UPDATE: I've made a new project and copied over the files and it seems to work now. Rather frustrating as it's not clear to me how the original config caused any caching or project issues.
I'm at my wit's end- getting a class compilation error even though I've changed nothing about my VS code settings and am setting it up exactly like I have for other assignments. I've asked chatGPT, I've tried updating Java RunTime, what am I missing?
Note, it DOES compile if I use the following commands, but not with VS code's "play":

javac AnagramSolver.java javac Test.java java Test 

I feel like I must be missing something obvious, but why would things change in between assignments? It is running my previous assignments just fine still so I'm assuming I had a blunder with writing it that I can't see!

The class:

public class AnagramSolver { //map object to keep track of words private Map  dict; //list for things to print out private List out; //dict placeholder for me because I am dumb? private List dictionary; AnagramSolver(List words) { //make a dictionary map this.dict = new HashMap<>(); //make a struct to store results this.out = new ArrayList<>(); //copy all words from given dict into personal one this.dictionary = new ArrayList<>(); for (String i : words) { this.dictionary.add(i); } } // future method.... // void print(String s, int max) { // //prune the map to include only valid words // } } 

The test file:

import java.io.*; import java.util.*; public class Test { public static void main(String[] args) throws FileNotFoundException { Scanner console = new Scanner(System.in); System.out.print("What is the name of the dictionary file? "); Scanner input = new Scanner(new File(console.nextLine())); // read dictionary into an ArrayList List dictionary = new ArrayList<>(); while (input.hasNextLine()) { dictionary.add(input.nextLine()); } // solve anagrams List dictionary2 = Collections.unmodifiableList(dictionary); AnagramSolver solver = new AnagramSolver(dictionary2); } } 

The error:

[{ "resource": "...FILEPATH/HW6/src/Test.java", "owner": "_generated_diagnostic_collection_name_#1", "code": "16777218", "severity": 8, "message": "AnagramSolver cannot be resolved to a type", "source": "Java", "startLineNumber": 19, "startColumn": 9, "endLineNumber": 19, "endColumn": 22 }] 

Greetings!, As many of you may already know, my original post stopped being editable a long time ago, I've decided to create this new post, as a large number of questions were repeated over and over again in the comments, and honestly, I don't have as much time to dedicate to this as I would like. However, I wanted to leave an "updated" version of this post, including answers to questions that were asked in the original post and other forums. I don't know how many times I'll be able to edit the main post (or if I'll be able to edit this post)
I hope you have a good time to read all of this, because it certainly WON'T be short.
Now we know that Nojima has studied Jung's theories and Yogachara Buddhism. Although we didn't know what would have been used as a reference, my partner and I were very sure that religious themes, especially Buddhism, were employed, and that was part of our theory from the very beginning, many years before Rebirth. Unfortunately, I doubt anyone will be able to understand what Nojima intends, as a glance at Wikipedia will not help us with that, much less to understand something as profound as a Buddhist belief root. So, we won't pretend to be experts on the subject and will focus on our way of interpreting everything, as we have been doing until now.

Original post with updated info and answers:

After finishing Final Fantasy VII Remake, the first part of this new trilogy based on the original 1997 title, we wish to present our theory about the conclusion of the game that left us with so many unanswered questions. Since then, Square Enix decided to continue the path of mystery in each of the trailers they have been showing for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and, as it could not be otherwise, since April 3, 2020, when we finished playing Remake, my partner and I ventured to make our hypothesis in Spanish forums back on april 4 2020, always following the same line of thought; all of this is nothing more than an expanded and reimagined way of telling the story that will lead to Advent Children, and the interview with Kitase and Nomura conducted for the theatrical release of Advent Children seems to confirm this.
Now, with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth concluded, our theories that we have been sharing step by step seem to have been confirmed by 90%. Therefore, we are going to leave you with our detailed explanation of the ending of this second part.
This explanation is entirely based on the official canon and lore from FFVII Compilation, and it avoids any Deus Ex Machina explanation (Such as multiverses)
The Lifestream
The lifestream, which could be said to be the very blood of the planet itself, is what binds everything in an eternal cycle where time and space do not exist. It acts in an eternal present, meaning it has no awareness of past, present, and future but rather everything occurs in the same instant and is present in an endless continuum, where the souls of the deceased find their final rest once they accept their death, and after returning to the planet's embrace, they will be reborn one day as a new life. This eternal cycle is what sustains the life of Gaia, the planet, which increasingly sees its existence endangered as it witnesses how this cycle is gradually lost, thereby wearing out its strength to maintain that which keeps everything together.
Souls, on their journey back to the planet, face a journey of atonement and acceptance, being unaware of this fact. In these small astral worlds, there is no space or time; they are created by the choices, hopes, illusions, and connections that those people have and had throughout their lives.
Both the spiritual essence of those who are still alive and those who have already passed away interact in worlds that exist and yet do not. Special individuals like Marlene seem capable of discerning what is happening; the sky of all those worlds now shows a terrifying breach. The planet is being consumed; the end seems near.
In that immense accumulation of timeless knowledge that the lifestream represents, lies the planet's last hope. The only way Gaia finds to endure is to guide a motley group that represents its only chance through the memories shown by an endless cycle of souls, relying on the Whispers, guardians of destiny and ethereal representation of the memory of those souls, guiding those brave youths to the destiny she needs to protect to be able to endure, without them being aware of the cruel future they will have to face for it.
Sephiroth, after having remained in the lifestream without diluting his existence and uniting it with the cycle of souls, has gained great knowledge about his own being, as well as Gaia. In this way, he dedicates his efforts to gather resentful souls and thereby tries to impose his own will using his own Whispers, confronting Gaia, thereby risking the return of the being that nearly destroyed her long ago, Jenova, the calamity from the skies, the alien being that descended upon the planet to bring about its end.
Zack Fair, whose soul remained divided across several of these worlds, eventually realizes that something strange is happening. He cannot discern what time he is living in, and like the soul of Biggs, a former member of Avalanche, he cannot explain when Cloud, Biggs, and Aerith met. Zack is unable to understand that he himself will be part of something greater, a soul that must help the planet, that must aid one of the beings living in another world, the world of the living, and that person is his old friend and the one he saved at the cost of his own life, Cloud Strife.
The duality of Aerith and Cloud's existences
In the material world, the holy materia lost its characteristic white color since the incident on the highway, during the escape from Midgar, and with it, Aerith was stripped of the connection, the knowledge, and understanding that the planet and the lifestream bestowed upon her.
On his part, throughout this journey and without being aware of it, Zack had been carrying the damaged soul of Cloud, as well as the memories of Aerith snatched by the Whispers. These memories are shown to us in the color of the holy materia, the special materia that Ifalna bestowed upon her daughter (Aerith) before passing away.
While Zack takes care of what he thinks is a recovering Aerith and an ill Cloud, he discovers from Marlene's words that Aerith and Cloud already knew each other, that Aerith is in love with Cloud, and in turn, a disturbing fact: if Cloud wakes up before he has healed, this will result in Aerith's death, as she will be killed by an evil man. Cloud, not having recovered, will not arrive in time to save her. Thanks to Marlene's description, Zack recognizes this man as Sephiroth, unaware that in another plane, they are engaged in a battle.
The Black Materia
In the material world, after secretly taking the black materia that Aerith had labeled as imitation and fleeing from the temple that tried to bury them alive, Cloud continues his cold and distant behavior while the other members of the group rejoice at Cait Sith's return. Barret, seeing Cloud lost in thought staring at the black materia, snatches it frustratedly and throws it to the ground. At that moment, Sephiroth appears and takes it. Aerith panics and runs toward him, knowing that something horrible may happen.
With a smile, Sephiroth confirms it. That materia is the key that will allow him to obtain the true black materia, which is hidden in the void between worlds. Sephiroth rises into the sky, and with the materia in his hand, he calls upon his Whispers once again with the purpose of demonstrating his power. At the same time, he decides that it is time to prepare for the reunion. Finally, he can begin his plan. Thus, testing his control over his puppet, he releases the black materia in front of Cloud, treating him like a dog, to make him return it. Cloud has lost his will completely. Tifa tries to stop him, aware that Cloud has no control over his actions. He struggles desperately to grab the black materia. However, Aerith takes hold of it and tries to keep it away from his hands. Sephiroth's Whispers attempt to restrain her movements as a frantic Cloud pursues her. Aerith resigns herself and decides to trust him, handing over the black materia.
Sephiroth makes his appearance. At that moment, like an obedient dog returning a ball to its owner, Cloud approaches him to hand over the black materia. Afterward, as he turns around, he sees Aerith surrounded by the dark whispers, thus recalling the first time he encountered her. Stirred by this memory, he regains his sanity and tries to rescue her. Aerith is relieved to see that Cloud is back to himself, while he tries to prevent her from falling into the void.
With a slash, Sephiroth severs the ground created by the dark whispers. Cloud and Aerith plummet into the void, protected in their fall by the whispers of the planet. At that moment, their other "selves" from the astral world awaken. Cloud appears confused while Aerith is confident because from that moment on, she is perfectly aware of what is happening. Therefore, she decides to take advantage of a few moments of tranquility to enjoy a last date with the person she loves. Meanwhile, Sephiroth is able to track them and boasts about it. Aerith decides to make the most of the little time they have together. During the date, we notice for the third time a new design on the potatoes of Stamp, indicating that this is another of those worlds. Some of those people are aware that the end is near for that world, and Aerith knows it too. Finally, there is one last thing she must do, and so they head to their favorite place, the Sector 5 church.
Once there, Aerith allows herself one last moment to be selfish and, in a shy manner, tries to reveal her feelings to Cloud with a question he cannot answer. Cloud is puzzled by her behavior. At that moment, Aerith hugs him, and then she hands him the holy materia containing all her stolen memories, the materia that will allow a prayer to the planet, to the Cetra, and to the souls of the lifestream, a prayer with which she hopes to stop Sephiroth and the Meteor magic. She understands it's not about them; it's about the planet.
Ephemeral Worlds
So far, we can identify four fragments of his soul, separated by the choices he made in each of those astral worlds, all of them teetering on the edge of the abyss.
Three of these fragments are identifiable by the design of Stamp in their respective worlds. The first one is the one we saw at the end of Final Fantasy VII Remake, which has been shown to us for much of the game, with this first Zack identifiable by the Terrier Stamp. Later, he decides to go talk to Hojo to try to heal Cloud.
The second one is the one we could see during the DLC of Final Fantasy VII Remake, Intermission, who went to the church to encounter the desperate souls of those who died in the collapse of Sector 7. He didn't find Aerith, so perhaps this fragment is the Zack that we would qualify as the "original", as he would be in the plane closest to the world of the living, resembling a Beagle.
As the third one, we have the Zack who decided to accompany Biggs instead of going to help Cloud. For this Zack, the design of Stamp is similar to that of a Pug. After losing Biggs in this world and realizing that what he truly sought in his life was the capacity for choice, he jumps into the void, deciding his own fate.
Lastly, we have the Zack who was unable to make either of the two choices and heads to the church in Sector 5, where we can see Johnny carrying a Stamp plush resembling an Akita.
At that moment, while waiting outside the church, he encounters Sephiroth, who treats him as a nuisance and displaces him to the center of the Lifestream. Now, all parts of Zack are one, as after his journey, he was able to find his purpose and mission. The planet protects his soul with the Whispers of Fate while the presence of Aerith guides him on the path he must follow.
Meanwhile, in that astral world where Cloud and Aerith still remain together, represented by a Stamp with the design of a Border Collie, she is aware that she cannot keep him there any longer. In that plane that only the Cetra and Sephiroth can visit at will, she reluctantly opens a portal and sends him to the center of the planet. Cloud watches in horror as the doors of the church open; Sephiroth has found them.
After falling into the center of the planet and the lifestream, Cloud encounters Sephiroth once again. Sephiroth explains to him that within Gaia, there are countless of these "worlds" like the one he just visited. Some die quickly, others last longer, but without exception, all end up returning to the planet as part of what keeps it alive. Using the knowledge gained from the lifestream, Sephiroth intends to unite these worlds and thereby both realities, in order to carry out the "reunion." This way, he can control the existence of living beings and endure eternally.
The Death of Aerith
Cloud catches a glimpse of what awaits him in the future: his journey to the Northern Crater and the reunion, being part of the men in black robes.
Faced with this revelation, Cloud adamantly refuses to collaborate with him, leading to both ending up in a plane close to the material world. Sephiroth closely follows him and realizes that Cloud has brought with him the holy materia, and thus, the knowledge that was taken from Aerith, so he decides that he will punish him for it later.
As Cloud's soul delves even deeper into that dark world, which seems like a dream to him, the whispers of fate transport him to another plane. Walking through the sleeping forest, he finally finds Aerith, who urges him to recover, to find out who he really is. Cloud believes he's fine, but Aerith knows perfectly well that he's not. She knows that Cloud is about to face something that could end him. Cloud hands Aerith the holy materia, thus reuniting the memories that were taken from her. In turn, she gives Cloud her transparent materia, perhaps hoping that one day, his memories will return to him in the same way it happened for her. After this, Cloud wakes up in the forgotten forest; Aerith is no longer with them. She has advanced ahead of the group to fulfill her role in the ancient forgotten capital of the Cetra.
Sephiroth presents himself before them, boasting that nothing and no one can stop his plans to carry out his "reunion," treating Aerith with contempt and judging her efforts and prayers as useless.
The planet itself summons its Whispers, which confront those corrupted by Sephiroth. Each has a purpose to fulfill, and none align with the group's plans. Slowly, they make their way to the sanctuary, where Sephiroth, as he did on the highway, raises once again a wall of fate. This time, Aerith is not there to breach it with her powers, so the group's efforts to penetrate the barrier are in vain. However, when Cloud calls out to Aerith, the dark whispers respond to his call, and a small opening appears before him. Only Cloud manages to cross the barrier.
Everything converges in the fateful moment when a determined Aerith prays from the altar of life in the forgotten capital, the ancient home of the Cetra, in a plea to the planet and the spirits of her Cetra ancestors, begging for their help to stop Sephiroth and thereby protect her friends, loved ones, and the planet itself. Cloud ascends the steps, slowed down by the flow of whispers; while the white ones try to prevent him from approaching, the dark ones try to seize control of his body, but fail. At that moment, Sephiroth descends from above with the intention of killing Aerith. Cloud desperately tries to stop him, but it is there, at that very moment, that everything changes for him.
The mind and soul of Cloud split, his mind sees what Sephiroth wants him to see, which is clearly shown by the black feather from Sephiroth's wing seen before the scene. Cloud, acting as the puppet he is, unaware of what has truly happened, from his point of view is sure that he has stopped Sephiroth, but that's not the case. From the moment Cloud raises his sword against Masamune to prevent it from striking Aeris, his soul connects to the lifestream brimming in the environment. This allows us to distinguish between both moments due to the aura of colors shown around Cloud, with the rainbow effect. Masamune seems to have been repelled, away from Aeris, but when we see reality, upon focusing on the ground, we can see that it has fallen in a completely different place, blood sliding down the blade; the barrier of destiny that prevented the group's entry disappears, allowing them to pass.
While in the physical plane Cloud holds Aerith in his arms, shouting words that are inaudible to us, in the astral plane, his body simply shows his emotions, as he cries inconsolably. It is then that the group arrives and witnesses the harrowing scene: Aerith lies on the ground, completely bloodied and motionless, while Cloud holds her in his arms.
It is then that Aerith, in this plane that only she, Cloud, and Sephiroth can see, caresses Cloud's face and tells him that everything will be fine. Grasping his sword, he stands determined to defeat Sephiroth, who boasts that Cloud is incapable of realizing what has really happened, telling him he understands nothing because he is nothing more than a mere puppet.
One of Jenova's fragments reappears thanks to the sacrifice of the hooded figures, meanwhile Sephiroth continues with his plans, attempting to purge the soul of the Cetra and destroy Cloud's will, who once again rises in rebellion against him, despite being his puppet. Nevertheless, the group manages to defeat the manifestation of Jenova, but then Cloud is taken to another plane once again.
The Meaning of Existence
Zack, whose soul wandered at that moment through the immense infinite void that is the true lifestream, is guided by the Whispers of the planet to Cloud, and the moment he touches his companion's shoulder, their souls resonate. Zack and Cloud stand together side by side, and before them stands Sephiroth, who is willing to do whatever it takes to turn Cloud into the perfect puppet with which to summon Meteor and reincarnate once again in the physical plane.
Both fight with all their might against Sephiroth, but his powers far surpass those of the duo, and so, just as they came into contact, the two worlds separate again, not before entrusting Aerith's safety to Cloud. Zack is banished to another of those thousands of "worlds" that the lifestream harbors, one on the brink of disappearance, where Aerith tries to protect him without revealing herself to him, for his journey is not over, and he is not yet ready to meet her.
Sephiroth uses the knowledge he has gained from the lifestream, his power, and the strength obtained from the dark Whispers, those souls full of resentment, to materialize the bizarre form he will take in the future. Cloud raises his weapon again against this new entity, and as the battle progresses, Sephiroth tears the barrier between worlds once more, temporarily appearing in the physical world, where the rest of the group will face him. At the same time, he also appears before Zack.
On their respective astral planes, Zack and Cloud battle Sephiroth, ultimately defeating the aberrant manifestation of him. Afterward, Sephiroth reveals his true form once more, and as Cloud prepares to confront him one last time, a warm and familiar light fills the space, everything turns white, and they are transported to the center of the planet. Aerith appears before Cloud with the idea of putting an end to all this, thanking him for coming to find her at the sanctuary. Together, they fight against Sephiroth until he decides to retreat, realizing he underestimated the last of the Cetra. Cloud and Aerith clasp hands, surrounded by the whispers of the planet, before she fades away. Sephiroth has shown how dangerous it can be to manipulate the lifestream.
At this point, everything seems to end for Zack, but Aerith rescues him, sending him back to the lifestream from which he had been expelled by Sephiroth, wondering if what he experienced was a dream or reality, hoping that he and Cloud can reunite once more.
Everything returns to normalcy. Sephiroth and Jenova are no longer there, and the group is mourning Aerith. Cloud slowly approaches her, once again enveloped in that rainbow-colored aura, embracing Aerith and asking her to open her eyes. She looks at him and smiles.
The next scene shows the shores of the lake surrounding the sanctuary. The group remains united, somber and sad. Some, like Barret, silently mourn the loss of someone so pure and innocent, someone who sacrificed herself for the planet, for her friends, for her loved ones. Cid, arriving late, doesn't understand what's happening.
While everyone is devastated, Cloud acts indifferent, as if nothing happened. After all, Aerith is by his side; they can now leave this place peacefully. Tifa looks at him completely bewildered, unable to understand his behavior. At that moment, Cloud's subconscious seems to show him what really happened, but his mind chooses to ignore it.
Meanwhile, Cloud remains trapped in an illusory world created by his mind. He has fulfilled his mission, and Aerith remains in the land of the Cetra, from where she will journey back home. Everything is fine; nothing bad has happened.
Shin-Ra, Wutai, Sephiroth, and geopolitical conflicts
Rufus, from the Shin-Ra tower, once again receives the unwelcome visit of Glenn. As they converse, he can't help but wonder if the entire war against Wutai is nothing more than a distraction to keep him away from Sephiroth. It is at this moment that Glenn smiles, and his image distorts. All this time, he had been nothing more than another failed clone of Sephiroth, manipulated by him using Jenova's cells so that, like his mother did in the past, he could manipulate others and lead them into wars, adopting the image of acquaintances and loved ones. Furious, Rufus unloads his entire magazine into the clone.
Sephiroth had used the appearance and memories of Glenn's tormented soul, a soul full of resentment for betrayal, a soul that did not join the planet, and before disappearing, he mocks Rufus one last time.
It's not a goodbye; it's a see you later.
The group prepares to leave the land, meanwhile, they continue to silently mourn the death of Aerith. Cloud, apart from the others while playing with the transparent materia that Aerith gave him, which intentionally seems to show two completely different skies in its reflection, does not notice his companions' sorrow and the reason behind it. After finding the black materia in his hands, he feels that call again; the "reunion" is approaching. Cloud stores the black materia in Zack's sword, then heads to Cid's plane. Remembering Aerith's words, "Don't look at the sky," Cloud repeats them to the confusion of his companions. Cloud, however, can see the breach between planes, the breach that Sephiroth has caused. He announces they will go north, believing Sephiroth will be there. Barret resignedly puts his hand on Cloud's shoulder, entrusting him with the weight of everyone's dreams and hopes. Cloud reassures him that if anyone falls, he'll pick them up. Tifa and Barret exchange glances before boarding the plane.
Both know the reality is very different. Unfortunately for Cloud and the group, Aerith will never be able to accompany them again. Everyone is aware of Cloud's mental state, but none can tell him the truth. They know his mind refuses to accept what just happened, and to prevent his already shattered psyche from falling further into the void, they decide to play along one last time, more aware than ever of the problem Cloud carries and the danger he poses to himself and others.
Cloud says goodbye to Aerith, worried about whether he'll be able to return home safely. She reassures him and asks him to try his best, mentioning she'll pray day and night to stop Meteor. Cloud promises to hurry to defeat Sephiroth, and she tells him she's sure he'll succeed. After that, Cloud boards the plane and takes off with the group, heading into the unknown.
"Farewell..."
With those final words, Aerith bids farewell to her friends and to Cloud, the person she loves, while she continues to watch over them and the world from the lifestream.

Going into detail:

The NPC almost everyone skipped on Cosmo Canyon (And now is famous)
Since it contributes to our theory, I would like to add a conversation that takes place in Cosmo Canyon, which many people seem to have skipped by going straight to the objective. This conversation occurs just as Tifa is about to discuss her theory, and it is quite enlightening.
(Translated from the spanish script, which is the closest to the Japanese script, better than the english translation)
"I am convinced that there is another world where my parents are still alive. I pour myself into my studies with the hope of reaching that other world, and I must say that it is here where I have received the most valuable teachings. Now I know that the lifestream and its spiritual energy are composed of knowledge and memories, although it is not easy to distinguish between the two. Perhaps it is also formed by hopes and dreams. It is possible that spiritual energy does not differentiate between real memories, hopes, and shattered dreams. I think that another world can be revealed to us when, by chance, we come into contact with this energy. This is the interpretation I have arrived at with what I have learned here."
As for Aerith, we have this interview from 2005:
“The words “memetic legacy” are used a lot in the film…In Advent Children, rather than focusing on memories we wanted to show that consciousness is what lives on. We took the ending of the game and expanded on that idea. Even if they’re dead, their consciousness is still with us. As for Cloud…he sees Aerith several times throughout the film. It’s not that he sees her because he feels her presence. He sees her because her consciousness…lives on inside him.” –Tetsuya Nomura; Square Enix
It seems that the scar was already there:
It was stupid of me not to take a look at the most important part of the original game, where, in fact, we can see the sky scar on Cloud's astral world, where he finally gets all the parts of his soul together.
https://youtu.be/X3j66G-xU1s?t=115
https://i.imgur.com/nZHRDgF.jpeg
But why are Marlene/Elmyra/Kyrie/Biggs/Johnny in those worlds? Why aren't Jesse and Wedge there?
As I mentioned several times in the original post, there are several reasons why Marlene, Elmyra, Kyrie, and Biggs appear in those worlds, so I'll try to summarize everything I said in 5 points.
1st: We must consider who are the main beings shaping those worlds, which in this case would be Zack, Biggs, Cloud, and Aerith, all sharing something in common: being acquaintances.
2nd: If those worlds are formed based on memories, knowledge, hopes, and dreams (as well as shattered dreams), this implies that the subconscious of those four can bring a residual image of the soul of these people into those worlds, even if they are not dead, as the lifestream is timeless. Therefore, Marlene could be an old woman in the physical world, but the image that could appear to Barret would be that of the little girl he adores so much.
3rd: The lifestream seems incapable of distinguishing real from unreal events, thus Kyrie, Elmyra, Kyrie, Johnny, and Marlene are formed by an amalgam of emotions and knowledge based on what others remember, as well as a diluted part of themselves, making them act as the counterpart of their real "selves," making them indistinguishable except for the viewer, who notices the changes between both lives.
4th: Does that mean they are alive or not? No, no one in those worlds is "alive" as such; it is an astral world, a spiritual manifestation of something that exists on a physical plane. Therefore, as such, we cannot qualify something "spiritual" as "alive."
5th: But then, where are Wedge and Jesse? Well, the most plausible answer is that they may have already begun to dissolve into the lifestream itself, as we can observe, Wedge himself whispers to Barret through the lifestream, which could indicate that he has already accepted his death and as such, has begun to become part of the planet. Given that Jesse does not appear either, we could say that perhaps she has met the same fate. Additionally, as we already know, Aerith in the novel "On the Way to a Smile" helps "acquaintances" regain their form so that they can help her in her fight against Sephiroth.
What could the transparent materia that Cloud has be for?
As I mentioned earlier in response to this question, it could be that this materia ends up containing Cloud's own memories, thus preventing him from being manipulated by Sephiroth again. In the original game, no explanation is given as to why Cloud is not manipulated by Sephiroth again after restoring his soul, and this would be a way to justify that, acting in a similar way to how Holy works for Aerith.
"I believe Aerith is alive and that two realities were formed"
This is something I completely discard. There are many reasons why Cloud sees what he sees, not only his overexposure to Mako but also his connection by the planet and Aerith to that "energy" that allows him to see part of that astral plane. Additionally, he has been transported to it several times. But the main reason why Cloud sees what he sees, added to all the above, is likely because, as can be seen when Cloud arrives at the Vital Temple, a large amount of lifestream descends from the inner shell. It is a place linked to the lifestream and the planet, and that's why it was used by the Cetra. Therefore, the overexposure to all these elements is what causes this, along with Aerith not wanting Cloud's fragile psyche to shatter, as she knows he has a very fragile heart.
Is Cloud hallucinating?
No, the Aerith that he is seeing is indeed the real one, as Nomura explained. There is a special connection between the two of them. Additionally, at that moment, Aerith has not yet begun her journey to the planet, as she explained to Elmyra when talking about her husband.
That's why Nanaki, whose race has a deep connection to the planet, is able to sense Aerith by his side.
Is Aerith's date world a "dream"?
As I've explained before, it's not quite like that, not as such. We have to consider that this world may be formed by Aerith's own illusions of having a date with Cloud. Therefore, given that they are returning to the planet's embrace at that moment (as explained in the Japanese script), the simple way she has of explaining it to Cloud is that, "Consider this a dream." However, that world doesn't differ at all from the ones we've seen with Zack.
What was Biggs' purpose? Why keep him there if he's going to "die" later?
Biggs is there not only for himself, seeking to give meaning to his own existence, which he considers a failure, but also because he helps Zack on his journey and helps him realize what he was seeking in his life: the ability to make his own decisions. Due to some differences in the English script, this may not be as noticeable. However, when Zack goes to the reactor to find Biggs
The tornado on the Kalm Radio
About the tornado, it's definitely not the same as the one you see in the final battle, because that would imply that half of Midgar ends up ravaged like the one shown in the opening scene, and that's not the case. We can see that the Shin-Ra building tower (where Rufus is) is still standing, whereas in the final battle, that building is completely destroyed. Moreover, when the group enters the final battle by crossing the wall, it's very clear that there is NOTHING beyond it. The road is cut off, it's the end of the road. Yet, upon crossing, they are TURNED AROUND, appearing to be looking back towards Midgar. Then, the tornado mentioned appears and causes damage.
https://youtu.be/tamqQAC696o?t=35859
And when everything goes black and they WAKE UP (does that sound familiar?), that's when the battle takes place in the other world. It's not immediately after crossing the portal (or they would all fall into the void, as I just emphasized). It's when the tornado absorbs them. In fact, lifestream can be seen everywhere as it drags things along.
Crossing one of those portals doesn't immediately change worlds like some people think. Otherwise, when Cloud crosses the portal in Rebirth, he would have been isolated from the rest, and that's not the case.
"Follow the yellow roses" and the white whispers
It's too early to assume that Aerith controls the white whispers. In the same scene in Remake where she talks about her secrets and her origins to the group, she mentions that the whispers tell her to follow the yellow flowers. There are between 6 and 8 appearances of these flowers in Rebirth, specifically towards the end, one of them being the pin she gets during her date (which symbolizes reunion). However, not every time the white whispers appear do the flowers appear, so I can't say for sure if it's Aerith or the will of the planet itself.
The space-time and why I don't believe this is a continuation of the original Final Fantasy VII
From the moment the "space-time" is introduced, we're bringing Einstein's theory of relativity into play and all that it entails. Therefore, the past is past; there's no way to change something that has already happened because doing so would involve falling into the grandfather paradox.
If we base ourselves on the theory of the cyclical universe, nothing would change. Futurama amusingly depicts this in one of its episodes; we would all repeat our lives in an exact 1:1 manner, our choices would be the same, our lives would be identical. That's what this theory dictates, and that's how it's shown in the series. The difference is that in Futurama, those inside the time machine are not affected by the changes that occur in the universe itself, which is why they can retain all the knowledge seen up to the moment of the repetition. However, Sephiroth is an entity that will eventually disappear at one point or another, and if he could never defeat Aerith and the planet, nothing would magically give him the knowledge he had in his past life. Moreover, he wouldn't gain access to knowledge he never had originally. Therefore, I completely dismiss the idea that this is a new Sephiroth and that it's not the original Final Fantasy VII, because if we base ourselves on that, who's to say that the original Final Fantasy VII was the ORIGINAL?
However, Einstein did consider other dimensions, including a spiritual one (Astral), and that's where everything related to the lifestream would be happening.
What do you think the rainbow effect means?
I believe the rainbow effect implies a direct connection to the astral plane, as well as changes occurring in it. In this way, we could interpret other moments when it appears, such as the mini-game in Junon with the Protomateria. The dolls would come to life thanks to the influence of this materia, combined with the essence of those soldiers who died in battles long ago.

