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I guess I just want to rant a bit after my experience tonight. I haven’t been diagnosed with HS as I haven’t been able to get into a dermatologist, but I ( 22 F ) have been suffering with recurring abscesses and cysts in my groin mostly and armpits since I was 16. In 2020 one appeared in my groin and grew bigger than a golf ball within 5 days resulting in a stay in hospital to get it lanced in theatre.
I’ve had this one abscess / cyst on my groin for 4 months now - I’ve seen 2 GPs and been to the emergency department twice, each time given antibiotics and sent away with no real directions. The antibiotics do decrease the size of it temporarily but afterwards it continues to grow and ooze, and become extremely painful.
I have work tomorrow (I’m a nurse) and after work today this abscess was causing me so much grief as I’m on my feet all day. I’m going overseas in 2 weeks and can’t get an appointment with any of the GPs in my area. I live in a regional area and there are no urgent care / 24hr medical centres nearby.
I went in at 9pm when it was quiet, only to come out feeling frustrated and a bit upset at the way the nurse commented on my situation.
Her first interaction with me was asking when I finished work, when I replied she stated “wow you picked such a great time to come in!” In a condescending tone. I work at this hospital in a different area and knew that the ED would only have 1-2 patients at this time as were a small hospital. I saw the bed board in triage and the ED was empty at this time. Further, she asked me if I shaved my bikini area and I said yes. She then replied “that’s a really smart idea for someone who has a history of reoccurring abscesses” and rolled her eyes. The whole time she was pulling faces as I replied to the doctor and it made me feel really stupid for coming in. It doesn’t matter if I shave, I still get abscesses. It’s just something that happens.
I ended up just being brushed off and sent home with antibiotics (again) which I know won’t do much and told to see my gp. The swab they did last time came back NAD. I just feel really disappointed and upset after this experience. I’m thinking of calling out of my shift tomorrow as it hurts to walk around too much. I’m sick of being brushed off and the wait times and fee to see a dermatologist is not something I can do at the moment.

Before late 2023, I used to listen to music on Spotify like 8-10 hours everyday. But after 2024, I've started using YouTube instead due to how bad Spotify has gotten over the years.
The most noticeable difference is the ads. God, I've hated the ads ever since I've started using Spotify, but it is only getting worse. Nowadays, you get increasingly more ads on Spotify, 1 ad per 2-3 songs. And every single one of them is a goddamn 30 seconds long ear-rape about craps that I don't even care about. It's even worse on mobile when most of the time, you get two of them back to back every time you have an ad break. On YouTube, you get a lot less ads, about one every 3-7 videos. They sound a lot easier on the ears, and half of the time it's about things that I do know or do care about, and they are skippable after 3-5 seconds, otherwise, they last for about 10 seconds at most.
Next up, the utilities. Yeah, yeah, there is almost no difference regarding this on PC. But it's really bad on mobile. On Spotify, you can't loop playlists, you can't loop a single song, you can't do normal listening and forced to be in a shuffle with bad algorithm, and you can't listen to your playlist again when it has ended, which is extra irritating when your playlist is short (i.e. about 10-15 songs). Hell you can't even skip more than like, what? 6 times per hour? While all of this is completely available for free on YouTube. And recently, they've removed the ability to see the lyrics for Spotify Free. Sure, YouTube never has built-in lyrics, but many videos still have lyrics enabled through the video itself or through subtitles. Or you can take a bit more time and see the lyrics in the video's description or in the comment section.
And what's better than an unsatisfying listening session on mobile due to being forced to use bad-algorithm'ed-shuffle? Yeah, that's right. Bad recommendations. After you're done listen to all of the songs in your playlist, you are usually forced to recommended songs that Spotify thought to be "similar" to the songs in your playlist. Half of the time, they are bad, just bad. And you thought that the "-" button in the bottom would work to make songs and/or artists like that appear less on your recommendations, right? Well then, screw yourself because it does not. You still get the same crappy song and artist, it doesn't matter how many times you try pressing that "-", nothing changes at all, at least until you remove the so called "similar" song in your playlist. I especially had this issue when I had the song "Christmas Truce" by Sabaton in my playlist. When the recommendations come, half of them is filled with really bad "epic"-Christmas-rock/metal songs from that one random band that I don't even know about. And it just keep on appearing no matter how many times I skipped that song or pressed the "-" button.
Maybe, you thought that using Spotify would be easier on your battery and internet because it only runs in the background, especially when your phone is screen off, and only uses audio, right? Well, my experience completely contradicts that. For mobile, many times on my 15-minutes listening sessions while only having Spotify running and the screen is completely off. Spotify would consume up to 5% of battery. That's 1% every 3 minutes, comparable to the game Honkai: Star Rail, which uses 1% every 2.5 minutes. And Honkai: Star Rail has many CPU and GPU-intensive processes for game calculations, assets loading, graphics and audio going on. Meanwhile, if I only has YouTube running on 240p, the video minimized and the screen brightness is set to lowest, it would take YouTube from 1 hour to 1.5 hours to consume the same 5%. That is a 300% to 500% difference in efficiency. And the audio quality of Spotify bares almost no difference to that of a 240p YouTube video. The situation is almost no different on PC. On the low-end laptop that I usually use, when YouTube is in the background, YouTube would use 0.5% CPU and about 250 MB RAM through out the listening session thank to sleeping tab feature on browsers, compared to Spotify 1-3% CPU and 250 MB RAM. The difference is almost ignorable most of the time, but it's really noticeable when I'm using resource-heavy apps. I gain about 15-20 FPS, or 30-50% increase when having YouTube sleeping instead of having Spotify in the background. Especially when the next song or ad break comes in, YouTube would have absolutely no problem handling this and the laptop would still run smoothly, but Spotify CPU consumption would just suddenly jump up to 10-25% on top of the already high resource consumption of resource-heavy apps and completely lags the crap out of whatever I'm doing for 2-8 seconds, which is extremely irritating. I once thought that Spotify would use less internet as it only uses audio, which it does, but not much at all. On 240p, which has comparable audio quality to that of Spotify, YouTube would use only about 1-5% more data than Spotify. As a 240p video isn't actually that much. And the advertisements on Spotify actually consumes a lot of data.
You do have to tell YouTube that you still want to continue listening at times or use split screen on mobile if you want to listen while doing something else. But it's worth the trouble for me.
Please note that this is only about YouTube and not YouTube Music.

