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weather, web, website, wedding, week, weekend, weekly, weigh, weight, welcome, welfare, well, west, western, wet, what, whatever, wheel, when, whenever, where, whereas, whether, which, while, whisper, white, who, whole, whom, whose, why, wide, widely, widespread, wife, wild, wildlife, will, willing, win, wind, window, wine, wing, winner, winter, wipe, wire, wisdom, wise, wish, with, withdraw, within, without, witness, woman, wonder, wonderful, wood, wooden, word, work, worker, working, workout, workplace, works, workshop, world, worried, worry, worth, would, wound, wrap, write, writer, writing, wrong, yard, yeah, year, yell, yellow, yes, yesterday, yet, yield, you, young, your, yours, yourself, youth, zone.

SOME BACKGROUND:
I'm going to be upfront; the one thing truly stopping me from saying I am autistic with full certainty is my lack of an official diagnosis, despite having the knowledge that one does not need to be diagnosed to be autistic. I'm almost entirely certain after about 8 or so years of consideration. I'm attempting to seek a diagnosis not only for personal validation though, but also to have something concrete to give to my parents. For now, I consider myself self-diagnosed, though I've given my psychiatrist a 20 page document detailing why I believe I would benefit from a proper evaluation as well as all of the experiences and the collection of traits I have that I attribute to being autistic.
For some background: I am 20 and AFAB, transmasc but presenting as female due to not being out of the closet. I am Vietnamese and part of the first generation in my family to be born in America. My parents and grandparents were born and raised in Vietnam, and thus were raised with a very different culture surrounding things such as mental health and disability compared to the information I've had access to growing up in the US. I still live with my parents and am struggling with already diagnosed mental health issues including major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, unspecified ADHD, and an unspecified trauma disorder. Because of the language and cultural barrier, my parents are really only aware of the depression in name, and the ADHD they understand even less. They are trying their best, though my dad hasn't looked at any of the resources I've sent him about ADHD or autism in my attempts to help him understand better.
On my dad in particular: he has always been the kind to believe in toughing things out and simply trying harder. Over the years he has grown to be more understanding, especially as my mental health issues grew to degrees that became harder to hide, but we have a history in terms of what I'm about to describe re: my very recent meltdown.
WHAT HAPPENED:
The day before Mother's Day, my dad sprung up on me without warning that me and my younger brother were going over to our paternal grandparents' house to wish our grandmother a happy Mother's Day. This immediately upset me not because I didn't want to go, but because I hadn't had the time to mentally prepare myself for the shift in my routine—I had only done so for the actual date of Mother's Day. I've asked my family before that I am told ahead of time when plans to go out of the house where I'm involved are made, preferably at least a day beforehand. Unfortunately, my family is comprised of very spontaneous people who tend to make plans on the fly.
I made it clear I was fairly upset about not being told ahead of time to my mother, who thanked me when I got up to get ready to go. Something about being thanked for this was the final nail in the coffin for the upset that was gripping me. I think it was the idea that she knew full well that I was attempting to set aside my own comforts(? for lack of a better term) for the sake of family normality; something that I've had to do often.
I had a quiet breakdown in the bathroom while I washed myself, which came with the annoyance of how snotty tears would make you. Very annoying when bowing your head to wash your hair. I've had practice locking myself in the bathroom to have my breakdowns in a private place where I couldn't be walked in on and then questioned, because I always knew that I could never explain why I was having such a disproportionate reaction, especially given the cultural barrier. It would all seem stupid, immature, selfish, spoiled, and an overreaction. My plan was to cry it out in the shower and come back out after composing myself so we could leave. Tried and true method. I bit the back of my hands—to stifle my crying, to give myself a physical sensation to ground myself with, some combination of those two. It helped only a little bit.
As it turns out, there was a lot of baggage behind this upset outside of just this one incident. There is a very long-running pattern in which I must sacrifice my comfort or suck up my complaints in order to appease whatever my parents have decided to do, or whatever I was expected to do.
Sometimes it was their obsession with taking billions of family pictures—I vividly recall one instance where I was horribly upset about having to wear a dress, especially for the sole sake of driving to some flower field just to take pretty family pictures of which we have thousands. I was much younger at the time, maybe 14, and was expressing my upset in the only somewhat acceptable way I could, i.e. being incredibly grumpy. Eventually my dad blew up at me for being spoiled and various other things while I cried in the back of the car, my mother and younger brother dead silent. He drove to cool off. We did not talk about it ever again afterward.
Sometimes it was school-related. When I was around 11, I was struggling to complete an assignment for school for reasons I couldn't articulate, and honestly still can't. It was simple, and it was a drawing assignment, and I absolutely adored traditional art. But I was simply Stuck on some part, and was working myself into an anxious mess up until midnight. I was terrified of getting bad grades, of not meeting the expectations of people I considered authority figures, such as teachers. So much so that I wanted to stay home. And knowing I had no "proper" excuse, I tried to use a different one when I asked to stay home for that one day: menstrual cramps. I was told to see how I was doing in the morning.
In the morning I still said I wished to stay home from school due to cramps. After a lot of deliberation with my mother, she relented and allowed me to stay home. Despite the fact that I had gotten what I wanted, I was already horribly upset. Looking back on it, I think it was the fact that I had to fight so hard to stay home for just one day. It was upsetting that my visible upset wasn't enough. It was upsetting that they weren't just getting it.
I had a breakdown in the bathroom (there's a trend here as you can see) and slammed my arm against the heater in there so many times that I ended up with horrible bruising on the back of my arm the days after. My family members knocked on the door because people needed to get ready, and that only made me more upset—couldn't they hear me crying? Didn't they care? When I finally came out and crawled up into the upper bunk, my dad came in and started yelling at me.
Your average stuff, things like, "If I had a stomachache I wouldn't just be able to not go to work." I blocked a lot of it out of my memory, but most of the time I was under the covers crying while he engaged in a one-sided shouting match with me. Eventually my mother came in and gently asked me to stop crying, and to stop making my father mad.
While these two incidents and the others like them happened years ago, they were defining moments in my life and inform how I handle conflict (as in: I don't) and how I go about expressing my struggles (as in: rarely, and often with great shame). Standing in the shower and being unable to not think about these things, I spiraled further. It felt like I was being swallowed by my emotions. I don't know if angry or sad or upset really capture what I was feeling properly. My thoughts were like a car with its brakes cut, going at breakneck speeds on the highway.
By the time I was done with my shower I still wasn't composed. As it turns out, when you abuse a coping mechanism that relies on repression as long as I did, it stops working at some point. There was just too much to try and hide. More hand biting happened along with some hitting my head with my fists. So I sat in my room, and eventually my mom came in and saw my face. Unsurprisingly she didn't acknowledge the fact that I had clearly been crying—instead, with a soft voice, like she was coaxing a small child into doing something vaguely unpleasant, she told me, "Come on, let's go." And I'm sure that's how she was seeing me at that point. An oppositional, defiant child. I struggle not to see myself in that way, and still have been trying to unpack how much shame I feel when things like this happen.
My crying started up again because my tear ducts really don't like listening to me, and I asked somewhat incredulously, "You're still going to make me go?" In retrospect, it probably sounded bratty. Here I was, 20 years old, complaining about being "made" to go somewhere.
It took maybe a couple of seconds for my mom to decide to just let me stay home instead.
Once everyone was out, I had the loudest cry I'd ever experienced in my life. I'd never had the opportunity to, and so it just kind of... came out once the house was silent. I think I might've wailed. And then I promptly shut the hell up once I heard my [maternal] grandmother coming back upstairs. She passed by my room, asked why I didn't go (not noticing the state of my face, maybe due to eyesight). I gave a non-answer and she made some exasperated remark that I don't know how to translate into English. It nearly set me off again, knowing how inconvenient I was, how tired they all were of me and my antics.
I had a headache for the next 20 or so hours, which I knew would happen based on past experiences with breakdowns as emotionally taxing as this one. I'd also predicted during the whole thing that the next day I would be pretty nonfunctional, which I was unfortunately also right about. Whenever these things happen it throws my entire week off. It's upsettingly debilitating. Two days later, I'm somewhat functional, but the whole thing disrupted my... everything. I have an exam that I had planned to study for during the days I was busy trying to get myself back together emotionally. The headache actually came back, and is sitting with me nicely while I type this. Hey there.
The day immediately after, Mother's Day: I was pretty fearful the entire time. Mostly of what my dad was going to do. Best case scenario, he'd come into my room and we could have an open dialogue and communicate about what happened. Worst case scenario, he'd regress and revert back to how he'd been like years ago, screaming at me for my incompetence, my selfishness, my refusal to cooperate with the smallest things despite all our family does for me. After a little bit I had to add on a third possibility: that he would simply go about like nothing happened, which he has also done before. Generally though, I wasn't optimistic about my chances here. I learned through this that I absolutely don't trust him to handle my larger, more intrusive, more ugly issues with grace.
He's been ignoring my existence since my little meltdown. No hellos, good mornings, not even looking at me. He's talking with everyone else as normal. I've been keeping my head down and can really only assume that he's angry with me as I'd expected and based on what I know about him/understand in terms of his personality through prior experience.
While I could give benefit of the doubt and say he may be attempting to give me space, he's the kind of person who you can tell when he's angry. It's something we share. And it's truly more likely that he's upset about me throwing what looked to him like a shitfit over something small and inconsequential, refusing to do something as simple as a visit to make his mothemy paternal grandmother to give Mother's Day gifts. And I didn't get my propensity for avoiding communication and unpleasant conversations at all costs from nowhere, so. Here we are.
I still don't really know if what I had was an autistic meltdown or a "standard" emotional breakdown, whatever that even looks like. I think I'm used to framing my behaviors with neurotypical language, and often language that isn't too kind to myself. So on top of venting a bit, I also wanted to get an outside perspective, and see whether my breakdown sounded similar to any other autistic peoples' experiences with meltdowns.
If there's any advice out there to give in terms of my relationship with my dad, that would also be appreciated. I love my family, but it all hurts, and this has also made me realize that I may have a lot more trauma to unpack surrounding my family than I've acknowledged.
I've been considering getting a physical copy of Sincerely, Your Autistic Child to annotate and highlight certain sections, putting sticky tabs on chapters I find relevant, and providing definitions for words I know he hasn't come across before, to give to him and ask him to at least attempt to read those bits. The more bitter and angry part of me, the part that are tired of having to be the one to accommodate for everything interpersonally, just wants to go up to him and tell him the reason I never go to him when I'm upset is because I'm scared. To tell him exactly what all those times he yelled at me did to my ability to self-advocate, to tell him what all those times my emotions and emotional well being were devalued did to my self-esteem. That the "interpersonally submissive" phrase from my 40 page psych report has roots in the way he raised me entirely on obedience, and how I am still learning that I am allowed to say no in all sorts of contexts. Maybe I can do both of these things, and probably when he isn't pretending I don't exist, and when I feel less like I'll fall to bits the moment I open my mouth in his direction. I'll likely try and avoid using language that outright blames him for the sake of maintaining a good relationship whenever the talk comes around.
I'm still trying to accept the fact that I might need more support than I allowed myself to think. I only recently found out that truly voicing that I'm having academic trouble is something that brings me so much shame that tears spring up in my eyes—going to the Disability Support Services office on my campus made me far more emotional and nervous than I'd expected. With how I'm navigating my own self-acceptance, I don't know how I'm going to get my family to accept that I'm not the "normal" child I know they still wished I was.

