I took my masters degree in HR management.
At the time, it felt like a very sensible thing to choose, and I was proud that I chose it.
I put my head down, studied hard and aced the exams. Coming out of it all with a car and a little apartment, which is a lot more than some people I knew.
I also had a job working for an online retailer. My first proper professional job as a HR administrator. I even had an office.
It wasn't a huge company, but it was growing fast. They needed more staff to help keep the cogs spinning. And that was me.
I must admit, my briefing by the CEO gave me conflicting feelings. Let's just call him Andy for now.
He referred to the staff in the warehouse as "grunts" on more than one occasion. Talking a lot about how he wanted to expand into furniture and electrical goods, how he wanted to be the next Amazon. How I could eventually be the Head of Human Resources in a giant conglomerate.
I took his words with a pinch of salt, but a part of me was with him; I did want to progress in my career, I did want to be part of something big.
Over the passing weeks and months, I got to know the warehouse staff.
Among them - Olly - a shy teenager who had come in through a recent government programme.
Andy loved the government programmes, as they subsidised the wages. I would realise pretty quickly how much he loved anything which cut costs, even by a little bit.
To the point of patrolling the packing bays, reminding the staff of the exact cost per centimetre of tape.
Me and Olly met up once a week. He was almost too shy to speak at times, and at others he was very articulate about how he felt.
He liked playing video games, and lived in a council house with his mother.
He confessed to being bullied by some of the other workers. He spoke of one time a group found him walking home after work and teased him all the way through town. Taking the piss out of his height, the way he talked with a slight lisp, his right eye and how it moved to the side sometimes without his control.
I felt bad for Olly, and I wondered to myself whether he was really ready to be in a place like this.
There seemed to be a common complaint from all the warehouse staff, though, and that was the wobbly ladders; the pickers used them to fetch product from the top shelves, which were very high up.
When I brought it up to Andy, he told me he'd replace all the ladders after the warehouse relocation in a few month's time. I found out soon after there'd been no health and safety checks... ever.
"We have to act quickly." Were Andy's words in the Team meeting. "We either grow with the demand or we plateau and accept mediocrity."
The company was in a transitional period. It needed more fulfilment space. More staff. More product.
And, a change in work culture.
"Those idiots get away with murder in there. I watch them standing about like lemons every time I walk in." Andy complained to me in a private meeting between us. "I'm not gonna sugar coat it. I want you to report back to me what they're saying. See who's with the company and see who doesn't give a shit."
Along with this covert addition to my role, I was to head up a productivity spreadsheet to "weed out the slackers". Because we didn't want slackers in the new warehouse.
We wanted a positive work culture that promoted diligence and integrity.
Meanwhile, Olly was showing up to our meetings with bruises. He shrugged off the matter, but I could tell there was a deep inner struggle.
A part of me yearned to reach out and help him. But I just didn't know what to do, other than my job.
One evening, after a couple of glasses of wine, I burst into tears on a phone call with my mother. I sobbed uncontrollably, telling her I hated the job, how horrible it was. Then it was back to work.
I soon had to write some difficult emails. Not everyone was hitting the new productivity quota and picking enough units, packing enough orders.
One of them - Mandy - cried in front of me. As streams of tears ran down her cheeks, I thought to myself whether my heart was really in this job. But then I'd receive my paycheque at the end of the month. Then I'd see my friends working at Starbucks, complaining about how "unfair the system is", and I consoled myself with what I had.
It took a while, but I became used to suppressing my feelings. I think that's when the job truly became the job. Also, maybe some of Andy was rubbing off on me.
A part of me enjoyed the way I was running the show behind the scenes. My covert operations, helping to improve the company output and let go of the weaker members.
Then, one afternoon, there was an accident in the warehouse.
Someone had fallen off one of the ladders and brutally injured themselves.
After hearing about it, I rushed into Andy's office, who was in a call. He seemed to be in a cheery mood, while I was panicking.
After finishing on the phone, he told me immediately not to worry. "We're dealing with it." He said bluntly, ushering me out of the office with his silence.
I read Andy's statement in the local newspaper a day later. The fall had been fatal.
"Olly was a hard worker. It is with a heavy heart that we deliver news of this tragic accident..."
The next time I stepped foot in the warehouse, all the old ladders had been replaced.

My psych recommended effexor xr 75mg in the morning and mirtazapine 15mg at night for insomnia and depression.
15 minutes after taking it i start. I had a sausage and cheese sandwich at 830 a ham and cheese at 9. I had 3 packs of gushers and a soda, pop tarts with a glass of milk. Last night i ate a whole sleeve of ritz crackers and didn't bat an eye at it. Just inhaled them in like 2 minutes.
And its not helping with insomnia. I wake up every two hours and I'm awake 15 minutes to an hour. Sleep another two hours and right back up. Any suggestions at all? Can i take something else to curb the appetite? And something else to help me stay asleep?
The first night was amazing i took it and slept through the night. Now ive gained 10 pounds in 2 weeks.

So I've recently jumped back into fallout 76 due to the show and plus having the fallout binge need. After getting back on after a year I've realized I have nothing at all in terms of good weapons or hell even armor. I believe I spent most of my time hunting down building plans and building my home than I actually have grinding for any good weapons or even armor. At this point I'm wearing power armor to even remotely stand a chance in any of the events. I mean hell I've not even done the nuke mission for the enclave. Is there anything anyone could recommend to get some better loot?

