College financial aid appeal letter with a good reason

Not financial advice, just wanted to give people some food for though about GWAV. Seen it in other threads and people with hopes it does well on Monday and the rest of the week, which it might very well. If you’re in it for a quick gain that might be your best option, but it might not come.
Anyway the reason I error on the side of caution with this one is because the CEO Danny Meeks did a debt/equity swap. Exchanging 17.22 million in debt to equity to his lenders. 10 mill in series d preferred stock and 7.22 mill in common stock. He says it “further aligns him with the shareholders” and reflects the confidence he has within the business and its growth.
If this company wasn’t a pennystock and was turning over good profits year over year I’d say it was poised for growth, but I think they are burning at both ends and are just trying to stay solvent. That being said I would not want to hold this one long term. They only have 1.55 million cash on hand as well. Just my 2 cents.

Not financial advice, just wanted to give people some food for though about GWAV. Seen it in other threads and people with hopes it does well on Monday and the rest of the week, which it might very well. If you’re in it for a quick gain that might be your best option, but it might not come.
Anyway the reason I error on the side of caution with this one is because the CEO Danny Meeks did a debt/equity swap. Exchanging 17.22 million in debt to equity to his lenders. 10 mill in series d preferred stock and 7.22 mill in common stock. He says it “further aligns him with the shareholders” and reflects the confidence he has within the business and its growth.
If this company wasn’t a pennystock and was turning over good profits year over year I’d say it was poised for growth, but I think they are burning at both ends and are just trying to stay solvent. That being said I would not want to hold this one long term. They only have 1.55 million cash on hand as well. Just my 2 cents.

Helloooo, I'm a junior and I'm trying to narrow my college list, and find more realistic target schools. Science and math have always been my weakest points, but I've always challenged myself nonetheless. If you have any college recommendations for me, I'd really appreciate it!!! Sorry this is so long!!
Demographics: M, White/Persian (dual citizen), TN, private school
Hooks: Performing arts
Intended Major(s): Biomedical Engineering, minor in Theater or Astronomy
ACT/SAT/SAT II: ACT - 26 (breakdown-- math 21, science 23, stem 22, eng 27, reading 33) SAT - 1220 (reading/writing-- 660, math-- 460)
UW/W GPA: Freshman GPA: 3.8 Sophomore GPA: 3.3 (medical leave) Junior GPA: 4.1 cumulative on record: 3.55 all weighted, cumulative hasn't been properly calculated (mistake in school's system)
Coursework: Freshman/Sophomore year I completed fine arts training (my academic lineage goes to Michelangelo) DP Eng Lit HL (A), DP AA SL (B), DP Physics HL (C), DP Anthro SL (B) Photography and Theater Production as electives, next year is 3rd year of fine arts training
Awards: National Art Honor Society Tri-M Music Honor Society International Thespian Society Scholastic Art and Writing Awards two honorable mentions National Shakespeare Competition Semi-Finalist 2 school awards in acting First in Odyssey of the Mind Ark State (2 years in a row) First in NHD Regional Comp International Honor Thespian by the end of my senior year
ECs: Assistant Director of a musical (2 shows) Directing (1 show) Tech Crew (lighting, sound, and stage) (4 shows) Acting (in hs) (6 shows, 8 by end of senior year) President of Thespian Troupe Part Time Job Art Studio Apprentice Published 3 times in School Anthology Graphic Designer in Student-Run Magazine Freelance Photography Odyssey of the Mind (3 years, will be coaching next year) President of GSA Club Co-founder of Acting Club Member of Local Astronomical Society CIT at Summer Camp School volunteer (19 hours) a lot more I haven't kept track of
Essays/LORs/Other: I believe my essay will be strong. I plan to write about how art has been my way of expressing myself and understanding the world around me, how I strive to be better at science, and my belief that science and art are the same in the sense that they are both ways of navigating the world, etc.
English teacher-- oh so very strong!!! i love my eng teacher she's so sweet :>
Anthro teacher-- haven't seen it yet, but i'm sure it'll be good, i have a natural spark in anthropology and am very active in his class, my teacher is also my advisor so i talk w him a lot more, he also is writing a recommendation for me for a summer program i'm applying to
Art teacher-- i believe this will be quite strong!
Director A-- this one will be !!great!!, she's known me for 7-8 years
Director B-- this one is a bit of a wildcard, he's a silly guy tho and he likes me so ik he'll say good things about me
Schools:
ED - Rice University
EA - UMich Stony Brook University
RD - Carnegie Mellon* NYU* UCSD CPSU (San Luis Obispo) San Diego State University UW UCD DePaul CU Boulder Michigan State
*I'm very passionate for theater and acting, which is why I want to apply to CMU and NYU for acting. I can't afford to fail if I took that route, which is why I'm only applying to reach schools under that major.
I am aware my college list is too long, I am hoping that'll change. I have safeties, I just didn't include them!! In general, I'm very worried about costs. Even though I'm on a single parent income of 100k (net), I am one of four people being financially supported by that income so that support will be limited in college. My parent's gross income is higher than almost every college's need-based cutoff, so I don't qualify for a lot of financial aid. My academics are also just not cutting it for most merit-based scholarships, as well. As I'm currently standing, I'm not eligible for the majority of large scholarships I've come across. Any help for a more realistic academic+financial bar? Thank you so much!!!

There is a price to Faster Than Light travel. A veritable one depending on the Stellar Domain being traversed, a trip might necessitate an offering or a sacrifice of some kind, usually food or items of sentimental value. Rarely has a Domain Warden asked for anything more beyond that as most of their Arch Demon masters would rather not let their main source of Axiomatic power be 'depleted'.
This is the most common case for intra-domain travel. The real trouble begins when you try to cross into another.
Arch Demons don't tend to like their 'property' escaping their clutches, so there is a hefty toll that must be paid to them before they agree to send you over. Not only that, chances are likely that the Domain you wish to travel to is already harbouring another Arch. In that case, you would not only need to satisfy your previous 'benefactor' but also convince the other to allow you entrance.
If that wasn't enough to discourage you, then there is also the lack of protection during your transit to the new domain. See, the reason why Stellar Domains even exist is because the Arch Demons that rule them exude a presence that wards off their unintelligent kin, so with that gone, you're a flying dinner bell.
Every moment your ship stays in Chtho-Space, more and more Lesser Demons will come for you like sharks to chum. They will surround you, their uncountable numbers hollering and scratching at your hull for as long as you can withstand. And if you're still sane, their tricks will become worse, their actions bolder than before. Illusions of the dead, cold whispers into the ears, and the feeling of being watched from the darkness are a few examples of what the Lesser Demons are capable of, but they are not their limits. Remember, never show them what you fear.
The reason for this madness is simple, and it is due to the incorporeal nature of Lesser Demons. As beings formed of pure Chthonic energy, they cannot interact with the Real-Space as is, they require a conduit to affect the material realm. In other words, they must possess a sapient creature.
To do so, an individual on board will be chosen as the vessel and the Demons will haunt them until either the ship reaches its destination 'safely', or they give in. That's when the slaughter begins.
The person, whose mind no longer belongs, will be reborn into a Corporeal Demon and kill off the rest of the crew with powers beyond the understanding of most in this galaxy to ensure its competition is at a minimum. Corpses can't be possessed after all.
With its newly secured intellect, the Corporeal Demon may do one of two things, become a Domain Warden under the watchful eye of an Arch or attempt to ascend into one. And whether it succeeds or fails, the galaxy is darker for it, such is the doomed fate of those under the rule of Demons.
Forever cursed to serve, be used, and forgotten. Everything they once were, boiled down to insignificant specks of blood in a galaxy that lost against Chtho-Space thousands of years ago.
Nevertheless.
As Demons seek to create a world without peace, one mirroring their own, they are bound to find those who are more than up to the task of defending it.
And it is in the void between the domains where they settle.
From the Demons' perspective, not much is known about them, other than that they can intrude into Chtho-Space without the permission or knowledge of a Domain Warden. This freedom of movement has allowed these mysterious warriors to battle on equal if not better footing with the Demons as Lessers can only ride the currents of Chtho-Space, not create them.
Seemingly, they also rescue domain migrators from swarms of Lessers. It is maybe how stories of them are so ubiquitous throughout the galaxy. A myth that emboldens the hearts of those under tyranny and plants the seed of rebellion in those who can no longer bear it.
For those that harbour such intent, the Chthonauts are eager for more members, you will only need to proclaim your wish to fight when one of their patrol ships is nearby while in transit between Domains.
Due to this recruitment method, the Chthonauts are an odd group, strictly speaking, as a whole multitude of different species comprises them. All with various traditions and practices that would have been snuffed out under the Demons.
They carry out their demon-hunting duties with corvettes, which are usually attached to a larger battlegroup or mothership, and either attack swarms of Lessers or hunt down singular Corporeals. Aside from that, some operate without the aid of larger ships, penetrating deep into Domains as scouts.
Of the many species sighted on these 'Chthonaut' vessels, a large portion of them appear to be hairless mammalian bipeds. Intercepted communications have revealed that they call themselves, Humans.
They appear to have a history of fighting Demons, even before their spacefaring age. Sources vary from religious texts to fictional tales dating back multiple millennia of the Demons they have encountered, some exhibiting capabilities eerily similar to Arch Demons. Whether the events recounted are true to life remains to be seen, but the Humans of today undeniably match their written portrayals in terms of Demon-hunting prowess.
I do wonder though, how did they remain unconquered before their space age? Most species evolved in a Stellar Domain and the ones that didn't were absorbed all the same when they reached the Axiomatic population threshold that draws in Archs.
Perhaps there were other forces at play, mankind's old text did describe many entities besides Demons. From immortals that leeched the life force of their victims to beings completely antithetical to the concept of Demons. It wouldn't surprise me if these races potentially existed at one point, the intrusion of Chtho-Space did spell doom for the previous masters of this galaxy.
Strangely, while the monsters may differ, mankind is still shown to triumph over impossible odds in these ancient texts. It was a common message, no matter the language or culture, that the human spirit stands tall at the end. A naive proclamation, but one with more bite to it than it probably warrants.
Yo, back with another story after...idk after how many months, not really the one I've been spending months on making, but one that I've forced myself to write and finish,
Kinda makes me feel a bit sad, to be honest, I wonder how long stories would take to write when I actually have to work and go to college. I won't stop writing though, so don't worry about that. I wanna make a career out of this.
As always, criticism is welcome, and I do read your comments! just takes a while to respond because I post these stories when I am about to go to sleep or when I just wake up due to time zones.
Here's to hoping you'll enjoy it.

