I am unhappy after living in my current city (Orlando, FL) for 10 years and think I am ready for a change. I have a few cities I am interested in but I'd love to hear your recommendations. I am originally from Atlanta and don't think I want move back, at least not at this point in time. I have a decent set of professional skills and am not necessarily tied to working in a specific industry, I think I could find a job anywhere, so that isn't a factor for me.
Things I am looking for:

• Affordability (lol). Assuming I would have a job with the same salary, my budget for rent would be pretty low. If living alone, no more than $1100, which I know is probably unrealistic in most places. If I lived with roommates I'd like to stay around $900.
• Mild winters. I hate the cold/snow. I can deal with extreme heat.
• Professional Sports. I love sports, mostly football, so either a city with professional sports teams or suburbs close enough for me to drive downtown for a game.
• Friendly locals. I grew up in Atlanta and am really yearning for that "southern hospitality"
• Stuff to do. I do love all of the entertainment options Orlando provides, so a city with lots to do would be ideal. Good restaurants, bars, shopping, parks/hiking trails, lakes, beaches, historic downtowns, community events, etc. to give a few ideas.

Reasons why I don't like living in Orlando and what I'm looking to avoid:

• Traffic. I know every city has bad traffic but more often than not it takes an hour just to go ~15 miles here. There have been multiple occasions it's taken me nearly 2 hours to go 20 miles for no real reason (no accidents, lane closures, etc.) . I can deal with rush hour traffic, but traffic here is around the clock due to all the tourists. Which brings me to my next point;
• Less tourists. It is so hard to meet people here/develop friendships because no one actually lives here. Most people are just here on a family vacation to Disney. I'd like to live somewhere where the locals outnumber tourists.
• No sense of community. No one seems interested in getting to know neighbors, there is no community support when it comes to community events, schools, youth sports, etc.
• Unfriendly people. For the most part, people are very unfriendly here. No hospitality/common courtesy.
• High cost of living. 1 bedroom/studio apartments that are in safe areas are on average $1800+ here. Prices of homes have grown astronomically. Groceries, home insurance, car insurance, etc. have all seen an extreme increase in cost over the past couple years. I know most cities are also experiencing increases in costs of living but there's gotta be somewhere that's "not as bad" as Orlando right now.....rent in most apartment complexes has doubled in the past 4 years with no change in salaries. I could go on and on about the drastic increase in the COL here....

I want to know how to make madden simulations where i actually watch the entire game play out by the computer as realistic to watch as possible. Like as close to a real football game as you can make it look. Any ideas? Couldn’t find anything posted about this.

I'm primarily a Pokemon collector, and I'm new to football cards.
I had the idea of putting together a binder of my Fantasy Football Teams for this league that I've been part of for the last ten years, using cards that were released that year.
I was thinking about searching through eBay and bidding on auctions for inexpensive Prizms, Optics, Mosaics, etc. My experience is primarily in Pokemon collecting, and I'm having a hard time figuring out how to easily comp sports cards.
Any tips or recommendations on how to go about it or certain cards that would look cool in this type of binder?

I'm using it with my PS5 and this is my first Alienware monitor. Any idea if console mode is necessary? Or which HDR is best? I've heard peak1000 has some issues right now. All I'm looking for is the best possible picture for games like Warzone, XDefiant, MLB The Show and soon the NCAA football game. Any advice is appreciated!

