Movie quotes turning 30 Free oval tank smoker plans

At the world’s top college of magic and technology, every day brings a new discovery -and a new disaster. The advanced experiments of the college students tend to be both ambitious and apocalyptic, with the end of the world only prevented by a mysterious time loop, and a small handful of students who retain their memories.
Surviving the loops was hard enough, but now, in his senior year, Vell Harlan must take charge of them, and deal with the fact that the whole world now knows his secrets. Everyone knows about Vell’s death and resurrection, along with the divine game he is a part of. Now Vell must contend with overly curious scientists and evil billionaires hungry for divine power while the daily doomsday cycle bombards him with terrorists, talking elephants, and the Grim Reaper himself -but if he can endure it all, the Last Goddess’s game promises the ultimate prize: power over life itself.
[Previous Chapter][Patreon][Cover Art]
“Should I be worried?”
Why would you be worried?” Kim said. “Dean Lichman loves us.”
Dean Lichman had asked the two of them to stop by his office, though his brief message had not said what for. That left Vell to concoct nightmare scenarios in his head.
“He doesn’t love all of us.”
“Alex doesn’t count as ‘us’,” Kim said. She was a looper in purely a technical sense, mostly due to her own refusal to be a team player. “Besides, she’s been behaving lately. She’s only been an asshole, not an active liability.”
“That we know of.”
“If we don’t know about it, Dean probably doesn’t either,” Kim said. “It’s fine, Vell, he probably just wants to ask us for advice or deal with some problem he has.”
“That’s not much better,” Vell said. “How weird would things have to be that the Dean is asking us for help personally?”
“Only one way to find out,” Kim said. She gestured to the door to the Dean’s office.
Kim entered first, and found it in much the same state as it always was. The desk piled high with paperwork, a small bowl of assorted candies shoved into the corner of the desk, and Dean Lichman behind it, frantically tapping away on a laptop. Vell had not been in this office for several years, and it was vastly different than the last time he’d been here.
“Ah, there you are, come in, have a seat,” Dean Lichman said. “Unless you’d rather we have our conversation elsewhere, Vell.”
“Why would I want that?”
“Well, it’s my understanding you haven’t been in this office since my, uh, predecessor,” Dean Lichman said.
“Oh, right, the kidnapping,” Vell said. “No, I’m good, I don’t really get traumatized by things anymore.”
Vell had been killed too many different ways in too many different places to have a functional trauma response. A few days ago he’d gotten his legs chewed off by a vending machine, and still stopped by it to pick up a soda on his way to the office.
“That’s a very concerning response, Mr. Harlan.”
“Yeah. Anyway, what did you need?”
Dean Lichman gestured for the duo to take a seat, and both did so. He folded desiccated hands in front of himself before beginning to speak.
“I would like to ask you two to take a look at an experiment that will be occurring later this week,” Dean Lichman said. “I don’t have any reason to believe it poses a threat, but I would like to be assured it is a safe and ethical environment, and, well, you two have a knack for identifying trouble spots.”
“You could say that,” Kim said. It was more accurate to say that trouble had a way of identifying them -and then leaping at them and ripping their heads off.
“I’d appreciate it if the two of you could simply examine the laboratory and give it your approval, or disapproval, as the case may be,” Dean Lichman said. “Though if you’re too busy, I fully understand.”
“If you don’t think this is dangerous, why are you asking for our help anyway?”
“Simply for my own peace of mind, frankly,” Dean Lichman said. “The school’s policies on animal experimentation are...satisfactory, I suppose, but I do want to take extra precautions when the subject is a creature as smart as an elephant.”
“An elephant?”
“Yes, a resident of a reserve in Thailand,” Dean Lichman said. “An older elephant by the name of Mae Noi. She has cancer, apparently, and she is submitting to experimental treatment in the hopes it will be useful for younger elephants.”
Kim’s digital face briefly flashed with a facial expression of concerned skepticism.
“‘She’ is submitting to treatment? As in the elephant?”
“Yes. Apparently the elephant can talk,” Dean Lichman said. “No, I don’t know how it works, they said it was ‘more impressive in person’.”
“Well now I kind of want to go just to see the talking elephant,” Vell said.
“Same.”
“Well, do try to take a few glances at the experiment’s safety while you’re there,” Dean Lichman said.
“Sounds like a plan,” Vell said. “Thanks for the heads up.”
“I’ll be there too,” Kim said.
“Excellent. Thank you both, and I’ll try not to take up too much of your time,” the Dean said. He then bid them both a polite goodbye and returned to his mountains of paperwork. Vell took a step out of the office and then took a sip from the soda he’d recently retrieved from the evil vending machine.
“So, what do you think?”
“I think I really do want to see the talking elephant,” Kim said.
“Obviously, yeah, we all want to see the talking elephant,” Vell said. “I mean the whole situation. You think the elephant thing is going to be the daily apocalypse for that day?”
“Well, on the one hand, an elephant seems like the kind of thing that would kill us,” Kim said. “But on the other, I feel like the fact we have advance warning means it’s not going to happen.”
“True. The universe probably wouldn’t make it that easy for us.”
“Yeah, but the elephant thing still feels pretty threatening,” Kim said. “Only way to find out is to wait a few days, I guess.”
A FEW DAYS LATER
“Hello you two,” Dean Lichman said. “And Hawke.”
“Hey,” Hawke said.
“He also wanted to see the talking elephant,” Kim explained.
“Well, that’s not a problem, it was an open invitation,” Dean Lichman said.
“Thanks. Still, sorry for not saying I was going to show up in advance,” Hawke said. “It took me a long time to make up my mind whether I was more interested in or afraid of a talking elephant.”
“They are rather large, aren’t they? I suppose that could be intimidating.”
“I’m okay with elephants on their own, it’s the talking part that doesn’t sit right with me,” Hawke said. “What if the elephant doesn’t like me? What if I’m the first person to ever get insulted by an elephant?”
“You’re less afraid of getting trampled by an elephant than insulted by one?”
“I’m a little afraid of trampling, but elephants are chill,” Hawke explained. “They wouldn’t attack unless provoked. I kind of feel like one might call me a dipshit unprovoked, though.”
“You have oddly specifics fears, Mr. Hughes,” Dean Lichman said.
“Yeah.”
In spite of those fears, Hawke happily stepped through the door to the zoology lab. It did not take a long time to locate the elephant in the room, as it was a literal elephant. The towering pachyderm was in a makeshift pen in the center of the lab, with an ample supply of food and a strange pedestal in front of her.
“Dr. Chanthara,” Dean Lichman said, with a polite wave to one of the researchers in the room. “Good to see you. These are the students I told you about.”
“Hm. Nice to meet you,” Dr. Chanthara said. He was, perhaps not unreasonably, skeptical of why three seemingly random students were in charge of a safety inspection. The fact that one of the three was a robot made him even more skeptical.
“Hi, nice to meet you too, and, uh, don’t mind us,” Vell said. “We just have an eye for weird things other people might miss.”
“Sure. I- wait. Aren’t you that kid who got chosen by a god?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” Vell said. “And her too, technically.”
Kim shrugged. She didn’t care for any extra attention on that point.
“Right,” Chanthara said. He was beginning to see why these students might know their stuff. “I suppose we should start by introducing you to Mae Noi. Say hello, Mae.”
The elephant shifted on her feet and poked her trunk at the wide pedestal in front of her twice.
“Hello. Friends,” a synthesized voice droned. Vell stepped a little closer to the pedestal, just enough to see that there were an array of buttons on the side facing Mae Noi.
“Oh, it’s kind of like a keyboard,” Vell said. He’d seen similar things used with dogs, though usually in a much simpler fashion. Mae Noi seemed to have a few dozen buttons at her disposal.
“Smart,” Mae Noi said, with another prod of her trunk.
“We initially put it into our sanctuary as a bit of a novelty, something elephants could choose to interact with,” Dr. Chanthara explained. “Mae Noi took to it a bit better than most. Especially once she found out she could use it to ask for food.”
“Food. Pumpkin. Pumpkin. Pumpkin.”
“No, Mae, no food until after experiment,” Dr. Chanthara scolded.
“Experiment,” Mae Niko said with a prod. “Pumpkin.”
“Yes, experiment then pumpkin,” Dr. Chanthara said.
“That’s not really a talking elephant, is it?” Hawke said.
“It’s more talking than most elephants,” Dr. Chanthara said.
“Elephant. Smart,” Mae Niko said. “Smart.”
“Yes, uh, right, elephant smart,” Hawke said. He took a step back, to avoid any further offense and any further risk of being insulted by Mae Noi.
“You’re very impressive, Mae, don’t mind him,” Kim said. “How many words does she know?”
“Our platform back home has around three hundred words, though she’s still learning some of them,” Dr. Chanthara said. “The ‘travel’ version we put together only has a hundred, just enough to make sure she can get her basic needs met and communicate about the experiment.”
“Right, speaking of, I do believe we should put some time into our reason for being here,” Dean Lichman interjected. “You’re welcome to stick around afterwards, at Dr. Chanthara and Mae Noi’s discretion, of course, but we should get underway.”
“We probably should get to business, yeah,” Kim said. She tapped the side of her metal head. “I’m going to scan the lab. Vell, you talk to the elephant and make sure everything’s above-board.”
“Abov- oh, right,” Vell said. “Sorry, not exactly used to being able to ask animals if they agree to animal experimentation.”
“Experiment,” Mae said.
“Yeah, experiment,” Vell said, as he turned to Mae. “So, Mae Noi, this experiment might hurt, do you know that?”
“Experiment. Hurt. Elephant,” Mae Noi prodded. “Experiment. Help. Elephant. Help. Baby.”
“Help baby?”
“Baby. Baby. Elephant. Sick. Baby. Sick.”
“We’ve explained the nature of her condition to Mae Noi as best we can,” Dr. Chanthara said. “She has several children, and is concerned they might be similarly affected.”
“Help. Baby,” Mae Noi said. “Experiment. Help.”
The way Mae Noi frantically tapped the buttons tugged at Vell’s heartstrings, but he choked those emotions down.
“So you want to do this experiment to help baby, got it,” Vell said. “Even if it hurts you?”
“Elephant. Old,” Mae Noi said. “Hurt. Okay. Help. Baby.”
“Huh. Well, that does sound like informed consent to me,” Vell said. “Passes ethical muster, at least.”
The campus rules allowed students to be experimented on, with their consent, so Vell saw no reason not to apply the same standard to an elephant.
“You speak up if you change your mind about the experiment, okay?”
“Stop. Stop. Stop,” Mae said, mashing the same button a few times. “Yes.”
“You got it. I’m going to go help my friends check things out,” Vell said. “Good talking to you, Mae.”
“Good. Talk. Friend,” Mae said. She waved goodbye with her trunk, and Vell waved back. He wandered away from Mae Noi’s pedestal and found Kim and Hawke carefully examining rows of beakers and various other supplies.
“Nothing sus yet, boss,” Hawke said.
“Nothing caustic, mutagenic, or explosive?”
“Well, something mutagenic, but it’s supposed to be,” Kim said. She had scanners built into her body much like those that had once been in Vell’s glasses, allowing her to analyze the complex chemical formulas at a glance. “They’re going for some gene editing similar to what we’ve tried to do on human cancer patients. Low success rate, but not harmful. Some adaptations to work on elephants, of course.”
“Run it by any of our chemistry and biology student friends yet?”
“A few,” Kim said. “Haven’t gotten anything back yet, though.”
“Maybe run it by Skye, too,” Vell said. “She’d recognize anything that’d mutate an animal.”
“She does love to mutate things,” Kim said.
“Benevolently,” Vell insisted. “Just show her. I’m going to check for any stray equipment.”
The presence of an unusually large test subject had resulted in the lab being rearranged and reshuffled, so Vell did a quick scan for any misplaced equipment that might pose a threat. He found, to his surprise, a tidy and well-organized environment, with any and all extraneous materials securely locked away. There wasn’t so much as a shrink ray out of place. Vell did another loop just to be sure, but returned to his friends empty-handed.
“This place has less safety hazards than my lab,” Vell said. Hawke stared at him for a while.
“Why does your lab have safety hazards?’
“I do runecarving, there’s like, hammers and chisels,” Vell said. “Those can hurt people.”
“Mm, true,” Hawke said. “So you really didn’t find anything?”
“Nothing,” Vell said. “This place is secure as I’ve ever seen a lab be.”
“It’s like I said,” Kim began. “We got an actual warning about it, so obviously nothing’s going to go wrong. That’d be too easy.”
“Maybe,” Vell said. “Things can get teleported in, or someone could cast a spell, or something.”
“Yeah, but that applies to anywhere, at any time,” Kim said.
“Kim’s right,” Hawke said. “I say we go business as usual.”
“I guess,” Vell said. “We have to branch out a little, at least. Can’t keep an eye on one room all day.”
The trio stopped sulking around the outskirts of the lab and returned to Dean Lichman and Dr. Chanthara.
“Everything looks good,” Kim said. “Probably the safest lab I’ve ever seen.”
“I’ll choose to take that as a compliment,” Dr. Chanthara said.
“We have very high safety standards here at the Einstein-Odinson,” Dean Lichman said, defensively. “Relatively speaking. Innovation requires some risk.”
“I understand perfectly. So does Mae.”
“Hurt. Okay,” Mae said.
“Not that okay,” Vell said. “Nice meeting you, Dr. Chanthara. You too, Mae.”
“Wait.”
Mae prodded one of the buttons on her pedestal and then pointed her trunk at the three of them. Hawke looked deeply concerned, but stepped forward alongside Vell and Kim. Mae Noi appraised them with massive brown eyes, and then moved her trunk back towards the pedestal. Vell noticed a distinctive scar on the bridge of her long nose just as Mae Noi pressed another button.
“Joke.”
“...Joke?”
Dr. Chanthara sighed and rolled his eyes.
“Just go along with it,” he said. “She likes to tell her joke.”
“Uh, okay,” Vell said. “Let’s hear it.”
“What. Elephant. Favorite. Part. Tree.”
“Umm...I don’t know, Mae,” Vell lied. He’d heard this joke from a kid, once. “What part?”
“Trunk,” Mae said. She gave a loud bray of amusement and then slammed her trunk down a few more times to emphasize the punchline. “Trunk. Trunk.”
“Oh, ha, I get it,” Kim said, hoping her feigned laugh was convincing. She’d never tried to lie to an elephant before. “Good one, Mae.”
Mae Noi shifted from side to side, looking pleased with herself, while the trio took a step back and stopped their feigned laughter.
“Did you give her buttons just to tell that joke with?”
“She gets upset,” Dr. Chanthara said. “I’m not even sure she understands the pun, she just likes people’s reactions.”
“As long as she’s having fun,” Hawke said.
“We’ll get out of your hair now,” Vell said. “Good luck with the experiment, feel free to let us know if you need a hand with anything.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Dr. Chanthara said. Some of his earlier skepticism seemed to have softened, but he did not seem entirely onboard with three strangers mucking about with his experiment. Vell and his friends left before they stretched what little goodwill they had any further. Mae Noi waved her trunk goodbye as the three left the lab and stepped back onto the quad.
