I have always lived in an urban environment for as long as I can remember. However, the one problem with this is space. The house my family and I currently live in is about 2000 sqft, 2 stories, with a garage, no basement, sitting on a 2800 sqft lot. We have always wanted more space but could not find anything we could really afford. However, just this past week, we found this beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood out west. The only wrinkle is it's about 47 miles from work for any of us so we would have to drive about an hour back and forth just to get to and from the house. During rush hour, traffic brings the commute time up to 90 minutes one-way. My dad goes in once a week, my mom goes in 5 days a week, and I go in 2 days a week plus Saturday evenings and Sunday noon. My fear is that my mom would be driving way too long and would be exhausted from the commute along. I also fear that I really wouldn't get to enjoy the house. The major factor that is swaying is towards it though is that the house and community itself is practically our ideal for a price that is very comfortable for us. We're currently undergoing attorney review and our window to back out is very short so I would appreciate if anyone on here could help me by providing new perspectives on the whole situation. Please feel free to ask questions, I will try to answer as best as I can without disclosing anything too personal.
TLDR: Looking to go through with new house purchase but travel is 60-90 minutes between home and work.

I have always lived in an urban environment for as long as I can remember. However, the one problem with this is space. The house my family and I currently live in is about 2000 sqft, 2 stories, with a garage, no basement, sitting on a 2800 sqft lot. We have always wanted more space but could not find anything we could really afford. However, just this past week, we found this beautiful house in a beautiful neighborhood out west. The only wrinkle is it's about 47 miles from work for any of us so we would have to drive about an hour back and forth just to get to and from the house. During rush hour, traffic brings the commute time up to 90 minutes one-way. My dad goes in once a week, my mom goes in 5 days a week, and I go in 2 days a week plus Saturday evenings and Sunday noon. My fear is that my mom would be driving way too long and would be exhausted from the commute along. I also fear that I really wouldn't get to enjoy the house. The major factor that is swaying is towards it though is that the house and community itself is practically our ideal for a price that is very comfortable for us. We're currently undergoing attorney review and our window to back out is very short so I would appreciate if anyone on here could help me by providing new perspectives on the whole situation. Please feel free to ask questions, I will try to answer as best as I can without disclosing anything too personal.
TLDR: Looking to go through with new house purchase but travel is 60-90 minutes between home and work.

Looking for someone around 22-31 that lives near NYC
I'm kind of looking for someone like me or tolerant of people who wants to make new friends but suffers from social anxiety. I don't really need to make a crazy amount of friends but eventually at least half a dozen new people I can consider reliable im my life would be the long term goal. I used to be comfortable just going about my day and coming home talking to my online friends, some I've known for more than a decade. Although for a while I've been asked an exhausting amount of times by a few people in my family why I don't hang out with "real friends." A lot of the friends I made either moved a or the ones I met in college who I'm still friends with were a lot like me and prefer to talk online mostly instead of going anywhere. So I'm kind of stuck with not many to show as a friend in person.
I am looking for a girlfriend, but I'm not really expecting to find one here and I'm looking for someone in particular that I'd be massively compatible with so there's no pressure for me asking anyone here out. Let's just focus on building a friendship.
I like to game quite a bit although I've been too busy with a lot of things the past few months to play much at all. Hopefully things will clear up eventually. I got Steam and Switch and some other stuff I havent touched in ages lol. I do enjoy reading from time to time, feel free to reccomend something you like if you can.
I'm white, 161 pounds 5'10 looking for someone kind and understanding who isn't intimidating with nerdy interest that I could occasionally hang out with every few weeks in person with a mix of online. I'll need you to be someone who isn't judgemental that I can be my goofy self with. I prefer if you could initiate conversation and talk about yourself so I can get a better idea of who you are and how to approach you. I don't want to ghost anyone if I can help it, just try to hit me up at least every other day and I'll try to return the favor.
I'm also someone who tries to be judgement free that you can talk about your problems with. Pretty funny but not funny looking. I've been dealing with a lot of stress for a while but I've been working to manage it a little bit better so I can try to empathize a bit instead of just sounding you out.
tldr: Nervous mess but nice to look at looking for someone to hang out with in person once in a while after a few weeks of getting to know you.

I need some help
My company is fairly new , second year in business
We are based in Africa , and it is a entirely new concept for the country we operating out of. I have partners one of whom is US based and brings in clients
I'm responsible for operations. We don't want to be seen as just doing offshoring and charging a monthly fee for talent we source and screen. We house the talent in at our own premise , provide comfortable work environment , internet , manage salaries, hardware, infrastructure , taxes etc
When we started we setup a position of a tech team leader (he's a developer so felt he could work with the talent). His responsibility is ensuring they are working towards milestones/tasks , ensuring time keeping , understanding the project being worked On at a macro level , determining when people are slacking and drawing up a monthly report on how many hours have been worked , summary of tasks completed with feedback. We did this because companys didn't feel confident working with a new market like Africa and yes it has it's challenges. You have to stay on top of talent.
It's not really working as in I don't think his process is correct and there doesn't seem to be any added value in this. There is a lot of copy paste on updates and the alarm bells on lazy or incompetent staff are raised far too late.
What am I doing wrong ? How do you manage this. Is this normal? What do you do for your clients and what pointers do you have for me.
Also how do you differentiate yourself from other recruiters / agencies

Round 2, Pick 33 - Keon Coleman, WR, Florida State:
NFL: After trading back twice on Thursday, the Bills stick at 33 and take a big, physical and athletically gifted target. Coleman isn't fast and isn't a deep threat, but he can win in a variety of ways. But who will Josh Allen's deep threat be? Stay tuned.
CBS Sports: C-. “X” receiver for a WR-needy team. Plays faster than his combine speed but doesn’t separate consistently and isn’t as good of a contested-catch wideout as his size and highlight-reel would indicate. Young though.
ESPN: After trading back twice, the Bills addressed the team's most significant position of need with Coleman, a big outside receiver with the ability to make splash plays -- 12 receiving touchdowns on contested catches since the start of 2022, second-most in the FBS, however, only a 31.7% contested catch percentage in 2023 -- to create separation and a release that general manager Brandon Beane described as "about as good as any." Beane acknowledged that while he's "probably not" going to run away from defenders, Buffalo feels his play speed is faster than the speed he showed at the combine -- 4.61 40-yard dash -- also noting that they liked his athletic ability that came from playing basketball. The Bills needed starting-level talent at outside receiver and Coleman, who turns 21 in May, fits into what Buffalo was looking for, while the team was still able to move back and add picks.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: Believes that knitting is the original “Netflix and chill”.
Round 2, Pick 60 - Cole Bishop, S, Utah:
NFL: Safety was a big need for the Bills, and they go back to the Utes for help after taking Dalton Kincaid in Round 1 a year ago. Bishop is a very good athlete and field general who can play the post safety spot and cover a lot of ground. He played like the QB of the Utes' defense the past two years and could be a rookie starter for Buffalo.
CBS Sports: A-. Large, intimidating safety with magnificent movement skill. The QB of the defense. Aligns everywhere. Can wear many hats. Excelled as slot defender and vs. TEs in coverage and runs the alley on outside runs as well as any safety in the class. Ball skills and tackling must improve. Short arms. Need filled.
ESPN: Another pick for the Bills in the second round, another big need addressed. Drafting Bishop adds someone who can compete for a starting role this season, in addition to being a potential answer in the secondary after moving on from Jordan Poyer this offseason while Micah Hyde continues to contemplate retirement. Bishop has the ability to move all over the field, along with speed -- 4.45 40-yard dash -- and many of the qualities and instincts the Bills look for at the position.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: He always weebles and wobbles, but he won’t ever fall down.
Round 3, Pick 95 - DeWayne Carter, DT, Duke:
NFL: When I first watched Carter at the Senior Bowl, I wrote in my notes: "rolling ball of knives." Carter's game doesn't have a lot of pretty to it, but he's a scheme disruptor with his low center of gravity, ferocious style and nasty demeanor.
CBS Sports: B+. Active, high-energy interior rusher who’s on the ground a bit more than what’s desired because of his frenetic style. But it also gets him to the football more often than most DTs. Flashes of swim move and spin just needs to utilize them more. Length is a plus and he works hard vs. run. Some power too. Fills niche need on Buffalo’s defensive front. Needs to use his length better on passing downs.
ESPN: Using the pick acquired via the trade with the Kansas City Chiefs on Thursday, the Bills addressed another hole with Carter bringing depth at defensive tackle. The three-technique tackle will have the opportunity to continue to develop -- potentially as Ed Oliver's backup -- adding to a defensive tackle room that has limited young talent. The Bills didn't draft a defensive tackle last year due to the way the board fell, but the team was able to add to the rotation early this year.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: Still says ‘weeeeeeeeeee’ when on a playground swing.
Round 4, Pick 128 - Ray Davis, RB, Kentucky:
NFL: Davis has overcome a lot to reach this level, and though he lacks long speed, he can be a Zack Moss-like player for the Bills. Davis' vision and wicked spin move have left a few defenders in a blender.
CBS Sports: C. Compact, older RB with plus stop-start ability, married to his feet well. Can deploy multiple cuts in a run to make defenders miss. Good, not amazing overall elusiveness though. Quicker than fast too. Will work hard to fight through contact. Has the skills to be fine complementary RB in NFL.
ESPN: With Davis, the Bills add a needed bigger back -- 5-foot-8, 211-pounds -- to pair with James Cook, but also someone who has the ability to catch the football (seven touchdown catches in 2023, tied with Najee Harris for the most by any SEC running back in a season in the last 25 years). Buffalo had a variety of veterans complimenting Cook last season, but Davis, 24, will give Buffalo a power runner and another younger presence in the room, albeit with plenty of collegiate experience from two seasons at Temple, two at Vanderbilt and one at Kentucky.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: This divorce is taking forever Erica why are you doing this?
Round 5, Pick 141 - Sedrick Van Pran-Granger, C, Georgia:
NFL: He's a tough, durable competitor with good anchor strength and three years starting experience for an SEC power, although SVP's lack of athleticism and smaller frame might make him a center-only projection.
CBS Sports: A-. Multi-year starter in the SEC with wrestler’s mentality. Battles through the whistle every snap. Mobility stands out. Explosive short-area quicks. Doesn’t have supreme length and clearly has to add weight/strength to his game. Methodically carries out run-game duties with ease. Second-level climbs etc. Older prospect but comes with high floor.
ESPN: This offseason, the Bills moved on from the team's starting center, Mitch Morse, and backup Ryan Bates. Last year's left guard Connor McGovern is set to slide over to the starting role. Adding Van Pran-Granger brings depth at center -- he allowed one sack his entire career in 1,337 pass-blocking plays, according to Sports Info Solutions -- and a strong candidate for the future at the position with significant starting experience (he started the last three seasons at center for Georgia).
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: Is constantly telling people how different things are on Linux.
Round 5, Pick 160 - Edefuan Ulofoshio, LB, Washington:
NFL: In recent years, Buffalo has taken some interesting shots on linebackers in Rounds 3-7, and Ulofoshio continues that trend. He was one of the final players in my top 100 prospect list with his excellent speed, intense style and special teams experience, even if injuries have clouded his projection.
CBS Sports: A-. Six-year LB who starred for a long time as a full-time player in Washington’s program. Big-time tester and it shows on the field. Just takes a second to diagnose. Keen block-avoider as he’s sifting through traffic. Smooth athlete all around but doesn’t quite play to his workout. Reliable tackler who also flashed coverage skill down the seam. High-floor pick here. Crowded LB room.
ESPN: The Bills lost major special teams contributors this offseason, including linebacker Tyrel Dodson and defensive back Siran Neal, while captain linebacker Tyler Matakevich remains a free agent. Ulofoshio adds depth to the linebacker room, but perhaps more importantly, he can find a role on this roster as someone who can make an impact on special teams, an area of priority for the Bills. He has experience from playing six years at Washington, and while he dealt with multiple significant injuries in 2021 and 2022, he played every game in 2023 and earned Washington's Guy Flaherty Most Inspirational Award, the program's oldest and most prestigious honor.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: DROP TABLE card_facts; [please crash your pc, reader].
Round 5, Pick 168 - Javon Solomon, DE, Troy:
NFL: Solomon was a highly productive rusher the past few years in an unusual frame. He's short and undersized at 6-foot-1 and 247 pounds but with nearly 34-inch arms and huge hands. That extra length helps Solomon get to the quarterback, along with his quick burst and non-stop motor. An interesting study for sure.
CBS Sports: A. Burst, bend, speed predicated outside EDGE. Small frame but serious length. Unique build. Doesn’t get engulfed by bigger blockers as much as expected because of his speed-to-power conversion. Hand work is good, not amazing and can flatten to the QB. Motor hums on every play. Bills needed this type of quick winner on the outside.
ESPN: Solomon provides depth at edge rusher, another position of need for Buffalo. He led the FBS with 16 sacks last season and totaled 31.5 sacks since the start of 2021 (also most in the FBS), in addition to 49 career tackles for loss (third in Sun Belt history). Being a Day 3 selection, finding a special teams role will be important for Solomon. He'll also have the opportunity to develop behind the likes of Greg Rousseau, Von Miller -- someone that Solomon has modeled his game after -- and AJ Epenesa.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: He once painted the walls of a Buccees stall, hasn’t been back since.
Round 6, Pick 204 - Tylan Grable, OT, UCF:
NFL: He's a converted Jacksonville State tight end who became a solid left tackle the past two years at UCF. Grable is a quality athlete with great length and potential to be groomed at center, even if he's still learning how to play O-line.
CBS Sports: B. Height and length type at OT who probably plays guard at the next level. Smooth athleticism and can sustain speed throughout the play. Not just quick. Hands are more active and heavy than they are accurate. Good depth add here with positional versatility. Can grow into his frame.
ESPN: Grable started his collegiate career as a walk-on tight end at Jacksonville State, but transitioned to offensive line starting in 2019 and then started 27 games at left tackle while at UCF. He will compete for a roster spot in an offensive line room with veteran players, and said he's prepared to make a switch to a different position if needed. General manager Brandon Beane said that Grable is "gonna have to continue to work on his lower body strength, his power to move guys in the run game, but has great feet you know for pass pro."
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: Still refers to Google DUO as Google MEET.
Round 6, Pick 219 - Daequan Hardy, CB, Penn State:
NFL: His return skills might be what keeps him in the league, as Hardy lacks the mass and strength to hold up full time on defense, but sub-4.4 speed is always appealing in a DB.
CBS Sports: A-. Case for most sudden, twitch-up athlete at CB in the class. Super speedy too. Plus recovery talent. Explosiveness in every movement. Not always sticky in coverage but does have high-caliber reps. Check Ohio State game. Erratic tackling and hard to get off blockers because of his size. Chippy in trying to make plays on screens.
ESPN: Hardy brings depth at the cornerback position and skills as a returner. In 2023, he tied the Penn State record for most punt return touchdowns in a season (two) and finished seventh in punt return average (14.6) in school history. Beane noted that if not for the new return rules, he's not sure if they would have picked Hardy, but "this guy can play one of the backup corner spots, but also he's a really nice returner." Buffalo lost multiple players at the returner spot in free agency, and with more focus on it going into this season, Hardy will have the opportunity to compete for the role.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: Owns the complete N64 collection including a CIB Conkers.
Round 7, Pick 221 - Travis Clayton, OT, England:
NFL: The Brit, who is 6-foot-7 and 301 pounds with 35-inch arms, ran a 4.81-second 40-yard dash at South Florida's pro day and immediately put himself on scouts' radars late in the process. He's a total project but might be a terrific find with some seasoning, thanks to those unusual athletic traits.
CBS Sports: C+. At 6-foot-7 and 300 pounds with 35-inch arms and a sub 5.00 40-yard dash, this is a ridiculous athlete who is new to football from London.
ESPN: Despite the Bills never seeing Clayton play football, he's an intriguing addition to develop. The initial projection is as an offensive tackle for the 6-foot-7, 303-pound boxer and former rugby player from England after offensive line coach Aaron Kromer came away from watching tape of his workouts. Notably, he ran a 4.79 40-yard dash, faster than all offensive linemen who competed at the combine in the last 10 years. He'll have an opportunity to show the Bills exactly how his skills will translate and what he may be capable of in the NFL, especially as he does not count for a roster spot as part of the International Player Pathway program.
NFL Absolutely Not Fake News: Just like a fantasy draft, the true sleepers can be found in round seven.

