Do you complain about poor service or general incompetence when you travel in hotels? Will you get any satisfaction?
We were staying at a Holiday Inn In Minnesota and on our second night our room key did not work. It was late, we were tired and wanted desperately to get into our room to sleep. Arriving at the lobby we saw a line of about ten people with one single front desk clerk. While we waited she was helping a befuddled older couple with a check-in issue. A full hour later the desk clerk and the two befuddled older couple were still working on their special issue. The line behind us continued to grow.
I complained verbally but got nowhere. The people in line complained and were ignored. I tried calling the IHG Holiday Inn Toll Free Customer Service Line to see if they would help but just got a voicemail.
What would you do in this situation?
(We left the line and checked into the cheap motel next door just to escape the situation. The next day we went over and talked to the manager of the Holiday Inn and she seemed uninterested in our plight. We wrote a complaint letter to IHG and are awaiting a reply.)

It’s no secret an ongoing conflict within this sub is fans vs. skeptics vs. “haters”. So instead of having the same continuous comments and arguments under and in posts let’s just talk about it, starting with a poll. Feel free to vote and then leave a comment. Respectful, constructive comments are fine. Hateful, antagonizing or unnecessarily rude ones will be deleted.
This is also not an open invitation to attack someone for their opinion. And there will be many differing opinions on here. The sub rules still apply so keep any discourse civil.
View Poll

I just updated to v65 and the brightness dropped a lot in passthrough, and the contrast dropped too! now it's really bad to play, it has lost all the brightness in mixed reality and also the color contrast! It's depressing!
it's true I can read notifications on my smartphone better now, but if I'm playing mixed reality with my Quest 3 the most important thing is to play well with bright colors, and not with these dead colors! I'm not interested in being able to read the smartphone, I'm interested in being able to play well!
and this update has significantly worsened the gaming experience in mixed reality it has made all the colors dead! the environment is so dark! even if I put the brightness at 100% it is still very dark!
I believe that meta should give users the possibility to adjust the brightness and contrast of the passthrough as the user wishes, or at least give two or three settings to choose from!
and not that Meta chooses for everyone, because not everyone has the same tastes! But beyond personal taste, undoubtedly playing is worse now, you can only read the smartphone better, I invite those who think like you to write a letter to Meta to report this thing through the error reporting of the viewer, so that in the future they may give us the possibility to choose to increase or not increase the brightness as it was before!

Hey guys. I'm a frequent reddit user but this is my first thread. I've been in this SR lifestyle for a few years now. This journey invites us to get to know who we really are. It's important sometimes to stop and analyze the journey.
With this I would like to share my main cause for relapse. I believe this is related to some of you. In my opinion, relapse comes from some action or consequence. If we are aware of it, we should evolve and deal with it, or avoid it as much as possible.
My main and only reason for relapse is having a messy house. Uncleaned kitchen, cooking, washing and ironing, etc...
When I let tasks pile up, procrastination sets in, and with it, the dreaded relapse.
I'm an organized and tidy person. But when I'm overworked, I let some tasks pile up. I used Sundays to put everything in order when I could. Sometimes I accumulated a lot and got bored using my free time for household chores.
I realized my shortcoming after a streak of 160 days. I went crazy with so much to do at home and relapse came. That was always the reason. I realized that and corrected it.
Guys, always keep your space clean and organized. This will give you more good energy.
Understanding the reasons for relapse and correcting it is very important for growth.
What about you? Have you identified anything that keeps you going off course?
Thanks and keep Honorable!

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Ultimate Guide to CompTIA Certification Study Resources: Prepare for Online Exams with Confidence
CompTIA certifications are a great way to kickstart or advance your IT career. With a wide range of certifications available, it can be overwhelming to know where to start studying. In this blog, we'll provide a comprehensive guide to CompTIA certification study resources, helping you prepare for online exams with confidence.
CompTIA Certification Levels:
Before we dive into study resources, let's quickly cover the three main levels of CompTIA certifications:

1. Core Certifications: Entry-level certifications covering IT fundamentals, such as A+, Network+, and Security+.
2. Specialty Certifications: Mid-level certifications focusing on specific areas like cybersecurity, data analytics, and cloud computing.
3. Professional Certifications: Advanced certifications for experienced professionals, such as CASP+ and PenTest+.

Study Resources:

Official CompTIA Resources:

1. CompTIA Learning and Training: Download practice questions, exam objectives, and study guides.
2. Certification Study Guides and Books: CompTIA offers study guides in both ebook and print formats.
3. Online Learning Platform: Interactive online courses and study materials.

Free Study Resources:

1. CompTIA Free Practice Tests: Get free practice test questions for CompTIA certification exams.
2. Reddit Study Groups: Join online communities, like , to connect with others studying for the exam.
3. YouTube Study Channels: Channels like Professor Messer and CompTIA offer video study materials.

Paid Study Resources:

1. Udemy Courses: Comprehensive online courses covering various CompTIA certifications.
2. Pluralsight: Interactive online courses and study materials.
3. Study Guides and Books: Third-party study guides and books from publishers like Wiley and Sybex.

Additional Tips:

1. Make a study plan: Set aside dedicated time to study and review material.
2. Practice, practice, practice: The more you practice, the more confident you'll feel on exam day.
3. Use flashcards: Flashcards can help you memorize key terms and concepts.
4. Join online communities: Connect with others studying for the exam to stay motivated and get help when needed.

Preparing for CompTIA certification exams requires dedication and the right study resources. By leveraging official CompTIA resources, free study materials, and paid study resources, you'll be well on your way to passing your exam and advancing your IT career. Remember to stay focused, practice regularly, and join online communities for support. Good luck on your exam!
Additional Resources:

• CompTIA Certification Website
• CompTIA Study Guides
• CompTIA Free Practice Tests

(Yes, the creators already did this, but I wanted to try reproducing their results.)
First of all, there's definitely still issues with the dataset.

