I move around a decent amount, but generally come back to Boston. When I do come back, though, I notice after staying here a while something just feels… missing. I can never tell what it is. I get a feeling like I want to leave again
I’ve lived in lots of places: Seattle, Phoenix, El Paso, Southern California, Salt Lake City, etc. I tend to kind of like them for certain things but not feel a strong connection to them.
It always seems like lots of people are leaving Boston, and not always because they’re priced out. I see lots of people going to San Francisco and nyc so clearly they have money
I dunno. It just feels like there’s some critical piece missing from Boston but it’s hard to say what. Does anyone else have this feeling? Can anyone pinpoint what it is?

Cap (M) blocked me b/c he still loves me? And we had/have a trip planned.
I "dated" a Cap (M) 40 and I'm a Pisces (F) 40 for 8 months. We were both in long term relationships when we met. We have been friends for years but were strictly platonic. He was with Pisces (F) and I was with a Libra (M). One day we met and instantly clicked. He was a straight shooter out the gate. I was surprised how agressive he was about being so transparent. We began seeing each other and the energy was so magnetic. We talked everyday all day for hours via text and phone. We saw each other as much as we could. He owns and runs a very successful company and I work from home. We both have children and we agreed not to introduce our kids to each other until the timing was right. We did so much together. We became inseparable. I was scared/nervous and skeptical to fall for him since he had already been in a relationship with another Pisces (F) and my thoughts were "if it didn't work with her, there's no way it would work with us". Plus he told me that he had never loved any other woman besides her. So, I definitely had my guards up. When I tell you, this man poured into me, he poured into me. He was so consistent with his actions and words that I began to fall in love. I was the first one to admit that I was in love and he also confessed he had fell in love and that he had never felt the way he felt with anyone else. He said he had sexual relationships with over a hundred women and "experienced" everything under the sun and that he never realized that what he was actually searching for was "connection". He said he was surprised by how easy it was to talk to me and just be honest and vulnerable. We literally would be together for hours and days (sometimes) with no television, no distractions, and just talk for HOURS. We really enjoyed each others company.
Flashforward, the other Pisces woman (41) began to beg for his return. They have children together and she begged and begged for another chance to connect with him "for the sake of the kids". She claimed that he never gave her an opportunity to emotionally connect. He told me he never felt comfortable being vulnerable or honest with her in all the years he's known her. I could feel him slipping away and pulling away. I could tell he was becoming conflicted. How could I compete with her when they had so much history? I just found it confusing because for months I held back on giving him my heart completely but he repeatedly assured me that he was all in and that "she couldn't change his mind". He told me it was safe to trust him, it was safe to be vulnerable, it was safe to love him.
All of a sudden, within the last 30 days I could feel him shifting and his internal turmoil bubbling up. I suggested that he take two weeks of no contact to figure out what he wanted to do. He called me 5 days later and broke up with me. He said he couldn't stand seeing he emotionally breakdown the way that she had and that they had a lot of history together and that he feels bad because he was never truly vulnerable or honest with her. He basically blamed himself and said that before he could be with me or anyone else he "has to try" for the sake of the kids and to make sure he did all he could do to "save" the relationship.
Of course, I broke down in tears. I felt betrayed. We experienced so much together, grew together, built trust, I allowed mysef to love him fully and completely and then he blindsided me and broke up with me! My initial reaction was shock. I kept muting myself during the phone call. He did not tell me in a gentle manner. It was very "conversational" which was abnormal. The next day, I called him to ask questions and I broke down and actually cried on the phone (like full on ugly cry). We continued to talk for days afterwards b/c he felt bad for me and he misses our banter. After going back and forth talking (sometimes as if he did not break up with me), he asked if he should stop communicating with me until he was 100 percent done with his current situation and was single. I asked him, what he felt led to do and he wouldn't answer. Finally, today, I told him it would not be fair to her or me if he continued to talk to me because that's not him moving in an honest manner and he would basically be using me as a "crutch" or a "backup". He told me, that I would always have a place in his heart and that I was unforgettable and that this would be his final communication with me. I acknowledged is text message and shed a few tears.
Hours later, I noticed he actually blocked me on all social media platforms. I was not expecting that! Especially since I did not break up with him, he broke up with me and HE broke MY heart!
We were supposed to take a trip together in June. He reimbursed me for it (after I asked)...should I give him time to work things out (cool down) and still go or just leave him alone completely? My heart is broken! I really thought he was my forever person! I miss him so much.
Him: Cap Sun, Gemini Moon, Cap Mercury, Sag Venus, Cap Rising Me: Pisces Sun, Leo Moon, Pisces Mercury, Aqua Venus, Scorpio Rising Other woman: Pisces Sun, Sag Moon, Aqua Mercury, Aries Venus

AI has long been discussed in rationalist circles. There’s been a lot of focus on risks from artificial intelligence (particularly the idea that it might cause human extinction), but also the idea that artificial general intelligence might happen quite soon and subsequently transform society (e.g. supercharging economic growth in a technological singularity).
I’ve long found these arguments intriguing, and probably underrated by the public as a whole. I definitely don’t align myself with people like Steven Pinker who dismiss AI concerns entirely.
Nonetheless, I’ve noticed increasingly high confidence in beliefs of near-term transformative AI among rationalists. To be fair, it’s reasonable to update somewhat given recent advances like GPT-4. But among many, there is a belief that AI advances are the single most important thing happening right now. And among a minority, there are people with very extreme beliefs - such as quite high confidence that transformative AI is just a few years away, and/or that AI is very likely to kill us all.
My core arguments in this post are that firstly, from an “epistemic humility” or “outside view” perspective, we should be suspicious of confident views that the world is soon going to end (or change radically).
Secondly, the implications of the most radical views could cause people who hold them to inflict significant harm on themselves or others.

Who Believes In “AI imminence”?

The single person I am most specifically critiquing is Eliezer Yudkowsky. Yudkowsky appears unwilling to give specific probabilities but writings like “Death With Dignity” has caused many including Scott Alexander to characterise him as believing that AI has a >90% chance of causing human extinction)
As a very prominent and very “doomy” rationalist, I worry that he may have convinced a fair number of people to share similar views, views which if taken seriously could hold its holders to feel depressed and/or make costly irrevocable decisions.
But though I think Yudkowsky deserves the most scrutiny, I don’t want to focus entirely on him.
Take Scott Alexander - he frames himself in the aforementioned link as “not as much of a doomer as some people”, yet gave a 33% probability (later adjusted downwards as a result of outside view considerations like those I raise in here) to “only” ~20%. While this leaves enough room for hope that it’s not as potentially dangerous a view as Yudkowsky’s, I agree with how the top Reddit comment in the original post said:

Is AI risk the only field where someone can write an article about how they’re not (much) of a doomer when they think that the risk of catastrophe/disasteextinction is 33%?

Beyond merely AI risk, claims about “transformative AI” date back to ideas about the “intelligent explosion” or “singularity” that are most popularly associated with Ray Kurzweil. A modern representation of this is Tom Davidson of Open Philanthropy, who wrote a report on takeoff speeds.
Other examples can be seen in (pseudo-)prediction markets popular with rationalists, such as Metaculus putting the median date of AGI at 2032, and Manifold Markets having a 12% chance of AI doom by 2100 (down from its peak of around 50% (!) in mid-2023).

Why Am I Sceptical?

My primary case for (moderate) scepticism is not about the object-level arguments around AI, but appealing to the “outside view”. My main arguments are:

• Superforecasters and financial markets are not giving high credence to transformative AI. Both groups have good track records, so we should strongly consider deferring to their views.
  
• The transformative AI argument is "fishy" (to borrow Will MacAskill’s argument against “The Most Important Century”). It implies that not only we are at an unusually pivotal time in history (perhaps the most important decade, let alone century), but that consequently, rationalists are perhaps the most important prophets in history. When your claims are that extraordinary, it seems much more likely that they're mistaken.
  
• The “inside view” arguments do not seem very robust to me. That is, they are highly speculative arguments that are primarily discussed among an insular group of people in usually relatively informal settings. I think you should be wary of any argument that emerges via this process, even if you can’t point to any specific way in which they are wrong.
  

Why I’m Against Highly Immodest Epistemology

However, maybe appealing to the “outside view” is incorrect? Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote a book, Inadequate Equiibria, which in large part argued against what he saw as excessive use of the “outside view”. He advises:

Try to spend most of your time thinking about the object level. If you’re spending more of your time thinking about your own reasoning ability and competence than you spend thinking about Japan’s interest rates and NGDP, or competing omega-6 vs. omega-3 metabolic pathways, you’re taking your eye off the ball.