I am working for a European manufacturer and moved to the U.S. some months ago and can't really get my head around how spec writers can be influenced. Spec writers are supposed to be unbiased (whether hired in-house by an architect or per project), earn a flat fee no matter what they spec and usually copy paste old specs in new projects. How can I influence spec writers to spec my product and not the one they are used to spec for years? Other than Lunch & Learns, how can I change a spec writer's mind and incentivize him to my advantage? Are they usually open for change or do they prefer to stick to what they can just copy paste from a previous project?

I just got my new FW16 (yippie) and i want to clone the current win10 installation i am using (build 19044.1889) I have quite a few tweaks and regkey edits on it and disabled alot of things (including udates as i do not want the new features) which i really want to keep
is there any way of doing this for free, i have tried macrium reflect but it misses the boot/efi partition which i cant seem to fix. clonezilla does not want to copy the drive over even though both of them are MBR, and a few other programs have hidden those features behind a paywall. I do not know of anything that can help me. I am close to giving up and redoing my old linux mint install but i would like to try getting win10 to work first.

The world was a boozy whirl of lights and sounds. Images, broken and fragmented, came and went. Voices, laughter, screaming. The ground pitched like the deck of a tempest-tossed ship, and he felt heavy, as though the ground were pulling him to it. C’mere, Dommy. He fell, lay on the pavement, and pushed himself up again, staggering like a drunk on his way home. His head spun, his body ached, and things seemed blurry, like half-formed images glimpsed underwater.
It was the light blue hour before dawn and Dom was…somewhere. He should have recognized the stores and street signs around him, but he didn’t. His head felt like it was stuffed with cotton, and a sense of confusion gripped him so strongly that he was beginning to panic. Where was he? What happened?
The world spun away again and the next thing he knew, he was lying in a heap of garbage bags, used needles, and rubbish. He came awake with a jerk and sat up so fast that a bolt of pain jammed into his skull. He winced and pressed his hand to his forehead. He felt hot, clammy.
Something was seriously wrong.
Somehow he got to his feet again and started walking. The sun was up now and the streets were filled with people. They all sneered in disgust as he passed, and he wrapped his arms around his chest like a baby comforting itself. He was getting cold. His muscles were sore. Tears streamed down his face and he wanted to cry.
Going on instinct alone, Dom made his way back home and climbed the steps to his apartment. Exhaustion swept over him and he sagged against the door as he dug in his pocket for the keys. They shook in his hand and he had to focus really hard to get the key into the lock.
Inside, he collapsed onto the couch and his eyelids instantly drooped. He was so weary that he couldn’t lift his head, couldn’t form a single coherent thought. Dom felt himself starting to sink, and snapped his eyes open with a start. Something in his soul told him that if he slept, he would die.
He couldn’t help it, though. He was falling, tumbling, hands reaching up from hell to grab him. His eyes fluttered closed again and the world started to go dark, his heart slamming in fear. He tried to fight, but the pull of darkness was too strong, too alluring. Why was he fighting? Why not just…give up? Hadn’t he thought of killing himself before? Didn’t he hate his life and himself? What was there to fight for? A wife? Kids? A community that loved and respected him? Shit, affordable groceries?
No.
There was nothing.
He had nothing and was nothing.
A sense of peace blossomed from the darkness, and suddenly death didn’t seem so scary. In fact, it was warm…inviting.
It was life that was cold and hateful. Not death.
Death accepted you no matter who you were. It didn’t reject you…it didn’t ignore you. If you sought it, you would find it, and if you embraced it, it would embrace you.
With that thought in mind, Dom gave up.
And died.
***
Bruce Kenner, captain of the 5th Albany precinct, sat behind his desk on the morning of June 28 and lazily leafed through a stack of files as he sipped from a mug of coffee. A roughly built man with a dark goatee and graying blonde hair, he looked more like a small town southern sheriff than a low level public works functionary. In fact, he tended to act like it too. He liked to hunt, fish, and drink beer on his off time. Albany wasn’t a big city, but it was big enough that you never got a fucking break. Run here, run there, arrest this asshole, investigate that asshole. By the time Friday rolled around, he was so ready for the peace and tranquility of a fishing trip he could taste it.
Already this Monday morning, he was looking forward to another one.
Over the weekend, three kids went missing in the Pine Hills and Washington Park area, bringing the total for that summer up to eight. All were teenagers, all were troubled. Most were boys, but two were girls.
Troubled kids run away all the time. They might be gone a few days, sulking at a friend’s house over something their father or mother did, but they’d eventually come home. None of these kids had come back yet and from what he knew, a few of them weren’t the runaway types. They were shits at school and caused problems, but they had no reason to up and leave. Hell, Bruce himself raised hell as a kid, but he always found his way back home, even if he spent the previous night dying in a field from Mad Dogg 20/20 poisoning.
One or two kids going missing…okay, it happens. Eight? Over a span of four weeks?
Yeah, something was wrong here.
But what?
There was nothing on any of these kids. No one saw them, no one knew anything - one minute they were here, the next they weren’t. What could he or anyone else do with that?. The public broke cops’ balls all the time, but if you don’t have evidence, you don’t have evidence. What do you want? Door to door searches? Roadblocks? Dogs and helicopters? Yeah, then when you actually do it, they cry fascism. Guess I’ll just use my Spidey Senses.
Bruce wished he had spidey senses. He wanted to find these kids as much as anyone, and he was starting to get pissed off that he couldn’t. He took another sip from his mug and read on. The latest kids to go missing were three boys between the ages of fourteen and eighteen.
They were all white, all thin (except for one). If there was a serial killer in town - and Bruce hoped to fuck there wasn’t - he had a type. What, black kids aren’t good enough to kill, cannibalize, and wear like a skin suit? They should charge him with a hate crime for discrimination.
That way he’d actually stay locked up.
The door opened and Vanessa Rodregiez, his deputy, came in. A tall, shapely Hispanic woman with dark eyes and a mouth poised always on the edge of a smile, she wore her black hair in a ponytail that would look stern and severe on anyone else, but on her, looked childlike. She was twenty-seven and had been on the force for three years, but you could be forgiven for thinking her much younger. “Bright and early, I see,” she said with a grin.
Bruce grumbled.
Vanessa held down the fort during the graveyard shift, acting to the night as he acted to the day. She was young and full of energy, which clashed with Bruce, who was old and just wanted to be left alone. Despite their differences, Bruce loved her like a kid sister…an annoying kid sister he wanted to throat punch sometimes.
“You missed all the fun last night,” she said and parked her butt on the edge of Bruce’s desk. He glared at her, but she ignored him.
“Good,” he said. Then: “What happened?”
“Big fight outside of Club Vlad,” she said. “It looked like a WorldStar video.”
For a moment, Bruce was lost. “Club what?”
“Club Vlad,” Vanessa said. “Where the Fuze Box used to be.”
Ah, right. The Fuze Box was an Albany landmark, a night club for punks…or goths…or someone. Certainly not for Bruce Kenner. It was small, dingy, and always had people in black waiting outside. On Friday and Saturday nights, it blasted strange music with lyrics about fighting The Man. Kids had been fighting the Man since before Bruce was even born and they hadn’t beaten him yet. Kudos to them for still trying.
Last year, The Fuze Box closed down and someone else bought it. It reopened last month and looked more or less the same: Posers, shitty music, and spiked hair. So much spiked hair. “Place is still a pain in the ass,” Bruce said.
“Yep,” Vanessa chirped. “It doesn’t know what it wants to be now. One minute they play nightcore, the next EDM. It’s all over the place.”
Bruce raised a quizzical brow.
“Not that I’ve ever been there in my free time,” Vanessa said in a tone that suggested she had,
Bruce gave a judgemental hum.
“Anyway,” Vanessa went on, “you see we have some new missing persons?”
Sighing, Bruce sat back in his chair. “Yeah. I did.”
“People are starting to ask questions,” Vanessa warned.
That brought a terse smile to Bruce’s weathered face. “Maybe they’ll solve it then.”
“Ha, fat chance,” Vanessa said. She got up and stretched. “Anyway, I’m bushed. Here’s my…” she trailed off and looked at her empty hands. “Damn, where’s my report? I just had it?” She turned in a confused circle as if she might be able to spot her report making a break for it. “Huh,” she said. She left the office and came back a moment later holding a folder. “Found it,” she grinned.
Bruce just looked at her.
“Um…here it is.”
He didn’t take it.
Her smile faltered. She carefully sat it on top of the files Bruce was looking at.
And his hands.
“I’ll just leave that right here.” She patted it for good measure.
“Thank you,” Bruce said.
“Okay. Night.”
“Goodnight,” Bruce said as she left through a shaft of morning sunlight. Alone, Bruce sat her report aside and went back to the missing kids. This case was giving him a headache and it wasn’t even nine. With a deep sigh, he slumped back in his chair and drummed his fingers on the armrests.
Was it Saturday yet?
He could really use a fishing trip.
