Cool pictures out of symbols on keyboard
Cats and keyboards
2014.01.28 02:38 Cats and keyboards
Pictures and videos of cats on keyboards.
2009.02.25 08:00 pallaviwensil r/Spanish: Learn, teach or discuss the 2nd most spoken language by natives
This is the biggest Reddit community dedicated to discussing, teaching, and learning Spanish. Answer or ask questions, share information, stories, and more on themes related to the 2nd most spoken language in the world by native speakers.
2012.03.05 16:44 ts87654 for cosplayers, by cosplayers
This is a subreddit specifically for people who cosplay and people looking to cosplay. Want to share the outfit you just made? Share it here! Want some advice on a costume? Ask here! Want to show some cool pics you took at the last convention you went to? Post them here!
2024.05.29 12:22 Flaky-Elderberry-968 The Ultimate Guide to Jackets for Women: Elevate Your Wardrobe with Style and Versatility
 | When it comes to creating a stylish and functional wardrobe, jackets for women are indispensable. Whether you're aiming for a chic look or need a practical layer for changing weather, a good jacket can be a game-changer. This guide will explore various styles, including velvet jackets, crop jackets, and summer jackets, helping you make informed choices to elevate your fashion game. submitted by Flaky-Elderberry-968 to u/Flaky-Elderberry-968 [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/3lgt4qagdc3d1.jpg?width=600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=369c80166d21b3eb142e16ac06c3322dccbf0b29 The Timeless Appeal of Velvet Jackets for Women Velvet jackets have been a symbol of luxury and sophistication for centuries. Their rich texture and sheen make them perfect for both casual and formal occasions. A velvet jacket women can be a versatile addition to your wardrobe, offering warmth and style in equal measure. Why Choose a Velvet Jacket?
Staying on top of fashion trends can be a challenge, but incorporating stylish jackets for women into your wardrobe can keep you ahead of the curve. From bold colors to unique cuts, there are countless options to express your personal style. Trending Styles
Crop jackets for women have made a significant comeback in recent years. These shorter jackets are perfect for highlighting your waistline and adding a modern twist to your outfits. Why Choose a Crop Jacket?
Summer jackets for women are essential for those cooler summer evenings or air-conditioned environments. The key is to choose lightweight fabrics and breathable designs. Best Summer Jacket Materials
Incorporating various types of jackets into your wardrobe can significantly enhance your style and versatility. Whether you prefer the luxurious feel of a velvet jacket, the modern flair of a crop jacket, or the practicality of a summer jacket, there's a perfect option out there for every occasion. By mixing and matching these styles, you can create endless fashionable outfits that keep you comfortable and chic throughout the year. Remember, the key to pulling off any look is confidence. Wear your chosen jacket with pride, and you'll be sure to turn heads wherever you go. |
2024.05.29 11:55 M1L5K1 Anyone know why this is happening?
Hi would anyone know how to fix this issue I have.
I turned my pc on last night after 3 months of no activity everything was working fine, was updating everything I needed to for example windows updates and drivers.
After updating I had to restart my pc for the changes to take effect, as the pc was restarting It loaded up bios and prompted me to update which I did. After it had finished, then restarted and that's where I now have an issue.
Since then my monitor will not pick up a picture, keyboard does not come on and same as my GPU.
I've done checks and can confirm that keyboard and monitor still works if plugged into my PS5.
USB ports are giving out power still as anything else I connect turns on, except my keyboard.
I've tried CMOS reset and I've also tried bios q flash to latest bios version. One thing to add regarding that is when I do do that, q flash light turns off after around 6 mins but power supply does not shut down even after an hour.
I've also tried different source and also plugged source into mother board but still no display.
Any ideas of anything else I can try ? TIA
submitted by M1L5K1 to PcBuild [link] [comments]
I turned my pc on last night after 3 months of no activity everything was working fine, was updating everything I needed to for example windows updates and drivers.
After updating I had to restart my pc for the changes to take effect, as the pc was restarting It loaded up bios and prompted me to update which I did. After it had finished, then restarted and that's where I now have an issue.