I currently work for a small local pool business and make around 45k a year. Working heavy ~9 months, then 3 hours a week for the other 3 months. I graduated HS in ‘17 and dropped out of college during covid. Did about 2 years of engineering and 1 year of business classes before i used covid as reason to drop out. I always had good grades I just never had an exact path planned and never fully committed. Got into the mentality that college trains workers not bosses. I went full time on pools at that time because money was good for a kid living at home. Now 4 years later, the owners are selling the company and it is available to me under market pricing. My bosses (husband and wife) pay themselves around 70k a year. I feel lost, because either way there will be a large change in life. I have always wanted to own a business, but now i just keep second guessing. I have a son now and want to make sure I can always support my family, but also understand success doesn’t come riskless. I just don’t know if i’ve entering an industry with low ceilings. Just looking for opinions!

Didn't think I would be on reddit but looking for i guess public random help? If I ATA then I will accept it.
I am having issues with my girlfriend and was hoping within the next 10 days to pop the question, and as shitty as it is, she is bringing up and point of view in our relationship I do not agree with in any capacity.
We have known eachother 9 years, Started dating almost 3 years ago. I had strong reservations about this relationship even beginning because I had gotten out of something bad a year prior and she had gotten out fo a 5 year relationship before getting with me.
This is a rare and only time where the girl was asking me out and I was saying no. I had started to learn about boundaries and mental health and it felt like at that moment I could not handle any form of a relationship. She forgets to tell anyone in this story how the longest she has been in single is 6 months and basically hopped from relationship to relationship.
I had told her she needs to spend a year or more figuring out what she wants in life for herself and who she is outside of a relationship because it sounded like a person with no path or direction.
I will admit I was weak and definitely like her, come to find out we liked eachother when we first met it was just bad timing. The only reason I asked her out is because all my friends said we looked and seemed perfect together and they hadn't seen me that happy in a long time.
So far we have had it good, and of coure some fights, but if I am being fair her last few relationships have been very abusive and non loving and the abuse goes all the way back to her family as well. So after my many failings I learned how to, not lash out or scream or make instant judgements or start a argument with texts, I have learned a lot from my own short comings and it feels she is where I was years ago. When we fight 80% of her arguments come from a topic that isn't even the issue and that fights feel like , I made her hurt or upset so she is gonna hurt me the same if not worse...
An issue I was warned about when I started dating, was after I inherited some money. I had been told by most of my family that dating financially below me could be tough because they might always see the comparison. And in a couple relationships it has been thrown in my face. Its not great, but it was given to me and I know that isn't fair. I would say I spend most of my money on my friends or significant other well being, not to buy them, but gift giving is a strong love language and I guess I always felt guilty I did nothing to have this money.
The recent conversation has been about her making more money versus me. I stopped working about 6 years ago to try and get into home investments and real estate stuff, I got tired of not being promoted when I showed up early, stayed late kind of crap then being asked to do 100 tasks not in my job description, but the actual on paper description of the person who got promoted over me and was not doing. I don't mind working hard or even for free, but if on paper I meet qualifications and the person promoted doesn't, then I have a problem.
This is her first consistent job that pays okay and has benefits. She job hops year after year and when looking for jobs they want some form of loyalty more than 1 year and she keeps wanting to go back to a bar job downtown that when she first had it was making bank, like 1800.00 every weekend only two days of work, but then when every bar opened up downtown post covid her weekend pay was now like 1200, then 1000, then 900. Not to mention tons of shootings and scary phone calls I would get at 3 AM. So we made a deal if for the next three months the paycheck wouldn't increase beyond 1000 she would quit and not go back... So I have supported her through multiple jobs and quittings and her trying to start her own baking business that she tanked because anytime I set a price for her baked goods, she would give a massive discount and not breakeven... I have even done 24hr straight baking sessions to get massive orders to clients in which killed our oven that I had to fix. I just wish she'd stay somehwere for a while and build a resume that works. I know our whole country is fucked financially and the average survival salary of our state is 100k,.. I already cover everything and pay for everything else...
I have been doing the real estate investing on mostly my own, and obviously it is not going well, trying to be ethical and moral and in the housing market seems like an oxymoron. I still have more money than she brings in and I am working on my real estate license, but I bought the house, take care of her, our dogs, mow the lawn, help out with her family of 9, fix our appliances, take care of her indoor plants, gave her a garden for outside that I also maintain, cook dinner or buy dates most of the time, pay for trips, her dogs surgeries etc, She is saying I need to make even more money so she can take it easy and stop working as much... But she has complained multiple times about wanting to help out around the house mroe and with payments... Idk how she can help if she is gonna take an inconsistent paycheck, and have no benefits of any kind and drive farther...
Am I slacking as her man and better half or is she not stepping up to the plate and doing her share?

I struggle really bad with stubling my words, the faster I talk or the more tired I am where I mean one thing but another word or gibberish comes out. I have a lot of trouble reading books to where I will read the same line twice or my brain just shuts off and I don't absorb anything unless there is maximum interest. I went to speech therapy as a child and it helped me with reading out loud but it still makes me really anxious because I still get stuck sometimes and can't always keep a good flow with my words. When listening to someone talk it sounds like English but my brain has a delayed response before I understand. I cannot concentrate on someone talking to me if I'm reading or listening to someone, AAAnd my writing is terrible even when I write slowly. I've tried learning different languages but for SOME REASON I will try to say a sentence and group 2 languages together. I also say words out of order in sentences if that makes any sense... With all of this plus major procrastination I've always had trouble with any education system I've gone through and it sucks because I want to go to college but I have no idea how to get over everything enough to get passing grades.

I’ve always wanted to go to college. I’m not yet in my 30s, but I feel like I’ve wasted the most important years of my life by not going to college. I want to dedicate my life to helping people, which is why I’m choosing the field of study that I am if I go to college without giving too many details. But I’m so afraid to. I live alone, I can’t bunk with anyone. I have to work full time. I feel like I’ll be way too overwhelmed by working full time and attending college full time. There’s the nagging fear always in the back of my mind due to the horror stories that were instilled in me through indoctrination. Have any of you ever made it work? How? How did you get past the fear, the financial barriers due to not having a good job since you weren’t allowed to go to college as a JW? I feel like I need to make this work in order to live a fulfilling life but it feels like all odds are stacked against me. I have no clue where to start.

I have watched all survival shows that I can find ever since I got into kpop in 2019 including produce series and girls and boys planet as well as I-land 1. I liked to watched the shows because I like to see the participants perform covers of some kpop songs that I may like or just enjoy the show but I just have not been able to commit myself to watching I-land 2.
I think it has something to do with the fact that I don't think some of the participants that i like will make it and i'm just not liking the drama they are trying to portray (growing tired of the weird edits in the past few episodes. Also i don't think the final group will do that well - people will be pissed that their favs didn't get in during the first few months then people will move on and those that want to support them will support them while others will abandon the group. this already happened with Kep1er. they had a good international fanbase and then within their first year, people stopped being interested in them. to be honest i was one of those people (i really liked the group in the first few months of their debut but then as time went on, i stopped checking in on them every once in a while. i genuinely think its because of 2 things (1 is that they do not have a big company behind them so i always think they just wont succeed- but coming from a big company doesn't mean your going to 100% succeed- you need to be producing good songs that appeal to either the Korean public or international public - doing well on either spotify streams and YouTube views or Korean charts. but i don't think wakeone is good at giving them good songs (i think this is particularly the reason why most people left the fandom - i thought wa da da was ok but not anything special but an ok debut (i preferred MASK over their title (literally listened to the song so many times)- after early 2022, i don't think they released any other good songs - i liked up and another b-side but that's it (shocking for a group that debuted more 2 years ago -a temporary one at that)
i know that the black label will be producing their songs but it will either turn out to be a copy cat of Blackpink songs or he is using this group to experiment on different sounds and if it does well he will produce the same for Blackpink.
i genuinely think survival shows have not been that good since the produce series (it had good Korean viewership as well along with iconic participants). After the groups debuted, they had good songs as well which made them even more popular. A lot of viewers will only support them during the debut era and then drop them unless they produce good music.
Another thing that i think this season is lacking is someone who is worthy of being the centre for the final group. For example in produce season 1 there was somi who was extremely popular from being from JYP and previously on sixteen, there was season 2 kang daniel - honestly he confuses me because he started climbing the ranks later on but still no one can deny his popularity among the Korean general public at that time. For season 3 there was Wooyoung who again was iconic and had a lot of Korean fans - she was definitely centre material throughout the show despite being the youngest I think. Then for season 4 there was Yohan who i don't know much about but apparently he was really popular (All of them or most of them have one thing in common and that is they were either really young - Korean's like the younger participants or less skilled / lacked some skills at the beginning at least compared to other participants but loved by the public.
Anyways does anyone see them doing well and being able to rival 4th gen/ 5th gen girl groups - G(I-DLE), IVE, Le sserafim, Aespa, ITZY, New Jeans, Baby monster - all of which except IVE come from the big 4.

