Recently I just started using my laptop as I have been out of town, on my downtime I have been playing games like Battlefield 2042 and League of Legends, and all was well until two days ago. I got onto battlefield and the frame rate was 10fps, I checked to see what was wrong and my laptop was not detecting my 4060 and the game was running on my integrated graphics. I uninstalled the driver and reinstalled and it was back, but now any game I would launch would cause a BSOD of VIDEO TDR FAILURE for the nvidia dll file. I used DDU and rolled back my GPU driver to two last months and the BSOD stopped, but I got a WHEA UNCORRECTABLE ERROR once and that was it. The problem now is that whenever I try to launch a game it will just crash, if I launch Abiotic Factor it will tell me there was a fatl error with unreal engine, if i launch league it will tell me that there was a problem with my gpu and Windows had to restart it, sometimes with when im watching a show, the screen will just freeze and I have to hard reset my pc and reinstall the gpu drivers. I used heavenes benchmark to stress test my gpu and after 15mins nothing crashed and nothing was wrong. The times when it crashes are also really inconsistent, sometimes I can play for 2hours, sometimes it will crash 5 times in 30mins. My laptop is the PH16-71 on the 4060, I need help as this is a new laptop. Thank you.

“Real gold is not afraid of the melting pot” - Old Chinese proverb
The core development team achieved a major milestone this week. They reached Certik KYC gold certification for providing the maximum amount of identification possible for the core team. This proves without a shadow of a doubt the team is dedicated to the long term goals they have talked about since launch. Out of all the protocols and teams Certik has looked at, a grand total of 74 projects have reached KYC gold. This is a rare feat that will allow people outside the PAW Chain community to trust that all aspects of the PAW Chain launch are being handled with integrity.
Certik voting is still in progress as we aim to be the top project to receive $20k in free services. With PAWswap coming in at #19 in overall Skynet security score, the goal is to get that rank even higher. The team as always is committed to security as the main priority, and grabbing an extra $20k in services from Certik can only improve the security of the network. Voting for PAWswap is available every 24 hours, and it is at the bottom of the page under “Monitoring”.
Build on PAW featured u/officialLXNK which is headed by DevilDog. His side-scrolling game is just a part of his plans to use in-game currency to get crypto into the hands of people from poorer countries. His goal is to expand the reach of cryptocurrency to those without the resources to consistently invest in their crypto future. PAW Chain will factor into the future of LXNK as the cheap fees and multichain accessibility will make it much easier to get money into the hands of more people.
Not only has the PAW Chain community been showing out on the voting for Killer Whales, the production team for the show is really taking notice. We have seen PAW Chain mentions from influential accounts rise over the last week. Because of the amazing job the community has done voting for PAW Chain, we will be featured on an X space hosted by CoinMarketCap along with the other top 5 projects for the previous week. This spotlight will give our speaker 10 minutes to pitch why we deserve to be on season 2. This will happen each week during the voting process, so we will have multiple opportunities to showcase our greatest assets in front of a massive audience.
PAW Chain has been the clear favorite to win the Killer Whales voting competition since it started. While we have slipped from first place a few times, the commitment from our community is going to make it hard for anyone else to keep up the voting pace. As of this writing PAW Chain has 349,800 votes. A staggering amount in 13 days.
We definitely bridged the gap on Bridging the Gap this past week. Ibrahym0x educated us on the possibilities of XFTs. These are basically NFTs with vault storage. You can place coins, tokens, or other NFTs inside of these vaults. This is a massive innovative jump for RWAs and their ties to NFTs. His collection of hyena XFTs is the first line of vault storage items for sale on his website.
Test-Net will be updated eventually, but we are currently waiting for it to be set up on an internal domain for Certik to perform their own testing. We will make an official announcement when Test-Net is released.
Thank you for taking the time to tune in to this week’s newsletter. There are so many exciting things happening at once, and we appreciate the amazing community that shows up day after day. Without everyone doing their part to support the project, no matter what support that is, we wouldn’t have this amazing launch to look forward to.

This isn't intended to be a tutorial on how to extract game files or make mods, I'm just sharing some resources.
For those of you who are knowledgeable in reverse engineering unreal games for early modding, I'll share what I've got working so far since I haven't seen anyone talking about it. Linked here is a working unreal mapping file for use in fmodel (make sure fmodel is loading UE version 5.3 or higher for Abiotic Factor). With that you should be able to view/extract nearly any game file barring some of the .binka sound files. Make sure you have the BINKA audio decoder for those.
p.s I've been loving this game so far and I can't wait to see what it has in store for the future, much love to the devs! <3

Just bored and wanting to have a conversation. For those of you who play on Steam, what are your current games that you’re playing?
I got Abiotic Factor on its release and it’s been a blast

Introduction:
Globalization, characterized by increased interconnectedness and integration of economies, cultures, and societies, has brought about profound transformations in the modern world. While globalization has led to economic growth, technological advancement, and cultural exchange, it also has significant downsides, particularly in its impact on population ecology. This essay delves into the downsides of globalization and its intersection with population ecology dynamics, highlighting the challenges posed to biodiversity, ecosystem stability, and human well-being in a globalized world.
The Downsides of Globalization: Disruption and Degradation
Globalization has been associated with a range of negative consequences for the environment, ecosystems, and populations worldwide. One of the primary downsides is environmental degradation, as increased industrialization, urbanization, and resource extraction have led to habitat destruction, pollution, and loss of biodiversity.
Globalization has also facilitated the spread of invasive species, diseases, and pollutants across continents, disrupting ecological balances and threatening native species and ecosystems. Invasive species outcompete native species for resources, alter habitats, and disrupt ecological processes, leading to declines in biodiversity and ecosystem resilience.
Furthermore, globalization has contributed to overexploitation of natural resources, including forests, fisheries, and freshwater sources, as increased demand for commodities drives unsustainable extraction and consumption patterns. Deforestation, overfishing, and water scarcity have negative impacts on ecosystems, species populations, and the livelihoods of local communities dependent on natural resources.
Population Ecology Dynamics: Interactions and Adaptations
Population ecology is the study of how populations of organisms interact with each other and their environments, including factors such as population size, distribution, growth, and regulation. Population dynamics are influenced by a variety of biotic and abiotic factors, including resource availability, predation, competition, and environmental conditions.
One of the key concepts in population ecology is carrying capacity, which refers to the maximum population size that a particular habitat or ecosystem can sustain over the long term. Population growth may be limited by factors such as food availability, space, and predation, leading to density-dependent regulation of population size.
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Population ecology also encompasses the study of population interactions, such as competition, predation, symbiosis, and disease transmission, which shape population dynamics and community structure. These interactions influence the distribution and abundance of species within ecosystems and can have cascading effects on ecosystem functioning and stability.
Intersection of Globalization and Population Ecology
Globalization intersects with population ecology dynamics in various ways, influencing patterns of population distribution, abundance, and interactions across different spatial and temporal scales. The movement of people, goods, and organisms across continents has led to the spread of invasive species, diseases, and pollutants, with implications for population dynamics and community structure.
Globalization also affects population dynamics through its impacts on habitat loss, fragmentation, and degradation, which can disrupt breeding patterns, migration routes, and food availability for wildlife populations. Fragmentation of habitats can isolate populations, reduce genetic diversity, and increase the risk of local extinctions, particularly for species with limited dispersal abilities.
Furthermore, globalization influences human population dynamics through its effects on urbanization, industrialization, and socio-economic development. Rapid urbanization and population growth in urban areas can lead to habitat destruction, pollution, and resource depletion, affecting both human and wildlife populations.
Challenges and Opportunities for Population Ecology in a Globalized World
In the face of globalization's downsides, population ecology faces numerous challenges, including habitat loss, fragmentation, overexploitation of resources, and the spread of invasive species and diseases. Addressing these challenges requires interdisciplinary approaches that integrate ecological, social, and economic perspectives to promote sustainability and resilience.
Conservation efforts must focus on protecting and restoring habitats, mitigating the impacts of invasive species and pollutants, and promoting sustainable land and resource management practices. Strategies such as habitat restoration, protected area management, and community-based conservation initiatives can help to conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services in a globalized world.
Furthermore, efforts to address global environmental challenges, such as climate change, deforestation, and biodiversity loss, require international cooperation and collaboration. Global agreements, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Paris Agreement on climate change, provide frameworks for collective action to protect and sustainably manage the planet's ecosystems and resources.
​
Conclusion
Globalization presents significant challenges for population ecology, including habitat loss, fragmentation, overexploitation, and the spread of invasive species and pollutants. However, it also offers opportunities for collaboration, innovation, and conservation on a global scale. By addressing the downsides of globalization and promoting sustainable development practices, we can work towards a more resilient, biodiverse, and equitable world for both human and non-human populations. As we navigate the complexities of globalization and population ecology, it is essential to embrace the principles of sustainability, stewardship, and interconnectedness to ensure the health and well-being of present and future generations.

First and foremost; thank you for giving this a read! I'll try and keep this nice and brief. I apologize in advance for my flowery speech.
My name is Sean, or DebonairDenizen on most platforms (including Discord). I like to fancy myself a writer (though I think you have to write in order to be a writer, but that's neither here nor there), an arm chair philosopher, and a generally pleasant man to pal about with- if I may be so bold. I've been stuck at home these last two years due to chronic illness which, when I'm feeling up to gaming, has left me with quite a lot of time for it. Truthfully, there's only so many times I can replay Red Dead 2 before I start to feel a tad lonely, y'know?
I'm looking for friends to play with (as I imagine we all are, on this subreddit). At this point, I don't care about the game, but I'll bullet point some of the games I own and am interested in below. Be it one friend or a community of friends, I'm not picky; I just kinda miss those middle school days where I balanced both an online and an offline circle of companions.
If I don't own one of the games you're playing, I'm- within reason- not above getting it. I wouldn't mind broadening my gaming horizons a tad. But as it is, here's some of the games I own and play;

• Helldivers 2
• Amogus
• League of Legends (kill me)
• Valheim
• Abiotic Factor
• Magic: Arena (also kill me)
• No Man's Sky
• Rust (well, I own Rust, at least)
• Hell Let Loose
• Rising Storm: Vietnam 2
• Red Orchestra 2
• Planetside 2
• Foxhole
• Stellaris
• Starship Troopers
• Tabletop Simulator (it's been a while but I dabbled in 40k, much to by chagrin at times)
• Minecraft (of course)
• Splinter Cell: Conviction (great co-op, been years since I played)
• Battlefield: 1
• Dungeons & Dragons (or any TTRPG really)

Those are some that come to mind, though again, if there's anything you're into that isn't listed, don't let that be what stops you from reaching out. I've been interested into getting into games not currently in my wheelhouse (like Overwatch, perhaps; haven't played that since highschool).
Look forward to hearing from you!

Banner
Welcome back to the Reformed UPG of the Week!
Gonna leave this here because reddit is still a massive pain these days

Slight update, the new reddit UI has made it almost impossible for me to quickly do these, like I used to be able to do. Thus, theres a chance it becomes UPG of the every other week until the problem is fixed. I can't spend every one of my entire Monday mornings working on this for hours with stupid formatting issues.

Now, please meet the Jordanian Arabs of Jordan!

Region: Jordan

map
Stratus Index Ranking (Urgency): 34
It has been noted to me by u/JCmathetes that I should explain this ranking. Low numbers are more urgent, both physically and spiritually together, while high numbers are less urgent. The scale is 1-177, with one number assigned to each country. So basically on a scale from Afghanistan (1) to Finland (177), how urgent are the peoples physical and spiritual needs.

The Stratus Index - Synthesizes reliable data from different sources to clearly display the world’s most urgent spiritual and physical needs.The vast majority of missions resources go to people and places already Reached by the Gospel, while only 3% of missionaries and 1% of missions money are deployed among the Unreached. This is the Great Imbalance. As a result, there are more people without access to the Gospel today than a decade ago. Stratus seeks to equip the global church with fresh vision to accomplish the Great Commission by addressing some of the factors that perpetuate the Great Imbalance. We hope this tool allows the church to better understand what steps will be required to overcome the barriers that prevent needs from being met, spurring informed and collaborative missions strategy. Stratus Website

Amman, Jordan
Climate: The climate in Jordan varies greatly. Generally, the further inland from the Mediterranean, there are greater contrasts in temperature and less rainfall. The country's average elevation is 812 m (2,664 ft) (SL). The highlands above the Jordan Valley, mountains of the Dead Sea and Wadi Araba and as far south as Ras Al-Naqab are dominated by a Mediterranean climate, while the eastern and northeastern areas of the country are arid desert. Although the desert parts of the kingdom reach high temperatures, the heat is usually moderated by low humidity and a daytime breeze, while the nights are cool. Summers, lasting from May to September, are hot and dry, with temperatures averaging around 32 °C (90 °F) and sometimes exceeding 40 °C (104 °F) between July and August. The winter, lasting from November to March, is relatively cool, with temperatures averaging around 11.08 °C (52 °F).Winter also sees frequent showers and occasional snowfall in some western elevated areas.
Wadi Rum
Terrain: The east is an arid plateau irrigated by oases and seasonal water streams. Major cities are overwhelmingly located on the north-western part of the kingdom due to its fertile soils and relatively abundant rainfall. These include Irbid, Jerash and Zarqa in the northwest, the capital Amman and Al-Salt in the central west, and Madaba, Al-Karak and Aqaba in the southwest. Major towns in the eastern part of the country are the oasis towns of Azraq and Ruwaished. In the west, a highland area of arable land and Mediterranean evergreen forestry drops suddenly into the Jordan Rift Valley. The rift valley contains the Jordan River and the Dead Sea, which separates Jordan from Israel. Jordan has a 26 kilometres (16 mi) shoreline on the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea, but is otherwise landlocked. The Yarmouk River, an eastern tributary of the Jordan, forms part of the boundary between Jordan and Syria (including the occupied Golan Heights) to the north. The other boundaries are formed by several international and local agreements and do not follow well-defined natural features. The highest point is Jabal Umm al Dami, at 1,854 m (6,083 ft) above sea level, while the lowest is the Dead Sea −420 m (−1,378 ft), the lowest land point on earth.
Village in Jordan
Wildlife of Jordan: Carnivorous mammals in Jordan include the striped hyena, caracal, jungle cat, sand cat, African wildcat, Arabian wolf, golden jackal, fennec fox, Arabian red fox, Blanford's fox, Rüppell's fox, Egyptian mongoose, least weasel, caucasian badger, honey badger and European otter. There are about twenty species of bat and a similar number of rodents including the Caucasian squirrel, Asian garden dormouse, Euphrates jerboa, Middle East blind mole-rat, and various voles, jirds, mice, rats, spiny mice, gerbils and hamsters. Other mammals found in suitable habitat are the wild boar, European hare, cape hare, Indian crested porcupine, rock hyrax, European hedgehog, long-eared hedgehog and desert hedgehog. Approximately 426 species of bird have been recorded in Jordan. Some of these are the Atlantic petrel, northern bald ibis, Egyptian vulture, Griffon vulture, lappet-faced vulture, Pharaoh eagle-owl, barn owl, golden eagle, steppe eagle, greater spotted eagle, eastern imperial eagle, MacQueen's bustard, Siberian crane, sociable lapwing, saker falcon, marbled duck, aquatic warbler, Syrian serin, short-toed snake eagle, long-legged buzzard, Barbary falcon and Bonelli's eagle. Five species of turtle are known from Jordan and there are a variety of snakes, mostly colubrids and vipers, but with representatives of seven snake families. The Shaumari Wildlife Reserve, a fenced off area in the deserts of central Jordan, has since been used in a breeding and reintroduction programme for the Arabian oryx, as well as other species such as the Somali ostrich, the Persian onager and gazelles. Other animals that have been released into the wild are the Nubian ibex, wild boar, fallow deer and roe deer
I cannot figure out if there are monkeys in Jordan but it doesn't appear to be the case. Praise the Lord!
The Arabian Oryx
Environmental Issues: Jordan is considered one of the countries most affected by environmental changes, especially those caused by the climate crisis and the resulting drought, desertification and loss of arable lands.
Languages: The official language is Modern Standard Arabic, a literary language taught in the schools. Most Jordanians natively speak one of the non-standard Arabic dialects known as Jordanian Arabic. Jordanian Sign Language is the language of the deaf community. English, though without official status, is widely spoken throughout the country and is the de facto language of commerce and banking, as well as a co-official status in the education sector; almost all university-level classes are held in English and almost all public schools teach English along with Standard Arabic. Chechen, Circassian, Armenian, Tagalog, and Russian are popular among their communities. The Romani people, though they may speak Arabic, speak Domari.
Government Type: Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy

People: Jordanian Arabs

Jordanian Arab woman
Population: 4,717,000
Estimated Foreign Workers Needed: 94+
Beliefs: The Jordanian Arabs are 2.5% Christian, but only 0.3% Evangelical. That means out of their population of 4,717,000, there are roughly 14,151 believers who share their faith. Thats less than 1 believer for every 333.
The state religion in Jordan is Islam. Nearly all of Jordanians are Muslim. The great majority of Arabs practice Sunni Islam. Shi'ites living in the East make up the remainder. Christians account for a small percentage of the population, but the largest churches are Orthodox and not evangelical. There are also a few small Muslim groups who desire to see a more extreme Islamic government. The Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood is gaining support in Jordan. This is an illegal political organization who are known for terrorist actions and violence against Christians.
King Abdullah I Mosque is the most famous Masjid in Jordan. Completed in 1989 as a memorial by the late King Hussein to his grandfather, King Abdullah I Mosque is the largest Masjid in the state.
History: Alexander the Great's conquest of the Persian Empire in 332 BC introduced Hellenistic culture to the Middle East. After Alexander's death in 323 BC, the empire split among his generals, and in the end much of Transjordan was disputed between the Ptolemies based in Egypt and the Seleucids based in Syria. The Nabataeans, nomadic Arabs based south of Edom, managed to establish an independent kingdom in 169 BC by exploiting the struggle between the two Greek powers. The Nabataean Kingdom controlled much of the trade routes of the region, and it stretched south along the Red Sea coast into the Hejaz desert, up to as far north as Damascus, which it controlled for a short period (85–71) BC. The Nabataeans massed a fortune from their control of the trade routes, often drawing the envy of their neighbours. Petra, Nabataea's barren capital, flourished in the 1st century AD, driven by its extensive water irrigation systems and agriculture. The Nabataeans were also talented stone carvers, building their most elaborate structure, Al-Khazneh, in the first century AD. It is believed to be the mausoleum of the Arab Nabataean King Aretas IV.
Roman legions under Pompey conquered much of the Levant in 63 BC, inaugurating a period of Roman rule that lasted four centuries. In 106 AD, Emperor Trajan annexed Nabataea unopposed, and rebuilt the King's Highway which became known as the Via Traiana Nova road. The Romans gave the Greek cities of Transjordan—Philadelphia (Amman), Gerasa (Jerash), Gedara (Umm Quays), Pella (Tabaqat Fahl) and Arbila (Irbid)—and other Hellenistic cities in Palestine and southern Syria, a level of autonomy by forming the Decapolis, a ten-city league. Jerash is one of the best preserved Roman cities in the East; it was even visited by Emperor Hadrian during his journey to Palestine.
In 324 AD, the Roman Empire split and the Eastern Roman Empire, later known as the Byzantine Empire, continued to control or influence the region until 636 AD. Christianity had become legal within the empire in 313 AD after Emperor Constantine the Great converted to Christianity. The Edict of Thessalonica made Christianity the official state religion in 380 AD. Transjordan prospered during the Byzantine era, and Christian churches were built everywhere. The Aqaba Church in Ayla was built during this era, it is considered to be the world's first purpose built Christian church. Umm ar-Rasas in southern Amman contains at least 16 Byzantine churches. Meanwhile, Petra's importance declined as sea trade routes emerged, and after a 363 earthquake destroyed many structures, it declined further, eventually being abandoned. The Sassanian Empire in the east became the Byzantines' rivals, and frequent confrontations sometimes led to the Sassanids controlling some parts of the region, including Transjordan.
In 629 AD, during the Battle of Mu'tah in what is today Karak Governorate, the Byzantines and their Arab Christian clients, the Ghassanids, staved off an attack by a Muslim Rashidun force that marched northwards towards the Levant from the Hejaz (in modern-day Saudi Arabia). The Byzantines however were defeated by the Muslims in 636 AD at the decisive Battle of Yarmouk just north of Transjordan. Transjordan was an essential territory for the conquest of Damascus. The first, or Rashidun, caliphate was followed by that of the Umayyads (661–750).
Byzantine Madaba Map showing the Jordan River and the Dead Sea. Dating to the 6th century AD, it is the oldest surviving depiction of the Holy Land
Under the Umayyad Caliphate, several desert castles were constructed in Transjordan, including: Qasr Al-Mshatta and Qasr Al-Hallabat. The Abbasid Caliphate's campaign to take over the Umayyad's began in a village in Transjordan known as Humayma. A powerful 749 AD earthquake is thought to have contributed to the Umayyads defeat to the Abbasids, who moved the caliphate's capital from Damascus to Baghdad. During Abbasid rule (750–969), several Arab tribes moved northwards and settled in the Levant. As had happened during the Roman era, growth of maritime trade diminished Transjordan's central position, and the area became increasingly impoverished. After the decline of the Abbasids, Transjordan was ruled by the Fatimid Caliphate (969–1070), then by the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (1115–1187).
The Crusaders constructed several Crusader castles as part of the Lordship of Oultrejordain, including those of Montreal and Al-Karak. The Ayyubids built the Ajloun Castle and rebuilt older castles, to be used as military outposts against the Crusaders. During the Battle of Hattin (1187) near Lake Tiberias just north of Transjordan, the Crusaders lost to Saladin, the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty (1187–1260). Villages in Transjordan under the Ayyubids became important stops for Muslim pilgrims going to Mecca who travelled along the route that connected Syria to the Hejaz. Several of the Ayyubid castles were used and expanded by the Mamluks (1260–1516), who divided Transjordan between the provinces of Karak and Damascus. During the next century Transjordan experienced Mongol attacks, but the Mongols were ultimately repelled by the Mamluks after the Battle of Ain Jalut (1260).
In 1516, the Ottoman Caliphate's forces conquered Mamluk territory. Agricultural villages in Transjordan witnessed a period of relative prosperity in the 16th century, but were later abandoned. Transjordan was of marginal importance to the Ottoman authorities. As a result, Ottoman presence was virtually absent and reduced to annual tax collection visits. More Arab Bedouin tribes moved into Transjordan from Syria and the Hejaz during the first three centuries of Ottoman rule, including the Adwan, the Bani Sakhr and the Howeitat. These tribes laid claims to different parts of the region, and with the absence of a meaningful Ottoman authority, Transjordan slid into a state of anarchy that continued until the 19th century. This led to a short-lived occupation by the Wahhabi forces (1803–1812), an ultra-orthodox Islamic movement that emerged in Najd (in modern-day Saudi Arabia). Ibrahim Pasha, son of the governor of the Egypt Eyalet, rooted out the Wahhabis under the request of the Ottoman sultan by 1818. In 1833 Ibrahim Pasha turned on the Ottomans and established his rule over the Levant. His policies led to the unsuccessful peasants' revolt in Palestine in 1834. Transjordanian cities of As-Salt and Al-Karak were destroyed by Ibrahim Pasha's forces for harboring a peasants' revolt leader. Egyptian rule was forcibly ended in 1841, with Ottoman rule restored.
Only after Ibrahim Pasha's campaign did the Ottoman Empire try to solidify its presence in the Syria Vilayet, which Transjordan was part of. A series of tax and land reforms (Tanzimat) in 1864 brought some prosperity back to agriculture and to abandoned villages; the end of virtual autonomy led a backlash in other areas of Transjordan. Muslim Circassians and Chechens, fleeing Russian persecution, sought refuge in the Levant. In Transjordan and with Ottoman support, Circassians first settled in the long-abandoned vicinity of Amman in 1867, and later in the surrounding villages. The Ottoman authorities' establishment of its administration, conscription and heavy taxation policies led to revolts in the areas it controlled. Transjordan's tribes in particular revolted during the Shoubak (1905) and the Karak Revolts (1910), which were brutally suppressed. The construction of the Hejaz Railway in 1908–stretching across the length of Transjordan and linking Damascus with Medina helped the population economically, as Transjordan became a stopover for pilgrims.
Increasing policies of Turkification and centralization adopted by the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the 1908 Young Turk Revolution disenchanted the Arabs of the Levant, who came to adopt Arab nationalism. These changes led to the outbreak of the 1916 Arab Revolt during World War I, which would end four centuries of stagnation under Ottoman rule. The revolt was led by Sharif Hussein of Mecca, scion of the Hashemite family of the Hejaz, and his sons Abdullah, Faisal and Ali. Locally, the revolt garnered the support of the Transjordanian tribes, including Bedouins, Circassians and Christians. The Allies of World War I, including Britain and France, whose imperial interests converged with the Arabist cause, offered support. The revolt started on 5 June 1916 from Medina and pushed northwards until the fighting reached Transjordan in the Battle of Aqaba on 6 July 1917. The revolt reached its climax when Faisal entered Damascus in October 1918, and established an Arab-led military administration in OETA East, later declared as the Arab Kingdom of Syria, both of which Transjordan was part of. During this period, the southernmost region of the country, including Ma'an and Aqaba, was also claimed by the neighbouring Kingdom of Hejaz.
The nascent Hashemite Kingdom over Greater Syria was forced to surrender to French troops on 24 July 1920 during the Battle of Maysalun; the French occupied only the northern part of the Syrian Kingdom, leaving Transjordan in a period of interregnum. Arab aspirations failed to gain international recognition, due mainly to the secret 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement, which divided the region into French and British spheres of influence, and the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which Britain announced its support for the establishment of a "national home" for Jews in Palestine. This was seen by the Hashemites and the Arabs as a betrayal of their previous agreements with the British, including the 1915 McMahon–Hussein Correspondence, in which the British stated their willingness to recognize the independence of a unified Arab state stretching from Aleppo to Aden under the rule of the Hashemites.
The British High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel, travelled to Transjordan on 21 August 1920 to meet with As-Salt's residents. He there declared to a crowd of six hundred Transjordanian notables that the British government would aid the establishment of local governments in Transjordan, which is to be kept separate from that of Palestine. The second meeting took place in Umm Qais on 2 September, where the British government representative Major Fitzroy Somerset received a petition that demanded: an independent Arab government in Transjordan to be led by an Arab prince (emir); land sale in Transjordan to Jews be stopped as well as the prevention of Jewish immigration there; that Britain establish and fund a national army; and that free trade be maintained between Transjordan and the rest of the region.
Abdullah, the second son of Sharif Hussein, arrived from Hejaz by train in Ma'an in southern Transjordan on 21 November 1920 to redeem the Greater Syrian Kingdom his brother had lost. Transjordan then was in disarray, widely considered to be ungovernable with its dysfunctional local governments. Abdullah gained the trust of Transjordan's tribal leaders before scrambling to convince them of the benefits of an organized government. Abdullah's successes drew the envy of the British, even when it was in their interest. The British reluctantly accepted Abdullah as ruler of Transjordan after having given him a six-month trial. In March 1921, the British decided to add Transjordan to their Mandate for Palestine, in which they would implement their "Sharifian Solution" policy without applying the provisions of the mandate dealing with Jewish settlement. On 11 April 1921, the Emirate of Transjordan was established with Abdullah as Emir.
In September 1922, the Council of the League of Nations recognized Transjordan as a state under the terms of the Transjordan memorandum. Transjordan remained a British mandate until 1946, but it had been granted a greater level of autonomy than the region west of the Jordan River. Multiple difficulties emerged upon the assumption of power in the region by the Hashemite leadership. In Transjordan, small local rebellions at Kura in 1921 and 1923 were suppressed by the Emir's forces with the help of the British. Wahhabis from Najd regained strength and repeatedly raided the southern parts of his territory in (1922–1924), seriously threatening the Emir's position. The Emir was unable to repel those raids without the aid of the local Bedouin tribes and the British, who maintained a military base with a small RAF detachment close to Amman.
The Treaty of London, signed by the British Government and the Emir of Transjordan on 22 March 1946, recognised the independence of the state upon ratification by both countries' parliaments. On 25 May 1946, the day that the treaty was ratified by the Transjordan parliament, Transjordan was raised to the status of a kingdom under the name of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Arabic, with Abdullah as its first king; although it continued to be referred to as the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan in English until 1949. 25 May is now celebrated as the nation's Independence Day, a public holiday. Jordan became a member of the United Nations on 14 December 1955.
On 15 May 1948, as part of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Jordan intervened in Palestine together with many other Arab states. Following the war, Jordan controlled the West Bank and on 24 April 1950 Jordan formally annexed these territories after the Jericho conference. In response, some Arab countries demanded Jordan's expulsion from the Arab League. On 12 June 1950, the Arab League declared that the annexation was a temporary, practical measure and that Jordan was holding the territory as a "trustee" pending a future settlement. King Abdullah was assassinated at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in 1951 by a Palestinian militant, amid rumors he intended to sign a peace treaty with Israel.
Abdullah was succeeded by his son Talal, who would soon abdicate due to illness in favour of his eldest son Hussein. Talal established the country's modern constitution in 1952. Hussein ascended to the throne in 1953 at the age of 17. Jordan witnessed great political uncertainty in the following period. The 1950s were a period of political upheaval, as Nasserism and Pan-Arabism swept the Arab World. On 1 March 1956, King Hussein Arabized the command of the Army by dismissing a number of senior British officers, an act made to remove remaining foreign influence in the country. In 1958, Jordan and neighbouring Hashemite Iraq formed the Arab Federation as a response to the formation of the rival United Arab Republic between Nasser's Egypt and Syria. The union lasted only six months, being dissolved after Iraqi King Faisal II (Hussein's cousin) was deposed by a bloody military coup on 14 July 1958.
Jordan signed a military pact with Egypt just before Israel launched a preemptive strike on Egypt to begin the Six-Day War in June 1967, where Jordan and Syria joined the war. The Arab states were defeated and Jordan lost control of the West Bank to Israel. The War of Attrition with Israel followed, which included the 1968 Battle of Karameh where the combined forces of the Jordanian Armed Forces and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) repelled an Israeli attack on the Karameh camp on the Jordanian border with the West Bank. Despite the fact that the Palestinians had limited involvement against the Israeli forces, the events at Karameh gained wide recognition and acclaim in the Arab world. As a result, the time period following the battle witnessed an upsurge of support for Palestinian paramilitary elements (the fedayeen) within Jordan from other Arab countries. The fedayeen activities soon became a threat to Jordan's rule of law. In September 1970, the Jordanian army targeted the fedayeen and the resultant fighting led to the expulsion of Palestinian fighters from various PLO groups into Lebanon, in a conflict that became known as Black September.
In 1973, Egypt and Syria waged the Yom Kippur War on Israel, and fighting occurred along the 1967 Jordan River cease-fire line. Jordan sent a brigade to Syria to attack Israeli units on Syrian territory but did not engage Israeli forces from Jordanian territory. At the Rabat summit conference in 1974, in the aftermath of the Yom-Kippur War, Jordan agreed, along with the rest of the Arab League, that the PLO was the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people". Subsequently, Jordan renounced its claims to the West Bank in 1988.
At the 1991 Madrid Conference, Jordan agreed to negotiate a peace treaty sponsored by the US and the Soviet Union. The Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace was signed on 26 October 1994. In 1997, in retribution for a bombing, Israeli agents entered Jordan using Canadian passports and poisoned Khaled Meshal, a senior Hamas leader living in Jordan. Bowing to intense international pressure, Israel provided an antidote to the poison and released dozens of political prisoners, including Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, after King Hussein threatened to annul the peace treaty.
On 7 February 1999, Abdullah II ascended the throne upon the death of his father Hussein, who had ruled for nearly 50 years. Abdullah embarked on economic liberalization when he assumed the throne, and his reforms led to an economic boom which continued until 2008. Abdullah II has been credited with increasing foreign investment, improving public-private partnerships and providing the foundation for Aqaba's free-trade zone and Jordan's flourishing information and communication technology (ICT) sector. He also set up five other special economic zones. However, during the following years Jordan's economy experienced hardship as it dealt with the effects of the Great Recession and spillover from the Arab Spring.
Al-Qaeda under Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's leadership launched coordinated explosions in three hotel lobbies in Amman on 9 November 2005, resulting in 60 deaths and 115 injured. The bombings, which targeted civilians, caused widespread outrage among Jordanians. The attack is considered to be a rare event in the country, and Jordan's internal security was dramatically improved afterwards. No major terrorist attacks have occurred since then. Abdullah and Jordan are viewed with contempt by Islamic extremists for the country's peace treaty with Israel, its relationship with the West, and its mostly non-religious laws.
The Arab Spring were large-scale protests that erupted in the Arab World in 2011, demanding economic and political reforms. Many of these protests tore down regimes in some Arab nations, leading to instability that ended with violent civil wars. In Jordan, in response to domestic unrest, Abdullah replaced his prime minister and introduced a number of reforms including: reforming the Constitution, and laws governing public freedoms and elections. Proportional representation was re-introduced to the Jordanian parliament in the 2016 general election, a move which he said would eventually lead to establishing parliamentary governments. Jordan was left largely unscathed from the violence that swept the region despite an influx of 1.4 million Syrian refugees into the natural resources-lacking country and the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
King Hussein on 21 March 1968 checking an abandoned Israeli tank in the aftermath of the Battle of Karameh.
Culture: Typical qualification that all people groups can't be summed up in small paragraphs and this is an over generalization.
In the villages, Jordanian Arabs are usually hospitable and friendly. It is common for them to welcome traveling strangers into their homes. A woman's public presence is more accepted than in other Arab countries. However, restaurants may still only welcome men or show the women to a "family room," where ladies and children are allowed.
Education of children begins at five years old and is free. There is a secondary school system for both boys and girls. The brightest students attend one of three Jordanian universities or study abroad.
The economy is centered around the production of phosphates, fertilizers, agricultural products, manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals.
Jordanian folklore band playing bagpipes in Jerash.
Cuisine: As the eighth-largest producer of olives in the world, olive oil is the main cooking oil in Jordan. A common appetizer is hummus, which is a puree of chickpeas blended with tahini, lemon, and garlic. Ful medames is another well-known appetiser. A typical worker's meal, it has since made its way to the tables of the upper class. A typical Jordanian meze often contains koubba maqliya, labaneh, baba ghanoush, tabbouleh, olives and pickles. Meze is generally accompanied by the Levantine alcoholic drink arak, which is made from grapes and aniseed and is similar to ouzo, rakı and pastis. Jordanian wine and beer are also sometimes used. The same dishes, served without alcoholic drinks, can also be termed "muqabbilat" (starters) in Arabic.
The most distinctive Jordanian dish is mansaf, the national dish of Jordan. The dish is a symbol for Jordanian hospitality and is influenced by the Bedouin culture. Mansaf is eaten on different occasions such as funerals, weddings and on religious holidays. It consists of a plate of rice with meat that was boiled in thick yogurt, sprayed with pine nuts and sometimes herbs. As an old tradition, the dish is eaten using one's hands, but the tradition is not always used. Simple fresh fruit is often served towards the end of a Jordanian meal, but there is also dessert, such as baklava, hareeseh, knafeh, halva and qatayef, a dish made specially for Ramadan. In Jordanian cuisine, drinking coffee and tea flavoured with na'na or meramiyyeh is almost a ritual.
Mansaf, the traditional dish of Jordan, originates from Bedouin life and is a symbol of Jordanian hospitality.

Prayer Request:

• Pray for the work among other unreached peoples living in Jordan - Egyptian and Iraqi Arabs.
• Ask God to protect the small number of evangelical believers and help them to grow strong in Him.
• Pray that Jordanian Arab Christians would be willing to sacrifice their time, and even their lives, to bring the Gospel to neighboring countries.
• Pray against Putin and his insane little war.
• Pray for our nation (the United States), that we Christians can learn to come alongside our hurting brothers and sisters and learn to carry one another's burdens in a more Christlike manner than we have done historically.
• Pray that in this time of an upcoming election and insanity that the needs of the unreached are not forgotten by the church. Pray that our hearts continue to ache to see the unreached hear the Good News.

Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. (Romans 10:1)
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Here are the previous weeks threads on the UPG of the Week for Reformed from 2023 (plus a few from 2022 so this one post isn't so lonely). To save some space on these, all UPG posts made 2019-now are here, I will try to keep this current.

People Group	Country	Continent	Date Posted	Beliefs
Jordanian Arabs	Jordan	Asia	04/29/2024	Islam
Bouyei	China	Asia	04/22/2024	Animism
Arab Libyans	Libya	Africa	03/25/2024	Islam
Gafsa Amazigh	Tunisia	Africa	03/18/2024	Islam
Hindi	South Africa	Africa	03/04/2024	Hinduism
Arabs	Iraq	Asia	02/26/2024	Islam
Bagirmi Fulani	Central African Republic	Africa	02/12/2024	Islam
Gujarati	Portugal	Europe	02/05/2024	Hinduism
Western Cham	Cambodia	Asia	01/29/2024	Islamc
Yadav	India	Asia	01/22/2024	Hinduism
Thai (updated)	Thailand	Asia	12/18/2023	Buddhism
Bayad	Mongolia	Asia	12/11/2023	Buddhism
Bedouin (Suafa)	Algeria	Africa	12/04/2023	Islam
Aboriginal (Reached)	Australia	Oceania	11/27/2023	Christian

a - Tibet belongs to Tibet, not China.
b - Russia/Turkey/etc is Europe but also Asia so...
c - this likely is not the true religion that they worship, but rather they have a mixture of what is listed with other local religions, or they have embraced a liberal drift and are leaving faith entirely but this is their historical faith.
Here is a list of definitions in case you wonder what exactly I mean by words like "Unreached".
Here is a list of missions organizations that reach out to the world to do missions for the Glory of God.

Hello fellow covid long haulers!
I want to start off by saying I am not a doctor! I am also suffering from long covid symptoms and I am in the queue to see a specialist for long covid. I will be documenting all of my meetings and zoom calls here with the information they give me in hopes that someone else can benefit.
When I caught it:
I first contracted it after a 50km 7 day kayak expedition in BC and I believe I caught it on the ferry back in Aug of 2023. This was my second time catching it, the first being New Year's Eve 2022 (Dec 31, 2021). I have been suffering from long covid symptoms since late Sept. I actually thought I was fine after my covid infection was gone and started running in mid Sept and then all of a sudden the symptoms hit.
My symptoms:
What I'm mostly suffering from are cognitive disruptions such as brain fog and sleep disturbances. I am also suffering from POTS and inflammation. To be clear, these symptoms come and go; which doctors call a "relapse". So I relapse every other week or so and during the relapse, the symptoms last for 3-4 days. Now I have extreme fluid retention where I look like I've gained 15 lbs. I get dizzy while sitting and I can't walk long distances. My body feels heavy like I am unfit. Running is out of the picture and walking is not even a thing!
On my good days, they are really good days. It's like long covid is gone. Currently I am completing a couch to 10km running program on my good days. Also on my good days, I sleep really well where my fit bit will give me 85+ score and sometimes 8.5-9 hours of sleep. My brain also works extremely well and is fast when it's my good days. My skin is also really nice. I attribute all of this to the whole food diet I am eating (single ingredient organic foods, no highly processed items!), sun exposure, rest and supplements.
Wednesday, April 24, 2024:
SUPPLEMENTS: Here are a list of supplements I have been taking which have helped so far. They are mostly brain focused, anti inflammatory, supportive for optimal body functions and antioxidants and their precursors. Everyone has different needs, so consider the symptoms you are having and try to think what the root cause may be; that's how I figured out how to start my supplementation journey.
Please use high quality third party tested supplements! Do not buy from Amazon even if they are selling a reputable brand; they are not regulated and there are counterfeits on that site!