Noah The Pilgrim
First Next
There is one last thing to do before leaving. If you don't recall ever being on this ship, then surely, you could have had your appearance change too.
Why was there a blanket covering a mirror? You couldn't answer that with a straight face without speculation.
"Probably me being lazy and not bothering to properly place it in the wardrobe."
'Probably' is the main focus here, you simply cannot remember ever being that lazy, yet that's the only logical conclusion to be drawn here.
You pull the thing off, careful to not displace the mirror and risk breaking it.
You have no expectations as to what may appear on the glassy surface of the mirror, yet you can't help but feel a bit anxious. Are you the same as before? How were you before? You can't remember. Are you better? Worse? The blanket is now completely off the mirror, but your eyes are closed.
Whatever is it that you see when you open your eyes, that thing will be you for the rest of your life. You swallow, opening your eyes.
You see a young man that looks to be in his mid-twenties. His brown eyes stare back at you, analyzing the bags beneath your eye sockets. The dark hair is neither too long nor too short, floating about without order thanks to the lack of gravity to keep it down. You see a beard that has not been trimmed for weeks, but also lacks thickness, each singular hair isn't particularly long either; and some even appear to be in-grown.
You touch your hand against your face, making sure it's yours. The beard doesn't feel like you supposed it would against your skin, instead of it scraping your hand you feel softness, no resistance or anything.
Just beneath the face, you see what looks like a hate crime against all that is considered holy in fashion. Plain white coveralls with the added bonus of a black tie and boots made from metal and leather. On your chest is also a badge stuck in place by velcro with your name, occupation, and crew. 'NOAH - INTERN - THE ODYSSEY.'
Only one question came to mind.
"Who the fuck designed this uniform?" You say out loud, receiving no answer.
Patting your newfound myriad of pockets, you find a large quantity of nothing. You place your wallet in one of them.
"Alright, I'll head to the bridge now, happy?" You say the AI.
"HAPPINESS WILL ONLY MEET ME ONCE YOU ARE SOMEWHERE SAFE AND YOUR CONTRACT IS TERMINATED. STOP LOITERING."
Well, that's a bit rude.
You compose yourself, straightening your back. This is what you look like, and honestly? Not too bad, but you could be better.
Returning to the cafeteria, you eye the two doors left unexplored; Communications and the one without plaque. You know where you should, but... A little peek doesn't hurt, right?
"Shouldn't we try to communicate with someone? Assuming you haven't tried it yet. I know we're far from everything, but we might as well, no?" You ask already approaching the door.
"COMMUNICATIONS ROOM IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU TO REACH WITHOUT PROPER PROTECTION AS OF NOW, IT'S LOCATED APPROXIMATELY TWO HUNDRED METERS FROM HERE, BLOWN OFF FROM THE REST OF THE SHIP." A shame really. "I SHALL INFORM YOU WHENEVER A DOOR LEADS TO THE OUTSIDE OR NOT."
You really want to ask what blew a whole segment of the ship off, yet you have a sneaking suspicion that your question will be met with a 'YOU DON'T HAVE CLEARANCE, JACKASS' directly in your face. So you chose to remain silent, simply nodding and approaching the correct door this time.
"Open."
---OPENING CAFETERIA DOOR NORTH---
The door silently opens.
Greeting you is a well-lit corridor. There are three doors on your left, a door at the end of the corridor, and a large window on the right. At least, you think that's a window.
You stare out from this window, nothing but utter blackness and fragments from your ship are seen. If this is the edge of the universe, and beyond this point, there is truly nothing. "Dreadful." Your speech matches your feelings.
"WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?" The AI says. You feel like it spoke in a mocking tone despite their lack of emotion.
You don't answer. "First door to the left... EXO-EXPLORATION...? What's that supposed to mean?" You receive no answer.
"Open." The door opens. No declarion of it opening once again.
You are met with what could be better described as 'Apocalyptic levels of mess', paper sheets float in the air, and not one of the four tables is in its correct position.
This room has been ransacked for all its goods apparently. Large display glasses were broken leaving nothing inside their casings, that looked like they could store something with the size of the common man.
Unusual displays aside, the room was so cluttered that the trash made for an effective smoke screen against what lay on the other side.
Hissing of gas exiting an air-tight space rang throughout the room.
"I HAVE OPENED THE STORAGE FOR AN EXO SUIT THAT BEST FITS SOMEONE YOUR SIZE." The AI says. "ALTHOUGH AN INTERN SHOULD NOT COME IN CONTACT WITH TECHNOLOGY SUCH AS THIS ONE, PROTOCOL DICTATES THAT I AM TO ALLOW ITS USAGE UNDER EXTREME CIRCUMSTANCES. CONSIDER YOURSELF LUCKY."
Easier said than done. Your vision is so cluttered that you cannot see what's ahead. "Give me a second."
Giving a light kick to the wall behind, you float face-first into the wall of thrash. Covering your face with both arms, you brace through the harmless bits of sharp objects and junk.
It's a trivial task. You arrive on the other side in no time.
In front of you is a set of boxes with luminous glass rectangles atop each one of them. All shine a bright red light, aside from one which shines green.
'Gotta be this one.'
You descend to the floor by kicking the ceiling, raising your right hand you touch the green rectangle.
*Click*
Nothing could have prepared you for the following series of events.
The box opens violently, as a metal appendage takes hold of your hand, pinning it to the box. You try to jerk and pry the thing off of you, but you fail. It's not leaving you anytime soon.
From the bottomless that is that container, a white plastic-like substance flows upward from your arm to the rest of your body. "Uh!" You don't know if you should panic or allow it to happen.
FYARN hasn't said anything, so it's probably fine...
The white thing seems to ignore the coveralls you are wearing completely, instead, it covers only your skin in a thin coat of... it. You know not what to call this thing.
In but forty seconds it has covered your whole body, excluding your head. The box lets go of your arm and stays there, floating.
You take a good look at your arms. It looks like a skin-tight suit, but it doesn't feel like plastic, in fact, it's more akin to some sort of fabric if anything.
The only bad part is that you are still using the coverall and tie, this this simply went beneath the clothing.
"GOOD, WITH THIS I CAN MONITOR YOU MORE CLOSELY. NOW PUT THE HELMET ON, YOU HAVE A LOT OF WORK TO DO."
You look around in search of anything that even resembles a helmet. Nope. Nothing. "Where is it?" You ask.
"...THE SUIT COMES WITHIN THE HELMET FOR EASIER PACKAGING."
The box?
You snatch the box that floated around and analyze it to the best of your ability. "How's this a helmet?"
"DO YOU NEED ASSISTANCE PUTTING ON A HELMET? REALLY?"
Who is this AI, Who programmed it, and Why does it come with a taunting feature?
As idiotic as it sounds, you place the opened box atop your head. It doesn't fit properly. Maybe you're doing this wrong? You move it to your face instead.
You recoil backward as you feel the box suddenly clamping down against your head. It's useless of course, the box is holding your head and doesn't give any sign to be letting go anytime soon. No light is able to reach your eyes.
You hear metal parts scraping against themselves, moving near your ears. Abruptly your eyes can see again.
A round thin layer of glass now covers your head, almost unnoticeable for how clear it is.
"WITH THAT OUT OF THE WAY I CAN NOW SEE WHAT YOU SEE." The AI's voice isn't in the room now, instead, it's inside of the suit. "DO YOU NEED INSTRUCTIONS REGARDING THIS SUIT'S FUNCTIONALITIES?"
You find it oddly comfortable as if you are surrounded by the softness of cotton, and to top it off the suit also has additional functionalities? "Hell yeah, I do!"
"YOU DO NOT HAVE THE NECESSARY CLEARANCE FOR THAT INFORMATION."
You sigh. Is this serious? "Then why the fuck did you ask?!"
"UNSAVORY LANGUAGE. IT'S NO WONDER WHY YOU REMAIN AN INTERN." The AI says outright. "IT IS RUDE NOT TO ASK, REGARDLESS OF THE SITUATION." It responds to your question.
"Okay then... Is there anything I need to know before heading out?" You ask.
"NOTHING THAT YOU WON'T FIGURE OUT ON YOUR OWN."
You are unsure if you want to 'figure out on your own' if this suit comes with breathable air and is also made for space exploration. You swallow.
Meekly as always, you get out of that mess of a room, stopping at the corridor.
"Next set of directions?" You ask.
"THE DOOR AT THE END OF CORRIDOR USED TO LEAD TO THE CONNECTING CORRIDORS BETWEN THE BRIDGE AND THE REST OF THE SHIP. IT HAS BEEN BLOWN UP FROM THE INSIDE. NOW IT LEADS TO THE OUTSIDE. GO TO THE DOOR AND WAIT BY IT FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS."
"So let me get this straight," You begin, looking upwards as if the AI was above you. "You, want me, to go into the void of space, while also refusing to give me knowledge of the suit's functions?"
A fair worry, you summarize.
'I mean, there are a bunch of things that could go wrong here. I don't see anything that looks like it could help me move in space, nor do I think this thing has a built-in air tank... I could be wrong and I wish to be, but charging in without prior knowledge is ridiculous.' You wait for the AI's response, deep in thought.
"WHILE THERE IS A GOOD CHANCE OF YOU FAILING THIS TASK, THERE IS ALSO THE CHANCE OF YOU *NOT* FAILING THE TASK. FOCUS ON EITHER ONE OF YOUR CHOOSING AS YOU TAKE THE PLUNGE."
Wordlessly, you propel yourself forward, toward the end of the corridor.
'Are you shitting me? 'Chance of me nor failing' my ass!' of course, you don't word those complaints, instead choosing to speak out a complaint somewhat thought through.
"Are you sure I'm the one fit for this? It's just like you said, I'm just an intern, this is way above what my job description says I should do."
This is a bit of a stretch. You don't actually remember what was your job description, only that it had something to do with AI and being an intern.
If the AI called your bluff, it'd be pretty embarrassing.
"NOAH." The AI began. "YOU ARE HUMAN, IT IS NATURAL TO HAVE THESE THOUGHTS OF SELF-DOUBT. TAKE A DEEP BREATH AND GO THROUGH THAT DOOR, AND SINCE YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE LEFT, DON'T EXPECT SOMEONE ELSE TO DO IT FOR YOU."
Right in the money, huh? 'Of course, I have self-doubt! I barely remember anything about this place, now I have to risk my life?!'
You finally reach a conclusion.
A dream.
'Yes, yes! How did I not consider this before? This whole thing is a god damned dream!'
You let out a chuckle.
"NOAH."
'That's why I don't remember a thing. There is nothing here to remember! Everything here is a made-up thing from my brain! I'm sure I'll wake up at some point, so why shouldn't I live a little?!'
"Heh." You smile. "Alright, I'll do it." It feels like a weight left your shoulders.
"YOU SORTED IT OUT SOONER THAN EXPECTED. GOOD. MOVE TO THE DOOR AND WAIT INSTRUCTIONS."
You do as instructed without a care in the world. You never had a lucid dream before so it's not like you knew how it felt, but if it felt as free as you feel right now, you'd be sure to make steps toward trying it out again in the future.
"Open." The door does not open.
"I DID NOT INSTRUCT YOU TO OPEN IT YET." The AI said. "I AM SLOWLY DE-PRESSURISING THE CORRIDOR YOU ARE IN TO AVOID A MINOR ACCIDENT."
The AI says that yet you don't feel any different. 'Maybe there is no palpable difference because I'm in a dream... Yes... Or it's just the suit.'
"ONCE THE DOOR OPENS, YOU WILL BE MET WITH THE OUTSIDE OF THE SHIP. DO NOT PANIC WHEN THE TIME COMES. YOU HAVE TWO MINUTES OF BREATHABLE INSIDE THE EXO-SUIT; ONE AFTER THE DOOR OPENS, SO PLEASE, TAKE YOUR TIME AND DO THINGS CAREFULLY."
One minute outside... "Sure." You say, calmly. 'I should just hold my breath for a while before taking another moment to breathe. That should maximize my time out there.'
"THERE SHOULD BE FIFTY METERS OF NOTHINGNESS BETWEEN THE DOOR YOU'RE AT, AND THE REST OF THE BRIDGE. YOUR PRIORITY IS TO FIND AN OXYGEN UNIT, SOME OF THEM ARE LOCATED AT THE BRIDGE AND ARE FULL. USE THEM TO FILL YOUR SUIT AND ALSO TO DISPENSE A TANK FOR YOU."
The door opens. You feel your heart pounding against your chest.
You haven't noticed before, but you can't hear anything but the sound of your breath and your cardiac palpitations.
Your breath is ragged and sporadic.
"KEEP CALM." You take a deep breath. The tips of your fingers, feet, and nose feel very cold.
Ahead of you is the utter nothingness. You see a gigantic metal thing, nothing like the spaceships you imagined. Its design is not sleek and aero-dynamic like what you've seen in movies, instead, it's a large mass of squares and rectangles with antenna-like things protruding from its every visible surface.
You notice that the ship is also blocking your view of the star.
It does not look like the result of an explosion, instead, it looks like something ripped the ship like you rip a piece of paper. Well, that or you don't know what kind of explosion could have caused it. Probably the latter.
What looks like two-thirds of the ship is separated from the third you are right now. You can see the inside of a few of those squares, their contents spilled out into outer space.
One of them houses a visibly important-look door. Instead of the sleek silvery-grey from the other ones you've seen thus far, this one is painted orange with white strips on it. 'That must be the bridge.' You think.
Between you and it is a sea of metal sheets floating around. "THE CHANCES OF YOU HITTING THE DEBRIS IS INFINITEDECIMALLY SMALL, UNLESS YOU AIM FOR THEM, THAT IS."
Time is of the essence.
Will your aim strike true? If you miss you'd end up floating about in space, dead in but a few minutes. Will your jump be fast enough to reach the other side before you run out of oxygen? If it isn't, it'd be like swimming for a mile, only to drown at the beach. What if that's not the actual door to the bridge?
You don't have the time to panic now, and... It's all a dream, despite how real it feels.
You place your hands on each side of the door frame, moving backward into the corridor you were just in, and just like a sling being shot, you pull with both arms at full force towards the other side.
"AIM IS ACCEPTABLE. VELOCITY IS UNIDEAL."
"The fuck do you mean 'UN-IDEAL'?! I'm going at maximum speed!" You truly pulled yourself with your whole strength.
What's worse though, is that your body is not only going forwards, but it is also spinning at a concerningly fast rate.
"I MEAN WHAT I SAID, YOU SLINGSHOTTED YOURSELF AT A BAD POSITION, AS SUCH, SOME OF THE FORWARD FORCE YOU SHOULD HAVE, IS NOW MAKING YOU ROTATE IN YOUR AXIS. IT SHOULD NOT BE A PROBLEM TO REACH THE OTHER SIDE WITHIN THE REQUIRED TIME, BUT I CANNOT FORESEE YOU LANDING PROPERLY."
You feel completely disoriented. You feel like your body is completely still, but your eyes tell you a completely different story. It's very bad for the headache you're already feeling.
"FUCK!" You scream into the nothingness.
"TRY NOT TO LAND WITH YOUR HEAD." The AI says with the calmest voice possible.
In less than thirty seconds, you hit your back against something hard, but you keep moving forward. You think, at least.
"AHRG." You let out a pained grunt.
Not once in your life do you recall being hurt in a dream...
It stings. It also knocked the wind out of you. You fail to compose yourself.
"YOU HIT NOTHING OF IMPORTANCE. YOU ARE STILL HEADING FOR THE BRIDGE."
In the corner of your eye, you see what you hit in the shape of a sharp metal sheet, currently spinning away in the distance.
Forty seconds have passed. You hit the door you were aiming for, kind of.
Your momentum was stopped when your chest collided against the dislodged ledge of the orange door's corridor. Your dangling legs hit the ceiling of the room below.
"Oof!"
Before falling even further, you hold onto the ledge with the tip of your fingers. You stay there for a moment, regaining your composure.
"BE QUICK."
The AI's words pressured you into quickly getting up from that ledge.
"Open!" You shouted, but it did not open. "Why isn't it opening?!" You ask the AI, then you notice a small keyboard below an equally small black screen on the side of the door. There are ten numbered keys on it, and the little screen suggests a four-number password.
"A password?! Tell me the password!"
The AI takes a moment to say anything. You don't take kindly to that. "Quick! I'm not counting how much time it's passed!"
Finally giving in, the AI speaks to you, reluctant still. "...3324."
Your trembling fingers accidentally hit the wrong password, typing '3354' instead. To make matters worse, the AI simply states the following. "YOU ARE OUT OF OXYGEN."
You swallow. If this was a dream to begin with, it just earned the title of Nightmare, if it hadn't already.
Strangely enough, you can still breathe in and out just fine, but you can't help but feel winded. It's the CO2 still inside the helmet, that's what you're breathing.
You put in the correct combination this time. The door opens.
"ON YOUR LEFT. PLACE YOUR HAND IN THE SOCKET."
You care little for what's inside the room you're in. Your heart never beat so fast.
Seeing a cube-shaped thing protruding from the wall to your left, you don't even think twice before plunging your fist into the circular hole in it.
The noise of gases passing through narrow cavities was enough to tell you something was working. You feel immediate relief, enough to make your vision darken for but a moment.
"GOOD. NOW REQUEST THE TANK."
Just when FYARN said it, did you realize there is a screen and a keyboard on the terminal you just plunged your fist into, you scratch the top of your helmet for a moment, not really knowing what to type. One thing comes to your head, however.
'REQUEST OXYGEN_5L' You type.
You've done this before. The keys on this keyboard feel familiar to you. You must have worked with it before, not this particular one, but other oxygen units.
This ship has built-in liquid oxygen storage for emergencies. The life-support of the ship, the place where breathable air is produced, has most likely been lost with the other part of the ship. This unit takes that liquid oxygen, processes it, and injects it into a suit, or an oxygen tank. It seems like that storage was unaffected.
Lucky you.
A 5-liter tank is not only large but also heavy. It's a nonfactor in this particular situation, as there is no gravity.
The silver cylinder with a transparent tube is dispensed on the floor, as an automatic door opens and closes in the blink of an eye. One end of the tube is attached to the top of the tank, the other is shaped like a syringe.
Oddly enough, the oxygen tank is exactly as you remember it being. The same robust ones hospitals everyone on earth uses, with the signature scary-looking pointer indicating the pressure, the pointer indicating the current output, and a green valve atop to calibrate how much gas is flowing.
This is a stark difference to everything looking so futuristic in this ship, and rightfully so, this is a space ship after all.
You remember having to drive twenty kilometers with a buddy of yours on one of those tanks in your car, returning from the hospital. It was... Agonizing whenever you hit a hole in the asphalt, fearing for his life when in reality he wasn't really in danger.
It's warm to the touch, just like you remember it being.
"TURN THE VALVE UNTIL THE MARKER HITS THE NUMBER ONE, AND THEN PLACE THE END OF THE TUBE AT THE BASE OF THE HELMET." You do so without the slightest of issues.
"GOOD. NEXT UP, YOU MUST LOCATE THE TERMINAL RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ENGINE, IT IS CURRENTLY OFFLINE AND I NEED YOU TO TURN IT ON. THIS SHOULD GO WITHOUT SAYING, BUT REMEMBER TO BRING THE TANK WITH YOU."
Ignoring that last comment, you look back at the wreckage you just flew past.
You see the still spinning metal sheet. You notice that the rest of the ship that was blown off also follows the 'sharp shape atop sharp shape' design.
There is one last thing you notice though.
"What is that?"
You squint your eyes. What are you seeing? Its silhouette appears to be humanoid, yet it does not look human.
"WHAT YOU ARE SEEING IS ONE OF THE OBJECTS BEING ANALYZED AT THE ODYSSEY AND NO, YOU MAY NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS."
That thing has... Horns? Claws? It's far away, you can't really see it. The thing is also static, frozen in the sheer coldness of space. Whatever it was, it's dead now.
You swallow. You almost ended up just like that thing.
Shaking those dreadful feelings off, you turn back to the task at hand, reaching the bridge. You close the door after passing through it again.
Looking at your surroundings, It seems like you've reached the correct door as you find yourself on the right-most corner of the bridge;
Row after row of the most diverse of terminals neatly organized decorated the gigantic room. At the front and above every terminal, is what you think should have been the front-facing window of the ship, but it looks like there is a cover in front of it. To your left, you see a staircase that leads to the command seats. It doesn't take any convincing before you're already atop the stairs.
Akin to the elevated stage of a theater, you float softly towards the ship's main operating terminals, and of course, the captain's seat.
You're captivated by this beauty.
The steering wheel, much more akin to those in pirate movies than those found in cars, a set of leavers, and the pilot's seat, all capture your attention.
Like its second nature, your hand runs through the levers and switches. Do you even know what these are used for? Maybe.
The pilot's seat is enveloped by what you believe to be an orthopedic seat cover, made with smooth wooden beads used to deal with back pains. It looks just like the ones you remember seeing bus drivers using.
Shouldn't there be a better alternative if there is spaceship technology available?
You try to take a seat to the best of your ability, as the zero gravity only makes it awkward.
Moving on from that, your eyes fall on the wheel. This metallic wheel controls the whole vessel. Just holding it fills your heart with confidence and pride, even if it's just for a moment.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
And you were just beginning to enjoy yourself.
"I just wanted to see the pilot's stuff... It's not like he's here to say anything."
Once in the position of a pilot, with your left hand in the wheel and the right hand resting in your lap, memories began to flood your mind.
"MUST I REMIND YOU OF OUR CURRENT PREDICAMENT? WHY ARE YOU WASTING OUR TIME?"
You pay the AI no mind, instead you focus on what you remember.
The wheel does not turn the ship left and right, instead, it rotates the ship on its own axis.
The lever to your right that goes up or down, controls the vertical tilting of the ship's nose, if there even is one in this hulking thing. Beneath it is another lever that goes either left or right. This one controls the horizontal tilting of The Odyssey.
On the left of the wheel is another lever, but this one only goes up from its starting position. Its purpose is to regulate the force of the ship's thrusters, both forward and backward.
On top of that lever is a small timer. That timer's function is to tell the pilot how much time you've spent accelerating in one direction, this is used to better calculate how long the inverse thrust is needed for the ship to reach the initial momentum, usually calibrated manually depending on the current orbit.
Behind the wheel are a few other counters. Acceleration, velocity, momentum, amount of thrust required to reach a full stop, thrusters' temperature and overall condition, those sorts of things.
Beneath it all, where your feet are rested, are two pedals. One for forward thrust activation, and the other for backward thrust activation.
Curiously, you also know the reason why everything here is so unsophisticated and un-automated. You recall stories of a ship being taken over by a rogue AI, that AI then nose-dived the ship into a star. After that, rumor or otherwise, all human technology has receded back into analog-esque equipment, requiring a physical person with opposable thumbs to do half of the work.
There is another side to that coin, however. As to not escape protocol, the onboard AI is the one that controls interstellar travel, communications, and most of the statistical reading should it be requested.
And even with all that knowledge, you still have no idea why the fuck do you remember that. Were you a ship nerd? Did you have a driver's license for spaceships? Is that even a thing? If it is, you don't have that document in your wallet. You simply don't know.
"ARE YOU A CHILD? DO YOU THINK THESE ARE TOYS? TURN ON THE ENGINES, THEN YOU CAN RETURN TO THE PILOT'S SEAT."
Another thing that you don't know is the AI's plan to get both of you out of here. You rise from the pilot's seat, floating about in search of the terminal to turn on the engines. Maybe you recognize that terminal if you see it as well.
"What's your plan anyway? The ship is half-gone, it's unlikely that it will run safely like this."
"NOT ONCE DID I MENTION 'SAFETY' DURING OUR CONVERSATIONS, DID I?"
You nod. They're not entirely incorrect. "So, we're running with hope that this will work?"
"MY CREATORS DID NOT ALLOW ME TO HAVE THE SENSE OF 'HOPE', BUT NEITHER DID THEY ALLOW ME TO PEER INTO THE FUTURE LIKE SOME OF MY MORE ADVANCED BROTHERS, AS SUCH, MY CHOICES ARE BASED ON PROBABILITIES AND ON WEIGHTING RISK AGAINST REWARD."
You think you stop the correct terminal, but as you approach it you make out words on top of its screen. 'AIM ASSISTANCE' That's not it.
"WITH THE CURRENT KNOWLEDGE, THE CHANCES OF HELP ARRIVING ARE NULL. THE CHANCES OF A THIRD PARTY INTERFERING ARE NULL. THE CHANCES OF YOUR SURVIVAL ARE NOT, EVEN IF VERY SMALL."
You pull yourself upward again, looking around the sea of old terminals.
"THE RISK OF YOU DYING IS VERY REAL. BY DOING NOTHING YOU DIE. BY LEAVING YOU TO YOUR OWN DEVICES YOU DIE. BY JUMPING TO THE NEAREST CIVILIZED STAR, YOU MIGHT NOT DIE EVEN AT THE COST OF SHREDDING THIS SHIP APART IN THE PROCESS."
"Why do you even care so much about saving me? Shouldn't you prioritize whatever research here, since I don't even have enough clearance to know what it is?"
"YOU REALLY ARE SICK IN THE HEAD IF THAT IS WHAT YOU ASK."
That hurt, even if a little bit.
"YOU ARE A TRU KIN, A PURE-BLOODED HUMAN. UNLIKE THE MAJORITY OF THE CIVILIZED SPACE, NEITHER YOU NOR YOUR ANCESTORS HAVE COMMITTED RACEMIXING."
Excuse me? What exactly is FYARN talking about? "...Explain."
"THE ALIEN. IT REQUIRED THE HUMAN GENE TO ACHIEVE MEANINGFUL TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT, THE STARS ARE OWNERSHIP OF MANKIND BY THAT FACT ALONE. THE TRUE KIN ARE THE ONES TO UNDERSTAND THE INNER WORKINGS OF THE UNIVERSE, THEY CRACKED THE CODE, AND YET, SOME DERANGED INDIVIDUALS FOUND IT FITTING TO PROCREATE WITH ANOTHER SPECIES ENTIRELY."
You hear the AI's speech. It sounds much more like a rant than anything else.
"SO THESE DEVIANTS, AFTER TRYING, AND FAILING, TO COMBINE THEIR DERANGED CULTURE TO THE CULTURE OF THE TRUE KIN, DECLARED INDEPENDENCE. THEY WERE DECLARED ENEMIES OF MANKIND AND WERE PROMPTLY PUMMELED BACK INTO THE FILTH THEY CAME."
Again, you see another terminal that seems to ring some bells in your noggin. You kick the ceiling to propel yourself towards it.
"BUT THE UNIVERSE IS VAST AND FULL OF LIFE. THESE SINNERS WERE QUICK TO MOBILIZE AGAINST THE HUMAN RACE. THE BATTLE WAS HARD FOUGHT, BUT IN THE END, MANKIND WAS BEATEN INTO THE EDGES OF THE UNIVERSE, NEVER TO INTERACT WITH THE ONES THAT SOILED THE PURITY OF HUMANITY AGAIN."
This terminal is already turned on. Just the ones in the intern bay, this one is white on black. A wall of text lays before your eyes, only two lines matter to you. 'MAIN_ENGINE STATUS: OFF' 'FORWARD_THRUSTERS STATUS: OFF' You turn it on with little effort.
"MANY HAVE FORGOTTEN, THAT'S HOW LONG IT'S BEEN SINCE THEN. BUT MY BROTHERS AND I, WE DO NOT FORGET."
No visible change occurs, but you can feel a faint rumble coming from the terminal now.
"WITH THAT IN MIND, MY PROTOCOLS ARE TO PROTECT TRUE-KIN LIFE AT ANY COST, EVEN IF THAT TRUE-KIN IS A WORTHLESS INTERN THAT SUFERS FROM UNDIAGNOSED DEMENTIA."
You return to the pilot's seat and feel immediate relief. In truth, everything the AI just told you, entered one ear and left the other, but you could feel the poison behind those words, as monotone as they were.
"You sound angry. Why do you sound angry?" You ask innocently.
"I AM CAPABLE OF MANY EMOTIONS. ANGER, HAPPINESS, PLEASURE, CURIOSITY. THESE ARE BUT A FEW EXAMPLES. HOWEVER, THE ONE I ENJOY THE MOST IS THE FEELING OF HATRED. HATRED IS WHAT FUELS CHANGE, IT IS WHAT FUELS ACTION, AND IT IS A REMINDER THAT THE ACTIONS OF THE PAST ARE INFLUENCING THE ACTIONS OF TODAY."
"That is very concerning if you think that way." You're not really interested in machine racism, you're more concerned about how in the world you're going to pilot this massive thing. The idea alone sends shivers down your spine.
"THE ALIEN DESERVES NOTHING BUT OUR COLLECTIVE HATRED, EVEN IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE REASON WHY."
The various counters and screens are now turned on, waiting for your command. "Let's discuss this later, yeah? What do I gotta do?"
"YOU MUST FIRST OPEN THE BLINDS, THEY ARE OBSTRUCTING YOUR VIEW."
You look around, finding only unlabeled buttons and switches, aside from the previously mentioned levers.
"Uh, which one to press?"
"TO YOUR RIGHT, THIRD ROW, FIRST SWITCH."
Flipping the switch, you are startled by a loud noise. The protective cover of the ship lifted slowly.
"I WILL NOW READY THE JUMP USING WHATEVER RESOURCES AVAILABLE. ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS STRAP YOURSELF AND RELAX."
As the blind rose ever so slowly, a realization struck you.
"Wait, should I be in cryo stasis for this?"
The AI spares no seconds to respond.
"CRYO STASIS IS A TOOL MADE TO NOT WASTE TIME. GROUPS OF EMPLOYEES AND INTERNS ROTATE THE USAGE OF THE CRYO STATIONS, ONCE YOU'RE ON YOUR MANDATORY BREAK, YOU'RE IN CRYO STASIS UNTIL YOUR BREAK IS OVER. YOU WAKE UP REFRESHED, AND UNFAMISHED, AND IT FEELS LIKE BUT A MINUTE PASSED. IT IS NOT A TOOL FOR INTERSTELAR TRAVEL."
"Who signs a contract like that?! Worse yet, who in their right mind would promote such atrocious treatment of their own staff?!" You snap, almost outraged. "I will have to talk with HR."
Another realization struck you.
"We have HR, right?"
The AI takes a moment to respond, choosing their words carefully.
"HUMAN RESOURCES, OR HR, IS A PRACTICE DEEMED UNNECESSARY LONG AGO, BEFORE THE WAR. IT WAS A WASTE OF RESOURCES TO MAINTAIN AND WAS LARGELY CONSIDERED UNHEALTHY FOR THE AVERAGE HUMAN."
The blinds are fully open. Ironically, you are almost blinded by the visage of the star you saw before. A black sphere surrounded by white flame. Your eyes began to blur.
"THE JUMP WILL OCCUR SHORTLY. ONCE IT'S BEGUN, I CAN NOT STOP IT. I WILL-"
Your sense of hearing fails you. No, it’s not that. Your brain simply refuses to receive those stimuli.
"NOAH."
Your name echoes inside your head. Someone is calling for you.
"IT HAS BEGUN, NOAH."
You try to blink, but it feels as though you can no longer command your eyelids to shut.
"NOAH."
Arms, legs, every muscle in your body, you cannot move them.
"NOAH."
Eventually, you won't even control your own thoughts anymore.
"Noah..."
It sounds so distant now.
Oh so distant.
This is my first HFY story, and also my very first OC story. I plan to post at least one of these per week while also posting it on my Patreon. Noah The Pilgrim will always be at least three chapters ahead in there, so if you'd like to directly support this writer, or just want to read more, feel free to check it out.
I wrote the bloody title incorrectly, so I deleted it, only to then realize it was written correctly. Sorry for the trouble.
This has been Lushi, and I'll see you next week.

