Not that anyone at this gives a single flying fuck but I did this so I’m posting it. I have included all works from the main 13 albums and singles excluding
The b Side of yellow submarine as no actual beatle plays on it
Those German covers as they really aren’t so different from the original and I didn’t see the point
Unreleased material such as ultra deluxe or whatever the fuck and the l unreleased stuff from anthology (excluding the 3 last Beatles songs)
There’s a couple of unpopular opinions here so don’t go too hard on me I love them all in my own way,
214:WILD HONEY PIE: To be clear I don’t dislike the idea of the song, but I just think it’s a huge middle finger to the album. I can’t help but laugh at it as it is a mockery of Paul McCartney by Paul McCartney. I can’t help but think it’s what John thinks his little jaudy ditties sound like. However I think it’s horrible to have to listen to I’m not angry at it, just disappointed. It really could’ve been a good parody song, as it however. I think it’s a filler interlude.
213: BOYS: The original version is leagues better, and when it comes to the Beatles that’s saying something. I can’t think of anything that justifies the existence of this song. The only redeeming aspect is it’s refreshing to hear ringo sing sometimes, he does a fine job of it.
212: A TASTE OF HONEY Trashy song too sweet and pissy for me (for a great lack of a better term) Paul sounds bad on this, the whole thing sounds trashy. Drivel
211: P.S I LOVE YOU Does nothing for me.
210: SUN KING Oh a hot take. Or is it, I won’t count the medley itself as no one else seems to but if so I respect it way more than it’s placed. It’s a bit trippy but not to an extent of intriguing me. The translation to mr mustard is great but I’m not ranking that. On its own, In My Opinion, bad
209: PLEASE PLEASE ME Has everything that I dislike about the early work, especially the harmonica, fine singing but could’ve been synced better.
208: THIS BOY Forgettable and boring to me
207: SEXY SADIE fascinating song but not particularly good or interesting in my opinion. The stories of who’s it about however are worth looking into.
206: ASK ME WHY Might it have something to do with love. As you might tell I’m not big on please please me. This one blends in with the rest of the album
205: CHAINS Not an awful song but it’s not overly good. George’s vocals haven’t gotten great yet so he still could use some work. Perfectly bland song
204: DO YOU WANT TO KNOW A SECRET I am aware this song has a relatively large fan base but this is not for me at all. Sorry
203: THE END First off the “Oh Yeah! All Right!” Are indeed iconic. Everyone’s playing their heart out. Some of Ringos best work. But I don’t know, it doesn’t punch me like I think it should. I like this, but I should love it, and I don’t.
202: GOLDEN SLUMBERS Too repetitive for me to get into. This is the only Beatles song that could’ve been shorter. That’ll be ironic as I pretty much think every Beatles song is too short except this one.
201: ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN Berry did it better
200: ANOTHER GIRL I didn’t think anything of it at all to be honest.
199: TELL ME WHAT YOU SEE Fine, not that good, but fine
198: YOU KNOW MY NAME (LOOK UP THE NUMBER) They’re taking the absolute piss. I’m glad this exists but I don’t want to listen to it.
197: BIRTHDAY It’s a birthday song, you know, typical white album. Fine.
196: FLYING This is such a fucking vibe, not much after you’ve heard it the once but still, not bad at all for a mostly instrumental song
195: WHEN I GET HOME It wasn’t that bad, and it wasn’t that good
194: I WANNA BE YOUR MAN Eh
193: THINGS WE SAID TODAY Better but we’re not THE BEATLES yet
192: IM HAPPY JUST TO DANCE WITH YOU Somewhat memorable, kinda boring, not shit
191: ITS ONLY LOVE I’ve heard worse
190: I CALL YOUR NAME Not much to say about these particular songs, they aren’t shit but they’re not at that quality of good, these are the awkward songs.
189: REVOLUTION 1 I originally heard it on the white album and thought “wow that was really mid” the I heard the original single and I thought “wow they really fucked that song” still noice lyrics
188: JULIA Calm ass song. A lot of people love this song to bits but I just don’t relate to it that much, with age I expect to like this song more
187: ALL TOGETHER NOW I guess it’s fine
186: DON’T BOTHER ME It’s just meh
185: HOLD ME TIGHT Still meh
184: DIG IT I like this but it’s so short and non sensical I can’t put it any higher
183: I SAW HER STANDING THERE I like this, but it’s still a bit too sappy
182: BLUE JAY WAY This is a weird ass song. Very George. It has those uppy downy lyrics, there’s a lot to like here but also a fair few things that I don’t like, like the lyrics could have been more defined and worked on, and it could use some more power in the vocals
181: I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER Karmas a bitch
180: THE NIGHT BEFORE This one has better production but the same blandness that culminates in old Beatles music
179: WAIT There’s going to be enough hot takes on this list anyway so I will contain my feelings on rubber soul. Let’s just say the Beatles evolutions had a middle ground from lovey dovey 60s bops to the psychedelic rock they’re know for. That middle ground is rubber soul, not a bad album, but like the stage from a child to an adult, kinda messed up. This album has some re great moments. But it also has wait, which isn’t bad, but it’s not everything you would want from this particular album.
178: CRY BABY CRY It’s good, idk what else to say not Beatles good but I wouldn’t skip it
177: LOVE ME DO This song just makes you feel happy, nothing else
176: KANSAS CITY/HEY-HEY-HEY-HEY It was ok but I can tell this track wasn’t over fixated on
175: I NEED YOU You can tell it’s an older Beatles
174: DIZZY MISS LIZZY I know there’s a recent dislike for this one but it never fails to make me smile. It’s so fucking chaotic I love it, it does have its production flaws but John is singing his heart out. This is what I want from a Beatles cover track
173: IVE JUST SEEN A FACE Charming enough song
172: TICKET TO RIDE A classic I’m sure. Really has a nice groove and what it lacks in lyrics makes up for in sound.
171: ONLY A NORTHERN SONG I agree with the rest of the group that if this was on Sargent peppers it would be the worst track. However that’s not to take away from it. It’s a charming piece, it has all the elements of Harrison but overall it is only a northern song
170: SOMETHING Damn here’s the first one I might not survive. People who were on the fence before will probably switch to the ‘eh, fuck this guy’ field. I don’t dislike the song, it’s a good song, it’s a great love song but it’s a very expected feet. Every line while sung with excellence is very conventional, it’s tropey. Perhaps it’s too far to call it cheesey. And don’t get me wrong I love the simple cheesey songs a lot (just wait till you see where I put silver hammer). But this one just doesn’t strike a nerve for me. I did think the same thing about strawberry fields forever for a while before listening to it more so maybe it’ll crawl up the ranks someday but overall I think it’s a nice love song that has some great production but after that it’s overshadowed by the rest of the album.
169: ALL MY LOVING Yeah, it’s a classic, who couldn’t like it
168: MOTHER NATURES SON This one has a huge fanbase as well. It’s a good song, great use of imagery and metaphors. Doesn’t do much after that in terms of production and the way it’s sang, just a nice song to chill to in my opinion.
167: ALL I’VE GOT TO DO Again, short, sweet song
166: YOU NEVER GIVE ME YOUR MONEY Yeah this one’s interesting. It goes through a fair amount of genres for one song. On one hand its structure is something of a mess, however it still is a good listen, it’s cute in the best sense. The fact that it’s about Allen Kline is also funny if not a little saddening
165: IT WONT BE LONG Wasn’t long, still nice
164: ANY TIME AT ALL Just another comfrey Beatles song
163: YOU’VE GOT TO HIDE YOUR LOVE AWAY Although I think this song is a little overrated not bad
162: DEAR PRUDENCE I know I like this song a lot less than others do. It takes a while to get going but when it hits that euphoric moment you know I’m talking about it’s bliss, but the first half kinda dull
161: BECAUSE A little oddity on the Abby road medley that’s just, I don’t know, conflicting. If it where longer maybe I could decide if I liked it or not but for now it stays here
160: THANK YOU GIRL Sweet little song that gives you a warm feeling
159: LONG LONG LONG At this point in the white album that’s what I was thinking. It’s not bad but it could’ve been longer (no pun intended) and released as a single with the right editing. George Martin could make it work I’m sure
158: I WILL Here’s how I feel. I always like it when I hear it, but forget what it sounds like 2 seconds after.
157: IF I FELL Cheesy but still pretty catchy
156: AND I LOVE HER This is nice also
155: LITTLE CHILD Though the lyrics in 2024 sound a little ‘noncey’ that’s part of the reason why it sticks out to me. It always gives me a chuckle. Little child… the way he says “I’m so sad and LoNeLy” is so cartoony and I like it.
154: ILL GET YOU Yeah, good, fine, acceptable
153: BACK IN THE U.S.S.R This is why the Beatles beat the beach boys for me this. Classic song that probably had America tugging at there collars, just genius
152: ITS ALL TOO MUCH Again this isn’t bad, am I blown away, not necessarily. But this is a bop
151: THERES A PLACE I like this quite nice I think
150: A HARD DAYS NIGHT A lot of people love it, I just think it’s fine, good song I guess
149: ILL CRY INSTEAD These are the songs that are well produced but lyrically forgettable. This is one of ‘em
148: EVERY LITTLE THING I really like Beatles for sale, it’s so fun, it’s a fun album. Every little thing isn’t badly written but I listen for the music. George is good on this, ringos subtly great. Just wholesome
147: EVERYBODY’S TRYING TO BE MY BABY A song of its time, and quite and tie tapper if you ask me
146: WORDS OF LOVE A pleasant song for any day
145: DAY TRIPPER Nice melody, ok lyrics, good enough song
144:BEING FOR THE BENEFIT OF MR KITE When I first heard this song I didn’t listen to the lyrics, the ones I did catch lead me to believe that it was some sort of political song with mr k being some sort of satirical caricature. Upon second listen I realised it’s just a song about a circus performer putting on a show, I can interpret some lyrics as a reference to some political nature but I think it really boils down to a circus song. It’s giving me a sense of stereotypical Halloween music you’d hear with the way the rhythm goes up and down frequently in the same line. Just a fun little jingle. Also I believe if Paul had wrote it John would have hated it, many probably do hate it. What does everyone have against whimsy?
143: CANT BYE ME LOVE Cliché yes, catchy yes, enjoyable yes
142: THINK FOR YOURSELF Fine little song with not much to write about
141: FREE AS A BIRD I am quite conflicted on the 3 last Beatles songs. They are mostly John Lennon demos rather than Beatles mixes. I was of two minds including them but I thought I may as well because they are interesting to talk about. I don’t think these are as cash cow despicable as some would argue. A lot work has clearly been done to preserve them and restore them. It’s hard to look at this song on its own basis. On its own it’s pleasant, but overall I do not really know why they bothered to release it as a Beatles track, it feels very unbeatles to me but as I say I don’t dislike it, I’m just not sure on where I stand on its purpose
140: REAL LOVE I have the exact same opinion on this one I just like the song better
139: MAGGIE MAY I just think love the accents alright. How long is it 50 seconds? For the life of me I’ll never get why they didn’t make their songs longer. I fancy me chances with this one
138: DEVIL IN HER HEART Solid cover of a very good song
137: PIGGIES This one’s kinda weird. We all get the piggies are elite pricks but the way George pronounces dirt just sells me on it. Good effort, could’ve been longer.
136: EIGHT DAYS A WEEK I like it, don’t love it, it’s what you expect but it does deliver in that regard
135: HELP! Iconic, reasonably catchy, just wholesome man
134:IF I NEEDED SOMEONE Rubber soul being kind of quirky comes through softly but noticeably here
133: MEAN MR MUSTARD This song just flows man. I love the lyrics, like the instruments and how they bounce off each other. Just the right amount of absurdity. If only it were longer…
132: HELLO GOODBYE Classic, I do like this one, but you know I always forget how much until I listen to it again
131: LONG TALL SALLY A lot of people hate this one but I think it’s fine
130: TWIST AND SHOUT COMEONCOMEONCOMEONCOMEONCOMEOWWN
129: ILL BE BACK Yeah, not bad, not bad at all, rather good actually
128: TELL ME WHY Classes Beatles getting it right
127: TILL THERE WAS YOU You know, maybe with the Beatles gets too much hate
126: OLD BROWN SHOE Not one of George’s best and the mixing is jarring but the lyrics are very nice
125: FROM ME TO YOU Just a sweet song, nothing wrong with that
124: SHES A WOMAN Not much to unpack, Paul is good in this though
123: MICHELLE Everyone loves Michelle. It’s a dainty song that isn’t that great, but good, it’s just so quaint
122:THE WORD The n word. No love of course. Maximum corniness but still a treat to hear, Lennon sings it believably
121: WHAT GOES ON How eloquent, idfk
120: BAD BOY Now junior, behave yourself! I just needed to hear Lennon say that and I was hooked. Weird to release a cover as a single but I won’t complain
119 : FIXING A HOLE Fun psychedelia, bring the family
118: MATCHBOX Just a song on the struggles of life, Beatles style
117: ONE AFTER 909 Chaotic song that gets the blood flowing. Also regrettably relatable
116: GETTING BETTER The charm is in the McCartney Lennon dynamic. Paul says it’s getting better everyday. John says it can’t get much worse. Doesn’t that sum up those two quiet well. Just so vibrant. This era had so much colour.
115: FOR YOU BLUE Solid song, ain’t bad at all
114: ACT NATURALLY I like this song a lot. Ringo fits well for it, it’s playful, just so pleasing
113: I DONT WANT TO SPOIL THE PARTY Another underrated song from Beatles for sale.
112: BABY ITS YOU This is fun
111: MONEY (THATS WHAT I WANT) Good cover, maybe not as good as the original but you can just feel the mayhem going on through the speakers
110: YOU WONT SEE ME Mmhm, mmhm, yup, that’s some nice music
109: YOU LIKE ME TOO MUCH A playful, goofy ass song that has some great lines and a pretty fine beat
108: YOUR MOTHER SHOULD KNOW Heartwarming, just, heartwarming
107: YOU CANT DO THAT Not perfect but undeniably based
106: NOT A SECOND TIME A great story mixed with some simply beautiful descriptions making up a song that hits different form other songs of the similar nature
105: SLOW DOWN It’s the bluddy beetles mate, whatja expect
104: YOU’RE GOING TO LOOSE THAT GIRL The character in this story is such a dick but I just can’t help vibing with him. He’s such a cnt that he says he gonna steal the guys girl right to the guys face. That’s hilarious and I really like it
103: GOOD MORNING GOOD MORNING Gets too much hate for what it is
102: RAIN I don’t know what it is about rain that grabs me but every time I listen I just get drawn in, it’s very clean
101: MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR ROLLUP ROLLUP. God I think this is so vibrant, so colourful, just really cool, great harmony, overshadowed by the rest of the album
100: MISERY Misery stuck with me, unexpectedly based for a first album
99: YES IT IS Yeah yeah yeah this one’s pretty good yeah
98: CARRY THAT WEIGHT I just sing this all the time randomly. It’s to the point, honest, fun. I don’t know what accents they’re singing in this time but it’s great. Not much of a lullaby though.
97: WHY DONT WE DO IT IN THE ROAD This one just makes me happy. I know it’s kind of filler but the way Paul increasingly hypes things up in his vocals make me smile. Big fan of this, thing
96:HONEY DONT I liked this a lot the first time I heard it and frankly I still do
95: IN MY LIFE When rubber soul gets it right it can end up like this song. And that’s a good thing
94: NOWHERE MAN Lyrically enchanting, some hot instrumentation. Production ok and a more memorable song from rubber soul
93: I FEEL FINE Yup this is fine
92: YESTERDAY A song you think is overplayed until you listen and it’s just so good. A real highlight from the early years, my favourite from help, a somber melody that is sang flawlessly by Paul
