I am not even talking about scriptural problems within the bible, You don't have to open a single bible to start seeing the problems,
1-) The Problem of Salvation and Faith (Why the plan of salvation is ridiculous, and has failed)
I.The ridiculousness of the plan
A. Demanding blood for remission of sins Heb 9:22 - Why is this the terms that god insists upon? Isn't he the architect of the parameters regarding sin, punishment, and forgiveness? Is he not able to forgive sin without blood sacrifice? Can he not say, “No blood sacrifice necessary, I just forgive you?”
B. God sacrificing himself to himself to save us from himself by creating a loophole in the architecture for condemnation he engineered in the first place? This is your solution for a problem in which you yourself are the problem. It’s like a doctor stabbing people to be able to operate and save them.
C. Dying for someone else's crime does not equal justice in any court.
D. The sacrifice was not a sacrifice at all :

1. Jesus is said to be eternal
2. He spent a few days in misery out of his billions of years plus of existence
3. He spent a minutiae of a fraction of his existence suffering knowing he would be resurrected after the ordeal and spend eternity in divine luxury, and that somehow provides him justification to sentence us to trillions of years of eternity suffering without end?
4. Jesus is a supernatural immortal who suffered temporary mortal punishment and then sentences mortals to supernatural eternal punishment if they do not receive his sacrifice.
5. Why is three days of punishment followed by eternity in glory sufficient for all the horrible deeds any man has ever committed, but billions of years suffered in hell by a good moral person who does not believe due to lack of evidence is not sufficient?

2-) Nature of The Christian god
I. He is supposed to be an all Powerful and All mighty being and yet he died on a cross by his own creation (If you see someone claiming to be god and then you saw him hie before your very eyes, How on earth are you supposed to conclude anything else other than "This guy is a liar"?)
Modern Christians would respond to this saying "Only the Human part died, The Divine part wasn't affected"
Which again, doesn't make any sense :
A. Even when assuming a human sacrifice is somehow necessary for salvation, The sacrifice of 1 Human being can never be Enough to atone for the sins of all of mankind since Adam and Eve till the return of jesus.
I found a Coptic pope explaining this issue in detail, Here is a link to his book, https://st-takla.org/books/en/pope-shenouda-iii/nature-of-christ/propitiation-and-redemption.html
Quoting from it : "The belief in the One Nature of the Incarnate Logos is essential, necessary and fundamental for redemption. Redemption requires unlimited propitiation sufficient for the forgiveness of the unlimited sins of all the people through all ages. There was no solution other than the Incarnation of God the Logos to offer this through His Divine Power.
Thus, if we mention two natures and say that the human nature alone performed the act of redemption, it would have been entirely impossible to achieve unlimited propitiation for man's salvation. Hence comes the danger of speaking of two natures, each having its own specific tasks. In such case, the death of the human nature alone is insufficient."
It's very clear that saying only the human part died doesn't make any sense, Even according to the Christian theology itself.
B. The Trinity is based on a false idea
I know, It's a classic Argument against Christianity but you can't deny that it's an actual damning argument against the Christian theology.

1. God is all knowing but Jesus wasn't all knowing (mark 13:32)
2. Jesus is supposed to be god, but he is praying to himself to save himself with cries and tears?? (Luke 22:41-44)
3. Jesus is god but we can't say he is good because only god is good?? (Luke 18:18-19)
4. God can't be tempted by evil (James 1:13) but yet jesus was tempted by satan?? (Matthew 4:1)
5. Jesus is god but he can't do a thing on his own?? (John 5:31) 6.Jesus is supposed to be the same as the father, But their teachings are different? (John 7:16)

And so many more, Throught the bible i can't help but notice the intense number of verses which clearly states Jesus can't be god.
3-) The Problem of a Historical Jesus (Why we don’t know the actual historical Jesus)
I. No contemporary historical evidence,
A. No historian alive during Jesus day wrote about Jesus despite ample opportunity

1. The kings coming to his birth
2. Herod’s slaughter of baby boys
3. The overthrowing of money changers
4. Jesus triumphant entry into Jerusalem where he is declared king by the whole town.
5. Darkness covering the whole earth for hours on Jesus’ Death
6. The earthquakes at Jesus’ death
7. The rending of the temple veil at Jesus’ Death
8. The resurrection of Jesus that was seen by 500 witnesses.(Only Paul claims that, even tho he never met jesus)

II. The Gospels are contradicting, late hearsay accounts
A. Mark, the earliest gospel, was written at least after 70 A.D. (referencing fall of temple) by a non-eyewitness, and makes numerous cultural and geographical errors that a Jewish writer would not have made such as locations of rivers, cultural customs regarding divorce, locations of towns or Jesus quoting from the greek Septuagint etc. (see geographical and historical errors in this link, https://holtz.org/Library/Philosophy/Metaphysics/Theology/Christianity/Criticism/Bible%20Problems%20by%20Packham%201998.htm#ERRORS )
B. The other gospels all copied from Mark. Luke and Matthew contain over 70% of Mark and mainly make changes in attempts to fix blatant errors made in Mark and to correct Mark’s poor grammar.The writer of Luke even reveals to us in Luke 1:2 that he was not an eyewitness, but that the story has been passed down to him.
C. Four where chosen by the church father Iraeneus because he believed the earth was founded on four pillars and so too, should the gospels be founded by only four accounts.
Iraenus also revealed the names of the Gospels in the late second century, without any reason to assume they where the authentic authors - no one knows who actually wrote them!
D. John was initially considered heretical by the early church because of its variation from the synoptic but was overwhelmingly popular amongst Christians and so was included.
E. The book of Revelations was also considered heretical by many :
For centuries The Revelation was a rejected book. In the 4th century, St.John Chrysostom and other bishops argued against it. Christians in Syria also reject it. The Synod of Laodicea: c. 363, rejected The Revelation. In the late 380s, Gregory of Nazianus produced a canon omitting The Revelation. Bishop Amphilocus of Iconium, in his poem Iambics for Seleucus written some time after 394, rejects The Revelation. When St.Jerome translated the Bible into Latin, producing the Vulgate bible c. 400, he argued for the Veritas Hebraica, meaning the truth of the Jewish Bible over the Septuagint translation. At the insistence of the Pope, however, he added existing translations for what he considered doubtful books: among them The Revelation. The Church in the East never included the Revelation.
4-) The early church did not seem to know anything about a historical Jesus. Huge amounts of disagreement over Jesus in the first hundred years :

1. Some churches didn’t even believe he had a physical body, prompting Paul to write about that very issue.
   
2. There was an enormous debate between all the major early churches as to whether Jesus was divine or not, this was settled at the council of Nicea by the Roman Emperor Constantine.
   

5-) Which Bible?
A. Over 450 English versions of the bible All are translated using different methods and from entirely different manuscripts
B. Thousands of manuscripts disagreeing with each other wildly in what verses and even books they contain.
C. Different translations teach entirely different things in places, some often leaving out entire chapters and verses or containing footnotes warning of possible error due to uncertainty about the reliability of the numerous manuscripts.
Take a look at this example, 1- Revised standard version 2- Revised standard version Catholic edition 3- NEW revised standard version Updated edition 4- NEW revised standard version Catholic edition 5- NEW revised standard version, Anglicised 6- NEW revised standard version, Anglicised Catholic edition
How many attempts would it take to finally get it right ?!
6-) The Morality of the bible
I don't like using Morality as an argument because i believe it's a subjective thing, But I cannot help but notice how the morals of the OT and the NT are completely contradictory
In the OT god was Angry, Vengeful, Demands war, order genocides, Ordered the killing of children and even the ripping open of pregnant women.
But in the NT he somehow became loving, a father figure, saying if anyone hits you you shouldn't even respond back.

• In Conclusion: I don't think Christianity can be accepted as the truth by any logical person (Even most convert stories i heard were basically "I saw jesus in a dream" or "The holy spirit held my hand")

There is so many Theological confusion, A salvation idea that makes 0 sense, Lack of any form of historical critirea of knowing what is true manuscripts and what is hearsays (The authors of the gospels are all Anynomous),
There is even disagreement within Christianity itself about what stories go into the bible (Many stories have been found out to be false like John 8:1-11 and Mark 16:18)
https://textandcanon.org/does-the-woman-caught-in-adultery-belong-in-the-bible/
The lack of consistency on literally everything makes it one of the least convincing religion in my opinion.

the main thing that gives me the ick about her is that she has a "situationship" with a guy in our class even tho she has a boyfriend of 7 years!! apparently they recently confessed feelings for each other, keep in mind my friend is 17 and the guy is 22!! they have been flirting since the start of the school year and they have been involved with several issues because a lot of people are speculating nga that she's a cheater. her boyfriend approached us one time to ask for advice on how to deal with the other guy, one thing led to another, she said she cut ties with the other guy but she's still flirting with him, sitting on his lap, hugging him before he leaves and watches longingly as he closes the door, etc. she constantly tries to convince everyone that she is not cheating on her bf and that her bg is fine with her and the other guy... honestly does she think we're stupid enough to believe that????
recently she's been acting up tho. idk she made one draft for the design of our class panel board and she's proud of it (even tho it's just meh) and can't stop bragging that it looks soo good. i understand its just a light joke but its been days and she's still mentioning na "i should join visual arts/creatives because my design looks so good guys" because no one is agreeing with her LMAOO. she never stfu about how petite she is and complains that everything is taller than her (fishing for validation, like how tara yummy acts lol). a while ago she distributed math papers and she gave my first paper -- that has a perfect score -- with a scowl on her face, not looking at me. when she gave my second test paper has a low grade, she inspects it for a while and mumbles something, then gives it to mewith eye contact HAHAHA fuck off inggitera. i could go on and on and on about what pisses me tf off but this will take forever lmao tahimik na lang me for now. 💖

Okay, here we go. Big rant incoming. This post is going to be extremely long and a bit whiny, but I would only write something like this because I really do love this game, and I am passionate about the decisions that go into game design & player experience. Feel free to skip to the TLDR. Obviously: SPOILERS
I'll start this off by saying that I have like 1000 hours in Valheim and I absolutely love the core aspects of the game. I also like to think of myself as a pretty skilled player compared to the average/target audience. I've done many Valheim playthroughs over the past few years, including a hardcore playthrough through Yagluth with no deaths, and a no-map/compass only playthrough. Even so, while the Ashlands as a biome felt "off" from even before the release, I generally blamed this on "skill issue", and figured progression would ameliorate some of the issues. After doing basically everything there is to do in the biome, I've come to the conclusion that it does not get better: the Ashlands gameplay loop is fundamentally anti-player experience. Here' why:
Mob density and lava is anti-exploration: Valheim, at its core, is an adventure & exploration game. If you take out the exploration, you're left with a resource collection simulator with awkward movement and basic combat. Like the Mistlands before it, the Ashlands presents immediate barriers to exploration. To even set foot into the biome you need top tier gear from the previous biome and an industrial grade multi-biome farm producing all of the best foods and meads.
However, while the Mistlands progression allows you to eventually overcome its barriers to exploration with the introduction of magic and new mechanical items (like the feather cape), the Ashlands never gets any less hostile. There are no lava-immunity boots, no anti-spawning beacons, no nothing. You just get a pretty okay gear upgrade, and a big fuck you. In fact, because of the unrelenting charred hordes, Valkyries, and marathon-running Asksvins, you're actually punished for exploring too far from your steadfast.
The only reasonable way to map the biome is by sprinting in Fenris armor with an Asksvin cape and Moder, which fundamentally destroys the immersion of the exploration anyways. After all this time in the biome, I've explored less than a half of a single of the Ashlands continents in my world. And why should I? What do I even gain from it? This leads me into my next big problem:
The Ashlands is unrewarding: To invest such tremendous effort into a biome there needs to be an equally tremendous reward. Spoiler: there isn't! You can expect to die a LOT in the biome, meaning your hard-earned skills are going to wither away, making you substantially weaker overall. What are you offered in return for this? Not much! The new heavy armor is the standard upgrade, extremely expensive, and generally slow. The Asksvin hide and magic armor sets are definitely not worse than the previous armor sets, but they don't really feel that much better. A couple of the weapons were interesting... but again, not enough to offset the pain.
The Ashlands really doesn't reward players for dealing with all of its bullshit. It's totally isolated, not very visually appealing, hostile from start to finish, and doesn't really introduce or accelerate any of the out-of-biome mechanics like previous biomes do (farming, sailing, new cooking stations, new crafting stations, fall damage negation, etc). By far the most interesting thing you acquire in the Ashlands is a staff that sacrifices half your health to spawn a charred troll, and they aren't even allowed to be on your team!!!
The whole war-zone aesthetic would be tolerable if the biome just didn't take so damn long to finish. Like seriously, because all of the limited visibility and constant mob clearing it's extremely slow to even locate the things you need to do, never-the-less even do them! At this point, I kind of think of the Ashlands as a chore you must complete to progress beyond it. That is fundamentally not a fun thing to do, and I believe the vast majority of players will not make it to the deep north for this exact reason. Which brings me to the biggest problem.
The Ashlands does not understand what makes difficulty fun: According to the devs, the biome is hard. Really hard, actually. They seemed extremely proud of making a biome that would really give the players a true run for their money! Naturally, I was extremely excited! Unfortunately, the Ashlands is not hard because of new strategic or mechanical learning curves, it is hard because it is clumsy.
Flametal mining is contrived and hostile. The pillars are a pain to climb with the game's terrible collision. Have you ever been crushed between the underside of a sinking flametal vein and your basalt bomb platform? 'Cus I have! Even worse, every time I actually whack a Flametal pillar (which by the way, wants to kill me even more than the monsters do) I'm personally inviting every entity in a 10 mile radius to form a mosh pit right below me.
Grapevine harvesting and planting is too slow. They take forever to find, even longer to grow, and cant even be planted in their natural biome without a shield generator? (What's up with that by the way?) I will admit that I love the way they look and depending on where you land you might get lucky and find them early, in which case this point is pretty moot. In my case, I had fully upgraded gear and had already cleared a fortress before I even found my first Vineberry.
Fortress "sieging", as the devs would like to call it, is kind of... useless? The siege weapons are clumsy and ineffective, and are immediately secondary to the brute force method of building a wooden staircase and bombarding the inside with fireballs until everything in it is dead. By the time you even reach a fortress, the relentless mob clearing just to get there has sucked all the fun out of the would-be battle anyway. (By the way, who though that it would be a good idea to make the only unique fortress mob a necromancer that summons even more of the most annoying mob in the entire biome?? Hurray, yet another swarm of reskinned, stat-boosted greydwarves!)
Honestly, I wouldn't even call the biome "hard". I would just call it painful. Things that are hard are generally things you can get better at. I don't think it particularly fits this category.
Lingering questions: While there are many things I like about the biome as a concept, I don't know if there is a single mechanic in the Ashlands that I actually think is well-designed. Now that I'm basically done with the biome, I look back and ask myself a number of questions about things I encountered. Were these really fun? or were they just tedious. I'll let you decide:

