A year and half ago one of my sons childhood friends was in a very difficult situation. She had two teenage children, a dog, two cats and had no where to go. I'll refer to her has Sheila. I'm “retired” while my husband says he's retired ( but never stopped) and we have grandkids; when my son was complaining about how he wished he had space for this friend ...I volunteered. We had the extra rooms for her and the kids, we also had the acreage for additional animals except for the cats. My husband is deathly allergic to cats. Regardless, I talked to my husband, and we then offered her the extra rooms for free. So long as Sheila finds someplace else for the cats. She agreed and she was very appreciative while also being honest with us. She has an autoimmune disease (JRA) and the youngest is autistic while her oldest is trans; she’s a chef at heart and we're retired so she'll take care of the meals. As she already had a job to work from home, those checks would go into savings.
We had a few weeks of near daily talks hashing out how this would work. I'll give the highpoints but these were the general rules:
Her rent is paid via meals. Her children do chores as they’re capable of doing them (cleaning their bathroom, vacuuming, dishes, keeping their room clean, and helping my husband to maintain the main lawn [which is maybe 1000sf] and help as requested with the farm.) She had 1 year to save up for a place of her own. To be rediscussed every 6 months.
We’ve had 3 discussions since, and no she doesn't have the money to move out in this economy. Most of this is due to the 3 hospitalizations through no fault of her own (and the way the economy keeps raw dogging everyone who doesn't have a 6 digit bank account)...we are fine with her and her kids being here. I managed to help the autistic one get into general Ed and he's on his way to graduating. I'm so extremely proud of him, he entered my house as creature who did everything he could to make himself small and acceptable to everyone else. Today, me and him can argue about moral ideologies in an heated manner and after the cool down still wants to sit with me while I watch my brain watch TV. Just the fact that he’s willing to be vocal is my pride in him; he's worked hard to get here and I'm so happy for him. I'll answer questions about that relationship if needed as I'm rambling.
After 3 months of Sheila being here I cook all the meals. She in effort at the start but now after a year and half, I'm do all the meals myself. In the times where I just can't my husband does. I think the last meal she put into this house was for the day after new years which was warming up left overs. Which is what's contributing to my attrition and may make the asshole.
My AITA is about her damn dog. I told Sheila not to give her dog a specific food. Bunny is now older and I just burried my baby boy at 20 years; 7 years after the vet said he'd live a month, I went psycho on his diet and kept him going happy and energetic for 7 years. Sheila has been fine in letting me control the animals diets. And I have become a but of a Nazi; there are some foods that a dog can have young that they can't have when they're older. Garlic is one of them. Bunny is now 7 years, I nevere let her have garlic. Sheila dropped some garlic pita chips into the flow tonight and called Bunny to eat them to clean it up. I screamed
It's a great Dane and Belgium Malinos mix and was 5 years old when I first met it. It's father was a Great Dane and the mother a Malnous-(I'm not spelling it right but I cannot get autocorrect to make it correct)-a bug lazy giant mixed with a hyper working dog. It's friggin neurotic. The first day I met it it jumped up into my face and broke my nose. To be honest she warned me it was a jumper and I didn't respect that warning.
I don't want to be disrespectful but...I broke that dog of jumping in a month of it being in my house. Not because I'd make it negative, but because I’d say no and crowd her her immediately and when she greeted people without jumping I'd get excited and give treats. As my son says, “It's the smartest dumb dog I've ever met.” It is extremely intelligent but...I feel bad for saying this-Sheila has only ever had cats. She doesn't give it direction or jobs beyond sleeping with her. When it doesn't have a job it is loud and destructive, giving itself guidance that it wants from Sheila.
In the first 6 months it destroyed our back yard fence every time Sheila left the property. I feel the behavior is because she's trained it to be by her side at all times. When she wasn't near, the Dog (named Bunny) didn't know what to do with herself and attacked the fence to try to find her. I've managed to get the dog contained, compliant, and sweet.....when Sheila is not around. If she wasn't so big I'd make her my own.
I know there are two sides of a story and I will try to account for Sheila’s but I am going to advocate for my side.
This dog entered my house barking, jumping, chewing, and spazzing as a puppy would but was actually 5 years old. Shiela just told me Bunny is now 8 years old. As long as Sheila is not around Bunny is calm, response, nondestructive, she has jobs in the house (specifically to chase squirrels out of the garden) until Sheila returns and then no matter what is going on Bunny will scream and cry to get close to Sheila.
Sheila works from home and it's generally fine except for the times when Sheila chooses that Bunny should be outside (arbitrarily). I have to deal with Bunny crying and screaming: Sheila is inside, Bunny is out, I think Bunny is neurotic because she knows Sheila is home and that her job is to be BY Sheila. Sheila’s response to this is to either ignore, scream at her, or give treats-but leave bunny outside while Sheila returns to work. Sheila is very talented at focusing on work regardless of what's going on out side. While Bunny is loosing her mind to get close to Sheila, Sheila doesn't doesn't notice unless I interrupt.
The whole goal of Sheila working is for her to save enough to get a house. I'm committed to this, so I've taken over Bunny during work hours which means two of three meals I feed Bunny. I've been feeding bunny for past year while Sheila works.
Today is apart of a two week vacation Sheila has taken for her oldest graduation. Sheila made food for bunny with Garlic in it. I saw it, and I told Sheila that Bunny is too old to have anything with garlic in it as Bunny is now 7 years old (70 years old in human years, they don't deal with toxins like they used to). Sheila got very upset with me and was very verbal that Bunny was not my dog and I had no voice it what bunny ate.
I feel that Sheila has only said this because I have spent so much time in the last year working with her dog, correcting Bunny to get positive behaviors. This summer Bunny has become very nervous about the new automatic sprinklera we have and I've been the one working Bunny through the fear she has darn near sun up to sun down.
Let me be clear, I'm only doing this now because Sheila simply removes bunny from the yard when the sprinklers start, while I have been sitting in the patio (that the sprinklers don't touch) and been trying to get her comfortable with them. They are new and scary for a dog-Sheila is too busy on the computer to work Bunny through her fears so I'm doing it.
When I work through the day with Bunny, by the afternoon timer that sets the sprinklers off Bunny is having a blast chasing and jumping through the sprinklers.
I'm a bit PO’d at Sheila's outrage and need to assert control over Bunny when I said the dog couldn't have garlic any more. I've shared my house for a year an half with 3 people and dog who all seem to have some sort of behavioral issues. I've exterted control where I can with Bunny to have nice days with own my home with her, her children, and her animals. But Bunny is Sheila's dog so....I don't have a voice.
Please don't placate or disparage; AITA and how do I move through this? It's not my dog, they’re not “famil”y, but I honestly want to continue to help all of them. Including Bunny. I need to find a way to get Sheila on board; she doesn't seem to have the time or patience for Bunny beyond bedtime.
P.S. knowing how reddit commentors can go: I don't argue structure or consequences in regards to her children and I've adapted as Sheila has requested. She simply doesn't have any structure for Bunny, while she enjoys the consequences my structure on Bunny.....she now seems to resent that. As it's only resently she's been putting her foot down about Bunny.
While I'm of the mindset: Bunny is her very first dog, her words, she had only had cats before hand. Sheila did pick a mixed breed but...my god did she pick an unpredictable mix. I've adapted as much as I can to help this dog find calm and connectedness. I love Bunny and I've spent so long working on her poor behaviors, editing her diet, giving her a job and a space that belongs to her inside and outside the house. I just want Bunny to live as long and happy as possible but feel if I put my foot down, I'm the asshole.
Mind the Autocorrect. I've re-read 3 times now and still find crappy misspelling and worse grammar as I've only used Reddit on mobile and make a mash of it every time I do. My apologies.
Edit: I'm sorry, I wrote this while having an argument with Sheila. Bunny is 7-8 years old per Sheila just a it ago; she's unsure of the digs age and has only guessed when talking about Bunny. Sheila said she thinks Bunny was 1 to 2 years old when she got her. My jumping in ages of 7 to 8 to 7 is just me being inaccurate as me and Sheila yell at each other and me typing In here in the lulls.
This is a very active argument. That does NOT end in be evicting them.