91: LOVELY RITA A song of a somewhat unlikely love that is different enough from the Beatles other love songs to stand out
90: WHILE MY GUITAR GENTLY WEEPS Why is it so low I hear you scream. Well to be honest FOR ME the verses while lyrically interesting don’t stand out in my mind. Obviously the chorus is incredible but it’s just as the rest of the verses which mind you are still good that bring it down for me. A song not really my thing till the chorus hits but still the fact that it’s there makes it worth the listen
89: HER MAJESTY Yes, I prefer this over while my guitar gently weeps. Moving on, I think this is a fun, tongue in cheek song that I always thought implied he was talking about money. Think about it, her majesty is on all the bank notes, she certainly doesn’t have a lot to say in that case, price changes from day to day. Paul loves it but to get it he has to get a belly full of wine to make it… think about it.
88: SHE CAME IN THROUGH THE BATHROOM WINDOW Ah, this one. The intrigue of the contrast of the chorus and the verses. One of my favourite from the medley
87: YOU REALLY GOT A HOLD ON ME With the Beatles being underrated again
86: TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS Look, I don’t dislike this song, it’s just a bit messy for me. There’s a lot going on and I like that but ultimately the trippy style is done better in other songs like day in the life. But I do like that George Martin on the piano isn’t half bad, he’s one of twelve fifth Beatles I hear
85: HERE COMES THE SUN I like George I swear. This song is really good and I like it but I just wouldn’t listen to it as much as some higher ones below. The changing of the seasons to describe a relationship isn’t new but it fit’s really well here I think.
84: IM SO TIRED Would be higher if it were longer, good, very good, too short
83: POLYTHENE PAM The fucking accents. Love the weird ass story of the gender ambiguous Pam and her drag persona as in a polythene bag. Just a fun character song
82: DOCTOR ROBERT My least favourite from revolver but still charming enough
81: WHAT YOUR DOING Just good
80: BLACKBIRD I really like this. I want to love it, but it’s so goddamn short man. Oh well what we got is still great
79: DONT PASS ME BY Weird, goofy, sung by ringo. A real gem of a song off the white album.
78: ROCK AND ROLL MUSIC A cover almost better than the original berry’s. Almost is still a hard feet to reach.
77: IM LOOKING THROUGH YOU The loss of a love has been done many times by these guys but this is one of there best
76: WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS The lyrics are kinda mid in my opinion but hearing ringo sing always has its perks
75: IVE GOT A FEELING Very good song, production a little iffy but not horrible, I think let it be is given too much shit for that
74: GOOD NIGHT They subverted my expectations with this one. What a way to end such a large album, I think this one is cute and light and just very sweet. Whispering is somewhat creepy though.
73: WITHIN YOU WITHOUT YOU We all know they were on a lot of serious shit during this era but goddamn the lsd vibes mixed with the Indian sitar sound is really fucking unique. And I like it, don’t love it but still
72: IM DOWN V good
71: THE INNER LIGHT V nice
70: BABYS IN BLACK This one strikes a nerve with me, a hood premise, John sings it well. A treat
69: ILL FOLLOW THE SUN Never got why people disliked this one. I had a theory that the guy in it is dead and he’s going away from his girl, you know, towards the Sun
68: RUN FOR YOUR LIFE More than inspired by Elvis but I can’t complain its a banger
67: PLEASE MR POSTMAN This is well suited for John to sing. I prefer this over the original maybe that’s controversial to say I don’t know. It’s great
66 : GLASS ONION The rocking beat is what hooks me at this one to be honest, the references are cool but a bit pointless
65: MARTHA MY DEAR Who doesn’t love dogs, just heartwarming. Just pure joy
64: IM A LOSER God this album doesn’t get enough love
63: MR MOONLIGHT I heard people disliked this one but John is really suited for this one. I do indeed prefer it to its counterpart
62: LOVE YOU TO Weird vibes, good track
61: I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND Just gets you grooving. Love it
60: DIG A PONY Nonsense song that sounds good in your ears, typical Lennon
59: DRIVE MY CAR Maybe overrated but still slaps
58: GIRL Love girl
57: SHE LOVES YOU Again one of those dancer songs that never fails to deliver
56: ANNA (GO TO HIM) Way better than the original, such a good cover, ah, bliss
55: NOW AND THEN You see is this the recency bias. I don’t think so I hope not but it feels like it is. Man I don’t know it just sounds like Lennon was going for something different and I get it. There was so much work that went into this I just don’t know. I do really like it.
54: I WANT TO TELL YOU Somewhat forgettable but when I hear it it comes rushing back to me.
53: GOOD DAY SUNSHINE Good vibes, peace and love you know
52: HERE THERE AND EVERYWHERE Somewhat cliché but idk I like it
51: TWO OF US I just love this. I don’t think it’s as badly produced as some claim (the long and winding road is evidently over produced but it still goes absolutely hard)
50: TAXMAN We can all relate to this. More relevant than ever, and will continue to be in the future I’m sure
49: WHEN IM SIXTY FOUR It’s so jaunty that I feel like it would belong in a cartoon but that just makes it better for me. I love whimsy
48: IM ONLY SLEEPING This is great
47: PAPERBACK WRITER Be longer please
46: WE CAN WORK IT OUT Longer be please
45: HEY BULLDOG Kickass bass playing by Paul. Lyrics that were just fucked together by John are somehow incredible. Ringos drumming on this one is really good too. Wow, for a throwaway song it works really well
44: NORWEGIAN WOOD (THIS BIRD HAS FLOWN) You can almost smell the pot off this one. Love Norwegian wood rubber soul at its best.
43: AND YOUR BIRD CAN SING Not much to say great song
42: GOT TO GET YOH INTO MY LIFE Iconic, great again
41: ELANOR RIGBY Maybe you’ll say I put this too low but I still like it to a great extent
40: LADY MADONNA One of their best character songs
39: THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD Epic song, great lyrics, sang fantastically, so good
38: SHE SAID SHE SAID Tripping balls but goddamn amazing
37: LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS Psychedelia on full force with this one. Some of the best imagery from any song. It’s charming and fun and at times mystical but overall Johns way with words really come to the top of the log pill with this track
36: I ME MINE In hindsight a song that highlights the way George felt the world around him was and he was probably right. I like the metaphor and the waltz aspect works more than any other of the Beatles attempts at the style, it’s a fantastic piece
35: THE FOOL ON THE HILL Oh I love this song so very much. The song has the fool as some sort of wise figure many (myself included) take to be god. And I like to think if there is a god he’s like this. Watching over giving the world his wisdom but we’re just to ignorant to hear it. Also the medieval sound is one of my favourite styles (love sunforest if you’ve ever listened to any of their songs) so the flute works just so well for me especially when it mixes with the piano. Oh I just love this song to bits it’s great
34: ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE The cheesiness is undeniable, the magic is unbeatable. This song is just such a good album ender. The chaos and randomness near the climax is such an incarnation of the love message and how it works as an organised mayhem. The anthem of love and joy and passion is overflowing and I really like this song, if you can’t tell
33: NO REPLY Oh the way people overlook this song is not right. Its well written, it’s well sang, everyone’s playing well, it’s delightful
32: HONEY PIE I know people hate this song however for me it brings me back into the 20s. It is a sweet ditty that works really well for me and I love this one
31: FOR NO ONE God I love this. It feels so personal and is reflective, as unbiased as it can be and just beautifully sang with no grit. It’s honest. Paul’s on piano here witch is always great. Ringos drums work well to I think. This one’s just brilliant
30: SARGENT PEPPERS LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND REPRISE I love this, the best feels like fucking hip hop, it’s a nice way to lead into day in the life it’s just good no real flaws
29: SARGENT PEPPERS LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND Well this is just a perfect way to start an album. Set up the setting, it explains why the music in this one’s a little different as it’s not the Beatles it’s Sargent peppers and that’s a good concept from the start. You get a real idea if what the world the album takes place in is like and you get a feel for the members of the band itself. Just a class act
28: SAVOY TRUFFLE Controversial one perhaps. I just like the song. The mixing is interesting, the lyrics are fun, I think George outdid himself with it, all just to mock Eric Clapton, hilarious
27: ROCKY RACCOON I know this one’s gonna be a war. Rocky raccoon is so listenable, and fun and encapsulating.Paul is singing it in a great way. I just like it, ok, just my taste. If you hate this song and believe it should be burned than that is perfectly fine, but don’t undermine someone else’s opinion
26 : DONT LET ME DOWN Oh this one’s so powerful, grand, fitting really.
25: YELLOW SUBMARINE I have a fee that I’m not going to survive this list. Can I not like fun, that’s what this is, pure unfiltered fun. This song makes me very happy ok. Ringo singing it just gives it that relaxing feel. Yellow submarine is that kind of happy go lucky song I love
24: REVOLUTION After hearing its bastardisation this is just so refreshing. It’s about a peaceful revolution. It sure as hell doesn’t sound peaceful what with the two electric guitars blowing my speakers out. This one just sounds like a revolution should in a song, and it’s really very good because of it.
23: GET BACK Shit, shit back, shit 1. No I love this. This is such a vibe man it strikes a nerve, it sounds incredible (considering it was recorded outside) and it helps that everyone is clearly giving it there absolute all. Love get back.
22: OB-LA-DI OB-LA-DA I don’t know if this one is as controversial as it used to be but I know there are still some who fucking loath this song. I saw an article where it put this song as the worst the Beatles ever done saying that it was genuinely a horrible experience to listen to. I don’t know this song is just a tonic for a bad day, I will always feel a little bit better after listening to it and that really pulls it up the list. Don’t get the hate
21: A DAY IN THE LIFE Oh boy. This is so good damn it. The Lennon McCartney dynamic is the best it ever will be. Lennon reads the news of suicide and sees a war film while Paul dashes about in his chipper day. The rising orchestra is incredible, Ringos drumming is so different to other approaches in the genre. I can’t tell the scales of the strangeness and the depression aspect mixed with the weird ass ending it’s just an experience instead of a song.
20: OH! DARLING You can’t deny the power in this song, Paul gives it his absolute soul and it works for me, this rejection song is more of an explosion of emotions that gets you invested. Idk I like it
19: REVOLUTION 9 Well I’m dead, there’s no redeeming myself now oh well, however if you would at least hear me out on why I put number nine here then I will do my best. I love things that are different, things that go against the norm and defy expectations. And if we can all agree that revolution 9 is not what you expect when you think Beatles then we have agreed on something. This song (if you can call it a song) is doing for me something interesting. Celebrating the avant-garde while also making fun of it. It sounds impeccable. The mixing is superb, it makes full use of the stereo format. It makes me feel things, picture things, it’s a very interpretive sound that mixes together different instruments and words and phrases forwards and backwards to make something of a trip. This sounds like what a revolution sounds like, points getting muffled over time, being big and grand before shrinking into disarray. You can take what you want from the meaning but when I listen I get completely overwhelmed with feelings. It’s a collage of expression that is most certainly not for everybody but I think is a full on revolution in my head. That’s just how I feel
18: EVERYBODY’S GOT SOMETHING TO HIDE EXCEPT FOR ME AND MY MONKEY There’s some dislike for this one too but I think it’s just a complete rocker, the lyrics also make me chuckle a fair bit
17: THE BALLED OF JOHN AND YOKO I don’t think this one is that hated. I love it. It’s genuinely very funny some highlights being the what you doing in bed interaction and the two gurus in drag. John was highlighting his problems with the media in a way that doesn’t sound bitchy or like he’s talking down to the listeners. Very good song
16: ACROSS THE UNIVERSE God the imagery, similes and lyricism is so beautiful. This is a beautiful song. So elegant
15: SHES LEAVING HOME I was somewhat shocked to find this in some worst of the Beatles lists. The people writing it seeming to miss the point that it isn’t that biased. Sure it shows the hardships of the parents, how broken they are but it realises that fun can simply not manifest in some places and has to be sought out. It’s a real understandable song that is softly sung by Paul in a mystifying way.
14: I WANT YOU (SHES SO HEAVY) Fucking insane song, it’s like a ride at an amusement park it ramps up over time and brings you right to the heights that you wonder how it’s going to end. This song subverts that by giving it no ending, it just gets cut off, which is brilliant. It’s like a ride through hell. A decent into madness of desire in a way making it shockingly relevant.
13: OCTOPUSES GARDEN Kudos to ringo bro just wants to be under the ocean. Calm as fuck. Beautiful expression of the desire to get away from the hassles of life and responsibilities which I’m sure we all relate to. Also bubbles, what’s not to love.
12: HAPPINESS IS A WARM GUN It’s almost perfect, but goddamn it it’s too short. I love this thing but I feel it cuts off before it’s time is up you know
11: THE CONTINUING STORY OF BUNGALOW BILL I don’t get the hate for this one (well maybe I do but still) you got a fire ass spanish guitar. A balled of verses, a sing song chorus that feels like it’s taking the piss in a good way. Even an underlying message of hypocrisy and ignorance. Now I know that yoko is very loud on the song but honestly it just ads to the bizarre feeling that the whole song gives off, I love this.
10: YER BLUES One of the most explosive blues songs I’ve ever heard, incredible
9: STRAWBERRY FEILDS FOREVER You already know it’s fantastic, but that still shouldn’t take away how fantastic it is
8: MAXWELLS SILVER HAMMER … yeah, no joke. Listen it was on of the first Beatles songs I ever heard, if not the first. It has that jaunty Paul feel but then it hits you that it’s about a murderer and it just makes me take a step back and go damn, the Beatles could make anything whimsical. It’s so sing song while being so dark. Yea it is fruity but man I don’t know. The synthesiser near the end is also just really fun to me. It’s fun it’s nostalgic and I will always love it. Sorry not sorry.
7: HELTER SKELTER I applaud you Paul McCartney, you put everything you had into this one and it paid off
6: BABY YOU’RE A RICH MAN I don’t know what it is about this one I love so much, I’m not a huge fan of sitar but it works here. I like the lyrics. There’s a lot of interpretation around them but I always took it as a similar vane of the balled of John and Yoko where it is like a dickhead reporter asking John the questions we here Paul sing in a sense of leading him on and that they’re responding in the sense that these people nagging them about having money when most who were had money themselves. Just a thought.
5: COME TOGETHER Classic, genius rhyming scheme brilliant
4: HEY JUDE 2nd Best uplifting song I’ve ever heard
3: LET IT BE Best uplifting song I’ve ever heard
2: PENNY LANE A fantastic song highlighting the serenity in modern life that often goes unrecognised. It’s penny lane, what’s not to love
1: I AM THE WALRUS It’s I am the walrus. Lyrics are dazzling. The whole mixture of instruments and sounds the distortion making it sound like a dream at points. The way it uses the stereo medium is genius. The Beatles were geniuses. One of the best things ever written.

