Research: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4233907/
PDF document: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4233907/pdf/fnhum-08-00884.pdf

Abstract

Stuttering has been the subject of much research, nevertheless its etiology remains incompletely understood. This article presents a critical review of the literature on stuttering, with particular reference to the role of the basal ganglia (BG). Neuroimaging and lesion studies of developmental and acquired stuttering, as well as pharmacological and genetic studies are discussed. Evidence of structural and functional changes in the BG in those who stutter indicates that this motor speech disorder is due, at least in part, to abnormal BG cues for the initiation and termination of articulatory movements. Studies discussed provide evidence of a dysfunctional hyperdopaminergic state of the thalamocortical pathways underlying speech motor control in stuttering. Evidence that stuttering can improve, worsen or recur following deep brain stimulation for other indications is presented in order to emphasize the role of BG in stuttering. Further research is needed to fully elucidate the pathophysiology of this speech disorder, which is associated with significant social isolation.

Neural Correlates of Stuttering

Right Frontal Operculum (RFO)

• The RFO, the right homolog of Broca's area, shows consistent overactivation in stutterers during reading and passive semantic tasks.
• This overactivation is considered compensatory, not primary dysfunction, and negatively correlates with stuttering severity.
• Decreased fractional anisotropy (FA) in the white matter (WM) underlying the left rolandic operculum (LRO) suggests demyelination or disorganization, with implications for articulatory planning and sensory feedback integration.

Brain Activation and Therapy

• Post-therapy, stutterers show decreased activation in the right middle frontal cortex and increased activation in left-sided areas and bilateral temporal cortex.
• The left insula and LRO show increased activation post-therapy.

Compensatory Mechanisms

• Right inferior prefrontal cortex activation can compensate for left frontal damage in aphasia, suggesting similar compensation in stuttering.
• Subtle anatomical changes in the right perisylvian cortex in stutterers are noted, with no significant asymmetry differences in the left perisylvian region compared to controls.

White Matter Integrity

• Children with developmental stuttering show reduced WM integrity in the left superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF).
• Adults with stuttering have increased right hemisphere WM volume in regions related to language and motor functions.
• Stuttering severity correlates with lower WM integrity in specific tracts.

Functional Imaging Studies

• Stutterers show overactivation in motor areas and atypical right lateralization, with reduced auditory activation related to self-monitoring of speech.
• Cerebellar overactivation and abnormal left-lateralized STG activation are noted.
• Female stutterers exhibit distinct activation patterns compared to males, with broader deactivation in the right hemisphere.

Neuroanatomical Studies

• Stutterers show atypical anatomy and lateralization in perisylvian language areas, prefrontal, and sensorimotor cortex.
• Decreased GMV in specific regions and WM integrity differences are found in persistent stuttering compared to recovered stuttering in children.
• Salmelin et al. (2000) found abnormal activation sequences and lateralization in motor cortical areas, suggesting dysfunctional timing relationships affecting speech preparation.

Broader Implications

• Functional abnormalities in stutterers extend to non-speech tasks, indicating inherent right hemisphere activation patterns.
• Stutterers exhibit atypical neural functions during silent reading and ERP studies, indicating altered neural organization and processing

The Basal Ganglia and Speech Pathways in Stuttering
The basal ganglia (BG) are crucial in selecting and disinhibiting voluntary motor programs while inhibiting competing ones, thereby playing a central role in voluntary movements without generating them. Dysfunction in the BG can lead to movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease (PD), dystonia, and tremor. Evidence suggests that stuttering may also be a BG-related movement disorder, with altered connectivity in the basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical circuit seen in people who stutter (PWS).
Speech Pathways and BG Dysfunction
Jürgens (2002) identified a cerebello-thalamo-cortical pathway critical for normal speech production. Lesions in the cerebellum and ventrolateral thalamus, which projects to Broca’s area and the supplementary motor area (SMA), can severely affect speech. Functional studies show increased activity in these regions during speech tasks, suggesting their involvement in speech production. Alm (2004) proposed that PWS have dysfunction in the BG-cortical pathway, leading to compensatory overactivation of the cerebellar-cortical route, supported by evidence of cerebellar overactivity in stutterers.
Role of BG in Dysfluent Speech
Studies indicate that increased neural activation in the putamen and caudate nuclei correlates with stuttering severity. For example, event-related fMRI studies show increased putamen activation following fluency-inducing therapy, but this activation diminishes over time. Giraud et al. (2008) found a correlation between stuttering severity and BG activity before therapy, which was lost post-therapy, suggesting BG involvement in stuttering. Their model suggests structural abnormalities affecting information flow from Broca’s area to the motor cortex may cause BG dysfunction, similar to mechanisms in PD and dystonia.
Stuttering and Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS)
DBS, used for BG motor disorders like PD and dystonia, provides insights into BG’s role in stuttering. Cases report both improvement and worsening of stuttering post-DBS surgery. For example:

• Moretti et al. (2003): A PD patient developed stuttering post-DBS.
• Burghaus et al. (2006): A PD patient’s childhood stuttering worsened post-DBS.
• Walker et al. (2009): A PD patient’s stuttering improved with unilateral DBS.
• Nebel et al. (2009): Stuttering developed in dystonia patients post-DBS, suggesting DBS can both provoke and alleviate stuttering.

These cases highlight that DBS can modulate speech pathways in the BG, affecting stuttering severity variably. Some report improvement with specific stimulation parameters, while others note new onset stuttering or worsening of existing stuttering post-DBS, often depending on the target region and individual patient history.
In conclusion, stuttering appears closely linked to BG dysfunction, with evidence from structural and functional studies, similarities with BG-related movement disorders, and variable effects of DBS on stuttering symptoms. Understanding these pathways may guide future therapeutic strategies for stuttering.

Neuroimaging of Glucose and Dopamine Neural Metabolism in Stuttering

Glucose Metabolic Rates

• Decreased Metabolic Activity: Wu et al. (1995) reported lower cortical and subcortical glucose metabolism in stutterers, potentially due to excess dopamine activity. During solo reading tasks, stutterers showed decreased glucose uptake in several brain areas, including the superior frontal cortex, Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas, the posterior cingulate, prefrontal cortex, deep frontal orbital cortex, and medial cerebellum.

State-Dependent Changes

• Choral vs. Solo Reading: Stutterers exhibited hypometabolism in the left caudate during solo reading compared to controls, with no increase during choral reading. However, increased glucose uptake in the substantia nigra/ventral tegmental area during choral reading suggests enhanced neuronal firing in these regions.

Permanent and Reversible Hypometabolism

• Trait-Related Hypometabolism: The left caudate shows permanent hypometabolism in stutterers, while left language areas and higher association areas exhibit reversible hypometabolism.
• Cerebellar Activity: Decreased cerebellar glucose uptake was noted during solo reading, but right cerebellum metabolism normalized during choral reading.
• Limbic Metabolism: Increased limbic metabolism during choral speech may correlate with reduced speech-associated anxiety.

Dopamine Synthesis

• FDOPA Uptake: Wu et al. (1997) found significantly increased FDOPA uptake in stutterers' right ventral medial prefrontal cortex, left caudate tail, and various limbic structures, supporting the dopamine excess theory.

Focal Segmental Dystonia

• Similarities to Dystonia: Stuttering shares characteristics with dystonia, such as involuntary movements and sensitivity to emotional stress (Alm, 2005). Family history studies suggest a possible genetic link between stuttering and dystonia (Fletcher et al., 1991).
• Basal Ganglia Lesions: Dystonia often results from focal basal ganglia lesions, suggesting a common pathophysiology with stuttering (Bhatia and Marsden, 1994).

Brain Imaging Studies

• Cerebellum:
  • Role in Auditory Processing: Traditionally seen as a motor structure but also involved in sensory auditory processing.
  • Activation Patterns: Greater activation and abnormal lateralization in stutterers, which changes post-treatment.
• Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC):
  • Function: Involved in emotional control and response preparation. Shows increased activation in stutterers during speech tasks, which decreases post-treatment.
• Supplementary Motor Area (SMA):
  • Volitional Control: Implicated in the control of learned motor patterns and initiation of vocal utterances.
• Other Areas:
  • Insula and Claustrum: Activated during speech tasks in stutterers but not in controls.
  • Thalamus and Globus Pallidus: Involvement in speech tasks, with increased activation in stutterers.

Specific Activation Patterns

• Silent and Oral Reading: Stutterers show increased cerebellar and ACC activation, possibly due to increased self-monitoring and attentional effort.
• Post-Treatment Changes: Reduced activation in these areas as speech becomes more practiced and automatic.
• Divergent Roles in Speech: Different brain areas show task-specific activation, such as insula activation during speaking but not passive listening

CONCLUSION

The etiology and pathophysiology of stuttering remain poorly. Stuttering is a disorder associated with significant psychological burden and social stigma, and work toward achieving successful therapies has been focusing on its psychological or psychodynamic causes. The increased recognition of a structural or functional neurological cause can render stuttering potentially amenable to surgical or medical intervention. Further research on the cortical and subcortical anatomical and functional changes in stuttering is needed. In this study, we have reviewed evidence demonstrating that dysfunction of the BG and of their cortical targets are a likely pathomechanism underlying stuttering.

• Stuttering involves a complex interplay of neural compensatory mechanisms, altered brain activation patterns, and structural differences in brain anatomy.
• Right hemisphere overactivation and reduced WM integrity in specific regions are consistent findings.
• Therapy can alter activation patterns, suggesting potential neural plasticity.
• The cerebellum and efference copy mechanisms may play roles in the neural basis of stuttering.

https://archive.ph/6mq2v
We lost Ursula K. Le Guin five years ago, on January 22, 2018.
She was one of the most influential science fiction authors in the history of the English language. She wrote 23 novels (mostly science fiction), alongside sheaves of short stories, poems, children’s books, and essays. She helped pioneer a feminist, radically critical sci-fi.
Her novels have been rereleased continually over the past few decades, to near universal acclaim. Her influence is clear on such major writers today as Neil Gaiman and N. K. Jemison, and literary theorists like Darko Suvin. Her work has been taken up by major best-selling book series and mega-hit movies (usually they don’t even mention her). The first book of the Earthsea series (about a school for wizards) is almost certainly the source of Harry Potter. And Avatar, and now its sequel, are clearly ripped from the pages of The Word for World Is Forest. Why this influence, 40 years after her major novels were penned?
At least part of the answer is this: we haven’t gotten past the problems Le Guin flung herself against. A new age of imperialist slaughter was dawning while she was writing most of her main novels in the 1960s and 1970s. In the years that followed, the ruling class executed its neoliberal smashing of the forces that resisted it, dismantling the powers of the working class and oppressed who rose up across the globe and in the United States. She gives artistic voice to the brutality and decay of capitalist imperialism, to the fate of the forces that opposed them — and to the potential for revolution.
But that world is changing. US imperial violence still reigns. But its decay is clear in the collapse of another failed war, this time in Afghanistan. And neoliberalism, the shared set of policies that help buoy up the masters’ violence, is falling apart. Worldwide, the working class and oppressed are beginning to feel their power again, and to feel it grow. Le Guin left us a task: liquidate the world of Le Guin; make her books relics of a dead past.

Art in an Age of Imperialist Slaughter

Every cultural object is welded together out of the ideas that lie about. Those ideas are forged inside the class and mass clashes of the time of the welding. Le Guin’s works are no different. They are created out of and express the clashing of social forces. The feminist revolution of the 1960s and 1970s and the indigenous struggles of AIM and beyond — all these were the raw materials she worked with, producing books that challenge gender norms, explore the resistance of native peoples against their attackers, and imagine a future beyond capitalism. Her writing is constantly marked by restlessness. Her works are always searching for, but never quite finding, a “third way” to fight for a new world: certainly not through liberal handwringing, and certainly not by fighting for Stalinist, bureaucratic socialism.
Anarchism, then? Taoism?
These questions are always raised, and the answers are always ambivalent.But Le Guin’s works bear the mark of an overarching problem above all: the brutality of imperialism. That problem works like a kind of framework, or “meta-structure,” for almost all her major writings. It’s the frame inside which she also explores gender, sexuality, indigenous struggle, suffering, the limits of knowledge, the nature of language, and more. It’s impossible to do justice to the complexity and nuance of her works in one article, but when we look at this guiding frame of hers, it can help us understand some of Le Guin’s power and importance.It isn’t an accident that she chose this guiding frame. Her first work was appearing in print in an era when Cuban revolutionaries won their struggle in 1959, and when the Algerian masses ejected French armies in 1962. Every one of her early novels, and most of the books of her mature period, were written as US troops were flooding Vietnam for the capitalist geopolitics of slaughter.
.....
The other book kicking off the mature period is A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), in what would become the original Earthsea trilogy. Fantasy had, for a long time, trafficked in the images of a largely white Middle Ages and stories of killing monsters. Earthsea, though, was a Bronze Age epic, filled with brown people wielding a magic closer to poetry than anything else. Wizard Sparrowhawk crisscrosses a mystic archipelago as he learns the art of sorcery — a kind of universal language (like the Ekumen’s universal culture) that rescues a being’s singularity, and releases it, rather than destroying it. And lurking in the background of the Earthsea series is a constant tension. The archipelago Earthsea is marked by a usually unspoken struggle between a central monarchy and the strangeness of the islands never quite under control, a tension never resolved — the frame of the whole series.
This main period is filled with some of Le Guin’s most original, iconic novels: the rest of the original Earthsea trilogy (1970 and 1972), The Lathe of Heaven (1971), The Word for World Is Forest (1974), and The Dispossessed (1974), not to mention the short story collection with “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (1973) — writing that I could hardly do justice to here. The Lathe of Heaven strikes inward: What if colonization is of the psyche too, the unconscious creativity of the mind itself? In The Word for World Is Forest, the problem of imperialism gets one of its most direct expressions: the violent battle of a native population, the peaceful Althsheans, against an invading force, and its incalculable and destructive consequences. The Dispossessed, perhaps, with Left Hand, a masterpiece of complex political and social exploration, offers a kind of political détante. A violent revolution in the past, an anarchist moon, and capitalist planet stand at odds, unstable in their truce. Annares, the anarchist moon, stands in constant danger from its rival; the capitalist planet has a brewing revolution. Shevek, traveler between worlds, seems to represent some resolution or next stage of social evolution, maybe.

[Just a quick note here but I would like to say that I'm not going to go into details about Natsumi and the plot point that concerns her because I think arc 7 is just her introduction and that there's way more things to this persona then just what arc 7 showed, this post is very long too so please be aware]
First I would say that this plot point is very dear to me for many reasons, but the most important Point is that for me it dealt with a problem I always wanted to see which is Subaru obsession of having the choice of RBD and how to use it, from the moment arc 4 finished and until now Subaru was always struggling with chosing the best way to RBD, in arc 5 he reached the conclusion that he shall use it to save his friends but focus on other ways to save the situation so he won't depends on it, arc 6 was Subaru using the power to reach what he believes to be the real Natsuki Subaru
And in arc 7&8 he was dealing with the guilt of not using RBD to save people in the previous arcs and the current ones, showing that just because Subaru didn't RBD in those previous arcs it doesn't mean that he didn't want too or that he didn't feel bad about it, however the arc also showed a very big flaw of Subaru that he carries on since arc 4 and until now, which is that Subaru always blames himself for every situation that goes wrong
Even when he is not in control Subaru STILL insists that he is and that the only reason why he couldn't save the people in the shelter in arc 5 for example is that he didn't do it, in arc 6 Subaru blamed himself for Ram taking the burden and fighting until she got severely wounded, he didn't accept it was her decision, at they ending of arc 6 Subaru blamed himself for Shaula death saying it was his fault because he came to the twoer until juluis shut him down and told him to be respectful for shaula wishes
In arc 7&8 this becomes more obvious to the point Subaru becomes really frustrating (which I like) he doesn't RBD when someone already dies due to their own decisions BUT he doesn't let go either and use this as an excuse to blame himself feeding on the fact that if he RBD he would have changed the situation, as if his feeding on this dulusion that if he died and RBD everything will be okay and the only one to blame is not those who did the kill no, it's his fault because he didn't stop it
After the "you are not a hero" chapter which was in amazing call for arc 6 because it was testing Subaru new determation of " you are in amazing guy Natsuki Subaru" by literally making the person who gave him this determation rejecting him completely Subaru was lost, he can't move on now because the mirror he used to see himself through is no longer here BUT he can't go back because Rem wasn't the only reason why Subaru reached this conclusion and now he genuinely understand his achievement and how great they were
he can never go back from this but now he can't move forward either which left him in a critical vulnerable state making him clinch into Natsumi as a piller of strength, which lead to Vincent looking down on him because Subaru reason of using this mask is emotional and to hide his weakness rather than solving them and this is the principal of weakness in the vollachian empire ( this is not the first time someone see right through Subaru like this, ironically enough Vincent sister Priscilla was the first to do that in arc 3 and just like what happened in arc 7 Subaru ignored Priscila completely there as well )
Unlike Natsumi, Subaru shotification was a very unfortunate and unexpected turn of events for Subaru, we all saw how frustrated Subaru was when Todd was haunting him down and how not even RBD was enough to control the situation and get him out of it, the RBD was useless here shocking Subaru to his core not just because Subaru most useful power RBD becomes useless but also because situations like these when Subaru is incapable of getting the upper hand DESPITE using RBD is what terrefy him the most
(It's a quick note here but this is a going fact about Subaru, in the recent Q&A for the 10th anniversary of re zero the author said that Subaru Just like Rosewaal likes to be in control of how people perceive him and intentionally makes people annoyed with him or very confused with his speech pattern, it's also the reason why Subaru is weak to effection, he is not used to it and doesn't know how to handle it)
So unlike the normal situation when Subaru is capable of using every single death efficiently or when his wearing the mask of being the perfectly confident Natsumi, just like how his death against Todd was out of his control shotabaru was the same and he was Subaru's weakest form....it was supposed to be his weakest form
Let's go back again to Chicha and olbart discussion a little, it was the conversation that made chicha understand how this ability works and re-create it to use it on cecilus, but it's not just that, olbart said that there's people who won't be effected because the core of their personality didnt change since childhood, example being Meduim and Cecilus, then we have the ones who the ability were created for, the ones who got weaker physically and emotionally and no longer capable of using their power the example for this is Al, and then we have cases, a very special cases that it not known how it exactly work for them but..they become more dangerous, way more dangerous then their adult form
Think about what limit RBD as a power, Reinhart the strongest has his moral code and the believe that his family will be okay if the kingdom is okay, there's definitely more to this but this is the only known information so far, for Subaru it's the same as well, some think that it's Subaru moral code that hold him back ,but to be honest I think that his moral code is as good as him keeping his promises...which is not something his that good at
If Rem and Emilia were in danger he would fight back and even kill if it was necessary, like when he put a death trap to kill Todd and his soldiers after knowing what they would do to Rem, when it comes to his close friends it's not really that hard to give up on many of his own rules, what hold Subaru back is his fear of death... Subaru is terrified of death, he doesn't believe that death is a good thing at all except when it happens when you are old and full of wrinkles, otherwise death is always a tragedy
After arc 4 and finally Subaru admitting his real feelings which is that he is terrefied of death, Subaru was very obviously scared of his ability and scared of returning back to his arc 4 mindset, it's not just death as a concept but rather RBD as a whole is what terrefy Subaru, the random chack points that keeps changing without a note, the pain that comes when his soul possess his body again, the fear that it's just too late and that if it was too late...then it's too late, and there's nothing Subaru can do to change that, he becomes a hopeless human being and face what every single person face in this world, an unbearable unchangeable lose that nothing could overturn, and Subaru said it himself in arc 7, RBD manifested because of his upnormal fear of lose
Despite everything I mentioned our MC continued to blame himself for other people's choices, in his dialogue you would always read his thoughts that go like
" They don't understand but I can change the situation"
Which is true, but here's the point he doesn't change it, so he doesn't let himself use his power to stop this self loathing due to his fear ( I explained what I meant with this up there) nor does he accept the lose and just move on, his obsession with perfect ends was always there but his fear was what stopped him from going all in, so imagine if what will happen if I removed this from him, made him incapable of thinking of such a complicated thought and rather turn him into something that doesn't understand these big complicated concept, remove the only thing that hold Natsuki Subaru back and see what kind of monster he will become
Through his shotification Subaru speech pattern was written in hiragana and katakana without kanji in the text to show how childish he has become, it also shows how his memories are kind of vague, he does remember some things and after the 10 second of hell Subaru was forced to somewhat catch up to his original self, but the full details and all are not that obvious, this vagueness is exactly why he was so dangerous as well
As a child I think all of you noticed that after chapter 75 you don't feel that much tension with shotbaru, the more you see of him the more you get...assured that nothing bad will happen, you are not afraid that someone will die nor are you worried that they will fail to save vollachia, heck you don't even see RBD or actually feel any of the normal tention that comes with the ability while you are reading, shotabaru makes everything easier...he make them easier for Subaru as well and the more shotabaru dies Subaru becomes more and more in control so much sonit becomes very hard to different them at some point
While the whole thing started as in out of control situation first, I have no doubts that it becomes something that our Subaru took advantage of, he notices how shotbaru has no real understanding of trauma, it's more like a painful unconvinet event to him but that's it, he theorized that it might blow up in his face later on but he was fine with this, he also noticed that his mindset has reset to his younger years when he was a prodigy, the Subaru from that time was obsessed with being his father son, this obsession continue for YEARS, because it took years for Subaru child self who believed that everything is possible with enough hard work to die, now imagine that desperate child with Subaru crazy idoligy and RBD and well, this is the formula for in utter disaster
It was a convinet situation for Subaru because it made him reached his desire BUT it wasn't something he desired to be because he still wanted to stand alongside Emilia as a knight and because this was still Subaru after all, and I think that Subaru hypocrisy and everything that I mentioned before in this post came together in the moment Subaru rejected to return back to normal despite him having few chances to do so
While the situation was unfortunate at first but this excuse to defend Subaru fall down in the moment he had the chance to return to his adult self but he willingly choose not too, he has the chance to ask olbart for help and Vincent will aid him, but he refuses saying it was for the pleadise but we all know that in chapter 75 this assumption was rejected, and even then Subaru returning back to normal should be for the best, isn't Subaru killing himself anyway because "it's for the best" as he put it? Wouldn't it be better to risk the possibility of one loop to see the outcome of this? Yet Subaru didn't do it, he could have do it after they left to the capital away from pleadise but he also refuses, and finally in arc 8 chapter 74 Subaru was seemingly knowledgeable about a way to return back to normal after using glouutiny yet he still didn't use it... it's because Subaru not shotabaru is the one behind this madness, and because he has decided that him retuning back to normal in this current time won't be beneficial, but since he can't explain exactly why he hide behind the lie that it's all for the plan, when in reality it was just him hiding behind this mask of invisibility that was forced on him but he crafted it to fit him eventually
Subaru knew for a fact that his adult self who has a full understanding of RBD won't really use this power to it's full potential, meaning that there's many tragedy that Subaru won't really stop from acuring, meaning that what hold Subaru back from the future that he always desired will be back again, as a child Subaru could do this but his not so sure if this will continue as in adult, in the moment Subaru felt that the ending of the story is getting close and that sphinx death is right in front of his eyes ( basically when he finally precived his perfect ending that he always dreamed of ) that he gave up on shotabaru , throwing him away like some unwanted rug, with amnesia barue at least it was emotional scene of acceptance, with shotabaru it was more like a weight that he finally lift from his shoulders without even one second of a proper clouser, only to run for Emilia happy that he finally no longer in need to stay like this
What many receive as Subaru finally being free from shotabaru is for me showing Subaru absolute hypocrisy and how he was actually the one abusing his child self and not the opposite, despite having the chance of letting him go Subaru used him under the excuse that it's for the best, and while he use the pill to remind himself of how harsh death is Subaru didn't stop seeing RBD as a method or a tool to reach his goal, Subaru in arc 4 used RBD to self punchiment, while in arc 7&8 he use it to save everything and the hurt part is just a neccacry process, he never lost meaning of death due to this BUT he has lost his way with RBD
The fact that the author killed off Priscilla when Subaru returned back again to his original self is a really big slap on Subaru face ( and it's not the last ) because Subaru has give up on the excuse that made him act out of his usual self thinking he has already reached the perfect ending only for him to face the fact that Priscilla has died off screen even before the big battle happen, Because unlike shotabaru who immediately think about RBD when faced with the death of someone dear, Subaru... Subaru is not like this, many people forget this but in arc 5 when Subaru saw that Emilia might have died he immediately fall down to his kennes and didn't move, his first instinct wasn't to RBD no, it was him surunder to grieve that swallow him whole, that's why Subaru reaction for to Priscilla death and her disappearing into thin air right in front of his eyes wasn't to kill himself, because his mind was so messed up and distracted by in unbelievable event that made him genuinely stunned and incapable of even trying to solve the situation, right now the amount of death he endure throughout the arcs will be rushing to make his wound even more painful
Of course I don't believe Subaru will accept that soon, I think that the aftermath of Subaru hypocrisy and his choices in arc 7&8 that he uses to Sneak away from what he leaned before since arc 4 will be shown in the next arc, there's also a high chance Subaru might go back to this mindset of " if I didn't RBD I would never know whatever they were savable or not thus I can still make myself believe that they were" which will be a perfect call for that scene in gunhive when Subaru also refuses to RBD for the same exact reason
I don't doubt that at some point Subaru will overcome this but my fear is actually that Subaru might go through his phase of hating the world ( just like in the shadow garden) switching the blame from himself to the world itself as a way to cope because I doubt Subaru would let go of his fear and obsession with Saving that easily but whatever will happen i feel that the whole arc was setting Subaru up for starting the path of him accepting death and lose more

Below you will find a weekly reminder of our Rules and partial FAQ. It's definitely a long read, but it's worth your time, especially if you are new to the community, or dropping by as a result of a link you found elsewhere. We periodically revise our rules, this weekly notice will help keep you informed of any changes made.
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• We highly recommend using a separate account for support subs to help prevent being doxxed. Do not post any information that may allow others to figure out your identity.
• Do not post photos of children, or any other photo that could be used to identify you or another user on the sub.
• Any image that contains a name or other identifying information should have the name or identifying information blurred out. This includes drawings, notes, and screenshots.
• Do not link to social media or any articles/blogs where you or another user on the sub is mentioned by name.