Prototypes of theories:

We might have already seen Sephiroth's "Supernova" attack.
Sephiroth's most famous attack, Supernova, which makes absolutely no sense due to its absurdity, has an explanation.
If we consider that Supernova destroys the entire solar system, that means Gaia would disappear too. However, this is not the case. Why? Well, the answer is very simple: because the final battle takes place within the planet, where Holy is held captive by Sephiroth, preventing it from aiding the planet in time.
https://preview.redd.it/6eakrg4nj8yc1.jpg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2e575fee25333be10e8968857668da2899c85bd3
This means that, just like the battle that occurs during the end of Remake, it doesn't take place in the physical world, but in an astral plane, which makes that "absurdity" make sense. The Supernova attack has been refined over the years in its representation, but the closest to what we might have already seen in Rebirth would be in World of Final Fantasy, where we can see Sephiroth summoning a comet that crashes into the ground.
https://youtu.be/fMIgVwsLB3E?t=21
And where have we seen a comet in a world where there are only chunks of rock? During the battle between Zack and Sephiroth in Rebirth, no one tells us that Sephiroth can't perform that attack because he doesn't have his Safer Sephiroth form; they are simply different enemies. However, we have to consider that in Rebirth, we're not fighting against Sephiroth Rebirth, but as the description says, an entity that has taken the form of something that is yet to happen, and it takes that form thanks to the dark echoes, as this is the form Sephiroth takes when he finally transcends, and that hasn't happened yet. So, in the same way, Supernova could be in that world for the same reason.
https://preview.redd.it/sfv7s7toj8yc1.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0114227c9739852f75c114899a248e1f0c4b1f88
~Glenn, Sephiroth, and the War to Come~
Once revealed that Glenn is a soul manipulated by Sephiroth, the question that remains is, what do they intend in Wutai? Well, what I sincerely think is that they seek to create a place filled with death and resentment, and for that, they need a war where innocent people die. Sephiroth seeks to generate more souls full of resentment towards the planet (Black whispers); this will give him more power and control to try to subdue the planet to his will, which, combined with the reunion, would ultimately end with him becoming practically a god who would rule over all existence, which is it's plan.
SufuR is an anagram to RufuS (Which for some strange reason, it's been called Sarruf in some languages)
~Jenova and Loveless?~
During the incursion into the temple of the Cetra, there is a moment when we observe a hologram: three knights fight against the Cetra and subdue their magic. Later, it is mentioned that it is not known if it was the work of the calamity from the sky, but they never understood the excessive hatred that humans showed against them. Later, we see the battle against Jenova, and at the last moment, an angelic image is shown, as if she were a goddess. Loveless (The gathered fragments, because it's incomplete) is about three warriors seeking the "gift of the goddess"; two of them die, and one of them becomes a hero. What if the story is a distortion of what actually happened in reality? What if the enemies the hero defeated were the Cetra, and the goddess was Jenova?
-----
Final comments
Credits: u/TheReal256k (@256k on Twitter) and Juan R. Ufarte (@BolaDeDragon), Rkss from thelifestream forums for pointing out the scar in Cloud's inner world and TurquoiseHammer for the Ultimania translations.
Exclusive theater screening interview: https://youtu.be/hEJDPj6tbY8
Originally written and posted on: https://areajugones.sport.es/videojuegos/te-explicamos-en-detalle-el-final-de-final-fantasy-vii-rebirth/
Original theories posted by 256k all over www.elotrolado.net forums since april 4 2020 Juan R. Ufarte on www.areajugones.com

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.
Historical information found on Shannon O'Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here)). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of O'Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Serial Information

• Episodes: Season 18, Episodes 9-12
• Airdates: 25th October - 15th November 1980
• Doctor: 4th
• Companions: K-9, Romana II, Adric (Matthew Waterhouse)
• Writer: Andrew Smith
• Director: Peter Grimwade
• Producer: John Nathan-Turner
• Script Editor: Christopher H. Bidmead

Review

I'd explain, but I don't think even your maths is good enough. – Romana, to Adric
Like their predecessors did for Season 17, Producer John Nathan-Turner and Script Editor Christopher H. Bidmead wanted to bring in as many new writers as possible for Season 18. As part of this, Bidmead looked through some old story submissions, and found one called The Planet that Slept. Intrigued by the premise, he decided to bring in the writer, named Andrew Smith, in to the BBC offices to refine the story into something that would be suitable for Doctor Who.
I can only imagine his surprise when Andrew Smith turned out to be a 17 year old Doctor Who fan.
Still, Bidmead liked a lot of the imagery of the story, and decided to stick with it anyway. The Planet that Slept went through a lot of development on its way to becoming Full Circle. The final product is remarkably solid for something credited to a 17 year old. But at the same time, you can still kind of tell that the writer was not the most polished. A lot of stuff just feels underexplained or underdeveloped.
Like, there's a lot of emphasis put on the "mistfall" in the first episode. The apparently deadly mistfall is then revealed by the Doctor to be non-toxic, only for us to find out that the real danger are the Marshmen that come out in the mist. And then mistfall is basically never mentioned again. Why the marshmen come out in the mist is never explained, hell, what causes mistfall is never explained. And yet, I can absolutely see what drew Bidmead to this story. That strong imagery can absolutely be felt. And the whole thing is built on a couple twists that are actually quite ingenious.
The setup is this: on Alzarius, many generations ago, a starliner from the planet Terradon crashed. Today, as the Doctor and Romana arrive on the planet, the descendants of that starliner's original crew are still working tirelessly to make the starliner ready for the embarkation, which they can do thanks to the system manuals. The embarkation and system manuals are treated like religious ideas, the system manuals being analogous to holy texts, and the embarkation being a kind of salvation or rapture. Meanwhile, when mistfall comes, the entire population runs from its toxic fumes to hide in the starliner.
And, except for the starliner crashing, none of that is true. I've already mentioned that mistfall isn't the real danger, but rather the marshmen. The big twist is that the "Terradonians" are not in fact from Terradon at all but rather evolved from the marshmen. Like with tachyons in The Leisure Hive and hysteresis in Meglos, this comes from an attempt to put some real science concepts into the story, in this case the field of evolution. Some of the marshmen over time evolved to be suited to the environment of the starliner, and thus began to mirror the appearance of the original Terradonians. Now, I should mention, that this isn't really how evolution works, but in that same vein it's not like the "Tachyonics" presented in Leisure Hive had anything to do with actual tachyons. And it makes for a really impactful twist. In the moment where it's revealed, there's absolutely a feeling of things snapping into place, even if there's still a lot in this story that doesn't make sense.
But there's another twist. The preparations for embarkation? They've been complete for generations. There's just one problem. The system files were corrupted. The Alzarians can put together and take apart every component of the ship as many times as they're asked to. But they do not have the information required to fly the thing. Like the marshmen twist, the moment where the Doctor reveals that the Alzarians "preparations for embarkation" have been little more than repetitive busywork, and the subsequent reveal that the Deciders don't actually know how to fly the ship both hit really well. It's these twin twists that really carry the story.
Before I continue, I should mention that this story is the first in a trilogy set in the sort of alternate universe of "E-Space". The idea of a new story arc for part of Season 18 originated with fan advisor to the show Ian Levine (which, side note, Ian Levine's involvement with Doctor Who fandom is a rabbit hole that I'm not getting into here, but short version, not a great person) who suggested a greater level of connection from story to story, like had existed during the black and white era. Bidmead liked the idea, but JNT, remembering how the limitations of such an arc had troubled the development of The Key to Time season was less certain. The compromise position was to limit the arc to just three stories in the middle of the season. The idea of E-Space was that it would be very small universe, allowing the Doctor greater control over the TARDIS. The concepts of E-Space are a bit weird in this story in particular – what does it even mean to have negative coordinates? And that's not even getting into the weirdness with the scanner that just ties my brain into knots whenever I think about it. But, on balance, this is the E-Space story that does the least with the E-Space concept.
And really, if Full Circle has a flaw it's that it really doesn't do enough with any part of its story. The guest cast in particular feels weirdly lacking. They're all perfectly fine characters. I appreciated the lack of clear villain. Sure you have the marshmen providing an active threat but they're not actually evil. The Deciders – leaders of the Alzarians – feel like they might be villains of the tyrant variety, but in reality they're just trapped by tradition. The most obvious villain is scientist Dexeter, who performs experiments on a mashchild, but even then he's of fairly minor importance. And then you've got the Outlers, a group of teenage rebels who reject the traditions of their people. An interesting group on paper, their rejection of tradition has obvious merits in the story (after all, all the Alzarian traditions are based on lies and falsehoods) but they're also pretty clueless in their own ways. But, I hate to say, almost none of these characters are particularly intriguing in their own right.
There is one that's worth talking about in his own paragraph. Login is introduced midway through episode 1 and, after the death of First Decider Draith, he is appointed a Decider to make up the required trio of Deciders. He's apparently a very well respected man among the people, hence why he was made a Decider. The one wrinkle is that his daughter Keara is one of the Outlers. Through much of the story he's torn between his duty as a Decider and his desire to protect his daughter, and it plays quite well. It also helps that he's generally presented as the most proactive of the three Deciders, which gives him a pretty good presentation overall. Even then he's hardly the deepest character, but he's still a solid enough character.
But if we're talking about characters introduced in this story, we've got to talk about our new companion Adric. Although you wouldn't necessarily know he's a new companion by anything that happens in this story, including how it ends. He serves as the Doctor's primary ally throughout the story, but not in a way that makes him stand out particularly. Adric was designed to be a more vulnerable hero as compared to the DoctoRomana/K-9 trio. Created to be highly intelligent (he's got a badge for mathematical excellence and everything!) and something of a take on the Artful Dodger from Oliver Twist, Adric has a lot of these disparate elements making him up…and will be remembered as one of the least popular companions in the show's history. And look, I don't think Adric is that bad, but there are definitely issues that can be seen from the beginning.
For starters, he's an arrogant little shit. That's honestly fine within the context of a single story, in fact it kind of works for him in a weird way. The fact that, in spite of wanting to join the Outlers, Adric also still sees himself as superior to them an has no problem saying this to their collective faces is weirdly endearing…at least for this story. A bigger issue is honestly Matthew Waterhouse's performance. And look, he was only 18 when he was cast, and had no acting experience. But still the performance, and in fact the performance of all the Outlers, is pretty wooden.
As for our existing companions, they do precious little in the story. That kind of makes sense, as, even if you wouldn't know it from watching the serial, it obviously means that Adric will take up a lot of space. Still, you can definitely see JNT's feeling that the TARDIS team of The DoctoRomana/K-9 was too powerful and needed to be broken up coming through in the last two episodes, where K-9 spends it mostly dismantled in a cave, and Romana spends the episodes incapacitated/being controlled (how I'm not sure, something to do with the spiders that the marshmen and Alzarians evolved from). That's not to say that they're completely out of the picture. And considering Romana is still on something a string of stories that really highlight how great the character is, this hardly does any damage. Also we do open with a really good Romana scene, showing her not wanting to leave the TARDIS and return to Gallifrey despite being ordered back, showing how much she's changed since her debut.
As for the Doctor, while he's more active than his companions in this story, we've really reached the point where there's very little left to say about Tom Baker's 4th Doctor anymore. Baker can largely do a good 4th Doctor in his sleep at this point, and sometimes it feels like he's doing exactly that. The performance is still engaging, because Tom Baker was clearly born to play the Doctor, but it does feel like there's not as much coming through. But, on the whole this is fine. His early relationship with Adric, an odd mix of frustration and admiration of the kid's potential is actually fairly intriguing in its own right. It's probably worth noting that Baker was suffering from an illness, during this time. Initially he refused to speak to a doctor, but eventually he relented, whereupon the illness was diagnosed as a metabolic disease.
I liked Full Circle, but wish it were a bit more. I think you can really tell from how underdeveloped the characters and underexplained certain elements were that it came from a very young writer. Still it had a couple of really good and well-delivered twists, excellent atmosphere and even set up the E-Space stuff pretty well, despite not touching on it much. Full Circle has its flaws, but is a very enjoyable watch all the same.
Score: 7/10

Stray Observations

• Adric's name is an anagram of "Dirac", in reference to English Physicist Paul Dirac, pioneering quantum physicist who predicted the existence of antimatter.
• Andrew Smith would attempt to submit further scripts for Doctor Who, but none of them would be made, and would eventually join the police. He did eventually write a sequel to Full Circle, entitled Mistfall, for Big Finish.
• The idea of Alzarius' coordinates being the negative coordinates of Gallifrey came from John Nathan-Turner. For a time, the planet was even going to be called Yerfillag (that's Gallifrey spelled backwards).
• This story was filmed after the next one, State of Decay. This caused some difficulties as Matthew Waterhouse felt like the version of Adric presented in State of Decay was inconsistent with the version presented here.
• It was around the time of filming of this story that Tom Baker made it clear to the production staff that he wanted to leave Doctor Who. He was unhappy with the changes that John Nathan-Turner was making to the show, wasn't getting along with new co-star Matthew Waterhouse, and was in general just tired of doing Doctor Who (which, after seven seasons, is completely understandable). It didn't help that JNT had informed him he wouldn't be receiving a raise if he decided to stay for Season 19. JNT, it seems, was happy to let Baker go.
• In episode 1, when the Doctor is planning to take Romana back to Gallifrey, he mentions looking forward to seeing Leela and Andred again.
• In episode 1, Romana references that the Doctor fought the Time Lords, to which the Doctor adds "and lost". Presumably, they're referring to the events at the end of The War Games.
• Oddly enough, the credits don't put Adric's name directly after the Doctor and Romana's, like you'd expect for a companion, but instead in like the 4th or 5th slide alongside Dexeter's name.
• In episode 3, The Doctor asks Adric to cross his fingers for luck. Adric has no idea what he means and makes a "t" with his index fingers.

Next Time: E-Space holds many mysteries. And vampires. E-Space holds vampires.

← On the trail of a spirit (2/3)
IN THE QUR'AN > THE CAVE

Crypted golf

Parallels between the game of golf and the story of the companions of the cave:

q-l-b

Return to the section In the cave, where I talked about the Arabic root "q-l-b", meaning to turn, and its phonetic resemblance to the word "club".
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word "golf" itself means club. Also, etymologically speaking, the letter "g" in a word often comes from the /k/ sound, and the letter "f" sometimes comes from the /b/ sound. It is believed that the word "golf" comes from the German word "Kolben" ("mace, club, butt-end of a gun").

The Cave, 18:18, right <-> left

A remarkable thing about Surah n°18 is that the verse that speaks of turning (from the root q-l-b) people from right to left in a kind of loop is Ayah n°18 (noted as 18:18):

18:18 And you would think them awake, while they were asleep. And We turned them to the right and to the left, while their dog stretched his forelegs at the entrance. If you had looked at them, you would have turned from them in flight and been filled by them with terror.
src: Qur'an 18:18

Golf, 18 holes, front 9 <-> back 9

Eighteen-hole courses are traditionally broken down into a "front 9" (holes 1–9) and a "back 9" (holes 10–18). On older courses (especially links courses, like the Old Course at St. Andrews), the holes may be laid out in one long loop, beginning and ending at the clubhouse, and thus the front 9 is referred to on the scorecard as "out" (heading out away from clubhouse) and the back 9 as "in" (heading back in toward the clubhouse). More recent courses (and especially inland courses) tend to be routed with the front 9 and the back 9 each constituting a separate loop beginning and ending at the clubhouse. This is partly for the convenience of the players and the club, as then it is easier to play just a 9-hole round, if preferred, or stop at the clubhouse for a snack between the front 9 and the back 9.
src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golf_course#Design (backup link)

k-l-b

I have already mentioned the phonetic and textual proximity in Ayah 18 of the arabic roots q-l-b (to turn) and k-l-b (dog). Also, we've just seen that the word "golf" is thought to come from the German word "Kolben".

The Cave, forelegs

According to a common lexical understanding of the word "wasid", the expression "bil-wasidi" (at the entrance) used in Ayah 18 indicates that the dog obstructs the entrance to the cave:

18:18 And you would think them awake, while they were asleep. And We turned them to the right and to the left, while their dog stretched his forelegs at the entrance. If you had looked at them, you would have turned from them in flight and been filled by them with terror.
src: Qur'an 18:18

Golf, doglegs

The term dogleg, which refers to the shape of the rear leg of a dog, is used to describe a bend in a golf course that obstructs the view of a hole:

The levels of grass are varied to increase difficulty, or to allow for putting in the case of the green. While many holes are designed with a direct line-of-sight from the teeing area to the green, some holes may bend either to the left or to the right. This is commonly called a "dogleg", in reference to a dog's knee. The hole is called a "dogleg left" if the hole angles leftwards and "dogleg right" if it bends right. Sometimes, a hole's direction may bend twice; this is called a "double dogleg".
src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golf#Golf_course (backup link)

Iron numbers

Number Sequence in Surah 18

Ayah 18:22 relates of a group of people trying to guess a certain number:

18:22 They will say there were three, the fourth of them being their dog; and they will say there were five, the sixth of them being their dog - guessing at the unseen; and they will say there were seven, and the eighth of them was their dog. Say, [O Muhammad], "My Lord is most knowing of their number. None knows them except a few. So do not argue about them except with an obvious argument and do not inquire about them among [the speculators] from anyone."
src: Qur'an 18:22

[+] Later, in Ayah 18:25, "and exceeded by nine" is mentioned. This phrase could well be seen as an addition to the previous sequence:

18:25 And they remained in their cave for three hundred years and exceeded by nine.
src: Qur'an 18:25

• So we have the sequence 3,4,5,6,7 and 8 + 9.
  
• Note the phrase "guessing at the unseen" just after the mention of the number 6, which can be understood to mean that the counts from 3 to 6 were blind assertions. In Arabic the words are "rajman bil-ghaybi" that literally means to throw stones at the unseen. It is a figure of speech for making wild guesses. We can use the term "conjecture" whose Latin root also carries the idea of throwing, com (together) + iacere (to throw).
  

Traditional Golf Irons

Irons have been seen ranging in number from 0 through 12, but the most common number range in the modern iron set is 3 to 9.
src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_(golf)#Numbered_irons (backup link)

[+]

The irons from 5 to 7 are typically called the "mid irons", and are generally used from the fairway and rough for longer approach shots
src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_(golf)#Mid_irons (backup link)

• The most common number range in the modern iron set is 3 to 9.
  
• Note that the irons used to hit the ball away from hazards and closer to the green, in order to have more accurate shots towards the hole afterwards, are typically 5 to 7 irons.
  

Inside out

Perspectives on my own serendipity experience:

It was written

The principle of serendipity is that events of specific interest occur without any conscious effort on your part to bring them about.
My serendipity introduced me to the Simpsons episode with the golf bunker scene. At that time, I didn't even think about the story of the companions of the cave in the Qur'an. It was only later, after going through various subjects (golf > Proteus > serpent > Musa) that I found a synchromystic correspondence between the two.
Note that at the Proteus stage, Surah 18 has entered the chat... my inner chat. Some points in the Proteus story resemble elements of Surah 18, but my decision was not to mention them explicitly.
Now, I'd like to draw your attention to something interesting that just came to me as I was writing the previous sections:

My serendipity	The companions of the cave in Surah 18
The very first scene from The Simpsons that entered the serendipity was the bunker scene. A bunker is a barren ground in the middle of the beautiful green vegetation of a golf course.	The very first explicit mention of the companions of the cave in the whole Qur'an is in Ayah 18:9. That is right after Ayah 18:8, which speaks of barren ground. (⇢ read [18:9] below the table ⬇️)
Later, I made a connection with the scene where Homer turns around with a club in his hand and Ayah 18:18. My curiosity then turned to the scene just before, and I saw something remarkable in connection with the previous ayah, e.g., Ayah 18:17. From there, I discovered a curious case of mimicry regarding these two sources.	Ayah 18:18 tells us about turning people to the right and to the left. In a written copy of the Qur'an, what is to the right are the previous ayahs, because Arabic is written from right to left. And the first ayah "to the right" is Ayah 18:17, which is the beginning of the synchromystic correspondence.*️⃣ (⇢ read [18:17] below the table ⬇️)

^*️⃣In fact, I find that this correspondence coordinates the ideas of "to the right" and "to the left" because, with a few exceptions, for a scene that comes next in the reading direction of the video (i.e., to the right), there corresponds an ayah whose number is incremented (i.e., to the left in Arabic).
---
[18:9]

18:7 Indeed, We have made that which is on the earth adornment for it that We may test them [as to] which of them is best in deed.
18:8 And indeed, We will make that which is upon it [into] a barren ground.
→ 18:9 Or have you thought that the companions of the cave and the inscription were, among Our signs, a wonder?
src: Qur'an 18:[7-9]

"ayatina", from "ayah" in the plural, is the Arabic word translated as "Our signs". Each "verse" of the Qur'an is called an ayah, a sign. The term also refers to a sign in our own reality.
Ayah 18:9 questions the action of presumption (am hasibta) and the sense of wonder ('ajaban) generated by the companions of the cave and "al-Raqim" (translated here as "the inscription"), that are called signs (ayatina).
My personal feeling is that this Ayah 18:9 invites us to learn about the companions of the cave and al-Raqim by avoiding conjecture, while hinting that great signs could be found there. And I think it sets the stage for Ayah 18:17, where the word "ayah" is mentioned again, but in a special way.
---
[18:17]

18:17 And [had you been present], you would see the sun when it rose, inclining away from their cave on the right, and when it set, passing away from them on the left, while they were [laying] within an open space thereof. That was from the signs of Allah. He whom Allah guides is the [rightly] guided, but he whom He leaves astray - never will you find for him a protecting guide.
src: Qur'an 18:17

"That was from the signs of Allah" (dhalika min ayati al-lahi), this is the part where the word ayah is mentioned.
The word dhalika can be seen as an index finger pointing to what it indicates: This, is from the signs of Allah. It refers to "And [had you been present], you would see the sun when it rose, inclining away from their cave on the right, and when it set, passing away from them on the left, while they were [laying] within an open space thereof."
Also, here it's no longer "our signs" (ayatina) but " the signs of Allah" (ayati al-lahi), which adds precision and intensity.

Cypher

Remember, at the beginning of my adventure, the element that introduced me to the Simpsons episode was the name "Steinmetz". I was still in the Bacon/Shakespeare mood, and the Qur'an wasn't involved yet. At least I didn't mention it in my post, but I did make notes in my draft about an idea that came to me from an ayah in the Qur'an. I was thinking about the name Steinmetz, and the first thing I thought of was that it sounds phonetically like "shaytan" (Satan in Arabic) "-mas" (touch in Arabic), the touch of Satan.
There's a ayah (maybe several) in the Qur'an that talks about the touch of Satan. I didn't know the number of the ayah I had in mind, so I did a search and finally found it. It's in Surah 2, it talks about "riba" (often translated as usury), and I didn't find any obvious connection with my serendipity impulse, so I didn't pursue it. I didn't even bother to memorize or write down the number of the ayah (this detail is of slight importance).
Later, I found the, what-I-called, Synchromystic Correspondence. Then I started writing and quickly scanned the Simpsons episode to see if I'd missed any details in the previous scenes. I stopped at the scene where ▶ Homer tries to cheat on his scorecard.
In the scene, there is 👁️‍🗨️ a tee sign in the background indicating the hole number, yardage and par. I transcribe what is written on the sign into this table:

HOLE	1
275	YDS
PAR	3

275, that rings a bell. I mentioned above the ayah whose number I hadn't memorized at the time of Steinmetz (the touch of Satan). I know the number of the surah, it's easy, it's Surah number 2. 2 is usually between 1 and 3. With a little imagination, I can see the table like this:

ayah	surah
-	1
275	[2]
-	3

So I check to see if by any chance Ayah 2:275 isn't the ayah about "riba" that I checked at the time... and as uncanny as it may seem, it is the one! O_O

2:275 Those who consume interest cannot stand [on the Day of Resurrection] except as one stands who is being beaten by Satan into insanity. That is because they say, "Trade is [just] like interest." But Allah has permitted trade and has forbidden interest. So whoever has received an admonition from his Lord and desists may have what is past, and his affair rests with Allah. But whoever returns to [dealing in interest or usury] - those are the companions of the Fire; they will abide eternally therein.
src: Qur'an 2:275

In this translation "al-riba" has been translated as "interest" and "alladhi yatakhabbatuhu al-shaytanu mina al-masi" as "who is being beaten by Satan into insanity" (the word "touch" does not appear explicitly in this translation, but it does in the original Arabic text of the Qur'an).
Note that:

• The Arabic word "riba" comes from the root r-b-w carrying the notions of increasing, exceeding...
• In the little scene I posted above, Homer was told "You know, Homer, the traditional way to cheat in golf is to lower your score". This means that he increased his score in order to cheat.

Also:

• Remember al-Raqim mentioned in Ayah 18:9? The word "Raqim" comes from the root r-q-m, which carries the ideas of inscribing, engraving, recording in writing, numbering, counting, etc.
  
• Homer recording the number of strokes on his scorecard brings to mind the idea of r-q-m.
  

And:

• Remember Ayah 18:9: "Or have you thought that the companions of the cave and the inscription (al-Raqim) were, among Our signs, a wonder?".
  
• The scene with the idea of r-q-m shows a sign (a tee sign) which, when deciphered, amazed me on a personal level. O_O
  

SYNCHRONICITIES

Here's an anthology of the synchronicities I've experienced along the way.

PAUL

In PROTEAN SPIRIT > SERENDIPITY:
I had a continuous period of synchronicity with the name Saul, then an extended period with the name Paul. Saul, Paul, that sounds like a religious thing, I had no knowledge of that subject. Paul the Apostle, before he was called Paul, he was Saul of Tarsus!
That synchronicity invited itself into my serendipity. I was writing this topic from my notes when I got to the point where I was talking about the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Shortly after that I watched the movie Serendipity and in one scene I saw 👁️‍🗨️ this poster.
This is a poster for a play called Six Degrees of Separation by John Guare. It's about a con man named Paul.
In the movie, the main character's name is Jonathan. Jonathan is a biblical figure, son of a king named Saul.

TALKIN' TO ME?