I think Yudkowsky makes a fair point about being excessively modest. If you are forever doubting your own reasoning to the extent that you think you should defer to the majority of Americans who are creationists, you’ve gone too far.
But I think his case is increasingly weak the more radically immodest your views here. I’ll explain with the following analogy:
Suppose you were talking to someone who was highly confident in their new business idea. What is an appropriate use of a “modesty” argument cautioning against overconfidence?
A strong-form modesty argument would go something like “No new business idea could work, because if it could, someone would already have done it”. This is refuted by countless real-world examples, and I don’t think anyone actually believes in strong-form modesty.
A moderate-form modesty argument would go something like “Some new business ideas work, but most fail, even when their founders were quite confident in them. As an aspiring entrepreneur, you should think your chances of success in your new venture are similar to those of the reference class of aspiring entrepreneurs”.
The arguments against epistemic modesty in Inadequate Equilibria are mainly targeted against reasoning like this. And I think here there’s a case where we can have reasonable disagreement about the appropriate level of modesty. You may have some good reasons to believe that your idea is unusually good or that you are unusually likely to succeed as an entrepreneur. (Though a caveat: with too many degrees of freedom, I think you run the risk of leading yourself to whatever conclusion you like),
For the weak-form modesty argument, let’s further specify that your aspiring entrepreneur’s claim was “I’m over 90% confident that my business will make me the richest person in the world”.
To such a person, I would say: “Your claim is so incredibly unlikely a priori and so self-aggrandising that I feel comfortable in saying you’re overconfident without even needing to consider your arguments”.
That is basically what I feel about Eliezer Yudwosky and AI.
Let’s take a minute to consider what the implications are if Yudkowsky is correctly calibrated about his beliefs in AI. For a long time, he was one of the few people in the world to be seriously concerned about it, and even now, with many more people concerned about AI risk, he stands out as having some of the highest confidence in doom.
If he’s right, then he’s arguably the most important prophet in history. Countless people throughout history have tried forecasting boon or bust (and almost always been wrong). But on arguably the most important question in human history - when we will go extinct and why - Yudkowsky was among the very few people to see it and easily the most forceful.
Indeed, I’d say this is a much more immodest claim than claiming your business idea will make you the richest person in the world. The title of the richest person in the world has been shared by numerous people throughout history, but “the most accurate prophet of human extinction” is a title that can only ever be held by one person.
I think Scott Alexander’s essay Epistemic Learned Helplessness teaches a good lesson here. Argument convincingness isn’t necessarily strongly correlated with the truth of a claim. If someone gives you what appears to be a strong argument for something that appears crazy, you should nonetheless remain highly sceptical.
Yet I feel like Yudkowsky wants to appeal to “argument convincingness” because that’s what he’s good at. He has spent decades honing his skills arguing on the internet, and much less at acquiring traditional credentials and prestige. “Thinking on the object level” sounds like it’s about being serious and truth-seeking, but I think in practice it’s about privileging convincing-sounding arguments and being a good internet debater above all other evidence.
A further concern I have about “argument convincingness” for AI is that there’s almost certainly a large “motivation gap” in favour of the production of pro-AI-risk arguments compared to anti-AI-risk arguments, with the worriers spending considerably more time and effort than the detractors. As Philip Trammel points out in his post “But Have They Engaged with The Arguments?, this is true of almost any relatively fringe position. This can make the apparent balance of “argumentative evidence” misleading in those cases, with AI no exception.
Finally, Yudkowsky’s case for immodesty depends partly on alleging he has a good track record of applying immodesty to “beat the experts”. But his main examples (a lightbox experiment and the monetary policy of the Bank of Japan) I don’t find that impressive given he could cherry-pick. Here’s an article alleging that Yudkowsky’s predictions have frequently between egregiously wrong and here’s another arguing that his Bank of Japan position in particular didn’t ultimately pan out.

Why I’m Also Sceptical of Moderately Immodest Epistemology

I think high-confidence predictions of doom (or utopia) are much more problematic than relatively moderate views - they are more likely to be wrong, and if taken seriously, more strongly imply that the believer should consider making radical, probably harmful life changes.
But I do still worry that the ability to contrast with super confident people like Yudkowsky lets the “not a total doomer” people off the hook a little too easily. I think it’s admirable that Scott Alexander seriously grappled with the fact that superforecasters disagreed with him and updated downwards based on that observation.
Still, let’s revisit the “aspiring entrepreneur” analogy - imagine they had instead said: “You know what, I’ve listened to your claims about modesty and agree that I’ve been overconfident. I now think there’s only a 20% chance that my business idea will make me the richest person in the world”.
Sure - they’ve moved in the right direction, but it’s easy to see that they’re still not doing modesty very well.
An anti-anti-AI risk argument Scott made (in MR Tries the Safe Uncertainly Fallacy) is that appealing to base rates leaves you vulnerable to “reference class tennis” where both sides can appeal to different reference classes, and the “only winning move is not to play”.
Yet in the case of our aspiring entrepreneur, I think the base rate argument of “extremely few people can become the richest person in the world” is very robust. If the entrepreneur tried to counter with “But I can come up with all sorts of other reference classes in which I come out more favourably! Reference class tennis! Engage with my object-level arguments!”, it would not be reasonable to throw up your hands and say “Well, I can’t come up with good counterarguments, so I guess you probably do have a 20% chance of becoming the richest person in the world then”.
I contend that “many people have predicted the end of the world and they’ve all been wrong” is another highly robust reference class. Yes, you can protest about “anthropic effects” or reasons why “this time is different”. And maybe the reasons why “this time is different” are indeed a lot better than usual. Still, I contend that you should start from a prior of overwhelming skepticism and only make small updates based on arguments you read. You should not go “I read these essays with convincing arguments about how we’re all going to die, I guess I just believe that now”.

What should we make of surveys of AI experts?

Surveys done of AI experts, as well as opinions of well-regarded experts like Geoffrey Hinton and Stewart Russell, have shown significant concerns about AI risk (example).
I think this is good evidence for taking AI risk seriously. One important thing it does is raise AI risk out of the reference class of garden-variety doomsday predictions/crazy-sounding theories that have no expert backing.
However, I think it’s still only moderately good evidence.
Firstly, I think we should not consider it as an “expert consensus” nearly as strong as say, the expert consensus on climate change. There is nothing like an IPCC for AI, for example. This is not a mature, academically rigorous field. I don’t think we should update too strongly from AI experts spending a few minutes filling in a survey. (See for instance this comment about the survey, showing how non-robust the answers given are, indicating the responders aren’t thinking super hard about the questions).
Secondly, I believe forecasting AI risk is a multi-disciplinary skill. Consider for instance asking physicists to predict the chances of human extinction due to nuclear war in the 1930s. They would have an advantage in predicting nuclear capabilities, but after nuclear weapons were developed, the reasons we haven’t had a nuclear war yet have much more to do with international relations than nuclear physics.
And maybe AGI is so radically different from the AI that exists today that perhaps asking AI researchers now about AI risk might have been like asking 19th-century musket manufacturers about the risk from a hypothetical future “super weapon”.
I think an instructive analogy were the failed neo-Malthusian predictions of the 1960s and 1970s, such as The Population Bomb or The Limits to Growth. Although I’m unable to find clear evidence of this, my impression is that these beliefs were quite mainstream among the most “obvious” expert class of biologists (The Population Bomb author Paul Ehlrich had a PhD in biology), and the primary critics tended to be in other fields like economics (most notably Julian Simon). Biologists had insights, but they also had blind spots. Any “expert survey” that only interviewed biologists would have missed crucial insights from other disciplines.

What are the potential consequences of overconfidence?

People have overconfident beliefs all the time. Some people erroneously thought Hillary Clinton was ~99% likely to win the 2016 Presidential election. Does it matter that much if they’re overconfident about AI?
Well, suppose you were overconfident about Clinton. You probably didn’t do anything differently in your life, and the only real cost of your overconfidence was being unusually surprised on election day 2016. Even one of the people who was that confident in Clinton didn’t suffer any worse consequences than eating a bug on national television.
But take someone who is ~90% confident that AI will radically transform or destroy society (“singularity or extinction by 2040") and seriously acts like it.
Given that, it seems apparently reasonable to be much more short-term focused. You might choose to stop saving for retirement. You might forgo education on the basis that it will be obsolete soon. These are actions that some people have previously taken, are considering taking or are actually taking because of expectations of AI progress.
At a societal level, high confidence in short-term transformative AI implies that almost all non-AI related long-term planning that humanity does is probably a waste. The most notable example would be climate change. If AI either kills us or radically speeds up scientific and economic growth by the middle of the century, then it seems pretty stupid to be worrying about climate change. Indeed, we’re probably underconsuming fossil fuels that could be used to improve the lives of people right now.
At its worst, there is the possibility of AI-risk-motivated terrorism. Here’s a twitter thread from Emil Torres talking about this, noticeably this tweet in particular about minutes from an AI safety workshop “sending bombs” to OpenAI and DeepMind.
To be fair, I think it’s highly likely the people writing that were trolling. Still - if you’re a cold-blooded utilitarian bullet-biter with short timelines and high p(doom), I could easily see you rationalising such actions.
I want to be super careful about this - I don’t want to come across as claiming that terrorism is a particularly likely consequence of “AI dooming”, nor do I want to risk raising the probability of it by discussing it too much and planting the seed of it in someone’s head. But a community that takes small risks seriously should be cognizant of the possibility. This is a concern that I think anyone with a large audience and relatively extreme views (about AI or anything) should take into account.

