I am loading a backfill of normalised files and am struggling. I really feel like I am missing something quite obvious with the best way to do this seemingly simple task... I'd be very grateful for any pointers
I have:

database staging tables (loaded from files) parent_staging: id integer other columns child_staging: parent_id id other columns 

The ids have integrity within the the staging tables but would NOT within the main database tables
And

Permanent database tables: parent_perm: dbid INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY, other columns child_perm: dbid INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY, parent_dbid INT NOT NULL, FOREIGN KEY (parent_dbid) REFERENCES parent(DBID) , other columns 

I would like to add the data in the staging tables to the permanent database tables, generate new IDs (the DBID's) and abandon the staging id's.
I can insert parent_staging(other columns) into parent_perm without issue.
But how can I get the generated parent_perm.dbid's in order to insert child_staging into child_perm?
Ideas: 1. insert into parent_perm one row at a time and get last_insert_id() (seems slow and painful) 2. join parent_perm and parent_staging and then child_staging (seems like the best solution, but I have nothing to join on!) 3. join parent_perm and parent_staging and then child_staging (ON some kind of row_number method with added row_number columns) 4. build some ids in the staging tables which are prepared for the parent tables (ie add row_number columns to staging tables and increment each of these by last_insert_id() from associated parent table) (but now I have to change the permanent tables not to use AUTO_INCREMENT)
none of these ideas seem like good ones.... I really feel like I am missing something obvious....

How does this play out in the real world, please weigh in!
I understand that food and UbeLyft drivers would likely have denial of coverage under their personal policy if there's an accident during a livery ride.
But what about all those carpenters, electricians etc (employees usually) who drive their pick up trucks to work and to/from jobsites hauling around a few tools? I'm assuming it would be common knowledge if they usually get their claims denied due to the appearance of work use of the vehicle even if they're headed to the grocery store.
I'm a sole proprietor and I'm thinking about the implications of buying a Ford Transit Connect (small work van) on my personal policy for example and selling my SUV. Would I be at high risk for a claim denial driving such a vehicle? My use of the vehicle is primarily personal use, but I'd love a van outfitted with tool shelving etc.
Would I be at any less risk buying a pick up truck since they're widely used as personal vehicles?
ALSO, my State Farm agent said my personal auto policy covers any rental truck as long as it has single axle rear wheels (ie: 10 foot uhaul box truck or van). He's familiar with my line of work (millwork) and set up my business liability policy, so would that auto coverage be denied if there were evidence I was using that uhaul for anything other than moving personal belongings? He failed to mention this critical piece of info if so.
Thanks in advance!!

Besides trynd, the windbrothers are the only champions that can use this lategame item as a first item. As expected it deals immense damage.
Berserkers-zeal-yuntal, you have 90% crit rate and basically proc it every auto. Lethal tempo would have fixed the only flaw, the low attack speed and also given more yuntal procs, but alas we have to make do with PTA or Conqueror. Both work fine, they both boost yuntal dmg, however PTA may be better if you are planning on building kraken/bork afterwards, since extra AD from conq doesn't boost the dmg for those items.
I think the best next item is probably kraken for it's 40% attack speed to fix the lack of attack speed, I've tried it and the dmg is really great. You can sell zeal for LDR or IE next.
It competes with Kraken and Bork rush: Pros: Berserkers, noonquiver, zeal is strong as hell. Way more dmg after the Zeal Yuntal combo because of actually having crit and having more AD and broken yuntal passive.
Cons: More expensive due to having to get zeal for the asp and crit to enable yuntal.

Does anyone know why this item is not used on aphelios at all? I feel like since it is no longer mutually exclusive to IE it should be pretty strong especially since aphelios has become more of a caster adc then a basic attack adc recently. Also getting more auto resets with things like blue/green would be pretty strong I would think. What do you guys think?

Hoping that I can get some help for this because I have totally confused myself!
Have recently moved our domain/ website over to Squarespace (built a whole new one from scratch using their site builder) and that's all been moved over from a Japanese domain ValueDomain/ Coreserver (long story short our old web developer was Japanese) and BigCartel. We've been using the ValueDomain/Coreserver emails for the entire time, and have 3 emails in use- mine, my bosses, and a general information email- think name1 @ domain.com, name2 @ domain.com and info @ domain.com. Important to note that I'm the only one who really fields anything incoming in the info AND my bosses email (she is even less tech savvy than I am and can barely recall her own email nevermind logins etc). Given that I would be the only one with the wherewithal to log in/ set up emails, I have the following concerns/ questions:

1. Would I need to set up 3 users on Google (via Squarespace) to retain these 3 existing emails (they have stopped being able to receive incoming mail completely since we transferred our domain to SquareSpace from ValueDomain/Coreserver);
2. Re above, would these 3 emails be categorised under aliases or do I need to purchase separate user accounts;
3. If under aliases, would it work to put info @ domain.com as the main user and name1/ name2 @ domain.com as the aliases;
4. When sending, will the recipient be able to see name2 @ domain.com or will they just see info @ domain.com and not the alias address? Would like to avoid this as we have these 3 emails on our business cards for trade events and they need to be accessible for correspondence (ie if name2 is an alias when they type in the email it wouldn't auto-fill as name1 since its the main account), and finally
5. Would using aliases and having just one email be the main one get rid of saved emails of each user from the previous server?

I've asked our web dev this question but I don't think I'm explaining myself correctly as he hasn't been able to give me an answer. Our budget is on the low side so we can't afford to plum for loads of accounts and want to keep it as low as possible, he's also advised against using sites like Ionos/ Dreamhost etc...
I don't mind not having a separate inbox as I can probably manage the aliases with folders etc., but if anyone can help me to differentiate between aliases/ users that would be great. Have been searching web/ FAQs/ Reddit desperately and just can't seem to find an answer for my questions above, so wonder if anyone would be able to help who has used Workspace in this manner. Or am I just overthinking and making things complicated for myself?!
We also have Dropbox Business so no need for Workspaces extra bits like storage/ a huge drive etc., and there's only two of us so don't need all the frills like automatic workflow calendars or video conferences, we simply want email! So advice on which plan to choose would also be great- I'm assuming the starter one would probably be fine but just wanted to figure out how many accounts we need.
TLDR: Moved our site to Squarespace, wondering how many Google Workspace accounts that we have to sign up for in order for our existing 3 emails to be retained!

Hello guys,
opgg: https://www.op.gg/summoners/euw/Tiga%20Mafia-EUW47
yesterday I only had time for 3 ranked placement matches with Viego. I one tricked Viego my last like 100-150 matches and will continue, to only play him. I peaked Plat 1 last season (almost Emerald :( ) so I think my opinion is not that useless as some ppl think.
Placement matches had some variety of players reaching form Gold 1 to Emerald 1 in it so it was a disaster as some could think.
I took some advice from some guy here in this Ubreddit (forgot his name) and went Collector first, into IE 2nd, 3rd item is either LDR or Mortal Reminder depens on the tank they have ( I went for Mortal Reminder because they had mundo on the last game). 4th Item can either be Blood thirster or Shieldbow, which also depends on the situation of course.
For the last item you always go Jak Sho to get those defenses high up, since you already hit 100% crit with 4 items.
Boots are berserker ones.
For the runes I went HOB into Sudden Impact, Eyeball collection and Ultimate hunter. For the second page I went Magical Footwear and Cosmic insight.
For the attributes I went Attack speed, Adaptive Force for Flex and last but not least health scaling or Tenacity if they have alot of cc.
I only had the opportunity to go full build on my last game but I can give you my experiences so far if it could help.
First of all you do insane amount of damage. Like really absurd amount of damage thanks to your crit and HOB. I one shotted a 60% health Veigar with Seraphs embrace, with a simple W and then E, Auto Q auto auto combo. The downside is, you lack attack speed until you have your boots and E maxed out. You do alot of damage like alot but you have to play really careful until you get your Jak sho as last item.
Kinda feels like a Lethality lee sin, where you cant just jump in like when you have the bruiser build.
So you always have to be very patient and let your team engage in team fights / objectives. once you reach the squishy ones on their team with a full charged W, its basically over and you win the team fight. But be careful when they focus and burst you down.
I dont want to say that this is the best build for Viego but I can clearly see full crit Viego with 4 items and a defensive as the 5th become a thing.
But I still have to try the new Bork and the yun tal arrows, I havent played it yet. Maybe a 75% crit viego with Bork and a defensive item is the thing then. You also dont need the berserker boots and can go either mercs or tabbys since you get the attack speed from Bork and your E.
I hope this helps some people, who struggle what build direction they should go.
I know some of you might think me as a hardstuck low elo Plat maybe have no knowledge but Im sure, some will be thankful for my experience.
Wish a nice day to every ruined king here.

