Hi there, looking for some insight. Might not act on any of it but interested to hear from others who have maybe gone thru similar situations. It's pretty long, a little confusing but if u stick around that'd be great.
A few months back my friend group broke up. I think I was the only one who 'officially' broke up but I was kind of the glue that held it together in a lot of ways. For context were an all girl group that were childhood friends (now we are in are early 20s 23-24 f). I wanted to provide more context but I'm worried it will get too specific, so if someone wants more context I'll answer in the replies. Last summer I started distancing myself from 2 of the girls in the group (Let's call them A & B). Although they were once like sisters, I started seeing more of the actions they were doing and didn't agree with them so I started slowly distancing myself so I could have time to think. Some examples of things they were doing was purposefully excluding the other 2 girls in the group (C & D), B especially kept making super back handed comments about one of the other girls (girl D, who was honestly my day 1 we went wayyy back and she's the sweetest most giving, kind, respectful person), A & B would make really condescending remarks to the rest of us regarding our goals, schooling, relationships etc. etc etc..... the list goes on. And honestly I had to come to terms with the fact that I was contributing to this by not properly standing up for C & D when I was with A&B and they were saying shady shit.. I would make remarks like 'lets invite C & D' and I wouldn't ever contribute to the stuff they were saying BUT looking back, the fact that I wasn't clearly putting a stop to it and calling them out.... I was part of the problem. THIS is one of the reasons I started distancing myself because I realized I wasnt being the woman I wanted to be, I was acting on some childish BS and I loved/respected C & D wayyyy too much to contribute to that stuff.
Anyways, fast forward a bit and I was talking with D about what was going on, and I opened up to her and apologized for everything. She also shared how she had been feeling about A & B for a long time but didn't want to say anything. So we had a really good, important long talk about our friendship and it was really healthy. After that conversation I realized wow I cannot continue to associate with A & B because clearly they're making my OG Best friend (who has been by my side forever) feel like garbage.
So fast forward a few months and I haven't really been talking at all to A & B. The 'distancing' worked because I was always the main person suggesting to hangout and checking in with everyone about what's new, how've you been, etc. and so once i stopped putting in the effort it quickly started fizzling. They hmu maybe 2 or 3 times over a few months but I was also INCREDIBLY busy finishing my uni degree & had 2 jobs, so I had valid excuses that helped me politely decline the invites.
FAST FORWARD ANOTHER FEW MONTHS I finally get to meet with friend C. She was also very busy and it was tougher to plan meet ups but we met up for coffee, and low and behold A & B have been talking shit about me behind my back. We shared what's been happening, because similar to with D I apologized for not checking in more, and for not being a good friend or sticking up for her and C more etc etc. AGAIn it was a very cathartic, loving, healthy conversation where we both got a lot of clarity. She similarly shared BS about how she had been feeling, and also about shit that went down between her and A&B before....we spent a few hours connecting the dots about stories/stretched truths A&B had been telling both of us about each other. So it was honestly much needed. Since then me, c & D have all gotten together and had a wonderful time together because there was no weird vibes of shady competitive side-eyeing behavior. Just love.
ANYWAYS some more stuff came to light, time moved on, the holidays passed. And I decided I was gonna remove A&B from my socials. I found out they (before my hangout with C) had been telling C all these lies about me, and making it seem like I was suicdl, like my relationship was falling apart, like I was depressed etc. and so they were telling C to 'let them know if she got any info' ON ME?! like they wanted the tea about my life?? When meanwhile I'm over here perfectly content, just very busy on the grind, but overall very happy and healthy. And instead of them being 'friends' and hmu to ask how I'm doing, they were just lying to C making it seem as if they'd been trying to contact me and I was 'going through it' or something? So I removed them from my socials, I never confronted them. Which looking back now that it's been almost half a year, I wish I did confront them properly and just lay it all out there. But i was too concerned about 'making it a thing's because C & D are also very non-confrontational that I was worried if I told A & B about why I'm not interested in being their friends anymore that they might drag C & D in and make their lives more stressful.
After i removed them (I didn't block them, I didn't delete their numbers, I just didn't want them seeing me post photos of my life on Instagram because I thought they don't deserve to 'spy' on me).
B never hit me up, but C called me almost immediately after i removed B from my socials saying that B texted her asking why I removed her... At which point C told her to just ask me herself? Because why TF would she do that - especially because she framed it from a POV of 'Is she okay? Is something happening with her' so likeeee girl if u really gaf why wouldn't u just ask me urself? Friend A hmu that evening with this big text message just essentially gaslighting me saying that I owed her an explanation and that I owed her communication etc. I can see her point now TO AN EXTENT however if she was sitting back thinking I'm depressed and wanting to self harm and that's why I haven't been communicating, you would think her reaction would be to check in and ask what's happening instead of immediately becoming defensive. I kept the reply short and tried to be as 'kind' as I had the capacity for. Let her know I appreciated the time together but that the relationship wasn't what I needed anymore to be the best version of myself. She never answered again.
This was very long - but idk I've had some dreams where friend A was in them and we reconciled and so when I wake up it brings back old emotions/memories. The real issues were mostly centered around B being rude and toxic and unaware of how her actions were impacting people. Whereas A was just a long for the ride. HOWEVER I've talked w my mom even about this, and she pointed out the A hadn't been there for me the way I was for her. I dropped everything when she was going thru rough times, would drive to her house whenever she needed me, supported her through rlly dark times. Whereas when shit hit the fan for me when we were young she was there, but once we were adults, she became really condescending and self absorbed. I think maybe I'm still holding on to the young version of our friendship and those good times?
I've been thinking about reaching out to A to apologize for how I left things and let her know if she wants to talk about it we can. I realize from her POV the hard stop/cold shoulder was probably rough, But I'm also conflicted because of the shitty things she had done to me, and I was operating with all the capacity I could at the time while trying to protect my peace as much as possible (my friendship with A wasn't as long as with D, however it was still about a decade long). I've definitely grown a lot, I'm sure she has too, but idk.... She's probably gotten wayyy closer with B since the friend group fell apart, and given her response when I unfollowed heremoved her from my IG following, I feel like it might go badly?.... Should I hit up A and open the door for possible to communication? Or should i just work to heal and move on from the friendship breakup?... Part of me misses times with B however there was so much pain & toxicity I could never go back into that, especially because of how she treated C & D, whereas A was more just there letting it all happen and going along with it.
If u stuck around thru the confusion of reading this and can share any thoughts/insight that'd be great. Thank you!

Hi music makers! I’m writing this post to ask for some advice and to see how fellow underground musicians are dealing with the current live panorama, since I admit that I am a bit frustrated.
I’m no professional but I take music making very seriously, I produce music in a niche genre, ambient/experimental electronica/post-rock/soundtrack-style (think Ben Frost, Tim Hecker and so on). I am based in Italy and in the last 10 years I’ve published 2 records with a duo and then one as a solo artist, all for a DIY label run by a friend. I’ve paid a press agency for every release, they found me some good reviews on respected specialized press, both web and paper, in Italy at least (less in other countries). Now I have a new record to be released in September, but this time it will be published by a well-respected label in the underground, active since many years, and I plan to hire the same press agent as last time.
So then I am trying to book some gigs in Europe for September, it has never been easy since I play a very niche genre but this is becoming harder and harder recently. As I said I am no pro, I don’t aim at big hi-level clubs, I don’t aim to make money out of it, I am fine with spending some, I have a day job that satisfies me and I’m doing it because I love music, I love playing live, bringing my music out of my room, traveling and meeting people. Playing a bunch of shows in some cities in Europe, with 30 people attending, losing some money, but having 30 people seriously interested in listening each time would be a failure for a seasoned professional but for me it would be a great deal of satisfaction. Of course I am ambitious and always aiming for more but I also want to be realistic and sincere.
Even this however seems to become hard to nail; I am sending so many emails right now, a place in Paris asked me to contact them again in August, too soon now for the fall; a place in Berlin where I played like 4 or 5 times during the years answers my mails with an excruciating delay and they haven’t confirmed me a gig yet, a place in Brussels where I played a couple of times, last one two years ago, doesn’t answer. All the other places didn’t answer. In Italy even small places don’t answer, or answer saying that my genre doesn’t fit (actually they book acts playing almost my exact genre, but they have a more established following).
I tried several times to contact good booking agencies, which are even specialised in genres like mine, they always say they are too busy/have their roster full.
So, there’s probably the easy answer, my music is not good enough. Which can definitely be true, but since I managed to find some good reviews for my last works (actual decent stuff, not “you pay - we review” stuff or minuscule, unknown webzines) and a label for my next one, I want to keep trying and asking the community: how do you manage to find your gigs? I know often people become friends with other acts and they exchange dates playing together, but this is also hard to do because I don’t even have enough contacts where I live to find gigs that would provide a good enough experience and enough money to host a foreign band in exchange for them to do the same.
Thanks a lot to anyone willing to share their experience, a virtual hug to everyone!

{ WLJ: Weight Loss Journey }
As stated in a previous post, I am to journal my mental state during my weight loss journey, as it stands today is week #3 of my plan. By now I had estimated to had lost about 3 Kg from my starting weight (SW). However, instead I've gained 3 kg. In the past 2 weeks my weight had fluctuated between 110.5 and 108.5 kg. But now it skyrocketed to 113. This sudden change is an issue and it's named "I've been tense lately".
My mom in particular mentioned this to me the other day because she noticed how much I snacked throughout the day. And then I bumped into another car because I was rushing. I have been tense and stressed, so I've got to fix this. I'll have to meditate and talk to my psychologist.

Hello, im just curious to see what many people think, or if there is anyone else in this situation that I am in.
My current "girlfriend" (I say because we're more like friends at this point) have been going through tons of problems in these past 4-5 months. Im a 29 year old male, while she is a 32 year old female, who suffers with mental health issues. She is Bipolar, ADHD, and has a very short fuse. I let her stay with me last year after dating her for about 4 months because she was in the processes of moving into a new home. That ended up not working out, and she ended up staying with me longer to this day. She believes that "Astrology" will lead her to greatness and that she doesn't need to work hard for anything because "the universe has a plan for her". Prior to all of this, she never showed her true colors until this year. Her mental health got worse, and started talking about ending it all. She won't seek help, and she has no family to fall back on. I've gotten to the point where I tell her to leave but she won't leave unless I call the cops. I already know how this will play out, so I avoid the police as much as possible. With her short fuse she is just hard to communicate with sometimes for she'll just get way more mad at anything I saw when I'm just trying to be reasonable.
For work she does this freelancing gig that is only 4 hours a day, and sometimes its not even everyday. She recently started a new job, but the job won't pay her because she has a expired ID, and the DMV won't issue her a new ID unless she pays for a red light ticket she received back in 2022. She refuses to pay it and wants to see if she can cheese her way to getting her ID some other way. I literally can't stand that kind of mind set, for I myself work for a company that provides gear to law enforcement and the military. Everyday she tells me that I have it easy and my life is nothing like hers. How she deals with multiple hardships and how I have a family and she doesn't. She really is a miserable person to be around, but no matter what I do she just won't leave. I told her that she has until June 1st to get her things together and leave. She agreed but its not looking like she'll be leaving around that time. I worry that if I just put her things outside and change the locks that she'll break my door down and the police get involved.
Am I an asshole for not being more supportive? Im just fed up because I'm not mentally equipped to handle this situation anymore.

I'm currently a MR21 player that never really paid much attention to the focus schools' upgrades and only used Zenurik for the energy regen. But recently I decided to start upgrading those skill trees.
I've used the ESO Volt Prime method and after a couple of weeks, I'm just about to max my first school but I can't stand this method anymore, it's just so repetitive.
One plan I had in mind for the next schools (I am going to farm madurai next) was to equip the lens on Dante, since I love playing him and find really cool the Noctua, but since I'm not sure wether the exalted weapons count as normal weapons or as a warframe ability or something else for Affinity distribution, haven't yet decided.