I've seen a lot of situations recently where people think the term “niche” represents a company that only makes perfumes. This isn’t correct and I think a more nuanced discussion is needed, especially since the term is thrown around so much. I’ve expanded on the actual definitions below, but here are some cliff notes:

1. Niche simply means that the fragrance has a small target audience. This can either be through availability (highly limited edition, a small indie distributor), unique smell, or to a lesser degree an extremely high price.
2. The opposite of “niche” is not “designer”, it is “mainstream”. The term designer fragrance is typically meant to indicate a fashion house that produces fragrances. Think Dior, Chanel, Prada, etc. This is where there exists a grey area in nomenclature and the limits of these terms begin to reveal themselves.

Diving into this grey area- take Commes de Garcons. A fashion design brand that has created many unique fragrances. Things like “garage” and “tar” and its clash series such as “radish x vetiver” are very niche fragrances that only a select type of person would be interested in. They are technically “designer”, yet definitely not mainstream. In my opinion, these two terms are often used interchangeably because big design houses take up most of the space in places like Ulta, Sephora, and most malls that offer mainstream perfumes.
Further, houses like Dior and Chanel are best called “designer” brands but labeling the entire fragrance output as either mainstream or niche isn’t useful. Chanel may release a stinky animalic incense fragrance priced at $450 that’s only sold at one of its boutiques. This could very easily be called a niche fragrance. Calling it a high end luxury fragrance is another possibility. The point being that unique, polarizing scents still come out of high end design houses and they defy easy categorization.
The point of all this is that the term niche and designer are essentially just not that useful in describing a perfume. They don't describe the quality of the ingredients, they don't necessarily describe the smell, and they leave open many other questions about the product in question. Because the term also describes the overall size of the target audience, a growing fragrance market and increasingly popular brands may shift the balance of what that actually means. Stores like Le Labo are almost ubiquitous in large cities now, although some of their scent profiles and prices are still somewhat unique and out of reach compared to something more mainstream like Dior Homme or Versace Eros. Because of that the definition seems to have become more rigid and easily applied at the expense of its real meaning. One of the other problems is that describing a brand in terms of what type of product they make also says nothing inherently useful.
Now, onto the actual definitions that some people may cite to support this “single producer” idea:
noun - a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service
Note that this is meant to represent a segment of the market- not the company itself. In context you would say "A niche exists for people who love animalic notes." or "I am going to exploit this niche and produce products that service it". If you take a company, and your only way to describe that company is to say "they only produce perfumes" you are saying exactly nothing about the niche they fill in the fragrance market as a whole. They could be trying to capture a large segment of that market through mainstream scent profiles distributed through Sephora, or they could be focusing on novel ideas like the brand Scents of Wood.
adjective - denoting products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population
This is the version most people use in discussions. Consider the fact that it again says nothing at all about the amount of products a company produces- it describes a quality of the products themselves. For instance, a single company can produce products that simultaneously appeal to a very small segment of the fragrance community, while also selling products that appeal to a very small segment of the incense community. Or maybe they also sell hand-crafted wooden moccasins lined with rare peruvian wool that cost $600 each. Just because they cater to two niche markets, does not exclude either of the products they make from being "niche". In this way the company has found two niches to cater to.

When I took Spanish in school, we spent a lot of time on conjugation, especially words ending in “ing” in English: eat vs eating, drink vs drinking.
I’m on section 2 in duo and I’m noticing that they still don’t make that distinction. “Él come una banana” is both “he eats” and “he is eating”. Is this correct?

i booked a long term stay starting on may 12, but ended up choosing to come on may 13 but did not tell the host because i figured it did not affect check-in or anything.
i got here yesterday afternoon and did a walkthrough of the place. it is a much older, jankier building with dated furniture and squeaky floors and an odd layout, so i didn’t really notice the cleanliness then more than just the odd vibe to it all. i put my stuff inside and then tried to move the fridge because it was covering a light switch. when i moved the fridge a MASSIVE pile of ants was revealed. obviously i moved all of my stuff to be on top of the dining room table and immediately left to buy raid and ant traps. i took pictures and sent them to the host, who said it was a “bad spring for ants” and offered to bring by a trap, but i had already bought some. later in the night he offered to compensate me for my time and the traps, and hasn’t gotten back to me on that yet.
sprayed the ants and cleaned and moved the fridge all the way around to get as many ants as possible. swiffered the floor after.
i didn’t trust the couch so went out and bought lysol and crazy lysol-ed that thing. also sprayed raid along all the baseboards and everything. i was in and out all day, meeting some friends and running some errands and so i did not thoroughly look at everything until later in the night.
there is hair EVERYWHERE. it is on the pillows, in between the sheets, in the tub/shower, around the sink, in the sink, on the floors, etc. it’s disgusting. the washedryer were visibly dirty and i cleaned them with clorox before feeling comfortable using them. i washed the comforter from my bed and then found the lint trap in the dryer was completely full. the comforter smelled funky once it came out of the dryer. tons of surfaces are dusty. i did not feel comfortable putting my things on anything that wasn’t a hard surface that i sanitized. i scrubbed the sink before i felt comfortable washing my dishes. i bought a cover for the couch before i felt comfortable sitting on it. i swiffered everywhere. i wore shower shoes to take a necessary shower last night.
bigger issue is this place does not match the listing photos. the photos are clearly from a while ago. paint colors are different, furniture is different, decorations are different. i’m pretty disappointed.
so what do i say?? i’m obviously going to contact the host because this is supposed to be my home for the next 3 months (long term stay) and i won’t feel comfortable being here until it’s cleaned. i’m realizing now that i probably shouldn’t have cleaned anything and found a hotel for the night. but i was trying my best to get comfy with the place and thinking that i just needed to clean it if it was ever going to get done. this is my first long term stay on airbnb and i just feel so grossed out and uncomfortable and i lowkey just want to find another place to go. how do i proceed?