Supplement	For what	Link
5htp (AM)	- serotonin and dopamine production, mood regulation and bodily functions (serotonin plays key role in body functions)	https://aor.ca/product/5-htp/
Antihistamine (AM)	- reduces histamine production (my immune system is ON)	https://www.costco.ca/kirkland-signature-allergy-relief-extra-strength10-mg%2c-200-tablets.product.100556077.html
DHA and EPA (AM)	- reduces inflammation, and improves cognition, mood, and energy	https://cytomatrix.ca/products/peak-epa/
N-Acetyl-L-Cysteine with glycine and selenium (AM)	- pre-cursor to glutathione which is an antioxidant	https://cytomatrix.ca/products/nac-matrix/
Nicotinamide mononucleotide (AM)	- essential coenzyme for body processes, precursor to NAD+ another antioxidant	https://purepharmacy.com/products/natural-factors-regenerlife-sleep-nmnsurge?_pos=1&_sid=3a1b31e3a&_ss=r
Magnesium bisglycinate (PM)	- sleep (many of us are also deficient in Mg)	https://purepharmacy.com/products/bobs-magnesium-bisglycinate-200mg-100vcaps?_pos=2&_fid=258f48a34&_ss=c
Magnesium threonate (AM)	- cognition (many of us are also deficient in Mg)	https://www.metagenics.com/mag-l-threonate
Melatonin + theanine + 5htp (PM)	- sleep aide and promotes relaxation	https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/webber-naturals-Super-Sleep-90-Soft-Melt-Tablets/PRD16UVLL2O3W3L
Probiotic (AM)	- improves digestion and absorption of nutrients	https://www.alignprobiotics.ca/en-ca
Turmeric, Protease, Stem bromelain, Quercetin (AM)	- reduces inflammation and swelling	https://cytomatrix.ca/products/inflammatrix/
Zinc (AM)	- supports immune system, enhances digestion and metabolism of important vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, and other essential nutrients	https://www.pureencapsulationspro.com/zinc-30.html?size=60%20capsules

April 29 appointment (general: which meds to take)
TLDR:
A big thing I took away from the session was that right now there are no solutions but drs are treating symptoms to help balance people and get them back to normalcy. This is all they can do at the moment.
Summary:
I attended a 1 hour zoom session with other patients today where the goal of the session was to funnel all of us into more specific sessions. Today the drs discussed areas of concern, symptoms and showcased the upcoming workshops about specific concerns. It was very general. For example, if you are struggling with sleep after long covid and want to know more about how to treat it, there is a group workshop on that.
My goal is to not go the pharmacological route if possible so will be attending sessions on sleep quality. I will be working on supporting my body and brain with quality sleep, low irritant whole foods diet, vitamins + supplements, low stress and adding in gentle exercise. My grandma told me, before she passed away, that her friends were on lots of medications. That once you start taking a pill for something, there is always a side effect. Which then you take another pill to “fix” the side effects. It is a race to the bottom and next thing you know you are taking a concoction of pills. This is not uncommon with prescription medication.
I did ask about antiviral medication studies and clinical trials which turns out there are some being conducted by Stanford related long Covid. According to the drs, there was a conference on anti viral medication so there should be some information to relay to the patients soon. This may be a route I take if the non-pharmacological route doesn’t work after 3 months.
May 2 appointment (How to exercise with Chronic Pain: EDS, ME/CFS)
TLDR: you need to be responsible for your own exercise rehab program and use your symptoms as your coach.
This zoom appointment was about how to exercise with chronic pain in relation to long covid symptoms. What I gathered was: it’s a choose your own adventure for your fitness rehab program.
The formula is to start small or easier than you think you need, observe symptoms and adjust from there.
Focus on exercise which increase your enjoyment of life and can improve body functions such improving circulation, range of motion and imrpveo sleep to help symptoms and improve overall quality of life.
May 9: conference summary
Here is a summary of the appoinement:
There were three remaining hypothesis doctors are looking at to explain a lot of the symptoms that are happening

1. PASC (post acute sequelae of covid-19): which relates to viral persistence and 200+ symptoms related to LC
2. Gut disbiosa: a study from china showed great improvement from pre and pro biotic foods and supplements
3. Blood clotting and endothelial damage: less oxygen to areas resulting in multi-organ injury.

These are all impacting the immune system resulting in disregulation which can be seen through various elevated antibodies bloodwork. The antibody production is also out of balance.
Some takeaways: - if you get covid again, your long covid symptoms worsen (seen in various studies) - There are trials related to serotonin being conducted. - As of right now, doctors are still focusing on symptom regulation since there is no cure at the moment but there is a lot of trials and studies being conducted.
May 13: medical info session on Guanfacine and stimulant medication for brain fog
The medications suggested for brain fog during the zoom call was guanfacin, modafinail and Vyvanse

• STUDY on NAC with guanfacine was referenced
• Guanfacine is a non stimulant while Vyvanse and modafinil are stimulant medications

What’s really interesting about these sessions is that the doctors talk about the mechanisms of each medication and leave it up to the patient to decide whether or not they should take it. There is some consulting where patients will disclose what they are already on and the doctor will share their thoughts.
The process is: we attend the medical info sessions, decide for ourselves k then request a prescription.
Will update here with next specialist appointment information (May 15, 2024: How to Navigate the Medical System)

I'm about to turn 36 and have been treating my RLS with hydrocodone for the last decade. I originally started because an old coworker was selling norco (his extended family had presciptions for gout and stuff) and I found it really helped me get through the work day, mostly with anxiety at the time. I would say I was originally addicted to hydrocodone for the euphoria, but now I'm addicted to it for the restful sleep it provides me. Every once in a while when the conditions are right (light load with work, diet in check that day, properly exercised, etc) I will test myself to see if I can make it through a night without it, but I end up miserable waking up every ~2 hours with the RLS flaring up. It's like my body registers a REM cycle and then bam. Every once in a while when I’ve pushed my body beyond its physical limits and completely exhausted myself, I can crash on my bed without it and sleep for like 5 hours.
My RLS was not as pronounced in my twenties, it was less intense and intermittent. Now it is constant (at night and sometimes during the day) and only affects my left side, arm and upper leg. It is the live-wire sensation of electrical current pulsing in my bones and muscles... a persistent neurological itch. Strangely, activating the muscles on my right side scratches the itch on my left, but it's merely a scratch. Clenching a pillow between my legs provides a good scratch but the itch does not go away, in fact it can just add fuel to the wildfire.
It's getting worse with age, same for my dad. He takes mirapex religiously (cycles with .25mg increments, maxing out at 1mg then holiday and reset) and has been trying all sorts of stuff over the years (bromocriptine and other weird drugs). Mirapex is the one thing that has really stuck for him. He got addicted to running as a means of coping with it, and became an ultra runner who does 100 mile races. He'll sometimes wake up at 2am restless, put on a headlamp and hit the trail for a 14 mile run. He takes naps during the day when he's able. He says he remembers his mom doing weird stuff like cleaning the house in the middle of the night when he was a kid, and he's pretty sure he got it from her.
I do not like mirapex - .5mg kind of masked the itch but not completely. When going on or off it for "holiday", I get irritable with mild headache and nausea. I just end up taking the norco anyway which completely shuts it down, like a nuclear bomb approach. My routine is 5mg of hydrocodone at 9-10pm and I sleep through the night. I've been trying to tone it down to ~.3mg but it's not always getting the job done. I also recently quit cannabis for various reasons.
The norco is expensive and I need to buy in bulk. I'm getting anxious as my current supply is running low, but I expect to receive a large enough bonus from work soon to restock for another ~6 months. I'm paycheck to paycheck these days and could really use that money for things other than this addiction. I've talked to various neurologists at Kaiser and while they acknowledge opiates can be used as a last resort, they say I'm too young to start that treatment method and must first exhaust all others medications. I've tried them: requip, ropinorole, neupro, gabapentin, etc. They just don't shut it down while the side effects suck, and I guess that's to be expected. I gather they are a piece of the solution that involves other factors like pro-biotic for gut health (lot of dopamine is produced by the gut), avoiding sugar after noon, iron supplements (I have borderline low iron levels from blood tests and take a multi-vitamin with dinner), heating pads, lavendar oil, calms forte, avoiding caffeine (although my dad swears that a small dose of coffee at the right time has an unexpected reverse effect on his RLS trigger), etc.
I can't admit to my dad that I'm addicted to opiates; I don't know who else to talk to about this condition. Should I switch to PPO health insurance to get outside of the Kaiser network (in Los Angeles) to seek other neurologistics who might be open to prescribing an opiate? I see some posts regarding methodone and I'd be very willing to try that. Or what do ya'll do when you wake up restless in the middle of the night and can't sleep? Hit an exercise bike, do some stretching, play a video game/ watch TV while jittering? Is there a way to embrace the restlessness with middle of the night activities (like my dad's running) that won't interfere with my wife's sleep? My habits are unsustainable and acknowledging that stresses me out. Thank you for reading and any potential advice. Fuck RLS.

I am studying a research paper by my research mentor about how emerging microbiomes are effecting plant physiology due to climate change effecting abiotic attributes of an ecosystem. I am curious on what effect this could have on the agriculture for the future.
This includes changes in reproduction, leaf and fruit production, and hight on plants. As well as some resistant ancestors and homeostasis factors. His study focuses on microbiological changes in soil composition on a molecular level.

Chapter 1 Previous Chapter
Palu
Lt Blake had been pulled away as soon as we arrived in the conference room. Leaving me and my guard unit alone with this ‘Gunny’ hologram. “So, Gunny, what exactly are you? In the Federation, AI are outlawed due to the fear of hostilities. Yet humans seemed to have mastered AI.”
Gunny’s avatar walked over to where Palu was sitting and played taking a seat next to me “Ah, yes. I am not a simple AI. The humans do have AIs yes. I am what the humans call a synthetic intelligence. The difference between an AI and a SI is an order of magnitude in complexity. An AI is more or less a self aware and thinking code on a server series. An SI, like me, is an engineered consciousness hard coded into a set of entangled quantum computers matrixes. Each unit is designed to mimic a region of the mind. The human brain was used as the model. I think very much like one of the humans, but I do also feel. The ship itself is my body. If the ship dies, I do as well. The way we are built, I can not be removed from the ship. An AI has more freedom in that they can upload themselves to a storage unit and eject from a doomed vessel. But they aren’t nearly as aware as I am. I know they have the same sensors I do but less of them. Every human on board wears a health monitor as well. The crew being happy and healthy gives me a positive emotional feedback response. Same goes for if the crew is getting stressed out, I feel their tension every time we go into combat. I am responsible for their well-being and they are responsible for taking care of my ‘body’.”
“So what about the AIs, can they still be a threat?” His explanation having confused me a little.
“Not at all, any SI’s ability to monitor, and if necessary, decommission any ship board AI would be the equivalent of crushing a bug. We have the ability to connect to any AI and see the entirety of it’s code in real time and make tweaks where needed. Or I could just delete the damn thing and replace it. That’s usually my personal preference. Doing so does take a lot of our attention, so we usually don’t do that. If the Admiral had allowed me to, I could have installed updated rudimentary AIs on your Fleet’s vessels as soon as I was in system. That idea was of course immediately shot down by the Admiral.”
In a perfectly timed surprise, Fleet Leader Krisick arrived with his guard detail and walked over. I hopped off the chair I had climbed onto and, Taking both right arms and grasping each others forearms. It’s been a long time since I had to greet someone of equal status.
The Fleet leader looked me up and down “Palu, you look like you’ve fallen from the tree canopies into thorns several times over. How are you doing?”
“Its been many sleepless nights for you as well I see. I’m sure Captain Preen is happy to have you off their ship finally. What do you think of our surprise allies? My perspective is only of their soldiers but this ship looks to be just pure devastation made reality.” I jested just as the door to the room opened and Field Marshal Brakk and, to my amazement, a bandaged and limping Field Marshal Tengu just behind. “Penko Tengu! You made it! I was scared we lost you. It’s been hours since you last reported in. How did your retreat fair?” Tengu is the oldest, most experienced of our current leadership and I couldn’t be happier to see him again.
“I never thought I would owe my life to demons of war, I had actually just been captured when the humans landed. The Lycaths were too coordinated. They routed every time we evaded and pressed in, we fell right into their trap. Those humans, they went manual combat against the Lycaths and it wasn’t even a fair fight.” Then he held up his upper right hand showing he only had 1 finger left attached. “The Sargent that pulled me out of the cage I was forced into, he even offered to get me my hand back, having seen the Lycath that bit it off.”
“So it was as we feared then. Thank the Stella you survived. These humans said they came because the Lycaths attacked a colony world they only recently settled. A world of twenty thousand. They killed over nineteen thousand of that world.” The Fleet leader starts on but just then, the door open yet again and Governor Krinks and a fiery haired human walked in.
“Hello everyone, I’m Lieutenant Reed. I am going to be making sure you are all taken care of while aboard the Vengeance but first, Field Marshal Tengu, are you in need of additional medical treatment before we begin? Sargent Dali said you were injured and they could only do field treatment before extraction. We do have medical capabilities for Verd physiology thanks to all those we’ve rescued so far working with us.”
“Just nerve blockers if you can. A few cuts and missing fingers isn’t going to keep me down but it would be nice to have my mind unclouded from this pain.” Tengu said, being the seasoned veteran he is.
“Right away. I am already in contact with the Medical staff. Gunny, have you finished building the full translation program?” Reed glared at Gunny’s avatar.
“Ma’am, I was done with that an hour ago. I have it for the Jassa, Xolo, Trilodons, Langailians, and essentially every species in their federation as well. The lexicons are all complete. The updated translation devices had already entered production and the first batch will be delivered as soon as the human element in engineering is satisfied with quality control.” The avatar responded faining offense to her accusatory question. “Corporal Vostoc just said he’s on his way. I decided to give the extra push since you are bugging me now as well”
About that time, a human and… another Verd walked in. The human pushing a cart with a tray on top, a syringe and a small vial on it, the carrying a plastic crate of some sort. The Verd slid the small crate onto the table and immediately went and saw to Field Marshal Tengu’s wounds. We just all stared in silence as this Verd was showing the human how to administer nerve blockers to a Verd.
Another group of three had entered the room while we were distracted, surprising us with a quick snap of their ever toothy jaw. A Xolo elder! A healthy looking one at that. The largest of the federation species. The Xolo are quadrupeds, being Category 9 thanks to higher gravity and solar radiation, they also have a lot of skeletal muscle and a covered in fur. Their front legs however have a split forelimb, the ‘upper” of the 2 having the more dexterity to use as a manipulator.
“It brings great joy to see our greatest Allies are still fighting and surviving. I am Quetall, last of Clan Dawnseeker. I was selected by the other clans to represent the Xolo. It pains me greatly to say, Kialon has fallen. It has been captured by the Lycaths.” He introduced himself, in their ever so methodical speech.
Off to the side, I saw the beetle like shape of a Jassa. Standing at .9 meters. A larger female of their species. “And when the Kialon fell, the Jassa retreated and went underground. We know we can survive for a time in deep hibernation. We didn’t have a better plan unfortunately.”
“Are there any others left?” Fleet Leader Krisick chimed in with concern in his voice.
“The world’s have only been subjugated. The populations treated as livestock. The Lycaths are proving our greatest fears of them to be true. Even the humans have not figured out how they communicate at the speeds they do and over the distances they do, but they were not immune to that fate. Their Tuc 3 colony, the one that was hit, suffered greatly. Many of those that survived joined the mission to save our people with the purpose and desire to wipe out the Lycaths.” Quetall spoke in a somber tone, but turned hopeful. “These Humans, while we have not learned much about them, living among them for the time we have, I feel they may be the only species able to go paw to paw with the Lycaths and win. I don’t know what class they are, but they are definitely higher class deathworlders. They are absolutely apex predators.”
Krinks interrupted “What class could they be? Had those gullible naïve Amoshai not uplifted the damned Lycaths, they’d have killed themselves for the rest of their existence like they were. I do still feel we need to isolate any species past class 10 if we even manage to survive this absurd catastrophe. But if these humans are higher than a 10, could they be problem as well?”
My curiosity was building “How did we even find these humans? It seems like they were very far away and met us only thanks to the Lychaths.”
The Jassa’s antenna shot up in excitement “I did math with them! Sorry. They killed the Lycaths that had us caged, then they were setting us free. They hadn’t figured out we were sentient yet. They weren’t hostile but kept shooing us away and I didn’t leave. I started just doing things to get their attention. Eventually I had a group of them looking at me. They were still not getting it and my people’s vocalizations being so foreign compared to their bark like vocalizations, that was hopeless. So I just started drawing basic math equations in the dirt. That seemed to get their attention at least. One of the humans came over and was deciphering what I was doing. I started drawing one through twenty in the dirt next to my math. That human figured out what I was doing and put their symbols next to mine. I then did the same math with their symbols. That was when it clicked for them. I made Quetall here do the same, they were seemingly dumbfounded. They pulled all of us off the surface and we worked for a few months to figure out our lexicons to a basic degree. They call the Jassa ‘giant tiger beetles’”
Quetall just shakes his head a bit “Cotcot, you’ve yet to introduce yourself. Anyway, she is correct. It is entirely thanks to her the humans even tried to look for us. They have called me ‘Big Hyena’. Everything Cotcot said is true, the humans were shooing us away constantly until Cotcot’s display. Having seen a human crush in the chitinous head plates of a Lycath right in front of me with only his balled up grasper, I was happy to get away from them. Cotcot pulled me back after a few days and showed me the basic equations she had drawn on the ground.”
“The Lieutenant Blake kept calling me a Koala, I assume these are all species off one of their worlds?” I said while trying to remember everything.
Cotcot excitedly chirped “All from their home world!”
The doors to the room opened again and seven humans walked in, one carrying a big of small plastic devices. “Excuse me, Verds, these are for all of you. These are upgraded and updated universal translators. They go inside your ear.” He explained as he started handing them out, even to all of our guards.
We took time to put them all in, the other humans waiting patiently. As soon as they were all in place, Admiral Valdez spoke “Greetings everyone. We needed to gather everyone to be able to coordinate our efforts. The local space around the planet has been cleared for now. We have ships jumping around the system to ensure the system is cleared all together. Unfortunately it seems the enemy ground forces are fairly well dug in the deeper into their lines we go. They have taken over half the planet. It will take time to deal with them without doing severe damage to the surface. With me, I have General Bishop of the UESN Iron Rain, General Shepard of the UESN Steel Horizon, General Cain of the UESN Iron Guard, General Arthur of the UESN Falling Star, and Jonathan Burke, our civilian contractor liaison. I am sure you have questions, we’ll let you go first.”
Kinks immediately interjected “You humans are clearly a higher class deathworld species. What class of Deathworlders are humans?”
They all looked at each other before making the admission, Burke speaking “We aren’t actually sure. We don’t quite understand your deathworld scale. We use a threat assessment scale that is based solely on the psychological and cultural traits of a civilization. But yours is something entirely different. Can you actually explain that one to us?”
Krinks took a slightly annoyed tone “It is based on all the species evolutionary traits. How many hardships did they had to evolve to survive. Their planets gravity, climate, how much solar radiation it takes, how many predators they have to compete with, how many diseases they have natively, all things like that.”
“Madam Krinks, let’s give them the checklist we usually go through to determine status. We can’t expect they would know the same scale we use” Fleet Leader Krisick said before turning to the humans and pulling up his tablet “The deathworld ranking is just a toughness scale of sorts. It’s been a good measure of how fast a species can expand and advance as well has how hard a fight against them can be. We’ve never really thought to use a scale for how well we can actually get along with someone since that’s what ‘threat assessment’ sounds like. That could be a good idea after this. You’ll have to explain your scale to us as well. Ah, here it is, the deathworld ranking system is a point based system. The first point is universal, does life regularly developed and die on the planet. Only one species has ever been classified as a category one. If it wasn’t for the Amoshai, we’d think a world that peaceful was impossible. But they are the oldest species in the Federation. Then there is a point for each category that applies. Does the planet have a harsh cold climate, does the planet have a harsh hot Climate, does the planet have extreme storms, does the planet have high gravity, and does the planet receive high levels of solar radiation. Most species check at least 2 of these boxes.”
General Bishop spoke up “How do you define the climate, what is the range for how hot or cold?”
Field Marshal Tengu was next to speak up, slouched back in his, clearly enjoying the nerve blockers “Fleet Leader Krisick forgot to mention we also use the Deathworlder scale to determine how we could or would fight a ground war if needed. Safe temperature ranges are 255 to 310. Zero being a still atom, 90 being oxygen boiling point, and 373 being waters boiling point. As for gravity, high gravity starts at eight newtons per kilogram. After that point atmospheric vehicles struggle to maneuver. We don’t have many high gravity species though. The only 2 we know of currently are the Xolo and the Lycaths. 8.7 and 9.2 respectively. I only know that info thanks to planning ground operations as a Colonel.” Then sank back into his seat.
I had to add “Solar radiation, it is a matter of how much ultraviolet and gamma radiation make it to the surface. Regular natural tectonic events are also a factor, both of those are a point. Then there’s diseases, parasitic infections, cross species infections, there’s a 5 point potential there. Then there’s predators. Aggressive predators are a point but predators that also still hunt the local sentient species is an additional point.”
With that I noticed the humans all making what I assumed was concerned facial expressions. I definitely wanted make sure there wasn’t anything wrong “Is there an issue with any of these? Are these hard to imagine for you?”
“Oh no, we are actually concerned about where we fall on this scale all together. You see, Earth, our home world has all these boxes checked and then some. Your temperature scale matches up with our Kelvin scale. Earth’s temperature ranges greatly. It can’t be 330k at the hottest and 186 at the coldest. We have lots of dangerous weather conditions thanks to that. We have a very active star at that. It puts out a good bit of gamma and ultraviolet radiation as well as there being a lot of electromagnetic interference our local star produces. Earth also has a lot tectonic activity that results in a lot of earthquakes and other volcanic activity.” Admiral Valdez spoke.
General Cain, the scarred white haired man took over “Then to touch on the biological, hell, Rabies alone checks two of those boxes. It’s cross species, spreads easily, and is extremely fatal. Rabies is only the tip of the iceberg there. We’ve got at least a dozen viruses that use to cause a lot of issues and there’s several bacterial infections that are hard to get rid of. Parasites, we got a bunch but we’ve got methods to deal with all of them.”
General Arthur, the youngest looking of the group, with very dark skin interjected “Earth has predators on every continent and even many in the water. Many that have no issues hunting a human. The Polar bear is the largest we have at 360kg, they are armed with teeth, claws, and brute force. Then there’s tiny spiders that are highly venomous. Hell, even the water has predators that can easily kill a human in many ways. You’ve got serrated teeth, venom, drowning, and even electrocution.”
“So you are… class eleven?” Krinks started to say before being interrupted by General Bishop “Earth also has higher gravity then the others it seems. Our gravity is 9.8newton per kg if my math is right.”
Gunny decided it best to take over with a few questions “Is there a check box for mega fauna? Earth has land animals that can weigh up to 6,000kg and sea based animals that can weigh over 160,000kg.”
We all could do nothing but stare at these humans. Quetall was the first to speak again. “So class 12, as I suspected. Though there’s a lot I heard we should consider shifting the scale for. We’ve never classified a planet past 12 because the environment is always too harsh for any species reach the point of forming civilizations at all. Even the Lycaths were on their way to self terminating before the Amoshai decided to uplift.”
“So what about your ‘threat assessment scale’? How does yours work?” Fleet Leader Krisick was genuinely interested as he even leaned in when asking.
“We grade the species based on how often they fight amongst themselves, how competitive natured they are, do they keep slaves, what is their governing structure, and how do they portray other species in their media. For an example, we would conclude we wouldn’t be able to get along with a species that portray themselves as superior to every other species, keeps slaves, is hyper competitive, and has an authoritarian governing structure. We would almost guarantee that we would end up in a war with them. The example I just used was the Bosolan.” Burke responded.
“Humanity is a 3 on our scale. Tier one is what we would consider harmless, tier two are peaceful species, tier three we would consider equivalent to humanity. All these we would happily try to communicate with, though the great majority of the species we know of in this category are still pre-FTL, thus, we haven’t made contact. Tier four could still be compatible but would be considered aggressive by our standards. Tier five are species that seem to have no interest in peace. They are just hostile. We have the Lycaths listed as a tier five species.” Admiral Valdez continued.
“Sorry, but I have to ask, what was the Amoshai home world like if they were listed as a class 1 deathworld?” General Bishop asked with a look of confusion.
“The Amoshai were unique even to us, they were actually three different co-existing sapient species. They considered themselves one people. Their home world, Sangula, was mostly an ocean world peppered with islands. It oceans were never more than a few hundred meters deep, it had a very strong magnetosphere, a very stable climate, no toxic flora, and the worst of the fauna were scavengers, no predators at all. It was easily the most peaceful planet we have ever seen exist.” Cotcot said remorsefully.
“The Lycaths ruined that world. They poisoned the water and decimated the surface. They used that world as the catalyst to become the horror they are today. The Amoshai never settled other worlds, we know they are lost.” Quetall followed just as remorseful.
"So the main reason we gathered all of you here, we don’t know enough about the enemy. Their fleets don’t use any know communication we can track, they don’t seem to store any data on their computer systems, and even in interrogation, they refuse to communicate at all. Instead, they seem to have a method to self terminate. We need Intel, we have no clue who we are fighting. We only know what they look like. They are far too well coordinated to not have a major advantage in communication. We also don’t see their technological evolutionary path. Their tech is seemingly a mix of different technologies. We are hoping you can help us here. Do you have any information on Lycaths that you can share?” General Cain said in a firm tone.
Quetall spoke up “The Xolo had extensive documentation on the Lycaths stolen from the Amoshai. I was already in the process of accessing what I still can on the Verdicant network. I do know the Federation voted on the Lycaths uplift. The Federation voted no. The Amoshai ignored that vote and chose to do it on their own.”
“Here it is! The Amoshai landed on the Lycaths homeworld, Suen, and took roughly 100 subjects off Suen to Sangula. They split them into four groups to teach and train independently. The Lycaths learned fast, faster than any of us. They were seemingly able to learn as a collective as well. The Amoshai would teach one group a method to complete a task and the other groups would all be able to complete the task exactly as the original group was instructed. This alone should have been cause for concern but the Amoshai saw it as an advantage and started training them faster, dividing them further into 16 groups and teaching them all different subjects. As before, the knowledge was shared amongst all without obvious communication.”
“They learned all they could learn about how to refine metals, build industry, and advanced sciences. They were completely docile, learning all they could until the Amoshai returned to the Lycaths home world again. When they returned, they discovered all the knowledge they had thought to those on Sangula was somehow shared with ALL Lycaths. The Planet had been converted to a Industrial powerhouse with artificial satellites and a few rudimentary ships in orbit.”
“ Those ships knew they were coming and launched a surprise attack as soon as they entered the system. At the same time, the Lycaths on Sangula launched their own surprise attack. Taking over any and every system they could on the land. Lychas ships assaulted, boarded, and overtook any ship they could of the few that jumped to their home world. Weeks later, those ships jumped back to Sangula and released hundreds more Lycaths on the surface. It wasn’t until this we knew something was going horribly wrong.”
“With the surveillance systems in place still, we saw they had a form we had never seen before. A single, significantly larger, slower form of a Lycaths was let off of each ship. The others ripping out any obstacle in the way of the larger ones. No other ships moved between the systems. But within a month, there were easily a thousand new Lycaths on Sangula and the world was changing.”
“ The Federation took 2 months to figure out what to do after this discovery. When we returned, Sangula was completely transformed. Almost a million Lycaths on the surface and still no ship movement. The scouts returned, delivering the information that forced the Federation to give orders to our fleet. I am not sure if the Federation was too slow to respond to the threat or if the response was just not strong enough. Maybe it was both.”
Admiral Valdez let out a big sigh “So they are a highly adaptable hive mind species. The larger forms you saw are likely a queen of sorts. I am forced to assume the queens also communicate between themselves somehow. With all the hive mind species we know of, there is always a very subtle line for communication. Ants on Earth use a trail of pheromones that can change almost instantly to communicate over distance. That method isn’t instant and doesn’t work from ship to ship or ship to ground. You have no Intel on their communication at all?”
“Sorry, we do not. That’s about all the Intel we still have as well. I am certain Central Station still has the archives. They were hard coded. The entire architecture was hardened against attack and intrusion, both physical and digital. We were forced to abandon it however. It was left in a dormant shutdown state. I have both the coordinates and access codes right here.” Fleet Leader Krisick said as he pulled out a circular storage device.
Gunny phased out of his seat at the table and reappeared standing at attention next to the door “Sorry to interrupt Admiral, warp signatures inbound. I assume this is their counter attack. You are needed on the bridge.”
“That was faster than I anticipated, How many ships?” Admiral Valdez asked as he stood and readied to rush to the bridge.
“It looks like there are four separate fleet, roughly 500 ships in each. It also appears these are fresh fleets, not the worn down partial strength fleet we were met with here. I took the liberty of dispatching the Cyno Scout ships a quarter AU out from the twenty most likely emergence points.” Gunny said, stepping aside as the door automatically opened.
Admiral Valdez paused at the doorway “Fleet Leader, would you care to join me on the bridge? It would be wise for us to learn from your experience.”