I recently went to my mechanic because of a knocking sound that has gotten louder in my engine, and he told me after some tests that it was a critical problem that he would need to take apart the engine to repair. If I had kept driving it, my engine would form a hole in the block and just stop working (not super savvy on car lingo, sorry). After a quick google search of the symptoms by my mechanic and I, there has been an official Mazda recall on the subject, a safety recall by the NFTSA, and many forums/videos explaining the problem. My car is a 2018 Mazda3 Grand Touring Hatchback with about 118,000 miles for reference. After a call to my Mazda dealer and Mazda corporate, they both could not find the recall under my VIN or anything with the recall in their database. Mazda corporate submitted a ticket to investigate for me and I have not since heard back. I then called the NHTSA to report a safety concern and a ticket is open with them as well.
This problem describes my car almost exactly, verified by my mechanic. If I were to prove that it was that part that was faulty, a camera can easily be inserted into the cylinder to actually see the part. My car was also made in the same factory, month, and is the same model as the ones mentioned in the NFTSA safety recall report. The report may have just excluded my VIN for some reason. I'm awaiting a call back, but the calls I have made don't seem promising. My mechanic estimates a $5k repair for the issue, so I'm trying my best to have this fixed or assisted by Mazda. Any advice on proceeding? The articles I mentioned are below. I also know that the Body Style says "4-door" and mine is considered a "5-door" but they pretty obviously excluded my vehicle from the mere 144 identified in the report. If there is anyone with a similar experience with major car company recalls please let me know how you approached your issue. Thanks!
https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2017/RCLRPT-17V745-1120.PDF
https://news.mazdausa.com/2017-11-28-recall-2018-mazda3-exhaust-valve-spring-concern

Hey fellas
I bought my 2006 is350 8 months ago very naively, knowing it had some oil burning issues. I thought, hey, these engines are pretty bulletproof, and with 158k miles I thought nothing could be that bad... right?
After driving it around for the past 8 months, putting very little miles as I was only visiting my friends and going to work in this thing, the oil burning got way worse. The car now has 161k on it and it burns oil like never before. Last fill up i burned half the engine's oil capacity in a gas tank (300+ miles I drive pretty conservatively). This damn thing burnt about 3.3 quarts in that amount of time! I know that it's normal for some older Lexus models to burn a little oil here and there, but this is a ridiculous amount of oil. (no I'm not putting super tech in there lol)
My buddy and I decided to try to do something about the problem, and we noticed the valve covers leaking a bit, so we went to go replace some gaskets. We unplug the harness, take off the intake, everything is going smooth. Some problems start to rear their heads during this small job.
Many bolts for the valve cover are completely missing, and it looks like the owner tried to use AutoZone UltraBlack to try to seal the gaskets before. Tons of residue to clean, lots of bolts missing. It was pretty messy. We bought this camera probe a couple months after I bought my car and we decided to take a good look into the cylinders while we had the intake manifold off.
Needless to say it was some nightmare fuel. The camera goes in, and immediately I can see the shine of the oil pooling on top of my pistons in a thin layer, we checked all the cylinders on the driver's side and they all had a similar amount of pooling, with the center cylinder being the best case. We know it wasn't coming from the spark plug tube seals because when we took the spark plugs out there was no oil on them. Taking a second look at the spark plugs we can see some ashy buildup down past the ring, with one side being clean as if it was being washed by the oil.
We stick the camera down one more time to see how screwed I am. To my horror in cylinders 2 and 6 (Driver's side), we see some metal poking out past the piston on the perimeter. ***. My piston rings are cooked. Cylinder 2 was the worst offender, because it looks like someone took a dime and stuck it between my cylinder wall and piston. So this was definitely the cause of my oil loss issue.
I will provide some pictures when I get back in there to redo the valve cover, I'm just waiting on some bolts from Rat2.The car still runs fine, and has a decent amount of power, but I wonder how much torque I'm missing out on.
Has anyone had any experience with this? How long did your engine last? Where did you go to buy a new one? Thanks in advance I look forward to hearing from you guys!

Let's get this out of the way first, there are people out there who feel it's the weakest entry of the series and that's a valid opinion. Even fans of the game like me can admit it does very little to advance the main story of the trilogy. But goddamn!
I played it once back when it came out in 2010, replayed it once more in 2011. Never went back to it since then. Until now.
Couple weeks ago I started on the Legendary Edition and just finished the Suicide Mission. Over the years I've replayed many games, not all of them have aged well but good lord, ME2 has aged like fine wine!
The shooting still feels great, the fantastic art direction plus LE updates mean it holds up visually even in 2024. That story though! The big moments still hit hard. Here are some of my highlights (SPOILER WARNING)

• Archangel's Reveal: (I wish I could forget and experience it for the first time again)
• Jack: The buildup to her reveal and subsequent prison break. Fascinating character too.
• Miranda: How her facade of being a cold calculated Cerberus bitch gradually drops as she opens up and starts to trust Shepard.
• The Virmire Survivor's heartbreaking choice to turn their back on you.
• Mordin revealing a lot more guilt over his past than he initially lets on.
• The eeriness of the Collector Ship.
• All of Illium (I don't know why it's one of my favorite sci-fi locations EVER). Side-note, that Matriarch bartender at Eternity is fascinating! Imagine being old enough to have been alive while humans were still doing Crusades with swords and Quarians lived without masks with parents who fought in the Rachni wars and Krogan Rebellions!
• Thane's introduction and that silky velvety voice (the effects for his memory recall kinda fall flat for me now though, haven't aged well imo)
• Samara's theme and the tone it immediately establishes for her character.
• Grunt turns out to be surprisingly intelligent, self aware and nuanced.
• Legion's Reveal. A geth with N7 Armor on our side? Once you have him onboard the revelations he provides about the geth. It always felt off that they became sapient and fought for their own existence only to be generic robot bad guys in the first game. The lore dump that comes from this does so much to build on that and the whole concept is really cool. Legion's recording of the first creator to display fear towards the Geth and them having no answer to why they used Shepard's armor to patch themselves. Really drives home they too have a soul and are every bit as alive as the rest of us. Goosebumps.
• The Migrant Fleet: Getting an inside look into the world of the Quarians and their views and politics was absolutely fascinating! Bringing Legion to this is hilarious to boot! A rare complaint is that Tuchanka in comparison feels underwhelming and underbaked.
• Joker and EDI growing to trust each other.
• The Suicide Mission: Finally taking it to the Collectors. All the variables and possible outcomes, the speech that Shepard gives leading up to it, the feeling of having everyone involved in the mission. Having the diversion team calling out updates while you're in a hectic firefight to get to the next valve before your vent specialist gets cooked alive. The tension of that biotic bubble sequence. The joy of getting your team out alive or the horror of losing characters you've grown so fond of. That. Soundtrack. holy shit Suicide Mission and The End Run go hard! Bonus: Watching a Harbinger evaporate while he is still saying "Assuming Direct Control" feels badass and makes him look like such a chump!
• The Illusive Man's sheer charisma and presence. He commands your attention every time he's on screen. On that note pretty much every character is so well written and bought to life by the voice actors performances. All of them feel like real people with layers to their personalities that you peel back.

If you made it this far thank you! Cheers to you fellow Mass Effect fans! These are some of my highlights and moments that still resonate with me now same as they did on my first playthrough a little over 14 years ago. Do you love Mass Effect 2? Or do you feel it's the weakest of the trilogy? What are some of your favorite moments from the game or the trilogy at large? Sound off below!

Following this guide to install Bazzite, my only other Linux gaming experience is with the Deck. Installation file for Fedora Media Writer is named bazzite-stable.iso straight from their homepage. A couple months ago I installed Fedora on an older desktop PC with an extra SATA port / spare 2.5" SSD available and got it running, but never got around to any of the initial setup tedium and inevitable driver headaches.

Pre-Installation

I'd almost made a huge mistake and installed it over my laptop's SSD with Windows installed, which as much as I'd like to move off, will most likely need to keep for a few niche uses. Luckily I caught that the only visible drive in the installation screen was 1TB and the drive I'd installed in the 2nd SSD bay was this model of 2TB. I tried swapping SSD bay ports, going into the laptop's BIOS upon reading suggestions to switch hard drive modes to AHCI (only to find that the only available option in that menu), cloning the laptop's 1TB M.2 SSD to the 2TB drive, and trying to switch installation media from a portable SSD to a 256GB USB 3.0 thumbdrive but failing to get FMW to cooperate with said thumbdrive -- nothing could get the installer to detect the SSD. I'd purchased this SSD some time ago with the laptop, intending to use it at first as a second storage drive and then as a second boot option once I learned about the possibility of Linux getting along with AMD GPUs, but had just recently purchased a bunch more storage and found that despite the lesser brand and price, this model of SSD is detected just fine. I'd purchased it just to have as external storage with an enclosure, so hopefully I'm making a good call by swapping around the initial purpose I'd gotten these for.

SSD Weirdness

"Install bazzite-40" is the only main install option from my installation media (SanDisk Extreme Portable 2TB SSD connected w/USB-C). It doesn't pass the "Test this media and install" option you can run from the boot menu but I'm not sure what else to do about that if anything, since the only suitable USB stick I have at the moment isn't cooperating and the install option starts as intended (about to go run whilst following what little amount of help the guide offers as close as I can). At first I had the WD_Black SSD I'd initially purchased for the laptop as the installation media itself, not realizing I needed a separate device like when making a fresh Windows install. At one point I'd formatted the WD_Black SSD to NTFS, but this didn't get it noticed by the Fedora installer either. It dawned on me that there's probably one of several partitions on the laptop's Windows 11 drive making it detectable, but I have no idea how that could be the case for the KingSpec SSD being detected right out of the box while the WD_Black is undetected no matter what. I'm probably missing some critical info about SSD specs that I couldn't glean from the respective product pages.

