How to ask about status after resume

Resumes

2009.06.14 12:00 epicRelic Resumes

Get help with your resume! Please read the Wiki before posting.
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2012.05.01 16:11 cezinho Job Search Hacks

Forget traditional job searching - improve your odds with good tips, tricks and tactics that help you stand out.
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2008.03.30 10:15 Switzerland

All things Switzerland!
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2024.05.19 01:29 Z_X_C_Throwaway Let's talk instrumentals

Throwaway because this is about to get spicy. I feel like I am in an existential crisis with dysphagia. 100% you can't know if someone is actually aspirating without an instrumental, but also 100% everyone and their brother can't have an instrumental, even in acute, for a variety of reasons. So many mixed feelings about what I/we are doing. I had an acute placement in grad school about three years ago at a community hospital where practice patterns were poor (cervical auscultation and thickening at bedside) as well as extremely conservative in recs. (Then I worked in EI) I just started training for a PRN (in pediatrics) at the major level one trauma center in my region and the team is very liberal . They are of the mindset, we can't rehab swallowing without actually swallowing, which touche... but sometimes I feel like there isn't just a strong rationale for what we as SLPs are doing--- or maybe I just need more clinical experience.... here's an example from this past week that's weighing heavy on me....
16 year old, no relevant PMH, MVA, Dx with R cerebellar hemorrhage, and DAI. GCS of 4 at the accident and intubated in the field. Stabilized at community hospital and transferred. GCS of 7 upon arrival to our hospital. Prolonged intubation- 4 days. We are asked to eval 1 day post op(still in SICU, weaning sedation). Obviously cog is in the toilet. Honestly, it took a herculean effort to rouse the pt. I would not have proceeded with PO trials if it was just me but the lead training me said the pt isn't here to sleep and we were asked to eval... so we did. Honestly pt seemed okay with straw sip thin (no overt s/sx of aspiration). Puree was slow. Needed verbal cuing to open mouth and strip spoon but could follow commands with a significant amount of time. 5ish bites had fatigued pt. In my mind this is screaming NPO. Pt is Ranchos level 3 for the most part. My lead reminded me that you need to swallow to practice and they had no means of nutrition so "pureed snacks" (meaning no tray but you can applesauce/yogurt pudding from the galley) and thins were reccomended. Told the medical team to consider a NG, which they declined due to risk of self injury (understandable). Go back the next day. PT and OT have pt in chair and are going to do the first walk. Pt still a hot mess- approaching Ranchos level 4 but still not a true 4. Mom reported she gave pt eggs for breakfast that morning (I know, right?!). Pt now overt signs/symptoms of aspiration on thin via straw but not open cup. Pt self fed puree from preloaded spoon. Pt with prolonged mastication (due to attention) after taking too large of a bite of graham cracker. Pt still not voicing. (cog status vs. ?intubation injury). Pt not appropriate for MBSS at this point. We recommended soft and bite sized w/1:1 assist esp because medical team is adamant they are not placing a tube.
This is where I feel like we are stabbing in the dark. I honestly feel like I could have rationalized any diet with NPO being the most conservative to soft and bite sized being the most liberal.
Any who thanks for bearing with me... I guess final question 1) How do you decide who actually gets an instrumental? 1a) Do you just feel like a fraud with the rest since we don't have X-ray vision? 2) What would you have done in that scenario?
submitted by Z_X_C_Throwaway to slp [link] [comments]


2024.05.19 01:24 Spirited-Bumblebee54 Am I dramatic and unfair? I walked away from what I (M31) consider abuse from partner (F34).

Hi all. I (M31) am in a relationship with my partner (F34) for a year and she’s someone I love very much but I feel she’s getting more abusive and I don’t know how to react anymore.
For background, I and my partner have known each other for a couple of years and fell in love since first sight when neither of us don’t believe in such thing. Enjoys activities together, great memories when things are going well but rather incompatible when it comes to arguments. Our arguments revolve around me not being able to meet her expectations around time. She hates when I take my time to think before speaking and when I don’t meet her schedule or I don’t meet my own schedule.
Although we bounce back very very quickly after resolved, the arguments in itself are highly emotional and take a toll on us pretty badly. There are a few things to note: * Cultural differences (West for me, East for her) but I refuse to pinpoint this as a major source of why we cannot communicate well. * Difference in being raised. I am self made, grew up with loving family, have siblings and spent a lot of time in childhood on sports and musical performance. She is an only child, absent parents so she grew up on her own however well funded by family, an academic. We are both fairly comfortable financially - top 10% earners.
My partner fights emotionally. She says a lot of mean things, swears at me, raises her voice, slams doors & items around and refuse to give me space when I need and ask for it. Mean things said in the past - I am poor, no emotional quality, fat, lazy, having an employee mindset, boring, evil. I also get kicked out several times - being a house or car in a middle of a trip. I don’t believe any of the things she says is true and I always call for a time out when things get too heated. But she never gives me space and continues on her emotional rampage giving me no choice than to escape being walking out of the conversation or driving out of the apartment if she corners me everywhere in the apartment.
What she said about me is that I am cold and pointy. My words are concise and pointy enough to hurt her, without the need to swear or raise my voice. She says she loves me very much and cares for me, and it hurts her so much to see me walking away, me saying mean words and being unfair. Statements I’ve made that triggered her: * Focuses too much on external versus internal (worrying too much on presentation and status when it comes to her friends, careful with her words with others but abusive verbally internally with me) * Saying that she is abusive and justified her abuse on me (she says she says things because I am tense), that this has no place in a relationship. A red flag in character. * Thinking that her growing up without siblings caused her to be the centre of attention and if she doesn’t get her way, she becomes unkind, throws a tantrum and says things without thinking of consequences.
The last conversation. She called me evil, that I scare her and hurt her. This triggered me and I communicated this to her. Being someone that is evil, intimidating and someone that hurts her emotionally is the last thing I wanted to be as a person so I decided enough is enough, and I decided to leave the apartment. If she really thinks this way, then I’m not the person for her and good riddance. I’m not going to be in a relationship where I’m seen as this evil person that scares his own partner. I drew this line in the sand and communicated to her. She maintains that I am not caring and I should be caring and comforting her while being emotional, but I can neither care nor comfort her when she’s abusive towards me. I’ve tried to hug her multiple times with success but it’s so painful and frustrating to go against the grain in hugging someone so emotionally abusive, it sickens me and builds resentment (also communicated to her).
Am I being unfair? That I have to read between the lines to see her intention ignoring the abuse of what is said to me at the time? I need to always remain present and take the abusive, the screams. My need of space is unwarranted because I leave her in pain which is uncaring. That I’m ignoring her emotional needs at the time of argument.
Considered therapy but no one made the move and I thought this issue can be resolved internally by being kind, thinking before speaking on how it can impact the other person, apologising after saying mean things and respecting how each other communicates in their own pace without the need to call names on the other person.
TL:DR. In a relationship I consider loving but also abusive, wanting to resolve in a way that does not involve me losing dignity as a person. I care about words being said but she says things without consequences, and cannot control her emotions & words.
submitted by Spirited-Bumblebee54 to relationships [link] [comments]


2024.05.19 01:23 Feeling-Piano9887 Daughter I gave up at 13 contacted me and has been told lies, she’s in a very vulnerable mental health state and I’m concerned

Hi I’m a 29 year old female. When I was 13, I fell pregnant. This wasn’t a consensual relationship, I was a virgin who didn’t really even know how babies were made, i still played with barbies, I was raped by my friends 23 year old brother during a sleepover.
I didn’t tell anybody. I didn’t know I was pregnant, Id only started my periods a few months prior so there absence didn’t concern me and like I said, I didn’t really know how babies were made beyond the basics. I found out I was pregnant at 29 weeks when I went to ER with my parents for stomach pain.
My parents were very angry at me despite the circumstances. He was convicted and imprisoned. They tried to find a doctor who’d give me an abortion but none would due to gestation. They said I had to give the baby up and I went along with it, I had no support from them and I grew up having a very cold relationship with them. When my daughter was born I was inconsolable and didn’t want to give her up. I refused to and my daughter was forcefully taken from me at the hospital. After which I was hysterical and had to be sedated. I made attempts on my life in the months after that. I was then put in to boarding school, where I stayed until I was 18.
It wasn’t an open adoption, I was allowed to leave a letter with her and I also left her my necklace which was my prized possession at the time. The adoptive mother stated she wanted no contact which I was devastated about but the social worker told me I could have contact when she turned 18. After I turned 18 and left boarding school, I moved in with my Nan whilst attending university. My Nan gave me so much love and care and was very disappointed in my parents (my Nan had no knowledge of me even being pregnant)
When I was 21 I graduated and I also got pregnant, that relationship didn’t work out but I’ve since married and had 3 more children. But I’ve never stopped thinking about my first born. I gave birth to her on my 14th birthday so we share a birthday and every birthday I feel like I’m grieving. I go through periods of just crying and staying in bed feeling guilty at what I’d done. I still feel so guilty and I can’t cope with guilt.
Anyway, my daughter who is now 15 found me on Facebook 2 weeks ago (I have a distinct name and I still use my maiden name on there) she messaged me an angry message and then blocked me so I couldn’t even respond.
She messaged me saying that she hates me and I’m dead to her, she told me how much she loves her adoptive mother and as far as she’s concerned I don’t exist. She says I’ve turned her in to a “messed up person” She told me how she thought I was a disgusting person for giving her up for adoption because I wanted to “enjoy life without the burden of a child” her words. She called me a slut (among other words) and questioned why I was having sex at 13. She said that she hoped my other children die and called them racist terms (they are mixed) because she is angry that I kept them and not her and that she felt that meant I wasn’t good enough. She then went on to say her adoptive mother told her that
1: My parents (her bio grandparents) wanted her but I refused to look after her and wanted her to be adopted.
2: I wanted an abortion and told adoptive mother that I wished I could have had an abortion
3: That adoptive mother had reached out to me when I was 21 and pregnant with her first sibling to ask if I wanted contact, and I (according to her birth mum) said I didn’t care about her and wanted to forget the whole thing and asked her not to contact me again.
4: That I was sleeping around with a lot of men my age and didn’t know her bio dad as I’d been with so many male school friends which is why I got sent to boarding school because I was “out of control”
All the above are just outright lies. I am glad she doesn’t know the circumstances of her conception, I’d be happy if bio mum had told her for example that her father was a childhood boyfriend of mine because the truth is something she shouldn’t know until she’s older, but to suggest I was sleeping around with multiple men at the age of 13 and didn’t know who he was is disgusting when it’s not true.
Im not able to contact her back because she’s blocked me. I’ve looked at her profile from my husbands account, I’ve seen her bio mums Facebook profile but I don’t intend to contact either of them as much as I want to because I guess I will just tell her everything when she’s 18 if she wants to hear it because perhaps now is not the appropriate age.
Her mums Facebook shows that she is her only child, that she’s now divorced (her and her husband adopted my daughter so she’s since divorced him) they seem very close and have lots of pictures together.
Her Facebook is concerning and it’s public so I could see everything. She posts quotes about depression and anxiety, has scars on her wrists which I fear may be SH scars) writes status’ such as “no body cares about me I may as well just die” constantly posts pictures laying in a hospital bed.
I have since informed social services about what I’ve seen on Facebook and they’ve just told me that they can not discuss this with me due to confidentiality as she’s legally not my child but have said they can assure me that they are doing everything necessary to ensure she is ok.
I don’t really know what to do. She has a false impression of me told by her adoptive mother. None of which is true, she was so wanted and I’ve never got over it. I now fear that her thinking I rejected her and didn’t want her and she wasn’t good enough has led to some serious mental health issues and potentially these will only get worse or she could harm herself very badly based on lots of lies.
I want her to know I love her, I want her to know I wanted her but I was forced to give her up, I want her to know that I still love her and always will and that I’d do anything for her. I want to tell her I was never contacted by adoptive mother and had I have been I would have jumped at the opportunity to even just talk to my daughter. I want to tell her that I do know her bio father and I wasn’t sleeping with multiple men (although the truth regarding the rape shouldn’t be disclosed right now) I just want her to know all of this, but I’m powerless until she is 18. I have been told if I message her from a different account since I’m blocked I could face legal charges.
I am so scared of her hurting herself based on lies. Her adoptive mum whilst I believe does love her, has poisoned my daughter against me in an attempt to get my daughter to hate me because she doesn’t want daughter potentially coming back to me or forming a relationship with me and her getting pushed out, so she’s said all of this to make that impossible so she will be her only mother.
But that’s to the detriment of my daughter, my daughter clearly has mental health issues and whilst they could be from other things I know that feeling unloved, unwanted and having being told this information that is outright lies must be weighing heavily on her and making her feel inadequate. I can’t imagine if I was adopted and I heard things like that about my bio mum, it would devastate me and I would hate myself.
I don’t know what I’m hoping to gain from this post just looking for advice. I can contact her in 3 years. But I’m scared in those 3 years something bad could happen with the way her mental health is, and that something bad may happen without her knowing the truth about how much I love her.
I’ve been off sick from work since, I have been an emotional wreck. I just hope she’s okay even if she does hate me. Of course I’d love to tell her the truth but more than anything I want her to know the truth for the sake of her own mental well-being even if that means she still doesn’t want to speak to me. Social services just keep telling me that they can’t discuss anything with her about me beyond the basics of the fact that she’s adopted. The rest is down to adoptive mother to disclose if she wishes. When she is 18 she will get access to her file and know the true circumstances but until then, everything she knows is based on lies.
submitted by Feeling-Piano9887 to Adoption [link] [comments]


2024.05.19 01:21 HolyCityRunner I think I’m losing BP for good. And I’m in agony.

I’ve been quiet for a while because I moved in with BP and we have been working through things for almost two years. I’ve been doing bi-weekly IC, monthly relationship coaching, we did bi weekly couples counseling, and I continued with my psychiatrist. I’ve read multiple books such as “the body keeps the score”, “the state of affairs”, “not just friends”, and “the courage to stay”. I’ve poured effort and energy into the marriage helper (though we aren’t married) program and one other program. I am really trying. I have so many good memories from the past 18 months that completely warm my heart…. And then suddenly a few weeks ago — BP asked me to move out. BP felt the angry thoughts about me they continuously had weren’t healthy and that it wasn’t a good way to live “always feeling triggered by me”. We have had a few bumps in the road: There was some tension after I found solace in a game on my phone for a bit — but BP brought this to my attention in CC and I quickly realized how triggering that might be and did my best to never be on my phone when we were together. BP also had free rein to any of my devices including my phone whenever they wanted. Eventually, BP started to get annoyed anytime I would even look something up - even for work. So that was difficult. But I was trying my best. I kept trying to be better — truly. BP also felt I was “disinterested” in any intimacy , which wasn’t anything BP did wrong but more of a personal self-confidence issue with me after gaining some weight after a recent running injury. So I got a weight loss and wellness coach to help me get back on track.
Anyway, BP made the announcement suddenly in one of our CC meetings. I felt so blindsided. It felt like we were working through this. However, out of respect for BP and their wishes (but against my heart and feelings for BP), I have slowly since moved out to stay with some mutual friends.
It has been AGONY without my BP. Today, BP asked for their house key back and my heart just sank. That kind of sinking feeling when you just take a deep breath and the only thing that comes out are tears because the sadness is boiling over inside. In my heart, I don’t want to give it back. Not because I will do anything nefarious or horrible. But because it feels so final. Please don’t hate on me for this. I would never do anything horrible or vengeful. But I just still feel special having their key on my key ring - like I still have a home with BP.
Last week, I spent multiple days constructing a really heartfelt letter to BP relaying how much I appreciate all the effort BP has put into trying to make this work , the amount of bravery it took to stay and try, and a few of the reasons I am so in love and cherish them. I did my best to pour my heart into it. I read it to them as I came to get a few more boxes of my stuff. It didn’t get much of a reaction - but that’s ok, maybe it needs to marinate for a bit… I also sent it to them so BP could have it to read if they chose to do so. I am trying so hard to be respectful and mature through this because I know it’s my fault this is broken. But I am not well. Not well at all.
I don’t want to whine or make this about myself but I just feel completely soul broken. I know what I did to BP was awful and betraying them destroyed everything they thought they knew. I know this relationship is broken because of my actions. I also realize that it is not up to me whether or not BP takes me back. But I thought we were slowly trucking along. Of course there were small bumps and blips in the road but I felt we were doing well getting through some things and making some (albeit slow) progress.
I love BP so much. I realized how much I took their love, passion, generosity, tenderness, and spirit for granted. I emasculated them and likely destroyed their ego. Maybe I didn’t do enough to help build it back up? I’m not sure. But I definitely had/have every intention of repairing everything in my power. I will do anything to help repair this for us.
I hate myself for it. But I just cannot get through this I cannot leave them. It is killing me. I honestly find myself driving to work and hoping I get side-swiped in a horrible car accident so I don’t have to think about everything I’m losing because of what I did the first two years of our nearly 4 year relationship. I am not the kind to do anything to hurt myself but if something were to happen to me - maybe it would be a little mental and emotional break. It hurts so bad. I know I can’t force BP to love me. But part of me thinks they still care but they are so hurt (traumatized) and haven’t been able to get through the trauma that I have caused. I want to be there to help but I know they don’t want me around. And it kills me.
To add salt to the wounds, I gave up a once-in-lifetime dream job offer to move down here to live with BP and work on “us”. And now the job I took here (which is definitely not dream job status) is falling apart (so-to-speak). I just feel so broken and hopeless and it’s all my fault. It absolutely kills me. I miss every single moment with them. I guess I just need a shoulder to cry on and some sort of hope that maybe my BP just needs a little time and space. I’ve searched and there really isn’t much support for waywards that are in my position. Any support or reassurance is appreciated.
Thanks everyone. 🙏🏼
submitted by HolyCityRunner to SupportforWaywards [link] [comments]


2024.05.19 01:15 Gazooonga Diary of a Press-Ganged Saurian (#1/?)

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.
submitted by Gazooonga to HFY [link] [comments]


2024.05.19 01:15 MaiReiko I have conflicting feelings about my ex husband.