It happened. He didn't deny that. Not like he was a suspect or anything—not yet—but he never denied it to himself. At the same time, this all happened over a decade ago—twelve years to be exact.
He didn't think of it every day; in fact, sometimes an entire month would go by where it barely crossed his mind.
In a way, that whole experience—he thought of all the abductions and murders as a singular event—now felt as if it belonged to somebody else.
It was a time in his life when he was confused, mixed-up, searching; a dark time, you know, like a phase. Who didn't have one of those in their past?
Plus, he was married now. His wife, Dee, obviously didn't know about it and he felt no obligation to tell her. Did he ask about her former lovers?
Sometimes there are things in the past and you just let them be. Whether it was Dee losing her virginity to the quarterback of the football team in the backseat at a drive-in or him using multiple black garbage bags and masking tape on that thing he didn't have time to bury in rural Tennessee, everyone has things they would rather forget about. Sometimes you just leave things where they lie.
So that's what Ned Doyle did.
Until that Sunday morning, November 6th, 1988.
He was a having a glass of Dee's pulpy homemade orange juice, waiting for his coffee to percolate, when he opened his heavy weekend edition of the New York Times (probably Ned's greatest extravagance—he liked its heft; and how the Arts & Leisure section made him feel culturally superior to his Ohio townsfolk, “the Philistines of Findlay,” he called them) when he saw the article buried in the back.
The country was two days from heading to the polls for the General Election—Bush v. Dukakis—so most everything else that week had been relegated to the back.
He read the article twice before he could even begin to make sense of it. It seemed to be a story about something called "DNA fingerprinting" and a 27-year-old baker in Great Britain named Colin Pitchfork who had confessed to raping and murdering two 15-year-old girls, in separate incidents a few years apart, after a new scientific process had been used to extract information from semen which he, Colin Pitchfork, had left at the crime scenes (likely inside the victims) some five years earlier.
Now if they could do all that after five years, why not ten years—or maybe even… twelve?
"Interesting story here," he said to Dee. It wasn't uncommon for Ned to read a news story twice—once for himself and a second time aloud to Dee while she brewed his coffee and burnt her toast. But this was his third reading and Ned acted as if it were his first.
"What do you make of that?" he asked. It somehow got worse each time he read it. After the third time, he felt as if he had been sucker punched in the stomach.
"Science Fiction is what it sounds like," Dee said matter-of-factly, pouring Ned his coffee in a mug that bore the Marathon Oil insignia. Findlay, Ohio was Marathon’s headquarters although there had been rumors circulating about a move to Texas.
"And unconstitutional," he said. "Cops running a dragnet like that, taking blood samples from 5,000 townspeople. Thankfully, that would never pass the muster here."
"They did catch the killer so maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea," she said, buttering her burnt toast. "Otherwise, who knows? They could have convicted the wrong man.”
Ned had already gotten lucky once – astonishingly so. Griffin Gerald Jones, the famed “I-75 Corridor Child Killer,” had claimed responsibility for all but one of Ned’s victims before dying in Florida’s electric chair.
"You can't have police in this country running around, sticking everyone with needles, drawing blood for some sort of science experiment,” he said. “Nevermind the Constitution, what about AIDS?”
“What about it?” she asked.
“There's been hundreds, thousands of cases now where people have been infected by giving blood,” he said. “That's a medical fact. Get accused of a crime and AIDS too?"
"It doesn't sound like any of the townspeople there in England got AIDS, darling. Unless there's more to the story, besides what you read to me."
He watched her spread orange marmalade over her burnt toast and take a bite. She had a dead tooth and he saw it every time she opened her mouth. He loved Dee but had never been sexually attracted to her. Not in the way he had been attracted to others.
"It really is just a matter of time before that stuff makes it over here," she said with her mouth full. "To this side of the pond, as they say." She took a sip of his orange juice. "Isn’t that how it always works? Things start over there in England, or in California, and then phht, before you know it, it makes its way to Findlay."
He held his hand over his stomach. She saw him wince.
"Was it my orange juice again? Was it still pulpy? I squeezed it by hand and even strained it twice this time."
"It’s not your fault,” he said. “I think it’s me. Orange juice is getting too… acidic for me." He looked at the clock on the coffee maker. "I'm going to be late."
He turned the page.
He played the 8 o'clock Mass by rote as he had many a bleary-eyed Sunday morning. It was pure muscle memory at this point. He made a few mistakes here and there, missed a key or two, but it was nothing the organ's sustain pedal couldn't mask – not that anyone would complain (not at the 8 o'clock anyway).
On Sundays Ned had four Masses: the 8, the 9:30, the big one at 11, and the 12:30 for the dilettantes who couldn't get their acts together for the 11.
He turned the page.
Today he was using Glory and Praise, AKA "the blue hymnal" for songs he knew by heart.
Turning the pages of his sheet music, reading each note, he was able to keep his mind off it.
Ned abhorred cliches (especially those involving sports) but he made an exception for “Out of sight, out of mind.” For Ned, that wasn’t a cliché; it was a way of life. He was a man who preferred to be heard, not seen, which made St. Bartholomew (or St. Bart’s) the perfect home for him.
In a spectacular architectural oversight, the church's pipe organ was situated so the organist's back was to the altar and pews. The organist of course needs to see what's going on in the Mass to read certain non-verbal cues but the arrangement suited Ned just fine. The congregation was comprised of many young families who had many young children—boys in particular—and it wasn't so much that he couldn't control himself because he was now firmly in control of all that; it was more that he didn't need any reminders of that time when he couldn't.
Especially during church.
So to see the altar behind him, Ned had installed an actual rearview mirror, the type you'd find on an old Buick, and he used a special type of putty to affix it to the mantle of the pipe organ. Having been the church organist at St. Bart's for nine years, he seldom needed it anymore—he could do it in his sleep—but it came in handy today as he found his attention drifting and he nearly missed the oratory refrain at the 9:30 Mass.
His real problems didn't start until the 35-minute break between the 8 and 9:30.
He was reorganizing his sheet music after the first wave of churchgoers had cleared out, when he began thinking about Colin Pitchfork again. The article said he was a baker in England somewhere—did it say he baked cakes or was that Ned's invention?
Even though no picture was provided in the Times article, Ned spent the balance of the 9:30 service picturing the 27- year-old ex-rapist/murderer working in his small English bakery, quietly going about his business, baking his cakes, when the police (Bobbies?) came.
Was he expecting them?
He played the offertory hymn, "On Eagle's Wings," as the ushers began taking up the collections and a family of parishioners he’d never seen before brought the gifts up.
And what was going through Pitchfork's head when he saw the Bobbies there? When they began asking him about rapes and murders that happened almost five years ago? The article said that he had initially given investigators someone else's blood when “the enquiry” began. Had he somehow caught wind of this “DNA Fingerprinting?”
There was a new usher, Ned noticed, in his makeshift rearview mirror.
The Times article said that one of Pitchfork's co-workers at the bakery had taken the blood test masquerading as Pitchfork because Pitchfork had told the co-worker that ‘he could not give blood under his own name because he had already given blood while pretending to be a friend of his who had wanted to avoid being harassed by police because of a youthful conviction for burglary.’ This story was later overheard by a woman in a pub who immediately went to the police.
Ned realized he had missed the homily twice now. Not that it mattered. Heard one you've heard them all and Ned was pretty sure there would be no surprises. Plus, he'd have two more chances to catch it. He knew he would have to really focus for the 11 o'clock. That was always the main event. He was going to play "I Will Raise Him Up," a complex hymn, which required his full attention. He would scratch that one now if he hadn’t read that article and if the Sunday programs hadn't already been printed. People liked that one –it was a real barn burner, as they say—and if he skipped it, there might be questions.
The last thing Ned needed right now were fucking questions.
Who was this new usher, by the way?