Killer Grips: Anne Maria, Brick, Jasmine, Justin, Millie
Screaming Gaffers: Chase, MK, Ripper, Scott, Sky
Episode 7: The Chefshank Redemption
"Last week, the dry desert heat baked our favorite pardners like roadkill on the black top! But, crispy bottoms or not, they still had to mount their ancient steed… from a hundred-foot platform!"
“But that wasn't all. A calf-roping contest had the teams lasso each other. When Trent threw challenges for Sky, she gave him a much deserved talking to, which led to some Total Drama from Justin. Well, poor old deputy Trent found himself hitching a ride on the 3:10 to Loserville.”
"With ten remaining, it's anyone's guess who will win this week!" The camera now showed the cast trailers, with nobody in sight. "Will the Gaffers manage to win again?" the host asked as the shot moved to the team of five, loitering together beneath a tree.
"Or will the Grips even things out?" Chris asked next as the shot cut to the team of five, all sitting outside at a picnic table.
"It can happen!" Anne Maria said.
"Right," Chris said in a close-up before smiling at the camera. "See for yourself, next, on Total! Drama! Action!"
(Theme Song)
The episode properly opened on a scene of the morning sun, a lilting tune playing as the camera panned down and over to the cast trailers. The sound of snoring could be heard as the shot zoomed further in on the boys' trailer, and cut inside to show the boys all in the beds they'd picked at the start of the season, though Justin was in the middle of a facial while a fan was blowing on his nails.
An air horn was sounded loudly as the shot zoomed in on Chase, who woke up with a snap. The focus switched to Scott, who opened his eyes and rubbed them before Ripper sat up and yawned.
"I call dibs on the bathroom!" Chase said after he got out of bed, rushing to the door of the trailer. The scene cut to a close-up of the handle as he grabbed it and pulled to no effect, leading him to frown and try pulling with both hands, still with no results.
Chase then saw Justin still in bed. "Can you help with this?"
“This is day 12 of my manicure!” Justin replied. “To risk any more cuticle damage would be madness!”
"I'll open the door if you can't," Ripper told Chase as he stood next to him. “I have more muscle than all of you wimps.”
“By all means, go ahead and give it a try,” Scott encouraged insincerely.
Ripper grabbed the handle and pulled to the best of his ability, but the door remained closed. "I can't open it. We're trapped."
Confessional: Ripper
“I'm pretty much the strongest of my brothers," Ripper told the confessional camera. "In my school, I'd usually have to rip open lockers so I could either stuff somebody into it or take money. I'd usually get weeks of detention for that though."
Confessional Ends
“Why did they even trap us in here?” Chase complained as the scene cut back to the guys' trailer.
“They probably want us to fight each other to see who'll come out on top,” Scott theorized.
“We should find a way out instead of doing that,” Justin argued. “My hands have just been manicured.”
The camera cut back outside as the scene panned over to the girls' trailer, and the camera cut inside to show Millie jiggling the girls' door handle.
"I don't know how I ended up inside this trailer when I slept in a tree, but we have to open the door," Jasmine panicked as the scene panned over to her. Anne Maria and Sky were sitting on the lower bunk next to her.
“I'm pretty sure they snuck you in here while you were sleeping,” Anne Maria said. “And why are you so worked up about this?”
“I have claustrophobia, and I hate being in tight spaces,” Jasmine said.
Millie gave up pulling the handle. “This thing is jammed. I'm not able to get it open.”
"So we should try a different exit," MK walked past the bunks and pointed up at the ceiling. The other girls looked up as well and the camera followed their gazes, stopping on an emergency hatch.
"One of us should be able to squeeze through it," Sky noted and tilted her head down at MK.
“Uh, why are you staring at me?” MK asked gruffly.
Confessional: Sky
"I'm not happy to see Trent leave this early," Sky confessed. "He did do some questionable things in the past few challenges, but I thought he could get better after our talk. Regardless," she looked at the camera with determination, "I have to not let this affect my game now that I'm competing without him for the first time, and we are still together, unlike me and Keith."
Confessional Ends
"You should be the one to do it," Sky told her petite teammate. "You are the smallest one here."
MK furrowed her eyebrows. "I don't like being singled out because of my height, but for the sake of escaping this trailer, I'll excuse it." The techno looked back up at the hatch. "I will need a boost though."
"I'll help you get up there," Jasmine offered as she walked over to the girl. "My height will definitely come in handy."
The scene flashed back over to the guys, showing them looking up at the hatch.
"So obviously, we need someone to fit through the hatch and open our trailer," Scott deduced.
"Count me out," Ripper huffed. "I'm too heavy to fit through."
“I'd do it, but I would need more people to climb up through,” Justin said. “This would be a lot easier if Brick was here.”
“Speaking of which, where is Brick anyway?” Chase asked aloud.
The scene cut over to the craft services tent before flashing inside to Brick standing in the kitchen wearing a pot as a hat while Chef stood next to him in his drill sergeant uniform. "Okay maggot," Chef said. "I'm gonna ride you 'til your confidence coats the back of a spoon and your self-respect forms stiff peaks!" He showed the cadet his reflection in a cleaver and said, "No more War Child Brick. Watch and learn." He used a knife to cut a banana, a can, a bitten apple, and a boot into pieces.
"What is that?" Brick wondered.
"Taste perfection, boy," Chef poured the sliced items into a pot and served a spoonful to Brick, who cringed in disgust. "What you're tasting is pride, son. The most important virtue in a man's life. Now stir that pot!" the cook ordered before storming out.
"If Chef wants pride, then I'm going to give it my best effort," Brick talked to himself as he stirred. "What he gave me was an order, and I always follow orders."
The scene flashed back to the guys' trailer, cutting inside as Ripper placed himself in a fighting position with his arm folded and sticking out in front of him.
“Are you sure you want to do this, Ripper?” Justin asked in concern.
"Of course," Ripper said. "All I have to do is show that door who's boss by bursting through it!" Moments later, he charged across the room, yelling at the top of his lungs.
The door opened outside just before Ripper reached it, and unable to stop himself, he flew outside, past a smirking Chris wearing a police uniform, and landed next to the girls who had already gathered outside their own trailer.
"Hope you all enjoyed your first taste of the gulag," Chris said as he walked over to them, the other boys coming out of their trailer and joining the group.
"Gulag?" Anne Maria asked as Ripper stood up and dusted himself off. "What even is that? Food?"
“Gulag means prison, not food,” Sky pointed out.
"Correctamondo," Chris told her. "Because today," the camera quick-panned to a prison set with high walls rimmed with barbed wire and several wooden dummies in prison uniforms set up in a courtyard, "is Prison Flick day!"
The castmates groaned.
"Ah, prison," Chris continued. "The confinement, the claustrophobia!" he said, getting excited as he began to pace back and forth in front of the unimpressed contestants, a tense tune building up in the background. "The vile, nasty food! And you're always lookin' over your shoulder, 'cause Mr. Killer Dude wants to cut ya for takin' the last tater tot! And no matter how hard you try, digging out spoonfuls of dirt, year after year, there's no escape!"
"Unless you get voted off, of course!" he added plainly.
Confessional: Chase
“As if this place wasn't prison-like enough,” Chase muttered. “Now we have to actually live like criminals. It won't surprise me if in a year or two, Chris gets locked up for teenage abuse.”
Confessional Ends
"Lockdown, people," Chris said with a grin as the footage cut back to him in the interior of a prison lit by a handful of stage lights. "Let's get this challenge started!" The shot pulled back, revealing the teams standing across from each other next to tables filled with a variety of cooking dishes. A covered cart sat near the hot, and in the background were a pair of cages.
"Teams, take a prisoner from the competition," he told them in a close-up as footsteps were heard in the background, "and Chef,” Chef arrived on screen in his earlier outfit, "I mean Warden," the host corrected with a wink. "Lock 'em up."
The shot cut over to the Grips. "Okay," Justin whispered as the five huddled, "we have to pick the weakest member of the other team."
“We do have to weigh our options,” Millie said. “Chase once told me that he swallowed ten bugs into his mouth in under a minute as a dare, and Scott and Sky have strong stomachs as evident in the eating challenge from last season.”
“Ripper doesn't seem the type to chuck out what he eats, so we're picking MK,” Jasmine decided.
The shot cut over to the Gaffers' huddle. "Obviously, we need to pick Millie for this," Scott suggested. "She's less likely to handle gross food."
"I would say Jasmine since she's less likely to go through being locked up because of her claustrophobia," MK said, "but using someone's fear against them would make me look bad."
"Looks like we have a choice," Chase finished.
"Choices?" Chris announced suddenly. "Gaffers?"
"We choose Millie," Sky announced, causing the writer to groan.
"Grips?" Chris followed up, taking a few steps to the other team. "Now remember, this is an important choice. Whoever gets the upper hand here could win the whole challenge!"
"Because of that," Brick announced, "we're picking MK." The techno girl gulped.
"Today's first game is," Chris announced as he walked back over to the covered cart, "the Prison Chow-llenge!" A few deep notes played as he grabbed the cover and whipped it away, revealing the stinking, rotting, half eaten food lying beneath. "Each team of prison chefs whips up the foulest, nastiest, most barf-inducing slop this side of Alcatraz," he explained as the camera moved in for a close-up of the 'food', then cut to a cringing Brick and a again to a somewhat surprised-looking Anne Maria.
"Millie and MK have to stomach as much as they can," the host explained. "Last one to power-hurl wins!"
"Technically, this isn't an actual prison," Millie said as Chef herded her into the cage closest to the Grips. "If I was, I'd be protesting how unfair my “arrest” is."
"That's what some of them say," Chris told her with a smile as the door slammed shut and the camera pulled back, showing that MK had been locked up as well.
Confessional: Millie
"I'm not exactly hyped for this," Millie confessed uncertainly. "With the exception of the Brunch of Disgustingness, I'm not the kind to eat gross food, and I don't plan on doing so in the future, but since I've already been nominated, I might as well just suck it up."
Confessional Ends
The camera panned across the Grips' table, showing only a handful of dishes filled with unidentifiable mush. "This just keeps getting worse and worse!" Millie said as she looked at it in horror.
"The reward better be worth it," MK said from her cage.
"Have I ever let you down?" Chris asked before quickly adding "Wait! Scratch that!" He smiled before continuing. "Anyway, the winning team gets this!" He held up a golden shovel, which gleamed in the light.
"A shovel?" Millie asked skeptically. “Seriously?”
Confessional: Jasmine
"Given what I know about confinement cells, I think I know what the next part of the challenge will be," Jasmine told the confessional camera. "If it's digging, then we have to believe that Millie will pull through for us."
Confessional Ends
"Prisoners ready?" Chris called from between the two cages. "Aaaand, culinate!"
The host continued his rapid commentary as the Gaffers were shown making their first moves around a large bowl of something brown. "Ripper goes right for the roaches. Chase tops it off with some moldy pineapple slices and oh! Here come the horse lips!" The burly boy dropped his ingredient into the bowl and walked away while the daredevil stuffed the pineapples into the bowl and grabbed some horse lips in order to add them in.
Sky approached the table from the other side. “Where did you even get these things?” the athlete asked.
"I found some leftover pineapples from the beach party," Chase told her before they left the table.
“Gross, but effective,” Sky said.
Scott arrived with his wife beater taken off and in his hands. “This oughta be good,” he snickered as he twisted his cloth and squeezed out all the sweat into the bowl. After doing so, he put his wife beater back on his bare chest.
The camera cut over to the Grips as Justin took some dead hair out of his pockets and put them into his team's bowl. "Looks like Justin is sacrificing some of his dead hair," Chris commented as Jasmine stepped forward with a cheese grater and a moldy onion, "and Jasmine adds a topping of ripe onion." The Australian woman quickly grated the onion and walked away as Anne Maria walked up to the bowl.
"Remember," Brick whispered to the Jersey girl, "we're trying to make the food gross, not tasty."
"I know that, which is why I'm throwing out these expired lip gloss," Anne Maria said as she took out two sticks of lip gloss and put them in the bowl, followed by her using her spray can on it.
"Time's up!" Chris announced suddenly and with a grin. "And jailbirds, hope your appetites are primed!"
"Hope you're not feeling queasy today," Jasmine said with a smirk as she delivered her team's bowl of white-and-moldy 'food' over to MK.
"Here is what me and my team put together," Chase said as he walked past to take a bowl of something mostly brown to Millie. “Sorry if it grosses you out, babe.”
"This looks," Millie said before gulping, "uh, incredibly...not so bad..."
"Are you maggots ready?" Chris asked excitedly. The shot cut to a close-up of maggots squirming beneath the white mush, the camera zooming out to show a horrified MK. "One minute to down that chow! Aaaaanndd...Dig in!"
The hacker took a spoonful of prison food and forced it into her mouth, cringing and shuddering immediately.
Confessional: MK
"I don't even know how the contestants could go through the Brunch of Disgustingness without dying last season," MK admitted in the make-up trailer. "I clearly don't have the iron stomach for this challenge, even after eating Chef's grossening excuse for food for two seasons."
Confessional Ends
The footage cut back to Millie as she hesitantly plunged the first spoonful into her mouth. She swallowed it whole and moaned. "What did you even put in this? Anchovy paste?"
"Not gonna answer," Ripper snorted cruelly.
Millie took another spoonful, and after a pause, she opened her mouth and pulled out a moldy pineapple slice. She shuddered again and flung it away from her.
A quick-pan over to MK showed the short girl forcing her way through her own meal. "Don't think about it," she said with a disgusted grimace after a swallow. "Do not think about it!" She took another bite, shuddered, and swallowed.
Seeing her struggle, Scott quickly conducted a plan. "Wow, who knew Millie had such a strong stomach?" he said to his team. "Especially after I squeezed all of my sweat into the bowl!"
“What?!” Millie's eyes went wide as she dropped her bowl of food to the ground with an off-screen splat. She vomited moments later, in a stream that hit a stunned MK in the head.
"MK keeps it down for the Screaming Gaffers," Chris announced over a piece of triumphant music, "and wins the reward!"
The Gaffers cheered, Sky holding the golden shovel in her hand.
"Hey Chris, can I throw up now?" MK asked as Chris let her out.
"As long as you don't get any puke on my hair and below, go right ahead," Chris told her.
"Cool," MK said, holding her stomach as she walked out of her cage. The moment the host left, she turned around and grabbed the side of her former cell, and puked right into it.
"Are you gonna be alright?" Sky asked as she and Scott walked over to her.
"Yeah," MK said after she turned around. "I was just waiting for Millie to puke her guts out."
"And because of me, she did it much faster," Scott gloated. “My sweat came through for us.
“You didn't need to say it out loud,” Sky told her teammate. “That was sort of cheating.”
"You say cheating, we say getting an advantage," MK said before getting queasy again. "Now can you excuse me for a sec?" Without waiting for a response, she turned back around and puked again.
The camera cut to Chef on another part of the set. "Sir, we may not have won," Brick said as he ran over to the cook, "but I can take pride in the fact that we created a meal that even you wouldn't eat."
"You've still got more to learn!" Chef shouted.
“Pardon?” Brick grew confused.
“Pride and two bucks will get you a cup of coffee!” Chef said. “What a man really needs is loyalty, and you clearly came through for your team. If it wasn't for the sweat thing, you would've won!”
“Thank you?” Brick said confusingly.
Chef placed a hand on his shoulder. “I was once like you. Young, weird, kinda ugly. But you've got a gift. Now own it. Don't let it go to waste. Like I did,” he sniffled and returned to his gruff state. “Meet me in the kitchen after the challenge. You're on permanent KP duty, soldier,” he said as he left.
Confessional: Brick
“I had no idea Chef could show empathy towards me, and though I don't like going against my morals by doing this secret alliance, that was the highlight,” Brick said with a smile.
Confessional Ends
(Commercial Break)