TLDR:

Initiated a swap using the in-app swap feature in ELLIPAL for $10K+ worth of $XLM to $DGB that remained “in-progress” for 9hrs during which I went through the 5 stages of grief, contacted ELLIPAL support, bought an equivalent amount of $DGB through my CEX (since I wanted to capitalise on the market dip), and ended up having 2X amount of DGB than I initially wanted.

The Story:

So I’ve been using the ELLIPAL Titan for close to 2 years now, and never once had any issues/complaints regarding anything, granted I’ve never used the Staking feature, or other DAPPS via in-app (nor do I plan to) so can’t comment on those specifically.
But my world was recently shaken up, and my life flashed in front of my eyes for 9 hours straight.
I’ve used the in-app SWAP feature before, but for only $20 - $30 transactions. Recently, the market correction on June 8th provided a good opportunity for me to restructure my crypto portfolio, which I had been planning for a long time. I didn’t want to use a DEX/CEX because of the spreads and liquidity issues, which is why I decided to use the in-app swap feature by ELLIPAL.
I wanted to swap $10k+ worth of $XLM to $DGB. I started by conducting a trial swap of $100 and in about 5 - 10 mins the equivalent amount of $DGB appeared in my wallet. Since everything worked out fine, with no issues or hurdles, I proceeded for the final/main swap.
I initiated a swap of $10k+ worth of $XLM to $DGB for which it initially showed me the accurate equivalent amount of $DGB that I would receive.

The Good:

The in-app swap feature has an option in the upper right corner where you can choose whether you want the swap to proceed at the fluctuating market rate or the option to complete the swap only at the market rate initially quoted to you before confirming the swap, & in case of failure to match the order, the funds would be refunded back to the wallet along with the network fees. In my previous adventures, I had experienced the importance of selecting the 2nd option first hand.

The Bad:

As soon as I confirmed the swap and went into the swap history option to check on the progress of my swap, I was shocked to see that the resulting amount of $DGB that I would receive (once the swap would complete) was almost $2K less than what was initially quoted. Seeing this literally broke my heart, and I cursed myself for choosing to swap on ELLIPAL rather than doing it on a CEX. But since the swap had already been initiated nothing could be done now, than just looking at the screen and seeing my money vanish into thin air.

The Ugly:

Since nothing could be done now about the $2K difference the only thing to do was to wait for the swap to complete. I expected it to complete in just about few minutes, since all my previous swaps had always completed within 5 - 10 minutes sometimes even quicker. But man, I was in for a surprise.
After about 10 minutes passed, I started checking the progress on my swap every 5 minutes. May be I might have done something wrong, may be the swap has already been completed, but not showing up properly in the progress bar?
10 minutes turned into 60 minutes, then 2 hrs, then 3, and I was in full panic mode by then. Checking the progress on the swap every 30 seconds & contemplating my life decisions and choices I’ve made that resulted in this outcome. Cursing myself for choosing to save a few $100 on a CEX vs SWAP and potentially losing $10k+ in the process.
The swap transaction ID that was provided, proved useless (maybe because I didn’t exactly know how to look for the transaction on the blockchain with the help of the swap transaction ID). I tried searching endlessly on the internet using the transaction ID but couldn’t find anything anywhere relevant regarding it.
By this time, 5 hrs had passed, the SWAP was still showing “in-progress” and I had completely become numb to anything and everything around me. Never had I thought that such a thing would ever happen to me.
I thought, I was very careful with everything regarding crypto & follow all the GOLDEN RULES of crypto while also having redundancy upon redundancies to Iron Clad my funds and protect my assets. But never had I thought that I would be my own wealth-destroyer trying to save a few hundred dollars on a transaction worth 5 figures.
Having lost faith in my abilities, I had almost accepted my fate. I decided to send an email to cs@ellipal.com regarding my issue, and explained the problem as best I could, but secretly I knew within me that nothing could be done now, atleast not by me. My FATE was not in my own HANDS for the first time, in a very long time.
Having accepted my fate, I had started to make peace with it, but the buying opportunity was still there, and I wanted to capitalise on it. An opportunity is an opportunity only until it is acted upon. So I decided to buy the equivalent amount of $DGB that I wanted via the swap on my CEX account and had it transferred to my ELLIPAL wallet for safe keeping.
By this time 9 hrs had passed since I initiated the swap. Although I was checking on the swap progress (which it was still showing as “in-progress”) there was nothing I could do.
What I feared the most was, that this SWAP would remain pending forever, (even though I selected the 2nd option) because I realized that other DEXs have a time limit for their swap transactions to process. For example, Uniswap has the feature to select the time limit of 10min upon which if the swap has not been completed, it would return back to your wallet. Such a limit is not available in the in-app ELLIPAL feature.
Sometime during the 9th hour I checked the progress on my swap transaction and suddenly I was amazed to see that the “in-progress” was changed to “completed”. I soon opened my $DGB wallet and there it showed the swapped $DGB was added to my wallet. And to my surprise there was no difference of $2K that it was showing while the swap was in progress. The amount of $DGB that I received was exactly the amount that was quoted to me before I initiated the swap.
There was no difference in the quoted amount and the final amount & no loss of funds, except for the fact that the swap took 9hrs to complete during which I went through all the 5 stages of grief - Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression & Acceptance.

Conclusion:

1> The in-app SWAP feature works.
2> It works for $10, $100, $1000, & $10,000+ swaps. (Should you use it for large $ transactions? Certainly I won’t !)
3> It may take anywhere between 5mins to 12hrs to complete your swap at your desired market price (or you could swap it as per the fluctuating market order).

Fun fact:

1> ELLIPAL support replied to my email within 24hrs (on a weekend), but by then the FIRE IN MY HEART was already extinguished.
2> I now have twice the amount of $DGB than I was initially planning to hold & still contemplating on whether to sell the surplus or just HODL it through!

Thoughts?

If you made it this far, thanks a lot for reading this through. I just wanted to share this experience with like minded people who may or may not have gone through similar situations in life, and would like to know your thoughts/suggestions on what I did wrong, or what I could have done something differently to avoid such a similar situation again in the future.

Before I start, I have to semi-dox myself and say that I am Indonesian. I have to do that because it would add so much more context to this story.
Prologue : The Antlers
https://preview.redd.it/ih54st9rji5d1.png?width=1732&format=png&auto=webp&s=22f3fcd319a0a621b918c5ba1cf11ff19d3ad818
I bought the latest Football Manager few months ago while the price was discounted. I was so excited to finally have J-League licensed because playing in Asia have been my lifelong FM dream but without J-League which is arguably the biggest and most competitive league in Asia, it just felt wrong.
I embarked on this year's journey the same way I have always started, to pick one of the top half teams in the league that I wanted to play, so that I get accustomed not only by the league rules but more importantly by the latest features and wrinkles of the game. I usually would play it for a season before moving on to the real long-term save.
This year, the lucky organization is Kashima Antlers. To cut the story short about this club background, you can imagine them like Japanese Manchester United with even less successful history. They have gone years without lifting a trophy but is able to consistently stay on the contention. Now that I said that, I guess they are the less horribly managed Japanese Manchester United.
My one and only mission : bring the J1-League trophy back to the Island of Antlers. Although, whatever it was that I wanted to do, I have to do it within the limitation of only 5 foreign players as per J1 rules and the lack wingers within the club. After hours of thinking and tinkering I came up with a tactic that I believe would work.
https://preview.redd.it/rzfx9sn3mi5d1.png?width=645&format=png&auto=webp&s=7eb7296ced348ee3f4414c474111ee54e643f0e2
The asymmetric 4-3-3 which emphasized the quality of Target Man Kai Chinen and homegrown talent Yuma Suzuki as well as 'hiding' the lack of winger but still be able to offer some width in the field. Saying that, it was still necessary for me to find a better winger for the formation than Yuta Matsumura, which was decent, but not good nor was he well-suited enough with the way I want to play.
Kai Chinen: Our main striker and one of our best player
The stats of Yuta Matsumura which was actually decent relative to the league quality, but not good enough. Also the only wingers other than him were some promising yet raw young talents.
**1******^st Act : The Reds
J1-League transfer window would be closed on 31 March. By the start of the month I have brought into the team some quality players: Roberto Soriano and Ismael for free and bring creativity in that midfield, and an uzbek guy called Hojiakbar Alijonov, a mature physical attacking right back which will provide those crosses from the right winger-less side of our formation.
I have not found my guy to be put in that left side though, until a young right-footed brazilian had a semi-fallout with his club and get transfer-listed. SC Internacional, his club, asked for two millions euros for whoever wanted to bring him out from Brazil. Having only spent so little, and in nearly desperate need for a winger, I jumped into the chance, and built a 2 millions worth of a deal based on so many installments and bonuses. Finally after some contract negotiation, my long-awaited inside forward has finally arrived on 06 March 2023.
His name is Joao Gabriel Martins Peglow, a 21-years-old who modeled his game after his idol Cristiano Ronaldo. He has good technique as well as physical attributes perfected by almost world class amount of flair. With him running with the ball down our left side, I believe we can outrun and outscore anybody in the league.
Peglow: Our main winger, and he had not even reached his ceiling
and I was not making it up when I say he idolized CR7.
**2******^nd Act : The Braces
You are forgiven for thinking that this story is about Peglow's debut. But it's not. His debut is mediocre at best. Playing against Urawa Red Diamonds in the J-League Cup (Japanese equivalent of Carabao Cup), he did not offer much. Only attempted 15 passes, produced 6.6 match rating, before I had to take him off in the one-hour mark of the game. In the game where the opponent produced nearly as many XGs from half as many shots, we ended up winning thanks to heroic performance of our first-choice goalkeeper, Tomoki Hayakawa.
https://preview.redd.it/ajp90s8gui5d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=5776948e9747bc51adb265861cb339e39c7f297b
Debuts are expected to be rough though. The real glimpse of what Peglow could bring to the team came almost two weeks after his debut. After another stinker which saw him produced 6.4 match rating in the league match that we otherwise dominated, I trusted and started him again in the match against one of the big boys: Yokohama Marinos. He paid that with an impressive return. I had to wait for a while though.
From the get-go, Yokohama's midfield which operate weirdly with two mezzalas in front of the single pivot, clearly got overrun by our midfield led by Roberto Soriano and spearheaded by Peglow. But it was our free agent signing, Ismael and our homegrown striker Yuki Kakita who gave us 2-0 lead before the halftime. In the 2nd half though, it's all Peglow's world and we were just living on it. He scored two goals in the span of 3 minutes before assisting another one in the closing stage of the match to close the game 5 goals to none. What a performance from him and surely, surely from then on, he would be the one leading this club to the promised land right?
Right?
https://preview.redd.it/3kj05obw4j5d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=94252890ec6063fd5dcac12f0bd6cb02b4f7f3dd
**3******^rd Act : The South-Easterners
All good things must come to an end. Some before it even begun.
I rested Peglow in the following match against lower division club in hope that he would be in peak condition for our next league match against Sanfrecce Hiroshima. Then the news struck.
It was 31 March, maybe around 10 am. Just one day before the league match mentioned before. Peglow was dribbling the ball in training when suddenly he turned sharply and fell. He scream in agony while the emergency radiology found out that he twisted his ankle and out for at least a month. It was far from being a career-ender, but if you pay close attention, it was 31 March. Not only was it just one day before the match, it was also THE transfer deadline. I only had hours to find Peglow's replacement. I had to.
https://preview.redd.it/f8soyhr1ij5d1.png?width=1629&format=png&auto=webp&s=4c00e1de090710e603a26e1dec0a83dbab606d81
I panicked and scrambled around scouting reports and player search columns. It was extra difficult knowing I had filled my foreigner quotas, so I could not add another foreigner anymore, but the japanese winger available just did not cut it. And there, at that moment, we came back full circle to me talking about the wrinkles of the league.
J-League has this unique registration rules where we could only field maximum of five foreign players, but with a little bit of curveball added. Due to some real life agreements, players from South East Asia countries is treated as non-foreign players. So I could buy and field whatever amount of players from Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and my real life home country Indonesia, together with other smaller South East Asia countries that I wanted. It did not help me instantly though as there are next to none SEA players that good enough for the top division of japanese league, let alone to be the replacement of Peglow.
That's until just 8 hours before the deadline is closed, a message come to my inbox. Agent recommendation. Candra Firmansyah, an Indonesian agent, notified me about one of his clients. A left winger, just as young as Peglow, does not get the playing time he needed in his club ADO Den Haag and after just 3 appearance in the first team, he thought it was the right time to be loaned out. ADO agreed and he became loan listed. His name? Rafael Struick.
Rafael Struick : Every Indonesian knows who this man is. For you who do not know, oh you will soon do.
I took a glimpse. And I sit there in front of my laptop trying to process it. Not only does the boy good enough for the J1-League, he almost as good as Peglow. I could even argue his technical ability is superior and his physical attributes are comparable. For a moment I got "kicked out" back to real life and thinking not as Hiruzen Hiragana the Japanese manager of Kashima Antlers my alter ego, but as me myself, and thinking "It must be nice to manage my countryman in the biggest competition in the continent."
I might overpaid for him. Giving ADO 200k just for a loan fee seems a bit much and my board felt that way too. But, I need a winger, the deadline was just 4 hours away, I did not have many choices. So I pulled the trigger. The administration team moved fast enough to conclude the deal just in time. In the midnight Kashima Antlers welcoming the promising Indonesian youngster and hopes that he is fit for the match, tomorrow.
Final Act : The Mismatches
Bad news and good news. The bad news is Peglow's injury was not a nightmare nor an SI april mop at all. The good news, Struick was in peak condition to play against Hiroshima. I did not know how he took flight from den Haag to Kashima without took a nosedive in terms of his fitness, but there he is, just hours after signing the contract, wearing red shirt and white shorts, ready for his debut.
Hiroshima was not an easy opponent to play let alone for the first time. They finished in the 3rd place the season before. The attack was dangerously led by brazilian target man, Vieira and the defence was solid under the command of Kansai University alumni Hayato Araki. The road gets steeper due to the fact that heroic Hayakawa got injured, so Karl Jakob-Hein, another emergency loanee, deputized him between the sticks. But, ready or not, it's game on.
From the very first minute, I can see that Struick got cold feet. Maybe from the jet lag, maybe because he was not familiar with the exotic asymmetric system. Whatever it was, he did not look good. My hopes for Peglow to miraculously be healed and playing that day peaked when in just the 4th minute mark, Struick has the ball in the left side on the field and tried to make a field-switching pass to Ismael on the center of the field, but his wobbly legs did not generate enough power and the ball was stolen by Hiroshima's midfielder, Matsumoto.
https://preview.redd.it/f0qgltr0pj5d1.png?width=1918&format=png&auto=webp&s=5b8f915baec7d2a2fc3c717e7a6826595ec736b4
Who brings the ball upfield, did a 1-2 pass combination into our penalty box, before swiftly pushing the ball in the path of their forward, Kashiwa who then struck the ball behind our net. Kashima 0, Hiroshima 1. In the 4th minute mark.
https://preview.redd.it/rklaitj3pj5d1.png?width=1919&format=png&auto=webp&s=ff4daac7aab6eeb0674f2b5d8a36bd3d42877376
I encouraged the team, told them that there are still 86 minutes to play. I saw Kai Chinen came over to Struick, maybe to help him calm his nerve. I did not know what Chinen said, but whatever it was, it worked. Just a couple of minutes after did that horrendous pass, Struick again found himself in the left side of the field. This time though, he had more confidence in his heart, and brought the ball way up front.
https://preview.redd.it/o5p6amkppj5d1.png?width=1919&format=png&auto=webp&s=45adbf9db54129f483d7516c3b7b51bda89beb3e
He then passed to Chinen who quickly gave the ball to Suzuki in the right side. It was Suzuki's show right after. He dribbled past two defenders before hit the ball so hard, Hiroshima's keeper, Osako could barely even react. It's 1-1 and there are still 84 minutes left.
https://preview.redd.it/zfigchc2qj5d1.png?width=1919&format=png&auto=webp&s=f73efe7eb1fac54fe898192f8f6c876ed3984677
This match is destined to be an end-to-end affair, when after Ismael Silva stopped Hiroshima's passing in the centre of the field, he found Alijonov running full speed on the right side. And running he does. Alijonov picked the ball just inside our side of the field and quickly run near the byline, bringing the ball up ahead.
https://preview.redd.it/bg4pg50qqj5d1.png?width=1919&format=png&auto=webp&s=60443eb9cfc6a5025e03088d8693472dcec36af9
Without any pressure whatsoever, Alijonov bent a cross into penalty area where all of our forwards are ready to head it home. Some of you might notice that Struick had pretty impressive jumping reach. But I did not notice that until Struick leapt above the right back who man-marked him. And when I say leap, i mean it almost looked like that Ronaldo's header against Sampdoria. Struick headed it home, his first goal, just 10 minute into his debut. It's 2-1 for Kashima Antlers.
https://preview.redd.it/y1lrcz9krj5d1.png?width=1919&format=png&auto=webp&s=1bf583e3529d0bd32432354c24f89d30572e85ff
https://preview.redd.it/9kmsb5qprj5d1.png?width=1080&format=png&auto=webp&s=e62a53c7032d23c8680f8e7f6e61cb055d2c09f9
That goal gave Struick and the team massive confidence boost. At the same time, Hiroshima looked trembled. Few seconds later, they misplaced a pass and let Chinen stole the ball and slot it home. It's 3-1 after 11 minute.
https://preview.redd.it/vqdileo5sj5d1.png?width=1919&format=png&auto=webp&s=9569da28b3b7701c33817dd86540ee17f1b2d38a
The game calms down a little bit until in the 35th minute, again Alijonov found space in the right side and bent another cross almost finding Struick. But this time Hayato Araki won the duel and headed the ball for a throw-in. A few simple pass from throw in then ended in Struick's feet who stood just inside the penalty box.
With a few neat moves, Struick found the ball in his right feet and rocketed the ball deep into the low left side of the goal. It's a brace in his debut and it's 4-1 for Kashima Antlers.
https://preview.redd.it/1u3p2dj1tj5d1.png?width=1919&format=png&auto=webp&s=209ff631dbef8c4c38bdd9345de33935375fb1a9
After that, I instructed my team to lower the tempo a bit, to conserve energy and retain possession. It resulted in the match gone calm for a bit. After Kashiwa sent an amazing cross to Vieira who headed it past Jakob Hein and Chinen slotted home a penalty kick to make it all 5-2, Matsumura who came in for Suzuki had the ball inside Hiroshima's penalty area before he's getting tackled. Referee pointed out to the spot for the second time. Chinen, the original taker, took the ball and give it to Struick, to let him complete this magnificent night both for him and the team. Struick shot it as hard as he could, it did not fool the goalkeeper, but it blew past him. It's a hattrick in his debut, and it's a dominating 6-2 win for the team.
https://preview.redd.it/3dagt73juj5d1.png?width=1919&format=png&auto=webp&s=60c16cc4aa06335339ae74834238d1e2b19778c7
He ended the night with 3 goals, 1 key pass, won 7 aerial duels, attempted 5 tackles and won all of them, covered 13.1 kilometres the most compared to every other player in the field, and fielded a match rating of 9.9. It was a dream debut for Rafael Struick.
Epilogue : The Reasons
Now some of you might say, "meh, I once have a debutant scored 5 goals and assisted 5 more." And I would not object that. That's why the title is the best debut I have ever seen, not YOU have ever seen. Because from FM standpoint it is "just" a good showing, not a spectacular one.
But this is so personal to me. This is my first save after months of hiatus, and just the pure hype of this game, the roller coaster of emotion just based on finding the right inside forward, it's just beautiful. This story, especially this match, makes me love FM all over again.