“I’m going to try and sneak some classes in,” Hawke said. “Later.”
“I’ll check some of our usual hot spots,” Kim said, before she too left. Once again alone, Vell headed to one of his own classes, and called up Samson.
“Hey, Samson,” Vell began. “See anything interesting while we were playing with the elephant?”
“Well, I thought I clocked someone acting suspicious, but it turns out he was only sneaking around to go see his boyfriend,” Samson said. “Nothing apocalyptic, but I did get called a homophobe, which is pretty emotionally devastating.”
“I’m sure you’ll recover someday,” Vell said. “Keep an eye out. Usually the safer things look, the more dangerous things end up being.”
“Will do,” Samson said, before saying goodbye and hanging up.
***
Vell got increasingly nervous the longer the day went without its daily disaster. He thought about checking in on Mae Noi again, but then recalled Kim’s warning about it being too obvious, but then remembered that nobody had seen anything suspicious anywhere else, but then remember that Mae Noi’s lab had looked perfectly safe-
“Vell.”
“Huh?”
“You’re spiraling,” Kim said.
“I’m not spiraling, I’m just,” Vell said, with a pause for contemplation. “Considering multiple options.”
“In a spiral fashion,” Kim said. “Eat the damn french fries. Honestly, what’s the point of ordering so many if you’re just going to let them get cold?”
“It’s not like they’re going to go to waste,” Vell said. The same time loop that allowed him to eat massive amounts of french fries without fear of gaining weight also allowed him to avoid food waste. One of the upsides of life in a time loop.
“Just eat, Vell,” Kim said. “You worry too much about all this shit.”
“I’m in charge, it’s my job to worry about it,” Vell said.
“It’s your job to handle it,” Kim said. “There’s no point thinking about this shit before it happens, you spend all day thinking about an elephant and then the universe drops, like, a bat with tentacles on your head. Just deal with as it comes, Vell.”
Vell leaned on the table and managed to chomp down on a french fry or two.
“You know, next year, when I’m not running the show anymore, I’m going to call and see if you still think it’s that easy.”
“I sure hope so,” Kim said. “I’m saying all this shit trying to make myself believe it too.”
“Oh good, you’re lying to both of us,” Vell said. “That’s cool.”
“Fake it ‘til you make it, Vell, that’s how it goes,” Kim said. “Eat your damn french fries.”
Vell rolled his eyes and returned to his fries, which were now starting to cool. Thankfully he would not have to worry about finishing them. A loud crash from across campus interrupted him mid-bite and nearly made Vell choke on his fries. He painfully swallowed the half-chewed food and then looked over his shoulder.
“Son of a bitch, finally,” Vell said. A few years ago he’d found it weird whenever he was relieved about a disaster, but now he was just genuinely glad to get it over with. The waiting was as killer as the apocalypse. He tossed his fries in the trash and headed toward the sound of chaos, with Kim right behind him.
“Already told everybody?”
“Well, I may or may not have left Alex and Helena out of the loop…”
“Kim.”
“They’d find out anyway,” Kim said. “I got to use my brain parts to get in touch with them, even over wi-fi that shit feels dirty.”
“Just get in- stop.”
Vell held out his hand. Kim froze in place and did not move. Not intentionally, at least. There was a small amount of unintentional movement. The ground was vibrating.
“Always love a good earthquake,” Kim said.
“That’s not a quake,” Vell said. “That’s...footsteps!”
Vell grabbed Kim and dove out of the way just in time for something to barrel through the walls of the dining hall and stampede across the room. Tables, chairs, and more than a few students were crushed under the feet of a hulking, brown-furred behemoth as it charged. Kim picked herself and Vell up off the floor and tried to trail its progress.
“That’s a- oh fuck me,” Kim said. “Please don’t say you told me so.”
Vell got his bearings and looked across the room at the titanic form of a woolly mammoth. Though it was definitely recognizable as an archaic mammoth, the ancient creature was also heavily mutated, unnaturally large even by mammoth standards, and with multiple curled, jagged tusks protruding from a slobbering maw.
“Well that could be unrelated,” Vell said. “Mammoths can come from a lot of places, cloning accidents, time machines…”
The mammoth reached a wall, and rather than barreling through, turned around, facing directly towards Vell. A prominent scar covered the bridge of its broad trunk.
“Oh, nope, that’s definitely Mae,” Vell said. The scar was in the same place and at the same angle. Even a clone wouldn’t have an identical scar.
Once the revelation had struck, Mae took her turn. Vell found himself staring straight down the barrel of a very angry mammoth coming right at him at Vell-squishing velocity. Luckily he’d been charged at by a lot of creatures over four years of looping.
Vell jumped up and to the side, and latched on to one of the curled tusks, which made for very convenient handlebars. Kim did the same on the opposite side of Mae, and punched her in the head.
“Wait, wait, hold off on the violence for a second,” Vell shouted. He tried to wave at Kim to stop, but Mae was thrashing so violently he had to grip the tusks with both hands.
“Good plan,” Kim shouted. “Can you get Mae on board?”
Another set of tables got crushed underfoot. Thankfully the other students were out of trampling range by now, but Mae Noi’s feet were still coated in the blood of earlier victims.
“Mae’s smart, maybe we can calm her down,” Vell said. He then ducked to dodge a swat from Mae’s mutated trunk.
“Call me crazy, Vell, but I think this is more than just a bad mood,” Kim said, as she climbed up Mae’s seven jagged tusks like a ladder.
“We have to try,” Vell said. The loopers rule against hurting other intelligent life forms had some flexibility for blood-crazed mutants on violent rampages, but they had to at least try to reason first. Vell climbed up on of Mae’s tusks and looked into one of her bloodshot eyes for any sign of recognition. “Mae! It’s Vell, do you remember?”
The only response Vell got was an enraged trumpet, which he didn’t think was a “yes”.
“Come on, bud,” Vell said. “What’s an elephant’s favorite part of a tree, right? The trunk?”
The massive brown eye staring at Vell blinked, and he felt a brief glimmer of hope. He then felt a brief glimmer of his lungs being crushed as Mae swung her head and slammed her tusks into the wall, and Vell along with them. Kim punched Mae in the throat and then jumped across the tusks to grab Vell and carry him to safety.
“You okay, Vell?”
He opened his mouth to respond, and a pint or two of blood came out instead.
“Apparently not,” he mumbled. “I might be down a few ribs. And a lung. Or two.”
Kim carried Vell a safe distance from the fight and set him down on the ground, where he promptly spat out another mouthful of blood.
“Okay, uh, you just lie there and try to die peacefully, I guess,” Kim said.
“Way ahead of you.”
***
“Was that last bit as funny as I thought it was?” Vell asked. “I think the blood loss was affecting my sense of humor.”
“It was kind of hard to appreciate in the moment,” Kim said. “But as far as dying jokes go, it was pretty good.”
Vell and Kim walked into the lair for their morning meeting and joined the loopers that had already gathered.
“Okay, what’d I miss while I was dead?”
“Well, after Alex was done getting herself killed,” Samson began.
“You’re saying that as if it’s something to be ashamed of,” Alex said. “Vell also died.”
“Yeah, but he got killed trying to do something good. You got killed trying to do something stupid.”
“Trying to eliminate a threat is not stupid,” Alex said.
“We don’t kill intelligent creatures,” Hawke said. “Sometimes we punch them into a coma, but we don’t kill them.”
“When a dog bites, you put it down, I don’t see why the same principle doesn’t apply to a mammoth that’s crushed seventy people.”
“That wasn’t Mae’s fault,” Vell said. “She got mutated, or something. On that note: did you guys figure out what happened to Mae Noi?”
“Nothing,” Hawke said. “Looked like Mae smashed up the entire lab, trampled everyone involved in the experiment too. Nothing left to investigate, and nobody left alive to interrogate.”
“Typical,” Vell sighed. “At least we have an easy out. Dean Lichman was really concerned about the ethics of that whole experiment. We raise some kind of complaint, we could probably get the whole thing shut down.”
“The problem is getting the complaint,” Hawke said. “That lab was airtight, Vell.”
“Apparently not completely airtight,” Kim said. “I can camp out in the lab and raise an entirely justifiable stink whenever something capable of making a murder-mammoth shows up.”
“And what if it happens so suddenly you can’t complain about it?” Samson asked. “For all we know that could’ve been some kind of dimensional rift, or time anomaly, or something. It might not be as simple as somebody just putting in the wrong syringe at the wrong time.”
“He’s got a point,” Vell said. “We might want to shut this down before it gets there.”
“Seems like our best option is to plant evidence, then,” Alex said.
Everyone else at the table spent a few seconds brainstorming ways to prove her wrong, and much to their frustration, could not.
“Okay, fine,” Vell said. “But it needs to be something incidental, not something anyone would get blamed for. We want to cancel the experiment, not get anyone in trouble.”
“I could have a seizure on some sensitive equipment,” Helena offered. “It’ll break something and nobody would dare get mad at me.”
“Can you fake a seizure?”
“No, but I’m allergic to elephants, so I’d probably have one anyway the moment I stepped in the lab,” Helena said.
“I don’t feel entirely comfortable sending you into anaphylactic shock for a bit,” Vell said.
“Offer’s on the table,” Helena said. “I’ll live. Wouldn’t have made it through that trip to the zoo otherwise.”
“Anybody have any non-medical emergency suggestions?”
“Seagull in the air vents,” Kim said.
“Will that work?”
“It happens now and then,” Kim said. “Seagull gets in, and Dean has to close down the whole lab for potential material damage and biohazard risks if they shit in the vents.”
“Really? We’ve never had to deal with anything like that,” Hawke said.
“It may shock you to learn that sometimes minor, tedious bullshit happens that we have nothing to do with,” Kim said.
“That is kind of surprising, actually.”
“Enough. Kim, can you grab a seagull?” Vell asked. He shouldered his bookbag, and stuck a hand into the extradimensional pocket that existed within it. “I can probably smuggle it in with my bag.”
“Yeah, I can get you a seagull,” Kim said. Since she did not need to sleep, she had to find ways to keep herself entertained at night, seagull-grabbing being among them.
“Alright, we’ll go grab one and put it in the bag,” Vell said. “The rest of you, be ready to meet us when I call.”
***
Roughly three minutes later, Vell put out the call and they reconvened in front of the biology lab.
“Yeah, that was much faster than I thought it would be,” Vell said.
“I’m great at grabbin’ birds,” Kim said. Seagulls were among the easier birds to snatch, even. They were suckers for food, and many of them were attracted to her shiny metallic body anyway.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Vell said. “I want this thing out of my bag ASAP.”
Even though the seagull was safely within a pocket dimension, Vell would swear he could still feel the bird thrashing and squawking inside his bag. He tightened his grip on the shoulder strap and led the way towards the zoology lab entrance. He grabbed the handle and held it as he froze for a second.
“Vell, what’s up? Is this bird escaping?”
“No, the handle’s vibrating,” Vell said. It was shaking the same way a wall near an incredibly loud speaker might. He pressed his ear to the door and listened closely. He opened the door immediately, and let all his friends hear the frantic trumpeting of a panicked elephant.
Inside the lab, Mae Noi was stomping her feet and trumpeting as loud as he long trunk would allow. She swayed from side to side in her pen, bumping against the walls not quite hard enough to damage them, but hard enough that it was clear she was doing it on purpose.
“What the heck is happening here?”
“Ah, Vell,” Dean Lichman said. He hustled over to Vell’s side and gestured to the entire room. “Maybe you can figure out what’s going on.”
Mae Noi stopped braying long enough to start mashing her trunk against her pedestal, mashing out the word “Bad” over and over again.
“Our test subject, Mae Noi, has been throwing an absolute fit ever since she got here,” Dean Lichman said. “Dr. Chanthara, these are the students I was telling you about earlier.”
While Vell reintroduced himself to Dr. Chanthara, Kim and Hawke stepped up to examine Mae Noi and her enclosure. It was a far cry from the peaceful, orderly scene they had examined on the first loop. They were half an hour earlier this time than before, but Kim found it unlikely that they had been able to calm Mae Noi down, clean everything up, and get back to work in such a short amount of time. They hadn’t mentioned any of this panic on the first loop either. They were soon joined in their confusion by Chanthara and Vell.
“We’ve tried everything; food, water, her favorite toys, even videos of her children,” Dr. Chanthara said. “We’ve even offered to call off the experiment, but she won’t listen.”
“She is an animal,” Alex said. “Sometimes they do things arbitrarily.”
“Not Mae,” Dr. Chanthara said. “Some of our sanctuaries residents from traumatic backgrounds can have outbursts, but Mae was injured in the wild. She’s never been like this.”
“Maybe some experiment on the island is upsetting her,” Vell said. “A sonic experiment only she can hear, or something…”
Vell stopped and thought about it. If there had been such an irritant, it would’ve been there on the first loop too. Everything always repeated exactly the same, except for-
“Could you, uh, take a step back for a second?” Vell mumbled. “I want to try talking to her.”
“Don’t get close,” Chanthara warned him.
“I’m not, I’m not,” Vell said. He didn’t need to get very close to tell a joke.
The massive brown eyes of Mae Noi stayed locked on Vell as he approached, and she continued to mash the “Bad” button on her pedestal.
“I know, I know, bad,” Vell said. “But, uh, do you want to hear a joke?”
Mae Noi stopped. She locked eyes with Vell for a few seconds, and then cautiously tapped a button on her pedestal.
“Joke.”
“Right, joke,” Vell said. He tried to recall the exact sequence of words Mae had used on the first loop. “What elephant favorite part tree?”
Mae didn’t blink.
“Trunk,” Vell said.
After a moment of contemplation, Mae Noi let out one final, fervent, trumpet, and then started mashing buttons on her pedestal again.
“Bad. Help. Help. Experiment. Bad. Help. Bad. Help.”
“Yeah, bad help, one second,” Vell said. He turned away from Mae Noi to look at Dean Lichman. “Hey, uh, excuse me, Dean? Hey, uh, if I remember correctly there are some pretty complicated rules on having intelligent animals on campus, yes?”
“Well, yes,” Dean Lichman said. After hearing of some questionable ethical practices involving an octopus back in first year, he had instituted a few clauses into the school’s ethical code of conduct regarding intelligent animals like elephants, octopuses, and dolphins. “Mae’s presence here is a bit of an outlier, but there were workaround, given her apparent consent to the experiment.”
“Yeah, about that, is she, uh,” Vell began. “Is she registered as a student?”
“Yes.”
Vell pursed his lips. It took a few seconds for his friends to catch on.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Samson snapped. He turned his back on the crowd and leaned against a wall while Hawke put his head in his hands.
“The first rule of looping,” Alex said quietly. “Loopers are randomly selected-”
She looked up and locked eyes with Mae Noi.
“From all registered students.”