This is just a whole rant/sob story about what I’ve been feeling as of recent.
I’ve been crying about yesterday’s U2 Chemistry exam, and today’s Pure 2 assessment for the entire day.
They were horrible. I can’t begin to describe the shock I am in. I've been holding in so much sh*t for so long, but these exams have left me unable to hold it in anymore.
I have done every single past paper, from the Sample Paper to the Jan 2024 papers. I have studied really, really well. I have made sure to study so hard to a point I that there was nothing left I could do. I literally don’t know what else I could have done to prevent this from happening.
I was always ready to sacrifice everything for my grades and my future. For these A-Levels, I have ruined my health, my happiness, my social life, wasted my youth, but for what?
I get around 4 hours of sleep every night. I’m always too stressed to have an appetite to eat. I feel tense and anxious almost all of the time. I am always tired and keep getting body aches for no reason. I have no time to pursue the things I love anymore. I can count the number of times I have gone out with friends in the past 4 years on a single hand. I see all these American teens online having fun and going out every other day. I can’t even remember the last time I left the house to do something enjoyable.
Yeah, I know it sounds like I’m overreacting, and it’s just some ‘exams’, but my whole future is literally dependent on this. Regardless of all the effort and hard work I’ve put in, I f-ed up these exams.
My biggest dream has always been to get into a prestigious university on a scholarship to study medicine. But I can say goodbye to that now.
I grinded so hard in my IGCSEs to do well and I did. I got A*s for every subject and I guess that gave me false hopes that I could ace my A-Levels. Having sat these two exams, I feel so doomed. I know I performed horribley on them.
I feel nothing but disappointment, hopelessness, and fear right now. I have disappointed myself by ruining my chances of making my dream come true.
It's even worse when you feel that the others around you, who have high expectations, are also disappointed. My chemistry teacher was saying how she knew I would do well because of how hard I've worked, then when I told her about how the exam was, I saw how her face just dropped. Everyone was telling her it was terrible, and I feel like she was on the verge of crying.
Then today, before going into the math exam, my math teacher saw me trying to breathe while I was very nervous, and he said that 'it's going to be fine'. I literally told him, 'I don't think it will be', and he just tried to be optimistic about it. After the exam, I knew he'd come to ask how we did, so I tried to hide from the shame, but he found my friend and I. I was crying before, but while he was trying to make us feel better the tears were just pouring down my face.
I feel like the biggest failure ever. During the math exam, my heart started to beat so fast as I realized time was running out and I still had so many questions I was stuck on to complete. That's exactly when the 'it's over - my future is ruined' thoughts came to my head. I just kept thinking 'forget about going to a big university, the only place I can go to now in my home country'. I couldn't even hold back my tears at school. I just started crying in front of everyone like that.
The biggest shock to all of this is that my parents weren't even angry with me; they were almost sympathetic. For reference, my parents are very strict when it comes to academics, so I was expecting them to blow up on me when I told them how it went. They didn't though. They kept telling me it was okay, and that I should focus on my next exam. Not gonna lie, this probably felt worse than having them shout at me. While they didn't say anything explicitly about how they feel, I can feel that they're miserable, and it's all my fault.
I feel so guilty. Is this what my parents immigrated for? My parents have endured so much racism, so many financial struggles, and just a whole lot of sh*t for a long, long time to make sure I can get a good education and have a good future. It feels like I wasted almost 2 decades of struggle in a foreign country.
Imagine all those relatives back home who are expecting me to become a doctor to realize I messed up this bad. Then there is the other side of the family who have criticized my parents since the day I was born for wasting all that time just for education. These same people are the ones who kept trying to convince my parents to try to have another child, hoping for a boy, because 'what is a girl going to do for you when you're old and tired?' I was dead-set on proving them wrong, and honoring my parents' hard work my succeeding and giving them the best life I could afford. I wanted to be the daughter who could make her parents live a life of comfort and peace, better than any son ever could. Now what? It's not happening.
I won't get into a top university, let alone get a scholarship. I won't study medicine as I've dreamed of. I won't become a doctor. I won't retire my parents and let them enjoy the rest of lives without a care in the world if we had enough money to pay rent. I won't be able to do anything I dreamt of.
I've always been insecure. At one point in time though, I made peace with it and said that if I can't be pretty or charismatic, at least I could be smart. It's been the one thing I knew I could count on. But now I feel so f-ing stupid. Like what am I useful for anymore? If that was the one thing I could do right, but now it's gone, what even is my use in life anymore? I used to cry about being ugly, but now I'm dumb too.
Since Year 9, I have been going through a really rough time mentally. I went through a period of time when I was bullied really bad, then another where we were flat broke, then another time when my dad lost his job, then another when my aunt was diagnosed with breast cancer, then half a year of my parents thinking of divorce, then dealing with the passing of 3 relatives. When does it stop being bad? I used to feed myself these corny lies of 'it's gonna get better' but it doesn't. And this exam period just proved me right.
I wanna give up now. I don't wanna sit anymore exams, and I'm just a third into it. In fact, I don't even wanna live anymore. I know it sounds dramatic to say this over an exam, but I've been holding in this entire rant for the longest time ever, and these exams just brought it out. I've attempted it twice already, but never succeeded.
Since I have no future anyways, I might as well not keep living. I swear to God, that if it weren't for my fear of going to hell, I would try to do it again. I won't though, until we see how the U2 Biology exam goes. But I don't have any hope for it to be any better.
I'm sorry for everyone who feels as though their future is ruined because of these exams, although they studied as hard as they could. May God reward us for our effort.