Any idea why it fails on every youtube video? Using v3.9 with pip install yt_dlp -U
the error is

[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, pref UTF-8, out UTF-8 (No ANSI), error UTF-8 (No ANSI), screen UTF-8 (No ANSI) [debug] yt-dlp version stable@2024.04.09 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp [ff0779267] (pip) API [debug] params: {'verbose': True, 'compat_opts': set(), 'http_headers': {'User-Agent': 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/90.0.4430.24 Safari/537.36', 'Accept': 'text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8', 'Accept-Language': 'en-us,en;q=0.5', 'Sec-Fetch-Mode': 'navigate'}} [debug] Python 3.9.19 (CPython x86_64 64bit) - macOS-10.15.7-x86_64-i386-64bit (OpenSSL 3.0.13 30 Jan 2024) [debug] exe versions: none [debug] Optional libraries: Cryptodome-3.20.0, brotli-1.1.0, certifi-2024.02.02, mutagen-1.47.0, requests-2.31.0, sqlite3-3.45.3, urllib3-2.2.1, websockets-12.0 [debug] Proxy map: {} [debug] Request Handlers: urllib, requests, websockets [debug] Loaded 1810 extractors [youtube] Extracting URL: [youtube] ZrQJaLemaoE: Downloading webpage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrQJaLemaoE WARNING: [youtube] unable to extract initial player response; please report this issue on , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using yt-dlp -U https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q= [youtube] ZrQJaLemaoE: Downloading ios player API JSON WARNING: [youtube] ZrQJaLemaoE: Failed to parse JSON (caused by JSONDecodeError("Expecting value in '': line 1 column 1 (char 0)")); please report this issue on , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using yt-dlp -U https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q= [youtube] ZrQJaLemaoE: Downloading android player API JSON WARNING: [youtube] ZrQJaLemaoE: Failed to parse JSON (caused by JSONDecodeError("Expecting value in '': line 1 column 1 (char 0)")); please report this issue on , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using yt-dlp -U https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q= [youtube] ZrQJaLemaoE: Downloading iframe API JS WARNING: [youtube] unable to extract player version; please report this issue on , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using yt-dlp -U https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q= [youtube] ZrQJaLemaoE: Downloading web player API JSON WARNING: [youtube] ZrQJaLemaoE: Failed to parse JSON (caused by JSONDecodeError("Expecting value in '': line 1 column 1 (char 0)")); please report this issue on , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using yt-dlp -U ERROR: [youtube] ZrQJaLemaoE: Failed to extract any player response; please report this issue on , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using yt-dlp -U File "/uslocal/anaconda3/envs/py39/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/extractocommon.py", line 734, in extract ie_result = self._real_extract(url) File "/uslocal/anaconda3/envs/py39/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/extractoyoutube.py", line 4079, in _real_extract webpage, master_ytcfg, player_responses, player_url = self._download_player_responses(url, smuggled_data, video_id, webpage_url) File "/uslocal/anaconda3/envs/py39/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/extractoyoutube.py", line 4043, in _download_player_responses player_responses, player_url = self._extract_player_responses( File "/uslocal/anaconda3/envs/py39/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/extractoyoutube.py", line 3733, in _extract_player_responses raise ExtractorError('Failed to extract any player response') https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q=https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q= --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ExtractorError Traceback (most recent call last) File /uslocal/anaconda3/envs/py39/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/YoutubeDL.py:1606, in YoutubeDL._handle_extraction_exceptions..wrapper(self, *args, **kwargs) 1605 try: -> 1606 return func(self, *args, **kwargs) 1607 except (DownloadCancelled, LazyList.IndexError, PagedList.IndexError): File /uslocal/anaconda3/envs/py39/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/YoutubeDL.py:1741, in YoutubeDL.__extract_info(self, url, ie, download, extra_info, process) 1740 try: -> 1741 ie_result = ie.extract(url) 1742 except UserNotLive as e: File /uslocal/anaconda3/envs/py39/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/extractocommon.py:734, in InfoExtractor.extract(self, url) 732 self.to_screen('Extracting URL: %s' % ( 733 url if self.get_param('verbose') else truncate_string(url, 100, 20))) 734 ie_result = self._real_extract(url) 735 if ie_result is None: File /uslocal/anaconda3/envs/py39/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/extractoyoutube.py:4079, in YoutubeIE._real_extract(self, url) 4077 webpage_url = base_url + 'watch?v=' + video_id -> 4079 webpage, master_ytcfg, player_responses, player_url = self._download_player_responses(url, smuggled_data, video_id, webpage_url) 4081 playability_statuses = traverse_obj( 4082 player_responses, (..., 'playabilityStatus'), expected_type=dict) File /uslocal/anaconda3/envs/py39/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/extractoyoutube.py:4043, in YoutubeIE._download_player_responses(self, url, smuggled_data, video_id, webpage_url) 4041 master_ytcfg = self.extract_ytcfg(video_id, webpage) or self._get_default_ytcfg() -> 4043 player_responses, player_url = self._extract_player_responses( 4044 self._get_requested_clients(url, smuggled_data), 4045 video_id, webpage, master_ytcfg, smuggled_data) 4047 return webpage, master_ytcfg, player_responses, player_url File /uslocal/anaconda3/envs/py39/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/extractoyoutube.py:3733, in YoutubeIE._extract_player_responses(self, clients, video_id, webpage, master_ytcfg, smuggled_data) 3732 elif not prs: -> 3733 raise ExtractorError('Failed to extract any player response') 3734 return prs, player_url ExtractorError: [youtube] ZrQJaLemaoE: Failed to extract any player response; please report this issue on , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using yt-dlp -U During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred: DownloadError Traceback (most recent call last) Cell In[14], line 11 3 ydl_opts = { 4 'verbose': True, 5 #"write_auto_sub":True, (...) 8 #"output":'/tmp/sub.txt', 9 } 10 with yt_dlp.YoutubeDL(ydl_opts) as ydl: - 11 ydl.download(url) File /uslocal/anaconda3/envs/py39/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/YoutubeDL.py:3572, in YoutubeDL.download(self, url_list) 3569 raise SameFileError(outtmpl) 3571 for url in url_list: -> 3572 self.__download_wrapper(self.extract_info)( 3573 url, force_generic_extractor=self.params.get('force_generic_extractor', False)) 3575 return self._download_retcode File /uslocal/anaconda3/envs/py39/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/YoutubeDL.py:3547, in YoutubeDL.__download_wrapper..wrapper(*args, **kwargs) 3544 @functools.wraps(func) 3545 def wrapper(*args, **kwargs): 3546 try: -> 3547 res = func(*args, **kwargs) 3548 except UnavailableVideoError as e: 3549 self.report_error(e) File /uslocal/anaconda3/envs/py39/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/YoutubeDL.py:1595, in YoutubeDL.extract_info(self, url, download, ie_key, extra_info, process, force_generic_extractor) 1593 raise ExistingVideoReached() 1594 break -> 1595 return self.__extract_info(url, self.get_info_extractor(key), download, extra_info, process) 1596 else: 1597 extractors_restricted = self.params.get('allowed_extractors') not in (None, ['default']) File /uslocal/anaconda3/envs/py39/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/YoutubeDL.py:1624, in YoutubeDL._handle_extraction_exceptions..wrapper(self, *args, **kwargs) 1622 self.report_error(msg) 1623 except ExtractorError as e: # An error we somewhat expected -> 1624 self.report_error(str(e), e.format_traceback()) 1625 except Exception as e: 1626 if self.params.get('ignoreerrors'): File /uslocal/anaconda3/envs/py39/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/YoutubeDL.py:1073, in YoutubeDL.report_error(self, message, *args, **kwargs) 1068 def report_error(self, message, *args, **kwargs): 1069 ''' 1070 Do the same as trouble, but prefixes the message with 'ERROR:', colored 1071 in red if stderr is a tty file. 1072 ''' -> 1073 self.trouble(f'{self._format_err("ERROR:", self.Styles.ERROR)} {message}', *args, **kwargs) File /uslocal/anaconda3/envs/py39/lib/python3.9/site-packages/yt_dlp/YoutubeDL.py:1012, in YoutubeDL.trouble(self, message, tb, is_error) 1010 else: 1011 exc_info = sys.exc_info() -> 1012 raise DownloadError(message, exc_info) 1013 self._download_retcode = 1 DownloadError: ERROR: [youtube] ZrQJaLemaoE: Failed to extract any player response; please report this issue on , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using yt-dlp -Uhttps://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q=https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q= 