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
submitted by MaiReiko to ToughLoveAdvice [link] [comments]


2024.05.19 00:59 GoAheadMMDay UPDATE 3: Torment Techniques Used by Canadian and US Militaries

UPDATE 3: Torment Techniques Used by Canadian and US Militaries
Update #3 appears at the bottom.
Due to numerous disparaging comments by multiple individuals, I have reposted my article.
Heckling does not change what occurred. People need to know these truths, especially those who have experienced the same. They need to know they are sane, that such things are indeed being perpetrated, and the perpetrators use shame to silence them and protect their activities.
I write to encourage them not to listen to disparaging people who speak without knowledge.
February 10, 2024
I am Joseph Cafariello, a Canadian citizen and ex-member of the Canadian military. Of sound mind, not on medication, not a drug user, not a marijuana smoker, not an alcohol drinker, with no mental disorders.
I recently posted to this Liberty subreddit experiences of harassment by Vancouver's police and fire departments (Vancouver, BC, Canada). I’m the fellow who was repeatedly ordered by police to stay out of Vancouver’s Stanley Park, and was continually harassed whenever I visited the park (which I do every second day on my early morning walks).
Immediately following that post, they changed some of the techniques they use in my case. They were either informed of my post or found it themselves, seeing as my internet activity, and phone activity for that matter, are under continuous surveillance (plenty of proof which I will not include here to avoid running off-topic).
In this post, I would like to shed some light on other harassment which is still ongoing, since it occurs in private, away from potential observers. It involves the Canadian and US militaries.
Havana Syndrome
In 2016, numerous employees of the Canadian and US embassies in Havana, Cuba, started experiencing head injuries ranging from mild headaches to concussions. It happened in their sleep, and came to be called Havana Syndrome.
Wikipedia explains (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havana\_syndrome):
“Havana syndrome is a cluster of idiopathic symptoms experienced mostly abroad by U.S. government officials and military personnel. The symptoms range in severity from pain and ringing in the ears to cognitive dysfunction and were first reported in 2016 by U.S. and Canadian embassy staff in Havana, Cuba. Beginning in 2017, more people, including U.S. intelligence and military personnel and their families, reported having these symptoms in other places, such as China, India, Europe, and Washington, D.C. The U.S. Department of State, Department of Defense, and other federal entities have called the events "Anomalous Health Incidents" (AHI). Of over a thousand purported cases, the majority of US investigative bodies found only a few dozen cases to be suspicious.”
Ladies and gentlemen, I can tell you exactly what happens, because I have been experiencing this since I first joined the Canadian military back in 2002, and am still experiencing these “torments” (as I call them) to this day, already 3 years after leaving the military.
I go to bed. In about 15 minutes, just as I am on the cusp of falling asleep, a hear and feel a heavy thud reverberate and ultimately strike my skull. My body releases a sharp burst of adrenalin, my heart starts racing, and my blood’s circulation speeds up significantly. Depending on the severity of the blow, it can take me anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to fall asleep again. Though there have been times I could not return to sleep for more than 2 hours.
A strong headache is felt immediately, and lasts for hours. There have been times when my heart felt like it was going to burst, having been startled as such.
The pulse to the head sometimes reverberates through the wall and my bed’s headboard. I distinctly feel as though I have been hit on the top of my skull. At other times, it feels as though the pulse has come through the air, striking the side of my skull.
This is not a sleep disorder, for it does not occur regularly. At times, my sleep is disturbed in this manner 3 or 4 days in a row. At other times, there is no disturbance for up to a week. But they never let me go more than a week without such interruptions to my sleep.
Neither is it sleep apnea, as I do not awaken gasping for breath. The pounding headaches, sudden release of adrenaline, and heart palpitations I experience are caused by external impacts of sound waves or air bursts.
Sonic Weapons
How these pulses are produced is not easy to identify. As Wikipedia explains:
“Once the story became public, various U.S. government representatives attributed the incidents to attacks by unidentified foreign actors, and various U.S. officials blamed the reported symptoms on a variety of unidentified and unknown technologies, including ultrasound and microwave weapons.”
Sonic weapons have been in use for many years by militaries, and by police in crowd control. As Wikipedia explains (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic\_weapon):
“Some sonic weapons make a focused beam of sound or of ultrasound; others produce an area field of sound. As of 2023 military and police forces make some limited use of sonic weapons.”
(Do not believe the 2023 timeline. The Canadian military has been using these weapons since the early 2000’s at the latest.)
Wikipedia continues:
“Extremely high-power sound waves can disrupt or destroy the eardrums of a target and cause severe pain or disorientation. This is usually sufficient to incapacitate a person. Less powerful sound waves can cause humans to experience nausea or discomfort.”
The users of these technologies must also be using thermal detection equipment to monitor the target’s sleep. As I mentioned, I most often feel these blows the moment I am falling asleep. Body temperature drops when we sleep, and brain activity slows. Heat-detection equipment is likely being used to identify the point at which the target is falling asleep.
Why they prefer to strike at the start of someone’s sleep as opposed to the middle of their sleep, I do not know. Perhaps their intent is to deprive the body of early sleep, limiting the amount of deep sleep available to the person before their alarm rings in the morning.
Ordinary Hammers
Not all such “torments” (as I call them) are caused by high-tech equipment. I have heard and felt distinct hammer strikes running along the 2x4 beams inside my walls. These strikes can be a single hard strike, or several strikes in a row. It is definitely caused by a person with a hammer because the intervals between strikes are equidistant in time; that is, the time spacing between strikes is not random and does not change from strike to strike, but is constant between strikes, exactly as when someone is hammering. And no, it is not someone hanging pictures at 1:30 am, multiple times a week, for years.
On one occasion, when I was standing at my kitchen sink, I felt the floor-board directly under my feet pulse so sharply it felt like a brick had struck the soles of my feet. In this case, my military neighbour likely used a hammer to strike the floorboard on his side of the wall. It is the only plausible explanation.
Surveillance
This leads to surveillance of one’s activities at home. I have plenty of proofs of that. They seem insignificant on an individual basis. But when you put them all together, they present a clear picture of home surveillance.
My laptop computer’s lid cracked one night, at the bottom left corner of the screen. The next day at work, I heard my military supervisor relate to another co-worker that the night before, his laptop computer’s lid cracked at the bottom left corner. I swear to the Lord in Heaven, I am being truthful.
I tested my suspicion of being surveilled. At home one night, I blurted out-loud, “VW Passat. What an ugly sounding word, ‘Passat’”, I said. A few days later, my military colleagues at work started playing a card game at lunch, invented by one of them. The name he gave his game was “Passat”, and when he spoke it, he looked at me for a reaction. If you ever contact the Halifax military base, ask for the Claims Department and ask them if they are still playing Passat.
On another occasion, at a time when I frequented the gym every second day for a few years, I suspected my van had been fitted with a listening device. I suspected so because a number of things I had spoken with people about on my phone while in my van (nothing illegal) were repeated by people at the gym in conversations among themselves. Too many times, parts of other people's conversations matched parts of conversations I had had with others while I was in my van.
I already knew my phone was being tapped, but I also suspected my van was bugged. So one evening while driving in my van, I blurted out-loud a number of things I said I hated. "I hate (this or that)"; "I hate it when...". One of them was, "I hate when people chew gum with their mouths open." I then vocalized an exaggerated gnawing sound, "Gnaw. Gnaw. Gnaw."
The very next time I went to the gym, 2 days later, while I was at an exercise, a fellow sat at an exercise directly behind me. And sure enough, he started chewing with his mouth open, vocalizing that gnawing sound, "Gnaw. Gnaw. Gnaw." I didn't look behind at him, because I knew what was going on, and I wanted to avoid playing into his hand. So he repeated himself again and again until I was done and moved to a different station. Now, honestly, who chews gum at the gym? You can't. Or you run the risk of choking for the heavy breathing, not to mention when laying down on benches. And with precisely the same exaggerated vocalized gnawing sound I had made in my van just 2 days prior.
Their whole intent is to let you know you are being surveilled. They want you to know, as both a warning and a provocation. They want you to say something, to launch accusations, which they would readily deny, making you look paranoid. If you react too strongly, they could even have you diagnosed with some kind of disorder, and put you on medication, which further plays into their hand. (More regarding medications in the last section of this post.)
This is why, as I mentioned in my previous post, they would park their cars shining their high beams on me as I walked past them during my morning walk. And why on some occasions, a group of 3 or 4 would exit their cars and stand on my path just as I approached, forcing me to go around them. They would then remain standing on the path until my return trip through, and after I had passed by the second time, then would then return to their cars - making it absolutely clear I was their interest.
Their intent is not only to make me aware, but also to present themselves in close proximity to me, within easy reach, in the hope I would confront them, resulting in an altercation that could land me in a lot of hot water - 4 witnesses against me, all pleading innocence.
Again, it is all designed to make you look bad, and to warrant some kind of legal measure against you - preferably a medical diagnosis, discrediting you in everything you say about them. If they can't refute your claims, their only remaining option is to discredit you. That's what all of these tricks are designed to accomplish. Who would believe anything you say, once you have been diagnosed with a disorder?
There are plenty more examples. But who would really believe them? I’ll save them for the future.
Home Invasion
Both during and after my military service, I have had my apartments entered without any signs of break-ins. How? Lock-picking and duplicate keys. Indications? Missing objects; ie: money, phone adaptor, etc. Nothing major. Just something to make us understand we are being watched, and to make us understand what they can do.
But it is always something small, something for which you would be ridiculed for divulging.
Two more examples: I found my razor, which I always lay-down razor-end to the wall, turned around, razor-end toward me. Also, in one of my house slippers I found a small shoe sticker on the up-side of the heel. I had those slipper for years, and never had any shoe stickers on them. Yet there it was, clearly visible on the top surface of my slipper, not the bottom. Could I have stepped on a shoe sticker when barefoot in my apartment, only to have the sticker transfer itself to my slipper when I wore it? How many shoe stickers do you have laying around your apartment that you can accidentally step onto?
If I had stepped onto a sticker in my apartment and had it stick to my heel, that means the sticky side was up against my skin. This means the sticker would have had to flip upside down such that the sticky side would then be down, allowing the sticker to stick to the slipper. Do you really think that happened? That sticker was not there when I left my apartment, but it was there when I returned. And it was the wrong sticker, wrong brand, wrong size.
Again, what is their intent? To make someone look ridiculous so no one will believe them should they speak of other more sensitive things.
Staged Incidents
The above incidents clearly point to coordinated and staged events (at my work, my home, on my walks, etc). This is so frequently met with incredulity. "But that would require coordination on the part of so many people," the public dismisses. "They wouldn't do that."
Oh yes they would, and they have, as explained in https://fightgangstalking.com/. Note the documented cases involving the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS, Canada's equivalent to the US' CIA) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP, Canada's national police force) in the second quote, which were reported in national newspapers.
From https://fightgangstalking.com/:
“Disruption operations often involve tactics which are illegal, but difficult to prove. These tactics include – but are not limited to – overt surveillance (stalking), slander, blacklisting, “mobbing” (intense, organized harassment in the workplace), “black bag jobs” [home invasions], abusive phone calls, computer hacking, framing, threats, blackmail, vandalism, “street theater” (staged physical and verbal interactions with minions of the people who orchestrate the stalking), harassment by noises, and other forms of bullying. Many of these tactics were used by the FBI during its illegal COINTELPRO operations, as documented by stolen official documents and subsequent Congressional investigations.
"Although the general public is mostly unfamiliar with the practice, references to “disruption” operations – described as such – do occasionally appear in the news media, even though that fact would apparently be news to the editors of The New York Times. In May 2006, for example, an article in The Globe and Mail, a Canadian national newspaper, reported that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) used “Diffuse and Disrupt” tactics against suspects for whom they lacked sufficient evidence to prosecute. A criminal defense attorney stated that many of her clients complained of harassment by authorities, although they were never arrested."
She can add me to that list too.
For the Benefit of Others
The experiences I have recounted here seem so trivial, so insignificant, they make you look ridiculous if you talk about them. But if we don’t talk about such things, no one will ever know about them. Other people have experienced the same, and are forced to endure such torments in silence. They need encouragement to talk about their own experiences, and so I write about mine in the hope they will talk about theirs, even if I do look ridiculous. The perpetrators are more ridiculous for doing them.
I remember a military colleague being hauled away by military police one morning, as she was struggling and having a violent fit. A fellow on her floor told me she was throwing chairs at her walls screaming, “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”. When he mentioned that, I knew exactly what they had done to her. She was considered unruly, and was being watched intently. They wanted her out, and that is how they accomplished it. Through wall tapping and sleep deprivation, they push you to the breaking point. And when you finally lose control and do something rash, they pounce on you, and you’re out. Now she has a criminal record, considered a criminal when in reality she was a victim. Welcome to the Canadian military, and other militaries besides, I am sure.
There are dozens upon dozens of experiences I could present. But who will really read them? Worse still, who will really believe them? I overheard my military supervisor in Halifax whisper to another, “Do you think he knows?”, after I had mentioned one of the many “coincidences” I experienced, but with a tone of my being aware it was not a mere coincidence. As I turned my face to my computer screen, I whispered under my breath, but still loud enough for him to hear, “Yes, (rank) (name), I know.” A few minutes later, as he walked past my desk, he leaned in by my ear and whispered, “We’re just trying to help you.” I should have pressed him for answers right then and there, but you just don’t know how much trouble you can get into when making such accusations in the military. So I let it go. But I will never forget.
Should anyone reading this ever decide to launch some kind of inquiry, I can mention names of over 100 people to contact, including military personnel, family members, neighbours, building managers, and others who have been contacted by military personnel with false narratives about me. They flash their ID’s and other credentials, and people believe anything they say. They turn family, friends, co-workers and neighbours against you, even recruiting their participation. Your acquaintances not only participate, but actually feel justified and emboldened playing tricks on you. It isn't their fault, though; they have been misled. I would reference them solely for corroboration.
As a final thought, here are explanations of two military programs in which certain persons (sometimes military, sometimes civilian) are kept under constant surveillance, and are in some cases subjected to conditioning in an attempt to turn them into what is called a “sleeper agent”. Almost all of the tactics presented below have been experience by me, including constant surveillance (ie: my previous post here regarding being harassed on my morning walks) and sleep deprivation (as per the top portion of this post, which other military members in Cuba and elsewhere around the world have also experienced).
Pentagon’s Signature Reduction Program
See Newsweek’s article: https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-inside-militarys-secret-undercover-army-1591881
Some excerpts from that Newsweek article, plus more background information on the Pentagon’s Signature Reduction Program, can be found here: https://fightgangstalking.com/
“The largest undercover force the world has ever known is the one created by the Pentagon over the past decade. Some 60,000 people now belong to this secret army, many working under masked identities and in low profile, all part of a broad program called “signature reduction.” The force, more than ten times the size of the clandestine elements of the CIA, carries out domestic and foreign assignments, both in military uniforms and under civilian cover, in real life and online, sometimes hiding in private businesses and consultancies, some of them household name companies.
“…a little-known sector of the American military, but also a completely unregulated practice. No one knows the program’s total size, and the explosion of signature reduction has never been examined for its impact on military policies and culture. Congress has never held a hearing on the subject. And yet the military developing this gigantic clandestine force challenges U.S. laws, the Geneva Conventions, the code of military conduct and basic accountability.
“…The signature reduction effort engages some 130 private companies to administer the new clandestine world. Dozens of little known and secret government organizations support the program, doling out classified contracts and overseeing publicly unacknowledged operations.
"Federal spy agencies are using Americans to spy on their fellow citizens – the same approach to governance famously employed by communist East Germany."
How to Develop a Hypnotic Sleeper Agent
By Dantalion Jones / Masters of Mind Control
The following “was” on the web, but has been removed. Surprise, surprise. But I saved its web files to my computer years ago, knowing that sooner or later it would be removed. I made a jpeg image of the web page as it once appeared, attached here.
Note that I have experienced almost all of the tactics described below, including the stalking I mentioned in my previous post here (regular walks in the park), the sleep deprivation noted at the top of this post, and the surveillance and intrusions described here as well.
Quoting the now-removed webpage: “How to Develop a Hypnotic Sleeper Agent” (from here to end of post):
Amid all the conspiracy theories one of the most feared is that there exist "sleeper agents" in our society who are programmed to come into service when they are triggered by a phone call or key word.
These alleged sleeper agents don't even know they are programmed to become saboteurs, soldiers, suicide bomber, etc because of the thoroughness of their programming. They are the feared "Manchurian Candidate" that the movies portray.
The question is "Are they real?"
If they are true sleeper agents there is no way of telling until they are activated. One can however theorize exactly how they are made.
Indoctrination
Using indoctrination a person can be made to embrace a religious or philosophical belief that would make becoming a sleeper agent possible.
This would be a person so committed to an ideal they would be willing to wait patiently as a member of society until they are called into action. These people would know their mission and consciously hold it secret while interacting with the rest of society.
Conditioning
Conditioning is a repetitive process where the desired responses are enforced and rewarded and unwanted responses are punished. This can be done consciously as part of training drill and it can be done subconsciously using hypnosis or drugs to create amnesia.
Hypnosis
It has been demonstrated that hypnosis can create "amnesia walls" in which the subject has no conscious memory of what happened in the hypnosis session. It has further been demonstrated that hypnosis can give post hypnotic instruction to be carried out automatically in the waking state without the subject knowing it or questioning the behavior.
What follows is conjecture and theory based on testimonials of people who were alleged to be sleeper agents and soldiers.
Continuous Supervisions
Continuous supervision doesn't mean that the subject is cut off completely from society. It means that they are constantly overseen and every aspect of their lives are managed (without their knowledge or consent) to support their hypnotic programming.
This would include:
• Repeated reinforcement of all hypnotic conditioning.
• Handlers. Handlers are people who help maintain the subjects environment to maintain all the programming. They can play the role of family, friends, lovers, psychologists, coaches or any roll the subject perceives as supportive. The truth is the handlers are their to support the successful fulfillment of the programming and not the subject as a person.
• Minimal sleep so that the mind/brain does not process all the sleeper conditioning during sleep.
• Creating constant environmental challenges like unemployment or poverty. This gives the subject something other than their programming to focus on.
• Frequent hospitalization. This gives overt opportunity to sedate the subject for conditioning. If the subject has a history of hospitalizations for mental disturbances all the better. No one will take them seriously.
Joseph Cafariello
PS... Today is the second day after this post (February 12, 2024). A garbage truck just slammed into my parked car.
PPS... I finish writing this post because I am satisfied with its shape and content; not because of what happened to my car.
It is similar to when you are reaching for your coat, and someone tells you, "Take your coat." Since you have to take your coat, your brain tells you it's ok to obey them, and you comply. They just created an instance where they led you, and you followed them. And your brain accepted it.
It's a technique the military uses all the time. It trains you to accept instructions from that person or group. Done enough times, you become comfortable obeying them.
I just say, "I take my coat because I choose to, not because you tell me to." It's important to make that clear, to block the conditioning and affirm our self-governance; not just to them, but to ourselves as well. Now our brain realizes we took our coat by our own choice; we are still in command.
So too, I say regarding today's event. "Thanks for the warning, but I had already finished writing my post. I finished by my own choosing."
UPDATES 1 & 2: February 26 & March 07, 2024:
My apartment was once again entered while I was out. Either a key was used or the lock was picked. This may or may not have included assistance from building staff. Home invasions are included in the list of their techniques noted above, referred to as "black bag jobs".
All tenants on my floor received new fridges a couple of weeks ago. I removed the tape securing the bins inside my new fridge, and also removed all styrofoam pads from the corners of the glass shelves when I repositioned them.
The person(s) who have been invading my living space on a regular basis have struck again. As you can see in the photo below, the styrofoam pads on the corners of my fridge's shelves were restored when I was out of my apartment. I had removed all pads when I repositioned the shelves. Yet now they are back.
It is a tactic used to undermine our observational awareness in an attempt to make us second-guess and doubt ourselves. The aim is to cause people to feel less sure not only of the things we have done, but also feel less sure of the things others have done. They want us to question the accuracy of our observations and memory.
The idea is to train you to dismiss any anomalies you may observe as being your own misperception of things. Once they convince you not to trust your own judgement, they are free to do whatever they want to you, and you will simply accept it without questioning.
UPDATE 3: May 18, 2024:
Confrontations with individuals keep occurring, at times potentially violent. Following are just 3 such encounters as of late.
1 - Kick-boxer in the park:
As I parked my car in one of the parking lots in Vancouver's Stanley Park one night, another vehicle drove up behind me and parked several spots away. A tall man exited that vehicle, and walked hastily along the path I always walk, down some steps to the water's sea wall path. I took my time and followed my usual walk, also down the steps down to the sea wall. The man knew my routine, and was in a hurry to get ahead of me.
As I walked along the sea wall, I saw the same man sitting on a bench, playing a loud Persian-sounding religious sermon on some device I did not clearly see. As I walked past him, he called out to me to stop and chat. I ignored him and continued walking past him. He rose and started walking behind me.
I opened my umbrella, turned, and walked past him the other way, returning to the stairs back to the parking lot. He also turned and continued following me. I started running. He also started running. I ran up the steps, as did he.
Being taller than I am, his legs are longer than mine, and he quickly caught up to me on a grassy patch at the top of the steps. I turned to him and asked, "Why are you following me?" He did not reply, but stood profile to me, the same stance a kick-boxer uses when ready to kick someone. He was tall, thin, and in excellent physical shape as you would see in a kick-boxer.
He did not speak at all, but was just waiting for me to make a move. I turned, entered my vehicle and left. The encounter continued with a chase through the park in our cars. Yes, that is correct. He chased me out of the park in his car.
2 - Told to keep quiet:
The perpetrators need to operate with as little detection as possible, and they repeatedly warn their subjects to keep their mouths shut about their experiences.
On another of my recent nightly walks, a man stood on the sidewalk ahead of me about half a block away, looked at me, and shouted into the sky at nobody, giving the appearance of being a homeless person shouting for no reason. He then started walking in my direction. I continued walking straight. As he passed me, he leaned into my face and shouted into my ear, "Shut the f_ck up!" I continued walking in my direction, and he resumed walking in his.
The idea is to make it seem as though he is just a deranged man wandering the streets at night, shouting at nothing, so that when he shouts at me, any observer would simply dismiss his actions. But in reality, he was sent to send me a message to stop publishing posts like this, which I had done many times on many sites, and continue to. They don't like it when we reveal their methods. But the truth must be known.
3 - You'll be sorry:
On another occasion, while returning from grocery shopping one afternoon, I walked past a man sitting by a storefront. He was clean-cut, wearing clean clothes, without any carts or wagons or any belongings of any kind. As I passed him, he asked me for some spare change. I replied, "I'm sorry," and continued walking past. He replied, "You will be."
There are numerous other experiences, like two seemingly unassociated men standing on the sea wall about 100 meters away from each other, each of them spitting just as I walked past each one.
There are too many experiences to mention. Looking at each experience individually, one would easily dismiss them as being unrelated and simply coincidental. But put them all together and a picture starts to form, like putting together the pieces of a puzzle.
As I hand you each piece of the puzzle one by one, you dismiss each piece, saying, "This could be anything." And you discard it. You keep discarding each piece as I hand it to you. By the end of it, you look down at the table and say, "You have nothing." That's because you looked at each piece as a separate item and threw it away. But if you leave the pieces on the table as I hand them to you and do not hastily discard them, you will see they form a clear picture when put all together.
We must look at all these events as a whole. Individually, each one could be anything. But when all of these experiences are put together and considered as a whole, they form an undeniable picture. Do not be quick to dismiss each piece. Leave the pieces on the table and look at the whole. The picture I present is sound. Remember, I have all the pieces; you do not. I see the picture more clearly than you do.
https://preview.redd.it/we31ymcsm91d1.jpg?width=966&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3d56ac3dd3558a60d477ba9315104d1b66b139f8
submitted by GoAheadMMDay to Liberty [link] [comments]


