My fellow gamers, for too long has our community suffered the indignation of an intolerable culture that has denigrated, besmirched, exploited, and has outright demonized our culture of unique individuals with a genuine love of a hobby that they see as profitable and progressive. They have taken beloved IP’s (Intellectual Properties) and twisted them into their own personal ideological crusade of undermining and humiliating the core aspects of characters they deemed as “Toxic” or “White Supremacy”. Through the guise and protection of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity) & ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) they have used our influence in the entertainment industry to push their narratives and agendas that have stigmatized our culture with numerous anti-consumer practices that they call “being progressive”. But the truth of the matter is they were never really looking to be a part of our community, they simply wanted to use our community as a tool of activism and propaganda in the entertainment industry as it was extremely profitable, and they wanted inclusion in that division. Ever since GamerGate & Female Frequency, we have had to endure the incursion of forced ideologies, xenophobic behaviors and inferior overpriced products that have never been in our best interest and have been flat out disgraceful towards foreign media.
Before Gaming had become a major source of entertainment, we were often categorized as anti-social or societies rejects where because we found more enjoyment in playing fictional characters and not spending as much time out and about, we never fully assimilated in society (which is a good thing if you ask me). From 1998 to 2007, at the height of innovation, creativity and production, Gaming had reached a golden age in which it had revolutionized society. Hollywood Execs who had ruined the movie industry turned their attention to video games as a source of income since video games had outperformed movies in terms of profit. No one was concerned about gaming, much less diversity or inclusivity until it became profitable. This makes people like SBI look extremely disingenuous as they were not interested in gamers as a community with its own culture. They simply wanted to use it as another weapon in identity politics.
Microtransactions; the hidden enemy to gamer progress and inducer to mental laziness of our community. Microtransactions have been around for a long time; however, it has never been more potent and apparent than in recent years. It has aided in the dismantling and segregation of players on the ideology of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and has created another sub-culture of gamers who have no real drive to be better outside of how much money they put into the game. This has degraded our culture as well as we have become “fat” off transactional gaming but at the same time we have been “starved” of purposeful gaming where our achievements were our sustenance. I am not saying that microtransactions are bad, but when they are exploitative and predatorial like they have been and don’t give gamers room to grow, we become lethargic and unwilling to improve ourselves as gamers. Oversaturated microtransactional games are one of the many reasons why we have become complacent and unwilling to fight against the exploitative tactics used by big brand game companies such EA, Ubisoft, ActivisionBlizzard, NaughtyDog and so many other western business model companies. Western style games were not like this in the past, they had much more depth and actual effort put into them with the gamer in mind. This has not been the case for over a decade and our connection to western developers has been whittled down to just being transactional. That is one of the reasons why you see so many remasters and remakes in today’s gamer community. They have lost their willingness to improve as developers of games and simply accept corporate/share holder rules.
Game journalists also do not have any real integrity or purpose outside of being funded for their involvement in promoting IPG (Identity Political Games) in a positive light to the public whether it’s positively received or not. They are not interested in what we have to say, they all support the same agenda and that is why they are a dying breed. Within the next couple of years, they will be out of the job and more than likely they will not be able to stay in the industry giving how they have responded to past articles that have clearly been scripted on the premise of diversity and racism. Not only that, but most of them are also extremely hostile to the community as they stereotype and defame the individuals that are a part of the community they are supposed to serve. We have been mentally liberated from their lies and coercive tactics as we tend to laugh at their obvious attempt at virtue signaling while hiding their misdoings so that they can play the victim.
My gamer brothers & sisters, I would not suggest the following action that we must take now without good cause. I have weighed our options and the best option for us now is this…...CULTURAL SECESSION. Naturally this is a form of segregation where they would more than likely claim they are being segregated by the dominant culture of the gaming community but that is incorrect. For years now we have been the ones who are often marginalized and ostracized for the smaller portion of our community. And when we aren’t, we’re exploited for more funds so that these companies can stay in business only to subject us to low quality products that coincide with the “WOKE Agenda” that are often huge expenses to these big brands i.e. AAA/AAAA games that will eventually flop for its obvious forced diversity and bug infested product which will undoubtedly piss off the consumer to the point of wanting a refund. Losing copious amounts of capital and stock in the process, not to mention their reputation is permanently marred.
We must separate on every cultural level in terms of entertainment and ideology. We must reject everything from the west that promotes toxic western beliefs, practices, and exclusion from other cultures (i.e. Southeastern Countries such as Japan and Korea). Japan & Korea have been the targets of unjust discrimination from Western Developers, Western Journalists, Western Localizers (The Wokelizers) and Western Society Prejudice regarding their sense of aesthetics as Westerners hate the aesthetic sense of these countries. The reason why they resort to such base tactics isn’t just because it weaponizes the ideal female form but it’s also because they have deep-seated insecurities about their own looks so when they see attractive female characters, they use terms such as “unrealistic” or “hypersexualized” to establish the moral high ground. But the truth is, they want to feel superior to that which is ideal, so they insult and dehumanize this figure that portrays natural female beauty because they see it as an insult to their own social superiority in what they believe is a hierarchy of them being at the top of all other women. Because of this and so many contributing factors, their movies flop harder than the Fat Chocobo landing on a group of enemies and their games seismically fail just as much if not more. We must sever our connection to Western Developers, Publishers, and ALL Western-Centric Entertainment for they seek to mentally enslave us to their Xenophobic ideology.
Let’s define Western Culture and its traits. Western Culture/Society is composed of more than several different ideologies that work in unison with one another to facilitate dominance over multiple aspects of society. Business, Social, Political, Technological, and sometimes even Global Affairs are affected by these ideologies that portray a specific mindset of Western beliefs. What are those ideologies you ask?

• Perpetual Victimhood: By weaponizing the fact that they are marginalized and of a small portion of western society, they can push their agenda to absurd standards that ultimately ostracize the main demographic. And when companies don’t capitulate, they are labeled as anti-progressive/misogynist’s or cohorts of White Supremacy. They use this to cancel their targets and silence them through societal defamation to keep the public on their side. They also use this mindset to justify their own lack of self-agency as they tend to throw companies who do adhere to their demands but miserably fail to turn a profit under the bus so that they can maintain face in front of the public while denying their actual involvement. They will never accept “Sense of Agency” when it’s negative but will gladly accept it when a positive outcome shines on them as if they are entitled to it.

Official Wiki GamerGate Page)
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• Societal Terrorism: This is another form of ideology weaponization that they use in order to make companies “toe-the-line” with their agenda. By weaponizing cancel culture, they exert dominance over these companies but in exchange they also reimburse those companies with DEI & ESG funds that raise their credit score as well as having social status with the marginalized demographic. However; cancel culture has not succeeded in years and developers and publishers probably only want the money and the DEI ESG rating. But they have to maintain the image of having social economic power so that they can continue to strong-arm other developers into compliance and promoting financial benefits of DEI & ESG. In other words, if you are not for sale, they discredit and stigmatize you in the industry.

Asmongold Clips.
https://youtu.be/Iq86DnmX2xY
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• “Its not us, its you who’s wrong” Mentality: This mentality is especially annoying as they tend to use it to hide their incompetence. They often look down upon gamers who are not in the industry to hide their obvious lack of knowledge on game development thinking that their job title grants them special status that they believe gives them the right to be condescending. But the truth they never wanted revealed has already strangled their careers of all credibility. They were never GAMERS, they were INVADERS. Community Colonists that seek to indoctrinate next generational gamers into their hive-mind and brand previous generations of gamers as villains.

@GeeksandGamers
https://youtu.be/1HbrTkqQFuM
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• Double-standard Enforcement: By labeling something as “unrealistic” or “hypersexualized”, they can claim this is morally wrong if it promotes traditional dynamics between men and women. Heterosexual relationships are condemned while at the same time Same-sex relationships are praised. Additionally, heterosexual relationships with main white male characters turn antagonistic and spotlight stealing. This is deliberate as to promote the “Girl Boss” ideology to indoctrinate women into the Feminazi state of mind. While at the same time, should a male character also adopt the “I don’t need male/female” ideology its seen as Toxic Masculinity which isn’t even a real thing. The idea of a strong male character is taboo while enforcing strong female characters is the ideal.

@MugenLord
https://youtu.be/to5Uciy_yeg
@EndymionTv
https://youtu.be/7TPTR8-qmbk
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• Dehumanization/Demonization: This is something that most military branches use in order to remove conscious inhibitions such as mass slaughter is wrong or categorization. By enforcing ideologies to denounce humanity in certain targets, it deactivates your conscience by saying this is not human therefore its ethically okay to treat this target without compassion and deny the fact it has sentience. We gamers fall under this category for journalists, developers, companies and society at large. This is a tactic we are familiar with to an extent as it implies that we are not normal when we do not do what everybody else is doing. “Geeks are the worse” or “Nerds need to fall into a pit of lava” are verbal dehumanization forms that most people in society say and we as Gamers tend to be relegated to those categories. This is their way of imposing the social hierarchy on us by establishing superiority. We know this as Gamers as we see it very often in the games that we play and some times experience it in real life.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gamergate#The_end_of_their_relevance
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• Deflection/Projection: This is basic psychology 101. By redirecting the conversation away from their mistakes and back on to the opposing view to avert blame and justify their innocence they can avoid criticism. However; deflection is a CONSCIOUS decision, meaning they have no real argument to justify their incompetence. If you can consciously process the situation, you have self-agency which means you don’t have a legitimate excuse. Projection is something else entirely. Most times, Projection doesn’t work on conscious decisions rather it is automatically deployed when feeling threatened, anxious or both. Instead of accepting accountability for feelings or actions that are deemed socially unacceptable they accuse others of committing that unacceptable behavior thereby exonerating themselves and proving that those feelings and/or actions are not their own.

@TheTrentReport
https://youtu.be/bPIPSKruYRo
These traits are so nefarious and unconscionable that I have a hard time believing that anyone could harbor them. However, given the social, political, and economic climate that we are in, those in power who use their influence on controlling society most definitely possess these insidious traits. Everything that they do is all about control and since video games are the biggest market in the world, they want control over it and the communities built around it to accrue more wealth and to use that wealth to subjugate other cultures. Mainstream media is a tool as well as mainstream organizations and sites to help accomplish this goal.
The government recently announced its intentions towards what they believe is “GamerGate 2.0” and now even the ADL has made an official appearance, referring to gamers as “extremist’s”. We know EXACTLY what they are doing, and they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore because they don’t think we are aware of their motives. This is just a pretext for them to exert even more control and we know why, it’s because they want the influence we as a community have to must serve them. So here is what we do my fellow gamers-
“In light of recent events and years of mainstream stigma, we the members of the Global Gaming Community [GGC] must officially renounce ALL TIES to the corporate western video game market. We have been financially exploited through predatorial monetization schemes, pelted with numerous articles of disdain and intentional misrepresentation from game journalists, news outlets regarding us as dangerous individuals and, even subjected to inferior products not only riddled with bugs but also products meant to push political agendas. For the preservation of our community and its unique culture, apart from a few select game development studios we officially sever all connections to western owned video game companies & their mainstream affiliates. From this point onward, we will no longer support western corporate developers, journalists and publishers that do not coincide with the goals of our community.”
Naturally this is completely optional. If you are okay with the state of the gaming community as it is, feel free to ignore this. But if you wish for real change and a break away from oversaturated monetization in the games you play and the push for radical ideological reform, then you are in the right place. Lets sever these rotted miasmic ties once and for all so that our community can be preserved and made better for future gamers. If you agree with this, share it with whoever you think might be interested. The more gamers who get involved, the easier it will be for us to finally break free from mainstream game companies and their associates.

I saw a recent “What to do with savings while young” thread on here and I couldn’t get over the amount of replies it got. I just stumbled upon this community on Reddit but it seems like an absolute goldmine of personal financial education - and far more practical than anything I studied in university.
My current situation is that I am a bit lost when it comes to where to invest/save my money. I have just started a career in law and I’ve always promised myself that once I start getting a consistent income, working full time, that I will capitalise on the benefits of passive compounding interest (this is against the backdrop of previously spending practically everything I’ve ever earned on travel).
After putting money aside for pensions, savings etc I would like to start investing around 10% of my salary each month. I had always thought that simply putting money into an index fund would be the way to go however, I have just learned about the downsides of ETF’s in Ireland with the 41% tax and the deemed disposal rule. I don’t really understand why it’s taxed higher than regular stocks and the DD rule really acts as a deterrent in my eyes. Is there any possibility of this rule changing in the coming years?
Would the best option be to simply track and buy a few heavy hitters on the S&P 500 stocks individually? And then the question comes of where to buy them - trading 212, eToro, degiro, interactive brokers? I would ideally like a platform that has a good user interface combined with a strategy that requires mid-to-low skill and effort.
Bit stumped about where to start at the moment, would appreciate any help or advice in that regard. Cheers

Okay so prior to 7/18/2013 my mother and I had the same name. After 7/18/13 her name became hyphenated. My mom owes a debt collector a law firm took over the account they already filed a judgement and levi went out except it didn't go out on her account it went on mine. The bank took my paycheck. I explained to all these people the law firm pressler and pressler they known as pfw now but also the court officer Kenneth and TD bank. No one has rectified the situation completely the bank returned the $125 charge they took for processing the levi but my $597.20 is still being held in some account other then mine. I explained you have the wrong margaret and the only reason you had my address is because my mom lived with me briefly in 2021 when she was a victim of a hit and run accident crossing the street she almost died but I helped her as best I could and got her into senior housing 10 months later.She has not used my address since. The debt is under her social not mine they updated the writ levi with her current address but didn't change the name. I had paid this debt on my mom's behalf using my credit card only because they threatened to auction her car and other goods. I would like to sue the court officer, my bank, and pressler and pressler for emotional distress, lose wages, and wrongful identity? I'm probably missing other things but I think I should be able to. Not only is this costing me a ton of money I didn't expect to lose it's very stressful and put a strain on our relationship my mom and I. Pressler and pressler sent a letter to my mom saying the judgement was satisfied today I took those letters and mailed them to the court with the filing fee and writs. The court officer won't return any calls. The bank says they won't release anything until the court responds. Do I have to sue the court too? I feel like I need some help I have proof of all these things. I just don't wanna go at it alone. Any advice?.

