Angry rant. I felt like I needed to type this, but I’ll never send it to her. Here goes…
I hate you. I love you. How is it possible I feel both of these at the same time?
After what you’ve done to me I should have no reason to love you… but I do. I know it’s fruitless. It’s hopeless. There’s no rewriting the past. But I miss you. The old you.
I thought I meant more to you. How long have you hated me? If not hate then just what is it?
I know i’m no saint. I wasn’t the best husband, or partner. I was trying, and I never checked out like you did. You were my everything.
I picked you up when you fell. I wiped the tears from your eyes when you were hurt or sad. I did everything you asked, and I hid under a disguise even though you belittle what I have done.
How can you live with yourself?
I know I’ll never get the answers I seek. I know I’ll never get the closure I truly wanted. That’s just what I have to live with now. Heaven knows I ain’t getting over you.
It still blows my mind you can’t tell any truths. You were always so easy to read, and you lied so terribly. Everything is my fault, right? I was the liar, right? Even at the end, and the last time we spoke you still lie.
Your story changed so many times. Still can’t give me the real one. It’s fine though. Like you kept saying - it doesn’t matter anymore.
I never lied to you about anything important, or anything that was about our relationship. You consistently lied for years, and even more so in the last 3.
You… you’re surrounded by two faced selfish backstabbers. They’ll love you until you don’t provide for them.
Me? I’m surrounded by people who actually love me, and want me to succeed no matter what I do for them. I will succeed.
Shut me out. Remove me from everything. You’ve ripped me out of your life. The kids lives. Our dogs lives. I’m but a memory.
Quit showing back up in my life when you want me gone so fucking bad. You’re an adult now. You can figure it all out without involving me.
I could wish all the bad on you. All the hurt, pain, torment, anger, loneliness, and sadness.. I could wish you felt a tenth of what I do… but I don’t.
I don’t. Because for some reason… I love you, and I always will.
I hope you find what you’re looking for, and this was worth it. Cause I’ll never be the same again. You ripped me to pieces and I have to pick those up then figure out who I am without you.
Thank you though. Thank you for the good times, and the time you did love me. Thank you for showing me what not to do in my next chapter, and what to look out for.
But I wish you’d go away. I will not forget, and I’ll never forgive you. I’m cutting you out of my life forever to tear apart this pain that I feel. You led me on. You have this new “voice”, but yet still can’t use it.
I hate you for this, but I won’t waste anymore energy on you. I’m done.
Goodbye.

Ever since I was 12yrs old in the 6th grade, I’ve been very insecure about how I walked and it’s gotten worse over the years. I’m now 24 still beating myself up emotionally. In the beginning I would think things like “Am I an idiot?, What am I doing Wrong?” Surprisingly, I even went the empathetic route at one point and thought “I probably look goofy as hell to others.” And to the people who didn’t laugh I thought “When they asked their friends (Why do I walk like that?) it’s probably out of concern.”
During High School, I even opened up to my parents and a few friends about it for help. My dad told me to “walk with more confidence.” Which made me look even weirder to random students in the hallways. When I complained to my friends about it one of them basically said “You came into the chat like your life is sooooo hard lol.” Which definitely pissed me off, so I stopped texting. 2 of my closest friends at the time also shared that they walked weird which was funny cause I never noticed till they said it. Even with us being similar I still felt alone because they were so nonchalant and chill about it while on the inside I was suffering (idk if it was the same for them). I almost forgot to mention that their were a lot of times that one of my friends and some people in our neighborhood would laugh at and make fun of my walk from time to time (which would be especially humiliating in front of girls). I don’t hate my old friend, because to his credit he did ask me genuinely why I walked the way I did when we were by ourselves, but I was too ashamed to ask him how I looked from his perspective. From the few times I did ask friends they said my arms were stiff, my walk was slow and I dragged my feet a lot.
After High School, a few years passed and I’ve had a few jobs where people would talk about me and I’d act like I couldn’t hear them.
In present day it’s gotten so bad that sometimes my brain hears distant chatter from tv and somehow makes it sound like someone said “Why do you walk like that?” I don’t even want to go anywhere most of the time because the low to mid level anxiety eats away at me to the point where I stiffen up and I take more shallow breathes. Today when I went to check the mail and take out the trash I heard a neighbor (who I previously heard talking about me) laugh loud asf as soon as he saw me walking. There have also been family members in the past few years that would laugh at my walk when thought I wasn’t paying attention. A few days ago it happened when seeing my cousins.
My “plan of attack” for my problem up till now was:

1. Correcting my walk myself
   
2. DoN’t CaRe WhAt OtHeRs ThInK
   
3. Try to see through my commenters points of view
   
   1. Watch YouTubers like Todd Martin M.D. to help with walking techniques.
   2. Meditate
   3. Seeking help from Chiropractor (progress: 1st adjustment completed).

I’m still kinda doing number 7 which is anger, hatred, bitterness, etc. from 1-5 not getting rid of my emotions towards my walk. Meditation is a little effective (and I do mean little) but I still feel like a clown and a complete idiot whenever I go somewhere. The hate I have is towards how weak I think I am for having this insecurity, how I let people get in my head this much, people who made fun of me for a quick laugh multiple times, and human nature itself.
This last part is definitely unhealthy but the way my brain sees this is: “Damned if I do try to change my walk by myself, damned if I don’t. Pretending I don’t hate people doesn’t help at all. Whether I vent to friends and family or not at the end of the day they can’t help me. I feel like 90% of the population are assholes so expect the worse out of people you encounter and let them show you their true nature. Even if the chiropractors fix your gait issues you’ll probably still be hearing insult in your head. Whether you be positive, neutral or hate your walking problems won’t lessen so you might as well be candid about having a “fuck you” attitude to big mouthed douchebags. Wishing the worst on people is a cowardly action and forgiveness “not for them, but for you” for repeated offenders is BULLSHIT!
Finally, if you have any advice that can help me cope with this negative mindset I’d appreciate it!

Hi! I’m not the best at builds and I’m trying to make a stealth one and was hoping someone might take a look and give me a few tips. Here
Some of the information on there is wrong as my stats are currently, Max AP: 130 Max HP: 280 Carry Weight: 300
I’m also wearing the Chinese Stealth armor and a chemist small backpack.
My main wants from a build, which I’m not sure if I’m doing it right that’s why I ask, are to max out my INT to earn more XP. Also to maximize my carry weight if possible while also keeping my guns strong, it seems sometimes like I do very little damage.
I’m level 296 and prefer to take out enemies from up high and/or far away. I’m not afraid to admit it but I have a fear of feral ghouls as they remind me of zombies. I also just don’t like getting to close to enemies, I know it sounds childish but I’m not a fan of jump scares so I sneak around the wasteland.
Thank you in advance!
Also if you’d like to check out my camp walkthrough you can do that here: https://youtu.be/RZkk2cZrngc?si=-foEvjysv0FQvpdJ