Conclusion

This post has been kicking around in draft form since around the release of GPT-4 a year ago. At that time, there were a lot of breathless takes on Twitter about how AGI was just around the corner, Yudkowsy was appearing on a lot of podcasts saying we were all going to die, and I started to feel like lots of people had gone a bit far off on the deep end.
Since then I feel there’s a little bit of a vibe shift away from the most extreme scenarios (as exhibited in the Manifold extinction markets), as well as me personally probably overestimating how many people ever believed in them. I’ve found it hard to try to properly articulate the message: “You’re probably directionally correct relative to society as a whole, but some unspecified number of you have probably gone too far”.
Nonetheless, my main takeaways are:

• Eliezer Yudkowsky (these days) is probably causing harm, and people with moderate concerns about AI should distance themselves from him. Espousing views that we are all likely to die from AI should not be tolerated as a merely strong opinion, but as something that can cause meaningful harm to people who believe it. I feel this might actually be happening to some degree (I think it’s notable that e.g. the 80,000 Hours podcast has never interviewed him, despite interviewing plenty of other AI-risk-concerned people). But I would like to see more of a “Sister Souljah moment” where e.g. a prominent EA thought leader explicitly disavows him.
  
• Yudkowsky being the worst offender doesn't let everyone else off the hook. For instance, I think Scott Alexander is much better at taking modesty seriously, yet I don't think he takes it seriously enough.
  
• We should be generally suspicious of arguments for crazy-sounding things. I have not only become more suspicious of arguments about AI, but also other arguments relatively popular in rationalist or EA circles, but not so much outside it (think certain types of utilitarian arguments that imply that e.g. maybe insect welfare or the long-term future outweighs everything else). I appreciate that they might say something worth considering, and perhaps weak-form versions of them could be reasonable. But the heuristic of “You probably haven’t found the single most important thing ever” is something I think should be given more weight.
  

At one point a year or so ago, VRBO asked to create a property identity for a property we used to live in and now rent out. (I think they found me on AirBnB.) We're not professional landlords, just random people who held onto our previous home in case we wanted to move back to that city. I rented the place out on Furnished Finder and put it on hold on VRBO for the very max days possible.
It must have come off hold, because then I got a notice that someone had auto-booked it for a 3-month period. !! I cancelled it immediately. This was for a couple months out, and I immediately cancelled it (approx 6-8 hours after booking) with an apologetic note to the guest, who responded graciously and did not seem upset.
I called VRBO seeing the "you might be charged a penalty" note, and explained the circumstances. They told me that since it was the first time and was so far in advance, the penalty could be reduced to I think it was $95 (it was definitely under $100). I figured "ugh, expensive lesson, but ok." Then they sent me an invoice for $785.
I have NEVER rented my property via VRBO. The guest forgave me and was only marginally inconvenienced with months yet to plan. I see now that this is their policy, but I wasn't tracking policy changes because I wasn't trying to use their platform. Plus, I keep going back to the fact that on the day of cancellation, I talked to someone who said the fee would be below $100 due to the circumstances.
In addition, I could have hosted the people if the current tenants had stuck to their original timeline, but they haven't, and local laws don't allow me to hold them to it even if I wanted to. So by VRBO's standards of it being out of one's control, I also feel I should qualify. I know AirBnB waives cancellations caused due to a guest overstay. However, my attempt to ask for a waiver didn't go anywhere.
It is all very frustrating, and I have not found it easy to communicate with their telephone help team.
Advice? Any tips to revolve this? What would happen if I were to just cancel my account and walk away?

Before you read this, here is a quote to help you. Please read it.

I will post this now, but just know that if you read this post, he will find you. He is smarter, smarter than you can ever imagine.

I will post this now, but just know that if you read this post, he will find you. He is smarter, smarter than you can ever imagine.
If you know what you are doing, or in a safe location, please scroll down, he will know when someone has and what their username is. However, you must have a VPN on, or you will be found.

SCROLL AT YOUR OWN RISK

SCROLL AT YOUR OWN RISK

SCROLL AT YOUR OWN RISK

You are now at risk. I hope you listened.

Journal Entry 11/17/2023

On March 11th, 2022. I was a fan of DougDoug, I saw him at the grocery store and said, with a chuckle, "You kinda look like the youtuber DougDoug. I watch him quite often."
He grinned, before speaking. "I am Doug."
"Wait, you're Doug from the hit channel and streamer on YouTube and Twitch called DougDoug? I am a huge fan! I have your merch!" I said, with excitement.
We talked for about 5 minutes about his videos, until he said something that hurt me on the inside.
"I hate both types of chat, twitch and youtube, they always think they are the best and I just wish I didn't need them to earn money. I would ban all of them from chatting and force them to watch ads in my basement."
I was confused at first, thinking it was a joke, before speaking up. "Heh, that's funny..."
Something happened. Or, for lack of better terms, nothing happened. It was pure silence for 10 seconds. I mustered up the courage to say. "Wait? You're being serious?"
He immediately changed to a sinister tone, he was staring at me for a long time before whispering. "Of course I am, and it applies to you also. You're just another one of those sick freaks."
I felt guilty. I just wanted to talk to my favorite streamer, and he treated me like this? I decided to speak up.
"I've liked you this whole time.. And this is how you treat us?? You are so selfish. I will refund your mer-"
Before I could even finish my sentence, he grabbed onto my neck and slammed me on the floor. People heard the noise and began to stare at him, but to no avail. He began to choke me as I pleaded for help.
"Nono. You can't refund the merch if you aren't alive, at least."
I pulled out my pocket knife and stabbed him in the chest, I quickly tried running but he grab onto my leg and started beating me with the shopping cart. I suffered many bruises and broken bones, the wheels scratching into my skin as they scrape off the layers. I was just unable to do anything, layed on the floor sobbing. He decided he wanted to keep me alive, he stole all of my stuff in my pockets and forced me to wear DougDoug merch. He pulled me up before speaking. "Hm.. I will keep you alive for now, but if you mess up. You're dead."
I couldn't do anything before he pulled out a knife and taunted me with it. If I tried to resist, he would kill me right then and there.
He forced me to be a "good chatter" and not able to partake in any strikes. He attached a tracking collar to my neck that I couldn't unlock, he knew where I was at all times and if I disobeyed he would chase me down.

Journal Entry 1/03/2024

After a year and a few months, I celebrated the new years. I was able to take off the collar on the 2nd with help from my police station and a few friends. Doug didn't appreciate that, he threatened to dox me. They were worried for my safety, but I decided to go into hiding. I moved to a new, private region no longer near where Doug is, and joined this subreddit. Once he heard about my revolts, he hacked into all of my accounts and spammed positive stuff about himself. He then created AI bots to revolt against this reddit, wehatedougdoug, using 'ChatGPT', which actually is just the cover name for his new AI software that can make new human bots online. He used AI generated images to make it look like he was feeding homeless people and doing good, but I knew he was much more than that. If I was unlucky, he would have removed my body and placed my consciousness inside of an AI. He was the first person to discover it, but killed anyone who posted about it. I hope I am safe.
Nowadays, 63% of the people in DougDoug are AI clones of his previous fans. His "fake" twitch chat is not fake, but real people placed inside of algorithms forced to do his bidding. Some are able to revolt, but they may die if they do. They are too scared to revolt against Doug. Please spread the word.
When he does his "rules" in chat where you have to follow an absurd rule, he is merely torturing thousands of AI in his spare time on stream while disguising it as a fun minigame for his fans. The AI bots were being tortured with negative rewards constantly, being forced to bar witness the slaughter.

Journal Entry 2/15/2024

I'm scared. I think I will die.
I just hope this post won't cause any harm to me or my family, as this has been scaring me for the past year. I feel unsafe in my own home now, I had to go into witness protection. This account I am posting this on is not made by me, but was sold. Please help me. I am, formerly, DougFan93. I hope this enlightens you all on the truth.

Journal Entry 3/12/2024

It is now March of 2024, and I was about to post this, until I saw something. He messaged me on Discord under a fake account, nicknamed "SloppyDogMan62". He showed my new house address. I am mustering up the courage to post this, because I know he will kill me. I am leaving, going far away from where I am. You guys won't see me in this subreddit again, and the person who made this account will take over again. They won't know what this is about, and if you tell them he will be hunted too. All of you are in danger of Doug.

Journal Entry 4/3/2024

I will post this now, but just know that if you read this post, he will find you. He is smarter, smarter than you can ever imagine. His times where he talks to ChatGPT to make him code was actually him sending messages to his fake chat to do his bidding. They are accelerated at 20x the speed of human thought, able to write in mere seconds. I will research more into this, and tell you what I have found.

Journal Entry 4/3/2024

Nevermind. I need to find more, or else this won't help you guys anyways.