Hello all -- first time poster here. Sorry for the really long post, I guess part of this is therapeutic for me just to write out.
I've really been struggling recently, as my wife has come to absolutely despise by 67 year old mother, and I'm not sure if there's anything that can fix it.
A little bit of my history. I've always been very close with my family. I grew up in a south Asian household (although I always felt we integrated nicely with a lot of American culture -- both me and my sibling have lived in a large US city our entire lives and consider ourselves American both in culture as well as nationality). However, as in many Asian cultures, respect for elders is extremely important. I always had a parent-child relationship with my parents (meaning that they were in charge, and not interested in being my friend, but rather my mentors and provided invaluable guidance over the years). Both of my parents sacrificed a lot for me and mysibling, but especially my mom who chose to forgo advancing her own career, and to work part time in order to raise my sibling and I. I've always had a good relationship with my mom, although we've had our share of fights over the years (we're both pretty stubborn), but they typically last no more than a 3-5 days on average and then things are completely back to normal. I would say this happens an average of 1-2 times per year at most. I do feel very close with my mom (& my dad as well, but my wife doesn't seem to have any issues with my dad so I'm not focussing on that part). I do believe that much of the success I have achieved in life is directly attributable to the sacrifices my mom made as well as the time she spent raising and teaching me. I have always respected my parents, which is typical of Asian culture. By respect, I mean things like not talking back, valuing their opinions, and trying to make their life easier or happier in small ways (visiting them on weekends, going out to dinner together -- we live roughly 40 minutes apart).
A bit of my wife's history -- she grew up with her parents being divorced from a young age. Both of her parents are wonderful people who I really adore, but they were extremely lenient with her growing up (they were not on top of her with regards to schoolwork, she would talk back to them at times without getting in much trouble, she was able to sneak out of her house as a teen, etc.). These are by no means egregious offenses, and I suspect many kids do the same at that age. However, there was a clear difference in her relationship with her parents -- there was no real enforcement of rules or punishment for breaking rules. Through my lens, it seems that this has manifested as a lack of respect for her own parents, as well as her elders. She mostly has a good relationship with both of her parents, but when she does disagree with them, she talks to them in ways I could never imagine speaking to my own parents (talks back, hangs up on them, etc.). She says that she needs to "put them in their place" at times, which I also find rude. Overall, I would say she grew up much less "family-oriented" than I did, for what it's worth.
My wife is also somewhat of a nomad (mostly not by choice). She moved a few times growing up (within the same state, but different areas), and then went out of state for college, only to leave after 1.5 years and finish at a local state school (in a different state) where her mother lived at the time. Because of this, she has very few close friends, and the ones that she does have are spread out all across the country on different coasts. This is in stark contrast to me. I've been lucky to maintain the same group of friends that I've had since we were 8 or 9 years old. On top of that, most of them have stayed in the same area that we grew up in (where my wife and I now live). I think the lack of a social circle has affected my wife since she moved to my city, but I'm not sure what solution there is for that since there is no city we could live in where she would have a group of close friends or family (her parents live in different states and split time between different states, her 3 closest friends live in 3 different states).
I've known my wife for 8 years and we've been married for 2.5. I love her. She is a great person; she is kind, compassionate, loving, and at her core truly does care deeply about others (though I feel that this does not always come across in the way she talks to her own parents). She's funny, adventurous, and up until recently, I was always happier around her. We were recently blessed with the birth of our son, who is now 11 months old. Our son is the best thing that has ever happened to us, but his arrival seems to have simultaneously strained our relationship in ways I did not anticipate. I knew that the sleep deprivation would be hard, and our lives would change drastically. What I did not envision was a deepening hatred that my wife has developed for my mom.
Prior to the birth of our son, my wife did not have much of an issue with my mom other than thinking she was "needy" for wanting to see myself and my sibling once a week, even if it was just for a dinner (again, we live roughly 40 minutes apart, and my parents are typically willing to drive to us, meet us at a restaurant, or have us over). My mom does tend to be picky with where we eat out (she doesn't eat most meat, and prefers vegetarian options), but that never really bothered me, though it seems to bother my wife that my mom is "getting her way", even though this was at most 1 meal in the week.
I know that my mom can certainly be stubborn and hard to deal with at times, but I know her very well, and I always felt that she was inclusive of my wife, and never did anything that warranted being strongly disliked. The one exception to this was during our son's baby shower. We had planned a large party with a lot of family and friends that my parents hosted (their house is large enough to accomodate a party of that size). During the baby shower, my mom helped arrange catering of food, ordering tables, chairs, tablecloths, and hiring a bartender (my parents also paid for all of this). My wife did not like my mom's taste with regards to tablecloths and chair decorations and she was irritated that my mom wanted to help and be involved in the planning (though to her credit, my wife did not outwardly show this discontent to my mom, though it was certainly made known to me). My wife handled the floral arrangements and other decorative pieces such as a backdrop, and spent a lot of time and effort getting them exactly how she wanted. I kind of sensed that my mom felt that she was being taken for granted and underappreciated by my wife (she did take care and pay for a lot), and my wife felt that my mom was being overbearing with planning, and also felt that my mom was purposefully spiteful (my wife claims that every other member of my family commented on how nice the floral arrangements were, but my mom never did). This culminated in a "fight" where my wife wanted a decorative piece in one part of the yard and my mom wanted it in another part. There was some exchange of words at the time, though I did not witness this. This left my mom feeling that my wife was "disrespectful" and left my wife hating my mom for not honoring her decision about where to place the decorative piece, since this was her baby shower. This led to a very upsetting experience for my wife and I as we really did not enjoy the baby shower at all (although this was not evident to our guests or other family members, as we were able to "fake it"). My wife was particularly upset after the baby shower when we drove home since she felt that it was supposed to be a special day for her, and my mom ruined it, which I mostly agreed with. To her credit, my mom did apologize to both my wife and me the following day, and told us that she had been under a lot of stress with many family members staying at their house, taking care of meals, sleeping arrangements, etc., and her stress got the better of her. I was willing to accept her apology and move on, but my wife has always held a grudge since that time, and feels that the apology wasn't genuine. Again, I've known my mom for a long time and she would rather not apologize at all than do so disingenuously. My wife however insists that she can read my mom better than me, since I'm biased. Nonetheless, we moved forward.
After the birth of our son, my parents and my wife's parents were overjoyed (he is all of their first grandchild). Again, we live near where I grew up so my parents are much closer to us than my wife's parents are. After the birth of our son, my wife's mom rented a place near us for 4 months to help with the baby and chores, etc. I never had any issue with this, even when she would come over multiple times a day, or even unannounced at times (this was not something that bothered me). My parents were (& are) also very eager to spend time with their grandchild, and initially were coming over every other day to see the baby, which then decreased to about twice a week, since he has been 3 months old. My wife has begun having major issues with my parents coming to see our son twice a week now. Perhaps what is most irritating to me is the fact that I anticipated this issue beforehand. I specifically asked my wife when our son was 1 or 2 months old "how often would you be okay with my parents coming to see him?", and her answer was "I would be so happy if it was just twice a week", (which she felt would be a huge improvement over the every other day they were initially coming when our son was a newborn). I assured her that twice a week was very reasonable and she said she'd be happy with that.
Fast forward to now -- my mom comes to visit twice a week for 3-4 hours and my wife says its too much. She says it's suffocating, that she shouldn't have to live her life around my mom seeing our son (which my wife does not, she always tells my mom which days to come, and they are different each week depending on what my wife wants to do), that she feels like she had a kid just for my mom to play with. Again, my mom is never insistent on what days or even times to see our son. She certainly appreciates seeing him regularly, and I always wanted my son to have a close relationship with his grandparents (both sides), as both myself and my wife did growing up. However, my wife's parents do not live near us (and don't come to visit that often). I think this plays a role in terms of her being irritated that my family sees him regularly, but I don't see any solution. Her family is financially able to visit us (very regularly) if they wanted to, but they don't make it a priority. Again, her parents are wonderful people, but they seem to be more interested in their own lives and relationships than they are in forging a deep connection with our son, their grandson (I'm not saying there is anything wrong with it, but it's the opposite of my family who really want to be close with their grandson, even if it's at the expense of time with their own friends).
I should also add that for the past 3 years my wife has not worked. This started prior to us getting married. She left her job because she hated it, and I am lucky to be in a position to financially support us on my own. However, she always told me she would (& wanted to) get a job in a field that she was more interested in, though she has never been able to articulate what that field would be (actually she was adamant that she would have a job before we got married). I tried to encourage her to find fields that appealed to her, even advised her to take risks with entrepreneurship, to see if she could make a career out of something she considers a hobby. I've paid for countless courses, certifications, etc. (90% of which she did not complete -- things like real estate certifications, social media certifications, photography lessons, camera lenses, etc.). Furthermore, I paid for her to see a therapist of her choosing for a few months hoping it would help her gain clarity with regards to what she wants to do career-wise (it did not). All in all, I've probably spent in the neighborhood of 7-8K on online courses, certifications, and she does not have anything to show for it. Once we got pregnant, we agreed that she would take on more of a domestic role (which is what she said she wanted as well, I did not force her into this -- and she was also not doing anything else for work anyway). The point I'm making here is not that I feel she needs to work, it is just that she gets to see our son all the time (it's not like she's going to work and handing our son off to my mom). Also, many times my wife will say "Oh why don't you come on Monday" when we see my mom (which my mom will then do). Then Monday rolls around and my wife is texting me at work all day constantly complaining about how my mom is interacting with our son (she doesn't watch him closely enough, or she doesn't put him in his crib to nap, or she feeds him when she's not supposed to, etc.), how long my mom is staying, how she feels trapped in the house when my mom is there, etc. She basically wants my mom to come over for no more than 2 hours and then leave (again we live about 40 minutes apart).
This issue she has with my mom seeing our son a couple of times a week for a few hours, has started to cause bigger and bigger fights between us. Part of me understands that my wife's lack of her own social circle of close friends, and not having family nearby is contributing to her unhappiness with our current situation. But the other part of me can't help but feel like I've done everything in my power to help, and it feels that she is just complaining about my mom because she's unhappy with where she is in life. I have tried helping her find a career that she would like, I have tried telling her she can remain a stay at home mom if she wants, I have tried getting her a therapist to help her work through her issues, I have tried encouraging her to join mom & baby classes to meet new friends (which she now attends, but hasn't made any real friends during them), I have offered to joint local couples meetups with her to meet new friends if that would make her more comfortable, I have encouraged her to invite the few local friends she does have over for dinner or even go out with them while I watch the baby, I have offered to move to a part of the city that is even further from my parents, and I've even offered to move cities altogether to be closer to her own family (although her family does not reside in just 1 city, they split time between a few). I've also told her to voice her issues to my mom and hash out whatever the issues are, but she says my mom will see it as disrespectful and "make things even more awkward" (which may in fact be true, but in that case I've told her we would just see my mom less, which is what she wants anyway...). Each time I suggest something, I feel that it is met with resistance or some excuse as to why it won't work (for instance when I suggest moving cities, she says no because I'll "use that against her" in the future if we fight). I'm just not sure where I can take it from here. I'm sure couples counseling has to be a part of the solution in some way, but I'm not sure what they are going to be able to offer that I haven't already tried.
I guess I'm just looking for advice. My guess is my wife wants me to just straight up tell my mom she can't come over twice a week anymore (but I could see my wife having a problem even if it was just once a week), for no good reason. My mom has no idea my wife despises her, and me just randomly telling my parents they can't come over anymore for no apparent reason would cause a rift between me & them. I love my parents and they're only getting older. They're not going to live forever, and I would feel awful if I told them they just can't come to see their grandson because my wife doesn't like my mom for no particularly legitimate reason.
Thanks in advance to whoever read through this, and for whatever advice you can provide.
TLDR - I feel like I've bent over backwards to make my wife happy but she still has a major issue with my mom that I don't know how to resolve.