In IN THE QUR'AN > CLUB AND SNAKE > Destiny and Serpent > Tamed serpent:
Reflecting on the serpent, a series of quick searches led me to YouTube videos that presented ways of reading reality close to what I do myself, this was an opportunity to caution me against a lack of humility. It also led me to search about Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka, formerly known as Serendip, from which the word "serendipity" is said to have been derived. We've come full circle!
But there's just one thing... the main city of Sri Lanka... it's Colombo! That's the HaHa moment. My nickname is LtColumbo403 but I think I lived in a reality where the fictional character was Lieutenant Colombo (Mandela Effect), so this spelling is meaningful to me. Right after I'd told myself to remain humble, I felt like I was being teased :D

AT THE DOOR

In IN THE QUR'AN > THE CAVE > In the cave:
At the time of writing detailed notes on the very first ayat of the Synchromystic Correspondence (18:17 and 18:18), I watched the movie The Negotiator (1998).
In ▶ the very first scene of the movie, the negotiator stands behind a door and gives this speech: "Yeah, I like animals better than people sometimes. Especially dogs. Dogs are the best. Every time you come through the door they treat you as if they haven't seen you in a year." I found that this line of dialogue resonated with the story of the dog at the entrance to the cave and the people in it who spent several years there thinking it was just one day.
Then we see 👁️‍🗨️ a shot of a notepad with a list of words, among which two words are clearly distinguishable because they are offset from the arrangement of the lines, the words "golf" and "snakes". Hmm...

LIKE CAT AND DOG

In IN THE QUR'AN > THE CAVE > In the cave > Comparison table:
Since writing my topic was taking much longer than expected and to get back into the mood, I decided to revise some of the sections I had already written. In the part where I talk about the dog at the entrance to the cave, I decided to remove a little reference to Anubis about 👁️‍🗨️ the outstretched forelegs.
Which got me thinking again about a subject: I'm pretty sure that Anubis was once, in a past reality of mine, a cat! It's a "Mandela Effect" for me, but I doubt many share it.
Yes, I can hear you from here, don't worry; Anubis is the canine and Bastet is the feline. That's true today, but there's a discrepancy with my memory. Anubis used to be a cat for me, and Bastet is a recent addition to my knowledge base.
I even noticed an uncanny resemblance to a word used in the ayah about the dog; Ayah 18:18:

18:18 And you would think them awake, while they were asleep. And We turned them to the right and to the left, while their dog stretched his forelegs at the entrance. If you had looked at them, you would have turned from them in flight and been filled by them with terror.
src: Qur'an 18:18

In Arabic: wakalbuhum (while their dog) basitun (stretched) dhira'ayhi (his two forelegs) bil-wasidi (at the entrance).
The term "basitun" is directly next to the term for dog ("kalb"). Basitun is a declension of the word "basit", which resembles Bastet, also known as Bast or Baset.
[Addendum] I just realized that the word "anubis" is in the English phonetic transcription "basitun": b.a.s.i.t.u.n = a.n.u.b.i.s + t.
At the time, I was watching season 2 of the TV series Early Edition, I was up to episode 15.
The subject of the episode is an exhibition in a museum of objects related to a (fictional) ancient Egyptian figure called Akenubis. The plot is that the main figure in the exhibition should actually be a cat statue representing Bastet. So the exhibition is finally changed ▶ from "TheTreasures of Akenubis" to "The Treasures of Bastet".
Strange synchronicity, if you ask me.

TAKE!

In IN THE QUR'AN > THE CAVE > Who's the Boss? > Comparison table:
About this part of Ayah 18:21...

18:21 Said those who prevailed in the matter, "We will surely take [for ourselves] over them a masjid^4️⃣."
src: Qur'an 18:21

...I wrote:

^4️⃣I don't have a clear idea of what the sentence means. The term masjid means a station of prostration, it is used to refer to mosques for example because the faithful stop there to practice prayers composed of prostrations (sujud).

I was reflecting on the wording "lanattakhidhanna alayhim masjidan", which literally means "We will surely take [for ourselves] over them [the young men] a masjid". I was wondering: Why the use of the verb to take? What does it mean in practice? and so on.
During the same period, I was watching The Prisoner (1967) on a daily basis and had reached the last episode, episode 17 "Fall Out". [Spoiler Alert!] Here I come across ▶ a completely burlesque scene that seems to parody my own musings on the phrase "to take a station of prostration". o_O

KILL THE COUNT

In IN THE QUR'AN > THE CAVE > Back to fitness:
This is the part about Ayah 18:22. The very enigmatic ayah about a group of people trying to determine an accurate count.
I followed a thread of thought about this ayah that led me to think about the establishment of the Roman calendar in ancient Rome. So when I heard Bart talking about an "Italian" "count" in the ▶ video excerpt it rang a bell.
At the same time, I was watching episodes of Season 2 of Alfred Hitcock Presents. Eventually I came to a particular story in the series, as the plot spans three episodes. Titled "I Killed the Count", episodes 25, 26 and 27 deal with the murder of an Italian count (!).
Even stranger, the plot revolves around the increasing number of people accusing themselves of the murder. From one, to two, to three... and maybe even more. This seems to echo Ayah 18:22, where the count goes from 3 and 4 to 5 and 6, then 7 and 8.

GREEN

In IN THE QUR'AN > THE CAVE > Surrounded > The good place:
As I was writing the "The Good Place" section, I felt a sense of relief as I thought I was nearing the end. I realized something with the couch gag from the Simpsons episode, but I just decided to write it down somewhere, maybe I'd write a few lines in the final version of the post:
▶ The Simpsons - couch gag; The Simpson family is sitting on the couch and their skin seems to have turned green in the dark.
It was still in the back of my mind though.
[True story] Afterwards, I was driving a sibling. Just as we were about to go under a tunnel, she had a moment of nostalgia and told me about when we were kids and we used to go under that same tunnel. I had a vague recollection, but according to her, we used to say we turned into the Hulk because the tunnel lights turned our skin green in the dark!
Outwardly, I acted as if nothing had happened. Inwardly, "Yeah, good one...".

FALLOW LEADS

Leads that I didn't pursue further. I'll deliver some of it here:

AUGUST CARL

Mechanically too, I had typed Steinmetz on Google and I came across Charles Proteus Steinmetz, American mathematician and electrical engineer. I notice that his real name is “Karl August Rudolph Steinmetz”.
August, that sounds familiar to me. I look at Charles Lindbergh's page and yes that's right, his name is "Charles Augustus Lindbergh".

• Speaking of synchronicities, I noticed that Carl Gustav Jung, the academic reference on the subject, had a name close to Carl August. Gustav is the anagram of August if we consider the 'v' as a 'u'.
  
• Francis Bacon died early in the reign of Charles I. Charles I as King is by definition august.
  
• A month and a half after the start of writing this topic, Prince Charles became King.
  

MÉLI-MÉLO

Second look

I noticed that the original poster of the Reddit thread that started it all (who is a man I think) is called Emilieduchatatelet1706 (It seems like the account no longer exists). I had to look twice because I could have sworn that his username was Emileduchatelet-????- before.

Was Shakespeare a woman?

Yesterday I was watching the first video again where Columbo looks at the picture on the wall. On the same wall I see a portrait that looks familiar, it seemed to me that it was supposed to represent Shakespeare (but maybe not, maybe it's Cervantes :D).

I was trying to identify the portrait on the wall^*️⃣ and I typed "Shakespeare" on Google Images.
In front of me I see portraits of Shakespeare that I had never seen before (for me he was older on the portraits... in a distant reality). And on some he looks quite effeminate. I see an image that points to the same site as the article on Lindbergh, I click.
I land on an article in French titled "Shakespeare était-il une femme ?" (Was Shakespeare a woman?). The line under the title says "The good thing about this character that little is known about is that he could well be anyone.".
A link refers to an article in English, Was Shakespeare a Woman?. Too long; didn't read. I see just that it concerns a certain Emilia Bassano. I don't go any further.
^*️⃣It's probably neither Shakespeare, nor Cervantes, nor anyone... maybe just a prop of a Shakespearized McGoohan.

Gender issue

Émilie du Châtelet and Emilia (Bassano) Lanier both involved in a context of gender confusion... I "hmm" with my face.
A quick search led me to find something a bit ironic, in 👁️‍🗨️ this image the highlighted part says "Gender issues (Institut Emile du Chatelet)".
---
Also, I read about Amelia Earhart here and there, I don't really know her. So I look at pictures of her, first reaction: "Wow, she looks like a female Lindbergh!".
And indeed, according to Wikipedia, she was called 👁️‍🗨️ Lady Lindy, in reference to her physical resemblance to Lindbergh.
---
Later, I wrote about the similarity between ▶ a scene from the Simpsons episode and ▶ a scene from the movie Serendipity where two characters are hit on the head with a golf club.
(Male) To me, Krusty is a kind of disguised representation of Homer. (Female) And the character of Eve is the counterpart to the character played by Kate Beckinsale in the movie Serendipity. I had this male-female duality in mind when I had the intuition to look at the name of the actress who plays Eve; Molly Shannon!
---
Emilie, Emilia, Amelia, Molly...

STONECUTTERS

Etymology

I was looking for the etymology of the name Steinmetz, I landed on this page, STEINMETZ Origin of surname:

Literally "stone cuttedresser" or "mason" in German

Conspiracy

It reminded me of The Stonecutters song^*️⃣ from The Simpsons.
^*️⃣To me the line "Who makes Steve Guttenberg, a star?" doesn't go unnoticed.

Synchronicity

Shortly after on Retconned someone (u/LuisRic0) posts about the "Was Jesus a carpenter or a stonemason?" Mandela Effect:

2. Jesus is no longer a carpenter, he was actually a stonemason.

TIME TO CONCLUDE

I don't know how to conclude, so I'll just write a personal reflection:
At first I thought I'd write this post in three days at worst, but it took me almost 21 months. Little by little, sentence by sentence, I managed to transcribe a condensed version of my experience and see my initial impulse come to fruition.
I didn't let the momentum slip after the initial enthusiasm, but spread it out over time. I switched to a different temporality since time seems to go by much faster down here. And 21 months later, it's almost as if it was yesterday.

(originally posted on JustSyncIntuit original post)
I warn you that this post will be long and in three parts. It's the transcription of an episode of serendipity that will take us, starting with Charles Lindbergh, then through Shakespeare and other points of interest, on the trail of a spirit.
TL;DR: Here's a 👁️‍🗨️ table of contents.
⚠️ This post was intended as a follow-up to Identity Crisis, which I published on Retconned on July 24, 2022. The wave of coincidences hadn't stopped with the publication of the post.
I had hoped to publish the post before August 2022, but it didn't work out as expected.
However, I persevered and took the necessary time to finish it, which ended up being 21 months! During that time, I made additional connections and the topic's content expanded.
First, I'll repost here what I already wrote in the Identity Crisis thread and then add the rest of the story:
​
^{⌄ original posts ⌄}

IDENTITY CRISIS

I would like to talk about an entertaining little experience triggered by the post: Charles Lindburg or Lindbergh? by Emilieduchatelet1706.

Doubtful ressemblance

Seeing images of Charles Lindbergh immediately came to mind a certain resemblance to Patrick McGoohan.
Charles Lindbergh vs Patrick McGoohan
Well, I readily admit that it's not obvious, and I don't even dare to defend my case, but it's the rest of the story that matters.
Patrick McGoohan, plane… immediately, there too, I had in mind the episode of Columbo, Identity Crisis (s05e03).
Patrick McGoohan plays Nelson Brenner, the killer, and Columbo discovers that he was an aviator in his life full of travels and experiences. Columbo calls him a hero, much like Charles Lindbergh.
I think it's even likely that the character of Nelson Brenner was inspired by Lindbergh.

Fun Fact

Fun fact: As I write these lines I mechanically typed on Google "charles lindbergh" hero, and on the first link I clicked on I see this.
In the image Lindbergh stands in front of his plane, the Spirit of St.Louis. The article talks about his multiple lives. The first line, which I have highlighted, says: “Who the hell was Charles Lindbergh, whose multiple avatars spanned the entire history of the 20th century?”
…and Columbo is there in the corner.
In this video that I had prepared and uploaded before starting to write my post (and therefore before coming across the article), Columbo asks Brenner if he is the one standing in front of a plane (a “T33… SilverStar”) in a photo in black and white.
And ends with “Yes I seem to remember reading about that”... I find it a bit funny in this new context.

Steinmetz

In the episode there is another shady character whose true identity remains a mystery, he's called Steinmetz.
Mechanically too, I had typed Steinmetz on Google and I came across Charles Proteus Steinmetz, American mathematician and electrical engineer. I notice that his real name is “Karl August Rudolph Steinmetz”.
August, that sounds familiar to me. I look at Charles Lindbergh's page and yes that's right, his name is "Charles Augustus Lindbergh".
-> Identity Crisis
 
These entertaining little coincidences…

TAPESTRY OF LIFE

Small personal theory

I'm beginnig to imagine a small personal theory (a small hypothesis to guide my thoughts). That of a new birth in adulthood (rather around 40 years old than 20 years old). In any case a threshold in life.
In this vision, the genetic heritage is replaced by the knowledge of life before, that is to say before the threshold, and wisdom.
The reborn person by groping their way, configures (and reconfigures), (re)connects the data of the previous life to adapt to the (true) life to come. In a better way of their formatting before in the previous matrix with its so-called genetic program and the teaching received. And it's as if there was an underlying program of knowledge and wisdom from the start that tutored their life. A better program.

Not so personal?

I'm not a Christian... but a quick quick look at Wikipedia shows that I may not be far from the concept of born again that we hear about here and there.

Jesus replied, "Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again."
"How can someone be born when they are old?" Nicodemus asked.
"Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother's womb to be born!" Jesus answered, "Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit."
— Gospel of John, John chapter 3, verses 3–5, NIV[8]

Water and Spirit

In the previous image of the article -> Spirit of St.Louis is the name of the plane, and in front of the magazine cover with Columbo there is a magazine cover where it is written: La guerre de l'eau est déclarée (Water war is declared).

ALL IN ONE

Yesterday I was watching the first video again where Columbo looks at the picture on the wall. On the same wall I see a portrait that looks familiar, it seemed to me that it was supposed to represent Shakespeare (but maybe not, maybe it's Cervantes :D).
I've heard of a theory that Shakespeare didn't exist and that in fact Francis Bacon (the philosopher) was the author of his work. I have since associated the "idea" of Shakespeare with Francis Bacon.
Well, this theory is completely in line with the subject of Steinmetz in the Columbo episode. But we see that the portrait of Bacon does not at all resemble that of Shakespeare: Shakespeare vs Francis Bacon.
But Steinmetz himself? Francis Bacon vs Charles Steinmetz.
Wonderful! Bravo. Bravo.
​
^{⌄ follow-up ⌄}
⚠️ A note about the use of the word similarity in this post:
When the word 'similarity' is used in this post, it means that the elements being compared share the same idea, but are not necessarily identical copies. For example, something that moves from right to left can be seen as different from something that moves from left to right, but at the level of idea there may be a resemblance.

THE SIMPSONS

▶ The Simpsons - Steinmetz; Very soon after posting, doing a quick search on Steinmetz I come across a scene from The Simpsons episode "Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield (s07e14)":

Homer as Steinmetz

Homer Simpson challenges Mister Burns to a game of golf. Burns as usual is mistaken about the identity of Homer Simpson. He calls him... Steinmetz!

Club sandwich

Homer says "Mmm... open-faced club sand wedge" and puts the word 'club' right before 'sand wedge'. The result is the phrase "club sandwich" (~ sand wedge). And one of the traditional ingredients in a club sandwich is bacon.

SHAKESPEARE

Interesting documentary

I don't know how I landed on the topic The Shakespeare Hole that I had already seen in the past but it was exactly the right time to remind myself of a documentary on Shakespeare that I had forgotten in a mental watch-later-list.
It is an interesting documentary, Cracking the Shakespeare Code (2017), about hidden codes in the work of Shakespeare with in particular the thesis that Sir Francis Bacon would be one of the authors. Viewable here.
This time I watched it! And... this lack of unfamiliarity... I don't remember ever watching it before but I didn't feel any sense of novelty. Hmmm...
For those interested, there are other hypotheses regarding Shakespeare's authorship.

Shakespeare the Bard

Shakespeare is known as "the Bard". The word bard, which means poet, also has other definitions, a piece of armor or ornament on a war horse and by analogy... bacon placed on game or meat before roasting.

COLUMBO

Sometimes the synchronicities come completely out of the blue, sometimes I have an intuition of where to focus my interest. Trivially I told myself that I was going to watch the episode of Columbo talking about Shakespeare, Dagger of the Mind.
In this episode several elements seem to gently taunt my flow of thoughts but it is obviously not the easiest things to explain. However I can relate a really curious series of synchronicities concerning golf and the Simpsons episode I mentioned above:

Welcome to the club

▶ Columbo in the club; Columbo while in London is invited to what I guess is called a gentlemen's club. There he makes two remarks:

• "When you said 'club', I thought you meant a country club or a health club."
  
• "When you said 'tea', I was afraid we were gonna get nothin’ but those tiny sandwiches."
  

Note the vocabulary used which, more or less subtly, refers to golf (while the episode has nothing to do with golf at all). A country club is commonly referred to simply as a golf club. And with ▶ the first video of The Simpsons freshly in mind, the words club, tea, and sandwich resonate like synchronicity. Especially with the formulation used by Columbo which adds a note of irony. Tea sounds exactly like tee, and sandwich for sand wedge.
▶ The Simpsons in the club; In the same episode of The Simpsons, the Simpson family is invited to a country club. Which echoes Columbo's words.
We will even notice that Homer and the kids remain at one entrance to the room while Marge is invited in among the other women. Which is the opposite of the Columbo video where the butler says: "Why do you think we keep the ladies out, sir?".

Pearls and balls

▶ Columbo - pearls; Note that in the scene a character throws a round white object which hits the head of another character who then lies on the ground in the middle of white pearls.
▶ The Simpsons - balls; Here a character hits a golf ball in the air which hits the head of another character who then lies on the ground before kneeling and finding himself in the middle of white balls.

Ruse

⚠️ SPOILER WARNING: Skip this one if you don't want to know how Columbo confounded the culprits just yet.
▶ Columbo - subterfuge; Without formal proof, Columbo discreetly puts a white bead in an umbrella which allows the culprits to be confounded by their reactions.
Also note these three points:

• A character who verifies that the bead is genuine: "Why, it’s the same. Exactly the same."
  
• A character who accuses another of trickery: "He put it there. Can’t you see? Before we came. He put it there!"
  
• A private discussion between two characters with the idea of keeping the subterfuge secret: "Off the record, eh?"
  

▶ The Simpsons - cheating; Smithers puts a golf ball on the green near the hole to make Mr. Burns win.
And note the same three points:

• A character who verifies that the balls are genuine: "These aren't reptile eggs."
  
• A character who accuses another of trickery: "You've been cheating. No matter where Mr. Burns hits the ball you put a fresh one on the green."
  
• A private discussion between two characters with the idea of keeping the cheating secret: "If you would keep quiet about the alleged decades of cheating I'm sure he'd support your application for membership tonight."
  

"sir" scenes

▶ The Simpsons - sir; Homer says: "For once, maybe someone will call me "sir" without adding, "you're making a scene"."
▶ Columbo - sir; A character hears himself called "sir" and arguably, he's making a scene...

BACON

When you're in a synchronistic wave, the interest isn't just the thrill of the coincidences, but also the fact that you learn about areas you weren't so interested in. And I found out more than enough about bacon. So much so that I saw references to bacon everywhere. It was no longer of interest.

Bacon overload

I wanted to move on, which was immediately comically reflected in the synchronicities as I came across these two clips of the Simpsons (from other episodes) that say it all:
▶ The Simpsons - Butter your bacon: "So, you think you know better than this family, huh? Well, as long as you're in my house, you'll do what I do and believe what I believe. So, butter your bacon!" :-)
▶ The Simpsons - The bacon man: The clip I saw at the time on the Internet only included the part where Homer takes his order. So without any mention of Shakespeare. But already the fact that Homer presents the "portrait" of the omelette and says that we could add a "bacon nose", "bacon hair", "bacon mustache", etc... that made me chuckle. It gave me the impression that they were mimicking what I was doing just before with the portraits of Shakespeare, Francis Bacon and Charles Steinmetz.
It was more than a month later while writing this post and creating the video extract that I noticed that Shakespeare was mentioned just before! "I'm getting a sweatshirt with Shakespeare's face on it!". So we have a mention of a portrait of Shakespeare followed by a "portrait of bacon".

Bacon numbers

And the Internet bombarded me with bacon number this, bacon number that... what!? This profusion of bacon has even been prophesied; they made a law about that, the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon!
I quote:

In a January 1994 interview with Premiere magazine, Kevin Bacon mentioned while discussing the film The River Wild that "he had worked with everybody in Hollywood or someone who's worked with them."
Following this, a lengthy newsgroup thread which was headed "Kevin Bacon is the Center of the Universe" appeared.

→ L.O.L.

PROTEAN SPIRIT

PROTEUS

I overlooked something about Steinmetz the first time, he's called Charles PROTEUS Steinmetz:

Steinmetz Americanized his name to Charles Steinmetz. He chose Proteus as his middle name—the nickname his professors in Germany had affectionately bestowed upon him in recognition of the shape-shifting sea god. In Greek mythology, Proteus was a cave-dwelling prophetic old man who always returned to his human form—that of a hunchback. Steinmetz thoroughly enjoyed the comparison.
src: Charles Proteus Steinmetz, the Wizard of Schenectady

Shakespeare and Proteus

It's no surprise Shakespeare and Bacon, prolific writers, talked about Proteus. On the Proteus wikipedia page there is this quote:

I can add colours to the chameleon,
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,
And set the murderous Machiavel to school.
Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?
Tut, were it farther off, I'll pluck it down.
— William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part Three, Act III, Scene ii

I wanted to know what the last line meant and a quick search led me to this Reddit post, What does Richard/Gloucester mean when he says "Tut, were it farther off, I’ll pluck it down.". This is a transcription of a scene from the film Richard III (1955).
In the video they refer to, the original monologue from the play Richard III is mixed with parts of a monologue by the same character (Richard III) from another play, Henry IV (the one in the Wikipedia quote):

[…]

And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,

[…]
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
[…]
I'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall,
I'll slay more gazers than the basilisk;
I'll play the orator as well as Nestor,
Deceive more slyly than Ulysses could,
And, like a Sinon, take another Troy.

I can add colours to the chameleon,
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,

And set the murd'rous Machiavel to school
Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?
Tut! were it further off, I'll pluck it down.

Bacon and Proteus

Francis Bacon also speaks of Proteus in "De sapientia veterum, liber", translated into English in "Of the Wisdom of the Ancients". It's short and interesting to read.

XIII. Proteus Or Matter

PROTEUS, the poets tell us, was herdsman to Neptune. He was an old man and a prophet; a prophet moreover of the very first order, and indeed thrice excellent; for he knew all three,—not the future only, but likewise the past and the present; insomuch that besides his power of divination, he was the messenger and interpreter of all antiquity and all secrets. His dwelling was under an immense cave. There it was his custom every day at noon to count his flock of seals and then go to sleep. And if any one wanted his help in any matter, the only way was first to secure his hands with handcuffs, and then to bind him with chains. Whereupon he on his part, in order to get free, would turn himself into all manner of strange shapes—fire, water, wild beasts, &c., till at last he returned again to his original shape.
The sense of this fable relates, it would seem, to the secrets of nature and the conditions of matter. For under the person of Proteus, Matter—the most ancient of all things, next to God—is meant to be represented. Now matter has its habitation under the vault of heaven, as under a cave. And it may be called the servant of Neptune, inasmuch as all the operation and dispensation of matter is effected principally in liquids.
[…]
src: https://www.bartleby.com/82/13.html

Spirit and Water

Consonant values

I noticed that the consonants of P-r-o-t-e-u-s are the same as those of S-p-i-r-i-t.

Matter of fact

The sense of this fable relates, it would seem, to the secrets of nature and the conditions of matter. For under the person of Proteus, Matter—the most ancient of all things, next to God—is meant to be represented. Now matter has its habitation under the vault of heaven, as under a cave. And it may be called the servant of Neptune, inasmuch as all the operation and dispensation of matter is effected principally in liquids.

Proteus, associated with matter, emerges from the sea^*️⃣ and sleeps in a cave, changing shape in between if one tries to capture him. The example of water is notoriously the first that comes to mind when we talk about the states of matter.
^*️⃣Note that in the video ▶ The Simpsons - The bacon man there is mention of returning to the ocean ("So, here for a snack before they roll you back into the ocean?"), in context I find that line a little ironic.

Capture the Serendipity

He can foretell the future, but, in a mytheme familiar to several cultures, will change his shape to avoid doing so; he answers only to those who are capable of capturing him.
src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteus

At this point I reflect on how easily connections come to us when we are in this particular position of observer, whether we like it or not. This is the principle of serendipity. Very strange word which I bet many have trouble pronouncing correctly and which for me has changed during my life (Mandela Effect). By the way, I had posted about this on Retconned in the past and when looking for my post I preferred to go through Google rather than the Reddit search engine.
This is where I get suggested a movie, Serendipity (2001), but it's a romantic comedy, I'm not too into that, I'm barely interested. But my instinct tells me it's not there by chance. If I don't watch the film, I will still look into the director's filmography.
Peter Chelsom; I'm looking at the list of movies he's directed. Not very funky at first glance but there are one or two key words, one or two imagery elements that have been involved in previous synchronicities for me that kept me from abandoning this lead in a hurry. I ended up clicking on the link of the movie The Mighty (1998).

The Old Man of the Sea

A young boy suffering from a debilitating disease causing deformities rides 👁️‍🗨️ on the shoulders of another, stronger boy. The young boy lends his insight while the other boy lends his strength.
It reminds me of the story of the Old Man of the Sea:

• In The Odyssey: Book IV, Homer (the other Homer) calls Proteus the wise Old Man of the Sea.
  
• The Old Man of the Sea in the tales of Sinbad the Sailor depicts 👁️‍🗨️ an old man clinging to a man on his shoulders.
  

While writing these lines

While writing these lines from my notes (more than a month later^*️⃣) I distractedly watched the Serendipity movie trailer... and there I see a golf scene that I hadn't noticed before (probably because I had not watched the entire video). I decide to watch the film.
^*️⃣Also while writing these lines I mentally played with the word "serendipity"; seren-dipidy, seren-pididy, etc. Which inevitably reminded me of ▶ this scene from a music video where Ben Stiller struggles to find the right name for rapper Puff Daddy. The plot coincidentally revolves around a golf ball...

SERENDIPITY

The plot of the film is a story of a character who seeks the identity of another, enough to entice him to pursue serendipity. Reminds me of the content of this post.
Moreover, there are several factual elements that suggest that resemblance:

Amazing likeness

Knockoff

▶ Serendipity - Prada:

• Purchase of a product (supposedly) from a luxury fashion house brand: "Ooh! Prada!" ... "I'll take it."
  
• Discussion about a knockoff product name: "Eve, that's a horrific knockoff. At least my fake says Prada. Yours says Prado."
  
• Discussion about altering the product a bit to make it more presentable: "Yeah? Well, I say for a dollar, I can buy a little magic marker and fix that."
  

▶ The Simpsons - Chanel:

• Purchase of a product (supposedly) from a luxury fashion house brand: "Oh, it's beautiful. Can it be a real Chanel?" ... "All right, I will buy it."
  
• Discussion about knockoff product names: "Don't be a sap, Dad. These are just crappy knock-offs." | "I know a genuine Panaphonics when I see it. And look, there's Magnetbox and Sorny."
  
• Discussion about altering the product a bit to make it more presentable: "Homer, please, I have to alter this suit so it looks different for tomorrow." | "Just slap some bumper stickers on it."
  

Golf

▶ The Simpsons - golf; To put into context, we had in the episode of The Simpsons:

• A character hit in the head by a golf club.
  
• A character hit in the head by a golf ball.
  
• A multitude of white balls scattered on the green.
  

