Read the full interview at https://edgeworth.blog/2024/04/27/me-a-doll-interview/
PUG: Jompiy are quite a lot like Damien Hirst’s spin paintings.
EJ: I liked his figurative paintings that Tate didn’t include any of, in that solo show that had virtually everything else he’d ever done. I think Tate will be showing Heckel’s Horse before long.
PUG: What makes you think that?
EJ: It would be poetic. Darth Vadar comes to his senses and everyone’s rescue. There’ll probably be some new maverick Director that comes along and wants to make an easy name for herself.
PUG: How about a Heckel’s Horse Jr. show there instead? I liked the Heckel’s Horse Jr. book.
EJ: Thanks. They’re currently available to all our Fan Club members on Tiers 2 and 3. If someone was interested in finding out more, all they’d have to do is simply visit https://blackivory.org/fan-club/
PUG: Is there anything planned for Heckel’s Horse?
EJ: As far as I can tell, it’s on the back burner till whoever’s in charge decides the time’s right for a show. Billy’s been trying to push things along for years, pretty much since we started doing them.
PUG: You need this new Tate Director.
EJ: We need someone to forcibly step in with the interest, clout and balls to act irrespective of any commercial consequence or fretting what the art world and its clientele think. Like some benevolent Stuckist ex-hedge fund manager who says “Let’s do a show because of all that stuff in the Stuckism manifesto.”
PUG: Like a hostile takeover. Might Heckel’s Horse Jr. being published speed things along for Heckel’s Horse?
EJ: Apparantly the opposite. It might put them off, but whatever. It shouldn’t be all beholden to any audience thing. There needs to be a punk movement in Contemporary Art. Like Black Ivory but slightly more influential. None of this prissy “We’re not allowed to do this, we’re not allowed to do that. The clients might not like this, the clients might not like that.” I don’t know anything about how the art world functions but there’s an obvious staleness and near-universal obedience to it. Then you get things like Stuckism or our semi-Stuckist-splinter-group Black Ivory that, like opt out of the audience as target idea. That are happy to be a disgrace. I think they asked the bass player from the Manics what it was like walking around dressed up in their band gear, round their local working-class mining village in skirts and makeup, and he says “We just wanted to be hated.” I like that about Stuckism and the seemingly repellent and toe-curling bridge-burning stuff we do. The term “target audience” is business talk for a reason. Target audiences are for things like Persil Automatic, not artists. Artists worrying about this stuff is just depressing and I guess is all counter-productive to what they’re after anyway.
PUG: How would it be counter-productive?
EJ: Because it’s like some saggy-headed donkey that’s given up. Part of the shuffling crowd, which is shame if your art isn’t. Not believing in yourself. That’s how it all looks to me anyway. When I see photos of Stuckists prancing around in clown costumes outside Tate it’s so appealing. They’re building walls between themselves and the people everyone else is so desperate to be approved by.
PUG: So can Black Ivory save Contemporary Art?
EJ: We’ll stack a load of six footer Heckel’s Horse Jr. paintings against the walls. A few in the front room with the sofas, tables and chairs and whatnot. I’ll be walking round with a full teapot. Invite some friends round and do it as Stuckism would do it. Leave the evidence on our YouTube channel as Van Goghian proof for future generations that today’s Contemporary Art wasn’t just the text book stuff.
PUG: Stuckism was quite punk influenced but the art world’s still largely what it was beforehand.
EJ: Stuckism bothered. Like leading a horse to water. It’s like even the anti-establishment are only considered successful when the establishment accept them. The Other Muswell Hill Stuckists should do a manifesto about it. Stuckism‘s not for our benefit, it’s for yours. Our “failures” are your problem. We’re waking up and painting either way. We don’t need the art world. We don’t need the Turner Prize to show us what a decent painting looks like. I’m only talking about it not shaking up the artworld obviously, not the work or anything important, but like we’ve both done loads of Stuckist Turner Prize demos, published a Stuckist Turner Prize manifesto, as far as I know, the Turner Prize is still going strong. So what? Did the demos fail? Are our paintings worse now? If nothing else, it’s nice to get out the house. I like the Turner Prize demos because it’s like getting bashed on both sides. By the establishment and the hipsters. Usually it’s like, choose a team: brand A or brand B and kid yourself there’s a difference. The establishment think they’re winning and the hipsters think they’re cool and anti-establishment. Stuckism chooses neither, which I see as the only real anti-establishment. Stuckism‘s failures, if anything, proove its success becuase punk succeeded in it’s non-musical objectives, it became chart music. No chance of Stuckism falling for that one. How’s that for a theory? Failure isn’t failure. Failure’s success because failure’s longevity and success is failure. Stuckism‘s a roaring failure.
PUG: A new punk Tate for Heckel’s Horse.
EJ: I did some assistant work for Jimmy Cauty years ago, on these glittery riot shields. I think around 2016. The tracksuit bottoms still have the gold glitter and PVA stuck to them. I can’t remember if I was talking about Heckel’s Horse or something else, but Billy and I couldn’t have done too many by then. It might have been something else, but I tell Jimmy we’ve done all this work and nothing’s getting published, and he says ‘So, when’s the bonfire?’ The man who burned a million pounds. Ten years later, he we are, same situation. Thankfully, as far as I’m aware, still no bonfire. So overall, things are going great for Heckel’s Horse. All the paintings are still probably in existence.
PUG: Just a lot more of them now.
EJ: I’ve got this image of Heckel’s Horse paintings being taken at night to some secret billionaires island off the South Kent coast and chucked on a blazing fire with a load of men in white suits standing round drinking champagne, each with a cigar between their teeth going ‘Ha! Ha! Fuck you Edgeworth!’
PUG: Then there’d just be the Heckel’s Horse Jr.’s left and you could sell them for millions.
EJ: You’re a genius.
PUG: All those paintings will end up in a show at some point.
EJ: It’s been eleven years. Could be another twenty, thirty. I had this paranoia, they’d pretend they were by Billy and cut my name out. If Billy and I aren’t around. Even if I’m still around, who’s going to listen to me?
PUG: Do you reckon?
EJ: I don’t even know who it was, but some lying fart-face decided it would be alright to pretend these monoprints Billy and I collaborated on would be better sold off as ‘by Billy Childish’ and not by both of us. So that’s what happened. Like a click of the fingers, “Bye bye Edgeworth.” Pretty unimpressive, I thought.
PUG: Didn’t you say anything?
EJ: No, what’s going to happen? Better to say nothing then moan about it ten years later. The way I see it, I’m not the one lying so it’s not my problem. Do you know what I mean? It shouldn’t be on me to object if they’re doing it on purpose.
PUG: So it’s not like Damien Hirst and his assistant’s painting butterflies.
EJ: No. It’s sort of, not wanting to flatter the people that erased my attribution with the idea they’re worth bothering with. Because it’s not like I was upset or felt hard done by. It was just disillusionment in one thing, addressed by the creation of another, Black Ivory Printmaking & Audio Club. If anything it’s a net positve. “So that’s the kind of people you really are. What a fantastic opportunity!”
Damien Hirst’s different. It’s all declared and everyone knows the deal. There’s nothing dodgy about it. It’s not like some slippery gallerist-type shifts the goalposts after the works done, like they’ve got some licence to change the truth. The buyers know what they’re buying, the artists know what they’re doing. These monoprints were a thick painterly transfer technique I came up with and haven’t seen anywhere else. Until I see any that look similar, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a type of monoprint of my invention. And they think they can just sign that away from me. If people see mine now, the ones I did independently using the same technique, they’ll probably think I copied it from Billy, which I think’s quite a liberty. “Taking Berty’s.” as we said at school.
PUG: Didn’t they ask you about it first?
EJ: No, I just get emailed after with some apparent excuse. If you’re some no-name pushover like me, I guess they think it’s alright. It might all have been a lot more innocent than it looked from my end, but if they’re like this with some few hundred quid monoprints, what’s it going to be like with all these crates of 6ft paintings that are worth a fortune? Not exactly reassuring to think of Heckel’s Horse in these people’s hands.
PUG: Welcome to the art world.
EJ: It might end up for the best. A lot of why I started doing Heckel’s Horse Jr. was to get the Heckel’s Horse story out the door. A lots been done already. Billy and I want to get Heckel’s Horse paintings in front of people. Billy‘s spoken about it in interviews that I’ve super-glue-referenced into the Billy Childish wikipedia page. L-13 have done a load of prints. Things are going pretty well. The less behind-the-scenes Heckel’s Horse is, the harder I guess it is for the truth to get fudged later. Especially if Billy and I aren’t around by the time anything happens.
PUG: You’ve always got Jompiy.
EJ: Yeah, my solid backup plan. I don’t need to worry about Jompiy getting nicked.
Read the full interview at https://edgeworth.blog/2024/04/27/me-a-doll-interview/
https://youtu.be/aWN2dAleE14

After more than a month of tweaking, I finally finished a new version of my low-contrast light theme for Visual Studio Code — Squirrelsong:
https://preview.redd.it/k6eif3z2px0d1.jpg?width=2644&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a6f7043898e0fbfd42e5566984af4c0d06ce6c3d
New and more cohesive grayscale palette, better UI readability and visual hierarchy, fewer distractions, lots of new colors.
I can’t use dark themes, and most light themes because the contrast is too high and colors are too bright. Such colors are too distracting for me, and I quickly get tired — not something you want if your job is to write code all day. Squirrelsong theme is low-contrast and uses soft colors, but still provide enough color and style variety to distinguish various elements of the code and avoid long chains of code printed in the same style.
https://preview.redd.it/31c4ig04px0d1.png?width=1648&format=png&auto=webp&s=8823d494ab260cff86a254a3bb2f81b5f612b90a
I created the first version of this theme long before I learned about my neurodiversity, long before I learned that bright colors are, indeed, not good for my brain, and I need softer and milder colors and UI with fewer distractions.
https://preview.redd.it/3rvf4bn4px0d1.jpg?width=1312&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=12f9b076ab9a602ab65125e28bd648f48c7f36e0
This might be the only color theme made specifically for neurodiverse and highly-sensitive developers, at least I haven’t seen any other so far…
Get it from Visual Studio Marketplace
P. S. Squirrelsong is also available for Alfred, CotEditor, Chrome, iTerm2, JetBrains, Marta File Manager, Midnight Commander, Nimble Commander, Prism, Slack, Sublime Text, Telegram, Terminal.app, Vivaldi, Warp, WezTerm, and more…

To start, let's talk about the Jacobs family, specifically Jeremy Jacobs.
He's one of the richest people in Western New York, former owner of the Boston Bruins, and current chairman of the University at Buffalo Council (wikipedia article).
On March 20, 1980, in a Jacobs family mansion on Nottingham Terrace, Jeremy’s fifteen-year-old nephew Seth (son of his brother Max) allegedly nearly beat to death Mary Kate O’Connell (sister of Buffalo TV newscaster Kevin). It was an unusual case:
​

From the beginning of the O’Connell case, which began at 7:30 on the morning of March 20, 1980, when Ms. O’Connell called for help, her assault was handled differently from the thousands of other beatings each year in the city. Eight hours elapsed after Ms. O’Connell’s injuries were discovered before the Buffalo Police Department was allowed inside the Jacobs home to investigate and secure any evidence. . . . Seth Jacobs, now 25, an actor and a graduate of Yale University, told Ms. O’Connell’s attorneys during his deposition that he has trouble believing that people consider him a suspect in the beating. When his father first told him that police thought he had beat Ms. O’Connell, he said: “I was understandably stunned, very dismayed, and I wondered what to do.” He said he let his father’s attorneys handle it. And he told his mother, “I couldn’t believe that people actually believed that I could do such a thing.” (source)

​
The Jacobs clan got lawyered up and counter-sued O’Connell. The excellent Jacobs family lawyers got him off, leading to the judgment that she was nearly beaten to death inside the Jacobs home by a person or persons unknown. So, racketeering without a racketeer, bludgeoning without a bludgeoner. See “O’Connell v. Jacobs” (1992). The Jacobs family then proceeded to sue Ms. O’Connell into bankruptcy.

But what happened to Seth Jacobs?

Well, we all know the Seth Jacobs that teaches history here. At first I thought that this just happened to be an unfortunate coincidence of two people having the same name. (Here he is!) However, I was horrified as I noticed more and more things line up.
Here's an article from 2020 about Seth Jacobs. Let's look at everything that matches.
Date of Birth

It was 1992 and the then-actor had $1.25 in his pocket, the exact price of the Documentary History of the United States. He read it on his commute to the famed Steppenwolf Theatre, where he was appearing in Twelfth Night. “I was 28 and I had never taken a college-level history class,”.

This would put his year of birth at around 1965, depending on when his birthday is and what month this happened. The Seth Jacobs who allegedly beat the teenage girl was 15 in 1980, putting his birthday around 1965 as well. But I see how this may also be an unfortunate coincidence. Let's continue.
​
Actor + Son of Actor

I grew up in New York City. My father was an actor and I wanted to be an actor. I felt at the time I had talent.