Short background: I work as a senior pentester (consulting, not internal) doing primarily network and assumed breach pentests for my clients.
The last few weeks I've been working an assumed breach test for a client and was able to privesc fairly quickly into the test. Nothing strange there, typical client AD weak/misconfigs.
While doing post-ex recon on the domain, I noticed something very strange when running BloodHound. Typically, the first thing I do after importing my collection zip into BH is I take a screenshot of the Domain Admins group as my simple "hey heres what bloodhound looks like" for my report walkthrough. Easy enough, right? Go into bloodhound, type "Domain Admins" into the search bar, select the DA group, expand the group members. Only issue is there wasn't a "Domain Admins" group in BH... like, at all. Okay, odd but I can work around that. Lets look at "Enterprise Admins".Odd again, it wasn't present. I thought maybe I pulled in a bad zip or my data was somehow corrupted in a way i've literally never seen before. So I type in "ADMINISTRATORS@" to see if thats there and, lo and behold, it was there.
Returning to my assumed breach host, I run a simple powershell script to enumerate domain users that gets output to a csv and also run ldapdomaindump. Checking out ldapdomaindump, I see that "Domain Admins" is referenced in recursive group memberships, but is not an actual entry in my domain_groups* files. However, "Domain Admins" is listed in the group membership of several users in my domain_users* files.
Checking my powershell output, which includes the full DN for users' group membership, i DO see "Domain Admins" and "Enterprise Admins" DNs for several users. This is when i noticed something else strange about these privileged groups.
Typically, and by default, the "Domain Admins" and "Enterprise Admins" groups are within the "CN=Users, DC=, DC=" container. so DA for a domain of "shell.smoke" would have a DN of "CN=Domains,DC=shell,DC=smoke". But in my harvested data for my client's domain, the "Domain Admins" and "Enterprise Admins" groups were moved to a different container underneath Active Directory Administrative Center (CN=Domain Admins, OU=ADAC,...). This was absolutely wild to me, because never in my career had I seen an organization move the DA and EA groups to a completely new OU structure within AD.
I did some further testing to see what was going on. I hopped onto a DC with winrm and tried to lookup the groups by name, but got an error saying object not found, which i kind of expected by this point. But also kind of weird and kind of to be expected, using powershell to "resolve"/"translate" the full SID of these groups was successful, translating -512 gave me "\Domain Admins". But then trying to get the AD object by directly referencing the SIDs ended up with the same result as referencing by name, object not found. Getting onto RDP on a DC and navigating through ADAC I was hopping I could find SOMETHING, literally anything, pointing to what had happened here. ADAC has a "Recycle Bin" of sorts, and there were entries in there but nothing related to what i was looking for.
Later on in testing I tried making a golden ticket with impacket, using the defaults that'll add the DA and EA SIDs into the ticket, and that did work to effectively give me DA access to hosts. Likewise, requesting a TGT for an account that was supposed to be in the privileged groups and using the describeTicket script from impacket to decrypt the "enc-part" of the ticket showed me it did have the appropriate group SIDs for the privileged groups.
Basically, I'm at a loss at what the hell is going on here. Attempting to do some googling on the topic pretty much just led to dead ends revolving around removing DA from hosts' local administrators group... so completely useless. Referencing Microsoft's documentation on security groups (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-serveidentity/ad-ds/manage/understand-security-groups) did show me that you can in fact move some of the privileged groups out of the default container, like DA and EA, but not some others, like Administrators. That's interesting and all, but why would anyone do this and then seemingly remove the groups? I dont have a Windows Server image laying around to play with to see what this looks like from an admin's perspective, but would there be any kind of security or warning prompt if you tried to move these groups, and then again if you attempted to remove them? What kind of implications would these group NOT being present in AD have for their AD security? Clearly, based on my golden ticket, you can still inject the appropriate SIDs into a forged ticket and they'll be recognized, but if the objects don't exist in AD, considering i couldnt even reference them directly by SID, how could a Service properly determine whether an account with those SIDs in a ticket should be given access? Most EDR and AD monitoring services that are configured to monitor and alert on changes to privileged AD groups keep an active watch on the actual containers themselves, with limited ability (pretty much just Windows Event Logging) to identify rogue use of the groups.
Any insights, answers, thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated. I definitely intend to make some mention of this in my report, but since this is my first time encountering this I'm kind of at a loss for what the overall implication of this is and how this can even happen to begin with.

I have my degree but work in the trades. Should I be a teacher?
Hi, all I’m wondering it teaching might be a good career path for me. I graduated with my Psychology degree in May of 2023. I worked as a substitute teacher while in college for a few years.
I saw a lot of teachers resigning and a lot of strain on the schools systems in different states. So I decided to change career paths.
My degree would only get me into boring office jobs or entry level behavioral tech roles. I feel burnt out from college and won’t pursue a masters degree for a while. Most career paths in the field of psychology require a masters or PhD.
I decided to become an apprentice electrician. It was the highest paying job I could get that didn’t have me sitting at a desk.
Now I’ve been in it for a while, I work for a small company and face a lot of work stress. I now do project management and manage the business side of things. I have to fill a lot of roles at my job and it feels like I have no structure most days.
I started to miss my substitute teaching days. Not getting home at 7pm or being on call for weekends. Having the stress of helping a small business run.
I was thinking I’d like to teach Psychology and an an elective course for high school. Or I’d like to teach art. My degree does fall under liberal arts and I have a portfolio of drawings and sculptures.
I stopped subbing because I needed more consistent income. It was tough having to look for a job every summer or budget for when school is out for winter break.
Would you become a teacher right now? What is the process like?
I there were a few principals that wanted me full time when I was a sub. I could just reach out to a handful of the schools I used to teach at and see where that goes.
If it helps I live in Nevada and the schools here can be hit or miss if they’re good.
I know that teaching can be a stressful job. But I’m craving structure in my work and want to get away from running a business.

I fully expect to get torn apart for this, have at it.
My spouse and I had a big fight. He called me names because I didn't do as much cleaning as he wanted me to do, even though I was trying.. he called me a lazy whore, lazy pig, bitch, useless. All sorts of stuff. He tells me to fuck off and fuck you.
I snapped and didn't need to swear at him to cut him down. I told him if he wanted a housewife who kept a spotless home, he should've made better career choices and made a good wage like a normal man. I told him he's so proud over his low paying job and for what? He doesn't even use his day off to parent his own children and we're all happier when he's not home. He's just as bad as (a family member) whos an abusive ass to his family.
How dare he call me a whore when I have been nothing but faithful to him? How dare he call me lazy when I work full time, take care of the kids and the housework.
How dare he speak to me this way. I'm ashamed he's my husband. I'm ashamed of myself for going to his level.
And I went absolutely ballistic at the apartment manager recently, they're changing all sorts of rules for no absolute reason. Have no fucking problem taking extra money every year but every year it feels like the quality of what I'm paying decreases drastically. She had the nerve to say to me that her menopause is equal to my pregnancy in 90 degree weather. Fuck her too.
I won't be answering any comments but have at it

Now this might be a silly question, I know plenty but not everything about sound and how all of it works.
Part of me has me wondering though, do we really NEED all the extremely high frequencies?
CD sample rate is about 44.1 khz, giving you a nyquist of roughly 22 khz, which is 2 khz higher than the theoretical limit of human hearing (although SOME people claim they can hear things above 20 khz).
But people age and sometimes hearing decreases a little, some people don't really hear much above 17 khz for instance.
Now I understand that what you can't hear, you MIGHT still be able to feel or perceive a change in air pressure.
But I also wonder, is the quality of music going to significantly decrease or be liked less by people if say for instance... cut everything above 20 khz. Or maybe go even a step further and cut above 18 khz?
This in most cases, should not result in a loss of clarity or perceivable detail since we're really mostly cutting away things that MOST people won't be hearing, and maybe some people do hear it but don't care enough about it.
I understand some people might be able to "feel" the difference in air pressure, even if it's not audible.
Then of course we also have certain music styles that sound compressed on purpose and/or have a lowpass filter set at say... 14 khz to make it sound "old". In which case it might be artistic intend.
But how much of an effect is it really going to have? How much of it matters and when does it matter?
Now, I know some people might ask "Why on earth would you want to do this?", and to be perfectly honest, this is just me being curious about a thing and wanting to learn more about sound and theory.

Hello! I am a career clerk for a federal district court judge. I have also worked as a term clerk for a federal CoA judge and associate at a litigation boutique.
In years past, I have done a short post with clerkship application thoughts. Today, OSCAR alerted me that opening day of the hiring plan is less than a month away, so thought I'd revive this post. I encourage other clerks to chime in. Usual caveats apply: I work for a very competitive district and every chambers is different.

1. Apply broadly. OSCAR makes the process so simple that the only opportunity cost is your time and ego. The process is a crapshoot and you never know what might catch the reviewer's eye. When in doubt, keep applying.
2. Apply early. Hiring is time consuming and most chambers want it done ASAP. Unless there will be a material change that greatly improves your application (eg, law review), there is little benefit to waiting.
3. Application. For us, your law school and law school grades matter to the exclusion of most everything else. Law review is required, barring exceptional circumstances. Participation on a secondary journal matters very little. Letters of recommendation are not impactful unless very good ("One of the best students I've ever had.") or very bad ("I would not recommend this student."), and both are rare. Professor calls are impactful but similarly rare. I prefer short cover letters and will note geographic ties. Typos are usually disqualifying.
4. Writing sample. I will read your writing sample and ask you about it during the interview. We prefer something short (8-10 pages) that mimics the work of a clerk (memos, briefs, etc.), but understand not everyone has access to that. Personally, I find 1L written work to be the weakest writing sample.
5. Work experience. A decade ago, we exclusively hired 2Ls and 3Ls. Now, it is an even split of law students and law firm associates, which seems to be the trend nationwide. In my experience, applicants will enjoy far more clerkship success with (even hypothetical) law firm experience.
6. Reviewing applications. I review every application. Last year, I gave an extended look to ~50 applications and forwarded 8 to my judge, who interviewed 4 candidates for 2 term clerk spots.
7. The interview. The interview helps us determine if the application is a good fit for for the position. We are interested in your work ethic, critical thinking skills, personality, and ability to work with a team. Any post-interview concerns is usually disqualifying.
8. Summer employment. Your 1L summer job is not significant, if law related. Your 2L summer job is more important, with big law expected but not required.
9. OCS. I have found OCS to be of little help unless the applicant is in the top 5 or 10%. Assume you are on your own if your law school has not reached out to you.
10. Politics. Your political beliefs are irrelevant unless we believe (usually through the interview) they would interfere with your ability to be an effective clerk. That being said, participation in Fed Soc and ACS does appear to matter to some of my colleagues, especially those on the appellate level. In short, YMMV.

That's all for now. I am happy to answer questions in this thread or via DM. I am also happy to review clerkship applications. Otherwise, good luck with your applications.