Karl Marx

05 May 1818 – 14 March 1883
Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History
Karl Marx and and the Permutations of Historical Materialism
Sunday 05 May 2024 is the 206th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx (05 May 1818 – 14 March 1883), who was born in Trier on this date in 1818.
Perhaps the biggest problem with Marx’s philosophy of history is that almost all the work on it has been done by Marxists, that is to say, by true believers in Marxism. The few who are not true believers who took up historical materialism have done so in the shadow of the work of true believers. This puts non-Marxists who engage with Marx’s philosophy of history in a bind.
It is a practical impossibility to master all the relevant literature on Marx. Anything you say about Marx is likely to be gainsaid by someone who has focused their entire career on Marx. They will have a response to any problem you might raise, but the response is always formulated in a way that is entirely internal to the Marxist conceptual framework. If you don’t share this conceptual framework, the argument is not likely to be persuasive, but it is rare to find someone well versed in Marx’s philosophy of history who is not a Marxist who feels compelled to defend Marx’s view at any cost.
As philosophers of history what we want to know about any thinker is what we can learn from them about their conception of history, not necessarily to defend it, but to know what has been said and why it has been said. And we don’t necessarily want to think ourselves into the conceptual framework internal to some ideology. Compare this situation to any number of other philosophers.
For example, the tradition of commenting on Machiavelli was almost entirely hostile up to the 19th century. Almost no one would cop to Machiavelli’s ideology, even if they admitted to wanting to understand Machiavelli on his own terms. And in my episode on Kant I said that Kant never wrote a big book on philosophy of history, but a Kantian philosophy of history can be assembled from his shorter writings on history. This is similar to the situation with Marx, who didn’t write a book on even an essay specifically on the philosophy of history, but who did leave enough of a trail in his other works so that his conception of history can be reconstructed.
There have been many scholarly studies of Kant’s philosophy of history that maintain the proper distance between the author and the expositor, with no expectation that we are going to become Kantians if we read Kant’s philosophy of history and endeavor to understand it. No one feels the need to toe any Kantian line (though there have been periods in German philosophical history when Neo-Kantian was nearly obligatory), and no one feels obligated to suspend all criticism until they have fully entered into the Kantian conceptual framework. Comprehension does not necessarily entail agreement.
It tends to be different with Marx’s commentators. The vast majority of Marx’s critics have been internal critics. Some of them rise above the mediocrity of that position—for example, Ernst Bloch was an internal critic of Marxism with a mind of his own—but most never find their own voice. The true believers in Marxism view themselves as part of an embattled community and therefore feel the need to defend this community, and this takes the form of defending Marxist doctrines, including defending Marx’s implicit philosophy of history. This isn’t helpful from a philosophical perspective, so we need to keep this in mind. And I will keep in mind that anything I say about Marx might well be contradicted by someone who has a lot invested in Marx.
Probably no one was closer to Marx than Frederick Engels, whom I think we can say closely shared Marx’s conceptual framework, to the point that Marx and Engels are sometimes treated as though they are interchangeable. Engels gave a funeral oration at Marx’s graveside that includes a good summary of Marx’s views on history:

“Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.”

There are several familiar themes here, perhaps most notably the claim that there are laws of human development in history. This is a classic claim of speculative philosophy of history. Also, the emphasis on the material conditions of history as being the forces driving history, and that the material conditions of human history are, effectively, economic conditions, are familiar Marxist talking points. The Preface of The Critique of Political Economy is sometimes identified as the locus classicus of historical materialism:

“In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis, on which rises a legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or—what is but a legal expression for the same thing—with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations, a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic—in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production. No social formation ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation. In broad outlines Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production can be designated as progressive epochs in the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production—antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism, but of one arising from the social conditions of life of the individuals; at the same time the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism. This social formation brings, therefore, the prehistory of human society to a close.”

There’s a lot going on in this passage, and I won’t attempt an exhaustive exposition. Instead, I want to pick out a few of Marx’s leading ideas. The leading ideas in Marx’s historical thought could be isolated and taken independently, though they rarely are. Usually, we find them all organically related to each other, each implying the other, as in the quote I just made from The Critique of Political Economy. I want to mention six ideas in particular:

1. Materialism
2. Cultural evolutionism
3. Economic systems as the basis of cultural evolutionism
4. The base/superstructure distinction (also known as the infrastructure/superstructure distinction)
5. Communist teleology
6. Determinism

1. Materialism
I’ve already mentioned that the material conditions of history is a familiar Marxist talking point. There are many passages we could take from Marx to underline this. There are also accounts of Marx that emphasize his debt to Hegel and to Hegel’s idealism. John Zammito in “Philosophy of History: The German Tradition from Herder to Marx” discusses in some detail the influence both of Hegel and Comte, and ends his essay with this:

“In Marx we see a philosophy of history that draws on both the Enlightenment and idealism for its premises. The driving interest in his thought derives from idealism: it is the aspiration to an ethical totality to be realized in the end of history, providing meaning to the entire sweep of history, with all its toil and trouble. But the method that animates his thought is taken from the Enlightenment and its aspiration to a social science based on principles authorized by natural science. Similarly, the radicalism of Marx’s projection of positive values into the future compares with the doctrine of progress of the Enlightenment. Yet, if one takes away the utopianism of Marx’s teleology of history and one takes away the romanticism of his criterion of fulfilled humanity, the balance of his thought has the features of a ‘science’ that falls all the way back to the mechanism of late Enlightenment ‘science of man.’ That was the path that thought on society and history would follow in the balance of the modern period. Indeed, after and through Marx, the question of making sense of history passed definitively out of the hands of philosophy into those of the newly constituted ‘social sciences’.”

I do not agree that, after Marx, the question of making sense of history passed definitively out of the hands of philosophy, but I think I can see what Zammito was getting at. We can find some basis for this replacement of philosophy by science in Marx:

“History itself is an actual part of natural history, of nature’s development into man, Natural science will in time include the science of man as the science of man will include natural science: There will be one science.”

