• Previous posts, since the bulleted list was getting super unwieldy.

Around 34 million Earth years ago, at the end of the very creatively named 18th Era, the boreal and polar regions including the Great Polar Plateau, where Kyanah would eventually evolve, and its surroundings, were a very different place. The climate was at the time cooler and drier than the modern Homeworld, and the plateau was filled with more open boreal savannas and polar barrens rather than the dense scrublands of modern times. These boreal savannas were quite different from the modern ones, as endoskeleton plants had yet to expand in the northern hemisphere beyond the tropics, and single-leaf crawlers (which would go extinct at the end of the era) dominated over the modern multi-leaf crawlers to form the ground cover, the equivalent of Terran grass. The most common Walkers (i.e. tetrapods) on the plateau in the late 18th Era were small to medium-sized grazers, many of which had heavy armor or glands to secrete poisonous substances, as a defense against the top predators of the day. There were also the Kakenkortiors, the ancestors of modern Kyanah and dozens of other species, as well as other carnivore groups that specialized in oasis environments, pursuing the amphibious neuz or small burrowing herbivores. The Kakenkortiors were solitary quadrupedal carnivores roughly the size of small to medium-sized dogs, which were opportunistic carnivores taking on all manner of small prey when they had the chance, but primarily subsisted on scavenging carrion or stealing eggs, and had scaly skin covered in a dense coating of feathers to keep them warm and provide camouflage; notably they had yet to evolve the pack behaviors seen in some of their descendants. However, they themselves often fell victim to the true predators of the time--not true Walkers, but rather an offshoot of the wingbeasts (themselves marsupial creatures with foldable wings that could fly like gliders or walk on all fours on land)--the terrorbeasts. These terrorbeasts gave up their flight in exchange for reaching enormous sizes--over a ton and 3.6 meters tall for the largest species--adopting a permanently quadrupedal and rather uncanny stance, with their forelimbs (formerly wings) being much longer than their rear limbs, while the wings themselves lost the ability to unfold, instead becoming vestigial forelimb frills used for attracting mates. Some terrorbeasts used their height to feed from the tops of exoskeleton plants, but many were carnivorous, developing long necks and elongated, hardened spear-like snouts to peck at grazers from above; it's believed that they sometimes reared up on their hind legs to gain additional height and force. This was in direct contrast with every extant tetrapodal predator of large game, which would prioritize either attacking from below or else taking out their prey's legs to bring them crashing down; as a result most herbivores had the heaviest protection on their bellies and legs, with their backs being comparatively weak. But then again, most creatures on the Kyanah homeworld, both extinct and extent, tend to be wide and low to the ground due to living under 1.4G, not tall and spindly, so the terrorbeasts were a giant middle finger to the biosphere and planet in general. Though their 50 million Earth year reign was cut short by the meteor shower that formed the Homeworld's newest impact range, created the Shatter, and caused the most recent mass extinction, leading to the beginning of the 19th Era.
With the terrorbeasts gone (though not their relatives, the normal, flying wingbeasts), the early 19th Era saw the creatures of the Great Polar Plateau adapt to the changing landscape. A group of species which had evolved thorn-covered backs--essentially made from modified feathers--to protect themselves from the terrorbeasts, also went extinct, and many of the remaining grazers lost their heavy armor due to the sudden dearth of megacarnivores to necessitate it. The Kakenkortiors survived the mass extinction and continued to occupy their old niches, but by around 29-28 million years ago, one branch, known as the Tyorketforms, would shift to a more actively predatory niche, using enlarged dew claws to slash the tendons of prey to drop them to the ground; this branch would eventually lead to the domestic Tyorkets, common Kyanah pets in the modern era. Meanwhile, climatic shifts at the start of the mid 19th Era would lead to the Great Polar Plateau becoming warmer and wetter; the boreal savannas would give way to denser boreal scrublands. Through both speciation and migration, the smaller, armored grazers would be displaced by large unarmored browsers eating leaves and twigs and growing to much bigger sizes in the comparatively plant-dense nutrient-rich environment.
It was only natural that something would evolve to hunt these new browsers. Oddly enough, it would be the Kakenkortiors. The main line would go extinct around 9 million years ago, but long before that, they would produce one more notable sideline, the Ratoryinut, starting around 25 million years ago. Many of the early Ratoryinut would be much larger than both early Kakenkortiors and modern Kyanah, reaching average masses of 150-300 kilograms, depending on the species. Compared to early Kakenkortiors, they had a higher and proportionally slightly narrower, though still relatively broad, profile, with bulkier forelimbs and more dexterous forelimbs--an intermediate stage in developing opposable thumbs--with non-retractable claws, as well as losing their feather coating entirely. By 20-18 million years ago, the Ratoryinut would further split into the Ratorkortyot-forms and the ancestors of the Kyanahforms. The Ratorkortyot-forms (roughly "strong herald beast") would continue to grow in size, with the largest species reaching up to 500 kilograms by 10 million years ago, somewhat resembling large, reptilian bear-like forms with bare, greenish-brown scaly skin. They would also evolve a Parasaurolophus-like crest, which they would use to make loud and elaborate trumpeting noises to attract mates or scare rivals away from a kill, and, as the climate cooled in the mid-late 19th Era and they gravitated towards the poles, many evolved blubber deposits to replace the insulating role of their ancestors' feathers. Ratorkortyot-forms, including the eponymous Ratorkortyot, the most famous species, are still extant and where their ranges overlapped with prehistoric Kyanah, appear to have occasionally killed and eaten packless or young individuals, though the reverse was more common. Most Ratorkortyot-forms are now threatened by habitat destruction and pollution.
As for the Kyanahforms themselves, they took the opposite approach to hunting the soft browsing herbivores that were spreading throughout the boreal scrublands. They began steadily losing raw mass, but underwent a quantum leap in intelligence, with six-core brains rather than the four-core brains of most Walkers; the only other animals with six-core brains, before or since, were a few one-off species of social wingbeasts. Not coincidentally, the modern pack dynamics of modern Kyanah also emerged with early Kyanahforms by around 15 million years ago, with 4-6 adults bonding together for life, having children with each other, and cooperatively raising them to adulthood. It's believed that this pack dynamic evolved from simpler serial pair-bonding in Ratoryinuts and the earliest proto-Kyanahforms as a result of six-core brains enabling more complex social behavior, allowing such relationships to be stable. It also enabled reliable tool using and eventually tool manufacturing (modifying found objects to further enhance their utility), as the Kyanahforms were capable of bipedal movement--though early Kyanah forms still spent most of their time on four legs--and had developed opposable thumbs.
While one minor side-line, the arboreal Kyanahforms, continued to shrink further, taking up omnivorous behavior and living in the taller, shrub-like exoskeleton plant species, the main line continued to gradually optimize for attacking in packs and killing medium-large game on the ground. During the mid-late 19th Era cooling, they would take on migratory behavior, moving to the edge of the Great Polar Plateau in the winter to take advantage of the milder winds from the south, and back north in the summer to hunt the big-ticket game animals further into the plateau. The main line would eventually evolve into tkorks, the closest living relatives of Kyanah, who have been discussed elsewhere. The side-line that would become the true Kyanah diverged from tkorks around 5-6 million years ago, shortly after the evolution of the Tyotonikors (perhaps "strong leaf beast"). These were basically the final, logical conclusion of the trend of large generalist browsers, relying on raw mass rather than armor or numbers to deter predators; it was one of these species that would eventually become the domestic nyruds that are so important to the Kyanah. The largest species, the Tyotonikor, could reach heights of 1.8 meters, with a length of 7.6 meters and males averaging around 4-5 tons--one of the largest known animals in the history of the Kyanah homeworld, and the largest period since the 16th or 17th Era; it was hunted to extinction by prehistoric Kyanah around 8000 years ago. While other related species were not as large, even the smallest averaged 1.5 tons, 3 times bigger than the biggest carnivores in the Great Polar Plateau. With a long, whip-like tail, a wide and stocky frame, and a sturdy beak-like mouth capable of handling even the toughest leaves and twigs, the species under the Tyotonikor classification were quite formidable. Indeed, healthy adults had no natural predators...until the true Kyanah came along.
If it seems like Kyanah were optimized specifically to hunt and kill the giant Tyotonikors that no one else dared eat...well, they were. They shifted from a merely bipedal-capable form to obligate bipeds, enabling them to see over interfering shrubbery to better devise a plan of attack, and also be able to hold tools and weapons at all times. To maintain balance in a bipedal posture, their tails became longer and bulkier, enabling them to flail them around to keep balance, and also use them as a weapon. While their jaw size--and thus snout size--and bite force increased relative to predecessors to better penetrate the thick skin of Tyotonikors, their claws became somewhat shorter and stubbier, optimized more for gripping than piercing, making it easier to hold the sticks and rocks they were increasingly using as force multipliers. An increase in fast-twitch muscles in their legs enabled them to more easily catch fleeing Tyotonikors--which, despite their bulk, could be surprisingly fast, rather like Terran elephants, able to reach speeds above 30 kilometers per hour. The strong legs and gripping claws also made it more feasible to get onto the creatures and deliver devastating top attacks. Their skulls also broadened significantly to enable increased cranial capacity, which enabled them to form even more complex pack hunting strategies and even cooperate with other packs to take down especially large and dangerous prey; this would be a game changer, as tkorks and earlier Kyanahforms would almost always ignore or fight other packs instead of working together. Compared to the tkorks, true Kyanah are basically high-performance, high-maintenance creatures, relying on intelligently applying explosive bursts of strength and speed to quickly take down big-ticket prey, rather than stamina, low resource usage, and gradually accumulating smaller prey items. While having primarily evolved to fill the empty niche of preying on Tyotonikors, the various Kyanah species were more than capable of hunting any medium to large animal, both on and off the Great Polar Plateau, using their sophisticated tactics, high physical strength, and eventually primitive spears, axes, traps, and controlled use of fire. Meanwhile, most tkork species in modern times are endangered or extinct, except for those that have adapted to living in Kyanah cities and feeding off various urban critters and meat that has been thrown out or left unattended by the Kyanah themselves. Those tkork species have done very well for themselves, to the point of being a pest.
Proto-Kyanah would speciate several times, gradually expanding around the edges of the Great Northern Plateau by around 1 million years ago, with some species expanding to the poles and also to the more temperate latitudes by 750k years ago, though modern, main-line Kyanah did not spread off the Great Polar Plateau until around 100k years ago. Remains of the most far-flung Kyanah species, the Dunewalkers, have been discovered from the Shatter to the Western Sector, though they went extinct 84k years ago after the asteroid impact that created the Ikun Crater, which also reduced the main-line Kyanah population to a few thousand, though they, obviously, bounced back and then some. None of these other species remain; the last to go were the Kyanah Brutes, so-named because of their large stature (roughly on par with humans) and proportionally smaller brains compared to main-line Kyanah, dying out around 5500 years ago; it is possible that there were organized efforts by Kyanah proto-civilizations to eradicate the last of them, but also just as possible that the main-line Kyanah merely hunted their prey into extinction. Notably, main-line Kyanah have the largest cranial capacity of any of these species, with Dunewalkers being a close second; there is no evidence that any Kyanah species other than *the* Kyanah ever devised fully fledged language on their own, which made cooperation between multiple packs more frequent and reliable, and made teaching their young more efficient. The presence of bones from multiple species being found together indicates that main-line Kyanah occasionally included members of a couple of the more advanced Kyanah species, like Dunewalkers and Kyanah Brutes, into their own packs, and vice versa. While these species lack the genes associated with independently inventing complex languages, it's believed to be possible that they could be taught it to a limited degree, as they had similar vocalization structures, and even tkorks can be taught to understand simple words and phrases. The exact nature of this relationship, whether these other species were viewed as working animals, slaves, or fellow packmates, is unknown. While they likely interbred, it is also unknown if this led to fertile offspring--but probably not.

As the title says, does anybody know if the Yasuke and Noae will have their own exclusive do's and dont's like

• Does only Yasuke can destroy the props like the doors/windows etc due to his enormous strength while the Noae don't?
  
• Does only the Noae will have access to the grappling hook while Yasuke don't?
  
• Does only the Noae can prone because she's short and flexible while Yasuke don't because he's giant and wears the heavy Samurai outfit?
  
• Does only Yasuke can take out the multiple enemies at the once while the Noae don't?
  
• Does only Noae can do the social stealth because she's the short and the local while Yasuke don't because he's giant and the foreigner?
  
• Does only Yasuke have access to the big weapons like he's holding in the trailer while the Noae don't?
  
• Does only Noae can go for the stealth approach while the Yasuke don't?
  
• Does only Yasuke can go for the combat approach while the Noae don't?
  
• What if the Noae went for the combat approach while the Yasuke went for the stealth approach? is it gets totally unplayable and they get killed in a 2 second?
  
• Does Noae will do parkour faster and can reach all the structures like the usual assassin protags from the previous titles while the Yasuke will only do the slower parkour with the heavy limitation on where to reach and not because he's not an assassin and he will be just the samurai?
  

I know nobody knows the answers for all these, I just want to know if somebody learnt more about this game than me and I may have missed something? If not at least you can tell your opinions on this. I personally want these exclusive do's and don't's so it makes the game much more realistic, harder and punishing if you're playing as a wrong protag in a wrong place and time. It also makes both the protags much more unique and it also increase the values of their respective playstyles.

Hey everyone! I am looking for one more player to join a group I am putting together with some friends for a new campaign. I am looking for a fun, friendly player with an interest in roleplaying. The playtime would be every other Wednesday at 6 PM CST for roughly 4 hours, and we will be starting in June!
It is a 5e homebrew campaign set in a dark, high-fantasy world full of mystery, monsters, and tragedy with a focus on roleplay (quick synopsis below). Players will be starting at level 4. I can’t stress enough that if you prefer heavy combat and constant dungeon crawling, this is not the game for you. The campaign will still have combat, but the ratio is somewhere around 65% RP to 35% combat. I ask that all players write a backstory and elements of everyone’s backstories will find their way into the campaign itself. Because there is a roleplay focus, I ask that players make an effort to roleplay their characters, but we are all laid back, joke around, and break character, and we don’t expect everyone to be on all the time.
I have three other players and you will be the fourth and final of our group. Our ages range from late 20s to late 30s, so ideally I would like to find a player that is close to our age group. We use Discord for voice and Foundry VTT for our tabletop.
I have been playing various TTRPGs for about 14 years and I have been DMing 5e for about 6. I am friendly and laidback, and I do my best to be fair, open, and flexible, so if have something you want to suggest or need to talk about, I’m always open to listen.
Lastly, I am looking for a player that will be respectful of the other people at the table. This is an LGBTQ+ friendly group, and everyone is welcome. The group does not tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia or other forms of bigotry and attacks on others will not be tolerated. Just be nice and a decent human being, and there shouldn’t be any issues.
Synopsis: Zul’Tara is a complex realm filled with magic, mystery, and untold secrets. Centuries ago the world was enveloped in a magical shroud known as “The Veil” that filtered the sun's light and cast the land into shadow. Its appearance triggered multiple catastrophes and forever altered Zul’tara and its inhabitants. Monster attacks have become more frequent, things that once only roamed at night move throughout the day, friendships and allegiances have shifted, and wars are regularly waged.
People are trying to live ordinary lives despite all the destruction and chaos. Recently a small town has begun to experience attacks with increased frequency from creatures that are stronger than they are used to. People are afraid to go out beyond the town’s walls, resources are dwindling, and they are taking on more casualties with each subsequent attack. At this rate, the town and its people could be wiped off the map. They have sent out a desperate plea to anyone willing to protect the town and eliminate the problem once and for all. Are you up to the challenge?
If you are interested in joining our game, please fill out the application here: https://forms.gle/K5T7cUKR1NWN3zuF9
As long as the application is open you can still apply, and I will update the thread once I’ve found someone!
Thanks!