TW, I do talk about my abuse and trauma in this, mostly about verbal and medical neglect.
It's almost like my family knows what they're doing to me. It's honestly frustrating. I'm almost always the one being neglected or ignored in conversations or at family events. And yeah, they were the ones that basically caused this damn disorder, it makes sense! But they apparently don't even know why I want to move into the college dorms so badly this fall???? How do they not see that I'm actively trying to not be around them specifically for extended periods of time???
I've always been the one my family put down and at this point I never know if I'm splitting on them or if the anger, abandoned, frustration, and stress I feel about/from them is actually rational. Because of that, it's honestly made me so confused with my own splits on my FP(who also has bpd). I feel like I'm going fucking insane at this point.
My family has always triggered me, but ever since starting medication back in February, I've noticed that they trigger me even more than before. I'm not as triggered with my FP, which is honestly a great thing! I haven't had any huge, explosive splits on them since starting my meds. But my family though? I fucking hate them. The parents that I live with have no regard for my food sensitivities(both in terms of the few allergies I have and also for sensory reasons(I'm also autistic btw)) and taste. And my mom(I don't live with her) thinks its a great idea to have 13(now 12) animals in her small-ass duplex and lets her new great dane "puppy" piss and shit everywhere and terrorize(not play) the cats. I literally had to grab my cat from there and now one of my friends are looking over her for a few months. Thank god.
My parents always hound on me for not having a job since August of last year, despite the fact that I've been applying for and interviewing for jobs actively since then! It's literally not my fault that the only "job" I have right now is Door Dash, which makes me constantly spend more money on gas than I can actually save up. Not to mention, it burnt me out pretty quickly after doing it for two months! They always try to "help" by sending me job listings, 99% of them I've either applied to or literally won't be able to do physically due to also being physically disabled! Which brings me to my next thing!
They have absolutely no fucking regard for my physical and mental health at fucking all. They simply think I just have depression and anxiety and thats it. They don't want to even believe that I'm autistic and have ADHD, BPD(which I basically refuse to tell them about, but I'm tempted so they learn how it's caused so they see just how much they fucked me up), DID, and maybe even Schizoaffective Disorder, which I'm still trying to work out with my therapist if that's another thing wrong with me or not. My parents don't want to even believe that I have POTs or dysautonomia of any kind, hypermobility, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, etc. They don't even believe me when I'm telling them that my vision is getting fucked because it's getting worse way too rapidly for someone my age(21) when there's literally a whole family history of this shit on my mom's side! Not to mention, we know jack shit about my grandmother's physical and mental health related shit on my fraternal side except for that she died of cancer in 2006! My parents refused to do any medical shit for me as a kid and still do now. All they would do was take me to my yearly checkup, the dentist once a year(when you're supposed to go like 2 times a year) and the eye doctor once a year. They don't take me seriously at all. When I was 11, I literally almost died from the fucking flu because of them! They made me stay at home while they went to my sister's band concert. Meanwhile, I couldn't fucking breathe and started choking on my own damn mucus for multiple minutes straight. I was fucking terrified. Now I'm always scared whenever I get sick, even if it isn't as serious as what I had went through. There's a reason why I'm not going to be seeing the family optometrist after my most recent appointment. Every medical or mental health professional that my parents would make me go to would gaslight me or brush me off.
Their negligence still holds up today too! And thats what fucking pisses me off! They helped my siblings pay for things for college but refuse to help me because "I didn't do well in high school, so it wouldn't really be a good idea to spend money on you because we know you're not going to do well in classes." What the fuck???? Maybe the reason why I didn't do well in school before is because y'all didn't LET me have any accommodations, refused to get me tested for literally anything, always put me down, and fucking verbally abused and neglected me 24/7! Just a month ago, I got into an argument with my stepmom and she legit told me, "Well, you don't have a job and I just want you to have a purpose in life." Why would you say that to someone?! Let alone your own kid?!
Oh don't get me fucking started on the younger of my two stepsisters(the older one hasn't done shit to me. She's the only one I'm not triggered by.) and how she has lied about me to my parents, aided/aids in my abuse, etc. She basically gets all the love and attention from my parents. They encourage her to do things, to live her best life, etc.
I don't even know if what I'm feeling right now is me splitting on my family or justifiable anger. All I know is that I'm upset with them and that I don't want to live in this damned house anymore. I've been wanting to leave it for years now but was always held back from it for one reason or another. I'm fucking upset.

This is my first time writing a Reddit story, so I’m sorry in advance if it sucks.
I, 27 M, met my boyfriend, 27 M, during my third year of college, when I had a steady relationship (with a girl) and was a blatant homophobe. He was in the same class as me, and we got grouped together for a project at the start of the year along with two other people. Before then, I didn’t really notice him, I just subconsciously labeled him as ‘that one emo kid with the black hair and blonde tips’.
Anyways, since I lived alone and I had a big apartment, everyone decided on going to my place to do the project. Before getting to know my boyfriend, I arrogantly assumed I was really smart and I could understand anything, since I got into a school like Boston University and got relatively good grades. Boy was I wrong. I guess now that I think about it, I only had good grades because I had private tutoring in high school, and my parents paid full tuition for my college, since I couldn’t get any scholarships (my family is really well-off). But my boyfriend is ACTUALLY smart. Like, smart smart. He comes from a working-class family, which means he obv never got any tutoring, and he was still somehow able to get a full ride to Boston.
Over the course of the next few days, he absolutely carried the entire project. Me and the other two people were just sitting there, confused most of the time. I didn’t really notice it at the time, but my crush on him was getting bigger and bigger.
On the last day of the project, me and one of the other people in the group were putting the finishing touches on the project, when he (my bf) suddenly fell asleep right there in my living room, with his head on the coffee table, and I just let it be since he always had noticeable eyebags. Anyways, after we finished the project and the two other people left my apartment, I carried my boyfriend to the couch, which was already weird enough since normally I wouldn’t care too much about some guy I don’t know, and then I, for some reason, went to all the trouble of getting a blanket and a pillow for him too. As I was tucking him in, I asked myself “bro why do I care so much” and that’s when I realized.
Anyways fast forward, I broke up with my girlfriend at the time, got over my homophobia (since at this point I was basically hating myself 💀) and me and him somehow ended up confessing to each other, and he moved in. Since then, we moved to Manhattan together, got a high-rise and a cat, and I’ve never been happier.

I’ve been wondering for a while why the series chose to begin with Sauron disguised as a “low-man”, why all of the fuss and secrecy was necessary to the showrunners and why they felt it was worth the risk of season one feeling so different from the Second Age story we were expecting.
When you consider that they’ve stated season two has a canonical story and they feel many fans will feel they’re ‘finally getting the story they wanted for season one’, it seems even more strange that they wouldn’t have simply started out by giving fans what they wanted.
But I think I may understand their reasoning, or at least part of it.
Season one presented a potentially repentant Sauron who was, at least outwardly, wrestling to choose which path he will take forward. Writing him in this way allowed us to meet Sauron before he became the spirit of malice and shadow of Morgoth that we see in The Lord of the Rings. (Yes, he committed great evils before this point but he had not yet reached the height of his power or evil.)
There’s something very poignant about many of Tolkien’s characters being described as the greatest of their kind, such as Melkor or Fëanor, only for these characters to experience an equally devastating fall through the work of their own hands. Sauron was once a Maia of Aulë and well-renowned (even called Mairon, which means Admirable) so the loss of his soul (for lack of a better term) or his potential for goodness is felt keenly. So letting us get to know Sauron as “Halbrand” gives us the time and space to grieve for the loss of Mairon the Admirable before we meet him again as Annatar.
Because the timeline has compressed, we might have witnessed a version of Sauron’s repentance before Eonwë, or at least something meant to remind us of it. They didn’t have the rights to include this moment specifically, but they wanted to convey the sort of rock bottom he’s found himself in and show him rebuilding from scratch. He’s testing different routes to power, and he’s still figuring out the most efficient way to achieve his goals.
As Tolkien explains in Letter 131, he is beginning with fair motives.
His search for light as embodied in his “cosmic” pursuit of Galadriel speaks to his genuine desire to heal and order Middle-earth, and it is also a nod to Melkor’s lust for light in the beginning. Ultimately, like Melkor, he will choose a different path.
But still Sauron lingers here in season one.
By the time Annatar arrives in Eregion, I believe his choice will be clear. There won’t be any doubt or ambiguity left and we’ll see his cruelty on full display.
Side note: I think this also allows the viewers to emphasize with Celebrimbor as we will see him deceived in the coming season. In season one, the viewer was essentially put in Celebrimbor’s shoes to be deceived by Sauron (despite the leaks ruining it for many). So hopefully Celebrimbor’s character arc will be compelling in season two.
Other side note: I’m not really sure if the risk the showrunners took will end up having been worth it to the general/wider audience but I do think, from my perspective, it added a lot of depth to the story they’re trying to tell. However, if you disagree (respectfully) that’s okay!