• Why is the only ship you can take through the spires so difficult to steer? If you want it to feel large and heavy, that's fine... but then why do spires spawn so densely that it constantly gets beached?
• Why do basalt bomb platforms only last for like 30 seconds? If you want them to not permanently mark the landscape, why not make them last at least long enough for players to reuse them for approaching and escaping from the pillars? Why make the player interact with the admittedly funky aiming mechanics to throw more platforms as the pillar is sinking?
• Why can the charred and Asksvins go in the lava if you can't? They're not immune to fire damage from a staff, but they can wade through lava? Wouldn't it make more sense to encourage players to use the lava as a risky resting place? Something like, "go out into the lava with basalt bombs to escape the horde briefly, but make sure you don't slip!"? Maybe then, once the player has cleared a fortress and acquired their first set of lava-immunity potions (or boots or whatever), they will have an advantage over the horde in terms of mobility. You know, like in every single other biome?
• Why are there no lava-walking boots?
• Why do tamed Asksvins animals not have a "passive mode", or a "follow" command like wolves, or at least some kind of hitching post? If the idea of asksvins is to be able to ride over lava to pillars, why make them run away from the pillars and to their death the instant the player gets off of them?
• Why are there no lava-walking boots........?
• Why make the step heights on flametal ore pillars only convenient/resonable to climb when wearing the feather cape that is extremely weak to fire? Isn't the idea of the fire weakness to discourage its use in the Ashlands? If you know your movement & collision mechanics feel clunky, why design the pillars in such a way that scaling them is necessary to escape certain death?
• Boots in lava no walking on it why tho........?
• Why make the spawnrate for monsters so uniformly high? The combat is extremely simple, and these monsters do pretty substantial damage in melee. This leads to a boring and frustrating "swarming" experience, where players have to run from monsters, inevitably picking up more monsters on the way. Couldn't you fix this by just have areas of extreme monster density like in every other biome which can be "cleared". Doesn't this work better with the power-up based combat your entire system is based off of? Doesn't this also double as another reason to actually explore in the Ashlands, as when players clear one area, they need to continue on to the next?
• If you want a new paradigm where defeating the horde isn't enough to "clear" an area, wouldn't you at least want to counteract this with some new mechanic that spawn-proofs/suppresses large areas? Or maybe a set of armor that reduces player-made sounds? Why doesn't that exist?
• Why not reward the player with outside-the-biome progression? Why not use this as the reason to go to the Ashlands in the first place? Teleporting metals is an obvious great example, but it feels like it was an afterthought made late in development so that the Ashlands would be even remotely tolerable, given that it's a nightmare to sail to. With an entire community full of dedicated players who love the game proposing extremely popular changes all the time... why not use some of those? (shield generators could also repair builds! Redbeard Dvegrs could offer unique item trading! New cores & metal could somehow accelerate or automate farming! Any of the above...)

TLDR: After finishing the Ashlands I struggle to see why so many design decisions were made that make the biome so relentless, tedious, and anti-exploration. It's like they took all of the experiences and mechanics that people love about the game and replaced them with all of the ones people find painful and annoying. It is extremely disappointing, and will prevent most players from finishing the game, or even the biome itself.

"Why Did Jesus Die on the Cross?"

The main reason Jesus died on the cross was to defeat Satan and set us free from his oppressive rule. Everything else that Jesus accomplished was to be understood as an aspect and consequence of this victory (e.g., Recapitulation, Moral Influence, etc.).
This understanding of why Jesus had to die is called the Christus Victor (Latin for “Christ is Victorious”) view of the atonement. But, what exactly was Christ victorious from, and why? To find out the answers to these questions, we have to turn to the Old Testament, as that's what the apostles would often allude to in order to properly teach their audience the message they were trying to convey (Rom. 15:4).
The OT is full of conflict between the Father (YHVH) and false gods, between YHVH and cosmic forces of chaos. The Psalms speak of this conflict between YHVH and water monsters of the deeps (an ancient image for chaos) (Psa. 29:3-4; 74:10-14; 77:16, 19; 89:9-10; 104:2-9, etc).
The liberation of Israel from Egypt wasn’t just a conflict between Pharaoh and Moses. It was really between YHVH and the false gods of Egypt.
Regardless of whether you think the aforementioned descriptions are literal or metaphorical, the reality that the Old Testament describes is that humanity lived in a “cosmic war zone.”
The Christus Victor motif is about Christ reigning victorious over wicked principalities and Satan's kingdom, and is strongly emphasized throughout the New Testament. Scripture declares that Jesus came to drive out "the prince of this world” (John 12:31), to “destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8), to “destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14) and to “put all enemies under his feet” (1 Cor 15:25). Jesus came to overpower the “strong man” (Satan) who held the world in bondage and worked with his Church to plunder his "palace" (Luke 11:21-22). He came to end the reign of the cosmic “thief” who seized the world to “steal, and to kill, and to destroy” the life YHVH intended for us (John 10:10). Jesus came and died on the cross to disarm “the principalities and powers” and make a “shew of them openly [i.e., public spectacle]” by “triumphing over them in [the cross]” (Col. 2:15).
Beyond these explicit statements, there are many other passages that express the Christus Victor motif as well. For example, the first prophecy in the Bible foretells that a descendent of Eve (Jesus) would crush the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15). The first Christian sermon ever preached proclaimed that Jesus in principle conquered all YHVH's enemies (Acts 2:32-36). And the single most frequently quoted Old Testament passage by New Testament authors is Psalm 110:1 which predicts that Christ would conquer all YHVH’s opponents. (Psalm 110 is quoted or alluded to in Matthew 22:41-45; 26:64, Mark 12:35-37; 14:62, Luke 20:41-44; 22:69, Acts 5:31; 7:55-56, Romans 8:34, 1st Corinthians 15:22-25, Ephesians 1:20, Hebrews 1:3; 1:13; 5:6, 10; 6:20; 7:11, 15, 17, 21; 8:1; 10:12-13, 1st Peter 3:22, and Revelation 3:21.) According to New Testament scholar Oscar Cullman, the frequency with which New Testament authors cite this Psalm is the greatest proof that Christ’s “victory over the angel powers stands at the very center of early Christian thought.”
Because of man's rebellion, the Messiah's coming involved a rescue mission that included a strategy for vanquishing the powers of darkness.
Since YHVH is a God of love who gives genuine “say-so” to both angels and humans, YHVH rarely accomplishes His providential plans through coercion. YHVH relies on His infinite wisdom to achieve His goals. Nowhere is YHVH's wisdom put more on display than in the manner in which He outsmarted Satan and the powers of evil, using their own evil to bring about their defeat.
Most readers probably know the famous story from ancient Greece about the Trojan Horse. To recap the story, Troy and Greece had been locked in a ten-year-long vicious war when, according to Homer and Virgil, the Greeks came up with a brilliant idea. They built an enormous wooden horse, hid soldiers inside and offered it to the Trojans as a gift, claiming they were conceding defeat and going home. The delighted Trojans accepted the gift and proceeded to celebrate by drinking themselves into a drunken stupor. When night came and the Trojan warriors were too wasted to fight, the Greeks exited the horse, unlocked the city gates to quietly let all their compatriots in, and easily conquered the city, thus winning the war.
Historians debate whether any of this actually happened. But either way, as military strategies go, it’s brilliant.
Now, there are five clues in the New Testament that suggest YHVH was using something like this Trojan Horse strategy against the powers when he sent Jesus into the world:
1) The Bible tells us that YHVH's victory over the powers of darkness was achieved by the employment of YHVH’s wisdom, and was centered on that wisdom having become reality in Jesus Christ (Rom. 16:25, 1 Cor. 2:7, Eph. 3:9-10, Col. 1:26). It also tells us that, for some reason, this Christ-centered wisdom was kept “secret and hidden” throughout the ages. It’s clear from this that YHVH's strategy was to outsmart and surprise the powers by sending Jesus.
2) While humans don’t generally know Jesus’ true identity during his ministry, demons do. They recognize Jesus as the Son of God, the Messiah, but, interestingly enough, they have no idea what he’s doing (Mark 1:24; 3:11; 5:7, Luke 8:21). Again, the wisdom of YHVH in sending Jesus was hidden from them.
3) We’re told that, while humans certainly share in the responsibility for the crucifixion, Satan and the powers were working behind the scenes to bring it about (John 13:27 cf. 1 Cor. 2:6-8). These forces of evil helped orchestrate the crucifixion.
4) We’re taught that if the “princes of this world [age]” had understood the secret wisdom of YHVH, “they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor 2:8 cf. vss 6-7). Apparently, Satan and the powers regretted orchestrating Christ’s crucifixion once they learned of the wisdom of YHVH that was behind it.
5) Finally, we can begin to understand why the powers came to regret crucifying “the Lord of glory” when we read that it was by means of the crucifixion that the “handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us [i.e., the charge of our legal indebtedness]” was “[taken] out of the way [i.e., canceled]” as the powers were disarmed. In this way Christ “triumph[ed] over” the powers by "his cross” and even “made a shew of them openly” (Col. 2:14-15). Through Christ’s death and resurrection YHVH's enemies were vanquished and placed under his Messiah's feet, and ultimately His own in the end (1 Cor. 15:23-28).
Putting these five clues together, we can discern YHVH's Trojan Horse strategy in sending Jesus.
The powers couldn’t discern why Jesus came because YHVH's wisdom was hidden from them. YHVH's wisdom was motivated by unfathomable love, and since Satan and the other powers were evil, they lacked the capacity to understand it. Their evil hearts prevented them from suspecting what YHVH was up to.
What the powers did understand was that Jesus was mortal. This meant he was killable. Lacking the capacity to understand that this was the means by which YHVH would ultimately bring about the defeat of death (and thus, pave the road for the resurrection itself), they never suspected that making Jesus vulnerable to their evil might actually be part of YHVH's infinitely wise plan.
And so they took the bait (or "ransom"; Matt. 20:28, Mark 10:45, 1 Tim. 2:5-6). Utilizing Judas and other willing human agents, the powers played right into YHVH’s secret plan and orchestrated the crucifixion of the Messiah (Acts 2:22-23; 4:28). YHVH thus brilliantly used the self-inflicted incapacity of evil to understand love against itself. And, like light dispelling darkness, the unfathomably beautiful act of YHVH's love in sending the willing Messiah as a "ransom" to these blood-thirsty powers defeated them. The whole creation was in principle freed and reconciled to YHVH, while everything written against us humans was nailed to the cross, thus robbing the powers of the only legal claim they had on us. They were “spoiled [i.e., disempowered]” (Col. 2:14-15).
As happened to the Trojans in accepting the gift from the Greeks, in seizing on Christ’s vulnerability and orchestrating his crucifixion, the powers unwittingly cooperated with YHVH to unleash the one power in the world that dispels all evil and sets captives free. It’s the power of self-sacrificial love.

Why Penal Substitution Is Unbiblical

For the sake of keeping this already lengthy post as short as possible I'm not going to spend too much time on why exactly PSA (Penal Substitutionary Atonement) is inconsistent with Scripture, but I'll go ahead and point out the main reasons why I believe this is so, and let the reader look further into this subject by themselves, being that there are many resources out there which have devoted much more time than I ever could here in supporting this premise.

"Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:"-1 Corinthians 5:7

The Passover is one of the two most prominent images in the New Testament given as a comparison to Christ's atonement and what it accomplished, (the other most common image being the Day of Atonement sacrifice).
In the Passover, the blood of the lamb on the door posts of the Hebrews in the book of Exodus was meant to mark out those who were YHVH's, not be a symbol of PSA, as the lamb itself was not being punished by God in place of the Hebrews, but rather the kingdom of Egypt (and thus, allegorically speaking, the kingdom of darkness which opposed YHVH) was what was being judged and punished, because those who were not "covered" by the blood of the lamb could be easily identified as not part of God's kingdom/covenant and liberated people.
Looking at the Day of Atonement sacrifice (which, again, Christ's death is repeatedly compared to throughout the New Testament), this ritual required a ram, a bull, and two goats (Lev. 16:3-5). The ram was for a burnt offering intended to please God (Lev. 16:3-4). The bull served as a sin offering for Aaron, the high priest, and his family. In this case, the sin offering restored the priest to ritual purity, allowing him to occupy sacred space and be near YHVH’s presence. Two goats taken from "the congregation” were needed for the single sin offering for the people (Lev. 16:5). So why two goats?
The high priest would cast lots over the two goats, with one chosen as a sacrifice “for the Lord” (Lev. 16:8). The blood of that goat would purify the people. The second goat was not sacrificed or designated “for the Lord.” On the contrary, this goat—the one that symbolically carried the sins away from the camp of Israel into the wilderness—was “for Azazel” (Lev. 16:8-10).
What—or who—is Azazel?
The Hebrew term azazel (עזאזל) occurs four times in Leviticus 16 but nowhere else in most people's canon of the Bible, (and I say "most people's canon," because some people do include 1 Enoch in their canon of Scripture, which of course goes into great detail about this "Azazel" figure). Many translations prefer to translate the term as a phrase, “the goat that goes away,” which is the same idea conveyed in the King James Version’s “scapegoat.” Other translations treat the word as a name: Azazel. The “scapegoat” option is possible, but since the phrase “for Azazel” parallels the phrase “for YHVH” (“for the Lord”), the wording suggests that two divine figures are being contrasted by the two goats.
A strong case can be made for translating the term as the name Azazel. Ancient Jewish texts show that Azazel was understood as a demonic figure associated with the wilderness. The Mishnah (ca. AD 200; Yoma 6:6) records that the goat for Azazel was led to a cliff and pushed over, ensuring it would not return with its death. This association of the wilderness with evil is also evident in the New Testament, as this was where Jesus met the devil (Matt. 4:1). Also, in Leviticus 17:1-7 we learn that some Israelites had been accustomed to sacrificing offerings to "devils" (alternatively translated as “goat demons”). The Day of Atonement replaced this illegitimate practice.
The second goat was not sent into the wilderness as a sacrifice to a foreign god or demon. The act of sending the live goat out into the wilderness, which was unholy ground, was to send the sins of the people where they belonged—to the demonic domain. With one goat sacrificed to bring purification and access to YHVH and one goat sent to carry the people’s sins to the demonic domain, this annual ritual reinforced the identity of the true God and His mercy and holiness.
When Jesus died on the cross for all of humanity’s sins, he was crucified outside the city, paralleling the sins of the people being cast to the wilderness via the goat to Azazel. Jesus died once for all sinners, negating the need for this ritual.
As previously stated, the goat which had all the sin put on it was sent alive off to the wilderness, while the blood of the goat which was blameless was used to purify the temple and the people. Penal substitution would necessitate the killing of the goat which had the sin put on it.
Mind you, this is the only sacrificial ritual of any kind in the Torah in which sins are placed on an animal. The only time it happens is this, and that animal is not sacrificed. Most PSA proponents unwittingly point to this ritual as evidence of their view, despite it actually serving as evidence to the contrary, because most people don't read their Old Testament and don't familiarize themselves with the "boring parts" like Leviticus (when it's actually rather important to do so, since that book explains how exactly animal offerings were to be carried out and why they were done in the first place).
In the New Testament, Christ's blood was not only meant to mark out those who were his, but also expel the presence of sin and ritual uncleanness so as to make the presence of YHVH manifest in the believer's life. Notice how God's wrath isn't poured out on Christ in our stead on this view, but rather His wrath was poured out on those who weren't covered, and the presence of sin and evil were merely removed by that which is pure and blameless (Christ's blood) for the believer.
All this is the difference between expiation and propitiation.