EDIT: I didn't expect this huge wallpost to generate such lively discussion. Thanks for all the comments.
The first annoyance appears in the form of the language region lock. I am in Poland and for reasons that make absolutely no sense to me, the EA App (formerly Origin, now it's just Origin but purple instead of white and orange) locks certain games to only being available in Polish and Russian languages. I will ignore the unfortunate political implication of giving a player in Poland the Russian language as the only alternative. I used a third party program to force a change to English. This is still incredibly stupid, but moving on.
The first impression was poor, what about the second one? It's much better. Provided that your hardware can handle it, the game is gorgeous, even by modern standards. The opening cinematics and planetfall to Habitat 7 deliver a good hook and do a good job of introducing Ryder, the player character.
The next challenge was the first taste of combat and figuring out all the keybinds. MEA introduces jumping to the franchise, which forces a reconfiguration (mentally and physically, where your fingers go on the keyboard) of how to move around the world effectively.
1. Combat
I played on the hardest difficulty. I don't judge any player for which difficulty level they choose in any game. I'm only mentioning this because the opening section of the game is particularly punishing for a new character (meaning not NG+) on harder difficulties. Ryder (the player character) has access to only one power, you have no passive bonuses, your cooldown is long and your weapon does low damage. On top of all that, I chose the Vanguard (starts with biotic charge) which was not all that useful in the prologue, given that charging more often than not exposed me to other enemies and the target of my charge wasn't anywhere close to dead. If I had known that Ryder isn't locked into one class and the player can mix and match skills from all classes as they choose, I definitely would have chosen a different starting class. I would have liked if the game indicated to the player that Ryder can switch classes at will sooner and more clearly, but it's not a big deal.
Once the game opens up and Ryder has access to more skillpoints, more abilities, more weapons, more armor, combat becomes really fun. The jump and dash give the player a lot of mobility.
There are some small annoyances, however. I ended up with a melee-heavy build and the melee is wonky. Sometimes I experience input delay that resulted in Ryder getting killed and me having to repeat the entire fight. Melee targeting also leaves a lot to be desired, though this became less of a problem once I unlocked the krogan hammer (its AOE effect meant I was no longer missing melee hits on enemies standing right in front of me) and I unlocked the ability which increased the radius of the jump melee. The jump melee is fun and looks awesome, but you trade survivability (you have to jump and expose yourself to enemy fire) for the AOE effect and coolness factor.
Ryder is limited to a loadout of 3 active skills. You can have more, of course, but if you want to use 4, you have to open the skills menu and assign the 4th power into one of the three slots and then you can use it in combat. I can't imagine anyone would actually bother with this, I know I never did. This design was first introduced in Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, but it made sense there: every character had 3 active skills and 2 passives. The combinations of differect skills were one of the thins that made multiplayer characters different from each other. The same 3-skill limit is also present in MEA multiplayer. I just don't understand why it also made its way into singleplayer. In the end I had enough skillpoints that I maxed out all the available passives and I would have liked to have a 4th active ability to round out the build, but I was limited to 3.
There is a wide selection of weapons and all can be customized. You have the mods: longer barrel for more dmg, larger magazine, recoil reduction, weakpoint damage, scopes for accuracy. And then there is the augmentation system, which allows you to do some wild stuff. You can convert a magazine weapon (which requires ammo) into a heatsink weapon (unlimited ammo, but if it overheats, it needs to cool down). You can turn a sniper rifle into a grenade launcher. You can turn a single-shot rifle into a pinpoint accurate laser beam energy rifle.
That sounds like fun, and it is--but the system is very player-unfriendly. Firstly, there isn't a decent tutorial for any of this. There are some vague tooltips and the player is mostly left to figure it out on their own. Except that crafting weapons costs resources, so it's not like you can craft three versions of a gun just to see which augmentation combo you like best, because the rare, powerful augmentations that allow you to equip more mods on a gun (base limit is 2, but I wanted to have a dmg increase, magazine increase and that cool scope on my sniper rifle) are limited in number.
Then there is the fact that many of the better weapons must first be researched using another currency, research points. Acquiring those points is inconsistent, I had no idea if I would end up with a surplus by the end of the game. It turned out that researching a bunch of different weapons and armor pieces was a bad idea, because I should have known to pick a select few and stick to those, so I would have the research points to keep upgrading them. Because you don't unlock a weapon once. Every weapon and armor piece has 10 levels (the higher ones are gated behind the player character's level) and each of those 10 levels is progressively more expensive to research. If you used the augmentation to expand mod slots on crafting Sniper Rifle Level 6, you can't expand the number of mod slots when you craft the Sniper Rifle Level 7 and now what? Do I use the (slightly) weaker version of the gun or do I give up 2 of the 4 weapon mods?
The UI design is absolutely horrendous across the entire game. Each menu has copious submenus. And those submenus have sub-submenus. It's submenus all the way down. The UI needed a lot more work. I got used to it over the course of the game, but it never became less tedious to navigate.
Ammo powers are gone. Now there are multiplayer-style one-use ammo power consumables. No longer can I consistently deal extra fire damage to enemy armor, because now my incendiary ammo only last for 3 magazines. If I happen to be using a weapon with a lot of bullets per magazine, I get more chances to set unprotected enemies on fire and prime them for fire combos. But if I use a single shot sniper, the incendiary ammo enhances... my next three shots. And it's very possible I'll miss all three shots when enemies duck just as I press the left mouse button, in which case my ammo consumable does nothing at all. This is a strange port of a mechanic from multiplayer to singleplayer. It's dumb and I don't like it.
Autosave feature doesn't autosave often enough. There are 4 optional boss fights (well, it's 4 instances of the same boss) and autosave doesn't save between phases of the fight. Now, I recognize the fact that much of this is due to my stubborn insistence of playing on the hardest difficulty, but I still think that not saving after I completed one of the phases was a bad design decision. By the time I fought the boss the 4th and final time I completed the fight on the first attempt, but the second time (owing also to the location, which made the fight a lot more difficult imo) I think I must have done upwards of 10 attempts. I got to phase 3 of the boss fight twice and then died, having to repeat the whole thing from the start. I realize that for many players, this would not be a problem at all, that many players would appreciate the challenge of having to complete the battle from start to finish in one go, in the name of git gud. I personally found that the insufficient frequence of autosave made the whole game a more tedious experience overall.
Never save inside the Nomad (this is the 6-wheeler car you use for exploration). If you happen to die and the save you load was inside the Nomad, the loading takes approximately 78 years. Otherwise, load times are perfectly acceptable. More than a few times I died in combat during exploration and hit "load last save", only then realizing that it's gonna load a save inside the Nomad, at which point I would go watch a baby grow up into a young adult, complete a four-year degree or maybe clean my whole apartment with a toothbrush and come back to find the game still loading. I quickly developed a habit of pulling over, hopping out of the Nomad, hitting save and then getting back in before resuming driving.
I encountered an incredibly annoying, near-gamebreaking bug. You can holster and unholster weapons. You can unholster by pressing a dedicated key, or clicking the right mouse button (or whatever key you bind it to) to aim down sights.
So, I had holsteunholster bound to one of the letter keys, fire to left-click, aim down sight to right click and melee to one of the thumb keys on my mouse. I don't know if this was the fault of a particular arrangement of keybinds or my hardware (though I doubt it, because the mouse performes perfectly well in other games), but regularly, when I pressed the thumb mouse button for melee, Ryder would instead holster weapons, entering non-combat mode.
This happened regularly enough that-which was honestly aggravating-I had to learn to expect it. I had to learn to anticipate that I would be waist-deep in enemies and Ryder, instead of performing a jump melee, would holster weapons, at which point I had to quickly unholster them again to reenter combat mode. I was not able to figure out the reason behind this and googling didn't seem to point to anyone else having this problem. I can't say whether this is an issue unique to my copy of the game, an issue with my hardware, or just a rare bug, so I won't count this against the game, but I will say that playing a melee-heavy build, dealing with this soured my experience of otherwise really fun and well-flowing combat.
2. Exploration
There are several large driveable areas which you will traverse in the Nomad. There are fast travel points to discover. There are some genuinely awesome views. I will repeat myself, but the game looks great. The Nomad is fast enough that driving around doesn't get tedious.
There are enough points of interest on the maps that the areas are seeded with enough stuff to do, but not so much that it begins to look like a billion pointless collectibles and copy-pasted enemy encounters (cough Ubisoft cough). Unfortunately, some of that depth is rather shallow. There are 5 major explorable locations:
Jungle planet: Nomad is not available here, you traverse it entirely on foot. Permanent night time. Imo, too much visual noise. The darkness + jungle vegetation + lighting effects had me struggling to locate interactable items and seeing where the hell enemies were.
Nomad is available on the other 4 planets.
Snow planet: Night time. Visually, my favorite location (caveat: completing a certain quest changes the environment and the lighting changes from a pleasant, deep blue tinge to an unappealing pale green).
Mountainous planet: least interesting looking, but the terrain made for some fun driving gameplay. If you were one of the players who approached the Mako vehicle in ME1 thinking "can I drive up this cliff", I think you'd enjoy driving on this planet.
Desert planet #1: it has flatter areas for speed, it has hilly areas to engage the Nomad's climbing capabilities.
Desert planet #2: it has big dunes and a really cool environmental hazard, but it suffers from being the second desert planet. Between the environments available, I was hoping for something more water-oriented.
There is another large driveable location that is unique compared to others. I don't want to spoil it too much, but the gimmick here is low gravity, which allows for super long jumps in the Nomad. If you enjoy the driving gameplay, this location is in the game to cater to you. It has an incredible skybox. I had fun.
All in all, I think exploration was largely a positive addition, striking a good balance between vast empty planet maps of ME1 and absolutely nothing in ME3 (ME2's Hammerhead does not exist and we do not speak of it).
3. It's a BioWare RPG, how's the story? How are the characters?
I have two main complaints.
First, the game does not do enough to signal that you can complete the main questline and then keep playing. You are not forced into a The End screen, roll credits. If I had known that, I wouldn't have done the tryhard completionist thing of hitting every available location and quest before progressing to the next main mission.
Secondly, because of all the drama around the game and BioWare, the game is obviously unfinished. Every ME game has received some story-focused DLC expansions. ME1 had Bring Down the Sky, which was baby steps for the ME franchise, but it was a fun, self-contained thriller. ME2 had Overlord, Lair of the Shadow Broker (which has my favorite combat level in the ME Shepard trilogy and is widely considered some of the best content in all of ME) and Arrival (which a lot of people hate and I understand their reasons but I personally enjoyed it). ME3 had Citadel (which I actually liked less than many others), Leviathan (which was awesome) and Omega (which was also awesome).
SPOILERS AHEAD
In MEA, over the course of the game Ryder finds 3 of the other 4 arks and I can't help but think that the most interesting one is the one we never got to see. A multispecies ark, boasting the contrast of quarians, experts at ship-based living, and batarians, who were the original trilogy's favorite non-Reaper bad guys, and here they are, setting out to make a new home in a different galaxy alongside species that Milky Way batarians kept as slaves.
The kett suffer from being generic bad guy aliens by design. They kidnap other species and do some freaky bioengineering and indoctrinations (not the Reaper kind) to turn them into kett drones. It's Collectors, only boring, because the kett do almost the same thing as Collectors. Collectors turned kidnapped people into Reaper-paste, kett turn them into more kett.
Remnant are the local Ancient Advanced Precursor Civilization That Vanished Under Mysterious Circumstances. Really, it's such a staple of BioWare RPGs that I'm not even mad they did again (and then again in Anthem), it's just something you have to expect from BioWare, just like you have to expect huge maps filled with a billion pointless collectibles and copy-pasted activities from Ubisoft games.
So, the presence of Protheans--pardon, the Remnant is a given, because it's a BioWare game. But are they cool? Well, we technically see more of the Remnant than we ever did of Protheans in ME1/2/3, but here it's just robot drones and not actually their creators.
But are the robots cool?
The huge architect boss is cool (the first time it arrives) and the robo-worm on Elaaden is a fantastic twist on an environmental hazard. The first time I managed to position myself just right and it burst out of the sand right next to the Nomad I jumped up in my chair. That was really cool.
When I was driving around Elaaden and realized that the huge mountain wasn't a mountain but a crashed Remnant ship, I squeaked like a 12 year old boy whose voice is going through that annoying croaking puberty phase.
The visual design of the Remnant vaults and their tech is cool too--it has that ultra high tech look that's necessary for a mysterious advanced alien race. When I saw the huge underground expanse of the vault on Eos, I stopped and just looked at it for a good minute.
As for the Remnant you actually fight... well, they're kind of boring looking, to be honest, but as an enemy faction, they function appropriately: they have units that force you into cover and units that force you out of cover, they have a flying unit that makes you look around and above you rather just around on the ground. The Remnant boss unit however is an absolute bullshitter which I think is waaaaay too overtuned on Insanity difficulty.
As for the characters: it's a mixed bag.
The new friendly aliens, the Angara, suffer from looking kinda goofy (would have been right at home in the Mos Eisley cantina with all the other weird freaks) and having to carry on their solitary shoulders what was accomplished in the ME trilogy by what, 10? 11? friendly races that were introduces just in ME1 alone. That's why the trilogy could afford to be a bit flat with the characterizations of aliens: Turians are the disciplined soldiers, Asari are the advanced hot alien babes, quarians are tech geek outcasts, volus are bankers, elcor are elephants, hanar are religious jellyfish and so on. And no one had a problem that hanar was all exclusively religious jellyfish, because the hanar were just one of many, In MEA, the angara have to be the solemn, curageous soldiers, and the species with an alien social dynamic, and the race of scientists, and the rebel outcasts (the Roekaar faction of angara).
The kett have the same problem. They have to provide the generic bad guys for the player to slaughter and they have to be the mysterious antagonists with a purpose that exceeds the player's mere mortal understanding. The Archon is not intimidating or interesting in the slightest. Hell, the player doesn't even get to kill him in the final battle! He summons a remnant architect (which the player doesn't get to kill) and in the end gets fried by remnant tech. Meh.
What about Ryder? I think Ryder is fine. I think his/her main problem is that they are naturally compared to Commander Shepard, a comparison Ryder loses automatically. Shepard was written to already be a veteran soldier, already an accomplished leader, already a bit of a celebrity at the start of ME1. Ryder is the greenhorn who is given enormous responsibility. Frankly, I think this was just a poor choice of archetype to cast in the role of the Pathfinder, but what's there is serviceable. It's fine.
Of the crew, I liked Kallo (ME is 2 for 2 with The Crew's Pilot characters so far). Gil annoyed the hell out of me so I didn't talk to him unless necessary to progress a quest. Suvi was inoffensive, but mostly just bored me.
Of the companions, Drack was clearly the best by a mile. Vetra was second best. Cora didn't convince me as an asari commando who just wants a garden, but she really convinced me as the second-in-command who thinks Alec done goofed making Ryder the Pathfinder instead of her. Jaal suffered from being one of the goofy-looking angara, but grew on me.
Peebee was the most annoying character in the game and I couldn't stand her. How dare she question my decision to let that bitch Kalinda die when Kalinda had done nothing but try to kill me the whole time. I'm sure some people loved Peebee. It's good that there's a place for a character like that in the story, something for everyone, though personally I'm entirely over the off-the-wall quirky she's-so-random girl character. I didn't like Sera in Dragon Age Inquisition and I didn't like Peebee in MEA.
Liam... exists. The most boring man in the Andromeda galaxy.
There was a range of different supporting characters in the story and I enjoyed the totality of them. I think that, taken as a whole, they stand no worse than any other BioWare supporting cast.
As for the story, its main weakness in my opinion is the strange clash between the stated goal and the execution. You're supposed to be the Pathfinder, the Initiative's guide into an unknown galaxy, but wherever you go, everyone else has already been there. Oh sure, it's not like Ryder doesn't actually Find any Paths, they do, and plenty of them, because it doesn't only mean literally finding a physical path, it's about bringing everyone's efforts together to build something, and Ryder does that. I just think too much was taken away from the player. For example, if angara weren't the only new friendly species we encounter, there was so much potential for writing an engaging narrative of making real first contact with aliens. That alone could have been a plotline entirely separate from the kett, with its own set of interesting character decisions.
4. The Ugly
MAE is a game that would honestly be average to good (depending on which part of the game you're engaged with atm) but there is one aspect of it that is so egregiously bad, so unfathomably horrendous, so boundlessly awful, that it drags everything else down with it. Things that are average become bad, things that are genuinely good about the game seem only meh.
The quest design in MAE is the worst I've ever encountered in a game.
So here's the thing about moving about in this game. Every time you fly between planets or points of interest within a solar system, there's a cutscene (though at least these are skippable). Every time you move between systems in the larger map, there's another cutscene (unskippable). Every time you land on a planet or take off, there's a cutscene (also unskippable).
And quests in this game routinely require you to land on a planet (cutscene), go to a location, talk to an NPC, which triggers a quest update. Now you have to go back to your ship, take off (cutscene), travel to a different system (cutscene), land (cutscene), perform task (talk to NPC/scan a thing).
However, the most ridiculous part of the system is the ON HOLD feature. Some quests get to a point where they get put, well, on hold, until you unlock a new location required for this quest, do another quest, maybe time just needs to pass--basically, you wait for something to trigger an update.
Imagine this: you're on planet X, doing some exploration based quests. You get things done, go to your ship. You get an email alert. You read the email. Companion Bob's personal quest just updated. You read Bob's email. Bob wants to talk to you. But not aboard the ship. Bob wants to meet you on the planet you just took off from.
Why? Bob, I was just planetside. Why couldn't you email me or give me the task to meet you on this planet while I was already on this planet. What the hell, Bob.
So you go through another unskippable cutscene, go to a location and talk to Bob.
Quest update: Bob now wants to do the next part of the quest in another system, which requires two more unskippable cutscenes, after which Bob's quest will probably pause until you unskippable cutscene your way back onto your ship, you'll get an email which will tell you to land back down on the same planet you just left.
Next, we have quests that require you to go to a location, scan a thing... then go to another system (unskippable cutscene) and scan another thing, then go another system (cutscene) and scan another thing, then GO TO ANOTHER SYSTEM (cutscene), LAND (cutscene) and finally do some combat/exploration.
But what really got my blood boiling was a quest about an NPC in a specific location, with whom I have a remote contact connection (the vidcom aboard my ship) but for a quest involving this NPC, instead of using the vidcom to call the NPC, I was required to travel to another system (CUTSCENE), land on a space station (CUTSCENE) travel to another part of the station (ANOTHER UNSKIPPABLE CUTSCENE), walk up to the NPC and talk to her, which concluded the quest. This was an NPC whom I contacted remotely, from my ship's vidcom, during another quest. Imagine if every report to the Council in ME1 or every conversation with Hackett in ME3 required you to go through 2 or 3 unskippable cutscenes on your way to that NPC's location just so you could talk to them and progress the story.
And this happens routinely, I've had a bunch of situations where I leave a planet, cutscene hop to my ship and get a quest update inviting me to go back down to the planet I was just on a minute ago, only doing it this way requires two more unskippable cutscenes.
If there is a devil, he tortures gamers in hell by making them play a game with this quest design. Or just has them play MEA.
What in the name of Harbinger happened to a feature that was present in ME1 all the way back in 2007 where, upon docking at the Citadel, you could order a transport and choose where to spawn instead of always landing in the docking bay and then having to go through a cutscene/loading screen to find the NPC you need.
If I were to rate MAE ignoring the quest design, I'd probably give it 6/10 - not great, not terrible. A game I enjoyed playing once.
But the quest design is an inescapable part of the game and I can't ignore it. This system is so bad that as a whole, I would rate MEA singleplayer 3/10. Not a game I will ever recommend to anyone. Watch a Let's Play on YT instead.