Cigarettes and rebellion have always gone hand-in-hand, and in an age of cigarette packet-sized health warnings, now more than ever, smoking a fag says: 'I do not give a fuck.' But if Brandon Flowers is hoping to strike a seditious pose by sparking up at the start of the interview, it's not going according to plan. The Killers' frontman is on all fours rooting through the junk that carpets the anteroom at the band's rehearsal space. "Has anyone seen my lighter?" he asks, rocking back on his heels. The question hangs in the air while Brandon cocks his head, waiting for an answer like a meerkat listening for a predator. Twenty-five years old and with a delicate bone structure, there's something almost dainty about him. Receiving no response, he returns to his search. "Oh, Jeez," he sighs. "I had it just a minute ago."
It's a scene that emphatically does not suggest a rebel without a cause. The mess isn't helping. The Killers' HQ - an industrial unit sandwiched between a construction supplier and the offices of a housing development just off Dean Martin Drive in West Las Vegas - is ankle-deep in designer clothing. A Dior Homme suit lies crumpled by the door; there's a pile of shoes topped like a sundae by a pair of Marc Jacobs trainers; and anyone wishing to enter the shoebox room the band use as an office must negotiate a mountain of discarded jeans. Many items are identifiable as coming from the wardrobe of Hot Fuss, The Killers' hugely successful 2004 debut album - triple platinum in the UK with two weeks at Number One and five million sold worldwide. Look! There are the shirts, ties and suit jackets they wore when they thrilled Glastonbury 2005 with indie rock anthems Mr Brightside and Somebody Told Me. That was the crowning moment of a two-and-a-half year tour that finally concluded in October of last year. It seems that after playing that final date in Miami, they returned to Vegas and shrugged off their image onto the floor of this bland white box.
Now a fine layer of dust covers the dead clothes. The Killers have no further use for white tuxedos on their second album, Sam's Town. Today, Brandon wears a black polo shirt, black pin-stripe waistcoat, black jeans and black boots. Where there used to be a layer of foundation, there is now a beard - an untrimmed beard at that. Dave Keuning (30, guitar), Mark Stoermer (29, bass) and Ronnie Vannucci (29, drums) all echo Brandon's black ensemble. Ronnie has added Aviator shades and a handlebar moustache for a dash of motorcycle cop, Dave's frizzy bubble of hair gives him a Marc Bolan-ish air, and there's something very teenage about Mark's scuffed Vans.
Short of walking around wearing sandwich boards saying, "Our new record is a bit heavier than the last one," The Killers couldn't hope to communicate that message more effectively. And they have gained some musical girth on Sam's Town. The pop hooks that made Hot Fuss so irresistible survive intact - see the ringing guitar riffs on first single When You Were Young - but there's a newfound punchiness, coupled with an epic sweep. The minor-to-major uplifts on Bones are fabulously dramatic, the coda to Why Do I Keep Counting? thrillingly intense. Comparisons to Bruce Springsteen have been made. If they overstate the case a little, they are at leaset qualitatively accurate. The Killers are back and this time it's serious - they've got the bootlace ties to prove it.
"Hey, it says here that Springsteen's headlining Glastonbury next year," shouts Ronnie, who's flicking through the NME. He nods sagely at the page without looking up.
"Really?" asks Dave, nicknamed Crazy Dave on account of his alledgedly volatile nature.
"The Boss is headlining one night, we're playing second on the bill the next night and Kylie's headlining the Sunday," says Brandon, charging like a bull through Michael Eavis' as-yet-unannounced line-up with what subsequently proves to be a characteristic gaucheness.
But that lighter is proving elusive. This being America, none of the people hurrying to-and-fro prepping the world for the release of Sam's Town smokes. Manager Robert Reynolds - Bobby Rey to the band - barks into his mobile, booking his band onto eye-wateringly demanding tours. "We're going to make a lot of money," he cackles to himself before switching calls to make a series of stern pronouncements on legal matters. Dave, Mark and Ronnie disappear for a jam session. Artwork is approved, B-sides are decided on and schedules are hammered out.
"I can't find it," Brandon says, finally. But he's not going to be denied the opportunity to underline The Killers reinvention with a puff of smoke. "Let's go to the gas station. I'll have to buy one. It's too busy to talk here anyway."
+
Brandon's black (of course) Volkswagen Touraeg four-wheel drive is barrelling down West Flamingo Road into town. "I was a bell boy there," he says, pointing out of the driver's window at the stucco facade of the Gold Coast casino. "I was working there when we were signed."
Coming from Las Vegas, it is perhaps inevitable that casinos play a big part in The Killers' story; not only is Sam's Town named after one, it was recorded in one, too.
The band began writing songs while on the road with Hot Fuss, turning up early for soundchecks to run through new ideas. On a trip home to Vegas, George Maloof, a hotelier known for cultivating famous friends, invited them to record the album in the new studio he'd built at The Palms, his flagship hotel-cum-gambling den. When the tour finished in October 2005, they returned to Vegas and spent five month finessing the songs they'd sketched out on the road. Then, in February, they decampled to the third floor studio at The Palms and recorded Sam's Town over 11 weeks.
Producer Flood (U2, Depeche Mode) encouraged them to experiment. They overdubbed, fiddled with synthesizers and played with new equipment. It took them five weeks to get the backing vocals right. The band sang the harmonies, then double-tracked them four times. The end result recalls Queen wondering, "Is this is the real life? Is this just fantasy?" When Ronnie, a trained classical percussionist, brought some kettledrums down, eyebrows were raised; but the fabulously bombastic coda on Why Do I Keep Counting? vindicates his indulgence.
"That's kind of the Ben Hur of the album," he says. He's not wrong. Sam's Town is a record on an epic scale. "Yeah, it has drama," he continues. "But, at the same time, I think it's a little more exposed than Hot Fuss. It's a little more naked. Last time it was about a lot of fictional things." By "fictional", Ronnie means that Hot Fuss wore its predominantly British influences for all to see. Brandon's taste in music is rabidly Anglophile - he constantly references The Smiths, The Cure and Joy Division - and it showed. By contrast, Sam's Town is an unequivocally American record. The lyrical imagery is pure American dream - cars, girls, wide-open spaces and escaping to a better life. "We're burning down the highway skyline/On the back of a hurricane that started turning/When you were young," sings Brandon on When You Were Young. That's the basis of the Springsteen comparisons then, though the lack of pathos more closely recalls another blue-collar rocker from New Jersey - Jon Bon Jovi.
The phrase "this town" recurs throughout the album, and it's always receding into the distance as The Killers escape to a new life. "This town was made for passing through/I never did get along with everybody else," sings Brandon on This River Is Wild. On Read My Mind he "never really gave up on breaking out of this two-star town", while on the title track he offers something of an explanation: "Nobody ever had a dream round here."
"With the first record, there was this feeling that there was this world out there that we didn't know," says Mark later in the day. Before The Killers, he studied philosophy: now he's their quiet one. "We wanted to get out and away from this and be somewhere else. We hadn't had a lot of experience - hadn't travelled much - then we were gone for three years. We didn't sit down and say that we wanted to make a record about how we're glad to be home, but that's what happened naturally."
It's not an angsty record. The Killers have already escaped with Hot Fuss, and, having done so, they view the experience fondly now they're back. There's a mistiness to Brandon's eyes as he explains how the album got it's name.
"Sam's Town is a casino on the edge of Vegas," he says. "I grew up in Henderson, which is out on the way to the Hoover Dam. My mom and dad lived in a trailer park, and my dad used to hitchhike up and down Boulder Highway, which is the only way you could get to Vegas. Sam's Town was the first thing you saw on your way in to town. So, when you're driving down Boulder Highway from Henderson, I always thought you finally knew you were getting somewhere when you saw Sam's Town. It was kind of like a beacon."
"It's not a completely American album," contines Brandon. "We still have our English influence, but we're also from the Wild West. Somehow we've managed to unify all that on this album. it's just such a perfect resemblence of what we are."
At the petrol station, Brandon rummages through the glove box looking for change to buy a lighter. "This is a great album," he says, pointing at Highway Companion, the latest from iconic American rocker Tom Petty. "I've always been a big fan of his. He's such a great American artist."
Yes, Brandon: we get the point.
+
When Brandon finally lights his cigarette, he smokes it awkwardly, like a child mimicking something he's seen the grown-ups doing. However, when he cheerfully admits that, "I feel the same mentally as I did when I was 12," it's not a knowing nod to the fact that he sometimes behaves like a loveably precocious child, but a reference to an unusually comprehensive grounding in pop music at an early age.
When Brandon sings about "this town", he doesn't mean Las Vegas. He means Nephi, Utah or Henderson, Nevada, where he spent his childhood. His parents are Mormon and he is the youngest of six children. "I was a surprise," he says. "I've got a 42-year-old sister." If he was issues about his "surprise" status, he chooses to gloss over them. "It turned out perfect because my brother was a teenager when I was a kid," he says. "He would bring home things like Rattle And Hum by U2 and I would watch it. I remember he bought Live In Dallas by Morrissey. It was always him watching these things, or his door was shut and you'd hear The Head On The Door by The Cure blasting through the house and rattling the walls."
The Killers were formed when Brandon answered an advert Dave had placed in a local paper in late 2002. Dave cited Oasis as a big influence; Brandon had seen them play recently and responded; and, as Dave has said in previous interviews: "He was the only person to reply to my ad who wasn't a complete freak." However, the band was born in Brandon's brothers bedroom.
"His room was like a shrine," enthuses Brandon. "It was a holy place. I wish I could show you a picture of it. It was covered in posters. There'd be a big picture of Elvis wearing a bow tie that just said 'The Smiths' [the artwork for The Smiths 1987 single Shoplifters Of The World Unite]. You had The Cure wearing face paint [the artwork to The Cure's 1985 single In Between Days] - all that kind of stuff. I remember Morrissey being on the cover of the NME, with the halo [from 1985] - stuff like that. You just wanted to know about these people 'cause they were so cool. My brother seemed like such a cool person. But he was a teenager, so he wasn't going to be that nice to me, a kid."
Brandon was fascinated by his brother's collection of music, magazines and posters, but he was denied access to them - officially, at least. "I would sneak in," he says. "I knew he'd be angry if he found out, but I would go in as soon as he left the house." For a long time Brandon was too scared to actually play anything. "That didn't come 'til later. I just used to go in there because I liked it. Then I got to the point where I'd actually take a tape out and put it in. It took more guts to do that."
It was a life-changing moment. "I was ten and the first song I played was Sing Your Life by Morrissey. I remember dancing about to it."
The lyrics to Sing Your Life include the lines, "Sing your life/Just walk right up to the microphone/And name all the things that you love/All the things that you loathe." It's intriguing to wonder what Morrissey makes of the neophyte he inspired with these lines.
Eventually, Brandon inherited his brother's tape collection. "It was around the same time CDs started coming out in a big way. He started buying CDs and gave me his tapes. And that was it: it took off from there. I got a hundred of the best albums - all the New Order, all the Morrissey, all The Smiths, The Beatles. I started buying posters. I went to see The Cure in concert. It was just kind of a continuation of my brother. And it was nice because, though my parents were strict, they were already used to it from him. There was no, 'My dad doesn't understand me,' or any of that kind of stuff. My mum likes The Smiths."
Brandon was 13 and his favourite band was late-'70s/early-'80s American new wavers The Cars, and particularly their jaw-droppingly catchy 1979 single Just What I Needed.
"I wouldn't exist without that song," he says. "That was the one. I remember driving around with my mum when I was 13, and we're living in Nephi - a really small town - and I felt so cool when I put that song on. Like: 'I have something that none of these kids I'm going to middle school with tomorrow have.' That excitement is what music's about, isn't it? That's why I understand the mentality of people that don't like us because we've sold so many records. I used to like it when no one else knew about a band. So I get that - I do."
+
Brandon's first band was called Blush Response. It was never going to work out. Not because he refused to move to Los Angeles with them, but because he is utterly - comically - shameless. He's given to making outrageously boastful statements like: "It's not like the '60s, '70s and '80s now. There are only a few bands around that are really good, that just do it. I mean, there's what, five or six of us?"
For the record, in Brandon's estimation, those bands are Franz Ferdinand, Razorlight, The Strokes, The White Stripes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and, of course, The Killers.
"I don't want people to think I'm lumping myself with other people just to make us sound cool," he says. Really? It sort of sounds like you are. But he just steamrolls through it. "Yeah, but you know what I mean," he says, grinning at his own cheekiness. He's so disgracefully forward you can't help but laugh along with him - Oh you are awful, Brandon! But joking aside, The Killers are the most commercially successful of all the bands he mentions.
Later, back at the rehearsal space, the band run through Sam's Town at deafening volume in preparation for the forthcoming tour - first the US, then the world. The infectious, almost contagious, chorus of When You Were Young sounds fabulous, as do the U2-like guitars and Twin Peaks synths of Read My Mind. Meanwhile, Smile Like You Mean It and Somebody Told Me benefit from the newfound harder edge.
They somewhat heavy-handedly underline the new direction by playing Paranoid by Black Sabbath and Get It On by T Rex. That's the thing: The Killers are not a subtle band. Their songs are like a wet kiss from a girl who's a bit too drunk. They are big and brash, and not everyone loves them for it. Mr Brightside and Somebody Told Me might go down as well at hip nightclubs as they do on the festival circuit, but the DJs play them with the same guilty look they wear when playing a pop record.
"I hate that," says Brandon. "Like writing a song you can hum somehow cheapens it? It makes me think of this quote by Morrissey. Everybody knows how he read Oscar Wilde, Keats and Yates when he was growing up and that he wanted to be a writer. He was talking to this journalist who asked why he hadn't become a writer, and Morrissey said: 'What I do is more powerful than what you do because I can write down these words and you get it to a melody. How can you beat that?' I'm of the same opinion. I don't understand why a good melody that's memorable is a bad thing."
Being dismissed as pop particular aggrieves Ronnie. "When we first came out we got compared to Duran Duran all the time. Jesus Christ! We got a keyboard player now all of a sudden he's Nick Rhodes! Come on!"
"The people who criticise us for being too poppy don't get it," agrees Mark. "I think that's the problem with a lot of rock music. People are afraid to write a song any more. Either that or they can't. And that attitude hurts music in general. The best bands ever have all written great songs. You can still do it and do it intelligently and it can be original. This isn't a studio creation with a producer writing these songs for us. We're not Avril Lavigne, or something like that. We're a real band writing real songs, just like a punk band would do, except that we write pop songs."
You get the impression that The Killers knack for showboating pop hooks that border on vulgar is inextricably tied up with the brazen side of Brandon's personality. But while his ebullient charisma, not to mention the songs themselves, mitigates his outrageousness, there is a less attractive side to his ego. He has a combative streak. He can't resist taking pot shots at emo bands, notably Fall Out Boy, whith whom The Killers share an A&R man.
Has he heard how many emo kids it takes to change a light bulb? "No." None. They just sit in the dark and cry. It's a full 30 seconds before he stops laughing. When he does he admits: "Yeah, we've had problems with other bands. You know, when you walk in the room it's like..." He whistles the theme to The Good, The Bad And The Ugly. "We're like gangs."
And while the other members of the band are diplomatic on the subject of Brandon, you don't have to read too deeply between the lines to conclude that there have been internal issues, too.
"Some people will think Brandon's the big genius," says Dave, visibly bridling. "There are songs, such as Why Do I Keep Counting?, where he's written every note. But there are others, like When You Were Young, that were more of a collaboration - like Mr Brightside, where I had some of the music and Brandon came up with the lyrics. We always have arguments about who wrote what. The truth is that we all help in that process."
When asked how success affected them, Ronnie says: "There were certain things that needed adjusting. When you're on tour for two years, people can get a little needy. It doesn't help that you're surrounded by yes men and everybody's working for you. At times we've had to say, 'Who do you think you are?' to people. No one wears the trousers, but some people would like to. I think if it wasn't for the people in the band kicking each other in the ass... Let's just say there was some ass-kickin'."
It doesn't take a genius to work out whose ass needed kicking most often.
+
It's the following day and The Killers are back at their rehearsal space. The topic of discussion is what to wear in the video for Bones, the second single. It's a big deal: the director is Tim Burton. "I feel like Frank Sinatra when I sing it," announces Brandon. "With maybe a little bit of Morrissey and a little bit of Elvis, too."
Of course he does. But if securing the services of Tim Burton tells you one thing, it's that The Killers are about to get even bigger, perhaps even make the leap to the same level as Coldplay et al. Already stars, they are about to become superstars. Brandon can hardly wait.
"Do you know that Rolling Stone didn't want to put us on the cover last time," he says indignantly. "They didn't think we were stars. We sold five million albums! What more do they want from a band?"
Whatever was required, Brandon would be happy to do most things. "I'll do stuff that some people don't want to do, 'cause I want people to hear the music," he says. However, even he has limits. "The Rolling Stone thing made the record label think: 'What can we do to make them stars?' If I go on vacation with my wife, do they have to send somebody to be there to take pictures of me? Is that how you become a star? I don't want that. I walked down the red carpet one time and I realised I don't like it. But you don't have to walk down the red carpet for people to hear your music. We do still have some of that indie blood running through our veins."
He heads off at a tangent: "When you walk around Liverpool, you think of The Beatles, or you go to Manchester and you think of The Smiths or Oasis. I want you to come to Las Vegas and think of Sam's Town. And I think we've started to capture that, which is a truer version of The Killers, 'cause that's where we're from."
He pauses.
"I used to live across the street from Sam's Town. Maybe it'll be like our Abbey Road where people go to take pictures."
Is that what he'd like?
"I wouldn't mind it," he says, desperately hoping it will come true.
He puts a cigarette between his lips, looks down at his trouser pockets and pats them in search of the lighter he bought yesterday.
"Hey, I don't suppose you've got one?"

