You guys know what an alpine coaster is? They are like a small roller coaster you find in the mountains. They are also called summer toboggans or mountain coasters and I think there’s some long German compound word they are called in parts of Europe. They are like a roller coaster, but with much smaller one or two person sleds you just sit on instead of multi-person cars you ride in, and instead of being built with like a scaffolding or a framework the tracks are just on the ground, using the elevation of the mountain. Basically it’s a coaster track on the side of a mountain where you ride a sled down.
They are pretty fun. Or at least I used to think so. They are more “personal” than roller coasters and although you get nowhere near the speed on them that you do on a good traditional roller coaster and they can’t do corkscrews or loops or anything like that the openness and simplicity of the ride gives an impression of a much greater speed. You’re just sitting there with nothing but a little plastic sled and the track between you and the ground as it goes zooming by. It’s like the difference between how fast a go-cart feels compared to how fast a sports car feels. You know the sports car goes faster but the open, simpleness of a go-cart feels a different kind of fast. There’s plenty of POV Youtube videos if you want to get the basic idea of what they are.
I used to love alpine coasters. Used to.
My family used to go to Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge and up and down the Smokey Mountains for vacations when I was a kid and they are common in that area and I’d always rode them every chance I got.
But as with so many things after I grew up and went to college they just became part of my childhood that slipped away. They aren’t exactly common once you get away from the mountains.
Until one cool spring afternoon in 2004. I was in my final year at college and I was driving back to campus in Tennessee after a short visit to my folks in North Carolina. It was only like a 4 or 5 hour drive via the most efficient route and I had no need to be back at campus early so instead of taking the freeway all the way I got off and took part of my trip through the mountains. The scenery was nicer and I admit I liked pushing my Camaro just a little faster than I should through the twisty mountain roads.
Just after lunchtime happened upon one of those little by-the-highway tourist towns deep somewhere in the Smoky Mountains near the Carolina/Tennessee border. Nothing fancy, a gas station/truck stop, a diner, a couple of places selling tourist merch nestled deep in the mountains. I pulled into the gas station. My tank was getting low and I needed to stretch my legs, maybe grab something to eat. It was still early and I only had another couple of hours. I could kill an hour or so and still make it back to campus at a decent hour.
I pulled into the gas station and was filling my tank when I happened to glance across the road and… well I’ll be damned. There it was. “The Blue Ridge Alpine Coaster.” Nestled on the side of the mountain was a building, a mockup of a red barn, where a single railed track that led up into the mountains, where it soon got lost in the greenery. Wooden hand painted standees of cartoon character bears dressed in stereotypical “Hillbilly” getup stood around, some of them holding signs showing the ride hours and ticket costs and other info. I had to admit, as silly as it was, it made me smile.I finished pumping my gas and, well, nostalgia is a helluva thing. I decided then and there I could waste a little time riding an Alpine Coaster again after all these years before getting back on the road.
I parked my car in a corner of the truck stop's parking lot, put my phone in the center console, this being the days before smart phones when people didn’t keep their phones with them 24/7 and I didn’t want my old Nokia brick phone to fall out during the ride, locked my car and walked across the mountain highway to the Alpine Coaster building.
Getting closer, the place was less inviting. The half hearted attempt at a whimsical faux-Americana kitsch was far less effective when it brushed up against the actual decaying, run down wooden building. Hell calling it a building was generous. It was a wood frame holding up a long roof that covered the area where you got on the sleds. The wood boards creaked under my footsteps.
The only real enclosed structure was a shack that held, what I assumed, was a ticket booth. A door on the side had both a single occupancy bathroom with an out of order sign on it. An old Pepsi machine buzzed and glowed next to it.
Still the place looked alive. Ahead of me a bored looking attendant was helping a mother and her young son into one of the sleds while in a bored monotone repeating the safety brief. A few people were waiting in line at the ticket booth. Up in the mountains the playful shouts of people on the ride echoed down. Fond memories of my own childhood rides flooded my mind.10 minutes and 15 dollars later I was settling into the hard plastic seat of a bright red sled sat atop a simple aluminum rail.
I couldn’t help but grin as the sled slowly climbed the track up the mountains, making click-clack ratcheting sounds that hit my nostalgia centers hard. I felt good. The air was cool and crisp and smelled of pine.Higher and higher in the mountains we went. I don’t know if this is my mind trying to make sense of it after the fact but when I remember these moments, the last good moments, I sometimes think I remember a very slight, very subtle pit of fear in my stomach. I honestly don’t know if I felt it at the time or not or it’s just how my mind tries to make sense of it looking back at.
But either way mostly I was enjoying myself. I smiled. I was a kid again. I could hear riders in front of me let out that initial yell of terrified glee you get at the first drop of any good ride.
It peaked. I glanced around. I could see for miles, rolling hills and mountains. I the sled tipped over and zoomed down the mountain and I let out the same happy yell I heard from the other passengers.The ride zoomed down the mountain, catching speed. The mountain forest floor zoomed past, only a few feet under me. Trees zoomed past. I gave out a happy whoop as the ride banked hard around a curve and then looped back under itself.Another dip, another curve. I closed my eyes, enjoying the feel of the G-forces pulling me every which way.
There was no one exact single moment where things started to go “wrong.” The ride kept going. And going. At this point the first creeping thought entered my head.
The ride… was still going.
It just started to hit me… this ride was going on for a really long time. I had taken a dozen rides on various coasters of this type before that day and they topped out at about 5 minutes or so, and that was the long ones. Longer than a traditional roller coaster but not that long. This one had been going on for what felt like 10, maybe even 15 minutes.
I looked back over my shoulder and could only see trees, moving too fast to really get a bearing on where I was at in relation to anything.
I wasn't exactly really worried yet. Okay so I had found a particularly long alpine coaster. At the time I wasn’t 100% wasn't sure they didn’t exist or anything like that. I was a little… unnerved but nothing was happening that was impossible. Yet.
I was trying to talk myself back into just enjoying the ride and stop overthinking it, and halfway succeeded, when out of nowhere I suddenly banked hard, the track jutting out almost over a sheer cliffside. I gripped the sled more tightly as I was whipped around. The ride then dipped hard and picked up speed, barreling down the side of the mountain.
I was pushed back against the seat by the force of the drop. Jesus I didn’t remember them being this rough. I was feeling slightly nauseous. And where had this elevation drop come from I wondered? I was still in the foothills and I didn’t remember seeing anything but gentle rolling hills and light drops from looking at the ride’s route earlier. How the ride had managed such a long, steep drop in this area I didn’t know. . For the first time I hoped that the ride would be over soon. I had no idea then how much I would want that same hope to be true so much more as time went on.
With a whiplash motion I was whipped forward and then back as the ride leveled out on flat ground again, but by this point I was going fast, too fast. My neck hurt from the mild whiplash and I felt sour in my throat and for a moment the contents of my stomach threatened to come back up. For the first, but hardly the last time the ride felt unsafe. Alpine Coasters are tame affairs, much slower and gentler than full on roller coasters but this thing was throwing me around like no thrill ride I had ever been on.
I looked around. I mean I wasn’t that deep into the woods. I should have been able to see a glimpse of something; the highway, the gas station, the tourist shops, the Alpine Coaster office, something, anything. But nothing. Just trees.
I forced back some panic for the first time. I closed my eyes and counted to ten. The ride zoomed along. I counted to 60. I counted to 60 again. And again. Okay this was getting uncomfortably harder and harder to explain.
Suddenly I noticed that up ahead the track seemed to just end, for one brief, terrible moment I thought the track just ended but I was wrong. Almost without warning the track dipped in an almost vertical drop. I almost screamed as I plummeted for 20, maybe 30 seconds before flattening out again.
By this point the voice in my head that was telling me something was wrong was louder and I could no longer tell myself it was wrong. This ride could not have been this long. I tried to make sense of it, wondering if somehow I had gotten diverted onto some kind of maintenance track or, hell for one brief irrational moment even entertaining the idea that I had wound up on an actual train track somehow. But that was absurd. The rail below me was not a train track, it was still just the simple, aluminum rail of an alpine coaster and there had been no diversions or junctions in the track. I was still on the ride, as insane as that was starting to feel. Had the ride somehow looped? Again after having the thought I immediately dismissed it as crazy. There’s no way I could have missed the ride building where I got on. And what kind of ride loops over and over?
The sled zoomed through the forest, oddly never seeming to lose speed despite the relatively flat grade of the track. I cursed myself for leaving my phone in the car and not wearing a watch. I don’t know exactly how long I had been on the ride at that point but it felt like I had been on the ride for a half hour, maybe more. But time is a funny thing when you’re in a situation you’ve never been in. Could have been more, could have been less, at that point.
My pride finally failed me. I started to scream for help. I screamed out that the ride was broken, to stop it, that I needed help. I did that for about ten minutes or so I think. The ride kept going. Mostly flat, level track with occasional mild dips and turns. But the simple length of the ride grew more and more unnerving and unexplainable.
I thought about just bailing out. But the ride, impossibly, was still not slowing down and chunks of mountain rock and thick tree trunks were all around me. Bailing out without risking smashing into a rock or a tree seemed impossible.
The ride kept going.
Up ahead the forest was clearing out some, I could see the forest brightening, more sunlight making it through the canopy.
I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.
The trees stopped and I had just enough time to take in a flat, open area of rock maybe 40, 50 yards at most before another sheer cliff. The tracks twisted and turned and then shot straight down. But that wasn’t the worst of it. For a moment, a very short moment, I had a clear view for miles and the landscape was, to be blunt, totally impossible. Any possibility that I had just stumbled on some incredibly long ride was blasted out of my head. Barren, volcanic looking rock stretched for miles. Jagged, black rocky outcroppings as far as the eye could see. I was in the goddamn Smoky Mountains. They don’t look like that.
I had a few moments for the terror of that view to settle in before the cart plunged into another horrifying drop. I gripped the handles of the cheap plastic sled until my knuckles turned white. The drop felt completely vertical, like I was falling at terminal velocity. I screamed. My stomach dropped and turned. I imagined the sled coming away from the track and me just plummeting screaming to my death on the rocks below. But somehow the ride still functioned. I closed my eyes tightly and just waited for whatever was going to happen. Eventually after several what felt like a full minute of steep plunging the track again leveled out, and I opened my eyes to see myself moving at breakneck speed over that black, rocky landscape.
Now that I was moving on a more or less flat horizontal track again I took a few deep breaths. I looked over the edge of the track. Nothing but that black, jagged rock, almost looking like obsidian, zooming past. I had no idea how fast the sled was moving now. Fast. Faster than a gravity powered sled should be moving. And the track was higher off the ground now. Alpine slides usually stick pretty close to the ground, but I was 20 feet or so in the air, the track suspended in the air, a simple metal tube tower like a power pylon every few yards.
Without any immediate threat and the sled moving fast but steadily and level I was able to think about my situation again, for all the good that did me. Ahead of me the track just continued to the horizon, nothing but the same rocky landscape as far as I could see. I craned my neck to look back over my shoulder and looked back behind me and it looked the same. Even the mountains were but distant specs on the horizon behind me.
This was insane. There’s not a giant seemingly endless field of black jagged rock in the goddamn Smoky Mountains. There’s no cliff faces tall and steep enough for a multi-minute vertical drop. And alpine coasters were small affairs, not major engineering projects that span miles with pylons and vertical tracks. It made no sense.
Sadly it wasn’t going to start making any more sense anytime soon.
The ride kept going.
I was on this rocky landscape for several hours. I feel comfortable saying this because I could actually notice the sun getting lower in the sky. And the sled wasn’t slowing down despite the grade of the track being flat. I was getting cramped from sitting and stretched my legs and twisted my back as best I could. Didn’t do much help. My eyes were starting to get irritated from the constant wind in them. Worst of all it was starting to get chilly. I only had on a light jacket, a windbreaker, just something to keep the breeze off me, no real insulation. I was cold, my joints were stiff, I was hungry and thirsty. My eyes watered and my throat was so dry it was sore.
But none of that was as bad as just how little sense this all made. There’s nothing like this place anywhere near the Smoky Mountains. This was like some volcanic rock landscape. The more I thought about it the less sense it made.
The ride kept going.
My mind didn’t even try to process this. Whatever I was experiencing simply couldn’t be possible. I was crazy. I was dreaming. The CIA had kidnapped me and dosed me with some new version of LSD and I was in a straightjacket in a padded room at Area 51.
The sled kept zooming along as the sky turned to dusk. Soon the bridge disappeared from my view and I continued on along the endless, rocky, featureless landscape.
I sat back against the sled, mentally and physically numb. I was exhausted. I was thirsty. I was cramping up. I was hungry. I had to pee. I held it for as long as I could, then had no choice but just wet myself. I cried until I had no more tears left. Then I just sat there.
The ride kept going.
By the time the sun dipped below the horizon my throat felt like sandpaper. I dug around in my jacket pockets hoping to find a stick of gum or piece of candy. Nothing. I checked again, having nothing else to do. Under a crumpled store receipt in the inner pocket of my jacket was a single old, forgotten cough drop. I unwrapped it from the paper and popped it in my mouth. Saliva flooded back into my mouth and I was overwhelmed by the methanol and medicine taste. It was something at least, although I knew it would be a brief and temporary fix at best.
I felt my eyes get heavy. It was getting colder. That mountain cold. That deep cold the mountains have even into the early spring when the sun goes down. That kind that just pulls the heat right out of you. I shivered. A terrible, horrible certainty came to me. I would ride until I passed out from exhaustion or the hypothermia set in. My body would tumble off the sled to fall and skip across the rocky ground like a stone skipping across a lake, my bones breaking as I tumbled until my body finally came to a stop. If I was lucky I would be killed and not have to lie for days, broken and bruised, on the ground until death took me.
The ride kept going. The ride kept going. The fucking ride kept going.
“Fuck you” I said to the ride, my voice a horse whisper. I pulled my jacket closer around me, for all the good it did. The cold wind was slowly but surely pulling my body heat away. My shivering got worse, crossing the line from a simple normal shiver into those deep, almost violent full body ones.. I wasn’t anything you could call an experienced outdoorsman, but I knew enough to know that wasn’t a good sign.
It was getting dark. There was a full moon at least so I wasn’t totally in the dark.
About then I noticed something. The landscape, what little I could see in the fading light, was changing. It was smoothing out, becoming less rocky and craggy. Up ahead an odd, shimmering light was starting to appear on the ground.
I was over it before I even realized what it was. The tracks were going over a smooth surface.