8. No More than 2 Posts per 24 hours

Use the daily threads.

• We are not a huge sub, but we are no longer a small sub. If you have multiple grievances to air, use the daily discussion threads instead of multiple posts.

9. Follow Reddiquette

Remember the human.

• Adhere to the same standards of behavior online that you follow in real life.
• Read it in full here.
• Downvoting is reserved for comments that don’t contribute, and shouldn't be used to indicate disagreement.
• If you believe someone is in violation of the subreddit rules, please either use the report function or message the mods to direct their attention to the issue.
• Suspected brigading will be reported to reddit admins.

10. No Porn, Spam, Blogs, or Research Studies/Surveys Without Mod Approval

Just don't.

• This is a SFW subreddit. Posting pornography will result in immediate post removal and permanent ban.
• Advertising on the subreddit (outside of Reddit's own advertising) is not allowed.
• No personal blog posts are allowed without express moderator permission.
• No advertising without prior mod approval.
• No asking for money/posting fundraisers/etc.
• For links to parenting research studies or surveys, please message the mods for permission before posting.

11. Disputes in Modmail Only

Don't argue with the mods on the sub.

• Any issues specifically related to how a mod is moderating should be addressed to the full moderating team via mod mail. This ensures that all mods are aware of any concerns and prevents disintegration of the topic thread at hand.
• This means to do not message or send chat requests to individual mods. All discussion and complaints about mod actions need to be done in mod mail ONLY. Failure to follow this rule can result in an immediate permanent ban.
• Comments in threads asking about mod decisions are subject to removal without notice.

12. Moderator Actions

We aren't kidding.

• Users are expected to know the rules before posting. If you are warned or banned for violating the rules, ignorance is not an excuse.
• Moderators will remove posts and comments and/or lock threads in accordance with the rules above. Typically this happens when threads have gone off-topic in a way that is not productive for the OP, or comments overall have become contentious or disrespectful.
• If a poster continues to argue or to willfully violate these rules, temporary and permanent ban procedures will be followed. Any attempts to avoid or bypass temporary bans will result in a permanent ban. User bans will not be discussed in the sub. Questions posted about user bans are subject to removal and the poster subject to warning/ban procedures. The mod team will not discuss a specific user ban with anyone other than the user involved.
• New accounts are subject to manual approval until they are no longer deemed "new" by the mod team. This helps to weed out trolls and ban evaders.
• We rely on Automoderator to scan for specific words and phrases that are not welcome here and notify the mod team to review the comment or post. This includes slurs of any type and platitudes such as "Love them as your own!"
• The mod team uses a combination of blacklisting and banning when dealing with trolls.
• We employ the use of a bot that automatically bans anyone who comments in subs that have historically harassed our users. If you are picked up by the bot for telling trolls to get fucked, reach out via mod mail and we'll get you sorted out.
• The rules above as well as ban procedures are considered guidelines only; some deviation may be necessary on a case by case basis and/or at the mod team's discretion.

13. Ban Procedure

These actions are at moderator discretion.

• Pornography will result in an automatic permanent ban.
• Extremely egregious content will result in an immediate permanent ban.
• You may receive a 7 or 30 day temporary ban for first and second rule violations, depending upon severity.
• Continued rule violations will result in a permanent ban.
• Willful attempts to avoid or bypass temporary bans will result in a permanent ban.
• We recognize the reddit site-wide rules of using alt names to get around bans and will ban those as well as report them to reddit admins.

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FAQ - About the Rules

What does Kindness Matters mean?

• Shortest version? Don't be an asshole. People come here for support and advice, they do not come here to be yelled at or told they are the reason everything is going sideways. There are ways to point out that someone may want to do some reflection on their own actions and reactions without being an asshole about it.
• The purpose of this subreddit is to provide support and a sense of belonging for struggling stepparents. We aren't here to pass judgement, but rather to offer support, empathy, and constructive commentary. That does not include "hard truths" or "tough love." Stepparents get enough of that in every other subreddit, we're not passing it out here. Be respectful.
• Remember, most people aren't going to come to a sub like this when everything is going great and everyone is getting along. People are coming here when they are down, when they are feeling defeated and stretched to the limit. Kicking someone when they are down is shitty behavior and we don't tolerate it.

What about being kind to the kids?

• "Won't somebody think of the children?" Pearl clutching isn't needed here. If you read the Kindness Matters rule closely, you will see that there is a clause in there about name calling children. We don't allow it. We also don't allow people rolling in telling OP that they feel sorry for their stepkids because OP is feeling overwhelmed and overloaded.
• If anyone is advocating slapping, spanking, or any other form of violence, report the comment immediately. We do not advocate violence towards children of any sort. The mod team does not advocate any sort of physical punishment at any time.
• Venting about behaviors is not the same as insulting the kids. However, if you see a post or comment where kids are being name called or dragged to the point of no return, use the report button. We try to catch the posts and remove them before they hit the sub, but we cannot see every comment without your help. Use the report button to bring problematic comments to our attention. Don't engage in a war of words on our subreddit.

Why is this sub such an echo chamber?

• Not allowing contributors to pile on and tell OP that they are a terrible human being who should never be around children does not equate to being an echo chamber. Many contributors here will offer OP suggestions to help them work through their resentments and frustrations, and the most egregious situations are called out. We simply ask that it be called out with respect.
• If you feel that a post is simply too much for you to handle without following the rules, move on to another post.
• If you believe that a post itself is crossing the rules report it. If the mod team has approved the post, it is because the mod team believes that the OP needs help from the community or needs a moment to vent and move on from their vent. That does not give you license to pile on disrespectfully. Unless it is proven that OP is a bot, assume that OP is a human being with real thoughts and feelings and has posted from a place of vulnerability.

Why can't I tell OP that they are an asshole?

• Because this isn't a judgement sub. We aren't AITA, we don't want to be AITA.
• Comments with terms like YTA, NTA, ESH, NAH will be removed.
• Don't start your posts with INFO either. We generally recognize that as a fishing attempt for more information to pass judgement on OP, and again, we are not a judgment sub.

But OP asked if they were an asshole?!

• Their post somehow got past our automoderator. Just use the report button. We will address it with OP.
• If you've asked if you are an asshole, a-hole, a*hole, a**hole, whatever, don't be surprised if your post is removed without warning. This isn't a judgment sub. If you want judgment, you know where to go.

What is a gendered slur?

• While it seems that everyone understands what racist slurs are, people struggle understanding the concept of gendered slurs. Generally speaking, we are talking about derogatory nouns or verbs that are used to negatively describe people or situations based on gendered terms.
• We've gone back and forth on this a few times, and the truth is, we get it, it's your safe space and you want to be able to vent about BM/BD how you want to vent about them, without us telling you how to vent about them. Fair enough. Vent away. What we are going to stick to here how people are referring to other users and to stepchildren.
• Examples that are not allowed:
  • "My SD is such a little bitch."
  • "She dresses/acts like a slut."
  • "My SS acts like a pussy."
  • "My SS is such a beta male."
  • "You are all fucking whores."
  • "Any dude who is raising some sluts kids is a cuck!"
  • "Little Lord Fauntleroy over here thinking he runs the house!"
  • "You're just the bangnanny, get used to it."
• Don't call users here names, don't call stepchildren names.
• Masking the term with asterisks or other neat little tricks might get you around the bot, but if we see it, we're removing it and quite possibly giving you a time out. The intended word is still there and you deliberately tried to skate the rule.
• As there is not enough space to list every term that is offensive and does not belong, nor every situation in which term or phrase may be allowable in context, this rule is enforced based on moderator discretion.

Seriously? You are the language police now?

• We're here to talk about stepparenting. And we would like for that to happen in a respectful way. Attacking each other doesn't help. Belittling stepchildren draws in trolls who don't understand your frustration, all they see is an evil stepmonster talking shit on the internet about a poor, innocent baby. Yes, even if that "poor, innocent baby" just robbed you blind and set fire to the house on their way out the door. That's just how it goes.
• We are aware that this is a relatively new rule and a lot of older posts and comments contain a lot of problematic language, including some from mods themselves. We are growing and evolving, and rules change as the sub grows and evolves.

What does No Drama really mean?

• Pretty much what it says, do not bring drama from other subs into this sub. Do not engage in vote brigades. Do not try to incite other subscribers to riot in a different sub. Don't follow posters into this sub from other subs to continue to harass them. Do not badger someone or derail threads. Do not harass community members because you don't agree with them. There's enough drama in the daily lives of subscribers, more isn't needed.

What is thread derailment?

• When a comment chain has devolved to the point where all you are doing is arguing back and forth with someone about the same thing over and over again, you have derailed the thread. Also known as bickering. It's what children do. We assume if people are in a stepparent role they are adults. We expect you to act like it.
• If you aren't a stepparent, or in a stepparenting role, consider that perhaps this subreddit isn't for you. If you want to participate, do so with respect. Thread derailment, arguing, bickering, and nitpicking are not allowed.

But what if they didn't answer my question?

• No one has to answer your questions. This is a support sub, not an inquisition. Jumping on a bandwagon with "OP is evading the question" in a 20 comment long chain is the epitome of thread derailment. You'll find more information about trolling below and how this might be considered such.

Why am I being silenced? I'm just asking for a back and forth!

• Thread derailment, badgering, and nitpicking are considered harassment. Continued harassment of either community members or mods will get you banned.

Why can't I look at someone's post history and comment about it?

• No mod in the history of this sub has ever once said post histories are forbidden. What we do frown upon is using someone's post history to attack, belittle, or otherwise harass someone.
• Example Post: "My stepkid's mom really hates me. How can I make this better?"
  • Okay: "Based on the timeline and your post history, it looks like this may have started as an affair. Unfortunately there's going to be outstanding issues for a long time due to that. Try focusing on yourself and how you can move forward without worrying about how someone else feels about you."
  • Not Okay: "Holy shit! You were the OW! What the hell do you expect, homewrecker?!"
• Example Post: "I am completely overloaded and feeling very down about myself."
  • Okay: "In your post history you mentioned that your spouse wasn't really helping around the house. Has that changed at all?"
  • Not Okay: "LOL, you already got the answers you need in your post on relationships. You are stupid for sticking with your lazy spouse."

Why can't we crosspost stuff to other subs?

• We can't stop you from doing so. The problem isn't that something has been crossposted, it's when the community that it's been crossposted to feels the need to come over here and harass OP. When we see that happening, we lock the post and start passing out bans. If you did the crossposting, you'll be banned. If you participated in the brigading, you'll be banned.

What if it's my own post?

• Again, we can't stop you from doing so. We prefer that you don't technically crosspost, but rather just copy and paste your post. Why? Because inevitably the above will happen. Redditors from other subs will follow you back to /stepparents and start attacking users here. It just happens.

What is "brigading"?

• Reddit defines vote manipulation and brigading as follows:
• Using multiple accounts, voting services, or any other software to increase or decrease vote scores.
• Asking people to vote up or down certain posts, either on Reddit itself or through social networks, messaging, etc. for personal gain.
• Forming or joining a group that votes together, either on a specific post, a user's posts, posts from a domain, etc.
• We, along with pretty much every other subreddit that has ever had to deal with this nonsense, further define brigading as this: You saw a post on another sub that linked to our sub either via a link in a comment or a crosspost. It was basically saying something along the lines of "OMG, check out these assholes over on /stepparents! They literally hate all their stepkids!" And then you and your friends come over and start hammering on OP and telling OP how much they suck. Congrats, you have just participated in a brigade.

What is this whole Report, Don't Rant thing about?

• If you see a post or comment that breaks the rules, instead of engaging, report it. When you report it, it sends notification to the mod team. We will act on it where appropriate. Engaging with bad faith users may result in your comments being removed. If you repeatedly do so, you may end up being banned.

What if I see an obvious troll?

• Report it.

What if they are being really mean in comments?

• Report it.

What if they are harassing me in private messages?

• Step 1: Report them to admins. You can report harassment to reddit by using this link or send a DM to reddit admins. Include the link to the DM, admins can see your inbox and providing a direct link is helpful for them to weed out bad actors.
• Step 2: Block the person so they cannot directly contact you again.
• Step 3: Send us a mod mail and let the mod team know. Tell us who they are and what they said, send us a screenshot if you can - admins can see your DMs, mods can't. We'll take action where necessary by banning from the sub if they aren't already banned.

What do you mean by No Naming & Shaming?

• Just as we prefer to not be linked to or crossposted from, we do not allow linking to or calling out other subs by name. If you see something you want to share, say it's a hot post that has hit the front page and a stepparent is being absolutely flayed, just refer to it as "that hot post that hit the front page." If you want to complain about other places in general, "other parenting/advice/judgement subs" will suffice. Absolutely under no circumstances should you link to anywhere else.

I can't link to other subs?

• Do not directly link to another sub. (e.g.: "/insertsubnamehere is ridiculously hostile to stepparents!")
• Do not name other subs. (e.g.: "I won't link to it directly, but insertsubnamehere is ridiculously hostile to stepparents!")
• Do not abbreviate other subs. (e.g.: "I know that ISNH is ridiculously hostile to stepparents!")

I can't ping other users?

• Do not summon another user with a username ping/tag. (e.g.: "insertusernamehere was being an asshole.")
• If you are agreeing with someone, it is okay to link to them. (e.g.: "I agree with insertusernamehere, you need to take a couple of steps back and reflect on this.")

What does No Platitudes mean?

• Sanctimonious, overused clichés that grossly oversimplify the stepparenting experience are neither wanted nor allowed here. We have all heard it a thousand times before, we don't need to hear it again. It's not nearly as insightful and wise as some would like to think.

Why don't you people understand it's a package deal?

• Any comment that suggests that OP should have known what they were getting involved with, or that they needed to understand that the kids were part of some package they needed to accept before signing up for marriage is subject to immediate removal.
• This is one of the most insensitive things you can say to a stepparent. Most stepparents were aware of the children, but they were probably not aware of all of the family dynamics.

Why can't you just love them like they are your own?

• Demanding that a stranger you do not know love children that are not biologically theirs as if they were theirs can be incredibly damaging to someone who is already in a vulnerable situation. Any comment that falls along these lines will be removed.

What do you mean by No Trolling? I was just...

• No means no. No trolling. No pretending to be a stepparent and then whipping out the Greatest Hits Bingo Card of The Worst Stepparent in the History of Stepparents. We see you. We've seen you a thousand times.

What does "concern trolling", "gish-galloping", and "sealioning" have to do with stepparenting? This isn't a debate sub, why are you using debate terms?

• That's absolutely right, this isn't a debate sub. And yet, here we are, day after day, having to defend ourselves against this sort of thing. So, enough. No more. Usage of any of these things will get you banned.

What is "Concern Trolling?"

• A concern troll is someone who disingenuously visits sites of an opposing ideology to disrupt conversation by offering unwanted advice on how to solve problems which do not really exist.
  • Example Post: OP expresses concern that she will feel, and possibly act, differently towards her stepchildren after her husband decides that no, he doesn't want anymore children after all.
  • Example Concern Troll pulled from actual mod mail after their comment was removed: "Possible child abuse claims need to be sorted out well before whatever empathy you believe the OP was looking for."

What is a "Devil's Advocate"?

• "I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but have you considered that maybe BM is just really tired and needs a break, too?" BM has dozens of different mom based subs alone on reddit she can complain on, this sub is for stepparents. The stepparent doesn't need to consider that maybe BM is just really tired and needs a break.

"Gish-galloping?" What does that even mean?

• The Gish Gallop is the fallacious debate tactic of drowning your opponent in a flood of individually-weak arguments in order to prevent rebuttal of the whole argument collection without great effort. The Gish Gallop is a conveyor belt-fed version of the on the spot fallacy, as it's unreasonable for anyone to have a well-composed answer immediately available to every argument present in the Gallop.

And "sealioning?" What's that?

• Sealioning involves jumping into a conversation with endless polite, reasonable questions and demands for answers, usually of entry-level topics far below the actual conversation (e.g. "please prove sexism exists"). This tactic differs little from harassment; instead of discussion, the point is to derail discussion, receive criticism (for their ignorance) so as to look like a victim, or to make someone feel overwhelmed and quit talking.

Who gets to define what is considered asshattery?

• The mod team, of course! If we feel that comments are out of line, are trolling, are leading up to a fight or "just asking questions", we are going to remove them and most likely ban the offender.

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FAQ - Sub Questions

Posting Guidelines for Stepparents

• Body text is required, we suggest you use line breaks between paragraphs as a wall of text is difficult to read. Posts that have only a title are likely to be removed. Instead of using names (even fictitious ones), try to use the sub acronyms. It helps our users to follow along if you use the acronyms and not names.
• Assign a post flair that accurately describes what your post is about and what you are seeking. If you are posting an update from a previous post, include a link to that post.
• Flairs are applied to posts to determine what a person is looking for. When submitting a new post, you should choose a flair that specifies if you are looking for advice, support, etc. The following link flair is available and is color coded with side bar links so that you can search by flair:
  • Advice - For when you are specifically asking for advice or help.
  • Announcement - Mod Use Only, for subreddit announcements.
  • Daily (Formerly TTP) - Mod Use Only, for our daily discussion threads.
  • Discussion - A little advice, a little "How does your family handle this?"
  • JustBMThings - Pretty sure this is self explanatory!
  • Legal - Asking for legal advice? Tag it with this!
  • Miscellany - Just a sort of off topic thing? Use this tag.
  • Resource - Sharing a good resource or asking for one? This is the tag you need!
  • Support - For those days when you want nothing but a good old fashioned cry and some community love.
  • Update - Updating us on something that you posted about previously? Use this one!
  • Vent - We all need to vent sometimes. Respect the tag as a vent. This isn't how OP talks all day every day.
  • Win! - Celebrate those wins with us with this tag!
  • Megathread - Mod Use Only, for large mega threads (typically around major calendar events.)

Posting Guidelines for Bioparents

• Stepparents is a support community for stepparents, by stepparents. As bioparents, you may want to have more insight into how the stepparent in your life feels or thinks. You may have questions on how to ease the transition for your partner. However, please keep in mind that this community was not created for you. It was created for your partner or your ex's partner. If you are seeking support on how to deal with a stepparent, there are other subs more suited for your situation and your post is subject to removal.
• There are some posts from bioparents we will accept:
  • Seeking advice on how to support your partner as they navigate stepparenting
  • Seeking resources to help you better support your partner
  • Seeking resources for your partner
• There are some posts from bioparents we will not accept:
  • Complaints about how the stepparent is too involved in your kids lives
  • Vents about how the stepparent is not involved enough in your kids lives
  • "Cautionary tales" advising stepparents to back off
  • Seeking advice on how to tell the stepparent to back off
  • The Do's and Dont's of Stepparenting
  • How your kid's stepmom is literally The Worst
• Comments from bioparents that are helpful and supportive are welcome and appreciated. Comments from bioparents that are not helpful or supportive are not welcome and subject to removal. There are several other subs that may meet the needs of bioparents better than we can. We recommend /coparenting, /parenting, /parents, /blendedfamilies, and /singleparents as starting points.

Guidelines for Stepkids

• At this time, we do not generally accept posts from stepkids. Comments from stepkids that are helpful and supportive are welcome and appreciated. Comments from stepkids that are not helpful or supportive are not welcome and subject to removal. If you are a stepkid seeking support, we highly recommend /stepkids. It is a very supportive community specifically for stepkids. We also recommend /blendedfamilies as another potential group for support.

What the heck are all these acronyms? I'm confused!

• Check out the Common Acronyms wiki page. We try to keep this updated as new terms are introduced to the sub.

Why aren't my posts or comments showing up?

• New posters and accounts go through a waiting period before their posts will show in the sub and the comments on posts automatically. During the new account approval period the mod team will check posts to be sure you aren't attempting to circumvent a ban with a shiny new account. Please be patient while the timer runs down on your "new" status and the mod team approves your posts and responses.

Why was my comment removed?

• Comments are removed when they do not follow the rules of the sub. These rules are published in several places for your reading pleasure.
• Comments are removed at moderator discretion. In some cases your comment may be removed while another remains up. If you find this to be the case, and you believe the comment to be violating the rules, instead of arguing with mods or demanding they remove the additional comments, just report it.

This comment/post is really offensive! Why is it still up?

• All moderators are volunteers and have busy real lives. Sometimes things get past us. The best thing you can do is report anything you find offensive or inflammatory. It's the quickest and most reliable way of alerting us to an issue.

I've received a hurtful/unwanted PM from someone about my recent post. What should I do?

• If you receive an unwanted/hurtful PM from a name you don't recognize, please report it to Reddit Admins using our handy pre-populated form. Be sure to include the permalink to the message. We've been dealing with a few unhappy folks who like to attack stepparents, and reporting it to the admins is the only way to make it stop.

What are the general moderator guidelines?

• Users are expected to know the rules before posting. If you are warned or banned for violating the rules, ignorance is not an excuse.
• Moderators will remove posts and comments and/or lock threads in accordance with the rules above. Typically this happens when threads have gone off-topic in a way that is not productive for the OP, or comments overall have become contentious or disrespectful.
• If a poster continues to argue or to willfully violate these rules, temporary and permanent ban procedures will be followed. Any attempts to avoid or bypass temporary bans will result in a permanent ban. User bans will not be discussed in the sub. Questions posted about user bans are subject to removal and the poster subject to warning/ban procedures. The mod team will not discuss a specific user ban with anyone other than the user involved.
• New accounts are subject to manual approval until they are no longer deemed "new" by the mod team. This helps to weed out trolls and ban evaders.
• We rely on Automoderator to scan for specific words and phrases that are not welcome here and notify the mod team to review the comment or post. This includes slurs of any type and platitudes such as "Love them as your own!"
• The mod team uses a combination of blacklisting and banning when dealing with trolls.
• We employ the use of a bot that automatically bans anyone who comments in subs that have historically harassed our users. If you are picked up by the bot for telling trolls to get fucked, reach out via mod mail and we'll get you sorted out.
• The rules above as well as ban procedures are considered guidelines only; some deviation may be necessary on a case by case basis and/or at the mod team's discretion.

I've been wrongly banned/Why can't I comment here?

• Due to an influx of harassment from users with specific user histories, we have employed a user history ban bot as described above. If you think this has affected you and wish to appeal, please message the mods.

Why was I banned without warning?

• There are numerous reasons that the mod team might opt to move perm banning without warning. Message the moderators if you have specific questions.

