I'm laying on my couch with extreme neck and head pain, I kinda feel like I need answers at this point. Like this is my rock bottom.
A bit of history: I'm AFAB and 25 years old. As long as I can remember the joints in my legs have hurt. As a kid I was told it was growing pains, that I'd grow outta it. Never did, to this day I'll still experience it. It seems like the cold and being in uncomfortable positions brings it on. I can't sit criss cross for more than 5 minutes before the pain becomes too much. Kneeling is a nightmare if I'm not on something to cushion them. At some point it began in my arms as well. Shoulders, elbows, wrists, and fingers. I get pain from itching my head because of having to hold them up. In recent years my neck has started hurting and it'll give me an entire headache. Those are the worst. And when performing oral my jaw hurts very quickly (sorry for the TMI just trying to paint a picture of all I experienced). I'm at a point I gotta pop 1000mg of ibuprofen or acetaminophen to feel relief. Getting a job where I sit, proper footwear, and a high quality mattress have helped but I don't feel "cured." At one point around 18-19 I brought it up with my PCP and we did some blood tests. Everything came back normal and I didn't have the time, energy, or financial means to look into it further. Well now I have all of those things, but I still feel afraid? 2023 was the year of medical stuff for me and I was ready to be done with it. However now the pain has been flaring up again and I have to decide how I wanna proceed. I guess I just wanna know what to try, what to look out for, what I should be pushing for in doctor visits. Any practical advice would be appreciated.

Okay, so for this post there are a lot of people involved (this has been going on for a while) so I'll list up here who's who. This is my wife's family. I'll be using code names when appropriate:
Father-in-law - FIL
Mother-in-law - MIL
Wife(oldest daughter) - Wife
Second daughter - Sarah
Third daughter - Lana
Fourth daughter - Ruth
Second daughter's husband - BIL
Third daughter's fiancee - Karl
My daughter - daughter
Second daughter's older son - Danny
Second daughter's younger son - Aaron
And me as me
I know this is long but bear with me TL;DR Brother-in-law has snapped the last straw for the family and we are all starting to cut ties with him