By the start of the 11 o'clock Mass, Ned wondered whether anyone would even show for the 12:30, seeing that it was already standing room only. The 11 was always the most popular Mass, but today felt different; it was packed like Christmas Eve. What was the occasion? Was the predominantly conservative town that afraid of Dukakis winning the presidency? Ohio was a swing state after all and that image of the little Greek man in the tank was unnerving, sure, but was it enough to warrant this sort of turnout for the 11 AM Mass at St. Bart's in Findlay?
Or was something else going on?
Ned didn’t believe they had come to hear his rendition of "I Will Raise Him Up."
Or could there be another reason? Maybe they had all read the same Times article. Maybe there had long been simmering suspicion of Ned in the community and maybe the article finally prompted the townspeople to join together and take arms. With pitchforks.
On March 31, 1892, the only known lynching in the history of Hancock County occurred when a mob of 1,000 men, many "respectable citizens," broke into the county jail in Findlay. They lynched Mr. Lytle, a man who had killed his wife and two daughters with a hatchet the day before. The townsfolk hanged the man twice (first from the bridge, then a telegraph pole) and then, in a classic case of overkill, shot his body over a dozen times. The authorities had intended to transfer the prisoner out of town at 1 o'clock in secret, where a train was scheduled to transport him to Lima, but someone talked.
Ned had only confessed what he had done to one person – a priest eight years prior. The priest was set to retire as he was dying of pancreatic cancer and visiting from a nearby parish. For years Ned had heard this priest was “of the old school” – i.e., your word to God’s ear, and it went no further. He was as safe as they come. Still, even then, Ned used the screened side of the Confessional, lowered his voice a full octave, and spoke of what he had done obliquely and in generalities. They were mortal sins. His penance severe: to repent and refrain from repeating the act again. The priest was now long dead. There’s no way he could have tracked Ned down and told anyone. Was there?
The last one was named Derek. That was the only one left unsolved.
He would play "I Will Raise Him Up" during Communion. Because of the crowds, he knew the communion lines would be longer and would thus require him to stretch the already difficult song a few minutes longer. If he was going to supply the masses, he was going to need a bigger yield. In a way it was like baking a cake, wasn't it?
He met Derek at a Dairy Queen in Paducah, Kentucky. It was Labor Day 1976. It must have been 100 degrees out, but it felt even hotter with the humidity. It was a real scorcher.
Derek had a bicycle with an American flag banana seat. It was the summer of Bicentennial Fever. The Dairy Queen was in an area known as Noble Park. It had a tin canopy that kept cars cool in the shade.
Ned missed a note as he turned the page. He stepped on the sustain pedal and his mistake sounded deliberate and beautiful even.
It was early evening; fireflies were out in full force and Ned was blotto. He had been drinking beer—cans of Schlitz—all day at the picnic of a friend (technically, the friend of an acquaintance so basically a stranger). A born introvert who still lived alone (this was pre-Dee), Ned was very drunk and primed for small talk. You must also remember this was a very different time. This was back when you still opened cans with an opener; drunk driving was frowned upon but not the cardinal sin it is today; and a grown man could still park outside a Dairy Queen and strike up an innocent conversation with a prepubescent boy on a bike.
"What da ya' got there?" Ned asked.
"Butterscotch Sundae," the boy said. The boy was blonde with brown eyes.
"Butterscotch, eh?"
The boy licked his plastic spoon and stared somewhere beyond the pea-green 1974 Buick Riviera Ned had inherited from his old man after he had kicked the bucket.
"For the life of me, I can't remember if I like butterscotch or not," Ned said. "That probably sounds pretty screwy, I bet."
"Get a free sample at the window,” the kid said. “They're free."
"Looks awfully busy over there. Mind if I have a taste of yours? I don't have any cooties, I promise."
The kid dragged his spoon over his ice cream as he mulled it over. Maybe seeing that he was almost done with it anyway, he figured what's the harm. He handed Ned the Styrofoam cup.
Ned looked at the boy as he stirred it a little and then placed the curved side of the spoon on his tongue and kept it there.
"I do like butterscotch," Ned said, giving it back. "Thank you for sharing that with me, that was awfully kind of you—say, what is your name?"
"Derek," the boy said.
"Derek. What a nice boy you are. Do you like dogs, Derek?"
"Sure," Derek said.
"Do you have a dog?"
"Not anymore. Used to. We had a beagle named Eleanor but she went blind and then lame and then..."
"What kind of dog was she?" Ned asked.
"A beagle," the boy said.
"A beagle, yes you said that. You like Golden Retrievers?"
"Sure," the boy said.
"Cause I have a Golden Retriever. It's a girl too. A bitch."
Derek smiled.
"She's pregnant. I mean she was. But… she just gave birth."
"To puppies?"
"You betcha. It was just a few weeks ago. She had a whole litter of 'em. Boys, girls. Cutest little pups you've ever seen. The thing is, Derek, I don't know what to do with them all. You're a nice boy. You just shared your Butterscotch Sundae with me and I'd care to return the favor. Would you… like a puppy?"
"How much?"
"For nothing,” Ned said. “For free.”
"You'll give me a puppy for nothing? And I can pick the one I want?"
"Sure can. They're at my place just down the road. Thing is, it's probably too far to bike there. And you're going to need both hands to hold on to the puppy. Hop in, I’ll give you a lift."
"What about my bike?"
"We could put it in the trunk but we're not going to be long. We'll be right back. It'll be safe here. People don't take things that aren’t theirs around here – especially when there's a lot of people around."
He remembered waking up on the floor of his apartment disoriented. He was late for work. He was still working as a salesman at the piano store. There was a big Labor Day sale still going on. Labor Day was always a big day for retail. The owner was a nice man and Ned wanted to call him and apologize but he wasn't sure what to say yet.
He hadn't planned on sleeping in. Forgetting work on Labor Day. The irony.
He saw the boy's underwear on his floor. They were tighty-whities from Fruit of the Loom. He thought of that every time he saw an ad for that company afterward.
They weren’t bloody but they were torn.
He remembered the sound of the filter on the aquarium he used to keep in his apartment. It was noisy but sometimes that was a good thing. He was very into Japanese Fighting Fish for a while until it became too expensive as they always killed each other.
There were no puppies obviously.
His apartment did not allow dogs.
His sense of disorientation and the ensuing panic prevented him from experiencing any of the usual remorse he felt afterward.
There would be plenty of time for that later.
The boy's body was in the bathroom just off the bedroom and he needed to get rid of it. He needed to get out of town. Out of Paducah. Out of Kentucky.
He placed the boy in a hardshell Samsonite suitcase, carried it out of his apartment, walked down the one flight of steps. He saw no one and he was confident no one had seen him. The suitcase was lighter than it should have been—a detail he never forgot—and he walked out to the carport where he saw his Riviera parked sloppily between the lines. He felt a wave of nausea come over him but he suppressed it. He opened his trunk, placed the suitcase in the back, and then looked around the apartment complex before walking back inside. He cleaned up with bleach. Showered. Hit the road.
There were no police gathered outside the Dairy Queen. It wasn’t a crime scene. He didn't look to see if the boy’s bike was still there; he didn’t want to appear suspicious.
He needed to get out of Paducah so he headed toward the freeway.
For a moment he briefly considered the Shawnee National Forest, which was to the north, but he stuck to his gut and took the newly-constructed Interstate 24 East toward Tennessee. Aside from getting out of Kentucky, he didn't have a plan. The asphalt was brand new and at times he felt as though he were floating across the highway. It took about two hours to get to the state line and once he was over, he filled up at a 76 Station in Clarksville, Tennessee. Only when he was filling his tank and had a moment to reflect, did he think about what was in the trunk. He imagined he had Superman's X-Ray vision and pictured the suitcase in the back, the boy's tiny body folded like a pretzel inside.
He missed both the readings, the Gospel, and the homily again. Then came the Consecration which was over before he knew it. It was time. He began to play "I Will Raise Him Up." In his rearview, he saw the communion lines forming and he thought he caught a glimpse of the new usher staring at him, but he couldn't be sure. He needed to concentrate on the song. People knew this one; people wanted to hear it exactly as they remembered it, and it was a full house, so the sustain pedal wouldn't save him this time.
Once he made it through the chorus, he knew he could relax a little.
The "DNA fingerprinting" in Pitchfork's case came from semen that was left inside of the victims.
Ned had made it to the outskirts of Nashville faster than he expected. He still hadn't checked in with Mr. Cory, the owner of the piano store. He desperately needed an alibi. Old Mr. Cory could probably send Ned to the electric chair if he wasn't careful.
He got on Highway 386 and headed north. After 20 minutes, he exited in Gallatin and drove around until he found an area he thought was remote. There was a road called Cages Bend.
He liked the sound of that.
It sounded hopeful.
He took that until he came to a gravel road, which looked as if it led to an even more secluded wooded area.
In the rearview, he remembered the cloud of dust kicked up by the tires of the Riviera he had inherited from his father, the drunk, who had done to him what he had gone on to do to others.
In the rearview, the communion lines were still going strong. No sign of that new usher.
He came upon a bend in the road that looked totally secluded, as if no one had been there in years. He cut the engine and listened for a moment. The invisible cicadas high up in the trees made it sound as if a giant rattle snake was slithering around him, preparing to strike. He got out of the car.
He didn't know if it was the trees or the fields of tall grass, but something smelled like semen.
He opened the trunk with his keys and pulled out the hardshell suitcase. When he closed the trunk there was a rustling in the tall grass but when he looked, he saw only a herd of white tail deer scattering.
Initially he had planned on dumping the body and taking the suitcase home with him. He didn't think to bring a shovel. Then he heard the sound of a bush hog—a piece of farm equipment with spinning blades that cut vegetation and cleared the land. He couldn't tell which direction it was coming from. He checked to make sure his suitcase didn't have any labels on it or name tags. He then two black trash bags in his back seat and wrapped the suitcase – one bag around the top, the other on the bottom, and secured it with masking tape. Then he carried it into the woods and set it down in some brush. He began snapping tree branches off to make cover but as the bush hog got louder and closer he panicked, leaving it only partially covered.
The communion lines had dissipated. Everyone was sitting now, even the priest.
Everyone always knelt until the priest sat and Ned should never be playing if the priest was sitting but somehow, Ned had missed his cue.
He concluded "I Will Raise Him Up" softly, using the sustain to ease himself out.
He looked in the rearview and saw the priest staring at him.
As was the rest of the congregation.
They would all be coming for him soon enough.
Unless he could make it back down to Tennessee and get rid of that thing once and for all – assuming it hadn’t been found yet.
Somehow, deep down, Ned always knew it was going to happen.
He was raised up, alright.
Now it was just a matter of time.