Omnivoracious Listeners New Music Newsletter (Week of May 19th):
New LPs:
🇺🇸 Ahem - 'Avoider' (Genre: Indie Rock, Pop Punk)
🇺🇸 Almanac Man - 'Terrain' (Genre: Noise Rock)
🇺🇸 Altar of Gore - 'Litanies of the Unceasing Agonies' (Genre: Black Death)
🇻🇪 Ancient Settlers - 'Oblivion's Legacy' (Genre: Melodic Death Metal, Metalcore)
🇺🇸 Animal, Surrender! - 'Animal, Surrender!' (Genre: Post-Rock)
🇺🇸 Ape Vermin - 'Andromedas Colossus' (Genre: Prog Sludge Metal)
🇺🇸 August Winter - 'Redemption' (Genre: Post Rock)
🇳🇱 Baardvader - 'When the Stars Arrive' (Genre: Stoner Doom)
🇺🇸 Babylon A.D. - 'Rome Wasn't Built in a Day' (Genre: Hard Rock)
🇬🇧 Bad Breeding - 'Contempt' (Genre: Hardcore Punk, Anarcho Punk)
🇺🇸 Baphorator - 'I.B.L.I.S.' (Genre: Black Death)
🇺🇸 Bat - 'Under the Crooked Claw' (Genre: Speed Metal)
🇺🇸 Bermuda Squares - 'Outsider' (Genre: Garage Punk)
🇺🇸 Billie Eilish - 'Hit Me Hard and Soft' (Genre: Pop)
🇺🇸 Blitzen Trapper - '100's of 1000's, Millions of Billions' (Genre: Alt Country, Folk Rock)
🇮🇹 Boleskine House - 'Miserabilist Blues' (Genre: Atmo Black Metal)
🇨🇦 Bootlicker - '1000 Yd. Bars' (Genre: D-Beat, Hardcore Punk)
🇺🇸 Botanist - 'Paleobotany' (Genre: Experimental Post-Black Metal)
🇺🇸 Burnt Sherpa - 'Last of Later' (Genre: Stoner Rock)
🇺🇸 Cage the Elephant - 'Neon Pill' (Genre: Alt Rock, Indie Rock)
🇺🇸 Candy Apple - 'Comatose' (Genre: Hardcore Punk)
🇺🇸 Cardiac Arrest - 'The Stench of Eternity' (Genre: Death Metal)
🇳🇱 Celestial Season - 'Mysterium III' (Genre: Death Doom)
🇺🇸 Childish Gambino - 'Atavista' (Genre: R&B, Rap)
🇧🇷 Chococorn and the Sugarcanes - 'Siamês' (Genre: Midwest Emo, Power Pop)
🇺🇸 Cognitive - 'Abhorrence' (Genre: Tech Death Metal, Deathcore)
🇷🇺 Cold Blooded Murder - 'From Russia With Hate' (Genre: Brutal Death Metal)
🇺🇸 Collective Soul - 'Here to Eternity' (Genre: Alt Rock, Post-Grunge)
🇳🇴 Combichrist - 'CMBCRST' (Genre: Industrial Metal)
🇺🇸 Crumb - 'Amama' (Genre: Psych Rock)
🇦🇺 Danielle Whalebone - 'Whispers of Shadows' (Genre: Noise Rock)
🇺🇸 Dawnbreaker - 'Banisher of Unlight' (Genre: Blackened Death Metal)
🇫🇷 Dead Horse One - 'Seas of Static' (Genre: Shoegaze, Psych Rock)
🇬🇧 Demon - 'Invincible' (Genre: Heavy Metal, Hard Rock)
🇮🇸 Demored - 'Well of Liquid Souls' (Genre: Hardcore Punk)
🇺🇸 Devitalized - 'State of Aggression' (Genre: Deathcore)
🇺🇸 Dog Party - 'Dangerous' (Genre: Punk Rock)
🇺🇸 Don McLean - 'American Boys' (Genre: Folk Rock)
🇮🇹 Duft - 'Altar of Instant Gratification' (Genre: Metalcore)
🇺🇸 Dystopica - 'Infinite Reflection' (Genre: Prog Metal)
🇺🇸 Early Internet - 'Ruminator' (Genre: Indie Pop)
🇨🇦 Earth Ball - 'It's Yours' (Genre: Experimental Rock)
🇺🇸 Egg Drop Soup - 'One Hit Woman' (Genre: Garage Punk, Surf Punk)
🇸🇪 Eigenstate Zero - 'The Malthusian' (Genre: Prog Death Metal)
🇮🇪 El Morta - 'The Man Who Laughs' (Genre: Doom Metal)
🇩🇪 Elvellon - 'Ascending Synergy' (Genre: Symphonic Metal)
🇧🇷 Eminent Shadow - 'Dawn of the Dark Age - Inferno Diaboli' (Genre: Death Metal)
🇪🇸 Esclavitud - 'Stronger Than a God' (Genre: Heavy Metal)
🇫🇷 Etwas - 'Rites of the Damned - Chvpter. II' (Genre: Symphonic Metal)
🇺🇸 Excuse Me, Who Are You? - 'Double Blind' (Genre: Midwest Emo, Post-Hardcore)
🇺🇸 Extinguish - 'One Less Enemy' (Genre: Hardcore Punk)
🇺🇸 Extortionist - 'Devoid of Love & Light' (Genre: Deathcore)
🇮🇹 Forever Falling - 'The Determinism of Essence in Matter' (Genre: Death Doom)
🇸🇪 Freedom - 'Stay Free!' (Genre: Hard Rock)
🇺🇸 From Indian Lakes - 'Head Void' (Genre: Indie Pop)
🇺🇸 Gatecreeper - 'Dark Superstition' (Genre: Death Metal)
🇬🇧 Ghost Keeper - 'The Dread Legion' (Genre: Thrash Metal)
🇩🇪 Goblyns - 'Hunki Bobo' (Genre: Psych Rock)
🇺🇸 Göden - 'Vale of the Fallen' (Genre: Death Doom)
🇬🇧 Gumshoes - 'Cacophony' (Genre: Indie Pop, Indie Folk)
🇺🇸 Guppy - 'Something Is Happening' (Genre: Garage Rock)
🇺🇸 Guster - 'Ooh La La' (Genre: Art Rock, Pop Rock)
🇬🇧 Halloweens - 'Opera Singing at the Salsa Bar' (Genre: Pop Rock)
🇺🇸 Hardy - 'Psycho' (Genre: Country Rock, Post-Grunge)
🇺🇸 Heavy Feather & the Magic Word - 'Two-Way Mirror' (Genre: Psych Rock)
🇺🇦 Hell:On - 'Shaman' (Genre: Death Thrash)
🇺🇸 Hemotoxin - 'When Time Becomes Loss' (Genre: Prog Death Metal)
🇸🇪 Henry Kane - 'Circle of Pain' (Genre: Crust Punk, Grindcore)
🇺🇸 High Noon Kahuna - 'This Place Is Haunted' (Genre: Noise Rock)
🇺🇸 Home Invasion - 'Enemy' (Genre: Hardcore Punk)
🇧🇪 Hudič - 'Into the Abyss' (Genre: Heavy Metal)
🇺🇸 If Not for Me - 'Everything You Wanted' (Genre: Metalcore)
🇮🇹 I Hate My Village - 'Nevermind the Tempo' (Genre: Psych Rock)
🇫🇷 Inner Landscape - '3H33' (Genre: Post Metal)
🇨🇦 Intervals - 'Memory Palace' (Genre: Prog Metal)
🇺🇸 Jack Name - 'Fabulous Soundtracks' (Genre: Hypnagogic Pop, Neo Psychedelia)
🇺🇸 Jasta - '...And Jasta for All' (Genre: Thrash Metal)
🇺🇸 Jeff Kollman - '2023 AD' (Genre: Hard Rock, Heavy Metal)
🇬🇧 Jeff Slate - 'The Last Day of Summer' (Genre: Hard Rock)
🇺🇸 John Larson and the SIlver Fields - 'Constellation Prize' (Genre: Power Pop)
🇺🇸 John Oates - 'Reunion' (Genre: Blue Eyed Soul, Pop Rock)
🇺🇸 Joywave - 'Permanent Pleasure' (Genre: Indie Rock)
🇺🇸 Kate Hudson - 'Glorious' (Genre: Pop, Soft Rock)
🇺🇸 Kerry King - 'From Hell I Rise' (Genre: Thrash Metal)
🇺🇸 Kev and Cam - 'Kevin's Gate' (Genre: Prog Metal)
🇳🇱 Krezip - 'Music for Maximum' (Genre: Alt Pop Rock)
🇬🇧 Kulk - 'It Gets Worse' (Genre: Sludge Metal, Noise Rock)
🇺🇸 Lightheaded - 'Combustible Gems' (Genre: Jangle Pop)
🇺🇸 Littered With Arrows - 'No Doves Fly Above' (Genre: Sludge Metal, Noise Rock)
🇺🇸 Little Feat - 'Sam's Phone' (Genre: Southern Rock)
🇧🇪 Lovelorn Dolls - 'Deadtime Stories' (Genre: Alt Rock, Synthpop)
🇳🇱 Lucassen & Soeterboek's Plan Nine - 'The Long-Lost Songs' (Genre: Hard Rock)
🇫🇮 Lucidity - 'Escherian' (Genre: Melodic Death Metal)
🇧🇷 Madame Frankenstein - 'The Eyes of the Mountain Are Mine' (Genre: Stoner Doom)
🇺🇸 Magic Fig - 'Magic Fig' (Genre: Psych Rock, Psych Pop)
🇩🇰 Mansfield - 'For All the Right Reasons' (Genre: Indie Rock)
🇮🇹 Marea - 'The Silene of Rust' (Genre: Black Doom, Post Metal)
🇺🇸 Marty Friedman - 'Drama' (Genre: Prog Rock, Prog Metal)
🇩🇪 Meanwhile Project LTD - 'Sir Mandrill' (Genre: Prog Rock, Post-Rock)
🇺🇸 Mia Day - 'Hellier, Forever' (Genre: Indie Rock)
🇺🇸 Mineshaft - 'We've Taken This Too Far' (Genre: Screamo)
🇲🇽 Moonlight - 'Skogstronen' (Genre: Black Metal)
🇩🇰 Morbid Grave - 'The Slime Crawlers' (Genre: Death Metal)
🇺🇸 Mortal Reminder - 'Mortal Reminder' (Genre: Metalcore, Djent)
🇬🇧 Mutes - '...Buried Where You Stand' (Genre: Post-Punk, Noise Rock)
🇷🇸 Nadsvest - 'Slovo Meseca I Krvi' (Genre: Black Metal)
🇨🇦 Naomi King - 'Black Water' (Genre: Alt Rock)
🇨🇦 Necht - 'The Prophect of Karnifor' (Genre: Black Metal)
🇷🇸 Neven - 'U Svakom Srcu Gore Svetla' (Genre: Hardcore Punk)
🇺🇸 New Kids on the Block - 'Still Kids' (Genre: Boy Band)
🇺🇸 Nobody - 'Despair Is Where My Thoughts Swim' (Genre: Post-Black Metal)
🇺🇸 Nocturnus AD - 'Unicursal' (Genre: Tech Death Metal)
🇭🇺 Norms - '100% Hazaárulás' (Genre: Hardcore Punk)
🇦🇺 Northeast Party House - 'Enhancer' (Genre: Dance Punk)
🇺🇸 Of Montreal - 'Lady on the Cusp' (Genre: Indie Pop)
🇨🇦 Olim - 'Because' (Genre: Post-Black Metal)
🇺🇸 One Step Closer - 'All You Embrace' (Genre: Straight Edge Hardcore)
🇪🇸 Orion Child - 'Aesthesis' (Genre: Power Metal)
🇸🇪 Pain - 'I Am' (Genre: Industrial Rock, Electronic Rock)
🇺🇸 Pallbearer - 'Mind Burns Alive' (Genre: Doom Metal)
🇨🇦 Passage - 'Crystal' (Genre: Doom Metal)
🇺🇸 Pathology - 'Unholy Descent' (Genre: Brutal Death Metal)
🇦🇺 Peter Freebairn - 'Silhouettes & Cigarettes' (Genre: Pop Rock, Singer-Songwriter)
🇬🇧 Pig - 'Red Room' (Genre: Industrial Rock,, Industrial Metal)
🇪🇸 Pòstum-0 - 'Nueva Humanidad' (Genre: Hard Rock, Heavy Metal)
🇸🇪 PreHistoric Animals - 'Finding Love in Strange Places' (Genre: Prog Rock)
🇺🇸 Radar - 'Radar' (Genre: Pop Punk, Supergroup)
🇫🇮 Rats Will Feast - 'Hellhole' (Genre: Hardcore Punk)
🇳🇿 Rendered Helpless - 'From Nothing Comes All' (Genre: Slam Death Metal)
🇮🇩 Reveals - 'Attachment, Destruction and Extinction' (Genre: Atmo Black Metal)
🇩🇪 Rope Sect - 'Estrangement' (Genre: Gothic Rock)
🇨🇱 Rotten Tomb - 'The Relief of Death' (Genre: Death Metal)
🇺🇸 Salt on Sunday - 'A Docket of Votive Offerings' (Genre: Experimental Metal)
🇺🇸 Secrecies - 'Perfect Bite' (Genre: Dreampop)
🇺🇸 Sekengard - 'Creation's Veil' (Genre: Folk Metal)
🇬🇷 Serement - 'Abhorrent Invocations' (Genre: Blackened Death Metal)
🇲🇽 Servus - 'Cyclical Existence' (Genre: Black Metal)
🇺🇸 Shellac - 'To All Trains' (Genre: Noise Rock)
🇷🇺 Shokran - 'Duat' (Genre: Prog Metalcore)
🇬🇧 Shoshy - '誰​に​も (Darenimo)' (Genre: Dreampop)
🇳🇴 Sibiir - 'Undergang' (Genre: Hardcore Punk)
🇺🇸 Sludgeworth - 'Together Not Together' (Genre: Punk Rock)
🇺🇸 So Much Hope, Buried - 'I'd Be Lying to Say I'm Not Weak' (Genre: Post-Hardcore)
🇨🇭 SoulLine - 'Reflections' (Genre: Melodic Death Metal)
🇺🇸 SQÜRL - 'Music for Man Ray' (Genre: Psych Rock, Post-Rock)
🇧🇪 Stacks - 'Want' (Genre: Synthpop)
🇩🇰 Strychnos - 'Armageddon Patronage' (Genre: Black Death)
🇬🇷 Subfire - 'Blood Omen' (Genre: Symphonic Power Metal)
🇺🇸 Suck Brick Kid - 'The End Is What I Want' (Genre: Pop Punk)
🇺🇸 Sweat FM - 'You and I, We Were Born to Cry' (Genre: Punk Rock)
🇺🇸 System Exclusive - 'Click' (Genre: Synthpop)
🇺🇸 Telltale - 'Telltale' (Genre: Pop Punk)
🇮🇹 Tezza F. - 'Key to Your Kingdom' (Genre: Prog Power Metal)
🇨🇦 The Anti-Queens - 'Disenchanted' (Genre: Punk Rock)
🇺🇸 The Co Founder - 'Never Miss a Good Opportunity to Shut the Fuck Up' (Genre: Indie Rock)
🇬🇧 The Dave Foster Band - 'Maybe They'll Come Back for Us' (Genre: Prog Rock)
🇬🇧 The Howlers - 'What You've Got to Lose to Win It All' (Genre: Indie Rock)
🇺🇸 The Last of Lucy - 'Godform' (Genre: Tech Death)
🇬🇧 The Lovely Eggs - 'Eggistentialism' (Genre: Egg Punk, Psych Punk)
🇺🇸 The Macks - 'The Macks Are a Knife' (Genre: Indie Rock, Indie Punk)
🇺🇸 The Mountain Movers - 'Walking After Dark' (Genre: Psych Rock, Neo Psychedelia)
🇺🇸 Tim Easton - 'Find Your Way' (Genre: Country Blues, Roots Rock)
🇺🇸 Tolls - 'Plummet Through Agony' (Genre: Hardcore Punk)
🇺🇸 Torturer's Lobby - 'Deadened Nerves' (Genre: Death Thrash)
🇯🇵 角松敏生 (Toshiki Kadomatsu) - 'MAGIC HOUR ~Lovers at Dusk~' (Genre: City Pop, Jazz Fusion)
🇦🇺 Tropical Strength - 'Tropical Strength & the Silverbeats' (Genre: Indie Pop)
🇬🇧 Troy Redfern - 'Invocation' (Genre: Blues Rock)
🇺🇸 Twenty One Pilots - 'Clancy' (Genre: Indie Pop, Alt Rock)
🇺🇸 Tzompantli - 'Beating the Drums of Ancestral Force' (Genre: Death Doom)
🇮🇹 Ufomammut - 'Hidden' (Genre: Psych Doom)
🇸🇪 Universe III - 'Universe III' (Genre: Hard Rock)
🇩🇪 Unwesen - 'Irrsinnfonie' (Genre: Black Metal)
🇺🇸 (Un)worthy - 'This Present Darkness' (Genre: Death Metal, Deathcore)
🇯🇵 Valhalla - 'Memories of Yggdrasil' (Genre: Power Metal)
🇺🇸 Vitskär Süden - 'Vessel' (Genre: Heavy Psych)
🇺🇸 Ward White - 'Here Come the Dowsers!' (Genre: Art Rock)
🇺🇸 Warren Dunes - 'Aquamarine' (Genre: Indie Pop)
🇨🇦 William Shatner - 'Where Will the Animals Sleep? Songs for Kids and Other Living Things' (Genre: Indie Rock, Spoken Word)
🇺🇸 Winter Aid - 'Pull the Sky Inside' (Genre: Indie Folk)
🇺🇸 Your Ghost in Glass - 'Drowning to Escape the Fire' (Genre: Post-Hardcore)
🇬🇧 Zayn - 'Room Under the Stairs' (Genre: Pop, Singer-Songwriter)
🇺🇸 Zero Point Energy - 'Tilted Planet' (Genre: Shoegaze, Indie Rock)
🇺🇸 Zig Zags - 'Strange Masters' (Genre: Crossover Thrash, Garage Punk)
🇺🇸 Zombeast - 'Heart of Darkness' (Genre: Punk Rock)
New EPs:
🇺🇸 Ameonna - 'Goddes Reign' (Genre: Deathcore, Prog Metalcore)
🇸🇪 Aspernamentum - 'Primal Judgement Manifesto' (Genre: Black Metal)
🇺🇦 Azimut - 'Nun' (Genre: Atmo Sludge Metal)
🇮🇹 Barbarian - 'A Kiss of a Whisper' (Genre: Speed Thrash)
🇫🇷 Black Velvet - 'Identity?' (Genre: Heavy Metal)
🇺🇸 Black Water Sunset - 'When Man and Machine Collide - A Tribute to Control Denied' (Genre: Prog Death Metal)
🇵🇪 Culmen - 'De Un Soplo La Creacion' (Genre: Black Metal)
🇬🇧 Darko - 'Greyscale' (Genre: Melodic Hardcore)
🇬🇧 De'Lour - 'The Ghost You Left Behind' (Genre: Post-Hardcore)
🇦🇺 Divine Grave - 'Traumapieces' (Genre: Prog Metalcore)
🇺🇸 Draag - 'Actually, the Quiet Is Nice' (Genre: Dreampop, Shoegaze)
🇨🇦 Erythrite Throne - 'Thy Bastard Offspring Birthed of the Gallows Tree' (Genre: Black Doom)
🇩🇪 Evoked - 'Immoral Arts' (Genre: Death Metal)
🇧🇪 Fatal Move - 'Fugazi' (Genre: Hardcore Punk)
🇺🇸 Female Gaze - 'Tender Futures' (Genre: Hard Rock)
🇩🇰 Gradience - 'Ironsight' (Genre: Deathcore)
🇬🇧 I Häxa - 'Part 2' (Genre: Folk Metal)
🇲🇽 Imperator - 'Diable' (Genre: Black Metal)
🇦🇹 Insanity Alert - 'Moshemian Thrashody' (Genre: Crossover Thrash)
🇬🇧 Irked - 'Irked' (Genre: Punk Rock)
🇧🇷 Katástrofe - 'Terra Sombria' (Genre: Thrash Metal)
🇯🇵 Loyal to the Grave - 'Rectitude' (Genre: Hardcore Punk)
🇺🇸 Mechanistic Butchery - 'Post-Human Putridity' (Genre: Grindcore, Cybergrind)
🇨🇦 MLRiffage - 'Bleak II' (Genre: Death Thrash)
🇺🇸 Night Sins - 'A Silver Blade in the Shadow' (Genre: Gothic Rock, Darkwave)
🇯🇵 Nothing's Carved in Stone - 'Brightness' (Genre: J-Rock, Alt Rock)
🇩🇰 Omsorg - 'Echoes' (Genre: Post-Hardcore)
🇩🇰 Pretext - 'Force the Hand of Fate' (Genre: Hard Rock, Heavy Metal)
🇺🇸 Psithurism - 'A Dead Sun' (Genre: Metalcore, Deathcore)
🇯🇵 Purple Hell - 'Asthenia Soul 灵​魂​病​症' (Genre: Melodic Death Metal, Metalcore)
🇬🇧 Queen Laya - 'Queen Laya' (Genre: Alt Rock)
🇨🇭 ReDraw - 'The Party' (Genre: Thrash Metal)
🇺🇸 Soften the Glare - 'EP III' (Genre: Prog Rock)
🇪🇸 Sons of Cult - 'Desolation' (Genre: Heavy Metal, Hard Rock)
🇺🇸 Stylogaster - 'Keepsake' (Genre: Slowcore)
🇺🇸 Vanquishment - 'Dogfights' (Genre: Melodic Black Metal)
🇺🇸 Virologist - 'Ameliorating Vicissitudes' (Genre: Brutal Death Metal)
🇺🇦 Wallflower - 'The Place Where I Feel Free' (Genre: Hardcore Punk)
🇺🇸 We're All Wrong - 'Leerer' (Genre: Prog Metalcore)
New Cover Albums:
🇨🇦 Arkells - 'Disco Loadout' (Genre: Alt Rock)
🇺🇸 Slash - 'Orgy of the Damned' (Genre: Hard Rock, Blues Rock)
Off to Detroit tomorrow for some live music! Cage The Elephant dropping this week, and thanks to concert week I got tickets for that also! Anyone you're seeing on the list this week?
https://discord.gg/atDujWqf9P
Feel free to contribute to our ever-growing newsletter:
Just DM Seffial!
Happy Listening!