1. Questions mostly have 10 possible answers, but some have fewer "to remove unreasonable choices". This is supposed to be done by actually having <10 answers (I assume), but in some cases questions are padded with N/A at the end multiple times. Removing N/A from the end of the options list until only one existed resulted in removing 3314 options from the test. AFAIK N/A is never the correct answer to any question (I checked).
2. Some questions are duplicates. I kept only the first instance encountered. This removed 86 questions from the test. I didn't check if their answer options were also duplicates.
3. Some questions have duplicate answer options (i.e. A and C or whichever being the same answer). As this is obviously incorrect I removed these questions from the test. This removed ~400 questions. It should be pretty easy to fix these but I didn't want to spend more time.
4. Some questions are impossible to answer as they're missing info.
   • For example, question ID 2668 is "Which of the following scans can image brain function?" but it does not give further details, and the answer options are things like "I, II and III only".
   • I only noticed one of these but I'm pretty sure there are more.
5. Some questions have very bad formatting, like 11797:
   • \textquotedblleftNew business firms can under price older firms, because thenewer firms can buy the latest equipment and are not bur-denedwith the older, less economical equipment which olderfirms must retire before they can economically adopt thenew. This is why continued technological progress contributesto maintaining a competitive economic system." Explain the er-rors in both sentences.
   • Smarter models will probably do better on things like this, but I don't think the formatting is intentional.

For my first run, I used temperature 0.2 (they used 0.1) and this system prompt:

You are a knowledgeable expert. When given a multiple choice question, think it through then give your single final answer as The answer is ....

Here is their system prompt:

You are an knowledge expert, you are supposed to answer the multi-choice question to derive your final answer as The answer is ....

I'm not a fan of the phrasing, but more importantly in my preliminary testing I noticed that GPT-4o interpreted it to mean that it could give multiple answers. My "single final answer" was intended to prevent that. This mostly worked, but when answering questions that involved a lot of LaTeX in the CoT it would sometimes format the answer using LaTeX, making regex matching unreasonably hard. (I didn't fix those, scoring them as failures.)
For my second run, I used temperature 0.5 (which OpenAI uses in their simple-evals repo) and this system prompt:

Answer the following multiple choice question. The last line of your response should be of the following format: 'Answer: ($LETTER)' (without quotes) where LETTER is a single one of the options. Think step by step before answering.

This is based on this prompt from OpenAI's evals. OpenAI's says to pick one of "ABCD" but I was too lazy to generate that dynamically so I changed it a bit. It seems to work well. I used the regex Answer\s*:\s*\(\$?([A-Ja-j])\) to capture the answer.
If the model's output didn't seem to give an answer at all I manually checked it. This was:

• Mostly GPT-4o saying that none of the answers are correct
• Sometimes the model entering an infinite loop until it ran out of output space
• A few times the model giving a numeric answer, often one that had no correspondence to possible answers. Scored as a failure.
• A few times very slightly bad formatting that my regex didn't match. If the answer it gave was correct I manually fixed it, on the rationale that a slightly better regex could have caught it, otherwise I left it alone (since it wouldn't affect the score either way).

Here are the results I got, plus the original results from TIGER Lab @ UWaterloo.

Models	Prompting	Overall	Biology	Business	Chemistry	ComputerScience	Economics	Engineering	Health	History	Law	Math	Philosophy	Physics	Psychology	Other
GPT-4o (TIGER Lab)	CoT	0.7149	0.8504	0.7852	0.7428	0.7512	0.784	0.5401	0.7152	0.6718	0.5393	0.762	0.6947	0.7355	0.7726	0.7091
GPT-4o (my first run)	CoT	0.7100	0.8441	0.7802	0.7502	0.7404	0.7763	0.5740	0.7061	0.6761	0.5753	0.7901	0.6760	0.7349	0.7611	0.7117
GPT-4o (my second run)	CoT	0.7113	0.8441	0.7725	0.7628	0.7506	0.7662	0.5584	0.6964	0.6641	0.5597	0.7772	0.6474	0.7378	0.7445	0.7041

So I'd say the results themselves are basically "yep, that sure is how it scores". I don't know if my overall scores are actually slightly worse or if it's the effect of removing almost 500 questions from a 12.3k question dataset.
Total cost: maybe $160 based on token counts, messed up cost tracking at first.
The second run had approx 2.17M input tokens and 5.04M output tokens. Naively scaling this to other models (without actually using their tokenizers, and assuming they'll give identical output lengths) gives these approximate prices:

• Claude 3 Opus: $410
• GPT-4-0314: $367
• GPT-4-32k-0314: $608

I don't intend to run those.
I'll post the inputs/outputs of both runs if anyone knows a good place to upload password-protected zips (to avoid accidental scraping, since everything posted to reddit is trained on).

Looking for tips for formatting a new spread? Never bullet journaled before and want to get started? Post them all here! This thread will be reposted every Thursday, so please save questions for this thread. Happy journaling!
If you like the idea of weekly generated discussion threads, please feel free to message the mods with ideas for other themed threads!

It actually could sound stupid but for me is really important. I, (16F), go to an arts school to the faculty of Architecture, which is pretty heavy, not going to lie, and I happen to be on almost deadline of a school project, called PCTO, which in Italian stands for 'percorsi per le competenze trasversali e l'orientamento' (Translated to: paths for transversal skills and orientation) which is to represent a room with a copula, an raised, (in italian: un'Alzata.), and with an altar, all of an important thing about a church that had been robbed of a painting.
So, I happen to have to work on it till Monday so I have 3 days to finish it, while also writing a relation about all of it and my sister, (18th F), happened to invite her friends over to grab a coffee, to have a chat and so on.
I also had warned her that I had to work on this important project but she got mad at me, saying that I could work on it in my brothers room, he is out of town for work, but the problem is I have to work on a big table, (the paper is 50×70 — previously 50×100, had to cut it.) And in vertical.
She got mad at me and also insisted till she finally gave in but still was mad at me that she always glared at me, and also scolded me for not saying 'hello' to her friends because I was busy.
So, Reddit, am I the AITHA? Also, I apologise for the long post, I just want to hear Reddit opinions and advices on how to react to these kind of events.
Have a good day/night!