Max Weber, after Marx, called for a rationalization of history that was not a philosophy of history, and Weber’s work on the methodology of the social sciences has been extremely influential. But whether Weber, or any other post-Marxian social scientist, managed to displace philosophy as a sense-making tool for history is not at all clear. Certainly this is not a proposition with which most philosophers of history will agree.
Another interesting thing in this quote from Zammito is his suggestion of setting aside Marx’s utopianism and teleology. This is exactly what I am trying to show: that there are many permutations of the Marxist conception of history, based not only on our interpretations of the elements of Marx’s thought, but which elements we include and which elements we set aside as being no longer relevant.
2. Cultural Evolutionism
Now I will move on from Marx’s materialism to his cultural evolutionism. Like Marx’s theory of history, his exposition of cultural evolutionism is scattered across many texts and appears in a fragmentary form, but it is well enough established that the idea that human society passes through stages from primitive communism to slavery, feudalism, and capitalism, with Marx positing a further stage of industrialized communism after capitalism. Because Marx’s exposition is unsystematic, there are many slightly different accounts of the stages in Marx’s cultural evolutionism.
The rival to Marx’s cultural evolutionism is Franz Boas’ cultural relativism. The contrast of Marx’s evolutionism and Boas’ relativism helps to give us a sense of what is at stake in Marx’s claims. We could say that we have both evolutionist intuitions about history and relativist intuitions about history, and Marx and Boas each build on these distinct intuitions, and, as they build on these divergent intuitions, the more their thought diverges the farther we follow the reasoning of either of them.
Both Marx’s cultural evolutionism and Boas’ cultural relativism have become so familiar to us that we scarcely realize when we are invoking either of them, but we should be clear about when our historical thinking is implicitly invoking either evolutionism or relativism, or both. Sometimes we find both in one person. For example, Spengler’s philosophy of history has elements in it that are derived from both cultural evolutionism and cultural relativism, and so we can find in his philosophy echoes of both Marx and Boas. Specifically, Spengler’s idea that all civilizations rise up from an undifferentiated mass of history and are incommensurable with any other civilization is akin to cultural relativism, while Spengler’s contention that all civilizations pass through definite stages in a determinate order is akin to cultural evolutionism. The two—evolutionism and relativism—are not necessarily mutually exclusive, though when we build exclusively on one set of historical intuitions or another, and these forms of thought diverge, they seem to be irreconcilable.
3. Economic Systems as the Basis of Cultural Evolutionism
Marx’s cultural evolutionism is driven by economic systems, and economic systems grow out of the satisfaction of human needs. It would be possible to formulate a conception of history defined by cultural evolutionism, but in which it is not economics, but something else that is the driver of the historical process. Here we see the relationship between Marx’s materialism and the other components of his conception of history, since any alternative to a system of economics that grows out of human needs would need to appeal to mind, or consciousness, or ideals of some kind.
Jacob’s Burckhardt’s conception of history, while not being a form of cultural evolutionism, does place the mind and its ideals as the drivers of history, and so presents us with an example of a conception of history in which economics and industry are only distant, secondary, and mediate causes in the development of the historical process. Burckhardt’s conception of historical development is as antithetical to Marx’s conception of human development as Boas’ cultural relativism is antithetical to Marx’s cultural evolutionism.
4. The Base/Superstructure Distinction
Because the economic systems grow out of the satisfaction of human needs, and this is the primary driver of the historical process, it follows that this is the basis of the entirety of society. The apparently non-economic functions of society like art, religion, science, law, and political institutions are not really independent of economic forces, but are in fact created by economic forces. The ideals to which we believe we are giving expression in the highest cultural productions of a society are not something independent of human needs, but are part of the rationalization and justification of the economic order of society.
In this way, these cultural expressions of a society are mere epiphenomena of the economic base of society. Their purpose is to make us feel good about ourselves and to justify the economic exploitation that makes them possible. It is this idea that Walter Benjamin presumably had in mind when he said that every document of civilization is at the same time a document of barbarism. As a cultural critic, Benjamin could appreciate the high culture productions of society, but he believed himself to have seen through the violence, oppression, and suffering entailed by their creation.
This is, we could say, a highly reductionist account of art and ideals and intellectual achievement. Varieties of Marxism that have flourished after Marx’s time, like Antonio Gramsci’s cultural Marxism, value the productions of culture differently, so Marxism doesn’t necessarily have to involve a reductionist account of non-economic value.
5. Communist Teleology
In Marx, the process of cultural evolutionism culminates in communism. There are several accounts of how exactly this comes about, and how many stages intervene between communist revolution and the achievement of a final communist society—for example, whether the expropriation of the expropriators leads directly to communism, or whether a society must pass through a period of the dictatorship of the proletariat before the state can wither away and true communism will be achieved, and how long the dictatorship of the proletariat has to endure, or how long it takes the state to wither away. However it comes about, communism is the end point of cultural evolutionism.
In Marx, cultural evolutionism, as we have seen, is expressed in a series of distinct economic systems, or relations of production. Once a society achieves the communist mode of production it has achieved its final form. Marx need not have made this assertion. We could just as well argue that communism is one more mode of production, which will eventually be followed by another mode of production in its turn. If the other mode of production is something unprecedented in history, then history is still directional, but does not necessarily converge on a finite teleology. We could even posit an infinitude of stages of economic development following capitalism and communism.
Alternatively, it could be argued that communism is a stage in a cycle of stages that repeat over historical time, which would give us a cyclical theory of history. For example, if the attainment of a perfect communist society coincided with the primitive communism prior to the slave mode of production, then the whole cycle would start over, and this would not be a form of teleology.
6. Determinism
Marx’s philosophy of history is usually taken to be deterministic. Partly this is because cultural evolutionism is widely believed to be essentially deterministic. This belief is false, because we could easily formulate cultural evolutionism in a non-deterministic way. We need not be deterministic about cultural evolutionism any more than we need to be deterministic about biological evolutionism. The determinist argument can be made, but it’s not obvious or necessary.
It is nevertheless true that many who are argued for cultural evolutionism have offered deterministic accounts of the origins and development of societies, and Marx’s account certainly suggests this. Whenever we find a claim of inevitability, we are in the presence of determinism, and we find many claims of inevitability in Marx. For example, this from Capital:

“…there can be no doubt that when the working-class comes into power, as inevitably it must, technical instruction, both theoretical and practical, will take its proper place in the working-class schools.”

There are many ways in which historical materialism could be formulated in which it was not deterministic, but still largely accommodated Marx’s insights. For example, one could hold that a society might collapse at any stage of its development, with this collapse being a contingent event, not determined by prior circumstances. If a society can collapse at any point in its development, and does not necessarily pass through all stages of cultural evolutionism in a determinate order, and does not necessarily pass through all of these stages, then Marx’s cultural evolutionism ceases to be deterministic.
If we take these six elements in Marx’s historical thought I have discussed so far:

1. Materialism
2. Cultural evolutionism
3. Economic systems as the basis of cultural evolutionism
4. Base/superstructure distinction
5. Communist teleology
6. Determinism

And pair each of these with its antithesis, which might be the list something like this:

1. Idealism
2. Cultural relativism
3. Historical development not driven by economics
4. Consciousness and its ideals as the basis of social institutions
5. Denial of teleology
6. Indeterminism

There are 64 possible permutations of these elements, and that means a possibility of 64 philosophies of history that overlap with Marx’s philosophy of history, more or less related to Marx, but not precisely coinciding to Marx. Because of the party spirit that animates Marxist thought, we rarely see these closely related alternatives being explored, though, as we saw in the quote from John Zammito, sometimes philosophers will set aside of aspects of Marx’s thought in order to arrive at a more satisfactory formulation.
Some of these permutations would be unlikely to say the least, but all could give us a novel perspective on Marx and historical materialism. But there are many ways to approach Marx’s conception of history. Another potentially profitable way to approach Marx from the perspective of philosophy of history would be Marx’s conception of revolution. I opened by quoting Engels’ funeral oration for Marx, and in the same funeral oration Engels’ commented on Marx’s commitment to revolution:

“…Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being…”

As a revolution, even an anticipated or precipitated revolution, is an historical crisis, Marx could be assimilated to those philosophers of history who have focused on crisis. But that will have to wait for another time.

Video Presentation

https://youtu.be/3cDuAUE6Fd0
https://www.instagram.com/p/C6nZByDtOak/

Podcast Edition

https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/XEgIjL2YmJb
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/a31b8276-53cd-4723-b6ad-a39c8faa4572/episodes/677b4de0-cc33-4f3a-96ce-bdb64823f048/today-in-philosophy-of-history-karl-marx-and-the-permutations-of-historical-materialism
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-today-in-philosophy-of-his-146507578/episode/karl-marx-and-the-permutations-of-173786886/
​

I bought a couple of things at Morphe online and wanted to return them so contacted them via email. Their return policy:
Purchases made on our website can be returned for any reason up to 30 days after delivery. Bring the item and a valid receipt or packing slip into any Morphe store, or contact au.info(at)morphe.com to start the return process.
They sent an automated response asking for return reason. So, I emailed back with all they asked and heard nothing back.
After a day, they CLOSED my ticket.
So, I sent second email requesting the return and got the same automated response and again, they closed the ticket.
What is going on with them?
There is no phone number or business address listed on their website. You can't contact them other that via email. Is this even legal?