WPA – A Completely Average Roadtrip
Disclaimer: Not canon, and I don’t use patreon so please don’t spoil me. Also, any opinion held by a character is that of the characters and not my own. Enjoy.
Town of Ljosalfington, local time 14:00, week 7
Emma Booker
“Again Illunor, I warned you before that this is a utility vehicle, not a party rated smart-limo. I am already compromising more than I should by allowing you to use the sample cooler as a minifridge, one which I can’t even use!” I said as I loaded the materials I had just purchased into the back of the high-G All terrain fusion-ethanol-electric hybrid 24th-century legacy pickup truck that I had printed out earlier this week, carefully avoiding the heavy ordinance hard point.
“That is hardly an excuse for that abysmally cramped leg space barely fit for cattle, never mind the bare minimum for standard decorum suitable for nobility. If this is what a car is like, then I don’t see why you care for your technology,” complained Illunor, who was sitting around idly with a malformed garish bowl of icecream that he had stashed away from lunch.
“If it bothers you so much, perhaps you could help next time with your ‘bigger-on-the-inside’ magic,” I retorted as I slid the last core sample into the back before covering it up with a tarp and strapping it down.
I had originally planned to visit Ljosalfington by myself to acquire much needed exo-materials to test various mana manipulator configurations as I worked to develop my first wand as not all of the materials I needed were procurable locally from Elaseer. I eventually yielded, much to my regret, to allowing Illunor to come with me as he insisted on wanting to deliver a letter personally in town after Thacea had pointed out the wisdom of not travelling alone.
We continued our back and forth for a bit yet as I finished securing my payload a voice called out to me from the direction of the town.
“Excuse me a moment, I couldn’t help but notice but are you from the academy?”
I turned to see an elf dressed in a plain brown buttoned up tunic matched by a slightly shabby pair of trousers with what appeared to be a lute upon his back and a plain and unenchanted longsword on his belt gesturing at our robes. Mine especially were new and unusual, tailored by the academy to go over my armour and allow access to the anchor points and allow me to exit my armour with minimal hassle. Illunor scoffed at what was evidently a commoner’s arrogance at approaching nobility and turned his head away in disgust. I glanced at Illunor and shook my head before turning to face the new man. I had time to spare, and any opportunity to engage in a hearts-and-minds dialogue with the locals outside the bounds of the managed environment of the academy was more than worth the time to chat. Especially as most of the other locals seemed to be content in ignoring me.
“Yes, we are currently studying at the Transgracian Academy. I am Cadet Emma Booker representing the United Nations of Earth and Luna from Earthream, and my aloof compatriot is Lord Illunor Rularia of the Vunerian courts. We were just about to head back but are in no rush. May I ask your name and what brings you by?” I asked with my hand outstretched in greeting.
“Ah yes, yes. My name is Edhel Redoehdelnif, a wandering bard by trade like my father and his father before him. My apologies, Cadet Emma Booker, I am unfamiliar with Earthrealm,” said Edhel as he grasped my hand with both of his and shook it tepidly yet vigorously. Or rather, tried to, as the motors on my suit resisted his efforts.
“News doesn’t seem to spread all that fast around here, so it makes sense you haven’t heard of us. We’re a new realm, and only just got here. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Edhel Redoehdelnif,” I replied.
“Absolutely fascinating! And a knight no less, or perhaps a squire? I’m sure you have many stories to tell of Earthrealm. Say, by chance are you about to head back to the academy? I have business in Elaseer and the usual coach has been absent as of late so I would rather not go it alone,” said Edhel.
I was hesitant to bring a stranger back in the car with me, even if Illunor was present. However, the opportunity that meeting a bard presented was too good to pass up from an intel perspective and to win the favour of the populace at large.
“That is a great idea. I think I have room for one more…” I paused before gesturing towards Illunor, “provided everyone is ok with it that is.”
Illunor gave a huff and turned his head away in silence.
“Very well, I will allow this. But he will not be joining me in your sorry excuse for a coach,” said Illunor dismissively.
Illunor approached the backseat expectantly and the door opened for him automatically, allowing the dlc kobold to gracefully enter and lounge across the length of the seats, once again ignoring the seatbelts. I sighed as I made my way to the driver’s seat, and Edhel entered from the passenger side as he marveled at the automatic doors and the interior.
“What a strange carriage this is! Although I must say, shouldn’t you be retrieving your horses? I didn’t see any harnesses or sense any artifices,” inquired Edhel as he attempted to make himself comfortable on the car seat, lute in front of him.
“Oh no, this thing doesn’t need horses or magic,” I said with a chuckle as EVI started the car. The elf raised his eyebrows at the sudden hum of the engine and made an expression of alarm when the car started driving itself without my input. “See, purrs like a kitten.”
“Earthrealm must have some large kittens if they purr like that,” noted Edhel, “but you must be concealing the enchantments somewhere. Such a thing as this with such strange yet precise craftsmanship is only possible in the crownlands.”
“Nope, no magic,” I said cheerfully.
“Then how?” Asked Edhel.
“It’s rather simple really. Are you familiar with the workings of a mill?” I asked, deciding to keep things surface level and elementary to avoid provoking the IDOV threshold.
“Somewhat, though I confess to not being familiar with their workings. Are you suggesting this is akin to a mill?” Asked Edhel perplexed.
“It’s the same principal. A mill works by taking a source of rotation such as a waterwheel or windmill, transferring that rotation along a series of rotating shafts and interlocking gears, and finally putting that energy to work by rotating a millstone,” I began as the car pulled out onto the smooth cobbled road in the direction of Elaseer. A notification popped up in the corner of my vision indicating my recon drone swarm had shifted from a holding formation to a convoy screening formation, and while the roads were clear I kept the speed at 60km/h to account for my passenger’s apparent distaste for seatbelts.
“Rotation…” muttered Edhel. He turned to face one of the wheels and EVI pinged an alert for a probable match for a detection spell, “fascinating.”
“Edhel, what are you doing?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, perhaps I should have asked first. Yes, I can see how it all fits together. But the source of this rotation? I see no mighty river or great wind to power this, so where does it come from?” Asked Edhel, not really apologizing. Elven arrogance, it seemed, was not limited by class.
The act reminded me of Sorecar when he inspected my gun, but where the armourer had been respectful with it, Edhel was more flippant. I considered the possibility that he was a spy sent by one of her peers or the crownlands, though this did not mesh with the methods I had seen so far. Edhel may have been just overly enthusiastic. In either case, I quickly decided to only reveal the antique design for the ethanol engine, and not that of the batteries or the emergency coupler to my suit’s fusion reactor.
“Right, well please ask first next time. As to your question, I won’t bore you with the details, but the rotation is generated by creating a periodic sequence of explosions inside of a machine – a manaless artifice – called a combustion engine, said Emma.
“So that’s what that sound is…” pondered Edhel, “are these artifices typical in Earthream?”
“You are awfully inquisitive for a commoner,” noted Illunor as he inspected his nails for dirt, “and rather accepting of something which should be impossible.”
“I wouldn’t be much of a bard if I wasn’t, my lord,” said Edhel shifting uncomfortably in his seat, “perhaps some music might set the mood better?”
“That would be preferable, bard. I have heard enough of the Earthrealmer’s Road Trip Playlist and would like to listen to some music of real culture,” said Illunor.
The bard agreed and proceeded to awkwardly play a ballad about an adventurer who slew a hydra in some frozen wasteland. Partway through, I politely interrupted the Edhel to point out the seat controls much to his fascination and Illunor’s grumbling at their common nature, and after some adjustment the bard went on playing and I half-heartedly listened while I paid attention to the road and my drone feed.
Particularly after EVI detected something unusual and alerted me to its presence.
”Attention Caded Booker. There is a disabled vehicle blocking the primary route to destination. Heat signatures in the woods are consistent with that of an ambush.”
“Damn it,” I muttered.
I glanced at the drone feed to see a broken cart strewn horizontally across a wooden bridge over a brook. On the surface it looked like a pair of civilians who required aid and assistance, but off in the woods were several heat signatures, several of which held weapons of varying levels of enchantments. Occasionally one of the pair on the bridge would talk with them, suggesting they were in cahoots rather than hostages. I recalled crossing that very bridge not a few hours earlier, so the blockade was very recent.
“EVI, did we pass that cart on the way here?” I asked.
”Negative,” replied EVI.
I grimaced. I had been trained to handle road-side ambushes, but it was only something that was a theoretical possibility. Something that should only occur in a warzone or a corrupt and unstable polity. I knew I had the capacity to handle such an encounter, even non-lethally, but that didn’t change the fact that these were civilians and as such were the responsibility of local law enforcement. Combined with the fact that I had passengers I was responsible for and engaging the ambush was a risky option.
“EVI, give me a list of alternative routes,” I commanded.
”Affirmative. Here is a list of routes in order of recommendation,” replied EVI.
I looked over the routes superimposed on a map of the region and quickly dismissed taking a shortcut through the forest and cutting through farmland. A detour caught my eye that extended the journey by roughly ten kilometers and I immediately sent a pair of drones to scout it out before committing to the detour.
“Are you alright, Cadet Emma Booker? You seem distracted,” asked Edhel, snapping me back to reality.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just focused on driving,” replied Emma.
“I suppose it must be quite taxing to command an artificed carriage of this complexity. Perhaps it might ease your mind if you were to regale me a tale of a hero of your realm?” Said Edhel, strumming a complex tune from his lute as he spoke as each and every pluck triggered a low-level spell.
“Well, that may be a problem. We don’t have any monsters to fight, and wars are a thing of the past,” I said while desperately tip-toeing the subject of aunt Ran, the subject of war, and our voyages through the cosmos, “though we are not without the adventurous spirit. We certainly have many stories of grand voyages. Some mythical and fictional such as The Odyssey as told by the Greek poet Homer and some historical such as the race to the south pole.”
“The south pole,” muttered the bard, “so you have explored all of Earthrealm then? I suppose that makes some sense, if you have artifices such as this then traversal of a globe would be quite manageable.”
“You are quite perceptive,” I said, not wishing to elaborate.
“A great performer knows his audience,” said Edhel with a charming, honest, almost human smile.
I felt a pang of homesickness as an intrusive thought reminded me that I could have gone to a real college surrounded by friendly faces my age, engaging in nightly holostreams and dreaming of adventures in the stars from the safety of a college dorm room. The sight of Illunor in the rear camera was the only thing that kept me grounded, as I almost felt like I was back at home on a road trip rather than returning to a fantasy feudal court, constantly evading death at every turn with the fate of humanity on the line. As such, and prompted by EVI, I barely had the wherewithal to take the planned detour.
A fact which did not pass by Edhel.
“I believe you may have taken a wrong turn, Emma,” he commented.
“Nah, I’m just taking the scenic route. I came from that direction on the way here, and you have inspired me to see the other road and I figure it should only add a few extra minutes to our travel time,” I said, gesturing at a paper map which I had referenced exactly once, “though on that subject, you seem to know these lands quite well. Do you have any recommendations on places to visit in the Nexus to scratch that itch?”
Illunor raised his eyebrow at the detour excuse, knowing full well this was not part of the plan. I worried that he might complain about the issue and but thankfully remained silent as he snacked on the contents of the misused sample storage unit. Edhel himself took on a more pensive posture.
“I’m happy to have been such an inspiration, Emma, though I am sure an explorer such as yourself has little need of such. I would normally suggest the skyward fountains of Verdellan or the cloud tides of Asturia, but that may be too casual for someone of your calibre. Perhaps the severed chasm or the fire marsh of Bhandahova may be more to your liking. Or perhaps…” Edhel leaned in, “I have heard rumours of a dragon in the glassy obsidian wastes of Vurcanar.”
I chuckled at that, knowing how I was fortunate enough to fish a dragon scale out of the nearby lake for the ECS. “The thought of going dragon hunting had certainly crossed my mind…” I mused aloud.
“Yet you sound hesitant. Perhaps it is too much for a newrealmer. Perhaps a slime or a dire rat might be more appropriate,” he said with a tease.
“No, it’s not like that! It’s” I stammered, before attempting to change course after realizing I had been goaded, “what I mean is, I was under the impression that dragons were an endangered species. Where I come from, hunting endangered animals is usually illegal, and big game hunting in general is frowned upon. We do make exceptions in the case of problem animals such as if a large predator starts hunting humans, but as a rule we prefer conservation and try to find ways of coexisting with wildlife such as the use of barrier fences and scaring away dangerous animals rather than being forced to cull their numbers. Having a species go extinct would prevent future generations from appreciating them and risks destabilizing the ecosystem they are a part of. Now if this dragon was actively razing villages and eating civilians and livestock, that would be one thing, but this does not look to be the case. I don’t imagine the Nexus has any settlements in this wasteland, and the dragon clearly wants to be left alone. Killing an innocent dragon would be murder.”
I grinned to myself after delivering a diatribe that would have made my tenth grade social and environmental studies teacher beam with pride, though by the expressions of my passengers my view did not appear to be shared. Edhel’s mouth was agape in shock and fascination, while the Venurian in the back seat merely huffed in disapproval.
“I assure you Newrealmer, there are no innocent dragons,” stated Illunor with a hint of terseness breaking through his otherwise regal demeanor.
“Illunor, I understand that Venurians have personal reasons for not liking dragons, but you can’t just extend that disdain to their descendants or those uninvolved just because they are the same species,” I said.
“If I may interject on your behalf, my lord, I believe I can address Cadet Emma Booker’s concerns,” said Edhel with a bow. Illunor nodded in approval.
“Very well, you may proceed,” he said.
“Thank you, my lord. My dear Emma, you must understand that dragons are not simple animals driven entirely off of instinct as it appears to be the case in Earthrealm. They are monsters. Intelligent, long-lived, violent, greedy, cruel, territorial, selfish flesh-eating monsters. They are evil by the very nature of their being, unable to change by their own accord, and unwilling to change when His Eternal Majesty offered them freedom from their nature. It isn’t that they want to be evil. As intelligent animals – intelligent monsters – dragons are capable of understanding morality, and many have tried to overcome their evil nature at great expense to themselves. A well intended and noble sentiment, yet a doomed one as like all animals, they all succumb to their nature in the end. Overcoming one’s nature is impossible,” said Edhel. His eyes took on a stoic, almost remorseful gaze as he spoke, and Illunor nodded with approval.
I was appalled by this claim, not by the contents so much as how blatantly false it was. As a representative of the human race, I was a living counterexample to his whole argument. We had remained physiologically unchanged as a species since the last Ice Age, and yet in spite of that, in spite of our many flaws, we had found peace and balance. If we could do it, anyone could do it.
“Will all due respect Edhel, that is nonsense. Monsters aren’t born, they are made. It is the mark of any intelligent species can adapt their behaviour to their environment for better or worse, and under the right care any so-called monster can grow to be a force for good,” I began, but while I searched for the right words Edhel shook his head.
“I appreciate your race is an empathetic one, Emma, your idealism is unfounded. As flesh eaters, a dragon must take the life of another animal or person to survive, or they will perish. As such, every dragon has taken a life. As long-lived creatures, they will have amassed a significant number of kills. As the land can only support so much animals, a dragon must be fiercely territorial and aggressive to remove competition, lest they starve. As such, even the most kind-hearted dragon alive must be violent and greedy, and their intelligence fuels this even more so if they know a bountiful land of morsels exists just outside their range.
Now perhaps a multitude of dragons may find a way to co-exist together in some settlement, but to support such a venture would require a large territory of prey, or a livestock animal. Perhaps they could support a large colony by farming grain for their livestock, but that would require effort on their behalf. As large animals, such efforts require a great deal of energy. Yet that size makes it easy for them to intimidate smaller races to do their labour for them, and to keep their client race in line dragons must be cruel. And even so, as their numbers grow so do their needs. As such, they must expand into the lands of their neighbours to survive until there is nothing left to devour, at which point they must turn against their own lest they starve. As such, it is the nature of dragons to conquer and devour. That is why there is no such thing as an innocent dragon,” finished Edhel.
I was speechless, not because I believed Edhel had a point, but because I was horrified at how easy he found it to rationalize the extermination of an entire sapient species. If this was how the elves thought, then it wasn’t the dragons who were the monsters. I suppressed that dark thought. Edhel’s thought process was a product of his culture, not a feature of his elven heritage. If there was any hope of peace between our people, I needed to show him there was another way of being. I needed to prove that co-existence was possible, no matter one’s nature.
I took a deep breath to steady myself before replying.
“That- that is a callous way of seeing things,” I began, though the shock was still there in my voice, “you speak as though there is no natural equilibrium with a dragon, that their only state of being must be to be cruel, to devour, to conquer. But I see things differently. In fact, I might wonder if a fledgling civilization might see the presence of a dragon as a boon rather than a curse. Being intelligent, the locals may be able to come to some agreement with the dragon. Perhaps they might leave some land as a hunting ground or offer up a share of their cattle or guard the dragon as it sleeps. In exchange, the dragon might allow them to build a town outside its mountain and protect them in times of danger. An equitable exchange. A civilization might even create artificial lairs to attract dragons for this very reason. True, some dragons may behave tyrannical towards their town, but a well armed populace of a large city would be more than capable of fighting such a threat, and a rational dragon might reason that threatening their own populace would put their reliable source of food and shelter at risk. You see, it’s all a matter of perspective.”
“You certainly are an imaginative one, Emma, to wonder up a quixotic world where the hare and the fox live together in harmony as equals. Even so, you seem to have ignored one key detail to such a society. What would happen should the dragon not be fed for months on end?” Asked Edhel with his eyebrow raised.
“The same thing as stranded a dozen starving, stranded Elves!” I spat back.
[Alert: Vehicle speed above recommended limit for conditions. Recommendation: slow down. ]
“I am driving slow!” I seethed, not realizing I had sped up with manual control enabled.
“I grow tired of this common prattle,” interjected Illunor just in time to prevent an awkward silence, “bard, play us another song.” “As my lord wishes,” said Edhel with a bow before turning to me with another smile, “perhaps a more soothing melody would be in order? A love song perhaps, to honour Cadet Booker’s compassionate nature?”
I said nothing as Edhel began to strum his lute again to the tune of a love story of a pair of doomed lovers named Ramian and Junette, hating his cheeky knowing grin that only served to get under my skin further as I focused on calming down and slowing the car back to a more reasonable pace before investigating a priority alert which I had been blinded to moments prior.
[Alert: hostile roadblock is absent, location unknown.]
Shit.
“Illunor, we may have a problem,” I said.
“Shush, Newrealmer, have you no class? We are almost at the best part! I’m sure it can wait,” replied the contextually clueless lizard.
I had never wanted to throttle Illunor as much as I did now.
“Illunor, shield, now,” I said with a raised voice.
“I don’t see-“ he started, pausing mid-sentence as his ears perked up.
[Alert: Multiple manafield and spell signatures detected!]
I took evasive maneuvers as Illunor tried to piece together a shield spell, fumbling it twice as panic appeared to set in and providing me with a reminder that Illunor was a civilian, not a soldier. A hail of arrows pelted the exterior of the truck, piercing but not penetrating the composite armour. I was tempted to do nothing but just drive away from the arrow fire, but a foreboding premonition of danger filled me as I recalled Sorecar’s hunter-seeker arrows.
Seeking to avoid that fate, I triggered the active defenses.
The smoke screens deployed around the vehicle, obscuring the sight of any who depended on visible light to see me. A barrage of decoy flares equipped with wooden cores shot upward at angles and diffusing to the side like a pair of giant wings which when combined with the MFD, short for mana-field dampener, inside the vehicle meant that the pelting hail of arrowfire softened to a whirr as the arrows whiffed over the top of the truck, retargeted away from the soft flesh of my passengers and even invoking friendly fire amongst the ambushers.
In the chaos, EVI and my drone swarm fed me complete tactical information on the ambush. Of the 26 individuals at the first blockade, 20 were accounted for, and 3 had died from friendly fire. Ahead at the bridge, 5 more of them were at the bridge where a barrier had been hastily erected to cage me in as the river valley was too deep to cross.
“Illunor, we need a bridge,” I said, taking stock of the wellbeing of my passengers.
The bard was huddled down low and suppressing his manafield, but otherwise rather composed. Illunor, on the other hand, was cowering in the gap between the seats with his hands covering his eyes and his tail tucked in.
“A bridge is no small request, Ne- Cadet Emma Booker,” replied Illunor, “and your ‘Emeffdee’ has blinded me to the outside of this moving death trap.”
“If I drop it, can you at least make a ramp?” I asked as I circled the battlefield. Or tried to, at least, as earthen ramparts emerged from the ground from a yet unseen source to cut off other avenues of escape.
“A ramp? Surely you don’t mean-“ he stammered.
“Yes or no,” I said.
Illunor paused, before taking an unsteady breath.
“Yes. But not with that Emeffdee,” he replied.
“Good. Steady your nerves and prepare to make a ramp ahead of us on my signal,” I said, “in the meantime, get your seatbelt on. This is going to be hairy.”
As I circled around to make my approach on the bridge, the final combatant made his appearance on a nearby tree, revealing himself as an elven mage. An alert focused on the air around him indicating he was preparing an unknown high-tier spell, and I locked the predator drone on him indicating the elf as a high-priority target if our escape plan failed, and I was forced to use lethal force.
If I was forced to kill.
It was one thing to know you may have to kill in the line of duty, but it was much harder to reconcile that with reality. No number of simulations could match the real thing, and a part of me wanted to simply offload the responsibility to EVI to keep my hands clean, but to do that would be betraying my duty as a human being. I breathed in deep and tried not to think about it, instead hoping to rely on the ace I held in my sleeve instead.
“EVI, ready the spell jammer,” I said unevenly.
“Acknowledged, the prototype Exo-Radiation Wave-Field Distruptor is primed. High risk target identified and locked, permission to engage?” EVI asked, forcing me to address the dreaded question.
“Negative,” I replied, “hold your fire. If the ramp fails, then you have permission to engage,” I said.
“Affirmative, on your mark,” replied EVI.
I lined up the truck with the bridge and bolted through the smoke, keeping a careful eye on the mage as I went. His spellform took on a more concerning shape as I accelerated, and I realized I could not afford to let him finish his spell. I triggered the spelljammer.
A terrible roar erupted from an array of speakers printed from mana-resistant materials that would have made Godzilla herself beam with pride. The sound was decidedly unnatural, gnarly, dubstep drop composed of an electric eel, a whale, a mountain lion, and a tyrannosaurus rex all being simultaneously assaulted by a swarm of angry cybernetic murder hornets as an equally chaotic wave of mana blasted outwards from the exterior of the truck, with the interior thankfully sheltered by audio and mana dampening.
The ambushing assailants cowered and panicked, and it was enough to cause the Elven mage’s spell to backfire in his face as his form exploded into ashes, meeting a horrific fate which I had tried so desperately to help him avoid. With all the combatants momentarily incapacitated or dead, I lowered the dampener and turned off the smoke.
“Ramp!” I shouted, snapping the lizard back to reality.
The Venerian nodded and hastily formed an earthwork ahead of us right before the blockade, and the truck leapt off the ramp with a not insignificant amount of air beneath our wheels. I braced for impact, regretting skimping on the shocks in the name of preserving materials, but the impact never came.
[Alert: Friendly spell designated ‘Feather Fall’]
Illunor thankfully had enough wherewithal to gently land the steel brick, and I sped off into the distance away from the trap that had unfolded behind us, leaving the interior of the truck in an awkward silence as we each processed our brush with death in our own way. “How many are dead?” I asked EVI.
“6 hostiles confirmed dead,” replied EVI.
I drove on in silence. Those were six deaths I had tried to avoid, and I became lost in thought as I wondered what I should have done differently to avoid the confrontation entirely.
Edhel broke the silence with a bout of laughter.
“Terrific! Absolutely terrific! Why, I can conjure up many a tale from this encounter alone! I live for this kind of inspiration!” Exclaimed Edhel a little too chipperly considering the circumstance.
“I would rather not hear stories about how I bravely ran away,” I moaned in deadpan sarcasm.
“You think too little of yourself, Cadet Emma Booker. It is plain to me that you are no ordinary rabbit. Make no mistake, I see it as a privilege to bear witness to the roar of a vorpal hare!” Said Edhel as he supressed his laughter, “though I am afraid with all the excitement that I must finish my song some other time.”
“How about I play some of our music?” I offered after the elf revealed his thrill-seeking side.
“Splendid, I would like that. Perhaps something of your ‘Roadtrip playlist’ you speak of? It sounds like a collection of your voyages,” said Edhel.
“That would be an improvement on the truth,” said Illunor dismissively as he eased from his state of shock, “it is little more than noise under the pretense of music.”
“Illunor…” I muttered to myself before turning the mic on, “no, no it’s not like that. I have terabytes of pre-recorded songs from various artists back home which can be played by… an artifice called a speaker. A playlist is a set of songs which are grouped together, usually to listen to in specific situations such as studying, partying, or travelling. The latter collection is what Illunor is referring to.”
I very deliberately chose not to reveal my ‘Unfortunate Daughters’ playlist.
“An artifice which plays music, and a magicless one at that. I must say, Emma, I fear for the bards in your realm,” said Edhel with a laugh.
“Your fear is misplaced, Edhel. Entertainers live like kings where I come from,” I retorted with a smirk of my own, “well, the ones with talent at least.”
“Well, well, I suppose I have to hear my competition!” Said Edhel with a laugh.
“Do as you must, though let it be known that I warned you,” said Illunor as he watched a play on his sightseer.
I had EVI compile a list of songs that left out content offensive to Nexian sensibilities or violating OpSec and as it compiled I mused over what type of sample spread I wanted to show off. Then it struck me. What better way to show off our culture than with some good old blue jumpers and nova rock! Sadly, jumpers were unavailable to show but I still had a whole list of modern artists to choose from.
Moments later, the car speakers sprung to life to the tune of ‘Innocent Youth of Mine. Edhel’s eyes lit up like a child visiting a zero-g gravity park for the first time, seemingly star-struck by the antique electric guitar and the synthesizer-drums in particular.
“What… what is this? I have never heard anything like this!” Proclaimed Edhel.
“Dreadful, isn’t it?” said Illunor, doing what he did best and pretending to hate it.
“Oh there is a lot more where that came from,” I said with a cheeky grin of my own, “this one is called ‘Innocent Youth of Mine’ by ‘Cannons and Poppies’. It’s part of the Nova Rock genre.
“And those strange instruments?” Asked Edhel.
“Oh, you mean the electric guitar and the synthesizer. They are electronic instruments, taking advantage of channeled and modulated electricity to create near any sound we can imagine,” I replied.
“Channeled electricity… are you suggesting these sounds were made by some form of lightning?” Asked Edhel.
[Suggestion: Avoid topic of electricity due to OpSec risk]
I nodded at EVI’s warning, thankful that it caught me before I discussed the very thing that all of my equipment ran on.
“It’s not exactly lightning, but close enough,” I said.
“If I had not witnessed to your display of power earlier, I might have perhaps been more skeptical of such a claim, but I suppose a lady must keep her secrets.” said Edhel with a raised eyebrow and chuckle, “but I digress, this music is most interesting.”
“There is a lot more where that came from,” I said with a cheeky grin of my own.
“If I ever have a prisoner in need of torture, I will turn to you first,” replied Illunor, “if you are willing to subject your peers to this madness then I cannot imagine what you would force upon your enemies before dunking them in ice.”
“In your dreams,” I retorted.
I played a few other songs including Astrodesee’s ‘Meteor Struck’, the Martian classic ‘Hotel Cydonia’ and even ‘Switching to Warp’ before Elaseer emerged from the distance, and I pulled up outside the gate to drop Edhel off.
“Here already?” Asked Edhel.
“Well, yeah. I was just running a quick errand, I didn’t want to go too far,” I replied casually.
“That was a distance worth at least five days of walking by foot, and you call that a ‘quick errand’?” Asked Edhel. I shrugged, and he laughed.
“Well in any case, thank you for allowing me passage in your car. I must apologize for my lack of gift or payment…” said Edhel. “Don’t worry about it, it was on the way,” I replied.
“I see, how generous. Perhaps we might one day meet again?” Asked Edhel.
“Maybe, but I’m not sure how likely that is. The academy takes up most of my time,” I replied, “though you never know. I still have a lot of quest hours to complete.”
“Is that so? In that case, I hope we meet again! Goodbye Cadet Emma Booker and farewell Lord Illunor Rularia,” he said. “And good travels to you, bard,” said Illunor.
I waved off Edhel and drove back to the academy, Illunor still sulking in the back seat.
“Perhaps next time, you should steer us away from danger?” Suggested Illunor.
“I tried, but we were tracked,” I replied.
I groaned inwardly at the additional work needed to fix the truck. EVI compiled a list of upgrades for future engagements, batting away my idea for a ‘turbo mode’ and a ‘jump boost’. Though at the end of the day, meeting the bard wasn’t a complete loss. It felt good to talk to someone almost normal for once, and I hoped I met him again.
Edhel Redoehdelnif
I watched as Cadet Emma Booker’s vehicle went off into the distance, getting one last look at the Earthrealmer’s strange artifice before turning towards the gate. The voyage was an exotic experience, not unlike that of a fever dream or a peak into a world completely alien to my own. Indeed, it was a struggle to contain my excitement and enthusiasm and process the experience rationally as I made my way through the southern gates of Elaseer and turned the corner of an alley before entering an impossible structure that did not exist.
“You are earlier than expected,” said the shadowy figure of my handler as I made my way to the meeting hall.
“The Earthrealmer’s means of transportation proved far more expedient than anticipated, my lord” I spoke as I knelt before him, “even with her unexpected departure from the anticipated road and the ambush we traveled for scantly more than an hour.”
“Yes, I will require a full report from you. Perhaps you can shed some light on the ‘smoke dragon’ my men claim intervened on the Earthrealmer’s behalf,” said my handler.
“Smoke Dragon, my lord?” I asked.
My handler responded by activating his sight-seer, revealing how the ambush had appeared from the outside. The Earthrealmer’s uncanny artifice traversed down the road, a pair of manafields displaying proudly from within until the archers began their assault. The artifice then transformed as smoke billowed out from its pores and wings sprung forth above until it was the form of a mighty wrym with a pair of glowing eyes springing forth from its ever extending head where it then gave forth a terrible unholy roar which sent waves of mana outward. The mage working to seal the area and trap their mark vapourized in an instant as his spell backfired. It was apparent to Edhel that his exceptional experience in the carriage was merely a muted rendition of the events unfolding around them.
It would seem the hare had the shadow of a dragon.
“I do have some insight, though I must confess the Earthrealmer did very little in the way of direct action. I suspect she has some unseen means of commanding and scrying through her artifices,” I said, “one which does not utilize magic as we know it.”
“Such a statement is heresy,” said my handler, “but such special circumstances are your reason for being. I will require you submit your memories for verification. What is your appraisal of the new realmer?”
“The girl is far more dangerous than a surface appraisal would suggest, though she prefers to conceal that power rather than utilize it out of a misplaced sense of compassion. Her people appear to have a boundless creative drive through which such artifices are birthed, though again it is misdirected towards more common applications. I believe that if properly tamed, this human animal may provide us with great works of art,” I said with a bow.
“I see. Does the girl know you work for us?” Asked my handler.
“She may harbour some suspicions, though did not voice them outright beyond concealing her knowledge,” I said, “though nothing significant. Provided our next meet is under believable circumstances such as a festival she should view me as cordial.”
“She has indeed proven clever,” conceded my handler, “very well, I will make arrangements for your paths to cross again. Perhaps I will arrange for her to be a contestant at the next inter-academy tournament. In the mean time, prepare your report and don’t wander far. This is a priority assignment.”
“As you wish, my lord,” I said with a bow and a smile.
Emma Booker had proved to be an interesting animal indeed, and I hoped our paths crossed again.