In this edition of “Odd Titanica”, we are going to dive into the sleazy, opportunistic world of show business. A world that comedian Fred Allen said of, “you can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly, and still have room for three caraway seeds and a producer’s heart”. Hyperbolic? Let’s take a look at Hollywood’s response to the Titanic disaster to see that there really is no business like show business.
Dorothy Gibson and the lost, first, film are well worn trivia by now. The traumatized actress rushed into production, her inability to process her trauma causing her mental breakdown, collapse, and retirement from acting immediately after the film was finished - it’s a perfect story to demonstrate the callousness of the film industry. But there is more to the story, and digging deeper shows us that “Saved” may have been the least sleazy project undertaken by the studios.
Dorothy’s account of the sinking and the suffering she endured filming “Saved from the Titanic” are predominantly found in two sources - The New York Dramatic Mirror and Moving Picture World. These were trade magazines, published weekly, and consisting solely of material related to the stage and screen business. These would be announcements of upcoming features, casting news, celebrity gossip, technical news - anything the movie star to the man sweeping the floor at the cinema needed to know. And they included ads … lots and lots of ads.
Immediately realizing that Titanic was not only a horrible tragedy but an incredible business opportunity, Moving Picture World got to work. As people stormed White Star Line offices, and raided newspaper carts for any drop of news regarding the sinking, Moving Picture World provided the latest in Titanic news; or perhaps we should say “Titanic” news.
The headlines of the April 27th issue may have screamed TITANIC, but as the public grabbed their copy and hurriedly flipped through the pages, they found that what they were actually given was ads. Those eye grabbing headlines were followed by much smaller print-
TITANIC EFFORTS... are being exerted by Champion to put before the exhibitors that will make them regular Champ Patrons! Get the following latest [releases] and you’ll be convinced!.
UNSINKABLE … is the reputation of Rep productions, but these two releases will sink into the minds of everyone who sees them and will remain there as worthy object lessons.
THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN …suggested by the poem of Elizabeth Barret Browning in 2 reels this Tuesday!
THE GREATEST MOTION PICTURE OF NATIONAL INTEREST - THE SINKING OF…. the big battleship. Remember the Maine!
THE DEATH SHIP...a sensational two reel drama of the sea containing one of the most thrilling dynamite explosions imaginable!
For all the slimy marketing tricks, flipping through the pages still has plenty of legitimate ads for real Titanic newsreels, movies, and a specific type of presentation known a Myriorama involving painting, music, and recitation. But, show business would strike again - the ads were legitimate, but what they were advertising was not. History has sort of forgotten the huge demand for Titanic media in the wake of the sinking, something that didn’t really exist. When cinema owners would order these “only surviving genuine negatives of the disaster” complete with lobby display package, they instead received-

our astonishment to find the Lusitania and Olympic, and one or two scratch films of ancient days posing as pictures of Titanic.

But they didn’t stop. Animated Weekly advertised that they were “the first to reach the wreck… chartered a tug from Cape Breton and rushed to the scene while the survivors were still in the water”. Cinemas began to promote footage of the sinking. Audiences wrote their disgust to Moving Picture World-

These representations are to the point of criminality … Take, for instance, the picture showing the Titanic with about a sixth of her forward length stuck into the iceberg. Everybody knows the collision did not occur in that manner!

They pointed to the following ad as an example - FIRST PICTURES OF THE TITANIC OCEAN DISASTER. The cinema owners responded by noting that they had misread, crammed in tiny letters were the words “sunk in” so that ad actually read FIRST PICTURES OF THE TITANIC sunk in OCEAN DISASTER. It was the customer's fault, they said, to be stupid enough to think anyone could have actually filmed the sinking.
Once this ruse was discovered, the studios shifted gears. The next step was to advertise film along with presentations by “A Lecturer who was on board”. When the audience realized the lecturer was not on Titanic and demanded a refund - the response from the managers was

Those signs didn’t say he was a survivor.

… and any attempt to charge him with the crime of fraud was absurd because, in his own words-

Of course I didn’t give him his money back. The sign didn’t misrepresent anything. West was on the Titanic, the sign didn’t say when he was.

…which was true. The lecturer, Eugene West, had visited Titanic while she was under construction at Belfast.
As for the movies themselves?

We said we had pictures. If people were foolish enough to think we meant moving pictures, that was their fault.

This particular cheated audience member was told if he wanted his money back, to go on the street and sing for it. Whether it was this, or something else, eventually the public snapped and began hauling out cinema managers and beating them in the streets. By May, the mayors of Boston and Memphis had banned the showing of any Titanic pictures - moving or still- within the city.
But, where was Dorothy in all this? Tucked in the very back of the magazine, after another newsreel ad,, we get to the celebrity sighting and gossip section. Ed Lux of the Rex Film Exchange was in town, Dan Markowitz of Fox Pictures was as well, Arthur Schmidt of the Victor Film Company was seen having a lovely spa at a Turkish Bath, Sam Gobel of the St Louis Motion Picture Company has been walking up and down 42nd street, we don’t know if Southern film maker Henry Wasserman is still here but he might be, Dorothy Gibson survived the sinking of the Titanic, and the Director of Selig Pictures took some actresses to Santa Catalina for a swim and a photoshoot and they had a great time.
By the following edition, on May 2nd, Moving Picture World was also able to provide its readers with the first stills from “Saved from the Titanic” and a feature on Dorothy. Along with this, tucked in the editorials, the magazine finally published a piece of truthful news about the Titanic disaster-

Senator William Alden Smith … declined to grant permission to have the cinematopgraph make a record of the sessions of the committee. “The sessions” he is quoted as saying…”are solemn affairs and must not be hippodromed or commercialized”. He is, however, falling into a serious error in judgement-

…they sniffed.