My husband (30M) and I (28F) got our second retriever who was already 75lbs at 9 months living in a small apartment with a full time nursing student. She said she just can’t give him the life he needs because of school and where she lives. We took him in. We started socializing him early on and I worked on training. I work from home so I can take time training, feeding, and providing attention to him. He had bit me a handful of times because he didn’t want to listen when I told him to stop or leave it (not touching him). Each time he had bitten me my husband questions me and asks “what were you doing? Why would he bite you” or “don’t discipline him, you know he’s going to bite.” Never does he asks if I’m ok or come and handle the situation but instead say dismissive things like it’s my fault. We had taken him to the beach once and he was sitting with me on the beach while my husband was in the ocean. A toddler and dad came up to ask if they could pet him. I said yes! Next thing I know he bites the kid! I was mortified and anxious. Asked if he’s okay and they quickly walked away. I told my husband and he was not bothered by it. After that, any time we go on vacation I drop him off at boarding. One of the places, after watching him a few times, had told me “they are happy to watch our one dog but they can’t watch him.” This boarding place is not only boarding but a board and train facility who is highly recommended in our community. I’m embarrassed. He continues to bite and snap and my husband continues to dismiss and question me like “well why didn’t the dad come and get me when he bit his child” or “yeah right, why would they watch one of our dogs and not him”. I had multiple times told him I’m concerned about our safety because he is unpredictable and is hard to train.
Mind you, I’m the one that stays at home and works full time for the government, works as a pet sitter as a side hustle, manages the home (fixes things, and calls professionals out when needed), the pets, the vacations, and the finances (my husband just graduated medical school so he wasn’t making money and even now, I manage the finances). My husband and I both have advanced degrees but with him having been in medical school and now residency, I have the most flexibility to take care of basically everything. All I’m asking for in my marriage is understanding, sympathy, and support (not that we have to agree on everything).
I’ve been very unhappy in my own house and anxious when guests come over especially with little ones or pregnant friends.
I am tired of my husband saying “his experience with him is different and doesn’t see why I don’t want him.” As a side note, my husband is like this with every “me” issue and dismisses toxic/concerning behavior from our dog and his mom. I was exhausted of his responses to everything serious and saying it’s fine or questioning me that I attempted s*****.
After my attempt, I tried telling my husband that we need to get him a behaviorist and/or training. I had called several places and got quotes. He told me and our therapist that he “doesn’t want to spend the money on it (really “my money”) and that we can do it ourselves” and he “honestly doesn’t think he needs training.”
I bit the bullet and paid for training because my husband is so desperate to keep him. Literally at the first assessment the trainer said “I could see why you would be concerned. You have to decide what you want. Once you decide to start a family you have to think about what is best. He is a pretty dog and him sure he will quickly find a home if choose to do that. You’re not a bad person for considering to rehome him.”
My mom tried talking to him about the dog and my mom’s perspective is that came off as “this is a her problem and I don’t see the issue.” Even recently, now that I am pregnant, his brothers have all agreed that our dog is a lot and that they’ve all had to consider the safety of their babies.
My husband has told me “you don’t need to resent him” or how “I’ll be a bad mom because I have favorites.”
This week my husband was bitten for the first time and he had drawn blood. My husband who is a doctor didn’t want to go get stitches from his work so I superglued his wound. He hasn’t told any of his friends, family, or his doctor friends. He continues to say “yeah it’s a concern but I don’t think he will bite our children” and how “it was his fault he got bitten in the first place.”
I’m just tired of how my husband doesn’t think that this dog is a concern, that actually he is fine and doesn’t need help, and that he makes multiple comments about how I will be as a mother to my kids. I have tried and done everything. And it still feels like my husband picks the dog over my mental health, the safety of our family, and honestly what is best for our dog before he is put down.
Am I overreacting? How I treat my one dog vs my other animals will make me a bad parent? Am I delusional and should continue to give our dog a chance? Just need some perspective.

Over the course of my 4 year marriage to my partner, I have arrived at the position that I was abused, manipulated, and functionally enslaved to a mentally ill partner.
In simplest form, the progression is apparently observable. She was diagnosed with cancer in October of 2019 while we were engaged. Due to the diagnosis, we moved up our actual marriage date (our wedding was still set for mid-April) to December 1, 2019. Her surgery was December 13, 2019. In my compassion for her, I agreed to move our wedding date up to offset her anxiety around who would be responsible for her if things went south with her surgical treatment.
Our first month of marriage was straightforward; she was on pain meds recovering from surgery, so the main engagement that occurred was me walking her up and down the hospital hallway as she recovered and trying to meet her base physical needs of hygiene, food, and presence. We stayed in the hospital for 2-3 weeks (with recurring hospital visits for complications).
Quickly after we figured out our marital living situation in her small 3-bed apartment with 2 roommates, our relationship devolved. Specifically, she was irritable because of the pain she was in, causing her to lash out at me with regular frequency for small things. If I didn’t put clothes away in the right place, didn’t anticipate her needs (without her communicating them), or ate the wrong food in front of her she would shout at me and decry me for my thoughtlessness.
These small, critical engagements were wounding and created a distance between us – and there was no upside. She was never kind, never paid mind to needs I might have, and started down a path of cultivating a root of bitterness in her soul. She quickly revealed herself to be venomous, hateful, and vindictive when she felt like she was wronged — and any observation of concern about our marriage resulted me in being accused of being mean or insensitive, even if I spent hours or days calculating the best way to share my concern (and I have a master’s degree in communication where I focused in studying disagreement — I know how to carefully package concerns).
During this time, I worked hard to provide for us, foreseeing a significant time period where I would have to be primary financial provider and caregiver. I increased my income each year we were married by around 25%, finishing our marriage at >$80,000 in yearly income, compared to starting our marriage at a modest $42,000 salary (including dramatically improving our healthcare). Frankly, I increased my income to provide for us in spite of the lack of support at home.
But to be clear: I don’t think it would have been particularly difficult to provide financially if I had an ounce of support at home.
However, the relentless criticism and expectation of mind-reading continued through the years. I rationalized this abuse for the first year of our marriage because of all the excuses to be cruel, she had a good one – she had cancer. I hung onto a hope that it would stop. Contrary to my hope, as the years went on – and our expenses climbed – and I continued to work myself to the bone – she continued to relentlessly critique and even started being more emotionally demanding, expecting me to take responsibility for her inability to cope with her emotions – I was drowning. She was asking too much of me. There was no deliverance from her abuse.
I was exhausted. In the peak of the abuse I endured at her hand, I was working multiple jobs, sleeping 10+ hours a night and napping frequently during the day around meetings and work, then coping with alcohol to numb myself to the abusive dynamic and fall asleep with no support from her. The only time I could approach her sexually was when I was intoxicated, with inhibitions lowered. The only time I could have a conversation with her was with a counselor in the room. Without something to mitigate opportunity for her to be cruel to me, either a mediator or self-medication, I was scared.
I lived at home in a constant state of alert and cognitive fatigue. No matter how I tried to make sense of my home life, I couldn’t. When she looked at or touched me, I would recoil in fear, anticipating some sort of incisive critique or demand expressed. Then she would criticize me for not responding warmly to her, exacerbating the cycle.
I couldn’t meet her needs – I was utterly exhausted. When I would tell her of the exhaustion I experienced in marital counseling, her responses were typically something along the lines of not believing me, denying what I was saying was true, or calling my exhaustion an ‘excuse’. I could interact happily with my friends… why not her?
I did not deny her demands were legitimate; rather, I expressed my inability to meet them because of how fatigued I was. I said ‘I can’t’ so many times. I realize her demands were small; affection, saying ‘i love you’, complimenting her. But it’s disorienting to be consistently berated and belittled by a person and then asked to compliment them and tell them you love them.
The push and pull of abuse is exhausting to a person who is not mentally because it does not make sense.
Further, in counseling I realized that I have forgotten that I have needs. I have lost the tools to even evaluate what my needs might be because, implicitly and explicitly in my marriage, I was told my needs don’t matter.
My marriage made no sense; I was obviously drowning, exhausted with the demands our life imposed on me. I was doing everything I could to get straight. I was in individual therapy, marital counseling, pastoral counseling, trying different antidepressants (4 in total – all with no effect), changing eating habits, trying to reduce my drinking, getting medical tests to see if I had health issues causing my fatigue, and being vulnerable in my friendships in an attempt to invite others in to process and move forward and figure out my marriage. I desperately shared everything I could about my marriage, hoping someone else would crack the code where I couldn’t.
None of my efforts worked. I could not get out of the exhausted state I was in. It’s worth noting here that within weeks of separating I almost completely cut out alcohol, got into a regular sleep schedule, was waking up at 6-7am every day and reading multiple hours (which I couldn’t do in marriage due to cognitive fatigue/distraction), and experienced a resurgence of energy. I have felt the duress I was under lift and lift and lift and the weeks and months have went on.
In retrospect, I was experiencing cognitive fatigue because I was taking the demands my wife was placing on me seriously, but no matter what I did I could not make sense of them. How could she not see that I was doing everything I could to make ends meet – the ends which she was imposing on me? I did not have additional energy left. She would ask me ‘Do you love me?’ and I didn’t know how to respond. How is my work not at least some symbol of love? My dream was to be a poor professor, which she knew – instead I was grinding myself to the bone, working in digital marketing with multiple freelance projects, picking up a bartending gig and a teaching gig on top of full-time employment.
The last straw was when she accused me of abuse. I took that accusation seriously, and weighed it against my experience. ‘Am I an abuser?’ I asked myself. I sorted through my behavior and how I treated her. I came to the conclusion that I may be a poor husband in serious ways; but I am not an abuser. And the abuse question opened the door to the question… ‘I may not be an abuser… but is there abuse in our marriage?’ And the answer quickly became ‘Yes.’
When we were married, I understood that she wasn’t going to work much for a while. However, she worked the bare minimum she could for 4 years, earning at most in a single year $18,000. As the years went on and my income climbed, our debt continued to climb as well. She was still contributing the same, yet spending frivolously on useless knick knacks for our home and a cat. As I packed up our home to sell, the majority of items were dozens of boxes of useless junk she’d accumulated.
She lived a life of mania around finances. We would go to marital counseling and she would regularly express, ‘I would rather be poor and happy than rich and sad’. We were poor and sad. Sure, my income was the highest it’d ever been – but we were still drowning, with debts climbing. At the end of our marriage, we’d accumulated about $20,000 in consumer debt between credit cards and personal loans.
It was traumatizing (and abusive) to go to counseling and be told by my partner she would ‘rather be poor and happy and than rich and sad’ when the factual scenario we were living was neither. She actively denied reality – both my lived experience and the reality of our finances – at my expense. It was killing me, trying to make sense of what we were going through but being unable to make sense of what I was being told and what I was experiencing.
Throughout this time, it is worth adding that she also leveraged my spiritual leadership to ‘set me straight’. I was in a conservative Evangelical space, believing that men are the ultimate provider in a family unit and primarily responsible for the status of the marriage. Because I was not doing what she wanted me to (lavishing her with affection), I was muscled into multiple groups and meetings where pastoral care intervened to restore our marriage. In the moment, I submitted to my pastoral care because of my trust for them and my faith in God. Now, I believe this dynamic was abusive; my pastoral care did not care in any sense for my soul; they only cared about fixing my marriage. No questions around ‘why’ my marriage was so bad were asked; only what was going on and how it could be fixed. I relish the thought of my pastoral care being held accountable for the abuse they exercised upon me during this time on judgment day, albeit through a shaken faith in a God that would enable this dynamic.
With my spiritual community, I shared that I felt like she was my tormentor; that she it felt as if I were on the ground due to exhaustion, and she was standing on my throat, telling me to ‘get up’ and ‘tell me you love me’; that our metaphorical life was a boat, sinking, and I was desperately bailing out water. All the while, she stood at the other end of the boat, desperately bailing water in and looking at me like I was a maniac.
And yet, because there was no adultery, there was no category for divorce. We had sworn an oath before God and were required to fix this.
As I reflect upon my marriage (and the ongoing divorce proceedings), a few things are clear.
She is an abuser. I don’t think she intends to be, but impact matters. She is mentally ill and unable to reckon with basic reality.
She is a manipulator. She manipulated my spiritual community against me. I was viewed as someone to be corrected while begging for help from my trusted friends and pastoral care, whom I now regret being vulnerable with due to their abuse and denial of my reality because I didn’t fit neatly into their thin theological categories.
She is an enslaver. In divorce proceedings, she is doing everything she can to get every dollar from me, leveraging student loans I did not co-sign, my continually increasing income due to my hard work, and denying every claim of dissipated assets she can.
It is truly a mind-breaking experience to see your compassion leveraged against you for money. I had to sit under an attorney proclaiming to a judge that, since I consented to move up our marriage date before her cancer surgery, ‘I knew what I was getting into’. That she is entitled to large sums of money (that do not exist; we never had more than $3000 in our bank account during marriage) due to that decision.
Even apart from the abuse, I did not know what I was getting into. Including the abuse, I am full of remorse for having invited such an evil, hateful person into my life.
This experience has been the most challenging to my faith. As I endured abuse from her, I trusted God in a few ways. That the compassion I showed would maybe be rewarded – or, at least not punished. That my spiritual community wanted what was best for me. That God was not a punitive, hateful God (like my partner). I do not believe this trust was well placed, but am open to shortcomings in my views here.
I struggle to consent to a God that allowed my experience to occur. I’m open and processing in some kind of faith, but I really don’t know what it looks like to find a place to put this pain and betrayal that I’m experiencing.
I am a survivor of abuse, and the abuse I endured was mind-shattering. I sacrificed everything to support a partner diagnosed with serious bodily illness, which drove her to hate me and deny my lived experience because she could not reconcile it with the hatefulness she cultivated over our marriage, choosing bitterness over any positivity for four years, poisoning my well-being in the process.
What I envisioned to be the most compassionate moment of my life — marrying a person with cancer and promising to support and love them — has become nothing but a symbol of pain and remorse. I envisioned a life where my partner and I would fight against the terror of cancer; instead she hopped to the other side, choosing her ongoing health issues as the ally and myself as the enemy.
It took me 4 years to realize it. And as she drags me through court to leverage every dollar out of me I can, my only regret is that I didn’t leave my abuser to her own devices sooner; self-pity, hatefulness, and a sheer disregard toward taking responsibility for anything.
I am grateful but drowning. As we are negotiating settlement, the end is near, and my abuser will soon be unable to execute any influence in my life.

I 23F and my friend 23F have been inseparable since we were freshman I’m high school. I’ve loved her through all the mistakes she’s made and have never judged her for any of them (Even though they were horrible) i can confidently say I’ve been a very good friend to her. Suddenly she’d been a little distant so i asked her to hang out to catch up (she works more than fourty hours a week in the summer, not hearing from her for a while is the norm but we go through phases of talking every day and not talking for a few weeks bc life.) She tells me she met a guy 30M and they’ve been dating for four months and plan on getting married within the next month. While we were hanging out he texts her and is just being so toxic, the type who tries to “catch her in a lie” when she’s not lying about anything and interrogate her so badly that she had ME replying for her bc it stresses her out so bad, she says he brings up the same things every week and does this all the time. I hasn’t heard from her after this in a month or two so was texting her here and there to make sure she’s okay. Our friends also were texting me asking if i had heard from her. She changed her number to be on his phone plan and texted me from her new number. She suddenly FaceTimed me saying she’s cutting everyone including her own sister off because she’s just “in a different place in life, more mature, and it’s normal to mature and not talk to people anymore and was mad that i shared her number with our friends” when she hadn’t told me not to and i wasn’t aware that was her intentions. I texted her a whole paragraph of how i see red flags in this man and what she’s saying doesn’t make sense and how she’s been in one other relationship ever so i think this is moving too fast. her friends aren’t bums and half are in med school and live by themselves so it doesn’t make sense that they’re not “mature” enough for her. Haven’t heard from her since but now i know she’s pregnant and going to give birth shortly. I texted her on her birthday just saying “happy birthday miss you hope you’re doing something fun” and got no reply. How do you guys stop feeling sad after a loved one chooses a man over you? Especially when it doesn’t seem like a man who treats her well.
EDIT: for context the red flags are: never wanting to meet any of her friends even after i invited them both out multiple times to hang out (and expressed i wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt), she was SUPER into body building and would use Instagram to track her progress and soon after they started dating she deleted ALL social media including Snapchat, would make her feel bad for past mistakes and victim blame her, would constantly tell her he’s worried she’s “too young for him” and would “change her mind about him in a year” and she would then have to convince him otherwise.
TLDR: my best friend chose a toxic man over me. Any advice on how to stop feeling sad about it?