Look, I think the change was well intentioned, but today I realized why it is probably worse in some ways.
I was trying to level up Sissy (double XP, it's the best time right now) and a Johnny player joined and said "Damn" before the match started. As soon as the game started he told me he didn't want to help "farm a garbage Sissy" and left on the spot.
I noticed some other people too waiting until the match started to leave. If this is how people get around the penalty for quitting lobbies, I think this is far worse. Being left without a 3rd player really just ruins everything. I don't usually mind the wait, I have other things I can do while a match loads, but there's no point in said wait if a match is over before it even begins.
Really hope this is addressed at some point

Any data analysts/web sleuth programming geniuses out there among us?
Hey folks,
So this morning I had a bit of an epiphany. Unfortunately, it’s not something I perfectly understand well enough to act on it.
A few months ago I was listening to a podcast about how a team of investigative journalists discovered that an army of bots based out of Saudi Arabia took aim at Amber Heard online during the trial vs. Johnny Depp. First off; I don’t have a dog in that race and from what I saw during that trial I think it’s fair to say that that relationship was pretty fucked up so the idea that an army of Saudi bots tried to influence public opinion on Johnny Depp is at least conceivably possible. I remember personally taking Johnny Depps side during the trial but that podcast made me doubt whether I had just become victim to propaganda.
So what has this got to do with GME?
Well it got me thinking as to whether we had folks in our community who can analyse large volumes of data. Over the last week we have seen a huge influx of what appear to be shill bots on this sub. But one place this seems to have been more dramatic was Twitter (I can’t bring myself to refer to it as X). What if we could figure out a way to crowd source the collection of seemingly bot posts about GME, and see if there are any commonalities among them. The first question we could answer (although I think we all know the answer ourselves intuitively) is what percentage of these anti-GME posts are organic and what percentage weren’t? From there we could look to see if we could figure out where these are coming from. Over this saga we have proposed many villains in this sub; Mr Left, K Griffin, B Hwang, Archegos, Credit Suisse (by proxy of Archegos, now UBS. Then of course we have S Cohen, Vlad who robbed the hood, Apex Clearing, the DTCC etc etc etc.(I had to write names like this because when I tried to post the full names the post was auto-removed… suspicious much?) it’s practically impossible to figure out who is sitting with a massive net-short position on GameStop. If we were to identify who’s funding these bot farms, we could possibly figure out who it is that has the largest vested interest in controlling the narrative on GameStop.
I work as a product manager for a tech company and while I don’t know how to actually do anything technical, I kind of understand how you might go about a task like this if you had the right resources available to you. I will caveat that what I am about to say will show how limited my technical capabilities are, but nonetheless here goes; we would first need to collect all the posts, comments and tweets and associated accounts with negative sentiments about GameStop. I believe after that we would need to use some sort of analytics tool like Information Tracer dot com (referenced in the podcast as a tool used to identify such disinformation campaigns)
As I say I know sweet fuck all about how to do any of this. I do know though that our Ape Historian has been collecting info and posts from this sub for a long time. The main thing that currently seems out of reach is someone who can analyse large data sets and write algorithms to spot patterns in these accounts. For that we would need some sort of applied scientist who could perform such analysis. So with that said, do any of you know how to perform such analysis? I have to thing that among us there must be at least 1 person with these skills. I’d be happy to fund (within reason I’m a europoor) such a campaign if the right person came forward to work on this.
This is just an idea, hoping this strikes a cord with our community.
Buy Hold DRS

What’s good EthTrader fam and farmers,
3 days ago I made a short post on the top projects I am farming : https://www.reddit.com/ethtrades/Nxlvym6gHS
Even though I have been making farming posts for months, from time to time I still see beginners commenting on how to farm. Seems like not everyone is on board the farming train yet!
So this is a post for beginners on how to start farming across Layer 2s.
*Note that I have replaced the a word to ‘farming’ because Ruggit keeps locking my account if I say the forbidden word.
1) Increase transaction volume by making swaps on DEXes/bridges
This is the most important tip I’d say, for almost all projects transaction volume is one of the main criteria and the way to boost your volume is by making swaps or bridges on the blockchain.
So you need to: 1) Identify the top DEXes for the Layer 2 - for example, for Scroll I use ambient.finance and Izumi the most. Take note that Eth -> Weth swaps are not counted, so swap from Eth to a stablecoin and back to Eth.
Tips for choosing your DEX: You can compare the slippage between the DEXes by putting example 0.1 Eth (do not click swap) and see how many stablecoins each DEX will give you.
2) For bridging, I like to bridge to another layer 2 that you can farm (e.g Scroll to Base, or you do dual farming by swapping LINEA to Arbitrum using Stargate which utilises LayerZero which has future seasons of farming).
Let me give you a criteria of a 3 in 1 farming: When you make a bridge on Jumper, LINEA to Arbitrum , and select the Stargate option: You are farming 1) Jumper token , 2) ZRO token, and 3) LINEA all with a single swap. Now THAT is true efficiency !
2) Increase contract interactions/Dapp interactions
So this is another important criteria, usually farmers aim for at least 25 different contract interactions per Layer 2.
How to do it? Interact with more Dapps and also different tokens/NFTs per layer 2.
Giving an example:
1) There are more than 5-10 DEXes on Scroll. You may only use 1 or 2 of them because of slippage- but make one interaction on others (Syncswap/Sushi/SpaceFi) because each new DEX counts as a new contract interaction- you can swap just a very small amount on Dapps you ‘don’t like’
2) Cheap interactions: Buy cheap NFTs on element.market , use cheap protocols like dmail or gas.zip to increase contract interactions- don’t spam your transactions as you don’t want to be flagged though.
3) Increase number of unique months/weeks of transactions
Increasingly, projects are filtering out those with less than 2 months of contract interactions as more and more farmers join the space.
My tip is: Get your very first transaction in as soon as possible, even if it is a busy week for you to farm. This is for evidence of ‘record’ since the number of months starts counting from your first transaction.
After, try to make swaps once a week, at a minimum once a month for every project you are farming.
4) Add liquidity for multiplier
I’ve seen this to be a multiplier in more and more projects, in fact LINEA and Scroll now has a liquidity campaign.
There are risks of impermanent loss on many pools though. My tip is to minimise risk, join a single sided pool (e.g on Stargate you can just deposit Eth, no risk of impermanent loss) or join a stablecoin pool like USDC-USDT on a DEX.
5) Maximise efficiency by doing dual farming
Like above, I already gave you an example on how a single swap on Jumper gave a 3 in 1 farm.
Tip is to identify which Layer 2s and protocols you can farm and do your farming there.
This way, even if one of the project flunks on TGE you can spread your risk across many different projects . It’s fun to farm as many as possible anyway !
So that’s it fellow farmers and aspiring farmers. My top 5 tips to all beginners out there.
If you are new , I hope it breaks down the mystery on how farmers farm and you enjoyed this post. Good luck to everyone !