The Content of Paul's Gospel Message

When the New Testament writers talked about “the gospel,” they referred not to the Protestant doctrine of justification sola fide–the proposition that if we will stop trying to win God’s favor and only just believe that God has exchanged our sin for Christ’s perfect righteousness, then in God’s eyes we will have the perfect righteousness required both for salvation and for assuaging our guilty consciences–but rather they referred to the simple but explosive proposition Kyrios Christos, “Christ is Lord.” That is to say, the gospel was, properly speaking, the royal announcement that Jesus of Nazareth was the God of Israel’s promised Messiah, the King of kings and Lord of lords.
The New Testament writers were not writing in a cultural or linguistic vacuum and their language of euangelion (good news) and euangelizomai would have been understood by their audience in fairly specific ways. Namely, in the Greco-Roman world for which the New Testament authors wrote, euangelion/euangelizomai language typically had to do with either A) the announcement of the accession of a ruler, or B) the announcement of a victory in battle, and would probably have been understood along those lines.
Let’s take the announcements of a new ruler first. The classic example of such a language is the Priene Calendar Inscription, dating to circa 9 BC, which celebrates the rule (and birthday) of Caesar Augustus as follows:
"It was seeming to the Greeks in Asia, in the opinion of the high priest Apollonius of Menophilus Azanitus: Since Providence, which has ordered all things of our life and is very much interested in our life, has ordered things in sending Augustus, whom she filled with virtue for the benefit of men, sending him as a savior [soter] both for us and for those after us, him who would end war and order all things, and since Caesar by his appearance [epiphanein] surpassed the hopes of all those who received the good tidings [euangelia], not only those who were benefactors before him, but even the hope among those who will be left afterward, and the birthday of the god [he genethlios tou theou] was for the world the beginning of the good tidings [euangelion] through him; and Asia resolved it in Smyrna."
The association of the term euangelion with the announcement of Augustus’ rule is clear enough and is typical of how this language is used elsewhere. To give another example, Josephus records that at the news of the accession of the new emperor Vespasian (69 AD) “every city kept festival for the good news (euangelia) and offered sacrifices on his behalf.” (The Jewish War, IV.618). Finally, a papyrus dating to ca. 498 AD begins:
"Since I have become aware of the good news (euangeliou) about the proclamation as Caesar (of Gaius Julius Verus Maximus Augustus)…"
This usage occurs also in the Septuagint, the Greek translations of the Jewish Scriptures. For instance LXX Isaiah 52:7 reads, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news (euangelizomenou), who publishes peace, who brings good news (euangelizomenos) of salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.'" Similarly, LXX Isaiah 40:9-10 reads:

"…Go up on a high mountain, you who bring good tidings (ho euangelizomenos) to Sion; lift up your voice with strength, you who bring good tidings (ho euangelizomenos); lift it up, do not fear; say to the cities of Ioudas, “See your God!” Behold, the Lord comes with strength, and his arm with authority (kyrieias)…."-NETS, Esaias 40:9-10

This consistent close connection between euangelion/euangelizomai language and announcements of rule strongly suggests that many of the initial hearers/readers of the early Christians’ evangelical language would likely have understood that language as the announcement of a new ruler (see, e.g., Acts 17:7), and, unless there is strong NT evidence to the contrary, we should presume that the NT writers probably intended their language to be so understood.
However, the other main way in which euangelion/euangelizomai language was used in the Greco-Roman world was with reference to battle reports, announcements of victory in war. A classic example of this sort of usage can be found in LXX 2 Samuel 18:19ff, where David receives word that his traitorous son, Absalom, has been defeated in battle. Euangelion/euangelizomai is used throughout the passage for the communications from the front.
As already shown throughout this post, the NT speaks of Jesus’s death and resurrection as a great victory over the powers that existed at that time and, most importantly, over death itself. Jesus’ conquest of the principalities and powers was the establishment of his rule and comprehensive authority over heaven and earth, that is, of his Lordship over all things (again, at that time).
This was the content of Paul's gospel message...

Justification, and the "New" Perspective on Paul

The following quotation is from The Gospel Coalition, and I believe it to be a decently accurate summary of the NPP (New Perspective on Paul), despite it being from a source which is in opposition to it:

The New Perspective on Paul, a major scholarly shift that began in the 1980s, argues that the Jewish context of the New Testament has been wrongly understood and that this misunderstand[ing] has led to errors in the traditional-Protestant understanding of justification. According to the New Perspective, the Jewish systems of salvation were not based on works-righteousness but rather on covenantal nomism, the belief that one enters the people of God by grace and stays in through obedience to the covenant. This means that Paul could not have been referring to works-righteousness by his phrase “works of the law”; instead, he was referring to Jewish boundary markers that made clear who was or was not within the people of God. For the New Perspective, this is the issue that Paul opposes in the NT. Thus, justification takes on two aspects for the New Perspective rather than one; initial justification is by faith (grace) and recognizes covenant status (ecclesiology), while final justification is partially by works, albeit works produced by the Spirit.

I believe what's called the "new perspective" is actually rather old, and that the Reformers' view of Paul is what is truly new, being that the Lutheran understanding of Paul is simply not Biblical.
The Reformation perspective understands Paul to be arguing against a legalistic Jewish culture that seeks to earn their salvation through works. However, supporters of the NPP argue that Paul has been misread. We contend he was actually combating Jews who were boasting because they were God's people, the "elect" or the "chosen ones." Their "works," so to speak, were done to show they were God's covenant people and not to earn their salvation.
The key questions involve Paul’s view(s) of the law and the meaning of the controversy in which Paul was engaged. Paul strongly argued that we are “justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law” (Gal. 2:16b). Since the time of Martin Luther, this has been understood as an indictment of legalistic efforts to merit favor before God. Judaism was cast in the role of the medieval "church," and so Paul’s protests became very Lutheran, with traditional-Protestant theology reinforced in all its particulars (along with its limitations) as a result. In hermeneutical terms, then, the historical context of Paul’s debate will answer the questions we have about what exactly the apostle meant by the phrase "works of the law," along with other phrases often used as support by the Reformers for their doctrine of Sola Fide (justification by faith alone), like when Paul mentions "the righteousness of God."
Obviously an in-depth analysis of the Pauline corpus and its place in the context of first-century Judaism would take us far beyond the scope of this brief post. We can, however, quickly survey the topography of Paul’s thought in context, particularly as it has emerged through the efforts of recent scholarship, and note some salient points which may be used as the basis of a refurbished soteriology.
[Note: The more popular scholars associated with the NPP are E.P. Sanders, James Dunn, and N.T. Wright. Dunn was the first to coin the term "The New Perspective" in a 1983 Manson Memorial Lecture, The New Perspective on Paul and the Law.]
Varying authors since the early 1900's have brought up the charge that Paul was misread by those in the tradition of Martin Luther and other Protestant Reformers. Yet, it wasn't until E.P. Sanders' 1977 book, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, that scholars began to pay much attention to the issue. In his book, Sanders argues that the Judaism of Paul's day has been wrongly criticized as a religion of "works-salvation" by those in the Protestant tradition.
A fundamental premise in the NPP is that Judaism was actually a religion of grace. Sander's puts it clearly:
"On the point at which many have found the decisive contrast between Paul and Judaism - grace and works - Paul is in agreement with Palestinian Judaism... Salvation is by grace but judgment is according to works'...God saves by grace, but... within the framework established by grace he rewards good deeds and punishes transgression." (Paul and Palestinian Judaism, p. 543)
N.T. Wright adds that, "we have misjudged early Judaism, especially Pharisaism, if we have thought of it as an early version of Pelagianism," (Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said, p. 32).
Sanders has coined a now well-known phrase to describe the character of first-century Palestinian Judaism: “covenantal nomism.” The meaning of “covenantal nomism” is that human obedience is not construed as the means of entering into God’s covenant. That cannot be earned; inclusion within the covenant body is by the grace of God. Rather, obedience is the means of maintaining one’s status within the covenant. And with its emphasis on divine grace and forgiveness, Judaism was never a religion of legalism.
If covenantal nomism was operating as the primary category under which Jews understood the Law, then when Jews spoke of obeying commandments, or when they required strict obedience of themselves and fellow Jews, it was because they were "keeping the covenant," rather than out of legalism.
More recently, N.T. Wright has made a significant contribution in his little book, What Saint Paul Really Said. Wright’s focus is the gospel and the doctrine of justification. With incisive clarity he demonstrates that the core of Paul’s gospel was not justification by faith, but the death and resurrection of Christ and his exaltation as Lord. The proclamation of the gospel was the proclamation of Jesus as Lord, the Messiah who fulfilled Israel’s expectations. Romans 1:3-4, not 1:16-17, is the gospel, contrary to traditional thinking. Justification is not the center of Paul’s thought, but an outworking of it:
"[T]he doctrine of justification by faith is not what Paul means by ‘the gospel’. It is implied by the gospel; when the gospel is proclaimed, people come to faith and so are regarded by God as members of his people. But ‘the gospel’ is not an account of how people get saved. It is, as we saw in an earlier chapter, the proclamation of the lordship of Jesus Christ….Let us be quite clear. ‘The gospel’ is the announcement of Jesus’ lordship, which works with power to bring people into the family of Abraham, now redefined around Jesus Christ and characterized solely by faith in him. ‘Justification’ is the doctrine which insists that all those who have this faith belong as full members of this family, on this basis and no other." (pp. 132, 133)
Wright brings us to this point by showing what “justification” would have meant in Paul’s Jewish context, bound up as it was in law-court terminology, eschatology, and God’s faithfulness to God’s covenant.
Specifically, Wright explodes the myth that the pre-Christian Saul was a pious, proto-Pelagian moralist seeking to earn his individual passage into heaven. Wright capitalizes on Paul’s autobiographical confessions to paint rather a picture of a zealous Jewish nationalist whose driving concern was to cleanse Israel of Gentiles as well as Jews who had lax attitudes toward the Torah. Running the risk of anachronism, Wright points to a contemporary version of the pre-Christian Saul: Yigal Amir, the zealous Torah-loyal Jew who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for exchanging Israel’s land for peace. Wright writes:
"Jews like Saul of Tarsus were not interested in an abstract, ahistorical system of salvation... They were interested in the salvation which, they believed, the one true God had promised to his people Israel." (pp. 32, 33)
Wright maintains that as a Christian, Paul continued to challenge paganism by taking the moral high ground of the creational monotheist. The doctrine of justification was not what Paul preached to the Gentiles as the main thrust of his gospel message; it was rather “the thing his converts most needed to know in order to be assured that they really were part of God’s people” after they had responded to the gospel message.
Even while taking the gospel to the Gentiles, however, Paul continued to criticize Judaism “from within” even as he had as a zealous Pharisee. But whereas his mission before was to root out those with lax attitudes toward the Torah, now his mission was to demonstrate that God’s covenant faithfulness (righteousness) has already been revealed in Jesus Christ.
At this point Wright carefully documents Paul’s use of the controversial phrase “God’s righteousness” and draws out the implications of his meaning against the background of a Jewish concept of justification. The righteousness of God and the righteousness of the party who is “justified” cannot be confused because the term bears different connotations for the judge than for the plaintiff or defendant. The judge is “righteous” if his or her judgment is fair and impartial; the plaintiff or defendant is “righteous” if the judge rules in his or her favor. Hence:
"If we use the language of the law court, it makes no sense whatsoever to say that the judge imputes, imparts, bequeaths, conveys or otherwise transfers his righteousness to either the plaintiff or the defendant. Righteousness is not an object, a substance or a gas which can be passed across the courtroom. For the judge to be righteous does not mean that the court has found in his favor. For the plaintiff or defendant to be righteous does not mean that he or she has tried the case properly or impartially. To imagine the defendant somehow receiving the judge’s righteousness is simply a category mistake. That is not how the language works." (p. 98)
However, Wright makes the important observation that even with the forensic metaphor, Paul’s theology is not so much about the courtroom as it is about God’s love.
Righteousness is not an impersonal, abstract standard, a measuring-stick or a balancing scale. That was, and still is, a Greek view. Righteousness, Biblically speaking, grows out of covenant relationship. We forgive because we have been forgiven (Matt. 18:21-35); “we love" because God “first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Love is the fulfillment of the law (Rom. 13:8, 10, Gal 5:14, Jam. 2:8). Paul even looked forward to a day when “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Cor. 5:10), and he acknowledged that his clear conscience did not necessarily ensure this verdict (1 Cor. 4:4), but he was confident nevertheless. Paul did in fact testify of his clear conscience: “For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation [i.e., behavior] in the world, and more abundantly to you-ward” (2 Cor. 1:12). He was aware that he had not yet “attained” (Phil. 3:12-14), that he still struggled with the flesh, yet he was confident of the value of his performance (1 Cor. 9:27). These are hardly the convictions of someone who intends to rest entirely on the merits of an alien righteousness imputed to his or her account.
Wright went on to flesh out the doctrine of justification in Galatians, Philippians, and Romans. The “works of the law” are not proto-Pelagian efforts to earn salvation, but rather “sabbath [keeping], food-laws, circumcision” (p. 132). Considering the controversy in Galatia, Wright writes:
"Despite a long tradition to the contrary, the problem Paul addresses in Galatians is not the question of how precisely someone becomes a Christian, or attains to a relationship with God….The problem he addresses is: should his ex-pagan converts be circumcised or not? Now this question is by no means obviously to do with the questions faced by Augustine and Pelagius, or by Luther and Erasmus. On anyone’s reading, but especially within its first-century context, it has to do quite obviously with the question of how you define the people of God: are they to be defined by the badges of Jewish race, or in some other way? Circumcision is not a ‘moral’ issue; it does not have to do with moral effort, or earning salvation by good deeds. Nor can we simply treat it as a religious ritual, then designate all religious ritual as crypto-Pelagian good works, and so smuggle Pelagius into Galatia as the arch-opponent after all. First-century thought, both Jewish and Christian, simply doesn’t work like that…. [T]he polemic against the Torah in Galatians simply will not work if we ‘translate’ it into polemic either against straightforward self-help moralism or against the more subtle snare of ‘legalism’, as some have suggested. The passages about the law only work — and by ‘work’ I mean they will only make full sense in their contexts, which is what counts in the last analysis — when we take them as references to the Jewish law, the Torah, seen as the national charter of the Jewish race." (pp. 120-122)
The debate about justification, then, “wasn’t so much about soteriology as about ecclesiology; not so much about salvation as about the church.” (p. 119)
To summarize the theology of Paul in his epistles, the apostle mainly spent time arguing to those whom he were sending letters that salvation in Christ was available to all men without distinction. Jews and Gentiles alike may accept the free gift; it was not limited to any one group. Paul was vehement about this, especially in his letter to the Romans. As such, I will finish this post off by summarizing the letter itself, so as to provide Biblical support for the premises of the NPP and for what the scholars I referenced have thus far argued.
After his introduction in the epistle to an already believing and mostly Gentile audience (who would've already been familiar with the gospel proclaimed in verses 3-4), Paul makes a thematic statement in 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” This statement is just one of many key statements littered throughout the book of Romans that give us proper understanding of the point Paul wished to make to the interlocutors of his day, namely, salvation is available to all, whether Jew or Gentile.
In 1:16 Paul sets out a basic theme of his message in the letter to the Romans. All who believed, whether they be Jew or Gentile, were saved by the power of the gospel. The universal nature of salvation was explicitly stated. The gospel saved all without distinction, whether Jew or Greek; salvation was through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Immediately after this thematic declaration, Paul undertakes to show the universal nature of sin and guilt. In 1:18-32 Paul shows how the Gentile is guilty before God. Despite evidence of God and his attributes, which is readily available to all, they have failed to honor YHVH as God and have exchanged His glory for idolatrous worship and self-promotion. As a consequence, God handed them over in judgment (1:18-32). Paul moves to denunciation of those who would judge others while themselves being guilty of the very same offenses (2:1-5) and argues that all will be judged according to their deeds (2:6). This judgment applies to all, namely, Jew and Greek (2:9-10). This section serves as somewhat of a transition in Paul’s argument. He has highlighted the guilt of the Gentiles (1:18ff) and will shortly outline the guilt of the Jew (2:17-24). The universal statement of 2:1-11 sets the stage for Paul’s rebuke of Jewish presumption. It was not possession of the Law which delivered; it was faithful obedience. It is better to have no Law and yet to obey the essence of the Law (2:12-16) than to have the Law and not obey (2:17-3:4). Paul then defends the justice of God’s judgment (3:5-8), which leads to the conclusion that all (Jew and Gentile) are guilty before God (3:9).
Paul argues that it was a mistaken notion to think that salvation was the prerogative of the Jew only. This presumption is wrong for two reasons. First, it leads to the mistaken assumption that only Jews were eligible for this vindication (Paul deals with this misunderstanding in chapter 4 where he demonstrates that Abraham was justified by faith independently of the Law and is therefore the father of all who believe, Jew and Gentile alike). Second, it leads to the equally mistaken conclusion that all who were Jews are guaranteed of vindication. Paul demonstrates how this perspective, which would call God’s integrity into question since Paul was assuming many Jews would not experience this vindication, was misguided. He did this by demonstrating that it was never the case that all physical descendants of Israel (Jacob) were likewise recipients of the promise. In the past (9:6-33) as in the present (at that time; 11:1-10), only a remnant was preserved and only a remnant would experience vindication. Paul also argued that the unbelief of national Israel (the non-remnant) had the purpose of extending the compass of salvation. The unbelief of one group made the universal scope of the gospel possible. This universalism was itself intended to bring about the vindication of the unbelieving group (11:11-16). As a result of faith, all (Jew and Gentile) could be branches of the olive tree (11:17-24). Since faith in Christ was necessary to remain grafted into the tree, no one could boast of his position. All, Jew and Gentile alike, were dependent upon the mercy and grace of God. As a result of God’s mysterious plan, He would bring about the vindication of His people (11:25-27). [Note: It is this author's belief that this vindication occurred around 66-70 AD, with the Parousia of Christ's Church; this author is Full-Preterist in their Eschatology.]