Something I was thinking about when I watched the final moments of the most recent EFAP was Mauler’s observation that the internet content creator landscape used to be different when AVGN clones ruled Youtube and his question of how that shifted into video essayists and commentary channels. I thought about that for a while and I thought of some reasons why the landscape changed that I would like to share.
Managers
Something that people might not be aware of is how many Youtubers have people managing their content in the form of things like setting up brand deals and other services that I am not familiar with. Some of them are very public about what they do, some of them are more private. The important thing is how managers worked in the past.
One thing that I liked about Machinima, ScrewAttack, and Channel Awesome that the creators probably didn’t like is that they forced the older creators to stick to a set schedule of uploads and some of them forced creators to follow a set formula. This meant that the manager would make sure that if a creator uploaded a video every Friday at 2pm, they would have an upload every single Friday at 2pm.
How would this work if the creator wanted to take a week off? Well, the creator would have to have a video to upload in advance. What if the creator wanted to spend 3 weeks on a super-duper big video? Well, they could absolutely do that, but it would be a passion project and they’d still have to follow the set schedule for regular uploads.
This created a content landscape that I actually enjoyed a lot as a consumer because it’s probably the way it should be for reviewers. Every week, or every day in rare cases, a movie reviewer would need to review a different movie, which meant that a reviewer might have to force themselves to sit through a movie they don’t want to see like Fifty Shades Of Grey to give it a chance to subvert their expectations and earn a glowing review, or dig deep to find a new indie movie to review to fill that quota if they really didn’t want to sit through Fifty Shades Of Grey.
The promise of Patreon and creators becoming more independent was that creators would exclusively make videos on topics they wanted to do, but I personally think that was the wrong way to go. I’ve maintained a position that I prefer it when content creators are encouraged, or even forced, to talk about things that they don’t want to talk about because oftentimes that’s when reviewers are most interesting. Some of my favorite Roger Ebert reviews were when he reviewed a children’s movie like Space Jam or Pokemon: The First Movie, and some of my favorite Zero Punctuation reviews are when he has to pick out a random indie game and commit to reviewing it regardless of what the indie game turned out to be, like when he reviewed Hell Pie.
What I think has happened is that the lack of managers has encouraged content creators to upload whatever they want, whenever they want, which has usually translated to videos about ‘easy’ topics, like videos about Disney movies, being uploaded weeks, or even months, apart, which has made the content creation landscape, at least for reviewers, a lot less interesting, and a lot less engaging.
It’s actually one of the reasons why EFAP has been losing my interest lately, because although they upload a stream every week the topics they choose are generally ‘easy’ topics because I genuinely think the hosts don’t have the ability to make an EFAP on something more obscure, or even just ‘difficult’ like Baby Reindeer, very interesting, or they just won’t do streams on those topics because, as Rags said: “This is our show, and we can do whatever the fuck we want.”
Honestly, my hot take is that I liked you better when you couldn’t do whatever the fuck you wanted all of the time. In fact, one of my favorite Rags moments on EFAP was when he clearly didn’t want to be involved with the debate with Twin Perfect.
Sponsors
I remember the Adpocalypse and how Youtubers transitioned to sponsors over relying heavily on ad-revenue. What that event transpired into is that audiences were far more accepting of basically any form of making money that Youtubers would use. Patreon became a very dominant part of Youtube, but sponsors also became extremely common and audiences would even cheer in the comment sections when creators would have their first Raid: Shadow Legends sponsorship.
Sponsors are what I want to talk about because I have seen Youtubers show that they have a bunch of videos on their computer that they simply aren’t releasing to the public because they don’t want to upload a single video without a sponsor on their main channel, as well as Youtubers having a second channel where they upload ‘slop’ content without sponsors that most of their audience is usually unaware of or isn’t interested in.
The problem is that the appeal for pretty much all content on Youtube is the personalities of the people creating the content, which is less about the actual personalities and more like “That’s an actual person doing what they actually want to do, that’s so cool,” but that is usually undercut by the presence of sponsors. The fact that Youtubers will sit on a video they made and not upload it unless they can get a sponsor to pay for it always seemed strange to me, especially for Youtubers where the image they present is “I’m just a normal, chill guy who makes Youtube videos for fun,” which needs the caveat of “Uhhhh, I’m actually really poor and if I don’t take this BetterHelp sponsor I can’t afford my rent this month. Please understand, I’m barely making any money on Youtube,” when a sponsor is included in the video.
As weird as this sounds, there are communities of creatives online that don’t expect to ever make any money putting hours, days, weeks, months, and years of work into a project. There are modding communities, bloggers, game developers, fanfiction writers, and artists that only want comments saying “You did a good job,” and Youtubers used to be that way, or they used to present themselves that way before sponsors became as common as they are now.
I don’t say this often enough, but I remember when Youtubers would make videos about not just random pictures on Deviantart, but on fanfictions and pornographic videos. They’d do those videos for things like clout, which is something that I don’t see too often on Youtube.
People might say that there are a bunch of Youtubers that talk about obscure media and Youtubers that make things without any expectation of earning money, which I say “Well, yeah, but that’s not what I’m talking about,” and then I’d point to things like AVGN’s Atari Porn video, and old videos where commentary Youtubers would branch out from their niche to say “Hey, just for fun, we’re going to check out this weird fanfiction story,” or how Yahtzee would include fun projects he created at the end of his Zero Punctuation videos, like how he’d dub over scenes in video games like Half-Life and Painkiller, or how he made a slideshow with Garry’s Mod that depicted a love story between Heavy and Medic.
What I’m saying is that a large part of what made Youtube fun was that not every video from an established creator with 100k subscribers needed to be monetized, or even created with the expectation of being successful or well-received by the community. There was a time when the expectations people had for, say, Jim Sterling was for a high-quality Jimquisition video to be produced and uploaded to the main channel once a week, and for the other days to feature a minimally-edited video where he showed himself trying out a game or reacting to a trailer on his main channel.
In the past I said that I would like it if EFAP would talk about comments and read fanfictions on-stream and I was mocked for it, but I stand by that statement because, although EFAP clearly doesn’t want to do it regularly, when they do read comments on-stream it tends to result in some of the best content because it showcases a side to them that I like. Instead of being totally normal dudes talking to each other about a movie they saw or reacting to a video, they have to use text-to-speech or read the comment using a silly voice or, well, use just a little bit of creativity when reading those comments out-loud.
What I’m kinda saying is that, yes, I think we all like professionally-produced content, and we all accept that sponsors for videos are necessary. But, like, I don’t like how for most successful Youtubers only the monetizable content, often with sponsors, is presented on the main channel, while the other content doesn’t exist, is uploaded to a secondary channel, or is locked behind some kind of paywall.
It just feels strange that these normal, chill, relatable people have gotten themselves into a position where they can earn real money, in some cases a lot of money, to stand in front of a webcam for 10 minutes talking about their favorite movies, chat with a group of friends, or even just play their favorite video game, and in quite a few cases they won’t do any of those things unless there’s a way to monetize it. Imagine how it looks to say “Well, I can’t talk about this cool fanfiction story I read on my main channel to my audience that enjoys my content about that franchise because I can’t get a sponsor for it.”
I wonder if Rags, a regular host of EFAP, appreciates the irony of him criticizing Chris Stuckmann for advocating that filmmakers “Get as much time and money as possible to make their films in the ideal circumstances and for the process to be easy,” when he’s in the position that he’s in where, on EFAP, he has as much freedom as he wants in the ideal circumstances to make money with EFAP, and it’s easy, yet he still will complain if he’s asked to step out of his comfort zone, even a little bit, on stream.
Insecurity
A while ago I had a theory about Cancel Culture which was that usually Cancel Culture is incredibly exaggerated by the audience of the people being canceled, and that most of the people being canceled are perfectly fine. The go-to example is the poor lady who made a joke about AIDS before going to Africa that got off the flight and got fired from her job due to her joke going viral. What people often don’t mention is that she got fired because it’s a terrible look for the company’s PR person to be involved with such a massive PR disaster, and that she got hired at another company a very short time later. Plus, like, she made a racist joke and people were calling her a racist, it wasn’t like she was targeted for absolutely no reason.
My theory is that people think that Cancel Culture absolutely ruins the lives of celebrities and influencers online because of their intense reactions to being canceled. An early example being Seth Macfarlane, who was mocked for his poorly-received hosting of the Oscars and who seemed incredibly bitter about it, making Cancel Culture a plot point in multiple episodes of Family Guy, talking about how bitter he was about it in interviews for years, and even apparently getting emotional support from his friends and family after the ordeal, even going as far as to ask celebrities to say “I liked what he did and I thought he was hilarious, and very handsome.”
What I’m saying is that I think that in the early days of content creation on Youtube the people making videos were more willing to appear on camera and embarrass themselves, like with Spoony screaming at a big gaming event on camera, because even though they were aware of Cancel Culture being a thing they weren’t going to be reduced to tears by someone saying “You’re totally cringe and annoying,” and even went as far as to incorporate those kinds of comments into their video because it was extremely easy content to create. You probably know what I’m talking about, where a creator would read out “This content creator is SOOOOOOO CRINGE,” in a video in a silly voice which you can’t really do as easily with “OMG, I love your content,” and make it entertaining.
That’s changed a lot today with content creators seeming to project an extreme amount of insecurity in every video they’re a part of, which gets even worse in formats like podcasts. It feels like every commentary creator is a chill dude that isn’t offended by anything and only wants to have a good time talking about things they like because, well, that’s what they need to be to avoid being criticized too severely, but they constantly allude to being a very immature and thin-skinned person that is mainly concerned about earning money, to the point where they’ll say “I’m not even having fun producing content at all.”
In college I remember one of my professors saying: “When you were high school kids you were insecure and weren’t confident in your abilities enough to volunteer when you were asked. You’re adults now, and when you graduate you can’t do that at a real job. Part of growing up is being confident in yourself, and if you don’t want to do that, you can always work in fast food where you never need to grow up, while the other adults in your friend group are becoming doctors and construction workers.”
It’s something that I realized with Youtubers which is that a decent amount of them started their careers young and never had to ‘grow up’ the way that my professor said that we needed to. Even with millions of subscribers you still see a lot of Youtubers struggle to commit to any statement they make, and I hear “I’m just a dumb Youtuber who doesn’t know anything and is stupid and socially-awkward and is fat and smells bad,” too many times from rich and successful people.
The thing is, when you’re a teenager, or you’re in your 20s, that insecurity is charming and relatable because you're trying to find a place in the world and discovering the role that you will fill in society. But, when you’re 30 and your role is “I tell people about the latest internet drama and make references to Spongebob,” or “I talk about Star Wars for hours at a time,” even if you make $2 million every day there’s likely a part of you that says: “I don’t like who I am. I don’t like what I do for a living. Yes, I’m rich, but I don’t like why I’m rich, and I don’t like my audience.”
I think that this insecurity leads to people trying to make their content more ‘mature’, but the way they do it isn’t by presenting themselves as a more confident person, or by making a clear separation between the personality in their content and their actual personality so that they can have a good work/life balance, it’s by creating the same content with very superficially mature elements. So, you end up with the video essayists of the past that gained fame by describing the events of a movie and then giving their opinion on whether they liked or disliked it doing the same thing but with quotes from smart people, like Socrates, and making conclusions like “Some people are gonna like this movie, some people are going to hate it. The important thing is that everyone involved with this movie tried really hard and had fun.”
The thing is, teenagers and 20-year-olds get value from a relatable person that comes across as an insecure loser who is too afraid to take a proper stance on anything to commit to a statement. When someone is actually mature they find more value in someone who is willing to do a good job and defend the job that they did, even if they’re like Neil Breen who thinks they did a good job but clearly did a terrible job. A 20-year-old might declare that Twin Perfect’s debate with EFAP wasn’t embarrassing because he was just being himself or something, but a 40-year-old might not tell Twin Perfect that the debate was embarrassing, but they would no longer respect him, and I imagine a lot of 40-year-olds don’t respect a lot of Youtube video essayists because of how eager they seem to be to engage in self-deprecation.
Conclusion
Despite everything that I’ve said, I do think that the content landscape on Youtube is generally ‘better’ than it was in, say, 2010. We weren’t getting a 4+ hour video by The Little Platoon about Rebel Moon, for instance, in 2010.
What I would compare modern Youtube and classic Youtube to is the 1970s movie scene vs. the 1980s movie scene, which Quentin Tarantino has labeled as “The worst period in movie history,” which the EFAP crew have pushed back on.
The thing is, in the early 80s we got Blade Runner, in the same way that nowadays we got the 4+ hour Little Platoon video, but the theatrical release of that film was famously sabotaged by the company that wanted Harrison Ford to provide voiceovers for the film that ‘ruined’ it, or at least, ruined the ending of the movie.
Throughout the 80s films were made which satisfied audiences more than films from the 70s did because Spielberg was producing hugely successful films that are still highly regarded, but there was also a bunch of shady practices going on and a bunch of notoriously poor studio decisions made in order to appeal to a wide demographic, such as the fiasco with Supergirl and Masters Of The Universe, or changing the ending of Brazil.
In the 1970s we not only got more challenging films, but there was also a thriving independent cinema scene that gave us Death Race 2000, Eraserhead, THX-1138, and Duel. There was also Jaws, Star Wars, and A Clockwork Orange, which were big-budget movies that took serious creative risks that paid off immensely which just wouldn’t happen in the 1980s, or would happen very rarely.
I think that I do prefer Youtube back in, say, 2015-2017 when it seemed like we generally got the best of both worlds, challenging content about a diverse range of subjects with production values comparable to what we have now.
To close this, I would like to include a paraphrased interaction I saw on a podcast featuring a pretty big Youtuber that I think illustrates why Youtube has changed in the way that it has.
Youtuber: Look, I don’t need to work as hard on my videos now because not every video needs to be an event. I just want to take it easy now, pump out a video whenever I feel like it, get paid by the sponsors, and then spend time with my family, is that so wrong?
Host: It kind of is. I know your audience of teenagers will be like “He just wants to spend time with his family, dude, have a heart,” but a lot of Youtubers, especially younger Youtubers look up to you for inspiration. If you’re in that position and your attitude is “I’m going to half-ass every video that I make from now on and if anyone calls my content lazy I’ll use my 8-year-old daughter as a shield against criticism,” that’s the attitude that a lot of young Youtubers are going to have. They’re going to half-ass their content and when criticized, they’re going to find their own excuse, like “I have a kid now,” or “I have to eat,” or something.
Youtuber: That’s not my fault, though. I never asked to be a role model.
Host: That’s not how that works. You don’t get to decide whether or not people look up to you, have expectations of you, and emulate your approach to content creation. You only release 2-3 videos a year, and with your status every video should be a major event, but instead every video is half-assed, as you admitted, and then you use your daughter as an excuse for why you don’t put as much effort into your content as you used to. I think you need to have someone in your life, like a friend, that actually makes you feel some shame for your content and encourages you to do better, rather than your social circle being composed of supportive people like your family and the people who pay you through Patreon.
Host 2: He did have that. He fired him two years ago, remember?
Host: Oh, yeah, you fired your friend, or made him quit, whatever the story was. Did that not make you feel bad at all?
Youtuber: Friendships end, that’s just life.
Host: That’s the attitude that I hate that comes across in your content. You can’t just brush aside everything and bumble through life, except if you’re an internet personality, apparently.
Host 2: It worked for the MCU.
Host: It’s not working for the MCU anymore, though, and it isn’t working as well for this Youtuber. It’s probably going to get worse and when he decides to do more work and make better videos, like he used to do, it’s probably going to be too late, or he’ll need to make really good videos to get the views he once did.
Youtuber: My videos are really good, though.
Host: You admitted to half-assing them.