2024.05.19 00:57 honeypuppy Are Some Rationalists Dangerously Overconfident About AI?

AI has long been discussed in rationalist circles. There’s been a lot of focus on risks from artificial intelligence (particularly the idea that it might cause human extinction), but also the idea that artificial general intelligence might happen quite soon and subsequently transform society (e.g. supercharging economic growth in a technological singularity).
I’ve long found these arguments intriguing, and probably underrated by the public as a whole. I definitely don’t align myself with people like Steven Pinker who dismiss AI concerns entirely.
Nonetheless, I’ve noticed increasingly high confidence in beliefs of near-term transformative AI among rationalists. To be fair, it’s reasonable to update somewhat given recent advances like GPT-4. But among many, there is a belief that AI advances are the single most important thing happening right now. And among a minority, there are people with very extreme beliefs - such as quite high confidence that transformative AI is just a few years away, and/or that AI is very likely to kill us all.
My core arguments in this post are that firstly, from an “epistemic humility” or “outside view” perspective, we should be suspicious of confident views that the world is soon going to end (or change radically).
Secondly, the implications of the most radical views could cause people who hold them to inflict significant harm on themselves or others.
Who Believes In “AI Imminence”?
The single person I am most specifically critiquing is Eliezer Yudkowsky. Yudkowsky appears unwilling to give specific probabilities but writings like “Death With Dignity” has caused many including Scott Alexander to characterise him as believing that AI has a >90% chance of causing human extinction)
As a very prominent and very “doomy” rationalist, I worry that he may have convinced a fair number of people to share similar views, views which if taken seriously could hold its holders to feel depressed and/or make costly irrevocable decisions.
But though I think Yudkowsky deserves the most scrutiny, I don’t want to focus entirely on him.
Take Scott Alexander - he frames himself in the aforementioned link as “not as much of a doomer as some people”, yet gave a 33% probability (later adjusted downwards as a result of outside view considerations like those I raise in here) to “only” ~20%. While this leaves enough room for hope that it’s not as potentially dangerous a view as Yudkowsky’s, I agree with how the top Reddit comment in the original post said:
Is AI risk the only field where someone can write an article about how they’re not (much) of a doomer when they think that the risk of catastrophe/disasteextinction is 33%?
Beyond merely AI risk, claims about “transformative AI” date back to ideas about the “intelligent explosion” or “singularity” that are most popularly associated with Ray Kurzweil. A modern representation of this is Tom Davidson of Open Philanthropy, who wrote a report on takeoff speeds.
Other examples can be seen in (pseudo-)prediction markets popular with rationalists, such as Metaculus putting the median date of AGI at 2032, and Manifold Markets having a 17% chance of AI doom by 2100 (down from its peak of around 50% (!) in mid-2023).
Why Am I Sceptical?
My primary case for (moderate) scepticism is not about the object-level arguments around AI, but appealing to the “outside view”. My main arguments are:
Why I’m Against Highly Immodest Epistemology
However, maybe appealing to the “outside view” is incorrect? Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote a book, Inadequate Equiibria, which in large part argued against what he saw as excessive use of the “outside view”. He advises:
Try to spend most of your time thinking about the object level. If you’re spending more of your time thinking about your own reasoning ability and competence than you spend thinking about Japan’s interest rates and NGDP, or competing omega-6 vs. omega-3 metabolic pathways, you’re taking your eye off the ball.
I think Yudkowsky makes a fair point about being excessively modest. If you are forever doubting your own reasoning to the extent that you think you should defer to the majority of Americans who are creationists, you’ve gone too far.
But I think his case is increasingly weak the more radically immodest your views here. I’ll explain with the following analogy:
Suppose you were talking to someone who was highly confident in their new business idea. What is an appropriate use of a “modesty” argument cautioning against overconfidence?
A strong-form modesty argument would go something like “No new business idea could work, because if it could, someone would already have done it”. This is refuted by countless real-world examples, and I don’t think anyone actually believes in strong-form modesty.
A moderate-form modesty argument would go something like “Some new business ideas work, but most fail, even when their founders were quite confident in them. As an aspiring entrepreneur, you should think your chances of success in your new venture are similar to those of the reference class of aspiring entrepreneurs”.
The arguments against epistemic modesty in Inadequate Equilibria are mainly targeted against reasoning like this. And I think here there’s a case where we can have reasonable disagreement about the appropriate level of modesty. You may have some good reasons to believe that your idea is unusually good or that you are unusually likely to succeed as an entrepreneur. (Though a caveat: with too many degrees of freedom, I think you run the risk of leading yourself to whatever conclusion you like).
For the weak-form modesty argument, let’s further specify that your aspiring entrepreneur’s claim was “I’m over 90% confident that my business will make me the richest person in the world”.
To such a person, I would say: “Your claim is so incredibly unlikely a priori and so self-aggrandising that I feel comfortable in saying you’re overconfident without even needing to consider your arguments”.
That is basically what I feel about Eliezer Yudwosky and AI.
Let’s take a minute to consider what the implications are if Yudkowsky is correctly calibrated about his beliefs in AI. For a long time, he was one of the few people in the world to be seriously concerned about it, and even now, with many more people concerned about AI risk, he stands out as having some of the highest confidence in doom.
If he’s right, then he’s arguably the most important prophet in history. Countless people throughout history have tried forecasting boon or bust (and almost always been wrong). But on arguably the most important question in human history - when we will go extinct and why - Yudkowsky was among the very few people to see it and easily the most forceful.
Indeed, I’d say this is a much more immodest claim than claiming your business idea will make you the richest person in the world. The title of the richest person in the world has been shared by numerous people throughout history, but “the most accurate prophet of human extinction” is a title that can only ever be held by one person.
I think Scott Alexander’s essay Epistemic Learned Helplessness teaches a good lesson here. Argument convincingness isn’t necessarily strongly correlated with the truth of a claim. If someone gives you what appears to be a strong argument for something that appears crazy, you should nonetheless remain highly sceptical.
Yet I feel like Yudkowsky wants to appeal to “argument convincingness” because that’s what he’s good at. He has spent decades honing his skills arguing on the internet, and much less at acquiring traditional credentials and prestige. “Thinking on the object level” sounds like it’s about being serious and truth-seeking, but I think in practice it’s about privileging convincing-sounding arguments and being a good internet debater above all other evidence.
A further concern I have about “argument convincingness” for AI is that there’s almost certainly a large “motivation gap” in favour of the production of pro-AI-risk arguments compared to anti-AI-risk arguments, with the worriers spending considerably more time and effort than the detractors. As Philip Trammel points out in his post “But Have They Engaged with The Arguments?, this is true of almost any relatively fringe position. This can make the apparent balance of “argumentative evidence” misleading in those cases, with AI no exception.
Finally, Yudkowsky’s case for immodesty depends partly on alleging he has a good track record of applying immodesty to “beat the experts”. But his main examples (a lightbox experiment and the monetary policy of the Bank of Japan) I don’t find that impressive given he could cherry-pick. Here’s an article alleging that Yudkowsky’s predictions have frequently between egregiously wrong and here’s another arguing that his Bank of Japan position in particular didn’t ultimately pan out.
Why I’m Also Sceptical of Moderately Immodest Epistemology
I think high-confidence predictions of doom (or utopia) are much more problematic than relatively moderate views - they are more likely to be wrong, and if taken seriously, more strongly imply that the believer should consider making radical, probably harmful life changes.
But I do still worry that the ability to contrast with super confident people like Yudkowsky lets the “not a total doomer” people off the hook a little too easily. I think it’s admirable that Scott Alexander seriously grappled with the fact that superforecasters disagreed with him and updated downwards based on that observation.
Still, let’s revisit the “aspiring entrepreneur” analogy - imagine they had instead said: “You know what, I’ve listened to your claims about modesty and agree that I’ve been overconfident. I now think there’s only a 20% chance that my business idea will make me the richest person in the world”.
Sure - they’ve moved in the right direction, but it’s easy to see that they’re still not doing modesty very well.
An anti-anti-AI risk argument Scott made (in MR Tries the Safe Uncertainly Fallacy) is that appealing to base rates leaves you vulnerable to “reference class tennis” where both sides can appeal to different reference classes, and the “only winning move is not to play”.
Yet in the case of our aspiring entrepreneur, I think the base rate argument of “extremely few people can become the richest person in the world” is very robust. If the entrepreneur tried to counter with “But I can come up with all sorts of other reference classes in which I come out more favourably! Reference class tennis! Engage with my object-level arguments!”, it would not be reasonable to throw up your hands and say “Well, I can’t come up with good counterarguments, so I guess you probably do have a 20% chance of becoming the richest person in the world then”.
I contend that “many people have predicted the end of the world and they’ve all been wrong” is another highly robust reference class. Yes, you can protest about “anthropic effects” or reasons why “this time is different”. And maybe the reasons why “this time is different” are indeed a lot better than usual. Still, I contend that you should start from a prior of overwhelming skepticism and only make small updates based on arguments you read. You should not go “I read these essays with convincing arguments about how we’re all going to die, I guess I just believe that now”.
What Should We Make Of Surveys Of AI Experts?
Surveys done of AI experts, as well as opinions of well-regarded experts like Geoffrey Hinton and Stewart Russell, have shown significant concerns about AI risk (example).
I think this is good evidence for taking AI risk seriously. One important thing it does is raise AI risk out of the reference class of garden-variety doomsday predictions/crazy-sounding theories that have no expert backing.
However, I think it’s still only moderately good evidence.
Firstly, I think we should not consider it as an “expert consensus” nearly as strong as say, the expert consensus on climate change. There is nothing like an IPCC for AI, for example. This is not a mature, academically rigorous field. I don’t think we should update too strongly from AI experts spending a few minutes filling in a survey. (See for instance this comment about the survey, showing how non-robust the answers given are, indicating the responders aren’t thinking super hard about the questions).
Secondly, I believe forecasting AI risk is a multi-disciplinary skill. Consider for instance asking physicists to predict the chances of human extinction due to nuclear war in the 1930s. They would have an advantage in predicting nuclear capabilities, but after nuclear weapons were developed, the reasons we haven’t had a nuclear war yet have much more to do with international relations than nuclear physics.
And maybe AGI is so radically different from the AI that exists today that perhaps asking AI researchers now about AI risk might have been like asking 19th-century musket manufacturers about the risk from a hypothetical future “super weapon”.
I think an instructive analogy were the failed neo-Malthusian predictions of the 1960s and 1970s, such as The Population Bomb or The Limits to Growth. Although I’m unable to find clear evidence of this, my impression is that these beliefs were quite mainstream among the most “obvious” expert class of biologists (The Population Bomb author Paul Ehlrich had a PhD in biology), and the primary critics tended to be in other fields like economics (most notably Julian Simon). Biologists had insights, but they also had blind spots. Any “expert survey” that only interviewed biologists would have missed crucial insights from other disciplines.
What Are The Potential Consequences Of Overconfidence?
People have overconfident beliefs all the time. Some people erroneously thought Hillary Clinton was ~99% likely to win the 2016 Presidential election. Does it matter that much if they’re overconfident about AI?
Well, suppose you were overconfident about Clinton. You probably didn’t do anything differently in your life, and the only real cost of your overconfidence was being unusually surprised on election day 2016. Even one of the people who was that confident in Clinton didn’t suffer any worse consequences than eating a bug on national television.
But take someone who is ~90% confident that AI will radically transform or destroy society (“singularity or extinction by 2040") and seriously acts like it.
Given that, it seems apparently reasonable to be much more short-term focused. You might choose to stop saving for retirement. You might forgo education on the basis that it will be obsolete soon. These are actions that some people have previously taken, are considering taking or are actually taking because of expectations of AI progress.
At a societal level, high confidence in short-term transformative AI implies that almost all non-AI related long-term planning that humanity does is probably a waste. The most notable example would be climate change. If AI either kills us or radically speeds up scientific and economic growth by the middle of the century, then it seems pretty stupid to be worrying about climate change. Indeed, we’re probably underconsuming fossil fuels that could be used to improve the lives of people right now.
At its worst, there is the possibility of AI-risk-motivated terrorism. Here’s a twitter thread from Emil Torres talking about this, noticeably this tweet in particular about minutes from an AI safety workshop “sending bombs” to OpenAI and DeepMind.
To be fair, I think it’s highly likely the people writing that were trolling. Still - if you’re a cold-blooded utilitarian bullet-biter with short timelines and high p(doom), I could easily see you rationalising such actions.
I want to be super careful about this - I don’t want to come across as claiming that terrorism is a particularly likely consequence of “AI dooming”, nor do I want to risk raising the probability of it by discussing it too much and planting the seed of it in someone’s head. But a community that takes small risks seriously should be cognizant of the possibility. This is a concern that I think anyone with a large audience and relatively extreme views (about AI or anything) should take into account.
Conclusion
This post has been kicking around in draft form since around the release of GPT-4 a year ago. At that time, there were a lot of breathless takes on Twitter about how AGI was just around the corner, Yudkowsy was appearing on a lot of podcasts saying we were all going to die, and I started to feel like lots of people had gone a bit far off on the deep end.
Since then I feel there’s a little bit of a vibe shift away from the most extreme scenarios (as exhibited in the Manifold extinction markets), as well as me personally probably overestimating how many people ever believed in them. I’ve found it hard to try to properly articulate the message: “You’re probably directionally correct relative to society as a whole, but some unspecified number of you have probably gone too far”.
Nonetheless, my main takeaways are:
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2024.05.19 00:15 Medium-Wing-4710 The harrowing experience of a cancer-surviving partner turned abuser