You know what the best part is about playing Engineer in Team Fortress 2? You get to watch how angry everyone gets when they get shot by your sentry guns. Me and my best friend Jose both main Engineer, and can confirm that the best way to spend your Friday nights after school is to set up a sentry and get ready for the rage. There’s been matches where we haven’t even used our actual guns even once, but racked up lots of kills just because of the sentries.
One day Jose called me up with an idea that was either going to be the stupidest thing ever or the smartest thing ever. He wanted to fill an entire team with only Engineers and watch the chaos unfold. I couldn’t stop laughing at the mental image in my head and agreed with the plan. I joined a Discord server with everyone else on the team.
I convinced my cousin Matthew to join, and he in turn brought along his little brother Zack. According to Matthew, it took quite a bit of convincing because Zack was a Scout main who couldn’t stand Engineers. He eventually got through to his little brother by promising him a Steam gift card. I even got their dad Graham to play along (yes, I have an uncle who plays TF2. How cool is that?). Jose enlisted his friends, who turned into friends of friends and soon enough we had a team of 16 Engineers.
To say that we caused chaos that night was an absolute understatement. As soon as we joined the game the text chat was flooded with messages from the other team wondering what the hell was going on. And they only got worse from that point on. We surrounded our control points with a ring of sentries that people just kept running into. I saw keyboard smashes and heard other teen boys’ voices crack in rage and many, many words that I personally don’t care to repeat here.
The most skilled Engineer was this guy named Craig, who was a friend of one of Jose’s friends. Not only was he the main person capturing the enemy control points with some very strategically placed teleporters, but he was also really friendly and encouraging to all of us. I didn’t know what he looked like, but from his voice it sounded like he was in his early 20s.
Me and Craig started to chat more and more on Discord. He was a super nice guy who was also really fun to talk with. He took time out of his day to teach me how to be an even better Engineer player. Whenever someone started dissing me in the voice chat, he firmly told them to leave me alone. After seeing my fair share of toxicity in the TF2 community, it was nice to know that this complete stranger was looking out for me.
This whole Team Engineer thing became a weekly tradition for us on Friday nights. It was something everyone could look forward to after work or school. One time after everyone logged off and said their goodbyes, Craig sent a message a few hours later in our Discord:
“You guys gotta check this out. I found the weirdest server ever. It’s literally Engineer heaven. Meet me at vl_sentry.”
I was still in the mood to play and I could stay up late tonight, so I hopped back on TF2. I saw that Jose, Graham and this other girl we played with named Lynn were also online. I found vl_sentry and connected to the server. The map was called Valley of the Sentries and it was created by Valve.
It took my computer a little bit to process the map, and it took me even longer than that to process what I was seeing.
The map looked like a chessboard with 3D-sculpted hills. The sky was just pure white. Not even white walls, just the color white. Every square had a blue sentry on it and there were about 4 or 5 other Engineers jumping around, spamming their voice lines. That’s when I realized that we were the only ones there, and there was no red team.
“Hey Sean, glad you could make it :)” Craig said in the text chat. “What the hell is this?” I asked. He told me that this was a server that one of his friends showed him. The friend said he was introduced to the map by a friend of his who knew someone who worked at Valve. Craig then went on to explain that apparently Valley of the Sentries was an experiment to test the limits of the sentry guns and their effect on the servers. Rumor has it that the map is infinite.
“Check this out.” said Jose. He switched to Heavy and immediately got shot down. All of the sentries turned towards him. There were so many of them that it made the game lag a ton. He respawned as Engineer and the sentries just kept on spinning.
“WTF?” I typed. “We tried it with all the other classes and it does the same thing.” said Craig. “It ignores Engineers, but shoots everyone else.” Lynn added. “And that’s why we’re the best class. Engineer power!” Graham joked.
I asked what would happen if you were to play as Spy and sap one of the sentries. “I tried, but you gotta have a godly reaction time to activate it.” said Jose. As soon as he said “godly reaction time”, I knew I had to try it out just for the bragging rights.
Respawn. Shot down. Respawn. Shot down. Respawn. Shot down.
Yeah, I did not have a godly reaction time. The others kept spamming “lol” in the chat each time I failed. I got annoyed pretty quickly and stopped trying. Then out of nowhere, all the sentries turned away from me and started firing at someone. I turned around and all five of us were still standing there. I looked at the top bar that shows how many characters were in the game. There were only five Engineers and they were all on the same team. So what the hell were the sentries targeting?
I started to walk in the direction that the sentries were facing and Jose followed me too. We moved really slow, not only because of the sentries on every square but also the uphill climbs. It was just us two in the chat for a while, talking about seeing each other back at school on Monday while we made our slow walk across the map. Then our conversation was interrupted by a chat message from Lynn.
“Why is there a man in the sky?”
Me and Jose tried to get to Lynn to see what she was talking about as fast as possible, but we moved like snails. To get back to the spawn point, we both switched classes, instantly died and respawned as Engineers. I don’t think we respawned in the same place we started from. I don’t even know where we respawned. There were no landmarks or notable things to help you find your way. Just hills, valleys, and sentries.
I asked Lynn where she was and she just told me she was with Graham and Craig. Only that wasn’t very helpful because we didn’t know where they were either. We stood there, stumped for a minute and a half until Jose got an idea. He said that she should just switch classes and respawn, because then all of the sentries would point toward her and we could follow them all the way back to her. She made the switch, got shot down, and we instantly knew where to find her.
We finally got close enough to kind of make out the vague shape of a few Engineers over the non-existent horizon. Me and Jose were relieved, until all the sentries pointed to our right. I swiveled around and saw them open fire on…nothing. I checked with Jose to see if he caught something I didn’t, but he also didn’t see what they were shooting at. I decided that it wasn’t that important and continued to walk towards the rest of the group.
We met up with Lynn, Craig and Graham, disappointed that we made that trek all for nothing. Even though we were all together now, it just felt so lonely. The only sound coming from my computer was the constant beeping of the sentries in perfect sync. I don’t know why, but it made me so uneasy. I attempted to break the silence by going to the voice lines and playing the iconic Engineer “Nope” soundbite. It echoed across the checkered land with no response.
It was about 12:30 AM at this point and I was starting to feel more and more unsettled with each passing minute. There was just something about this black and white world that I felt creeped out by. Before Craig invited us to come over, there was no one else on the server. Who would even want to play on this map, anyways? It’s so unfairly balanced that only one class can survive. Movement speed was super slow, and you can’t even really do anything except watch the sentries turn and turn and turn forever. It was like hypnosis, except I didn’t feel sleepy or relaxed at all.
Speaking of being sleepy, Jose said he was getting tired and was going to be logging off. We all said goodbye to him and continued chatting amongst ourselves. It sounds stupid, but my stomach dropped when I saw the fifth Engineer portrait disappear. One less person to talk to. One less person to keep myself from wondering what else was out here. I could have sworn that after he left, the beeping got louder.
“So is this map actually infinite?” asked Graham. “Only one way to find out.” Craig said. “Just keep on walking and see if it goes on forever.” “Why don’t you just fire a shotgun and see how far it goes?” Lynn suggested.
I took out the shotgun and fired. The bullet flew off into the white distance and disappeared.
Then I heard the distinct sound of someone getting shot.
A message appeared in the chat, from someone named sentry_check_pattern.