Recall from earlier "Seth Jacobs, now 25, an actor and a graduate of Yale University". This aligns with the timeline of our Seth Jacobs being 28 at the time. Additionally, alleged assaulter Seth Jacob's father, Max Jacobs, was an actor as well! Another interesting coincidence!
​
Education

I went to Yale as an undergraduate and majored in philosophy and psychology, but that was just because my parents told me they weren’t going to pay for a Yale education if I majored in theater.

Our Seth Jacobs indeed went to Yale and got their undergrad degree. And wouldn't you know it, alleged assaulter Seth Jacobs was a Yale graduate as well! Recall from earlier: "Seth Jacobs, now 25, an actor and a graduate of Yale University." These coincidences are starting to stack up...
Middle Name
This dissertation asserts that our Seth Jacob's middle name is Stephen. According to official court documents:

"Max William Jacobs as custodian for Seth Steven Jacobs under the New York Uniform Gifts to Minors Act, 703 Main St., at Tupper, Buffalo, N.Y."

Our two Seth's share the same middle name!
Maybe: Physical Appearance
This one is more of a maybe, but take a look at Max Jacobs and then compare him to our Seth Jacobs.
​
Picture from Buffalo News
​
A shitty pic but it gets the point across

What now?

I have some family members in Buffalo who've told me about Jeremy Jacobs and his shadiness, but I did not expect our Seth Jacobs to be involved in it. I'm like 99% certain that these are the same people, and while it was "alleged" that he nearly beat a teenage girl to death, the circumstances surrounding it are incredibly suspicious.

1. How do I remove the front & back covers and just put something of my own in the front cover.
2. How do I align the Chapter Name, Acknowledgement, Abstract, Epigraph texts towards the left & not to the right.
3. How to add a dot next to section number, I used to do it by \label{sec:uno}
4. I want to also comply with these guidelines from my university on LaTeX

a. A page size of A4 (210 by 297 mm)
b. Left and right margins: 0.98 top and bottom: 1, justified
c. One-and-a-half spacing
d. Times New Roman 12 point as the base font
e. Page numbers at the bottom of the page and at the center
f. Printed on both sides; so, Gutter 0.5

Wood had been training the Gryffindor Quidditch team relentlessly at every free moment. Last night Wood had been running broomless drills between dinner and curfew. Once back in their common room he had tried to talk strategies using Ron's chess pieces, Harry had been King, George and Fred were bishops, the chasers were pawns, and Oliver was the Queen. Until Angelina Johnson had yawned, and explained that a good night's sleep was the the best strategy.
Harry stiffled a yawn in transfiguration. He found it hard to concentrate. For some unknown reason Harry began to think about werewolves. Were werewolves even real? He couldn't remember.
"Mr Potter!" Snapped Professor McGonagal. "Would you care to share what is so important it has taken all of your attention?"
"Werewolves" he answered before he could consider the question. "...and the difference between them, and the transfiguration when you turn into a cat."
"Animagus" Hermione coughed
"Animagus! That's it. I was trying to remember the word. Now that I have, I can leave this to consider later." Harry rambled.
Professor McGonagal stared her unblinking cat stare. Harry grew increasingly uncomfortable but decided not to say anything further.
"That, Mr Potter, is an interesting question. What is a difference between them?"
Hermione's hand shot up three inches higher than her natural reach.
Professor McGonagal continued to stare at Harry. Harry thought of the B grade horror films Dudley watched.
"Er..a werewolf is forced to transform on the full moon, and you... er... Animagus.... Animaguses? ....Animagi? ... an Animagus can transform.... at will?" Harry tentatively answered.
"Given your attention was diverted for seven minutes, I want seven factual points comparing werewolves and Animagi, handed to me by tomorrow's class."
"Are you giving me a detention?" Harry asked hopefully
"Not unless you fail to hand in an acceptable response to the question."
Harry's shoulders slumped. He would have to stop by the library and complete it in 'History of Magic'. He had hoped to get a nap in during Professor Binns class.
...
Harry asked Madam Pince for any documents on Werewolves and Animagi that were accessible to him. Soon she had compiled a stack of books for him, and oddly a copy 'Teen witch weekly' (issued monthly, but Hermione pointed out that if it was called 'Teen Witch Monthly' it would sound like a euphemism for a ladies time of the month. Ron had promptly dropped the magazine.). The issue of 'Topographical Habitat' made some sense, as it was purported to be a factual periodical about unknown magical tribes from around the world and rare fantasic beasts.
Hermione took the largest book from the stack, Ron took 'Topographical Habitat', and Harry flipped through 'Teen Witch'.
Hermione seemed somewhat impressed that Ron had at least taken the serious publication. Harry's own suspicions about Ron's choice appeared confirmed, when Ron blushed such deep scarlet, he could have been camouflaged next to Fawkes.
"100 ways to woo your wizard? Top 10 potions for a slimmer summer body? Love potions gone wrong, a young witch's horror? Who reads this trash?" Harry asked aloud.
Hermione didn't meet his eyes.
"I don't. Some of the other girls do. Apparently they can often have interesting articles, and they have a 'questions to the Sage Sisters' section where young witches can ask embarrassing questions they can't ask their parents or professors"
Hermione attempting to hide the red flush in her cheeks,nonchalantly flipped through the large book, seemingly unaware it was upside down.
"There must be a reason Madam Pince got it for you." She continued before turning the book right side up. "It's faster to get to 'W' for werewolves from the back" she explained without looking up.
Harry smiled.
"Take our quiz. Which Animagus are you?"
"That sounds highly inaccurate. I suppose you did say any documents..."
Harry pushed it to the side a little too far and it slipped off the edge of the table with three other books. Harry ducked down to tidy them up. He quickly slipped the magazine into his bookbag and picked up the other three books.
The three of them quickly found the pages with basic information on both, and a refence to the spell to become an animagus, but it was in the restricted section. Harry noted the book title down. Unfortunately there wasn't time to write down all the important bits. If he hurried, Harry thought he might just be able to mark down page numbers and book titles to find them on the next break.
"I wish I had access to a photocopier" Harry lamented.
"Just ask Madam Pince for a copy." Ron suggested
Madam Pince read through the pages quickly, and copied them. She redacted a few pieces of "restricted" information, including the name of the restricted book. Finally, a watermark charm indicating it was an authorised copy, before handing them the pages.
Hermione stared in awe.
"I need to learn that spell." She said as they raced to 'History of Magic'
"Yeah, it'd be super helpful." Replied Ron.
"How did you know what a photo copier was?" Harry panted as they sprinted up to the classroom
"A wha? You said copier. I assumed you wanted a copy. Name seemed pretty obvious."
During 'History of Magic' Harry propped open the text book and flipped to the quiz in the magazine. He readied his quill, but as it was a magical publication, you used your wand to tap the answer. After the result was given the pages would clear and the next person could take the test.
There were several disclaimers in fine print stating results were not guaranteed, and merely for entertainment purposes.
...
Which Animagus are you?
Question one:
Where do you live?
Harry tapped the box next to the UK.
The page shifted revealing the next question.
If you attend/ed Hogwarts, which house were you, or do you hope to be sorted into?
On the questions continued.
Pick a sport or activity
□Quidditch
□Spelunking
□Dueling
□Wrestling
□Spectating
Harry didn't even know what spelunking was. He assumed it was some obscure wizard sport, common elsewhere in the world. He picked Quidditch of course.
The questions were odd and seemed mostly irrelevant to animals, but finally he came to the results.
Red Kite
"Think it's broken mate" Ron whispered over Harry's shoulder "my dad found one of those at the ministry. It's a toy for muggle kids."
"It says its a bird of prey." Harry whispered back.
"Give it here so I can take it." Ron asked.
Harry carefully passed it over and started writing his comparison for McGonagal.
Ron grumbled when he was done.
"Still say its broken. I got goat."
"It's just a ridiculous quiz Ronald. Hardly likely to be accurate is it? Besides goats are excellent creatures. " Hermione reached over and took the magazine.
Soon she showed her own results.
"Utter nonsense. I got an octopus. I'd much rather be a goat, than an octopus." Hermione carefully showed the result page to Ron and Harry.
"Nah, that's way cooler than a goat." Ron sighed
"Imagine you turn for first time, no water in sight. Not very useful. Great, I could swim around the lake. I personally, have no desire to find myself in any way in the lake, or any other body of water bigger than a bathtub. Animagus forms are random, I have just as much chance of being a Blue Ringed Octopus, as I do a Fox. You wouldn't know what animal you'll get until to do the full spell. One reason why I'd not likely try to become an animagus." Hermione closed up the magazine, and returned to her classwork, except her classwork was for Arithmancy not history of magic.
When the class ended, Nevile came up to Harry.
"I took that quiz, or one like it ages ago. I was at St Mungos,... just waiting at the minor aliments clinic. I don't subscribe to 'teen witch' magazine or anything. I got a Honey Badger. I thought for sure it would mean I'd be in Hufflepuff. Do you think I could maybe,... maybe I could... borrow your magazine to see if I'd be something else now?" Neville shyly asked
"Go for it. This is just a library copy. Part of my extra homework McGonagal set me. I'll give it to you in our room"
At the end of class, Ron had a free class block. Oliver Wood had a copy of all the Gryffindor Quidditch team player's timetables, and he and Harry had a one on one training session during this free block. Hermione had an elective that Ron and Harry didn't take. In an attempt to delay the training session, Harry offered to walk with Hermione to the next class.
"Ron, do me a favour and talk Quidditch strategies with Wood. Maybe he won't notice I'm late. I need a few minutes to myself. Encourage him to get substitute players too. If he has more players to train then maybe he'll ease up on the rest of us." Harry sighed.
"Hermione mind if I accompany you to..." Harry paused not knowing what her next class.
"Ancient Runes" Ron said as he packed up his books.
"Actually, I've got Ancient....Runes. How did you know that Ron?"
"I spent long enough helping you shift your classes around, so you could do them all." Ron replied "Catch you two at lunch then. Do you think Wood would really listen to my strategies?"
"Percy apparently complained to Oliver that 'it was bad enough having a house full of Quidditch obsessed siblings, he could no longer handle it taking over their dorm room too.' I feel bad for their other roommates, having to deal with both Percy and Oliver. Anyway Percy must have mentioned you helping with Hermione's schedule, and treating it like a Quidditch league. I think Oliver will be quite keen to hear your opinion. If only to annoy Percy further."
"That's 'nough reason for me." Laughed Ron in response.
The trio split off at the staircase, with Ron promising to stall Oliver.
"So Vix, Octopus you say?"
Hermione glared at Harry
"Did you forget my name Harry?"
"You've only been my best friend for two years. Of course I forgot it, Vix. Must have been obliviated. You said you got a Blue Ringed Octopus."
"I did. It proves only that the quiz was nonsense."
"You got a small poisonous..."
"Venomous." She corrected
"Probably poisonous too. You got a small venomous octopus from Australia? I did a project on them in primary school. They live in Australian waters not anywhere near the U.K. The quiz asked your location, so you'd only get a creature that lived here. So why wouldn't you tell Ron you got a Fox?"
"How did you... I got an octopus you saw the results."
Harry gave no further reponse and waited for Hermione to come clean.
"Fine. I took the test multiple times. How did you know I got a fox?!"
"You said 'you had as much chance of being a Blue Ringed Octopus, as you did a Fox'." Harry shrugged. "You'd make a pretty good fox."
"Serves me right for choosing Australia as a location. I thought I might get a Koala or something cute. Instead I get a tiny but deadly octopus." She shook her head in frustration, frizzy hair flying everywhere.
"You would have have the fluffiest fox fur ever." Harry concluded. Hermione swatted him in the arm.
"It's still nonsense. Each animagus is completely random, as far as current research can tell. I'd probably get a hare, or a vole, or....or...an otter! Not something im currently planning to try."
"Only 'cause you don't know how." Which earned him another whack in the arm.
"Would you learn the spell?"
"If I could guarantee I'd get a bird, of any kind, hell I'd even take a bloody pigeon, absolutely. Only birds I'd say no to would be flightless birds"
"That's the problem isn't it. You could get anything. I wouldn't want to be a water animal, like a fish, or a rat like Ron's pet" She shuddered "or a bug. Can you be a bug?"
He shrugged
"If you could choose your form, I know, I know" he held his hands up before she could tell him off "but IF you could, what animal would make you say yes immediately?"
They walked in silence while she pondered the question.
"Not something people want to kill. Not a pest creature; rats, mice, insects, spiders, snakes. Nothing like that. Something strong, something friendly, something beautiful."
"So not a fox then?"
"No. Too many people trying to hunt them down."
"What about a horse?"
"Hmmm possibly."
"Do you think that most Animagi are Gryffindors, because it requires courage to go through with becoming an unknown animal?"