This was originally posted to pettyrevenge, but for some reason got taken down. So here goes:
The revenge I took on my grade nine English teacher was so petty that I hesitate to write about it. But Mrs. Bristle (for that is the name I will give her) was cruel to me every chance she got, and she made my first year in high school a misery. So when a file with her name on it arrived at my office, my first thought was not that I would beat her (for I was certain that I would) but rather, of the revenge I would take along the way.
I was pushing forty when Mrs. Bristle’s file hit my desk, some estate litigation where a mother’s last will and testament left my clients next to nothing, and gave their sister, Mrs. Bristle, pretty well the entire estate. When I saw the defendant’s name it looked familiar, and after a bit of Googling, I confirmed what I suspected: the defendant, Mrs. Bristle, was my former grade nine English teacher.
I remembered Mrs. Bristle very well. She was supposed to be teaching us the wonders of English literature, but what she really taught us were her rules, by which she meant her arbitrary whims, expressed in vague language, backed up by petty punishments for non-compliance. There was an art to getting along with Mrs. Bristle, and while most of the other kids learned it easily enough, somehow I did not. I have trouble learning unwritten rules, and in Mrs. Bristle’s class where unwritten and constantly changing rules were the order of the day, I didn’t stand a chance. Mrs. Bristle admonished me almost daily for ‘not paying attention’. I did detentions, re-wrote assignments, and made visits to the principal’s office, all because I apparently wasn’t listening, wasn’t doing what I was told.
Many was the time when Mrs. Bristle took me to task for missing some obvious but unstated part of an assignment. One time I handed in a sonnet, and received an “F” because the rhyming pattern was Petrarchan, not Shakespearean. But she would be nice to me, Mrs. Bristle would always say when she tossed my work back at me. She would give me another chance to hand the assignment in with the arbitrary changes she required, in the end giving me a good mark, but then heavily downgraded for being late.
Mrs. Bristle's case worked its way through the early stages, and every time I exchanged an email with her (for she was a self-rep, no need for counsel, she claimed) I thought about the unpleasant time I’d spent in her class. I had a rough time in high school, and I always resent anything that makes me dwell on it.
After a few months, the case was ready for the next stage. It was time to examine Mrs. Bristle, to find out why she thought her mother wanted to disinherit most of the family and enrich Mrs. Bristle alone. I showed up at the court reporter’s office early as usual, to get set up.
“What’s that shit eating grin on your face?” Adam asked. He was a lawyer colleague, about my vintage, and we were sitting in the lounge for lawyers only, the room that most court reporter’s offices have, a place for the lawyers to hang out and shoot the shit, no clients allowed.
“I’m going to examine my grade nine English teacher today,” I said, “and it's going to be fun.” I explained how she’d hated me back in the day, and had done her best to make my life hell.
“What’s the case about?” Adam said. Adam had been around the block, same as me, and it took only a few words for me to summarize everything that mattered in the file. “Estate fight, one sibling against four, undue influence, holograph will cutting out most of the siblings, competing with an older will, a formal one, where the shares are equal.”
Adam nodded appreciatively. “Nice fees, if the estate’s got the cash.”
“It does,” I said. We chatted for a bit, and then sat there in silence as we each did the last bit of prep for the cases we had that day, making notes, reading documents and drinking coffee. My alarm dinged just before ten, and I made my way to the examination room, and Mrs. Bristle, the teacher who’d greatly disliked the grade nine version of Calledinthe90s. I was curious to see if she would like the older version any better.
* * *
The examination started, and Mrs. Bristle and I sparred for a while, me tossing vague questions her way, and criticizing her when she did not understand. I kept her on the defensive for close to three hours, until it was getting on to one p.m.
“Aren’t you in a conflict or something?” she said to me just before the lunch break, when she’d finally made the connection, and understood that the lawyer asking her questions was a former student.
“No conflict,” I said, dismissing her concerns with a wave of my hand. “During the lunch break, there’s something I need you to do.”
“I don’t want to answer questions during lunch. I need a break.” The examination had been rough on Mrs. Bristle. She was not used to being asked questions, to being held to account, to being constantly challenged, and even having her grammar corrected now and again.
“You’ll get your lunch break. But while you’re eating a sandwich or whatever, keep this copy of the holograph will next to you.” The will on which Mrs. Bristle’s case relied was a holograph will, meaning that Mrs. Bristle’s mother had written the will entirely in hand from start to finish. The mother, or more likely, Mrs. Bristle herself, had downloaded a holograph will form from the web, and had completed it in accordance with the website’s instructions. Holograph wills are special. You can do a holograph will without a witness, without a lawyer, without anything at all, so long as you did it right. But if you got anything wrong, if you messed up in any way, it was invalid.
“You want me to read the will again over lunch?” Mrs. Bristle said.
“No. Instead, I want you to make a handwritten copy of it.”
“You want me to write it out? Whatever for?”
“There’s an allegation that the will wasn’t written by your mother, and that you wrote it up instead.” An allegation that I’d made up myself, that morning, while I was sitting in the lawyer's lounge, drinking coffee and munching on a muffin. My clients had not challenged the will’s handwriting; it was obviously their mother’s, totally different from Mrs. Bristle’s own writing. But I had decided otherwise.
Mrs. Bristle was appropriately outraged at being unjustly accused of forgery. Said she could prove it wasn’t her handwriting, could absolutely prove it.
“Then let’s settle the forgery issue once and for all,” I said, “write out the will in your own hand, so that our document experts can examine it, compare it with the original, and make a determination.”
“I don’t need the entire lunch break for that,” Mrs. Bristle said, “and I’d rather eat lunch at the restaurant downstairs.” The will was barely a page long, at most three hundred words, that being all it took for the mother to allegedly disinherit most of her children, and inexplicably leave everything to Mrs. Bristle. The mother had written up the will herself, but she’d been ninety at the time, while living in Mrs. Bristle’s house, and very much under her influence.
“I’ve retained five different experts,” I said, “and each of them will need copies.”
“Five experts? Why so many experts?”
“Each expert needs ten samples, for comparison purposes. It’s going to take you a while, Mrs. Bristle. I suggest you get started.” I overrode her protests and once she started to write, I left her in the room, and went to the lawyer’s lounge to eat their small sandwiches and drink more of the excellent coffee. After a while I stopped by the examination room to look in on Mrs. Bristle. I wanted to check in on her progress.
Mrs. Bristle asked for more time, complained of writer’s cramp, and asked me again if it was really necessary for her to write out the holograph will fifty times in her own hand, and I assured her that there was nothing for it, that it was absolutely necessary. I returned to the lounge to check my emails, leaving her hard at the homework I’d given her.
After a while my colleague, Adam, popped into the lounge. He asked me how it was going, the examination with the teacher, the teacher who had treated me so badly.
“I’m making her write lines.” Adam laughed, and laughed harder when I explained that I wasn’t kidding, that I really was making Mrs. Bristle write lines, and how I was doing it. His laughter attracted attention, and a few other lawyers asked what was up. “He’s making his teacher witness write lines,” Adam said, and the lawyer’s lounge hooted with laughter when I told everyone what was up.
It was one of the pettiest things I’ve ever done to anyone, making my grade nine teacher write lines. But the writing lines thing was just a warmup. The real revenge had yet to come. I returned to the examination room after a while, to check up on Mrs. Bristle, see how she was doing.
“This is taking forever,” she said, “and I really don’t get why you need it.” She had writer’s cramp, and was shaking her hand to get the kinks out. I picked up the stack of holograph wills she’d created, and flipped through it. She was nowhere near finished.
“On second thought,” I said, “maybe it isn’t necessary. I think you’re right. I don’t need any handwriting samples from you.”
“Why not?” she said.
“The will is invalid,” I explained, adding that because her mother had used a pre-printed form off the web, the law would not recognize the will. “A holograph will has to be entirely in the testator's handwriting,” I explained, “every single word entirely in handwriting from start to finish. This will doesn’t qualify, because your mother used a standard form, a form printed off the web, with instructions and boxes and questions and so on, and when you do that, then the will is no longer a holograph will. It’s a regular will, and regular wills need to be properly witnessed. This one isn’t witnessed, and that means it’s not a will. It’s just a piece of paper.”
“Are you trying to tell me that you only figured that out now? What kind of lawyer are you, anyways?”
“What kind of lawyer am I? I’m a lawyer who makes a witness skip lunch, and sit in a small room all alone, and write lines. Sound familiar, Mrs. Bristle?” She said nothing, and just stared at me. I closed the door on her, leaving her alone once more, and left for the Middle Temple Tavern where the lawyers all hung out. It was time to hoist a Guinness and enjoy my petty triumph.

Three year career nanny here. I started for my most recent family in April and I’ve been here a little over a month. I’ve encountered a new problem that isn’t something I typically deal with, that being NK and I are inside all day. When I say all day, I mean the full 8 hours I am there. I am perfectly fine to meet parents where they’re at and my job is to collaborate with them so everyone gets what they need. They don’t want me to transport him to any activities out of the house and as far as I know he doesn’t have any scheduled activities on a regular basis. Both MB and DB work from home. Typically, outside time is one of the staple activities I use, parks, splash pads, just walking in the neighborhood. I pride myself on being creative with what we have and we absolutely don’t need to drive anywhere to have fun. This is where it gets tricky. NK is turning two in June. He’s developmentally ready to do a lot. He’s tall for his age and very active, which leads to a lot of frustration when we are inside because I am constantly redirecting him. We have two “yes” zones but those are limited to his room (with minimal toys, mostly books) and the upstairs loft with most of the bigger toys and activities. When I started, the family’s current nanny was bringing her own daughter and it was a little chaotic to say the least. Everyone was under the assumption two kids under 2, with one nanny, and outings was a lot. Now that the dynamic has changed, I was hoping we would get to do more. At first the reason was they wanted to “get the backyard ready” and give him time to transition caregivers. Very understandable. When I suggested walks, MB said she wouldn’t want us to go alone until one of them had the chance to go with us a few times, also reasonable. However, that just never seems to materialize because they both need to be on work calls at 9. I know they typically take a short walk around the block as a family in the evening. Now that’s it’s getting hotter, the only reasonable time anyone wants to be outside is the morning, so I think they’ve been skipping evening walks. It can be over 100 when I leave at 5. We have gone outside in the back yard a few times within the last week, but there is no swing, nothing to play on or climb, not even a water hose. We have some chalk and bubble but those typically last about 5 minutes before he’s ready to move on. Even then, he wants to play with the grill and again I have to tell him no. We usually only last about 20 minutes because there’s just nothing that engages him.
I clarified with MB what temperature she thinks is too hot to be outside, I follow ISD rules which say 90+ degrees is usually the cut off. MB said nothing lower than 50 and nothing higher than 80. We are in Texas, summers here are brutal, and I always take necessity precautions when we do go outside, but there will seldom be a day where it’s under 95 realistically. We rinse and repeat the same thing everyday with little variation other than what is in my scope of control, like toy rotation and creating activities. And even then I have to ask and double check and ask because MB wants to source materials herself. We have weekly check-ins to see how everyone is doing. I’ve already brought up that outside time is a great way to add variation to routine, and how he might be acting out of frustration/boredom. Hell, I’m starting to get zoochosis myself. With a lot of my other kids my watch counts 10-12k steps a day, when I leave at 5 sometimes I’ll have less than 5k.
Is it really that unreasonable to want to bring him to a park within walking distance?

I'm in my late 40s and feel like I did life wrong. I know part of my problem is that I watch these young folks making very informed decisions because they have access to so much information. Omg, when I was in my early 20s to early 30s, we just made the best decision based on what we thought was the right thing to do which was usually based on what our parents or peers did. There are so many jobs out here that I had no idea even existed. I've been miserable in my career for over 15 years now. I just picked something just for the sake of making money.... only to realize it's horrible and I'm not even making that much money. I think about so many decisions I made throughout my life that was just ill-informed or lacked information. Even though I'm much older I'm committed to changing my professional situation. I really want to get the second half of life right.

Basics - I'm 33 now, so by the time I go through everything I'll be 34 or 35 applying and getting into a law school.
I never really knew what I wanted to do with my life. It took me 8 years to finish undergrad because I changed majors so many times. I eventually ended up with an English education degree which is fine, and I did teach for a year and a half, but then I quit. I've tried other jobs, too, like working in a jail and currently working in a hospital.
I chose English education because it seemed easiest and I just needed to graduate, not because of any real sort of love of teaching - I love the reading and analysis but trying to tell others how to do it isn't fun, especially when they don't want to know and are only in the classroom because they're required to be.
Working at a jail for a few years and now in the hospital, I know that careers as law enforcement (I don't like the hands on aspects) or any medical practice is not for me.
I have been thinking about becoming a lawyer. I toyed with the idea years ago but my family discouraged it (and a couple other thoughts I had on what to do with my life).
I've been exploring, however limited it is, the profession online and it actually seems like the perfect fit for me. I don't have a particular part I'd like to go into just yet, but both family and defense are interests right now.
But I'm a bit scared, truth be told. I'm a hard worker, im well spoken when I need to be, I had great reading and writing skills, and I think I can do school and do well at the job.
The scary part is that I'm worried about failing to land a job once out of school, either because of my older age while being a new grad or because of over saturation of the market, or just because maybe I actually flat out suck.
I'm also trying to find work as a paralegal right now, but most are asking for experience I don't have.
I guess I'm posting here to ask if it's worth it? If it's doable with my age and experience? I know with my history it can seem like a passing fancy, but it isn't. It's a thought I've revisited a lot over the years and now I would like to do something about it. I'm just not sure what or how, or if I even should.

Alright, so… I (18F) kinda made this reddit account just to get some feedback about this situation, since I’m too ashamed to ask my parents. The girl in question is 16, and is probably one of the most annoying people I’ve ever met…
(TLDR: This girl I was pretending to be friends with in High School obsessively fantasized about murdering someone for an entire semester, is overbearing as a person, interrogates people on a daily basis and is nosy, injects herself into drama that isn’t her own, throws temper tantrums when she doesn’t get her way, constantly touches people and makes unwarranted comments about girl’s bodies, asked me to draw CP for her, and MADE FUN OF HER SUICIDAL BROTHER. And I wrote a hate-letter telling her that all of this stuff is a problem, but now I feel bad about it because I think she might actually have mental issues. It’s a really wild ride and a long story, so if you choose to read it, you should expect to be here for a while. And it’s High School drama, so I’ll try to discard the boring details.)
There’s this girl, who… I’ll call her Storm. You’ll find out why. Storm quickly became the most annoying person in one of my classes. Any time she talked, she didn’t have anything interesting to say, but just kept going on and on and on endlessly. It was annoying, but we just kinda played along to be nice.

Well… Around a month into school, Storme started opening up and became comfortable talking about personal topics. She told us this story about how one of her other friends (I’ll call her Katie) “betrayed” her the previous year, and then went on to talk about how much she hated Katie and didn’t care if she lived or died. (Honestly, Katie’s offense was miniscule. At most, she replaced Storm with someone else as her best friend. You know… Regular High School drama that wasn’t that deep.) 