Over the course of my 4 year marriage to my partner, I have arrived at the position that I was abused, manipulated, and functionally enslaved to a mentally ill partner.
In simplest form, the progression is apparently observable. She was diagnosed with cancer in October of 2019 while we were engaged. Due to the diagnosis, we moved up our actual marriage date (our wedding was still set for mid-April) to December 1, 2019. Her surgery was December 13, 2019. In my compassion for her, I agreed to move our wedding date up to offset her anxiety around who would be responsible for her if things went south with her surgical treatment.
Our first month of marriage was straightforward; she was on pain meds recovering from surgery, so the main engagement that occurred was me walking her up and down the hospital hallway as she recovered and trying to meet her base physical needs of hygiene, food, and presence. We stayed in the hospital for 2-3 weeks (with recurring hospital visits for complications).
Quickly after we figured out our marital living situation in her small 3-bed apartment with 2 roommates, our relationship devolved. Specifically, she was irritable because of the pain she was in, causing her to lash out at me with regular frequency for small things. If I didn’t put clothes away in the right place, didn’t anticipate her needs (without her communicating them), or ate the wrong food in front of her she would shout at me and decry me for my thoughtlessness.
These small, critical engagements were wounding and created a distance between us – and there was no upside. She was never kind, never paid mind to needs I might have, and started down a path of cultivating a root of bitterness in her soul. She quickly revealed herself to be venomous, hateful, and vindictive when she felt like she was wronged — and any observation of concern about our marriage resulted me in being accused of being mean or insensitive, even if I spent hours or days calculating the best way to share my concern (and I have a master’s degree in communication where I focused in studying disagreement — I know how to carefully package concerns).
During this time, I worked hard to provide for us, foreseeing a significant time period where I would have to be primary financial provider and caregiver. I increased my income each year we were married by around 25%, finishing our marriage at >$80,000 in yearly income, compared to starting our marriage at a modest $42,000 salary (including dramatically improving our healthcare). Frankly, I increased my income to provide for us in spite of the lack of support at home.
But to be clear: I don’t think it would have been particularly difficult to provide financially if I had an ounce of support at home.
However, the relentless criticism and expectation of mind-reading continued through the years. I rationalized this abuse for the first year of our marriage because of all the excuses to be cruel, she had a good one – she had cancer. I hung onto a hope that it would stop. Contrary to my hope, as the years went on – and our expenses climbed – and I continued to work myself to the bone – she continued to relentlessly critique and even started being more emotionally demanding, expecting me to take responsibility for her inability to cope with her emotions – I was drowning. She was asking too much of me. There was no deliverance from her abuse.
I was exhausted. In the peak of the abuse I endured at her hand, I was working multiple jobs, sleeping 10+ hours a night and napping frequently during the day around meetings and work, then coping with alcohol to numb myself to the abusive dynamic and fall asleep with no support from her. The only time I could approach her sexually was when I was intoxicated, with inhibitions lowered. The only time I could have a conversation with her was with a counselor in the room. Without something to mitigate opportunity for her to be cruel to me, either a mediator or self-medication, I was scared.
I lived at home in a constant state of alert and cognitive fatigue. No matter how I tried to make sense of my home life, I couldn’t. When she looked at or touched me, I would recoil in fear, anticipating some sort of incisive critique or demand expressed. Then she would criticize me for not responding warmly to her, exacerbating the cycle.
I couldn’t meet her needs – I was utterly exhausted. When I would tell her of the exhaustion I experienced in marital counseling, her responses were typically something along the lines of not believing me, denying what I was saying was true, or calling my exhaustion an ‘excuse’. I could interact happily with my friends… why not her?
I did not deny her demands were legitimate; rather, I expressed my inability to meet them because of how fatigued I was. I said ‘I can’t’ so many times. I realize her demands were small; affection, saying ‘i love you’, complimenting her. But it’s disorienting to be consistently berated and belittled by a person and then asked to compliment them and tell them you love them.
The push and pull of abuse is exhausting to a person who is not mentally because it does not make sense.
Further, in counseling I realized that I have forgotten that I have needs. I have lost the tools to even evaluate what my needs might be because, implicitly and explicitly in my marriage, I was told my needs don’t matter.
My marriage made no sense; I was obviously drowning, exhausted with the demands our life imposed on me. I was doing everything I could to get straight. I was in individual therapy, marital counseling, pastoral counseling, trying different antidepressants (4 in total – all with no effect), changing eating habits, trying to reduce my drinking, getting medical tests to see if I had health issues causing my fatigue, and being vulnerable in my friendships in an attempt to invite others in to process and move forward and figure out my marriage. I desperately shared everything I could about my marriage, hoping someone else would crack the code where I couldn’t.
None of my efforts worked. I could not get out of the exhausted state I was in. It’s worth noting here that within weeks of separating I almost completely cut out alcohol, got into a regular sleep schedule, was waking up at 6-7am every day and reading multiple hours (which I couldn’t do in marriage due to cognitive fatigue/distraction), and experienced a resurgence of energy. I have felt the duress I was under lift and lift and lift and the weeks and months have went on.
In retrospect, I was experiencing cognitive fatigue because I was taking the demands my wife was placing on me seriously, but no matter what I did I could not make sense of them. How could she not see that I was doing everything I could to make ends meet – the ends which she was imposing on me? I did not have additional energy left. She would ask me ‘Do you love me?’ and I didn’t know how to respond. How is my work not at least some symbol of love? My dream was to be a poor professor, which she knew – instead I was grinding myself to the bone, working in digital marketing with multiple freelance projects, picking up a bartending gig and a teaching gig on top of full-time employment.
The last straw was when she accused me of abuse. I took that accusation seriously, and weighed it against my experience. ‘Am I an abuser?’ I asked myself. I sorted through my behavior and how I treated her. I came to the conclusion that I may be a poor husband in serious ways; but I am not an abuser. And the abuse question opened the door to the question… ‘I may not be an abuser… but is there abuse in our marriage?’ And the answer quickly became ‘Yes.’
When we were married, I understood that she wasn’t going to work much for a while. However, she worked the bare minimum she could for 4 years, earning at most in a single year $18,000. As the years went on and my income climbed, our debt continued to climb as well. She was still contributing the same, yet spending frivolously on useless knick knacks for our home and a cat. As I packed up our home to sell, the majority of items were dozens of boxes of useless junk she’d accumulated.
She lived a life of mania around finances. We would go to marital counseling and she would regularly express, ‘I would rather be poor and happy than rich and sad’. We were poor and sad. Sure, my income was the highest it’d ever been – but we were still drowning, with debts climbing. At the end of our marriage, we’d accumulated about $20,000 in consumer debt between credit cards and personal loans.
It was traumatizing (and abusive) to go to counseling and be told by my partner she would ‘rather be poor and happy and than rich and sad’ when the factual scenario we were living was neither. She actively denied reality – both my lived experience and the reality of our finances – at my expense. It was killing me, trying to make sense of what we were going through but being unable to make sense of what I was being told and what I was experiencing.
Throughout this time, it is worth adding that she also leveraged my spiritual leadership to ‘set me straight’. I was in a conservative Evangelical space, believing that men are the ultimate provider in a family unit and primarily responsible for the status of the marriage. Because I was not doing what she wanted me to (lavishing her with affection), I was muscled into multiple groups and meetings where pastoral care intervened to restore our marriage. In the moment, I submitted to my pastoral care because of my trust for them and my faith in God. Now, I believe this dynamic was abusive; my pastoral care did not care in any sense for my soul; they only cared about fixing my marriage. No questions around ‘why’ my marriage was so bad were asked; only what was going on and how it could be fixed. I relish the thought of my pastoral care being held accountable for the abuse they exercised upon me during this time on judgment day, albeit through a shaken faith in a God that would enable this dynamic.
With my spiritual community, I shared that I felt like she was my tormentor; that she it felt as if I were on the ground due to exhaustion, and she was standing on my throat, telling me to ‘get up’ and ‘tell me you love me’; that our metaphorical life was a boat, sinking, and I was desperately bailing out water. All the while, she stood at the other end of the boat, desperately bailing water in and looking at me like I was a maniac.
And yet, because there was no adultery, there was no category for divorce. We had sworn an oath before God and were required to fix this.
As I reflect upon my marriage (and the ongoing divorce proceedings), a few things are clear.
She is an abuser. I don’t think she intends to be, but impact matters. She is mentally ill and unable to reckon with basic reality.
She is a manipulator. She manipulated my spiritual community against me. I was viewed as someone to be corrected while begging for help from my trusted friends and pastoral care, whom I now regret being vulnerable with due to their abuse and denial of my reality because I didn’t fit neatly into their thin theological categories.
She is an enslaver. In divorce proceedings, she is doing everything she can to get every dollar from me, leveraging student loans I did not co-sign, my continually increasing income due to my hard work, and denying every claim of dissipated assets she can.
It is truly a mind-breaking experience to see your compassion leveraged against you for money. I had to sit under an attorney proclaiming to a judge that, since I consented to move up our marriage date before her cancer surgery, ‘I knew what I was getting into’. That she is entitled to large sums of money (that do not exist; we never had more than $3000 in our bank account during marriage) due to that decision.
Even apart from the abuse, I did not know what I was getting into. Including the abuse, I am full of remorse for having invited such an evil, hateful person into my life.
This experience has been the most challenging to my faith. As I endured abuse from her, I trusted God in a few ways. That the compassion I showed would maybe be rewarded – or, at least not punished. That my spiritual community wanted what was best for me. That God was not a punitive, hateful God (like my partner). I do not believe this trust was well placed, but am open to shortcomings in my views here.
I struggle to consent to a God that allowed my experience to occur. I’m open and processing in some kind of faith, but I really don’t know what it looks like to find a place to put this pain and betrayal that I’m experiencing.
I am a survivor of abuse, and the abuse I endured was mind-shattering. I sacrificed everything to support a partner diagnosed with serious bodily illness, which drove her to hate me and deny my lived experience because she could not reconcile it with the hatefulness she cultivated over our marriage, choosing bitterness over any positivity for four years, poisoning my well-being in the process.
What I envisioned to be the most compassionate moment of my life — marrying a person with cancer and promising to support and love them — has become nothing but a symbol of pain and remorse. I envisioned a life where my partner and I would fight against the terror of cancer; instead she hopped to the other side, choosing her ongoing health issues as the ally and myself as the enemy.
It took me 4 years to realize it. And as she drags me through court to leverage every dollar out of me I can, my only regret is that I didn’t leave my abuser to her own devices sooner; self-pity, hatefulness, and a sheer disregard toward taking responsibility for anything.
I am grateful but drowning. As we are negotiating settlement, the end is near, and my abuser will soon be unable to execute any influence in my life.
submitted by Medium-Wing-4710 to abusesurvivors [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 23:50 LordUnconfirmed There is no definitive evidence that the man observed by Fouke was Zodiac

While I believe it is probable or likely for him to be, this post is intended more so as a warning and cautionary bit against a trend I have observed every so often around True Crime message boards: the tendency for internet sleuths to take 'probable' things and run around with them as if they were confirmed.l facts about the case.
One should always remember to highlight the unconfirmed status of their speculation, no matter how likely.
Now, maybe you can come up with possible, but uncertain, explanations for these two bullet points, but the fact these simple questions can be asked at all already means there is a lot of reasonable doubt to be had about how definitive our guesses are as to the identity of the so-called suspect.
We should always keep that in mind when analyzing aspects of this case.
submitted by LordUnconfirmed to ZodiacKiller [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 23:43 Ok_Top_7936 IGG WHEN FIRST TESTED?

Hi, I hope everyone is doing well or atleast trying. wow… I never thought i would be here. Im pretty sure we all didn’t. I have been newly diagnosed in February. Prior to February I never knew herpes wasn’t included in an std pannel. I am a 27yo female and that is so embarrassing to say.
Let me start from the beginning.. In January of 2020 I had did a full pannel at an urgent care and everything was negative except for HSV. I never received a call and I was never informed. I saw my results to everything else online everything was negative. But i guess for the igg they do over and over testing which I just learned. So i never saw the actual result for it. Again usually aftercare will call and tell you the results or if its something more serious they will call and ask for you to come in person (which is what they did to me in February 2024). (I WENT FOUR YEARS WITHOUT EVER BEING TOLD MY STATUS OR KNOWING)
Fast forward to February of 2024 i did another regular pannel in late March (same urgent care different lo) . I again saw all my results and didn’t receive a call so obviously I believed I was in the clear. On February 10th I received a call while I was napping with my 2yo. Since i obviously didn’t pick up due to me sleeping they left a voicemail asking me to come in to discuss my labs.
That freaked me out and automatically I went into panic mode. Something told me to go back into my portal. I saw the hsv result and my heart dropped. I then started digging into my portal trying to see if i ever been tested for this before ( I ALSO CHECKED MY REAL OB CLINIC PORTAL AND I NEVER BEEN TESTED FOR IT THERE ALL THESE YEARS EITHER) Thats when i then bumped into the January 2020 test. My heart dropped again. I never knew. No one called or anything. I had a baby in 2021 and my heart felt even heavier I immediatley went into thinking I hurt my child.
For two years my child ate off my spoon and drank off my cup. And i had no idea of my status. I never had a symptom not even a cold sore or a blister below. By the way they stated i was pos for both 1 and 2. Recently i asked my child’s doctor if I could’ve possibly infected my child, she said if i didn’t have a cold sore when he ate or drank from me then he is perfectly fine and not infected. (I ALSO HAD A CSECTION DUE TO AN EMERGENCY NOT BECAUSE OF ANYTHING ELSE)
Back to me now… My test in 2020 said an igg 6 for hsv. And then my test recently in March 2024 said igg 9. i then retested in February 2024 and it said an igg of 11. I know that its hard to tell when I got infected but I’m trying to figure out how long has it been before that first postive in January 2020 of 6.
My question to you all is how long after being infected did you find out? And what was the igg if you recall? I am struggling to wrap my head around this diagnosis. I am struggling to find my self worth. I feel as though no one will accept me or love me. I just want some insight on how this igg level thing actually works.
PS I DID LEARN ABOUT HERPES IN SCHOOL HOWEVER THEY ALWAYS MADE IT SEEMS AS THOUGH SYMPTOMS SHOW AND THAT IT CAN ONLY BE PASSED WHEN SYMPTOMS ARE VISIBLE. Pretty sad to say. Also after my diagnosis I asked my ob why stuff like this isnt tested regularly. She stated that the blood test isnt always acurate so its better to only test people with symptoms (which cdc recommends as well). That way they can swab the actuatal blister or etc.
submitted by Ok_Top_7936 to HSVpositive [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 23:27 theblahblahmachine The stinkfest that is Stickeys.in

The stinkfest that is Stickeys.in
Hi all,
I bought an Artnex GK75 some time last year. I started running into some battery related issues in January and reached out on Stickeys' discord. The dude asked be to raise a ticket which I did. The conversation is attached here in the screenshot.
discord ticket
As you can see, after some time of not recieving any response on the ticket, I started dm'ing him on the side parallely as well. This was another joy ride of a conversation. I can understand the slow response but I expect some truth in what you respond with. This, again, was missing. He says something but that never seemed to happen. Attaching the dm screenshots here:
p1
p2
p3
After finally months of hounding him on discord, I finally manage to get him to send me the keyboard only to realize that he sent me the wrong keyboard. I was not informed of this prior to him sending it. I thought it was maybe a mistake. Happens to the best of us. I reached out to him. I told him I recieved the wrong keeb and I had sent a diff one for RMA. I get hit with "I sent you a new board bud". Yeah, shouldn've notified prior about this. What made the lad assume I would just "accept" it I have no idea. 2 days after his last message to me, I went to dm him again and that is when discord said I couldn't dm this guy and when I checked the discord group, I got notified of his "break" from discord and the company. Given how my interaction with him went all these months, I thought damn, exit scam for sure like many others and decided to come to terms with the fact that i got scammed and just call it a day. 2-3 days post that, he reopened the chat back again. I still couldn't send him dm's probably due to the restrictions he put. I tagged him on the general channel about a status update and got hit with "individual order queries, pls mail". Again, I obliged. I dropped a mail. Still half assed responses with 0 truth. Email thread attached:
https://preview.redd.it/fcpprf7c591d1.png?width=2467&format=png&auto=webp&s=cfa2630d823dded4eba08be67002630bfd3f1477
"Expect tracking number today" on 15th May and dude disappeared again. Time and again, I see him playing the victim card in the discord channel but I have seen nothing that would convince me that his "struggles" are real and people are just hounding him for no reason. Whatever you do, just avoid stickeys if you care about any kind of support. I have ordered a couple of things from stickeys in the past without complaints but this one incident has left a sour taste in my mouth that nullifies it all. IDK what to do now. Any suggestions are helpful thanks.
submitted by theblahblahmachine to mkindia [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 23:20 JoshuaSingh11 The truth about Robert F Kennedy Jr and his candidacy: an overview, countering common smears, citing evidence, and short-form content

Overview
  1. Kennedy on the state of our union (9 min)
  2. 2024 candidate comparison chart
  3. Overview of Kennedy (3 min)
  4. Fixing huge issues Biden & Trump don't fix (1 min)
  5. Policies on Kennedy's website
  6. Who is Bobby Kennedy? (30 min)
  7. Kennedy's Record vs Biden's Record vs Trump's Record
  8. A Hero Of The Planet
  9. Kennedy's podcasts
  10. Kennedy's books
Countering common smears
  1. Kennedy isn't a grifter, or a plant to help Trump or Biden; Kennedy is a legitimate candidate who can win
  2. Kennedy isn't anti-vax
  3. Kennedy isn't a conspiracy theorist
  4. Kennedy fully recovered from the brain worm incident over a decade ago and doesn't have cognitive issues
  5. Kennedy isn't a spoiler
  6. Kennedy isn't antisemitic and didn't claim covid-19 was an ethnically targeted bioweapon
  7. Kennedy didn't claim atrazine causes transgenderism
  8. Kennedy respects the 2nd amendment and isn't going to take people's guns away
  9. Kennedy isn't authoritarian and didn't say climate change deniers should be jailed
  10. Kennedy isn't responsible for the measles outbreak in Samoa
  11. Kennedy has a solid stance on abortion that most Americans would agree with
  12. Kennedy wants the right kind of environmentalism that both sides can agree on, not authoritarian scams
  13. Kennedy cares about both Israelis and Palestinians and wants peace
Evidence supporting counter-narrative claims
  1. Science supports Kennedy's claims about Big Pharma corrupting our scientific system
  2. Science supports Kennedy's claims on Covid, vaccines, EMFs, glyphosate, microplastics, and more
  3. Science supports Kennedy's mercury-related claims
  4. Science supports Kennedy's fluoride-related claims
  5. Science supports Kennedy's Ivermectin-related claims
  6. Science supports Kennedy's frog-related claims
  7. Science supports Kennedy's claims about Wifi, 5G, and radiofrequency radiation
  8. Science supports Kennedy's claims about syringe-injectable electronics
  9. Science supports Kennedy's claims regarding different populations potentially having different levels of susceptibility to Covid
  10. Kennedy's claims about NATO and Ukraine are supported by strong evidence
  11. Kennedy stands up to the corrupt establishment
Short-form content
  1. The truth about Ukraine (3 min)
  2. Inflation, war, and banks (2 min)
  3. Rising above partisanship and the duopoly (4 min)
  4. Making housing affordable (3 min)
  5. Not a conspiracy theorist 1 (5 min)
  6. Not a conspiracy theorist 2 (3 min)
  7. Calling out Fed, MIC, Oil, Pharma, CIA (2 min)
  8. Persuasive memes
  9. Truth to power and fighting for freedom (3 min)
  10. Chronic disease (3 min)
  11. Fighting factory farming corruption (3 min)
  12. Making our government tell the truth (3 min)
  13. Making our farms and food healthy (1 min)
  14. The right kind of environmentalism (4 min)
  15. Kennedy vs Biden for democracy comparison
  16. Kennedy can win 1 (1 min)
  17. Kennedy can win 2 (3 min)
  18. Draining the swamp (2 min)
  19. The truth about Trump's swamp record (2 min)
  20. Fighting the great reset (2 min)
  21. Mercury in vaccines (15 min)
  22. Fighting against totalitarianism (13 min)
  23. History lesson on Ukraine (4 min)
  24. Vaccines: science vs orthodoxy (10 min)
  25. Kennedy's covid record vs the duopoly's (4 min)
  26. Kennedy can beat Donald Trump in 2024, Biden can't
  27. Kennedy vs Trump on draining the swamp
  28. Looking at vaccine science vs trusting Bill Gates (2 min)
  29. Pro vaccine safety testing, not anti-vax (13 min)
  30. Neither right nor left: what we stand for (2 min)
submitted by JoshuaSingh11 to RFKJrForPresident [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 23:19 satelliteenter how much is okay to offer under? and other questions

