Hello everyone! As always, thank you for your upvotes and comments on my last post about the Sussex County Jane Doe- I hope that her identity will be given back to her soon.
Today I'd like to highlight a Doe case from a neighbouring state.
TRIGGER WARNING: This case involves a young child (3-5) whose body was found in a gruesome state. There are no graphic images for this case, but there will be descriptions and speculation, so proceed at your own risk.
DISCOVERY
On the 5th of February, a 47-year old nurse, Cecilia Davis, has been walking her dog with a friend at Rockaway Beach (specifically near Beach 112th Street) in New York City, New York, USA, around 4:55 PM. When she was collecting seashells, she noticed a bedsheet with a pattern of letters and Disney characters Mickey Mouse, Goofy and Donald Duck, which was tangled in seaweed, tattered and mixed in with debris and horseshoe crabs. Intrigued, she came closer, only to discover that a body of a young child was wrapped in the fabric- she called out "This is a child!" to her friend, after which the two women called the authorities. The boy was nicknamed "John Valentine" as the investigators tried to find his identity.
When Davis managed to catch a glimpse of the body from shoulders down when she found the bundle, she assumed that the child was a girl, about a year old, whose skin had the color of "aged yellow foam"- after a proper medical examination, it turned out that it was actually a boy, and aged 3-5 at that. One of the child's knees was bent, with his foot tucked under his body.
The boy was determined to be white and/or Hispanic. He was 3'0" (36 inch / 91 cm), and his weight couldn't be estimated. He had brown, slightly wavy hair, and his eye color was unknown. His foot was size children's 5. Several bones in his torso were broken- I'm not sure, however, if it happened post-mortem or if it could've been a sign of abuse in life (but I have to say, it would be quite likely that he was abused). The body was headless, but it wasn't cut off- it likely detached during the decomposition and got washed away and eaten by marine life. His cause of death is unknown.
The sheet John was found in was called a "blanket", but it would appear that it is actually a crib sheet. The pattern could've been dated back to the 70s, so there's a possibility that it was a hand-me-down or thrifted. It was also mass-produced, so tracking it down was impossible. The body and the sheet were found inside a duffle bag, which was described as "yellow plasticized canvas duffle bag with one side pocket with a snap enclosure. There are multiple grommets for top closure of the duffle bag. No string is present. The bottom of the duffle bag is made of a heavy white canvas. There are 2 approximately 2” wide canvas straps attached to and surrounding the duffle bag. The duffle bag is approximately 30” tall with a top circumference of 34”. The side pocket measures 10 inches wide and 8 inches tall". It was also described as "nautical-style" and was wrapped with duct tape, and might've had a drawstring on top at some point. No known photos of the bag are available, but there are ones of the crib sheet. I'm assuming that the bag must've opened in the water or deteriorated enough to open, revealing the contents.
Due to a lack of leads, police theorized that the boy might've been thrown into the ocean from a boat or overseas and washed up in New York. A local on websleuths theorizes that the child might've been dropped from Atlantic Beach Bridge by Beach 2nd St and taken to Beach 112th St- Apparently, a lot of people drown in the area, and their bodies are taken up to 169th St (Marine Parkway Bridge).
CONCLUSION
Discovering the body of John Valentine has impacted everyone involved. The precinct involved in the investigation collected funds to sponsor the boy's funeral, so that he wouldn't wind up in a Potter's Field. The Children of Hope Foundation also contributed, and now John is resting at the Cemetery of the Holy Rood in Westbury, L.I, in a section called Island of Hope, with (at the time) 80 infants who have been found abandoned or murdered by their mothers at birth. John was one of the older children buried there.
Cecilia Davis, the woman who found John's body at the beach, has passed away from cancer sometime before 2013. According to her sister-in-law, Emilia Arvai, it has impacted Cecilia twice as much, as she wasn't able to have children. She was allegedly never the same after that incident. According to Arvai, Davis would say "How could someone be so cruel to throw a baby away like that when there’s people around the world who can’t have a baby. (...) There’s a million people who would take that baby."
I think that it's pretty much a given that some kind of violence was involved in this case- why else would someone throw away the body of a child? John wasn't an infant or a newborn, he was as old as five, so it wasn't a case of post-partum psychosis or someone giving birth unexpectedly and panicking. The broken bones made my eyebrow raise- if he really was thrown into the water from a high place like a bridge, then I can see bones breaking on impact, but they could've also been a result of physical abuse; We don't really know much about this detail. It's unfortunate that John's head wasn't recovered- it would probably tell us more about him, maybe a bust or a sketch could've been made and circulated and maybe someone would recognize him.
People on websleuths speculated that John might've been Jesus Alvarado Martinez, a four year old who was probably abducted by his father after he killed his mother in Texas in October of 2004. The age and ethnicity fit, as does height, plus Jesus vanished shortly before John was discovered. There is a lot of distance between Texas and New Jersey, but it is technically possible that Jesus' father could get there in the few months between October and February.
There are no dentals available of John (of course), no fingerprints (which might've been erased due to prolonged exposure to water and decomposition) and, suprisingly, no DNA. This case is relatively recent (forensic development-wise)- I'm suprised that no DNA was taken. Perhaps the investigators expected that it will be solved soon? Still, there are good news- thanks to the department's care over the boy, he was buried (and not cremated), and we even know where he is. Digging up the coffin, taking a sample and performing genetic genealogy on it seems to be very possible, and only needing the funds and public interest to re-open the case. I think that if someone like Othram will take the case in, John being identified is a case of "when" and not "if". I have high hopes for young John Valentine getting his name back at some time in the future and, hopefully, that justice will be served to anyone who took his life and discarded his body in the ocean almost 20 years ago.
If you believe you have any info about John Valentine's case, contact the Office of Chief Medical Examiner New York City at (212) 447-2030 (case number Q05-00731).
SORCES:

1. NamUS.gov (includes photos of the crib sheet)
2. doenetwork.org
3. nydailynews.com (paywalled)

John Valentine's websleuths.com thread

I have never done contract work before, but I just received an offer for a year’s worth of work contingent on passing a background check.
However, the third party company they hired seems unable to verify much of my employment. (I’ve asked previous employers if anyone has reached out and they said no).
In response, the company is now asking me for 7-8 years of W2s and paystubs to verify employment.
Is this normal for contract work? I’ve never had to provide tax documentation to an employer before in order to start working. I’m getting worried as to why any company would want all of that information.
(No, I didn’t lie about any employment. Some of the companies were very small and one is super disorganized).

One of the fascinating aspects of outsider reports and analysis is what they see. Given that at this point (1992) the internet was not yet widely available/accessible, this sort of thing would have been difficult to find. And of course SGI wasn't ever going to tell us the truth!
This will show you that SGI-USA (then called "NSA") was failing in recruiting far earlier than perhaps most of us in the US realized. SGI in the USA was basically a flash in the pan; it fizzled fast; and now it's just that rank stale smoke smell that lingers long after the fire's been put out.
This comes from Cults and Nonconventional Religious Groups: A Collection of Outstanding Dissertations and Monographs, "Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism and the Soka Gakkai in America: The Ethos of a New Religious Movement", Jane Hurst, 1992, pp. 150-151. Jane Hurst has some interesting research out there; while she tends toward being uncritically supportive of SGI, anyone who is making statistics available is a big help.

NSA members in the 1960s and 1970s were young (52% below age 30), more than half female (59%), and from a variety of occupations and social classes.

The Baby Boom generation were at most age 19 in, say, 1965 and at most age 24 in 1970.
This youthfulness is largely reflected in the early organization's origins in the American servicemen who returned from being stationed in Japan with their Japanese war-brides - those servicemen tended to be young and from a variety of ethnicities and backgrounds, as the draft was still in effect during that time period (ended March 1975). In addition, the first General Director of the US organization, Masayasu Sadanaga, initially targeted college campuses for recruitment by offering lectures on Buddhism. Sadanaga changed his name to George M. Williams in 1972, in obedience to the (short-lived) direction back then of Japanese leaders adopting American-sounding names (first AND last) in order to appeal more broadly to non-Japanese Americans.

The percentage of Oriental members steadily decreased as more and more white and black Americans joined NSA as seen in Figure 10, above.

Figure 10 (I'll get to that line in another post.)
Most of the original "Oriental members" were those Japanese war-brides, whose first efforts to recruit new SGI members were directed toward other Japanese individuals.

NSA members came from the major religious traditions of Protestantism (30%), Catholicism (30%), and Judaism (6%). At the time these 1971 statistics were compiled, all areas of American society. By 1983, the age span was even more broad, with 11% of the members age 50 and above, 62% ages 30-49, 24% ages 20-29, and 3% below age 19.

For reference, here are the age ranges for the existing generations in 1983:

• Greatest: Ages 59-82
• Silent: Ages 38-58
• Baby Boomers: Ages 19-37
• Generation X: Ages 4-18
• Generation Y (Millennials): Age 3 or younger.

While these 1983 statistics aren't broken down by generation, here's what is clear:

• 11% of the SGI-USA membership was MUCH OLDER than Baby Boomers
• 62% was either Baby Boom generation or older (though younger than that oldest group)
• 24% was Baby Boomers
• 3% was younger than Baby Boomers.

This means that 97% of the membership of SGI-USA was Baby Boom generation OR OLDER!

IN 1983!!

Notice how this affirms the demographic estimate from this other research: "Soka Gakkai in America": Little appeal/interest outside of Baby Boom generation

Take a look at Table 4.
Specifically, the Age cohort (%) category.
For the Converts, 26% are older than Baby Boomers; 61% are Baby Boomers. That makes 87% Boomer and older. Only 14% are younger than Boomers.
No wonder SGI-USA is aging and dying, with these kinds of numbers!
We are seeing, like, 90% Baby Boomers in the group photos we've looked at.
The pictures back this up.
Also, this comment by an SGI-USA leader a few years ago during Minoru Harada's visit (anyone know what year that was?):

They [top SGI-USA leaders] then went off on how when we create these big-ass meetings, we shouldn't have to look into the crowd and see, and I quote, "A bunch of old-ass motherfuckers" The words of my "superiors", not mine. I think this is when they brought up the idea of 50K to my co-leaders and me. Source

"Old-ass motherfuckers" is all they have. How 'bout showing a little of that appreciation and gratitude SGI bangs on about??
Worse, "old-ass motherfuckers" is all SGI-USA can get.
Further, again referring to Table 4, SGI-USA's membership is solidly 2/3 women. That means it's going to be very difficult for women in SGI-USA to find mates to marry, which means childlessness will be more of a norm than an exception. Child-free is a valid and respect-worthy decision, don't get me wrong, but a religion's most reliable source of younger members is its own membership's children. Since SGI-USA's female members don't feel any responsibility or obligation to bear multiple children (like those poor, stupid Mormon sheepwomen do), there won't be any next generation to take over.
There's a reason so many religions have traditionally exhorted their membership to have lots of babies, why they condemn birth control and abortion. A big part of it is to keep their own numbers up! Source

It's the same problem happening in Japan within the Soka Gakkai:

On the other hand, aging is relentless. In terms of the Soka Gakkai's membership demographics, the "volume zone" where most members fall is the baby boomer generation who joined by the 1960s. They are now late elderly. In the past, the management of centers in various places was handled by the "Gajokai" consisting of Young Men's Division members, but it is no longer possible to secure personnel. Instead, in 2009, the Soka Gakkai launched the "Ojokai'' consisting of "middle-aged divisions,'' scolding them as "young people in their 50s'' and rushing to mobilize them. Source

GOOD LUCK!