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Plot

When the Traveling Baboon Show led by Uroho arrives in the Pride Lands to perform their show, they end up stealing the other animals' food. After chasing the baboons to the Outlands, the Lion Guard has to come to their rescue when they are cornered by Janja, Cheezi, and Chungu.

Song: "The Traveling Baboon Show"
Pros
-There aren't that many pluses to this episode, for me. However, I did like Kion and Ma Tembo's interactions in this. This episode feels like a precursor of their "child/adult friendship" for the rest of Season 2. I like their interaction at the start and when they discover there's a food thief. Unfortunately, they are not enough to save this episode.
-"No, but, we will hear you chewing," Fuli, Misophonic icon.
-"Me too! I was in a panic, let me tell you!" Thurston. It's funny because he's always in a panic.
-"I like 'em better on my inside than my outside," Bunga, best line in the entire episode.
-I will admit, I do like the addition of Yellow Baboons in The Lion Guard because they are a different species of baboon than the rest of them in the Pride Lands. So, I like that the animators added a new species for the kids. It's just really unfortunate that they made them really unlikable and annoying.
-"Or, if you're a zebra, panicking and running!" Alright fine, that was the funniest Uroho line in the whole episode, but, I still hate him.
-"It's funny because it's true," Thurston, at least he's aware of it. What an icon.
-I've always loved Ono in this episode because I empathise with him and I feel his frustration. "Yes, they're hysterical. Ha ha," I love his sarcasm. He hates them as much as I do.
-Beshte, "Like my dad says, it's not fair to take more than your share." Wise words from Basi. Also, I always loved when Beshte recites his father's sage advice.
-Ono, speaking nothing, but facts, "Plus, some zebras are afraid of.... bugs!"
-Bunga's "Baboons" was a funny line in the episode. He understands where Fuli and Ono are coming from by then.
-Cheezi and Chungu were funny at first, but it got old really quickly as soon as the baboon trio arrived into the Outlands. "You know what would taste really good right now?" Anything?" I can't deny how much I love these two, even if they can't save this episode.
Cons
-Okay, while the idea of there being a food thief in the Pride Lands sounds cool, the series has already explored that in episodes like "The Kupatana Celebration" and "The Call of the Drongo" and we saw two different outcomes. In the former, Reirei and the jackals got punished for stealing food and for scamming the animals of the Pride Lands, and in the latter, Tamaa was stealing food at first, but did learn from and correct his mistake. I find the two of them much more watchable than this lackluster episode. Plus, nothing thrilling happens in this episode, it's just the Lion Guard investigating on area of the Pride Lands and very slowly trying to piece together who the food thieves are. Plus, they don't even ask around and no animal is in any real danger, here. We don't get a change of scenery, apart from the baboons' performance and the one area of the Pride Lands.
-Okay, as I already said, this episode is a complete rehash of "The Kupatana Celebration", "The Call of the Drongo" and "Ono's Idol", which are much better episodes than this and have more going on. We already had the whole "food thief" plotline in the first two and it was way better. It's very predictable with any twists and turns, and it's not very interesting. I thought the dialogue was quite weak. We can all guess exactly what will happen even if we've never it before (I have watched it when it premiered). Also, I thought the baboons were weak antagonists, personally with no redeeming or interesting qualities, whatsoever. But seriously, switch out the baboon trio for Reirei's pack or Tamaa, and it's the same story, except that the jackals actually got their comeuppance and Tamaa learned his lesson.
-The baboons are very unlikable and I don't feel like they earned their redemption arc at all. At least, with Tamaa, he wasn't entirely antagonistic in his episode, he was more morally-grey and he was unable to gather food for himself. So, we can kind of feel bad for him. Also, Tamaa was, deep down, aware that he was in the wrong for stealing and he actually took the initiative to correct his mistake in the end, no prompting from the Lion Guard. With Hadithi, in his episode, he did have a conscience deep down all along and felt guilty for always lying to Ono. He also feels guilty during the ceremony and makes a proper effort to apologise and help Ono, and even commends the young egret at the end for his act of heroism. Those were both examples of "Selfish character learns to put the needs of others before their own" done right.
-Another reason I think that the baboon troop had no qualms about stealing food and going against the circle of life, is that they kept juggling and throwing Ono around against his will because they knew he would figure it out and expose them as the thieves. I don't think they actually wanted him as part of the act, I think they intimidated by his presence. Also, the circus soon becomes clear that it's just a cover up to throw the Pride Landers off, so, they can't be exposed. When eventually Ono figures out that they are the thieves, Uroho tries to talk himself out of trouble, but to no avail, just like Reirei had tried when her pack were discovered. So, overall, I think the baboons were very aware that they were in the wrong, but, didn't care, they only cared about being popular from performing.
-"Bunga and the Baboons" would've been genuinely funny, to me, except for the fact that we'd already seen the baboons mistreating Ono against his will by forcing him to be part of the act. I have to wonder, I know Bunga is being Bunga, but, why would he want to do the act when Ono, one of his best friends, is being thrown around by said baboons.
-That's another thing, I really don't like Ono being treated as the Butt-Monkey. I don't like his mistreatment from Mwevi and Mwizi, and the fact that no one on the Lion Guard does anything to prevent it. I thought Kion and his friends were a little bit mean here, the way they laughed at Ono even though he was clearly being roped into a performance he didn't want to be in. "What the hell, guys! This is your friend, Ono, and a valuable member of the Lion Guard. Why would you guys just stand there and not intervene when he's clearly being juggled around, screaming?" That doesn't sound like any of them. Kion has pounced on several of the bad guys for trying mistreat his friends and allies, as well as trouble-making and he's also pounced on Hafifu and Majinuni for messing with some pangolins." Why wouldn't he just pounce on Mwevi and Mwizi right then and there, for his friend Ono?
-"It was pretty funny when they juggled you like a sausage fruit." and "Funny! That was hilarious..." No, it was not. I think was the one time I didn't like Beshte's character and Bunga's, for that matter. I don't like that they do not defend Ono even once and that they're laughing at his annoyance.
-"Come on, Bunga. Who are gonna believe, your friend, Ono or a couple of baboons?" Thank you, Fuli. I really don't like these stupid or mindless Bunga tropes that the writers like to throw in. The Bunga I know would believe Ono, in a heartbeat! Plus, Bunga has already proven before that he is, in fact, intelligent when he needs to be. So, I hate this trope of stupid, idiotic, "doesn't-know-where-he's-been Bunga". Also, the whole "Hi" joke was pointless. He already knows that Ono was referring to him and the rest of the Lion Guard. So, what was the point?
-Thurston is really rude in this episode. I don't like obnoxious and rude Thurston. "Excuse me, I believe I had something very important to say." Thurston, you'll get your turn to speak eventually.
-I really loathe Ono being made the butt of every joke with the baboon trio. He deserved so much better and he shouldn't have been made for cheap laughs, in this episode. "Ono, why would you keep letting them treat you like this, my friend? You should've seen it coming the second and third time." I dare you guys to name a single Ono fan who enjoyed this!
-Mwevi and Mwizi were obnoxious with the way were stealing and hoarding food from other animals in the Pride Landers. As Pride Landers, they should know that, as a general rule, you're not allowed to steal and that it goes against the circle of life. There's also the fact that they continued to hide the evidence, even after Ono caught them red-handed, further proving my point that they must feel no guilt about it.
-It's doubly a crime against nature because they did it so close to the Dry Season and didn't even apologise or own up to what they did. This makes them absolute scumbags since food scarcity is extremely high during the Dry Season. Another reason why I don't think they have earned their redemption and why it could've been much better. They also ran away from Kion and the Lion Guard instead of, I don't know.... turning themselves in.
-I don't like how the baboons are invading everyone's space as part of their act. Audience participation has to be a personal choice and shouldn't be forced upon someone. Not only did they force Ono to perform by just throwing him around, but, they also went around invading everyone's personal boundaries and using them in their act. First, with Fuli, when Mwevi and Mwizi jumped on her back without permission, despite the fact that she didn't like it, and also the fact that Uroho purposely used Ma Tembo's trunk for the act without her permission. I don't like the fact that they just make all the animals be in the show against their will and without a slight care for personal space.
-Uroho, "Sorry, but, I'm not sorry!" Uroho, you're such a jerk. See, the writers are literally handing me proof, on a silver platter, that Uroho and his troupe did not feel any guilt for their actions and, therefore, didn't earn their redemption arc in the end. Also, I don't like the fact that he didn't show any sign of redemption until after the Lion Guard saved them. So, did he actually genuinely want to reformed or did he just do it to repay the Lion Guard, because they saved him even when he did not deserve it and to get back into the Pride Lands. I mean, for God's sake his name means "Gluttony" for a reason and Mwizi means "Thief/Burglary" for a reason.
-Now, I do feel bad for Janja in this episode. I feel so bad that he's considered the villain of this episode. Damn it, I never wanted to side with Janja, but, in fairness, he was not doing anything like he is in most other episodes. 99% of the time, I can why the Lion Guard need to chase away the hyenas because Janja has an ulterior motive most times, but, in this situation, I just wanted to see him for a change. I'm not saying the Lion Guard shouldn't have felt bad that the baboons had ended up in the Outlands, but, I think they should've cut Janja some slack this time around. Plus, Kion was initially saying how the baboons are not in the Pride Lands and therefore, not their problem, anymore. But, suddenly, for real reason other than "Well it's our job to defend the Pride Lands", they decided they must save the baboons. In this situation, and this situation only, I think they were unfair to Janja. When does get to eat in his OWN TERRITORY!!!!
-Kion, "Stop right there, Janja! Step away from the baboons!" Really Kion! Could you not give him a break this time around? He didn't do anything wrong and wasn't taking down whole herds of animals to spite you. Those are the situations where he deserved to get his butt kicked, but, not here. I refuse to acknowledge him as the villain of this episode! He did not have an ulterior motive this time around, he was just hungry. Plus, you didn't even want to go into the Outlands, in the first place. I also don't get what the Lion Guard were intending to do to them as punishment for stealing food. If they didn't intend for them to be in the Outlands, why did Kion say, "At least we got 'em outta the Pride Lands," and what were they going to do with? This is the bit I can't get my head around because isn't that what they do with animals that don't follow the rules.
-To further prove my point, Kion says earlier on, "It's more than not fair, Beshte, it goes against the circle of life." And the line before where he tells Ma Tembo that the Lion Guard will make sure the food thief doesn't do anything again. So, if you guys what their plan was, please tell me because I don't get it. Were they just intending to attack them as punishment, but then, let them remain in the Pride Lands? Were they going to be watched or under slave labour for Simba and Nala? I don't know, because when Janja and Reirei are breaking rules they are chased out of the Pride Lands, justifiably so. I mean, even though the baboons are Pride Landers, they've been nothing, but trouble, and we have no proof that they would've changed if the Lion Guard hadn't come to their aid. Uroho didn't seem to care about the circle of life and had been antagonistic for nearly the whole episode.
-"They wouldn't be in the Outlands if it weren't for us. We're the ones who chased them there." No, Ono, you guys didn't chase them into the Outlands, you guys broke off to deal with some sable antelopes that fell in the river. The baboons, meanwhile, just ran away so they wouldn't have to own up to what they did and then chased themselves into the Outlands. So, no, it wasn't you guys' doing and you guys' wouldn't have had to take action if they hadn't been stealing food in the first place. The baboons brought this on themselves by putting themselves into a situation where the Pride Landers would be mad at them and then running away instead of actually apologising for their actions.
-I also don't know why Ono would be forgiving of them. "Ono, my friend, they humiliated you like an hour ago and literally tossed you around and stole food. Why would you so eager to forgive them? Don't you think you should be firm? You're the smart after all." I mean, I admire his level-headedness, but, the baboons didn't earn their rescue and needed to be punished for their wrongdoing. And if poor Ono hadn't suffered enough, to end the episode, the baboons just bribed him by throwing him an insect, before selfishly tossing him around again. And yet again, the Lion Guard do nothing. Uroho is still a massive jerk. Ono had just saved his life like 5 minutes ago and this is how he repays him!
-"And for that they deserved to get eaten?" Okay, I do get where Beshte is coming from. I didn't want to see the baboons get killed just because they were mean to everyone in the Pride Lands. I don't anyone should deserve to die, but, at the same time, they did have it coming to them by wandering into Janja's territory in the first place and stealing from them. If it was a situation like "Too Many Termites", it would be a different story, but, here the baboons went into the Outlands on their own and had been nothing except a nuisance within the Pride Lands! I mean, the Lion Guard should've definitely felt bad for them, but, I think they should've let Janja have this, on this occasion.
-"I can't believe you came all this way to save us. Now we feel bad..." Yeah right, Uroho, you knew stealing was wrong all along and you kept doing it. I have my doubts about whether he actually felt bad or if he was sucking up to the Lion Guard to be welcomed back into the Pride Lands. Also, the Lion Guard are very naïve for letting them scott-free with no real punishment except to give free food to the Pride Landers. I get that they're children and that the writers probably didn't want the younger viewers to dislike Kion and his friends in this episode by making them leave the baboons for dead, but, it feels unfair to how the Outlanders get punished for disrespecting the circle of life.
-Finally, I don't the song of this episode "Travelling Baboon Show" was just annoying. It's one of the few TLG songs I can't stand, especially since having watched this episode when it first aired, I found out at the end that the baboons were the main villains of the episodes and kept stealing and making everyone look foolish. Also, they humiliate Ono in front of everyone, during the song. I do think that the lyrics are just plain weak as well, and Uroho is just kind of making the performance a much bigger than it is. It really isn't as hyped up as he makes it out be, in my opinion. I don't listen to this song and I don't really want to revisit it any time soon. I'll give a 2.75/10 because it's the worst TLG song ever.
Overall
I never liked this episode. I think it's got storytelling that wasn't very interesting and it didn't have much happening in it. Also, as I said, we already this storyline twice and doesn't work here, on this occasion. I hate Uroho's troupe so much and I find them extremely unbearable. They're worse than Tiifu and Zuri and Hafifu and Majinuni, for me. I think they're more obnoxious with no redeeming qualities and I don't think they properly earned their redemption arc, unlike Tamaa and Hadithi. They were just annoying and they didn't feel worthy of forgiveness and I hate the way the Lion Guard just decided to treat them like they did nothing wrong and just let them off scott-free when they were clearly breaking the circle of life. I feel bad for Janja on this occasion because he hadn't done anything wrong and the baboons didn't deserve to live in the Pride Lands. I'm very confused about what the Lion Guard were planning to do to them before Janja got to them. The baboons had learned nothing about not stealing basically and continued to annoy Ono in the end. The song was very bad for a TLG song. I found the dialogue weak. The only saving grace was a few funny moments in the first act, but only in the first act and they cannot compensate for how bad this episode was, in my opinion. Overall, I think it had potential and could've been written better. I'll give a 2.5/10 and I don't want to watch it again. But it isn't my most hated episode.