This post will be addressing Grusch’s ICIG whistleblower complaint, submitted May 2022. I feel there’s a lot of misinformation out there regarding the nature of that subsequent investigation, and it’s important to get to the actual substance of this stuff.
II’ll start with breaking down this post: * The limited jurisdiction of ICIG * How the ICIG responds to UAP claims * Confirmed statements from officials * Breaking down what Grusch has said.
The Jurisdiction & Function of the ICIG
To investigate complaints with relation to serious or flagrant problem, abuse, violation of the law or Executive order, or deficiency relating to the funding, administration, or operation of an intelligence activity..
We can refer to the ICIG statement of 12/08/2015 regarding their specific functions:

• To prevent problems and deficiencies related to the administration of programs and activities.
  
• Prohibitations [to ref ICIG’s jurisdictions] relate to such activities themselves to protect the security interests of the United States.
  

You can go through to the publications section of the ICIG website - Pages 3 & 4.
This means the core purpose of the ICIG is to investigate the professional and operational nature of intelligence programs. It’s a matter of administrative auditing, and ethical behaviour. They would not be investigating the veracity of Grusch’s whistleblower claims. It’s just not their function.
You can even go to their semi-annual reports as well where they are required to disclose or unclassify all cases.
“The ICIG shall, not later than October 21 and April 30 of each year, prepare and submit *unclassified** semi-annual reports summarizing their findings of all investigations.” Again, go to the publications section of the ICIG site.*
Even for ongoing investigations they disclose all findings to date. None of the cases summarized in any of the reporting so far verify Grusch’s claims.
Here’s an example of the March Semi-Annual 2023 report. Go down to “Reprisal Investigations”.
What officials say on Grusch’s NHI complaint in relation to the ICIG
02/08/24 Senator Marco Rubio - Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee:
Matt Laslo: ”Are we gonna hear from those people whistleblowers within the senate?”
Marco Rubio: ”There’s a whistleblower complaint filed by one of them, and, ultimately, I mean, we haven’t spent a tremendous amount of time on it lately but I was hoping that’s what AARO would”. Source
-------
12/04/24 Senator Kirsten Gillibrand - Chairs the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities. Also sits on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Matt Laslo: ” Laslo asked Gillibrand, "Have you met with David Grusch yet?".
Kristen Gillibrand: ”No. We invited him to come, and I was supposed to meet with him and Dr. Kirkpatrick together. But they ultimately declined that meeting." Source.
Further.
Kristen Gillibrand: "But I can't assess them unless AARO can talk to them, because AARO knows what they know and what they've seen and what they've been shown." Source
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The ICIG vs AARO
As much as people hate on AARO here, there’s a reason why they came to be in the first place. There was a gap with regards to investigating these sorts of claims, and that was understood following the 2017 NYTimes article on Elizondo. AARO’s and the UAPTF’s function wouldn’t be a necessity if the ICIG covered this area already. There was a gap concerning UAPs that precipitated the formation of subsequent investigative bodies. AARO’s responsibility covers the matter of UAPs by the historical review legislative language of the NDAA FY23. Both the ICIG and DoDIG have deferred to them in this area already. This is specifically why the actual chairs and participants of the Intelligence Committee (Rubio & Gillibrand) have deferred to them as well. I’ll refer right back to the ICIG website where you can read for yourselves. See the following:
2023 CONSOLIDATED ANNUAL REPORT ON UNIDENTIFIED ANOMALOUS PHENOMENA
They outsource specific matters of UAPs and NHI’s via AARO’s reporting pipeline. Finally, under this particular point, I which to emphasize that there are no direct records from ICIG officials stating Grusch’s NHI findings are “urgent and credible”. As a matter of fact, it’s hard to find the Inspector General comment on the veracity of his direct claims himself. The sources for this claim come from Grusch’s associates themselves. Not direct from the ICIG.
It is true that as a matter of policy they find all complaints urgent and credible, but that is a general measure as a matter of employment misconduct. What has Grusch said on this matter
I’ll be honest, that while looking into this my automatic instinct was to blame Grusch for misleading on this matter. With that said, there are no direct statements where Grusch actually says the ICIG found his NHI claims credible. He never stated any such thing. As somebody who has experienced being misquoted, I can understand the same thing happening to Dave. Dare i say it he’s probably innocent, and we’re misquoting.
Here’s a particular quote: ”I trust in the investigative and law enforcement/criminal referral authorities ICIG has independent of DoD oversight."
Where does that leave the investigation?
I refer back to the Congressional Transcripts of the 07/26/24 Hearing. This was in relation to Grusch’s response to Anne Paula Luna:
Grusch: "I had a classified conversation [with Sean Kirkpatrick] in April 2022 before he took over AARO in July 2022 and I provided him some concerns I had....I was happy to give sage counsel to him on where to look when he took the helm of AARO."

The figure of the Mesopotamian "Anu" corresponds to what is commonly referred to as "Adam Kadmon" in Hebrew culture; who is sometimes interpreted as the First Man but called the "cosmic man" and not the "earthly man" (because there was another Adam according to Hebrew tradition who was the "earthly man" instead) – and this "cosmic" or "heavenly man" is thus Adam Kadmon and he corresponds to the Sumerian Anu and Greek Uranus.
But on other occasions Adam Kadmon is instead worshipped as "god" himself and as the purest manifestation of god – so in that case Anu/Uranus is interpreted as God and the first man Adam is instead considered to be equivalent with the "earthly Adam" mentioned previously, and not with the "cosmic one" in those cases. So traditions are ambivalent towards him – because they still consider him as occupying the slot of the "first man" thus having embodied the position of the "cosmic" man and first creation ever created; but then at the same time he’s also regarded as being equivalent with God himself in other stories – so in those cases the position of Adam is instead occupied by the earthly Adam instead, the "other" Adam (called "Adam Ha’Rishon" in Hebrew meaning "the earthly Adam"; who is distinguished from "Adam Qadmon" which is the "cosmic Adam").
The fact that Uranus is the first Adam or the "cosmic Adam" i.e. Adam Kadmon – is also apparent in the description of the creation of the first couple of beings called "Adam and Eve" (because as stated in previous posts there was more than one couple of individuals who bore the names "Adam and Eve") – and Uranus and Gaia being the first set of "Adams and Eves" ever (the first ones who bore those names ever); they were claimed in Greek mythology to have been born conjoined or "united" originally; with Uranus pointing upwards thus being "the sky" and Gaia pointing downwards thus being "the earth". This is why Uranus was called the sky (among other reasons) and Gaia was addressed as the earth.
Likewise when Adam Kadmon is created – Hebrew culture stated that he was conjoined with his twin-sister Eve and Adam was said to have had his face pointing towards the sky while Eve had her face pointing down towards the earth according to Rabbinical writings. This was the original "man-woman" united called Adam Kadmon – who corresponds to the first ever couple called "Adam and Eve" and to Uranus and Gaia themselves.
An image of a mosaic of Uranus (Roman: Caelus) and Gaia (Roman: Terra or Tellus) inside the garden – with the symbols of the twelve zodiac signs and four seasons around them (the four seasons being represented by their four children): https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aion_mosaic_Glyptothek_Munich_W504.jpg#mw-jump-to-license These symbologies were placed to indicate that at the time when they ruled on earth the seasons were continuously fertile and plants were producing fruits all year long – which is exactly what’s stated in the Bible – which claims that the Garden had all the plants that produced good fruits to eat and good vegetables for consumption – and that these plants would keep producing and giving off fruits all year-long since artificial conditions had been created on earth that made it so that this was the case for plants and fruits. And not coincidentally the first man Adam Kadmon is also depicted while surrounded by the 12 zodiac signs in Hebrew culture and he’s called the "man inside the zodiac" himself (just like in the mosaic with Aion/Uranus).
This was the first couple of beings called "Adam and Eve". Then – as mentioned in this other post as well: https://www.reddit.com/EsotericOccult/s/Ve7RWrSWkN; there was another set of "Adam and Eve" who were Hades (the young brother of Persephone, the twin-god of death) and Persephone herself (who was the twin-goddess of death); and they were kicked out of the Garden for their transgression of being romantic partners. This subsequent couple of individuals who were also called "Adam and Eve" themselves – is sometimes addressed with the proper names "Adam and Eve" in the Bible (for example when they eat the fruit and they are kicked from the garden) – but they are confused as being the same Adam and Eve as the first ones (i.e. Uranus and Gaia) due to confusion (so the myths of the "second Adam and Eve" were then confused with the ones of the "first Adam and Eve" – and the mythologies of both were thus fused together into a single account because they were believed to be one and the same people due to confusion and due to the overlapping of figures who bore the same names despite being multiple distinct individuals); but then at other times this second set of "Adam and Eve" (Hades and Persephone) are instead addressed with other names in the Bible; like for example the second Adam (who corresponds to "Dionysus" or to the "younger version of Hades" who’s the brother of Persephone) being also addressed with the name "Seth" by the Bible or the woman being addressed as "Lilith" when she was banished. (Seth was claimed to have been a copy of Adam since he looked exactly like him and was created "in the image of Adam" according to the Bible in Genesis 5:3; so Seth himself was essentially a second Adam or a copy/clone of Adam and they were indistinguishable because of that. He was technically the "third Adam" created because there had also been an even earlier "earthly Adam" who was created after Uranus i.e. after Adam Kadmon, but this first "earthly Adam" was claimed to have died, so he was replaced by Seth – and this previous earthly Adam corresponds to Abel the brother of Cain; but since Abel had been killed, Seth remained as the only Adam available after Adam Kadmon/Uranus).
But one thing that was to common to all of them is that both sets of Adams and Eves were claimed to have done a "transgression" at some point in the their lives: the "first transgression" of the first couple called "Adam and Eve" i.e. Uranus and Gaia; was that the woman (in this case "Gaia") betrayed the husband (Adam/Uranus) and joined the Serpent (Cronus) having an evil son with him i.e. Cain (who corresponds to "Typhon" in Greek mythology as the offspring of Cronus and Gaia). Typhon will then murder Zeus (or "mutilate" him out of jealousy – like Cain did with Abel and Set with Osiris; and not coincidentally Horus is then born as a replacement for Osiris much like Seth is born to be a replacement for the dead Abel).
On the other hand the "second transgression" of the second couple called "Adam and Eve" i.e. Hades/Dionysus (the younger Hades) and Persephone – was that they discovered each other’s "nakedness" and shared their sexuality with each other; when in fact they were brother and sister and that was something that was forbidden (Uranus and Gaia and the other gods usually married their "half-sisters" or "half-brothers", not full siblings) – but in this case the two siblings were much more related to each other so it was considered sinful and a transgression.
As a quick note: the reason why Uranus is claimed to be the son of Gaia in Greek mythology – is only because Tiamat herself (the Babylonian goddess who was said to have given birth to the gods) also came to be worshipped as the "Mother Earth" at some point and Tiamat was the mother of Anu, so she was sometimes confused with his wife Ki (the earth) i.e. Gaia because Tiamat was also worshipped as Gaia as well at some point. So Uranus was the son of Gaia but not the one "Gaia" who was his wife i.e. the Mesopotamian "Ki" – and he was instead the son of the one "Gaia" who was equated with Tiamat and who was a previous Gaia herself.
The Sibylline Oracles (a work written in Greek which explained how Hebrew, early Christian and Greek culture all speak of the same events only called with different names – and these cultures thus all have common origins) states flat out that Uranus and Gaia were the first couple of human beings – and that they were the first "intelligent" or "sentient" humans because everyone around them were savages at the time when they lived. The Sibylline work then explains how nobody knew the real names of Uranus and Gaia but that they were called with the names "Uranus" and "Gaia" only posthumously by people who worshipped them after their deaths. Uranus kept himself in the skies and didn’t want to have much contact with earth (he did live on earth but most of the time he didn’t spend his life on earth – he was in "paradise") whilst Gaia spent most of her time on earth instead; especially when she left Uranus and the two became separated, so she was called "the earth" as a result. The Greek translation for the term "Adam Kadmon" was not out of coincidence "Adam Ouranios" or "οὐράνιος ἄνθρωπος" (Ouranios Anthropos) meaning "heavenly man" – "heaven" being the word "Ouranos"; or he was also referred to as "Adam Elyon" and "Adam Ilah'ah" meaning "Supreme Adam" or "Higher Adam", the one "who’s above".
The terms "Elyon" and "Ilah'ah" will then be kept intact when Adam Kadmon will come to be worshipped as a "god" instead of a man by some other cultures (the Hebrews only worshipped "one god" – so to them it was forbidden to call anyone else with the title "God" or to state that anyone else is a "divinity" outside of the "one god", because it was forbidden according to their culture – and because of this – in the Bible we have all of these pagan deities who are addressed as mere "men and women" or as simple "humans" by the Bible itself as a result of this culture, when in fact they were actually all of them gods and they were even worshipped as "deities" in other cultures as well) – but this didn’t stop other groups of Semites who practiced polytheism to address these other figures as "gods" instead; because they didn’t have these kinds of problems in their cultures so they straight up worshiped these "first men" or "first humans" as deities in their own right and even called them with divine titles; which is why Adam Kadmon was worshipped as the god "El" (which is what the title "Ilah’ah" actually means – it’s an aspired way of pronouncing the word "El" or "Il" as "Ilah") and this one "El" was worshipped as the "highest above all others" – so this is why the epithet "Elyon" (Most High) was applied to him (this deity also appears in the Bible with his title "Elyon" in Deuteronomy 32:8).
Originally the Hebrews were polytheists as well (because the polytheistic cultures were actually the oldest ones and the Hebrew Bible is derived from them) – but after they became monotheists (first going through a phase of monolatry for some time and then becoming straight up monotheists completely) – the Hebrews rewrote the Bible multiple times and by the time they’d become full monotheists they rewrote the Bible removing all of the divine titles and the references to different "gods" throughout the Bible itself; and as such they wrote that Adam, Eve – the Patriarchs and the children of Israel were all mere "men and women" and they were simple "humans" who followed "the one and only god"; when instead originally in the previous polytheistic traditions – the original traditions claimed that these figures were all gods, and that they followed their "chief" who was the supreme god among them and he ruled over these "lesser gods" or – "gods who were lower in rank" when compared to him – but they were still all gods nonetheless, equal to him in terms of titles and dignity or "godhood". He was just the chief over them though.

First things first, I know that this is an assembly exclusively thread, BUT thought time I realized the only guys that have a clue about operating systems/low leveler level programming are you in this thread, ( is a joke) and stackoverflow is worse..So this is the question:
I have this PE that I want to load dynamically using a PE loader:
Code:
void excep() {
try {
int k = 11;
throw (k);
}
catch (int j) {
std::cout << j;
}
}
int main() {
excep();
return 0;
}
And this is the PE loader:
Code:

1. typedef enum _UNWIND_OP_CODES {
2. UWOP_PUSH_NONVOL = 0, /* info == register number */
3. UWOP_ALLOC_LARGE, /* no info, alloc size in next 2 slots */
4. UWOP_ALLOC_SMALL, /* info == size of allocation / 8 - 1 */
5. UWOP_SET_FPREG, /* no info, FP = RSP + UNWIND_INFO.FPRegOffset*16 */
6. UWOP_SAVE_NONVOL, /* info == register number, offset in next slot */
7. UWOP_SAVE_NONVOL_FAR, /* info == register number, offset in next 2 slots */
8. UWOP_SAVE_XMM128 = 8, /* info == XMM reg number, offset in next slot */
9. UWOP_SAVE_XMM128_FAR, /* info == XMM reg number, offset in next 2 slots */
10. UWOP_PUSH_MACHFRAME /* info == 0: no error-code, 1: error-code */
11. } UNWIND_CODE_OPS;
13. typedef unsigned char UBYTE;
15. typedef union _UNWIND_CODE {
16. struct {
17. UBYTE CodeOffset;
18. UBYTE UnwindOp : 4;
19. UBYTE OpInfo : 4;
20. };
21. USHORT FrameOffset;
22. } UNWIND_CODE, * PUNWIND_CODE;
24. #define UNW_FLAG_EHANDLER 0x01
25. #define UNW_FLAG_UHANDLER 0x02
26. #define UNW_FLAG_CHAININFO 0x04
28. typedef struct _UNWIND_INFO {
29. UBYTE Version : 3;
30. UBYTE Flags : 5;
31. UBYTE SizeOfProlog;
32. UBYTE CountOfCodes;
33. UBYTE FrameRegister : 4;
34. UBYTE FrameOffset : 4;
35. UNWIND_CODE UnwindCode[1];
36. /* UNWIND_CODE MoreUnwindCode[((CountOfCodes + 1) & ~1) - 1];
37. * union {
38. * OPTIONAL ULONG ExceptionHandler;
39. * OPTIONAL ULONG FunctionEntry;
40. * };
41. * OPTIONAL ULONG ExceptionData[]; */
42. } UNWIND_INFO, * PUNWIND_INFO;
45. bool readBinFile(const char fileName[], char** bufPtr, size_t& length)
46. {
47. if (FILE* fp = fopen(fileName, "rb"))
48. {
49. fseek(fp, 0, SEEK_END);
50. length = ftell(fp);
51. *bufPtr = (char*)malloc(length + 1);
52. fseek(fp, 0, SEEK_SET);
53. fread(*bufPtr, sizeof(char), length, fp);
54. return true;
55. }
56. else
57. return false;
58. }
60. void fixIat(char* peImage)
61. {
62. auto dir_ImportTable = getNtHdr(peImage)->OptionalHeader.DataDirectory[IMAGE_DIRECTORY_ENTRY_IMPORT];
63. auto impModuleList = (IMAGE_IMPORT_DESCRIPTOR*)&peImage[dir_ImportTable.VirtualAddress];
64. for (HMODULE currMod; impModuleList->Name; impModuleList++)
65. {
66. printf("\timport module : %s\n", &peImage[impModuleList->Name]);
67. currMod = LoadLibraryA(&peImage[impModuleList->Name]);
69. auto arr_callVia = (IMAGE_THUNK_DATA*)&peImage[impModuleList->FirstThunk];
70. for (int count = 0; arr_callVia->u1.Function; count++, arr_callVia++)
71. {
72. auto curr_impApi = (PIMAGE_IMPORT_BY_NAME)&peImage[arr_callVia->u1.Function];
73. arr_callVia->u1.Function = (size_t)GetProcAddress(currMod, (char*)curr_impApi->Name);
74. if (count < 5)
75. printf("\t\t- fix imp_%s\n", curr_impApi->Name);
76. }
77. }
78. }
80. #define RELOC_32BIT_FIELD 0x03
81. #define RELOC_64BIT_FIELD 0x0A
82. typedef struct BASE_RELOCATION_ENTRY
83. {
84. WORD Offset : 12;
85. WORD Type : 4;
86. } entry;
88. void fixReloc(char* peImage)
89. {
90. auto dir_RelocTable = getNtHdr(peImage)->OptionalHeader.DataDirectory[IMAGE_DIRECTORY_ENTRY_BASERELOC];
91. auto relocHdrBase = &peImage[dir_RelocTable.VirtualAddress];
92. for (UINT hdrOffset = 0; hdrOffset < dir_RelocTable.Size;)
93. {
94. auto relocHdr = (IMAGE_BASE_RELOCATION*)&relocHdrBase[hdrOffset];
95. entry* entryList = (entry*)((size_t)relocHdr + sizeof(*relocHdr));
96. for (size_t i = 0; i < (relocHdr->SizeOfBlock - sizeof(*relocHdr)) / sizeof(entry); i++)
97. {
98. size_t rva_Where2Patch = relocHdr->VirtualAddress + entryList[i].Offset;
99. if (entryList[i].Type == RELOC_32BIT_FIELD)
100. {
101. *(UINT32*)&peImage[rva_Where2Patch] -= (size_t)getNtHdr(peImage)->OptionalHeader.ImageBase;
102. *(UINT32*)&peImage[rva_Where2Patch] += (size_t)peImage;
103. }
104. else if (entryList[i].Type == RELOC_64BIT_FIELD)
105. {
106. *(UINT64*)&peImage[rva_Where2Patch] -= (size_t)getNtHdr(peImage)->OptionalHeader.ImageBase;
107. *(UINT64*)&peImage[rva_Where2Patch] += (size_t)peImage;
108. }
109. }
110. hdrOffset += relocHdr->SizeOfBlock;
111. }
112. }
113. char* basee = (char*)malloc(sizeof(char*));
114. int* sizee = (int*)malloc(sizeof(int));
115. void peLoader(char* exeData)
116. {
117. auto imgBaseAt = (void*)getNtHdr(exeData)->OptionalHeader.ImageBase;
118. auto imgSize = getNtHdr(exeData)->OptionalHeader.SizeOfImage;
119. bool relocOk = !!getNtHdr(exeData)->OptionalHeader.DataDirectory[IMAGE_DIRECTORY_ENTRY_BASERELOC].VirtualAddress;
120. *sizee = imgSize;
121. char* peImage = (char*)VirtualAlloc(relocOk ? 0 : imgBaseAt, imgSize, MEM_COMMIT MEM_RESERVE, PAGE_EXECUTE_READWRITE);
122. basee = peImage;
123. if (peImage)
124. {
125. printf("[v] exe file mapped @ %p\n", peImage);
126. memcpy(peImage, exeData, getNtHdr(exeData)->OptionalHeader.SizeOfHeaders);
127. for (int i = 0; i < getNtHdr(exeData)->FileHeader.NumberOfSections; i++)
128. {
129. auto curr_section = getSectionArr(exeData)[i];
130. memcpy(
131. &peImage[curr_section.VirtualAddress],
132. &exeData[curr_section.PointerToRawData],
133. curr_section.SizeOfRawData);
134. }
135. printf("[v] file mapping ok\n");
137. fixIat(peImage);
138. printf("[v] fix iat.\n");
140. if (relocOk)
141. {
142. fixReloc(peImage);
143. printf("[v] apply reloc.\n");
144. }
146. auto addrOfEntry = getNtHdr(exeData)->OptionalHeader.AddressOfEntryPoint;
147. auto table = getNtHdr(peImage)->OptionalHeader.DataDirectory[IMAGE_DIRECTORY_ENTRY_EXCEPTION].VirtualAddress;
148. auto tablesz = getNtHdr(peImage)->OptionalHeader.DataDirectory[IMAGE_DIRECTORY_ENTRY_EXCEPTION].Size;
150. RtlAddFunctionTable((RUNTIME_FUNCTION*)(table + basee), tablesz / sizeof(RUNTIME_FUNCTION), (DWORD64)peImage);
152. printf("[v] invoke entry @ %p ...\n", &peImage[addrOfEntry]);
153. ((void (*)()) & peImage[addrOfEntry])();
154. }
155. else
156. printf("[x] alloc memory for exe @ %p failure.\n", imgBaseAt);
157. }
158. DWORD64 imagebase = NULL;
160. LONG handler(EXCEPTION_POINTERS* ex) {
162. if (ex->ExceptionRecord->ExceptionCode == 0xE06D7363) {
164. const int maxFrames = 100;
165. void* frames[maxFrames];
166. USHORT framesCaptured = RtlCaptureStackBackTrace(0, maxFrames, frames, nullptr);
167. void* handler_data = NULL;
168. uint64_t establisher_frame = NULL;
169. CONTEXT context;
170. RtlCaptureContext(&context);
173. for (USHORT i = 0; i < framesCaptured; ++i)
174. {
176. auto lookup = RtlLookupFunctionEntry((DWORD64)frames[i], &imagebase, NULL);
180. UNWIND_INFO* ui = (UNWIND_INFO*)(imagebase + lookup->UnwindInfoAddress);
183. if (ui->Flags & UNW_FLAG_EHANDLER ui->Flags & UNW_FLAG_UHANDLER) {
185. if ((DWORD64)imagebase < (DWORD64)GetModuleHandle(NULL)) {
186. std::cout << lookup << std::endl;
187. auto language_handler = RtlVirtualUnwind(UNW_FLAG_EHANDLER, imagebase, (DWORD64)frames[i], lookup, &context, &handler_data, &establisher_frame, NULL);
188. std::cout << language_handler;
190. DISPATCHER_CONTEXT new_dc = {};
191. new_dc.ControlPc = (DWORD64)frames[i];
192. new_dc.ImageBase = imagebase;
193. new_dc.FunctionEntry = lookup;
194. new_dc.EstablisherFrame = establisher_frame;
195. new_dc.TargetIp = reinterpret_cast(&lookup);
196. new_dc.ContextRecord = ex->ContextRecord;
197. new_dc.LanguageHandler = language_handler;
198. new_dc.HandlerData = handler_data;
200. auto result = language_handler(ex->ExceptionRecord,(void*)establisher_frame, ex->ContextRecord, &new_dc);
202. return result;
204. }
207. }
215. }
217. return EXCEPTION_CONTINUE_EXECUTION;
218. }
219. return EXCEPTION_CONTINUE_SEARCH;
225. }
228. int main(int argc, char** argv)
229. {
231. AddVectoredExceptionHandler(1, handler);
232. char* exeBuf;
233. size_t exeSize;
234. readBinFile(argv[1], &exeBuf, exeSize);
235. peLoader(exeBuf);
237. return 0;
238. }