I engrave my name on my tools with a drimmel. Nothing fancy, I print a label with my name and trace it. It isn't always very visible. I want to add color and planned to use a fine point paint marker to color in the name or maybe a wax crayon like with old DnD dice. Anyone have experience or better suggestions?

I am new to Twine. I have set the player's name into a variable from a textbox. The variable will print just fine unless I embed it into a choice dialogue.
Here is my code:


So I want the second choice to fill in $mcname with the value from the textbox (so ie "No, Amir is what I am called.") When I try to playtest it, the second choice prints as "No, $mcname is what I am called." It doesn't fill the variable with the string from the textbox. I've printed the variable without issues outside the choice dialogue, so I know the variable has a value. I've tried looking up a fix for this.
I tried using quotes and plus signs like this:

But that just prints "No, " + $mcname + " is what I am called." instead of the string value.
I tried:

I also tried making a widget to capitalize the name and then just using <> instead of $mcname but it always just prints that verbatim instead of filling it with the string value.
Would someone be able to help me with this? Thank you!!

I tried to do this with the new model chatGPT I gave her the link where you can play Eviebot I told this to it. I want you to learn everything about this replicated and make it better https://www.eviebot.com/ And that means write the code to make it better Then he gave me the code I told it to finish the code and put it into one file. I will give you the code that he gave me my question is is the code finished? And if it’s not finished, what should I ask next and I’ll give you the response with the code that they gave me.
import openai from textblob import TextBlob
openai.api_key = 'your-api-key'
class ChatMemory: def init(self): self.memory = []

def remember(self, user_input, bot_response): self.memory.append({'user': user_input, 'bot': bot_response}) def recall(self): return self.memory[-10:] # Recall the last 10 interactions for context 

def get_response(user_input, conversation_history): prompt = f"The following is a conversation between a human and a highly advanced AI:\n\n{conversation_history}\nHuman: {user_input}\nAI:" response = openai.Completion.create( engine="text-davinci-004", prompt=prompt, max_tokens=150, temperature=0.9, top_p=1.0, frequency_penalty=0, presence_penalty=0.6, stop=["\nHuman:", "\nAI:"] ) return response.choices[0].text.strip()
def analyze_sentiment(text): analysis = TextBlob(text) return analysis.sentiment.polarity
def get_emotional_response(user_input): sentiment = analyze_sentiment(user_input) if sentiment > 0.5: tone = "cheerful" elif sentiment < -0.5: tone = "sympathetic" else: tone = "neutral"

prompt = f"The following is a conversation between a human and a highly advanced AI. The AI should respond in a {tone} tone:\n\nHuman: {user_input}\nAI:" response = openai.Completion.create( engine="text-davinci-004", prompt=prompt, max_tokens=150, temperature=0.9, top_p=1.0, frequency_penalty=0, presence_penalty=0.6, stop=["\nHuman:", "\nAI:"] ) return response.choices[0].text.strip() 

memory = ChatMemory()
def chat_with_memory(user_input): conversation_history = '\n'.join([f"Human: {entry['user']}\nAI: {entry['bot']}" for entry in memory.recall()]) bot_response = get_emotional_response(user_input) memory.remember(user_input, bot_response) return bot_response

Example usage

if name == "main": while True: user_input = input("You: ") response = chat_with_memory(user_input) print(f"Evie: {response}")
This code integrates contextual understanding, memory, and emotional intelligence into a single chatbot application. Replace 'your-api-key' with your actual OpenAI API key. The chatbot will remember recent interactions and adjust its responses based on the sentiment of the user's input.

Introduction: The Mysterious Double Album
I’ll always remember 2 AM on April 19th 2024. I was in my pjs, alone, on my balcony, fresh off my first listen to Taylor Swift’s album The Tortured Poet’s Department. After sufficiently enjoying my solitary experience, I took to the internet to see what the masses were saying…when Swift dropped a whole second album: The Tortured Poets Department Anthology. Swift, a master of both Easter egging surprises for her fandom and practicing the number one rule of business (give the people what they want!), had been hinting at something “double” for months. Most significantly, while accepting her Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album, she flashed a “peace sign.” That damn peace sign haunted the fandom for months. Swift’s corporate social media account, u/TaylorNation, used peace sign emojis and called attention to the number two whenever possible (ie teasing the album 22 days out etc.). There were also many “2”s present in in the promotional “experiences” leading up to the album release date—including statues of peace signs at the TTPD interactive experience at The Grove in LA. As usual, some Swifties went bonkers with their theories (or “clowning” as outlandish theorizing is referred to in the community). I myself couldn’t help but believe some concept of doubling would be significant in TTPD, but I couldn’t have guessed a full DOUBLE album (Swift’s capitalization). What an absolute treat. Mother was, as they say, mothering.
…Only the two mania didn’t seem to end post-drop. If anything, the two mania heightened. The albums were not just surprises in themselves, they were full of mystery. They seemed to reference multiple relationships, cryptic narratives, allusions to Swift’s previous songs, allusions to iconic poets, and very often, twins. The sleuthing type of Swiftie (full disclosure, moi) dove in deep. We gathered where we do—on Twitter, on TikTok, on Reddit (my preferred sandlot). And as we obsessed over every lyric, literary allusion, and video clip, Swift, our self-appointed “chairman” seemed to encourage us. Swift added a TTPD set to her Eras tour in Paris. Afterward, she posted a collection of photos to Instagram. The second photo of the post is Swift onstage, in a sparkling showman’s outfit, flashing two fingers.
Initial Tortured Poets and Sylvia Plath Connections
Swift has always been an incredible poet, but that’s not necessarily how the world saw hesees her. Swift is a pop star, specifically, Swift was a young girly pop star, most known for her tabloid romances and dramas, which she would (allegedly) write about in her music. Swift’s work has been labeled as “confessional” since her first album, which included songs she openly said were about boys at her high school. I offer this context (or, lore) to explain why I began seeing connections to TTPD in Sylvia Plath’s “confessional” work.
Of course, the theme of TTPD is tortured poets, so many avid literary Swifties have enjoyed seeking connections between Swift’s new songs and iconic poetry. No connections are overt, but some seem to be more likely than others. Namely, there’s been much discussion of Virginia Woolf thanks to the song “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?”(perhaps a riff on the Edward Albee play title). Other Swifties have found possible lyrical links to Mary Shelley and Charlotte Bronte. Swift herself references Patti Smith and Dylan Thomas in the album’s title track.
I remembered a third poet in relation to Smith and Thomas: Sylvia Plath, obviously an all timer of a tortured poet. I remember hearing an anecdote that she had been obsessed with Thomas and stalked him outside the Chelsea Hotel (also named in the TTPD title track). I did a quick skim of Plath’s Wikipedia to confirm and then started noticing many possible connections to TTPD and Plath’s life.
In the “Fortnight” music video, Swift acts out being institutionalized for insanity and getting electric shock treatment—two significant experiences in Plath’s life. Plath was also coupled with a deeply problematic man, Ted Hughes. Plath fell in love with Hughes for his artistic talent before he revealed himself to be an unsupportive parter, ultimately cheating on Plath with a younger woman. The narrative is not too dissimilar to the narrative about Swift’s alleged ex Matty Healy, as seemingly told in TTPD. (Of course, we don’t know the true subjects of Swift’s songs—if they’re even actually confessional—but some key hints point to Healy. Whether those hints provide actual context to Swift’s life or to the story Swift is telling of her life, one cannot know.) Finally, several of TTPD songs reference a latent desire for suicide (“I might as well die / it would make no difference” etc.). Okay, post-“finally,” these are stretches, but, I’ll note anyway: one of Plath’s most famous collections of poems is titled Ariel, but an alternate title was Daddy. There are connections to both words in TTPD via the song “But Daddy I Love Him.” The title is a line from the Disney movie The Little Mermaid (which features the main character Ariel, a mermaid, caught between two worlds). Extra clowning: some people (hi, I'm people) believe Swift’s 1989 costume for her first Paris concert was an allusion to Ariel: a pink crop top and a seafoam skirt.
As I dug into Plath's life, I couldn’t help but also see similarities to Swift's life. Both women were prolific writers from a very young age. Also, although possibly obscured through artistic license, both women were/are known to write about their own lives. (Plath was apparently encouraged by her professors Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton to write from her experience. I cannot help but tie in Swift’s “The Manuscript” lyric “the Professor said to write what you know.”) Both Plath and Swift expressed/express their depression via their writing, but if you only knew them from their public personas, you’d never guess the depths of their struggles. It seems both Plath and Swift lived/live double lives. Plath was actually fascinated by the concept of doubles. In fact, the concept of doubling was the topic of Plath’s college thesis paper “The Magic Mirror.”
The Magic Mirror and TTPD
Plath’s college paper is sadly not available to the general public. (It had a limited print run in, you guessed it, 1989.) But! I was able to read a few texts about the thesis, and the amount of possible TTPD references is astounding.
Since we can’t directly analyze Swift’s work via Plath’s directly, I’d like to share several key quotes from the most telling article I could find about the “The Magic Mirror”: “Sylvia Plath’s Magic Mirror” by Kelly Coyne (May 2018, The Los Angeles Review of Books). (To be noted, Coyne has also written about Swift, in her article “Growing Up In Taylor Swift’s America” in December 2023 on Literary Hub—a fabulous read!)
Early in her article, Coyne sets the scene for Plath's thesis:
“Her undergraduate thesis, which she wrote as a senior at Smith College...is titled “The Magic Mirror: A Study of the Double in Two of Dostoevsky’s Novels.” “The Magic Mirror” explores literary doubles made up of a character’s repressed traits, and, as the double grows in power, it heralds the protagonist’s death. Citing Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as well as Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Plath argued that the choice to create a double works to “reveal hitherto concealed character traits in a radical manner” and simultaneously exposes the driving conflicts of the novel housing that character. Her thesis claims that both Ivan, of The Brothers Karamazov, and Golyadkin, of The Double, have attempted to repress troubling aspects of their personalities, resulting in the double.”
Immediately, I imagine the two versions of Swift from the “Anti-Hero” music video. One Swift is real, true, sensible. The other is a pot-stirring, self-esteem destroying, alcoholic. During Eras, the huge Swift (monster on a hill) screams and stomps around in the background while the real, true Swift smiles and dances in a sparkle dress onstage. The fandom seems to be referring to these two Swifts as Taylor Swift and TAYLOR SWIFT (TM). Folks have theorized Post-Malone in the Fortnight music video is not necessarily a lover, but a twin, or double, of Swift. This theory is enhances by the Eras visuals during that song, specifically two dancers walking away to the back of the stage, but then becoming one.
More Coyne: “Plath, quoting Dostoyevsky in her thesis, noted that Ivan’s double, Smerdyakov, is “wrinkled” and “yellow.” The distinct differences in appearance between originator and double, she continued, are meant to reflect the protagonist’s mental state and cultural status.”
First of all, yellow. In the Gaylor community, folks have often theorized yellow symbolizes being closeted—a reading based on the symbolic coloring in the 1999 film …But I’m a Cheerleader. However, one need not be a Gaylor to consider the importance of yellow to Swift’s storytelling. Most recently, Swift performed “my tears ricochet” at Eras in a bright yellow dress, as her dancers were dressed for a funeral. Following Coyne’s analysis of Plath's analysis of Dostoyevsky, one could guess Swift is teasing a death of some version of herself.
Coyne discusses how Plath clearly used a “double” of herself to write The Bell Jar. Plath herself spent a summer in New York interning for Mademoiselle. The protagonist in TBJ, Esther, spends a summer in New York interning at a magazine too. To go even further down the rabbit hole, Esther also doubles herself, frequently expressing normalcy on the outside and despair on the inside. On the book's first page, Esther tells her audience, “I was supposed to be having the time of my life.” (Again, I cannot help but hear a Swift echo of, “I can read your mind / she’s having the time of her life” from “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” about smiling through her depression.) Coyne makes many more references to mirrors and concealing in The Bell Jar, Ether’s split (and sadness) gets worse and worse the more she hides who she is from others. Notably, at a low point, Esther hides under her mother’s bed. (And Swift sings of a post-heartbreak depression, “Afterwards she only ate kids' cereal / And couldn't sleep unless it was in her mother's bed.”)
Coyne writes about the “imprisoned” aspect of doubles: “The wound from which Esther tries, and fails, to hide chimes with the inescapable, colonizing double, and Plath’s language again illustrates its penal nature: it is inside Esther, but it traps her like a jail cell.” (Again, I cannot help but see references to “Fresh Out the Slammer”, “The Smaller Man Who Ever Lived,” and the TTPD Eras visuals of cages and cell lighting.)
Coyne, on Plath’s doubles’ names, something Swift has not ever used (or so we think): “From her conception of The Bell Jar all the way to its final revisions, Plath suffered an exhausting amount of anxiety over its heroine’s name.” Plath wrote to a friend, “‘I’ll have to publish it under a pseudonym, if I ever get it accepted, because it’s so chock full of real people I’d be sued to death’...Indeed, this wasn’t mere paranoia; she did have to change her protagonist’s name at the instruction of her editor for legal reasons.”
Coyne continues, “Most novelists likely have concerns about being associated with the characters to whom they give life, especially the ugly ones, and especially when the character resembles its author. Yet what is unique about Plath’s case is her knowledge of the theoretical underpinnings and implications of her choice to push Esther away, and the hold this knowledge assumed on Plath’s work and life. Another look at The Bell Jar with a consideration of Esther as Plath’s double tangles the issue even further, and Plath drops clues for this kind of reading throughout the novel. Esther, for example, sits down to write her own novel and recounts, “My heroine would be myself, only in disguise. She would be called Elaine. Elaine. I counted the letters on my fingers. There were six letters in Esther, too. It seemed a lucky thing.” Not coincidentally, Plath’s first name has six letters as well.” Again, Plath was in a bizarre double infinity loop (like the loop on the Eras stage in “Down Bad”?). Plath was concealing her double, the protagonist in her novel, who was concealing her double, the protagonist in her novel.
Coyne wraps up her findings: “In her thesis, written nearly a decade earlier, as she turned 22 — the year after her first documented suicide attempt — Plath claimed, quoting Otto Rank:
In such situations, where the Double symbolizes the evil or repressed elements in man’s nature, the apparition of the Double “becomes a persecution by it, the repressed material returns in the form of that which represses.” Man’s instinct to avoid or ignore the unpleasant aspects of his character turns into an active terror when he is faced by his Double, which resurrects those very parts of his personality which he sought to escape. The confrontation of the Double in these instances usually results in a duel which ends in insanity or death for the original hero.”
Coyne seems to argue Plath believed an artist's double has the power to become bigger than the artist herself, ultimately killing her. Is TTPD Swift's predetermination of, hopefully, her her double's death instead of her own?
In Conclusion: Plath to her Mentor, Dessner on Swift
Who knows what TTPD is really truly about, and who knows if we ever will.
The biggest Easter egg, hiding in plain sight, is that the album is titled THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. There’s no apostrophe after “poet.” Nor is there an apostrophe after the “s” in “poets.” The department does not belong to a poet or to a collection of poets. It is a department OF tortured poets, perhaps two, to be exact. …or perhaps the album indicates the departure of the tortured poet...and her double.
I’ll sign off with two final quotes from my research:
According to Coyne, three months before Plath died by suicide, she had written a mentor about her second (obviously unfinished) book. Plath wrote, “It is to be called “Doubletake”, meaning that the second look you take at something reveals a deeper, double meaning […] it is semi-autobiographical about a wife whose husband turns out to be a deserter and philanderer although she had thought he was wonderful & perfect.”
According to Aaron Dessner’s TTPD release Instagram post: ”Keep searching and you'll find some new detail, layer or sliver of meaning with each listen.”
SUBREDDIT PS! Shout out to Expensive_Succotash5 for noting the TTPD intro poem's reference to being out of the oven, could be an allusion to Plath's death. Also shout-out to Good-Amphibian-7993 for this connection to a photo of Plath with a rose, not unlike Swift's album rose art.

