I've (23,F) been dating my bf(35,M) for almost a year and friends with the flatmate (21,M) for almost four. Living together for 2 years.
My boyfriend used to stay 2-3 nights but would drop by almost every night for 10-20 mins to hug me, kiss me and then leave. My flatmate and boyfriend got to know each other during this past year and they normally get along well. We even went on a vacation as a trio, just a month ago.
So around 3 months ago my flatmate voiced some issues about my boyfriend staying so often. I said it's okay, i can do 2 nights instead. Mind you, those nights start after 11 as we both work and end before 4-5 p.m. the next day. I didn't create any problems, i even told him it's good he said this, maybe it would become the reason he takes me out on more dates as he wouldn't be seeing me as often. So the flatmate then said, "i also don't like him dropping by. Even if it's for five minutes, i feel like i see him everyday and i feel like this isn't my house when i see a third person so often."
I said okay. No more hugs at the doorstep. I was honestly disappointed but i knew i had to comply in order to keep my peace at home.
Still the situation affected my own peace. I no longer had a home where i could just casually call my boyfriend to, even if it's for ten minutes. We had a strict schedule. One day, he couldn't come so we postponed to next day without letting the apartment manager ahem sorry, the flatmate know. But it was still 2 days within the same week, not three. Not at all to my surprise, the flatmate again told me how bothered he was that he wasn't informed. All i did was say sorry and promise I'll inform him next time there's a change.
Fast forward to last week, boyfriend and i were out of town for some important stuff but then we realized our day trip was going to take longer he had to go back home as he had work. Before he left, he had parked his motorcycle in front of my apartment building (he lives too far away and it was way more convenient to do so, for retrieving it later). Then he knocked on my door to ask whoever was at home to hand him his helmet, which we had left in my bedroom. The person (whoever opened the door) ended up telling him they don't know where it is, so he went to my room to get it. While he was there, he noticed that the cats were hungry and their litterbox was stinky, so he took care of that too and left immediately after. In summary, i was having a very hard time out of town and he was retrieving his helmet and helping me out however he could, as he should.
And tonight we came back home extremely tired. We both have not slept a decent night's sleep for the past 5 days. He has pulled 3 all-nighters and i, 2. I told him to come rest a bit in the kitchen and then he could leave. We spent half an hour in the kitchen, chatted to my flatmate and our friend who has been staying with us. And then bf left. I was then immediately asked this question: "How did your boyfriend enter the apartment that day?"
I was confused because i remember him mentioning that one of those two had opened the door for him. I said "I'm not sure". The flatmate said "well i did not open the door. Then the other friend said "neither did i.. actually, i just don't remember opening the door".
I called bf to confirm. He said it was the other friend who opened the door. I hung up the phone and told them that. The friend just replied "i... Don't remember. I'm not sure".
I was still confused by this question. My boyfriend doesn't have a key. So it must be one of those two who opened the door for him. And what kind of a question is that? Why would you even ask that? All i knew was that the room was becoming very tense.
I asked "what's wrong?" To which the flatmate replied, "We both did not open the door. He came inside somehow. Did he have your keys?"
I explained over and over that i had given my keys to the friend before leaving, and i have never given the bf any keys. We only have two, one is always on the flatmate and other one is mine. I genuinely thought they were joking so i attempted to break the ice by saying "well looks like bf is secretly a ghost!". The attempt did not work, they were both dead serious.
Then i asked "are you implying that my boyfriend got another key made behind my back?" They said "why not". I mean respectfully sir, you shouldn't be going on vacations with the people who you believe have the potential to break into your home and commit a literal crime. What i mean is, these people both know my boyfriend very well, and they know he's not that kind of person.
Well after this they both looked at me like i was hiding things. They said "well we don't know who opened the door" to which i replied "well that is a you problem, you probably should know whether you've opened a door or not".
The flatmate also added that he was again bothered that noone let him know the boyfriend was coming. And the fact that he was here when i wasn't. I mean... He was just taking back his helmet and cleaning cat litter for heaven's sake. Not like he sat in front of tv with a beer. And it was early morning, he had not slept for two days straight, just come back from a 7 hour trip, and just wanted to take his helmet so that he could go to work. He couldn't let me know because i was sleeping, 7 hours away from him.
I've lived with actually toxic situations before, but for this one i don't know what to think. Am i even slightly right? Or am i fucked? Should i move? How can i approach this situation? Someone please give me some advice, right now I'm very much sleep deprived and can't think but i feel like this kind of accusation should probably make me angry.
TL&DR: i was out of town, my flatmate and another friend were home. My boyfriend stopped by for something and the other friend opened the door. Now that friend says she doesn't remember whether she opened the door or not, and they accuse me of giving my boyfriend a spare key (or him making another key for himself)

Lord English is biggest wasted potential to me that Hussie didn't even bring on touching. He is a prefect contrast to John and even Dave in some aspects so let me cook in this autistic sperg.
Lord English works perfectly as John's antagonist because he is contrast to John and his growth as person which is theme of the comic alongside breaking out and choosing your own, you know the drill but what makes him contrast is that:
Lord English despite being only character to actually change and go from thin wrist to absolute unit was still the same childish person he started as mentally while John in original comic looked the same as he started to the end but changed and grew as person and decided to break out of it and choose his own life which is why LE should've acted same as Caliborn but with extra muscle.
He is on surface completely different man but deep down he's like a child on playground, he wants to be unbeatable toy that can make up any excuse to beat Mc's but when they leave into real world and stop child's play he becomes nothing. This is contrast to John and why he works as hero.
John is a nobody. Unlike every other character he is least interesting in a way he doesn't have too much going on with his life or special traits. He is just another kid and just like Emmet from lego movie that's why he's the one. Because he is nothing he can be anything.
Eeryone else is too much biased and riddled with flaws that if they were up to John's task they wouldn't have even passed through some acts. John becomes special because he is just some guy, he acts like most of people and is willing to save the world because like many others in his situation they would done the same maybe with more panicking. This is why he is perfect guy alongside Dave to kill Lord English.
Caliborn was opposite of John, he was born on crazy deranged wasteland as extremely rare universal ending species that has to take up role as main bad guy and most important thing ever to fight. To him his life is battle of importance and meaning and him having to fight John, some generic guy who isn't even special in any way and also weak nothing burger species that decides to leave in the end breaks him because he didn't get to have the conventional generic self righteous MC to fight. This is where also Dave fits in.
Dave is perfect contrast to Vriska and also makes sense why he'd slay LE in the end.
Dave was kid with weird abusive brother that turned him into strong fighter but thing is he doesn't care or want to be any of that such as hero but ends up doing the heroic and right thing in the end unlike Vriska that at any attempt to take spotlight fades into obscurity and gets sidelined. Even in the end Vriska gets fucked up and transported into new universe while Davepeta (another version of dave) fights LE. Even if Epilogues and Beyond canon weren't written Vriska still loses by being in background ignored with Caliborn to just rot away while John lives a normal life not looking back.
This is why Dave also works. He never wants to be hero but ends up doing it so out of actual care and love for his friends so he goes up fights the enemies and finishes them off while Vriska having heroic qualities never actually does it for heroic reasons, only for selfish gain and her own goal and her constant larp as some Mc even in the end gets her jackshit as she charges army and they all get blasted away in seconds proving she is literally other than being kinda strong useless. Dave in the end slays him because he beats the big bad mosnter as some random guy that doesn't care or isn't even willing to even try and play hero but becomes the true definition in the end alongside John some kid that becomes the hero because he can just be anything others command him too
Ok that's too much.lol