As a matter of right, the camera man ought to have been permitted. The day of the enfranchisement of the motion picture will surely come .. which will give equal rights to the cinematographer and the newspaper man.

Then, among the illegal false advertising and reports of public brawls at the cinema, they ended with-

The lesson of the Titanic disaster and all its incidents can be made far more impressive by pictures that move than by mere words in cold letters.

In this edition of “Odd Titanica”, we are going to dive into the sleazy, opportunistic world of show business. A world that comedian Fred Allen said of, “you can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly, and still have room for three caraway seeds and a producer’s heart”. Hyperbolic? Let’s take a look at Hollywood’s response to the Titanic disaster to see that there really is no business like show business.
Dorothy Gibson and the lost, first, film are well worn trivia by now. The traumatized actress rushed into production, her inability to process her trauma causing her mental breakdown, collapse, and retirement from acting immediately after the film was finished - it’s a perfect story to demonstrate the callousness of the film industry. But there is more to the story, and digging deeper shows us that “Saved” may have been the least sleazy project undertaken by the studios.
Dorothy’s account of the sinking and the suffering she endured filming “Saved from the Titanic” are predominantly found in two sources - The New York Dramatic Mirror and Moving Picture World. These were trade magazines, published weekly, and consisting solely of material related to the stage and screen business. These would be announcements of upcoming features, casting news, celebrity gossip, technical news - anything the movie star to the man sweeping the floor at the cinema needed to know. And they included ads … lots and lots of ads.
Immediately realizing that Titanic was not only a horrible tragedy but an incredible business opportunity, Moving Picture World got to work. As people stormed White Star Line offices, and raided newspaper carts for any drop of news regarding the sinking, Moving Picture World provided the latest in Titanic news; or perhaps we should say “Titanic” news.
The headlines of the April 27th issue may have screamed TITANIC, but as the public grabbed their copy and hurriedly flipped through the pages, they found that what they were actually given was ads. Those eye grabbing headlines were followed by much smaller print-
TITANIC EFFORTS are being exerted by Champion to put before the exhibitors that will make them regular Champ Patrons! Get the following latest [releases] and you’ll be convinced!.
UNSINKABLE … is the reputation of Rep productions, but these two releases will sink into the minds of everyone who sees them and will remain there as worthy object lessons.
THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN …suggested by the poem of Elizabeth Barret Browning in 2 reels this Tuesday!
** THE GREATEST MOTION PICTURE OF NATIONAL INTEREST - THE SINKING OF**…. the big battleship. Remember the Maine!
THE DEATH SHIP...a sensational two reel drama of the sea containing one of the most thrilling dynamite explosions imaginable!
For all the slimy marketing tricks, flipping through the pages still has plenty of legitimate ads for real Titanic newsreels, movies, and a specific type of presentation known a Myriorama involving painting, music, and recitation. But, show business would strike again - the ads were legitimate, but what they were advertising was not.
History has sort of forgotten the huge demand for Titanic media in the wake of the sinking, something that didn’t really exist. When cinema owners would order these “only surviving genuine negatives of the disaster” complete with lobby display package, they instead received-

our astonishment to find the Lusitania and Olympic, and one or two scratch films of ancient days posing as pictures of Titanic.

But they didn’t stop. Animated Weekly advertised that they were “the first to reach the wreck… chartered a tug from Cape Breton and rushed to the scene while the survivors were still in the water”. Cinemas began to promote footage of the sinking. Audiences wrote their disgust to Moving Picture World-

These representations are to the point of criminality … Take, for instance, the picture showing the Titanic with about a sixth of her forward length stuck into the iceberg. Everybody knows the collision did not occur in that manner!

They pointed to the following ad as an example - FIRST PICTURES OF THE TITANIC OCEAN DISASTER. The cinema owners responded by noting that they had misread, crammed in tiny letters were the words “sunk in” so that ad actually read FIRST PICTURES OF THE TITANIC sunk in OCEAN DISASTER. It was the customers fault, they said, to be stupid enough to think anyone could have actually filmed the sinking.
Once this ruse was discovered, the studios shifted gears. The next step was to advertise film along with presentations by “A Lecturer who was on board”. When the audience realized the lecturer was not on Titanic and demanded a refund - the response from the managers was

Those signs didn’t say he was a survivor.

… and any attempt to charge him with the crime of fraud was absurd because, in his own words-

Of course I didn’t give him his money back. The sign didn’t misrepresent anything. West was on the Titanic, the sign didn’t say when he was.

…which was true. The lecturer, Eugene West, had visited Titanic while she was under construction at Belfast.
As for the movies themselves?

We said we had pictures. If people were foolish enough to think we meant moving pictures, that was their fault.

