Crc accident avoidance course

II. The Narcissistic Personality of Our Time
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Social Influences on Narcissism
Every age develops its own peculiar forms of pathology, which express in exaggerated form its underlying character structure. In Freud’s time, hysteria and obsessional neurosis carried to extremes the personality traits associated with the capitalist order at an earlier stage in its development - acquisitiveness, fanatical devotion to work, and a fierce repression of sexuality. In our time, the preschizophrenic, borderline, or personality disorders have attracted increasing attention, along with schizophrenia itself. This “change in the form of neuroses has been observed and described since World War II by an ever-increasing number of psychiatrists.” According to Peter L. Giovacchini, “Clinicians are constantly faced with the seemingly increasing number of patients who do not fit current diagnostic categories” and who suffer not from “definitive symptoms” but from “vague, ill-defined complaints.” “When I refer to ‘this type of patient,’” he writes, “practically everyone knows to whom I am referring.” The growing prominence of “character disorders” seems to signify an underlying change in the organization of personality, from what has been called inner-direction to narcissism.
Allen Wheelis argued in 1958 that the change in the “patterns of neuroses” fell “within the personal experience of older psychoanalysts,” while younger ones “become aware of it from the discrepancy between the older descriptions of neuroses and the problems presented by the patients who come daily to their offices. The change is from symptom neuroses to character disorders.” Heinz Lichtenstein, who questioned the additional assertion that it reflected a change in personality structure, nevertheless wrote in 1963 that the “change in neurotic patterns” already constituted a “well-known fact.” In the seventies, such reports have become increasingly common. “It is not accident,” Herbert Hendin notes, “that at the present time the dominant events in psychoanalysis are the rediscovery of narcissism and the new emphasis on the psychological significance of death.” “What hysteria and the obsessive neuroses were to Freud and his early colleagues…at the beginning of this century,” writes Michael Beldoch, “the narcissistic disorders are to the workaday analyst in these last few decades before the next millennium. Today’s patients by and large do not suffer from hysterical paralyses of the legs or hand-washing compulsions; instead it is their very psychic selves that have gone numb or that they must scrub and rescrub in an exhausting and unending effort to come clean.” These patients suffer from “pervasive feelings of emptiness and a deep disturbance of self-esteem.” Burness E. Moore notes that narcissistic disorders have become more and more common. According to Sheldon Bach, “You used to see people coming in with hand-washing compulsions, phobias, and familiar neuroses. Now you see mostly narcissists.” Gilbert J. Rose maintains that the psychoanalytic outlook, “inappropriately transplanted from analytic practice” to everyday life, has contributed to “global permissiveness” and the “over-domestication of instinct,” which in turn contributes to the proliferation of “narcissistic identity disorders.” According to Joel Kovel, the stimulation of infantile cravings by advertising, the usurpation of parental authority by the media and the school, and the rationalization of inner life accompanied by the false promise of personal fulfillment, have created a new type of “social individual.” “The result is not the classical neuroses where an infantile impulse is suppressed by patriarchal authority, but a modern version in which impulse is stimulated, perverted and given neither an adequate object upon which to satisfy itself nor coherent forms of control…. The entire complex, played out in a setting of alienation rather than direct control, loses the classical form of symptom - and the classical therapeutic opportunity of simply restoring an impulse to consciousness.”
The reported increase in the number of narcissistic patients does not necessarily indicate that narcissistic disorders are more common than they used to be, in the population as a whole, or that they have become more common than the classical conversion neurosis. Perhaps they simply come more quickly to psychiatric attention. Ilza Veith contends that “with the increasing awareness of conversion reactions and the popularization of psychiatric literature, the ‘old-fashioned’ somatic expressions of hysteria have become suspect among the more sophisticated classes, and hence most physicians observe that obvious conversion symptoms are now rarely encountered and, if at all, only among the uneducated.” The attention given to character disorders in recent clinical literature probably makes psychiatrists more alert to their presence. But this possibility by no means diminishes the importance of psychiatric testimony about the prevalence of narcissism, especially when this testimony appears at the same time that journalists begin to speculate about the new narcissism and the unhealthy trend toward self-absorption. The narcissist comes to the attention of psychiatrists for some of the same reasons that he rises to positions of prominence not only in awareness movements and other cults but in business corporations, political organizations, and government bureaucracies. For all his inner suffering, the narcissist has many traits that make for success in bureaucratic institutions, which put a premium on the manipulation of interpersonal relations, discourage the formation of deep personal attachments, and at the same time provide the narcissist with the approval he needs in order to validate his self-esteem. Although he may resort to therapies that promise to give meaning to life and to overcome his sense of emptiness, in his professional career the narcissist often enjoys considerable success. The management of personal impressions comes naturally to him, and his mastery of its intricacies serves him well in political and business organizations where performance now counts for less than “visibility,” “momentum,” and a winning record. As the “organization man” gives way to the bureaucratic “gamesman” - the “loyalty era” of American business to the age of the “executive success game” - the narcissist comes into his own.
In a study of 250 managers from twelve major companies, Michael Maccoby describes the new corporate leader, not altogether unsympathetically, as a person who works with people rather than with materials and who seeks not to build an empire or accumulate wealth but to experience “the exhilaration of running his team and of gaining victories.” He wants to “be known as a winner, and his deepest fear is to be labeled a loser.” Instead of pitting himself against a material task or a problem demanding solution, he puts himself against others, out of a “need to be in control.” As a recent textbook for managers puts it, success today means “not simply getting ahead” but “getting ahead of others.” The new executive, boyish, playful, and “seductive,” wants in Maccoby’s words “to maintain an illusion of limitless options.” He has little capacity for “personal intimacy and social commitment.” He feels little loyalty even to the company for which he works. One executive says he experiences power “as not being pushed around by the company.” In his upward climb, this man cultivates powerful customers and attempts to use them against his own company. “You need a very big customer,” according to his calculations, “who is always in trouble and demands changes from the company. That way you automatically have power in the company, and with the customer too. I like to keep my options open.” A professor of management endorses this strategy. “Overidentification” with the company, in his view, “produces a corporation with enormous power over the careers and destinies of its true believers.” The bigger the company, the more important he thinks it is for executes “to manage their careers in terms of their own…free choices” and to “maintain the widest set of options possible.”
According to Maccoby, the gamesman “is open to new ideas, but he lacks convictions.” He will do business with any regime, even if he disapproves of its principles. More independent and resourceful than the company man, he tries to use the company for his own ends, fearing that otherwise he will be “totally emasculated by the corporation.” He avoids intimacy as a trap, preferring the “exciting, sexy atmosphere” with which the modern executive surrounds himself at work, “where adoring, mini-skirted secretaries constantly flirt with him.” In all his personal relations, the gamesman depends on the admiration or fear he inspires in others to certify his credentials as a “winner.” As he gets older, he finds it more and more difficult to command the kind of attention on which he thrives. He reaches a plateau beyond which he does not advance in his job, perhaps because the very highest positions, as Maccoby notes, still go to “those able to renounce adolescent rebelliousness and become at least to some extent believers in the organization.” The job begins to lose its savor. Having little interest in craftsmanship, the new-style executive takes no pleasure in his achievements once he begins to lose the adolescent charm on which they rest. Middle age hits him with the force of a disaster: “Once his youth, vigor, and even the thrill in winning are lost, he becomes depressed and goalless, questioning the purpose of his life. No longer energized by the team struggle and unable to dedicate himself to something he believes in beyond himself, … he finds himself starkly alone.” It is not surprising, given the prevalence of this career pattern, that popular psychology returns so often to the “midlife crisis” and to ways of combating it.
In Wilfrid Sheed’s novel Office Politics, a wife asks, “There are real issues, aren’t there, between Mr. Fine and Mr. Tyler?” Her husband answers that the issues are trivial; “the jockeying of ego is the real story.” Eugene Emerson Jennings’s study of management, which celebrates the demise of the organization man and the advent of the new “era of mobility,” insists that corporate “mobility is more than mere job performance.” What counts is “style…panache…the ability to say and do almost anything without antagonizing others.” The upwardly mobile executive, according to Jennings, knows how to handle the people around him - the “shelf-sitter” who suffers from “arrested mobility” and envies success; the “fast learner”; the “mobile superior.” The “mobility-bright executive” has learned to “read” the power relations in his office and “to see the less visible and less audible side of his superiors, chiefly their standing with their peers and superiors.” He “Can infer from a minimum of cues who are the centers of power, and he seeks to have high visibility and exposure with them. He will assiduously cultivate his standing and opportunities with them and seize every opportunity to learn from them. He will utilize his opportunities in social world to size up the men who are centers of sponsorship in the corporate world.”
Constantly comparing the “executive success game” to an athletic contest or a game of chess, Jennings treats the substance of executive life as if it were just as arbitrarily and irrelevant to success as the task of kicking a ball through a net or of moving pieces over a chessboard. He never mentions the social and economic repercussions of managerial decisions or the power that managers exercise over society as a whole. For the corporate manager on the make, power consists not of money and influence but of “momentum,” a “winning image,” a reputation as a winner . Power lies in the eye of the beholder and thus has no objective reference at all.
The manager’s view of the world, as described by Jennings, Maccoby, and by the managers themselves, is that of the narcissist, who sees the world as a mirror of himself and has no interest in external events except as they throw back a reflection of his own image. The dense interpersonal environment of modern bureaucracy, in which work assumes an abstract quality almost wholly divorced from performance, by its very nature elicits and often rewards a narcissistic response. Bureaucracy, however, is only one of a number of social influences that are bringing a narcissistic type of personality organization into greater and greater prominence. Another such influence is the mechanical reproduction of culture, the proliferation of visual and audial images in the “society of the spectacle.” We live in a swirl of images and echoes that arrest experience and play it back in slow motion. Cameras and recording machines not only transcribe experience but alter its quality, giving to much of modern life that character of an enormous echo chamber, a hall of mirrors. Life presents itself as a succession of images of electronic signals, of impressions recorded and reproduced by means of photography, motion pictures, television, and sophisticated recording devices. Modern life is thoroughly mediated by electronic images that we cannot help responding to others as if their actions - and our own - were being recorded and simultaneously transmitted to an unseen audience or stored up for close scrutiny at some later time. “Smile, you’re on candid camera!” The intrusion into everyday life of this all-seeing eye no longer takes us by surprise or catches us with our defenses down. We need no reminder to smile. A smile is permanently graven on our features, and we already known from which of several angles its photographs to best advantage.
The proliferation of recorded images undermines our sense of reality. As Susan Sontag observes in her study of photography, “Reality has come to seem more and more like what we are shown by cameras.” We distrust our perceptions until the camera verifies them. Photographic images provide us with the proof of our existence, without which we would find it difficult even to reconstruct a personal history. Bourgeois families in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Sontag points out, posed for portraits in order to proclaim the family’s status, whereas today the family album of photographs verifies the individual’s existence: its documentary record of his development from infancy onward provides him with the only evidence of his life that he recognizes as altogether valid. Among the “many narcissistic uses” that Sontag attributes to the camera, “self-surveillance” ranks among the most important, not only because it provides the technical means of ceaseless self-scrutiny but because it renders the sense of selfhood dependent on the consumption of images of the self, at the same time calling into question the reality of the external world.
By preserving images of the self at various stages of development, the camera helps to weaken the older idea of development as moral education and to promote a more passive idea according to which development consists of passing through the stages of life at the right time and in the right order. Current fascination with the life cycle embodies an awareness that success in politics or business depends on reaching certain goals on schedule; but it also reflects the ease with which developments can be electronically recorded. This brings us to another cultural change that elicits a widespread narcissistic response and, in this case, gives it a philosophical sanction: the emergence of a therapeutic ideology that upholds a normative schedule of psychosocial development and thus gives further encouragement to anxious self-scrutiny. The idea of normative development creates the fear that any deviation from the norm has a pathological source. Doctors have made a cult of periodic checkup - an investigation carried out once again by means of cameras and other recording instruments - and have implanted in their clients the notion that health depends on eternal watchfulness and the early detection of symptoms, as verified by medical technology. The client no longer feels physically or psychologically secure until his X-rays confirm a “clean bill of health.”
Medicine and psychiatry - more generally, the therapeutic outlook and sensibility that pervade modern society - reinforce the pattern created by other cultural influences, in which the individual endlessly examines himself for signs of aging and ill health, for tell-tale symptoms of psychic stress, for blemishes and flaws that might diminish his attractiveness, or on the other hand for reassuring indications that his life is proceeding according to schedule. Modern medicine has conquered the plagues and epidemics that once made life so precarious, only to create new forms of insecurity. In the same way, bureaucracy has made life predictable and even boring while reviving, in a new form, the war of all against all. Our overorganized society, in which large-scale organizations predominate but have lost the capacity to command allegiance, in some respects more nearly approximates a condition of universal animosity than did the primitive capitalism on which Hobbes managed his state of nature. Social conditions today encourage a survival mentality, expressed in its crudest form in disaster movies or in fantasies of space travel, which allow vicarious escape from a doomed planet. People no longer dream of overcoming difficulties but merely of surviving them. In business, according to Jennings, “The struggle is to survive emotionally” -to “preserve or enhance one’s identity or ego.” The normative concept of developmental stages promotes a view of life as an obstacle course: the aim is simply to get through the course with a minimum of trouble and pain. The ability to manipulate what Gail Sheehy refers to, using a medical metaphor, as “life-support systems” now appears to represent the highest form of wisdom: the knowledge that gets us through, as she puts it, without panic. Those who master Sheehy’s “no-panic approach to aging” and to the traumas of the life cycle will be able to say, in the words of one of her subjects, “I know I can survive… I don’t panic any more.” This is hardly an exalted form of satisfaction, however. “The current ideology,” Sheehy writes, “seems a mix of personal survivalism, revivalism, and cynicism”; yet her enormously popular guide to the “predictable crises of adult life,” with its superficially optimistic hymn to growth, development, and “self-actualization,” does not challenge this ideology, merely restates it in more “humanistic” form. “Growth” has become a euphemism for survival.
The World View of the Resigned
New social forms require new forms of personality, new modes of socialization, new ways of organizing experience. The concept of narcissism provides us not with a ready-made psychological determinism but with a way of understanding the psychological impact of recent social changes - assuming that we bear in mind not only its clinical origins but the continuum between pathology and normality. It provides us, in other words, with a tolerably accurate portrait of the “liberated” personality of our time, with his charm, his pseudo-awareness of his own condition, his promiscuous pansexuality, his fascination with oral sex, his fear of the castrating mother (Mrs. Portnoy), his hypochondria, his protective shallowness, his avoidance of dependence, his inability to mourn, his dread of old age and death.
Narcissism appears realistically to represent the best way of coping with the tensions and anxieties of modern life, and the prevailing social conditions therefore tend to bring out narcissistic traits that are present, in varying degrees, in everyone. These condition have also transformed the family, which in turn shapes the underlying structure of personality. A society that dears it has no future is not likely to give much attention to the needs of the next generation, and the ever-present sense of historical discontinuity - the blight of our society - falls with particularly devastating effect on the family. The modern parent’s attempt to make children feel loved and wanted does not conceal an underlying coolness - the remoteness of those who have little to pass on the next generation and who in any case give priority to their own right to self-fulfillment. The combination of emotional detachment with attempts to convince a child of his favored position in the family is a good prescription for a narcissistic personality structure.
Through the intermediary of the family, social patterns reproduce themselves in personality. Social arrangements live on in the individual, buried in the mind below the level of consciousness, even after they have become objectively undesirable and unnecessary - as many of our present arrangements are now widely acknowledged to have become. The perception of the world as a dangerous and forbidding place, though it originates in a realistic awareness of the insecurity of contemporary social life, receives reinforcement from the narcissistic projection of aggressive impulses outward. The belief that society has no future, while it rests on a certain realism about the dangers ahead, also incorporates a narcissistic inability to identify with posterity or to feel one self part of a historical stream.
The weakening of social ties, which originates in the prevailing state of social warfare, at the same time reflects a narcissistic defense against dependence. A warlike society tends to produce men and women who are at heart antisocial. It should therefore not surprise us to find that although the narcissist conforms to social norms for fear of external retribution, he often thinks of himself as an outlaw and sees others in the same way, “as basically dishonest and unreliable, or only reliable because of external pressures.” “The value systems of narcissistic personalities are generally corruptible,” writes Kernberg, “in contrast to the rigid morality of the obsessive personality.”
The ethic of self-preservation and psychic survival is rooted, then, not merely in objective conditions of economic warfare, rising rates of crime, and social chaos but in the subjective experience of emptiness and isolation. It reflects the conviction - as much a projection of inner anxieties as a perception of the way things are - that envy and exploitation dominate even the most intimate relations. The cult of personal relations, which becomes increasingly intense as the hope of political solutions recedes, conceals a thoroughgoing disenchantment with personal relations, just as the cult of sensuality implies a repudiation of sensuality in all but its most primitive forms. The ideology of personal growth, superficially optimistic, radiates a profound despair and resignation. It is the faith of those without faith.