Hello everyone, FTB here with a few silly questions.
I viewed a property yesterday evening for the 1st time and thinking about putting an offer in. I am very new to this so have a few questions I would like to ask. The estate agent has said that one offer is already in. The house has been up for several months and has already had one sale fall through. I'm thinking about making an offer on the back of just one viewing, but seeking some opinions.
I know the area well, as I used to work close by so not worried about that. Asking price is £265,000 it says on the website it was reduced previously but I'm not sure from what.
1) Is it reasonable to offer under £265k?
The reason for this is I'm happy with the state of the property (as far as I can tell, not any expertise in this area) however I am chain free and have a large deposit (25-30%), I've heard this can give an advantage, especially as they have already had a sale fall through. Several family members have said not to offer the list price and that it is the "done thing" to offer a little bit under (not sure about this). I'm considering to offer 5%-10% under so around £235-250k. I am a serious buyer and don't want to come off like I'm playing games to try and save a bit of money, but on the other hand, I'm feel I'm an attractive buyer and with one sale already falling through moving quicker for a bit less might be in their interest. Is it reasonable to stick in an offer of 235 and expect to negotiate up to 245 (for example).
2) I would like to go with my parents/sister to visit the property. Should I book a second viewing before or after making an offer? How likely will it be that the owner accepts another offer, in the meantime if I request a second viewing immediately, rather than going straight into the offer, and does my chain free status give me any lee-way here?
I'm thinking maybe to just go right in and offer on Monday, but equally I would like to go with my family to get their opinions. I'd also like to have a look at the loft space, which I couldn't do first time around. I wouldn't class this as essential, but something I would like to do, and I think having someone else look is reasonable. The balance I'm trying to strike here is a bit tricky perhaps.
I don't want the seller, or estate agent to doubt my legitimacy by putting in an offer and then asking for a second viewing, would it make the seller worried, like I'm trying to find some faults with the property or something? Equally I don't want to request a second viewing, and then in the meantime the house is taken off the market by the first offer (which the EA has told me is in). I have no idea about this other offer, it could be that the first offer is by someone in a chain, or a worse financial position than myself. This could worry the buyer as the first sale fell through because the buyer could not secure the correct funding.
3) Should I amend my AIP to be closer in value to the property?
Based on my salary, I could probably mortgage around 280k and I have a deposit of up to around 120k. So in theory I could be looking at properties around 350-400k. I'm not because I'd prefer to not go for the max amount and I am happy with this house after my first visit. If the EA sees I can (in theory) afford another 150k on the house price, they might be more likely to want to me to pay more. On the other hand, it can indicate I am more likely to get accepted for a mortgage (which was the sticking point of the sale that fell through).
4) How honest should I be with the EA? And should I wait for him to call me or shall I call him on Monday?
I'm thinking I could just ring him up and ask directly, "look I like the property, I'm chain free with a large deposit, so you can tell the owner I can move quickly, and more likely to be fine getting a mortgage, this should be more comforting to the owner who had a sale fall through before, I would like to do a second viewing and then immediately put an offer in, I'm very interested, but because of those reasons I'd like to offer 240k".
Or is it better to "play the game"?
5) Did I miss anything, general advice anyone can give.
Ultimately I'm very serious and very interested, just trying to get the best price and hopefully my chain free status and decent deposit should make me more attractive.
Thank you so much for reading, and thanks for anyone considering to comment, looking to get some opinions from all the experts here! :)
Good evening all.
submitted by satelliteenter to HousingUK [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 23:15 ChadEriksen Let's discuss ! "My own" Another Eden Hall of Fame, here's my extensive list, it's a Long read and hope you enjoy it. What is your "Best of" ? Please share your thoughts and you can use my post as template.

Hello everyone, I've been wanting to make this post for a while and now here we are ! This is a long post but ENJOY !!!
Another Eden is now 7 years old which means many stories, characters and an entire world...or rather time periods/timelines that currently exists. So here's the question, what's your Another Eden Hall of Fame ? Both Meta and Non Meta related.
Note: Remember that what I'm about to write is based SOLELY ON MY OPINION but I'm interested to see what my fellow Residents of Time's Forgotten Keep think ! Without further ado, let's start:
  1. Best Story Protagonist (Excluding Aldo): Nona
    Another Eden is composed of many stories and they are NOT always centered around Aldo which is the game's protagonist, few examples of that being Deirdre in the Knights Episodes/Nona in Apocrypha and Wryz from the recent Wryz Saga. My pick is Nona because she has BY FAR the best character development and to me she took the spotlight in the entire Apocrypha. In fact I'd argue that if Another Eden had the "Choose your Protagonist" Aldo would be the Male Protagonist and Nona would be the Female one because she's litterally the Protogonist of Apocrypha and it can be regarded as a "Game within a game" so yea that says alot.
  2. Best Side Story: Western Mythos (Song of Sword and Wings of Lost Paradise)
    The Western Mythos is the best story in my opinion (And actually alot of players do agree with me on that). The Zerberiya continent, the world, the cast of characters and the story is phenomenal from it's 1st chapter to the finale. I know that people will tell me Future Mythos is also great but it doesn't have THAT impact on me as much as the Western Mythos did.
Which is why (Rant Warning!) WFS ! WHERE'S MY WESTERN EXPANSTION !!! WHY DID YOU FORGOT THAT ZERBERIYA EXISTS ?? WE NEED MORE OF PEAK !! That is hurting me alot !! The only story which is a close second is Apocrypha but Western Mythos is the far better one and I'm thankful for Another Eden for creating that. I do hope that the Highly Rumored Eastern Mythos would be just as good because speaking of...
  1. Best Main Story: Main Story Part 2 (Tales of the East)
    There are currently four Main Stories: Main Story Part 1;Main Story Part 1.5 (Ogre Wars) ;Main Story Part 2 (Tales of the East) and the currently Main Story Part 3 (Into the Hollow).
    In my mind while having played all of those stories, I still find myself being drawn and attached to the Eastern Continent ! Because I truly love the setting ! WFS clearly nailed it and even so when you consider the amount of "Eastern" Personality characters that are in the game which is the highest in the game at 30 characters (Not counting AS/ES). Heck I'm currently replaying the Main Story Part 2 because I enjoyed it even better than the current Part 3 which from a pure gameplay sure it's better but in terms of Story/Characters and OST then to me nothing beats the Garulea Continent (Present/Past/Future and Underworld) !
Alot of people in the sub love Eastern characters, most notably u/NoWaifuN0Laifu who like Hozuki, an Eastern sensual Fox Lady so yea there's that.
This is in part why I'm extremely hyped for Eastern Mythos and I can't wait for it ! And Yukino Alter (One of the main things keeping me attached to Another Eden)
  1. Best Character Quest: Melissa
    Melissa is by far the best Character Quest and ask any veteran player and he'll tell you that. It's also the darkest and the saddest one in the entire game and it's special in the fact that Aldo IS NOT PRESENT in it at all ! Imagine THAT ! I won't say more because of spoilers but if you don't have Melissa you can just search on Youtube as her CQ is there and you can watch it ! If you have her but have not played her quest...WHAT ARE YOU WAITING for ? DO IT !
  2. Best Character: Yukino
    This is subjective and my AE subreddit flair checks out, I love Yukino so much since her introduction, apart from me having a thing for women/girls with Ice powers, her story and how she was created (Also she's Eastern as well so another point !) also her relationship to Tsukiha so no need to say more!
  3. Best Antagonist/Villain: Guildna (Main Story Part 1)
    The reason why to me Guildna is the best villain is NOT what you think it is ! Another Eden is a game centered around stories Beyond Time and Space there I said it but while there are really good villainy characters like for instance the Empress/Emperor of the Land of Mi and Shin (Again Eastern !) Garneli and Genshin but Guildna is special because he made me appreciate Main Story Part 1 alot more then the other characters, it tells you what happened if Guildna makes some impactful decisions in the storyline. Besides without Guildna there's no Aldo and therefore no Another Eden !
  4. Best Cat Companion: Kuchiba
    I love the Siamese Cat Breed and Kuchiba IS the only one in the game in whom I didn't change ever since I found her years ago in Vermillion Road (Another Eastern Reference, see what I told you)
  5. Best NPC: Some Guy
    He's Scott literally everywhere in the game. From the past to the future, from Zerberiya to Garulea, heck even in the Hollow you'll find him ! There's no way I make a list without appreciating "Some Guy" and his deeds to the game.
  6. Best Frog: Cyrus (He's Eastern aswell ! I tell you this is why the Eastern Setting is THE BEST !!)
  7. Best Main Cast Character: Guildna
  8. Best Mascot: Varuo
    If Moke wasn't released as a playable Sidekick he would have been my pick but now I have to choose the 2nd best IMO and that's Varuo. The Iconic Cat mascot in the game.
  9. Best Boss: Caroline and Justine (From Persona 5 Royal part 2 Collab)
    This boss used to be the hardest boss in the game for a long time and for good reason as it has alot of HP stoppers and has TONS of HP, while the boss has been powercrept and now easy with the recent units...back than it was a pain, another close second would be the Toova AS Manifest Battle which used to be the hardest Manifest fight in the entire game because of Toova AS insane fixed DMG and RNG involved.
  10. Best OST: エルの唄~メリナ Song of Sword and Wings of Lost Paradise ED ~ The Stifling Song Melina Edition
    The best theme for the best story in the game, everytime I hear the OST I unconsciously start humming and even start tearing up because it's JUST THAT GOOD and after playing the Western Mythos and knowing what the lyrics means...man it hits hard ! A close second is Apex Logic and Cardinal Scales ED ~ Immaculate Full Version but let's be real ! The game is full of the best OST in a game ever !
  11. Best Battle OST: Apex Logic and Cardinal Scales ~ Last Notes of the Battle Song Alter Dewey Boss Theme.
    This one is hard to choose as the game is packed full of Bangers in the Battle Theme departement but this one personally gets me all hyped...besides even you didn't reach that part of the game it still hypes you up ! A close second is First Knight and The Holy Sword ~ Dear My Dearest -Prayer of the Holy War- as I loved the Knights Episode Story so much and love the plot twist which leaves to this battle.
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Now let's go to the Meta:
  1. Best Free Character: Nona AS
    Seriously she's by far the most flexible free character in the game, yea sure it takes a bit to get her but she can give 1/3 of her stats to anyone and she can mold her kit into the unit she's devoted to including zone setting/element and attack type change etc... She's even more good when used with Aldo (And it's canon aswell as she's devoted to Aldo and loves him so much which he also does (Not in a friend way btw)) and we know SA Aldo is OP especially at 255 Light so yea !
  2. Best Zone Setter: Iphi
    To qualify for The Best, a unit doesn't just has to set a zone but it needs to have OP effects with the zone setting skill/VC and to me no one who's better at that than Iphi, her zone setting skill Walpurgisnacht is seriously broken: First of all the skill is Pre-emptive; you get the best elemental zone (Shade zone); you get Blood Contract which gives you survivability and Lunatic Risktaker; you get 5T Magic Focus and if you recast it, you get Kaleido switch to Shade element for 1T for all units...ALL OF THOSE in a single skill and moreso when you realise that these are all skills you usually see in Stellar Awakening Locked-Behind recent units in a unit released a year ago
  3. Best Damage Dealer (DPS): Xianhua
    Before Xianhua got released and broke the DPS meta, Yakumo and Sesta used to dominate that market but now Xianhua is the best end of question ! The reason being that her DPS potential is not locked behind her SA skill as most recent units does.
  4. Best True Tank: Radias AS
    Some people might argue that Radias AS is being powercrept but to me a Tank is more than just high HP/DEF/DMG Mitigation via Shield or Debuffs but to me a Tank in AE needs to have Guard and Rage and to me Radias AS is still the best one even if she's now almost 2 years old. While Alma AS is alot more recent and has all of those she's more of a Secondary DPS/Support than a tank and her Guard is conditional; Soira AS doesn't have Guard;Anabel ES doesn't have Guard nor Rage and Prai is constrained by Stun after Guard
  5. Best Support: Myunfa Alter
    I tried alot of units but to me no one can do support/sustain in the entire game than Myunfa Alter, seriously her kit is a dream to every one, she has everything you can think of, YEP EVERY.SINGLE.SUPPORT.EFFECT in her kit. If you have the fourth slot (80 light) she's even better, she support the entire party but more so the unit on her right:
* She can heal HP and MP and reduce MP consumption.
* She can tank (Tho not with Guard but with DMG mitigation such as -50% DMG taken, a 2000 Max HP Shield and insane debuffs + Buff END/SPR).
* She can set Earh/Magic Zone (3 Staff users+) and can awaken any zone.
* She can give Magic and Singular Focus.
* She can give Weapon Type DMG and Weakness Multiplier.
* She can give Status and Knockback Immunity.
* She set 3T pain/poison ignore res.
Yes everything I said above is in her kit, what's more is that she can do most of these preemptively and do you know what's more insane ! She's not bound by the Stellar Awakening System !
  1. Best Healer: Anabel ES
    She can heal 50% HP/15% MP but unlike Radias AS which can also do it in a counter, if you put her in Guiding Light she gets +50% DMG and Healing meaning she can potentially heals 100% HP ! Something only seen in EX Attacks in ES characters and that one requires complex setting.
  2. Best Pain/Poison Setter and DoT (Damage over Time) user: Pom AS
    A Best Pain/Poison setter doesn't just have to set p/p ignore res as most units can do that but can use p/p as DoT (Damage over Time) and no one can do it better then Pom. Heck 4⭐ Pom has been known for her gimmick of giving p/p if you have the appropriate equipment and there's Grasta Ores that gives +50% DMG if user is inflicted with Pain/Poison so yea.
  3. Best AF user: Miyu ES
    To qualify for this the unit has to benefit more from using AF (Another Force) either by doing more DPS in AF or get easy AF Combo Multiplier, it's been known that Thunder units are the ones who can use AF efficiently and while the current Meta revolves around DMG outside AF, some units only shines in AF and Miyu ES is just that, a close second would be Victor AS but he can be tricky to use as you need the AF Combo to 1000% for him to deal 7300% DMG Multiplier but in a Thunder Team with high SPD it's possible.
  4. Best Singer: Milsha AS
    While Singing has been powercrept by Praying, I still use Singing units from time to time and Milsha AS is by far the best from the best, seriously her 2 songs can give different Lunatic to the entire party depending on the Song being user (Sacrifice and Risktaker) and this effect can co-exist with other lunatic.
  5. Best Praying unit: Toova ES
    This one is hard as most Praying units are OP ! However for me Toova ES takes the crown by a slight margin, just set her pray and forget about her and if you have a unit which can Cover (Iphi is most used with her) then you don't have to worry about her taking DMG and breaking Prayer.
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Phew This essay took me 3 hours to write but that's how much I love Another Eden even tho the game's questionable direction does leave alot to be desired, I hope you enjoyed reading and I want to see everyone's opinion
submitted by ChadEriksen to AnotherEdenGlobal [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 23:14 somyajit619 I was just bored and cooked something criminal!!(yapping warning!!!)