This particular cheated audience member was told if he wanted his money back, to go on the street and sing for it. Whether it was this, or something else, eventually the public snapped and began hauling out cinema managers and beating them in the streets. By May, the mayors of Boston and Memphis had banned the showing of any Titanic pictures - moving or still- within the city.
But, where was Dorothy in all this? Tucked in the very back of the magazine, after another newsreel ad,, we get to the celebrity sighting and gossip section. Ed Lux of the Rex Film Exchange was in town, Dan Markowitz of Fox Pictures was as well, Arthur Schmidt of the Victor Film Company was seen having a lovely spa at a Turkish Bath, Sam Gobel of the St Louis Motion Picture Company has been walking up and down 42nd street, we don’t know if Southern film maker Henry Wasserman is still here but he might be, Dorothy Gibson survived the sinking of the Titanic, and the Director of Selig Pictures took some actresses to Santa Catalina for a swim and a photoshoot and they had a great time.
By the following edition, on May 2nd, Moving Picture World was also able to provide its readers with the first stills from “Saved from the Titanic” and a feature on Dorothy. Along with this, tucked in the editorials, the magazine finally published a piece of truthful news about the Titanic disaster-

Senator William Alden Smith … declined to grant permission to have the cinematopgraph make a record of the sessions of the committee. “The sessions” he is quoted as saying…”are solemn affairs and must not be hippodromed or commercialized”. He is, however, falling into a serious error in judgement-

…they sniffed.

As a matter of right, the camera man ought to have been permitted. The day of the enfranchisement of the motion picture will surely come .. which will give equal rights to the cinematographer and the newspaper man.

Then, among the illegal false advertising and reports of public brawls at the cinema, they ended with-

The lesson of the Titanic disaster and all its incidents can be made far more impressive by pictures that move than by mere words in cold letters.

Been struggling with psychological ED for the better part of four years. It started after a breakup and has just slowly built up into a thing. I’ll usually be ok when in a relationship but, even then, I’m just in my head. It got to the point where I wondered if I just didn’t like sex and there was nothing to be done. I knew it was my psychological because, when avoiding other complications (nicotine, excessive masturbation, etc).
Had an unexpected hookup last week and could not get it up, at all. Finally said fuck this, I’m trying pills. Got a prescription and a few days later had a chance again with someone I’ve been seeing. We ended up doing it that night AND the next morning. She came both times. I was hard the whole time. Incredible. I’d really prefer to not have to rely on these forever since I’m still pretty youngish (33) but holy hell it’s given me so much more confidence.
Also, I took it before drinking and had no issues, I’ve seen people ask that here before.

Hiiii!
I was diagnosed with hEDS in 2015.
My guts have never quite been right and I recently decided it's time to ask my doctor for some help lol because I've started puking up bile/acid when I brush my teeth, along with many other issues.
She palpated my stomach and said that despite the fact I 💩 daily, sometimes 2x a day, I'm "totally backed up" as high as my belly button and need to take laxatives to clear myself out 😅
Pulled up records from 2021 when I ended up in the ER with impacted stool lump greater than the size of my fist, again despite the fact that I was going daily.
Last month I ate asparagus on a Friday and didn't get the "asparagus urine" until Monday 😵‍💫 which caused me great concern.
I've stopped being able to wear a lot of my clothing because skirts have elastic bands at the waist, dresses were meant to be worn with Spanx, etc and I can't have any compression on my abdomen or I get excruciating mid back pain.
Anyway, switching from Prevacid OTC to prescription pantoprazole, had bloods drawn to check gallbladder function and a few other things, coming back in 4 weeks for a celiac test (lol) and I will ask to be referred out to a gastroenterologist at that time 😇 so hopeful!

This is the strategy I used recently to get my first Roc very early on in the game - before even making my full diamond armor set. It's quite easy to do and overall I think it takes less time and is safer for any gear you have than the "intended" way, that being hunting and killing or soulgazer-ing multiple Rocs and then hunting for trolls for materials for the saddle.
Part 1: Needed materials (minimum, you can add other stuff for utility or whatever)

• Multiple shovels (1-2 diamond shovels should do the trick, or their equivalent durability-wise of iron shovels)
• Some basic materials for a small temporary base - blocks, furnace, crafting table, bed, etc.
• A boat
• Soulgazer
• Soulstone
• Name tag
• Basic Saddle
• ~20 bones
• 20-30 river fish
• At least level 1 in treasure hunting skill ("L" hotkey) - the more, the better
• A few stacks of easily breakable blocks (dirt will probably be your first choice here)
• Any of the matierials mentioned in Part 2 as things to farm that you might already have