Hi,
After suffering from a long time with my mental health, I recently started therapy for depression, anxiety and sui**dal thoughts. I have my 3rd therapy session tomorrow, so far have been advised to focus on basic self-care like eating meals on time, proper hydration and have an accountability partner for tracking progress and stopping negative self-talk. But I haven't made any progress on these advices so far. I'm still not taking meals on time and drinking enough water. I don't feel any motivation to do anything. I'm not able to follow a routine properly. I just don't fee like doing anything. I think in my mind, I've made up to end my life at a certain point that's why I'm not able to put efforts into anything. Is there something I can do to make things feel more manageable?
I know it's me who have to do the work and therapy can only guide me but as simply as I can say, I'm just not able to do anything. I started therapy along with medication for depression and anxiety but stopped taking them as I couldn't find them helpful and plus my psychiatrist was not an empathetic and level-headed person. So, I'm looking for another psychiatrist at the moment. I know medicines are required for the therapy to be effective.
I'm planned to start CBT in the upcoming session. My therapist is a nice and understanding person, but I feel like I'm letting her down, as I'm not making any progress. All these thoughts are stopping me to go for tomorrow's session.
Any advice on how to proceed? Thanks in advance.

CONTENT WARNING: SA, suicide, violence, animal abuse 🚫
English is my second language so I apologize for any grammatical errors.
I’m not entirely sure why I’m writing this, maybe it’s a desperate attempt at salvation, a selfish effort to offload my guilt onto these lines and out of my body. Or perhaps it’s because I need confirmation of what a terrible person I am and how I should live the rest of my life accordingly.
For context, I was born into a very dysfunctional family. My parents’ marriage was doomed from the start. My father was a violent alcoholic, and my mother was emotionally fragile, providing motherly care with cold and unfeeling hands. I grew up with domestic violence at home and severe bullying at school. My father was extremely violent and frequently drove under the influence with my siblings and me in the car. He was also often verging on inappropriate behavior towards us.
I was SA’ed for the first time at 13. At 14, after four reports to the local authorities and two suicide attempts, I was finally placed in foster care. I ended up in an institution where I started using drugs, leading to addiction. This resulted in my involvement in very bad environments, leading to another SA at 15 and yet another at 17. My drug use escalated to the point where I began prostituting myself at 15. The authorities gradually gave up on me and my reckless behavior, placing me in my own apartment at 17, which only worsened my addiction.
One night, I took far too many drugs and became extremely ill, vomiting and lying on the ground, unresponsive. My vision blurred, and I temporarily lost my sight and my hearing. Lying there, I thought I was going to die. I had lost all control over my body and senses. It felt surreal, lying there in what I once thought was my immortality. But I made it through the night, and the next morning, everything had changed.
My entire personality seemed to shift. It felt as if something had changed in my brain. I became incredibly aggressive. Despite everything, I had never been aggressive before. I was always calm, a pushover who couldn’t set boundaries. I had never experienced intense anger until that day. I destroyed my entire apartment. The urge to hit things was immense and gave me intense satisfaction, which only intensified when I ran out of drugs, which was often. At this point, I was 17 years old.
I also became extremely paranoid. I had episodes where I would lie on the floor, hyperventilating for hours as the world spun around me. I would hit myself in the head repeatedly, almost wanting to tear my hair out. There was only peace when I got my drugs. Then everything stood still, and nothing hurt anymore. I also started hearing voices and seeing things. Now to the point. I just want to stop here and stop writing.
I found myself in many bad environments, including a friend of mine and his family living on a farm. We all did drugs together. The family had many animals, including dogs. In hindsight, it’s clear they were forcibly breeding dogs to sell them to the highest bidder. One day, while at the farm, high on drugs, the mother placed a puppy in my lap and said I could buy him. She said that It seemed like just what I needed. He was a half-German Shepherd, half-Pitbull mix. I took him home. I was selfish, wanting a puppy, a best friend, a relationship.
I had Chino for four months. I tried to do my best for him. I bought toys, food, and a bed for him. I briefly read online about what to do and what not to do. But I was ultimately completely unprepared for the task. It was the stupidest decision and absolutely terrible conditions for a puppy.
It ended up with me hitting him. It didn't take long before I had one of my blackouts where I became incredibly aggressive. In the four months I had him, I hit him multiple times. If he chewed my debit card, preventing me from getting money for drugs, or if he had an accident indoors—these were all normal situations to face when raising a puppy. He was afraid of me. There was nothing safe for him in that home. Although I cared for him, my version of love was completely twisted. To Chino, I became what my parents were to me.
After having Chino for 1-2 months, I turned 18, resulting in the authorities evicting me from my apartment. The system that had supported me my whole life suddenly didn’t care. It felt like an additional betrayal. I became homeless with Chino. I slept on the streets, feeling utterly lost and alone in the world. I was a broken person who had long since drowned, and I selfishly dragged Chino down with me.
After four months with Chino, I decided I couldn’t care for him the way he deserved. No matter how sick it sounds, I really did love him. I loved him, and I hurt him. I found an animal shelter that took in dogs for a fee. It was a place that provided the right training and ensured they went to the right families. I took him there and saw him for the last time being led into the shelter, distracted by a toy from one of the handlers. I broke down completely but also felt relieved. I called the shelter periodically in the following months to check on him. He had been affected by everything he had been through. He was understimulated and clearly traumatized. But fortunately, they found him a family in the countryside with several large dogs. It was the best news in the world.
Today, I am 26 years old. I am studying at university. I am completely clean and free from all drugs. I live in my own apartment, have a boyfriend, and have no contact with my biological parents. But I am haunted. Chino haunts me, or rather, it is my actions that do. The better I get, the more I can feel and sense, and the more I feel my overwhelming guilt. I think of Chino when I lie in bed at night. When I find myself laughing and actually being happy with my life. A part of my humanity disappeared with Chino, a humanity that vanished by my own actions, and I will never get it back. Never. Of all the things I have experienced, these actions are the worst that have ever happened to me. I love animals, but every time I see a dog or find myself looking at a cute dog, a stone forms in my heart. I don’t feel like I deserve to be happy. I feel selfish even trying to move on. A part of me desperately wants to forget it. I look at other people who have never harmed anyone and think how blessed they are without knowing it. I feel like a horrible person.
I am unsure if I should tell my boyfriend. I feel like he has the right to know the kind of person he is with, even tho I am not like this anymore at all. Should I tell him? I have lost all my aggression today after many years of therapy. I had apparently developed a severe psychosis that lasted for several years. I also stopped hearing voices and the paranoia vanished completely. My psychosis also led to intense social anxiety, and today I constantly fear hurting others, that I will lose all control over my body and harm others. I no longer trust myself or my body. In a way, I understand why my parents never admitted what they had done because it is unbearable to live with. Knowing you have forever tainted the world with your actions and that there is nothing you can do to take it back.
No matter how good I am today and how many good deeds I do, I will never be able to take it back. It has become my legacy and my eternal curse.
Thank you for taking the time to read this

My evaluation by NIES is done and I paid application fee to state board on CPA portal. How long does it take for educational info to get approved. It says that it will take 8 weeks for state board to approve and after that I can apply for NTS. I’m from Washington state board.

Hello! I am a 28M with persistent atopic eczema. Every few years I seem to suffer from prolonged, especially angry flares, to which doctors have previously prescribed oral and topical corticosteroids and UV light treatment. These flares usually seem to occur after some kind of viral infection. Last winter I had covid again, and just like the first time, got a pretty bad flare on my neck area where the excema tends to persist the most. Now with the summer and sweating it is starting to get unbearable.
I’m currently traveling and instead of going to a doctor was thinking of taking a week’s course of prednisolon that I carry with me for such flares, 20mg daily. I have not taken any oral corticosteroids since May 2022, but I use topical creams 3-5 times a week. How harmless/harmful of an idea is this? I know I ideally should see a doctor for a prescription, but I would very much like to avoid the potentially high medical fees, plus I know from experience that atopic excema generally doesn’t afford one emergency care, and waits can understandably be very long.
Thank you for any and all replies.