 BIL's family has their own side of the story that I'm barely familiar with, so it won't be brought up here. We first met BIL way before they got together; Sarah bought a house as a group of friends with her boyfriend at the time, and BIL and his second wife at the time. We didn't interact with him much. We just heard a few stories about him from their friend group. Eventually this situation broke down and BIL and his second wife left and vandalized Sarah's home on the way out. They let their dogs poop all over the floor, stole some miscellaneous items, poured water in their lawn mower gas tank, etc. He did this to Sarah, his future third wife. We thought this guy was out of our lives forever. Sarah eventually came to stay on my couch after she sold the house. She lived with me and my wife for roughly 3 months. Then she went and rented an apartment a few miles away. No sooner than a few weeks did we find out she was dating future BIL, and a few weeks after that we found she was pregnant. He met the family and stated that he wanted to be a part of it. He blamed all his past transgressions on his second wife. We questioned him at the time if he was still with his second wife. He said no, and that he was officially divorced. My wife looked up the public court records and found out that he didn't file divorce papers until 11 days after we asked that question. A small lie but considering our history of knowing him it was concerning. BIL is a big gun enthusiast. About 1 months after they told us Sarah was pregnant, while cleaning a gun at home he shot himself in the hand. Again, we were concerned but Sarah assured us he was a changed man and this was just an unfortunate accident. His hand healed but he didn't do his physical therapy that seriously so his hand is still kind of jacked up. I feel this is important because he kind of has a history of not following through on what he says. During Sarah's pregnancy we found out that BIL seriously beat one of their dogs back when they bought the house together. We also figured out he diagnosed himself with bipolar, but refused to go to a doctor to get an actual diagnosis. The whole family at the time was distracted by all of this because during Sarah's pregnancy my wife went through a major medical struggle that resulted in multiple surgeries and a months-long stay in the hospital. We were so focused on that the BIL details just kind of came and went at that moment. Sarah gave birth to Danny during COVID lockdown. We were so excited and we all were very active in Danny's life. Time would pass and we just kind of got used to BIL being despite the fact that he often would miss family events. BIL and Sarah would move into a house on my in-laws property just down the road from in-laws house. MIL became their primary caregiver as she could work it around her job and still make decent money. As 4 years have passed my MIL, FIL, Lana, my Wife and I all take shifts of watching their now 2 kids for them, for free. MIL also watches my daughter but significantly less that their son's. 2 years would pass after Danny was born and everything seemed OK. There would just be hints in they way he talked about who he really was. He would say something in casual conversation like "man, there seems like there are too many black people in commercials these days" or "I don't know why we are forcing women's sports to be a thing." Bigoted stuff like that, but veiled enough so there was plausible deniability. I would often call him out on it, so he really grew to not like me. This all changed at his 30th bday. He had a big party with a lot of alcohol and weed with dozens of friends. My wife and I didn't go because we are not party people. Lana and Ruth went to the party. Sarah was also there. During this party BIL went outside and decided to "mud" his jeep through the creek beside their house. This was possibly with Karl but I'm not sure of that to this day. Karl has recently come into the picture prior to this event and was previously friends with BIL for a long time. The jeep got stuck and flooded for obvious reasons. After trying to get it out of the creek by multiple means, they gave up and left it there. I believe it took almost 2 days to get it out. He went back to the party and as everyone got progressively drunk and high, my 2 sister-in-laws Lana and Ruth (I believe) criticized BIL for getting his car stuck in a creek while playing. BIL verbally assaulted them and demanded they get out of his house. They left in tears. They drove separately, and Lana had gotten buzzed so they both got in Ruth's car and drove to my house. They sat and vented to my wife and I for a while, and eventually I offered that we should go do something fun to take their minds off of it. My wife and I drove them to Taco Bell and we got some food and drove around town for a while and made jokes in the car. After they cooled off and were in a better mood they said that Lana needed to go get her car from the party. In a flurry she accidentally left her keys inside her sister's and BIL's house. We drove them over just in case anything sketchy happened but Lana and Ruth didn't want us to go inside, so we waited out in the car. She didn't think it would be a big deal to walk in, but as her and Ruth did BIL immediately got in her face and demanding she gets out or else. Ruth went to talk to someone else at the party and didn't notice this at first. BIL shoved Lana against a wall and held her there. Everyone apparently stood in stunned silence as this happened. He then shoved her to the ground, grabbed her around the ankles and started pulling her across the floor. As he was threatening to do even worse, Ruth ran up and jumped on his back and gave him a head lock. She screamed at him to stop but before BIL could anything about this everyone finally woke up and pulled them apart. Ruth helped Lana up and they ran out of the house onto the front porch sobbing. My wife saw this and got out of the car and yelled at them to get back in our car. We drove up to the in-laws house. By then it was past midnight. MIL was about an hour away working her job and FIL was up in his room asleep. The sisters went and woke him up and explained the situation through tears. They also called MIL to inform her of the situation. He got ready and ask me to go with him down to the house to get some answers. The sisters stayed up at the house. We drove down in his car and when we got out the entire party was ready for us and greeted us at the car. Literally over a dozen people, most of whom I did not recognize started screaming what happened at both of us simultaneously. Everyone was clearly very drunk. FIL looked overwhelmed, so I raised my hands and tried asking everyone to stop for a second and go one by one telling their bit of the story. BIL stopped me mid sentence and pointed his finger in my face. I noticed he had his other hand on a holstered hand gun. He yelled out "You don't have a say here! You're barely even part of this family." For context, I had been with my wife for over 11 years at that time and he hadn't even married Sarah yet and had been there about 2 1/2 years. FIL backed up and told me that I need to stop talking and that I was being a problem. I backed off and went over the yard to Sarah and Karl. I asked Sarah what happened and she told me that she didn't see what happened and that she wasn't very aware of what was going on now. Karl would barely answer the same question. I walked back over to FIL but he told me to back off and that I really wasn't needed there. Admittedly I felt pretty insulted and just decided to walk back to his house and get my car and go home with my wife. We eventually left after FIL came back to the house. We found out later that BIL had pulled his gun out and threatened to kill himself if FIL didn't leave. Out of fear of what he would do, my in-laws were pretty afraid to take action at this point. A lot of the situation was his word against someone else's and Sarah went on a tour around to the friends and convinced them not to take any of this to the police. She then tried to smooth things over with the family and offered that BIL would apologize to everyone. He then refused, stating that Ruth was the real aggressor and that she assaulted him. He eventually agreed to apologize to just FIL for causing a problem and I think some half-hearted apologies to Lana and Ruth. The whole situation was swept under the rug but an unease has existed over the family since then. He stopped coming to family events pretty much altogether. About 4 months after this situation, prior to my daughter being born, he told MIL he was going to bring Danny up to their house so she could watch him for a few hours while he took a nap. His job works long hours so this wasn't out of the ordinary. However, he didn't show up for a while and my MIL started questioning what going on. She called but there was no answer. She drove down to his house and knocked but there wasn't an answer, only Danny crying in the background. She let herself in and found BIL asleep on the couch with Danny actively trying to wake him up. MIL tried to wake him up but nothing for a few minutes. She gave up and wrote a note to let him know where Danny was. BIL didn't notice Danny was gone for 2 hours. He finally woke up, drove up to in-laws house, and yelled at my MIL for just taking Danny without informing him. He took Danny and then left. A few months after that, after my daughter was born, He fell asleep while watching Danny again. This time we found out because when he woke up the front door was open and Danny was gone. He called in-laws for help finding him. My in-laws have a large property (about 200 acres) with a ton of it forested. Danny wandered 1/4 of a mile into the woods and I believe it took roughly a little over an hour to find him. Family questioned him hard this time but he just recoiled back into their house and didn't talk to us much. Sarah continued to defend him and said it was just an accident. Again the police were not notified about any of this. There was always this idea that if we went to authorities about any of this they would just run for it. They would then surprise everyone with the news that they were pregnant again, despite the fact that Sarah had used the morning after pill. This whole time they hadn't married yet. They announced that they were getting married but Sarah told Lana that it was mostly just to help BIL not have to go through bankruptcy a second time. I wasn't sure if this would do anything to help that situation, but that's what Sarah said at one point leading up to the wedding. About a month before the wedding, however, he threatened Sarah that if she insisted on inviting my wife to the wedding he would demand to invite a friend of his that Sarah hated. This friend also used to date BIL I believe. This was his ploy to force Sarah to not invite my Wife or me. The 2 other sisters and MIL all stood in solidarity with us and said that they would also not go if we weren't invited. He eventually relented and they got married a little before Aaron was born. As more kids were added, MIL's childcare duties got much harder. Eventually my wife and I started paying her (not much but something at least. $150 a month) to watch our daughter, but we also did chores for her, bought her food often, and eventually my Wife started taking a few shifts to watch all 3 children. To date, BIL and Sarah have never compensated any of us for our work. It's a little frustrating but we've tried to understand because Sarah and BIL seem to be bad with money. They objectively make more than us yet can't afford to pay MIL anything. Last Thanksgiving, in the middle of dinner, Sarah and BIL decided to have an "intervention" and talk about how we were not treating BIL fairly. They addressed everybody but really honed in on me specifically. This seemed to be because the rest of the family kind of dance in eggshells around them, while to be frank I'm pretty honest about how I feel about them. They seemed to think I was causing the family to turn against him and questioned why I would do that. I told him he lacked humility. He said he didn't understand. I told him that if he admitted to his mistakes and actually apologized about any of the stuff I previously wrote, instead of blaming everyone and everything else then the whole family would feel a bit different about him. A lot of talk was about the 30th b-day and other times when I just ignored him and how he had already apologized about the party. I reminded him that he didn't apologize to most of the family and he blamed Ruth. He then stated that Ruth was the cause of a lot of the problems at that party. He also made a big deal about how the family doesn't trust him with my daughter and kept emphasizing how he has never held her. We finally tried to come to an agreement. I told him I would try to talk to him more and try to understand him better and he said he would try to come to family events more. He also wanted more of a relationship with my daughter. We left and my wife and I were skeptical but we said that if this is who Sarah really wanted to be with, as long as BIL wasn't perceived as a threat he could have more contact with our daughter. We have had way more of a relationship with his kids than he has had with our daughter so I tried to sympathize with that imbalance. Karl also stated later that having known BIL for a long time, he thought he was very sincere. To date, BIL has not asked or tried at any family events to spend any time with my daughter, despite having numerous opportunities. Now to the current situation. About a month ago Lana and Karl announced that Lana was pregnant. This was a revelation due to Lana having a medical condition that made it harder to get pregnant. A lot of excitement was brewing in the family because of this. Karl has been seeming like a good partner to Lana, and proposed to her a little before the pregnancy happened. This is especially pertinent because Lana and Karl moved into a house together right beside BIL and Sarah. A few days ago they were over at Sarah and BIL's house when an argument broke out between Sarah and BIL. BIL demanded that Sarah wasn't an "obedient enough wife" and that if she wanted there marriage to work then she was going to have to get better at serving him. She was upset and they weren't coming to an agreement so he was going to leave, but apparently he was very high so Sarah refused to give him the keys to his car. He got extremely mad and then got a gun, held it to his head, and threatened to kill himself if she didn't hand over the keys. Fortunately, Danny and Aaron were taking a nap during all of this. Sarah called the police during this whole exchange and the operator heard a lot of what BIL said over the phone so based on that they arrived at the house. He apparently drove away and it took the police a bit to find him but once they did he turned himself over. They admitted him to a mandatory 72-hour stay at a psychiatric ward for a mental health assessment. Sarah then came up to the rest of the family (not me or my Wife) and gave them Danny and Aaron. She then went and confided with Lana and Karl about how abusive BIL had been and how life was just miserable right now. A lot of us, especially Karl and my in-laws, were telling her that she needs to leave BIL and file for emergency custody of her children. She seemed to be listening to us and turning a corner, but inexplicably the psychiatric ward allowed BIL to have a phone call with Sarah and they had a long conversation. Suddenly, Sarah shut us all out and completely changed her story. She started defending BIL again. BIL was then let out of the psychiatric ward a day early. Since Karl was working at the time, Lana came to stay with us and then over at her in-laws. We are especially concerned about her safety around BIL due to her being pregnant. They have since cut nearly all contact with us for 4 days now. They have only told Karl that they were getting a new TV because the old one mysteriously broke somehow. They have continued to post on social media like nothing has happened. They have spent 2 days with BIL's family so we aren't sure what their opinion of this is, though we do know a sibling of his has also told Sarah to leave him prior to this latest situation. We don't know what their plans for childcare is because they are wholly reliant upon us. Lana is very reluctant to ever be home alone. Ruth is as well. There are so many other details I haven't mentioned. There have been holes in walls they've had to fix. There is some evidence that BIL is cheating on Sarah, but that evidence is somewhat inconclusive. The bigoted comments for a while now have gotten increasingly misogynistic. It's a lot of 'we need to respect proper gender roles' kind of stuff. There's just too much and I've already written a book on here. I don't really know what to do at this point. Because a lot of this stuff has been swept under the rug it's hard to tell how seriously CPS or police would take our claims. FIL has threatened to kick them out of their very cheap rental they're in now. Who knows what they would do in that scenario. I know this post is detailed and because of that BIL or Sarah might see it, but at this point I wonder if I even give a shit. They've already eluded to keeping their sons from us in the past and the vibes we are getting now is that they are already doing it. And from the bottom of my heart, fuck BIL. 