For perspective, note that SGI-USA was managing to recruit just "1,000 per YEAR" - including all ages - between 1991 and 1999. Eight years of only 1,000 members added per year, with no accounting for the deaths or defections. Were the years after that more successful, recruiting-wise? I doubt it.

[Then-SGI-USA's public-relations director for the East Coast Bill] Aiken says SGI-USA has attracted about 1000 new members per year for the past eight years. - from 1999. Only 1,000 new members - across the ENTIRE 360+ million-person strong USA - in an ENTIRE year. And this extremely low level of success for EIGHT YEARS IN A ROW!! Source

From 2018:

In recent years, the number of young Soka Gakkai members has been decreasing rapidly . Looking at the participants in the simultaneous broadcasts and roundtable discussions, the majority are of the grandparents' generation, with only a small number of young people in their 20s and 30s, and the number of teenage boys and girls is almost an endangered species .
Therefore, what I am interested in is the population of Soka Gakkai by age group. This time, I would like to estimate the current population of Soka Gakkai by age , based on information I have personally seen and heard and verification from others . Please note that this estimate is very rough.
First, the largest number of Soka Gakkai members are baby boomers (born between 1947 and 1949 [Japan's Baby Boom]). This seems almost certain considering the history of the development of Soka Gakkai .
Also, the total number of members has already been verified by many people, and is estimated to be around 3 to 5 million people. This time we assume about 4 million people .
And this is what I heard directly from a staff member at headquarters last year, who said , `` The number of activists decreases by about 1/3 with each generation.'' I think this is a reasonable rate of decline that can be felt by looking at participants in simultaneous broadcasts and roundtable discussions. It seems that members who have stopped being activists are less likely to have their children join, so this time we will use a value of 1/3 per generation as the member decline rate .
Also, regarding the number of years it takes for generational change, the average age for men and women to give birth to their first child is currently 30 years old. Considering that the average age of childbearing for both men and women when the baby boomer generation was born was 24 years old, and that there are cases where not only the first child but also the second and third children are born, the generational shift will take 30 years. Let's calculate it as if it would take a year . In that case, the annual membership attrition rate would be (1/3)^1/30 = 0.964, or 3.6% .
It is unclear when this trend of declining membership started, but this time we will assume that it started in the year following the baby boom generation (1950). Source

And "Soka Gakkai is like an old people's club":

Regarding the problem of a decline in Komeito votes, or in other words, a decline in active Soka Gakkai members, many people concerned point out that the primary cause is the aging of Soka Gakkai members. The enthusiastic members of the generation who supported the growth of the society along with charismatic Honorary President Daisaku Ikeda are now elderly across the board. Most of the current new members are second- or third-generation members who join because their parents are members of Soka Gakkai, and they are not very enthusiastic about Soka Gakkai's activities. Today, many of Soka Gakkai's daily events are even derided by insiders as "like an old people's party."

And a more recent report (this year):

Back about 20 years ago a good friend and good guy, now deceased, from ChiTown, was commissioned by SGI Central Command to survey every contactable member of SGI in every district in America. The number he came up with was 5% of the number of Gohonzon passed out since, I guess whenever Gohonzon started to be passed out. The total number was about a million give or take, 20 years ago. These were contactable people, not practicing members. I remember going through lists of people we had on the books and trying to see if they could be reached. So the number we came up with was reported. Hearing nothing about it, I happened to run into my friend at some event at Soka U. He mentioned that he did the survey, and gave me the results. I believe he told me the facts. (Not everyone who practiced was a lying asshole.) So about 20 years ago SGI had about 50,000 “contactable“ people who had received Gohonzon. My estimate that about half of that number had zero interest in SGI. Thus 20 years ago, SGI had about 25,000 members still interested in SGI in some capacity. I think it’s the same number today. (2500 districts x 10=25,000.) Like I said before I went to FNCC twice last year, and everyone, including me, were old zany seniors. Neither conference was for old people. Conclusion: SGI is a senior citizen support group. When I joined in1969, we were all hippie ish, rejecting all the old shit, looking for something new and hip. Now SGI looks like old shit. Source

And another (this year or last):

When I joined 50+ years ago the ratio of youth to MD and WD was about 80:20. Now it's the reverse. Our goal is to move steadily back to a youth focus again. Source

Except it's obvious that SGI-USA doesn't HAVE "20% youth":

Youth? They've got to be fooling themselves!!! When I was still with the SGI last February (2023), I went to the kosen-rufu gongyo meeting at the center in my area. Mind you, the state I live in closed its center in 2021 for undisclosed reasons. That aside, the one I went to was in another state, and at that meeting, they had no byakuren, Gajokai, or Soka Group in attendance. Additionally, the only youth at the meeting were a few small children. Source
I feel that SGI is out of touch with anyone who’s younger than 60. The leaders are retired, have a lot of time on their hands and completely disregard the fact that people may work or have families. For young people it’s the old people taking nonsense. Source

The PROBLEM was already evident in 1983 - and none of the SGI-USA's big "Recruit-Youth-A-Thons", like "Victory over Violence" and "Rock The Ego Era" and "50K Liars of Just-Us" (everybody wants to forget the epic fail that was the "Gandhi, King, Ikeda" exhibit), has made the slightest difference in this demographic disaster. In fact, preparing for the 2018 "50K" event, SGI-USA likely had only 2,451 members in the 12-35 (or perhaps 11-39) age group, just 9% of the most generous SGI-USA active membership total (~30,000).

Ikeda could have preserved a "youthful" Soka Gakkai by passing the Presidency to a younger candidate, but Ikeda refused, because Ikeda was too focused on and obsessed with HIMSELF - his power, his prestige, his wealth, his status, his fame, his renown, HIM becoming leader of the world, his PERMANENCY, and his legacy. He refused to let anyone else come anywhere CLOSE to the power and control - he greedily, selfishly clutched it all tightly to himself and refused to share.
THAT is why the Ikeda cult Soka Gakkai/SGI is aging and dying. It's ALL Ikeda's fault, Ikeda's responsibility. IKEDA DID THAT.
Some "mentor". Source

SGI-USA has never managed to recover from that demographic bottleneck that happened no later than 1983.

so this year is my Grandmother's 85th year and although she is sadly declining with dementia and other health conditions it is a milestone worth celebrating
My uncle and Aunt (my mums younger siblings) text my mother saying that they had organised a small get together for my nan as its her birthday soon and we could come up at any point after 1 this was with a week to go (and on my mums birthday) we were away at the time so didn't really respond as phone signal wasn't the best.
the day after we return we were out getting stuff we needed after being away like groceries and my mobile rings. Its my uncle.
he says "hello OP" but the way he says it is over exaggerated as i don't normally answer my phone (to my aunt) as she usually just wants to scream at me (she is very delulu and self intitled ) (she had a go at my mum and sister for not responding to a text I had responded to ) he makes small talk about our week away asking things like when we got back.
he then proceeds to talk about my nans birthday and what they had planned. and mentions "oh we thought we could all put in £50 (my mum, him, and Aunt)" at this point i passed my phone to my mum. he reiterated the 50 quid each to pay for the food and the cake to which my mum says she cant afford it not after a week away. and my mum also said she was working so wouldn't be up till after the party was over. to which my uncle responded "well there are others here"
my aunt was in the background saying the same sort of things basically telling him what to say so we just hung up and got on with our day.
my mum doesn't actually object to paying but
1) we were invited up as guests. who asks guests to pay.
2) we had no idea this was happening until the text and had no say in anything to do with planning
3) my uncle is getting the food from his work and although the platters are ££ with his employee discount there is no way the food and a cake would come to £150 (its all pre-made processed factory sandwiches)
4) besides it will all be done to cater my aunts gluten free diet there will literally be nothing any of us like
5) My aunt as i said is seriously delulu. a week before we went away she came to ours asking mums plans for middle of next year as they (aunt and uncle) were going to a wedding (probs my cousins) so could she look after my nan and they also wanted give us a code for my nans and then spoke to me like i was 3 (not 29) to explain, when i said i heard its in my phone she called me rude
its not that we object but they just expect us to fall in with what they say no matter what.

Hello, lovely people! Our party has just hit Level 5, which means that I need to pick out some new spells for my Wizard. My School is Universalist, and my Thesis is Staff Nexus (with GM permitted options to swap out the staff spells I picked at first level using Downtime). I've taken the Loremaster archetype with Free Archetype.
Our party consists of a Bard, Champion, Cleric, Magus, and Summoner. Lots of healing and moderate damage output leading to longer fights.
We're playing through the Abomination Vaults, so keep that in mind. I'd prefer to avoid spoilers, please, but if I'm considering something that's going to be less effective it would be nice to know. We've just completed (or are in the process of completing, we haven't opened the way down yet) the fourth level (Belcorra's Retreat), so I'm aware that there are a lot of Undead and other horrible monsters!
I'd appreciate any advice on spell selection, but particularly for the two new spells I get to pick up at 5th Level, which can now be 3rd Rank.
My current "standard" loadout is as follows:
Cantrips:

• Needle Darts - My "signature cantrip" if you will. I want to hang on to this one, even though it's an Attack spell.
• Eat Fire - React to gain fire resistance! Fun, but it's come up exactly once so far.
• Shield - Another +1 AC, and Shield Block against any physical or magical attack is pretty great
• Draw Moisture - a character spell; for a researcher, keeping things dry is important
• Light - We don't all have Darkvision, so this is important for keeping hands free.

