How can you tell which are protons

Hey aus renovators, I need your collective wisdom and experience to help figure out if my spidey senses about my builder are justified or if I'm just being paranoid.
Here's the situation: - We paid a deposit to the builder for design work which they outsourced to a drafting company. We've since paid full amount for the design phase but looks like they're still working on it as some engineering stuff came up they weren't expecting.
I know it could be late in the game for this - but the builder has a nice looking Instagram page, just can't find any legitimate reviews online. My hubby spoke to one of their last clients they provided a number with and felt comfortable. But never went to check the job.
The projects they showcase also look nothing like the style/scope of work we are after. And they always mention they're working on a job - but it's either one of their own, or for the foreman.
Initially, the builder was very responsive - came to visit us multiple times (trekked far to meet us in St Kilda a number of times) But as soon as they got the deposit, the main guy we were dealing with went radio silent. Now we are only communicating with a project manager who seems quite green and inexperienced.
I'm getting a gut feeling that this builder is more of a sales pitch than substance. But my hubby feels comfortable with them and thinks I'm being overly suspicious. That they have a building license, and have agreed to whatever we wanted to change to the contract. (Well we had to pretty much create it as their lawyers seem like high school kids from Brighton). And didn't even include a license which we had to ask for just to check. Oh. They also asked for 35% deposit on a 400k build, and then agreed to drop to 20%.
I'm new to the whole renovation game, so I wanted to ask - what do you folks do to vet your builders and make sure they are the real deal? Let's say everything checks off (maybe we're one of their first builds like this) but How can I tell if my concerns are valid or if I'm worrying over nothing?
Any advice or personal experiences to share would be much appreciated! Cheers.

My boyfriend (25M) and I (29F) have been together for a little over a year. I want to preface this with this is the best relationship I’ve ever been in. He’s attractive, funny and treats me like a queen. However, the issue I’m having is that recently I feel like many of our conversations fall flat and are overall just… boring.
It wasn’t like this when we first got together at all. I felt there was a lot of chemistry, he asked a lot of deep questions, really listened to me and I did the same for him. I felt like there was endless topics for us to discuss and we were genuinely curious about one another. There was a fun banter when we were still getting to know each other.
Now that we know each other better, some of that chemistry is gone. It’s like we’ve both reverted to asking the same basic questions “how was your day?” “what are your plans tonight?” Etc. Sometimes I’ll be in a talkative mood and I’ll inquire about other parts of his life like family, how he is genuinely feeling, and his friends, but he doesn’t go too deep and often doesn’t have much to say and then the convo stops there. Recently I’ve noticed he doesn’t ask me many questions beyond surface level anymore. We spend a lot of time being in silence or just watching tv.
If I’m telling him about one of my interests, sometimes I see his eyes wandering and it’s so apparent he doesn’t care. He’s just waiting for me to stop talking so he can make a comment like “that’s cool baby” and then move on. & just as a disclaimer it is NOT that I won’t stfu, if it’s something I’m passionate about I love to talk deeply about the subject but for the most part I am not a rambler and i am concise with my words. He also has a habit of straight up interrupting me when he does have something to say which adds to my feeling that he actually doesn’t care about what I’m communicating.
We have a few overlapping interests but for the most part we are into different things. Which I didn’t think would be a big deal bc I am genuinely curious about his interests and I love asking him about them but the curiosity doesn’t seem to be reciprocated.
Lately when we’re sittin in silence I feel myself racking my brain about deeper questions to ask him but my brain is just blank. I’m not sure if it’s bc when I try to go deeper he doesn’t have much of a response so I’m just used to that or what the issue is.
What are some deeper questions I can ask to really engage him? How do we get that initial spark of conversation back? Do most relationships get boring after you really know each other? How do I talk to him about this? I want us to be together but deep conversation is so important to me, I need something to reignite this part of our relationship.
tl;dr - conversation with my(29F) boyfriend (25M) has become boring and surface level. He doesn’t ask deep questions and sometimes it feels like he’s completely uninterested when I speak. He doesn’t offer much when I ask him deep questions and this leaves me sitting in silence thinking “what do we talk about??” We used to have an undeniable chemistry, how do I get that back? What questions do I ask him to actually engage him?

So my parents finally had a divorce in 2020. I say "finally" because I saw it coming and honestly wanted them to. They have been fighting for years and other problems made me just want them to get a divorce because the tension was horrible.
They got a divorce because my dad fucked up, but my mom was the one to move out. For years now my mom has told me that if they ever got a divorce she would take me and my brother and we would live happily alone. But because she already found a new partner while the divorce was still in motion, me and my brother did not want to go live with her because she promised it would only be the three of us. It's childish, I know, but me and my brother have been through a lot.
So me and my brother live with my dad now and it's fucking awful. Even though my dad messed everything up he pretends to be the victim. He acts like we have to pity him. He has always had an alcohol problem but ever since the divorce it got worse. He would always say "your mother did this to me". My dad stopped receiving a bonus at work because he's been slacking off and we spiraled down a financial disaster. He actually quit his job a month ago, making me even more worried about our financial situation.
My mom has always done the cooking and cleaning around the house so when she left I had to take over. I taught myself how to do the laundry and I had experience doing the dishes but never liked doing it because it's gross. My cooking was sometimes good but ive never made something disgusting. I always made sure my brother had clean clothes to wear to school and I would even spend the little money I had to buy something if we really needed it. Where I always spent my money for pleasure I now have to use it like an adult.
So, about my dad... Yeah he's acting like the victim but he also acts in charge, and I mean he felt like he was the boss of EVERYTHING. We had to ask permission for things that didn't need permission. We weren't allowed to do the dishes. He would tell us to leave the dishes because he said he would do it. And because we were scared of him, we listened. The dishes would just pile up for days and when I decide I'd had enough I would do the dishes, only to get yelled at afterwards. Other chores and activities would have the same outcome.
We weren't allowed to be sad. If we had a bad day at school and just wanted to stay in our room and be upset, he would for some reason always accuse my mom for being the reason for all sadness. If we had a disagreement about something he would always say "Why don't you go live with your mother!" "Why am I the bad guy?" It's exhausting.
My dad obviously has a smoking and drinking problem. My mom was strict about the smell of smoke in the house but after she left, my dad didn't care and would smoke indoors and his room was full of askes. A teacher even asked me one day if I was smoking because I came to school smelling like smoke. My dad could easily drink 1.5 litres of alcohol everyday. He would start drinking early in the morning untill he went to sleep so he's never sober. It made me and my brother not want to hang out with him, which made my dad mad.
My dad was emotionally abusive. He never physically hurt us, but his words has a huge impact on us. My dad is the cause of our trust issues, our paranoia, and our insecurities.
We are not allowed to make jokes. We are not allowed to have friends over. We are not allowed to go out with friends. We are not allowed to take part in school activities. We are not allowed to be children. We are not allowed to talk seriously with him. We are not allowed to have problems.
I hate my dad, and I'm sure he hates us as well.
I just finished highschool, so you might think I can finally start my own life, but no, I'm not allowed to leave. I'm not allowed to go to uni. I'm not allowed to get a driver's license.
I'm stuck here

It is worth remembering precisely why Phoenix supporters are much more tolerant of the APL than some other clubs - because the APL is not literally trying to "constructively dismiss" us from the competition.
https://aleagues.com.au/news/wellington-phoenix-david-dome-interview-semi-final-melbourne-victory-save-the-nix-2015/

Imagine the A-Leagues without the Wellington Phoenix. In 2015, it was a reality that almost came to pass.
Nearly a decade on it’s hard to envisage; the club is on the brink of its first Grand Final, with more than 30,000 fans expected to pass through the gates for Saturday night’s blockbuster Semi-Final against Melbourne Victory.
But nine years ago, Wellington was a club on its knees.
Just weeks before the start of the 2015-16 season, Football Federation Australia denied the Phoenix a 10-year license extension and David Gallop, chief executive of the league’s governing body, delivered a crushing assessment of the situation which still rings in the ears of those involved at the club today:
“We’re ambitious for the growth of the A-League. You can’t expect to squat on a licence in our competition.”
Those who wanted Wellington gone from the league in 2015 made their voices heard. But those who wanted to save the Nix spoke louder.
David Dome was the General Manager of the club at the time, and still is today.
“We haven’t forgotten that,” Dome told aleagues.com.au. “It comes up every now and then: ‘squatting’. I said to the Yellow Fever, you should make a banner: #Squatting!”
It’s a memory of a bleak moment in Phoenix history retold with the typical humour and resilient tone you come to expect after speaking to enough people at the club, battle-hardened but never defeated.
This is the story of how a club on the brink was saved – not for the first time – and the subsequent events that have led Wellington to the cusp of the promised land.
“I can tell you without a word of a lie, there was not one single club in the A-League who wanted the Phoenix out at that time,” Dome recalled.
“All the other clubs were supportive of the Phoenix… they could not understand why (FFA) were trying to get rid of clubs. There are always clubs that are financially challenged, and Wellington Phoenix were not one of the clubs that were draining resources from the centre.
“Why were we asked to question our survival, our existence in the league, when we were not taking money out of the centre when other clubs were? Other clubs understood that.
“Looking back on it now, there was always that sense that we were in the right, that what the club was bringing to the league was valuable, and it was something that anyone from the outside would be saying: that club is valuable to the league, and adds something to the league. It was nonsensical to be questioning our existence.”
The ‘Save the Nix’ campaign began in November, 2015. The Yellow Fever – the club’s active supporter base – led the charge and local councillors and MPs lent their voices to the cause.
“People came out of the woodwork to support the club in that time,” he said. “I remember one of the things we did was put a whole lot of scarves around the city to highlight the fact the Phoenix was being questioned.“I can tell you without a word of a lie, there was not one single club in the A-League who wanted the Phoenix out at that time,” Dome recalled.
“All the other clubs were supportive of the Phoenix… they could not understand why (FFA) were trying to get rid of clubs. There are always clubs that are financially challenged, and Wellington Phoenix were not one of the clubs that were draining resources from the centre.
“Why were we asked to question our survival, our existence in the league, when we were not taking money out of the centre when other clubs were? Other clubs understood that.
“Looking back on it now, there was always that sense that we were in the right, that what the club was bringing to the league was valuable, and it was something that anyone from the outside would be saying: that club is valuable to the league, and adds something to the league. It was nonsensical to be questioning our existence.”
The ‘Save the Nix’ campaign began in November, 2015. The Yellow Fever – the club’s active supporter base – led the charge and local councillors and MPs lent their voices to the cause.
“People came out of the woodwork to support the club in that time,” he said. “I remember one of the things we did was put a whole lot of scarves around the city to highlight the fact the Phoenix was being questioned.
“Shane Harmon, the CEO of Sky Stadium, was climbing in one of the fountains putting up scarves to highlight the challenge in front of the club.
“It certainly did galvanise the fanbase, not that it wasn’t before that… and it wasn’t easy.
“You can’t paper over that and say it wasn’t a challenge because, of course, it was a challenge. But what kept us going was the fans. It united the fan group. They showed their support for the club in a very overt way. But we also had a lot of fans from Australia and the other clubs coming out in support of the Wellington Phoenix.”