[+]

• A character acknowledging a buried feeling: "I knew my kind wasn't welcome here."

▶ Serendipity - golf; The film Serendipity uses the synchronicity of golf as an factor of serendipity. And note these points:

• A character hit in the head by a golf ball.
  
• A character hit in the head by a golf club.
  
• A multitude of white balls scattered on a green floor.
  

[+] just a tiny bit of interpretation here:

• A character saying: "I think I swallowed a filling". Which I think is to be understood in the context of the film as "I think I swallowed a feeling".

Serpent and Destiny

Furthermore, the serpent is, in my humble opinion, an underlying theme in the film. I will avoid going too deep into the interpretations and just quickly relate a few noteworthy elements:

Serpent of old

▶ Serendipity - Cool Yule; The film opens with the song "Cool Yule" by Louis Armstrong with the Commanders. With these lyrics:

♪ And you gonna flip when Old Saint Nick ♪
♪ Plays a lick on a peppermint stick ♪

Old Nick could mean the Devil, Old Serpent, etc. An interesting discussion about the adjective "Old" in Old Nick.

Another one bites the dust

▶ Serendipity - crawling; A scene where the main character, Jonathan Trager (black jacket), is crawling on the ground.

In order, garter.

▶ Serenditpy - T-r-a-g-e-r; Jonathan Trager, T-r-a-g-e-r. Trager anagram of garter. Like a garter snake. But also a vocabulary used for a bride (which is in line with the apparent theme of the film).
Reminds me of something I jotted down somewhere...
...there it is:

Notably the pendant suspended on a ribbon from around Bacon’s neck, which in earlier portraits was deliberately concealed in such a way as to suggest a secret, is in this picture shown exposed, revealing itself as the Lesser George and thereby suggesting or indicating that Bacon was a secret Knight of the Garter, or had the right to be one.
src: https://www.fbrt.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Portraits_of_Francis_Bacon.pdf#page=6

Some infos on The Order of the Garter.

Snake Club

The presence of the word snake in Beckinsale (the name of the main actress) is obvious. But, I was interested in the consonants of the word and I saw there the term Snake Club.
I explain, we remove the vowels and: b.c.k.n.s.l → s.n.k c.l.b
I do a Google search on "snake club". I come across a page on a movie site that talks about what looks like a Z movie titled "Snake Club: Revenge of the Snake Woman". I scroll down a bit and come across 👁️‍🗨️ this poster showing Kate Beckinsale herself in the first place of movie recommendations.

IN THE QUR'AN

CLUB AND SNAKE

At the time of the synchronicities with the Simpsons episode, I was interested in the symbolism of golf. The golf club is reminiscent of a farm tool, the hoe, I kept that in mind. With the intrusion of the serpent into my serendipity, I was instead led to think about the story of the staff of Musa (Moses) in the Qur'an. Especially in Surah 20, Ta-Ha:

20:17 And what is that in your right hand, O Moses?"
20:18 He said, "It is my staff; I lean upon it, and I bring down leaves for my sheep and I have therein other uses."
20:19 [Allah] said, "Throw it down, O Moses."
20:20 So he threw it down, and thereupon it was a snake, moving swiftly.
20:21 [Allah] said, "Seize it and fear not; We will return it to its former condition.
- Translation: Sahih International ⇠ I'll keep this translation throughout the topic.
src: Qur'an 20:[17-21]

This new perspective has taken the serendipity in a interesting direction. A scene described in this same surah caught my attention; Musa and Harun confront the magicians summoned by Pharaoh:

20:61 Moses said to the magicians summoned by Pharaoh, "Woe to you! Do not invent a lie against Allah or He will exterminate you with a punishment; and he has failed who invents [such falsehood]."
20:62 So they disputed over their affair among themselves and concealed their private conversation.
20:63 They said, "Indeed, these are two magicians who want to drive you out of your land with their magic and do away with your most exemplary way.
20:64 So resolve upon your plan and then come [forward] in line. And he has succeeded today who overcomes."
20:65 They said, "O Moses, either you throw or we will be the first to throw."
20:66 He said, "Rather, you throw." And suddenly their ropes and staffs seemed to him from their magic that they were moving [like snakes].
20:67 And he sensed within himself apprehension, did Moses.
20:68 Allah said, "Fear not. Indeed, it is you who are superior.
20:69 And throw what is in your right hand; it will swallow up what they have crafted. What they have crafted is but the trick of a magician, and the magician will not succeed wherever he is."
20:70 So the magicians fell down in prostration. They said, "We have believed in the Lord of Aaron and Moses."
20:71 [Pharaoh] said, "You believed him before I gave you permission. Indeed, he is your leader who has taught you magic. So I will surely cut off your hands and your feet on opposite sides, and I will crucify you on the trunks of palm trees, and you will surely know which of us is more severe in [giving] punishment and more enduring."
20:72 They said, "Never will we prefer you over what has come to us of clear proofs and [over] He who created us. So decree whatever you are to decree. You can only decree for this worldly life.
20:73 Indeed, we have believed in our Lord that He may forgive us our sins and what you compelled us [to do] of magic. And Allah is better and more enduring."
src: Qur'an 20:[61-73]

I spotted other similarities:

Intrigue and trick

➔ Qur'an 20:[61-63]; Note this:

• A secret confabulation: 20:62 "So they disputed over their affair among themselves and concealed their private conversation."
  
• Characters implying that other characters intend to use a trick: 20:63 "They said, "Indeed, these are two magicians who want to drive you out of your land with their magic and do away with your most exemplary way."^*️⃣
  

^*️⃣The magicians repeat here the words of Pharaoh a few ayat ("verses") before: "He said, "Have you come to us to drive us out of our land with your magic, O Moses?" Qur'an 20:57.
▶ Columbo - subterfuge (spoiler!); We have already mentioned these points in ALL IN ONE > COLUMBO > Ruse:

• A character who accuses another of trickery: "He put it there. Can’t you see? Before we came. He put it there!"
  
• A private discussion between two characters with the idea of keeping the subterfuge secret: "Off the record, eh?"
  

▶ The Simpsons - cheating; Same here:

• A character who accuses another of trickery: "You've been cheating. No matter where Mr. Burns hits the ball you put a fresh one on the green."
  
• A private discussion between two characters with the idea of keeping the cheating secret: "If you would keep quiet about the alleged decades of cheating I'm sure he'd support your application for membership tonight."
  

By hook or by crook

➔ Qur'an 20:[64-73]; Note this:

• An injunction to throw a staff...: 20:69 "And throw what is in your right hand; [...]"
  
• ...that will swallow up an illusion (objects that move like snakes; see 20:66): 20:69 "[...] it will swallow up what they have crafted. What they have crafted is but the trick of a magician, and the magician will not succeed wherever he is."
  
• Characters thrown down to prostration^1️⃣: 20:70 "So the magicians fell down in prostration. They said, "We have believed in the Lord of Aaron and Moses.""
  
• Characters acknowledging a hidden feeling: 20:73 "Indeed, we have believed in our Lord that He may forgive us our sins and what you compelled us^2️⃣ [to do] of magic. And Allah is better and more enduring.""
  

^1️⃣The magicians didn't just fell down, they were thrown down: fa-ul'qiya [So were thrown down] al-saharatu [the magicians] sujjadan [prostrating].Note that this is the same verb, in the passive form, as in the previous ayah in which Musa was asked to throw down his staff: wa-alqi [And throw] ma [what] fi [in] yaminika [your right hand]. This emphasizes the correlation between the two events.
^2️⃣The Arabic word "akrahtana" translated as "you compelled us" carries a notion of aversion. That is to say, to be compelled to something that generates aversion. Here the magicians finally admit their true feelings towards Pharaoh's orders.
▶ The Simpsons - golf; Notice the similarities:

• A character throws a golf club...
  
• ...which hits another character who then falls face down.
  
• The latter acknowledges a buried feeling: "I knew my kind wasn't welcome here."
  

▶ The Simpsons - cheating; ~ Swallowing fake snakes:
The club-thrower character puts a whole golf ball in his mouth, chews it, and proves that "these aren't reptile eggs".
▶ Serendipity - golf; Note the same similarities here:

• A character is hit by a golf club and then falls face down.
  
• The same character who says: "I think I swallowed a filling". Which I think is to be understood in the context of the film as "I think I swallowed a feeling"^*️⃣.
  

^*️⃣Note also the use of the verb "to swallow".

Destiny and Serpent

Divine measure

In Surah Ta-Ha Allah commands Musa to meet Pharaoh, reminding him of the divine interventions in the key stages of his existence on Earth:

20:36 [Allah] said, "You have been granted your request, O Moses.
20:37 And We had already conferred favor upon you another time,
20:38 When We inspired to your mother what We inspired,
20:39 [Saying], 'Cast him into the chest and cast it into the river, and the river will throw it onto the bank; there will take him an enemy to Me and an enemy to him.' And I bestowed upon you love from Me that you would be brought up under My eye.
20:40 [And We favored you] when your sister went and said, 'Shall I direct you to someone who will be responsible for him?' So We restored you to your mother that she might be content and not grieve. And you killed someone, but We saved you from retaliation and tried you with a [severe] trial. And you remained [some] years among the people of Madyan. Then you came [here] at the decreed time, O Moses.
20:41 And I produced you for Myself.
20:42 Go, you and your brother, with My signs and do not slacken in My remembrance.
20:43 Go, both of you, to Pharaoh. Indeed, he has transgressed.
src: Qur'an 20:[36-43]

All of these life events brought Musa to the ad hoc place and time: 20:40 "[...] Then you came [here] at the decreed time, O Moses.".

Tamed serpent

A sinuous life course alternating between threat and benevolence though not turning away from fate. Symbolized from the outset by the abandonment of the baby on the river, a river that snakes its way to destination. And marked at the appointed moment by the transformation of the staff into a serpent before it is returned to its former condition.
End of part 1/3.
The continuation is in On the trail of a spirit (2/3) →

← On the trail of a spirit (2/3)
IN THE QUR'AN > THE CAVE

Crypted golf

Parallels between the game of golf and the story of the companions of the cave:

q-l-b

Return to the section In the cave, where I talked about the Arabic root "q-l-b", meaning to turn, and its phonetic resemblance to the word "club".
According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word "golf" itself means club. Also, etymologically speaking, the letter "g" in a word often comes from the /k/ sound, and the letter "f" sometimes comes from the /b/ sound. It is believed that the word "golf" comes from the German word "Kolben" ("mace, club, butt-end of a gun").

The Cave, 18:18, right <-> left

A remarkable thing about Surah n°18 is that the verse that speaks of turning (from the root q-l-b) people from right to left in a kind of loop is Ayah n°18 (noted as 18:18):

18:18 And you would think them awake, while they were asleep. And We turned them to the right and to the left, while their dog stretched his forelegs at the entrance. If you had looked at them, you would have turned from them in flight and been filled by them with terror.
src: Qur'an 18:18

Golf, 18 holes, front 9 <-> back 9

Eighteen-hole courses are traditionally broken down into a "front 9" (holes 1–9) and a "back 9" (holes 10–18). On older courses (especially links courses, like the Old Course at St. Andrews), the holes may be laid out in one long loop, beginning and ending at the clubhouse, and thus the front 9 is referred to on the scorecard as "out" (heading out away from clubhouse) and the back 9 as "in" (heading back in toward the clubhouse). More recent courses (and especially inland courses) tend to be routed with the front 9 and the back 9 each constituting a separate loop beginning and ending at the clubhouse. This is partly for the convenience of the players and the club, as then it is easier to play just a 9-hole round, if preferred, or stop at the clubhouse for a snack between the front 9 and the back 9.
src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golf_course#Design (backup link)

k-l-b

I have already mentioned the phonetic and textual proximity in Ayah 18 of the arabic roots q-l-b (to turn) and k-l-b (dog). Also, we've just seen that the word "golf" is thought to come from the German word "Kolben".

The Cave, forelegs

According to a common lexical understanding of the word "wasid", the expression "bil-wasidi" (at the entrance) used in Ayah 18 indicates that the dog obstructs the entrance to the cave:

18:18 And you would think them awake, while they were asleep. And We turned them to the right and to the left, while their dog stretched his forelegs at the entrance. If you had looked at them, you would have turned from them in flight and been filled by them with terror.
src: Qur'an 18:18

Golf, doglegs

The term dogleg, which refers to the shape of the rear leg of a dog, is used to describe a bend in a golf course that obstructs the view of a hole:

The levels of grass are varied to increase difficulty, or to allow for putting in the case of the green. While many holes are designed with a direct line-of-sight from the teeing area to the green, some holes may bend either to the left or to the right. This is commonly called a "dogleg", in reference to a dog's knee. The hole is called a "dogleg left" if the hole angles leftwards and "dogleg right" if it bends right. Sometimes, a hole's direction may bend twice; this is called a "double dogleg".
src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golf#Golf_course (backup link)

Iron numbers

Number Sequence in Surah 18

Ayah 18:22 relates of a group of people trying to guess a certain number:

18:22 They will say there were three, the fourth of them being their dog; and they will say there were five, the sixth of them being their dog - guessing at the unseen; and they will say there were seven, and the eighth of them was their dog. Say, [O Muhammad], "My Lord is most knowing of their number. None knows them except a few. So do not argue about them except with an obvious argument and do not inquire about them among [the speculators] from anyone."
src: Qur'an 18:22

[+] Later, in Ayah 18:25, "and exceeded by nine" is mentioned. This phrase could well be seen as an addition to the previous sequence:

18:25 And they remained in their cave for three hundred years and exceeded by nine.
src: Qur'an 18:25

• So we have the sequence 3,4,5,6,7 and 8 + 9.
  
• Note the phrase "guessing at the unseen" just after the mention of the number 6, which can be understood to mean that the counts from 3 to 6 were blind assertions. In Arabic the words are "rajman bil-ghaybi" that literally means to throw stones at the unseen. It is a figure of speech for making wild guesses. We can use the term "conjecture" whose Latin root also carries the idea of throwing, com (together) + iacere (to throw).
  

Traditional Golf Irons

Irons have been seen ranging in number from 0 through 12, but the most common number range in the modern iron set is 3 to 9.
src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_(golf)#Numbered_irons (backup link)

[+]

The irons from 5 to 7 are typically called the "mid irons", and are generally used from the fairway and rough for longer approach shots
src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_(golf)#Mid_irons (backup link)

• The most common number range in the modern iron set is 3 to 9.
  
• Note that the irons used to hit the ball away from hazards and closer to the green, in order to have more accurate shots towards the hole afterwards, are typically 5 to 7 irons.
  

Inside out

Perspectives on my own serendipity experience:

It was written

The principle of serendipity is that events of specific interest occur without any conscious effort on your part to bring them about.
My serendipity introduced me to the Simpsons episode with the golf bunker scene. At that time, I didn't even think about the story of the companions of the cave in the Qur'an. It was only later, after going through various subjects (golf > Proteus > serpent > Musa) that I found a synchromystic correspondence between the two.
Note that at the Proteus stage, Surah 18 has entered the chat... my inner chat. Some points in the Proteus story resemble elements of Surah 18, but my decision was not to mention them explicitly.
Now, I'd like to draw your attention to something interesting that just came to me as I was writing the previous sections:

My serendipity	The companions of the cave in Surah 18
The very first scene from The Simpsons that entered the serendipity was the bunker scene. A bunker is a barren ground in the middle of the beautiful green vegetation of a golf course.	The very first explicit mention of the companions of the cave in the whole Qur'an is in Ayah 18:9. That is right after Ayah 18:8, which speaks of barren ground. (⇢ read [18:9] below the table ⬇️)
Later, I made a connection with the scene where Homer turns around with a club in his hand and Ayah 18:18. My curiosity then turned to the scene just before, and I saw something remarkable in connection with the previous ayah, e.g., Ayah 18:17. From there, I discovered a curious case of mimicry regarding these two sources.	Ayah 18:18 tells us about turning people to the right and to the left. In a written copy of the Qur'an, what is to the right are the previous ayahs, because Arabic is written from right to left. And the first ayah "to the right" is Ayah 18:17, which is the beginning of the synchromystic correspondence.*️⃣ (⇢ read [18:17] below the table ⬇️)

^*️⃣In fact, I find that this correspondence coordinates the ideas of "to the right" and "to the left" because, with a few exceptions, for a scene that comes next in the reading direction of the video (i.e., to the right), there corresponds an ayah whose number is incremented (i.e., to the left in Arabic).
---
[18:9]

18:7 Indeed, We have made that which is on the earth adornment for it that We may test them [as to] which of them is best in deed.
18:8 And indeed, We will make that which is upon it [into] a barren ground.
→ 18:9 Or have you thought that the companions of the cave and the inscription were, among Our signs, a wonder?
src: Qur'an 18:[7-9]

"ayatina", from "ayah" in the plural, is the Arabic word translated as "Our signs". Each "verse" of the Qur'an is called an ayah, a sign. The term also refers to a sign in our own reality.
Ayah 18:9 questions the action of presumption (am hasibta) and the sense of wonder ('ajaban) generated by the companions of the cave and "al-Raqim" (translated here as "the inscription"), that are called signs (ayatina).
My personal feeling is that this Ayah 18:9 invites us to learn about the companions of the cave and al-Raqim by avoiding conjecture, while hinting that great signs could be found there. And I think it sets the stage for Ayah 18:17, where the word "ayah" is mentioned again, but in a special way.
---
[18:17]

18:17 And [had you been present], you would see the sun when it rose, inclining away from their cave on the right, and when it set, passing away from them on the left, while they were [laying] within an open space thereof. That was from the signs of Allah. He whom Allah guides is the [rightly] guided, but he whom He leaves astray - never will you find for him a protecting guide.
src: Qur'an 18:17

"That was from the signs of Allah" (dhalika min ayati al-lahi), this is the part where the word ayah is mentioned.
The word dhalika can be seen as an index finger pointing to what it indicates: This, is from the signs of Allah. It refers to "And [had you been present], you would see the sun when it rose, inclining away from their cave on the right, and when it set, passing away from them on the left, while they were [laying] within an open space thereof."
Also, here it's no longer "our signs" (ayatina) but " the signs of Allah" (ayati al-lahi), which adds precision and intensity.

Cypher

Remember, at the beginning of my adventure, the element that introduced me to the Simpsons episode was the name "Steinmetz". I was still in the Bacon/Shakespeare mood, and the Qur'an wasn't involved yet. At least I didn't mention it in my post, but I did make notes in my draft about an idea that came to me from an ayah in the Qur'an. I was thinking about the name Steinmetz, and the first thing I thought of was that it sounds phonetically like "shaytan" (Satan in Arabic) "-mas" (touch in Arabic), the touch of Satan.
There's a ayah (maybe several) in the Qur'an that talks about the touch of Satan. I didn't know the number of the ayah I had in mind, so I did a search and finally found it. It's in Surah 2, it talks about "riba" (often translated as usury), and I didn't find any obvious connection with my serendipity impulse, so I didn't pursue it. I didn't even bother to memorize or write down the number of the ayah (this detail is of slight importance).
Later, I found the, what-I-called, Synchromystic Correspondence. Then I started writing and quickly scanned the Simpsons episode to see if I'd missed any details in the previous scenes. I stopped at the scene where ▶ Homer tries to cheat on his scorecard.
In the scene, there is 👁️‍🗨️ a tee sign in the background indicating the hole number, yardage and par. I transcribe what is written on the sign into this table:

HOLE	1
275	YDS
PAR	3

275, that rings a bell. I mentioned above the ayah whose number I hadn't memorized at the time of Steinmetz (the touch of Satan). I know the number of the surah, it's easy, it's Surah number 2. 2 is usually between 1 and 3. With a little imagination, I can see the table like this:

ayah	surah
-	1
275	[2]
-	3

So I check to see if by any chance Ayah 2:275 isn't the ayah about "riba" that I checked at the time... and as uncanny as it may seem, it is the one! O_O

2:275 Those who consume interest cannot stand [on the Day of Resurrection] except as one stands who is being beaten by Satan into insanity. That is because they say, "Trade is [just] like interest." But Allah has permitted trade and has forbidden interest. So whoever has received an admonition from his Lord and desists may have what is past, and his affair rests with Allah. But whoever returns to [dealing in interest or usury] - those are the companions of the Fire; they will abide eternally therein.
src: Qur'an 2:275

In this translation "al-riba" has been translated as "interest" and "alladhi yatakhabbatuhu al-shaytanu mina al-masi" as "who is being beaten by Satan into insanity" (the word "touch" does not appear explicitly in this translation, but it does in the original Arabic text of the Qur'an).
Note that:

• The Arabic word "riba" comes from the root r-b-w carrying the notions of increasing, exceeding...
• In the little scene I posted above, Homer was told "You know, Homer, the traditional way to cheat in golf is to lower your score". This means that he increased his score in order to cheat.

Also:

• Remember al-Raqim mentioned in Ayah 18:9? The word "Raqim" comes from the root r-q-m, which carries the ideas of inscribing, engraving, recording in writing, numbering, counting, etc.
  
• Homer recording the number of strokes on his scorecard brings to mind the idea of r-q-m.
  

And:

• Remember Ayah 18:9: "Or have you thought that the companions of the cave and the inscription (al-Raqim) were, among Our signs, a wonder?".
  
• The scene with the idea of r-q-m shows a sign (a tee sign) which, when deciphered, amazed me on a personal level. O_O
  

SYNCHRONICITIES

Here's an anthology of the synchronicities I've experienced along the way.

PAUL

In PROTEAN SPIRIT > SERENDIPITY:
I had a continuous period of synchronicity with the name Saul, then an extended period with the name Paul. Saul, Paul, that sounds like a religious thing, I had no knowledge of that subject. Paul the Apostle, before he was called Paul, he was Saul of Tarsus!
That synchronicity invited itself into my serendipity. I was writing this topic from my notes when I got to the point where I was talking about the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Shortly after that I watched the movie Serendipity and in one scene I saw 👁️‍🗨️ this poster.
This is a poster for a play called Six Degrees of Separation by John Guare. It's about a con man named Paul.
In the movie, the main character's name is Jonathan. Jonathan is a biblical figure, son of a king named Saul.

TALKIN' TO ME?

In IN THE QUR'AN > CLUB AND SNAKE > Destiny and Serpent > Tamed serpent:
Reflecting on the serpent, a series of quick searches led me to YouTube videos that presented ways of reading reality close to what I do myself, this was an opportunity to caution me against a lack of humility. It also led me to search about Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka, formerly known as Serendip, from which the word "serendipity" is said to have been derived. We've come full circle!
But there's just one thing... the main city of Sri Lanka... it's Colombo! That's the HaHa moment. My nickname is LtColumbo403 but I think I lived in a reality where the fictional character was Lieutenant Colombo (Mandela Effect), so this spelling is meaningful to me. Right after I'd told myself to remain humble, I felt like I was being teased :D

AT THE DOOR

In IN THE QUR'AN > THE CAVE > In the cave:
At the time of writing detailed notes on the very first ayat of the Synchromystic Correspondence (18:17 and 18:18), I watched the movie The Negotiator (1998).
In ▶ the very first scene of the movie, the negotiator stands behind a door and gives this speech: "Yeah, I like animals better than people sometimes. Especially dogs. Dogs are the best. Every time you come through the door they treat you as if they haven't seen you in a year." I found that this line of dialogue resonated with the story of the dog at the entrance to the cave and the people in it who spent several years there thinking it was just one day.
Then we see 👁️‍🗨️ a shot of a notepad with a list of words, among which two words are clearly distinguishable because they are offset from the arrangement of the lines, the words "golf" and "snakes". Hmm...

LIKE CAT AND DOG

In IN THE QUR'AN > THE CAVE > In the cave > Comparison table:
Since writing my topic was taking much longer than expected and to get back into the mood, I decided to revise some of the sections I had already written. In the part where I talk about the dog at the entrance to the cave, I decided to remove a little reference to Anubis about 👁️‍🗨️ the outstretched forelegs.
Which got me thinking again about a subject: I'm pretty sure that Anubis was once, in a past reality of mine, a cat! It's a "Mandela Effect" for me, but I doubt many share it.
Yes, I can hear you from here, don't worry; Anubis is the canine and Bastet is the feline. That's true today, but there's a discrepancy with my memory. Anubis used to be a cat for me, and Bastet is a recent addition to my knowledge base.
I even noticed an uncanny resemblance to a word used in the ayah about the dog; Ayah 18:18:

18:18 And you would think them awake, while they were asleep. And We turned them to the right and to the left, while their dog stretched his forelegs at the entrance. If you had looked at them, you would have turned from them in flight and been filled by them with terror.
src: Qur'an 18:18

In Arabic: wakalbuhum (while their dog) basitun (stretched) dhira'ayhi (his two forelegs) bil-wasidi (at the entrance).
The term "basitun" is directly next to the term for dog ("kalb"). Basitun is a declension of the word "basit", which resembles Bastet, also known as Bast or Baset.
[Addendum] I just realized that the word "anubis" is in the English phonetic transcription "basitun": b.a.s.i.t.u.n = a.n.u.b.i.s + t.
At the time, I was watching season 2 of the TV series Early Edition, I was up to episode 15.
The subject of the episode is an exhibition in a museum of objects related to a (fictional) ancient Egyptian figure called Akenubis. The plot is that the main figure in the exhibition should actually be a cat statue representing Bastet. So the exhibition is finally changed ▶ from "TheTreasures of Akenubis" to "The Treasures of Bastet".
Strange synchronicity, if you ask me.

TAKE!

In IN THE QUR'AN > THE CAVE > Who's the Boss? > Comparison table:
About this part of Ayah 18:21...

18:21 Said those who prevailed in the matter, "We will surely take [for ourselves] over them a masjid^4️⃣."
src: Qur'an 18:21

...I wrote:

^4️⃣I don't have a clear idea of what the sentence means. The term masjid means a station of prostration, it is used to refer to mosques for example because the faithful stop there to practice prayers composed of prostrations (sujud).

I was reflecting on the wording "lanattakhidhanna alayhim masjidan", which literally means "We will surely take [for ourselves] over them [the young men] a masjid". I was wondering: Why the use of the verb to take? What does it mean in practice? and so on.
During the same period, I was watching The Prisoner (1967) on a daily basis and had reached the last episode, episode 17 "Fall Out". [Spoiler Alert!] Here I come across ▶ a completely burlesque scene that seems to parody my own musings on the phrase "to take a station of prostration". o_O

KILL THE COUNT

In IN THE QUR'AN > THE CAVE > Back to fitness:
This is the part about Ayah 18:22. The very enigmatic ayah about a group of people trying to determine an accurate count.
I followed a thread of thought about this ayah that led me to think about the establishment of the Roman calendar in ancient Rome. So when I heard Bart talking about an "Italian" "count" in the ▶ video excerpt it rang a bell.
At the same time, I was watching episodes of Season 2 of Alfred Hitcock Presents. Eventually I came to a particular story in the series, as the plot spans three episodes. Titled "I Killed the Count", episodes 25, 26 and 27 deal with the murder of an Italian count (!).
Even stranger, the plot revolves around the increasing number of people accusing themselves of the murder. From one, to two, to three... and maybe even more. This seems to echo Ayah 18:22, where the count goes from 3 and 4 to 5 and 6, then 7 and 8.

GREEN

In IN THE QUR'AN > THE CAVE > Surrounded > The good place:
As I was writing the "The Good Place" section, I felt a sense of relief as I thought I was nearing the end. I realized something with the couch gag from the Simpsons episode, but I just decided to write it down somewhere, maybe I'd write a few lines in the final version of the post:
▶ The Simpsons - couch gag; The Simpson family is sitting on the couch and their skin seems to have turned green in the dark.
It was still in the back of my mind though.
[True story] Afterwards, I was driving a sibling. Just as we were about to go under a tunnel, she had a moment of nostalgia and told me about when we were kids and we used to go under that same tunnel. I had a vague recollection, but according to her, we used to say we turned into the Hulk because the tunnel lights turned our skin green in the dark!
Outwardly, I acted as if nothing had happened. Inwardly, "Yeah, good one...".

