https://preview.redd.it/sq9ob43vkq0d1.png?width=450&format=png&auto=webp&s=00f9b50b4221afd75c3ba40d6bc078bded8781e1
Theodosius, whose name means "gift of God," grew up in the small cities of Vasilkov and Kursk where his father was a judge. Although his parents were Christian and gave him an education directed primarily at the study of Scripture, they were astonished to see his heart so completely overtaken by love for God.
His father died when Theodosius was 13, and this caused the boy to retreat still further from the world common to one of his age and social rank. He gave away his good clothes, preferring to dress like the poor, and found pleasure in helping the peasants with their work. He often went to church, and when he learned that Divine Liturgy was sometimes not celebrated due to a lack of prosphora, he undertook to bake them himself. His mother loved him dearly, but she did not share her son's life-encompassing Christian outlook; she was very conscious of her social standing and felt that by engaging in such lowly occupations Theodosius brought shame upon the family. She tried cajoling, then threatening and even physically beating him to make him change his ways, but Theodosius stood firmly on the path of the Gospel commandments.
His zeal for the things of God inspired Theodosius to slip away with a band of pilgrims bound for the Holy Land. Three days later his mother tracked him down, berated the pilgrims for having taken the boy along, and dragged Theodosius home where she kept him in chains until the youth promised not to leave her again.
The humility of the youth and the sufferings he endured at the hands of his mother came to the attention of the governor who requested that the youth attend him in church. This served to calm the domestic drama, but Theodosius' heart yearned for a more concentrated spiritual atmosphere, for monastic life. Standing in church one day, he was struck by the words of the Gospel: "He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me." With fixed resolve, he took advantage of his mother's departure into the country for a few days to set out for Kiev, taking with him nothing but some bread for the road. The monks in the established monasteries, however, turned him away because he had no money. Then he heard about the righteous Anthony. Coming to his cave, Theodosius fell to his knees and begged the holy ascetic to accept him.
"My son," said Anthony, "you see my cave; it is cramped and dismal, and I fear you will not endure the difficulties of life here." "Know, O blessed father," replied Theodosius. "that God Himself has led me to your holiness that I might find salvation. I shall do all that you enjoin." Foreseeing his future greatness, the blessed Anthony accepted the determined aspirant and bade the priest monk Nikon tonsure him. Theodosius was 23 years old.
It was a few years before his distraught mother finally discovered her son’s whereabouts. With great reluctance Theodosius went out to her. At first she vowed that she would die if he did not come home with her. But gradually God softened her heart and she came to see the wisdom of her son's patient admonitions. Following his advice she entered the St. Nicholas convent there in Kiev where she ended her days in peace.
https://preview.redd.it/h10jlboxkq0d1.png?width=225&format=png&auto=webp&s=0b0cf8272c80cf80377438120ecc92fb8624389c
When Theodosius became abbot, he saw need for a common rule to unite the growing community--which by that time was living above the ground; only a few hermits were left in the caves--and he sent one of his monks to Constantinople to copy out the rule of the Studite Monastery. The rule governed the daily life of the monk: it set the hours of prayer and work; monks were forbidden to have any personal possessions, everything was held in common; all monks were together for common meals: time, apart from prayer, was to be spent in working; all activity was begun with a blessing from an elder and with prayer. The monks were to reveal their thoughts to the abbot, a practice which roused them to constant spiritual vigilance and helped to check manifestations of the passions before they took root in the heart.
Above all things, have fervent charity among yourselves (I Peter 4:8).
It was St, Theodosius' choice of the Studite Rule, with its emphasis on the duty of charity and the common good, which served to revive the ancient ideal of strict cenobitism and gave Russian monasticism its characteristic warmth. "What is principally necessary," taught Theodosius, "is that the youngest should love their neighbor and listen to their elders with humility and obedience. The elders should lavish on the young love and instruction; they should teach them and comfort them." This attitude created an atmosphere eminently suitable for missionary work, and it was thanks to the monasteries that Christianity was so successfully propagated in Russia.
Of a strong constitution, Theodosius was a model of industriousness. Even as abbot, he felled trees, carried water, and ground wheat, often helping the other brethren with their obediences. Once, the cook came to ask if he would assign a monk to cut firewood, as the kitchen supply was depleted. "I am idle," replied the Saint, and he set to chopping wood himself. He worked through the dinner hour and the brethren, when they came out and saw their abbot hard at work, were inspired to do likewise.
Knowing the great benefit of good books upon the soul, Theodosius instituted the reading of spiritually profitable texts during meals, and sought to augment the number of such books in the monastery. Books were still a rarity at that time, and one of the valued occupations of the monastery was the copying and binding of manuscripts. Theodosius himself helped in this work.
At first, life in the Caves Monastery was very austere indeed. The monks lived principally on rye bread and water with the addition of a few vegetables which they cultivated themselves; they wove their own cloth and sewed their own garments. When the brethren murmured about some deficiency, Theodosius exhorted them to place their trust in the Lord Who knew their needs. And his faith was often miraculously rewarded.