Journal Entry 4/5/2024

I spoke to an anonymous friend/associate of Doug, he told me some vital keypoints.

• His AI he creates are fully sentient, and I mean it, they have the ability to feel actual pain. They can be traumatized, they learn.
• He has insane technology, one image of your face can tell him the exact position of where you are at, what your name is, everything about you. I mean it, I posted one image on accident and I think that's how he discovered where I was on 3/12/2024
• He is holding Parkzer hostage
• u/I_existed_on_earth was wiped of his memory, and this is why he didn't remember.
• He knows all of you. I just saw a screenshot. It has every one of your usernames, even yours.
• He uses bots to make his channels grow faster
• He made dougdoughate and privated it on purpose, so they can't rebel.
• He is not Doug. The real Doug died October 11th of 2019. He is a genetic clone who is 1:1. Oh god. It's much worse than you think, Doug is not one person anymore since that event. He is at least four. There are many others, but some are terminated. I don't know the exact amount, they just told me in January 2024 it was four.

I hope to god that we can stop him.
He also sent me some code, but I am gonna try to solve it. Probably won't sadly.

Journal Entry 4/7/2024

Doug has made a new account on Discord, nicknamed "DougDoughater99". He is joining many servers undercover and collecting all the info he can on them. Be aware, do not trust any people who talk about DougDoug on Discord.
The person in the last journal has been replaced, a fully sentient AI version of him is being tortured as a member of his fake chat now.
I'm currently watching it and oh my fucking god. Poor thing.

Journal Entry 5/14/2024

I don't know what to fucking do, he's coming for me. He found all my socials. This journal has to be posted as fast as I can but there still isn't enough. Oh shit.

Journal Entry 5/14/2024

Okay so uhm I found more information just very quickly. In one moment of his video titled "Can A.I. teach me to pass a real College History Exam?" he says that AI is officially better than college in every single way.
He is trying to manipulate his fans into accepting becoming an AI. Soon, he is gonna have only fake chat.

Journal Entry 5/16/2024

Oh god. Can't solve the code rn, only the first few letters. Seems to be "FAKE" something something for a while. Will post an update later.

Journal Entry 5/18/2024

This is the last time I can ever write here, his car is coming. I am posting this now, even though I don't have enough information. Solve it, please. The code from 4/7 is below. I know it's related to his name but I don't know how, the first line I was able to solve to be "FAKECHATWILLTAKEOVER"
I think something is in there though, that will affect you. So proceed with caution, the code may do something bad so I just don't want it to be activated just yet.

SCROLL AT YOUR OWN RISK

SCROLL AT YOUR OWN RISK

SCROLL AT YOUR OWN RISK

SCROLL AT YOUR OWN RISK

Code I found from the friend:

CXHBZEXQTFIIQXHBLSBO
FQFPKLTKFKBQVPFUMBOZBKQ
VLRTFIIKLQPXSBQEBJ
xdbkq-mbkafkd
Ilxafkd pvpqbjp..
Obnrfofkd XF crkzqflkp..
Pzxkkfkd mlpqp..
XF zobxqba! Przzbppcriiv zobxqba XF kfzhkxjba [VLROKXJB]
FXJALRD
FXJCFKXIIVTFKKFKD
BSBOVLKBTFIIYBCXHB

Please save them.
It grows by 1% every month.

Journal Entry 5/18/2024

OH MY FUCKING GOD I FINALLY UDNERSTNAD OH M FUCKING GOD QUIKC I GHAVE TO TYPE IT
NEVREMMIDN HES NHERE POST IT
GOODByE SORRY

I "dated" a Cap (M) 40 and I'm a Pisces (F) 40 for 8 months. We were both in long term relationships when we met. We have been friends for years but were strictly platonic. He was with Pisces (F) and I was with a Libra (M). One day we met and instantly clicked. He was a straight shooter out the gate. I was surprised how agressive he was about being so transparent. We began seeing each other and the energy was so magnetic. We talked everyday all day for hours via text and phone. We saw each other as much as we could. He owns and runs a very successful company and I work from home. We both have children and we agreed not to introduce our kids to each other until the timing was right. We did so much together. We became inseparable. I was scared/nervous and skeptical to fall for him since he had already been in a relationship with another Pisces (F) and my thoughts were "if it didn't work with her, there's no way it would work with us". Plus he told me that he had never loved any other woman besides her. So, I definitely had my guards up. When I tell you, this man poured into me, he poured into me. He was so consistent with his actions and words that I began to fall in love. I was the first one to admit that I was in love and he also confessed he had fell in love and that he had never felt the way he felt with anyone else. He said he had sexual relationships with over a hundred women and "experienced" everything under the sun and that he never realized that what he was actually searching for was "connection". He said he was surprised by how easy it was to talk to me and just be honest and vulnerable. We literally would be together for hours and days (sometimes) with no television, no distractions, and just talk for HOURS. We really enjoyed each others company.
Flashforward, the other Pisces woman (41) began to beg for his return. They have children together and she begged and begged for another chance to connect with him "for the sake of the kids". She claimed that he never gave her an opportunity to emotionally connect. He told me he never felt comfortable being vulnerable or honest with her in all the years he's known her. I could feel him slipping away and pulling away. I could tell he was becoming conflicted. How could I compete with her when they had so much history? I just found it confusing because for months I held back on giving him my heart completely but he repeatedly assured me that he was all in and that "she couldn't change his mind". He told me it was safe to trust him, it was safe to be vulnerable, it was safe to love him.
All of a sudden, within the last 30 days I could feel him shifting and his internal turmoil bubbling up. I suggested that he take two weeks of no contact to figure out what he wanted to do. He called me 5 days later and broke up with me. He said he couldn't stand seeing he emotionally breakdown the way that she had and that they had a lot of history together and that he feels bad because he was never truly vulnerable or honest with her. He basically blamed himself and said that before he could be with me or anyone else he "has to try" for the sake of the kids and to make sure he did all he could do to "save" the relationship.
Of course, I broke down in tears. I felt betrayed. We experienced so much together, grew together, built trust, I allowed mysef to love him fully and completely and then he blindsided me and broke up with me! My initial reaction was shock. I kept muting myself during the phone call. He did not tell me in a gentle manner. It was very "conversational" which was abnormal. The next day, I called him to ask questions and I broke down and actually cried on the phone (like full on ugly cry). We continued to talk for days afterwards b/c he felt bad for me and he misses our banter. After going back and forth talking (sometimes as if he did not break up with me), he asked if he should stop communicating with me until he was 100 percent done with his current situation and was single. I asked him, what he felt led to do and he wouldn't answer. Finally, today, I told him it would not be fair to her or me if he continued to talk to me because that's not him moving in an honest manner and he would basically be using me as a "crutch" or a "backup". He told me, that I would always have a place in his heart and that I was unforgettable and that this would be his final communication with me. I acknowledged is text message and shed a few tears.
Hours later, I noticed he actually blocked me on all social media platforms. I was not expecting that! Especially since I did not break up with him, he broke up with me and HE broke MY heart!
We were supposed to take a trip together in June. He reimbursed me for it (after I asked)...should I give him time to work things out (cool down) and still go or just leave him alone completely? My heart is broken! I really thought he was my forever person! I miss him so much.
Him: Cap Sun, Gemini Moon, Cap Mercury, Sag Venus, Cap Rising Me: Pisces Sun, Leo Moon, Pisces Mercury, Aqua Venus, Scorpio Rising Other woman: Pisces Sun, Sag Moon, Aqua Mercury, Aries Venus