The strategy here is to use the GB and WT words against them and also use the Bible as an authority. You’ll force them to say they don’t believe the GB or the Bible if they try to criticize you.
“Do you believe the GB is the faithful slave?” They don’t know who the faithful slave is and neither do you. It’s been identified as 5 different people or groups over the years. CT Russel was first, JFK Rutherford and the corporate members next, the 144,000, the part of the 144,000 that is teaching the other part, then just the GB. Will it change again in a minute? If it was clear, there wouldn’t be a need to change it.
I’m not apostate for believing whats true and believing the Bible. If I was to say what’s in the WT now 10 years ago, I’d be apostate. If in 10 years form now I said what’s in the WT now, I’d be apostate. I’ll just stick with what the Bible says and not get too fancy.
I believe jeffrey winder when he says the GB are not inspired and make mistakes. Also when the Bible says each one should carry his own load. I’m not inspired either. But I’m the one who has to bear the consequences for my decisions.
“Do you report service time?” I talk about the Bible as much now as I ever did. [i criticize it as being stupid but I’m not saying that.] I’ll report time when the Bible says to.
Several WT article and videos say you are to blame if you suffer the consequences of believing the WT and later it was revealed Jehovah never cared about that. It says that people who believed what they heard at the conventions and COs about 1975 are you own fault for fixating on dates. It says brothers who spent 12 years in prison over civilian service in Greece should be grateful they spent time in jail after new light said it wasn’t necessary. [See my post history] I’m just taking responsibility for my own actions. Would hate to make a decision based on new light, then suffer consequences, then be told it was my own fault when the new light was changed again. Lots of people died from refusing organ transplants and lots of brothers went to prison when they didn’t need to.
I trust Bible words over Bible principles. Bible words don’t change. Bible principles say beards are bad and also says they’re good. It’s too confusing. I’ll just stick with with the Bible says. Hard to know for sure what music or dancing or medicine God hates. He probably doesn’t hate a lot of stuff we’re told he does.
If the Bible says I can’t do it, I’ll obey, if it doesn’t say that, I’ll assume it’s probably fine.
David Splane said we shouldn’t be applying anything in an antitypical manner unless the Bible specifically says to do that. The 2560 days was used to show the end of the world a lot of times. Not sure why it’s even being applied in an antitypical way.
I don’t think anyone knows who the king of the north is. It is “evidently” one country and then later it is “evidently” another country. Just hard to know.
The WT says there are people who pretend to be anointed. I have no idea and neither do you if anyone is or not.
The generation is 110 years old now. I guess I can just live my life and Jehovah sort out the end of the world.
David Splane said to check the facts regarding negative stories so I did. I watched Geoffrey Jackson testify and read the transcripts f the court cases. The states website isn’t apostate and the court transcripts aren’t taken out of context.
What did you find?
Geoffrey Jackson said JWs weren’t god’s spokesperson right in in court, which was surprising. I’d think he would use that opportunity to give a bold witness. The WT lawyer in Canada said family relations continue normally when someone is Daft and they don’t shun. Brother elder in noweigh said JWs don’t DF minors and that JWs don’t shun. The next days they showed a video instructing the congregations how to shun and how thorough it should be. I don’t think the lawyers care about stopping the preaching. They just don’t want kids being shunned. It wasn’t a good look seeing away lawyers say we don’t shun at all and then seeing a video by the organization showing that shunning needs to be absolute.
Show me in the Bible where it says it’s wrong.
If the new light is loving and scriptural, what was the old light?
I obey God as ruler rather than men.
It seems like a conflict of interest to say after all our research and prayer we humbly conclude we are the faithful slave and you need to do everything we say even if we make mistakes.
The current two tiered DF arrangement is the same as it was in 1974. It was changed in 1980 when ray Franz wrote his book and is not back to 1974 level after the court loss in Norway. Jehovah is very sensitive to current events it seems.
People who are DFd aren’t suffering the consequences of their own actions. Mark Sanderson said the Bible never said people should be shunned over immorality or for any other reason other than being the Antichrist and dying Jesus never came in the flesh. Means those people suffered a lot more than the Bible wanted them to. It wasn’t their choice. I believe mark Sanderson on this. Lots people committed suicide when they were treated like the Antichrist.
The Bible only says to DF for denying Jesus came in the flesh. Like atheist maybe. You can be DF’d for 33 things. You think a guy who smokes deserves to never speak to his grandchildren ever again? What didnt Jehovah just say that? You think a married people should be treated like the Antichrist because they do oral sex? They’re married. What difference does it make what they do naked? Show me that in the Bible.
The Bible doesn’t say to talk to the elders. It doesnt talk about judicial committees. A pdf says that. Not the Bible.
I obey God as ruler rather than men. I’m loyal to God.
“1914 doesn’t matter. We never preach about that” 1914 is linked to 1919. If 1914 doesn’t matter, what happened in 1919? [This is when John measured the temple and said Rutherfords hostile take over of a lucrative printing company was when Jesus picked the one true religion.]
The last days started in 1799 and 1874 and 1914. I can’t keep up. I’m going to college and I’ll let Jehovah sort the rest out.
“This is the only religion that checks all the boxes WT has made for itself.” This religion checks those boxes too.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iglesia_ni_Cristo
Established in 1914, the leadership is anointed, they preach, international, no trinity, no hellfire, no Christmas, no birthdays, full water immersion after studying, no infant baptism, and they disfellowship.

I am a 21M who needs a bit of financial guidance as to my personal situation. Here are my current assets:
Checking/Savings(Day-to-Day Spending): 4k
HYSA(Emergency Fund): 20k at 4.3%
ROTH IRA: 14k invested solely in VTSAX
Individual Brokerage: 32k Currently UNINVESTED, 2k invested in individual stocks(playing around with this recent chip/tech boom)
Now for some details on my personal situation. I am currently living at home and attending community college full-time. I will be graduating with an AS(Business) this semester and transferring to a local state school for a degree in Finance this August. I have been lucky enough to have parents who are fine with me living at home, rent-free albeit, as long as I am attending school. Because of this situation, I was able to take advantage of working full-time for the past 1.5 years while saving pretty much every penny apart from necessities like gas, occasional bite out to eat, etc. I am very frugal and don't like spending $$$ on much as I grew up with parents who didn't have a dime to spend on much else apart from the mortgage and caring for the kids. I was laid off from this job due to a business closure at the beginning of the year, which sucked monetarily but also presented itself with some benefits. I have noticed a drastic change in my school performance - getting Bs and Cs prior, and now pretty much all As and much more peace of mind with my educational goals. However, I have picked up a part-time gig earning me about $400 a week which allows me to earn some $$ while not mega-stressing myself out by working 40-50 hours a week while in school.
My main concern now is handling my investments now that I will have to pay tuition(CC is free where I am), which is looking to be around 20k total over the next two years. Would it be a good idea to invest that 32k into VTSAX? Should I place that money elsewhere like a 401k? I am very invested in the concept of FIRE and would like to have financial independence so I want to make sure I am properly managing my own money.

hiii guys, I am transferring from another uc, and I recently got admitted to the college of letters and science with a major in humanities, but I'm thinking about double majoring in a STEM-related field. I‘m considering Data theory, Mathematics&Economics, Financial Actuarial Mathematics, Mathematics of Computation, and Statistics and Data Science, and I'm leaning towards Data theory and Statistics and Data Science. So I was wondering do I have chance to double major in these STEM-related fields as a transfer student? What's the process like? Thanks!

There is a huge loan repayment problem happening in the US right now, and many different ideas for how to fix it. I have spent time researching and debating the best way to ensure that college is both affordable and accessible. I came across a well structured post that details the optimal way to structure repayment, and why it is superior to other proposals, such as free college or loan forgiveness. I will be using their collected data for my post as well.
First, we need to understand who is suffering under the current system. Contrary to popular belief, it isn’t graduates with high debt who are the most at risk of default, but rather those with low balances who are college dropouts, or only hold an associates degree. This makes sense once we remember that the benefits of being a college dropout or having an associates degree are not much better than just being a highschool graduate, except that they still have loans to pay.
IDR Scheme
This brings me to my solution for the problem, Auto-Enrollment in a broad Income-Driven Repayment Scheme. For simplicity, this IDR scheme functions as an insurance against bad labor market outcomes caused by college, and the repayment that comes with it. This means it will be designed in a way that doesn’t require any repayment if their salary is below a certain point, or if they drop out of college. Here are the specifics of the program:

• College Dropouts are fully forgiven
• An exemption level equal to the median income of an associate holder (48.6k as of 2023)
• The repayment period would last around 20 years
• Payments are otherwise set based on income
• The entire program is self-funding through payments, no tax funds needed.

(The repayment period is set for 20 years, that way those who didn’t substantially benefit from college over their life will be forgiven after a set period of time.)
Moral Hazards

• Won’t graduates wait out the 20 years before getting any high paying jobs?

Palacios (2014) points out that wages have significant path dependency, meaning that in order to obtain high paying jobs, you have to first make your way through a variety of different jobs that have different wages. This is why job pages will often have a requirement like “X years of increasingly responsible work experience”.

• Won’t students with low effort/ expectations go to college knowing they can dropout?

There are costs stemming from this, as the author of the cited post notes. The author notes that the welfare benefits of forgiving dropouts vastly outweighs the potential costs.
Why not free college?
This is likely a question that most will ask or cite as a better alternative, so I believe it deserves its own section so I can go in depth why it isn’t optimal.