As we all know that in unite there isn't any type advantage like thing exists here and unite just feels like any other moba because of that just nothing special, so I thought about a new mechanism for unite. I named it "Battle Effects". Here how it goes so based on user's mon type it will apply a effect on the enemy mon or the user itself upon casting a skill or a certain scenario. A gauge will come up on enemies or above user's health bar, and after that gauge bar pops up your every move will fill the gauge bar and when the gauge bar gets full it will further boost the powers of those battle effect. But the gauge bar will replenish slowly if the user don't use moves to charge the gauge. Let me explain it furthermore with some battle effects I've created in my mind lol.
• RAGING FLAMES (fire type B.E): Upon casting any move it will trigger the B.E gauge. Upon triggering gauge effect enemy mon who's affected by the gauge effect will take 1% true dmg every second for 5 seconds after user lands a fire based move upon them (true damage amount and time duration of effect cannot be stacked).When the gauge bar gets full the affected enemies will instantly loose 15% max hp and will take 30% more dmg from the user and the user will grant a shield equal to 20% max hp and movement atk speed boost of 30%for 5 seconds. Raging Flames goes into cooldown for 20 seconds after it takes effect.
•PARALYSING CURRENTS (Electric type B.E): After triggering effect gauge affected enemies will get movement speed and atk speed reduction of 15% and upon filling the gauge bar the affected enemies will get instantly strucked by crushing thunderbolts stunning them for 3 seconds and reducing their movement speed by 20%, atk speed by 30%, healing effect by 15% for 5 seconds (after the 3 seconds stun ends). Paralysing Currents goes into cooldown for 25 seconds after it takes effect.
•FEAR (Ghost type B.E): After triggering effect gauge affected enemies will get healing reduction by 10%, sheild regeneration amount reduction by 10% dmg reduction of 15%. Upon filling up the gauge bar the affected enemies will immediately get stunned for 1 second and will no longer be able to heal(nor by themselves or by teammates) and can no longer generate any sheild by themselves (but can obtain a sheild effect by teammates or objectives) and will take 50% more dmg from user for 5 seconds. Fear goes into cooldown for 40 seconds after it takes effect.
•TOXCIN (Poison Type B.E): after triggering effect gauge affected enemies will take true damage of 2% max hp every second for 5 seconds and movement speed reduction of 15% and atk speed reduction of 10%. Upon filling up the gauge bar the affected enemies will take a burst dmg of 15% max hp, healing reduction of 30% and movement speed reduction of 20% and any of the user's move will deal true dmg for 4 seconds.Toxcin goes into cooldown for 30 seconds after it takes effect.
•DIVINE BLISS (Fairy type B.E): When any disruptive Effect strikes the user or ally the healing effect of user will be increased by 40% for 5 seconds and upon filling up the gauge bar every status effects will be removed from the user and nearby allies and gain a sheild of 30% max hp.Divine Bliss goes into cooldown for 30 seconds after it takes effect.
Furthermore battle effects can not be stacked with eachother only one effect will take place at a time (based upon move type) meaning for example a if a gengar hits you with a sludge bomb first you'll get Toxcin but if the ginger uses Hex it will apply Fear. But a mon can hold upto 2 max B.E at same time. So here's the whole thing although I still got many other Battle Effects to share but maybe another day. Thanks if you read it till the end. Tell me in the comments if I cooked or overcooked and you can also ask me questions if you want. see ya 😃👍
submitted by somyajit619 to PokemonUnite [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 23:02 Klokinator The Cryopod to Hell 560: Ancient Domains

Author note: The Cryopod to Hell is a Reddit-exclusive story with over three years of editing and refining. As of this post, the total rewrite is 2,182,000+ words long! For more information, check out the link below:
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...................................
(Previous Part)
(Part 001)
"Hell yeah, I wanna go exploring." Jason says to Calanthra with a smile. "How do we navigate around Ripspace though? Traveling to other galaxies is going to take billions of years, right? Surely, there's a shortcut."
"Ripspace is not as it seems." Calanthra explains, gesturing grandly to the epic sight before them. "It is a connection between the past and the present; the near and far. The further away or the further back you want to travel, the higher the price you will have to pay."
Jason's smile vanishes. "Wait... you can use Ripspace to travel back in time?!"
"No." Calanthra clarifies. "Time is linear. We cannot travel through it. Some can slow it down or speed it up. A rare few can even pause it for a short while. But moving forward and backward is impossible. Countless have attempted to do so over the eons, but all have failed."
She looks at Jason meaningfully. "Many Rulers would wipe out galaxies if it might let them obtain such a power. The fact they still haven't proves it is impossible."
Jason nods slowly. "I won't lie. I have a lot of regrets. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and save my daughter from dying."
"Everyone has regrets." Calanthra muses, looking off into the distance. "I have plenty, myself. But it's better this way. There would be pandemonium if time travel ever became possible."
She pauses before continuing with her explanation. "While we cannot go back in time, we can look back into time. Pinpointing exact moments in history is difficult, to say the least, but it is possible to use Ripspace to search for key moments in intergalactic history."
"So it's like a massive seer-stone." Jason muses aloud. "But wait, didn't you imply earlier that you used Ripspace to travel to the Milky Way from Andromeda? How does it allow you to jump between galaxies? Are other species using Ripspace for intergalactic travel?"
"You can indeed use Ripspace to travel to distant reaches of space." Calanthra explains. "But... you have to pay a certain price. Akasha's Barriers still protect every galaxy. Cosmics cannot travel between them easily. Mortals can, but the price we must pay is unimaginably steep. That is also the reason my mother perished not long after arriving in the Milky Way and giving birth to me."
The Fairy Monarch sighs softly.
"My people used the power of Ripspace to travel to several other galaxies. We were fortunate that the Creator had died, allowing us to take up residence here in secret, but the Angels, Titans, and Dragons were still a threat we could not overlook. Later, the Volgrim rose up too, and that was something that worried us for a while. Particularly when their Sentinels began to rapaciously erase the lives of innumerable Sentients."
She waves her hand. "Ultimately, very few galaxies didn't have a Ruler in power. Traveling to one that did meant flipping a coin and praying our people could avoid their gaze. Sadly, time has shown me that we were likely unsuccessful. I have lost contact with all my sisters across the cosmos."
The image of innumerable galaxies floating in the distance changes before Jason's eyes. Calanthra manipulates some unseen power, causing herself and Jason to suddenly materialize directly in front of a beautiful spiral galaxy.
"This is our Milky Way." Calanthra explains, waving her hand to conjure another, far bigger galaxy beside it. "And this is Andromeda."
"Is it just me or does Andromeda seem... brighter?" Jason asks.
"Andromeda contains far more interstellar particles, cosmic energy, and latent magical power than the Milky Way." Calanthra says. "Of course, in the ancient past, it had even more than it does now, but such is the way of entropy and Chaos."
Jason nods. "How exactly do galaxies lose power over time? Doesn't this feel self-defeating in a way?"
"Every Ruler enters the Unending War with a strategy." Calanthra says, motioning with her hands to disperse the galaxies and reveal images of ghostly creatures, some standing on two legs, some on four, and plenty that appear as mere blobs of energy. "I cannot pretend to know the thoughts of such high and mighty beings, especially as I am a mere mortal myself. Even so, I can definitively state that there are Rulers who seek to put as much galactic energy into their initial creations as possible, while others wish to adopt a more energy-efficient growth-model."
She pokes her finger against Jason's chest. "Take the angels and humans, for instance. The Creator poured the vast majority of his power into creating a galaxy full of Apex Cosmics. At their peak, the angels as a whole commanded enough power to flatten other galaxies. But what did they do instead? They fought with one another, killing themselves due to sheer boredom, if not outright ego."
"I see." Jason says, brushing Calanthra's finger away. "So the Creator dumped all the Milky Way's energy into the angels. I take it this is uncommon among Rulers?"
"Of course. It's a wasteful strategy and usually loses Rulers the War for that Eternity." Calanthra says dismissively. "The Timeless used a different strategy. She created the fairies as mere mortals that evolved over time, gaining greater and greater power through their own efforts. This meant that instead of devouring Andromeda's abundant Cosmic energy, they could slowly sap off its excess over time. For you see, the more energy a galaxy has, the more it can produce. If you ration it long enough, you can reap more of it across the duration of an Eternity."
"That makes sense." Jason concludes. "It's like a Rush build in an RTS versus an Economy build. You sacrifice long-term gains in exchange for short-term power. The problem is, with Akasha's Barriers preventing Rulers from attacking their enemies straight away, a Rush build is dumb because you're just wasting your resources and sacrificing Cosmic energy when you'll actually need it."
Calanthra blinks twice. She looks at Jason with a strange expression, then turns away for a moment, trying to understand the strange terms he's used. They mostly make sense, but some of them are a little...
She shakes her head and returns to the topic at hand. "Right. Rush strategy versus Economy. Of... course. Well, in any case, there is one advantage toward the first strategy. If you drain all the energy from your galaxy, it becomes less appealing for other Rulers to attack. Because Andromeda was so large and still filled with Cosmic power even billions of years after the Expansion Era, it stoked the hunger of the Dark Ones. Meanwhile, the Milky Way only needs to deal with the Plague, which is threatening for mortals, but manageable for Cosmics. In that respect, we've gotten off much luckier."
"I get the bigger picture now." Jason says with a nod. He turns to look back at the cosmos before him. "So, what about all this? Are we gonna go exploring, or what?"
"In order to explore the universe presented here, we would need to make sacrifices we cannot afford. I think you would find the price most disagreeable. But there is something we can explore freely..."
She waves her hand, and instantly, the brilliant and beautiful cosmic view of the universe vanishes.
In its place, Jason and Calanthra suddenly appear inside a dead, barren wasteland. Brown and grey dirt rises up in huge dunes stretching off into the distance. Fallen towers made of gold and stone lay on their sides, or stick into the ground, buried nearly up to their tops as they point diagonally toward the sky.
And speaking of the sky, it glows faintly grey, as if some weak, pale imitation of a star were trying to shine through a thin atmosphere clouded by dust and grime. The very air itself smells of sulfur and toxins, making Jason's nose curl up when he takes a breath.
"Ugh... what the hell? Where are we now?" Jason asks, as he turns and looks around at the dead world surrounding him.
"An Ancient Domain." Calanthra says softly. "A remnant of a dead universe. All life stripped away. All hope lost. Septillions of different Sentient species, gone. Their mortals, their Cosmics, reduced to dust by the Contraction."
The Wordsmith frowns. "This Ancient Domain represents a dead universe? But how can that be possible? If the Heat Death played out and all the galaxies faded to cosmic dust, then there already wouldn't be anything left. And then, if the entire universe collapsed into a singularity before exploding again, there definitely wouldn't be anything left behind resembling physical matter."
"You perceive reality through just three dimensions." Calanthra intones. "Time and space can be considered two dimensions. Cosmic Power is another dimension. I must admit I do not understand how Ancient Domains have continued to exist across countless Eternities, and I don't know how they retain a vaguely familiar form... but I can assure you that in spite of bending logic itself, they do exist and they can provide tangible benefits to those dedicated to exploring them."
"You've been exploring them, then?" Jason asks, turning away from the dead world to scrutinize Calanthra's phantasmal image.
"Me, a little. But often, I dispatch my descendants to scour these Ancient Domains for things of value. It may surprise you, but there are powerful artifacts, vengeful spirits, and all manner of other inter-dimensional horrors lurking within these so-called dead-lands."
Calanthra pauses. She shifts her posture to look at Jason deeply.
"And that is why I've brought you here, Jason. It's time for me to get down to the crux of the matter and breach the subject that I find most important."
He nods. "I'm listening."
"It's like this." Calanthra explains. "The Ancient Domains are unfathomably broad. Think of how large a universe is. Think of how many universes have existed. Think of how much space my people have yet to explore."
She pauses.
"The gains we have received have made my people stronger than you would expect. Among those gains are Yredelemnul's Eye and other leftover remnants of power that many dead ancient Rulers lost when their Existences became forfeit. While their tangible Existences may have perished, their spirits sometimes live on in these broad, unending dead universes..."
"That's why you approached me." Jason says, while crossing his arms and leaning on the ball of his heel. "You said you wanted an alliance with humanity. You... want humans to help you explore the Ancient Domains?"
"Trust is hard to come by among mortals, Cosmics, and Rulers." Calanthra says simply. "I never would have considered allying with the humans before, but you have shown me the broadness of your mind during the debate against your clone and the commander of your military. To some, you certainly appear naive, but to me I see an opportunity I would be foolish to ignore."
She continues. "The Fairies cannot reproduce efficiently. Every fairy we send into the Ancient Domain is one less fairy we have among our Empire. We already have a difficult time replenishing our numbers through the remaining Male Fairies, but do you think it is easy for us to reproduce with other species?"
Jason slowly shakes his head. "Blinker and Kar's children were all crocodiles, not fairies. From that, I can only imagine that most of the time, your mating attempts do not create more of yourselves, but instead more non-fairy children."
"That's exactly correct." Calanthra replies. "But that all changed recently when I found out one of your human males somehow spontaneously altered his genetic profile to become a fairy. There is no doubt about it; Samuel Baker harnesses all the capability to reproduce that you humans do, as well as the trueborn powers of any male fairy."
"So... are you seeking a marriage alliance with Samuel Baker?" Jason asks, scratching his head in confusion. "You could just ask him yourself, you know?"
"This is not about one man." Calanthra retorts. "Samuel Baker, if he were to join our ranks, would certainly help us stave off extinction for a while longer. But that is hardly worth all this melodrama and me taking you to the Ancient Domain in person..."
Jason's eyes widen in realization. "I see! You... you're thinking that if my magic could make one male fairy, I could surely make another, and another..."
"Yes, precisely." Calanthra says, revealing a beautiful smile. "Additionally, if humans were to assist us in scouring these Ancient Domains, we could make great gains together. There is plenty of room for another species to join ours in locating powerful artifacts and other items capable of Uplifting us."
"You want to become Cosmics still." Jason muses. "You haven't resigned yourselves to your current fate."
"Quite the opposite." Calanthra says. "The curse placed upon us is unbreakable by those beneath the realm of Ruler. As I said before, the fairies have lost this Eternity's war. However, while we cannot Ascend any longer, that does not mean the humans are subject to the same limitation. If we could groom a human into becoming the Milky Way's Ruler, we could finally break free of our shackles by virtue of having a powerful ally."
She pauses, looking meaningfully at the Wordsmith.
"If the Demons or the Volgrim were to become our Ruler, we would not enjoy such a benefit. At best, we would only maintain the status quo, and at worst, they might eradicate us out of fear of having an unsightly tumor in their midst."
"Haha." Jason laughs. "So you brought me here to show your sincerity. I get it. Well, I'm definitely not opposed to helping you. Blinker is my good friend. If she were to ask me, I'd definitely say yes to just about any request."
Jason turns away. He walks a few feet off to the side and pauses, standing to gaze out at the Ancient Domain and its endlessly rolling plains which stretches off into the infinite distance...
"Here's what I can do." Jason says. "My people are already working on laying out the options for humanity and where our fellow men and women will depart over the next few weeks. Some will travel to Maiura. Some will go to Sharmur. Some will stay on Tarus II. It's no trouble at all to put Pixiv on the list, especially as I was already planning to do that. I even have some other places I'd like to include, too..."
"Such as Camael's Cube?" Calanthra asks with a smile. "Or do you perhaps mean Chrona and Hope's Hall of Heroes?"
Jason nearly jumps out of his skin. He whirls around to look at Calanthra with shock in his eyes. "What?! How do you know about Chrona? How do you also know about where Hope has been hiding?? I don't even know that much!"
"For those who are talented in magic, it is possible to see through many lies and deceptions." Calanthra says calmly, unfazed by the alarm on Jason's face. "Your Spynet Sphere isn't so different from the many options I have at my disposal. I have many means to keep an eye on the galaxy. And while Diablo does not know exactly where or what Chrona is, he certainly knows of its general existence."
Her smile turns cold. "I would advise you not to take Unarin lightly either, Wordsmith. That ancient creature is more capable than you can imagine. He is hiding a great many secrets from the galaxy... secrets he does not know that I am aware of. If he were to learn of the true extent of my information web, I fear that he would dispatch a handful of High Psions to eliminate the fairy species tomorrow."
Calanthra's words truly rock Jason to his core. All along, he assumed the precautions he put on Chrona, precautions that fooled even Hope, would make his hidden dimension impossible to detect.
But how could he be so naive?
As the daughter of an Apex Cosmic, Calanthra must have her means, and that likely means Unarin and Diablo aren't too far behind either.
"Shit." Jason curses, lowering his head as a flicker of anger smolders in his heart. "I was too complacent. Chrona isn't secure, which means it's only a matter of time before more Cosmics learn of its existence. How long before they can find its exact location and invade it?"
"Calm yourself, child." Calanthra says soothingly. "The situation is not that dire. After all, Chrona still exists within a highly accelerated timespace. Any biological entity that wishes to travel there could suffer severe after-effects. Furthermore, the entities born inside will be too adapted to living within a higher dimension, so they won't pose much threat to the creatures of realspace."
She waves her hand. "Let's move on, Jason. I want to discuss other matters before dying of old age."
The Wordsmith cools himself off. He inhales deeply, then returns his attention to her.
"Alright. What next, then?"
"Fairies are not the only Sentients capable of entering Ancient Domains." Calanthra explains. "There are others who rarely appear inside here. That is why exploring these domains can be dangerous. The good news is that Cosmics have little need to enter these barren lands, as most of the heritages, treasures, and other such gains you might find inside are only useful to mortals. There are exceptions, but they are so rare as to be a needle found within ten million haystacks. A waste of effort better spent simply progressing one's Cosmic power the ordinary way."
"So what you're saying is, when you send fairies into an Ancient Domain, they can die as a result of crossing paths with Sentients from other galaxies." Jason concludes. "But if you had an army of humans to enter with you, your people would be a lot safer."
"Safety in numbers, yes. And you humans are... uniquely advantaged in Ancient Domain exploration." Calanthra says mysteriously. "Before that, though... do you know what the Power of Imagination is, Wordsmith?"
Jason raises an eyebrow. "Imagination? Like the mental ability to visualize stuff in your head? Yeah. It's not that complicated to understand."
"Ah, that's where you're wrong." Calanthra chides gently. "Imagination is the key to magical power. Imagination, Conception, Visualization, these are all key capabilities powerful maguses and sorcerors use to uplift their capabilities! And as it turns out, most Sentients are actually quite terrible at conceptualizing thoughts into imagery."
She gestures grandly. "Just take the Volgrim! You may think they are a powerful Sentient species, but in fact the Volgrim have terrible imaginations. They are stodgy, dull, and lack a great deal of creativity. All the gains their Technopaths make through technology are developed via brute force. They slowly improve their technological prowess by minute fractions over long periods of time, eventually resulting in a large and cohesive buildup."
"At the same time, the Psions Uplift themselves through meditation and sitting motionless for thousands of years at a time. Can a species capable of such incredible feats of drudgery also possess limitless imagination? I think not."
"Maybe the reason they're able to sit still for so long is because they live in their imagination?" Jason posits. "In which case their power of imagination should be quite formidable, right?"
"Possible, but unlikely." Calanthra says with a wave of her hand. "Never mind that. The point I'm trying to make is that humans have an extremely high affinity for magic. If your people were to ally with mine, we could teach you our ways. You could help us through your Wordsmithing and superior genetics, creating more fairies and humans alike. This would create a recursive cycle that would continually bolster both our species to greater and greater heights!"
She lowers her voice back to normal. "An alliance with humanity would have other benefits. You humans are equally adept in technology and magic both. You are versatile, capable of learning any skill provided you have time to devote to your studies. The bursts of inspiration you receive also allow you to make large jumps in capability as well, which could mean that in a relatively short period, you might even be capable of challenging the Volgrim."
Jason nods. "That does sound tempting, Calanthra. I'm willing to help you, but I won't demand my people join the fairies. It would be better if those who were the most interested did so instead."
Calanthra playfully twirls a finger through her hair. "Well. My daughters are all beautiful. Perhaps you should make mention that the fairies are... aggressively interested in copulation?"
"COUGH COUGH!" Jason wheezes, taking a step back as he asses her bold choice of words. "Yeah! Uh, I can probably- I'll let everyone know about that too. Obviously!"
Calanthra chuckles. "Such a cute boy. Well, it seems I've accomplished what I wanted. Let's return for now. You can always pay Ripspace a visit later."
"I will." Jason says, nodding seriously. "Waypoint."
Calanthra raises an eyebrow. "You think you can return here without a Ruler's power?"
"Won't know unless I try." Jason smiles back.
...
Not long after, Jason and Calanthra emerge back into Realspace. He shivers as he feels the Eye of Yredelemnul fixating on him from behind, but Calanthra quickly reactivates the Formation of Light, sending the sliver of a Ruler back to the shadows so it can no longer interact with the physical world.
"You know, Jason." Calanthra says. "You are a Candidate. You have the capability to become a Ruler someday."
"I am?" Jason asks, before thinking back to a conversation in the past. "Oh yeah, someone did mention that to me before. But... eh. I don't know. Becoming a Ruler sounds awful."
"Awful?" Calanthra asks. "How so?"
"It seems... lonely." Jason says, his voice softening. He looks at the space between the four statues, where Yredelemnul's Eye has disappeared. "Imagine all your loved ones dying, but you're stuck behind, living through the end of an Eternity, which takes trillions of years before Heat Death finally eradicates everything. Then comes the next Eternity, where you can remake your species again... but it won't be the same. Even if you remake your loved ones, it won't really be them."
Jason lowers and shakes his head. "That sort of life doesn't suit me."
"I understand why you'd think that way." Calanthra says. "In fact, you are suffering from the same affliction that plagues all Candidates who began their Existences as Biologicals. We have too many ties to the mortal world, so the majority of Biologicals who ascend to the rank of Ruler... fall to their non-biological opponents."
"As for the things which are not biological..." Calanthra says, looking at Jason with disgust. "You should already know what they are."
"Highly evolved Artificial Intelligences?" Jason guesses.
"That's right." Calanthra affirms. "There are several tiers of power a superintelligence can possess. The Volgrim have taken great care to prevent anything above a Beta Core from forming in the Milky Way, but once, a long time ago... they made a huge mess by accidentally creating the Milky Way's first Alpha Core Synthmind."
Calanthra chuckles. "The stupid fools didn't only create an Alpha Core, they gave it autonomy in the hopes it would be able to stop the wars between their factions. They built indestructible bipedal bodies for its splintered intelligences, and called them... Sentinels. Luckily, they were able to defeat the Alpha Core before it ascended further, but countless other biological species have failed at that juncture, creating an Alpha Core that ultimately devoured the full power of their galaxy for itself."
A chill trickles down Jason's spine. "You're saying the vast majority of Rulers are actually Alpha Core AIs? AIs that control entire galaxies?!"
"No, Jason." Calanthra counters. "Alpha Cores can defeat advanced civilizations. But there is one Existence higher than an Alpha Core, a tier that can only be reached once it has swallowed the power of a galaxy."
"That would be an Omega Core. a sentient artificial intelligence that has become Ruler over one or more galaxies. And in Akasha's game, more than 90% of all Rulers are estimated to be these superior lifeforms."
"It is for that reason that these highly adaptable entities are known as The Evolved."
submitted by Klokinator to HFY [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 23:02 Klokinator Cryopod Refresh 560: Ancient Domains