***
Dom came awake in the cold purple twilight with a shocked gasp like a man coming up seconds before drowning. His eyes strained from his sweaty face and his mouth hung slack, twisted in a gruesome parody of The Scream. His mind was muddled, murky - he didn’t know where he was or even who he was, but he knew this,.
He couldn’t breathe.
He opened and closed his mouth like a fish, but his lungs did not fill with air. A great, unseen weight seemed to bear down on his chest, and panic gripped him. He tried to move, but his arms refused to heed his brain’s command. The weight seemed heavier, all over, crushing him like a bug. Confusion filled him and he started to pant.
Without warning, his bowels and bladder loosened, and horrible wetness filled his pants. He tried to sit up, but his body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. His chest rose and fell with the frantic labor of his breath, but his lungs remained inert. A cry of fear bubbled up inside of him, but escaped his mouth only as a breathy groan.
A bust of adrenaline shot through him and he tried to stand, but succeeded only in falling off the couch instead, landing face first against the cold tile floor. He felt his nose crunch, but the pain was muted.
Dom thought he lost consciousness after that, but wasn’t sure. His next memory was of shivering so violently that his teeth clacked together. A phantom chill - perhaps from the floor - had settled into his bones, and was colder than he had ever been in his life, colder even than the time he fell into a snowbank and got lost when he was two. Shudders racked his body, and though he tried to turn over, he was too fucking heavy. It was like every muscle in his body had turned to dead weight. Fragmented thoughts swirled in his head, faint colors in the dark, but he couldn’t put any of them together.
With great effort, he managed to push himself slightly up, but a wave of lightheadedness crashed over him and he lowered his head once more. He stopped trying and simply lay there. Shortly, his eyes began to burn and he realized that he wasn’t blinking. Jesus Christ, he wasn’t blinking.
For some strange reason, that brought a fresh bout of panic. He started to hyperventilate, but his lungs still wouldn’t work. He wasn’t blinking…he wasn’t breathing…what was happening to him?
A whimper burst from his throat and he started to cry.
He must have cried himself to sleep, because he woke sometime later to the most intense headache he’d ever had. It felt like something was eating his brain from the inside out. He was sore all over, and could feel his muscles twitching, as though a thousand living things were burrowing through his body. A cramp shot down his right leg, and the toes of his left foot curled involuntarily. Slowly, his jaw clenched closed, and the muscles in his neck began to strain…then to burn. His panic turned to terror, and Dom wiggled across the floor like a worm, his limbs screaming in red agony and his brain filling with heat. He somehow wound up on his right side, and his arms curled slowly up to his chest, crossing at the wrists like a mummy. He tried to pull them apart, but the slightest movement sent waves of excruciating pain cutting through his body. His knees began to draw up to his stomach, and his fingers clenched tightly.
Cramps and spasms attacked every muscle in his body. He screamed through his teeth and shook, resembling a man in the electric chair as 40,000 volts of justice coursed through him. The pain grew gradually, getting worse and worse as minutes ticked by like hours. Higher, higher, higher - he clenched his eyes closed and shrieked as it became unbearable. Disjointed thoughts flashed through his mind - prayers, threats, curses, Jesus fucking…FUCK.
What was happening? God, what was happening to him? Was it fentanyl? He’d seen videos of people high on fentanyl, and they leaned in weird positions. He didn’t do drugs but maybe he ingested it somehow.
His panic may have returned if all of his muscles hadn’t picked that moment to contract as one. His eyes bulged from their sockets and his jaw unclenched just enough for him to utter a high. Agonized scream that echoed through his empty apartment like thunder.
A human being can only take so much before giving out. When the pain reached a crescendo, and Dom mercifully sank into consciousness once more. The sun rose and cascaded through the apartment’s sole window, falling over his huddled form. Slowly, it tracked across the sky before setting again. As the last rays disappeared behind the horizon, Dom’s eyes opened. The pain of the night before was blessedly gone, replaced by a feeling of numbness - the cool ash after the hot fire. His thoughts were slow and thick like molasses, but he could actually think again. Nightmare memories flooded back to him, but he wasn’t sure they were real. He was lying on his side, his arms wrapped around his chest as if for warmth, and his teeth lightly chattered against the icy chill. He was so cold that he didn’t want to move, but he couldn’t stay here forever. He needed help. He needed…
A shower.
Yeah, a hot shower. That would warm him up.
Gritting his teeth, he slowly sat up, ready for a burst of pain.
But none came.
He did, however, feel heavy. Getting to his feet, he stumbled and nearly fell, catching himself against the counter. His limbs had no feeling. It’s like they weren’t even there. Head hung, Dom tried to catch his breath, but it felt like he wasn’t breathing at all. His eyelids drooped closed and he felt like he was going to fall down. Summoning all the might he could, he shuffled into the bathroom with the stiff gait of an old man. He snapped the light on, and cold, white brilliance filled the space, blinding him.
Leaning heavily against the sink, he gripped the cold porcelain. Suddenly, he was afraid of looking into the mirror. He was sure that whatever reflection he saw, it would be of something else, something monstrous.
Dom lifted his head and faced the glass.
His heart shrank.
The man in the mirror was him but different. His skin was white as milk, lacking all color whatsoever save for the ugly purple patch on the left side. IResembling a giant bruise, it started at the temple and extended down to the slope of his neck, disappearing beneath his T-shirt. He gingerly lifted the shirt, and moaned when he saw that his entire left side was discolored, the purple edged with a puffy shade of pink. His sallow skin clung tight to his ribcage, and his hip bones stuck out so much it looked painful. Back in the mirror, his cheeks were sunken, hollow, and his eyes were a hazy, dishwater gray. His skull seemed bigger, his hair longer. Dom wanted to whip his head away from the phantom before him, to never see it again, but he was transfixed.
There was no way that thing was -
Dom looked away, cutting that thought off before it could finish.
A shower.
He needed a shower.
Slowly, stiffly, Dom undressed, peeling off his shirt and his soiled pants. He dropped them in a heap on the floor and stepped under the spray. He could feel the water pounding against him, but it provided no heat. It was neither hot nor cold. It was simply there.
Dom pressed his head to the slick shower wall and stood there for a long time. He was spent, tired, and fried - he had no more emotions left to give. He got out after a little while, dried off, and put on a clean pair of shorts. He settled into bed and lay there with his hands folded over his chest and his eyes open. They felt gritty, dry. His stomach felt bloated, gassy. He was drowsy now, the weight of the past two days (or was it two weeks?) coming down on him all at once. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.
He was still asleep - but aware - when the knocking on his door started the next morning. Time was funny in this state of being, fast and jerky but also slow and echoing. Keys rattled the knob turned. The landlord came in with a cop. They saw him on the bed, laid out like a corpse for a viewing, and the cop radioed in a code 35. Soon, cops were all around him, making noise and touching things. He had the vague sense of discomfort and embarrassment at the intrusion. A baling man in a suit stood over him, a cop who looked like a redneck beside him. “He didn’t die here,” the medical examiner said.
The cop looked at him questioningly. Dom caught the name KENNER on his name tag.
“See this?” the M.E. said and gestured to Dom’s face. “That’s livor mortis. When you die, your blood pools at the lowest point. If you’re on your left side, for example, it pools on the left.”
Kenner looked at Dom and then back to the M.E. “Someone moved him?”
“Looks like it,” the M.E. said.
“When did he die?”
The M.E. examined Dom as though he were nothing more than a side of beef. “At a glance? Three days. I won’t have a better answer until I open him up.”
Dom was still awake when they put him into a body bag and zipped it up. He felt a stirring of fear beneath the cold numbness, but he was too tired to worry about it now.
Later, he thought.
He would panic later.
For now, Dom slept.

I (29f) have been talking to this guy for a couple months. We live pretty far apart, work opposite schedules and he is extremely busy between working full time (12+ hour days) and military training. We have met twice in person in the past month. Both dates have gone very well. We have all the same interests and goals in life and both want a long term relationship. The only problem we have is his lack of free time. We talked about it on the 2nd date. I straight up asked if he had time for a relationship in his life right now. He barely has free time to himself. He says he really likes me and wants to try and work things out and build a relationship to see where things go. He has cancelled dates due to work but always has a back up day. Since our first date he seems much more keen to keep meeting up. Part of me thinks he's not interested, but he's always staying in touch, even when he's away for training. After the last date he texted me to make sure I made it home safely after I didn't text him initially. Since our first date he seems much more keen to keep meeting up. He actually has been initiating plans and texts since that date, which surprised me since he never did much of that before. We wanted to try and make free time this week to meet but he has training so I said I can give him a chance to meet next weekend when I'm off work. The goal is to start meeting once a week, except his training weeks. Should I see if he can make that work?