Number One: My Brother
There were plenty of times when I was growing up that my older brother would try to scare me. When I was really young, he was somewhat successful with it. But of course, when someone tries scaring you over and over again, you normally get used to it. Then it doesn’t scare you very much.
As we all got older, things changed quite a bit. He wasn’t getting the reactions from me that he previously had been, so he wasn’t scaring me as much. It was kind of a good feeling, you know, feeling that you have defeated your older brother when he was just trying to torment you. But also, I soon began forgetting that he was ever doing things like that to me.
When he was 17, he stopped hanging out at home very often. We assumed he was just out with his friends all the time. But he really had grown distant from everyone else in the family. He would rarely show up for meals. If he did, he would take his food and eat it away from everyone else.
My parents didn’t really think much of the change in my brother’s behavior. They insisted that teenagers all go through things like that. So I took them at their word and didn’t assume that they had anything to worry about.
I was home once after school and I was the only one there. My parents both worked a lot of hours and this was pretty common. My brother wasn’t home either so it was only me there. So, I set about trying to decide what I was going to have for dinner.
I remember this day for many reasons, but the first being that it was very windy outside. So I was hearing a lot of noises from outside. Also, the house was pretty old so it was making a lot of creaking noises.
What bugged me the most though was how sometimes our screen door in the kitchen would become unlatched on those windy days. When that happened, the win would cause the door to bang open and bang closed. And unless you went and put the hook lock onto it, it would keep doing this.
So, I went and made sure that the screen door was secured after hearing it bang several times in the wind. And then I went and I tried to finish making myself something to eat. Once I was done, I went into the living room and I tried to watch some television while I ate.
It wasn’t long until I heard what sounded like the door had gotten loose again. Since I used the hook lock, I wasn’t sure what it could have been. But if the door got torn of its hinges, it would have made things a lot worse. So I got up and went back in the kitchen, annoyed, to go and secure the door once again.
However, the door wasn’t open. My older brother was at the back door. And he was banging on the screen door for some reason. He was complaining about the door being locked and told me that I had to open it for him.
I asked him why he didn’t just come in through the front door like everyone did. The question seemed to just make him angry, however. He began pounding on the door harder and telling me to just open the damn door.
I went over to open the door, but the look on his face got me to stop. I wasn’t sure what it was, but there was just something in his eyes that I didn’t recognize. I am not sure how else to put it, but it didn’t seem like I was looking at my brother. There was some vacant, other person behind those eyes.
My pause made my brother pound on the door harder and I could tell that he was really pissed off. I thought he was trying to scare me for only a second because I wasn’t sure what to think about what was going on. He began then pulling the screen out of the screen door in order to get to the lock I couldn’t imagine he would ever be stupid enough to deliberately destroy part of the house; my parents would have killed him.
He started yelling at me, threatening all sorts of things to do to me once he got into the house. I was about to run off, but I didn’t because part of me still thought he was just trying to scare me, albeit that part was really small.
When he got through the door, though, he didn’t stop anything. He went right over to a knife block and that was when I turned and ran. I went quickly up to my stairs and into my bedroom, locking the door behind me.
We lived in an old house with some good, solid doors. There was no way my brother was going to break through them. However, he did pound on the door and yell and scream at me for a while, demanding that I open the door. However, a while later, he gave up and everything went quiet.
I didn’t come out of my room until my parents got home. They had found my brother, sitting in the bathtub upstairs, shivering; the kitchen knife beside him. He claimed to not really know what was going on and my parents were confused. I relayed the whole story to them and he seemed to sincerely have no memory of what happened.
So, it seemed my brother had a psychotic break down or a fugue state or something like that. I believe the last one is what the doctor said. But to this day, he denies that he ever faked what happened as a practical joke. He had admitted to every joke beforehand so I have no reason not to believe him. I have no idea what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten to my room.