TL;DR: Can I avoid paying their "reposession notice fee" and also, does this rubbish institution have a leg to stand on here - jump to repossess a car for the second to last payment remaining on a loan?
Ah boy this is a total doozy! Half rant, half warning to anybody looking to borrow but also, ultimately, a question at the end of this.
I have a car loan with Geneva Finance - It's a four year loan and my first major loan, in terms of the both the amount taken out and the length it has run for.
The only thing I can appreciate at this stage is the lesson that has been learned from this: read the fine print and really study the terms of the contract (I'll blame my young naive self for forgoing this).
Through my dealings with this company, if you so much as miss 1 payment, the next day you're immediately receiving spam texts (the "cost" of which is added onto your loan balance). You will receive phone calls and be charged for these too - many of these calls do not even connect but rather ring for 5-8 seconds and then hang up... They will also get straight onto sending a letter to your door. This should give you a rough idea of the kind of institution they are.
Now unfortunately, I know this situation well because I've had late my share of late payments along the way - that said, often always sorted out within a week or two.
They will ask for you to make a "payment arrangement" which sounds like a gesture of good will, but really all it serves as is a "snooze button" to stop the phone calls and texts coming through - the "due date" of the arrangement is predetermined, all you are doing is either choosing their date or earlier... and putting their texts, calls and letters on "silent mode".
I have just two payments left on my loan - one in arrears, and the one coming up. In true Geneva fashion, they've decided to fire out a repossession notice.
I'm not worried or stressed about their theatrics as I know there's 15 todays until they supposedly take action, and within those 15 days I will have paid my loan off in full... What is currently owing includes a $25 fee for their garbage notice. My question is 1. Can I avoid paying this? and 2. Do they really have a leg to stand on here?
I ask whether or not they have a leg to stand on because I just think it is absolutely pathetic to send a notice on the final month of the car being paid off. I would almost wonder if Geneva Finance themselves are in arrears with somebody. I have borrowed from numerous other companies before, and on the (rare) occasion I've had an issue their teams have been excellent at resolving the issue. Geneva is a beautiful city, why this company hasn't more appropriately named themselves "South Auckland Finance" is beyond me.

I'm in Tech Support, and a user calls, saying they need help on the computer. For this user, it would be easier to just see their screen than try to decrypt their code. I ask for the computer name, which is printed on a white label on the laptop lid.
They hesitate. I remind them where the label is. They say they don't know. I remind them where the label is. They ask if I can find out from my end. I remind them how it's one second to close the lid a bit, it'd be a minute to look it up, and where the label is. They request that I find out from my end. I look up their computer, find the name, and ask if the computer name is correct. They say yes. I ask if that's the name on the label. They say yes. I wanted to ask why they felt like wasting my time that can never come back but I just try to fix the issue ASAP so I can hang up. Unprompted, they say that they didn't know if they were supposed to say the name. I guess somehow they didn't trust the number they called, the company Tech Support line.
I'd love to see quantum computing take a crack at decrypting whatever goes on in their brain cell into anything resembling rational thought. I guess next time I'll just say I'll call them back once I figure out the computer name.

I have about a dozen tooltips in my game, and they all work **except** for this new one that I am trying to add. When testing, the tooltip text just shows in plain text right next to the hook whether or not it is being hovered.
I've essentially just been copying/pasting the tooltip CSS each time I need to add a new one, so I'm unsure why it's not working this time. Perhaps the answer is right in front of me and my brain is too fried to see it. I wonder if it perhaps has something to do with the image in the hook? But then again if it was the image that is the problem, why is it that when I rename other existing hooks with tooltips to the name Totem (the name of the new hook I'm trying to add) that they mess up too like the new one? That seems to suggest that the error is only in the CSS for the new tooltip, which is bizarre since it was just copied/pasted from working tooltips.
Here is the Harlowe code:
Totem>[
(print:'')
Totem


Totem description
]
And the CSS:

tw-hook[name="Totem"] { position: relative; display: inline-block; /*border-bottom: 0.1em dotted black;*/ } tw-hook[name="Totem"] .tooltiptext { visibility: hidden; width: 6em; background-color: white; color: black; text-align: center; border-radius: 0.5em; padding: 0.25em 0; /* Position the tooltip */ position: absolute; z-index: 1; top: 1.4em; left: 50%; } tw-hook[name="Totem"]:hover .tooltiptext { visibility: visible; } 