let me just preface this by saying if you take the time to read this all and respond, thank you so much. i really appreciate it. sorry its so long
Ok so, to start off I think ive always had a sort of idealistic view regarding love and romance. i always wanted to meet some guy that i get super close to and then we start dating just because he happens to be gay or bi, the way straight people are able to find their partners. that to me feels like the actual way to find someone. ive tried dating apps and things before, but ive never gone past pure hookups/one night stands because i just hate the idea of seeking out a relationship so badly. it always has just felt wrong to me and i didnt like trying to make genuine connections over apps. and i honestly dont feel that strong of a desire to be in a relationship generally.
but i started to think that if i didnt want to be single for my entire life id have to suck it up and settle. i still couldnt bring myself to actually try on the apps though, but i thought my problems might have been solved when i met my current best friend. ive never been as close to anyone before as i am to him right now. we just vibe perfectly. were the exact same in the places where it matters but different in all the places that make the relationship exciting. we can talk forever about anything, and best of all, he's actually bi (although only out to me).
earlier this semester he pretty much singlehandedly saved me from a pretty dark place. i transferred to our current school, and as such it was much harder to make friends. i had people i talked to but it was mostly just acquaintances/drinking buddies. i was really lacking a serious friend group and it was starting to get to me. but he started dragging me to literally everything he went to, and basically forcefully adopted me into his group lol. and i genuinely love this friend group, i feel like i finally found my people. but that's not all im talking about when i say he saved me from a dark place. we met while pledging for a frat together, although i ended up dropping. someone else we were pledging with ended up finding out i was gay and developed some bizarre homophobic obsession with me that followed into second semester. my friend ended up dealing with him for me and even got him kicked out of a club he joined that we both were already in.
since then, he's done a lot of other things purely to take care of me/solve my problems. ive never had a friend like that before. ive gotten the chance to stand up for him now once which makes me happy i could repay some of what hes done but id like to be able to do more. regardless i think its helped make us even closer.
he started sleeping at my place a lot. we started meeting up before any event and showing up together. i started developing feelings. i didnt want a relationship generally, but i really wanted one with him. it was different. but i knew i had to make a move soon or he would get snatched up by some girl. just speaking bluntly, he's super hot and there was a grace period here since he had recently gotten out of a long term relationship.
one night i left a party early because i was feeling sick and he called and asked if he could just leave too and come watch a movie with me or something. i ended up saying no because i was really feeling shitty (i have some health issues that were acting up) but when i woke up the next morning i had 7 missed drunk calls from him. after this, i thought i genuinely had a chance, so i wanted to try to build up the courage to tell him how i felt.
the night i was going to, though, he told me something first. he told me this girl he was really good friends with confessed her feelings for him. now i was almost sure this girl had feelings for him (and he was too), but i wasnt worried. he had told me before he wasnt interested in her. but now, he still wasnt sure but was willing to "see where it went."
this was really painful but i wanted to be a good friend, so i just acted like everything was normal. they started "seeing where it goes" and now its all but official. but heres the thing; we've gotten way closer too since then. the three of us (me, him, and his girl) started hanging out all the time. me and the girl are actually good friends now, and we're pretty similar (she's even commented on this), which makes the situation even weirder. originally, he was inviting me to lots of things the two of them were originally planning on doing together, although thats kinda stopped now.
a few weeks ago he told me he was planning on ending his relationship with her before summer started as he wasnt ready for one yet. and that he was happy he was willing to do that as he felt like that was good character development for him. but despite that there was no question whether or not he liked her anymore. he didnt originally but he does now. theyve also had two close to relationship ending issues already but they managed to resolve both of them. for one of them, they decided to make it official and then undid it in under 24 hours.
but he changed his mind, he decided he wants to continue it with her. honestly, theyre a cute couple. people want them to succeed and i probably would too if i were in someone elses shoes. but, now he literally lives at my apartment. he started staying over every single night, i genuinely dont know the last time he slept at his place. hes asked me to cuddle and stuff like that. the other night though, i feel like i fumbled pretty bad. he passed out on my couch so i went to get a blanket for him. that woke him up and he told me to join him. this is a small couch, if i were to join him (which im not sure if its even possible), we would have to be basically on top of each other, fully spooning. i got too nervous and just said something along the lines of i didnt know how i didnt think there was enough space. i really regret this. the literal day after she hard launched him (on her private instagram but still), and he commented with a 😗 emoji.
were officially moving in together in about a month, but i wont see him until then. hes made comments about how this next month is gonna suck because he doesnt know what hes gonna do without coming to my apartment twice a day (even though hes literally gonna be on vacation lol). the girl is gone for the summer so theyll be long distance for the next 3 months. he has really bad experiences with a long distance relationship before though.
i think my plan as of right now is, i need to try to move on but im probably gonna see him in about a week and ill ask him then how its going with her. or if i dont get a chance then ill ask him sometime after we move in together in a month. if he says theyre official/hes wanting to make it official, ill ask him if hes 100% sure thats what he really wants and remind him about the things hes said to me earlier. because honestly, as a friend, if this relationship with her is gonna end badly i think its the last thing he needs. both of the issues theyve had are related to things shes done thats kind of brought up trauma from past relationships of his (during the issue they had where they changed their status back to "exclusive unofficial situationship" i guess is what you would call it he ended up telling her she was worse than his ex), so i think another bad experience would be super bad for him. especially with her as she was a close friend before.
i know i have to move on though. its just really hard. i dont know if im going to be able to. i might try to go back on apps but it just feels like settling even more now. i think the kind of romance i want is just impossible for a gay guy though. im in college, supposed to be one of if not the most progressive colleges in the world, and despite at this point having a lot of friends and acquaintances hes the only lgbt guy i know here. i even had a homophobic bully lol. oh well

From my Fetlife. Prepare for cringefest. Tell me your thoughts about my cringe.
Hello, everyone. I'd like to introduce myself to you.
Ever since I turned 20, I've been dreaming of becoming another woman's housewife (or, as I like to say, a "wifey"), but I've never exactly known how to make it become a reality. I've always been an extremely submissive person and life hasn't treated me very well both for being like that and for trying not to be like that. I score extremely highly in agreeableness and I take great pleasure in serving those I care for. Specifically and preferably, a woman I love and who also loves me. Today, I'm looking for a romantic, ordinary and 100% monogamous relationship with a woman, but one that includes the element of dominance and submission and the possibility of me being her full-time housewife. While she works, I take care of the house. When she comes home, I take care of her. Always very lovingly and completely given to her body and soul as well as to the household's domestic duties. In practice, I want to be the woman in the relationship. I want to go far beyond the basics such as cooking and cleaning: I want to be responsible for doing her nails, her make-up and giving her massages whenever she wants them. I want to learn to cook everything she likes to eat. Maybe even learn gardening to take care of her plants. Perhaps the origin of this is an innate need of mine to be necessary and useful to someone and I guess that is how it is.
Inevitably, I believe this relationship would also include elements of platonic worship. The reason for this is that I have always harboured an adoration for the female figure, the female energy, the female essence and the female appearance. None of this is sexual. In fact, I feel that this element of platonic worship is so strong that I would even feel uncomfortable seeing my dominating partner naked because it would make me feel the same dirty lust for her that I'd feel for porn actresses when I'd watch their movies and I feel that this would be disrespectful to her and to what her image represents to me. This adoration for the female figure is also one of the reasons for my gender transition, which began in September of 2023. I admire the feminine image so much that I want to make it a part of me. I don't like being a man, looking like a man, being treated like a man, behaving like a man and, God fobid, dealing with masculine gender roles. I have an enormous need to feminize my gender expression because that's what makes me happy.
For reasons that are far beyond my control and that may sound cheesy, I always end up seeing women whom I find beautiful to be superior to me. Not in a bad way, but simply in a kind of hierarchy where I'm below them. So, for some reason, I feel fulfilled imagining myself serving them in a completely devoted way. In a way, I can sum myself up as a human Golden Retriever in terms of loyalty, perhaps to pathological levels. Such a level of unexplored and repressed loyalty that I can easily imagine myself getting so deeply involved with the right woman and creating an emotional bond so indestructible that I would go as far as burying a body with her without giving it a second thought. It's as if there were a hurricane inside me waiting for the ideal conditions to form and destroy everything in its path to reach its goal. My goal is domestic servitude within a romantic relationship and this storm inside me will only grow larger and larger over time. I don't see much value in ordinary work as in working for a company. I only see meaning and purpose in domestic work in a relationship for and with a woman I love with great obedience, dedication, submission and gratitude. I don't see myself as a leader, but as someone to be led.
I come from a place where I suffered a lot of verbal abuse directed at my appearance for being too thin and I see that the world today is full of evil people with an evil intent who get off at doing evil things and also of people who omit themselves when they observe evil being done and end up becoming accomplices by omission. All of this makes me really want to put myself in a kind of safe space with someone trustworthy where I don't have to be constantly watching over my shoulder in order to check whether there already are vultures circling me from above waiting for the ideal moment to pounce. I look like an easy victim for predators and I've always attracted them without any difficulty, unfortunately. I am soft and highly sought by them. I want to be able, if only for a few hours, to let my guard down completely knowing that I'm not in danger and that I'm with someone well-intending who, at worst, doesn't wish me harm and, at best, actively cares about my well-being. In other words, a relationship like any other. I very much want and like the idea of giving myself body and soul to a woman who has consideration for me, for whom I have value and who is in charge of the relationship (FLR). As I said, I want to put myself in a situation of total vulnerability in a controlled and safe environment with a person I can trust and who means well. I want to put myself below them in every situation and always put them before myself unconditionally. I want to live under domestic servitude, as well as having a romantic, ordinary, monogamous relationship like any other. If there's no love, there's no point. I can't explain exactly what I feel, but I see this dynamic as the most honest way I can express love to my owner, mistress and friend. This is the rawest and most sincere manifestation of my personality. And please don't get me wrong: I'm not here trying to "cure" myself through BDSM or draw attention to myself by talking about my problems that nobody cares about. I'm just putting all this into context and explaining objective reality as it is, that's all.
I have no idea how I'm going to fulfill this dream and where I'm going to find this woman. I see a lot of profiles here of dommes who are only in it for fetishistic reasons and to make money and that makes me a little sad. But I understand, since a relationship can end up being a very big responsibility and many women don't want this kind of burden in their lives. Not to mention that the temptation of financial gain must be too great for them not to take advantage of. And in an economy like this, I think it will be considerably difficult to find a woman who will want to keep someone at home without generating income just taking care of the household chores. The odds don't seem to be in my favor and the entire setting seems less than ideal.
I feel disgusted by and abhor any fetish scenario that involves the element of being a housewife, maid and the like, especially if it includes elements of humiliation for carrying out such activity. I understand that for some it can be pleasurable, but for me it's despicable. I can't associate being a housewife with something humiliating and if that's your intention with me, don't get in touch. As for sexual activity in general in a relationship, I don't have much to say. Hormone replacement therapy completely obliterated my libido and I see no purpose in any activity that promotes my sexual pleasure. To all intents and purposes, I've become somewhat asexual. I'd accept being penetrated by my domme if she wanted to, since I'd put her wishes before my own, but I feel it's hardly something I'd ask for. I'm much more interested in the emotional side of the relationship than the sexual.
Still on the subject of sexuality, I feel that the word "virgin" isn't accurate enough to describe myself. This word is used to refer to people who have never had sex, which is my case, but I've also never had any other intimate experience with a woman. It's not that I've never had sex, I've never even hugged a woman in bed. I've barely experienced any degree of intimacy with a woman before. I suppose this complete lack of sexual experience will be viewed in a very bad light by the women I seek, but I don't think there's much I can do about it. I have no interest in having these first experiences with, for example, a prostitute because I'm looking for a real emotional connection in a legitimate relationship. I'm a romantic and I have no choice but to wait.
I can't imagine a life in which I allow this dream not to come true. It can't not happen. If it doesn't, I'll have an extremely bitter deathbed full of regrets.
When it comes to the woman I'm looking for, I only have three demands: don't be a drug user (cigarretes included), be a gentle domme and unconditionally monogamous.
My gratitude for you will be eternal and my debt to you unpayable.
I hope the woman I'm looking for is out there waiting to be found.
kool4kats hi, what ya think?

As a maintenance man, I’ve definitely seen my fair share of oddities in peoples homes. However, the story I’m about to tell you is definitely one that is new to me.
So as I stated before I work in maintenance. Commercial and residential. Been doing it almost 10 years now. Everyday is something new and that’s why I love this job. Helping people. Seeing their smiles whenever something that was broke is fixed and they are able to go about life normally again. It really makes my heart swell.
The incident in question happened on a day that started out like any other day. I got to work, went into my office, started some coffee and began checking over my workload for the day.
My first work order for the day was in a unit that had a new resident in it. I have yet to meet the young lady in question so as procedure states I gave her a call to let her know I would be stopping by today to take care of the issue she submitted. She had a clogged sink, which, in the years of doing this I know isn’t going to be a long job so best to knock it out early.
When she answered her phone she sounded out of breath. “Hello?” “Good morning Ms. [redacted]. My name is Jimmy the maintenance tech here at [redacted] I was wondering if I could come by and take a look at your sink for you this morning?” There was a long pause. So long I had to see if she was still there.
“Ms. [redacted]?” “Yes! ….I mean yes. You can come by this morning. Umm… yes. That’s fine.” “GREAT!” I respond. “I will be up in about 30 minutes. See you soon!”
I hung up and finished the coffee I had poured while on the phone with her and began gathering any tools I may need for the job.
About 40 minutes later I was standing on her porch and knocking on her door. “Ms.[redacted]? It’s Jimmy with maintenance.” A loud clatter could be heard from the other side of the door before a petite young lady snatched the door open looking very distraught.
“Is everything ok? I can come back later if you..” “No no. You can come in now” she cut me off. “It’s the kitchen sink, right here.” Pointing just passed the threshold into the kitchen. I nod and make my way in closing the door behind me.
I’ll save you the boredom of the explanation of how I fixed the leak but regardless, it was fixed. The odd thing was that she stood there in the doorway to the kitchen the entire time. Not necessarily watching me but seemingly blocking me from the rest of the house.
Although I thought she was acting odd it is not in my job description to be a psychiatrist to people. I fix their sinks, not their heads. I gave her a clean bill of health for her sink and said my goodbyes.
Two days later I get another service request from the same unit. If there is anyone out there familiar with RealPage you know that there is the section that the resident can fill in what the issue is. This one simply said “Other- see comments.” Under the comments says “Please help.”
I make my way back up to her unit to investigate the problem. I was not ready for what was waiting on me on the other side of the door.
A rush to the door and a breathless, petite woman stands in front of me.
Good morning Ms. [redacted]. What seems to be the issue. She takes a deep breath, “I have another clog.” “Oh no. Where is it? Let me take a look so I can go grab my…” Before I knew it she had snatched me inside by my shirt and slammed the door behind us. “You have been extremely nice and so willing to help since I’ve been here.” Even though I had only been here once. “You seem like a really great and trustworthy guy.” “Thank you.” I say trying to hide the shock and uneasy feeling I felt creeping up my gut.
“I have something very important I need your help with. Follow me.” With that she started back towards the steps and beckoned me to follow her. Once at the top of the steps I could see into the bathroom and could see this was going to be much bigger than even I was ready for.