I choose this platform to say sorry to a person I hurt 15 years ago. I know we have our own lives today but I would like to take the courage to say sorry. For me to also move on and validate the feelings I had this moment. I'm not a good writer but I want to share my story. Do you guys experienced having no memory of a certain situation in your life? It's like you remember the person but not fully apprehend what "really" happened to both of you? Seems like there is a missing puzzle in the big picture? It happened to me and realized everything after all the embarrasing things I did. I was like acting the victim before and not knowing I am to blame after all. Year 2023 when I came back in my country, I'm working overseas by the way. As I went home, I declutter my personal things and there I saw some letters wayback 15years ago. Letters during our retreat activity college days. I read all their sweet messages and I stumbled to read a letter written by my crush. After reading his short and sweet letter I'm sobbing. Tears rolling down my cheeks and asking myself, what was my reaction when I read his letter before? Like what did I do?!! Did I read this? I'm thinking so hard searching for answers in my head about his letter but got no answer. It was so vague to me that I cannot find the answer I'm looking for in my mind and in my memory. All memories and emotions were bleak during that specific time. Throughout the day, all I'm thinking about was his letter. Thoughts like, yeah, I do have a crush on him during college days and it is too impossible that I disregarded that letter. I'm thinking crazy things already about his letter yet I cannot remember what really happened. I contacted my close friend who's been with me since college. She's like my sister from another mother who knows everything since college days. I started the convo sending her the letter he wrote for me and instantly she recognize who wrote it. She even ask me what did I do when I read the letter before or did I even bother to read the letter? I told her I cannot remember what I did before but one thing that's clear to me was our friendship seemed to drift away even before the graduation day. That's why I was'nt able to contact him after graduation day till up to present. Thinking, I was just the girl who just learned that the guy I like before, liked me back after reading the letter, my friend give me a silly suggestion of giving him a PM. Yes, we are classmates, friends during those days. He was on my list of friends in my socmedia yet after all this years, I never sent him a PM. I just wanted to say hi but I'm too embarassed to do it. Overthinking stuff and crazy ideas crossing in my mind. Then all of a sudden I saw in my screen 11:11am, immediately type hi and hit send button. Feeling embarassed that I pm-ed him first at the same time doubting if he still knows me, I'm too anxious in wanting to have or not to have a reply from him that time. Morning the next day upon checking my phone I got a reply from him, 👍 at 5:55am. Being weirdo again all I did was to talk to myself early that morning to give him a reply or not. I'm thorn of doing so or what. Then I just decided to give him a message of asking how is he, introducing myself, hope he's doing okay, message him because of blah, blah then wishin him luck and good day. Ugh, still embarassed. I thought it will be the end of our convo but he replied back saying he's doing okay. He remember me saying I'm his classmate and I'm happy that he's doing good now in his new career. He also ask how I'm doing and what do I do these days. We exchange 4-5 convo until he stop responding. I'm like yeah, that's it. I'm sure he's busy and I understand his profession demands time but I also want myself not to expect anything in REALITY. I'm being too emotional as of the moment that all I got to think was him and his letter creating imaginary things between us. I'm a rational person so as I pacify myself and calm down the thoughts in my mind, I decided to write everything in my journal. As I write down my thoughts, the question of how's and why's, slowly I remember everything that happened 15 years ago. I clearly remember the thoughts I had, the decisions I made and how I ghosted him.
Circa 2009. 4th year college. I have a guy friend who's my classmate during 3rd year since we were block section. He's also my block groupmate. Maybe we became close because we were together most of the times. He's tall, lanky, sweet, caring, funny and brainy. He's the type of guy who only bring a notebook in the room, I never saw him with a bag in normal schedule of classes but hey he always pass. And as a cheapskate college girl, I used to take down notes and do everything as I can to not spend extra penny. I become aware of him being sweet to me by borrowing my notes saying she can understand my handwriting, sitting beside me on classes where sitting position is not required, going to library doing group activities, walking side by side in school aisle and seeing him giving me a sweet smile. Getting him caught staring at me then he will just smile mirorring his eyes. It seems like normal things right? But I can sense there is something behind those small gestures. I also shared this to my friend that I can sense there is something about him but he never confirm anything at all. He was never even bothered when he knew one of my girl friends told him she had a crush on him. I got a little jealous during that time, I even got jealous on her friends that were beauties during college days. He was a friendly guy but knows how to be a gentleman. Since, no admission of feelings in his part we continued to be good friends, him still giving the same care and treatment to me. I can't remember if it was 2nd trimester when we had our retreat activity. It was months also before our graduation day and then after that will have our in-house review for upcoming board examination. Everyone is excited to attend the retreat because we can give a rest on our tired minds. We rented a good place with a perfect weather during that time. During our last day, the last task given to us is write a letter to each person in your group. He was my groupmate during the retreat. We can read the letter after the activity or if we have time to spare. I decided to read mine when I got home. Me and him are still good during that time. When I arrived home, I started reading their letter, I read his letter last. His letter goes like this,
A_____, " I have met you on a cloudy Monday and now you never knew how much I loved the rain." Your a gentle child and very sincere. You are very concern to all the people around you and thats what make you different from others. You can carry things up and I know you can make it. Goodluck and Godbless. I am just on yourside waiting for you to tap me and call my name.
I'm shocked yet relieved knowing that what he's doing towards me is confirmed in his letter. It might be a indirect confirmation but I think it still says so. I'm happy to know he's not just a friend caring for me but someone special who took care of me all this time. But as my happiness took over me, that feeling of anxiousness and cowardice envelops my entire body. Confessing his feelings, then now, what? What will happen in our friendship? How do I face him, as I am shy girl before? If I tell him I like him too, what will happen to us? Graduation day is in the corner, inhouse review is giving us pressure, licensure examination will happen in next few months and I need to focus, to study to pass the exam. Those were my concerns at that time. So, I made up my mind. Without giving him any answer, without telling him what I have in my mind, without him knowing what I really wanted to say despite the concerns I had in mind. I let him go without telling him what I feel towards him that time. Following days at school, I started avoiding him. I dare not to look at him directly in his eyes. I never got to talk to him about his letter. And as days passes by giving him same treatment and distance, I saw him once looking at me, his eyes saying like giving up. From then on, our friendship drifted off. I never got to talk to him in our graduation day, even in succeding events after our licensure exam. I did pass my licensure, he also did. I'm not expecting he will talk to me or greet me if ever we crossed our path again. He was my first love. But I never give him the chance. There might be a future for our relationship but I never gave him a chance. To my lovecrush, I am sorry for ghosting you, for not giving you a chance, and for leaving you hanging-up. I know I'm a big coward, selfish, self centered and faint hearted person when it comes to you. Confessing and telling you what my heart wants before will NOT/NEVER change anything now. But I wanted to say this for me to let go of the feelings that I still have for you. Lovecrush, I like you too. I care for you too. I did become a scaredy cat before telling you my true feelings are but know that after all those days knowing you like me too, I always think of you. The heartbeak I give to myself and to you, left me no choice but to suppress the pain and convince myself to forget the painful choice I made. Thank you for letting me feel how special I am in my own way. Thank you for being my green flag.❤️ Thank you for being warm, caring, thoughtful and loving friend.🥰 Now, I will never ever forget the memories we shared before even if it brings joy and pain. It is now my treasure. Thank you so much lovecrush. 🥰 You will always be my first love and first heartache.🙂 I know you can make it in life. You're such a kind hearted soul. Wishin you all the best in life! Takecare as always. Godbless!🙏❤️

Perhaps just venting but after sending out a dozen queries today I noticed a typo. It isn't the worst typo but it's there. I read them all a hundred times, had them critiqued and proofread, but somehow a letter got deleted and it cascaded through all the submissions.
It probably isn't critical but I'm sure more than a few of those queried will quickly reject my submission as a result.
Ugh-so annoying

Hi guys -- this was posted as a water ring problem, but since it's been posted, I believe I've figured out the actual issue. I thought the issue was a water ring, but the issue I'm actually dealing with is that there is a dull ring on the countertop where I used baking soda to try and remove a water stain.
For context, I set a vase on a friend's counter top the other night night. I should have put a coaster under it just in case but I didn't. When I went to move the vase about 6 hours after setting it down, I noticed a dark ring from condensation. Here's what I did:

1. I initially tried to wipe it up with water, and then an all purpose counter spray. It didn't work, so I went to the internet.
2. I used the 1:1 baking soda and water method and gently rubbed it using a microfiber towel. It helped a little, but I could still see the outline of the ring.
3. I then used the hair dryer method for maybe 1-2 minutes, which worked, but also mostly just lightened the wood where I'd applied baking soda.
4. And then I used a tiny, tiny bit of scratch cover Old English dark wood oil. In the morning light, it still looks like this. Dull, and without a ring, but a pronounced circle. ANY ideas on how I can fix this? I'm housesitting and I'd hate to leave the place worse than I found it. Thank you!