The reputation of the monks as 'angels on earth' began attracting pilgrims; princes and peasants ca me for spiritual counsel and left donations. Grand Prince Izyaslav, who became very attached to St. Theodosius and frequently came to visit him, was a great benefactor of the monastery, as also was the Viking Prince Shimon who was baptized into the Orthodox Church together with his entire household, numbering some 3,000 members.
With increased mean s, Theodosius was able to build a guest house for pilgrims where the poor and sick also found refuge. No beggar was ever turned away from the monastery without being given a meal. Weekly a cart was sent from the monastery laden with bread to be distributed among those in prison.
The Saint's compassion was boundless. Once there were brought to him some robbers who had been apprehended in the act of stealing monastery property. With tears the Saint entreated them to mend their ways. Then, having fed them, he let them go. The robbers were so moved by the Saint's mercy that they repented and became honest, God-fearing men.
Like St. Anthony, Theodosius also endured the effects of the princes' quarrels. At the same time he maintained his independence and did not fear risking the displeasure of his royal benefactors if he felt called as a spiritual father to admonish them. When, for example, Svyatoslav unjustly took the throne from Izyaslav, the Saint wrote a strong letter to Svyatoslav, reproving his action and urging him to restore power to his older brother. This angered Svyatoslav, and Theodosius was warned of possible consequences, but he calmly replied: "Nothing could be better for me in this life than to suffer for the sake of the truth." Mindful of the Saint' s popularity, Svyatoslav took no action against him and even went to visit him. He was surprised when Theodosius received him with the respect due to one of authority. "I was afraid you'd be angry with me," said the Prince. "Our duty," replied the Saint, "is to say what is beneficial for the soul's salvation; and you would do well to listen." Although Svyatoslav could not be persuaded to give up the throne and Theodosius continued to commemorate the pious Izyaslav as the lawful ruler, their relationship was peaceful and it was Svyatoslav who gave land for the building of the new stone church.
Work had just begun on this church when St. Anthony reposed. Neither did St. Theodosius live to see its completion. It was his custom to retire to a cave for the course of Great Lent, and it was during this time, in 1074, that the Lord revealed to him his imminent departure from this world. On Bright Week, having joyfully celebrated the radiant feast of Pascha in the monastery, he fell ill. Summoning the brethren, he informed them that his time had come, and foretold the very day and hour of his repose. By common consent of the brotherhood, he blessed his disciple Stefan to take his place as abbot, exhorting him not to change the tradition s of the monastery, "but follow in all things the law and our monastic rifle."
May 3,1074. The divinely appointed hour arrived and the bright soul of the Saint took leave of its earthly tabernacle. As he had willed, his body was laid to rest in the cave which alone with the angels had witnessed his ascetic labors.
Eighteen years after the Saint's blessed repose, the monastery brethren decided to transfer his relics to the new cathedral church. The abbot, together with monk Nestor the chronicler, went to the cave to dig up the relics and discovered them to be incorrupt. Accompanied by a large crowd of people, the relics were solemnly transferred to the Dormition Cathedral on August 14, 1092. And in 1106 Saint Theodosius was added to the list of canonized saints.
True to their promise, the holy founders of the Caves Monastery continued to watch over its existence even after their repose. There is, for example, the story written by Bishop Simon (+1226), a former monk of that monastery and principal author of the Kiev Caves Patericorn of how the stone church was completed.
Sts. Anthony and Theodosius had been gone from this world some ten years when a group of Greek iconographers came to the Caves Lavra demanding to see the two monks who had hired them to adorn the new church with frescoes. They were rather angry inasmuch as the church standing before them was considerably larger than they had been led to believe and would consequently require more work than was covered by the sum of gold they had received there in Constantinople upon signing the agreement. Abbot Nikon, confessing his ignorance of the matter, asked who it was that had hired them. "Their names were Anthony and Theodosius," "Truly," said the abbot, "I cannot summon them, for they departed this life ten years ago. But as you yourselves testify, they continue to care for this monastery even now."
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The Greeks, scarcely believing this possible, called some merchants traveling with them, who had been present at the signing of the agreement, and asked that they be shown an image of the deceased. When this was done the Greeks bowed low, for they recognized in the saints the exact likeness of the two men who had commissioned them to paint the frescoes and given them the gold. Acknowledging the supernatural power of the saints, they decided not to cancel the agreement after all, and set about with heightened inspiration to embellish the church. The iconographers never returned to Constantinople; they became monks and ended their days there in the Caves Monastery.
The Dormition Church, rebuilt in 1470, was destroyed in 1941 by an explosion which the Soviets attribute to the Germans. Witnesses, however, state that it was the communists themselves who set delayed action explosives just before the German occupation of the city.
Orthodox America

Just tried posting this on UFOs and aliens and it was taken down because of Reddit's filters.