Innate Cantrips:

• Telekinetic Hand (Nagaji Spell Familiarity) - utility, but almost entirely unused. I'm still on the fence about picking up the next feat in this chain, and if I don't I'll likely retrain this one.
• Guidance (Magical Edification) - A nice use of a third action if Shield is not needed or on cooldown
• Sigil (Magical Edification) - Came with the other options!
• Message (Magical Edification) - Utility, particularly for communicating with a scout.
• Detect Magic, Rank 1 (Arcane Sense, from Bibliophile background) - Kind of useful

1st Rank:

• Mystic Armour - +1 AC feels pretty weak, but I need every point I can get. (This will put me at AC21 at 5th level)
• Briny Bolt - opportunistic Blind is nice, and our Hero Point module means that a reroll is more likely to hit. But relying on a Hero Point to be consistent isn't great. I'll likely replace this with Fear once I pick that up.
• Force Barrage - Automatic damage, but three actions for 10.5 average damage isn't amazing at 5th level. I'll likely replace this one with Pocket Library now that I have 3rd Rank spells available to boost my offensive options.

2nd Rank:

• Invisibility - not being seen while in trouble is nice, though maybe another offensive or buff option would be better - Loose Time's Arrow is very appealing.
• Laughing Fit - Disable reactions, and hopefully Slow the target on a Will save
• Revealing Light - Reveal invisible creatures, or give groups of foes a miss chance

Wands

• Ant Haul - I enjoy carrying things. This wasn't a good choice for a first Wand, but I'm very happy to have it.

Staff (Staff Nexus Staff of Earth - I just wanted a cheap staff to get charges for Nexus spells)

• Tangle Vine - not particularly useful because it needs an Attack roll, likely to swap for Read Aura
• Scatter Scree - Area damage and create Difficult Terrain
• Enfeeble - Good status ailment and good duration on a failed save, though perhaps best against creatures likely to have good Fortitude saves
• Pummelling Rubble, Rank 1 - Honestly, I don't think I'm going to cast this. It's an opportunistic push, I guess.

Thus, on to picking Rank 3 spells for 5th Level.
An observation I made in our last major fight was that I need to improve my "boss fight suite". Currently that's pretty much Revealing Light, Laughing Fit, and Enfeeble (plus Briny Bolt if I keep that prepared). That is at least one spell targeting each save (and AC), but the effects are fairly light and none of them contribute damage to the mix.
I'd like to be able to contribute damage, but I feel that as a Wizard inflicting status ailments/buffs is more important (it's not like anyone else in the party is doing much of that). Doing both would be ideal! With that in mind, here's my shortlist of spells and my thoughts on them. I'd appreciate any insight into which of these might be particularly good (or bad) given our adventure and party makeup (and doubtless I've missed a few gems along the way too)!
Potential 3rd Rank picks:

• Agonizing Despair - It's single target Fear, plus some Mental damage. 14 Expected Damage isn't a huge amount (21 seems to be average for Rank 3 even for single target spells, and Heightened Thunderstrike expects 27), but even a little bit would be a nice contribution.
• Cave Fangs - It's Fireball damage, but close range and Piercing type. Creates a big old area of Difficult Terrain too, which could be especially useful against melee foes. I'm pretty sold on this one, since while groups aren't something we've traditionally struggled with it would be cool to have something to deal with them! Downsides being lack of ways to approach an enemy once they're enmeshed in the difficult terrain, but I'm sure that's fine...
• Gravity Well - Draws targets towards the centre of the effect. Big area, but I'm not sure gathering foes together is better than just hitting them with a Fireball, especially given the small size of the rooms in this adventure. Very cool though, and that's a selling point on its own.
• Gasping Marsh - Uncommon. A sustained barrage of area damage and the Sickened condition that can be redeployed at will, the only thing keeping me from locking this one in is the prevalence of Undead foes we've come up against. This is Poison damage, and requires a breathing target, and I have a feeling that locks it out of working on a lot of things.
• Slow - Inflict the Slowed status with a) a fortitude rather than will save; and b) without sustaining the spell. Looks great despite overlap with Laughing Fit.
• Glyph of Warding - Might be a cool option if I'm going to end up having Heightened lower level spells in my 3rd Rank slots most of the time. Summon Proximity Mine is a pretty cool ability!
• Time Jump - Single action double move is pretty awesome, but I suspect not a great use of a top-level spell slot. Probably one to pick up at level 7 or 9.
• Wooden Double - I should be able to pick this up from our party Magus rather than spending one of my own picks on it, but it seems like an absolute lifesaver. One to keep prepared in case of critical hits, but maybe an extravagant use of a top-rank spell slot.
• Haste - Give a party member an extra Stride. Great for me, but spending a turn setting this up feels like a slow start to a combat. I thought it'd be great for use on our Cleric or Magus, but I'm not sure *they* are as keen. I'd love some insight on how useful this ends up being in practice.

Additionally, I'm tempted to pick up (via scrolls) the following with an eye to Heightening them to 3rd Rank. Honestly, I'll probably grab as many as possible, but it'd be cool to know if there are particular standouts among these options - I haven't really considered Heightened spells before.
Spells to Heighten to 3rd Rank:

• Fear - I should have this already, to be honest. It's an alternative area attack at 3rd Rank, and works nicely in a 1st Rank slot (like my staff, for example). Not certain it's a great use of a third rank slot if I'm expecting to fight a lot more Boss monsters though.
• Thunderstrike - It wasn't a thing when we started playing, it's not my fault that the laws of magic themselves have changed since then! Heightened, it seems to be the best single-target damage available at 3rd Rank (and maybe anywhere before Disintegrate at 6th Rank), and if used on someone in metal armour it's still a debuff too!
• Dehydrate - A 10ft burst inflicting 4d6 Persistent Fire damage is pretty dang respectable, and the extra check for Enfeebled is just gravy. The 1 minute duration is a little confusing, however - does the area stick about and continue to apply Persistent damage to anyone entering it? Or starting their turn there?
• Heat Metal - Respectable damage, plus persistent fire damage and potentially make a foe drop an item. Relies on them carrying metal, though so does Thunderstrike if I want it to inflict conditions on the target.
• Sudden Bolt - Uncommon. Even better damage than Thunderstrike (worse scaling, but not for a long time), but no benefits for targeting an armoured creature. No status effects put me off this one.

And that's about it. My current thought process is that I'll take Cave Fangs and one of Agonizing Despair, Haste, and Slow. I do enjoy the idea of stacking detrimental conditions onto a target until it stops being able to do much of anything, but I'm not sure that's actually a viable playstyle given how effectively things make saves in Pathfinder.
Anyway. Thanks for reading this far, and my apologies for the wall of text - hopefully it was at least legible! Any thoughts you may have on spell selection (even if it's just "why would you take X when Y is just better?") would be very much appreciated!