Happy World Autism Day, everyone!!! So, as an Autistic person myself, this is a big deal to me. I love any kind of representation because I feel it makes it a lot nicer for the audiences on the spectrum. "What Characters Most Likely Fit The Bill For Autism." Because there's no real representation at all, so it's up to us.
Now just to be clear, Autism is different for everyone. So, not everyone shares the same features.
Here are my headcanons (Let me what you guys' ones are)
Bunga: AuDHD. (Autism & ADHD combined)

• Has difficulty understanding sarcasm/metaphors.
• His comfort food is always bugs and grubs.
• Special interests: His "Zuka Zama" philosophy, bugs, grubs, flies, Baobab Ball, Utamu grubs, adventures, exploring, The Lion Guard.
• Poor understanding of social boundaries or social cues.
• Difficulty empathising with others.
• Not waiting for a response to a question.
• Stims by bouncing up and down or squirming.
• Hyper-fixated on adventure.
• Trouble "reading the room".
• Brutally honest.
• Comes off as rude sometimes.
• Recklessness and impulsivity.
• Talks excessively and interrupts.
• Trouble with volume control.
• Extreme hyperactivity and high energy.
• Little to no awareness of personal space.
• Can say things without thinking.
• Jumps into things without thinking.
• Doesn't think things through.
• Poor understanding of safety.
• Inability to calm down/sit still.
• Easily distracted (except when he's in the middle of a battle).
• Says jokes at inappropriate times and can accidentally offend his friends.
• Can be forgetful and absent-minded, sometimes.

Timon and Pumbaa: Autism
I think his "uncles" have Autism traits
Timon

• Literal-minded and poor understanding of metaphors.
• Has been outcasted by his colony just because he has a different way of thinking.
• Different skillset compared to other meerkats.
• Special interests: Hakuna Matata, grubs, bugs, having fun, musical numbers.
• Easily distracted, but hyper-fixated on his own interests.
• Can come off as rude and selfish sometimes, but, he does not to be.
• Lacks social etiquette. Not very socially advanced.
• Scatter-brained and forgetful. He forgets to watch for hyenas.
• Impulsivity. He drives the hyenas closer, accidentally.
• Misunderstood by his colony, but, he is very capable when he wants to be.
• His Ma is extremely protective over him (this happens a lot with children with Autism).

Pumbaa

• Sarcasm is basically a foreign language to him.
• He's also literal-minded.
• Scatter-brained and forgetful.
• Very easily distracted.
• Special interest: Hakuna Matata, grubs, bugs, having fun, musical numbers.
• Not good at reading social cues and is lacks social skills.
• He was also outcasted by his herd.
• Impulsivity.
• Has anxiety over being in enclosed spaces.

Anga: Autism (semi-verbal)

• Extremely brutally honest and blunt.
• The way she moves her head around as she speaks can maybe be seen as a tic. "Why did you buzz us like that," *shrugs "That's how I land."
• Rarely speaks unless it's important to do so.
• Tends to just say "yup" or "nope".
• Speaks with a very flat, monotone voice.
• Rarely shows any emotion.
• Interrupts, e.g. "We're the-" "Lion Guard, I know who you are."
• Didn't really talk to/socialise with anyone before the Lion Guard.
• Preferred keeping to herself.
• Stares off into the distance.
• Strong moral compass.

Makini: AuDHD

• Lack of social awareness and boundaries.
• Trouble "reading the room" like Bunga.
• Difficulty following instructions.
• Difficulty reading non-verbal language.
• Has a hard understanding social cues.
• Gets easily distracted and scatter-brained.
• Anxiety and has difficult thinking under pressure.
• Impulsivity and hyperactivity.
• Says things without thinking.
• Difficulty concentrating on tasks.
• Acting without thinking.
• Interrupts a lot.
• Talks excessively.
• Has trouble with volume control.
• Can be reckless at times.
• Special interests: Paintings of the past, painting and artistry, history, learning about different cultures within the Pride Lands, exploring, musical numbers, having fun.
• Sensitive to upsetting and/or hurting her friends.
• Gets upset easily her friends' anger and frustration.
• Highly emotional, empathetic and overly sensitive.

Ono: Autism (I think he has Asperger's syndrome, which is a very mild form)

• Gets overly anxious or afraid sometimes.
• Upset and downhearted by changes, like his crest feathers.
• Overly sensitive and self-conscious.
• A bit of a perfectionist. To an extreme level (a little bit OCD going there as well).
• He likes familiarity and routine, for example, his crest feathers or his head, going on patrol.
• Gets overly emotional or depressed if he de-valued.
• Literal-minded, "Peeled eyes, ewww." (But he can still dish out sarcasm).
• Special interests: Animal facts and nuggets of wisdom, random factoids about the circle of life, biology, geographical factors, educating and sharing them with his friends on it, going on patrol.
• Strong moral compass.
• Tries to do what's right.
• Can be a bit skittish and panicky.
• Leaps to conclusions, like believing that Makuu would eat him for waking the crocs up.

Conclusion
So, these are all the ones I've thought of for this. I'll let you all know if I think of anymore in the comments. Now, it's you guys' turn to let me know your Autism/ADHD headcanons and whether or not you agree with my suggestions.
Also, I've seen the "no one on the Guard is neurotypical" argument, before. I disagree with it because I don't think that Kion, Fuli and Beshte are neurodivergent. Fuli is introverted and doesn't like being touched, but, it doesn't make her Autistic. She's not fully against being touched. Plus, you're allowed to be introverted and not be Autistic. Kion has self-confidence problems and doubts that are due to him being a leader at a young age, and then later, his "scar arc" where his confidence is shook. Beshte is just everyone's friend who's the most emotionally mature of the Guard. Plus, they all seem too socially advanced and aware, that I don't consider them on the spectrum at all. If you do, then that's fine. Leave your HC's in the comments below.

The 313000a107 paper titled "Hyena: Balancing Packing, Reuse, and Rotations for Encrypted Inference" makes the following main contributions:

1. Provides a comprehensive analysis of performance bottlenecks in encrypted inference systems, identifying key contributors like packing, reuse, and rotations.
   
2. Introduces new co-designed packing and dataflow techniques (Hyena-Pack and Hyena-Dataflow) that enable dense packing while reducing rotations and improving reuse.
   
3. Demonstrates significant speedups (38× over Channel-Packing) and energy efficiency improvements (162× over Channel-Packing) compared to several state-of-the-art baselines.
   
4. Publicly releases HEPack-Sim, a simulator for modeling packing, dataflow, and architecture in encrypted inference systems, enabling independent analysis and reproducibility.
   

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Top 5 Strengths:
• Thorough analysis of bottlenecks in existing encrypted inference systems
• Novel packing and dataflow techniques that effectively address the identified bottlenecks
• Substantial performance and energy efficiency improvements over state-of-the-art baselines
• Comprehensive evaluation across multiple benchmarks and baselines
• Open-source release of HEPack-Sim for reproducibility and future research
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Top 5 Weaknesses:
• Limited discussion on the scalability of the proposed techniques to larger models and datasets
• No analysis of the impact of different threat models on the proposed system
• Lack of comparison with other hardware accelerators for encrypted inference
• No discussion on the potential trade-offs between accuracy and performance in the proposed system
• Limited exploration of the applicability of the proposed techniques to other homomorphic encryption schemes
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Real-world Impact:
• Hyena's techniques can significantly reduce the latency and energy consumption of encrypted inference, making it more practical for real-world applications.
• The open-source release of HEPack-Sim can accelerate research and development in the field of encrypted inference.
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Potential Future Work:
• Investigating the scalability of Hyena's techniques to larger models and datasets
• Exploring the impact of different threat models on the proposed system and its performance
• Comparing Hyena with other hardware accelerators for encrypted inference
• Analyzing the potential trade-offs between accuracy and performance in the proposed system
• Examining the applicability of Hyena's techniques to other homomorphic encryption schemes
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Q1: How does Hyena handle the trade-off between security and performance in the context of different threat models?
Likely Answer: While our work focuses on the honest-but-curious threat model, we believe that Hyena's techniques can be adapted to other threat models with minimal impact on performance. However, a more thorough analysis of the security-performance trade-off under different threat models is an important direction for future work.
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Q2: Have you considered comparing Hyena with other hardware accelerators for encrypted inference? If so, what insights have you gained?
Likely Answer: We have primarily focused on comparing Hyena with state-of-the-art packing and dataflow techniques rather than other hardware accelerators. However, we believe that Hyena's techniques are complementary to hardware acceleration and can be combined with other accelerators to further improve performance. Comparing Hyena with other hardware accelerators is an interesting direction for future work.
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Q3: How do you expect Hyena's techniques to scale to larger models and datasets?
Likely Answer: While our evaluation focuses on moderately sized models and datasets, we believe that Hyena's techniques will scale well to larger models and datasets. The benefits of dense packing, reduced rotations, and improved reuse are likely to become even more significant as the size and complexity of the models and datasets increase. However, a more thorough analysis of the scalability of Hyena's techniques is an important direction for future work.
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Q4: Have you observed any trade-offs between accuracy and performance in the proposed system?
Likely Answer: In our current evaluation, we have not observed any significant trade-offs between accuracy and performance. Hyena's techniques are designed to improve performance without compromising accuracy. However, we acknowledge that in some cases, there may be a trade-off between accuracy and performance, particularly when aggressive optimizations are applied. Analyzing these potential trade-offs is an interesting direction for future work.
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Q5: Can Hyena's techniques be applied to other homomorphic encryption schemes beyond CKKS?
Likely Answer: While our current implementation focuses on the CKKS scheme, we believe that the core ideas behind Hyena's packing and dataflow techniques can be adapted to other homomorphic encryption schemes. However, the specific details of the implementation may need to be adjusted based on the characteristics of the chosen scheme. Exploring the applicability of Hyena's techniques to other homomorphic encryption schemes is an important direction for future work.
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Q6: How does Hyena handle the challenges associated with non-linear operations in encrypted inference?
Likely Answer: Hyena focuses on the linear operations in encrypted inference, which are the most computationally intensive and time-consuming. For non-linear operations, we rely on existing techniques such as polynomial approximations or multi-party computation. Our work is complementary to these techniques and can be combined with them to improve the overall performance of encrypted inference.
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Q7: What are the main limitations of the HEPack-Sim simulator, and how do you plan to address them in the future?
Likely Answer: HEPack-Sim is designed to model the key aspects of packing, dataflow, and architecture in encrypted inference systems. However, it may not capture all the nuances and complexities of real-world systems. We plan to continue refining and expanding HEPack-Sim based on feedback from the community and our own ongoing research. We also encourage other researchers to contribute to the development of HEPack-Sim to make it an even more valuable tool for the community.
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Q8: How does Hyena's performance compare to unencrypted inference, and what are the main factors contributing to the performance gap?
Likely Answer: Encrypted inference is inherently more computationally intensive than unencrypted inference due to the overhead of homomorphic encryption. Hyena's techniques help to reduce this overhead, but there is still a significant performance gap compared to unencrypted inference. The main factors contributing to this gap are the increased computational complexity of homomorphic operations, the need for larger ciphertext sizes to ensure security, and the additional memory and communication overhead associated with encrypted data. Closing this performance gap further is an important challenge for the field of encrypted inference.
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Q9: What are the potential privacy risks associated with the use of Hyena's techniques, and how can they be mitigated?
Likely Answer: Hyena's techniques are designed to improve the performance of encrypted inference while preserving the privacy of the input data. However, there may be some potential privacy risks associated with the use of these techniques, such as the leakage of information through side channels or the potential for attackers to exploit weaknesses in the implementation. To mitigate these risks, it is important to follow best practices for secure implementation, regularly audit the system for vulnerabilities, and keep the software and hardware components up to date with the latest security patches.
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Q10: How can Hyena's techniques be integrated into existing machine learning frameworks and workflows, and what are the main challenges involved?
Likely Answer: Integrating Hyena's techniques into existing machine learning frameworks and workflows will require some modifications to the underlying infrastructure to support homomorphic encryption and the proposed packing and dataflow techniques. The main challenges involved include ensuring compatibility with existing libraries and tools, managing the increased computational and memory requirements of encrypted inference, and providing a user-friendly interface for developers and data scientists. We believe that the open-source release of HEPack-Sim will help to facilitate this integration by providing a common platform for modeling and evaluating encrypted inference systems.
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GRADE: 9/10
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Motivation: The Hyena paper makes significant contributions to the field of encrypted inference by introducing novel packing and dataflow techniques that effectively address key performance bottlenecks. The proposed techniques are thoroughly evaluated against state-of-the-art baselines and demonstrate substantial improvements in both speed and energy efficiency. The paper's strengths, including the comprehensive analysis of bottlenecks, the novel techniques introduced, and the open-source release of HEPack-Sim, make it a valuable contribution to the field.
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However, there are some areas where the paper could be improved, such as providing a more in-depth analysis of the scalability of the proposed techniques, exploring the impact of different threat models, and comparing Hyena with other hardware accelerators. Despite these limitations, the paper's contributions are significant and well-supported by the experimental results.
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Given the paper's strong technical contributions, thorough evaluation, and potential real-world impact, a grade of 9/10 is well-justified. The authors have demonstrated a clear understanding of the challenges in encrypted inference and have proposed effective solutions that advance the state of the art. The paper's weaknesses, while noteworthy, do not significantly detract from its overall value and contributions to the field.