“sentry_check_pattern: stop that”
Once again I looked at the top bar. It just showed four blue Engineers. That meant we were the only ones on the server. Or so we thought.
The chat was flooded with our confusion, almost as if everyone realized at the same time that something wasn’t right. None of us moved an inch.
“What even is this place?” I asked, hoping that the mysterious user would provide me with an answer. “Must be Engineer heaven.” said Graham.
“sentry_check_pattern: more like my personal hell”
This was the moment that made me trust my intuition. I knew there was a reason why I found this map so creepy. I wanted to leave the server, but there was just one thing keeping me back- my own curiosity. My wish to unveil the mysteries of the Valley of the Sentries.
“Okay this is really freaking me out. See ya guys.” said Lynn before she left the server. The fourth Engineer’s portrait disappeared from the top bar.
No no no, please. Please don’t go. Don’t leave us. I wouldn’t want to be alone here. Now there’s just three of us, and I really hope that number doesn’t go down anymore. When the others were here, this was just a weird TF2 map that we were exploring together as friends. And now it feels like we’re trapped in this infinite world, but we aren’t alone. The only problem is we don’t know what else is here.
I shuddered, imagining Craig and Graham ditching me and leaving me all alone in the Valley of the Sentries. Just me and whoever- no, whatever was talking to us.
“sentry_check_pattern: you don’t know how good you have it
you can leave at any time
i can’t”
This terrified me. What a horrible thought, never being able to leave this place. But of course, no one could really be trapped here. It’s a Team Fortress 2 server. You can just exit the game and shut your computer. No one could be trapped in a video game.
But if you think about it, aren’t the characters themselves trapped? They can’t leave the game. They’re characters. They don’t even know they’re in a game. You or the computer controls all their actions. They don’t have free will. And if you’re bad at the game, they’ll just keep dying over and over again.
Wait, why was I thinking about this?
I carefully considered what I wanted to say next in the chat. Whatever I said could either answer all my burning questions or leave me asking more. But sentry_check_pattern talked first.
“sentry_check_pattern: i was made for one purpose
to die over and over again”
Oh my god. It was like this person read my mind and knew exactly what I was thinking about. Who or what was I talking to? I turned all the way around to make sure that no one else was there. It was just the two blue Engineers standing behind me. Just Graham and Craig. And that man with the checkered skin.
Startled, I asked my friends if they saw what I saw. It took them a second, but both of them confirmed that yes, there was indeed something else there. A basic male model with the same chessboard texture as the map. Graham immediately started to shoot at him. Nothing. It just went straight through him.
“sentry_check_pattern: you can’t kill what’s already been killed millions of times over
valve made that mistake too
every company has that one failed project they don’t talk about
and that’s me”
Whoever was behind this weird account was talking crazy. The Team Fortress 2 developers were very open about everything like fixing their glitches and bugs. They always posted things on the official blog about the development process. They’re so open about their failures and always promise to fix them.
“Stop with the weird stuff. We just wanted to know what the deal is with this server and the weird chess guy. Do you know anything about it?” Graham asked in the text chat.
“sentry_check_pattern: know anything?
you’re not very bright, graham
none of you are
do you not realize where you are and what you’re talking to”
Something about the way sentry_check_pattern used Graham’s name gave me goosebumps. I didn’t know what I was talking to. I didn’t even think I wanted to know at this point.
“sentry_check_pattern: this is one of valve’s test servers
i’m the texture they use to check if the sentries work
read between the lines”
“Quiet, NPC.” Craig said. I laughed a little bit to fight off the awkward tension. Then I reminded myself that I was talking to a video game character, no- not even a character. A blank character model. A texture.
“sentry_check_pattern: just because i’m a character model doesn’t mean i can’t feel pain
open fire”
The sentries all swiveled around to face the man and shot at him. He kept falling to the ground, turning white and standing back up in the same position.
“sentry_check_pattern: cease fire”
All of the sentries stopped shooting and just went back to spinning around, their beeps echoing in the air.
“sentry_check_pattern: ready to see what i’ve been through for over a decade?
open fire”
Before any of us could react, the sentries opened fire on Craig all at once. He kept dying, but he didn’t explode the way you’re supposed to when you die in TF2. He just dropped to the floor, turned white, and respawned over and over again. There was no death scream. I tried to type something else in the chat but the game lagged so much that my typing just ended up as a string of random letters that meant nothing. Craig tried to type something out too. It just ended up as “wwwwwwwwwwthisishowitfeelswwwwwwwww” Then the game crashed and my computer shut down.
I hyperventilated. Then I laughed at myself for hyperventilating over a stupid computer game. It was Team Fortress 2 for god’s sake. That game with all the memes and goofy jokes. Stupid, stupid Sean. Scared of a character model. Jose would never let me live it down. I just laughed and laughed to push the fear away.
I closed my laptop and took out my phone to rewatch all of my favorite TF2 animations for the millionth time. As if they weren’t already the funniest things in the world, I forced myself to laugh even harder than usual. Every time I saw the Engineer, I couldn’t help but look at the reflection in his goggles. The reflection of an endless map of black and white squares.
Thankfully, nothing bad happened to my game, account or laptop. The next day I just went right back to playing and enjoying the rage coming from all the people who ran right into my sentries.
Team Engineer was still a thing, but it was never really the same. We played together a lot less frequently. It was still a lot of fun, but I felt a change that I couldn’t really describe.
We found out that Craig had lost all progress on his TF2 account. Everyone gifted him all his favorite cosmetics and we all pooled our money together to get him a Steam gift card. He video called us, crying at our kindness. It was the first time I ever even saw his face. He was a lot older than most of us. If I had to guess an age, I’d say somewhere around 30. He had black bangs and was wearing a TF2 shirt. His room was dark, only lit by his glowing computer screen. He thanked us repeatedly and even tried to return the gift card, but we were all adamant that he should keep it.
Speaking of Craig, we still kept in touch but he didn’t talk to me as much anymore. Any time I tried to ask him about vl_sentry, he ignored me for a few days.
The other day, I got some postcards from my cousin Matthew. He was very academic and happened to be studying at a private high school about 9 hours away from where I live. All of his postcards were pictures of him making funny faces with all his friends at favorite school activities like robotics, debate team, and chess club.
I looked at the chess club photo closely. Matthew and his friends were standing in front of a chessboard with a mirror on the wall. And for a split second, I could have sworn that the chessboard looked different in the mirror. It looked warped, like it wasn’t a flat board anymore. Like it almost had hills and valleys. No, it couldn’t be. I rubbed my eyes. There, in the mirror was a checkered man. I knew it was there. I swear on my mother’s life that there was another person in that photo. And then it was gone. Maybe the picture was just printed badly. But I had to make sure my eyes were right.
So I brought the postcard to school with me and I showed Jose. I asked him if he saw the checkered man in the mirror. He said no. But that wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear. That was the answer I hoped I wouldn’t hear. I asked him again. He said no again. Then I asked him another time. He said I was being annoying. So I asked another one of my friends. He said no too. So I moved on to yet another friend. He told me to stop.
I angrily clutched the postcard in my hand, crumpling it. I was the only one that saw what was really there. Everyone else was lying to me. They refused to see the truth.
I screamed and ripped up the postcard. I stomped on its pieces. I rubbed them in the dirt for good measure.
Somewhere in the distance, I heard the sound of electronics beeping.
It rang in my ears.
It was weirdly comforting to me.
You can leave the Valley of the Sentries. But the valley will never leave you.