Good morning sisters and brothers, fellow Saints of our aspirational Zion. I was asked to speak and allowed to decide what the topic would be. After a lot of consideration I felt inspired to speak about being Actively Engaged in a Good Cause and how that relates to the full name of the church.
I was glad when President Nelson decided to put more emphasis on the full name of the church. Not that I mind using the term Mormon, but because I do find the full name of the church to be significant. When the church was organized in 1830 it was called the Church of Christ. In 1834 the members voted to change the name of the church to the Church of the Latter-day Saints. Then in 1838 Joseph had a revelation for the name to be The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While this effectively combined the two previous names, it also highlights something that I think most people overlook. Namely that the church is not only Jesus’s church, but that the church also belongs to us, the Latter-day Saints. We too have ownership of the church. While this may sound strange at first, it actually also fits very well with another concept that Joseph Smith taught: Theodemocracy.
Joseph spoke of this most actively the year before his death when running for President of the United States and when the Council of Fifty was created. The idea also holds in it that while God is in charge, we also have ownership and must have a say, actively vote, propose new ideas, and generally be actively engaged in moving things forward. It is not a theocracy with a fake voting system attached like that of North Korea. However, we have largely seen our own tradition move from one in which we do things by common consent including adding to our canon or as in 1834 voting to change the name of the church, towards something much more akin to voting in North Korea. This has coincided with other shifts in which we have taken less and less ownership of our church and as a result failed to properly sustain and support our leaders.
It is unfair to our leaders for us to sit back and wait for them to do frankly most of the heavy lifting when it comes to the running and functioning of our church, stake, and ward. In the past when I’ve been in callings that required me to be overseeing the assignments of home teaching or really any other church assignments, my experience has been that occasionally some inspiration will strike for some of the assignments, but that for the majority, I felt like I was left to figure out myself what assignments seemed to make the most sense. I know that many leaders that I have spoken to on this topic have also had such experiences. When we as members speak with our leaders, share information with them, it makes it much easier to make the best decisions. Without that feedback much more is left to guesswork.
We need to support and sustain our leaders, but this becomes difficult or challenging if we bring some assumptions to the table when considering how we do this. A major one as I see it is when we put too much trust in the arm of the flesh and grant our leaders infallibility or the lesser but largely equivalent functional infallibility.
As the saying goes: “Catholics say that the Pope is infallible, but none of them believe it. Mormons say that the Prophet is fallible, but none of them believe it.” Brigham Young recognized the potential for harm in this setting and said:
"I am fearful [the Saints will] settle down in a state of blind self-security, trusting their eternal destiny in the hands of their leaders with a reckless confidence that in itself would thwart the purposes of God in their salvation, and weaken the influence they could give to their leaders, did they know for themselves, by the revelations of Jesus, that they are led in the right way.” – Brigham Young 1862 General Conference (quoted in General Conference of the church in 1963 and in 1989)
And this one is also important:
"And none are required to tamely and blindly submit to a man because he has a portion of the priesthood. We have heard men who hold the priesthood remark, that they would do anything they were told to do by those who presided over them, if they knew it was wrong; but such obedience as this is worse than folly to us; it is slavery in the extreme; and the man who would thus willingly degrade himself should not claim a rank among intelligent beings, until he turns from his folly. A man of God… would despise the idea. Others, in the extreme exercise of their almighty authority have taught that such obedience was necessary, and that no matter what the saints were told to do by their presidents, they should do it without asking any questions. When Elders of Israel will so far indulge in these extreme notions of obedience as to teach them to the people, it is generally because they have it in their minds to do wrong themselves.” – Millennial Star, vol.14 #38, pp. 593-95
Yet does this functionally happen in the church? Do we follow this council to find out for ourselves instead of simply assuming everything from our leaders is divine? Apostle Charles W. Penrose, who would later serve as counselor to President Smith, declared:
"President Wilford Woodruff is a man of wisdom and experience, and we respect him, but we do not believe his personal views or utterances are revelations from God; and when ‘Thus saith the Lord’, comes from him, the saints investigate it: they do not shut their eyes and take it down like a pill.” – Millennial Star 54:191
Do we do this? When the prophet says “Thus saith the Lord” do we take the time to investigate it? Do we remember President Kimball’s reaction to Elder Benson’s talk on the “14 fundamentals of following the prophet”?
"Spencer felt concern about the talk, wanting to protect the Church against being misunderstood as espousing ultraconservative politics or an unthinking “follow the leader” mentality. The First Presidency again called Elder Benson in to discuss what he had said and asked him to make explanation to the full Quorum of the Twelve and other General Authorities… A First Presidency spokesman Don LeFevre reiterated to the press the day after the speech that it is “simply not true” that the Church President’s “word is law on all issues—including politics.” – Lengthen Your Stride – Working Draft, by Edward Kimball
I’ve had the opportunity to know some great Mormons who do take this approach, but I’ve also known many who treat quotes from church leaders like downloaded messages from God (no human filters involved).
If we can believe that God is capable of inspiring our leaders, surely we can believe God is capable of letting us know when they’re wrong. If instead we assume that their judgment is always superior to our own, perhaps we’re helping to put up a massive iron gate.
"How often has the Holy Spirit tried to tell us something we needed to know but couldn’t get past the massive iron gate of what we thought we already knew?" – Dieter Uchtdorf 2012 Worldwide Leadership Training
Moses once opined “Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!” We have all been confirmed members of the church and in that confirmation told to receive the Holy Ghost. It is easy to forget that when the spirit tells us something, that is a member of the Godhead speaking to us. If we can believe that God can give guidance to our leaders surely we can also believe God can give us guidance.
Another important and often overlooked point is the context to this oft quoted verse:
"We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion." -D&C 121:39
This statement wasn’t given in a vacuum. It is in the middle of a long discussion of priesthood and priesthood authority. This is talking specifically about priesthood leaders. When we read that “many are called but few are chosen,” we’re reading that many priesthood leaders abuse their power and only few truly honor it. The saints in Joseph’s day understood this. I think we’ve sanitized it over the years to make it seem like an aside, an intermission on the discussion of priesthood. This statement is as true now as ever. This verse, with its proper context, needs to be a lesson for us as members. We need to sustain and support our leaders. This doesn’t mean following them blindly. This doesn’t mean we must become “yes-men” to them. This does mean pray for them to be chosen instead of just called. This does mean to influence our leaders to do God’s will. Remember, one of Brigham’s concerns about us acting as if all our leaders decisions were divine is that it will “weaken the influence [we] could give to [our] leaders.”
What questions our church leaders will take to the Lord are impacted by our own openness to those things. In 1977 President Kimball expressed concern that if the Race-ban on priesthood was removed that there would be pushback from members in the American South and from some in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. When President Hinckley was asked in an interview about the Gender-ban on priesthood his response was that “there’s no agitation for it.” Until we better engage in our own history and understand how we got to where we are now it will be very difficult if not impossible for us as members to be prepared for the removal of the current gender-ban on priesthood.
Sometimes we might justify our own spiritual laziness by saying that while our leaders are fallible that God will never let them lead us astray, granting them a sort of functional infallibility. Nevermind that this was first said when my 3rd-great-grandpa President Woodruff was trying to convince members not to leave over the Manifesto. Nevermind that it means that we’re denying our leaders their agency by assuming that God removes their ability to make mistakes in their callings. Maybe some make such a statement more nuanced. Maybe they think that our leaders can make mistakes, but they won’t be majosignificant mistakes. Well, what is and isn’t significant depends a lot on who you are and how you’re being affected by it. I’m thinking that the women and children who were slaughtered in prophet-sanctioned genocide in the Bible considered that a significant mistake. I’m thinking that the thousands denied temple blessings their entire lives because of the color of their skin might consider that significant.
Let’s just recognize that few are chosen and that we need to give our leaders constructive/interactive support. We place a lot of responsibility on our leaders and they are very likely to make mistakes. Because they are human and doing their best, but as humans we all err from time to time. Recognizing the mistakes of our leaders is essential to giving them true support; it is vital to sustaining them. I would hope that we would avoid enabling or cheerleading bad decisions that friends or family are about to make. Pointing out why a decision will be or was problematic is what we expect of people who we truly love and support us, because it helps us to avoid pain and pitfalls and enables us to be our best.
Here’s a story from our little section of Salt Lake City in which members recognized the potential for mistakes and took ownership of our church. On August 23rd, 1896 Stake President Angus M. Cannon proposed a man to be the bishop of a new ward which was to be divided from the Sugar House Ward. The congregation voted against the proposed new bishop. President Angus M. Cannon then purportedly shouted "Sit down! and shut your mouths, you have no right to speak!" When Cannon engaged in a shouting match with the dissenting congregation, a ward member and policeman threatened to arrest the stake president for disturbing the peace. President Cannon more calmly repeated his attempt but was voted down "again several times." The Secretary of the First Council of the Seventy was in attendance and wrote in his journal: "I have been taught that the appointing power comes from the priesthood and the sustaining power from the people and that they have the right of sustaining or not sustaining appointees.
When it comes to being actively engaged in church endeavors our neighborhood and the general Sugar House area has done a lot. The "stake missionary program" began in the Granite Stake under President Frank Taylor in the early 1900s. It was an idea presented to President Taylor who then prayerfully considered trying it out as a stake. It proved successful and was later picked up by the General Authorities who made it a church-wide program.
The seminary program was also started in our stake after Joseph Merrill (a newly called member of the Granite Stake Presidency) felt inspired to start it and worked out agreements with the school board and got it going at the very new (at the time) Granite High School.
Also, in 1909 the Granite Stake started a monthly family home evening program. After counseling with many sisters and brothers in the stake, the Stake Presidency asked each family to spend Tuesday evening home together. All of these were local things which were eventually picked up and run at the church-wide level. We have a history in our area of being anxiously engaged and pioneering with new ideas.
While those are all instances of members, wards, and stakes starting programs for good causes in our area of Salt Lake City, they are just a few examples of Saints starting inspired efforts which were eventually accepted and promoted by the top church leaders. The relief society started when women in Nauvoo came together to do some good. The Primary program, Sunday school, Mutual Improvement Association, welfare/farming, organized genealogy efforts, and Young Adult programs all also started as members and local leaders were anxiously engaged and thereby gave influence to the top church leaders.
So as we consider how we can more actively engage in the church and look at what we can do now that would help to further the kingdom of God, I’d like to share a few things that have been on my mind which I feel would be steps which we can do now and which doesn’t require any new doctrines, revelations, or organizational adjustments from our leadership.

1. Give leaders their agency and remove the false idol of functional infallibility

I’ve already said a lot about this. The only thing I’ll add is to encourage everyone to read and learn about our history. The church history department has been putting out a lot of new, well-researched material, and there is a very high chance that it will be different than how you learned about things over the last several decades. Interestingly, most historically thorny topics become vastly easier to deal with when we stop denying leaders agency and ability to get things wrong.

1. Stop turning into a time capsule of the 1950s

This is really a small thing, but sometimes small things can have an outsized impact. Assuming someone comes into church for the first time, they will likely be a little weirded out because in dress and culture they walked into a time capsule of the 1950s. The Amish did this with mid-1800s, some Mennonites have as well. FLDS have with when they split in the 1930s/40s. These groups that have followed this pattern of freezing time and culture because they have been integrated into their religious practice are generally ones that are not really growing and have little-to-no impact or relevance in society. If we want to do the most good and build the most bridges, it is easier to do if we don’t continue falling into this pattern. Any efforts on our part to make our meetings look like a place that people in the public could come into and not feel out of place are steps in this direction. Dresses, suits and ties aren’t part of Christ’s gospel. Missionary clothing is changing for similar reasons. New guidelines for missionaries include allowing sisters to wear pants and Elders to go without jackets, so surely we can extend the same to our church attendance.

1. Always speak at church as though the audience is the general public

I have many times felt like I didn’t fit in or belong at church, and many times this has been because people speaking at church have done so with the assumption that everyone in the building must share their views on a given topic. Simply imagining that a gay couple, an ex-mormon, an investigator, some in the midst of a faith crisis, and others who live in our neighborhood are in the audience will help us to make sure that as we teach our lessons, give our talks, etc. that we will do so in the most open and welcoming way possible, which frankly is how i believe Jesus would have spoken. I truly believe that if we try to do this it will drastically improve our lessons and dialogue and help to make church a place that more people want to be. It is a change that (to borrow imagery from Jesus’s parable of the sower) will be akin to tilling and prepping the soil to improve the likelihood of allowing seeds to take root.
There are near infinite ways that we can innovate and get engaged in good causes. Awake and arise, join in the cause of Zion. The aspiration of Zion is to be of one heart and one mind and have no poor among us. I think it is worth noting that being of one mind doesn’t mean agreeing on everything. It means that we are united in love; love for God and for all persons. When this is our top priority, when we worry about how our actions impact others and whether our words and actions are conveying love, we become united. I’ve been a long-time fan of Eugene England’s essay “The church is as true as the gospel.” In it he makes the case that the church is true because it is a vehicle in which we are able to actually try to put the gospel into practice. In doing so we encounter difficulties as we interact with other fallible mortals and try to navigate our interactions in a Christ-like way. We all try and this mix of imperfect people who unite in love and service can help to bring each other and others to Christ. It is my prayer that we can find ways to engage with love, and humble ourselves like little children, to change our ways as needed to come closer to Christ. I leave this with you in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

I can’t BELIEVE I used to spend 4-10+ hours a week on sales calls 🥴
That’s like… An entire day of my week, at times, just speaking to people who AREN’T paying me.
… AND I was making extremely time consuming custom proposals on top of that 😅
Your life should never foot the bill for your business.
Work to live, don’t live to work.
For me, that means:
NOT spending time on tire kickers…
NOT being a slave to making hundreds of posts on social media…
NOT being chained to my desk with 15+ hours of sales calls and custom proposals per week…
I was sick of being chained to my desk for all these sales calls, so I decided to take my destiny into my own hands -
And I quickly found I needed 2 critical things:

1) Find a method to get new leads that DIDN’T involve me buying coffee, lunch, or putting my personal 1:1 time into finding them…

2) A simple, painless, online process to reach those ideal clients and enroll them into the offer…

Here’s what I did:

1) Find a method to get new leads that DIDN’T involve me buying coffee, lunch, or putting my personal 1:1 time into finding them…

After 100s of hours of researching the solution to my stuck sales, I realized that the LIFEBLOOD of all businesses boils down to the same 3 parts:
🙋 Acquire Leads 💸 Bag Clients 🔁 Continue Leveling-Up Clients
That’s when I had my priceless epiphany:
I didn’t have a LEADS PROBLEM…
I was spending all this time on these calls, after all…
That’s when I realized I had a SALES PROBLEM.