Part 2: Strategy

1. First you obviously want to get everything mentioned above. Everything can be found easily in many structures around the world, both safe and unsafe (villager "mansions" with basements, battle towers, etc.)
2. Next, you want to have waystones at specific locations
   • In a snowy biome, close to ice villages (the common small ones), best to have a few of these
   • In a regular plains or forest area with a nearby rivelake/sea
3. Once you've found those, the next step is to make a small base in the plans/forest area. Obviously, make sure it's not near a dragon and also not near a village (unless you don't care about keeping villagers alive in that village). You'll be spending quite a bit of time here now
4. Before your first night, get at least 5 Silex meat from the nearby body of water. If near an ocean, Ika and Crab meat works too. Cook the meat and make your first avian treats
5. Once night falls, wait for a Roc variant to spawn (Scarlet or Golden) -> variants give double knowledge when using Soulgazer (or avian treats if still at knowledge level 1), giving +200 instead of +100 and therefore requiring only 5 interactions with the Soulgazer. Place your boat near your base, then lure the Roc to it by holding your avian treats. Once it's in the boat, use your name tag on it so it doesn't despawn, then use your Soulgazer and go to sleep.
6. From now until you make the Roc your pet:
   • Keep it daytime the whole time (sleep as soon as you can)
   • Use your Soulgazer on the Roc when you can
   • Keep farming Silexes/Ikas/Crabs for their meat and making avian treats
   • While waiting for new ones to spawn, start digging dirt. Once you have about a stack or 2, just start building a pillar and then digging down. This will give you some random stuff occasionally due to Treasure Hunting skill. The chance of getting any drop at all is 5% per level of the skill, and out of those 5% approximately 0.016% is the chance for a Troll Tusk (this is 0.016% per each block, which equates to about a 1% chance in any 64 dirt blocks broken), which is the main thing we're after here. This might sound like a very low chance, but considering how many dirt blocks you'll end up breaking the chance is actually quite high. At level 2 Treasure Hunting, I gotten both of my Troll Tusks (one for avian saddle, other one for dragon saddle) within 20 minutes of placing and breaking dirt. On top of this, you can get some other stuff as well, including enchanted stone tools (usually with quite good enchants), enchanted diamond sword, dragon bones and even a pig spawner!
7. Once you have level 2 knowledge of the Roc, you can start taming it with your treats. On average, you'll get 50-100 taming points per treat, and you'll need 1000 total for the Roc to be tamed. This means that most of the time 20-30 treats should be more than enough. After the Roc is tamed, make sure to use the Soulstone on it so it can respawn when it dies!!!
8. If you still haven't gotten a Troll Tusk, keep digging for it. If you have, move on to the next step.
9. Now take all your river fish and any dragon bones you're fine with trading and go to the ice villages (wool armor highly recommended). Find a Fisherman (they usually have a spear in their hands) that's buying the river fish at a 1:1 ratio and sell your fish for Sapphires. You can do the same with your Dragon Bones at a Shaman.
10. Next, find a Craftsman and level him up fully (usually 1-2 trades are enough for him to level up once, I just went with the cheapest one and spent maybe 5-10 Sapphires to level him up fully). His final trade will ALWAYS be Ice Troll Leather. You should have enough Sapphires left over to buy 3 pieces of leather, but if not just get more by finding and trading more river fish and Dragon Bones. Shamans will also buy Blaze Powder, so that's another alternative for getting Sapphires.
11. Only the last material left for the saddle now: 2x Amphitere or Stymphalian Bird feathers. Unfortunately, hunting and killing them is damn near impossible in early game (as most RLCraft players know). Fortunately, however, you don't have to do that. You can get both of the feathers in those small floating structures high up in the air (kinda like small "cubes" with a single chest in the middle). Just pillar up to them with your easily-breakable blocks, optionally take a few lockpicks with you in case the chest is locked (or do what I did and look for a different one, they're very common) and see if you got lucky. From my experience, at least half of the chests will have the feathers in them and there will always be at least 2 feathers if they are in there. Added bonus is that you can often find Potions of Wings in the chests too (seems to also be at least half the time), which give you free flight for 3 minutes and can make finding more of these structures a lot easier and faster if you get unlucky with the first one.

And there you have it, you now have all of the stuff you need to craft the avian saddle and a Roc to use it on! A quite simple strategy that requires about as much effort as hunting for trolls for the materials would, but a lot safer and requiring very minimal gear. Plus added bonus from all the additional stuff you get thanks to Treasure Hunting.

I am wondering how much is known in official lore (into which I personally include anything written by Keith) about the way that the Emerald Claw functioned before being outlawed, and especially during the Last War. Was it an organization limited exclusively to Karrnath, or did it exist officially also in other nations? And if yes, then how were the allegiances aligned, and how much were they on the radar of any intelligence services due to possibly suspicions of Karrnathi connection.
I'm asking because right now I'm DM-ing a campaign set during the ending stages of the war (the period leading up to the Mourning), and the antagonists are the Emerald Claw. And I just realized that I am not sure how official their activities in Breland were before the order got outlawed by Moranna in Karrnath.

We hear a lot about the shitty things the people around us do that trigger our EDs, so how about the opposite? What did someone do that helped you a lot? could be something more tangible or just listening to your troubles.
Mine is probably when my grandma gave me about six boxes of protein bars (those you buy in bulk at Costco), I often can’t be bothered/don’t have the energy to make any food at all and ended up skipping meals constantly so I needed something quick to eat that didn’t trigger a purge and the protein bars worked like magic, having those little bad boys around was basically her way to make sure I was at least eating something while away at college.
How about y’all?

Hey everyone,
I'm seeking some advice on a potential strategy I'm considering and would appreciate your insights.
I currently hold 3.5 ETH, and I'm contemplating selling it for USDC to rebalance my portfolio. My plan is to use the USDC to dollar cost average (DCA) into Solana (SOL) over the course of one month. Here's some context and my thought process:
Rationale Behind the Move:

1. Diversification: While Ethereum has been performing well, I'm concerned about being too heavily invested in a single asset. Diversifying into another promising project like Solana seems prudent to spread risk and potentially capture upside in another blockchain ecosystem.
   
2. Bullish on Solana: I've been closely following Solana's development and ecosystem growth. The project has shown strong potential with its high throughput, low transaction fees, and growing DeFi and NFT sectors. I believe it could be a good long-term investment, but I want to mitigate the risk of market volatility by spreading my purchases over a month.
   
3. Current Market Conditions: The crypto market has been quite volatile lately, and while Ethereum has had its share of ups and downs, Solana has also experienced significant fluctuations. DCA-ing into Solana over a month might help in smoothing out these volatility bumps rather than making a single large purchase.
   