Hi everyone. This post is in regards to the “K hiphop & rnb” festival being held in Sydney and Melbourne this July.
This festival is being held by Prime Entertainment, and I feel responsible to make everyone aware of just how shady this company is.
Below is a recap of my experiences with prime, having worked with them directly, and being an industry professional, I feel I am best suited to comment on the matter. Please read this.
I urge you all to please not attend these shows, they are likely to have artists pulled or the shows be cancelled entirely.
I am happy to answer any questions anyone has.
Thank you.
My Experience with Prime Entertainment
Hi. If this seems familiar that’s because this is a recap of everything that’s happened so far, I want to provide all the current information in one place for the relevant people to access.
Please read this the whole way through.
I have worked in the audio industry, in concert production for around 6 years now, and I’ve had my fair share of shit clients, but I have NEVER been treated with such lack of respect and have witnessed such disorganised business before.
I worked with Prime Entertainment on the TripleS in Sydney show last December. I was brought on less than a week before the show and was tasked with fixing a major issue with the staging, an issue that required me to hire in extra equipment and negotiate with venue staff to meet safety requirements. I understand not many of you are familiar with the world of concert production, but to put this simply, it was a job that required WAY more than THREE DAYS to complete in a satisfactory way.
Fixing this issue took me many hours, emails, phone calls, the whole lot, just to fix a damn stage.
Two days before the show, I was also asked to source 6-8 more lights to place on the front of the stage, and despite efforts that is not something I was able to provide given the timeframe.
Prime, I’m an engineer. Not a miracle worker.
I had explained ahead of the show that I was expecting payment and verbally outlined my rates, which in hindsight was a bad move as I now don’t have that in writing.
Post show, I send my invoice to Prime with the attached due date.
I was left on read for nearly two weeks.
It was only when I threatened legal action that I got a response, and to that, I was told that my rates were “unacceptable” and I was offered an hourly rate $30 per hour below my standard AV rate. Below minimum wage for casual workers under the LPA.
We settled on a middle ground, still $10 under my standard rate.
By that point, Prime had racked up almost $200 in late fees, which Prime refused to pay. And still has not paid. I ended up just letting it go as I just needed to pay my rent.
Let’s talk about VIP photos.
It does NOT take you MONTHS to receive photos from your photographers and get them out to the fans who paid for them. Plain and simple. Tell me why we only just received the Melbourne TripleS VIP photos, only AFTER having to contact you about this. I discovered that the reason these pics haven’t been provided is because prime hasn’t actually PAID those photographers yet. Multiple. Going all the way back to kwave.
And what’s more, you didn’t even provide all of them! Some people had their images left out of the file, conveniently the same people who have been trying to get answers out of you regarding photo approvals for a show that happened in NOVEMBER.
Prime, you do not get to sit there and leave people, clients, and audience alike on READ for weeks when you are withholding vital information and people’s rightful money that YOU owe them. That is plainly disrespectful.
Tabber and Jey.
What on earth made you think cancelling a Jey tour stop and not making a statement about it on your main platform was a good idea? Not everyone is checking your website daily, however if you had just put a post out on your instagram this would’ve been a lot better.
Now as for Tabber, it has been months and you have not processed refunds for the ticketholders who purchased VIP tickets at the incorrect price. It is now less than a month until the show and these people are unsure if their tickets are even valid because you WON’T COMMUNICATE.
This is your fuck up, Prime. You need to fix it.
You, as a promoter and event organiser, have a duty to be transparent with your audience about everything that pertains to the events you run, and you have not done such thing at all.
You have been severely unprofessional and lack the basic communication skills required for this kind of work. If you are not capable of running this business in a productive way, you need to hand it over to someone who can.
I refuse to sit idly by and watch you mislead your audience, this doesn’t just affect you, it affects the artists, the audience and the Australian music industry. You have a responsibility here and you have failed.
You have been given so many chances to fix these issues and you have instead stuck your head in the sand each and every time. Shame.
UPDATE 1:
well who’s surprised. I got blocked on all platforms. But I have some more information that I’d like to share.
After I put out my first post, I met up with a photographer who worked on some Prime shows last year and discovered that I was NOT the only one who did not get paid! This person is owed several hundred dollars by prime and has invoices MONTHS overdue, with radio silence from Prime. And he’s not the only one.
And now to add insult to injury, Prime is now approaching other photographers interstate and offering to pay for them to fly to Sydney and Melbourne for this hiphop festival in July, before even paying their professionals from shows LAST YEAR.
Now an update on VIP photos. As I’m sure those of you with packages know, not all the VIP photos were provided. Prime, people PAID for these photos, you do not get to pick and choose who gets them.
Prime is still yet to provide ANY vip photos for certain people, and quite frankly it’s petty and immature to withhold these images because you don’t like someone. This is grossly unprofessional.
People paid for these photos Prime, and I am not above getting my hands on them myself and getting them to the rightful people myself. I know you blocked me but I know you’ll see this either way, so let’s put it this way, I am in the process of acquiring these photos myself and I will be releasing them. The photographers deserve to be paid and the fans deserve the benefits they paid for.
You didn’t pay for them so you have no right to them. Stop leaving people on READ when they ask about the money they are rightfully owed.
Get your head out of your ass and get your shit together before you lose your business.
UPDATE 2:
I cannot believe we’re talking about this again.
It seems like every single time I hear about them things just get worse.
I am beyond angry.
I refuse to sit by and let Prime ruin Australia and New Zealand’s touring industry.
We as a country, rely so much on the international touring industry and companies like prime that routinely scam fans and artists are damaging the economy and I will not have it.
How fucking dare you come back and do a show when you actively owe thousands of dollars to fans to artists and to staff. The fucking audacity that you have astounds me.
Where are the refunds for Tabber? Where are the VIP pictures for Jey? Where is the merch that people ordered for Gemini?
You don’t have it because you clearly are incompetent and are a scammer.
You have time and time again, failed to pay the people that are supporting your shows and making these shows possible for you, and bringing you an income. You are ungrateful, selfish, entitled, and severely unprofessional.
You have no place in our industry.
Do NOT purchase any tickets for the k-hip hop & rnb festival. It’s likely to be canceled and you are likely to not receive any of your ticket benefits. This is ploy for money because they need it to pay for other things that I’m not at liberty to disclose. But it’s not good.
Prime, you’re too deep in your own shit to claw yourself out. You deserve to be in jail for what you’ve done. You disgust me on a very guttural level.
This isn’t just about me. This is about the industry as a whole. Gio, you are DESTROYING the Australian and New Zealand touring industry by operating in this way.
You need to stop. I do not CARE how much more money you lose. Cancel the show. You won’t get away with this, not unless I’m fucking dead.
I have contacted the management of each of the artists schedule to perform at the festival, and have strongly discouraged them from going through with it.
Please share this and tag the artists and the companies in this post so that they can see this.
We need to make it known that this behaviour is not acceptable at all in our industry and in our country. We are better than this.
I would also like to quickly mention something that I’ve already mentioned on my Instagram story.
Prime entertainment and Nova entertainment are not the same people.
Nova entertainment has been nothing but amazing to me ever since we started working together and ever since this whole situation blew up. Please send them your love and support, they have been through enough.
They are not responsible for any of the mismanagement of any previous shows, in fact, they’re the reason that most of them went ahead in the first place. They were handed a shitty deck of cards, and they did the best that they could with them, please do not send any hate. They were not responsible, and they are no longer associated with Prime.