I have completed acca back in 2018 and i am not currently a member
I have read on UOL, in their general requirements where they have stated that if you have qualified more than 5 years ago , you need to to be showing that you are in good standing with your professional body , and this means doing CPD
However as i am not a member which means i cannot be doing any CPD ,
So will i still be eligible to apply for the Msc in professional accountancy from UOL as an affiliate(2018) ?
I plan on registering for October 2024 session if i am eligible

I am an American woman married to a Dutch man and living in Europe with him. I take trips back to the USA about once a year to see my mother but my partner had never joined me due to an intense work schedule.
Recently, he had a rare opportunity for 2 consecutive weeks off so he jumped on the opportunity as I had been talking about visiting the USA soon and tried to tempt him into coming along by offering to combine the visit with a trip to Yellowstone National Park. My husband had never been outside of Europe and visiting all the US national parks is one of his dreams.
We booked the trip, my mother was happy we’d be visiting, and my husband meticulously planned our days in Yellowstone. My mother is not very fit and didn’t want to hike so he was careful to plan out spots for her to hang out at during our planned hikes that would have indoor rest areas, restrooms, activities/shopping, and food.
Everyone was very much looking forward to the trip but fast forward to my mother, my husband, and I in Yellowstone and things quickly went downhill.
My mother behaved in a very demanding manner from day one. Insisting on an overpacking ordeal that put us three hours behind schedule. The car was overflowing with her stuff -cot bed, xl tent, extra pillows and sheets, self-standing hammock, and several boxes of camping gadgets.
Once there, she became annoyed at how often we wanted to hike and convinced us into shortening some of our hikes so as to not leave her alone long. Fair, but I felt bad for my husband as we already decided against several activities he wanted to do in favor of less sporty things my mom would do.
There was tension the whole time because my husband has a direct way of communicating and this frequently upset my mother as she felt he was being rude. This came to a head when she asked him if he’d like to go to a gift shop (her way of saying she wants to go shopping) and he said he didn’t.
Well she absolutely blew up after he said no. Told him he has no manners and told me I was a selfish daughter for not planning the trip around visiting her and saying she never wanted to come to Yellowstone. (Before the trip I asked her several times if I should visit her alone first and then meet my partner in Yellowstone later. She insisted she wanted to go).
Feeling angry and defensive of my partner because this trip was a huge deal for him, I snapped back at her that I wish she had not come along to Yellowstone.
She spent the next hour crying and I felt awful for what I said. I am still angry with her for how she acted on the trip but I may have gone too by saying she shouldn’t have come. Am I the asshole here?

For the first time since his incarceration, Bankman-Fried described his daily life in a detailed interview with journalist William D. Cohan of Puck:

On a recent Tuesday, I went to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn for an intimate chat with America’s most famous prisoner, Sam Bankman-Fried. During our 75-minute conversation, we discussed everything from Caroline Ellison and the travails of his new life, to his regrets about the demise of FTX and his forthcoming appeal.
I got the distinct impression that Sam still doesn’t believe he committed any crimes, only that he was the one responsible for putting FTX in a position where it was vulnerable to a bank run and the devious actions of its competitors

WILLIAM D. COHAN -- May 9, 2024
On Tuesday afternoon, I found myself in the most unusual circumstances—sitting on a small plastic chair at a cramped table in the Metropolitan Detention Center, the federal prison on 29th Street in Sunset Park, in Deep Brooklyn. Outside, it was a gorgeous day, the sort of picturesque and slightly humid one that inevitably reminds longtime New Yorkers of the weather on the morning of September 11th. Inside the prison’s visiting room, however, there was no natural light, no sunshine, only the Hitchcockian buzz of fluorescent bulbs and three vending machines standing in a corner. Posters on the wall attempted to compensate for the bleak atmosphere by buoyantly welcoming visiting families.
I first met Sam Bankman-Fried in December 2021, during the height of his power and influence, when he was the richest person in the world under 30. My friend Anthony Scaramucci, a.k.a. The Mooch, had connected us. On a cold winter night at the One Hotel, on Sixth Avenue, I interviewed him for a documentary I am part of making about Bitcoin and its developer, Satoshi Nakamato. Sam showed up an hour late, in a black t-shirt and cargo shorts, apparently having just flown in via private jet from the Bahamas. A month later, Sam’s cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, would raise its final $400 million round of financing from a group of highfalutin investors—led by Softbank, Temasek, and Paradigm—at a valuation of $32 billion, making the company one of the most valuable in the sector. At that moment, Sam was said to be worth $26 billion.
This week, we reconnected amid very different circumstances. Sam and I arranged for this visit through his Corrlinks email account, at the suggestion of his mother, Barbara Fried, and the family’s prison advisor. We met on Tuesday around 1 p.m. because that was the only day that visiting hours are permitted at MDC, a hangover from the Covid era. Prisoners can have visitors for one of two sessions, either starting at noon or at five in the afternoon.
We were meeting later than noon because of the staffing shortage at the facility. I was allowed to bring in $1 or $5 bills, up to a total of $30, in case I wanted to buy Sam some water, soda, or snacks from the humming vending machines. I was told to put my $20 bill as well as my wallet and iPhone into a locker. Sam was not permitted to buy anything himself.
Following about an hour of bureaucratic snafus (I went to the wrong building at first, and I wasn’t wearing dark pants—although an exception was made for me) and other forms of prison processing (shoes and belt off, metal detection, sticking my hand in a scanner) I was finally allowed inside the prison, without a phone, a watch, a recording device, or even a pad of paper and a pencil. (I knew this in advance, of course, and set about preserving my recollections of our conversation immediately after leaving the facility.)
After a few minutes of waiting, I looked up to see Sam Bankman-Fried, over in the corner, dressed head to toe in a chocolate-brown prison jumpsuit, along with the still-wild frizzy hair that has been his trademark. These days, Sam looks considerably thinner than the last time we met—it appeared he’d lost 25 pounds, at least. But he looked better and fitter than I thought he would, to be honest—less pudgy, less manic, less fidgety, no bags under his eyes.
He was sustaining himself on rice and beans, he said, because the prison food was unsurprisingly inedible, especially the vegan entrées he was served, which his fellow inmates thought literally smelled like shit. He wasn’t complaining, mind you; he noted that he was just trying to make the best of a bad situation. The rice he buys at the prison commissary has become one of the currencies of the realm inside MDC. We joked briefly about how the arbitrage opportunities in jail were better than anything he experienced trading crypto at Jane Street Capital or buying and selling assets at Alameda. He looked me in the eye pretty much the whole time, something he rarely did with people in the old days.
After we shook hands, he sat down in his own plastic chair as a camera watched us from the ceiling. We were surrounded by a couple of other inmates, dressed similarly, facing their visitors. Sam declined my initial offer to buy him some snacks but ultimately agreed to a $4 bottle of water and a small $2 package of Wheat Thins, which he eagerly consumed.
We talked for the next 75 minutes or so, the first in-person interview he has given to a journalist since he was locked up in the MDC last August and then subsequently convicted of two counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, securities fraud, commodities fraud, and money-laundering at his federal trial in November. In March, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Our chat, under these rather drastic circumstances, was a profoundly jarring and fascinating experience.

Prison Diaries

Sam began by answering my question about his life in prison. According to him, he lives in an area of the jail that was dedicated mostly to incarcerated women, save for the 35 men with whom he shares a dormitory-style existence in a big open room—bunk beds, no privacy, extreme boredom, and four television sets tuned to ESPN, Telemundo, BET, and a news channel. Sam said he could try to persuade his fellow inmates to change up the channel selection, but television bores him, so he has no interest in that challenge. He prefers watching a small selection of movies or playing some inferior video games on a tablet, without an internet connection, that the prison provides him and other inmates.
When I told him he seemed better than I had anticipated, he replied that he’d become good at faking it. So, yes, life inside the MDC is not the Bahamas. But, truly, I had expected to see him coping less well. At the MDC, Sam has mostly been permitted his prescription medications, and the cocktail he’s been allowed has him thinking clearly, he said, and energized for the legal battle he plans to wage soon against the verdict.
In the meantime, he told me, he doesn’t fear for his safety. He can use the bathroom and shower a couple of times a week in peace. He’s always been a light sleeper, and he’s still not sleeping soundly at the MDC, but mostly because people sometimes bug him during the night about those bags of rice, which they intend to use to barter. He has not been touched or abused, and he seemed notably thankful for that.
He acknowledged that he has a unique rap sheet at MDC, and his fellow prisoners indeed recognize him. He estimated that about half of the other 35 men in his unit were murderers who had been turned into cooperating witnesses for the prosecution in exchange for not serving a life sentence. In prison, many inmates consider cooperating witnesses the lowest form of vermin, lower even than child molesters. Sam also told me that some of the other prisoners tried to get close to him, thinking they would benefit financially from the proximity to a former billionaire. He doesn’t play along, he said.
We didn’t talk about his trial strategy or whether he intentionally siphoned off the $8 billion of FTX customer funds into Alameda. Both topics seemed moot at this point. We did discuss his onetime girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, whom he selected to run Alameda after lawyers kept hounding him about the inherent conflicts in him running both FTX and the hedge fund. (He chose to run FTX.) He acknowledged that he had asked a few other people if they would be interested in the role, but they turned him down. Ellison, he said, was a good manager of people and a good administrator but didn’t like making big investments and didn’t like taking risks. (Obviously, this seems like a bizarre aversion for a hedge fund manager, but I didn’t belabor the point.) In any event, Alameda ended up doing both.
He regretted that he had not tried harder to find another executive. He also said he should have ignored the lawyers and just kept running both FTX and Alameda, conflicts be damned, sort of like how Elon Musk oversees his various companies. Wishing he had ignored his lawyers’ advice emerged as a theme of Sam’s during our visit.

Legal Therapy

We did talk a fair amount about his appeal and about how he believed he was set up to be the fall guy—the victim of the old build-’em-up-only-to-tear-’em-down narrative arc. His theory of the case was that by the fall of 2022, it was every man for himself on a boat that looked to be sinking. By early November 2022, FTX was facing a liquidity crunch. Sam first sought a deal with Binance, which quickly fell apart or was never truly real, and was in the process of trying to raise billions in capital when his lawyers advised him to turn the keys of FTX over to John J. Ray III, which he did. Ray quickly filed FTX for bankruptcy and installed Sullivan & Cromwell, the company’s outside counsel, as counsel to the debtor.
Sam became the target of federal prosecutors, he told me, soon after FTX’s outside counsel at Sullivan & Cromwell made a presentation to them, on November 9, 2022, a day or so before the bankruptcy filing, about what they believed Sam may have engineered between FTX and Alameda, which has been described as the theft of $8 billion of customer money. In a sworn declaration about that meeting, S&C attorney Andrew Dietderich said he reported to the D.O.J. only what Ryne Miller, FTX’s U.S. general counsel, told him about a problem of “reconciling digital assets with entitlements” on FTX’s U.S. exchange, and nothing about Sam and his alleged transgressions.
Sam told me that had he not been persuaded by Sullivan & Cromwell and then by his personal attorneys to relinquish his job as C.E.O. to Ray, the company would not have filed for bankruptcy, and it would still be a thriving enterprise, worth $80 billion now. In this alternate reality, he would be worth $40 billion and he certainly wouldn’t be at the MDC. (S&C declined to comment on Sam’s theory of the case. It’s also fair to reiterate here that Sam was sentenced to 25 years in prison after a jury convicted him of the crimes described above.)
I got the distinct impression that Sam still doesn’t believe he committed any crimes, only that he was the one responsible for putting FTX in a position where it was vulnerable to a bank run and the devious actions of its competitors, not unlike how both Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers failed in 2008. Why, Sam wondered, was he prosecuted when no one at either Bear or Lehman faced criminal prosecution? During our chat, Sam was contrite and certainly chastened, but not exactly apologetic: He was adamant about his innocence, aside from a few degrees of negligence—punishable, in his view, perhaps by civil consequences, not criminal penalties and a quarter-century sentence.
According to Sam’s theory, he isn’t in prison for commingling assets of FTX and Alameda. Instead, he’s an innocent guy who didn’t get a chance to negotiate a deal with the federal prosecutors, and wonders why he was even prosecuted at all for what he believes was a form of a bank run. Instead, they just presented him with his indictment and told him he could eat it— accept it and plead guilty and then get sentenced, or go to trial and try to fight it. Since there was no plea bargain on the table, he said, he fought the charges at trial, and lost. Unlike his fellow inmates, he told me, Sam speaks to his new attorney nearly every weekday for an hour or so, as the focus of his appeal comes into view. He expects to file it this fall. Yes, he will appeal, but most people think he faces long odds of success.
On the day of my visit, Sullivan & Cromwell, still counsel to the debtor-in-possession in FTX’s bankruptcy case, filed a first draft of a plan of reorganization that appears to give its customers and creditors all of their money back, plus a little more—a return of $15 billion on $12 billion of claims—in large part because of the investments Sam made through Alameda. The plan, which still has a long way to go before being confirmed, also gives Sullivan & Cromwell, along with other FTX advisors, “exculpation” from future lawsuits related to its conduct in the matter. This is not unusual in a plan of reorganization. But Sam has exhaustive thoughts on this subject, which I may explore with him in a follow-up conversation.