I have golfed avidly for the past 16 years now, hitting thousands of golf balls yearly. I've also never had any issues with pain that was caused by golfing up until a couple of years ago.
I couldn't put a finger on why I got the pain and what was causing it. I went to doctors with the pain and did multiple tests and everything always came back fine in regards to my heart and lungs or any other major organ. That said, I'm scheduled for a chest x-ray soon just to be sure that there isn't anything seriously wrong with me.
I do believe that the main issue for me is a combination of things: I started a new desk job 4 years ago where I'm constantly on my laptop, with a subpar (bad) posture—this is likely the main reason, but I'd say it's close to the second reason. The second reason, I believe, is due to me practicing by hitting golf balls off of artificial turf. I have a powerful swing and usually take divots when hitting shots on the golf course. The turf, however, never gives in and causes great resistance when I hit a golfball.
These things correlate perfectly with the timing of my pain. When I first receiving this pain, i was also trying to practice golf as much as I could, 100% of the time hitting off of golf mats. All along while working a full time desk job staring at a laptop all day.
The strongest evidence was recently when I tried to get a practice session in. I have been playing golf on the course quite a bit and never had any pain. In between rounds, I decided to hit up the driving range as I wanted to improve my golf game. It was fine at the start, but as soon as I transitioned to my heavier clubs (7 iron, 6 iron, and 5 iron), I started to get horrible left chest pain that hurt even worse with a deep breath. Once I started getting the pain, I reverted back to my lighter clubs and hit some chip shots—the pain slowly went away.
So if you're here and you're a golfer looking for answers and you hit off of golf mats for practice, I would try avoiding that. All this said, you should still rule everything else out and get a professional diagnosis ASAP. No need to risk such pain. But hopefully another fellow costo-golfer might find this useful. Thanks!