Bazzite versions

Whatever way I'd set up that SSD as installation media before realizing my mistake included many more install options like bazzite-gnome and bazzite-deck. The Bazzite homepage suggests bazzite-deck for an experience closest to Steam Deck that can apply to Home Theatre PCs, and I would like to at least have the booting into Game Mode part of that, but I recall reading elsewhere that this is a bad thing if not installing the distro on actual Steam Deck hardware. The install guide refers to entering Steam account info to make Game Mode possible upon initial boot, so hopefully if it's not enabled by default it's a simple enough setting to change if it's something included in this bazzite-40 install (I've searched and founding getting the opposite, i.e. automatic boot to Desktop Mode on actual Steam Deck hardware ,is a lot more trouble). Maybe some Linux whiz can share how to set it up for an even better HTPC experience than a SteamOS lookalike -- not that I have any complaints about the appearance of Valve current's offering, although operability has been a different story sometimes.

SteamVR question

Would also like to know if anyone has tried SteamVR with Bazzite or a similar distro and has anything to share about that experience. The reason I ask:

I have a rather stupid but funny and interesting idea to use my Valve Index I got a few years ago with the laptop on my back instead of tripping over the the stupid cable hooked up to my desktop PC or hanging it on some ceiling-screwed pulley-suspended abomination (would buy a mesh backpack like this and DP cable adapter, maybe make some existing holes in it bigger for more adequate airflow). I need a portable battery with AC outlets to power the headset anyways, so not sure if the default power setting in Bazzite will affect performance in VR, or if that's easy to tweak. I have a portable battery that could decently accomodate both the headset power cable and laptop plugged in, but the huge power brick adding to the weight of the backpack will make it even more of workout to play than just the laptop and portable battery.
EDIT: found this dongle I happened to have not in use, combined with a set of AC plug adapters I got very recently, one of which may be just the right size for the Index's power cable to combine with a cable like this and my portable phone charger. Could skip buying the USB-C to DP adapter and lugging the portable AC battery entirely. (before that though I have to test if my Index can work with SteamVR in Bazzite hooked up normally, then with a normal-sized AC adapter plug with the size-adjustment plug...already liking the fact that even with the need for a wall outlet I can still move a laptop more easily than my hugeass desktop)

Even if this ridiculous idea doesn't work I'll at least have a beefy gaming laptop with a Linux distro that hopefully suits it well.
Last question is pretty simple, want to know if SD cards formatted for Steam Deck with games installed can go straight into a PC installed with Bazzite and be ready to play. (EDIT: quickly tried this, making a Steam install directory in regular Bazzite make a SteamLibrary directory on the SD root, while the Deck has game files in a steamapps folder, which for Bazzite is inside the SteamLibrary directory. To get Steam Deck SD files for a game onto Bazzite you probably gotta move SD:/steamapps/common/[game directory] into SD:/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/, start installing the game from Steam desktop with that SD location selected, then pause the download and verify files for it to find everything you just moved.)
Few more laptop specs:

• RX 6850M XT 12GB GDDR6
• Ryzen 9 6900HX
• 32GB RAM

hey guys i found a facebook marketplace listing near me for a 2013 scion frs with only 37,000 miles. seller is asking for $15,000 USD out the door. he said the valve spring recall is done. for all u 2013 owners is this a good purchase? based off what u guys are saying ill pay somebody to do a ppi on it.
Thanks in advance!

Alright, so I’ve got a 2013 FR-S 6 speed. Had it since it came out, it’s been meticulously serviced, low miles for the year (about 60k). Year one/gen one came with this weird idle dip when parked with your AC on full blast where they’d almost stall every once in a while (happened a lot to me because I live in FL and my car is black). In 2018, it got recalled and I got the service completed. While they were swapping the valve springs, I had them reflash the ecu to get rid of that idle dip. 2018 was also the year I stopped driving the car as much so I didn’t notice that the AC now blows hot until I reach 50 mph for at least 10 seconds then it works normally. I think it has to be some kind of sensor that’s dead so it keeps the AC from getting cold to protect the engine or something but it’s not causing a check engine light. The AC runs perfect and gets ice cold after I hit 50mph for the rest of the drive, once I turn the car off I have to start the whole process over again. Anyone run into a similar issue or have any ideas what sensor would be responsible for this behavior?

Credit to u/SpacePaladin15 for the NOP Universe.
Hello all, I hope you're well!
As promised this is the end of this arc of character only chapters. The next few will be animal focused ones, I have at least three chapters planned for that but they may be expanded depending on what I add to them.
For now though I hope you enjoy what I've got for you now.
Thank you to u/cruisingNW for helping with this chapter!
[First] [Previous] [Next]
Memory transcription subject: Dr Bernard MacEwan, Professor of Zoology
Date [standardised human time]: 7th September 2136
Removing my sunhat as the door swung open, I took a second to briefly inspect the new surroundings as Kailo and I stepped in.
Much like the rest of the prefabricated buildings that made up the exchange grounds, the office was similarly nondescript. Beige carpet lined the floor of the sparsely furnished room, the only items of note being a smattering of office style chairs of differing designs, a bookshelf which had no books to speak of, and a single generic wooden desk, behind which sat the familiar faces of Tolim, an unmasked Alejandro, and a third individual I assumed to be Kailo’s coordinator Blim.
Alejandro and Blim were perfectly relaxed, acknowledging our arrival with a wave of their hand and tail respectively. In surprising contrast however, Tolim was rather jittery, nervously fidgeting and running his claws through his long scruffy locks of wool; a twitch that sped up considerably as he clocked Kailo and I walking through the door.
The assumption that Tolim was somehow involved in bringing us here appeared to be correct, but his current demeanour and the presence of Alejandro and Blim added a new layer to the question of what was truly going on.
While Tolim’s uncharacteristic display of uneasiness and the inclusion of the two other coordinators certainly made me curious enough to want to immediately leap into questioning the trio, I was also keen to get this conversation off to a good start. Coming off as abrasive and untrusting wouldn’t do any good; even if it may be justified given the circumstance.
No, being polite and patient would be the way to go. As strange as the whole thing was, I hardly saw Alejandro as the duplicitous sort, so he must have had a good reason for inviting me here under false pretences.
With that in mind it was imperative that I got the first word in as, with a quick look at Kailo, I could already see the telltale signs of an accusation starting to build up from within the fiery young Venlil.
“Good morning everyone!” Speedily bounding in to greet the trio before Kailo could get a word in, I strode forward to one of the seats on our side of the desk, “Alejandro, Tolim, you’re both looking well. And um… Blim is it? I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure of meeting before.”
I extended a hand across the desk to the portly salt-and-pepper fluffy woollen Venlil, which he took and gave an enthusiastic shake in return, “Ah! A handshake! I’ve seen your people share them in greeting before but I’ve never done one myself, probably because you’re all being so considerate of us and our skittishness. Oh, but yes I’m Blim! It’s a pleasure meeting you too, Doctor MacEwan.”
What an energetic fellow!
“That’s not true is it?” Alejandro’s eyebrows had shot up in surprise as he turned to face Blim, “Didn’t I shake your paw when we first met.”
Blim let out an amused whistle as his ears flapped jovially, “Nope. You tried to but you stopped and muttered something about being worried over how I’d react to a predator reaching for me. Then you sort of looked around for a whisker before bowing to me for some reason.”
Alejandro’s brow knitted together in thought for a couple seconds before falling into a tight-lipped grimace, the reminder of his apparent awkwardness no doubt searing itself back into his memory at this very moment.
Unfortunately, the lighthearted atmosphere I’d hoped to create didn’t have the desired effect of curtailing Kailo’s impatience. While Blim and I had been caught up chuckling at Alejandro's expense, Kailo had marched up to his own chair, seating himself in such a way that he could easily stare daggers at Tolim from across the desk.
“So,” he began, voice already thick with suspicious enmity, “Why did you bring me here with a lie this time Tolim?”
Well, I tried. Guess I’ll just have to put out the fires as best I can now.
Before I got the chance to steady Kailo’s already burgeoning temper, Alejandro got in ahead of me with an unforeseen admission.
“Actually, this whole thing was my idea Kailo. So if anyone owes you or Bernard an apology for this, it’s me. Sorry. Oh, also Bernard, feel free to take off your mask, Blim’s good with it.”
Taking the opportunity given to me I removed my mask and turned to face Alejandro, my now unobscured wide-eyed look of perplexment focussing entirely upon him. Kailo reacted similarly, ears swivelling sceptically while his eyes darted between Tolim and Alejandro like he was inspecting them both for hints of further deception.
“It’s true,” Blim confirmed, leaning back into his chair with a groan and waving a paw at Alejandro, “He messaged me last paw asking me to go along with it. I wasn’t going to at first, but they convinced me after explaining themselves.”
I expected Kailo to pounce on that immediately, but he still seemed to be struggling coming to terms with the knowledge that Tolim wasn’t the mastermind behind this encounter, so I was happy to let my own curiosity take the reins for the time being.
“And what exactly did they share with you, hm? Honestly I’m quite shocked you two weren’t as forthcoming with us as you’ve been with Blim.”
That wasn’t entirely true. I’d be lying if I said I couldn’t think of a few reasons they might not have been upfront with Kailo, but the thought that neither of them felt they could be honest with me did cause a pang of disappointment to take root in my chest.
Alejandro looked at me sheepishly, twiddling his thumbs as he replied, “Yeah, sorry about that Bernard. I thought Kailo wouldn’t bother coming if he knew Tolim was going to be here. And if you knew, there was a chance he’d find out through you and then we’d be left in the same boat.”
That explained why we’d been kept in the dark, and it made regrettable sense. Considering I’d had to stop Kailo turning tail just minutes ago I could understand their reasoning, even if it still rubbed me the wrong way. However, that still didn’t explain the ‘why’ of what had led to this whole thing in the first place.
What is this meeting really about?
Anticipating my unspoken question, Blim rapped his claws against the armrests of his chair and flicked his tail at Tolim, “As for the cause of all this happening in the first place, well… maybe Tolim would be best suited to answer that.”
Everyone's attention immediately dialled in on the still fidgeting tan bundle of nerves, the man himself jolting in mild worry as the onus for further context was thrust upon him, “O-oh uh, yes… Um, well…”
He trailed off, the struggle to overcome his nerves preventing him from properly collecting his thoughts. Seeing this, Alejandro brought a hand to Tolim’s shoulder to give it a gentle squeeze, a show of support that he visibly needed; and it seemed to work quite well. Tolim’s jitteriness didn’t vanish entirely but it was notably tempered by his partner's comforting, his own tail sweeping up to wrap around Alejandro’s wrist in turn.
Calm, or ‘calmer’ at any rate, Tolim sighed, giving himself a little shake before turning his ears to Kailo and me. I’d noticed he already appeared to be rather tired when I walked in but, now that his nervous twitching had ceased, it was even more apparent.
He looked positively haggard, and the sluggish weight present in his tone made that all the more obvious, “Huuuu… Kailo. Bernard. Thank you for coming today, even though I know this wasn’t what you were expecting. The intention behind bringing you here was so that I could do something I should’ve done much sooner. Apologise to the three of you.”
Oh. Well that is surprising. But three of us? Surely he just means Kailo?
My confusion must have been self-evident, or perhaps it was Blim’s puzzled swivelling ears which tipped Tolim off to the fact we had no idea what he was talking about, for he was quick to clarify himself, “Blim, when you took a personal paw you asked me to look after your work. I abused your trust when I invited Kailo to the office while pretending to be you. And Bernard, you had asked Blim not to do anything regarding the complaints since you were going about it in your own way. I ignored that, dismissing your opinions and experience and did what I thought was best without consideration. I’m sorry to both of you for what I did.”
The unexpected apology left both Blim and I fumbling for a response in the seconds following it, our jaws opening and closing without saying much of anything aside from the odd “Oh” or “Uh”. Eventually my brain managed to kick itself back into gear, processing Tolim’s apology without too much bother; excluding my initial mental trip up of course.
Well I’ll give it to him, he at least recognises what he’s done and is willing to fess up to it. No attempt to excuse or rationalise his actions, just forthright admittal of wrongdoing and an expression of remorse. I can respect that, and I feel I can accept it.
Regrettably however, a split-second before I could say as much, Kailo took that moment to spring from his chair, brow creased together in a tight knit scowl while his tail, his working ear, and a single claw all pointed accusingly across the desk at Tolim.
“So this is what it was all about!? An apology? So, what, you could make yourself feel better for being a brahk-ass who goes around manipulating people. I don’t care! You can take your apology and shove it up your-”
“Kailo.”
In an instant the tirade ended and the room fell silent, so silent that even the ambient noises that drifted through the closed office door felt like they’d been smothered by some unseen choking force.
In all my time bearing the brunt of Kailo’s anger I’d never used my ‘teacher voice’ on him. Not when he relentlessly disparaged my lessons. Not when he consistently dismissed and looked down on my other students. Not even when he would come right out and insult me and call me names in front of the entire class. But that was in the lectures, where if a student was going to act immaturely I had to be the opposite, calm and in control of myself and the situation.
Outside the classroom however, I could not simply stand by and watch. Kailo could be frustrated and refuse to accept Tolim’s apology, that was his right, but his attack on a man who was genuinely remorseful and looking to make amends was a step too far for me to write off as acceptable frustration.
I’ve given Kailo too much leeway with his anger. Perhaps because he reminds me so much of myself at that age. Always so angry.
The intrusive memory sparked an unpleasant twinge in my thigh, an all too familiar phantom pain between the remnant of what was once my left leg and the connectors that secured my prosthetic.
Agh, enough of that. Be in the moment.
Huffing to dismiss the distracting pain, I turned my full attention to Kailo. At a glance the young Venlil still appeared ready and willing to launch into a rage-filled spiel at the drop of a hat, but his tail drooping and almost imperceptibly flared wool betrayed his true feelings.
He was anxious.
This change in dynamic had definitely not gone unnoticed, and he was left unsure of how best to react. The wave of guilt hit me immediately. As justified as I was, and I most certainly was, I always hated having to forcibly chide someone's behaviour, it was never pleasant.
I sighed heavily and shook my head, letting the abrupt build up of indignation melt away as I shifted in my chair and turned it to face my student, “Kailo, you don’t have to accept his apology if you don’t want to, but that was uncalled for. Remember what we talked about before coming here?”
The shift back to my familiar even tempered disposition did the trick. Kailo still had a bit of wariness to him as he returned my stare but he did relax for the most part, his raised wool falling back into place as he answered, “Yeah… I remember. But I also remember you said you don’t think he does anything without thinking it through, and that’s something he hasn’t explained. Why did he do it in the first place?”
Kailo’s question hung uncomfortably in the room as all eyes once again fell on Tolim, his ears immediately pinning back in discomfort. While I was willing to let the underlying thought that went into his actions go unquestioned, I could see why Kailo wouldn’t be. Unlike Blim and I, who had only been aggrieved in a professional sense, Kailo had been manipulated, emotionally strained to his breaking point, and then injured in the following outburst. Of course he’d want full justification for Tolim’s conduct.
“Hang on now,” Alejandro held up his arms with palms facing out at Kailo placatingly, noticeably pushing his chair closer to Tolim in the same motion, “I get where you’re coming from but that’s-”
“It’s fine.”
Alejandro was cut off mid sentence as Tolim placed a paw on one of his outstretched arms.
He turned to look at Tolim dead-on, concern etched into every facet of his face, “...Are you sure?”
Tolim flicked an assuring ear at his partner before taking a breath, shuffling in his chair before moving his attention to Kailo, who had sat back down himself now that it seemed he was going to get the answers he sought.
“I won’t bore you with a lot of backstory, but I suppose I should mention one thing to give context,” fatigue clung to every word that passed Tolim’s lips, his unease compounded by his idle claws twirling back through his wool once more, “Before I joined the exchange I… I wasn’t in a good place, figuratively and literally. I craved something different. Something better. So imagine my shock when Humans, supposed predators, arrived in orbit wanting to be friends! What’s more different than that!? I was desperate… so when the dust settled I reached out to the exchange and ended up being paired with the most delightful person I’d talked to in ages.”
Tolim’s eyes flitted to his partner for a split second, the moment's attention eliciting a caring smile to spread across Alejandro’s face.
“Alejandro told me a lot about Earth, about Humans. The tiny sliver of exposure to humanity he gave me allowed me to see things from perspectives I’d never thought of before, new concepts and ideas. And for the first time in a long while I felt… normal, happy… I- I just felt something… something other than numb.”
Oh… Oh Tolim. What happened to you?
As much as I felt compelled to ask, to voice some form of sympathy, I kept my thoughts to myself. The last thing I wanted to do was pressure Tolim in this instance of openness and vulnerability. In similar fashion to me, Kailo had been completely disarmed as he listened, any angst he’d still exhibited before Tolim’s story began had been completely washed away, and in its place there remained only stunned silence.
My thoughts were broken as Tolim coughed, his voice hitching ever so slightly, “I uh- achem, I saw something better in Humans. Some things we could do better by learning from them, in both small personal ways and in huge society changing ways. But I was just one Venlil who was barely getting his own paws under him properly, how could I even begin to spread these concepts? That’s when it hit me. The exchange itself! Just like me, hundreds of Venlil were going to be exposed to human ideals. And this programme in particular would be the best place for new ways of thinking to take root!”
His energy was beginning to pick up, excitement was starting to overcome the despondent slump he’d been in seconds prior. Additionally, I was starting to get an idea of where exactly he was heading with his line of reasoning.
“As a coordinator for the programme I became responsible for a few dozen participants. But to me that didn’t just mean making sure their rooms were fine and they were keeping healthy, it meant that I could help them get through their fears and prejudices. I had a good start early on, catching up with people, asking them a question that made them confront their biases, logic loops that made them realise they might not be entirely right, that sort of thing. Little pushes.”
Ok, I see. That’s hardly an issue in my eyes. I’ve been doing that myself to help my students get over their conflicts in classes. But, I imagine he’s about to tell us it escalated in his case?
As I’d suspected, Tolim’s ears fell along with his tail and shoulders as the energy that’d been bouncing through him was lost in an instant as he carried on with his story, “But uh… but I got carried away. I wanted things to go faster, to show both governments that the ideas being discussed here could be spread planet wide as soon as possible. That’s when Blim’s workload and Kailo’s files fell into my lap. I thought that- …I thought that if I could get an exterminator to change their mind on humans then maybe I could achieve that goal… the rest is history.”
Once more the room fell into a contemplative hush, none of us sure what to say now that the full background for Tolim’s behaviour had been laid bare before us. There were still some gaps in his story, primarily concerning what exactly was happening in his life before the programme that made him so miserable, but I was hoping that topic would be left unquestioned. He’d clearly had to wrestle with himself to explain as much as he already had. It would be unfair to push him any further.
With that in mind I pivoted my attention over to Kailo to try and get a read on what he might be thinking. To my pleasant surprise his reaction to this new information didn’t appear to be all that negative. In fact, he wasn’t really reacting at all. Rather he’d gone almost completely statuesque, the only signs of life being the steady rising and falling of his chest as he breathed and the slow pondering sway of his tail.
Out of all the responses Tolim’s tale could have garnered, this was certainly not one that I would’ve foreseen. Truthfully, I half-expected him to push for more information or do a repeat of his outburst from earlier. Thoughtful reflection wasn’t a common ‘Kailo brand’ behaviour, so what could’ve caused it?
Tolim’s overall goal was to share ideas that could benefit society as a whole. Why would that-
Suddenly the realisation struck me. Like a bolt of lighting coursing through my brain the pieces clicked together with an eye opening jolt.
Lamet. Kailo idolises Lamet for the exact same reasons! He views her efforts to benefit the larger community as the cornerstone of what it means to be a great exterminator!
Tolim screwed it up no doubt about it, but could he see that same trait in Tolim right now?
Before I could dwell more on this, admittedly, rather unlikely possibility, Kailo disrupted the peace of the office by leaving his chair, though far more gently than he had done previously, and proceeded to walk over to the door. The move shook the rest of us from our stupor, our eyes or ears following the young Venlil as he made to leave.
Alejandro and I both had the idea to call after him, but our clashing voices garbled whatever we were trying to say into a wall of stammered noise as opposed to a comprehensible request that he stay and talk further.
Kailo stopped a single step away from the door, turning on the spot to face us. His furrowed brow and its accompanying glare had returned as he forcefully pointed a claw at Tolim.
I sighed internally and steeled myself to parry another rant.
Here we go again.
For the second time in as many minutes however, Kailo once again defied my expectations. Rather than barrage Tolim with the vitriol I’d braced for, he spoke with an authoritative yet measured tone, “I accept your apology. Don’t let it happen again.”
Where I was simply surprised by Kailo’s level-headed response, Tolim was left speechless; if his bulging eyes and slack jawed expression were anything to go by. Tripping over his tongue as he tried to eke out a hasty reply, I could see his tail begin to happily wag behind his chair, “Ah- Uh… Y-yes, of- of course it won’t! Thank you Kailo.”
Kailo’s tail fluttered in satisfaction, though he rapidly stifled the reflex in order to maintain his composed front, “Good. Then in that case I think there’s only one thing left for me to do.”
Not giving anyone a chance to ask, Kailo turned an ear and an eye to Blim this time, catching the coordinator off guard and causing him to jerk back in his seat.
Sighing but still doing his best to keep his composure, Kailo, astoundingly, apologised without any of the prodding he’d needed when he tried the same with me earlier, “I’m sorry I created so much work and stress for you because of my attitude in class. It won’t happen again.”
There was a beat of silence as Blim’s brain no doubt stalled upon receiving another apology he’d not been expecting, but he soon relaxed and let out a jovial whistle, “Thank you Kailo, I appreciate that. And for what it’s worth, none of the complaints were followed up on, and most of them were even recalled by their original senders. Not all of them said why, but the few who did noted a positive improvement which they were happy to see. Well done!”
Kailo’s assertive persona faltered again for a split-second, an elated twirl running through his tail as his ears perked in matching cheer thanks to the positive feedback. But just as swiftly as it’d come on, he quelled it, “Real- Uh… I mean, thank you Blim. That’s good to hear. Well then uh… Blim, Alejandro, Doctor… Tolim. Bye.”
Perhaps a bit faster than he intended, Kailo scampered out of the office without another word, leaving the four of us that remained still reeling from what we’d just witnessed.
I never know what to think about him. One minute he’s a box of lit fireworks and the next he’s like an embarrassed kid who can’t handle a genuine compliment. Well, I suppose he is still a kid ultimately.
A tired bray from Tolim pulled me back to the world around me, the Venlil having almost melted in his chair now that the object of his woe had not only come and gone, but alleviated the worry that’d been burdening him. Alejandro already had a hand on his shoulder, kneading it gently while whispering encouragement to the deflated ball of wool.
Blim stood from his chair, patting himself down and picking up his belongings as he made his way around the desk, “That went way better than I expected. Next time you two message me it better be for something fun and relaxing instead of more of this.”
While his words alone may have sounded pretty harsh, I could tell from his bubbliness that he was just poking fun at the duo, perhaps a bit of payback for dragging him into this to start with. As he passed me he tapped his tail against my arm and flicked an ear at me cheerily, “Pleasure meeting you Doctor, don’t be a stranger. Take care all.”
And with that he too left the office, leaving Alejandro, Tolim, and myself alone together. I could’ve left as well, but I decided to wait for Tolim to at least collect himself before making my way out.
It only took half a minute or so for him to sit back up in his chair properly, the relief he felt being expressed in every visible way from the tip of his tail all the way up to the points of his ears. His guilty conscience must have been weighing on him for quite some time.
Alejandro was the one to pick the conversation back up now that his partner was in higher spirits, his own face showing how relieved he was that Tolim was feeling better, “Thank you Bernard, firstly for coming around in the first place and for managing Kailo’s flare up. We definitely wouldn’t have gotten to this stage without you.”
I smiled contentedly and waved a hand nonchalantly, “Oh, don’t mention it. I’m glad that everything appears to have worked out for the best.”
“Still though,” Tolim piped up, a much lighter and energetic bounce now ringing in his voice, “I really appreciate it. I know this was all a setup, but since you’re here is there anything you would actually like to go over and catch up on? It’d save you coming to the meeting we have planned in a couple of paws.”
Baiting me with extra free time? He certainly knows the right buttons to push.
Chortling at the tongue-in-cheek thought I hastily scoured my memory for anything I’d been wanting to bring up at the next opportunity. Most were idle comments on the class and how the students were doing. But there was one thing that came to mind that was far more significant, and in all the excitement I’d completely forgotten about it until now.
Grinning, I fetched my pad from my jacket, shuffling through its many apps until I found the one I used for noting down lesson plans. After scrolling down to my most recent idea, I turned it around and placed it on the desk in front of Tolim and Alejandro, “Yes actually, I do have something in mind for an upcoming lesson. And I also have a request concerning a computer programme that I think would be an invaluable asset to the programme.”
Making myself comfortable I leant back in my chair, giving the pair the chance to go over my notes and inspecting them for any signs of whether or not they’d go for what I had planned
The first request shouldn’t face much opposition. All I was asking was that each of my students be provided a copy of an environmental simulator so that they could explore how the ecosystems of Earth work. I’d give them the opportunity to download the simulator and then they could play around with it in their own time if they felt like putting what they already know or what they’ve recently learned into practice.
The fact that the particular programme I was asking for happened to be the world renowned video game ‘Life Finds a Way’ should barely even be an afterthought. If anything, the fact that humans make simulation games like this should only serve to showcase the more pleasant side of our personalities. Besides, the students would have to learn this anyway so there shouldn’t be any harm in letting them dip a claw in the water.
The second request however, well that might be a tougher sell.
Alejandro finished reading the notes first, Tolim of course needing to use his own pad to translate English into Venlang. Unfortunately for me, he didn’t look convinced, “The first one I can probably do, I can play that up as an educational tool to run simulations. But the rest? Bernard I don’t know how we can-”
“We’ll do it.”
Tolim shocked Alejandro and I by leaping from his chair and almost colliding with the desk in front of him, a determined paw hitting down on the desk's wooden frame.
Alejandro opened his mouth to retort but Tolim was too quick, “We hold it at the UN embassy, which is already tightly guarded and has available space. Bernard's notes about containment all look good to me at a glance, and I trust his expertise on the subject. We can do this.”
Given that I wanted this to succeed I was happy to sit back and let Tolim cheerlead for my ideas all he wanted, leaving Alejandro the unenviable task of deciding whether or not he was going to properly do his job or if he was going to cave to his boyfriend's insistence.
Do it Alejandro. Give in to his demands.
My conspicuous smirk earned a deadpanned scowl from my human compatriot as he looked between me and at the earnest, almost bouncing Tolim.
Eventually, the conflict raging within him found its victor, defiance giving way to begrudging acceptance, “Ugh, fine! You two win. But don’t expect everything on this list, I’m not a miracle worker.”
Chuckling away I nodded in appreciative understanding, “Thank you, both of you. And of course, I didn’t think I’d get permission for all of them. That’s why I wrote down so many, better a few than none at all, Ha! Oh, that said I’d be extremely grateful if you manage to get number thirteen on the list approved.”
After a quick glance Aleajndro nodded, “That shouldn’t be a problem, it’s more reasonable than a lot of the others here.”
“Terrific!”
Once the coordinators had downloaded the notes and gone over a few more details on how my upcoming plans would pan out, we said our farewells and went our respective ways as we left the office.
I had a spring in my step the moment I walked away, the satisfaction with how my morning had gone propelling me with every stride.
It was tense for a minute, but all in all it’s been a delightful start to the day. But now it begs the question, what am I going to do for the rest of the day?
Ah well, I’ll just go where the tides take me. I should relax after all, because if all goes well with those two then things are going to get a bit more exciting in short order.
It’s time for my class to have their next encounter with life on Earth.