Last night I posted about Thomas Townsend Brown's research into building UFOs that goes back to the late 1920s right about the same time that Tesla was patenting his own research about UFOs.
https://www.reddit.com/UFOs/comments/1csdviz/comment/l49mtn9/?context=3
I only know about T. Townsend Brown thanks to this Jesse Michels recent doc that a number of you have seen. I watched it twice when it came out and it blew my mind. I'm not a physicist by any means and can't explain shit to anyone. Just trying to pull together some threads.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTEWLSTyUic&pp=ygUkamVzc2UgbWljaGVscyB0aGUgbWFuIHdobyBidWlsZCB1Zm9z
Jesse Michels actually learned about T. Townsend Brown from his doc on Grusch documenting his time around his hearing last July.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRO5jOa06Qw&t=3s
A number of you in the field of mathematics and physics with a huge interest in UFOs chimed in today, and I can't even keep up. It's all pretty brain-breaking stuff. I'm super armchair about all of this but have always been very interested. So in response to a couple of comments, I took the very simple measure of looking into Brown's Wikipedia. Yes, I'm very aware of the whole Guerilla Skeptics thing. I even happened to pass by their office here in LA after going to the sole US press conference on the Nazca Mummies here in Beverly Hills on March 11th.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbz7Ce4Q5dE&t=2s
Here's the u/thegoodtroubleshow episode about the Guerilla Skeptics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5ACu-pUSHg&t=13s
Anyway, hope this stuff doesn't get scrubbed, but here's Brown's Wikipedia page as it stands now. Seems like a lot of you have already done years of research on him, so I doubt much can truly be hidden.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Townsend_Brown
Brown filed a number of patents:
Patents

• GB300311 — A method of and an apparatus or machine for producing force or motion (accepted 1928-11-15)
• US 1,974,483 — Electrostatic motor (1934-09-25)
• US 2,949,550 — Electrokinetic apparatus (1960-08-16)
• US 3,018,394 — Electrokinetic transducer (1962-01-23)
• US 3,022,430 — Electrokinetic generator (1962-02-20)
• US 3,187,206 — Electromagnetic apparatus (1965-06-01)
• US 3,196,296 — Electric generator (1965-07-20)

Here's a website dedicated to him:
http://ttbrown.com/. Maintained by Paul Schatzkin, author of "Defying Gravity: The Parallel Universe of T. Townsend Brown"
One of the references mentioned on his Wiki page is this, perhaps a book titled "Lost Journals." Here's Chapter Six.
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/tesla/lostjournals/lostjournals06.htm
Chapter Six
UFOs and Electrogravity Propulsion
~Did Tesla Discover the Secrets of Antigravity~?
Nikola Tesla has been credited for the creation of much of the technology that we take for granted today. Without the genius of Tesla we would not have radio, television, AC electricity, Tesla coil, fluorescent lighting, neon lighting, radio control devices, robotics, x-rays, radar, microwaves and dozens of other amazing inventions.
Because of this, it is no surprise that Tesla also delved into the world of flight and possibly, antigravity. In fact, his last patent in 1928 (#1,655,114), was for a flying machine that resembled both a helicopter and an airplane. Before he died, Tesla reportedly devised plans for the engine of a spaceship. He called it the anti-electromagnetic field drive or Space Drive.
Here's this article mentioned in that publication by Tesla.
Man's Greatest Achievement by Nikola Tesla
New York American — July 6, 1930
from Rastko'sNetwork Website
Here's more from that link:
~How to Build a Flying Saucer~
Tesla had discovered that the electrostatic emission from the surface of a conductor will always concentrate where the surface curves or even presents an edge. The sharper the curve or edge, the greater the concentration of electron emission. Tesla also observed that an electrostatic charge will flow over the surface of a conductor rather than penetrate it. This is called the Faraday or Skin Effect, discovered by ~Michael Faraday~ many years ago.
This also explains the principles of the Faraday Cage which is used in high voltage research labs to protect humans and electrosensitive equipment from harm. According to eyewitness reports of interiors of UFOs, there is a circular column or channel through the center of the vehicle.
This reportedly serves as a superstructure for the rest of the saucer shaped vehicle, and also carries a high voltage, high frequency coil. It is believed to be a resonant transformer which gives the electrostatic and electromagnetic charge to the craft and establishes polarity.
This coil is relative to what is known as a Tesla coil. The Tesla Coil of course, was invented by Tesla in 1891. This column or channel is approximately two feet in diameter and is hollow. On some vehicles this hollow area has a turbine generator in it.
When the vacuum is created on one hemisphere of the craft, the atmospheric pressure is allowed to rush through the tube to drive a sort of turbine electrical generator. Some reports say the extraterrestrials use this system as stationary power plants for electrical energy on their planets as well.
The eyes of the craft are arranged by electro-optic lenses placed at quadrants or wherever they wish to see from. The screen-like monitors are placed on a console where the navigator can observe all areas around and about the vehicle at the same time. This includes the magnification lenses which are used without changing positions.
There are also windows about elbow level and about one foot through or thick. This distance would have to be in view of the four or more walls or plates of the capacitor hulls making up the major portion of the craft. The windows have an iris type of shutter so that when it is closed, it allows electrostatic charge to flow evenly.
~Dr T. Townsend Brown and Electrogravitics~
The idea of using high voltage electricity as a means of propulsion is not new. Tesla laid the groundwork in the late 19th century which was then continued by such notables as Thomas Townsend Brown, who discovered in 1923 what was later called the Biefeld -Brown Effect.
Thomas Townsend Brown, was a physics student of Dr. Paul Alfred Biefeld at the California Institute for Advanced Studies. Brown noticed that when he had two plates carrying high voltages of direct current separated by a dielectric, the negative electrode moved by itself in the direction of the positive plate. In other words, Townsend Brown discovered that it is possible to create an artificial gravity field by charging an electrical capacitor to a high-voltage.