It performs the necessary actions to load the PE (fix IAT, relocs, load the sections), and then I add a dynamic function table using RtlAddFunctionTable() and a VEH which is catching exceptions of code 0xE06D7363 (that is the code of C++ exceptions and not SEH). Then I perform a StackWalk inside that VEH, and finally call the language specific handler of that function that raised the exception.
The problem is that after that call, the loader breaks at runtime and does not handle that exception (although addresses and everything are correct, based on some tests I did).
Why is this happening?
If any of you has dealt with Win Api in the past can take a look.(If you delete, my question I will understand).
Thank you

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- - - - -
It had been a few weeks since Altier was brought to the run-down shack that his black-scaled companion likely called home, and he could now comfortably say he was accustomed to the…household’s routine. The kobold typically left at the crack of dawn, returned a little after noon, and occasionally left again to forage until nightfall. When the weather was bad or there wasn’t a particular need for something, they half-heartedly chased their rabbit around for a bit, which usually ended with a bout of quiet petting while everyone got ready for the night. It was always amusing to see the energetic side of what he had come to know as a relatively lazy loaf of an animal. As for the routine of the ferrorabbit in question… Well…it was at least more interesting than expected.
Hoppit would begin his own series of activities as soon as his caretaker left—the first of which being a check of every nook and cranny in the shed. He sniffed at anything that caught his interest, varying from morning to morning, but he gave every object or corner its due attention. Once he was satisfied with that, he would eat some of the ragged plants that made up most of his diet, take a drink from his bowl, then jump onto the tro— table and plop himself down, his ears pivoting towards the door. It was hard to say if the lounging spot had been established before Altier’s arrival, but it was somewhat amusing to pretend that the little rabbit was standing guard over his core—if it wasn’t for one particular part of the morning ritual, that is.
Indeed, the ferrorabbit had a habit of licking the obsidian orb that sat in the middle of the room, which thankfully didn’t seem to perturb the system enough to give Altier a headache. He was confused when it first happened, but it was commonplace enough now that he barely acknowledged it. A part of him liked that he was getting attention as a core, even if it was delivered via a strange grooming method. The closest he got to being acknowledged as something other than ‘the dungeon’ was through an unfortunate misunderstanding that he could never properly rectify. He supposed that was hardly worth thinking about now, though; too much time had passed for there to be anyone left to correct. The little oddity of his mornings would have to suffice.
There wasn’t much to comment on as far as the rest of the day’s happenings. Hoppit would end his loafing by shaking his head and ears in a way that filled the silence with soft clacks, give the core a customary tongue bath, then jump off the table to nose his way out of the shed through a hole that was hidden by the storage cart against the wall. Where the rabbit went was anyone’s guess, but he always returned before anyone noticed he was gone, and often did so while covered in small cuts and scratches. Any blood from the lacerations was quickly licked off before it could be seen by the kobold, and in the event that the scaly caretaker happened to return earlier than expected, Hoppit would scurry over to the bundles of blankets to finish the cleanup in secret.
Today looked to be following the usual pattern. The kobold left bright and early with various gardening tools and a wooden pail, and Hoppit had since set off into the great unknown for one reason or another. Hopefully, he returned less injured than usual. It was frustrating to admit that Altier had begun to grow rather fond of the fluffy creature, and seeing the thing come back hurt was bothersome. Was it off looking for food? There wasn’t a whole lot given to it, so that was a possibility, and it could be getting into fights over whatever it found. That still didn’t explain why the animal was so thin, and Altier didn’t have enough to go off of to think of a potential solution. He wanted to help it in some way, like by summoning a creature to act as an escort, or maybe just by manifesting something edible like he once could. No, he could only stare at the ‘Synchronizing…’ that occupied his menu, wishing he had more information to work with.
He never thought he would miss the bombardment of notifications and their lingering presence that filled the edge of his mental vision; at least with that he could surmise enough to hazard some kind of action. Even knowing why the menu was acting the way it did would be a start. Yet, try as he might, there wasn’t a history for him to reference anymore, and he had nothing to work with. He was confident the last message had asked him to ‘accept’ something, then took his befuddled ponderance as an answer, but he was no closer to an explanation for what it wanted, nor why it prompted him in the first place. He just didn’t have another experience to compare against, since nothing like that had ever happened before. Not that he was ever in much of a position to allow it.
The entire purpose of having Altier inhabit a core was for him to become a dungeon of Decay, which entailed all the skeletons, poisons, acids, and whatever else came to mind when one pictured the concept. ‘Living’ creatures were something he only had the chance to experiment with near the beginning of his new existence, though he never dabbled past the first few insects before transitioning to the mindless undead. Having a thinking, feeling, breathing entity touch his core was a rite reserved only for the adventurers and soldiers that bested his trials, and that was usually a painful experience. Now, he had spent what he could only guess was hours being held by a kobold, followed by having a rabbit bump against him, and neither felt like what he came to expect. Instead, both had led to a completely novel reaction from the system. The strange circumstances put him at a bit of a loss as to what it all meant for him.
Sure, he could dismiss the deluge of errors from his companion’s involvement by pointing to the numerous ‘corrupted’ messages before it, and Hoppit was a part of mostly unexplored territory, but the lack of clarity nagged at the back of his mind constantly. Being exposed to activity after potential decades or centuries of unchanging solitude made him despise the informational dead end. If he couldn’t make sense of the rabbit’s circumstances, then he didn’t have much hope of deciphering the reason for why his system was misbehaving so terribly. He also didn't know much about the one who owned the decrepit holdings he was housed inside.
He still wasn’t sure what drove the kobold to take him from the cave. His suspicion of becoming traded goods fell flat after the first week or so, and he hadn’t noticed any cult-like behaviour, which was promising. Granted, a lack of nefarious behaviour didn’t mean there was a lack of nefarious intent, but he didn’t get the impression his companion held that either. The kobold itself didn’t seem quite settled on an opinion of his core, though it was up for debate if the hesitation was due to knowing what he was or not. They seemed to mull something over before bed each night, yet never reached a satisfactory conclusion, staring at the obsidian orb through weary grey eyes until they eventually forced themselves into sleep.
Whatever the underlying reasoning for his abduction was, he had observed enough to know that the kobold didn’t deserve to live in destitution. As beaten as the shed might be, they cared for it as best they could, and did so without a single groan or grimace of complaint. The floors were cleaned with a tattered rag and fresh water, dust was removed regularly, and any stray mess that Hoppit made was dealt with promptly. They even took the time to wipe off his core, which was possibly where the ferrorabbit got the idea to start licking him. The only time Altier had seen discontent from the kobold was when they didn’t find much during their foraging, and thus couldn’t give any treats to the excited and bouncy herbivore.
He wasn’t aware that a creature’s face could make such a painfully broken expression, and he was quick to decide that he never wanted to see it again.
Vexingly, his metaphorical hands were tied; a dungeon could only influence their Domain, and given the state of his system, not even that option was available to him. All he could do was glare at the rotting wooden beams that held up the roof and remember when such an issue didn’t exist. It would have taken a mere flicker of thought and a paltry sum of mana to mend the struts when he was a proper dungeon. He could even outright reinforce the structure by weaving in other materials, leaving the appearance as it was while making everything stronger than iron. Well, he once could. Working with other affinities was something that came to him after absorbing the coloured motes left behind by adventurers, and the accursed stone that stole his mana had taken that ability as well.
An attempt was made anyway, his will ordering the deteriorated wood to absorb any trace metals from the ground, but it was no use. He couldn’t feel the iron or stones beneath the shed like he would have been able to before, all but confirming his suspicion that his connection to the Earth element had slipped away. Nature was much the same; the only way he knew when Hoppit had returned most days was from the subtle noise and the essence of injury. The other attributes—Air, Flame, Luma, Shadow, and so on—were ones he never experimented with to any real extent, so it was less noticeable when he lost his grasp on them. Perhaps they faded early. Either way, all he had left was a waning cognizance of his own alignment, and that wasn’t of much use to him. If he had any appreciable mana income, then perhaps he could do something, but he wasn’t even sure what the upkeep of his current Domain might be. It was entirely possible that he was running on a deficit, which would offer a reason for why his system had been so—
[Do#$@n Ex@#d$%^&d! CRe@#r H-H-H-HoPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP—]
[Errrrrrr—]
[Sy$%^hroni%^$zing…]
[Creeee-tu— Hoppit ha@$ esttttb-hed terrrrrrr-ity f^#% t$e dun@&$n!]
- - - - -
“Well then,” he mumbled to himself, taking in the strange scene behind the shed. For one, he could actually view a small distance beyond the structure now, and two, there was a rather proud-looking Hoppit sitting on his haunches before a pair of significantly less prideful examples of the species. They looked quite a bit bigger than the lazy loaf Altier had come to know, yet they were more cut up and dejected than his furry friend. That answered where the injuries had been coming from, he supposed. Hoppit was probably running off to bash heads with whatever animal population existed here beforehand, and they had only just reached a consensus on who was in charge. Impressive.
One of Hoppit’s ears turned back towards the shed, his head following suit as he gave a lagomorph’s approximation of a ‘Look what I did!’ smile. Altier blanked out mentally, but didn’t have time to question anything before the new leader of the local rabbits imperiously pointed a paw towards the surrounding forest, which was equally surreal to witness. Most surprising of all, the…subordinates? The other ferrorabbits did as commanded, keeping their forms small as they took off into the foliage. Soft clacks came from Hoppit’s pleased shake of his head, then he too left the area with only a slightly lopsided bounce to his stride.
The man-turned-core could only gape at what he saw. Were animals always so…expressive? Had Hoppit heard him? What in the world was happening? Why had Hoppit’s personal conquest led to Altier’s Domain expanding?
He lamented not having fingers, nor temples to rub with them. His system was a garbled mess of errors and inconsistent messages, his residence was falling apart at the seams, his companion was someone who abducted him from the dungeon, yet never did anything past that, and his first real experience with an animal was turning out to be more confusing than he thought possible.
All of this was after an unknown amount of time spent commanding legions of undead to strengthen the very people who he would later learn had lied to and manipulated him, making him into a nightmarish entity just to bolster the power of their forces. He almost missed the days spent gazing out of a mossy window. At least then he knew what to expect.
Nothing made sense anymore.
= = = = =
The soft sound of roots ripping free from soil suddenly stopped, only to be followed by a dull thud of Ceele’s palm slapping against the ground to catch her fall before she landed on her rear. She righted herself with her tail and tossed the stubborn weed into a pile with the others. No matter how many mornings she did this, they always seemed to replace themselves faster than she could remove the pesky things. A sigh slipped from her muzzle as she set about grabbing the next one embedded in the vegetable garden.
Aches and spreading stiffness flared up, but went ignored as she neared the end of her duties, though she was well aware that they would come back with force once she tried to settle down for the day. The impending soreness was an inevitable byproduct of spending so much time working. Still, she knew that if it wasn’t for the kindly old couple that allowed her to call their shed home, she would still be sleeping beneath the stars while making sure nothing tried to get at her Hoppit. Even if it was just a part of the deal, they were owed this much in return, and she would see it done properly.
The sun bore down on her back as she did her usual tasks, which was a departure from the slightly overcast weather as of late. It looked somewhat promising when she checked in the wee hours of the morning, yet as her gardening duties dragged on, so too did the intensity of such a clear sky. A disappointed glance at the empty wooden bucket on the edge of the field was quickly corrected. She hadn’t thought to refill it at the river after watering the crops, and her parched throat was making its protests known, while also reminding her that there wasn’t much water left at home either. One more thing to take care of when she was done.
A gruff cough brought her attention towards the old kobold resting his back against a tree some distance away, safely shaded from the unforgiving rays beaming down. Her displeasure at having yet more to do was hastily wiped away. She was undecided on what to think of the detached audience, but looking so sour while upholding her side of the agreement wouldn’t reflect well on her. Hopefully, he hadn’t seen it. Not that she could tell if he did; he always had the same expression when he watched her work. The elder kobold’s arms were crossed, a finger tapping absently against his bicep, while his tail sat motionless on the grass, the muddy red colour of his scales standing out amongst the greens and browns. ‘Makis,’ was his name, assuming her memory served.
Makis had taken to observing her every so often, usually propping himself against this or that at a distance, the unwavering scowl being as unnerving as it was belying of his age. Somewhat loose skin sagged a bit around his jowls and neck, yet the rest of his face was still taut from how much time he spent examining red-hot metal, and his arms were marred with countless burns and cuts from his profession. He held an oppressive aura, though the crinkles around his eyes and muzzle suggested he smiled as frequently as he glowered, even if Ceele was yet to see the former. There was only the same judgmental expression aimed at her when he was around. She could only hope that he didn’t take offence to some unintended slight, but she didn’t know him well enough to say what might be considered one.
They hadn’t spoken since she took up residence on the outskirts of his land. His wife was the one to introduce them, but it was quickly established that he had no intention of being a chatty individual. He led Ceele to the shed hidden amongst the trees on the edge of the property, then dismissed her with only a grunt coming from the elderly kobold. She supposed that it was for the best. Her experience in socializing was centred around convincing others to employ her, and there hadn’t been much of an opportunity to expand her horizons while living a life on the road. If that had been the end of their interactions, she would have swiftly written the terseness off, but he appeared every few days, taking up residence beneath the shade as he watched her work, never speaking a single word. At least he didn’t openly protest her presence, yet she figured that would be easier to manage. He wouldn’t be such an enigma then.
There wasn’t a whole lot she knew about him besides his penchant for ‘supervision,’ and anything beyond that was what his wife had volunteered during the rare opportunity they had to chat. She was told that Makis worked the smithy out front, and although he had retired from doing so in an official capacity, she could still regularly hear his hammer as she tended to the garden, so she figured he kept himself busy most days. It made her wonder what was so interesting about a vagrant like herself, but when there was so little else to do, she could see how anything could be made worth the attention. It was just him and his wife living in the once bustling home, after all; the couple’s children had long since grown up and made families of their own.
She noticed his gaze shift elsewhere as she tugged yet another stubborn intruder from the soil, his arms falling from across his chest and the perpetually worn displeasure melting to that of curiosity. He wandered off shortly after, and she had to make an effort not to fall onto her tail as the pressure on her shoulders unexpectedly evaporated. Did something happen?
Ceele shook her head free of the distracting thought. It wasn’t her business if he grew bored with watching her work. As long as no one voiced any complaints, she could only assume that she was doing a satisfactory job. Maybe he finally decided that he didn’t need to be so watchful because she was doing well! That could be it, right?
A glance at the somewhat sloppily maintained garden erased the false confidence from her face, but she was just as quick to focus on finishing up, unwilling to allow darker musings to fester. Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be anything else that needed her intervention. The weeds were all uprooted, the soil was appropriately dampened, and her check for pesky insects or wildlife turned up nothing to worry about. She was free for the rest of the day!
…Or she would be free—as soon as she finished the last of her tasks, anyway.
The black-scaled kobold got up from her crouch unsteadily, shivering and wincing from the pins and needles in her legs. She would have to remember to stretch more often; it was far too easy to forgo that kind of thing just to make the overall work go slightly faster. Her hand reached out to grab the pile of weeds and put them into the bucket as she ran through what needed to be done before she could properly relax. Hoppit’s food needed to be washed, she needed to bathe, and they were running low on water anyway, so she would have to visit the river. Just the thought of dragging herself into the forest again made her muscles protest, but she wouldn’t have the energy to do it later. She forced the smile that had started to fall and took the first of many steps.
- - - - -
The river wasn’t too far away, only taking a few minutes of traipsing through the dense woodlands until she reached her destination. It was an idyllic little spot. The trees thinned out to allow a grassy bank along the water, and there was an appreciably gentle slope from shallows to depths, making for a convenient place to take care of various needs. She had discovered this place during her travels, and it was where a kind older woman found her.
Ceele was washing off at the time, with Hoppit safely taking shelter from the outside underneath the bundled blankets while he waited. The trickle of the stream brushing against rocks covered the sound of footsteps, so she was rather surprised when an aged voice called out to ask if she was okay. Her first reaction was to distance herself and apologize—the why didn’t matter, but she had learned that most people were more lenient of her presence if she seemed apologetic for it, and she usually was. The elderly kobold just laughed at her scrambling, tacking on an assurance that there was no need for modesty. The woman was blind, apparently, which explained how Ceele’s blackened colours hadn’t deterred her.
Strangely enough, there was a comforting sense of ease around the one who introduced herself as Hira. It was a sort of presence that Ceele could only vaguely remember, and it drew her close enough to speak as she finished bathing. The conversation wasn’t anything profound, of course—they hardly delved deeper than surface-level small talk—but Hira lost her smile as she listened to the younger kobold. By the end of it, the old woman posed a series of questions with a dark inflection to her voice, and Ceele struggled to find an answer.
‘Are you tired of looking for something that only slips away? Are you tired of running? Do you really want to be scared and alone?’
If the silence bothered Hira, then it didn’t show. She had simply held out a hand and offered Ceele a way of life that didn’t involve wondering where she would be spending the night, nor entailed cowering in the brush while fearsome predators roamed freely. It would be a simple existence of few fortunes, but it was safe, and it was honest. All she had to do was say yes.
Ceele denied it at first, partially because she knew most people despised Hobbit's species, and partially because she couldn’t shake the offer being too good to be true. Hira was quick to propose a compromise; Ceele could take residence in the gardening shed that had fallen from use, and to satiate the nagging sense of an unfair deal, she would be put in charge of maintaining the garden itself. All Hira wanted was to ‘see’ her favourite space bloom again, since she couldn’t take care of it anymore. The black-scaled kobold stared longingly at where Hoppit was, his little body shivering from the prolonged cold and fear that he would be hurt if he left the blankets hiding him. It was with a heavy guilt that she accepted Hira’s offer, keeping quiet about her true reason for doing so.
That was in the past, however, though she thought about it every time she stopped by and saw the smooth rocks where she and Hira first met. Eventually, she might gather the courage to admit that she was housing a ‘pest’ and beg for forgiveness. Until then, she would just work her hardest to prove it wasn’t a mistake to give her a home. That her endless efforts weren’t meaningless. That Hoppit deserved to be more than a ‘pest.’
That Ceele was more than something she had no control over being.
She cleared her head a bit and started on the reason she came all this way. Her dress was rather easy to wash in the meandering water, and the trees provided a suitable place for it to dry in the sunlight and light breeze. The weeds were fine with a thorough rinse near in the shallows, but taking care of her own hygiene required her to wade farther in, though it only came up to her chest in the middle of the rill. Still, she could scrub off the soil and grime, which was all she really needed. Perhaps some simple soaps would help rid her of the pervasive black that stained her skin and scales, but that was beyond her meagre means for the time being, as well as being mere wishful thinking.
She worked past the dreary mindset that settled in when she allowed it, focusing on how serene the river was. The soft birdsong from the trees helped make for a peaceful experience, and she could feel the somewhat chilled liquid basically pour into the aches and pains throughout her body, washing away the stiffness from spending so long under the unerring sun. It was nice to escape reality and let thoughts drift while held buoyant by calmer waters.
Yet the bliss was short-lived. Even if winter was gone, spring was still far from warming the waters enough for her to laze about for too long. She dragged herself from the soft current and fetched her dress from the low-lying branch she left it to dry on. It was still a touch damp, but it wasn’t anything a bit of time in front of the fireplace wouldn’t fix.
Ceele was only a short distance away from home when she heard a gravelly male voice, but it was the flicker of sight between the trees that made her drop what was in her arms and lunge into a sprint.
Makis stood just outside the gardening shed, a ferrorabbit held at arm’s length by rusty crimson hands placed on the scruff and haunch, the rabbit’s little ears flattened as fear filled its tiny face. Her eyes widened further when she noticed the small stains of blood in his light brown fur. They found out about him. Ephemeral claws of blackness clutched at her soul, ripping the very fabric she was made of as an unseen beast smiled, eager to take yet one more thing from her. Her Hoppit. Her baby. Her everything.
“Hoppit!” she shrieked, her words all but tearing out of her throat in desperation. Frozen blood coursed through her veins, yet poured into exhausted limbs. She broke through the treeline with no regard for the branches slashing against her flesh, panic making each sting fade before it could be processed. The grizzled glare of the older kobold snapped towards her, his usual scowl picking up an actual air of intensity that she never thought could be absent, the promise of violence lurking in his eyes. She skidded to a stop a few paces away, the lump in her throat threatening to clog her airway. “S-stop hurting him!”
“Didn’t,” he barked back, his tone even yet firm. “Cuts ain’t me. I’d’a done worse if’a had ta mind ta.”
The blatant declaration snapped her from blind panic, although his apparent anger didn’t do her fear any favours. “B-but… Then how…”
“‘Hoppit.’ Named it, did’cha?” he grunted, ignoring her confusion and bobbing the rabbit to get her attention again. His gaze shifted back to the animal, the flames of ire cooling slightly. “I was wonderin’ why yer plots ain’t dead yet. Suppose this critter’s why.”
One of her hands hesitantly reached out until she pulled it back, while the other clutched at her chest to stop her heart from hammering against her ribs. She couldn’t act rashly. Not while her baby was in his arms. “I—”
“Soft thing, ain’t it,” the elder kobold commented curiously, cutting her off.
“Y-yes?” she returned reluctantly, struggling to stop herself from lashing out to reclaim the ferrorabbit in his grasp.
“Like fine silk.” Makis tipped and tilted the animal, inspecting this and that with a deep-seated frown, all while Hoppit silently looked to her for help. The pit in her stomach grew. She needed to get him back, but how?
Ceele swallowed the dense dread as she tried to formulate some sort of plan, stumbling over her words and forced smile. “I-it’s nice! Isn’t it nice?”
His eyes snapped back to burrow into her own with hatred. “Wasn’t a compliment, girly.”
“B-but you—”
He released Hoppit’s lower half to jab a claw at the various spikes around his body, plying them with minimal force. “Look. See this? These’r suppose ta break bone. ‘Specially when he’s stiff like this. Ain’t no way I should be able ta bend ‘em. He’s barely more than a walkin’ carcass—all skin ‘n stick. He’s gonna get picked up by a wandering pecker if he keeps pissin’ about out ‘ere. It’s a wonder he’s still kickin’. What’cha feeding ‘em?” His gaze dropped from her face to the rest of her, disgust curling his muzzle into a snarl. “N’ver mind. I can guess.”
She felt the dampness build at the edges of her vision, unprepared to not only worry for Hoppit's immediate health, but also to face such harsh criticism while she was so vulnerable. “I… I try to make sure he has…”
Makis crouched to release the ferrorabbit onto the ground, Ceele dropping to her knees the moment he did. The terrified lagomorph wasted no time, bolting towards his adoptive mother and leaping into her arms, shaking uncontrollably. The rust-coloured ‘bold stared as she started soothingly stroking the animal’s back.
“Yer given’ em the weeds, aren’t ya?” he stated rather than asked. She gave a teary nod when her voice wouldn’t respond for her. The old kobold drew a breath, letting it go in an exasperated sigh as he stood back up, his expression becoming more impatient than antagonistic. “What else?”
“I— Um…”
“What. Else?”
“W-whatever I c-can find!” she sputtered out. Hoppit tried to hide against her neck, prompting her to tighten her hold. She couldn’t stop herself from shrinking, the guilt and confusion pulling her head down. “R-roots, vegetables, fruits… I give them as often as I can.”
His glare continued unimpeded, his cadence cold. “That it?”
There were a million things Ceele wanted to say. A part of her wanted to beg him not to kick them out of the first safe place she had in longer than she could remember, but she couldn’t find the words. She wanted to deny the judgmental tone that stabbed into her insecurity surrounding how good of a job she was doing with Hoppit, but the deadened void in her chest swallowed her pride whole. She knew he was right to critique her. That she was failing in the only thing that mattered anymore. That the feeling of loss would return.
“I try,” she whispered through the beginnings of a sob. “I try to find more, but he needs someone around, and I have to work the garden, so there’s only so much time I can spend looking. He won’t even eat all of what I bring back…” Tears dripped off her cheeks as she aimed a desolate smile at her furry friend. “He wants to make sure I have some too.”
“Yer killin’ em,” Makis pointed out plainly, crossing his arms. “He’ll be dead ‘fore the summer at this rate.”
“I know!” she shouted, forcing back the memories of insidious murmurs that lurked in the back of her mind, eager to creep into her ears again. The hate-filled stares that followed her, the rumours that arrived in towns before she had the chance to make an impression, and the guilt that loomed over her like an executioner's axe… “I know I am… I just… I don’t know what he needs. I don’t know how to make him happy…but I try. I’m trying…”
“…Yer an idiot, girly.”
She looked up to see the elder kobold walking away without another word. Her eyes fell to Hoppit, the ferrorabbit pressing himself against her as much as he could. He was small, thin, soft, and growing weaker by the day, but he never let it keep him down for long. No, he always showed his best for her, giving her joy that wasn’t provided anywhere else. She saw the thin cuts and dried blood, though she didn’t know where they came from, nor how he got out of the shed in the first place. But that was okay. Hoppit was okay, and she had Hoppit, so everything was okay, right?
…But how much longer would everything stay okay? How much longer until her efforts weren’t enough, and she was left desperately reaching for fading memories of what once was? How much longer until she killed her baby too?
How much longer until she was alone again?
Soft footsteps drew near, pulling her from the spiralling thoughts that threatened to gnaw at her soul. Damp, blurry eyes fell on Makis returning with a small wooden crate, the older kobold stopping a few steps away. He dropped the box, a deep, rattling thud produced as it impacted the ground, making Hoppit flinch in her arms. Ceele blinked as she kept him calm, then blinked again, looking up at the man for answers.
“The name, girly,” he spat in irritation. “Ferrorabbit. Ther’ Earth aligned creatures; they need metals. They don’t care where they get it, but they need lots of it. Iron, copper, tin, lead—raw crystal, if they can find it. You name it, they’ll take a chunk out of it. It's why they bother farmers so much; the best soil’s usually top’a gem deposits, ‘n the little bastards have no issue burrowing deep to get it. Dries up the element’s energy ‘n makes the crops weak.”
Ceele’s mouth opened and closed, each unsuccessful attempt to speak making her feel smaller and smaller. More and more lost. Why was he telling her this? How did he know? What was in the—
He kicked the crate with the side of his foot. “Scraps. Don’t’cha look at me like that. I’m a smith, girly. I might be old and retired, but I still work a forge. Now, this ain’t anything pure—it’s just slag and hunks—but I’m sure the critter won’t mind. Your little gardenin’ project pays off, ‘n I’ll see which of my contacts can get in some better ore.”
She ripped her eyes away from the box and met the perpetual scowl of the old kobold, seeing a warmth behind the hostility that she had never noticed before. “…Why?”
He scoffed in amusement, which looked somewhat menacing on such a hardened expression. “Yer a touch stupid, girly, but the missus adores ya, ‘n yer a good worker.” A shadow of a smile formed on his face. “Hira spent more evenings asking ‘bout how the plots are doin’ than I got time in the day. She’d bite my head off if I noticed a critter like that sufferin’ and didn’t lend a hand. ‘Specially when it’s obvious you ain’t tryin’ ta hurt the thing.”
“B-but the garden… Isn’t he a problem?”
Makis rolled his eyes, turning with a dismissive wave of his hand. “If he was, he’da killed it by now. I’d say he’s been keepin’ the others clear ‘n got scratched up for the trouble. That’s more reason to feed ‘em right in my eyes; pay the poor bastard his dues.” He paused after a few steps, shooting her one last incredulous glance. “‘N the rabbit’s right. You’re not much better off than he is. Eat. Before the missus takes my head, preferably. I ain’t need ta hear her worryin’ over you more than I already do.”
And with that, he walked off back to the house, leaving Ceele to sit stunned on the ground with Hoppit quietly nuzzling into her.
“Hoppit…?”
The ferrorabbit perked an ear and gently licked her collar. Fresh tears ran rivulets down her face, yet they didn’t weigh her down. They felt freeing. She adjusted her hold on the rabbit and held him out, taking in the small cuts and numerous other injuries she had never noticed before. He stared back at her with worried eyes.
“You’ve been busy, huh?” she cooed quietly, doing her best to keep her voice from cracking. He shrunk in her hands. “I told you to stay home, baby. What if something happened to you? I wouldn’t know where you went, and…”
Her protests died out as she saw what was unmistakably guilt on his little face. She brought him back to her chest and cleared her throat.
“It’s alright, Hoppit. If… If you want to help momma, then we can work together, okay? Just…please don’t go off getting hurt… I don’t know what I’d do without you…” The rabbit didn’t reply, and she was pretty sure she had never heard him make any sounds that weren’t his happy little ear clacks, but she chose to interpret the nuzzling as an agreement. “Such a smart boy…”
She took a breath and wiped off the excess moisture from her cheeks, setting Hoppit down on the ground. “Let’s bring Mr. Makis’ gift in, and then I need to go get more water so we can clean you up, okay?”
He bounced his way to the door of their home, waiting patiently for her to lug the surprisingly heavy crate into the shed. He was even still behaving himself by the time she returned from picking up the things she dropped in her haste. There wasn’t a single protest from the ferrorabbit as she washed over his wounds with warm water, nor when she asked him to wait as she cut up a small salad for him using an extra portion of her rationed vegetables. Finally, once everything else was gone, she tentatively sifted through the box until she found a chunk of something that didn’t look so sharp, then offered it to Hoppit skeptically.
As startling as it was to see him bite through metal without issue, she couldn’t help but tear up again at how pleased he looked with the bizarre addition to his diet. He munched through the first piece, then stared at the box while pawing at the air, asking for more. She obliged through wet laughs, feeling lighter than she had since he first gazed at her from his burrow, alone and afraid, just like she was.
Her little baby was happy, and that made it okay.
Next
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A/N: Thank you to my Patrons, new and returning! No Thanks, Emmanuel, and Megathor join the others who get to read 1 chap ahead!