Well hi there! How's the weekend been treating you?
Mine's been alright, but that's not what you're here for is it?
You saw the title on this post and now you're all curious right?
I bet you're wondering what boyfriend stuff includes? Let's start with:

• Getting texted back regularly with an option for phone calls!
  
• Going out on dates with possible holding hands or making out!
  
• I'll make you laugh with all sorts of jokes from the sophisticated cynicism, cutting sarcasm to childish fart jokes I can do it all!
  
• You can get home cooked dinners! And breakfast too if I'm working overnights!
  
• You'll get all sorts of attention and compliments!
  
• I'm emotionally available and completely over my ex's!
  
• Flowers!
  

....and so much more!
Sounds pretty great right?
But who am I?
I'm a nearly middle aged divorced ex stand up comic that's worked himself into full on burnout working in hotels for the last twenty years. It's made into someone that's very empathetic and caring while still being to be cold as fuck when needed.
In my free time I'm kind of a traditional nerdy white guy. Gaming, cartoons (not anime though), science fiction, detective stories, alternative history, sketch comedy, various sitcoms, hiking, cooking and mowing the lawn occupy my off hours. I also tried getting back into writing again, but it's been challenging.
Now it's your turn! PM me and we can start planning the first date!

Over the last few months the RA’s have had a huge impact on everyone. People I’ve worked with closely for the last few years were gone over night it seems. In the chaos I was informed I would be transferred to a new manager on a different project. This was about two months ago. They had me do KTs with a guy on the team then asked how I was doing and I said I think I got a hold of most of the info. They turned around the next week and RA’ed the guy that gave me the KT. I have like 2,000 commits over the last year working a shit ton on different projects. The team they moved me to I don’t even get to code anymore. It’s a 30 year old legacy application clunking along and there is SO much pressure and micromanagement literally NOTHING happens. There are soooo many processes and procedures and the “security focal” (lol) chokes the poor team with requirements that are frankly pointless in the context of this dinosaur application. So much time is spent trying to Jerry rig the app so that the FLM and focal can check off boxes to show management all the progress but it’s really just a smoke screen and the application is severely unstable because the devs spend all their time scrambling to meet their demands. I literally don’t know what I’m going to do any single day because the manager starts DMing early in the morning with requests instead of actually just following sprint planning. Im in my early 30s and have never experienced an environment like this before in my career. From what I hear the job market is brutal right now in tech so I feel compelled to stay in a role I wasn’t hired for that is paying under market rates with a huge stress factor. I know this is kind of a rant but I’m just frustrated and don’t really know what I should do. Any insight is welcome.

So the past 6 months have been the wildest rollercoaster ride of my life. More like a horror movie. Back in November 2023, a woman I used to see (but recently broke up with) pretended she was pregnant, lying to me first and then to my family. She was convincing and had pics of the positive test (belonging to one of her sisters-in-law, as I later found out), and thought she wouldn't lie about it because I never knew her to lie before and thought she would be crazy to lie about such a huge thing in our conservative culture & religious community. Well it turns out that's exactly what she was.
I was pressured/threatened to marry her, and felt it as my responsibility, because that's how you patch it up in our community.
But I found out she wasn't pregnant, from her messages with her best friend on her phone and then a lot of questioning. There were many more manipulations to follow over the months, one of the biggest ones being her previous marital history and her age - she pretended she was 28 but according to her passport she's 40! She later claimed she's actually 28, or 29, or 31 (different dates in different conversations). So with that and everything else from the very beginning, I don't know what to believe anymore. Oh, and the fact that I didn't even want the marriage in the first place.
I tried to divorce her many times, but she constantly threatened me with either her family/brothers or with suicide.
Long story short, and skipping over many details, I tried to make things work between us a few times but it kept on breaking down. Eventually one crazy night where she was round my & my family's place, she hounded me for almost the whole night about me not having sex with her (at this point I had just stopped) and my father had to even get involved and calm her down, warning he would call the police because of her harassment.
She wasn't allowed back in our house and we basically ignored her calls for a couple of days until things calmed down. But then the unexpected happened: she reported ME to the police alleging that I had raped her multiple times (ironic considering she was pressuring me for sex), when I had never dome anything non-consensual with anyone in my entire life. I was arrested and detained for a day while being interrogated and examined before let out on bail.
It turns out she then dropped the case, furiously shouting at the police for arresting me and apparently now launching legal action against them. Bizarre, what did she think would happen when reporting rape?
She has since begged for my forgiveness and for me to take her back, but I don't have the slightest desire to do so. I don't seek revenge and I can even forgive her, but I just want peace of mind and for her to get out of my life.
She's claimed numerous times since then that she would accept my decision even to divorce, but then when I brought it up yet again recently (with an intermediate mutual friend present - I ain't meeting her alone) she denied it and insists on staying with me.
My dilemma is this: I suspect she likely has borderline personality disorder (BPD) based on a lot of symptoms, and her mental state has apparently deteriorated. If I divorce her, I fear she might kill or harm herself, and that would be on my head. Alternatively she could even reopen the rape allegations case and I could get rearrested. Or she could at the very least set her family on me or get some type of revenge (for what I don't know).
Either way it could get messy. If anyone has any advice on the next steps, feel free. Otherwise it's been great finally venting

Why I like Spider-Man more than Batman
I just wanna preface this by saying that I love both of them. They’re both my top 5 heroes. I will just be going over some of the reasons why I feel that Spider-Man is a better character than Batman and things that I don’t like about Batman specifically.
1) Spider-Man’s resilience: Joker once said that it takes one bad to make a person snap. To turn an average joe into someone like him. And to extent, Batman personifies this. Spider-Man has gone through way more stuff that were just as bad, if not worse than what he went through. And yet he is still able to go out and fight crime with a smile on his face. Spider-Man as a person contradicts Batman’s entire character. Spider-Man lost his mom, his dad, his uncle, his wife, and even his aunt before. And yet he is still able to not absolutely go insane and keeps it together for the betterment of himself and the people around him. Spider-Man as a 15 year old child was able to handle the deaths of his loved ones around him better than this 30 something year old man. Peter takes “All it takes is one bad day” and throws it in the trash.
2) Batman’s “moral code”: I don’t really mind the no kill rule, except for not killing the Joker. Like mentioned before, Joker said that all it takes is one bad day. And the game between him and Batman is how but heinous stuff can he do before Bruce just caves in and goes off the deep end. And I can respect that Bruce is able to keep himself in check and not cave in. But Joker has done some heinous stuff though. At some point, Bruce is gonna have to realize that Joker needs to go. Joker has done cruel and horrible things to the city and even Batman’s family, but Batman still won’t kill him because “It’d be too damned easy”. Bro, wtf are you talking about. What is preventing him from killing Joker. What about Bruce’s psyche is not allowing him to cave in and kill Joker? You could hear the pain in Jason Todd’s voice when he said “I’m not talking about Riddler, or Penguin. Him. Just him”. How insane is Batman actually, to lose a son to this man, and still not kill him. How insane is Batman, to see the things that Joker is doing to the city, and realize that it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that Gotham would be better off without Joker. Literally no one disagrees that Gotham would be a 10x better place without joker.
And if you’re really that hellbent on not killing him, then lock him away somewhere forever. You have billions of dollars and contact damn near every other Superhero in DC. You can find somewhere to put him. Doesn’t Oliver Queen own a literal island? Tell him to lock Joker there forever so he can live out the rest of his sad pathetic life until he dies. That Asylum clearly isn’t working. Every time Bruce puts him there, he is fully aware that Joker will break out at some point. And I don’t want to hear that killing Joker wouldn’t chance anything, because if you believe that then there’s no hope for you.
THIS IS JUST FROM MY MORAL STANDPOINT. ITS ALL SUBJECTIVE
If you disagree with any of my points, feel free to comment and we can discuss. All I ask is that we keep this civil.

Hi
I'll preface by saying my experience is limited to building 2 personal pc's, tinkering with fan/clock speeds, and basic folder sharing between Windows pc's at home. I've never used dockerfiles or linux so far.
The last few weeks I've been trying to read forums and posts, and watch as many guides and explanations as possible to help get my first understandings of home servers. I've reached a point where I am tipping into overwhelmed with possibilities (probably overthinking), and struggling with how I proceed.
I think I'm mostly struggling with how it all connects and how/what software I need to make it easily remote accessible/a cloud server, so help on this front would be great. Thanks in advance.
First idea: I use my Old PC + new HDD's as the servecloud hardware. (Cheaper and ideal in that it uses old parts)
My understanding so far for this is;

1. I reset the Win 10 operating system on my Old PC
2. Remove Win bloatware
3. Set new HDD's to Raid 5 and format
4. Install Plex media server
5. Install Steam with games
6. Install Moonlight/Sunshine for streaming Far Cry 6
7. Install Immich or Photosync with Photoprism for auto photo backups from mobile phones
8. ?Designate folder access for other users on the local network?
9. Tailscale vpn for remote access (never used it before)
10. ...unsure if i need to do anything else

Second idea: Buy a Synology device and add HDD. This acts as media+photo+file servecloud and remains on 24/7. Old PC gets turned on intermittently to act as GUI for Web browsing+PC gaming on TV. (upfront more expensive, possibly easier to first setup)
Below are some parameters of what I'm trying to do/use.
Functions to perform:

1. Connect to tv, other pc’s and mobile devices within local home network for access to personal media (movies, music, photos).
2. Storage of home media, personal documents
3. Access to web browsing on TV for ad-free viewing instead of using direct aps like YouTube (I imagine i need a GUI for this such as Windows 10)
4. Infrequent pc gaming on TV (without using my gaming specific pc to stream from. Far cry 6 on low-ish settings but OK fps).
5. Auto backup/syncing of photos from Mobile phones.
6. Avoid needing to use public cloud services like Google Photos/Apple iCloud/Microsoft Onedrive as file sharing/backup/remote access.
7. Be online and accessible 24/7

Note: I’d welcome any tips to reduce noise and wattage profile.
Room layout:

• Room 1 has - Router, TV, Nvidia Shield Pro
• Room 2 has - Gaming PC, space for home server device and/or additional hardware device.