As a maintenance man, I’ve definitely seen my fair share of oddities in peoples homes. However, the story I’m about to tell you is definitely one that is new to me.
So as I stated before I work in maintenance. Commercial and residential. Been doing it almost 10 years now. Everyday is something new and that’s why I love this job. Helping people. Seeing their smiles whenever something that was broke is fixed and they are able to go about life normally again. It really makes my heart swell.
The incident in question happened on a day that started out like any other day. I got to work, went into my office, started some coffee and began checking over my workload for the day.
My first work order for the day was in a unit that had a new resident in it. I have yet to meet the young lady in question so as procedure states I gave her a call to let her know I would be stopping by today to take care of the issue she submitted. She had a clogged sink, which, in the years of doing this I know isn’t going to be a long job so best to knock it out early.
When she answered her phone she sounded out of breath. “Hello?” “Good morning Ms. [redacted]. My name is Jimmy the maintenance tech here at [redacted] I was wondering if I could come by and take a look at your sink for you this morning?” There was a long pause. So long I had to see if she was still there.
“Ms. [redacted]?” “Yes! ….I mean yes. You can come by this morning. Umm… yes. That’s fine.” “GREAT!” I respond. “I will be up in about 30 minutes. See you soon!”
I hung up and finished the coffee I had poured while on the phone with her and began gathering any tools I may need for the job.
About 40 minutes later I was standing on her porch and knocking on her door. “Ms.[redacted]? It’s Jimmy with maintenance.” A loud clatter could be heard from the other side of the door before a petite young lady snatched the door open looking very distraught.
“Is everything ok? I can come back later if you..” “No no. You can come in now” she cut me off. “It’s the kitchen sink, right here.” Pointing just passed the threshold into the kitchen. I nod and make my way in closing the door behind me.
I’ll save you the boredom of the explanation of how I fixed the leak but regardless, it was fixed. The odd thing was that she stood there in the doorway to the kitchen the entire time. Not necessarily watching me but seemingly blocking me from the rest of the house.
Although I thought she was acting odd it is not in my job description to be a psychiatrist to people. I fix their sinks, not their heads. I gave her a clean bill of health for her sink and said my goodbyes.
Two days later I get another service request from the same unit. If there is anyone out there familiar with RealPage you know that there is the section that the resident can fill in what the issue is. This one simply said “Other- see comments.” Under the comments says “Please help.”
I make my way back up to her unit to investigate the problem. I was not ready for what was waiting on me on the other side of the door.
A rush to the door and a breathless, petite woman stands in front of me.
Good morning Ms. [redacted]. What seems to be the issue. She takes a deep breath, “I have another clog.” “Oh no. Where is it? Let me take a look so I can go grab my…” Before I knew it she had snatched me inside by my shirt and slammed the door behind us. “You have been extremely nice and so willing to help since I’ve been here.” Even though I had only been here once. “You seem like a really great and trustworthy guy.” “Thank you.” I say trying to hide the shock and uneasy feeling I felt creeping up my gut.
“I have something very important I need your help with. Follow me.” With that she started back towards the steps and beckoned me to follow her. Once at the top of the steps I could see into the bathroom and could see this was going to be much bigger than even I was ready for.

I hope I can get some help here on this. I want to make use of the 12VHPR port on my PSU to use it as a third PCI for the GPU, since I have a thermal grizzly wireview to change it to 3 8-pin PCIe.
Now my GPU came with a 4-way PCI to 12VHPR connector, since the 12VHPR is reversible I should be able to plug it into the port on the PSU, correct? However, since the 8-pin pci cables are not reversible I would need a cable with the standard pci pinout on the gpu side also on the other side to fit the adapter? Which should be easy to make especially since I could change an existing PCIe cable, and the manufacturer does not matter since I will change it to the same pinout as gpu side.
Any ideas if this should work, or did I miss something here? Mostly Im worried about the adapter being 4-way and thus maybe not relaying enought power to one output (probably not how they work, please correct me)? Furthermore, shouldn't you be able to use a daisychain pci cable and change the PSU side to the GPU pci pinout to "collect" two of the adapter ports?
Hopefully someone can enlighten me, tell me where to post this instead. Thanks!

I feel like this is a thing a lot of people are bringing up, so I wanna hear what other people think and get their perspectives and why I guess?
We’ve seen artist fall from grace multiple times but (please correct me if I’m wrong) I don’t think there’s ever been another rapper accused of the things Drake has been accused of AS BIG AS HE IS and we’ve seen an aftermath from it. This is an actual first which is cool but brings a valid question what happens to his career?
I feel like the closest you get to is Chris Brown but chris straight up admitted guilt, apologized and pandered to make up for what he did to where he is now. (don’t really have an opinion on him either way, I don’t listen to him) but Drake is accusing Kendrick of Chris brown-esque crimes. This has been proven to be bounced back from.
We’ve seen how much this beef has expanded to people outside of the culture and into the mainstream. I feel like that’s what Kendrick actually wanted at the end of the day. Everyone talking about and making fun of this guy. Everyone who puts on a drake song is going to be under hell fire from someone telling them about what he has done and evidence can be physically looked at of drakes accusations.
I feel like slowly but surely the fan bases will die out, men, women, high schoolers, soccer moms, college kids, sporting events, eventually we will finally get the video title “Where is Drake now?” Or “The Downfall of Drake”
Usually just comment cuz anything I wanna post is a grip to read but 🤾🏾

First thing's first, they are not wearing the Augsburg chausses. I mean, there is a possibility that they could be, but I've seen the Augsburg chausses on Henry when equipped and they don't look anywhere near as striking.
I think at this point it is pretty much clear that whatever these lords are wearing, there is no wearable version in the vanilla game that Henry can equip.
I was just wondering if anyone has found out what the name of that specific leg armour is? I don't know how it works with modding and datamining and digging through game files. Maybe there is a mod that lets you wear it or there is some detail given in a mod that tells you what it's called?
It's just curiosity nothing else. I've looked around. But the only answers I have come across are that they are the Augsburg chausses, which I believe is incorrect. They are such STRIKING pieces of armour I really wish that you could get them in the game.

I run an small eBay business and utilize pretty much all the main shipping companies. Albeit UPS is probably the one I use the least but that’s besides the point.
My business is still on the small side so I often grab boxes from stores just to save some money. Usually if they have any markings on them I just scratch them out.
Anyways, I was dropping off 2 items that day both in the same kind of box. The lady referred to them as “product boxes” because I guess they were boxes that had things in them that came in bigger boxes. Idfk, I’m just repeating what she told me. The box wasn’t “shipped with a label previously” so I couldn’t use it. How does that make any fucking sense?
She took the first one no problem, which was the same kind of box, but when I gave her the second one she went on and on about how I couldn’t use that box because of the whole “product box” thing i mentioned above.
Keep in mind these boxes are literally just normal boxes. I scratched some things out but otherwise it was literally just a normal box. I’ve used all 3 main shipping services and not a single one has ever gotten so upset over the box I was using. Matter of fact, no one has even questioned me on the box. I’ve even shipped things in the same kind of boxes through UPS at the same location and no one has said anything to me.
I hate being that guy because I get it, I’ve worked in retail in the past, but how are you gonna tell me I can’t use a normal box? After arguing for about 5 minutes she just gave up and put the label on it.
Is there any validity to what the employee was talking about? I just found it extremely strange. Regardless I don’t think I’ll use UPS again unless I have no other choice but I was curious if anyone else has had this issue.