Hi all, This is my first collision case. Scenario- I was backing my car from my apt complex parking, the other person’s car reversed so quickly from the internal road (basically from a dead end on the right side) that she hit my car. I had already backed my car 40% when my sensors started beeping and I realized their is a car reversing at high speed. I tried my best to drive forward into my parking space but unfortunately I couldn’t go completely in. I managed to avoid a bigger collision but my rear bumper got damaged. The other person came out and apologized and said she didn’t see me. I took her insurance information and we called police. I am not sure what she told the police since she was far away. Who do you think is at fault?
I filed the claim with her insurance policy but they concluded that I am 100% at fault. This means that other person just denied the fault. Now I filed the claim through my company. They said they consider it is not my fault. so I believe they will charge me $1000 deductible and increase my premiums. Am I right about this? Will my premium go up if they consider me not at fault?
Other thing- There is a CCTV camera installed where the accident happened so I am trying to get that footage. I am just afraid if what I believe happened is not completely true (since I was inside the car and I might have missed some scenario) and from camera’s angle I am also at partial fault, what will happen? Will my premium be even more?
Should I go through the process of getting footage? Or let the insurance repair my car and let it be.
Pleasee let me know the pros and cons. Thank you!

Hi, I'm new here and am not super proficient with vehicle mechanics, so I'll do my best to describe the issue, the vehicle being a very basic 2014 Mitsubishi Outlander ES 2.4 L automatic.
I accidently over discharged my battery over the course of about 4-5 hours today, my battery being only about 8 months old now. My windows were down and when I went to roll up my windows I turned my key and realized it was already on (long story short, it was a nice day I fell asleep in my car in the shade while I was working on something with electronics plugged in and left the key in the on position). So when I realized that the ignition start wasn't turning because it had already at the "on" position I realized I killed the battery, like a dingus. I did recognize some faint clicking sounds that I thought was just the failure to initiate the start due to the exhausted battery. I have a portable jump start device, so I grabbed it and lifted the hood to find that here was a constant clicking coming from the engine fuse box. But my keys were in my pocket and the ignition switch is completely off so I didnt understand where or why power was being accessed from. Two of my apartment maintenance men came to try to helped me, one thought it was a relay, which I had also wondered if it was, so he removed one relay individually, and when it kept clicking put it back in before he pulled the subsequent ones.
I have had this issue once before back during a very cold winter, about a year and a half ago. It was well past time to replace my battery but I didn't have the money right then, which is why I got my little jumper box. The thing is, when it happened that previous time my headlights were turning on by themselves, even though the physical switch was off (I have a base model so they shouldn't have been activated at all). I had assumed during the last time that my fuse box had gotten wet and caused a short, and assumed it was why my vehicle seemed possessed, especially because the headlights were seemingly surging /extremely fast power cycling. It had been a WAY louder clicking though last time, so much so I thought it was going to explode. It was pretty unnerving, the clicking sounded so aggressive, and it was also coming from the engine fuse box. I solved it last time by just disconnecting the battery and I waited several days (thinking it was due to moisture/snow exposure because I was jumping my old battery pretty frequently then). But today it is warm and dry so moisture is not a contender. Also, today, I didnt have any Frankenstein headlight action going on either.
So when comparing the two instances of occurrence I know these things: 1. The battery was drained/dead both times 2. Despite the ignition not supplying power to the electrical something was accessing or bypassing it. (Maybe the anti-theft system?) 3. When I disconnect either of the battery terminals, it stops. And if immediate put it back or touch it to tthe battery then the fuse clicking begins again. 4. After waiting some time (a few days for the first instance, a dozen or so minutes for the current one) when the battery is reconnect it stops. 5. It's doesnt appear to be caused by failing relays, as internet research might have suggested (I did this research the first time it happened. 6. No fuses in the engine compartment had been or were subsequently blown which could have caused or might have resulted from this.
Seriously, I searched a lot of forums, youtube, reddit, and backalley Google search links trying to figure out what the fart is going on. There doesn't appear to be any damage to wires and it sounds like it is coming directly from the engine fuse box not the passenger compartment one, which is directly under the engine compartment fuses/box. My other fuse box is located in the passenger compartment on the driver side far left close to floor under the dash. But I feel like it would have been loud in the passenger compartment if it were due to that fuse box. The manuals that came with my vehicle don't identify any kind of issues like that, they more describe maintenance stuff.
Thanks so much for reading my post and hopefully someone can solve this frustrating worrisome isome mystery!