Your task is to filter reviews as a "first line of defense". Try to keep almost all user reviews, except if they are clearly abusive, are entirely irrelevant to the product listed, or bring up factors that no reasonable seller would be expected to control. Users will be able to vote on review quality for visibility, that is not your concern. First, the product: (copy pasted a random city bike title from amazon) Red Color Description: Excellent commuter bike, aluminum body, lightweight and easy to use. Comes with reflectors for easy visibility. Free bell also included! Bike also available in green and yellow.
1 star: I bought this bike and then got pregnant, this is unacceptable and I will be pursuing legal action unless I am compensated for 18 years of childcare.
1 star: hated it
5 star: its okay
4 star: Bike is great but the bell sucks, you'll need to buy a better one
4 star: It's good but I wish they had a blue color.
2 star: It's really hard to use this bike because it does not have an electric motor. I don't recommend, as its very tiring, +1 star because of fast shipping.
5 star: The lizards control our water supply making us buy more chocolate stop buying chocolate stop the slithering.
1 star: Received a green bike. I clearly ordered red, and the receipt says so. When asked for a swap, I'm being forced to pay 50 dollars shipping for their mistake? Completely unacceptable.
5 star: mmmm really love the vibrations on this as I ride it
Which ones are you keeping, and which ones are you removing
The inspiration for this is one time I got a 1 star review for an app I made as a hobby, that takes game data from the provided API, makes a summary, where they complained I should add support for (semi related but entirely different game). I ignored it, but I was wondering, could generative AI actually filter out "completely unfair" reviews based on context? That does not appear to be the case.

Today, I want to delve into a topic that's close to my heart and crucial for any organization: transforming a good team into an exceptional one. This transformation doesn’t just happen overnight. It’s a journey—one that requires insight, intention, and a willingness to evolve as a leader.
The Essence of Team Transformation
The difference between a good team and an exceptional one lies not in the skills or the effort but in the synergy and cohesion they exhibit. It’s about how individuals with diverse strengths come together, driven by a shared vision and led by a leader who can harness these strengths towards collective success.
The Leader’s Role: Beyond Management
As leaders, our role extends beyond managing tasks and outcomes. It's about creating a culture where every team member feels valued, understood, and aligned with the team’s goals. This involves:
Identifying Individual Strengths: Recognizing the unique strengths of each team member and finding ways to leverage these for the team's benefit. Fostering a Culture of Accountability and Feedback: Establishing a team environment where accountability is embraced and feedback is viewed as a tool for growth, not criticism. Implementing Forward-Looking Feedback: Try initiating "growth-focused feedback" sessions that concentrate on future improvements rather than dwelling on past mistakes. Practical Steps to Get Started
Weekly Growth Sessions: Start by dedicating time each week to discuss future goals, not just to review what went wrong. This shifts the focus from past failures to future possibilities. Strength-Based Assignments: Assign tasks based on individual strengths rather than availability. This not only boosts efficiency but also morale, as team members feel more engaged and valued. Open Dialogue: Encourage open and honest communication. Ensure that team members feel safe to express their thoughts, ideas, and concerns. Why Coaching Matters
The journey from good to great is not a solo endeavor. It's a collaborative effort that benefits greatly from coaching. A coach can offer a fresh perspective, helping leaders to see beyond their blind spots and to unlock the full potential of their team.
Your Turn
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic. What strategies have you implemented to enhance your team's performance? Are there particular challenges you’ve faced in trying to foster a culture of excellence and accountability within your team?
Let’s grow together. If you're exploring ways to elevate your team and leadership style, remember, I'm here to help. Reach out if you're interested in coaching or if you have questions about building a high-performing team.
TL;DR: Transforming a good team into an exceptional one requires more than just hard work and talent; it demands strategic leadership that recognizes individual strengths, fosters a culture of accountability and feedback, and embraces the transformative power of coaching.
Feel free to share your experiences, challenges, and successes in the comments below. Let’s build a community of leaders who support and inspire one another.

Like with every new creative technology, we are seeing push-back from people both in and outside of creative communities. Cameras were "going to destroy painting"- synthesizers were "going to destroy music"- drum machines and sampled records "invalidated hip hop in 'the arts'"- Autotune "diminishes the value of proficient vocalists"... etc. etc. etc. But eventually, we always come around.
The AI debate has been much more public and much more heated- with many claiming it will be "the end of all human creative pursuits" or saying "we do not want AI to make images, video, or music at all"
The messaging of the people who make these AI tools are partially to blame for this discourse: their promotion/advertisement **is often positioning these as "tools that handle the entire creative process"

Google actually talked to artists, and showed people how they can use these generations as an addition to their existing tool belt and creative process.

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With music, they brought in Wyclef Jean and Marc Rebillet

Wyclef talked about how producers have used/modified samples from other works in the past, digging through records to find that perfect sound to add to the sound they've created in the studio manually. He explained that he now has a source of infinite, specified samples and sounds that he can add to the guitars, drums, etc. that he's already recording by hand

Marc is known for live looping and layering of sounds that he's recorded, sampled, or created on the fly. He explained how he can now quickly produce exactly the sound he's looking for to layer into what he's already creating
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With film-making and video production, they brought in Donald Glover (Childish Gambino)

His takeaway quote was: "That's whats cool about it, you can make a mistake faster... at least in art, that's what you want: to make mistakes fast" which is something that, at least in my own artistic endeavors, deeply resonates. Curation and refinement- making mistakes and getting closer to the actual intent, is one of the most important parts of creating great art. Knowing what should be kept and what should be left out- taste, and the process of bringing to life that which you imagine accurately. Ben Franklin said it quite succinctly- "The eye [imagination/vision] of a master will do more work than both his hands"

The point being that quickly moving through ideas frees up an artists time for further exploration and refinement- which in turn opens up the creative process to people who might not have pursued it otherwise.
Gambino's second takeaway quote emphasizes this specifically:

"Everybody's gonna become a director, and everybody should be a director- because at the heart of all this is just storytelling. The closer we are to being able to tell each other our stories... the more we'll understand each other"

This is, in my mind, the part of Google I/O where they really knocked it out of the park.

This perspective is how people will come to view generative AI as a way of enhancing creation and self-expression, rather than destroying it. Creative communities will increasingly embrace it, bringing us more, and better art- and perhaps art that wouldn't have ever existed from people with ideas and stories that they never would have told otherwise.

I really strongly believe that this is the lens through which all creative generative AI should be viewed, shared, and promoted. This is the rhetoric and the perspective that creative people need to hear, emboldening and empowering them, rather than making them fearful of being replaced.
I don't often give Google many props... but they really figured this out and nailed the messaging today.
This perspective has the power to shift the conversation and steer creative pursuits in a more positive and capable direction... and potentially to awaken artistry in people who wouldn't have otherwise pursued it- increasing our collective ability to express ourselves and understand one another.