Go West, Young Man

I’m not sure how much longer Sam will be at the MDC, and neither is he. He has asked to remain in Brooklyn at least until the fall, when his appellate brief will be filed. But that’s not up to him, of course. If he gets moved, which could come at any moment without warning or explanation, I’m told, it would probably be to California, closer to Palo Alto, where he grew up, the son of two Stanford Law professors. At that point, the question will be whether he gets to spend his incarcerated years in a federal penitentiary, which are mostly nasty places filled with hardened criminals, or in more of a minimum security prison, as Mike Milken once did.
If he does get moved out of Brooklyn, his family and legal team worry, he could spend as long as four months on a bus, handcuffed to the seat, making his way, slowly, across the country. Such prison buses make frequent stops—picking up new prisoners, dropping off others—which explains why they take so long to reach their final destinations. There’s also a remote possibility that he could be placed on one of the many planes operated by the U.S. Marshals Service, a.k.a. “Con Air.” But he’s more likely to get the infamous “diesel therapy,” they fear. Either way, during this hypothetical cross-country journey, Sam would be completely incommunicado with both his family and his lawyers until he reaches his new home in California, deprived of the minimal access to the internet and email he now enjoys in Brooklyn.
Just as we were getting ready to discuss some knotty issues, such as his choices during his trial or the fact that many of the people who once worked for him had turned against him to save themselves, our visiting time was up. It was non-negotiable. We quickly shook hands again. Then Sam went back to his dormitory and I went back outside into a glorious spring afternoon.
Credits/Via: https://puck.news/exclusive-prison-chat-with-sam-bankman-fried/

I wasn't planning on watching Thrice Upon A Time. I had not liked the previous films and they seemed like a very inferior product compared to the original anime. However, the good reviews and opinions I saw about it encouraged me to do so. I did it with as open and tolerant a mind as possible, knowing that there was a good chance I wouldn't like the film. "What's the worst that could happen? That I don't like it and continue to prefer the original series? At least I'll be entertained for two and a half hours," I thought. What I did not expect at all is the deep feeling of disgust and repulsion that this film provoked in me, in a way that no other film has provoked in years.
I hated the movie from start to finish. I could spend hours talking about the boring action sequences, about its ugly, excessive CGI that ruins the already ugly mecha, about its disgusting hypersexualization of fucking 14-year-old girls, about how Misato's plans don't make sense, about how Last Kiss almost made me tear my ears off, or its plot full of Deus Ex Machinas with concepts conveniently taken by Hideaki Anno from the place that his last name suggests; but the real reason I'm writing this is because I feel like these movies spit on everything the excellent original work represents.
Not only because as adaptations they fail miserably, but also because they retroactively damage the original work (we'll talk about that later).
Before I begin to explain why the rebuilds are bad adaptations, I want to warn that I am going to do a relatively exhaustive review of the 4 films, so this rant is going to be very long, like staying up late on a winter night with chronic insomnia. That said, let's start to see the reasons:
WHAT IS NEON GENESIS EVANGELION?:
To understand why rebuilds fail as remakes, I must first ask you, dear reader: What does Neon Genesis Evangelion mean to you? (it should at least be familiar to you, unless you've spent your life under a bridge) What do you think about when you read that title, apart from Shinji fucking in front of a comatose Asuka? What comes to mind when you hear the most famous opening in anime history, apart from Shinji strangling the otter against Happy Thursday's throat? (in more ways than one). If your answer is: "It's a mecha anime for emos with a coomer protagonist", that's fine, I respect that; but please press the red "X" in the top right corner of your screen, you can now leave.
Now, I'm going to get serious and explain my definition: Evangelion is a work about the hedgehog's dilemma and the difficulties of forming emotional bonds that human beings have, as well as the consequences of trying to separate from them for fear of rejection. It is not a story about heroes. It's not a story about saving the world. In Evangelion there are neither heroes nor villains, but rather a group of emotionally broken characters trying to be happy in a world just as broken as them. The real enemy of Evangelion is not the angels. It is the lack of communication and empathy.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilema_del_erizo
It is that same lack of communication and empathy that progressively causes everything to go to hell to conclude with a cathartic and bleak ending, but consistent with the themes of the work. It is therefore an existentialist work about human relationships disguised as a mecha anime. This, added to a unique visual style, daring direction, and mechas like never before seen on television, made Evangelion one of the most influential anime in all of history, as well as a true commercial success for Gainax Studio. Success that encouraged other studios to carry out projects such as Cowboy Bebop or Serial Experiment Lain, taking anime towards a new golden age.
Even today you can hear the echoes of that Third Impact of End of Evangelion in 1997. The list of works influenced by Evangelion both inside and outside of Japan is endless. Of course, it is not a perfect work, nor extensive in errors: its target audience is ambiguous, many of the biblical references are more for decoration than anything else, and several aspects of the ending(s) could have been explained better. However, many of these errors can be attributed to a lack of time and budget during the production of the original anime (which was quite chaotic and improvised); therefore, they are understandable and forgivable.
In summary, we can conclude that Evangelion is a dark, introspective, provocative and unique work (at least at its time). This is also combined with a unique visual identity and complex characters whose relationships intertwine and interconnect throughout the work. The sum of all these factors is what led Evangelion to be such a critically acclaimed work that it transcended its own genre and became an icon of popular culture. And this in turn constitutes the biggest mistake of rebuilds; because they commit the biggest sin that an adaptation can commit: denying everything that made the original work great.
ADAPTING WITHOUT A CLEAR PURPOSE:
One of the biggest problems with these remakes (as well as a clear example of what I'm saying) is their total narrative inconsistency. Let me explain: the first rebuilds movie (1.11) is a literal copy-paste of the first 6 chapters of the original anime, with practically the same scenes, dialogues and even music. This makes the film completely redundant and unnecessary (and makes one wonder why it exists); But in any case, the message is being conveyed that the purpose of these remakes is to adapt the original series as faithfully as possible to the cinema with a current animation style.
However, the second movie (2.22) is a... something. A pastiche of new and old things where the plot broadly follows that of the original anime, but with many things changed (of course, for the worse) and a different ending. All this compressing no less than 14 chapters of the original anime into two and a half hours. Here the message that one can infer is that it seeks to adapt the original story (very briefly) by changing and rearranging certain elements, now more in line with what an adaptation is.
However, then we get to 3.33 and... well, after a 14-year because reasons timeskip, we're now in a post-post-apocalyptic world (repetition intended) where ex-Nerv members fight against Nerv itself. Nerv in giant spaceships, there are mechas everywhere, Misato is a sociopath, and Shinji and Asuka still look exactly the same because "DAMN JEBA." Here we can infer that what is sought is to create a totally new story and take it in different directions than the original. The following movie (3.0+1.01) is the only one that is consistent with this purpose.
Whether all these narrative pirouettes were planned in advance or not (clearly not), we can see that there is a clear incongruity between what is intended to be done and what is finally done. All of this generates a strong narrative chaos where the elements and themes of the original anime are mixed with the new ones, creating a total inconsistency. Since also in 3.0+1.01 it is revealed (unfortunately to me) that everything is part of the same universe and this is not really a remake, the excuse of "they are different universes, they don't have to be the same" doesn't work either.
In fact, one thing that you will see me comment a lot throughout this article is the lack of narrative consistency of these remakes, especially in comparison to the original work.
A HEDGEHOG WITHOUT TICKS:
No character in Evangelion better embodies the central theme of the work than Shinji Ikari, its own protagonist. Shinji is not a hero: he is not brave. He is not a genius. He is not charismatic. He is not selfless. He doesn't want to save the world. His reason for piloting the Eva is to gain recognition and appreciation from others; especially from his father, whom he hates, but at the same time admires; He feels that she despises him, but he also wants (and needs) that she loves him. Shinji spends the entire series in the dilemma between escaping from what hurts him (classic avoidance behavior) or accepting it and moving on, even at the risk of being hurt again.
This theme is rock solid throughout the entire original series: from the first to the last chapter of the anime, and from minute one to the very end of End of Evangelion. Even the opening itself makes several visual references to Shinji's hedgehog dilemma. This can make Shinji an infuriating character for audiences accustomed to typical anime protagonists; but it's those same things that make Shinji such a unique and special character. He deconstructs and subverts the hero's journey. And it's not as if this hinders the plot: Shinji is not proactive, but he also does not spend the series crying, as many often claim.
https://files.catbox.moe/eolho0.mp4
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomito
And as you may already be imagining, the Shinji of the rebuilds does not have a hedgehog's dilemma. Or rather, he has it, but only during the first movie (copy-paste of the original anime) and part of the second. This is a problem, because it creates a strong narrative inconsistency (again) where it seems that two Shinjis exist at the same time or that this one is bipolar. As of 3.33, Shinji's entire character arc is based on trying to redeem himself for his past mistakes first by unleashing "Almost Third Impact" (what a stupid name) and subsequently preventing Kaworu's death while trying to right said mistake.
Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. The problem is that I have already seen the arc of the hero who fails to eventually rise up and succeed in 100 trillion works, while the hedgehog's dilemma in none more than in Evangelion (at least in my case). Which makes Shinji a much less interesting character. Some might argue that in 3.0 + 1.01 Shinji does have such a dilemma because he spends half the movie crawling on the ground; but there is not a hedgehog's dilemma, but rather depression for having seen Kaworu's head go KAWOOM (I know, the joke was very bad, but if he didn't do it, I would explode too).
End of Evangelion's Shinji did have such a dilemma because the reason for his depression was having been manipulated and used by someone he had previously opened up to and then forced to kill him, not for failing in his mission (in fact, he was very efficient in her mission to separate Kaworu's head from her body), which in turn brings sexual (and later, deadly) results for Asuka. I insist: narrative consistency. But this is not the worst: the worst thing is that at certain moments in these films, Shinji becomes the typical shonen savior hero, betraying the central point of his character in the original series.
https://youtu.be/E-x-f2OrWeA
A perfect example of this is the ending of 2.22, where the fight in chapter 19 (COINCENTLY from where the original anime starts to get more introspective) is transformed into a ridiculous shipping attempt, with Rei turned into a damsel in distress and Shinji into a savior hero while spouting all the typical cliché lines, topped off with a disgustingly cheesy ending. But of course, how could it end otherwise? With Shinji's Eva practicing cannibalism on Zeruel's corpse (the original scene)? Too disturbing for current times. Shinji and Rei fighting as a team to defeat him? Yes of course. Rei has enough not being in the kitchen. Besides, Asuka already takes care of that, hoping to receive her alpha male's cock as a reward.
https://youtu.be/TPS0Uk0TkP0
Because, like any good modern anime protagonist, Shinji now has a harem.
FETISHING WITHOUT CONTROL:
Of all the characters who are now part of Shinji's harem, the one who is most harmed by this is Rei (Asuka's case is different, and the other character is an infernal creation from Anno's sick mind). Not only because acting like a bitch in heat goes totally against her personality and because of the murky situation, considering that she is a clone of Shinji's mother, but also because her character is reduced to a mere fetish object that does things cute to produce tenderness in the viewer and make coomers buy their figurines.
Rei is an interesting character because he raises numerous existential questions based on the ship of Theseus paradox: the concept of identity, to what extent we can consider ourselves still ourselves, the construction and definition of a "self", etc. But here, her screen time piloting her Unit 00 is minimal (COINCENTLY most of it in 1.11) and her exploits are practically irrelevant or non-existent, also being reduced to a mere damsel in distress at the end of 2.22, as I said before.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradoja_de_Teseo
In 3.0+1.01 he doesn't even get to pilot an Eva. Her role in the film is to cause pity and produce tenderness with her total ignorance (I see that the idiot Anno forgot that all the Reis are born with basic knowledge) while she is seen with different hairstyles, different outfits, working as a farmer, taking care of a baby, etc. In short, a fetish object where she wants the public to value her for how "moe" she is instead of for her abilities or as a character. In Anno's mind, feminism advances in reverse. Ironic, considering that it was precisely Rei who unintentionally started the moe culture.
Of course, it goes without saying that Rei is not the only one who suffers from this extreme fetishization of her character in these films. Under the excuse of paying homage to End of Evangelion, Asuka now always wears an eye patch (needless to say it has nothing to do with having been injured there), a cap with cat ears, in addition to having a very convenient trend for the coomer public of walking naked and semi-naked through other people's houses. She sometimes puts on the plugsuit, but near the end of the movie, it is conveniently torn off, lest we forget that this is made by the Japanese.
One of the best examples of how this hareminication has destroyed the main female characters is in the elevator scene. In the original anime, Rei tries to advise Asuka in a time of particular vulnerability and depression. Rei's limited social skills, coupled with Asuka being Asuka, cause her to misinterpret the attempt to help as mockery and an act of condescension, triggering a slap from her towards Rei and a worsening of her already strained relationship and Asuka's mental state. Rei doesn't fight back because she knows that doing so would only make things even worse.
It is an excellent dramatic scene because it once again brings to the foreground the hedgehog's dilemma and the difficulties between human relationships, very much in line with what Evangelion is. In 2.22, this scene is gratuitously introduced and turned into two horny bitches fighting over which of the two will let their alpha male penetrate first, with a highly OC Rei stopping the assault attempt in a 100% gangsta way to make her see more "cool." The scene doesn't even make plot sense, because Asuka at that moment is not even depressed, and in the original anime this occurs at a much later time under a very different context.
and speaking of asuka...
SOMEONE CALLED ASUKA:
When I started watching these movies, I was afraid that Asuka's character had undergone modifications to make her more "palatable" to new audiences. What took me completely by surprise was how radically different this Asuka is from the original. So different that they can't even be considered the same character. To show it very clearly, we are going to review the personality of both:
Asuka from the original anime: An energetic and outgoing half-German, half-Japanese girl (actually it's 1/4, but who cares) who loves to be the center of attention and have everyone praise her due to the lack of parental love received during her childhood having been abandoned by her father and supplanted by her mother, who suffered from severe mental disorders. She is extremely proud and competitive because she feels that being Eva's pilot is the only thing that gives her an identity and purpose, which makes her tend to become quickly frustrated when things don't go her way and become defensive when she feels like she is being outmaneuvered. . He loves to make fun of others (especially Shinji), to the point of being cruel at times, but he does not do it out of malice, but rather to compensate for his enormous inferiority complex due to the rejection suffered by his mother and having witnessed her. committed suicide (and possibly even tried to kill her) the day she was chosen as Eva's pilot and came running to wish her a Happy Thursday. She admires Kaji and wants to fuck him because she hates her own adolescence, she needs to feel adult and independent due to suffering from a certain Electra complex for having lacked a true father figure during her childhood. She has a sweet and vulnerable nature, but she rarely expresses it to anyone except her best friend Hikari and I better stop this now because too much text.
Rebuild Asuka (hereinafter "Asuka"): A girl soldier created by Nerv as part of a series of clones who has always been alone and thinks she doesn't need anyone, although she secretly wishes to have a family. She hits and insults others for no reason, she yells a lot, never smiles or makes jokes, and hates socializing with others, which doesn't stop her from looking for Shinji's dick within 2 days of meeting him. She always plays video games while someone is talking to her and at night she talks to herself with a doll like an autistic person.
As we can see, these two characters not only look nothing alike: several of their traits directly contradict each other. Because they look alike, they are not even alike in aesthetics: the original Asuka had red hair and dressed in the traditional feminine way, while "Asuka" is light brown and dresses in a tomboy style (which I'm not saying is wrong, I'm just commenting to show the radical difference). It's not that they have changed Asuka: it's that they have directly murdered her to supplant her by someone with whom she only shares her first name (not even her last name). And needless to say, the change has been VERY for the worse.
To describe the first character, I had to spend 15 damn lines, and even then I had to leave out many important facets of his personality, his development in the original series and his entire character arc in EoE, because if I didn't have one endless bible For the second, 6 lines were enough for me, and I could have had more left over if I had been more concise. The first character is a complex and three-dimensional character, with multiple facets, edges and layers. She feels like a real person. The second character is a generic tsundere that you can find in any mecha anime of the week. She is not even comparable to the first; She's not even a good character.
We cannot speak of Flanderization because not even the most basic traits of the character have been respected. Nor can we speak of a deconstruction because that same absence of basic traits means that there is no character construction on which to stand in the first place. Obviously, this change greatly resents the interactions between characters: the original Asuka was a charismatic and fun character with the ability to drive the plot on her own (as soon as she appears in chapter 8 of the original anime she is already changing the entire dynamic between characters) , while "Asuka" is mostly only in the background or to fight; He doesn't even have a character arc as such. In fact, in 2.22 he has even less screen time than several supporting characters.
His chemistry with Shinji is also non-existent (and I'm not just referring to the romantic level) and they barely have any development together. They like each other here because... ehhhh... she likes how he cooks and he thinks she's hot? It's not that the AsuShinji (or ShinSuka, or whatever the hell it's called) here is forced: it's just that it doesn't even make sense. The only reason people still ship them together is because they did it in the 90s. Yūko Miyamura's performance also feels very lackadaisical and lacks passion, which is quite unlike her. Although perhaps this is intentional, since her character always talks as if she has the spear of Longinus permanently stuck up her rectum. In fact, the few times she says her iconic "Anta baka?" This one feels very forced, in addition to not having her characteristic high-pitched tone.
In short, the character has suffered the same fetishization as Rei (gamer girl, tomboy, one-eyed, etc.), but also with the aggravating factor that not even her basic characteristics have been respected here. This is especially disconcerting when we take into account that the rest of the characters have their original personalities more or less intact (albeit simplified). Even more disconcerting if we take into account that Asuka is possibly the most popular character in all of Evangelion, and even more so if we consider that she is Anno's favorite character (in fact, the initial idea was for Asuka to be the protagonist).
https://evaresources.wordpress.com/der-mond/
Given this, the inevitable question arises: "Why?" What was the point of turning Asuka into an inferior and tsundere copy of Rei, even more so when there are already three clones? It has always been rumored that Asuka is not popular in Japan, but that is completely false. The only semi-rational explanation I can think of is that they did it to please the haters. It's no secret that a portion within the Evangelion fandom (and outside of it) hates Asuka with a passion. They see her as someone toxic and cruel who dedicates herself to screwing others for no reason, without understanding that you don't have to like a well-written character.
https://imgur.com/a/KznXE1x
What these people fail to understand is that Asuka's verbal abuse is a defense mechanism to avoid opening up to others, since Asuka constantly says things that do not fit with what she really feels or thinks (clear proof is chapter 16 from the original series). It's not like it matters much, considering they were never more than an extremely vocal minority. That the character is so popular is proof of this. The great irony of all this is that the new "Asuka" is a much more unpleasant and detestable character than the original, since she lacks the redeemable qualities of the original and her moments of comic relief.
And if until now I have been more or less benevolent with this remake, this is something I cannot forgive: because changing a character just because a group of people doesn't like it is one of the most cowardly and pathetic acts in the world. that a writer can fall. The fact that this was also at the expense of one of the best female characters in the history of anime and with a wonderful story arc makes it even more bloody. Any other halfway competent writer would have responded with this.
https://youtu.be/5Js0ea6yPKM
...although if we go by Ockham's razor, the most likely explanation is simply that Hideaki Anno is mentally retarded.
A CHARACTER TO DESTROY A FRANCHISE AND BIND IT TO DARKNESS:
Mari Makinami Illustrious A.K.A María Iskariote (what an appropriate last name) is one of the worst creations ever made by humans. Not since the atomic bombs has humanity created something so horrible. Worse than the holocaust. Worse than fascism. Worse than Facebook memes. Worse than stepping on a lego. I would even dare to say that it is worse than pizza with pineapple. No character better reflects Anno's mental decline or better embodies all the problems of the current anime industry than this trash.
This character contributes absolutely nothing to the plot, he does not contribute at any time to its advancement, he lacks his own development or story, he does absolutely nothing relevant in the 3 films in which he appears, and he does not even have a defined personality. So much so, that all of her scenes could be eliminated or replaced by any other character and she would barely affect the plot, or not affect it at all.
The character is so frighteningly one-dimensional that she doesn't even show different emotions or moods during the three films in which she appears, always being perpetually happy and carefree even in tense situations for literally no reason. This leads to moments as surreal as her starting to sing and hum in scenes that are intended to be serious or dramatic (or so I think; perhaps what they wanted was to turn this into an unintentional comedy), again generating a gigantic narrative dissonance. The last third of 3.33 is the best example of this.
But that's not the worst: this character is clearly made for otaku coomers to masturbate to. She has almost every fetish possible: glasses/lenses (whatever they call it in your country), pigtails, miniskirt, schoolgirl, saying "nya", big tits, obsession with smell and tight outfits, etc. To make matters worse in 3.0 + 1.01 we discover that she is 48 years old, so we can also add the milf fetish. Evidently, her tits always bounce in her plugsuit (she would swear that never happened in the original series) and there are many close-ups of her ass. In addition to constantly making sexual advances towards Shinji, which also turns this piece of shit into a potential pedophile.
If the thing simply ended there, we could say that this character remains a mere annoying and unnecessary secondary character. Unfortunately, the character is also disruptive to the plot, occupying long filler scenes that do nothing more than waste time that is already scarce in a film, and that could have been used on something else more interesting; like Pen Pen watching TV, Pen Pen eating a sardine, etc. Without going any further, both 2.22, 3.33 and 3.0+1.01 begin with a long filler scene of her hitting on her. Well, to be honest, the 3.33 one is more Asuka, but this abortion is still out there fucking and singing.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that discussing why this character exists is much more interesting than any other debate that can be created about these films. I still think about it. However, the ending of 3.0+1.01 gives a good clue: the character was created solely and exclusively to stay with Shinji. I can only imagine that Anno made this tired of the fandom shipping and the arguments over who Shinji should stay with, so he decided to end the matter by creating his own ideal waifu with all the fetishes he likes in a woman to end it. with this. It's disgusting, but considering we're talking about a Japanese, totally possible.
It's surreal coming from the man who harshly criticized the use of anime as escapism and the excessive female objectification and sexualization in it, but it's the only semi-decent explanation I can think of. Basically, he is what is called a mascot character in literature. That would explain why this character never shows doubts, nor any kind of internal conflict, or why he is a better Eva pilot than Asuka and Rei themselves. It is also very revealing about the quality of the Rebuilds: creating a self-insert OC just to be the partner of the protagonist or another main character is the quintessential trait of all bad fanfiction.
However, among all this tsunami of disqualifications, I also have to say something positive: spending three movies giving hope to the shippers only to have Shinji be cuckolded simultaneously by Rei and Asuka in the last one and end up with a character with which had zero development (before 3.0+1.01 I didn't even know its name) is a true trolling masterclass, worthy of the best of ball pumpers. Only a true emperor of evil would have come up with such a twisted and at the same time perfect way to screw over a large part of the fandom. I give you my tens, Anno.
THE ANTI-UNIVERSE OF ANTI-NARRATIVE:
Of all the new concepts that Anno brings up at the last minute from the place named after his last name, none stands out more than the "anti-universe." Or, as I like to call it, the "anti-good writing." Basically because it perfectly represents all the problems of the rebuilds and their script. In the final stretch of 3.0+1.01 we have the last-minute revelation of a quantum plane of existence capable of turning imagined worlds into reality and changing this through Lilith, which cannot be understood by the human mind (wow, WHAT CONVENIENT!) and whose existence has never been mentioned or even hinted at in the entire franchise until CONCIDENTLY the aforementioned last third of the film.
In other words, a gigantic Deus Ex Machina created in an improvised way to avoid repeating End of Evangelion and forcing a happy ending where Shinji creates an ideal universe for each character (although that is questionable, as we will see later). And it is far from being the only one: the spear of Cassius, the Eva of Infinity, the key of Nebuchadnezzar, the Book of Life, and so on. None of these concepts are integrated into the plot in an organic and natural way, but rather they arise spontaneously at its convenience when it needs it. Except for the new "Super Berserker Mode" of the Evas, which is simply a power-up to sell figurines.
As I said before, if at least this were an alternate universe separate from the original anime, all this bombardment of concepts pulled out of the ass would be a little better justified. But the revelation that everything is a cycle and we are in the same universe as the original work only makes it even worse, generating countless inconsistencies about why they never mentioned this or never used that (what's the point of the seeds of life If you can create universes simply by imagining them?). Although without a doubt, the worst of all these new concepts is "the curse of Eve."
Here we have a new concept with very strong repercussions completely launched, which is not even an explanation in itself, it does not answer anything and to make matters worse, the same films contradict each other several times. Needless to say, this is a cheap excuse for the three main characters not to grow up and continue sexualizing 14-year-old girls after the most gratuitous timeskip ever seen. And speaking of timeskip, putting such a long one in the middle of the story is a first-time writing error. If you are writers, never do that: the bigger the time jump, the more things you will be forced to explain, since the less you do it, the more plot holes will form as a result.
And of course, here it explains little to nothing of what happened these 14 years. Like where Nerv got such a tremendous base from, if in 3.33 it seemed that together with Rei and Kaworu it was made up of four people. Or how they have gotten such an army of pseudo-Evas, especially when these are supposed to be extremely expensive (wow, and SEELE with all her unlimited resources was barely 9 in EoE). Or worse yet, how Kaji managed to stop Almost Third Impact (seriously, the name couldn't be stupider). None of these questions are answered at any time. Obviously because they can't do it.
Evangelion has always been characterized by leaving things up to the public's interpretation, but here I feel that they are vilely taking advantage of it so as not to have to give any kind of explanations. And in the case at hand, do not even pay attention to contradictions. Like Touji and Kensuke got on Unit 01 and that doesn't stop them from being 28 after the timeskip. Or that Mari appears to be 14 despite looking like an adult in Gendo's photos and flashbacks, plus the fact that Evas, by simple logic, could not exist back then.
The height of absurdity is when near the end of 3.0+1.01 the "unexpected" revelation occurs (actually we all saw it coming) that everything is a cycle and we are facing a reboot of the original timeline, of which only Kaworu seems to be conscious. He let them guess without giving them any clues how many times Kaworu mentioned or even hinted at such a thing in the original series. Needless to say, nothing is ever explained about it: Who created that cycle? (Adam? Lilith? The First Ancestral Race? Hideaki Anno's last name?) For what purpose? How does it work? How long does it last? Why is Kaworu the only one who remembers him? Do these remakes make sense?
THE DEATH OF A STYLE:
Fortress-cities folding in on themselves. Designs and constructions oscillating between the nineties, the utopian and the cyberpunk. Meshes of flesh and blood animated with the souls of the dead fighting with classical music in the background. A mysterious and ambiguous lore where aliens, technology and conspiracies mix with gnostic, cabalistic elements and the most esoteric aspects of Christianity (did the History Channel predict Evangelion?). Minimalist posters moving quickly between frames. Monochrome backgrounds flashing aggressively (bad luck if you were epileptic). So consistent with its themes that the A.T. fields themselves. They were an allegory of the hedgehog's dilemma (I'm not making this up, Kaworu himself says it in chapter 23).
https://imgur.com/a/2M0eDVK
The sum of all these factors is what allowed Evangelion to build an absolutely unique identity, the one that allowed people to say "hey, that's an Eva!". Starting in 3.33, all that is lost to disappear in 3.0+1.01 in favor of giant spaceships, mechanical mechas made of pure CGI, battles full of colored lights, multiverses and time loops. I'm not saying these elements are bad in and of themselves, but I've already seen a thousand mecha stories with these. For that, I start watching any of the versions of Gundam or Macross. I could also complain about the boring shots without audiovisual language and always using the same color palette, but to be fair, that is an endemic evil of current anime.
And like any bad remake, 3.0+1.01 can't help but pay homage to several scenes from the original work, completely failing to understand the point of said scenes. As an example, we have Ritsuko shooting Gendo for no reason other than to pay homage to End of Evangelion, ignoring that the context between both scenes is very different. Furthermore, here they never explain the relationship that exists between the two, so the scene makes no sense; especially for those who never saw the original series, who will also find mentions of facts that these films have never shown or bothered to explain.
Even worse is when they try to pay homage to the iconic battle between Asuka and the Eva Series. Not only because of the total absence of the graphic violence and choreography of the original, but because what makes that fight so remembered is its emotional component, since it is preceded by a narrative catharsis in which Asuka discovers that the Her mother's soul was always in Unit 02, in addition to being marked by the constant tension of knowing if she will be able to finish the fight before the Eva's energy supply runs out. Here the Evas never run out of energy (why do they need the power supply, then?), so there is no such tension.
In the original fight Asuka may not be shooting 1387945 Evas with a super cannon larger than her as she falls through an... interdimensional hole?; But there you feel every blow, you can appreciate every movement in detail, and the dramatic tension in crescendo only improves the result. If this were a shonen, the logical thing is that Asuka would win. After all, her character arc has been wrapped up in a climactic way. Unfortunately, this is Evangelion. When the Evas Series manage to cause a mortal wound with the pseudo-spear of Longinus and the energy counter reads zero, the outcome is already decided. What happens next is horrific (Asuka's enemies are cruel to her even after she is dead), and just as horrifying are Yūko Miyamura's screams and Miki Nagasawa's performance as Maya announcing that Asuka is dead. In the Rebuilds there are no performances anywhere near that level.
End of Evangelion will be as dark and uncomfortable to watch as you want, but it is a film where all those responsible put their souls into achieving the best possible result, both on a technical and artistic level.
and well, I think that for today I have already downloaded too much, an apology for the large amount of text, I will make a second part at another time because I have so many things to comment on... anyway, I hope you have a good day/afternoon/night or when you read this .