Memory Transcript Subject: Carlos Jose Rodriguez, Mechanical Engineer, Florida Man
Date [Standardized Human Time]: December 29th, 2136
When Yalga passed out on the couch I sent a message to the family group chat making sure everyone knew of the situation.
I needed to get Yalga into the hospital, but I didn’t want to do it myself. Pyon also needed a sitter, so I was waiting for mom to come back so Salisek and I could focus on Yalga.
Me: Yalga burned herself on the heat pad. We’re taking her to the ER. Mom, could you come home to take care of Pyon.
Mom: WHAT DO YOU MEAN BURNED HERSELF?! We’re coming home!
Tarvik: On our way. We’ll help you take her.
I didn’t want to bother them, but I couldn’t complain. I needed help. While I waited for them to arrive I poured a cool glass of water for Yalga so she could hydrate herself when she gets up. I gently nudged her awake, which made her groan in discomfort as her eyes opened.
“Dad? What’s going on?” She asked weakly. Her voice was a little rough.
“I’m gonna take you to the doctor,” I answered bluntly. “I am aware, you don’t love doctors but these people can help you much better than me. I’ll be with you as much as I can, holding your hand. Can you be brave for me?”
My daughter nodded yes, so I got up and went upstairs to grab something we’re definitely gonna need. I also made sure Salisek got the news. She probably saw through the chat, but I needed to be sure.
I peeked into our room, or at least the room the girls were staying in together. “Honey?” I called the mother of my children. Salisek was cradling Pyon, trying to calm him down. Pyon was holding his teddy tight enough to cause some visible rips and tears. I need to ask mom to fix that later. “How is he?”
Pyon buried his face in Saliseks chest fur, and made some small whining sounds. “He’s scared. We heard Yalga scream and didn’t know what was going on. He soiled himself when he heard Yalga and has been crying for a while now. He only just stopped. He can sense I’m worried too.”
“You changed him right?”
“Yeah, although I didn’t think now was a good time for potty training. What are you getting?”
Salisek followed me to my mom’s room and watched me search around the closet. “Almost a decade ago, my dad was hit by a car. Something about the sensors being screwed up. He’s obviously fine now, but the car didn’t stop just in time so he broke a leg. Thank God that’s all he got. Anyway, he bought a wheelchair and kept it- Aha!”
I freed the simple contraption buried under a mountain of clothes dad considered put away and carried it downstairs.
“We’re gonna need this. It’s gonna be way easier to move Yalga.”
Salisek continued to cradle Pyon, rocking him back and forth, as she talked to me, “What do you need me to do?”
“Stay with Pyon.”
“No.”
“We’re not arguing about this. I need you to stay-”
“Pardon me, could you repeat that!? Have you forgotten that despite that fact we aren’t married yet we both signed as the legal guardians of both Pyon AND Yalga. Or did you want to call your barber for help?”
Hearing Salisek use her angry voice when talking about anything other than Exterminator and Federation bigotry felt like a punch in the gut.I tried to defuse the situation. That worked about as well as it did when dad tried it.
“Hun, that’s not what I mea-”
“MY-” Salisek paused when she remembered she was still carrying Pyon who was looking at her as if she yelled at him. “Oh, I’m so sorry pup just…” She shifted Pyon's position so he could bury his face into her fur to distract her. She softened her voice, but made it stern as steel. “My daughter is in an incredible amount of pain. She is scared, she is tired. I will be there. Pyon will come with, so he can see his sister being taken care of. I. Will. Be. There. For. My. Daughter. Am I clear?”
I help up my hands in defeat. “Okay. We’ll leave as soon as the family gets here.”
Saliseks voice and posture softened. “Okay. Again this time. What can I do?”
Seeing how serious she was, I realized doing this on my own was a stupid idea from the start. “Pack some snacks. I’m not getting overcharged for crappy hospital junk. And while you’re in the kitchen please grab more water for Yalga. I gotta make sure the bandaging is on well and she’s okay.”
“Okay.”
Salisek walked to the kitchen, still carrying Pyon. At times like these, I know I made the right decision marrying her.
“I love you sweetheart!” I called out.
“I love you too hun!” She called back.
I pulled the wheelchair out so Yalga could get in it. I could try and carry her, but unfortunately with her size and weight it would be better to transport her like this. Even if it’s a short distance.
“Daddy,” Yalga called.
“Yeah.”
“Are you and Mommy mad at each other?” She asked innocently. “Did I do something wrong? I heard Mom say my name.”
I knelt down to give my daughter an assuring kiss on her head. “No kiddo. We had a disagreement like all adults. It’s solved now. We still love each other.”
Despite her monotone voice, it couldn’t hide the tears building in her eyes. “Okay.”
I ignored it for the moment because she was probably gonna cry more in a moment. I opened the chair as much as it could go and gave the seat a nice solid pat.
“We’re gonna put you here, then we’re going to the Emergency Room.”
“Do I have to get up?”
“Yeah. You do. Grab my hand. We’ll go slow.”
Yalga held my hand and grasped it tight. I need to remember that she has a very strong grip. To keep her even I used my other hand to push her up from the other side so she didn’t have to do the work.
I’m so glad I go to the gym.
We slowly worked together to lift her up so she could sit straight.
“Ow, ow!”
“I know it hurts. Take your time.”
Once we got her up we had to get her into the chair. I thought about the best way to put her tail. Through the hole in the back? Would it just drag to the ground? Wait!
I went to the side of the couch where there was a thin blanket for me and Salisek when we slept here. If I can tie the blanket on the handles it can keep her tail up without squishing it. I just need to get her on first.
“Okay Princess. Let’s get up. Can you stand?”
“Y-Yeah. Um, Dad?”
Yalga awkwardly clutched her tail. “I need to use the bathroom.”
My eyes darted from the bathroom to the couch and back. “No better time to test the wheelchair.”
[Memory Transcript Time Skip: 40 Minutes]
Even though it was getting late the traffic was still a lot. Once Salisek was ready we both called our parents and they both said that traffic was heavy. With it being the last Saturday of the year, Florida residents and tourists alike were enjoying their day.
We decided to just meet at the ER. The blanket trick for Yalga’s tail worked well and it didn’t hurt too much for her to walk once she got up. However, sitting down hurt her a lot unless it was in the wheelchair. Her tail probably played a factor since it didn’t have a place to sit except on the side when dealing with regular chairs.
Once we got to the hospital I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t that packed. Because of increased tourism and parties things can get crowded this time of year. Thankfully that wasn’t the case today. I didn’t want my daughter waiting more than she had too.
When I opened the side door, Yalga was already half up just so she could get into a chair with room for her tail. I helped carry her down and rolled her through the hospital's parking lot.
Salisek was having a difficult time carrying Pyon. He was pretty nervous. “Mawmy, I don wan to gow en.”
I didn’t understand why Pyon was scared but Mawmy was able to calm him down. “It’s okay pup. This place is filled with very nice and smart people who can help your big sister.”
My daughter didn’t say much, instead she looked around the large hospital and took in all the architecture and bright lights at the front. The front and lobby areas were clean and comfortable which helped a little to ease the tensions of anyone going in with something they believe is serious.
I rolled Yalga straight to the front desk and we were greeted by the medical receptionist. “Hello, how may I help you?”
I smiled politely and spoke calmly, “Hello, I’m Carlos Rodriguez and this is my daughter Yalga. She was using a heating pad and unfortunately suffered some burns. I was able to patch her up a little, but the gels and methods we have are for humans so I want to make sure she can heal properly. I would also like a professional to look at other areas of concern dealing with her limbs and back.”
“Any pain, shortness of breath, chest pain, profuse bleeding?”
“Her back usually causes her pain and the burning made it worse.”
She gestured to my fiance and son, “Are those two with you?”
“The tall Venlil woman is Salisek, my fiance, and she’s holding our son Pyon. They came for emotional support and to assist with anything Yalga may need.”
“We’ll get you someone right away. Please wait in the lobby.”
“Thank you.”
I knew they probably wouldn’t rush us in since even though Yalga is in pain, there’s no direct threat to her life. The most they’d do is probably a tetanus shot. I suppose I’ll have to worry if Yalga reacts to needles. I’ll try to calm her down because I could tell Yalga was still tense. I rolled her to a seating area with a TV playing Tom and Jerry.
Peak Fiction
With all the stress Yalga was going through, there’s nothing like cartoon violence to ease the mood. What would also ease the mood is having the family visit which according to a message they just sent, they were already here just finding parking.
Soon everyone entered the hospital and after a quick chat with the receptionist, along with me flagging them down, they joined us in the lobby. Helen and Chalta ran to Yalga the quickest.
“Yalga, are you okay?!” Chalta asked. “We heard your back got hurt!”
Helen was about to tackle Yalga into a hug before I stopped her. “Helen, Yalga isn’t feeling well. Please be careful she’s in a lot of pain.” Helen was visibly worried but still gently gave Yalga a supportive hug.
“Get better soon please.”
Talice and Tarvik were surrounding Salisek, asking questions on how they could help.
“Mom, it’s fine, really.”
“No, it’s not fine. Your father and I are here to help so please be honest with us. We’ll help with anything you need. We’ll take Helen home soon but the moment you need anything we’ll be right there.”
“Why isn’t she seeing a doctor yet? What kind of place is this?!”
Mom went over to Salisek who was still holding Pyon. “I can take him sweetie, get some rest.”
Salisek cradled a stressed Pyon in her arms, “Do you wanna go with Grandma, little pup?”
“Gwandma.”
Salisek gently handed Pyon over to my mother who instantly knew how to calm him down. Salisek fell into the chair next to me. She was pretty exhausted and it was getting late. The stress of everything is what really made her worry. Seeing your child in pain isn’t fun. My father put a hand on each of our shoulders.
“Is everything alright?” he asked.
I looked over to my daughter who was trying to watch the cartoon with her sisters but still had a hard time focusing because of the pain, as evident by her trying to adjust herself. I gave her a tap on her shoulder and mouthed “how are you feeling?”. I could only hear a little whisper, but it was enough to understand she was saying “It still hurts.”
Dad could overhear what we were trying to say and knelt down next to Yalga. “What would you like to do when we leave?”