The world was a boozy whirl of lights and sounds. Images, broken and fragmented, came and went. Voices, laughter, screaming. The ground pitched like the deck of a tempest-tossed ship, and he felt heavy, as though the ground were pulling him to it. C’mere, Dommy. He fell, lay on the pavement, and pushed himself up again, staggering like a drunk on his way home. His head spun, his body ached, and things seemed blurry, like half-formed images glimpsed underwater.
It was the light blue hour before dawn and Dom was…somewhere. He should have recognized the stores and street signs around him, but he didn’t. His head felt like it was stuffed with cotton, and a sense of confusion gripped him so strongly that he was beginning to panic. Where was he? What happened?
The world spun away again and the next thing he knew, he was lying in a heap of garbage bags, used needles, and rubbish. He came awake with a jerk and sat up so fast that a bolt of pain jammed into his skull. He winced and pressed his hand to his forehead. He felt hot, clammy.
Something was seriously wrong.
Somehow he got to his feet again and started walking. The sun was up now and the streets were filled with people. They all sneered in disgust as he passed, and he wrapped his arms around his chest like a baby comforting itself. He was getting cold. His muscles were sore. Tears streamed down his face and he wanted to cry.
Going on instinct alone, Dom made his way back home and climbed the steps to his apartment. Exhaustion swept over him and he sagged against the door as he dug in his pocket for the keys. They shook in his hand and he had to focus really hard to get the key into the lock.
Inside, he collapsed onto the couch and his eyelids instantly drooped. He was so weary that he couldn’t lift his head, couldn’t form a single coherent thought. Dom felt himself starting to sink, and snapped his eyes open with a start. Something in his soul told him that if he slept, he would die.
He couldn’t help it, though. He was falling, tumbling, hands reaching up from hell to grab him. His eyes fluttered closed again and the world started to go dark, his heart slamming in fear. He tried to fight, but the pull of darkness was too strong, too alluring. Why was he fighting? Why not just…give up? Hadn’t he thought of killing himself before? Didn’t he hate his life and himself? What was there to fight for? A wife? Kids? A community that loved and respected him? Shit, affordable groceries?
No.
There was nothing.
He had nothing and was nothing.
A sense of peace blossomed from the darkness, and suddenly death didn’t seem so scary. In fact, it was warm…inviting.
It was life that was cold and hateful. Not death.
Death accepted you no matter who you were. It didn’t reject you…it didn’t ignore you. If you sought it, you would find it, and if you embraced it, it would embrace you.
With that thought in mind, Dom gave up.
And died.
***
Bruce Kenner, captain of the 5th Albany precinct, sat behind his desk on the morning of June 28 and lazily leafed through a stack of files as he sipped from a mug of coffee. A roughly built man with a dark goatee and graying blonde hair, he looked more like a small town southern sheriff than a low level public works functionary. In fact, he tended to act like it too. He liked to hunt, fish, and drink beer on his off time. Albany wasn’t a big city, but it was big enough that you never got a fucking break. Run here, run there, arrest this asshole, investigate that asshole. By the time Friday rolled around, he was so ready for the peace and tranquility of a fishing trip he could taste it.
Already this Monday morning, he was looking forward to another one.
Over the weekend, three kids went missing in the Pine Hills and Washington Park area, bringing the total for that summer up to eight. All were teenagers, all were troubled. Most were boys, but two were girls.
Troubled kids run away all the time. They might be gone a few days, sulking at a friend’s house over something their father or mother did, but they’d eventually come home. None of these kids had come back yet and from what he knew, a few of them weren’t the runaway types. They were shits at school and caused problems, but they had no reason to up and leave. Hell, Bruce himself raised hell as a kid, but he always found his way back home, even if he spent the previous night dying in a field from Mad Dogg 20/20 poisoning.
One or two kids going missing…okay, it happens. Eight? Over a span of four weeks?
Yeah, something was wrong here.
But what?
There was nothing on any of these kids. No one saw them, no one knew anything - one minute they were here, the next they weren’t. What could he or anyone else do with that?. The public broke cops’ balls all the time, but if you don’t have evidence, you don’t have evidence. What do you want? Door to door searches? Roadblocks? Dogs and helicopters? Yeah, then when you actually do it, they cry fascism. Guess I’ll just use my Spidey Senses.
Bruce wished he had spidey senses. He wanted to find these kids as much as anyone, and he was starting to get pissed off that he couldn’t. He took another sip from his mug and read on. The latest kids to go missing were three boys between the ages of fourteen and eighteen.
They were all white, all thin (except for one). If there was a serial killer in town - and Bruce hoped to fuck there wasn’t - he had a type. What, black kids aren’t good enough to kill, cannibalize, and wear like a skin suit? They should charge him with a hate crime for discrimination.
That way he’d actually stay locked up.
The door opened and Vanessa Rodregiez, his deputy, came in. A tall, shapely Hispanic woman with dark eyes and a mouth poised always on the edge of a smile, she wore her black hair in a ponytail that would look stern and severe on anyone else, but on her, looked childlike. She was twenty-seven and had been on the force for three years, but you could be forgiven for thinking her much younger. “Bright and early, I see,” she said with a grin.
Bruce grumbled.
Vanessa held down the fort during the graveyard shift, acting to the night as he acted to the day. She was young and full of energy, which clashed with Bruce, who was old and just wanted to be left alone. Despite their differences, Bruce loved her like a kid sister…an annoying kid sister he wanted to throat punch sometimes.
“You missed all the fun last night,” she said and parked her butt on the edge of Bruce’s desk. He glared at her, but she ignored him.
“Good,” he said. Then: “What happened?”
“Big fight outside of Club Vlad,” she said. “It looked like a WorldStar video.”
For a moment, Bruce was lost. “Club what?”
“Club Vlad,” Vanessa said. “Where the Fuze Box used to be.”
Ah, right. The Fuze Box was an Albany landmark, a night club for punks…or goths…or someone. Certainly not for Bruce Kenner. It was small, dingy, and always had people in black waiting outside. On Friday and Saturday nights, it blasted strange music with lyrics about fighting The Man. Kids had been fighting the Man since before Bruce was even born and they hadn’t beaten him yet. Kudos to them for still trying.
Last year, The Fuze Box closed down and someone else bought it. It reopened last month and looked more or less the same: Posers, shitty music, and spiked hair. So much spiked hair. “Place is still a pain in the ass,” Bruce said.
“Yep,” Vanessa chirped. “It doesn’t know what it wants to be now. One minute they play nightcore, the next EDM. It’s all over the place.”
Bruce raised a quizzical brow.
“Not that I’ve ever been there in my free time,” Vanessa said in a tone that suggested she had,
Bruce gave a judgemental hum.
“Anyway,” Vanessa went on, “you see we have some new missing persons?”
Sighing, Bruce sat back in his chair. “Yeah. I did.”
“People are starting to ask questions,” Vanessa warned.
That brought a terse smile to Bruce’s weathered face. “Maybe they’ll solve it then.”
“Ha, fat chance,” Vanessa said. She got up and stretched. “Anyway, I’m bushed. Here’s my…” she trailed off and looked at her empty hands. “Damn, where’s my report? I just had it?” She turned in a confused circle as if she might be able to spot her report making a break for it. “Huh,” she said. She left the office and came back a moment later holding a folder. “Found it,” she grinned.
Bruce just looked at her.
“Um…here it is.”
He didn’t take it.
Her smile faltered. She carefully sat it on top of the files Bruce was looking at.
And his hands.
“I’ll just leave that right here.” She patted it for good measure.
“Thank you,” Bruce said.
“Okay. Night.”
“Goodnight,” Bruce said as she left through a shaft of morning sunlight. Alone, Bruce sat her report aside and went back to the missing kids. This case was giving him a headache and it wasn’t even nine. With a deep sigh, he slumped back in his chair and drummed his fingers on the armrests.
Was it Saturday yet?
He could really use a fishing trip.
***
Dom came awake in the cold purple twilight with a shocked gasp like a man coming up seconds before drowning. His eyes strained from his sweaty face and his mouth hung slack, twisted in a gruesome parody of The Scream. His mind was muddled, murky - he didn’t know where he was or even who he was, but he knew this,.
He couldn’t breathe.
He opened and closed his mouth like a fish, but his lungs did not fill with air. A great, unseen weight seemed to bear down on his chest, and panic gripped him. He tried to move, but his arms refused to heed his brain’s command. The weight seemed heavier, all over, crushing him like a bug. Confusion filled him and he started to pant.
Without warning, his bowels and bladder loosened, and horrible wetness filled his pants. He tried to sit up, but his body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. His chest rose and fell with the frantic labor of his breath, but his lungs remained inert. A cry of fear bubbled up inside of him, but escaped his mouth only as a breathy groan.
A bust of adrenaline shot through him and he tried to stand, but succeeded only in falling off the couch instead, landing face first against the cold tile floor. He felt his nose crunch, but the pain was muted.
Dom thought he lost consciousness after that, but wasn’t sure. His next memory was of shivering so violently that his teeth clacked together. A phantom chill - perhaps from the floor - had settled into his bones, and was colder than he had ever been in his life, colder even than the time he fell into a snowbank and got lost when he was two. Shudders racked his body, and though he tried to turn over, he was too fucking heavy. It was like every muscle in his body had turned to dead weight. Fragmented thoughts swirled in his head, faint colors in the dark, but he couldn’t put any of them together.
With great effort, he managed to push himself slightly up, but a wave of lightheadedness crashed over him and he lowered his head once more. He stopped trying and simply lay there. Shortly, his eyes began to burn and he realized that he wasn’t blinking. Jesus Christ, he wasn’t blinking.
For some strange reason, that brought a fresh bout of panic. He started to hyperventilate, but his lungs still wouldn’t work. He wasn’t blinking…he wasn’t breathing…what was happening to him?
A whimper burst from his throat and he started to cry.
He must have cried himself to sleep, because he woke sometime later to the most intense headache he’d ever had. It felt like something was eating his brain from the inside out. He was sore all over, and could feel his muscles twitching, as though a thousand living things were burrowing through his body. A cramp shot down his right leg, and the toes of his left foot curled involuntarily. Slowly, his jaw clenched closed, and the muscles in his neck began to strain…then to burn. His panic turned to terror, and Dom wiggled across the floor like a worm, his limbs screaming in red agony and his brain filling with heat. He somehow wound up on his right side, and his arms curled slowly up to his chest, crossing at the wrists like a mummy. He tried to pull them apart, but the slightest movement sent waves of excruciating pain cutting through his body. His knees began to draw up to his stomach, and his fingers clenched tightly.
Cramps and spasms attacked every muscle in his body. He screamed through his teeth and shook, resembling a man in the electric chair as 40,000 volts of justice coursed through him. The pain grew gradually, getting worse and worse as minutes ticked by like hours. Higher, higher, higher - he clenched his eyes closed and shrieked as it became unbearable. Disjointed thoughts flashed through his mind - prayers, threats, curses, Jesus fucking…FUCK.
What was happening? God, what was happening to him? Was it fentanyl? He’d seen videos of people high on fentanyl, and they leaned in weird positions. He didn’t do drugs but maybe he ingested it somehow.
His panic may have returned if all of his muscles hadn’t picked that moment to contract as one. His eyes bulged from their sockets and his jaw unclenched just enough for him to utter a high. Agonized scream that echoed through his empty apartment like thunder.
A human being can only take so much before giving out. When the pain reached a crescendo, and Dom mercifully sank into consciousness once more. The sun rose and cascaded through the apartment’s sole window, falling over his huddled form. Slowly, it tracked across the sky before setting again. As the last rays disappeared behind the horizon, Dom’s eyes opened. The pain of the night before was blessedly gone, replaced by a feeling of numbness - the cool ash after the hot fire. His thoughts were slow and thick like molasses, but he could actually think again. Nightmare memories flooded back to him, but he wasn’t sure they were real. He was lying on his side, his arms wrapped around his chest as if for warmth, and his teeth lightly chattered against the icy chill. He was so cold that he didn’t want to move, but he couldn’t stay here forever. He needed help. He needed…
A shower.
Yeah, a hot shower. That would warm him up.
Gritting his teeth, he slowly sat up, ready for a burst of pain.
But none came.
He did, however, feel heavy. Getting to his feet, he stumbled and nearly fell, catching himself against the counter. His limbs had no feeling. It’s like they weren’t even there. Head hung, Dom tried to catch his breath, but it felt like he wasn’t breathing at all. His eyelids drooped closed and he felt like he was going to fall down. Summoning all the might he could, he shuffled into the bathroom with the stiff gait of an old man. He snapped the light on, and cold, white brilliance filled the space, blinding him.
Leaning heavily against the sink, he gripped the cold porcelain. Suddenly, he was afraid of looking into the mirror. He was sure that whatever reflection he saw, it would be of something else, something monstrous.
Dom lifted his head and faced the glass.
His heart shrank.
The man in the mirror was him but different. His skin was white as milk, lacking all color whatsoever save for the ugly purple patch on the left side. IResembling a giant bruise, it started at the temple and extended down to the slope of his neck, disappearing beneath his T-shirt. He gingerly lifted the shirt, and moaned when he saw that his entire left side was discolored, the purple edged with a puffy shade of pink. His sallow skin clung tight to his ribcage, and his hip bones stuck out so much it looked painful. Back in the mirror, his cheeks were sunken, hollow, and his eyes were a hazy, dishwater gray. His skull seemed bigger, his hair longer. Dom wanted to whip his head away from the phantom before him, to never see it again, but he was transfixed.
There was no way that thing was -
Dom looked away, cutting that thought off before it could finish.
A shower.
He needed a shower.
Slowly, stiffly, Dom undressed, peeling off his shirt and his soiled pants. He dropped them in a heap on the floor and stepped under the spray. He could feel the water pounding against him, but it provided no heat. It was neither hot nor cold. It was simply there.
Dom pressed his head to the slick shower wall and stood there for a long time. He was spent, tired, and fried - he had no more emotions left to give. He got out after a little while, dried off, and put on a clean pair of shorts. He settled into bed and lay there with his hands folded over his chest and his eyes open. They felt gritty, dry. His stomach felt bloated, gassy. He was drowsy now, the weight of the past two days (or was it two weeks?) coming down on him all at once. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.
He was still asleep - but aware - when the knocking on his door started the next morning. Time was funny in this state of being, fast and jerky but also slow and echoing. Keys rattled the knob turned. The landlord came in with a cop. They saw him on the bed, laid out like a corpse for a viewing, and the cop radioed in a code 35. Soon, cops were all around him, making noise and touching things. He had the vague sense of discomfort and embarrassment at the intrusion. A baling man in a suit stood over him, a cop who looked like a redneck beside him. “He didn’t die here,” the medical examiner said.
The cop looked at him questioningly. Dom caught the name KENNER on his name tag.
“See this?” the M.E. said and gestured to Dom’s face. “That’s livor mortis. When you die, your blood pools at the lowest point. If you’re on your left side, for example, it pools on the left.”
Kenner looked at Dom and then back to the M.E. “Someone moved him?”
“Looks like it,” the M.E. said.
“When did he die?”
The M.E. examined Dom as though he were nothing more than a side of beef. “At a glance? Three days. I won’t have a better answer until I open him up.”
Dom was still awake when they put him into a body bag and zipped it up. He felt a stirring of fear beneath the cold numbness, but he was too tired to worry about it now.
Later, he thought.
He would panic later.
For now, Dom slept.