Just hopped onto the practice tool to test out some builds. It turns out I found something better than pure On-hit. It's hybrid build.
Builds: (fyi:not the build order)
Pure On-hit: Botrk, Guinsoo, Kraken, Terminus, Nashors Zephyr
Hybrid: Botrk, Guinsoo, IE, LDR, Collector(can be swapped with the new burn on crit item probably), Zephyr
Since both builds are based on auto attacking, I only used auto attacks, no abilities were used.
Result? Hybrid wins by a decent margin. The dps was higher than pure On-hit, against both squishies and tanks.
Rune: PTA + Domination secondary , AS + adaptive shard.
Go ahead and give it a try and let me know how it performs for you. I'll be running this in my games for a while now and see how well it performs.
Build path wise, I think it would be wise to go Nashors Guinsoo early for the dmg + atk speed since crit items no longer provide both ad+as in the same item. IE 2nd might also be fine. This part is more about real-time testing so choose accordingly.
I will probably be making a video on this as well to explain it in-depth.
Postscript: while writing this, it came to my mind that perhaps botrk instead of nashors would also be a nice first option, since it would also benefit from LDR's armor penetration, unlike nashors. It provides a hefty amount of attack speed and AD as well, plus the lifesteal would be huge since this build lacks lifesteal rn with nashors. It would certainly be better against tanks, but against squishies, dmg might fall off. Will test this out in a bit as well and update the results here.
Postscript 2: Botrk is indeed outperforming nashors in the hybrid build. There is however a flaw in this comparison as the target has same armor and mr, which is usually not the case in most scenarios. Due to this, nashors would definitely perform a lot better in real scenarios, for which I'd say they'll probably perform the same against squishies. For tanks however, botrk would remain the best due to its current health dmg on hit.

After rewatching the second game, around 38 minutes a team fight ensues and Yeon goes for an edgey W(Ahri E-R)flash-E-auto-Q to finish off Faker
Yeon has Collector IE Shieldbow and BT At 39.16 Oner flag and drags in but misses
What considerations were made that caused Yeon to not E Q Oner and Q / auto and E reset Guma / Keria / Zeus?
I think he was too scared, but is there something I’m not considering?

With the new item changes what builds have you been running? for me usually if I'm able to base with 1300 gold on first back I'd get BF sword and build into IE then PD, LDR runnans then GA/BT the damage is insanity. You guys every one tap a driven with 3 autos? (I had a level lead and PTA)

So I'd avoided creating an NYT account for forever because (like others) I'd had issues with it occasionally doing weird things with stats, and this way I could fix it by tweaking the local storage on my device. Sadly they now force you to use an account to see your stats (not, it turns out, to store them) - and doubly sadly my phone had a freak out when I finished a puzzle with no connection, and reset my streak. So I decided to play around to see if I could restore it.
TLDR: When you load Wordle it stores your stats in a key in your browser's local storage (and the game state in another). If you edit these and edit the timestamp in the key to be the current time (or maybe just any time that is newer than the server version, not sure), when you refresh it will update the server copy to match these rather than the other way around. If you don't edit the timestamp, it will overwrite the local copy with the server version instead.
Caveat: this is based on some pretty patchy testing so it's possible not all of the statements will hold up, but hopefully it's helpful anyway if others are tearing their hair out about losing their streak or stats because of an NYT glitch!

Wordle's local storage keys

If you view the local storage when you've got Wordle open on a desktop, you'll see a bunch of keys (press F12 in Chrome/Chromium-based browser (eg Edge) or Firefox, then click Application (Chrome) or Storage (Firefox) and choose local storage). Relevantly we are looking for these two keys:

• wordle-legacy-stats-xxxxxxx
• games-state-wordleV2/xxxxxxx

xxxxxxx is a string of numbers that I guess corresponds to a user ID. If you've played without an account, that'll be ANON instead. If you've signed in with multiple accounts, you'll probably have a few of these with different ID numbers, so you'll need to work out which one corresponds to the account you want to fix.
wordle-legacy-stats, as its name suggests, stores your stats. games-state-wordleV2 saves the current game state (eg what guess you're up to and what words you've guessed so far). The set of stats are also embedded within the games-state-wordleV2 key, but as far as I can tell you can ignore that and it'll update itself to reflect whatever's in the wordle-legacy-stats one.

Updating stats

wordle-legacy-stats will look something like this:

{{"gamesPlayed":100,"gamesWon":100,"guesses":{"1":10,"2":20,"3":20,"4":20,"5":20,"6":10,"fail":0},"currentStreak":100,"maxStreak":100,"lastWonDayOffset":1061,"hasPlayed":true,"autoOptInTimestamp":1234567890123,"hasMadeStatsChoice":true,"timestamp":1234567890} 

Mostly this is self-explanatory. Note, however, lastWonDayOffset, being the Wordle # that you last beat, and timestamp, which is (I think) the time the stats were last updated. This is in Unix time - you can convert to a human-readable time using various sites like Epoch Converter - Unix Timestamp Converter.
I first tried just updating the stats, and refreshing. This didn't work as Wordle kept overwriting it with the values from the server. However, once I updated the timestamp value to the current time (ie so it was newer than the stats stored on the server), this seemed to work - on refreshing the page, it updated the stats in my account.
I haven't worked out what autoOptInTimestamp is (save that it seems to be in milliseconds rather than seconds), but I left it as it was and everything still seemed to work.

Updating game state

games-state-wordleV2 will look something like this:

{"states":[{"puzzleId":"2223","data":{"boardState":["word1","word2","word3","word4","word5",""],"currentRowIndex":5,"status":"WIN","hardMode":false,"isPlayingArchive":false,"setLegacyStats":{"gamesPlayed":100,"gamesWon":100,"guesses":{"1":10,"2":20,"3":20,"4":20,"5":20,"6":10,"fail":0},"currentStreak":100,"maxStreak":100,"lastWonDayOffset":1061,"hasPlayed":true,"autoOptInTimestamp":1234567890123,"hasMadeStatsChoice":true,"timestamp":1234567890}},"schemaVersion":"0.16.0","timestamp":1234567890}]} 

Again hopefully it's mostly self-explanatory :

• boardstate lets you set the words you've guessed so far, and row you're up to. This can be useful if you want to (let's be honest, cheat) and undo a guess.
• status can be WIN or IN_PROGRESS.
• You don't need to worry about puzzleID, but it seems to be the way NYT has randomised the order. For example it was 2223 for Wordle #1061, and before NYT moved to a human-edited version of Wordle, the answer to Wordle #2222 would have been PINCH- which was the answer to this puzzle - so that kind of makes sense.
• setlegacystats is followed by a complete replication of the data in the wordle-legacy-stats key. From my (really not very) extensive testing, we can ignore this as it updates to match whatever's in wordle-legacy-stats.
• As above, timestamp (the second one) needs to be updated if you want to change this and have it update whatever's saved to your account, rather than theother way around.

So as far as I can tell there is no way to do this but I just want to make sure.
I was hoping there was a way to do something similar for storage as there is for cooking. IE I can have my meals auto-pause until I get down to 5/20. One thing that drives me crazy in Rimworld is my colonist constantly re-stocking my food shelves when they are 90% full. Cook makes a meal, someone comes to re-stock. Cook instantly makes another meal and someone else comes to re-stock. Is there anyway to avoid this or have a setting like re-stock when at 20/75?