• Free college isn’t as progressive

Even with extremely progressive taxation, free college is at best mildly progressive. An IDR scheme is easily much more progressive, and doesn’t involve wealth transfers to graduates with high average earnings.

• Free college consists of mostly private benefits

Many will justify free college by its public benefits for society. While there are some public benefits with increased education, the author notes that the vast majority of the benefit is private. Free college is inherently wasteful because of this private benefit, and doesn’t promise that education attainment will increase (see next point).

• Free college will become a public expense, subject to politics.

Many will say that free college will have high quality education if it is funded properly, but that exposes a huge problem with free college, it becomes an entire budget that will be subject to constant change when politics change. The proposed IDR scheme is self-funding and financially solvent, and can be adjusted to remain financially solvent. The reason free college in SA is often low quality, requires highly competitive tests, and often consists of crammed lecture halls is because of politics and financing.
Conclusion
This post will undoubtedly create confusion as well as criticism for not adhering to what most social democrats believe in, but I am more than welcome to clarify specific points and why I think social democrats should start supporting this system instead. I recommend that you check out the post linked in the introduction to clear up any confusion about the actual data.

In hindsight, I should have known something was wrong with The Caeles Academy of Acting.
Maybe the fact that it doesn't exist to the outside world.
This place prided itself on famous alumni it didn't actually name, and a once in a lifetime opportunity to work with the best in the business.
It's what I wanted.
More than anything.
After enduring four years of high school with barely a semblance of a drama club (we met every month, and our teacher was an alcoholic), and countless failed auditions, I was ready to take my acting career seriously. I had one year.
According to my parents, I had one year to make a living from my passion.
If it didn't work out, I would be on the first plane back to Connecticut.
It's not like they didn't trust me. I think they were just scared I wouldn't be able to financially support myself. So, I got a job right out of high school and slipped a year. Drama schools are expensive, and college’s are cut-throat on who they take on. I found Caeles Academy by accident–or, I guess it found me?
After researching cheap drama classes, auditions, academy’s, literally anything to progress my career, an ad popped up.
Not exactly flashy.
Just a date, a time, and a promise that they only take the best. I ignored it, but throughout the week, I started getting more ads. Just the words, “IMPRESS US - - JOIN CAELES ACADEMY NOW.”
Followed by, “BE WITH THE BEST, AND BE THE BEST. JOIN THE S CLASS NOW.”
When I googled the academy, nothing came up.
I gave up, clicking on the ad, which sent me straight to an application form.
I filled in my details as more of a joke. But I wasn't expecting to get an email back. Again, it was a time, a date, and that exact same tagline: “Impress us.”
However, Caeles Academy was different from what I imagined.
I was expecting a university building, or at least some modern structure.
Judging from their marketing and ads, I figured they could at least afford decent premises. Though I was mistaken. When I stepped out of the Uber, I found myself staring at what looked like an abandoned office tower, a red-brick monolith in the middle of nowhere.
Which was crazy, because I swore a girl wearing a bikini had strode through the doors, with nothing but her phone, and a coffee tucked under her elbow.
According to the text sent from the academy, the auditioning rooms were on the third floor.
Tipping my head back, the checkerboard of broken windows didn't exactly instil confidence.
Neither did the clunky set of automatic doors that took a while to open.
It was a summer's day, and the heat was already baking through my dress, sweat sticky on the back of my neck.
I wanted to make a good impression, but the heels were a little over the top.
Though I had also seen a girl casually walk in wearing a two piece bikini.
“Well?”
Freddie’s voice made me jump. I forgot I was on the phone to him. I was excited the whole car-ride, already high on five coffees, and now I was silent.
If I perceived the ‘academy’ from an objective standpoint, it definitely looked like the perfect place to be brutally murdered. But my own personal opinion was it was.. okay.
“What's it like?”
I pretended not to see a rat scuttling under an old candy wrapper.
“It's… fine.”
“Just fine?”
I could hear the smirk in my friend’s tone. He couldn't wait to tell me it was a scam, and had been reminding me all week I was essentially willingly selling myself to the black market. I was stubborn, so, fine sounded better than my initial first impression.
Which was to turn around, walk away, and completely block the place from my memory.
Unfortunately, at that moment, I valued my pride over my awareness.
“It's… okay.” I said, trying to find positives. I was staring at a looming grey building with shattered windows and a resident rat living near the door. I had a hard time figuring out how the girl from earlier had just casually strode inside, barefoot too. I glanced down at the ground, immediately regretting it.
Like there weren't bits of chewing gum and grime stuck to the concrete.
“Huh.” Freddie said, his tone creeping into teasing territory. “You're really selling it.”
“It just looks like a building,” I muttered, my gaze glued to the rat, who looked a little too comfortable.
Maybe it was a pet.
I was getting progressively more infuriated the more I stared down this place. Judging from the decades old writing ingrained into the door, it used to be a dentist surgery. “What do you want me to say?” I wasn't even trying to hide the scorn from my voice. “It's a building that looks like an academy.”
“Can you send a picture?” Freddie asked, “Ooh, wait, I'll face-time you.”
“That's, uh, that’s not really necessary–”
I was cut off, suddenly, when a guy threw himself through the automatic doors, palms first. He took two stumbled steps forwards, one back, and lifted his head, half lidded eyes finding the sky, before dropping to his knees and heaving up pinkish liquid.
I could see him trying to hold it in, slamming his hands over his mouth, only for it to splurge through his fingers, showering the ground in greyish pink froth.
Like he'd downed a bottle of Pepto Bismol.
Inching towards him, I realized it was Pepto Bismol.
The stink made my own stomach churn.
“Missy?”
I found my voice. “Uh, can I call you back later?”
Before my friend could answer, I ended the call, slipping my phone in my pocket.
The guy was still heaving, coughing up globules of pink.
“Are you okay?”
The sound of my heels click-clacking on concrete made me cringe. The guy noticed, flinching away. Closer, and I could see his scraggly blonde hair.
He was handsome.
Without the bile spewing down his chin.
Early twenties, wearing a fitted white shirt now covered in streaks of bright pink. Part of me wanted to make a half-hearted joke, but getting even closer, so close I could smell his pepto-breath, I noticed he was trembling, his hands clenched into fists.
When I attempted to awkwardly pat him on the shoulder, he twisted around, so fast my morning coffee slithered its way back up my throat.
His eyes were wide, almost feral, studying me like a wild animal.
I noticed the whites of his pupils were red, like he'd burst a blood vessel.
Theatre kids were intense, though I had never met THIS kind of intense.
“Are you… going in there?” The guy’s voice was a child-like whimper I wasn't expecting.
It looked like he was slowly regaining clarity, staring down at his filthy shirt, his hands stained bright pink.
I nodded, uncertainly, offering him my water. “Yeah. Did you audition?”
He shoved it away, slapping himself in the face. “I… I don't know.”
“You… don’t know?”
Suddenly, it was like something had contorted in his expression, a switch being pulled. I wasn't expecting him to twist around so fast. The guy slowly cocked his head, his lips breaking into a grin. His eyes, however, stayed the same.
“Of course I've auditioned.” He said, with a laugh.
“It was the best experience of my life!" His mouth formed an almost mocking frown.
“Unfortunately, I didn't make the cut. Which is a real shame. I'm sure Caeles would have benefited from my talents.”
What was weird, is that his mouth was moving, but he wasn't even looking at me, frenzied eyes caught in an oblivion I couldn't see.
When he did look at me, his expression crumpled all over again.
Pepto jumped to his feet, brushing himself down.
I couldn't take his over the top smile seriously, when his eyes were screaming, hollowed out caverns silently begging me to listen.
This guy was fucking crazy.
“Wait.” Pepto whispered, when I turned to walk away.
He pulled out his phone, tapping the screen before shoving it in my face.
I HAD SO MUCH FUN AT THE CAELES ACADEMY AUDITIONS :)
When I could only stare at him in confusion, Pepto’s gaze flicked to his phone, swiping bile from his lips.
His eyes went cartoon wide, like he couldn't believe what he himself was typing.
“That… that's not what I was trying to say!” He tried retyping it, but the guy was just writing strings of emoji hearts.
I didn't know what to say. I had dealt with rejection before, but I had never gone this far. Pepto was having a full on mental breakdown, his body shuddering, teeth chattering, blinking eyes and lips parting as if to speak, but choking on his words. When he started clawing out his hair, I took the opportunity to make a quick getaway.
Before I could make it to the doors, though, Pepto jumped in front of me, waving his phone directly in my face.
“Just…” he pointed at the screen. “It won't let me…” Growing frustrated with himself, he let out a wet sounding sob, clawing his fingers through his hair.
“Fuck, it won't let me…it won't let me type! It's not letting me type!”
By now, he had tufts of hair stuck between his fingernails. I don't know why his first reaction was to immediately try ripping his hair out.
A quick glance at my own phone reminded me of my own audition that was in five minutes.
Meanwhile, I was dealing with what I was pretty sure was delusion, denial, or a mixture of both.
I was considering pushing past him, when Pepto’s phone screen hit me in the face. Again.
This time, though, there was coherent writing.
“FIND LUKE.”
“Luke?” I said. “Who's that?”
“Luke!” The guy was bouncing on the heels of his feet. “He's my…” Pepto drifted off, his eyes going vacant, as if I could physically see his brain being plucked from his skull. Pepto dropped his phone, and I grabbed it before it could hit the ground. His hands went to his curls, clawing, scratching, until he was drawing blood across his forehead.
“I… I don't know! I can't… I can't remember. Luke. He was my… he was my… I don't know, I can't… I can't–”
I stumbled back when he let out a shriek, scratching at his face.
“Fuck!” He whimpered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”
Pepto grabbed my shoulders, shaking me, his fingers digging into my skin.
“I don't know who he is.” He gritted out, pink froth pooling from his lips.
Pepto broke out into a sob. “I don't… I don't know who he is, but you can find him, right? You can… you can find…”
Again, he trailed off mid sentence, his hands going limp around my shoulders.
I managed to side step him, swallowing a cry.
“Yeah, I'll, um, I'll find him for you.”
Pepto backed away, suddenly, stumbling over himself.
His gaze found mine, vacant, like a baby deer.
“Find who?”
I didn't wait around to answer him, pushing through the doors and stepping inside.
The interior was unsurprisingly even worse than the exterior.
The elevator was broken, so I had to run up three flights of stairs.
I expected at least an attempt at an academy, even in the dregs of an old dentist surgery.
What I got, though, was a never ending staircase, obnoxious photos of teeth greeting me on every level.
The third floor was… less clinical.
I strode directly into a waiting room filled with college aged students, either sitting on plastic chairs, or standing around, rehearsing.
The room itself was cosy enough, a navy carpet and a TV playing a random Twitch stream.
Situated in the middle was a desk with a bored looking woman behind it.
Her smile was fake. I could understand her pain. She was stuck in a room with theatre kids all day.
“Sign here.” She prodded a sheet of paper.
I was convinced her voice was AI.
While I was scribbling my details, I took a moment to notice the stark difference from the kids entering the room, to the ones leaving. The kids entering wore wide, confident smiles and were social butterflies, chatting amongst themselves.