The rift between them has caused a lot of tension in my family and now my mom wants to be in the life of her newborn grandson but refuses to address or try to mend things with my wife.
Little history: I probably introduced them too quickly. My grandmother was in town in south Florida about to move here from Illinois for a retirement community. My wife, girlfriend at the time, came with cookies or some form of baked goods like she usually does when visiting someone as a sign of affection and respect. Where it went wrong from here I have no idea. I suppose the initial crack was when wife scheduled a skitrip for her and I to have as a 1 year of dating anniversary present. We are not rich, this is a huge gift that made sense to her since I refused to let her pay rent. Our combines salaries are barely over 120k. So wife calls mom 6 months in advance because she is a planner for the sole purpose of asking my mom to watch one of our four dogs. Wife has already paid in full for the trip. Yet Mom decides it is a great idea to instead use the opportunity to hop on and take a family trip because it is the last time the family will have for a family vacation - I am the oldest of two boys and two stepsisters, my mom married the guy she left my father for who has twin girls of his own that were in the womb during the infidelity. Anyway mom completely takes over and decides to make our one year gift a family vacation, so she books tickets for a hotel nearby. Wife is bold but at the time not bold enough to stop my mom in her tracks for overstepping a boundary. At this time she still respected my mother and kind of let herself get steamrolled.
Probably skippable Family history: Now I have always had issues with my mother, resentment for leaving my father for my stepdad behind my own fathers back and constantly trying to keep brother and I from seeing “Disneyland dad who doesn’t do any of the work but gets all the fun.” my mother was very strict growing up, always bringing us to church and making my father feel guilty for not bringing brother and I on his weekend. So mom marries stepdad age 11, divorces him around 13 after asking me advice for her relationship and i encourage her to move out. Then remarries him and moves us back into his house age 15. Here I begin rebellion and normal teeenager stuff but stepdad won’t butt in because he isn’t my “biological father” so would have my mom intervene brother and i from behind the scenes. For example, I am young and messing around on the piano because music is important and I never had any formal training and mom comes in to tell me stepdad “wants to know when the concert is going to end because it is a little annoying.” Anyway, they have me prescribed adderall at 16 and in the parking lot holding my first prescription I am told that they would like me to move out and in with my father, who had chased us every time mom and stepdad moved several miles away (5 moves from age 5-15 all in one county). Anyway, brother and I are recovering alcoholics with (my) slipups triggered from interactions or visiting my mom, which mom claims is genetics from my father alone and has nothing to do with her. Maternal grandfather, mother, and I have some nasty temper problems which certainly are exacerbated by drinking (at least mine and moms).
Skitrip revelations: Wife and I are on the way to brothers graduation in Chicago, and wife has yet to reveal to me that my mother has taken over her massive investment of a couples ski vacation and it will now be a family vacation for mom, stepdad, brother, two stepsisters who are all getting out of gradschool. On the way to the airport I am told the news by future wife of my one year surprise. So I get upset and call my mom to call it off. She obliges my request and now holds resentment against me and now wife for “ruining her last family vacation.” Fine, whatever. Mother never says a word about it for months until we are out for a distant family members birthday dinner and at a table of about 8-10 people that are having a group conversation and gets real close to my wife’s ear and tells her privately along the lines of “you deprived our family of our last family vacation.” During this time my wife is frantically tapping my leg under the table because my mom can get a little aggressive. My mom saw this and later (privately to me) mocked her for doing it to my leg under the table.
Christmas blessings: Closer to Christmas maybe 2/3 weeks later we went to go see my mom and my mom had a couple drinks in her (not an alcoholic like brother and I just very sensitive to a couple glasses of wine and occasionally some hidden sips of wine or something) and invites my wife to Christmas church and out to dinner after because the family needs photos for a Christmas card and future wife “will be the photographer for it.” Now this can easily be a nothing comment but given the way my mom had been making future wife feel, it was taken as an insult. So wife declined church and showed up to family dinner just in time for photography session to be over.
The distance: Then mom moves to a fancy house up the coast and invites us up to visit. At first it is ok to bring the 4 dogs then the day before she says they will not have dogs at the house and we can easily find a sitter. 2 Dogs don’t get along, they need to be separated always as there has been two attacks on one from the other, so we can’t trust someone to come to the house and keep them separate and we won’t board 4 dogs it’s too expensive for us. Anyway we go back and forth being invited with the dogs then they retract the offer and say pick one dog to bring and leave the others and it’s just annoying, so we say forget it and don’t go. But my brother becomes engaged and decides to throw his engagement party at my mom’s new place near the beach. Great. First all the dogs are welcome, then day before they say it is too chaotic and she will pay for a small hotel room for one night for future wife and her dogs and my one (the attack dog) can stay in a crate at the house with me but I may not leave the dog to stay with her. And no reasonable cheap hotel in the area is going to accommodate 4 dogs. Anyway wife is stressed but feels obligated to come because I am the best man and I stay at the house while she checks her dogs into the hotel. Wife had made a cheesecake and brought it up in a separate car from me, 4 hour drive by the way, and night of.. my mom says no desserts for engagement party dinner, the dessert is themed or some crazy stuff. Wife shows up to dinner a little later and very flustered because of the situation plus I had relapsed on a bottle of whiskey a couple days prior to seeing my mom. Related, I don’t know. Anyway. Mom has had a couple drinks and future wife and I are talking about having children and religion comes up. Mom asks what we were thinking of doing about baptism or not and I jokingly said (guiltily to get on my moms nerves a bit) that he would have a bris and would love it if she would come to the bar mitzvah. now my wife’s mom was forced to convert from Catholicism to Judaism for her own mother in laws acceptance for a failed marriage so wife is not religious, but it hurt my wife and reasonably so when my mom replied “oh, son, I raised you better than that.” Still no acknowlegement of fault from that comment and mom thinks wife is “overly sensitive, dramatic, and childish” for wanting an apology for it.
Weddings: Future wife becomes current wife. We had gotten engaged on our next anniversary trip she planned for us. I proposed on our bike and barge through tulip season in holland with our feet in the water of the North Sea after a picnic in the dunes. her family business manufactures photo albums for professional photographers, so aside from our families all being divorced, estranged, difficult, and us trying to save money, we did not have a wedding, we just did the paperwork within a month of the proposal. I had already decided to have a baby with her before the trip so we were trying. 2 weeks before brothers wedding in Tennessee we become pregnant, so we break news immediately as to not steal limelight from brothers expensive wedding. Mom says she will cover cost of rental car so we can save money. Ok great. She books the tiny car and we pack it and head up the Smokey mountains to the cabins we are staying at. Two cabins for grooms family, one for his mother and one for his father, ten paces from each other: they havnt spoken but twice im since divorce in 1995 but through lawyers. Grandmother, mother, stepdad, 2 stepsisters and one boyfriend stayed in mom’s side. Wife and I stay at father’s side cabin with just his wife. His Wife’s 3 daughters and family’s stayed a town away down the mountain among extended family. Anyway, beautiful wedding takes place. My wife is sent into town to collect flowers and run errands for my mom which she happily obliged to since she is a solitary person and did not want wedding day drama. Day after, we are loading our rental sedan with our bags. Mom and grandma need a ride to the airport and our flight is before theirs so they will drop off the car for us 4 hours or so after we go to the airport 5 hours from current time. We’re loading the car. Stepcousin passed out in mother’s cabin night before and needed a ride. Disorganized brunch for 20 people is trying to be made. Father’s wife’s daughter books a reservation for 10 people which include her family, her sisters, me, my wife, dad, and their mom. My stepdad had left for home at this point as he had taken his own suv instead of flying with my mom and 90 year old grandma. So mom is trying to pack grandma in the car with bags and my wife and stepcousin. At this point mother asks stepmother if she and grandma are on reservation for the brunch. Stepmom says no they are not, she wasn’t sure of their plans. Mom says under her breath “fucking assholes, so typical,” and she goes into a bit of a rage to which my stepmom says here “it’s ok I will call and add you two it’s no big deal.” So we continue packing the car and realize we won’t all fit. So my wife tells my stepcousin to go ride with my father to the restaurant 10 minutes away we will meet you there. Mom says to wife, “no you go with the father.” Wife says “no I am going to ride with my husband” mom gets close to her face with her finger and says “this is my car, you can fucking Uber!” Wife is 6 weeks pregnant at this point and it all escalated from here. wife and mother start yelling at each other swearing at each other and we get into the car, mom behind wife who was in shotgun. 2 occasions on the trip I had to stop the car because mom had taken off her seatbelt to stand over the seat and scream in my wife’s face with so much vigor that spit came on to her face multiple times. I’m trying to tell them both to behave and mom sit down shut the f up. Mom is telling wife to get the f out of the car and find a ride, she has no right to speak because she’s “new here” (dating and living together for 3 years at this point). The following brunch she apologized in a crowd with a hushed voice at a table of 20 people trying to have a group conversation again privately to my wife “I’m sorry you get so upset” and my wife told her “that is not an apology.” The following several hours in the car with grandma and stepcousin and wife were some of the most uncomfortable moments of my life. At a gas station I pulled my mom aside and said I need ther to give a huge apology, that it was so nasty and inappropriate, my brother and I are used to abusive language and aggressive behavior but to my pregnant wife and any other human being it is disgusting and unacceptable. Sitting in the car was quiet for many hours until we got to the airport. No speaking about what happened just mom happy go lucky about Tennessee and Dollywood and wife and I in shock, cousin still half in the bag from a fun wedding, grandma 90 years old probably confused about what happened.
The family groupchat: Im waiting on an apology from my mother to my wife who is extremely hurt and expressed to my mom loads of time she needs to reach out and apologize. We’re not talking until she will do so. It is bugging me and keeping me up at night. My appendix flares up and I am admitted to the hospital with emergency appendectomy. Still pregnant Wife suggests I reach out to mom to let her know what’s going on. So I text mom I’m at the hospital and will have surgery. I send a pic or something that on my end says hasn’t gone through. Mom group texts our family group with stepdad, his daughters, brother and his wife, and grandma that I am in the hospital and attaches the pic I sent of me in there. Then she continues to rave about the success of her startup company and how they got FDA approved clinical trials finally completed or some pivotal moment that made the text about her. Wife and I are in a hospital so the picture comes up on moms end as unable to have been sent. Mom assumes that my wife has blocked her phone, so mom removes my wife from the chat. Wife is rushing home to take care of the dogs at this point and is not alerted on her phone, but on everyone else’s phone it clearly reads “(mom) has removed (wife) from the chat.” Immediately I text my mom and basically say how dare you do that to her she is the one who insisted I let you know out of respect and mom responds with blah blah she did this she did that I will not have it. So I go back to the family chat and remove mother. At this point I let everyone in the chat know what my mother has done and how she refuses to take responsibility for how she made my wife feel, address her feelings, apologize or do anything at all to reach out about the wedding incident or even inquire about the wellbeing of the pregnancy for her first grandchild. Stepdad finally steps in and tells me “enough.” Grandma says “shame on you.” I am dumbfounded. This is a hush hush family that hates to have anything out in the open and likes to maintain a picture perfect image. For examples; 1) I and wife were on the family Christmas card of a photo taken at the wedding that the whole world received except for wife and I. 2)brothers alcoholism was to remain hidden from the family as was his rehab treatment and how it affected his career. Now understand that they like to keep things quiet but that is not how I want to handle my problems, these things trigger alcohol use and violent outbursts on my part that I no longer wish to live through. Now appendectomy’s are pretty simple so I recovered quickly (it don’t rupture we just took it out). But during the time I was scheduled to be under anesthesia, stepdad reaches out to wife to have a chat and clear the air. Wife waits until I come to so i can be there and I hear the conversation. He claims to be here as a middleman like a business meeting to fix things once and for all. Wife and I are like wow great. He then proceeds to double down on my moms behalf that they will not be apologizing or meet any of her demands as she had already apologized as confirmed by 90yo grandma who was in the car and my mother herself. The term he used was stalemate to describe the situation. Wife and I are shocked but she has me keep quiet to show me what he will say. He proceeds to yell at her and they were screaming at each other, again steamrolling the conversation assuring us that he was down the middle yet maintains that mom has made a sufficient apology that needs to be accepted and wife needs to grow up and move on, then wishing her luck with the baby and a nice life. Next day I call stepdad to see how it went. He reassures me that he has done all he can and everything is back to normal. At this point I call him out and tell him I was conscious and explain to him what an apology is. But there is no dialogue with this guy like there is no dialogue with my mother. He proceeds to talk loudly over me like she does and basically call me a piece of shit for the amount he and mother have done for me. I speak to him first time like I never have before by calling him a hands off father and a pussy of a man who finally reaches out while he thinks I am under anesthesia to yell at my wife then pretend it’s cool, and I basically tell him he has never done a single thing for me to try and develop me into a man or nurture me as a child into an adult, but he thinks taking me on fishing trips and ski vacations are equivalent to love and nurturing growth and development just like my mom does. I reassure him that he has no right to talk about family being that he ruined his own as well as mine and couldn’t even tell my dad to his face that it was him who was sleeping with my mom behind his back when my dad came to him very upset as a friend when he got an anonymous phone tip at work one day. Then him and my mom laughed about it in court when my dad brought it up during the divorce. We ended with swearing and I felt very happy for finally giving my true feelings to him.
The birth: Months go by and nobody has said a thing. I can’t sleep at night seeing how much love I am getting from my father and his side for the baby, and my wife’s family, then thinking about how my own mother hasn’t reached out a single time. I’m dreaming about beating up my stepdad and it’s driving me mad. So weeks before the due date I reach out to my mom begging her to clear things up and apologize to my wife. Nothing. A week later i tell her how disappointed and abandoned I feel and want her in the family. Nothing. Baby comes a couple days early. Everyone is excited. Mom texts me begging for photos and to let everyone know. I tell her my brother and two stepsisters have received photos. I ask her to please reach out to wife she still needs to make amends for what’s happened between them and all she needs to do is reach out. Mom’s responses have been defensive, derisive, projecting, playing victim and referring to herself as a kicked puppy. Telling me my wife needs to apologize to her and making the conversation about mother son instead. She is beating around the bush. And she is sending me photos of my own baby that I did not send her. Her friends are congratulating me that I did not tell. Again she is pretending that everything is ok and it is not. She asked me to apologize to her husband for what I said on the phone that day. I said ok, watch this. So I sent the guy a message that was very apologetic and not passive aggressive or backhanded comments in any way. Still my mom won’t say anything.
Now: Baby is 6 days old. He is the best thing in my life and I wish my family were involved but it seems like I am living in a fantasy world where everyone can be happy together. I can be a jerk and have a terrible relationship with my mom, but I want more than anything to just feel loved enough where she can swallow her pride and make amends with my wife. Thats it. And she asked the other day to put a family group chat so everyone can be involved… for real? I know she is stressed with a high pressure job, but it seems heartless to me. She asks what big items she can get for the baby. Mom, baby is here we have everything for a couple months already. I said the biggest thing you can do is reach out and have a heart to heart with my wife so this rift can end and we can at least be cordial if you two can’t get along. I don’t think it will happen.