He built a special capacitor which utilized a heavy, high charge-accumulating (high K-factor) dielectric material between its plates and found that when charges with between 70,000 to 300,000 volts, it would move in the direction of its positive pole. When oriented with its positive side up, it would proceed to lose about one percent of it's weight.
He attributed this motion to an electrostatically-induced gravity field acting between the capacitor's oppositely charged plates. By 1958, he had succeeded in developing a 15 inch diameter model saucer that could lift over 110% of its weight. Brown's experiments had launched a new field of investigation which came to be known as Electrogravitics, the technology of controlling gravity through the use of high-voltage electric charge.
As early as 1952, an Air Force major general witnessed a demonstration in which Brown flew a pair of 18 inch disc airfoils suspended from opposite ends of a rota-table arm. When electrified with 50,000 volts, they circuited at a speed of 12 miles per hour.
About a year later, he flew a set of 3 foot diameter saucers for some Air Force officials and representatives from a number of major aircraft companies. When energized with 150,000 volts, the discs sped around the 50 foot diameter course so fast that the subject was immediately classified.
Interavia magazine later reported that the discs could attain speeds of several hundred miles per hour when charged with several hundred thousand volts. Brown's discs were charged with a high positive voltage, on a wire, running along their leading edge and a high negative voltage, on a wire, running along their trailing edge.
As the wires ionized the air around them, a dense cloud of positive ions would form ahead of the craft and corresponding cloud of negative ions would form behind the craft. Brown's research indicated that, like the charged plates of his capacitors, these ion clouds induced a gravitational force directed in the minus to plus direction.
As the disc moved forward in the response to its self generated gravity field, it would carry with it its positive and negative ion clouds and their associated electrogravity gradient. Consequently, the discs would ride their advancing gravity wave much like surfers ride an ocean wave.
Dr. Mason Rose, one of Townsend's colleagues, described the discs principle of operation as follows:
https://preview.redd.it/m9z2722phq0d1.png?width=1134&format=png&auto=webp&s=75754301a0a8de25ba771c800da8e7ba1f76d6ec

Although skeptics at first thought that the discs were propelled by more mundane effects such as the pressure of negative ions striking the positive electrode. Brown later carried out vacuum chamber tests which proved that a force was present even in the absence of such ion thrust.
He did not offer a theory to explain this unconventional electrogravitic phenomenon; except to say that it was predicted neither by general relativity nor by modern theories of electromagnetism. However, recent advances in theoretical physics provide a rather straightforward explanation of the principle.
According to the novel physics of subquantum kinetics, gravity potential can adopt two polarities, instead of one. Not only can a gravity field exist in the form of a matter-attracting gravity potential well, as standard physics teaches, but it can also exist in the form of a matter repelling gravity potential hill.
Moreover, it predicts that these gravity polarities should be directly matched with electrical polarity; positively charged particles such as protons generating gravity wells and negatively charged particles such as electrons generating gravity hills.
Thus contrary to conventional theory, the electron produces a matter-repelling gravity field. Electrical neutral matter remains gravitationally attractive because of the proton's G-well marginally dominates the electron's G-hill. Consequently, subquantum kinetics predicts that the negative ion cloud behind Brown's disc should form a matter repelling gravity hill while the positive ion cloud ahead of the disc should form a matter attracting gravity well.
As increasing voltage is applied to the disc, the gravity potential hill and well become increasing prominent and the gravity potential gradient between them increasing steep. In Rose's terminology, the craft would find itself on the incline of a gravitational hill. Since gravity force is known to increase in accordance with the steepness of such a gravity potential slope, increased voltage would induce an increasingly strong gravity force on the disc and would act in the direction of the positive ion cloud. The disc would behave as if it was being tugged by a very strong gravitational field emanating from an invisible planet sized mass positioned beyond its positive pole.
Early in 1952 Brown had put together a proposal, code named Project Winterhaven, which suggested that the military developed an antigravity combat saucer with Mach-3 capability. The 1956 intelligence study entitledElectrogravitics Systems - An Explanation of Electrostatic Motion, Dynamic Counterbary and Barycentric Control, prepared by the private aviation intelligence firm, Aviation Studies International Ltd., indicates that as early as November 1954 the Air Force had begun plans to fund research that would accomplish Project Winterhaven's objectives.
The study, originally classified Confidential, mentions the name of more than ten major aircraft companies which were actively involved in the electrogravitics research in an attempt to duplicate or extend Brown's seminal work. Additional information is to be found in another aviation intelligence report entitled: The Gravitics Situation.
Unfortunately, due to the militaries TOP SECRET classification, Townsend Brown's work has not appeared in any physics or science publications that can be accessed.

Hello there fellow Bummers! We're EARLY with our next major Bumchat update!
So much has happened in the last week (we released an average of six updates per day), lets talk about it:

• Added Personas
• Added Side Context (this one is special)
• Added Fancy Pants
• Added chat message editing
• Switched to our new fine-tuned models
• Dramatically improved our UX
• Had an outage 😢
• Hundreds of new signups, and thousands of messages sent!