I've been with my girlfriend (transF21) for 3 years and we have a 1-year-old child together. Tonight. I got a message from someone online. Alerting me that she cheated on me behind my back. She went out in the middle of the night and hooked up with someone while i was asleep in our bed. I went to sleepafter we made love. I woke up cuz I wasn't feeling and called her. I didn't see her and I called her to see where she was. She said she was going to buy a pack of smokes. I got up to use the bathroom. And apparently I passed out and fell and hit my head pretty hard. I was passed out on the floor for almost 2 hours and she opened the door and hit me in the head. I wasn't able to think much of it at the time because I had a pretty good fall and was pretty disoriented. We just decided to try out having an open relationship but require that nothing romantic happens and that we communicate fully and get approval before meeting with anyone or being inappropriate. Naturally, upon finding this out. I called her a few times she finally answered. She admitted that she had and I told her that I was completely shattered and devastated, but that that didn't even begin to describe how I felt. She said she was sorry and I told her no she's not cause if she was, she wouldn't have done that and she proceeded to hang up on me. This isn't even the first time. Towards the end of September of 2023 I attempted suicide seriously and I shouldn't have survived. The doctors and the paramedics and the cops did not understand how I was still breathing when they arrived. I had called my girlfriend beforehand and told her what I was about to do. I did this as a result of finding out that she was cheating once again. I don't know when the phone call ended because I couldn't think anymore.I wasn't aware anymore.My heart rate was over 200bpm. It was twelve hours from the start of the phone call until she called the cops for a wellness check. She knew that I genuinely did it because this wasn't my first attempt that was serious. She was waiting until she thought I was dead, She admitted this to me afterwards. The day of what was supposed to be my death she had already moved on and installed every dating app known to man ones i've never heard of. She wanted to hook up. Fast forward today and me finding out the most devastating news of my life. I've been calling her for over an hour and she doesn't answer. She's not sorry she did it, shes sorry she got caught. The only reason I agreed to an open relationship is cause I thought I could figure out something else to make her love me again. I've done so much for her and so much for this relationship, She's my entire world, she has been this whole time. I gave her my virginity. She was my first everything. I've been convincing myself this whole time That there was something else I could say or do that could make her stay, that can make her respect me. She's been verbally sexually emotionally and physically abusive most of the time that we've been together. I somehow always thought that it was my fault and that I was just doing something that wrong. Yet, despite over a decade of therapy, I couldn't figure out why I was the problem and how to fix it. To realize, I hadn't done anything wrong to become her victim. That I didn't deserve to be treated like that. All I wanted was for her to love me for her to respect me as a human being in the same way that I did for her. She treated me as if I wasnt even human sometimes as if I didn't deserve the same basic respect as every human being does. I was shamed and humiliated for crying i was mocked the whole time with words under her breath. I have extensive childhood trauma on top of this. I thought things were finally getting better again between us. I had felt closer to her, It seemed as if she felt the same. We had hung out almost all day today. Last time she threatened once again to leave me (she does this a lot as a manipulation tactic, confirmed by multiple professionals) I fell to the floor with agonizing pain in my stomach as if flaming hot blades were shredding and tearing through every one of my organs , and i was going to die. I swear I could feel the blood welling up inside of me and I was going to flip inside out and a black hole would be summoned from the death of my body. One that would rip apart everyone and everything in the entire universe as we know it. I told her what I was feeling when I was down on the floor begging on my knees for her, to please wait, for her to please let me talk for her, please listen to me, to please talk about this with me before she leaves me again. She didn't leave that time and I don't understand why, what was different? I don't know what to do now. What happens after this? she was supposed to come over tomorrow, technically today, and spend the night. Tuesday we were going to go on a long car ride together. What now? What do I do now? She's the love of my life. I can't do this without her. It's my birthday on Thursday and now I'll be sitting home alone.

Hi. I am from Kamakura Kanagawa, Japan. I am living in the states for almost 10 years now. I am renting in Florida and California. I have work that I am have to travel and these two location is good for me as home base. I travel every week. My English is not very good so sorry if it seems broken and not correct, I am still learning as much as I can.
I travel alot because I am working in sports entertainment. I pack a lot of things like my ring gear and my work clothing but I always come back with new things. Because I only use one luggage and I buy states memory. I like American food sometimes like I miss pancake and egg sausage breakfast when I am in Japan. But when I am in America I cannot find good and clean Japanese food. My favorite one of dish to make is spring green beans with tofu and beef. I also like to make fresh Jasmine boba tea.
Maybe someone will write with me a lot because I try before and everyone will just write short and no conversation messages. I can learn if you write with me and give me a chance to read and write English. So my goal is to try and find that tonight! To start the week off great! Let’s go! Let’s do this guys!
I really want to decorate and buy a house so maybe we can discuss pretend like we are roommates and can decorate and design a home together.

Rogue is in a state where, when multiclassing is gone, the most effective way to play rogue is to go back to taking 10 pairs of throwing knives, 30 bolts, two hand crossbows and pretend to be a ranger.
Can we please finally do something about that?
I mean, the stealth archetype rogue is literally unable to move in stealth without being spotted and even going invis in a dark corner reveals you. So it's either camp on the other side of doors, go invis when they open and hope you win the trade or build 330 ms and just run run run.
We're at a place where the most effective way to use hide is to pop it for a milisec while running straight at someone to make use of ambush. That's ridiculous.
People complain about class identity being erased with multiclassing. But rogue got their identity erased before all that multiclassing chaos even started.
Positive changes would be: 1. Buff dagger damage by 2 for each rarity. 2. Give the rondel and stiletto, or all stabbing mechanics (3rd and 4th swing of Kris, and 3rd of castillon) armor pen. That is what those cheeky, pointy, little daggers where designed for back in the day. I mean, the blunt force weapons have armor pen, but daggers don't? That don't make no sense. 3. Bring back the old hide. 4. Remove visibilty of poison weapon on rogue's blade for enemies.
Without changes along these lines, rogue goes back to becoming a wannabe ninja ranger, which is way off from the classic and fun rogue mechanics.

Cursed Technique
Innate Technique: the user is able to manifest the contents of near by peoples dreams into reality for battle. Everything summoned is as light as a feather to the user no matter what it is, but takes on the assumed weight for anyone else (unless specifically object x was a lot lighter then what it would normally be in the real itself). The user is also able to un-summon any of those things at any given time.
-RCT: The user can summon and manipulate things from their own dreams. OR! summoning things from the enemies nightmares.
-Domain Expansion (unconscious pleasures): HAND SIGN(S): Flat hands, one’s palm on back of other. DOMAIN ENVIRONMENT: colourful thick pink-purple foggy dream world. SURE-HIT: anything from the targets dreams.
-Maximum (ideal world): summon the enemies figurative dream into reality to use against them (i.e. “my dream is to become king of the pirates”!).
Weaknesses
-the farther back you go in time for their dreams, the more CE it costs
-what if the enemy has super bland ass dreams
-cannot repeat summon the same thing
Strategies
-use partial parts of any buildings from their dreams to restrict movement
-use everything as an advantage, potential weapons, shields, etc, and if they use the dream summons against you, de-summon them
Question(s) for improvement:
-should there be better means of offence?
-should the application of manipulating dreams be handled differently?