FALLOW LEADS

Leads that I didn't pursue further. I'll deliver some of it here:

AUGUST CARL

Mechanically too, I had typed Steinmetz on Google and I came across Charles Proteus Steinmetz, American mathematician and electrical engineer. I notice that his real name is “Karl August Rudolph Steinmetz”.
August, that sounds familiar to me. I look at Charles Lindbergh's page and yes that's right, his name is "Charles Augustus Lindbergh".

• Speaking of synchronicities, I noticed that Carl Gustav Jung, the academic reference on the subject, had a name close to Carl August. Gustav is the anagram of August if we consider the 'v' as a 'u'.
  
• Francis Bacon died early in the reign of Charles I. Charles I as King is by definition august.
  
• A month and a half after the start of writing this topic, Prince Charles became King.
  

MÉLI-MÉLO

Second look

I noticed that the original poster of the Reddit thread that started it all (who is a man I think) is called Emilieduchatatelet1706 (It seems like the account no longer exists). I had to look twice because I could have sworn that his username was Emileduchatelet-????- before.

Was Shakespeare a woman?

Yesterday I was watching the first video again where Columbo looks at the picture on the wall. On the same wall I see a portrait that looks familiar, it seemed to me that it was supposed to represent Shakespeare (but maybe not, maybe it's Cervantes :D).

I was trying to identify the portrait on the wall^*️⃣ and I typed "Shakespeare" on Google Images.
In front of me I see portraits of Shakespeare that I had never seen before (for me he was older on the portraits... in a distant reality). And on some he looks quite effeminate. I see an image that points to the same site as the article on Lindbergh, I click.
I land on an article in French titled "Shakespeare était-il une femme ?" (Was Shakespeare a woman?). The line under the title says "The good thing about this character that little is known about is that he could well be anyone.".
A link refers to an article in English, Was Shakespeare a Woman?. Too long; didn't read. I see just that it concerns a certain Emilia Bassano. I don't go any further.
^*️⃣It's probably neither Shakespeare, nor Cervantes, nor anyone... maybe just a prop of a Shakespearized McGoohan.

Gender issue

Émilie du Châtelet and Emilia (Bassano) Lanier both involved in a context of gender confusion... I "hmm" with my face.
A quick search led me to find something a bit ironic, in 👁️‍🗨️ this image the highlighted part says "Gender issues (Institut Emile du Chatelet)".
---
Also, I read about Amelia Earhart here and there, I don't really know her. So I look at pictures of her, first reaction: "Wow, she looks like a female Lindbergh!".
And indeed, according to Wikipedia, she was called 👁️‍🗨️ Lady Lindy, in reference to her physical resemblance to Lindbergh.
---
Later, I wrote about the similarity between ▶ a scene from the Simpsons episode and ▶ a scene from the movie Serendipity where two characters are hit on the head with a golf club.
(Male) To me, Krusty is a kind of disguised representation of Homer. (Female) And the character of Eve is the counterpart to the character played by Kate Beckinsale in the movie Serendipity. I had this male-female duality in mind when I had the intuition to look at the name of the actress who plays Eve; Molly Shannon!
---
Emilie, Emilia, Amelia, Molly...

STONECUTTERS

Etymology

I was looking for the etymology of the name Steinmetz, I landed on this page, STEINMETZ Origin of surname:

Literally "stone cuttedresser" or "mason" in German

Conspiracy

It reminded me of The Stonecutters song^*️⃣ from The Simpsons.
^*️⃣To me the line "Who makes Steve Guttenberg, a star?" doesn't go unnoticed.

Synchronicity

Shortly after on Retconned someone (u/LuisRic0) posts about the "Was Jesus a carpenter or a stonemason?" Mandela Effect:

2. Jesus is no longer a carpenter, he was actually a stonemason.

TIME TO CONCLUDE

I don't know how to conclude, so I'll just write a personal reflection:
At first I thought I'd write this post in three days at worst, but it took me almost 21 months. Little by little, sentence by sentence, I managed to transcribe a condensed version of my experience and see my initial impulse come to fruition.
I didn't let the momentum slip after the initial enthusiasm, but spread it out over time. I switched to a different temporality since time seems to go by much faster down here. And 21 months later, it's almost as if it was yesterday.

I warn you that this post will be long and in three parts. It's the transcription of an episode of serendipity that will take us, starting with Charles Lindbergh, then through Shakespeare and other points of interest, on the trail of a spirit.
TL;DR: Here's a 👁️‍🗨️ table of contents.
⚠️ This post was intended as a follow-up to Identity Crisis, which I published on Retconned on July 24, 2022. The wave of coincidences hadn't stopped with the publication of the post.
I had hoped to publish the post before August 2022, but it didn't work out as expected.
However, I persevered and took the necessary time to finish it, which ended up being 21 months! During that time, I made additional connections and the topic's content expanded.
First, I'll repost here what I already wrote in the Identity Crisis thread and then add the rest of the story:
​
^{⌄ original posts ⌄}

IDENTITY CRISIS

I would like to talk about an entertaining little experience triggered by the post: Charles Lindburg or Lindbergh? by Emilieduchatelet1706.

Doubtful ressemblance

Seeing images of Charles Lindbergh immediately came to mind a certain resemblance to Patrick McGoohan.
Charles Lindbergh vs Patrick McGoohan
Well, I readily admit that it's not obvious, and I don't even dare to defend my case, but it's the rest of the story that matters.
Patrick McGoohan, plane… immediately, there too, I had in mind the episode of Columbo, Identity Crisis (s05e03).
Patrick McGoohan plays Nelson Brenner, the killer, and Columbo discovers that he was an aviator in his life full of travels and experiences. Columbo calls him a hero, much like Charles Lindbergh.
I think it's even likely that the character of Nelson Brenner was inspired by Lindbergh.

Fun Fact

Fun fact: As I write these lines I mechanically typed on Google "charles lindbergh" hero, and on the first link I clicked on I see this.
In the image Lindbergh stands in front of his plane, the Spirit of St.Louis. The article talks about his multiple lives. The first line, which I have highlighted, says: “Who the hell was Charles Lindbergh, whose multiple avatars spanned the entire history of the 20th century?”
…and Columbo is there in the corner.
In this video that I had prepared and uploaded before starting to write my post (and therefore before coming across the article), Columbo asks Brenner if he is the one standing in front of a plane (a “T33… SilverStar”) in a photo in black and white.
And ends with “Yes I seem to remember reading about that”... I find it a bit funny in this new context.

Steinmetz

In the episode there is another shady character whose true identity remains a mystery, he's called Steinmetz.
Mechanically too, I had typed Steinmetz on Google and I came across Charles Proteus Steinmetz, American mathematician and electrical engineer. I notice that his real name is “Karl August Rudolph Steinmetz”.
August, that sounds familiar to me. I look at Charles Lindbergh's page and yes that's right, his name is "Charles Augustus Lindbergh".
-> Identity Crisis
 
These entertaining little coincidences…

TAPESTRY OF LIFE

Small personal theory

I'm beginnig to imagine a small personal theory (a small hypothesis to guide my thoughts). That of a new birth in adulthood (rather around 40 years old than 20 years old). In any case a threshold in life.
In this vision, the genetic heritage is replaced by the knowledge of life before, that is to say before the threshold, and wisdom.
The reborn person by groping their way, configures (and reconfigures), (re)connects the data of the previous life to adapt to the (true) life to come. In a better way of their formatting before in the previous matrix with its so-called genetic program and the teaching received. And it's as if there was an underlying program of knowledge and wisdom from the start that tutored their life. A better program.

Not so personal?

I'm not a Christian... but a quick quick look at Wikipedia shows that I may not be far from the concept of born again that we hear about here and there.

Jesus replied, "Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again."
"How can someone be born when they are old?" Nicodemus asked.
"Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother's womb to be born!" Jesus answered, "Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit."
— Gospel of John, John chapter 3, verses 3–5, NIV[8]

Water and Spirit

In the previous image of the article -> Spirit of St.Louis is the name of the plane, and in front of the magazine cover with Columbo there is a magazine cover where it is written: La guerre de l'eau est déclarée (Water war is declared).

ALL IN ONE

Yesterday I was watching the first video again where Columbo looks at the picture on the wall. On the same wall I see a portrait that looks familiar, it seemed to me that it was supposed to represent Shakespeare (but maybe not, maybe it's Cervantes :D).
I've heard of a theory that Shakespeare didn't exist and that in fact Francis Bacon (the philosopher) was the author of his work. I have since associated the "idea" of Shakespeare with Francis Bacon.
Well, this theory is completely in line with the subject of Steinmetz in the Columbo episode. But we see that the portrait of Bacon does not at all resemble that of Shakespeare: Shakespeare vs Francis Bacon.
But Steinmetz himself? Francis Bacon vs Charles Steinmetz.
Wonderful! Bravo. Bravo.
​
^{⌄ follow-up ⌄}
⚠️ A note about the use of the word similarity in this post:
When the word 'similarity' is used in this post, it means that the elements being compared share the same idea, but are not necessarily identical copies. For example, something that moves from right to left can be seen as different from something that moves from left to right, but at the level of idea there may be a resemblance.

THE SIMPSONS

▶ The Simpsons - Steinmetz; Very soon after posting, doing a quick search on Steinmetz I come across a scene from The Simpsons episode "Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield (s07e14)":

Homer as Steinmetz

Homer Simpson challenges Mister Burns to a game of golf. Burns as usual is mistaken about the identity of Homer Simpson. He calls him... Steinmetz!

Club sandwich

Homer says "Mmm... open-faced club sand wedge" and puts the word 'club' right before 'sand wedge'. The result is the phrase "club sandwich" (~ sand wedge). And one of the traditional ingredients in a club sandwich is bacon.

SHAKESPEARE

Interesting documentary

I don't know how I landed on the topic The Shakespeare Hole that I had already seen in the past but it was exactly the right time to remind myself of a documentary on Shakespeare that I had forgotten in a mental watch-later-list.
It is an interesting documentary, Cracking the Shakespeare Code (2017), about hidden codes in the work of Shakespeare with in particular the thesis that Sir Francis Bacon would be one of the authors. Viewable here.
This time I watched it! And... this lack of unfamiliarity... I don't remember ever watching it before but I didn't feel any sense of novelty. Hmmm...
For those interested, there are other hypotheses regarding Shakespeare's authorship.

Shakespeare the Bard

Shakespeare is known as "the Bard". The word bard, which means poet, also has other definitions, a piece of armor or ornament on a war horse and by analogy... bacon placed on game or meat before roasting.

COLUMBO

Sometimes the synchronicities come completely out of the blue, sometimes I have an intuition of where to focus my interest. Trivially I told myself that I was going to watch the episode of Columbo talking about Shakespeare, Dagger of the Mind.
In this episode several elements seem to gently taunt my flow of thoughts but it is obviously not the easiest things to explain. However I can relate a really curious series of synchronicities concerning golf and the Simpsons episode I mentioned above:

Welcome to the club

▶ Columbo in the club; Columbo while in London is invited to what I guess is called a gentlemen's club. There he makes two remarks:

• "When you said 'club', I thought you meant a country club or a health club."
  
• "When you said 'tea', I was afraid we were gonna get nothin’ but those tiny sandwiches."
  

Note the vocabulary used which, more or less subtly, refers to golf (while the episode has nothing to do with golf at all). A country club is commonly referred to simply as a golf club. And with ▶ the first video of The Simpsons freshly in mind, the words club, tea, and sandwich resonate like synchronicity. Especially with the formulation used by Columbo which adds a note of irony. Tea sounds exactly like tee, and sandwich for sand wedge.
▶ The Simpsons in the club; In the same episode of The Simpsons, the Simpson family is invited to a country club. Which echoes Columbo's words.
We will even notice that Homer and the kids remain at one entrance to the room while Marge is invited in among the other women. Which is the opposite of the Columbo video where the butler says: "Why do you think we keep the ladies out, sir?".

Pearls and balls

▶ Columbo - pearls; Note that in the scene a character throws a round white object which hits the head of another character who then lies on the ground in the middle of white pearls.
▶ The Simpsons - balls; Here a character hits a golf ball in the air which hits the head of another character who then lies on the ground before kneeling and finding himself in the middle of white balls.

Ruse

⚠️ SPOILER WARNING: Skip this one if you don't want to know how Columbo confounded the culprits just yet.
▶ Columbo - subterfuge; Without formal proof, Columbo discreetly puts a white bead in an umbrella which allows the culprits to be confounded by their reactions.
Also note these three points:

• A character who verifies that the bead is genuine: "Why, it’s the same. Exactly the same."
  
• A character who accuses another of trickery: "He put it there. Can’t you see? Before we came. He put it there!"
  
• A private discussion between two characters with the idea of keeping the subterfuge secret: "Off the record, eh?"
  

▶ The Simpsons - cheating; Smithers puts a golf ball on the green near the hole to make Mr. Burns win.
And note the same three points:

• A character who verifies that the balls are genuine: "These aren't reptile eggs."
  
• A character who accuses another of trickery: "You've been cheating. No matter where Mr. Burns hits the ball you put a fresh one on the green."
  
• A private discussion between two characters with the idea of keeping the cheating secret: "If you would keep quiet about the alleged decades of cheating I'm sure he'd support your application for membership tonight."
  

"sir" scenes

▶ The Simpsons - sir; Homer says: "For once, maybe someone will call me "sir" without adding, "you're making a scene"."
▶ Columbo - sir; A character hears himself called "sir" and arguably, he's making a scene...

BACON

When you're in a synchronistic wave, the interest isn't just the thrill of the coincidences, but also the fact that you learn about areas you weren't so interested in. And I found out more than enough about bacon. So much so that I saw references to bacon everywhere. It was no longer of interest.

Bacon overload

I wanted to move on, which was immediately comically reflected in the synchronicities as I came across these two clips of the Simpsons (from other episodes) that say it all:
▶ The Simpsons - Butter your bacon: "So, you think you know better than this family, huh? Well, as long as you're in my house, you'll do what I do and believe what I believe. So, butter your bacon!" :-)
▶ The Simpsons - The bacon man: The clip I saw at the time on the Internet only included the part where Homer takes his order. So without any mention of Shakespeare. But already the fact that Homer presents the "portrait" of the omelette and says that we could add a "bacon nose", "bacon hair", "bacon mustache", etc... that made me chuckle. It gave me the impression that they were mimicking what I was doing just before with the portraits of Shakespeare, Francis Bacon and Charles Steinmetz.
It was more than a month later while writing this post and creating the video extract that I noticed that Shakespeare was mentioned just before! "I'm getting a sweatshirt with Shakespeare's face on it!". So we have a mention of a portrait of Shakespeare followed by a "portrait of bacon".

Bacon numbers

And the Internet bombarded me with bacon number this, bacon number that... what!? This profusion of bacon has even been prophesied; they made a law about that, the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon!
I quote:

In a January 1994 interview with Premiere magazine, Kevin Bacon mentioned while discussing the film The River Wild that "he had worked with everybody in Hollywood or someone who's worked with them."
Following this, a lengthy newsgroup thread which was headed "Kevin Bacon is the Center of the Universe" appeared.

→ L.O.L.

PROTEAN SPIRIT

PROTEUS

I overlooked something about Steinmetz the first time, he's called Charles PROTEUS Steinmetz:

Steinmetz Americanized his name to Charles Steinmetz. He chose Proteus as his middle name—the nickname his professors in Germany had affectionately bestowed upon him in recognition of the shape-shifting sea god. In Greek mythology, Proteus was a cave-dwelling prophetic old man who always returned to his human form—that of a hunchback. Steinmetz thoroughly enjoyed the comparison.
src: Charles Proteus Steinmetz, the Wizard of Schenectady

Shakespeare and Proteus

It's no surprise Shakespeare and Bacon, prolific writers, talked about Proteus. On the Proteus wikipedia page there is this quote:

I can add colours to the chameleon,
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,
And set the murderous Machiavel to school.
Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?
Tut, were it farther off, I'll pluck it down.
— William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part Three, Act III, Scene ii

I wanted to know what the last line meant and a quick search led me to this Reddit post, What does Richard/Gloucester mean when he says "Tut, were it farther off, I’ll pluck it down.". This is a transcription of a scene from the film Richard III (1955).
In the video they refer to, the original monologue from the play Richard III is mixed with parts of a monologue by the same character (Richard III) from another play, Henry IV (the one in the Wikipedia quote):

[…]

And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,

[…]
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
[…]
I'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall,
I'll slay more gazers than the basilisk;
I'll play the orator as well as Nestor,
Deceive more slyly than Ulysses could,
And, like a Sinon, take another Troy.

I can add colours to the chameleon,
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,

And set the murd'rous Machiavel to school
Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?
Tut! were it further off, I'll pluck it down.

Bacon and Proteus

Francis Bacon also speaks of Proteus in "De sapientia veterum, liber", translated into English in "Of the Wisdom of the Ancients". It's short and interesting to read.

XIII. Proteus Or Matter

PROTEUS, the poets tell us, was herdsman to Neptune. He was an old man and a prophet; a prophet moreover of the very first order, and indeed thrice excellent; for he knew all three,—not the future only, but likewise the past and the present; insomuch that besides his power of divination, he was the messenger and interpreter of all antiquity and all secrets. His dwelling was under an immense cave. There it was his custom every day at noon to count his flock of seals and then go to sleep. And if any one wanted his help in any matter, the only way was first to secure his hands with handcuffs, and then to bind him with chains. Whereupon he on his part, in order to get free, would turn himself into all manner of strange shapes—fire, water, wild beasts, &c., till at last he returned again to his original shape.
The sense of this fable relates, it would seem, to the secrets of nature and the conditions of matter. For under the person of Proteus, Matter—the most ancient of all things, next to God—is meant to be represented. Now matter has its habitation under the vault of heaven, as under a cave. And it may be called the servant of Neptune, inasmuch as all the operation and dispensation of matter is effected principally in liquids.
[…]
src: https://www.bartleby.com/82/13.html

Spirit and Water

Consonant values

I noticed that the consonants of P-r-o-t-e-u-s are the same as those of S-p-i-r-i-t.

Matter of fact

The sense of this fable relates, it would seem, to the secrets of nature and the conditions of matter. For under the person of Proteus, Matter—the most ancient of all things, next to God—is meant to be represented. Now matter has its habitation under the vault of heaven, as under a cave. And it may be called the servant of Neptune, inasmuch as all the operation and dispensation of matter is effected principally in liquids.

Proteus, associated with matter, emerges from the sea^*️⃣ and sleeps in a cave, changing shape in between if one tries to capture him. The example of water is notoriously the first that comes to mind when we talk about the states of matter.
^*️⃣Note that in the video ▶ The Simpsons - The bacon man there is mention of returning to the ocean ("So, here for a snack before they roll you back into the ocean?"), in context I find that line a little ironic.

Capture the Serendipity

He can foretell the future, but, in a mytheme familiar to several cultures, will change his shape to avoid doing so; he answers only to those who are capable of capturing him.
src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteus

At this point I reflect on how easily connections come to us when we are in this particular position of observer, whether we like it or not. This is the principle of serendipity. Very strange word which I bet many have trouble pronouncing correctly and which for me has changed during my life (Mandela Effect). By the way, I had posted about this on Retconned in the past and when looking for my post I preferred to go through Google rather than the Reddit search engine.
This is where I get suggested a movie, Serendipity (2001), but it's a romantic comedy, I'm not too into that, I'm barely interested. But my instinct tells me it's not there by chance. If I don't watch the film, I will still look into the director's filmography.
Peter Chelsom; I'm looking at the list of movies he's directed. Not very funky at first glance but there are one or two key words, one or two imagery elements that have been involved in previous synchronicities for me that kept me from abandoning this lead in a hurry. I ended up clicking on the link of the movie The Mighty (1998).

The Old Man of the Sea

A young boy suffering from a debilitating disease causing deformities rides 👁️‍🗨️ on the shoulders of another, stronger boy. The young boy lends his insight while the other boy lends his strength.
It reminds me of the story of the Old Man of the Sea:

• In The Odyssey: Book IV, Homer (the other Homer) calls Proteus the wise Old Man of the Sea.
  
• The Old Man of the Sea in the tales of Sinbad the Sailor depicts 👁️‍🗨️ an old man clinging to a man on his shoulders.
  

While writing these lines

While writing these lines from my notes (more than a month later^*️⃣) I distractedly watched the Serendipity movie trailer... and there I see a golf scene that I hadn't noticed before (probably because I had not watched the entire video). I decide to watch the film.
^*️⃣Also while writing these lines I mentally played with the word "serendipity"; seren-dipidy, seren-pididy, etc. Which inevitably reminded me of ▶ this scene from a music video where Ben Stiller struggles to find the right name for rapper Puff Daddy. The plot coincidentally revolves around a golf ball...

SERENDIPITY

The plot of the film is a story of a character who seeks the identity of another, enough to entice him to pursue serendipity. Reminds me of the content of this post.
Moreover, there are several factual elements that suggest that resemblance:

Amazing likeness

Knockoff

▶ Serendipity - Prada:

• Purchase of a product (supposedly) from a luxury fashion house brand: "Ooh! Prada!" ... "I'll take it."
  
• Discussion about a knockoff product name: "Eve, that's a horrific knockoff. At least my fake says Prada. Yours says Prado."
  
• Discussion about altering the product a bit to make it more presentable: "Yeah? Well, I say for a dollar, I can buy a little magic marker and fix that."
  

▶ The Simpsons - Chanel:

• Purchase of a product (supposedly) from a luxury fashion house brand: "Oh, it's beautiful. Can it be a real Chanel?" ... "All right, I will buy it."
  
• Discussion about knockoff product names: "Don't be a sap, Dad. These are just crappy knock-offs." | "I know a genuine Panaphonics when I see it. And look, there's Magnetbox and Sorny."
  
• Discussion about altering the product a bit to make it more presentable: "Homer, please, I have to alter this suit so it looks different for tomorrow." | "Just slap some bumper stickers on it."
  

Golf

▶ The Simpsons - golf; To put into context, we had in the episode of The Simpsons:

• A character hit in the head by a golf club.
  
• A character hit in the head by a golf ball.
  
• A multitude of white balls scattered on the green.
  

[+]

• A character acknowledging a buried feeling: "I knew my kind wasn't welcome here."

▶ Serendipity - golf; The film Serendipity uses the synchronicity of golf as an factor of serendipity. And note these points:

• A character hit in the head by a golf ball.
  
• A character hit in the head by a golf club.
  
• A multitude of white balls scattered on a green floor.
  

[+] just a tiny bit of interpretation here:

• A character saying: "I think I swallowed a filling". Which I think is to be understood in the context of the film as "I think I swallowed a feeling".

Serpent and Destiny

Furthermore, the serpent is, in my humble opinion, an underlying theme in the film. I will avoid going too deep into the interpretations and just quickly relate a few noteworthy elements:

Serpent of old

▶ Serendipity - Cool Yule; The film opens with the song "Cool Yule" by Louis Armstrong with the Commanders. With these lyrics:

♪ And you gonna flip when Old Saint Nick ♪
♪ Plays a lick on a peppermint stick ♪

Old Nick could mean the Devil, Old Serpent, etc. An interesting discussion about the adjective "Old" in Old Nick.

Another one bites the dust

▶ Serendipity - crawling; A scene where the main character, Jonathan Trager (black jacket), is crawling on the ground.

In order, garter.

▶ Serenditpy - T-r-a-g-e-r; Jonathan Trager, T-r-a-g-e-r. Trager anagram of garter. Like a garter snake. But also a vocabulary used for a bride (which is in line with the apparent theme of the film).
Reminds me of something I jotted down somewhere...
...there it is:

Notably the pendant suspended on a ribbon from around Bacon’s neck, which in earlier portraits was deliberately concealed in such a way as to suggest a secret, is in this picture shown exposed, revealing itself as the Lesser George and thereby suggesting or indicating that Bacon was a secret Knight of the Garter, or had the right to be one.
src: https://www.fbrt.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Portraits_of_Francis_Bacon.pdf#page=6

Some infos on The Order of the Garter.

Snake Club

The presence of the word snake in Beckinsale (the name of the main actress) is obvious. But, I was interested in the consonants of the word and I saw there the term Snake Club.
I explain, we remove the vowels and: b.c.k.n.s.l → s.n.k c.l.b
I do a Google search on "snake club". I come across a page on a movie site that talks about what looks like a Z movie titled "Snake Club: Revenge of the Snake Woman". I scroll down a bit and come across 👁️‍🗨️ this poster showing Kate Beckinsale herself in the first place of movie recommendations.

IN THE QUR'AN

CLUB AND SNAKE

At the time of the synchronicities with the Simpsons episode, I was interested in the symbolism of golf. The golf club is reminiscent of a farm tool, the hoe, I kept that in mind. With the intrusion of the serpent into my serendipity, I was instead led to think about the story of the staff of Musa (Moses) in the Qur'an. Especially in Surah 20, Ta-Ha:

20:17 And what is that in your right hand, O Moses?"
20:18 He said, "It is my staff; I lean upon it, and I bring down leaves for my sheep and I have therein other uses."
20:19 [Allah] said, "Throw it down, O Moses."
20:20 So he threw it down, and thereupon it was a snake, moving swiftly.
20:21 [Allah] said, "Seize it and fear not; We will return it to its former condition.
- Translation: Sahih International ⇠ I'll keep this translation throughout the topic.
src: Qur'an 20:[17-21]

This new perspective has taken the serendipity in a interesting direction. A scene described in this same surah caught my attention; Musa and Harun confront the magicians summoned by Pharaoh:

20:61 Moses said to the magicians summoned by Pharaoh, "Woe to you! Do not invent a lie against Allah or He will exterminate you with a punishment; and he has failed who invents [such falsehood]."
20:62 So they disputed over their affair among themselves and concealed their private conversation.
20:63 They said, "Indeed, these are two magicians who want to drive you out of your land with their magic and do away with your most exemplary way.
20:64 So resolve upon your plan and then come [forward] in line. And he has succeeded today who overcomes."
20:65 They said, "O Moses, either you throw or we will be the first to throw."
20:66 He said, "Rather, you throw." And suddenly their ropes and staffs seemed to him from their magic that they were moving [like snakes].
20:67 And he sensed within himself apprehension, did Moses.
20:68 Allah said, "Fear not. Indeed, it is you who are superior.
20:69 And throw what is in your right hand; it will swallow up what they have crafted. What they have crafted is but the trick of a magician, and the magician will not succeed wherever he is."
20:70 So the magicians fell down in prostration. They said, "We have believed in the Lord of Aaron and Moses."
20:71 [Pharaoh] said, "You believed him before I gave you permission. Indeed, he is your leader who has taught you magic. So I will surely cut off your hands and your feet on opposite sides, and I will crucify you on the trunks of palm trees, and you will surely know which of us is more severe in [giving] punishment and more enduring."
20:72 They said, "Never will we prefer you over what has come to us of clear proofs and [over] He who created us. So decree whatever you are to decree. You can only decree for this worldly life.
20:73 Indeed, we have believed in our Lord that He may forgive us our sins and what you compelled us [to do] of magic. And Allah is better and more enduring."
src: Qur'an 20:[61-73]

I spotted other similarities:

Intrigue and trick

➔ Qur'an 20:[61-63]; Note this:

• A secret confabulation: 20:62 "So they disputed over their affair among themselves and concealed their private conversation."
  
• Characters implying that other characters intend to use a trick: 20:63 "They said, "Indeed, these are two magicians who want to drive you out of your land with their magic and do away with your most exemplary way."^*️⃣
  

^*️⃣The magicians repeat here the words of Pharaoh a few ayat ("verses") before: "He said, "Have you come to us to drive us out of our land with your magic, O Moses?" Qur'an 20:57.
▶ Columbo - subterfuge (spoiler!); We have already mentioned these points in ALL IN ONE > COLUMBO > Ruse:

• A character who accuses another of trickery: "He put it there. Can’t you see? Before we came. He put it there!"
  
• A private discussion between two characters with the idea of keeping the subterfuge secret: "Off the record, eh?"
  

▶ The Simpsons - cheating; Same here:

• A character who accuses another of trickery: "You've been cheating. No matter where Mr. Burns hits the ball you put a fresh one on the green."
  