Number Two: Bullies
I moved around a whole lot when I was growing up. I have lived in the city, in the country and the suburbs. I moved so much that I really didn’t get to know a lot of kids my age very well while I was growing up. And after having this be the case for a long period of time, I stopped trying to make friends when I reached a certain age. It didn’t seem worth it if my family would just pack up and move a few months after I had made a friend.
There was a period of time where we moved out to this house out in the country. It was a poorer area, I guess, where the only houses you came across were mobile homes. I never tried to make any friends with the kids who might have lived there, though. I also didn’t really make friends at school.
I don’t know what it was about this area, but for some reason it was the only time in my life where I was bullied. I think it might have been because I kept to myself and did well in school, instead of playing football during recess. But whatever it was, the bullies were real jackasses and caused me a lot of Hell for the year when we were there. Weekends and school vacations were my favorite times because it was the only times I could get away from the bullies at school and the teachers never did anything to make the bullying stop either.
This happened during a weekend in the fall. I remember because I was out wearing a jacket and taking a walk. I tried to go out for walks whenever I could on days home, because it felt good to get out of the house for a while. So, I was heading down a gravel road, just strolling along and lost in my own thoughts.
It was after a while, I heard some sounds coming off ahead of me and to the side of the road. I was curious to see what was going on, so I walked up to the area and noticed that there was a fenced off field in that area. It sounded like there were some people off doing something and I began to wonder why. However, I wasn’t curious enough to try and find out.
It was pretty suddenly though that someone approached me on the side of the road. I was surprised to have seen it, because I hadn’t noticed anyone else out there. Plus, I was really afraid to see it was a kid name John, who was one of the bullies who bugged me at school.
John made some comments at me but none of them were mean. In fact, he had heard the noises out in the field too and was wondering what they were. John asked me if I was curious and wanted to go see what was going on.
I wasn’t sure how to feel. I mean, part of me thought that this bully might have been warming up to me. But another part of me definitely didn’t want to go with him walking in a field.
In the end, I decided to go with him because I was mostly afraid that he might beat me up if I didn’t go with him.
After walking for a while, we finally noticed a few other guys up in front of us. It didn’t take long for me to recognize them also for school. I was a bit scared when I noticed that they were guys who normally hung out with John and tormented me. That probably meant that he had known they were out there all along and was meeting up with them.
I wanted to turn around and go back to the road, but I couldn’t force myself to do it. Besides, if those four kids wanted to catch me, they easily could and beat the crap out of me. I didn’t want that so I just decided to try to not seem scared. Perhaps they would respect me that way and let me take part in what they were doing.
But as we got closer to them, I realized that they had rifles and were shooting at things. At first I assumed they were pellet guns, but they were actually rifles. And I found myself even more wanted to get away as quickly as I could.
John asked me if I wanted to fire one of the rifles. I definitely did not and told him that was okay. I didn’t want to take any of their fun away from them. So, I would just watch them if that was all right.
“Oh I have a better idea,” John laughed with his friends. “How about we use you for the target? Now that would be really fun.”
Of course those words scared the hell out of me. These were bullies that I knew were not scared to get physical with someone. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were willing to shoot me either.
There were only two rifles amongst the four boys and they both pointed them at me. I tried to tell myself that they wouldn’t be stupid enough to try and shoot me. If they did, they would get into a lot of trouble. But I had no idea whether that was true or not.
“Well that’s not what I thought would be fun,” John told his friends. “I mean we could just shoot at anything you know. We could shoot at trees, bushes, rocks. But what would be really fun would be a moving target.”
All the boys laughed and I just got even more scared. Now, I didn’t want to run because that would give the boys what they wanted. But I didn’t want to stand there either. I am probably pretty lucky that I didn’t wet myself at some point.”
“Well run,” John urged me. “It would be a lot harder to shoot you if you’re running that if you’re just standing there like a dumbass.”
I still didn’t move. I was too terrified to do anything.
“Run!” John yelled and he sort of lunged at me.
That was enough to scare me enough to get me running. So, I took off and began running. I began telling myself again that they were just trying to scare me. But no sooner did I think that then I heard a gunshot.
I was so startled by the gunshot that I tripped and fell on the ground. I hadn’t been hit by anything, but that didn’t mean that they hadn’t been trying to hit me. So, I got back and began running again. It wasn’t too long before I heard another gunshot. It was followed by another and another and each time, I kept expecting the gunshot to hit me. I couldn’t even be relieved when they didn’t hit me because I was too terrified.
I made it to the fence and I jumped back over it. Getting on the gravel road, I kept running and I didn’t stop running until I got home. I was out of breath and in pain, but I hadn’t been shot and I was glad about that.
Here is the part that might get you though. I didn’t tell anyone about what happened right away. I was too scared about what the bullies might do to me if I got them in trouble. So I kept it to myself and didn’t tell anyone until years after we moved away from there.
I really don’t know how much trouble they would have gotten into anyway. They would have just denied it and I have found the parents of bullies rarely discipline their children for bullying.