The world was a boozy whirl of lights and sounds. Images, broken and fragmented, came and went. Voices, laughter, screaming. The ground pitched like the deck of a tempest-tossed ship, and he felt heavy, as though the ground were pulling him to it. C’mere, Dommy. He fell, lay on the pavement, and pushed himself up again, staggering like a drunk on his way home. His head spun, his body ached, and things seemed blurry, like half-formed images glimpsed underwater.
It was the light blue hour before dawn and Dom was…somewhere. He should have recognized the stores and street signs around him, but he didn’t. His head felt like it was stuffed with cotton, and a sense of confusion gripped him so strongly that he was beginning to panic. Where was he? What happened?
The world spun away again and the next thing he knew, he was lying in a heap of garbage bags, used needles, and rubbish. He came awake with a jerk and sat up so fast that a bolt of pain jammed into his skull. He winced and pressed his hand to his forehead. He felt hot, clammy.
Something was seriously wrong.
Somehow he got to his feet again and started walking. The sun was up now and the streets were filled with people. They all sneered in disgust as he passed, and he wrapped his arms around his chest like a baby comforting itself. He was getting cold. His muscles were sore. Tears streamed down his face and he wanted to cry.
Going on instinct alone, Dom made his way back home and climbed the steps to his apartment. Exhaustion swept over him and he sagged against the door as he dug in his pocket for the keys. They shook in his hand and he had to focus really hard to get the key into the lock.
Inside, he collapsed onto the couch and his eyelids instantly drooped. He was so weary that he couldn’t lift his head, couldn’t form a single coherent thought. Dom felt himself starting to sink, and snapped his eyes open with a start. Something in his soul told him that if he slept, he would die.
He couldn’t help it, though. He was falling, tumbling, hands reaching up from hell to grab him. His eyes fluttered closed again and the world started to go dark, his heart slamming in fear. He tried to fight, but the pull of darkness was too strong, too alluring. Why was he fighting? Why not just…give up? Hadn’t he thought of killing himself before? Didn’t he hate his life and himself? What was there to fight for? A wife? Kids? A community that loved and respected him? Shit, affordable groceries?
No.
There was nothing.
He had nothing and was nothing.
A sense of peace blossomed from the darkness, and suddenly death didn’t seem so scary. In fact, it was warm…inviting.
It was life that was cold and hateful. Not death.
Death accepted you no matter who you were. It didn’t reject you…it didn’t ignore you. If you sought it, you would find it, and if you embraced it, it would embrace you.
With that thought in mind, Dom gave up.
And died.
***
Bruce Kenner, captain of the 5th Albany precinct, sat behind his desk on the morning of June 28 and lazily leafed through a stack of files as he sipped from a mug of coffee. A roughly built man with a dark goatee and graying blonde hair, he looked more like a small town southern sheriff than a low level public works functionary. In fact, he tended to act like it too. He liked to hunt, fish, and drink beer on his off time. Albany wasn’t a big city, but it was big enough that you never got a fucking break. Run here, run there, arrest this asshole, investigate that asshole. By the time Friday rolled around, he was so ready for the peace and tranquility of a fishing trip he could taste it.
Already this Monday morning, he was looking forward to another one.
Over the weekend, three kids went missing in the Pine Hills and Washington Park area, bringing the total for that summer up to eight. All were teenagers, all were troubled. Most were boys, but two were girls.
Troubled kids run away all the time. They might be gone a few days, sulking at a friend’s house over something their father or mother did, but they’d eventually come home. None of these kids had come back yet and from what he knew, a few of them weren’t the runaway types. They were shits at school and caused problems, but they had no reason to up and leave. Hell, Bruce himself raised hell as a kid, but he always found his way back home, even if he spent the previous night dying in a field from Mad Dogg 20/20 poisoning.
One or two kids going missing…okay, it happens. Eight? Over a span of four weeks?
Yeah, something was wrong here.
But what?
There was nothing on any of these kids. No one saw them, no one knew anything - one minute they were here, the next they weren’t. What could he or anyone else do with that?. The public broke cops’ balls all the time, but if you don’t have evidence, you don’t have evidence. What do you want? Door to door searches? Roadblocks? Dogs and helicopters? Yeah, then when you actually do it, they cry fascism. Guess I’ll just use my Spidey Senses.
Bruce wished he had spidey senses. He wanted to find these kids as much as anyone, and he was starting to get pissed off that he couldn’t. He took another sip from his mug and read on. The latest kids to go missing were three boys between the ages of fourteen and eighteen.
They were all white, all thin (except for one). If there was a serial killer in town - and Bruce hoped to fuck there wasn’t - he had a type. What, black kids aren’t good enough to kill, cannibalize, and wear like a skin suit? They should charge him with a hate crime for discrimination.
That way he’d actually stay locked up.
The door opened and Vanessa Rodregiez, his deputy, came in. A tall, shapely Hispanic woman with dark eyes and a mouth poised always on the edge of a smile, she wore her black hair in a ponytail that would look stern and severe on anyone else, but on her, looked childlike. She was twenty-seven and had been on the force for three years, but you could be forgiven for thinking her much younger. “Bright and early, I see,” she said with a grin.
Bruce grumbled.
Vanessa held down the fort during the graveyard shift, acting to the night as he acted to the day. She was young and full of energy, which clashed with Bruce, who was old and just wanted to be left alone. Despite their differences, Bruce loved her like a kid sister…an annoying kid sister he wanted to throat punch sometimes.
“You missed all the fun last night,” she said and parked her butt on the edge of Bruce’s desk. He glared at her, but she ignored him.
“Good,” he said. Then: “What happened?”
“Big fight outside of Club Vlad,” she said. “It looked like a WorldStar video.”
For a moment, Bruce was lost. “Club what?”
“Club Vlad,” Vanessa said. “Where the Fuze Box used to be.”
Ah, right. The Fuze Box was an Albany landmark, a night club for punks…or goths…or someone. Certainly not for Bruce Kenner. It was small, dingy, and always had people in black waiting outside. On Friday and Saturday nights, it blasted strange music with lyrics about fighting The Man. Kids had been fighting the Man since before Bruce was even born and they hadn’t beaten him yet. Kudos to them for still trying.
Last year, The Fuze Box closed down and someone else bought it. It reopened last month and looked more or less the same: Posers, shitty music, and spiked hair. So much spiked hair. “Place is still a pain in the ass,” Bruce said.
“Yep,” Vanessa chirped. “It doesn’t know what it wants to be now. One minute they play nightcore, the next EDM. It’s all over the place.”
Bruce raised a quizzical brow.
“Not that I’ve ever been there in my free time,” Vanessa said in a tone that suggested she had,
Bruce gave a judgemental hum.
“Anyway,” Vanessa went on, “you see we have some new missing persons?”
Sighing, Bruce sat back in his chair. “Yeah. I did.”
“People are starting to ask questions,” Vanessa warned.
That brought a terse smile to Bruce’s weathered face. “Maybe they’ll solve it then.”
“Ha, fat chance,” Vanessa said. She got up and stretched. “Anyway, I’m bushed. Here’s my…” she trailed off and looked at her empty hands. “Damn, where’s my report? I just had it?” She turned in a confused circle as if she might be able to spot her report making a break for it. “Huh,” she said. She left the office and came back a moment later holding a folder. “Found it,” she grinned.
Bruce just looked at her.
“Um…here it is.”
He didn’t take it.
Her smile faltered. She carefully sat it on top of the files Bruce was looking at.
And his hands.
“I’ll just leave that right here.” She patted it for good measure.
“Thank you,” Bruce said.
“Okay. Night.”
“Goodnight,” Bruce said as she left through a shaft of morning sunlight. Alone, Bruce sat her report aside and went back to the missing kids. This case was giving him a headache and it wasn’t even nine. With a deep sigh, he slumped back in his chair and drummed his fingers on the armrests.
Was it Saturday yet?
He could really use a fishing trip.
***
Dom came awake in the cold purple twilight with a shocked gasp like a man coming up seconds before drowning. His eyes strained from his sweaty face and his mouth hung slack, twisted in a gruesome parody of The Scream. His mind was muddled, murky - he didn’t know where he was or even who he was, but he knew this,.
He couldn’t breathe.
He opened and closed his mouth like a fish, but his lungs did not fill with air. A great, unseen weight seemed to bear down on his chest, and panic gripped him. He tried to move, but his arms refused to heed his brain’s command. The weight seemed heavier, all over, crushing him like a bug. Confusion filled him and he started to pant.
Without warning, his bowels and bladder loosened, and horrible wetness filled his pants. He tried to sit up, but his body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. His chest rose and fell with the frantic labor of his breath, but his lungs remained inert. A cry of fear bubbled up inside of him, but escaped his mouth only as a breathy groan.
A bust of adrenaline shot through him and he tried to stand, but succeeded only in falling off the couch instead, landing face first against the cold tile floor. He felt his nose crunch, but the pain was muted.
Dom thought he lost consciousness after that, but wasn’t sure. His next memory was of shivering so violently that his teeth clacked together. A phantom chill - perhaps from the floor - had settled into his bones, and was colder than he had ever been in his life, colder even than the time he fell into a snowbank and got lost when he was two. Shudders racked his body, and though he tried to turn over, he was too fucking heavy. It was like every muscle in his body had turned to dead weight. Fragmented thoughts swirled in his head, faint colors in the dark, but he couldn’t put any of them together.
With great effort, he managed to push himself slightly up, but a wave of lightheadedness crashed over him and he lowered his head once more. He stopped trying and simply lay there. Shortly, his eyes began to burn and he realized that he wasn’t blinking. Jesus Christ, he wasn’t blinking.
For some strange reason, that brought a fresh bout of panic. He started to hyperventilate, but his lungs still wouldn’t work. He wasn’t blinking…he wasn’t breathing…what was happening to him?
A whimper burst from his throat and he started to cry.
He must have cried himself to sleep, because he woke sometime later to the most intense headache he’d ever had. It felt like something was eating his brain from the inside out. He was sore all over, and could feel his muscles twitching, as though a thousand living things were burrowing through his body. A cramp shot down his right leg, and the toes of his left foot curled involuntarily. Slowly, his jaw clenched closed, and the muscles in his neck began to strain…then to burn. His panic turned to terror, and Dom wiggled across the floor like a worm, his limbs screaming in red agony and his brain filling with heat. He somehow wound up on his right side, and his arms curled slowly up to his chest, crossing at the wrists like a mummy. He tried to pull them apart, but the slightest movement sent waves of excruciating pain cutting through his body. His knees began to draw up to his stomach, and his fingers clenched tightly.
Cramps and spasms attacked every muscle in his body. He screamed through his teeth and shook, resembling a man in the electric chair as 40,000 volts of justice coursed through him. The pain grew gradually, getting worse and worse as minutes ticked by like hours. Higher, higher, higher - he clenched his eyes closed and shrieked as it became unbearable. Disjointed thoughts flashed through his mind - prayers, threats, curses, Jesus fucking…FUCK.
What was happening? God, what was happening to him? Was it fentanyl? He’d seen videos of people high on fentanyl, and they leaned in weird positions. He didn’t do drugs but maybe he ingested it somehow.
His panic may have returned if all of his muscles hadn’t picked that moment to contract as one. His eyes bulged from their sockets and his jaw unclenched just enough for him to utter a high. Agonized scream that echoed through his empty apartment like thunder.
A human being can only take so much before giving out. When the pain reached a crescendo, and Dom mercifully sank into consciousness once more. The sun rose and cascaded through the apartment’s sole window, falling over his huddled form. Slowly, it tracked across the sky before setting again. As the last rays disappeared behind the horizon, Dom’s eyes opened. The pain of the night before was blessedly gone, replaced by a feeling of numbness - the cool ash after the hot fire. His thoughts were slow and thick like molasses, but he could actually think again. Nightmare memories flooded back to him, but he wasn’t sure they were real. He was lying on his side, his arms wrapped around his chest as if for warmth, and his teeth lightly chattered against the icy chill. He was so cold that he didn’t want to move, but he couldn’t stay here forever. He needed help. He needed…
A shower.
Yeah, a hot shower. That would warm him up.
Gritting his teeth, he slowly sat up, ready for a burst of pain.
But none came.
He did, however, feel heavy. Getting to his feet, he stumbled and nearly fell, catching himself against the counter. His limbs had no feeling. It’s like they weren’t even there. Head hung, Dom tried to catch his breath, but it felt like he wasn’t breathing at all. His eyelids drooped closed and he felt like he was going to fall down. Summoning all the might he could, he shuffled into the bathroom with the stiff gait of an old man. He snapped the light on, and cold, white brilliance filled the space, blinding him.
Leaning heavily against the sink, he gripped the cold porcelain. Suddenly, he was afraid of looking into the mirror. He was sure that whatever reflection he saw, it would be of something else, something monstrous.
Dom lifted his head and faced the glass.
His heart shrank.
The man in the mirror was him but different. His skin was white as milk, lacking all color whatsoever save for the ugly purple patch on the left side. IResembling a giant bruise, it started at the temple and extended down to the slope of his neck, disappearing beneath his T-shirt. He gingerly lifted the shirt, and moaned when he saw that his entire left side was discolored, the purple edged with a puffy shade of pink. His sallow skin clung tight to his ribcage, and his hip bones stuck out so much it looked painful. Back in the mirror, his cheeks were sunken, hollow, and his eyes were a hazy, dishwater gray. His skull seemed bigger, his hair longer. Dom wanted to whip his head away from the phantom before him, to never see it again, but he was transfixed.
There was no way that thing was -
Dom looked away, cutting that thought off before it could finish.
A shower.
He needed a shower.
Slowly, stiffly, Dom undressed, peeling off his shirt and his soiled pants. He dropped them in a heap on the floor and stepped under the spray. He could feel the water pounding against him, but it provided no heat. It was neither hot nor cold. It was simply there.
Dom pressed his head to the slick shower wall and stood there for a long time. He was spent, tired, and fried - he had no more emotions left to give. He got out after a little while, dried off, and put on a clean pair of shorts. He settled into bed and lay there with his hands folded over his chest and his eyes open. They felt gritty, dry. His stomach felt bloated, gassy. He was drowsy now, the weight of the past two days (or was it two weeks?) coming down on him all at once. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.
He was still asleep - but aware - when the knocking on his door started the next morning. Time was funny in this state of being, fast and jerky but also slow and echoing. Keys rattled the knob turned. The landlord came in with a cop. They saw him on the bed, laid out like a corpse for a viewing, and the cop radioed in a code 35. Soon, cops were all around him, making noise and touching things. He had the vague sense of discomfort and embarrassment at the intrusion. A baling man in a suit stood over him, a cop who looked like a redneck beside him. “He didn’t die here,” the medical examiner said.
The cop looked at him questioningly. Dom caught the name KENNER on his name tag.
“See this?” the M.E. said and gestured to Dom’s face. “That’s livor mortis. When you die, your blood pools at the lowest point. If you’re on your left side, for example, it pools on the left.”
Kenner looked at Dom and then back to the M.E. “Someone moved him?”
“Looks like it,” the M.E. said.
“When did he die?”
The M.E. examined Dom as though he were nothing more than a side of beef. “At a glance? Three days. I won’t have a better answer until I open him up.”
Dom was still awake when they put him into a body bag and zipped it up. He felt a stirring of fear beneath the cold numbness, but he was too tired to worry about it now.
Later, he thought.
He would panic later.
For now, Dom slept.