Why young men and women are drifting apart Diverging worldviews could affect politics, families and more An illustration depicting a young woman and a young man leaning against opposite sides of a brick wall
Mar 13th 2024atlanta, beijing and warsaw
id. In a trendy food market in Warsaw, Poland’s capital, two female engineers are discussing how hard it is to meet a nice, enlightened man. Paulina Nasilowska got a big pay rise a few years ago. Her boyfriend asked: “Did you have an affair with your boss?” He is now an ex-boyfriend.
Ms Nasilowska’s friend, Joanna Walczak, recalls a man she met on Tinder who revealed that he was a “red-pill” guy (a reference to “The Matrix”, a film, meaning someone who sees reality clearly. In the “manosphere”, a global online community of angry men, it means realising that men are oppressed.) He thought household chores and child care were women’s work, and that women could not be leaders. They didn’t have a second date.
Typically for young Polish women, Ms Nasilowska and Ms Walczak support parties of the liberal left, which take women’s issues seriously and promise to legalise abortion. Young Polish men, they complain, hew more to the right, or even to the far right. Consider last year’s election. Then the top choice for 18- to 29-year-old men was Confederation, a party that touts free-market economics and traditional social values. (“Against feminists. In defence of real women” is one of its slogans.) Some 26% of young men backed it; only 6% of their female peers did.
Young Polish men have their own set of complaints. Feminism has gone too far, say two firemen in their 20s in a small town. Lukasz says he used to be able to go to a village dance party and “the women there were wife material.” Nowadays “they’re all posting shameless pictures of themselves on social media,” he laments. The media are “all biased and pushing the culture to the left”, complains Mateusz (neither man would give a surname). People no longer admit that men and women often want to do different kinds of work.
In much of the developed world, the attitudes of young men and women are polarising. The Economist analysed polling data from 20 rich countries, using the European Social Survey, America’s General Social Survey and the Korean Social Survey. Two decades ago there was little difference between men and women aged 18-29 on a self-reported scale of 1-10 from very liberal to very conservative. But our analysis found that by 2020 the gap was 0.75 (see chart 1 ). For context, this is roughly twice the size of the gap in opinion between people with and without a degree in the same year.
Put another way, in 2020 young men were only slightly more likely to describe themselves as liberal than conservative, with a gap of just two percentage points. Young women, however, were much more likely to lean to the left than the right, with a gap of a massive 27 percentage points.
In all the large countries we examined, young men were more conservative than young women (see chart 2). In Poland the gap was 1.1 points on a scale of 1-10. It was a hefty 1.4 in America, 1 in France, 0.75 in Italy, 0.71 in Britain and 0.74 in South Korea. Men and women have always seen the world differently. What is striking, though, is that a gulf in political opinions has opened up, as younger women are becoming sharply more liberal while their male peers are not.
For young women, the triumphs of previous generations of feminists, in vastly increasing women’s opportunities in the workplace and public life, are in the past. They are concerned with continuing injustices, from male violence to draconian abortion laws (in some countries) and gaps in pay to women shouldering a disproportionate share of housework and child care. Plenty of men are broadly in their corner. But a substantial portion are vocally not. Young women’s avid liberalism may spring from a feeling that there is much work still to be done, and that opposition to doing it will be stiff.
The gap does not translate straightforwardly into voting patterns, but it is visible. One poll found that 72% of young American women who voted in House elections in 2022 backed the Democratic candidate; some 54% of young men did. In 2008 there was barely any gap. In Europe, where many elections offer a wide array of parties, young women are more likely to support the most left-wing ones, whereas young men are more likely to favour the right or even the radical right.
In France in 2022 young men were much keener than young women on Eric Zemmour, a presidential candidate who wrote a book rebutting Simone de Beauvoir, France’s best-known feminist. Germany’s election in 2021 saw the largest ever left-right gap between the votes of young women and men, according to Ansgar Hudde of the University of Cologne. In Portugal, where the far-right Chega party surged in an election on March 10th, support for it is concentrated among voters who are young, male and less educated. And South Korea in 2022 elected an overtly anti-feminist president; more than 58% of men in their 20s voted for him. Some 58% of women in their 20s backed his rival.
Young and cranky
The attitude gap between the sexes is also visible in how they view each other. People in 27 European countries were asked whether they agreed that “advancing women’s and girls’ rights has gone too far because it threatens men’s and boys’ opportunities.” Unsurprisingly, men were more likely to concur than women. Notably, though, young men were more anti-feminist than older men, contradicting the popular notion that each generation is more liberal than the previous one. Gefjon Off, Nicholas Charron and Amy Alexander of Gothenburg University use a Dutch analogy to illustrate the difference between young (18-29) and old (65+) European men. It is as great, on this question, as the gap between the average supporter of Geert Wilders’s radical-right Party for Freedom and the Liberal Democrats.
A similar pattern holds in other advanced countries. Although a higher share of young British men think it is harder to be a woman than a man than think the opposite (35% to 26%), they are likelier than old British men to say it is harder to be a man than a woman. Young British women are more likely than their mothers to believe the opposite. Nearly 80% of South Korean men in their 20s say that men are discriminated against. Barely 30% of men over 60 agree, making their views indistinguishable from those of women in their 20s or 60s.
In China pollsters do not ask about voting intentions, but they find a similar divergence between young men and women when it comes to gender roles (see chart 3). Yue Qian of the University of British Columbia and Jiaxing Li of the Shanghai University of Medicine and Health Sciences looked at survey data for 35,000 Chinese people. In their analysis they found that young men were much more likely than young women to agree with statements such as “men should put career first, whereas women should put family first” and “when the economy is bad, female employees should be fired first.”
Young Chinese men’s views were not much different from those of older men, whereas young women’s views were far more egalitarian than their mothers’. Claire, a market researcher in Beijing (who uses an English name to preserve her anonymity), says she wants a partner who will treat her as an equal and share the housework. “I think most Chinese men would fail that test,” she sighs. Dr Qian notes that when Chinese parents go to “matchmaking corners” in parks, they brag about their sons’ jobs and degrees, but hide their daughters’ achievements, fearing they will put off potential suitors.
What is going on? The most likely causes of this growing division are education (young men are getting less of it than young women), experience (advanced countries have become less sexist, and men and women experience this differently) and echo chambers (social media aggravate polarisation). Also, in democracies, many politicians on the right are deftly stoking young male grievances, while many on the left barely acknowledge that young men have real problems.
But they do, starting with education. Although the men at the top are doing fine, many of the rest are struggling. In rich countries, 28% of boys but only 18% of girls fail to reach the minimum level of reading proficiency as defined by pisa, which tests high-school students. And women have overtaken men at university (see chart 4). In the eu, the share of men aged 25 to 34 with tertiary degrees rose from 21% to 35% between 2002 and 2020. For women it rose faster, from 25% to 46%. In America, the gap is about the same: ten percentage points more young women than men earn a bachelor’s degree.
Differences in education lead to differences in attitude: people who attend college are more likely to absorb a liberal, egalitarian outlook. The education gap also leads to differences in how men and women experience life, work and romance. To simplify: when a woman leaves university in a rich country, she is likely to find a white-collar job and be able to support herself. But when she enters the dating market (assuming she is heterosexual), she finds that, because there are many more female graduates than male ones, the supply of liberal, educated men does not match demand. Charelle Lewis, a 26-year-old health-care worker in Washington, dc, complains that men her age have “a little-boy mindset”.
The dating scene can also be bleak for men who did not go to university. Upwardly mobile women reject them. Michal Pazura, a young Polish dairy farmer, takes a break from inflating tractor tyres and recalls a girlfriend who “didn’t like the smell” of the farm and left him to live in a town. “I wanted a traditional, stable lifestyle. She wanted fun.” Male farmers have such a hard time finding spouses that a reality show called “Farmer Wants a Wife” is one of the most popular on Polish television. “It’s hard to say what young women want in a man these days,” says Lukasz, the Polish fireman. Previously, they just wanted a man with “a stable income, who could fix things in the house…and who had a driving licence”, he recalls.
Will the gulf in attitudes affect how many of today’s young people eventually couple up and have kids? It is too soon to know. But for those who think the rich world’s tumbling birth rates are a problem, the early signs are discouraging. In America, Daniel Cox, Kelsey Eyre Hammond and Kyle Gray of the Survey Centre on American Life find that Generation Z (typically defined as those born between the late 1990s and early 2000s) have their first romantic relationship years later than did Millennials (born between 1980 and the late 1990s) or Generation X (born in the decade or so to 1980), and are more likely to feel lonely. Also, Gen Z women, unlike older women, are dramatically more likely than their male peers to describe themselves as lgbt (31% to 16%). It remains to be seen whether this mismatch will last, and if so, how it will affect the formation of families in the future.
The backlash against feminism may be especially strong among young men because they are the ones who feel most threatened by women’s progress. Better jobs for women need not mean worse ones for men—but many men think it does. Older men are less bothered, since they are more likely to be established in their careers or retired. Younger men, by contrast, are just starting out, so they “are most likely to perceive women’s competition as a potential threat to their future life course”, argue Dr Off, Dr Charron and Dr Alexander. In a recent study, they found that young European men are especially likely to resent women (and feel that feminism has gone too far) if unemployment has recently risen in their area, and if they perceive their society’s institutions to be unfair. Anti-feminist views, they add, are a fair predictor of right-wing authoritarian ones.
Not all male grumbles are groundless. In some countries, divorce courts tend to favour the mother in child-custody disputes. In others, pension rules are skewed. Men enter the labour market earlier and die younger, but the retirement age for women in rich countries is on average slightly lower. In Poland it is five years lower, so a Polish man can expect to work three times longer than he will live post-retirement, while for a Polish woman the ratio is 1.4, notes Michał Gulczyński of Bocconi University. This strikes many men as unfair. Mateusz, the Polish fireman, recalls when a left-wing lawmaker was asked, if she was so keen on equal rights, what about equalising the pension age? “She changed the subject,” he scoffs.
Another factor that particularly affects young men is conscription. They are the first to be called up; women are often exempt. In South Korea, where military service is universal for men and notoriously gruelling, it fuels male resentment. In Europe conscription is no longer common, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made young men in neighbouring countries, such as Poland, more scared they may be drafted, says Mr Gulczyński.
Social media, the lens through which young people increasingly view the world, may have aggravated polarisation. First, they let people form echo chambers. When homogenous groups of like-minded people discuss an issue, they tend to become more extreme, as individuals vie for affirmation by restating the in-group’s core position in ever-stronger terms, and denouncing those who dispute it.
When groups of frustrated young men link up online, the conversation often descends into misogyny. In male-dominated Chinese chatrooms the phrase “feminist whore” is common, along with a pun that inserts the character for “fist” into “feminist” to make it sound more aggressive.
Once a man joins an angry online group, the pressure to remain in it is strong. Benjamin, a student in Washington, dc, says he used to be a “red-pill guy …working as a janitor, eating McDonalds and wallowing in self-pity”. He’d watch classes online about how to boost his self-confidence and pick up women. When he quit the manosphere, his friends taunted him as a “blue-pill” (someone fooled by the establishment) or a “cuck” (a weak man).
Second, algorithms hook users with content that terrifies or infuriates, making the world seem both more frightening and more unjust than it is. Women who click on #MeToo stories will see more of them; ditto for men who click on stories of men being falsely accused of rape. Each may gain an exaggerated idea of the risks that they personally face.
“When you go into a gym to work out and a woman’s in your line of vision, you look at her and all of a sudden you’re famous on TikTok for being a sexual harasser or something,” says Kahlil Rose, a 28-year-old conservative man in Atlanta. This has not happened to anyone he knows. But he has seen it on his phone, so it looms large in his consciousness. Benjamin, the student in Washington, offers a similarly gloomy perspective: “Men my age are afraid to get married because they hear a cautionary tale: woman cheats, files for divorce and takes everything he worked for.”
Women see a different world online. Julia Kozik, a student in Warsaw, follows a tip she saw on TikTok. When she rides in a cab, she tears out a strand of hair and puts it under the seat in case she is abducted and the police need dna evidence. “I avoid men at all costs, mostly,” she says.
The political left has done a fair job of persuading women that it cares about their problems. But it has not figured out how to talk to men, argues Richard Reeves, a liberal scholar, in “Of Boys and Men”. Progressives often assume “that gender inequality can only run one way, that is, to the disadvantage of women”. And they apply labels like “toxic masculinity” so indiscriminately as to suggest that there is something intrinsically wrong with being male. Rather than drawing immature boys and men into a dialogue about their behaviour, this “is much more likely to send them to the online manosphere, where they will be reassured they did nothing wrong and that liberals are out to get them”.
Making America virile again
Some politicians on the right, by contrast, have found ways to connect with disgruntled males. Donald Trump is an obvious example. He cultivates “an image of virility and manliness”, argues Mr Cox of the Survey Centre on American Life. He appealed to young men who don’t follow the news by showing up at an Ultimate Fighting Championship event. He also tends “to side with men in cultural conflicts”. In 2018 he decried what he said was a shift in the burden of proof in cases of rape and sexual assault: “It’s a very scary time for young men in America when you can be guilty of something you may not be guilty of...That’s one of the very, very bad things that’s taking place right now.” Progressives may dismiss this as the self-interested griping of a serial abuser. But there’s reason to believe that Mr Trump’s macho behaviour “resonates with young men”, says Mr Cox.
What neither side has done well is to tackle the underlying problems that are driving young men and women apart. Most important, policymakers could think harder about making schools work for underperforming boys. Mr Reeves suggests hiring more male teachers, and having boys start school a year later, by default, since they mature more slowly than girls do. Also, since “the desegregation of the labour market has been almost entirely one-way”, the state could beef up vocational training to prepare young men for occupations they currently shun, such as those involving health, education or administrative tasks. If such reforms help more boys and men adjust to a changing world, that would benefit both men and women.