Water. It was a lake. The odd lights I had seen were the moon, reflected in ripples on the lake.
Within minutes I was out of the view of the land. After the nearly endless rocky landscape and everything else I had seen, it scared me how little I was shocked. I didn’t like how mentally numb I was getting. I leaned over. There was enough moonlight to see the water, 15 or 20 feet below the track. The pylons holding up the track went into the water, the light wasn’t good enough to even make a guess at how far they went down or how deep the water was.I leaned back in the sled. My eyes were red and bloodshot from the constant wind. I closed them. This was a mistake.I jerked awake. I don’t know if I dozed off for a split second or an hour. My weight had shifted and I caught myself as my center of gravity was in danger of sending me off the sled and into the water.
I screamed in anger. A deep primal scream. I hurt so bad. My joints felt like they were full of glass. My limbs were full of pins and needles. I glanced over at the water. For the first time on the very edges of my brain a tiny voice started to speak up, telling me that I could be all over if I just jumped. I shut the voice up, but it scared me still.
I sat there as the ride went on. It felt like hours. Eventually the lake ended in a rocky shore line. The damned ride. There was no safe place to bail out. If the ride slowed down, it was high in the air, if it moved toward the ground it sped up. Sharp rocks, big trees, nothing you could safely bail out into.
I kept having to force myself awake. I kept dozing off. Once I felt myself falling asleep and drove a vicious uppercut into my own nose to stave it off.
I seriously started to think about how much longer I could hang on. The voice came back again. This time I didn’t shut it up. I wasn’t admitting it to myself yet, but I was starting to think about the best way to land that would end it quickly if I needed to.
Something was ahead. The track seemed to dip into the ground. I was too tired, too beaten to even get scared. I was just resigned to whatever happened at this point.
With little warning the track took my sled into a tunnel in the ground. Everything went completely pitch black. After several moments even the dim moonlight was gone.
This was the worst part. The creepy forest, the immense rocky landscape, the eerie lake… those were bad. But this was just nothing. Nothing to look at, nothing to hear, nothing for reference or sense of where I was going. The walls of the tunnel felt like they were inches from me in every direction. The air felt thick, like there wasn’t enough oxygen.
With every moment I was in that tunnel I lost a little more hope. After a long, long time I made a decision. When I got out of this tunnel, I would jump. I didn’t care anymore. Hopefully there would be a spot where I could be certain the fall would instantly kill me. I was done. The ride had beaten me. I sat there, waiting for a chance to end this on my terms. That was all I had left.
Eventually up ahead, a tiny speck of light appeared. I gathered my strength, ready to end it. I sat up, getting my legs under me so I could jump as soon as we were clear. The sled burst out of the tunnel. The dim light of the full moon was enough to be momentarily blinding after the pitch black of the tunnel.. I gave my eyes a moment to adjust.
I was back in a normal looking Appalachian forest. Rolling hills, green trees. The air smelled of pine again. I heard an owl hoot off somewhere.
Slowly I lowered myself back into a setting position, in shock. At first I refused to believe it but the ride was slowing down. I held still, making sure my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me, but no, the cheap plastic sled that had been my world for what felt like an eternity was slowing down.
Up ahead, a structure was visible, peeking out from among the trees in the dim lighting as the sled moved down the track.
It was the Alpine Slide building. The crappy fake red barn where I had boarded this cursed ride so long ago. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, sure it was either my mind or the cursed ride playing tricks with me. But the building stayed there.
It grew closer and closer. The track leveled completely out. The sled slowed down more. Before I had the time to really come to terms with it I arrived back at the building.
The sled slowed to a stop, gently pumping against another sled parked on the track. I sat there for a few moments, gasping in great big gulping fear breaths, trying to assure myself the ride didn’t have one last trick of its sleeve.
I looked around. The place was empty, deserted. The overhead lights were still on and the old Pepsi machine still glowed and buzzed, but the ticket booth was dark and empty, a metal gate pulled down over the ticket window.
Suddenly it hit me that I was free and I practically leapt out of the sled and onto the platform. I immediately collapsed. My legs were jelly and my head was spinning. I tried to stand up again and doubled over, dry heaving. Have you ever been out on a boat for a day and have that weird reverse motion sickness when you’re back on solid land? It was like that times a hundred. My inner ear was literally pounding, all the motion had really done a number on it.
I laid there for a few moments and eventually forced myself to stand up on my two wobbling legs. I looked around, a horrible certainty creeping into my mind that there would be no exit, no way off the platform but to my relief an exit turnstyle, one of those full height ones, was set into the fence that surrounded the ride property.
I went through it and found myself back on the main road. The truckstop was still there, still open but far less busy. My car sat in the same corner of the parking lot I had left it.
I allowed myself one look back, just one quick one. The metal skeleton of the Alpine Slide track sat there, dark and quiet but otherwise normal.
I stumbled-ran back to my car, dug the keys out of my pocket, and collapsed inside. When the door shut I let out a primal scream, the tons of fear and confusion and anger all fusing into a single, raw emotion. I screamed again and again.
After a few moments I felt like I was emotionally at least back to a place where I could act, although I wasn’t sure yet what to do next. Not really knowing what to do I cranked the car. The A/C had been on low when I shut off the car and it came roaring back to life and cold air blowing on me almost sent me back into a full on panic attack. I fumbled with the climate controls until the air stopped blowing directly on me, then calmed down enough to turn the heat on, helping to get the chill out of my bones. There was a half full bottle of water in the center console cup holder and I grabbed it and chugged it. Nothing ever tasted as good before or sense as that few ounces of water.
That was when I noticed the clock on the radio head unit. It was 4:17 in the morning. It had been about one, one thirty or so in the afternoon when I got on the accursed ride.
Over 15 hours. I had been on the goddamn ride for over 15 hours. Over half a day.
I just sat there. Warming up. Calming down. I was exhausted. I was dehydrated. I can’t even describe how my head felt. I probably had at least a minor case of hypothermia. I thought about going into the gas station and asking for help but what would I even say, and more than anything I just wanted to get away from this place. And I just wanted to get away. I wanted to be nowhere near that damn ride.
I put the Camaro in gear and pulled into the street and in panic I immediately slammed on the brakes. I was lucky there was no traffic on the road at that moment. The feeling of accelerating to just normal surface street speeds made me sick to my stomach. I gathered myself and very slowly accelerated the car I usually treated with a very heavy foot up to 30 miles an hour. Every time I tried to accelerate at a pace faster than “Old Lady Going to Church, Uphill” I would have a panic attack. I was okay once I was up to speed, but accelerating freaked me out after being on that ride.
I drove about 30 minutes, putting some arbitrary amount of distance between myself and the coaster. Eventually I made it back to where the twisty mountain road met back up with a major road that would eventually meet back up with the highway. After a few more minutes of driving I saw the onramp for the highway. There was one of those big truckstop travel plazas and pulled in, parking right up at the door. I smelled like pee and I can only imagine how I looked, but I didn’t care.
I kept a couple of emergency 20s in the back of my wallet and spent it on the biggest bottle of water the store had, an overpriced bottle of eye drops, and a huge travel mug of coffee. The clerk looked at me as if he was expecting me to either drop dead or rob him the entire time.
Back in my car I downed the coffee. I put a few eye drops in each of my eyes and sat there as the caffeine took effect until I felt like I could make it back to my apartment. The sun was just coming up when I finally pulled out of the truck stop and got on the freeway. I slowly, very slowly, accelerated up to highway speed, put the Camaro in cruise control, and let the miles start to drift away. I turned on the radio, I needed to hear human voices. Every time my mind went back to what had just happened I turned the radio up louder, eventually drowning it out with painful levels of rock music. I wasn’t ready to think about it yet. Yes looking back I know I was just in denial. I finally made it back to the crappy little apartment I had off campus, a little two story walk up studio. I let myself in and collapsed on the cheap couch. I was asleep before I even had the time to decide whether or not to do anything else. I woke up later that afternoon. I took a shower and ate a meal and didn’t think about the ride. I washed the pee stained filthy clothes I had been wearing and didn’t think about the ride. I went back to class and didn’t think about the ride. Every time I thought about the ride I forced it out of my head. I’m sure this wasn’t the most mentally healthy thing to do but what can you say?
I didn’t forget about it, don’t be silly. This isn’t the kind of thing you forget. One day while looking up something else in the university’s library my curiosity got the better of me and I looked up the Alpine Slide. No website but a few Google Map and Yelp mentions. None of them mentioned anything weird, certainly nothing even remotely like what I experienced. Near as I can tell it closed sometimes in the winter of 2012.
Life went on. I mean, that’s what it does. The next day was a little better. And the day after that a little better. And the day after that a little better still. I met a nice girl. Graduated. Got married. Got a nice house in the suburbs. Got a dog. Had a daughter. Spent a lot of time happy and not thinking about being trapped on an endless alpine coaster.And that was my life for many, many years after that.
Until a few weeks back when as a very different person I found myself driving a boring and safe mid sized family SUV through those same mountains. My wife Carol, 5 months pregnant, sat in the passenger seat, our 6 year old daughter Emily in a booster seat in the back, and Max our mixed breed mutt next to her. It had been a nice pleasant trip, driving back from visiting her folks.
I hadn’t thought about that fucking ride in so long I barely registered that I was in the same general area until it was too late. Suddenly I realized that little mountain tourist trap town was only a few minutes down the road. I swallowed hard and gripped the steering wheel hard. Carol was looking out the window at the scenery and Emily was deep into some kid’s Youtube video on an iPad. I forced myself to keep my breath steady as we rounded the corner.The town was still there, sorta. Time had not been kind to it. The gas station was still there, at some point it had been bought out by Shell. The tourist trap shops were still there. One of them was now a vape shop. The diner was closed, the building looking like it sat unused for a long time.
But of course that’s not what I cared about. A looked over at the site where the Alpine Coaster once stood. It was gone. The kitschy fake barn was gone. The site was just a bare concrete slab with a chainlink fence around it. Faded “no trespassing” and “for sale” signs hung off the fence. A pile of old, decaying lumber that might have once long ago been part of the structure covered part of the old lot. No sign of the track remained outside of some old concrete support posts dotting the side of the mountain.
I exhaled out a breath I hadn’t even realized I had been holding in. Soon the little town disappeared in my rear view mirror.
About a half hour later we stopped for gas. I pulled up to a gas pump across from a massive motorhome. Max stuck his head out the window and started barking at a little white dog, a toy breed of some kind, in the window of the motorhome. Carol and Emily immediately headed into the store to restock on snacks while I fueled up.
I stood there, a half smile on my lips as Max barked and wagged his tail in an attempt to attract the attention of the other dog while I filled up the tank, said dog doing an admirable job of ignoring him.
Right about the time I finished fueling up and cleaning the bugs off the windshield Carol returned from inside the store, Emily in tow, arms filled with two full sized bags of Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips and what looked to be a half dozen individually wrapped pickles.
I raised an eyebrow at the collection of food but knew better than to question a pregnant woman's snack choices.
“Should we take Max for a quick walk?” Carol asked. The travel plaza had a nice little gated dog walking area off to the side.
“Yeah probably not a bad idea, he’s been cooped up in the car for a few hours.” I said. Max, upon hearing his name and the word “walk” , forgot about the other dog and upgraded from wagging his tail to wagging his entire body while making whining sounds and staring right at me.
About this time I became half aware that the big motor home next to us was pulling away. I didn’t think much of it, outside of doing a quick automatic mental check to make sure Emily was well clear of the moving vehicle, but she was safely between me and our SUV, well out of the way.
But that was when Emily looked behind me and cheerfully yelled “Daddy look a roller coaster! Can I ride the coaster?”
It’s cliche as fuck I know but my blood went cold.
I turned around slowly, certain in my knowledge that terrible old decrepit Alpine Coaster would be there, having just popped into existence to trap me again.
That.. is not what I saw. Sure enough there was a coaster there, one I hadn’t noticed earlier because it had mostly been blocked by the motor home, but there it was. It was even an Alpine Coaster.
But it was not the same coaster I had encountered those years ago. That was immediately obvious. It was a small but modern and newish looking setup with neon lights and a bunch of people. There was an actual building where you bought tickets and a little snack stand.
“Daddy! Can we go on the coaster!” Emily asked again.
My mouth made motions but no words came out. I glanced over at Carol, hoping she’d say we didn’t have time but to my horror she smiled and said “You know what? That does sound like fun. Daddy will take you while I take Max for a walk.”
My mind raced, trying to think of a way to get out of it. But Emily was already dragging me across the parking lot to the entrance.
I patted my pocket, making sure my phone was in it. Every fiber of my being was screaming to run away. I slept walked through the line and the ticket booth while Emily bounced happily.
We got into a two seat plastic sled. This one was actually a lot nicer than the one my mind wouldn’t stop thinking about. It had two nice cushioned seats, big grab handles, even a nice rollbar.
The sled started up the track. I fought back the panic. I swerved my head around, keeping the building in my view. I was terrified of losing sight of it. We made it to the top and Emily did a happy squeal as we started down the side of the mountain.
My heart raced. Any second, any second my mind told me we’d lose sight of the building and then the ride would never end. The ride sped down the mountain. My mind tortured me with thoughts of not only going through it again, but seeing Emily go through it. The ride went around a big, banking turn. Emily kept shouting happily. How long before Carol reported us missing I wondered? Could I keep Emily calm? What if it lasted even longer this time? What if this time it never ended?
And then we were back at the start of the ride. The same attendant who had helped us into the sled was helping Emily out. I stepped out. The attendant gave me a brief look but said nothing. I guess I looked a little wild eyed.
I was fine. Emily was fine. It had been a perfectly normal, fun ride.
“That was fun Daddy! Thank you!” Emily said. I forced a smile back. “It was fun.” I responded, hoping like I sounded like I meant it.
I took Emily’s hand and we walked back to the car. Max saw us coming and barked happily. Carol looked up from the pint of Ben and Jerry’s she had somehow acquired and added to her snack collection while we were gone and smiled at us.
“Did you have fun?” she asked.
“It was so fun Mommy!” Emily said.
Carol smiled down at her, but then looked at me and frowned. “Are you okay?” Carol could read my face a lot better than the attendant could. “You’re pale.”
I smiled and this time the smile felt real. “Ya know what. Yeah, I think I am okay.”
Carol looked a little puzzled, but didn’t press it. We loaded Emily back in her booster seat, stopped Max from trying desperately to eat half a discarded gas station hot dog off the ground and got him back in the car. Carol and her small collection of snack food took her place in the passenger seat and I got in the driver's seat.I smiled. I cranked the car. I put it in gear. I pulled out of the gas station and back on the road, this time accelerating just a little faster than I had in years.