The kids leaving reminded me of pod people.
They left the room silent, in an orderly line with dazed smiles on their faces, like they weren't sure where they were.
I watched one guy walk directly into the wall instead of taking a left toward the exit, and a girl straight up just toppled down the stairs.
The kids waiting with me named them rejects.
I wasn't convinced until I glimpsed an empty bottle of Pepto Bismol sitting on the floor by the window.
Thinking back to Pepto, that made a lot of sense.
I was still dazedly staring at the bottle, when my name was called.
Jumping to my feet, I did my best to calm myself down, straightening my ponytail. Pepto had really screwed with my head. I could barely even remember the lines I had been rehearsing for a week straight.
I was muttering my lines to myself, when I stepped through the door.
The door that apparently turned you into a pod-person on the way out.
For a moment, I thought I was blinded by stage lights.
It was so bright.
The glow bathing me was clinical, stabbing into my eyes.
When I blinked, I found myself standing in front of three shadows sitting in front of me.
Their chairs were made of leather, far different from the plastic ones in the waiting room.
So, they did have filthy cash.
I was looking at one man, and two women.
They were… average?
I expected them to be more glitzier, but they were just regular people.
The man was in his late twenties, maybe early thirties, a stiff looking brunette wearing a suit and tie, one leg crossed over the other. His eyes were narrowed slightly, lips curved into the start of a smile. Like I amused him.
The women were polar opposites.
One of them was my Mom’s age, grey hair and floral clothing. She took a sip of water, her gaze burning into me.
Google told me not to be intimidated by their stares, but it was impossible.
These people were carving holes into my skull.
Sitting next to her, a younger girl who seemed to own the color red.
Her hair simmered, blood red, while she herself was sculpted in a dress, perfect cherry lips spread in a wide smile.
With a little too many teeth.
They studied my face like I was already theirs, drinking in every inch of me.
Freddie said I had to find a weakness in their expression and use it to my advantage.
If I could find the prick of a genuine smile, I could become their favorite.
“Hi!” I said. My caffeine intake was starting to take effect.
I didn't realize I was bouncing up and down until I caught myself.
Red’s smile stretched wider.
Maybe they liked my eagerness.
“My name is Misa.” I introduced myself, staying casual, keeping my arms by my sides. “I'm twenty one years old–”
I choked on my next words when Red spoke up. “Impress us, Misa,” Her voice was a smooth, almost seductive rasp, and I felt myself fall into it, enveloped in sugar that was too sweet, and yet I couldn't stop myself. She folded her arms across her chest, her gaze challenging me to do something different. To make her want me.
“Show us something we have never seen before.” She stood up, cat-like eyes narrowing, “Show us how desperate you are to join this prestigious class.”
I nodded, and began.
I had planned a whole monologue, practised it over and over again, forcing Freddie to judge me with a none biassed opinion.
I was three lines in, when Red started laughing.
“Stop.”
I did, my cheeks heating up, and she started clapping.
“Sweetie, oh, stop, you're adorable!” She said, her lips curving into a cruel smirk.
She leaned forward, like I was something that entertained her, jostling her heeled foot. “We don't take amateurs. I think you need to go back to school.”
This woman was definitely a psychopath.
Empty eyes sparkling with a gleam that definitely enjoyed humiliating candidates, and a twisted smile that was a little too wide. Red made me want to crawl into the ground.
She made me want to turn around, leave the room, and quit my dream. I was aware of my own fury, my embarrassment turning my cheeks crimson. I matched her.
Maybe that's what she wanted all along. To wear the color of her victims.
Taking a shaky step back, I started to nod, started to agree, my mouth choking with the words, “You're right. I'm sorry for wasting your time."
I had never received proper constructive criticism from a professional standpoint.
Which meant I really did suck.
But I didn't move. I didn't want to move, and Red continued laughing, her companions sitting in silence.
The man rolled his eyes with a loud, exaggerated sigh.
Like I was boring.
The older woman pulled out her phone.
“Misa, you are…cute.” Red said. “But you're not quite what we are looking for.”
I wasn't sure I could admit it right there, but she made me feel things.
Like I was ignited.
Like I was going to prove this crazy bitch wrong.
I found my voice, strong and confident, despite my hammering heart.
“Give me another chance.”
Red’s lips curled. “So cute, Misa. Oh, sugar bear, It would be better if you left the room. Unless you want to embarrass yourself further! In that case, be my guest!”
She turned her attention to her nails, nudging the guy.
“Dinner?” She hummed. “I'm thinking of Italian. You are quite the wine connoisseur, Nicholas. Why don't you introduce me to your favorite?”
“Hey.” I blurted.
They ignored me, getting a little too close.
I don't know why I continued, reading my lines, screaming them, so I would be heard. I read them perfectly, and tweaking the genre from drama to romance, and then to horror. I became three different characters, a high school girl struggling with cancer, a final girl, and a woman going through a divorce.
I was fucking perfect.
But they weren't listening to me, caught up in their own conversation.
I tried again.
And again.
And again.
By now, I was on my knees, my fingers ripping into my hair. I was seeing red.
“We want originality, Misa,” Red said, sucking her teeth.
Her voice crawling into my skull was enough.
She still wanted me.
The thought polluted the back of my mind, taking a strangling hold. She still wanted me. When I lifted my head, Red wasn't looking at me, her gaze on the table grains. “Show us something new.”
I got to my feet, panting, my breath in my throat.
I became a screaming, strangled mess, a woman who lost her baby.
Red’s interest was piqued. Only slightly. Through my fraying vision, she slowly turned in her chair. “Again.” She clapped her hands, “Come on, Misa! We want new! We want never been fucking done before! Are you deaf?”
I couldn't stop the sobs escaping my mouth.
They lost interest again, right in the middle of my reading.
“Why can't you look at me?” I found myself spluttering.
When the man pulled out a bottle of water, I pulled off my heel and lobbed it at his face.
“Look at me!”
He did. Slowly. His gaze found me, for perhaps the first time.
Not as an amateur, but as a potential candidate.
Around the twentieth attempt, I started to laugh. Never been done before? I could feel my fingernails already in my scalp, clawing chunks of my hair out.
Reality contorted, and I felt myself drop to my knees. I was still laughing, spluttering, sobbing. I could still hear her in my head. Never Been Done Before. I started slowly, dragging my fingernails down my face until I felt the harsh sting.
“Again.” Red said, and her voice led me to stare down at my hands, at pinkish flesh glued to my bones, fleshy mounds.
So easy to tear. I didn't even feel it.
Only the sudden, unbridled euphoria of biting into my own skin, locking in my jaw, and ripping into myself.
When I tore it from the bone, warmth filled my mouth, and I was choking, guzzling down my own flesh, mulling it in my mouth and swallowing.
I can't remember how I got so deep, and why I didn't stop.
Why I didn't fucking scream.
But it didn't matter.
Red was standing up. She was clapping, her lips spread into a grin.
Her applause filled me with stars.
So, I ripped my hair from my scalp, a hysterical giggle escaping my lips.
She loved me.
I could see her jumping up and down, clapping.
Louder, and louder.
Her applause controlled me, twisting and contorting me into hers.
I didn't even think. I wanted to impress her, and doing this was doing just that.
My fingers were delving into my right eye socket, clawing my eye out. It didn't even hurt. Not with her thundering applause that was deafening, beautiful, an orchestra in my ears.
When I was semi conscious, my eye was crushed in my hand, but my vision was still mine, almost too clear. I could see streaks of red blurred between my lashes. My hair was caught between my fingers. But I wanted to do more.
When I stumbled to my feet, Red’s smile was so beautiful.
The man, however, looked horrified.
“Someone bring in the one of the successes,” Red’s voice was a shrill giggle, “Bring him in!” she clapped her hands together, and I spat out a fleshy thing. “I want to see them together! I want to see the future in front of us!”
Footsteps coming towards me in slow, shuddery thumps. I looked up, and a shadow was dancing around me.
When I slowly rose to my feet, I half realized I’d bitten my toe off. The shadow had a face, a boy who was younger than me. I think he used to have hair, but half of it was gone, half of it was still stuck between his fists. When I found his eyes, I found twin caverns instead.
Eyes that were still physically there, and yet there was no life.
No spark.
I was staring at a dead body, a flesh puppet who had lost his strings.
When he grabbed my hands, pulling me into a waltz, I caught a smear of scarlet trickling down the back of his neck. When I followed it upwards, his head was covered, slick, dripping with red.
Like me, he matched her too.
And he was beautiful, she told me, her push, her thunderous applause, guiding me into a waltz.
His feet moved, perfecting every step, and my foggy mind couldn't understand why. He matched my every move, the two of us floating across the floor.
My feet knew the steps before my mind.
How could he dance? I thought, dizzily.
How could he dance, when smeared scarlet followed his twisting, and turning and pirouetting feet?
Because underneath that swimming clinical light, the back of the boy’s head had been carved away, a perfectly sculpted cavern where his brain should have been. I could see the severed stem, where it had cleanly plucked out.
His fingers cradled in mine were wet. Swimming in blood.
His own blood.
Spinning round and around, I imagined myself as a princess.
I saw an 18th century ballroom lit up around us. Glittering smiles and glasses of champagne, long, flowing ball gowns.
I blinked, and my head was tipped back, gliding in blood once again.
When he pulled me to his chest, I stumbled, and a name came to light.
Luke.
I had found him.
Our finishing spin left me hard to breathe.
My body was broken, ripped into, and yet somehow not.
By the time we were finished, the two of us bowing, my mind was full of fog.
Cotton candy.
“Congratulations!” Red’s smile was inhuman, stretching right off of her face.
“You're in the S class!”
I was led through a door that wasn't the one I entered from. Inside the room were a dozen or so students, kneeling on the floor. They were missing parts of themselves, like unfinished puzzle pieces.
I dropped onto my knees next to a girl without a head. I could only see her torso, but I knew she was smiling.
Looming over us, was the goddess Athena drenched in blood that was still wet.
Dripping, pooling from every crevice of her dress.
Looking closer, this statue was moving.
Something sickly crept into my mouth.
Her right eye was human, a twitching eyeball sandwiched inside the stone.
It didn't match her. It was wrong, horrifying, like a painting, a real human eye struggling to focus on us.
And then, my own gaze found the statues head, where a real human brain had been forced inside perfect white, pink, greyish mush dripping down the sculpted, slender neck.
I could see where it had been pushed, pulverised through the stone.
The statue’s singular eye found me.
Its dancing pupil jumped up and down.
Before it blinked.
Next to me, Luke was on his knees, as if in prayer.
I can't remember leaving the room.
I just remember running.
Back down the stairs, stumbling, staggering over myself.
I was screaming by the time I reached the doors.
They opened, as usual.
But I couldn't get through. I tried, but I was slamming into something I couldn't see.
Pepto was still waiting outside. The sky was dark.
When he saw me, he stumbled over, slamming his hands into the glass.
I couldn't even understand myself. I was just fucking screaming.
Pepto held up his phone.
“DID YOU FIND HIM?”
I shook my head.
“No.” I lied.
I can't tell him the truth. I don't even know what it is.
“I can't get out!”
Pepto nodded slowly, typing something and showing me his phone.
I'm getting you both out of there. I think I know how I can get inside.
It's been 3 days, and Pepto is yet to return.
I’ve tried multiple times to cry out for the H word. But it won't let me type it.
Please H me. I need to get out of this place.
Fuck. Get me OUT OF HERE.
Classes start tomorrow.