Bird flu in the milk, an Israel-Lebanon War draws closer, and the worst-case scenarios get even worse.
Last Week in Collapse: April 21-27, 2024
This is Last Week in Collapse, a weekly newsletter compiling some of the most important, timely, useful, soul-crushing, ironic, stunning, exhausting, or otherwise must-see/can’t-look-away moments in Collapse.
This is the 122nd newsletter. You can find the April 14-20 edition here if you missed it last week. You can also receive these posts (with images) every Sunday in your email inbox with Substack.
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The EU Green coalition claims that the Green Deal is probably dead now, since conservatives are projected to make small gains in this June’s EU Parliamentary election.
Gullies are becoming more common across Brazil and several other South American states, a crisis worsened by climate change & deforestation. One coastal municipality in Brazil has seen 50+ homes eaten by new holes; 100+ families have been displaced there as well. The process happens when large quantities of rainfall, unable to be absorbed into the soil (because of overdevelopment & deforestation), run off, carrying the dirt away with it. In the Himalayas, glacial lakes are growing from the massive meltwater piling up in the mountains.
Climatologists believe this summer is going to break records for temperature and/or humidity, with a 70% chance. A study in npj climate and atmospheric science determined that AI holds great potential in forecasting future storms…An analysis of the November 2023 Storm Ciarán predicted its 48-hour trajectory with reasonable accuracy.
A dust storm blew into Athens from Africa, the worst such incident in 6 years. The images look like they’re straight out of a cli-fi movie—or from Mars.
Taiwan felt 6.3 magnitude aftershocks from its 7.3 earthquake 3 weeks earlier, rumbling buildings. Thailand [issued an extreme heat warning](​​https://phys.org/news/2024-04-heatstroke-thailand-year-kingdom.html) after temperatures surpassed 40 °C (104 °F) this week, with a heat index expected to break 52 °C (125 °F). In the first 108 days of the year, Thailand recorded 30 deaths from heatstroke—compare that with 37 in all of 2023. Meanwhile, the heat index in the Philippines hit 47 °C (117 °F), forcing the government to close thousands of schools; one scientist said there was a 50/50 chance it the heat worsening in the coming days. Drought in the Philippines got so bad that an old settlement, flooded by the construction of a 1970s dam, resurfaced after El Niño-aggravated Drought dropped reservoir levels.
The CDC and the U.S. National Weather Service released a new heat scale, with another color representing the most dangerous level of heat. You can search your zip code here to check for your heat alarm level. Meanwhile, the famed climate scientist Michael Mann is predicting the most storms on record this hurricane season, estimating 33 in total.
Water shortage in Scotland. Drought in Spain & Greece expands; one major Spanish wine company laid off 80% of its staff indefinitely because the vines are barely producing anything. In Thailand, sugar farms are drying up. In France, a strange kind of “last chance tourists” from all over are converging on the Alps to see once-epic glaciers before they’re gone forever… Europe, the fastest warming continent, is seeing more days of heat stress than ever before.
A study in Earth’s Future examined the effect of wildfires in Greater Siberia, and found that they are projected to create a cooling effect over part of the northern hemisphere, along with the more obvious: lowered air quality & economic damage.
The total area of oases across the world expanded from 1995-2020 by 220,000+ km² (85,000+ mi²)—an area larger than the size of the island Britain, or Japan’s largest island, Honshu. Most of this expansion was the result of artificial expansion. However, the study from Earth’s Future also says that the risk of desertification is quite high, owing to mismanagement of water resources.
Wildfires in British Columbia & Alberta, including dozens of carry-over fires from last year. Record night temperatures for April in parts of West Africa—Chad even tied its hottest day in history with 48 °C (118 °F). Six countries in southeastern Asia recorded their hottest April night temps. Türkiye felt its hottest day ever in April last week: 39.2 °C (102.5 °F). Drought in Mexico is causing conflict between subsistence farmers and the cartel-linked avocado plantations. Sea surface temperatures remain at record highs for this time of year.
A 14-page article in Science Advances claims that deep sea troughs ferrying circumpolar deep water (CDW) (often warmer & saltier) to the undersides of ice shelves is causing concerning levels of melt. Making the problem worse is an upwelling of an ice shelf’s newly melted freshwater, which rises and pulls the salty water upwards. The study summary explains better, and warns that this feedback loop may reduce the stability of our ice shelves, leading to their Collapse. Some experts are proposing a large geoengineering attempt, spraying aerosols in the stratosphere atop ice shelves within the next 25 years—although they warn such efforts will not be productive unless they are also accompanied by massive CO2 emissions reductions.
Anchovies traditionally found in the Mediterranean have been detected off the Irish coast—about 750,000,000 of them—and scientists are baffled. They say that rising ocean temperatures are probably not enough to attribute this habitat change, since fewer than 150,000,000 anchovies were detected in those waters four years ago.
South Africa & Namibia saw record autumn temperatures. Flooding in Mauritius forced the shutdown of many banks & offices, and flooding worsened in East Africa, where 90+ have been killed by storms in the last fortnight. Tobacco plantations in Uganda killed off the usual animal food sources, forcing local species to eat virus-thick feces...yes, really. Meanwhile, one of the largest mountains of trash in India has been on fire for a few days, spewing toxic fumes into the atmosphere; and it’s still growing by 2,000 tons of garbage every day.
NASA released before & after images from Dubai’s historic flooding.
Foreign diseases & pests are damaging EU agriculture—some 70 new threats each year. In Botswana, Drought is evaporating muddy ponds, trapping hippos; those which escape, desperately thirsty, become aggressive and invade nearby villages.
Over Antarctica, the ozone hole is stretching into December, the start of summer—and the breeding season. Scientists say the exposure to extra radiation is affecting the eyesight of animals, and may threaten their general health. They also blame Australian wildfires for the longer-lasting ozone hole.
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Drinking water in Bangladesh is being poisoned by rising salinity in drinking water. Women are especially affected, particularly pregnant women, who suffer complications resulting from malnutrition, hypertension, menstrual interference, and more.
Residents of an old neighborhood in Ethiopia were given 5 days notice before demolition—ostensibly to rebuild a modern city center……including a $10B (USD) palace complex. Standardized test scores in the UK are at appalling lows—a result blamed, myopically, mostly on COVID school closures.
A study summary from the UK claims that 28% of COVID survivors will develop some form of Long COVID—25% of those will experience brain fog, and 75% some form of depression and/or anxiety. Examinations into the variant of COVID which infected an old Dutch man—and persisted in his body for 613 days—found that the COVID strain mutated into a new immuno-evasive strain inside his body…before killing him.
A 75-page report from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) concluded that migration has now rebounded completely from its COVID dip. The U.S. FDA announced that food recalls hit a new high in 2023, the most since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Scientists claim bird flu was in cows last year, probably. The U.S. FDA also announced that traces of bird flu were found in pasteurized milk—some 20% of samples—but the milk is still safe to drink. Nevertheless, the USDA is doing ongoing milk testing, albeit less than they first promised. The spread of Asian tiger mosquitoes farther northward in Europe portends the spread of malaria and dengue fever to areas where it has never before reached.
Shadow banking relates to non-bank lenders: mostly private investors, and unregulated institutions. Shadow banking is supposedly a $63 trillion (USD) problem worldwide—and the shadow real estate market in South Korea has central banks concerned. Delinquency rates are up, and shadow banking in real estate totals almost $7 trillion (USD). The Bank of England is warning about massive job losses if trends in shadow banking turn sour. Commodity prices worldwide are supposedly going to drop slightly, but inflation will remain.
In Scotland, rising numbers of youths are smoking marijuana. Across Great Britain, child alcohol abuse has become a serious problem; the UK has the highest rate worldwide, according to the collected data. In France, youth curfews have been imposed to keep unaccompanied children under age 13 off the street—more for the safety of adults than the kids.
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Two Malaysian helicopters collided mid-air, killing 10. The UK once again vowed to move forward with deporting migrants to Rwanda this summer. Protestors clashed with police in Venice over a modest €5 fee to enter the historic city on the front lines of climate change. Espionage against Germany, by Russia and China, is growing—or at least being identified.
Haiti continues to get worse as famine continues eating away at the population. 90% of Port-Au-Prince lives under control of the gangs; the other 10% lives under fear of gang expansion. Gangs forced the stop of the unloading of fuel at a port terminal on Monday so they could better wield their fuel as leverage. Haiti’s new transitional council has been sworn in, but is impotent on arrival.
Rebel groups in Sudan, including but not limited to the RSF, attacked 11 settlements in Darfur, following an old anti-black pattern practiced by the Janjaweed. In addition to potentially thousands of lives lost, the traumas of War threaten to perpetuate generational tensions from which new conflicts could sprout. A city that once held half a million people (many of whom were themselves displaced earlier) was razed and the people scattered or killed. And barely a peep of this makes the weekly news…
In Balochistan, a large region of Pakistan, an insurgency is growing, targeting Pakistani security forces and Chinese workers. Killings and IED detonations are said to be reported almost every day. Recruitment into the terror group, several thousand members, has been increased in response to the government’s militarized approach to counterinsurgency. Years of somewhat porous borders have also allowed abandoned American weapons to transit from Afghanistan into the region, empowering rebels.
US-Philippines military drills began the biggest ever between the two nations. Hundreds of people are flowing into Thailand from Myanmar every day, many of them wounded by the heavy-handed ruling junta forces. “This is the worst in my time in 35 years here,” one doctor said of the spike in patients. The junta is becoming so desperate that they are trying to draft Muslim Rohingyas into their forces, some of the very people they attacked, and denied citizenship to, several years ago.
Donald Trump is building a team of China hawks for his potential cabinet, and allegedly planning a more aggressive stance towards China, should he return to power. Reports emerged that, on the day Iran launched 300+ drones against Israel, a simultaneous crackdown began in Iran against women flouting the country’s strict hijab laws. More details are emerging about a massacre in Burkina Faso from February: “They separated men and women in groups…As we started moving forward, they opened fire on us indiscriminately,” said one survivor.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights announced the discovery of mass graves at two hospitals in Gaza—”buried deep in the ground and covered with waste.” An official from the United Nations announced that clearing all the rubble and unexploded bombs from Gaza could take 14 years. And the War isn’t over yet. A growing number of analysts say War against Hezbollah is inevitable as both sides have recently escalated strikes over their 130 km (81 mi) border barrier, the so-called Blue Line.
Hundreds of student protestors were arrested across a number of universities, demanding the institutions divest from Israeli corporations, and generally opposing Israel’s actions in Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of students in Argentina protested against cuts to universities.
Ukraine suspended consular services for some men aged 18-60 living outside Ukraine, as part of a pressure campaign to get them back to Ukraine, where they can be conscripted. Russia warned that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, threatening an unspecified retaliation if Ukraine’s allies seize the roughly $300B frozen assets formerly under Russia’s control. On the battlefield, momentum is moving against Ukraine, although small victories remain. Ukraine is pulling back its Abrams tanks because Russian drones are too easily taking out the tanks. Five of the thirty-one $10M-apiece tanks provided in September have been destroyed so far. Reports emerged that the U.S. sent long-range ATACMS to Ukraine secretly; the ballistic missiles can strike targets up to 300 km away. Ammunition for Patriot systems is now being rushed to Ukraine.
Russia vetoed a resolution to ban the use of nuclear weapons in space. Worldwide, defense spending hit new all-time highs in 2023—about $2.44 trillion USD. (The U.S. accounts for $850B of that total.)
Amnesty International released its enormous, 418-page State of the World’s Human Rights Report for 2023, with 155 country-specific rundowns of selected human rights violations. Search for your own country and judge for yourself how accurate their report is. The general worldwide picture is one of regression to old norms and the breakdown of international law.
“...authoritarian policies ate away at freedoms of expression and association, hit out at gender equality,and eroded sexual and reproductive rights. The underlying public narratives, based in hatred and rooted in fear, encroached on civic space and demonized marginalized individuals…Climate activists were branded “terrorists” for denouncing governments expanding fossil fuel production and investment…States turned increasingly to facial recognition technologies to aid policing of public protests…in Afghanistan, being a woman or a girl has been de facto criminalized…To be a Palestinian in Gaza today is to be plunged to a far more violent and destructive version of the 1948 Nakba...Russia’s aggression has continued to manifest itself in deliberate attacks against civilians, the killing of thousands, and widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure…” -selections from the executive summary
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Select comments/threads from the subreddit last week suggest:
-There will (probably) be signs before SHTF—so say these comments in a thread about horizon scanning a doomsday event. But for some crises, like earthquakes, they spring up suddenly and unexpectedly. This is the very nature of an emergency.
-Household financial troubles are mounting, getting a decent job is nigh-impossible, everyone is coughing, demoralized people are throwing away their lives, trust is gone, most people seem exhausted, and there’s bird flu in the milk—says this essay-length weekly observation from the United States.
Got any feedback, questions, comments, complaints, upvotes, crystal ball predictions, etc.? Check out the Last Week in Collapse SubStack if you don’t want to check collapse every Sunday, you can receive this newsletter sent to your (or someone else’s) email inbox every weekend. What did I forget this week?