Am I the a-hole for retracting my agreement to alter the written custody schedule after several events in the last week that highly concern me

• they refused breastmilk be brought to the child causing the child emotional trauma and to be scared to let go when they came home.
• they forced me into that day for me to get the one day I was asking for but they didn’t even use their three other custodial days and were on vacation
• the final and actual reason, when I went for custodial pick up they got aggressive with me, wouldn’t let me approach my child in the driveway, wouldn’t step away from me when I asked/practicallt begged over 5+ times in fear. They have assaulted me in the past and I was trying to get the child in the car as fast as possible. They did all this in front of the child with zero care. They then told me “be aware of what happens if you don’t”

That statement with him threatening to make my my friends in the past “pop up a cold case”, assaulting me and more I’m terrified for the child to go over there on my time and be put through all this.
I am retracting Back to the order because they can’t be civil in front of the child and insighting fear, because I feel like ultimately that is the original thing we should go by especially if someone is acting volitile.

I messed up. I messed up bad.
“Never get high on your own supply”. The human who sold me this data told me it was a saying from his world. But I had to be sure it was the real deal. After all, data drugs that worked on people without a brain interface installed? It was unheard of. But here I am [30 hours] later, and I no longer doubt. I feel utterly exhausted despite having barely moved. My every neuron feels fried. All 6 grasping appendages are sore from the repetitive motions, and my eyes are dry and unfocused from the long strain I have put them through. I feel intense pangs of hunger and thirst, as I haven’t eaten or drank since I started this test.
I still want more. But with a great effort of will I force myself away from the screen of my computing terminal and stumble to my pantry so I may attend to my body’s needs. As I gulp down nutrient drinks and chew some dried fruit, I reflect on the trance I’ve somehow barely managed to pull myself out of.
Simulations. A useful tool for engineers, scientists, and military strategists. We had never thought to teach storytellers or artists to use them. Humans had. And what they created was both miraculous and monstrous.
Humans decided to use simulation technology to create art and craft stories. It seemed that there was a human simulation… no, hundreds of human simulations, designed to invoke whatever feeling or emotion you could imagine. And possibly some you couldn’t.
I had started simple. A basic test of spatial reasoning, and later quick thinking, expressed through the medium of stacking colored blocks formed into geometric shapes. While comparable at first to a children's toy, as the speed and challenge increased I became increasingly hypnotized. The feeling of lining up and clearing four rows at once with the all too rare straight piece was intensely satisfying. Making a mistake, leaving a gap caused frustration and incompleteness like I had never felt before, and eventually fixing it gave a feeling of relief, of rightness. As the game sped up, I found myself more and more frantic to try and find places for every piece. The rush of success and agony of failure only increased as I prided and chided myself on my quick decisions.
Eventually, I could keep up no longer, leaving me only with a number. A score.
Could I push that score higher?
[4 hours] went by, and I barely noticed.
I should have stopped. I knew that what I had was genuine. But I wanted to know what else this data was capable of.
I navigated a colorful landscape, defying gravity with every action and finding joy in exploration and collection.
I slaughtered demons with a chaingun, turning the fear of being devoured into a rising sense of conquest and bloodlust.
I failed a single test of dexterity, sending me tumbling down a hole and erasing hours of progress, and I nearly knocked myself out from the shock of frustration.
I defeated a hulking warrior with a team of other adventurers, and the triumph of it was only amplified by the sting of failing several times before.
Freedom and entrapment.
Horror and domination.
Elation and sorrow.
Every new experience was an emotional high of a kind I’d never had before, and my hearts were racing with the myriad of feelings rushing through my mind. My imagination was going wild with the possibilities of all these new worlds of data and programming.
My self-reflection comes to a grinding halt. I need to stop. If I’m not careful I’ll get addicted and end up like one of those mindjackers, burning their brains out on data drugs. Supposedly these simulations can’t do that, but I wouldn’t have put it past the seller to lie about that kind of thing.
Well, one way or another, I’m gonna make a [alien animal that shares many traits with both giant squids and magpies]’s hoard selling these. Time to call my best clients…
[Time skip: approximately 25 solar years]
The Rise of the Galactic Game Industry: Fluke of the Black Market, or Human Marketing Genius? You Decide!
Dr’k-Nam, Head Investigative Critic for the Arts and Culture section of Twin Suns Newsgroup
Simulation games, also known as “video games”, have taken the galaxy by storm ever since their controversial introduction and subsequent series of bannings and legalizations across the galaxy. Simulation technology is nothing new of course, but galactic newcomers from the Sol system, Humans, used it in an extremely novel way: art and entertainment. According to their historical records, a significant amount of their entertainment industry is based around simulation games, and that portion has grown even further with their introduction to the galaxy at large.
At first, however, no one was interested. A simulation with little or no practical application, designed only to entertain? Most people preferred to stick with the entertainment they knew, or seek new experiences outside of sims. So what changed?
Simple: some anonymous human decided to sell them as data drugs instead of simulation games; data drugs usable by simply interacting with a computer program, rather than having to inject the data directly in through a neural interface. With this small, but completely false new branding, video games were ready to start spreading across virtual black markets like spoilers for the latest episode of Ace Flyer Kr’t-Kah on the galnet (side note: please have some courtesy to others and tag your spoilers).
Human governance and society at large had been reportedly as surprised to see a lack of simulation games from other species as they were that humans had them. But they were even more surprised when they started getting accused of pushing the latest data drug. This was an especially confusing accusation because neural interface technology was not widely adopted by humanity at the time, and only a fraction of a percent of their population even knew of the existence of data drugs in the first place. The revelation that most humans had video games of some sort on their PPDDs (personal portable data devices) threatened to cause an uproar in the galaxy, as paranoia around data drugs was at an all time high among many species.
After trying and failing to ignore the problem for long enough for it to go away, human governance, as well as human corporations producing video games, were forced to release statements, acknowledging that:

• Yes, video games were human productions.
• Yes, they could be addictive in the same way that any other pleasure-seeking activity could be addictive.
• Yes, there are games that even humans ban. Adult subject matter is restricted from youths, but additionally, games could be made manipulatively to exploit or develop gambling addictions, which is banned outright. Technically this ban isn’t even for games specifically, but instead falls under the purview of their laws against taking advantage of the mentally unstable.
• No, they did not “hack your brain” to cause neural impulses, unless you’re a a Syns-nah, who only partially exist in our dimension and are not used to any 3-dimensional sensory inputs, to the point where eating an unflavored [grain product resembling a cracker] can cause them vivid hallucinations.
• If other races want to ban them, go ahead, but humans can’t really stop data from spreading (their government has tried, believe me), and they’re not going to stop making or distributing them where it’s legal.

Ironically enough, the controversy made them much more popular, even in places that decided on banning them. The idea of a simulation that could act like a data drug without the risk of frying your mind like the real thing was enticing to many. The lack of side effects and ease with which the games could be distributed only increased both their spread and unregulatability. In short order, races throughout the galaxy were trying out a new pastime, and galnet connected multiplayer games were bridging the gaps between the stars. Now, several other races, including my own, are seeking advice from human developers in starting their own simulation game projects. Only time will tell what kind of games their unique perspectives will produce, but it’s unlikely that humans will lose their position as the most powerful and profitable storytellers through this new medium; they have generations of experience to draw upon, after all.
Rumors that the data drug sales pitch was a deliberate ploy by the human game industry (to drum up intergalactic sales) or by human governance (to spread human culture and influence) are still under investigation, but solid evidence for either has yet to emerge.
Edit: anyone posting untagged Ace Flyer Kr’t-Kah spoilers in the comments section of this article will receive an immediate, no-warning permaban.

I did this (Cancelled rides after initially accepting) twice today and I thought I would share why so you might better understand what is going on. I know I will likely get downvoted for being "uppity" but here you go anyway, some honesty:

1 First ride was at a higher end Hotel here with a very small parking lot/dropoff pickup area. Valet parking is also in the same spot. It was absolutely pouring down rain and when I received the ping (offer for the trip)and as usual it just told me a nearby cross section of streets and didn't specify the hotel. The offer was for like $5.15. Had I known it was this hotel I never would have accepted the ride for several reasons:

1. The parking area as said is very small at is likely that you will get stuck in there for 5-10 minutes.
2. The valet there always come up to you and I just find it annoying having to interact with them all the time.
3. It's a higher end hotel and the people there tend to be wealthy. It annoys me a little bit that the pay is so low for the trip from there ($5). From such a place I prefer to get at least $10 because it seems to me the clientelle there are usually a bit "snooty" and picky about things. I also notice tips seem to be more rare from them versus the other nearby hotels...
4. It was pouring down rain and the road was beginning to moderately flood.
5. I could tell that the customer would be going to a destination which would require me to make a left turn out of this place and I always find making that left turn annoying because of the traffic and the small parking area. Today it was even worse due to the heavy rain. It's a very dangerous turn to make actually and I dislike doing it.

...but regardless I decided to go ahead and do it.... until I was able to see the hotel and until I saw a line of five or six cars backed up outside the entrance area waiting to pull into the tiny lot. At that point I just cancelled the ride because there was no way it was worth it for only $5. It easiliy could have taken 20 minutes just to get in and out of there alone.

2 This trip occurred right after the one above, strangely enough. It was still pouring down rain but not as bad as the previous trip. I get a ping (ride offer) for a little under $8. Again they only give me the cross sections of the road nearby it. They don't tell me the name of the business or even the exact address in the ping (ride offer). I see it and by the location figure that it is probably a nearby apartment. I see the cross section for the destination and see it is a hotel. I figure it is probably an employee at the hotel going to work.... NO! DAMN! After accepting it I see it is a pickup at a shuttle transportation service. And since this is Uber they don't tell em the exact destination until I pickup the customer but I figure out from the info they gave at the ping that it is likely going to a different high end hotel with a very small parking/dropoff area too. And also valet parking.

Of course I cancelled this one too! Why?

1. It was still pouring down rain. And the shuttle area does not have any cover. Plus it was a female passenger. So more than likely I would have to either get out (and get soaked) and help with luggage or else deal with a pissed off customer who might downrate me or do a false report because I am not willing to provide butler service for $7.80.
2. This shuttle service is usually used by people who are cheap. Combine this with someone going to this high end hotel and it implies that they are both wealthy and cheap. Basically the shuttle picks them up at the airport and either takes them to the hotel or just to the shuttle office. To go tot he hotel costs a bit extra. This passenger it seems didn't want to pay that money and instead got dropped off at the shuttle office-- they probably thought the Uber would be cheaper than the extra money the shuttle service would charge to take them to the hotel. So again wealthy (likely) AND cheap. VERY cheap. A horrible combination for getting a tip! On top of that such people tend to demand a lot more and complain more about things. Not to mention the odds are high that there is a lot of luggage.
3. Just like in #1 though a different hotel, this one also has a very small parking/dropoff area and it tends to get backed up. You can easily get stuck there for 15 minutes. Now the pay for this trip was barely worth it already but I had remembered how the other hotel was backed up and figured it was likely this one was backed up too. So I canceled.

After I cancelled this ride, I immediately got another ride for about the same amount. This one was picking up an employee at a house and taking them to restaurant where they worked. It was about half the distance and probably about 1/5th the amount of time as trip #2 would have been. Plus I never had to leave the car, there was no luggage to deal with and no backed up tiny parking areas to delay me and also risk getting into an accident due to all the people there chaotically moving all about.
So if you read this far, thank you. I thought I'd just explain what went on so some of you might understand better. How could it be solved and made better? Well for one thing if they just paid us fairly all of the above would be far less of an issue. You might be paying $20 for the ride but we might only be getting $5. And when it is like that, as you can see, anything negative about your ride makes us want to cancel it. The other thing would be the company giving us the FULL upfront details about the ride before we accept it. As it is now they basically give us limited info in order to try to "trick" us into accepting your ride. Then they figure we are less likely to cancel it because we "committed" already. But really you the customer would have FAR less problems if the company just gave us the details upfront and was honest about it.

Hi everyone,
I wanted to share with you my response to the introduction found in the only edition of Use of the Self currently in print. I believe it's a rather misleading intro to FM Alexander's work, so I'm sharing this in the hope that I can help clear up misconceptions people may have about the Alexander Technique, not derived only from Anthony Kingsley, but many bland blog posts one tends to encounter when researching the Alexander Technique. That said, this is not intended to be an introduction of its own, but rather something experienced students, teachers, and anyone enthusiastically learning the Technique may find useful. In the tradition of Alexander himself, I've included extensive footnotes, some painfully long. I'm happy to answer any questions or otherwise discuss what I've written. Understand these are my own interpretations and opinions about what some call "the work," so take them as you will. I've taken lessons for a number of years and currently am training as a teacher, so my view of the Technique is based on these experiences, as well as my interpretations of Alexander's writings. Some of these interpretations you may object to, but I hope you find my arguments reasonable.
Response to Anthony Kingsley's Introduction to The Use of the Self
The Use of the Self may be FM Alexander's most important work, since it contains his own account of how he developed what is now called the Alexander Technique. While Alexander's other volumes are available from Mouritz, the only edition of The Use of the Self currently in print is published by Orion Spring. This edition replaces the philosopher John Dewey's introduction—which praises the technique's "genuinely scientific character"—with one by the contemporary teacher Anthony Kingsley, who is heralded on the book's front cover as a "leading Alexander Technique teacher." Therefore it is probable that many readers' first impressions of the Alexander Technique will be framed by Mr. Kingsley's opinions. I submit this is problematic, since his introduction is in my view contradictory to fundamental principles of the Alexander Technique. I write this response to address the introduction's two most dire faults: Kingsley's misrepresentation of the concepts inhibition and direction, and his dismissal of the concept of the primary control. I'll begin with the second, since it is a more straightforward error.
Primary Control
Kingsley opens his paragraphs on the primary control with the opinion that the concept should be "recast," then describes Alexander's definition of the primary control as a "particular relationship of his head, neck and back [that] acted as a master reflex that conditioned his whole organism." Then he discards this definition, claiming the head-neck-back relativity should instead be "regarded as an indicator[sic] of overall health rather than an area considered in isolation." He concedes the "region of the neck and back is a [...] barometer of our state of being," but concludes that "no single element is actually primary," since our eyes, breath, digestive system, and all other psychophysical elements are "simultaneous and interdependent" and also like barometers. Finally, he reveals his "recast" of the primary control, defining it as "the unknown and unseen self-righting and self-healing mechanism that can be restored and vitalized."
In sum, Mr. Kingsley has presented the primary control—which Alexander wrote extensively about and considered central to his technique—with an ill-defined mystical force which, accordingly, Alexander must have unwittingly stumbled upon and mistaken for a certain relativity of the head, neck and back.
Ironically, it is in The Use of the Self where Alexander wrote of discovering the necessity to first free his neck in seeking a better condition for his vocal apparatus, since that was the sine qua non of taking his head forward and up, of widening the back, and so forth, which are in turn the necessary conditions of freedom and stability in the limbs. This is the genesis of Alexander's use of the word "primary" in describing the head-neck-back relationship, and in my experience, as in Alexander's, it holds true: the sequence of directions given to oneself matters greatly, since tense feet, for example, can hardly flatten on the floor if the head is taken back and down, whereas the head can be taken "forward and up"1 to a fine degree even if there is tension in the lower extremities, particularly while sitting. Further, and maybe most significantly, the relativity of the head-neck-back rarely need change during any manner of activity, whereas the arms and legs are constantly bending, rising, stretching, and so on. Small wonder Alexander considered this relativity primary.
Of course, Kingsley is not wrong to point out the interdependence of all processes in the body. It is certainly true that undue tension in the feet creates a downward pull on the head, neck and back. Yet what is crucial to understand here is that in the context of learning and teaching the Alexander Technique, the primary control is an indispensable concept. It instructs the pupil to guide his or her attention through the body in the sequence most fit to facilitate proper relativity of all the parts, and it names succinctly that natural, visible, dynamic yet enduring relativity of the head, neck and back observable in little children and animals as well as many great musicians and athletes. Thus Kingsley discards a practical concept in favor of a truism about "interdependence;" and so we come to his second, graver error.
Direction
Here it begins to seem that what Kingsley writes of in his introduction is not the Alexander Technique at all, but in fact the Kingsley Technique, since he has redefined not only the primary control, but two other conceptual pillars of the technique: inhibition and direction.
First, he takes aim at direction, neglecting to elucidate Alexander's own definition of the concept before setting out the axiom that "aiming for postural improvements using postural directions leads to a bodymind[sic] attitude of effort and trying, which simply reinforces the problem." Dismissing as superfluous all "ideas and images about heads, necks and backs," he declares that "the trying[sic] self is the obstacle, and the shift towards a non-trying[sic] self is the solution." Finally, he offers his own definition of the directions as "the natural flow of energy and vibrancy that exists within the organism," directions which are interfered with "when we are in a condition of stress and reactivity."
Here, again, Kingsley takes a practical concept which Alexander developed based on careful observation of his own muscular action, and replaces it with a kind of mystical or spiritual phenomenon which, implicitly, only the initiated can perceive.2 Thus the famous directions are not, as Alexander described repeatedly, a series of mental orders or intentions projected to oneself before and during muscular activity along lines one has reasoned out in advance, but a "natural flow of energy and vibrancy"—just as the primary control is not, as Alexander saw it, a concrete, observable relativity of the head, neck and back, but an "unknown and unseen self-righting and self-healing mechanism." These pseudo-spiritual definitions do a massive disservice to neophyte readers, and reveal Kingsley's muddled seeing in relation to the central problem addressed by the Alexander Technique: how to shed habit and coordinate the bodymind through reasoned conception and conscious awareness.
But for a moment let us leave aside direction, since a subtler and more misleading error still lurks in Kingsley's presentation: his dismissal of conception itself. He explicitly warns that "ideas, concepts and cognitive efforts reinforce the very mental instrument that is the problem in the first place," he advises us to simply trust that "the prevention or inhibition[sic] of reaction, maintains or liberates this stream of energy [or direction] in the body."
To understand Kingsley's error, we must return to Alexander. In Man's Supreme Inheritance, Alexander sets out four stages to the "performance of any muscular action by conscious guidance and control:"