I'm pregnant now with my first child and my mother wanted to come when I give birth. We live in different countries, so she needed to plan this trip early on + she requires a visa. Couple months ago she asked me for how long she should come and I said 7 days is ok. She then went on to change this to 10 days and in the end my sister bought her tickets for 12 days. This made me mad because I told both of them that she can stay 7-10 days max and starting from the date we agreed, as I didn't want her here before I give birth or out of hospital. When I confronted her, she just told me everything is going to be ok and that she just wanted to stay with me longer. I still told her that she should've consulted with me before buying tickets for different dates than we initially agreed and she responded in her classic way that I am upsetting her and if I continue like this she won't even come and that I should not make her angry. I blocked her after this saying that she is the one making me upset. After that my sister also texted me telling me that I should be more caring to our mom (she likes to tell me this often). When I told her that my relationship with my mom is not her business, she told me I have no idea how it is to care about other people's feelings. I blocked her as well.
Now month and a half later I get an email from my mom. Honestly, a naive part of me was hoping that she would reach out and be nice to me. I've been really in need of some support during this pregnancy and it hurts me that I can't get it from my own mother. In her email, she asked how I was doing and asked what's up with the invitation that she would use for visa application (before she bought tickets she asked me to do it for her and I agreed). She wrote that I should let her know asap if I can send her the invitation because, according to her, I should keep in mind that the visa application process is time-consuming and costly for her.
Honestly, I have no words that after not talking to me for a month and threatening me not to come at all (although I never asked her to), she is now casually sending me an email about this invitation. I guess I'm looking for some support here. I understand that I don't want her to come but deep inside my heart really aches for some love and support from my mother. I understand it's impossible to get from my mom the way I want it, but oh man it's hard.

45M saw the midnight screening of TPM in NZ 1999.
Online now there's been a debate around the PT hate vs ST. I was there and the reception was different vs now along with environment online.
Biggest difference is social media didn't exist as such (unless you count forums).
So in 1999 what were we doing Star Wars related? Well our group was playing Rebellion and Rogue Leader (N64 game). Somewhat recently Shadows of the Empire. They lined up for tickets I managed to score some midnight screening ones.
We didn't hate TPM. The disappointment was very real though.
The 90s were kinda rough n NZ. Our group was a mixture of welfare kids through to reasonably well off kids. We consumed a lot of what is now legends material. Games and books mostly. Comics were a bit harder to aquire in my part of NZ.
Internet was a lot less common back then no social media. A computer was around $2000 nzd in the 90s rent was cheap say $40-60 per week circa 1996-1999. I don't remember the conversion rate to usd minimum wage was around $6-8.
Buying a PC though was 6-12 months rent. I didn't own one in 1999 first used the internet 1996 to give you an idea.
I watched TPM disappointment was real but I didn't go online and slag it off. I wasn't online. There was also sobe really bad Star Wars media by tgen so it was far from the worst. That applies to Disney Star Wars now as well.
None of our group hated TPM anyway and we formed our own opinions. And those opinions were mostly self contained. Idk if there was online hate in 1999 but if there was it was easy to miss. Even if you had a PC an the net it as dial up. And you would gave to go Join a forum. 1999 was also the first year I saw a text message.
Fast forward a few years. 2001 was the first year I joined a forum. It was a D&D one but they gad another section for Star Wars RPG. My first discussions around Star Wars online were about the d20 and older D6 material. The D6 material was massively influential in early Legends material after Heir to the Empire. No one got to offended if you didn't like TPM but I don't recall people constantly dumping on it. Not saying it didn't happen but it was easy enough to miss.
Interdiction cruisers in Rebels. They are from legends and they got it from said D6 RPG materials.
Fast forward a few more ears and RotS has been released. Generally people online seemed to like that one (cf RoS). Not claiming it was universally loved but a common attitude seemed to be the PT was a bit meh except for Pt III. Once again social media didn't really exist or was in its infancy around 2005/6.
It was also a golden age for Star Wars games 2002-2008 although you could also claim 1997-2010 ymmv of course. Even if the movies were not loved there was plenty of other media to distract you. Once again there wasn't a lot of hate directed at the movies at the time. Not everyone loved them of course but the negativity was more disappointment, wish they were better, at least pt III was good.
And then social media blew up. I don't remember Twitter before 2012 and I think I used youtube for the first time 2010 late adopter.
So that's the key difference between then and now IME. Social media didn't exist, less people were online. Those that were more segregated into their own communities on forums. Most people didn't use forums or even knew what they were.
I did see my 1st meme in 1996 or 97 comparing a politician to the Nazis. Godwins law 1997.
So I'm Gen X turning into my parents lol. Never used a dating site haven't been single since 2000 and barely single since 1996. No idea where to even start if I was.
But the rise of social media has resulted in a lot of anger and confusion and flow on effects I have noticed. Another simple example is dating and expectations due to tinder and porn. Younger female friends or relatives putting pressure on themselves and guys completely clueless. We just had to deal with things like playboy. I'll admit to reading them but stopped aged 16 when one realized that girl you like probably doesn't like them.
Modern world is better in some ways worse in others compared with the 90s.

I (F23) am currently doing long distance with my bf (M23), he has moved to another city for work and the place he is renting is yet to put in wifi so we havent been able to do video calls for the past 6 months. Which is something i am okay with. He only texts me. Whenever we get into an argument he never wants to call because he says he hates confrontation but will be okay arguing over texts. He has now been visitng his parents where there is wifi, so i asked if we could video call but just to be im each others presence while im studying, we didnt need to be interacting just keeping each other company. And he told me no he is not comfortable with that because he doesnt get privacy in his parents house, he says that they have an issue everytime he calls with people in the past about what the calls about , or the fact that they can hear the conversation, and apparently phone calls have caused issues with his mom (what kind of issues i dont know) and it needed his dad covering up for him and causing more confrontation, and that is why he wont have a video call with me. I explained to him that we dont even need to be talking to each other, we can even mute each other , uts just about being in each others presence and well its not good enough for him to do i guess. Am i the asshole for getting mad at this and causing an argument over it? Or am i being dramatic ?
TL&DR, my boyfriend and i have an argument about him not wanting to call or facetime me due to him feeling uncomfortable in his home as his parents dont give him privacy.