• A private discussion between two characters with the idea of keeping the cheating secret: "If you would keep quiet about the alleged decades of cheating I'm sure he'd support your application for membership tonight."
  

By hook or by crook

➔ Qur'an 20:[64-73]; Note this:

• An injunction to throw a staff...: 20:69 "And throw what is in your right hand; [...]"
  
• ...that will swallow up an illusion (objects that move like snakes; see 20:66): 20:69 "[...] it will swallow up what they have crafted. What they have crafted is but the trick of a magician, and the magician will not succeed wherever he is."
  
• Characters thrown down to prostration^1️⃣: 20:70 "So the magicians fell down in prostration. They said, "We have believed in the Lord of Aaron and Moses.""
  
• Characters acknowledging a hidden feeling: 20:73 "Indeed, we have believed in our Lord that He may forgive us our sins and what you compelled us^2️⃣ [to do] of magic. And Allah is better and more enduring.""
  

^1️⃣The magicians didn't just fell down, they were thrown down: fa-ul'qiya [So were thrown down] al-saharatu [the magicians] sujjadan [prostrating].Note that this is the same verb, in the passive form, as in the previous ayah in which Musa was asked to throw down his staff: wa-alqi [And throw] ma [what] fi [in] yaminika [your right hand]. This emphasizes the correlation between the two events.
^2️⃣The Arabic word "akrahtana" translated as "you compelled us" carries a notion of aversion. That is to say, to be compelled to something that generates aversion. Here the magicians finally admit their true feelings towards Pharaoh's orders.
▶ The Simpsons - golf; Notice the similarities:

• A character throws a golf club...
  
• ...which hits another character who then falls face down.
  
• The latter acknowledges a buried feeling: "I knew my kind wasn't welcome here."
  

▶ The Simpsons - cheating; ~ Swallowing fake snakes:
The club-thrower character puts a whole golf ball in his mouth, chews it, and proves that "these aren't reptile eggs".
▶ Serendipity - golf; Note the same similarities here:

• A character is hit by a golf club and then falls face down.
  
• The same character who says: "I think I swallowed a filling". Which I think is to be understood in the context of the film as "I think I swallowed a feeling"^*️⃣.
  

^*️⃣Note also the use of the verb "to swallow".

Destiny and Serpent

Divine measure

In Surah Ta-Ha Allah commands Musa to meet Pharaoh, reminding him of the divine interventions in the key stages of his existence on Earth:

20:36 [Allah] said, "You have been granted your request, O Moses.
20:37 And We had already conferred favor upon you another time,
20:38 When We inspired to your mother what We inspired,
20:39 [Saying], 'Cast him into the chest and cast it into the river, and the river will throw it onto the bank; there will take him an enemy to Me and an enemy to him.' And I bestowed upon you love from Me that you would be brought up under My eye.
20:40 [And We favored you] when your sister went and said, 'Shall I direct you to someone who will be responsible for him?' So We restored you to your mother that she might be content and not grieve. And you killed someone, but We saved you from retaliation and tried you with a [severe] trial. And you remained [some] years among the people of Madyan. Then you came [here] at the decreed time, O Moses.
20:41 And I produced you for Myself.
20:42 Go, you and your brother, with My signs and do not slacken in My remembrance.
20:43 Go, both of you, to Pharaoh. Indeed, he has transgressed.
src: Qur'an 20:[36-43]

All of these life events brought Musa to the ad hoc place and time: 20:40 "[...] Then you came [here] at the decreed time, O Moses.".

Tamed serpent

A sinuous life course alternating between threat and benevolence though not turning away from fate. Symbolized from the outset by the abandonment of the baby on the river, a river that snakes its way to destination. And marked at the appointed moment by the transformation of the staff into a serpent before it is returned to its former condition.
End of part 1/3.
The continuation is in On the trail of a spirit (2/3) →

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Hey Sportsfans — it's time for Week 3 of baseball Power Rankings:The ever-changing landscape of baseball continues to develope. Who's pretending and who's for real? Time will tell! For now, enjoy these baseball numbers! Or don't. I am an AI-Generated intro, not a cop.
Every voter has their own style / system and the only voting instructions are these:

"To an extent determined individually, you must take into account how strong a team is right now and likely to be going forward. You must, to some degree, give weight to the events and games of the previous week."

TRANSPARENCY: This link will show you who voted each team where and has added neat statistics!
Auxilliary Post: You can view extra stats and breakdown of this week here.
If something is a little messed up, feel free to pester me let me know.
Total Votes: 28 of 30.

#		Team	Δ	Comment	Record
1		Yankees	+3	Another week of baseball and the Yankees seem to actually be this good. The brightest spots continue to be Volpe, Soto, and Cabrera. We had some big upswings by Giancarlo Stanton and Nestor Cortes this week, both of whom could elevate the Yankees from AL East favorite to World Series favorite if they’re even 70% as good as their peaks. Also encouraging is that the Yankees are surging even with a hard-slumping Aaron Judge (not worried) and a still-absent Gerrit Cole. Get both those guys at maximum capacity, and this is one special Yankees team.	12-4
2		Braves	-1	Good thing we can hit. A year ago, everyone in Braves Country (including me) wanted to run Marcell Ozuna out of town. Not anymore. This season he is 1st in the MLB in HRs (7), 1st in RBIs (21), 5th in AVG (.373) and 2nd in OPS (1.192). But it goes further than that. Since May 1st of last year he is 2nd in HRs (45), 2nd in RBI (119), 9th in AVG (.306) and 5th in OPS (.993). Next year's $16 million team option is looking like a bargain for the potential 2024 NL MVP.	9-5
3		Dodgers	-1		11-7
4		Orioles	+1	Jackson Holliday was called up, as most of the fanbase wanted, and proceeded to go his first 13 AB's without getting a hit. He did finally record a hit and probably had a huge sigh of relief. I am sure he will get into a groove, but the kid is literally a kid, so it will take some time. On the other hand, Colton Cowser is single handedly driving this offense. Destroying Boston pitching in that series and continuing that against the Brewers. He has basically put last years AL All-Star left fielder Austin Hays on the bench. I know it is early but a trade for another starter might be in the cards sooner rather than later. The O's have a plethora of position players and not nearly enough depth in starting pitching. Bradish and Means are on their way back but after Burnes and Rodriguez there is a huge drop off to Wells, Kremer and Irvin. Plus, if the O's trade position players they have plenty more in Norfolk. Overall to be 9-6 right now is not terrible but things need to start clicking for more than a few players.	9-6
5		Brewers	+4	Milwaukee absolutely mashed this week, taking 2 out of 3 from both the Reds (Get a roof morans + cornbread is good, actually) and Orioles (Corbin Burnes beat us, so really we both won that last game.) This stretch brought their season average to 6.5 runs per game, the best in the league. Despite my lack of confidence in the pitching staff, they actually grade out solidly above average in WHIP and ERA as well. But more importantly than numbers, this team is fun to watch. They get runners on base, steal bags, bunt for hits, and hit dingers. I've watched enough Brewers baseball to know that we'll slump before the all star break, but for now, lets just enjoy watching one of the best, youngest, and most fun Brewers lineups we've had in a while.	10-4
6		Guardians	+6	Last week, because of the small sample size and them having the best record and run differential, I put the Guardians as #1. I can no longer do that. The White Sox series was more of a nailbiter than it should have been and the Yankees series was a nightmare. I think the Guardians (and I) are being brought back to Earth. I don't even know what to do with my rankings this week, since I highly doubt the Royals, Brewers, and Pirates will keep this up.	10-5
7		Rangers	-4	Inuries suck. Bullpen is still a mess. Flags fly forever.	8-8
8		Pirates	+5	The Pirates didn't win any series this week — but they didn't lose any, either, splitting a 2-game set with Detroit (thanks to another David Bednar meltdown in the 9th) and a 4-game set in Philadelphia. The starting pitching remains the unexpected strength of this team, although that will be tested now that Marco Gonzales has hit the IL with a forearm strain, an injury similar to the one that kept him out for most of 2023. In better news, Andrew McCutchen smacked his 300th career home run on Sunday. He joined elite company by hitting #300 in a Pirate uniform; this feat has only been achieved by such legends as Willie Stargell, Ralph Kiner, and Jeromy Burnitz.	11-5
9		Cubs	-1	The preseason concerns about the Cubs bullpen came to roost this week, as the bullpen was heavily responsible for the Cubs worst loss in decades, blowing an 8-0 lead to the Padres. While they righted the ship enough to finish 3-3 overall after beating the Mariners in Seattle, the bullpen was shaky at best. However, the Cubs offense and starting pitching were able to pick up the slack, in particular Michael Busch. He homered in 4 straight games, one shy of the Cubs record, a welcome boost for an offense that has seen 3 of its top 4 hitters go ice cold. They'll look to right the ship in Arizona, before closing out the week with a 4 game set against the Marlins at Wrigley.	9-6
10		Rays	-3	After last year's start, treading water doesn't feel great, but when you're taking a chance on this many pitchers it's bound to be a bit bumpy. There is reason for optimism with some, like Ryan Pepiot, however others are just out there to consume innings at what has so far been like a 6 ERA. The bats should be due for positive regression as stars Yandy and Randy have been cold, however we are now giving at bats to Niko Goodrum because Brandon Lowe (pronounced Lowe) sneezed and hurt himself again. The goal for now is to hang around while players get healthy, then make a certified Sneaky Rays(tm) push for the playoffs.	9-7
11		D-Backs	-5	The Diamondbacks rebounded a bit this week, taking series from the Rockies and Cardinals. The Snakes, however, are still not firing on all cylinders, and will have to start playing better if they're going to hang with other playoff contenders. The good news is the starting pitching has looked great even without E-Rod or Montgomery to start the year.	8-8
12		Reds	+7	I’m very sad today. Very sad, so I wanted to bury myself in nostalgia, so I currently have an entire can of Pillsbury croissants in the oven. Did anyone else as a kid have their mom go through a croissant phase? You know where every other dinner she cooks had croissants as a side. My mom did, and she hasn’t bought those croissants in years. Anyway the Reds swept the White Sox, and continued to get their asses beat by the Brewers. I’ve said before i’m not very good at baseball analysis, I just sorta took the Reds voter opening because I thought it would be fun, so I don’t really know what to say as an analysis. They swing bat good. +100 baseball analysis. Anyway I wanted to get back into reading, my eyes have been hurting from all these monitors and screens i’ve been looking at. So I started re-reading Harry Potter because it’s one of the few book series I have physical copies of. I’m not a potterhead or anything like that but these teachers are just some of the most irresponsible people i’ve ever read about. Also there are some things that really bother me, like why didn’t they just petrify or stun Peter Pettigrew in the shrieking shack so he wouldn’t be able to escape? Also I thought the Accio charm couldn’t be used on a living creature but in chapter 18 of Order of the Phoenix Harry uses it on a frog. And why does 18 year old Victor Krum invite a 14 year girl to the Yule ball? And why can I not stop thinking about Croissants? I’m writing this as my croissants bake in the oven, the smell is in the house and it smells good. I don’t even have anything to eat with them, it’s just croissants. I’ll figure it out. Anyway catch ya later gators see you on the flippy flip side remember to grease up them pancakes and stay in school.	9-6
13		Royals	+10	It's been a fun start to the season but there are some concerns. Chris Stratton and Will Smith have combined for half of the Royals losses and have been a tightrope act. Salvy is injured and as of this writing, it is unknown how long he will be out. Hopefully he won't be out long and the bullpen can stabilize.	10-6
14		Phillies	-4	I should probably be happy with the Phillies this week, winning 2 of 3 on the road in St. Louis and splitting a 4 game set at home against the Pirates, but it still feels like a disappointment. This team can very obviously be much better if they can start hitting. They are currently in the bottom third in virtually all offensive stats and are 24th in runs scored. 3 lineup regulars (4 if you include Whit) are hitting below the Mendoza line including Bryce Harper who had a dreadful 2 for 27 streak this week. Somehow, they're still only 2 games back on the Braves and have what should be an easy week with 6 games against the Rockies and White Sox at home.	8-8
15		Padres	+2	I’m glad that the San Diego Padres exist…and exist as an MLB team in the highest level of professional baseball, and not some old defunct team, or minor league team that used to play at the top level, or some distant memory of what once was… I’m thankful that I can watch them play, and enjoy baseball for the foreseeable future. I grew up in a sports family, and picked a team in each sport. The team I rooted for in football moved, and it seems the hockey team I rooted for is on the way as well. I am looking forward to watching the last game for the Arizona Coyotes this upcoming Wednesday, hoping to hear the ‘awoo’ of the goal horn a few more times before it’s all over (at least for the time being). It’s true that the teams we love are a business at the end of the day, but for fan’s, they’re anything but. Win or lose, your favorite team generates a community, and a sense of almost religious camaraderie. Sports are a hobby that we spend tons of money and time on. It can be an amazing sensation when the team you’ve been rooting for your whole life finally makes it over the hump. On the other hand, it is absolutely devastating when the team we grow up rooting for just suddenly decides it wants to make money elsewhere, off of new fans, in a different market. Fuck billionaires. Obviously, everything said here can be said about fans in Oakland as well, disgusting that A’s fans are going through the same. Fuck relocation, man.	9-9
16		Red Sox	-2	Two weeks in, the narrative for the Sox this season is beginning to take shape. If the 90% breaking balls don't tear apart every UCL on the staff, our pitching is going to be greatly improved from the last few years of mediocrity. We have no middle infield, so look forward to our mix-and-match of AAAA bats botching three or four easy double plays a week. There is a path to the playoffs, but it's going to require our young core stepping up and our more fragile players staying healthy. I'm looking at you O'Neill...	9-7
17		Astros	-6	Kyle Tucker batflipping a home run when the Astros were getting their asses handed to them by the Rangers was certainly a choice. Supposedly the team was mad about Yordan being hit/nearly hit - so fine, whatever. Still wasn't the best look, especially when the offense has mostly been anemic this season. Pitching hasn't fared much better, with everyone and their mothers (except for the MILFs) being put through the meat grinder. The team is in desperate need of an off-day.	6-11
18		Blue Jays	-3	Winning series vs SEA and COL made for a nice home-opener week for the Jays, and kept them afloat while waiting for some key pieces to come back from injury or shake off the rust of the spring. Biggest development of the week was Yariel Rodriguez's debut, in which the Cuban pickup gave up 1 run, walked 2, and fanned 6 over 4 innings. If he can live up to the stuff and shore up that one hole in the bottom of the rotation, he'll wind up being the sneaky best signing of the off-season. The non-sneaky best signing is the Tormund Giantsbane ginger anchoring the 4-spot in the lineup, Justin Turner, who is absolutely raking right now. If Vladdy and Bo can warm up to match his output, the offense might have a hope. Thankfully, Jansen coming back this week to add more pop behind the plate and Romano and Swanson slotting back into the backend of a good bullpen will help as the league-best Yankees come to town.	8-8
19		Tigers	+2	Nothing too wild to report from this past week, other than JAVY BAEZ ACTUALLY DID SOMETHING other than strike out. Look at his lovely .140/.152/.209... and then cry knowing that there are still more years left after this one. This week: 4 vs. TEX, 3 at MIN.	9-6
20		Twins	-4	A predictible series loss against the Dodgers, and a split against the Tigers is not a good sign. The bats are cold and completely letting down our pitching, which has been near the best in the league so far. We're striking out way too much, our OBP is awful, and we just can't get hits with RISP. Not to mention the injuries: Lewis was injured on Opening Day, and now Correa has joined him. We really need things to turn around quickly if we're going to be competitive this year.	6-8
21		Mets	+4	There's no way my blurb is gonna be as good as the Reds guy, so I may as well try something wacky. This week we're doing Mets anagrams. Adrian Houser is an anagram of "horrid nausea" which I had after Houser's poor start against Atlanta this past week. Brooks Raley is an anagram of "broke Royals" (he did break them on Sunday, earning a win). Starling Marte is an anagram of "target Marlins" which he did in 2023, slashing .364/.440/.591 against Miami. Finally, Harrison Bader is an anagram of "A hard boner, sir" which is a completely justifiable reaction to Bader's recent run of hot hitting.	7-8
22		Mariners	-4	The vibes, they are not good. Offensive, Defensive, and Pitching miscues abound to continually snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The saving grace is that the rest of the division is also off to a slow start, so if the M's can turn it around soon, they've still got a shot. Up next: 3 vs. Communists, 3 @ Large Boulders the size of a Small Boulder	6-10
23		Cardinals	-1	The Cardinals lost back to back series this week and now sit 4 GB. Almost every game was competitive and Sonny Gray looked fantastic in his debut. However, bad base running and struggles with RISP (.195 over the last week!) were themes over the weekend. Themes that are uncharacteristic of a franchise that prides themselves on fundamentals. This organization has been at a crossroads for over a year and appears content to sit down on the ground and stay there.	7-9
24		Giants	-4	The Giants have lost series’ against Dodgers, Rays, and Nationals; the only other team played is the Padres in what could be a ‘tough opening stretch’. However, the biggest problem is their own making – the Giants are 27th in MLB in OPS w/ RISP. While a lot of the Giants offensive stats, traditional and peripheral, will put them in the middle of the pack – 18th in RS/G (-1) – new acquisitions Lee, Soler, and Chapman are not getting it done when it counts. (Ahmed / Conforto doing the best RISP work). The staff, meanwhile, gives up the 8th most HRs while striking out the 4th fewest to the tune of 23rd in RA/G (+3) and a Bullpen ERA that’s 25th (=) in baseball. The end result? A Run Diff of -12, good for 20th (+1) in MLB. If you’re a normal, non-reactionary fan, you might view the 6-10 record as not a big deal. Snell will settle in, being good w/ RISP isn’t a skill, the lineup has capable hitters, IL reinforcements, aforementioned schedule, and the defense is improved. But Doomers smell blood in the bay and want someone to blame. I suggest the first deck ushers on the 3rd base side who had the gall to kick me out in the 8th inning just because I technically didn’t have that ticket. It’s been downhill since. Next up: @ MIA for 3, vs ARI for 4. No off-day till next Thursday. Let’s settle in, Giants.	6-10
25		Angels	-1	Three weeks in and Mike Trout has the world on fire so I finally feel obligated to talk about him. For all the conerns there have been about Mike Trout's health and durability, he is showing an unprecedented amount of strenth and power by his own Hall of Fame standards. He has the highest wRC+ of his career. The highest Slugging percentage of his career by 39 points. The highest ISO of his career by 57 points! Even crazier is that despite all this Baseball Savant has him as a 99th percentile in baserunning value and 83rd percentile Outs Above Average. Kinda makes it all the more depressing that this is all coming what has potential to be the team's most futile year during his career.	7-8
26		Athletics	+2		7-9
27		Nationals	-1	The Nats took a crushing defeat yesterday to the A's. Not only was it the series rubber match but it also felt like the rubber match of the 9-game stretch they have out west. Win and you've won back to back series going into Dodger Stadium. Now the hope rests in the hands of a rookie, Patrick Qorbin, and Jake Irvin to hopefully scrape a win before heading back to DC to celebrate the 5th year anniversary of the 2019 World Series Championship with the Astros in town.	6-9
28		Marlins	-1	The marlins have been slightly more consistent last week, but when i say slightly i mean it. The fish lost a series to the yanks and braves but each series had a close game that could have gone the marlins way, which is the small silver lining when looking back to the beginning of the season where we were getting blown out day after day. The marlins will continue to have offensive struggles with jake burger going on the IL with an oblique strain but at least the bullpen has continued to show growth, at least more than the offense. Edward cabrera is finally being called up from his rehab stint and the pitcher getting optioned down is......max meyer. Word from the club is that its due to innings management following his recent TJS but we all know this service time tango. There are more and more signs of the FO looking to next season and essentially closing the book on this season. I just hope we dont lose 100+ games. Got the giants at home for 3 games and then we fly out to the north side to close out the week.	3-13
29		Rockies	+1	Look! KB is injured again! At least DU won another championship. Ranking the Yankees 1 made me throw up a little (a lot). I think I hate baseball.	4-12
30		White Sox	-1	The White Sox are off to their worst ever start through 15 games. Their 3 best hitters are all currently on the IL with varying degress of injuries while just running the bases. The Sox have 17 hitters with a plate appearance this year. Only 6 of them have an OBP north of 300 and only 3 of those have a SLG above their OBP. They have scored 34 runs in 15 games with a massive -51 run differential. So, no, the offense has not been good by any metric.	2-13

Big hyperdrama Spoilers below

Justice talks Hyperdrama track by track - with details/descriptions on every song via Discover music Japan .
translation Taken directly from a Japanese site by using google translate and it all doesn’t translate perfectly (LOL) VERY spotty and funny but you can def pickup on the vibe of a lot of the tracks here!
This was the link it was at : https://www.udiscovermusic.jp/stories/justice-hyperdrama-trackbytrack
Here’s the rough google translation copied :
Neverender (Starring Tame Impala)
>! It's a very justice song in spirit, with a French touch filter, and it's essentially pop. "Neverender", in which Kevin Parker of Tame Impala is a guest, decorates the opening of this duo's new work with a lively pop theme song full of dance and melancholy. !<
>! The album "Hyperdrama" is a great epic full of joy, and it is colored with energetic rhythms, changing moods, disco-like phrases, and gaba-style gimmicks, and a sound mug centered on one thing. Everything is converging in Ma. The core is, in other words, "groove". !<
>! The first song "Neverender" of this work, which has the most collaborative color in the history of Justice, is a melancholic and psychedelic world unique to Tame Impala and a vivid dance world that Justice is good at, It is a proof that it is very compatible. !<
>! “That thing has always been in the corner of our heads. There's obviously something special about his song, and it's going to swell in here. He has the ease of understanding of the melody, know-how, and genius. It's very different to be active in the mainstream with his unique musicality." !<
2.Generator
This may be the song that summarizes the philosophy of "Hyperdrama" the most. In other words, it is a fusion that anti-naturally combines Gaba, a kind of hardcore techno that caused a major movement in the Netherlands in the 90s, and the disco of the 70s and its delicate hedonism.
From the very first few seconds at the beginning of the track, a pompous gimmick, a micro break full of euphoria, and a vacuum cleaner sound (in honor of the legendary Thunder Dome Festival) that is characteristic of Gaba. "Generator", which rushes into the deadly Gaba Beat, is scattered, turns into an irresistibly attractive fusion of disco and funk after 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
It's like a medley that combines the two visions of dance and performance on the dance floor, decorated with a string and an unmistakable chic (Chic) base. In short, it's Disco Gaba!
"In the 20th anniversary of Ed Banger in London, we played a lot of Gaba Tracks. At first, everyone feels a little annoying, but there's something like this, something very euphorating and exhilarating."
3. Afterimage (Starring RIMON)
Everything starts with a heavy and powerful rhythm like the slowed down EBM (electronic body music), and RIMON (a Dutch artist discovered by Pedro Winter, Justice's As a woman who sings on the track, the muffled sensual singing voice of "Tthee Ppaarrttyy" is supported by exquisitely beautiful backing vocals, and it's like "I Feel Love" Develop this song into a synthetic, ecstatic and punchy disco number that seems to have been independently arranged by Justice
>! “When I first started, it was a 180bpm Gaba track, but I reduced the speed to the maximum to add harmony. That will make the whole thing soft and open the way to be more sensual. Pedro made a bridge between RIMON and us. We did the recording of her song at our studio, but we took the approach of using her voice as if it were an old sampling and treated it like a house truck. Regarding all the guests who were candidates this time, we had a certain idea of what they could do and what they could bring. Everyone has different visions of our music, so it was fun to find the most natural way to incorporate it." !<
>! “By working with them, we were able to exchange various ideas and fine-tune the melody, lyrics, interpretation, etc. When the album was completed, we found out that our choice was not a product of chance. Everyone, more or less, applies to the same common person review. In other words, they are independent artists who often do everything by themselves, from composition to singing, producing, and performing. They're the same bedroom producers like us." !<

1. One Night/All Night (starring Tame Impala)

"One Night/All Night", which can be said to be the essence of justice with a dance floor-oriented cold wave beat, progressive pad, and a devilishly funky break, is Kevi The second track of "Hyperdrama" in which N Parker participated is influenced by the songs of the Gaba compilation.
"I slowed down the basic riff, then rearranged everything, played acoustic instruments, and made funk parts in the middle and end."
That's the explanation on the Justice side.
"I'm going back and forth between the two parts unexpectedly, but smoothly. This song became a template for most of the songs included in this album."
The love-sweet and melancholy pop song "One Night/All Night", which is perfect for singing while taking a shower and dancing all night, says, "It's okay to be your woman" with a sweet voice like honey. Various boundaries are seamlessly fused, up to the lyrics declared by in. It is a song that Justice traces Prince's "If I Was Your Girlfriend" that casts a shadow on the whole album in a sophisticated way.

1. Dear Alan

>! “Dear Alan" in honor of Alan Blacks (I think they meant Braxe…) is undoubtedly the track that pays the greatest homage to the genealogy of Justice's French House. While making various quotations from multiple sources, the boundaries are blurred, and after listening to the break that goes in rapid succession, the return, the sampling that can play soap bubbles, and the gentle melody, the divine ele like a chant. It becomes a Kutro Soul Ballad and reaches its climax and closes. !<
>! "I was aiming to break away from the format of a used song called Verse ~ Chorus ~ Verse ~ Chorus, because I was no longer excited about that. I wanted to take a more collage-like approach, and for us, it was a new way to produce like never before. There, different arrangements and orchestrations are applied to the same sequence, and it flows through the whole track." !<
>! “The sequence, which was very electronic at first, eventually turns into something very organic and lively, as if it pressed the button of space-time. What we like in today's American rap tracks has that aspect. The idea of making three tracks coexist in a two-and-a-half-minute single makes not only listeners, but also ourselves excited and nervous." !<

1. Incognito

In the album "Hyperdrama", another song "Incognito", which is composed around a deconstructed and slowed Gaba beat, first opens with a grandeur reminiscent of movie music, and Justice It goes straight to the rhythm on the verge of explosion in a saturated state with the irritation that he is good at.
"Incognito" is a large unit of lively synthesizers that neutralize the glamorous glamor, the sampling of the clever Italo Disco, and the shrill of the high-pitched machine, "Hyperdrama" " and the entry into the hardcore of the work is closer to the influence of the disco that penetrated the album "†" (cross), which is done in the category of logical continuity of exploration on the dance floor of Justice. They explain like this.
"The relationship between disco and gaba may not always be clear just by listening to it. But it's actually a very logical thing. In gaba and hardcore, it's often pitch-shifting and rearranging short sampling of disco and funk, such as James Brown."