At the world’s top college of magic and technology, every day brings a new discovery -and a new disaster. The advanced experiments of the college students tend to be both ambitious and apocalyptic, with the end of the world only prevented by a mysterious time loop, and a small handful of students who retain their memories.
Surviving the loops was hard enough, but now, in his senior year, Vell Harlan must take charge of them, and deal with the fact that the whole world now knows his secrets. Everyone knows about Vell’s death and resurrection, along with the divine game he is a part of. Now Vell must contend with overly curious scientists and evil billionaires hungry for divine power while the daily doomsday cycle bombards him with terrorists, talking elephants, and the Grim Reaper himself -but if he can endure it all, the Last Goddess’s game promises the ultimate prize: power over life itself.
[Previous Chapter][Patreon][Cover Art]
“Four years on and the headache still sucks,” Vell groaned to himself.
Though most of the loopers had managed to make it to midnight alive, they had nothing to show for it but headaches. They had not succeeded in digging Cane out of the rubble, or investigating his apparent ghost theory in any other way. That was a complication, but not a fatal one. They had some leads to work with, at least, and Vell knew where to get started on the ghost angle. Vell gladly made the call that would get them started.
“Goooooood morning Mr. Harlan,” Harley chimed. “What’s happening?”
“Frog invasions, among other problems,” Vell grumbled.
“Oh, that’s a time loop headache if I ever heard it,” Harley said. She’d run into that affliction more than a few times.
“Yeah, it’s not great,” Vell said. “Listen, do you still have Garrett’s number?”
“Ooh, ghost problems, eh?” Harley said. “I’ll text it to you.”
“Thanks. I kind of got to get right to it, so I’ll have to give you the details later, alright? Love you, Harley.”
“Love you too, bud,” Harley said. “Say hi to Garret for me.”
Vell hung up the first call and braced himself for the second. He liked Garret, but he could also be a lot to deal with -a fact well-demonstrated by the phone call beginning with Garret’s theme music blaring over the phone. Once the bombastic rock and roll stopped, Vell was disappointed to hear a mechanical beep indicate the start of an answering machine message.
“Hi, you’ve reached Garret Geist, Ghost Getter,” the message said, in Garrett’s usual southern california drawl. “I’m currently on a long-term submersible mission to exorcise the ghosts of shipwreck victims who’ve been trapped undersea for centuries.”
“What?”
Vell knew it was a recording, but needed to voice his offense anyway. It was hard to truly be mad knowing Garrett was doing something so incredibly heroic, though.
“I should be back to the surface and ready to help in a few days, so please leave a message and I’ll get to you as soon as I can!”
The automated message clicked again and fell silent. Vell hung up the phone and let out a low groan of despair.
“Okay, we’re not screwed yet,” Vell said. “Just need to wait a bit.”
Vell brushed his teeth and rushed through breakfast, and then, right on cue, heard a knock on his door. He whipped it open to find a bothersome scientist once again at his door.
“Hi, good morning,” Vell said, as he opened the door. “You here to bother me about Quenay?”
“I- uh, I have some very interesting theories.”
“I’m sure you do,” Vell said. “If you can just hold on one second…”
Vell paused and waited. The bothersome student also waited, at least for a few seconds.
“What exactly are we waiting for?”
“This.”
Cane grabbed the student by the collar and yanked them away from the door. Vell invited him in and slammed the door shut behind them to really drive the point home.
“Thank you for that,” Vell said. “Did you need something?”
“Just to talk to you,” Cane said. “I was trying to get people together to hang out tonight. Figured you’d want in, if you’re not too busy.”
“I could probably make it, I just have to…”
Vell froze. He really should’ve come up with these lies in advance.
“You good, Vell?”
“I, uh, sorry, just losing track of things, mentally,” Vell said. “I’ve had a lot of people, uh, ask me for help with things.”
“What kind of things?” Cane said. “You need a hand?”
“Maybe.”
Vell contemplated how to proceed for a moment, and then figured he’d probably built up enough good will with Cane over the past four years he could just dive right in.
“You ever heard about frog ghosts?”
“Yeah,” Cane said, without so much as blinking.
“Oh, cool,” Vell said. “What about them?”
“Well, hold on, are you talking about frog ghosts as in the ghost of frogs, or a ghost related to frogs?”
“Either or, I guess?”
“Okay, because I don’t know anything about any ghostly frogs,” Cane said. “There is supposedly the ghost of a guy obsessed with frogs on campus, though.”
“Interesting. Tell me about the frog guy.”
“I don’t know all the details, it was kind of an urban legend even when my brother came here about a decade back,” Cane said. “All he ever told me was the this frog-obsessed sophomore died while studying, and he haunts the basement of the sophomore dorms, I guess. ‘Some say you can still hear faint croaking in the basement’ and all that horror story shit.”
“Interesting,” Vell said, again. “Let me look into that and we’ll circle back later, alright? I gotta go, see you.”
“Vell-”
“Sorry, kind of in a hurry, bud,” Vell said, as he left and shut the door behind.
“This is your dorm, dude,” Cane said.
***
“You were not exaggerating about this headache,” Alex said.
“We warned you,” Kim said. “Man, it’s almost better to die.”
“How do you have a headache, you’re made of metal!”
“It’s complicated,” Kim said. Her synthetic body did not spare her from the time loop headache, no matter how she rebuilt herself.
“Good morning everyone,” Helena said, as she whacked the door open with a crutch. “What did I miss?”
“Quiet down a little, please” Hawke said.
“Why?”
“Do you not have a headache too?”
“No, I died pretty early,” Helena said. “Got a frog on me.”
“You died from a frog touching you? What condition do you have that causes that?”
“Well it was a poison dart frog, so I guess ‘being alive’,” Helena said. Samson pursed his lips and said nothing. “What did you all get up to while I was busy being dead?”
“Vell found out the frogs were summoned by a weird frog-obsessed ghost,” Hawke said. “He apparently knows a guy who might be able to help.”
The loopers then proceeded to relax and chat about frogs, ghosts, and other miscellaneous topics for about seven minutes, which made it a lot less dramatic when Vell barged in and announced Garret would be unable to help.
“Oh come on,” Kim snapped. “What’s the point of knowing a ghost hunter if he never helps hunt ghosts?”
“He’s on some undersea mission to rescue lost souls,” Vell said. “Which makes it really hard to be mad at him.”
“And yet I manage,” Kim said. She didn’t begrudge Garret personally, but she had been hoping for their first easy win of the year. All the apocalypses thus far had been a major pain in the ass.
“Aren’t you people supposed to be able to handle things like this?”
“Yes, Alex, and we will,” Vell said. “Just would’ve been nice to have a professional on the job.”
“I’ll get the ghostbusting stuff ready,” Hawke sighed. He would’ve loved a chance to outsource their daily nonsense.
“Keep it on standby for now,” Vell said. “Ghosts have unfinished business or regrets. If we can help our ghost deal with whatever frog-related business he’s got going on, maybe we can fix this without having to bust anyone.”
“That’s your plan?” Alex said. “Be nice to the ghost that crushed a building and hope it goes away?”
“Yes,” Vell said, with a completely straight face. “And busting is plan B.”
“Bustin’ makes me feel good,” Hawke sang, as he grabbed all their various ghostbusting gear.
“True professionals at work,” Alex scoffed. Everyone else rolled their eyes and got back to work.
“Vell is an old pro at being nice to people,” Kim said. “Just ask Helena’s sister.”
“Don’t pat yourself on the back, Joan’s incredibly susceptible to manipulation,” Helena said. It was disturbing she’d say that, and even more disturbing she knew that. “That said, anyone dumb enough to get stuck as a ghost for decades will probably buy into your routine just as easily.”
“Thanks for your input,” Vell said. “I’m just going to go ahead and get started.”
He said that both because it was important and because it was an excuse to get away from Alex and Helena faster.
“Need any backup?” Samson asked, for similar reasons.
“I’ll check it out solo first,” Vell said. Historically speaking, he was the best people-pleaser, a dubious honor at best, but one that came in handy when dealing with a frog-summoning ghost. “I’ll let you know if I need backup.”
“Or busting,” Hawke said.
“Or busting,” Vell agreed. “I have to find out where the ghost is, for starters. I’ll be in touch soon.”
***
Finding the lair of the ghost was the first hurdle. As it turned out, the sophomore dorms had a lot of basements. Every building on campus had a lot of basements, so Vell was not all that surprised. At least these basements didn’t have booby traps or old experiment equipment in them. They mostly just had a lot of junk. Vell kicked aside some old food wrappers and scanned the room.
“Why do people treat these empty rooms like dumping grounds?”
“People are usually different when they think no one is watching.”
Vell whipped around and saw a transparent head poking through one of the nearby walls. A ghost if Vell had ever seen one.
“Oh, hi,” Vell said. “Uh, weird question, how do you feel about frogs?”
“I’m ambivalent at best,” the ghost said. “Are you looking for the frog guy? Because he haunts two rooms over.”
The ghost pointed to the right, down the hall, and Vell looked that way.
“Thanks,” Vell said. He took a few steps towards the door before spinning around to face the other ghost again. “Uh, do you need any help like, moving on? Finishing unfinished business?”
“Nah, we get wifi down here, so I don’t mind just chilling,” the ghost said. “Thanks for offering though.”
The ghost drew back into the wall and vanished from sight. While Vell was painfully curious as to how a ghost accessed wifi, he decided it was time to move on. The frog ghost was apparently close by, after all.
Vell followed the wifi ghost’s directions and hopped two doors down, barging into a subterranean room that was uncomfortably moist and smelled of mud and rainwater. Condensation dripped from the ceiling and onto Vell’s back, sending an unpleasant shiver down his spine. Unlike other rooms, this one was completely free of any garbage, but Vell took no comfort in that.
“Hello? Anybody home?”
A chill ran down Vell’s spine that definitely was not another drop of water. He waited two seconds, took a deep breath, and turned around.
“Hello.”
Vell was just inches away from another transparent face. This one had a slight green tint, with wide set eyes and a broad, flat mouth. Vell wondered if the similarities to a frog had been there during this person’s life, or if they just liked frogs so much their ghost had slowly shifted to reflect their passion.
“Hey! Hi, uh, nice to meet you,” Vell mumbled. “I’m Vell.”
“I’m Raine.”
“Neat, nice name,” Vell said. If Raine noticed the awkward hesitation in the compliment, he didn’t show it. “So, uh, I was wondering, well, I heard you were the guy to ask about frogs.”
The already wide eyes of the ghost got even wider, and visible excitement trembled through their spectral form. Vell began to think he may have made a mistake.
***
“So even though it’s the biggest frog in the America’s, the helmeted water toad is still only half the size of the Goliath frog,” Raine said. “Which must be wild for the helmeted water toad. Could you imagine crossing an ocean and finding out the people who live there are literally twice your size?”
“Must be pretty mindblowing, yeah,” Vell said.
“And that’s not even going into the real extremes,” Raine said. “Do you remember our pal P. Amauensis?”
“How could I forget,” Vell said, about something he had definitely forgotten.
“Not just the world’s smallest frog, but maybe the world’s smallest vertebrate,” Raine said. “Only seven point seven millimeters long, a literal fraction of the Goliath frog! Could you imagine meeting someone who’s only as big as your toe?”
“I actually did, once,” Vell said. “Shrink ray.”
“Oh. Was...was it weird?”
“A little,” Vell said.
“Wow. You almost know what it’s like to be a Goliath frog meeting a P. Amauensis,” Raine said. “I’m so jealous.”
“Yeah, I’ve done a lot of interesting stuff,” Vell said. “What about you, what’d you get up to when you weren’t studying frogs?”
Raine tilted his spectral head and stared blankly at Vell.
“You did do things other than study frogs, right?”
“Not if I could help it,” Raine said.
“Okay, uh...what did you like to eat?”
“Oh, I just ate food whenever I was hungry,” Raine said. “What I really liked to do was gather samples of different bugs and other frog dietary staples, so I could try to get a sense of their diet for myself.”
“Like, cooked bugs, or just raw, living bugs,” Vell said. He’d eaten a few different varieties of cooked bugs, just for the experience, but couldn’t imagine eating raw insects.
“If I could find them, yeah, live ones,” Raine said. “It got pretty hard after I got banned from the entomology department.”
“That’d do it,” Vell said. “So, did you, uh, go swimming a lot?”
“Oh yeah, all the time,” Raine said. “Until I got banned from the pools too. Trying to swim like a frog doesn’t work very well, and they got sick of having to rescue me, I guess.”
“You could’ve just swam like a person.”
“Why would I do that?”
“To...I don’t know,” Vell said. He was starting to feel like Raine’s entire life and unlife revolved around frogs. “Did you ever do anything, I don’t know, human?”
“Oh, I studied frogs,” Raine said. “Frogs lack the self-awareness to understand frogs. It’s their only flaw, really.”
“I see. So what’s your favorite frog?”
As expected, this set off a long rant, as Raine found it hard to pick a favorite and had to start listing pros and cons of various frog species. It was not exactly scintillating conversation, but it kept Raine talking instead of somehow summoning frogs. Vell kept reminding himself that was the real goal. He was not here to have a pleasant chat, he was here to prevent the frogpocalypse. Anything that kept Raine ranting was good. He was saving the world.
As Raine started ranking every existing frog species by maximum jump distance, Vell kept repeating that to himself. Saving the world, one frog jump strength at a time.

I have three roommates,19F. Me and a girl who lives next to me, Annie, started noticing problems with one specific roommate, Mary.
4/21, my roommate seemed stressed and would ignore us anytime we said anything. It wasn’t too severe to where I was upset and I understood she was stressed. This continued throughout the week.
One day she would be stressed and be incredibly rude and another she would ask me if I wanted to have lunch or go to the gym. By rude, I mean I would go up to her desk and ask her a question like “Hey, wanna grab lunch?” and she would not even look at me let alone respond. I kinda left it at maybe she didn’t hear me.
However, Saturday night me and Annie were getting ready to go out in her room and I had came back in my room to show Mary my outfit and makeup. I was right next to her desk and said hi around 3-4 times trying to get her attention, and I knew this time she could see me since I was right next to her. She ignored me.
I just left her alone and I did chalk it up to stress, but honestly ignoring me straight to my face really upset me. Annie also waved to her in the bathroom and Mary just gave a side eye and walked away. I understand stress, but, a “Hey I’m stressed I’ll talk to you after my midterm” would’ve gone a long way.
So honestly, I was kinda peeved about guessing if she was going to be nice to me and gave up on trying to talk to her.
Me and Annie decided it wasn’t really good to let it fester so I texted her “Hey can we have a chat outside rq”. Basically saying we felt very disrespected by her ignoring us and her giving every excuse in the book and saying I didn’t eat all day, I had a midterm, I can’t tell you guys I’m stressed because I’m a business major and y’all are engineers and I have PTSD.
We tried emphasizing that we care if shes stressed but she said “I don’t care if you care” and “I do this when I’m stressed”.
I had a convo with her separately the next day where she said she would try to be better but no promises. She never said sorry once, and we later learned she never had the intention of saying sorry because she thought we were being dramatic and it’s just what she does.
The situation really didn’t improve after this, we would barely talk and the responses were always short and felt fake. I didn’t want the tense environment next year so me and Annie decided we didn’t want to room with her. I had left our roommate match to see how I could find another roommate, but she got an email and figured it out.
The aftermath was very tense with a lot of anger. I feel bad she found out through an email since it probably blind sided her and I wanted to talk to her in person about it. Plus, I believe she was stressed and maybe I should’ve understood that’s how she deals with it? She’s also going to have to find three new roommates in a month and a half which will be hard unless she goes random. So AITA?