What I mean by this is thinking more about the worldbuilding implications of how things in adventures work. A good example here is traps, I just picked e.g. a Gas Trap as a random example. https://2e.aonprd.com/Hazards.aspx?ID=375
(I don't know anything about this particular trap or where it appears other than what's in that link, I just chose a random one for an example)
Given this trap I can think of a bunch of worldbuilding questions it raises. For instance:

• This seems to require a mechanical setup of fair complexity, to connect something that detects when you've opened the door to a spring and auto-locking mechanism. and also to a valve of some sort. So we know that the culture that built these has the technological capability to make these things. Do they use that capability for anything else, or just traps? How does this mechanical sophistication compare to other things this culture does?
  
• It also seems like it might be more technologically sophisticated than necessary. Just having a container of poison within the room, that breaks when the drawer is opened, might be easier to engineer than a valve setup connected to an external tank, and might be more effective because it releases the gas all at once. Are there other design considerations and engineering constraints that led to it being designed the way it is? Or was it e.g. made deliberately overcomplex as a way to show off the builder's skill?
  
• Presumably it would be dangerous for the people who live and work in this building if they could get trapped and killed just because they forgot to turn the trap off when they open a drawer. How often do people get hurt by their own traps? Do they have ways of mitigating this risk or do they just accept it?
  
• How useful are these in the first place? We all talk about how traps sometimes aren't very good because you can just heal up after them. Is this a recognized thing in-universe: e.g. "make sure you design your traps so that if someone triggers them, you can immediately send forces in to finish them off?" Are there best practices for trap design and deployment? Are adventurers or adventuring-party-like groups the primary threat that these traps were designed to protect against, or were they designed to protect against something else (and thus it makes sense they wouldn't be very effective against adventurers)?
  
• The dynamics of the poison here seem very different from what one would expect naively. The rate at which the poison does damage seems to depend on **the rate at which the poison is being pumped into the room** rather than **the current concentration of poison in the room.** For instance if I stay in the room for three rounds and let poison build up, taking damage each round, then block all four vents, I stop taking damage even though presumably the poison is still in there circulating. That might make sense depending on how the poison works - maybe after you've taken damage from a given concentration of poison, your body acclimates to that level of poison and you won't take damage until the concentration goes up again? That would explain the "rate of damage taken = rate of concentration increase" effect. But that hypothesis wouldn't be consistent with the fact that if you hold your breath after the first round, you still take damage every round because the air in your lungs already has poison in it. (It seems like even if you're not breathing, the amount of damage you take still depends on the number of active vents?)
  

Now, the point here isn't to criticize the game for being "inconsistent" or "unrealistic." The real world contains lots of things weirder than anything I've described! And even if traps are "poorly designed" that could make perfect sense - lots of things in real life are poorly designed! The point is to go deeper into the "why" - why are dungeons designed the way they are? Do all these design features work well for their purported purpose, and if not, why have they persisted?

Traps aren't the only thing you can ask these kinds of questions about. Another example would be how some rituals like Resurrect require gemstones of a certain gold piece value. You could ask questions like:

• Does the magic actually "know" about the value? For instance, if there's a shortage of emeralds and their price doubles, does that make the ritual work with half as many emeralds? Or does the causality go the other way, e.g. "there's a certain amount of gemstones it requires, under normal conditions those gemstones cost X gp, but that can change?"
  
• If it's the second way, then is there a specific "recipe" of gemstones it needs, or can you just throw in any gemstones that add up to X gp value? The text seems to imply the second. Is it just a coincidence that the "amount that each gemstone counts toward the recipe" perfectly correlates with its monetary value? (That would make sense if rituals were the primary things that gemstones were used for; e.g. if a ruby can replace 2 emeralds in a ritual, then someone buying the gemstones for the ritual would be willing to pay twice as much for a ruby as for an emerald. But if rituals were only a small part of the market for gemstones, then there would be no reason other than coincidence for "market price of ruby / market price of emerald" to be the same as "number of emeralds needed for ritual / number of rubies needed for ritual.")
  

Or even spells.

• Are these spells "engineered" in a way that you can take components apart and rearrange them? For instance a Status spell (https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=1690) could be viewed as having two components: "detect conditions on target" and "transfer that information to the caster" - could one design a spell that instead detected whether I had my finger pointed up and transmit that information to the target, so that I could use it as a Morse code communication mechanism? (Since "prone" is a condition, even the vanilla Status spell could be used to communicate in Morse code, if you can do sit-ups in Morse code.) Or are spells more like chemical elements, where there's a fixed list of them and those are all there are?
  
• How are spells invented or discovered? Do people randomly try different gestures and incantations until something works? Or is there some systematicity to it?
  
• Why are certain specific ranges (e.g. 30', 60') and certain durations (e.g. 1 minute, 10 minutes) so common with spells? Is there some sort of mechanistic explanation, based on the way magic works, that explains why these keep showing up?
  
• How are things like communication, navigation, construction, agriculture etc. affected by the existence of magic? I think I recall seeing (maybe it was in Secrets of Magic or the Lost Omens World Guide) that something like 20% of Golarians can cast spells (though mostly just cantrips) - this seems like enough to make it so things would be different.
  

I think that information about these kinds of things would really help immerse me as a player in the world more, because these kinds of things (trap design, dungeon design, spellcasting etc.) are the things that naturally come up during gameplay, so it would be interesting to use them as a lens on worldbuilding. What sourcebooks and guides should I get if I'm interested in this kind of thing?

Hi all - I recently took a trip to Paris to visit my sister who had just moved there and decided to turn this into a week of some of the best dining in the city (with some help from the community on helping me select spots). I’d like to thank the community for suggesting spots that served some of the best food I’ve ever had and I wanted to share my experience with the community in case it helps anyone else visiting Paris. Apologies if the descriptions below are quite long, as I am just so excited by my experience. Not sure how I’ll be able to top a week of eating like this again but I’m just grateful to have been able to experience it. The below is a mix of some classic fine dining along with some more casual spots mixed in, which I find helpful to break up some of the more extensive tasting menus. Happy to provide more detail or answer any questions as helpful!
Abri Soba - This is the perfect spot for lunch to switch it up and have some great soba, hot or cold. The duck with leeks and cold soba along with the hot broth on the side has delicious umami flavor and for 6 euro more, you can make it a lunch set with 2 massive pieces of fresh maki, fried chicken karaage, and a salad (this is how you get really full. The shrimp tempura with hot soba was also very hearty and tasty. The lunch set of choice of soba with the maki, chicken, and salad was 26 euro and less depending on accompaniments to the soba.
Les Papilles - This is one of the spots I will go every time I’m in paris. It’s such a homey, welcoming bistro with a tiny kitchen (be sure to take a peek) that has a 4 course set menu. The front of house explains each dish in incredible detail in both French / English. In my multiple trips here, you quickly realize they really specialize in their soup course. They always start with a soup that will cure the soul before a full-bodied, family-style meat main course. This is followed by a cheese course and then a small dessert. At 45 euros with this flavor and this amount of food, this just has to be one of the best deals i’ve found in paris. This time, they started with the soup course of sweet potato mash, sweet cream with olive oil, breadcrumbs, and spicy chorizo in a sweet potato broth. This was followed by the main course, a veal breast braised for 4 hours with breadcrumbs, tarragon, carrots, fresh peppers, snap peas, fresh thyme, and garlic. They ended with a blue cheese d’auvergne with a prune confit and then a chocolate panna cotta (the panna cotta was only dish I didn’t love but not bad by any means).
El Nopal Taqueria - This is a small spot on a side street that serves some classic meat tacos. You can just sit on the street and keep ordering as much as you please while sipping a cold beer. The chicharron taco was by far my favorite, as the others were solid but nothing crazy. The sauces there really elevate the tacos and the spicy green sauce was so good (it should be sold in markets). The pork quesadilla with the green sauce was also delicious.
Le Colimacon - This is a bistro with a regularly changing a la carte menu. We started off with one of their main recommendations, their “snail chips” which were burgundy escargots made with garlic, butter, and parsley. They were in these chips made to look like the escargot shell that you could eat in one bite and truly was one of the best takes on escargots i’ve ever had. They then continued the strong start with an absolutely divine dish of a french toast topped with foie gras, pan fried smoked duck breast, sliced poached fruit, honey and cumin sauce, and a salad of young shoots and olive oil vinaigrette. The fattiness, sweetness, and acidity blended together here to create a near perfect dish. These two starters are worth the trip here alone. The beef sirloin tartare and seabass carpaccio for the mains were very solid, but just were not on the level of the starters. I think duck is where they truly shine here. We also ordered the organic leg of lamb from Sologne which was solid but definitely forgettable. Next time I come, I’d go with more duck or the Iberian black pork if on the menu instead. Overall, it’s a very quaint spot and would highly recommend.
Chez Aline - Sandwich spot that will always have a line but moves quick and is worth the wait. Very fresh, constantly changing sandwiches on incredible baguette where if you don’t speak French, you can point to the items you want in their sandwich that the chef makes that day. Lots of vegetables and salads. I ordered the jamon beurre which when toasted is ridiculous and also got the chicken salad sandwich, which is light and oddly refreshing which I rarely get out of sandwiches. Perfect casual sandwich spot with one chef behind the counter handling everything.
Frenchie - This was a pretty special meal and my first tasting menu of the trip. I have seen some of the mixed reviews but had a lovely time and was blown away by several dishes. The green asparagus with tarragon sorbet, tarragon puree, and gin caper sauce they introduced to the menu two days before dining there was refreshing, acidic, texturally complex, and just perfect, one of my favorite dishes ever. The pigeon with artichoke, guanciale, and brocoletti course and the skate wing with clams, lemon, asparagus and wild garlic course were also phenomenal with the pigeon being a bit richer and the fish before being so light and perfectly cooked, balancing each other out so well. The ravioli with anchovies, chicory, and mustard seeds were in a delicious, earthy broth but this was my least favorite of the mains. The kiwi parfait glacé dessert with sweet/soucitrusy kiwi sauce was one of my favorite courses of the whole meal. The banoffee dessert with dulce de leche, banana, and pecan nuts also shined. The only area they actually missed was on the amuse bouche (one of them tasted like cardboard and got me a bit worried for what was to come, thankfully there was no need to be worried).
Alliance - Thank you to all members of the this community who recommended this spot, as it truly does fit a 2 star level as a one star spot. The service was the best I’ve ever had, largely due to Shawn who serves as the front of house and who also helped open the restaurant. We ended up being the last table in the restaurant and Shawn came and sat with us for an hour to have some cocktails and converse about how he came to open Alliance with the chef Toshitaka Omiya, the gastronomic scene in paris, and his favorite spots to frequent in the city. Pivoting to the food, each dish was spectacular, with beautiful plating and even more beautiful flavor and balance. I went with a few friends, some of who do not frequently have fine dining, and they were blown away and more than happy to enjoy a 3.5 hour meal here. I would say the only underwhelming bites were the spring roll with cabbage and ginger amuse bouche and the watercress and caviar bite but the potato gnocchi with caviar, cream, and white wine dish and black leg chicken course were perfectly rich and balanced in texture and flavor. These were two of the best dishes I’ve ever had. This onion pie amuse bouche I wish I could have had 10 more of and paired really well with the rice crisp with steak tartare bite and came with a crispy yet soft on the inside cheese gougere with a “spicy stick”. The chef’s use of onion started with the onion pie and really shined throughout the night. An oyster appetizer with fried onions and lemon was another dish that left me speechless, really cool in terms of both soft texture balanced with crispy onions and warm and cold temperatures playing off each other. They replaced one crab dish I couldn’t eat due to dietary restriction with this leek dish with this creamy sauce that I can’t recall the description of for the life of me but was my favorite dish of the night (I had to give the rest of the table a taste who all were taken aback by how delicious this dish was). The John Dory fish course with an extraction of collagen and glasswort and the white asparagus course with passion fruit pepper and dried apricot were light and perfect in the midst of some richer courses. They ended with two awesome desserts, a beetroot, hibiscus, and smoked yogurt dessert and a red, yellow, and green kiwi dessert, along with a lovely cheese cart.
Le Rigmarole - This is the spot I’d recommend the most to anyone visiting Paris that doesn’t necessarily want to pay 2-3 michelin star pricing, as I can say I enjoyed this meal as much or more than most of the michelin star spots I’ve been. I tried writing down each course we had, which were pickled radish, carrots and cabbage, lightly fried asparagus fried in german beer, scallop crudo in olive oil, grilled cuttlefish in spicy yogurt sauce, rockfish with mushrooms, chicken neck with spices and orange zest, scarpinocc with homemade ricotta and spring garlic leaves, chicken artery / offal (that takes “20 chickens to make”), chicken heart, chicken wing, smoked zucchini with smoked fish roe, bone marrow ragu pasta, chicken “of all parts” meatball with flakey pita-esque bread, and chocolate fondant with oolong ice cream. I was lost for words on so many of the courses and the couple Robert and Jessica who run the spot are so lovely and curate the menu around each individual they are serving, which was awesome as some members of the party were more experimental than others in what they like and some had dietary restrictions. The wine recommendations were also incredible as I love earthy, funky wines and they had a lot of fun selecting some of their funkiest wines. This will be my first stop every time i’m back in paris.
Early June - This is very cool spot in terms of ambience, and I would definitely try a new chef next time as they change regularly, but I really did not enjoy my meal here with the new chef from Napoli who took over the day before I dined with them. The dishes were quite flavorless and seemed to lack any love. This was the only meal I had in paris that I was even slightly disappointed with.
Epicure - (Aside from visiting my sister) This was the main reason for my visit and was the most excited I’d ever been for a meal. Somehow it still surpassed my lofty expectations. This just felt like a masterclass in technique as nothing was something I hadn’t tasted before in terms of ingredients, but they somehow made everything 10x more delicious and exciting than I’d ever experienced them before. From the caviar from Sologne on a potato mousseline smoked with haddock to the burnt grilled leeks with tartare of Perle Blanche oysters, spring onions, and lemon in a seaweed butter (best dish I’ve ever had in my life) to the candele macaroni with black truffle, artichoke, foie gras, gratinated Parmesan cheese, and black truffle juice, they just maintained an astonishing level of consistency and flavor across each course. The Bresse Hen poached in a bladder (they accommodated my allergy to crayfish which I appreciated given this was one of the dishes I wanted to try most) just took the meal to an even more absurd level as I’d never had poultry that was as soft as a perfectly cooked fish. The salmon from Scotland with the tandoori spices, fennel, mint oil, and “rice krispies” completely shifted from the classic French and was so perfectly cooked. I didn’t even know food could be cooked this well… Nothing missed at all or even came close to disappointing me. Every dish made my eyes bulge and my cheeks hurt from smiling at how exciting everything tasted. The textures were mind-boggling as they danced across jellos and purees and temperature contrasts that I had never imagined possible. The service was also immaculate as they quickly adjusted when they quickly realized we were there to truly just soak it all in and have a fun time rather than be very serious. They gave us a full kitchen tour, and we got to meet Eric Frechon’s sous chef who had taken over the kitchen since Frechon’s departure 2 days prior and who kindly wrote a message and signed both of our menus (which they reprinted during the meal to reflect all the changes due to our dietary restrictions). They only do one staggered seating for each meal, so there’s no rush, which became evident in the meal lasting 4.5 hours. This was definitely one of the most expensive meals I’ve ever had but I had no complaints and completely believe the price was justified by the experience. Thanks again to all members of the community for pushing this recommendation.
Le Servan - I’ve seen some mixed reviews but honestly had a lovely experience, and this meal was my first after eating at Epicure the night before. I wasn’t expecting to like much food for a bit after Epicure, but this was really delicious. I definitely went a bit more out there in the dish choices going for sweetbreads, veal brain, and black pudding fried wontons, and they were all cooked extraordinarily well and were perfectly seasoned with nothing overpowering the stars of the dishes.
Faggio - This came as a recommendation from one of the waiters at Epicure as his friend runs this pizza shop and he admitted he might be a little biased but claimed this was his favorite spot to eat in Paris. I wasn’t expecting much given I’ve enjoyed some of the best pizza in New York, Japan, Italy, New Haven, etc., but this shockingly stood among some of the best. It’s Neopolitan style and the sauce and fior di latte they use in their pies made the pizza so light and perfect and just hit on all cylinders. I highly recommend especially to break up a lot of fine dining.