-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-
Romuna Administrative Orbital Headquarters, United Confederation Occupied Territories of Earth (QUAL-ZANV)
May 8, 1945
-------------------------------------------------------------
Commander Dunajski
- - - - - -
We were the watchful eyes over Earth. That was my job. The only thing second to that was the search for the missing pieces of my life.
As usual, however, that work was hard. After all, the past two years had been the same process. I get my human subordinates to find a list of names from anywhere: concentration camps, labour camps, ghettos, and all of those rotten places. Then, they'd hand me a report with the unimportant names blacked out and only the specific names I needed were left uncrossed. I had spent two years doing that process, every day on this station was spent doing that. Finding those two was the main goal of my life; It's what let me wake up every morning. The hope of a reunion.
But, until I got my hands on another report, I was keeping myself busy with monitoring my subordinates on the Romnua Space Headquarters as we orbited over Southern Africa. Something to help me take my mind off of everything was admiring our native Earth from my post. The golden deserts of Namibia and the green rainforests of the Congo dominated the view from the huge glass wall that separated us from the cold vacuum of space. Although I’ve been on this damn station for two years now, the sights never cease to get a gasp of amazement from me.
The Confederation used this station and 16 others to monitor and keep tabs on anything happening on Earth. We were the keen observers that protected Earth from any foreign incursion.
A bit ironic coming from the people who invaded us.
At least the Germans didn’t fill us with such lies.
The only reason why they chose me to run this joint human-Confederation sector was because I was an unwilling favourite of their high command. I was one of the best remaining generals in Poland. I served in the Great War and the Polish-Soviet War as a lowly troop, but I was a respected general by the time of the German invasion in 1939.
I defended my country for as long as I could. I resisted for a long time after our official surrender. When the Nazis got to me, they carted me off to a labour camp. Then I escaped and continued the fight on the British Isles, being airdropped and ferried out on multiple occasions. Once the Confederation arrived, my fight against the Nazis and their brutal occupation ended, but I was left without the sunshine of my life.
“Here’s the registered civilian report, sir,” a Lithuanian lieutenant saluted as he handed me a manila folder with a printed paper that had a list of names typed onto it. Even though Lithuania and Poland weren’t the greatest of chums before the war, occupation by the Soviet and Nazi barbarians created a sense of tragic camaraderie between our people.
“Did you file out the names?” I asked calmly, flipping open the folder. I kept my ears open for the response as I waded my hands across pages of paper with smooth flips.
“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant replied as my eyes scanned the paper. The names were crossed out in black marker. I scanned it top-to-bottom and page after page. I began to lose hope even more, but then again, it’s not like there was much left of it anyway.
I had been searching for them for two long years. Two years of going against the rules of our hulky alien occupiers. I used their systems to find evidence and our tools to file them out into something comprehensible. I wouldn’t trust an “AI” to find the names I was looking for. The Germans kept well organised records of everything well-organised, so a good thorough search was probably the best thing I had. Still, however, it was an arduous process.
But, just as that thought appeared in my mind, it was my eyes that had fixed on the one name I had been anticipating for the last two years:
Katarzyna Kaminski. My love.
I must’ve jumped with joy. I’d done it! I found her! After what? Six long years of waiting and searching! Finally! First my wife, and then that would open the gate to finding my son too! After so long! I’d see them again! This day was something to be remembered forever!
“Oh, you did your job spectacularly!” I cheered to the lieutenant. However, his expression was more grim.
“Ne, pone,” he advised sombrely in Lithuanian, shaking his head. "The top of the page.”
I was so hooked in my search for any sign of my family that I forgot to even read the title of the page. Looking up, my eyes locked onto the print and read. In a moment, my hopes were stamped out and rage and suffering swallowed my heart like the deep blue ocean.
Registered List of All Prisoners Killed in Auschwitz Death Camp in the Year of Our Lord 1942
Everything went silent in an instant. I froze upright with my eyes glued to the paper. My ears began to ring like a shell had just hit nearby. My face bubbled red in embarrassment, rage, and most of all, misery. My legs felt just about ready to collapse inward and my hips were ready to explode outwards. My body pushed against itself, betraying my fundamental being as my eyes reread the name over and over, trying to make some worthless attempt to console my burning body of emission. None of it worked.
My Katarzyna. Gone. In one sentence. All my joy trampled in a second.
She died not even with a proper burial. She died leaving her son and not knowing if her fighting husband would even embrace her again. All of my searching, and the result was this. This.
It seems that the story of my search for my loved ones ended here. But upon reviewing the rest of the list in silence, I couldn’t find a single mention of a Jakub Dunajski. All my hope was gone to the extent that I held out no idea that Jakub survived the camps.
If his mother didn’t, then he didn’t either.
The final verdict of my search hit me like a train: I would never see my family again.
That depressing day I had to leave them in September of that fateful year was the last time I’d ever see my son and wife again. Our paths diverged with me toling in labour camps hoping to escape to find them once more. And while I was fighting onwards in England, they were shipped to Auschwitz to die. While I was toiling in captivity, they were being beaten and tortured daily. While the Confederation swept across Europe, they were gassed or gunned down in their cots.
After all this time, the thought that I had been suppressing for my entire search was now the dominant ruler of my brain. It was the fact that I had failed them.
I did not sob loudly, I did not scream. Nor did I stamp the floor or tear the page from the folder. I resisted them all. As I had for the past six years. The only response the Lithuanian got from me was a barely audible whimper and a tear.
The tear rolled from my eye down my shaved cheek, slowly dripping down and curving up to my chin in a swift motion. It hung there delicately as if it was absorbing all of my pain into it. Then, when the load became too much for it to bear, it fell. Quickly slipping off and dropping down before it slapped against the white page with a plop. A stain that looked like a crater in no man’s land now rested, ingrained into the paper that killed my hope.
The paper that essentially killed my wife.
Silence engulfed the room and ringing my ears as the words and black marker on the paper became no more than a blur, incomprehensible and unidentifiable. That’s what I wanted anyway, every glance at the page would just finalise the fact that it all was over. That I was alone.
“Legion-Commander Henix wants to see you,” an unforgiving feminine alien voice came from behind me. I jumped in response as my head flew back to meet the alien.
It was a Yetiayhu. And, as was apparently commonplace, they had the typical fangs and talons that all species other than us seemed to have, along with a giant tail that had a little ball of fur at the very end of it. Adding onto that, the Yetiayhu had large expansive cool-coloured frills that were interrupted by little blackish-blue dots here and there, like some Amazonian animal. Their bodies were slimmer than others but still pretty much buff tanks compared to me.
“For what purpose?” I replied with a brow raised in suspicion. My experience in the military and as a resistance head gave me a good tutorial on how to suppress the tears in one’s voice. After years upon years of endless trial and error, I had pretty much perfected it. But, in the case of my reddened eyes, I brought the brim of my military cap down to obscure my eyes.
“He didn’t tell me. Get moving,” the Yetiayhu hissed, her frills fluttering in annoyance.
I almost forgot that the aliens didn’t give a shit about any of our feelings. I’m sure showing too much emotion was an offence in the Confederation military. Could you imagine emotion being a punishable offence? What sort of dystopian fascist hellhole did that!?
Oh wait, I could think of one: Nazi Germany.
My eyes subtly fixed on the Yetiayhu with a bit of contempt that she came to me at my worst moment. I just found out that my wife was unceremoniously killed in a death camp, and she was just acting as pouty as a kid. Granted, she didn’t know of my suffering, but that attitude is deserving of a wrist-slap back on my world.
Too bad for me, the world I’m referring to was no longer even ours anymore.
“You better show some respect,” I huffed, containing my emotions in a little capsule of misery.
“Last time I checked, you were still a transpec,” she scoffed. “Get to his office. Now.”
I couldn’t say no. The first was because she was right about our species’ standing as a “Transitional Species”. But the other reason was because the females of these species were huge. It made sense since their system of governance was a matriarchy. But even then, this bitchy Yetiayhu was a good 2.3 metres tall, towering over me by quite a bit.
Why the hell were these species so damn demonic? Did nature really just shit on us for all of evolution? Every single alien species I had ever seen was some sort of superhuman being. Was there some galactic hierarchy that I didn’t know of? But whatever, there was nothing I could ever do about that fact. The most concerning thing on my platter now was finding the fate of my only child. Whatever Henix had would have to come second.
But either way, I obliged. Leaving my little command sector with a scowl. The doors hissed shut behind me and I turned to my left and began my journey. To prevent an emotional disaster, I tried to ease my haywire senses by inspecting the futuristic facility around me.
Around me was a circular walkway that wrapped around the edge of the station as the outer rim wrapped around the core. Now that I think about it, the station resembled more like a solar system than the bullseye some of the Hungarians compared it to. There was a huge spherical central command at the core of the structure, and then there were the rims. Those were essentially shorter tube structures that wrapped around the centre. Like an orbit.
But these “orbits” weren’t separated by any spaces at all and were all bunched together and connected. The only open space in this station was between the centre and the outer sectors, which was only punctuated by multiple pressurised walkways. The other sectors and posts were in a concentric batch of circular structures around the core. Where I was going, was into the core.
I strolled along the outskirt walkway before taking a right turn into the deeper sections of the station. The view changed from a large window of space to machines and tech beyond my comprehension as I made my way into the inner sectors. The closer it was to the core, the more important it was. These areas were exclusively for the Confederation members, so no human without permission or clearance could enter. But apparently, they were okay when I was there. Many of them gave parting glances before getting back to their work on their “holograms” and “holopads”.
That was something to note, the tech difference between our two civilisations was greater than we could even conceived of, following the Armistice. I watched as humanity went from pigeons and telegraphs to radios and enigma. Now these aliens had “networks” and “internets”. All the new tech was annoying and complex, I never knew what to do. That’s why my sector, the only sector with humans, used telegraphs, enigma, morse, paper, ink, pen, typewriters, and everything else that you would find in an earthly workplace.
I went through a workplace that was basically a science fiction book. It had bright white individual work pods, big glowing blue screens that weren’t even tangible, and so many other things that were too much for me to comprehend. This was stuff only a writer could come up with! Even if we had all of the guns, tanks, and planes our planet’s resources would’ve let us make, it still wouldn’t have even come close to the weapons of the Confederation and their sophistication.
After a long stroll through the labyrinth of connected stations and workplaces, I finally reached the connecting walkways. I entered a little middle chamber that hissed a little gas onto me and ran over me with a blue and red laser. The other doors then opened and I was let through into the lightless walkway.
Once again, only space shined through the top glass dome that ran across the whole upper section of the walkway. But even if I wanted to, I couldn’t even gaze at the stars due to the circumference of the spherical central command blocking half my vision. The outside cover of the sphere was white and hexagon padded, which just added to the already humongous gap between humanity and our Confederation conquerors.
But, even if I looked beyond that when no structures were blocking my view, I could see at least a hundred or more blocky slabs of black and grey.
And there it was, the Confederation Occupational Fleet. It was so menacing with all of their Vatican-sized ships. Except, those ships were only frigates. Their fleet had cruisers, frigates, destroyers, battleships, battle cruisers, carriers, supercarriers, and everything in between. All to monitor our little desolate rock of two billion.
Their supercarriers which were probably the size of Rome, were the prides of the enemy fleet. Those bulky beasts and their battleships were the literal symbols of their superiority. All of these ships had enough firepower to raze a good million or so Earths. Why they sent all of this to deal with a species that hadn’t done anything past grazing space with a V-2 rocket was beyond me.
Overkill, My mind ranted to itself. Ego just radiates off those ships like heat from the sun!
Speaking of the sun, in a good few months, there wouldn’t even be one.
Or, to be more specific, it would be pretty much enclosed in a megastructure to harness power from it. The Confederation called their mad project a “Hrana Complex”. Construction began even before they attacked Earth, and they were making progress. Whenever a human complained about it, the Confederation ilk always shot them down with either a patronisation of their primitive nature or a response that there would be a small window for Earth to receive light; As if that was better.
The sun was dimmer and dimmer by the day, the one light that all humans looked up to was fading. Blocked out by tech and machines from the occupying powers. That’s like if the Germans built a big space shield to block America from the sun and kill all of their crops or something.
The idea was so alien that not even I could come up with a relatable explanation for it!
After a long while of distracting myself with successful results, I finally reached the other side of the walkway, which was a large metal door. I now had to push the heavy metal door open with difficulty as it slowly hissed open. Upon entering, I was greeted by two Bwkas, who were basically supersized humanoid bears, but with deadly attributes tripled in their power and appearance. Of course, I was met with the average stare of contempt as I made my way up to them.
“And why are you here?” one of them growled with venom as it balanced its heavy rifle in its claws. Those “rifles” were the size of an anti-tank rifle or an Ami bazooka. The difference was that it was also automatic and powered by plasma. Just by seeing that, anyone could’ve already predicted it to you that humanity was doomed from the start of the war.
“Legion-Commander Henix wanted to speak with me?” I replied with a head tilt.
“Up the stairs and down the left hall to the right,” the other grumbled with a snarl of its fangs. He was talking as if I didn’t know where my own senior officer was.
I rolled my eyes secretly and trudged on. Scurrying off into the main lobby, I gazed up to see that the vertex of the roof was an absolutely stupendous 40 metres high! That just added a cavernous feeling to the multi-floored white chamber. It was a whole office building in space.
Not many of those were left in Warsaw anyway.
As I made my way toward the circulating stairwell, my gaze snapped to the circular stellar map that projected a huge three-dimensional view of the galaxy. I couldn’t help but be mesmerised by the glowing non-touchable lights every time I saw it. The map was of the whole known galaxy, the dark pink was the Confederation at the centre. It was huge, at least triple the size of the second largest power, whose name was in an alien tongue unknown to me. All the other colours were of the different species that were independent states and empires of their own.
Free from the forced “civilising” we were suffering through.
Annoyingly, my long black military boots slapped against the clean granite floor with loud audible clacks. This, of course, instantly drew attention from all the beasts around me. All of them looked at me with confusion before it morphed into what I assumed was judgment. These species didn’t think highly of us at all. I mean, according to them, we were uncivilised brutes. Dumb primates that just invented new ways of chucking rocks at one another.
Now, that wasn’t wrong per se. But, it wasn’t nice when that was their one sole opinion of our species.
From the beginning of my tenure here, they practically spat on me. They saw my use of our antiquated tech to be insubordination, and savage in nature. Whenever I did my Polish two-fingered salute, they saw it as disrespect and dishonour. Whenever I didn’t eat the same solely raw and carnivorous diet as them, I was a disgusting omnivore who was a greedy bastard wanting to steal from both sides.
Whatever that meant! Imagine being persecuted because of what you ate! On Earth, we were prosecuting each other over other stupid things like skin, race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, how people looked, and everything else similar.
But!
Nobody was stupid enough to get mad at each other over food. Muslims didn’t kill Christians over eating pork. Jews didn’t kill Muslims over them eating dairy and meat on the same plate. Food was food. We all needed it to survive. Yet, the aliens saw it as just another thing to hate us for.
How could these things hate us but somehow still force themselves to occupy us? Why didn’t they just let us duke it out in the battlefields and on the high seas? Why were they just lamer Nazis? Death by slow assimilation and bigotry was worse than death by starvation, labour, or the firing squad.
Making my way up some circulating steps to the second floor, I took the turn and rushed down the hall before finding the door to Henix’s room. Pushing it open with a low drum, I was met with the dark room of Legion-Commander Henix. The only thing lighting the room was, of course, empty space. Since we were higher than the orbiting sectors, his window was actually able to see into the rest of outer space.