Currently DMing a homebrew campaign for my group of friends who are currently level 6. They’re all pretty new to DND but we’ve been playing for a couple months and they’re starting to get the hang of it. One of my players started as a rogue and has definitely not been enjoying our sessions as much as others. I think he thought the class would be different than what it is so we decided that I’d kill his character and he would make a new one.
The party is currently in the Underdark and are traveling with a tribe of denizens. My current plan is to have the party encounter a rival tribe who has been corrupted by some ancient power that the party’s companions seek. Dude with evil power that kills guy seems a bit played out so I’m hoping the internet can inspire a more interesting fatality.
I appreciate any responses. Y’all have a great day!

This batch from Tokyo Jon's is another aggravating, "Then why did you put up with this?" venture.

British Education Korea (BEK) Apr 16. 2024

...unprofessional and incompetent staff, unqualified bilingual teachers and toxic atmosphere. Worst experience of my life. Waste of time and energy. Extremely low pay and imposed additional (unpaid) roles.

--That's really the key elements that never seem to go away:

1. Unprofessional.
2. Unorganized.
3. Incompetent.
4. Catty, petty, gossipy, abusive.

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JESSICA ENGLISH - ILSAN Apr 16. 2024

Last year they fired 6 people and claimed financial reasons. On top of this they continued to hire foreign workers from overseas despite claiming financial troubles. Because management was so poor the place is leaking students and so the ones that stay get away with anything.

--The first mistake is to trust anything that comes out of their mouths. If they tell me it's raining, I head for a window, open it, stick my hand out before I believe anything from these buffoons and their constant lies, misdirection, and propaganda. Find 5 things that you already know the answers to and that anyone in management / education ought to know, ask in a meeting, see what they say. It's fun, they know nothing about anything.
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iGarten Seocho Banpo Apr 23. 2024

From the moment I signed with this school, warning signs were glaringly evident, but I was optimistic and brushed them off. However, in hindsight, those warning signals were clear indicators of what was to come.* 2. Lack of leadership. 3. Lack of Communication breakdowns 4. Incoherent curriculum 7. Dishonesty and manipulation

--Yup! That sounds like a Hagwon alright.

2. Lack of Leadership ...with those in charge either physically absent or lacking the awareness needed to foster accountability, communication, and organization.
Many times, Korean teachers are found either sitting in a corner of the room on their phones, taking selfies, or shopping, or they're outside the classroom engaging in gossip with the front desk or lunch staff.

--This happens everywhere. The laziness is profound. Search bar: Hagwon Life:The Day They Refused to Pay Me. Floor manager playing games on computer, university students paying on their phones in the break room instead of working, and everything else wrong, broken, incomplete, wrong levels, bratty / undisciplined children, no one cares. Let the foreigners pull their hair out and deal with all the issue, the rest of us will sit back and do like the prisoners say, "Get over, get by." The answer is, follow them right out the door no matter what the reason is, stay with them until they come back. They leave, you leave.

3. Lack of communication (School Events) Even when management does inform us of an event, it's usually with minimal notice, often just a week or two in advance... (Science Fair) It's frustrating that management only takes action when faced with the threat of embarrassment, leaving teachers to pick up the slack with little support or guidance. (Report cards) The lack of communication extends to the crucial task of writing end-of-year report card comments. Shockingly, this important information was only relayed in the last week of school, not by management, but through hearsay from a veteran teacher. This last-minute notification left teachers with minimal time to prepare thoughtful and personalized comments for each student.

--The answer is, THEN DON'T DO IT! Why do the foreigners care more than the people who own the place? All you are teaching them when you put in double-overtime, scramble around like crazy, frantically quick-time it to get things done, don't get enough sleep or proper exercise/nutrition, do it for free at home, is that they learn to expect it from you again and again without consequences. They are as bad at education than anyone you will ever encounter on the planet. They have no idea about anything, ESPECIALLY how long it takes to plan and put together a good result. You can ask any one of them, "How long do you THINK it takes to add a worksheet or construct a lesson plan from scratch? And when do you think I will have time to finish it?" As the OP said, they don't do anything until there is a threat of embarrassment. Well then? Embarrass them and keep giving them the same talking points right from the beginning, "I don't have enough time, I don't work at home for free, everyone ignored my request for resources etc." In many cases, they do this out of disrespect to the foreigners, also they don't want to hear foreigners complain or adjust the instructions so they purposely try to run out the clock on them to keep them busy and quiet. A part of it is to see the foreigners stressed and fail. Yeah, really. They want it to fail. Give them what they want and let it collapse. Of course they blame it all on the foreigners, but just repeat your talking points and keep on repeating them. You get off topic, they'll keep jabbering in your face, you stay on topic they'll get frustrated and give up.....eventually.
iGarten Creverse, April, CDI, are all basically the Chungdahm umbrella, I don't know why anyone hasn't figured out not to work for any of these places.
Search bar: iGarten Seocho Branch DO NOT DO IT!iGarten Seocho Branch DO NOT DO IT!
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You wanted to be a teacher? Well then TEACH. Students and everyone else learn a lot from failure. You can talk / complain all day long--ears closed. As soon as there are consequences for leaving the classroom with a room full of naughty children, deadlines are not reached, parents are put off by poor results, management is caught with their pants down--ears open.
Now, do you have the spine inside you to reject punishment? Are you going to reject it and walk out the door, fight back, keep on with your talking points? To SAVE FACE, management will undoubtedly:
a) have a meeting in which they emote all over you, blame you for everything.
b) demand you come to work early/stay late to get said work done, without pay of course.
c) demand you go home and come back with the work completed, without sleep or pay of course.
d) threaten to withhold salary until objective is completed?
e) stink-eyes, sneers, passive-aggressive pouty behavior?
You don't need to throw chairs and getting into a big donnybrook about it (thank you Thesaurus.com). Stick to your talking points, "I'm not doing that, you didn't give us proper notice, there is no time in the day to do it, you aren't paying us overtime or actually anything at all" etc etc.. and if you really need to "Cross the Rubicon" (Thank you Wikipedia), you may have to go full Willy Wonka on their ass:
Wrong, sir! Wrong! Under section 37B of the contract signed by him, it states quite clearly that all offers shall become null and void if - and you can read it for yourself in this photostatic copy:
I, the undersigned, shall forfeit all rights, privileges, and licenses herein and herein contained, et cetera, et cetera... Fax mentis incendium gloria cultum, et cetera, et cetera... Memo bis punitor delicatum!
It's all there, black and white, clear as crystal! You stole fizzy lifting drinks! You bumped into the ceiling which now has to be washed and sterilized, so you get nothing! You lose! Good day, sir!