Planning to buy so far:

• 4 x Seagate IronWolf Pro 16 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive

Hardware I have:

• Display: TCL tv 43P6US (4k UHD 3840x2160) (HDMI + ethernet port)
• With TV: Nvidia Shield TV Pro
• Router: TP Link Archer 1600v (1600Mbps total wifispeed, 1300Mbps on 5GHz)
• Internet provider connection: 55/20 Mbps down up
• In-home net connection: 5g wifi, 600AV2 power line (600 Mbps)
• Router sits with TV+Shield Pro, keyboard+mouse, xbox controller
• Phone: iPhone 13, Samsung Galaxy (5yr old)

(Old PC part list)

• CPU: Intel Core i5-8600K 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor
• Mobo: Asus Prime Z370-A ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR4-3000 CL15 Memory
• Storage: Samsung 860 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 SATA Solid State Drive
• GPU: EVGA SC GAMING ACX 3.0 Black Edition GeForce GTX 1070 8 GB Video Card
• Case: be quiet! Silent Base 800 ATX Mid Tower Case
• CPU cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 3 67.8 CFM Fluid Dynamic Bearing CPU Cooler
• PSU: SeaSonic Focus Plus Gold 550 W 80+ Gold Certified
• Wifi: 5GHz
• Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 AAOEM

So the past 6 months have been the wildest rollercoaster ride of my life. More like a horror movie. Back in November 2023, a woman I used to see (but recently broke up with) pretended she was pregnant, lying to me first and then to my family. She was convincing and had pics of the positive test (belonging to one of her sisters-in-law, as I later found out), and thought she wouldn't lie about it because I never knew her to lie before and thought she would be crazy to lie about such a huge thing in our conservative culture & religious community. Well it turns out that's exactly what she was.
I was pressured/threatened to marry her, and felt it as my responsibility, because that's how you patch it up in our community.
But I found out she wasn't pregnant, from her messages with her best friend on her phone and then a lot of questioning. There were many more manipulations to follow over the months, one of the biggest ones being her previous marital history and her age - she pretended she was 28 but according to her passport she's 40! She later claimed she's actually 28, or 29, or 31 (different dates in different conversations). So with that and everything else from the very beginning, I don't know what to believe anymore. Oh, and the fact that I didn't even want the marriage in the first place.
I tried to divorce her many times, but she constantly threatened me with either her family/brothers or with suicide.
Long story short, and skipping over many details, I tried to make things work between us a few times but it kept on breaking down. Eventually one crazy night where she was round my & my family's place, she hounded me for almost the whole night about me not having sex with her (at this point I had just stopped) and my father had to even get involved and calm her down, warning he would call the police because of her harassment.
She wasn't allowed back in our house and we basically ignored her calls for a couple of days until things calmed down. But then the unexpected happened: she reported ME to the police alleging that I had raped her multiple times (ironic considering she was pressuring me for sex), when I had never dome anything non-consensual with anyone in my entire life. I was arrested and detained for a day while being interrogated and examined before let out on bail.
It turns out she then dropped the case, furiously shouting at the police for arresting me and apparently now launching legal action against them. Bizarre, what did she think would happen when reporting rape?
She has since begged for my forgiveness and for me to take her back, but I don't have the slightest desire to do so. I don't seek revenge and I can even forgive her, but I just want peace of mind and for her to get out of my life.
She's claimed numerous times since then that she would accept my decision even to divorce, but then when I brought it up yet again recently (with an intermediate mutual friend present - I ain't meeting her alone) she denied it and insists on staying with me.
My dilemma is this: I suspect she likely has borderline personality disorder (BPD) based on a lot of symptoms, and her mental state has apparently deteriorated. If I divorce her, I fear she might kill or harm herself, and that would be on my head. Alternatively she could even reopen the rape allegations case and I could get rearrested. Or she could at the very least set her family on me or get some type of revenge (for what I don't know).
Either way it could get messy. If anyone has any advice on the next steps, feel free. Otherwise it's been great finally venting

I just wanna preface this by saying that I love both of them. They’re both my top 5 heroes. I will just be going over some of the reasons why I feel that Spider-Man is a better character than Batman and things that I don’t like about Batman specifically.
1) Spider-Man’s resilience: Joker once said that it takes one bad to make a person snap. To turn an average joe into someone like him. And to extent, Batman personifies this. Spider-Man has gone through way more stuff that were just as bad, if not worse than what he went through. And yet he is still able to go out and fight crime with a smile on his face. Spider-Man as a person contradicts Batman’s entire character. Spider-Man lost his mom, his dad, his uncle, his wife, and even his aunt before. And yet he is still able to not absolutely go insane and keeps it together for the betterment of himself and the people around him. Spider-Man as a 15 year old child was able to handle the deaths of his loved ones around him better than this 30 something year old man. Peter takes “All it takes is one bad day” and throws it in the trash.
2) Batman’s “moral code”: I don’t really mind the no kill rule, except for not killing the Joker. Like mentioned before, Joker said that all it takes is one bad day. And the game between him and Batman is how but heinous stuff can he do before Bruce just caves in and goes off the deep end. And I can respect that Bruce is able to keep himself in check and not cave in. But Joker has done some heinous stuff though. At some point, Bruce is gonna have to realize that Joker needs to go. Joker has done cruel and horrible things to the city and even Batman’s family, but Batman still won’t kill him because “It’d be too damned easy”. Bro, wtf are you talking about. What is preventing him from killing Joker. What about Bruce’s psyche is not allowing him to cave in and kill Joker? You could hear the pain in Jason Todd’s voice when he said “I’m not talking about Riddler, or Penguin. Him. Just him”. How insane is Batman actually, to lose a son to this man, and still not kill him. How insane is Batman, to see the things that Joker is doing to the city, and realize that it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that Gotham would be better off without Joker. Literally no one disagrees that Gotham would be a 10x better place without joker.
And if you’re really that hellbent on not killing him, then lock him away somewhere forever. You have billions of dollars and contact damn near every other Superhero in DC. You can find somewhere to put him. Doesn’t Oliver Queen own a literal island? Tell him to lock Joker there forever so he can live out the rest of his sad pathetic life until he dies. That Asylum clearly isn’t working. Every time Bruce puts him there, he is fully aware that Joker will break out at some point. And I don’t want to hear that killing Joker wouldn’t chance anything, because if you believe that then there’s no hope for you.
THIS IS JUST FROM MY MORAL STANDPOINT. ITS ALL SUBJECTIVE
If you disagree with any of my points, feel free to comment and we can discuss. All I ask is that we keep this civil.

Hey guys. So I'm pretty confident that I'm reading rule 17E in the flsa excludes helpdesk / repair techs from being OT exempt. But here I am. I didn't know about this before taking the job, and realistically it's not that much OT to pursue legal action, but long story short the ship has sailed on moving up in this company, I didn't get my promised career advancement framework, and other folks with less experience are getting hired in at higher rates even while raises are "temporarily suspended". I know job hopping right now is hard given the state of the industry, so I'm looking to cut back to a hard 40 limit, and protect myself from retribution, somehow, without telling them I know my rights, until I can find something better.
Basically the problem is this: they schedule us required to be on site from 8-5 with an hour lunch. This lunch break is not protected to be duty free - we have to keep all communications turned on, and are strongly discouraged from leaving our areas to take lunch. What this results in obviously is people walking in during our lunch needing something, and the expectation being to help them in emergency or submit a ticket for them. The workload is not so high that in any given week I cannot accomplish the job within SLA within 40 hours, even if they have an after-hours need. So when there's an after-hours meeting or event, I have to stay over, in unpaid OT, as well as still arriving at my 8am start, for the sake of availability. I feel that they can't have the employer benefit of not paying OT if they get to micromanage our hours just for availability, even if there are no pending tasks. Like if my SLA is 2 hours first response, and I had to stay 2 hours late so come in 2 hours late next day and immediately respond, I'm still within bounds of my metrics. Am I actually needing to go full throttle working for 40 hours a week? No. But I am definitely at minimum "engaged to wait" for this full 40+. Again this is not a super regular occurrence, just when you add it up over the course of a year it adds up to a non-negligible amount. Like I'd be very upset if I were robbed for this amount in any other way. Management has been known to check badge swipe timing and camera footage to make sure we're on time, and has written folks up for it (again even when there was no task scheduled).
One of the general conditions of being salary is flexible hours within business reason, but my scheduled hours are to start before everyone else, leave after everyone else, so there is time to +- 30 minutes without risking any business impact. It's literally just so they can have me available at the helpdesk just in case. "Just in case" scheduling doesn't sound like a very exempt type of workload. Of course if there's a big high prio issue like the network is down, I would get my ass out of bed and be there asap, as well as being on the horn with the other techs to consult. But... fires like that are so uncommon to pop up at random first thing in the morning without already having 50 reporting emails in my inbox that I'd already have seen. I don't have a problem telling them that I'm comping the time just so they know, but having to ask them, rely upon receiving a response (which is maybe 50% likely), and then told no a high amount of the time, or to provide proof that I worked over during the hours I was asked to, seems..... questionable.
What can I do besides play hardball and leaving at 40 at this point? I've never had a salary exempt job before this and just don't know how to navigate the politics of putting my foot down, as a powerless, low paid tech worker in a shitty job market, with managers like this? Best I can really do without anyone noticing is taking long periods of doing no backlog/project work. But that's not really the same as being home, on my own time.

TL;DR! I feel drained, sad, and unmotivated and I feel like my girlfriend is being insensitive when I told her why I feel this way, what do I do?
I just need advice and opinions from a 3rd person view.
Fyi, she has been unemployed for nearly half a year until yesterday..
So these past couple days I have been feeling drained, sad, unmotivated. Haven't been eating much, not sleeping well, showing up to work late. Maybe I'm dealing with a depression episode? Maybe I'm just overthinking and doing this to myself?
I texted my girlfriend and said we need to talk. I asked if I could tell her what's on my mind without you getting upset. She said yes, and this is what I said.
"I don't know what's going on, like if I'm just being dramatic or something is off with me but I feel like i'm not getting enough love. I feel like im always selfless and don't get the attention I need. I hardly put myself first, I usually think about everyone before me and not getting reciprocation is exhausting. I also feel like there's a lack of romance and excitement. I don't know what I can do."
She then called a few minutes later, asked if there was anything she can do. I said "I don't know, maybe read what I said and see if any of that is contradicting to what you do. Maybe come love on me? That's what I'd do."
She went off to say how she gives me hugs, kisses, scratches my back, says "I love you". I said theres more to love than just that. You do do those things but im talking about right now, not the past.
Her excuse for the no romance or excitement was she has no money. I said you don't need money to have romance or excitement. You could literally take me to a park, throw out a blanket, sit at a picnic table, eat lunch, or watch a movie/videos on our phone, or go late and just lay there and look at the stars. Her response was "Okay well I'll start taking you to the park"
I told her I feel like you're always selfish. She asked in what way. I asked her what do you do for me? When do you ask what I want to do? What I want to eat? If I want or need anything? When have you done something thoughtful for me?
She starts naming things, well last weekend I think I asked you what you wanted to do. Well that one time I made enchiladas, I asked if you wanted that or something else. Then went off about how when she asks me to go fishing, she doesn't want to, she's doing it for me. She said the other day she would've rather stayed home and relaxed in the swimming pool, but came to see me because I wanted to hangout with her.
Now here's how im thinking.. I always put her first. I always ask her what she wants, what she needs. I take care of her however she needs. I pay for all our meals. I randomly zelle her. I fill up her gas tank. I steal her car to go wash and vacuum it as a surprise. I've missed work just to be with her. I went through the hassle of calling ATT to get her phone unlocked so I can put her on my phone plan and pay her phone bill. I replaced her headlight and turn signal bulbs. Ive literally given the last few dollars i had so she could a take a 6hr trip to throw her sister a baby shower and pay for all of it, including her gas and dinner for her family. There's so much I just do, without being asked.
It turned into an argument with her getting all defensive and I feel like she was trying to make my feelings invalid instead of understanding how I feel and why. She went on to say my thought process is childish and she's tired of arguing with me. We said bye and hung up.
I just don't get it. Am I being childish? I genuinely am feeling down and just expressed that. Is she being insensitive?
What should I do?

Crossposted in waterwelldrilling
I hired a well company to install a new well. His communication and planning were not good. He subcontracted the drilling to another well company without telling me (huge surprise when company X showed up top drill when I hired company Y), showed up to finish the install and realized he had forgotten to hire an excavator crew so there was another delay. Also, there were issues on site the day he ran the water lines.
Well was finally installed, check written to the guy and county health guy came by today to inspect the well and take samples to test and sign off.
Nobody plugged the old well. I didn't know it was required. County won't sign off until that's done and when I called the well guy, he tells me his subcontracted company has to do that and hangs up. The subcontractor's receptionist had no idea about it and the owner hasn't returned my calls. And here's no mention of plugging the old well in the quote or receipt.
I appreciate that contractors shouldn't have to do extra work outside the quote for free, but I hired a licensed well driller, and I don't think it's unreasonable to presume that a quote would include all work required to install a well that meets county and state health requirements. This isn't like he had to drill deeper than expected. It's work that he had to have known was required. And I can't help but feel like he's trying to push this off as company Xs problem when it probably isn't.
If it comes to it, am I out of line for demanding the well plugging be included in the original quoted price?

i was watching Kyedae a while ago. I'm not subbed, so when her ads started rolling i opened another tab and started doing something else to let the minute pass. i got distracted, ended up watching some youtube and came back to kyedae's stream to see the ad is still precisely in the spot where i first left the tab, same amount of seconds left and everything. i think to myself "well that's dumb" and refresh the page, only to get another 30 second ad. to which i also say "that's even dumber" and begrudgingly leave the tab again. came back once more, that ad is still paused at 25 seconds left too but then starts playing once im watching it. so i haven't watched kyedae (in other words i haven't enjoyed a streamer's content) because 1 minute of ads kept me away for over an hour. how petty does twitch have to be? just because they contractually require some streamers to run ads doesn't mean i'm required to watch them. holding the stream hostage until i watch your 90 seconds of shit i don't care about is enough reason for me to turn off the stream and then no one gets their free pennies out of my exposure to Progressive Home & Auto Bundled Insurance.
TL;DR- twitch will pause their ads and wait for you to watch them if you try to open another tab and do something else.