1. The conception of the movement required;
2. The inhibition of erroneous preconceived ideas which subconsciously suggest the manner in which the movement or series of movements should be performed;
3. The new and conscious mental orders which will set in motion the muscular mechanism essential to the correct performance of the action;
4. The movements (contractions and expansions) of the muscles which carry out the mental orders.

Alexander considered "conception of the movement required" the very first stage in his technique, to precede even inhibition. Thus he made clear, if indirectly, that in the context of his technique, clear conception is essential to achieving a desired end. Incidentally, this is a fact any competent artist can attest to; if a composition is not unambiguously understood and organized within one's memory, it cannot be brought to fruition. Even the most simple act, such as extending one's arm to grasp a nearby object, requires a detailed conception of distance, weight, strength, and so forth; if the object turns out to be heavier than expected, the conception of these variables and their relation to one another, and hence the muscular action, must change. This is direction in action, albeit subconscious.
Yet Kingsley belittles conception, instead leaning on concepts like "ease," "letting go" "acceptance," and the like. He is not alone in this among teachers, but in my opinion, they overlook the influence of what Alexander termed "erroneous beliefs," a concept closely related to that of "unreliable sensory appreciation." Both could be read in the spiritual lexicon alongside "letting go," etc.; but that would place their referent outside the realm of what words and concepts can describe. On the contrary, Alexander was pointing to something concrete and empirically observable: to errors of spatio-motor perception able to be observed phenomenologically and in other people's behavior; not to transcendent truths about observation itself. Thus the classic example of an Alexandrian "erroneous belief" is a person who raises their arm and believes their shoulder has remained still when it has not. The key for the pupil in this instance is to gain an accurate conception5 of their own muscular action, in reference to bodily sensations; not to simply "let go" or "do nothing."3 And this conception must come about through active tutelage—e.g. Alexander Technique lessons—or, dare I say, the way Alexander himself did it: by reasoned experimentation, conceiving hypotheses based on careful register and analysis of his own sensations, and also by watching the behavior of others. John Dewey called the technique scientific for a reason.
All of this is not to understate the importance of concepts like "release" and "effortlessness," including in the context of the Alexander Technique. Seeing more or less what is meant by them is doubtless the key to mastery of all activities, all practices, all techniques. Yet those spiritual concepts should not blot out the very concrete technique Alexander developed for improving what he called "the use of the self:" that coordination of the muscular system, achieved through conscious reason, which influences for better or worse the functioning of the whole organism.4
Inhibition
So much for direction. What about inhibition? Under the heading "Inhibition and Non-Doing," Kingsley describes Alexander's understanding of inhibition as "an artificial pause between stimulus and reaction," after which he could "give directions to himself." Then he lays down the gauntlet, stating that in the "real world […] life does not offer us the choice to inhibit:" since according to neuroscience research, "neural reactions take milliseconds and are faster than conscious thought processes." In other words, "we either react to the stimulus, or not." So, with inhibition proven impossible, Kingsley is left with no choice but to "reformulate" another of Alexander's concepts, offering us a supposedly scientifically enlightened6 view that inhibition is really "a quality of non-doing[sic] that needs to be already available in the organism before the receipt of a stimulus." This is "a way of being[sic] rather than a way of doing[sic]."
This Kingsleyan inhibition turns out to be the essence of the technique, since it is this very "condition of non-doing[sic]" the teacher is supposed to transmit, through a touch Kingsley describes as "a dance of poetry and a symphony of silence." With it, the teacher imparts a "deep sense of acceptance" by which "change emerges in the pupil."7 He goes on to compare the Alexander Technique to "Zen Buddhism, mindfulness and the philosophy of non-duality," identifying the uniqueness of the Alexander Technique in "the transmission of immediate experience." In fact, there is no Alexander Technique as such, but only inhibition:
The Chinese Tao has a concept of Wu Wei[sic], which translates as surrendering to the effortless flow of life[sic], or non-doing[sic] action. Ultimately, the Alexander Technique needs to reinvent itself and relinquish the Technique. The Alexander Teacher really teaches nothing[sic!]. But this nothing or emptiness is in fact the deepest essence of being and the fullness of life. Like grace, it drops onto us and into us when the conditions are ripe.
The problem is that Alexander's own writings indicate that inhibition is not a "quality," a "condition," or a "surrendering to the effortless flow of life." On the contrary, according to Universal Constant in Living, it is "the act of refusing to respond to the primary desire to gain an end, [which] becomes the act of responding (volitionary act) to the conscious reasoned desire to employ the means whereby that end may be gained." As clear as day: inhibition is an action in response to the stimulus of conscious desire: a conscious, continuing refusal to do a thing the way one normally does it. Alexander saw that this inhibitory act had to precede in every instance any attempt to change his habits. Everyone is well familiar with the inhibitory act. The act of not indulging an immediate desire, however small, is it. So, inhibition is not an "artificial pause," but a phenomenologically observable process within the organism, a process that can be made habitual through practice. It is no more abstract and transcendent than blinking or moving one's finger.7
Here Kingsley again takes something ordinary and concrete and makes it mystical, going so far as to "relinquish the Technique." The trouble is that there is a good reason the Alexander Technique came to be known as such. A technique is a skillful way of doing something; a mental tool; a procedure. Ways of doing can be found everywhere: techniques for dance, for romance, for healing, even for attaining nirvana or enlightenment. Each has a goal in mind and is based on what worked in the past; each resorts to concepts to explain itself; each prescribes action, or doing something a certain way. Yet Kingsley dismisses the idea of doing anything at all. Equating the Alexander Technique with "nothing," he tosses out the concepts Alexander spent decades refining, when Alexander's genius was precisely to conceive a useful, coherent way of doing things through patient observation of the phenomena he termed inhibition, direction, primary control, and the rest.
So, the technique may encompass all the acts of living, but it is still a technique. Alexander often used the term "procedure" to describe it, and I think procedure is as apt a word as any to describe the application of his technique to the acts of living. He constantly stressed the technique's sequential, stepwise nature and recorded countless practical examples of it in action, both in hypotheticals and accounts of lessons. The technique is not a metaphysics or a philosophy like non-duality; it is a practical procedure with a clear purpose: restoring
advantageous, natural relativity of the head, neck and back.
Conclusion
The technique is blindingly simple but surprisingly subtle and difficult to master; and, as far as I am aware, it is unique. Unfortunately, Kingsley is not alone in overlooking the uniqueness and subtleties of the technique in favor of spiritual truisms and platitudes. I suspect there are two main reasons for this.
The first is the tendency of serious pupils of the technique to become more open to "spirituality," both philosophically (e.g. non-duality) and in terms of sadhana (e.g. meditation, yoga, self-inquiry). Many are enthusiastic about the similarities between the Alexander Technique and, for example, mindfulness practice. It is certainly true that the technique requires the pupil to have some degree of "mindfulness," or the ability to realize when the mind has wandered; and it is also true that a few people who devote themselves to the technique come upon some of the same insights one might find in spiritual practice. Yet spiritual insight is not the purpose of the technique. In my opinion, the Alexander Technique is a relative of energy practices such as Hatha yoga, qigong, and TRE (trauma release exercises). Such techniques are often used in tandem with spiritual practices meant for the cultivation of insight, but their purpose has traditionally been preparatory and salutary, not "spiritual." One need not stray too esoteric to encounter the idea that the real goal of spirituality has nothing to do with "ways of doing." On the other hand, Qigong explicitly aims to regulate qi in the body; kundalini yoga is concerned with the flow of prana; the Alexander Technique seeks to restore the good use of the primary control. More practically, the technique teaches mental discipline, and ultimately the ability of the nervous system to regulate itself. Such a practice may lay the groundwork for spiritual realization, but it is by no means indistinguishable from it.
While there is no point speculating about Alexander's private insights, one thing can be certain: he left us a definite procedure with a practical, concrete purpose—not a transcendental one. Yet Kingsley's introduction continually implies the Alexander Technique is an essentially spiritual practice with heavenly fruit. Disparaging the core concepts that constitute the Alexander Technique, he invites us instead to simply "surrender," "let go in faith," and blindly trust that its real essence—nothing less than Wu Wei—will be transmitted through the "rare, "unconditional" touch of the teacher.
The second, more obvious reason Alexander has been so misunderstood is that he rarely wrote concisely, and in any case, recognition and conception of the primary control can never be refined through words, but only through unfamiliar sensory experiences—either reasoned out, as Alexander did, or in the hands of a good teacher. Hence there is more than a kernel of truth to Kingsley's view of the "supreme value of guidance with the hands;" yet I differ from him in that I insist the Alexander Technique cannot be divorced from intellectual understanding and, indeed, conception.
The Use of the Self and Alexander's other works certainly were not without their flaws, but at their best they illuminate concepts which are nuanced, rich, and useful when applied. Primary control, direction and inhibition are three such concepts. Whatever their flaws, Alexander's books point the way to a wonderful technique, and they deserve thoughtful, probing introductions like Dewey's—not dismissals.
1 Like many other Alexandrian terms, the concrete meaning of "forward and up" seems incredibly controversial among Alexander Technique teachers. While I conceive it roughly as freedom of the atlanto-occipital joint, the term cannot be understood in isolation from the rest of the parts—namely, from one's conception of the primary control. It seems to experience it, one must discover it, as Alexander did, or be shown it by a teacher.
2 This is not to say there are not phenomena only some people perceive.
3An overemphasis on "letting go" and the like obscures the fact that Alexander always described the technique as consisting of stages or sequential steps, which in my opinion constitute the "means whereby" he wrote of.
4 "Use of the self" is another problematic term. Related to the concept of "good form" and "good technique" among athletes and musicians, it refers essentially to coordination of the musculature along reasoned lines, which is not separate from conception of the primary control. Equal and opposite is the term "misuse," since one's idea of misuse depends on one's idea of good use. Different teachers understand the term differently. Kingsley states that "bodily tensions and distortions become fixed and reinforced as we react to the general stimuli of living." True enough. Yet he goes on to imply it is associated only with fear, anxiety and distress. Again he couples this concept to the language of contemporary spirituality, trumpeting that it "alienates us from our own true nature." This is to completely ignore the point Alexander returned to again and again in his own writing: that the use of the self is inextricably linked with conception. No doubt, tension and imbalance are very often inextricable from fear. But there may be another class of misuse: one based on misconceptions about the body, unexamined movement patterns from childhood which have little or nothing to do with manifestations of stress or emotions in the body. I suspect one may experience profound psychophysical quietude yet still tend to throw their head back and down in relation to their neck and back, especially in movement.
5Kingsley writes that the teacher's touch indicates the "negation of trying and doing within the pupil." Even a token mention of guidance viz. the relativity of the body parts is nowhere to be found. Yet in my opinion this discussion of touch is misleading, since nothing like it can be found at all in Alexander's writings. On the contrary, Alexander stressed that the teacher's role was to demonstrate manually the proper relativity of the pupil's parts, with the means whereby of the technique; not to transmit "a way of being," nor indeed enlightenment or gnosis.
6 Neuroscientific findings relating to will and volition have proliferated in recent years. They may raise fundamental questions about the nature of self and will, but in my opinion they have little to do with the Alexander Technique, no more than they do with dancing or playing an instrument. If there are really recognizable activities Alexander termed "inhibition" and "direction," then his writings are timeless, since they speak from direct observation and experiment, not philosophy about "free will" and the like.
7 In spiritual literature one encounters, almost universally, the idea that there is no "doer" of action, or no "doer" but God. Hence Kingsley is implying that Alexandrian inhibition is somehow related to this concept, which Buddha famously summarized: "Events happen, deeds are done, but there is no doer thereof." In my opinion, the Alexander Technique has nothing more to do with this than does reading, writing, or playing a game. There may be "procedures followed, but no follower thereof."