Damn this is a long post. 😅 Sorry to whoever reads this I'm a wordy person.
I'm kind of thinking of nachoing. Not because I hate my step daughter but because I really really love her and her relationship is so important to me.
Basically since my fiance and I got serious I have stepped in as a parental figure to my SD who is now a young 5. I love her as much as I could love a kid that I didn't give birth to. She is smart, funny, sweet, energetic, sassy and curious.
We have 60/40 custody and her mom is involved and HC only with my fiance. Her mom teaches her bad manners (like that it's funny to be mean to people, she doesn't need to say please and thank you, swearing is encouraged etc etc), let's her eat all the junk food and treats she wants, is a little neglectful in the love and comfort area and both of her parents (and both sets of grandparents) baby her and coddle her (she RARELY gets told no from anyone in her life). She has a switch (from dad) and an iPad (from mom) with snapchat and messanger on it (which I get the premise. She can talk to us while at mom's and mom while here) and both her and my fiance call our Xbox her Xbox. I can already see a technology addiction surfacing in her, she's already talking about us getting her a phone, 1000 times a day she's like "I just need to snapchat this" and she spends probably a good hour a day staring at herself with filters on. At our house we only let her have her iPad when we are actively watching her. But I am so concerned over the long term affects this will have on her. My fiance says he is concerned only when I push him on it and sometimes comes back with "yes of course I agree. I can't do anything about it. Her mom got her the iPad".
We are also trying to encourage her to be more independent and help out a bit around the house....things like bringing her plate to the kitchen after supper, putting her shoes away in her cubby, hanging up her towel and hair towel after her bath and filling up her water bottle.
This week has been a very taxing week because my fiance hasn't been home much because of work so I've been home with her 24/7 and everyday has been met with "I don't want to do it I want you to do it for me", "I hate doing things for myself", "I like when you do it", "I can't do it", her throwing her hair towel at me while she is playing her switch and saying "here go hang this up" with a bossy tone or full on temper tantrums. This went on the last time we had her too. She sometimes has had bad days where she throws a tantrum but this week especially it's been multiple times every single day. It is mostly stemming from her not wanting to do things for herself because she's so used to us catering 24 hours a day.
The other dynamic is that she wants everything I have. She loves me and I'm her idol and it's absolutely exhausting. She will happily be playing until she sees me and my fiance holding hands and then she needs to break it up and go in the middle. Or we are holding hands in the car and she tells me to let you of his hand so I can hold hers. I get a new dress why didn't I get her the matching one and she gets upset. My fiance buys me flowers and she complains she didn't get any (last time I got flowers I happened to be in the city and found a cute sticker book I thought she would love.) when she came home I gave her her books and she was happy for 2 minutes until she realized my fiance got me flowers and for the next 24 hours she constantly was like "why did you get SM flowers but not me" "I want flowers too", my best friend made me a painting for my engagement and she kept asking why my best friend made me one and not her. She even talks nonstop about how her dad is gonna buy her a ring like mine (engagement ring) for like a month after my engagement. I don't blame her and I understand that a) she wants to be included and b) she wants to be exactly like me (she has told me as much). But it's exhausting and sometimes when I can't even get a kiss from my fiance without her needing one too it stings. (I don't blame her and I would never expect my fiance to not give her a kiss if she asks for one after I get one)
So like I said this week I have been with her 90% of the time. I've kept up with laundry, housework, yard work, transportation and I usually get up before my fiance to make him coffee and pack his lunch so he can sleep in a bit (it's something I LOVE doing for him so he can sleep in.) she has been a bit of a menace with talking back and arguing, entitlement and tantrums but I've dealt with it and always bounce back and try to stay calm and steady and understanding in the face of her big emotions.
Last night my fiance and I talked about how if we ask her to do something we are not going to be doing it for her.
So flash forward to this morning. I wake up and brush my teeth with SD (she complains nonstop or doesn't do it unless Indo it with her). Go downstairs and my fiance comes down 10 minutes later he gives me a kiss and SD starts asking why I get a kiss and she doesn't so he gave her one as well. Things like that sometimes sting and it did this morning so I went upstairs for 5 minutes to regroup and tell myself it's not a big deal. I can be hurt but no one did anything wrong. Then my fiance was taking SD with him and asked her to get her water bottle and fill it up (he asked her like 5 times). She refused to fill it up so he went to do it and I reminded I'm about our talk last night and he disregarded that and did it anyway.
I texted him and told him that when he brushes me off that way it makes me feel like he doesn't value what we decide on together and it's very important to me that when we ask her to do something she does it and if she refuses to she deals with the natural consequences (ie she chose not to fill her water bottle up she will have to go the car ride without water). He brushed that off and told me he was just not wanting to fight with her about it. And then told me that he felt "unloved when I went upstairs this morning" and so I explained that when I can't get a moment of affection for myself sometimes it really stings and today was one of those days (but that I also don't expect him to refuse to give SD a kiss because that's unfair to her and she deserves affection too) so I went upstairs to regroup and came back down after I had 5 minutes. And he responded with "how unacceptable that a child wants affection from her parent" and that just felt very condescending and cycled into a fight.
Anyways I kind of feel like I am at my limit. I don't feel like my perspective and advice is valued and that response from my fiance really makes me feel icky. There was no kindness and compassion in it.
I'm thinking maybe I should nacho from any parental duties for the time being, still give her love and affection but really prioritize myself and my needs day to day instead of bending over backwards for her and my fiance. Let him deal with his child. And I know the affection thing I'm just gonna have to get over and figure out a way to handle better when it feel like it stings.
Any advice or encouragement or even constructive criticism would be so helpful

Damn this is a long post. 😅 Sorry to whoever reads this I'm a wordy person.
I'm kind of thinking of nachoing. Not because I hate my step daughter but because I really really love her and her relationship is so important to me.
Basically since my fiance and I got serious I have stepped in as a parental figure to my SD who is now a young 5. I love her as much as I could love a kid that I didn't give birth to. She is smart, funny, sweet, energetic, sassy and curious.
We have 60/40 custody and her mom is involved and HC only with my fiance. Her mom teaches her bad manners (like that it's funny to be mean to people, she doesn't need to say please and thank you, swearing is encouraged etc etc), let's her eat all the junk food and treats she wants, is a little neglectful in the love and comfort area and both of her parents (and both sets of grandparents) baby her and coddle her (she RARELY gets told no from anyone in her life). She has a switch (from dad) and an iPad (from mom) with snapchat and messanger on it (which I get the premise. She can talk to us while at mom's and mom while here) and both her and my fiance call our Xbox her Xbox. I can already see a technology addiction surfacing in her, she's already talking about us getting her a phone, 1000 times a day she's like "I just need to snapchat this" and she spends probably a good hour a day staring at herself with filters on. At our house we only let her have her iPad when we are actively watching her. But I am so concerned over the long term affects this will have on her. My fiance says he is concerned only when I push him on it and sometimes comes back with "yes of course I agree. I can't do anything about it. Her mom got her the iPad".
We are also trying to encourage her to be more independent and help out a bit around the house....things like bringing her plate to the kitchen after supper, putting her shoes away in her cubby, hanging up her towel and hair towel after her bath and filling up her water bottle.
This week has been a very taxing week because my fiance hasn't been home much because of work so I've been home with her 24/7 and everyday has been met with "I don't want to do it I want you to do it for me", "I hate doing things for myself", "I like when you do it", "I can't do it", her throwing her hair towel at me while she is playing her switch and saying "here go hang this up" with a bossy tone or full on temper tantrums. This went on the last time we had her too. She sometimes has had bad days where she throws a tantrum but this week especially it's been multiple times every single day. It is mostly stemming from her not wanting to do things for herself because she's so used to us catering 24 hours a day.
The other dynamic is that she wants everything I have. She loves me and I'm her idol and it's absolutely exhausting. She will happily be playing until she sees me and my fiance holding hands and then she needs to break it up and go in the middle. Or we are holding hands in the car and she tells me to let you of his hand so I can hold hers. I get a new dress why didn't I get her the matching one and she gets upset. My fiance buys me flowers and she complains she didn't get any (last time I got flowers I happened to be in the city and found a cute sticker book I thought she would love.) when she came home I gave her her books and she was happy for 2 minutes until she realized my fiance got me flowers and for the next 24 hours she constantly was like "why did you get SM flowers but not me" "I want flowers too", my best friend made me a painting for my engagement and she kept asking why my best friend made me one and not her. She even talks nonstop about how her dad is gonna buy her a ring like mine (engagement ring) for like a month after my engagement. I don't blame her and I understand that a) she wants to be included and b) she wants to be exactly like me (she has told me as much). But it's exhausting and sometimes when I can't even get a kiss from my fiance without her needing one too it stings. (I don't blame her and I would never expect my fiance to not give her a kiss if she asks for one after I get one)
So like I said this week I have been with her 90% of the time. I've kept up with laundry, housework, yard work, transportation and I usually get up before my fiance to make him coffee and pack his lunch so he can sleep in a bit (it's something I LOVE doing for him so he can sleep in.) she has been a bit of a menace with talking back and arguing, entitlement and tantrums but I've dealt with it and always bounce back and try to stay calm and steady and understanding in the face of her big emotions.
Last night my fiance and I talked about how if we ask her to do something we are not going to be doing it for her.
So flash forward to this morning. I wake up and brush my teeth with SD (she complains nonstop or doesn't do it unless Indo it with her). Go downstairs and my fiance comes down 10 minutes later he gives me a kiss and SD starts asking why I get a kiss and she doesn't so he gave her one as well. Things like that sometimes sting and it did this morning so I went upstairs for 5 minutes to regroup and tell myself it's not a big deal. I can be hurt but no one did anything wrong. Then my fiance was taking SD with him and asked her to get her water bottle and fill it up (he asked her like 5 times). She refused to fill it up so he went to do it and I reminded I'm about our talk last night and he disregarded that and did it anyway.
I texted him and told him that when he brushes me off that way it makes me feel like he doesn't value what we decide on together and it's very important to me that when we ask her to do something she does it and if she refuses to she deals with the natural consequences (ie she chose not to fill her water bottle up she will have to go the car ride without water). He brushed that off and told me he was just not wanting to fight with her about it. And then told me that he felt "unloved when I went upstairs this morning" and so I explained that when I can't get a moment of affection for myself sometimes it really stings and today was one of those days (but that I also don't expect him to refuse to give SD a kiss because that's unfair to her and she deserves affection too) so I went upstairs to regroup and came back down after I had 5 minutes. And he responded with "how unacceptable that a child wants affection from her parent" and that just felt very condescending and cycled into a fight.
Anyways I kind of feel like I am at my limit. I don't feel like my perspective and advice is valued and that response from my fiance really makes me feel icky. There was no kindness and compassion in it.
I'm thinking maybe I should nacho from any parental duties for the time being, still give her love and affection but really prioritize myself and my needs day to day instead of bending over backwards for her and my fiance. Let him deal with his child. And I know the affection thing I'm just gonna have to get over and figure out a way to handle better when it feel like it stings.
Any advice or encouragement or even constructive criticism would be so helpful.

https://www.healthrising.org/blog/2024/05/18/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-long-covid-energy-sink/
TLDR by Claude.ai
In summary, the preprint study by Shankar et al. found that immune cells from ME/CFS and Long COVID patients exhibit reduced energy production, elevated oxidative stress levels, and mitochondrial dysfunction compared to healthy controls. These findings were particularly pronounced in female ME/CFS patients. The authors propose that the immune system's struggle to produce energy in these conditions may lead to an energy drain on the rest of the body, potentially explaining the fatigue and other symptoms experienced by patients. They also suggest that reducing oxidative stress using antioxidants might help regulate the immune system activation and improve energy levels.
The gist, copied from the blog
• Health Rising reported some time ago becoming obsessed with the energy problems found in ME/CFS. Vishnu Shankar, a PhD. Stanford student, engineered a study that assessed energy production in ME/CFS patients’ immune cells. The study recently appeared in preprint form and includes some new findings – so it’s onto round 2 of this fascinating study.
• Shankar focused on immune cells because they provide a good test case for assessing energy production. It turns out that protecting the body from pathogens turns is quite an energy-intensive project. Even when it’s not fighting off an infection, the immune system uses about 15-20% of our energy.
• The study assessed both mitochondrial activity and oxidative stress in immune cells (PBMCs) in ME/CFS patients, long-COVID patients, and healthy controls.
• The immune cells in the ME/CFS/long-COVID patients weren’t pumping out as much energy as the healthy controls’ cells – suggesting they were damaged and possibly exhausted.
• Because damaged mitochondria can become free radical-producing machines, they took a look at oxidative stress (free radical) levels. (Just as a damaged automobile engine produces more exhaust than a well-functioning one, damaged mitochondria spew out more toxins; i.e. free radicals.)
• Immune cells have to switch their after-burners on to get the energy to go after pathogens. Producing that energy comes at a cost, though, in the form of increased levels of reactive oxygen species oxidative stress (free radicals). (Note the key word – reactive oxygen species – these are unbalanced oxygen molecules which try to achieve balance by ripping electrons from other molecules; hence the word “reactive”.)
• Dramatically higher levels of reactive oxygen species were found in both the ME/CFS and long-COVID patients’ immune cells compared to the healthy controls. (ME/CFS patients had the highest levels). A closer look revealed, however, that the reactive oxygen species were almost wholly centered in the immune cells from female ME/CFS patients.
• Both male ME/CFS and long-COVID patients did, however, exhibit elevated glutathione levels – indicating that their immune cells were also dealing with increased oxidative stress levels – which have triggered the production of the master antioxidant in our cells – glutathione.
• Altogether, multiple pathways that deal with oxidative stress (glutathione, superoxide dismutase, lipid oxidative damage, etc.) appear to have been overwhelmed in the immune cells in both ME/CFS and long-COVID patients. In all cases, the ME/CFS patients were worse off than the long-COVID patients – leading the authors to suggest that long COVID was an intermediate condition between health and ME/CFS.
• Increased levels of mitochondrial calcium – which drive the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the mitochondria – provided another potential explanation for the increased levels of oxidative stress. That was a very interesting finding given that in 2021 Wirth and Scheibenbogen proposed that increased mitochondrial levels of calcium were a core factor in ME/CFS.
• Once again, damage to the lipids that protect our cells and the organelles in our cells popped out during a metabolomic analysis (of T-cells). Since reactive oxygen species target lipids this finding make sense and it underscored what big deal lipid issues have become in ME/CFS studies over the past few years.
• Once again, men and women had different findings. Oxidative stress was worse in women while lipid damage was more extensive in men. Plus, the study suggested that when confronted with high oxidative stress levels, women’s T-cells go on a hyper proliferation binge – potentially sucking more energy from the rest of the body.
• Trying to reduce the oxidative stress present, they used antioxidants like NAC (increase glutathione), metformin (increase SOD2 expression), and liproxstatin-1 (reduce lipid peroxide levels) in cell cultures and found that NAC and metformin was able to reduce immune activity to some extent. That finding suggested that the right antioxidants might be able to tame the immune activity and improve energy levels.
• All in all, the authors proposed that long periods of elevated reactive oxygen species damage the mitochondria, producing a long-term problem of energy depletion. Because the immune cells already use up so much energy in the body, and then struggle to produce energy in ME/CFS and long COVID, the authors proposed that immune problems in these diseases produce an energy sink that draws energy from other areas of the body.

I went through every stage of mono and recovered in a month. This is the steps I took to do so, and hopefully they can help you too. I am not a doctor and there is a lot of stuff that could be wrong here, and/or not do anything at all. If you are dealing with issues please go get medical assistance.

1. Sore Throat

For throat pain I visited my doctor and was prescribed prednisone and unfortunately I was dealing with an infection so I had to take anti-biotics. If you are diagnosed with mono and your doctor is assuming it is strep or another type of infection communicate with them the uncertainties you have in order to be tested for strep (taking anti-biotics with mono burdens you with a high chance of a rash).
Besides prednisone. I used a humidifier in my room in order for my throat to not dry out in the back. Even if it hurt horribly I attempted to drink at least 4 glasses of water every 4 hours so I wouldn't be dehydrated.
I suggest not taking Ibuprofen during use of Prednisone as it can cause intestinal issues. Use Tylenol.
I stuck to smoothies and chicken noodle soup for food during this time. Salty broth foods help soothe the throat quite a lot and help you get some nutrients.
It was hard to sleep because of my throat pain, I ended purchasing a sitting pillow for my bed. It took a lot of the stress off my lymph nodes during rest.
Finally I made sure to brush my teeth twice a day and use Orajel hydrogen peroxide mouthwash. Oral hygiene is incredibly important during any issues with tonsils in order to keep an infection from happening and washing off pus from throat scars during mono.

2. Sleep

For me sleep was quite difficult and I unfortunately didn't have many ways to deal with it for the first couple of days.
I tried to not take naps throughout the day and rather hold in my sleep for the nights, as your body does better healing when it's in REM. Which is more difficult to have happen if you take brief short naps.
By around my third day I learned that having a humidifier in my room made it so much easier to breathe and feel a bit better.
I took one extra strength Tylenol right before bed, and 10 mg of melatonin. Keep in mind that melatonin only is going to help put you to sleep and you will need to change your diet to be heavier in magnesium in order to have a better time staying asleep. If I woke up due to the pain at the middle of the night i'd take another tylenol and wait it out until I was able to sleep again. Continue to drink water throughout the entire time.

3. Spleen Pains

I dealt with really bad spleen pain for a couple of days and my only solve for it was laying on my back and using a heatpad on the area where my pain was. I tried not to move around very much. If your pain becomes increasingly worse go in to get screened for a risk of rupture.

4. Mental Health

Out of all the things I dealt with, this was one of the worst. I felt defeated for most of my days. I tried to feel better by looking at other peoples experiences and seeing how others have it worse. It also can help to call loved ones and friends and talk with them. I also watched shows and movie continuously in order to distract myself. Eating good helped me a lot, once I started making protein smoothies my mood changed for the better. Also try to stay out of the dark for to long, if you can go into a more open room with sunlight and lay during the day it will make you happier. Try to retain your sleep for just the night, this way you feel like you still are holding to a schedule. It also helps with REM which is incredibly important for mental health and can't be done with naps. Finally, self-care was a breakthrough for me. I tried to shower daily, and clean up my face before bed. It made me feel happier and nicer.