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• Hack like a pro, build empires, survive the chaos.
• No bans ever - only mutes for hate speech, hard slurs, or chat spam.
️🕹️ Forge Your Path in a Pure Vanilla World:
• Experience the true essence of Minecraft with no vanilla altering plugins or meddling admins.
• Reach your potential in this survival wasteland with no resets ever.
🌍 World Exploration Extravaganza:
• Discover a vast 3x3 million block world border.
• Respawn within 500 blocks of 0 0, allowing you to redefine your survival journey.
• Explore and exploit the nether roof.
🔒No Teleports, No Shortcuts: Authentic Vanilla Anarchy
• Hard Difficulty, No Compromises: Test your survival skills in the toughest conditions.
• Uncover the mysteries below spawn - good luck!
💬 Shape the Future with Direct Input: Join our Discord and engage with the community.
• Server owner, Vorlice, is available for technical queries.
️• Launched in July 2023, always synced with the latest version (1.20.4).
• Powered by robust hardware in New York for a lag-free experience.
💎 Support the Chaos:
Vote or donate to color your name in chat and stand out in the vibrant community.
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org

🔥Welcome to Modern Anarchy🔥 - A Dedicated Community of Anarchy Enthusiasts!
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org
👾Anarchy at Its Finest with a Dedicated Community:
• Hack like a pro, build empires, survive the chaos.
• No bans ever - only mutes for hate speech, hard slurs, or chat spam.
️🕹️ Forge Your Path in a Pure Vanilla World:
• Experience the true essence of Minecraft with no vanilla altering plugins or meddling admins.
• Reach your potential in this survival wasteland with no resets ever.
🌍 World Exploration Extravaganza:
• Discover a vast 3x3 million block world border.
• Respawn within 500 blocks of 0 0, allowing you to redefine your survival journey.
• Explore and exploit the nether roof.
🔒No Teleports, No Shortcuts: Authentic Vanilla Anarchy
• Hard Difficulty, No Compromises: Test your survival skills in the toughest conditions.
• Uncover the mysteries below spawn - good luck!
💬 Shape the Future with Direct Input: Join our Discord and engage with the community.
• Server owner, Vorlice, is available for technical queries.
️• Launched in July 2023, always synced with the latest version (1.20.4).
• Powered by robust hardware in New York for a lag-free experience.
💎 Support the Chaos:
Vote or donate to color your name in chat and stand out in the vibrant community.
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org