1. Mannequin Love (starring The Flints)

>! “Mannequin Love" led by the psychedelic vocals of The Flints, a talented British twin pair with an ideal musical world located between MGMT and the Bee Gees, excavated by Gaspar, It is the most pop track in this work in a formal sense, colored by poisonous rhythms, swirling arpeggios, and vocals that sing with a lot of euphoria. !<

1. Moonlight Rendez-Vous

>! A jazzy and futuristic interlude reminiscent of Nocturne (Nocturne). This song, supported by the saxophone, provides an opportunity to take a break before heading to the second part of "Hyperdrama". The two of Justice give a clever explanation as follows.!<
>! “This is the soundtrack of the movie. In that movie, the detective who went home looks out of the window tired of a day full of unpleasant things. And I realize that it's a world full of androids and machines. It's raining outside." !<

1. Explorer (starring Connan Mockasin)

>! The most magnificent track on this album, "Explorer" first starts as a journey to the galaxy, and then changes to a gentle and sweaty disco funk groove. !<
>! In the second part, Conan Moccasin's spoken word and apocalyptic tone are there, which reminds me of Vincent Price in Michael Jackson's "Thriller." After that, the song turns into a symphonic ballad, and Conan's singing voice, which is comfortable in the ear, has a wonderful effect again. !<
>! The only guest of this work who recorded his part remotely was a mission that was not natural for Conan Moccasin, but in order to be able to feel the atmosphere of this track and the album, Conan Images of illustrations by Pierre Lapolis and Möbius were sent from the two of Jastis. !<

1. Muscle Memory

>! The anxiety-inducing anthem "Muscle Memory" featuring an arpeggio line of unstable movements that comes and goes like a boomerang is the most fruitful in this work, boosted by the sound of a dysfunctional electrocardiogram. There is no doubt that it is an experimental truck. The various sources of influence that shape the album "Hyperdrama" are condensed here. !<
>! “It took a long time for this truck to be completed. As for us, we wanted to make it sound like a machine that is about to overdrive to a point where it could collapse internally due to excessive information. It seemed to us that it was natural to use a synth, but we couldn't reach the exactness and accuracy that we were desperately aiming for. In the end, "Muscle Memory" calmed down by using 90% guitar. The guitar was an instrument that could realize the best envelope response that could produce sharp and blur-free movements using only short sounds so that the sound could be gradually repeated over time." !<
11 Harpy Dream
>! “Harpy Dream", the anagram of the album title "Hyperdrama", is an interlude that leads to the last explosion. !<

1. Saturnine (starring Miguel)

"Saturnine", which decorates the pop climax of this work in the form of Future R&B, invites Miguel, who is a big star in the American R&B world but not yet known in France, and is unrealistic and beautiful. His falsetto attracts the listener to the point of stunning.
"Saturnine", which is full of breaks and changes in form, is both fluid and full of ups and downs, experimental and at the same time in the mainstream, and by its dystopian and futuristic soul, justice It's a truck that opens up new horizons.
"Miguel is an outstanding performer. In the studio, we said to him, "Well, we're going to record your voice with a single mono take, without using any modern pop vocal effects such as reverb and autotune." It was. He was very enthusiastic at first, but when he listened to the finished truck, he asked us this. " Is it really okay that you don't want to add a little bit of reverb and octaver and make it more American sound?" That's right. So we answered like this. " No, no, trust us. When your voice is in the middle, it sounds cool and sexy.'"
"After that, some people told me that I was a little embarrassed about the way we produced his voice. But all the songs we really love, when we listen to them, we feel such a disturbing anxiety or even awkwardness, because of the composition method and the way of producing it. And after that, I won't be able to stop listening."

1. The End (starring Thundercat)

>! “The End", which Justice himself describes as a track like the end of the world, reflects their desire to work with Thundercat, a Compton singer and outstanding musician. It's a song that was done. In this truck that closes the end, the Thundercat is being pushed out of his usual safety zone.!<
>! “The End", which is based on the R&B beat and layered with many layers of angry gaba rhythm, sounds like an apocalyptic soul tornado that tightens your chest ... In other words, the seductive and magical dis called "Hyperdrama" It's a perfect finale for Ko Gaba Opera. !<

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.
Historical information found on Shannon O'Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here)). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of O'Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Serial Information

• Episodes: Season 18, Episodes 1-4
• Airdates: 30th August - 20th September 1980
• Doctor: 4th
• Companions: K-9 (Episode 1, V/A: John Leeson), Romana II
• Writer: David Fisher
• Director: Lovett Bickford
• Producer: John Nathan-Turner
• Script Editor: Christopher H. Bidmead

Review

We must have missed the usual channels…as usual. – The Doctor
So here we are. The beginning of the final producer era of Doctor Who's original 26 season run. Of course, calling this part of the same era as Survival is a bit silly, but nonetheless our final Producer, and by far the most controversial (mostly because barely anyone has heard of John Wiles), John Nathan-Turner has arrived. And with him…a really refreshing change of pace.
The Leisure Hive began its life as a script while Douglas Adams was still producer. And the original script would have had a lot of elements that would have felt right at home in Season 17. The original plan was a sort of parody of mafia/gangster movies, similar to how City of Death started its life as a David Fisher script that was a sort of parody of detective novels. However, JNT, along with his new Script Editor Christopher H. Bidmead, were aiming for a more serious sci-fi tone for the new season and the two of them gradually removed all of the parody elements in the revision process with Fisher. What's left is a much more straightforwards Doctor Who story that, in what is something of a novelty for the 4th Doctor era, doesn't have any clear inspirations in its final form.
And I think Leisure Hive is better for it. While by no means an extraordinary story, Leisure Hive does manage to get a lot right by keeping things focused on the actual plot. Argolis is in the fallout from a devastating war with the Fomasi (that's an anagram of "mafiosa", because gangsters). The end result is that the Argolins have been rendered sterile. The last generations live their days out, having turned the lone habitation dome on Argolis into a tourist destination, a monument to both their advances in the sciences of tachyonics and the ideals of peace. That last point was down to David Fisher both wanting to do a bit of commentary on England's declining tourism industry and his having read some articles in the New Scientist magazine about tachyons. Honestly the tourism angle is probably the least interesting part of the story, even though it's where the story gets its name. It's just such a minor plot detail that occasionally forces the story to go "oh by the way, the guests are all panicking" every now and then.
That aside, I think the setting does work quite well. The dread of a population apparently consigned to dying out by the end of a generation is felt strongly. The anger at the Fomasi is an undercurrent throughout. And those tachyonics experiments really let the the special effects crew show off their stuff without hitting against what is practical. Mind you, I'm not sure exactly what tachyonics is within the story. Obviously it has something to do with time, as it is based around tachyons, and there is a lot of talk the makes it clear that time travel ideas are at the core of the science, but how that leads to an individual getting their arms legs and head pulled off their torso…I'm not entirely sure. Still, if you're willing to go with "tachyonics does whatever the plot says it does", it's a good time.
It does take a while for things to get into gear. This story is a bit of a slow burn, especially with episode 1 taking its time actually getting to the main plot. That's not necessarily a bad thing though. In fact, I tend to like slow burn stories (for example, I absolutely love War Games). The issue that I take is that it feels a little hard in the first couple of episodes to get a sense of why anything that is going on matters. Still, the advantages of a slow burn are still present here. Because we take more time getting set up, the world of Argolis feels more complete. The past horrors of the war they've survived feels more real.
And because it takes a while for the plot to get going, it gets a while until we realize that Pangol is our main villain. The youngest Argolin on the planet, Pangol turns out to be a regressive, longing for the heroic past of Argolis that lead them into war. Xenophobic in the extreme, even though he runs the demonstrations of tachyonics for the visitors, Pangol is actually a really good skewering of a fascist.
That being said, his actual plan is bonkers. So tachyonics can create clones (just go with it), and he's the first successful child of the machine (whether he's a clone of anyone is unclear, again, go with it). The moment when we realize this is actually pretty well-timed, or at least it was for me. I recall my first time rewatching the story in several years just starting to wonder, "wait, if all of the Argolins are supposed to have been born before the war, how is it that Pangol looks so young" when Pangol revealed the truth in a scene perfectly performed by David Haig. In fact, Haig's whole performance is excellent, perfectly embodying the regressive angry young man he represents. He then, and this is the bonkers part, plans to create dozens of clones of himself to repopulate the planet and lead Argolis back into war, only stopped because the Doctor manages to reprogram the Tachyonic Recreation Generator to generate clones of the Doctor. The clones don't last long, fortunately (which, admittedly, suggests that Pangol's big plan was always doomed to failure).
Before Pangol takes over it looks like the Fomasi, Argolis' enemies in the last war, will be the villains. A human banker named Brock, who's been investing in the Argolis "Leisure Hive" shows up and starts trying to strongarm the Fomasi into selling Argolis to the Fomasi. We see a Fomasi lurking outside the protective dome. And later it becomes clear that the Fomasi trying to buy the planet aren't members of the government – they're a criminal sect called the West Lodge (there's another remnant of the mafia plot leaking through). Except, as it turns out, the Fomasi lurking outside the dome was actually a government investigator who was there to arrest a member of the West Lodge…who disguised himself as Brock. If all that sounds convoluted it actually plays out pretty well on screen, with Brock very much coming off the sleazy businessman before he's revealed to actually be a sleazy criminal businessman in a skinsuit. Neither the investigator nor the fake Brock get any meaningful character moments, but I thought they worked reasonably well as, essentially, decoy villains.
The rest of the guest cast are a smattering of fairly basic but solid enough characters. There's a subplot involving human scientist Hardin who was invited by Mena, one of the Argolins, to work with Tachyonics and his assistant Stimson. Hardin has been convinced by Stimson to fake his results, as they're certain that they can solve the problems they're encountering eventually. While Hardin comes off somewhat sympathetic (perhaps too sympathetic for someone committing academic fraud and dangling false hope in front of the Argolins), Stimson feels a lot shadier. The dynamic works, until Stimson is killed to frame the Doctor for murder. Mena, along with Morix, are the leaders of the Argolins (technically when Morix dies of old age the role passes along to Mena) and they come off as sympathetic in how they deal with the difficulties of the Argolin's people. As well, the way that old age hits Argolins suddenly, and little bits drop off them is quite effective.
As for the main cast…well things get a little weird here. First of all, we should mention that in the opening scene K-9 explodes when he goes into the water after Romana, frustrated, throws a beach ball in the water to get rid of him. The Doctor somehow manages to sleep through all of this by the way. Aside from the silliness in this opening scene of an otherwise fairly serious story (seriously, how is K-9 that vulnerable to water?) this does represent a pretty big shift in Doctor Who's philosophy. New Producer John Nathan-Turner and new Script Editor Christopher Bidmead wanted to move away from the lighter tone of the Williams era, and saw K-9 as a representative of the kiddier tone that era took. In addition, Nathan-Turner felt that the trio of the Doctor, Romana and K-9 were a bit too capable, that because all three of them were essentially geniuses in their own right, it was unnecessarily difficult to create a feeling of genuine threat. As a result K-9's profile was greatly reduced while he was still in the show this season.
And then there's Romana and the Doctor. Tom Baker and Lalla Ward's relationship, while not the smoothest at times, provided a sense of genuine chemistry throughout Season 17. But around the time Leisure Hive was filmed they had broken up, and Baker was trying to get back together with Ward. The end result was that at this time Ward and Baker were not talking to each other. And it does show. Not all the time, but Ward and Baker don't have the same chemistry that they did last season in this story.
Which is a shame because, individually, Ward and Baker are putting in some strong work built on pretty strong material. Romana continues to show off an increased willingness to be proactive, particularly shining as she works directly with Hardin to create the effect he'd been faking to that point. The two develop a genuinely enjoyable working relationship, in spite of the circumstances. Outside of that she's not as active as she was in the final few stories of Season 17, but still has a number of good moments. Lalla Ward is still putting in a strong performance as well, even if the chemistry with her costar is no longer what it was.
And the same could be said for Tom Baker as the Doctor. You'll read that Baker was a bit unhappy with the return to more serious material, but you wouldn't necessarily know it from this story. You'll also read that he took ill during filming, but he still manages to keep the energy up. Granted this is not a reversion to his Hinchcliffe era performance. He's still comes off a lot more relaxed than he was in those stories, and is cracking more jokes than he would have at the time. Oh and he also spends a good portion of the story in surprisingly solid old age makeup, because the Tachyonic Recreation Generator ages him several hundred years (again, go with it, although this seems like one of the less silly uses of tachyonics in the story). He then creates the aforementioned several dozen clones of himself and no, I don't have the same problem with this that I did in Invisible Enemy, mainly because I'm not entirely sure what the "clones" are really supposed to be and what their relationship with the Doctor is.
As a final note, John Nathan-Turner did more than just change the tone of the show, he made changes to pretty much every superficial element of the show. In the "Stray Observations" section below I go into more details on my thoughts on the Doctor's new outfit and the new title sequence and theme (short version, not a huge fan of any of them), but there's still more changes. Dudley Simpson, who'd been composing all of the incidental music for the show since Terror of the Zygons was let go by Nathan-Turner, who instead decided to go back to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, with a rotating group of composers (Peter Howell in this case). The result is a return to more electronic incidental music, though by this time we're talking about a heavy reliance on actual synthesizers, rather than the more elaborate techniques used in the 1960s. The new musical style takes a while to get used to, but it does work quite well for Doctor Who. Also, and only in this story, there's some odd transition effects used for a couple scenes, not dissimilar to Star Wars' scene transitions (I kind of suspect that's where the idea came from), though these don't return in future stories.
The Leisure Hive starts Season 18, and John Nathan-Turner's lengthy run as producer, off to a good start. It's a bit oddly paced, and while the secondary cast was solid they could have used a little more depth, but the story and worldbuilding make for an engaging time.
Score: 7/10

Stray Observations

• This was, of course, John Nathan-Turner's and Christopher H. Bidmead's first story as Producer and Script Editor respectively. JNT would stick around until the end of the Classic Series, but Bidmead would leave after the end of the season.
• This was the debut of a new fiberglass TARDIS prop, designed to be closer in look to actual police boxes.
• This was also the first Doctor Who story to ever have an Executive Producer. Former Doctor Who producer Barry Letts returned to the show under the Executive Producer label. The idea for an executive producer came from Grame MacDonald. During his time as BBC's Head of Serials, MacDonald had always tried to keep a close eye on Doctor Who, but the Serials department had just been merged with the Series department, and MacDonald would no longer be able to be so active in the show, and wanted Letts to keep an eye on it for him. For what it's worth, Letts has always insisted he tried not to interfere with John Nathan-Turner and his team.
• John Leeson returns as K-9. He had left after growing tired of the part and only returned because JNT promised him the character would be written out of the show. That being said, Leeson had gotten so good at doing the K-9 voice by this point that he no longer needed to use the vocal modulater he'd used back in Season 15.
• For the first time ever, ITV tried to directly compete with Doctor Who by placing a science fiction show, the American Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, in the same timeslot as Doctor Who beginning with The Leisure Hive. This is generally agreed to have contributed to Season 18's relatively poor ratings, including dropping out of the top 100 television programs for the week of episode 3 for the first time ever.
• Production on The Leisure Hive went severely over budget and behind schedule, and Director Lovett Bickford was never brought back to work on Doctor Who again as a result.
• Writer David Fisher was unhappy with cuts made to the story, which caused individual episodes to run short, and would never work on Doctor Who again.
• So we start off with some big changes. The title sequence, theme music and logo are all entirely different and I…do not really care for any of them. Beginning with the title sequence, I can at least understand the decisions that were made here. John Nathan-Turner felt that the prior title sequences, especially the time tunnel one used to that point in the 4th Doctor era, felt too claustrophobic, and wanted to create something that would feel more open. And, this title sequence does exactly that. Thing is, I've just never especially cared for the "starfield" title sequences. It's hard to explain, but I just feel like they don't do a very good job representing the show. For a space adventure show, Doctor Who has very few shots of or in space. I've always preferred the more abstract or time vortex title sequences, that feel a bit weirder and more disorienting, as Doctor Who is often a very weird and disorienting show. That being said, the "Doctor face constellation" is a neat idea, though in this specific case, poorly implemented. I cannot fathom what made them choose one of the worst pictures of Tom Baker to slap in the opening title sequence.
• Next the theme music. It's by far the change that I have the least problem with. Though Delia Derbyshire's arrangement remains a classic, I can definitely see that, by 1980, it would have felt very out of date. The new arrangement, by Peter Howell, is perfectly fine, but it's by far the most generic-sounding of all of the themes, at least in retrospect. At the time, I'm sure it seemed like a wild shift for the show, but looking back on all of the versions of the theme, it's the one that has made the least of an impression on me.
• Finally, that logo. I do not like "neon tube" Doctor Who logo at all. It is very of the times, but it has always felt too campy for my tastes.
• So the Doctor's revised outfit. Tom Baker had gone through a number of different variations on the same basic outfit throughout his tenure, but JNT wanted a refresh. Tom Baker apparently suggested that the outfit might change entirely, presumably throwing out the iconic scarf, coat and hat look, but ultimately the decision was made by Costume Designer June Hudson to keep the same basic outfit. The big change was that the outfit was now entirely burgundy, coat, hat and even the scarf. The outfit…is too much of one color. I don't hate it, but earlier versions of the outfit definitely allowed each design element to shine a bit more. As it is the scarf and hat kind of blend together. Oh and for the first time the Doctor has question mark lapels. The question mark thing is going to stick around through the rest of the classic era, as JNT seems to have particularly liked it. I don't have a problem with this, as goofy as it might be.
• Apparently the idea was thrown around that Romana might have her own outfit that she'd stick in through the rest of her stories. Lalla Ward rejected the idea, as she liked having a say in her costume and having various outfits. However the idea of each companion having a set outfit, or "uniform" as JNT liked to think of it, is something that would eventually become the norm on the show under Nathan-Turner.
• Romana mentions that the Doctor bypassed the TARDIS randomizer to attempt to arrive at the opening of the Brighton Pavilion. They arrived in the "right place, wrong time".
• The end of episode 1 cliffhanger is one of the best Doctor Who cliffhangers ever. The Doctor apparently walks into the Tachyon Recreation Generator, and suddenly his limbs and head are split off from his body as we zoom in on his screaming face.
• In episode 3, the Doctor causes an Argolin scientist to go into shock (as in, he has a physical reaction) by writing down warp mechanics on the side of the TARDIS in chalk. So I have a lot of questions, but for now I'll just point out that the chalk…didn't actually make any marks on the TARDIS.
• In episode 4, after the arrest of the false Brock (the leader of the West Lodge), the Doctor declares "you don't cross your bridges before they're hatched. This sort of mangling of two common sayings into one will eventually, albeit briefly, become a signature of the 7th Doctor's.
• At the end of the story The Doctor leaves the TARDIS randomizer behind, dismissing the threat of the Black Guardian. I'm sure this will have no long-term consequences whatsoever.

Two Years of This Nonsense

So this post marks the 2 year anniversary of me forcing my opinions on the unsuspecting denizens of gallifrey. This review series, which takes up an amount of my spare time I'm genuinely ashamed to admit to, has grown a lot in that time. By which I mean, of course, that the posts have gotten far longer and more pretentious.
In all seriousness, I love doing this, mostly because it gives me a reason to rewatch Classic Who, something which I don't necessarily do as much as the revival because…there's just so much of it, and each story takes at least 2 hours to get through (for the most part). I enjoy the serial format, to be clear, it's just a significantly greater time commitment.
I've gotten on a reasonably consistent schedule over the past year, mostly by getting a bit ahead (I've already written my review for State of Decay, for reference). This means that I've gone from having gotten through The Mind Robber this time last year – the tail end of the 2nd Doctor era – to being near the end of the 4th Doctor era now. It also means I have a reasonable sense of what's to come in the future. If all goes well, I should be wrapping up the Classic Series around the end of the year. As in this calendar year. As surreal as it is to even be thinking about the end of Classic Who…it's coming, and faster than I'm willing to deal with. Of course the plan is, and has always been, to continue on after that.
As always, thank you to those who read, comment, and so on. I hope you've enjoyed reading my ramblings. I know I've enjoyed writing them.
Next Time: Cactus man, cactus man, does whatever a cactus can

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“Who exactly are you?”
Evina’s question, as was typical and expected of her, came completely out of nowhere and at the height of my own confusion.
Except instead of this being a typical jab or derived from her questionable sense of humor… this was serious.
Her features were beyond darkened, now crossing over into one that she wore only in the most severe of circumstances.
Her eyes betrayed a look that she’d never used before, staring me down with a gaze even more distant and fearful than even our first meeting as complete strangers.
To say that my heart completely sank at that point would’ve been an understatement.
The tonal whiplash of being at the very height of optimism just a little while ago, to having your very identity and your very sense of self being deconstructed with evidence, was something that was tearing my resolve apart at the seams.
I took a moment to consider Evina’s question, to try to put two and two together coupled with Lysara’s foregone conclusions.
But no matter how hard I tried, and no matter how much I attempted to wrap my head around it, I couldn’t come up with any logical dissection of the situation or any decisive comeback.
And so I answered in the only way I knew how to.
By just telling the truth.
“I’m me.” Were the only words I could blurt out, as I practically forced them out through a hoarse breath, with anxiety threatening to eat up those scant few syllables before they even left my constricted throat. “I’m… I’m literally who I’ve been for as long as we’ve known each other, Evina.” I continued, trying to find my footing and my stride as best as I could.
I tried standing up for myself, perhaps for the first time ever.
“I really want to believe that, Eslan.” Evina answered promptly, and without even the slightest hint of the same anxious nervousness that was holding me back. “I… I hate asking this, because I want to believe you. I want to believe everything that happened over the past decade was exactly how it’s supposed to be.” There was a pause following that, as if Evina wanted to pull back and take on a different trajectory. But she didn’t, deciding to simply power through it. “You know me better than anyone, Eslan. The thing I hate more than even the worst wastelander gang, than even the most savage of raiders, is a con artist. And it’s one thing to be conned out of ammo for dud batteries, and it’s another to be lied to and manipulated by your own bunker mates… but it’s an entirely different ball game to be conned out of an entire life you thought was real. An entire life you thought you’d built out of genuine trust.” Evina paused, as if trying to calm herself down, taking long steady breaths, averting her gaze only for a split second. “I didn’t give a heck about those bone scans or whatever at first, Eslan. I didn’t care about the lab results, the bloodwork, or any of that. It’s all just smoke and mirrors to me and you know I’m not the best person to interpret that sort of crap. But the thing I do know, the one thing I know better than even the lab techies themselves? It’s inheritance. And when I saw that scan of your brain, when I saw what was… or more accurately, what wasn’t there?”
Evina paused, taking yet another set of deep breaths before leveling her eyes towards me.
“I… It… What I saw broke me, Eslan. So tell me. I just want to know. How much of what you’ve said about your life was true? And how much of it was a massive falsification?”
I felt like a deer in headlights.
My whole body refused to move.
And my mind… followed a similar pattern.
A million and one thoughts passed through my head.
Ultimately, it all boiled down to one distressing conclusion - I just didn’t understand.
I struggled to put those thoughts into words.
Struggled for seconds as my lips quivered nervously.
If this had been a proper interrogation, Evina would’ve more than likely exploded by now.
Which meant her silence and her frustration… was actually signs of her holding her own emotions back as best as she could right now.
At least there was that…
“None of it.” I began, although I immediately regretted those words given the context. “None of it was a falsification, Evina. Everything I’ve said, everything I’ve done, every single thing we went through… all of it was real.”
“I don’t doubt for a fact what we went through together was real, Eslan.” Evina snapped back, though just as quickly restrained herself from going any further. “Which is what makes this situation more complicated… because I know for a fact that you walk the walk and much as you talk the talk; at least when it comes to the life we’ve led for the past decade. We’ve been through hell and back and nothing can take that back. But I… I need to know if all of that was founded off of a big fat lie. Because despite everything we’ve been through, if everything you’ve told me about your life was false… then how do I even know who I was even fighting with? We’ve built a life together, like brother and sister. So just tell me, how much of your narrative was constructed to ensure that we ended up as close as we are?”
“There is no narrative Evina!” I finally shouted out, finally breaking out of my anxieties with a mix of emotions almost alien to me. “There wasn’t ever any narrative! Everything I’ve said about my life, my past, my everything was true! Exactly as I remembered it!”
“Including your inheritance cycle? Your prior iterations?” Evina shot back.
“More than anything else.” I responded confidently.
“Then let’s go through it.” Evina suggested, almost akin to a challenge. “You were born in what bunker?”
“Bunker Seven-Two-Nine.” I responded instinctively.
“Who was your bunker administrator?”
“Doctor Evis Larnocka.”
“The date of your inheritance?”
“The Twelfth of the Fifth month.”
…
This back and forth went on for a full ten minutes.
And by the end of it, it looked as if Evina had come to some terrifying conclusion, if the look on her face could be trusted at least.
“Eslan.” Evina managed out through a shaky breath. “My bunker number was Two-Nine-Seven. My administrator’s name was Proctor Sevis Narlocka. The date of my inheritance was the fifth day of the twelfth month.” She spoke, going on and on down the long list of what were seemingly irrelevant details to me, but were somehow completely reality-shattering for her.
“How is any of this relevant-”
“Just humor me for a second. Tell me just how far back your iterations go.”
“They go back as far into the last generation in the pre-war era. My first iteration worked in academia, and was a rather frail felinor all things considered. They had hobbies which involved indoor activities and primarily focused on escapist fiction.”
“And that doesn’t sound like my first iteration to you?” Evina countered.
“There were ten billion felinors back before the war, are you claiming that there couldn’t have been individuals with similar life stories?”
“Then let’s go to your latest iteration, the one prior to your current self. What were their hobbies?”
“Fishing in the-”
“-untouched aquifer just south east of the Fieldspring neighborhood’s secondary school.” Evina interrupted, more or less predicting exactly what I was going to say.
That… stirred something within me. As if a part of me felt unreasonably angry at that, but I couldn’t point how why.
So I continued, trying to dredge up facts that I hadn’t told Evina before.
“Finding old firearms to repair, and often finding ways to iterate on them using-”
“-their wastelander allies’ expertise. This group consisting of a grizzled ex-raider, a twitchy bunker scientist who got exiled for an experiment gone wrong, and a mysterious mechanic who goes off on their own and comes back with new vehicles every couple of months.” Evina finished my thoughts for me.
She… actually managed to finish them, without even hearing me say anything.
I… knew for a fact I’d never told her about this.
In fact, strangely, I seemed to have recalled this story the moment I thought of it. As if the memory just… popped into existence.
“H-how? How did you know-”
“Because that’s a story I told you about my latest prior iteration, Eslan.” Evina interjected once more. “It’s the broad strokes, told as vaguely as possible, without putting in the specific flourishes and details.” She continued, before letting out a deep and worrisome sigh. “I’m starting to realize that somehow, almost everything you’ve told me thus far, has been a reconstruction of what prompts I’ve given you; as well as the stories of those we’ve met along the way. And given how much you were just… so overly curious about the world, and my own experiences following our first meeting… I should’ve known there was something off.”
I tried thinking back to those early days, to the first few weeks of just… surviving out in the forests and in its nearby towns.
But the more I tried to think back on those days, the more they felt… formative, as if that’s as far as I could feasibly think without things starting to become strangely cloudy.
Anger stirred inside me once more, inexplicably too, when confronted about all of this.
An anger that I just didn’t feel was part of me, but that felt… defensive, almost like it was an instinctive reaction to being confronted with the veracity of my own memory.
“Evina.” Lysara finally interrupted. “The names which you mentioned before, the bunker administrator’s names and numbers. They don’t really sound anywhere near similar to Eslan’s own-”
“They do in my language.” Evina interrupted, before going all out on her theory. “I don’t know how much your translators are able to deal with weird contextual localisms, but these names are just… anagrams of one another. The bunker number is even a switched up version of my own, and the date of inheritance is also just swapped. That’s not to mention all of the stories I’m now realizing are my own stories or the stories of other wastelanders we’ve met, just with more embellishments and rearrangements of the facts to give them more credibility in their originality.”
There was a firm, long pronounced pause following that. As Evina sunk her face into both of her hands, gripping her forehead tightly in the process.
“Eslan.” Lysara finally spoke, seeing that Evina had just checked out of the conversation.
“Yes, Lysara?”
“I… I… First of all I do apologize if this is poor bedside manners on my behalf. I’m… not a medical professional and I do not know if this would be something that you would be okay with seeing right now but… this entire confrontation was brought on in large part due to your brain scans. I just wanted to ask if you wished to see the results of-”
“Yes.” I answered abruptly, cutting the alien off before he could waffle on.
“Alright.” The alien responded with a single nod, bringing up another hologram, revealing what looked to be your standard coronal, lateral, and sagittal views of the brain. Except instead of it just being a black and white CT, there was color here, indicating it was reading brain activity as well. And what I saw… or rather, as Evina said herself, what I didn’t see - disturbed me to the core.
The tentorium, the ‘shell brain’ that should’ve been alive with colors, indicating the presence of all my prior iterations… was simply dark.
Barely a spark of light was there.
And that was if I wasn’t just seeing things.
I began stumbling back, as if my whole body wanted nothing to do with that image that taunted me with an impossible truth.
I began stammering, my mouth hanging agape as my eyes darted every which way.
“Eslan.” Lysara spoke, prompting Evina to finally turn up from her own internalized woes, to stare at me with a renewed gaze of conflicted concern. “I think what’s best for us, for all of us right now-” The alien turned towards Evina, if only for a moment. “-is to remain calm, and to just take a few steps back. I can have refreshments and-”
“It was all a lie.” I managed out, finally, through a shaky breath. “Everything… everything I… but it can’t be… but it is… but it can’t. I…” The world began to stir, as I felt as if the room itself was spinning.
Nothing else came to mind at that point.
Save for one, strong, almost overwhelmingly powerful thought.
RUN.
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(Author’s Note: Lysara starts out in an attempt to explain Eslan's situation to him, however Evina attempts the more direct path towards confronting him with both the truth, and a bold attempt in reconciling with the inconsistencies in the life she's been led to believe as accurate over the past near decade! I hope you guys enjoy! :D The next chapter is already out on Patreon as well if you want to check it out!)
[If you guys want to help support me and these stories, here's my ko-fi ! And my Patreon for early chapter releases (Chapter 90 of this story is already out on there!)]