Edit: shit, I forgot to include a link to the song! https://youtu.be/8HeuMiuj_Sg?si=GrfF1tL9SWTbGF76
I know people have talked about themes for various Wildbow works a bunch, but I felt this was a little different so hopefully it won't be redundant.
I thought about this when I was listening to this song on my way to work today, and I just couldn't get the idea out of my head. So, since it's a slow day at work, I did this. Basically, I couldn't stop picturing an opening theme for a hypothetical Ward show to go along with the song. I have absolutely no artistic talent, so I couldn't possibly hope to actually animate anything. However, I was raised on the internet era that included Song-fics (ie writing the scenes for a music video of a song using whatever intellectual property you wanted to). So I figured I could give it a shot, maybe get across what I was seeing in my head. I'm hoping it comes across well enough.
Note: This is structured like a standard animated (western or anime, really) show opening. Many of the scenes are based on things that actually happened in the story, but some liberties were taken when needed. This is pretty normal for these kinds of openings, most of the time they don't really show things exactly like they happen in the show proper. The lines of the song are in bold, and the italicized text following each line is the scene that would play out to that line or section of music. Also, I know I pale in comparison to Wildbow in the writing, but I'm hoping it's not too rough.
Note the second: Yes, I know I'm a 36 year old man, sometimes you just have to channel your 13 year old self.
https://preview.redd.it/damzsfeuqm0d1.jpg?width=1647&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=47ffa3d2fdb4fd4b783076e37a6f01613c15532e
https://preview.redd.it/62akbdeuqm0d1.jpg?width=1475&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=05124e283d3d57a35697d411249c4bc27757cba9
https://preview.redd.it/0ew21meuqm0d1.jpg?width=1475&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f47b9d9b35152a89b395f6c448e5b6f9861c545d
https://preview.redd.it/yy75xceuqm0d1.jpg?width=1475&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=91405a20b21cf1459d3060db7b70d19fd893a588

Hello all, I recently applied to the above position and I have some questions about what to expect from the role.
I am currently an account representative in a State Farm office, my primary focus is intended to be Sales, but it ends up being 90% Service (Back and forth with Underwriters, taking payments, assisting with claims, etc.) Can I expect this position to be similar?
When I take an inbound call, is it a warm transfer from a lead provider or a customer that has made a conscious effort to call Allstate specifically or both?
How many calls can I expect in a typical 8 hour shift?
What does my time between calls look like? Do I have time to gather myself or is it back to back?
Do I do any service work?(Adding coverages/endorsements, answer current policy transactions)
Are the inbound callers current or new business or a mixture?
The Commission System: I hear it is based on a points system, does anyone have a better explanation of this system? Ie, how many points for a Personal Auto, Homeowners, PLUP etc.?

for every guy out there. just build Yun tal+ ie + runan. Bleed stacks + bleed works on runan so you basically doing shitton of damage with every auto. Twitch in my game did 30k dmg with this item only :) Zeri did 7k dmg in 5 minutes of game. Free elo right there

Just finished my first game, 18/6 and a Quadra (enemy Jinx was top tilting). Here is my build path, I died at 5 mins: boots/dagger - BF - Pickaxe - IE - Yun Taal - LDR - PD - game finished.
I really felt the amount of damage I was doing after 2 items, I went LDR 3rd because they had a super tanky Sion, but I feel Zeal into PD could have been also a great option since it now gives you 20% crit.
I kinda felt the lack of attack speed, I used to build Kraken first, so I had to play even more carefully with positioning in order to hit more autos.
I still think my build was not the greatest, I wanted to try Yun Taal but maybe the path was not so on point; still gg's tho :)

The biz is pretty simple, selling hiring assessments via a self serve platform, and providing nice reports and job fit recommendations in a dashboard. Sine this is targeted at businesses I need to be able to support Organizations and teams in the app (ie mid sized company signs up and they should be able to have sub accounts for different hiring managers)
For the app I need:

1. Landing page
2. Login/sign up (company emails only, no Gmail etc.)
3. Dashboard page that displays candidate assessment status, reports, ability to push a reminder notification via email, ability to buy more assessments etc)
4. Billing page
5. Profile page
6. Applicant tracking system integrations (future state)

Id also like to incorporate some generative AI features for custom assessment building and/or job fit recommendations.
The assessments will be purchased and scheduled via a form on the SaaS site, and then a candidate will just receive an email with a clickable link to take the test (no login to site required). Once completed it will be auto scored and a report generated.
I was planning on doing most of this backend stuff with lambdas and DynamoDB etc. but I'm wondering if Bubble or something else might be feasible for this? I'm far from a competent frontend dev so anything I can find to expedite the process would be beneficial.
At the moment it seems like one of the SaaS Boilerplates might be the best fit based on my requirements but I figured I'd check here first before buying one.
Thanks in advance!

Essence Reaver is waaay worse without sheen, Navori is dead everything scales with AD with even true damage, you are not a auto attacker so forget about IE. Plus indirect buffs to all those IE users how can this champion function right now ? Am i just gonna have to build AP which takes sooo long to scale and generally not worth it ? Then why did you buff crit chance to Q at first place ? They specifically nerfed the bruisers build and buffed crit chance to make people go for Essence Reaver-Navori-Bloodthirster-RFC which has the highest winrate generally right now, But they just took all of those things, whipe their ass with it and throw it away. Now i have to go for bruiser type build, WHICH IS THE EXACT THING YOU MORONS DIDN'T WANT PEOPLE TO DO !!! This champion was the only reason i was playing this game time to time and they just destroyed it.

Hi guys! I drove a 2021 Prius and although impressed with the acceleration and tech specs of 50mpg, I cant but help circling back to the fact that the front especially has NO CLEARANCE. I have seen there are 1.5" lift kits pretty well rated as well as skid plates, and that MIGHT just make it doable. Auto repair shops keep pushing me away from the idea of lifting it though...
For reference, I live in a place with random bumps in the roads, steep driveways, small patches of dirt road I need to drive through to get the kids to school. My last car (which has more clearance than this Prius) is being retired due to hitting a bump on a turn up a hill at more than 5mph. Its a 3k labor intensive repair and my car isn't worth repairing at this point. God forbid this happen to a $20k car I haven't payed off yet!
Other option, spend 50% on an AWD, ie RAV 4 Hybrid. With a 10mpg reduction and soo much more interest to pay since it will take longer to pay off.

Hi all, I'm trying to automate an emailing system for OTP verification but am running into some trouble. Below is my code, in it's respective files.
In models.py:

from django.db import models from django.contrib.auth.models import AbstractUser, User from django.db.models.signals import post_save from django.dispatch import receiver # Create your models here. class UserProfile(models.Model): user = models.OneToOneField(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE) otp = models.CharField(max_length=6, blank=True) otp_expiry_time = models.DateTimeField(blank=True, null=True) class AdditionalData(models.Model): user_profile = models.OneToOneField(UserProfile, on_delete=models.CASCADE) firstname = models.CharField(max_length=100, blank=True) lastname = models.CharField(max_length=100, blank=True) dateofbirth = models.DateField(null=True, blank=True) phone_no = models.CharField(max_length=20, blank=True) country_origin = models.CharField(max_length=100, blank=True) city_origin = models.CharField(max_length=100, blank=True) u/receiver(post_save, sender=User) def create_user_profile(sender, instance, created, **kwargs): if created: UserProfile.objects.create(user=instance) @receiver(post_save, sender=User) def save_user_profile(sender, instance, **kwargs): instance.userprofile.save() 