Number Three: The Tunnel
I can’t say that I was bullied much when I was growing up. Rather than being unpopular, I was just the sort of kid that everyone ignored. If people talked about me or had any strange impressions of me, I definitely never knew about it. I spent a lot of time by myself.
However, I wasn’t one of those people who liked spending a lot of time by themselves. I would often try to insert myself into a conversation or to join up on a ball game if extra players were needed. I wanted to get along with people and to have those interactions, but it was normally always a bust. I just had a problem making friends. But that didn’t keep me from trying to.
So one day I was walking home from school. I had a pretty long walk as I lived out of town but still close enough that the district did not provide a bus for me. I didn’t mind the walk, though, as I had been doing it all of my life and it gave me time to think.
When I was walking by a field, I noticed a bunch of kids from high school that I knew walking off in the field. So, my curiosity got the better of me and I decided I would follow them to see what they were doing. This might seem strange to you and it certainly does to me now, but recall that this was something that I did very often.
The kids all had a pretty big start on me so it would take me a while to catch up with them. However, when I did eventually catch with them, they were hanging out and smoking pot. They noticed me and actually invited me over. They didn’t seem worried that I would narc on them or anything and even offered me to smoke with them. I had never done that before but I wanted them to like me so I did. Of course as many first time pot smokers out there will tell you, the first time can be the roughest. Much to the amusement of the other guys, I was coughing my lungs out for quite a while afterward.
After hanging out for a little while-and I hadn’t done much talking really, just listening- one of the guys told us that he had an idea. There was an old tunnel under an old road that had been closed down for years and they thought it would be cool to check it out.
I was all for it and I walked with the guys for a while until we came to this tunnel. It wasn’t long and I am sure you have seen this sort of things before. I could definitely see to the other side of it. Still, it had a sort of creepy vibe to it. You couldn’t see the dirt road that ran over the tunnel anymore because it had completely grown over. Plus there were tons of trees and bushes grown up over everything.
One of the boys noticed something. It looked like, on the far end, that there was a human body laying in the tunnel. After he pointed it out, I noticed it too. However, I didn’t get a bit curious about it like the other guys did. It freaked me out and I wanted to just get away from it, but there was no way that I could tell them that.
The guys then began daring me to go and check it out. This scared me, of course, because I really didn’t want to do it. But I also wanted them to like me so after they prodded me for a little while, I decided to go ahead and do it.
The tunnel seemed kind of dank, but it wasn’t wet or anything. It was just unpleasant walking in it, especially knowing that I might be approaching a dead body. I walked as slowly as I could, trying to draw this out as long as possible. Seems silly in retrospect, I know. Most people would want to get it over with as quickly as possible.
As I got closer to the figure in the tunnel, I could see him a lot better. It didn’t look like he was breathing either. This scared me but I also kept thinking about how cool the guys would think I was if I had approached a dead body. So I kept creeping closer.
Right when I had gotten next to the body, I heard this loud clanging, echoing noise ring out across the tunnel. I turned behind to look and see what it was but my attention was drawn back to the body when it tried to grab me.
I stumbled backwards and fell over. I watched the body get up to my horror. I could hear the guys laughing but I wasn’t concentrated on that. I was concentrated on the scary figure in front of me that was suddenly yelling at me and coming toward me.
I got up and began running out of the tunnel. I couldn’t even tell you what the figure was yelling at me as I ran out. I just knew that he sounded very angry and I was terrified.
The guys were running back to the area that they had originally been in and I followed them. I checked behind me at one point and did not see the figure from tunnel following me. However, the guys were all laughing their asses off.
They explained to me that the guy in the tunnel was a homeless guy who had been living in that tunnel for who knows how long. He always hates it when people come along and go into the tunnel. So, that clanging sound I heard was one of the guys throwing a rock into the wall of the tunnel to wake the guy up and scare the hell out of me.
The guys were all laughing but I didn’t find it very funny. However, I began to laugh too because I wanted them to like me. So they seemed to accept me and I was invited to keep smoking with them and hanging out.
So, I had finally made some friends, some who I continued to know until long after high school was over. And all it took was for them to scare me so bad I nearly shit my pants.

Hi! Trying this again in the hope of finding some new people to talk to 🙂 I’m a 26M from Scotland, UK, pretty chilled out and happy to talk about/listen to just about everything.
As for my hobbies - I am a MASSIVE horror fan and I love everything creepy/scary,
I watch/play football to keep fit and I like gaming(PS5) whenever I have the spare time, always looking for game recommendations and people to play with.
I love being outside, finding places to explore and most importantly spending time with my dog (feel free to send me pet photos too!) 🐶
I also have a lot of tattoos and love to see other people’s work, I’m always looking for new ideas and I love seeing what other people have so feel free to show me yours!
I don’t mind moving to a different platform too if it’s easier, Reddits chat system is terrible. Send me a message if you like 🙂

Hi! Trying this again in the hope of finding some new people to talk to 🙂 I’m a 26M from Scotland, UK, pretty chilled out and happy to talk about/listen to just about everything.
As for my hobbies - I am a MASSIVE horror fan and I love everything creepy/scary,
I watch/play football to keep fit and I like gaming(PS5) whenever I have the spare time, always looking for game recommendations and people to play with.
I love being outside, finding places to explore and most importantly spending time with my dog (feel free to send me pet photos too!) 🐶
I also have a lot of tattoos and love to see other people’s work, I’m always looking for new ideas and I love seeing what other people have so feel free to show me yours!
I don’t mind moving to a different platform too if it’s easier, Reddits chat system is terrible. Send me a message if you like 🙂

Not Bit Season podcast (big fan) but man the post-draft junks has been rough. They need some skits and bits and no ideas are coming. Two segments on a kicker who’s been on the team for 5 seconds. A segment just asking cakes if he knows an old baseball player.
And they had a segment saying nobody works anymore!!!
Come on producers, produce!!
(Yes I know I can turn off but why would I want to. It’s been a rough month of content).

Carlo Ancelotti has done an outstanding in-depth interview about his childhood, evolution as a manger, identity, philosophy, man management and more with TheTimes which is unfortunately under paywall and hence I am sharing some of the snippets from it:
Carlo Ancelotti on Real Madrid players love towards him:

They think I am a sort of kind grandpa, Don Carlo, they call me — or Maestro. I’ve got to say, I really, really like that.”

Carlo Ancelotti on the change of his philosophy and evolution as a manager:

“When I started, I wasn’t like this, I had one system that I learnt at AC Milan from Arrigo Sacchi. It was 4-4-2. And for this I refused to have Roberto Baggio at Parma because he wanted to play No10. I said, ‘No, I don’t play No10.’ He was one of the best players in the world at the time and I refused to have him because I just wanted to play with two strikers. Today, I would say, ‘Baggio, come to Parma, and we’ll arrange the situation.’ Instead I told him, ‘Listen, Roberto, there is no space for you’ — and he went to Bologna instead.
It was a mistake and I tried to change my idea when I went to Juventus. I had Zidane, and he was No10. Should I put him right, or left? Impossible. Zidane is the most important player in my team and he has to be No10 and I have to adapt. From there I always took into account the characteristics of the players to build the system.”