My god I stepped away from the hip hop community for a few years (all music if I'm being honest) and when I get back Kendrick Lamar is carpet bombing Drake and it's happening in real time! I just need someone with real skin in the game and true weight in Hollywood to be the Kendrick to the Baldwin's Drake and just go at them dropping receipts, videos of Hilaria strapping on the moonbump, video of the Alcea contracts in Alec's office-apartment, videos of Alec pouring alcohol into his Stanley tumbler whilst monologuing and then sipping away, video of Alec scowling at Halyna every time she gave him a directive on set and the video footage of the actual moment he decided to point and pull the trigger, video of Hilaria practicing the Spanish accent in the mirror - you just know receipts exist, just drop all of them until they bow out. I know someone is itching to take him down. Bonus if a pop star decides to join in and release a club hit with everything in it we can dance and karaoke to as well.
It'll take a weekend tops if the Kendrick vs Drake beef has shown me something - a weekend and then the Baldwins can release a pitiful statement refuting all the pepino facts by saying that they planted all the facts themselves (1D Chess parading as 5D Chess) to "trick" us into creating this cub, becoming pepinos, calling them grifters and scammers and druggies and rage-a-holic alcoholics. And then maybe even the Baldwin Sycophants will be like "nah ... those Baldwins are not right" Maybe after it all - they pack their backs and move to a quiet suburb where no-one has heard their names because Vermonters don't want them either.
Please, could you do that for me, please.
*Oh yeah, I blocked redditcares Lil Hillz but you're welcome to try it*

I took my masters degree in HR management.
At the time, it felt like a very sensible thing to choose, and I was proud that I chose it.
I put my head down, studied hard and aced the exams. Coming out of it all with a car and a little apartment, which is a lot more than some people I knew.
I also had a job working for an online retailer. My first proper professional job as a HR administrator. I even had an office.
It wasn't a huge company, but it was growing fast. They needed more staff to help keep the cogs spinning. And that was me.
I must admit, my briefing by the CEO gave me conflicting feelings. Let's just call him Andy for now.
He referred to the staff in the warehouse as "grunts" on more than one occasion. Talking a lot about how he wanted to expand into furniture and electrical goods, how he wanted to be the next Amazon. How I could eventually be the Head of Human Resources in a giant conglomerate.
I took his words with a pinch of salt, but a part of me was with him; I did want to progress in my career, I did want to be part of something big.
Over the passing weeks and months, I got to know the warehouse staff.
Among them - Olly - a shy teenager who had come in through a recent government programme.
Andy loved the government programmes, as they subsidised the wages. I would realise pretty quickly how much he loved anything which cut costs, even by a little bit.
To the point of patrolling the packing bays, reminding the staff of the exact cost per centimetre of tape.
Me and Olly met up once a week. He was almost too shy to speak at times, and at others he was very articulate about how he felt.
He liked playing video games, and lived in a council house with his mother.
He confessed to being bullied by some of the other workers. He spoke of one time a group found him walking home after work and teased him all the way through town. Taking the piss out of his height, the way he talked with a slight lisp, his right eye and how it moved to the side sometimes without his control.
I felt bad for Olly, and I wondered to myself whether he was really ready to be in a place like this.
There seemed to be a common complaint from all the warehouse staff, though, and that was the wobbly ladders; the pickers used them to fetch product from the top shelves, which were very high up.
When I brought it up to Andy, he told me he'd replace all the ladders after the warehouse relocation in a few month's time. I found out soon after there'd been no health and safety checks... ever.
"We have to act quickly." Were Andy's words in the Team meeting. "We either grow with the demand or we plateau and accept mediocrity."
The company was in a transitional period. It needed more fulfilment space. More staff. More product.
And, a change in work culture.
"Those idiots get away with murder in there. I watch them standing about like lemons every time I walk in." Andy complained to me in a private meeting between us. "I'm not gonna sugar coat it. I want you to report back to me what they're saying. See who's with the company and see who doesn't give a shit."
Along with this covert addition to my role, I was to head up a productivity spreadsheet to "weed out the slackers". Because we didn't want slackers in the new warehouse.
We wanted a positive work culture that promoted diligence and integrity.
Meanwhile, Olly was showing up to our meetings with bruises. He shrugged off the matter, but I could tell there was a deep inner struggle.
A part of me yearned to reach out and help him. But I just didn't know what to do, other than my job.
One evening, after a couple of glasses of wine, I burst into tears on a phone call with my mother. I sobbed uncontrollably, telling her I hated the job, how horrible it was. Then it was back to work.
I soon had to write some difficult emails. Not everyone was hitting the new productivity quota and picking enough units, packing enough orders.
One of them - Mandy - cried in front of me. As streams of tears ran down her cheeks, I thought to myself whether my heart was really in this job. But then I'd receive my paycheque at the end of the month. Then I'd see my friends working at Starbucks, complaining about how "unfair the system is", and I consoled myself with what I had.
It took a while, but I became used to suppressing my feelings. I think that's when the job truly became the job. Also, maybe some of Andy was rubbing off on me.
A part of me enjoyed the way I was running the show behind the scenes. My covert operations, helping to improve the company output and let go of the weaker members.
Then, one afternoon, there was an accident in the warehouse.
Someone had fallen off one of the ladders and brutally injured themselves.
After hearing about it, I rushed into Andy's office, who was in a call. He seemed to be in a cheery mood, while I was panicking.
After finishing on the phone, he told me immediately not to worry. "We're dealing with it." He said bluntly, ushering me out of the office with his silence.
I read Andy's statement in the local newspaper a day later. The fall had been fatal.
"Olly was a hard worker. It is with a heavy heart that we deliver news of this tragic accident..."
The next time I stepped foot in the warehouse, all the old ladders had been replaced.