• We crossed a HUGE subscriber milestone!

We've been working day and night to make Bumchat the best possible character chat app, and we're only just getting started.
Gem Giveaway!
Lets cut straight to it; Bumchat is lacking in character diversity. We need more characters ASAP. This week I hope to add tavern card importing, but even still, tavern characters have less features than our native ones.
For some indeterminate amount of time; we'll be giving away 300 gems every day to our top daily kudos earner. The only way to earn kudos at the moment is via upvotes on public characters - this will be expanding in the next week or so with Trinkets. The giveaway will happen daily at 9am UTC, and the most recent giveaway recipients will be listed on the leaderboard page.
Personas
Personas are familiar to most people who use similar chat apps. Our personas allow you to switch your identity in a chat at any time. Our personas include fields for physical and personality traits, as well as additional information.
Personas!
Side Context
This one is special! We're extremely excited about this feature. Its something we dreamt up years ago and expected other chat apps to implement... years ago. Long before Bumchat was a glint in our eyes, we had written custom scripts to implement this in our favourite local inference frontend. Side Context keeps the chat consistent for far longer than without it.
I'll use a scenario to demonstrate the problem; you're chatting to your favourite character, and somewhere in the character card it says "{{char}} is standing by the open fridge, ready to offer you a drink". After that, no matter what happens in your chat, after some time, your chat will *always* gravitate back to that fridge and drink.
Side Context adds several fields at the chat level, currently for Location, Outfit and Mood (with more in testing). In your character card, you fill out the fridge part at the "starting location", and when that changes naturally during roleplay (for example "we went to the bed room"), the relevant side context is updated automatically and now there is no mention of a fridge anywhere in your prompt.
This has a dramatic effect on chat coherence, but it requires additional inference by the LLM. So we've limited its use to chats sent to our flagship Suno model (which we've also reduced the usage cost of by 25% this week).
An additional benefit of side context is; it keeps outfits consistent and updates them automatically - which means you no longer have to stop the flow of the conversation to ask "wait, what are you wearing?"
Side context adds a couple of seconds to response generation when used, and it can be turned off completely in the new chat settings menu above the send button.
Yuno started in her office, but now we're walking in the park.
Fancy Pants
Fancy Pants are the new name/branding for our subscription tier. We believe strongly that all features of Bumchat should be free to use. Fancy pants allow you to blow past limits imposed on free usage of features. We plan to add significant benefits to our Fancy Pants subscribers with EVERY major update. For this first release, FP members can create unlimited personas, while free users have a limit to the amount of personas they can maintain at once.
Our New Models
Bumchat is now supported under-the-hood by five separate models! We have Aura, Muse and Suno, but then also one for generating our character creator suggestions, and a different one for generating Side Context entries. We're iterating on these several times a week at the moment, so some chat quirks might come and go. We're currently very happy with our models' performance.
Big Much Thanks
Last week I mentioned that Bumchat was 4% of the way towards being profitable. This week, I'm happy to report both that Bumchat is MORE EXPENSIVE to run, and yet we're over 50% of the way towards profitability!
Thanks so much to our Fancy Pants subscribers and our free users alike! If we can cover our basic infrastructure costs, we can continue to improve the value proposition for all users, free and paid alike. Ideally, we would be able to completely remove the concept of Gems from Bumchat altogether.
Looking forward
We're going to continue working day and night on Bumchat. We won't stop. We will make Bumchat the single best one of these character chat apps available. We're going to redefine the industry with some of our upcoming features, and we're dedicated to forever pushing the envelope forward on UX. We come from a game development background, and our belief is that character chat apps should be more dynamic and interactive, more self aware and less linear by default.
This week (today!) we're going to launch our first ever advertising campaign. We have no idea what to expect, but hopefully it leads to good things. We've already come so far with zero advertising.
Our next major update will include Trinkets, another unique feature that we're extremely excited about.
As always, we love to hear your feedback. Please reach out to us on Discord, or here on Reddit.
And finally, you can find Bumchat itself over at Bumchat.ai

https://preview.redd.it/0inqf9owfq0d1.png?width=581&format=png&auto=webp&s=2e9a54fe8ed19bbc611f4f987d4f608ae9a96c81
Mr. Bill Panagiotakopoulos reports
SAFE SUPPLY STREAMING: PIONEERING SOLUTIONS IN THE ADDICTION CRISIS THROUGH STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS AND INNOVATION
Safe Supply Streaming Co. Ltd. has reaffirmed its commitment to developing integrated, sustainable solutions in response to the evolving regulatory and public health landscape. The Company's announcement aligns with recent developments in Toronto, where the city's Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Eileen de Villa, defended the plan to decriminalize all drugs for personal use.
Safe Supply Streaming is uniquely positioned at the intersection of public health and innovative technology. With strategic stakes in vital assets like Safety Strips, a provider of cutting-edge fentanyl test strips, and a 40% ownership in CannaLabs, an operational, revenue-producing laboratory, Safe Supply Streaming is building a robust platform to tackle the complexities of drug addiction and overdose prevention.