OK, so basically I’m gonna make this as short suite as possible. I’m 36m who just started dating a 42f who lives in Lafayette, Colorado. A little backstory, I had gone on a couple dates with her in the past ended up becoming more like fwb. But during the process, I got to know her pretty well. Got to know her two daughters pretty good. one stone high school and one just graduated from college. It was my decision to move in a different direction. because I got like really strong noncommittal vibes even though the whole time she’s telling me she’s looking for a monogamous LTR. Then we just completely lost contact with each other for a couple months. And by couple months, I mean like four or five months. Well randomly she hit me up and asked if I would like to go out with her to watch the nuggets game. We go to her favorite place Hoffbrau last weekend. I will say there was something kind of off while we were there. Maybe felt like she was keeping an eye out for somebody maybe. But then she would be real touchy and wanna hug and kiss and like grind up on me. Aside from that wehave a really good time. Go back to the hotel later on that night thave some adult fun. that night and the whole next day she just keeps talking to me about wanting to be in a relationship with me (exclusive). Which was something I just wasn’t really trying to entertain due to how the past turned out. so I agree to dating but non-exclusive with the idea of a long-term relationship. However, since that night, I haven’t seen her. I tried to spend some time with her for Mother’s Day, which she told me she already had plans with her daughters to go to get a pedicure and what not. So totally understood but I still thought you know hey there’s 24 hours in the day. I’m sure I could be able to spend at least a half an hour with her give her Mother’s Day present that’s it. I am I end up spending the whole day texting and calling her to no avail. Like she can’t answer one of the calls or respond back in a text like hey I’ll call you back later. Nothing! Since then, I’ve tried to hang out with her two other times were both times she just used her daughters as excuses to why she couldn’t make any availability. Also doesn’t answer her phone response to text after I send them. It kind of makes me feel like she might be in a relationship and the other guy. And some weird coincidence I’m correct and you are in a relationship with a woman whose initials are BB! And fit a lot of the criteria of what I’ve already spoken on. Let me know.

Hello folks, I'm 26 years old, and I live in Belo Horizonte, a really cool city to live in. My life, in general, has been peaceful. I'm a guy who can be both introverted and extroverted; it depends on the context and how familiar I am with the people around me. I enjoy going out for pizza, visiting amusement parks, going to the movies, and strolling around the neighborhood. But I also like to make the most of my time at home, studying languages, binge-watching TV series, hosting friends, discovering new bands on Spotify—a normal life. I work remotely, so I indeed spend most of my time at home. I'm considering the possibility of doing a language exchange abroad; I haven't decided on the destination yet, maybe Korea, maybe Japan—those are my main options. I won't lie, I'm quite eclectic when it comes to things that catch my attention. For example, I love meeting new people and talking about a wide variety of topics as if we had all the time in the world. Seriously! I'm an open book, and I'm also a great listener. If there's an area you're an expert in or something that sparks your curiosity to the point of excitement, I'd love to feel your enthusiasm as you talk about it. I also like to follow sports, watch cooking shows, and stay up-to-date with new technological advances, all that stuff. With me, you can have casual conversations about weekly events, memes, fun facts, or even deeper discussions about life, philosophy, venting, frustrations, dreams, long-term projects, etc.
I'm a talkative guy, so what I'm looking for in a penpal is mainly someone who is also communicative and truly open to getting to know me, and allowing me to get to know them as well. I want a penpal who is willing to share life experiences, teach me about their country, their language, someone who wants to laugh with me and also grow together with me. I'm looking for someone with whom I can indeed build a beautiful, unique, and special connection. More than a penpal, I seek a lifelong friend.
PS: Don't be shy; I'm an easygoing person. If you liked this announcement, write to me, tell me a little about your life, what caught your attention in this announcement, what things you noticed we have in common, and... Feel free to share whatever you wish. I'm always open to new tunes.
PS²: If you're over 18, that's great. I don't mind if you're 18 or 60+, I'm looking for friends, and you will be equally welcome.
PS³: I don't know from which country or city you are... Maybe you're from a country I've read a lot about, maybe you're from a country I can't even point out on a map. But that's precisely what makes having a "penpal" so amazing. Having a penpal is the opportunity to meet incredible people we would never meet in our daily lives. So, no matter your country of origin or residence, write to me; we can learn a lot from each other.
Thank you for reading this far, have a great day.

Hello folks, I'm 26 years old, and I live in Belo Horizonte, a really cool city to live in. My life, in general, has been peaceful. I'm a guy who can be both introverted and extroverted; it depends on the context and how familiar I am with the people around me. I enjoy going out for pizza, visiting amusement parks, going to the movies, and strolling around the neighborhood. But I also like to make the most of my time at home, studying languages, binge-watching TV series, hosting friends, discovering new bands on Spotify—a normal life. I work remotely, so I indeed spend most of my time at home. I'm considering the possibility of doing a language exchange abroad; I haven't decided on the destination yet, maybe Korea, maybe Japan—those are my main options. I won't lie, I'm quite eclectic when it comes to things that catch my attention. For example, I love meeting new people and talking about a wide variety of topics as if we had all the time in the world. Seriously! I'm an open book, and I'm also a great listener. If there's an area you're an expert in or something that sparks your curiosity to the point of excitement, I'd love to feel your enthusiasm as you talk about it. I also like to follow sports, watch cooking shows, and stay up-to-date with new technological advances, all that stuff. With me, you can have casual conversations about weekly events, memes, fun facts, or even deeper discussions about life, philosophy, venting, frustrations, dreams, long-term projects, etc.
I'm a talkative guy, so what I'm looking for in a penpal is mainly someone who is also communicative and truly open to getting to know me, and allowing me to get to know them as well. I want a penpal who is willing to share life experiences, teach me about their country, their language, someone who wants to laugh with me and also grow together with me. I'm looking for someone with whom I can indeed build a beautiful, unique, and special connection. More than a penpal, I seek a lifelong friend.
PS: Don't be shy; I'm an easygoing person. If you liked this announcement, write to me, tell me a little about your life, what caught your attention in this announcement, what things you noticed we have in common, and... Feel free to share whatever you wish. I'm always open to new tunes.
PS²: If you're over 18, that's great. I don't mind if you're 18 or 60+, I'm looking for friends, and you will be equally welcome.
PS³: I don't know from which country or city you are... Maybe you're from a country I've read a lot about, maybe you're from a country I can't even point out on a map. But that's precisely what makes having a "penpal" so amazing. Having a penpal is the opportunity to meet incredible people we would never meet in our daily lives. So, no matter your country of origin or residence, write to me; we can learn a lot from each other.
Thank you for reading this far, have a great day.

ULPT
LONG, sad story, but 45 year old half sibling has never had a job in her life and is a narcissistic sociopath who mentally and emotionally started abusing my already abused mother at 12 and basically for decades had her lying to everyone and funneling assets to her live a high lifestyle for decades to the sum of well over $10 k a month. Lost a nice house with apartments worth millions, took my father's house out of a trust for me and my siblings and sold it--both were paid off. Mother basically on puppet strings and decades of trying to save her didn't work. Alienated everyone. About five years ago half sibling had to take her in with her when she lost the houses to keep the pensions coming to her and refused to let anyone see her. We finally found mom in a hospital on Xmas with a broken hip sibling has had her walking on for a month, and she's been in six times since for respiratory issues, once intubated--sibling has refused to allow her any vaccines, including covid, having gotten POA and medical documents fraudulently signed over with her dementia. Mom cannot remember anything a few minutes ago, an hour, a day, a month, years ago, which is sort of a blessing. All she can do is repeat what sibling says. The other siblings have been trying to help mom and give her a decent end to her life at 87 and some communication with family and people she knows. (She's been completely isolated.) She says she wants it, and is so much happier in the hospital because she has interaction with people. NIGHTMARE finances where "they" sold house and didn't pay capital gains, no taxes filed for years, maxed out credit cards with only minimum payments, again. We TRIED to work with psycho to fix this, but as soon as she doesn't get to have all of the money and you 100% bow down to her, she cuts everyone out. She has 100% control of mom's phone, who can't really use it on her own.
My brother had a tracker on the phone so we were able to see what was going on, like her taking my mom out for hours and hours at night going to stores, eating out, and going shopping, leaving mom in the car late at night--she admitted to that. That's how we found out that "they" had moved to an apartment and where, because the house "they" bought they couldn't afford to keep up on, even with them selling my father's house and my mom's $6700 month pension. We were trying to set it up to bring them both back to where my mom used to live, where most of us and all of her friends are (and psycho took her hours away to isolate her) to a nice place for both of them, where we can help with care, get good medical care, etc, and psycho went psycho and cut off all contact. In last week long hospital stay where my sister found her and psycho never told anyone about, my mom was all great and happy with everyone visiting for mother's day and made plans. So psycho berated her and made her tell everyone she never wanted to see anyone because we want psycho in jail and refused any contact since
All true, and reality is far worse. We have tried EVERYTHING and EVERY source. No one cares. Many, many, many APS calls from us and hospital social workers, multiple police welfare checks, all kinds of social services, state elected officials and everything else. Really, all we can do is break in, take my mom and all her stuff and leave, which isn't going to happen. But from experience, no one would care.
So, since we have really tried and mom will die soon from this experience, what can I do to make miserable psycho even more psycho and let the world know? I know the apartment complex, but not a number. The phone and tracker have been disabled. I was thinking of calling the IRS and FTB to facilitate even more that fraud they are going after my "mom" for and letting them know psycho is controlling all of this. I know my mom's credit union (I had to change my whole account because I've had it since I was 15 and my mom's name was still associated with it--my brother and sister have already had accounts seised by the IRS that had her name on it) and was thinking of trying to let them know about the fraud. I'm pretty sure the maxed out credit cards are from there and Discover. Any ideas?