In views.py:

from django.shortcuts import render, redirect, HttpResponse from django.contrib.auth.models import User from django.contrib.auth import authenticate, login from django.contrib.auth.decorators import login_required from datetime import timedelta from django.utils import timezone from django.core.mail import send_mail from rest_framework import status from rest_framework.decorators import api_view, permission_classes from rest_framework.permissions import AllowAny from rest_framework.response import Response from .serializers import UserProfileSerializer from .models import UserProfile, AdditionalData from rest_framework_simplejwt.tokens import RefreshToken from .generate_random_digits import generate_random_digits def sign_up(request): if request.method == 'POST': username = request.POST.get('username') email = request.POST.get('email') pass1 = request.POST.get('password1') pass2 = request.POST.get('password2') User.objects.create_user(username, email, pass1).save() return redirect('login') return render(request, 'main/signup.html') def login1(request): if request.method == "POST": username = request.POST.get('username') pass1 = request.POST.get('pass') user = authenticate(request, username=username, password=pass1) if user is not None: if user.last_login is None: user.last_login = timezone.now() user.save() login(request, user) return redirect('firstlogin') else: user_profile = UserProfile.objects.get(user=user) verification_code = generate_random_digits() user_profile.otp = verification_code user_profile.otp_expiry_time = timezone.now() + timedelta(minutes=15) user_profile.save() send_mail( 'Verification Code', f'Your verification code is: {verification_code}', 'from@gmail.com', [request.user.email], fail_silently=False, ) return redirect('otp') else: error_message = "Invalid username or password" return render(request, 'main/login.html', {'error_message': error_message}) return render(request, 'main/login.html') def verify(request): username = request.data.get('username') password = request.data.get('password') otp = request.data.get('otp') user = authenticate(request, username=username, password=password) if user is not None: user_profile = UserProfile.objects.get(user=user) if ( user_profile.verification_code == otp and user_profile.otp_expiry_time is not None and user_profile.otp_expiry_time > timezone.now() ): login(request, user) refresh = RefreshToken.for_user(user) access_token = str(refresh.access_token) user_profile.otp = '' user_profile.otp_expiry_time = None user_profile.save() return Response({'access_token': access_token, 'refresh_token': str(refresh)}, status=status.HTTP_200_OK) return Response({'detail': 'Invalid verification code or credentials.'}, status=status.HTTP_401_UNAUTHORIZED) @login_required def firstlogin(request): if request.method == "POST": user = request.user try: additional_data = AdditionalData.objects.get(user_profile__user=user) except AdditionalData.DoesNotExist: additional_data = AdditionalData.objects.create(user_profile=UserProfile.objects.get(user=user)) additional_data.firstname = request.POST.get('FirstName') additional_data.lastname = request.POST.get('LastName') date_str = f"{request.POST.get('dob-year')}-{request.POST.get('dob-month')}-{request.POST.get('dob-day')}" try: additional_data.dateofbirth = date_str except ValueError: return HttpResponse('Invalid date format') additional_data.phone_no = request.POST.get('PhoneNumber') additional_data.country_origin = request.POST.get('Country') additional_data.city_origin = request.POST.get('City') additional_data.save() return HttpResponse('WORKED') return render(request, 'main/firstlogin.html') @login_required def home(response): return render(response, 'main/landing_page.html') def otp(response): return render(response, 'main/otp.html') 

In settings.py:

""" Django settings for mysite project. Generated by 'django-admin startproject' using Django 4.2.6. For more information on this file, see https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.2/topics/settings/ For the full list of settings and their values, see https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.2/ref/settings/ """ from pathlib import Path import os # Build paths inside the project like this: BASE_DIR / 'subdir'. BASE_DIR = Path(__file__).resolve().parent.parent # Quick-start development settings - unsuitable for production # See https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.2/howto/deployment/checklist/ # SECURITY WARNING: keep the secret key used in production secret! SECRET_KEY = '#####...' # SECURITY WARNING: don't run with debug turned on in production! DEBUG = True ALLOWED_HOSTS = [] # Application definition INSTALLED_APPS = [ 'django.contrib.admin', 'django.contrib.auth', 'django.contrib.contenttypes', 'django.contrib.sessions', 'django.contrib.messages', 'django.contrib.staticfiles', 'main.apps.MainConfig', ] MIDDLEWARE = [ 'django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware', 'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware', 'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware', 'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware', 'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware', 'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware', 'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware', ] ROOT_URLCONF = 'mysite.urls' TEMPLATES = [ { 'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates', 'DIRS': [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'templates')], 'APP_DIRS': True, 'OPTIONS': { 'context_processors': [ 'django.template.context_processors.debug', 'django.template.context_processors.request', 'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth', 'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages', ], }, }, ] EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend' EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.gmail.com' EMAIL_PORT = 587 EMAIL_USE_TLS = True EMAIL_HOST_USER = 'from@gmail.com' EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = '############' WSGI_APPLICATION = 'mysite.wsgi.application' # Database # https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.2/ref/settings/#databases DATABASES = { 'default': { 'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3', 'NAME': BASE_DIR / 'db.sqlite3', } } # Password validation # https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.2/ref/settings/#auth-password-validators AUTH_PASSWORD_VALIDATORS = [ { 'NAME': 'django.contrib.auth.password_validation.UserAttributeSimilarityValidator', }, { 'NAME': 'django.contrib.auth.password_validation.MinimumLengthValidator', }, { 'NAME': 'django.contrib.auth.password_validation.CommonPasswordValidator', }, { 'NAME': 'django.contrib.auth.password_validation.NumericPasswordValidator', }, ] # Internationalization # https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.2/topics/i18n/ LANGUAGE_CODE = 'en-us' TIME_ZONE = 'UTC' USE_I18N = True USE_TZ = True # Static files (CSS, JavaScript, Images) # https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.2/howto/static-files/ STATIC_URL = 'static/' # Default primary key field type # https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.2/ref/settings/#default-auto-field DEFAULT_AUTO_FIELD = 'django.db.models.BigAutoField' 

otp.html:

TLDR:
The problems are as follows:

• 4 verification codes were sent b2b2b2b on the first try
• No longer receiving any emails
• The otp.html redirect after entering the code doesn't work