so I'm going to my first hardcore show (Drain beach party!!!) next week and I'm really excited! but also a little terrified. they opened for neck deep a couple months ago and I didn't know who they were, so I wasn't prepared for the fuckery happening at the barricade. I'm a pop punk/midwest emo girlie first and foremost so i'm NOT used to the energy of pits like that.
I'm planning on hanging as far back as possible (even tho i won't be able to see shit), but I'm a little nervous the ENTIRE crowd is gonna be shoving/punching/whatever the fuck, even in the way back. I'm 5' tall and fragile so any advice would be awesome. should I go wrapped in bubble wrap? a suit of armor??? I really just wanna enjoy the music :)
edit: need to clarify, I'm not just gonna stand still the whole show either, I just wanna know what to expect/what steps I can take to stay safe. and don't say "just stay home" lol

For context, I am a software engineer, used plenty Android smartphone in the past, and I'm generally considered a tech savvy
I was an early adopter of Nothing Phone (1) and Nothing Ear (1)
Great hardware/price ratio The software design is the most pretty I've used
However, the software (Nothing OS) UX is one of the worst I've used (still better than MIUI though)
Here are the things I'm not satisfied with compared to my prior general Android use, in no particular order: Xiaomi, Redmi, Samsung, Pixel, Poco, One Plus
Some of those issues are happening with other Android phones, but I'll put them anyway

• Bad camera third-party use performance (generally slow and makes bad looking videos and photos outside of the native camera app)
• Bad camera app performance (clicking early on the capture button sometimes make the photo be displayed in the gallery preview at the bottom, but you realize soon after it was not saved and you lost those memory footage forever)
• WhatsApp picture random performance (usually slow, sometimes just not responding and needing an app reboot after capture)
• Instagram stories bad performance (making very low-fps and poor looking videos and photos ; random decrease if any process is running in background)
• Capricious fingerprint sensor
• Passkeys broken and unusable since 2.5.4 A (it's been a few months since they told me the devs will be releasing the fix in the next update; it was, in fact, not fixed in the next update, and still not fixed as of the date I'm posting this)
• Battery random over-discharge (hard to know from which background app / process it comes from)
• Buggy native screen modes (Night light / Extra dim / bedtime mode), although seems to be fixed since 2.5.4 A
• Sometimes buggy media control above the notification center (sometimes slow, causing double click, showing multiple media from long-ago closed apps)
• Bad multiple-word text selector behaviors (feels way too slow and sometimes scroll at the same time ; options sometimes disappear after selection, really annoying. Also the zoom display is too small and sometimes doesn't disappear after use, it actually happened right now as I tested it)
• Random "charge steadily overnight" activation (sometimes work, sometimes the phone is already at 100% in the middle of the night)
• Gliph interface innovations has been abandoned for the NP1, should have known it was a gimmick I guess
• Heating when calling (common for unoptimized android phones)
• Native (android) UI reactiveness is not good enough and pretty underwhelming compared to hardware specs (opening notifications, switching apps from swipe on bottom button)
• Trash-tier Bluetooth Calling Mode sound and microphone (I made a post a long time ago about that). That is a general Android problem but I think can be overriden with a layer such as Nothing OS.
• Personal feeling of abandonment since Nothing Phone (2) release

The general software really doesn't feel like it has been optimized enough In my experience, an old pixel phone with undeniably worse hardware specs feels more performant for day-to-day tasks
That's a pity because I trusted them as an early adopter, and them ignoring those issues when I reported them and under-delivered their fix promises will make me rethink buying from Nothing again

Hello and thank you for taking time to consider my question.
I work for a small business in Tennessee. We have roughly 20 employees. One of our employees has recently been diagnosed with colon cancer. The timeline for recovery for colon cancer treatment is about 12 months although that could be a little shorter or longer depending on the specific circumstances of the patient. This employee is a field service technician working on industrial equipment. I have provided the opportunity for a light/limited duty assignment ad hoc when they feel strong enough to work. (stay with me, this isn't heading where you are thinking :) )
My question is we would like to continue to pay their wages and the company portion of their health coverage while away from work. Does anyone know of any legal ramifications in doing so? We are too small to have to follow FMLA rules and being a small business, we have the flexibility to do this.
Some will say we are setting precedence for other employees and we don't care about that, we WANT to take care of our employees as people. We know the dollar costs. I am simply trying to determine what I don't know about this type of arrangement. Would we be wise to put an agreement together and both parties sign? If so, what would this protect us/them from? Just to make sure no one backed out of the "deal"?
I come from a government HR background so small business HR is a bit different. Any commentary is appreciated!

Eva Brennan was a 39 year old Irish woman who vanished after leaving her parents home in Dublin on Sunday 25th July 1993. Despite vanishing exactly 4 months after Annie McCarrick, her case received almost no police or media attention which her family feels drastically affected the investigation.
Eva was single and lived alone in a one bedroom apartment in the upmarket South Dublin suburb of Rathgar. She stood at 5'7 and wore her hair short, looking much younger than 39. According to her family and friends, she "appeared 10 years younger than her actual age". She was also described as being a "creature of habit and enjoyed a quiet life based on routine". Sunday the 25th started off normally; Eva went to mass at St Joseph's Parish Terenure and then walked to her parents home in Rathgar via Templeouge Road, arriving at approximately 1pm. Eva reportedly visited her parents almost every single day and this was no exception. This particular Sunday was a bank holiday and the entire family had come together to have dinner. However, before dinner could start, Eva and her siblings had an argument over the food being served. Although a small and seemingly insignificant argument, Eva promptly decided to leave her parents home afterwards. She was last seen leaving her parents home in Rathdown Park.
By the time Tuesday 27th came around, Eva's family was starting to get worried. They hadn't heard anything from her since Sunday which was extremely uncharacteristic of her. They would normally speak to or see her daily so they knew something was wrong. Her father, David Brennan, called round to her apartment in Maddison House but didn't get any reply. Increasingly concerned, he returned with a barman from the pub he owned and they broke a window to gain entry. Upon entering the property, he observed how clean and tidy everything was, with nothing out of place and no sign of a struggle. He also stated that the coat she had been wearing on Sunday was found in her apartment so she definitely made it home that day. However, her handbag, keys and money weren't present. The pink tracksuit that she'd been wearing on Sunday couldn't be accounted for either. Her father reported her missing later that same day.
Despite Eva's disappearance being mere months apart from Annie McCarrick's, the Garda didn't seem to take her family's report particularly seriously and simply told them that Eva was over 21 years of age and that they didn't think her disappearance was the result of foul play. Even when her family told Gardaí that Eva suffered from depression, they simply suggested that she had committed suicide and didn't look at the case further. Eva's family dispute this theory as she was a devout catholic and she left no suicide note or anything similar to suggest she had intention. Frustrated at the Garda's lack of interest in the case, David Brennan used his political influence through the FF party to enlist the help of Albert Reynolds, the Irish head of state, in getting authorities to investigate properly. Gardaí eventually began to look into the case more seriously but by this point, Eva had been missing for over a month and a forensic examination of her apartment revealed nothing. It's unknown what time Eva arrived at her apartment on the Sunday and left again but what's baffling is that there wasn't a single sighting of her by anyone on the way home. She would have walked along several very busy streets that were lined with restaurants and cafés and it was a warm summer's day. In addition, Eva's father was a successful businessman who owned several pubs and was involved politically so him and his family were very well known in that area. Despite this, not a single sighting of Eva was reported that day.
It has been almost 31 years since Eva vanished and not a single trace of her has ever been found. It's still unclear why she wasn't seen walking home, where she went after returning to her apartment and if her disappearance was the result of foul play or, as originally stated, suicide. In addition, a look into Eva's background found no boyfriends or romantic partners that could have been involved. Alan Bailey, the former sergeant detective of the Garda's cold case unit and national coordinator of Operation Trace stated "I always considered Eva to be one of the forgotten missing persons. If you ask anybody who disappeared in 1993, they'll always mention Annie, but Eva seems to have been forgotten". Garda have confirmed that Eva's case is still active today and they have issued a new public appeal for any information that could be relevant. However, unless new information comes to light, Eva remains missing with not a single trace of her since 1993.
Sources: https://www.rte.ie/news/dublin/2023/0724/1396270-missing-eva-brennan/
https://www.irelandsvanishingtriangle.com/general-5

# BACKGROUND
My organization uses a third-party marketing agency to manage certain advertising (let’s refer to that marketing agency as “Foo”). In the past, the name of that marketing agency was appended to the end of the utm_source value in the URL query string (e.g., utm_source=facebook-foo).
We are now beginning to move the marketing agency name reference to a new custom URL query parameter: utm_agency. I am passing the value of the utm_agency parameter to a new custom dimension (named “Marketing Agency”) in Google Analytics 4 by way of Google Tag Manager. Data is being received in that custom dimension as of March 14. All is good there.
There is still some active advertising using the previous URL structure with the agency name references in the utm_source value in the URL query string (e.g., utm_source=facebook-foo). So, for some amount of time in the future, the value will be captured by different URL query parameters: utm_source and utm_agency.
# ISSUE WHEN CREATING A CALCULATED FIELD IN LOOKER STUDIO
Now, my goal is to create a new calculated field in Looker Studio (let’s call it “Calculated Marketing Agency”) that does the following:

• When the “Marketing Agency” custom dimension value exists and does not equal “(not set)”, set “Calculated Marketing Agency” as that value
• Otherwise, when the value of “Session source” contains “foo”, set “Calculated Marketing Agency” as “foo”

However, any function I have used so far that references the “Marketing Agency” custom dimension results in “Calculated Marketing Agency” only having a value defined after the date of creation for the “Marketing Agency” custom dimension in GA4 (March 14).
Below is an example of one of the formulas I have tested when creating the “Calculated Marketing Agency” calculated field. It returns the desired results on or after the date of creation for the “Marketing Agency” custom dimension in GA4 (March 14). However, it returns no value on dates before March 14, even though the "Session source" dimension does contain the relevant values before March 14.

CASE WHEN Marketing Agency IS NULL OR Marketing Agency = "(not set)" THEN CASE WHEN CONTAINS_TEXT( Session source, "foo" ) THEN "foo" ELSE "(not set)" END ELSE Marketing Agency END 

Below are other formulas I have tested when creating the “Calculated Marketing Agency” calculated field, reversing the order of the function to lead with the reference to "Session source" in case that had an impact. However, the results were the same.

