By David North
On April 25, 2024, Bogdan Syrotiuk, the 25-year-old leader of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists (the YGBL), a socialist-Trotskyist organization active in Ukraine, Russia and throughout the former USSR, was arrested by the notorious state security service of the fascistic Zelensky regime, the SBU. Bogdan is being held in atrocious conditions in a high security prison in the city of Nikolaev (Mykolaiv), which is located in southern Ukraine.
The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), the world Trotskyist movement with which the YGBL is politically affiliated, has finally obtained the actual documents in which the SBU presents its charges against Bogdan Syrotiuk. These documents, which form the basis of his detention, make absolutely clear that Bogdan is the victim of a monstrous state frame-up. The allegations concocted by the SBU are a crude combination of lies, obvious fabrications, and political absurdities.
Moreover, the documents submitted by the SBU are directed not only against Bogdan. They are nothing less than a declaration of war against all left-wing and socialist opposition to the Zelensky regime and, specifically, the International Committee of the Fourth International and its public organ, the World Socialist Web Site.
The central allegation leveled against Bogdan Syrotiuk is that he is guilty of high treason. The basis of this charge is that Bogdan has been for the past two years “engaged in the preparation of publications commissioned by representatives of a Russian propaganda and information agency, the World Socialist Web Site” [emphasis added.]
The World Socialist Web Site is denounced as an instrument of “an active information war against Ukraine” being waged by Russia, which

uses the so-called “left-wing” propagandists and their information platforms (websites, media and social platforms) to discredit the support of Ukraine by international partners, justify Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine, accusing Western countries of creating conditions under which Russia was forced to launch the so-called special military operation, fomenting wars in Ukraine by providing it with weapons, etc. As a result, they are used by Russia to systematically convey pro-Kremlin narratives to the population of Ukraine and Ukraine’s allied countries…
Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the World Socialist Web Site “WSWS” has regularly published articles in various languages aimed at discrediting Ukraine and representatives of governments around the world for assisting Ukraine in its fight against the aggressor state.

The ICFI’s opposition to the US-NATO war in Ukraine is an essential element of its political program, deeply rooted in the socialist and internationalist principles of the Trotskyist movement. The attempt of the Ukrainian regime to portray this opposition as an instrument of Putin’s propaganda network is as viciously mendacious as it is politically absurd. The intransigent opposition of the International Committee of the Fourth International to the Putin regime—which emerged as a consequence of the Stalinist bureaucracy’s final betrayal of socialism and the restoration of capitalism in the former USSR—is a fundamental political fact that is substantiated not only in written texts numbering in the hundreds, but also in the exhaustively documented activity of the Trotskyist movement spanning decades.
True to its fascist character, the Ukrainian regime is operating on the basis of the well-known precept of Hitler and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels: “The bigger the lie, the more readily it will be believed.”
In this particular case, the Zelensky regime seems to believe that the scale of the SBU lies are of such a magnitude that they will simply overwhelm the thinking public. It thus expects that public opinion will accept that the Putin regime is directing the work of the WSWS, which the SBU indictment describes as

an online publication of the world Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International and its affiliated sections in the Socialist Equality Parties around the world, which covers the main socio-political problems around the world from the position of revolutionary opposition to the capitalist market system, with the aim of establishing world socialism through socialist revolution.

At no point does the SBU attempt to explain the contradiction that wrecks its case against Bogdan, i.e., that the political principles that he upholds as a socialist and internationalist opponent of wars waged by the capitalist ruling class are irreconcilably hostile to the policies of the Putin regime, including its invasion of Ukraine.
It attempts to evade the contradiction by simply lying. The indictment claims that Bogdan’s activities, “acting on the instructions of a representative of the World Socialist Web Site,” consisted of “supporting and justifying the conduct of the Russian aggressive war on the territory of Ukraine…”
Every word is a lie. The opposition of the ICFI, its affiliated organizations, and the WSWS to the Russian invasion, in line with its hostility to the Putin regime, is a political fact that is documented in hundreds of articles that have been posted since the first day of the invasion.
On February 24, 2022, the day of the Russian invasion, the ICFI posted a statement on the WSWS titled: “Oppose the Putin government’s invasion of Ukraine and US-NATO warmongering! For the unity of Russian and Ukrainian workers!” It began:

The International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site denounce the Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Despite the provocations and threats by the US and NATO powers, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine must be opposed by socialists and class-conscious workers. The catastrophe that was set in motion by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 cannot be averted on the basis of Russian nationalism, a thoroughly reactionary ideology that serves the interests of the capitalist ruling class represented by Vladimir Putin.
What is required is not a return to the pre-1917 foreign policy of tsarism, but, rather, a revival, in Russia and throughout the world, of the socialist internationalism that inspired the October Revolution of 1917 and led to the creation of the Soviet Union as a workers state. The invasion of Ukraine, whatever the justifications given by the Putin regime, will serve only to divide the Russian and Ukrainian working class and, moreover, serve the interests of US and European imperialism.
In the two major statements that he has made during the past week, Putin has justified his actions by enumerating the provocations and crimes of the United States. There is, no question, much that is factually true in his denunciation of Washington’s hypocrisy. But the viciously anti-communist and xenophobic ideology that he invokes and the interests that he claims to be defending are thoroughly reactionary and incapable of appealing to the broad mass of the working class in Russia, let alone in Ukraine and throughout the world. A substantial section of the working class in Russia and Ukraine will be repelled by the cynicism of Putin’s glorification of the heroic struggle waged by the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany in World War II while denouncing the October Revolution and the existence of the USSR as a multi-national state.