Blachowicz here.
Kept yah’ waiting, huh? Heh, sorry about that one, but I can explain. As we all know… we lost a few good men the last few months.
That’s the brutal part of a hybrid war like ours: We’re fighting a foe unconventional, with half our arsenal tied down because those who grant us authorization are either in disbelief of the true facts, or scared… or already assimilated. That being said our momentum recently was a change not seen in years, and because of that… despite the losses we have garnered, we were close through a breakthrough. One last night Krol pulls myself and other two must trusted squad leads into the back of our COP. There is one of our equipment cages, surrounded by m-bitter radios, tripods, and several hundred thousand dollars of equipment he brought us around a simple worn table. Before us he laid a map of eastern poland… red markings indicating cells that seemed to dot the countryside like a pestilence, or used to… as deep gashes of advance from raids had trisected their lines, even if ones did pop up in the interior.
It was a back and forth; an outside virus infecting Polska at it’s heart, and we were the antibodies sent to drive them out. To which… Major Krol points to one of the largest symbol on the map: a dark red diamond, the NATO symbol for an enemy unit, deep inside of an untouched wooded area, adjacent to a mountain ridge. Several jagged lines indicated entrenchment, with red horizontal lines indicating possible enemy control… or our contested control, for over 20kms surrounding it. Letting us all look, the Major lit himself a cigarette.
“Sir, you sure it’s wise to smoke in here with the dive tanks just behind us” 1st Squad’s lead quipped. “Fuck off” Krol dryly said.
“Alright… this is it… this is the one we’ve been searching for for years, this is the nucleus my predecessor commander died trying to find” he says, pointing to it. Not far from Zamosc, it was almost touching the border with Belarus, the contested area indicating the Strigoi did operate over it… indicating one of the largest spill through points. “-It’s an old soviet bunker, made during their 1960s initiative it was designed to hold the munitions and manpower of several units in the event of a NATO first strike” Krol explained. “It’s gotta be massive then…” I said gazing at the map; “Didn’t the army demolish all of the old soviet hulks near Belarus to prevent any infiltrations?” 3rd Squad’s lead asked. “National Police took the effort over… and by extension, the Strigoi. It was halfway demo’ed before they burrowed into it and have been using it as a bridgehead ever since. This is it…” Krol said. He looked around at all of us, a sense of certainty I had never seen before as he blew smoke from his nostrils; “We’ve been fucking around in the dark for so long, it’s hard to believe we’ve made any progress, but this is it. With this gone, this will set them back over a decade and the momentum will finally shift into our favor… into Poland’s… -Europe’s”.
I swear there was almost a flash of joy, of pride in his eyes and a phantom of a smirk before reality set back in “That being said… we can’t leave this to chance, especially not something as important as this. We’re going to have to go there ourselves… clear through every inch of that place, and tear it all down, piece by piece. I will be straight with you all… when we go, there will be some of us that aren’t coming back. -but we are going… a whole generation is counting on us, and unborn billions rely on us to succeed”. We all nodded, a silent agreement washing over us as we took this upon ourselves. Echo-1 spoke up: “So… They’re authorizing a raid? How big?”. “We’re rolling in as a hard target, armor, explosives, and air support” Krol answered, taking a drag off his cigarette. “Aviation? How the hell did we get that approved, we’ve gotten attempts shot down four times due to those leeches” I said in disbelief. “There’s too much evidence here pointing to the human trafficking tied to their actions… We’ve finally got too much weight pinning them down, to keep the hammer from slamming into their necks” Krol chuckled. He looked around “Any questions?”. “When?” Echo-3 asked. “Three hours. We’re hitting them in the dead of night, only time we could get the birds authorized. Get your boys ready. We’re rolling out” Krol said, dying the cigarette bud out on the table. I can’t begin to tell you the euphoria we felt leaving that cage, as our men started arriving, they did so a lot quicker, and with their heads a lot higher than they had in weeks. As Second Squad’s lead we were going to be one of the main arms of attack into the bunker, thus I made sure we had a breacher loaded with enough thermite, charges, and tools to cut through anything. Our shield bearer we ready to go, as was our assaulters, grenadiers, and machine gunner. I double checked each and everyone of their weapons; ensuring the feeder paws of our squad’s belt fed were intact, making sure every breach charge we had was properly set and packed. There was going to be no mistakes, no slip ups. The margin of error needed to be the smallest it had ever been for us tonight if we were going to make the gore spilt worth it.
Finally… there on the outside of the building, the bright LED lights kept the darkness of the ensuing night at bay as the roar of our MRAPs could be heard. It was said once that war is 99% peace, and 1% chaos, they were right. The slow periods where the blood slowed and the doubt creeped in was the worst… yet we all kept it at bay. We needed to, there was going to be no backing down tonight. All three squads were up, all of us ready to go… we circled up… short stares and shaky nods telling us one things: We were in this together, till the end… the finish line so many before us had been searching for, we were being granted tonight.
A single set of footsteps could be heard as we turned, Major Krol stepping into the center. He took the last drag of a cigarette, throwing it down to the ground and stamping it out onto the damp concrete. He looked around… his chin strap blowing in the weak air as he met everyone of our gazes… then mine… then looked around. “I want you to remember every detail of tonight, as you have every other night… when you are situationally aware, scanning for the enemy, liberating the subjugated, I want you to remember the sting of anxiety, the shake of adrenaline, the chill of the bunker, the heat of your weapon as it cuts them down… because tonight we are going to write every fine detail of our victory, their defeat, in history…” Krol’s words echoed deep into our souls. He paused for a moment, staring around he looked down… a small pause before he said “When you are ruthless in combat, remember to be patient, and reserved in victory. This conflict is for our existence… a lot of innocents have bled due to the mistakes of those who failed to listen, a lot of our brothers are now laid under because we had to bridge the gap of uncertainty with their lives. We remember them now… but in an hour? We forget them… when we raise our barrels, when we cut into those foes, and we liberate Polska!! This does not end tonight, but history puts everything in it’s place, and patience is the companion of the victor… All of our hard work will be cemented, no matter the obstacles we face in that darkness… no matter the demons, the blood, no matter what incomprehensible horrors, we will make them comprehend that to invade our land, to bleed our people, the justice will be paid in full… Load up. It’s time*”*.
The purpose in our steps was heavy as we climbed the back ramps of the MRAPS; Four of the heavily armored vehicles, one for each squad with an additional for attached personnel including our JTAC, the term means Joint Terminal Attack Controllers. With air support requisitioned to us for this operations, there needs to be a definite liaison on the ground who can directly communicate to the birds, and coordinate their fire and progress. I’d worked with many of them in the past, resourceful guys, quick thinking though I guess that comes with the position they hold of needing to quickly figure out what bombs to drop, on which target, at what precise points, whilst taking contact. He loaded in the lead vehicle with Major Krol… and soon, our convoy kicked off.
The drive was several hours as myself and my squad sat in the back of that forty ton goliath, the rumbling of the engine keeping us awake as the crap heater fought to keep the cold from the outside frost from setting in. I looked around to each of them, some were catching some sleep because even with the circumstances… better to get all the energy you can, than to stay awake for nothing. Others were checking their weapons… My gunner locked eyes with me, the same one from the village extraction… many of these men I had trained with for a while now, fought with for months.
We may have met on unconventional circumstances but those in JW Grom thrive on austere chance and create opportunity from scratch. I was pulled from my thought by the sound of a transmission, my peltors were set up for dual comms so I could both receive information from the Major and other leads, whilst communicating with my team.
Krol himself sent out: [“Approximately 10 minutes from enemy AO…”]. As the rest of the squads acknowledged, I quickly sent out [“Echo-2 Copies”], before kicking the boots of any of them sleeping: “Look alive, we’re here”. Through the exterior net armor of the MRAPS, and the bars protecting the small reinforced windows, we could barely see jack shit. I reached up, turning off the overhead light as we all looked through our nods to scan the outside. A dark wall of dense trees was shown before us, making it difficult to see… in addition to night vision capabilities we had also requisitioned ourselves some thermals… when mounted onto rifles they were bulky, made it a pain to aim down quickly, but considering the supernatural capabilities of spotting our foes we needed every advantage necessary.
I flipped out one of my tubes… scanning the outside with my scope. I looked over to one of my assaulters who had been assigned to man the turret of the MRAP, seated near the view screen as he controlled the 50. Cal. Each of the vehicle turrets had been assigned a direction to cover… we took the 9 o’clock, the left flank. “See anything?” I asked. He shook his head; “Negative… wait… I’ve got two cold signatures, front left heading to our rear”.
I quickly scanned the far tree line, at approximately 60 meters off our left were two cold signatures… followed by a third heading to our front… then another. They were surrounding us, moving at speeds so fast I could barely keep my reticle on them. Is this what the National Police saw? What they faced at that lodge without the benefit of a foot of heavy armor protecting them on all sides. Then… suddenly. Something slammed into the side of our MRAP so hard, it caused it to shake. From over the leader comms, Echo-3 quickly shouted [“Contact right!! 4 hostiles!!”].