“I’m a little hungry. Can we go eat later?”
“Of course, anything you want.”
I was grateful for my dad, that we remembered to comfort Yalga in all this. I was so new to everything, not to mention the speed at which everything was happening.
…
Where’s the doctor!
“Carlos Rodriguez,” She called just as my patience was wearing thin. “We’re ready to see you now.”
“Thank you. One moment.”
I quickly talked with my parents and in-laws about who is going home and who is staying. My mom offered to take Pyon home and to tuck him in, Salisek agreed. Talice decided to go with and made sure to bring Chalta and Helen back since they knew they might get bored or cause trouble. Tarvik and Dad were conversing for a bit about who should stay before settling on Dad since he’s more familiar with the hospital.
Salisek gave Pyon a strong nose nuzzle, “I’ll see you later, okay Pyon? Mommy will be home soon. Be good to grandma, okay?”
“Owkay Mawmy.”
“I love you.”
“I wuv yu tu.”
Helen and Chalta gave Yalga a big, but gentle, hug.
“Get better soon.”
“We’ll play lots of games together when you get back.”
Everyone quickly said their goodbyes so it was just me, Yalga, Salisek, and Dad. We followed the nurse to a room and were asked to wait until the doctor arrived. Yalga was really on edge.
“Dad, are you gonna tell Odin about me?”
“It hasn’t crossed our minds. Do you want us to call him so you can talk for a bit?”
“No thank you, I don’t want him to worry.” My daughter fidgeted with her claws in shame. She didn’t want Odin to see her hurt. The moment she’s okay, I’m planning a date for her and Odin. With chaperones of course. “Are the doctors here nice?” Yalga asked nervously.
“Of course they are, Princess. Just answer honestly and they’ll help you get better.”
They’ll help you get better… I hope.
[Memory Transcript Time Skip: 60 Minutes]
“So the spray will help heal and clean the burn so it doesn’t get sick?” Yalga asked curiously.
“That’s right,” Dr. Brown stated. “Soon we’ll give you a small shot to help protect against tetanus. It’s a very dangerous condition that can happen when you get a cut or burn. But you’re being very brave, I’ll see if we can get you a treat later. That is, if your parents are okay with it.”
“gasp Can I daddy?! Pleeeeeeease, I’ve been soooo good.”
I smiled brightly, “Of course you can.”
Dr. Brown was a huge blessing. The guy had been working with kids for a while and was great with Yalga. He was really good at relaxing her and explaining to her what was going on. He was honest and genuine. Salisek really liked him too, and even asked some questions herself. I also remembered him during my reckless years. He recognized me too.
“You’re daddy was quite the troublemaker back in his day.”
“Really?”
“Yup, when he was small he proudly came to me with a broken wrist.”
“Why would he be proud of that?”
“He got it trying to impress his crush.”
Seven-year-old me told you that in confidence.
I awkwardly looked at Salisek, but all she could do was stare and slowly smile while turning to my dad for more information.
“Do you happen to know the full story, dad?” Salisek teased.
“Well daughter, Carlos had a small crush on this girl named Jessica in the second grade and he tried to impress her by jumping off the swing set. He succeeded and flung himself so far into the air that when he landed on his wrist he needed a cast for months.”
“H-Hey! You laugh but it worked. She sat next to me at lunch and gave me her lunchables, that’s like… the pinnacle of love in second grade.”
I earned a laugh from everyone in the room, which almost made me forget that it was at my expense.
“Um, what is a lunchable?” Dr. Triva asked. She was a Zurulian working with Dr. Brown, trying to work with and understand the Arxur biology. While she was important in treating Yalga’s burn with her experience with Harchen Exterminators she would be even more important in trying to understand her condition as a whole. Zurulians have the best medical understanding compared to… pretty much everyone.
“It’s a children’s meal kit for both vegan and non-vegan foods, it’s popular for kids in school lunches.” Dr. Brown took his eyes off his colleague and gave me a sly look. “But let’s be honest, there was never any real meat in those things.”
Yalga’s interests also peaked. “Were they tasty?”
“Back in my day they were the best part of school. They were also a status symbol. Having the best lunchables meant you were the coolest kid.”
“What was the best one, Daddy?”
“Pizza.”
Of course it was pizza. It’s always pizza.
Pizza is God’s gift to the world.
Dr. Triva grabbed the syringe for the shot while Dr. Brown prepped the area. The sight of the needle made Yalga nervous.
“D-Daddy, do we have to…”
“Hey Princess, look at this.”
Yalga took her gaze off the needle and onto my phone where I showed her my favorite distraction.
[Behold Distraction]
“What is that?” Yalga asked. “I like the sounds.”
The legend Zach Choi, his legacy continued by his descendants, loved making short videos of him just cooking. This one was one of the rare ones that didn’t feature meat. Yalga was fully entranced into the process that she didn’t even react to the needle or the bandaid.
“Good job my beautiful pup!” Salisek cheered.
“Yeah… in a minute, mom.”
Dr. Brown chuckled, “I think I should start using those for nervous patients, right Dr. Triva?”
“Yeah… in a minute, Dr. Brown.”
I took my phone away before everyone forgot why they were here and we were ready to proceed. The doctors wanted to really get a look at Yalga and her condition. On the promise of peanut butter cookies and meat lovers pizza Yalga bravely went through all the X-Ray’s, bloodwork, medical history, and any other examinations they needed.
It took a while and she was starting to get frustrated with all the tests, but she persisted, and soon it was over. They allowed us to stay the night to monitor the burn area in case complications arose. So we all stayed in the hospital room, enjoying our time together as if it was a little adventure.
“Mommy look, the bed moves!”
“Pup, please don’t break it.”
Yalga went crazy when she saw how many buttons the hospital bed had, and needless to say, she was enjoying it. She kept Dad occupied with all her questions both about the hospital and about anything else her mind could think of. She was happy to be done with the tests.
“Grandpa, do you think they’ll let me see my bone pictures later?”
“Sure, but they need someone who is trained to look at them first and show them to the doctors.”
“There’s someone who knows how to look at pictures of bones?”
“Yup, they can see things we can because they’re bone smart. Do you wanna be a doctor when you grow up?”
“I dunno. Maybe I can be a doctor for bones, a bone doctor!”
It was nice seeing her happy, but Salisek and I were still worried about what they would find. What would it take to heal Yalga? Could they do it? I think so, but how long will it take? I don’t care about the financial cost, I care about the physical and mental toll it would take on Yalga. But would we have a choice?
I looked to my fiance who was rapidly tapping her foot onto the ground, impatiently waiting for the doctor to come back in and give us the news on Yalga’s condition.
“It can’t be that bad right?” she whispered. “With aid from the Zurualians they must have a way to easily fix Yalga’s condition. So what’s taking them so long?”
“They’re probably just double checking some things. I’m sure it’s nothing.” I could tell she was still stressed, so I held her hand and kissed her cheek. “Our daughter will be fine.”
Salisek tried to keep herself from crying for Yalga’s sake, but had the doctors not finally arrived she might’ve broken.
“Carlos, Salisek? You’re the parents correct?” Dr. Trivia asked. “I’ll just need to see you both very quickly to discuss some things.”
Finally ready for some answers we quickly got up, kissed our baby goodbye for now, and followed the Zurulian to a small room with Dr. Brown.
“Mr. Rodriguez and Mrs., do you prefer to be called Salisek or are you fine with adopting Mrs. Rodriguez?” The doctor politely asked.
“I’m fine with either, but I would like to get used to Mrs. Rodriguez.” I could feel her hand strengthen her grip in mine.
“Wonderful,” Dr. Brown took out a small folder that showed some of Yalga’s X-Rays, notes, and documents. “First things first, your daughter's burns should heal very soon.”
“Courtesy of Zurulian medicine and Harchen Exterminator Accidents.”
“Yes, thank you Dr. Triva. But of course this is not the only information you wanted to know about. The condition of your daughter is concerning. Not only because of the condition of her injuries, but also her condition that allows her body to grow at an exaggerated rate.”
Dr. Triva put the X-Ray slides on a projector for us to see. Seeing Yalga’s bones and how badly they were broken made my stomach turn, and my heart sink. I could hear Salisek’s gasp from how shocked she was.
It looked like a child had rearranged the right side of her body like a poorly constructed jigsaw puzzle. What made things worse was that the other side of her body looked nearly untouched meaning we could see all the damage her sperm donor did. I know how it felt to have broken a few bones as a kid. Her life would’ve been torture for me. I have know idea how she could live like that.
Why didn’t I take her here the moment we got home? How long has she been suffering like this?
“As you can see the limbs that didn’t grow as much were the ones that were injured the most. Trauma can be a factor in how limbs develop,” Dr. Triva explained. “You can see here how the bones didn’t heal correctly. Upon questioning your daughter it’s no question her back holds the most problems, but looking at her arms and legs it’s possible they’re also providing an incredible amount of discomfort and pain.”
Salisek wrapped her tail around my leg nervously. “So, what does this mean?”
“It means,” Dr. Brown continued. “That before we even think about her back we should address what’s going on in the rest of her body. If you look at her pelvic bone you can see it isn’t straight due to her walking on uneven legs for lord knows how long. So we think it would be best to first start realigning the bones as well as doing the appropriate extensions. My only concern is that her accelerated growth may cause complications, so she’ll need to visit here frequently.”
My fiance’s grip tightened as she looked deeper into the X-Rays, “I see. How long will it take for her to recover?”
“Several months, due to the severity of it. We can do the arms and legs separately, but that would be up to you. There’s a possibility it could take longer. We just can’t be certain with her growth, but we’ll have experts working round the clock on her case.”
“I-I see. But you can help her right?”
“We will do all within our power to make sure your daughter is healthy and lives a pain free life.
“Thank you… could you give us a moment. We would like to let our daughter know about it before we make arrangements.”
“Of course. Please let us know when you’re ready.”
We politely walked out of the room and turned around the corner away from where Yalga was.
“Honey?” I asked. “Is everything okay?”
I almost fell over when she pulled me in for a hug. I could barely hear her through her bleats and cry’s. “Look at what that monster did to her.”
First Previous