I love running my family through the old 1E Tales of the Outer Planes. It's the first D&D book I ever purchased, so the nostalgia is great, but some parts need more than just a stat update. Some need to be completely gutted and rewritten. Case in point: The Castle at the Edge of Time, an adventure for low-level PC's in the Deep Ethereal.
SUMMARY
Centuries ago, the legendary Sapphire Mage Aionias and his apprentice Montgomery built a castle in the Ethereal, near a color curtain to the Demiplane of Time. In this way, they could conduct experiments without interruption and warn unwary travelers away from the dangerous demiplane. Eventually, Aionias pronounced Montgomery's training complete, departed beyond the veil of Time, and hasn't been seen since. Montgomery assumed the mantle of the Sapphire Mage and continued his mentor's investigations.
Recently, the castle and the curtain have begun drifting towards each other, necessitating a change of address. The Sapphire Mage has decided that the city of Arabel would make an ideal headquarters and has offered a considerable sum for it. The party is sent as bodyguards of the mayor's envoy Lady Cheodot to decline as diplomatically as possible.
But Cheodot is secretly working for the The Zhentarim, and begins negotiations for the sale, hoping the Mage will enforce his condition that Arabel's citizenry be removed. It is up to the party to convince the Mage to withdraw his offer, simultaneously protecting him from Cheodot's treachery and increasingly murderous intrigues.
TAKEAWAYS
I love this setting, I love the focus on diplomacy (this adventure actually introduces the idea of a diplomacy 'proficiency'!) but the central plot engine of a well-meaning archmage asking a capital city to just up and move their populace is just psychotic. It's only exacerbated by having the negotiations take place alone in the castle, so that when "someone" alters the Mage's summoning circle in an attempt to kill him, the suspect list is exactly two people, one of whom has been acting extremely sketchy.
Once I realized a rewrite is in order, I knew I wanted a LOT of diplomats, with a full murder mystery among them. I like homages, it's practically a private game with me to keep as much of the original material as possible, so I'll probably keep Lady Cheodot and the Zhentarim as the villains. My oldest son's PC is a skilled diplomat (Order of the eel cavalier) so I'll have one of the parties tap him as their representative.
Other things I might want to keep:
• Ether golems - ten of them, color coded for convenience, one of them is a passable cook, but WHAT ARE THEY??
• Aionias' return - he's apparently some kind of human-shaped "hole in the ether"? Mute? No stats, all pathos? Portent of warning?
• Jacktooth - a battered short sword from a previous adventure that awakens to a powerful enchantment on the Ethereal plane, because...sure.
• The Castle - Needs a map, badly. And if Monty earned the name Sapphire Mage a century ago, why are Aionias' rooms still off limits?
• The Sapphire Mage: supposedly an important title that we've never heard of before or since. Since the color curtain is silver and pearl, the title has nothing to do with that. Maybe there should be a sapphire artifact that they attune to?
• Death by Sabotage: I like the idea of Cheodot using acid to ruin a summoning circle, leading to combat with summoned creatures.
Things I want to add:
• Chronomancy connection: this is way before the chronomancy book, so it can't be faulted, but the Sapphire Mage is obviously a chronomancer role.
• Context: there ought to be references to how others have exploited chronomancy recently, especially Vecna. For their own time travel, someone might direct the PC's to the tomb of Chronos.
• Variety: the other diplomats and visitors should include sphinxes, spellweavers, mercane, devils, modrons, time dragons, royal dimensionals, geniekind, etc.
• Suspects: the Ravenloft netbook adventure Feasting With Falcons did it best. It's really my go-to for how to do a murder mystery.
Most of all, I need something for them to debate about, but I have only the basic shape for that. Something that would draw lots of factions together, and get them debating hotly enough to create logical suspects when someone dies. My youngest boy is playing a machinesmith, and the EULA I created for one of his magi-techno devices mentions the authority of "Astral Sea, the Rock of Bral, the City at the Edge of Time, the Shadow Proclamation, The City of Doors, the Midnight Market," so I'd love to see the formation of a City at the Edge of Time as a result of these negotiations.
Finally...the Chronomancy manual says there IS no Demiplane of Time, and that previous references to it were mistaken. So, if that's the case, what IS this place with the pearl-and-silver curtain, and why would it be mistaken for a Demiplane of Time? Whatever it is, could it be a resource that could be shared by a variety of factions, necessitating the creation of a city? If some part of Aionias returns as in the original, could he work with his apprentice to create a bulwark against the expanding curtain, to protect the incipient City?

we are so poorly evolved. i envy the creatures of wild nature that do not trouble themselves with adapting an inessentially complicated way of life. i envy the pack animals that assign roles for their community and commit to them. i envy the lone wolves that need not be taught how to make friends, do their taxes, or get a job — they have simplicity and its instinctual instruction emerges from within. humans are helpless, codependent, breakable, foolish, destructive. we leave our children behind, and they’d die. and they do. we make the wrong move, and a youth is traumatized for life. is there no potential mutation to protect us? from the world and from ourselves?
this all links back to today. i asked my mother if she could help me with something. she said yes. i further asked when she could help me, as it was something important and required for my job. she refused to give an estimate of when, just mumbled “i don’t know” “maybe soon” “….” i mentioned again, i kind of needed to know a precise date so i can make plans. she ignored me and looked at her phone for a while. i patiently asked again, she got angry, started yelling, saying i blame her for everything. i never said such a thing. i remind her that i’m not attacking her, i just needed confirmation. she says to leave her alone, and that she doesn’t feel like it anymore. i mention how this isn’t healthy and yelling isn’t necessary, how it makes me sad that i’ve been unable to practice proper conflict resolution in my life due to never learning it at home, and that it’s best to talk out the problem that isn’t as big as it seems. she says “my head hurts, i need to lie down.” she goes down to take a nap, and i bring her our cat, and it’s like all is forgotten in smiles.
is she bipolar? crazy rollercoaster of a post i know. i never interact with anybody like i do my mother. i like to hope it’s made me able to avoid these types of situations by knowing what isn’t stable behavior. it’s like i’m walking on eggshells and the prospect of asking for any favor sets her off. but yeah, looks like i’m not unlearning the “sleep away the pain” lifestyle anytime soon. that’s all she does. if anything makes her question herself and her behavior too hard, she would rather be unconscious. what a pitiful existence to lead. i work on my self improvement daily, promised myself i would never be so miserable. when i was little, she would sleep all day unless she was at work, and avoid talking to me. she doesn’t remember any of this of course. she claims to have taught me a lot. i mostly remember a lot of confusion and neglect and silence. sometimes i wonder if she’ll develop dementia or something else when she gets old, since her childhood and failed choices bother her so much. i think of this tweet i saw the other day, that said we aren’t here to parent our parents. that we cannot change their ways or help them be better when they don’t want to be. but it is so hard to resist when you’re watching an adult have an inner 5 year old’s tantrum. if i could afford to distance myself from their implosion i would. it’s a shame that humans are even allowed to procreate when they haven’t healed themselves beforehand. if only that was the order of nature. thoughtlessly passing along flawed dangerous dna has ruined us all.
but the moral of the story is: i hate how much you have to rely on other humans. how much you are at the mercy of your parents. how you are expected to accomplish everything by yourself but are given no tools or paths to doing so. how my mother secretly doesn’t want her children to ever be capable of moving out of her home - she wants slaves to gain help from instead. how during the brief summer when i lived with other relatives, she said i abandoned her, when it’s her husband who doesn’t pay the bills. i fear i’ll never be able to support myself, and i hate how i barely even want to, because i don’t even want to be here in the first place.

The website GotQuestions.org includes an attempt to construct a single coherent story about the events that surround the resurrection of Jesus based on the gospels. Let us look at the difficulties that arise.
Can the various resurrection accounts from the four Gospels be harmonized?

In the battle with skeptics regarding Jesus’ resurrection, Christians are in a "no-win" situation. If the resurrection accounts harmonize perfectly, skeptics will claim that the writers of the Gospels conspired together.

How is that not a win? Regardless of how the writers managed it, at least they would have managed to tell a consistent story that has the possibility of being accurate to actual events, as opposed to telling inconsistent stories that cannot all be true. Even if they conspired to make this happen, that does not make their story false, but telling inconsistent stories does absolutely make their stories false.

If the resurrection accounts have some differences, skeptics will claim that the Gospels contradict each other and therefore cannot be trusted.

For good reason. If their stories are different, then they cannot all be true. The real no-win situation for apologists comes from the fact that they are tasked with defending a Bible that contains inconsistent stories, and there is no hope of getting around that inconvenient fact.

However, even if the resurrection accounts cannot be perfectly harmonized, that does not make them untrustworthy.

The important thing is that we are all aware that the gospel stories got some details wrong. How trusting we are going to be after that is a matter for each of us to determine for ourselves. If we want to believe fantastical stories about miracles from unreliable narrators, no one is going to stop us.

The central truths - that Jesus was resurrected from the dead and that the resurrected Jesus appeared to many people - are clearly taught in each of the four Gospels.

No doubt the writers want us to believe in that. That is their religion. In the same way, Scientologists want us to believe in thetans. This does not make Scientologists trustworthy, and it does not make the gospel writers trustworthy.

To how many women did Jesus appear, and to whom did He appear first? (While each Gospel has a slightly different sequence to the appearances, none of them claims to be giving the precise chronological order.)

If any of them tell the events in the wrong order, that would be an error. It is exactly this sort of error that proves they are not infallible.

An angel descends from heaven, rolls the stone away, and sits on it. There is an earthquake, and the guards faint (Matthew 28:2-4). The women arrive at the tomb and find it empty.

In other words, GotQuestions.org has determined that the women were not there to see the stone roll away, despite the way Matthew 28 is written to make it sound like they were there. Matthew 28 says this:

After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. Suddenly there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, rolled away the stone, and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards trembled in fear of him and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified."

If the women were not there, then from where did the writer hear about this event? Did the writer conduct an interview with the guards, or with the angels? If so, it is unfortunate that the writer did not record the words of what the actual witness said, and instead we get this second-hand account. It seems especially doubtful that the guards were in any condition to be reliable witnesses after they had become like dead men. Or are we to suppose that the writer was actually one of the guards, since GotQuestions has decided that they were the only humans to witness this event.

Mary Magdalene leaves the other women there and runs to tell the disciples (John 20:1-2).

This is really butchering the narrative of Matthew. That story mentions only two women, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, and outright says that the angel speaks to "the women" who surely must be at least the only two women that were mentioned, but GotQuestions has declared that Mary Magdalene stayed just long enough to see the tomb was empty, but not long enough to hear what the angel said. Somehow she managed to get close enough to the tomb to convince herself that the body was nowhere to be found in there, while for some reason the angel waits quietly, and only once Magdalene is gone does the angel tell the remaining women what happened to the body. There is no hint that any of that is a reasonable possibility from reading Matthew 28.

The women leave to bring the news to the disciples (Matthew 28:8).

Not according to Mark 16:8. "And in their fear they did not say a word to anyone."

Peter and John run to the tomb, see that it is empty, and find the grave clothes (Luke 24:12; John 20:2-10).

According to Luke, this is not supposed to happen until after Magdalene has told the apostles about the resurrection. Luke very particularly says that Magdalene was among the women who told the apostles about the resurrection after being told about it by the angels. But according to GotQuestions, Magdalene still does not know about it because GotQuestions needs to keep Magdalene in the dark until Jesus appears to her. It is ironic that Magdalene is mentioned as being present in all four gospels, even thought the gospels feel free to omit mentioning some women who were supposedly there, and yet GotQuestions has to find a way to keep Magdalene from witnessing anything interesting until later.