The dimming sun reflected off of the station’s concentric exterior and the stars shined bright through thick glass and into the little dark room. The floor was akin to an emerald-coloured rug and the walls were shelves for storage devices like their “pads” and “drives”.
“Greetings, sir,” I opened to the Kohaul with a two-fingered Polish salute.
The Kohaul were the typical humanoids, but they were practically copies of wolves. Light grey fur, a huge bushy tail, and a patch of dense hair around the pelvis area that acted as a sort of frontal tail. Hazel or blue eyes. And, obviously better than us in every way as usual with fangs, semi-venomous saliva, better hearing with their dog ears, the ability to run faster, especially on all fours, and all of that useless garbage that I was used to. Humanity was clearly always the weak link.
Ending my salute and looking to the right, it was then that I noticed at least three other foreign beasts. I quickly recognised them as superiors of different stations and fleets. Why they were here just added to my paranoia.
A Wenli, a Felshan, and a Geinna. Or the more simplified version being: a humanoid dragon, a blue lizard, and a literal Pacific folk beast.
If you were to continue simplifying it even more, you’d come to the definition that they were the three species assigned to resistance mop-up duty on Earth.
“Now, now,” Henix growled. “What is the way I taught you?”
Sighing deeply, I put my Polish general cap to my chest with my left hand before bowing slightly. They wanted us to purge all of the things that made us Polish soldiers and make us their soldiers. I wasn’t going to give up so easily. No matter how much they held me in high regard. They would have to acknowledge that Poland was for the Poles and I would never be anything else.
“Now, I know you are a good commander. You have served us well,” Henix began with a flick from his dog ear. “But, something has come up in recent days that has been of horrible concern to us.”
“And that is?” I asked with a raised brow, sitting at the open chair in front of Henix with a grunt.
“Wasting Confederation equipment and materials on something unsanctioned by any relevant superior on this station,” the Geinna replied for Henix with a hiss.
Oh, kurwa.
They had caught me red-handed. Was today just the day my luck ran dry from its coffers? I was now completely at their mercy. But, these aliens were brutes. So, I was sure that I’d be beheaded within the next hour.
I had tried my best to scrub all evidence of my operations. I put in false reports and fake alerts to give them the facade of me just doing my job. It appears that they saw through my ulterior actions quickly. I was using their tech to do it. Why did I not expect them to know!?
“Now, unless you would be so kind as to tell me why, maybe I’ll pardon your charges,” Henix warned with a composure that put me off.
“Charges of what?” I asked fearfully.
“Well, normally, that would just be a reprimand or demotion at the worst. But since you are a species that we are trying to integrate into the galactic community . . . the punishment is equivalent to treason.”
Henix must’ve seen my face go pallid as his expression softened from robotic seriousness to empathy in a moment. I didn’t despise Henix at all, and this was the exact reason why.
He could feel empathy.
Unlike most Germans.
And he showed reason.
Unlike most Germans.
“Oh, no, don’t worry,” he reassured me with a sombre grin. “I personally do not wish for that fate to befall you. You have served me well. I’ll defend you. But I can’t do that if you won’t even tell me why.”
I would’ve, but I couldn’t. I trusted Henix. Sure, he was as bigoted and cold as his shitty peers. But, I could trust in his word. He wasn’t a crook. But for his comrades present? For all I knew, this was a death trap to get me to confess and to justify a sudden execution. It's not like they would've cared much if I lived or died anyway. I was expendable.
“I know nothing of this,” I affirmed, straightening myself in the slick white chair. Since I was practically a master of all things cold and emotionless, I could just put off a face of resolute honesty without any weaknesses, barring the death of Katarzyna. They’d have to fuck off eventually for that reason, and I’d be more careful with my further searches.
But then again, Katarzyna was dead, and Jakub probably was too. There was nothing else to really risk my life for. Because I had no more life. The two I loved most were gone. I could’ve just let myself die here. I had nothing else. My parents were dead, my home was rubble, my country was occupied, my wife was dead too, and my son was too. I had nothing left to fight for.
“You are the only human in this position of power,” Henix hummed. “We chose you for a reason. You had talent and composure. But this we cannot tolerate. Don’t play coy and tell us.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I huffed with concern mounting in me and gnawing on my soul. “I do not know why you seem to want to frame me for such a crime.”
“Commander Dunajski,” the Felsha snarled. “We’re not stupid. Do not try and lie to us.”
“I am not lying,” I turned to the row of beasts with a scowl. “Whatever could I even use the equipment for? My subordinates only use human machines. Typewriters. Not ‘holographic display devices’ or any of that fancy tech. Why would I even?”
“Commander Duna—”
“No,” I cut off in a calm but harsh tone, “this will not continue.”
Henix looked between the beasts and then he zeroed in on me with his steely blue eyes that rivalled mine, “I know you’re lying, Commander. This will simply mount your charges.”
“In fact,” the Felshan admiral began with a sad smirk, “you could be helping resistance movements for all we know. That level of treason is something very few get and it’s for a good reason. Does that sound like something you’d want?”
“I didn’t do any of the deeds of which I am accused,” I held my ground with a growl. “I have nothing to gain!”
“Do you not?” Henix growled, now agitated. “I’ve noticed a lot of care in searching for a ‘Katarzyna’ and ‘Jakub’. Is there any reason why?”
The Geinna nodded, “Are these contacts or aliases? You know well what fate awaits you if we prove their origin to be that of a resistance cell.”
Oh, Bog. I was really stuck now. They knew their names too. I couldn’t just shrug this off. If I continued parrying their questions, I’d totally get beheaded. They wanted us to be as meek and docile as possible. Me standing up to their accusations instead of folding probably already probably fucked up my chances of clemency.
I looked up to Henix, and his blue eyes were unforgiving. He was waiting for my next move, like a brutal game of chess. I turned to look at the three bastards to my right, their eyes were filled with scorn and disgust at me, at my people.
Just like the Germans.
“I-I . . . I don’t . . . They aren’t . . . ” I began before letting out a deep sigh to empty my tight lungs. Silence enveloped the room for a good few seconds. I couldn’t fight on anymore. I’d lost. “You win.”
“As expected,” the Wenli grumbled. “I expected better of someone like you. But I guess the nature of such a volatile and insubordinate species like you would always dominate your actions.”
I didn’t mind that blatant patronisation of me and my kind as I just looked up at Henix with decimated dreams. Henix seemed to note that I wished to talk as he leaned and sat up straight in his chair. He’d listen. But not his ilk.
“Do you have a testimony, Commander Dunajski?” Henix purred with his head leaned in on his arm.
“Well,” I began with a wince, “i-it’s for a selfish reason to be fair.”
“Mhm,” Henix replied, pulling out one of his hologram pads to write down my testimony. Even if I trusted him, as of now, I couldn’t even trust him with writing my own testimony. For all I knew, he’d probably just warp it into something reminiscent of a last-second attempt at deception or just plain begging.
Then again, he was my best chance to prevent my fate from manifesting.
“I-I-I . . .” I stuttered, not finding the words to express my suffering. My throat burned and my eyes filled with tears. My face of composure was just as fragile as my mental health. All I knew was going to shit.
“You what?” Henix snarled. “I’m not here to take stutters as a testimony. Give me a comprehensible sentence or I can call the guards in to take you to the brigs.”
“I j-just want to find my family,” I blurted blindly. Clamping my eyes shut, I waited for my reasoning to be torn apart by the monsters before me. The monsters that were killing our homes and assimilating us.
Just like the . . . Oh, you know who!
After a little while of uncomfortable silence, I reopened my eyes and looked up at my prosecutors. Henix’s ears perched up in surprise at the confession, and I heard the slaps of tails and the rustle of scales from my side. I expected that to be an even greater reason to punish me. Using their tech just to find my family? Treason it was. I couldn’t even pull myself back together when a few tears rolled down my cheek as I looked to the floor once more in shame.
I fought and worked for Jakub and Katarzyna. Now both were gone. And even if Jakub was still alive, he would be without a father too in this new world. Nothing was happy about this unceremonious end. My story was over, and so were the stories of my family, friends, and parents.
“F-family?” Henix finally hummed with a hint of shock. He then attempted to hide it with his monotone voice. I slowly and quietly sobbed to myself, cursing my weakness. “Tell me more.”
The other beasts in the room shuffled their feet and locked their gazes on me with a bit of anticipation. I was a bit confused by the reaction. How was saying they were my loved ones a game-changer? But, I didn’t pay much attention anyway, my mind was filled to the brim with the stone-cold fact that had haunted me since the beginning of my searches:
I was now alone.
“Wife and son. I-I don’t know where they are. I was searching for them both. Using your systems, I . . . before you summoned me here, I got a report. In it, Katarzyna, my wife of twenty-two years, is dead. My son . . .” I gave a miserable chuckle, “only God Almighty knows where he is now.”
I should have never cried. I should have never shown emotion, especially on this damn station. Emotional control was the most important here. These beasts were very organised and very honour-driven. Crying itself was probably considered treason. At this point, it was just another thing to add on to my list of present offences.
Everything was collapsing in front of me in quick succession.
Instead of scolding me though, Henix just looked at me and watched me fail at controlling my sobs. It gave me an odd feeling that he was just tacitly judging me rather than chastising me verbally. The other beasts were the same, simply wagging their tails in thought or tilting their heads. It unnerved me a bit, but I was too busy internally cursing myself to care about it.
After what felt like my whole tour in Bolshevik Russia, Henix gave a low growl and a wag of his bushy back tail with the words of his sentencing response pushing against his fangs. The fate waiting for me was only a second away, and with that one growl, I’d be done for. What a fool I was to trust any of these pigs!
“I’m sorry about your predicament,” he spoke slowly. “When we saw the crimes of your ‘Nazis’ it became one of the major reasons why we intervened on this damn planet in the first place.”
What a lie. My brain cackled nonchalantly. They’re doing the same things as the Nazis; Although this time, it was all of us who were suffering from it.
Rolling my eyes, I saw through the bullshit. They were no different.
Scraping at his slick and futuristic desk in ponderous thinking, Henix refocused his pristine and steely blue eyes on me, “What you did was unprofessional and highly dishonourable. Anyone who did such an offence would’ve been discharged or demoted with the snap of a maw.
He shook his head in another short pause as he formulated his next response. I hated the silence, I just wanted a “yes” or a “no” if I was to be shot or not. The aliens had a knack to be blunt, but also verbose. It didn’t make sense, but that’s how they worked. And boy did I hate it!
“But, I cannot even attempt to grasp the gravity of the situation you are dealing with,” he began again, snapping me from my thoughts.
I scowled with agitation and furrowed my brows, “Am I still being shot?”
“No,” the other Wenli interrupted with a sigh and a lick of his fangs. “But, we aren’t leaving you here either.”
My mind went berserk As if that was better! Leaving me alive at this point was punishment enough! Without this station, I’d have to scan all of Europe manually. It’d take the rest of my whole pathetic life to cover even half of Poland! Damn these beasts and damn their posturing!
“Well,” Henix thought, “I have an idea. Akvu?”
The Felsha stepped up from the group of beasts and bowed slightly, “Yes?”
“How about we send Commander Dunajski to be a part of the clearance teams?”
The Felsha slapped its tail against the floor in disdain, “Isn’t he under suspicion of connections?”
“I never saw it in him,” Henix replied. “He was hiding something? Yes. But I never expected resistance affiliations. He isn’t that type of soldier. Besides, I used the accusation to crack him, not actually charge him.”
“W-what is my punishment?” I interrupted with mounting impatience as I tapped my jackboot in annoyance. Talking about how they broke me wasn’t what I wanted to hear at the moment. What was important was my quest for my old life. I wanted my wife back, my son, my home, my country.
“So, the idea is,” Henix began with his hands raised in illustrative explanation, “we send you to Earth to root out the resistance pockets. Some random places like Roosiya, Anghipt, Brazza, Mixka, Cooba, and much more. But! There is also an ongoing search for a resistance network in Eirope.”
“Where?” I shot back with rejuvenated hope.
“Central Eirope,” Henix hummed with a grin. “Former human nations like Polna, Cjermaña, Nodorla, Belja, and Cnzecka.”
It took me a good second to decipher those names. What a mess of pronunciation for all of them they were. Since they were busy trying to wipe our uniqueness from us, the aliens had their own names for our old nations, just the same as how they put my Poland in an occupation zone called “Foije”. A stupid name. Now, they were just coming up with mispronounced names for the defunct nations of old Earth.
I absolutely loathed the name “Polna” because “Polska” was better in every way. But they were our conquerors, and they were the bastards who just sentenced me to scouring Europe for my own kind.
“Who’s under my command?” I sighed.
“Oh, just two dozen of every species in the Confederation,” Henix smiled.
“288? That’s kind of small,” I chuckled. “My all-Pole regiment in Britain was at least 1,000 strong.”
“You really think there’s only a dozen species in the Confederation?” Henix snickered. “No, there’s a good seventy. You really thought we sent all of our power across the galaxy to fight some small plucky band of primates? How adorable.”
That ticked me off, but since I didn’t want to bite the hand that spared me from a beheading, I kept my mouth zipped tight. My composure returned and I wiped the tears off with my sleeve as Henix talked with his other peers in their garbled choking that they called a “language”. My goals had shifted from not crying to not snickering as they conversed in the throat cancer they revered as an actual tongue to be spoken by someone.
“For now, you are dismissed,” Henix sighed. “I hereby remove you from your post. You will report to the bays for a debrief.”
“Can I bring my personal belongings?”
“No,” he replied coldly.
“Why?”
Henix squinted his eyes in anger, “Get there and don’t ask any more questions. You are still a disgraced officer and you will not be shown any more mercy from us.”
How reassuring, I scoffed to myself once more. These aliens were as blunt as wood! They might rival my old camp Oberkommando. Hell, they might as well be him!
Sighing, I pressed my hands against the smooth chair and shakily brought myself up again. With another stupid bow, I left while trembling in every limb. I was in a precarious position now. Anything that went wrong under my command, I would take the hit.
But, if it still gave me a chance to at least try and piece my old life back together;
Then I’d throw myself into it with an intrepid Polish spirit.
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Basically that , I am in my 20s physically attractive for most people apparently not that it matters much in the grand scheme of things , I have a nice job nice life overall , friends I love a lot but it’s just how it is to me, it’s my reality.
No one that knows me might imagine that I am feeling most of the time hell most of them don’t have the slightest clue of how real and consuming it is. I’ve had partners before but it’s just him who is more in my heart than anybody else , it sounds unhinged and insane and believe me I questioned my sanity enough I literally went to therapy just to make sure I was not going insane. But turns out I am normal just somehow in love with someone who is impossible in every single way. I feel bad for his wife constantly poor woman there is no comparison and I don’t even want to imagine the torture she goes through if this is my pain I can’t imagine hers.
The hardest part of my grief is that I know it’s something that is not understandable for most people more if it comes from an adult who has Apparently to everyone else all figured out and had good partners in the past who ( spoiler alert… I never loved as much as him , yes I loved them yes they have a special part In my heart but it’s just not like him ) Fancy dinners , nice guys taking me out , it should do something for me but it doesn’t , I developed a certain apathy for certain things just because I know no matter what I can’t bring him back and will never hold his hand in a sunny afternoon or I’ll never tell Him how much he changed my life with his work , it’s been years now years of long hidden grief.
It feels like wearing a full body costume to everyday life look at me I am the totally ok and totally not pained young woman I am expected to be , then I arrive home and sob over his picture I printed to put on my nightstand rinse and repeat. I do find pleasure on things but I know I have this constant grief that doesn’t goes away it just adapts and changes with time.
I might no longer cry for an hour as the immediate time after he passed but I get choked up if I see his name mentioned and how lovely he was , I might not spend my night imagining us being together but I add him to my prayers every night before I sleep and a tear drops in my face with the cruel reminder he is in fact not here. It is like when you first learn to drive and you are hyper aware of everything and you are afraid to put on the radio to not distract yourself and with time you just do it in autopilot you just know , and you have the radio and you even sing , it is the same. It doesn’t means is less painful it just transformed but it doesn’t makes it any easier.
I wonder when life will start to feel less wounded , less static , less flavorless. I am not pessimistic , I want things to get better eventually I know they probably will and I hope that wherever he is Ill make him proud.