Since then my monitor will not pick up a picture, keyboard does not come on and same as my GPU.
I've done checks and can confirm that keyboard and monitor still works if plugged into my PS5.
USB ports are giving out power still as anything else I connect turns on, except my keyboard.
I've tried CMOS reset and I've also tried bios q flash to latest bios version. One thing to add regarding that is when I do do that, q flash light turns off after around 6 mins but power supply does not shut down even after an hour.
I've also tried different source and also plugged source into mother board but still no display.
Any ideas of anything else I can try ? TIA
2024.05.29 11:39 Chas-- Nikken's End 1A: The Survivor Gita [Part I: The Roles]
"What distinguished the Indian system from that of the ancient Western world is the absence of slavery. The caste system made formal slavery unnecessary in ancient India." - from The Two Classes of the Four-Fold Caste System, by Sudheer Birodkar.In Nikken's Threefold World, which is "the world of unenlightened beings who transmigrate within the Six Paths" [Hell, Hunger, Animality, Anger, Humanity and Heaven] ... the 1st chapter describes the structure of Nikken's World of Heaven.
Table of Contents
Part I: The Roles- The Hindu Caste System and Brahminism
- The Nichiren Shoshu priesthood and Nikken Abe
- The First Rank of Nichiren Shoshu (Brahmin Caste - Priests and Teachers)
- The Second Rank of Nichiren Shoshu (Kshatriya Caste - Warriors and Proxy Rulers)
- The Third Rank of Nichiren Shoshu (Vaishya Caste - Farmers, Merchants, Artisans, etc.)
- The Fourth Rank of Nichiren Shoshu (Shudra Caste - Laborers)
- The Fifth Rank of Nichiren Shoshu (Untouchable Caste or Eta - Polluted Laborers)
- Definition of Heaven (Ten)
- Getting Some Help
- The Survivor Gita
What I will attempt to do in this polemical series laced with satire, is to give a view from which the seeming random or enigmatic quality of the various moves made by the priesthood, can be revealed to be more predictable and easy to understand.
In the analytic method that I have chosen, the grid for analysis, is the Hindu caste system.
The theme that will be employed to portray the flow of events to come is the "Survivor" series from CBS.
Think of it as the "Survivor Gita".
1. The Hindu Caste System and Brahminism
First, let's get a cursory understanding of what the phenomenon of "Brahminism" is all about.From "The Caste System and the Stages of Life in Hinduism", by Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D, (abridged):
The Bhagavad Gita says this about the varnas (color):An explicit Brahminist theocracy would be the Vatican, where the Pope and Cardinals = Brahmins, the Bishops = Kshatriyas, the Priests tending the flocks = Vaishyas, the Monks, Nuns and the Laity = Shudras, and finally the poor = Untouchables, except for once a year when the Pope washes a foot or two.
Brahmins (white) - Priests and Teachers: The works of a Brahmin are peace; self-harmony, austerity, and purity; loving- forgiveness and righteousness; vision and wisdom and faith.
Kshatriyas (red) - Warriors and Rulers: The works of a Kshatriya are: a heroic mind, inner fire, constancy, resourcefulness, courage in battle, generosity and noble leadership.
Vaishyas (Brown) - Farmers, Merchants, Artisans, etc.: The works of a Vaishya are trade, agriculture and the rearing of cattle.
Shudras (Black) - Laborers: The works of the Shudra are service.
Untouchables (Outcastes - no color) - Polluted Laborers.
[chapter 18, Juan Mascaró translation, Penguin Books, 1962]
Associated with each varna there is a traditional color. These sound suspiciously like skin colors; and, indeed, there is an expectation in India that higher caste people will have lighter skin -- although there are plenty of exceptions (especially in the South of India).
So, there are these visibly separable classes of people, which perform specific functions, and which form the basic hierarchical structure of ALL theocracies, explicit and implicit.
An implicit Brahminist theocracy would be the a 10-year-old high tech firm, where the Founder and the Board = Brahmins, the corporate officers and top managers = Kshatriyas, the middle management and technical leads = Vaishyas, the line managers and churn and burn salaried workers = Shudras, and finally the hourly, temp and out-sourced workers = Untouchables.