My Concerns:
Market Timing: Although I understand that timing the market perfectly is nearly impossible, I'm still worried about selling my ETH at a suboptimal time. What if ETH surges after I sell? Conversely, if Solana drops significantly, my rebalancing might end up costing more than expected.
DCA Period: Is one month too short a period to effectively dollar cost average into Solana? Would it be more prudent to extend this period to reduce risk even further, or is one month a reasonable timeframe?
Execution Plan: - Convert 3.5 ETH to USDC on a reputable exchange. - Set up automated buys of Solana on a daily basis over the course of one month. - Monitor the market conditions regularly but stick to the DCA strategy unless there are significant changes in the market sentiment or unforeseen developments in either the Ethereum or Solana projects.
Questions for the Community:

1. Does this strategy make sense given the current market conditions and the upcoming milestones for both Ethereum and Solana?
2. Are there better alternatives to selling ETH for USDC and then DCA-ing into Solana?
3. What risks am I potentially overlooking with this approach?
4. Has anyone here executed a similar strategy? If so, what was your experience?

I'd love to hear your thoughts, especially if you have experience with ETH, Solana, or DCA strategies. Thanks in advance for your insights!
TL;DR: Considering selling 3.5 ETH for USDC to dollar cost average into Solana over one month. Seeking advice on whether this is a good strategy and any potential pitfalls.
Looking forward to your responses!

I’m 19 (F) and am struggling with AN. Although I have fairly slow weight as far as I know I don’t have any serious medical problems. Ive been in psych wards before after therapists have sent me for expressing suicidal ideation but never for my ED. I’m at the point I feel like there’s no way I can recover without extreme intervention but would never be able to admit myself to an inpatient facility.
I’ve seen people online and people I know in real life end up as inpatient or in hospital and my question is how? Is it after passing out, talking to a therapist, self admission or something else?

Been studying up on my Roegadyn words a bit since I'm playing one and been enjoying it. I hastily picked a name but will most likely change it later when I can. I see the word "friend" but not friendly. It says adjectives that end in y add i at the end and adjectives with ing add n. But there's no ly like friendly or lovely. Would this just be the same as ending in i?

i’m new to dm’ing a game and currently my players are trapped inside a cave. One player at the end of the session asked if she could eldritch blast the rubble trapping them to remove it because she could do it in bg3 and I’m wondering if there’s anything against it? or is this something I should decide as a dm?

I know this sounds crazy but hear me out.
Roughly a year ago now I found out I was pregnant and told my management at work because I wanted them to be aware and let them know I would no longer be working the c0mb@tive/bariatric side of the building. The hall they kept me on mostly, was a hall with multiple physically aggre$$ive residents and multiple residents who were bariatric size. I do not mean like “plus size” I mean like 400+ pound people who refused to roll so you basically had to make them over with all your weight to change them. Prior to this I worked any where they needed me to but I was not willing to put my baby at risk. Fast forward, I ended up being put on that hall with a passive aggressive note on the schedule saying “do NOT switch.” I said something about being on the one group in the w whole building I refused to work and the RN supervisor said “it’s like that for a reason, we have four I’m not changing it” I said “that’s fine, you can go on ahead and regroup it for three because I’m leaving”. I went to the time clock, clocked out and left. I had not taken report so I was not liable for any residents. I was outside when the DON and the ED called me several times and requested I come back inside to discuss what the issues were. I went against my better judgement and went into the DON’s office. It was a literal disaster of a meeting with them to explain my side of things and why I wouldn’t be working that hall. I’m generally a pretty “let it be” type of person but I was already feeling emotional and over the entire situation. Not to mention this facility has done some pretty f*ked up sht. I ended up losing the baby and let’s just say that was an entire ordeal as well.
Fast forward to tonight, another cna is pregnant and is “nauseous”. They straight up let her leave the facility at 2 in the morning because she’s pregnant and sick. Where was this pity party for me when I was pregnant, willing to work (just not one hall) and not complaining because I was “sick” but because of an actual safety risk??? My anger was misdirected to the coworker a bit I realize that, my anger is more towards management for allowing this to happen in the first place. “Working with four” essentially means we have 25+ residents most of who are total care to 1 cna. So her leaving left us with four which also pssed me off. I’ve worked several times sick, not feeling up to par to keep my coworkers from having a shtty night.

I know this sounds crazy but hear me out.
Roughly a year ago now I found out I was pregnant and told my management at work because I wanted them to be aware and let them know I would no longer be working the c0mb@tive/bariatric side of the building. The hall they kept me on mostly, was a hall with multiple physically aggre$$ive residents and multiple residents who were bariatric size. I do not mean like “plus size” I mean like 400+ pound people who refused to roll so you basically had to make them over with all your weight to change them. Prior to this I worked any where they needed me to but I was not willing to put my baby at risk. Fast forward, I ended up being put on that hall with a passive aggressive note on the schedule saying “do NOT switch.” I said something about being on the one group in the w whole building I refused to work and the RN supervisor said “it’s like that for a reason, we have four I’m not changing it” I said “that’s fine, you can go on ahead and regroup it for three because I’m leaving”. I went to the time clock, clocked out and left. I had not taken report so I was not liable for any residents. I was outside when the DON and the ED called me several times and requested I come back inside to discuss what the issues were. I went against my better judgement and went into the DON’s office. It was a literal disaster of a meeting with them to explain my side of things and why I wouldn’t be working that hall. I’m generally a pretty “let it be” type of person but I was already feeling emotional and over the entire situation. Not to mention this facility has done some pretty f*ked up sht. I ended up losing the baby and let’s just say that was an entire ordeal as well.
Fast forward to tonight, another cna is pregnant and is “nauseous”. They straight up let her leave the facility at 2 in the morning because she’s pregnant and sick. Where was this pity party for me when I was pregnant, willing to work (just not one hall) and not complaining because I was “sick” but because of an actual safety risk??? My anger was misdirected to the coworker a bit I realize that, my anger is more towards management for allowing this to happen in the first place. “Working with four” essentially means we have 25+ residents most of who are total care to 1 cna. So her leaving left us with four which also pssed me off. I’ve worked several times sick, not feeling up to par to keep my coworkers from having a shtty night.