CASE WHEN CONTAINS_TEXT( Session source, "foo" ) THEN "foo" WHEN Marketing Agency IS NULL THEN "(not set)" ELSE Marketing Agency END CASE WHEN CONTAINS_TEXT( Session source, "foo" ) THEN "foo" ELSE Marketing Agency END 

I did confirm that the following formula does return a value for all dates (before and after March 14) when creating the “Calculated Marketing Agency” calculated field — referencing only the "Session source" dimension and not the "Marketing Agency" custom dimension.

CASE WHEN CONTAINS_TEXT( Session source, "foo" ) THEN "foo" ELSE "(not set)" END 

I also tested the following formula when creating the “Calculated Marketing Agency” calculated field, just to confirm whether or not the value of the "Marketing Agency" was stored as NULL before the date of creation for the “Marketing Agency” custom dimension in GA4 (March 14). However, it still returned no values before March 14.

IFNULL( Marketing Agency, "(not set)" ) 

It seems I need some expression to account for the lack of value in the "Marketing Agency" custom dimension, since its value is not even NULL prior to its date of creation in GA4 (March 14).
# MAIN QUESTION / SUMMARY
Is there a way to accomplish this so that I have a calculated field in Looker Studio ("Calculated Marketing Agency") that defines its value based on whichever of the two other dimensions ("Session source" or "Marketing Agency") actually has the relevant reference value, regardless of whether the “Marketing Agency” custom dimension existed in GA4 on a given date?

Hey gals!
I wanted to share my success story with you. There are so many posts in saphic subreddits out there with gals losing hope around finding a partner. In the kink space, it's harder. But it's possible! It takes a bit of extroversion and effort, but IMO well worth it.
I'm a Domme. I've been kink my entire adult life. I'm also a trans girl. I didn't transition until mid-adulthood due to not knowing anything about gender dysphoria. But that's not really the story. I just want to give hope to trans girls out there as much hope as cis girls. My fiancee/submissive/pet/little is a cis girl.
I went through the hardest breakup of my life with my former partner. We had been together 8 years and she left me for another woman 6 months before our wedding. I was destroyed. I moved home to where I live now and decided I was going to change everything about myself to not feel that kind of pain again. I wanted to switch. I wanted to bottom. I wanted to just date and not fall in love again.
Fast forward about a year after my toxic breakup and I'm now living in my new city. I decided to go to a FemDom munch to give this whole sub thing a shot. Like in most cities, there are not sapphic kink groups where I live but there are PLENTY of kink groups with bisexual women. I wasn't sure I wanted an LTR but I WAS sure that any relationship I wanted to be in had to have some kink and possibly a kink dynamic.
I dressed in a super cute dress, wore a big pink collar, and ventured out into the world. The munch was held at a gay bar and I was one of the first ones there. As the folks began to fill in, there were 1 or 2 sapphic couples there out of about 20-30 people. That gave me hope that I might meet someone to connect with.
Eventually, this bombshell of a woman walks in. She dressed very straight and very vanilla - but as a sapphic friend once said - "Why do you assume everyone is straight? You'll never shoot your shot if you do!" I mean....we were in a gay bar after all! She was looking for a seat and all of the chairs at our table was taken. I stood up, grabbed her a chair and offered it to her. She replied with, "Thank you! Where are you sitting?" and had me put the chair next to me.
At this point, I had no idea what her deal was. Straight girl? Domme? Sub? Vanilla? Wrong internet meet up?
I complimented her beautiful Kate Spade purse and we sat and talked about fashion for the next 30 minutes. Eventually, she offered to buy me a drink. I politely declined thinking it was a friendly offer. Plus I had a stomach ulcer at the time so I wasn't going to make that worse by drinking alcohol.
When she came back to the table, we sat and talked for another hour before I had to go to a friends party at another bar in the same neighborhood. We traded fetlife accounts and I left thinking, "Damn, that girl was awesome! Too bad she's probably straight."
When I got home that night, I added her on FetLife and saw her sexuality listed....a Bisexual submissive! Before I was able to shoot her a message, she shot me one telling me how much fun she had talking to me and how she hopes to see me at more events.
I shot my shot ladies. I asked her out to dinner.
Fast forward a week and we're at a lovely little Mexican resataraunt by the beach. Now that I knew she was a submissive, my Domme side awakened. I skipped the cutsie dress and collar and instead wore a gorgeous, form fitting body-con dress with stilleto black PVC heels. I channeled my black cat lesbian. I curled my hair and did my makeup. I'm still not sure this is a date, and neither is she - but I'm hoping it is!
We talked for 3 hours and sipped on margaritas. We talked about everything. Work. Kink. Politics. You name it! As I walked her to her car in my stilletos struggled with the gravel parking lot but she was impressed I was able to handle it gracefully. She moved in closer to me by her car and we both asked as the same time for a goodnight kiss. I guess this WAS a date! That kiss...floored me.
Our second date was very different. We met up at a Spanish tapas place, again by the beach, and talked kink all night. Despite her looking like a preppy straight girl (I'm more of a big tiddy gothy queer girl), her kinks aligned with mine in every way. We negotiated our first play date. The chemistry was undeniable.
I won't go into the NSFW stuff but only to say that after 23 years in kink, I've never connected with someone is such a profound way.
It's now a few weeks past our 2 year anniversary. We're getting married. We have 3 playrooms in our house. Kink is part of our day to day language but the love and support is beyond great. We're getting officially married in October.
It can happen! Despite being queer. Despite being kinky. Despite gender stuff.
Your partner is out there.
Short version of how I found my person:

1. I skipped the Apps like HER and Tinder because they all suck.
2. I got on FetLife and found a local munch with my interests (Dominant women).
3. I went to a munch and met a girl.
4. We got to know each other and fell in love.

I know how hard it is to date as a queer woman, but the majority of successful kink relationships I've met have all met in real life.

I have not traveled much due to fear and finances but I am not getting any younger and want to enjoy life more and not just work and pay bills.
How do you plan an engaging and fun experience while traveling? I don’t want to spend a bunch of money and time for a mediocre experience. And I don’t want to end up doing the same exact things I could do at home.
It always seem like when people travel and post on social media all they do is go to parties/clubs, restaurants, bars, and a beach. These are all things I can do in my own city/country.
How do you plan a once in a lifetime type of trip?
Some places I would like to go: Spain, Italy, Greece, Paris, London, South Africa, Puerto Rico, California, New Orleans, North Carolina
I like Food, Dancing, Music/Live Music, Culture, Art, Theater, and Doing things that are fun and active

Summary

Slovak PM Robert Fico, a pro-Putin populist, has been shot multiple times while visiting small Slovakian town Handlová. Politico reported he was hit in the head and chest. Aktuality.sk reports he was shot once in the stomach and twice in the arm. A 71-year-old former security guard has been arrested. Fico was transported to a hospital in Banská Bystrica. There was a planned rally in Handlová to protest the controversial overhaul of Slovakia's radio and TV services. That rally has now been canceled by the organizers.
JPDU - Video: the moment Slovak PM Robert Fico was shot by a 71-year-old former security guard
JPDU - Video from the scene right after Slovak PM Robert Fico was shot

Background

Why is all this relevant?
Slovakia used to be part of Czechoslovakia. Hitler occupied the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia in 1938 after France and the U.K. ceded control. After WWII, Czechoslovakia became a communist state under de facto Soviet tyranny via the Warsaw Pact. Four Warsaw Pact countries invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 in response to the Prague Spring. In 1989, when the USSR started collapsing, the Velvet Revolution restored democracy. Czechoslovakia dissolved in 1992 into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The capital of the Czech Republic is Prague (which I visited and regard as the most beautiful city I've ever seen) and the capital of Slovakia is Bratislava. Slovakia borders Ukraine directly and is geostrategically important.
Robert Fico is a highly controversial pro-Putin populist attempting to mimic Viktor Orbán's takeover and de-democratization of neighboring Hungary to the South. Quoting from a Politico article from March this year:

Fico is “trying to create a mafia state … where the primary goal is to keep the pyramid of power functioning,” Michal Vašečka, a political analyst at the Bratislava Policy Institute said.

And:

Explainer: Who is Robert Fico?
Robert Fico, Slovakia’s prime minister, was shot today in the town of Handlová, where he had been meeting supporters, and taken to hospital.
Born into a working-class family on 15 September 1964, Fico – a lawyer by profession – began his political career with the Communist party shortly before the 1989 Velvet Revolution that led to the breakup of former Czechoslovakia.
He set up his centre-left Smer-SD party in 1999 after being turned down for a ministerial post by the Democratic Left, the Communists’ political heirs.
Embroiled in allegations of corruption he has always denied, Fico is brash and outspoken, with a penchant for bodybuilding, football and fast cars.
Fico admires both Vladimir Putin, saying he would not permit the Russian president’s arrest under an international warrant if he came to Slovakia, and Hungary’s illiberal leader, Viktor Orbán, “who defends the interests of his country and his people”.
The Smer leader is also a tactician: in a three-decade career, he has navigated successfully between mainstream, pro-EU positions and a fiercely nationalist, anti-western rhetoric destined mainly for domestic consumption, proving more than willing to change tack depending on public opinion or political reality.

Source: The Guardian live thread
So far, this assassination attempt looks like a godsend for Russia and Vladimir Putin.

Recap

Here’s a recap of everything we know about the shooting so far:

• Slovakia’s prime minister Robert Fico was shot multiple times during a visit to the town of Handlova where he was seen greeting supporters moments before the attack.
• The 59-year-old Putin ally was rushed to a local hospital and has now been airlifted to Banská Bystrica hospital.
• He is in a life-threatening condition, with the next few hours said to be crucial.
• A man was detained at the scene and is in police custody.
• European leaders have condemned the attack, with Rishi Sunak saying: “Shocked to hear this awful news. All our thoughts are with Prime Minister Fico and his family.”
• The shooting comes just three weeks before the crucial European Union Parliament elections.

Source: The Guardian live thread
Updating as we go along.