In addition, Safe Supply Streaming is actively expanding its licensing portfolio to include additional narcotics permissions, further cementing its role as an industry trailblazer. This proactive approach not only enhances the Company's capability to manage and mitigate addiction-related risks but also opens new pathways for public and private investment, particularly in sectors where traditional banking finance remains elusive.
"Amid the public discourse on drug decriminalization and the critical need for comprehensive public health strategies, Safe Supply Streaming stands out as a beacon of innovation and action," said Bill Panagiotakopoulos, CEO of Safe Supply Streaming. "Our strategic investments in essential technologies and healthcare infrastructure demonstrate our commitment to safety and effectiveness in addressing drug use. We are not just responding to a market need - we are anticipating the challenges and shaping the solutions that will define tomorrow's landscape in addiction treatment and prevention."
The CEO further emphasized the Company's role in shaping public policy and health responses. "As we continue to engage with policymakers and health experts, our goal is to create a safe, regulated framework that supports not just the decriminalization of drug use, but a shift towards an integrated treatment and prevention model," he added.
Safe Supply Streaming's response to the statement by Dr. Eileen de Villa underscores its alignment with public health priorities that advocate for treatment over criminalization. The company supports the call for more publicly funded treatment options, accessible mental health supports, and affordable housing, recognizing these as foundational to solving the intertwined challenges of addiction, mental illness, and homelessness.
To this end, Safe Supply Streaming is enhancing its collaborative efforts with government bodies, healthcare organizations, and community groups to ensure that its solutions are comprehensive and tailored to meet the diverse needs of the communities it serves. This includes expanding its educational outreach and community engagement programs to raise awareness of the health risks associated with drug use and the available preventive measures.

Are you or your loved one seeking a place where comfort, care, and luxury converge? Look no further than Beulah Vista, an esteemed luxury care home nestled in the serene surroundings of Upper Norwood. At Beulah Vista, we pride ourselves on providing unparalleled residential, nursing, and dementia care tailored to the individual needs of each resident.
https://preview.redd.it/a17wqki6fq0d1.jpg?width=1500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f7b95058af6dd4dc89a2727399e550113b34d59a
Here at Beulah Vista, we understand the importance of choosing the right Residential Care Home London. It's not just about finding a place to live; it's about finding a community where one can thrive, feel cherished, and experience the highest standards of care. That's why we invite you to come and see for yourself what sets Beulah Vista apart.
What sets Beulah Vista apart from other care homes? Here are just a few reasons why we stand out:

1. Luxurious Accommodations: Our beautifully appointed rooms offer the perfect blend of comfort and elegance, providing residents with a peaceful sanctuary to call their own.
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4. Engaging Activities: At Beulah Vista, we believe that staying active and engaged is essential for maintaining a high quality of life. That's why we offer a wide range of stimulating activities and events designed to promote physical, mental, and emotional wellness.
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This might end up as a bit of a weird post. But mostly a very long one. I don’t think this place I’m presenting here is heaven, but without SuburbHeaven Thursday this subreddit may give viewers the idea that we’re all just hating, and this case study may help illustrate some of the alternatives and what one could like and dislike about them. I know that yelling “the Netherlands!” on any urbanist platform is overdone and so 2 years ago, but I also feel like the available “Netherlands!” content is giving people an incomplete picture. So I’m going to discuss a suburban neighborhood, Lunetten, in Utrecht, where I’ve lived for about a year now. It’s a place built in the 70’s and 80’s, housing about 11,000 people in 5,500ish homes, for a density of just over 4,000 people/km², 10,000 per square mile.
Obviously that’s pretty dense. In a North American context Lunetten may count more as an example of the “missing middle” than a true suburb, but I feel it still works as a comparison because it is situated at the edge of a city* and it offers features people often look to the suburbs for, like a low noise environment, plenty of green and child oriented features. So, what can we find in this example that people may like or dislike in their suburban areas?
If you want to look along on your favorite online map: 52° 3'53 N, 5° 8'13 E.
Traffic and transit
Lunetten has a clear main road (middle left image, bright pink line on the map) that serves as the main way of getting around by car. It is the only road where the limit is 50 km/h (30 mph), not 30 km/h. The main road has priority over all side roads, indicated by the exits or all side streets being raised a bit. The speed bump automatically makes one slow down to yield to the traffic on the main road. In the places where people’s front doors open towards this main ring there are service roads for them to do their parking and loading and such on. In the busiest part of the ring the road was raised a few meters so pedestrians and cyclists can pass underneath through tunnels. So while the maximum speed cars can go on most of the roads in this place is quite low, the time to destination is pretty good, because a lot was done to ensure a good flow of traffic.
A more debatable feature is the lack of through-traffic options. If you want to leave Lunetten by car there are two roads leading West, connecting to the rest of the city and to the 70km/h raised road that serves as the exit from the city. There is also one small road going South-East along the train line, and that’s it. Despite being next to two highways Lunetten has no direct on- and off-ramp accessing it, and even no direct way across the highways for cars. Cyclists and pedestrians do have options leading in basically all directions. On the one hand this does wonders for how quiet the neighborhood is, but on the other hand that one road taking people in and out of the city is still more prone to blocking than a direct ramp to the highway, so car owners will experience some travel delays because of this.