Then Storme started saying ludicrous stuff like “I hope she falls into a volcano”, or “I hope she gets eaten by sharks falling from the sky. Like Sharknado.”. But like… She kept saying it constantly, out loud in class. She ranted about how she wanted Katie to get kidnapped by the Mafia, be flown up to the moon, and be dropped into a black hole to become “Katie-spaghetti”. It was honestly really funny at first, so me and a few other people in the class joined in a little bit and added our own stupid, childlike scenarios. (Katie has a reputation for being… A slut. That’s why it was funny at first.)
But then after this schtick got old, Storm just kept going and going and going… She ranted about Katie until it physically hurt to hear her talk anymore. Instead of adjusting herself like a normal person, she just kept yapping until everyone rolled their eyes every time she opened her mouth, because we knew she would just keep going on and on about all of the stupid ways she wanted Katie to die. Even the damn teacher told her to stop doing that, but she never listened and the teacher eventually just gave up.
Katie then gradually started to get more morbid with the things she was saying, to the point where I genuinely considered calling the cops and getting this girl some grippy socks. She talked until she became red-faced, started tweaking, and laughed in a neurotic, nervous angry way while she started wringing out her trembling hands. She genuinely looked and sounded unhinged, and what didn’t help was that she started saying stuff like “There aren’t metal detectors in this school, right?”, and “I wish I wasn’t such a good person, because if I wasn’t, I’d be acting on my impulse to cave her skull in the next time I see her. One of these days I’m going to snap and then just do it..” …Yeah, so I was genuinely considering getting the police involved in this because of those two sentences. Thankfully Katie is safe and sound to this day and Storm never acted on these “impulses”. I’m so glad it worked out that I didn’t have to call the cops, but I was seriously worried for a minute…
She continued to talk about Katie, but mostly to me. She talked about this topic endlessly, her words getting increasingly violent until Christmas break. Yeah… 5 months. She ranted about the ways she wanted Katie to die for 5 whole months. Months. But then when she was done ranting, she finally shut up.
She wrote a note to Katie after Christmas break explaining “You hurt me really badly, but I’m a Christian so I forgive you and I hope you the best”... As if she didn’t rant about her for 5 months straight. Make it make sense. But enough about that. Here’s where my fuck ups began.
I gave her my number and we started saying we were friends, even though I never liked her. I started sending her some art (I'm an artist), and she started asking me some questions about it. She asked if I had ever drawn p0rn in my life. Of course, I said no because I didn't.
And then my worst nightmare: “Have you ever drawn p0rn of them?” …Of course I didn’t, because that would be CP… Plus I’ve never thought of those characters as being “sexual”... They’re literally 14 and 15 years old.
Then basically, she made an indirect “suggestion” for me to draw them together. I said fuck no. Hell fucking no. She tried to convince me to draw them “aged up”, but again I refused. She put me off from drawing those characters ever again. I haven’t drawn them since and I don’t take my sketchbook to school anymore because I don’t want her to see my drawings and be reminded of that BS.
But enough about that… Storm is a church-going girl, and so she has a few church-going friends. (This also makes everything I’ve said before all the more ironic.).
I’ve heard many stories about how Storm interrogates other people, too. If she sees a guy/girl’s name pop up on the screen of someone she knows, she’ll pester them until they give her one of two answers: either “I’ll tell you later”, or the actual answer. She’s done that to me too, in front of everyone in class.
The thing that upsets me about this is that she claims to be “nosy”, but thinks it’s a positive attribute rather than an annoying one. She brags about being “nosy” sometimes.
And the sexual assault… Since we were in a sports medicine class, our projects involved a lot of hands-on things. That didn’t bother me by itself, but with Storm, it was a nightmare. This girl, in the process of strapping an ice bag to my thigh, called my thighs “small”, and said that I have a “beautiful body”. We also did shoulder stretching stuff the next week, and I happened to fall under her care while she stared into my eyes and made weird faces at me, all the while she made sound effects and made the process much more uncomfortable than it needed to be.
One week, we ended up as partners again and she ended up wrapping my shoulder. This shoulder-wrap wasn’t an issue for me, but having her as a partner made it an issue. As expected, she made sound effects, but this time she stated the obvious as if it was new information that nobody would have ever suspected: “Wow, this is squishing your boobies huh?”... Emphasis on the word “boobies”. Jesus Fucking Christ, it was already awkward as hell before she even brought that up, why would she say something like that?? I didn’t even realize that until she brought it up.

In fear of being subjected to her uncomfortable BS again and feeling violated, I texted her and told her that she’s been making me feel uncomfortable, and to please stop being so…. Weird. I get it’s an awkward thing to wrap up your classmate’s thigh, but that’s a moment to keep comments to yourself. Her response? “I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY-” Just… Stop it. I didn’t introduce the topic as a big deal and told her not to worry about it, but she kept apologizing for it nonstop. Just endlessly, like everything else. Even when I tried to change the subject to something else, she just kept apologizing for it practically until she went to bed. (She has a bedtime at 9:30… At 16 years old.) All of this stuff contributed to my overall hatred toward her. I don’t like her at all, and it’s a wonder I didn’t explode and insult her entire personality and deplorable behavior to her face (Meg Griffin style). Things are just so awkward and awful whenever she opens her mouth, and it just doesn't ever stop. But because of all of this, when it came time for my Senior prom, I decided to secretly invite one of my friends from that class as a plus one, and NOT Storm. I was worried that if I told her that to her face, I would all of a sudden be the new “Katie” in her conversations, because the infraction Katie did was so miniscule that it seemed to be less like a “betrayal” than what I did. (In hindsight, it was probably the other way around.) So… I just kept the whole thing to myself and so did the friend I took to prom (I’ll call her Beyonce. Because… She loves Beyonce.). If this wasn’t bad enough, strap in because not even three weeks ago, Beyonce was doing her usual schtick of making fun of random things. She once made fun of cool whip and the entire state of Texas at the same time and somehow made it make perfect sense. She should really have a comedy show, I swear. But this time, Beyonce was making fun of the name “Gage”, saying “Why would anyone name their kid after a 12-gage shotgun?” and “People named Gage seem untrustworthy. I wouldn’t want to be near one in a zombie apocalypse, because he’d just feed me to those fuckers.”. Funny stuff. Storm then said “My brother’s name is Gage”, and in order to preserve the flow of the conversation (and also to tick her off a little, I’m ngl), Beyonce asked her: “Is your brother untrustworthy?” And then without a single millisecond wasted, she said, in a Disney Channel comedy fashion: “Welll… We can’t trust him with his own life, sooo…”.. And then she laughed as if it was funny. Like.. Rib-stitches type of laughing. ….So then the others (understandably) went quiet, which left only me and her. Then my idiot ass decided to say what I was thinking at that moment: “You don’t seem to be taking it seriously. That’s your brother, but you don’t sound sympathetic at all.” I felt bad for that statement, so I apologized for it over text when I got home from school. Quickly, we erupted into an argument, (with me holding back), and she ended up saying “What does it matter to you? He’s not your brother. If Beyonce said that about her brother, you’d laugh. But when I do, it’s bad.”. Beyonce’s brother is 8 years old…. So no, that would be even worse. …So then I had to explain to her how human decency works, and how making fun of your s*icidal siblings isn’t funny whatsoever and how that joke could be considered to be in very poor taste, even for people who like dark humor. When me, Beyonce or Mark made “suicide” jokes, it was about OURSELVES and it was usually in a statement like “I don’t want to take a test next period, I’m gonna kms.”... …Storm ended up getting so mad that we weren’t having a conversation anymore; we were just throwing shit around. I told her that if she was being livestreamed at that moment, she’d be bashed on the whole internet for a week or so and be called “evil” for that joke. In hindsight I shouldn’t have said that, but my goal was to tell her how people perceive those jokes. I ended the conversation and the next day, I apologized to her again. I retracted my statements and told her that I was sorry for talking out of line. She accepted the apology, and things went back to “normal”. She forgot about it, but I didn’t. …So here are the reasons why I feel bad, before I delve into the contents of the “hate letter” I wrote to her. Here’s a list of my crimes: 

• I pretended to be her friend for an entire school year.
• I hid the fact that I was going to prom with Beyonce from her, and then lied to her face repeatedly whenever she asked if I went to prom or not.
• I got into business that wasn’t my own and criticized her.
• I wrote a hate-letter to her that I directed her to read at home on the last day of school.

…Here’s why I feel bad: Storm doesn’t seem to be emotionally intelligent and is unable to control her mouth whenever she feels strong emotions. All she wants is to be listened to and understood, but nobody can and nobody truly wants to. She feigns confidence and goes overboard with compliments in the hopes of catching the attention of people who want to be friends with her. She’s not used to change and is very naive, to the point where (just yesterday) she quit her job at a fast food restaurant after only the first day of working there. For the longest time she didn’t have access to the internet, so she doesn’t really have a means to connect with other people through sharing videos or memes or whatever.

…I feel like a bad person because I knowingly, intentionally played into all of this just for the pathetic reason of making her shut up in class. It’s despicable what I did, and I’m beating myself up for it every day. I was just originally going to leave the school, block her and never talk to her ever again in my life, but when she made that joke about her brother, I decided (stupidly) to take it upon myself to be the bearer of bad news. I gave her a letter. Within the “hate letter”, it isn’t actually hate, per se. It’s more like… A report on the behavior she needs to fix, as well as an admission to my lies over the course of this whole year. I told her the awful truth. I told her about everything I mentioned in this post and tried to keep it “professional”, though I did end up going as far as to say “you have all of the attributes of an obnoxious piece of stale bread”........... And what’s worse is… I told her to read it on the last day of school, and my reasoning is pathetic at best. I told her to read it on the last day of school because I didn’t want her to burden the class with her nonstop ranting about me, since she, Mark and Beyonce are sophomores and I’m the only senior in the “friend group”, which means that I left the school an entire week earlier than them. I’ve been intentionally delaying her pain and still talking to her over text acting like things are “normal” so that she doesn’t read it early, knowing damn well that on that last day of school, my words are going to hurt her so badly that she might not be able to recover for a while. In the letter, I told her that by the time she reads it, I would have already blocked her because I don’t want any more conversation with her due to me feeling so bad and having nothing more to say. If the plan goes right, she’ll read it on May 23rd, and on that day I will block her. I feel awful for all of this. I feel like a monster for this. It’s painful knowing that I’m going to cause her pain and that I planned when it’s going to happen, but at the same time I feel like she deserves it. But at the same time, I know damn well that it wasn’t my place to do that. I should have left everything alone. Nobody I can talk to irl would even hear me out; they’d just stop at the words “hate letter”, which means my only option is to seek advice from people on Reddit. Do my motives for doing things make sense? Am I actually a bad person for this? Am I the asshole? Does she deserve what she’s getting? 

Edit 1: I removed some asterisks (they're annoying). Edit 2: I attempted to shorten it or say things in simple terms. I also fixed spacing and stuff. Sorry.