I know this is all too much like.
If youre interested in knowing what's going through my head when I'm making shit like this its that before hannah, I was on my own for so long (5 years to be exact). So long that I had completely convinced myself that I was happier on my own and I just completely devoted myself to being the best person I could be on my own, money success whatever the fuck. I thought if I just kept my sole drive on that that I could accumulate enough resources to help out a few people that I care about and generally be the Uncle Phil of the group.
Then hannah showed me attention and latched onto me after stuff went south with Liam, and you know, I did the charming white knight good listener thing with her and for the first time it worked, a girl actually fell properly in love with me it felt like, so much that at the start I was the you in this situation, not replying for a few hours cos I'm doing stuff only to reply later and she responds straight away. And it felt amazing. So many people fall for you I've heard, I can only imagine what you feel like.
All my past relationships have had the hallmark of me caring more about it than them and I finally thought with hannah I'd found someone who can match my energy like that, maybe even surpass it. So for her to leave me as soon as I reminded her of her ex the tiniest bit. After shed told me that I deserved love and that she'd always be there for me. After spending 2 months fully convincing me that I didn't have to be alone anymore. After fucking filling my head with dreams shed apparently had about blonde kids cos of my hair, she just moved straight on and acted like it was nothing. (I'm playing the tragic hero here obvs but this is real life and I wasn't blameless either; I did a song about it, one of my better works imo; "another fucked love")
Anyway it fucking broke me. It broke me in this weird crazy artistic way which I'll probably look back and appreciate but i still broke. I put all my faith in this one support system, finally thought I could be the one having love to spare for once just to have it all ripped away. Like I tattooed our relationship on the journal of my life and now even if I rip out that page I'm gonna remember I did it. There's still gonna be a gap in the spine of my story. I'm good at hiding it with the male bravado and shit but I'm still broken now.
But it's weird like, through that relationship, me and you would have the occasional encounter when you were with Andy and you'd notice the little weird things I was doing like the economies of scale thing and the lil toy dinosaurs in andys living room, nugget in the biscuit at james' party, even tiny stuff like you giggling when I repeated the colour of the bow of the box I was imagining to tish outside duffys and dancing when I sang a snippet of s club 7. Stuff hannah, the apparent love of my life, didn't even pick up on (yhyh I know she wasn't there for that last 2, this is the 2nd draft stfu).
Ik it's only a few small things but I look at how we interact and I can't help feeling that you're on my wave length, like we both understand the implications of us having a conversation as "the guy and the girl" where it might be a bit flirty and meet cute-y and both know how to take the piss out of it. Cat and mouse lol. I try to be someone that's entertaining for my friends to be around cos I want to make them happy and it feels like you are too.
And listen right, I'm not declaring my love to you with this. I'm not about to launch into some weird limerick about your emerald eyes or some shit, I only do the physical appearance complimenting in stuff like "Come With Me" cos I wanna take the piss out of the cliche.
I don't know if we'd work together. It'd be a dream come true to have something like that, where both of us are spontaneous asf and ready to go at the drop of a hat. We'd wear each other out most likely, but it'd be a LOT of fun.
But tbh idec. Not really. I just wanna be your friend and get to know you a bit more. I just wanna walk around with you on some dumb chilled errand and talk shit and make fun of eccentric strangers we see going about, maybe even strike up a convo with them.
Its just confusing because (and ik the answer to this is just that you're popular and youre with people most of the time, I noticed that in my car you barely went on your phone, you live in the moment & I love that, sidetrack over) because I don't know if you feel any of the things that I'm feeling.
Like Im a twat and make our dms look imbalanced asf but then when we have our lil chats in my car (lovely girl, I noticed you paused to admire her for a second when I pulled up to stonergay) or outside a pub (that guy that came over to talk and then just ignored you lol wtf) I can't help feeling that it's the best conversation I've had all week, full of little in jokes and us just winking at each other knowing the game were both playing. You have that social awareness that is so rare in people these days, social media has eroded self awareness but you see it and you sit back and laugh at it all. Me too. But there's not that many people like that.
So that's why I'm doing all this. I'm trying to impress you in a way that you'll enjoy (weird musicy shit, although in fairness I was rapping before to deal with stress from my job and I've recorded a lot of music in general in my lorry, like 3 hours worth) and to tell you that I think, as friends, lovers, acquaintances, weird unrequited love triangle people, whatever, we could make each other happy. You've already made me achieve heights in my strange comedy/art that I never would have dreamed of. Just because your aloofness is so fucking enticing (like it literally inspired me to write a song about girls who are aloof in general, that's the "couple lines" I was referring to in that written rap I did. I was hoping to record it the next day but yknow me, scatterbrain till I die).
Let me put it another way just in case you don't understand. The day I helped hannah move her stuff in (ngl she arranged everything but I packed my car and put all the stuff in her flat myself, it's kinda my dayjob after all), she was in a mood a lot of the time and stressed etc cos no one came to help us and she went sleep early and I stayed up to smoke. I went a few streets away and smoked a lil spliff and tried composing a few more lines to this song I'm working on to go with this sick techno tune (Energy Drink by Virtual Riot if you're interested). And I got a bit adventurous and started walking.
She lives next to Narborough road and I ended up in beade park at like 5 in the morning, sun just coming up. I saw this slide that I'd been looking for ever since I was a kid. I took a pic I'll show you next time I see you. Always captivated my imagination cos it was so tall and it looked like a spaceship. I hadn't seen this slide since i was like 5 and I was blown away for a moment. And I wanted to share it so I called hannah and obviously she was half asleep and asked me why the fuck I'm calling at that time and I told her and she asked why I felt the need to wake her up to tell her that and my heart broke a little and I said "I just wanted to share this moment with you", apologised and hung up.
I wondered what the response from my "one" would be to that phone call. Several people crossed my mind and what their responses would have been. Then I thought of you and I realised I wouldn't have to call cos you'd probably be right there beside me on this weird walk, egging me on to climb up there and go down it (which I did, was on my own but I had Taylor swift singing in my headphones about being 22 and shit cos life's too short to ever fully grow up).
It's possible (shit, almost certain) that you're not into me at all and maybe even the things I'm feeling are just a weird interpretation of what I'm feeling for losing hannah, but whatever I tell myself, I can't lie about how I felt when you noticed those things before. You see the jokes in between the lines of the funeral letter. I've spent my life looking for someone like that. You understand and appreciate why I'm making what I am, a lot of people would have blocked me after the number thing. So sorry if I'm shooting my shot in an overly showy way but youre really cool and I just want to be happy. And I want to know if you're getting any of this weird feeling shit on your end, cos that would confirm whether this is something or not (friendship, fancying, whatever, I have no idea how you see me tbh).
So yeah opinion plz, in your own time ofc. Doesn't matter what you sing, I'm not gonna tell you what I want you to say now, say whatever init.
Or don't.
Im going San Francisco next month to see Jordan so I've got plenty to keep me occupied 😂 maybe you'll call me up and ask me to book you a ticket, Teenage Dirtbag style (lol yeah right keep dreaming bro, it's funny how I can be so twisted yet so naive at the same time).
Dw, my weird postmodern gen z mating dance is over, the ball is officially in your Court (see what I did there? Ngl I'm a sucker for callbacks) .
Please be honest and straight with me if you do get in contact, if there's nowt on your end then I'd rather just completely put it out my mind now and focus on doing something else. I'm not asking for a relationship right away, neither of us are ready for that rn but just let me know if you enjoy our chats as much as i do. You probably don't (no one ever does, wah-wah poor me etc) but I don't wanna settle for grey concrete reality if there's even the slightest chance my vibrant squishy* dreams could come true ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Sincerely, with a moderate amount of affection that puts across how I feel without making me look desperate,
PS. Okay, maybe I'm not completely done just yet. I'm gonna block you on here cos otherwise I'll drive myself insane trying to top the last thing I did, and I just had an idea for how to end it properly (assuming you don't contact me, hopefully you do but it's all cool and dramatic to pretend this is it, Romeo & Juliet shit ygm).
Quick sidenote, if we don't talk again then I want you to know that I did this because you're special (needs(haha)) nah but fr. If you ever feel down about where your life is going or something you've done, just remember that once upon a time, someone made cringey art spanning visual and audio mediums, just to get your attention 😂 I don't do this for just anyone, I hadn't even written a song for a crush before I met you.
You're sick girl, never forget it.
Watch the video underneath these screenshots. Haven't actually made it yet, hope its good.
I'm in my lorry writing this (not enough time to get back to the yard so I'm spending the night in a layby in Crawley, just ordered the shit I'll need for the video. Got a lil forest next to me, might have a lil explore after I've eaten).
Funny, right? This is gonna be over a couple days for me but for you it'll be as quick as you can flick between these pics and the video underneath.
Can you see why I like doing this now?
Hello from history! 😊
See ya over there (future for me, past for you) 🤙
*no that's not a joke about your tits, I've matured ofc bro