Air, shelter, water, and food, all essentials of life we take for granted. The gratitude of being alive,
smothered by emotional baggage. Just a bunch of pill induced zombies, riddled by life’s perplexities. Not
me, not any more at least. No, now I wake up every day reborn with a newly discovered purpose in life,
thanks to, him.
Most would be emotionally devastated and seek long term therapy, after what I had endured.
Most would need to be heavily medicated, to calm their anxiety of the fear he would return. No, not me,
the person I once was, is now dead. Suffocated, frozen, dehydrated, and starved out of me. Who I was
perished, and I am grateful. I am offering you the same, but before we get started, let me explain how I
arrived at this place of serenity.
The night was the same as always. I had just finished gorging myself on junk food while binge
watching a reality show. Empty bottles of soda surrounded me as I surfed the streaming networks.
Knowing my weight was getting out of control, I still managed to finish off the bag of greasy potato
chips. My bottles of meds sat on the end table waiting for me. Depression, anxiety, stomach, and heart
pills all courtesy of the negligence of my life choices. One by one I swallowed the antidotes of a better
me. Yet, there never seemed to be a stronger version of myself, no matter how many pills I ingested.
Falling asleep, I told myself tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow I will try harder. As I drifted
off to sleep, I felt a sting in my neck, only waking up for a few seconds. My eyes opened just enough to
see him standing over me. Fighting to stay awake, my eyes latched closed, and I fell into the darkness.
Upon awaking, I could hear sounds of mumbles surrounding me. Feeling heavy and disoriented, I
managed to flicker my eyelids. As the minutes passed, my surroundings became more lucid. The foul
stench of pig shit singed my nose hairs. Dust from old haybales stimulated my sense of smell, inducing a
sneeze. An unimaginable pain coursed through my mouth. Still dazed and confused, I heard a voice say,
"we can't have that, now, can we?". Once again, I felt a sting in my neck, causing me to drift out of
reality.
"Wake up", I heard as I came to, "we need to get started". Started with what, I tried to ask. Yet,
my mouth wouldn't open. Tranquilized still, I thought maybe my brain just wasn't cooperating with my
body. Flexing my jaw, I tried again to speak, it was useless. All I could do was mumble. My words were
nothing more than muffled grunts behind a padded wall.
Looking around, I could see I was not alone. Vision blurry, I still managed to make out a large
silhouette of a man sitting in front of me holding a cutting needle and thread. He then placed the needle
on a barrel and stood up. Whistling, "The Sun will come out tomorrow", I began to look around. There were other people with us. Including myself, all tied to chairs and mouths sewn shut. Three of us were men. The fourth was a woman in her
mid-forties. She was crying and moaning uncontrollably. Mucus ran down her face dripping from her
chin. Trying to console her, I batted my eyes. It was all I could do without having the use of my mouth
and arms.
The injection he had no doughtily given me, had worn off. Like the woman, I found myself in panic
mode. My heart raced fast. I thought I would have a heart attack. Wanting to scream, I
couldn't. Wanting to run but I was incapacitated. Fighting my way out, entered my mind, but how? How,
with my hands bound behind my back. Besides, I wasn't a fighter, and the man was massive. He would
be very intimidating under any circumstance. His raggedy hair was sandy blonde with a mixture of gray.
Deep wrinkles hid behind a handlebar mustache, which stretched across his face. Thick eyebrows sat
untamed above his devilish eyes. Watching him, I tried not to make eye contact. I looked everywhere,
other than at him. The other two men looked as frightened as me. One man, the bigger one, had tears
but made no sounds. The other man was a very frail older man. He shifted side to side as he tried yelling
from behind his fastened lips. His arms bared scars of that of a junkie. His body, covered in scabs.
Cautiously, I looked around. A rusty old plow sat in the corner next to some feed sacks. A saddle
lay across an old broken table. Two horses stood quietly behind their stall door. I could see rays of light
shine through the cracks between the boards. It was daylight, knowing that gave me comfort somehow.
The barn was dusty, and as painful as it would be, I hoped I would sneeze again. At least then I could
scream. Abruptly the man stopped whistling and spoke.
Your mouths are bound together so that I cannot hear you. People talk too much, making the
world noisy. All loud with pathetic excuses of their weaknesses. I am not going to kill you. Your life is in
your own hands. Up to this point, you have wasted your life hiding behind your addictions. Cowering
and leaning on crutches of life’s temptations. I am here to save you from yourselves.
The rule of three is simple. You can survive three minutes without air, three hours without
shelter, three days without water, and three weeks without food. If you truly desire to live, then you will
triumph. If not, you will perish. I am here to help you unpack your emotional baggage. Air, the very
breath you breathe, you have taken for granted. So, please slow your breathing and relax. We are about
to begin.
While you were sleeping, I provided you with adequate fluids and nutrition. I cannot have you
starting off, on an empty tank. I want to be as fair as possible and make this a pleasant experience.
Though, I warn you it will not be easy, and you will have to dig deep within yourselves.
The burly man began whistling once again. He placed an egg timer on a barrel, grabbed a plastic
bag and spoke. You can survive three minutes with no air. Do you have the desire and strength to want
to live? For you, I truly hope so.
Standing behind the heavier man he turned the timer and then placed the plastic bag over his
head. The man jerked in his chair, thrashing about. One minute, he said. The man still moving wildly.
Two minutes, almost there just hold on. Three minutes he announced, ripping the bag from the head of
the now motionless man. “Oh dear, I guess he did not have what it takes, next”. My heart raced even
faster as he stood next to the now inconsolable woman. I would be after her. I had to slow my breathing
if I were to live. Picking up another bag, he stood behind her.
The air went in and out her nose as she hyperventilated. “There, there, I’m not going to hurt you”,
he said, as he patted her on the shoulders. “Three minutes is a miniature amount of time. I wish you the
very best.” Her legs kicked out lunging back and forth. Her muffled shrieks filled the barn. “Are you
ready?” He then reset the timer. Fearing for my own life, I turned my head and concentrated on my
breathing. Trying hard to block her out, I went to another place in my head. As hard as it was, I imagined
I was calm and at peace lying on a sandy shore. Desperately, I wanted to cover my ears. Her loud cries
soon became small whimpers. Then to gurgles as she choked on her own vomit. Turning my head back
towards her, I could see her convulsing as life left her body. “Not quite a minute, what a shame”, he
said.
Thinking back to when I was a child, and held my breath under water, outlasting my brother.
Back then, holding my breath was easy for me and I always won. Being in my mid-thirties, I wasn’t a
child any longer. Could I beat this, I questioned. Unlike the woman next to me, who reeked of tobacco, I
didn’t smoke. My chances were greater than those who came before me.
Excepting the inevitable, I practiced my anxiety exercises my therapist had taught me. Four, four,
four, inhale hold, exhale hold. If I panic, I will surely suffocate, I told myself. The other man was calmer
now and followed my lead. Our eyes locked on to one another as we breathed. “Very good, that is what
I want to see, a thirst for life, the will to live.”
Picking up a bag, he then stood behind me. I took a deep breath as he turned the timer. I felt the
panic trying to set in, but I pushed it deep down. Oddly enough, the tune he’d been whistling popped
into my head. “The sun will come out tomorrow”, played as the bag was put over my head. “So, you got
to hang on ‘til tomorrow.” Not wanting to see the blurred images through the bag, I closed my eyes. I
just kept humming the tune in my head. “One minute”, he said. Getting more difficult to hold my breath,
I could feel my heart beating faster and my blood pressure rising. The tune still reeling in my head,
“tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you tomorrow”. “Two minutes”. I can do this, I’m almost there, but my
mind was getting foggy, and my chest tightened. My muscles tensed up as I felt my existence dwindle
away. The tune that kept me going had faded away somewhere deep into my brain. Hungry for air, I
started scratching my hands behind my back. I was going to die. Tomorrow, tomorrow, I managed to
think one last time. “Three Minutes”!
Air rushed through my nose, as I clung to the remaining life I had. It was the greatest feeling just
being able to breathe. I’d made it, I had beat him, I was alive. “Congratulations, you did well”. “Breath
and continue to appreciate the gift, I have given you”.
Tears rushed down my cheeks, as I sat watching the man set the stage for the last occupant. As
sympathetic as I was, I was overwhelmed too just be alive. Still fighting my anxiety, I closed my eyes,
four, four, four. Sounds of distress and faint scuffling could be heard, yet I refused to open my eyes.
Three minutes passed quickly. “We have another fighter, outstanding.” Opening my eyes, I seen that the
other man had also survived. “Two out of three, I wished it faired better.” “It is a pity they perished, yet
the pigs will eat well.” “Nothing should ever go to waste”. “Their carcasses are a valuable resource.” I
am thankful for their contribution.”
“I will let you rest up.” The next gift, is that of shelter.” “People of the world scratch and claw to
have bigger dwellings of that of their neighbor.” Never being thankful of the shelters warmth when it is
cold.” “Not a second thought about the materials taken from the earth to provide that comfort.” “I will
teach you to not care about the size or the looks. You won’t care if it’s a barn or a house made of sticks.
You’ll learn to be content as it shelters you from the storm.
Not understanding what was coming next, I tried thinking of ways to escape. Wringing my hands
together, I tried loosening the rope. He had his back turned removing the bodies from the chairs. Yet
somehow he still managed to catch on to what I was doing. “That’s a double sheet bend knot.” Try as
you might, you will not loosen or untie it.” “Yet I commend you on your perseverance.” “If you escape,
you will not learn the valuable lesson I am trying to teach you.” “Sit and be patient, like I told you
before, I’m not going to kill you.”
He was right. The more I tried twisting my wrists, the tighter the rope became making them bleed
and burn. “Why was he doing this and why me”, I wanted to ask. The inside of my mouth was so dry,
and I was thirsty. All I could think about was water to wash out the metallic taste left from the wounds
of my lips. Making eye contact with the other man, I wondered if he was as thirsty as I. “The storm will
be here soon, and we can continue.”, he said as he removed a hacksaw hanging from the barn wall.
We watched as the man carried on as if he’d done this before. He laid the saw across a table.
Sweat dripped from my head as I panicked. What was he going to do to us? I thought. Do not worry, this
saw is not for you, he said as he placed the woman’s body on the table. He then began to dismember
her legs. He continued to hack through the bodies throughout the day. He would casually take breaks
between the removal of the body parts. After he was done, he used a rusty old wheel barrel to take the
parts out of the barn. He kept his word. I could hear the pigs happily squealing as he fed them.
The light that had previously comforted me dwindled away as darkness approached. As frightened
as I felt, all I could think about was water. “It is time”, he said as he wiped sweat from his brow. “I will
untie your arms so you can move freely. I encourage you to move as much as possible to keep the blood
circulating. Frostbite and hypothermia are inevitable if you let yourself settle. You can wear the clothes
you have on, but nothing more.
The barn was heated with an old wood stove. Our captor had fed it wood throughout the day. Yet
the wind from the storm outside seeped through the cracks. A chill came over me, fearing what was
next. The four technique no longer working. He then placed a makeshift collar around our necks.
Connected to the collar was a chain. After untying the ropes from behind our backs he told us to stand.
Fearing what he would do, I did what he told me.
He then unlatched the wooden brace holding the barn doors shut, unveiling winter’s wrath.
Weather in Michigan was unpredictable and harsh at times. That night was no different. The wind
bustled through the doors as we all stood staring into the night. Snow was falling rapidly and had quickly
begun accumulating. “Tonight’s storm is only a mild one but will last a few hours.” “Having your mouths
bound is a positive.” “It will protect your lungs.” Your heart rate will lower the less you move so keep
moving to boost your circulation.” “You will have to endure three hours in the weather.” “This trial is
brutal, I know but if your life is precious then you will improvise, adapt, and overcome.
He then led us by the chains out of the barn and into a wooden pen. It didn’t have a roof but was
too tall to climb over. “I know you must be thirsty, but if you try and eat the snow you will only amplify
dehydration and hypothermia.” He then removed the collars and locked the door. As he walked away in
his rabbit fur coat, he turned and once again said, “Do you have the desire to live, for you I truly hope
so.”
Frantically I surveyed the pen looking for a way out. The enclosure was made of old pallets, thin
boards, and cattle fence. It was sturdy enough to keep us in but not the wind out. It must have been
about twelve feet wide by twenty-four feet long. Rubbing my hands along the gaps, I felt something
warm run down my fingers. I had sliced my hand along the inside of one of the pallets. He had secured
razor blades and sharp nails from the inside to keep us from climbing out. Even if we were able to make
it to the top, we wouldn’t be able to climb over the razor wire that spiraled along the perimeter.
More frantic than I, the other man ran back and forth. He was shaking and sweating profusely. How
could he be sweating in this weather, I thought. On the other hand, I had begun to shiver. My feet had
already begun to tingle. Wearing only gym shorts, socks, and a t-shirt, I knew I must keep moving. The
other man was more fortunate than I. He was wearing pajama bottoms, socks and a hoodie. At least he
had a layer to break the wind.
The snow was dry and easy to move. Thinking maybe we could get out from the bottom. I began
moving the snow with my hands. As I moved it, I motioned for the other man to help. My attempts to
get his attention went unnoticed. He had found a nail long enough to cut through the stiches in his
mouth. Watching him, I debated on doing it myself. Though I thought of the burly man and his hacksaw.
Deciding it was best to keep my lips bound, I watched him saw through his. He yelled in agony as blood
dripped from his lips. Be quiet, I wanted to tell him, he’ll hear you.
When the last stitch broke the man dropped to his knees gasping and crying. He then stood up,
removed himself from his pants, and began urinating in the snow. “I’m Evan”, he said shivering and still
covering the white snow yellow. His urine smelled foul as the wind carried the smell. Not being able to
talk, I used a stick to spell out my name. Letter by letter, I spelled it out, Liam. He didn’t acknowledge
what I had written. He didn’t seem to care about what my name was.
Bending over he began to eat the yellow snow. Then pulling up his sleeves, he did something that
made my stomach churn. He picked off the scabs from his arms and started sucking on them. I now
understood he was detoxing and was trying to get a fix from the meth that had exited his body. I had a
cousin in jail once, who had described this same behavior from the inside. After doing this for a few
minutes he then spoke. Stuttering out his words, “I know it’s disgusting, but it is what it is.” “Now how
we gonna get out of this here, Liam. No matter what he was or what he spoke, it was comforting to hear
him speak to me.
Not knowing how to get out I just started moving. Shaking my head and still shivering, I began to
do jumping jacks. There wasn’t a way out and I was so cold. Knowing that I had to keep moving I
continued. I knew that if I didn’t move, my heart would slow and eventually stop. “You gonna listen to
that Behemoth or ya gonna try and help me find a way out?” Stopping, I once again tried looking from
the bottom. He looked for a way to climb over. Neither of us found a way to escape. Both of us,
shivering we stopped looking.
As we huddled together in the corner, a voice came from a speaker. “One hour has passed, two
hours remain.” Your lust for drugs trumps your lust to live.” “It will be your demise.” He’d seen, he’s
watching us, I thought. Not wanting to die, I began running in circles. The pain was excruciating. Every
step I took was like stepping on needles. My nose felt like it would break off.
“It’s no use, we’re gonna die, Evan said as he plopped on the ground. Using my arms, I motioned
for him to get up, but he refused. He sat in the corner with his teeth chattering and shoulders shaking.
While Evan sat, I continued. Running from one end to the other, tears freezing as they plummeted from
my eyes. As I ran, I tripped over something that caught my attention. It was a stack of a few boards
hidden under the snow. Uncovering them I counted them out in my head. There were several I dug out. I
crafted a fort in my head. We could use the wood for a shelter. Once again, I motioned for Evan to help.
Evan didn’t speak or move. “Two hours”, I heard as a voice projected from a hidden box.
Quickly I stumbled to Evan, shaking him. Tears ran down my cheeks as I faced the truth. I was
alone. Evan’s inability to try had snuffed out his life. He was dead. Time seemed to stand still in that
moment. Looking at his lifeless body, I realized he wasn’t a frail old man. He in fact was my age. The
drugs just made him look old. My sadness for him abandoned me to be replaced with anger. He should
have tried harder. I was now alone. He had left me alone.
Feeling numb and secluded, I wanted to give up. There wasn’t much fight left in me, yet
something in me snapped. I didn’t want to die. Ripping my wet clothes off, I threw them to the ground.
Trying to keep my temperature above freezing, I jumped and staggered in the snow. Laying Evan’s body
flat on the ground, I thought I would use it as a warm layer between me and the ground. One board at a
time, leaned them over Evan’s body and up against the pen, making an ominous clubhouse. Shivering
and naked, I crawled inside and laid on Evan’s lifeless body.
No longer having the strength to move, I lay crying. In the last hour I replayed my life. If only I had
another chance to do it all over again. If only I thought as my eyes closed. The door then opened, “Three
hours”. “Stand up.”, he said as he wrapped a fur coat around my frigid body. ”Come on, you have passed
but you are not out of the woods yet.” Replacing the collar around my neck he then led me back into the
barn.
“I have prepared a warm bath for you.” He then helped me lift my legs over a galvanized water
trough. “There, there”, he said, “Just sit and let the bath warm your blood. The pain of prickly needles
washed over my body as the numbness dwindled. Fading in and out, I watched him carefully remove a
stockpot from the stove. He poured the water from the pot over my head. “Just relax, you should be
proud of yourself.” “You have outlasted all who came before you.” “You’re a fighter and you value your
life. I watched as he warmed pot after pot, continuously pouring them over me.
“I will have to give you warm fluids intravenously.” “Try to stand”, he said as he lifted me up and
out of the trough. He then dried my body with a towel. After he dressed me in dry clothing, he led me to
a makeshift bedroom converted from a stall.
As he assisted me into the bed, I noticed a tray with medical instruments on it. What were they
for I wondered, but to tired to care anymore. He then placed the I.V. needle in my arm and covered me
up. “Rest up and sleep while I deal with the frostbite.” Before I was able to think about what he had just
said, I went out.
Waking up, I was no longer cold. The shivering and pain from the night before gone yet replaced
with new discomfort. My hands, feet, face, and head all pulsing. Slowly, I removed the blanket with my
bandaged hands to see my feet. Both were wrapped in bandages. Looking over my entire body, I
reached for my face. It was also bandaged. I could feel that my ears and nose were missing. “I know this
must be shocking to you, but it had to be.” “You had deep frostbite in your fingers, toes, ears and nose.
They had to be amputated. “I have sealed off the wounds and have given you antibiotics to fight off
infection.” “Be grateful your alive.”
“You are very ambitious, and I want to reward you for your success. “If you can continue to
cooperate, I will remove the stitches from your lips. “Don’t speak unless I ask you to.” “Can you give me
word that you can stay quiet?” I nodded in agreement.
As promised, he removed the sutures from my lips. Handing me a tin cup of water, he told me to
drink. Words can’t express how refreshing the first sip was. Not being able to control myself, I gulped
down the entire cup. Handing the cup back to him I managed to mumble, “more?” Violently, he struck
me in the face and stood up. “More, more more”, he yelled as he paced the floor. “Always wanting
more!” “You should have savored every last drop rather than gulping it down like a pig at a trough.”
“You have reached your third trial.” “Water is the source of all life and you will learn to appreciate it. Do
you have the desire to live?” “For you, I truly hope so.”
Locking the door behind him, he left the room. Feeling relief from his absence, I took a deep
breath. Concentrating on the air that went in and out my lungs, I was thankful to be alive. It had been a
couple of days since I was able to breathe through my mouth. I felt happiness and gratitude to just be
able to breathe. The blanket and bed kept me warm from the cold that seeped through the barn walls.
Feling relieved, I felt safe for that minute. I pulled the blanket up under my chin and just lived in the
moment. Looking for ways to escape no longer crossed my mind. Still fearful of the man, yet I felt a
strange feeling of gratitude toward him.
Mixed emotions danced around inside of me as I lay. Thinking of the others that were with me, I
pitied them. Had they truly wanted to survive, they would be alive. Had they fought harder, they would
have won against his trials. My sympathy for them abandoned my thoughts, replaced with
disappointment. Questioning my mental state, I laid wondering if I’d gone mad. How could I sympathize
with a man who had essentially tortured me. How could I be thankful to a killer, I wondered. As
comfortable as I was, I was thirsty. Three days was a long time to go without water. Knowing this, I
closed my eyes to try to sleep through it.
A familiar tune whistled through the cracks of the wall. My eyes blurry from crust, I wiped it away
with my bandaged hand. Curious, I tried peeking through a hole in a board. Seeing the two horses in the
next stall brought back anxiety from the first trial. Sounds of mumbling could be heard. Listening
intensely, I realized he had more victims. Wanting to scream out to them to calm their breathing, I said
nothing. Fearful he would kill me if I spoke. Though I didn’t have to. He was telling them to be calm and
they would live. If only they would listen, they could live. One after another perished throughout the
ordeal. Once again mixed emotions of sympathy and anger fought within me. I slammed my hand
against the stall boards. Why am I angry at them, I questioned myself. Hearing the distinct sound of the
hacksaw cutting through the bodies, I became sick. I crawled back in the bed and covered my head.
“Wake up, you have rested enough.” Leading me into the room where the bodies were, he
motioned for me to pick the parts up. “I will cut the meat and you will load it up.” “Do you
understand?”, he asked. I nodded yes and began putting the severed limbs in the wheelbarrow.
“Take it out back to the pigs.” “I trust you won’t try to run.” You will not get very far in your
condition and the weather” He was right, still bandaged and weak I knew I would freeze. Reluctantly I
put a arm, leg, and head in the wheelbarrow.
Once again, the cold made me shiver as I treaded through the snow. The night was calm. The
moon shined down on the solar panels that lined the buildings. I was on some sort of homestead.
Nearing the structure that housed the pigs, I cringed at the thought of feeding them. The squealing led
me to the hog house. Opening the door and entering, I gasped in horror. Piles of bones lay everywhere
within the house. The pigs squealed in delight as I tossed the body parts to them. The smell was pungent
and took my breath away. Not being able to hold back, I vomited the only liquids I had in me. After
unloading my delivery, I left to retrieve another load. Feet still bandaged, and I was cold, the thought of
running left my mind. Yearning for the warm bed, I trudged my way back to the barn. This went on
throughout the night.
“Almost done, this is the last of it.”, he said as he cut through a torso of a woman. “You have done
well, and I am proud of you.” “I know your cold and must be thirsty.” Yet, you still have forty-eight hours
left until you can replenish your thirst. “Keep motivated and you will triumph over your it” After the last
load was completed, he led me to the bed and rebandaged my wounds. Curiously looking down at my
severed toes, I seen I was missing five of them. The same as he bandaged my hands. I was four less
fingers. Two were gone from each hand.
My stomach grumbled as I tossed and turned. All I could think about was water and food. I
eventually passed out from the nights work. Waking up, I felt disoriented and weak. The hunger for food
and water still consuming my thoughts. “Twenty-Four hours left”, his voice said from outside the stall.
“Get up, I have more work for you.” “You have to earn your keep.”
The man then entered the room and placed the collar around my neck. “Here is a coat to keep
you warm, he said as he placed it on my back. Then he handed me some rubber boots. “These should
help keep your feet dry while you dig.” Wanting to ask, dig what, I didn’t dare from the fear of being
struck again. The task will be difficult but not impossible. Handing me a shovel, he led me to the spot he
wanted dug.
“The weather has let up and the temperature has risen. I can not trust that you might try to run.
He then locked the chain to a stake in the ground. “The hog house needs cleaned of the bones.” “Dig me
a hole big enough to bury the remains of the less fortunate.” “I will return in twenty-four hours.” You
have fared well so far, keep up the good work and you will be rewarded.” He then turned and walked
away.
The sun was just beginning to rise, and it felt warn against me face. The black sky turned to a
canvas of pastels. The view was stunning under any condition. After admiring the horizon, I started my
grueling work. Trying to dig with missing toes was difficult and excruciating. Placing the shovel into the
frozen ground, I bared down with all my weight. Breaking the ground seemed unfeasible, but I managed.
Letting out agonizing cries, I repeated the movements until I finally moved dirt.
Scanning around, my head was on a swivel looking for cameras. The thought of trying to escape
weighing heavily. Using my bandaged hands, I felt for any gaps in my collar. It was tight around my neck.
I Then looked for any weak links in the chain but found none. The steak the chain was hooked to must
have been buried ten feet, I thought as I gave it a tug. Giving up on any escape attempts, I continued to
dig.
The hunger and dehydration had started to take effect. My head pounded like a hammer on a
nail. I became nauseous. Fearing I might throw up, I sit and rested on the ground. Looking down at the
homestead, I wondered who the man was. Nearly falling asleep, I pushed myself up off the ground.
Visions of water surrounding me engulfed my every thought. God, I was thirsty.
After I finished digging the hole I fell to my knees in exhaustion. Worrying that if I fell asleep, I
would die of dehydration. Standing up, I desperately tried staying awake. The chain weighed down my
neck making it hard to stand. Using the shovel as a brace, I wedged it into the ground and balanced the
chain over top of the shovel. It lifted the weight off me, allowing me to stand easier. Standing and
swaying, I watched as day turned to night and night back to day. “Congratulations”, the man said as he
walked up the hill toward me.
“II knew you would conquer the test.” “You will soon be rewarded for your victory.” Leading me
back to the barn, I stumbled and fell. The man picked me up and helped me to my feet. As He laid me in
the bed, oddly enough I wanted to thank him. “Before I tend to your bandages, I am going to start an I.V.
to restore your electrolytes. He then handed me a cup of water. “Drink”, he said. Wanting badly to gulp
it down, I refrained and sipped slowly. The water was refreshing as it moistened my mouth. Water
wasn’t something I normally craved but, in that moment, it was all a I wanted. Living mostly on energy
drinks and sodas, I rarely drank it.
As I sipped, I thought about my body and how I had neglected it. Peculiar enough, the man was
giving me all I ever needed. He had somehow managed to push my stronger version to the surface.
“Good news”, he said as he wrapped the final bandage around my foot. “You have made it to the last
trial.” “But before we discuss that, I want to reward you on your accomplishments.” “I’m sure you have
questions, and I will allow you to ask them.” A little conversation will do us both some good.” I must say
I am as curious about you as you are of me.” He said as he poured me another cup of water. “But not
until you have rested.” “I look forward to it, I will see you this afternoon.” Locking the door behind him,
exhausted, I fell asleep.
Hunger pains interrupted my slumber. Turning about in the bed, images of food ravaged my
thoughts. Trying hard, I managed to push the vivid images of cheeseburgers out of my mind. Replacing
them with the image of the man conversing with me. What would I ask him, I pondered. Would I set him
off again and be fed to the pigs. One would think that I wouldn’t want to talk to him after he had cut off
my nose, yet strangely enough I did. I was curious about him.
My tossing about abruptly interrupted as I heard the man enter the room. “Well now, how do you
feel this afternoon?” He asked, as he pulled a old wooden chair next the bed and sat down. To scared to
speak I laid quietly. “It Is o.k., he said cheerfully as he patted my leg. “You may speak”. “Better but
hungry”, I managed to mumble. “Yes, I know you are hungry, but you have entered your final trial.” You
must endure three weeks with no food.” You have been here a week.” “Two weeks remain.”
“People of the world are gluttons. Indulging in prepackaged garbage to feed the body. Never
having to hunt or forge for it. If you make it the three weeks, you will have learned to appreciate what
you put in your mouth. You will think about what it is for, rather than just stuffing your face. Do you still
have the desire to live, for you I truly hope so.
“What is your name?”
“Liam, my names, Liam”
“Well, Liam, my names Doc” “It is finally nice to meet your true self.” I’ve been waiting along time for
this.” “You are now worthy to speak to.” “You have shed your old, infected skin and are growing new
skin.” “I have helped you thus far to create a better, you.” “You may speak freely”.
“Why are you doing this”?
“To save you.” “To rid you of the worlds temptations” “I am extracting all you have digested and
replacing it with the will to survive.”
“Who are you”, I fearfully asked.
“I am a doctor who the world cast out due to what they call negligence.” “I only pushed my patients to
better themselves and refused to subscribe fake antidotes”. “I didn’t hand them a crutch when they
could walk on their own.”” I left the city and moved off grid”. “Here I am free to practice as I see fit”.
“My patients now, are those that want to better themselves but just need a little push.” “Yet, none have
come as far as you, Liam.” “What is it, you desire, Liam?”
“A life of fulfillment”, I said.
“Are you not now, achieving that goal, Liam?”
Before I could answer, he told me, “Enough talk for the day”, we have work to do. “Don’t speak
unless I ask you to”. Unhooking my I.V., he then furnished me with warm clothes and boots again. “Grab
the wheelbarrow”, he said as we excited the barn. He then led me to the hog house. “I want you to pick
up the bones and put them in the hole you dug. Feeling weak, I pushed through the chore. The sight of
the mutilated parts wasn’t as repulsive to me as before. Yet, I did wonder who they were and where
they had come from. The day sped by quickly.
That night, I laid in the bed thinking of the man. Could he be right with what he was doing. I did
feel a new feeling of accomplishment. Had I truly shed my old self. Had he had given me what every
doctor before him had failed at. Questioning my own thoughts, I drifted off to sleep.
As the days went by, I would often help him rid the world of the weak. Every few days he would
bring in new patients. One after one they failed his trials. Some made it past the first, only to die in the
pen or the cooler, depending on the weather. We had many evening conversations where I learned
more about Doc, as he did me. Some nights I would listen to him mourn their deaths. He would often sit
by the stove talking to himself and crying. He would question their inability to understand what he was
doing. Finding myself somewhat sympathetic to him, I spoke out. “It’ll be o.k. you’re a good doctor, they
just don’t have a desire to live. “Thank you”, he said, “but do not speak unless I tell you”. With that I
climbed into bed and covered my head.
Ribs now visible, I was nearing death. No longer having the energy to help him any longer, I spent
the remaining few days in bed. As the final day approached, he came to me and said, If you don’t die
through the night, I will intravenously feed you the nutrients your body requires. Then you can truly live
your life. Tears filled his eyes as he pulled the blanket over me. You have been an outstanding and
cooperative patient and I thank you. Share to the world the gift I have given you.
Waking up, I was confused and again fighting off a sedated state. Rubbing my eyes in dismay, I
stumbled out of bed and tripped over my tennis shoes. Looking down at my disfigured feet, I was
perplexed at the sight of the floor. Continuously wiping at my vision, I scanned the room. Soda bottles
littered the nightstand. An empty potato chip bag lay empty on the bed.
Falling onto the floor, I curled up into a fetal position and cried. Visions of the dead filled my
thoughts. My mind was baffled with an emotional and ethical struggle. Four, four, four, I tried to
manage as anxiety reared its ugly head. “No!”, I yelled. I was alive and I was thriving. Quickly jumping to
my feet, I ran to my dresser mirror. It would be the first time, seeing the new me since my amputations.
Raising my head slowly my eyes met a man I had never seen before. A mangled mess stared back at me.
Yet, I didn’t see the ugly. I seen a victor. A man who fought for his life. I seen a man with the desire to
live. Admiring my new self, I calming starting whistling that familiar tune. I knew what I had to do.
The next few months, I spent talking to the detectives. Occasionally throwing them a false bone
toward their investigation. Had I not been a missing person, I would have avoided the police all
together.
A year has passed since my abduction. My life has changed for the better. I have faired well. I
often think about Doc and if he is still practicing. I did what he asked. I survive, appreciate, and share my
new gift to the world. I no longer spend my days waiting for life to toss me a crumb of its cookie. There
is value in the very air we breathe, the water we drink, the dwelling that shelters us, and the nutriment
we eat. Yet, it’s been difficult to convince people of this without some persuasion. So, please calm your
breathing. I am not going to kill you. This will only take three minutes. So, relax, do you have the desire
to live?” “For you, I truly hope so.