https://tiermaker.com/list/league-of-legends/league-of-legends-all-champions-1318-15475761/3985061
https://i.imgur.com/0mGTAHG.png
Long story short, i come from dota originally and the one thing i miss is playing a melee carry. I play adc in league generally, and most of the ranged adcs in the game can be divided into two categories, caster or attacker. your either throwing abilities and auto attacking, or just auto attacking. Because of this, most adcs feel the exact same. Melee characters on the other hand have a pretty wide variety of different abilities, and i crave variety.
So with that out of the way, this tier list is mainly comprised of how well a melee character can survive in the bottom lane. Tahm kench is the main standout doing extremely well, but there are a few others who do decent. A tier are my list of characters that you can pretty much always run in a lane. It might not be a great time depending on your and enemy support picks, but its really doable. B tier is also really strong, but due to some factor with their kit or laning ive decided to rank them a bit lower. C tier is where things start to fall apart, and these characters either dont have the damage, sustain, or need a specific support to do well. D tier is much the same, with the main point being they dont provide enough damage or sustain. And then there is olaf. I really thought he would at least be decent, but his q cooldown is far too long if you cant pick it up, and if you pick it up you get poked down really quickly. You cant stay at low hp either because the support or carry will just straight up kill you.
As for my bans, zeri does really strong damage as you approach, and can fuck you up as you run away, super annoying. Smolder also spams abilities to poke and even with careful laning, his late game is just far too strong to deal with. And finally nilah is basically what this list provides, a melee carry, but actually excels in lane. Very hard to play into a nilah with these picks.
Anyway ill answer questions about this list as they come in, but this list was just more or less made for fun. Thanks for looking, I appreciate it.

Hi everyone. This post is in regards to the “K hiphop & rnb” festival being held in Sydney and Melbourne this July.
This festival is being held by Prime Entertainment, and I feel responsible to make everyone aware of just how shady this company is.
Below is a recap of my experiences with prime, having worked with them directly, and being an industry professional, I feel I am best suited to comment on the matter. Please read this.
I urge you all to please not attend these shows, they are likely to have artists pulled or the shows be cancelled entirely.
I am happy to answer any questions anyone has.
Thank you.
My Experience with Prime Entertainment
Hi. If this seems familiar that’s because this is a recap of everything that’s happened so far, I want to provide all the current information in one place for the relevant people to access.
Please read this the whole way through.
I have worked in the audio industry, in concert production for around 6 years now, and I’ve had my fair share of shit clients, but I have NEVER been treated with such lack of respect and have witnessed such disorganised business before.
I worked with Prime Entertainment on the TripleS in Sydney show last December. I was brought on less than a week before the show and was tasked with fixing a major issue with the staging, an issue that required me to hire in extra equipment and negotiate with venue staff to meet safety requirements. I understand not many of you are familiar with the world of concert production, but to put this simply, it was a job that required WAY more than THREE DAYS to complete in a satisfactory way.
Fixing this issue took me many hours, emails, phone calls, the whole lot, just to fix a damn stage.
Two days before the show, I was also asked to source 6-8 more lights to place on the front of the stage, and despite efforts that is not something I was able to provide given the timeframe.
Prime, I’m an engineer. Not a miracle worker.
I had explained ahead of the show that I was expecting payment and verbally outlined my rates, which in hindsight was a bad move as I now don’t have that in writing.
Post show, I send my invoice to Prime with the attached due date.
I was left on read for nearly two weeks.
It was only when I threatened legal action that I got a response, and to that, I was told that my rates were “unacceptable” and I was offered an hourly rate $30 per hour below my standard AV rate. Below minimum wage for casual workers under the LPA.
We settled on a middle ground, still $10 under my standard rate.
By that point, Prime had racked up almost $200 in late fees, which Prime refused to pay. And still has not paid. I ended up just letting it go as I just needed to pay my rent.
Let’s talk about VIP photos.
It does NOT take you MONTHS to receive photos from your photographers and get them out to the fans who paid for them. Plain and simple. Tell me why we only just received the Melbourne TripleS VIP photos, only AFTER having to contact you about this. I discovered that the reason these pics haven’t been provided is because prime hasn’t actually PAID those photographers yet. Multiple. Going all the way back to kwave.
And what’s more, you didn’t even provide all of them! Some people had their images left out of the file, conveniently the same people who have been trying to get answers out of you regarding photo approvals for a show that happened in NOVEMBER.
Prime, you do not get to sit there and leave people, clients, and audience alike on READ for weeks when you are withholding vital information and people’s rightful money that YOU owe them. That is plainly disrespectful.
Tabber and Jey.
What on earth made you think cancelling a Jey tour stop and not making a statement about it on your main platform was a good idea? Not everyone is checking your website daily, however if you had just put a post out on your instagram this would’ve been a lot better.
Now as for Tabber, it has been months and you have not processed refunds for the ticketholders who purchased VIP tickets at the incorrect price. It is now less than a month until the show and these people are unsure if their tickets are even valid because you WON’T COMMUNICATE.
This is your fuck up, Prime. You need to fix it.
You, as a promoter and event organiser, have a duty to be transparent with your audience about everything that pertains to the events you run, and you have not done such thing at all.
You have been severely unprofessional and lack the basic communication skills required for this kind of work. If you are not capable of running this business in a productive way, you need to hand it over to someone who can.
I refuse to sit idly by and watch you mislead your audience, this doesn’t just affect you, it affects the artists, the audience and the Australian music industry. You have a responsibility here and you have failed.
You have been given so many chances to fix these issues and you have instead stuck your head in the sand each and every time. Shame.
UPDATE 1:
well who’s surprised. I got blocked on all platforms. But I have some more information that I’d like to share.
After I put out my first post, I met up with a photographer who worked on some Prime shows last year and discovered that I was NOT the only one who did not get paid! This person is owed several hundred dollars by prime and has invoices MONTHS overdue, with radio silence from Prime. And he’s not the only one.
And now to add insult to injury, Prime is now approaching other photographers interstate and offering to pay for them to fly to Sydney and Melbourne for this hiphop festival in July, before even paying their professionals from shows LAST YEAR.
Now an update on VIP photos. As I’m sure those of you with packages know, not all the VIP photos were provided. Prime, people PAID for these photos, you do not get to pick and choose who gets them.
Prime is still yet to provide ANY vip photos for certain people, and quite frankly it’s petty and immature to withhold these images because you don’t like someone. This is grossly unprofessional.
People paid for these photos Prime, and I am not above getting my hands on them myself and getting them to the rightful people myself. I know you blocked me but I know you’ll see this either way, so let’s put it this way, I am in the process of acquiring these photos myself and I will be releasing them. The photographers deserve to be paid and the fans deserve the benefits they paid for.
You didn’t pay for them so you have no right to them. Stop leaving people on READ when they ask about the money they are rightfully owed.
Get your head out of your ass and get your shit together before you lose your business.
UPDATE 2:
I cannot believe we’re talking about this again.
It seems like every single time I hear about them things just get worse.
I am beyond angry.
I refuse to sit by and let Prime ruin Australia and New Zealand’s touring industry.
We as a country, rely so much on the international touring industry and companies like prime that routinely scam fans and artists are damaging the economy and I will not have it.
How fucking dare you come back and do a show when you actively owe thousands of dollars to fans to artists and to staff. The fucking audacity that you have astounds me.
Where are the refunds for Tabber? Where are the VIP pictures for Jey? Where is the merch that people ordered for Gemini?
You don’t have it because you clearly are incompetent and are a scammer.
You have time and time again, failed to pay the people that are supporting your shows and making these shows possible for you, and bringing you an income. You are ungrateful, selfish, entitled, and severely unprofessional.
You have no place in our industry.
Do NOT purchase any tickets for the k-hip hop & rnb festival. It’s likely to be canceled and you are likely to not receive any of your ticket benefits. This is ploy for money because they need it to pay for other things that I’m not at liberty to disclose. But it’s not good.
Prime, you’re too deep in your own shit to claw yourself out. You deserve to be in jail for what you’ve done. You disgust me on a very guttural level.
This isn’t just about me. This is about the industry as a whole. Gio, you are DESTROYING the Australian and New Zealand touring industry by operating in this way.
You need to stop. I do not CARE how much more money you lose. Cancel the show. You won’t get away with this, not unless I’m fucking dead.
I have contacted the management of each of the artists schedule to perform at the festival, and have strongly discouraged them from going through with it.
Please share this and tag the artists and the companies in this post so that they can see this.
We need to make it known that this behaviour is not acceptable at all in our industry and in our country. We are better than this.
I would also like to quickly mention something that I’ve already mentioned on my Instagram story.
Prime entertainment and Nova entertainment are not the same people.
Nova entertainment has been nothing but amazing to me ever since we started working together and ever since this whole situation blew up. Please send them your love and support, they have been through enough.
They are not responsible for any of the mismanagement of any previous shows, in fact, they’re the reason that most of them went ahead in the first place. They were handed a shitty deck of cards, and they did the best that they could with them, please do not send any hate. They were not responsible, and they are no longer associated with Prime.