5. The Rash

This rash was one of the worst parts of the whole thing besides my throat. It happened after I had taken my antibiotics for 5 days. It itched so badly. In order to deal with the itch I went to the ER and was prescribed hydroxyzine and another dose of prednisone. For the first day I used calamine lotion, I soon realized it was making me even more itchy as it caused my skin to dry up. I switched over to Eucerin anti-itch lotion and it helped so much. I applied when I woke up and before I went to bed. I applied ice packs to my skin, instead of itching and it works much better at stopping the itch. Also try to sleep with a fan pointed towards you. During the rash stage, it is the most important for you to drink as much fluids as possible.
I hope this can maybe help someone? Idk, i am very thankful for this subreddit as most of these posts helped me recover much faster. Thank you all.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been the standard measure of economic growth since World War II. It is widely believed that accelerating economic growth as measured by the GDP will translate into improved living standards. However, this view is being challenged with the argument that it is better to focus on measures of wellbeing than GDP because, despite robust economic growth over the past several decades, there are still millions of citizens living in poverty.Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has been the standard measure of economic growth since World War II. It is widely believed that accelerating economic growth as measured by the GDP will translate into improved living standards. However, this view is being challenged with the argument that it is better to focus on measures of wellbeing than GDP because, despite robust economic growth over the past several decades, there are still millions of citizens living in poverty.

Besides, GDP measures perpetual growth, which is unattainable. Because GDP is an outdated proxy measure of economic growth, wellbeing, which is a multidimensional approach of measuring the most important aspects of people’s life, is gaining popularity.

Perpetual Growth

Stagflation is simultaneous economic stagnation combined with high inflation. In the long run, economic growth is dependent on two drivers; productivity and labor (Dolar). Productivity is affected by multiple factors. Improvements in many facets of productivity growth have decreased or reversed since the global financial crisis. The foremost factor is the demographic crisis of western countries that threatens the growth of GDP. Developed countries have experienced deceleration of working-age population, stabilization of educational attainment, and expansion into various forms of production. Furthermore, labor reallocation from less productive to more productive sectors has decelerated since the global financial crisis. Besides, radical disruptions to education and income losses are likely to affect human capital negatively. The waning demographics of western countries imply that acceleration of productivity growth is needed. The McKinsey Global Institute projected that 80% productivity growth is required to mitigate the effects of changing demographics (49). This projection is unlikely to be achieved given the dwindling working-age population in western countries. On the contrary, productivity growth is likely to continue decreasing because of the significant changes in the demographics unless the working-age population begins to grow again.

Perpetual Growth

GDP as a measurement is very outdated because it does not measure wellbeing. It is a statistical tool used to measure how well the economy is performing. However, it neglects important factors that determine the wellbeing, such as inequality and environmental services (Gallup). GDP as a proxy measure of economic growth ignores certain aspects that do not involve monetary transactions, does not assess changes in human capital, does not discriminate activities that enhance welfare from activities that reduce welfare, does not account for cultural difference, and omits the environmental costs and rates of depletion of resources (Giannetti et al. 14). The Measure of Economic Welfare is one of the alternatives for a gross domestic product as it measures consumption in the economy as a proxy for economic welfare. It adds up the benefits of goods and services consumption and subtracts the costs associated with the consumption, such as environmental pollution, providing a picture of economic welfare. Other economic welfare measures were developed after the Measure of Economic Welfare, such as the Index of the Economic Aspects of Welfare which incorporates environmental costs in estimating economic welfare (Giannetti et al. 15). Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare is an index developed to account for the current environmental issues while addressing the long-term ecosystem and natural resource sustainable use. More indices were developed with recent ones such as the State of Global Well-Being, the Better Life Index, and the Global Well-Being Index measuring a myriad of aspects of wellbeing. The Gallup Global Well-Being measures the behavioral economics of gross domestic product growth. It estimates the percentage “thriving,” “struggling,” and “suffering” of individuals in different countries and regions (Gallup). The indexes focus on the percent thriving in at least elements of wellbeing such as purpose (liking what they do), social (supportive relationships), physical (good health), community (liking the surrounding community), and financial (managing economic life well) aspects.
One in six adults worldwide are considered thriving – or strong and consistent — in at least three of the five elements of well-being, as measured by the Gallup-Healthways Global Well-Being Index. For example residents of the Singapore score quite low at the 19%, while New Zealand leads in Asia – Pacific with 67%.
The Gallup Global Well-Being measures have opened up new opportunities to study issues that affect people in different communities around the world in ways that GDP would not. For example, life satisfaction aspects of the Gallup World Poll data have been exploited to measure inequality in the distribution of subjective wellbeing (Gluzmann & Gasparini 2). Measuring inequality in subjective wellbeing might be complementary to the various approaches aimed at computing unfairness in a society because it may in some way have benefits over the usual income inequality measurements. Some perceived income inequalities may arise due to personal choices if all constraints are observed thus cannot be considered unfair. A case in point is when two individuals facing similar opportunities make different choices. One choice might lead to a better, healthier lifestyle while the other subjects the individual to poverty. Free choices resulting in socially acceptable income inequality should not be regarded as unfair. The assessment of subjective wellbeing is less likely to be susceptible to such differences. Under evaluation of subjective wellbeing, differences in perceived happiness may better estimate social unfairness rather than income unfairness (Gluzmann & Gasparini 4). Gallup World Poll provides data that can be used to compare wellbeing in different countries. It cures one of the most significant problems associated with compering inequality across countries and regions, namely, the generation of homogenous information. The poll poses the same question across all countries in all areas, which significantly reduces spurious differences in estimating comparisons. This reduces sources of measurement error significantly. It is noteworthy that people may not interpret and answer the standardized questions the same in different countries, leading to additional errors. However, the advantages of estimating subjective wellbeing and its rising popularity imply that improvements in the measurements will yield better results.

Technological Revolution

Usually, information and communication technologies are considered a key driver of economic growth and productivity. Different reviews indicate that technological effects tend to be positive at the organizational level (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development [UNCTAD 34]). However, it has been reported that productivity tends to drop as economies entrench technologies in every sector. In other words, the rapid digitization of economies has not translated into strong productivity. On the contrary, productivity growth appears to have stunted over the past few decades, with the slowdown more pronounced in developed countries and also in developing countries (UNCTAD 34). This is a productivity paradox because as technological advancement and use have increased, productivity growth has decreased, which is contrary to popular expectations (Remes et al.). The digitization of economies into digital economies has thus far not translated into increased productivity. The paradox in the digital economy is attributed to different reasons. A more pessimistic perspective considers the technological effects on productivity as having fewer impacts on productivity growth than the revolutionary technological advances of the past (UNCTAD 34). A more optimistic view links the slow growth of productivity to the time lags between the time the technologies are introduced and the time actual effects are felt (European CEO). As a result, more visible impacts on productivity will occur when technologies are adopted widely within the economy. An additional contributing factor to the productivity paradox is the difficulties associated with measuring the digital economy. The slow growth in productivity might be explained by the lack of proper recording of technological activities in that in overall GDP estimation. Consequently, the proper measurement would be reflected in increased productivity. In developed countries, demographic factors associated with the aging population are also linked to the slow growth in productivity (UNCTAD 34). Therefore, the productivity paradox related to the technological revolution arises from multiple factors.

Quality of the GDP

Measuring economic growth in purely quantitative categories diminishes the significance of “high-quality growth.” High-quality growth encompasses increased technological self-reliance, significant production and welfare transformation, the establishment of a comprehensive safety net for the citizens, enhancement of quality healthcare, education, and employment, and reduction of inequality across regions and various demographic characteristics (Wärtsilä). It reflects a policy change that focuses on investment areas that guarantee increased productivity, such as production, consumption, healthcare, and education (Pfeffer). The concept of high-quality growth is being advanced by China to reorganize the economy in a way that focus on increased domestic consumption and investing in productive sectors to drive the overall economic growth. For example, after decades of heavy investments in infrastructural projects and the manufacturing sector, the country realizes that roads and bridges are not productive but rather facilitates productivity. Policy change to shift investment into more productive sectors of the economy might bring sustainable economic growth and wellbeing. At the sectorial level, administrative job control is one of the main factors impacting the health of the employees (Pfeffer). The return of line of sight to the work, workplace flexibility, autonomous fusion teams, fluidity in work practices, and organizational health can elevate the personal wellbeing of the employees. The functional organization provides an environment with less stress caused by micromanagement demands from the employees. Therefore, wellbeing is a product of economic policy at the national level and the contribution of the private sector in nurturing the wellbeing of employees.

Conclusion

The failure of GDP as a measurement proxy of economic growth is less effective in contemporary society. It assumes that an economy will experience perpetual growth, which is a difficult achievement. Even where economies have experienced phenomenal growth over the years, the economic expansion failed to transform the lives of millions of citizens. The technological revolution also has been unable to expand the GDP as it was initially believed despite the fact that the significant impacts technology has had on society. It led to the conclusion that GDP has limitations as a measure of economic growth because it does not account for the non-monetary aspects that matter to people. As a result, new indexes such as the Gallup Global Wellbeing have been developed and are experiencing rising popularity due to their ability to compute wellbeing. In particular, the estimation of subjective wellbeing creates opportunities for improved measurement of social inequality. Furthermore, the realization that wellbeing is important to citizens is supporting new ideas of measuring national economic growth. China’s shift to the assessment of the quality of economic growth indicates a paradigm shift where countries focus on national statistics that reflect their economic realities.

References

Dolar, Veronika. “Why stagflation is an economic nightmare – and could become a real headache for Biden and the Fed if it emerges in the US.” The Conversation (2022). https://theconversation.com/why-stagflation-is-an-economic-nightmare-and-could-become-a-real-headache-for-biden-and-the-fed-if-it-emerges-in-the-us-179036. Accessed 21 Mar. 2022.
European CEO. “Giving a voice to the digital revolution’s silent majority.” (2019). https://www.europeanceo.com/industry-outlook/giving-a-voice-to-the-digital-revolutions-silent-majority/. Accessed 21 Mar. 2022.
Gallup. “2014 Country Well-Being Rankings.”
Giannetti, Biagio F., et al. “A review of limitations of GDP and alternative indices to monitor human wellbeing and to manage ecosystem functionality.” Journal of cleaner production 87 (2015): 11-25.
Gluzmann, Pablo, and Leonardo Gasparini. “International inequality in subjective well‐being: An exploration with the Gallup World Poll.” Review of Development Economics 22.2 (2018): 610-631.
McKinsey Global Institute – “Global growth: Can productivity save the day in an aging world?” page 49
Pfeffer, Jeffrey. “The overlooked essentials of employee wellbeing.” McKinsey Global Institute (2018). https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/the-overlooked-essentials-of-employee-well-being. Accessed 21 Mar. 2022.
Remes, Jaana et al. “Solving the productivity puzzle.” McKinsey Global Institute (2018). https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/regions-in-focus/solving-the-productivity-puzzle. Accessed 21 Mar. 2022.
Wärtsilä. “Going beyond GDP: China targets a new path to growth.” (2021). https://www.wartsila.com/insights/article/going-beyond-gdp-china-targets-a-new-path-to-growth. Accessed 21 Mar. 2022.
Authors

Paul Lalovich

Organizational Effectiveness and Strategy Execution Practice

Tesha Teshanovich

Organizational Effectiveness and Strategy Execution Practice

An alternative title for this is: Should I ever offer more without any knowledge of competing bids? OR Can someone explain to me about this automated offering system my realtor seems to be working with?
Anyway, here is my story:
Working with some realtor Zillow gave me. I know not the best, but he seemed okay during the tour. I wanted to make a fast offer on this foreclosed property (being sold by a bank) with asking price of $210k, and working with him just seemed the best way to do it.
I told him I'd like to offer $200k and see where things would go. So we make the offer. I expect the sellers to come back with a counter offer. This is on day 6 of the listing.
The next day we don't hear back from sellers. However, the realtor he mentions off-hand how the sellers are taking offers for the first week, then picking from the best or something? With this knowledge, I mention being concerned about my offer being weak, and maybe I should increase it. I REALLY like this place, and 210k seems well below what it's worth. I don't want to lose it.
My realtor states: "Nah, your offer is good. There's going to be people offering $100k. You have nothing to worry about."
Since this was day 7, the final day, I convince him to increase my offer to $206k. He says "Okay, but your pre-qualification is for 200k, can you afford that?"
I tell him I've been pre-qualified for $220k+, I just ask my lender for pre-qualifications that match the offer I'm making so my hand isn't tipped with the seller.
After I say this, my realtor says "Well... if you're going $206k, might as well make them happy and match their 210k asking price."
This seemed weird... especially since earlier he seemed to treat $200k as totally acceptable.
I sign the $206k offer and we send it off. Then about 30 minutes he comes back to me and says, "The website counter-offered for asking price ($210k), so it's just a matter of who has been countered this asking price, and how many people offered above this price."
At this point I'm confused. I asked a bit more and apparently the bank thats selling the property is using an automated system to accept offers. I'm not really sure what to make of this. The realtor is telling me I should offer above asking price... but I haven't even been given confirmation of another offer by someone else existing? How do I even know if I'm being out-bid?
I ask my realtor if we would be given an opportunity to outbid another offer if there's one better than ours, and all he says is "If they see an offer they like, there's a chance they'll go with it."
So I'm sitting here wondering if I should offer more. I say 212k, and my realtor says I should do more. I say 215k, and he's like: "for every 1k, it's only a couple dollars a month. You should go higher. I'd say what would be the best offer you would be able to offer them and to offer that" (Those statements are copied from our texts exactly)
Finally I say, "I don't understand, they gave us a counter offer at asking price. Can't we just accept the counter offer and then everything's set?"
He says (forbeitum): "We won't know until the offer is either accepted or rejected. The next offer is probably going to be the last offer we submit because it says "Highest and Best" above our offer"
I ask him what he means and he says: "It won't let me change the offer type from highest and best when I was clicking on it. That made me realize this is probably the last offer we are going to submit before they decide"
So I sign on an offer for $215k.
Once again, it feels weird since he seemed fine with $200k earlier, but now keeps pushing me to offer as much as I can now that he knows I can offer more.
Anyway, the day ends.
And there's nothing.
The next day, day 8 since the listing goes by.... no response.
It's now nearly the end of day 9. The property is still listed for sale everywhere with no changes.
My offer has technically expired, and I'm wondering what to do. According to the realtor, there has been no response from the sellers.
"Good morning. No there are no updates at this time. I keep checking in to see if anything has changed"
I ask: "Are things usually this non-communicative when it comes to buying from banks? Seems weird to have no response at all."
He says: "It's not a normal offer"
Wtf does that mean?? I asked him to clarify and he never responded.
I want my realtor to be communicating with a real person, but it seems like all they can do is interact with a machine? Is this normal? What's the strategy here?
I haven't signed anything exclusive with this realtor, besides the expired offers. Should I quickly find someone else to make an offer with? Should I tell them my situation and ask them to force communication with a human?
Is my realtor genuine? I still don't understand the counter offer thing with the automated offer system and why I should be offering more than that. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!

In today’s evolving and competitive landscape, the value of innovation is shifting from the traditional closed systems approach to a more open, decentralized, and community-driven approach. Paul Lalovich and Tesha Teshanovich from Agile Dynamics outline what is driving the trend, its implications for organizations, and how leaders can successfully operate at the forefront of the shift.
Innovation transcends the mere conceptualization of fresh ideas; it is the actionable process of enhancing existing products or conjuring entirely new offerings. While there is a strong correlation between R&D and innovation – with the former serving as a wellspring for pioneering thoughts – the journey from groundbreaking research to practical utility can be intricate and protracted.
However, it’s worth noting that innovation isn't solely tethered to structured R&D. It can spontaneously arise from sheer curiosity, a spark of inspiration, or even the simple act of refining or tweaking existing methodologies.
Firms might invest in R&D to catalyze innovation, but they can also harness external advancements – referred to as ‘spillovers’. After all, groundbreaking knowledge isn't always the exclusive domain of its creators, making external inspirations invaluable.
Emerging from a robust foundation of innovation, soft power presents tangible advantages. Leaders in technology often establish benchmarks that others deem beneficial to adopt. As a result, global standards lean favorably toward those pioneers. Moreover, countries recognized for their innovative acumen become prime territories for patent filings. These innovation hubs magnetize not just domestic but international investments and capital.
Perhaps the most profound testament to their soft power is the allure they hold for top-tier talents. For instance, Silicon Valley has evolved into a global nexus, drawing in exceptional minds from the realms of information, communication, and digital technologies. Such concentrations of talent can significantly influence a nation’s trade dynamics.