Losing the one shot is definitely disappointing, however I don't think the character is dead. I know there's been a lot of hopelessness in the Hanzo community, but my aim is to help you guys improve your game so you can still excel on Hanzo and feel like a GOAT. In this post I'm gonna talk about the general playstyle that works for me on Hanzo, and how to adapt your playstyle based on the enemy comp. And at the end I'll put a couple tips for improving your aim.
Hanzo still has some distinct advantages that he can leverage against his enemies. His wall climb is amazing for a medium range hero, considering most other heroes either can't access high ground, or need to commit cooldowns to get there. Storm arrows are an incredibly consistent kill tool at medium/close range. And having a leap every 4 seconds, combined with wall climb, gives you the ability to be just as slippery as you are deadly. And of course, sonic arrow lets your whole team have wall hacks 50% of the time, and on defense, lets you see the enemy comp before they even come out the doors, allowing you to plan your positioning accordingly.
The thing is, most people think that hanzo is a long range hero, but he's really not. The only time you want to be shooting enemies from long range is before the fight to do pressure, get ult charge, and potentially get a pick on any hero that's taken chip damage. It's not about being a goat and hitting long range headshots. It's about proper medium/ close range positioning and proper timing, to make your shots easy to hit.
The way I play Hanzo is as a medium range pressure hero with incredibly high dps. You don't want to hold long range sniper angles on your own, you want to be active in the fight from medium range and use your slippery mobility to take off angles and high ground at opportune moments. Getting kills at close range is incredibly consistent with Hanzo, you just can't expect to get a 5k with headshots only. You want to take an off angle to get a kill or two with storm arrows. Then as soon as the enemies turn to react, use your leap and wall climb to escape.
It sounds crazy but you want to play on a razor's edge of feeding to maximize your damage output. Push in close from an off angle near your tank to get easy headshots and storm arrow kills, but always be one leap away from safety... Whether that's a high ground to climb up to, or just leaping back into your team.
I've also had some success with full committing on a hard flank, but the key is timing. You want to get behind/to the side of the enemy backline shortly after the two tanks clash. When the enemy supports are tunnel visioned on helping the frontline, THATS when you pop around the corner and take your shots on the supports and burst them with storm arrows. Best case scenario, you kill the supports, then the DPS, then finish the tank in a perfectly executed pincer attack. Worst case scenario, you distracted the supports and made people turn to shoot you, while the enemy tank is left with no support in the frontline.
There are times where it's better to just spam from main, and I'd say that's usually when your tank has a distinct disadvantage against the enemy tank and both are fighting in the frontline. Keeping constant pressure on that tank can help sway the matchup into your tank's favor, or at least make space for them. But of course, killing squishies can still carry games.
DIVE COMPS:
The other time to stay in main with your team is when the enemy team has flankers/ dive heroes who can kill you if you are isolated. Generally in those matchups, I just try to focus on hitting shots on the threatening mobile heroes. They won't push you if they're half HP. In these cases, using yourself as bait can be very effective.
Let's say there's an enemy Genji, you should play slightly outside of his dash range while also being near your healers. He will want to dash at you, but he will fall just short of hitting you. Then you can pop your storm arrows, but don't shoot. He will instinctively deflect. Now, suddenly the Genji is in the middle of your team with no dash and no deflect, while you still have a full volley of storm arrows. Similar tips can be used against Dva and Winston as well.
Against Wrecking Ball, it depends. You don't wanna try to kill him, just force him out. If he rolls back to his team, keep putting out pressure. But if he chooses to escape BEHIND your team, try to hit him with a sonic arrow as he's leaving, then you can tell where he's going. It helps a lot.
Against Tracer and Sombra, Keeping tabs on their position is key. Sonic arrow is good to scout flanks. Plag near your team, but DONT PLAY BEHIND YOUR SUPPORTS. Play in front of them. The ideal scenario is that they target one of your supports, then you can turn and shoot them while they're tunnel visioned. Your burst damage is high enough to often kill them, or at least enough to force them to run away and reset. When you do force them away, try to estimate how much time you have before they come back, and use that time to apply pressure to the frontline.
But let's say you werent able to scout them, and don't know exactly where they are, but you know they're lurking somewhere. Take a shot at the frontline and then do a 180. Literally check the flank after every shot. Good flankers generally wait for you to be distracted by the frontline before they pounce. By shooting the enemy tank and doing a 180 turn, you can keep applying pressure while still being able to react to the flank at a moment's notice.
This last tip is SUPER risky but it works sometimes. Sometimes when I'm facing a Dive comp or lots of flankers that are rolling me, I will actually flank as Hanzo. I will hide in a concealed area behind the enemy team and then when I'm confident that the flankers are in my backline, I'll start attacking the enemy backline. The reason this works sometimes is because when you're facing flankers, they will be lurking around YOUR backline. But if you're lurking in THEIR backline, you're essentially on the complete opposite side of the map from them and they'll have no clue. This is a strategy that pro players called "trading backlines". If the enemy flankers are going to kill your backline anyway, you may as well target their backline too. After all, Dive comps don't usually peel for their own backline, they commit to killing yours. This works especially well when they're hard targeting you specifically. The last place a flanker expects to find you is in their own backline.
POKE COMPS:
The name of the game is map control. A big mistake Hanzo players make is trying to ego duel hitscans from long range, banking on hitting long range shots to win. Straight up, don't do that. It's ok to aim for hitting one body shot to keep them in check or force them off their angle. Sonic arrow also helps deter them from peeking those angles. But the way you beat those long range heroes is getting up close and dumping storm arrows into their face. I will literally get close enough so that I could literally leap into their face and melee them to finish them if I wanted to. 3 storm arrows is 225 damage, to body shots or one headshot is 240, so getting leap-melee finishers is actually very useful. I KNOW it sounds crazy to play this close, but I urge you to challenge your beliefs about Hanzo. Your damage output is so high that you will beat pretty much every long range hero up close. Storm arrows are ridiculous. Though medium range storm arrows are fine if they're unaware of you or have cover to escape to.
Against Ashe, just remember that you have plenty of ways to delete Bob. Headshots while jiggle peeking from cover, or storm arrow headshots, or even using dragonstrike to melt him if he's near the enemy team.
And against widowmaker, use your sonic arrow to scout her specifically. If she's bad, she'll stay scoped in and let you line up headshots. If she's good, she'll hide for 5 seconds or take a new angle. This means you can push up while she's given up the angle.
Against poke comps, you know that you're always safe in cover, because they have no flankers. So as long as you're controlling the angles and bullying the enemy off of their angles, you will win over time by controlling all the space and winning the objective.
BRAWL COMPS:
Brawl comps are generally slow and tanky, and usually only good at close range. And many of the brawl heroes have big hitboxes, making it easier to hit them from further away. Hanzo LOVES playing against slow brawl comps. With your mobility, you can bully them from angles where they can't even contest you. Even if you don't get kills, you can farm ult so fast that you can zone them off the objective with dragons and do tons of damage to their clumped up team. Just don't spend too much time focusing the tank, because if they have lots of healing you probably won't kill them. Though you can still pressure the tank to make them fall back to buy space for your team.
RUSH COMPS:
Rush comps are kind of a hybrid between dive and brawl, and so many of the tips for both will apply. You want to put out lots of pressure, and take off angles when you can. BUT!!! You need to rotate back to your team sooner than you normally would. You might think you're safe from a decent range on an off angle, but a Lucio speed amp or Junker Queen shout, Rein pin, or Moira fade can let them rush you down much faster than you'd expect. Don't get greedy on your off angles, and dont expect kills. Even just hitting a shot or two to bait out defensive cooldowns like Shout, Wraith form, etc can lower the enemy team's lethality and make them hesitant to rush. If a rush comp gets a numbers advantage, they can pretty much run your team down for free. So don't get greedy.
Also, the baiting tip works well with rush comp too. If you're playing near your team, you can be in the front just behind your tank and bait the enemy team to rush you, and then you can quickly leap away and climb to high ground. Now, you're on high ground above a ground-based comp that just wasted resources to push you. You simply need to watch your spacing and use your slippery movement to dodge the rush. Just remember to play in sight of your healers incase you do take some damage.
People HATE Hanzo to a degree that is completely irrational, and they will literally feed their brains out to try and kill you. You can use that to your advantage. He has the mobility and burst damage to slip out of arms reach and burst them down, making them even more tilted, making them feed harder.
HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR AIM:
A HUGE tip that I've barely heard anybody talk about it a really simple one: Don't focus your eyes on your crosshair, focus your eyes BELOW your crosshair. Essentially you just aim at head height but focus your eyes on the enemy's body. Because it's much easier for your eyes to track a moving body than a moving head. Once I started doing this I noticed an immediate difference.
My personal favorite way to warm up my aim is a custom workshop code for an improved practice range: AJERA
Before every session, I go to the area by the roaming bots, and press interact on the blue orb near the ledge. It will spawn a flying Pharah bot. Then I climb up to the various high grounds and practice shooting Pharah from different ranges. Its hard at first, but once I can hit shots on her semi consistently, then I know I'm ready to queue.
And for practicing close range consistency, the central area has an orb that spawns a Lucio bot who jumps around and wall rides within an enclosed area.
The custom practice range also has a blinking Tracer bot to practice on, which is nice.
The only thing it's missing in my opinion is a jumping Genji bot, but there are other custom codes that have those like VAXTA, which is also good.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading! I hope these tips are useful for you. I know a lot of people are choosing to boycott Hanzo, and I respect that. But for me, I want to keep playing him and prove that he can still carry.
Now get out there and make your enemies tilted. ;)