2x15 'Phases' is an Oz episode, right? I mean, it's the episode where Oz, the Scoobies and the audience all learn that he is a werewolf. The episode begins with the budding relationship between Oz and Willow in what the latter describes as a holding pattern without the holding, progresses through various werewolf shenanigans, and ends with Willow accepting Oz' unique condition and initiating their first kiss. Across the episode, Oz probably has more dialogue than in all of his previous appearances put together; how could it not be an Oz episode?
And yet, 'Phases' is actually a Xander episode. No, hear me out -- it's remarkable just how much Xander material is crammed in and around the A-plot here. Let's run through it all:
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Xander is "concerned" (read: jealous) about Willow's relationship with Oz: he's a Senior, he's in a band, he's tucking the tag on her shirt away, he's a werewolf. Basically, the same jealous and possessive policing behaviours that he's displayed in the past towards Buffy, arguably made worse by his having actively scorned Willow's affections in the past. Xander is as Xander was, is what this material tells us, and at the end of the episode Buffy very pointedly calls him out on it, saying that Willow's relationship with Oz is not up to him. /highfive
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Cordelia is frustrated that Xander seems to pay more attention to Buffy and Willow than he does to her. There are two relevant scenes here, the first between Xander and Cordelia at Lover's Lane, the second between Willow and Cordelia at The Bronze, where the two bond over their shared criticisms of Xander. It's interesting that this thread is not pursued in the next episode, 'Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered', where Cordelia's temporary breakup with Xander appears to be motivated more by external than internal factors.
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There's a fantastic callback to the events of 1x06 'The Pack'. Xander says that he knows "what it's like to crave the taste of freshly killed meat, to be taken over by those uncontrollable urges." This runs contrary to his protestations of amnesia at the end of that episode and Buffy immediately picks up on it:
Buffy (suspicious): "I thought you said you didn't remember anything about that."
Xander: (laughs nervously).
The implication here, of course, is that if Xander remembers his experiences as a hyena, then he remembers his attempted SA of Buffy in that episode, and now Buffy knows this too.
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Xander confronts Larry on suspicion of being a werewolf, only to discover that he is gay instead (it's so easy to confuse these things). This scene is framed positively as a moment of liberation for Larry, but Xander is panicked that Larry comes to believe that he is gay also. Both of these elements are carried forward in a subsequent scene at the end of the episode, with Xander seeking to avoid the topic of what he and Larry discussed entirely. This material is interesting in light of reports that, at one stage, Xander was apparently a candidate for "becoming" a gay character, before that role eventually went to Willow.
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Leaving the best, and worst, until last: Xander accompanies Buffy to visit Theresa's casket at the funeral home and to sign her guest book. Throughout this scene Xander displays an unusual level of tact and sensitivity, reassuring Buffy that she is not responsible for every death that occurs in Sunnydale, and refraining from any of the selfish barbs at Angel's expense that have been a reliable part of his verbal repertoire up to this point. Evidently, Xander cares too much for Buffy to indulge in "I told you so." When Theresa rises from the casket as a vampire and gets Buffy off balance by telling her that Angel "sends his love", Xander is the one to stake her and save Buffy, thereby fulfilling most of the criteria of Xander's fantasy in 1x04 'Teacher's Pet', minus the guitar solo. At this point Buffy briefly embraces Xander, emotionally overwhelmed by Angel's cruelty and guilt over her failure to kill him. Xander returns the gesture platonically, advising her to not let Angel get to her, that he's "not the same guy you knew."
Up to this point, I think this scene is a moving culmination-to-date of the slowly maturing relationship that we have witnessed between Xander and Buffy since 1x12 'Prophecy Girl' (granted, the maturation has been almost entirely one-sided). Unfortunately, once Buffy departs a few seconds later, Xander then fucks it all up by observing to himself that his life is becoming complicated. Why is it complicated, Xander? Being a true friend to someone in their hour of need is not complicated. This line only makes sense insofar as Xander still has a crush on Buffy and sees the events of the preceding few minutes as relevant to that. This line retroactively colours the entire scene and gives it an altogether less heartwarming hue. Fuck you very much, Xander.
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When I finished watching this episode recently, I noticed that my notes contained a lot more Xander than they did Oz, or anything else for that matter. To be honest, I'm not sure what all of this adds up to for Xander, or if there is even a coherent through-line here. I just know that it's a lot. Conversely, I'm not sure how much we actually learn about Oz here, beyond the obvious.

Nepila stares down the beast with her aura exposed from her body. "My grief left me astray. I understand now why Aliska wanted me to never stay sad for long. If I'm going to be the nation's Iron Maiden." Nepila uses her hand to summon a wooden staff. "I must be in control of my emotions! Define them, not let it define my heart!" A wave of Pristinia climbs up to reach Nepila as she begins her assault.
The fragile memory is plunged into the ground before being thrown into the Solairian wall. Nepila eyes glow a furious green as she travels through the wall to warp into the fragile memory. The beast sees this, remembering what Enoma did outside. It grabs Nepila and slams her into the ground. It roars, shouting, "Is this what you want!? Death of the memory that once held you and that mistress close together!?" Nepila growls in anger, summoning multiple roots to stab the fragile memory's chest as she uses Zeptheria to launch herself to kick the beast into the air.
"Just like how I was with my guilt. You're trying to manipulate the truth. The truth is that you aren't the memory of Aliska because she would never be such an unruly wretched monster!" Nepila uses the Solarian Dome to create a temporary stasis ball to slow down the beast fall. Taking her chance to finish it, Nepila tries to create an attack, but a hole opens up in the dome. Outside, everyone can see each other on both sides. Nepila is about to say something when she finally sees what her anger can do. An arm lifts up as he comes crashing down on to Relinna. Nepila cries out no, but it never fully crushes her. Nepila is shocked, confused about who could've saved her until a cold voice yells from underneath Fenrir's arm. "Maple! Control it, woman! You're not a kid anymore, stupid girl!" Sil punches the arm, which hurts the fragile memory inside.
Nepila hears it roars in pain as she realizes where she's truly at. "This is not the void of thoughts or quite simply my head space. We're literally in the central spot of the brain. This means that the stasis field I put up is allowing him to freely move the Fenrir outside! Fine! Let's play this game!" Nepila uses her Solarite to create a flaming hand to jump into the stasis field.
Inside, Nepila finds herself moving extremely slowly, trying to use the outer walls to connect to the outside world. However, Nepila quickly realizes that the beast can still attack her with projectiles. The beast launches a barrage of Solarite blast towards Nepila, who can't dodge the attack. Nepila is about to get hit when she remembers that she's in the brain. Using a memory she saw of Aliska, Nepila eyes glow bright green as she sticks a hand out and creates a barrier. When she creates it, the beast and Nepila are transported to a familiar field to both of them.
Nepila stands still, tanking the beast attack with the barrier she created from her hand. The two stare at it, seeing the massive wall Nepila has created. The beast walks back and forth, laughing as Nepila does the same except that she stares at the beast angrily.
"Yes! This place! Where you and that mistress first met. What a memory!" The beast looks behind itself, admiring the destroyed town in flames. "The hometown of Aliska. The woman who was created from a relic to uphold the plant life in this cold, blizzard underworld we call Arnaedia. Let me tell ya, she done well with the plants for a while until she met you." Nepila is about to get angry but calms herself. "No." The beast looks at the maid confused, surprised she even muttered a word. "No, that woman kept going even after meeting me. She put up her best protecting plant life while still living as a human. This relic that defines her and her magic did not stop her from trying to be more than what she feels. Unlike you and your species!" The beast is shocked and offended, rushing at Nepila as it breaks the barrier. Nepila tries to block the beast attacks, but she is dragged into the snow as the beast throws her into the wall of the memory. Nepila breaks through the wall and sees herself flying into another memory as she lands into a tree.
She falls onto the ground, getting picked up by the beast who slams her onto a frozen lake nearby. "Look at yourself before her, maid!" Nepila looks up to see herself talking to Enoma. "You speak of things defining someone, but what about you!? You grew up with barely any pain except motivation and a heart of compassion! You grew up in a solitary home with your mother, father, and three siblings! A father who committed a crime and was taken away to another nation! And a mother who relied on you to raise your other siblings! Your greatest struggle doesn't involve death, pain, or some random revelation." The beast is about to say more but stops. It can feel a boiling rage in Nepila, grinning in the process. Nepila is about to summon her flames until she remembers the Fenrir and Aliska words. Sighing, Nepila summons Pristinia again as she gets up.
"I see what you're trying to do. You are so despicable for even trying to make me lose sight in order to get me to hurt my own people. However, fragile memory." Nepila stares at the beast, summoning another Pristinian barrier. The beast is confused, but it smiles. Nepila smiles, too, expanding the barrier and breaking it into thousands of pieces. The beast backs up, unaware as to where Nepila is taking her attack. "You want to see me angry, right? Then let me show it to you in its controlled state!" Nepila takes the pieces of the barrier and sends them all flying at the wall of the memory.
The pieces begin to bounce all around the memory. The beast thinks it'll have to dodge a lot, but the shards are all purposely missing it. "What is this!? Is it an attack!?" The beast looks at Nepila, who begins to fly up. "Since you won't mention Aliska, I will mention her for you." Nepila stops at the middle of the memory. The trees surround her as the moon stares the beast down. "My greatest struggle was dealing with the death of my best friend. The revelation that shook me, a truth that would break my heart. I may never be able to stop missing her, but I can tread on my path with her still by my side with her relic." Pristinia twirls from Nepila's chest as it circles into a dark green and orange background with Nepila being the only bright thing in the memory. "Aliska sacrifices herself for me with the goal to be able to help me succeed in the end with this inner battle. Fragile memory, remember this. I may not have a partner to help me fight in the depth of battle. But I am not alone!" A giant flower that Aliska is known for creating appears from the background. "The Mari'flaundra shall rise and upheave the cleansing hour! Purge evil from within us!" The flower blooms, sending out a massive of cleansing pollen onto the memory, causing the beast to panic. The beast tries to run, attempting to break the wall, but it's too late. "Your crowd of evil shall plague us no more!" Nepila rushes forward, slashing the beast open as she's kicked from inside her head.
Outside, Nepila is shot out the Fenrir, but she's brutally beaten. Sil sees her fly out, realizing that if Nepila lands on the ground, she'll die immediately. Sil tries to fly, but her left arm gets scorched by the Fenrir. Sil shriek in pain but flies to save Nepila. As she flies towards her, fireballs fly at her as she tries destroying them all. Some of them she manages to defend against, but she realizes she wasn't the main target. "The fireballs! They're aimed at Maple! No!" Sil tries to fly faster, but the fireballs rapidly approach Nepila. It it looks like Nepila is about to be hit. "O' Grand Shrine, Sheath Their Last Gazing Breath!" A woman appears, absorbing the fireballs and proceeding to launch the attacks back down at Fenrir. Everyone is shocked, asking who the woman is until Samikoiya steps up. "That woman is my step sister. Yoiyami." Yoiyami dashes downwards, landing as she steps in front of Samikoiya. "Hi, Koi! I'm finally here to help out!" Everyone gets mad at Yoiyami, confusing the Sly Fox. "Yoiya, why didn't you grab Maple!" Samikoiya asked, but the woman simply knocks herself on the head. "Oops, I meant to say we." The group looks back up at Nepila when another voice can be heard. "The Ecosystem Guides You!" A man catches Nepila and uses his bow to grapple back to the ground. "What the!" Sil screams out before being grabbed by a bird.
Everyone groups up on Nepila, checking to see if she's still alive. As Enoma is about to use her Pristinia, the man stops her. "I'm sorry, but this requires a much stronger dose of Pristinia." The man places a hand on Nepila forehead, pulsing her with massive amounts of Pristinia. "This amount of Pristinia. It's more than mine. Even with my title as wizard, I don't own this amount of Pristinia. Who are you?" The man's face change to a sad expression. He sighs as he lets go. "My name is Ekonari. I am a living ecosystem of abiotic and biotic features." Ekonari uses his magic to vitalize the plants all around the forest. "I met Nepila when she came to my sanctum injured. I saved her and took care of her using the animals before sending her off. But that's as far as I can go with my relationship with Nepila. I'm just a savior to her. But that Starlight Mage and his Sly Fox of a sister. Those two are my bosses." Enoma looks at Samikoiya with a puzzled expression. But before Samikoiya can explain, Relinna and Mynia can be heard screaming. Everyone checks back on Fenrir and sees that he has grown stronger.
"The Fenrir! It doesn't have a host to be restricted, so it's just its own entity! Everyone, fend off the Fenrir while either one of us strategists comes up with a plan!" Everyone nods at each other, rushing into battle. Samikoiya, Sil, Enoma, and Yoiyami plan a finishing attack. Isolis, Mynia, and Ekonari fight and defend Relinna.
Samikoiya stays in the back, using his magic to kick and punch as magic circles appear and launch beam attacks the Fenrir. Enoma uses her Solarite and Frolaryte to create flames and ice all around Fenrir to blind it or hit blind spots. Yoiyami blitz the Fenrir with Aqauria and Frolaryte with slash attacks. Tricking the Fenrir into sliding into attacks. Isolis uses Voleria and Solarite to cause a lot of explosions while Mynia uses Earthrallion to block attacks from the Fenrir. Everything seems to be going to plan until the Fenrir howls in anger. From being orange to now being a black and white flaming wolf.
While in the process of tricking up Fenrir, Yoiyami notices something off. All the strategists realize what the Fenrir is about to do. "Yoiya! Run!" Yoiyami tries to run last second, but it's too late. The Fenrir transforms the ice below him into a portal. Yoiyami falls in it, warped into the air as Fenrir performs multiple slashes on her before spiking her down with his tail. Yoiyami crashes into a tree next to Nepila. Samikoiya rushes to his sister, crying as he screams for Yoiyami to wake up. And just like that, everyone begins to lose the battle.
Fenrir rushes down towards Sil, who tries to punch him, but he dodges Sil punch. Fenrir uses his teeth to bite Sil's arm off, making her shriek in pain again before tail whipping her away. Isolis attempts to flee, but he's swiped away into a tree, making him gasp for air. Mynia puts up a wall for herself, but Fenrir slashes it and hits her away into a nearby hillside. The constant loud noises finally wake Nepila up to the ongoing battle. Nepila looks to where the shriek came from to see Sil's left arm burnt while her right arm is torn off. Nepila gets up and tries to use Aliska's abilities but realizes that she can't. "Wait, I'm not in my head. I can't use her abilities because I don't know how she performs them. Tch! I'll just." Nepila is about to use her magic when the Fenrir warps behind her. Nepila tries to turn around, but she's hit by Fenrir's tail. Nepila is sent flying into a tree, but she's hit again by the Fenrir into another before she can feel the Fenrir teeth clamping in her. Nepila screams in pain as Fenrir tries eating her, but it stops as Enoma sends a blast its way. "If you want her, you'll have to go through me!" Enoma says, rushing at Fenrir.
Behind Enoma, a purple spell can be seen as it transforms Enoma into a Mage. Enoma slams Fenrir into the ground as red colors her outfit. When the transformation reaches the top, Nepila heart drops. An hourglass in the shape of multiple bones appears on Enoma's hat. "Wait, the Hourglass Death of Flame is you?" Enoma is disappointed in herself for not telling Nepila, but she keeps her focus on Fenrir. "I'm sorry, Maple." Enoma summons a dark red Voleria that shocks Fenrir. Fenrir barks in pain as it swipes Enoma away. Nepila watches Enoma fight head to head with Fenrir in her Death of Flame state. She launches spiraling death blades at Fenrir while the wolf keeps warping around. Nepila is about to cry but stops. Understanding that Enoma had her reasons for not saying anything about her true self. She also understands that Enoma isn't evil anymore. Seeing how she's using her magic for good and not trying to rob a civilian for money. The stories of the old Enoma make sense to Nepila now. Just as Nepila thinks the battle is won, Enoma screams in pain as Fenrir toss her body away. Nepila sees her body falling, horrified Enoma was defeated in battle. Fenrir howls again, but this time, he sets his sights on Relinna. Fenrir rushes at Relinna, who is trying to help Mynia get up. Nepila emotions flare up, screaming for Relinna to move until she suddenly uses Pristinia and Zeptheria to calmly guide herself to Relinna's location.
When Nepila makes it, she comes out with a defensive ability to shield Relinna. "A Mother's Duty Never Ends!" Nepila shouts as a Pristinian, and Solarian rose appears underneath Nepila and shields her and everyone nearby from Fenrir's attack. Inside the rose, Nepila realizes what she has just done. "This rose. It's like the one when I lose control, except it's calm. Relinna!" Nepila hugs Relinna, holding back her tears as she checks for any injuries. Relinna stops her and asks if Nepila can do anything for Mynia. Nepila is about to say no but realizes she had Pristinia. Using her new knowledge of Pristinia, Nepila places try multiple ways to heal Mynia, but nothing works. Nepila is about to give up, hugging Mynia, believing she has failed her sister. That is, until a voice calls to her. Nepila thinks it's Aliska again, but it's someone else. Nepila listens to the voice, feeling a great sense of warmth from the beautiful voice she's hearing. "The children are withering away. They haven't fully blossomed yet, sister." Nepila realizes what she needs to do. She sticks a hand out, summons a rose, and chants bloom as it heals Mynia.
Mynia opened her eyes as Relinna hugged her immediately. Nepila looks at her hands and back at Fenrir. "With my magic, I can't defeat Fenrir. However." Nepila turns to Samikoiya, who had just walked up to her. "Maple, do you have a plan?" Nepila nods. Using her magic to heal Yoiyami, Nepila tells Samikoiya that they must heal Enoma. Samikoiya nods, rushing outside the rose to secure Enoma. Relinna asked what she could do to help, and Nepila smiled at her. "Gather everyone here with Auntie Yoiya, okay?" Relinna eyes sparkles with excitement, yelling okay as she rushes to Yoiyami and helps her up. Nepil thanks Relinna under her breath before taking off to fight Fenrir.
As expected, Nepila is being beaten up by the giant wolf. He constantly slashes Nepila and bites her, but something is different this time. Nepila seems to be using her magic to strengthen her endurance. Getting frustrated, Fenrir throws Nepila to the side and tries to destroy the rose, but he's quickly stopped by an Earthrallion wall. "Stay back!" Mynia shouts, using her Earthrallion walls offensively. Nepila thanks Mynia as she continues to distract Fenrir.
Minutes would go by, fighting off Fenrir. Nepila is critically injured, barely able to use her magic. She tries to stand up, but she's too injured. She stays on one knee, using her remaining to try creating a shield, but something forms in front of her. Nepila eyes widen, realizing what she is seeing, forming before her as a woman screams at Fenrir. "Leave my student alone!" Enoma flies down at Fenrir with a swarm of arms and skulls trailing behind her. Nepila smiles, healing Enoma with her last remaining magic as she passes out.
Enoma lands on Fenrir, using her magic to create an ocean of arms as it drowns Fenrir within. It roars, trying to escape the trap, but fails to do so. Realizing what she must do, Enoma uses her own life essence to cause a death spiral to form. In the middle of the death spiral, an hourglass appears as lightning, water, and gale surrounds it. "The Hourglass has run out of its call for Armageddon! See its last drop as it coats life with perilous agony!" Enoma flies downward into the arms. Everything grows silent before an explosion goes off. The battle has been won, but at what cost?
Back at the group with Relinna, everyone watches the rose bloom away as all that's just left is Enoma and Nepila on the field separated from each other. The group splits up to take care of the two. Samikoiya, Yoiyami, and Nepila's sisters check up on the maid. She looks exhausted and hurt but still alive. Sil, Ekonari, and Isolis check up on Enoma. What they see before them terrifies them. Enoma looks older with her purple hair, losing its color. Isolis says it aloud for everyone to hear, shocking the group except Samikoiya. He sighs in frustration. "She lost Aliska, her best friend. Now, she's about to lose her master. Hm." Samikoiya walks up to Enoma, who's just started opening her eyes. She asked if she did it, and Samikoiya nodded. He tells her that Nepila is alive but is probably on the brink of death. Enoma tries to rush to her side, but she notices that she's too injured to even move. She feels frail and weak. She mentions this, making Samikoiya shake his head. "For one, mage. You nearly sacrifice yourself if it isn't for Nepila's healing and the extra mana I gave you. But that aside. I will do you a favor if you do one for me." Samikoiya sticks a hand out as Enoma grabs it. She asked what Samikoiya's favor before feeling something warm in her hand. "That favor I want is for you to never go into that state ever again. For trying to sacrifice yourself, here's your stupid reward." Enoma eyes widen as she screams in pain. Everyone is about to attack Samikoiya until sensing Enoma's magic growing a lot stronger while Samikoiya grows weaker. He groans in pain as the sound of Enoma screams echoes in the forest.
Days later, Nepila finds herself waking up in a medical bed. She lays up, feeling her bandages all over again. "Was that just a bad dream?" Nepila asked before seeing everyone else that was in the battle brutally beaten. She's about to jump out of bed, but someone grabs her hand. She looks to her left and sees Relinna tears flowing on her hand. "Please, big sister. Stay here and rest. I can't lose you and anyone else here." Nepila is about to move but realizes that everything is okay now. She sits back, squeezing Relinna's hand, who begins to sleep on it. She smiles, looking up at the ceiling as she thinks about what happened earlier. But her thoughts are interrupted when the voice of a woman calls for her.
"Hello, Ms. Saiki-Nera?" Nepila looks to the right to see a woman who eerily looks familiar. "Ah, yes, you're awake. That is just fantastic!" The woman speed walks to Nepila's right side, blushing and seemingly nervous while fiddling with her clipboard. "Hello? You look like someone I know. Dvarski?" The woman jolts in shock but nods quickly as a bright smile shows on her face. "Yes! Yes! Yes, I am the daughter of the doctor! My name is Beoila! Nurse of my father's hospital that we are currently in!" Beoila jumps around, confusing Nepila, who's trying to understand what's going on. "Be-Beoila. You seem to be very ecstatic. Perhaps you're seriously not." Nepila stops her words, seeing Beoila nodding at her words. The two are embarrassed, awkwardly staying quiet before someone else breaks the silence. "Well, Maple. To anyone, it would be an honor to serve you. After all, you are the leader of a clan, saving thousands of people from a crisis." Dvarski says, walking in and checking up on everyone.
The three chat with others for hours. Chatting about Beoila's personal life of being Nepila's biggest fan. Beoila fights with her dad, making Nepila laugh as the two use Pristinia to play fight. As the three chill with others, food arrives at the door. Nepila didn't realize it, but she remembers not eating anything at Enoma's library. She takes her food from the delivery man who smiles at her. Nepila assumes it's her brother, but surprisingly, it's Yoiyami. "E-yo!" Yoiyami throws up a peace sign as she uses it as bunny ears. "Yoiya!? Are you fully healed?" Yoiyami shakes her head. "Nope, but I do have these!" Yoiyami reveals bandages stretching from her waist to her neck. "Those bandages. Take it easy, girl." Yoiyami laughs, sitting on Nepila bed as she begins to eat. "Wait a second! Did I get told to take care of a woman who went toe to toe with a freaking beast that nearly killed her!" Nepila choked on her beef, swallowing it down before saying, "That's not the point, kay!" Nepila starts coughing as she drinks her water. "Welp, at least you're still the Nepila we know. I can't help it, but deep down in my heart. And probably those that are here with us. We're all proud of you." Nepila pauses herself from taking a bite of her sandwich. "Seriously, Nepila. I still remember the day you took me and Samikoiya in with welcome arms. You did us such a huge favor, and now, I feel like doing favors, so let me do one for you." Yoiyami hugs Nepila, who drops her sandwich. Yoiyami catches it with her tail and places it back in Nepila hand. "Go on ahead. I know you're holding back your tears for her. After all, I'm the Sly Fox. I can see the hurt on your face. Go on. Tell us about it." Nepila begins to cry on Yoiyami shoulder, talking about her past with Aliska. This would go on for some time before a book opens to Nepila sleeping with her siblings sleeping on her.
"Archive number 85. In regards to the woman known as Aliska, here's a full report. All information can be gathered from Nepila Saiki-Nera or formally, Ms. Saiki-Nera. Continuation. Aliska, a bio life form born from a Pristinian relic. Not considered as an animal but a plant. But yet, Aliska understood us humans more than we can each other. Ability Design: Rooted Emotions. Aliska was designed to collect data and help the nation as a whole. But since the king restricted her magic, Aliska couldn't act out her order. So, the only one who could carry on her task is Nepila. The Iron Maiden. As it stands, from what Nepila could gather about Aliska's abilities. They are triggered when someone is in danger on their own. Explain why, in her own words, was being protected by the roots of Aliska. The reason why Aliska couldn't just give Nepila her Pristinia was because her Pristinia was trying to help Nepila. The only way Aliska was able to let Nepila absorb her was by calming her down and forcefully getting absorbed. Sacrificing herself in the process. Her abilities stem from just helping out those in need. However, she never used Solarite with her abilities. Not only that, but Nepila heard a different voice that wasn't Aliska's. From the description of the voice and what she felt. Could it be that her constellation is coming true? Is the woman I came to know for years no longer here and now is just her? Could she be? Telbarra?" Samikoiya looks at the sleeping Nepila who's holding onto Mynia and Isolis shoulders while Relinna sleeps on her. "Hm, I should contemplate this later. For now, this chapter must come to an end. Yes, this chapter shall come to a beautiful end." Samikoiya says, staring into the night sky from the library window, knowing that something in the future is rapidly approaching.