Tech monopolies slow down innovation

In the arena of global economic dominance, competition emerges as the cornerstone, propelling nations to the forefront of innovation and growth. While Chinese strategies appear to have adapted, embracing the dynamism of competitive markets, the United States stands at a crossroads. Some of its tech behemoths promote their size and market leadership as pivotal for cutting-edge innovation.
Yet, it is crucial to discern the nature of this innovation and whose interests it truly serves. Does it prioritize shareholder returns, or is there a broader, national interest at play? As smaller, agile firms emerge, emphasizing true boundary-pushing innovation, one must ponder: Is the spirit of unbridled competition – a force that once fueled the American economy – being overshadowed by the looming giants?
In the nuanced interplay between governmental oversight and market forces, recent actions within China's technology sector provide a captivating study of regulatory boundaries. This phenomenon, aptly termed ‘de-tycoonification’, captures a deliberate effort to harmonize enterprise innovation with centralized checks.
A leading digital commerce platform in China encountered regulatory attention. The swift determination that its practices were anti-competitive, accompanied by a significant financial penalty, symbolizes a broader intent to redefine market paradigms. Prompt official communique following these events conveys a clear perspective: monopolistic behaviours can inhibit the holistic evolution of a market-based economy.
This stance also emphasizes that thoughtful regulations, rather than restricting growth, might actually serve as pillars to stabilize and nurture it. The regulatory web further ensnared another major digital entity in China, underscoring the principle that technological ingenuity should operate within established ethical and legal frameworks. Such internal checks within China challenge certain dominant narratives in global tech centres.
The notion that maintaining a robust market stature acts as a shield against global tech adversaries comes under scrutiny. The introspective regulatory steps within China necessitate a broader re-evaluation of such assumptions.
The tech landscape today is unmistakably marked by the towering presence of Big Tech, but what underlies this dominance might point towards a concerning reduction in competitive intensity. For two decades, the profits raked in by American tech behemoths have remained unparalleled, with market valuations suggesting this trend is expected to continue, if not amplify, in the coming years.
Such sustained, sky-high profitability isn't typical in a genuinely competitive market. In such a setting, rivals and newcomers usually exert downward pressures, ensuring no single entity retains an overwhelming edge for extended periods. The tech industry's trajectory further points towards a rising penchant for consolidation. This is evidenced by the substantial acquisitions of budding companies by the tech titans.
Data sourced from Mergermarket underscores an uptick in acquisition activity by these colossal tech firms, particularly post-2010. The symbiotic relationship between persistent high profits and a trend toward industry concentration suggests that the tech market might be veering away from the vibrant competitive arena it once was.

Cardwell’s law

The tech landscape’s evolution, in its relationship with innovation, is witnessing a palpable shift in entrepreneurial motivation and vision. Historically, the fervour of pioneering something transformative, encapsulated in the ‘moonshot thinking’, drove entrepreneurs. This audacious spirit envisioned groundbreaking entities akin to the tech luminaries of the late 20th and early 21st century. Yet, today’s entrepreneurial aspirations seem more tempered.
Instead of fostering ambitions of building the next revolutionary tech empire, there’s a growing inclination towards securing an acquisition by an existing tech colossus. This shift in sentiment dims the likelihood of a new tech juggernaut rising to challenge the incumbent titans. Post the era of computer-centric, web-driven, and smartphone-related innovations, a cloud of uncertainty looms over the emergence of new tech powerhouses.
Notably, the promising technological domains of the upcoming decade – be it autonomous vehicles with their exorbitant R&D costs, virtual or augmented reality's significant development expenditures, the data intensity of artificial intelligence, or drones and the Internet of Things with their challenging profit margins – present formidable entry barriers.
These hurdles, combined with a changing entrepreneurial landscape, cast a shadow on the future dynamism of tech innovation. Cardwell's elucidation on the patterns of technological evolution offers a poignant lens through which to view the current landscape dominated by Big Tech.
Donald Stephen Lowell Cardwell’s seminal work from 1972 suggests that technological vigor within societies is not an enduring flame, but a fleeting burst of brilliance. Within the European context, as one nation's innovative energy began to wane, another would rise, ensuring a consistent relay of progress across the continent.
Visualize this relay of innovation as a torch, brilliant yet intense. Historically, regions such as Northern Italy, Southern Germany, Spain, and Portugal, and later Holland, Britain, the United States, and Germany, took turns in holding this torch, leading the march of innovation. Yet, no single society clung to this leadership for extended durations. The relay ensured that as one nation's innovation diminished, another took up the mantle, propelling the collective forward.
This phenomenon, coined as ‘Cardwell’s Law’ by Joel Mokyr, posits that when left in isolation, a society’s technological creativity is but a brief spark. Over time, conservatism’s stifling grip, intent on preserving existing structures of power and privilege, often curtails this innovative drive.
This is where the analogy becomes particularly relevant for the Big Tech landscape. In today’s digital age, a few colossal entities dominate, much like the leading nations of old Europe. Yet, as these tech giants solidify their positions, they risk becoming victims of the very conservatism Mokyr speaks of.
Instead of being conduits for continual innovation, their sheer dominance and entrenched positions could lead to a stagnation in technological creativity. As they grow in size and influence, there is an increasing tendency to preserve the status quo, which inadvertently suppresses the innovative spark found in smaller, more agile entities.

Decentralization and open innovation

In the contemporary milieu characterized by the overwhelming dominance of Big Tech monopolies, the paradigms of decentralized innovation and open innovation emerge as potentially transformative alternatives.
The concept of distributed strategy borrows from nature, suggesting that in the same manner that organisms such as trees maximize their efficiency by creating multiple self-similar structures like leaves instead of solely relying on a single core trunk, businesses too need to shift their focus from purely scaling their core processes to nurturing multiple iterative strategies at the organizational peripheries. This can be encapsulated in the mantra of ‘Think Local, Act Global’.
In essence, companies must attune to the nuanced demands and opportunities of each local market, while simultaneously integrating these learnings into a broader global strategy. This is particularly evident in industries undergoing rapid transformation; for instance, the automotive industry's evolution from merely selling cars to offering comprehensive mobility solutions, a shift that is predicted to significantly alter its revenue structure by 2035.
In parallel, in our data-driven age, there is an increasing realization that the sheer volume of data is less crucial than its meaningful interpretation. Organizations need to pivot from prioritizing data accumulation to developing advanced algorithms capable of drawing insights from fragmented, patchy datasets. In the rapidly shifting landscape of today's global business environment, numerous established multinational corporations find themselves at a perplexing crossroads.
The crux of their predicament stems from a foundational dilemma: how to juxtapose traditional scale-driven strategies with the emergent imperative of Distributed strategies. To dissect this conundrum, one must appreciate the inherently divergent organizational philosophies underpinning scale and distributed strategies. Transitioning from a scale-centric model to a distributed-oriented one is not merely about implementing a series of organizational modifications, no matter how profound.
The shift demands a comprehensive reimagining of the organizational ethos and operational mechanics. Moreover, it is a fallacy to view these strategies as mutually exclusive. In actuality, they exist on a continuum, each holding its unique value. The challenge for modern enterprises lies in striking an optimal balance between harnessing the benefits of scale and the agility of Distributed strategies. Regrettably, the journey to this equilibrium is riddled with pitfalls, and many companies, even with their vast resources and global reach, have faltered in this endeavor.
Contrary to scale-centric entities that depend on static assets, with streamlined yet inherently slower supply chains, Distributed organizations harness networks characterized by adaptability and continuous transformation. These networks are primed for swiftly addressing specific local requirements and seizing niche market prospects.
Such frameworks incorporate a blend of proprietary micro-production facilities, possibly utilizing innovations like 3D printing; leasing assets from providers offering asset-on-demand services; and coordinating flexible ecosystems of regional digital collaborators. The overarching aim is twofold: continuously devise innovative solutions tailored for local clientele and escalate them to various markets with optimal speed.
Distributed-oriented organizations prioritize decentralization, contrasting with the top-down hierarchies commonly seen in scale-driven entities. Within these structures, decision-making isn't confined to a centralized corporate core. Instead, considerable authority is delegated to customer-centric teams positioned away from the primary headquarters. This design fosters agility, allowing for a rapid response to localized demands and new opportunities.
Some multinational corporations have observed marked improvements in their performance metrics after such decentralization. They empowered regional leaders with financial oversight, decision-making rights, streamlined communication channels to the central office, and enhanced access to market analytics.
Another trend, seen in the case of an appliance industry giant, involves an even more radical shift. This entity introduced a unique organizational framework aimed at minimizing the distance between the enterprise and its customer base. In a bold move, an entire level of middle management was eliminated, redistributing power to numerous newly-formed, semi-independent, customer-aligned business segments. These units operate in synergy, linked by a unified digital platform.
Further reading: Knowledge and venture capital as a driver of innovation.
Meanwhile, ‘Open Innovation’ offers a complementary model, championing a departure from insular corporate research and development approaches. Instead, it advocates for the amalgamation of external insights, be they from academia, startups, or independent innovators, into the innovation process. This synergistic approach addresses the often-criticized inertia inherent in large tech monopolies, promoting a more dynamic and collaborative innovation ecosystem.
Both these paradigms, however, necessitate a significant cultural shift within organizations, demanding a more flexible, adaptive, and outward-looking ethos to truly harness their potential in countering the inertia often associated with tech giants.
The rise of open innovation, propelled by reduced communication costs and advancements in memory and computation capabilities, has ushered in significant changes in market dynamics and societal interactions. Unlike the traditionally centralized, firm-driven innovation models, open innovation champions a decentralized, peer-based approach that emphasizes intrinsic motivation and societal benefits.
Indeed, the literature has delved into the nature of these peer innovation communities, understanding their social structures and intricacies.
However, the repercussions of this shift towards open innovation on established and emerging firms remain inadequately explored. Current organizational and strategic theories don't fully encapsulate the nuances of community-driven innovation. Despite the transformative potential of open innovation, its influence on mainstream organizational and strategic discourses has been somewhat muted.
As we progress, it becomes imperative to develop a more comprehensive understanding of firms in this new context, addressing the interaction between traditional organizational structures and emerging community-based innovation paradigms.