🔥Welcome to Modern Anarchy🔥 - A Dedicated Community of Anarchy Enthusiasts!
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org
👾Anarchy at Its Finest with a Dedicated Community:
• Hack like a pro, build empires, survive the chaos.
• No bans ever - only mutes for hate speech, hard slurs, or chat spam.
️🕹️ Forge Your Path in a Pure Vanilla World:
• Experience the true essence of Minecraft with no vanilla altering plugins or meddling admins.
• Reach your potential in this survival wasteland with no resets ever.
🌍 World Exploration Extravaganza:
• Discover a vast 3x3 million block world border.
• Respawn within 500 blocks of 0 0, allowing you to redefine your survival journey.
• Explore and exploit the nether roof.
🔒No Teleports, No Shortcuts: Authentic Vanilla Anarchy
• Hard Difficulty, No Compromises: Test your survival skills in the toughest conditions.
• Uncover the mysteries below spawn - good luck!
💬 Shape the Future with Direct Input: Join our Discord and engage with the community.
• Server owner, Vorlice, is available for technical queries.
️• Launched in July 2023, always synced with the latest version (1.20.4).
• Powered by robust hardware in New York for a lag-free experience.
💎 Support the Chaos:
Vote or donate to color your name in chat and stand out in the vibrant community.
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org

🔥Welcome to Modern Anarchy🔥 - A Dedicated Community of Anarchy Enthusiasts!
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org
👾Anarchy at Its Finest with a Dedicated Community:
• Hack like a pro, build empires, survive the chaos.
• No bans ever - only mutes for hate speech, hard slurs, or chat spam.
️🕹️ Forge Your Path in a Pure Vanilla World:
• Experience the true essence of Minecraft with no vanilla altering plugins or meddling admins.
• Reach your potential in this survival wasteland with no resets ever.
🌍 World Exploration Extravaganza:
• Discover a vast 3x3 million block world border.
• Respawn within 500 blocks of 0 0, allowing you to redefine your survival journey.
• Explore and exploit the nether roof.
🔒No Teleports, No Shortcuts: Authentic Vanilla Anarchy
• Hard Difficulty, No Compromises: Test your survival skills in the toughest conditions.
• Uncover the mysteries below spawn - good luck!
💬 Shape the Future with Direct Input: Join our Discord and engage with the community.
• Server owner, Vorlice, is available for technical queries.
️• Launched in July 2023, always synced with the latest version (1.20.4).
• Powered by robust hardware in New York for a lag-free experience.
💎 Support the Chaos:
Vote or donate to color your name in chat and stand out in the vibrant community.
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org

🔥Welcome to Modern Anarchy🔥 - A Dedicated Community of Anarchy Enthusiasts!
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org
👾Anarchy at Its Finest with a Dedicated Community:
• Hack like a pro, build empires, survive the chaos.
• No bans ever - only mutes for hate speech, hard slurs, or chat spam.
️🕹️ Forge Your Path in a Pure Vanilla World:
• Experience the true essence of Minecraft with no vanilla altering plugins or meddling admins.
• Reach your potential in this survival wasteland with no resets ever.
🌍 World Exploration Extravaganza:
• Discover a vast 3x3 million block world border.
• Respawn within 500 blocks of 0 0, allowing you to redefine your survival journey.
• Explore and exploit the nether roof.
🔒No Teleports, No Shortcuts: Authentic Vanilla Anarchy
• Hard Difficulty, No Compromises: Test your survival skills in the toughest conditions.
• Uncover the mysteries below spawn - good luck!
💬 Shape the Future with Direct Input: Join our Discord and engage with the community.
• Server owner, Vorlice, is available for technical queries.
️• Launched in July 2023, always synced with the latest version (1.20.4).
• Powered by robust hardware in New York for a lag-free experience.
💎 Support the Chaos:
Vote or donate to color your name in chat and stand out in the vibrant community.
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org

🔥Welcome to Modern Anarchy🔥 - A Dedicated Community of Anarchy Enthusiasts!
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org
👾Anarchy at Its Finest with a Dedicated Community:
• Hack like a pro, build empires, survive the chaos.
• No bans ever - only mutes for hate speech, hard slurs, or chat spam.
️🕹️ Forge Your Path in a Pure Vanilla World:
• Experience the true essence of Minecraft with no vanilla altering plugins or meddling admins.
• Reach your potential in this survival wasteland with no resets ever.
🌍 World Exploration Extravaganza:
• Discover a vast 3x3 million block world border.
• Respawn within 500 blocks of 0 0, allowing you to redefine your survival journey.
• Explore and exploit the nether roof.
🔒No Teleports, No Shortcuts: Authentic Vanilla Anarchy
• Hard Difficulty, No Compromises: Test your survival skills in the toughest conditions.
• Uncover the mysteries below spawn - good luck!
💬 Shape the Future with Direct Input: Join our Discord and engage with the community.
• Server owner, Vorlice, is available for technical queries.
️• Launched in July 2023, always synced with the latest version (1.20.4).
• Powered by robust hardware in New York for a lag-free experience.
💎 Support the Chaos:
Vote or donate to color your name in chat and stand out in the vibrant community.
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org

🔥Welcome to Modern Anarchy🔥 - A Dedicated Community of Anarchy Enthusiasts!
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org
👾Anarchy at Its Finest with a Dedicated Community:
• Hack like a pro, build empires, survive the chaos.
• No bans ever - only mutes for hate speech, hard slurs, or chat spam.
️🕹️ Forge Your Path in a Pure Vanilla World:
• Experience the true essence of Minecraft with no vanilla altering plugins or meddling admins.
• Reach your potential in this survival wasteland with no resets ever.
🌍 World Exploration Extravaganza:
• Discover a vast 3x3 million block world border.
• Respawn within 500 blocks of 0 0, allowing you to redefine your survival journey.
• Explore and exploit the nether roof.
🔒No Teleports, No Shortcuts: Authentic Vanilla Anarchy
• Hard Difficulty, No Compromises: Test your survival skills in the toughest conditions.
• Uncover the mysteries below spawn - good luck!
💬 Shape the Future with Direct Input: Join our Discord and engage with the community.
• Server owner, Vorlice, is available for technical queries.
️• Launched in July 2023, always synced with the latest version (1.20.4).
• Powered by robust hardware in New York for a lag-free experience.
💎 Support the Chaos:
Vote or donate to color your name in chat and stand out in the vibrant community.
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org