Hello everyone. I’ve come to Reddit as a resort to not knowing where else to go. For context, I’m a 25 year old college student living at home with a father who has prostate cancer. He was diagnosed about two years ago after prolonging his doctors visit for body pains after assuming it was pain from a prior car accident. By the time he finally went, he was already stage 4. I’ve had other family members who have had different forms of cancer, so, I’ve seen the physical and emotional toll that accompanies having a sick family member. However, I’ve never experienced something like this that’s this close to me, witnessing the decline in health day-by-day.
I’m writing this post because I feel absolutely helpless, and I’m not sure what more I can do. He’s currently a vegan, and we’ve tried herbal remedies (sea moss, black seed oil, sour soup leaves, etc, with no results. We’ve tried alkaline dieting but found that it’s hard to maintain, especially when he becomes deficient in nutrients. He’s lost 50+lbs in two months because he cannot keep any food down. And as we speak, he is in excruciating pain. The cancer spread to his bone and there’s multiple tumors in his spine and skull. The doctors have put him through multiple treatment’s and medicines like xtandi, pain killers, chemo, etc. Just seems like there’s nothing that’s keeping his psi levels down. I can’t help but to blame the overall American health care system when he’s taken all these treatments with no results, and the immunotherapy Keytruda treatment that could help save his life is denied by insurance.
I mentioned my age and that I was a student because I am not established with a career yet, and I have no clue on how to handle any of this emotionally and financially. I have a job that makes me about a little under 3k a month, it’s not much, but I can’t leave my job because it’s paying for my university tuition. After all expenses (rent, insurances, groceries,etc) I can’t help out any more financially. Ive cut back on useless spending, going out/eating out, and am starting to get into debt ($1.5k) after helping with family expense’s. I’ve thought about picking up another job, but I’ve been doing 15 credit semesters to try and hurry my graduation process (about 1 year left) so I can get a career to help my parents out. The workload is a lot, I shamefully admit that I have to abuse my ADHD medication just to keep up with work, caretaking, and school. I feel horrible even talking about my problems, but emotionally I cannot handle this. I don’t sleep often because of school and the anxiety over the possibility my father will passes. If he passes, I don’t even know how my mother and I will manage. My mother and step father just got married over a year ago, and after all my mother has gone through, for her to finally find her person and to lose him so soon breaks me.
This whole situation isn’t about me, so my problems are way less important compared to the life of my father. That’s why this feeling of helplessness is unbearable because it’s not a matter of wanting to do more, I need to do more for the sake of his life and my mom.
I ask for your advice and opinions on whether I should pause university, and strictly focus on a job that could sustain my family better, or continue with school and pick up a second job and just try to make it work? How does dealing with a sick family member manage emotionally? Also, if there’s any possible resources for prostate cancer treatments, and any sources that can help with the finances? Thank you so much in advance. I wish nothing but good health and a happy life to all of you regardless if you respond or not.

The concept of blue zones is usually distorted by carnivore advocates who claim all the blue zones were based on diets high in animal fats and proteins or nonsense from keto quacks like Steven Gundry who claim it is because the old people in these zones were smoking or drinking sheep's milk.
The truth is, there isn't any scientific evidence to support the blue zones concept, the idea has never been embraced by the medical and scientific communities. The blue zones was a research project not a scientific study, modern diet influencers promoting this idea on social media are unaware about how the concept was developed. If you read the original papers, the idea of diet hardly came up.
There are no controlled studies, no long-term epidemiological studies. Much of the evidence is anecdotal due to lack of records and is second-hand taken from interviews of relatives.

The problem with trying to determine how many very old people are alive in an area is that the further back you look to verify ages, the worse the records get. It’s reasonably easy to figure out where and when a person was born if they are 80. But when we’re talking about 110-year-olds, the records are decidedly patchier. (The supercentenarians at the start of the Blue Zones study were born in the late 1800s.)

https://slate.com/technology/2023/11/centenarian-blue-zone-health-long-life-netflix.html
In regard to alleged supercentenarians in these zones, there is a recent article that notes the likelihood of fraud

These pockets of extreme longevity seem to occur in areas with “greater poverty, higher illiteracy, higher crime rates, and worse population health” than the norm, according to Oxford scientist Saul Newman. Data from the United Nations even suggests that Cambodia was a blue zone of sorts during the genocide of the Khmer Rouge. These hotspots can be chiefly explained by welfare fraud, identity theft, name-saking and criminal abuse of the pension system, or by genuine confusion over dates or lack of birth certificates. Some are banal in any case.

https://archive.is/d9beK
Another issue is the abuse of the pension system

“Whenever you get an investigation of the pensions system, the rate of centenarians suddenly collapses. That is what happened in Greece after the financial crisis,” said Dr Newman, now at Oxford University’s Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science.
The Greek labour ministry concluded that 200,000 pensions were being paid to fraudulent claimants. Most of the country’s 9,000 centenarians were dead. The same happened in Japan in 2010 after the mummified corpse of Tokyo’s “oldest” man was discovered. His family had been drawing the pension from his bank account for 32 years. The inquiry discovered that 238,000 people listed as aged 100 or more were unaccounted for. Some had died in the Second World War.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/2018708179/dr-saul-newman-debunking-the-blue-zone-longevity-myth

Only 18% of ‘exhaustively’ validated supercentenarians have a birth certificate, falling to zero percent in the USA, and supercentenarian birthdates are concentrated on days divisible by five: a pattern indicative of widespread fraud and error. Finally, the designated ‘blue zones’ of Sardinia, Okinawa, and Ikaria corresponded to regions with low incomes, low literacy, high crime rate and short life expectancy relative to their national average. As such, relative poverty and short lifespan constitute unexpected predictors of centenarian and supercentenarian status and support a primary role of fraud and error in generating remarkable human age records.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3
Saul Newman who wrote the above received a lot of abuse for questioning the blue zones.
The blue zones concept is mostly a marketing myth to sells books and ideas about diets. Dan Buettner is most well known for this. There was a recent series on Netflix about the blue zones.
Michel Poulain who originally proposed the blue zones published a paper in 2011 in which he was unable to verify the claims of longevity in Okinawa due to lack of records surviving WW2.
https://www.demographic-research.org/articles/volume/25/7/
Since 2011 no new evidence has come to light.
If we actually look at the oldest people in the world right now whose birth certificates have been validated
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_living_people
They are mostly from Japan, Spain and Brazil. None of these are blue zones.
I realise that all sorts of diet gurus promote the blue zones online but if you go looking there isn't any good scientific evidence to support this concept. The concept has now just become a marketing myth to promote diets.
If you read Michel Poulain's original research he hardly mentions diet, it's literally mentioned twice in passing yet online influencers only talk about this topic.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200302043123/http://austriaca.at/0xc1aa500e_0x00307bb6.pdf
Interestingly if you read Poulain's work, he says

In Okinawa, as elsewhere in Japan, the individual validation of age is based on the koseki, a family register containing records of all members of a family, including gender, dates and places of birth, names of parents, dates of marriage and divorce if any, date and place of death. Unfortunately, for privacy reasons, data extracted from the koseki such as birth and death records are only accessible by directly asking the relatives of the concerned persons or for official legal proceedings.