2) A simple, painless, online process to reach those ideal clients and enroll them into the offer…

Understanding that I had a SALES PROBLEM allowed me to fix the root of my stagnant growth.
Everything changed for me when I built these 3 sales systems for my business:

• Hands-free Sales System #1: Effortless Influence Formula (Attract DREAM clients effortlessly, who are ready to pay what you’re worth and work with you long-term because your positioning commands premium prices…)
  
• Hands-free Sales System #2: Lead to PAYING CLIENT Engine (Makes you sales today, AND consistent evergreen sales + sustainable revenue on repeat WITH 0 SALES CALLS…)
  
• Hands-free Sales System #3: Profitable Scaling Playbook (Get your OTHER Offers in front of those who don’t have it, get consistent visibility WITHOUT posting on social media…)
  

After doing this:
Amazingly, I noticed I wasn’t hustling like I was before on my “usual” grind…
To my surprise, in just a few days I already had serious buyers reaching out to me and asking how they could work with me!
… And it was actually easier than what I was doing before!
And the MAJOR difference was eliminating all the complexity and friction from my sales process 💯
If your sales growth stalled like mine did, the fastest way to break free from your plateau is:
Take YOURSELF out of the way.
That’s the freedom that building hands-free sales systems gives you.
Want to learn how to build those systems for yourself?
Here’s some good news:
This isn’t just working for me. I’ve helped my clients sell over $12,000,000 of their coaching, courses, memberships, books, events, and more by following these same steps…
If you’re ready to break through your own revenue plateau, and finally “delete” sales calls off your calendar:
I just wrote a 42-page report where I broke down step-by-step EXACTLY how and what my client did to hit her 1st $100,000 month WITH 0 SALES CALLS using this same method…
So if you want to steal what’s in this case study...
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From a former board member:
Good afternoon!
To all my fellow Ithaca residents, please make sure to take to the polls today, to vote in the Ithaca City School District Board of Education election. If you believe in public education, making sure our students, teachers and support staff are getting the resources and tools they need to thrive and succeed, you will make time to get to the pools, between 12pm and 9pm. If you don’t have access to transportation, I am happy to transport folks (send me a message on Facebook or email)
As many of you know, I spent 6 years on the Board of Education, until I made the difficult decision to resign two years ago. After receiving many Facebook messages, text messages, and phone calls in the past 24 hours from friends and community members asking me who they should vote for and if they should vote yes/no to the budget, I have decided to share my thoughts publicly so I can get back to my 9-5 job for the day . As a single mom of three and a homeowner, I empathize with the sentiment of people feeling like they can no longer afford to rent or own a home in Ithaca. However, Ithaca has been becoming unaffordable for quite some time, I say this as someone who has lived in this community for 21 years. This feeling did not start with our assessment that increased this past year or the rollout of the BoE budget. Voting NO to the budget will not change your assessment, it will not “stick it” to administrators, who will get their raises along with other unionized ICSD employees as part of contractual negotiations. Voting NO will punish and hurt children, teachers and supporting staff. Teachers and support staff will have less resources and support to educate and inspire our children if we have to adopt a contingency plan. And our most vulnerable students will suffer the most. “How a society treats its most vulnerable is always the measure of its humanity” – Ghandi. In this context, how ICSD cares for and educates its most vulnerable students is an indication of how well the school district fares in educating its school community.
As we have all read about four of our schools losing “Good Standing” status with NYSED, and our Black and Brown students feeling the impact of this the most; how can we as a community in good conscious, say that we will provide our children, our future leaders with less than they deserve to overcome the many obstacles that the pandemic has created. For all the caregivers, educators, mental health workers out there, we all know - no one is okay! Some of us were not okay before we were forced into a few years of isolation, so to expect our educators to be able to reconcile the damages that the pandemic created with fewer resources is setting our educators up for the impossible. And yes, taxpayers should not have to bear the weight of this alone when we live in a town with college/university campuses. So instead of glorifying the problem, why don’t we talk about structural solutions? How many of us know Anna Kelles and Lea Webb personally, socially or professionally? Why don’t we bring in our state representatives to help us think about structural long-term solutions of state aid and university contributions? And while we are at it, invite Governor Kathy Hochul who sits on the Board of Trustees of Cornell University to this conversation; why are we not thinking strategically about those who hold power to shift this paradigm? I know this will take time, and folks are concerned with the now.
What can we do now? We can do an inventory of what ICSD offers and provides our students and staff from academics to extracurricular activities. We can ask the questions of, what is the district allocating funding for and is it effective and for whom? The district has an Evaluation Officer, we need to hear from her on what are the impacts of our initiatives, programs, and the curriculum offerings. Our teachers and support staff have unions and union leaders. We need to hear from the union leaders, not just during budget season or when chaos is amiss, but throughout the academic years so we know how best to support teachers all year long.
I will be voting yes to the budget. Yes, it is a huge increase. But guess what folks? We have 12 schools in our very small city, and we are living during a time of high inflation so the services needed to support all these 12 schools have increased. A typical classroom in our building has many adults. I bring this up because I constantly hear the comparison of salary of ICSD teachers to teachers outside the district who are making more than ICSD teachers. 9/10 times these teachers in other districts are making more money because they don’t have co-teachers, teachers assistants, teacher aides, 1:1s, etc. I am in NO way making the argument to have less support in the classroom or to eliminate positions, I am pointing out that our district has a larger supporting staff than many other districts. Teachers and supporting staff deserve a HIGHER wage without question. But this is not an ICSD only problem, this is a nationwide issue. Our country has not put anywhere near enough funding into public education that is needed. And this is not an excuse for the Board or the highly paid administration team. But we have to be real about what are the root causes vs. symptoms of the problems. Give this article a read if you have time: Schools are bracing for widespread teacher layoffs. Here’s why CNN Politics
Now the tricky part of this post, who I am voting for. I am going to be brutally honest because that is just who I am. After attending the public forum with all seven candidates, I left with very very strong opinions of what I witnessed and heard. I plan to vote for Barry Derfel, Moira Long, and Eldred Harris. I know Barry Derfel very peripherally from sitting on the BoE, as well as when I worked for the Multicultural Resource Center, and he was supporting teachers with culturally responsive teaching as well as participating with the Talking Circles initiative. What I know of Barry, is that he is a supporter of equity and inclusion, meaning NO CHILD GETS LEFT BEHIND. Barry has been a teacher, an administrator, and is a parent – he understands the many facets of public education and how we are thriving as a district and how we are failing as a district. Two truths can stand side by side.
I was on the BoE with both Eldred and Moira during my tenure, and it was not always cordial and a walk in the park between us. But what I can say, is that in those behind the door conversations, heated debates, I rarely ever questioned their commitment to children and teachers and support staff. Moira has always championed for teachers and retirees; she understands their plight and struggles as a former teacher herself. Eldred and I both grew up in NYC (though he is my senior by maybe a couple decades) and understand the struggles of being hyper visible yet unseen, overcoming adversity, attending underfunded schools, and taught by teachers who were tasked with the impossible. I know Eldred to be someone who is going to champion for what is best for every child, someone who is going to tap into their radical imagination to think of another way forward, someone who has institutional knowledge and knows how far the district has come, and someone who is willing to ask the hard questions.
I’m going to close this long monologue by saying I believe in creating space for new voices at the table. However, some of these new voices are advocating for changes that will hurt specific populations of children, like candidates who are advocating to bring back policies such as "tracking", while research shows tracking has a disparaging outcome for students and frankly is a racist policy. I said it. There are also candidates who have flip flopped on their support of the budget, telling ITA they would vote yes and after receiving the teacher’s union endorsement telling community members, they would vote no for the budget. Misleading your constituents is never a good sign and not a good way to build community trust and engagement. If I had to vote for a fourth candidate, it would be Todd Fox. He was honest and transparent about his talents and his lack of knowledge of the processes within public education. However, he spoke with passion and authenticity when speaking about his experiences in the school district as a student, and the support he wished he had as a former ICSD student. What I hope for in a school board member, is someone is not afraid to ask the hard questions, someone who listens with compassion and empathy (even if they disagree), someone who takes the time to get to know their constituents and can be honest with themselves and their fellow board members when they are individually or collectively are missing the mark. And most importantly, someone who is is always thinking about equity, and who is at the table and who is not. Our district is in need of school board members who are looking beyond what their individual child needs and instead is looking at what all of our children need in order to receive an equitable education that allows them to more than survive but to thrive within ICSD.
(excuse my typos I don’t have the energy to edit this another time, apologies)
Nicole LaFave
Nicole LaFave Interim Director of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Office of Diversity and Inclusion Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management Cornell University
Edited to add that I’m not the author, just sharing.

On any location of the maps.
Using your own personality and real life inclinations. Assume you had a chance to build a survivor bunker and escaped until the Bridges started coming around again.
Who are you to them? Do you help? Offer anything unique? What would you call your little outpost?

Govt appears like they are going to scrap the first home grant.
This seems really really backwards in a time when we need to incentivise building more homes.
Here in Christchurch, I know at least 10 people personally who built new homes in the region in the last 5 years. Several of them went on to build and sell several more brand new homes to others using the first home grant.
If the grant was to make up a chunk of your deposit then wouldn’t you also loose purchasing power? If you were to make it up from your own KiwiSaver that will mean your going to loose out on circa 60k every 30 years you hold a the portfolio? Wouldn’t that be bad for the economy?
Just seems like a really stupid idea just for landlords to get a tax break.

Idea

Since I've heard about the abilities and the goals of the mangod I've been thinking about a game where one person plays as the mangod.
It might make sense to use the world of MT, but it's not neccessary for this game.

Thoughts

I wasn't sure how it would work. I thought it would have to be a narrative game. Every character and their stories would have to be set up manually. That's a lot of effort, and it the end you would just finish the game once. Or maybe reach all endings once, and that's it. In the end you would just click all paths. It wouldn't really be strategic.
I thought it would be nice if it was more strategic. Similar to Sudoku, or even more like Minesweeper. You have limited knowledge of the world. There are simple rules. Sometimes you might have to guess. And if you make a mistake it's over.
While reading I always thought of it as huge decision trees. Multiple lines going out from each character, depending on their decisions. And most of them lead to the mangod dying. The mangod would always look at all the paths and try to find one which doesn't lead to his death.
So I thought, it would make sense if for each (important) character a huge decision tree will be generated. And all the decision trees will be connected (so a decision of person A might influence the decisions of person B later).
Depending on the setting it might be possible to see the future of all charactres. But I guess being able to track the future of multiple hundreds of characters would be overkill.
It's was never clear to me why the mangod wasn't able to switch desciples all the time. Maybe I missed it somehow. But if it's possible to look at the future of somebody, he would know his future, and so he wouldn't even have to switch back. So in the end he could just see the future of all characters. And that might be overpowerd. So if his restriction is explained somewhere, I would like to know.
However, I think in a game it would make sense if the mangod never sees all possible paths of the furture of some person. And besides that, it's only possible to switch desciples once per step. An step could be a day, month, year...
I have these basic ideas: - see all possible paths of the person, but only the paths which don't require any interference by other persons - see all paths of the person, but only the paths which can be reached by influencing - only see a few steps in advance, and the likelyhood of important outcomes (especially the death of the mangod, maybe also the death of other characters)
So these huge decision trees for each character might be generated in advance. But they might also be only generated partially.
Generating a decision tree for a single character, who only has two options every year, which would lead to more than one quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) paths. That might be difficult to program, and even more difficult to keep track of when playing as the mangod. So it would be more reasonable if there are only around 10 important events a character might take part in, which also influence the lives of other characters. Most other things are likely rather unimportant.
But there might be different paths to reach one of these important points. For example you want to avoid some characters to get children, there are different paths they could end up together. So you would just have to avoid these if most of your deaths rely in this event. So these unimportant decisions usually add up to become important. But in the end, many decisions don't change a lot and just lead to the same or the same few paths (strong fate).
It would be nice if these trees could be generated automatically. It would still be neccessary to fill them with story I guess. It wouldn't need to be complicated story. Just simple events like "Person A dies", "Person A impregnates person B", "Person A becomes king", "Person A moves from place X to Y", etc. So maybe generating these automatically should work, too. Maybe somehow generating mini stories, which could be used to generate huge stories. I guess using modern AI wouldn't make much sense, though.

Gameplay

The basic game loop might look like this: - you play as the mangod - each step (day, month, year) you select your three deciples - you can look through their possible futures (trees containing around 10 important possible events, and maybe hundreds of unimportant events; not everything might be visible from the beginning) - you can tell each charactre some information you know - then the next step begins - the game ends when the mangod dies - the goal of the mangod might be one of these: - survive for a fixed time - kill some enemy (like Orsted) - ensure there are only paths which don't lead to death (maybe by killing Orsted)
It's probably easier as a single player game where all the characters are NPCs. The NPCs might just always go the same path if the mangod doesn't interfere. But there might also be some randomness instead. Maybe the only "randoness" might come from special characters, which cannot be seen (basically Orsted).
But it might also make sense as a multiplayer game. Either online, or if possible even some kind of table top. But since the mangod would always have three deciples, there should be way more other players (but the rules could also be tweaked so the mangod can only have one desciple at a time). So as a realtime online game it would probably make more sense.
If it's a multiplayer game, the main problem is, that the players already know that the mangod doesn't care about them. So it might be difficult to make them trust the mangod. There would have to be some gameplay mechanic, which makes it reasonable for the mangod to tell the truth. Building trust doesn't work. In the end, the players already know that the mangod would only build trust to betray them one day. Maybe the mangod could explain to somebody that they have the same goals, and the other player might believe it, so they would gladly work together.