🔥Welcome to Modern Anarchy🔥 - A Dedicated Community of Anarchy Enthusiasts!
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org
👾Anarchy at Its Finest with a Dedicated Community:
• Hack like a pro, build empires, survive the chaos.
• No bans ever - only mutes for hate speech, hard slurs, or chat spam.
️🕹️ Forge Your Path in a Pure Vanilla World:
• Experience the true essence of Minecraft with no vanilla altering plugins or meddling admins.
• Reach your potential in this survival wasteland with no resets ever.
🌍 World Exploration Extravaganza:
• Discover a vast 3x3 million block world border.
• Respawn within 500 blocks of 0 0, allowing you to redefine your survival journey.
• Explore and exploit the nether roof.
🔒No Teleports, No Shortcuts: Authentic Vanilla Anarchy
• Hard Difficulty, No Compromises: Test your survival skills in the toughest conditions.
• Uncover the mysteries below spawn - good luck!
💬 Shape the Future with Direct Input: Join our Discord and engage with the community.
• Server owner, Vorlice, is available for technical queries.
️• Launched in July 2023, always synced with the latest version (1.20.4).
• Powered by robust hardware in New York for a lag-free experience.
💎 Support the Chaos:
Vote or donate to color your name in chat and stand out in the vibrant community.
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org

Hello Belfasters, I’ve unexpectedly taken up the moderatorship over at the alas mostly dead CasualNI sub created a while back and I would like to invite you all to join and give it another chance.
Though I know this particular sub isn’t very political there is no reason we cannot have our own wee thriving spot like Casual Ireland or Causal UK and I’m quite sure there are many people here that would like a local sub to see and discuss local matters much like this sub but without our boring, repetitive and toxic tribalist politics being allowed in, nope, leave that at the door.
So if you want a sub like this one but free of our incessant petty politics Join CasualNI everyone is welcome!