This is the second half of my list for Florida's execution roster. As stated in the first part, I split it into two halves in order to follow reddit's character count limitations. Link to part 1.
The currently 105 executed offenders, cases 53 to 105:
53. Aileen Wuornos (~1974-2002, lethal injection): Wuornos murdered 7 men between the ages of 47-65. She was a street prostitute that enticed her victims with promises of sexual favors. After a victim was entrapped, Wuornos shot them dead, and robbed them of their money and their vehicles. Although Wuornos initially claimed that she killed the victims in self defense, she later admitted that they were murdered for their valuables. Her criminal history was extensive, and she had several convictions for armed robbery, assault, DUIs, reckless discharge of firearms, and disorderly conduct. She was also accused of domestic violence by an ex husband, and he placed a restraining order on her within weeks of their marriage.
54. Linroy Bottoson (~1971-2002, lethal injection): In a robbery of a post office, Bottoson stole $14,000 in money orders and $100 in cash, and abducted the post mistress, 74 year old Catherine Alexander. After holding her captive for 3 days, Bottoson stabbed Alexander 16 times, and ran her over with his car. He had several robberies on his criminal record.
55. Amos King Jr. (~1972-2002, lethal injection): After he escaped from a minimum security prison, King broke into the home of 68 year old Natalie Brady and assaulted her. She was raped, stabbed, and savagely beaten in the attack. King then set her house on fire, and returned back to the prison. At his arrival, the prison counselor confronted him about his absence and bloodied clothing. He was stabbed 25 times by King, but managed to survive his injuries. Despite her injuries, Brady managed to crawl out of her burning home, but succumbed to blood loss shortly before help could arrive. King had a previous conviction for robbery.
56. Newton Slawson (1989-2003, lethal injection): Slawson went over to the home of the Wood family (consisting of parents, 23 year old Gerald and 21 year old Peggy, and their children, 4 year old Jennifer and 3 year old Glendon) to buy some cocaine. During an argument over the transaction, Slawson shot and killed Gerald, Jennifer, and Glendon, and wounded Peggy. Slawson then stabbed Peggy (who was 8 months pregnant) with such force that he tore her unborn child out of her womb.
57. Paul Hill (1994-2003, lethal injection): During an attack on an abortion clinic, Hill shot and killed John Britton, a 69 year old abortionist, and his bodyguard, 74 year old James Barrett. Britton’s wife, 68 year old June, was also wounded in the shooting. Hill was a hardline pro life activist and Christian fundamentalist, and saw ending abortion by any means necessary as his personal divine mission.
58. Johnny Robinson (~1980s-2004, lethal injection): Robinson and his teenage accomplice picked up 31 year old Beverly St. George when they found her broken down on the side of the road. They then raped St. George and shot her to death. He tried to claim that they had consensual relations and St. George was hit by an accidental discharge during intercourse. If Robinson's "recollection" was to be believed, he then shot her again to cover up an "accidental" shooting of a white woman. The courts weren't convinced by the defense, and the accomplice admitted that the murder was entirely deliberate and calculated from the beginning. Robinson had several rape convictions and accusations before St. George's murder.
59. John Blackwelder (~1970s-2004, lethal injection): While incarcerated for molesting a 10 year old boy, Blackwelder tied up his cellmate, 39 year old Raymond Wigley, under the alleged pretenses of a bondage session and strangled him to death with makeshift rope. According to Blackwelder, Wigley had been sexually harassing him, and he wanted to put a permeant end to the unwanted advances. Blackwelder had several sexual assault convictions dating back to the 1970s, and was also previously convicted for threatening former vice president Dan Quayle. His victim was the accomplice of another executed offender, John Marek, and was serving a life sentence for assisting him in the torture murder of a woman [for more details on Marek and Wigley's crimes, please see section 68] at the time of his own death.
60. Glen Ocha (1999-2005, lethal injection): Ocha picked up 28 year old Carol Skjerva from a bar and they had sex in his home. However, Skjerva allegedly made mocking remarks towards his genitals and threatened to tell her fiance of their encounter. In a drunken rage and under the influence of ecstasy, Ocha hung her with rope from his kitchen door.
61. Clarence Hill (1982-2006, lethal injection): During an attempted bank robbery with an accomplice, Hill engaged in a shootout with the responding policemen. One of the officers, 26 year old Stephen Taylor, was killed and another was wounded.
62. Arthur Rutherford (1985-2006, lethal injection): Rutherford was hired by a widow, 63 year old Stella Salamon, to do odd jobs around her home. He then drowned Salamon in her bathtub and tried to cash in a check of $2,000 from her account. Salamon's nude body was found with a broken arm, bruising all across her face, and three head wounds.
63. Danny Rolling (~1960s-2006, lethal injection): Rolling murdered a total of 8 people between the ages of 8-55. In 1989, Rolling stabbed 55 year old William Grissom, William’s 24 year old daughter Julie, and his 8 year old grandson Sean to death in their home. Julie’s body was ritualistically mutilated and posed during the attack. A year later, he shot his estranged father, 59 year old James. Although James survived, he was left permanently blind. Rolling then burglarized several student dorms in a week long rampage. Five students, 23 year old Tracy Paules, 23 year old Manuel Taboda, 18 year old Sonja Larson, 17 year old Christa Hoyt, and 17 year old Christina Powell, were bound, raped, and stabbed to death. Only Taboada was spared from any sexual abuse. As with Julia Grissom, Rolling posed the female victims into provocative positions and mutilated their bodies. Roiling decapitated Hoyt and placed her head on a cabinet shelf for the sole purpose of shocking witnesses stumbling across the scene. He had a long history of robberies, assaults, and voyeurism, and some of his earliest convictions occurred when he was a teenager.
64. Ángel Díaz (~1960s-2006, lethal injection): In his native Puerto Rico, Díaz stabbed an unidentified man, who was a director of a local drug rehabilitation center, 19 times while the victim was asleep. Díaz was sentenced for second degree murder, but he escaped after beating a guard near death, and fled to Florida. During his stay in Florida, Díaz and his accomplices robbed a strip club at gunpoint, and shot and killed the manager, 49 year old Joseph Nagy. After Nagy’s murder, he and his accomplices relocated themselves to Connecticut. However, they were arrested for a possession of illegal firearms charge. Díaz and 3 other inmates briefly managed to escape by beating up a guard and threatening another at knifepoint, but were quickly recaptured. After a cellmate testified that Díaz confessed to Nagy’s murder, he was deported back to Florida and sentenced to death. His execution sparked controversy, as it took him 34 minutes to succumb to the lethal drugs. Díaz’s other criminal convictions include shooting and injuring an officer during an armed robbery and several drug possession charges. Authorities also suspected him of being involved with several Puerto Rican nationalist insurgent groups.
65. Mark Schwab (1987-2008, lethal injection): Schwab lured 11 year old Junny Rios-Martinez into a motel room by posing as a photographer for a surfing magazine. He bound Rios-Martinez, anally penetrated him, and smothered the boy to death with a pillow. Schwab also had a conviction for the sexual battery of a 13 year old boy, and he was released after serving 3 out of an 8 year prison sentence months before Rios-Martinez's murder.
66. Richard Henyard (1993-2008, lethal injection): Henyard and his teenage accomplice carjacked 35 year old Dorothy Lewis, and her two daughters, 7 year old Jamilya and 3 year old Jasmine. The pair raped Dorothy, and shot and killed both of her daughters. Dorothy was also shot in the head, but was able to survive. Dorothy recounted that she tried praying for her and her children's safety, and Henyard taunted her by mockingly claiming to be Satan himself.
67. Wayne Tompkins (~1980s-2008, lethal injection): While helping his girlfriend move from their home, Tompkins made sexual advances on her 15 year old daughter, Lisa DeCarr. When she rejected him, Tompkins raped and strangeld her to death with a bathrobe, and tried to report DeCarr as a runaway. Tompkins also had several sexual assault convictions and accusations prior to the murder. One incident involved him abducting and abusing a gas station clerk.
68. John Marek (~1980s-2008, lethal injection): Marek and his accomplice, Raymond Wigley, picked up 47 year old Adela Simmons. They forced Simmons to perform oral sex on them, burned her fingers and pubic hairs, and strangled her to death with a bandana. The pair then dumped her body near a beach. Marek was sentenced to death for Simmons' murder, while Wigley was given a life sentence. While in prison, Wigley himself was strangled to death by the above mentioned John Blackwelder.
69. Martin Grossman (1984-2010, lethal injection): Grossman was given probation after a spree involving the burglary of an ex girlfriend's home and stealing cars. While out shooting a stolen handgun with a friend, they were confronted by Margaret Park, a 26 year old wildlife ranger. Wanting to avoid being arrested and put back into prison for violating his parole, Grossman and his friend attacked Park with a flashlight. They wrestled her service pistol away from her and shot and killed Park with it. Due to Grossman being Jewish, his death sentence outraged several Jewish organizations across the globe, and they petitioned ceaselessly for his clemency.
70. Manuel Valle (1978-2011, lethal injection): While driving a stolen car, Valle was pulled over by Louis Pena, a 41 year old police officer, for a traffic violation. In the confrontation, Valle shot Pena and his partner. Although Pena was killed in the shooting, his partner's life was saved by a bullet proof vest.
71. Oba Chandler (~1960s-2011, lethal injection): Chandler enticed a woman, 36 year old Joan Rogers, and her two daughters, 17 year old Michelle and 14 year old Christe, with the promise of a boat ride. On board, he bound the family with rope and raped all three of them. Chandler then tied concrete blocks around Joan and her daughters' necks and tossed them into the ocean to drown. He also raped and strangled 20 year old Ivelisse Berrios–Beguerisse after abducting her from a mall, and was linked to the murder by a 2014 DNA test 3 years after his execution. Chandler was an inveterate sexual predator with a very long criminal history, and was first arrested for car theft in his early teens. Many of his other crimes include several convictions of armed robbery, burglary, rape, counterfeiting, and kidnapping. In one incident, he broke into a couple’s house, and sexually assaulted the wife in front of her husband. One surviving victim, a 24 year old Canadian tourist, helped investigators tie Chandler to the Rogers’ murders with her reports.
72. Robert Waterhouse (~1966-2012, lethal injection): In 1966, Waterhouse snuck into the home of 77 year old Ella Carter, and raped and strangled her to death. He was paroled after serving 8 years of a life sentence. A few years later, Waterhouse picked up 29 year old Deborah Kammerer from a bar and assaulted her on a nearby beach. He stabbed and violated Kammerer with a broken bottle, shoved a tampon down her throat, and drowned her in the ocean waters.
73. David Gore (1981-2012, lethal injection): Gore and his cousin abducted and murdered 4 teenage girls (17 year old Ying Hua Ling, 17 year old Lynn Eilliot, 14 year old Angelica LaVallee, 14 year old Barbara Byer) and 2 grown women (48 year old Hsiang Huang Ling and 35 year old Judith Daley). The victims were kidnapped through force, picked up while hitchhiking, or tricked into thinking that Gore was a police officer detaining them. They were then tied up, raped, and shot or strangled to death. The cousins dismembered the bodies in their attempts to destroy them and buried the scattered remains in shallow graves. Two of their victims, Ying Hua Ling and Hsiang Huang Ling, were a mother and daughter pair of Taiwanese immigrants, and the cousins murdered them together. A 7th victim, 14 year old friend of Eilliot, was also abducted and sodomized, but she managed to escape with Eilliot's help.
74. Manuel Pardo Jr. (1986-2012, lethal injection): Pardo was a corrupt cop heavily involved in the drug trade. After his department fired him for his abuse of power and suspected tampering of investigations, Pardo went on a crime spree. He shot and killed at least 9 men and women in robberies and interpersonal disputes. The victims he murdered in robberies were 39 year old Ulpiano Ledo, 37 year old Luis Robledo, 33 year old Mario Amador, and 28 year old Roberto Alons. In every robbery incident, he stole the victims’ credit cards. Pardo killed 28 year old Fara Quintero in an argument over a ring he pawned to her and 30 year old Sara Musa for refusing his demands of buying him a VCR set with a credit card stolen from one of his previous robberies. Another victim, Michael Millot, a 38 year old Haitian refugee that took up work as a gunsmith, was slain out of Pardo’s fears of him being a police informant. His last murders were 40 year old Ramon Alvero, a drug dealer that he work for, and Alvaro’s girlfriend, 38 year old Daisy Ricard. Pardo turned on the couple after Alvaro stiffed him of a meeting. He shot Alvaro dead, but Padro’s gun jammed when he tried to shoot Ricard as well. As he was beating Ricard to death with his gun, it discharged and hit Pardo’s foot. On death row, Pardo tried to fashion himself as a vigilante trying to rid Florida of all drug related crimes.
75. Larry Mann (~1970s-2012, lethal injection): Mann ambushed 10 year old Elisa Nelson while she was biking from school to a dentist appointment. He raped Nelson and beat her to death with a pipe. Authorities also initially suspected Mann in the murders of several girls in the area, such as 16 year old Janie Sanders and 13 year old Rose Levandoski, but the current thinking is that another (still unknown) predator was likely responsible. Although he had convictions against adult women, Mann was a pedophile with a history of mostly preying on young girls.
76. Elmer Carroll (~1972-2012, lethal injection): Carroll broke into the room of 10 year old Christine McGowan. He raped and strangled the girl to death, tucked the body underneath the bedsheets, and stole her stepfather's construction truck. McGowan's body discovered was by her stepfather when he came to check on her. At the time of the murder, Carroll had two separate convictions (including one against his then 5 year old niece) for child molestation and was first accused of rape at the age of 16.
77. William Van (~1971-2013, lethal injection): Poyck Van Poyck and another man, Frank Valdez, ambushed a prison van that their incarcerated friend was being transported in with the intent of freeing him. The pair shot and killed a guard, 40 year old Fred Griffis and wounded another. Despite overtaking the van, they were forced to retreat without their friend with the arrival of police reinforcements. Both were captured after a brief shootout with the police and were given death sentences for Griffis’ murder. The case sparked controversy when Valdez was beaten to death by other prison guards in his cell. The officers involved were all fired but acquitted for murder in their trials. Van Poyck had several convictions of armed robbery on his record.
78. John Ferguson (~1960s-2013, lethal injection): Ferguson was the mastermind of the Carol City massacre that his above mentioned accomplices, Marvin Francois and Beauford White, participated in. He also committed a series of murders on his own. Two of his other victims, 17 year old Brian Glenfeldt and 17 year old Belinda Worley, were a couple that were ambushed in the parking lot of an ice cream shop. Ferguson raped Worley, shot her and Glenfeldt dead, and ran off with her jewelry and Glenfeldt’s wallet. Another couple, 82 year old Katherine and 75 year old Raymond Perry, were assaulted by Ferguson in their motel room, robbed, and shot dead execution style. Authorities also believe that Ferguson was responsible for the murders of James Ward, a 40 year old runaway from a mental institution, and Joseph Walters (age unknown), but was never convicted of them in court. Ferguson had a troubled upbringing, was stealing cars at the age of 13, and convicted for the attempted murder of an officer. Due to allegations of him being a schizophrenic, his execution was delayed numerous times, which is why he was put to death decades after his accomplices.
79. Marshall Gore (1988-2013, lethal injection): Gore abducted and murdered two women, 30 year old Robyn Novick and 19 year old Susan Roark. Both women were last seen in his company, and they were raped, beaten, and stabbed to death. He also carjacked 32 year old Tina Coralis while she was driving with her 2 year old son Jimmy. Gore raped Tina, beat her with a rock, slit her throat, dumped her on the side of the road, and drove off with her car while Jimmy was still in it. Tina survived the attack and notified the police about her kidnapped son and stolen car. The police were able to rescue Jimmy unharmed and capture Gore without incident.
80. William Happ (~1980s-2013, lethal injection): Happ dragged 21 year old Angela Crowley out of her own car window in a convenience store parking lot. He anally raped and strangled Crowley to death with her pants. A corner's report mentioned that Crowley received over 20 blows to her head during the assault. Happ had several convictions of armed robbery, one of which pertained to an abduction incident.
81. Darius Kimbrough (1991-2013, lethal injection): Kimbrough climbed into the apartment window of 28 year old Denise Collin with the help of a ladder. He raped and repeatedly slammed her head against the wall. She was found bloodied and nude by the paramedics called to the scene. Collin died of her injuries in the hospital a day after the attack. Her murder went unsolved until samples of Kimbrough’s DNA were collected from another one of his rapes. With the presence of additional pubic hairs found in Collin’s room, at least two other men were also certainly involved, but they remain at large to this day.
82. Thomas Knight (~1960s-2013, lethal injection): Knight began his string of murders by abducting his former employer, 64 year old Sydney Gans, and Sydney's wife, 60 year old Lillian. After her forced them to withdraw $50,000 from their bank accounts, Knight shot the Gans' dead. He was apprehended and, but he managed to escape from jail while awaiting trial. While on the run, Knight gunned down a clerk, 54 year old William Culpepper, while holding up a liquor store, and $640 from the cash register. A month later, Knight was recaptured following an armed standoff with police, and sentenced to death for the Gan killings. On death row, he stabbed a correctional officer, 48 year old Richard Burke, to death with a sharpened spoon over the prison allegedly barring him from seeing his mother. Knight had numerous theft and burglary convictions that date back to when he was 9 years old.
83. Juan Chavez (1995-2014, lethal injection): Chavez accosted 9 year old Jimmy Ryce when the boy was dropped off at a stop by a school bus, and abducted him at gunpoint. He took Ryce to a trailer on his employers' property and raped him. When Ryce tried to signal a passing helicopter for help, Chavez shot him in the back of the head, and muffled his cries as he died. The body was then decapitated and dismembered, and Chavez buried the remains near his trailer.
84. Paul Howell (~1990s-2014, lethal injection): Howell was part of a drug smuggling gang. One of the members had a falling out with the ring and made an agreement with law enforcement to testify against them. Howell constructed a microwave bomb to assassinate the witness in her home, and he assigned an associate to carry out the hit. As he was transporting the bomb to its intended destination, the associate was pulled over and detained by deputies. While being processed, the bomb detonated prematurely, and killed a deputy, 35 year old James Fulford, Jr.
85. Robert Henry (1987-2014, lethal injection): As part of his plan to assault the gas station that he worked at, Henry tricked his co workers, 53 year old Phyllis Harris and 35 year old Janet Thermidor, into thinking that a robber was holding him hostage. He duped the women into allowing themselves to be tied up and gagged, as Henry claimed to them that the fictitious "robber" was forcing him to do it. Both women were beaten with hammers as Henry ransacked the station’s store. After he stole a total of $1,269 from the register, he poured gasoline all over the building, and set it on fire. Thermidor and Harris were burned alive in the blaze and died of their injures, but Thermidor survived long enough to identify Henry as the assailant.
86. Robert Hendrix (1990-2014, lethal injection): To prevent his cousin, 25 year old Elmer Scott Jr., from testifying against him in a then upcoming burglary trail, Hendrix broke into the home that he shared with his wife, 18 year old Susan, with an accomplice. He shot Susan and Elmer, beat them with the butt of his rifle, and slashed their throats. In the case that he was about to be tried for, Elmer and Hendrix burglarized a home together, and Elmer agreed to testify against him in exchange for a reduced sentence.
87. John Henry (~1975-2014, lethal injection): In 1975, Henry got into an argument with his first wife, 28 year old Patricia Roddy, while they were driving with her daughters. Henry pulled over and stabbed Patricia to death in front of her children. After he plead guilty, Henry was given a 15 year sentence for second degree murder, and was released in 1983 after serving 8. Shortly after his release, he married 28 year old Suzanne Overstreet. As what happened with his first wife, he fatally stabbed Suzanne during an argument in 1985. He then took his stepson, 4 year old Eugene Christian, to a chicken farm and stabbed him to death as well. Henry also had several convictions for the possession of drugs and illegal firearms.
88. Eddie Davis (~1980s-2014, lethal injection): Davis kidnapped his ex girlfriend's daughter, 11 year Kimberly Waters, from her home and gagged her with a rag. He took the girl to a trailer that he used to live in, and raped and strangled her to death. His criminal activity before the murder included several arrests for burglary and autotheft.
89. Chadwick Banks (1992-2014, lethal injection): Banks shot his wife, 30 year old Cassandra, in the head while she was sleeping on their couch. He then crept into the room of his stepdaughter, 10 year old Melody Cooper, and sexually assaulted her. Melody was also shot dead during the abuse.
90. Johnny Kormondy (~1989-2014, lethal injection): Kormondy and his two accomplices invaded a house that Gary McAdams, a 38 year old banker, shared with his wife, 38 year old Cecilia. The couple were ambushed after they returned home from a high school reunion. Gary was shot and killed by Kormondy, while Cecilia was forced to orally copulate the other intruders. Several items were stolen in the robbery, but my sources didn’t disclose any specifics. Kormondy had several previous convictions of robberies and auto thefts, and the earliest occurred when he was 14.
91. Jerry Correll (1985-2015, lethal injection): Correll shot and killed his ex wife, 25 year old Susan, their daughter, 5 year old Tuesday, Susan's sister, 29 year old Marybeth Jones, and their mother, 58 year old Mary Lou Hines. All four victims were murdered in a home they shared together.
92. Oscar Bolin (~1977-2015, lethal injection): Bolin was sentenced to death for the abductions and murders of 26 year old Teri Matthews, 25 year old Natalie Holley, and 17 year old Stephanie Collins. All 3 victims were kidnapped while they were getting off from work, raped, and killed in beating and stabbing attacks. He raped and strangled a fourth victim, 30 year old Deborah Stowe, to death in Texas, but wasn't charged due to already facing the death penalty in Florida. Bolin also took part in the non fatal abduction and gang rape of a waitress in Ohio, was charged for kidnapping his girlfriend (which were later dropped by the courts), and had several theft convictions that started when he was 15.
93. Mark Asay (1987-2017, lethal injection): Asay shot and killed a black man, 34 year old Robert Booker, during a racially charged fight that he picked at a bar. After Booker's murder, Asay, his brother, and their friend went cruising for prostitutes. They encountered a cross dressing sex worker, 26 year old Robert McDowell, they were acquainted with and picked him up. McDowell was also shot dead by Asay when they got into an argument over payment for an oral sex act.
94. Michael Lambrix (1983-2017, lethal injection): While intoxicated, Lambrix beat one of his friends, 35 year old Clarence Moore, to death with a tire iron, and fatally strangled another friend, 19 year old Aleisha Bryant, with a t-shirt in their trailer. He was previously arrested for welfare fraud and was detained for an unspecified "unrelated charge" during the murder investigation.
95. Patrick Hannon (1991-2017, lethal injection): 27 year old Brandon Snider vandalized the bedroom of his ex girlfriend while she was away on vacation. The ex girlfriend's brother was friends with Hannon, and he convinced him to launch a revenge attack on Snider with the help of another friend. They broke into Snider's apartment, stabbed him, and slit his throat. Snider's roommate, 28 year old Robert Carter, witnessed the murder, and tried hiding underneath his bed. Hannon dragged Carter out and shot him to death.
96. Eric Branch (1991-2018, lethal injection): In 1993, Branch abducted and carjacked 21 year old Susan Morris. He raped, beat, and strangled her to death, and then buried Morris' body in a shallow grave near a nature trail. Branch used Morris' car to flee back to his native Indiana, but was captured for a traffic violation. A registered sex offender, Branch had previous convictions for sexually abusing a 14 year old girl, and raped an unidentified woman 10 days before Morris' murder.
97. José Jiménez (~1990-2018, lethal injection): Jiménez fatally strangled Marie Debas, a 32 year old French woman who was allegedly in a relationship with a Medellin cartel drug runner, during a burglary of her apartment. Two years later, he burglarized the home of 63 year old Phyllis Minas, and stabbed her to death.
98. Bobby Long (~1990-2018, lethal injection): As the “Classified Ad Rapist”, Long raped over 50 women. He was given that epithet due to contacting and luring his victims through classified ads. After one of his victims sought charges that initially convicted him (though were later dropped on appeals), Long’s pattern of sexual violence escalated to murder. Long murdered at least 10 women and teenage girls between the ages of 18-28 and non fatally assaulted a 33 year old woman, Linda Nuttall, and a 17 year old girl, Lisa McVey. The victims were picked up through hitchhiking, forcibly grabbed while walking alone on streets, or were prostitutes lured with promises of payment for sexual favors. Long’s sparing of his last victim, McVey, provided to be his downfall, as it was her meticulously detailed reports that led law enforcement to him.
99. Gary Bowles (~1970s-2019, lethal injection): Bowles lured 6 men, 72 year old Milton Bradley, 59 year old John Roberts, 47 year old Walter Hinton, 47 year old Alverson, 39 year old David Jarman, and 38 year old Albert Morris by prostituting himself to them. Once a victim was enticed, Bowles strangled them, and stole their credit cards. He also had several convictions for armed robbery, hospitalized his stepfather in his early teens, and served a 6 year prison sentence for sexually assaulting his girlfriend.
100. Donald Dillbeck (~1979-2023, lethal injection): In 1979, Dillbeck stole a car, and was pulled over by a deputy, 31 year old Dwight Hall. After a prolonged chase and scuffle, Dillbeck shot and killed Hall with his own gun. He was then given a life sentence for Hall's murder. Dillbeck escaped from prison in 1990, and stabbed 44 year old Robbie Vann to death while trying to seize her car. The pursuing officers recaptured him shortly after the killing, and he was sentenced to death for Vann's murder.
101. Louis Gaskin (~1986-2023, lethal injection): Gaskin started his burglary spree by breaking into the home of couple, 56 year old Robert and 55 year old Georgette Sturmfels. He shot them both dead, and stole their lamp, VCR set, and some jewelry and money. His second target was a house owned by 38 year old Joseph Rector and his wife Mary (age unknown). Although Gaskin shot Joseph, the couple both managed to escape him with their lives. Due to him wearing a ninja costume as a disguise during the robberies, he was dubbed as the "Ninja Killer" by media outlets. Gaskin also had a few robbery convictions at the time of the murders.
102. Darryl Barwick (1983-2023, lethal injection): Barwick stalked 24 year old Rebecca Wendt as she was sunbathing in a pool, followed her to her apartment, and forced himself inside to rob it. He stabbed Wendt 37 times and raped her. At the age of 16, Barwick had committed a similar act of rape and burglary against an unidentified woman, and was released from prison 3 months before Wendt's murder.
103. Duane Owen (1984-2023, lethal injection): Owen raped 14 year old Karen Slattery while burglarizing a home she was babysitting at, and stabbed her to death. A few months later, Owen burglarized another home owned by 38 year old Georgianna Worden. She was sexually assaulted and fatally beaten with a hammer. He was captured while breaking into another house on the same day, and confessed to Worden and Slattery's murders
104. James Barnes (~1988-2023, lethal injection): In 1988, Barnes invaded the home of 41 year old Patricia Miller, and tied her up with her own shoelaces. She was sexually assaulted, beaten to death with a hammer, and Barnes set her bed on fire to destroy any evidence of the crime. 9 years later, Barnes strangled his estranged wife, 44 year old Linda, to death in her home, and stuffed the body into a closet. He stayed in the house until he was arrested by police officers. Barnes also admitted to the shooting deaths of Chester Wetmore, a 14 year old runaway, and Brenda Fletcher, a 50 year old prostitute, but was never charged for their killings. According to Barnes, he killed both victims for stealing from him.
105. Michael Zack III (1996-2023, lethal injection): Zack befriended two women, 40 year old Laura Rosillo and 31 year old Ravonne Smith, while hanging out at bars. He lured Rosillo to the beach with the promise of drugs, and assaulted her with a tire iron. Rosillo was raped, strangled to death, and he buried her body in a sand dune. A day later, he tricked Smith into letting him inside her house. She was smashed in the head with a glass bottle, raped, and stabbed to death. Zack then fled with her car, television set, VCR, and her purse. On a different note, when he was a child, Zack’s older sister dismembered their mother with an ax over an argument regarding the sister’s boyfriend. He used that story to gain the sympathy of his victims. His sister (who was simply institutionalized rather then incarcerated for the murder) also testified about their stepfather’s alleged abuse of them at his trial, though the prosecutors debunked most of her stories.