Ive noticed alot of new faces here, and Ive seen alot of "what ______ do I need to buy" posts. Let me start by this is not a flame on yall, but rather a resource! I wanted to compile a decent get started/how to thread for all yall. What I want to do is go over as many parts as possible, their function, and effectiveness. This should probably be a video, but I feel like it would be more useful to yall in written form. :) If you have questions about specific parts, just scroll to what you need. This post will be very long, but hopefully helpful. No comments in this post are meant to bash any brands, so please do not get offended if you have a different mindset than me. Please keep in mind: This is a hobby that you will need to do research on, and struggle through trial and error. Everyone has a different aim in this hobby between looks and performance. They also have a different driving style. Google is your friend, as is the search function in this sub. If you cannot find what you are looking for please speak up, one of the established members of this sub can point you in the right direction. As you tinker, you will learn, and thus your skill and understanding will increase.
For background. Im a performance guy with these things. I do not care if its pretty; I want to climb a wall. I compete roughly 18 times a year. The summer series has about 40 competitors per comp on average and the winter series is about 25 per. Everything I will talk about is a culmination of all that I have learned between my own driving and tinkering, watching and filming other competitors, and knowledge from some top parts producers and awesome content creators that are in my local RCMCCA chapter.
Let me also say that I have no brand affiliation. I have my own RC brand, and I am working to a release, but that will be a different post. I also have various levels of acceptance of brands, owners, and their ethics, but that will not be discussed here... That is not to say that there are not tiers of quality in this hobby. Stock is stock, boutique level brands that sell on their websites are the top, and amazon brands fall somewhere in the middle with varying degrees of effectiveness.
Chassis: This is the basis of your build. It affects virtually every other part and its effectiveness. That being said, short of tires, it is the single most important part on your build. It is also the most ignored part of a rig. I cannot stress enough, upgrading every part on your truck but this will look cool, but it will take away from performance improvement that each one of those fly parts are supposed to provide. Upgrading this should be so high on your list that you did it yesterday. There are some great frame sets out there, and you will not find them on Amazon.
Skid plate: This connects your frame, mototrans unit, and links. Alot of aftermarket frame rails come with them, or those companies have it as an option. Whatever skid you buy, just buy a flat skid. The traditional ones that drop low does provide a lower center of gravity, but it isnt worth hanging up on every obstacle you touch. If you arent sure what to buy, the OGRC flat skid is there as an affordable option that you will never complain about.
Transmission: Translates your motor power into go power, but also holds your motor to the whole truck. The stock unit is fine till you blow out a plastic gear or strip a screw hole. When this happens, get a metal unit. Most all of them are all the same, but a few companies make unique ones like hardpark and LGRP. These units are both great and proprietary, but pricy. There is also one with a built in overdrive (overdrive makes the front tires spin faster than the rear tires, effectively pulling you over an obstacle and mitigating the rigs attempts at flopping backwards). You want the metal gears. For the spur gear, you have to decide what pitch to run. More on that in the next section.
Spur gear pitch: there are two pitches. Mod .3 and Mod .5. Mod .3 is the same as stock, but .5 has less teeth and they are larger. Pay attention to buying motors because they come with one or the other. Neither is better, just a preference.
Brushed Motor: This is a can of worms. For brushed motors, they are a dime a dozen as long as you exclude 2 companies (injora and Mofo RC). The stock size is 030. The correct size is 050. If you are looking outside of the aforementioned companies, you probably will not tell a difference between motors. Injora makes some very hard to kill motors, though they do not have the quality nor power of mofo (they ARE cheaper if cost matters). The two injora motors are the red and purple, and people who have an opinion between the two will die on that hill. If power and quality is what you are after though, buy Mofo motors. They use a proprietary magnet set as well as winding. There is nothing like them. They are plug and play on stock electronics, but in most instances you need to swap the motor mount plate because the holes on the motors are inversed from stock. Where ever you buy motors you can find a plate.
Brushed ESC (electronic speed controllers): This listens to the reciever for input (in stock form the reciever is part of the ESC) and doles out tasks to the servos and motors. V1 is black with an axial logo. It can act as a reciever when you go brushless if you dont want to spend the extra 50 dollars for a proper reciever and controller. V2 (blue) and V3 (spectrum) cannot do this. It is widely accepted as versions progressed, quality decreased. A great replacement option is the Injora MB100. You will have to provide a new receiver and transmitter, but its worth it.
Brushless ESC: If you go to a brushless motor, you will need a new speed controller. The new ESC will also require a new reciever and transmitter. It is almost the cost of a new stock rig to go brushless, so if you arent willing to make that jump do not consider it. Quality brushed setups are amazingly underrated anyway. Furitek is the big name, and they are fine. Better out there is Dinky, Mofo and others.
Brushless Motor: Once again, brushless motor conversions are about the cost of a new stock rig because of the additional ESC, motor mount, reciever, and transmitter required. If you arent ready for that cost, please see the above 3 sections as there are some highly underrated brushed setups. The best motors out there are provided by Furitek, LGRP, and Mofo RC. If you are questioning which one to buy, do yourself a favor and buy a mount from the same brand you select for the motor. I say this because there are differences in mounting screw size, patterns, and pitch between all these brands, as well as intra brand based on motor selection. The two benefits is low throttle modulation (slow crawl) and pure power.
Links: Links connect your axles to your skid plate. "high clearance" links are a cheap on amazon and ali express and good enough. If you see custom built links from a company that you are buying a frame from, those links will cost a firstborn... and they are worth every penny. They are typically hand bent allthread with plastic link ends, and covered by plastic or metal. If you are confused at the type of links I am talking about, go look up RC Steve. If you have a Dremel, I recommend buying M2 all thread, SCX 24 link ends, and cheap calipers online. Building links seems very daunting to anyone who hasnt done it. It is actually easy, just time consuming. Keep in mind you need to match your link length with your drive shafts, but drive shafts are cheap. To keep it simple, the best performing link geometry for the 133.5mm wheelbase is Deadbolt, but two very popular competition link geometries are C10 up front with Deadbolt rear links and Deadbolt front links with Gladiator rear links. This brings the wheelbase to about 145mm. Gladiator geometry is about 155mm.
Drive Shafts: Metal is nice. Plastic stock is better. Use the stock cheap drive shafts as your built in weak point. Everything else in the drive train is much pricer to fix.
Shocks: I apologize ahead of time, because this will be hard for alot of people to hear: longer shocks do not equate to better shocks. With the exception of my rear shocks on my Echo v2, all my socks are stock length because that length is excellent. You only need 2-2.5 tires of flex. More is great for your scale SEMA build, but they will often hinder performance. Oil filled shocks also fix alot of problems that the friction shocks cause, but stock shocks are amazingly good performers. The best shock on the market are the Proline Big Bore Scaler 39mm (and the 50mm in highly specific application) but they cost a kidney.
Axles: There is nothing wrong with your stock axles (as long as you modify them). The steering sucks and the half shafts inside are very weak. There are half shafts on amazon you can buy that look like a drive shaft ujoint where the hubs turn. Buy those, and cut around the axle housing cups at each end to increase turn radius. Yes cutting is scary, and if you dont pay attention you will ruin your housing. If you do it, you will be very happy you did. Stock steering is about 24 degrees, and with this mod you can almost double that. As far as aftermarket, there are 5 SCX 24 specific axles of note: LGRP Super 8, Meus Isokenetic, Mofo x15, Hardpark, and Injora +4. They each have major advantages and drawbacks but all are of similar quality with the exception of Injora. Meus and Mofo are g2g out of the box. Super 8 and Injora need better ujoint style half shafts and shaving, then they are good. You can find the improved half shafts on Exos website as well as Dlux Fab. I have no opinion of hardpark, though a guy in our group was integral in their final design. He likes them.
Overdrive: Stock the front axle drives the same speed as the rear axle. Tons of people make gears to speed up the front axle or slow down the rear, and they all seem to be similar in quality. there is a 15%, 24%, and 33% overdrive option, as well as a underdrive for the rear. Most people run 24%. It is a great goldilocks option. I run 33% in my high end class 3 that only sees crawling in comps.
Knuckles: Most of these knuckles are all the same, with exception of a few. Namely Hardpark LowBlows, Samix, and the three piece axial units. If you arent getting one of these three, just get the cheapest option that you like the looks of. There are a few brands out there that are "off brand" and heavier than most but quality is spotty. With the nicer brands I mentioned they all have options and option parts to increase and decrease weight.
Wheels: All personal preference when it comes to looks. The main performance difference is size and offset. Standard is 1.0, those bicycle tire looking ones are 1.8s and the in between that work for classes 2 and 3 in RCMCCA rules are 1.3. Most are an absolute pain in the ass to assemble, and the cheaper they are, the higher likelyhood of having 83 screws per wheel to install. Notably easy to assemble units are from LGRP and Prophet designs.
Tires: The best two tire brands out there are Jconcepts and RC4WD (not to be mistaken for RCAWD)... fight me. Both have superior compounds and great tread designs. Little Guy Racing Parts makes a good and affordable tire, but the hype is in the marketing. Injora makes good tire and many are great knock offs of other brands. With every brand, do your research on compound scales before buying. Keep in mind that the general consensus is moving to a +65mm tire, but often that larger tire lessens your ability to crawl for two reasons. It is from a company that doesnt have the best rubber compound and for every mm you increase tire size, you increase center of gravity by half that. The largest tire I run is only a 63 and the smallest tire is a 52.
Servo Tray: There are dozens of options out there, but excluding specialty parts like a battery on axle servo tray, there are 3 of note. Aluminum trays, brass trays, and adjustable trays. Brass servo mounts are good but I dont like how high the weight is. The best brands for a servo tray are NSDRC and Mofo. NSDRC trays are non adjustable but Mofo trays are. Injora also makes a clone of the mofo tray as does ramp crab. Both of these are on amazon.
Servos: the stock servo will fail (just like the stock motor) quickly. Aftermarket Servos can be broken up into 4 categories (plastic cheap, metal budget, metal quality, and NSDRC). Cross reference the voltage that your esc can run the servo at to ensure compatibility. If you are running a higher voltage than that servo is rated far, you will destroy it. Emax is the go to plastic brand. Set your endpoints on the servo arm throw and you will not burn them up quickly. Metal budget servos are a much better option than emax. Think RampCrab and Injora. They are a significant step up in power without breaking bank. Metal quality is represented by brands like Reefs, AGFRC and Mofo. They are virtually bulletproof and another significant power increase. NSDRC is in a class of its own because it is the most powerful and sturdy servo on the market.
Screws: The most complete set of replacement screws and small parts is offered by ramp crab in a neat little printed clamshell, but they are on the softer side. Use them only if you are using a quality hardened driver like, or do not overtighten them because they will strip. Injora makes good screws. The best are proline, but you will pay out your nose at a hobby shop for them.
Inserts: foams are fine and so are silicone, but the best are printed inserts. FlubRC makes one for any size you can imagine. Other companies make printed inserts like Prophet Designs. Printed TPU inserts such as these brands provide nice compression vertically and are extremely rigid lateral stability. This is what you want.
Steering links: All of these do the same stuff with exception of rollerbearing links. 3flow9rc was the pioneer here and still makes the best rollerbearing steering link on the market.
Rear link riser: adjustable risers allow you to customize the the antisquat properties of your rig while climbing. multiple companies make them on amazon as do the boutique parts producers. My favorite for cost vs value is ramp crab on amazon.
Tools: cheap amazon or ali express tools look cool but they are soft. Even most of the nicer brands in hobby stores that cost way more are soft. MIP tools cost about 15 dollars per driver but are built to an extreme exacting tolerance and are hardened to a point that they will not wear down. This ensures a tight fit when using them, so when you strip a screw you have no one to blame but yourself. Buy MIP or guarantee yourself you will ruin an occasional part due to stripped screw heads.
In conclusion, this is a hobby that will require your own research and ongoing money to some degree. If customization and tinkering is driving you crazy, research more. Do not be afraid to modify store bought parts, and dont be afraid to make your own as your skill improves. I hope this helps... K, thnx, bye, love you all!