I’m a 16-year-old male, and I still have a backpack filled with things I treasured from my first love relationship. (P.S. I’m really bad at explaining myself and bad with words, so bear with me. Also I’m leaving a lot of things out.) My girlfriend and I were together since the 6th grade and ended things at the beginning of my junior year. I have tried to get rid of this backpack filled with things I treasured, but I just can’t seem to do it.
I hated the way things ended because I felt like I could have done more. I froze in the heat of the moment and was lost for words when she told me she wanted to end our relationship. I just agreed and said, “alright then.” I honestly don’t know why I didn’t try to stop us from splitting up—it just happened so fast. I felt so much regret the following day; I just sat in bed for hours on end.
Two weeks later, I opened up Instagram to see her with another guy—her new boyfriend. This made me feel a mix of emotions. I couldn’t believe she moved on so quickly after so many years together. It made me question if what we had meant anything to her at all and if she really loved me all those years. I blocked her the second I saw her story. I was stunned. I then deleted everything in my camera roll that had anything to do with her and tried forgetting about her. But I still have this backpack filled with our things. After eight whole months, I still have it. What should I do?

Hi. I'm an international student pursuing a master's degree at Unimelb.
I enrolled last February and have already taken two classes. My grade for the first course is P for passing. I don't think about it too much since I viewed it as my 'trial and error' class and tried to view it as an adaptation phase from studying abroad. However, the result for my second course is out, and I'm just 2 points above 50 for passing, which is a close call for failing.
I can't help but think, what if all my grades merely pass and do not improve? I realised this was a negative thought and that I should improve myself, but this is my worry. What do you think of a transcript full of pass (P)? Will it affect the job search in the future? Also, am I that dumb not to even reach at least an H3 or H2B grade? Should I reconsider my coursework?
Thank you.

I completed my build with the H6 Flow case. I went with 3x120mm QX + 3x120mm QX + 2x140mm QX corsair fans.
I ran into issues with the bottom fans and went flipping the bottom fans to exit air. That meant I had to reverse the top fans on the Kraken AIO as well.
CPU started to hit 75°C to 80°C as the liquid temps would stay above 55°C.
So, a friend who helped me with the build shared this post: My H6 Flow build ft. Corsair QX cooling. I went ahead and unlinked the 2x140mm fans at bottom and rotated them and used a cutter blade to shave off some plastic from the connecting 90-degree cable as well as to further flush in the fans.
The issue I have now is that I was using just one Corsair hub that allows for 2 device connections. That hub was handling the 6 fans (3 x Front + 3 x Top Radiator) linked + 2 x 140 linked. Now, it's handling the same (top + front) 6 fans + just one of the 140 mm bottom fans due to only two connection points.
I was able to add a second Corsair hub, power it, and connect the single 140mm. But I have no USB2 header left over on the motherboard: ASRock Z790 Steel Legend WiFi; as one USB2 header is occupied by the first Corsair hub and the other USB2 header is occupied by Kraken.
Added the second hub without a USB connection
Single 140mm Fan on second Hub
Made the 2 x 140mm as flush as possible while still avoiding cable damage
I was also planning to get a strix for the ugly 24-pin connector as well... The motherboard choice is also a limiting factor here.
Do I have option(s) to expand on the USB2 Headers?
Here is my build for reference:
PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item
CPU	*Intel Core i7-14700K 3.4 GHz 20-Core Processor
CPU Cooler	NZXT Kraken 360 78.02 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Thermal Compound	Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut 1 g Thermal Paste
Motherboard	ASRock Z790 Steel Legend WiFi ATX LGA1700 Motherboard
Memory	Corsair Vengeance RGB 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-6400 CL32 Memory
Storage	Lexar NM790 4 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
Video Card	Gigabyte WINDFORCE V2 GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER 16 GB Video Card
Case	NZXT H6 Flow ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply	Gigabyte UD1000GM PG5 (rev. 2.0) 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
Operating System	Microsoft Windows 11 Pro OEM - DVD 64-bit
Case Fan	Corsair iCUE LINK QX120 RGB Starter Kit 63.1 CFM 120 mm Fans 3-Pack
Case Fan	Corsair iCUE LINK QX120 RGB Starter Kit 63.1 CFM 120 mm Fans 3-Pack
Case Fan	Corsair iCUE LINK QX140 RGB Starter Kit 82.5 CFM 140 mm Fans 2-Pack
Keyboard	Logitech G910 Orion Spectrum RGB Wired Gaming Keyboard
Mouse	Logitech G502 Proteus Core Wired Optical Mouse
Headphones	Logitech G935 7.1 Channel Headset
Webcam	Logitech C920 HD Pro Webcam
Custom	Kogan 34" IPS Ultrawide USB-C FreeSync HDR Gaming Monitor KAMN34XQUCLA
Custom	Kogan 34" ​IPS Ultraw​ide USB-C ​FreeSync H​DR Gaming ​Monitor KA​MN34XQUCLA

napakasakit. sobrang sakit. im such a failure i dont know how to face my family and friends.
for context, im a 2nd yr civil engineering student who is also working full time at a bpo company in graveyard shift.
i am the most studious person you’ll ever meet. alam yan ng mga kaklase ko, lalong lalo na ng mga kadorm ko. hindi ako natutulog, magdamag nakaupo sa table at nagsosolve. sometimes even while working, pinagsasabay ko pagsolve sa concerns ng customer while also solving my own fucking problem sets.
i have sacrificed hundreds of sleepless nights para lang makapasok ng maaga kinabukasan. i would always pull an all nighter for my quizzes and exams.
and yet, here i am. still a failure.
yung iba kong subjects na 3 to 5 points na lang para makaabot sa passing grade, hinabol ko sa mga prof ko at nanghingi ng mga pedeng gawin para sa adjustments pero wala eh. hindi na sila nagrereply, tapos yung iba matigas na talaga at di mapakiusapan. hindi na ako nagpilit. kasi alam ko sa sarili ko na hindi naman ako ganon, na hindi ko kailangan magmakaawa. pero bakit wala silang consideration? alam naman nilang working student ako. malate lang ng take sa quiz, zero na. hindi ba pwedeng deductions lang muna?
hiyang hiya ako. sobra. i’m the most vocal and passionate pagdating sa course ko, halos ipagmalaki ko sa lahat kung gaano ko kamahal ang course ko pero heto ako. wala man lang naipasa ni isang subject.
i just want to die.
ps. hindi ako nagfull units this sem, since hindi kaya yung tuition fee financially. ako lang naman gumagawa ng paraan para makabayad ako ng tuition. i only took 6 subjects, major pa lahat (in my uni’s curriculum, second year second sem has a total of 11 subjects, 9 majors and 2 minors- advanced math and PE). so 6 out of 6 subjects, bagsak.