Just another fun little story idea I had. I am still working on Humans are the violent ones but I like to bounce around and experiment with ideas to see what I really like. I also suck at writing more casual stories, as they give me severe writer's block as I try to map out how to make a scene feel genuine in my head, but I promise I'll update that soon. If you like this story and want to see more, then like and comment. I'll gladly continue this series as well.
Start of Personal Log
Humans don't like being told what to do. They don't like being commanded, put in their place, or snubbed. It was an inexorable, inalienable trait of humans, at least any noteable humans, to go against any authority that they believed was against their interests.
Humanity would not fit amongst the stars. Few ever did. It was a trait of most successful species to be willful, ambitious, and to desire more. But once they reached the stars the new (and simultaneously very old) pecking order either quashed any spirit such species had or simply eradicated them. Countless tomb worlds and diaspora served as painful reminders of what became of the nails that chose to stick out. The hammer of order would always strike. There could be no compromise, the very soul of the authority that held the Jurisdiction together relied on a show of unmatched power, or at least the illusion of item.
In reality, the Jurisdiction was an old, fat, and lazy beast. It filled its belly on the corpses of empires far and wide, and sated its bloodlust on the shattered dreams of hopeful cubs. It had every right to, for none could challenge it: there were no new frontiers to explore, nor were there any other enemies to conquer. The Milky Way, as humans had so strangely dubbed our cradle galaxy, as well as Andromeda, had long since been warred over and settled for millennia before humanity had arrived, bright-eyed and with familiar yet otherwise foolish dreams of cooperation and prosperity. The Jurisdiction did not cooperate, nor did it ensure prosperity. Oh, it claimed it did, but in reality it simply took. The rest was just the peace that came with not being the direct target of the biggest fish in the pond. The humans didn't like that, but they had no choice.
Slavery was a common tribute. The Jurisdiction had no use for other resources: it simply took. No, it wanted those who could facilitate that unequal exchange, those raised in a world where the only morality was the one set by your lord. The Jurisdiction was held together by expectations, obligations, and dury more than any kind of shared dream, so when you were ordered to take you did so without question. Humanity was new: they had no niche or value that set them apart, but they had a penchant for killing and taking, so the Jurisdiction gave them a taste of how the galaxy worked. They killed and they took. The humans didn't like that, but what choice did they have?
Humans were strange. They learned, but not in the way most species learned. Most species learned to adapt in a passive way, to adhere to the world around them. They flowed like water, moving past and around obstacles and confirming to the boxes they were assigned too. Humans didn't confirm, nor did they adapt: they made their circumstances fit their desires. They would not move around obstacles, but rather smash through them, and they refused to stay in one box for too long. The Jurisdiction merely saw them as a particularly loud nuisance, but those who faced their wrath knew better.
It is said that when a beast seeks to make an example, it shall humble its rival by killing it's cubs. Children were one of those universal constants that brought entire communities together: the Sok’klar saw their hatchlings as gifts, shaped by the fruitful currents of the universe in perfect harmony. The Yarrack saw each and every newborn whelp as an uncut gemstone, ready to be shaped into something magical. Humanity oftentimes referred to their offspring as angels, or spirits of unbridled good sent by the gods themselves. Children were seen by most of the galaxy as gifts.
The Jurisdiction saw them as a lever to inflict suffering. It had become quite effective at enacting psychological punishments on those that stood up and spoke out. You dare to disobey? You believe you can speak out? Your gifts shall be taken from you, and you shall be without joy.
Humans didn't like this, but the Jurisdiction would have their pound of flesh, and humankind would kneel. And they did. But humans were patient creatures: most species who retained that trait of willful spit also lacked patience.
I had long since become desensitized to the Jurisdiction’s actions: it was simply how the universe worked now, as if it were a constant akin to gravity. Cruelty was the unspoken rule of this seemingly unending age, where our lives never appeared to move forward or backwards, only lay dormant. The Jurisdiction had been the unyielding authority that ruled the galaxy for thousands of years, venerable yet feared all the same.
And for the longest time I was just another cog in its wheel. My name is Kalnuracht Sedjuur-Noumar VII, and was the scion of the noble house Sedjuur-Noumar. I was born into what most would describe as veiled apathy, living a life that could be attributed to the privileged class of feared scribes that enacted the will of those above. I was an administrator and nothing more. And now I am doomed to be far less than that in the eyes of my former constituents within the endless administration. I am the only scion, as is tradition, and without an heir I am the last of my house, our name to be scrubbed from the records, worthless, meaningless, and forgotten.
I am merely Kalnuracht, nothing else and nothing more. I have seen from their eyes, the eyes of the downtrodden, and it makes my crimes of association with the Jurisdiction feel all the more damning on my worthless soul. I am worthless to the world, and this is my story.
End Personal Log #1
Start of Neural Lace Narrative Log #1
They came from the black like carrion birds in the night, encircling our convoy as if it were a dying animal ready to be picked clean without remorse. There was no warning, no list of demands sent out as civilized peoples did, nor was there either any requirement for unconditional surrender nor chance to parlay, as was done so under letter of marque: this was an unmistakable call for violence and nothing else. They sought to reduce us to slag and scavenge the rest.
So, as one would expect, the entire bridge of the ship was nearing a panicked state. This was not the actions of those practicing civility, but rather the common behaviors of despoiling barbarians, the kind that tore their way through the dark reaches of the galaxy as if they owned it.
“Wayfinder, what do your probes see?” Shouted the ship’s sovereign. He was an older Kar’Rowmach, an amphibious cephalopod species with a venerable history within the Jurisdiction going back thousands of years. Normally one such as him would be above me if it weren't for the fact that I was under the authority of the Jurisdiction’s seal of office. He didn't like me very much, but most of his kind shared the same sentiment.
“All dark, honorable Sovereign: the sensor arrays are wailing but the feedback we're reviewing is beyond incomprehensible,” the wayfinder replied with a certain restrained temper in his voice. The Sok'klar wayfinder swayed gently, his tentacled limbs grasping different metallo-liquid braille output arrays, the liquid gallium flexing and reshaping unnaturally to allow him to to take in multiple different sources of sensory output at once, with the primary navigation computer plugged into the cybernetics surrounding his opaque, gelatinous head and plugging directly into his tube-shaped brain.
The Sovereign cursed in Loskat and pointed to his bridge crew while I simply sat in the back, near the Sovereign’s symbolic throne. “Prepare countermeasures and spool up the warp drive, we cannot allow the amanuensis to be taken! He carries sensitive information that only he can translate and transcribe!”
As the bridge crew nodded and began fiddling with their own systems, I preened my feathered hide anxiously. I wasn't a fighter: us nobles of the cloth were the educated minority above all else, not those who waged war or partook in hard labor. Special cybernetics in my brain allowed me to translate triple-encoded messages that usually took a ducal signet codekey or above to parse, but even without that I was a skilled mathematician and logician. I had terabytes worth of knowledge stored within the hardware installed in my head, all well protected of course, but if I were to die it would still be a waste. I could only imagine the damage any malcontenders could do with it if they were able to get their filthy hands on me.
Suddenly, the ship rocked, and the gallium overhead display began to form crescendos like I'd never seen before. “Sovereign, decks A-3 through C-12 are venting atmosphere and our coolant systems have been obliterated,” the Wayfinder spoke in an almost serene voice, as if he was completely unconcerned by current events. I knew they were simply incapable of tonal displays, but it was unnerving nonetheless. “Once we jump, we will not be able to risk another until the vacuum of the void can reduce temperatures to acceptable levels within the plasma capacitors.”
“Damn them,” the armored nautiloid hissed, his barbed feelers coiling in frustration, “May the currents take them. What are our options? what can we see? This fleet cannot fall to the void today, not with such vital cargo.” My hackles rose lightly at the Kar’Rowmach referred to me as some object rather than an esteemed amanuensis of the Jurisdiction, but I bit my forked tongue. Now was not the time to squabble with the sovereign over who was what and what titles I deserved, not while he was so desperately attempting to keep what semblance of order within his fleet that he had left.
I could not blame the crew for being panicked either: wars were practically mythologized now, having been long since rendered obsolete with the rise of the Jurisdiction, and that felt like an eternity ago. Now, either being levied into or joining a ducal naval force was simply another career, more akin to serving as an officer of the law rather than a fully fledged soldier. Minimal training was required, most of it being the technicals of one's duty rather than any kind of combat conditioning, so expecting a fleet to actually be prepared for a combat scenario in a universe where peace was the norm was laughable.
“We are practically blind, Sovereign,” stated the Sok'klar Wayfinder, “our probes are offline, and shipboard graviton displacement sensory arrays have been rendered unreliable at best.”
“What about the particle emission array? Has there been a spike in radioactivity where we were hit?”
The Wayfinder seemed to think for a second, his gelatinous form flexing and morphing a bit before answering. “Affirmative, a jump from negligible to forty billion becquerels along decks A through E-5 on our starboard side.”
“Torpedoes…” the Sovereign hissed, stroking his barbed feelers, “Human Torpedoes. Only those primitives would rely on crude nuclear warheads.” He then turned to his militant leaders on the ship. “Noddos, Rel’ads: organize your phalanxes and prepare to repel boarders. We are bound to be assailed by those rancorous primates, and I want their skulls piled at my feet if they dare set foot on our ship.”
“Your wish is our command, Sovereign,” the two militant commanders spoke as one. Noddos, a large bipedal with multiple sets of curved spines running down his back, a pair of graceful horns sprouting from his head, and multiple rows of sharp teeth in his snout, bowed first, followed by Rel’ads, a marsupial with long saberteeth and thick fur. They both must have been fierce warriors in their own right to each lead a phalanx. They wore thick, semi-powered armor and held dueling polearms alongside their usual plasma casters, and seemed completely unfazed by the situation we were in. As they stomped out of the brightly lit bridge, I let out a quiet squawk of discontentment. “Sovereign, why haven't we jumped again? We are wasting precious time.”
“I am working on it, you spineless beaurocrat!” He warbled back, his feelers tensing in anger, “besides, it's not as if you're the one who will be spilling blood today, amanuensis, so flatten your wretched beak or I shall weld it shut with a plasma torch.
I was about to reply with something indignant, but the ship rocked again, this time causing the lights to flicker and the air to become… thick. The skin under my feathers began to blister, and I became lightheaded and confused. “Seal the damnable vents, initiate radiation scrubbers, and activate secondary life support!” Shouted the Sovereign, “Their nuclear weapons are rendering the ship inhospitable!”
I coughed up magenta blood accidentally, and I could feel more seeping from under my eyes. Some of the crew was in a similar position, but others were more resistant to radiation than I. The Sok'klar seemed completely at ease as he ran his tentacles across his morphic braille arrays before calmly announcing the ship’s status. “I've regained some control over our probes: ten, twelve, and seventeen are active and fully functional, the rest are either still malfunctioning or permanently inoperable. A rapid rise in localized radiation is also interfering with the detection of graviton displacement; we can't sense photon redirection, thus readings will remain inconclusive.
“Wayfinder, damn you, get me some kind of out here! We're easy prey until we can respond in kind!”
“Negative, something has gone awry with our processing hub, I am attempting to troubleshoot-”
And with that, the Wayfinder’s bulbous head exploded in a cascade of opaque lavender blood, covering the front half of the deck crew like a morbid art piece. Some of the crew screamed and shouted in terror before removing their cranial adaptors and choosing to interact with their displays manually. Others died just as quickly, unable to unplug in time as their brain stems fried or their blood boiled. It was a horrible way to go, having your insides neutralized by your own cybernetics, so I was glad I wasn't connected to the system.
“Cybernetic warfare! All systems are to be considered compromised, switch to manual settings or you'll be killed!”
The lights in the bridge flickered again, and the displays went haywire. The bridge crew, which obviously weren't acquainted with working without being hard-linked into the mainframe, moved at a much slower pace.
“Launch missile pods A through F and set to self-target after five hundred kilometers, then rely on their ballistic coordinates to begin firing broadsides! If we can't see the humans due to their meddling, we'll just have to feel them.” Shouted the Sovereign, “and got me a detailed report on the ship’s diagnostics readings. I need to know if this flagship is still capable of escaping or if we'll have to scuttle it and retreat on another.”
“Acknowledged, Sovereign, launching now,” affirmed another deck officer as he swiped across his own gallium output array. I could hear the dull thunk, thunk, thunk of missiles pushing out of their pods before racing off to their intended targets, then the mechanical whirring as the pods rotated to be reloaded by slaves in the lower decks. I was regaining my bearings as the many horrible sensations of being overwhelmed by radiation poisoning were beginning to subside, but I still felt as if I had been microwaved. The air was stale, the crew was horribly sick as well, and even the sovereign himself seemed to be on his last leg. I was beginning to believe that I might die here.
“Sovereign, a message from the lower decks,” shouted a communications officer, his chitin scraping against itself as he turned quickly, “they're requesting reinforcements, something about being overrun.”
“Impossible,” the Sovereign hissed out in a vain attempt to exude confidence, “We must outnumber the humans, they always go for bigger targets out of arrogance.”
“I've received reports that it's not just humans: the primates seem to make up only a third or so of the assailing force, along with some Phaeldaer and Vrex.”
The commander slammed his clawed hands down on his own output array in a fit of rage, obviously overwhelmed by the circumstances, “Then this wasn't just a typical assault, but something more sinister!” The nautiloid warbled, blood seeping from his shell as the full effects of the radiation took hold, “Get Rel’ads on the line, have him divert all spare lances to the lower decks or else we'll lose the only offensive capabilities we can use.”
“Rel'ads has gone dark, Sovereign, his vitals are critical.”
“Then either get me Rel'ads tail-leader or get me Noddos!” He screamed in rage, “don't give me this nonsense! If we don't pick it up we're all going to die, is that what you want?”
“No, Sovereign, I'm simply overwhelmed-”
“We're all overwhelmed! By the tides, I'm dying of radiation poisoning you nincompoop! Get me something I can work with!”
The officer didn't even acknowledge the Sovereign after that, simply turning back to his display. Eventually, the Sovereign was able to get Noddos on the line.
“Sovereign, two thirds of my phalanxes have been decimated by combat with the primitives and the radiation, the rest are in shambles. We must retreat and fortify elsewhere!”
“Then the ship is compromised! Rel'ads is unresponsive and the lower decks are swarming with intruders. We must evacuate the amanuensis to another ship.”
Just as the Sovereign spoke, I heard several gentle thumps rattle against the bridge’s door, and it made me uneasy. Some of the bridge crew seemed to feel the same, as they looked incredibly nervous and some even drew their sidearms. Just as the sovereign turned to give further orders, the door blew inward with a deafening explosion, followed by shouting and gunfire. Several of the bridge officers were dispatched quickly, brain matter and blood splattering against the delicate electronics. Others were shot in the legs, the torso, or in any other exotic yet non-vital body parts. The humans poured in, brandishing primitive ballistic firearms and jury-rigged energy weapons while wearing scavenged, legion-grade powered armor.
The Sovereign was the next to go, but he wasn't afforded an honorable death. He was shot along the arm with a particularly potent plasma caster, burning off his clawed hand and cauterizing the wound, the acrid smell of roasting chitin filling the already hot and cramped bridge. He fell back against his output array, the gallium reaching new highs and lows as more diagnostics and casualty reports were delivered, and he clutched his stump angrily. “I'll burn every last one of you in the foundries! I'll tie you to stakes, cover you in wax and set you alight! Your screams will be broadcasted all over the galaxy!”
One human warrior stomped up and slammed the butt of his rifle into the sovereign’s face, shattering his facial plates and causing blue blood to splatter across his section of the bridge. “Shut the fuck up, you mutant lobster,” the human said before dragging him by both antennae towards the center of the bridge and receiving a stained breeching axe from one of his comrades. “Emmanuel, start recording. We need proof.”
The other human nodded and pressed a button on his armor before lifting up his gun again. The rest of the humans fanned out, holding everyone else at gunpoint. I tried to get up and sneak out, but a human grabbed me by my neck and nearly wrung it out as he forced me to my knees and pointed a sidearm to my skull. “Get down, you piece of shit, before I blow your brains out too.”
“Damnable primate,” I hissed, but he bashed me in my skull with the base of his sidearm’s grip and sent me sprawling, making my already pounding headache worse. Another human shouted at him in a language I didn't recognize, but he sounded furious. The first brought me back up to my knees again, and I complies with a hiss and a groan, blood still leaking from my eyes and mouth and my world was spinning.
The Sovereign struggled, but he was weak from the radiation poisoning and he couldn't exactly resist on account of his lost arm. The human with the breaching ax kicked the Sovereign down and forced him to kneel before lifting up the breeching ax and splitting his chitinous head down the middle with one powerful swing, sending more blood and brains across the floor. “Execution confirmed, take his antennae just in case and we've got ourselves a bounty. Now all we need is that ugly cat’s teeth and the fat hedgehog-thing’s grimy spines and we'll be in business. Although, they do have skulls… we might as well just take their heads.”
The real horror of the situation dawned on me at that moment: they were going to kill us all, or maybe worse. They mentioned a bounty for the commanders, and multiple of the higher ranking ship officers were already dead, their brains splattered against the walls or their bodies torn apart by gunfire. I wasn't dead yet, but that didn't mean much since I wasn't an immediate threat.
“Alright, round them up and bring all the grunts to the hanger bay, then kill the rest,” the leader of the humans said in such a lackadaisical manner that his complete disregard for life almost made me sick… almost. I had seen worse from the Jurisdiction before, but usually that was from me delivering some kind of ordered judgment on a world that had sinned against order. I might have simply been the messenger, but I had seen many of the outcomes. “And make sure to collect whatever proof of bounties you can, we'll need to deliver them to the office to get cashed out. Don't let this be a repeat of last time where Juarez fucking forgot to take a few heads and it ended up cutting our profits in half, the fucking retard.”
Some of the humans chuckled at that as they dragged more of the senior officers away, out of the room and into the hall,where I heard gunshots. The rest of the bridge crew froze in place, different fear instincts kicking in. The remaining Sok'klar corralled together into what seemed to be a singular, semi-congealed mass as if to try and trick the humans into believing that they were much bigger and much more threatening than they actually were. The one Thei’chi on the bridge, an ensign who had clearly thought this would be a simple mission, bore her curved fangs at the humans and growled as they approached, her hackles completely vertical and her eyes dilated. They quickly muzzled and bound her before beating her over the head with a gun stock, sending her sprawling onto the ground. Many others simply cooperated, eyes wide and yet simultaneously empty, as if they couldn't quite process that the ship had been taken and the commanding officers were being executed as the rest were escorted to the hangar.
“Get the damn messenger down to the hanger as well, we need whatever data's in his ugly lizard head, then we can decide on what to do with him.”
I spat at him in spite, as if to try and seem brave, but it was clearly an empty gesture. “You won't get anything, primate! You couldn't possibly crack the encryption!”
The human holding me seemed to wind up for another swing, but the commanding officer simply held up his hand to stop my tormentor before strolling over to me. He knelt down and removed his helmet, revealing a beige-colored face covered in scars, wiry black hair cut down to the scalp, and multiple tattoos. “You're really fucking mouthy for a hostage,” he said before punching me across my beak faster than I could register. I heard a sharp crack as his fist connected, and my head spun again as the metallic taste of blood pooled into my mouth. “I'd advise you to shut up, but I'm sure you won't listen: you aristocratic types are so full of yourselves. Maybe I should have you flogged in the public square until your vocal chords give out once we rip those cybernetics from your head, huh? How's that sound?”
“It won't matter… it won't change anything… the Jurisdiction will hunt you down.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it will happen for some time: they really suck at doing anything that requires effort, even when they're mad enough. They just keep sending their rabid lapdogs to try and smoke us out, and they always end up full of holes,” the human officer said with a smirk, his yellowish-white teeth and green eyes sending shivers down my spine as he drew his knife. “They're just horrible at their job, you know? You've all gotten so lazy and incompetent after being able to just take what you want without resistance, and now that you've met people who are angry and crazy enough to fight back you act as if we're committing some grave injustice,” he placed the knife against my throat, the flat just underneath my now bent beak, “No, we just took a few pages out of your book, ‘cept we've got standards. No kids, for one…” he seemed to look off into the distance as his sneer deepened, “but it's more than that, we don't attack the defenseless in general and we still win against you all in fair fights.”
I went to say something else snarky, but he quickly grabbed my thin tongue with his fingers and yanked it out, blood from my mouth pulling to the floor as he held the blade of his knife against it. “No no, none of that. Say one more thing and I'll cut that rancid little tongue of yours out of your mouth and feed it to you,” he hissed at me, pressing the blade down just hard enough to draw blood. “Do you know what it's like to see a planet turn into a tomb?" he asked me, gritting his teeth, “Do you know what it's like to see everything you've ever known crumble to ash and glass, all the life and the green stripped away leaving nothing but bones? I do. I've seen it happen to countless worlds, and my grandfather always told me stories of how you bastards did it to Earth. He still prays in its direction five times a day, to Mecca, but he knows the Kaaba is gone now, or maybe it's still there, buried in the bones of those who sought refuge there.”
I didn't care for the human’s nonsensical beliefs, but I did care to correct him. “I've seen it before, and I'll see it again. And so will you, it's inevitable. The Jurisdiction will always have its judgment fulfilled, there is no alternative.”
“One day, I hope we can rectify that,” he said, then he sheathed his knife and slammed my head against the metal floor with enough force to nearly knock me out. As I lost consciousness, I could hear him speak. “Take him to the Chop Doc, and make sure the cybernetics don't get damaged: they're supposedly more valuable than any bounty on this ship.”
Warning: Severe radiation poisoning detected. Flush system immediately.
Warning: Neural Lace removal detected, chance of neurological damage high. Proceeded with caution.