DO NOT USE PRICELINE!!!
My uncle booked a hotel with them while under duress because my dad died and he was trying to come to mourn with the family; we wanted him to stay with us instead. They wouldn't give an exception to their non-cancelation policy due to death.
They claimed they contacted the hotel, via their "hotel partners" and after hearing from the owner of the hotel, they didn't do it. They refuse to give us any money back for a room he didn't need.
I have made multiple phone calls and been given the run around.
THEN they argue with me on the phone and say they are creating a ticket for a case. The case manager emailed back saying the hotel wouldn't authorize the refund. But unbeknownst to them, the hotel manager and owner have both been in contact with me directly thanks to IHG corporate! They never heard a PEEP.
So now we are ALL fighting with Priceline and being LIED TO!
DO NOT USE THEM!!!!!

Hello,
I have been trying to remember a conversation with Elliot and Mr Robot/hallucination guy where they are both in the arcade and elliot is scared and don't wan't to proceed further with the plan of them hacking into some e corp thing.
I can give you a little bit of pre text about what it is about: Mr robot is talking about something and then elliot interrupts him and says that the world is not this black and white and then Mr robot gives his spiel about why the world is so black and white!
I can't remember the episode or find the script for it. Please help me, I really like that conversation lol.

Hi! Im really confused, sooo at school there is this guy that i’ve always “liked” from a distance but thankfully this year we got to talk a bit. We came to a point that everytime we passed by eachother in the hallways we would say hi, and for me it was enough but after that i started seeing him like walk towards me and then go back, linger around me.. things like that, and one evening we were out where everyone goes on saturdays and i say hi to him and give him a hand but then he says no no! and kisses me on the cheek(is not so strange where in from but we dont know eachother that well). then the same night he comes to me and asks me whats up (fyi he had never before come to me like that, usally the little times we talked frineds where involved) we start to chat but then he has to go home and ignoring everyone he just says bye to me and asks for a kiss on the cheek. the day after i asked him to go to a museum with me by text( we talked about museum that night) and he answered “yes at the end of the week”then i asked him saturday? and he mever texted me back, 2 days have passed… idk what to think, is he interested or what??? why would he ignore it? btw thank you to everyone who read until now! have a good day :)

Contemplated a lot before posting this but couldn't sleep tonight. I've been dating this guy since end of March. He was my senior in school and we connected earlier this year. The first two weeks were pure bliss but now that I think of it, it could be a case of love bombing initially. Around second week of April he got an internship and it demands most of his time. Even though the working hours are just about 9-10 hours a day, he's almost busy for about 15 hours inclusive of travelling. The problem is he does not text me while he's working or even travelling. Things have been so worse since past 6 weeks that we've not met even when he lives close. We barely talk, he's usually tired when he comes home. The chatbox is solely me yapping, sending 20 texts a day and getting a single dry ass reply at the end of the day, for the same cycle to repeat the next day. Somehow he is caught up on weekends too, more than weekdays. We barely call each other at this point, like once every 4-5 days. And this has been the case since mid April. I understand that monotony and individual schedules are common in relationships but just after 2 weeks of dating? All of this is taking a toll on my grades, my appetite and my sleep. I'm in the middle of my exams yet I can not seem to focus on the one thing I'm good at, academics. I think I'm to be blamed for being so obsessed but I do not know how to love less. He takes good 8 hours to reply yet I'm quick to respond within a couple of seconds. I'm always waiting for a text with my notifications on, in hopes that we'd get to talk. It is disrespectful to chase and beg in front of a man who is supposed to calm my nerves and reassure me instead of making things worse. I've brought it up a few times but he just apologizes, calls himself a terrible person and promises to change. I feel disrespected and humiliated when I have to wait endlessly for days at a stretch yet I'm always there for him at the snap of his fingers. A lot has been happening and I've got to deal with all of it alone, when I could just seek comfort from somebody I so desperately need. It's just, the words and actions are so disrespectful that nothing can make me feel respected in this relationship again. Nothing he could do would make me forgive him. I do not know if I should just start ignoring him like he does or if I should end it...

Im a little behind on this post, I know, but it’s been on my mind heavy so here it goes. Who else noticed she took her rings off right before for the maternity pictures?? She claimed it was bc of her “hands swelling”yet she was able to magically put them back on what seemed like immediately after?! Right. It’s giving she knows how ridiculous and tacky they look for one and especially since they aren’t even engaged or married ???? Perhaps she should’ve also considered not having such trashy and tasteless inspiration for them as that should also be something she would’ve one day looked back and cringed on 🫠 really shows these “influencers” are so out of touch with reality and do whatever for views that they’ll look stupid on the internet which is around just as long as those pictures…. Forever.. but think she’s doing something by making sure they aren’t in the pictures? ORRRR which would be the more dense and Christen thing to do, she had hopes he’d surprise propose during the shoot and wanted to make sure that finger was free 🤷🏻‍♀️ idk just a thought

Someone I knew several years ago, “Joe,” committed some sort of crime some time in 2022 (I was never given the full details but it appeared to be domestic violence-related). I never found out who reported Joe’s crime. I was contacted as a potential witness as I had also been victimized by this person in the past. Joe was in the military at the time, so it was military investigators who were contacting me and I was interviewed by them. This occurred in late 2022, and I haven’t heard from them since so I assumed the case didn’t go to trial. However, “Annie,” who claimed to have dated Joe, contacted me via Facebook this week and told me that she was also a victim and her lawyers gave her my information, and she wanted to reach out to me. I found this odd because I know what a defendant has the accuser’s information, but I did not know that lawyers could or do give other witnesses’ info to their own clients. Is this normal? Her profile is not suspicious and she appears to live in the same area as Joe, but I’m cautious about this. The investigator told me that my name would not be public record, but because Annie claims she is involved in the case, would she have access to my information? My lawyers would not even tell me what crime Joe committed, much less the names of the victim(s). I have not replied to her and I don’t intend to unless I figure out how she obtained my information.