Hey ladies! I’m a tall, nerdy guy looking for an equally nerdy woman to chat with and see what happens. I am open to short or long-term, but I am strictly monogamous. I don’t have kids, and don’t want any of my own. Not religious, either. Very left-leaning politically and open to women of any race. I’m hoping for nightly voice calls, movie nights, things like that. If local, even better! I want to make you smile so much your cheeks hurt, and your heart to flutter. Nothing makes me happier than making a lady giggle!
I value the simple (and nerdy!) things in life, and would rather find my person to spend my life with rather than living a life of comfort and privilege. My dream is to open an animal sanctuary or hobby farm that could double as a human therapy center. I am looking for a long-term, monogamous relationship with a woman within a few years of my age and within a few time zones of EST. Curly hair, freckles or dimples get you to the front of the line! I’ve been having a rough week, so please send me your pet pictures!
For work right now I’m in a volunteer position at a local food bank where I socialize with seniors and the food-insecure and basically serve as a ‘Johnny on the spot’ helping with odd jobs, tech support, stuff like that. I also help with a cat rescue organization where I have fostered cats and do some admin work. I do freelance editing on the side, and would love to have some of my own work published in the future!
‘Hey’ is for horses!

Hey ladies! I’m a tall, nerdy guy looking for an equally nerdy woman to chat with and see what happens. I am open to short or long-term, but I am strictly monogamous. I don’t have kids, and don’t want any of my own. Not religious, either. Very left-leaning politically and open to women of any race. I’m hoping for nightly voice calls, movie nights, things like that. If local, even better! I want to make you smile so much your cheeks hurt, and your heart to flutter. Nothing makes me happier than making a lady giggle!
I value the simple (and nerdy!) things in life, and would rather find my person to spend my life with rather than living a life of comfort and privilege. My dream is to open an animal sanctuary or hobby farm that could double as a human therapy center. I am looking for a long-term, monogamous relationship with a woman within a few years of my age and within a few time zones of EST. Curly hair, freckles or dimples get you to the front of the line! I’ve been having a rough week, so please send me your pet pictures!
For work right now I’m in a volunteer position at a local food bank where I socialize with seniors and the food-insecure and basically serve as a ‘Johnny on the spot’ helping with odd jobs, tech support, stuff like that. I also help with a cat rescue organization where I have fostered cats and do some admin work. I do freelance editing on the side, and would love to have some of my own work published in the future!
‘Hey’ is for horses!