Wade held Jasmine in his arms as he flew a low height down the long road to another section of the staryard, Tina on his back and Nathan and F right behind them in the air. Together, the five glided across the base grounds, taking care as to not irritate the aerial security during their search for the meeting room. Being outside for the flight, the group considered it a blessing that Wade's 'enhanced cooling unit' allowed his body to tolerate the breaching sun in the still cloudy sky, which, according to F, was dangerous to drones like her due to the inefficient cooling she and disassembly drones like her suffered from. Given F's physical fault, she had to fly under shady areas in order to safely traverse the base at day.
Originally, Wade and his friends had planned to walk to the meeting zone, but after running into a trooper experiencing a health mishap, the group did what they could to help the distressed officer. By the time he was brought to the medical ward by other soldiers, Wade found that him and his team would be at least a few minutes late if they kept on their way with their walk.
Deciding to speed things up, Wade, understanding the concern for performing such an effort, opted to carry the Fowleys around the base to the meeting area. Reluctantly, F decided to come along, carrying Nathan in a similar manner that Wade was carrying Jasmine. Taking notice of the time on his HUD, which read, "9:47 AM", Wade scouted for the building he and his friends were directed to. "8072" He said to himself, the number being for the building that would house the imminent meeting.
"They said it was down here, right?" Wade asked aloud to Tina before stopping himself in mid-air, the girl holding onto him tightly as he tried to speak over the growing sound of a retrofit Apache flying overhead.
Looking about, Tina nodded as she spotted the target building. "Yes, I believe that's the one over there!" Pointing past his head, Wade followed her finger to a large building ahead at his right. The structure was moderately tall, only about two stories high, with several soldiers and officers going in and out of the building. Wade smiled as he noticed the target number, as well as the big, bold words describing the building's designation. "8072, Briefing Center B"
"Good eye, honey. Hang on!" Continuing his low glide, Wade zoomed towards the building's entrance before stopping just meters above the ground, his two friends close behind as they slowed down as well. The troopers around them initially looked startled by the sudden arrival of Wade and his group, but quickly regained their composure as Wade hovered still above them.
"At ease! Just visitors." One of the soldiers declared as they identified the newcomers, who touched down before Wade let Jasmine down to her feet, Tina hopping onto the ground along with her.
Putting his hands up, Wade apologized for his swift surprise. "Sorry for the scare, we got delayed for a meeting we're invited to."
The soldier gave an understanding nod as he replied to the former worker drone sternly. "I can see that, just be a bit more careful next time, Mr. Carter. You gave the boys here quite a scare."
Wade returned the gesture in embarrassment as F put a hand to his back, chuckling at his efforts as Tina questioned the officer. "Is Mrs. J in there? She's the one who called for us."
The guard gave his reply as Wade and Tina pulled out their IDs for clearance. "Yes she is, Miss. The meeting's set to begin in under ten minutes." Checking the two drones' IDs, Jasmine and the others pulled out theirs as well, the watchman motioning another trooper over to verify the group. Once the guard finished checking the five's cards, he nodded in approval as the watchman spoke once more. "You're clear to enter."
"Thank you Sir, again, sorry about that spook back there." Wade replied with a smile as the trooper gave one of his own, the disassembly drone and his allies making their way towards the office door before stopping upon the call of a voice.
"Hey, Felice!" Wade turned to find the origin of the voice, F doing the same as the two quickly spotted a quartet of soldiers walking excitedly towards F. The disassembly drone glanced to her friends with a smile before turning back to the approaching entourage.
Wade examined the four troops as they got closer: Two human men, one woman, and a male worker drone. One of the male soldiers had short, blonde hair, and a small scar to the right side of their face. The second man bore a tan skin tone and had black hair, with blue strips that went down slightly in a mullet style. The woman bore a set of long, dark green hair, with the hair going down and over her left shoulder. As for the worker drone, he wore the standard green soldier helmet, single eye visor and all. He had no hair on him from what Wade could tell, and bore a pair of whiteish purple eyes on his visor.
As F walked over to the soldiers, the same one that called to her spoke again. "Felicity, I didn't expect to see you around here today! Where you been?"
The girl soldier interrupted his initial chatter. "Hang on Carlos, do you even know if she remembers us?"
"Aye, don't she have one o' them memory locks, or sumthin?" The drone added in a heavy Scottish accent.
F waved her hand as she replied to the group. "Easy, everyone. Thankfully I still got my memories, courtesy of my technician back at Central." Lowering her hand, F let down her usual persona as she gave a wide smirk to the soldiers, clearly pleased to see them. "Good to see you guys around here."
The soldiers gave light cheers to F as they all embraced her, the group having a surprise reunion as Wade and the others watched in surprise. These must've been F's old colleagues from when she was in the service, Wade thought. Quite the coincidence for them to be here at this base of all places.
Not bothering with the convenience of the matter, Wade shook the thought off as he and his friends watched F and her old friends breaking the hug, Tina wrapping an arm around her boyfriend as the second male human spoke to her in what the two discerned as Spanish. "Ay, who your new friends, F?"
"Oh, these guys?" F replied in the same language, quietly startling Wade and the others as they had never heard her speak like that until now. Glancing over to Wade, F motioned him and the others to come over. "Everyone, these are some friends I made in the past few days. Wade, Nathan, Tina, and Jasmine." She pointed her hand to the four as she said each of their names. "I met the boys here during my time on Ceres. Jasmine and Tina here are sisters."
The four soldiers gave various forms of excitement, ranging from hearty laughs to low woops and even a whistle from one of the guys. As F stood next to her old teammates, they each introduced themselves to Wade and his friends. The blonde soldier went first. "Well, it's a pleasure to meet you all, name's Carlos, Lieutenant Marksman."
"I'm Private Alvaros, good with close-range and stealth operations." Said the tan soldier with a salute.
"Sergeant Lucia Vasquez, usually the one who leads this bunch around these days." The female warrior stated with a humorous smirk.
"And Corporal Duncan Wallace, at your service!" The soldier drone stated proudly as he saluted to the bunch in front of him, who gave warm smiles as Wade shook his hand.
"Quite honored to meet you all, seems you have quite the history with F." The former worker drone said as Carlos patted F on her back.
"Oh, we do! She's the one who took charge when we didn't! Did you all hear of the Pasting of Nola VI?" Jasmine and Tina gave nods of affirmation while Wade, not as familiar with such history, held his hand up in a questioning manner.
"I think, wasn't that the battle where the Navy just barely held the outpost in that system? From the Stryker Clan?" Wade asked as Carlos nodded approvingly to him.
"That's right, and if Felice weren't there, WE would've been the ones getting pasted!" Carlos' statement brought victorious cheers and "oorahs" from the group, F letting a blush loose as she chuckled at her team's praise of her efforts.
"Well, that's not wrong." Although she didn't want to break off from her friends and discuss the past few years since they'd last met, F remembered the briefing. Clearing her throat, she continued. "And as much as I'd like to chat about the good times, I've been called to a meeting here, as have Wade and his crew."
The soldier group gave understanding looks to F as Lucia spoke up. "Thought so, Carl here was real eager to see you, though."
"Maybe we can talk after the meeting?" Nathan proposed as the soldiers collectively nodded in agreement, F readying a smartcomm attachment before turning to face her friends again.
"We're probably getting low on time, you all go in, I'll catch up in a sec." Wade nodded in acknowledgement before taking Tina's hand, the lover drones continuing towards the briefing center as Jasmine and Nathan followed behind them.
Passing through the door, the four guests observed a short hallway, which seemed to split into two paths as they came closer to the other end. Looking to a sign on the wall above, they saw arrows pointing to two separate areas, "Primary Briefing Room; Main Lobby + Secondary & Tertiary" Going to the right, they entered the moderately active lobby, several officers walking and standing about in mass chatter. Walking over to the desk up against the wall to their left, Wade and his group waved a hand to the occupying attendant.
"Welcome, what do you need?" The desk attendant asked as Tina raised a finger to reply.
"We're here for a meeting, Mrs. J called us here."
The attendant nodded in understanding before directing an arm towards the other end of the room, where a single door stood. "She should be in the second briefing room down that way."
"Thank you." Tina replied warmly before she and Wade began walking towards the door, their friends behind them as they proceeded into the room.
The room beyond the door was quite sizable, a large circular table occupying the middle with several chairs surrounding it. The walls went up a few meters, with four whiteish blue lights illuminating the room. On the wall opposite to Wade and Tina were three monitor screens, all of which showed the USN in bright blue. In several of the seats were faces both familiar and unfamiliar, several men and women in varying styles of uniforms conversing about quietly or taking notice of the recent visitors. Standing up near the monitors were three people: A decorated officer whom Tina identified as a ship captain, and the so-called operatives, Tessa, albeit as a hologram, and J.
Walking slowly into the room, Wade gave a low wave of his hand as he tried to hide his nervousness. Noticing his shyness in front of the officers, Tina held his hand and rubbed his arm comfortingly while returning a pleasant smile to the staff in the room.
"Ah, Wade, Tina. Glad to see you all here." J stated with a smile as she scanned the group, raising a digital eyebrow as she noticed one missing guest. "Or, most of you, I see. Did F run off somewhere?"
Wade shook his head as he replied to his fellow disassembly drone. "Oh, no. She just ran into some old friends, she should be back-"
"Right now." F finished aloud as she entered the room, seemingly having heard Wade speaking about her absence. The warrior drone fast walked to Wade's team, taking a seat near them as they prepared to do the same. "Not too late, are we?"
"Not at all." The standing officer answered as the group took their seats, Wade and Tina sitting next to each other as they got comfortable. The captain examined the lot for a moment, glancing to J as he asked about them. "So, these are the ones you helped rescue from the Mojave?"
"Yes Captain, and they helped us out greatly in turn. This is Wade Carter, one of the captured drones whom became a disassembly drone before we could mount the rescue. The luckiest one, if you ask me." Motioning her arm over the others, she continued. "And there's his girlfriend, Mrs. Tina Fowley, and her sister Jasmine." Smirking to F and Nathan, she finished her friends' introductions. "And these two are Serial Designation F and Mr. Nathan, whom I've heard were once under your ranks."
The military captain gave a welcoming smile to the five as they returned the gesture, eyeing F and Nathan specifically before speaking to them. "Indeed they were, we still have records on their contributions to the colonies." Eyeing F, he continued. "Though, in Mrs. F's case, I won't blame her if she doesn't remember us. We've been very well aware of JCJenson's 'memory suppression' protocols when it comes to their DDs."
F laid back in her seat with a smug look as she replied to her former superior. "Well, my friend on the station's a good tech gal. She's... waived that hindrance from me."
"I see, that means your still with us, am I right, Mrs. Lee?" Unlike her friends next to her, F was not startled by her original name being said aloud, rather smiling proudly as she saluted to the captain. "Good to see you again."
"Pleased to be here, Sir." F replied as she lowered her arm, glancing to her companions next to her as J spoke up.
"Everyone, I'd like you to meet Captain Preston Mitchell, commander of the USNV Vickers down at the stardock."
Wade gave a respectful salute to Preston as he spoke first. "It's an honor to meet you, Sir."
"Thank you, Mr. Carter. I've heard about your efforts from J, you did an admirable job back there, son." Wade failed to hide an embarrassed blush from the compliment, but it quickly faded as a beep sounded from a small device on the table. It was swiftly silenced by the captain as he tapped a button on the small, pyramid shaped timer, then facing Wade's group before continuing. "Though, as much as we could use some small talk, it'll have to wait till later."
"Indeed, we're running late at this point." Said another officer, a highly decorated member of the base with dark skin, dark grey hair and a thin beard. He immediately won the attention of everyone in the room as he spoke up. "I'm General Hugh Hood, overseer of this base. I'm certain you know some of the reasons you're here with us, correct?"
Wade nodded as he spoke to Hood. "Yeah, it's cause of those rogue agents from the JCJenson corporation." Glancing to J, the corporate drone nodded in affirmation before speaking herself.
"Tessa and I spent the last hours of yesterday evening clearing up the matter with General Hood, along with several other officials stationed here." She stopped as the middle monitor behind her flashed with a banner at the top, reading, "INCOMING TRANSMISSION", and in place of the USN emblem was a textless version of the JCJenson logo. Below the profile image was another two lines of text. "N. Jenson (Company Exec); Comms Source: Yottrite IV"
"And also told our boss about what happened here too, he wanted to give his say on this ordeal." Looking to the general, J asked him, "May I put him on?"
Hood only gave a nod of approval to the corporate drone before she picked up a remote on the table and tapped a button, accepting the call as the picture shifted to show a middle-aged man in a pristine-looking business suit on the screen.
Wade and Tina glanced to each other before J introduced their guest on the screen. "Ladies and Gentlemen, the CEO of JCJenson: Mr. Noor Jenson."
Jenson gave a pleased nod to his subordinate as he spoke to J. "Thank you for the pleasantries, J. I see we are ready to discuss our plans on dealing with this 'recall' disaster I've bore witness to on the news this morning?"
J nodded as she replied to her boss. "Indeed, I've explained to General Hood here about our efforts yesterday, and, as of recent, we've just received a message from a source we believe to be close to the company."
Mr. Jenson looked down to J attentively as he spoke to her. "Well, that's quite intriguing news, J. Do you have this message available for us to view?" J and Hood both nodded in affirmation, but didn't get an immediate reply as Jenson gazed to Wade and his friends. "...And I presume these are some of the drones rescued from one of the factories?"
Again, J nodded to her superior before explaining her colleagues. "Yes Mr. Jenson, the two drones at the front in particular were among those taken by the Administrator and their subordinates." Pointing an arm to Wade and Tina, she introduced the drone couple. "The disassembly drone here is Mr. Wade Carter, a brother to his-technically speaking-owner, the late Ron Carter. The latter helped us recover Wade during an initial raid inside the Nevada facility." When bringing up Ron, J gave an apologetic look to Wade as to show she did not mean to be offending on him and his brother's relationship. "And this is his romantic partner, Mrs. Tina Fowley. I heard she and her sister Jasmine are pilots."
Jenson looked over the two drones as his obedient employee described them to him, quietly sighing as Wade and Tina returned the gaze with nervous smiles. Once J finished, Jenson spoke to Wade. "I... would say it's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Carter. But, given recent events, I don't hold fault to you for feeling frustrated at me for my... former subordinate's actions."
Wade shook his head lightly, taking Jenson's light apology with a faint smile as he replied to the CEO. "Actually, I don't. The only person I have such feelings put towards is," He hesitated for a moment, his anger at Dr. Halloway returning for a short moment before he eased himself. "..That bastard Halloway."
"The feeling's mutual, Mr. Carter. Dr. Halloway has been trying my patience for years now, especially with you and your fellow disassembly drones." Looking to J, then F, he returned his gaze to Wade before questioning him on his new body. "I don't know if J has told you of this, but if there's one truth my company has admittedly not held up to for a while, it's our quality. Recently, some of my research staff here made blueprints for an upgraded variant of the disassembly drone design. It's intended to fix several faults we expected to be nonexistent previously, most notably that atrocious cooling unit."
As a schematic pulled up on the left monitor, everyone glanced to the improved design before F spoke up about it. "If I may ask, Mr. Jenson, how big of an improvement is this new cooling unit supposed to be?"
"Good question, F. Frankly, it's supposed to do away with the issue entirely. Saves us from sacrificing enormous supplies of oil for the poorly built unit in the previous iterations. We even tested it with a repaired drone just a few days ago, and it worked flawlessly." Then, glancing to Wade again, he questioned the former worker drone on his new form. "Speaking of, how does your enhanced body feel, Mr. Carter? I'm certain it feels better to not have to-"
"Actually, Mr. Jenson," Wade interrupted, pulling out one of his canteens as he answered the CEO on his upgrades. "I guess Halloway changed up the blueprints, cause unfortunately this new cooling unit didn't cure the overheating problem. I... kinda learned that the hard way." Wade glanced to Tina apologetically, still feeling bad from her seeing him eat the corpse of the dead murder drone back at the factory.
The corporate CEO grimaced in frustration as he took in Wade's statement, already intolerant of the head researcher's actions as he replied. "...I was worried about that, Edgar always likes to run things his own way, making excuses for that 'Administrator' he watches over." Taking an agitated breath, he continued on with his spew on the two culprits of yesterday's events. "It was only because of all the very impressive creations and enhancements she and her research team provided that I tolerated them for so long, but this..." Sitting up straight in front of the camera, Jenson finished sternly. "J said the Administrator... Cyn, I believe? She was apparently something worse than we presumed originally, and I'm very inclined to believe so after yesterday."
"As well as the program tied to the Administrator, the AbsoluteSolver." J clarified before receiving an agreeing nod from Mr. Jenson, standing corrected on his placing of blame.
Raising a hand, Nathan asked about the supposed plans. "Yeah, about this "Solver Project", what do we plan to do about that?"
"Good question, Nate." Tessa replied as she crossed her arms before looking to Jenson and beginning her explanation. "Initially, we were going to investigate the other factories spread across Earth in order to get some more info on the Administrator before things get worse. But, just this morning, it seems someone else saved us the trouble." Just as Tessa neared the end of her sentence, J held up the remote again, tapping a few buttons before the left monitor shifted to show a slightly grainy video onscreen.
The video only showed a single being, a worker drone, dressed in a chrome suit and bearing a set of yellow eyes. Behind them was what appeared to be a vacant room, a few shelves holding many books within them standing still in the back. The drone's visage indicated they were filled with immense anxiety, terrified of being caught as they spoke quietly to the camera.
"I can only hope someone gets this in time, they're gonna be on me once they find out the transmitter screens are down!" Turning the camera, he showed what appeared to be a large factory room, several more of the mysterious conveyor belts like at the factory slotted next to each other. It was hard to discern every detail due to not only the window reflection, but also the dark lighting in the inactive conveyor room. Filming the room beyond, the drone continued. "Dr. Halloway's a madman, he's got more of those stolen drones being brought here and he's going to be overseeing it in the afternoon tomorrow! I've seen what happened back in Nevada, I can't take this any longer! I'm at coordinates ##.######, -###.###### Please, send someo-"
The suspicious, partially scrambled transmission immediately cut off to static, leaving Wade, Tina, and their friends with confused expressions as Tessa spoke up. "Yeah, that caught me by surprise too."
"So, that guy says they got more drones being sent 'there', but... where is there, exactly?" Jasmine asked with immense curiosity.
"I was hoping you'd ask that, Mrs. Fowley." The technician replied as she glanced to J, who tapped a few more buttons on the remote before speaking over her boss-friend.
"While the transmission itself isn't much to work off of, our friends from Comms over here managed to intercept the signal earlier, and even better, discern where it originated from." As J started her explanation, the screen shifted once more to show a large city, with one skyscraper highlighted in red as it was zoomed towards on the screen. "That scrambled audio wasn't a simple glitch, it was intentionally done so as to hide key information for us to uncover. Upon cleaning up the message, we managed to recover a set of coordinates, which direct to this structure here, in San Francisco."
Wade and his friends stared at the building in shock, examining the tall structure as it stood over the shorter buildings in the city. Tina broke the silence in her gaze. "So, this is another factory? It looks... terribly different from the one we got out of."
"Not exactly, Mrs. Fowley." Mr. Jenson answered, Tina and the others looking to him as he continued. "THAT is the Administrator's main laboratory, its location was kept on the down low so other authorities and terrorist groups wouldn't find out what the buildings true purpose was." Sighing, Jenson completed his reply. "But, with this recent mistake of Halloway's, that place has lost all purpose for us at the company."
Wade raised a hand to speak. "So, we're going to pounce on that place? Get Halloway before he runs off again?"
"Exactly." General Hood replied as he looked up to Mr. Jenson. "This whole 'recovery/recruitment' effort has gotten out of hand all across Sol. We've gotten countless reports of people being killed because of this, be it the brutal robberies here in Nevada or the bloodbath on Ceres. Even if Mr. Jenson refuses to cooperate, this has become a dire matter for us now. One way or another, this insanity will be stopped with due haste."
The CEO nodded in acknowledgement before explaining his own plans for the mission. "Speaking of cooperation, upon seeing what was happening at Earth, I ordered a detachment of our corporate starships in orbit at the time to depart for Sol in order to help with investigating the situation. They're not warships, but they are well-armed. I'll dispatch them to your authority upon concluding this call." Glancing to Wade and his team for a moment, Jenson continued. "As for the mission, I may not have much of a say, but let it be known that you have my blessing to do whatever it takes to end this madness. I don't care what you do with Halloway or any of his lackeys, or what happens to that facility down there... I want that program shut down."
"Thank you for the extra hands, Mr. Jenson. We'll make sure this Administrator is dealt with." Hood replied gratefully as Wade sat firm in his seat, Tina and the others following suite.
"General?" The former worker drone said aloud, catching Hood's attention before he made his request. "I know I'm not a soldier, but I want to help with dealing with Halloway and his grunts. After what he did, after losing my brother, I can't rest until I see that man stopped."
Tina raised a finger as well. "As do I, Wade could use a hand with those people, and given how we did during our escape run out of that place, I think the two of us make quite the duo." She glanced to Wade with a smirk as she referenced their combat prowess when flying together.
Nathan and F stood up before the latter gave her own request. "Sir, I wish to take part in this mission as well. I can also recommend Wade for you too, as I fought alongside him during the factory raid."
"Wouldn't mind giving a hand myself! And I'm sure my pal Kurtis would love to help, he's here at the base too!" Nathan added with a confident smirk, the group's determination encouraging Jasmine to stand up as well.
"I'd like to help too." She stated simply, a smile on her face as the general and his companions observed the five guests.
Admittedly, Hood knew it would be a bit absurd to allow these people to take part in an operation which would certainly involve bloodshed, especially considering most of them merely had civilian status at the moment. But, upon careful evaluation of the five, their desire to see this problem dealt with, and the fact that some of them had experience on the field...
He paused his train of thought as Captain Mitchell spoke to him. "General? I read up on the Fowleys' files when we recovered Mrs. Jasmine here, they provided service in their early careers." He smirked to the pilot sisters as he finished adding his say. "And to be frank, we need more people like them here. The records we have of them showed them to be damn fine pilots."
Tina blushed at the praise from Mitchell as she spoke to the general. "That is true, we uh... did get discharged for our... 'fancy maneuvering'."
"Sir?" Jasmine said, the general's attention on her as she added to the conversation. "Even if our flying is a bit out of protocol, Tina saved a lot of people on that starjet a few days back. I can promise you, she's an excellent woman to have at the wheel."
Glancing to Wade again, Hood took in his face, one of begging desperation as he spoke once more. "Please, Sir. My brother, the troops he brought from the Coalition, Halloway's gotten them all killed cause of this. I want to do this. I HAVE to do this, at least for them."
The good general took a deep, quiet breath, considering his decision once more before finally revealing it to Wade and his friends. "Mr. Carter, Fowleys? I'm probably making myself a fool for saying this, but you're permitted to assist us in this mission."
The drone couple contained their gratefulness in the form of ecstatic grins as Wade replied to the general. "Thanks, General. We won't let you down."
"And Mrs. Lee?" Hood said as he glanced to F, who returned the gesture as he told her, "You're technically under Mr. Jenson's authority, whatever his answer is, it's mine as well."
Bringing her yellow-orange eyes to her CEO, F awaited Mr. Jenson's answer. "F, yes? I heard Mr. Hood call you by a different name just now, I assume you have some experience with the army?"
The warrior drone nodded as she explained herself. "I once inherited the name of Felicity Lee, Mr. Jenson. I served under the USN Defense Forces before joining the DD Division." Then, glancing to the military staff near her, she finished with, "I had hoped to provide my enhancements to the Force one day."
Jenson gave a hint of a proud smile as he finally gave his decision. "Well, it seems you'll finally get that chance. From now on, even after this mission on Earth is over with, you're hereby dispatched to serve under the USN."
F admittedly couldn't hide her excited smirk as she flung a salute to her now former boss. "Thank you Sir!"
Looking up to Jenson, General Hood asked the CEO, "Mr. Jenson, how long until your ships can reach Earth?"
Jenson glanced down at his communication console as he answered the military leader. "At max speed, their Ion drives should be able to bring them into orbit in as little as one to two days. I believe there should be some ships within the system that could help as well."
"Signal them when you can, Mr. Jenson. We could use all the help we can get from them." The CEO nodded to Hood as he stood firmly to the viewer, the general turning to face Wade and his colleagues. "And Mr. Carter? We'll be mobilizing our forces immediately after this meeting concludes. It'll be a minute, but I want you to gather whatever items and belongings you'll need for this operation. Be ready to head to the flight pads in no more than three hours."
"Understood Sir!" Wade said with a salute, Tina, Jasmine and Nathan giving their own as Jasmine raised a finger.
"What about the area around the lab? That place looks like it's in the middle of the city."
J raised a finger as she told Jasmine and the others about their resolution of the civilian obstacle. "Shortly after reporting our findings on the transmission, Hood told us that they were sending in some teams to clear out the civilian population within several miles of the facility. Once we get there, it should be of no concern."
Jasmine sighed in relief as Tina spoke up. "So the people should be safe from any sort of danger?"
"Correct, Mrs. Tina." Preston answered before continuing. "Given the resistance Halloway and his men showed during the Coalition's raid, they most certainly won't hold back there."
"One more thing, Sir." Nathan asked. "The Coalition's going to help us out with this too, right?"
"You can count on it, Mr. Nathan." The Vickers' captain replied as he looked to J, then to Jenson as he spoke further. "I met the leader of the Coalition's detachment working with us when I was introduced to J and Mrs. Elliott here, they intend to see this conflict finished. I highly doubt they're willing to sit back and let us do this by ourselves."
"And their help will be much appreciated." Hood added, everyone's attention returned to him as he looked to Tessa, curious eyes scanning her holographic form. "And Mrs. Elliott, if I may. Do you mind heading down here to assist us in our investigations later on?"
"Funny you say that, General. I'm almost done with my own snooping around on the JCJ up in orbit, Cyn has some small departments of hers aboard, and I thought I'd gather some more intel before coming down." Glancing to Mr. Jenson, she saw him giving an understanding nod before returning her gaze to the military staff. "I should be down there by the evening, judging by where you're located."
"Do what you must, Mrs. Elliott. We could use whatever you find." Hood replied firmly as he turned once more to the JCJenson CEO. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Jenson. We will get to the bottom of this."
"It's my pleasure, General." Glancing to J and Tessa, he spoke to them once more. "J? Contact me when you've finished with Halloway and his Administrator."
"It'll be done, Mr. Jenson." The obedient servant answered before saluting firmly, receiving a final nod from her boss before he ended the transmission.
With their off-world guest out of the way, Hood looked to Wade and his friends, J, Tessa and Captain Mitchells sharing the gaze with them as the general spoke to them in finality. "Well, you know what comes next everyone. You're all dismissed for now. And remember, landing zone by 1300."
"We'll be there Sir." Wade said with a nod as he and his friends stood up, pushing in their chairs before making their way out to the door.
As they neared it, Wade stopped for a moment as they heard Hood call to one of his friends. "And F?" The soldier drone looked to the general as he continued. "Before we depart, would you mind changing your uniform? I believe it could help with identifying you from the other disassembly drones more easily." Glancing to J, then back to F, he finished with, "I recall hearing about the most formidable drones having clones prepared, yes?"
"Correct, Sir. I'll stop by the nearest barracks while I can." F replied before turning back to the door with her colleagues, Wade opening the door for them all as they passed through. After them, Wade passed through himself, shutting the door to the meeting room as he returned to the lobby.
Walking about together, F spoke to Wade and the others. "Well, that went smoothly. I'll be heading down to the barracks, then head over to your place to help out."
"Actually," Wade replied, raising a finger up as he asked his fellow murder drone, "You think you could bring your friends over? We could get to know each other while we're getting ready."
F glanced to Nathan with a smile before returning her eyes to Wade. "I could see about that. You're gonna like them, I can promise you that."
Taking Tina's hand, Wade walked with his girlfriend alongside Jasmine and the others, nearing the hallway they came through as they prepared for the walk back to the apartment.