One of the Strigoi… so bold, had charged and slammed into the side of our MRAP. I quickly looked to see the figure, a dark blue mass of cold energy through my thermal, back away without so much as a stagger… as they tried to flee into the woods, the white hot justice of Echo-3’s gun fired at them, cutting them down. “Blachowicz I’ve got a few breaking for our vic” my man on the turret called out, I spun around, spotting out the window.
Just then, Major Krol announced [“weapons free, watch and shoot for targets of opportunity…”]. I turned to him… “take those fuckers out-”. Without hesitation my vic’s turret began to quickly target them, and through the darkness I saw a stream of outgoing fire bisect one of them, the ISR of the black blood freaking out the optic so badly it didn’t know what temperature to register it as… but it did register it. As another was cut down, one broke through the tree line and latched onto the side of our MRAP. The thing tore at one of the outer net armor panels, usually made to stop RPGs. It grabbed at the bars near the windows, tearing one off… I lowered my rifle as we locked eyes through the reinforced window.
The thing… the Strigoi looked at me, skin cracked as putrefied muscle fibers seemed to leak through dead flesh. It’s teeth were corroded and worn down to sharp fragments, alongside newly mutated fangs that messily protrude from the jaws. Even through the thick walls of the MRAP I could hear it’s roar, as it then tried to punch it’s way through… it cracked the outer coating of the vehicle… but it wasn’t getting anywhere near. My machine gunner, seated next to me, seemed to chuckle at the sight, quippily saying “Yeah… fuck you too”. It’s then our vehicle lurched upwards, as we began to climb the small incline of the bunker. I knew the layout, mapped it in our head, the main entrance was built into the rocky side of an old cliff meaning we could easily set up a defensive perimeter around it, a horseshoe. Krol’s vehicle was first, taking to the right as Echo-3’s MRAP followed. My vehicle, third, left the incline and took a left and… that’s where things got complicated.
We’re still trying to work out what happened but… from what Joakim says his drone captured. Right when the MRAP turned, several of the monsters quickly slammed into the side of the vehicle, as another more bulkier one, pushed at it’s undercarriage. The result.. Was the 40 ton armored vehicle tipped over. It wasn’t uncommon, hell in some cases a well placed IED, a good shot with a recoilless rifle, have been known to tip over Oshkoshs and Maxpros all the time. But this beast? Needless to say we barely had a second to comprehend it as it leaned to the left; “Grab on to something-” is all I had time to shout. A mess of gear and men spilled onto one side of the vehicle as it slammed into the old gravel and dirt.
Several of my assaulters, my grenadier planted right ontop of myself and the others as we came to a stop. Someone’s knee slammed directly into the side of my skull, causing me to dazily bob in and out of consciousness as my face was smushed against the glass of one of the windows.
Through my peltors, the other squads were erratic;
[“Echo-2’s vehicle is down!!”].
[“Echo-3 to Echo-2… Echo-3 to Echo-2…”].
Krol’s voice came through the comms;
[“Echo-Lead to Echo-2… Fuc-... Echo-1 secure Echo 2’s flank, Echo-3”].
[“Echo-3 to other units, they’re spilling through, I’ve got several enemy combatants converging on Echo-2’s vehicle”].
I pushed the legs of my grenadier off my head as I fought to my hands and knees, unfucking my nods as I looked around… “Fuck it… we’re going lights on, shield your eyes” I muttered as I reached for the overhead lights and flipped them on. The bright LEDs bathed the inside of the vehicle as we all gained our bearings, a mess of multicam, gear, and weapons as we quickly pushed each other off. My gunner caught as he fought to realign his promask, from what I gathered one of the assaulters had landed directly into his gun, pushing it directly into his jugular, as pulled back at the rubber and coughed, freeing up his esophagus. We didn’t have time to think however… the sound of bending metal caught our attention… as the back ramp door of the MRAP was ripped clean off. I could barely believe it but as the white light of the MRAP’s interior poured to the outside, a hulking mass leaned in, the dead flesh on it’s face nearly fallen off as the hideous Strigoi leaned inside.
Without hesitation I aimed took aim, yelling “Keep to the deck!!” to any of those inbetween myself and the invader as I opened fire. A burst of full auto fire tore through it’s collar and neck, my men quickly clung to either sides of the fallen MRAP as a few more fired out. As the thing backed up, a blast of .50 cal fire quickly tore it to shreds, along with several others as I realized they were fuckin swarming over the outside of our vehicle. Echo-3’s vehicle continued to carefully fire on the Strigoi on the outside, the sounds of .50 cal ricocheting off the outside of our armor was enough to make the pucker factor set in.
[“Echo-3 to Echo-2”].
[“This is Echo-2, we’re green on ammo, equipment, men”].
[“Roger, we’re shifting fire, exit the vehicle”].
“Hurry up let’s go!!” I barked to my men, leading the way as I staggered out. I turned on my peq, taking aim at silhouettes in the brush as I began to fire. The sounds of machine guns lighting up the brush, as a sea of growls, howls, and incomprehensible roars fired back at us was the ambient noise of the night. My men quickly exited, my gunner being the last as he and I pulled back to the rest of the defensive perimeter. I set in my men to take up the frontal security, as 3rd squad took the right flank, 1st squad to the left. Major Krol and the JTAC were bickering with each other; “How far out are the birds”. “They’re entering airspace now…” Joakim said, already scanning his smart book.
I asked “What’ve we got?”. He then flipped through… to the NATO combined arms segment, quippily saying; “Apaches…”. This caused me to pause as Echo-3 turned their head whilst directing their squad’s fire “The hell… where did we get apaches from?”. “The Americans… they volunteered” Krol said dismissively as he took aim at the darkness, firing off a controlled trio. “Volunteered? They’re aware of what’s going on?” I asked.
Krol seemed to stop, glancing back at me before returning his focus “There’s a lot more going on than you realize, Blachowicz… Prep the breach, you and 1st are going on”.
I quickly pulled my breacher off the line, securing some thermite as the reinforced bunker door wasn’t going to go as easily as a conventional door breach would. 1st Squad pulled back, stacking up and preparing themselves to be the first in. All the while… Joakim gave his firing solution; “Alpha Hotel Two Five Nine, This is Bravo-4…… Type 2….”.
I snapped to my right, watching as a Strigoi managed to dark across the clear gravel field, only to be cut down by my gunner, the peq’s laser marking the burst as it tore through the beasts’ hips, as it hit the ground and still continued to claw, another GROM operator took aim and fired into it’s skull. Joakim popped up to his feet…. “Marking laser, high power…”. He then pulled out a target marking laser… if you’ve watched night operations, you’ve probably seen them.
The green laser than as it says on the label, marks targets. The pattern of which can vary… if it’s a point target, it’ll usually lasso an area, or remain on target until the target is removed with extreme prejudice. If its close air support, then it’ll be a line of the general area… and Joakim damn near marked the entire perimeter around us. He quickly pocketed the tool, turning back to Krol; “Don’t go past 20 meters unless you want to be liquidated”.
With that… 2nd and 1st stacked up at the door as 3rd squad took up the perimeter security. As Major Krol went over to Echo-1… I saw them. A single blinking IR strobe from the beasts as they moved on the far off horizon, converging from several angles… and fired. The sound of the Apache’s main gun, the M230, truly sounds like the hammer of god… the 30mm cannon shot through the dark sky, lighting it up as we saw three incoming streams tear up the woods. Only then as the sound broke did we start to hear their rotors as they broke and began to circle, firing again… then… Joakim dipped his head and looked to Krol; [“Foxtrot Mike, hang onto your teeth…”]. One of the Apaches fired off a AGM-114… a Hellfire. I barely saw it out of the corner of my eye as the Apache from our right flank fired off at a target approximately 200 meters off. A fireball lit up the forest as the horrendous roar echoed throughout… then went silent.
Echo-3 scanned the horizon carefully;
[“Echo-3 to Echo-Lead, enemy contact is starting to die down”].
[“Maintain perimeter, Close Air is to maintain fire mission until we are boots up, Break…”].
[“Echo-Lead to Echo-1, condition white has been met. Proceeds”]. I saw Echo-1 and his men quickly stack up close to the wall and gesture to me; Breaching. I quickly pulled my stack back against the wall as his and mine breacher quickly hit their actuators. Now under normal circumstances, it doesn’t take much for thermite to melt the locks off of a metal surface, in fact it’s a more precise took as alternative means get real medieval like saws, pry bars… we weren’t in the mood for precision, we need to breach their little lair, and drag them out. The sound of several pounds of hellfire burning through the metal could be heard around the corner as a sea of white and red sparks flew out… after several seconds, two of our men tossed a fragmentation grenade and a nine-bang through the opening… a series of concussive blasts and a large explosion rang out.
Echo-1 and his men maneuvered. 1st Squad quickly converged as we followed them in.
Stepping through the black wall of smoke, the dark abyss of the interior was illuminated in a white light as entered barrels raised. Shots rang out as several of the beasts near the entrance were cut down, though not immediately, rounds disconnected the shoulder of one of them, leading to their arm hanging limply by a single tendon as they roared… another series of rounds putting them down. What greeted us was a messy concrete hell of rust and debris, fecal matter, trash, and all kinds of obstacles laid in our way, our boots sticking to the floor. I thank every god we had promasks that night. I called my shield bearer up, 2nd squad leapfrogging ahead to take the next corridor as 1st squad checked their weapons.