Hey ladies! I’m a tall, nerdy guy looking for an equally nerdy woman to chat with and see what happens. I am open to short or long-term, but I am strictly monogamous. I don’t have kids, and don’t want any of my own. Not religious, either. Very left-leaning politically and open to women of any race. I’m hoping for nightly voice calls, movie nights, things like that. If local, even better! I want to make you smile so much your cheeks hurt, and your heart to flutter. Nothing makes me happier than making a lady giggle!
I value the simple (and nerdy!) things in life, and would rather find my person to spend my life with rather than living a life of comfort and privilege. My dream is to open an animal sanctuary or hobby farm that could double as a human therapy center. I am looking for a long-term, monogamous relationship with a woman within a few years of my age and within a few time zones of EST. Curly hair, freckles or dimples get you to the front of the line! I’ve been having a rough week, so please send me your pet pictures!
For work right now I’m in a volunteer position at a local food bank where I socialize with seniors and the food-insecure and basically serve as a ‘Johnny on the spot’ helping with odd jobs, tech support, stuff like that. I also help with a cat rescue organization where I have fostered cats and do some admin work. I do freelance editing on the side, and would love to have some of my own work published in the future!
‘Hey’ is for horses!

TL;DR: A collision shop did not do the work they charged me and my insurance for and compromised the integrity of my car, despite having multiple chances to fix it.
This may be a little lengthy. I (20f) hit a deer on Feb. 21st. This is my first accident and/or incident with the car (2013 Honda Accord, if that helps) of any kind. The poor thing busted my radiator and I was leaking coolant. I called State Farm, got their recommendation on a collision shop, then towed my car there. The shop had my car for over a month (Mar. 21st was the estimated completion date, yet my car was not actually ready until Mar. 26th), and had very poor communication with us throughout the entire duration. One $6k bill later, I finally go get my car and it was missing a very obvious cosmetic detail. They tell us they’re out of that specific color tape, and they’ll let us know when it’s in. It takes two weeks until we hear anything back from the shop. During these two weeks, I was running a quick errand and I noticed I couldn’t get my car to start to drive home. I assume I need a new battery, and have a friend jump me. That was the only thing out of normal that I immediately noticed. About a week later, I take my car to the collision shop for said cosmetic detail. About 15mins go by, and a guy comes to ask if I’ve been having any problems with the vehicle. I say yes, mention that I think I need a new battery, and he said the car won’t start again. He leaves to attempt to jump it, then comes back again about 10mins later and says he tried jumping it from a battery and from another car (using my personal jumper cables in the trunk ?) and nothing will get it to start. He told me he doesn’t think its the battery, but instead sounds like I have no gas yet I had half of a tank. He says him and a couple guys are going to wheel my car in front of their gates so that they can close, and basically tells me I’m on my own and to have a great day. I go back inside to call my mom and figure out what I should do for no longer than FIVE minutes when the same guy comes back in and tells me he got my car to start. As we’re walking, he’s telling me that he messed with the fuel line to see if gas was getting to my engine (it was) and when he “put it back”, that’s when my car started. I don’t know much about the inner workings of engines but even then it didn’t sound right to me. We get to my car and I notice there’s a smell coming from my engine (not burning, not chemical, just different). He doesn’t say anything about it so I assume it’s okay, then go on my way. As I’m pulling into my driveway, I start to see little tendrils of smoke just briefly coming from my hood. I have my stepdad come look at my engine, and he starts cursing like a sailor! There are bolts, screws, and brackets missing left and right. My radiator support, which they charged us for a new one as well as the labor of installing it, was in fact not new and instead had donned a plastic piece on top to obscure the damage from view. Said plastic piece was not secured into my car at all, just placed. I still had my old (and damaged) core support. My inner fender liner on the passenger side did not have a single bolt or screw securing it ; you could shake it by hand. My radiator was secured into my car by a single bolt (you could shake that too), and there looked to be evidence of another (or the same?) coolant leak. And this is just upon first glance! The integrity of my car was obviously impaired, and I could have been significantly more injured if I had gotten into another accident since I did not have full shock absorption, which is my biggest grievance. We took pictures of everything we noticed and immediately got in contact with State Farm. Upon rebounding with the collision shop later, the manager (who was the same guy who couldn’t get my car to start) did not look AT ALL surprised. He 1. told us he would bring the car back and look at everything himself 2. said he was “having problems with one of their technicians” and 3. told my stepdad that he took the gas tank out of the vehicle (where he told me fuel line), and said the car started when he put it back. Again, there was about a five minute duration from when I left him with my car to when he came in and told me it started. The shop has my car for another two and a half weeks or so, then we get it sent to a Honda dealership for a third party inspection. They discover that there were holes in my air condenser, my front suspension wasn’t secured properly, my splash guard was missing, my alignment was off, and I still had barely any coolant. Another $2.5k later (now an $8.5k repair. from a deer.) and I have the car as of May 16th. What should my next steps be in reporting the collision shop? Is it worth suing? These people sent me away three times in an unsafe vehicle with no problem; how do I fire back at them? Any advice helps, and I can post photos if needed. Thanks!

As the title reads, I have had a total of 50 jobs in my entire life and have only been fired from two. The reason for such a high number is that I've worked multiple jobs at once, i.e. six while I went to grad school.
Below is the list of all the jobs I've had in order and the corresponding age of when I worked them. * denotes jobs that I've been fired from. I also count promotions/departmental moves as separate job experiences.

• Babysitter (9-17)
• Personal assistant to a lawyer (14)
• Cashier at a local pizza place (14)
• Cashier at Kroger (14-15)
• Sacker at Kroger (15)
• Cashier at Cici's Pizza (16)*
• CashieDrive Thru Attendant at Taco Bell (16-17)
• Cashier at Boston Market (17)
• Internship: administrative assistant at an insurance company (18)
• Photo Department Technician at Walgreens (17-19)
• Server at Montana's (19)
• Cocktail waitress at a strip club (19)
• Server at Johnny Carino's (19-20)
• Cashier at Barnes and Noble's (20)
• Groomer's Assistant at Petco (20-21)
• Pizza chef at a local pizza place (21)
• Shipping manager at a local photo development business (21-22)
• Contract sports and event photographer (21-22)
• Sublimation manager at a local photo development business (21-22)
• Front desk receptionist at Biscuits and Bath (22-23)
• Personal assistant to a professional fashion photographer (22-23)
• Front desk receptionist at 24 Hour Fitness (23-25)
• Part-time nanny for two children (24-25)
• Administrative Clerk at a tech firm (25-26)
• Financial forecast modeler at a tech firm (26)
• ----International travel-------
• Farm hand on an olive farm in France (26)
• Server at Nigaloo Resorts in Australia (26)
• Bartender at Nigaloo Resorts in Australia (26)
• Server at the Carlton Paragon in Australia (26)
• Farm hand on a zucchini farm in Australia (26)
• Receptionist at a physical therapy clinic (27)*
• Chef at a local pizza shop (27-28)
• Shift manager at a local pizza shop (28-29)
• Delivery driver at a local pizza shop (29-31)
• Research assistant at a local university (27-31)
• Lab instructor for undegraduate courses at a local university (28-31)
• Backpacking instructor at a local university (28-31)
• Avid tutor for middle and highschool classses (28-31)
• Catering server at a local catering company (28-31)
• Brand ambassador for a marketing firm (28-31)
• Paid model (28-31)
• Amazon flex delivery driver (28-31)
• Lyft driver (31-on/off ongoing)
• Contract ecologist for high-elevation bee surveys (31-32)
• Contract ecologist for biodiversity studies (31-32)
• Contract ecologist for a cultural resources firm (31-32)
• Ecologist/wetland scientist at an engineering firm (32-34)
• Ecologist/deputy project manager at a boutique environmental firm (34-36)
• Ecologist/technical expert at a mid-size national engineering firm (36-38)
• Ecologist/project manager at an engineering firm (38-current)

In addition to my work experience, I have multiple years of experience volunteering with numerous NPs as a technical expert and scientist.
Interested in learning more - AMA!

Hey ladies! I’m a tall, nerdy guy looking for an equally nerdy woman to chat with and see what happens. I am open to short or long-term, but I am strictly monogamous. No kids, and don’t want any of my own. Not religious, either. Very left-leaning politically and open to women of any race. I’m hoping for nightly voice calls, movie nights, things like that. If local, even better! I want to make you smile so much your cheeks hurt, and your heart to flutter. Nothing makes me happier than making a lady giggle!
I value the simple (and nerdy!) things in life, and would rather find my person to spend my life with rather than living a life of comfort and privilege. My dream is to open an animal sanctuary or hobby farm that could double as a human therapy center. I am looking for a long-term, monogamous relationship with a woman within a few years of my age and within a few time zones of EST. Curly hair, freckles or dimples get you to the front of the line! I’ve been having a rough week, so please send me your pet pictures!
For work right now I’m in a volunteer position at a local food bank where I socialize with seniors and the food-insecure and basically serve as a ‘Johnny on the spot’ helping with odd jobs, tech support, stuff like that. I also help with a cat rescue organization where I have fostered cats and do some admin work. I do freelance editing on the side, and would love to have some of my own work published in the future!
‘Hey’ is for horses!

Is this available on the Network / Peacock? I'm particularly interest in the mid-80s with the Nightmares, the Armstrongs, the Fullers, Tommy / Johnny Rich... I grew up in this era going to live shows at the Houston County Farm Center and would love to relive some of those old angles.

Hello EthTrader farmers,
I’m making this post as unfortunately the airdrop column been very barren of late, it’s very sad for me to see this state on EthTrader after a flurry of farming activity earlier this year.
So today I have to push out an airdrop guide, and as the title says - this is an informal one but hope you guys still enjoy this one.

1. SCROLL

This is personally my number 1 layer 2 to farm (since the rest in the title is near TGE), and has been one of my top 5 for a long time. And all rumours I’ve seen on crypto twitter says there’s still a few months to farm.
So keep pushing those transactions! Interact with different DEXes (Izumi, Ambient, Syncswap, Sushi my top choices) and bridges (Jumper, Owlto, merkly hyperlane) - every single week at least once a week - and I assure you, you won’t regret it.
Oh, and don’t forget to provide liquidity on Stakestone for their liquidity campaign! (not sure if I have already created a guide for that but you can search that up)

1. Hyperlane

This one immediately came to mind as well.
Why? You can farm across 3 chains (EVM, Cosmos Wallet and Solana wallet) - 3 in one farming!
This is an interoperability play and is the third biggest behind Wormhole and LayerZero, and has less eyes on it - hopefully if you get involved early, you will EAT GOOD.
I have 2 earlier guides on EthTrader for Hyperlane, bullish on this!

1. Liquidswap (Pontem)

Before LayerZero announced their snapshot, I had created a Liquidswap/Pontem 5 in 1 farming post.
Yes, farming 5 airdrops at once on Liquidswap!
Now it is ‘only’ 4 in 1. Lol!
My guide is up, 5 in 1, 4 in 1 it is ludicrously efficient airdrop farming. I wouldn’t fade on this if you are a farmer !

1. Jumper

This is the number 1 bridge I am currently farming.
If you have transactions earlier, keep pushing those buttons!
The drawback is that TGE may be 30th June so there might not be too much time on this if your history of using Jumper is very limited.

1. Berachain/Monad

This one is a toss up, because I feel there is not enough information available but they have the biggest funding.
Berachain has huge 100m funding, slated for Q3 launch and is in TestNet - my advice is push once a week transactions for their Testnet.
Monad has 250m funding, absolutely huge. There’s still no details on how to farm this but this could absolutely be the next big thing. I’ve seen rumours saying Wormhole staking might qualify you - but then the question is, how much $W should you stake to qualify in the first place ??
We can expect more criteria on farming Monad in the coming weeks, I might make a guide if I have information.
So that’s it my folks! I think unfortunately all the downvotes and repost spam has scared everyone else off making airdrop posts, but I hope everyone enjoys this post and some are encouraged to produce more OC content.
Good luck to everyone farming, may the wife changing gains be in our favour !!

“Your art was the prettiest art of all the art.” -Roy Anderson, The Office
“When one door closes, fortune will usually open another.” -Fernando de Rojas
🎵 “HEE HEE!” 🎵-Michael Jackson
Have a great weekend!
AROUND TOWN

• Art-a-Whirl (Various locations in NE - All Weekend)
• Farm Babies (MN Zoo - All Weekend)
• Liquid Zoo (Bauhaus Brew Labs - All Weekend)
• Beautiful: The Carole King Musical (Chanhassen Dinner Theatres - All Weekend)
• MJ The Musical (Orpheum - All Weekend)
• Love and Other Things that Ruined My Life (Dudley Riggs Theatre - All Weekend)
• Sadie Barnette: The New Eagle Creek Saloon (Walker Art Center - All Weekend)
• Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow (MN History Center - All Weekend)
• The Spitfire Grill (Hennepin Avenue Church - All Weekend)
• Blended (Harmony): The Kim Loo Sisters (History Theatre - All Weekend)
• Matilda the Musical Jr. (Hopkins Center for the Arts - All Weekend)
• A Year with Frog and Toad (Children’s Theatre Co. - All Weekend)
• Urinetown (Hanifl Performing Arts Center - All Weekend)
• Men on Boats (Theatre in the Round - All Weekend)
• Whirlygig (Indeed Brewing Co. - All Weekend)
• Seven Keys (Yellow Tree Theatre - All Weekend)
• The Lilies of the Field (Open Window Theatre - All Weekend)
• Jumping Off Point (Jungle Theater - All Weekend)
• Mind:Body (Luminary Arts Center - All Weekend)
• Arctic Highways: Unbounded Indigenous People (American Swedish Institute - All Weekend)
• Sea Cabinet (Elision Playhouse - Friday & Saturday)
• Portugal. The Man (First Ave - Friday & Saturday)
• Star Wars: The Last Jedi w/ the Minnesota Orchestra (Orchestra Hall - Friday & Saturday)
• From Barry - Vintage Pop Classics of the Bee Gees (Chanhassen Dinner Theatres - Friday & Saturday)
• Zach Martina (ACME Comedy Co. - Friday & Saturday)
• Sesame Street Live (State Theatre - Friday & Saturday)
• K Trevor Wilson (Rick Bronson’s House of Comedy - Friday & Saturday)
• Skeleton Crew (Guthrie - Friday & Sunday)
• ‘Til Beth Do Us Part (Plymouth Playhouse - Friday & Saturday)
• Rasputin (Open Eye Theatre - Friday & Saturday)
• Vince Carone w/ Dan Hinnekamp + Lahiru Samarasinghe (Laugh Camp Comedy Club - Friday & Saturday)
• Colleen Raye + Rick Carlson (Maggie’s Lounge - Friday & Saturday)
• Doors Open Minneapolis (Various locations - Saturday & Sunday)
• Songkran Festival (MN State Capitol - Saturday & Sunday)
• Cirque du Soleil Bazzar (MOA - Saturday & Sunday)
• Torch Song (Six Points Theater - Saturday & Sunday)
• The Oddities & Curiosities Expo (Minneapolis Convention Center - Saturday & Sunday)
• May Market (MN Landscape Arboretum - Saturday & Sunday)
• La boheme (Ordway - Saturday & Sunday)

FRIDAY, MAY 17

• Julie Albers Plays Haydn’s Cello Concerto in D (Ordway 11am & 7pm)
• Breizh Fest (Minneapolis Cider Company 4-11pm)
• MicroShow feat. Pokey LaFarge (Amsterdam Bar & Hall 4:30pm)
• Ghost Note (Dakota 6:30pm)
• Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (Roxy’s Cabaret 7pm)
• The Belfast Cowboys (Hook & Ladder 6pm)
• Mississippi Hot Club (MOA 6:30pm)
• David Hazeltine feat. Lucia Newell (Dunsmore Jazz Room 6:30pm)
• Joe Alterman Trio (Crooners 7pm)
• DENT MAY (Green Room 7pm)
• M.A.Y. (Can Can Wonderland 7pm)
• Richard II (Guthrie 7:30pm)
• GB Leighton (Varsity 7:30pm)
• John Gorka (Parkway Theater 7:30pm)
• The Spitfire Grill (Westminster Presbyterian Church 7:30pm)
• Uptown Follies (Granada Theater 7:30pm)
• Rob Schneider (Mystic Lake 8pm)
• Prateek Kuhad (Cedar Cultural Center 8pm)
• Tenille Townes (Turf Club 8pm)
• Mary Blue (Icehouse 8pm)
• Winelight Revisited: The Music of Grover Washington Jr. (The Belvedere 8pm)
• TENNESSEE WHISKEY - Chris Stapleton Tribute (Medina Entertainment Center 8pm)
• GWEN (Cloudland Theater 8pm)
• Charles Gorczynski Tango Quartet (Berlin 8pm)
• Motel Breakfast (7th Street Entry 8:30pm)
• Jeff Gavin (LUSH 9pm)
• Ride (Fine Line 9pm)
• Jiqui (Skyway Theatre 9pm)