In conclusion the blue zones lacks scientific evidence. The concept is best explained through welfare fraud, pension abuse, identity theft and confusion due to lack of birth records.

This is not work related but has to do with my personal life. This is a burner account for obvious reasons with bad karma due to posting legal info in tenants rights subs which are trolled by landlords (my new hobby due to the situation explained below).
I am really struggling with having normal communications with my landlord due to my minimal, basic working knowledge of landlord tenant law in my jurisdiction and my landlords complete lack of understanding of these same rules. I do corporate transactional for work, so when I say basic knowledge I mean like basic knowledge I discovered via google.
Rental agreements are always annoying but generally I just agree to whatever inane stuff they include because my jurisdiction has clear rules on everything so it really doesn’t matter.
But i’m in a situation where my landlord has attempted to start the process to get me to move out of his property and it is OFF THE RAILS. I say “attempted” because he sent me some notice form that in no way, shape or form requires me to move out but he seems to think it’s an order or something. He keeps sending me progressively hostile emails about how I’m “violating” the “terms” and I’m not “complying” with the arbitrary date in the notice which he wants me to move out by which I’m realizing he thinks is like an eviction date.
I live in a jurisdiction with strong tenant rights laws and very clear processes for ending a tenancy but he seems to not have familiarized himself with them at all prior to becoming a landlord. Which is surprising to me because he’s like a senior VP of an international company. So I genuinely expected more from him.
I didn’t actually even realize he was so uninformed until yesterday when he sent me some deranged email asking me to sign some landlord’s application form that doesn’t have anything to do with the tenant. Like, it doesn’t even have a signature line on which I could sign even if I wanted to.
I guess the thing is…he is being really mean and aggressive in his emails. They are super hostile but also entirely out of touch with reality. It’s causing me a ton of stress and upset and I’m struggling to just “let it go”. It’s making me feel uncomfortable in my own home. And it’s entirely due to the fact that he is grossly uninformed. Like he seems to think I am really fucking him over by not moving out on the date he selected even though I have been bending over backwards to be a normal, reasonable person and try to find a new place since he wants his property back ALL WHILE I HAVE HAD ZERO OBLIGATION TO DO SO. like I have literally been working with him out of the good of my heart, yet he is so confused on the process that he thinks I am being a total asshole.
This is all to say, I don’t know how to be a normal person in this situation anymore. My work brain says to stop communicating with him but my personal brain needs to tell him he’s super dumb and the reason he’s unhappy is entirely due to his own lack of understanding. So I start drafting replies to him based on my personal urge to tell him this but then my work brain takes over and l’m basically writing a work letter explaining how he has the law wrong. I don’t want to be my own client.
What would you do? Would you write him a letter telling him he’s severely confused? Do I just ignore him and not engage because it’s so dumb? At this point there is not any kind of legal issue because he has botched the process so bad, it’s literally just an interpersonal issue where I’m being emailed by someone who is acting like a total asshole.
What would a normal person do here? Help me.

The strategy here is to use the GB and WT words against them and also use the Bible as an authority. You’ll force them to say they don’t believe the GB or the Bible if they try to criticize you.
“Do you believe the GB is the faithful slave?” They don’t know who the faithful slave is and neither do you. It’s been identified as 5 different people or groups over the years. CT Russel was first, JFK Rutherford and the corporate members next, the 144,000, the part of the 144,000 that is teaching the other part, then just the GB. Will it change again in a minute? If it was clear, there wouldn’t be a need to change it.
I’m not apostate for believing whats true and believing the Bible. If I was to say what’s in the WT now 10 years ago, I’d be apostate. If in 10 years form now I said what’s in the WT now, I’d be apostate. I’ll just stick with what the Bible says and not get too fancy.
I believe jeffrey winder when he says the GB are not inspired and make mistakes. Also when the Bible says each one should carry his own load. I’m not inspired either. But I’m the one who has to bear the consequences for my decisions.
“Do you report service time?” I talk about the Bible as much now as I ever did. [i criticize it as being stupid but I’m not saying that.] I’ll report time when the Bible says to.
Several WT article and videos say you are to blame if you suffer the consequences of believing the WT and later it was revealed Jehovah never cared about that. It says that people who believed what they heard at the conventions and COs about 1975 are you own fault for fixating on dates. It says brothers who spent 12 years in prison over civilian service in Greece should be grateful they spent time in jail after new light said it wasn’t necessary. [See my post history] I’m just taking responsibility for my own actions. Would hate to make a decision based on new light, then suffer consequences, then be told it was my own fault when the new light was changed again. Lots of people died from refusing organ transplants and lots of brothers went to prison when they didn’t need to.
I trust Bible words over Bible principles. Bible words don’t change. Bible principles say beards are bad and also says they’re good. It’s too confusing. I’ll just stick with with the Bible says. Hard to know for sure what music or dancing or medicine God hates. He probably doesn’t hate a lot of stuff we’re told he does.
If the Bible says I can’t do it, I’ll obey, if it doesn’t say that, I’ll assume it’s probably fine.
David Splane said we shouldn’t be applying anything in an antitypical manner unless the Bible specifically says to do that. The 2560 days was used to show the end of the world a lot of times. Not sure why it’s even being applied in an antitypical way.
I don’t think anyone knows who the king of the north is. It is “evidently” one country and then later it is “evidently” another country. Just hard to know.
The WT says there are people who pretend to be anointed. I have no idea and neither do you if anyone is or not.
The generation is 110 years old now. I guess I can just live my life and Jehovah sort out the end of the world.
David Splane said to check the facts regarding negative stories so I did. I watched Geoffrey Jackson testify and read the transcripts f the court cases. The states website isn’t apostate and the court transcripts aren’t taken out of context.
What did you find?
Geoffrey Jackson said JWs weren’t god’s spokesperson right in in court, which was surprising. I’d think he would use that opportunity to give a bold witness. The WT lawyer in Canada said family relations continue normally when someone is Daft and they don’t shun. Brother elder in noweigh said JWs don’t DF minors and that JWs don’t shun. The next days they showed a video instructing the co gregarious how to shun and how thorough it should be. I don’t think the lawyers care about stopping the preaching. They just don’t want kids being shunned. It wasn’t a good look.
Show me in the Bible where it says it’s wrong.
If the new light is loving and scriptural, what was the old light?
I obey God as ruler rather than men.
It seems like a conflict of interest to say after all our research and prayer we humbly conclude we are the faithful slave and you need to do everything we say even if we make mistakes.
The current two tiered DF arrangement is the same as it was in 1974. It was changed in 1980 when ray Franz wrote his book and is not back to 1974 level after the court loss in Norway. Jehovah is very sensitive to current events it seems.
People who are DFd aren’t suffering the consequences of their own actions. Mark Sanderson said the Bible never said people should be shunned over immorality or for any other reason other than being the Antichrist and dying Jesus never came in the flesh. Means those people suffered a lot more than the Bible wanted them to. It wasn’t their choice. I believe mark Sanderson on this. Lots people committed suicide when they were treated like the Antichrist.
The Bible only says to DF for denying Jesus came in the flesh. Like atheist maybe. You can be DF’d for 33 things. You think a guy who smokes deserves to never speak to his grandchildren ever again? What didnt Jehovah just say that? You think a married people should be treated like the Antichrist because they do oral sex? They’re married. What difference does it make what they do naked? Show me that in the Bible.
The Bible doesn’t say to talk to the elders. It doesnt talk about judicial committees. A pdf says that. Not the Bible.
I obey God as ruler rather than men. I’m loyal to God.
“1914 doesn’t matter. We never preach about that” 1914 is linked to 1919. If 1914 doesn’t matter, what happened in 1919? [This is when John measured the temple and said Rutherfords hostile take over of a lucrative printing company was when Jesus picked the one true religion.]
The last days started in 1799 and 1874 and 1914. I can’t keep up. I’m going to college and I’ll let Jehovah sort the rest out.
“This is the only religion that checks all the boxes WT has made for itself.” This religion checks those boxes too.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iglesia_ni_Cristo
Established in 1914, the leadership is anointed, they preach, international, no trinity, no hellfire, no Christmas, no birthdays, full water immersion after studying, no infant baptism, and they disfellowship.
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