Conclusion

In an evolving landscape where tasks are increasingly modular and knowledge about solutions becomes more widespread, the traditional closed systems of innovation shift towards open, community-driven models. The implications are profound: we can no longer rely solely on conventional understandings of innovation rooted in cost efficiency, control mechanisms, and external incentives.
As innovation gets embedded in a spectrum ranging from strictly internal processes to open community collaborations, our conceptualization of firms and their boundaries need revisiting. This doesn’t negate the value of traditional models, but it requires a hybrid approach where both internal and open strategies coexist.
A pivotal question arises: under what circumstances should firms toggle between these different modes of innovation? The answer, it appears, lies in understanding the nature of the product and the distribution of problem-solving knowledge.
For products that are inherently integrated and where specialized knowledge is centralized, the conventional in-house R&D model, bolstered by a strong innovation-centric culture, remains relevant. Here, innovation is typically cocooned within the firm's boundaries, spanning from distinct functional divisions to intricate, ambidextrous designs.
However, when a product can be broken down into modular components and the requisite knowledge is dispersed, the limitations of a closed innovation system become evident. In these contexts, the power dynamics of innovation are reshaped by the principles of openness, collaborative sharing, intrinsic motivation, and community engagement.
The challenge, then, for modern enterprises is to discern when to internalize and when to externalize, ensuring that they harness the best of both worlds while navigating the complex terrain of innovation.In today’s evolving and competitive landscape, the value of innovation is shifting from the traditional closed systems approach to a more open, decentralized, and community-driven approach. Paul Lalovich and Tesha Teshanovich from Agile Dynamics outline what is driving the trend, its implications for organizations, and how leaders can successfully operate at the forefront of the shift. Innovation transcends the mere conceptualization of fresh ideas; it is the actionable process of enhancing existing products or conjuring entirely new offerings. While there is a strong correlation between R&D and innovation – with the former serving as a wellspring for pioneering thoughts – the journey from groundbreaking research to practical utility can be intricate and protracted. However, it’s worth noting that innovation isn't solely tethered to structured R&D. It can spontaneously arise from sheer curiosity, a spark of inspiration, or even the simple act of refining or tweaking existing methodologies.
Firms might invest in R&D to catalyze innovation, but they can also harness external advancements – referred to as ‘spillovers’. After all, groundbreaking knowledge isn't always the exclusive domain of its creators, making external inspirations invaluable. Emerging from a robust foundation of innovation, soft power presents tangible advantages. Leaders in technology often establish benchmarks that others deem beneficial to adopt. As a result, global standards lean favorably toward those pioneers. Moreover, countries recognized for their innovative acumen become prime territories for patent filings. These innovation hubs magnetize not just domestic but international investments and capital. Perhaps the most profound testament to their soft power is the allure they hold for top-tier talents. For instance, Silicon Valley has evolved into a global nexus, drawing in exceptional minds from the realms of information, communication, and digital technologies. Such concentrations of talent can significantly influence a nation’s trade dynamics. Tech monopolies slow down innovation In the arena of global economic dominance, competition emerges as the cornerstone, propelling nations to the forefront of innovation and growth. While Chinese strategies appear to have adapted, embracing the dynamism of competitive markets, the United States stands at a crossroads. Some of its tech behemoths promote their size and market leadership as pivotal for cutting-edge innovation. Yet, it is crucial to discern the nature of this innovation and whose interests it truly serves. Does it prioritize shareholder returns, or is there a broader, national interest at play? As smaller, agile firms emerge, emphasizing true boundary-pushing innovation, one must ponder: Is the spirit of unbridled competition – a force that once fueled the American economy – being overshadowed by the looming giants? In the nuanced interplay between governmental oversight and market forces, recent actions within China's technology sector provide a captivating study of regulatory boundaries. This phenomenon, aptly termed ‘de-tycoonification’, captures a deliberate effort to harmonize enterprise innovation with centralized checks. A leading digital commerce platform in China encountered regulatory attention. The swift determination that its practices were anti-competitive, accompanied by a significant financial penalty, symbolizes a broader intent to redefine market paradigms. Prompt official communique following these events conveys a clear perspective: monopolistic behaviours can inhibit the holistic evolution of a market-based economy. This stance also emphasizes that thoughtful regulations, rather than restricting growth, might actually serve as pillars to stabilize and nurture it. The regulatory web further ensnared another major digital entity in China, underscoring the principle that technological ingenuity should operate within established ethical and legal frameworks. Such internal checks within China challenge certain dominant narratives in global tech centres. The notion that maintaining a robust market stature acts as a shield against global tech adversaries comes under scrutiny. The introspective regulatory steps within China necessitate a broader re-evaluation of such assumptions. The tech landscape today is unmistakably marked by the towering presence of Big Tech, but what underlies this dominance might point towards a concerning reduction in competitive intensity. For two decades, the profits raked in by American tech behemoths have remained unparalleled, with market valuations suggesting this trend is expected to continue, if not amplify, in the coming years. Such sustained, sky-high profitability isn't typical in a genuinely competitive market. In such a setting, rivals and newcomers usually exert downward pressures, ensuring no single entity retains an overwhelming edge for extended periods. The tech industry's trajectory further points towards a rising penchant for consolidation. This is evidenced by the substantial acquisitions of budding companies by the tech titans. Data sourced from Mergermarket underscores an uptick in acquisition activity by these colossal tech firms, particularly post-2010. The symbiotic relationship between persistent high profits and a trend toward industry concentration suggests that the tech market might be veering away from the vibrant competitive arena it once was. Cardwell’s law The tech landscape’s evolution, in its relationship with innovation, is witnessing a palpable shift in entrepreneurial motivation and vision. Historically, the fervour of pioneering something transformative, encapsulated in the ‘moonshot thinking’, drove entrepreneurs. This audacious spirit envisioned groundbreaking entities akin to the tech luminaries of the late 20th and early 21st century. Yet, today’s entrepreneurial aspirations seem more tempered. Instead of fostering ambitions of building the next revolutionary tech empire, there’s a growing inclination towards securing an acquisition by an existing tech colossus. This shift in sentiment dims the likelihood of a new tech juggernaut rising to challenge the incumbent titans. Post the era of computer-centric, web-driven, and smartphone-related innovations, a cloud of uncertainty looms over the emergence of new tech powerhouses. Notably, the promising technological domains of the upcoming decade – be it autonomous vehicles with their exorbitant R&D costs, virtual or augmented reality's significant development expenditures, the data intensity of artificial intelligence, or drones and the Internet of Things with their challenging profit margins – present formidable entry barriers. These hurdles, combined with a changing entrepreneurial landscape, cast a shadow on the future dynamism of tech innovation. Cardwell's elucidation on the patterns of technological evolution offers a poignant lens through which to view the current landscape dominated by Big Tech. Donald Stephen Lowell Cardwell’s seminal work from 1972 suggests that technological vigor within societies is not an enduring flame, but a fleeting burst of brilliance. Within the European context, as one nation's innovative energy began to wane, another would rise, ensuring a consistent relay of progress across the continent. Visualize this relay of innovation as a torch, brilliant yet intense. Historically, regions such as Northern Italy, Southern Germany, Spain, and Portugal, and later Holland, Britain, the United States, and Germany, took turns in holding this torch, leading the march of innovation. Yet, no single society clung to this leadership for extended durations. The relay ensured that as one nation's innovation diminished, another took up the mantle, propelling the collective forward. This phenomenon, coined as ‘Cardwell’s Law’ by Joel Mokyr, posits that when left in isolation, a society’s technological creativity is but a brief spark. Over time, conservatism’s stifling grip, intent on preserving existing structures of power and privilege, often curtails this innovative drive. This is where the analogy becomes particularly relevant for the Big Tech landscape. In today’s digital age, a few colossal entities dominate, much like the leading nations of old Europe. Yet, as these tech giants solidify their positions, they risk becoming victims of the very conservatism Mokyr speaks of. Instead of being conduits for continual innovation, their sheer dominance and entrenched positions could lead to a stagnation in technological creativity. As they grow in size and influence, there is an increasing tendency to preserve the status quo, which inadvertently suppresses the innovative spark found in smaller, more agile entities. Decentralization and open innovation In the contemporary milieu characterized by the overwhelming dominance of Big Tech monopolies, the paradigms of decentralized innovation and open innovation emerge as potentially transformative alternatives. The concept of distributed strategy borrows from nature, suggesting that in the same manner that organisms such as trees maximize their efficiency by creating multiple self-similar structures like leaves instead of solely relying on a single core trunk, businesses too need to shift their focus from purely scaling their core processes to nurturing multiple iterative strategies at the organizational peripheries. This can be encapsulated in the mantra of ‘Think Local, Act Global’. In essence, companies must attune to the nuanced demands and opportunities of each local market, while simultaneously integrating these learnings into a broader global strategy. This is particularly evident in industries undergoing rapid transformation; for instance, the automotive industry's evolution from merely selling cars to offering comprehensive mobility solutions, a shift that is predicted to significantly alter its revenue structure by 2035. In parallel, in our data-driven age, there is an increasing realization that the sheer volume of data is less crucial than its meaningful interpretation. Organizations need to pivot from prioritizing data accumulation to developing advanced algorithms capable of drawing insights from fragmented, patchy datasets. In the rapidly shifting landscape of today's global business environment, numerous established multinational corporations find themselves at a perplexing crossroads. The crux of their predicament stems from a foundational dilemma: how to juxtapose traditional scale-driven strategies with the emergent imperative of Distributed strategies. To dissect this conundrum, one must appreciate the inherently divergent organizational philosophies underpinning scale and distributed strategies. Transitioning from a scale-centric model to a distributed-oriented one is not merely about implementing a series of organizational modifications, no matter how profound. The shift demands a comprehensive reimagining of the organizational ethos and operational mechanics. Moreover, it is a fallacy to view these strategies as mutually exclusive. In actuality, they exist on a continuum, each holding its unique value. The challenge for modern enterprises lies in striking an optimal balance between harnessing the benefits of scale and the agility of Distributed strategies. Regrettably, the journey to this equilibrium is riddled with pitfalls, and many companies, even with their vast resources and global reach, have faltered in this endeavor. Contrary to scale-centric entities that depend on static assets, with streamlined yet inherently slower supply chains, Distributed organizations harness networks characterized by adaptability and continuous transformation. These networks are primed for swiftly addressing specific local requirements and seizing niche market prospects. Such frameworks incorporate a blend of proprietary micro-production facilities, possibly utilizing innovations like 3D printing; leasing assets from providers offering asset-on-demand services; and coordinating flexible ecosystems of regional digital collaborators. The overarching aim is twofold: continuously devise innovative solutions tailored for local clientele and escalate them to various markets with optimal speed. Distributed-oriented organizations prioritize decentralization, contrasting with the top-down hierarchies commonly seen in scale-driven entities. Within these structures, decision-making isn't confined to a centralized corporate core. Instead, considerable authority is delegated to customer-centric teams positioned away from the primary headquarters. This design fosters agility, allowing for a rapid response to localized demands and new opportunities. Some multinational corporations have observed marked improvements in their performance metrics after such decentralization. They empowered regional leaders with financial oversight, decision-making rights, streamlined communication channels to the central office, and enhanced access to market analytics. Another trend, seen in the case of an appliance industry giant, involves an even more radical shift. This entity introduced a unique organizational framework aimed at minimizing the distance between the enterprise and its customer base. In a bold move, an entire level of middle management was eliminated, redistributing power to numerous newly-formed, semi-independent, customer-aligned business segments. These units operate in synergy, linked by a unified digital platform. Further reading: Knowledge and venture capital as a driver of innovation. Meanwhile, ‘Open Innovation’ offers a complementary model, championing a departure from insular corporate research and development approaches. Instead, it advocates for the amalgamation of external insights, be they from academia, startups, or independent innovators, into the innovation process. This synergistic approach addresses the often-criticized inertia inherent in large tech monopolies, promoting a more dynamic and collaborative innovation ecosystem. Both these paradigms, however, necessitate a significant cultural shift within organizations, demanding a more flexible, adaptive, and outward-looking ethos to truly harness their potential in countering the inertia often associated with tech giants. The rise of open innovation, propelled by reduced communication costs and advancements in memory and computation capabilities, has ushered in significant changes in market dynamics and societal interactions. Unlike the traditionally centralized, firm-driven innovation models, open innovation champions a decentralized, peer-based approach that emphasizes intrinsic motivation and societal benefits. Indeed, the literature has delved into the nature of these peer innovation communities, understanding their social structures and intricacies. However, the repercussions of this shift towards open innovation on established and emerging firms remain inadequately explored. Current organizational and strategic theories don't fully encapsulate the nuances of community-driven innovation. Despite the transformative potential of open innovation, its influence on mainstream organizational and strategic discourses has been somewhat muted. As we progress, it becomes imperative to develop a more comprehensive understanding of firms in this new context, addressing the interaction between traditional organizational structures and emerging community-based innovation paradigms. Conclusion In an evolving landscape where tasks are increasingly modular and knowledge about solutions becomes more widespread, the traditional closed systems of innovation shift towards open, community-driven models. The implications are profound: we can no longer rely solely on conventional understandings of innovation rooted in cost efficiency, control mechanisms, and external incentives. As innovation gets embedded in a spectrum ranging from strictly internal processes to open community collaborations, our conceptualization of firms and their boundaries need revisiting. This doesn’t negate the value of traditional models, but it requires a hybrid approach where both internal and open strategies coexist. A pivotal question arises: under what circumstances should firms toggle between these different modes of innovation? The answer, it appears, lies in understanding the nature of the product and the distribution of problem-solving knowledge. For products that are inherently integrated and where specialized knowledge is centralized, the conventional in-house R&D model, bolstered by a strong innovation-centric culture, remains relevant. Here, innovation is typically cocooned within the firm's boundaries, spanning from distinct functional divisions to intricate, ambidextrous designs. However, when a product can be broken down into modular components and the requisite knowledge is dispersed, the limitations of a closed innovation system become evident. In these contexts, the power dynamics of innovation are reshaped by the principles of openness, collaborative sharing, intrinsic motivation, and community engagement. The challenge, then, for modern enterprises is to discern when to internalize and when to externalize, ensuring that they harness the best of both worlds while navigating the complex terrain of innovation.

Hey Reddit, We're in a dire situation with our 7-year-old daughter, Carissa, and we desperately need advice and support. Over the past week, our family has been barely hanging on through her meltdowns, getting only 1 to 5 hours of sleep a night, and making 2 ER visits. Carissa has always had high anxiety and, over the past couple of years, has developed a severe sensitivity to clothing. These issues seem to amplify each other now, and she's spiraled to the point where she barely eats, drinks, goes to the bathroom, or sleeps, leading to frequent meltdowns multiple times a day.
Background:
After a growth spurt, she is very tall for her age, ~97 percentile, Carissa grew out of her already limited set of clothes she was comfortable in, including her last pair of underwear. This triggered a lot of anxiety because without underwear, all bottoms felt too awkward for her to wear. Not being able to wear clothes then increased her anxiety since she couldn’t go out or have people over. We also pressured her to wear clothes, which only caused more anxiety. The increased anxiety then led to heightened levels of sensitivity which increases anxiety and so on in a negative feedback loop. She's now at the point where she can’t wear clothes, wash her hands, brush her teeth, take medications, go to the bathroom, and rarely even eats or drinks. She won’t comply with anyone’s requests, even doctors. She often stands in the bathroom for hours as the tile feels the least triggering to her sensitivities. Touching water is off-limits because it feels “too soft” and makes her itchy when it dries, triggering anxiety attacks if she accidentally gets wet. This all happened within a month where we haven't had anything close to this serious ever happen before.
What We’ve Tried:
We’ve taken her to the ER twice, where they did blood, urine, neuro, and psych checks. She does better in the ER, not melting down as much in front of others compared to us, especially me (Dad) and her Mom. We have Grandma and Auntie here, which helps, but we're all running on extremely low sleep, and the situation is not sustainable. We've consulted with three psychiatrists and three therapists who don't know what's going on. She’s on Guanfacine (0.5mg, 70lbs) twice a day for calm and sleep, and we're trying to start Lexapro for her anxiety.
Our Plea:
We’re desperate for any advice, experiences, or support you can offer. We feel like we’re at the end of our rope and don’t know what to do next. Any suggestions or words of encouragement would mean the world to us right now. Thank you.

The 3 basic parameters of hashtag #Valzubiriagenda:

1. We artists and everyone else can write and self-publish art- and artist-related books: memoirs, biographies, art books and art catalogs. Books are forever. Pamphlets and brochures are not books.
2. We announce a schedule of increasing prices of our art pieces, which includes quantities (scarcity numbers) per price point and overall (the total quantity of art pieces we might ever make). This helps art traders, art investors and art collectors speculate or even stop speculating and instead join a community of investors working together to hopefully skyrocket to the higher announced prices in a shorter span of time.
3. We can use the NFT world, because NFTs provide the tracking (who owns what) and trading.

We can also not be involved with NFTs. Stores and individuals can help sell art using online presence and our catalogs in the stores. If this trends, or once this trends, even expensive art can be sold by neighboring businesses, without exclusivity. Commission systems do not have to be standardized. Art investors can produce their own catalogs to leave at the cafés. Even the cafés can produce their own catalogs.
Valzubiriagenda NFTs
NFTs only came about a few years ago. But I had been working on this since the 1990s. I wrote a book, Valzubiriagenda, along with fellow artist Silverio Perez, and released it in 2018 (Amazon and elsewhere), tackling everything related to #1 & #2. We'll come up with #3 in a later book/ memoi marketing book.
Any artist, including tangible artists can release 10,000 NFTs if the artist chooses to do so. For tangible artists, the NFT first becomes an Art Commission Contract for sight unseen, yet-to-be made art. Once the art is made, the NFT becomes proof of ownership that the actual, tangible art is theirs.
Warehousing our tangible art
Another related idea is that the tangible art may be warehoused by the artist so that the NFT traders continue to trade. This means that even 10-ton 10-foot tall sculptures can be owned and traded by anyone without worrying about shipping, reshipping, scratches, smudges, parts breaking off, etc. The newness of the pieces remain because they are stored by the artist, source, gallery, etc. The art piece gets shipped to the art collector, the ultimate owner.
An artist who makes ceramic coffee mugs - smaller art pieces, can release 10,000 NFTs with a schedule of increasing prices so that NFT traders can trade immediately. The 10,000 coffee mugs can get damaged, so as they are made, they continue to be stored by the artist, until the time when art collectors decide to have the art pieces shipped to them.
Why only now?
I decided to write as many book-length memoirs as I can before I came out to promote this.
I'm an artist and an author. Both need time to "master." I would not even fully use "master" on myself, because there's always something new, even to my own art, my own writing and publishing.

I am now claiming that I'm the visual artist who has produced the most artist memoirs in the world. I have 5 on Amazon. I count Valzubiriagenda as both a marketing book and a memoir-of-sorts, because it has a lot of my own life lessons on writing and publishing. I would not care to contest my claim of having the most memoirs. I will release 5 more over the next 3 years.