For the past couple years I’ve been celibate and dedicated my life mind heart and soul to Christ to the point I avoided dating because I felt content and didn’t want to be tempted to sin. But recently about a year ago I started dating again because I got lonely and sought a partner. of course I asked God to be with me in this process and he did.
However, after many failed attempts I gave up and decided to surrender back to God because I kept falling into lust and masterbation and the men were crap anyway so wasn’t even worth the sin until I eventually met the person currently in my life.
Still not perfect but I fell into fornication and ended up pregnant basically the first time we had sex and now I struggle to stop fornicating. It hurts my heart and I hate the sin but I like sex and having sex with him. Sex isn’t bad but outside of the way God designed it it’s a sin and I need help I’m trusting God to deliver me but I feel so weak and part of it is because I don’t want to stop but I don’t want to sin and afterwards I feel so guilty and sad and dark like it consumes my day and sometimes make me depressed which is even worse because I struggled with depression before and I want to shake those feelings. I’m frustrated and angry that I keep falling into the same sin so easily and keep putting myself in this horrible cycle.

I went through a lot of loss in my 30s. Mom to sudden brain hemorrhage, dad in accident, sister to suicide, dear friend also suicide. Brother almost died of cancer during but made it. Before this I miscarried twins. I’ve also lost various friends in odd ways. Basically I know death well, just luck of the draw it seems. I’m 40 now and I know I’ll never be the same but I don’t think about it all 24/7 now and have a pretty peaceful mind beyond occasional triggers of course. Those certain dates or moments.
Issue now is: I was divorced around 30 and have dated but have found no one who can take it. I swear I end up hearing “You’re kind of morbid” or “Maybe you need help with that” or “That’s kind of dark” just because I share that any of it happened. I’ve done my therapy plenty, work in mental health, am as okay as I think I’m gonna be by now. It just seems like all the loss scares people honestly. I am dating someone and they said the movie Iron Claw was good (wtf. do not watch it, horribly triggering) and I left abruptly during it which caused a really annoying discussion about me being too intense essentially. I don’t know if I’m dating weak ass personalities or my story is just too much but. It’s lonely. I’m sick of feeling like too much but honestly I barely even share any details. So. Did anyone find a partner who isn’t an asshole/ scared of this stuff? Any tips on not terrifying ppl but also not suppressing all your feelings to make them feel happy in a fake way? Because I’m not fake. Is it me? ): Thanks ahead for any thoughts and sending love to you all.

hihi, i honestly just need a place to vent after binging for the nth time !! (nothing important so feel free to skip haha)
back in late 2021-2022, i dropped what i would like to think was a decent amount of weight over the course of 5ish months before i got stupidly complacent and decided to try and maintain for a bit by volume eating in an effort to avoid further judgy comments from my family- big fucking mistake.
3 years later ive gained and lost the same 10lbs over and over and over again and im genuinely nearing the end of my rope. Since college started ive been binging pretty regularly and although my binges probably arent as bad as a lot of other people's, they're still so mentally damaging and ive never felt worse about myself. I do so much to stay in a good deficit and get my workouts in but by the end of the day my fatass will destroy the kitchen while telling myself i need to get it together all the while. its like im some kind of animal and no matter how positively or negatively i think, i dont seem to fucking learn. i take the fall and get back up just to do it all over again. imagine sisyphus really fucking unhappy.
I honestly didnt see losing weight as that important until i started binging and now i just want to get to an unhealthily low weight so everyone around me can see how much ive been struggling because im so tired and no one cares. my parents think its cute, my brother thinks its funny, and my friends and boyfriend dont take it seriously. theyre so underweight themselves and when they tell me i should be eating more it feels like theyre mocking me. they dont care.
Lately i've gotten into the habit of 6am runs and managed to do great my first year of college but i hate myself so much. my willpower really doesnt do shit here and it hurts so much. i think im nearing the point where i might just throw health out the window and do whatever it takes to mitigate the binges because i think im just doomed to be my own worst enemy.

Hi all, I finished the course content late last week for Reg. Then I took Se2(on accident took it before se1) and got a 38% with a pretty even spread. Then I reviewed over the last few days and took se1 today getting a 55% with 61% mcq avg and around a 50% tbs average. Do you think If I pound mcqs for a few hours tomorrow and review a little on Friday (making sure to get a good night rest) I can be ready for an exam saturday?

My 4 year old is my second child. My oldest (girl) trained like a dream. She was just over 2, we merely suggested she use the toilet and that was it. She has barely ever had an accident and she has never once wet the bed. She made it all seem so easy. Oh how naive we were.
My son refused to sit on a potty or toilet (or even stand near one) until last August. He was 3 and going to be starting school and we were beginning to panic. He can be very stubborn and he would scream and cry if we even suggested it. Finally after finding a potty that he liked we convinced him to try and sit in it. He was pee trained only to one specific potty over the course of 3 weeks. I literally carried that potty around for a month to every park, zoo, and outing we went to. One week before school started we had to try and get him to use a toilet because kindergarten doesn't have red race car potties! After many, many battles we finally had a few successes. I should mentioned that he never once pooped on the potty, only pee. He was still popping in his underwear. We anxiously sent him to school. He proceeded to pee his pants daily and refused to use the toilet at kindergarten. After a few weeks the school emailed me to ask me to send him in a pull-up because he was peeing on their carpet. I felt so defeated and I regret my choice but I complied. This began a total regression. He refused to pee on the potty at home and after weeks of constant accidents he went back to pull-ups full time. Around Christmas I'd had enough I told him he was done with pull-ups at home (except bedtime) and that he needed to use the potty. He still wore pull-ups to school however. He actually to my surprise did great. He became completely pee trained at home. Not poop. He still pooped his pants daily, but never at school. He seems to be able to hold it and wait until he gets home. Anytime I mentioned wearing underwear to school he would scream and cry and since I work and I have my MIL get him off to school I couldn't burden her with dealing with his behavior. So for the time being he continued in pull-ups. Around March I told the school I wanted to get him out of pull-ups at school. The school suggest they give him candy as a reward and he did great. He was out of pull-ups at school and he had only a couple accidents since. However, the pooping is not improving. Every single day he comes home and poops his pants. Sometimes it's even before school. Sometimes its right when he gets home sometimes hours later. Never at school though. We've tried a surprise reward bin, sticker charts, food incentives, toys, scheduled bathroom times etc. We've tried getting him to help clean himself up with our help. I'm really good about keeping it neutral and just dealing with it. The clean up can be horrible, but there are times my husband can't hide his frustration and I don't think it helps.
I need advice. My husband thinks he needs to see a doctor. I've done that before and they just told me he needs incentives and we have all of that. Is this a medical issues?
Sometimes he says he hasn't pooped and he has, but he could be avoiding the cleaning up. Sometimes he tell he pooped so he can get cleaned up and be able to sit down and not make a mess. For instance if he's at home just relaxing he will hide that he's pooped but if we need to go out he'll say I pooped before he gets in the car seat, or before he lies down to sleep.
Could he just be that stubborn? He's not afraid of the toilet. He sits on it to pee and we clean him up on it. He does hide to poop and if we catch him we can sometimes get him there midway. And when we have we praise and reward him like crazy. But he will turn around and poop his pants 10 mins later. He doesn't seem to care at all. He's not embarrassed. It's baffling. He's a smart kid. I'm totally at a loss in the situation.