You get the picture. The need, which is held by all humanity, to improve their own and their family's condition ... is used to betray and undermine their own humanity and render the effect of slavery within a system that appears personally voluntary, however socially coercive it may be in reality.
Ross goes on ...
The twice born [Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas] account for about 48% of Hindus. The rest are Shudras and Untouchables. The Shudras may represent the institutional provision that the Arya made for the people they already found in India. The Shudras thus remain once born, and traditionally are not allowed to learn Sanskrit or study the Vedas. Their dharma is to work for the twice born. But even below the Shudras are the Untouchables, who are literally "outcastes," without a varna [color], and were regarded as "untouchable" because they are ritually polluting for caste Hindus. Some Untouchable subcastes are regarded as so polluted that members are supposed to keep out of sight and do their work at night: They are called "Unseeables." In India, the term "Untouchable" is now regarded as impolite or politically incorrect (like Eta in Japan for the traditional tanners and pariahs).These kinds of divisions of people only become more bitter, over time, as more and more distinctions need to be drawn to demonstrate clearly that one is not a part of a lower group. (Like the insanity of "Colored" water fountains in the South, when I was a child.)
Following the ritual tenets of animality and thereby preserving the pecking order become the overriding preoccupation of anyone desiring a better life. These demonic activities will ultimately attempt to occupy 100% of all human effort, since this particular evil is determined to undermine humanity's true mission of Kosen Rufu.
Ross finishes with ...
The Untouchables, nevertheless, have their own traditional professions and their own subcastes. Those professions (unless they can be evaded in the greater social mobility of modern, urban, anonymous life) involve too much pollution to be performed by caste Hindus: (1) dealing with the bodies of dead animals (like the sacred cattle that wander Indian villages) or unclaimed dead humans, (2) tanning leather, from such dead animals, and manufacturing leather goods, and (3) cleaning up the human and animal waste for which in traditional villages there is no sewer system. Mahâtmâ Gandhi referred to the latter euphemistically as "scavenging" but saw in it the most horrible thing imposed on the Untouchables by the caste system. His requirement on his farms in South Africa that everyone share in such tasks comes up in an early scene in the movie Gandhi. Since Gandhi equated suffering with holiness, he saw the Untouchables as hallowed by their miserable treatment and so called them "Harijans" (Hari=Vishnu). Later Gandhi went on fasts in the hope of improving the condition of the Untouchables, or at least to avoid their being politically classified as non-Hindus. Today the status of the Shudras, Untouchables, and other "scheduled castes," and the preferential policies that the Indian government has designed for their advancement ever since Independence, are sources of serious conflict, including murders and riots, in Indian society.If you had a difficulty in understanding precisely what tied together the "Gandhi, King and Ikeda" exhibits around the country ... perhaps the point will become abundantly clear after reading this article, since all three of these men fought to end the exploitation and oppression of a large number of hard-working common people, who supported a parasitic caste system.
Gandhi, King and Ikeda are the three Anti-Brahminist heroes of the Common People, for the modern era.
Some argue that the SGI has Brahminist tendencies, and like all human organizations, that is surely exists ... but it is also true that those tendencies are sporadic, impermanent and rapidly shifting as the SGI undergoes it's own human revolution with the broadening of the Soka Gakkai activities to include all places where Dai-Rokuten-No-Mao (the Devil King of the 6th Heaven, or arrogant authority) might appear in the leadership of any organization, or group.
But let's go a little further in understanding the phenomenon of Brahminism. And then we will talk about the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood, Nikken and his successors.
From "The Two Classes of the Four-Fold Caste System", by Sudheer Birodkar:
The Brahmin-Kshatriya combine was thus the appropriating section as against the Vaishya-Shudra combine who represented the productive section. But although the two appropriating and the two appropriated sections of society performed different functions like the ritual worship undertaken by the Brahmins, warfare by Kshatriyas, cultivation by the Vaishyas and menial work by the Shudras they were essentially two broad economic categories with antagonistic interests of sharing the social surplus product which only the Vaishyas and Shudra created.Dai-Rokuten-No-Mao is defined as the function of rapturous exploitation of the efforts of others, while grinding those others underfoot.