I started a save with King’s Lynn in conference National. Got promoted first season with real life chairman. Then second season in conference national (top of league) the chairman kept trying to sell the club. There was one failed local business man one but never got as far as a transfer embargo so guess it was never close.
I then got the elusive “things might never be the same” media message. Claimed a South Korean business man tycoon wanted to buy the club and would make £11.2m available for transfers. This went on for a month or two with the “deal close” and “deal close to falling apart” media messages repeatedly coming up…then a transfer embargo set in and it happened.
I have screen shots on my laptop but there was a media message using the words “tycoon” and the landmarks tab now says the club was taken over by a tycoon. However a message was received saying he was making 100k available for transfers. I mean 100k at conference level was handy but not ground breaking as a tycoon take over should be in my opinion. Our wage budget went up but only to 7th highest in national league. The original media message did the usual “he will stop at nothing to make Kings Lynn the biggest team in the land”.
Either way I got promotion again in record breaking style to league 2. Budget released for that season 60k transfer budget and 60k salary budget which is ok but again not spectacular for league 2 by any means.
The question I’m asking is anyone with experience of tycoon take overs, I know there is 3 different types of tycoons but if you’ve had one at lower league do they sometimes take time to start investing money. I mean my side like all conference sides bleeds money despite me never going over salary budget etc and operating carefully. The owner put £1m in to help with running costs at the end of the national league promotion season when the overall balance was £300k in the red (still no actual debt etc). He usually after an argument accepts requests to improve youth recruitment but any improvement to facilities gets rejected “because of the clubs financial situation” which I find odd as he’s a tycoon and the club balance is positive and no debt.
I’m now at a stage where championship clubs are coming in for me. I always play my journey man saves as real as I can (virtually no rep, badges etc). I move when it’s realistic to etc. I didn’t know I’d get a tycoon take over but when I’m on £950 p/w and clubs are offering me £6,750 p/w wage in real life I’d surely jump to a massive club (derby and Coventry for context) but I’m tempted to stay because of the tycoon aspect.
Playing round on the skin I use I noticed on the finances tab it tells you if which ever club your looking at, has a tycoon an what type (underwriter, foreground) etc. on my Kings Lynn save it just says Tycoon and no description of which. Only one I can find with no description as well.
Is this normal for a tycoon save to be like this. I don’t want to leave and suddenly after over a year he starts acting like the announcements at his take over claimed he would be 😂. Basically what I’m saying is, after 30 plus years of playing fm and never getting a tycoon take over, if he’s about to give me a truck load of money randomly I will stay put lol.

Myquals- (12th grade) so I completed my 12th in cbse school and I’ll be joining college of commerce soon it has second language compulsory since I didn’t have second language durning my 11-12th plus and I don’t score well in languages prior 12th durning 1st to 10th grade and now my college students offers Sanskrit Hindi will they teach from basics I mean Sanskrit in college? Please reply asap it would be really appreciated thank you.