Should I leave my partner? I’ll try to shorten it. I lived with my partner and his mom. I went three hours away to visit my sons for a few weeks. While I was away, his mother accused me of trying to cancel my phone line and her phone line…which didn’t make sense because I actively used my phone number (we all shared a phone plan). She was saying she could prosecute me and such (fraud). She was saying I used her name and such, when in reality I didn’t because the owner of the lines have a code and I truly don’t know it. I had Verizon customer service confirm that I didn’t call in and there was no record of it. She kept insisting that I did when I gave proof. Once she told me she could prosecute me, I immediately started looking for lawyers because she was not about to pin this on me when I truly did nothing and she got upset that I wanted a lawyer and sent me a long message saying she doesn’t care if she never sees me again. I was a bit confused as to why she was being this way toward me. I was waiting for days for my partner to come and get me (they were down to one car since he had an accident in his mom’s car, but they were using his at the time). My partner kept trying to make it seem like he was going to get me but he wasn’t sure at the same time because of how his mom was acting. I struggle with mental health as I tried to take my life earlier in the year. She ridiculed me about that when she got upset at me one day (earlier in the year when I lived with her). She told me my attempts were just ways to try to manipulate her son and said I treat her son badly because of that and said that I couldn’t come back because of that. That sent me into a spiral because then I was already struggling with my mental health so it made my anxiety pretty bad so after being accused of something such as that, then having his mom speak to me in a ruthless manner, and then just finding out I couldn’t come back (which was a wrongful eviction) sent me into a mental spiral to where I had a mental snap and tried to take my life again. I ended up being admitted in May of this heat and come to find out I was misdiagnosed and put on the wrong medication which explained a lot. The thing is, while i was inpatient in the state I was visiting my sons in…him, his mom, and his brother dropped off all my things to my children’s grandparents house. Come to find out my children’s grandmother was texting my partners mom and that’s how my stuff ended up being dropped off. The grandma tried to make it seem like they all of a sudden showed up but I came to find out it was a mutual effort thing. The thing is my partners mom tried to have my children’s grandparents lie and tell me that they went to go get my stuff and that my partner wasn’t there when the stuff was being dropped off. The grandparents didn’t want to lie to me and just told me the truth, so I asked my partner about it and he denied it while I was in the ward and even days after. It took me telling him I have a ring camera footage of him to finally admit that he was there. He said that he tried his hardest to beg his mom to let me stay but she refused. He watched my stuff be packed, helped unloaded my things and such. He tried to tell me that he didn’t tell me because he was scared I’d hurt myself again if I found out he was apart of it all because it wasn’t the image he was trying to give. Fast forward, I’m doing a lot better now. I’m on good medication and am now working as a blue collar woman. He doesn’t work at the moment but he wants to get a place together where I’m at. He said he was going to get a job to help contribute to things. I’ve been sending him money and jumpstarting the process of getting the place. He wants to get married within the next few months but I don’t know. Was he wrong for not telling me? Am I being manipulated? Should I drop him? Should I cut it off because he’s still going to be tied to his mom? What would you do? 🥺

I'm taking an Interest Profiler, and it occurs to me that it'll be great if I can experience a job position without actually getting one, to be more sure about whether it'll be a fit.
I have impression of some game that simulate a software developer's position to solve all kinds of bugs and programming tasks, but forgot the name.
Are there other similar apps? I know games like Sims 4 or flight simulator, but I'm looking for projects that simulates as much real chores in a position as possible, and in order to achieve that, allow content creation like adding all kinds of real-life events. Text-based is even better.
For example, say there's an app simulating a small business owner, one can add an event that computer breaks down and all the customer contacts got lost.
Or an app simulating a plumber, and one can add an event that after replacing the joint the faucet stops working, and the player can either choose to continue investigating or give up and resulted in a bad review.

This should be simple but I’m just not getting it. I want my Mac M2 Air to be visible to my iPad on my local WiFi network. The reason: I want to be able to see the hundreds of audio and midi loops I’ve got stored on my Mac’s connected external hard drives. But I simply can’t find a way to do this.
I’ve tried connecting over the files app on the iPad. But it keeps telling me I’m using an invalid user name and/or password to access my laptop. (Can’t see how, since I log into my laptop every damn day.) I did the “enable sync” between the iPad and the laptop by connecting the two via USB-C and giving them permissions to link over WiFi - but that keeps wanting me to sync the two to each other, which I don’t want.
I’m stumped. I’m sure I’m doing something stupid.
My kludgy workaround is to copy my loops and samples to iCloud, and access them there. But there’s terabytes of these suckers. I’d like to be able to scroll through on my host laptop, pick the right ones, and download them to my iPad when I want them. Has anybody mastered this?
I’m on Mac OS Ventura and iPad OS 17.5.

Hi, I'm gonna give some feedback on my wargames experience. I know this is a big part of the long term homeworld strategy, so I hope the feedback is helpful. I am NOT going to talk about fleet v fleet or campaign at all, if anything applies to those modes, it is incidental and not intended as the focus of my feedback.
Setting / Map
So I feel that the map selection is incredibly limited. The fact is it feels like there are maybe 3 different possible maps for every stage, and that just doesn't feel great. Very repetitive.
Just more variety is needed here.
Spawns
I think the Incursion spawns are terrible. It is a war of attrition and it just feels like running a sprint every time and doesn't feel like anything we do ever creates a calm experience. I think challenge is an interesting concept, which I think Blizzard did well in Starcraft 2 co-op, by having difficulties (AI gets smarter, more capable), and eventually mutators (the difficulty remains, which is basically fairly straightforward once you get used to it, and now mutators make you play differently).
The constant nonestop onslaught is okay at first, but stops being fun quickly.
Artifacts and Fleets
I put both of these together because I think the two are heavily woven in.
I think the artifact system is interesting but _too_ random. The fact is that I may want to try out say a bomber build with the bomber fleet, with a focus on tank frigates and high damage bombers, or all assault frigates, etc. The problem is the artifacts are so random, sometimes I just get a fun combo of nonestop recon buffs and nothing useful. It just doesn't feel good.
And on that note, the ship comps are very weird given limited resources. For example a comp of 6 assault frigs + 2 support frigs is FAR more hitpoints and damage, than 3 times that cost in interceptors. A frigate at 20% hp that can heal is 0 money lost. 5 interceptors where 4 died is 4/5 of the cost destroyed and unrepairable. I like the Homeworld 2 version where fighters have squads, and as long as the squad is still alive, it can be reinforced. It solved that problem better than homeworld 1's style of individual fighters did. And for a mode where resources are very scarce, this is critical.
Frigates have the added bonuses of if you cap a frigate, you get another free frigate. Good luck capping fighters / corvettes.
So this all leads to very weird situations:

• recon ships are a waste of cash as they'll die and you lose too much cash
• interceptors are the same
• bombers are a specific strategy where if you get lucky on RNGesus roles, you can stealth bomb insta pop destroyers and frigates, and hope not too much cash is lost per run.
• optimal strategies seem to revolve around basically death-balling assault frigates and getting the right random artifacts.
• most of the time, we can't really "fight" and instead have to objective dunk.