I have a lot of extra time at work with a laptop and access to wifi. I've already started doing my own small side hustle which is English tutoring online. It's nice to meet new people and I actually enjoy it a lot more then I thought I would. My problem is, it doesn't pay a lot (about 7.50 per hour) and I have maybe 2 classes a day. I'm still left with plenty of time to commit to another project. A couple ideas I had already been considering: -Getting a degree from WGU in Accounting (Accounting has nothing to do with my current job but I did do an internship for accounting when I was in college. I dropped out in 2022.) -doing some type of drop shipping -get into some type of Turo business where I borrow a loan to get a car and just rent it out. I can have a friend pick it up or drop it off and I'd just uber him home.
Some data points: I'm 21 My job is one where I can't leave my building until 8pm I have a laptop I opened my LLC for my tutoring business. My idea behind it was to get a couple of business cards to build history without really using them. I do plan to pursue the Turo idea in the future but I don't have a car at the moment to even start. Still building on my credit on the personal side.
These are all long Term goals, I'm more looking for other ways to improve myself. I've been working out for about 30 minutes since I have a couple weights here, but I want to do something genuinely productive. I've so far taught myself more about financial literacy through YouTube. Started getting my credit together, building an emergency fund, investing into some stocks (about 100-200 month, nothing crazy bc my income isn't that high to begin with). I want to know what else can I do? I'd really like to keep this job as it pays enough for my bills and a little more, and this free time could be used to develop something. Thanks for reading my rant lol

I’m a stay at home mom of two baby boys. Married 3 years & dated 6 months prior to marriage & got pregnant a couple of months before getting married.
I’m going to get shit for all my bad decision-making here.
I prayed (out loud) for a man that would meet all this criteria and one month later met my husband. He met all the criteria of my prayer so no matter what bad things happened, I thought God had this purposed for me. I mean like a checklist of 10-20 items all checked off. I was vedy devout in my faith. But, now looking back I feel like maybe it wasn’t God who answered my prayer. Maybe this was like a time in the book of Job where God let Satan attack Job and take everything away from him. I don’t know. Oddly enough, the man that became my husband said he prayed for this, too, one month prior.
He love-bombed me. He devalued me. Later, he threatened to leave me (but never has). While we were dating, when I was pregnant, when we were engaged. He called escorts behind my back. I find out he had sexual relations with a woman in his apartment complex one week before we started dating - he told me three years into our marriage. Before we dated, he also had a two year affair with a married woman (whose husband to this day has no idea about it.) He was meeting her and texting her behind my back 2 weeks into us being officially dating exclusively. I find out because he got arrested and I went to pick up his things on his person at the jail. I guess his passcode in one try and there I see the truth. He lied about this woman - he said she was a best friend with no I love yous and no sexual relations. He even asked me if it was okay to be friends with her and I asked him those two questions. He lied and the proof was right there. We were fairly new so I didn’t read too many texts. I spent one hour on his phone at most and handling a panic attack in between.
I read where he texted escorts, too, and read two other relationships he had while seeing this married woman. My mind was blown. I was done. I screenshoted some evidence for my personal keepsake. I texted the married woman because their I love you was so recent. I told her what happened and said to go get him out of jail because I was done. She blew up my phone with texts. She wanted to know who I was and she wanted to share all the creepy details about this man. She claimed they only had sex twice and it was rape - bullshit. She also said a lot of other things like she knew when he bought me a coffee and knew when he went to the city to meet his friends. She said he said that they could still have sex while he was seeing me. He denied it and said it was the other way around.
When he got out of jail, he contacted me and sent me a video. She texted me to show me he sent her a video, too. Same shirt, same scenery and all filmed back after back. He told her how much he cared about her but he was letting her go. He came to meet me because I took his dog to care after her while he was in jail. He talked me into giving him one more chance. I moved into his apartment to get away from a situation at home. I fell for him hard and believed I was in love. We texted and talked all the time and when we were able, we were together. I went on a trip for a week withoht him to California. I got back and the sheets were washed. He said he did that for me so I can come home to clean sheets. Later over the course of our relationship I noticed he never much stepped up to do the laundry. A lot of chores started falling on me. Before even being married he expected me to coean his whole apartment which seemed to have never been touched once with any cleaning.
We were fighting a lot and I saw some of his anger but I thought he was just frustrated with things he was dealing with in his life. He got sort of pushy with me having intercourse with him at times I told him I didn’t want to because I wanted to wait. That made him angry. I find out that he had been FaceTiming escorts from the first weeks we started dating and found at least one call every month up to the week we were suppose to get married. I was shocked! I had no idea and I couldn’t believe it. We had intercourse so much that he wouldn’t need that so I thought. He said it was like porn to him and he had that habit from before he met me. Keep in mind, I’m religious so I was abstinent most of my life and these red flags weren’t so obvious to me. I thought most men were dogs like this. The biggest factor that blew my mind (of which he explained away) was that these escorts weren’t typical - they were transgender women and some still had their boy parts. After talking with someone who I thought was like a mom to me(I find oht later she wasn’t for me), I went through with the wedding, and besides, I was having his baby.
We moved states. I noticed a lot of verbal abuse starting from typically the night time as we shared a bed. He would cuss at me a lot and get so angry. It was almost every night. I was surprised - thinking who is this guy. He made me cry a lot. It was so stupid, I got screamed at just for rolling over in my sleep. He explained this away later after the problem got better. I began feeling like I made a mistake in marrying him. I was so scared at the same time because this was my first pregnancy. I feared so much about the “what ifs” and what world this baby was coming into.
The abuse got worse. It got physcial from time-to-time. He says I was abusive back but I feel like it was reactive abuse because it became too much for me. I would hit him back. It ate at my mind every day and I had all these hormones because I was going to have a baby soon. When pregnant, he has pushed me, held me down, jumped on me with his hands around my neck. He said things that were horrible like he would walk away from this son like he did his first son (he had a son from an earlier relationship which he had nothing to do with). Fear overcame me and some days I thought ending my life was the only way to escape my life and prevent a nightmare for my son. (These feelings relented later in time.)
One time he held up furniture above his head and he was ready to throw it at my head - I believe this was right after our son was born. We argued a lot because my mistrust in him because what I mentioned I discovered earlier. I wanted him to assure me he was trustworthy so sometimes I asked for his phone. Doing that resulted many times in violence and rage. When he had that furniture held up, I felt like he was going to end me right then and there. He stopped himself and I asked him why. He said because he saw the fear in my eyes.
We fought and made up A LOT. That was our relationship and me asking him where he has been or was he with someone. It was terrible for both of us. I discover later that he lied about a lot of things. I didn’t even know he didn’t have a drivers license until about 1-2 years into our marriage. I didn’t know the pictures of his boy parts I found once while dating were to the escorts. I asked him approximately a thousand times. He doesn’t just lie - he tells a story with details and the whole thing is a lie.
I use to check his phone and browser history because it was never ending place of discovery. I never got confessions out of him but I did get evidence that he thought he hid. He must have gotten better at hiding things because I would find less and less. I got to a point where I don’t check anymore - I know and it’s a damn headache to live like that. All the time he did these things, he swore his love for me. He said I was everything.
I discovered again a lie the first time he went to Miami last year (his first time away from me.) He took advantage and called at least ten eacorts and almost met up with one (or did. I don’t know. There’s no money spent but he lied and said the last escort called was his co-worker. I may never know what happened but his coworkers got weird around me after that trip. They won’t look me in the eye.) I didn’t know all this until December last year where I asked him for his T-Mobile password. He didn’t think I would find this when giving me the password.
I saw a text after that trip and found out he lied. He was awake at 2:00PM after he told me he went to bed on the phone. He told me how he missed me SOOO much. He said he tried putting his arm around me in bed to realize I was not there. We FOUGHT over the phone. He didn’t want me to see the rest of the texts between him and his coworker. He left bruises on my arms pushing and shoving me with all his strength. He overpowered me and I never saw the messages. He said he was hiding the fact ge did cocaine. I lost control because I pulled a knife out at him. Not to hurt him but to intimidate him. (I never lost it like this again -he ALWAYS uses this against me to say I’m the abusive one.)
December he admitted the elaborate cocaine story he gave me was a LIE. He said he did do cocaine but not how he told me. The real thing he was hiding was the escorts. At that time, I find out he kissed a coworker (maybe more but nobody will tell me anything.) Another girl told me he was always flirting with new hires. After I find this out from these girls, he put two holes in the walls and broke the doors at the apartment that was in my name. He also bought me $200 roses and a new marriage ring fo Christmas along with other nice gifts. He even goes to therapy to get better at his lying problem (which he only did for about 3 sessions.) He swore this was the last time I would EVER have this happen to me. He swore he loved me and our family. My second baby was born February after ALL of that.
November, my mom died and left me money. I find all that out after I put money on a house for us - Our first house. I made sure we were good. I made sure my baby had everything he could need. I didn’t even buy myself a new car (backstory I lost my good credit, my 2020 car and had one eviction in this marriage. I was almost $30,000 in debt after all of that. My husband made his bad credit good and how we got the house, too. He still has his car and no evictions on his name. We paid over $5,000 for his traffic tickets and court fees plus his debts.)
I could have left then but I was vulnerable because I was having another baby in two months.I feared all the time because I couldn’t get a job or keep one being pregnant and I worried about having one after because I wouldn’t make enough with him and me working would put us at a negative income. I tried building this website but I have yet to get sales. I knew I needed to get out but one last things I feared was breaking up my marriage. I thought he could get better for all his problems.
His anger reared its head again this past month. I found a book titled “Why did he do that.” My husband fits a lot of those examples of abusers. The book said the nice guy is the mask.
This time when he got angry, he said it was my fault he cheated on me. He said it’s a woman’s fault if a man cheats. He said that women need to keep a man happy. He said he had depression caused by me which he never mentioned before. He always said I made him happier than he ever has been in his life. I didn’t know about the cheating just like I didn’t know about the cause. He endlessly lied to me.
I went to his work and asked his boss about the girl he kissed. He is still lying. He said he told his boss what happened. His boss said they both said nothing when they came in for questioning. My husband got the word out and it turned into drama when those girls texted me.
My husband is two people. Dr. Jekell and Mr. Hyde. I just learned recently he has been reading my journals on my phone and texts between my sister. He read my reddit posts. He lied about this and kept it to himself. I feel like he may have planned trapping me in my marriage so I would have nothing. I feel like he is stalking me, too. I have 30K left locked up in a CD - he wants that when its available to pay off the credit cards in his name. We both spend on those cards for food and needs. I want to keep it as my nest just in case. He scares me sometimes. I feel like he may charm a judge when we fight for custody if I leave. I’m scared he will bring up the knife incident and the baker act (I was bakeracted last year when 5 months pregnant- he said he would cut me off financially and have me and our unborn baby fend for ourselves. I panicked and he was being a monster. I said he was hurting me and he said he didn’t care.) I told a cop I wanted to hurt myself but I wasn’t suicidal - I just feared my husband and wanted to get away from him. It was impulsive and I regretted saying it immediately. He was messing with my mind - he fake called the cops. Never dialed but acted out a conversation. I called right after.
I fear him. He is looking like a pscychopath to me or narcist - he pal ed his whole marriage and family around abuse and lies. He admitted to lying to keep me from leaving him on a few occassions. He would act like a little innocent and hurt boy. I could never see the abuser when he switched.
Would you be scared, too? I feel like no matter what I will never be free from him. My husband has once told me nobody will believe me. Everyone thinks I’m crazy - he said this right after convincing the cops that. (Time where he bent the truth to make it funny - the cops were sold.)

i don’t get why people go into free play and then try to turn it into the same thing as the regular game, just with judges choosing the theme. that’s not what it’s for?? it’s called free play for a reason. we can dress up as whatever we want. the judges should just vote based on how good the outfit is overall. i’m not going into free play mode to dress as boring themes on the judges time limit with their annoying announcements “YOU HAVE 30 SECONDS”. and when you dress as something other than the theme they say “the theme was future career why are u dressed as a zombie” BECAUSE ITS FUN THIS IS WHAT THE GAME MODE IS FOR!!!!