Summary: Can’t think after a sudden move back home. I probably need a therapist asap. Scared and hesitant about taking on too much stress (CPTSD overwhelm) by moving back out after previously being disabled. Seeking advice, support, or other options I haven’t thought of.
No questions about age please, this is not about that
In a sudden turn of events (completely outside of my control), I had to move back into uBPD parent’s house. The stress was so overwhelming I phoned my NC>LC eParent and cried at the local park that I couldn’t live there with my uBPD parent. (I hadn’t disclosed my undiagnosed disabilities yet but that was part of why “I felt like I couldn’t leave” at home.) eParent was surprisingly supportive and I even got BPD’s help to move my things. I barely ate for a few days until after the move.
_
In the stress of the moment I applied for an apartment and paid the application fee. If/when I’m approved I could move in immediately. That was meant to be where I went without the pit stop at uBPD’s, but that didn’t happen.
So I’m back home now and shockingly, my uBPD parent seems lighter. It seems that getting involved with their local church has renewed some sort of happiness within them. Also they talk to members from the church. Thank god. I haven’t been here much of course and I remember those raging moments of terror. They are less of a hermit, less socially anxious, and have made some improvements to themselves and I know it’s early but it is impressionable. It could be because I told them I already applied for the apartment, too 😬
My eParent had suggested I pause at home while I figure out what I want to do next. I have CPTSD and I do need a new therapist. I also just started my period and I always forget how fatigued it makes me until it happened—I’ve missed school and work before, and received no assistance from doctors besides birth control and the recommendation to take iron (still fatigued).
I really didnt want to be stuck at home with a borderline. But also I felt like I made my plan already. I applied for the apartment, while I was in Flight mode.
I used to get by, on flight mode. Until I burned out. I’m worried.
Now that the stress has settled, I honestly am having second thoughts about the apartment. It’s a sublease, it was meant to be a place to go, but that crisis situation passed. While I am waiting on the approval, I am saying to myself “really??” that BPD has not switched. I honestly wish that I could have lived here to save up money in peace without rage attacks, and….if the place was cleaned up a bit more. I worry that I am jumping the gun and my body could use more time to recover. I also hadn’t expected my eParent to be so supportive and they have honestly significantly changed. uBPD less so, but it was a relief that they found the church people too keep them occupied.
I had a double allergy and PMS attack today. I felt irritated for multiple reasons. I don’t think I’ve even had time to think. I feel a bit stretched thin either way. Do I move out, and worry about finances..? I would have gotten a minimum wager there, the same exact stores I have around me here. And then get another apartment there. I was going to rush that one too.
I’m having difficulty around choices. I’ve wanted for so long to get away, clearly RBBs can understand the desperation there. But I couldn’t because I was also suffering with undiagnosed disabilities. Its taken me years to discover and heal those. So part of me is reserved about diving back into a min wage work-week. And coming home I’d have less space to think for myself. Perhaps therapy could help with that. Also I’m still fatigued once a month. Im scared about calling off on those days, but even if it’s okay the added pressure of making rent for the first time is new for me. I worry about overwhelming myself past what is maybe necessary. I don’t want to bet on uBPD’s changes, but I think I need help and the desperateness of having rent over my head worries me.
I am once again humbled by my body and if CPTSD has taught me anything is that my feelings and my emotions are never wrong. It’s hard to think straight. I don’t want to regress into despair. I’m going to get overwhelmed when my apartment application is approved and I’ll wonder if I should sign the lease or back out. It’s a sublease so maybe I should just take it.

Things you need to know about the Iglesia ni Cristo (Church Of Christ)
THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE IGLESIA NI CRISTO (CHURCH OF CHRIST)

1. INC is neither a protestant sect/denomination nor a member of any interreligious organization. It is an independent Christian religion, the largest in Asia.
   
2. INC is not a cult. Critics consider us as such because we dont adhere to what they believe as "essential doctrines of mainstream Christianity" like the Trinity and some just want to discredit the Church.
   
3. INC holds worship services twice a week and we believe that attending this holy gathering is our obligation to God. Men and women have separate seats. Everyone is welcome to join us.
   
4. INC doesnt believe in Trinity. We believe in only one God--the Father.
   
5. INC believes in our Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that He is human in nature, the Son of God, God's messenger, made Lord and Christ by God, the only mediator to God, and the foundation where the Church was built. He is the founder, head and savior of the Church. We also worship him as instructed by God.
   
6. INC believes that the Holy Spirit is not a God but a power being sent by God and Jesus.
   
7. INC doesnt practice tithing. Members give voluntary offerings and donations. It is not true that this Church is only for the rich or middle class. It is also not true that our offerings only go to ministers and INC leaders. Besides buying properties, the church is able to continue building and renovating houses of worship worldwide because of the wise management of the Church Administration--all for the glory of God.
   
8. INC believes that the BIBLE is the word of God, the sole basis and service to God. It is not true that we are forbidden to read the Bible, but what members shouldnt do is private interpretation. We dont have our own Bible version.
   
9. INC believes that membership in the Church is necessary for salvation. We dont believe that salvation can be attained only by faith alone. It is not true that there is a membership fee when joining the Church, a Bible student only needs to finish the indoctrination process and undergo a probation period before getting baptized and officially becoming a member.
   
10. INC believes that baptism by means of immersion is necessary for salvation. The Church doesnt baptize babies.
    
11. INC believes that Jesus established only one Church. We dont believe that all churches belongs to God.
    
12. INC believes that Jesus built a Church in the 1st century. It was named after him and it is the Church that he will save however, it had fallen to apostasy like what happened to the ancient Israel--God's chosen nation. The apostatized church is now known as the Roman Catholic Church.
    
13. INC believes that Bro. Felix Manalo is God's messenger in these last days. He was the instrument on re-establishing the true Church thru biblical prophecies. We never recognized him to be the founder of the Church and to be greater than Christ. We dont worship him.
    
14. INC believes that being a member of the Church is not enough to be saved. One should lead a new life, and obey all the teachings of God until the end.
    
15. INC believes in the Day of Judgment which will take place in the second coming of Christ. We also believe in resurrection and the second death which is the Lake of fire.
    
16. INC believes that it is the will of God for us members to love one another as true brothers and sisters. We treat each other equally.
    
17. INC believes that unity is God's teaching that should be practiced and there should be no division within the Church. We also practice voting in unity in relation to submitting to the Church Administration. It is not true that the church asks for money or anything in exchange of support for political candidates and there is no bidding.
    
18. INC believes in the separation of Church and State. The Church doesnt meddle in politics. Members are advised to respect and observe the rules of the government, as long as it is not against God's will.
    
19. INC members practice discipline and orderliness. It is not true that members are murderers or violent people. Church members/officers/ministers/officials who are found to have violated Church doctrines and teachings are expelled.
    
20. INC believes that God is against eating/drinking blood as food, live-in relationships, inter-faith marriage, homosexual unions, same-sex marriage, divorce, annulment, legal separation, extra-marital affairs, drinking alcoholic drinks, and taking of drugs.
    
21. INC doesnt believe in Catholic Saints and we do not keep images/statues of them in our homes and chapels. We also do not believe in the Catholic teachings about Mary and the cross.
    
22. INC does not believe in purgatory and we do not pray for the dead. We also believe that the dead should not be cremated.
    
23. INC members are advised not to believe in ghosts, Feng shuis, magics, fortune tellers, spiritists and superstitions.
    
24. INC does not celebrate Christmas, Halloween, All Saints day, All Souls day, Valentines day, Lenten Season and Fiestas that are associated on honoring Saints/Patrons.
    
25. INC believes that ministers are the ones who have the authority to preach the gospel through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We members do not preach but only help in the missionary works as it is our duty to do so.
    
26. INC members are taught how to pray and encouraged to pray everyday. We do not use the rosary and we do not pray in repetition (recited prayers). We do not perform the sign of the cross.
    
27. INC members are taught to submit to the Church administration and church officers.
    
28. INC supports the use of family planning and artificial contraceptives. The Church rejects rhythm/calendar method. It is against abortion, and assisted reproductive methods such as surrogacy.
    
29. Church steeples/spires are not missiles and we dont believe that our chapels will fly up to heaven when judgement day comes.
    
30. Church positions are not inherited most especially the Executive Minister and Deputy Executive Minister positions. Both are voted by the Church Ecumenical Council.
    

TRUE INC MEMBERS ARE EXPECTED TO:
▪️Not join labor unions, fraternities, and sororities.
▪️ Avoid attending/participating in Christmas Parties, Junior Senior Prom, fiesta activities, worship services in other religions and other assemblies that are not in accordance to Church's teachings.
▪️Not imitate wrong doings and use of profanity.
▪️Lead a new life and follow Church teachings.
▪️Actively participate in Church activities.
▪️Do things properly and orderly when attending worship services.
If you have questions to any of these, you can visit the locale nearest you. Our ministers or evangelical workers will be glad to explain and assist you.
© INC UNITY 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

I’ve read a good amount of Ginsberg’s poetry and I’ll be honest, I didn’t like it. So I never did much of a deep dive on him as a person & for all I know this is common knowledge… but I was reading Andrea Dworkin’s memoir today and she talked about their brief friendship which I’ve pasted below. It’s long for context but I bolded the important parts if you wanna skim:

I did go to New York just to see him, but when I got to New York I was too shy to call him. I'd spend every waking hour worrying about how to make the call. I picked a rainy night. He answered the phone. “Come on over now, ” he said. I told him that he was much too busy. I told him that it was raining. I went anyway, shaking on the wet sidewalks, shaking on the bus, so nervous on the five flights up to his apartment that I could barely keep my balance. As always when I was nervous, I broke into a cold sweat.
He had warned me that he was working on proofs for a new book of poems and would have very little time for me, but we spent the whole night talking - well, okay, not all of it but many hours of it. He then walked me down to the bus in the rain and told me he loved me. I counted. He told me eleven times.

[…]

When Elsa [the photographer they shared] had a baby I was asked to be his godmother and Ginsberg was his godfather. We were now, metaphysically speaking, joined in unholy matrimony. And still I stayed away from him. I did not see him again, since that time in college, until my godson was bar mitzvahed. By this time I had published many books, including my work attacking pornography - the artifacts, the philosophy, the politics.
On the day of the bar mitzvah newspapers reported in huge headlines that the Supreme Court had ruled child pornography illegal. I was thrilled. I knew that Allen would not be. I did think he was a civil libertarian. But in fact, he was a pedophile. He did not belong to the North American Man-Boy Love Association out of some mad, abstract conviction that its voice had to be heard. He meant it. I take this from what Allen said directly to me, not from some inference I made. He was exceptionally aggressive about his right to fuck children and his constant pursuit of underage boys.
I did everything I could to avoid Allen and to avoid conflict. This was my godson’s day. He did not need a political struggle to the death breaking out all over.
Ginsberg would not leave me alone. He followed me everywhere I went from the lobby of the hotel through the whole reception, then during the dinner. He photographed me constantly with a vicious little camera he wore around his neck. He sat next to me and wanted to know details of sexual abuse I had suffered. A lovely woman, not knowing that his interest was entirely pornographic, told a terrible story of being molested by a neighbor. He ignored her. She had thought, “This is Allen Ginsberg, the great beat poet and a prince of empathy. ” Wrong. Ginsberg told me that he had never met an intelligent person who had the ideas I did. I told him he didn’t get around enough. He pointed to the friends of my godson and said they were old enough to fuck. They were twelve and thirteen. He said that all sex was good, including forced sex.
I am good at getting rid of men, strictly in the above-board sense. I couldn’t get rid of Allen. Finally I had had it. ** Referring back to the Supreme Court’s decision banning child pornography he said, “The right wants to put me in jail. ” I said, “Yes, they’re very sentimental; I’d kill you. ” The next day he’d point at me in crowded rooms and screech, “She wants to put me in jail. ” I’d say, “No, Allen, you still don’t get it. The right wants to put you in jail. I want you dead. ” **
He told everyone his fucked-up version of the story (“You want to put me in jail”) for years. When he died he stopped.”

-Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant - Andrea Dworkin
I googled it after because i don’t blindly trust anything I read in any book. I found this long article with a NAMBLA context from someone who was clearly a huge Ginsberg fan. Despite the minimization sprinkled throughout the author makes clear Ginsberg did participate for this organization for years, and was in fact kinda the face of the thing.
So did y’all know this? If you’re a Ginsberg fan do you care? One of my criticisms with, like, Howl for instance was that I thought the pornographic language gratuitous. There is no language so coarse as to bother me from a moral standpoint, for instance I like Henry Miller very much, but I thought it was shock for shock’s sake. If I recall correctly, Howl resulted in a lawsuit over it being banned. I believed then the “cunt wheelbarrows” (or whatever it was - im on my phone & this is from memory) to be a most excellent marketing plan for media attention.
Someone did eventually explain to me that the graphic language was to represent consumeristic culture / selling sex etc. so then I thought the lawsuit garnering him so many fans (book sales!!) was clever in an Andy Kaufmann-esque way - taking his art from poem to performance art - using a critique about consumerism to advertise for free (lawyer fees? But news telling you you can’t read something is sooo much more effective than a magazine ad). beatnik Ouroboros?
But after reading Bworkin & the article linked above… I’m kinda just back to where I started. Maybe he was just a philiac who figured out a way to talk dirty in public? Hoping to find a Holden Caulfield in the crowd enamored by poetry’s lack of “phoniness” to come back & see his obscure music collection & talk about how teachers really /don’t/ get him?
TLDR: The question at the end of the day for Ginsberg: Kaufman DaDa, Grecian dada, or both?

This is long so Tl;Dr: a long, dangerous disgusting ride and Lyft offers no credit at all, sorry to have to go back to Uber.
I started using Lyft exclusively when Uber began adding on hidden reservation fees for trips I make monthly for business traveling to and from the local airport. This time I didn't reserve a Lyft but called when I landed. I waited while the arrival time would count down from 7 minutes and then go back to 7 minutes and count down, and then go back up to 7 minutes and count down, when finally the guy showed up. No idea why he drove around the airport three times, it said he had another passenger but that didn't make sense.
When he finally showed up he just opened the back door for me to put my bag in the back seat and didn't offer to open the trunk but I didn't ask, I should have. I get in the car and all of the windows are open. As we drive out of the airport and hit the speed bumps it sounds like his rear axle is about to fall off the car. I suddenly start to notice the smell - a combination of mold, vomit, attempts to cover it with something disgusting, really an unidentifiable and deeply horrific stench. He drives on the highway with all of the windows open telling me I can close the windows if I like. But when I close the windows the smell is even stronger. He can't go over 60 with the car it sounds like it's going to fall apart. I'm fearful for my life as he hits construction cones on the highway, goes off the side of the road, and yawns constantly (it's an 11PM drive).
We finally get to my home after he keeps saying how dark it is where I live - yeah we don't have street lights everywhere in the suburbs - and he seems like he's afraid to be driving there. His headlights barely work. But the piece de resistance is we pull into the driveway and I try to get out and the back door handle doesn't work. Confused, I click the lock back and forth but even though I can pull it the handle does not open the door. He says to me he has to go open it and he jumps out quickly and opens the door. Then he gives me this kind of weird look and I just say thank you good night and I walk away. He sits in the driveway for a while so I'm watching out the window to see when the headlights go away and he finally leaves.
I reported it immediately to Lyft - the entire drive the car felt like it was going to fall apart or he was going to crash into a truck and literally throw all of my clothes outside and my suitcase and my bags because of the stench which took me dry cleaning to get rid of. But the only thing they really seem to care about was the fact that the rear door didn't open from the inside. They said they would take care of it but honestly if this is the quality of driver they allow, I feel like I have no choice but to go back to Uber who at least occasionally checks their drivers. And they offered zero credit or refund, I mean this was the worst ride I've ever had and I was terrified this guy was going to come back to the house after I reported him. Nothing, no credit just "our safety team will take care of it".
Just unbelievable. They said I could get out from an unsafe ride at any time but we were on a major highway and I had no idea that I could do that or even how I would do that. How about you just have safe drivers to start with?? I can't in good conscience ever use them again. Would love to hear if this is more common than I once thought.