DAY: MAY 20 2024
5-20-2024

Why nightmares and ‘daymares’ could be early warning signs of autoimmune disease

An increase in nightmares and hallucinations—or ‘daymares’—could herald the onset of autoimmune diseases such as lupus, say an international team led by researchers at the University of Cambridge and King’s College London. The researchers argue that there must be greater recognition that these types of mental health and neurological symptoms can act as an early warning sign that an individual is approaching a “flare,” where their disease worsens for a period.
5-20-2024 Yoga and meditation-induced altered states of consciousness are common in the general population, study says
Yoga, mindfulness, meditation, breathwork, and other practices are gaining in popularity due to their potential to improve health and well-being. The effects of these practices are mostly positive and occasionally transformational, yet they are known to sometimes be associated with challenging altered states of consciousness. New research by a team including investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital reveals that altered states of consciousness associated with meditation practice are far more common than expected. Although many people reported positive outcomes, that were sometimes even considered transformational, from these experiences, for a substantial
5-20-2024 Examining the benefits of out-of-network care for pediatric moyamoya
Total in-episode expenses and resource use before the index surgery (preop) and including/after the surgery (postop). The comparisons are separated for analysis into (A) single institution cohorts (1 and 2) and (B) multi?institution cohorts (3 and 4). Moyamoya disease is a rare condition that affects the blood vessels in the brain, especially in children. Narrowing and blockage of vessels significantly increases the risk of stroke and requires surgical revascularization for treatment. Although research shows that outcomes of revascularization are better
5-20-2024 Study explores links between social media use, mental health and sleep quality
The more time you spend on social media, the greater the likelihood of having unpleasant social-media related dreams that cause distress, sleep disruption and impact our peace of mind. Flinders University’s Reza Shabahang says that the vast and rapid adoption of social media has the potential to influence various aspects of life, including the realm of dreaming. “As social media becomes increasingly intertwined with our lives, its impact extends beyond waking hours, and may influence our dreams,”
5-20-2024 How are asthma and heart health linked?
Although the heart and lungs are neighbors in your chest, people may think of them as separate entities with unrelated problems. But a growing body of evidence suggests that asthma—one of the most common lung disorders—is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Asthma is a serious chronic disease in which airways are inflamed, often in response to specific triggers. It affects about 25 million people in the U.S., including nearly 5 million children, causing millions of annual visits to doctors’ offices and emergency rooms. “We call these major changes
5-20-2024 STUDY EXPLORES PATIENT TRUST IN PHYSICIANS
Trust in one’s physician drives positive health practices. In a scoping review, SUNY Poly Professor of Sociology Dr. Linda R. Weber discovered new developments in the measurement of trust, identified those measures of trust that have known reliability and validity, and compared those instruments’ conceptualizations, dimensions, and indicators. The paper is published in the journal PLOS ONE. Weber explains that 10 dimensions emerged from the study: fidelity, technical competence, communicative competence, interpersonal competence (i.e., caring), honesty, confidentiality, global, behavioral, fairness, and system trust/accountability. In addition, these findings provide the foundation
5-20-2024 TIMESAVING TIPS FOR COOKING HEALTHY MEALS
Living a busy, fast-paced life can make it hard to find the motivation to cook a healthy meal at home. However, learning some shortcuts in the kitchen can keep your healthy eating goals on track and help you avoid grazing on unhealthy snacks, grabbing the first thing you see in the fridge or going out for fast food. Why cook at home? Research shows that maintaining a healthy weight is challenging when you eat out too frequently. Restaurant portions often are super-sized
5-20-2024 UNDERSTANDING PERIMENOPAUSE VS. MENOPAUSE
Menopause marks a significant transition for women, yet understanding its precursor, perimenopause, and its symptoms can be complex. Dr. Stephanie Faubion, director of Mayo Clinic’s Center for Women’s Health and medical director of The Menopause Society, says experiencing perimenopause and menopause can be confusing for some. She says it is not only patients who may find it confusing, but medical providers as well, due to lack of training in menopause management. “Menopause is defined by no menstrual cycle for a year,” says Dr. Faubion.
5-20-2024 LOW-DOSE IRON SUPPLEMENTATION HAS NO BENEFIT FOR BREASTFED INFANTS, SHOWS STUDY
The American Pediatric Association recommends iron supplements to all healthy infants who breastfeed longer than four months, while its European counterpart, Society of Gastroenterology, Hepataology and Nutrition, does not recommend it. These deviating guidelines stimulated researchers to design a new study. Breastfeeding is strongly recommended, and the proportion of children are breastfed during the first half of life is high. The researchers wanted to determine whether breastfeeding babies could benefit from extra iron.
5-20-2024 ALLERGY MEDICATIONS COME WITH HAZARDS: BE AWARE
People with seasonal allergies often turn to over-the-counter and prescription medicines to relieve symptoms like coughing, sneezing, runny nose, congestion and itchy eyes, nose or throat. But they often aren’t aware that these meds—including antihistamines—have as much risk for potential side effects, drug interactions and overdose as other drugs. “All medicines have side effects associated with them even when they are taken appropriately and according to dosing directions on the label,”
5-20-2024 I CAN’T AFFORD OLIVE OIL—WHAT ELSE CAN I USE?
If you buy your olive oil in bulk, you’ve likely been in for a shock in recent weeks. Major supermarkets have been selling olive oil for up to A$65 for a four-liter tin, and up to $26 for a 750 milliliter bottle. We’ve been hearing about the health benefits of olive oil for years. And many of us are adding it to salads, or baking and frying with it. But during a cost-of-living crisis, these high prices can put olive oil out of reach. Let’s take a look at why
5-20-2024 Researchers uncover biological trigger of early puberty
Heather Brenhouse, associate professor of psychology, says disrupting the caretaker relationship can really traumatize a child or a developing rodent. Credit: Ruby Wallau/Northeastern University New research conducted by the Brenhouse Lab reveals how early life adversity triggers early puberty and late-life anxiety, paving the way for potential interventions. The onset of puberty has been creeping downward for decades. In the United States, the average age of girls reaching puberty ranges from 8.8 to 10.3 years old. The early start of puberty, which is associated with many health risks, can be
5-20-2024 Bioluminescence and 3D-printed implants shed light on brain–spinal interactions
Brain-spinal cord duet’s neurodynamic symphony is now accessible to scientists via novel multi-organ implants. Credit: Dmitrijs Celinskis A sensory process such as pain is no ordinary phenomenon—it’s a symphony of neural and vascular interactions orchestrated by the brain and spinal cord. Attempting to dissect this symphony by focusing on a single region is like trying to understand a complex melody by listening to just one instrument. It’s incomplete, potentially misleading, and may result in erroneous conclusions. Enter the Carney Institute’s team of visionaries. Their mission? To develop tools that allow
5-20-2024 New thesis explores cancer treatment that can prevent relapse
. What is the main focus of your thesis? Relapse following initial treatment efficacy remains a major clinical challenge for many cancers. The focus of my thesis has been to explore the therapeutic impact of immune cells in patients with blood cancer (leukemia), by first investigating which cells
5-20-2024 New study reveals health and social benefits of car-free living
Participating in a three-week car-free challenge has enhanced the health and well-being of Oxford residents, according to research conducted by The University of Bath’s Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations (CAST), in partnership with climate charity Possible and Low Carbon Oxford North (LCON), conducted this research project. After ditching their cars for three weeks, 10 out of the 12 drivers across Oxford who participated said they plan to continue with reduced car use beyond the project. The findings of this research project show that: Day-to-day transport emissions were slashed
5-20-2024 Research shows linked biological pathways driving skin inflammation
A certain biological pathway—a set of linked reactions in the body—drives the inflammation seen in the skin disease psoriasis, a new study finds. The work could lead to improved therapies for all inflammatory skin diseases, including atopic and allergic dermatitis and a type of boil called hidradenitis suppurativa, say the study authors. The findings are published in the journal Immunity. Inflammation is the body’s natural response to irritation and infection, but when out of control, it can lead to the reddish, flaky, itchy lesions that
5-20-2024 Prescription co-payments linked to more hospital admissions in New Zealand, study finds
A new study from researchers cautions that bringing back the $5 co-payment for prescription medicines could see a jump in hospital admissions. The study analyzed health data for 71,502 people and found those who didn’t pick up a prescription because they couldn’t afford the $5 fee had a 34% higher rate of being admitted to hospital.
5-20-2024 How a simulation is informing COVID-19 vaccine policy after our ‘return to normal’
As the saying goes “There is no such thing as normal” and this has been especially true after the pandemic. Before the emergence of the omicron COVID-19 variant, countries like the U.K. had high vaccination coverage along with widespread exposure to COVID-19 in the population. This combination of vaccine and infection-derived immunity is termed hybrid immunity and is different to vaccine immunity or infection immunity alone. In contrast, other countries, including Australia, New Zealand and those in the Western Pacific, had a very different pandemic experience.
5-20-2024 Researchers find intriguing connections between Alzheimer’s disease and other common conditions
A study has found that while some medical conditions appear to increase our likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease, others appear to decrease the odds. The study, led by Dr. Yijun (Nicholas) Pan and Dr. Liang Jin, analyzed data from 2,443 older Australians living in Melbourne or Perth who are part of the Australian Imaging, Biomarker and Lifestyle (AIBL) study, an internationally recognized cohort for dementia research. “We found anxiety and other neurological disorders are associated with increased likelihood of Alzheimer’s disease,” Dr. Pan said.
5-20-2024 Prepping autistic or sound-sensitive kids for cicada noise
As Chicagoans await the emergence of the cicadas, parents of children on the autism spectrum and/or who have sensitivities to sound can take a few steps to prepare for what is expected to be a loud summer. “Some children on the spectrum can struggle with loud or unexpected noises, such as toilets that automatically flush, fireworks around the Fourth of July or the emergence of a large number of cicadas,”
5-20-2024 Study highlights importance of screening for rare inherited iron metabolism defects
Over 40% of cases curated based on stringent clinical and laboratory criteria from the Indian subcontinent have an inherited iron metabolism defect on comprehensive genomic evaluation, report investigators in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics. Although iron deficiency anemia is the most prevalent form of anemia globally,
5-20-2024 Study finds tyrosine kinase Csk promotes germinal center B cell survival and affinity maturation
The authors found that Csk (a tyrosine kinase that attenuates B cell receptor signaling) is required for germinal center maintenance and efficient antibody maturation. The immune system strikes a fine balance by identifying and neutralizing disease-causing agents while carefully avoiding destruction of healthy tissues and cells. Now, researchers from Japan have shed new light on one of the processes that helps train immune cells to act only against genuine threats.
5-20-2024 Significant gaps between science of obesity and the care patients receive, say experts
As research continues to produce evidence about the underlying causes of obesity and optimal strategies to treat and manage obesity have evolved, there are disparities in application of the latest scientific advances in the clinical care that people with obesity receive. Widespread adoption of current findings, consistency of care and expertise in obesity care varies by health care professional and institution.
5-20-2024 Improving online depression treatment
Symptom course of depression for individuals who dropped out of treatment and those who completed treatment. In the dropout group, there is an initial decrease in symptoms while the patients were still in treatment, which tapers off as they drop out. For completers, there is close to a linear change over time. This suggests there is a relation between the more that an individual continues to participate in ICBT and their depressive symptom improvement.
5-20-2024 Women face worse chronic kidney disease management in primary care
Women receive worse primary care-based chronic kidney disease (CKD) management than men, according to a research letter adult patients with CKD receiving primary care at 15 practices using electronic health record data to examine sex disparities in guideline-based CKD management
5-20-2024 Bisoprolol does not reduce exacerbations in at-risk COPD patients
For patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), bisoprolol does not reduce the number of self-reported exacerbations treated with oral corticosteroids, antibiotics, or both, according to a study
5-20-2024 Anticancer potential of CLK kinase inhibitors 1C8 and GPS167 via EMT and antiviral immune response
The diheteroarylamide-based compound 1C8 and the aminothiazole carboxamide-related compound GPS167 inhibit the CLK kinases, and affect the proliferation of a broad range of cancer cell lines. A chemogenomic screen previously performed with GPS167 revealed that the depletion of components associated with mitotic spindle assembly altered
5-20-2024 Study sheds light on bacteria associated with pre-term birth
Researchers from North Carolina State University have found that multiple species of Gardnerella, bacteria sometimes associated with bacterial vaginosis (BV) and pre-term birth, can coexist in the same vaginal microbiome. The findings, published in mSystems, add to the emerging picture of Gardnerella’s effects on human health. Gardnerella is a group of anaerobic bacteria that are commonly found in the vaginal microbiome. Higher levels of the bacteria are a signature of BV and associated with higher risk of pre-term birth, but it is also found in women who have no sign
5-20-2024 New AI model uses federated learning for multi-organ segmentation based on medical image data
Researchers have successfully developed the technology that can accurately segment different body organs by effectively learning medical image data used for different purposes in different hospitals, which is expected to greatly contribute to the development of large-scale medical AI models in the future.
5-20-2024 Second Phase 3 clinical trial again shows dupilumab lessens disease in COPD patients with type 2 inflammation
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients with type 2 inflammation may soon gain access to a new drug—dupilumab—that showed rapid and sustained improvements in patients in a pivotal Phase 3 clinical trial, researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine. This monoclonal antibody is the first biologic shown to improve clinical outcomes in COPD. The data supporting the use of dupilumab in COPD will be reviewed by the United States Food and Drug Administration in June. The disease improvements—as measured by a significantly lower annualized rate of acute exacerbations
5-20-2024 New AI model uses federated learning for multi-organ segmentation based on medical image data
Researchers have successfully developed the technology that can accurately segment different body organs by effectively learning medical image data used for different purposes in different hospitals, which is expected to greatly contribute to the development of large-scale medical AI models in the future.
5-20-2024 Second Phase 3 clinical trial again shows dupilumab lessens disease in COPD patients with type 2 inflammation
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients with type 2 inflammation may soon gain access to a new drug—dupilumab—that showed rapid and sustained improvements in patients in a pivotal Phase 3 clinical trial, researchers report in the New England Journal of Medicine. This monoclonal antibody is the first biologic shown to improve clinical outcomes in COPD. The data supporting the use of dupilumab in COPD will be reviewed by the United States Food and Drug Administration in June. The disease improvements—as measured by a significantly lower annualized rate of acute exacerbations