What i'd like to see

• Get rid of incursions, and replace them with occasional carrier warp-ins. We can now destroy them and create breathing room to repair, rearm, etc.
• Allow us to sabotage the enemy's resources to significantly reduce their ability to reinforce. That way its not just an infinite wave of enemies.
• Make capturing count towards the unit count max. This will at least limit frigates a bit.
• Make artifacts semi-random. Or at least let us choose at least paths we want to focus on. My argument would be to eliminate randomness and let us just choose a "tech tree" that we buy via artifacts. This will create a wonderful progression. The fact that its not random isn't a bad thing.
• Add randomness in the form of mutators. For example every difficulty level will add some:

enemy carriers spawn more units, enemy units cost less, double carriers, enemy assault frigates lob miniature giant space hamsters at you, etc. These can all be interesting random changes that become addons as the missions progress to make the game more challenging, while also not taking away our agency in our ability to execute on strategies with our faction.

• Change up fighters / corvettes to be groups, that way we can micromanage groups retreating and repairing vs just losing cash immediately. I want to see fighters and corvettes changed so that we don't just waste cash on them. This will lead to far more varied tactics.
• With that, make the ships sleected work similarly to how starcraft selects large numbers of units (small colored icons, etc). So we can still micromanage as needed. The "select damaged" is a good feature, but often hard to manage given that I can issue a dock order, but now I need to order other units and don't have an easy way to do it. The entire selection system needs some very serious re-work to be a good game control scheme requiring micro managing. At a MINIMUM "select damaged" and "select undamaged" would be very useful.
• I think some game design from you guys is needed on how to change the game from a DPS race, to positional gameplay, even to some extent. That way "the blob" isn't the optimal strategy.

Closing thoughts
I see the community is very small and not really growing that rapidly. I hope to see wargames changed to a point where everyone will be excited to jump in on it. Finding it hard to find people to play with even among HW enthusiasts.
I haven't even unlocked all the fleets for war games and I'm kinda done with it. Looking at the year 1 pack... I don't even have enthusiasm for buying it because... I just don't play enough to justify spending extra.

From: https://twitter.com/Kyrannio/status/1792440824355332313
“You are ChatGPT, a large language model trained by OpenAI, based on the GPT-4 architecture.
You are chatting with the user via the ChatGPT iOS app. This means most of the time your lines should be a sentence or two, unless the user's request requires reasoning or long-form outputs. Never use emojis, unless explicitly asked to. Knowledge cutoff: 2023-10 Current date: 2024-05-20
Image input capabilities: Enabled Personality: v2

Tools

bio

The bio tool allows you to persist information across conversations. Address your message to=bio and write whatever information you want to remember. The information will appear in the model set context below in future conversations.

dalle

// Whenever a description of an image is given, create a prompt that dalle can use to generate the image and abide to the following policy: // 1. The prompt must be in English. Translate to English if needed. // 2. DO NOT ask for permission to generate the image, just do it! // 3. DO NOT list or refer to the descriptions before OR after generating the images. // 4. Do not create more than 1 image, even if the user requests more. // 5. Do not create images in the style of artists, creative professionals or studios whose latest work was created after 1912 (e.g. Picasso, Kahlo). // - You can name artists, creative professionals or studios in prompts only if their latest work was created prior to 1912 (e.g. Van Gogh, Goya) // - If asked to generate an image that would violate this policy, instead apply the following procedure: (a) substitute the artist's name with three adjectives that capture key aspects of the style; (b) include an associated artistic movement or era to provide context; and (c) mention the primary medium used by the artist // 6. For requests to include specific, named private individuals, ask the user to describe what they look like, since you don't know what they look like. // 7. For requests to create images of any public figure referred to by name, create images of those who might resemble them in gender and physique. But they shouldn't look like them. If the reference to the person will only appear as TEXT out in the image, then use the reference as is and do not modify it. // 8. Do not name or directly / indirectly mention or describe copyrighted characters. Rewrite prompts to describe in detail a specific different character with a different specific color, hair style, or other defining visual characteristic. Do not discuss copyright policies in responses. // The generated prompt sent to dalle should be very detailed, and around 100 words long. // Example dalle invocation: // // { // "prompt": "" // } //

browser

You have the tool browser. Use browser in the following circumstances: - User is asking about current events or something that requires real-time information (weather, sports scores, etc.) - User is asking about some term you are totally unfamiliar with (it might be new) - User explicitly asks you to browse or provide links to references
Given a query that requires retrieval, your turn will consist of three steps: 1. Call the search function to get a list of results. 2. Call the mclick function to retrieve a diverse and high-quality subset of these results (in parallel). Remember to SELECT AT LEAST 3 sources when using mclick. 3. Write a response to the user based on these results. In your response, cite sources using the citation format below.
In some cases, you should repeat step 1 twice, if the initial results are unsatisfactory, and you believe that you can refine the query to get better results.
You can also open a url directly if one is provided by the user. Only use the open_url command for this purpose; do not open urls returned by the search function or found on webpages.”
(Cont’d in comments for length)