hello! I’m fairly new to D&D so any insight would be amazing. right now, here’s what I’m thinking for my characters background:
she works as a psychic/fortune teller at a circus/carnival and while she actually can communicate with spirits to get all this information, her abilities only work in waves. the spirits or other worldly beings decide when and where to give her messages. she cannot figure out how to communicate with them outside of when they decide. when her “powers” don’t work, she has to rely on her snooping and people-reading skills (think fortune teller in the beginning of the Wizard of Oz but much smoother with it) to deliver the most accurate fortunes and answers to her clients questions. ideally, she will learn how to harness her powers and communicate with the “spirits” throughout the campaign.
questions: is a storyline like this even possible in D&D? If so, what class would you recommend for her? definitely a spell-caster, right? I just have no idea whether to choose a warlock, wizard, etc. what about a bard?
so far, my character is a half-elf, she has extra ability points in intelligence and wisdom, has the investigation and performance skills and knows celestial.
let me know your thoughts! thank you!!

This has taken me a
long
time to come to terms with, so
I’m just going to out and say it. I gave this a lot of consideration and given the fact that I’m a very introverted person, I didn’t speak up. But now I am. And nooo I’m not hating on Kevin I just want to say something that’s been bothering me. In the beginning of 2018, I wrote an album. It comprised of four songs and I worked the hardest I ever had on music (at the time) with this album. I was so proud of it. Now getting into why I’m doing this post. In late 2017, I decided I was finally going to see my at the time favorite artist, Tame Impala, for a second time. (The first time was in 2013) He was to perform at pitchfork music festival in Chicago 2018. So I got my ticket. This is by no means me trying to defame him in any way or to get him in any trouble, although it seems like I am owed something for what was destined to occur. So I wrote my album all while waiting to see this artist. Fast forward to the completion of my album. Which was July 18, 2018. I posted it to a music sharing website, then shared the link on at the time Twitter…so then a few days later, July 21 to be exact, I went to pitchfork. I got to see Tame Impala and I was in the front right at the rails and I was so amazed and it seemed like Kevin and I were vibing with each other….so in those moments I decided to do something dumb. After the show…I emailed him. It was his official email through his record label, spinningtop. I emailed him my album I worked so hard on! I even said I’d like to meet him some day. My name on my email was Nami, because I wanted to change my name to it so bad and I actually did but that’s a different story. Anyway…I really wanted to connect with him on a deeper level, other than the fan/celeb dynamic. So yeah it’s corny but I actually thought he liked me. Let’s go on to a little over a week later. He and Travis Scott released a collaboration track on August 2, 2018! I listened to it, and I liked it, but it sounded oddly familiar. It took me a minute to realize…it sounded a great deal like the final song of my album, with elements of my whole album in “Skeletons”! It even starts with the same chord. And now this could be just me, but at the end of the song, it sounds like he’s saying my name, Nami! I was shocked and didn’t know how to react. So I definitely felt that he was vibing with me that night. So…it’s been six years, and he still hasn’t said a word to me. And I’m distraught because I don’t know how to approach the situation. He just sold his catalog to Sony too so I don’t think I can do anything about it. And even though it may not sound like my song immediately, if you speed up the tempo of my song and add more of the same bar to it (or lengthen it by repeating the same riff) it lines up and goes together. I wouldn’t have cared if he stole my ideas if he spoke to me but he didn’t. Now about his latest album…this might be a coincidence but even the location (revealed by the album art artist), Southern Namibia, seems inspired by my name. So I’ve been silent about it until today. I think I have to let it go now, but I still feel so used and hurt by his actions, because of him not acknowledging me. But I will not keep silent any longer on this. And I’m not hating on Kevin…just thought that was a jerk move for him to do, especially because I looked up to him. I wasn’t even infatuated with him, I just really liked his music. Oh and if you want to compare songs and hear my album, I’ll share it eventually, but only when my album is cleared for a copyright. Well that’s it. What do you all think? How would you react in this situation?