The ICFI insisted that the socialist opposition to imperialism was incompatible with any form of national chauvinism, and, therefore, rejected all the justifications given by the Putin regime and its apologists for the invasion. Their invocation of “national defense” could not be accepted by socialists. The defeat of imperialism and its overthrow was possible only through the revolutionary struggle of the international working class. The ICFI statement cited the words of Trotsky: “Not to bind itself to the national state in time of war, to follow not the war map but the map of the class struggle, is possible only for that party that has already declared irreconcilable war on the national state in time of peace.”
The ICFI called “for an immediate end to the war,” and explained: “In opposing the invasion of Ukraine, we denounce the policies of US/NATO imperialism, whose claims to be defending democracy and human rights are blood-drenched with hypocrisy.”
This political declaration elaborated the principles and policy that have guided the work of the ICFI and WSWS since the war began.
On February 26, 2022 the International Committee held an international webinar, in which its opposition to the war was emphatically advanced. Among the speakers, in addition to myself, were Nick Beams, a longtime leader of the International Committee’s Australian section, Johannes Stern, a leader of the ICFI in Germany, Thomas Scripps, a leading member of the ICFI’s section in Britain, Joseph Kishore, the national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States, and Evan Blake, another leading member of the SEP (US).
The ICFI has never wavered from the principled opposition to the policies of NATO and Russia that it advanced in the first days of the war.
The relationship between the ICFI and the comrades of the YGBL coincided almost exactly with the outbreak of the war. They were attracted to the ICFI precisely because of its opposition to both the war and the national chauvinism of the Russian and Ukrainian regimes.
The SBU indictment charges that the World Socialist Web Site assigned to Bogdan “the task of preparing, writing, editing and publishing … both on the WSWS website and other communist-oriented media, articles, publications, comments, etc. aimed at spreading pro-Russian narratives related to the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, to which [Bogdan Syrotiuk] gave his voluntary consent.”
In support of this claim, the SBU references a YGBL statement titled, “For the organization of an international movement of workers and young people against war!” It claims that this document, posted on the World Socialist Web Site on October 12, 2022, includes “fragments, statements, sentences and phrases… which contain justification of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation, which began in 2014…”
The actual document clearly exposes this claim to be a lie. There is not a single sentence in the YGBL declaration that indicates support for the invasion of Ukraine. The SBU cites selectively from the document, including passages only from numbered paragraphs 4, 7, 8, 10 and 13. Paragraphs 4 through 8—the SBU interrupts the continuity of the YGBL’s analysis by leaving out paragraphs 5 and 6—provide a concise Marxist explanation of the objective capitalist crisis and political aims that underlay the instigation of the war by the United States and its NATO allies. They state:

1. The new world order that the United States wants to establish looks like this very possible picture: Russia and China are to be subordinated to imperialism and divided, if that is necessary to maintain direct control over their natural, industrial-technological and human resources.
   
2. The European imperialist powers support the United States for their own place in the new redivision of the world. At the same time, European imperialism, while placed on rations by the United States, sees a way out of its economic and geopolitical predicament only in a redivision of the world in which it can regain its former greatness.
   
3. Japan, South Korea and Australia support the US only as much as it suits their interests in the struggle against China in the Pacific region. These countries will support the US as long as it allows them to compete with China. The process of dividing spheres of influence will revive the contradictions between the Pacific capitalist powers, which are as much in limbo as Europe.
   
4. The crisis of 2008 revived class struggles around the world. The Arab Spring of the early 2010s is vivid evidence of this revival. It forced US and European imperialism to take more decisive measures. In 2014, they supported a coup d'état in Ukraine. Through this coup, the US was able to create all the conditions to build a bridgehead in a future war against Russia.
   
5. The Covid-19 pandemic that erupted in 2020 exacerbated the contradictions of capitalism and was the trigger for a more rapid expansion of US imperialism in preparation for war against Russia and China. The US embarked on a more provocative path of abandoning the “one-China” policy, and increasing its support for Ukraine, as expressed in the NATO summit in August 2021, which supported Zelensky’s “Crimean platform.”
   