Hi. I’m an autistic dude in my 30’s. For context, I’ve avoided interacting face to face with people pretty much my whole life. I have a really hard time with the word “connection” as it pertains to interpersonal relationships. I think the core disconnect is that I don’t think I’ve ever experienced “connection”. Or if I have, I didn’t naturally apply that name to it. I’m trying to puzzle it out because:
1) apparently women want an emotional connection in relationships/before sex. I’ve sought out dating/sex my whole adult life. The crushes that I’ve had dates with, I just felt amazing around that person. That’s as far as I understood it and then they would ghost me after 1 or 2 dates. I had no idea that what women want is an emotional connection. Now that I know that, I’m trying to figure out what the hell that actually means.
2) I need to know the actual definition of the word, because I need to know if I’m making a connection with someone. What am I supposed to feel in my body? What is supposed to actually happen? What is the other person supposed to feel or do? I can’t make progress towards being emotionally connected until I know these things. My current friendships are quite shallow (apparently), so clearly emotional connection doesn’t “just happen” for me. I need to be able to know what I’m doing and if I’m making progress so that I can correct course if I’m not doing it right, or if I am doing it right, tell myself “keep doing what you’re doing”.
I’ll start with what got me thinking about it again and then what my history with the word is.
So the other day I was hanging out with some friends and there’s one guy in the group who is dating. He apparently had been out multiple times with this girl he met on a dating app. I know I’m supposed to be happy for him, but when I hear about this sort of thing, I’m just baffled. How did he have a conversation with her over the app? What did they start with? It seems to have something to do with connection, I guess. I seemingly don’t know how to have a conversation, and that’s not something I could’ve asked him, people just look at me weird when I say something ultra-beginner like “how do I have a conversation”. It just pissed me off because this dude is recently divorced and he’s already been on multiple dates with this other woman. This is the 3rd friend I’ve had that has been divorced and started dating again, and they all get further than me in 1/10th the time! The other two friends are already re-married! Meanwhile I’ve never made it past a 2nd date. So clearly I’m missing something.
My friend was talking about said girl and ended it with “connection! That’s the important thing!” Which is what got me confused and thinking about the word.
So, from my perspective, “human connection” is a totally new idea to me. I literally never heard anyone in any capacity, whether it be online, face to face, or in media of any kind, talk about “connection”, emotional connection, or human connection. Then all of a sudden a few years ago people started saying it all the time. Not everyone, but I’ve heard it from multiple people now. Many people have said that it’s the most important thing on earth. Why is something that many people consider to be the most important thing on earth…something that wasn’t even on my radar until a few years ago? What the hell?
My confusion comes in because I can’t tell what my friend’s history with the word is. Is he just as clueless as I am, and is just using the word because they’ve heard other people say it and their best guess is that what they are experiencing is connection? Or did they experience a connection at some earlier point in their life and somehow someone was able to label it as “connection” for him? Does it somehow feel like a “connection” so people naturally apply that label? Maybe his family frequently talked about connection? That seems weird though because it seems impossible to talk about “human connection” with the people you might connect with - people seem to get really uncomfortable with it. I guess because if you don’t know what an emotional connection is, and they do, they probably don’t want to be around you.
Looking it up, the term emotional intelligence was coined in 1990. It seems like that’s around the same time “emotional connection” was coined. So….the most important thing on earth didn’t have a name until 1990? What? What did people in the 70’s say to refer to it? Did they not have connections? What did people in the 1920’s say without this term existing? I just don’t get how something so recent is supposedly so crucial to being a human and interacting with others.
Furthermore, what does it say about my life that I had only heard this term recently? I’m not thinking like “boo hoo for me, his life is better”, more like “other people have been living in an alternate reality to me where connection is very important and for some reason they never helped me with this concept, and they won’t help explain it to me now because I’m supposed to just get it.” Not understanding it seems to signal to them that I haven’t been living in their reality.
So what’s your history with the word? Did you have a “connection” with someone, and then, not having heard the word, you said to yourself “this feels like a connection!”. Or had you heard the word first and then applied it to your situation once you had a connection with someone? Do you feel as weird about it as I do, like you missed the memo that said the definition of the word and told everyone to start using it? Did your family talk about the concept when you were growing up?
I wasn’t sure where to post this, so if you have a recommendation for a sub where I can ask people that are understanding of Autism, but also has NT people on the sub, I’m all ears.

hihi, i honestly just need a place to vent after binging for the nth time !! (nothing important so feel free to skip haha)
back in late 2021-2022, i dropped what i would like to think was a decent amount of weight over the course of 5ish months before i got stupidly complacent and decided to try and maintain for a bit by volume eating in an effort to avoid further judgy comments from my family- big fucking mistake.
3 years later ive gained and lost the same 10lbs over and over and over again and im genuinely nearing the end of my rope. Since college started ive been binging pretty regularly and although my binges probably arent as bad as a lot of other people, they're still so mentally damaging and ive never felt worse about myself. I do so much to stay in a good deficit and get my workouts in but by the end of the day my fatass will destroy the kitchen while telling myself i need to get it together all the while. its like im some kind of animal and no matter how positively or negatively i think, i dont seem to fucking learn. i take the fall, get back up, and do it all over again. imagine sisyphus really fucking unhappy.
I honestly didnt see losing weight as that important until i started binging and now i just want to get to an unhealthily low weight so everyone around me can see how much ive been struggling because im so tired and no one cares. my parents think its cute, my brother thinks its funny, and my friends and boyfriend dont take it seriously. theyre so underweight themselves and when they tell me i should be eating more it feels like theyre mocking me. they dont care.
Lately i've gotten into the habit of 6am runs and managed to do great my first year of college but i hate myself so much. my willpower really doesnt do shit here and it hurts so much. i think im nearing the point where i might just throw health out the window and do whatever it takes to mitigate the binges because i think im just doomed to be my own worst enemy.

I am so happy for Johnathon Bailey's successes, from Fellow Travelers to Wicked to Jurassic World. And of course, he is able to do all of this while also staying on for three seasons of Bridgerton. He is booked and busy and we love it.
HOWEVER, I wish some fans of JB and Bridgerton could celebrate JB's successes WITHOUT shading or talking smack about Rege-Jean Page leaving the show. I'm sure there are some fans that were genuinely upset that Saphne didn't continue on. I was one of them: I love Page and his work, loved him in Dungeons and Dragons, and I have a big ol' crush on Simon. But you see some fans say on videos and posts about JB's successes "wow look at how busy he is, and he STAYED on Bridgerton 🙄🙄🙄" "this is what happens when you don't cross Shonda" and other things to that effect.
There are a lot of theories and stories about why Page left Bridgerton and didn't want to continue the series. Maybe Page really wanted to avoid being typecast from Bridgerton. Maybe he thought there'd be better opportunities for him. That's between him and those in charge of the show. Between him and his team. Being shitty about him leaving doesn't add anything to JB's successes or take away from Page's. Would the story be a little different? Meh, it's not like they would've taken much from Season 2 to divest in Saphne, just like I don't think a lot of Season 3 will focus on Kathony, not like some Kathony stans are hoping for. But we won't know. Because he didn't stay. And it bothers me that some fans can't let that go.
Ultimately I feel bad for Page. Sad for Page that some fans turned against him when he made a personal career decision and may have the exact career he wants right now. It probably bothers me more than him haha but still.
Give people their flowers without tearing down others, dang it!