Gonna sound like boomer rage bait but here goes.
Yesterday a man, clearly drunk, broke, possibly homeless, maybe a refugee or immigrant, assaulted me on the metro.
I was with my girlfriend on a packed, standing room only train when this dude approached me and immediately said some gibberish to me with some obscenities sprinkled in calling me ‘boy’. I told him to please back off. Then the guy changes his demeanor and becomes somewhat friendly. Introduces himself as Mohammed (I’m not kidding) and i say hello, okay this interaction is calming down I think. I try to de-escalate. He wants to shake hands so I shake his hand. A few moments of silence and I think it’s over.He then he proceeds to tell me he’s ‘a killer and a sniper’ I’m doing my best to ignore him but he is like 2cm from my face and getting aggressive and also saying some really weird off kilter racist shit about Asian people. He asks what the next stop is and i tell him. He then proceeds to point at my girlfriend and touch her arm while calling her girlie and clearly being a fucking creep. I get between the two of them and tell him that this is the stop he asked about and he should go. Well homeboy didn’t like this and shoved my face while telling me he’s a sniper and a killer. I took this as a threat as any sane person would and immediately pushed his hands off of my face and told him to back off again. He then attacked me, hitting me in the face and with his umbrella several times, yelling some more gibberish, I had to shove him off the fucking train several times before he finally gave up. I was just praying the dude didn’t have a knife and that the conductor would close the fucking doors. Everyone else just stood there as this fucking asshole continued to assault me. I just kept yelling, “get the fuck off the train” and shoving him back when he approached me. He dropped his duffel bag and it landed in the door frame so I chucked it out. Wasn’t until a few blows to the face later that someone finally stepped in and he relented and the doors closed. I couldn’t just walk away from this guy because the train was absolutely packed and he kept using threatening language with me and then assaulted me. Afterwards my girlfriend then proceeded to chastise me for engaging with the dude even though I was literally just assaulted and defending myself. She later admitted that it wasn’t my fault and we’re good now, but that made me feel like shit.
Anyway, I’ve never encountered such an asshole in my 3.5 years living in this city but just want to say fuck these types of people. I used to encounter people like this all the time when I was living in L.A. but I had enough distance to ignore them or get away easily but this dude was a nose hair away from me. I chose to stand my ground. I could have escalated it further as this dude was clearly shit faced and stumbling but I chose to just shove him away from me even though every ounce of me wanted to pound this dickhead into oblivion.
The country I’m in won’t punish these types of low life losers and often the person defending themselves gets charges pressed against them so I’m lucky it ended quickly and without further incident.
Anyway I kinda feel bad for the dude being such a sorry sack of shit but why can’t these people keep their fucking hands to themselves?

If the original PS1 trillogy got remade what features would you keep and what would you change?
-Obviously the core story should remain the same but with some up to date narative tweaks (Teresa's "death" should be handled better for example) and expanded character backgrounds especially side characters like Girdeaux or omitting some altogether like Erikson in SF1.The boss and mini boss fights should be reworked to become more complex with a hidden gimmick or just to be more challlenging (the iconic ones like Girdeaux for example should retain the original idea but be more polished ). I feel like the remake should only add content since there are no redundant levels in my opinion.
-Make it a single game (like with Crashes N'sane trillogy) with the same number of missions maybe add some new ones to expand the story.
-The parallel missions in SF2 where Gabe is at the mountain while Lian is at the air base is a great idea that can be implemented to add a couple more levels.Maybe in SF1 have a stealth section with Mara trying to capture Phagan at the Pharcom Expo Centre or her escape from the agency after that.Jenkins having his team attacked in DC and even playing as one of the CBDC agents it can be tied up nicely if they were some of the men that end up crashing with Gabe at the start of SF 2.
-Give the player an option where possible to remain undetected for as long as possible like in Rhoemers stronghold and make it impact the current level.For example guards being more or less hostile maybe even some different level routes and radiotraffic depending on the agro state and have it transfer to subsequent level to make it matter (not like in Rozovka where you remain undetected but in the bunkers it doesn't matter because ups the silent alarm has been trigered and the base is on alert anyway)
-Keep the game third person only that means no first person aiming and no auto lock as that would make it too easy today.Update the map to make it useful for orientating for a change😁.
-I personally love the mission briefing screen before the levels and would be very happy if that esthetic (the bluish colour outline that is also in the pause menu) could be preserved maybe have someone do a voiceover reading the text.Radiotraffic should stay it's a nice touch and it feels like you have a team behind you.
-The weapons are great they have the variety and are fun to use but i could see them being rounded up with some more realistic sounds.Maybe cut the weapons that seem repetitive like the Falcon in SF3 (we already have the shotgun and .45) or combine some of them into one like the sniper and nightvision sniper could be just one gun.There is no need for an inventory system or upgrades of any kind to weapons during the game.
-Flak jackets should stay and somekind of an indicator for headshots since they are the core mechanics of the game.Box pickups i would be ok to be mainly abandoned maybe have a new weapon introduced that way could be cool as homage to the original.The dying animations specific to the way killed are fun (choking from a gas grenade or shotgun like weapons pushing henchmen back is always satisfying).Both Taser variants should stay but maybe the long range one should be nerfed to balance the gameplay😁.
-Soundtrack is awesome and an integral part of the experience it should only get an upgrade in terms of quality no need to fix something that isn't broken.Voice acting and the lines in general obviously should get a fresh coat of paint but if possible like in the case of Gabe (John Chacon ) at least the VA should remain the same .
-The obejctives in the levels should remain linear but the player can tackle them in any order when possible and should be encouraged to explore the level to get some rewards for doing so a new weapon,easter egg or piece of dialog.Not to come across wrong the game should not become some open world game but rather just use the maps to their full potential.
Let's give some ideas to potential game developers so that they have a broad outline of a finished product and no excuses not to remake SF😁