TLDR: Is it insane buying a 240k flat to live in (with mortgage) with possibility of moving out in 2 years?
Hi all,
Me and my wife are foreigners who planned on moving back to our home country (Poland) in 2019-ish. That's why we had bought a flat there. However COVID happened, which messed with our plans, then we had a second child and here we are. On and off we had ideas of buing a flat in Wales for us to live in, but we always had in mind we might not stay for too long for it to be a good idea (and yet it's our 10th year in Wales now, so we should have done that). Currently, I changed jobs and am earning 1k monthly more than before and we thought we probably should make a move to own a flat as this extra money would cover (almost) the mortgage monthly payment.
However, we're not sure how many more years we're going to stay in Wales. My wife is very hesitant to move and I'm on a side of going back in like 2 years (my main drive is my family, parents). So let's say 2 years...
We're looking at a 240k flat now, which we like a lot and think it would improve our quality of life significantly! We already talked to the advisor and his best offer is for 15% deposit 25 year mortgage with 5.18% interest rate. As I mentioned, we already have a flat in Poland, so the stamp duty for us would be 11700k. My wife is very into taking a risk, buying this flat and seeing what future brings. I'd like t buy it too, but I'm thinking that we might just loose a lots of money on it
So if I do my maths correctly and using the morgage calculator within the 2 years we'd pay following non-refundable charges:

Non-refundable expense	Pounds
Mortgage interest 1st year	10'471
Mortgage interest 2nd year	10'253
Stamp duty	11'700
Solicitor when buying	1'500
Service charge (24*360)	8'640
-- TOTAL --	42'564

When we move out we'd have to decide what we do with a property. If we try to sell it, we'd incur Estate Agent fees (e.g. 1.5% = 3'600) and solicitor fees ~800, which would total 45k. If we tried to keep the propery and rent, we'd have to re-mortgage to BTL which of course is on the worse interest rate (and I'm not really sure we'd have the capacity to pay it off with new jobs we'd have to take on).
If I compare the above 45k to "just renting" (24 * 1'050 = 25'200) it's at least 20k more. The rent we pay is for a flat of worse standard than the flat we're looking at, though. But within that budget we'd be able to rent a bigger place.
All in all my question is - do you think we're out of our minds, if we went ahead and bought the place? I'm worried we'd just loose 20k, which is hell lot of money. However:

• there's a slight chance we won't move after 2 years - like we did before. Had we taken the mortgage in 2019, we'd already be 5 years into mortgage which would be a really good place to be
• I didn't take property appreciation into account, but apparently the flat market is much slower than the house market and it's hard to predict
• living in a self-owned place has many advantages, especially being able to make decisions about the place - (e.g. trivial as having 2 kids and being able to get a bank bed for them to share a bedroom, which is not possible in a rented flat!)

Any input appreciated, thanks a lot!

As stated above, I'm currently running the Dragonheist campaign, so if you're currently playing it and haven't at least completed the Zhentarim's second sidequest, I would advise against reading the spoilers.
The stars of this particular tale are a pair of evil party members: The jester, Stitches, and the former Zhentarim thug, Kanno. Stitches is a College of Lore Bard with the Charlatan background, whose favorite con was impersonating others. Kanno is a Fighter, whom I had worked out with the player to be a former follower of Manshoon, who left after a betrayal by his former master. As a result, Kanno was quick to seize opportunities to make money, which he needed for his revenge.
The party has just experienced the beginning of the "Fireball" event, and conducted a fruitful investigation. Afterwards, they were questioned by Barnibus Blastwind and Saethe Cromley. Once the two had left, Stitches' player asked me whether their conversation with Barnibus had lasted for more than a minute. I answered in the affirmative, asked why, and then suddenly realized that he could now impersonate Barnibus. I didn't expect that to come into play so soon, though.
The party's first stop was to meet with Davil, to find out what he knew about the Zhentarim operatives that were killed at the scene of the blast. Since the men who died don't work for him, that lead was a dead-end. However, I took the opportunity to provide the party with the second Zhentarim sidequest, to deliver potions for Skeemo Weirdbottle. Since the party couldn't think of a next step for their investigation, in spite of all of the clues they had gathered, they decided to do the job to make some quick change.
It was here that Stitches began scheming. On the way to Skeemo's, he stopped at another apothecary, and was able to convince the man to tell him what a Potion of Mind Reading looks like. He also explained his plan to Kanno, operating under the assumption that it would be a large shipment, and that nobody would notice if a bottle or two were to "break" or "be confiscated by the Watch" when they made the delivery. Fortunately, they at least had the sense to realize that losing one bottle out of a delivery of four was not feasible. It was my mistake to think that this would be the end of the scheme.
Arriving at the Godcatcher with their cargo, they quickly spotted the intended recipient sitting in a hire-coach. After delivering the box, the woman inspected the goods, then quickly handed the party their reward and told the driver to get out of there. It was then that Stitches acted. Casting Message, he informed the driver, "Eyes are on you, take a roundabout route." While I had originally intended for the driver to take a circuitous route back anyways (I assumed that the woman was already taking precautions, given the nature of the sidequest), I had Stitches roll Persuasion. His result was good enough that I decided that the driver wouldn't tell his client about the missive, assuming that he was being reminded of his instructions by a compatriot of hers.
Meanwhile, Stitches hailed another hire-coach, and informed the party that he and Kanno would be "Following up on other leads", and that he hoped to "Earn a little bit of a bigger tip", or something to that effect. I didn't really want them to try to follow her, especially since what they were planning was obviously going to involve committing a crime of some kind, but I also wasn't going to just give them a hard "No", so I decided to make it difficult.
First, I rolled to see how many turns would pass before they could get a cab, and got a result of 3. Well, that's to be expected, it's a pretty well-travelled area, so cabs should be readily available there. I then had the driver balk at taking them without a set destination in mind, since fares are negotiated and paid before travel begins. Stitches, thinking fast, tells him to take them as far as 1 gold would go, and given the cost of a hire-coach, I had him reply that, "Sure, you've got me for an hour".
Since the module doesn't really contain rules for a vehicular chase, and I didn't want to waste time flipping through the DMG looking for something, I decided to modify the chase rules found on page 72. I had one of them roll a d20 for the outset, and Stitches rolled a natural 20, so they encountered no obstacles leaving the square. But they'd still have to actually find their quarry's vehicle, since it was currently going around the square a few times, and ducking up and down sidestreets. Oh, no problem, a 15 and a 22 on Perception quickly spotted the woman's cab, and a quick lie about their intent set their own driver to following her at a distance of about 100 feet.
I then began a few rounds of rolling d20s to determine how the chase would go. After both their cab and the one they were following rolled well enough to avoid mishap on two successive checks, I informed them that their quarry had finally stopped its erratic travel, and was now moving straight up The High Road, seemingly now on its way back, and called for one more round of checks. My hope was that they would follow her home, see that they were messing with a noble, and back off. Instead, I rolled a 2 for the NPC's coach, while they managed to avoid mishap once again. Since they had just been asking their cabbie about possibly finding a shortcut to head them off, I decided that they would see the hire-coach ahead of them stopping due to a fruit-cart in the middle of the road having a broken wheel. I informed them that the coach they were following was waiting for a break in the oncoming traffic so that it could go around.
Once again, they defied my expectations. Playing their previous lie to the hilt, they departed from their cab and approached the stopped vehicle, where the dice gods granted their blessing upon the absolute Indy Ploy they rolled out. First, the two ducked into an alleyway, where Stitches cast Disguise Self to make himself look like Barnibus Blastwind. Then, using his Performance to do a bit of voice mimicry, he approached the fruit cart vendor, slipped him a silver piece, and started making a big production about "Reckless drivers these days!", and the negligent driving that damaged the wheel on this poor fruit vendor's cart!
I called for Persuasion, and with a 19, the fruit cart vendor decided that he wasn't one to say no to free money, and started playing along, albeit very passively. A Performance result of 23 ensured that not only was Stitches able to do a spot-on impression of Barnibus' voice and mannerisms, but that he was starting to draw the crowd's attention as well, just as he had hoped. Stitches started demanding compensation from the hire-coach driver, who was incredulous that he was being blamed for this. The fact that Stitches was demanding two Platinum as compensation only made him more certain that this was some kind of shakedown, and he adamantly refused to pay for something that he had nothing to do with.
For the lady's part, I rolled absolutely abysmally. A natural 1 on her Insight check led her to also assume that this was some clumsy attempt at extortion, and she chimed in that even if her driver had damaged the cart, he would only have to pay damages to the owner, not the exorbitant fee that Stitches/Barnibus was demanding. She also demanded to know exactly who he was. Stitches obliged.
...And here, ignorance proved to be a strength as well. See, Stitches didn't actually know Barnibus' last name. Nor did he know that Barnibus was only a consultant, and not a member of the Watch. And so, he introduced himself as "Inspector Barney of the City Watch". And the woman, failing yet another check, didn't question the obvious lie. And besides, as a secret member of the city's criminal class, she's not exactly looking for a confrontation with the City Watch right now. And so, the two started talking in circles for a bit, both the lady's driver and the lady herself being a little confused by what exactly Stitches was looking for, since even his own demands were, by design, self-contradictory and bizarre. The only reason they didn't just leave was because the traffic on their side of the road was at a standstill due to the broken cart.
Meanwhile, while Stitches held their attention, Kanno emerged from the alley he was observing from and slipped around to the other side of the lady's hire-coach. After ascertaining from him exactly what he intended to do, I had him roll Stealth, but informed him that there was a fair-sized crowd gathered, and that while the hire coach would block people from seeing him on their side of the road, and the oncoming dray would block the view from the other sidewalk, he would still be visible to the people on board the dray, and that a bad Stealth roll would mean that he's spotted.
So, Kanno steals up to the hire-coach. His intent is to try to sneak up, open the coffer full of potions, and swipe one. He asks where it is, and I decided that it was about a 50/50 that she'd either be holding it in her lap or having it sit on the seat next to her. I rolled a secret d100, got a 4, and had him call high or low. Kanno called low, so to his great fortune, the box was sitting on the seat next to the woman, who was currently engaged in a heated conversation with Stitches over the poor fruit vendor's cart damages.
At this point, I also had the cart vendor realize that this wasn't going well, and have him start to meekly assert that "It's not such a big deal", and that "I don't think they were the ones who even hit me in the first place", to put a time limit on this exercise. On the other side of the wagon, Kanno rolled Stealth once again to try to steal a potion from the box, and Stitches, running brilliant interference, hit the woman with Cutting Words to reduce her Perception check. It ultimately proved unnecessary, as Kanno's Stealth check was good enough to beat the woman's Passive Perception, but I wanted to highlight the move anyways, as it was a great assist.
And so, Kanno slipped away with the bottle tucked into his pocket, giving Stitches a wink to indicate a job completed. Stitches, playing along with the vendor's second thoughts, stated that "Since the man himself has decided not to press charges, I'll drop the matter", and departed. And just for the sake of adding a little flair to the scene, I described to the two how, as they were leaving, they heard the sound of a member of the City Watch arriving to direct traffic around the broken cart while it was being removed from the road.
And so, the two got away with their dastardly scheme. The woman completely fell for Stitches' trickery, and since he played his role so well, she now believes that "Inspector Barney", purportedly of the City Watch, has tried to demand a bribe from her. She never saw Kanno, and nobody noticed him stealing the potion from her box, so all she knows is that the "inspector", and possibly the fruit vendor, coordinated a scam to rob her of her potions. Additionally, since we were playing on Roll20, and I accidentally did a couple of the woman's rolls in the open instead of as secret GM rolls,they now have the OOC knowledge that they managed to get one over on the infamous Black Viper.
It wasn't where I was expecting that short sidequest to go, but it was one of the funniest and most memorable roleplay experiences I've had in a long time, calling to mind the absurd stories of the old ad hoc roleplaying sessions we used to do using the Dragonstrike game rules. I think it's a good example of how your players can disrupt your game in a way that's fun for everyone at the table, turning a nothing task into a fun story. They knew what they were risking, it was entirely in character for both players to do it, and they profited from their daring. And really, while she might be annoyed and want to find out who did it, I feel like The Black Viper could at least appreciate a robbery smoothly committed, and draw inspiration from it. Besides, I can't wait to find out how these two discover that their stolen "Potion of Mind Reading" is actually a Potion of Poison *evil laugh*.