• Business transformation: BlackBerry is now a software company, starting the transformation in 2015. The focus is security, the general term.
• 5 Products:
  • QNX: Embedded system OS.
    • Multi-OS housing: It has the capability to allow for multiple OSs on a single chip.
    • Real-time availability/software prioritization: Not all pieces of software operate on the same priority. Steering/braking would be higher priority than media, and QNX allows for that. Even if the thread/core is shared with other applications, when high priority software is requesting a resource it will be prioritized to ensure reliability.
    • Resource sharing: CPU, RAM, and GPU resource sharing between different applications capability. Two applications can share the same CPU core and bump each other based on prioritization.
    • Why not Linux? QNX has the highest certification for security available. Linux does not. CEOs would want to avoid liability and this certification allows for that.
    • Device agnostic: It can be installed on any device, not just cars. Any IoT and offline device can use QNX.
  • QNX Hypervisor: Consolidate multiple OSs on a single SoC using virtualization
    • SoC: System on a chip. Instead of using multiple ECUs, which is what car manufacturers currently do, they can use one single chip to run multiple high priority applications and multiple OSs. This is what Tesla does now.
    • Virtualization: Running an OS in a virtual environment. Think Linux environment inside of Windows. This helps with debugging for developers without having to have the actual hardware.
  • IVY: Scalable cloud-connected software platform for vehicles.
    • What is it a solution for? When a vehicle manufacturer wants a way to transmit the QNX/OS data safely, normalize it, and visualize it/interact with it. It also allows car manufacturers to own the data, unlike other OSs.
    • Scalable: AWS servers are capable of handling the load from many endpoints.
    • Software platform: There is currently no centralized software ecosystem for vehicles. IVY is providing that.
    • Non-BB developers would be able to use an SDK to develop applications on IVY for infotainment/general apps/others. IVY will also use ML to gain insight on unrecognized patterns by developers. An example of this is detecting if a car slipped, without having the developer connect multiple sensors to figure out if that event happened.
    • 50/50 joint effort on revenue and effort to develop the ecosystem. Using AWS's knowledge in AI/ML for calculated sensors (slip, driver on seat, etc)
    • Usage by other vendors: A city can connect to the data from vehicles and detect when ice/slipping is happening. If brakes are getting overheated coming from a high elevation area. If a car had an accident, etc. An insurance company can provide an app to give discounts similar to the currently implemented OBD-2 readers. A maintenance provider can also connect to this data and check if an error is specific to maintenance, malpractice, or general misuse.
  • Spark: Endpoint management. Basically API security. Did not delve far into this, basic info.
    • Unified Endpoint Security: This is the endpoint where a laptop/phone/IoT device hits. It provides encryption and security around that. Continuous authentication is a part of it, where a device is learning the user behavior using ML and continuously checking if the behavior matches the original owner; if not, lock the device.
    • Unified Endpoint Management: Basically managing your API for devices.
    • Zero trust: I think this is specifically talking about continuous authentication. Basically, it's not an authenticate once and forget it. It's constantly tracking behavior to verify the user is the authenticated user.
  • AtHoc: Non-enterprise communication system.
    • Target customers: Government, healthcare, education, etc.
    • Solution: A communication system targeting non-enterprise businesses; specifically for Event management, cross organizational communication/collaboration, mass notifications.
    • Who does this benefit? You've seen the hacks in healthcare/educational/governmental sector. This is specifically for them.
  • SecuSUITE: Phone application to allow employees to use work related data in personal devices without cross communication (between personal and work data).
    • End to end encryption.
    • Separation of concerns between personal and work data. Employers CANNOT access your personal data.
    • Used by NATO; doesn't carry much value in my book but maybe in yours.
• Customer oriented solutions: As you've seen in the products above, some products overlap and are just names to target specific customers. It allows customers to easily understand what product could solve their issue. Continuous authentication is a great example of this: Their customer complained that they kept re-authenticating, so they designed a solution allowing them to authenticate once and using ML they learned their behavior and can continuously check if the user is the owneauthenticated user. This kind of passion in leadership is good for business.
• Liability: QNX has the highest security rating available. Most CEOs want to avoid liability when it comes to security, using QNX would help them avoid that in a similar way cloud services help them avoid being blamed for hacking.

Where I think growth can be made:

1. QNX in more cars. They can capitalize on the idea of less ECUs = less cost for OEMs + security.
2. IVY usage by OEMs along with QNX.
3. IVY ecosystem. Maybe application billing?
4. Professional services (support) for the products listed.
5. AtHoc increased market share in more governmental/healthcare/educational entities.
6. SecuSUITE for more enterprise customers with the idea being saving employers money from purchasing work phones for employees, and worrying about securing them.

I just finished The Captain and The Rebel and am halfway into The Shadow Syndicate and what amazes me about both these fics is they are taking/took me where I never thought Dramione could go. List of fics I have read that have done this is below, there might be more I cannot remember at the moment. My requests are no Muggle AU and it needs to relate back to the original magical world of HP in someway. Dramione Reddit please tell me the fics that took our two love birds where you least expected to see them! (No length limit and self recs welcome.)
The Captain and the Rebel by Canttouchthis. Sci-fi Dramoine, I never thought I would see them in space.
Push and Pull by moonlightmelancholy. Avatar elemental magic! Of course that is missing from HP cannon. WIP
Love and Other Historical Accidents by PacificRimbaud. Time travel back Jane Austen’s time. Why not?
Love In A Time Of The Zombie Apocalypse by rizzlewrites. They can kill zombies, really well infact.
The Shadow Syndicate by bookish_clf (clf1646). Mobster Draco inspired by Peaky Blinders - add suspenders to my list of items I like on Draco. WIP

So for a long time I have avoided updating beyond Leia because I had read something about the next version not being compatible with prior databases and that I would have to rescrape my entire library.
This would be a major issue for me for 2 reasons; I have a massive library (about 3500 movies and 17000 tv episodes) and I have spent dozens or maybe even hundreds of hours modified things like tags, artwork, movie sets, sort titles, etc. to be exactly how I want it for every movie and show over the course of the 6-8 years I’ve spent building this collection.
But I recently installed Omega on a second travel computer with a much smaller “essentials” version of my library and I like some of the changes. I have also heard that scrapers may eventually stop working for Leia so I’ve been thinking more lately of how I might be able to update without losing my library.
Can I simply use the “export video library database to XML files” function and import it into Omega? Are these files compatible across versions and will this maintain all library information associated with each file? What info is not included in this kind of export? How do I get artwork to be included and is there a way to export things like playlists?
I assume I will have to re-configure my skin (which is also highly customized) and add-ons and such, but I’m willing to deal with that if I can keep the library intact.
If I were to export a library with that many files, would it be about the same size as my userdata folder? How does stuff like actor thumbs work? Obviously the size would multiply if it exports actor thumbs for each movie individually since a ton of them would be repeated many many times.
Another issue is my source locations are not organized as well as they should be. Movies are mostly in their own folders already but maybe as much as 30% are not, so dumping all the data and artwork for those seems like would make a terrible mess of the source folder. Are there any (relatively) easy ways to solve that issue?
Thanks

this is my final for honors sophomore English, it's a speech I have to read infront of my class. is the last paragraph too ballsy or sound rude?
Walking into sophomore year I was expecting to breeze through it just like I did Freshman year. Obviously, that didn't happen. I went to STEM in freshman year, and it was easier than middle school. We had no expectations to have our work done on time or to do quality work. English and History classes were alternating days, but we almost never actually had English class. We did not do any assignments for that class, and this only set me up for failure. But, non the less, I tried, and I went into this year with a positive mindset. My mindset was immediately diminished when I got my grade for the Federalist Papers assignment. Take a wild guess at what I got. Then, I realized how hard I would need to work to succeed in this class. Afterall, I didn't even want to take this class to be honest. All my life, I have been a follower, and I just do what other people do to avoid any sort of conflict. So, when a then-friend told me to take Honors English 10 instead of regular, along with APUSH and doubling my math classes to do Algebra 2, I did so with no thought. Of course, I did not succeed. I have made a lot of decisions in my life based on what others tell me to do, and I don't take my own opinion into account. There was a post on Instagram that I saw one day, where the author stated that they were "a mosaic of everyone they have ever loved, even for a heartbeat. For me, I am a mosaic of everyone I have ever met I have always tried my best to please everyone without a second thought to myself. This year, while working on projects together and doing peer editing. I have gotten better at voicing my opinions and building off others. In other words, I have started to stop following others, and have started to lean on them for support instead, like we all do in our web. To stand here and say that I have mastered communicating with my peers would be a lie. I still have work to do, just like the rest of us.
Along with this, I have also learned academic skills that will help me in the future in college. I learned how to better manage my time and how to plan things out, although this still needs work.
For my Final Words, I would like to NOT-thank Mrs. Repko. You said not to be afraid to express our thoughts and opinions, or to offend you or anyone in the room, so here I go. There is a difference between purposely making class difficult and frustrating to help us bond, and making it so difficult and frustrating that we don't want to be here. Don't get me wrong, we definitely bonded from our struggles in the class, and I am so grateful for these bonds and the friends I have become close with. But, and I think I'm speaking for more than just myself here, We are so frustrated with this class that we often don't even want to go. Most of us were confused, and so frustrated about what was expected of us that we pushed off assignments as long as we could, just out of not knowing where to start. And my 8 hours straight all nighter on my literary analysis can attest to that. There is a line where creative freedom becomes too much, and eventually we are just trying to finish the work to have it done instead of showing our full potential, which we could have possibly done with more instruction and control. A lot of assignments crossed said line. The built up confusion and frustration overpowered potential learning and growth we were supposed to have done. Of course, I greatly appreciate Mrs Repko for all that she does for us, but I felt that this should be addressed
Thank you.
thank you so much for reading if you made it to the end, any and all advice is apreciated!!