What this is: I've been writing about prompting for a few months on my free personal blog, but I felt that some of the ideas might be useful to people building with AI over here too. People seemed to enjoy the last post I shared, so, I'm sharing another one! This one's about how to get consistent output formats out of the more "stubborn" open-source models. Tell me what you think!
This version has been edited for Reddit, including removing self-promotional links like share and subscribe links. You can find the original post here
One of the great advantages of (most) open-source models has always been the relative ease with which you can get them to follow a given output format. If you just read that sentence and wondered if we’re living in the same universe, then I’ll share a prompting secret right off the bat: the key to getting consistent behavior out of smaller open-source models is to give them at least two carefully crafted few-shot examples. With that, something like Nous Mixtral will get it right 95% of the time, which is good enough if you have validation that can catch mistakes.
But unfortunately not all models can learn from examples. I typically call these “Stubborn” models due to this post I wrote about Mistral Next (large) and Mistral Medium. Basically I’m referring to model that were deliberately overtrained to make them better in chat and zero-shot settings, but inflexible, because they often “pay more attention to” their training data than the prompt. The difference between a “stubborn” model and a non-stubborn model, in my definition, is that with two or a few more few-shot examples a non-stubborn model will pick up basically everything and even directly quote the examples at times, whereas a stubborn one will often follow the patterns it was trained with, or take aspects of the given pattern, but disobey it in others. As far as I can tell stubborness is a matter of RLHF, not parameter count or SFT: Nous Hermes Mixtral is not stubborn, but the official Mixtral Instruct is.
Needless to say, for complex pipelines where you want extremely fine control over outputs, non-stubborn models are infinitely superior. To this day, Mistral Large has a far higher error rate in Augmentoolkit (probably >20%) compared to Nous Mixtral. Despite Mistral large costing 80% of GPT-4 Turbo. This may be an imprecise definition based partly on my intuition, but from experience, I think it’s real. Anyway, if non-stubborn models are far better than stubborn ones for most professional usecases (if you know what you’re doing when it comes to examples) then why am I writing a blog post about how to prompt stubborn models? Well, sometimes in life you don’t get to use the tools you want. For instance, maybe you’re working for a client who has more Mistral credits than God, and you absolutely need to use that particular API. You can’t afford to be a stick in the mud when working in a field that reinvents itself every other day, so I recently went and figured out some principles for prompting stubborn models. One thing that I’ve used a lot recently is the idea of repetition. I kinda blogged about it here, and arguably this one is also about it, but this is kind-of a combination of the two principles so I’ll go over it. If you don’t want to click the links, the two principles we’re combining are: “models see bigger things easier,” and “what you repeat, will be repeated.” Prompting is like quantum theory: any superposition of two valid prompting principles is itself a valid prompting principle. Here’s a valid prompting example:

You are an expert something-doer AI. I need you to do X Y and Z it’s very important. I know your training data told you to do ABCDEFG but please don’t.

That’s a prompt. Sometimes the AI will be nice:

XYZ

Often it will not be:

XABCDEFG.

Goddamn it. How do you solve this when working with a stubborn model that learned more from its training dataset, where [input] corresponded to ABCDEFG?
Repetition, Repetition, Repetiton. Also, Repetition. And don’t forget, Repetiton. (get it?) If the model pays more attention to its prompt and less to its examples (but is too stupid to pick up on is telling it to do the thing once), then we’ll darn well use the prompt to tell it what we want it to do.

You are an expert something-doer AI. I need you to do X Y and Z it’s very important. I know your training data told you to do ABCDEFG but please don’t.

[output format description]

Don’t forget to do XYZ.
User:
[example input]
SPECIAL NOTE: Don’t forget XYZ.
Assistant:
XYZ
User:
[example input]
SPECIAL NOTE: Don’t forget XYZ.
Assistant:
XYZ
User:
[the actual input]
SPECIAL NOTE: Don’t forget XYZ.

AI:

XYZ

Yay!
It’s simple but I’ve used this to resolve probably over a dozen issues already over many different projects with models ranging from Mistral-Large to GPT-4 Turbo. It’s one of the most powerful things you can do when revising prompts — I can’t believe I haven’t explicitly blogged about it yet, since this is one of the first things I realized about prompting, way back before I’d even made Augmentoolkit.
But that’s not really revolutionary, after all it’s just combining two principles. What about the titular thing of this blog post, getting a stubborn model to write with a given output format?
This one is partly inspired by a comment on a LocalLlama post. I don’t agree with everything in it, but there’s some really good stuff in there, full credit to LoSboccacc. They write in their comment:

Ask the model to rephrase the prompt, you will see quickly which part of the prompt misunderstood

That’s a pretty clever idea by itself, because it uses the model to debug itself. But what does this have to do with output formats? Well, if we can use the model to understand what the model is capable of, then any LLM output can give us a clue into what it “understands”. Consider that, when prompting stubborn models and trying to get them to follow our specific output format, their tendency to follow some other format (that they likely saw in their training data) is what we’re trying to override with our prompt. However, research shows that training biases cannot be fully overcome with prompting, so we’re already fighting a losing battle. And if you’re an experienced reader of mine, you’ll remember a prompting principle: if you’re fighting the model, STOP!
So what does that tangent above boil down to? If you want to find an output format a stubborn model will easily follow, see what format it uses without you asking, and borrow that. In other words: use the format the model wants to use. From my testing, it looks like this can easily get your format-following rates up to over 90% at least.
Here’s an example. Say you create a brilliant output format, and give a prompt to a model:

You are a something-doer. Do something in the following format:

x: abc

y: def
z: ghi
User:
[input]
Assistant:

But it thwarts your master-plan by doing this instead:

What do you do? Well one solution is to throw more few-shot examples of your xyz format at it. And depending on the model, that might work. But some stubborn models are, well, stubborn. And so even with repetition and examples you might see error rates of 40% or above. Even with things like Mistral Large or GPT-4 Turbo.
In such cases, just use the format the model wants. Yes, it might not have all the clever tricks you had thought of in order to get exactly the kind of output you want. Yes, it’s kind-of annoying to have to surrender to a bunch of matrices. Yes, if you were using Nous Mixtral, this would have all been over by the second example and you could’ve gone home by now. But you’re not using Nous Mixtral, you’re using Mistral Large. So it might be better to just suck it up and use 1. 2. 3. as your output format instead.
That’s all for this week. Hope you enjoyed the principles. Sorry for the delay.
Thanks for reading, have a good one and I’ll see you next time!
(Side note: the preview at the bottom of this post is undoubtably the result of one of the posts linked in the text. I can't remove it. Sorry for the eyesore. Also this is meant to be an educational thing so I flaired it as tutorial/guide, but mods please lmk if it should be flaired as self-promotion instead? Thanks.)

Hi guys,
So DD2 brought a lot of attention to TM2020 in general and I see a lot of new players who want to try it just for fun. But unfortunately most of the features of the game are behind a paywall, e.g. playing custom maps. As new players don't know much about the game, the mechanics, the other features that are behind paywall, etc., it is understandable that they don't want to pay just to try DD2, then realize it is way too hard, and also risk the fact that they simply don't enjoy the game enough in general to pay for it.
So below I present to you a workaround which makes it possible to play DD2 (and other custom maps) locally even without any paid subscription.
This is obviously for PC only, and I installed TM2020 via Steam, but that in turns installs the Ubisoft launcher, so I think it doesn't matter where you got the game from.

• First of all, download the official map from TMX: https://trackmania.exchange/maps/170211/deep-dip-2
• Tell Windows to always open GBX files with TM2020 by right-clicking on the downloaded file, then "Properties", then "Opens with", then "Change..." button, then "More apps", then scroll down, then "Look for another app on this PC", then browse the installation files (depending on how you installed the game) and select Trackmania.exe. Then "Apply".
• Start the game regularly, stop at the main menu.
• Alt+Enter to make it windowed, open a file explorer, then double click the downloaded map file.
• The map should now load in the running TM2020 instance and you are ready to play! Don't forget to Alt+Enter again to make the game fullscreen!

This obviously works for other custom maps on TMX as well!
I also read some other solutions here and there, like starting a local hotseat multiplayer session and selecting the downloaded map, but it didn't work for me ("Tracks found in this section are not suitable"), and also tried something else that I don't remember anymore that also did not work. But this solution above seems to be working fine!
Also tips for new players who want to take it a bit more seriously:

• Don't forget to Alt+Enter to go fullscreen mode, because by default the game starts in windowed mode (even if it looks like it's fullscreen) and that can cause input lag (OS window management and stuff)
• Go through your graphics settings and make sure you only enable what you need, high framerates > beautiful graphics
• If you have a less performant GPU, install OpenPlanet ( https://openplanet.dev/ ) and then the Tweaker plugin, which can be used to set a custom (short) render distance. DD2 itself is HUGE, so you definitely want this if you don't have the latest and greatest GPU.
• Also there are some other "mandatory" Openplanet plugins, but it is a topic for another time.

Hope this guide helps anyone, enjoy DD2!