Similar game ideas

I already had ideas for similar games before. A game about the mangod would be a mix between the two.

Strategy game

A strategy game, where you follow the stories of multiple charactres (similar to Samurai Warriors 3). Each character has their own story, but depending on which battles you win and lose with each character, or which paths you choose, you might have different paths for other characters.

Demon possesion

You are a demon and always posses one character. You can just live inside them and do nothing, but you can also influence them in various ways. You can communicate to them directly, or you can just give them ideas and feelings. You can be honest or you can lie. You can control their bodies by force or you can make them consent to controlling their bodies.
There might be three ways to switch the person you posses: - you are locked into a magic artifact, like a ring, so the possessed person have to give the ring to the other person - just be close enough - be close and the other person needs to be in a vulnerable state of mind (maybe sad, maybe in love, maybe while being intimate)
It would likely be an episodic game. You would probably start on a small island with only 5 people and have to leave this island at first. And in the end you might get your body back or kill the person who banned you.

Implementation

I doubt I'll actually try to program it for real, but it might be helpful that I've already written a performant perti net simulator in C. Perti nets can be used to represent connected decision trees.

End

So now I've written it down somewhere. Any thoughts?

Want to get this off my chest. I've a part that is concerned and frustrated by posts which show very little understanding of the IFS framework and process.
Some seem to automatically equate their self identity of "I" as being the same as Self. And also seem to be under the impression that the goal of IFS is to become one with Self! This is ironic as they already refer to themselves as Self.
Self is not a part! So it can never be an "I" or "you" or anything. I realise its very name is problematic as the label of Self has a part-like ring to it, as in common parlance it's a noun. Dick Schwartz is aware of the linguistic minefield and confusion regarding IFS terminology. With hindsight, he says he would have chosen different words and labels but things are way too far along to change them wholesale now.
And the goal of IFS is to unburden burdened parts. It is not about trying to be more in Self than anyone else, trying to achieve ultimate enlightenment or trying to be in a permanent, unwavering state of Self and whatever other idealised religious and moral concepts you're wanting to project onto the label!
A clearer way to think of Self is as Self energy, that every system and its parts always has a minimal level of Self energy but that level is always naturally fluctuating. It isn't essential, desirable or natural for every part to be maxed out with Self energy all the time. Our system of parts is connected to our autonomic nervous system which is always re-regulating. That is its function, ability and power, to be able to dysregulated and kick into survival mode when needed, then re-regulate according to changing conditions, its goal isn't to maintain permanent and absolutely perfect serenity and bliss always and forever. The only preference is for a system that can easily re-regulate, expanding and contracting gradually and smoothly, with a wide window of tolerance, instead of a system that is easily triggered into sudden shutdown or no limits exploding, with very little tolerance for internal/external change and gets stuck in that disregulation.
Also, I compare access to Self energy in a smoothly reregulating system to access to the functions of the prefrontal cortex and its influence on the limbic system and reptilian parts of our brain. To gradually build more space and bring more awareness to past experiences that were so overwhelming that Self/prefrontal cortex was bypassed for the sake of emergency, crisis and survival measures carried out by the reptilian brain and remembered as unprocessed emotional and procedural memory in the limbic system.
The other concern I have noticed is that posts seem to like IFS to a neat, by numbers procedure that is applied to whatever "part" that person has in mind. The basic IFS guideline of becoming of aware of blending to unblend from a part and then connect with it and get to know it and the exile it's protecting to get permission to connect with and get to know the exile or get to know the burden it carries so that it can be unburdened. That's just a guide and the IFS process is hardly ever as neat and procedural as the guideline.
So it concerns me that some posts seem to talk about working with parts as if it's like doing the dishes and hey presto, it's done, the parts are magically unburdened in the dishwasher cycle in some part's mind.
Also, I appreciate that for some, they see IFS as a psycho spiritual process but that's not how it was originally formulated as a psychotherapy, so IFS terminology has no spiritual roots or traditions other than what each of us choose to project onto it. It's our responsibility to become aware of our own projections cos some projections and expectations might hinder the IFS process and our own healing.
Maybe it's all in my mind but that's what I see coming up regularly on this sub and I wanted to point it out so I can say I did that so I can calm my frustration and concern with it.
Please at least read No Bad Parts by Dick Schwartz before doing any self-therapy but working with a trained IFS professional is recommended because as simple and elegant as the IFS framework is, the personal process isn't meant to be as neat, simple and procedural. If yours is, then you're likely just stuck in a mind part playing an IFS simulation game in its head. The real deal is usually a total shitshow of parts and pain.

Hopefully this isn’t downvoted instantly, because I know people seem to get strangely very defensive about Beast’s characterization in this run. I think there is a lot of miscommunication whenever a Beast fan complains about how he was depicted here. Often times people will discount those complaints because they think Beast fans just don’t want him to go bad, when that doesn’t really seem to be the whole truth from what I’ve seen. Ultimately, the complaints I raise and I have seen others raise are more about thinking the writing of his spiral in X-Force 2019 was not done well rather than that said spiral shouldn’t have happened at all. With the Krakoa era coming to an end, and “From the Ashes” having the now-rebooted Beast who is pulled all the way from his time on The Defenders, I don’t see any of the flaws here being addressed beyond characters casually referring to how bad he became. So I wanted to take this time in the in-between, where our new Beast is apparently just chilling on Wonder Man’s couch while the rest of the X-Men fight against Orchis and Nimrod, to once and for all lay out the flaws of Beast’s villainous era, and establish not that it shouldn’t have happened, but that it could have been way better.
Problem 1: A Lack of Pathos:
Most X-Men fans who have been reading for awhile will agree that it’s honestly surprising more mutants haven’t gone down a dark path. Their history is one of striving for acceptance, putting their lives on the line for people who would rather see them dead, and being rewarded with not one but multiple genocides on their population. Some of the most interesting stories can actually come from a formally “upstanding” mutant finally deciding enough is enough. When Cyclops went down his “villainous” path, it made a lot of sense. We’d seen him becoming more disenfranchised with the dream for years. We’d seen his trust in Xavier erode time and time again, and so when he decided to stop asking for acceptance and start demanding it, it was hard to blame him. Even as we saw most of his friends turn against him, that didn’t stop people from declaring “Cyclops Was Right,” because his perspective could easily be understood, and he did achieve results. More recently in X-Men ‘97, we saw Rogue go down a dark path in the wake of Genosha being wiped out, including Magneto and Gambit. Again, this was understood, and it was an interesting direction for her character.
This sort of turn would also make a ton of sense for Hank McCoy. Did you know that back towards the start of the original Uncanny X-Men run, Hank was actually the first X-Men we ever saw to leave the team and say that Magneto was right, after he and Bobby were attacked by an angry mob because Hank used his powers to save a young child? Over the years, one of Hank’s most recurring struggles and arcs is self-loathing and eventual acceptance of his condition. Hank has always been at his darkest when he’s trapped in his spiral of self-loathing, but when he comes out the other side, he tends to be one of the most optimistic mutants when it comes to coexistence with humans. He was out making connections and fighting alongside non-mutants before anyone else. Joining the Avengers and Defenders, speaking on behalf of mutant rights before congress, dating human women who were able to accept his appearance, blue fur and all. Until they weren’t… looking at you, Trish Tilby.
So with all of this in mind, it would honestly be an extremely interesting arc to see Hank, this optimistic mutant who has spent his life building bridges and making connections with humanity, to be slowly beaten down and start to believe peace is not an option. As one of the original X-Men, he has been there through every tragedy that struck the mutant population. And as one of the smartest X-Men, he has usually been at the center of these crises. He has seen advancements in science meant to eradicate the mutants. He has fought against viruses that threaten to drive them extinct. He was there in the wreckage of Genosha. He has seen countless friends killed again and again. He has suffered his own mutation evolving and making him less and less human-looking. He saw the development of a mutant “cure” and was tempted to take it. He has seen it all.
And so that brings us to Krakoa. This is the moment where the mutants as a whole decided enough was enough. If they could not be accepted by humanity, they would pack up and form their own nation, and they would force humanity to accept that they exist by developing life-saving drugs that other nations would have to rely on. And what is one of the first things that happens after the establishment of Krakoa? Hank witnesses assassins infiltrate the island and assassinate Charles Xavier. This right here is honestly the perfect setup for Hank to go darker than he has before. Even after literally segregating the mutant population from humanity, like humanity seemed to want, they still decided to come and kill the man at the forefront of the movement. And Hank, recently placed in charge of mutant black-ops, would likely see that all options are on the table.
Unfortunately, Hank’s actual pathos surrounding the decisions he would go on to make is not explored by the book itself. The book has no interest in detailing Hank’s fall from grace as we saw with Cyclops before him. The book just wants us to accept that Hank has already fallen. And in fact, according to the writing, maybe he never had anywhere to fall from. Any time a character in X-Force tries to ask important questions to understand Hank’s thought process, they are cut off. Usually by Wolverine saying “He’s always been like this.” And then on one occasion, when Wolverine asked Hank why he was doing all this dark shit, Hank said, “Didn’t you read the script? I’ve always been like this.” There is no attempt to examine Hank as a character. We don’t need to know why Hank makes the decisions he does, because this book wants Hank to be a black and white villain and so that’s what he will be. Why? Because he’s always been like this.
Problem 2: Rapid Escalation:
One of the major defenses people have when it comes to Krakoan Hank is that he has apparently been on the road to his villainous self for over a decade. The X-Force run itself loved to have characters spout a list of Hank’s previous “crimes” without any context involved, as justification for why he was acting the way he did in the current run. The problem is, that context is very important. Because it shows the disparity in the Hank of previous stories who made mistakes with good intentions vs the Hank of X-Force who did heinous shit because he wanted to. This was less a plane making a slow descent and more a plane that was slowly descending, but then its engines shut off and it plummeted into a fiery explosion.
To make this case, we need to briefly analyze the previous perceived transgressions of Hank McCoy to show what they actually meant for his character and how they differ from the Bond villain X-Force would present us with. Let’s start with Threnody. Somehow, Threnody became a bit of a buzzword for the beginning of the end for Hank. When people talk about the history of Hank and Threnody, they will usually present it as one of Hank’s worst sins, saying something like “Hank callously handed Threnody over to Mr. Sinister so he could experiment on and abuse her!!!” It kind of makes for some whiplash when you actually read the Threnody story people are talking about. Here is a brief rundown of what actually happens:
Threnody is a young woman who cannot control her powers. It causes her no end of grief, and when we are introduced to her, she is homeless and constantly in danger of hurting herself or others. Beast, Rogue, and Iceman come across Threnody who has been found first by Mr. Sinister. Sinister actually has a vested interest in curing the Legacy Virus, and believes he can help Threnody master her powers, at which point she will prove vital in his efforts to study said Virus. Notably, Threnody wants to go with Sinister here. While Rogue disapproves, Hank does believe that Sinister is actually Threnody’s best option, openly stating Sinister can actually help her gain control and the X-Men cannot, because, as Hank directly says, Sinister is willing to damn parts of his soul in pursuit of scientific enlightenment, and the X-Men are not. A few issues later, when breaking into Sinister’s base, Hank encounters Threnody again. She’s happy. Sinister did indeed help her control her powers, and she has been able to use her abilities to help mutants the world over, while also undermining Sinister’s more evil operations from the inside. Hank expresses relief, saying he was kept up at night by his decision to let her go with Sinister, but Threnody actually thanks him for letting her. And that’s it. That’s Hank’s big “crime” here.
Hank’s other “sins” are also of varying levels of severity. There’s the time “Hank worked with his evil self to cure the Legacy Virus!” when the actual story in question is Hank asserting that he won’t stoop to the levels of Dark Beast and compromise his values in the name of science. There’s the time “Hank sided with the Inhumans against the X-Men!” when the actual story is Storm sending Hank to Attilan to find a way to end the conflict between mutants and inhumans before war broke out. Hank runs out of time to find a cure for the terrigen mist cloud, suggests mutants get off-world in the meantime rather than go to war with the inhumans, is thrown into a cell by the other X-Men for his “betrayal”, and then freed at the conclusion of the war by a repentant Storm when it comes to light that the whole conflict was manipulated by Emma Frost. There’s the time “Hank risked the timestream by bringing the original X-Men to the present day!” A decision that was made on his perceived deathbed with the hopes of bringing his old friend Cyclops back to his side. Hank wants to take the young mutants back right away, but they refuse. And instead of others enforcing that they need to return, we actually see Kitty Pride decide to lead them in the present in memory of Charles Xavier. Notably, Kitty would be one of the many mutants in future issues who would yell at Hank about this.
The point of this post isn’t to absolve Hank of all fault. He has made countless mistakes and bad decisions. Regardless of the culpability of others, the pulling of the O5 to the present was his decision. During Secret Empire, Hank would turn a blind eye to Hydra’s activity simply to keep the mutants under his care safe. During all of this, however, Hank’s character was not compromised. He expressed despair and regret over his worse choices, and struggled with thinking he was a good person any longer. Again, going back to his recurring struggle with self-loathing. He had pathos behind his decisions and how they affected him, and would often reunite with Wonder Man as an opportunity to recenter and declare he would “be better tomorrow than he was yesterday.”
You would think, if the aim of X-Force was to turn Hank into a full-on villain, it would take advantage of the long-form storytelling of comics to chronicle that escalation. Like I said, the assassination of Charles Xavier is a great starting point for Hank to start going darker than he ever has before. The problem is, we don’t get an escalation. Hank starts the run by doing some of the most heinous shit imaginable. Regardless of your thoughts on the severity of Hank’s previous mistakes, none of them compare to his opening volley in this run. Hank uses telefloronics to override and genocide an entire country, leaving various people either completely dead or braindead. We later find out that during this time he also established a space station where he ran unethical experiments on prisoners like Krakoa’s very own Dr. Mengele. He then accuses his old ally Colossus of conspiring with Russia against Krakoa, and calls forth the mutant population to witness as he parades a shamed Colossus through its streets. Then he kills Wolverine and resurrects him as a mindless animal who he uses as an attack dog against his perceived enemies. This isn’t an escalation, this is a different character. And the aforementioned lack of pathos means that we don’t get to see him struggle with these choices. We don’t see his thought process as he becomes darker and darker. Why would we? “He’s always been like this.”
Problem 3: No Personality:
One of the most fun aspects of turning a protagonist into an antagonist is seeing how their personality works with a more villainous mindset. When Cyclops became an “antagonist” to the X-Men, he was still Cyclops. He stuck to his convictions, he was a great leader and tactician, and he was able to turn many mutants to his side because of this. We’ve seen an evil Beast before. The creatively-named Dark Beast is from an alternate future where Beast went down a dark path lacking ethics. The fun of this character, besides comparing his ideologies with our Hank McCoy, is seeing how Hank’s penchant for jokes or quotes now become far more sinister and cutting.
There’s a strange narrative that the jokey Hank is reserved for the Avengers while the Hank with the X-Men is all business and science. This isn’t entirely true. Early on when he was a member of the Defenders, Hank talks about this sort of thing. He essentially says that he wears different hats. While working with the X-Men, he used big words essentially to gain respect from both his teammates and humanity. But with other teams, and in his then-new furry form, he dropped all of that. His speech became more naturalistic and he was much more of a goofball. The thing is, it’s the speech patterns that truly change depending on who Hank is hanging with, not his personality. Hank with the X-Men and Hank with the Avengers are both jovial characters who like to tell jokes and quote philosophy. You can see Hank being a bit of a clown among the X-Men in various runs. So it’s not like it’s a given that Hank is some entirely different dry doctor devoid of any sense of humor when among the X-Men.
But this is how Hank is portrayed in X-Force. Part of why this version of Hank is so hard to reconcile with the rest of his history for fans of the character is that he just doesn’t act like himself, even when he isn’t actively committing war crimes. In one early issue of the run, we get a glimpse at Beast’s journal where he accounts a meeting he had with Forge. Now, Beast has been known to be a very physical character. He is often known to sweep others into a hug, or even plant a big kiss on their face in the case of characters like Wonder Man or Iceman. Meanwhile this one page where we read his thoughts on Forge is clearly pretending this is not the case:

I paid Forge a visit in the Armory – and I must say that he can be, like Logan, rather impossible. There is a certain locker room bravado about him I find perplexing, like a language I only half understand. For instance, he refused to shake my hand but instead dragged me into what he called a “bro hug.” Then he challenged me to a “feat of strength,” asking if I would test out this sappy “muck bomb” he had developed that – or so I gather – glues one in place. He wondered if a “big boy” like me might be able to thrash free of the binding. I refused him and said I very much would prefer to get down to business. He then referred to me as a “bookish peckerwood @#$%” but did so with a friendly laugh and clapped me on the shoulder hard enough to make me stagger. I’m not sure how to process this, honestly. Is he being friendly or cruel? Is it possible to be both?

Needless to say, this doesn’t read like Beast. It reads like an android that has never before felt human emotion. I remember before reading this I was theorizing that Hank had been switched with Dark Beast once more to explain his sudden escalation, but after this I realized that couldn’t be the case. Because this sounds like neither Beast nor Dark Beast. Dark Beast understood how to properly write Hank as a villain. He doesn’t suddenly become your typical made scientist devoid of emotion, humor, or basic human understanding. He still makes jokes that are now cruel. He still quotes literature in a way that paints him as a god among men. Hank going bad can be a fun read, but this run was not.
Problem 4: No One Cares:
Another important angle to consider when writing a story of a good person breaking bad is how it affects those around them. Those who are close friends to the person and find themselves disturbed by their current actions. Again, I return to Cyclops. Regardless of where you stand on if he was right or not, he was very much positioned as an antagonist to the mutants at the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. Yet we see various friends of Cyclops still caring for him and wanting to pull him back from what they perceive as the dark side. Like I previously said, Beast’s whole reason for messing with the timeline was because he felt he was going to die and wanted to try to appeal to his old friend and bring him back around before he passed on. When someone good goes bad, part of the emotional core is seeing former friends try to appeal to their better nature, and even eventually deciding they’ve gone too far to turn back.
Not so with Hank in X-Force. Like I said, this run posits that this is not any kind of heel turn for Hank. This is how he’s always been. “Hank this isn’t you!” “No, he’s always been like this.” “Hank, turn back before it’s too late!” “Turn back where? He’s always been like this.” None of Hank’s friends give a shit. Hank’s best friend amongst the X-Men is Bobby Drake, Iceman, and we never once see any kind of confrontation there. Cyclops and Angel similarly doesn’t care. Now you could argue this is because X-Force is a secretive organization. Bobby and Scott don’t even know what Hank is doing. There are two issues with this. First, things reach a point where they would know. Hank’s actions become public knowledge, and Wolverine goes off to hunt him down while the rest of the X-Men just kinda look the other way. And second, there is someone with a lot of history with Hank that was a part of X-Force and did see everything that was going on. Jean Grey.
But we never get to see Jean wonder what’s happened to her close friend. Jean who was always incredibly close to Hank. Jean who, it was confirmed during the All-New X-Men era, had mutual feelings for Hank and might have started dating him had things been different. But no, Jean, like every character in this run, accepts that Hank has always been like this. That’s the answer to everything. So instead of some kind of emotional confrontation where she tries to appeal to his better nature, we instead have Jean yell at Hank, use her powers to throw him against a wall, and quit X-Force. And then most recently, we see her tell Firestar without hesitation to throw Hank under the bus for any heat that comes her way from her undercover mission. Because everyone will believe Hank is responsible for all the bad shit. Who the hell cares about Hank? According to this run, no one.
Conclusion:
I hope you can see the larger issue here. When Beast fans complain about his Krakoan era, people assume they just don’t want to see their favorite do bad things. But it’s practically accepted at this point in comics that most heroes will have a villain arc. Hell, Iceman is the only one of the original five X-Men who hasn’t gone down a dark path at this point. The problem is that everything about the writing of Hank during this time was just not done well. There is no exploration of Hank’s descent into villainy, and any questioning down that line is immediately shut down by the assertion that this is just who he’s always been. There isn’t any slow escalation because his first move is genocide. Hank is not even written as himself during this era, but rather as a generic bond villain. And none of Hank’s former close friends even show any emotion about his turn to villainy. An evil Hank story could easily work. We saw it with Dark Beast. A story where the former optimistic member of the X-Men has been beaten down so many times that he takes on a “whatever it takes” mentality could be interesting and emotionally resonant as we both understand what drove him here yet hate the man he’s become. But that isn’t what we got. We got a run that wrote him as a complete stranger and then had all the characters tell the reader that they were wrong for ever thinking he was anyone else.

TLDR

• CS graduate.
• Never worked in tech.
• But building web apps 7+ years as hobby and freelancer.
• Want to kick off my web dev career.
• What do I put on my resume?

I graduated in Computer Science in 2011, but instead of pursuing a career in tech I spent the next 7 years building and running a small travel agency with my brother. By 2018, I got burnt out, sold my shares, and with my savings decided to travel.
So with my savings, the privileged Westerner that I am, I relocated to Asia and Latin America where my Euro would go far, and went all-in on indiehacking.
My goal was essentially to build my own apps and make a living from that.
I was confident that within 2 years I'd be making a good living from this.
Well, 2 years pass. Still no money. Savings drying up. Picked up some freelance work on the side to pay the bills while continuing to indiehack..
2 years became 3, then 4, then 5... and now here I am 6 years later and I'm making less than $1k a month coding 50-60 hours a week.
Talk about sunk-cost fallacy...
The miserable money I am making is purely from my freelance work (which for the most part I hate... WordPress, or some frontend stuff, nothing backend heavy which is my real expertise).
So I've come to realise I suck at sales. I suck at marketing. And really all I want to do so is work on interesting technical problems.
And at the ripe age of 36, I can now understand why people get day jobs lol
And now to get to my question: How do I go about getting my first tech job?
I have 7+ years amateur experience (PHP, Python and JavaScript) But 0 years professional. So I understand I would need to start from the bottom as a Junior Developer.
I haven't applied for a job since I was 19. No idea how to go about writing a resume for someone in my circumstances.