"Hell yeah, I wanna go exploring." Jason says to Calanthra with a smile. "How do we navigate around Ripspace though? Traveling to other galaxies is going to take billions of years, right? Surely, there's a shortcut."
"Ripspace is not as it seems." Calanthra explains, gesturing grandly to the epic sight before them. "It is a connection between the past and the present; the near and far. The further away or the further back you want to travel, the higher the price you will have to pay."
Jason's smile vanishes. "Wait... you can use Ripspace to travel back in time?!"
"No." Calanthra clarifies. "Time is linear. We cannot travel through it. Some can slow it down or speed it up. A rare few can even pause it for a short while. But moving forward and backward is impossible. Countless have attempted to do so over the eons, but all have failed."
She looks at Jason meaningfully. "Many Rulers would wipe out galaxies if it might let them obtain such a power. The fact they still haven't proves it is impossible."
Jason nods slowly. "I won't lie. I have a lot of regrets. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and save my daughter from dying."
"Everyone has regrets." Calanthra muses, looking off into the distance. "I have plenty, myself. But it's better this way. There would be pandemonium if time travel ever became possible."
She pauses before continuing with her explanation. "While we cannot go back in time, we can look back into time. Pinpointing exact moments in history is difficult, to say the least, but it is possible to use Ripspace to search for key moments in intergalactic history."
"So it's like a massive seer-stone." Jason muses aloud. "But wait, didn't you imply earlier that you used Ripspace to travel to the Milky Way from Andromeda? How does it allow you to jump between galaxies? Are other species using Ripspace for intergalactic travel?"
"You can indeed use Ripspace to travel to distant reaches of space." Calanthra explains. "But... you have to pay a certain price. Akasha's Barriers still protect every galaxy. Cosmics cannot travel between them easily. Mortals can, but the price we must pay is unimaginably steep. That is also the reason my mother perished not long after arriving in the Milky Way and giving birth to me."
The Fairy Monarch sighs softly.
"My people used the power of Ripspace to travel to several other galaxies. We were fortunate that the Creator had died, allowing us to take up residence here in secret, but the Angels, Titans, and Dragons were still a threat we could not overlook. Later, the Volgrim rose up too, and that was something that worried us for a while. Particularly when their Sentinels began to rapaciously erase the lives of innumerable Sentients."
She waves her hand. "Ultimately, very few galaxies didn't have a Ruler in power. Traveling to one that did meant flipping a coin and praying our people could avoid their gaze. Sadly, time has shown me that we were likely unsuccessful. I have lost contact with all my sisters across the cosmos."
The image of innumerable galaxies floating in the distance changes before Jason's eyes. Calanthra manipulates some unseen power, causing herself and Jason to suddenly materialize directly in front of a beautiful spiral galaxy.
"This is our Milky Way." Calanthra explains, waving her hand to conjure another, far bigger galaxy beside it. "And this is Andromeda."
"Is it just me or does Andromeda seem... brighter?" Jason asks.
"Andromeda contains far more interstellar particles, cosmic energy, and latent magical power than the Milky Way." Calanthra says. "Of course, in the ancient past, it had even more than it does now, but such is the way of entropy and Chaos."
Jason nods. "How exactly do galaxies lose power over time? Doesn't this feel self-defeating in a way?"
"Every Ruler enters the Unending War with a strategy." Calanthra says, motioning with her hands to disperse the galaxies and reveal images of ghostly creatures, some standing on two legs, some on four, and plenty that appear as mere blobs of energy. "I cannot pretend to know the thoughts of such high and mighty beings, especially as I am a mere mortal myself. Even so, I can definitively state that there are Rulers who seek to put as much galactic energy into their initial creations as possible, while others wish to adopt a more energy-efficient growth-model."
She pokes her finger against Jason's chest. "Take the angels and humans, for instance. The Creator poured the vast majority of his power into creating a galaxy full of Apex Cosmics. At their peak, the angels as a whole commanded enough power to flatten other galaxies. But what did they do instead? They fought with one another, killing themselves due to sheer boredom, if not outright ego."
"I see." Jason says, brushing Calanthra's finger away. "So the Creator dumped all the Milky Way's energy into the angels. I take it this is uncommon among Rulers?"
"Of course. It's a wasteful strategy and usually loses Rulers the War for that Eternity." Calanthra says dismissively. "The Timeless used a different strategy. She created the fairies as mere mortals that evolved over time, gaining greater and greater power through their own efforts. This meant that instead of devouring Andromeda's abundant Cosmic energy, they could slowly sap off its excess over time. For you see, the more energy a galaxy has, the more it can produce. If you ration it long enough, you can reap more of it across the duration of an Eternity."
"That makes sense." Jason concludes. "It's like a Rush build in an RTS versus an Economy build. You sacrifice long-term gains in exchange for short-term power. The problem is, with Akasha's Barriers preventing Rulers from attacking their enemies straight away, a Rush build is dumb because you're just wasting your resources and sacrificing Cosmic energy when you'll actually need it."
Calanthra blinks twice. She looks at Jason with a strange expression, then turns away for a moment, trying to understand the strange terms he's used. They mostly make sense, but some of them are a little...
She shakes her head and returns to the topic at hand. "Right. Rush strategy versus Economy. Of... course. Well, in any case, there is one advantage toward the first strategy. If you drain all the energy from your galaxy, it becomes less appealing for other Rulers to attack. Because Andromeda was so large and still filled with Cosmic power even billions of years after the Expansion Era, it stoked the hunger of the Dark Ones. Meanwhile, the Milky Way only needs to deal with the Plague, which is threatening for mortals, but manageable for Cosmics. In that respect, we've gotten off much luckier."
"I get the bigger picture now." Jason says with a nod. He turns to look back at the cosmos before him. "So, what about all this? Are we gonna go exploring, or what?"
"In order to explore the universe presented here, we would need to make sacrifices we cannot afford. I think you would find the price most disagreeable. But there is something we can explore freely..."
She waves her hand, and instantly, the brilliant and beautiful cosmic view of the universe vanishes.
In its place, Jason and Calanthra suddenly appear inside a dead, barren wasteland. Brown and grey dirt rises up in huge dunes stretching off into the distance. Fallen towers made of gold and stone lay on their sides, or stick into the ground, buried nearly up to their tops as they point diagonally toward the sky.
And speaking of the sky, it glows faintly grey, as if some weak, pale imitation of a star were trying to shine through a thin atmosphere clouded by dust and grime. The very air itself smells of sulfur and toxins, making Jason's nose curl up when he takes a breath.
"Ugh... what the hell? Where are we now?" Jason asks, as he turns and looks around at the dead world surrounding him.
"An Ancient Domain." Calanthra says softly. "A remnant of a dead universe. All life stripped away. All hope lost. Septillions of different Sentient species, gone. Their mortals, their Cosmics, reduced to dust by the Contraction."
The Wordsmith frowns. "This Ancient Domain represents a dead universe? But how can that be possible? If the Heat Death played out and all the galaxies faded to cosmic dust, then there already wouldn't be anything left. And then, if the entire universe collapsed into a singularity before exploding again, there definitely wouldn't be anything left behind resembling physical matter."
"You perceive reality through just three dimensions." Calanthra intones. "Time and space can be considered two dimensions. Cosmic Power is another dimension. I must admit I do not understand how Ancient Domains have continued to exist across countless Eternities, and I don't know how they retain a vaguely familiar form... but I can assure you that in spite of bending logic itself, they do exist and they can provide tangible benefits to those dedicated to exploring them."
"You've been exploring them, then?" Jason asks, turning away from the dead world to scrutinize Calanthra's phantasmal image.
"Me, a little. But often, I dispatch my descendants to scour these Ancient Domains for things of value. It may surprise you, but there are powerful artifacts, vengeful spirits, and all manner of other inter-dimensional horrors lurking within these so-called dead-lands."
Calanthra pauses. She shifts her posture to look at Jason deeply.
"And that is why I've brought you here, Jason. It's time for me to get down to the crux of the matter and breach the subject that I find most important."
He nods. "I'm listening."
"It's like this." Calanthra explains. "The Ancient Domains are unfathomably broad. Think of how large a universe is. Think of how many universes have existed. Think of how much space my people have yet to explore."
She pauses.
"The gains we have received have made my people stronger than you would expect. Among those gains are Yredelemnul's Eye and other leftover remnants of power that many dead ancient Rulers lost when their Existences became forfeit. While their tangible Existences may have perished, their spirits sometimes live on in these broad, unending dead universes..."
"That's why you approached me." Jason says, while crossing his arms and leaning on the ball of his heel. "You said you wanted an alliance with humanity. You... want humans to help you explore the Ancient Domains?"
"Trust is hard to come by among mortals, Cosmics, and Rulers." Calanthra says simply. "I never would have considered allying with the humans before, but you have shown me the broadness of your mind during the debate against your clone and the commander of your military. To some, you certainly appear naive, but to me I see an opportunity I would be foolish to ignore."
She continues. "The Fairies cannot reproduce efficiently. Every fairy we send into the Ancient Domain is one less fairy we have among our Empire. We already have a difficult time replenishing our numbers through the remaining Male Fairies, but do you think it is easy for us to reproduce with other species?"
Jason slowly shakes his head. "Blinker and Kar's children were all crocodiles, not fairies. From that, I can only imagine that most of the time, your mating attempts do not create more of yourselves, but instead more non-fairy children."
"That's exactly correct." Calanthra replies. "But that all changed recently when I found out one of your human males somehow spontaneously altered his genetic profile to become a fairy. There is no doubt about it; Samuel Baker harnesses all the capability to reproduce that you humans do, as well as the trueborn powers of any male fairy."
"So... are you seeking a marriage alliance with Samuel Baker?" Jason asks, scratching his head in confusion. "You could just ask him yourself, you know?"
"This is not about one man." Calanthra retorts. "Samuel Baker, if he were to join our ranks, would certainly help us stave off extinction for a while longer. But that is hardly worth all this melodrama and me taking you to the Ancient Domain in person..."
Jason's eyes widen in realization. "I see! You... you're thinking that if my magic could make one male fairy, I could surely make another, and another..."
"Yes, precisely." Calanthra says, revealing a beautiful smile. "Additionally, if humans were to assist us in scouring these Ancient Domains, we could make great gains together. There is plenty of room for another species to join ours in locating powerful artifacts and other items capable of Uplifting us."
"You want to become Cosmics still." Jason muses. "You haven't resigned yourselves to your current fate."
"Quite the opposite." Calanthra says. "The curse placed upon us is unbreakable by those beneath the realm of Ruler. As I said before, the fairies have lost this Eternity's war. However, while we cannot Ascend any longer, that does not mean the humans are subject to the same limitation. If we could groom a human into becoming the Milky Way's Ruler, we could finally break free of our shackles by virtue of having a powerful ally."
She pauses, looking meaningfully at the Wordsmith.
"If the Demons or the Volgrim were to become our Ruler, we would not enjoy such a benefit. At best, we would only maintain the status quo, and at worst, they might eradicate us out of fear of having an unsightly tumor in their midst."
"Haha." Jason laughs. "So you brought me here to show your sincerity. I get it. Well, I'm definitely not opposed to helping you. Blinker is my good friend. If she were to ask me, I'd definitely say yes to just about any request."
Jason turns away. He walks a few feet off to the side and pauses, standing to gaze out at the Ancient Domain and its endlessly rolling plains which stretches off into the infinite distance...
"Here's what I can do." Jason says. "My people are already working on laying out the options for humanity and where our fellow men and women will depart over the next few weeks. Some will travel to Maiura. Some will go to Sharmur. Some will stay on Tarus II. It's no trouble at all to put Pixiv on the list, especially as I was already planning to do that. I even have some other places I'd like to include, too..."
"Such as Camael's Cube?" Calanthra asks with a smile. "Or do you perhaps mean Chrona and Hope's Hall of Heroes?"
Jason nearly jumps out of his skin. He whirls around to look at Calanthra with shock in his eyes. "What?! How do you know about Chrona? How do you also know about where Hope has been hiding?? I don't even know that much!"
"For those who are talented in magic, it is possible to see through many lies and deceptions." Calanthra says calmly, unfazed by the alarm on Jason's face. "Your Spynet Sphere isn't so different from the many options I have at my disposal. I have many means to keep an eye on the galaxy. And while Diablo does not know exactly where or what Chrona is, he certainly knows of its general existence."
Her smile turns cold. "I would advise you not to take Unarin lightly either, Wordsmith. That ancient creature is more capable than you can imagine. He is hiding a great many secrets from the galaxy... secrets he does not know that I am aware of. If he were to learn of the true extent of my information web, I fear that he would dispatch a handful of High Psions to eliminate the fairy species tomorrow."
Calanthra's words truly rock Jason to his core. All along, he assumed the precautions he put on Chrona, precautions that fooled even Hope, would make his hidden dimension impossible to detect.
But how could he be so naive?
As the daughter of an Apex Cosmic, Calanthra must have her means, and that likely means Unarin and Diablo aren't too far behind either.
"Shit." Jason curses, lowering his head as a flicker of anger smolders in his heart. "I was too complacent. Chrona isn't secure, which means it's only a matter of time before more Cosmics learn of its existence. How long before they can find its exact location and invade it?"
"Calm yourself, child." Calanthra says soothingly. "The situation is not that dire. After all, Chrona still exists within a highly accelerated timespace. Any biological entity that wishes to travel there could suffer severe after-effects. Furthermore, the entities born inside will be too adapted to living within a higher dimension, so they won't pose much threat to the creatures of realspace."
She waves her hand. "Let's move on, Jason. I want to discuss other matters before dying of old age."
The Wordsmith cools himself off. He inhales deeply, then returns his attention to her.
"Alright. What next, then?"
"Fairies are not the only Sentients capable of entering Ancient Domains." Calanthra explains. "There are others who rarely appear inside here. That is why exploring these domains can be dangerous. The good news is that Cosmics have little need to enter these barren lands, as most of the heritages, treasures, and other such gains you might find inside are only useful to mortals. There are exceptions, but they are so rare as to be a needle found within ten million haystacks. A waste of effort better spent simply progressing one's Cosmic power the ordinary way."
"So what you're saying is, when you send fairies into an Ancient Domain, they can die as a result of crossing paths with Sentients from other galaxies." Jason concludes. "But if you had an army of humans to enter with you, your people would be a lot safer."
"Safety in numbers, yes. And you humans are... uniquely advantaged in Ancient Domain exploration." Calanthra says mysteriously. "Before that, though... do you know what the Power of Imagination is, Wordsmith?"
Jason raises an eyebrow. "Imagination? Like the mental ability to visualize stuff in your head? Yeah. It's not that complicated to understand."
"Ah, that's where you're wrong." Calanthra chides gently. "Imagination is the key to magical power. Imagination, Conception, Visualization, these are all key capabilities powerful maguses and sorcerors use to uplift their capabilities! And as it turns out, most Sentients are actually quite terrible at conceptualizing thoughts into imagery."
She gestures grandly. "Just take the Volgrim! You may think they are a powerful Sentient species, but in fact the Volgrim have terrible imaginations. They are stodgy, dull, and lack a great deal of creativity. All the gains their Technopaths make through technology are developed via brute force. They slowly improve their technological prowess by minute fractions over long periods of time, eventually resulting in a large and cohesive buildup."
"At the same time, the Psions Uplift themselves through meditation and sitting motionless for thousands of years at a time. Can a species capable of such incredible feats of drudgery also possess limitless imagination? I think not."
"Maybe the reason they're able to sit still for so long is because they live in their imagination?" Jason posits. "In which case their power of imagination should be quite formidable, right?"
"Possible, but unlikely." Calanthra says with a wave of her hand. "Never mind that. The point I'm trying to make is that humans have an extremely high affinity for magic. If your people were to ally with mine, we could teach you our ways. You could help us through your Wordsmithing and superior genetics, creating more fairies and humans alike. This would create a recursive cycle that would continually bolster both our species to greater and greater heights!"
She lowers her voice back to normal. "An alliance with humanity would have other benefits. You humans are equally adept in technology and magic both. You are versatile, capable of learning any skill provided you have time to devote to your studies. The bursts of inspiration you receive also allow you to make large jumps in capability as well, which could mean that in a relatively short period, you might even be capable of challenging the Volgrim."
Jason nods. "That does sound tempting, Calanthra. I'm willing to help you, but I won't demand my people join the fairies. It would be better if those who were the most interested did so instead."
Calanthra playfully twirls a finger through her hair. "Well. My daughters are all beautiful. Perhaps you should make mention that the fairies are... aggressively interested in copulation?"
"COUGH COUGH!" Jason wheezes, taking a step back as he asses her bold choice of words. "Yeah! Uh, I can probably- I'll let everyone know about that too. Obviously!"
Calanthra chuckles. "Such a cute boy. Well, it seems I've accomplished what I wanted. Let's return for now. You can always pay Ripspace a visit later."
"I will." Jason says, nodding seriously. "Waypoint."
Calanthra raises an eyebrow. "You think you can return here without a Ruler's power?"
"Won't know unless I try." Jason smiles back.
...
Not long after, Jason and Calanthra emerge back into Realspace. He shivers as he feels the Eye of Yredelemnul fixating on him from behind, but Calanthra quickly reactivates the Formation of Light, sending the sliver of a Ruler back to the shadows so it can no longer interact with the physical world.
"You know, Jason." Calanthra says. "You are a Candidate. You have the capability to become a Ruler someday."
"I am?" Jason asks, before thinking back to a conversation in the past. "Oh yeah, someone did mention that to me before. But... eh. I don't know. Becoming a Ruler sounds awful."
"Awful?" Calanthra asks. "How so?"
"It seems... lonely." Jason says, his voice softening. He looks at the space between the four statues, where Yredelemnul's Eye has disappeared. "Imagine all your loved ones dying, but you're stuck behind, living through the end of an Eternity, which takes trillions of years before Heat Death finally eradicates everything. Then comes the next Eternity, where you can remake your species again... but it won't be the same. Even if you remake your loved ones, it won't really be them."
Jason lowers and shakes his head. "That sort of life doesn't suit me."
"I understand why you'd think that way." Calanthra says. "In fact, you are suffering from the same affliction that plagues all Candidates who began their Existences as Biologicals. We have too many ties to the mortal world, so the majority of Biologicals who ascend to the rank of Ruler... fall to their non-biological opponents."
"As for the things which are not biological..." Calanthra says, looking at Jason with disgust. "You should already know what they are."
"Highly evolved Artificial Intelligences?" Jason guesses.
"That's right." Calanthra affirms. "There are several tiers of power a superintelligence can possess. The Volgrim have taken great care to prevent anything above a Beta Core from forming in the Milky Way, but once, a long time ago... they made a huge mess by accidentally creating the Milky Way's first Alpha Core Synthmind."
Calanthra chuckles. "The stupid fools didn't only create an Alpha Core, they gave it autonomy in the hopes it would be able to stop the wars between their factions. They built indestructible bipedal bodies for its splintered intelligences, and called them... Sentinels. Luckily, they were able to defeat the Alpha Core before it ascended further, but countless other biological species have failed at that juncture, creating an Alpha Core that ultimately devoured the full power of their galaxy for itself."
A chill trickles down Jason's spine. "You're saying the vast majority of Rulers are actually Alpha Core AIs? AIs that control entire galaxies?!"
"No, Jason." Calanthra counters. "Alpha Cores can defeat advanced civilizations. But there is one Existence higher than an Alpha Core, a tier that can only be reached once it has swallowed the power of a galaxy."
"That would be an Omega Core. a sentient artificial intelligence that has become Ruler over one or more galaxies. And in Akasha's game, more than 90% of all Rulers are estimated to be these superior lifeforms."
"It is for that reason that these highly adaptable entities are known as The Evolved."
submitted by Klokinator to TheCryopodToHell [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 22:50 saltyblueberry25 Tinfoil master thesis on DFV meme-story