I (21F) have been talking to this dude (22m) since March. During that time, we initially had around one or two hangouts weekly just trying to get to know each other. Whenever we hanged out, we tended to lose track of the time because we enjoyed talking and just getting to know one another. Time just flew by and by the time we checked the time, hours have passed.
At some point, the hangouts became more regular casual study sessions where we would just be next to each other studying (sometimes they turned into regular conversational hangouts and no study done but for the most part, we studied like we intended). He would ask what I was up to and I would let him know I was studying at the university library. He would join me after his class ended and we would be there until closing hours.
Then things got more intimate than intended one day (in the moment, it was consensual for both parties) and the next morning he messaged me saying he wanted to talk. He stated that he thought I was a cool person but he had this irrational thought about the night leading to pregnancy and how it made him paranoid. We never did penetration or anything that could result in it aside from casual touching. I told him the thought also crossed my mind and that I understood where he was coming from and it made me uneasy as well. Ever since, things felt off. We talked about why he felt that way and we concluded that that night was an outlier and won't happen again. We also discussed how his paranoia might stem from the fact that he and I did not know each other that well, and that if things were ever to lead to such consequences, he wouldn't feel comfortable with it. Essentially, we were moving too fast, something that I had agreed on. This talk also lead to labels--we decided that we were just friends with an interest in one another seeing if we had potential, which worked good because he and I were both inexperienced and this was all new to us so I had figured that would be a good pace for the both of us. A pacing where we would figure it out in time and we were just testing the waters. We also made it clear that I was more attracted to him than he was to me.
A few weeks past and we continued our study session leading up to graduation. Things were normal. Then we graduated.
We went to go watch a movie. He revealed to me the paranoia came back two times. He dreamed about it two times and would feel paranoid about it. I tried to help relieve the anxiety if I could. I reassured him that if something were to happen, I would tell him and get an abortion. And that I'm also updating him on when my next period comes. I also told him I got my period a week after that night. I was debating if I should just go on birth control to calm his nerves but idk, he and I aren't even in a relationship and my hormones and period are pretty stable. Meanwhile I'm also trying to think about why he feels this way. I end up going back to the fact that he is not interested in me. And that he feels forced to be in this situation. And that he's forcing himself to try and be attracted to me. That this is his subconsciousness screaming at him that he needs to get out of this situation. But when I ask him if this is the case, he says he's attracted to me, just not sure if he into me to the point where he thinks he can take it further. I understood where he was coming from. Because it was similar for me. It's been barely over two months. I still needed to get to know this guy. But at the very least, I knew I liked him and was willing to explore where this could lead to. He was still on the fence.
I ended up staying at his apartment the next weekend since he invited me. And my god, things were awkward. Perhaps we were both stressed and tired. He had a cert exam that he had been grinding on the past few weeks. He took it the morning of the sleepover and he passed!!! As for me, I was anxious with graduation and felt like I was behind on life since I was essentially jobless after graduation and just lost with what to do with myself. During the sleepover, it mainly consisted of us resting--laying on his couch and sleeping on the bed. When we tried playing board/card games, there was an awkward feeling in the air. Conversations didn't flow and died off awkwardly. I could feel that something was off about him too because something was amiss about him and his behavior. Just earlier the week leading up to the sleepover, we felt chill. We hanged out and were also in a call just vibing. But when the sleepover occurred, something was off. We ended up just sleeping from early Saturday evening to Sunday morning. I took a shower and left with a simple bye.
Then we met the next day because we had a dinner and movie planned. The awkwardness from the weekend still lingered. I couldn't fully be in the moment because it was bugging me how he felt off. When he dropped me off, I texted him I wanted to talk. We ended up in a call. I told him I was feeling off because of the weekend and that it was making me overthink and that it would be best if we stopped the physical intimacy. He said he was confused and that the way our conversations sometimes died off awkwardly made him unsure. We would have moments were we would hit it off really well, and others, the conversations just awkwardly died off. We both stated that perhaps it was a sign of incompatibility. He thought I was a cool person but that was it. I knew that I liked him somewhat, that I came into this with the mindset that this was something I wanted to try out and see how it played out. I guess he was just going with the flow. We settled on just being friends.
The next morning, I had a nagging feeling in my chest. I texted him if we could talk. I was going tell him I wasn't sure if I could be friends with him right away and cut him out off my life. But I failed to do so. Instead, I told him everything that I felt and left out the previous night. I told him that I wanted to test the waters a little longer since everyone likes to say 3 months is the amount of time you should aim for. He said he didn't know. We could be friends. Or we could try and see for a little longer. Then I asked him about the dreams. He revealed that the baby dream came back during the weekend when I had slept over. And that it was bugging him a lot. I reiterated to him what would happened if it did end up with that consequence. I would get an abortion and he would know--I would not keep it from him. Then I went into the exact details, how I would go to walgreen/cvs and get a test if my period was off. And that I would give the details of the appointment and even give him my location on the day of the appointment. Then we both reiterated that it was highly unlikely. It seemed to relieve him a bit. Then he stated that he had another a nagging feeling throughout the day, concerned that he was leading me on. I explained to him that he was not leading me on. He and I are both people pleasers. He didn't want to make me sad if he ended things. He'd rather make everyone happy if he can. I told him I knew that he didn't like me like that. If anything, I was leading myself on. If I ended up sad from this ending, then it was on me. I was the one who wanted to take the chance to see where this could go. I am also a people pleaser so I told to please tell me how he felt about all this. He stated again he was unsure but was willing to see where this could go. We ended the night back to the status quo of being friends testing out the waters but lesser physical intimacy.
Now this is the day after and I feel like I fked up. But then if he was so unsure, why did he invite me over to his apartment? And why was he inviting himself to hang out with me more? He also started texting me more and he started calling me in the weeks leading to today. I think I know the answer and that is that he was just looking for physical intimacy in someone since he spent 22 years without the experience of a relationship and that I'm just an opportunity. But he's also a people pleaser so I can't help but also think that he's trying to compensate for his lack of equal attraction to me by initiating more. But he says that he is attracted to me and likes me as a person. Just not sure if it was like that. He said he would like to stay friends if all fails. I think a part of the reason why he said that was to ease the guilt on his ego since he's a people's pleaser. I'm just confused on where he stands. One moment, he seems interested--texting, hanging out, just the normal stuff. The next, he's all confused and unsure. I'm afraid that I'm just forcing myself to be blind and not see his actions as they are: uninterested.
tldr: He is unsure of how he feels and anxious about pregnancy. Did I force him into this situation?