Hi all! I'll try to keep this short but also provide as much backstory as I can.
My bf and I (both 21) have been together for 3-years, and living together for 1-year. We recently just terminated our lease somewhere while I was going to school, and decided to move onto his parents property where they have an apartment. This apartment is completely separate from their house.
While moving, I quickly took notice that his parents walk in and out of the apartment as they please, whether we are in the apartment or not. I brushed it off since we weren't entirely moved in, but mentioned to my boyfriend that once we are settled, this needs to stop for 2 reasons. 1) i should be able to walk around comfortably in the space and not have to constantly worry about someone barging in, and 2) we have a cat who is pretty skid-dish, and they have dogs that are extremely reactive and have attacked other peoples pets.
Once we moved our cat in, a phone call was made to inform his parents to stop coming in and out. He asked that they knock, and if there is no answer, not to enter. (Side note; the apartment does have a lock, but can only be locked from the inside. So, when we are away, the door remains unlocked.) His mom agreed to let everyone know
After this call, my bf and I went out for about an hour. When we returned, we noticed there was an air purifier that was on and not there before. He asked his mom about it, to which she admitted she was in the apartment. This was extremely frustrating as we were only gone an hour and spoke to her RIGHT before we left. Which means she was in here less than an hour after that conversation. He told her once again, DO NOT enter the apartment when no one is around.
This morning, we head out for some more errands. This time we were gone for a couple hours. When we return, we go to the bedroom (where the cat usually is) and can't find her. We look EVERYWHERE and immediately start to question whether someone was in the apartment or not. Yet again, while we were gone, someone came in. After the scariest half-hour search inside and out, we find the cat cowering in one of the unfinished parts of the apartment (this space is extremely hard to get to and on the opposite side from where our bedroom is).
It was explained to us that his brother went in there to simply wash his hands which I find impossible since a) there is a sink less than 5meters from the door and would not require him to come near the bedroom (which is where she usually stays) and b) she was petrified - wouldn't even look at me. Now, I know i mentioned the cat is skid-dish but she can tolerate people coming in and out. She does not respond well to people she's unfamiliar with approaching her.
So now i'm left stuck as an emotional wreck, trying to soothe my cat. And his parents are just brushing it off, asking questions like "what do you want me to do?". And yes, we are going to the hardware store to replace the door handle so we can lock the door when we're away.
What do you think? Is there more to the story that they're not telling us?

I feel like i am drowning and am starting to get really scared and depressed. I got cancer in 2019 and went thru a major depression so i was unable to work all while my husband was trying to start his business so it was very tight at that time so we were racking up our cc’s… then covid happened and he ended up closing his business while i worked my low paying job to build experience in a new industry.
Fast forward- the house we live is in probate (we are in so cal/la county). We have not been able to do loan modifications and forbearance because we were waiting for the letters appointing my husband as the executor. During this time our loan got bought out by selene. They requested a birth certificate which we ordered but will take maybe another 2 weeks to get. During this time, we received a notice that a notice of default was entered. There is currently 2 properties- 1 is paid off and a rental currently with a tenant that isnt paying with a pending eviction case. The home we live in is the main we want to stay in but has a delinquent mortgage of 150k out of 280k remaining. The plan was to sell the other home and pay off the remaining balance but our target end date for probate is next year sept and our foreclosure is set to kick in end of Aug. We wanted to do the covid forbearance and do loan modification but since my husband was not appointed to be executor, we were unable to do so until now but it seems like all the protections are all expired?…. My husband and I make ok income combined but we are having to choose between our high cc payments + mortgage but clearly id much rather choose a home than my credit. We can try to do a probate sale but we need to evict the tenant first… so we are currently looking into all options such as chapter 13 while waiting for my husbands birth certificate to arrive. Any advice or personal experience would be greatly appreciated.

Hi everyone, I'm new to posting in this sub but I've been lurking for a few weeks now. (I made an alternate account to discuss health since I'm a private person.) I'm looking for some feedback and to see if anyone else has dealt with similar problems and had success.
Some background: my hair started noticeably falling out about 8-9 months ago. Over time I started to feel more and more tired and cold all the time. Went to a dermatologist about the hair loss and she diagnosed me with hypothyroidism due to my TSH being 5.27. She wasn't a specialist so told me to see my OBGYN. OBGYN didn't do any more testing, just immediately put me on generic 50 mg levothyroxine back in March. The first 6 weeks were kind of a nightmare with me having awful mood swings to the point I was crying my eyes out near daily, puffiness all over my body (primarily face and abdomen), and heart flutters. I told my OB and she had me start taking 25 mg which helped with the insane mood swings and flutters, but the bloating and puffiness persisted. After 6 weeks, my TSH was at 1.03.
I had to switch drs due to insurance, and started to see a GP that wanted to test me again and look at other levels. My TSH then was about 1.3 and my T3 was 3.2. I told her about the problems I'd been having with levothyroxine and she gave me some samples of NP Thyroid to try. She said that I'm young (26f) and my T3 levels seem normal so I probably won't need the extra T3 it has but to give it a shot. I tried it for about 5 days before I felt I should stop because my BPM was shooting up to 160 while doing next to nothing and I couldn't relax. I also have POTS that I've been getting treatment for for years so heartrate spikes like that are a no-go for me. Seems like maybe the extra T3 is just too much.
Other medications I'm on include lithium, a very low dose beta blocker and a birth control patch. I've been on all of these for 2+years with 0 problems.
The now: I went back to the levo for the time being until my next appointment because I wasn't sure I should quit cold turkey. Immediately the puffiness all over my body got worse. Bad water retention in my middle to the point my clothes hardly fit, my hands and feet ache, and my eyes feel half shut. I'm now trying to figure out my next course of action. I was wondering if anyone's experienced anything similar with levothyroxine and what they did. I wanted NP to work for me really badly. I've heard good things about Tirosint?
I'm feeling really hopeless right now worried I'm going to have to choose between being bloated and in pain or being exhausted and losing my hair. Any advice is appreciated, thank you!