16-minute read.

anti-corruption: authorities reach an asset forfeiture settlement with ex-Governor of Tavush

The Anti-Corruption Court read a verdict to reaffirm the settlement reached between authorities and a Serj-era governor accused of possessing properties with illegal origins. The ex-Gov Hovik Abovyan will transfer 75% of the assets, a total of ֏609 million, to the state.
In 2021 the ex-Gov was charged with falsifying income declaration documents during his tenure. Prosecutors began investigating his assets shortly afterward.
P.S. One of the listed "illegal" properties is a cubic Mercedes-Benz G500.
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police will use cameras to catch drivers not wearing seat belts

POLICE: Speeding is the most common cause of fatal car accidents. However, your chances of surviving a speeding accident are far greater if you and all the passengers are wearing seat belts. Unless we see progress soon, we're going to start using cameras to hold every violating driver accountable. Once again, we urge everyone to follow the seat belt rules unconditionally.
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desperate residents of Nagorno-Karabakh were mixing wood dust with scarce food to survive during the 2022-2023 hunger blockade by Azerbaijan that ended with total ethnic cleansing in September: VIDEO

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Glory to Arstotzka

Russia and Belarus continue to integrate into a Union State. Russian press writes that a joint media holding will be launched by 2025 as part of the "Union State" efforts. The organization will receive ₽1 billion in funding to kickstart.
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Armenia sent election observers to the U.S.

Los Angeles invited ranking members of Armenia's electoral commission to observe the presidential Primaries earlier this month.
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Armenia did not send election observers to Russia as part of a CSTO mission

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Russians formed "kilometer-long" lines in Yerevan and Gyumri under the rain to vote in Russia's "presidential elections"

There were five polling stations across Armenia. The lines were particularly long in the noon as part of a Russian opposition campaign "Noon against Putin". The idea was to convince anti-Putin voters to get out to vote together as a silent protest.

... Russian election results in Armenia

Yerevan had 6,002 voters: Davankov 50%, Putin 33%.
Gyumri had 1,234 voters: Putin 58%, Davankov 31%.
Russian opposition figures, including a survey organizer, implied that the organizers might have falsified the election results to boost Putin's numbers. They said the exit polls showed only 20% support for Putin in Gyumri. However, the survey organizer added that many elderly voters and dual citizens refused to take part in exit polls and that some of them said they "still maintain connection with Russia."

... the percentage of votes captured by Putin in various capitals

Baku 77%
Bishkek 74%
Tashkent 58%
Yerevan 33%
video, source, source, video, video, video, Rotenberg, video, source, source, source, source, source,

Ilham Aliyev congratulates Putin

Putin thanked Aliyev for paying attention.
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Russian economist Guriyev about the economy of Russia and protests by the families of mobilized troops

REPORTER: Putin announced tax increases during the speech to parliament. Is this an unpopular but necessary decision?
GURIYEV: Exactly. Tax hikes are not popular in any country. Putin understands that the sanctions have, after all, limited the amount of cash in his pocket. Let me remind you that Putin drastically increased military expenditures in 2024 and he is worried now about running out of money.
The liquid portion of the National Welfare Fund as of January was approximately $56 billion. Half of it is in Chinese yuans and the other half in gold. Gold is not easy to sell. That's why Putin is raising the taxes.
When you look at the deficit and the funds necessary to fund the war, Putin will run out of money by early 2025 without raising taxes. He has decided to raise the taxes and reduce expenditures on healthcare instead of stopping the war. He is relying on OMON to suppress any public protests to tax hikes. The killing of Navalny and more recently the physical attack on dissident Volkov is part of the strategy to deprive the dissatisfied population of leaders.
Tax hikes will not only take wealth from citizens but will also reduce economic growth in the civilian sector. This is a blow to the civilian workforce. The unemployment rate is currently low partly because of high levels of defense manufacturing, but anyone not in this sector is going to suffer from the tax hikes.
REPORTER: Will the tax hike weaken or strengthen Putin's grip on power?
GURIYEV: There will be more public dissatisfaction and more resources to suppress it.
REPORTER: Is Putin distracting the public from the war, especially ahead of the presidential elections?
GURIYEV: Putin cannot lose this war. Nobody else needs this war, it's unpopular. Protests are growing among families of mobilized troops who want them returned. Putin is cash-strapped here because he needs more money to hire mercenaries to replace them. Putin cannot afford to lose this war, otherwise, the generals will begin to wonder why they have to continue to serve someone who sacrificed hundreds of thousands of their men in vain. "I could do better than Putin. I did a great job leading my army while Putin sabotaged us by not supplying tanks and soldiers. Maybe we should replace Putin with someone who is more determined." There is a real physical threat to Putin, so he will do anything unpopular, like raising taxes, to deliver those tanks and mercenaries. No one else needs this war.
REPORTER: Could Putin lose the war despite these efforts?
GURIYEV: I'm not a military expert. I don't know how many missiles and jets Ukraine would need to win the war. The situation is currently difficult for Ukraine. There have been no major movements on LoC for around a year and Ukraine is short of ammunition. This is why here in Paris there is a discussion about significantly escalating the type of support for Ukraine if there is a threat to Odesa or Kyiv.
REPORTER: Is there any imminent threat to Putin?
GURIYEV: He has many problems but there is currently no "Prigozhin", no cracks in the system, and no visible conspiracy brewing against him. If there was a process against him we wouldn't read about it in newspapers, it would be a secret process, so maybe there is a process that we are not aware of.
Today the biggest threat to Putin is the growing movement by the families of mobilized troops. The regime can't publicly beat the soldiers' wives with batons like they do others because the soldiers on the frontlines wouldn't like it, which is why so far the regime has chosen to scare or bribe the leaders of this movement. They are also detaining the journalists covering the families' protests to prevent the story from spreading.
Putin doesn't have many options here. These mobilized troops have been on the frontlines for 1.5 years. To replace them he'd need to announce a highly unpopular mobilization or spend a lot of money to hire their replacements. This is why Putin is facing economic and political problems.
This is also why it's so important to raise awareness about the protests by the families of mobilized troops. We remember the important role that soldiers' mothers played during the war in Chechnya. Imperial wars always work the same way: no resistance initially but protests grow as more coffins and wounded return from frontlines. This was the case for the USSR in Afghanistan, the U.S. in Vietnam, and France in Algiers.
There have been instances of Putin's regime threatening and scaring the families of soldiers to prevent them from being as outspoken. There have been instances of "bribing" them. They will also promote fake family members who will claim everything is great with their sons. It's necessary to spread the word about this growing movement so other families will know they aren't alone, that they can join a movement, and that it's relatively safe. //
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High-Tech Minister Hayrapetyan about possibly restricting Russian state television channels in Armenian public multiplex for anti-Armenian coverage

REPORTER: Russia24 television channel recently broadcasted yet another anti-Armenian program. How do you plan to address this issue?
MINISTER: Soon we will hold consultations in Moscow to discuss the bilateral broadcasting agreement. Armenia will present solutions to protect Armenia's state interests. No broadcasted content should meddle in Armenia's internal affairs or insult the symbols of the Republic of Armenia or the dignity of the Armenian population.
REPORTER: There was a similar meeting earlier [under the former High-Tech Minister, fired a few months ago] but Russia claimed Armenia did not present any examples.
MINISTER: Correct. There were negotiations in December. We haven't seen any improvement in the quality of the broadcasted content and problematic content is aired frequently. That means the mechanisms of control envisaged under the AM-RU broadcasting agreement aren't functioning. The Armenian side will present solutions. We will present examples of violations.
REPORTER: Will you remove Russian state channels from Armenia's public multiplex?
MINISTER: I will refrain from disclosing the details of the proposals we plan to submit to the Russian side.
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man arrested after breaking a government building window with a stone

[Նիկօլ դավաջան?]
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government launches a tender to select a company for the implementation of the new biometric passport & ID system with European eIDAS 2.0 standards

It's mandatory for visa liberalization with the EU.
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Armenia-Kazakhstan relations

Kazakh FM visited Yerevan on Monday to meet his Armenian counterpart. They discussed the Crossroads of Peace logistics project, direct AM-KZ flights, the AM-AZ peace efforts, and the idea of forming an AM-KZ business and investment council.
KAZAKH FM: Our exports to Armenia grew by 23% to only $58 million. We have the potential to increase it by $350 million. Armenia has over 100 businesses with Kazakh capital, and Kazakhstan has 435 companies with Armenian capital. We intend to launch direct Yerevan-Astana flights to boost these ties.
Armenia's Crossroads of Peace project is a complementary opportunity for our countries. We intend to cooperate with Armenia so that the middle corridor can operate at its full potential.
The 25,000-strong Armenian diaspora of Kazakhstan plays an important role in strengthening cultural and business ties. //
The foreign ministers signed a 2024-2025 cooperation plan.
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PM Pashinyan visited Tavush border villages to discuss the upcoming border delimitation plans with residents

Pashinyan announced the visit last week during the press conference. Residents said almost every family residing in the villages of Voskepar and Kirants sent a member to participate in the Q&A with Pashinyan on Monday.
PASHINYAN: The border delimitation process is entering a practical phase. Delimitation is a process to reaffirm where the countries are on the ground. Why am I in village Voskepar today? We see a realistic opportunity to begin the AM-AZ delimitation from this area: Baghanis-Berkaber. What is unique about this area? As you are aware, Azerbaijan has raised the question of 4 non-enclave villages. In turn, we have raised the issue of lands belonging to 31 Armenian villages. In response to our demands, Azerbaijan says none of the "immediate" areas of these villages, in other words, the areas where people live, are under the control of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan has suggested addressing "living" areas of villages first, followed by pastures and other territories. We argue that all territories of a village are important. But we shouldn't fight a war over this. We have decided to launch the delimitation process from this section of the border. It will strengthen the security of Armenia and nearby villagers. //
MAYOR Of NOYEMBERYAN: The 4 Azerbaijani ex-villages are: Baghanis Ayrum, Ayrumnel [?], Kheyrimli [?], Nerkin Aksipara [?]. Pashinyan said there might be war if the borders aren't delimited. [Audio quality is bad] There are 4 Armenian houses that fall into Azerbaijani territory, 3 of which are populated. This area will be neutral [no soldiers on either side] so an entire district will be a neutral zone. They offered to cover the cost of moving those [presumably 4] houses but we are against it. Our [villagers'] suggestion is to exchange with Azerbaijan the 850-hectare Armenian area near the Berkaber reservoir currently under Azeri control with the highway near Voskepar so our houses won't be affected. //
MAYOR of KIRANTS (on the border): The only thing villagers care about is peace. Pashinyan informed us that [Armenian] villages won't be surrendered and that this is a delimitation process. As for Azerbaijan's demands, it's about 4 villages of Azerbaijan. We also have Armenian territories currently under Azerbaijani control. We need to delimit the borders and return our territories. Pashinyan agrees with us. We need to return territories belonging to 31 Armenian villages. //
Since the borders are twisted in this region, some villagers wanted to know if they'll be able to use existing roads to reach pastures or neighboring settlements without having to cross the Azeri border after the delimitation. Pashinyan collected the residents' questions and will meet them again "several times" with more answers "before a decision is made", said the participants. "There is no final decision on anything yet."
AREG KOCHINYAN (analyst): The topic is the delimitation of territories immediately on the border, not the enclaves. Azerbaijan wants "4 Azerbaijani villages" that are immediately on the border. The first step is to agree to use maps that hold legal power. It will be a great diplomatic accomplishment if Azerbaijan agrees to use legal maps and principles for the entire AM-AZ border delimitation process in exchange for starting the delimitation from these 4 villages. Lack of agreement around legal maps is the #1 issue stalling the peace process today. The #2 issue is the unblocking of communications. It's worth noting that Turkey's Foreign Minister Fidan recently used the term "route" instead of "corridor". I have noticed a similar trend in Azerbaijan as well.
REPORTER: Why are the political forces that always accuse Pashinyan of "surrendering" things, for example, HHK Edward Sharmazanov, also criticizing Pashinyan for NOT surrendering a Zangezur corridor to Russia? Sharmazanov said we would not have lost Nagorno-Karabakh had Pashinyan agreed to give the Zangezur corridor.
AREG KOCHINYAN: It's not really "surrendering" when you fight until the end and sometimes are forced to step back. We did not surrender Nagorno-Karabakh, which is why we had the war. As for surrendering a corridor to Russia, we have surrendered many things to Russia over the last 30 years. Did that help us? Armenian leaders, including Pashinyan, took steps to appease Russia, up until mid-2022. And what was the result of that? Just accept the fact that Turkey and Azerbaijan are far more valuable to Russia. This is the root of problems. Period. To blame Armenia for the deeds of others is mankurtism.
REPORTER: Ukraine chose Europe. See what happened to Ukraine?
AREG KOCHINYAN: Armenia chose Russia over Europe in 2013. See what happened to Armenia? Why do we need Russia anymore if we don't have Nagorno-Karabakh?
REPORTER: ... so they can protect our border with Turkey.
AREG KOCHINYAN: Does anyone believe the Russian army will open fire at the Turkish army and stop them if they decide to invade Armenia? How long are we going to be this naïve?
source, source, video, source, source, source, source,

did Israel cancel the sale of some weapons to Azerbaijan?

On March 11 the press reported that Israel sold a Sky Dew "flying radar" to Azerbaijan. It's a system manufactured jointly with the US. Unnamed Israeli sources have since informed Shepher Media that the report was false.
The source says Israel is exercising caution because of the US's heavy diplomatic involvement in the AM-AZ peace process. There is no outright "order" from Washington not to sell weapons, but Israel has decided not to approve the sale of certain systems, says the source.
The source says Azerbaijan is also attempting to purchase heavier warheads and electronic warfare systems.
The source confirmed the earlier reports that Azerbaijan wants to acquire two surveillance satellites with a resolution of <1 meter.
source,

Azerbaijan agreed to host U.S. envoy Bono after shunning him earlier this year

Bono and FM Bayramov discussed the AM-AZ peace process in Baku despite Aliyev's earlier complaints that the U.S. is "biased".
source,

Armenian manufacturer begins producing toothpaste with fruit flavor

The manufacturer imports the ingredients from the UK and Germany and produces 5,000/day with flavors of apricot, watermelon, etc. They plan to export some of it to CIS and the Middle East.
The production launched in December after a $0.5 million investment and tax breaks with the help of Enterprise Armenia - the country's National Investment Agency.
video,

Yerevan municipality goes berserk on illegal ad banners and billboards: VIDEO

2,000 removed in 2 months. They were removed from streets, bus stops, and building façades.
It's a result of a new ordinance approved last year that gave non-compliant ad owners until the end of the year to remedy the issue to avoid removal.
The new law specifies the locations authorized for ads and their aesthetic standards. Shop owners are given example images showing where the entrance ads are allowed, the ratios, the height from the ground, etc.
The city sent inspectors to remove non-compliant ads from Baghramyan Ave last year. Similar enforcement is planned elsewhere this year: Halabyan, Kievyan St, Kievyan Bridge & adjacent, Sasna Tsrer, Tigran Petrosyan, Komitas, and Hrachya Kochar.
video,

Yerevan municipality continues to replace illegal garages and fences in condo backyards with playgrounds and gardens: VIDEO

video,

Yerevan is bribing dog owners ahead of a potentially unpopular decision: VIDEO

The city is building a dog park in the Arabkir district, similar to the ones built in several other districts.
The city says they soon plan to require dog owners to microchip666BillGates their pets, so these parks are a bribe to keep the potentially unhappy owners quiet.
The city will also launch the construction of a large concentration camp for stray dogs.
Glory to Arstotzka.
Long live cats.
video,

3D model of the proposed renovation and expansion of Yerevan Zoo: VIDEO

Last year the government delimited the Zoo's borders and realized it owns an additional 5 hectares adjacent to it. A development plan was drafted.
The zoo is buying new cages because it has animals that aren't being displayed to visitors due to a lack of appropriate enclosures.
New animals: White tiger, African goats, African hyena-like wild dogs.
This year: New alleys, POIs, educational guides, new cages.
A bus in front of Yeritasardakan subway station will take you to the zoo free of charge on weekends, starting in May.
Bunka the elephant needs sexy time so they are going to get a female after expanding the enclosure this year.
video,

government discussed the Academic City

PASHINYAN: In the long run, every university should move out of Yerevan and Kentron to the Academic City [15-20 minutes with public transport]. There should be no university in Armenia outside of Academic City. Today we have 60 "universities" across Armenia with a massive administrative overhead, 60 rectors, 120 vice-rectors, hundreds of deans, and close to a thousand vice-deans.
So it is not surprising that whenever we talk about the reforms of the university system, certain tensions arise because we are talking about depriving thousands of people of their statuses from their point of view.
This is a strategic area for Armenia yet none of these universities meet international standards; they would all shut down if we were to introduce EU standards today, or if we attempted to enforce our domestic requirements. That is how the idea of Academic City was born. They simply don't meet the standards, even physical facility standards. Their infrastructure and modern education are incompatible.
By the way, these 60 universities sometimes drag us into international scandals that affect Armenia's reputation. There are tens of publications on international outlets about the corruption and fake diplomas by Armenian universities. We can't enforce the rules on universities selectively so the entire field needs a rework.
After the reforms and the relocation to the Academic City, the existing university buildings must be managed by a reputable international organization and the revenue from their utilization should be used for the development of universities. //
The Academic City will have 6 clusters: educational, arts, technology, classic, medical, and military. The arts cluster will include the Conservatory, the Academy of Fine Arts, Taterakan, and several other cultural structures. The government is cooperating with Western universities to form the clusters.
PASHINYAN (November): We should focus on quality over quantity. Today we have "universities" in provinces with standards so low that they shouldn't be called universities at all. After the establishment of Academic City, the only place you will find universities in Armenia will be the Academic City. In provinces, we will develop colleges with higher standards to train experts so people can remain in their communities and find jobs if they wish. You won't be required to attend a university to be skilled and financially successful. Today Armenia has a shortage of skilled welders. They get paid very high wages but this field has been neglected for years and there is not enough interest in it. We can't have a so-called "university" on every corner. It has led to quality issues that we are forced to deal with today. Those who want to study will be able to study. This isn't about there not being a university "close enough" to someone's community and them having to travel to Yerevan. They will be able to get admitted, travel there, and study in a large academic environment that promotes education. I'm from a province myself. When you travel to a new environment and become part of a big educational system, it changes your mindset, it becomes part of your education. We need to teach young students to get out of their homes and see the world. Gaining this experience is part of becoming an adult. After all, mom and dad aren't going to hold your hand your entire life. Living an independent life and having to gain new skills to resolve your new problems is also education. When I was a newspaper editor, one time a man in his 50s entered my office with his daughter in her 20s. "Hello. I want my daughter to work at your publication." I told him that the job of a journalist is a very serious one. If your adult child doesn't have the determination to independently come and apply, are you going to sit down with her during interviews and write the articles with her? We need to end the practice of holding a child's hand forever. Let them go see the world. Then you wonder why they don't have a job and courage. You are not giving them an opportunity to face challenges. Release them from the incubator. They need to travel to the Academic City, enter the new campus, engage with new people and a new environment, and learn to resolve new problems. Our students will cooperate with foreign students in Academic City and gain new experiences. Engaging with a foreigner, a foreign culture, is also a prerequisite for training good diplomats. //
source, source, source,