Me F(22) and my ex husband (23) were married when we were married at (19) and (20). We got married so young. He was in the military and he was during basic training. I believe that we had the best relationship before the army. We were both heavily in love with each other. But then the army happened and got married. My parents never really liked the ideas of getting married and we did it anyways without them knowing. It created a hard time for us. He was stationed in the Texas. Hundreds of miles away from where we lived. We did long distance until I got out of our lease and moved with him. I was constantly told by my parents that he is using me for the bah money, or not to feel lonely. I never did I feel that way until we got divorced but I don’t know what to feel about that anymore. I’ll explain more after I add more information to our story. He got into a car accident and the car totaled so he need a new car. Which added to debts and with the debts came the problems. We had so many debts and the army pressure never helped us. I worked for a few months but i quit my job cause it wasn’t good for my mental health. I can attribute some of the blame. I could have continued to work and paid off our debts but i couldn’t. I went into a heavy depression state that I didn’t realize I was in. I did do things around the house like cook dinner (not all the time cause I didn’t have any motivation to do it so we order DoorDash), I used to do laundry in the bathtub because he was so busy and tired to go to laundry may, I constantly picked up and cleaned the house. I could have done more. I know I’m partially to blame for a lot of things. I had trust issues but those added to our problems. One day I was gone for a month, I went to spend time at a youth group trip with his mom and then I went to see my parents after that. When I got to Texas his best friend told me that he was trying to sleep with another woman while I was gone. Which killed me. I asked him when he got home and he told me that he was trying to but he didn’t do anything with her and was trying to seem like it cause his friend was pushing it on him. I forgave him and push past it. I fucked up too. I did something that i regretted and still regret till this day. I loved him and I still do. I don’t think I will ever stop loving him. We were had our fights like always. It was always about money and how I wasn’t valuing him and he wasn’t valuing me. I think the only time that we didn’t fight was the last month we had before he deployed. We were so happy. We spent our time together watching movies, playing card games, playing video games, just being the same kids we were before we got married. I miss those days sometimes. I wish I could turn back time and do things differently. Now the hard part. The divorce. I never wanted to be divorced. He was/still is my person. The person who understands you to the core. The person that you can be yourself without shame or guilt. The person that your heart beats from no matter how much it hurts when they break it or damage it. The person that you picked in a room filled with people who you have loved in the past/future. He is that person. My ex deployed and was gone for six months. Three months into the deployment he stopped calling me, he stopped snapping me, he stopped talking to me. It felt like he shut down on me. I begged him to call me or anything. We went through a dark phase. Then he got back to the states and we were good for a while. He came to visit his mom for Christmas through new years. Our anniversary was the 30th of December. His mother lives 4 hours away from my parents house where I was staying while he was away. He didn’t bother to spend our anniversary together or even bother to say happy anniversary. Which killed me inside. On New Year’s Day I sent him a message that it seemed that he didn’t want me in his life anymore so I was setting him free. But on his way back to Texas he and I talked and we were going to make it work but 8 days later. He met a girl. He hide our marriage status, archived post that he made of me, and hid our pictures. Which made me think he did the same thing he did when I was away. I decided that I wasn’t going to stand for it so I asked him to file for divorce. He agreed. It was a little messy. I found pictures of him and this girl on a romantic date, he got dressed up in a suit, had a picture of her on his lap. So much which set me off and I became petty and tried to fuck him over with the army for it. This is where things get complicated. This week I had to go to separate our things because he had everything in a storage unit. When I got there we were polite to each other and we talked to each other. He explained to me that nothing happened with that girl. They went with a group but only made a reservation for two, she was awake for the picture of her hand on his lap, she was wearing the same clothes from that night in the morning cause she slept in them but she didn’t sleep at his apartment, and that she knew what was going on. Which I don’t know what to believe. I want to believe him and I kinda do believe him but I don’t know. I love him but everyone around me telling me to not believe him. I was a mess for months when things were going wrong between us. I didn’t want to lose him but I feel like I lost him. He said we can be friends. I want him in my life but I always want to be us again. I know in my heart that I can never really move on from him. I always want him in my life but I don’t know what to do or what to believe. My parents hate him because they believe he is a liar and will constantly hurt me but they say a tons of things that weren’t true. I just want an unbiased opinion from people who don’t know the shit I said while I was mad or sad. There’s a lot that happened this week with him but it’s been long story already I can explain more in the comments

I keep seeing posts where people shit on Rhys for witholding the dangers of Feyre’s pregnancy from her, but let’s break this down:
In all reality, the second the two of them decided they wanted to try for a baby I do agree Rhys should have considered there would be a strong possibility of the baby having wings and warned Feyre ahead of time about the possibility and dangers that come with it. They also should have spoken to healers about Feyre remaining in her “iyllrian” form for the duration of the pregnancy, especially if she was going to be in her iyllrian from while they were mating. I’m assuming they didn’t think about these things because the bone carver’s vision didn’t have wings, and so it made sense to believe the vision would be 100% accurate since they don’t know better.
Regardless of what should have happened, when thinking about what actually happened I genuinely believe that Rhys’ only mistake was telling the entire IC. I think a big reason Feyre felt so betrayed is because it seemed like her entire family made this decision for her behind her back. If anything Rhys should have only told Amren as his second and as the oldest, and maybe Azriel if he wanted a fellow illyrian to tell, but he should have known how likely it’d be that Cassian would tell Nesta.
Otherwise, this decision was made out of nothing but love and concern for the safety of both Feyre and Nyx. Madja said that the stress alone would be dangerous for both of them, and Rhys did have every intention of telling her, he just wanted to see if he could find a cure first in order to lessen the stress it put on Feyre. As for sending Nesta away so he wouldn’t “kill her”, that was very clearly said in the midst of rage. Rhys would never do that to his mate, he knows Feyre could likely never forgive him for murdering her sister, especially over something like that. I think Rhys knew it would be for the best to take Nesta away given her current state, and Cassian was the obvious man for the job.
It especially baffles me when people compare Rhys to Tamlin, because what Tamlin did was selfish. Feyre cried and begged him to let her be a part of his court and he didn’t care. He loved her undoubtedly, but he cared more about controlling her fate to cater towards his needs than what was actually best for her. Tamlin and Rhys are not the same. Rhys is not perfect, but he is not a bad male.

This is probably going to be a weird post, but I really need the answer.
So I originally joined this sub out of curiosity, because I like to join subs about things that I’m not knowledgeable about, in order to learn. For instance, I’m part of a few subs about ace and trans people. Other examples for non lgbt-themed subs are pcbuilding, a cooking sub and a bunch of subs about plants and gardening.
Now, here comes the bad part : I’m a bisexual 18m. Actually I don’t really care about my gender, I just say man cause it’s easier. But I’m definitely not a woman, nor a lesbian.
At first I didn’t see this as a problem, but as time went on I started to notice that non-lesbians, and especially non-women people didn’t seem to be accepted by some members.
I could defend myself by saying that I’m supportive, but I don’t think that is the point here. From my understanding, the problem is that these people want this sub to be for lesbians only, which I think is understandable.
However, I’ve also noticed some people saying it was fine, and criticizing this approach.
This leads me to my question : should I leave the sub ? What is the consensus on this ?
Note : whatever you decide, I will accept it. This is your decision, not mine, I will leave if it is the most popular opinion and I hope all the other non-lesbians seeing this post will too.

So I seated for the PCP entrance exam in a Calgary school last week. It failed - I didn’t expect them to ask so many high school mathematics questions. I had been solely focused on the medical questions - but what was most memorable about it was the scenario test. It was wild. I am not sure if I did something wrong or the instructor intentionally made it that way. Obviously I made some mistakes, but perhaps there’s something else I did not catch. Let’s see what you guys think about it.
The patient is sitting on a park bench. It is a sunny day. He complained of a shortness of breathe. Initial assessment found rapid and shallow breathing, rapid HR, pale and clammy skin, cyanosis on extremities (15L O2 given), and some kind of hive/rash on the skin. Strider was heard but the airway was patent.
I suspected anaphylaxis and went for the EpiPen. (First mistake made: I forgot that as EMR I was only supposed to assist the patient in taking their own medication) The patient did carry EpiPen and a Ventolin puffer. I went through the whole sequence of drug administration (6 rights > Color, Clarity, Concentration, Expiration, etc) and assist the patient in self-administration on the side of his thigh.
But the pt’ vitals were unchanged. So I continued with the head to toe. Wheezing was noted on both lungs. Of interest was that there was no pulse on the patient’s feet, but he could move them.
The pt was unable to stand, so we transferred him to the stretcher via rescue seat. Due to compromise in ABC I called it a load and go. Upon moving on-board, reassessment found no change in patient’s condition. Vitals were taken and revealed no change. HR and RR remain very high. SpO2 is low. BP and BGL are both normal.
I chose not to use the Ventolin because it would have worsened the tachycardia. 15L O2 remains on. I am also unsure of the patient’s condition. Regarding the shock-like condition, I chose not to put the pt in the Trendelenburg position - the pt was already in respiratory distress and was being transported in high Fowler position. Beside the O2, the only thing I could do was to keep the patient warm. (2nd mistake: I didn’t call medical control. Though I m not sure if it is even an option to begin with.)
En route, pt suddenly went unconscious. I found no breathing (3nd mistake made: I assessed in the ABC order instead of CAB). At that point I didn’t realize it was a code, so my initial reaction was to check gag reflex > inserted the OPA > BVM at 5-6 BPM. But then I got to the pulse and found that he actually had no pulse as well. Shit. I instructed my partner to go light and siren and sped up, while I began one-person resuscitation.
(Potential mistake: prompt transport is not in the life chain. So perhaps I should have stopped the truck and have my partner assisted me?)
I put on the AED first before I worked on the CPR. For rescue breath I opined for the pocket mask in lieu of the BVM. I justified it on the ground that I won’t have time to work the BVM while I was working on both the CPR and AED.
Two shocks from the AED and more than two minutes of CPR later, the pt achieved ROSC. He is breathing 4 time a minute. I replugged the 15L O2 (mistake) but then I realized the mistake and then immediately shifted to the BVM, giving breath at 5-6 BPM.
Eventually, the patient made it to the hospital. Scenario was over.
So that’s it. It’s very unlike the scenarios I undertook in EMR school, where the pt usually had only one condition. This pt seemed to have multiple conditions at once. And I really could not fathom which single medical condition could cause all those respiratory distress and a loss of pulse in both feet.
Any help before I retake the test three months later is greatly appreciated.