Reports

Source	Title/Link	Timestamp (UTC) (Descending)
The Guardian - YouTube (unlisted)	Slovakian PM wheeled into hospital in Banská Bystrica after helicopter transfer	2024-05-15T15:22Z
HNOnline.sk	Assassination of Fico: The Prime Minister was shot in Handlova, he needs emergency surgery	2024-05-15T13:50Z
Politico	Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico shot in head and chest, reports say	2024-05-15T13:31Z
The Guardian	Slovakia prime minister Robert Fico shot and injured	2024-05-15T13:25Z
BBC	Slovak PM Fico in hospital after being shot	2024-05-15T13:11Z
AP	Slovakia’s prime minister wounded in shooting	2024-05-15T13:07Z
Reuters	Slovak PM Fico shot and injured, TASR agency reports	2024-05-15T11:47Z

Live threads

Source	Title/Link	Latest
The Independent	Slovakia PM shooting latest: Putin ally Robert Fico taken to hospital after gunman attack	Slovakia’s PM rushed inside hospital after attempted assassination
The Guardian	Slovakia’s prime minister Robert Fico shot in abdomen and undergoing surgery – Europe live	The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has said he is “shocked” by the news of the attack on Robert Fico.
Sky News	Slovakia Prime Minister shot - latest: Robert Fico suffers 'brutal' assassination attempt, says president; leader in hospital	Vladimir Putin has called the shooting a "monstrous" crime which has "no justification". In a telegram to outgoing Slovak President Zuzana Caputova, the Russian leader said: "I know Robert Fico as a courageous and strong-minded man. "I very much hope that these qualities will help him to survive this difficult situation."Mr Putin wished Mr Fico - who has been an ally of the Russian president - "a speedy and full recovery".

Previously on Robert Fico

• Politico - Slovakia’s Fico plots to dismantle the free press (2024-05-11)
• Politico - Slovakia, the EU’s next rule of law headache (2024-03-20)
• NOEL Reports - Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico with an appalling video statement regarding the anniversary of the full scale war in Ukraine (2024-02-24)

my collective family has nonsensical values and i was always sensitive and thoroughly unlike them. i moved far away as soon as i had the ability to do so. from US to northern canada, where i met my husband and found a beautiful lifeway. i honestly have a different culture now. i live extremely differently, simply, and in my opinion, sanely. i value peace and harmony and living closely to nature. i do visit when i can because i love certain family members very dearly and preciously.
my beloved grandfather is dying. he received a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer ~2 weeks ago. he is in his final days. i came down a few days ago to be here for a small time to say goodbyes. i am shocked and disturbed that the rest of my family have not curated the most comfortable environment for him. their preferences are seemingly more important than his. he mostly wants quiet, and to be alone with just a few family. instead people fill the house too many hours too many days. he is not in a place where he can sleep or rest in silence, instead he is in earshot of the main part of the house everyone lingers. my sister's children are constantly screaming and throwing balls around. my grandfather expressed to me he wants it to be mostly adults most of the time. i try to take my nephews outside and distract them so that he can get this.. they love me because i will play with them very actively so luckily it is easy to do, they seem to think i am the bee's knees haha. but what is stressful is no one else tries to do this. no one makes an effort. my grandmother plays tv constantly for "background noise". it is hard for me to be around because i don't even own a tv. yesterday, my grandfather wanted to sit with everyone. the adults were either on screens or solely addressing the kids. my grandmother had put on this disturbing movie. i watched my grandfather's face intently, looking at the screen when he did, and it showed a priest clinging a stone wall in terror, a virus nucleus, the priest again, the virus again, the virus transformed into a ball of flames, and a skeleton/skull. i asked for it to be turned off because i couldn't help but imagine he, in his general confusion/impacted state of consciousness, would find this strange and intense and possibly disturbing. they changed it to the news channel, where we were then bombarded by news about child predators (an equally inappropriate thing no one needed entering the house). there are no conversations of shared memories really. it just is totally opposite of what i would want at my deathbed, and what i would imagine anyone else would want at theirs.
and then my cousin, whose father owns the house, brought over his girlfriend from college. she was in a hot pink tanktop, booty shorts, i don't know and don't ordinarily think of people's clothing choices but it seemed so inappropriate! my grandfather is so weak and frail and jaundiced and unwell, can hardly communicate what he needs, cannot drink or eat or use the bathroom himself. she loudly laughed and spoke about a trip they are leaving on soon to some beach destination or whatever, and it just really grated on me combined with everything else. i have never before met her, and neither had my grandfather. she is a stranger. she had no place here. my grandfather expressly wanted only close family present which to me is the only thing that matters. today, a day after i arrived, i asked my cousin and his girlfriend what they were thinking and if my cousin even asked or considered my grandfather's preferences. they stared at me dumbfounded and said i don't even know his gf. i said exactly, this is my point. then they started going on about it being their house.. i asked why their worldview of property ownership , used to justify their momentary preferences, was more important to them in this moment than our grandfather in his final days. they short-circuited and could only say my presence here does not matter and i have no business being here. i am undoubtedly, along with my sister, among the closest to him, even despite having moved. he practically raised us.
i'm so shaken up and disturbed. my grandfather thanked me for saying what i did, the sentiment mattered to him, we hugged a very long time and both cried, and he said they just don't understand anything and never will, and that my moving north was probably the best thing that could have happened, and he is proud of me. he told me to please not try anymore and just walk away next time. now he is resting again. i feel horrible for generating conflict during this time, but..it did work. the gf is not going to be around anymore. they left. i believe my grandfather did want that. he didn't want a stranger to witness him in this state.
i'm so heartbroken. i cannot imagine how shitty it must feel, to be at the end of one's life and treated this way by your own family. i wish i could change everything for him. my family's lack of empathy, their thoughtlessness, their entitlement, and the way they approach both life and death are deeply repulsive to me. i am happy i came, and could spend this time with him, and just be present. but i can't wait to get away from the rest of them.
AITAH? it's not my house but i felt she had no place here.

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My friend Yan is putting on a comedy show at Cloud & Spirits this Thursday. Tickets are limited; go check it out I promise you'll have fun.

THURSDAY - MAY 16

Tapered Expectations XXI: "Above the Clouds" - A Standup Comedy Event @ Cloud & Spirits @ 7PM Acquired Taste Comedy is back at Cloud & Spirits with another signature Standup Comedy Event. Catch a carefully curated selection of the area's funniest comics along with a special musical guest at a breathtaking cocktail bar in Central Square!
Red Sox vs Rays @ Fenway Park @ 7:10PM
Asi Wind’s Magic Show @ The Wilbur @ 7:30PM Being one of the most-watched magicians in the world, Asi Wind presents a new show where he pushes the limits of belief even further with unbelievable mind-reading and astonishing magic.
Candlelight: A Tribute to Adele in Concert @ Temple Ohabei Shalom @ 7PM / 9PM
Marc Martel & One Vision of Queen Concert @ Symphony Hall @ 7:30PM The Pops will rock you when Marc Martel brings the iconic anthems of Queen to Symphony Hall.
Diana Ross @ Wang Theatre @ 7:30PM See the iconic and legendary Diana Ross perform the hits that have defined her career.
Cooper Alan @ Paradise Rock Club @ 8PM With Thomas Mac
Lords of Acid @ Brighton Music Hall @ 6:30PM
Ben Beal @ City Winery @ 7:30PM

FRIDAY - MAY 17

Bruins vs Panthers @ TD Garden
Madeleine Peyroux @ The Wilbur @ 8PM
Neil Young & Crazy Horse @ Xfinity Center @ 7:30PM
Wild Child @ Paradise Rock Club @ 8PM
Soen @ Brighton Music Hall @ 8PM
Tye Tribbett and Friends @ Orpheum Theatre @ 7:30PM
Galantis @ Big Night Live @ 9:30PM
Hermanos Gutiérrez @ Royale @ 6PM
Tinlicker @ Royale @ 10PM
Buck Meek of Big Thief @ Crystal Ballroom @ 8PM
Anders Osborne Trio @ City Winery @ 7:30PM

SATURDAY - MAY 18

Watertown Porchfest @ Watertown @ All day
Revolution vs Philadelphia Union @ Gillette Stadium @ 7:30PM
Dancing on the Charles @ Marsh Post #442 @ 3PM Montreal deep house DJ Fred Everything headlines this marathon outdoor dance party, running from late afternoon into the night.
Ales & Tales @ Stone Zoo @ 5:30PM Walk on the wild side while enjoying local craft beverages. This popular beer tasting event is a favorite among animal and beer lovers alike!
Kite & Bike Festival @ Franklin Park @ 12PM This Boston tradition brings families together to enjoy picnicking, kite flying, bicycles & music.
Ongoing - Artisan Market @ Rose Kennedy Greenway @ 11AM
Kevin James Comedy Show @ Chevalier Theatre @ 4:30PM / 7:30PM
Jimmy Failla Comedy Show @ Shubert Theatre @ 8PM
‘Encanto’ in Concert @ Symphony Hall @ 2PM Disney’s Academy Award-winning film comes to life in a concert event, featuring the entire feature-length film with a full orchestra performing the score.
The String Cheese Incident @ MGM Music Hall @ 7:15PM
Robyn Schall Stand Up @ The Wilbur @ 7PM
Sorry Papi @ House of Blues @ 9PM
James Arthur @ Roadrunner @ 8PM With Forest Blakk
The Music of Talking Heads & More for Kids @ Paradise Rock Club @ 11AM *Presented by The Rock and Roll Playhouse
Orgy + COLD @ Brighton Music Hall @ 8PM
Gimme Gimme Disco @ Big Night Live @ 5:30PM
Arty @ Big Night Live @ 10:30PM
The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis @ Crystal Ballroom @ 8PM
Chris Smither + Peter Mulvey @ City Winery @ 7:30PM

SUNDAY - MAY 19

Celtics vs Cavaliers @ TD Garden
Kite Festival @ Revere Beach Kick off beach season with a fun day for the whole family complete with build-your-own kite stations, professional kite flyers, live music, and other activities!
Ongoing - Open Market @ SoWa @ 11AM One of the largest open-air farmer and artist markets returns this summer season!
‘Dropouts’ Podcast Live @ Paradise Rock Club @ 7PM Come see internet stars Zach Justice, Tara Yummy & Jared Bailey discuss latest hot topics, celebrity gossip, and personal dramas live!
Electric Callboy @ MGM Music Hall @ 7PM
Deko @ Brighton Music Hall @ 7PM With Yameii
Mk.gee @ The Sinclair @ 7:30PM
Guppy @ The Rockwell @ 7:30PM
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy @ The Wilbur @ 7PM
Compaq Big Band @ City Winery @ 7:30PM