Significantly, the SBU leaves out paragraph 9 of the YGBL declaration, which presents a scathing indictment of the Putin regime. That paragraph reads:

The reactionary regime of Vladimir Putin emerged from the treacherous dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy and the restoration of capitalism. The policies of Putin, in the final analysis, are aimed at safeguarding the wealth of the post-Soviet oligarchy against the pressure of Western imperialism from above and, even more critically, against the movement of the Russian working class from below.

The SBU does cite paragraph 10, which continues the critique of the Putin regime, stating:

Within this geopolitical and social context, Putin’s adventurist invasion of Ukraine on February 24 was the Russian oligarchy’s response to NATO’s relentless expansion to the east. The Putin regime’s main objective was to achieve through the pressure of its “Special Operation” a new round of talks with the US-NATO, since the last round ended up crossing “red lines” on the part of the US-NATO, which caused Putin’s invasion [emphasis added].

The characterization of Putin’s invasion as “adventurist” is in no way compatible with what the SBU claims to be a “pro-Russian narrative.” Obviously recognizing the fragility of its attempt to portray the YGBL statement as pro-Putin propaganda, the SBU decided against further citations from the document, leaving out the YGBL’s development of its denunciation of Putin’s policies in paragraphs 11 and 12, which assert:

1. The Russian bourgeoisie’s desire for an “equal partnership” with the West was one of the most utopian delusions. This delusion, historically derived from Stalin’s policy of “Popular Fronts” and then “peaceful coexistence,” developed among the fledgling class of Russian capitalists in the 1990s.
   
2. The Putin regime has not gotten rid of this utopian delusion. Its whole policy has been to maneuver and seek compromise with the West, with whom the Russian oligarchy wanted to be “on equal footing.” Except that Western imperialism, with its conquering ambitions for Russia, did not care about these conciliatory tones of Putin’s regime.
   

The SBU also chose not to cite paragraph 17 of the YGBL statement, which declares:

The course of the war after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine increasingly emphasizes the reactionary nature of this invasion. While claiming to be fighting for the independence of the Russian people from the threat of Western imperialism, Putin is in fact only defending the independence of the Russian oligarchy to exploit the Russian working class and the country’s raw material wealth.

Paragraph 18, which is also left uncited, further demolishes the SBU’s indictment of Bogdan, the YGBL and the WSWS as instruments of Russian propaganda. The paragraph asserts that

the Putin regime has no way out of the current crisis for Russian society. It will not have such a way out in the future. All of the military and political activities of the Putin regime will only contribute to the escalation of Western imperialism and the deterioration of conditions for the Russian, Ukrainian and international working class.

The SBU also failed to cite paragraphs 19 and 20, which presciently warned of the catastrophe to which the war could lead.

1. The prospects for the present war, when thought within the framework of the capitalist system, are very bleak. First, this war will take on a long-term character and will not only be fought between Ukraine and Russia. It is the first step in inflaming the world situation to the point that the threat of a third world war is simply inevitable. All countries of the world will take part in the future war.
   
2. Secondly, the nature of the war will be determined by the policies of the ruling classes, which now stand on a blatantly anti-human position. The ruling classes are recklessly moving toward the use of nuclear weapons in the conflict, thereby creating the real possibility of a nuclear Armageddon. The specter of planetary destruction arises from the insane policies of imperialist and capitalist governments. The recklessness of the ruling capitalist elite compels young people to ask whether they will be allowed any future at all.
   

The SBU specifically cites this document as proof of Bogdan Syrotiuk’s treasonable activity. But the text of this document conclusively refutes the charge that Bogdan and the YGBL are advancing a pro-Putin narrative.
Moreover, and most decisive, the Ukrainian regime does not present a scintilla of evidence to substantiate its absurd and lying claim that the World Socialist Web Site is a “Russian propaganda and information agency.” With this filthy slander, the Zelensky regime betrays—notwithstanding the ongoing war with Russia—the lingering influence of Stalinism’s rabid hatred of Trotskyism. As in Russia, the transfer of power in Ukraine from Stalinist bureaucrats to capitalist oligarchs has not required any change in the methodology of the political police. The same techniques of fabrication and slander, utilized by the Stalinist regime against Trotskyists in the era of the Moscow Trials and the terror of 1936-39, remain operative in Kiev.
Bogdan Syrotiuk stands accused of treason and faces the threat of a life-long prison term that is the equivalent of a death sentence. But the allegations against Bogdan are based entirely on articles and speeches he has posted on the World Socialist Web Site, in which he has declared his opposition, as a socialist internationalist, to the capitalist regimes of Zelensky and Putin and the ongoing war that has cost hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian lives.
The SBU indicts Bogdan for advancing in his speeches and writings posted on the World Socialist Web Site “which are accessible to everyone in the world, including citizens of Ukraine” information that exposes the reactionary character of the Ukrainian regime and the war.
The SBU declares that Bogdan’s “criminal actions were stopped only with the intervention of a law enforcement agency.” What a devastating self-exposure of the claims that the US-NATO proxy war is being waged to defend democracy in Ukraine.
The reality is that Ukraine is a fascistic dictatorship, which applies police methods to stop the expression of popular opposition to the policies that have brought untold suffering and death to the people.
The arrest of Bogdan Syrotiuk comes precisely at a point of mounting popular opposition to the Zelensky regime. On May 18, a new and vastly unpopular mobilization law that will vastly expand the recruitment dragnet of Ukrainian military goes into effect. Even the New York Times has expressed doubts about Zelensky’s ability “to find new troops to relieve a weary, often demoralized force.”
In an article posted on the World Socialist Web Site on April 30, Maxim Goldarb, a Ukrainian socialist who has been persecuted by the Zelensky regime, reported: “More and more Ukrainian men are desperately trying to flee the country, unwilling to die for someone else’s selfish purposes.”
He added:

It is not the rich minority, but the poor majority—the unemployed, workers, peasants, teachers, doctors, office workers—that will be sent into the bloody meat grinder. Now, with the adoption of the new law, the number of men deprived of basic human rights, who will be captured and hunted down like animals and sent to the front, will increase many times over.
The profits of those who benefit from this war will also increase many times over … These huge profits will be divided up between the military-industrial complex, its lobbyists in the American and European establishment, and the Ukrainian oligarchic top brass.

Bogdan Syrotiuk’s life is in danger. In the environment of terror that exists within Ukraine, he is deprived of all means to defend himself. Efforts to obtain competent legal representation have been undermined by government threats against defense lawyers. No less than five attorneys have declined to represent Bogdan because to do so would expose them to significant physical danger.
The significance of the fight to defend Bogdan and secure his freedom extends beyond Ukraine. His incarceration is yet another example of the growing international assault on democratic rights as imperialism escalates its military operations throughout the world. The political conspiracy to destroy Julian Assange set into motion a process that is replicated throughout the world.
Those who oppose and expose the crimes of the imperialist regimes are targeted for persecution by the state. The assault on basic democratic rights—first and foremost, freedom of thought and speech—is always justified on the basis of lies.
The opponents of Israel’s genocidal war against Gazans are denounced as anti-Semites, even when the protesters are Jewish. In the denunciation of Bogdan Syrotiuk as an agent of Russia for opposing the proxy war in Ukraine, the same lying method is at work.
The real reason for the arrest and persecution of Bogdan Syrotiuk is that he is fighting for the unity of the Ukrainian, Russian and international working class against the ruling capitalist elites of all countries. As Comrade Andrei Ritsky of the Russian branch of the Young Guard of Bolshevik Leninists explained so eloquently in a speech delivered at the May Day 2024 celebration held by the International Committee:

The only “crime” that Bogdan committed was his conviction that Ukraine can become truly free only through the independent struggle of the Ukrainian working class, acting together with the international working class against imperialism and war. He advanced a principled political position based on a Marxist understanding of the war, opposed to the fanatical worship of Ukrainian nationalism as well as the reactionary Russian nationalism of the Putin regime. Like our entire movement, he has fought for the unification of workers in Russia and Ukraine with the workers in the imperialist countries, to put an end to a fratricidal war that has claimed the lives of at least half a million Ukrainians and tens of thousands of Russians.

He concluded his remarks with a declaration of the fundamental perspective that underlies the work of the Fourth International:

No bourgeois regime is capable of resolving the crisis other than through war and destruction, because any other way would be contrary to its fundamental capitalist interests. The contradictions of capitalism cannot be resolved within national borders and on the basis of a defense of private property. Only the international working class armed with the program of world socialist revolution will be able to put an end to the wars and resolve the fundamental crisis. To do so, however, it must fight for its unity with its brothers and sisters around the world.

The International Committee of the Fourth International calls for a global campaign to demand the immediate release of Bogdan Syrotiuk from prison. The fight for Bogdan’s freedom must be taken up by workers, students and all those who are committed to the defense of democratic rights and opposed to the escalation of imperialist wars that, unless stopped, threaten humanity with a nuclear catastrophe.
Join the fight to Free Bogdan. Circulate this statement as widely as possible on social media. Bring this case to the attention of co-workers, fellow students, and friends. To sign a petition demanding Bogdan’s release, contribute funds toward the defense campaign, and become personally active in the fight for his freedom, go to wsws.org/freebogdan.