Portfolio

I have a relatively large portfolio of personal projects (mostly apps and SaaS)
In terms of "real projects", my client work is either:

• not really relevant to the role I want (mostly WordPress, landing pages)
• something not so easily demonstratable
• under NDA and cannot disclose

Qualifications

• I hold a BSc Hons in Computer Science (graduated in 2011)

GitHub

• haven't contributed to open-source projects
• have 6+ years of commits (mostly Laravel) - more than happy to open-source a couple of big projects

Technologies

Laravel, Vue.js, SQL, Nginx, Docker, Ubuntu, Linux, git, Tailwind, JavaScript, PHP, HTML, CSS, Filament, Statamic, Alpine, Livewire, Nuxt, WordPress, Python, Django
Furthermore, I'm an EU national and open to relocating to a new country for work.
My biggest dilemma, is having no idea what to put in my resume since I have zero relevant work experience.
Should I just be upfront and say I have no professional work experience?
My gut feeling is that most employers aren't keen on hiring someone with my track record (i.e. being self-employed and freelance... ok fine... unemployed).
Furthermore, they might be concerned that I plan to open my own business in the future and go in competition with them. It's a reasonable concern.
So what to put on my resume as a 36 year old aspiring software/web developer with no relevant work experience?
No need to sugar-coat your answers. Be as blunt and direct as you want. I appreciate all advise.

Hey fellow Algorand users and developers,
Allow me to intro myself. My name is Celestino, been around the blockchain space from 2017. Started by building on NEAR, went to Celo, Polkadot, and Ethereum for sometime, but finally committed to Algorand in late 2021.
So, my team and I came up with an Algorand-based platform called Jasiri.
Jasiri is a simple-to-use platform that allows anyone to tokenize their most valuable purchases, and experience their full economic value as fungible digital assets and unique legal property titles.
Think of how you can own NVIDIA stock or partial real estate stock(e.g through Lofty AI). It's the same with Jasiri, only that you get to unlock, own, and do De-Fi with the 'stock' in your recently purchased smartphone, laptop, smartwatch, and more! We have a name for these types of new assets we are enabling on Algorand — ‘dead capital’. They are 'dead capital' because they are unrecognized assets by modern financial institutions in the real world, making it hard for you to experience their full value, even though they have so much utility in our daily lives, and are built off of valuable minerals(Gold, Cobalt etc.).
Jasiri's property titles are NFTs, but of a different kind, we built them so you can actually own and protect your assets in the real-world as well. In some jurisdictions(e.g Kenya, US), it helps us use existing legal frameworks to do so.
In order for you to start tokenizing your purchases, we built an e-commerce add-on here , that you can easily add to your browser as you go shopping on Amazon.com , Alibaba.com , Aliexpress.com , with more stores still on our waitlist.
It doesn't stop there. To lock your assets for maintenance(like locking your assets on Folks Finance), and trade your ownership rights(like how you trade NFDs using NFDomain, or property tokens using Lofty AI) , we built a web console here , you can also track asset prices in real-time on the console.
Lastly, to safe-keep your assets, you can use:

1. Jasiri wallet(currently available for Android) - best if you are a non-technical person, or you would just love to support us ;) .
2. Pera wallet
3. Defly wallet
4. Daffi wallet

All wallets connect using a single QR Code, instead of multiple QR Codes, on the extension and on the console. I had a rough experience during my early days building Jasiri trying to get wallet support in the ecosystem, and so I made it so.
We've been using Whatsapp, email, and X to onboard, and engage with our community(currently small).
We share product updates on our X account here. we are going to be launching on Product Hunt very soon(Will share on our X account as well) .
Jasiri was developed with the support of the Algorand Foundation Grant Program(back in 2021-2022), under its 'Access' category.
Thank you!

They call it the Render—a strange globe of light, swirling with illusions and shadows. For who knows how long, it has drifted ceaselessly across the land, and wherever it goes, the emotions and thoughts of those near it manifest into spirits, monsters, and more bizarre phenomena. New threats and opportunities abound, while the buried and scattered technology of a lost age reactivates as this rift draws near it.
Your people follow the Render. Some of you have even developed strange abilities, whether you were born near it or only recently joined the caravan community. The strongest among you are the vanguard. You travel closest to the Render and see the villages it will affect sometimes even before the Render reaches them. You prepare people for its approach, and you fight off the opportunists who try to use its chaos to exploit others.
You hear myths about it and wonder what is true. Perhaps you also make myths in order to comfort or teach those in your caravan or the towns it passes through. You hope to learn about it and perhaps wield it as a tool someday or at least stop it from harming the innocent in its path.
Central Tensions - The Render: What is it? Can it be used—slowed, hastened, directed, stopped, enhanced, or destroyed? - Other People: We’ll encounter locals as we travel, while strangers will be drawn to the Render as well. Each person will have their own motivations, theories, and trustworthiness to consider. Their emotions and thoughts are important because the Render can create manifestations based on them. - Lost Technology: The numenera—technologies from previous ages that defy understanding—is reactivating wherever the Render goes. Each device could be useful, dangerous, or both.
Your Goals - Follow and learn about the Render. - Find and use the numenera technology. - Guide your caravan of misfits toward safety, advancement, and fulfillment. - Help the innocent and oppose the cruel.
Your Backstory You may have been born and raised in the caravan, or you may have joined it alone or with family or friends at some point. Either way, any magical abilities you may have come from the Render or the ancient technologies it has awoken.
Player Options You may use any official Numenera: Discovery or Destiny content, as well as many of the Cypher System core rulebook, but remember that your character’s abilities should be manifestations of their personality, whether the surface-level parts or the buried parts. I have a particular fondness for these builds: Arkus who Consorts with Spirits, Nano or Jack who Crafts Illusions, and Wright as well as any builds “reskinned” to focus on light, shadow, ghosts, illusions, psychic abilities, and bizarre technologies.
The system is Numenera, of course. The campaign is a play-by-post online game on Discord.
I’m seeking 4 players. Players should be 18+ and post once a day. A post doesn’t need to be long, just some dialogue and/or action usually. A dice bot will allow us to roll.
My time zone is Central, but since we can post asynchronously, it won’t matter as much.
I have been running various TTRPGs for about five years now.

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I believe in personalized attention. That's why I work one-on-one with you to develop a customized study plan that fits your individual needs and learning style. With my tailored approach, you'll receive the targeted support you need to succeed.
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Hi all! After a crazy, but incredibly fun and rewarding year earning my pilot certs, I wanted to make a write-up of my experience in hopes that it’ll be helpful for any other aspiring or current pilots. To summarize, I went from zero aviation experience to CFII in 13 months, Part 61, paying as I go and on the pretty cheap side. I do want to emphasize that I was ~incredibly~ lucky and had some very generous people who helped me out, and I could not have done this as efficiently and cheaply if it weren’t for them. I’m going to list all my takeaways below, but I think my biggest piece of advice is to network as much as you can because there are some amazing, generous people in this community that want to see us all succeed.
Background:
For context, I’m in my mid to late twenties and have been in the workforce for about 5 years. Through a combination of factors I decided to make a career switch to professional pilot but was hesitant because I did not want to take on debt. I have a family member who is an airline pilot who helped me devise a plan. I moved home and kept working my job remotely so I was able to put all my paychecks towards flying.
Private Pilot – 3 months, 75 hours TT, $12k
I did my private in a Piper Archer owned by my local FBO. The owner allowed my family member to be my instructor and gave me a small discount for pre-paying hours. We flew almost daily. I also took ground school at another local FBO in-person, and that was much more helpful than having to learn everything on my own because I was brand new to aviation. I took the private written exam as soon as my ground school concluded which was also the week of my checkride (bad idea in hindsight, but it worked out).
I solo’d around 25 hours and took my checkride with about 60 hours in the Archer (15 additional hours were in a friend’s airplane). The checkride was challenging, but straightforward and I was well prepared. The DPE said good things about me afterward and I was officially a private pilot! I’d be happy to answer questions or do a writeup in a separate post on any of my checkrides but for the sake of brevity I’ll skip that for now.
~Key takeaways from private:~
Fly as often as possible and make sure your instructor is aligned with that. Also stay on top of ground school. Also, don’t rush to take the checkride before you’re ready, it’s okay to have a lot of practice first. Lastly, I know DPE availability is a big issue in lots of areas and can cause people to have to wait on a checkride even though they’ve been ready for months. In my experience, if you try hard enough and call around, you will find someone. However, it might mean you have to travel a little bit which I know is not possible for everyone.
Instrument – 2 months, 150 hours TT, $14k
I was feeling a little fatigued after private so I was slow to start studying for instrument. I started by doing a lot of flying for fun, mainly flying in the Archer by myself on little cross countries to check off some of the requirements (in hindsight I should have found someone to split time with).
I did my instrument at a flight school in one of the adjacent states. This particular school specializes in accelerated programs, but they do not have a formalized instrument course. I went in-person and spoke with the director of flight operations to discuss my options. Since I had to take PTO to do this, the goal was to finish my instrument in one week with the checkride at the end. I paid a flat rate for the airplane and instructor time. I also stayed over there during that week so I had to pay for housing as well.
Before I went over there, I did some prep in the Archer that I did my private in and took the written exam (Sheppard air). I also purchased Sporty’s Instrument course and used that to prep and for the endorsement needed to take the written. The week I spent at the flight school was honestly a blast, and I was able to take my checkride on day 7 with 20 hours in the plane and about 4 hours of sim time. Again, happy to discuss the checkride in the comments or another post.
~Key takeaways from instrument:~
TAKE THE IRA, FII, AND IGI EXAMS AT THE SAME TIME. You only have to purchase the IRA Sheppard course and can take all 3 exams back to back. Also, again stay on top of ground school because instrument flying requires a lot of technical knowledge. But it honestly is really fun!
Commercial – 3 months, 263 hours TT, $8k
The biggest challenge for commercial was time building, of course. This is where networking saved me. I made friends with another instructor who frequented my local FBO who also owns a plane. He needed the time as well so we flew together a lot and I paid for the fuel. I also had another friend at the airport who owns a plane that he doesn’t fly often and offered to let me time build in that (again, I’ve been so lucky to come across some very generous people).
I did my checkride in the Archer that I learned in with my family member signing me off, and with the same DPE who did my private. Commercial was probably the easiest one I had done so far, but it still was no joke! I will say I was amazed with how much easier things came to me by this point versus when I first started, which was a great feeling.
~Key takeaways from commercial:~
Network, network, network. Spend as much time as you can at your local FBO or flight school and make friends with everyone. Like I’ve said, there are some very generous people out there who love to help out new pilots, and I could not have made it this far without them.
Also, in retrospect, it would have been a really good idea to have done commercial from the right seat. I’ve heard of a lot of people doing that and if I had, I would have been able to knock out CFI a lot sooner and cheaper.
Multi-engine add-on – 1 week, 298 hours TT, $4.3k
Shortly after getting my CPL, I had a week of PTO and decided to knock out my multi add-on. I found a flight school with a Seminole and got ahold of their MEI, and we figured we could knock it out during that week. I contacted the DPE who did my private and commercial and we scheduled my checkride for the end of the week. This flight school was about 2 hours driving from home, and I was able to stay with friends while I was there.
This one was a little challenging because this was in January in the midwest and we were seeing a lot of low IFR days. We ended up getting weathered out the first half of the week, but luckily the Seminole was an easy transition for me and we got me trained up in 3 days, 8 hours of flying. I took the checkride as scheduled and passed (I will say I have had extremely good luck with weather for all of my checkride days so far).
Sidenote: Prior to this checkride, I also took the AGI and IGI exams and asked the DPE who did my multi checkride to sign off on the ground instructor certificate at the same time. I did this because I’ve heard it helps when applying to CFI jobs (shows a little extra effort) and it was easier to do it this way versus having a FSDO issue the cert. Cost me $50 to the DPE.
~Key takeaways from multi:~
Do your research to find an airplane at a good rate. I paid $395 per hour which included the instructor, but I’ve seen some schools charging a lot more. Also, I looked into schools with accelerated courses that you pay as a package, and based on my experience I would not recommend because I was able to do it much cheaper my way.
My instructor did a good job of making sure I knew all the aircraft systems well enough to teach them in case I go for my MEI (which I would like to do soon). Since the MEL is light on material, I highly recommend this. Also, when I was doing research I was told to look for a Seminole or DA-42 because they’re easy trainers, which I would agree with based on my limited experience.
CFI – 1 month (on top of all my experience thus far), 316 hours TT, $5k
This was the scariest one for me. I had heard all along that CFI is the hardest and longest checkride and for the most part I would agree. I originally was planning on going to a school with an accelerated program for this, but after asking around I decided to do it on my own (with my family member signing me off).
This one was heavy on ground school. I got some lesson plans from various people as I heard that’s what everyone has prepared for the checkride, but I hardly ended up using them. I also had a friend send me PowerPoints he made for the technical subject areas. I edited them/made them my own and these are what I ended up using for the checkride along with a couple props.
As far as studying goes, the thing I found most helpful was watching random YouTube videos before bed every night. Although it was all review, I picked up a lot of tidbits that weren’t quite drilled into my brain as I still feel new to aviation overall. As the DPE described it, to be a good CFI you basically need to be a nerd about everything aviation and that’s what I tried to do. I would guess that I studied a few hours a day for a month and a half or so. As for the flying part, I had a little bit of right seat experience prior to buckling down for CFI (probably under 5 hours), so I’d guess it took me about 5 more hours to feel comfortable in the right seat. I took the checkride with the same DPE who did my private, commercial, and multi and passed! The checkride was 8 hours total so definitely a long day. As we were debriefing, I went ahead and scheduled CFII with him as well.
~Key takeaways from CFI:~
Start nerding out now (if you aren’t already). Keep a running collection of links and videos that explain concepts well or teach you something interesting, they will be useful for the checkride. Also, don’t buy lesson plans. As my DPE put it, there are really only like 5 lesson plans for any given topic and we all steal them from each other, so no need to reinvent the wheel or pay for them if someone else can give them to you. I’d also recommend really getting to know the PTS, because it lays out very clearly what you are required to do on the checkride (for example you know you’re going to need to teach runway incursions so it’s a good opportunity to be really prepared). I’m sure my last point is most applicable to those doing CFI on their own since you won’t have a school telling you exactly what to expect.
CFII – 1 month, 368 hours TT, $1.3k
CFII was possibly the easiest checkride to prepare for. I did this one in a friend’s airplane – a Mooney with a G750 and GFC 500 autopilot. It probably took about 10 hours of flying (I already have lots of time in this plane) to be ready. For studying, I reviewed Pilot Cafe, YouTube videos, and obtained some lesson plans from a friend. I did not use PowerPoints or anything for this one. I also had already completed the written exam back when I did my instrument rating. I’m not sure what else to say about this one, but I did it with the same DPE again and passed. It feels amazing to be done with checkrides for a while!
~Key takeaways from CFII:~
Select an airplane with a good autopilot. This made the flying portion of the checkride super easy. For the oral, I highly recommend working with instructors who send students for a lot of instrument checkrides. I feel like there are so many very specific questions that DPEs like to ask on instrument/CFII checkrides, so it helps if you have someone who knows what those questions are going to be. Also, FlightInsight on YouTube and Boldmethod were my favorite resources for this one. Lastly, make sure you know your avionics and autopilot really well, including reading and being able to teach all of the limitations that are in the user manuals.
Notes regarding cost:
I did a decent job of tracking all my expenses throughout this process. I noted in the title that the total cost to me was about $50k, which consists of the ~$45k that I discussed above plus some additional expenses. I also did my commercial ASES rating at Jack Brown’s seaplane base which cost me about $2.5K total (of course this was just for fun). The remaining amount consists of things like buying a headset, books, random accessories, and even some things I called “unnecessary expenses”. I temporarily paid for a membership at a flight school that I barely ended up using, so I put that in that category. While I did everything pretty cheap, I was definitely not perfect!
Here is a further breakdown of my expenses:
Airplane rentals/fuel - $36.9k
Instructor fees - $2.5k (bear in mind I got a lot of free instruction from friends & family)
Ground school - $1.3k (includes actual ground school and books)
Flight accessories - $1.2k
Written exam fees - $1.2k (8 exams total)
DPE fees - $5.8k (7 checkrides; this includes seaplane)
Medical fees - $290
Housing - $900
Misc/unnecessary expenses - $1.2k
Total: $51.7k
Overall Takeaways:
- For those doing Part 61/pay as you go, I highly recommend finding an independent instructor with a flexible schedule. This was key for me because I had a work schedule to work around.
- NETWORKING/MAKING FRIENDS. Go to every fly-in you can, always stop into the FBO to say hi to people, etc. etc. Having friends in aviation was monumentally helpful for me and saved me SO much money. Cannot stress this enough!
- If you are on a timeline, make sure you set specific milestones and when you are going to hit them. Make sure your instructor is on board too.
- Do your research! Reddit has been a fantastic resource for me throughout this process. Talk to people who have achieved the things you want to achieve. I really cannot thank you all enough for all your help and insights on your experiences!
Again, I am more than happy to answer any and all questions. I also apologize if anything is jumbled or confusing; this took a long time to write and I’m sure I missed things. I will also disclaim that while I did a good job of tracking all my expenses, I was not perfect and YMMV for sure. I just hope this gave a somewhat helpful picture for those hoping to do something similar to what I did.
As for next steps, I am aiming for the airlines one of these days! I have a couple interviews at flight schools coming up so I am planning to quit my job and finally start flying full-time soon. I want to do my MEI sometime soon as well but I haven’t figured out how I’m going to pay for the PIC time yet.
I also want to say that I absolutely love general aviation and hope to always be involved in it. I have made so many friends, had some incredible experiences, and learned way more than I could have ever imagined in the past year. For anyone thinking about flying, hopefully this is your sign to just do it! Feel free to comment with questions!