Carlo Ancelotti on his calmness persona in the sidelines even in the tough moments:

“Do you think they listen more if you shout? No. The more you shout, the less they listen. The key point is I have a lot of passion, but I’m not obsessed, I’m not obsessed with my job. I never was, not about football. I really liked it, as a player, as a manager, but I don’t become crazy. I’m calm.
"It’s strange because before the game I am usually really nervous. Then immediately when the referee blows his whistle — calm. Ah, we start the game, finally. Then I have no fear. The fear is before and when it starts — optimistic. It will go well. Whether the game goes well or whether it goes badly, I am in control of myself. At the press conference, under control. And that is because I am not obsessed.”

Carlo Ancelotti on his poor and struggling childhood:

“My father was a farmer. It was him, my mother, my grandfather, my grandmother and my sister. We were six and [had] no money, at all. Money, for me, is not important because we grew up without it. I never heard my father talk about it, never to my mother. And I never heard my father or my mother disrespect my grandfather or my grandmother. It was a really good atmosphere in the family, but also a lot of problems because we didn’t have money.”

Carlo Ancelotti on his current philosophy and managing style:

“To have only one identity of your team is a limit, We played a game in the Champions League against Shakhtar Donetsk. Very good team, Roberto De Zerbi was their coach. What he was doing with full backs, and different positions, really good. But I said to my players, they want you to press. Don’t press. If you press they will pass the ball around you. Don’t press, and they will give the ball to you. We didn’t press — and we won 5-0.”
"You see, there is no style for me, No Ancelotti style. My style is not recognised, because I change. The style takes into consideration the preparation of the players."

Carlo Ancelotti on game plan of defending deep against Man City in the CL this season:

Against Manchester City [in the Champions League quarter-final] we played low block, strong defence. We have played that way this season one or two times, no more. We don’t play like that, we are more attacking. But I saw that as the way to compete and to win that game. This season, we lost Karim Benzema, but Bellingham arrived. We had two fantastic strikers, Vinícius and Rodrygo, but they play wide. So we start to play Vinícius and Rodyrgo with Bellingham behind, No10 — 4-3-1-2.

Carlo Ancelotti on current tactics that he deploys at Real Madrid this season:

“We did really well at the beginning, Bellingham scored a lot of goals, but then in one match with Atletico Madrid they scored three goals from crosses because the right side was not covered. So we changed and put Bellingham to help defensively inside. We adapt without making the players uncomfortable. Vinícius does not want to play inside, so I won’t force him to play inside. He doesn’t show his best quality there, so I have to give him freedom. I spend a lot of time defensively, working with my team, working together."
"Offensively I give some information, but not too much. What can I tell them? Vinícius was always fantastic one-against-one but I have helped him to be more effective inside the pitch, not just wide. He is fast, he is really talented, but he has to beat two people from wide to have a shot. That movement in the middle of the pitch, with one touch he can score a goal.”

Carlo Ancelotti on the history and DNA of Real Madrid that makes it so special:

"They never forget, (Champions League success) Wherever you go at the club, it’s [Alfredo] Di Stéfano, Di Stéfano. Come to the training ground, Di Stéfano there, Di Stéfano there."
“They say at the Bernabéu there is a God and he wears a white shirt, and who knows maybe that is true, but I think that this God punishes mistakes. If you make a mistake, the God in white punishes you.”

Carlo Ancelotti on future of Real Madrid:

"They work very hard. It will not be easy. But my players work hard, too. And humble. To be humble is the key point of this squad. We won the league this season because there is no ego here. Vinícius, no ego. Bellingham, no ego. Rodrygo, no ego. And the senior players are like that. Toni Kroos, Dani Carvajal, Nacho, Luka Modric. I don’t know what happens in the future but there is no jealousy between the young ones now. Humility is important. You must have that.”

Final Words Of The Article:
We finish the wine, we leave the restaurant, in the lobby a young couple ask for a selfie. The request begins, “Don Carlo…” He stops. He smiles. He told me earlier that when he retires he would like to stay in Madrid. It feels like his home now. And he is at home there, too.
The farmer’s son in this biggest of football cities, who changes with the seasons, yet has never truly compromised an inch. Always himself. Don Carlo, El Maestro, what a guy.
Full Article: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/sport/football/article/carlo-ancelotti-interview-italian-manager-bnj7hrxzt

Hi! Trying this again in the hope of finding some new people to talk to 🙂 I’m a 26M from Scotland, UK, pretty chilled out and happy to talk about/listen to just about everything.
As for my hobbies - I am a MASSIVE horror fan and I love everything creepy/scary,
I watch/play football to keep fit and I like gaming(PS5) whenever I have the spare time, always looking for game recommendations and people to play with.
I love being outside, finding places to explore and most importantly spending time with my dog (feel free to send me pet photos too!) 🐶
I also have a lot of tattoos and love to see other people’s work, I’m always looking for new ideas and I love seeing what other people have so feel free to show me yours!
I don’t mind moving to a different platform too if it’s easier, Reddits chat system is terrible. Send me a message if you like 🙂

Hi! Trying this again in the hope of finding some new people to talk to 🙂 I’m a 26M from Scotland, UK, pretty chilled out and happy to talk about/listen to just about everything.
As for my hobbies - I am a MASSIVE horror fan and I love everything creepy/scary,
I watch/play football to keep fit and I like gaming(PS5) whenever I have the spare time, always looking for game recommendations and people to play with.
I love being outside, finding places to explore and most importantly spending time with my dog (feel free to send me pet photos too!) 🐶
I also have a lot of tattoos and love to see other people’s work, I’m always looking for new ideas and I love seeing what other people have so feel free to show me yours!
I don’t mind moving to a different platform too if it’s easier, Reddits chat system is terrible. Send me a message if you like 🙂