• 5-20-2024GALLBLADDER CANCER RISES AMONG BLACK AMERICANS AS CASES DECLINE IN OTHER GROUPS
• 5-20-2024US PEDIATRICIANS REVERSE DECADES-OLD ADVICE AGAINST HIV-POSITIVE MOTHERS BREASTFEEDING
• 5-20-2024UK REPORT FINDS COVER-UP OF DECADES-LONG INFECTED BLOOD SCANDAL
• 5-20-2024ASTRAZENECA TO BUILD $1.5 BLN CANCER DRUG FACILITY IN SINGAPORE
• 5-20-2024CHEMO FOR GLIOBLASTOMA ENHANCED BY TAPPING INTO CELL’S DAILY RHYTHMS
• 5-20-2024RESEARCH SHOWS THAT FERROPTOSIS, A FORM OF CELL DEATH, OCCURS IN SEVERE COVID-19 PATIENT LUNGS
• 5-20-2024BODY’S ‘MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE’ DELIVERS TARGETED CANCER TREATMENT
• 5-20-2024EARLY BLOOD GLUCOSE CONTROL FOR THOSE WITH TYPE 2 DIABETES CRUCIAL FOR REDUCING COMPLICATIONS, PROLONGING LIFE
• 5-20-2024GRID CELL RESPONSES TO THE ILLUSION OF SELF-LOCATION
• 5-20-2024RESEARCHERS DISCOVER TOP-DOWN SIGNALS IN BRAIN CIRCUITS REGULATING DEPRESSION
• 5-20-2024BENIGN NAIL CONDITION LINKED TO RARE SYNDROME THAT GREATLY INCREASES CANCER RISK
• 5-20-2024RESEARCHERS REVEAL PROMISING TREATMENT TARGET FOR RESISTANT BRAIN CANCER
• 5-20-2024NEW MECHANISMS UNDERLYING TUMOR VARIETY IN BRAIN CANCERS DISCOVERED
• 5-20-2024STUDY EXPLORES PATIENT TRUST IN PHYSICIANS
• 5-20-2024MOTIVATED BY LACK OF DIVERSITY IN NEUROLOGICAL STUDIES, SCIENTISTS LOOK TO ENSURE EQUITY IN BRAIN RESEARCH
• 5-20-2024FLUORIDE EXPOSURE DURING PREGNANCY LINKED TO INCREASED RISK OF CHILDHOOD NEUROBEHAVIORAL PROBLEMS, STUDY FINDS
• 5-20-2024STUDY SUGGESTS BOTH STEP AND TIME-BASED EXERCISE TARGETS ARE EQUALLY BENEFICIAL
• 5-20-2024MEDICAID ‘UNWINDING’ DECRIED AS BIASED AGAINST DISABLED PEOPLE
• 5-20-2024TIMESAVING TIPS FOR COOKING HEALTHY MEALS
• 5-20-2024UNDERSTANDING PERIMENOPAUSE VS. MENOPAUSE
• 5-20-2024LOW-DOSE IRON SUPPLEMENTATION HAS NO BENEFIT FOR BREASTFED INFANTS, SHOWS STUDY
• 5-20-2024IS IT BIRD FLU JUST AN ANIMAL THING, OR CAN PEOPLE CATCH IT?
• 5-20-2024SCIENTISTS USE NEW APPROACH TO DISABLE BRAIN CANCER CELLS’ ABILITY TO SURVIVE
• 5-20-2024RESEARCHER FINDS MOTHERS LIVE LONGER AS CHILD MORTALITY DECLINES
• 5-20-2024U-SHAPED LINK DETECTED BETWEEN ADOLESCENT BMI AND MENTAL HEALTH
• 5-20-2024AI CHATBOTS SHOW HIGHER EMPATHY, READABILITY IN RESPONDING TO CANCER QUESTIONS, STUDY FINDS
• 5-20-2024ALLERGY MEDICATIONS COME WITH HAZARDS: BE AWARE
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Considerations on Sexual Immorality, Gender Identity, and my friends Non-Denominational Church.
A good friend of mine from a fairly conservative evangelical background is considering becoming a pastor at his non-denominational church. As part of the evaluation process, they asked him to write a paper on these topics that he is not an expert on.
He asked for my opinion and I offered to share it online to solicit constructive criticism, notes of encouragement, and or reading recommendations on these topics.
I believe his goal is to be faithful to the scriptures, loving to those outside the church, and challenging to those inside the church, as most of us could do better.
What he wrote is in the quotation marks below.
“1: Scope of the Issue
Sexual immorality has become a besetting and ubiquitous issue in our culture and in our churches. While many aspects of it are not novel or unique to this time and have clear scriptural input, there are others that bring challenges to our church for which we don’t have obvious precedent. The main point of these comments is to try and answer three questions with some degree of specificity: (1) how do we make ourselves a place where people who do not know Christ will feel welcome to come and learn of Him regardless of where they come from, (2) how do we pastorally care for people who have come in to the church with pre-existing circumstances related to sexual immorality, and (3) how do we equip our members to represent Christ to those in their lives that are dealing with these issues. We want to do this in a way that does not “walk a tight rope” or compromise to appease, but honors Scripture in its commands to both show compassion and exhort and correct. We must recognize that every individual circumstance is unique, and many will require careful and prayerful consideration, but this is meant to give a framework for that consideration.
2: Scriptural Basis for Corporate Response
There are many references we can point to that discuss and define sexual immorality throughout Scripture and many of these will be used below as we consider specific examples and situations. Let us start, however, by looking at passages that deal with corporate response rather than individual sin. It is clear that the Corinthian church had significant issues in this area, and much of Paul’s first letter was devoted to it. In chapter 5, Paul states that when sexual immorality is discovered in the church we should “mourn” over it and “not to associate with immoral people.” Importantly, he also makes clear in vv. 9-13 that these comments only apply to those “who bears the name of brother.” He explicitly writes, “not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world…for what have I to do with judging outsiders?” This is key in informing our response to those who are not members of the church. If it is our desire to see sinners come through our doors and come to know our Savior through our ministry, then we must be welcoming, accepting them where they are. This is not to say we hide or compromise the biblical position, but it is not an issue on which we want to filter people at the door. There are three categories of people in sexual sin that we need to form a response for. First, those just coming to the church who have not committed to it – these should be treated the same as any we are reaching out to with Christ’s love. They need Jesus, not behavioral change. Next, those who have recently joined the church but have pre-existing sexual sin patterns. This can and should be addressed with patience, dignity, and love. There are often many sin areas in the life of a new believer, and it is prudent to discern how and when to address each of them. Lastly, those who have been members in the church for some amount of time and fall into sexual sin. This is the group that Paul is primarily addressing in 1 Corinthians. While sex within marriage is a private issue, sexual sin cannot be a taboo topic. It needs to be addressed regularly and clearly. We need close enough relationships within the church that such problems do not fester in the dark. We must avoid the typical church pattern to vilify the first group, never see the second group, and pretend the third group doesn’t exist until it all blows up in scandal. May it never be.
3: Consistency Issue
There is a tendency in our Christian culture to treat some sexual sins as worse than others. Like the Corinthians, some things we seem to have accepted as just ubiquitous parts of our culture. Knowing the prevalence of promiscuity and fornication among teens and single adults and usage of pornography even within the church, we tend to address these as issues of indwelling sin, similar to anger or fear of man, with offers of accountability and understanding when someone falls. By contrast, when it comes to homosexuality or adultery, it is often a church discipline issue. We view homosexual marriage as a major problem, but remarriage after a non-biblical divorce is rarely addressed. These inconsistencies lead to stigmatization and polarization and should have no place in the church. The criterion for escalation should be unrepentance, not the nature of the sexual sin. It is clear from 1 Corinthians that all should be taken seriously, but none should be vilified above others.
4: Culture and Identity
The major underlying problem with many of the sexual sin and gender issues is that they have come to be culturally bound up with people’s identities. This is not a new phenomenon and is not unique to this issue. As far back as Acts 19, you see people becoming “enraged” because Paul had threatened the Ephesians’ cultural identity as worshipers of Artemis. People continue to find their primary identities in their employment, hobbies, sports teams, or families rather than Christ. None of these should be accepted, but none should be reviled either. If a person does not know Jesus, they are dead. How they identify themselves is of no concern. Once they have been made alive, they can be taught that “whose” they are is more important than “who” they are. All identity outside of Christ is not sinful, but if it takes paramount importance, it may become so. A person who recognizes a tendency toward same sex attraction may label themselves as gay or lesbian. This should not be considered a sin issue unless it becomes, for them, their defining characteristic or leads to sinful actions. We should recognize the difficulty of this struggle and support such a person rather than get hung up on labels. There must be clear distinction between identifying same sex attraction and engaging in homosexual behavior. These should be the guiding principles underlying everything that follows are regards individual cases.
5: Public Facing Information, Guests, and New Attendees
Considering what we have discussed, and Paul’s assertion in 1 Corinthians 5 that we ought to reserve judgment on sexual immorality to those we call brother, I would submit that public facing information regarding the church (i.e. website, app, etc) should not publish a position on sexual immorality, marriage, and gender identity. Doing so effectively places the filter at the door so that people who do not know Christ may be turned away from it. This is not tantamount to tacit approval. In appropriate contexts within the church, these topics should still be discussed and addressed, but I do not believe it is consistent with a biblical treatment of unbelievers to place it in a public facing forum. If we have guests or new regular attendees who appear to be engaged in a cohabitating or fornicating relationship, a homosexual relationship, or other sexual sin, this should not be a priority to address unless we have discerned that they are believers and join the church. Even then, it is important to draw a distinction between someone who deals with same-sex attraction and someone who engages in homosexual behavior. The next seven points are meant to discuss, in broad terms, how we should address those who join the church with pre-existing relationships or identity issues:
6: Promiscuity, Cohabitation – Hebrews 13:4, 1 Cor 7:1-2, Ex 22:16
Much of the biblical discussion on promiscuity is by inference. Clearly, sex was meant to be inseparably linked to marriage and outside of that context should be considered immoral. For those who join the church already in a sexual relationship who are unmarried we should apply Exodus 22:16 and encourage them to marry as soon as possible. If they do not wish to marry, they should be encouraged to separate. Paul acknowledges in 1 Cor 7:2 that marriage is the best remedy for “temptation to sexual immorality.”
7: Adultery, Divorce and Remarriage – Matt 5:32, Matt 19:9, 1 Cor 7:10-11
This issue is given much more explicit biblical instruction but is often glossed over in our Christian culture due to the messy landscape of divorces and remarriages. In cases where non-biblical divorce has occurred, if reconciliation is possible, this should be pursued. If reconciliation is impossible because one or more parties have remarried, it would not be sensible to divorce again in order to achieve reconciliation. The principle to apply here, I believe, is from 1 Cor 7:17-24 summarized in verse 20: “Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called.” This is not an ideal circumstance, but it is the best way forward in an imperfect world. Of note, polygamy was common in the culture of the early church, and while not ideal, was accepted by the church, as evidenced by the qualifications for elder to be “a husband of but one wife.” We have polygamous cultures even within our local community and if they came to Christ, we should not counsel them to divorce all but one wife and thus disrupt their social structure. It is not ideal and would disqualify them from eldership, but they should remain as they are. Whether marriage after unbiblical divorce in the past disqualifies a man from eldership is a case-by case question for the eldership.
8: Pornography, Sensuality, and Lust – Lev 18:6-18, Matt 5:28
As mentioned above, use of pornography has reached a high saturation point within our culture and within our church. While once thought of as simply a male issue, there is a growing trend toward gender parity in pornography usage. It is an issue that should be discussed with some frequency within our church. For those that join the church and view pornography regularly, it needs to be made clear that while the world has largely destigmatized it, it is still sexual immorality. Furthermore, this isn’t just limited to nudity and pornography, but any sensuality that leads to looking at someone “with lustful intent” is the heart equivalent of adultery according to Matt 5:28. In our culture, it is not possible to avoid such things by just turning away. We need to address the heart issues of idolatry, selfishness, and satisfaction in Christ. Practically, how should we deal with those who have on-going struggles with pornography, sensuality and lust? Should this preclude them from eldership? From deaconship? Taken strictly, this would preclude nearly all men from eldership. These require individual evaluation from the elders, but a guiding principle should be, if the person is repentant and there is evidence of growth in their life, we should consider more responsibility and continued discipleship.
9: Homosexuality – Lev 18:22, Lev 20:13, 1 Cor 6:9, 1 Tim 1:8-11
From the above references and others, it is evident that homosexual behavior is sexual sin. We cannot equivocate on that point. As we have discussed above, if a person who is already a believer and in the church and struggles with same sex attraction, we should approach them as we would handle anyone who is sexually attracted to someone to whom they are not married. If such a person decides that homosexuality is not sinful and begins sexually immoral activity, we should deal with them in the same way as any member who falls into unrepentant sin and go through the processes of correction and, if necessary, of church discipline. It is important that we draw a distinction between same sex attraction and homosexual behavior. We can do tremendous harm by demonizing same sex attraction and creating a taboo around it. A person who is struggling to abstain from homosexual behavior should be supported and encouraged. I believe Paul’s strong statements about not associating with sexually immoral people applies to those who remain unrepentant. Much more nuanced is the issue of how we address those that join the church already in a homosexual relationship. What about the married homosexual couple who join the church with their adopted child? Should we break up their family? I believe, in this case, the same principle should apply as to those who have gone through an unbiblical divorce in the past. We should apply 1 Cor 7:20: “Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called.” We can recognize that this is not ideal, but it is the best we can do in a fallen world just as we do with someone who is married after unbiblical divorce. Whether should apply to a homosexual couple in a long term committed relationship who are not legally married would be an individual discussion with the elders. Again, these are nuanced cases that will need individual prayer, discussion, and discernment. I believe a great deal more patience is called for when a new believer joins the church that has a history or present reality of homosexuality, even if they are unrepentant at first, believing that homosexuality is not sinful, than we would demonstrate to a person who has been in the church for a period of time and then decides to pursue a homosexual relationship.
10: Bisexuality – Heb 13:4
Bisexual attraction is no more or less of an issue than anyone who finds that they are sexually attracted to someone other than their spouse. This is not a rare or unique circumstance, even within the church. Someone who is practicing bisexuality is, by definition, not confining sex to the marriage bed, and this, therefore, qualifies as sexual immorality. The issue, here again, is one of identity and cultural acceptance. If a person “identifies as bisexual,” the real issue is not the bisexuality, but the fact that they identify themselves primarily by their sexual desires, and not by Christ. It would be equally a problem if they “identified as heterosexual” and that was seen as their defining characteristic. If such a person were to join the church, our priority should be in helping them see their identity in Christ rather than focusing on renouncing their sexual preference.
11: Transgenderism/Non-binarism – Psalm 139: 13-15
It should be noted that the next two points should not be considered in the category of sexual immorality, but as they are connected to the same cultural moment will be discussed here. It should further be remarked that transgenderism is a modern issue with no direct reference in Scripture. It is a challenging issue that often falls prey to oversimplification and scapegoating. It is not sufficient to simply state that a person should identify with their born gender. There are those born with ambiguous genitalia and those born with sex chromosome abnormalities such that “born gender” is not necessarily accurate. These occur with a frequency of 1 in 448 births on average which is not particularly rare. The majority of people who consider themselves to be transgender do not fall into these categories, but the fact remains that these categories exist. Unless we plan to embark on genetic testing, we must be careful how we assert someone’s gender assignment. Furthermore, we must acknowledge that much of the gender confusion in our culture is due to a distortion of biblically accurate masculinity and femininity in our culture of which the church has been widely supportive for generations. Many transgender and non-binary individuals consider themselves so because they do not fit into the traditional boxes our culture has created for the genders. The church can start by recognizing that these boxes are incorrect. We can also acknowledge that gender differences and roles are far less important than most human cultures perceive. Christ himself challenged many gender norms in his ministry and Paul maintains “…there is no male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28b) It is much more difficult to recognize this issue as a sin issue than many of the above concerns. If someone wishes to be addressed by different pronouns than they once did or dress differently than they once did, this does not amount to immorality. Once again, this can be an idolatrous identity issue if the person sees it as the central characteristic of their lives. There is often an inherent pride in asserting that such a person does not feel they fit in the body created for them, but if they come to love Jesus and understand and believe that they are “fearfully and wonderfully made” then this issue may become moot. Whether or not they revert to dressing differently or using pronouns they did when they were younger is largely immaterial. This also addresses the issue of people who may have undergone permanent physical changes. While we should not endorse such modification if it is being considered, there is no reason to reverse such a thing in order to return to a base state. We must recognize that this is a group that has a high propensity toward mental health concerns, instability, and suicidality. They need love, support and prayer, not scapegoating and extra-biblical expectations of conforming to a cultural norm. We must further note that this group as well as the homosexual group have often experienced psychological and even physical harm from others in our culture, sometimes in the name of Christ. We must foster an environment of champions physical and psychological safety for these people.
12: Asexuality – 1 Cor 7:25-38
Asexuality also should not be considered sexual immorality. There is, in fact, wide support in Paul’s letters such as in 1 Cor 7 for people, if they are able, to remain unmarried and be “anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord.” We tend to champion the model of the nuclear family in our Christian culture, but Paul sees chaste singleness as a better way. There should be no pressure from the church to make sure that single people pair off and get married because it is expected of them. As this state has been culturally identified with the LGBTQIA movement, it is seen on the same spectrum as the sexual immorality and gender issues discussed above, but it is not. It can still fall prey to the same issue of an idolatrous identity as some of the above issues, but it need not be so.
13: Glass Ceiling
In the event that God sees fit to bring people from these subgroups into our church, there would inevitably be a glass ceiling. The question is at what point. The four logical points are: regular attender, member, deacon, and elder. Regardless of their background or position, all should be welcome to be a regular attender. It is also clear, from the biblical requirements for eldership, that on-going problems or engagement in any of the sexual sins would disqualify them from that post. The middle two are less clear. I would submit that the bar for membership should be very low. This step, in my opinion, is when they would “bear the name of brother” and not before. Even if they disagree about the sinful nature of homosexuality, this should not disallow them from becoming members as long as they agree to submit to the churches position and not cause division. Allowing them to become members gives us the pastoral authority to speak into their lives, and we would hope that over time the Spirit would work in their hearts to convince them of the truth. Putting such a person in a deacon role would probably not be wise but would need to be evaluated prayerfully on a case-by-case basis. The difficulty here is that, while a position on homosexuality is not a salvific issue and should not be considered a core doctrine in the same way as the deity of Christ, for example, it is a sin issue. There is a limit to how far we can “agree to disagree” and still uphold our duty to root out sin in our midst. Once again, we should also distinguish between a struggle with same sex attraction and engagement in homosexual behavior when we consider our response. There is also a glass ceiling when it comes to marriage. While I believe we should not break up existing homosexual marriages, we should not participate in creating them. The marriage covenant between a man and woman was created, in part, to reflect the relationship between Christ and the church (Eph 5). This should not be co-opted to excuse or normalize immorality.
14: Nuance and Edge Cases
The above outline is by no means meant to be exhaustive or definitive. It is meant to provide a lens, supported by scripture, through which we can view these issues and consider corporate and pastoral responses. It should inform how we view the people that walk through the door from a wide range of backgrounds and how we equip those in our church to be Christ’s ambassadors to those in our community. Every person and circumstance, history and baggage will be different, and any non-nuanced position would be inherently evil. I pray we have many opportunities to talk, think and pray through specific situations that God would bless us with the chance to be a part of. What an honor it would be to be used to reach into broken lives like these with the Gospel of Grace.
15: Action Steps
As we consider practical and philosophical ways of responding to the above, I believe we should start from a position of corporate repentance. If we wish to truly reach out and touch the lives of broken people in need of a Savior who live a life of same sex attraction or gender dysphoria, we need to begin by recognizing that a great deal of harm, emotional and physical, has been inflicted on this group by the Church for generations. There are homeless people living in our area who were kicked out of their homes by parents holding a Bible. There are those who have been subjected to horrific methods that amount to torture under the guise of “Conversion Therapy” from Christian organizations. The only “conversion” we should concern ourselves with is to a regenerate heart. Attempting to change someone’s sexual attraction is very much beside the point. We cannot hope to be a place where such people can hear about Jesus unless they feel safe to enter our doors. We must also fight the tendency to consider sin in this area as something worse than others, even in non-Christians. James 2 says “…For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it….So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.” As we consider corporate and pastoral responses to the argument above, we must start by removing our own planks and repenting for the historical actions of the Church.
Practical steps that we could consider taking would include: removing the statements from the website about marriage and sexuality, especially directly under our Core Beliefs. Again, this is not meant to hide or equivocate on the truth, but not to set such a barrier before someone even walks through our door. Secondly, we should consider how to address these topics within the church. A Sunday morning sermon is not ideal as it is time limited and a unidirectional conversation. A small group course format would be a consideration. We need to equip parents and family members of adolescents, teens, and adults with language to talk about these things in loving, humble, God-honoring ways. In the longer term, we need to consider how we can make our church a place where people would feel comfortable inviting friends and family who look, think and act differently than we do. We need to find a way of projecting safety and inclusion even in our public facing information. This isn’t a balancing act where we must make it clear early and often that we “love the sinner but hate the sin” as the saying goes. We just need to love the sinner. Dealing with the sin can come later God-willing. A third application point is to be mindful of what we say and what we allow to be said without being checked. Certainly, joking at the expense of those who are dealing with these issues is unacceptable, but we also need to work to avoid getting dragged in to pseudo-political discussions on bathroom issues, sports issues or other divisive concerns that have no bearing on the church.
I recognize that these proposals have the potential to divide the church. There are some who may leave the body over these sorts of changes. I would argue that it is our responsibility to them as well as to the unreached in our community to have those discussions and risk some of them leaving over it. These are not all things we should change overnight but after ample opportunities for discussions and prayer.
16: Conclusion – Mark 2:15-17
At its core, these are not issues of who someone loves, sexual attraction, or even specific sex acts. The core is idolatry and identity. When acceptance by others, self-determination, or physical pleasure become the central force driving our lives then we have become idolators. Though our idols take on different shapes, the struggles in this space are shared by all. Whether you are identified by your profession, your family, or your gender identity, you are not being identified by your Master. Building fences around or within the church because someone sins in a different way than us cannot be allowed. Making the excuse that we are somehow “protecting our children” by shielding them from people in our community who desperately need a Savior will not show our children who Jesus is. Within the church, we cannot be afraid to “speak the truth in love.” We need not and cannot shy away from sin in the church, but we must recognize that the Spirit works in each of our lives. Often this happens over a period of time. We should be prepared to walk alongside our brothers and sisters in this journey for as long as they need.
There is a significant correlation between this community and their relationship with religious groups, and the “tax collectors and sinners” that Jesus sought out in His ministry and their relationship with the religious leaders of the day. Our heart should reflect His. Jesus responded: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:17) If our church was filled with transgender people and gay families that loved Jesus, God would be glorified.”
Thank you in advance for any constructive criticism, notes of encouragement to and or reading recommendations on these topics that I can pass along.