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ASUS Motherboard stopped posting, I tested enough to know it's the motherboard and its under warranty (Note: it's registered on their site)
I could not find any way to submit an RMA on the website, so I called. The tech that answered the phone wanted the serial number. I told him the product is registered. It took me over 5 attempts for him to finally get my email address correct and then he could only find one product (there are 3).
Then I had to give him my serial number, it took 10 attempts to get that right and then finally we got through all the questions, this took him an hour !!!! I gave him all the details, what is wrong the steps I went through .... etc. He then put me on hold and 15 minutes later came back and said to check my email, where I had received the "RMA" email.
This is NOT the RMA, this is a big disclaimer that has little to do with returning a mother board and has a link to "Start" the RMA. Go to that link and there is a cryptic link to follow that I clicked just because.
Believe it or not this starts the whole process all over again !!!!! I have to provide ALL the information that I already gave to the moron from Support. And then when I finished that, it going to take them a full 24 hours to issue and RMA number. WTF
During this process they try to sell you a shipping label and for you to pay to upgrade the return shipment.
THERE IS NO CROSS SHIPPING I had to waste and hour and a half, wait a day to get the RMA, then WAIT for the package to reach them and for them to ship it back !!!! I HAVE NEVER EXPERIENCED A WORST RMA PROCESS AND THIS IS THE ONLY RMA WHERE CROSS SHIPPING WAS NOT AVAILABLE.
How is this company still doing as well as they are... Gamers Nexus & JayzTwoCents literally roast them
Wish I had NEVER purchased this board... Never will again ....

https://preview.redd.it/mhza8bhrx91d1.png?width=2270&format=png&auto=webp&s=0690057ff05d30929e660e2a071230b15d6761ce
So I always use this website to find teachers and stuff,etc. Now it won't let me in saying that I need to verify that I'm human from cloudflare? I don't really mind not being able to access it, but the site isn't down because my friends are still able to access it. But why is this happening? Thank you!

I've heard that the new ChatGPT has data analysis super-powers. So I grabbed this spreadsheet of the Seven Major Felonies tabulated by the NYPD by precinct from 2000 - 2023. (NYPD Website with historical crime data) I asked it to generate a new table that adds up all the numbers from precincts 1 - 34 (Manhattan only) so that we can see the numbers for each of the seven major felony categories in Manhattan from 2000 - 2023. It completely fails with a bunch of Python errors.
I've tried numerous times it just won't work. I tried telling it to do this without running in Python, it did better but eventually started making up numbers. I tried telling it to convert the spreadheet to json and this completely fails too. This should be pretty basic.

Monthly Trade Thread can be found here, and always on the sidebar.

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A hot topic, and often asked about for newcomers realizing just how much sun their plants need! A search of the sub itself should yield enough posts for you to have a good idea what to look for. Beyond that, you can look through previous years' Overwintering Megathreads.
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I'm trying to obtain the API for data scraping, and seems that I need to create an app to get it. I don't have a website. It requires an about us URL, and a redirect url. Do I need to set up a site just to get the api?

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

I passed my MF test on Thursday 🤭
But on the HSPA website there are literally no job postings near me.
I’m in north Jersey, 30 minutes from the city so idc if it’s NYC or Jersey.
Anyone know of hospitals that do the 400 hours?
I’m going to go onto each individual hospital site and apply but how do I even apply for just my hours?

The message says Access Denied You don't have permission to access "http://www.costco.com/" on this server.
I've gotten the message for the McDonald's website too. And those are the only sites I have noticed this on so far. What could be causing this?

It does to me using MS Edge Browser on Windows 10 PC. Try playing a song on the website and then close your browser and play the MP3 direclty using Windows Media Player. Can you hear the negative effect it has on the audio which use to not be there? I would like a way to bypass whatever they are using to regulate volume on the site. I compare it to having a sh*tty VST plug-in on your master channel in your DAW that makes your audio sound worse by just running your signal through it.

I'm working on a Scrapy project where I'm using the scrapy-playwright package. I've installed the package and configured my Scrapy settings accordingly, but I'm still encountering issues.
Here are the relevant parts of my settings.py file:

# Scrapy settings for TwitterData project # # For simplicity, this file contains only settings considered important or # commonly used. You can find more settings consulting the documentation: # # # # BOT_NAME = "TwitterData" SPIDER_MODULES = ["TwitterData.spiders"] NEWSPIDER_MODULE = "TwitterData.spiders" # Crawl responsibly by identifying yourself (and your website) on the user-agent #USER_AGENT = "TwitterData (+http://www.yourdomain.com)" # Obey robots.txt rules ROBOTSTXT_OBEY = False # Configure maximum concurrent requests performed by Scrapy (default: 16) #CONCURRENT_REQUESTS = 32 # Configure a delay for requests for the same website (default: 0) # See # See also autothrottle settings and docs #DOWNLOAD_DELAY = 3 # The download delay setting will honor only one of: #CONCURRENT_REQUESTS_PER_DOMAIN = 16 #CONCURRENT_REQUESTS_PER_IP = 16 # Disable cookies (enabled by default) #COOKIES_ENABLED = False # Disable Telnet Console (enabled by default) #TELNETCONSOLE_ENABLED = False # Override the default request headers: #DEFAULT_REQUEST_HEADERS = { # "Accept": "text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8", # "Accept-Language": "en", #} # Enable or disable spider middlewares # See #SPIDER_MIDDLEWARES = { # "TwitterData.middlewares.TwitterdataSpiderMiddleware": 543, #} # Enable or disable downloader middlewares # See #DOWNLOADER_MIDDLEWARES = { # "TwitterData.middlewares.TwitterdataDownloaderMiddleware": 543, #} # Enable or disable extensions # See #EXTENSIONS = { # "scrapy.extensions.telnet.TelnetConsole": None, #} # Configure item pipelines # See #ITEM_PIPELINES = { # "TwitterData.pipelines.TwitterdataPipeline": 300, #} # Enable and configure the AutoThrottle extension (disabled by default) # See #AUTOTHROTTLE_ENABLED = True # The initial download delay #AUTOTHROTTLE_START_DELAY = 5 # The maximum download delay to be set in case of high latencies #AUTOTHROTTLE_MAX_DELAY = 60 # The average number of requests Scrapy should be sending in parallel to # each remote server #AUTOTHROTTLE_TARGET_CONCURRENCY = 1.0 # Enable showing throttling stats for every response received: #AUTOTHROTTLE_DEBUG = False # Enable and configure HTTP caching (disabled by default) # See #HTTPCACHE_ENABLED = True #HTTPCACHE_EXPIRATION_SECS = 0 #HTTPCACHE_DIR = "httpcache" #HTTPCACHE_IGNORE_HTTP_CODES = [] #HTTPCACHE_STORAGE = "scrapy.extensions.httpcache.FilesystemCacheStorage" # Set settings whose default value is deprecated to a future-proof value REQUEST_FINGERPRINTER_IMPLEMENTATION = "2.7" TWISTED_REACTOR = "twisted.internet.asyncioreactor.AsyncioSelectorReactor" FEED_EXPORT_ENCODING = "utf-8" # Scrapy-playwright settings DOWNLOAD_HANDLERS = { "http": "scrapy_playwright.handler.ScrapyPlaywrightDownloadHandler", "https": "scrapy_playwright.handler.ScrapyPlaywrightDownloadHandler", } DOWNLOADER_MIDDLEWARES = { 'scrapy_playwright.middleware.PlaywrightMiddleware': 800, } PLAYWRIGHT_BROWSER_TYPE = "chromium" # or "firefox" or "webkit" PLAYWRIGHT_LAUNCH_OPTIONS = { "headless": True, }https://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/settings.htmlhttps://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/downloader-middleware.htmlhttps://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/spider-middleware.htmlhttps://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/settings.html#download-delayhttps://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/spider-middleware.htmlhttps://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/downloader-middleware.htmlhttps://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/extensions.htmlhttps://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/item-pipeline.htmlhttps://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/autothrottle.htmlhttps://docs.scrapy.org/en/latest/topics/downloader-middleware.html#httpcache-middleware-settings 

I've confirmed that scrapy-playwright is installed in my Python environment:

(myenv) user@user:~/Pictures/TwitteTwitterData/TwitterData$ pip list grep scrapy-playwright scrapy-playwright 0.0.34 

I'm not using Docker or any other containerization technology for this project. I'm running everything directly on my local machine.