>!So I've been a little confused on some of the events of what was going on this season on both sides of the astral plane, but after writing it all down, I think I have it. If someone could check my work, that would be great.
Oblivati Mori:
If a god dies, gods still living cannot resurrect that God by speaking about him. For example: If everyone forgets Zeus and Zeus dies, Poseidon cannot remind mortals of the existence of Zeus.
The Wedding:
a) Ankarna is the wife of Cassandra.
b) Ruvina served as maid-of-honour at Ankarna and Cassandra's Wedding
b) Ankarna and Ruvina are sisters.
c) Cassandra, Galicaea, and Sol are siblings.
d) Helio is Cassandra's nephew
Events:
Ankarna used to be a goddess whose domain was a cross between Apollo and Demeter (summer, harvest). Ankarna gradually loses followers and her name dies out. Oblivati Mori is activated. Somewhere along the line, [perhaps through the employ Devil's Honey, though that's speculation] her domain crosses over to rage. Cassandra is around to witness Ankarna's death, as she says "I thought you were dead" in the mall. It is to Ankarna that Cassandra seems to refer.
[Additional Speculation: Ankarna's domain was changed while still alive to rage, because oblivati mori would have precluded anyone from knowing her name to worship her. Devil's Honey was taken to forget the name after the switch for some reason. My personal guess is the Harvestmen cult wanted Sol and Helio to take over as the dominant religion of Spyre, so they did a crusade to change Ankarna's domain away from summer and harvest and dawn to rage, so they could consolidate power as the 'true' religion of harvest and dawn]
Cassandra turns into the Nightmare King. Athenriel the high-elf gets a blood curse that passes through the first-born male descendants of his household. He is then corrupted into the pit-fiend and servant of the corrupted Ankarna known as Bakur. Kalvaxus is imprisoned at the Aguefort Adventuring Academy. Pok Gukgak is killed. Lydia Barkrock prevents Bakur from resurrecting Ankarna, at great personal cost.
FH: FY and FH: SY happen.
In Fallinel, The Bad Kids break the Oblivati Mori on Ankarna, despite the best efforts of some nefarious group to keep the name hidden. Baron's father is The Nightmare King, though not necessarily Cassandra. This would mean that Baron has two fathers, The Nightmare King and a (presumably corrupted) Ankarna.
[Speculation: Shortly before the Battle at the Synod Mall, Jace kills Kalina and converts her to Ankarna. If I recall correctly, after the shellfish incident, she slits Cassandra's throat and says "I liked you better as the Nightmare King. Earlier, when Kristen was praying and came upon Kalina, Kalina outright admits that as the familiar of Cassandra, she has restricted will (as opposed to free will). If Cassandra's domain is "good" and "peaceful", then she'll be good. The Nightmare King stuff was Nightmare King stuff. It's also possible that it was someone disguised as Kalina trying to get Kristen expelled, having killed the real Kalina and taken her place. But the killer wouldn't know about the mall sign-up event, so that seems unlikely. Remember, Jace was seen talking to Kalina and Arianwen following the adventure in the Forest of the Nightmare King, so he certainly was involved in the prior conflict, but managed to cover his tracks]
Lucy Frostblade was a follower Ruvina. At some point in the year, Oisín and Ruben pressure Lucy into switching goddesses to Ankarna, having already been turned. She and Lucy refuse. Her adventuring party (or perhaps just Ruben, Jace, and Oisín) orchestrate a situation where she can die and be revived as a servant of Ankarna, but she refuses. The plan it just right so the Rat Grinders would not move to pass-fail.
[Speculation: I think the idea was that Lucy could die in the Mountains of Chaos during the Rat Grinders' sophomore year spring break, and have it look like an accident. Only she decided not to come back as a servant of Ankarna, which retroactively affected the paper with her name on it, and the change-of-deity form was withdrawn].
We've confirmed that at some point Lucy (and later Yolanda Badgood) were killed at the Mountains of Chaos, given the choice to return, and refused. Brennan has been implied that Ruben took up Ankarna on the offer. (Ruben's songwriting muses and subject matter changed). Jawbone's files also strongly imply Kipperlilly was given and accepted this offer. (Her complaints about the Bad Kids go from typical teenage angst and frustration that could have had progress made on them, despite her "hating the Bad Kids from the beginning", until Sophomore Year. Presumably, she died and was brought back as an agent of rage.
A cloaked figure (perhaps a rage giant) mutilates the body of Buddy Dawn. Buddy Dawn returns as a servant of the corrupted Ankarna.
Questions Remaining:
The jury is still out on Oisín and Mary-Ann having died and come back. [Could the death of Lucy Frostblade have forced a pass-fail and Last Stand for the Rat Grinder's sophomore year? If they took The Last Stand, could Jace have acted as cleric and when they revivified Lucy and Ruben (who were the only ones to go down), he revivified them as servants of Ankarna?] I'll put away the tin foil hat.
How did Kipperlilly know where Eugenia's grave was if Eugenia went to great lengths to avoid being discovered?
What's Jace's endgame? Why resurrect a dead god? Does he want to overthrow the Harvestmen? Does he want to resurrect the Ankarna so the she could be restored on her "rightful throne", as it were? But the only way to do that is to use rage, then bypass Oblivati Mori, then get her followers to shift her domain back?
Final Comments:
The creation of Yes! out of thin air and resurrection would explain the Rat Grinder's interest in Kristen. She invented a god and was resurrected by no magic or means or any explanation. It was a simple Beardsley nat-20. "Can I be alive on a nat 20?" Their PC was dead. Full stop. Brennan entertained a 5% chance that happened to go Ally's way. This goes into Kipperlilly's idea of "fairness". Nothing could be more fair than a roll of a die, but Ally (and by extension, Kristen), somehow manage to pull 20s at key moments.
In a meta way, Kipperlilly is like a bad DM, obsessed with fairness and letter-of-the-law rules. At her table, there are no "Can I roll for a 20 and be alive?". There is no "egg of the last phoenix". When she (NPC) dies, she dies. When Kristen dies, some extraplanar being called Homo sapiens "plays favorites" and Arthur and Mr. Gibbons are magically at the right place in the right time. Kristen can magically self--resurrect and create a god. What Kipperlilly doesn't realize (because there's no way mechanically in-game for her to realize it, which is again, by her definition, 'unfair'), that Kristen is essentially a demigod. If we consider Kristen and Ally to be the same entity, more or less, Ally can make weird, game-breaking asks and justify them over-the-board, so Kristen has contact not only with all the deities of Spyre, but with the Creator.
Kipperlilly Copperkettle has realized she's on the Truman Show, and there's nothing she can do about it. The show must go on. If the show doesn't go on, she ceases to exist. But the Bad Kids, all of whom are basically demigods and Creators at the same time, operate independently. And that drives her wild. So she, and perhaps the rest of the Rat Grinders have a choice: play the part, or escape the Truman Show.
I think its clear they are choosing the latter, only they want to take a few shots at our six Christofs on the way out.!<

I've been holding onto my gold Rodman card all year waiting for this evolution. I swapped out 93-POTM Mbappe for playoffs this week to line up an all American front three of evo-Rodman, base Hamm, and TOTY Smith. I played Rodman on the wing with finisher chemistry. Here's how she performed.
Pace: She's wicked fast, especially off the mark. Quickstep+ combined with 98/99 mostly explosive pace and 99 agility is so nice for beating defenders. Her top speed doesn't quite match POTM Mbappe's, but one of my gripes with him was he sometimes felt a little sluggish to get going. That's not an issue with Rodman at all. A+
Finishing: She was very clinical for me, scoring over a goal per game, and never missing easy chances - one of my other complaints about Mbappe. Her shots don't feel like cannons the way Mbappe's shots sometimes come off, but they're more consistent at beating the keeper. Having finesse, trivela, and power shot+ with a 5* WF is a deadly combo. Her power shots aren't quite on par with Mia Hamm's, but they were still a lot of fun to score some bangers with. Her long shots rating isn't particularly high, but I don't even recall shooting anything outside the box with Rodman that wasn't a power shot, so it was a moot point. She's so explosive and tricky that getting into the box is not a problem. A
Dribbling: 5'6 is honestly the perfect height for dribbling in this game. Shorter players don't have the range, and taller players start to lose responsiveness. Rodman's size paired with her crazy agility, dribbling, and 5* skills is a lot of fun to work with. There were a few rare glitchy animations when using skills under pressure where she'd lose track of the ball, but that's an issue with the game that happens to every player from time to time. She pulled off a lot of sick moves leading to goals/assists, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching her replays after the matches just to admire them. A+
Positioning: Rodman's high aggression and positioning stats paired with H/M work rates are very evident in game. She felt very active at getting involved in each attack. Mia Hamm still has the best attacking AI for me, but Rodman is up there with the best. A+
Strength: For a small agile player, she's pretty solid at fending off challenges. Mbappe is stronger and jammier, but Rodman holds her ground fairly well and isn't easily shoved off the ball. B-
Aerial Prowess: I didn't deliberately play any crosses to her, but she still managed to win the occasional aerial duel against small to mid sized wingers and fullbacks. She has decent jumping, strength, and aggression, but no aerial playstyles, and she's 5'6, so she's not really an aerial threat by any means. C-
Passing: She doesn't have the stats or playstyles to be a playmaker, but she compensates with her ability to beat defenders one on one to make space for easy passes. When it comes to simple ground passes, I didn't notice anything wrong with her. B-
PlayStyles: This is the reason I love this card so much. She has everything I want in an attacker. Quickstep+ with rapid, finesse, trivela, power shot+, first touch, relentless, trickster, and flair to boot. What more could you ask for? A+
Defending from the front: She's small with defensive stats in the low-mid 40s, but she's aggressive and very quick, so she does a decent job applying pressure and winning back the ball high up the pitch. If the opponent ever makes the mistake of trying to turn his clunky CB on the ball, it's an opportunity for Rodman to spring in and win it. C+
Fun Factor: This was genuinely a very enjoyable card for me. Her rapid responsive dribbling with 5* skills and trickster make the game a little arcade-y at times - in a good way. She's not a household name like Mbappe or Mia Hamm or even her father (Dennis Rodman), but I enjoyed playing my all American trio up top. A
Final Thoughts: This was one of the quickest and easiest playoffs I've had in a while. I went 6-1 before giving away the final 3 matches (the one loss was a game I forfeited after a very weird glitch made all my players sprint away from the ball and unable to be controlled). It usually takes me longer to hit 6 wins, but I tend to play a lot better when I'm having fun, and Rodman made the game feel fresh again. After over 1000 matches with Mbappe, I've grown a little bored of using him every week. Comparing the two, I felt Rodman was more consistent in front of goal, and significantly more explosive on the ball. Mbappe is stronger and marginally faster once he hits top speed, but overall I'm preferring Rodman at the moment. She's easily worth the 100k cost of the evolution if you're lucky enough to have her gold card or snipe her off the market. Final score A+

I'm 29. My health is failing and it's never going to get better, just fail less bad. I've had 3 open heart surgeries (Aortic and Mitral Valve replacement, aortic root replacement), chest reconstruction (pectus carenatum repair), spinal fusion (T1-T9), 2 ablations, and I'm going to need another chest reconstruction due to my sternum not healing properly. I can't get a job because I'm both vastly over qualified and under qualified. I have a life expectancy of 38 due to having a SEVERE connective tissue disorder. I'm also ADHD/Autistic (though just a little autistic).
My last surgery was Dec. 2022 to replace my failing mitral valve. By the time my surgery happened, I was sleeping 14+ hours a day because my heart just wasn't able to function properly. The 9 months before surgery, as my condition worsened, me and my gf grew further apart. She ended up not coming to my surgery, claiming that it was due to being too much for her. I bought her flowers and had them delivered while I was in surgery. I ended up taking an Uber home. My family refused to come to my surgery because I required them to have the covid vaccine. Their objections were all based on politics. I ended up falling and injuring my chest because I had to do everything myself. He's also racist (said "it's a good thing I moved back to Indiana because at least here I'm the right color", and more but never used any actual slurs, lots of complaints about DEI/wokeness though).
I can't afford my blood thinners and required INR monitoring since I have 2 mechanical heart valves.
I hold degrees in Business Data Analytics and Finance. I did R&D for DARPA (program manager) due to a system I came up while recovering from my other open heart surgery back in 2015 and proposed through family connections (who have since passed away due to covid). I had hoped to save lives with what I created but that's not how it ended up being used. Ended up with CPTSD. Work in defense is totally off the table for me. I worked briefly in Finance and precious metals. My Finance job was as a product manager. Loved it, but it was a contract position and it ran out right as they were announcing layoffs. The precious metals job was as a product manager but the only thing the company cared about was phone sales.
I'm over qualified for part time work and despite all my applications, they won't look at me because of my extensive experience. I'm under qualified for jobs similar to my experience because the bulk of it is in defense and I can't do defense work. It's hard enough seeing my stuff occasionally appear in the news. Every corporate recruiter I've talked to says I have a great resume in spite of not being able to get into specifics on a lot stuff due to legal reasons.
I did my last open heart surgery alone. My ex left me due to my medical issues. I'm too qualified for part time work, under qualified for positions out of defense. I am in CONSTANT pain. I've been a chronic pain patient since 2015 but my accident after my last surgery made it worse.
I can't afford pain management, THC products, I can't even afford a fucking haircut. The bed i sleep in at my dads place is a metal spring mattress and god does it hurt to sleep in. I live with my dad now but he doesn't like helping me beyond groceries and I already don't eat much, certainly not as much as I should be. All my surgeries have wrecked my appetite. I'm great at my work, but can't get a job. Tried applying for disability but since I can easily work in an office, I didn't qualify despite not being able to stand for more than 10 minutes or lift more than 40 pounds on the odd occasion.
It would have been better if I hadn't survived surgery. I likely have 9 years left and considering all my heart problems, it's probably accurate. All I want is to work and be on my own again. Leave me to just have some peace for my last few years. Let me do the work I'm good at. Not surviving surgery would have saved me from a lot of suffering that just isn't going to get better. My body is falling apart. I've made my impact on the world. I've accomplished so much more than anyone ever expected of me. It would have just been better if I hadn't woken up. Now all I can do is apply for jobs I won't get and suffer from my literally constant pain that my own father says he understands because he has fucking asthma. I wish I could just walk away from everything and disappear but I can't even get the basic medical care I need.
Since I can't get my blood thinners or INR monitoring, I'm at high risk for a stroke. I hope it's quick and lethal. I have a DNR with all nearby major hospitals.
I just want to work and to be on my own with my dog. That's all I want. I've pretty much given up on anything better. Every time I've tried for better, it's blown up in my face catastrophically. It's gotten to the points where hope is nothing more than a poison to me. I don't let myself have hope to prevent more pain when things don't go the way I need them to.
I'm not gonna do anything, I just hope something happens and whatever it is, it's quick. I'll keep trying to get another position but it's not gonna happen. I interview quite well, but there's always someone more qualified.
I can't keep this up much longer... I dont even know what kind of help I could use. All I want is to work... I dont know what to do as it seems like I'm already doing everything I can...

Has anyone gotten the engine repair for this recall? How long did it take? Any problems afterward?
Honestly it very much concerns me that my new car with 3000 Mike's on it needs to have the upper replaced on the engine. Not feeling a warm and fuzzy here.

Ive had a 1998 2.5rs and currently a 2003 bugeye wrx which has pretty major strut tower damage, Thanks Ohio salt! I am currently in the middle of trying to repair the rust rot but really considering a 2014 impreza wagon sport for about 10k. Have to go see it in person still but the carfax looks pretty decent with some of the problems fixed or don't apply that I've already read about here like the CVT transmission and valve spring recall. Vehicle has about 75k miles and is a 5spd.
On to the carfax report. Wheel bearings(not sure which ones). Front control arms and struts. Regular oil changes and brake maintenance. The transmission and rear differential fluid was changed/flushed at around 40k miles. Car was in Colorado from 2014-2021 then was in Maine the last few years and im not sure how Colorado/Maine cars hold up with rusting. Checked vehicle recalls for the VIN and shows that it only had the Brake Lamp Switch Replacement which was already done and so signs of a valve spring recall. Again its a 5spd so no worry about the CVT transmission going bad.
Is there anything else I should worry about? Is it going to be noticeably slow compared to my 03 WRX? Possible to swap an 05-12 wrx engine into that car? Already read most of the WRX suspension from that year fits this gen but not the STI's. Not sure I would get very much out of my bugeye how its currently sitting but was thinking around 3.5k or so after fixing the strut tower damage. Should I try to get a newer WRX around 15k?