I’m a stay at home mom of two baby boys. Married 3 years & dated 6 months prior to marriage & got pregnant a couple of months before getting married.
I’m going to get shit for all my bad decision-making here.
I prayed (out loud) for a man that would meet all this criteria and one month later met my husband. He met all the criteria of my prayer so no matter what bad things happened, I thought God had this purposed for me. I mean like a checklist of 10-20 items all checked off. I was vedy devout in my faith. But, now looking back I feel like maybe it wasn’t God who answered my prayer. Maybe this was like a time in the book of Job where God let Satan attack Job and take everything away from him. I don’t know. Oddly enough, the man that became my husband said he prayed for this, too, one month prior.
He love-bombed me. He devalued me. Later, he threatened to leave me (but never has). While we were dating, when I was pregnant, when we were engaged. He called escorts behind my back. I find out he had sexual relations with a woman in his apartment complex one week before we started dating - he told me three years into our marriage. Before we dated, he also had a two year affair with a married woman (whose husband to this day has no idea about it.) He was meeting her and texting her behind my back 2 weeks into us being officially dating exclusively. I find out because he got arrested and I went to pick up his things on his person at the jail. I guess his passcode in one try and there I see the truth. He lied about this woman - he said she was a best friend with no I love yous and no sexual relations. He even asked me if it was okay to be friends with her and I asked him those two questions. He lied and the proof was right there. We were fairly new so I didn’t read too many texts. I spent one hour on his phone at most and handling a panic attack in between.
I read where he texted escorts, too, and read two other relationships he had while seeing this married woman. My mind was blown. I was done. I screenshoted some evidence for my personal keepsake. I texted the married woman because their I love you was so recent. I told her what happened and said to go get him out of jail because I was done. She blew up my phone with texts. She wanted to know who I was and she wanted to share all the creepy details about this man. She claimed they only had sex twice and it was rape - bullshit. She also said a lot of other things like she knew when he bought me a coffee and knew when he went to the city to meet his friends. She said he said that they could still have sex while he was seeing me. He denied it and said it was the other way around.
When he got out of jail, he contacted me and sent me a video. She texted me to show me he sent her a video, too. Same shirt, same scenery and all filmed back after back. He told her how much he cared about her but he was letting her go. He came to meet me because I took his dog to care after her while he was in jail. He talked me into giving him one more chance. I moved into his apartment to get away from a situation at home. I fell for him hard and believed I was in love. We texted and talked all the time and when we were able, we were together. I went on a trip for a week withoht him to California. I got back and the sheets were washed. He said he did that for me so I can come home to clean sheets. Later over the course of our relationship I noticed he never much stepped up to do the laundry. A lot of chores started falling on me. Before even being married he expected me to coean his whole apartment which seemed to have never been touched once with any cleaning.
We were fighting a lot and I saw some of his anger but I thought he was just frustrated with things he was dealing with in his life. He got sort of pushy with me having intercourse with him at times I told him I didn’t want to because I wanted to wait. That made him angry. I find out that he had been FaceTiming escorts from the first weeks we started dating and found at least one call every month up to the week we were suppose to get married. I was shocked! I had no idea and I couldn’t believe it. We had intercourse so much that he wouldn’t need that so I thought. He said it was like porn to him and he had that habit from before he met me. Keep in mind, I’m religious so I was abstinent most of my life and these red flags weren’t so obvious to me. I thought most men were dogs like this. The biggest factor that blew my mind (of which he explained away) was that these escorts weren’t typical - they were transgender women and some still had their boy parts. After talking with someone who I thought was like a mom to me(I find oht later she wasn’t for me), I went through with the wedding, and besides, I was having his baby.
We moved states. I noticed a lot of verbal abuse starting from typically the night time as we shared a bed. He would cuss at me a lot and get so angry. It was almost every night. I was surprised - thinking who is this guy. He made me cry a lot. It was so stupid, I got screamed at just for rolling over in my sleep. He explained this away later after the problem got better. I began feeling like I made a mistake in marrying him. I was so scared at the same time because this was my first pregnancy. I feared so much about the “what ifs” and what world this baby was coming into.
The abuse got worse. It got physcial from time-to-time. He says I was abusive back but I feel like it was reactive abuse because it became too much for me. I would hit him back. It ate at my mind every day and I had all these hormones because I was going to have a baby soon. When pregnant, he has pushed me, held me down, jumped on me with his hands around my neck. He said things that were horrible like he would walk away from this son like he did his first son (he had a son from an earlier relationship which he had nothing to do with). Fear overcame me and some days I thought ending my life was the only way to escape my life and prevent a nightmare for my son. (These feelings relented later in time.)
One time he held up furniture above his head and he was ready to throw it at my head - I believe this was right after our son was born. We argued a lot because my mistrust in him because what I mentioned I discovered earlier. I wanted him to assure me he was trustworthy so sometimes I asked for his phone. Doing that resulted many times in violence and rage. When he had that furniture held up, I felt like he was going to end me right then and there. He stopped himself and I asked him why. He said because he saw the fear in my eyes.
We fought and made up A LOT. That was our relationship and me asking him where he has been or was he with someone. It was terrible for both of us. I discover later that he lied about a lot of things. I didn’t even know he didn’t have a drivers license until about 1-2 years into our marriage. I didn’t know the pictures of his boy parts I found once while dating were to the escorts. I asked him approximately a thousand times. He doesn’t just lie - he tells a story with details and the whole thing is a lie.
I use to check his phone and browser history because it was never ending place of discovery. I never got confessions out of him but I did get evidence that he thought he hid. He must have gotten better at hiding things because I would find less and less. I got to a point where I don’t check anymore - I know and it’s a damn headache to live like that. All the time he did these things, he swore his love for me. He said I was everything.
I discovered again a lie the first time he went to Miami last year (his first time away from me.) He took advantage and called at least ten eacorts and almost met up with one (or did. I don’t know. There’s no money spent but he lied and said the last escort called was his co-worker. I may never know what happened but his coworkers got weird around me after that trip. They won’t look me in the eye.) I didn’t know all this until December last year where I asked him for his T-Mobile password. He didn’t think I would find this when giving me the password.
I saw a text after that trip and found out he lied. He was awake at 2:00PM after he told me he went to bed on the phone. He told me how he missed me SOOO much. He said he tried putting his arm around me in bed to realize I was not there. We FOUGHT over the phone. He didn’t want me to see the rest of the texts between him and his coworker. He left bruises on my arms pushing and shoving me with all his strength. He overpowered me and I never saw the messages. He said he was hiding the fact ge did cocaine. I lost control because I pulled a knife out at him. Not to hurt him but to intimidate him. (I never lost it like this again -he ALWAYS uses this against me to say I’m the abusive one.)
December he admitted the elaborate cocaine story he gave me was a LIE. He said he did do cocaine but not how he told me. The real thing he was hiding was the escorts. At that time, I find out he kissed a coworker (maybe more but nobody will tell me anything.) Another girl told me he was always flirting with new hires. After I find this out from these girls, he put two holes in the walls and broke the doors at the apartment that was in my name. He also bought me $200 roses and a new marriage ring fo Christmas along with other nice gifts. He even goes to therapy to get better at his lying problem (which he only did for about 3 sessions.) He swore this was the last time I would EVER have this happen to me. He swore he loved me and our family. My second baby was born February after ALL of that.
November, my mom died and left me money. I find all that out after I put money on a house for us - Our first house. I made sure we were good. I made sure my baby had everything he could need. I didn’t even buy myself a new car (backstory I lost my good credit, my 2020 car and had one eviction in this marriage. I was almost $30,000 in debt after all of that. My husband made his bad credit good and how we got the house, too. He still has his car and no evictions on his name. We paid over $5,000 for his traffic tickets and court fees plus his debts.)
I could have left then but I was vulnerable because I was having another baby in two months.I feared all the time because I couldn’t get a job or keep one being pregnant and I worried about having one after because I wouldn’t make enough with him and me working would put us at a negative income. I tried building this website but I have yet to get sales. I knew I needed to get out but one last things I feared was breaking up my marriage. I thought he could get better for all his problems.
His anger reared its head again this past month. I found a book titled “Why did he do that.” My husband fits a lot of those examples of abusers. The book said the nice guy is the mask.
This time when he got angry, he said it was my fault he cheated on me. He said it’s a woman’s fault if a man cheats. He said that women need to keep a man happy. He said he had depression caused by me which he never mentioned before. He always said I made him happier than he ever has been in his life. I didn’t know about the cheating just like I didn’t know about the cause. He endlessly lied to me.
I went to his work and asked his boss about the girl he kissed. He is still lying. He said he told his boss what happened. His boss said they both said nothing when they came in for questioning. My husband got the word out and it turned into drama when those girls texted me.
My husband is two people. Dr. Jekell and Mr. Hyde. I just learned recently he has been reading my journals on my phone and texts between my sister. He read my reddit posts. He lied about this and kept it to himself. I feel like he may have planned trapping me in my marriage so I would have nothing. I feel like he is stalking me, too. I have 30K left locked up in a CD - he wants that when its available to pay off the credit cards in his name. We both spend on those cards for food and needs. I want to keep it as my nest just in case. He scares me sometimes. I feel like he may charm a judge when we fight for custody if I leave. I’m scared he will bring up the knife incident and the baker act (I was bakeracted last year when 5 months pregnant- he said he would cut me off financially and have me and our unborn baby fend for ourselves. I panicked and he was being a monster. I said he was hurting me and he said he didn’t care.) I told a cop I wanted to hurt myself but I wasn’t suicidal - I just feared my husband and wanted to get away from him. It was impulsive and I regretted saying it immediately. He was messing with my mind - he fake called the cops. Never dialed but acted out a conversation. I called right after.
I fear him. He is looking like a pscychopath to me or narcist - he pal ed his whole marriage and family around abuse and lies. He admitted to lying to keep me from leaving him on a few occassions. He would act like a little innocent and hurt boy. I could never see the abuser when he switched.
Would you be scared, too? Am I overthinking his lies and abuse? Do I need to get away now? I feel like no matter what I will never be free from him. My husband has once told me nobody will believe me. Everyone thinks I’m crazy - he said this right after convincing the cops that. (Time where he bent the truth to make it funny - the cops were sold.)

So I turned 18 this year, and I'm planning on moving out once I finish this year of school (I only have a week left), and she keeps saying that even after I move out, she's going to call me to come over and babysit and take care of my younger siblings with no pay because "I'm a good person". I've been babysitting my siblings since I was 7 years old while she went out to go date guys, but now she just sits around the house on her phone doing "important things", has me take care of them, and yells at me when I don't do it the right way (her way).
I don't know what to do and I'm scared to move out because I have no free will. She's managed my entire life so I can't really think for myself. Her managing my life and neglecting me have given me saver anxiety and a dependency on her. I know what she's doing (things mentioned here and other things) is hurting me mentally and emotionally, but I don't feel emotionally prepared to leave home permanently for the first time. Just the thought of moving out is making me feel physically sick but everyone I know keeps telling me to move out because it'd be good for me.
But even after I move out, I still won't be able to get rid of her. I want to cut her out of my life permanently, only seeing her if it's 100% necessary (she lives with her parents and my grandparents, and so do I), but I'm scared to. Should I just rip the bandage off and get my own life? Or is there something better I can do?

Fascism has a number of essential characteristics but the most distinct is palingenetic ultranationalism: The myth that the nation is an organic body composed of a downtrodden but authentic "common people" who have been betrayed, victimized, and derived of land and money by out-groups (especially Jews, LGBT folks, immigrants, and liberals), and the nation must be reborn and grown larger, phoenix-like, from the ashes of its downtrodden state through the cleansing fire of violence against those out-groups and their allies (especially their allies among the "common people") and the seizure of their land and property, regardless of how many "common people" must be sacrificed in this process of violent "purification"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palingenetic_ultranationalism
Palestinian nationalism has all these definitional features. Its central myth is that "the Palestinians" (whose language, Arabic, lacks the letter P) have been betrayed, oppressed, and deprived of their land and money by Jews, and "Palestine" must be reborn and grown larger, phoenix-like, from the ashes of its current corrupt theocracy through the cleansing fire of violence against Jews, LGBT people, and liberals (especially liberal Arabs who believe in co-existence with Jews and LGBT people), and all those who support them, regardless of how many human shields, child soldiers, and hospitals with bunkers underneath them must be sacrificed in this process of purification
This Palestinian ideological mythos entirely reverses victim and perpetrator
In the real world, there is an extensive and well corroborated archeological record (starting with the Merneptah Stele) showing the continuous residence of the indigenous Jewish inhabitants in the land between the river and the sea, but that Stele alone independently establishes their presence for at least the last 3200 years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merneptah_Stele
In contrast, the Arab-Israeli conflict started relatively recently, with the battle of Tel Hal on March 1st 1920, when an Arab militia attacked the Jewish-owned farms at Tel Hal in an attempt to find French soldiers, eventually burning it to the ground. Prior to that there was no organized violence between Arabs and Israelis in the region:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tel_Hai
The next incident in the Arab-Israel conflict was the Nebi Musa riots a month later, on April 8th 1920, when Amin al-Husayni (who later allied with the Nazis and was a big fan of Hitler) gave an incendiary speech from the balcony of the Arab Club, kicking off what resulted in an Muslim mob of around 60,000 ransacking of the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem:
https://www.palquest.org/en/historictext/6709/palin-commission-report
That's what started the war. It started with Arab people committing mob violence against Jewish people and that has never stopped to this day. Genocide is what Nazi and Communist-inspired Arab mobs and armies have repeatedly tried to do to the indigenous Jewish people of the land between the river and the sea, starting from the 1920 Nebi Musa riots, and continuing on through 1948, 1967, 1973, 1982, 1987, 2000, and most recently on October 7th
They keep trying to eradicate Jewish people off the land their ancestors lived in continuously for thousands of years, they keep getting their asses kicked every time they try it, and they deserve it every time they do
This makes sense when you understand the history of the region, and how Arab-ness was imposed by force (along with Islam) by multiple relatively historically recent waves of conquering Muslim settler-colonists
The Ottoman Empire was the culmination of those waves of Muslim settler-colonists, and after World War I it collapsed and in much of the Middle East was followed by Pan-Arab nationalism, which was a remarkably Nazi project. The founder of modern Palestinian religious nationalism (Amin al Husseini) was a close ally and personal friend of Hitler
https://time.com/4084301/hitler-grand-mufi-1941/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/full-official-record-what-the-mufti-said-to-hitle
After waging and escalating series of genocidal pogroms against the indigenous Jewish people (culminating in their alliance with the Nazis in World War II) and getting their asses kicked, Palestinian nationalism (as distinct from pan-Arab nationalism) emerged a fundamentally Soviet project
That is not an exaggeration. 100 years ago most people in the region defined themselves as Ottoman, by their village, or by their religion. Arab nationalism is a relatively new socially constructed weapon, made up by unambiguous fascists (like Sati Al-Husri, Abdulrahman Badawi, and Amin al-Husseini) and communists (like Fawaz Taraboulsi or Suhayl Idris) to mobilize hate against and justify the murder of their imperfect but much more reasonable democratic enemies (who also happened by the enemies of the Nazis and Soviets)
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/liberation-arabs-global-left
Palestinian nationalism, as opposed to Arab nationalism, was created by the KGB after the repeated defeats of the USSR's Arab-nationalist proxies in 1948 and 1967. The blueprint for the PLO Charter was drafted in Moscow in 1964 and was approved by 422 Palestinian representatives hand-selected by the KGB. At that time, the USSR was in the business of creating "people’s liberation" fronts. The KGB founded the PLO as well as the National Liberation Army of Bolivia in 1964 led by Ernesto "Che" Guevara, and the National Liberation Army of Colombia in 1965
The “Palestinian Liberation Army” was contrived by the KGB, much like the KGB devised the Bolivian National Liberation Army, Greek People's Liberation Army, Malayan National Liberation Army, etc etc. It created this Arab army in the early 1960s following the failure of the troops of various Soviet-puppet-ruled Arab states to destroy Israel. The KGB drafted the Palestinian National Charter and handpicked the 422 members of the PLO council that approved it. As the KGB's director said at the time, "We needed to instill a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel". Likewise, both the Palestine National Covenant and Palestinian Constitution were drafted in Moscow
https://stanfordreview.org/deception-palestinian-nationalism/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_involvement_in_regime_change
The most popular Palestinian faction currently, Hamas, pointedly opposes multi-ethnic pluralistic democracy. That's what Israel already is and they hate it. Hamas also explicitly opposes a two-state solution, wants to expel and murder Jews, and impose an Islamic theocracy by force
The founding covenant of Hamas, which they created their terrorist organization around in 1988, opens with a message that precisely encapsulates Hamas’s master plan. Quoting Hassan al-Banna, the Egyptian founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a constituent member (Article 2), the document proclaims, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”
After some general explanatory language about Hamas’s religious foundation and noble intentions, the covenant comes to the Islamic Resistance Movement’s raison d’être: the slaughter of Jews. “The Day of Judgement will not come about,” it proclaims, “until Moslems fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and k-ll him.”
Article 11 spells out why this annihilation of Jews is required. Palestine is described as an “Islamic Waqf”—an endowment predicated on Muslim religious, education, or charitable principles and therefore inviolate to any other peoples or religions. Accordingly, the territory that now encompasses Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank is:
consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up … This Waqf remains as long as earth and heaven remain. Any procedure in contradiction to Islamic Sharia, where Palestine is concerned, is null and void.
In sum, any compromise over this land, including the moribund two-state solution, much less coexistence among faiths and peoples, is forbidden.
https://web.archive.org/web/20231010215457/https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/10/hamas-covenant-israel-attack-war-genocide/675602/
And Hamas has the support of somewhere between 65-80% of the Palestinian people
https://www.awrad.org/en/article/10719/Wartime-Poll-Results-of-an-Opinion-Poll-Among-Palestinians-in-the-West-Bank-and-Gaza-Strip
To understand the Palestinian strategy in this latest phase of their forever war, see here:
How Hamas Uses Civilians as a Weapon - The Dark Side of Clausewitzian War
https://deadcarl.substack.com/p/how-hamas-uses-civilians-as-a-weapon
Both Palestinian leadership and street have repeatedly acting as willing pawns, first of the Nazis, then of the Soviets, and now of the contemporary fascist Axis that includes Russia, China, and Iran. The historical Palestinian embrace of Nazi, Soviet, Islamist, and modern Axis fascism (and their rejection of democracy and equal rights) only makes their rationale for doing do so, and the nature of their project, more clear
In this context, Biden's support for Israel should not be surprising. Palestinian-ism is fascist, and everyone who understands and opposes fascism should oppose it