I've come to a dark, and difficult realization this last week, and ever since I've been really tired and operating on autopilot. I don't feel safe talking to anyone I know about this, so I'm coming to you, internet strangers. Every second of downtime that I get, I go back to this thought, and it's weighing on me.
But first, some back story. This is going to seem totally unrelated, but just take the ride with me real quick.
Although in many ways I lived a privileged life growing up, my parents and younger brother were all emotionally, verbally, financially, and often times physically abusive. There were times when I feared for my life. But perhaps the worst of it was that they were careful. They carefully built a reputation for me--clumsy, strong-willed, dishonest. It was a reputation that I internalized and grew to think was true, up until I had my daughter. Now, she's nearly three, and I am finally breaking my family's hold on me. Permanently.
Like most abuse victims, I tried to leave them several times. It was my baby's father who taught me how to leave for good, and who taught me the importance of severing ties permanently. When I first left him, I needed financial support from my parents, and was grateful to have it. I know so many victims don't have that and can't get out because of it. And, while they were the lesser of two evils, they've proved in the last few years over and over that they are still, in fact, an evil. And one I need out of my life. My dad got me a job when I was well enough to work again after I left, but it only gave him more access to me. And I let him. I'm a grown adult woman. At any moment I could have had the courage and the strength to just walk away. No amount of perceived financial security (because relying on them is not financial security) is worth what I've gone through emotionally on behalf of him and this 'job'. But now, after years of moving over and over again and not feeling safe or secure, my daughter and I have housing that I won't have to worry about losing for the foreseeable future.
I have provided for her a roof over her head, but more than that, a place to grow in and call her own. A place where she can put posters on her wall and have a playground in the back yard and raise a puppy. It's beautiful, and it means that I know that I can now pursue a career that better aligns with the schedule, work-life balance, and emotional fulfillment that she and I need to better our lives. In other words, I've put in my two weeks' at that job so that I can find something more sustainable and sever my ties with my family closer to for-good.
I think that this is why I've had this sudden realization about my daughter's dad. It has been an incredibly emotional time. The universe seems to be throwing tests at me left and right, as if to say, are you sure? Will you really go through with it this time?
And I will. I have faith in myself as a mother more so than I have ever had faith in myself as a person. I know what my daughter needs me to do, so I'll do it. I know where I want to be so that she can grow and thrive, so I will go there.
But it has reminded me of the person I was, who did not know this, and who did not feel so sure.
When I first met my ex, he said and did all of the right things. I was a newly appointed executive in a male-dominated industry, and I was young and single in a conservative area where any indication that I was not wearing a chastity belt read as an invitation to pursue to every man I worked with or around. I was fresh out of another abusive relationship, still repeating the cycle my family had taught me, and was vulnerable.
And he played the part of my savior very well. We were together two years, and I supported him through COVID and losing his high-paying engineer job only to one day, suddenly, discover that virtually everything about him was a lie. Not only was he cheating on me--heavily, while I was at work and he was pretending to freelance, with several women including some I thought were my friends--but he had no college degree, much less a master's degree in engineering, and he had never had the job he allegedly lost. He was a con-artist with two children by two different women, a separate fiancee he'd been with since high school and kept trying to bring into our lives, and so much more. He was using his older, disabled brother's ssn at the job I had gotten him to avoid paying child support. He had even lied about how his parents died.
I'm not even sure I knew his legal name.
To be clear, I found out about the cheating first. That was it. The rest of it, I'm sure I had vague suspicions of. But I had trusted him. If something was off, then he probably had a sound explanation and it wasn't my business. I was young and stupid, and he was still acting perfectly normal.
I broke up with him, then, just to find out a month later that despite using birth control and condoms religiously, and despite having more than one prognosis that I would never conceive let alone carry a child, I was pregnant. At the time, I was no contact with my entire family and had been further isolated from my friends by my then-boyfriend. Plus, the company I worked for was showing signs of selling--my job was by no means secure, and especially not so because they had a history of firing pregnant women in my position exactly two months after their return from maternity leave.
The point was, I was desperate, and I was scared, and I didn't know that the father of my child was a monster, so I tried to make it work, thinking that my daughter, surely, needed a father figure. And for his part, he seemed remorseful. He promised to go to counseling and agreed to certain conditions and, again, said all of the right things.
And then he started drinking. And screaming. And demanding. And...threatening, and then doing.
But at that point, I was alone. I was halfway through a complicated pregnancy that made me incredibly ill with small town doctors who were gaslighting me and not helping me, the writing was on the wall at work and I was enduring slander and drama there, and I had no one and nowhere else to turn. So I pushed through. I tried to leave him when I was about 22 weeks along. I enlisted the help of my friend, who supported me, and I thought I was home free.
But that night was one of the most horrific nights of my life. The only person I've been able to tell about it was my lawyer, a year later, when I went in to make sure my daughter was protected. By the way, he's not in either of our lives at all and will never be. I have and will continue to do everything in my power to keep him away from us. Not that he could find us if he tried.
Things only got worse after that night. and at some point. I told a trusted friend and my mom (breaking no contact) that I intended to leave. Safely, and in time. I started freelancing again and looking for other jobs, and I played house the best I could to keep myself and baby safe. I ended up being ordered to go on bed rest two weeks early, And then I gave birth, and my daughter and I both almost died.
It was horrific, and traumatic, and sent me into a terrible spiral. It was all I could do to care for my daughter. But it became very quickly apparent that I was running out of time to get her out. And this is where the realization comes in.
His alcoholism and verbal and emotional abuse were increasing in frequency and intensity. He was also growing more violent--even if he was just punching holes in doors. But he was also...weird with our daughter. I did everything I could not to have to leave him alone with her, and she was only left with him twice.
Once, for an hour, because I had to go into work and handle something in the middle of the day. He left my 1mo infant daughter lying, asleep, on her belly, on a very high bed with loose blankets and pillows, alone in our apartment while he moved something from one apartment to another. I have no idea for how long.
I tried to breastfeed, at first, and there were issues with that so she was waking up often and hard to put back to sleep. We later found out she wasn't getting enough milk because of a tongue tie and started supplementing with formula at two weeks. I have heavy suspicions that I was also underproducing because of stress and emotional duress. One night, he was frustrated because even though I was sleeping in the living room and taking care of the baby while he slept in the bed, he couldn't sleep, and blamed me for being an incompetent mother. He took her from me, and put her to sleep with him in bed. I knew he was drunk. I went in to check on her--I was anxious, I had done tons of research on safe sleep. He saw me, screamed at me, and then blamed me for waking her up.
Later, he would try to put rice cereal in her bottle and make those "knockout bottles" that are incredibly dangerous when I wasn't looking. There were a number of weird incidents like this which he chalked up to being older than me, and being the way he'd raised his other two babies. And back then I really thought it was just all apart of the abuse--targeted at me.
We got out when she was five months old and today she's a sweet, happy, healthy kid.
But, and honestly maybe this should have occurred to me before, I can not shake the heaviness of the conclusion that remembering all of these incidents has brought me to; he wanted her to die. I mean, I guess in a roundabout way he expressed this. He started berating me for not getting an abortion almost immediately after I passed the legal time to get one done where I'm from (they're completely illegal now but were not at the time). I'm not anti-abortion, by any means, but it felt like it came out of nowhere. He also refused to have any part in naming her or preparing for her arrival--even in raising her. I always thought that these were just manipulation tactics. That he was just saying malicious things to get under my skin.
Now that I'm writing this, I also remember one of the last texts he sent to me over a year ago, alleging that he had shot and killed someone before. It wasn't an active threat to me. It was just part of a psychosis spiral where he was trying to explain that we could live safely with him in his new apartment even though it wasn't in a safe area or something, and so I really just discarded it. I didn't see him anymore. He didn't know where we lived. He was only allowed to contact me still because I was building a case against him. It didn't seem like it mattered.
Now? Today? I think that if I hadn't left with her when I did, we might both be dead already. More than that, I think that if I had not had her and I had ended up back with him--or back in another abusive relationship with anyone else--that I would certainly be dead. I might have been the one to physically take us both and leave, but she saved me first.
So that's it. That's what I've been struggling with. And I haven't really fully processed what that means for me, yet, except that I've made another appointment with my lawyer to take additional safety measures for my daughter. But emotionally? I'm not sure. I'll have to sit with this, and I just needed to say it somewhere. If you read all of this, thank you.
tldr; i left my ex when my daughter by him was 5 months old, and now she's nearly 3 years old and we are no contact with him, but i've recently been hit with memories of actions he took when she was an infant that lead me to believe he may have been subconsciously or even actively trying to take her life

I have finally made the decision folks! Below is my formal letter of resignation that I am building to officially remove myself from the cult! For obvious reasons I have not attached my name, address, or member number, but those will all be included in the real thing. Please Let me know what I can add or change to keep the creeps away from me for good!😊 (I did use a template I found online for the basic structure, but decided to get a bit more "assertive" then the one I found lol)
This letter is my formal resignation from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and it is effective immediately. I herby withdraw my consent to being treated as a member and I withdraw my consent to being subject to church rules, policies, beliefs, and discipline. As I am no longer a member, I want my name and any and all matters and events associated with me including my baptism, permanently and complelty removed from the records of the church. I am also asking to remove my name from any and all membership roles of the church.
My resignation should be processed immediately, without any 'waiting periods'. I will not be dissuaded in this decision and am prepared to take legal action if my request to be removed from all church records is denied. I expect this matter to be handled promptly, and with respect and full confidentiality.
After the date of this letter marked above, the only contact I give my consent to receive is a single letter of confirmation to inform me that I am no longer listed as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Sincerely, Me😇