Hello, fellow swifters. I have a background in web development and I'm new to Swift and SwiftUI. I'm building an app to register my expenses and income. I used to do that on a Gsheet, but as I wanted to learn Swift, and I had the idea of adapting this sheet into an app that would make my job easier to track my budget. Things are going pretty well and I'm quickly learning how things work, however, I'm having this issue with the list and even after a lot of researching I couldn't solve it and can't find what I'm missing.
Basically, I have a list of Periods that I fetch from my API and inside each Period I have a list of Transactions, I show these transactions grouped by the periods in the TimelineView and in the end of each group I show the total of the period. Also, in the TimelineView, I can do a few actions such as add, edit, pay, and delete transactions. After each one of these actions, I fetch the data again from the server because the periods have their totals that will be updated after I run some action on the transactions. (I know it's not ideal to fetch the data every time, but I'll improve this logic in the future, for now, I just want to make it to work)
The issue here is, that after I fetch the data again from the server, the values are not being updated on the TimelineView, the only thing that gets updated is when I add a new transaction it will be added to the list, however, the period totals will not update.
I'll paste here some code and if this is not enough I can share the Github repo.

// TimelineView import SwiftUI struct TimelineView: View { let planning: Planning @StateObject private var viewModel = TransactionsViewViewModel() var body: some View { List ($viewModel.periods, id: \.self) { $period in if !period.transactions.isEmpty { Section { ForEach(period.transactions.indices, id: \.self) { index in TransactionsListItemView(transaction: period.transactions[index], onDelete: { await viewModel.fetch(planning: planning) }) } } header: { PeriodHeader(period: period) } footer: { PeriodFooter(period: period) .padding(.bottom) } } } .listStyle(.insetGrouped) .listRowSpacing(6) .refreshable { Task { await viewModel.fetch(planning: planning) } } .onAppear { Task { await viewModel.fetch(planning: planning) } } .frame(maxHeight: .infinity) .toolbar { Button { viewModel.isPresentingFiltersView = true } label: { Image(systemName: "line.3.horizontal.decrease.circle") } Button { viewModel.isPresentingNewTransactionView = true } label: { Image(systemName: "plus") } } .navigationTitle(planning.description) .navigationBarTitleDisplayMode(.inline) .sheet(isPresented: $viewModel.isPresentingNewTransactionView, onDismiss: didDismiss){ NavigationStack { NewTransactionView(planning: planning, newTransactionPresented: $viewModel.isPresentingNewTransactionView) .toolbar { ToolbarItem(placement: .cancellationAction) { Button("Cancel") { viewModel.isPresentingNewTransactionView = false } } ToolbarItem(placement: .confirmationAction) { } } } } .sheet(isPresented: $viewModel.isPresentingFiltersView) { FiltersView() } } func didDismiss() { Task { await viewModel.fetch(planning: planning) } } } //TransactionsViewViewModel import Foundation import SwiftUI @MainActor class TransactionsViewViewModel: ObservableObject { @Published var periods: [Period] = [] @Published var isLoading: Bool = false @Published var isPresentingNewTransactionView = false @Published var isPresentingEditTransactionView = false @Published var isPresentingFiltersView = false @Published var errorMessage = "" @Published var newTransaction = Transaction(id: "", periodId: "", planningId: "", userId: "", amount: 0) @Published var formErrors: [String] = [] func fetch(planning: Planning) async { do { let response = try await TimelineModel().fetch(planningId: planning.id) DispatchQueue.main.async { self.periods = response self.isLoading = false } } catch { DispatchQueue.main.async { print("Error fetching data: \(error)") self.isLoading = false; } } } func saveNewTransaction(planningId: String) async { guard isFormValid(transaction: self.newTransaction) else { print("form invalid", formErrors.count) return } self.isLoading = true; do { self.newTransaction.planningId = planningId _ = try await TransactionModel().save(transaction: self.newTransaction) DispatchQueue.main.async { print("success") self.isLoading = false; } } catch { DispatchQueue.main.async { print("Error: \(error)") self.isLoading = false; self.errorMessage = "Error on submitting transaction" } } } func updateTransaction(transaction: Transaction) async { guard isFormValid(transaction: transaction) else { print("form invalid", formErrors.count) return } self.isLoading = true; do { _ = try await TransactionModel().update(transaction: transaction) DispatchQueue.main.async { print("success") self.isLoading = false; } } catch { DispatchQueue.main.async { print("Error: \(error)") self.isLoading = false; self.errorMessage = "Error on updating transaction" } } } func payTransaction(transaction: Transaction) async { self.isLoading = true; do { _ = try await TransactionModel().pay(periodId: transaction.periodId ?? "", transactionId: transaction.id ?? "") DispatchQueue.main.async { print("success") self.isLoading = false; } } catch { DispatchQueue.main.async { print("Error: \(error)") self.isLoading = false; self.errorMessage = "Error on paying" } } } private func isFormValid(transaction: Transaction) -> Bool { self.formErrors.removeAll() guard !transaction.amount.isLessThanOrEqualTo(0) else { self.formErrors.append("Amount should be more than zero.") return false } guard !transaction.description.trimmingCharacters(in: .whitespaces).isEmpty else { self.formErrors.append("Description should not be empty.") return false } return true } func removeTransaction(periodId: String, transactionId: String) async { do { _ = try await TransactionModel().remove(periodId: periodId, transactionId: transactionId) DispatchQueue.main.async { print("success") } } catch { DispatchQueue.main.async { print("Error: \(error)") self.isLoading = false; } } } func formattedDate(date: Date) -> String { let dateFormatter = DateFormatter() dateFormatter.dateFormat = "MMMM d" return dateFormatter.string(from: date) } func formatCurrency(amount: Decimal) -> String { let formatter = NumberFormatter() formatter.numberStyle = .currency formatter.maximumFractionDigits = 2 return formatter.string(from: amount as NSDecimalNumber) ?? "" } } //TimelineModel import Foundation class TimelineModel { func fetch(planningId: String) async throws -> [Period] { guard let request = try? HttpService().buildUrlRequest(method: "GET", endpoint: Constants.ApiConstants.Periods.getPeriods, params: [planningId]) else { throw NetworkError.invalidURL } let (data, response) = try await URLSession.shared.data(for: request) guard response is HTTPURLResponse else { throw NetworkError.custom(errorMessage: "Invalid HTTPUrlResponse") } if let response = try? HttpService().customDecoder().decode([Period].self, from: data) { return response } let errorResponse = try HttpService().customDecoder().decode(ErrorResponse.self, from: data) switch errorResponse.statusCode { case 401: throw AuthenticationError.unauthorized case 404: throw NetworkError.notFound case 500: throw NetworkError.internalServerError default: throw NetworkError.custom(errorMessage: errorResponse.message ?? "Bad request") } } } struct Period: Hashable, Codable, Identifiable { var id: String var planningId: String var userId: String var periodBalance: Decimal var periodBalancePaidOnly: Decimal var expectedAllTimeBalance: Decimal var expectedAllTimeBalancePaidOnly: Decimal var periodStart: Date var periodEnd: Date var transactions: [Transaction] static func ==(lhs: Period, rhs: Period) -> Bool { return lhs.periodStart == rhs.periodStart && lhs.periodEnd == rhs.periodEnd } func hash(into hasher: inout Hasher) { hasher.combine(periodStart) hasher.combine(periodEnd) } } struct Transaction: Codable, Identifiable, Hashable { var id: String? var periodId: String? var planningId: String var userId: String? var amount: Decimal var description: String var category: Category var date: Date var isPaid: Bool var type: TransactionType var dateCreated: Date? init(id: String?, periodId: String?, planningId: String, userId: String?, amount: Decimal = 0, description: String = "", category: Category = Category.empty, date: Date = Date.now, isPaid: Bool = true, type: TransactionType = TransactionType.expense, dateCreated: Date? = Date.now ) { self.id = id self.periodId = periodId self.planningId = planningId self.userId = userId self.amount = amount self.description = description self.category = category self.date = date self.isPaid = isPaid self.type = type self.dateCreated = dateCreated } } 

Appreciate your help, thanks.

I'm currently working on a project involving Arduino and Node-RED, where I'm attempting to insert a variable declared in Arduino, visible in my serial monitor, into a MySQL database using a JavaScript function. The function I'm using is as follows:

var value = JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(msg.payload)); value = msg; var sensor = msg.payload; msg.payload = [sensor]; msg.topic = "INSERT INTO tbl_sensor(ID_sensor) VALUES (null, ?);"; return msg; 

However, the issue I'm facing is that the function attempts to JSON encode everything displayed in my serial monitor. This isn't feasible because my Arduino code includes additional serial prints besides the variable I'm interested in, which is named "tmp".
What msg.payload is printing and trying to JSON encode is the following:

------------------------- ID #1 Template 1 loaded Attempting to get #1 Template 1 transferring: 3349331C1391820 done. 

I've attempted various adjustments like changing msg.payload to msg.payload.tmp and experimenting with additional variables. However, since this is my first time working with JavaScript, I'm uncertain about the correct approach. Can anyone provide guidance on how to accomplish this? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!

My father was a police officer in the 90s, he worked some investigative cases, one of which was actually turned into a movie because it was such a big deal. My mother told me that the longer he worked, the more he changed. He became a drinker, and abusive. He always acted like he was hiding something. My mother, thinking he was cheating on her, decided to snoop through his desk one night. It was there that she found a small black book, one with numbers, and names written down. More specifically, names of his fellow police officers. Before she could look further, he came in and attacked her for going through his things. After he calmed down, he cried and told her she didn't need to see those things, and pretend it never existed. He said that he was investigating some shady shit going down in our local police station, with some of the higher ups. That was the end of the conversation and she stopped questioning him. Not long after, they seperated. For the next year they still shared a home, and were never legally divorced. At one point he even begged my mother to take him back. The day my father passed away, he came to see me hours before. I was at my grandmothers house, and she said she still remembers the look on his face as he kissed me goodbye. She said she knew something was wrong. The next morning, the police showed up at my grandmothers door, and informed her that he had killed himself. Now. Here's where things got tricky. - Originally this is how the scene was set up - empty beer cans scattered around the room with a reciept that read they were bought that same night. Blood on the floor with a shoe print that was not my fathers. And a GSW deemed self inflicted on the scene. This case was to be investigated as a homicide. Who found my father? Two officers he worked with, that just "happened" to stop by and check on him, despite him not working that day. However, not long after they opened it as a homicide, it was quickly closed as a suicide. My mother didnt believe it, even though he had his problems he seemed to be doing better. She was bestfriends with a woman who worked with my father, and met up with her begging for any information she could give her. All her friend told her was that the original Dr. said the gunshot wound was in no way possible self inflicted, but the final report says it was. She then begged her to drop it. She told her to Stop showing up around the police station, and don't ask anymore questions about it. When my mother went back to our house to clean out his things, there was one thing missing. The little black book. Despite his death being ruled a suicide, he was given an honorable death, with the whole show. His name was even put on a plaque in my town saying he was killed in the line of duty. All things a fellow officer who commited suicide just a year prior - DID NOT recieve. NOW. i was a child when all this happened, how do I know any of this is true? I dont. But years of growing up without my father caused curiosity. I have repeatedly asked family, family friends, and others to recount his final days. To tell me everything they know. When I was old enough, I accessed the crime scene reports (what I was legally able to see and gain access too) and what I discovered chilled me. His autopsy report? There was no alcohol in his blood. Then why did they make note of the empty beer cans? Why was there a reciept from purchasing them just hours before? Ive thought about traveling to meet with my fathers partner. Not long after my father passed he quit, and moved hours away. He too told my mother to proceed with caution, and not ask questions. I want to speak with him. I will not bring this up to any law enforcement. I do not want my fathers case reopened. I do not want eyes on me, though I knew I risked something when requesting his crime scene and autopsy information. I've done my own "investigation" over the last two years. I only know what I know from what people have told me, and what the reports show. I dont know what happened to my father. But i believe he didn't do it to himself.
I know this may come off as sounding unrealistic, and another crazy reddit story, but this is my fathers story, and I wanted to get it off my chest. Thank you.

Looking to order an outdoor memorial stone that allows for a name and maybe a small sentence “in living memory” . Looking for something with weather resistance. Not sure if laser engraving is enough or if etching is the way to go. The offerings on chewy include paw prints and my dog has 6 toes on the back paws so it kind of doesn’t work for me. Here is a link to a website I have found, for 60$ plus free shipping this is in the realm of what I’m looking for:
https://www.oldworldstones.com/granitememorial6by4.htm?gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIpduyidqShgMVK11HAR0NPwWnEAQYFCABEgJjV_D_BwE