Lunetten is no public transit hotspot, but there are like two bus lines both going to more connected places including the city’s central hub, and the train station is two stops from said hub as well, which happens to be the biggest train station in the Netherlands.
Public Spaces
Even by Dutch standards Lunetten has a pretty urban-ish density. There’s a mix of mostly rowhouses and midrise apartment buildings, mostly gallery flats up to 5 stories tall, including the ground floor. To give you an idea of Dutch standards for density: I grew up in a commuter town of about the same size as Lunetten, housing 1,000 less people (present day numbers) on roughly 1.25 times the surface**. But what I find interesting is what that space is used for. In Lunetten, on the outer ring of the neighborhood, adjacent to the two highways, busy raised road and train line that surround the neighborhood, there are quite sizable parks (bottom right picture). There’s plenty of space for dogs to run off their leash, there are football/play fields, there are two skate parks, two ponds for amphibians to spend the winter in (granted: that’s an amenity most people could live without) and an entire petting zoo, in case you had doubts this was a suburb. Together with a football/soccer club, a tennis club, some allotment gardens and a small business park near the train station these parks take up most of the space where traffic noise is an issue. There is room for recreation and other daytime activities in the noisy bits (there are sound screens, but that’s not blocking all of the noise) so that peoples’ homes can mostly be in the quiet parts, shielded from noise by trees and stuff. And then there’s the neighborhood interior. You’ll see on the map a few yellow locations marked as “playground/square”, but in reality many, probably most, of the dark green “courtyards” contain a little playground too. All of the courtyards have grass, most if not all of them have trees, many of those trees being taller than the midrises. Some of the courtyards feature parking space as well***. The middle right image is far from the greenest example. The combination of the parks and the courtyards make Lunetten much greener than the actual smallish town I lived in mentioned previously. Plenty of birds live here too, including a bunch of water birds who enjoy the ditches and canals. In the smallish town much more of the space was simply used for row houses with pretty large gardens, and in the newer parts a bunch of four home and two home units and free standing homes as well****.
Which brings me to the reality check. With all these pedestrianized public spaces around and loads of playgrounds, is Lunetten actually a good neighborhood to raise kids? From what I can tell, opinions are mixed. Because one thing that does tend to come with density of people is density of crime. In my year here I have personally witnessed a man snorting coke off his bicycle saddle, in broad daylight, in the middle of a bike lane near a skatepark with playing children in it*****. There is also the occasional lost shopping cart dumped in a canal and apparently there was a pretty shocking supermarket robbery just before I moved in. Especially if your budget only allows for an apartment and not a house I could imagine feeling a little scared to let young children wander around near the house on their own, also maybe because of the canals and ditches they might fall into. The sweet spot age for children in Lunetten is probably around 9-12, old enough to be trusted with their own safety around water and some minor drug use and vandalism, yet young enough to fully enjoy all the outdoor play space.
The blame for the crime is often put on the street pattern that is said to attract drug dealers and the like who love having good get away options, and the many green public spaces and nice dry apartment building entrances are certainly not the worst place a homeless person could go to for another night of hopefully not being bothered by the police. More recently developed neighborhoods have tried to avoid these effects by using a “cauliflower pattern” for their streets, branched streets ending in a bunch of (at least to cars) dead ends. The downside of that pattern seems to be less sense of community. The more direct neighbors you have, the more interaction. That’s why cul-de-sacs can be so isolating after all. Lunetten is not the worst crimey part of its parent by a long shot, but it’s noticeable enough to be worth mentioning.
A planned neighborhood
The big advantage I think Lunetten has over a lot of other places is that it was designed in one go. The land it was built on was part of the Dutch Water Line******, and had to stay free of buildings and obstructions that would block the firing lines of defending artillery. (That’s what the two weird shapes in the northern park are: old fortifications, called Lunette 3 and 4. Hence the suburb’s name.) When the line was legally disbanded in 1963 Utrecht started planning to build a new neighborhood here. Because of the highways (current configuration built at the same time as the suburb) and the train line that surround the place it was very clear to where the neighborhood would stretch. And it shows. The suburb is designed as a cohesive whole. There’s a neighborhood shopping center (bottom left image and the main soft pink blob on the map) at the heart of the neighborhood. It has two supermarkets, some small other shops, several small fast food/lunch places in different styles, two bicycle shops and repair places (it’s the Netherlands), a restaurant (there’s another one on one of the forts in the park, which doubles as a sort of social work place), a community center which houses some clubs and such (not the scouts, those have a place in one of the parks) as well as a library. There’s even a bar (I think, I should maybe go there ones), and some space where small neighborhood markets and events turn up with some regularity. The other main soft pink and yellow blob in a convenient central location on the map is two elementary schools*******. In many more organically grown neighborhoods or places the amenities wouldn’t be so conveniently centralized or would eventually be “centralized” on the outskirt of town.