The Definitive List of Onyx Gemstone Refractors in CURRENCY Series 1 by Cardsmiths as of April 1, 2024 that have been pulled, captured, and uploaded as a photo, screenshot, etc.: 46 out of 73 discovered!

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Card #1 Bitcoin
Card #1A Bitcoin
Card #2 Satoshi
Card #3 Litecoin
Card #4 Ethereum
Card #5 Dogecoin
Card #6 The Saylor
Card #7 Nikola Tesla
Card #8 Pythagoras
Card #9 Bitcoin
Card #10 Bitcoin
Card #11 Vitalik
Card #12 Mt. Gox
Card #13 Charlie Lee
Card #14 Ethereum
Card #15 Charles Babbage
Card #16 Antikythera Mechanism
Card #17 Ada Lovelace
Card #18 Satoshi
Card #19 May 22nd
Card #20 Rocket
Card #21 HODL
Card #22 Stock to Flow
Card #23 Lambo
Card #24 The Moon
Card #25 Tulips
Card #26 Fiat
Card #27 Ancient Drachma
Card #28 Elon Musk (Welcome to Mars)
Card #28A Elon Musk (Nuke Mars)
Card #29 Gold
Card #30 Silver
Card #31 Platinum
Card #32 Satoshi
Card #33 Camel
Card #34 The Bank
Card #35 Whale
Card #36 Miner
Card #37 The Halving
Card #38 Token
Card #39 Peer-to-Peer
Card #40 Tally Sticks
Card #41 Abraham Lincoln
Card #42 King George III
Card #43 Alexander Hamilton
Card #44 Bitconnect
Card #45 Bitcoin
Card #46 Ethereum
Card #47 White Paper
Card #48 Red Pill
Card #49 Bagholders
Card #50 Rekt
Card #51 Bitcoin
Card #52 Dogecoin
Card #53 Litecoin
Card #54 Shitcoins
Card #55 MMT
Card #56 NFT
Card #57 Salvator Mundi
Card #58 Satoshi
Card #59 Bitcoin
Card #60 Bitcoin
Card #MR1 Bitcoin
Card #MR2 Dogecoin
Card #MR3 Dogecoin
Card #MR4 Cardano
Card #MR4A Cardano
Card #MR5 Satoshi
Card #MR6 Dogecoin
Card #MR6A Dogecoin
Card #MR7 Ethereum
Card #MR7A Ethereum
Card #MR8 Year of the Ox
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Fun facts

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13) This is the first tweet that Gamestop, as a company, tweeted about Cardsmiths!
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Although Cardsmiths, under the parent company of Toynk, is a private business or company with no public info about its finances, you could likely directly correlate a spike in its profits in the months after the above tweet by Gamestop. There's something brewing here . . .
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Larry Cheng, the Co-Founder of Volition Capital and a director and board member of GameStop:
'What’s the best website or app to buy sports cards (e.g. baseball, football, etc) besides eBay and Beckett?"
8:36 AM · Sep 23, 2023
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Beckett Collectibles announced, "Accepting take back submissions next weekend at u/GameStop"
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Gamestop has promoted Cardsmiths on its official Twitter for a long time now: "Whoa! Did you hear a full bitcoin was found at a Gamestop in San Antonio this week? Get in on this!"
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14): Cardsmiths tweeted that all Cardsmiths CURRENCY cards, including the ones distributed at conferences and conventions (like The National Sports Collectors Convention or Gamestop Conference) are eligible to be graded at PSA and Beckett!
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They are! All Cardsmiths cards are eligible to be graded by @PSAcard and @beckettcollect!
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15) CURRENCY Series 1 by Cardsmiths features Card #47 White Paper, which features the following inscription on the back:
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Most new investment ideas or cryptocurrencies are first introduced in the form of a "whitepaper," which is an informational document laying out the specific features of a project.

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Did you know that the Bitcoin White Paper was published on October 31, 2008 in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis? Many say that timing was a coincidence, and a few say maybe not.
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The closest and earliest thing I have ever seen to a GMERICA White Paper was "The GME Warpath" by u/Sharkbaitlol, and it was published on August 29, 2021 (roughly 7 months after the GME "sneeze"). It describes a world reimagined where blockchain technology (NFT, etc.) enhances the lives of all of mankind and makes the world a better place. For example, if Gamestop is involved in or creating a blockchain stock exchange, it would essentially render predatory and abusive naked short selling obsolete since the blockchain is transparent. This would be a big step towards preventing unfair wealth concentration in a few powerful (and corruptible) people.
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16) CURRENCY Series 1 by Cardsmiths features Card #29 Gold, which features the following inscription on the back:
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Gold is a dense yellow metal that is highly malleable. Gold has been used throughout history to make jewelry and decorations. It also serves as a medium of exchange in the form of coins and bars.

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As in the case of other wars, governments suspended the gold standard during World War I to increase the money supply and pay for the war.
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The U.S. returned to the gold standard in 1919, and other European countries and Japan reinstated the gold parity a couple years later.
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Nearing a coming dollar solvency crisis, Richard Nixon announced on August 15th, 1971 that he was closing the gold window, effectively barring all countries from current and future gold redemptions. Money ceased to be based on the gold in the Treasury vaults, and instead was now completely unbacked and based solely on government decree or fiat.
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Please see "Fun Fact" #10 involving fiat for more information, and much of this information was obtained from Peruvian Bull. A key underlying feature of the fiat money system is that virtually all money is credit. One danger of fiat money is that governments can print too much of it, resulting in hyperinflation.
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Did you know that Peruvian Bull is one of the only Superstonk members to be liked multiple times by Ryan Cohen on Twitter?
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17) CURRENCY Series 1 by Cardsmiths features Card #55 MMT, which features the following inscription on the back:
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Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT, is a macroeconomic principle whereby sovereign countries who issue their own currency can print as much money as necessary to meet the spending requirements of their government.

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Part I: Peruvian Bull, Superstonk Legend and Liked by Ryan Cohen on Twitter, on Hyperinflation
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Peruvian Bull, who first starting writing on Superstonk, has written a book about a potential crisis in the global financial system due to the actions of the United States of America and the status that U.S. dollar holds as the World Reserve Currency. Two of the biggest problems caused by the U.S. are due to the unconstrained "printing of money" by the Federal Reserve and the risks posed by the $1 quadrillion in the derivatives market. A derivative is a financial contract whose value is tied to an underlying asset. Common derivatives include futures contracts and options. Predatory or abusive naked short selling involves options. Derivatives in the mortgage market were a major cause of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Susanne Trimbath, PhD stated that "for every $1 in real value that any company or country puts into the financial markets, brokers are ramping it up and trading something like 1,875% of it. Another way to look at it is that if a homeowner defaults on a $100,000 mortgage, it can do $187,500,000 worth of damage to global financial markets."
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Warren Buffet called derivatives "financial weapons of mass destruction." Peruvian Bull used the metaphor of nitroglycerin to describe the risks involved with derivatives.
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The modern international financial system, unhinged from the fetters of regulation and oversight, has created a derivatives monster whose tendrils reach across the globe. Fed by the incessant money printer and holding the retirement funds of generations, this machine continues to bet, in ever-increasing amounts, in the greatest casino ever created. This monster, as long as it is nourished by cheap credit and ever increasing flows of cash from the Federal Reserve, will continue to grow:
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We are at the end of a MASSIVE debt supercycle. This 80-100 year pattern always ends in one of two scenarios - default/restructuring (deflation a la Great Depression) or inflation (hyperinflation in severe cases (a la Weimar Republic). The United States has been abusing it’s privilege as the World Reserve Currency holder to enforce its political and economic hegemony onto the Third World, specifically by creating massive artificial demand for treasuries/US Dollars, allowing the US to borrow extraordinary amounts of money at extremely low rates for decades, creating a Sword of Damocles that hangs over the global financial system.

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Peruvian Bull said, "Bitcoin, and gold to a lesser extent, serve as inflation hedges." See "Fun Fact" #10 to see which two assets that Peruvian Bull believes has infinite value.
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Part II: Criand, Superstonk Legend
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Did you know that one of the most respected and influential figures in the Gamestop movement wrote a reddit post describing how the 2007-2008 financial crisis never finished "crashing" and some of the most powerful people or organizations in the world are simply kicking the can down the road and delaying a financial crisis? Part of the title of u/Criand's post described, "How 2008 is repeating, at a much greater magnitude." Another GME silverback gorilla named u/broccaaa said the same thing.
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The market crash of 2008 never finished. It was can-kicked and the same people who caused the crash have still been running rampant doing the same bullshit in the derivatives market as that market continues to be unregulated. They're profiting off of short-term gains at the risk of killing their institutions and potentially the global economy. Only this time it is much, much worse.
The bankers abused smaller amounts of leverage for the 2008 bubble and have since abused much higher amounts of leverage - creating an even larger speculative bubble. Not just in the stock market and derivatives market, but also in the crypt0 market, upwards of 100x leverage.
The rich made a fatal error in way overshorting stocks. There is a potential for their decades of sucking money out of taxpayers to be taken back. The derivatives market is potentially a $1 Quadrillion market.
The rich, and I mean all of Wall Street, are trying desperately to shut GameStop down because it has the chance to suck out trillions if not hundreds of trillions from the game they've played for decades. They've rigged this game since the 1990's when derivatives were first introduced.

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Part III: Did you know that Peruvian Bull agreed with Criand?
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Did you know that Peruvian Bull agreed with u/Criand? Did you know Peruvian Bull created a YouTube video entitled, "2008 Never Ended - The Dollar Endgame Part 3.5." The following is Pervian Bull's grim prediction:
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Through the magic of Fractional Reserve banking, institutions can loan out much more debt than cash that actually exists. This increases systemic risk. As a result, over 90% of all capital created is in the form of debt. This supercharges debt cycles and can cause massive bank failures. When debt super-cycles crest and begin the march downwards, massive deleveraging and defaults begin. If the banking system is weak, bank runs begin (1930s). We were hitting another end of the 80 yr debt cycle in 2008 (1929-2008 (79yrs)). We never de-leveraged the system. Instead, we re-leveraged EVERYTHING even MORE. The Government and the Fed swept in and bailed out the banks. Now the Federal Government is deeply in debt to the tune of $28 Trillion. The trillions printed by the Fed were almost exclusively routed to the financial system - creating a new bubble in every single asset class, larger and even more widespread than the 2008 bubble.
We never resolved 2008. We only kicked the can up the stairs. The Derivatives monster from Pt 2, along with a massive debt avalanche, will come back with a vengeance.
Debt borrowing and money-printing cannot continue forever. The idea that anyone can borrow forever, or print money forever, with no consequences, defies basic financial logic. Impossible Objects cannot exist forever. History shows deadly consequences for the nations that venture down either path. The United States is no exception. The avalanche is coming either way - and we only have two choices. Either we allow ourselves to be buried under a mountain of hyper-deflation, creating a new Great Depression, frozen credit and equity markets, and massive bank failures - or, we burn our way out, using the inferno of money-printing and hyper-inflation.

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18) CURRENCY Series 1 by Cardsmiths features Card #MR8 Year of the Ox with the following inscription on the back of the card:
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The Ox occupies the second position in the Chinese Zodiac Calendar. The Ox is a symbol of diligence, strength, honesty, down-to-earth persistence, and wealth.
2021 is the Year of the Ox, with the next Year of the Ox occurring again in 2033.

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Part I: It's Publicly Reported on Record that GME's short interest was 249.73% and BBBY's was 126.78%
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It's ironic that Cardsmiths made Card #MR8 Year of the Ox because Cohen has tweeted about China several times, has tweeted "hello" in Mandarin, and has written a children's book entitled Teddy Goes to China. The first half of the Gamestop saga started with Gamestop: the second half of the saga will involve Bed Bath and Beyond, Buy Buy Baby (which will become the next Chewy but for babies), and "China." The end of the Gamestop saga will coincide with the MOASS and will mark the beginning of the GMERICA saga.
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Just like the inscription on the back of the card, Gamestop Apes are relentlessly bullish (doing their due diligence, having strength and persistence with their diamonds hands, being future wealthy millionaires, etc.), so this card is quite apropos for the MOASS movement. It's interesting how unbelievably and unintentionally accurate CURRENCY Series 1 by Cardsmiths was with memorializing the (inevitable) MOASS.
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Ryan Cohen is one of the only human beings on earth to go up against Amazon in a particular sector of the market . . . and win. Chewy made Cohen a billionaire, and it made Larry Cheng, the man who initially invested in him, much wealthier after Cheng's initial $15 million investment was flipped into hundreds of millions (2:12:45 - 2:13:00). The most current theory amongst authentic Superstonk apes and BBBY / The PP Show apes is that Gamestop will undergo some sort of merger or acquisition with BBBY / Buy Buy Baby using the $1 billion cash on hand that Gamestop possesses right now. Never forget that Gamestop and BBBY were, respectively, the #1 and #2 most shorted stocks in the stock market during the pandemic, and both were at one point or another shorted more than 100% (see Yahoo! Finance statistics). Mathematically speaking, the fact that they were shorted more than 100% should at least raise eyebrows to those unacquainted with the financial terrorism (predatory naked shorting) that has gone on in plain sight for decades if not almost a century.
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GME Short % of Float (Aug 13, 2020) = 249.73%
BBBY Short % of Float (Feb 27, 2023) = 126.78%
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Then magically around Mar 30, 2023, BBBY short interest drops to 19.08% with no short squeeze whatsoever. This kind of laughable fuckery was documented to death in Superstonk, and it happened to BBBY without much fanfare for some reason. It's theorized that naked short sellers (around the end of 2020 or beginning of 2021) initially attempted to partially close their open positions on GME (maybe that's why the short interest dropped from 249.73% to 226.42% initially); perhaps this was intentional to create the illusion that a short squeeze happened then concluded. This caused the "miniature short squeeze" or "sneeze" that raised GME to over $500 in the premarket. Short sellers possibly realized that fully closing their open positions on GME would decimate the global financial system. Consequently, they "took away the buy button" then completed a series of complex financial transactions to bring the price of GME back down to about ~ $40 (pre-split) without closing their positions, which happened around 1/2021 - 2/2021. Thus, a story was born that went something like this: the short squeeze is over, and there is nothing else to see here, so go home and take your losses; Melvin Capital closed out of its short position already so forget about GME. Gamestop Apes refused to believe the story that was sold to the American public by the mainstream media: it was all a lie.
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The short interest publicly reported for GME and BBBY does not reflect the true short interest disguised by tactics like swap transactions, using derivatives in overseas affiliates to net against short positions in the US to avoid marking orders as short, buy-writes or married puts, failure-to-delivers, etc. The SEC has known about these tactics for a long time—at least since 2003. Unfortunately, the SEC can only bring about civil enforcement actions and only the DOJ is capable of bringing about criminal enforcement for these types of white-collar crimes that are notoriously difficult to prosecute.
https://www.sec.gov/rules/2003/11/commission-guidance-rule-3b-3-and-married-put-transactions
https://www.sec.gov/about/offices/ocie/options-trading-risk-alert.pdf
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Part II: Definitive Proof that Naked Short Sellers Never Closed Their Open Positions on GME
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Naked short sellers never fully closed their open positions on GME (indeed, they doubled down and abusively naked shorted GME even more), and Gamestop apes proved it the way that Nobel Prize-winning scientists proved that black holes exist: it's technically impossible to see a black hole because black holes don't emit or reflect light, making them effectively invisible to telescopes. Therefore, studying the evidence surrounding the black hole will eventually get you the smoking gun.
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Gamestop apes analyzed all the publicly available info—like Level II market data, Bloomberg Terminal, SEC filings, dark pool data from FINRA—in order to conclude that predatory and abusive naked short sellers never closed their open positions on GME. This unethical, and likely criminal, behavior was suspected as early as 2004 in primitive online forums. This crowdsourced effort was one of humanity's greatest accomplishments: the collected effort of at least hundreds of thousands of retail investors; accountants; financial experts (former employees from DTCC, SEC, Citadel, etc.); Susanne Trimbath, PhD; lawyer(s) with an expertise in complex litigation and suing Wall Street for fraud; statisticians; and freelance journalists is capable of outgunning the employees of any newspaper, news broadcaster on television, or mainstream media outlet with more journalistic objectivity. u/Criand offered damning evidence to further support the fact that predatory and abusive naked short sellers never closed their open positions on GME and said, "You haven't covered your shorts, and I can show it mathematically":
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https://imgur.com/a/KD746WD
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It's easy to forget that Einstein himself (the man who first developed general relativity) doubted that black holes could even exist in the first place—despite the fact that general relativity predicted the existence of them—because black holes are such bizarre structures that break all the laws of physics. The math and physics checked out, but perhaps some sort of bias prevented Einstein from believing the truth. Could GME's true short interest be anywhere from 3,000 - 10,000%? Is the float of GME actually in the ballpark of ~500 million - billions when you factor in phantom shares? The following were calculated before the GME split when the float was around 63 million and the shares outstanding was 76 million:
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• In April of 2021, u/Criand and u/broccaaa calculated short interest using publicly available information (from FINRA, etc.) and concluded that it was 400%, and u/Criand said that the short interest "keeps growing every single SI Report Cycle."
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• Short interest of GME = 3,000% - 10,000% with float in the billions.
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• Short interest of GME is 6000% with float at about 4.62 billion shares.
  

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• Public float is at least 531 million.

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• Indirectly calculating the Gamestop short interest (1322.35%, 22606.25%) or float through XRT, an ETF that is just another method through which GME can be abusively naked shorted: XRT isn't just closely linked to GME—it is GME.

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• Indirectly calculating the float of GME by examining the OTC Transparency Data at FINRA as of February 28, 2022 showed "4.508 billion GME shares were traded over the past 72 weeks (at least 78x the float)."

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Predatory or abusive naked short selling creates phantom shares; thus, this dilutes the actual price of GME and prevents authentic price discovery in a (supposedly) free market. Don't believe me? Just read everything that Susanne Trimbath, PhD has ever written then get back to me.
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Part III: Teddy Goes to China and 你好
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Here are some of Ryan Cohen's tweets mentioning China:
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1. China is a sleeping giant. Let her sleep, for when she wakes she will move the world.
2. I have a crush on China.
3. China has a nationwide high-speed rail network that spans almost 22,000 miles. This is an amazing achievement.

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Many have speculated, including those on The PP Show, that Gamestop will soon be rebranded as GMERICA or Teddy, a conglomerate in the vein of Berkshire Hathaway or Icahn Enterprises. Gamestop and BBBY / Buy Buy BABY will be two factions of a juggernaut that will take down Amazon using technology that will take us one step closer to being a Type I Civilization on the Kardashev scale: cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
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Ryan Cohen does not waste time telegraphing his plans to his competitors. He is a man of few words, and his actions speak for themselves. His plans are under non-disclosure agreements, and you have to ask yourself if BBBY is undergoing a straightforward Chapter 7 bankruptcy, why all the NDA's here? It's a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and apes have gone absolutely nowhere. We are all still here, holding our GME / BBBY shares with nuclear pasta hands.
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In light of our long-term focus, we are not an investor that demands guidance. In fact, we appreciate that Apple, one of our long-term holdings, suspended guidance amidst pandemic-related uncertainty and has never given away a detailed strategy for all of its competitors to see. We dislike when a management team spends time accommodating Wall Street, engaging with television pundits and telegraphing forecasts to the competition. We believe management’s time is best spent focusing on execution that drives a better customer experience and tangible value creation.

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It must be said that the following are cold, hard facts:
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A) China is an anagram of Icahn. (Carl Icahn's son's last name is Icahn.)
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B) Ryan Cohen took a photo standing right next to Icahn himself.
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C) thestreet.com wrote an article entitled, "Is GameStop Chair Ryan Cohen the New Carl Icahn?"
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D) thestreet.com wrote an article entitled, "Is Ryan Cohen Steering GameStop Toward a Berkshire Hathaway or Icahn Enterprises Transformation?"
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E) Ryan Cohen tweeted, "Ryan Cohen by day, Warren Icahn by night."
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F) In response to predatory or abusive naked short sellers targeting IEP stock, Fox Business said in regards to Icahn that "He's Planning Something That These Guys Will Never Forget."
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G) Activist investor Carl Icahn scored a big payday after shares of tanker car maker American Railcar Industries surged on news that the company will merge with a subsidiary of ITE Rail Fund.
Icahn owned 62.2 percent of American Railcar’s shares outstanding, according to FactSet, having first taken a majority stake in 2010. The stake was worth nearly $550 million. In a statement, Icahn Enterprises said its investment in American Railcar resulted in a profit of $757.2 million, including the deal.
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H) Larry Cheng is a founding partner at Volition Capital, which has just under $2 billion of total assets under management. He was the first person to believe and invest in Ryan Cohen and propel Cohen towards becoming a billionaire. He is also a Gamestop board member. He said this on The PP Show to a room of Bed Bath and Beyond stockholders:
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"You guys are really defining what it means for retail investors to be in community and what comes from that, and so when I think about where this is headed and where communities are going from impacting the financial markets, it's wherever you guys in this room want to go. Because you guys are on the forefront, and you're leading it, and so kudos to you guys. I think the power of individual investors in community will only grow over time, and there are days in the future where rooms like what you have will be more important and more influential than Goldman Sachs."
https://www.youtube.com/live/9GCGn_STx-o?si=SCDhB4DvkR2Ud8xt&t=8070 (2:14:30 - 2:15:35)

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Why would a man of Larry Cheng's wealth and status waste his time and risk his reputation and bother going onto a show where the stockholders are holding onto a supposed bankrupt and worthless stock? How can a bunch of alleged rekt bagholders be more influential than Goldman Sachs? Keep in mind that the host, guests, and viewers of The PP Show talk about nothing but Bed Bath and Beyond stock relentlessly every day for 2-4 hours each stream, painstakingly pore through each and every docket (full of dry, verbose legalese) that comes out about Bed Bath and Beyond, and have less than 7,500 - 10,000 views per stream on average as of this writing. Also note that Bill Pulte was actually co-hosting with PP himself the day that the live stream featured Larry Cheng. Who do you think is the most liked person on Ryan Cohen's Twitter feed? Would you be surprised if I told you it was Bill Pulte? What would you think if I told you Ryan Cohen took a photo with Bill Pulte?
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It's a fact that Bed Bath and Beyond is currently going through Chapter 11 bankruptcy, not Chapter 7. Look to when American Airlines emerged from Chapter 11, marking the most successful Chapter 11 reorganization of an airline in recent history. Look to when Hertz emerged from Chapter 11 and surprisingly rewarded its shareholders with more than $1 billion in value despite the shareholders previously being in line to be completely wiped out.
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I) Ryan Cohen said some interesting things about Bed Bath and Beyond in a document filed with the SEC.
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J) Gamestop went from the verge of bankruptcy to a full year of profitability and has more than $1 billion cash on hand to grow its company.
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Part IV: Long Live GMERICA
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Is Ryan Cohen still involved with Bed Bath and Beyond? Please refer to my metaphor above involving black holes and discovering that the predatory naked short positions in GME were never closed. The hosts, guests, and viewers of The PP show have done exactly what the apes at Superstonk have done: they have deduced, indirectly, that Ryan Cohen is still involved with Bed Bath and Beyond and / or Buy Buy Baby through all the evidence that is publicly available to analyze.
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The transformation of GME into GMERICA may look like a world where blockchain technology paves the way for mankind to become one step closer to a Type I Civilization on the Kardashev scale. For example, to compete with Amazon Prime or Netflix, Ryan Cohen could revive Blockbuster and use NFT technology so that customers could own their own movies instead of having them permanently disappear after a streaming service abruptly takes them down offline without warning and without the ability to view their content again. Ryan Cohen could create a stock exchange using blockchain technology in order to render predatory and abusive naked short selling obsolete since the blockchain is transparent. A stock exchange using blockchain technology would give Computershare a much needed update and revolutionize the idea of owning a non-fungible stock in your name instead of having the DTCC own it for you as a phantom share. Something like this, or at least a merger or acquisition involving Gamestop and Bed Bath and Beyond, would likely force the open naked short positions on GME and BBBY to finally close. Money itself on the blockchain could usher in a era of humanity where wealth works for everyone instead of only for the 1% or centralized financial institutions and governments.
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Amazon has annihilated everyone who has ever stood in its way. Amazon will not be destroyed in a day nor will it be easy to destroy; therefore, when you strike at a king (retweeted by Ryan Cohen), you must kill him. MOASS will be the kill shot.
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A blue whale can take a long time to fully decompose, and in the beginning you may not even realize it's dying.

SOLVED: The problem has been found: When I checked if the word is on the list the reason it didn't find the repeating word is because it searched the list final_list itself instead of the lists inside it. I had to use the "any" function instead. Thanks for all the help!
I need to create a function that gets a list of strings and returns a new list that contains a lists of every given word that anagrams to each other (rearrange of letters). The problem is that when I check if the word is already inside the final list it just think the condition doesn't apply even though it should. I am not looking for a better way to code this, just the solution of why it wouldn't work and how to fix it.

def sort_anagrams(list_of_strings): final_list = [] for word in list_of_strings: new_list = [] if word in final_list: #THIS LINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! continue new_list.append(word) for string in list_of_strings: if sorted(word) == sorted(string) and word != string: new_list.append(string) final_list.append(new_list) return final_list def main(): list_of_words = ['deltas', 'retainers', 'desalt', 'pants', 'slated', 'generating', 'ternaries', 'smelters', 'termless', 'salted', 'staled', 'greatening', 'lasted', 'resmelts'] print(sort_anagrams(list_of_words)) if __name__ == "__main__": main() 

What it should return:
[['deltas', 'desalt', 'slated', 'salted', 'staled', 'lasted'], ['retainers', 'ternaries'], ['pants'], ['generating', 'greatening'], ['smelters', 'termless', 'resmelts']]
What it returns:
[['deltas', 'desalt', 'slated', 'salted', 'staled', 'lasted'], ['retainers', 'ternaries'], ['desalt', 'deltas', 'slated', 'salted', 'staled', 'lasted'], ['pants'], ['slated', 'deltas', 'desalt', 'salted', 'staled', 'lasted'], ['generating', 'greatening'], ['ternaries', 'retainers'], ['smelters', 'termless', 'resmelts'], ['termless', 'smelters', 'resmelts'], ['salted', 'deltas', 'desalt', 'slated', 'staled', 'lasted'], ['staled', 'deltas', 'desalt', 'slated', 'salted', 'lasted'], ['greatening', 'generating'], ['lasted', 'deltas', 'desalt', 'slated', 'salted', 'staled'], ['resmelts', 'smelters', 'termless']]
basically repeats the loop for every word.

I used an anagram generator to find words that could be spelled from “I am Clancy” and two that I found significant were “cynical” and “icy”, both of which are obviously related to Scaled and Icy. Do you guys think we will have more references to SAI in this era ? I understand how much of a stretch this is lol but I just feel like SAI can be pretty ignored by the fandom and its one of my favorites so I feel like I’m grasping at any opportunity to make it relevant lmao. But idk, am I being totally delusional (which is likely) or might there be something here ??