BARTER! Get help to write, photograph art and publish your books!
Anyone can hire 11 ghostwriters for 11 memoirs. If you can make art, but you cannot write, then barter your forever art with those who can help you produce forever books.
I don't feel the pressure of writing and publishing because I feel my focus should be on art students and art experts who would study my art and my books 100 years from now. Don't expect relatives and friends to read your books.
I call myself the Dollman
For my NFTs, I am proposing to make dioramas - my original, costumed, bejeweled porcelain dolls in backdrops that will also have precious metals and gemstones. This way I can incorporate precious metals and gemstones in my work, to make sure that people perceive my art as expensive, just in case I myself don't become "famous" - there's no need to get world famous. We are artists and all we need to do is to satisfy the art niche.
Use your laptop now!
I will encourage you to start writing your book-length memoir. Write, Edit and then Self-publish it. Get help. Why wait a hundred years for someone to write about you when all you need is a laptop and a nearby coffee shop.
Don't start counting chickens before the eggs hatch. I have encountered a lot of would-be writers who immediately see themselves as bestselling. world famous assets to society. Two even wanted me to sign NDAs (Nondisclosure agreements), because they did not want me to steal their book ideas.
Here's a suggestion. I would not personally do it. From one manuscript can come 2 books: The Original Draft (unedited, with misspellings, considered to be an art piece, scanned pages(?) of your handwritten original effort), and The Final Edition (edited).
PROVENANCE!
Another way to enhance our investability, tradability and collectability is PROVENANCE - how art ownership proceeds through time. The way this can be done is also through publishing books. Everyone can write their memoirs, biographies, art books and art catalogs, including traders, investors and art collectors. In effect, we artists can continue to be included or mentioned in even more books, without any additional effort by us.
You as an investor, reseller, trader, art collector should be able to publish a catalog with 250 works by 250 different artists, but they need to agree to this right from the start - it's your money, you should require them to follow your version of the hashtag #valzubiriagenda parameters, which preferably should include permission for you to publish their art. Why would you track down 250 artists later?
No exclusive contracts
If you're a café, you can call for artists, and come up with a book with for example, 30 artists, with a chapter devoted to each artist's profile and images of the artist's art.
You can distribute your catalogs to businesses and individuals near and far and online.
The book Valzubiriagenda even cites that funeral homes and janitors closets can sell art, with or without exclusivity. Airline catalogs can include million dollar art pieces. Car manufacturers, showrooms and even car repair shops can sell art as well. Everyone should be able to do this, anywhere in the world, especially not just because of the pandemic, but right now, we are in really bad economies.
What's with the name #Valzubiriagenda
I was into conspiracy theories in 2018, and this term, "The Mandela Effect," was popular. I had read many times that an artist coined the term, but I had to research online, for her name, many times, before remembering it. I'm not good at remembering names. It took me a year and a half to finally tell you that Fiona Broome coined "The Mandela Effect."
I also thought I might have to research trademarks and copyrights just to come up with a generic name. So I decided on "Valzubiriagenda." I was not really sure at first, but I decided to use it as the title for my book (with co-authoartist Silverio Perez) so that there would be no turning back and I can move on.
Am I a FUTURIST?
Someone I recently met this May 2022 just called me a futurist.
In the 1990s, I proposed to a pension fund that they can raise billions of dollars, especially for emergencies, or as needed, or out of desperation, if the pension fund purchases a quantity of art from an artist who not only has a current, reasonable price, but an announced future price that the artist wants to reach.
That future price would obviously be higher than the current price. The art commission contract for multiple art pieces can be taken to the fund's financial lender for a loan. The higher future price can be used for financing purposes.
The pension fund's treasurer, a publicly elected official, said this idea might work, but we had to keep this a secret and discuss this some more, because other pension funds might copy and do this prematurely. This idea had to come from the two of us. The treasurer needed his votes and I needed credentials.
Added into the pot was my idea that I, as the artist, will also write one book-length artist memoir. This was and still is a strong factor, because the leadership and marketing books I had read then mentioned a strong tip. If you want to advance in your field, write a full-length book that is related to the field.
Unfortunately, the elected official, the treasurer of the pension fund, who was also a friend, passed away - he was old and had ailments. At that point in time, I cannot just approach another pension fund treasurer to share this idea with.
I realized I had to write a few memoirs. I needed to set an example for other artists, so I needed to write more than one memoir. Then I felt I should also make ready another book - the how-to of what I'm up to. I wrote Valzubiriagenda, which was a memoir of sorts. I knew how long it would take me to write a book, so I had to make sure I can also consider this book a memoir.
In 2008, I imagined that someone like Bernie Madoff, or a fund like Lehman Brothers, would be desperate enough to use this to save themselves and their companies. I was not ready. I had only written 1 manuscript for a memoir.
In 2012, I released Dollman the Musical, A Memoir of an Artist as a Dollmaker. Once again, I was not ready because writing it depressed me a little, and I knew I had to write more.
In 2014, I released 3 memoirs, and re-released Dollman the Musical. Besides releasing regular books, I released special editions of the 4 books, which had a "Special Secret Insert for Bankers," which explains my ideas of an announced schedule of exponentially increasing prices, to satisfy investors, and the publication of artist memoirs, to satisfy art collectors.
In 2014, I also issued out a press release. Google "Can Billion Dollar Artist Save Investors and World Economy Valentino Zubiri PRWeb August 19 2014" and you will see the press release.
What I did was stake a claim on my ideas. I did not promote my books and the press release. I just wanted them to stay online, like a sleeping giant or a dormant volcano. I even designed 3 of the book covers to look like indie books from the 1980s. I was planting the seeds, thinking they will eventually grow and bear fruit in the future.
In 2015, I was interviewed by Richard Syrett, about one of my memoirs, Hocus Pocus Lately. This book is my memoir with paranormal stories. I could have pursued promoting my paranormal stories, but I wanted to be known first as a visual artist and memoirist, so I allowed myself one interview related to Hocus Pocus Lately. Richard Syrett has(had?) his own syndicated radio show, The Conspiracy Show with Richard Syrett, about the paranormal. He also guest hosts on Coast to Coast AM, another internationally syndicated show about the paranormal.
In 2018, I released Valzubiriagenda (co-authored by artist Silverio Perez, a fellow artist). Finally, this book is "the how-to of what I'm to."
I'm going to end this with some strangeness. In 1986, a lady at a religious gathering went into a trance and left a good number of messages. Supposedly, anyone who got into a trance would have messages, but once the trance was over, the person would not remember what was said.
I was not part of the group, but the lady turned her head to face me. She "foretold" that whatever I would decide to do in the future, it will take time, but it will be the right thing. This is one of my stories in one of my memoirs, Hocus Pocus Lately.
The Tulipmania of 1634-37
I discovered that there was this incident of rare tulips becoming collectible during the Dutch Golden Age. There were tulips so rare and so well-desired that their prices equaled to that of a house. You can read more about this online (Wikipedia) or watch a few YouTube videos about it.
Here is the most useful idea that I gleaned from the Tulipmania. The tulip bulbs remained safe inside nurseries. The traders were carrying the deeds of ownership to the tulip bulbs.
Then NFTs came to the forefront
I started learning PHP, an HTML scripting language, and MySQL, the database that PHP can connect to in the background, in 1999, when there were only 3 books about PHP and MySQL at the bookstores.
By 2014, I was trying to figure out how to make the "ledger," or database that can be used to update ownership and who can be contacted. If we are trading art, then the art ownership should be updated.
Then NFTs came about. This can be used as our ledger. Everyone can immediately trade NFTs of future, yet-to-be made art pieces, especially because it takes time to make tangible art.
NFTs actually went a step ahead, by allowing digital art to be traded.
The only setback with NFTs, in my opinion, is that it still lacks a commission system for resellers and representatives.
For example, if a café wants to represent me, then they can promote me at their café and on their online pages. If I make one piece of art that will be exclusively represented by a gallery, then that commission will be different and more specific. As ownership is transferred, the subsequent owners should be able to reset the commission. We should also have the option of giving commissions to hundreds of representatives at one time with different percentages if need be.
The recent crypto crash
Lately, we have observed that NFTs and cryptocurrencies have been behaving like the stock market and other markets. They have been fluctuating.
I believe that it is time for a trend which discourages fluctuation of prices.
I have also seen YouTube videos where social influencers are encouraging us to be on the lookout for exponentially profitable ventures, because we have all seen this happen with the exponential increase of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Let's see if #Valzubiriagenda trends
We can announce present and future art prices. The galleries won't do this (yet?) because they follow a more traditional approach to the business of art.
We have a choice of using incrementally or exponentially increasing prices. We still reserve the right to change things in the future, so everyone should know to follow the latest update.
If this trends, if you as an artist simply announces that you will write an artist memoir, or that you will include the future works in future art books, you might have more art traders, investors and collectors approaching you.
Get your pen, paper and calculator
Imagine yourself as an artist, where you are right now. Let's just say you still do not have a book about yourself and your art yet. Imagine now that you have a memoir out there. Don't you think it makes sense to charge more than what you are charging now? Writing and publishing books is just the beginning. I'm just standardizing this approach. The books also say to do other related projects. In my case, getting Dollman the Musical onstage is one idea. You will have other related projects, but the publication of memoirs, biographies, art books and art catalogs will help all of us.
You can also imagine that a law firm that has meeting rooms, with someone who wants to form a local #valzubiriagenda group, can have meetings. A local café can do the same. Local photographers for your art, writers, editors, book designers, proofreaders and others can join in.
I suggest have printed books to share. 15 copies of your memoir or art books will be better than an e-reader or laptop or your phone to show. These gadgets can be stolen, sabotaged, broken, have coffee spilled on them, etc. 15 printed books means simultaneously showing to 15 people. You can even give them away to potential resellers, investors, traders and collectors.
When it rains, it pours, as in the days of Noah
There's a saying, "When it rains, it pours." There is a negative interpretation and a positive interpretation.
Negative: When trouble comes, they cascade to even more.
Positive: When opportunity comes knocking, more follow suit. We can assume that if one gets our art because of #valzubiriagenda, more want to do it now, because of the rising prices, and FOMO - fear of missing out. What will they lose if they miss the boat?
As I have said earlier, if the #valzubiriagenda trends, if you announce a future memoir or art catalog, you might have an increase of investors, traders and art collectors who would want to check you out. You might encourage more sales. Just remember to write and publish that memoir and art catalog.
There's this saying, "As in the days of Noah." Imagine Noah, building his ark, with members of his own family, putting all his time and effort into it. Noah was a nice guy. I'm sure every once in a while a neighbor offered him coffee, or chai latte, or whatever refreshing drink they might have back then.
Here's the lesson to be learned. Just because they offered him some type of bubble tea drink, or coca cola, they still didn't make it to the ark. Rubbing shoulders with actors does not make you an actor. I have told my artist friends to write their memoirs. They told me that once they see me succeed, after all these many years of seeing my seemingly useless efforts, then they will write their memoirs and follow the road that I had paved for them.
Good luck to them, but if I were you, act now, get my art or make art. Support the 5-year old artist whose parent promised to release a comprehensive art catalog. If you get that 5-year old's art, and mine, I would be honored to be in the same art catalog that you will produce. I'm already successful at that point. You have gotten the mission just right.
I have already claimed to have written the most book-length artist memoirs in the world. Dethrone that claim. Barter. Use ghostwriters. Success to me means facing God one day and saying, I wrote my memoirs and left the world a legacy of books and art. I will not tell God, smiling and proudly, that I encouraged a run for my art by announcing a schedule of exponentially increasing prices that reached 9 figures. I'm sure God knows we had fun.

JOIN THIS GROUP

If you want to try out #valzubiriagenda, in any capacity, join this group. Let others know about this group as well.
If you are an artist, you can let everyone know here that you will produce your memoir, art catalogs, etc. It's okay if you don't know how to go about publishing yet, I will discuss this. Please be honorable enough to produce what you promise to produce.
If you want to meet fellow artists, investors, resellers, etc., join us here.
If you are a book writer, editor, proofreader; if you can photograph art pieces; if you are a book designer, etc., join us here. Let us know if you charge, barter for art, or both.
If you have your own tips and knowledge to share, join us here.
If you have underaged artists you are managing (parents, etc.) join us here.
Join this group if you want to sell works. Post your works. You web links. I'm sure I will.
You can announce meetings in your area. You might have meeting rooms, a café, restaurant, etc. where people can meet. In the future, you can have the regular show and tell, where books can be shown and shared.
​
Thanks for reading. Please let me know if I need to edit some parts. Please share and join this group. - Valentino Zubiri, Dollman, Artist, Memoirist
Underaged artists are welcome here, so please be mindful of your language. We cannot post your adult-oriented art pieces, but you can direct us to a separate page or community. There will be limits to your posts, and there will be adult-oriented art that we cannot allow to be posted.
Thanks for reading. Please let me know if I need to edit some parts. Please share and join this group. - Valentino Zubiri, Dollman, artist & memoirist

Put simply what is the likelihood of a Pokeball / great ball / ultra ball / rogue ball / master ball appearing after a round.
And within that, what are the chances of each item within each class.
And does shiny luck affect the base odds listed above or does it simply increase the chance of an item levelling up?

[ [FIRST] [NEXT>]

Season 10 “Days of Fury” - Episode 2 “Visiting Omen”