Despite this, I'm still encountering issues when I try to run my Scrapy spider. Error:2024-05-19 03:50:11 [scrapy.utils.log] INFO: Scrapy 2.11.2 started (bot: TwitterData) 2024-05-19 03:50:11 [scrapy.utils.log] INFO: Versions: lxml , libxml2 2.12.6, cssselect 1.2.0, parsel 1.9.1, w3lib 2.1.2, Twisted 24.3.0, Python 3.11.7 (main, Dec 15 2023, 18:12:31) [GCC 11.2.0], pyOpenSSL 24.1.0 (OpenSSL 3.2.1 30 Jan 2024), cryptography 42.0.7, Platform Linux-6.5.0-35-generic-x86_64-with-glibc2.35 2024-05-19 03:50:11 [scrapy.addons] INFO: Enabled addons: [] 2024-05-19 03:50:11 [asyncio] DEBUG: Using selector: EpollSelector 2024-05-19 03:50:11 [scrapy.utils.log] DEBUG: Using reactor: twisted.internet.asyncioreactor.AsyncioSelectorReactor 2024-05-19 03:50:11 [scrapy.utils.log] DEBUG: Using asyncio event loop: asyncio.unix_events._UnixSelectorEventLoop 2024-05-19 03:50:11 [scrapy.extensions.telnet] INFO: Telnet Password: 7d514eb59c924748 2024-05-19 03:50:11 [scrapy.middleware] INFO: Enabled extensions: ['scrapy.extensions.corestats.CoreStats', 'scrapy.extensions.telnet.TelnetConsole', 'scrapy.extensions.memusage.MemoryUsage', 'scrapy.extensions.logstats.LogStats'] 2024-05-19 03:50:11 [scrapy.crawler] INFO: Overridden settings: {'BOT_NAME': 'TwitterData', 'FEED_EXPORT_ENCODING': 'utf-8', 'NEWSPIDER_MODULE': 'TwitterData.spiders', 'REQUEST_FINGERPRINTER_IMPLEMENTATION': '2.7', 'SPIDER_MODULES': ['TwitterData.spiders'], 'TWISTED_REACTOR': 'twisted.internet.asyncioreactor.AsyncioSelectorReactor'} Unhandled error in Deferred: 2024-05-19 03:50:12 [twisted] CRITICAL: Unhandled error in Deferred: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/crawler.py", line 265, in crawl return self._crawl(crawler, *args, **kwargs) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/crawler.py", line 269, in _crawl d = crawler.crawl(*args, **kwargs) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/twisted/internet/defer.py", line 2260, in unwindGenerator return _cancellableInlineCallbacks(gen) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/twisted/internet/defer.py", line 2172, in _cancellableInlineCallbacks _inlineCallbacks(None, gen, status, _copy_context()) ---  --- File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/twisted/internet/defer.py", line 2003, in _inlineCallbacks result = context.run(gen.send, result) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/crawler.py", line 158, in crawl self.engine = self._create_engine() File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/crawler.py", line 172, in _create_engine return ExecutionEngine(self, lambda _: self.stop()) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/core/engine.py", line 100, in __init__ self.downloader: Downloader = downloader_cls(crawler) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/core/downloade__init__.py", line 97, in __init__ DownloaderMiddlewareManager.from_crawler(crawler) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/middleware.py", line 90, in from_crawler return cls.from_settings(crawler.settings, crawler) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/middleware.py", line 66, in from_settings mwcls = load_object(clspath) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/utils/misc.py", line 79, in load_object mod = import_module(module) File "/home/hamza/anaconda3/lib/python3.11/importlib/__init__.py", line 126, in import_module return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level) File "", line 1204, in _gcd_import File "", line 1176, in _find_and_load File "", line 1140, in _find_and_load_unlocked builtins.ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'scrapy_playwright.middleware' 2024-05-19 03:50:12 [twisted] CRITICAL: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/twisted/internet/defer.py", line 2003, in _inlineCallbacks result = context.run(gen.send, result) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/crawler.py", line 158, in crawl self.engine = self._create_engine() File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/crawler.py", line 172, in _create_engine return ExecutionEngine(self, lambda _: self.stop()) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/core/engine.py", line 100, in __init__ self.downloader: Downloader = downloader_cls(crawler) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/core/downloade__init__.py", line 97, in __init__ DownloaderMiddlewareManager.from_crawler(crawler) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/middleware.py", line 90, in from_crawler return cls.from_settings(crawler.settings, crawler) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/middleware.py", line 66, in from_settings mwcls = load_object(clspath) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/utils/misc.py", line 79, in load_object mod = import_module(module) File "/home/hamza/anaconda3/lib/python3.11/importlib/__init__.py", line 126, in import_module return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level) File "", line 1204, in _gcd_import File "", line 1176, in _find_and_load File "", line 1140, in _find_and_load_unlocked ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'scrapy_playwright.middleware' (myenv) hamza@hamza:~/Pictures/TwitteTwitterData/TwitterData$ scrapy crawl XScraper 2024-05-19 03:52:24 [scrapy.utils.log] INFO: Scrapy 2.11.2 started (bot: TwitterData) 2024-05-19 03:52:24 [scrapy.utils.log] INFO: Versions: lxml , libxml2 2.12.6, cssselect 1.2.0, parsel 1.9.1, w3lib 2.1.2, Twisted 24.3.0, Python 3.11.7 (main, Dec 15 2023, 18:12:31) [GCC 11.2.0], pyOpenSSL 24.1.0 (OpenSSL 3.2.1 30 Jan 2024), cryptography 42.0.7, Platform Linux-6.5.0-35-generic-x86_64-with-glibc2.35 2024-05-19 03:52:24 [scrapy.addons] INFO: Enabled addons: [] 2024-05-19 03:52:24 [asyncio] DEBUG: Using selector: EpollSelector 2024-05-19 03:52:24 [scrapy.utils.log] DEBUG: Using reactor: twisted.internet.asyncioreactor.AsyncioSelectorReactor 2024-05-19 03:52:24 [scrapy.utils.log] DEBUG: Using asyncio event loop: asyncio.unix_events._UnixSelectorEventLoop 2024-05-19 03:52:24 [scrapy.extensions.telnet] INFO: Telnet Password: 1c13665361bfbc53 2024-05-19 03:52:24 [scrapy.middleware] INFO: Enabled extensions: ['scrapy.extensions.corestats.CoreStats', 'scrapy.extensions.telnet.TelnetConsole', 'scrapy.extensions.memusage.MemoryUsage', 'scrapy.extensions.logstats.LogStats'] 2024-05-19 03:52:24 [scrapy.crawler] INFO: Overridden settings: {'BOT_NAME': 'TwitterData', 'FEED_EXPORT_ENCODING': 'utf-8', 'NEWSPIDER_MODULE': 'TwitterData.spiders', 'REQUEST_FINGERPRINTER_IMPLEMENTATION': '2.7', 'SPIDER_MODULES': ['TwitterData.spiders'], 'TWISTED_REACTOR': 'twisted.internet.asyncioreactor.AsyncioSelectorReactor'} Unhandled error in Deferred: 2024-05-19 03:52:24 [twisted] CRITICAL: Unhandled error in Deferred: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/crawler.py", line 265, in crawl return self._crawl(crawler, *args, **kwargs) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/crawler.py", line 269, in _crawl d = crawler.crawl(*args, **kwargs) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/twisted/internet/defer.py", line 2260, in unwindGenerator return _cancellableInlineCallbacks(gen) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/twisted/internet/defer.py", line 2172, in _cancellableInlineCallbacks _inlineCallbacks(None, gen, status, _copy_context()) ---  --- File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/twisted/internet/defer.py", line 2003, in _inlineCallbacks result = context.run(gen.send, result) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/crawler.py", line 158, in crawl self.engine = self._create_engine() File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/crawler.py", line 172, in _create_engine return ExecutionEngine(self, lambda _: self.stop()) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/core/engine.py", line 100, in __init__ self.downloader: Downloader = downloader_cls(crawler) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/core/downloade__init__.py", line 97, in __init__ DownloaderMiddlewareManager.from_crawler(crawler) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/middleware.py", line 90, in from_crawler return cls.from_settings(crawler.settings, crawler) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/middleware.py", line 66, in from_settings mwcls = load_object(clspath) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/utils/misc.py", line 79, in load_object mod = import_module(module) File "/home/hamza/anaconda3/lib/python3.11/importlib/__init__.py", line 126, in import_module return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level) File "", line 1204, in _gcd_import File "", line 1176, in _find_and_load File "", line 1140, in _find_and_load_unlocked builtins.ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'scrapy_playwright.middleware' 2024-05-19 03:52:24 [twisted] CRITICAL: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/twisted/internet/defer.py", line 2003, in _inlineCallbacks result = context.run(gen.send, result) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/crawler.py", line 158, in crawl self.engine = self._create_engine() File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/crawler.py", line 172, in _create_engine return ExecutionEngine(self, lambda _: self.stop()) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/core/engine.py", line 100, in __init__ self.downloader: Downloader = downloader_cls(crawler) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/core/downloade__init__.py", line 97, in __init__ DownloaderMiddlewareManager.from_crawler(crawler) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/middleware.py", line 90, in from_crawler return cls.from_settings(crawler.settings, crawler) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/middleware.py", line 66, in from_settings mwcls = load_object(clspath) File "/home/hamza/Pictures/Twittemyenv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/scrapy/utils/misc.py", line 79, in load_object mod = import_module(module) File "/home/hamza/anaconda3/lib/python3.11/importlib/__init__.py", line 126, in import_module return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level) File "", line 1204, in _gcd_import File "", line 1176, in _find_and_load File "", line 1140, in _find_and_load_unlocked ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'scrapy_playwright.middleware'5.2.2.05.2.2.0 