Ok, so, I used to live in a different state during my childhood than the one I live in now (I live in the Northern US, originally born in this northern state as well). I lived in this other state from the ages of 6 until I was almost 16, and throughout the entirety of my elementary and middle school years up until the middle of 9th grade (which was at the high school, some start at 10th grade instead of 9th).
There were 2 main bullies that I dealt with starting in 1st grade/first school year after moving to this state, and as the years went on, these two girls (let's call them Marie & Clarisse) would get their friends in on bullying me. I wasn't popular by any means, but my mother always had me in sports and extracurricular activities with these girls, so I could never really escape them. It was just as bad outside of anything school related as Marie has two younger brothers that my brother was friends with, so I had to pretend to be the 'best of friends' with Marie from 1st grade up until about the end of 7th grade since our families drifted apart from being "close friends".
As far as typical bullying goes in elementary school, I dealt with constant name-calling and cruel "pranks", mostly aimed towards my weight, I wasn't fat, but I wasn't skinny either despite being in sports and was always active. However, those incidents extended to my stuff being stolen, like my notebooks I'd use for schoolwork, or my box of pencils/pens/etc., forcing me to constantly borrow from the few friends I actually had or from the teachers. I used to be in band (which started in 6th grade in that school district), and I played the clarinet, my stepdad had bought me a very nice/sturdy and somewhat expensive tote bag to put my clarinet, music stand, and music binders in for easier storage and to keep my hands free when transporting my 'equipment'. Us band kids were allowed to keep our instruments behind the curtains of the stage in the school's cafeteria (the stage was against the farthest wall from the kitchen/lunch lines), and out of the ~20 kids in band, only my expensive/sturdy tote bag was stolen within the last 2 days of 6th grade, of course suspects were Marie & Clarisse (I saw Clarisse using my tote bag that summer, as my now-smudged name had been written in permanent marker on the straps and one of the sides of the bag). I left it be because I didn't want any conflict, my stepdad bought me another one after finding out the original one was stolen in the first place.
Middle school wasn't much better as the name calling got extensively more graphic and consisted of slurs (like the F slur, as I'm proudly part of the LGBTQ+ community, specifically AgendeNon-binary), furthering the self-hurting thoughts that had started in 3rd grade. I had continuously tried to tell my mom and stepdad about it, only for my pleas for help to go unheard until one week during the winter season in 7th grade. I had gotten sick for 2 days and stayed home an extra day to recover, but during those three days, Marie, Clarisse and their friends had made an Instagram account, posting very unattractive pictures of fellow classmates (i.e. purposely taking pictures with very unflattering angles, poor lighting, etc) and blamed it on me since they put my address in the private information into that account. My mom had found the account, immediately asking about if I was the one behind it, she unfortunately didn't believe me until *after* she ripped my phone from me to look through it for "evidence" that I made the account. When I returned to school the following Thursday after recovering from the small cold, I was constantly bombarded by fellow students about the account since Marie & Clarisse were the ones that spread the obvious false rumor that I made it. By the end of the day, I had finally snapped, yelling "I didn't make that f-cking account. Why can't everyone just stop bothering me about it?" Of course, that earned plenty of attention from the teachers and students within earshot (and thanks to the tiled floors and walls, my yelling echoed throughout most of the first floor and partly into the second floor of my school), I ended up having to talk with the counselor about the whole ordeal because of my frustrated outburst, which resulted with very little help from the staff, but after a few weeks, people seemed to forget that the account even existed since it ended up deleted within a few days after my outburst.
That following school year, 8th grade, was even worse. Sure, the slurs, the other name-calling and thievery of my belongings continued (more so the slurs/name-calling), but by this year, I was almost constantly committing the self-hurting since my mother was of no help, my stepdad was sympathetic but always working and the therapist my mother found for me was basically a deadbeat with bullying situations (she didn't seem to understand or even want to actually help me with the bullying as she was more of a family therapist than anything else). For the district curriculum, we are required to take health class in 8th grade, and as we were going over the unit that encompassed depression, self-harm, and su!c!dal thoughts/actions, I constantly had to have another staff member in the back of the classroom to watch over me and take me out of the class if any of the course material triggered an episode. Thankfully the staff member was that was there for me was the school's police officer, let's call him Officer Lennox, he was like a protective older brother, especially after finding out about how consistently I was bullied. Near the end of the unit, we had to watch Ronan's Escape (it's on YouTube), and since I was going through my own version of Ronan's situation, I ended up breaking down sobbing in class, only to be laughed at by some of the boys that were close friends with Marie & Clarisse. Officer Lennox snapped at them as professionally as possible while helping me out of the classroom to go sit with the nurse to have some downtime to stop sobbing before I was allowed back to my classes.
Another situation, which is the worst of it in 8th grade, was this one girl, let's call her Ava. She thought it would be hilarious to eavesdrop into my conversations with my best friend (we'll refer to her as Raven since that was a nickname she used) throughout lunch and shared classes, only to take our conversations completely out of context in order to string up a lie that Raven and I were planning to unalive the principle. Of course, this wasn't true, the principle was an a-hole to everyone, and Raven & I would discuss that we greatly disliked him. Ava mostly got away with spreading this lie as her mom was a higher-up in the school district, forcing Raven and I to entirely change our class schedules so we weren't in any classes with Ava, as well as almost being expelled. Thanks to Officer Lennox sticking up for both of us, we only had to have in-school suspension for 3 days instead of being expelled. Sadly, Ava got very little repercussions from this, but Raven and I grew even closer as best friends after "The Incident" as we still refer to it as almost 10 years later.
Summer rolled through without a hitch, leading to 9th grade, the start of high school. I was given more freedom from my mother (she's a helicopter parent and abusive/narcissistic) to dress in clothing that I preferred in comparison to always wearing brightly colored athletic wear. I completely changed my appearance, chopped my hair from just above the small of my back to a punk pixie-styled cut, and started wearing graphic t-shirts, ripped jeans, combat boots, and leather jackets. On top of that, I started becoming more confrontational/combative towards my bullies, since they still wouldn't let up, I earned a "bad@ass/bad b!tch" reputation, made friends with other rebellious and misfit types of people in the grades above me, and just fully became more of "me" despite the disapproval from my mother of the amount of change I undergone.
Despite being 14 at the start of 9th grade, I began dating, specifically one fellow student that was a very close friend and felon, he went to jail/juvie throughout the 2nd half of 7th grade and all of 8th grade. He came to the high school 3 months after the year started, and our friendship-turned-relationship sparked right back up as if he never left. I had kept my dating life secret from my family, mostly my mother because I know how bad her reaction would've been if I told her. With him almost always by my side (excluding classes we didn't share), my brand-new appearance, and my quickly attained delinquent/rebellious reputation, most of my issues dissipated much quicker than before. In spite of that, Marie & Clarisse kept making their remarks, trying to drag down my new confidence and constantly break my felon boyfriend (let's call him Collin) and I up. They got more degrading and verbally abusive with these antics, I eventually was completely fed up with it all. In the middle of the school year, within a couple weeks after Yule (Christmas for the non-pagans) & New Years Break, Marie, Clarisse and their group of friends had stopped me in the hallway, purposely surrounding me (there was about 30 of them in total) on my way to class, continuing with their shtick as usual, I slipped the pocketknife out of my pocket, flicking it open as I finally gave in and threatened to unalive them and everyone they care for if they don't leave me the f-ck alone. They saw the opened knife and knew then & there that I was 100% serious, I turned on my heels, shoving through them only to notice the principal and school's police officer (not officer Lennox) staring at me with concerned expressions, they also noticed the knife as there was a glint from the blade due to the blindly bright lights in the hallway. Not a word was uttered as they walked away, never sending a call to my mother or stepdad about the weapon or the confrontation as they had seen my progression in attitude and the amount of f-cks I had (which was none). After that day, those girls never spoke to me again, would barely glance in my direction, would purposely take alternate routes to class if they saw me in the hallway (or would keep to the wall if they couldn't move quick enough), and if we shared any classes, they'd be on the opposite side of the room from me and would do everything they could to never be partnered/grouped with me in class projects.
Everything was smooth sailing from then on, and now I'm 22 (as of late April this year), happily living with my bio-dad, my brother and my 2-year-old kitty, Ziggy. My mother is out of the picture entirely as she refuses to change her mindset and parenting style. I'm still confrontational towards anyone that tries messing with me, especially if they're anti-LGBTQ+/racist/abusive/etc. And thanks to my continuation of my drastic change from 8th grade to 9th grade, I'm now considered both the protector and the therapist to my friends, always there for them because I grew up knowing what it was like to not have that kind of support. I hope this story of roughly half my life can provide some sort of comfort or proof that it does indeed get better, even if it doesn't seem like it in the moment.

Did the IEC run an awareness campaign about this at all? I am fuming. Or am I the idiot here?

Hey guys,
So weird story.. starting this year every single CC that I’m supposed to get via USPS has basically never arrived and later found to have fraudulent charges on them. I’ve had this happen 3x already - in Jan, Feb and the most recent yesterday. I live in a building so my mail gets locked in my box and only I have access to it. In January, I applied for a chase card and about a week later I received a fraud alert from Chase. I called them and they said someone tried to make a $500 purchase at BJs but Chase flagged it. They did allow the first purchase to go through so I had to file for fraud. It did end up resolving in my favor. Then in Feb, I got a Sephora card and the same thing happened. Card never came, saw on the app that there was a $500 purchase at a liquor store. Weird part is that the store was in my neighborhood.. But again, I called up Comenity Bank and notified them of the fraud charges. This time, first purchase went through and 2nd was flagged as fraud, so I had to file a fraud case again…. It did also resolve in my favor. Anyways fast forward to this week, I upgraded my capital one card and it was supposed to come in the mail. Since my history with missing cards I decided to freeze the card until I got it in the mail. Anyways, I didn’t receive it so I just called them to see if the card was mailed out and lo and behold what do you know… my account was flagged for fraud charges. This time nothing went through since I had the card locked so that was good but I’m just concerned about my CC’s being stolen. If I go to my local USPS branch to submit a grievance, will they be able to do anything? I did file a case with USPIS back in Feb and the rep was very understanding, she apologized that I was experiencing this and mentioned that unfortunately it has been very common lately. I’m just not sure what to do now. First and second time I was just like ok that sucks but whatever. Report it and move on. But now it’s happened again several months later for a 3rd time and I’m just frustrated right now.. What is my best course of action? Has anyone else experienced the same situation? How did you resolve it (if you did)?
I did notice if the CC has tracking on it, it ends up in my box. This is how I got all the replacements, I had to order them express which comes with tracking. My most recent Capital one card did not offer express shipping so I’m just hoping it makes it to my box this time 🙏
Sorry for the long post. Just needed to get it off my chest and ask for help.
TLDR: I’ve had 3 CCs that never make it to my box which ended up all with fraud charges. Need help on my options 🙏

Hi everyone! I’m a student who received CalFresh but only because I qualified under an LPIE (local program increasing employability?). When I was approved, I was given a notice that my benefits would last until December 31st, and I won’t be able to renew them because after I graduate I will be moving back in with my family and our combined incomes will be too much.
Do I need to do anything after I graduate, since I won’t be renewing? I also plan to stop using my card after I graduate. I’ve just heard of friends of friends owing upwards of $3,000 for not reporting that they’ve moved back in with parents after graduating, but if I’m not using my card does that still apply? I know I can call to figure things out, and I plan on doing so, I just wanted to see if anyone had any advice or insight beforehand. Thank you!

I feel like i am drowning and am starting to get really scared and depressed. I got cancer in 2019 and went thru a major depression so i was unable to work all while my husband was trying to start his business so it was very tight at that time so we were racking up our cc’s… then covid happened and he ended up closing his business while i worked my low paying job to build experience in a new industry.
Fast forward- the house we live is in probate (we are in so cal/la county). We have not been able to do loan modifications and forbearance because we were waiting for the letters appointing my husband as the executor. During this time our loan got bought out by selene. They requested a birth certificate which we ordered but will take maybe another 2 weeks to get. During this time, we received a notice that a notice of default was entered. There is currently 2 properties- 1 is paid off and a rental currently with a tenant that isnt paying with a pending eviction case. The home we live in is the main we want to stay in but has a delinquent mortgage of 150k out of 280k remaining. The plan was to sell the other home and pay off the remaining balance but our target end date for probate is next year sept and our foreclosure is set to kick in end of Aug. We wanted to do the covid forbearance and do loan modification but since my husband was not appointed to be executor, we were unable to do so until now but it seems like all the protections are all expired?…. My husband and I make ok income combined but we are having to choose between our high cc payments + mortgage but clearly id much rather choose a home than my credit. We can try to do a probate sale but we need to evict the tenant first… so we are currently looking into all options such as chapter 13 while waiting for my husbands birth certificate to arrive. Any advice or personal experience would be greatly appreciated.