Hello I'm Lx. I am a full-time worker in NZ, and currently on my gap year.
It was the second week of May 2023 when I met this guy on Bumble. Let's call him J. We talked and clicked right away, so we moved to IG to talk more, then later on to Messenger where the majority of our interactions occurred. Yes, we became official in the short time we knew each other. I know, ridiculous. We also became official after a few months of our relationship, where both of our families knew about us except my father.
On the 7th of August 2023, I met him in the Philippines. He picked me up at NAIA 3 (our first meeting) and left the airport as soon as I arrived at the hotel I booked in BGC. This was the time he unboxed the MacBook Air I gave him, as he mentioned numerous times that laptops are such a necessity in today's education.
During our stay, he received an email about him getting accepted to the university he wanted, which was TUP-M. He was overjoyed about the news, and I was too, but I cried to him. Even though I was so happy for him, I cried because of the endless possibilities in a big city like Manila. This includes new people that he will meet and the possibility of him meeting someone better than me. Yes, I was insecure. I had doubts given the short amount of time we knew each other. I also mentioned that I had trust issues. He then said that he would give up his scholarship for my sake and just go to Perpetual Biñan instead. I refused and said that I want him to put his career first before me, but he insisted on giving up his scholarship and dream university. His decision was firm, so I just went with it, though I still feel guilty about that.
We stayed in the hotel for 3 nights then went to his family's place in Laguna where his family let me stay.
15th - 17th of August 2023 We stayed in an AirBnB (condo) in Tagaytay and went to SB Hiraya and Skyranch together.
20th - 24th of August 2023 We went to Boracay together
29th of August 2023 This was my departure date from Manila to NZ
We did take a lot of photos and videos together, so it kind of bothered me how he has never posted anything about us, considering he's always active, especially on IG. I wanted to bring it up to him, but I set them aside because I didn't want us to fight.
In November of 2023, we had a huge argument. He had been hiding me from his IG stories. How did I know? My main account on IG had a glitch. I saw he posted a story, but when I clicked, it said "there has been an error". So I was already suspicious of him at that time. I opened my dummy account and stalked him. I then saw just a picture of himself. I was disappointed, sad, and angry almost because there is just no reason for him to hide his stories from me if he has nothing to hide. I asked him the reason why, then his response was "I did that because I feel like you don't trust me". Then why not give me reasons and proofs that I can fully trust you? Long story short, we made up. Yes, I was the one who initiated after having no contact for almost a week.
Months passed, he became more "busy" while stupid me was naive from all he had been doing. For a couple of months, I took more shifts at work where I worked six days a week for 9-10 hours a day. This was to sustain myself, weekly and monthly expenses, and his "tuition". Also within these times, I bought a new iPhone for him (forgot what model).
Fast forward to the 28th of April 2024 when I received a notification on Messenger in my message requests. It was a guy who confessed that he was my ex's boyfriend. Let's call him Guy A. He introduced himself as my ex's schoolmate and told me that my ex has been lying and cheating on me since our relationship started. At first, I was not convinced until he sent me photos of them together. I was shaking when I heard the news. From our conversation, I discovered numerous things that destroyed me: they started talking in early December of 2023, my ex claimed that I was already an ex (at that time) when in fact we were still together, my ex met with multiple guys while he was in a relationship with me and Guy A, Guy A forgave my ex three times for the three times he was caught cheating, and my ex has been studying in TUP-M the whole time. Mind you, I have been sending him the monthly tuition fee, thinking he was studying in Perp Biñan. Yes, he did not only cheat and lie but also used me. It was eight months in total that I have been sending him money for his "tuition" plus his other financial concerns. Yes, I only knew this on this date.
After talking to Guy A, I messaged one of his close friends in TUP-M and his classmate as well. I discovered that he lied about a baby picture of me that I left for him, which was always in the back of his ID or phone. My ex claimed that my photo was his sibling. My ex also told his friends that he was with his family when he went to Boracay when in fact it was just the two of us. I also discovered through this friend that my ex was also in a relationship with another guy who studies in DLSU-Dasma. Let's call him Guy B. My ex's friend/classmate also said that they support Guy A and my ex's mutual relationship, knowing that Guy B already introduced himself to them as his boyfriend. Seems off, right? From my perspective, it looked like they tolerated my ex's cheating... and maybe I was right. So I searched for Guy B's account and talked to him. He said that Guy B and my ex also started in December. This means that my ex had a thing with Guy A and B in the same month. Guy B claimed that they ended in February 2024 but officially in early March 2024. Yes, my ex and I were still together at this time while he's also together with Guy A. I also discovered that my ex and Guy B first met in Tagaytay... did he get déjà vu? Lmao.
Clearly from what I have learned, it was obvious that he used me for money. Yes, he used my money to go out and date with his men. At the end of the day, we were all just his victims.
Shortly after the news unfolded, my ex sent a paragraph of his apology. He only apologized because he got caught, not because of what he has done.
Through all that, I am, in fact, destroyed. I am traumatized. I am scarred for life. I knew for myself that I gave my all in our relationship. I will also admit that I was never a perfect boyfriend and it did cross my mind that I could have been and done better for him not to search my shortcomings on other men. However, the support I received made me realize that he cheated not because I was not enough but because he was never satisfied. I am slowly and gradually healing thanks to my supportive circle.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-08/what-are-assumable-mortgages-how-to-get-a-3-home-loan-interest-rate
For house hunters discouraged by high borrowing costs, there’s still a way to secure a 3% interest rate.
The catch? To make the most financial sense, it requires a large cash payment.
A so-called assumable mortgage allows buyers to take over an existing loan — including its interest rate, which in the vast majority of cases is below the current 7%. It’s a little-known strategy that can help buyers save thousands of dollars in a largely frozen real-estate market. But they must be able to afford not only the balance of the seller’s loan, but also whatever equity is owed.
Less than 1% of home listings currently advertise that the property has an assumable loan, in part because it’s mostly just government-backed loans that can be transferred. But in theory, it’s an option that could be available for roughly one in five homes with a mortgage, if a buyer asks.
How It Works
When using an assumable mortgage, the buyer must take over the seller’s remaining balance, repayment schedule and interest rate.
Both the seller and buyer must be approved by the lender holding the existing mortgage. Plus, the buyer is likely to need more cash up front. In addition to normal closing costs, an assumable mortgage can come with additional fees for processing, documentation and legal work. And the buyer will still have to pay the difference between the home’s higher purchase price and the outstanding balance of the loan assumed.
For instance, say a couple bought a $300,000 home four years ago and they used a $250,000, 30-year Federal Housing Administration loan with a 3% interest rate. They’ve since paid off $50,000, and now they want to sell that property for $400,000. A buyer wanting to assume the mortgage would need to pay the couple $200,000 in addition to taking over the $200,000 left on the loan. They can pay with cash — but if they’re short, they’d still need a loan at current interest rates with a down payment, cutting into cost savings. Not all deals will make sense financially, according to Melissa Cohn, a regional vice president at William Raveis Mortgage.
“If you can take advantage of it, it’s a great opportunity,” she said. “But you have to do the math.”
Alternative Path for Buyers Understandably, in an interest-rate environment that has dramatically changed in recent years, buyers are looking to get creative with their purchases.
At $2,550 a month, the mortgage on a median-priced home of $429,950 — assuming a 6.9% interest rate and 10% down payment — is almost double what it was in 2021, when rates were at historic lows, data from Realtor.com show.
The opportunity to get a loan with a lower rate and shorter duration could save a buyer thousands of dollars, said Hannah Jones, a Realtor.com research analyst.
Still, transferring a mortgage remains rare.
Less than 0.5% of homes listed in May advertised an assumable mortgage, according to Realtor.com. That’s more than double the share of homes offering a transferrable loan a year earlier. But the best route for buyers may be simply to ask sellers if they have an eligible mortgage they’d be willing to transfer.
For the most part, only government-backed mortgages — loans from the FHA, as well as the US Department of Agriculture and Veterans Affairs — are eligible for assumption. That represents about one out of five US homes with a mortgage. And the limit for a loan the government will back is about $1 million in high cost areas like New York.
However, finding a transferable loan may be a challenge at a time when there are so few listings on the market, said Keith Gumbinger, the vice president of HSH Associates.
“We have very thin inventories of homes for sale of any kind in most marketplaces,” he said.
A Deal Sweetener for Sellers After a long inventory drought, the US housing market is starting to see listings rise. But, in many places, buyers just aren’t showing up.
Sellers who need to close quickly or are having trouble getting traction should strongly consider offering an assumable mortgage, Jones said. An alternative financing option is a great marketing feature for sellers. That’s especially true if they have a rate below 6%, which is nearly 90% of homeowners, according to real estate company Redfin.
Furthermore, sweetening a deal with a lower rate may help give a seller more negotiating power on price.
“As inventories start to climb, we’ll see home sellers wanting to find ways to sell quickly,” Jones said. “For homeowners, offering an assumable mortgage is another lever to make the home more attractive to a buyer.”

I just thought I would share my story because I realize it’s almost been two decades of no contact with my father.
After 18 years, it’s become a lot easier to deal with. Me and my father have virtually been estranged for the majority of this time. I am 37 now. When I was 12, my parents split up, namely, my mother left him due to his abusive behavior and unpredictable rage. my teenage years are nothing more but memories of him acting like a big buffoon and torturing me and my siblings with horrible parental alienation. Getting angry if you had any contact with my mother. Sadly, during those years, I did not have a lot of contact with my mother, namely, because I did not want to trigger his anger and violence against me. He and my mother have a 17 year age difference and he really assumed that he had told control of her when they were married. She is now 59 and he is 77 currently. She left him in 1999.
However, at a certain point when I was 18 I left his house, but we were still living in the same city about a year after I graduated high school. I began to be in touch more and more with my mother at this time and my relationship with my father really started to break down at this time. And he had already pretty much not really been there for me too much for years at this point anyway. He provided the Room and board. Yes I’ll give him that, but by and large, anything that I had after the age of 15 I got on my own by working while I was in school. Didn’t pay for any of my clothing didn’t pay for school fee. Didn’t pay for one textbook. So it’s been distant and cold for a long time even before he began leaving me violent death threat voicemails when he knew that I was gonna go live with my mother and try to start over.
This is a man who I have witnessed pull a machete on my little brother, knock an entire old school TV over on my brother and who has also pointed a gun in my face at the age of 14 in a violent rage, and is most consistently very verbally abusive and quite blatant about all of it. Very antagonistic, very irritating, and someone who almost gets a weird twinkle in his eye when he’s being abusive. Very disturbing to witness.
He murdered our neighbors dog because the dog crapped in our yard. He stalked a woman who lived in our neighborhood because he was suspicious that her dog was going to do the same thing and he was following her to find out where the dog lived because he was going to possibly attempt to kill her dog as well.
He and my brother once got into a violent fight over a pornographic videotape. No one was in the home but us three, but it was one of the most embarrassing experiences of my life. I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing. The police were called to our home many times during my high school years.
Does not know how to have a relationship that isn’t based on fear, control and abuse. However, because he has a lot of money people kiss his a$$, but I have never been willing to do that for one red cent of his money. That’s just not worth the headache.
His wife (the lady he married after my mother) has in the past had a severe gambling addiction. But she worked so much and stayed at the casino. She really wasn’t there for a lot of this rage so I tend to think that she doesn’t believe me anyway and I don’t think her family ever really liked me to be honest. a lot of these incidents used to happen when we three children were at home with him only. When my mother was there with us when they were still married, though he was very violent with her. Also, very violent and cruel with animals. A very sick man. A Vietnam veteran who refuses to believe that he needed to go seek professional help upon his return.
There was a lot of racial shame too. My father is black and my mother is white. Apparently, he deeply hates white people, but nobody realized how bad it was till after my mother left him. He would tell us kids how embarrassing we were because we were half-white and that something was wrong with us because of that.
I have watched him be there way more for his wife’s daughter who’s not even his biological child above me and my brother especially. I have a biological sister who has been abusive with but in a different way, because she was the golden child. But he’s enabled her so much in her life she basically can’t function and is more or less a collapsed narcissist in my book. But that’s a tale for another time about her. The girls were definitely always favored over us boys and it remains that way today anyway.
Once I moved away, and I was far out of that chaotic environment, what I had actually been through for all of those years really started to hit me about six months in and I had a really tough time with it. But in the end, I just decided that I wasn’t going to continue this toxic devastating relationship. It took a lot of years and there were even periods of attempts at reconciling. But in the end, it really boils down to the fact He’s never been someone I can depend on. He’s never been someone I can call in a time of need. I’ve heard some children who are estranged from their parents talk of the financial hardship they have incurred as a result of that but for me there never was any financial support so there was nothing to lose there. Everything and anything that I’ve gotten I’ve had to work for with no help from him. Period.
Not somebody who takes responsibility, not really somebody who can look in the mirror and see the mistakes that he’s made. He just likes to try and sweep all of it under the rug and pretend like nothing ever happened. But it’s really hard for me to do that and as hard as it is to be estranged, sometimes I think it would be harder to sit there and be expected to continue to play these fake games as so that we can put on a show.
I think that’s really what’s always rubbed me wrong about him. His desire to place appearances above all other things. I remember when I was 14 and I didn’t feel like going to some picnic because I think he was on my nerves then. Remember him saying to me oh well if you don’t think there’s something wrong with you but what I couldn’t say at the time was that it was really not something I was terribly concerned about. He’s always been the one worried about putting on a fake show. But when you look behind the scenes, everything is a total disaster and in chaos.
And after my mother got cancer years later, and I ended up taking care of her pretty much on my own with no help from my siblings, I would say virtually more or less I’m estranged from most of my immediate family other than my mother. My mother is also estranged from my brother and sister who are twins. Me and my sister had different falling out about 11 years ago and we have not really been on speaking terms since. I used to believe that we had a close relationship, but I’ve come to learn that it was all a lie. My brother and I talk occasionally but I’m careful about what I talk about because he’s basically the one who is in touch with everyone. It’s definitely a fine line relationship with him. And he doesn’t really understand where I’m met with my relationship with our father and thinks I should get over it, but they have a weird trauma bonded relationship and in spite of the things that my father has done to him, he can’t let go. And I respect that, but that’s not gonna work for me personally. I find my father to be a highly toxic person.
It’s hard, but I think what makes it hard is just the smear campaigns that I know are happening about me. But I think for me that’s the worst part and the good news is I don’t have to hear it. I don’t miss the drama. I don’t miss the lies. I don’t miss the violent threats and the yelling. I don’t miss the betrayals. I don’t miss the favoritism. I don’t miss being treated like someone’s property. I don’t miss the vile words that come out of his mouth. I don’t miss any of that.
So when you add it all up, just remember it takes strength, and it takes courage. it takes a lot of courage to stand up and hold the boundary to someone that you feel has been violently abusive and really scares the sh*t out of you. And don’t get me wrong, like, it’s sad. I do think it’s really sad but at the end of the day these are the cards I’ve been dealt and it was a tough choice, but in a lot of ways, it was the only choice for me in order to survive.
More and more these days I’m just working on trying to not ruminate on it anymore and trying to not let the memories pour over into the present. But I have so much to be grateful for and I’m really happy with the place that I am in my life and I really don’t regret it at all. But I know that my circumstances are somewhat extreme just due to the insane violence and the insane behavior that went on.
And a lot of ways it’s been easy because of his age and the fact that he’s not on social media. he also expects me to do all of the contacting and reaching out. It’s always on me. So he’s not gonna pick up the phone if I don’t pick up the phone. Which once again makes it somewhat easier to deal with. I typically don’t expect any phone calls or text messages from him and I don’t receive them.
For some people, it’s a really tough choice, but in my book if the person makes you feel terrible about yourself constantly, basically craps on your confidence at every turn, belittles and ridicules you regularly And basically makes you feel just nothing but tension, anxiety, and negative feelings about the relationship then what is the point of staying? Everybody has their breaking point and can only tolerate so much before something has to give. 17 years later, I don’t really feel bad about it and in the end I feel like it really has been the best choice. To be able to function in society I had to cut out this kind of severe abuse from my life. And I don’t regret it because it’s made me who I am and it’s made me a stronger person.
And truly at the end of the day, I actually wish them well. I don’t wish them or anything like that but I just know that we cannot have any kind of relationship until people decide that they need to make changes too. I just cannot go back again for any more of that. I’ve always been an observer and a listener, and I don’t think that’s what my father gets his I spent my years just observing and listening to him because I was pretty much forced into silence. Based on my observations, I know that I’ve made the right choice because you can’t reason with somebody who is that crazy. The funny thing is this guy thinks that he is the portrait of sanity.
That’s quite enough of that now, but I wanted to share and I hope that it helps somebody who may have something similar going on or having conflicting feelings about it.