I think it's a pretty common occurence that people really like the LoTR movies, and then, when they start the books they end up finding them boring and rather a slog. Why?
Well, the main reason is that there is a divide between expectations and what LoTR actually is. The Lord of the Rings books were written by someone who spent his entire life creating languages and building a mythos. Importantly he also served in the most traumatic and violent war of all time, until 20 years later when even that (WWI) was surpassed. He didn't want to glorify or focus on war. He wanted to focus on the world that he built, atmosphere of that world, and the moral impacts of war, industrialization etc upon the world and it's characters.
For instance, almost all the violence happens offscreen, and very often worldbuilding is prioritised over tension in the story and generally accepted story structure. The most blatant example of this is the beginning with Tom Bombadil, where the tension of the story is broken for a whole chapter, there is an all-powerful get-out-of-jail-for-free card, who makes fun of the main object of the entire story and breaks all tension. Now, LoTR is NOT a bad story, it's simply suboptimal due to the author prioritising worldbuilding over story. And this is the point. Don't read LoTR like a page turner. There are indeed many parts of the books which are like this. But many parts of LoTR are about atmosphere, themes, and worldbuilding rather than 'action'. What I reccomend you do is read one chapter every night under your blankets with tea, or go sit outside in the sun, or, even better, take the audiobook and goo for a walk outside while listeniinbg to JRRT's worldbuilding.
So what's the problem with this? Is there anyone who complains about Anna Karenina not having enough action? No, but that's because of the different expectations. The movies are far more about action than the books, because movies are inherently a medium for action. Apart from that attention spans and the fantasy genre are changing over time, and there is expectation of more action and less walking, descriptions etc.
And that's the problem. People have the wrong expectations of LoTR. The point was worldbuilding, atmosphere, and thematic significance, not constant thrills, Enjoy the greatest world ever created. Read, perhaps a chapter per day rather than speed-reading it. Anyways that's my take.

I understand Redhat is not really developing this any further, but I have spent hours going over documentation and almost none of it works with oVirt 4.5.5. I can't seem to find a way to define storage in hosted-engine --deploy --4 . It crashes complaining that it can't find a variable about a local disk that I have no clear way to define or fix. Here is the error (one of several that say the same thing):
2024-06-08 21:56:04,806-0400 DEBUG otopi.ovirt_hosted_engine_setup.ansible_utils ansible_utils._process_output:109 ignored: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"msg": "The task includes an option with an undefined variable. The error was: 'local_vm_disk_path' is undefined. 'local_vm_disk_path' is undefined\n\nThe error appears to be in '/usshare/ansible/collections/ansible_collections/ovirt/ovirt/roles/hosted_engine_setup/tasks/clean_local_storage_pools.yml': line 16, column 7, but may\nbe elsewhere in the file depending on the exact syntax problem.\n\nThe offending line appears to be:\n\n changed_when: true\n - name: Destroy local storage-pool {{ local_vm_disk_path.split('/')[5] }}\n ^ here\nWe could be wrong, but this one looks like it might be an issue with\nmissing quotes. Always quote template expression brackets when they\nstart a value. For instance:\n\n with_items:\n - {{ foo }}\n\nShould be written as:\n\n with_items:\n - \"{{ foo }}\"\n"}
Surely there is a way to configure this? I tried to use the https://github.com/oVirt/ovirt-ansible-collection/tree/masteroles/hosted_engine_setup instructions and code but they and the previous version https://github.com/oVirt/ovirt-ansible-hosted-engine-setup/tree/master are looking for a YML file I don't see anywhere, on my system or online. Error, including missing file:
[WARNING]: * Failed to parse /etc/ansible/hosts with yaml plugin: Unable to retrieve file contents Could not find or access '/root/ovirt-ansible-
collection/roles/hosted_engine_setup/examples/he_deployment.json' on the Ansible Controller. If you are using a module and expect the file to exist on the
remote, see the remote_src option
Surely somebody has been able to make this work - with thousands of system engineers and CIOs ditching CentOS Stream for fully stable releases (I'm not saying Stream isn't stable, but it is ridiculous to expect people used to one of the most tested and vetted operating systems on Earth (RHEL and most derivatives) to stick with an OS that is more staging/QA.
I can't find any documentation about this that actually works. I'm happy to mess with config or YML files if I can actually find information on what is missing or what I'm doing wrong. Please advise.

blanket party is a term used in the military where fellow soldiers gang up on you to teach you a a lesson after you made a decision which may put the entire detachment in a bad place
Context: Cadia is blowing up after abadddon lobbed the blackstone fortress into it. Lord Castellan Creed predicted they might lose cadia so he developed a failsafe for survivors to evacuate the planet.
Hellskar is a colonel in charge of the unit which have received orders to evacuate the planet
Daverna is an that inquisitor didn’t allow evacuation n fear of demonic contamination
Are you Hellsker? Are you in charge here?’ ‘Yes, sir, Colonel Hel…’The needle pistol was big in her vision. A long, wicked barrel. ‘Call it off.’ ‘What? Call what off?’ ‘The embarkation. Get on your frekking vox and tell the pilots to come out. This is an illegal operation.’ ‘I’m working under the authority of the Lord Castell–’ ‘I know whose authority you’re working under.’ The woman grabbed her by the flak vest and pulled her close, the needle pistol jamming into her unprotected throat. Her captor was huge, with broad shoulders, and clad in a tailored officer’s coat. ‘Inquisitor Daverna of high command. And I know all about you, Major Hellsker. How Creed favoured you, how he bribed you into this illegal action with a rank elevation. Call the pilots out. Tell them no lift.’ ‘These troopers have fought hard, they deserve–’ ‘These troopers will start developing signs of mutation within a month. Two months, and they’ll be vessels for Neverborn or defecting to the Despoiler. Were you at Tyrok?
After daverna shot an injured soldier, Hellskar decided to pretend she was using her vox to call her men off after it seems they might shoot the inquisitor
“Daverna swung the pistol back to Hellsker. ‘If your people try anything…’ ‘Stay back!’ yelled Hellsker, her hands raised. ‘Inquisitor, I’m going to key my micro-bead and tell them to stay back, all right?’ She slowly, deliberately, changed frequencies to wide-band. ‘Everyone, stay back,’ she warned, then knelt in front of the pistol. ‘Even you, Zadoc, listen up.’ ‘Tell them to send the pilots out.’ ‘Yes, I will. But you should get low, inquisitor.’ ‘What?’“‘It’s dangerous here. Active combat. Archenemy snipers in the zone. You could get hurt. We’ve lost two officers already. It would be a very natural thing to occur.’ ‘What the hells are you talking about? Get the pilots and–’ Talia Daverna’s head exploded. A hotshot round at long range, flashing out from somewhere near the front line. She toppled between the corpses of Pesk and Arun Lek, her body unrecognisable. ‘Plyn?’ ‘Yes, colonel?’ ‘The inquisitor has been killed by a heretic sharpshooter.’ ‘Tragic. Should’ve kept low, sir, like you said.’ ‘Make a sweep for the assassin before you get on the transport, will you? He’s a good shot, might be dangerous.’”
I think this excerpt really shows that Rath did some research into some common things that happen off the books in the army.
Some other examples of this aside from this excerpt are the characters of glave and Selvar Ghent. in my country’s army, we do have characters like ghent especially when we are posted into foreign countries where you didn’t know the local language most times and the good shops that might serve foreign soldiers .I know I bought dental floss and a small listerine mouthwash for about $10 a few days into the forward base exercise to get rid of the sandy taste in my mouth after sleeping out in the field. Glaves story was also relatable as it shows the enthusiasm of every recruit when they first join up or enlist
All in all while the novel wasn’t perfect (might make a post on this to try to get some insights). I thought it was well written and as somebody who used to serve in the army I found the book relatable and can see how Rath tries to make the story as close to real life minus the Sci-fi and chaos parts to real life army parallels to make it more interesting and more human.

Unlocking Contact Information with Google Apps Script

Google Apps Script offers a powerful way to automate and integrate various Google services, including Sheets and Contacts. This flexibility becomes particularly useful when managing contact information stored across different Google platforms. Imagine having a Google Sheet filled with names of individuals, all of whom are valuable contacts saved in your Gmail. The challenge arises when you need to retrieve their email addresses or phone numbers without manually sifting through your contact list. This task, while seemingly straightforward, can become complex due to the limitations and deprecations in Google's Apps Script APIs, specifically when dealing with functions like ContactsApp.getContactsByName() and getAddresses().
Many users face difficulties when attempting to write scripts that efficiently fetch contact details based on names alone. Common issues include receiving incomplete data arrays or encountering deprecated functions that no longer work as expected. However, with the right approach and understanding of Google Apps Script's capabilities, it is possible to overcome these hurdles. This introduction sets the stage for exploring a method that not only addresses the problem but also integrates seamlessly with existing Google Sheets workflows, ensuring that your automation efforts are both effective and efficient.

Function	Description
ContactsApp.getContactsByName(name)	Retrieves a list of contacts matching the given name.
Contact.getEmails()	Gets the email addresses of a contact.
SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet()	Accesses the current active spreadsheet.
Sheet.getRange(a1Notation)	Gets the range of cells for the specified A1 notation.
Range.setValues(values)	Sets the values of the cells in the range.

Advanced Techniques for Contact Management in Google Apps Script

Google Apps Script stands as a versatile tool for automating and enhancing workflows across Google's suite of productivity apps. When it comes to managing contact information within Google Sheets and Google Contacts, the script offers a seamless bridge, enabling users to automate the tedious process of updating contact details. The essence of leveraging Google Apps Script for such tasks lies in its ability to interact with Google's API, fetching and updating information based on specific criteria defined by the user. This approach is not only efficient but also scalable, accommodating a wide range of use cases from personal contact management to comprehensive CRM systems built within Google's ecosystem.
The challenge of synchronizing contacts between Google Sheets and Google Contacts, however, underscores the need for a nuanced understanding of both the Google Apps Script environment and the underlying Google Contacts API. Given the potential for deprecated functions and the evolving nature of Google's API, developers must stay abreast of the latest changes and adapt their scripts accordingly. This continuous adaptation ensures that scripts remain functional and efficient, capable of handling complex queries like searching for contacts by name, updating their information, and even parsing through large datasets to identify and fill gaps in contact details. Moreover, this process highlights the importance of clean coding practices and error handling to ensure scripts run smoothly and reliably over time.

Retrieving Email Addresses with Google Apps Script

JavaScript in Google Apps Script

function updateEmailAddresses() { var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet().getSheetByName("Contacts"); var namesRange = sheet.getRange("A2:A"); // Assuming names are in column A, starting from row 2 var names = namesRange.getValues(); var contacts, emails, phoneNumbers; for (var i = 0; i < names.length; i++) { if (names[i][0] !== "") { contacts = ContactsApp.getContactsByName(names[i][0], true); if (contacts.length > 0) { emails = contacts[0].getEmails(); phoneNumbers = contacts[0].getPhones(); sheet.getRange("B" + (i + 2)).setValue(emails.length > 0 ? emails[0].getAddress() : "No email found"); sheet.getRange("C" + (i + 2)).setValue(phoneNumbers.length > 0 ? phoneNumbers[0].getPhoneNumber() : "No phone number found"); } } } } 

Navigating the Nuances of Google Apps Script for Contact Management

The intersection of Google Sheets and Google Contacts via Google Apps Script presents a rich landscape for automating contact management tasks. This integration not only streamlines workflows but also opens up a myriad of possibilities for personal and professional organization. With the right script, users can automate the retrieval of contact details, synchronize information across platforms, and even create custom notifications or reminders based on contact data. The power of Google Apps Script in this context lies in its ability to transform static contact lists into dynamic databases that interact with various Google services in real-time.
However, mastering Google Apps Script for effective contact management requires a deep dive into both the scripting language itself and the APIs it interacts with. This includes understanding how to navigate rate limits, manage script permissions, and handle API updates that might affect script functionality. Additionally, users must be vigilant about privacy and security considerations, especially when dealing with sensitive contact information. Adhering to best practices in coding and data handling ensures not only the efficiency and reliability of the scripts but also the protection of personal and sensitive data within the Google ecosystem.

Top Questions on Managing Contacts with Google Apps Script

1. Question: Can Google Apps Script interact with Google Contacts?
2. Answer: Yes, Google Apps Script can interact with Google Contacts to manage contact information, search for specific contacts, and update details automatically.
3. Question: How do you fetch a contact's email address using Google Apps Script?
4. Answer: You can fetch a contact's email by using the ContactsApp.getContactsByName() function to retrieve the contact and then calling getEmails() method on the contact object.
5. Question: Are there limitations to using Google Apps Script with Google Contacts?
6. Answer: Yes, there are limitations such as API call quotas and the need to handle deprecated functions, requiring scripts to be updated periodically.
7. Question: Can Google Apps Script update contacts in bulk?
8. Answer: Yes, with proper scripting, Google Apps Script can update multiple contacts at once, though it's important to be mindful of API rate limits.
9. Question: How does Google Apps Script handle privacy and security when managing contacts?
10. Answer: Scripts operate under the user's permissions, adhering to Google's privacy and security guidelines. Developers must ensure they follow best practices to protect sensitive information.

Mastering Google Apps Script for Efficient Contact Management

The journey through automating contact management using Google Apps Script reveals both its potential and challenges. From the initial setup to navigating API intricacies, the process demands a detailed understanding of how different Google services interconnect. The examples and guidelines provided underscore the script's ability to fetch and update contact information dynamically, demonstrating its power to transform manual processes into automated, efficient ones. Despite facing deprecation issues and API limitations, with the right approach, developers can harness Google Apps Script to enhance productivity significantly. This exploration emphasizes the importance of continuous learning and adaptation in the ever-evolving landscape of Google's APIs. By adhering to best practices in coding, privacy, and security, users can leverage Google Apps Script to not only manage contacts more effectively but also to innovate within the broader spectrum of Google's applications, paving the way for more sophisticated, automated workflows in the future.
https://www.tempmail.us.com/en/google-apps-script/fetching-email-addresses-from-google-contacts-using-google-apps-script

Alright, this tale goes back to my junior year in college. You should know, I was a computer science major and communication was something I really struggled with. I was more inclined towards binary numbers and C++, not speech and debate. But, as fate would have it, I was required to take a class on Public Speaking.
My professor was a tough, determined woman named Dr. Martinez. She had this crazy idea about the role communication played in education. She swore up and down that effective communication was the key to better learning environments, improving student-teacher relationships, and even enhancing overall academic performance.
Well, let's just say I was skeptical at best. But it was a requirement so, feet dragging, I buckled up for the course. The first assignment was a simple one; just a 5-minute presentation on a topic of our choice. Now here's when things get intriguing.
I had just read about a fascinating theorem in my Algorithms class, which I thought would be perfect for my presentation. As I stood there, voicing out Knapsack Problems and Greedy Algorithms, I saw glazed expressions all around. It felt like I was speaking an alien language. That's when I realized, it's not about understanding the content, it's about simplifying it for others to comprehend.
After that debacle, I dove headfirst into honing my communication skills. Turns out, Dr. Martinez was right all along. I wasn't just becoming a better speaker, but a better student, a better teammate, and even a better friend. Problems were easier to solve when brainstormed collectively, group projects became less burdensome, and even my grades improved significantly. It was like I had discovered the secret sauce to excelling in education.
So here's the deal folks. The ability to express and convey is critical in collaborative learning environments. The beauty of education is the sharing and receiving of knowledge. But what good is knowledge if not communicated effectively?
P.S. While this story is as fictional as the chances of me going to the gym regularly, it's a gentle nudge (or a hard push) to acknowledge the importance of communication in education. Also, it's an example of the mental model of 'First principles thinking', where you break down complicated issues into basic principles and solve them effectively. And don't worry, you won't be tested on this!

I've become incredibly frustrated. I really cannot figure out from whence my anxiety hath arisen. I am done with it in any case. I am accomplishing everything I set my mind to, so why the hell would I be anxious? The only thing left to try is a certain herbal refreshment.
Really, I am sure I know why I am anxious, but there is absolutely nothing I can change the past, and I am trying not to worry about the future either. I've crushing myself lately with every task and purpose I can throw myself into. It is partially for personal achievement, in part for distraction, and for the purpose of self-flagellation. Flogging myself for ending up here, but I shouldn't be so harsh, the actions of others play a large part. I just can't help but feel that, despite going out of my way my entire life to walk on egg shells, I have made the wrong choices that led me to be here.
It is not without benefit. I have been doing a lot to improve my life. For myself for once. I have lost 35 pounds and 5 inches in the last three months. But a lot of what I'm doing with my time is not for me. I am trying to protect the LGBTQ community. My community. If that means bringing someone from $15/hr to $30/hr, or helping them get access to transitioning, or just mental health care, I want to keep them safe. It's not entirely selfless. There is someon out there, whether I know them or not, who is the most important person to me, and if I do this, if I can maybe work my way to getting legislation passed or policy changed to prevent the abuses during the last administration, then I am protecting them, too.
God, it sounds so sappy and childish when I say it out loud like this. But who cares? I feel what I feel. I just can't do nothing to look out for them, and I definitely can't do anything. I have silently perused the dating market and found a few people who may be of interest. There is one in particular, but I feel like I shouldn't bother. I'm not afraid of him saying "no" to a first date. In fact, the opposite, what if he says yes and we date for a while and we fall in love? Then I will be in love again. And what's to stop him from hurting me like the others?
I hate to speak ill of my own parents, but even since the beginning, when I truly needed someone to be there for me I had no one. My grandmother was all I had. We all have the need to be with someone who we can trust and be trusted by, love and be loved by, be safe with and keep safe, insofar as any person can protect another, to encourage and be encouraged by, etc. Even in an emergency there are so few people I can rely on. However, I am fortunate to have found people who are truly great to me. Friends only, but amazing people. Maybe that's one reason I'm doing as well as I am, in spite of the heart-ache I know is hiding deep within me. One of them is even like the father I always wished I'd had. Someone who not only is proud of me, but gives me the tools to be successful, as well.
I really am trying to just not feel anything anymore. I don't think that my cavernous heart can be paved over and made unfeeling. But I really want to try. I just don't know what goals or purposes there are outside of interpersonal relationships. Everything I want to do I work hard at and end up doing to my satisfaction. I don't have the same love of possessions that enchants so many others. People and the relationships with them are the only interesting thing in the world. The only valuable thing in the world. It's hard to imagine that I might have to set that aside.
And while I've limited my time concerning myself with all of this to as little as 8% of my time, I still keep digging up statistics, data, checking the dating market. The probabilities are not good for getting what I want. I've considered just being casual the rest of my life. Perhaps I should, but I hate to give in when it isn't what I want. The more I interact with my community, the more I see that that's just how it is. And I understand not wanting to get married, I don't know if I will ever bring myself to ever again, but it is kind of sad that we fought so hard to prove that it isn't just a sexuality and that we deserve to be married, but so few do marry.
I get that we are all so traumatized by bullying, domestic violence, ostracization, being disowned, and so on. But it's breaks my heart that I keep seeing how dramatically that is impacting our relationships, and creates an inability to trust one another. We aren't alone in this, it is so often that we destroy ourselves on behalf of other people and how they've treated us.
These are the musings of frustration, not of fact. They are born of worry and I feel bad for even entertaining them. I just want to find my little peace in this world. I've always been the one who rushes headlong into it, a knight in shining armor. But I've come to realize that I do that for people I come to care for, because I feel they deserve everything... and it's the thing I've always secretly wanted for myself. My own knight in shining armor. Not in any grandiose manner that reflects the imagery of the epic poems. But being swept off my feet does sound wonderful. But I'm a masculine top, and I think that is some fatuous ideology for someone like myself. It doesn't have to be complicated or extraordinary.
I just don't know how to proceed. I used to think I knew what the future might look like, but I can't even face the future. I live entirely in this moment, right now. And I try not to think about all of the things I've been doing for which I had that emotional support. Or the great date opportunities I've had. For example, tomorrow I have plans for what I hope will be a wonderful garden party, and it always feels a bit gray to not have anyone to bring. I have random thoughts about hopefully teaching them sign language. Sometimes I find it more enjoyable to converse in that medium. I'm not quite as talkative as I used to be (a lesson from my father: one should listen twice as often as one speaks) yet sometimes when I am passionate I keep going on, but I have found that speech without the spoken word is somewhat calming to me. When I am upset, especially, I have a hard time uttering vocal words, and it would be nice to have that way of relating my upset with someone.
I must digress, I'm not even certain this can all be posted in one piece, and it isn't doing me any good to vent anyway. I still need to find a good therapist. Not that they have ever helped much, other than helping me talk myself through to a solution. I suppose that is something, though, and my insurance covers it. I suppose that is the next thing to do, now that things have calmed down.... if I ever let things calm down. If I ever have a reason to let things calm down....