Background: I am working on a project to make some open source templates for physical keyboard layouts that are non isomorphic and non chromatic. I come from a background of woodwinds to string instruments to piano, and have found that internalizing and learning new geometry and shapes when performing music to be extremely helpful to conceptualize and understand harmony, melody, and many other aspects of music.
My question is, if I am building a base instrument that is not able to be “tuned”, what would be the best starting point to standardize the Hz values programmed to each note? I am starting with 31-EDO and 17-EDO for the following reason: it’s arbitrary and I want to. I’m hoping that if I can’t pick a “standardized” Hz value for say, 31-EDO C0, I can at least arbitrarily pick one that makes the least amount of people go, “what is wrong with you?” My gut reaction is to pick A4 440 Hz, and to just go from there calculating cents and ratios for C0-C10 in various EDO’s and calling it a day. Feel like that is the least offensive option for what’s ultimately just personal preference, and easy enough to have a spreadsheet tool where you can plop in your favorite A4 value to calculate your preferred note range if you’re customizing your own.

So long story short I started working for the start up company about a month and a half ago. Everything was going good the first two weeks, until I noticed that my ex boss now was demanding me to learn all these new things when I told him before, I was hired that I had no experience with IT.. but he hired me as operations manager, when I had originally applied for office manager. I was flattered that he offered me something else, but like I said, I told him before he hired me that I had no experience, and he said he would teach me.
He did not… The last week has been very difficult, because I have been working overtime but not on the clock, so I’m working with the company laptop when I’m at home so I can finish checking on some things. I asked him and everyone else in the office, if that was OK for me to do, and they all told me the same thing. “ why would you want to work while at home? It’s up to you, just make sure that your tracker is off.” Which is fine. I just wanted to study more of my Job role and wanted to go through all the documents.
Well, we hired 10 new “employees”.
It was my job to train them after 24 hours, and if they did not understand I needed to fire them and find someone else.
I did not feel comfortable with this, and I told him that, so he gave the responsibility to the office manager. All the HR stuff that I was supposed to do, he was giving to the office manager. I felt a little uncomfortable, but the same time I’m like OK that’s fine. I’ll just try and spend more time learning my role so I can help with other things.
Now my ex boss was throwing all these responsibility things for me to do, and it was nearly impossible to do that while also training 10 new hires over slack -online answering all their questions every single minute of the day. Also trying to meet my quota.. it became very stressful, and it got to the point where I started to have headaches. And I know that this could be a remote thing, but when I was hired, (I’m saying this, because it needs to be said) I was never told that I could not work from home. That the position that I was applying for wasn’t in position. And that was fine. I had no problem with that, however, I had things come up, and since every time I’m at the office, nobody would say a word to me nobody said anything or ask me questions Unless it was over slack.
Every time I try to talk to my boss about something, he would tell me “just dm me” when he was literally in front of me at my desk. So it just made no sense. I was really hoping that he would respect this, and I did tell him last night everything that was going on because I asked him yesterday if we could talk, I said this at 8:56am. He said “sure later this afternoon”. I asked what time, and he never said anything. Throughout the day, I noticed that he was laughing and joking, with all the other employees, having their own little mini conferences… meetings idk. I was a little bummed out, because I was so in the zone zone, helping the new hires, that nobody was talking to me. And I was hoping to at least squeeze five minutes and with him. But it wasn’t until 5 PM came when I’m like “ OK, he had all this time to actually talk to me. But every time I try to ask, he said he was busy.” When he wasn’t.
I have done everything that I can for this company when I first started. I would stay up all night studying, making sure that I understood… clearly that’s not what he wanted. He would call me out and be very disrespectful in a public channel thru slack..
I get a message from him this morning, and he pretty much just let me go go. What bothers me, is that it took him less than 10 minutes to completely delete all of my (professional email - no access on Slack or the dashboard) which I understand, but how am I going to return all this stuff? When the building is very high cyber security…
There was a lot of red flags going on at this place. I just feel completely used and taken advantage of. This has happened a lot throughout the years, but I had a feeling this was happening when he was stripping my duties after hiring me. And he expected me to be an expert at IT after the first week… I literally have a friend who does programming and coding for a living, and he’s teaching me, and he told me straight up that it is nearly impossible to teach someone to become an expert after a couple of days….
I just have a lot on my mind, I don’t know how to return this stuff if I can’t even get a hold of them. The fact that it took him less than 10 minutes like I said to wipe all my stuff, but he couldn’t even take the five minutes to talk to me in person yesterday.
Part of me wants to apply for unemployment and explain what happened. I know part of me feels like I would be denied, but at least I tried. Because everyone around me that has seen me come home working 10 hours Part of me wants to apply for unemployment and explain what happened. I know part of me feels like I would be denied, but at least I tried. Because everyone around me that has seen me come home working 10 hours a day five days a week.. I would come home and pass out for like 18 hours…
I told him about my disabilities, I was trying to be honest and update him with everything. But it’s like people don’t even care anymore.. it’s really shitty because I’m such a hard worker..
(After getting that message from him, I just went out and mowed my entire yard front and back. Took me about four hours… wore myself out but I really need to just vent and get this off my chest)

Hi Ya'll,
I recently graduated OCS and I have been bombarded myself in real life over what to expect with OCS. For context, I went from basic training straight to OCS, and even graduated with honors. From the time of writing this post, it has officially been a month since I graduated. So here is a list of common questions I get and I hope I can settle some anxiety for all of you future 2nd LTs.
Warning: The cadre at OCS does read these Reddit posts, so I won't be able to post answers to tests or events.