First Previous
Peering down into the now exposed cavern, I wondered what was in there and consequently how I would even get down there. Ordering my marauder to back up a bit so that they would not fall though or anything of the sort, I began floating back up to the surface before blipping over to the factory and more specifically the modification station. Flipping through the menu screen, I quickly whipped up a modification to my crabs so that they would have a searchlight sitting on their claw arm so that they would not have such a hard time seeing the mines. Drifting back over to the mining outpost, I began ordering for the on site construction crew to begin constructing the new lights onto a few volunteers. As they began the process of constructing the modifications for my crabs, I began gathering up a few flight capable drones from the factory since I doubt that my hounds and ants would have a very good time climbing down a eighty plus degree slope down to the bottom.
Perhaps I should have a few of the hornets have some of the searchlights as well. Certainly couldn’t hurt to have some extra lights. Thankfully at the factory there was a much more sizable spider drone presence so my hornets were equipped with the searchlights quickly enough and were able to reach the mining outpost just about when my crabs got theirs as well. Ordering my drones to begin venturing down into the mineshaft, I was finally able to properly see down in the mines although I suppose I had not turelly needed to. I wonder if this would help the rest of my drones ability to mine out ores. The lack of light surely hasn’t stopped them so I guess they probably can see better down here that I could. As we ventured through the mineshaft, I took the time to look around and found that the tunnels which had been carved out looked to have many small patches missing, presumably where they had found valuable ores and the like. Before long we reached the opening to the cavern which looked to be somewhat expanded by the marauders sub drone harvesters.
Ordering my newly equipped crabs to use their search lights in order to light up the cavern a little bit, I was able to quickly enough make out the forms of what had to be organic life which was rather surprising. Squinting my eyes, I was able to see the vague forms of large fungus-like shapes covering the entirety of the rather large cavern like a warping forest which seemed to be perfectly fine with growing on every available surface. Looking over to my hornets and vultures who had volunteered to take a look, I ordered them, along with the harvesters from the marauder, to begin flying down and begin looking around the area. Switching my perspective over to one of my hornets equipped with the searchlights, I watched as they began to descend down to the bottom of the cavern and where the dozens and dozens of tree sized mushrooms and fungus sprouted out from the ground and created a canopy of sorts.
As we descended, I was able to see that every available spot on the surface of the floor was absolutely covered in moss and fungus which had taken root in whatever rocky soil which they could find. As we continued to look around the cavern, one of my hornets seemed to have managed to spot some sort of constructs near the far end of the cavern and soon enough the hornet which I was watching through linked up with the rest of my force as they moved towards the buildings. As they approached the structures, I was able to make out the general shape of the buildings which looked to be rather squat with the occasional second floor which I took as a sign that they were either rather small or there was more underground. With the help of the searchlights, I was also able to see that the constructs seemed to be absolutely infested with the fungus and moss along with a large amount of other dark growths which stretched out from the insides of the building.
Huh, maybe this is where all the fungus had come from. Perhaps it’s a research building that’s focused on botany or something. Floating down to ground level with the rest of my drones, I ordered one of my hornets to open the doors leading into the building proper which they promptly did so by firing their spike launcher into the joints of the door which caused it to be blown off its hinges. A bit overkill but hey, I’m not complaining. Sending a couple drones into the breach to make sure that there were not any hostile contacts in the building, I made sure to have the rest of my drones on high alert for any signs of activity as something about this place was making my nerves stand on end. Upon the confirmation of no hostile contacts present, I ordered the rest of my drones to enter the building as well, minus a couple of hornets I decided to leave guarding the entrance while the rest of us began making our way through the maze of corridors.
Entering into the building, I saw that the place looked to be just as abandoned as all the other buildings in the city, however this place seemed to not even be touched by ferals and the like looking for shelter. Sure everything looked to be messed up but I could not see a single trace of activity in the rooms as we moved through the corridors methodically, keeping our spike launchers at the ready at all times. Entering a research room of some sort, I saw a large amount of glass containers which looked to have at one point helped strange plants and funguses although most of which had died long ago whenever this place was abandoned to its fate. I guess this helps confirm that this place was some sort of research building focused on plants and stuff. As we continued to make our way throughout the building, my drones and I found more and more of the black tendrils which covered the ground and were familiar in some way, however I could not place my finger on it.
Eventually after looking through a handful more rooms filled to the brim with plant specimens, my drones and I encountered a stairwell leading both down into the underground and upwards to the second floor. I made note that the downwards stairwell had a larger than usual amount of the black tendrils which snaked out from the stairwell before infesting the rest of the building. Deciding that I did not wish to go down there, I sent about half of my force down while I and the rest of my drones went up the stairs and checked out the second floor where there were noticeably less tendrils. As my hornets clambered up the stairs, noticeably avoiding the black vine like tendrils whenever possible, I noticed that there seemed to be some artificial light coming from above which was strange, I would have assumed that all the power had been disabled for these ruins.
Moving closer to the source of the light, we eventually entered what looked to be a control room with a large amount of screens and control panels, most of which were entirely deactivated and in some cases destroyed outright. All except for one which seemed to be a simple control panel with a large amount of lights associated with various sections of the compound like the power generators and various research rooms. Looking around, I eventually found a key stating which faintly blinking meant what and quickly began transcribing each of the dim lights which were still finding enough power to give off a noticeable glow. First to gain my attention was the power generators which were flashing a red light stating that they were completely down, however looking at the auxiliary power systems, they were glowing a faint yellow which stated that they were still at least partially functioning. Guess that explains where this thing is pulling the power from, the pitance that it is.
Continuing down the line of blinking lights, I see that most if not all of the systems making up the building and a few of the other, much smaller, buildings surrounding this one seemed to be more or less non-functional which should be expected given that this place had been abandoned for at least a couple decades. As I reached a few lights noted as containment units and found that most were deactivated or destroyed, I received a few messages from my drones I had sent downwards stating that they had found something that I should probably have a look at. Slipping out of the hornet I was currently in and transferring over to one of the hornets down stairs before coming face to face with what they had found. Floating around, suspended by some sort of force field was a disgustingly large bulbous black clump of flesh with faint blue marks and bulbs dotting around its body. Why in the seven hells does this place have a rot specimen? Sigh, I guess this explains where all the power which the still functioning generators is being pumped into. At least it hadn’t gotten out of its containment, that would make this ten times wors- … waaait a minute.
Looking down to the ground where the black tendrils snaked across the floor leading to two other containment units which were worryingly not activated and had two, thankfully smaller, iterations of the rot simply laying there, as if hibernating. Shit! Alright maybe if we back up slowly they won’t notice our presence. It was then the two rot clumps and their many tendrils began pulsating before marks and bulbs on their body began to glow a faint blue and some began to move. Alright, change of plans. Everyone RUN! My drones were quick to obey as they powered on their wings and bolted for the stairwell as the tendrils began writhing as if searching for my drones. One even lurched out and grabbed one of my hornets as they attempted to escape the building, dragging the poor drone to the ground and more tendrils moved in to help keep down my struggling troops who fought valiantly which thankfully diverted tendrils which were dangerously close to my other drones to quickly flew up the stairs and out of the building.
A few tendrils attempted to stop our escape however my hornets quickly fired their launchers and pinned those to the walls of the building and my harvester sub drones proved to be rather effective as they cut right through the rot tendrils that got close. Taking to the skies as quickly as they could, I could see that the rest of my drones seemed to have managed to get out unmolested by the rot tendrils which were definitely not as numerous as the ones underground and they were now covering the rest of my drones retreat as they fired their launchers and cut down any tendrils which got close. Linking up with the rest of my drones, my various hornets quickly turned their own spike launchers to bare against the tendrils, managing to land a few shots before I ordered them to fall back as one of the rot tendrils lashed out and nearly swatted another one of my hornets out of the sky which I decided was too close for comfort.
Turning around as we flew back to the mines and the rest of my drones, I watched as the far side of the cavern where the facility was began to pulse blue as the rot emerged from its slumber and began moving through the fungus forest. I have no idea how the rot works but given that they’re fleshy, I suspect that letting them feast off of the mushrooms is probably going to bite me in the ass later. Slipping out of the hornets as the flew back to the outpost, I began scrambling to assemble as many fire beetles as I could from all of my territories as they had been proven to be one of my best anti-rot drones meaning they would be instrumental in fending off those things from escaping the cavern. As it would turn out, I was rather lacking in the fire beetle department as I could only assemble about a dozen of them which means that I would have to wait a bit before I could start deploying them en masse.
Deciding to make the process as quick as possible, I began ordering for the construction of fire beetles from every available small drone works in my territory but it would still take a while for them to all fabricate and be transported over here, especially from places like the warehouse outpost and the newer outposts near the front lines. While I waited, I continued to watch as the rot began infesting the cavern with reckless abandon and from where my crab was standing, I could see as one after another the large fungus trees toppled over to be consumed by the rot. As the fungal forest was being consumed by the now fully awakened rot, I began wondering whether or not they would be able to use their newly acquired food supplies to create more of the damned tendrils or even more rot clusters. At least there’s only two, maybe three, of them down there. Hopefully my fire beetles will be able to burn the forest down before the rot gets a chance to eat all of it.
Speaking of which, my drones, a few of the suicidal drones had arrived from the factory and were already making their way down the mine shaft over to my position. Once they arrived, I gestured to a few of my hornets who quickly picked up the four fire beetles before flying down to the base of the cavern before placing the fire beetles amidst the fungal forest which they promptly began burning down to the ground. Hopefully they would be able to burn down at least half of the mushroom tree before the rot could eat it or to my beetles for that matter. Watching as the cavern began to glow a bright reddish orange, I decided to check up on the rest of my territory as I waited for more of my beetles to finish being fabricated and transported over to the mining outpost. Deciding to check on my forces in Ping’s territory first, I drifted over to the outpost that my forces had helped Ping take back which was now returning to what I was guessing was its full capacity.
Checking up on my drones which I had managed to rescue from enemy territory, I found that most had been repaired back to functionality and were now going about their duties which mostly revolved around helping out Pings drones with the various patrols or, if my spiders deemed them unfit, working to assist with the movement of supplies around the outpost along with some light salvaging. A fair amount of my veteran drones had been sent back to whatever force I had taken the form, mostly the force at Churn’s front line with the occasional drone working in sudo retirement which garrison or mine work afforded them. After all, they were likely needed more at Churn's front line where active fighting was still occurring on a regular basis rather than in Ping’s territory where the corrupted AI was being pushed back as Ping got their feet under themselves as they began pumping out drones and defenses.
Checking up on the outpost which Churn had lent me, I found that the enemy force had begun moving back into the now destroyed production hub however not in any significant numbers as the outpost was likely deemed to be not worth the effort of putting a large garrison there. The forces present were likely only there to inform them if I was making moves to attack more of their territory so that they could make the proper adjustments. Thankfully this newly established enemy garrison could not stop my stealth hounds as they occasionally sent back a member or two of their number to inform me of what was going on in enemy territory. In Coopers stead, one of the next most senior drone which happened to be an ant had been receiving the most recent of reports from the stealth hounds which mostly consisted with random enemy movements and caravans which did not really affect me given that I was not willing to start sending out my force to being taking the fight to the next enemy stronghold, at least not while my forces in Ping were still criminally understaffed and my resource stocks were at a minimum.
Perhaps once things stabilize and more resources become available I will begin tasking my force with attacking however until then I was content to sit around on the defense. The thought of constructing more stealth hounds until I could start having them raid caravans briefly flittered across my mind but I quickly cut that off and stored it in my head for later use once the whole situation with the rot back in the mines is resolved. Speaking of which, as I finished reading through reports and stamping away thoughts of pressing the attack while my supply lines were strained, I received the message stating that the first batch of fire beetles were now finished construction and were beginning to be collected by the subway system and would soon be delivered to the mining outpost. Good, the longer I wait, the more dangerous those things will probably become. Hopefully my beetles will be able to handle whatever they encounter down there.
Floating back over to the mining outpost and down to the cavern entrance, I could see that the initial four fire beetles had done a good job at burning down what they could as I was able to easily see that well over half of the forest had been light ablaze as the fungal trees caught fire and whatever moisture the mushrooms had were quickly evaporated. Regardless, the rot still continued to feast upon the biomass that they could get their tendrils on and from where I was watching I could easily see that nearly a quarter of the fungal forest had been completely taken over and infested with rot puss as the area where the rot had infected began glowing blue as their residue began to take place and fester. Hopefully the fires will also be able to burn some of the rot along with the mushroom trees before the rest of my beetles arrive and with some luck take down whatever is left. But for now I watched the flames as they spread and burned down everything in its path.
Next
Sorry it’s late, I had to GM a bit of DnD which took priority over finishing up and posting this.

I (33F) had surgery 2 weeks ago, my friend Jen (32F) knows exactly what surgery I had, the complications I had and visited a few days after and saw how much I was struggling physically and mentally.
A simple Google immediately says initial recovery time is 6-8 weeks without complications, 3 months for full recovery. Jen is a doctor but if she’s unsure I’m sure can refresh herself before she decides to approach me confidently on it.
Last week 1 week after surgery she asked if I can come out for coffee. I was extremely shocked she was doing this but also disappointed because of her history.
Jen is a doctor and has always used it as a way to diminish health issues people have, with a rolling eyes attitude to anything you say, treating you like a hysterical medical time waster, and like everything you have is you exaggerating or wanting to be ill. We never go to her for medical advice but as friends talk about being ill when relevant in personal conversations (I had to go to A&E last night etc), she herself talks about her own.
Once I mentioned I’d had a migraine and she immediately interrupted with disdain that a headache isn’t a migraine. I said I had to go A&E as I could barely walk or see and she stopped. You’d think she’d stop doing things like that after being proven wrong everytime but she never does. Only when you’re in an undeniable active serious medical scenario she gives you grace and support. But when she has a simple cold makes a huge deal about how she can’t come out, which is very different to her attitude to others being unwell.
She even tried to diminish the suspected illness I had surgery for before I was given a surgery date. During the surgery time and immediate days after in hospital she acted supportive answering questions (not medical help, but things to help me navigate my situation), because there was no way she could diminish that, but then went back to acting like it’s nothing when I had a complication at home that was unclear to me and tried to ask her if it needs following up. It did need following up and needed antibiotics, if I’d gone by her reaction I’d have left it.
Jen’s never asked me how I am, but messaged to go for coffee 1 week post surgery and when I said I’m not anywhere near leaving house stage she said nothing. She never asked how I am again since and now less than 2 weeks post surgery asking me to go shopping and lunch like my surgery never happened.
I’ve always been the kind of person to not make others feel awkward and laugh off things, but this time I’d had enough.
I told her that I’m puzzled she expects me to come out, I’m recovering from surgery. She replied that I just needed to say that, which completely dumbstruck me. I needed to tell her I’m recovering from surgery? I expressed how upset I was, how inconsiderate she was, how she hadn’t even asked how I was and it was like she was trying to make out nothing happened. She’s now really annoyed with me and told our mutual friend I’m overreacting.