DAY JUNE 8 2024
6-8-2024

‘WE CANNOT SIMPLY GO, GO, GO.’ WHAT IS ‘GIRL MOSSING,’ THE WELLNESS TREND THAT REJECTS HUSTLE CULTURE?

On TikTok and Instagram, people are “girl mossing”: lying on a forest floor, staring up at a leafy canopy or caressing moss. The United States National Forest Foundation even borrowed the term to kick off its 2024 Instagram account. Girl mossing recognizes a need to step away from the pressures of modern, urban life, promoting spending time in nature as a restorative practice. The fast pace and pressure of neoliberal capitalism take an enormous toll on well-being: not just personal, but social and planetary.
6-8-2024

FIVE WAYS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CAN IMPROVE YOUR DATING LIFE

Artificial intelligence is going to transform how we date. The question is: will it be for better or worse? It’s already causing some real problems, especially related to “romance scams” and other fraud. But it’s not all doom and gloom. Used in the right way, AI can actually make dating better. It can help write profiles and find matches, provide dating advice and coaching and, if all else fails, become a date companion. I have spent the last few years studying the impact of technology, and especially AI, on our
6-8-2024

STUDY ASSESSES ‘THE DANCER PERSONALITY’

“Tell me if you dance and I will tell you who you are!” A study led by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, has shown that both amateur and professional dancers are less neurotic than people who do not dance. They are also more agreeable, more open, and more extraverted.
6-8-2024

ONLINE SHOPPERS BEHAVE DIFFERENTLY AFTER CHATTING WITH STAFF OF THE OPPOSITE GENDER, RESEARCH SHOWS

In a digital world where people are mere pixels on a screen, gender bias can show up in unexpected forms. When people are online, anonymity and physical detachment embolden them to behave in biased ways
6-8-2024

INVESTORS BET BIG ON SUNNY DAYS, STUDY FINDS

It’s often said we can’t control the weather. But what if the weather controls how and when we invest our money? More specifically, what if the skies control how much we’re willing to gamble in the stock market? New research by the University of South Australia has found a connection between pleasant weather conditions and higher investment in lottery-like stocks. Lottery-like stocks are cheap compared to other stocks and, like lottery tickets, they can be seen as an opportunity to make a substantial gain. However, the chance of a higher
6-8-2024

TEENS TREATED UNFAIRLY BY TEACHERS MORE LIKELY TO HAVE POPULIST ATTITUDES

Perceived unjust teacher behavior is strongly and positively associated with populist attitudes among children and adolescents. Populist attitudes consist of ideologies including anti-elitism, people-centrism, and a dualistic perception of good versus evil, and where the foundation of political decision-making should be based on the general will of the people. In contrast to the association with teacher behavior, the correlation between young people’s relationships with peers and the development of populist attitudes is less strong, and the correlation between young people’s relationships
6-8-2024

MICROINCLUSIONS IMPROVE WOMEN’S WORKPLACE BELONGING AND COMMITMENT

New research shows how “microinclusions”—brief instances of positive treatment, especially from members of the dominant group—help women feel valued at work. Imagine your first day at a new job. You probably feel nervous, wondering how you’ll fit in with the team. It’s natural to worry if your co-workers will be supportive, or if they’ll take your contributions seriously. This experience is amplified for women in technology companies, who often face underrepresentation and
6-8-2024

BURNT OUT? HOW YOUR EMPLOYER CAN HELP YOU RETURN TO WORK FOR THE BETTER

The working world can be a pitiless one, as competition in the marketplace can put significant pressures on employees. Relentless deadlines, shrinking resources and shifting priorities all take their toll on employees’ well-being and mental health. In my home country of Belgium, more than two thirds (66.4%) of individuals on disability for psychological reasons had cases related to depression or burn-out. These worrisome statistics reflect broader trends across OECD countries, where nearly half (47.6%) of workers with mental-health problems have been absent from the office in the past year, compared
6-8-2024

FAMILY-FRIENDLY WORKPLACES BENEFIT EMPLOYEES, BUSINESSES

Paid leave and employee well-being are the focus of a three-part policy series on family-friendly business practices put together by the Brown School’s Clark-Fox Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis. “Creating a family-friendly workplace benefits both employees and businesses,” said Gary Parker, associate dean for external affairs and director of the institute. “For employees, it enhances work-life balance and job satisfaction,” he said. “For businesses, it leads to higher retention rates, reduced absenteeism and improved productivity. Policies such as paid leave, flexible work arrangements
6-8-2024

HOW TRUMP’S DEFINITION OF A ‘REAL’ AMERICAN HAS GRABBED HIS AUDIENCE—WHAT OUR RESEARCH SHOWS ABOUT WHY

Donald Trump has recently doubled down on his derogatory depictions of undocumented migrants in his bid to win the 2024 presidential election. In an interview with Time magazine, published on April 30 2024, Trump referred to migrants as “criminals,” who “come in and they steal our jobs, and steal our wealth, and they steal our country.” Trump was especially disparaging towards migrants from China, who he said are a “major force that’s forming in our country.” In short, according to Trump, undocumented migration is “an invasion of our country.” Trump’s
6-8-2024

NEW STUDY SHOWS MARKETING A BRAND’S SIMPLICITY CAN BACKFIRE

Irritability is a common side effect of heat. When companies tout the simplicity of their products, they may unknowingly invite customer dissatisfaction, new University of Oregon research finds. For decades, “simpler is better” has been accepted as a universal truth in marketing. Nick Light, assistant professor of marketing at the UO’ Lundquist College of Business, has tested that assumption. He found that most consumers prefer offerings that appear to be easy to use and understand. However, trumpeting simplicity can have a hidden, costly downside. “When marketing convinces consumers that things
6-8-2024

RESEARCHERS CREATE WINNING STRATEGY TO COMBAT VACCINE MISINFORMATION ON X

A new in-depth analysis shows that users who reply to misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine on X, formerly known as Twitter, with a positive attitude, politeness, and strong evidence are more likely to encourage others to disbelieve the incorrect information. Researchers from three Georgia Tech schools found the most
6-8-2024

STUDY SHOWS DISENGAGED STUDENTS MORE LIKELY TO USE AI TOOLS FOR ASSIGNMENTS

A Swansea University psychology study has found that disengaged students are more likely to use AI tools—particularly ChatGPT—for academic assignments, raising questions about academic integrity and the need for proactive interventions. Launched in November 2022, ChatGPT is an AI program capable of answering questions in detailed, human-like ways. Researchers surveyed 160 undergraduate students, aged between 18 and 24, in March 2023 to assess their attitudes towards and past usage of AI tools such as ChatGPT in academic coursework. The study is published in The Internet and Higher Education journal. Thirty-two
6-8-2024

HUMAN CULTURE IS CHANGING TOO FAST FOR EVOLUTION TO CATCH UP—HERE’S HOW IT MAY AFFECT YOU

Research is showing that many of our contemporary problems, such as the rising prevalence of mental health issues, are emerging from rapid technological advancement and modernisation. A theory that can help explain why we respond poorly to modern conditions, despite the choices, safety and other benefits they bring, is evolutionary mismatch. Mismatch happens when an evolved adaptation, either physical or psychological, becomes misaligned with the environment. Take moths and some species of nocturnal flies, for example. Because they have to navigate in the dark, they evolved to use the moon
6-8-2024

YOUNG PEOPLE IN THE UK SAY THEY ARE LESS LIKELY TO VOTE IF THEIR PARENTS REPORT DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS

With a U.K. General Election approaching, new research has found that parental history of depression can predict whether a young person is likely to intend to vote. The research, led by the Department of Politics at the University of Liverpool, found that, at age 26, people were less likely to intend to vote if they had grown up with a parent experiencing high levels of depressive symptoms. Published in the journal Electoral Studies, the research used the British Cohort Study (BCS), which followed more than 16,000 babies born across a
6-8-2024

WHO GETS TO DECIDE WHAT COUNTS AS ‘DISORDER’?

As a scholar of urban governance and data policy, I viewed the responses to protests on U.S. campuses as about more than threats to academic freedom and freedom of speech. They are also threats to the fundamental rights of people in public spaces. The protesters’ tactics, particularly their use of tents in encampments, have brought debates around definitions of public order and disorder to the fore. Over the past couple of months, students in universities across the country, from the University of California, Los Angeles to the Massachusetts Institute of
6-8-2024

STUDYING VIOLENCE TOWARD WOMEN AND ANIMALS CAN HELP US DEVELOP STRATEGIES TO PREVENT BOTH

We live in a world where not everyone feels safe and respected, especially women. Sexual violence and abuse are significant global health issues. Intimate partner violence continues to be a problem in Canada. According to Statistics Canada, of the 117,093 victims of police-reported intimate partner violence in 2022, almost 80% were women and girls. More than half of women in the United States have experienced sexual violence involving physical contact. Given these high rates of sexual abuse, it is imperative that we improve upon what we currently know about violence
6-8-2024

WHY THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY COULD DEPEND ON YOUR GROUP CHATS

I became newly worried about the state of democracy when, a few years ago, my mother was elected president of her neighborhood garden club. Her election wasn’t my worry—far from it. At the time, I was trying to resolve a conflict on a large email group I had created. Someone, inevitably, was being a jerk on the internet. I had the power to remove them, but did I have the right? I realized that the garden club had in its bylaws something I had never seen in nearly all the
6-8-2024

NET ZERO IS NOT JUST GOOD SCIENCE—IT’S ALSO A GOOD DEAL FOR ORDINARY PEOPLE

As the UK moves into a general election, a misinformed debate over the country’s climate transition and legally binding net zero targets risks further dividing people. Much of this debate in the UK focuses on the “cost” of net zero. For instance, energy secretary Claire Coutinho recently stated the government did not want a “net zero leviathan” to crush the nation’s “brilliant enterprise economy,” while the Labor Party had to backtrack on its own headline climate investment pledge, citing “affordability” and “fiscal rules.” But the true “cost” is tricky to
6-8-2024

THE FASCINATING PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND ‘DINE AND DASH’ AND WHY IT’S ABOUT SO MUCH MORE THAN A FREE MEAL

Sometimes when I read the newspapers, I think that going to a restaurant and leaving without paying has become something of an epidemic. My research into lying has taught me that the psychology behind acts of deception is often deeply complex. Let me start with a confession. I was guilty of dine and dash a very long time ago before it had a catchy name. I was in a group that hung about a chip shop at the turn-of-the-road in north Belfast, a poor and troubled area. I had a
6-8-2024

YOU CAN NOW BE FROZEN AFTER DEATH IN AUSTRALIA. IF YOU’RE REVIVED IN THE FUTURE, WILL YOU LEGALLY BE THE SAME PERSON?

In recent weeks, Southern Cryonics—the southern hemisphere’s only cryopreservation facility, located in rural New South Wales—announced it had successfully cryopreserved its first patient. There are only a handful of cryopreservation facilities across the globe—two in the United States, and one each in Russia, China, Australia and Switzerland. If the claims made on their websites and in the press are accurate, these facilities likely have no more than 600 patients in cryonic storage in total. Media reports however suggest interest in cryopreservation has risen since the onset of the COVID pandemic,
6-8-2024

ENGINEERS HAVE A DUTY TO PROTECT PUBLIC WELL-BEING, BUT LESS THAN HALF LEARN HOW TO DO SO EFFECTIVELY

Engineers who received public welfare responsibility training in classes are more likely to consider the societal impact of technologies they design and to take action when concerns arise, according to a study by University of Michigan researchers published in The Journal of Engineering Education. While engineers are professionally obligated to protect the safety and well-being of those their technologies impact, the study found that nearly a third of U.S. practicing engineers have never received any training in public welfare
6-8-2024

HIRING PRESSURES TO DIVERSIFY ARE INFLUENCING PATTERNS OF DISCRIMINATION IN UNEXPECTED WAYS

In 2004, a pair of economists published a landmark study to measure discrimination in the labor market. In the study, the researchers applied to real job openings with fictitious applicants but changed the applicant names to reflect a different gender or race. They found clear evidence of discrimination: White men and women received 50% more callbacks than Black men and women. More recently, Berkeley
6-8-2024

STUDY FINDS RACIAL BIAS IN TRAFFIC STOPS BY CHICAGO POLICE

Black drivers in Chicago are significantly more likely than white drivers to be stopped by police regardless of where the drivers live or are going, according to a new study led by a Cornell city planning expert that maps the racial composition of roads by using mobile phone GPS data. The study confirms a racial bias
6-8-2024

DO WE HAVE MORE EMPATHY FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE SIMILAR TO US? NEW RESEARCH SUGGESTS IT’S NOT THAT SIMPLE

How do people successfully interact with those who are completely different from them? And can these differences create social barriers? Social scientists are struggling with these questions because the mental processes underlying social interactions are not well understood. One recent concept that has become increasingly popular is the “double-empathy problem.” This draws on research looking at people who are known to experience social difficulties,
6-8-2024

HOW CAN WE MAKE GOOD DECISIONS BY OBSERVING OTHERS? A VIDEOGAME AND COMPUTATIONAL MODEL HAVE THE ANSWER

How can disaster response teams benefit from understanding how people most efficiently pick strawberries together, or how they choose the perfect ice cream shop with friends? All these scenarios are based on the very fundamental question of how and when human groups manage to adapt collectively to different circumstances. Two recent studies on collective dynamics by the Cluster of Excellence Science of Intelligence (SCIoI) in Berlin, Germany, lay the groundwork to promote better
6-8-2024

OTHERS’ WORDS, NOT FIRSTHAND EXPERIENCE, SHAPE SCIENTIFIC AND RELIGIOUS BELIEF FORMATION, STUDY FINDS

Three proposals explaining the differential confidence. (A) Intuitively, one might assume that confidence in scientific entities (e.g., germs) is higher than confidence in religious entities (e.g., angels) because scientific entities are observable in principle whereas religious entities are not. (B) The Dual- Pathway Model proposes separate information pathways for scientific versus religious beliefs; belief in scientific entities is primarily driven by direct experience of causal outcomes whereas belief in religious entities is primarily driven by testimony. (C) Contrary to these two models, the Unified Model proposes that belief in both
6-8-2024

TRYING TO SAVE MONEY? RESEARCH SUGGESTS PAYING IN CASH—WHILE YOU STILL CAN

Cash is in crisis. In Australia, it’s now only used for 16% of in-person transactions, down from about 70% in 2007. The situation is so dire that on Monday, independent federal MP Andrew Gee introduced a private member’s bill that would force businesses to accept cash or else face big fines. The reality is that over the past decade, technological advancements have utterly transformed the way we pay for goods and services. Phones and smartwatches can now easily be used to pay by card, and buy-now-pay-later
6-8-2024

MESSAGES CAN TRIGGER THE OPPOSITE OF THEIR DESIRED EFFECT—BUT YOU CAN AVOID COMMUNICATION THAT BACKFIRES

The best graduation speeches dispense wisdom you find yourself returning to long after the graduation tassels are turned. Take the feel-good life advice in Baz Luhrmann’s song to a class that graduated 25 years ago. Only on a recent relisten did I realize it also captures one of the research-based strategies I teach for avoiding communication that backfires. The tip is hiding in plain sight in the song’s title, “Everybody’s Free (to Wear Sunscreen).” Communication aimed at promoting a certain behavior can have the opposite
6-8-2024

DIFFERENCES IN EDUCATION, VALUES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN CAUSE MISMATCHES WHEN SEEKING A PARTNER, FINDS SPANISH STUDY

The educational expansion of women has led to changes in the differences in educational level of men and women when looking for a partner. Research conducted by the UAB Center for Demographic Studies (CED-CERCA) has examined for the first time the role of discrepancies in gender role values and education among potential spouses. According to the study, about a third of women in favor of gender equality and with a higher education would not be able to find a homogamous male partner. The work is published in the journal Perspectives
6-8-2024

‘FUZZY’ MAPS OFFER INSIGHT INTO LOCAL PERCEPTIONS OF THE VALUE OF VOLUNTEERING

In the global South, volunteer programs are framed by policymakers and scholars as an effective vehicle for empowering women living in poverty. But this narrative often rests on scant knowledge of the perspectives and experiences of a key set of local stakeholders: the volunteers. A new study co-authored by Yale anthropologist Catherine Panter-Brick addresses this knowledge gap by engaging with Syrian refugees and Jordanian women from poor households in Amman, Jordan,
6-8-2024

EXPERTS SAY USE OF POLITICAL MEMES ARE A PREDICTOR OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE

In a study of social media activity prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, researchers at the University of Notre Dame say a sharp increase in politically salient imagery online—visual content designed to influence, dehumanize, manipulate and motivate audiences—was a predictor of the conflict. With collaborators at Colby College and Kennesaw State University, the researchers collected post history from a select group of 989 Russian milbloggers—a term used for “military bloggers”
6-8-2024

PROGRAMS TO PREVENT SEXUAL VIOLENCE SHOW NO EVIDENCE OF CURBING ASSAULTS, ANALYSIS FINDS

Sexual violence prevention programs effectively change ideas and beliefs that underscore assaults, but show no evidence of reducing their actual occurrence, a new comprehensive analysis shows. The findings are published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest. Researchers led by behavioral scientist Roni Porat of Hebrew University challenge the assumption that changing people’s thoughts about sexual violence will change their actual behavior. They call on scientists to study more behavior-centered approaches to reducing sexual
6-8-2024

DIVERSE FRIEND GROUPS PROMOTE BETTER SOCIAL COHESION AND WELL-BEING, STUDY FINDS

New research featuring more than 24,000 people has found that having diverse groups of friends improves well-being and social cohesion, despite people’s tendency to gravitate towards people more similar to them. Led by researchers at the University of Birmingham and published in Psychological Science, the study used data from 24,726 adults from over 10,000 English neighborhoods to examine the composition of people’s social networks according to age, ethnicity, income, and education to understand the implications of homophily (preference for similar people) on social cohesion subjective well-being. Dr. Miguel Ramos, lead
6-8-2024

STUDY SHOWS JUSTICE FACILITY DOGS BENEFIT WELL-BEING FOR CHILDREN FACING COURT

A new Edith Cowan University (ECU) study has revealed that having a four-legged friend at Children’s Court significantly reduces stress and anxiety for young victims, witnesses, and their caregivers. ECU criminology researchers Dr. Suz Rock and Associate Professor Natalie Gately have published the first Australian study to evaluate the impact of introducing a justice facility dog to a Children’s Court. The study “Kids, Courts and Canines: Evaluating the Justice Facility Dog Program through a Therapeutic Lens
6-8-2024

SEXUAL MINORITIES EXPERIENCE MORE EXCLUSION IN EVERYDAY SITUATIONS, FINDS STUDY

Lesbian, gay and bisexual people experience exclusion more frequently than heterosexual people. This is the finding of a recent study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin by researchers from the University of Basel and the RPTU University of Kaiserslautern-Landau. According to the study, people who are perceived as less gender-conforming are more frequently socially excluded. This could also affect heterosexual people if they deviate from traditional
6-8-2024

STILL RIDING LA’S METRO AFTER THE PANDEMIC? YOU PROBABLY THINK IT’S SAFER THAN THOSE WHO DON’T ANYMORE

As Jon Regardie wrote last year in Los Angeles Magazine, “Metro’s raison d’etre is to get hundreds of thousands of people each day across Southern California.” But the COVID-19 pandemic sent the numbers of riders plummeting to a low of 13%, and ridership still hasn’t fully rebounded. The reason may now be clear, thanks to the latest USC Dornsife LABarometer survey, conducted by the Center for Economic and Social Research (CESR) at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. The survey found that although public transportation ridership in
6-8-2024

CAN VAGUE GO VIRAL FOR GEN Y?

Generation Y, Gen Y, is commonly referred to as the millennial generation. It usually includes individuals born between the early 1980s and the mid-to-late 1990s or early 2000s. This generation follows Generation X and precedes Generation Z. The millennials, it is said, grew up during the transition to digital technology and the rise of the internet, and this has shaped their perspectives, behavior, and the way they use technology and media. They are often characterized as tech-savvy, adaptable, and socially conscious, with a strong affinity for social media and digital
6-8-2024

ITALIAN MOMS WITH 3+ KIDS WORK FAR FEWER YEARS THAN DADS, WHILE FINLAND SHOWS EQUALITY

Over the past century, the number of working women in Western countries has steadily increased. However, numerous studies show that it is still primarily women who have to manage the balancing act between parenthood and working life. Compared to fathers and childless women, mothers often have a less straightforward career path and face greater hurdles to career advancement. Little research has been done on what happens to women’s employment trajectories from midlife when childrearing efforts are
6-8-2024

TOP IT INDUSTRY MANAGERS ARE DIVIDED ON THE NEED FOR FACE-TO-FACE COMMUNICATION IN THE WORKPLACE

Many managers are currently seeking a balance between digital and face-to-face communication. A recent study from the University of Eastern Finland published in Information Technology & People shows that top IT industry managers have different views on when and for what purposes face-to-face communication in the workplace is needed. “Some top managers felt that all work tasks can be performed remotely with the help of digital communication. According to them, face-to-face communication is only necessary for maintaining interpersonal relationships and a sense of community,” says Doctoral Researcher Lotta Salin of
6-8-2024

STUDY FINDS SIMPLE HEADLINES ATTRACT MORE ONLINE NEWS READERS

The competition for online attention in today’s news environment is fierce. High-quality news from credible sources must compete for attention with misinformation and a rapidly increasing amount of partisan content. How can a news organization stand out as a reputable and trustworthy outlet while driving readers to its site? The answer is simple: literally. According to research from Michigan State University, news readers engage more with simple writing, suggesting journalists should write simply—clearly and without ambiguity—to attract attention online. The study was published in the journal Science Advances. “Newsrooms want
6-8-2024

STUDY SHOWS BANNING FALSE INFORMATION TRAFFICKERS ONLINE CAN IMPROVE PUBLIC DISCOURSE

When Twitter banned more than 70,000 traffickers of false information from its platform in the wake of the violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the impact went beyond the silencing of those users. A study co-authored by UC Riverside public policy and political science scholars published in the journal Nature on June 5, found that the crackdown by Twitter (now called X after it was acquired by billionaire Elon Musk in late 2022) also significantly reduced the number of misinformation posts by users who stayed on the
6-8-2024

YOUNG ADULTS SAY STEADY SUPPORT FROM CARING ADULTS MADE DIFFERENCE IN TRANSITIONING FROM CHILD WELFARE SYSTEM

Young people who have exited foster care generally fare better—in work, school and relationships—if they get consistent support from adults who care about them during their teen years. My research team reached these findings by interviewing 21 people, now in their late 20s, who had aged out of foster care when they turned 18, had spent time in foster care as children or grew up in families that had active child welfare cases. These young adults relayed the degree to which they received support from
6-8-2024

HOW THE 1901 DISCOVERY EXPEDITION’S POLAR EXPLORERS STAYED HEALTHY DURING THEIR ANTARCTIC JOURNEY

Antarctica is the most inhospitable continent on earth. It’s dry, cold, and completely dark for months of the year. Edwardian explorers were some of the first to brave the Antarctic winter, developing new knowledge still drawn upon by scientists today. The Discovery expedition (1901–4) played a key role in the history of polar exploration. It was led by the Royal Navy commander Robert Falcon Scott, a pioneering polar explorer who died in 1912 after attempting to reach the south pole. The expedition’s third lieutenant was Ernest Shackleton, who led three
6-8-2024

SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MODELS INFUSED WITH AGRI-INNOVATION SYSTEMS CAN REDUCE POST-HARVEST FOOD LOSS AND WASTE

developing sustainable business models that are multi-actor networked for integrating them with agricultural innovation systems initiatives can enable a systemic approach for reducing food loss and value loss at the post-harvest
6-8-2024

WILL THE 2024 OLYMPIC GAMES BECOME THE PLAYING FIELD FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE PROTESTS?