ALL WEEKEND

FRIDAY & SATURDAY - Amanda Seales Stand Up @ Laugh Boston
FRIDAY & SATURDAY - Zach Brazao Stand Up @ Nick’s Comedy Stop @ 8PM
SATURDAY & SUNDAY - ‘Bluey’s Big Play’ Show @ Wang Theatre ‘Bluey’s Big Play’ is a brand-new theatrical adaptation of the Emmy award-winning children’s television series featuring new music and new character adventures.
All weekend - Jukebox The Ghost @ The Sinclair @ 8PM
All weekend - Nantucket Wine & Food Festival Enjoy food and drinks tastings, seminars, brunches, and parties as the annual festival uncorks the island for the summer!
All weekend -’Hallyu Hits: Korean Films that Moved the World @ MFA See the best of Korean cinema including ‘Oldboy,’ ‘Parasites,’ and ‘Burning.’
All weekend - ‘Spring Experience’ Ballet @ Citizens Bank Opera House LAST CHANCE - Explore Boston Ballet’s dynamic and captivating Spring program composed of three masterful ballets featuring classical and modern dance elements.
All weekend - ‘BABYBABYBABY’ Dance Performance @ Calderwood Pavilion This contemporary dance production taps into the feeling of falling in love and reflects on the human impulse for connection and intimacy.
All weekend - ‘A Strange Loop’ Musical @ Wimberly Theatre Winner of Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award, Michael R. Jackson’s blisteringly funny masterwork exposes the heart and soul of a young Black artist grappling with desires, identity, and instincts he both loves and loathes.
All weekend - ‘Jersey Boys’ Musical @ North Shore Music Theatre LAST CHANCE - Featuring legendary hits, this award-winning musical tells the behind-the-scenes drama of the international sensation boy band The Four Seasons.
All weekend - ‘Toni Stone’ Play @ The Huntington Theatre The Huntington’s season finale is a beautiful, rich portrait of a trailblazing woman. Follow the inspiring and life-affirming story of baseball legend Toni Stone.
All weekend - ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Play @ Calderwood Pavilion Brought to life by Actors’ Shakespeare Project, Shakespeare’s most famous duo return in a flurry of forbidden love, exhilarating fight scenes, and tragic fate.
All weekend - ‘Mermaid Hour’ Play @ Arrow Street Arts LAST CHANCE - Fast-paced, funny, and heartfelt, ‘Mermaid Hour’ follows two parents and their trans teen kid as they all seek to understand who they are and who they wish to be.

ONGOING

Ongoing - Immersive Disney Animation @ Boch Center Step into the art and legacy of Walt Disney Animation Studios and celebrate the music, artistry and animation from the creators of Frozen, The Little Mermaid, Big Hero 6 and many more.
Ongoing - Musical Shows @ MoS Planetarium Museum of Science puts on special experiences adapting the music of Pink Floyd, Rihanna, Beyoncé, and The Divas to immersive visuals in the Charles Hayden Planetarium.
Ongoing - ‘Firelei Báez’ Exhibition @ ICA One of the most exciting painters of her generation, Báez explores the multilayered legacy of colonial histories and the African diaspora in the Caribbean and beyond.
Ongoing - ‘Wordplay’ Exhibition @ ICA Highlighting the rich interplay between imagery and text, the exhibition showcases how contemporary artists have played with words to animate and expand their art practices.
Ongoing - ‘Hallyu! The Korean Wave’ Exhibition @ MFA Enjoy an immersive and multisensory journey through Korea’s fascinating history, and celebrate its contemporary vibrant creative force.
Ongoing - ‘Dress Up’ Exhibition @ MFA Through more than 100 works from the MFA’s collection including 20th- and 21st-century clothing, jewelry, accessories, illustrations, and photographs, this exhibition explores adornment and its role in the creation of a look.
Ongoing - ‘Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party’ Exhibition @ MFA This exhibition brings together 27 powerful photographs by Stephen Shames that feature the women of the Black Panther party and showcase their crucial work for the movement.
Ongoing - ‘Thinking Small: Dutch Art to Scale’ Exhibition @ MFA Featuring 15 intriguing objects from 17th-century Netherlands such as paintings, prints, silver medals, and books, this exhibition compels viewers to reconsider their relationship to the world around them.
Ongoing - ‘Raqib Shaw: Ballads of East and West’ Exhibition @ ISG Museum Shaw’s images of magic and mystery combine Western artistic tradition with ornamental elements derived from the Japanese, Persian, and Indian cultures that he vividly remembers from his youth.
Ongoing - ‘Picasso: War, Combat, and Revolution’ Exhibition @ Harvard Art Museums The exhibition explores the dictator Francisco Franco’s Spain, imagery of death, struggles of good and evil, political and artistic revolution, and issues of desire and capture.
Ongoing - ‘Our Time on Earth’ Exhibition @ Peabody Essex Museum This traveling exhibition from the Barbican Centre in London celebrates the power of global creativity to transform the conversation around the climate emergency.
Ongoing - ‘AI: Mind the Gap’ Exhibition @ MIT Museum MIT Museum presents its latest riveting, interactive exhibit exploring the tremendous promise, unforeseen impacts, and everyday misconceptions of AI.

I'm going to Ibiza this summer and really want to get a couple of new beach outfits, but don't want to invest in fast fashion brands (which dominate the beach holiday space). Does anyone have any recommendations for sustainable summer fashion brands that sell nice beachwear and Ibiza party wear?

The US has an infamously high gun ownership rate; 120%, by one measure, although that is clearly and flagrantly absurd (unless there are 75 million armed illegal aliens...). An individual ownership rate of 25-35% and a household ownership rate of 35-50% are more accurate (and legitimate) statistics.
Our violent crime rates are relatively moderate, though; a relatively high homicide rate, compared to most other "advanced" nations, but rape, robbery, and even casual violence are far less common in the US than in most of the world. For all the infamy of cities like Detroit or Chicago, you are unlikely to be the victim of any sort of crime as long as you stay out of the handful of bad neighborhoods at night, which is not something you can claim about London, Paris, Rome, or most any other major First World city.
Better yet, we can compare our history of violent crime to our history of gun control, and they simply do not map to one another, at all; there is no correlation, either way. Up until 1934, you could walk into a hardware store and buy pretty much anything you wanted, even fully automatic rifles (machine guns) and explosives, with no law against it (which didn't mean that the proprietor wasn't going to ask some hard questions and maybe choose not to sell them to you). On the other hand, walking down the street of pretty much any town with a loaded weapon on your person was a crime, but that's how much things have changed.
The 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA) ostensibly came in response to the gangland crime of the Prohibition Era... which ended in 1933. The stated intent was to regulate concealable weapons by requiring a Federal Firearms License (FFL) to deal in them... but it only covered short-barreled rifles and shotguns, machine guns, and silencers, specifically excluding pistols and revolvers, which have represented the overwhelming majority of gun crime since the 19th century.
The Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA) was supposedly motivated by the assassinations of JFK and MLK (the bill itself was stalled in Congress until the RFK assassination, after which it went through quickly), but its primary focus was to restrict interstate sales of firearms between private individuals... which had nothing to do with any of the assassinations.
In 1986, the Firearm Owners Protection Act (FOPA) had the stated purpose of addressing harassment of FFL holders by the ATF, but actually further restricted firearms, outlawing any civilian ownership of automatic weapons manufactured after 1986, and requiring ATF approval of transfers of any firearm restricted under the NFA, giving them even more tools to interfere with lawful firearm owners.
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (Brady) was enacted in 1993 in response to the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, and restricted firearm rights of various groups of people, including convicted criminals, those dishonorably discharged from the military, etc... which notably would not have prevented John Hinckley, Jr. from acquiring the weapon he used to attack Reagan.
This was followed in 1994 by the Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB), which even the people who wrote the bill have been unable to definitively state which firearms were banned under, as the definition provided was ambiguous. In any case, these weapons are the least commonly used in crime, by a wide margin.
2004 and 2005 saw the Law Enforcement Officer's Safety and Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Acts, one of which expanded the gun rights of current and former law enforcement officers, and the other protected firearm manufacturers and dealers from liability for negligence... even if they break the law.
And most recently, in 2022, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, this time driven by recent mass shootings, but again, did nothing that would have prevented any of the events that supposedly motivated the law; instead, it focused on making it easier for gun rights to be restricted under "Red Flag" and domestic violence laws (which are already grossly abused), weakened Constitutional protections for investigations of firearm-related crimes, and opened up juvenile records to background checks.
None of these laws have ever had any kind of effect on crime, in any shape, form, or fashion, for reasons which are perfectly obvious, when you stop to think about it.
Automatic weapons are not useful for criminal purposes; as a military function, their purpose is to force the enemy to take cover, preventing them from shooting at your soldiers while they maneuver, and various alternatives - bumps stocks, forced-reset or 2-stage triggers, etc - will provide similar rate of fire with less reduction in accuracy.
"Assault weapons" are not even properly defined; an AR-15 is an "assault weapon," but a Mini-14 is not, despite having virtually identical capabilities. They use the same ammunition, can have the same magazine capacity, similar barrel length, size, weight, etc. The AR-15 is sleek, black plastic, though, while the Mini-14 is wood and metal; that is the only real difference, how they look.
Explosives are useful for criminals, but are so easy to make at home (no, I'm not telling you how) that restricting them is absolutely impossible.
None of these laws addressed handguns, at all, despite two of them having the stated intent of addressing concealable firearms and these weapons being used in the overwhelming majority of gun crime.
Background checks were a good idea, but the "private seller" loophole (often mislabeled the "gun show" loophole) is so big that criminals have no problem acquiring firearms, and without any kind of registration, there is no way to hold sellers accountable.
And even background checks become abusive when any opinionated doctor or vindictive ex-girlfriend can have your gun rights eliminated on a whim, when your protections against overzealous law enforcement have been curtailed, and when the system is so rigged that trying to fight for your rights will only result in even harsher punishment.
100 years ago, pretty much anyone could own pretty much any weapon, but you couldn't carry it around with you; today, there are massive restrictions on the types of firearms you can own, but most places allow you to carry them around. How does this make any sense, at all?

The Mediterranean Revival-style residence located at 5454 Pine Tree Drive in Miami Beach was sold for $7.7 million. Spanning 6,828 square feet on a 0.35-acre lot, the property features nine bedrooms, a custom pool, and modern additions. The home, owned by Ximena Caminos & Alan Faena, was listed for $8.5 million before being acquired by Gaga LLC.

Summary of transaction details:

• Property Type: Single Family
• Transaction Amount: $7,700,000
• Market: Miami Beach
• Buyer: Gaga LLC
• Seller: Ximena Caminos & Alan Faena
• Brokers: Liz Hogan, Matt Crane & Nancy Batchelor - Compass
• Square Footage: 6,828
• Price per Square Foot: $1,128

Liz Hogan, Matt Crane, and Nancy Batchelor from Compass represented the parties involved in the transaction, facilitating the sale of Ximena Caminos and Alan Faena's eclectic Miami Beach property. The deal, which closed on 04/12/2024, showcased the significant role these individuals played in the successful completion of the transaction.
Learn More: Gaga LLC Buys Ximena Caminos & Alan Faena's Mediterranean Home For $7.7M