Hey everyone so I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this but I was hoping for advice. I'm from Georgia(stating this so people can know state codes). I really can't take a hit to my insurance (unlucky car accident recently) and I was hoping to know how to get a ticket dismissed so my insurance doesn't go up. I was reading something about a defensive driving course but don't fully understand it. Also it was 19 over, is it even possible to be dismissed? Thanks for any help!

this is my final for honors sophomore English, it's a speech I have to read infront of my class. is the last paragraph too ballsy or sound rude?
Walking into sophomore year I was expecting to breeze through it just like I did Freshman year. Obviously, that didn't happen. I went to STEM in freshman year, and it was easier than middle school. We had no expectations to have our work done on time or to do quality work. English and History classes were alternating days, but we almost never actually had English class. We did not do any assignments for that class, and this only set me up for failure. But, non the less, I tried, and I went into this year with a positive mindset. My mindset was immediately diminished when I got my grade for the Federalist Papers assignment. Take a wild guess at what I got. Then, I realized how hard I would need to work to succeed in this class. Afterall, I didn't even want to take this class to be honest. All my life, I have been a follower, and I just do what other people do to avoid any sort of conflict. So, when a then-friend told me to take Honors English 10 instead of regular, along with APUSH and doubling my math classes to do Algebra 2, I did so with no thought. Of course, I did not succeed. I have made a lot of decisions in my life based on what others tell me to do, and I don't take my own opinion into account. There was a post on Instagram that I saw one day, where the author stated that they were "a mosaic of everyone they have ever loved, even for a heartbeat. For me, I am a mosaic of everyone I have ever met I have always tried my best to please everyone without a second thought to myself. This year, while working on projects together and doing peer editing. I have gotten better at voicing my opinions and building off others. In other words, I have started to stop following others, and have started to lean on them for support instead, like we all do in our web. To stand here and say that I have mastered communicating with my peers would be a lie. I still have work to do, just like the rest of us.
Along with this, I have also learned academic skills that will help me in the future in college. I learned how to better manage my time and how to plan things out, although this still needs work.
For my Final Words, I would like to NOT-thank Mrs. Repko. You said not to be afraid to express our thoughts and opinions, or to offend you or anyone in the room, so here I go. There is a difference between purposely making class difficult and frustrating to help us bond, and making it so difficult and frustrating that we don't want to be here. Don't get me wrong, we definitely bonded from our struggles in the class, and I am so grateful for these bonds and the friends I have become close with. But, and I think I'm speaking for more than just myself here, We are so frustrated with this class that we often don't even want to go. Most of us were confused, and so frustrated about what was expected of us that we pushed off assignments as long as we could, just out of not knowing where to start. And my 8 hours straight all nighter on my literary analysis can attest to that. There is a line where creative freedom becomes too much, and eventually we are just trying to finish the work to have it done instead of showing our full potential, which we could have possibly done with more instruction and control. A lot of assignments crossed said line. The built up confusion and frustration overpowered potential learning and growth we were supposed to have done. Of course, I greatly appreciate Mrs Repko for all that she does for us, but I felt that this should be addressed
Thank you.
thank you so much for reading if you made it to the end, any and all advice to make it better is apreciated!!

this is my final for honors sophomore English, it's a speech I have to read infront of my class. is the last paragraph too ballsy or sound rude?
Walking into sophomore year I was expecting to breeze through it just like I did Freshman year. Obviously, that didn't happen. I went to STEM in freshman year, and it was easier than middle school. We had no expectations to have our work done on time or to do quality work. English and History classes were alternating days, but we almost never actually had English class. We did not do any assignments for that class, and this only set me up for failure. But, non the less, I tried, and I went into this year with a positive mindset. My mindset was immediately diminished when I got my grade for the Federalist Papers assignment. Take a wild guess at what I got. Then, I realized how hard I would need to work to succeed in this class. Afterall, I didn't even want to take this class to be honest. All my life, I have been a follower, and I just do what other people do to avoid any sort of conflict. So, when a then-friend told me to take Honors English 10 instead of regular, along with APUSH and doubling my math classes to do Algebra 2, I did so with no thought. Of course, I did not succeed. I have made a lot of decisions in my life based on what others tell me to do, and I don't take my own opinion into account. There was a post on Instagram that I saw one day, where the author stated that they were "a mosaic of everyone they have ever loved, even for a heartbeat. For me, I am a mosaic of everyone I have ever met I have always tried my best to please everyone without a second thought to myself. This year, while working on projects together and doing peer editing. I have gotten better at voicing my opinions and building off others. In other words, I have started to stop following others, and have started to lean on them for support instead, like we all do in our web. To stand here and say that I have mastered communicating with my peers would be a lie. I still have work to do, just like the rest of us.
Along with this, I have also learned academic skills that will help me in the future in college. I learned how to better manage my time and how to plan things out, although this still needs work.
For my Final Words, I would like to NOT-thank Mrs. Repko. You said not to be afraid to express our thoughts and opinions, or to offend you or anyone in the room, so here I go. There is a difference between purposely making class difficult and frustrating to help us bond, and making it so difficult and frustrating that we don't want to be here. Don't get me wrong, we definitely bonded from our struggles in the class, and I am so grateful for these bonds and the friends I have become close with. But, and I think I'm speaking for more than just myself here, We are so frustrated with this class that we often don't even want to go. Most of us were confused, and so frustrated about what was expected of us that we pushed off assignments as long as we could, just out of not knowing where to start. And my 8 hours straight all nighter on my literary analysis can attest to that. There is a line where creative freedom becomes too much, and eventually we are just trying to finish the work to have it done instead of showing our full potential, which we could have possibly done with more instruction and control. A lot of assignments crossed said line. The built up confusion and frustration overpowered potential learning and growth we were supposed to have done. Of course, I greatly appreciate Mrs Repko for all that she does for us, but I felt that this should be addressed
Thank you.
thank you so much for reading if you made it to the end, any and all advice is apreciated!!

I find it odd that many of our trusted Christian church leaders,both true blue & lipstick varieties, are quick to gloss over Christ’s literacy or even assert Christ’s illiteracy while simultaneously attributing all sorts of magical nonsense to his name. How you gonna elevate this guy to god-tier status, yet preach he can’t read? Of course God reads, reads great!writes great too! Jesus according to Christians is the real deal, the whole Enchilda, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha & the Omega, yet also according to them he can’t write Alpha or Omega. That’s crazy thinking, blasphemy even, all the best stuff in the Bible was written by Jesus.
Receipts?
Jesus Christ (Didymus Judas Thomas) authored The Gospel of Thomas.
Read here the opening lines of The Gospel of Thomas (Leloup Translation)…
“These are the words of the Secret. They were revealed by the Living Yeshua. Didymus Judas Thomas wrote them down.”
Note the unusual use of the word “revealed” here in place of common language you’ll find of “said/spoken”.
The unusual doubling of the Twin generic descriptor, sandwiching the common Judas name.
Didymus = Twin (Greek) Judas = Name Thomas = Twin (Aramaic)
Judas, according to the Bible, was a brother & devoted servant of Jesus Christ (Mark 6:3; Matt 13:55; Jude 1). His twin (Acts of Thomas). The spiritual (divine) Christ paired to the physical (human) Judas. Jesus WAS Judas. In the Gospel of Thomas there were no miracles, no resurrections. Jesus predicted no future events, he was no prophet, no revelations or rapture. All prophesy attributed (falsely) to Jesus was culled from the Hebrew OT and retrofitted as Roman propaganda to co-opt, conflate & corrupt Judaism w/ the upstart Jesus’ movement, neatly consolidating control of both under Rome, effectively killing 2 birds with 1 stone.
So how then did Jesus know Judas would betray him? Simple, he (Jesus/Judas) turned himself in & cut a deal with Pilate to fake crucifixion avoiding further unrest in the Jewish population (exactly what you would hope for & expect from a Jesus). The deal was after the crucifix fake-out Jesus would bounce & so he did becoming St.Thomas/St.Jude traveling far & wide, converting about a billion more ppl to Christianity before dying in his 100s.
A few additional odds & ends that support this info above (greatly abridged for time).
1) While the two written accounts we have of Judas’ death following his “betrayal” of Jesus in the New Testament differ greatly, on one point they both agree, Judas’ death occurred simultaneous with Jesus’ death on the cross.
2) NT Jude 1:1 identifying Judas as a brother to James but a “servant” of Jesus.
3) The apocryphal Gospel of Barnabas (apostle of Jesus), Ch. 216 - Judas takes on appearance of Jesus, later crucified in Jesus’ place.
4) St. Jude is most often depicted wearing a giant medallion around his neck with the life-sized head of Jesus on it (google it), that’s 2000 yrs before modern rappers made this a thing & fashionable. They literally got Jude walking around, spreading Christ’s word “wearing the face of Jesus”. The truth hidden in plain sight.
5) Judas of Galilee/Gamala founder of the "4th Philosophy"/Zealots was the father of Jesus/Judas, Judah ben Judah, and Jesus/Judas was the father of Menahem, Menahem ben Judah (google it).
6) In sharp contrast to the synoptic Gospels’ liberal use of the sayings in Thomas’ Gospel, chopping them up and sprinkling them about freely, The Gospel of John contains far fewer examples of overlapping content with The Gospel of Thomas. This drop off due to the fact of John being authored in direct opposition to Thomas. A point by point takedown and smear campaign (e.g., “Doubting Thomas”, Faith trumps Knowledge) targeting Thomas to discredit and flush out the remaining followers of early Christ movements, movements still having legs and remaining popular despite the introduction and heavy promotion of the 3 synoptic Gospels being widely disseminated across all Roman territories. John’s underlying agenda accounts for the dramatic shift in tone, structure & narrative, making a clean break from messaging of synoptic Gospels. John was a hit piece against early Christians/Gnostics, Rome couldn’t just steal it, they had to kill it.

I have read that a lack of calcium can result in potentially kidney stones. Being on a vegan diet I avoid all dairy at all costs. Some of the other sources of rich calcium apparently contain too high oxalates which aren't good for those with kidney stones. Anyone know how to manage a vegan diet will also trying to prevent kidney stones/ pass kidney stones (aside from of course - drinking enough water)?

I'm upgrading from a 2017 iPad so I haven't familiarized myself with the new features of newer iPads.
I'm looking to avoid carrying a laptop if I can so I can travel lighter and just backup the photos from my mirrorless camera to an external SSD. Of course the laptop is the easiest and efficient way, but I cannot get a new MacBook just yet. Most of the search results I see are at least a few years old so I thought maybe iOS had new features since.
Just as important is whether the iPad is making a copy of the files on the internal storage before transferring it to the external SSD (ex. 128GB model iPad Pro can't transfer 256GB SD card content to external SSD in one go). Only one old comment on a YouTube seem to mention this and I was surprised why this wasn't more widely known. Thanks in advance.