SATURDAY, MAY 18

• The ALS Superhero 5k/10k (Harriet Island Regional Park 8am)
• PNC Women Run the Cities (Minnehaha Park 8:30am)
• Mainstreet Day (Downtown Hopkins 9am-4pm)
• Lyndale Garage Sales Day (Lyndale 9am-2pm)
• 2024 Twin Cities Bike Swap (Long Lake Regional Park 10am)
• History Plays Marathon Day (Guthrie 10am)
• Harry Styles + One Direction Drag Brunch (Union Rooftop 10am)
• 5k Beer Run (La Dona Cerveceria Brewery 11am)
• Dolly Days (Roxy’s Cabaret 11am)
• North Loop Block Party (NOLO 2-8pm)
• Parkbreezy (Cabooze 5pm)
• Albert Castiglia / Indigenous (Hook & Ladder 6pm)
• Static-X + Sevendust (Myth 6:15pm)
• BJ The Chicago Kid (Dakota 6:30pm)
• Holly Humberstone (Fine Line 7pm)
• X Ambassadors (Varsity 7pm)
• Chicano Batman (Uptown Theater 7pm)
• Hot Streak (Treasure Island 7pm)
• Country Roads: Dennis Curley Sings the Music of John Denver (Crooners 7pm)
• Silent Planet w/ Soulkeeper (Amsterdam Bar & Hall 7pm)
• Neil Hamburger (Turf Club 7:30pm)
• Scream It Off Screen (Fitzgerald 8pm)
• Loony (7th Street Entry 8pm)
• Bear Grillz (Skyway Theatre 8pm)
• Johnnie Brown Sings Lionel Richie (The Belvedere 8pm)
• FIERRO (Cloudland Theater 8pm)
• Lucia Sarmiento Quintet (Berlin 8pm)
• Queer Circus (Can Can Wonderland 9pm)
• Mirage Comedy Takeover (LUSH 9:30pm)
• DJ Hayes Presents: Shake (Uptown VFW 10pm)

SUNDAY, MAY 19

• Emo Drag Brunch (Crave Minneapolis 10am)
• Riders & Ribbons Horse Show (MN State Fairgrounds 10am-3pm)
• Adam Turman Artist Meet & Greet (MN Landscape Arboretum 12-3pm)
• Moonshadow - An Evening of Cat Stevens (Chanhassen Dinner Theatres 2pm & 7pm)
• Jazz Age Rumpus III: The Sounds of Chicago (Hook & Ladder 2:30pm)
• MY KID BANANA (Cloudland Theater 3pm)
• The Big 60’s Singalong (Dunsmore Jazz Room 5pm)
• Jalan Crossland (The Belvedere 6:30pm)
• The Marshall Tucker Band w/ Jefferson Starship (Mystic Lake 7pm)
• Grocer, Time Room, Oyster World, Popstar (7th Street Entry 7pm)
• Mike Kota + Josephine (Green Room 7pm)
• Joyann Parker + Jackie Venson (Dakota 7pm)
• HALEY w/ Alan Sparhawk (Berlin 7pm)
• Laughing Bat’s Market (Can Can Wonderland 7pm)
• The Secret Sisters (Parkway Theater 7:30pm)
• The Bird Show (Crooners 7:30pm)
• The Decemberists (Palace Theater 8pm)
• Katie Pruitt (Amsterdam Bar & Hall 8pm)
• Psychedelic Porn Crumpets (Fine Line 8pm)
• Mr. Bungle (First Ave 8pm)
• Blueprint (Turf Club 8pm)

SPORTS

• Cleveland Guardians VS Twins (All Weekend)
• Omaha Storm Chasers AT Saints (All Weekend)
• Seattle Storm AT Lynx (Friday 8:30pm)
• Pittsburgh Thunderbirds AT Wind Chill (Saturday 6:00pm)
• Bavarian United SC AT Crows (Saturday 7:00pm)
• Portland Timbers AT Loons (Saturday 7:30pm)
• Denver Nuggets AT Timberwolves (Sunday - time TBD)*

*hopefully.
MOVIES (released nationwide in theaters)

• IF
• Back to Black
• The Strangers: Chapter 1

LINKS
Reddit Twin Cities Social Meet-Ups: https://www.reddit.com/twincitiessocial
Trivia Mafia Schedule: https://www.triviamafia.com/schedule
Music Mayhem Schedule: http://www.musicmayhem.net/live-show-locations.html
Get a Clu Trivia Schedule: https://www.getaclutrivia.com/home/#weekly-trivia-schedule
Racket MN Event Calendar: https://www.racketmn.com/category/events/
Meet Minneapolis Event Calendar: https://www.minneapolis.org
MPLS Art Events: https://www.mplsart.com/calendaupcoming
Minnesota Monthly Event Calendar: http://www.minnesotamonthly.com/Calenda
MSP Magazine Event Calendar: http://mspmag.com/search/event/events-calenda#page=1
Minneapolis Northwest Event Calendar: https://www.minneapolisnorthwest.com/events/
Minnesota Parent Event List: https://www.minnesotaparent.com/calenda
Family Fun Twin Cities: https://www.familyfuntwincities.com/family-fun-events-calenda
Minneapolis Park Events: https://www.minneapolisparks.org/event-calenda
St. Paul Parks & Rec Events: https://www.stpaul.gov/calendaparks-and-recreation-events
Three Rivers Park District Event Calendar: https://web2.myvscloud.com/wbwsc/mnthreeriverswt.wsc/search.html?display=Calendar&module=event&_csrf_token=cU716Z6D0C1B2B2C3C2L454I5R604U581V665Z566H046Q3U595K0B5U4U6L4N1F0E3S6K4U055R5P4J576D734L5C576Q73535P6D015S4R504J09664Q5G5708564N5S
If you have any events to add, drop them in the comments!

“Your art was the prettiest art of all the art.” -Roy Anderson, The Office
“When one door closes, fortune will usually open another.” -Fernando de Rojas
🎵 “HEE HEE!” 🎵-Michael Jackson
Have a great weekend!
AROUND TOWN

• Art-a-Whirl (Various locations in NE - All Weekend)
• Farm Babies (MN Zoo - All Weekend)
• Liquid Zoo (Bauhaus Brew Labs - All Weekend)
• Beautiful: The Carole King Musical (Chanhassen Dinner Theatres - All Weekend)
• MJ The Musical (Orpheum - All Weekend)
• Love and Other Things that Ruined My Life (Dudley Riggs Theatre - All Weekend)
• Sadie Barnette: The New Eagle Creek Saloon (Walker Art Center - All Weekend)
• Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow (MN History Center - All Weekend)
• The Spitfire Grill (Hennepin Avenue Church - All Weekend)
• Blended (Harmony): The Kim Loo Sisters (History Theatre - All Weekend)
• Matilda the Musical Jr. (Hopkins Center for the Arts - All Weekend)
• A Year with Frog and Toad (Children’s Theatre Co. - All Weekend)
• Urinetown (Hanifl Performing Arts Center - All Weekend)
• Men on Boats (Theatre in the Round - All Weekend)
• Whirlygig (Indeed Brewing Co. - All Weekend)
• Seven Keys (Yellow Tree Theatre - All Weekend)
• The Lilies of the Field (Open Window Theatre - All Weekend)
• Jumping Off Point (Jungle Theater - All Weekend)
• Mind:Body (Luminary Arts Center - All Weekend)
• Arctic Highways: Unbounded Indigenous People (American Swedish Institute - All Weekend)
• Sea Cabinet (Elision Playhouse - Friday & Saturday)
• Portugal. The Man (First Ave - Friday & Saturday)
• Star Wars: The Last Jedi w/ the Minnesota Orchestra (Orchestra Hall - Friday & Saturday)
• From Barry - Vintage Pop Classics of the Bee Gees (Chanhassen Dinner Theatres - Friday & Saturday)
• Zach Martina (ACME Comedy Co. - Friday & Saturday)
• Sesame Street Live (State Theatre - Friday & Saturday)
• K Trevor Wilson (Rick Bronson’s House of Comedy - Friday & Saturday)
• Skeleton Crew (Guthrie - Friday & Sunday)
• ‘Til Beth Do Us Part (Plymouth Playhouse - Friday & Saturday)
• Rasputin (Open Eye Theatre - Friday & Saturday)
• Vince Carone w/ Dan Hinnekamp + Lahiru Samarasinghe (Laugh Camp Comedy Club - Friday & Saturday)
• Colleen Raye + Rick Carlson (Maggie’s Lounge - Friday & Saturday)
• Doors Open Minneapolis (Various locations - Saturday & Sunday)
• Songkran Festival (MN State Capitol - Saturday & Sunday)
• Cirque du Soleil Bazzar (MOA - Saturday & Sunday)
• Torch Song (Six Points Theater - Saturday & Sunday)
• The Oddities & Curiosities Expo (Minneapolis Convention Center - Saturday & Sunday)
• May Market (MN Landscape Arboretum - Saturday & Sunday)
• La boheme (Ordway - Saturday & Sunday)

FRIDAY, MAY 17

• Julie Albers Plays Haydn’s Cello Concerto in D (Ordway 11am & 7pm)
• Breizh Fest (Minneapolis Cider Company 4-11pm)
• MicroShow feat. Pokey LaFarge (Amsterdam Bar & Hall 4:30pm)
• Ghost Note (Dakota 6:30pm)
• Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (Roxy’s Cabaret 7pm)
• The Belfast Cowboys (Hook & Ladder 6pm)
• Mississippi Hot Club (MOA 6:30pm)
• David Hazeltine feat. Lucia Newell (Dunsmore Jazz Room 6:30pm)
• Joe Alterman Trio (Crooners 7pm)
• DENT MAY (Green Room 7pm)
• M.A.Y. (Can Can Wonderland 7pm)
• Richard II (Guthrie 7:30pm)
• GB Leighton (Varsity 7:30pm)
• John Gorka (Parkway Theater 7:30pm)
• The Spitfire Grill (Westminster Presbyterian Church 7:30pm)
• Uptown Follies (Granada Theater 7:30pm)
• Rob Schneider (Mystic Lake 8pm)
• Prateek Kuhad (Cedar Cultural Center 8pm)
• Tenille Townes (Turf Club 8pm)
• Mary Blue (Icehouse 8pm)
• Winelight Revisited: The Music of Grover Washington Jr. (The Belvedere 8pm)
• TENNESSEE WHISKEY - Chris Stapleton Tribute (Medina Entertainment Center 8pm)
• GWEN (Cloudland Theater 8pm)
• Charles Gorczynski Tango Quartet (Berlin 8pm)
• Motel Breakfast (7th Street Entry 8:30pm)
• Jeff Gavin (LUSH 9pm)
• Ride (Fine Line 9pm)
• Jiqui (Skyway Theatre 9pm)

SATURDAY, MAY 18

• The ALS Superhero 5k/10k (Harriet Island Regional Park 8am)
• PNC Women Run the Cities (Minnehaha Park 8:30am)
• Mainstreet Day (Downtown Hopkins 9am-4pm)
• Lyndale Garage Sales Day (Lyndale 9am-2pm)
• 2024 Twin Cities Bike Swap (Long Lake Regional Park 10am)
• History Plays Marathon Day (Guthrie 10am)
• Harry Styles + One Direction Drag Brunch (Union Rooftop 10am)
• 5k Beer Run (La Dona Cerveceria Brewery 11am)
• Dolly Days (Roxy’s Cabaret 11am)
• North Loop Block Party (NOLO 2-8pm)
• Parkbreezy (Cabooze 5pm)
• Albert Castiglia / Indigenous (Hook & Ladder 6pm)
• Static-X + Sevendust (Myth 6:15pm)
• BJ The Chicago Kid (Dakota 6:30pm)
• Holly Humberstone (Fine Line 7pm)
• X Ambassadors (Varsity 7pm)
• Chicano Batman (Uptown Theater 7pm)
• Hot Streak (Treasure Island 7pm)
• Country Roads: Dennis Curley Sings the Music of John Denver (Crooners 7pm)
• Silent Planet w/ Soulkeeper (Amsterdam Bar & Hall 7pm)
• Neil Hamburger (Turf Club 7:30pm)
• Scream It Off Screen (Fitzgerald 8pm)
• LOONY (7th Street Entry 8pm)
• Bear Grillz (Skyway Theatre 8pm)
• Johnnie Brown Sings Lionel Richie (The Belvedere 8pm)
• FIERRO (Cloudland Theater 8pm)
• Lucia Sarmiento Quintet (Berlin 8pm)
• Queer Circus (Can Can Wonderland 9pm)
• Mirage Comedy Takeover (LUSH 9:30pm)
• DJ Hayes Presents: Shake (Uptown VFW 10pm)

SUNDAY, MAY 19

• Emo Drag Brunch (Crave Minneapolis 10am)
• Riders & Ribbons Horse Show (MN State Fairgrounds 10am-3pm)
• Adam Turman Artist Meet & Greet (MN Landscape Arboretum 12-3pm)
• Moonshadow - An Evening of Cat Stevens (Chanhassen Dinner Theatres 2pm & 7pm)
• Jazz Age Rumpus III: The Sounds of Chicago (Hook & Ladder 2:30pm)
• MY KID BANANA (Cloudland Theater 3pm)
• The Big 60’s Singalong (Dunsmore Jazz Room 5pm)
• Jalan Crossland (The Belvedere 6:30pm)
• The Marshall Tucker Band w/ Jefferson Starship (Mystic Lake 7pm)
• Grocer, Time Room, Oyster World, Popstar (7th Street Entry 7pm)
• Mike Kota + Josephine (Green Room 7pm)
• Joyann Parker + Jackie Venson (Dakota 7pm)
• HALEY w/ Alan Sparhawk (Berlin 7pm)
• Laughing Bat’s Market (Can Can Wonderland 7pm)
• The Secret Sisters (Parkway Theater 7:30pm)
• The Bird Show (Crooners 7:30pm)
• The Decemberists (Palace Theater 8pm)
• Katie Pruitt (Amsterdam Bar & Hall 8pm)
• Psychedelic Porn Crumpets (Fine Line 8pm)
• Mr. Bungle (First Ave 8pm)
• Blueprint (Turf Club 8pm)

SPORTS

• Cleveland Guardians VS Twins (All Weekend)
• Omaha Storm Chasers AT Saints (All Weekend)
• Seattle Storm AT Lynx (Friday 8:30pm)
• Pittsburgh Thunderbirds AT Wind Chill (Saturday 6:00pm)
• Bavarian United SC AT Crows (Saturday 7:00pm)
• Portland Timbers AT Loons (Saturday 7:30pm)
• Denver Nuggets AT Timberwolves (Sunday - time TBD)*

*hopefully.
MOVIES (released nationwide in theaters)

• IF
• Back to Black
• The Strangers: Chapter 1

LINKS
Reddit Twin Cities Social Meet-Ups: https://www.reddit.com/twincitiessocial
Trivia Mafia Schedule: https://www.triviamafia.com/schedule
Music Mayhem Schedule: http://www.musicmayhem.net/live-show-locations.html
Get a Clu Trivia Schedule: https://www.getaclutrivia.com/home/#weekly-trivia-schedule
Racket MN Event Calendar: https://www.racketmn.com/category/events/
Meet Minneapolis Event Calendar: https://www.minneapolis.org
MPLS Art Events: https://www.mplsart.com/calendaupcoming
Minnesota Monthly Event Calendar: http://www.minnesotamonthly.com/Calenda
MSP Magazine Event Calendar: http://mspmag.com/search/event/events-calenda#page=1
Minneapolis Northwest Event Calendar: https://www.minneapolisnorthwest.com/events/
Minnesota Parent Event List: https://www.minnesotaparent.com/calenda
Family Fun Twin Cities: https://www.familyfuntwincities.com/family-fun-events-calenda
Minneapolis Park Events: https://www.minneapolisparks.org/event-calenda
St. Paul Parks & Rec Events: https://www.stpaul.gov/calendaparks-and-recreation-events
Three Rivers Park District Event Calendar: https://web2.myvscloud.com/wbwsc/mnthreeriverswt.wsc/search.html?display=Calendar&module=event&_csrf_token=cU716Z6D0C1B2B2C3C2L454I5R604U581V665Z566H046Q3U595K0B5U4U6L4N1F0E3S6K4U055R5P4J576D734L5C576Q73535P6D015S4R504J09664Q5G5708564N5S
If you have any events to add, drop them in the comments!