There is always a gloating rapture present. (Remember the gleeful pictures of those happy Southern men standing around a burning black corpse in the lynchings of last century? Remember how much they are enjoying themselves proudly in the Abu Ghraib pictures? It is the same function, the same demon.)
And there is always a hierarchy being enforced, which is a denial of the Lotus Sutra's universal equality.
Birodkar goes on ...
... Dana along with dakshina (a voluntary payment made to Brahmins for religious services which they rendered), has been represented as an offering to the clergy at our innumerable religious rites. Thus the spiritual clasp of the clergy on the general population came to play a vital role in appropriating the surplus in favour of the clergy, rendering coercion unnecessary and in perpetuating social practices which had lost relevance with day-to-day life.The reference to day-to-day life and social relevance is indicating that those activities which were initially tribal social functions involving redistribution of food in an agrarian tribal culture, were no longer serving the function of allowing farmers to survive a bad year, or a flood in one part of the locality not affecting another part.
Birodkar goes on ...
The clergy firmly rooted in the minds of the masses, ideas about Karma - faithfully carrying out of duties assigned to each person on virtue of being born in any particular caste. Ideas about rebirth fostered a belief that sufferings of this life were a result of deeds of one's past lives and the faithful execution of duties that fell upon one in one's present life would hold a promise of rebirth in a higher caste. With their minds enmeshed in such dogmas, the masses mutely accepted a secondary status in the social hierarchy for centuries together.The idea of waiting until the next time around, instead of enjoying this one and only precious instance of YOU, which will not recur in anyone's religious tradition ... this is the worst slander of humanity: wasting one's life, voluntarily, for the foul rapture of another.
2. The Nichiren Shoshu Priesthood, Nikken Abe and His Successors
There are many complaints about the behavior and activities of the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood, related to their pursuits of having a good time with bad women and expensive food, drink and parties with the member's money. It is not my intention to defend those activities, but my view of those activities is frankly, sociological. Impossibly bad and flagrantly unacceptable social behavior is to be expected when great evil is enthroned.So, I do not expect Nichiren Shoshu priests, especially the priesthood elite, to behave well. This is secondary. It is an effect or symptom, or think of it as the warning label on a pack of smokes, or the nuclear symbol on a container of Plutonium. (It lets you know that you should keep your distance, for safety.)
Indeed, in all cases when the correct practice of Nichiren's Buddhism is considered, secular issues fade into insignificance.
From Nichiren Daishonin's Gosho "On Prayer", WND p. 345:
It makes no difference if the practitioner himself is lacking in worth, defective in wisdom, impure in his person, and lacking in virtue derived from observing the precepts. So long as he chants Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, they [the protective functions] will invariably protect him. One does not throw away gold because the bag that holds it is dirty; one does not ignore the sandalwood trees because of the foul odor of the eranda trees around them; and one does not refuse to gather lotuses because the pond in the valley where they grow is not clean. If they ignore the practitioner of the Lotus Sutra, they will be going against their vow.The issue is the correct practice. THAT is my complaint against Nikken and his Nichiren Shoshu successors like Nichinyo.
From "Moral Philosophy and Dealings With Priests", written by myself (sorry about the self-quote):
THAT is my problem with Nikken and Nichiren Shoshu priests, in general. It is not that they hang out with bad women or good women.From the end of Nikko Shonin's 26 Admonitions:
- Nichiren Shoshu and the Hokkeko have always called themselves followers of Nikko's Fuji School, but from the beginning (1912) they have followed priests that disobey the 25th Admonition against sexual abstinence, and they have followed priests that were trained by Nichiren Shu (5 Senior Priests) at Rissho University - disobeying the 2nd Admonition, and hence according to Nikko they are not his followers, but are instead followers of the Five Senior Priests. (Nikko would have kicked them out of the Fuji School just for training at Rissho.)
"I have set forth these 26 articles for the sake of the eternal salvation and protection of humankind. Those who violate even one of these articles cannot be called disciples of Nikko."