This will be long and my first time posting so please bear with me. I need help. Me and my stbx have 2 children, an almost 3 year old daughter and a 20 month old son. Last month was our two year wedding anniversary. We’re also young, both of our children were conceived on birth control.
He is a serial cheater. He’s been cheating on me for majority of our relationship, almost 4 years. At least 15 different women. I found out about the first time almost two years ago. It was a revolving door of cheating, the apologies, me believing him and then him switch it back on me, again and again. He can be emotionally and verbally abusive. He would tell me I’m a slut, used up, due to my relationships before we got together. That I was worthless. He gets mad if I don’t want to have sex or give him oral sex everyday. He ended up getting another women pregnant while I was also pregnant. He was also with a totally different women, who he eventually dated for a new months, while I was in labor for 14 hours with our youngest. He came about 30 minutes before I started pushing and left 10 minutes after and never came back to the hospital. When I just had our youngest he would be gone for days at a time(cheating) and would come back home, look around and tell me “Wow, you’re really bad at this”. He hated me breastfeeding and called me names and gave me a hard time about it. I know I should’ve left sooner. I just thought I could love him into loving me. And that one day would be good enough.
At one point after the birth of our son, I moved back to my parents, 4 hours away from where we were before. He stayed with his new girlfriend( a different one), and didn’t come see me or the kids for 6 months, except for 3 days total where he spent the time on the phone reassuring his girlfriend. He was ready to divorce me over her. I told him I would sign the papers he just needed to pay the fee since I’ve been a sahm in school since our daughter was born. It should be mentioned our oldest has a severe autism diagnosis. He never did. He ended up moving here after those 6 months because they broke up and I thought I needed his help. Turned out I didn’t. He made everything harder, he was just as mean, wasn’t here half the time and made it hell when he was. He’s put his hands on me a few times. Albeit not often.
I finally told him 2 weeks ago I was done and wanted a divorce, and for him to be gone by end of July. He says he’s not cheating anymore but I don’t want to be treated this way anymore. Although he’s said for years he doesn’t want me, now that I’ve said this I’m the bad guy. I just can’t do it anymore. Today I found out I’m pregnant. I am so lost. The only reason we had sex was because he kept asking and I didn’t want to deal with his mood the next day. And now here I am. 23, living at home with my parents, 2 children one with a disability, wanting a divorce, and pregnant. I’ve always been pro-choice. But the thought of of having an abortion makes me ill and I don’t know if I can do it. I want to keep this baby. But I know it’s not the most logical choice. He wants me to get rid of it. Said that he’ll hate me even more if I keep it. I worry about how he feels and how everyone else may be disappointed in me. My mom supports me keeping this baby but also said she’ll support me if I have an abortion.
I don’t know what to do. I’ve finally got my oldest into therapy, she’s flourishing. My youngest is becoming more independent. i want to do this but don’t know what to do. I would still get a divorce if I had this baby and he knows that. He doesn’t want me to have it but when I asked if he’ll be involved he said “with the baby, I’d have to, with you not so much.” So I’ll have to prepare to go through this alone, although I feel i did that the last two times except now I’ll have my mom. He doesn’t even think it’s his, since I asked for a divorce he thinks I’m cheating. Am I crazy for wanting to have this baby? I just don’t know whether to have the abortion or keep it, they’re both permanent decision. I will take any advice just please help me.

First of all, a premise which is the reality of today but 99% of the public is blissfully ignorant of.
The economy collapsed in 2008. Since then, the entire thing has been propped up completely artificially with Federal Reserve money. The Fed has literally bought half the stock market and bought out bad mortgage debt to keep asset prices high. This is a "we owe the money to ourselves" situation, but it's also a "if we don't keep making the system work this way, it will fall apart". So it's not a matter of running out of money to "borrow", it's a matter of at some point things stop working and inflation takes off.
If you are confused about this, here you go:
Assets: Total Assets: Total Assets (Less Eliminations from Consolidation): Wednesday Level (WALCL) FRED St. Louis Fed (stlouisfed.org)
This graph is insane. I studied it in college in 2010 when the 2008 "blip" was like niagara falls in reverse. You have to actually be a mentally ill sycophant to look at it now and think everything is fine.
Anyway, when the Federal Reserve "bought" the global economy on credit in 2008, it didn't just give the money away. Its helicopter bux came with a mandate.
First "are there like any academic studies that demonstrate what you're claiming?" Yeah.
Corporate social responsibility and financial stability: evidence from the Troubled Asset Relief Program Emerald Insight
For you zoomers and Daily Show watching nitwits, more here: Obama Plans Financial Triage for Bad Bank Troubled Assets :: The Market Oracle ::
Keep in mind the financial sector bailout was started by Bush, but he was basically working hand in glove with Obama at that point, and then Obama took over and greatly expanded it. Reddidiots can't wrap their brains around what this was: a government takeover of the financial sector.
I remember reading that federal bail out money came with strings attached. I think this has been scrubbed from the internet, even the Russian search engine can't find anything (google is less than worthless by the way). But there was this:
Obama limits bailed-out bank CEO pay - MarketWatch
So we do see some reporting that the bail out money came with strings, and in a similar manner to Dodd-Frank, Wall Street was easily able to get around the ones that actually hurt.
Still, the fact of the matter is that when we hear about BlackRock and so forth, where companies like Disney WASTE 100s of millions of dollars OVER and OVER again on films they know piss off their audience, no one can make sense of why this is happening. Until you realize that BlackRock is the primary broker for the Fed.
Remember when the Fed bought half the stock market?
How Larry Fink’s BlackRock Is Helping the Fed With Bond-Buying - Bloomberg
Now we have to look at another tentacle of the Obama-Bush era octopus. Behavioral science.
Obama’s effort to ‘nudge’ America (politico.com)
Governments are trying to nudge us into better behavior. Is it working? - The Washington Post
Obama's Nudge Brigade: White House Embraces Behavioral Sciences To Improve Government (forbes.com)
Corporate America also employs "nudge" units.
Lessons from corporate behavioral-science units McKinsey
First the basics of what's wrong with behavioral science:
Behavioural Science at its Worst – The Daily Sceptic
But here is a good breakdown of practical nudging and a peak into the HELL of behavioral science's brave new world:
Nudge Theory: The Psychological Trick Influencing Your Behavior - Goalcast

Setting A Default Option
Typically, people won’t deselect a default option to choose something else. So when a certain option is intentionally selected as the default, this increases the chances that people will “choose” it, just like the organ donation example described above.
Making Certain Options Easier Or Harder To Select
This one depends on the level of ease when choosing certain options. For this nudge, either the so-called “good” option is easier for people to choose or the so-called “bad” option is harder to choose. This steers people toward selecting the good option.
Making Certain Options More Noticeable
Another way nudging can encourage people to choose a good option over a bad one is to make the good option more noticeable or the bad option less noticeable. This attracts people’s attention toward the good option, making them more likely to select it.

And here we come to an anecdote.
I have rich parents. They bailed me out of my last semester of college because I lost my scholarship because of having bad grades in my second to last semester because a girlfriend faked a pregnancy before being committed (more like she quit work to spend a year with her parents) with a b-series disorder. I didn't live in poverty growing up, and I was able to go on a couple family trips to disney world - I'm grateful - but my parents' success never bought me anything in life. I never used their connections, they never paid for more than a few clothes from JC Penny. I went through college on a scholarship and they demanded I work too.
When I started working, I paid them back with my first six months of surplus savings. Just to make it clear when I say I had rich parents.
My sister is a basket case with drugs and other things. They pay everything for her. She basically has a venmo recurring payment, though it's only recurring in practice since there's always some new bullshit she's charging like a sick dog, running over a tree, forgetting to pay a fee and incurring late charges, and insane wastes of money you haven't even heard of.
Anyway, paypal, zelle, venmo, her bank account. Every 6 months or so, chunks of $500-1500 just disappear from her accounts, or my parents' zelle/Paypal accounts. Like, 3 $500 charges. The typical notification doesn't occur, my sister's account doesn't see the money (they checked). My parents aren't slouches. They've filed claims, wrote letters, threatened to involve a congressperson who's a family friend.
These banks won't budge. The payment systems themselves are untouchable.
One bank in particular, Suntrust, was notorious because you look up online and see hundreds of poor people with the same story of money that just disappears in chunks. Fraud shouldn't even be possible. It's the type of thing where if hackers or fraudsters COULD hack that, they're jacking directly into the bank's infrastructure, not the individual's personal account details. Meaning, even if it's true conmen, it's like the bank leaving their vault door cracked open and making you pay for it.
I began to seriously wonder if these banks were just stealing the fucking money! But wait, they couldn't get away with that for long, it would be the story of the decade, right!
Well, unless this is POLICY.
These bank bailouts, they ended the idea of market-driven distribution of resources. It's all funny money now, a money printer casino for rich people. What happens when shortages come up? How do you unfuck real economy hiccups without price mechanisms and markets to actually convey this information to entreprenuers?
Enter, Aladdin.
Aladdin the terminator of Blackrock Financial Markets by Jorgeacevedoarnaldo May, 2024 Medium

How would you react if I told you that a robot has more wealth than all the nations on Earth combined? A robot so strong that, in the last ten years, it has secretly built the largest corporation on the planet. This is the narrative of the robot Aladdin, born on Wall Street. The best kept secret, capable of consuming all asset classes in all sectors. To put it in perspective, Aladdin currently controls $21 trillion of the global economy.
Aladdin has become a system responsible for more than four times the value of all the money in the world this robot directs stocks in the United States.
from the federal reserve of almost all major banks and investment funds on Wall Street and more than 17,000 traders. It controls half of all ETFs, the bond market, the global stock market and makes a quarter of a million trades every day and billions of forecasts every week, year after year, accumulating trillions of data points in each market.
In 2008, the global financial crisis arrived and with 21 years of existence. The US government used Aladdin to decide which assets to keep and which assets it wanted to leave in the $30 billion bailout package. It was the robot that saved the United States from disaster. It is a little-known story. With that first success, not only the American government but now the European and Japanese central banks began to trust Aladdin to determine how
The $5 trillion of new money they printed should go, most of it into bonds and funds to prop up mortgage companies and banks, assets in which Aladdin and Blackrock were already invested. Money printing expanded
causing assets controlled by America to grow rapidly to $11 trillion in 2013.
In the last decade, Aladdin has gone from being a leader to dominating all financial markets with the acquisition of Barclays by Blackrock, obtaining Barclays shares, units of exchange-traded funds or ETFs, and with that Aladdin went from dominating bonds and stocks to ETF dominator, just like everyone else. The biggest investors moved from mutual funds to ETFS and that’s when in 2017 everything changed, on Aladdin’s 29th birthday, Larry launched a top secret project on blackrock under the code name Monarch which led to the firing of its managers. funds and By replacing its funds with Aladdin funds, the robot was now removing humans from the equation entirely and, as a result, today more than 70 percent of all transactions in the US stock markets are made by it. They decide robots with Aladdin leading the way these transactions are completed from the beginning.

BlackRock Boosts Aladdin’s Forward-Looking Sustainability Analytics and Reporting Capabilities Through Strategic Partnership with Clarity AI Business Wire
Oh and look at this, Aladdin is being used to focus on funding sustainability AKA ESG.
Hmm..
So what happens when your financial uber-robot fucks up and runs short on a cash, or needs to take cash out of the consumer market? Is there a way to enable it to just simply STEAL from people (it already controls your pensions, folks, your "wealth" is already stolen and will be nationalized soon enough, de facto or otherwise)?
So here's what happened when my father say $1000 of charges to his bank via venmo, without receiving a venmo notification, and without my sister - the beneficiary - receiving the money

1. He tried to log in to the venmo app "server error try later".
2. He went online to see if he could file a dispute "disputes are filed from the app".
3. Finally the app came back "to file a dispute, click get help on your transaction under the me tab". This button was missing
4. He called the bank and filed a dispute "well since this was money sent to your daughter, not a vendor, there's little we can do."
5. "But my daughter never got the money, and the vendor I'm disputing is Venmo."
6. "Well, Venmo's not a vendor but we'll see what we can do."

This shit reminds me of when I tried to cancel/change my cable bill a couple times. Have you ever tried to do that? It's typically like this:

1. Oops the web site is down try later
2. Okay, you're logged in just click here
3. Oops there's a server error, why don't you try our live chat
4. "Hi, I'm pradeesh from India, what can I help you with?"
5. "I want to cancel my cable"
6. "Ok, I'm absolutely going to help you with that, but first maybe I can save you money with this other deal"
7. "No I don't want that"
8. "Okay, but I can save you $50 a month for a year if you sign up for this 2 year plan"
9. "What about year 2? You know what, just cancel please"
10. "Okay, sure, I'll help you with that. Just let me work out the details.
11. 10 minutes on hold
12. "Okay, I've sorted out some of your details, but there's actually this great new deal I found."

THAT SHIT is behavioral science.
They want you permanently subscribed to service based systems, and while your wages will slowly, barely increase over time, the amount of your money bogged down by this shit will see your saving be next to nothing. They will make your life hell if you try to escape or manage this, but not so much that you wake up enough to see what's happening and make radical changes to your life.
With data science, they can tell exactly who you are, exactly whether you have access to money from somewhere to keep paying these charges.
For instance, I'm 1000% certain that a data science platform identified my sister as a poor, dysfunctional, high-spending, unlikely to notice or address fraud kind of person. Then, it identified my parents as high-income who, no matter how pissed they get, will never stop sending money to my sister in semi-regular increments.
So, based on this data science, their accounts were targeted for literal fraud that I'm certain has to be built into the algorithm of even the Venmo app. Like, conveniently timed "server errors" so my parents quit trying to fix the problem. Or mysteriously absent dispute claim buttons.
Reddit does shit like this all the time. You try to post when your post has controversial keywords, or you have controversial karma? "I'm sorry there's some sort of server error." Lol, okay, so I just go to old.reddit and it posts fine.
Anyway, we're ALREADY LIVING IN BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE HELL.
Also the economy is 1,000,000% fake as hell.
This is literally the reality we're in, and probably 99% of the country doesn't even have any idea.