He had hoped for a boring day. Boring days are good at work, and Santos was already expecting to not have many of them for a while.
The first couple of days were boring, as usual- Blackriver is a small town, and the worst that had happened was Nila and Kessa making a few wellness checks after worried calls from neighbors. A couple of people in denial, a few ashamed at their own violent outbursts and a stern warning to Tamm about painting others’ properties without asking first.
This morning, however, began with an all-hands meeting. There were no meeting rooms in the office, so they made do in the general workspace room, they all stood there at the center while Keya looked them over.
“We have received a report from a neighboring city about a convoy of protestors making its way to Blackriver” she describes without tone. At this point nobody bothers interrupting.
“This convoy is comprised of approximately four hundred and seventy eight individuals of multiple species, primarily human and venlil but with operationally relevant representations of the entire spectrum of size and mobility types” her paws are behind her back, her ears focused directly ahead, her eyes centered to keep the entire team on the core of her focus “They have crossed multiple cities already, generally engaging in verbal sparring with any figure of authority, parading signs and banners denouncing all manners of authorities as well as occasionally engaging in physical altercations with officers.”
“They are also known to engage in vandalism. Though primarily aimed at exterminator and police precincts as well as public offices, they have already caused considerable collateral to others they have identified as ‘collaborators’” there’s a single heartbeat of waiting for breath before she continues “They have, however, not shown to be an incredibly organized group or one with a clear goal and objective. The convoy appears to contain only extremely emotionally charged people with no clear overarching goal.”
“We are incapable of dealing with the situation should they turn aggressive, as such we will be simply maintaining watch and relocating the populace should they become a problem.” Then, she picks up her holopad and passes it to Lunek beside her “They can only follow one path with the entire convoy, the central street, therefore I have divided it into four sectors. One of each will be assigned to a sector.”
First her ears turn to the first target “Lunek, sector one at the entrance. As the most approachable member of the precinct your task is to give an initial image of harmlessness. Do not engage first, do not take initiative against them. Ensure the members of the herd in the area are warned of their approach. If they become aggressive, retreat and focus on the escape of the herd.”
She tilts her head a little bit, turning her ears the other way “Marik, sector two. Mostly the commercial area, your task is ostensive protection to lower the chances of them initiating aggression. Whereas protection of the herd is first priority your second priority is ensuring Tenve’s Hardware Store as well as Sunbreeze Meals and Watchful Café remain capable of providing anyone whose residences become damaged.” suddenly, she turns her head entirely to face Marik “Ostensive protection means dissuasion, ensure that they know they are not under threat and as long as those specific areas are not engaged, do not provoke”
Next in her line of fire is Santos “As our human officer you will be in sector three, nearby the precinct. They are liable to become most agitated in this area and your presence may serve to calm them. You are not to engage, if deemed necessary the precinct’s materials are considered expendable, do not attempt to stop them”
“Sector four, the exit of town, will be with me to ensure that they have fully left Blackriver and will not attempt to turn back” then she tilts her ears again “Aren, you will gear up with a CCG and remain out of view range, your task will be quick emergency response should the need arise.” she then points her tail at the last three officers “Vess, your task will be to inform the herd and ensure a clear path for the convoy while Nila and Kessa will gather all of our medical supplies and set a staging area out of the convoy’s range. Organize ambulance assistance from Striped Hill and Everrain”
Then, she turns her ears around to focus each one in turn “As any attempt at aggression will end only in negative consequences, and in order to reduce the apparent levels of threat you will be unarmed. The estimated time of arrival is a third of a claw, ready yourselves and be at your post in time. Dismissed.”
“Not sure if I like or I don’t that we had the cold bastard right now” Aren says, as soon as Keya had left the room “Maybe we should move in closer when the convoy gets to sector four?”
“Probably a good idea to be nearby” Santos adds with a sigh “They might take umbrage with her demeanor, hopefully they won’t be set off too hard.”
And with silent signs of agreement all of the officers of Blackriver depart for preparations. The first ones to leave the precinct are the ones in charge of support, the two girls set off early to find someone willing to permit usage of their lawn as a possible impromptu field hospital and a little while later Aren leaves with a heavy CCG.
Slowly, the clock ticks to the appointed claw… And soon enough, Lunek can see in the distance the incoming omen of people. At first a distant line in the horizon, slowly the dark mark on the road coalesces into distinct shapes, the shapes of hundreds of vehicles slowly rolling down the road.
When the first few get close to the initial buildings of the main street, the entire convoy slows down. Their process of preparation is seemingly laborious, each vehicle houses multiple people at a time, smaller cars full to the brim, flatbeds with more people on their cargo space than can safely be contained, even buses conscripted for the effort. They carry with them signs, flags, a multitude of symbols as they dismount their vehicles and start spreading out to fill the street.
They seem to naturally form two distinct yet highly mixed groups, at its most distinctive is the pack of humans who keep a good distance from each other. But they are not alone in this group as takkan, mazic, yotul, zurulian and even drilvar form this central group. But flowing around them, not avoiding their presence but never infringing in their space is the grey mass of venlil, packed tight together, and mixed in there adding color to the monochromatic flux are krakotl, tilfish, sulean, iftali, sivkit and even a seemingly very confused duerten.
And at the very core of the moving group are their vehicles, which gently start rolling forward again as the group starts moving. Lunek simply waits, silently, by the side of the road, his ears attentively swiveling from one side to the other, expression having given way to function. Before the first of the convoy even arrives close he turns to the side, making a pointing sign with his tail. A woman who had been watching from her yard flicks her right ear and runs back inside.
He continues to wait, scanning around at all times for the presence of… Anything. The street is empty of locals when the first visitors start to alight. The convoy is loud, their symbols carry a loudness of colors and their vehicles make as much noise as they can to draw attention, but those who walk seem content in allowing their tools to speak for them, for now. Lunek tries to make sense of the banners and signs, but the messages are disparate as the group- Some speak of injustices against their people, some speak of anger at invaders, some speak of betrayal.
“Fuck off, fireman!” comes the harsh bark of a human, causing Lunek to flinch. But flinch is all he does, he simply starts walking alongside the moving convoy.
The exterminator’s attention is drawn to the details of the few people he can distinguish amongst the mass. Something tickles at his pattern-recognition but he cannot quite ascertain what for a while, until a lightly limping mazic makes her way to the edge of the mass “Want to finish the job?!” she trumpets, her form towering over his.
“I’m just observing, ma’am.” Though the tremor of his voice is noticeable, he remains stoic. But her proximity makes him notice something about her body, marks in her wrists, neck and feet. Though mazic have powerful wrists and knuckles upon which they support the front half of their weight, her left wrist seems completely incapable of it, giving her a limp particular to a three-point walk. “To make sure there’s no impediment on your path” he notices the leathery skin around her left wrist is deeply blackened.
“Oh, ‘no impediment’ is that it? So everyone that lives here is an impediment?!” her voice booms.
“Ma’am” still, he does not yield nor does he break his pace following the convoy “We have not done anything other than inform our people of your presence…” for a half second all he hears is the sound of his own heart “We can’t do anything else.”
Those words, then, sealed his fate. The first shout to echo in his direction was a yotul howling “Yeah you’re useless!” and soon the avalanche came in multiple voices and languages “Can’t do shit!” “You’re just here to hurt people!” “Useless crap!” “Idiot!” and many more.
With every step and twitch the very average exterminator puts all of his focus on just being there. He lets himself cower a little bit, against the barrage it is difficult not to, but he continues to accompany. A few curious coats step out from their houses to watch, but the front of the convoy seems far too focused on the sole exterminator in view to bother anyone else.
A few steps ahead, an older venlil with a cane has moved the closest to the convoy as any watcher has up to now. Seeing her proximity to the increasingly rowdy crowd causes Lunek to speed up, quickly approaching her “Leva-”
But his words are stalled when she puts a paw on his shoulder, she gently puts her head against his for just a second “You’re doing good pup, keep at it” she mutters to him before breaking contact and turning around to walk back inside. He can spy her grandchildren looking on through the door. Lunek looks back at the still-shouting moving convoy, takes a deep breath, and continues to accompany them forward. A small pawful of them, however, seem to have fallen silent.
Once having reached the limit of his assigned zone, however, Lunek stops. He watches the convoy move forward, past the houses, now noisier than before. The initial hollering at him had turned into disjointed screams at some indistinct foe- Though the herd had been noticed of a foe, it was yet unaware of who, or what, said foe was. So for now it howled at the ineptitude of… Someone. And as the last of the convoy passes beyond the imaginary line of his duty, Lunek lets out a deep sigh and allows himself to sit down on the ground.
He stays there for a moment, without thought, simply letting the tension, confusion and fear permeate his body until a gentle paw touches his arm. He doesn’t need to look to identify it, he lets his lover use her strength to prop him up, raising him to his feet “Keina you shouldn’t-”
“Neighbor’s looking over Tiss” his wife wraps her arms and tail around him “I’m not leaving you alone.” she stays like that for a second, before breaking off “Do you need to go after them?”
“No”
Marik stalks through the sidewalk, moving with energy. His speed outpaces the movement of the convoy, his paws twitch to grasp at something that isn’t there and a deep and intense motion makes his short fur stand on end. He had let the convoy’s head move in front of him, simply standing still as he assessed as many as he could in the mass, and now he had begun to move towards the front again.
As he stalked forward he focused his sight on every member of the convoy that seemed of interest. A human whose clothes seemed suspiciously loose, a venlil whose movements were far too stiff, a gojid who kept his claws behind his back. He stared at each like they were his quarry, analyzing every piece of movement they made for threats, and yet aside from the challenge in the human’s gaze he saw no danger arise.
Tenve had closed his shop, so as the convoy moved forward Marik simply continued to follow along, scanning the crowd for threats. But the next point of interest arrives, and he rushes ahead placing himself in front of the only restaurant of the town. Sunbreeze Meals wasn’t a very common sort of restaurant, Blackriver did not have enough visitors for a normal restaurant to be profitable and was small enough most people had their meals at home, it most often served takeout for those farmers who’d spend so long in the field they would return home without the energy to feed themselves.
Sparing a look inside at the only five tables, Marik couldn’t keep a small thought away from his mind. How most who got their meals from Sunbreeze these days did so because they enjoyed the cooking rather than their need of work, ever since the sunspeck population has been brought under control and the maintenance of the fields had become much smaller. He feels the presence long before he can recognize what led him to feel it and turns to stare at a group of six that approach the entrance: Two humans, a tilfish, two gojids and a takkan had broken off from the convoy and approached the restaurant.
He traces his color band over each in turn, and they all bristle at his stare. One of the humans hesitates before continuing to walk inside, and Marik simply remains by the door with his arms crossed, left ear twisted as far back as he could to listen to the inside.
“What have you got here?”
“W-we mostly ha-have ready ma-made meals to go or- or- Or you can look over the menu”
“There’s no need to stutter, y’know”
“So-sorry-”
“Really, after everything y’all are still with this predator crap?”
The chimes on the door echo for the second time in sequence as Marik makes his way inside. The tilfish had started to lean over the counter while the other five had arrayed themselves behind her. They all turn their attention to him as he enters, including the venlil manning the counter. Marik keeps his gaze directly on the tilfish for a few uncomfortable seconds, before looking at the man behind the counter and making a simple sign with his tail, a short vertical bob with the tip and a slow horizontal swipe. It’s meaning simple: >Safe<.
After a few seconds someone else appears from the kitchen. The tall venlil carries a large stack of plastic boxes in his arms, all of them seemingly designed to attach to themselves so as to be carried with ease. He puts them down with a resounding crash on the counter, and opens up his voice with ice “Farmer’s Pots, good meal when you’re working and can’t go home.” With each word the owner of the restaurant and main cook comes closer and closer to the tilfish, until the last “Ten credits each.”
Nobody moves for a couple of seconds, and then one of the humans steps closer and brings a holopad over to the credit reader. There’s a noise indicating payment, and then the owner raises his head and tilts it to focus his favored eye and both of his ears at the man who paid “Now,” he shifts register in his voice and the language he speaks in “fuck off” he finishes.
With no small amount of surprise the group of six retrieve the stack of packaged meals, carefully walking out and back into the convoy. Marik stays behind for a moment “Didn’t know you spoke human”
“Pup’s enamored with their languages. Of course, first greek words he learns is swearing.”
Outside, Marik stalks further ahead to the next point of interest. He moves faster than the convoy, and has time to move in front of it. For a few meters the street is still clear as he arrives to find a group of people standing in front of the Watchful. Standing there were all of its employees, and even all of its regulars, twenty people total standing there as if they were having the most normal day. If not for their raised ears tracking every noise coming from down the street and their swaying tails swinging about like angry beasts.
One of them simply points his tail at the other side of the street as Marik comes closer, and the hunter doesn’t need a second command to understand the meaning. They have this, he has a less practical but just as important duty. He crosses the street quickly before the convoy starts coming closer, and heads towards the park.
As the regulars of the Watchful had feared, it took little time until a large group had broken off from the convoy. With the town on alert about the convoy they had found themselves bereft of prey and now this group had set out to find some, anyone who might be willing, or not, to listen to their grievances. And what is clearly a place designed for people to congregate looked most appetizing.
Marik shadowed the group as they moved through the park, but they were accompanied by nothing but silence. It wasn’t until they ran into the centerpiece of the park that he took initiative, stepping ahead of the group and simply… Standing there a distance away from the tree of many scions, between it and the group.
“What’s so important over there, fireman?” it was a venlil who asked, but his usage of an english word was not lost on Marik.
“A place you will respect” the exterminator has his arms crossed, the one good portion of his gaze set on the man who asked “This is a grave.”
Though the group that now prowled was large, those who heard were taken aback. One such, however, approaches closer. He was a venlil whose fur shifted between a soft, brownish color and a dirty white “A tradition of the tenets right? One of those family trees?” The man would have been distinctive in any other group due to his missing patches of fur around neck, wrists, even portions around his head. But such signs of long term damage were common in the convoy.
Interest. They had shown true interest, or at least one of them had. “No, but similar… The forgotten tree is a grave for the forgotten.” He felt like these people, at least the ones before him, could probably understand the meaning of this place “It is of no tradition. Someone, a long time ago, wanted to honor someone who was gone but whose name was not meant to be remembered. Someone who had disappeared in the system… So they borrowed on another’s tradition, and added a scion to this tree, with something in their memory. Others have done so similarly, until it became… A grave for the forgotten”
“Didn’t think you’d be worried about this kind of place” it’s a human that speaks up this time
“Our duty is to protect this town, what you think-” but Marik’s words are interrupted by that same venlil who had asked before. His demeanor suddenly shifts, his ears perk up and his entire body shifts forward for a moment. He hesitates, for a second everyone’s focus is on him, and then he runs towards the tree.
Marik follows behind, stopping just by the man’s side as he finds himself at the base of the tree. The man makes a direct line to somewhere, something he had found from the distance, as if it had called him. He finds a thick and heavy branch that had been bent down by the weight of its scions and memories, near its base and speaking of a memory left behind long ago is a braid of fur made of three colors, a dirty white, a soft brown and a dark grey, bound by the braids are two beads.
The man raises up a paw, but does not touch it. As if cradling it, he recites the words engraved in one of the beads “I will cross every star to return home” others have come closer to listen to the man’s hoarse voice “There will always be a home for you” he reads of the second one. The names on the beads have been scratched out. The man falls on his knees “S-she kept her promise and… I couldn’t keep mine…”
Marik steps back as he watches two others come closer to comfort the man. He looks as a few others approach with more caution, looking up at the tree with a bit more reverence than they had before. Then, he turns around and starts heading back towards the main street.
Gazing out as the convoy gains a new flux, some leave it as it passes to move towards the park while others leave the park to rejoin the convoy, Marik simply stays there at the side of the street looking as stern as he could. Though the noise of the convoy remains great, here in this portion it seems to die down a little. A thought crosses his mind as he turns an ear as far back as he can, a thought he can’t help but voice “I wonder how many are looking at their own graves…”
As the convoy progresses, Santos simply stands by the front of the precinct, hands in his pockets. He watches the convoy arrive, heart beating fast, constrained hands the only reason he hasn't started shaking quite yet. He starts tapping his right foot as he watches the first few people cross by without noticing what this place is yet, everyone knows where the precinct is, so aside from the words printed on the sign by the entrance there is no other marker of what this building’s purpose might be.
Of course, it is impossible for nobody to notice. The entire convoy seems to stop as soon as a zurulian riding on the shoulders of a human points a claw at the building and says something. A large group breaks away at the command, all of them holding disparate signs and messages. They turn on the building with enough roars that whatever they are attempting to transmit is lost on him.
Santos is thankful his hearing isn’t nearly as good as his coworkers’, as the cacophony is already overwhelming him. He changes stances slightly, taking his hands out of his pockets and crossing his arms. This prompts a small group to turn their looks at him, the focus easily identifiable with the humans in their midst, focus which made the hair in the back of Santos’ neck stand on end. Living in this place had refined his sense of danger, but he didn’t need that to realize what could happen.
It was a group of five that approached, four humans and a venlil. “Didn’t think they’d be letting humans live out here in the boonies” said one of his kin.
Santos just shrugs “Got hired to work here. Honestly, rural folk get a needlessly bad reputation, most of the time they just don’t care as long as you’re not bothering them”
“Really? In my-”
Santos interrupts the man “Cut it out” there are many ways in which humans make themselves obvious, many of which are their eyes. Santos did understand the fear of them and why it was primal, it was not the fear of the eyes but the fear of attention, it was knowing you were under the scrutiny and judgment of another that set off that emotion. It was rarely the eyes that showed this attention for most species, but for humans it was, and the man’s clear gaze on his badge made the entire situation clear to him “Stop beating around the bush and say it already.”
Someone else is who speaks. The tall woman starts not with words, however, but by spitting on Santos’ uniform “You fucking traitor” her voice is both fierce and cold at the same time. A very emotional coldness.
“There we go” he sighs “Just… Move on. We’re not getting anything out of this conversation”
“Why?” It was the venlil in the group that started this time “These people hate you, they hate you for what you are! Why do you work for them?!”
Santos rubs his eyes and sighs “Because someone has to. Change only happens when you make it happen, simple as that”
“Change?!” another one of the humans howls “Do you think those people can change?! You know the truth, those fuckers have never done anything good!”
“You know, if you had read your history books…” Santos stares at the one who had just had their outburst “You’d remember that we once thought the very same about the police” there’s the sound of glass breaking, but he doesn’t reaction “And a lot of us still do”
The human staring him down shifts their gaze slightly at the broken window of the precinct, then back at Santos “A broken window is easy to fix” he shrugs “As I was saying. Same shit.” he crosses his arms again “There’s a role those people play, a role that needs to be played because it’s important. Different name, different problems, still the same shit. Gotta fix this, I’m doing my part” he then stares at the venlil in the group “You do yours. Simple as that.”
“Role?!” the venlil of the group steps closer “What role could they possibly have?! They only exist to hurt people!”
Santos steps back, and raises his eyes a little bit. Of course, the classics had shown themselves in this instance. With as many humans as there are in the crowd there were now quite a few objects in the air, most clearly aimed at the precinct behind him. Though given the failed arc of some of them it was clearly not just the humans indulging in such a tried and true method.
“I used to be a wildlife preserve ranger” Santos then focuses his gaze on the aggravated venlil “This is a frontier town, if you walk in the brushes with shorts you’ll walk out with your ankles numb. The athai out there are rather harmless, but they keep the sunspecks under control.” He takes another step back “Since coming here I’ve been pest control, had to catch an exotic animal set loose, investigated a murder, helped stop a child from taking her own life, stopped large scale fights, helped a dozen people avoid being arrested for self defense and helped break a fucking siege”
Santos cracks his knuckles “There’s roles. Jobs that need done and there is one fucking organization doing it all. That is a problem.” Then, he sighs and takes a few more steps to the side, offering indifference from this point on “There’s nothing I can say that would make you calm down.” he says one final time “Just make sure not to injure yourselves in the process, alright?” His words seemed to be enough to make the small group cease trying to interact, as the convoy had begun moving again. Though the one human who had called him a traitor gets one final parting shot at the precinct “Where the hell did you get an egg in this planet…” Santos says with a raised eyebrow as the projectile impacts the front door.
Keya stands by a large sign, the same one that welcomes you into Blackriver on one side and sees you out at the other, the official limit of the town. Her arms behind her back, her attention directly towards the front of the convoy as they march. Something gains the whole of her attention, the car in the front. Someone draws her focus, a human with a megaphone on top of the car. The man shouts words of encouragement at the people behind him with the megaphone before turning to his holopad, then he bends over downwards to discuss something with the driver.
She simply remains there, waiting for the convoy to pass. But instead of moving on out of the city, here the convoy stops completely. Keya observes as the further end of the convoy starts to slowly compact upon itself, and her ears pick up something “Alright everyone, start getting ready, next town over is more than a claw away, make sure you’ve left nothing behind” the words were not meant for her, nor for anyone too far. They come from the same man she had seen standing on top of the car, but he had now climbed down and was talking with a group of multiple species.
It is clear they have some degree of leadership, though the convoy does not stop cleanly nor does it begin to organize with alacrity they do respond to the group’s organization. So Keya keeps her focus on them as they point, wave and talk between themselves, others and devices. But at least one of them has noticed her attention, a gangly and light-skinned human with fire-red hair, the man that was atop the car. He starts walking in her direction, before turning around for one final set of commands as he walks backwards “And make sure the guys at the back got all the crap! We’re here to be heard, not to trash the city!” he says before turning back again to head towards her. A venlil with pure white fur erupts from inside the car he was riding, quickly dashing to his side as they notice where he was going.
In a few moments both have come up to her, the human looking down at her with the venlil bristles at his side “Saw anything interesting, fireman?”
“What are you doing here?”
“What? Isn’t it obvious?!” it was the venlil that roared a response “You saw all of it! You know what they’ve done to us! What they’ve done to everyone! And you still work for those brahking monsters! It’s like you’re thankful they made you a cripple!”
The human puts a hand on the venlil’s shoulder, calming her demeanor just a little bit “We’re here because honestly, we’re all too tired of being fucking ignored is what. So what the fuck are you gonna do?!”
“I have put the wrong emphasis” Keya says with her lack of tone. She can see the human shiver just a little bit “My task is to ensure the safety of this town. Your convoy is a danger. We have eight field-capable officers, we cannot ensure the safety of the residents against a group like yours. People will take actions for reasons, you have broadcast your reasons clearly. You have chosen this place for a reason which I cannot ascertain.”
She makes sure her ears are trained towards both the human and the venlil, an action which causes the venlil to cower behind her partner “We do not house government agencies. This is a farming town of little note. The local precinct is a simple precinct, we have no regulatory or command authority. The town population is approximately double that of the number of your convoy. We have no individuals of appreciable social or political reach. There is nothing in Blackriver of interest to people attempting to change government policy, nor have there been actions taken here that I can identify as being cause for retaliatory actions within the context of your message.”
“I must ensure this does not happen again and the only way of doing so is minimizing our attractivity as targets. A logical assumption of your choice of quarry would be a town with the presence of politicians, a large city with constant news coverage, cities housing important government agencies or those containing the Regional Firebases”
“So I ask again. What are you doing here?”
The two remain silent for a few seconds, before the human turns around with a mouth noise “Whatever, I don’t need to explain myself to someone that won’t listen. Come on!” he starts to stalk back towards the car, but stops once he notices his venlil companion wasn’t moving.
The snow-white venlil has their focus on Keya, who offers a simple low forward swipe of her tail, a sign to proceed. Still, the venlil seems frozen in place until the human comes back and grabs hold of their paw with a gentle touch. At which point both finally return to the convoy.
Keya remains at the side of the road, watching as the convoy readies itself again to leave. People get back inside cars, they hop on the back of trucks and load themselves into buses. She continues to watch as the convoy takes its time riding out, making their way out of the town.
Once it is finally gone, multiple footsteps sound behind her. When she turns around she meets her officers, having returned from their assigned positions “They have left. I expect your reports of what happened in each sector by the end of your shifts” she states plainly, before looking at Santos “They did not appear to have a specific reason for targeting Blackriver.” The question remains unspoken.
The human officer just shrugs “Sometimes, you don’t know what you’re doing. We’re just a little town, I doubt they even know what exactly they’re angry about.” He looks at the tail end of the convoy as it leaves “Town was probably just a place they felt safe going to.”
“D-do you think we might get more like that” Lunek says, at the back of the group.
“Who knows…” Santos sighs “But if human history applies anywhere here… This is just a sign of worse things to come”
[ [FIRST] [NEXT>]
And thus the omen passes by. Feelings, emotions of all sorts, without a plan or a reason other than just their own rage and distress.
Did any of these even know what they were doing? And how much worse can it be when they do?