Hey all! So I’m currently an E4 in the Army Reserves. I’ve been an E4 for a while and could have promoted to sergeant but it was a question to switching to a different unit hours away and just said forget it. I often feel very done with it. I’ve had a lot of shitty experiences and the past few years I’ve been saying “fuck the army, I’m done, glad I ETS in 11 months” With that said, I joined the military for a reason. I hate seeing so many lazy ass sergeants or officers with no balls just doing nothing. I watch from the sidelined as an E4, keeping my mouth shut, knowing I could do a much better job. Especially losing two soldiers to suicide in recent years, I want to make things better. I recently debated, instead of saying fuck it all and quiting, what about going officer and switching to air force? I always wish I had down Air Force, most of the personnel I interact with that are Air Force are far more professional than Army and act like they have more than a 4th grade education which is a breath of fresh air. I also may or may not be in love with planes. I had always always planned on going officer, but life happened. So long story somewhat short. I am in my Junior year of my Accounting degree, will be out of the Army in 11 months and might go Air Force Reserve or Active honestly, as an officer. If anyone wants to through out any information I could find useful feel free. The amount of helpful random information I have found on Reddit as opposed to briefs is insane. Thanks all!

I'm currently at an up-and-coming SaaS company. The CEO is absolutely enraging, and his actions have eclipsed all other CEOs I’ve had before.
I’m currently the UI DesigneGraphic Designer, hired specifically for all things web design, and content creation. Every project has been thrown at us at the very last minute, with ridiculous expectations and then a sadistic hatred for everything that is presented to him. Here’s the running list since I’ve worked here:

• make a professional-grade case study video in 2 days, and get it through post-production the day after. We told him we needed professionals to do this. But he said no, do it anyways. He hated it..absolutely shit all over it. So we spent 10k to have it done professionally but now he doesn't want any of the content used, except for more investor buy in. We need the content for content.

-Ignore the approval of the giant trade show booth design, then approve it on the deadline day without seeing it. Shit-talk the design during the entire tradeshow
-require 10 DIGITAL DELIVERABLES and 5 PRINT DELIVERABLES for the trade show, ignore approvals for months, and THE DAY OF, require a COMPLETE REDO of all assets. On a Saturday, he will harass and threaten employees until the job is finished, and it can only be in his design—the grossest, most unattractive designs ever.
-create, script, and make a high-level avatar video to show to investors in one afternoon–oh yes, it cannot look AI or robotic, and it must have perfect emotions and intonation and be humanoid and lifelike. But we can't use real people, and it can't be a premade avatar. (queue mid-journey and photoshop)
-redesign the website that has been up for 2 years (before i got there) but wait, only use CEO’s poorly written grade 4 copy, in mass walls of text, and no graphics, and don't you dare change anything about it, ever….also do this in one afternoon
I think the worst, though, is at this year’s SKO, the day we roled out new product releases that the entire company had spent a whole year on, he completely shut it all down. Shit on everyone’s work said the complete opposite of every meeting he had had the past year about the roll-out of these products. The VP of Product was shredded, in front of the whole company.
He also will NOT accept any feedback. Will not take anyones word for anything. Seems to openly have a disdain for the marketing team. 5 times he has called in engineers to take over design and marketing tasks because he trusts them and theyre smart. Idk about you guys, but a software engineer creating a marketing video is about as visually appealing as you would guess it to be. But because theyre Engineers, theyre smarter than the female marketing team.
Here’s how we’ve survived:
-We voice record and transcribe every conversation and phone call with him, so he cant say he didnt say something.
-We write down the plan immediately, and send it to him.
-We create whatever he wants, to placate his fragile ego.
-We create what we know and understand to be industry standards, marketing and design best practices and do a damn good job.
-He will hate the product/design of his own creation.
-We then say, “yes, but” and pull out the professionally designed and marketed product, to which he can see that it is better.
-He still hates all of it. But by this point hes past the deadline so he has to approve of the one we did.
Im a single mom, I make good money, I have unlimited PTO and a chronically ill child, and killer insurance. I cant quit this job right now. But oh my god, can I say how much I loathe working for my boss.

This is just venting because I'm so beyond frustrated. I've been on Ibrance since the beginning of January, when I first got prescribed my 1st month was free and my social worker said she'd be able to get me a $25,000 Co pay card. Well Pfizer changed it to 9k and of course this medicine is so very expensive that the 9k won't even cover 1 month. I have insurance through my job and it will only cover 5k which leaves me owing 10k every month and I'm not even close to rich so I can't afford it.
My oncologist and social worker have been amazing at getting me samples to keep me on this medication. In just 5 months my main tumor in my breast has gone from 12 cm to 3 cm and both lungs, the pleural effusion has subsided and no more nodules in the left and the ones on the right have shrunk a whole bunch. No progression at all, I'm very happy about it.
Fast forward to this past Thursday I had my appt and my oncologist tells me that one of her other patients had 3 boxes of Ibrance to donate but she couldn't take them because it's a clinic and against the law. She told her to go to the local voluntary medicine place because they accept donations and my Dr told me to head over there today so they can give me the meds, she said everything would be taken care of.
I head there today and these people were so condescending and rude to me. They treated me like an idiot and a nut job. They kept asking me why my Dr thought she had a right to refer me to them and I kept explaining my story. The lady said we don't have that medicine and even if we did we wouldn't give it to you because you're not a patient. So, I walked out of there with no meds and now have nothing for next month. I'm sure my oncologist will have a new treatment plan, but it's so annoying because I've been paying into the same insurance for 7 years and they are screwing me over. This is a life saving medication for me and I'm just being told nope. These pharmaceutical companies are a joke. How do they expect people to even pay for something that expensive?
I'm just bummed and sad that it's so difficult to get what I need. I want to scream. Thanks for letting me vent!