German scientists bring 2 robots to Armenia to test them for Mars mission

The Austrian Space Agency recently launched a project called "Amadee-24" in Armenia to train international astronauts for future Mars missions. Germans are testing new robots and astronaut suits. Scientists believe that humanity needs another 15 years to set foot on Mars.
Deutsche Forscher üben Suche nach Außerirdischen, soure,

this winter was the hottest in 57 years in Armenia

2023-2024: -1.48C avg.
1961-1990: -5.5C avg.
source,

So I want to get something straight before you read this and get the pitchforks out: I actually DO support most rewilding projects. With the exception of the more outlandish one's (such as resurrecting mammoths, using extant lions as American lion proxies in Texas etc, which despite their popularity online, are actually not nearly as well supported by mainstream biologists and conservationists alike as fans of these ideas think), I tend to support most of these projects and my only protests tend to be more along the lines of pointing out flaws that could cause setbacks, rather than a genuine desire to have them not go through (think of lynxes in the UK. They could very well survive on the British Isles from an ecological point of view, but my suspicion of the lack of tolerance they’ll receive would make me advise against it. At least, for now). Bison? Make them more free range. Jaguars? Get 'em back in Arizona. Wolves? Keep 'em coming. This is about me wanting to talk about a problem I've noticed, and I want to address it, with papers, books and other sources being cited when necessary.
But that being said, there is something that does really bother me about rewilding: there is often very little empathy towards the people who have to live with these animals. A very recent example is the wolf situation in Colorado. Now, I do think a lot of the fears of those who oppose it are unfounded. We all know the wolves aren't going to wipe out everything in sight, or kill people en masse. I find the concerns of deer hunters even more bizarre when you realise just how many wild ungulates live in Colorado, and the US in general. But there are still some genuine concerns that ranchers have that I feel are justified. After all, they didn't want the animals there, but they're going to be the one's dealing with them. While I fully support the wolf reintroduction, I understand very well why locals might have voted against it. I do have some concerns for how the wolves were reintroduced, but that warrants an entirely different thread all on its own.
Now, in the case of Colorado though, I am honestly not too worried. As I said, many of the fears aren't super well founded. Generally, people in the West (keep in mind, GENERALLY) speaking have systems in place for livestock compensation, have better access to non-lethal methods to protect livestock and while losing money and livestock is never fun, they can generally financially recover better from this. In the EU, governments will even subsidise non-lethal protections such as guard dogs and fences. And when predators attack people, these are often either extremely rare incidents, provoked or they happen to people unnecessarily putting themselves in a dangerous position. No one asked you to hike in grizzly country, afterall. That was your own choice and you were aware of the risks. Your livelihood and survival didn’t depend on needing a recreational activity. My main concerns here are mainly Asia and Africa, where people don’t have such luxuries.
We all love elephants, tigers, lions, crocodiles and other amazing animals that are no doubt important to their ecosystems. But it can't be denied that the people who live around them don't always benefit from them and can even experience harm from them. Keep in mind, people who live in many of these countries are not well off. They have no social safety nets, live in harsh circumstances and don't have much financial stability. They need to rely on their livestock and crops a lot more than your average Westerners do, and suffer greatly when this is impacted. Let's take Mongolia for example. A snow leopard killing a single livestock animal there, can amount to up to 42% of an annual capita loss for families there. Families there who don't have much. And this is a trend everywhere. People in the west generally lose much less to predators then those in Asia and Africa, yet tend to be far more compensated for it. To these people, losing one or two cows can be a literal death sentence, as many of the regions this happen in are riddled with poverty. ( The unequal burden of human-wildlife conflict Communications Biology (nature.com). A study done in Tigray, Ethiopia examined how much locals lost to spotted hyenas in terms of livestock. Now, Ethiopia has a high degree of tolerance towards spotted hyenas (which is fortunate, as recent research shows that the species may be doing worse than we thought), and on paper, spotted hyenas don't do much damage. Even less than 1% of livestock was lost in the region to the hyenas. But while this doesn't seem much on paper, you need to view this in context too. If you're a poor sod in this area with only a few goats and hyenas eat two of those, you're in a world of trouble ( Peri-urban spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) in Northern Ethiopia: diet, economic impact, and abundance European Journal of Wildlife Research (springer.com).
It's easy to (and indeed, I've seen it often happen) to simply say that people need to protect their livestock better or that they just need to adapt, often cited with numerous benefits the animals bring. This is very much true, as I will never deny the animals don't have benefits. We all know which one's they are as well and ecosystem services are sorely needed. But at the same time, in regions such as Tigray or rural Mongolia where a hyena or snow leopard raiding livestock can result in your children starving, that message doesn't always hit home. But loss of livestock isn't the only reason why locals might not want to happen in their backyard. Human losses of life are very much also a thing to consider.
In Tanzania, Rufiji and Lindi to be precise, around 1000 people have been attacked by lions as of 2007, a number that keeps increasing. More than half of these were fatal. These attacks happen in wildlife-depleted areas and the lions therefore turn to an easy prey: humans (Human and ecological risk factors for unprovoked lion attacks on humans in Southeastern Tanzania — Experts@Minnesota (umn.edu) and (PDF) Lion attacks on humans in Tanzania (researchgate.net)). Keep in mind, the vast majority of people that were attacked weren’t some hikers out recreating, nor were they tourists breaking the rules and trespassing into dangerous territory, and they weren’t out to poach or hunt lions either. These are people working their crops, defending their fields from bushpigs or going to get water or supplies. In other words, they need to put themselves in dangerous circumstances in order to survive. And when doing so, they risk being predated on by lions. And given many of these attacks involved lions actively entering human settlements and even breaking into homes, one can’t really argue that they were feeling threatened either. These were predatory, unprovoked attacks by hungry cats that deemed humans a good source of food.
Is it humanity’s fault at large that the lions are attacking people? Given they happen in very prey depleted regions, certainly. It's easy to guess who is responsible for killing all those herbivores. But I don’t think I need to explain why a woman who lost their bread-winning husband to a lion attack while tending the fields, or a father who waved his son goodbye when he went to get water from the nearest source (which can be miles away) and never came back home won’t be comforted by these facts.
On the Indian subcontinent, we see a similar pattern. People in far off, rural regions of India and Nepal, much like the denizens of rural Tanzania, often have no choice but to venture out into the forests for various tasks. While you (and I am making an assumption here about most people who will read this, including myself) are heated up by a heater or able to get firewood from nearby, these people will have no choice but to enter the forests in order to be able to warm themselves and their families. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of tiger victims are those that are poor, rural and often require to enter the forests for their survival. Much like the Tanzanian lion victims, these people don’t have a choice. They have to venture out and risk their lives to provide for their families. And with tigers increasing in numbers but their range and available habitat decreasing, conflict in some regions are also increasing. Nepal in particular saw a rise in tigers. A great success in conservation, myself included (Despite my hyena-themed name, the tiger ranks very closely as a favourite animal as well) celebrated, but not without costs. Between 2007-2014, around 45 people were attacked by tigers in Chitwan National Park alone, the majority of which were fatal. And just like with the lions in Tanzania, most of these attacks were predatory attacks on poor rural people that were collecting essential resources at the wrong time and in the wrong place. (Living with tigers Panthera tigris: patterns, correlates, and contexts of human–tiger conflict in Chitwan National Park, Nepal Oryx Cambridge Core). The Indian subcontinent also has the unfortunate habit of treating the remaining family members of tiger victims, widows in particular, as cursed outcasts.
One megafaunal predator rises above any cat, bear, hyena or wolf though. And that is the crocodile. Perhaps the animal that kills the most people each year, crocodiles are a grave threat to those that have to live with them. Water is essential. People drink it, use it to irrigate their crops or fish in them to sustain themselves. Everyone needs water. And humans are certainly no exception. And when doing this, they put themselves in great danger. Crocodiles have no issues preying on people, regardless of whether there is other game available for them to eat. In 2006-2008, around 134 people were killed and 36 more were injured in various rural, frequently poor districts in Mozambique. This can amount to one person roughly every week. (PDF) Human-wildlife conflict in Mozambique: A national perspective, with emphasis on wildlife attacks on humans (researchgate.net).
Moving away from carnivores entirely, let’s take a look at an animal that people who live alongside perhaps despise the most, and one I know will upset many people here: elephants. Both in Africa and Asia, elephants are amongst the animals that people will complain about the most and retaliate against. And people that do so have generally good reasons for it. Elephants can be very destructive towards crops, and once again this often happens in areas where people can’t afford such losses. But elephants are also dangerous in their own right. In 2022, over 200 elephants were moved to Kasungu in Malawi, one of the most ambitious relocation projects up to date in my opinion. Mere days after the elephants arrived, they started killing people and trampling crops. As of 2024, seven people have died and numerous injuries have occurred. This project happened without the local’s consent, input or safety in mind, proving by the fact fences meant to keep the pachyderms away were not even finished when the animals arrived. (Death toll rises to seven in Malawi elephant relocation project linked to Prince Harry NGO Global development The Guardian). It's unfortunately not a different story in Asia. In a six year period in Hazibaragh, Indian elephants killed around 242 people. This was more than the number of victims from wolves, sloth bears, leopards, tigers and striped hyenas combined. (ResearchGate, page 26). Am I advocating for elephants to be shot? No, I’m not. But do I understand why someone who lives alongside them might? I certainly do.
It's clear that living alongside these animals, while certainly not impossible, is not without danger and challenge. And yet, I find people (especially from the West) tend to simplify, downplay or even downright dismiss or ignore these very real issues that have an impact on conservation. Frankly, I have noticed they will offer simplified solutions to complex problems they often don't understand, but will still judge and belittle people when they take matters into their own hands. It's very easy to judge a group of Indian villagers for killing crocodiles or tigers in retaliation for loss of livestock or their fellow men, when you aren’t feeling the effects of living alongside such formidable predators. It's not your food supply that was depleted, or your neighbour that was devoured by something after all. Many conservation and rewilding projects, both real and proposed, dismiss or downplay the human factor. At most there is talk of compensation (and in many countries, this frequently goes wrong due to mismanagement, corruption or other causes. And besides, if your brother was eaten by a tiger, how would you feel if the local forest guard just waved some money at you and called it a day? If you’re even offered such compensation in the first place, that is…), but it ends there. I am genuinely appalled by the lack of empathy many people have for these folk. They’re human like you and me, and many of them are attacked unprovoked while they go about their daily lives, trying to survive day to day. In that regard, I suppose we aren’t that different from non-human animals. But my point remains: we turn a blind eye when these people suffer, but when they retaliate and kill the animals that harm them, we suddenly are all too eager to point fingers, even if we were all too willing to ignore the circumstances that led to such tragedies in the first place.
Now I know someone will inevitably say: what about tourism? Indeed, many will say that ecotourism more than makes up any trouble the animals might give. Now, it is true that ecotourism is extremely important. It makes people appreciate wildlife, can finance conservation and allows local communities to profit from it too. But tourism isn’t a magical way to fix everything. In order to draw enough tourists to sustain a community, you need something to want them to come. Then you need infrastructures and facilities to transport and house them. And you need to convince them to spend money locally. All easier said than done. And, to put it bluntly, you don’t need every animal to draw tourists in. One or two less lions or elephants that were known troublemakers less aren’t going to suddenly stop the flow of tourism you might get. It's also not guaranteed that the money made from tourism goes to people who suffer the costs from having the animals around. So there is an argument to be made that tourism does not always balance out the issues local communities gain from them. And before anyone says it, no, this is not advocating for trophy hunting. Afterall, for that to work, you need a decent population of those animals around as well. So you’ll run into the same issues. Ecotourism and trophy hunting share more problems than people on either side like to admit. Both can be affected by local corruption or poor ethics (unstainable trophy hunting for example, or poor guiding ethics that harm the animals tourists wish to see, such as is the case with cheetahs in Kenya Cheetah-Paper.pdf (marapredatorconservation.org), or how rampant tourism affects wildebeest migrations Nature Tourism is Killing Wildebeest Season 41 Episode 1 Arkansas PBS (myarkansaspbs.org)), but that is an entirely different discussion. Besides, there’s plenty of examples of local communities being forced off their ancestral lands to make way for luxury safaris and trophy hunting alike. It's unfortunately all too common for people to be displaced, and conservation doesn’t always happen because of it. Attempts in 1977 to reintroduce Asiatic lions to Lake Parishan didn’t occur on the account that locals protested against it. And if we’re being perfectly honest with ourselves, can we blame them for not wanting a potentially large and dangerous predator around? That isn’t to say we shouldn’t support any reintroduction efforts at all, of course. I’d personally love for Asiatic lions to roam around Iran. But I’m also in a privileged position where I’m not being forced to deal with the consequences.
Adding insult to injury is that we often dehumanise these people, albeit perhaps not always intentionally. Attacks on people in Asia and Africa aren’t often covered in detail. At most, you get an article about a nameless fisherman that was killed by a crocodile, or three people that were trampled by an elephant. Their names are rarely mentioned. Meanwhile, Westerners that are attacked by animals make the news night after night. When wildlife researcher Gotz Neef was attacked by a lion in Botswana, this was a big deal. Numerous news articles were written, it appeared on the news across the world and it was frequently talked about in various circles. Neef lived to tell the tale but in 2018, the Kenyan Maasai Kirui was killed by a lion while guarding his cattle. If you have never heard of Kirui, don’t worry, almost no one has. Outside of Kenya, this fatality barely received attention and the international sources that do talk about the incident rarely mention the man by name. With that in mind, perhaps you might also understand why the reaction of people in Zimbabwe didn’t react with nearly as much outrage as those in the West did over Cecil the lion’s death. They have much bigger concerns and issues than a singular lion. And also keep in mind that, while the West freaks out over the extremely rare (and usually not fatal) cougar attack, some villages in Nepal have to deal with the same amount of tiger attacks in less than a year, that the entire US has with cougar accidents in a century. Yet one of these receives far more attention than the other.
But perhaps the biggest example of this would be Kaziranga National Park. Kaziranga is often hailed as a conservation success story, in part due its population of rhinos and other endangered animals. But this came at a cost: human rights were undeniably infringed. Numerous locals were displaced, are not well compensated for their losses and to make matters worse, they are often shot by the forest guards. I’m sure we all know the policy of Kaziranga rangers to shoot poachers on sight in order to protect the wildlife. But many of the people shot aren’t poachers. They’re just regular people trying to reach a different place, or gathering resources. Kaziranga’s policies push the local communities deeper into poverty, which ironically makes them turning to poaching all the more likely. Poaching is in many cases often just a result of poverty, afterall. The locals, even if they don’t engage in the practice themselves, will also often shelter and assist poachers, even something as small as simply not telling the authorities about them. They don’t trust the authorities. And if you were a poor woodsman on the fringes of Kaziranga fearing for a bullet in the head whenever you wanted to gather firewood, would you?(As Kaziranga National Park spreads, residents tear down their homes before they are evicted (scroll.in) and To the PM, From Kaziranga: An Open Letter Decrying Displacement, Human Rights Violations (thewire.in)
Now, if you’ve read this far down with an open mind and still haven’t downvoted this, you might think I don’t support conservation, rewilding, reintroductions or anything of the sort, and that I think potentially dangerous animals should be shot at even the slightest suspicion of causing harm. And you would be extremely wrong. I fully support such projects within reason, and I am a massive advocate for non-lethal control and giving animals the benefit of the doubt. I’ve made more than one person upset by defending wolves, and my actual job involves teaching people about appreciating wildlife and nature in general. Animals, and nature in general, are and always will be a huge part of my life. But I also can’t pretend that innocent people being killed or financially ruined for the sake of conservation isn’t a problem. Does that mean we should stop with conservation? Of course not! But the human aspect of conservation is something we should consider.
Local communities should have a say in how the wildlife around them is managed. A fantastic example would be the Snow Leopard Trust Foundation. Earlier I mentioned Mongolia, a region where snow leopard predation on livestock can cause massive harm to the locals. But rather than just wagging their fingers at the locals if they even think about shooting one of the cats, people of the SLTF instead involved the local communities in snow leopard conservation. The communities have benefited greatly from this. They have better protections against the snow leopard’s potential raids and the average income of families who have chosen to engage with the SLTF have increased by more than 40%! (Turning the Tide: Mongolian Conservationists Create a Future for Snow Leopards by Snow Leopard Trust Medium). This proves that local communities should have a say in what happens to their home. Whether they are an Indian woodcutter, an Indonesian fisherman or a Tanzanian farmer, all want to live and provide for their families and communities. They have a right to know and decide on how their lives are affected, rather than be ignored or judged. If you wouldn’t like the idea of a large, dangerous animal wrecking your backyard or devouring your friends, chances are they don’t like it either. Local communities, while not universally great at conservation of course, can do great things for the land they call home, such as when the Colville Tribes of Hellgate restored a land once wrecked by ranching. (How the Colville Tribes are restoring traditional lands and wildlife - High Country News (hcn.org))
I think these five pointers are worth remembering.

1. Conservation is about more than just animals, or even ecosystems. It's also about people. People will always live alongside wildlife in various regions and how they do that will have massive impacts on both them and said wildlife.
2. Listen to the right voices. Sure, its eye catching to listen to a random celeb bottle feeding a lion with some heartbreaking music in the background, an animal right’s activist who tweets about things they don’t understand from the comfort of their home or someone who has clear benefit (Fore example, asking someone at Colossal will support mammoth de-extinction. But you’ll find it's actually much more difficult to find a professional expert who supports the idea once you look past the affiliated scientists and big names) or anyone of that category. But who is the flashiest, isn’t always right. Shaun Ellis and his ludacris claims may make for an entertaining documentary, but if you want actual knowledge on wolves, someone like David Mech is a much better source. Be critical in who you listen to and when you do, it's best to listen to the Ron Tilsons and George Schallers of the world and not the Joe Exotic’s or Doc Antle’s.
3. Don’t impose conservation. As I’ve hammered in by now, conservation is much more effective when local communities are involved. If you don’t keep their needs and concerns in mind, you’re going to be in for one nasty surprise after another, and those will have negative consequences on humans and animals alike. Not taking action when a tiger keeps picking off people in a village can eventually result in a mass killing in which many animals are slaughtered per retaliation, for example.
4. Accept that the conservation of large, potentially dangerous megafaunal animals is very complex and isn’t easily solved. We can say stuff like “poachers are bad”, “technology will develop”, “tourism/trophy hunting will fix everything” and “people just need to be more careful”, but they are not real solutions. Not even close. They’re just excuses and hand waves, all while both people and animals pay the price. The sooner you accept that conservation of these animals and balancing their needs with those of their environment and the human denizens of the regions they occur in, the better. There’s no magical fix for all solutions. It requires hard work, great thinking, in depth teamwork and much, much more. If you genuinely think just introducing a species somewhere, implementing a rule or giving a donation is going to solve most if not all issues, you honestly don’t know enough about the subject you’re discussing.
5. Have some empathy. Chances are, you’ll never have to witness your child’s face being torn apart by a hyena, hear your neighbour being mauled by a lion in his own home or come across the remains of your friend after he was dragged into the river by a crocodile. But for many people across the world, these are very real scenarios that can and have happened to them. Ignoring or downplaying such things may make us feel better, but it's also unethical and will create problems for the animals we wish to preserve down the line.

If we want people and wildlife to be able to coe-exist, it takes great effort and involving local communities to do this and minimise damage and conflict the best we can, for man and animal alike. And a good start would be to take issues people might have with rewilding seriously, rather than dismiss it. We might support such projects, but they’ll be the one’s experiencing the consequences, for better or worse. And I think it's in everyone’s best interest to make sure the good outweighs the bad.
Alright, my essay/rant is done.
EDIT: I am very pleasantly suprised most people responded positively to this thread! I'm glad there can be aknowledgement that conservation and rewilding of megafauna is complex with many nuanced shades of gray. I am severely dissapointed in some genuine racist stuff that was also posted in response, but I'm glad that is the minority.