So let me go on a story.
I'm a gay 29M.
I lost my parents, and received inheritance around two months before my birthday last year. It was put toward purchasing a lovely home with several rooms and accommodations. It's very lovely.
However; when this happened, I lost my job which would've provided a far better income, benefits, and far easier work due to circumstances that transpired. I was set back for a while, and ultimately became financially unstable. I always make it work out ultimately now, re-employed and taking odd jobs, so I've become reliable on that front.
I invited a coworker of mine who wanted to avoid her abusive living situation with her mother, who threatened to kick her out. This coworker friend (20F) [Let's call her J] tends to have anger-issues that elicit her to lash out at people rather immensely. She has made tremendous progress in this respect I feel in some of the time I know her, but habits continue. It's not physical or anything, it's just emotional/anxiety riddled stuff, and so forth. For the most part, having lost the job, the majority of the duress between us arrives from housing situations and ultimately the issues aren't massive. Either out of respect, out of understanding, or out of better compatibility, things improved. Likewise she has a cat, and while it can be a little annoying, it's adorable so I forgive it. Likewise she's a big animal lover.
Near Christmas, another former Coworker of mine (24F) [She can be H.]had a falling out with her boyfriend. So at the behest of my new roommate's request, she was given a room. It was a trial to sort of get her back on her feet. I offered a month without rent to allow her to save money. Then a 3-month period discounted Rent, to help her furnish herself. Likewise due to a smaller room; she had less money owed. This has continued for five or so months in totality. This Coworker I don't have much synergy with, and she seems primarily self-contained. I don't opt to interact with her, and she doesn't with me. Likewise; she's far more extroverted than I or my roommate, so often goes out drinking, hanging out with boys, etc.
Recap.
J is 20. H is 24.
And for the majority of the time together; the two have been fast friends and likewise seemed to improve more as they've hung out here. Until the second roommate wanted a cat, which initially both were overjoyed by. She got a kitten, pretty spontaneously. And ignoring advice, she let it interact with my roommate's cat. We were initially planning on keeping them apart for both their safety, especially because the kitten hadn't been vet-processed and J's cat has a slightly weak immune system. This was in breach of trust given, and upset J quite a bit.
H had made plans to hangout with a friend that night, and essentially left the cat in a carrier in her room, and told J she'd likely be back by 1 AM that night, and if she could watch the cat. J had work at 7 AM, but agreed.
H got drunk and never came home that night. Meanwhile, the kitten she adopted was mewling all night across J's room and upsetting her essentially. The 4-week old kitten was comforted and likewise, and could fit into your cupped hands. It got stuck under a door once even, escaping it's carrier. It could've been bad or worse. I'm mildly upset at it.
But likewise; I own a pet I keep in my room too, who rarely scratches at the door sometimes. I can understand a cat left to their own devices can be fine, they can be solitary creatures seemingly. But given how young the kitten was and how it needed constant attention, it felt very rough for J to both look after H's kitten after everything, and for H to disappear after saying she'd return. Likewise J didn't want the cat to be harmed. She'd leave it be for intermittent periods but would check in on it every half-hour to hour.
So on this side of the topic; I feel J is beyond validated.
But it evolved.
J elected to lash out at H over this. Sending 20+ text messages in the same day; threatening to get the cat into a Vet, or Humane Shelter due to what had happened and the seeming neglect, so on and forth. Hollow threats she claims to provoke H into caring more, but ultimately still made and essentially this was on the first day of owning the kitten. I don't feel H was given an opportunity or time to process or adjust from her day's decision, and was bombarded immensely with hateful messages that tore her down.
Ultimately, this led to H giving her cat away, but she refuses to apologize, and their friendship essentially broke. H's ability to take accountability is tremendously limited and often leans toward victimization at times, but I empathized with her because J can be absolutely vitriolic, toxic, and poisonous when her anger oversteps her rationality.
Ultimately H feels like moving out in some regards due to it. But the talk about J's feelings toward H; the disdain, annoyance, and likewise low-opinion J holds due to this, has caused H to recluse some toward J further. And ultimately time has passed, between shouting at one another, to text messages, to H seeking refuge in friends and drink, to J having a operation around this time and spending time recuperating from it. Which opened a bridge of concern from H, that I hoped would maybe lead them to talking it out. Because the two can be good at it.
But ultimately when J relented enough to offer the Olive Branch, H rejected it. Which is her right. Civility after the initial moments had been somewhat restored, life moved on, they weren't friends but they could mostly live with one another.
Which led J spiraling into an angry tirade that was primarily meant to tear down H again, and did so by praying on trauma H had. Because J wanted to ensure all bridges were burnt down.
I'm stuck in the middle on this and it's aggravating me.
H refuses to even so much as budge in admitting fault, but I honestly don't think leaving your kitten alone at home is necessarily a bad idea on paper; since many animals are often left alone and while not the greatest situation can still be fine. She already has to work an 8-hour+ job some days, and would be relying on us in the interim for feline-care, until the cat was grown, had her shots, and was allowed to roam the house and have some more freedom. And likewise she had made plans, and got carried away. I can honestly chalk up her decisions to inexperience and bad decision-making and feel in some respects she deserves some grace. Likewise J's treatment of her, personal attacks, threats to get the Cat put into a Vet after one day, and likewise were it me in her shoes it would make me reconsider ownership of the cat as well, and likewise would make me very unreceptive toward any sort of relationship with J.
But as I said; H throughout all of this didn't apologize, and took solely to defending her decisions, justifying her rationale in them, and ultimately even on the things she did wrong that led to the situation developing, doesn't relent.
J meanwhile, I can see the frustration on. She is earnestly trying to get H to be accountable. She helped tremendously toward even getting the cat, and offered a lot of help throughout the process. She had her own cat endangered recklessly despite several warnings (in a very avoidable way that you'd deliberately have to do otherwise), and likewise was sent to work without sleep caretaking for a kitten that she had only volunteered for a few hours for. Much the same, the kitten was essentially in distress and abandoned in the first day, which raised a few questions about the responsibility and future events arising alike to that.
But; I feel that while J deserves to be told that in several respects she was right, that her grievances toward H erupted in such a manner that it was absolutely disrespectful, and painful, and likewise manipulative in the worst of ways.
I've no idea what to do in this case, because I'd like both Renters to sort of hash it out, and be done with it, but obviously not happening per se. But I'm also conflicted on the topic. I don't know if the kitten left alone is a massive deal and red flag for future neglect on the first day, or if it was acceptable to take time away from the kitten given how it would be left alone anyway when she worked. Likewise; I'm not sure if J's justified in respects for how used it made her feel and not receiving a single apology, or if H at this point is suffering more than enough from how J's reacting.
I'm very stuck in the middle here, and I'm worried about losing one. Should I accept the potential loss?
TL;DR: 20F lashes out toxically at 24F for abandoning kitten she had just adopted for twelve+ hours and making her babysit on a work-night beyond agreed upon times and also endangering her own cat in the same day. 24F refuses to apologize, but 20F's negative response has been borderline overwhelming and personal.
29M landlord is unsure what to do, feel, think, or prepare for.

Its taken me nearly 20 years to make sense of something I happened upon for the first time as a teenager.
There are said to be old service tunnels that run from the naval-shipyard to various locations under my hometown, believed to have been originally built around WWI. But In the early 1940s, the main tunnel was opened as a fallout shelter capable of holding 10,000 people . The rest of the tunnels were supposedly closed off when new construction around town occurred in the 1970s. My grandpa worked construction on what at the time was to be the tallest building in town, adorned with a clock at the peak. He like to brag about having "put a hand on nearly every rock in that build'n" or saying "I remember when that was a pile of rubble until we worked on it". He also liked to say "There are still many old places that hold many old secrets for those brave enough to seek them" but I assumed that he meant the bottom of a bottle.
The main streets are a reminder of the infrastructure built in the 1930s and 40s. Many of the businesses on the street were the ground level of a larger office or warehouse buildings. Some were single story buildings, shoehorned in between the larger ones. There is also a Masonic Lodge history with the town. They built the original temple way back then, and then a couple decades later, built another building and moved there. Their presence is clearly noticeable in the architecture all over the town. There are even plenty of houses in town that were built in the same fashion.
It's amazing how small town gossip can be passed down from generation to generation. I first heard about the tunnels as a young boy from a classmate in the second grade. She said that her dad worked on the base(it’s a naval shipyard) and was an important man because they had an escape tunnel under her house. I think I believed her at the time but I never really saw her after around that point. Even at that age I associated her as a Navy brat. I just assumed they moved.
I never really gave it much thought though until I was about 16, in the year 2005. I was a punk teen. I smoked weed and cigarettes as often as I could. I skipped a lot of school, choosing to go get fucked up and skateboard on private property somewhere. I spent a lot of time all over the town and in the most secluded locations. As a skater I'm telling you there were/are some sick spots! A majority of the buildings are that original brick masonry. Stair cases, gaps, banks, ledges, rails. The biggest problem is that skateboarding was a form of vandalism to public property. It was that year after enough people kept getting into trouble that the skaters of our community petitioned city-hall to have a skatepark built. They listened and even let us help design it. It definitely mimics some of the most popular aspects from downtown.
I stumbled upon the first of the tunnel entrances down an alleyway in downtown. The kicker is that, of course it was past midnight and of course I had been drinking and smoking pot. But that's also why I was in the alleys. Anyone hanging out there wasn't looking for any attention. Yes looking back I regret doing all the stupid things I did. I knew the area like the back of my hand but for some reason I was never able to find an entrance while sober. The alley way is particularly remarkable and I had been down it numerous times before. It’s the only one that has a man bridge over the alley connecting two separate buildings. It’s like a hallway fully enclosed with windows, matching the appearance of the buildings. I had just passed under it and to the next building where a smaller dumpster sat. The dumpster had one side pulled away from the building it was butted up against. It was dark but I could see a gaping dark hole behind and underneath the dumpster. I pulled my lighter out to reveal a staircase leading under the building. It was hard to see but I could tell from the edges of the opening that there was supposed to be a metal or wooden cover.
Intrigued I pulled out my old Nokia cellphone. The screen albeit small and dim, it did glow and in the dark-dark was better than nothing. I didn't want to burn myself and wanted to conserve my lighter for other things. I don't know why exactly I felt I needed to but I dropped down behind the dumpster to the stairwell and held my phone up high like a lantern. The stairs went down maybe 15 steps to a flat that went through a doorway on the left. Curiosity out weighed rationality in those days and I made my way down to the flat as quietly as I could. As the last bit of ambient light and noise from the dark quiet alley disappeared, the calm stagnant air in the concrete passage way that acted like an echo chamber was a stark shift in environment.
There was a hallway beyond the doorway that was extremely narrow and not very long. It was only wide enough for one person. It was probably 15 feet in length or so. As I slowly proceeded, the hallway dumped out into a much larger tunnel. I remember thinking "a bus could fit through here!" and it stretched far beyond the dim lights reach of my Nokia. I debated on whether I should just head back and decided now was an appropriate time to spark up a smoke, which didn't mix well with the stale air. Replacing my light source with the flame from my lighter provided enough light to see a panel of switches on the wall next to the smaller tunnel. I flipped one and the main tunnel lit up surprisingly, popping a humming to life. It was at least a football field in length. There were a few other similar little tunnels in various locations along this larger one.
As I was taking in just how long it was I peered from one end to the other and down at the farthest end was what looked like a person. The realization snapped me out of my wonderment. I was now uneasy at the thought that someone was down here just hanging out in the darkness. The more I focused on the figure the more it appeared that it was just standing down there staring at me. I looked the other direction but didn't notice anyone or anything. Taking a drag as I looked back towards the figure who I was now significantly closer to, I stopped in mid step. I hadn't been aware of it but I had been walking towards the figure. That's when everything in my body told me to leave now. And in that very moment the figure began running at me full sprint. There was no time to make sense of how or why I was walking towards the figure or why I was even down here in the first place as I turned running as fast as I could.
When I got to the smaller tunnel I took the opportunity to glance back over my shoulder while rounding the corner. To my absolute terror the figure was right where I was when I started running. I could hear the foot steps echoing off every surface followed with the creepiest snarling. I hit the stairs skipping three or four steps at a time. The light from the night city sky poured over the remaining steps and I nearly forgot the drop I had made getting down there. As I reached for the side of the stair well to pull my self up I could here that thing hit the stairs. With every ounce of adrenaline I heaved myself up and rolled out into the alley. Frantically I picked myself up and rammed into the dumpster closing the gap and began to head to the main street. That night I sprinted the nearly 1.5 miles back home without stopping or looking back.
I wish I could say that I forgot about that night and the tunnels to save myself some sanity in life. If I had only known this was the beginning of something much older and darker than I could have imagined. It took me a few weeks to shake the initial shock of that encounter. Eventually I went back during the day but couldn't even find the dumpster. I put it out of my mind until about six months later when an opportunity came up to visit with my grandpa...

Disgust / / Take My Hand

Mombasa, The Union of African Socialist Republics 

vibe

"Upheaval of the world, French Guiana the last stand of the West?"

"The torturous end of the Russian hyper-state has sparked a crisis for an increasingly volatile world."