1. I haven't received a welcome letter or a packing list. Where can I find it?
   • Fort Moore Officer Candidate School (army.mil) I would download and print the packing list and the ISAP. The ISAP acts more or less like a syllabus from college. It will give a rough understanding of the rules, regulations, and requirements for you to pass.
2. Is everything on the packing list required?
   • Yes. Try your best to follow the packing list to the letter. It is almost entirely dependent on the cadre and of course, the weather does play a part in their decision making. Some things you'll find you didn't really need or use throughout your cycle. For example, my cycle didn't use 550 Cord almost at all, but I used it to build a hooch and secure sensitive items.
3. What if I don't have the required equipment on the packing list?
   • When it comes to military equipment, try your best and bring what you can. I was never issued an IFAK before OCS or after. The cadre understands they have some coming from basic and those in-service. So if you have it, bring it. If not, bring it up to your cadre and they'll schedule time to get it issued to you.
4. Anything not on the packing list you recommend?
   • I would recommend the following: hand soap, bathroom spray, travel vacuum, wet wipes, clipboard with compartment, pillow, very bright headlamp, multitool, and laminator. Hand soap because for some reason OCS had a hard time procuring it. Travel vacuum because you'll likely have 2 or 3 vacuums available to your platoon and having your own saves time. Wet wipes to dust everything down. Clipboard with compartment for Land Nav as you'll be running with maps, marker, protractor, and your points so its best to have something safe and secure. Laminator for your papers because its Georgia and your papers can get wet. The pillows at OCS have this weird plastic cover on so if you want a better night sleep, get a better pillow. The headlamp is just in case, some classes enforce the lumen limit while others don't, Land Nav is DARK so if you can find a lighthouse out there, do it. The multitool is just useful to have especially if you are out in the field.
5. Where can I find some things on the packing list I am missing?
   • Luckily there is a company called Commandos who helped us out the entire time. They have an OCS purchasing list you can take advantage of. They even deliver that weekend at the footprint.
   • Visit: https://commando-military-supply-9d5038.printavo.com/merch/ocs-packing-list/
6. I saw you can bring your laptops? Is it required for classes? Can I opted in for a tablet or iPad?
   • You can bring a personal laptop primarily for recreational use after duty hours. OCS will provide you with a government laptop that you'll need to use your CAC to access. Tablets and iPads are not considered laptops and will be confiscated like a phone. If the majority of your class has issues with the government-issued laptops, then the cadre may allow the use of your personal laptops.
7. What is your day-to-day look like?
   • Mostly on a non-physical or FTX event coming up you'll follow the following schedule: 0500 - wake up. First formation is at 0600, then you conduct PT until breakfast. After breakfast, you will head to the classroom and stay there until lunch, return and stay there until dinner. After dinner, it will be the end of the duty hours and you'll roughly have 2 hours for personal time.
8. What are the most important categories/test to focus on?
   • Treat everything as important. Every test you do not pass can put you at risk of being recycled, and it is up to you to catch up. For example while everyone is studying for tactics, you'll be studying tactics and history if you failed history. So save yourself the hassle and take every test seriously. The big 3 recycle events have been historically, Army History (70% to pass), Land Nav (4 points or more to pass (day and night)), and the 4-mile run (need to run in under 36 minutes regardless of gender).
9. How many retests or chances do you get?
   • You get 2 tries at everything before recycle. You get 2 tries again at the same test then you can be dismissed. For example: You are part of Alpha company. You failed history twice. You get recycled into Bravo company. You failed history twice again. You can be dismissed.
   • If you happen to pass history but fail Land Nav twice, then you'll be recycled into Charlie. If you fail Land Nav twice then you can be dismissed.
10. What is a recycle? What does it look like in OCS? Can you get dismissed?
    • A recycle is when you fail something twice and you get "recycled" into the next class. A recycle can occur for other reasons such as illness or injury. You can also be recycled for improper behavior or being "peered out". Every class starts up in a like a month (I heard they are changing that for even further out). So even though the cycle takes about 12 weeks to complete, if you get recycled you can expect more like 16 weeks or more. We had someone at OCS who has been with it for a year. If you get recycled for repeat offenses, or do something majorly bad such as breaking the law, then you can be dismissed.
11. What is being peered out mean?
    • Throughout the cycle you are put into a platoon and then a squad. Your squadmates eventually all sit down and fill out a form to give to the cadre who is the weakest link in the squad. Usually, squads kick out the person they do not like. We had to kick out one person because they didn't mesh well within the squad and wasn't very kind. He would then get replaced with someone else who got peered out. Luckily after that one person got kicked out, the squad improved and we tried our hardest to keep it together. We still needed to peer someone out, but we kept tabs on them and invited them to a lot of our squad functions nonetheless as my squads grew to love and respect each other as a family.
    • If you do get peered out, unfortunately, you get a spot report, moved to a different squad, and are at risk of being recycled if peered out again. Stay humble and help out whenever you can. I got the most respect from my squadmates as I stayed up late with them to help them with their STX lanes.
12. What is personal time like?
    • You essentially use personal time to work out if the PT wasn't enough, clean yourself, and prepare for bed. Yes if you have time, you can contact family and friends (when you get your phones), and if you have the time, play games. I don't recommend playing games as it distracts you from the mission of graduating.
13. What are the different phases like?
    • You are separated into 3 phases. Black, Blue, and White. You immediately enter black phase upon arrival with a tradition called "Gold to Black". Which is more or less a physical smoking session. During Black you are expected to run everywhere, not be able to drink coffee, have your phone confiscated (and given back on Sunday), and have less personal time. Blue you get the ability to drink coffee again, and you have your phones returned and used only during personal time. During Blue you get the ability to visit and explore the base (Fort Moore) and shop around. During White phase you get the ability to explore off-base (Columbus) and you get to wear civilian clothes. White phase if you leave off-post, you need to be in uniform, and on-base you can be in civilians.
14. Can you use your personal vehicle?
    • Yes, but you can only drive it during White Phase
15. How can I keep in contact with my family during Black phase?
    • I recommend that you download WhatsApp or some other social media on your laptop and have your family members on it.
16. Can I visit the gym on base?
    • Yes during Blue phase you can visit the gym. Rules regulate that you leave the footprint in uniform and change into the appropriate PT uniform once at the gym and conducting PT.
17. What is the DFAC like?
    • The DFAC is better than basic training and offers snacks like cookies, granola bars, ice cream, and soda. They have a salad bar and the usual cycle of foods. They do have a "short-order" line that serves fries, burgers, hot dogs, etc. To stay in physical shape, I recommend eating your fruit and a side salad every meal. Drink juice, Gatorade, or water only. I only drank soda and the burger after an intense physical requirement like a long run or a ruck march to regain my glucose and caloric levels.
18. Does Amazon deliver there?
    • Yes, you can have other things delivered to the footprint. However, the Cadre are going to inspect it for food and other contraband. Just ask the cadre for the delivery address. It may take like 2 weeks for them to deliver it.
19. Any final advice?
    • Be helpful and noticeable amongst your squad but try not to bring attention to yourself from the cadre. Take everything seriously and give yourself proper rest and proper nutrition. OCS is not hard, but it can be if you let it get to you. OCS is designed to test your competency, commitment, and character. I luckily had an amazing squad, and I had a blast with them.
20. Any advice on room cleanliness?
    • Your rooms will always be inspectable. You literally leave the door open and cadre can enter whenever they please to inspect your room. Room inspections are always very strict and can result in spot reports. Some tips I did with my roommates were the following: Always help each other lock each other's lockers. If it is open the cadre will then see how much of a mess it is. My closet was 90% of the time never up to standard as it is hard to putting away everything nice and neat every single night. I also slept on the floor to not disturb my bed as any wrinkle can result in a spot report. I used an extra towel as a display in the bathroom and never used it, and I used an extra laundry bag as a display and never used it.

I want this to be an open forum so don't be afraid to leave any more questions below. If the answer you are seeking is not above, then write the question in the comments, and I will try my best to answer you before you are sent off. Best of luck, thank you for your service, and be the best leaders your soldiers deserve.

I (33F) went back to university a few years ago to pursue a different career. In order to work in this field, in addition to your degree, you need to do a year internship and pass four board exams. I want to specialize within the field, which requires passing a further three specializing exams.
I completed my internship in January this year. It was an incredibly toxic workplace with a very high turnover. I worked 60 hour weeks. I was my managers punching bag and scapegoat and at some point a part of me just shut down in order to get through it. I had three coworkers from different departments approach me separately about how I was being treated and that I should report it to the regulatory board.
I have passed three of the four board exams. Two of them last year and one earlier this year. I failed the fourth exam and will have to retake it in August. Because I basically completed my internship and am just left with one board exam I am in an employment limbo where I can’t really work as an intern nor do I qualify to work in the profession. I have now been unemployed since February and desperately need to find a job.
I feel like I am in my own personalized version of hell. Failing the fourth board exam really put me in a very dark place. I have always done well academically and this was the first exam I’ve ever failed. My plan was to write the specializing exams in August but now I guess I’m going to have to push that to next year because I have to pass my board exam first.
I do some freelance work here and there but I absolutely despise every minute of it. I know it’s money coming in and I should be grateful but the amount I make barely covers groceries. And along with the money, everything is running out or breaking. My phone is at its end. My laptop is barely working. My clothes have holes in them. I have been applying to jobs, and will literally take anything I can get but the unemployment rate in my country is extremely high and jobs are so scarce.
On top of everything my relationship with my GF (32) is also failing. The final nail in the coffin was after my GFs mother passed away and I was told in no uncertain terms that I am not allowed to come to the funeral. My GF is not out to her family and I don’t see her acknowledging my role in her life anytime soon. I would never force anyone to come out of the closet if they are not ready but I want to have children and I just don’t see how or where I fit into her life.
But I currently stay with my GF. Since her mothers passing she has been staying with her father in her hometown for months at a time. They have been discussing having him move here (to my GFs place). This will basically mean that I will lose my home as I cannot afford to pay the rent on my own.
Once I inevitably lose my home I will have nowhere to go. My mother and my intellectually disabled brother stay with my aunt. My mother was retrenched a few years ago and has since been unable to find work. We’ve literally lost everything. I could stay at my aunts place but there is no room for me there. My aunt will also be retiring at the end of the year and I don’t want to put anymore financial strain on her.
I feel so hopelessly trapped. I just don’t know what to do.
The town I currently live in has very few job opportunities. So I would basically have to move to get a job but then none of the jobs actually pay enough for me to be able to survive. There are even fewer jobs in the town where my family lives.
I cry myself to sleep every night. The freelance work I do is online so I barely leave my apartment. I do the same thing everyday, over and over. I haven’t spoken to another human being in person for 6 days now. It’s a feeling of utter aloneness that I don’t even have the words to describe.
Even if I could leave where would I go, what would I do. I have no money, no friends, nothing. And everyday I have to face the fact that this is my reality, my hell. I worked so incredibly hard to get through that internship. I studied so incredibly hard for that exam. I put 110% in everything I do. And for what?
The only good thing I have is that I was able to lose 30 kgs. I’ve been overweight my entire life and for the first time I feel like I actually like my body. But for what? I can’t even afford new clothes, I wear the same baggy oversized clothes from before my weight loss. Because it’s all I have.
All I wanted was to build a decent life for myself. To have a job, enough money to survive, to have friends, and a family.
Before I went back to university, I was miserable, literally planning my suicide. But I made a promise to myself, that I would make a list of everything I hated about my life and at least try to fix it. And I did, I grabbed every opportunity that was available to me, I fought so very hard to get out of that hole. But now I’m halfway through that list and I’m just right back where I started, if not worse off because I actually had hope that things could get bette for me. And now that hope is gone.
Now all I see is how horrible the world is, how much pain and suffering there is. Everyone is suffering. The world has gone to shit, so what makes me so special that things will work out for me?
I so desperately want to live, to experience life but it feels like every chance I had, every opportunity was for nothing. That I was just going to end up the same way. I’m sleeping so much. I’m drinking so much. Just anything to take me away from this reality. And things could have been so different, if I could have just passed the exam I could have found a job. Something, just anything.
I’m just wasting away. And I don’t think it’s every going to get better. I saw my grandparents suffer. I saw my single mother suffer. This is just the way it’s always going to be in my life. And I’m just the idiot who thought that maybe, just maybe my life could be something different. I should have ended it when I had the courage to do so.