The Bijlmer comparison, what not to do
Another interesting point of comparison I think is the Bijlmer (Bijlmermeer officially) in Amsterdam, another green neighborhood designed as one big plan outside of its parent city’s core, yet quite different. The Bijlmer is nationally famous as a bit of a ghetto, a place where you don’t want to live. (To be fair: the plane falling down on it didn’t help its case.) A lot of work has been done to improve the place, but its initial “ghettoization” was surprising because the Bijlmer was never intended to even be particularly affordable, but more of a vertical suburb, spacious family apartments (around 120 m²) for 100,000 people or more in large highrise buildings with between them plenty of green. A quiet place, with quick access to the city, using density to save on land use and travel time. There are three main differences I see between the struggling Bijlmer and “doing pretty well” Lunetten: 1 The Bijlmer has a higher density through the use of massive apartment buildings, literally and figuratively increasing the distance between people’s homes and the public space. 2 The Bijlmer is a much bigger place, I’m not sure they ever got to those 100,000 inhabitants, but it certainly loses that towny vibe. 3 They’ve been correcting this in the rebabilitation, but as designed the Bijlmer had basically no amenities. It wasn’t a town or city, it was people storage, housing for people who mentally lived several kilometers away but couldn’t afford it there. See the rest of this subreddit for why that doesn’t work for many people.
Interdependency with other suburbs
Looking back on growing up in that smallish town I notice that there really isn’t that much of a difference in amenities. The town offered much of the same things Lunetten does. But Lunetten’s status as a suburb gives it a big advantage over that town. Because while suburbs mostly serve themselves, they also serve each other. Take sports: there’s a football and tennis club and two indoor sports halls in Lunetten, but what if I want to swim or throw spears instead? Well, there’s a pool in a suburb to the North, as well as an athletics stadium. After elementary school there’s no middle/high school in Lunetten, but there are in nearby neighborhoods, and there are even college options******** spread throughout different suburbs and neighborhoods. These things are closer than they are in a small town not because the suburb is associated with a city center, but because it is associated with other suburbs. There are things I liked about the commuter town, but having to take either an honestly too long bike trip or a bus ride that only went whenever it was not convenient for me whenever I wanted to do something my town didn’t provide, like going to school, wasn’t one of them. And I say that even as a spoiled person whose commuter town at least had buses and bicycle paths.
Conclusion
And that is I think the main takeaway from this absolute wall of text: suburbs don’t have to be places where there’s nothing to do and you feel disconnected from the world. That’s the entire point of living in a suburb instead of in a town: there are other places nearby. There is a balance to be found between private space, public space and connectivity. Essentially, in a neighborhood of 10,000 people, for every 100x100 meters of public space or amenities either every person gets 1 square meter less private space or everybody gets maybe a few meters of extra travel distance on the average trip. Lunetten probably provides too little private space for the taste of many North American suburbanites, but it does show I think that there is quite a bit of room on those sliders. A green place with amenities sort of near other places can still be built with more spacious houses. (Just maybe go easy on the sea of lawns?) And that’s when all the separated bike lanes and other urbanist talking points really start making sense: when you found the balance between having your own place, having local places worth going to and being close enough to other places worth going to, then you want a good way to get there.
The other takeaway I feel is that it pays to design neighborhoods as a unit. And that’s another reason why suburbs can be better than towns. A town of 10,000 residents can’t plan ahead for the next 10,000, but a city of several hundred thousand people can. And it pays off. Don’t lose track of the human scale though, planning 10,000 residents ahead might actually be better than planning 100,000 or 1,000,000 residents ahead when it comes to suburbs. It is still supposed to feel like a quiet little place with maybe a bit of its own identity.
* On the other side of one of the highways there’s a bit of forest tied to several historic estates that’s very nice for walking in as well as a golf course half as big as this entire neighborhood, this really is the edge of town and will be for the foreseeable future.
** I’ve also lived in several other cities since then, near the city center, further out and on the far edge in a highrise neighborhood. Honestly I might still prefer the smaller cities I’ve lived in, being near everything the city offers and even to some of the stuff outside of it. But work took me back to a larger city (pretend I said “less tiny” if you’re from Mexico City or something), and I could honestly have landed in a much worse place than this particular suburb.
*** Fun fact: this is one of the very few neighborhoods of Utrecht where parking is currently still free, because of enough parking space and enough distance to the city center. It really is a suburb.
**** In the 90’s a style of more expensive neighborhoods called “Vinex” set standards for the ratio of more expensive to cheaper houses in those neighborhoods, and ever since both contractors and local politicians refuse to let go of those ratios everywhere. A newer, competing vision is that we shouldn’t be building new neighborhoods at all, just filling in the gaps in our cities. So now we mostly build quite large houses, but only in very small spaces. We’re still not sure where that massive housing shortage came from, somehow.
***** I stopped and addressed him because I thought he was having bicycle trouble, chain ran off or something. Quite a chill dude, very apologetic, but still maybe not exactly what the average parent is looking for in a neighbor.
****** More accurately: Holland Waterline, because it wasn’t the only Dutch waterline, but it was the main one defending the part called Holland. But that sounds a bit off in English.
******* We have a bit of a weird school system, for every public elementary school there is at least one other founded on religious grounds or based on some specific didactic theory. That’s why there are two schools in the same central location instead of just one bigger school or two in separate locations.
******** If I start going into the differences in advanced education systems we’ll be here all day, but there are options within cycling distance ranging from trade school to university, depending on the field you actually want to study *********.
********* I could start using other symbols instead of these confusingly long rows of asterisks, but where would be the fun in that?