Intended Major: Data Science / Computer Science (changes depending on the school i'm applying to)
GPA: 3.81 UW, 4.92 W out of 6 (includes courses from middle school 😭 )
UC Gpa since I am applying to a lot of them: 3.90 UW, 4.57 W, 4.17 weighted and capped
Class Rank: Outside top 10% because of some high school courses I took during 7th and 8th grade. Got straight Bs and Cs unfortunately.
SAT: 1450 (750M 700 RW, didn't study at all, trying again in august after studying)
Race: Asian
Gender: Male
Background: middle-class immigrant family.
School: Competitive Public High School
State: Texas
19 APs total (12 taken so far) AP Human Geography- 4, AP World - 5, AP Physics 1- 5, failed Spanish Lang 💀, waiting on all others
Senior year course load - AP Stats, AP Physics C (Mech and E&M), AP Gov/Econ, AP Lit, Data Structures And Algorithms (course after AP CSA, gpa is weighted the same as AP), and Calc III / Differential Equations dual enrollment, APES.
Main Extracurriculars:

1. Created an open-source flight board website/app for a Flight Simulator Multiplayer server that displays information on each flight including departure/arrival times and status. Displays busiest airports and flight routes, and predicts future routes and flight recommendations based on historical data such as ATC availability. Website has 400 users and receives approximately 4.5K visits daily, with a maximum of 1022 distinct users in April. I have also created my own API that gives relevant information such as time remaining and specific departure times that are not shown in the original API that I used to create the flight board.
   
2. Interning at State School’s CS lab this summer and will research and create a final project about how businesses use the data they collect to make future decisions to increase profit. This aligns with my goal of becoming a data scientist and going into the machine learning field, so I thought this would be pretty important.
   
3. Active addon creator for Microsoft Flight Simulator - Developed many addons such as aircraft liveries, realistically modeled airports, and the biggest one being a graphics mod to make the sim look more realistic. ~2500 downloads for all mods
   
4. Computer Science Club: Competed in multiple competitive coding competitions such as UTD Battle of the Brains, A&M Codewars, Lockheed Martin Codequest, Computer Science UIL, and many other online ones such as Devpost and CyberPatriots (did this with my friends for fun, unfortunately didnt win anything). I have also demoed my personal projects in this club and have helped members with learning Python and HTML, since our school’s curriculum is only based on Java.
   
5. Personal Computer Science Projects - Just a couple of projects that I made in the past few years that have helped me improve my understanding of coding. My school only offers Java, so these projects were incredibly helpful when it came to understanding R, Python, and JavaScript. My favorite project is a volunteer log tool that breaks down my total hours based on the number of hours that I have volunteered at my local food packing facility and how many boxes each table can pack. Using this information, I can derive how many boxes I have personally helped make and how many children I have fed through my contributions.
   
6. Created a review guide for AP Physics 1 that compiled the most important formulas and concepts from our lessons and resources. I also compiled an entire mock exam’s worth of MCQ and FRQ questions to test the hardest questions from each unit. On exam day, there were 54 people on the doc, so there were at least 50 people I impacted with this. I have also recently started a tutoring service for people who are struggling with physics and people who are taking Physics in the future (doing it on Saturday and Sunday every week).
   
7. Volunteering at a local food packing facility for ~105 hours. Volunteered at every position including pourer, bagger, weigher, and warehouse crew.
   
8. Volunteering at NHS organized events for 15 hours.
   
9. Completed Harvard’s CS50 course back in sophomore year (my website stated above evolved from my final project for CS50, which was a flight board on command prompt lol)
   
10. Part of the National Science Honors Society and Cybersecurity club at my school.
    

Awards (I am cooked 😔):

1. National Merit Commended (probably gonna get this)
   
2. PVSA silver award
   
3. Computer Science UIL awards
   
4. AP Scholar (probably with distinciton in july)
   

LOR: AP Calc - 8 (maybe 9) /10, did really well in her class and asked a lot of questions. she was also impressed by my resume, but I didn't talk to her a lot personally. I've heard that she writes good rec letters tho. AP Physics - 7/10
Schools:
Reach : UT Austin (Statistics / Data Science), UMich (CS lsa), UC Berkeley (Applied Math, my dream school), UCLA (Stats/Data Science), Purdue (CS or AI major), UIUC (Computer Engineering or CS + Stats), UCSD (data science or Math-CS), UCI (CS), UCSB (CE), UW Madison (CS), Georgia Tech (CS, doing this one for fun lol), USC
Target: Texas A&M Engineering (attainable dream school), UT Dallas (CS), Colorado Boulder (CS), UMD College Park (CS), Penn State (CS), NCSU (CS)
Safety (if I get into UTD rolling then i wont apply here): UNT, Texas Tech, ASU
Notes: I want to settle in the bay area after going to college, and want to become a data scientist (seems more interesting to me than becoming a swe, my opinion might change) at a well-respected company, preferably in the aerospace industry since I've had an interest in aviation since my childhood. I might also do grad school.
Thoughts?