Grid Battery Metals is a junior mining company focused on advancing a portfolio of four Electric Vehicle (EV) metal projects, primarily in Nevada, along with a nickel project in British Columbia. The company's flagship assets are the Texas Spring and Clayton Valley lithium projects.
Nevada Lithium Projects:
•⁠ ⁠Nevada, known for its favorable mining jurisdiction and abundant mineral resources, hosts several advanced-stage lithium projects and America's only lithium-producing mine, Albemarle's Silver Peak mine.
•⁠ ⁠CELL's lithium projects, including Texas Spring and Clayton Valley, exhibit mineralization similar to advanced-stage projects in the region, indicating significant potential for M&A/consolidation opportunities.
Texas Spring Lithium Project:
•⁠ ⁠Located in Elko County, Texas Spring is adjacent to Surge Battery's North Nevada Lithium Project, boasting high-grade lithium mineralization of up to 5,610 ppm Li.
•⁠ ⁠Recent exploration efforts, including surface sampling and geophysical surveys, have identified two significant mineralization zones, positioning the project favourably for further drilling and resource estimation.
•⁠ ⁠Located 73 km northeast of Wells, Nevada, and adjacent to Surge Battery’s NNLP
Clayton Valley Lithium Project:
•⁠ ⁠Bordering Albemarle's Silver Peak mine, Clayton Valley project is strategically located in one of the most prolific lithium-producing regions.
•⁠ ⁠With encouraging past drilling results and geological similarities to other Clayton Valley deposits, CELL plans to initiate a comprehensive exploration program, including drilling, to unlock its lithium potential.
* Located approximately 273 km southeast of Reno, and 315 km from Tesla’s (TSLA)
Market Outlook and Catalysts:
•⁠ ⁠Despite a 37% YoY decline in lithium prices, the sector is experiencing a 24% YTD increase, driven by the rising demand for EV batteries.
•⁠ ⁠The U.S. government's initiatives, such as the "Inflation Reduction Act," underscore the importance of domestic EV and battery production, creating opportunities for companies like CELL.
•⁠ ⁠With an anticipated surge in EV sales and lithium demand, CELL is poised to benefit from the growing market, especially with upcoming drilling activities and positive market sentiment towards EV metal juniors.
Financial Snapshot:
•⁠ ⁠As of Q2 FY2024, CELL possesses strong financial fundamentals, including $7.67 million in working capital, enabling the company to fund its exploration programs and operational activities.
•⁠ ⁠The company's mineral assets, totalling $1.39 million, reflect its substantial investment in its project portfolio, particularly in Nevada's lithium-rich regions.
Investment Recommendation:
•⁠ ⁠Based on the company's promising lithium projects, favourable market conditions, and robust financial position, analysts from fundamental research corp recommend a "BUY" rating for Grid Battery Metals.
•⁠ ⁠A fair value estimate of C$0.22/share suggests significant upside potential, supported by upcoming catalysts such as drilling programs and increased investor awareness of the company's value proposition.
Overall, Grid Battery Metals emerges as a compelling investment opportunity in the EV metals sector, with its strategic project portfolio, strong financial standing, and favorable market dynamics positioning it for future growth and value creation.
https://gridbatterymetals.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Grid-Battery-May-2024-Initiating.pdf
*Posted on behalf of Grid Battery Metals Inc.

Grid Battery Metals is a junior mining company focused on advancing a portfolio of four Electric Vehicle (EV) metal projects, primarily in Nevada, along with a nickel project in British Columbia. The company's flagship assets are the Texas Spring and Clayton Valley lithium projects.
Nevada Lithium Projects:
•⁠ ⁠Nevada, known for its favorable mining jurisdiction and abundant mineral resources, hosts several advanced-stage lithium projects and America's only lithium-producing mine, Albemarle's Silver Peak mine.
•⁠ ⁠CELL's lithium projects, including Texas Spring and Clayton Valley, exhibit mineralization similar to advanced-stage projects in the region, indicating significant potential for M&A/consolidation opportunities.
Texas Spring Lithium Project:
•⁠ ⁠Located in Elko County, Texas Spring is adjacent to Surge Battery's North Nevada Lithium Project, boasting high-grade lithium mineralization of up to 5,610 ppm Li.
•⁠ ⁠Recent exploration efforts, including surface sampling and geophysical surveys, have identified two significant mineralization zones, positioning the project favourably for further drilling and resource estimation.
•⁠ ⁠Located 73 km northeast of Wells, Nevada, and adjacent to Surge Battery’s NNLP
Clayton Valley Lithium Project:
•⁠ ⁠Bordering Albemarle's Silver Peak mine, Clayton Valley project is strategically located in one of the most prolific lithium-producing regions.
•⁠ ⁠With encouraging past drilling results and geological similarities to other Clayton Valley deposits, CELL plans to initiate a comprehensive exploration program, including drilling, to unlock its lithium potential.
* Located approximately 273 km southeast of Reno, and 315 km from Tesla’s (TSLA)
Market Outlook and Catalysts:
•⁠ ⁠Despite a 37% YoY decline in lithium prices, the sector is experiencing a 24% YTD increase, driven by the rising demand for EV batteries.
•⁠ ⁠The U.S. government's initiatives, such as the "Inflation Reduction Act," underscore the importance of domestic EV and battery production, creating opportunities for companies like CELL.
•⁠ ⁠With an anticipated surge in EV sales and lithium demand, CELL is poised to benefit from the growing market, especially with upcoming drilling activities and positive market sentiment towards EV metal juniors.
Financial Snapshot:
•⁠ ⁠As of Q2 FY2024, CELL possesses strong financial fundamentals, including $7.67 million in working capital, enabling the company to fund its exploration programs and operational activities.
•⁠ ⁠The company's mineral assets, totalling $1.39 million, reflect its substantial investment in its project portfolio, particularly in Nevada's lithium-rich regions.
Investment Recommendation:
•⁠ ⁠Based on the company's promising lithium projects, favourable market conditions, and robust financial position, analysts from fundamental research corp recommend a "BUY" rating for Grid Battery Metals.
•⁠ ⁠A fair value estimate of C$0.22/share suggests significant upside potential, supported by upcoming catalysts such as drilling programs and increased investor awareness of the company's value proposition.
Overall, Grid Battery Metals emerges as a compelling investment opportunity in the EV metals sector, with its strategic project portfolio, strong financial standing, and favorable market dynamics positioning it for future growth and value creation.
https://gridbatterymetals.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Grid-Battery-May-2024-Initiating.pdf
*Posted on behalf of Grid Battery Metals Inc.

Grid Battery Metals is a junior mining company focused on advancing a portfolio of four Electric Vehicle (EV) metal projects, primarily in Nevada, along with a nickel project in British Columbia. The company's flagship assets are the Texas Spring and Clayton Valley lithium projects.
Nevada Lithium Projects:
•⁠ ⁠Nevada, known for its favorable mining jurisdiction and abundant mineral resources, hosts several advanced-stage lithium projects and America's only lithium-producing mine, Albemarle's Silver Peak mine.
•⁠ ⁠CELL's lithium projects, including Texas Spring and Clayton Valley, exhibit mineralization similar to advanced-stage projects in the region, indicating significant potential for M&A/consolidation opportunities.
Texas Spring Lithium Project:
•⁠ ⁠Located in Elko County, Texas Spring is adjacent to Surge Battery's North Nevada Lithium Project, boasting high-grade lithium mineralization of up to 5,610 ppm Li.
•⁠ ⁠Recent exploration efforts, including surface sampling and geophysical surveys, have identified two significant mineralization zones, positioning the project favourably for further drilling and resource estimation.
•⁠ ⁠Located 73 km northeast of Wells, Nevada, and adjacent to Surge Battery’s NNLP
Clayton Valley Lithium Project:
•⁠ ⁠Bordering Albemarle's Silver Peak mine, Clayton Valley project is strategically located in one of the most prolific lithium-producing regions.
•⁠ ⁠With encouraging past drilling results and geological similarities to other Clayton Valley deposits, CELL plans to initiate a comprehensive exploration program, including drilling, to unlock its lithium potential.
* Located approximately 273 km southeast of Reno, and 315 km from Tesla’s (TSLA)
Market Outlook and Catalysts:
•⁠ ⁠Despite a 37% YoY decline in lithium prices, the sector is experiencing a 24% YTD increase, driven by the rising demand for EV batteries.
•⁠ ⁠The U.S. government's initiatives, such as the "Inflation Reduction Act," underscore the importance of domestic EV and battery production, creating opportunities for companies like CELL.
•⁠ ⁠With an anticipated surge in EV sales and lithium demand, CELL is poised to benefit from the growing market, especially with upcoming drilling activities and positive market sentiment towards EV metal juniors.
Financial Snapshot:
•⁠ ⁠As of Q2 FY2024, CELL possesses strong financial fundamentals, including $7.67 million in working capital, enabling the company to fund its exploration programs and operational activities.
•⁠ ⁠The company's mineral assets, totalling $1.39 million, reflect its substantial investment in its project portfolio, particularly in Nevada's lithium-rich regions.
Investment Recommendation:
•⁠ ⁠Based on the company's promising lithium projects, favourable market conditions, and robust financial position, analysts from fundamental research corp recommend a "BUY" rating for Grid Battery Metals.
•⁠ ⁠A fair value estimate of C$0.22/share suggests significant upside potential, supported by upcoming catalysts such as drilling programs and increased investor awareness of the company's value proposition.
Overall, Grid Battery Metals emerges as a compelling investment opportunity in the EV metals sector, with its strategic project portfolio, strong financial standing, and favorable market dynamics positioning it for future growth and value creation.
https://gridbatterymetals.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Grid-Battery-May-2024-Initiating.pdf
*Posted on behalf of Grid Battery Metals Inc.

Grid Battery Metals is a junior mining company focused on advancing a portfolio of four Electric Vehicle (EV) metal projects, primarily in Nevada, along with a nickel project in British Columbia. The company's flagship assets are the Texas Spring and Clayton Valley lithium projects.
Nevada Lithium Projects:
•⁠ ⁠Nevada, known for its favorable mining jurisdiction and abundant mineral resources, hosts several advanced-stage lithium projects and America's only lithium-producing mine, Albemarle's Silver Peak mine.
•⁠ ⁠CELL's lithium projects, including Texas Spring and Clayton Valley, exhibit mineralization similar to advanced-stage projects in the region, indicating significant potential for M&A/consolidation opportunities.
Texas Spring Lithium Project:
•⁠ ⁠Located in Elko County, Texas Spring is adjacent to Surge Battery's North Nevada Lithium Project, boasting high-grade lithium mineralization of up to 5,610 ppm Li.
•⁠ ⁠Recent exploration efforts, including surface sampling and geophysical surveys, have identified two significant mineralization zones, positioning the project favourably for further drilling and resource estimation.
•⁠ ⁠Located 73 km northeast of Wells, Nevada, and adjacent to Surge Battery’s NNLP
Clayton Valley Lithium Project:
•⁠ ⁠Bordering Albemarle's Silver Peak mine, Clayton Valley project is strategically located in one of the most prolific lithium-producing regions.
•⁠ ⁠With encouraging past drilling results and geological similarities to other Clayton Valley deposits, CELL plans to initiate a comprehensive exploration program, including drilling, to unlock its lithium potential.
* Located approximately 273 km southeast of Reno, and 315 km from Tesla’s (TSLA)
Market Outlook and Catalysts:
•⁠ ⁠Despite a 37% YoY decline in lithium prices, the sector is experiencing a 24% YTD increase, driven by the rising demand for EV batteries.
•⁠ ⁠The U.S. government's initiatives, such as the "Inflation Reduction Act," underscore the importance of domestic EV and battery production, creating opportunities for companies like CELL.
•⁠ ⁠With an anticipated surge in EV sales and lithium demand, CELL is poised to benefit from the growing market, especially with upcoming drilling activities and positive market sentiment towards EV metal juniors.
Financial Snapshot:
•⁠ ⁠As of Q2 FY2024, CELL possesses strong financial fundamentals, including $7.67 million in working capital, enabling the company to fund its exploration programs and operational activities.
•⁠ ⁠The company's mineral assets, totalling $1.39 million, reflect its substantial investment in its project portfolio, particularly in Nevada's lithium-rich regions.
Investment Recommendation:
•⁠ ⁠Based on the company's promising lithium projects, favourable market conditions, and robust financial position, analysts from fundamental research corp recommend a "BUY" rating for Grid Battery Metals.
•⁠ ⁠A fair value estimate of C$0.22/share suggests significant upside potential, supported by upcoming catalysts such as drilling programs and increased investor awareness of the company's value proposition.
Overall, Grid Battery Metals emerges as a compelling investment opportunity in the EV metals sector, with its strategic project portfolio, strong financial standing, and favorable market dynamics positioning it for future growth and value creation.
https://gridbatterymetals.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Grid-Battery-May-2024-Initiating.pdf
*Posted on behalf of Grid Battery Metals Inc.

Hi there! Coming here to try to get some ideas. I’m on a quest to cover the soffit above my kitchen cabinets. It cannot be removed as it supports the upstairs. Currently it’s just a painted soffit. Nothing fancy, typical of a Midwest house built in the 50’s. I’m interested in making this appear to be a wood beam, and echoing that same beam look at the entry to the kitchen for a more natural and updated look overall. The plan is to stain it in a walnut color.
This requires that I would cover the soffit, but I cannot create the typical faux 3 sided box beam that there are a million tutorials for.
Essentially I just need ideas on how to cover it so it looks like a wood beam. The area is 15’ wide (spanning the width of the kitchen cabinets). Length of the soffit is about 14” cabinets are mounted to the base of the soffit and wall behind it.
Anyone with ideas for someone who a) has no idea on how to do this or where to source the wood from (located in St. Louis, Mo) and b) would likely do this as a DIY project although I have the tools and labor help. So explain it to me like I’m 5 in case you have ideas.
Thank you for any help. I’ve lived here for 18 years and this soffit has always driven me crazy.