Yannick Kluch, a professor of recreation, sport and tourism at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, studies sport as a platform for promoting social justice. Kluch has worked with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, U.S. Diving and the National Collegiate Athletic Association. He spoke with research editor Sharita Forrest about the history of Olympic athletes’ social justice protests and governing organizations’ efforts to avert them with Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter.
6-8-2024

STUDY FINDS WE SPEND MORE WITH CASHLESS PAYMENTS

A study found support for the existence of a positive “cashless effect,” which is when consumers spend more when using cashless payment methods in comparison to cash. The study suggests the cashless effect leads people to spend more when purchasing products that are typically used to signal status, such as jewelry. However, the
6-8-2024

LAWS MEANT TO KEEP DIFFERENT RACES APART STILL INFLUENCE DATING PATTERNS, DECADES AFTER BEING INVALIDATED

If you are single and looking for a romantic partner, chances are that you have used a dating app. But the likelihood that others will like, or even see, your profile may depend on your race. Studies have found that all people on dating apps, regardless of their own race, are more likely to contact white people using the app. And all people using dating apps are least likely to contact African American women and Asian American men. Until recently, some popular apps, including OkCupid, Match, Hinge and Grindr, provided
6-8-2024

VIRTUAL LABS IN PSYCHOLOGY RESEARCH BOOST DIVERSITY

University of Oregon psychologists are breaking down barriers to include underrepresented populations in research by bringing laboratories online. The researchers are trying to address a longstanding issue in psychology studies, which often rely on undergraduate students to volunteer as research subjects.
6-8-2024

ATTENDING LOCAL EVENTS STRENGTHENS NEIGHBORHOOD BONDS, SURVEY REVEALS

how often people visit and actively participate in local events and how this affects their sense of place or their connection to their community. A survey of almost 400 households in the state’s coastal council area of the City of Holdfast Bay found that people who frequently attend local events or participate as volunteers, organizers or exhibitors, have a stronger
6-8-2024

STUDY SHOWS ONLINE PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION WORKS FOR COMPLEX TOPICS

“COVID-19 forced educators to adjust their educational best practices to an unfamiliar virtual classroom, and professional development was no different,” said Karen Jo Matsler, assistant professor in practice for UTeach at UTA
6-8-2024

EYE-TRACKING STUDY REVEALS THAT SIMPLY LOOKING AT THE NATURAL WORLD IN URBAN AREAS CAN REAP WELL-BEING BENEFITS

Integrating more natural features into city landscapes can play a crucial role in enhancing the mental well-being of residents. A study by Bangor University and Technion- Israel Institute of Technology, published in the scientific journal People and Nature, involved city dwellers and showed how paying visual attention to greenery, rather than human-made structures, can alleviate anxiety and enhance restorative feelings. The 117 urban residents who took part in the study, were guided on a
6-8-2024

ADVERTISERS MAY BE INADVERTENTLY FUNDING MISINFORMATION

Companies in industries such as health care, technology and insurance have been found to advertise on misinformation websites, according to an analysis published in Nature. In a related experiment, consumers who were made aware that a company advertised on a misinformation website were likely to reject an offer of a gift voucher to spend with that company. The majority of digital advertisement placement on the internet is done via an algorithm-based distribution
6-8-2024

STUDY SUGGESTS EVOLUTIONARY BASIS FOR MALE RISK-TAKING BEHAVIORS

why we associate risk-taking with males rather than females, from an evolutionary standpoint. Study author Hannah Goodman, from UWA’s School of Human Sciences, said researchers found men engaged in riskier behaviors when crossing a busy traffic intersection, supporting growing evidence that risk-taking is predominantly an androcentric behavior. “Males

A few days ago, I asked this community what would happen for the final fight against Salem and how would the series end. A lot of you had a variety of responses. Some say there is gonna be some Talk-no-Jutsu, some say Salem will just die by the hands of the gods just like that, and some said it will end with Team RWBY gaining Maiden powers.
This was just to gain an idea of how the final fight would go and how the show can possibly end. With that said, let me introduce everyone to my version of the answer. Now if you disagree with what I have to say, that's fine, you can even say why its a problem in the comments. Just make sure not to say anything that will convince me to block you out of sheer disgust, so try to keep it civil, this is only a theory, a RWBY Theory!
Yes, that was an obvious Game Theory reference, moving on
1. How it starts!
I'm not gonna go into nit picks on how exactly it will play out, because one, that will take a lot of energy out of me and two, I know some of you don't have great attention spans.
So the first episode will have Cinder finding the Crown of Choice and gives it to Salem, who sees that her plan will be foiled as she will still be alive after the destruction of Remnant brought down by the Gods. The reason why I chose Cinder to find it is because the vault containing the crown can only be opened by the Fall Maiden, that being Cinder Fall. How did she find it considering it was not under Beacon? Two ways this could play out.
One, the crown is at Beacon, just hidden well enough to not be detected by anyone. Cinder couldn't get any leads on the crown's location, so she decided to go back to Beacon, tear it down and rip it off the ground with her Maiden powers (this will be fun for power scalers to imagine, either being the entire thing or just going from one end to the other). That's how she finds the vault containing the crown.
Two, the crown was actually hidden somewhere else and Cinder found the lead. So she goes back to Vale, kills a bunch of people guarding it, and takes the crown from the vault. How did she find a lead, I'm not gonna get into that.
2. The Sword of Destruction
With three relics now in Salem's hands, the best thing the heroes could do is to find the Sword of Destruction. Now the sword itself hasn't shown up yet, so we don't know what it could do. To understand what it can possibly do, we need to see what the other relics can do.
\Why is this important? Since the Relics can summon the Gods, I thought it would be important to discuss their abilities before being used to summon higher beings.*
Crown of Choice - Capable of letting people see the future, letting them chose their path ahead of time.
Lamp of Knowledge - Contains a spirit that can answer any question in the present and past, thus giving the person the knowledge they need.
Staff of Creation - Contains a spirit that can create one thing at a time with exact details.
With those in mind, each one has something in common, that being obviously connected to what they are called. Choice, Knowledge, and Creation. For Destruction, here's what I think.
Sword of Destruction - Can destroy any surface or building it touches, for example, if it strikes a house, the house will be split into two, and if it were shoved into the ground, it will break the ground around it.
\The sword itself won't be used much in the present, but there will be illustrated flashbacks showing it's capabilities.*
So the sword is basically an amplified version of a... sword. Containing other feats like taking down an entire skyscraper or cutting down an entire forest. For how it's retrieved, it will be received by the Summer Maiden, which we don't know about. As they head to the Land of Darkness, Cinder to comes in to engage in battle against three other Maidens, including Team RWBY, JNR and SSSN. As we know, Cinder is one of the most hated characters in the show, either to love to hate or to simply just hate. Some think she could be redeemed while others say she can't. How about we do both!
So when she is fighting multiple people, someone (idk who), would grab the sword and plunge into Cinder's chest. This is where she receives a bit of Talk-no-Jutsu where she realizes what she has done before dying by the sword. Now after something like this, I could see the sword being stolen from the group's grasp, most likely now being in the possession of Tyrian. For the new Fall Maiden, I also don't know since it will be the same person who killed her.
\How did Cinder die exactly? Well, when the sword was removed from her body, she will turn into hot embers, giving both irony and flashbacks to how Pyrrha was killed.*
3. Fight for Humanity
Now we get to the action! The group follows Tyrian as they and all of Remnant close in on the Land of Darkness. For this whole army vs army thing, ripping a page out of Avenger's Endgame isn't gonna cut it. Since RWBY was owned by Warner (I'm saying it like that because Volume 10 will most likely be made after the rights are sold), might as well look at another Warner IP which does that but better, which is the Lord of the Rings.
We can have both armies prepare, dialogue between characters, flashbacks and references to previous moments in the show as Ruby gives off one last speech to Remnant before they charge in as Salem watches over, quoting the lyrics of her own theme "Form your armies, dream your dreams. Make your plans and plot your schemes. Send your fighters one and all. Then in battle watch them fall."
So while the whole Grimm VS Humanity thing happens as the Maidens and Team RWBY reach Salem before she can fully summon the Gods. So her goons are defeated, but Salem defeats them and summons them, knowing that her plan may not work, but hopefully she can convince the Gods otherwise, desperate to know if her vision was true or not.
4. Judgement Day
So the Gods come down and see Humanity victorious against the Grimm. Salem tries to convince the Gods that Humanity will leave this victory in the past and be divided once more, but Ruby steps in, along with her team, to convince them that Humanity will never go back to it's old ways. The two groups go back and forth, only for the Gods to tell them to shut up as they discuss somewhere private.
When alone, Ruby and Salem get into an argument, talking about how either precious or vile humanity is and how their lives are either a gift or a curse. It then escalates a fight between only Team RWBY and Salem, as it ends with Ruby using her Silver Eyes on Salem, reverting back to her almost normal self while surprisingly weakening her (Not like she could die by Ruby or that she can't defeat her). We all know that Salem can't be redeemed, nor can she revert her actions. So a proper way of her siding with Humanity is to have Oscar show up as he convinces her to join them, agreeing with her that he will be there till forever and the end, even if the Gods decide to exterminate the entire planet.
With tension now high, the Gods come back and they have decided that they will spare Remnant, and now seeing a changed Salem, they remove her curse and any remains of Grimm on her, along with Ozpin, who reverts back to his previous body while separating from Oscar's body. The Gods compliments and congratulates Team RWBY for their efforts, with them ending with Ruby by saying something like "you have done well uniting humanity", and then removes all the Grimm from the planet and reverses the damage done by them.
How it ends in the aftermath, well, everyone gets a happy ending. Well, not exactly, because unfortunately I will not have Pyrrha and Penny resurrected, and I know that sounds cruel, but we got to implement some of that realism RWBY is known for. Even if the world is finally at peace, there are those who won't actually get their happily ever after. Not everyone can come back from the dead.
I could see many things happening afterwards. Ruby and Jaune getting together, including other relationships like Yang X Blake and Ren X Nora. I could also see Salem and Ozpin spend their final days in Ever After, even meeting Neo, Somewhat and Juniper in the process.
And for the end of the story, just so we can end it like a proper fairy tale, we could have an older Ruby talk about the story to her children or child as she closes the book, ending with the words "The End" engraved into it.
\The final song will most likely be called "The End" or something.*
Summary
This is mostly a combination of what I would think would happen in Volume 10, with other's opinions as well in my last RWBY post. I wanted something that felt like something both logical, reasonable, realistic, and straightforward, as well as including everything that has been the main driving points for the story, like the Relics, Silver Eyes, the Maidens, and even some stuff I hadn't mentioned can be included too. I just wanted something that felt like a proper end to the series.
So hopefully a lot of you enjoyed my Film Theory / TedTalk!
Also Ruby is best girl and her and Jaune are the best ship. I don't mention this often because I'm not into shipping, but I'm willing to make an acceptation, "fight me"!

https://bgodinspired.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/1717900986.png

Understanding the Power of Simplicity

Have you ever tried to explain something complicated, only to find that people are just not getting it? We’ve all been there, fumbling for the right words and losing our audience in a sea of confusion. This isn’t just a modern-day problem; even Jesus faced this challenge when He spoke in parables so that His profound truths could be easily understood by everyday people. Truly, if you can’t explain it simply, you probably don’t understand it well enough.

Jesus’ Example of Simple Communication

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus consistently communicated deep spiritual truths through simple stories and analogies. Whether He was talking about the Kingdom of Heaven being like a mustard seed (Matthew 13:31-32) or explaining God’s love through the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), His teachings were relatable and easy to grasp.
When you find yourself struggling to express a concept or idea, take a moment to reflect on Jesus’ approach. Simplifying your message doesn’t diminish its value; instead, it makes it more accessible and impactful.

The Importance of Clear Communication

1 Corinthians 14:9 reminds us, “So it is with you. Unless you speak intelligible words with your tongue, how will anyone know what you are saying? You will just be speaking into the air.” This verse emphasizes the value of clarity in our communication.

• Simplifying a message helps others grasp your ideas more efficiently.
• Clear communication minimizes misunderstandings and fosters stronger relationships.
• Speaking simply allows us to reach a broader audience, much like Jesus did.

Reflection: Are You Accurately Conveying Your Message?

Take a moment to reflect on your own communication style. Do you tend to overcomplicate things? Are there areas in your life where you could benefit from simplifying your message? Consider the following questions:

• When was the last time I explained something complex in simple terms?
• How did the other person respond?
• What steps can I take to ensure my messages are clear and understandable?

By addressing these questions, you’ll be on your way to improving your communication skills, making your interactions more meaningful and effective.

Practical Steps for Simplifying Your Message

1. Know Your Audience: Tailor your message to the level of understanding of your listeners. Avoid jargon and use familiar language.
2. Clear Structure: Organize your thoughts coherently. Use bullet points or numbered lists to break down complex ideas.
3. Use Analogies and Stories: Just as Jesus used parables, employ analogies and stories to illustrate your points vividly.
4. Ask for Feedback: Encourage questions and solicit feedback to ensure your message is being received as intended.
5. Practice: The more you practice explaining your ideas simply, the more naturally it will come.

A Call to Action: Share Your Experience

Let’s make today a day of change. Do you have any tips or personal experiences about simplifying communication? Share your thoughts and stories in the comments below. Your insights could be the key to helping someone else unlock the power of simple, effective communication.
By actively engaging in this conversation, we can collectively grow in our ability to communicate clearly, just as Jesus did. So, take a moment, reflect, and then share. Let’s simplify our messages and enrich our conversations!
Remember, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Let’s strive for understanding and clarity in all our communications, following the example set by our Lord.
If you like this content, please connect with us at: https://BGodInspired.com
Or dig for more answers yourself with our BGodInspired Bible Tools! Be careful – each interaction is like a new treasure hunt… you can get lost for hours 🙂
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Speaking from my perspective, Python is an awesome language which is closer to human language and has a bunch of great and useful libraries that ease coding. However, I think it shouldn’t be the first language for a programmer to begin his learning with.
I think a programmer should start with languages like C for example . C language helps understanding fundamentals as C is a low-level programming language that provides a strong foundation in computer science concepts like memory management, pointers, and data structures. Understanding these concepts helps you become a better programmer overall and makes it easier to grasp higher-level languages like Python.
And overall, it’ll develop your problem solving skills and computer resources management, which are important in programming.

Greetings,
Allow me to spin you a tale of my time with Helldivers 2. It is a story of tragedy and triumph, a story of dark and terrible deeds, of waning faith and of eventual triumph over the enemies of Managed Democracy.
But first, a little context about myself. I'm rapidly approaching my mid 30's, I suffer from a basket case mix of ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder, no I don't find jokes about my condition funny), Anxiety and Depression. I've been pretty severely bullied and harassed over the course of my life, and as a result I was initially skeptical about enlistment. I also come to HD2 from the first game, so I'm used to dealing with the Facist Bugs, Communist Cyborgs and Terrifying Illuminate. I also unfortunately had to hang up my cape last war since both myself and my partner were frequently harassed by the community over there (to the point where more than one Enemy Sympathiser attempted to track down and "friend" my Steam profile to throw harassment at me).
So initially, I was skeptical about the Second Great Galactic War. I had done my time for Super Earth last war after all. The Cyborgs, Bugs and Illuminate were all contained and dealt with. Enter my younger brother, AwestruckHavoc (if I get his name wrong, he will scream at me). When Super Earth bought back the Helldivers, he signed up right away like the good A-Class citizen he is. Once he got his cape, he kept me updated on how the war was going. Over time, I sat and thought about re-enlisting. I was still skeptical due to the changes Arrowhead had made to the game, and the decision to add in NProtect GameGuard - old Cyborg Spyware tech into the new suits. After sharing some more war stories (and my Cyborg Dog PTSD) I eventually decided to re-enlist on June 1st.
Part of that was a desire to fight the Facist Termanids and Baby-Stealing Clankers...and part of that was a visit from the Democracy Officer, telling me there had been trouble with my brother. Namely that Super Earth had lost contact and assumed he had martyred himself on a mission, so they were notifying next of kin.
Anyway, I go back for training (retraining I guess?), get my cape and get assigned to the SES Elected Representative of Family Values. After saying hello to all the Bridge Crew, Captain, Technicians, Pilots, Ship Gunners, SEAF Marines, Doctors...
...Anyway once I was done saying hello, I booted up the map for the Galactic War. My first ever drop was on Meridia. Difficulty 1, nothing too crazy. I drop down, proceed with the mission and then three other Divers showed up.
...And then they immediately left. All of them. This lead to me having to slug though the entire mission alone by myself. Nobody else joined, so I was left to fend for myself. I managed to beat the mission, but failed to extract.
This was my first drop, and this action by cowards and deserters colored everything else going forwards. Outside of two other games I can remember and some small moments, HD2 was for the most part a frustrating experience compared with the last war. On the off-chance someone at Arrowhead is reading this, here's a list of my grievances:

• Limiting Reinforcements to 5 (or 25 at maximum). In HD1 you died. A lot. Battles were chaotic, messy affairs with a lot of friendly fire. The Cyborgs too could chuck out the firepower of an entire Micheal Bay movie, and then there were dogs. Sweet Liberty, I still see their metal jaws, red eyes and stunlocking bullshit when I sleep sometimes. Every so often I'll hear their bark too. Anyway, the point is HD1 was balanced around this, namely in that you had unlimited Reinforcements (if you were playing in a squad). It meant dying really was a matter of paitently waiting around for one of the Divers to tactically withdraw to a better position before reinforcing. And yes, you could still lose if you fat-fingered the reinforcements call-in, or someone chucked a Nuke at you, or any number of things. The HD2 system is a big problem. See, HD2 tries to have these big, chaotic fights...but also actively punishes you for dying. It doesn't help that I'm the one who usually eats most of those tickets on a drop, and each ticket is me letting the squad down and failing Democracy and Super Earth. This isn't helped by...
• Losing all my Samples upon death. In HD1, any Samples you picked up were distributed among the Squad and your death didn't affect this. The new system in HD2 leads to even more frustration, as I've been very slow to progress up the upgrades trees due to having to lose Samples and people running right past them. This in turn only caused further frustration and resentment...
• Before he went dark, AwestruckHavoc told me a lot about how HD2 was a great place where Arrowhead came down HARD on anyone being a dick. This hasn't been my experiance. As if the story of my very first drop didn't set the tone, I've had enemy sympathizers in Helldivers gear show up to my Dives and deliberately friendly fire the team with their stratagems. Now folks there's accidentally hitting a guy with a 500kg bomb, and then there's calling down a 500kg, a 380mm and a Gattling Barrage all ontop of your fellow Divers as a deliberate act of malice. Seriously, what the fuck? At the very least, they've not started trying to "friend" me on Steam. Yet. There's also a degree of rank elitism among the Helldivers - I have been booted from sessions because of a stupid number that means little. And I swear upon the honor of democracy, the next Diver who thinks it's hilarious to drop a Reinforcement beacon right in the middle of an enemy horde is getting an entire Factory Strider shoved up their ass.
• The Armor Perks system. Hate it. I am of the opinion that Armor should be a Cosmetic Thing. Especially the suit they give you upon Super Citizenship. Seeing what it did, my question became "why would I ever equip anything else in the game ever"?
• On the topic of our enemies, the Bots? Nowhere near as bad as the Cyborgs, to the point where their difficulty largely feels like memetic exaggeration. Personally, I've found the Termanid menace to be worse since - to put it simply - every unit in the Bug Arsenal is Cyborg Dogs. I *LOVE\* dying before I can finish reloading my rifle, 10/10 democratic experience right there.
• The weapons themselves. Sweet Liberty. Not to question the wisdom of Super Earth, but I can't fight the enemies of Managed Democracy if every gun I have basically fires potatoes at them. Weapon feedback feels weak, and somehow the Automaton Tank can tank hits from both the EAT's and ol' Recoilless, bane of Cyborg IFV's. This all adds up to one problem - if my guns do less damage than paintballs when shooting anything (even at their weakpoints), why the fuck would I not just keep the Liberator equipped until the end of time?
• The Soundtrack. This one's not bad, just disappointing. I get that it's inspired by the great Basil Poledouris, but I found myself switching it off and instead using other (democracy approved) music instead, and the mood changed to be a night and day difference. The right ambiance does wonders. Constantly blaring Klendathu Drop all the time gets old after a while. To use a non-Helldivers example, it's like having a C&C Red Alert game that constantly has Hell March playing. You need your Run's, Twin Cannon's and Bigfoot's too. That and honestly, the tracks themselves feel a step down from HD1. I'll say no further since I haven't put my finger on why for this point yet.
• Helldiver Feedback is extremely poor. One of my biggest complaints. While the interface we had on our old Diver suits was able to keep track of ours and our fellow Divers gear and Status, HD2's is so minimalistic it's criminal. My heart goes out to those who lost their lives failing to spread Democracy because their suit failed to tell them their rifle had ran out of ammo, or trying to figure out their buddy needed support. Visibility is also generally poor too - I love not being able to dispense Democracy at ranges longer than ten feet in-front of me while a Bile Titan can spew it's undemocratic filth as it pleases.
• Crashes and Glitches. I think this might have to do with that Cyborg Spyware I spoke of, but I've had points where Stratagems I've called in didn't happen, and apparently giving Bot Sympathisers and other griefers the boot results in a crash too. Hell there was one time I lost battlefield control when I was simply running.