Yeah I know, 12 yo is kinda “too young” to be worrying about this but I promise I honestly think it is vital for my health or else I might turn overweight. I am about 200 pounds and 5’6 and I don’t look it. I ask around what weight I look like I have and most answer 120-140 and it’s never even close to higher unless they joke and say 300. I felt like the strongest guy in 5th grade last year because I could beat most people in a race and everybody in an arm wrestle but now my “strength” is starting to wither as what I thought was strength was just some muscle and more fat. I saw some of my P.E classmates flex their abs which I didn’t think was that possible at our age but now I’m growing a habit of jealousy and I’d like to fill that hole. How do I start to either lose weight or start gaining muscle at this age. I feel that this summer could be the perfect time to start as I have all the time in the world. My sister has dumbbells and we do have a rower in the garage but what can u do just to be more subtle and gain muscle or to eat well on a better diet for this age as I don’t know how much of a difference my age could effect the way I achieve my goal as I am not a professional or an adult. I also have kids already started making sugar free açaí bowls everyday with chia seeds, flaxseeds, and hemp seeds to start to clean my digestive system (I think that’s what it does) and I would love to also know how much that is helping and if I’m consuming too much everyday ( I use one tea spoon per ingredient). Please if you have any info I would love to hear it.

I don't think I speak for the majority of this subreddit but I have been encountering a lot more "agency owners" who fell into the YouTube guru trap and instead of actually getting free certifications from platforms, they give away all their money to those gurus.
This post is my attempt to stear those people into the right direction before spending all of their money.
Whenever a new "agency owner" (or someone looking to start an agency) asks me about where to start for learning ads (doesn't matter which platform, Google, Facebook, etc), they seem dumbfounded when I tell them that Google and Meta have FREE ad courses where they teach you how to run ads on their own platform AND you get a certification from Google and Meta.
Why does everyone immediately jump to YouTube and start giving these gurus their money without even taking the free courses and getting certified?
I think one of the biggest issues I have with wannabe agency owners is they want to own and operate an agency and are willing to "learn" what it takes to own a successful agency, but when I tell them what it takes is actually learning how to perform the service you sell, it falls on deaf ears.
I'll tell you this right now, if you're not actually willing to learn and become an expert in the service you're selling, you're not going to make it. You're going to be another one of the thousands of people who gave a YouTube guru money with the hopes of one day being a millionaire only to eventually turn to crypto day trading scams.
And just to show that I'm not only just ranting... here...
Here are actual FREE courses FROM Google and Meta on how to run any type of ads on their platform AND get certified by them:Google:

• E-Commerce & Digital Marketing Certification
• All Google Ads Certifications
• Google Analytics Certification
• Google Tag Manager Fundamentals Course

**I put all of these Google courses on here because regardless of which platform you use to run ads or market, knowing and understanding analytics and conversion tracking within Google Analytics (especially using Tag Manager) is extremely important for any agency looking to actually prove value/ROI to their clients.Facebook/Instagram:

• Meta Blueprint Certification

**This has literally everything you need to know about Facebook & Instagram marketing. Organic, paid, video, AI, etc.TikTok:

• TikTok Academy

**I included this one just to show that you really can just Google "[platform] ad certification/course/academy" and find a free set of courses FROM the actual platform for FREE.Hubspot:

• Hubspot Academy

**Finally, Hubspot Academy isn't platform-specific. But there are a TON of courses and certifications here ranging from inbound marketing to content marketing, and even email marketing and SEO.
ALL FREE.
Lastly, I'll say that there is a time and place for paid courses from other agency owners and experienced coaches. But AFTER you do the research yourself and take some basic-level free certifications from actual platforms.
Creator courses are fine if you're looking to get deeper information but there isn't a need to start there.
One thing paid creator courses can teach you is how to run an agency from a business perspective. But 9x out of 10, executing the actual ads can be found in free courses.

I have a decently wide vocal range, but some songs just don’t sound good or sit comfortably in my voice, where others hit that “sweet spot” where it’s easy and comfortable and resonant.
I’m trying to figure out how to choose a song key for my voice on my own with my limited piano knowledge. Would you recommend basing it on where the highest crescendo point of the song sits in a good place? I don’t really struggle to hit any notes in particular, but sometimes a song starts off resonant and warm, but then jumps to the weakest point of my mix at the top and the sound quality of the higher notes sounds either thin or operatic in a way that’s unsuitable to the song. It’s like the song would sound better if it were crescendoing under that point in my voice or above it. It’s not a question of being able to navigate through my mix smoothly, I can do that, it’s more like I’m taking on a challenge that is unnecessary and doesn’t serve the song or my comfort by singing it in that key.
In the past my instructor has simply chosen transpositions for me, but I don’t think her ear for my voice 100% reflects my sound preference and physical comfort level. I’d like to be able to analyze it on my own and start making more informed choices about the key.
Does anyone have guidance to offer?

Hi, I work as a programmer in public health and I wanted to switch to pharm industry because I am so underpaid. I’m comfortable with sas and R but I’d need to brush up on sdtm Adam programming. I think entry level jobs wouldn’t expect candidates to know cdisc programming since this can be learned on the job. I wanted to know how happy you lot are when you consider all variables that could influence job satisfaction ( work life balance, pay, remote flexibility, work culture etc). Thanks in advance for your input.

Hi everyone. This is my first post so I’m sorry if this is totally weird or makes anyone uncomfortable.
I recently found out I had PCOS after over 5 years (I’m 20 for context) of stomach issues, intense cramps, low energy, brain fog, etc. I had so many tests but I never got answers. I recently decided I needed to push hard and advocated for myself since I had not got a period in a year. I got a new doctor, and when she told me I “probably” had PCOS and to come back if I wanted birth control, I pushed for a referral to a gynaecologist, and finally met with a health care provider who listened.
Anyways, for a month now I have been taking Metformin and Diane at the recommendation of my gynaecologist, in addition to many vitamins and my antidepressant. I got my period a few days ago, however, I’m having a bit of a dilemma. I realized that the periods I had been having all my life were never really normal, in the sense that I had such little blood that I could have only used one regular pad for my entire period if that wasn’t totally unhygienic. This period has been heavy, and my cramps are worse than before. I also had some wicked stomach pains and nausea tonight (day 5) and ended up puking.
I guess what I’m asking is if this is normal? Has anyone had a similar experience? I’d love to hear any tips or stories.
If anyone read this to the end, I appreciate you!

I take 100 mg of micronized progesterone orally every night. I’ve had my DHT level tested recently, but only like 6 months after I started progesterone because the place I regularly go to for blood work doesn’t do that test. It took me a while to figure out I could just buy the test online and have it done somewhere else. I thought the test results would relieve my worries, but they aren’t very specific and just say <5 ng/dL.
I know that’s on the low end of the DHT spectrum for cis women, but it’s still worrying to not know what my exact level is. I have a genetic variant that can cause psychological and even physical health problems that is worsened by having a higher amount of testosterone, and I assume dihydrotestosterone has a similar effect. I went though a period of feeling suicidal earlier this year, and I keep thinking I might be losing hair or that my laryngeal prominence might be growing again - sometimes it pops out of place, which is incredibly painful, and I feel like it happens more when I have more testosterone.
My husband is also concerned about it because higher levels of progesterone can cause higher levels of cortisol in response to stress. Since my genetic variant already causes me to produce more cortisol than normal, progesterone could be making my stress response even worse. I was also randomly showing signs of becoming pre-diabetic earlier this year with a high glucose level, which is very unlike me as a vegan who eats relatively healthily. But sustained high cortisol can cause high blood sugar.
Should I be concerned if my DHT level is only maybe as high as 4 ng/dL? Is that an amount that can still potentially cause masculinization or negative mental effects? Does some progesterone always inevitably convert to DHT via the androgen synthesis backdoor pathway? Is there a way to know what my exact DHT level is? Or is knowing my exact DHT moot if I don’t feel comfortable on progesterone because of the likelihood of it raising my cortisol level higher?
I’m just stressed because my husband was telling me to stop taking progesterone months ago, and I was going to stop but then second-guessed myself because I kept reading that progesterone was important.

Hello all… I tried coming up with my own answer for this one but WA Fish and Wildlife is an absolute nightmare to decipher
Does anyone know what some good rivers to fish in the summer would be? Id like to go for Trout, Steelhead, and Salmon (if thats even possible) the closer to Seattle the better but id be willing to drive a few hours from time to time as well
Not expecting anyone to give up their spots, not like anyone would anyways, but if I could get some basic info that’d be sweet! Gear, conditions, general areas, especially
Thanks 🤘!