This is my in-depth notes while watching the full length dfv meme video compilation by roaring pika this morning.
https://x.com/roaringpika/status/1791834694704591155?s=46
It’s an hour long and way easier to understand all together like this.
These notes come from watching every ppshow this week and taking my favorite bits of tinfoil from the community into one fairly simple look into the story dfv is telling us without getting too deep on possible tinfoil, it’s just laid out plain and simple here.
Tldr; this is a very long post. I think it starts with dfv’s final yolo update (fine I’ll do it myself) and what’s been going on since then, how he’s been feeling, and all the battles over the last couple years for the first 30 minutes of the memes.
Then in the last half it switches to: I’ll fuckin do it again and full of straight confirmation foil that we’ve been right about the bear trap, bbby, Teddy, and baby all along. Then he says we’re all good, be zen and says goodbye for now.
Here goes:
Fine I’ll do it myself, Cat heartbeat, Wolverine mad. (I think this marks his Final yolo update and of course doubled as the hype to start this week off with a bang.)
I think the first half of the movies are all about the first squeeze and how he was both dfv and kitty, how they were talking trash about him, how we found out about the baskets “you move I move” the battle scenes were all about price action up and down, everything was green and red, and the running memes are about the stock running up and sad memes are when the stock goes down.
About 30 minutes in someone asks, “where you been”, he says “waiting”, what about getting caught? “All part of the plan.”
Then there’s usual suspects movie with the goofy meme “I’ll fuckin do it again”.
——
Jake texting Keith, hilarious (is this about our Jake2b and the story PP had about accidentally going to a gay bar around the first pulte event? So funny with the guy with 600 memes and basically joking that he became a full blown psycho with the memes.
Tell me where the freaks at - epic pump up music. (Psyched on us? Finding other freaks to vibe with.)
Guy looks out the window, then the Teddy in a chair (might have just been a response to Cramer being a smartass). Then Hank (Jim Carrey) starts to lose it as the stock price keeps going down, his alter ego comes out.
Truman show, he’s trying to escape, they say “he’ll turn back he’s too afraid”. They hit him with everything they’ve got but he knows it’s all fake. He says, “is that the best you can do??” (I think this is clearly about fake price movement, trying to keep us trapped in the illusion)
“Fury is a game where every boss fight feels like the final boss. They taunt you, they demand you get back in your prison cell, they pound you into a pulp and they even make you doubt the righteousness of your own quest towards freedom. But the soundtrack man, it keeps egging you on. To whoop some ass!” PP theme music drops. Holy shit.
(This one is obviously talking about us, I cried because I was so happy when I heard this one)
——
The Bullet one talking about time, cause and effect, “don’t try to understand it, just feel it”. “Instinct, got it.”
Morpheus teaching neo it’s all fake. Just before that scene he says, “you think that’s air you’re breathing?” … “Again!”
Alice says “But I don’t want to go among mad people.” The cat replies, “Most everyone’s mad here. You may have noticed I’m not all there myself.” Neo waking up again in the 4th movie.
Alice going down a rabbit hole into wonderland.. psychedelic music and dancing. (That’s us going down the rabbit hole thinking we’ve gone mad but loving every minute of it.)
Next scene guy running and falls over, music says “I lost myself.”
Shawshank, they find the tunnel he made. In 2021 Kitty escaped prison. All they found of him was some Reddit posts, tweets, and an old live stream. Investing is the study of pressure and time. That’s all it takes really, pressure and time. That and a keen goddamn activist.
A man will do anything to keep his mind busy in prison. Turns out kittys favorite activity was handing out memes, a handful at a time (the dirt for the tunnel and the tinfoil that’s helped us dig our way to freedom). Kitty did as he was told, buffed that financial education to a high mirror shine. (I think he’s been getting ready for something big and these memes are just a countdown.)
Bruce Willis. “No, THIS is the Kansas City shuffle.” (An advanced form of confidence trick where the mark is aware of being involved in a swindle and believes that he or she can outsmart the swindler; however, this is all part of the trick, and by attempting to retaliate, the mark unwittingly assists the con artist.) Hedge funds are the mark and dfv/rc are playing a con, the bear trap?
——
Pay attention to what I say, I choose my words carefully and I never repeat myself. The cat looks at the camera.
Michael from the office - It’s Britney bitch. And I am back. Cut to Britney Spears - I must confess I still believe. When I’m not with you I lose my mind. Give me a sign (like how we’re always asking for a sign?? (with the alien g from signs all red like a gme logo giving birth). Hit me BABY one more time!
Goosebumps all the papers fly out of the briefcase right when we get like 200 new dockets clawing back money from 90 days before bbby bk. Bear beware… you’re in for a scare…
Then it’s Abbi from Broad city dancing all over the place and she’s obsessed with bed bath and beyond in the show. There’s also the scene where the other girl is dancing behind a colored blanket with the same logo as HBC and then the next scene she’s tied up. Then they’re dancing again.. and naked then then only in shorts. Naked shorts?
We’ll never survive unless we’re a little crazy. The modern investor unleashes the animal within to take on the big city - that’s gotta be us apes?
What kind of person are you? The kind that sees signs, sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Is it possible that there are no coincidences? The kid holds up a baby monitor. They find a crop circle and it’s two GameStop logos turned in different directions (maybe rc turned GameStop around) and then another one with a long line and a baby gme logo (is gme about to have a baby?!)
Why make something disposable like an investment thesis when you can make something that lasts forever, like a GameStop meme? (It says “Reality” at the bottom of this clip, lol)
Jack Nicholson in the shining (music playing it’s just a matter of time before I lose my mind it’s also a place in ready player one where they have to take the leap not taken, the leap of faith, a kiss). “Make a lot of memes today?” Lol
Can’t stop what’s coming. Kicks some ass.
——
I got both hands off the wheel, the cops are coming. I listen to the music with no fear, you can hear it too if you’re sincere. Cuz I’m a punk rocker yes I am. (song: punkrocker by the teddybears)
Rock ain’t about doing things prefect! Who can tell me what it’s really about? Sticking it to the man! If you wanna rock, you gotta break the rules.
Two cars racing, one plays chicken with a truck and then cut to bojack horseman talking on stage right before they almost crash (stalking horse? Looks just like he horse from 1, 2 switch that GameStop tweeted the minute the stalking horse deadline was up.)
Now you may only see a pile of boring forms and numbers, but I see a story (us going through the dd and maybe holly etlin talking about there’s a story here but it’s not mine to tell)
Listen to this song, it’ll change your life.
(Song is don’t fear the reaper - so don’t be afraid of death, funny because of the cowbell, maybe cowbell is involved in the tinfoil but at the end of the song lyrics not shown in the clip they say: don't be afraid, Come on, baby (and she had no fear) And she ran to him (then they started to fly) They looked backward and said goodbye)
Big Lebowski dude is investigating and finds the drawing of Jackie tree horn and it’s just a guy with a raging erection with the name cohen at the top of the paper. (I think this means rc is ready to fuck)
Jason borne is telling the run Lola run chick he can’t run with her, he has to be careful because people are after him. He says I gotta figure it out. She says well then figure it out. They drive into a parking garage through the wrong way (where it should say exit it says exit strategy and he enters through the exit, parks and walks away, as in “what’s an exit strategy”)
Then it looks like maybe him and rc just waiting and dealing with some bs.
Then there’s the Backstage roaring cat perhaps. The girl says ima stick beside him.
Not sure about everyone shooting each other but someone said maybe because he wrote it and manifested it?
——
Then the dress one “this is art, get it?” Was apparently two minutes after hey Ross and some others were talking about that dress on a space call.
I’m a United States gamestop memer. Aren’t those the guys that go crazy and come back with an arsenal of memes and blast everybody? Sometimes. Price action keeps coming and coming… and then it’s GameStop earnings week! (6/5 aftermarket)
Always sunny scene maybe like a peek into how crazy he’s been feeling not being able to talk to anyone for three years?
He can’t speak or he’ll get in trouble.
Alladin scene (alladin name of trading algo. He also says next time I’ll use a nom de plume - pen name) all I gotta do is jump! (The theme of taking a leap of faith again)
Dreyfus billionaire family (no idea but she’s dancing having a great time)
You can’t handle the truth (code red has to do with a worm/virus, maybe they’re about to unleash something that destroys several companies that are short? And it’s pretty funny)
Beavis and butthead sex for dummies (to me it says rc and dfv are ready to fuck but also cex means centralized exchanges which are also for dummies)
Oceans 11, (theme is a heist. We’re all looking at each other like what’s about to happen and then the last guy is just looking at boobs, seems to describe a group like us lol)
Bernard from westworld can’t see the bear thesis (because in the movie he’s programmed not to but irl it’s because there isn’t a thesis!)
“That’s not a thesis,” pulls out huge knife, “that’s a thesis.”
The gme galaxy on the cat collar says deepfuckingvalue so I think he’s saying it’s still deep value and we often made memes about the black hole of gme absorbing the rest of the market into it so maybe that’s it.
Whats in the box? What’s in the box??? (What’s the plan??? RC not telegraphing his plans)
Guy looks at all the memes - she asks “is it not good?” “It is miraculous.” (That’s us loving every second of this. Thank you dfv.)
And so.. you just RAN. Forest gump runnin’ (gme gonna just keep runnin’)
you go backwards but then you go forwards again… you go backwards… then he walks out of the woods.. (are we out of the woods now? Done going backwards?)
We’ll see. The Zen philosophy story - kid breaks leg, oh that’s bad, can’t go to war, oh now it’s good etc - (I think he’s saying to be zen, we’re gonna win, but this message goes deeper:
We don’t always know what is good or bad. Breaking your leg isn’t good or bad, those are just judgements in our mind. We don’t know what the future holds. Almost anything can be a good thing or a bad thing, all we can do is accept life and how things play out without judgement.)
We’ll see.
Then the boy is saying bye to ET, the music says I’ve really enjoyed my stay, but I must be movin on. (DFV going silent again until this all plays out.)
——
——
He’s saying “we fuckin won fellas! Be zen, and we’ll see this all play out soon enough.”
I think the heavy use of good movies and music and video games may also be hinting at gamestops nft marketplace May reopen to sell those 3 things as NFTs by partnering with blockbuster and some musicians.
LFG 🚀 I’ll see you regards on the moon.
submitted by saltyblueberry25 to Teddy [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 22:37 sadsadsock Teenager says he wants to learn, then ignores everyone teaching him

I'll start out by saying I'm pretty sure since finding this Reddit and spending the last three days reading stories from here, I've unintentionally cursed our table. I thought to myself "wow, I'm pleased everyone at the table I play at seems nice and we don't have these problems".
Oops :)
We had two new players at the table - one being the Druid who had passed our table the previous week and was excited to see we were playing DnD and how he wanted to learn, and we told him it was a beginners game so he could come down and try it out, especially as we were starting a new campaign the following week so everyone would be at the same point and making their characters.
The Druid was about 13 (the rest of us ranging between late teens to mid 30s) and excitedly talking about how he's wanted to learn to play DnD so he can start a club at school, and so a few people were helping him write his character. The rest of us were a Wizard, Cleric (me), Paladin, Fighter, and Ranger. Instantly he kept getting distracted, asking everyone about their characters, what their names were, what their races were. Which is fine, he's excited. But he quickly turned it into a competition (for example, "What's your armour class? 7? OMG I'm SOOOO much stronger, mines 12, I'm the strongest, yeah!"). Once his stats were done, he was told to think about his traits/backstory while the rest of us finished up our sheets, but he kept yelling "Are you ready yet??? When are we going to start??? Can we start already???"
Which... Okay again that's fine. He's excited. But it's gonna take a lot longer if you keep interrupting us.
Eventually we start out. The DM starts setting the scene - we wake up in a room on a ship, there's a man sitting in there with us who explains our quest on the island we're moored at. Before anyone can say or do anything the Druid says "I set fire to the ship!" Everyone asks him why he would do that and he said "Because I'm crazy!". The DM has us roll and we discover the ship is enchanted ie it cannot be attacked or affected by statuses. The Druid turns his attention to the man and asks why they should do what he's telling them. The man explains they've already been paid. Druid asks for more money. The man says no. Druid declares he doesn't trust this man and says "I kill this man and chop his head off!". The Wizard tells him that if he does this, he will attack the Druid himself. He still insists that he wants to kill the man. DM has him make a roll, which he fails. He keeps insisting he's going to kill everyone we approach, at what point we explain the concept of a murderhobo and how, yknow, he shouldn't be one.
After we finally got him out of the room, things didn't get better.
Obviously I know that he's young, and I'm being harsh, and I know it was his first game, and he definitely has the enthusiasm, but his lack of interest in understanding the game and rules despite being told them over and over really worries me what the next session will be like. He wants instant gratification, things handed to him on a silver platter and to be the most important, the strongest, the smartest. I felt like a babysitter. There were other examples of things he was told over and over that he refused to take on board. I swear my 7 year old niece understands taking turns better than he did.
Any advice in handling him, or suggestions I can make to him would be welcome. I'm curious where he learnt about DnD to see if there's any examples of etiquette I can give him the next time he comes along to a session. Best case scenario that he maybe goes away, thinks over what he's been told, and comes back next session with a little more understanding. Hopefully.
submitted by sadsadsock to rpghorrorstories [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 22:32 wembagoat How is your partner reaction when you have ED ?

Im curious, so if you could share their reactions, age and the status of relationship ( one night stand, married, girlfriend etc ). Also please share how many times you got ED, if you have sex often or if never works etc
I’m 36y old.
I have psychological ED, so my dick works fine 80-90% of time.
I have been with 25 girls and only with 4 I never have ED.
With my 3 ex girlfriends they were sweet, give me support etc.
Fwb were always very sweet, give me comfort and told me “it’s ok, take your time, let’s drink something so you relax”.
One night stands I couldn’t have se twice. One of them was ok reaction and invite next day. And the other was worst reaction ever, after she noticed my dick was soft she literally told me to get out of her apartment and didn’t want give me her Instagram/whatsapp.
Overall I’d say woman in their 20s-30s are ok and supportive. Despite that one night stand, being soft didn’t make me lose any of those girls, which was my biggest fear “if I get limp dick, she will humiliate me and run “
The girls who I didn’t have ED, I enter this subject like a ninja and asked about this. They told me it happened many times with them and she would be fine if happens to her .
What about your partners ?
Good day everyone !
submitted by wembagoat to erectiledysfunction [link] [comments]


2024.05.18 21:32 Azurecertificates Best online statistics class help Reddit

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submitted by Azurecertificates to Statisticshelpers_ [link] [comments]


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