To avoid falling foul of the Democracy Officer, I'll stop the belly aching here but in short, I was not having a fun time. My (re)enlisted partner Orikal had to put up with my increasingly deteriorating mental health. Going though a lot of shit over the past two years of my life has meant that I'm not keeping it together as much these days, and how he's willing to tolerate my nonsense so readily I'll never know. Things got a point where I found myself betraying other Divers, as the problems compounded to the point where I just stopped caring. My mental health only got worse and worse as these things progressed. At one point after failing to call down a Cluster Bomb from Eagle One on a Bot Tank, I threw the stratagem marker at myself out of frustration.
And yet, I wasn't able to put the game down.
There was something in the game that kept pulling me back. Anything else I would have just left. I'm not sure if it was an ASD thing or the call of Managed Democracy, but I wasn't able to put it down even as my mental health slipped further.
In some ways, I'm glad I didn't.
I'd like to take this moment to thank fellow Helldivers Kinja9 and Leon033 if they happen to be reading this. We met on Crimsica, which the Termanids sought to despoil. I wanted to try out my new Flamethrower as I joined a level 69 Helldiver's game (and he surprisingly didn't kick me, which was odd). I thought it was going to just be another drop. I'll probably die a lot, drag the team down, embarrass Super Earth...
...That didn't quite happen. Initially I had the same thought I do in all these Co-Op games - stay quiet, don't speak, try not to be noticed. While it started out that way, I first met Kinja on this mission. The part where I recognised him was after my first death, where he was busy burning bugs with my Flamethrower. He then passed it back to me once the Bugs were dealt with. That's odd I think I didn't think you could do that. Admittedly I'm not the best on the uptake, but the Squad was...communicating? In all my drops, communication was rare. See the above for me - this is also why I don't tend to have my Voice Chat enabled in my Helmet. Anyway, things became more...democratic after I saved the group from a Bile Titan by way of 500kg bomb. After blurting out in the Chat what I was thinking, Kinja seemingly went along with it. From there, we spent most of the mission watching each others backs. This included attempting to incinerate a Bile Titan with a Flamethrower - truly, only filthy heretics burn in the fires of Democracy. Anyway it wasn't long before Leon joined (I think he came in late? Memory's a little fuzzy) and after being pointed out that we were aboard my Destroyer, I plotted in another mission on Crimsica. Before long, the three of us were laughing and joking about our exploits, whether it was the Flamethrower making me want to commit dark and terrible things in the name of Democracy, Kinja stealthily setting up a Flag beneath the Bug's notice or Leon's leadership, all of the above just...washed away. For the first time since I started playing, I made some friends and actually...enjoyed the game? It's weird like that. I also have a deep and terrible need to marry my Flamethrower for some reason I can't explain.
Anyway, I guess the point of all of this is Kinja, Leon - if you're reading this, thank you. I don't think you guys realize how much tonight's drop meant to me. To anybody whose been on the receiving end of some of my darker deeds, I am sorry and I hope there isn't any serious ill will between us. As I said above, I was in a pretty dark place when that stuff happens. I don't mean to be an asshole most of the time, but I can understand how my actions helped perpetuate some of the behavior I've outlined above. If anyone quit over my dark deeds, then I am truly, deeply sorry.
Will I drop again? More than likely. The Second Great Galactic War isn't over yet and I don't plan on shirking in my duties...so long as anyone's willing to have a temperamental fuckup with an IQ just above that of a Bug's.
On a final note, if an Arrowhead employee is reading this, I have some opinions on things that need to be done. To quickly outline these -

• Armor Perks need to go. You have the camera in a position where you can appreciate every Helldiver's unique design and choose to add perks to it? Nonono - FashionDiver should be free without worrying about a +2 buff to Democracy Damage or whatever.
• Helldiver software needs a full reworking (read - user interface needs to be more readable). I've lost count of the number of times I've been knee deep in the enemy and then suddenly found out my Liberator is out of Ammo. HD1 was a lot better about this sort of readability, so why can't HD2? Training Helldivers to auto-reload like every other TPS or FPS out there would probably help too.
• Remove NProtect GameGuard. That Cyborg Spyware has done everything from causing my game to crash to changing my Keyboard Language from English (UK) to English (US) for no discernible reason. I also have suspicions that the Automatons could be using it to spy on Super Earth's citizenry. It would explain how I ended up with twelve Factory Striders and twelve more Factory Striders on one drop.
• The Super Credits system feels like a sidegrade. It's not as bad as it could have been, but if I could make a couple of suggestions - the rotating cosmetic shop needs to go, it's stupid FOMO bullshit, and the same question I always have when a paid game implements them - why not just go Free to Play?
• On the topic of Economics - I need a way to swap types of samples with others. I've got more Rare Samples than I can count and nowhere near enough Common ones to progress. It's infuriating.
• BUFF GUNS.

Anyway, that's my overly long, stupid and dumb story. If you got to the end here, thank you for reading and I hope I didn't waste your time here.

Umm… it’s a long story I guess. TL/DR at the bottom.
Sometimes I really want to divorce. But I also really don’t. I do love my husband a lot and we have had such incredible times together and built a really amazing life. I don’t want to leave it all behind, to start over with someone new, blow up my life and start with literally nothing, but man am I hurting right now. I feel so lonely in my marriage that sometimes I feel like it would just be easier to actually be alone. I don’t like how I’m being treated and I don’t like that I’m asking for bare minimum and not even getting that. Sometimes I feel like I am growing up and outgrowing him/our dynamic and things feel stagnated (I want kids, he wants to drink and party).
My husband (30M) and I (29F) have hit a rough patch, except I’m not even sure if it’s just a rough patch anymore or if we are truly falling apart. Together for nearly 6 years, married for 3. It makes me sick to think about because I feel as if my husband is a totally different person now. I’m so confused because our relationship has never ever felt this wrong or hurtful, I used to believe our love was so healthy and nurturing; my husband used to communicate and be open and loving and now he’s just passive aggressive (he’ll even admit it), hot/cold and mean to me.
He has said some very hurtful things but will never take accountability or apologize for what he has said to me, he often times will spin things around and blame me for all the ways I’m hurting him and never acknowledge what I have come to him with; like I will raise a concern and somehow by the end of it, I’m left apologizing while my feelings were never acknowledged. Or he just goes “ok!?” Like ok so what??? A lot of DARVO and defensiveness, he will twist my words and insist I said something when I know I didn’t. If I call him out, I just get a “sorry I misspoke” from him. If I tell him he hurt my feelings, he says it’s a me problem. That he has no problems. That I should just be happy and move on. In his mind, we wake up the next day and be happy and all is well because we choose to be better (ok sure, fine) but with no apology or repair attempts, I have a hard time “just moving on”. It’s hard to forgive a person that can’t even admit they hurt you or show remorse for how they have done so. I have gone to bed sobbing next to him and it’s never brought up or talked about the next day and he wonders why I’m growing distant. He has zero compassion and empathy for my feelings and I feel really alone in that.
Last year, we were long distance for the whole year (military). Our fights started in September when I went to visit and I felt he was disrespecting me, mocking me, not taking me seriously, disregarding my suggestions in front of our friends. One night, he started picking fights with me at a bar and insisted we go home “because I wasn’t having fun”. I never expressed that, though the bar scene is not my thing, I still went with him and our friends and was enjoying our time. I told him to go have fun, dance, hang out and I’ll enjoy my drink. He kept saying I wasn’t having fun and we needed to leave and I kept insisting I was totally happy to just be there (that was the truth). A lot of times he will project his own interpretations of my feelings onto me and assume he knows what I’m thinking/feeling without asking. We left that night without our friends and grabbed dinner on the way back to the hotel, except he completely ignored me and stonewalled me the entire time. I tried to make conversation but took the hint, let him know I don’t feel welcome in this interaction since he wasn’t engaging in return, and that I was going back to the hotel alone since he clearly didn’t want me there. His defensiveness is usually cold and silent, he has admitted that he “stonewalls me because he’s done talking with me”. He refuses to talk a lot of the time or will say there’s nothing he wants to talk about.
After I had come back home, our fights continued. I asked him a handful of times to please send me the pics we took on our vacations and it took him over a month of me reminding him to please just do it. Finally he became angry and BLEW UP on me and sent them, only half, and I reminded him that there’s more and he spit back at me “THAT’S ALL I HAVE, WE’RE NEVER TAKING PICTURES ON MY PHONE AGAIN” when I knew there were more. What a stupid, petty thing to get mad at me over?
Another time, he completely disappeared on me for 3 whole days and I hardly heard a word from him. I knew exactly where he was (drunk in his dorm playing video games, on a complete bender with his friends online, only taking breaks to go to work drunk/hungover and come back to drinking again). I attempted to reach out, say hi, stay connected, because I feel that’s important long distance? To make an effort to communicate? Because we have a responsibility to each other? I don’t feel like I’m asking for much here, but he was just gone for 3 days. When I finally heard from him and let him know how hurt I was because I felt like he didn’t have time for me (I have often felt second to his online friends, I spent a year and a half going to bed alone and existing without him because he would stay up drinking with them), all he said was “sorry sometimes I just fuck off into my own world”. Like dude you have a wife that you need to be involved with too? I have a really big problem with his drinking and his online life as it’s taken a higher priority over me a lot of times. For a long time, all I saw him do was go to work, come home, drink and game.
Between September to now, things have only spiraled and gotten so much worse. In January, we moved abroad. I knew it would be a hard adjustment for me as I’ve never left home, am incredibly close to my family and overall just a big change, plus I had all my luggage and our two pets to drag through airports and onto flights with. I needed help. I wanted to do it together, as husband and wife, I wanted his support and for us to be doing this new thing in life together… except I had to BEG him to come pick me up. I knew I would need him as my heart was aching over leaving home. There was so much resistance from him though, he said I’d be fine and to just meet him at our next duty station. That it’s such a big waste of time and money to come get me from Asia (he gets a free flight home though??), just to fly back to Asia. Then he started talking about going home to his home state before our move, to see friends and family, and I asked, ok so if you’re in the states already, why not just come up to me and pick me up and we go to Japan together (also, he has time and money to go them but not for me?)? At this point he came unglued and hysterical, insisting again how it’s a waste of time and money and who is going to pay for him to go home? Me? (I’m like, wtf why would I pay for you to go party but you can’t make time to pick me up for a big transition???) he let me know how much I frustrate him and honestly the whole fight just turned into something so bizarre and vague, I wondered what we even were fighting about anymore (as often is the case). I was sobbing and so hurt that he clearly wasn’t choosing me when I needed him, and we fell silent on the phone while I just cried and cried. All he could say was “yeah I know you’re pissed at me”.
Since moving, our sex life has completely declined (my fault). I’ve been depressed, stressed, tired and honestly so hurt by him that I don’t want to have sex with him, especially when he won’t even acknowledge that he has hurt me or apologize. That’s not someone I want to be intimate with. So I have rejected him a couple times, letting him know I’m feeling really insecure about us. I have tried SO HARD to not reject him because I know how hurtful it is, and sometimes in the past, I was just tired. Not in the mood. It doesn’t happen frequently at all (maybe 3 times in our time together), and the times I have said no, he literally will throw himself over in a tantrum like manner and it’s so gross and childish to me. Now, since things have gotten worse, he just goes cold. He told me that if it weren’t for us being married, my couple of times saying no recently would’ve been enough for him to be done with me. And that hurts, because not once has he even attempted to ask what’s wrong, why am I feeling this way, what can we do differently, how is my heart? He can throw everything away over that without even talking to me first? I told him I’m straight up depressed/homesick and having a hard time since moving, not to mention our lack of connection, and he never expressed concern, only his hurt feelings for how rejected and ugly he feels because I won’t have sex with him. He makes weird, off handed snarky comments about how he sometimes “considers going to the gym and getting in shape just to attract some attention and that he never would do that, but he’s thought about it”. The weird comments have happened here and there over a few subjects, leaving me dead in my tracks thinking “what the fuck was that? Where did that comment even come from?”
I have begged him to meet me half way outside of the bedroom, because I don’t feel emotionally connected anymore and that we really need help, and he’s still so dumbfounded that I won’t have sex even though I’ve clearly laid out the ways in which I’m hurting and feeling like we are falling apart. I can’t even remember the last time he told me he loved me first, that he appreciates me, is proud of me, feels lucky to have me, but he used to say those things.
At one point, I wrote him a very long, heartfelt letter stating exactly what was hurting me and why I was feeling the way I am. He read it and didn’t speak to me or even look at me for a week. LITERALLY. When he finally responded (opposite shifts and never any time to talk, a lot of our conversations have been letters or texts lately, because there’s no time/we never see each other and our in person fights derail anyways), he told me he “read my note and felt nothing and that he didn’t care, but knows that he should care so he’ll consider how he should feel.”
I have asked for counseling, to which he insisted he was never going to do again because it’s just a crying/shit-on-the-husband-fest (he is divorced once, I assume he went with his ex), he told me there’s nothing wrong with him, he doesn’t need someone telling him how to live his life, he’s happy with who he is and will not go to counseling. I told him it’s not an option anymore and so we went once (didn’t go well) and he reminded me more than once how stupid it was. I told him I want a husband that has a growth mindset and someone who is wanting to work on things with me, who takes me seriously when I say we need help, someone who is open to talking and communicating. He took offense that I don’t think he’s growth minded because of his spiritual journey and personal growth but I asked him, how are you showing up as a husband? He tells me “we don’t need to be checking in and talking about things”.
He says I’m trying to change him and want him to be different (because I’ve asked him for help around the house but he doesn’t see the mess the same so it doesn’t matter to him? But to me it does because it’s his mess too and we exist together, therefore we both need to be making an effort? I have taken on 90% of the household chores for a while now and let him know I need help and suddenly he’s saying I’m trying to change him and asking him to “put on his husband mask”, what does that even mean?????) I’ve asked him to attempt to speak my love language more (touch and words), as there’s hardly any intimacy between us (no hand holding, cuddling, hardly any affection outside the bedroom) and that’s asking him to be someone he is not?? Because he’s not touchy feely? He will slap my ass or grope my boobs (huge pet peeve and I’ve expressed that) and when I ask him for a hug instead, there’s push back? He gets mad and guilts me when I won’t drink with him (I don’t need or want to drink every night at home, sorry). One time he was poking and pinching at my sides and I asked him not to as it was making me uncomfortable (struggling with binge eating at the moment) and he got irritated and defensive because “he’s just playing and why can’t I have fun”.
Through all of this, I feel like I am the one saying I want to work on things, I love him and our life and let’s do better, let’s fix things, let’s grow together, I’m the one still making an effort to bridge the gap even though we are hurting, and all I’m hearing from him are all the ways he doesn’t like me: he thinks I’m boring (because I won’t drink with him), that I can’t do anything for him that he doesn’t do for himself (yes he literally said this, what do I even offer him?), that he fell in love with me for my independence and what am I doing now? (I uprooted my entire life and moved to another country to support him, I got a job within 2 weeks of being here and have since secured a government position, I’ve bought and paid off a car in 3 months, I go out and travel in a country where I can’t even speak the language, made friends, and he says I’m not independent?? WTF), that he doesn’t need me or this relationship and only fears I’m wasting his time. He can’t think of a single thing he appreciates about me (his words) when I feel I have given up everything and bend over backwards for him to care for him and our relationship. I really feel he doesn’t like me or respect me, but he’ll say he wants me around. He insists I don’t love him or like him, but I feel that is his own projection onto me. We are long distance again and I have expressed multiple times that it’s important to me to stay engaged and check in at least once daily, to say hi, and I’ve been doing that despite being incredibly busy myself, but he ghosts me constantly and is hardly reciprocating effort. I have hardly heard from him in a month, despite my efforts (I’m starting to feel like a damn fool by continuously reaching out, if I don’t text, we don’t talk, I’m tired of the games and have since pulled back but that feels so shitty to even have to do???). I want someone that WANTS to say hi to me and see how I’m doing???
I don’t feel I have a friend in him, as he never asks about me, my life, my inner world, what’s going on with me, does not express interest in my new jobs, new friends etc, when I am constantly interacting with his world and engaging with him. I have expressed to him I feel like I am his friend but he is not mine because he doesn’t express an interest. We do a lot of what he wants and not a lot of what I want.
I told him I want to go home for my 30th birthday in July (it’s a big deal to me!) and I asked him to meet up with me in my state (he will already be in the states for a work trip). He told me he doesn’t want to come hang out with me on my birthday and was instead thinking of going to a big get together with his online friends in a different state to party and drink with them. That really hurt me. Do I not matter to him at all???
I have a big problem with his drinking (he has driven drunk at least 3 times that I know of, 2 of which I was in the car with him, once my family was also involved), I have expressed my concerns about his drinking and he says “I don’t think it’s a problem”. I told him I don’t want our future kids thinking it’s ok to wake up and pop open a beer for breakfast every day and he dismissed it.
We are not agreeing or seeing eye to eye on our next 5-10 years together: we want kids, but I want to be in the states closer to home so we can have our families be involved with our kids too, meanwhile he wants to live abroad as long as possible and retire out of the military overseas. He wants nothing to do with his family and doesn’t care to be close to them. I knew this, and thought I would be ok with it, but I’ve since realized that it’s actually really important to me to have our families involved and not be on the other side of the world at the moment. We can’t find a way to meet in the middle on this, but I don’t want to be this far away for too long (current trajectory is 3-7 years). He says he isn’t sure if he can compromise because he’s always done for others and not himself. Meanwhile, I feel like: maybe you should’ve thought about that before getting married? Aren’t your spouse’s feelings enough to move you in a direction that would be fulfilling for both of us, not just yourself? I agreed to 4 years overseas when I really didn’t want to, and now that I’m asking that we go home after, now it’s an issue?
We went to a marriage retreat that only further revealed what I have been hurting and expressing concern about: that I don’t feel connected and that we need to be digging deeper and investing more into our relationship. I cried so hard when we returned from that retreat and all he could tell me was how frustrated he was that he took us there only for me to come home and cry about it.
He is ok with pushing my boundaries and disregarding my feelings: example of this a couple months ago, I let him know multiple times and many hours in advance we had dinner reservations (we need to leave by 7). He gets ready around 630. I tell him, ok time to go. He says, just 5 more minutes (on his pc gaming and drinking). I say, ok it’s been 5 minutes, let’s go. He says, wait just another minute. 20 minutes pass and I’m now visibly irritated and telling him, I’m leaving, now we’re going to be late. He gets pissy and storms behind me, I let him know that it’s really important to me to be on time for things and I felt really disrespected by him making us late. He told me with attitude that “it’s fine” and it’s “not a big deal because we’ll still be there and we’ll get there when we get there”.
In the store, I will ask for his input on groceries and he will mutter under his breath to leave him alone, only to admit later that he did that and it was disrespectful: but just as an admittance and matter of fact, nothing more, like he’s ok with disrespecting me and declaring it??
Honestly there’s still so much to this, but it’s getting long - bottom line, I just really feel he doesn’t respect me or like me. I don’t feel like he loves me as a husband should or how I envision a marriage to be. I feel a lot of disinterest and complacency. I wonder if he could ever even properly be there for me in the ways I would want my husband to be (what happens when my dog or parents die, is he just going to dismiss my feelings then too and tell me to get over it? He is very emotionally avoidant, numb and dismissive). I don’t feel loved, supported, heard or understood, I feel so incredibly lonely in our marriage. I feel I am reaching a breaking point and it hurts deeply. He was NEVER like this, our relationship used to be so good and I have no idea what happened or why things changed but I am deeply unhappy now and don’t see a way forward with an unwilling partner who will not participate or sees nothing wrong. I deserve better and I want a husband and partner in life that is just as invested and just as loving and interested in me and willing to grow, as I am to him. I’m a damn good wife and I know that, I know what I have to offer, and I want someone that sees that and appreciates that. I feel my husband is very childish and immature and emotionally unavailable, I have wondered but whether or not he is manipulative doesn’t really matter and I don’t think labels are helpful, at this point all I know is I’m hurting and this isn’t working for me.
Of course this is only my side of the story, and no I have not been perfect. I have found myself in a dark, contemptuous state of mind towards him and tried my best to turn that around and reflect and do things differently. I am reading books, listening to podcasts, going to counseling, trying to model to him real apologies (sincerely too). He will say that I criticize him (I do have a harsh start up at times but have since tried to communicate softer and take more responsibility for my feelings and not find fault in his actions), that I want him to be someone he is not (he says I want him to put on a husband mask??), that he feels ugly and rejected because I won’t have sex with him, that I’m hurting him (but I’m honestly confused as to how because he can’t give specifics when I ask how or what I can do differently).
Sometimes I just feel so done with this and like it’s not worth it. I gave up everything to be in another country with him, I gave up friends, family, a career that I wanted to pursue, EVERYTHING, and this does not feel worth the pain I am feeling being so far away from the things that bring me joy outside of him. I feel deeply unfulfilled day to day.
We used to be so happy. He was so sweet and nurturing and cared for me, took interest in me, prioritized me. We had a wonderful life and home together, supported each other’s dreams and desires, used to communicate openly without defense or combative behavior. This is so left field for him/us that it’s left me deeply confused and feeling so much ambivalence. I used to feel #1 to him and now I just feel like his roommate.
Jesus this is long, if you read it and have any advice, thank you. I feel so alone in these feelings and don’t want to dump on my family and friends more than I have already. I am in individual counseling and that helps but I just needed to get it out of me and into the void.
TL/DR: basically I feel like I started challenging some bad behaviors and speaking up when my feelings were hurt (previously I guess I was the “cool girl” and chill and wouldn’t speak up and now I have resentment), and our relationship has become toxic. I am constantly torn between should I stay or should I go? I really don’t have much optimism anymore as my husband will spin things around and blame me, and I’m really not trying to act like a victim here, but he doesn’t take accountability or step up into being a leading man or husband and I’m tired. I’m tired of fighting, feeling sad, being long distance from my family and life in what feels like a failing marriage and not feeling like I’m being met half way on repairing/moving forward in a healthy manner.

Tbh idk why I'm posting this here, maybe it's for people who had same situation as me? Maybe because I want someone to tell me I'm not overreacting? Idk I just need to type it all out to feel better.
(Sorry if you see any mistakes English isn't my first language)
Bear with me bc it's gonna be a LONG story
So in summer my leg started hurting sm, even when I was in bed and sometimes it would get so worse I couldn't sleep at night, it was truly frightening, I didn't know what was happening to me, my mom brought me to several doctors they all said different things, it was around that time when we noticed big bump on back side of my lower right leg, and when I say BIG I mean it. At that point we finally found out I had a tumor in my right leg (if anyone doesn't know tumor is An abnormal mass of tissue that forms when cells grow and divide more than they should or do not die when they should) the reason my leg was hurting was that this tumor was pushing on nerves in my right leg. When we asked about surgery they told us that they couldn't remove it without needing to amputate my right leg, so my mom dropped everything and we immediately went to Austria and got admitted to hospital, we did some examining, I even had to go through biopsy (a procedure to remove cells, tissue or fluid for examination by a medical pathologist, in simple words they stabbed me with a giant needle in order to get a tissue out to discover what kind it was) and let me tell you that it was NOT pleasant. I cried sm while my mom way praying for me. After they had to insert port catheter (if you don't know what it is use Google but you might not end up feeling very comfortable lol) into my neck so they could insert chemo through it and my suffering officially began: I started chemotherapy treatment. It was unbearable, if you don't know chemo makes your hair fall off which made me more insecure than I was, not to mention the dead feeling you have inside of you when you're getting chemo, it feels like you're dead, like something is bothering you but you don't feel pain, I couldn't eat and I could barely reach bathroom without collapsing, I couldn't even sit on a chair without feeling tired, I couldn't eat nor drink water bc everything tasted disgusting, plus I had to wake up everyday for German lessons(I don't know german) everything was so overwhelming, I thought of ending it all sm times. Not to mention I got called "baldie" and "chemotherapy n****" by my own friends, basically I was stuck in bed feeling like I was dead. All of sudden I decided I was gonna suck it up and instead of refusing to eat I began forcing myself to eat, not for me but for my mom, I felt so bad for her, only thing I lost was my friends and family,she lost her carrier, friends, her family and everyone, after forcing myself to eat things felt better, at least I could get to bathroom normally, I'm very glad for nurses here, they were always smiling and rlly helped me get through it all! But although they weren't giving me as much as chemo anymore I was still miserable, crying over my friends, my classmates, my family. I started overthinking: "if I hadn't done that I would have much more time with my friends" and etc, it was very hard, especially after my mom told me we'd be staying here for years. after we got half way through chemo doctors noticed that tumor was getting a lot smaller which was very unexpected although (I needed blood transfusion 2 times lol) I forgot to mention the fact that ever since I got to hospital EVERY SINGLE DAY I had to take a needle called INHIXA to prevent blood clots (bc tumor was big and preventing blood flow) I was truly terrified of needles and even seeing them used to scare me, but ever since I moved to an apartment I had to do them myself. yes u read that right, myself. And yes I did it (and I still will untill 12th of June) after some time doctors decided that chemo wasn't enough and I had to go to a different state everyday to get Lazer therapy? That's how they told me it was called, basically I had to lay still for 10 mins while lazers were beaming at tumor, for 1 month which wasn't really a problem bc they turned on music for me (yay?) after that we did MRT and they said it got super super small and surgeons were ready to do surgery, but after 1 month, since Lazer therapy really affected my leg and it was painful for some time but when I finally went to hospital doctors were talking to me explaining what were they gonna do (my mom didn't know English so all the talking had to go through me and I had to translate) and they were telling me risks of this surgery, they said they might have to amputate my leg, at that moment I started sobbing while my mom was looking at me confused, after we got escorted to the room I began sobbing, I already got made fun of not having hair so not having a leg would leave my self confidence in shambles. During surgery I was of course under anesthesia and when I woke up I remember looking down at my leg and moving it, it was very painful but I still could move it and feel it, they took tumor to study it and found out that all cells inside of it had died and there wasn't anything left (but I still had to have 1 chemo) and I did MRT and on 14th I'll know the results! And I'm happy to announce I'm free of that tumor! I currently can't walk bc of new done surgery and have to use crutches and I can't move my right foot good as right one nor do I feel it right (I feel numbness in some places which doctors said it was normal) and on 12th I will officially stop taking needles bc on 14th they will be removing port catheter on my neck! I still can't help but cry and miss my friends, it's still so hard for me.
This thread turned out to be very long so if you stayed share your experience and if you have ever have to go through SMTH like this I'm very very sorry and I'm sending virtual hugs <3