Bandung Daily Issued August 1st, 2072 - 12:00 Mombasa, The Union of African Socialist Republics
MOMBASA - It would seem that the fall of the Great Russian Goliath had been in the making the moment that Dederick Lohengrin's empire collapsed, yet unlike the Álfheimr Civil War - the collapse of Russian Hegemony would be as swift as the dissolution of its predecessor, the Soviet Union. There was no tears to weep, no alliance to mourn, the Eastern Union had long ceased to be anything less than an arms manufacturer for the Bandung Pact - growing increasingly obsolete in the face of an expanding Pact technology network.
How many times had the world called for Russian aid? As much as the Russian and Eastern Union governments had decried the lack of a Western response to the original Downfall of Europe, by the late forties, the Eastern Union so overwhelmed with corruption, had become the very thing that those early Eastern Union ambassadors had loathed - they had, in essence, become the very thing they found disgusting. Italy, fallen at the hands of the Alfr and the Eastern Union did nothing. The countless provocations of the Aesir and never an adequate response, a Japanese Empire chipping away at the very bones of Eastern Union hegemony and in the end, it was only the intervention of INC diplomacy (theorized) that prevented the consumption of anything more than Manchuria. Even as the very Russian nation-state collapsed inward, not even the Bandung Pact could do more than give a shake of their heads while scalping away much of the Russian technological base in a way not dissimilar to the early East African efforts to save the Israeli industry. And as the once Karakum Union once again declared nominal independence from the broader Russian entity, the beginning of the end for Eastern Europe was once again nigh.
Therefore, it was no surprise when the Garden of Eden spread its roots through the former Polish hyper-state, the tendrils of Iohannis grasping at every fallen fruit, each an offering to the Earth Mother (so it's called in Eastern Europe). It was no surprise when the Second Roman Republic, what was once Greece, and the machinations in Yugoslavia equally unified under an expanded Republic partially at the behest of a significant diaspora of Italian veterans of the Gothic Wars. It was no surprise, when in the face of the spreading vines of Kyiv, that the UNSC under all its providence as a GIGAS member - initiated the annexation of what was once Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. It was no surprise, when the Bandung Pact did what it could to funnel Russian troops, assets, and civilians out of a collapsing hyper-state. It was no surprise, when the vulture of the Midnight Sun descended on Siberia, consuming Vladivostok and moving into Mongolia and across Lake Baikal.
It was however a surprise when radio messages of a free Europe, began quietly skimming across morning news in the Bandung Pact. It was a surprise when those same messages soon led to declaration of a new "Atlantic Russian Republic", when those radio waves turned into surviving Russian fleets massing in the last quietly surviving Russian territory that all but Russia had forgotten of. At one of the many mouths of the Amazon jungle, stood the Atlantic Russian Republic and the last bastion of Free Europe in the West. The fleets of the Polish-Russian hyperstate had under Bandung support, skulked quietly into the Atlantic Ocean under new flags, until eventually landing in French Guiana. Much like the French Remnant State which survived as the last offshoot until it was eventually subsumed by the Russian government, the Atlantic Russian Republic now stands as a mini Fortress-state, housing the vast Russian Navy and all its kinetic and rocketry might. Just as the French Free Navy slowly starved to death, so too, now does the Russian Navy in its hole across the Ocean. And with a resource crisis still ongoing even if neutered now by the rampant space mining operations of the hyper-powers, the Russian Navy in exile's position remains ever volatile.
November 20th, 2072
Tallinn, Estonia (UNSC Protectorate)
The wind and snow was heavy even for November, that was the thought going through the old dog's head as he watched his ward, the Princess Estelle addressing the rows of former Russian soldiers. And as she finished, the guns ringing out signaling the formalization of the groundwork laid so many years ago it was not hard for the General to maintain his stoic nature as the procession of soldiers filed out of the great hall that had been constructed in Tallinn. Like so many others, they had become nationless men, effectively dead and yet still very much alive and willing to fight.
"So this is what your deal bought you." the ex-Prime Minister, ex-President, Katz finally broke his silence as Princess Estelle made her way back under the cover of the gallery. "My Baltics, turned into the Fens."
There was a sadness to the eyes of the fair-haired Princess, one letting on only a fraction of the pain she had experienced over the past year. "My cousin...he told me this would be an early birthday present." She lowered her head out of respect to the Russian ex-minister. "Had I known...what all that would have entailed, I would have certainly declined."
Timo Kivinen, the General of so many things by now, knew there was bountiful more that the Princess would have wanted to share in that very moment. He had heard it, when they had first been informed of the operation. He had seen Estelle's outrage, as the good Prince George did his best to calm his dear wife. But now, in the aftermath of the Russian Collapse, Estelle had put on her brave face and in true STOICs fashion - mustered a smile and a bout of levity.
"I once asked my cousin to remember us as his family, I hadn't expected this is the path to be walked by our kin." Estelle cracked a wry smile, as she started walking towards the exit. "But there is more to come, isn't that right, General?"
"Yes." Timo nodded, as his thoughts turned to the fleets amassing in the Atlantic.
"What now?" Katz questioned, not expecting much of an answer.
"Promises to keep, we have promises to keep." Estelle's gaze turned towards the Sun and the thought of warm waters.

CLAIM REVEAL: THE EASTERN UNION STATES (MAP)

The Atlantic Russian Republic

• DETAILS
• Head of State: Maxim Katz
  • Other Important Characters (meta control)
  • Those mentioned in bigrockswilderness Fleet Posts for Poland
• Population: 3,863,000 (including Naval and Marine personnel that evacuated Russia)
• Claim Starting Allotments (IE. Special Starting Scenario)
  • Has the ability to access a secret campaign (ALL THROUGH PLAYER INITIATIVE) to reclaim the Western Russian Remnant state in Europe.
  • Has control of 80% of the Russian Navy in entirety
  • Must find remedies for resource drain of the Fleet, or face narrative repercussions.
  • Starts with SECRET information that could lead to the expansion of the claim, early on.
  • Handing over the fleets, or coming under another's thumb or like-scenarios will result in a Naval mutiny. IE. this is not a viable "easy" option to deal with your lack of resources. There will be warning events.
  • Is not immediately aligned with anyone.
  • Has access to the entire Russian tech book (so to speak).

Things to Consider
The Atlantic Russian Republic (ARR) or better, the Russian Fleet in Exile is intended on being a claim that requires heavy amounts of player initiative through the early period of the season to survive. However, can blossom into a rewarding claim if played well.
This is a difficult claim in general, and you can expect to be under fire from many enemies as the Alfr remnant states (North America in particular) and the Bandung Pact both look to subsume or sink your fleets.

The Garden of Eden

• DETAILS
• Head of State: The Earth Mother - Klaus Iohannis
  • Other Important Characters (meta control)
  • Zalmoxis
  • Prophet Amir
  • Burebistan
  • Pleistoros
• Population: Not currently calculable
• Claim Starting Allotments (IE. Special Starting Scenario)
  • Begins with 30% of the Russian Army - corrupted.
  • Receives [BATTLE] bonuses based on the level of "perversion" and its spread across not just the Garden, but of the world. This is internally tracked by the Mods.
  • Likewise, receives automatic NEGATIVE amplifiers to [DIPLOMACY] with NPCs. (You are really freaking out the Japanese and INC AlfRussian remnants.)
  • Has access to the entire Russian tech book (so to speak).

Things to Consider
This is a fairly niche claim, having to wrestle with both the Alfr, INC, and Japan in the immediate vicinity - while attempting to repair (or destroy) relations with other surrounding neighbors as you look more inward.

The Second Roman Republic

• DETAILS
• Head of State: Gaius Appuleius Diocles
  • Other Important Characters (meta control)
  • Can be found here
  • And here for Italian related stuff
  • Niklas
• Population: 60,800,196
• Claim Starting Allotments (IE. Special Starting Scenario)
  • Ceasar's Legions = meta control over approx 200,000 battle-hardened Italian veterans of the Gothic Wars.
  • These legions will specifically receive significant [BATTLE] bonuses when used against Alfr remnant states. However, they are a finite number, each casualty being irreplaceable.
  • Additionally - the Legions have an expressed goal = reclaiming Rome (Italy). If this is not met by the 2/3rd mark of the Campaign, there will be IG repercussions of significant magnitude.
  • Begins the Campaign with positive diplomatic relations with ALL NPCs including Japan, non-playable Bandung Pact members, and non-claimable Alfr remnants. The only exception is TURKEY.
  • Has access to the entire Russian tech book (so to speak).

Things to Consider
The Second Roman Republic is a particularly interesting claim, due to its immediate diplomatic "neutrality through positive relations" and the fact that they have a legitimate claim to Italy if not Rome at large. However, they are also surrounded by power-hungry hyper-states that have increasingly small amounts of room to expand.
Questions please send on discord through private messages or comment on this post.

Hi there,
Here is my setup:
Office:

• Bluetooth headset (Anker Soundcore Space One) which can also be used with a cable
• Alternatively, the built-in laptop microphone (Dell XPS 15 9530)
• Ubuntu 24.04
• Laptop positioned diagonally in front of me on the desk
• Video calls via Microsoft Teams in the browser, as there is no desktop client for Linux

Home Office:

• Same headset, laptop, operating system, and Microsoft Teams setup
• Laptop still positioned diagonally on the desk
• Additionally, a Logitech C920 webcam, which also has built-in microphones

Personal:

• Desktop PC with Pop_OS!
• C920 webcam
• For video calls, almost exclusively use Discord with the desktop client

My primary goal is to have the best sound quality in Microsoft Teams. I understand that using a cable instead of Bluetooth is better, as Bluetooth doesn’t even allow me to select A2DP or SBC-XQ once the microphone is activated. And if the output quality deteriorates so much, the input via Bluetooth won’t be great either. Sure, I could test each microphone by recording a short sound clip to find out which sounds best. Additionally, I’d like to have the option to suppress background noise if possible. In the office, it’s very disruptive when nearby colleagues are also on calls, causing feedback. At home, I’d prefer if my young daughter’s loud interruptions were not picked up.
For Discord, we regularly host an online book club with friends. Three friends share a laptop, which is awful because Discord’s voice detection cuts off the first few seconds of each new speaker. My wife and I use separate PCs to avoid this issue. Now, a new person will join us on-site, meaning there will be three of us in one room and the other group in another room. We’ll be seated in front of the webcam, whether at the desk or in the living room with the PC and webcam connected to the TV. I can’t estimate the distance yet.
When I connect the headset with a cable, Microsoft Teams gives me these options:
https://preview.redd.it/b78jd8fkiq1d1.png?width=308&format=png&auto=webp&s=49c232ff4cf40a4e50801573d27a79aa922ece99
The second microphone one does not seem to work. OthersS won't hear me. What are them?
My priority is the work scenario. Audio settings in the browser are much more limited than in the Discord desktop client. In general, I’d like to know if there are any tools to optimize voice recognition and noise suppression?
Additionally, with output on Ubuntu with headset and cable, I hear a constant background hissing. When I open audio settings in Ubuntu, I hear one crackling sound and the hissing is gone. When I close the options, the hissing is back. When I am in Microsoft Teams and the headset is in use, the hissing also is gone. I can only put the hardware in transparency and noise-cancelling mode. Normal is not available, at least on Linux. On Android with the App, I think the option is available. Is there a solution for that.
Are there any extensive tutorials for Audio setup on Linux that explain different audio server, codecs, connection methods and tools how to manage is effectively?

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• Optimal Performance: Ensuring your equipment performs optimally and lasts longer.

🎯 Our Mission 🎯

At KnifeToronto.com, our mission is to be your trusted partner for all things related to knives and cutlery. We’re committed to offering unparalleled expertise, exceptional service, and top-quality products.

• Customer Satisfaction: Exceeding expectations with every interaction and service.
• Quality Workmanship: Delivering excellence in every repair to guarantee reliability and longevity.
• Continuous Improvement: Embracing the latest technologies and techniques to enhance our services.
• Ethical Practices: Upholding integrity and transparency in all operations, fostering trust with our customers and partners.

🌟 Our Vision and Values 🌟

Vision: To be the foremost authority and preferred destination for Japanese knives and cutlery, empowering culinary professionals and enthusiasts worldwide.
Values:

• Passion for Craftsmanship: Celebrating the art of Japanese knife-making and its tradition.
• Commitment to Excellence: Striving for the highest standards in products and services.
• Community Engagement: Supporting and nurturing the culinary community in Toronto and beyond.
• Sustainability: Promoting sustainable practices in sourcing and operations.

💁🏻 Why Choose KNIFE Toronto? 💁🏻

• Authenticity: Directly sourced from reputable Japanese craftsmen, ensuring genuine quality.
• Expertise: In-depth knowledge of Japanese knife-making with valuable insights and recommendations.
• Customer Satisfaction: Top priority on exceptional service and seamless shopping experiences.
• Community Engagement: Active support and involvement with chefs, restaurants, and food enthusiasts.

⚖️ Conclusion ⚖️

Elevate your culinary journey with KNIFE Toronto’s exquisite collection of Japanese knives. From precision chef’s knives to versatile kitchen blades, our selection embodies the artistry of Japanese craftsmanship. Explore our collection today and unleash your inner chef. 🍣🔪

🔗 Connect with Us Today! 🔗

Ready to experience unparalleled quality? Contact us today and begin your journey with KNIFE.
Business Address: 803 Dundas St W, Toronto, ON M6J 1V2Business Phone Number: (647) 996-8609
Website: knifetoronto.com

Hi!
I have switched to a new computer and unfortunately Edge became a problem - whenever I open or change a tab, I see a CPU spike in the Edge Task Manager and the whole browser micro-freezes for about 1 second. Windows is operating normally and does't freeze.
I checked Chrome and Firefox - they don't freeze, but I want to stay on Edge
It's very annoying. Tried turning of extensions, graphics acceleration within Edge etc. but it doesn't really help.
Computer: ASUS Zephyrus 16 Duo.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX with Radeon Graphics
GPU: GeForce RTX 4090 Latpop
RAM: 64 GB
Any ideas?
Thanks!

CONTEXT: I (17f) have two elder sisters who are twins (20f). We are going to call them sister A and sister B. They always hated me because they always thought that our mom always spoiled me, even though this was never the case. Hence, they always resented me. And I actually quite adored them, I wanted to be like them, always respected them as my two lovely big sisters. Other than this, we were quite the happy family, our parents always showered us with love equally.
Now, fast forward to when sister A was 15. She met a girl in high school. And all of a sudden, sister A started to resent all of us. And started sh. My mom never understood that, because she and our father did their darn best to give us the universe. Here’s the thing: the sh never came from her having life contemplations, but her “friend” encouraged her to do it, and when she’d show it to her, her “friend” would say: “ just 5? Should’ve gone for 10.” This is something my sister A has actively told. Now that the readers have an idea about how it all started, my sister still does sh. She also has been going to professional therapy since she was 16. Hence, she was diagnosed with bpd.
Now, her behaviour never really affected me other than my parents just ignoring me to give her the attention , to the point that I haven’t had a heart-to-heart with either of my parents in 4 years, since, I was 13. And of course I am crazy jealous, but my love for my sister still remains. The thing is, my sisters, as twins, always operated as a team hence, they always had each other and still do things together (excluding me). And hence, I only ever had my mom to talk my feelings with, which I haven’t been able to do since, I was 13. And even if I have, she has told about it to my sisters who come confront me and start a whole other argument. And that has taken a toll on me and I have been failing my classes. I went from a straight A+ student and now, recently I got a 19/100 in maths. Hence, I have been quite bitter to my family. And obv I also had my own petty arguments with my parents. TLDR: I also have my own teenage issues that have formed due to the lack of communication with my parents.
Now, here comes in my sister. Whenever, I have any disagreement with my parents, big or small, in the middle of my argument, even if my voice isn’t raised, my sister would jump in and SCREAM on the top of her lungs and say that I should lower my voice. And there have been instances that she would even shout slurs at me in front our mother and she wouldn’t even bat an eye. And in all of this, my problem would still be unresolved. This example comes from my following problem: I had private classes, but I had an extra-curricular event going on in my school. So, I was trying to convince my mom to let me skip private classes.
Now, there was another instance where my mom was condemning me from using my phone cause of my grades, and again; my sister started to not shout but, scream at me to lower my voice. And started crying, telling our parents that they don’t deserve a child like me. And at the end of the night, my mom was cuddling her.
These type of things happen quite frequently now, even this morning. As much as I love my sister, I really do. But I am growing frustrated of this. I don’t wish any harm on my sister but I do wish my sister never met that “friend”.
I do not need any sympathy or hateful comments, I just want constructive criticism. How shall I handle such situations?
Point to note: I might be an ah, because when I get frustrated of her antics, I do snap back at her. And my mom does tell me to quite down.
Please, tell me if I am in the wrong, and how to handle this, I want my old loving family back.