One of my men mule kicked the metal door ahead, twice, finally the latch gave away as we tossed in a grenade. A horrifying roar was cut off as an M67 shook the walls of the ancient soviet mausoleum, frag and spall kicked off the walls as I moved in right behind my shield man. The cramped russian design meant there was barely enough space for three people, and that’s three normal people, not in 50kgs of kit, moving slowly and maneuvering against creatures of the dark. Still… we moved forward, my shield bearer and I pushing the pace as two stacked of either squad formed on either wall.
As we passed doorways they flowed in… “Door Left!!”, “Door Right!!”. “Move!!”.
Two men entered each side, no gunshots, we moved up, a roar came.
“Door left!!-”. A series of gunshots came out as we continued to push forward.
“Two down!!”. “Confirm them” Krol commanded, as a series of gunshots run out in response. From one of the doorways, a Strigoi emerged… a female… clumps of hair had been ripped from her decaying skull, as her blooded eyes locked on myself and my shieldman. The skin on her hands had been tore down to the point where barely her bones and tendons remain… looking like huge talons as she roared and lunged at us. He fired off his pistol, though the rounds did little to stop her as she pushed against our stack.
“Fuck!!” he muttered, somehow her strength caused him to stagnate, holding up the advance… fuck that. I shoved the muzzle of my MK18 into her ribcage, flipping the weapon to auto as I fired of round after round. The 5.56 salvo disconnecting her spinal column, causing her to fall as I continued to fire, along with a man to our right and left as the stacks reformed as we pushed to the end of the hall. I fell back, dropping the magazine and loading a fresh one, like clockwork a GROM Operator from 1st squad took my place. Krol was beside me as we approached the end of the hall.
[“-Prep an entry”] I radioed to my breacher, a comrade handed him one of the charges from his back panel as he took to the door, quickly securing it. We all moved as far back as we could, look away, exhale. The blast knocked metal and wood in all directions, scrapping against our uniforms and kit as we made our way in and what laid before us was… it used to be the center atrium of one of these bunkers. Soviet’s loved their grandiose designs, the complex was supposed to be a circular room around a central planning table… instead. It had been turned into some sort of church. Runes and old eastern Romuva pagan symbols written in black ink and blood across the walls, old rotten filing cabinets, long receipt terminals. In the center… several of the Strigoi were kneeling before the table where someone had been tied down, flayed, and… shared amongst the group. They rose to their feet, we aimed our barrels…
The ladder amongst turned to us… his skin wasn’t cracked, or flayed, it was smooth… it still looked dead as the body on the table but it seemed more… accustomed to it. I don’t know… evolved? Under the surface however I could see it’s darkened veins pumping whatever cursed blood ran through them as it locked two blood red eyes onto each of us. It’s nose had long since been turn off, exposing boney nostrils to the open air as it seemed to smirk. All across it’s body were the same symbols on the walls, in every cell… markings of death, of rebirth, of assimilation… From behind this seemingly Alpha emerges another figure I had never seemed before… dressed in a white cloak with a deer head.
"So they've followed the trail... they're too late" the Deer headed individual spoke, definitely not from here, a dialect similar to an Americans but... aristocratic? Each word was drawn out, assurance as if they had everything mapped down to our actions. They didn’t sound like they were from Poland or the east.
“Doesn’t matter…” the Alpha growled… and then, it lunged at us. Quickly breaking from their ground it slammed into my shield man knocking both him and myself at the ground as it displayed an intense feat of strength. Around us I could see several of the Strigoi leap at our comrades… though to no fruitful endeavor as I could see one GROM operator cut two down, as another got into a hand to hand confrontation… my breacher, crafty as they were, reached back and slammed one of the prybars of his kit into the skull of the beast.
The Alpha however was not content as it threw away the 90lb shield, sending it flying across the room as it grabbed my comrade by the skull. I quickly kicked up at it, firing my MK18 into it’s body as the rounds pierced it’s gray and rune covered flesh. The thing simply seemed to chuckle… that was until Major Krol blasted away at the side of it’s head, the alpha turned… and it’s smirk turned to a scowl when face to face with the major. A knowing pause almost like they had done this dance before…
The creature lunged, locking up with Major Krol as it swung and slammed railing. Krol didn’t back down however as he pushed against the creature, hiptossing it to the ground even as it tore at his armor and gear. But the beast pulled, both of them rolled and the Major was on his back as the thing reached for his neck. I fought to a kneel, firing into the creature messily with my MK18, trying not to hit my commander… then…
Click. A sound sends a chill up the spine of every warfighter during a firefight.
My gun ran dry. I dropped the magazine, looking to load another, but the thing came up and with one of it’s claws, sliced deep into my cheek, through the pro mask. I could feel my own blood go flying through the air as I landed hard on my back plate, spitting out red iron as I quickly tried to adjust my mask. Through my fogged up, blood covered lense… I saw my shield man raise his pistol, firing into the skull of the thing staggering it with a roar. Krol came from behind, drawing his knife he sunk it deep into the neck of it…. I reached for my rifle, forcing a new magazine in and damn near punching the bold release. ““Sir, down!!” I shouted, Krol rolled away, back to his own rifle as I fired. So did my comrade as he continued to fire his pistol… so did the Major as he fired his rifle. All of us chewing through that apex predator of darkness, that beast… the leader that had been preying on our people for so long. Layer by layer, muscle group by bone… eventually… the alpha landed on whatever was left of his back.
The silence of the fight died down as all of us checked our surroundings, GROM Operators putting controlled pairs in the heads and nerve stems of any Strigoi laying around… I flicked my weapon onto safe, letting it hang as I pulled off my mask. I dared not touch the wound on my face… the pain nearly crippling me if it wasn’t sheer will pushing me through, and adrenaline doing all it could to subdue it. The sound of the apaches continuing to lay hate drew us from our moment of contemplation as the Major went back to work; [“Confiscate any info, burn the rest…”]. He turned back to me as I shoved my damaged M50 mask back into it’s bag, chuckling as he looked at the sight; “You need a medevac, Blachowicz?” he quipped.
I shook my head, barely able to speak as I muttered; “Negative sir…”. The two of us scanned the room as my shield bearer went to collect his defense implement turned 90lb projectile, we scanned the center of the room, checking and confirming bodies, until we got to the last one alive. His white gown was soaked in red crimson and black ooze, as his dear head was mangled from bullet fire and impact from falling on it. I swear… the way his blood poured out of it though made me wonder if it was a mask. I gave it no second thoughts as he looked to Krol; “You… you can’t stop this, they’ve already-”.
The Major was in no mood for communication as his rifle snapped up and fired off three rounds to the body, four the head. The violent yet quick salvo ending the cultists life, I looked down at it, then to him as he remarked; “Have your squad drag him out to the front, burn the rest”. I stood alongside him, looking down as the sight of it’s deer head was both captivating and horrifying… the curiosity in me wanting to look closer at it fighting the primal instinct I had to burn the thing to ash. “-Haven’t seen one of those before…” I muttered, thinking the Major had an answer.
He didn’t. Krol saying “Neither have I…” shortly before he walked away, was what truly shook my soul about that entire night. Victory stood firm in our hearts that night as we stood outside of the bunker. The night sky burning with fire and white phosphorus as we watched the ruin burn from the inside from the other side of the lot. In the distance, the Apaches continued to scan and circle the forests, no longer firing…. Which meant they had driven any or turned to glass any enemy combatants within a four miles, probably both, more than likely the latter. Echo-1 patted me on the shoulder as we stood there, soaking it all in, though Krol looked none to pleased. “In the time it took us to take this one down, they’ll be trying to set up three more cells… that being established…” he said, looking to either of us, then to Echo-3. “-Hell of a thing we did tonight, been waiting for this one for a decade, cleanly, maybe more… but no time to rest on our laurels… we’ll have another task for us as soon as we’re boots down back home” he said, to which his eyes followed mine, the body of whatever cultist that was zipped up in a black body bag beside the wheel of one of the MRAPs. The fire from the bunker casting an orange hue over it’s shiny jet black outside, something didn’t sit right with me… “That wasn’t a Strigoi…” I said to Krol.
“That’s very clear…” the Major said, shoving his mask under his arm and lighting a cigarette. “So… someone’s helping them?” I asked. The meer notion of it shook me to my core, sickened me. This parasite was already badly infecting Europa, Polska… if it was spread like this throughout the world. Krol settled my nerves: “We’ll be ready… It’s not just us anymore”. As he said that, I realized what he meant… my eyes looking to the Apaches as they started to form up, leaving the areas as their thunderous propellers melted into the night’s calm, unnerving ambience.
It’s been a couple of weeks since then, Echo Detachment has been busy. We’ve gained good ground against the enemy and honestly I think in a few years, we might see a much larger change. For now… we must keep going, that being said the Strigoi aren’t the only ones we’ve been combating. Recently we’ve made contact with of some sort of extermination coalition, they’ve known about the Strigoi, and others plaguing the world, the level of corruption and corrosion on society goes deep. Regardless a lot of the units we’ve been working with are apart of NATO, such as this “4th Special Forces Group” of the American Military. I don’t know where the road from here leads, but we’ve gotten momentum on our side, finally. Just remember… these things are out there, in every town, every city, every nation… preying and waiting for you to be alone, vulnerable, so they can take you and replace you.
Watch your back, and stay safe.
For now, Blachowicz signing out. Until next time