Hi! Trying this again in the hope of finding some new people to talk to 🙂 I’m a 26M from Scotland, UK, pretty chilled out and happy to talk about/listen to just about everything.
As for my hobbies - I am a MASSIVE horror fan and I love everything creepy/scary,
I watch/play football to keep fit and I like gaming(PS5) whenever I have the spare time, always looking for game recommendations and people to play with.
I love being outside, finding places to explore and most importantly spending time with my dog (feel free to send me pet photos too!) 🐶
I also have a lot of tattoos and love to see other people’s work, I’m always looking for new ideas and I love seeing what other people have so feel free to show me yours!
I don’t mind moving to a different platform too if it’s easier, Reddits chat system is terrible. Send me a message if you like 🙂

Hi! Trying this again in the hope of finding some new people to talk to 🙂 I’m a 26M from Scotland, UK, pretty chilled out and happy to talk about/listen to just about everything.
As for my hobbies - I am a MASSIVE horror fan and I love everything creepy/scary,
I watch/play football to keep fit and I like gaming(PS5) whenever I have the spare time, always looking for game recommendations and people to play with.
I love being outside, finding places to explore and most importantly spending time with my dog (feel free to send me pet photos too!) 🐶
I also have a lot of tattoos and love to see other people’s work, I’m always looking for new ideas and I love seeing what other people have so feel free to show me yours!
I don’t mind moving to a different platform too if it’s easier, Reddits chat system is terrible. Send me a message if you like 🙂

Hi! Trying this again in the hope of finding some new people to talk to 🙂 I’m a 26M from Scotland, UK, pretty chilled out and happy to talk about/listen to just about everything.
As for my hobbies - I am a MASSIVE horror fan and I love everything creepy/scary,
I watch/play football to keep fit and I like gaming(PS5) whenever I have the spare time, always looking for game recommendations and people to play with.
I love being outside, finding places to explore and most importantly spending time with my dog (feel free to send me pet photos too!) 🐶
I also have a lot of tattoos and love to see other people’s work, I’m always looking for new ideas and I love seeing what other people have so feel free to show me yours!
I don’t mind moving to a different platform too if it’s easier, Reddits chat system is terrible. Send me a message if you like 🙂

Hi! Trying this again in the hope of finding some new people to talk to 🙂 I’m a 26M from Scotland, UK, pretty chilled out and happy to talk about/listen to just about everything.
As for my hobbies - I am a MASSIVE horror fan and I love everything creepy/scary,
I watch/play football to keep fit and I like gaming(PS5) whenever I have the spare time, always looking for game recommendations and people to play with.
I love being outside, finding places to explore and most importantly spending time with my dog (feel free to send me pet photos too!) 🐶
I also have a lot of tattoos and love to see other people’s work, I’m always looking for new ideas and I love seeing what other people have so feel free to show me yours!
I don’t mind moving to a different platform too if it’s easier, Reddits chat system is terrible. Send me a message if you like 🙂

Hi! Trying this again in the hope of finding some new people to talk to 🙂 I’m a 26M from Scotland, UK, pretty chilled out and happy to talk about/listen to just about everything.
As for my hobbies - I am a MASSIVE horror fan and I love everything creepy/scary,
I watch/play football to keep fit and I like gaming(PS5) whenever I have the spare time, always looking for game recommendations and people to play with.
I love being outside, finding places to explore and most importantly spending time with my dog (feel free to send me pet photos too!) 🐶
I also have a lot of tattoos and love to see other people’s work, I’m always looking for new ideas and I love seeing what other people have so feel free to show me yours!
I don’t mind moving to a different platform too if it’s easier, Reddits chat system is terrible. Send me a message if you like 🙂

Hi! Trying this again in the hope of finding some new people to talk to 🙂 I’m a 26M from Scotland, UK, pretty chilled out and happy to talk about/listen to just about everything.
As for my hobbies - I am a MASSIVE horror fan and I love everything creepy/scary,
I watch/play football to keep fit and I like gaming(PS5) whenever I have the spare time, always looking for game recommendations and people to play with.
I love being outside, finding places to explore and most importantly spending time with my dog (feel free to send me pet photos too!) 🐶
I also have a lot of tattoos and love to see other people’s work, I’m always looking for new ideas and I love seeing what other people have so feel free to show me yours!
I don’t mind moving to a different platform too if it’s easier, Reddits chat system is terrible. Send me a message if you like 🙂

Hi! Trying this again in the hope of finding some new people to talk to 🙂 I’m a 26M from Scotland, UK, pretty chilled out and happy to talk about/listen to just about everything.
As for my hobbies - I am a MASSIVE horror fan and I love everything creepy/scary,
I watch/play football to keep fit and I like gaming(PS5) whenever I have the spare time, always looking for game recommendations and people to play with.
I love being outside, finding places to explore and most importantly spending time with my dog (feel free to send me pet photos too!) 🐶
I also have a lot of tattoos and love to see other people’s work, I’m always looking for new ideas and I love seeing what other people have so feel free to show me yours!
I don’t mind moving to a different platform too if it’s easier, Reddits chat system is terrible. Send me a message if you like 🙂

Hi, I recently ordered 20 ampules of 5ML from Cosmic Nootropics, and I am going to do a month-long cycle. I am 30 years old, athletic, and a former football player. I think that this is likely a good offsetting treatment, as well, for the fact that APOE4 (I have 1 allele) carriers do not naturally produce as much BDNF to repair the brain, and I am confident that I received TBIs while playing football for 10+ years of my life. I studied graduate work in analytic philosophy at a top school, and now am a full-time investor, but I've felt that I'm not quite as mentally sharp as I know I'm capable of performing, and would like to fix whatever issue is causing this -- do people notice an increase in motivation / pre-frontal cortex functioning from this treatment? I used to be maniacally goal-oriented, and I am wondering if APOE4 allele has inhibited my ability to repair itself after over-stimulating it.
I have two questions: (1) what is the best way to do this first cycle? I have read that 4 weeks, 5 days on and two days off per week is typical. And (2), given the APOE4 status, I am wondering if doing this in an ongoing maintenance fashion, i.e. after the first cycle, doing 5ML once per week, would be helpful.
As well, how many cycles per year of 1-month long treatments are typically recommended? I am hoping to receive the maximum long-term benefit. As well, if anyone could give an idea as how long the benefits last, and if they are permanent, that would be great.