⚠️ DISCLAIMER. I AM NOT A FINANCIAL ADVISOR. THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVISE. I AM NOT TELLING YOU WHAT WILL HAPPEN, NOR DO I HAVE ANY WAY OF DOING KNOWING. ALL POSSIBILITIES PROVIDED BY ME, OR ANYONE IS SOLELY AN EDUCATED PREDICTION ON WHAT CAN HAPPEN IF ALL INVESTORS COLLECTIVELY MAKE THE SAME DECISIONS. THE ULTIMATE OUTCOME RELIES ON THE COMMUNITY AS A WHOLE NOT WHAT ONE PERSON SAYS ⚠️
Read here to catch up on yesterday’s recap - https://www.reddit.com/FFIE/s/yyNlzndKOc
Read here to catch up on FFIE in general (some of your questions might be answered!) - https://www.reddit.com/FFIE/s/hDH5ANRYji
Okay! We made it through another wild day. You apes fought HARD, and won today’s battle! But before we dive into today’s recap, a quick PSA 🗣️
🚨 TURN OFF STOCK LENDING ON WHATEVER BROKER YOU USE 🚨
READ THIS POST FROM TO READ ABOUT WHAT STOCK LENDING IS AND WHY WE SHOULD TURN IT OFF - https://www.reddit.com/FFIE/s/XjXiPkbDTc
BELOW ARE SOME LINKS TO GUIDES ON HOW TO TURN IT OFF ON SPECIFIC BROKERS:
Robinhood / TD Ameritrade / Fidelity / Charles Schwab / Webull / Interactive Brokers / Ally Invest / Trading212 / Vanguard - https://www.reddit.com/FFIE/s/snKwVTMwmM
Public - https://www.reddit.com/Superstonk/s/VzFGwTxPFO
Today we opened pre-market hours with a price point of 1.63/share. From then on until 10:30, we saw a steady price dip, bringing us to a low of 1.29/share. Because of how steady it was declining, this can tell us one thing. The big investors were dumping shares on us (mentioned again later) and we were just eating them right back up. They eventually eased up and we saw a NICE climb to 1.62/share at 11:45AM, to which we then began steadily declining again, bringing us to a daily low of 1.25/share. We closed the market day at 1.39/share, which is still GREAT. Please remember late market declines are normal, and alone they can’t determine our current state. Evaluations need to be done at a whole.
That being said, you guys can all give yourselves a huge pat on the back 👏🏼 “But Big Ape, we’re down from yesterday! You lie!” Hold on little ape, remember we talked about volume? No? You should! Remember, “Today’s Volume is the total of buys & sells of a stock in a certain time period. For a stock like FFIE, 677.89M is a BIG number.” Now that number provided is actually from YESTERDAY. So what was today’s number? A SHOCKING 220.14M 😱 What does that mean?
It means you crazy apes held your promises. It means you held your shares like your lives depended on it, and when the dips came, you ate them right up! Because the selling was mostly one sided, and so was the buying, with almost ALL OF US holding (👏🏼👏🏼) , all these contributed to us cutting the volume by 1/3!!!
But if we all held, then why were we -22.78% when the market closed??? Well, i’ll be completely transparent with you - I’m still figuring out all the details about this BUT, here’s what we do know - Today’s low volume means there wasn’t as much fighting going on within the stock market. It was a smooth game of hedge’s selling, and us holding for the dip, and buying more. Not a lot of trading going on compared to yesterdays volume of nearly 700M (Look at how volatile yesterday was!)
You all trusted one another to hold, while simultaneously keeping your end of the promise. Talk about a team bonding exercise.. very well done!! 🦍🖤
“But Big Ape! I goofed up and bought when the share price was higher! I’m not seeing any gains!” Well, it’s still a fight and we won’t see gains for a few more market days. But I understand little ape. You need reassurance. Well luckily for you Hope is my middle name. (It’s not.)
Here’s what else we know:
(Source for this segment - https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/FFIE/key-statistics/ )
As of the last update, FFIE has 42.41M shares outstanding. What does this mean? Let me put it like this. FFIE is a pie (company). Of that Pie there are 42.41 million pieces (shares). All of those shares aren’t available for everyone to buy and sell though. This is where the float comes into play.
As of the last update FFIE has a float of 17.09M shares. Those are pieces of the pie available for everyone in the stock market to play with.
The short % of this float is at 85.71%. What does this mean? It means the big boys have shorted 85.71%. “I still dont get it!” Okay, let me try it again.
When investors borrow shares, they do it in hopes that the price of those shares will fall. If that were to happen, they’d sell those same shares at a profit. This is what they’re trying to do to us.
You might be hearing a lot of numbers being thrown around, 60%, 90%, 80%. Places like Ortex are wrong because they’re only accounting for some of the shorts not all. Shorts positions aren’t released until every 2 weeks. The number provided is the number of ALL shares.
So, 85%, is that a good thing? Well you might be hearing that we were at 95%, or 97%. I’m not sure exactly how credible that is, but let’s focus on what we have. 85% is a GREAT number, the Hedge’s dumped 250k shares on us today causing the big first dip we saw and we ate that shit right up.
Today was a perfect representation of how we can maintain our position if we collectively move as a unit. I’m working on a Q&A post so if you have any questions regarding FFIE, or how stocks work feel free to comment, but first! Please try looking for your answer through this subreddit, as we have a lot of genius apes who have spent a lot of time making educational posts for you to read! I’ll link some in this post later tonight.
I have to run for now but I will be back tonight with some edits as well as a new post regarding what tomorrow could look like, what we can expect, and how we can fight tomorrow.

Ok I was speaking with a friend of mine about this today and things started to click, so I want to present my theory and hear people’s thoughts because I am by no means an economist or politician or anything and I want to know if I’m way off base or not. In other words, I need advice on my theory on real estate taxes and how they’re impacting current renters rates…
This is purely speculative without supporting evidence.
So, Boston gets a huuuuge portion of the revenue through property taxes, and of that number a huuuuge portion comes from commercial businesses real estate. But in comes Covid telling people to work from home for “a while.” What’s a business to do? They don’t want to get rid of their properties because they’ll need them eventually, but they’re so expensive. So it’s time for plan B. Layoffs, yup. Downsizing, yeah. Closing completely, mhmm. All of these things are happening, and it’s driving the cost of commercial real estate down, which in turn drives down the taxes earned from each property.
Meanwhile, Boston has been spending those taxes like crazy, and who could blame ‘em! They had a health crisis to manage, on top of all the other projects going on (looking at you mbta, you really botched that green line job huh pal…).
So the money is going out faster than the taxed businesses can replenish it. Fast forward to today and Boston is in the red by a lot. Like a lot a lot, projected to be 1.4B deficit in five years. On top of that, the damage is done and people realize they don’t need to commute to work and they don’t want these offices, leaving the businesses holding the bag on what appears to be poor investments on paper. Last I checked businesses are far better at lobbying than individuals, are they about to pass the buck to residents? What’s Mayor Wu to do?
Well, unsurprisingly taxes went up. Commercial real estate went up, as did residential taxes. On top of that, the values of these residential properties also went up, making those taxes more expensive.
Now Mayor Wu has filed legislation - not passed, just filed - to try and protect those residential property owners by allowing for a rather substantial tax exemption… if you live in the property you own. Ya know who doesn’t live in their own properties. The landlords… well, typically.
So, regardless of if Mayor Wu’s legislation is passed, landlords are looking at a tax increase no matter what, and boooooy howdy they ain’t gunna be the ones paying it, all you are. This is why you see landlords asking for substantial rent increases, getting shot down, then listing the place for even more. But it gets worse.
The deficit of taxes within Boston is so great, it’s unlikely that property taxes for businesses or residents will ever go down anytime soon, only increase. So what are the landlords to do? Some will weather the storm, but I think a lot of them will sell, and I think Mayor Wu is hoping for this, but I foresee it backfiring. We aren’t talking about the major real estate owners property conglomerates selling, nor are we talking about the schools selling either, I’m talking about the yuppy rich white lady down on the cape that has a few rental properties and never takes care of them. She’s selling. But to who? I think the hope is that potential home owners will buy these properties, incentivized by the tax exemptions, but this us where my skepticism comes from. There’s absolutely noooo way that’s happening when their main bidding competitors are colleges, whose resources are practically unlimited, and real estate companies who have started renting by the room and not by the apartment. And if all else fails, just pull a seaport and buy, demo, build.
Let’s review. Boston is in debt and it’s only getting worse. Commercial real estate value is continuing to drop. Taxes on those properties are increasing but it’s not enough to offset the spending like it used to. Businesses gunna shutter. Residential real estate is increasing in value. Taxes on those properties will be unmanageable for the run-o-the-mill homeowner. Wu is trying to keep home owners, so landlords get disproportionately taxed. Renters are left holding this very heavy bag. Oh yeah, those renters also have like absolutely zero protections against any of this.
Let’s skip ahead a few more years and let the crazy conspiracy theorist in me run rampant: Taxes continue to go up for everyone, so a whole lotta businesses are gunna close (I mean, did you see what just happened to Tavern in the Square this week? Yeah, expect more of that…), landlords keep raising their prices, tuition keeps climbing, unaffordable housing keeps getting built, there’s a mass exodus of businesses leaving Boston, and the businesses that do stay can’t pay their… no, they can, but they won’t pay their employees a salary to live here. They just won’t, and why should they? It’s ungodly expensive to live here and equally as atrocious to run a business here, you’d have to live with your parents rent free for years on a Boston salary just to save enough for a competitive down payment for a home in the city, and forget about renting and saving… your boss’s argument is that they commute in from the cape everyday so why can’t you? Audible eye roll… The schools love this, keep the poor out and only allow for the wealthiest students and their very rich papas and mamas to pay for everything, they look more prestigious than ever, meanwhile I’d wager that at least 1/10 of those students are here to party and get fucked up. Fucked up on what though? TITS literally just closed, liquor licenses are obscenely expensive, you can expect to see more Hecate’s than Silhouette’s because the clientele will absolutely spend $100 to have some smoke rolling out of the glass… The renters gotta make a quick buck and sell their pain killers from an injury the year prior, get kids hooked but they can’t afford anything, so they turn to tranq. Meanwhile those same renters, who are respectable hard working nurses and teachers and small business owners and all kinds of people who should NOT be in this situation, they all have their price jacked up AGAIN to mmm I’m thinking 3500/studio will be the going rate by now, and so these renters are forced to “move” but the question is how? Everyone wants a first, last, security, brokers, and a U-Haul, no one can afford to move, or save for that matter, so they have to leave the city. If they’re lucky enough to have a place to go that is, otherwise everyone else is going to be turning methadone mile into a methadone marathon.
Boston is well on its way to make Philly and San Francisco look like saints in comparison.