The Great Depression had a significant and lasting impact on society, especially in the Dust Bowl states. Oklahoma suffered the worst and is still suffering from its effects. The stock market crashed in 1929. This was 11 years after the end of WWI when a lot of working age men were killed. My father was 19 years old. Children age 4 and older had to go to work in the fields harvesting and hoeing weeds. My maternal grandmother who was born in 1932 cut broomcorn and picked cotton by hand. The International Harvester for cotton was invented in 1940, but only came into widespread use by 1970. The broomcorn industry died out in 1980. Older boys age 11 and up went to work in sawmills and the trades. Watch the movie Walk the Line. Johnny Cash’s older brother of 14 was almost cut vertically in half when he slipped and was cut through the sternum by a large saw blade. Can you imagine being that young and handling dangerous machinery with no safety equipment? Safety equipment didn’t exist back then and neither did child labor laws. Those old Boomer children worked just as hard as adults to help feed their families. They were punished for playing. They had to suck it up and endure extreme hardship just to eat and they ate very little. Everyone was starving and filthy. There was as no indoor plumbing, no electricity and no air conditioning. I watched my grandmother work from sun up to exhaustion and she slept in her clothes. When she died, her bra strap hooks were rusted from sweat because she never removed it, meaning she hadn’t bathed in decades. She was 4-8” and wore a child size medium. She was conditioned to hard work and starvation. She and her family including my mother never overcame the effects of the Depression. She was functionally illiterate despite graduating high school in 1948.
Education stopped at third-fourth grade for the average child because parents were extremely poor and couldn’t afford to pay for schooling. School was different then. Teachers lived in a teacherage provided by the school district and earned a living stipend from the state to teach grades 1-4 how to read, write, sign their names, cipher, count money and read a watch. That was the extent of free education. Advanced learning after 4rth grade was taught by subscription very similar to private tutoring. Grades 5-7 were called grade school. Grades 7-12 were called high school. They didn’t have Junior High.
In 1935, the Second New Deal created the Works Progress / Projects Administration (WPA) to help people recover from the Depression. A lot of new schools were built during this period. Schools were funded with a combination of state aid and a tax levy called a mill collected from every resident in a school district. When Boomers say they shouldn’t have to pay a school tax because they don’t have children in school, this is what they’re referring to. They had the right to vote against a tax levy. These days, we call them temporary sales tax increases to fund things like new gym equipment. Everyone inside the school district votes on the increase and everyone inside and outside the district has to pay the sales tax if they shop at a store in the district. These no-voters will shop outside the district if the tax increase passes.
Fast forward to WWII (1939-1945) and the Korean War (1950-1953) and we see a significant decrease in school attendance that results in the closure of many rural schools. Many of this second generation of Boomers grew up in boarding schools and orphanages because their mothers couldn’t afford to feed them. This period resulted in a high population of youth being institutionalized. One of my grandmother’s sisters was raped by her uncle at age 14 and was sent to an asylum for the mentally ill. My mother (born 1952) and her sisters were taken by DHS (called CPS today) and sent to a girl’s state school after their father died of cirrhosis at the age of 42. He was a bootlegger who literally drank himself to death. Prohibition (1920-1933) was another result of the Depression. It lasted until 1952 in Oklahoma. Forced sterilization in mental institutions was outlawed in 1951 for the sake of medical study. The practice began in 1931 because the state believed that mental illness/retardation was genetic and caused by incest/inbreeding. It runs in my mother’s family so I can confirm the state was right. Mutations in the brain can be passed from mother to child.
The third generation of Boomers was born during the Vietnam War (1955-1975). I was born in 1973, so I’m technically Gen X with Boomer influences but not to the point that I’m a raging psycho. I consider those born in the 60s to be the third Boomer generation. My town lost its high school in 1968 and stopped at the eighth grade. All those who graduated from the 60s-1980 are the anti education gatekeepers of the workforce that I’m personally struggling with. These are the people who hate anyone with an education level above theirs. They’re offended by education unless you’re a doctor or a lawyer and they can use you. They are also anti-technology and refuse to use it. They are bullies who are socially enmeshed and always in your business. This generation of women married older men because men their age were fighting in a war. Or, they married wealthy men. Those women didn’t have to work and became bored housewives. I blame daytime soap operas for teaching these idiots their horrible social skills. They stayed home almost 24/7 except for when they were at the hair salon or shopping. They wore a lot of makeup too and nail polish contained formaldehyde. The amount of lead and toxic chemicals they were exposed to was very high. My mother was in this category from 1970-1980 when she divorced my father. Men who came home from the war were addicted to heroin and may have turned to cocaine, crack or meth. Many ended up homeless or hooked up with women for the welfare benefits. They were insanely abusive. Very few were able to adjust. Women who did not marry well, had to work cash jobs to support themselves and they might have qualified for USDA commodities and food stamps under Johnson’s War on Poverty (1964). We didn’t have welfare reform until 1996. My mother became an alcoholic and was addicted to amphetamines sold as diet pills in the 80s. We had pure meth from 1980 that my stepdad was addicted to and an explosion of brown meth from 1994 to the present. Almost this entire generation and my own Gen X either experimented or became addicted to meth. It affected Millennials too.
Child prostitution as a means of survival and CSA were common during the Depression because there was no law against it and it’s something society has difficulty grappling with. Oklahoma passed its first anti-child molestation law in 1945 after the end of WWII. I remember those old Boomer women saying that talk about sex was vulgar and those matters weren’t discussed. It was swept under the rug until 1990 when teens finally began to speak out. We had an explosion of violent rape and domestic violence in the 90s by Boomers and chauvinists who couldn’t bear to give up their right to sex on demand and beating women.
We got the Department of Education and mandatory attendance in 1980 so Gen X was the first generation to have a well rounded education since 1929. All the generations that came before us are jealous because we also got child labor laws and the statutory rape law. We’re the first generation that didn’t have to endure backbreaking work as children. We got easy jobs like paper routes, babysitting and mowing. As teenagers, farm kids hauled hay but that’s about as strenuous as it got. Many Gen Xers got pregnant young and had to drop out of school or couldn’t go to college. They had to get married and raise a family. I’m struggling with this portion of my generation being jealous as well.
I think Gen Z is the best generation because they are so far removed from the absolute hell that previous generations went through. They have the best education, the best social skills and are the most well adjusted of all the generations that came before them. Gen X just needs to teach ya’ll life skills and survival skills that you can hand down to Gen Alpha.

Hi friends! Sometimes we can't go wrong with the classics and today we're doing a Jump Doc Analysis of Burkess's Concept Understand Education Wonder jump! As usual have a secondary link to my past discussion posts.

General Thoughts

I've noticed I always have a lot of fun with Burkess's odder jumps. One of my favorites of theirs is Generic Totally Not Mind Control, which is a hilariously powerful jump depending on the setting you're planning to go to, and this one is also shockingly powerful (there's a perk to become a concept, a perk to bring inanimate objects to life, and an item which can absorb all of the knowledge someone has! It's wild).
This jump is the ultimate one-stop-shop for teachers & educators, which is a VERY good skill for jumpers to master. Jumpers, particularly early jumpers, would be wise to figure out how to do teaching stuff and do it well, as being a teacher is a good profession for a jumper and also mastering teaching is a pretty powerful way to subtly or not so subtly guide, shape, and improve settings. Becoming a skilled teacher is a powerful key to figuring out how to alter the course of jumps without having big flashy powers, and being a skilled teacher is a heck of a way to craft better, or worse, ends for the places you visit.
I'm a member of a setting known as the Shiftverse, which is VAGUELY like a fusion of jumpchains and more generic isekai stuff and in it two skills are top of the line in almost any situation: farming/survival & teaching. Teaching is a critical way to become indispensable to a community or group of people that is in a moderately stable condition, while farming/survival is more critical for communities in dire conditions, but of the two skills teaching is usually the skill that produces the most change over the long-term. Teaching is a vastly underrated skill set for any sort of multiversal wanderer, and in this jump we start to see some of the real power of a teacher come to the fore. So let's dive in!

Items

There's only nine items in this jump, Jumper Academy, The Living Orphanage, Treats & Games, Teaching Materials, Experimental Lab, Book Of Concepts, Media Library, Your TV Show, & Hungry Knowledge.
Two of these items are books, Book of Concepts (the obligatory "You can spread abilities like the ones here throughout the setting) & Hungry Knowledge (which can grant magical knowledge to peeps!). Three of the items are places: Jumper Academy (Generic School item), Living Orphanage (an orphanage which naturally attracts little orphan peeps from throughout a setting), & Experimental Lab (self-cleaning, auto-adjusting laboratory for all of your experiments). Three items are collections of items; Treats & Games (fun prizes and rewards for your students), Teaching Materials (a collection of supplies for teaching stuff), and Media Library (a collection of copies of all of the media you've consumed and will consume in the future). The last item is Your TV Show which is a program you are the lead actor in which will naturally be geared around education in some capacity, AND a network which you control and can create more shows for.
I like these items, they're all pretty solid encapsulations of various scenarios related to learning and different contexts in which learning can occur. Honestly there's just a lot of fun to be had with these items, and a range of different jumpers would be able to benefit from looking over some of what this jump has to display in terms of items. Funnily enough there's no teaching certificate item here, which is a bit disappointing. Though if someone wants that, it's the free item for teachers over in my High School Musical jump which could be a very fun jump to use this as a supplement with.

Perks

There are many pages of perks, as is invariably the case in a jump like this. I have a few standout favorites and I want to talk about them for a beat.
Innovation is an immersive power-modifier that allows you to take all of your powers and figure out ways to creatively use them which grants you new abilities thematically tied to your powers. They Ask Questions & Always Employed are thematically relevant employment perks that guarantee that you'll find that people like and respect you more, and are more willing to ask you to help them learn new stuff. Retrocognition is a fun perk that lets you learn the pasts of places you visit and objects you touch. Some perks like A Customized Approach, Potential Unlock, and What's Your Motivation are perfect for tutors working with singular students or small groups and allow you to figure out how to create the best, most fulfilling stuff you can imagine to work with them and teach them.
Some of the perks here are direct superpowers like Know What I Know which is a telepathy granter, and Uplift Them and Creating Life which is a sentience granter and a life-creator (for inanimate objects) respectively. These perks are interesting, and all grant new contexts for you to mess about with your abilities and CREATE students for you to teach as well as figures you can learn from.
The perks here are a healthy mix of giving you new ways to get people excited about learning, allowing you to learn stuff from people (or even ghosts!), and ways to figure out how to best teach someone something. A lot of this stuff is really good for tutors specifically, as opposed to more modern teachers and lecturers, but make no mistake there's plenty of ways to leverage the stuff here to be handy among larger numbers of people.
The perks this jump offers are worth exploring yourself, but if you've ever thought about having a jumper who either uses a job as a teacher as a cover, or just IS a teacher who likes to explore and learn stuff this jump has a lot of fun stuff for you to snatch up. I think there's just a lot of different, interesting ideas this jump allows you to explore and gives you a set of skills and abilities that will be useful in virtually any context sans something truly extreme like you being in a jump where you are either alone or almost completely alone, or where you are well and truly surrounded by hostiles and you've just got to endure whatever bullshit the jump is throwing at you (and this jump has stuff for that too! Seriously, this is a very intriguing jump).

Conclusion & Parting Thoughts

This is a very intriguing mundane/cosmic citizen jump. I think it's funny that Burkess found some straight up superpowers related to teaching and learning and I appreciate that a jump as minor as this has some real powers in it. I also like that this jump just revolves around an essential skill, and takes that skill to some pretty intense heights without doing the traditional stuff like allowing you to teach someone your superpowers. It's cool to see such creative thoughts put into a jump and made into a fun playground for jumpers to mess around in.

I’ve been a Skynyrd fan for a long time. They were the band that got me into Rock, and the first band I just completely nerded out on. They inspired me to learn guitar, write songs, and start a band. I can’t stress enough how much I respect Bob, Allen, Gary, Ronnie, Leon, Billy, Ed, Artimus, and Steve. Regardless of the personal demons of all of them and the fighting reputation that stuck to them; they were a different level of hardworking and dedicated to the craft. There’s a reason that those songs have stuck around so long. It’s because they worked so damn hard, running those songs over measure by measure hundreds of times to get them the EXACT way they wanted. They rehearsed 30 miles outside of town, way out in the north Florida woods right up against Peter’s Creek. And when you hear songs like Tuesday’s Gone, Simple Man, I Need You, or All I Can Do Is Write About It, it takes you right there. Even if you’ve never been to the South. They of course leaned into their reputation of Fighting Rednecks that could out drink, fight, or smoke anything. But even they got tired of that status quo as time went on. They had a grace about them on the flip side of that coin.
So to see what the band has been turned into is just so depressing. I mean I’ve just kept it to myself for years but after seeing the news about hell house I’ve just hit a boiling point. For those that don’t know, the farm that Hell House originally sat on has been divided and turned into a neighborhood. However there was one lot that was spared and not developed on. That was the space of property that Hell House originally sat on. A great guy bought the property to make sure it was saved. He even got a historical marker made that faced the creek which explained the significance of that land. But sadly this gentlemen passed away around the time of the pandemic. The lot was then put on the market and somebody very recently bought it. The HOA of the neighborhood stole the sign and made sure it would never be put back. To make things worse, the dipshit that bought the land tore up the original dock to “Put the boards on the sides of this shipping container house I’m building.”
While all of this went on, Johnny and the boys created that stupid ass Hell House whiskey brand just to watch the land be sold and turned into an Instagram Reels project. The band that “honors the legacy” and makes millions of dollars a year to do it, couldn’t lend a hand to save the place where it all started. They literally just profited off of the name, kinda ironic isn’t it? When you listen to those lyrics on All I Can Do Is Write About It, like “I can see the concrete slowly creeping” it’s reminds you of that grace that Ronnie and they guys had. And now it’s became the “Lynyrd Skynyrd Pepsi Budweiser Harley Davidson Hell Yeah Band” I mean has anyone else noticed this??