Before I begin, Id like to explain that fallout 4 is a great game and I've played it more times then I can count. But it's very different than the other fallout games in such a way that some could say it's crossed the line from the fallout franchise into it's own sub genre of fallout game. Let me begin to explain.
Entry One: (not so S.P.E.C.I.A.L.)
So in all the other fallout games your stats or your S.P.E.C.I.A.L are what outlines your characters personality. There was good reason to not being able to max out all of your skills and S.P.E.C.I.A.L, while it was still possible it was not the wisest course of action due to the great sacrifice of your perks. I believe that fallout 4 forcing the player to max these stats out takes away from character building of your own imagination. Not only that but not having things like skills, karma, or a silent protagonist also take away from the self character development we have all known to love. Like the S.P.E.C.I.A.L system in previous fallout games you weren't supposed to be able to have every perk in the game for those same reasons.
Entry Two: (where's my rifle?)
This entry will be based more off of my own opinion. The weapons in fallout 4 completely changed. While that's not necessarily an issue with the gameplay itself I don't understand how the assault rifle went from its classic design in fo3, to a more modernized rifle in New Vegas, then in fo4 to whatever that thing is supposed to be. They completely scrapped the idea of holstered weapons on your back or hip and that really takes away some key aesthetics I've always loved about the fallout universe.
Entry three: ("so now I'm traveling backwards in time?")
Now what bothered me the most is the historical references to the extent of literally dressing entire factions, companions, newspapers, and even some random encounters and quests to match the historical counterparts of that which took place in Boston HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO. Now correct me if I'm wrong but most NPCs in previous titles had very little to no understanding of anything that that happened in the world prior to the bombs falling. But in fallout 4 the characters in Boston seem to be rich in culture that pre dates them by centuries. They can be seen quoting Shakespeare, Oppenheimer, even Poe. I get that this can be explained by saying well Boston has audio tours and museums everywhere or Boston has historic landmarks and plaques that explains history or they were taught to them by ghouls. But I find it hard to believe that in a time where raiders, mutants, and other ungodly flesh eating abominations infested every historical landmark that I've visited in the game. Nor can I just simply accept that ghouls (who aren't even allowed in diamond City) are teaching or giving lectures on such things to any wastelanders that care to learn. Not only that but where did these people learn all this rich culture when they don't even know how baseball use to work. I mean the biggest settlement around is in a fucking baseball stadium. If they can all read up on history and Shakespeare then why can't Moe Cronin pick up an old play book? I could go on and on about this but for the sake of your time and mine I'll move on.
Entry four: (where's my f-bomb)
Now this last entry is extremely based on my own personal opinion, and if you made it this far id like to remind you I don't hate fallout 4. It's a wonderful game and I'm in my 6000th playthrough while writing this. So, in previous titles the wasteland was a gritty and disturbing place full of darkness, slavery, rape, chaotic neutrals and chaotic evils, and I hate to sound immature but... vulgarity.all of that affects the player based on your own choices being judged by the karma system. I absolutely loved that. I still do. The fact that the main protagonist in fo4 is literally a suburban dad/mom throughout the whole game who is completely indifferent to the new world around them really took away from all of that for me. Fact is Fallout 4 has little to no edge. I'm sorry but it's the truth. Just an example when you first enter diamond City and talk to the woman getting her hair cut who assumes your a begger and refers to everyone in diamond City as "poor and stupid" the edgiest thing you can say to her is "I don't beg you stuck up old bat" and then "bitch" under your breath. There's a million more examples like this. Now I'm not hating on all of the dialogue choices (some of them are somewhat funny) but there's no way to be an asshole like you use too. I think I'm going to leave it here because the vualt-tec rep at my front door is getting impatient. Let me know what you think down below.
(Conclusion)
Fallout 4 is not a bad game, but it is nowhere near it's previous titles when it comes to capturing the essence of a nuclear apocalypse. In my honest opinion it's a bit of a stretch to even call it an RPG. It's more of a shooter with RPG elements that's fun for the whole family. I think soccer moms would approve. But with that being said it's nothing compared to it's counterparts. Thank you for reading my rant. I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to see what my honest feelings and thoughts are about this game we have all grown to love or utterly despise in some cases (not mine (isagudgame)) so thanks again for reading and have a great rest of your day.

Hi. I am from Kamakura Kanagawa, Japan. I am living in the states for almost 10 years now. I am renting in Florida and California. I have work that I am have to travel and these two location is good for me as home base. I travel every week. My English is not very good so sorry if it seems broken and not correct, I am still learning as much as I can.
I travel alot because I am working in sports entertainment. I pack a lot of things like my ring gear and my work clothing but I always come back with new things. Because I only use one luggage and I buy states memory. I like American food sometimes like I miss pancake and egg sausage breakfast when I am in Japan. But when I am in America I cannot find good and clean Japanese food. My favorite one of dish to make is spring green beans with tofu and beef. I also like to make fresh Jasmine boba tea.
Maybe someone will write with me a lot because I try before and everyone will just write short and no conversation messages. I can learn if you write with me and give me a chance to read and write English. So my goal is to try and find that tonight! To start the week off great! Let’s go! Let’s do this guys!
I really want to decorate and buy a house so maybe we can discuss pretend like we are roommates and can decorate and design a home together.

looking for high capacity refrigerator
IGN: Fulltiltedicecream PC

Ever since the new update I’ve been experiencing some issues. It all started when I went to earth vaders island . My weapons swapping was heavily delayed or straight up not working and my reloads and jumping were doing the same either delayed or not responding. So I figured it was that area and never went back. The rest of the game everything seemed to work fine. Then In another game when I had picked up a stormtrooper blaster I was stuck on that weapon and the same experience happened. So I unequipped all my weapons and picked them back up and it was all good again. So I stopped picking that up. Then another game things started out fine but that same experience ended up happening in the middle of a fight of course. looking back I’m realizing my teammates both had the trooper blaster . It also feels like my frames drop and my sensitivity is slowed when it happens. So idk if it’s being around the Star Wars stuff or my controller is failing and this is all coincidence. Or possible bad internet connection? I’m on Xbox in NAE If anyone has had any similar experiences since the update please let me know!

Hey yall
I'm on my fourth season of my career mode where I made my own team. For fun I made myself at the back of the pack R&D wise to work myself up. After season 3 I was the fourth best car, but with a ton of regulation changes that took away nearly all my chassis, aero, and durability, I'm again at the bottom.
I've worked my way up so my aero is back to 13, chassis at 15, power at 17, and durability at 14 which allows me to be just behind AlphaTauri.
My issue is I feel like my car has 0 turning capabilities. Other cars are turning harder while also going faster and on worse racing lines than me most turns. My car just doesn't turn well and idk why. Does anyone have any advice? I