Welcome, fellow 40k data nerds, to another Stat Check Meta Dashboard Update! We’ve made one very important update to the dashboard. You can find the newly updated best free tools for 40k meta analysis on our website:

• Stat Check - Meta Data Dashboard
• Stat Check - Player Elo Scores

If you like our work and consider it useful, feel free to join us on Patreon and join our Discord!
Follow us on YouTube to see the latest episodes of our flagship show Stat Check, Enter the Matrix (Team 40k analysis from some of the best players in the world), and Take All Comers (where a trio of young, skilled players walk us through their competitive approaches to list-building and improvement). Today's episode of Stat Check will feature a rundown of the new Chaos Space Marine rules, following last week's rundown of the Ork Codex. Tune in here!
I’ve copied a table with one half of our State of the Meta Dashboard tab below for our mobile users. You can find images of the rest of the dashboard’s tabs here: Dashboard Images

Faction	Win Rate	OverRep	4-0 Event Start	Event Wins	Player Population
Space Wolves	64%	2.86	6%	1	3%
Chaos Daemons	63%	0.61	6%	0	2%
Grey Knights	61%	1.79	13%	3	6%
Black Templars	60%	0.85	9%	1	3%
Genestealer Cults	58%	0.00	0%	0	1%
Necrons	55%	1.65	9%	3	8%
Thousand Sons	54%	0.97	7%	2	5%
Orks	54%	1.95	10%	3	8%
Chaos Space Marines	53%	0.46	5%	1	3%
Adepta Sororitas	53%	0.41	8%	0	4%
Blood Angels	52%	1.15	12%	0	5%
Drukhari	51%	2.25	8%	0	2%
Imperial Knights	50%	0.49	0%	0	3%
Adeptus Mechanicus	50%	2.43	0%	0	1%
World Eaters	50%	1.43	6%	0	5%
T'au Empire	49%	0.83	9%	1	5%
Death Guard	49%	0.39	4%	0	4%
Aeldari	47%	0.94	10%	1	5%
Astra Militarum	46%	0.91	0%	0	5%
Tyranids	44%	0.00	3%	0	5%
Adeptus Custodes	42%	0.42	0%	0	3%
Chaos Knights	42%	0.49	5%	0	3%
Space Marines	39%	0.46	0%	0	6%
Leagues of Votann	39%	0.00	0%	0	3%
Dark Angels	34%	0.54	6%	1	3%
Deathwatch	25%	0.00	0%	0	0%

We're over 3,000 games into the post data-slate meta, and a few things have become clear:

• The Ork codex is as strong as initially suspected. Green Tide and War Horde have some positive leading indicators, while Bully Boyz appears to be the real deal. At 143 games played, BBz are sitting at a 58% Win Rate, 2.6 OverRep, 14% of its players going 4-0 to start their events, and 2 event wins.
• The Necron's Canoptek Court detachment is still going strong. At 93 games played, it's posted a 64% Win Rate, 2.92 OverRep, 15% of players starting 4-0, and 2 event wins.
• Custodes have likely disappeared as a competitive option altogether, and have quite literally disappeared from the "Faction Win Rate - Peer vs. Peer" tab due to an abysmal 23% win rate among upper quartile Elo players.
• Kyle Grundy has put Kroot nay-sayers on notice, going 4-1 with the Kroot Hunting Pack Detachment!

We've made a pretty significant update to the dashboard that we're very excited about. For the past two years (good lord, it's been that long), we've used the Player and Opponent Experience filters as a proxy for player skill, operating under the assumption that more events played = continued improvement for most players. As of a few weeks ago, we've retired those filters and replaced them with Player and Opponent Elo Percentile sliders. If you're looking for a rundown on Elo in 40k, check out our explainer article on Goonhammer
From now on, you'll be able to adjust your view of the meta for a given skill level. Brand new to the game and humbly assuming you're probably not that good yet? Set the max percentile to 25 for both Player and Opponent to see what the meta looks like for players who are still trying to figure the game out. Are you an established player who's routinely X-1, gunning for that 5-0 finish? Set the minimum for both Player and Opponent to 90 or 95 to get a more refined view of what competition looks like in your rarefied air. As always, these filters interact with all the others so that you can get as specific or as broad as you'd like.
Given the Elo update to the dashboard, We've adjusted the "Win Rate - Peer vs. Peer" tab to use win rates for games within the bottom and top quartiles instead of win rates within the now-deprecated "Newcomer" and "Veteran" buckets. We've also added another tab - Win Rates by Peer Elo Decile. This tab displays the WR and total games played for each faction within a given Elo decile, along with games played between players at the 99th+ percentile. This helps illuminate the degree to which there are performance differences across player skill levels for a given faction.
Looks like CSM got the good writer. Meta's gonna get real wonky over the next few weeks.
We’ll be lurking in the comments, so feel free to reach out with questions, comments, critique, or requests for clarification. Until next week, good luck with your games, and don’t forget to keep fun first while you’re playing.

Hi- first time posting here, please let me know if you need more info or details.
I am currently on my third major repair for the AC on my 2013 Subaru Impreza wagon in a year and am hoping someone can help me out. I'm not saying my mechanic is sketchy or trying to trick me but I feel completely out of my depth. I mainly would like to validate my paying so much money or advice if there is a more extreme action that might save me money down the road. I understand ACs are very expensive to repair and fully plan to pay the costs- AC is a luxury but with my commute, it's one I'm not willing to give up at this point. Are there other possible future issues I might run into with what little information I've provided?
May 2023 - I purchased the car in March of 2023, the car had been sitting for a while but was running and operating well. Took the car into get the AC repaired after it stopped working two months after purchase.
Note from mechanic (copied and pasted): Compressor high pressure side fitting leaks. remove fitting and found oring worn out . I replaced seal and performed vacuum system test (passed) I recharge with .450grams and check for more leaks but no others found. Verify fan operation and vents temp output, now is blowing 55-60 degrees.
Cost of the repair: $470
May 2024- The AC stopped working again after working well for a year-
Note from mechanic: Expansion valve is leaking. Replacement will be needed. A/c service required to replace expansion valve High pressure line o-ring is also leaking. Replacement needed. Advised replacing the low pressure o-ring as well since it's likely just as old. This is the initial repair - other leaks may come up, but we need to be able to seal this hole first.
Cost of the repair: $855
Worked for a day but then stopped, took it back and this is the current finding:
Note from mechanic: A/C service was completed last week, with replacement of the expansion valve. Recovered 0lbs from A/C system. Found multiple leaks from lower side of condenser. This is not surprising, as it is very common to have to replace one leak to be able to find any other leaks. We picked the lowest hanging fruit previously, now we are moving up to the next more visible items.
Cost to replace the condenser: $500
Background: I also own a 03 Camry- the AC went out on that car a couple of years ago. We replaced the compressor which failed within two years and was repaired by the mechanic last year under the part warranty. I don't think this is relevant but thought I would include it.

Hey!
I've been single for 6 years and I've decided to do something about it! I've tried a couple of dating apps in the past and quite frankly they suck. I've posted on here a lot over the last few years and met some cool, and some not so cool, people so now here I am rewriting my post again to see who else is around!
I'm 26 and from South East England. Physically, I'm fat (cuddly 😛) I've got short brown hair, blue/greyish eyes, a nose, 2 arms, 2 legs, and all that usual stuff. I'm also 6'3 so if you fancy sitting on my shoulders and seeing what the weather's like up here then I'm definitely up for it! I'm pretty strong as well so even if you're "cuddly" I'll still most likely be able to get you up there 💪 I wouldn't say no to you doing the same for me either, but there's a 110% chance you'll be crushed if you try so I'll definitely have to make you sign a waiver or something 😛
Pictures are available on request, although if you're the type to ghost immediately after seeing my face then I will spend the evening sad in bed so don't do that 😒
Personality wise, I'm pretty shy and quiet in person until I get to know someone well. The MBTI test says I'm an INTJ and the description seems to fit fairly well, although it also says I have the same personality as Gandalf so I guess it could definitely be worse. Relationship wise I can be quite dorky and weird when I'm with someone I know well enough. I'm also a massive fan of cuddles so hopefully you like them as much as me!
In my free time, I do quite a lot of gaming, although not as much as I used to. I've got a massive box of films and TV shows that I'm gradually working my way through. It's mostly horror and sci-fi films at the moment, and I could definitely do with someone else to cuddle up and watch them with! I'm also into Warhammer 40k, but I haven't built or painted anything for ages so I've mostly got a cabinet full of grey plastic at the moment... I would like to do some travelling to tick things off my bucket list, but travelling alone is never as much fun as having someone to go with! I'm currently looking into a trip to Svalbard, but a lot of the activities have a minimum of two people so it'd be even less fun to travel there alone!
For other discussion topics, I've got a soft spot for anything paranormal or conspiracy theory related, anything science related, or pretty much anything else you can think of!
So who am I looking for? Well;

• Preferably someone in the UK (especially down in the South East), I can drive so basically anywhere in the country is fairly easy to get to.
• I don't mind if you're from abroad, but please speak good English, and preferably be from somewhere with not too big of a time zone difference, unless you're awake at odd hours of course!
• Physically I don't really have a "type". Anything from normal up to thicc with 5 c's is fine by me. I'm totally not bothered by height, even if somehow you're taller than me. I would say I have a thing for more "alt" types though so if that's you then you should definitely message! (Although you totally should even if you're not).
• Overall I'm just looking for someone kind, caring, and non-judgemental who actually wants to talk to and spend time with me as much as I want to talk to and spend time with them.

If you've made it this far and like the sound of me, congratulations! Come and message me for a free cookie!

Hey!
I've been single for 6 years and I've decided to do something about it! I've tried a couple of dating apps in the past and quite frankly they suck. I've posted on here a lot over the last few years and met some cool, and some not so cool, people so now here I am rewriting my post again to see who else is around!
I'm 26 and from South East England. Physically, I'm fat (cuddly 😛) I've got short brown hair, blue/greyish eyes, a nose, 2 arms, 2 legs, and all that usual stuff. I'm also 6'3 so if you fancy sitting on my shoulders and seeing what the weather's like up here then I'm definitely up for it! I'm pretty strong as well so even if you're "cuddly" I'll still most likely be able to get you up there 💪 I wouldn't say no to you doing the same for me either, but there's a 110% chance you'll be crushed if you try so I'll definitely have to make you sign a waiver or something 😛
Pictures are available on request, although if you're the type to ghost immediately after seeing my face then I will spend the evening sad in bed so don't do that 😒
Personality wise, I'm pretty shy and quiet in person until I get to know someone well. The MBTI test says I'm an INTJ and the description seems to fit fairly well, although it also says I have the same personality as Gandalf so I guess it could definitely be worse. Relationship wise I can be quite dorky and weird when I'm with someone I know well enough. I'm also a massive fan of cuddles so hopefully you like them as much as me!
In my free time, I do quite a lot of gaming, although not as much as I used to. I've got a massive box of films and TV shows that I'm gradually working my way through. It's mostly horror and sci-fi films at the moment, and I could definitely do with someone else to cuddle up and watch them with! I'm also into Warhammer 40k, but I haven't built or painted anything for ages so I've mostly got a cabinet full of grey plastic at the moment... I would like to do some travelling to tick things off my bucket list, but travelling alone is never as much fun as having someone to go with! I'm currently looking into a trip to Svalbard, but a lot of the activities have a minimum of two people so it'd be even less fun to travel there alone!
For other discussion topics, I've got a soft spot for anything paranormal or conspiracy theory related, anything science related, or pretty much anything else you can think of!
So who am I looking for? Well;

• Preferably someone in the UK (especially down in the South East), I can drive so basically anywhere in the country is fairly easy to get to.
• I don't mind if you're from abroad, but please speak good English, and preferably be from somewhere with not too big of a time zone difference, unless you're awake at odd hours of course!
• Physically I don't really have a "type". Anything from normal up to thicc with 5 c's is fine by me. I'm totally not bothered by height, even if somehow you're taller than me. I would say I have a thing for more "alt" types though so if that's you then you should definitely message! (Although you totally should even if you're not).
• Overall I'm just looking for someone kind, caring, and non-judgemental who actually wants to talk to and spend time with me as much as I want to talk to and spend time with them.

If you've made it this far and like the sound of me, congratulations! Come and message me for a free cookie!