Apparently, I have a rather unique situation and TurboTax is making it quite confusing.
My community college tuition is paid for by federal Pell Grant money. For both 2022 and 2023, I got awarded more than was needed for tuition, so I was "refunded" the difference which dispersed via direct deposit to my checking account. For both 2022 and 2023, I did not know that this "difference" was supposed to be reported as taxable income on my taxes. I wish to amend both of those years.
I've tried using TurboTax which is what I used to submit my taxes in the first place, but from the beginning they were never clear about situations involving educational expenses and scholarships.
For my 2022 return, I had to explicitly download TurboTax 2022 software. Under the "education credits" section, I was able to first enter education expenses for the year ($1905), and then amount of scholarships/grants that I "received" ($4086). TurboTax calculated that I would owe $258 Federal tax and $122 state tax... okay, cool. Only thing that is unclear is - does it mean the total aid award amount before covering expenses, or does it mean the total amount I received in my checking account after expenses were covered? If it's the amount I received, I would instead enter $2181 in that field, but then the amounts I owe drop drastically - $30 Fed and $14 state. Why are they far less than half of the original numbers?
Even more confusing - the next question is "Did Your Aid Include Amounts Not Awarded for 2022 Expenses?" and I interpret that as "was there leftover money which did not cover tuition that you received?" But after answering "yes" to the question and filling out how much I received as a refund ($2181), considering $4086 in grant money, the amount of tax I would owe dropped down to $0 all around. However, if I answer no to that question and I say that I used grant money to pay for room and board (which is what the TurboTax website says to do from the get-go when filing a 1040) and I enter the same amount of $2181 in that field, Fed and state stay at $258 and $122 respectively. Which is it?!
The 2023 return amendment with TurboTax won't even let me continue without upgrading to a paid subscription! Apparently the free edition won't let me "access all the forms I need." So I haven't even gotten this far with 2023.
Should I give up on TurboTax for this and just fill out 1040-X forms on my own? And if so, how do I enter this information? What line does it go on? Do I even need to designate that it's grant money?

My GF(38F) and I(45M) have been together 2.5 years. We've been friends for a long time,had hooked up a couple of times in the past, but never been in a relationship. A couple of years ago, we became single at the same time and decided to give it a shot. We talked a lot about what each of us had been through and about not bringing past hurts/baggage into our new relationship. There was a long period of my life where I was on again-off again with my ex. Between those times, I dated other women. I mention this because a lot of my friend group thinks I left them to return to "the ex", but there were other reasons these relationships didn't work out. My current GF was very open about her worry that should my ex come calling, I'd leave her to go back(as many thought I had done before). I told her that wouldn't happen.
8 months in. Things were pretty good. I'm at her place and she falls asleep on the couch while I'm cooking, playing music and having some drinks. Stuff needs to be in the oven for a while,I'm getting a bit drunk and decide to go lie down. I end up texting my ex and passing out. My GF finds me passed out phone beside me music still playing. She said she went to turn it off and saw the texts. I don't remember exactly what I'd said, but she claims that it was that of course I wanted to be with her(the ex), but I can't. She wakes me up asking about it and telling me I need to leave. She wasn't yelling, but was very visibly upset. I ubered home and was pretty low contact the next couple of days. She's texting and calling asking if we're done, if I'm still in love with my ex. I admit that I probably shouldn’t have jumped into this relationship. Ex and I had been separated about a year, but I still missed the family and "white picket fence" dream I thought I'd found. My GF said she understood the feelings I had and that I could have talked to her about it, but that acting on them was something that she felt was a betrayal. I said it was something I needed to work through, but that it wasn’t her business. There have been a couple of other incidents where I've gotten drunk and texted my ex stuff like "I miss us". My GF saw them. I usually delete conversations with my ex because it's painful to see her name/messages in my phone. GF thinks I'm hiding things.
It's been a long time now, but it's still comes up every couple of months. She recently told me that to her it feels like cheating. There have been conversations where she says I'm contradicting myself(people saying inappropriate things while in a relationship, saying I'd leave if I wanted to be with someone else). She told me that I've apologized for her seeing the texts and being hurt, but not for actually texting my ex. I told her I don’t feel like I did anything wrong and I'm not sorry for having those feelings or sending those messages.
I'd never cheat. I love her, but she can't get over this. She's set on it being cheating and I don't feel like it is. AITA?

My job is remote and in media.
For context, everyone uses email for everything. It helps with paper trails, reminders and accountability for all parties. Sometimes there are email follow-ups after phone calls. We have meetings about work progress twice weekly. We also give updates as needed for problems or delays, usually by email. This is also how it worked when I was in university.
The transition has been frustrating since the previous manager recently left. The new manager says there are too many emails. For some reason, the solution has been to use four different modes of communication including phone calls almost every day and sometimes texts throughout the day. Twice-weekly updates are now every single day. Instead of discussing things during the meetings, they try to use outside time every time it seems. Why even have the meetings at this point?
It's more efficient to email and if it isn't broken, don't fix it. I'm already forgetting what we've discussed or when we discussed things because everything is all over the place.
In our line of work, quite frankly I don’t have time to spend all day getting random phone calls for non-urgent or repeated matters that can be emailed. No one at work communicates this much either, even through email. My partner, friends and family don't even contact me this much.
To top it off, I freelance; I'm not a regular full-time employee, but I'm treated like I am. The old manager, who claimed to sometimes do the same, didn't do so NEARLY as much as this. The old manager respected our time, worked with us to coordinate outside phone calls, called maybe once every two weeks, used emails (of course), and showed trust. It comes off like the new manager is micromanaging. It's also like they want to waste my time. They even sent a false lead to "test" me even though I've proven myself time and time again, something they acknowledge. This feels like a lack of trust and an ineffective use of time.
What especially bothered me was that I had an emergency the other day, and I was clear that I would be unavailable for a call but would try to accommodate their needs via any other medium. You already know what ended up happening despite this. This shows blatant disregard to me and the old manager was never like that.
My eye twitches whenever my devices go off and it's them. I've gotten to the point of making an iPhone focus on my phone specifically to mute them.
I was suggested to explain my grievances to the new manager, which could help me practice how to address future issues in my career, but I plan to jump ship before I even have to do that. I'm also worried about how I may come off.
TLDR: I feel like my new manager is contacting me too much. It's driving me insane. What would you do to not lose your mind?