Does anyone have any suggestions for what might be going wrong, or what I could try to resolve this issue?
I tried to reinstall the scrapy-playwright also tried to deactivate and then activate my virtual environment.

I want to add a Twitter X feed to a website, which is being fully developed from scratch. The site is intended for viewing on desktops as of now, and the feed is only supposed to appear on the side of the page - and in small(er) font sizes.
Using the official publish.twitter.com page is not good. It's too limited in customization options, and I can't make it compact. I tried messing around in the inspect/dev console and I just couldn't seem to make it change it's appearance.
I tried another option using Elfsight. It allowed far more customization, along with custom CSS (which I couldn't get to work), however, I was able to further add styling to the widget, except after a point it would bug out... such as going invisible if I set certain div heights to 100%, or certain parts of the tool not resizing or being spaced weirdly, and several hours of digging just didn't do anything.
Are there any barebone third-party twittex feed options or basic web scraper API I could use to simply programmatically view the website and return text, image/video URLs, etc that I can manually generate my own feed? I'm completely fine creating my own basic feed (honestly looking for something similar to the old twitter feed embeds... smaller, compact, able to tuck away to the side of a webpage)...

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• Help the mods control spam with the report button. This removes spam quicker.
• Please comment on link quality, and upvote good links!
• Start looking for streams on these sites: CricFree.sc, CrickFree.io, VipBox.live, Vipbox.lc. Link directly to good streams.
• iPlayer, ITV, SuperSport or Sky blocked? Geo Unblock with a VPN

• Thanks for helping your fellow rugby fans to follow rugby!