I know that no one on here are medical professionals, but I have tried that route with no answers so looking to see if I can find someone who has experienced these or is educated on any of this
So I was wondering I’ve been dealing with being emotionally numb for about 5 months now, but I also have a problem with not being able to recall memories, or visualize anything in my mind.. I have no pictures flowing in my head or anything colorful! This all started after a very bad panic attack from trying a Xanax for the first time because I have a huge fear of medicine. I have had panic attacks & anxiety for about 6 months or so before this happened. Then I tried a half a Xanax before bed had a terrible panic attack and woke up the next day feeling numb.. like I wanted to panic but physically I couldn’t feel anything I was just mentally worried, I wanted to cry but couldn’t get tears to flow for nothing.. then a couple weeks later I woke up and my mind was like “blank” I couldn’t recall the happy times, good memories etc and not able to visualize anything in my mind. Before I went numb I had all of this and to a great level always have been able to do so! I’m now freaked out and convinced that I have brain damage and I’ll never get my sweet precious memories or visualizations back. I feel even more hopeless because I can’t find anyone else with these issues nor does any of the therapist or medical professionals I have visited even understand what I’m talking about I get looked at as if I have 6 heads. If someone could please help me find answers as to if this is DPDR or dissociation and what I may be able to do in order to get my life back? Cause feeling this empty has me feeling as though I’m not a person at all and is the hardest thing! I also deal with on my bad days feeling as though I’m losing my mind or going to snap or lose control! :( I’m a mom so this is really hard to deal with for me because I feel like I am ruining my kids lives not being the mom they have known :’(

I'm not sure how much I can trust this particular poll as it is from a Credit Card Company, which makes money on credit card transactions, but it has some interesting numbers.
https://capitaloneshopping.com/research/cashless-statistics/
For the most part, I believe that cash is becoming outdated and while there are still some in the younger crowd who are legitimate employed workers using cash, realistically, I believe the majority of cash users are the elderly who fear change and haven't accepted credit cards in their lifestyle and criminals.
When I say criminals, I don't just mean crime syndicates like drug lords using cash to hide their drug cartel income, but also those who refuse to follow the rules and regulations of their state/country, deciding to start a business without licensing, insurance and so on. Paying their staff under the table. Avoiding taxes by hiding their income through cash transactions, and while there are some who may actually care to offer a good product, many of those who work under the radar of the rules and regulations, do not, ending in customers who are scammed out of their hard earned money and projects incomplete or never even started, but the deposit is lost. The only other purpose of cash would be to hide finances from a significant other you plan to divorce in order to have it not included in the divorce negotiations... Basically, a majority of it is for shady reasons.
If we eliminate cash and everything goes digital, with the US setting a deadline to turn in all physical cash and convert it into digital currency, any physical cash would now be collector only. This means if you do work for someone and you are unlicensed, uninsured and so on, you will not be able to hide that income. Sure, there would still be things like bitcoin and other currencies like that, which many illegal entities have been turning to, but those industries are also extremely volatile and if cash is no longer an option, there is no way to convert that digital currency through a money washer into cash without it being traced (and recently, a means has been found to trace Bitcoin currency transactions which was in the past, supposedly not traceable). This means EVERYTHING is traceable.
How would this effect the economy? How many big businesses do you believe are hiding large liquid assets in cash depositories people don't know about? How many big wig CEO's are taking cash and storing it in unspecified locations where it can't be accounted for through hidden means and modifying the books? Pulling $20k per week out of a multi-billion dollar corporation and converting it to cash is easy to hide in books, but pulling $20k per week and transferring it digitally to your personal account is far harder to hide!
How do you believe this change would effect the US economy? What percentage of high level officials and potential shady CEO's that are stealing money off of the top would this expose? What would the US economy look like 10 years from now if that cutoff off for cash was announced 10 years ago and today is the day that cash no longer has any value? Would licensed contractors be more profitable and thus more affordable while still being profitable because they aren't constantly competing against unlicensed, uninsured contractors, losing half of their potential business to them?

title. 20F, and i honestly don't think i ever formed a healthy self-image. i attended a K-12 school with a small student population and a severe endemic bullying problem so the same 15 individuals i met as a toddler were the classmates alongside whom i graduated high school. my school was actually known throughout the surrounding area for having a bullying issue and i got dealt a pretty bad hand in those terms. bullying and social exclusion followed me from kindergarten all the way up to high school. my only friends were my cousins up until sixth grade. i know this by itself doesn't sound all that bad but feeling like an alien and an outsider as a six-year-old girl messes you up. i wasn't a "quiet" or "weird" kid or anything like that- just literally a normal young girl- but a lot of the other kids in my grade just came in with these vicious, catty personalities which didn't mesh well with the sunshiney, always-assuming-the-best-in-people attitude i had as a young child. my parents were also working class and i didn't always have the trendiest items/wasn't "hip" to what was popular and that certainly didn't help. i never really formed any sort of self-image during those formative childhood years because all that time was just spent feeling awful about myself and trying to figure out what i had to do to earn acceptance. my most formative memory is just spending years and years trying to figure out why i couldn't be accepted by the other kids in my grade and trying absolutely everything to no avail. additionally, i wasn't exactly able to build a strong self-image at home because my father was largely emotionally absent and hypercritical. (he was never abusive in the slightest, but was just very rigid, not emotionally involved, would criticize every single thing etc). i internalized a lot of those criticisms and still have an incredibly overactive hypercritical voice. then when i was 11 i got involved with an excessively-competitive intensive sport which involved adult male coaches who (as i now recognize) were incredibly abusive. think those eastern european gymnastics coaches in the 50s. i was training 30-35 hours a week by the time i was 13 and my life resembled an Olympic training regimen. because i already was so incredibly weak in self-esteem i internalized and accepted all of the abuse from the coaches while other children told their parents and were removed from the environment. i felt like this sport was a place where i could be competitive, included and treated like a mature adult- a break from the constant exclusion i was experiencing from my peers at school. i couldn't figure out how to quit because the coaches' validation (which was few and far between) had become the only thing remotely resembling a self-image i had. i couldn't relate to any of my peers or the few friends i did have because i didn't have a normal teenage life where i could go to the mall or hang out with friends; all of my waking moments involved crippling anxiety due to these adult men who i spent the majority of my time around. they screamed at, insulted, threw things at, and took delight in physically hurting the young children involved in the sport. i felt like i didn't own or control my life and i had a sense of being completely isolated because i didn't know how to get out of or even define the situation. i finally left at 15 (in the middle of my freshman year of high school) and within a month of leaving developed some sort of mental health/trauma response (which i am still unable to identify because i never got any sort of psychological help due to being afraid of seeming "weak"). i started having regular anxiety attacks (something which i had never experienced before), throwing up daily, having nightmares and losing my hair. growing up although i was always insecure i had never dealt with any mental health issues and i am neurotypical so this was all absolutely new for me. the fact that this was something i had never felt before all arising so abruptly at once- seemingly overnight- made the experience scary and unfamiliar, and i felt like i was losing my control of my mind and body at 15, right when teens are meant to be naturally growing into and forming healthy relationships with their bodies. it was around this time when the usual teenage drama of high school really took off and due to the mental health issues i had begun to experience i found myself involved in typical teen drama which led to me losing my entire friend group multiple times over. my high school years were full of painful drama, friendship breakups and a plethora of unhealthy actions which i now recognize as desperate efforts to regain some sort of sense of control over my life and self-image. i got rejected from my dream ivy league university which i had wanted to attend since i was a child (the university where my father works) because my grades had dropped after my experience in the sport- not a lot, but just enough to remove me from the ivy league range. i enrolled in my state university and entered my first relationship which swiftly ended due to my baggage from childhood/the fact that my insecurities made me unable to accept the fact that someone genuinely liked me. i got my life together (in some sense) in college and now am an honors program + dean's list student on a pre-law track, set to graduate with phi beta kappa and magna cum laude distinctions as well as a near-perfect gpa and membership in a national honors society for my area of study. i still have absolutely zero self-esteem or even any idea of what it feels like to have a healthy relationship with myself. my opinion of myself (physical appearance, personality etc) is so negative and distorted that i have absolutely no idea what i look like or how people perceive me. i have been told that i am attractive but i honest-to-God just don't know. i criticize myself brutally for every decision i make and i can't go a day without comparing myself to other people. nobody knows that my self-esteem is so awful because i seem on the surface to "have it all together". i don't want to go to therapy or counseling because i feel like my parents would see me as weak or incompetent and even if they didn't i know that i would see myself that way. the mental health issues i dealt with in my teen years are (for the majority) gone now but only because i've had to develop my own coping mechanisms (some healthy, others not so much) and most of it has just come down to toughing it out and pushing it all down inside. i have this weird overachiever complex where i purposefully will put myself in painful/uncomfortable/excessively difficult situations in order to "prove" that i can overcome them and feel like i'm proud of myself/have accomplished something, if that makes sense. i'll stay awake 72 hours consecutively studying for an exam and skip meals just to score the highest in the class on zero hours of sleep and an empty stomach and the more uncomfortable/unpleasant it is the better i end up feeling because it seems like i've accomplished something/like i'm being "disciplined". everyone just thinks that i'm an overachievereally good student and so i feel like if i actually did tell someone about how bad i feel on a daily basis i'd be dismissed with "but you have it all together!!" etc etc. idk how to fix this or if it even can be fixed but i would appreciate some sort of advice. i want to be able to just enjoy my life.

Title.
I really enjoy building lego but this one is a right nightmare. The instructions are terrible, in sense of poor diagrams that requires interpretation at some parts, or even the wrong order of putting things on.
But what really has annoyed me about this set is that it is so tedious and fragile to build. The TIE feels so weak and fragile when I put pieces on. They fall off for too easily. Heck, I'm right at the end and now I have to repeat some steps from ages back just to fix the gun that fell off on the inside. The pieces don't even fit properly either! I've done everything right and one part just isn't clipping on properly whereas it did the previous wing fin.
$380 set? More like $150 at best. It's been so horrible that I honesrly don't want to build another lego set, and I've already done the Hogwarts Express and Castle.

Ok so, I (M21) have been going on dates with this guy from Grindr (M23) for the past 3 weeks. We have been out 7 times and always do something in public. Our dates are always really romantic and he is very verbally and physically affectionate with me. A few times I had prompted him that maybe we could head back to one of our places, but he always politely declined. I surmised from this that he was wanting to take it slow because he was looking for something serious. This is fine with me because I can really see myself that way with him.
Last night, he came over to my place for the first time, I cooked him dinner, and we watched a movie. We layed on my couch for hours and talked about our hopes and our fears, our relationship with our families and our plans for the future. It was really sweet. Towards the end, I asked him where he thought we were headed in terms of our relationship. I was hoping he would say that he was interested in something serious and exclusive with me.
Instead, he told me that he saw us as "very casual". I told him I was looking for something serious and exclusive. I asked him if he was open to that and he told me that he had never been in a serious relationship before and that he worried it would change our dynamic. He said he wanted to keep having fun like we were. I asked, and he said that the exclusivity part was not what would bother him. I told him straightforwardly that I had feelings for him and that in order to keep seeing him I would need to know that he was at least considering being exclusive with me and being something "serious". He said he would consider.
He sent me a very sweet goodnight message after he went home and we have been talking normally today.
I have spoken to my (mostly straight) friends and they all agree that calling a romantic, sex-less relationship "casual" does not make a lot of sense to them. I feel like maybe the disconnect is that he is immersed in a different dating culture than me? He is kind of a classic big city gay and I guess I am a little more traditional and conservative about dating. I have also considered that maybe he is enjoying the romantic things I do for him and wanting to continue having sex with other people.
I am curious what you all make of this. What do you think I should do moving forward?

Hey guys, looking for some advice.
Got back from a work trip last Thursday, I didn't see any bedbugs at the hotel, but I'm a little paranoid so when I got home I dumped all my clothes straight into the laundry. Not paranoid enough, as I didn't wash any of my bags, just unpacked and put them away. I think that's where I went wrong.
Fast forward to this morning, I wake up with really itchy legs- bites everywhere. I notice a spot of blood and 2 bedbug poo spots on my sheets. Oh boy.
I've had bedbugs before, about a decade ago, in my first apartment. I didn't know what the signs were, so it got pretty out of hand before I took action. I only got rid of them by pretty much nuking the whole place and throwing out half of the furniture. But now I have cats, and my place is bigger than my old 1br1ba, so treatment will be more complicated.
How do I keep this contained while I deal with it?
My mattress and pillows are already in encasements. I already ordered some Crossfire and diatomaceous earth, washed the sheets and double dried them. Waiting for my quilt to finish drying so I can throw my pillows in there. I have an ozone machine, but it's not a very good one, so I imagine that would just make them leave this room which I DO NOT want to happen. It's getting quite hot out, and my car is black with no tinting, so I was thinking of throwing some of the un-washable things (ie leather handbag) in there to cook, but now that I type it out it seems a little stupid 😅
Sorry for the rambling; TL;DR- have very new infestation, would like to nip it in the bud as much as possible

Hello
I'm researching various Abrahamic religions, and I want to understand the methodologies behind Jewish sources and the conclusions derived from them.
Although I'm not Muslim (I'm Catholic), I'll use an example from Islam to illustrate what I'm looking for, as it seems externally similar to Judaism and I have some knowledge on the subject.
In Islam, there is the Quran, which Muslims believe is the revelation from God to the Prophet (p) through the angel Gabriel. Apart from this document, there are compilations of books called Hadiths, which are stories from the Prophet (p). These books contain a variety of content since they are not of a single nature; they are usually divided into sections but often consist of paragraphs that can say several things.
In a Hadith, you might find a story of the Prophet (p) or previous stories, exegesis of the Quran, predictions, commandments of the Prophet (p), etc. The sections do not affect the numbering; some books go from 1 to +7000 Hadiths. As I mentioned, you can find a wide range of topics without a very strict order, and usually, Hadiths don't depend on the surrounding narrations. For example, Hadith 5 doesn't depend on 6, and 6 doesn't depend on 7, etc. Typically, all the context is contained within each narration. In some cases, they combine Hadiths that are just variations of the same narrative with some details by adding a letter to them; for example, if Hadith 7a mentions drums, Hadith 7b might mention flutes, but the rest is exactly the same.
These Hadiths are verified for authenticity by a chain of transmitters. For example, a friend of the Prophet (p) tells a story to another person, who tells it to another, and so on until a Hadith compiler writes it down in his book. To verify the authenticity of a Hadith, the biographies of the transmitters and the continuity of the transmissions are carefully checked.
Beyond the Hadiths, there are other early Islamic books, such as biographies of the prophet (p) and/or his companions with a different structure from the Hadiths, exegesis of the Quran (tafsir), and so on. Modern authors also write books about these topics, like contemporary tafsirs, compilations of different hadiths, laws compilation, etc.
There are consensus systems among scholars, universities, and influential figures like Al-Albani. Regarding divisions, I don't know much. As far as I understand, the divisions were not made for purely theological reasons but also for pelitikal ones, with Shi'ites having their own chains of transmission, and so on, similar to the Ibadis; and their hadiths doesn't apply to one division to another. Hadith libraries can become immense but usually only a few books (such as Muslim and Bukhari for Sunnis and Kafi for Shiites) are counted, the rest are used little to nothing
Also there are Quranists who doesn't believe in all of this and only have their Quran with their own intepretation.