In 1969, Daisaku Ikeda founded Soka University to train the future leaders of the Soka Gakkai, among others. This was a necessary move, because of the corruption seen in attitudes of Japanese Academics, and their determined resistance to recognizing the Soka Gakkai as a valid religious organization and worthy of respect. Witness the academic quotes in the LOOK Magazine article (1963) by the President of Rissho University, Rev. Shobun Kubota, D.T. Suzuki of Zen, and other academics, that the Soka Gakkai "can not be Buddhism".
' The Rev. Dr. Shobun Kubota, vice-president of Rissho University of Tokyo, concurs. "The principle of Buddhism," he says, "is to restrain man's desires, such as sex, hunger, wealth and fame, but Soka Gakkai promises the possession of these desires. It uses man's weaknesses as a tool for its own expansion. It has the same characteristics as Nazism. Finally, it is a corruption of Buddhism."' - LOOK Magazine, September 10, 1963
This from academic Buddhists who signed up unanimously, institution by institution, to bear the Shinto Talisman, and promote Imperial Way Buddhism and Imperial State Zen militarism for the God-Emperor. In support of that self-same Nazi Reich, while Makiguchi and Toda alone bore the brunt of oppression to the end. Such evil-doers call themselves Buddhists. Their tongues should rot in their mouths.
Soka University has created at least one academic environment where the Soka Gakkai can be viewed with objectivity by students. This was and remains an absolute good.
Nichiren Shoshu continued to allow the training of their future leaders by the Nichiren Shu Minobu Sect at Rissho University, even though they were aware that this was a slander of Nikko's school, and made them not followers of Nikko.
Excerpts from http://www.geocities.com/smimoza/vol275.html, the "Fake [High Priest]" Newsletter: "My view of the teachings of Nichiren Shoshu has been polluted with Minobu's wicked teachings," Nikken confessed at the opening ceremony for the Fuji Gakurin School (Dai- Nichiren, May 2000 edition).
Fuji Gakurin is the school that Nikken started to belatedly replace Rissho University as the source of priest trainees for Nichiren Shoshu. Apparently, he only took this action after people started talking about the 26 Admonitions publicly (Living Buddhism article by Daisaku Ikeda in 1998). The sad fact is, that Nichiren Shoshu has violated all 26, most by the letter of the admonition, but all 26 by their intent.
In relatively short order after being rebuked in 1998, Nikken officially opened the Fuji Gakurin School on April 10th, 2000. Many attended and heard his statements: Nichijun Fujimoto, Nichiyu Yoshida, Nitto (Juken) Ohmura, Nichijo (Gikan) Hayase, Nissho (Shinei) Yagi, Chief of the Overseas Department Kotoku Obayashi, Chief of the Public Relations Department Kogaku Akimoto and Vice Chief of the Study Department Kosho Mizushima.
Nikken went on to state that "he had been contaminated by Minobu's teachings"...
"I once attended the University run by Nichiren-shu. The hardest thing for me in my campus life was that the teacher said many false things about the teachings and history of Nichiren Daishonin. I had always thought that I should refute these false ideas. However, I cannot say that that was my true intention, because I was only a student."
"When we constantly hear false things, we will be caught up in false ways of thinking, or I can say, we will be trapped in it. As I recall my early days, false ideas did exist in my view of Nichiren Buddhism, especially regarding the legitimate teachings of Nichiren-shoshu. At that time, I was not able to straighten out my thoughts sufficiently from the viewpoint of faith, action, study.... If I were young now, I could study with you, young fellows, in these classes, taught by these engaged teachers."
But his distorted views from Rissho were not left there at the University.
We are reminded of Nikken's words on October 8th, 1985, when he attended the completion ceremony of Komyoji Temple, Hachioji City, Tokyo. Kotoku Hirayama, the chief priest of the temple, asked Nikken, "What is the biggest obstacle you had in your practice?" Nikken answered, "It is that I could not truly believe in the Gohonzon. I cannot believe truly now. I have to really try."
Also, we are reminded of Nikken's statement that "Daigohonzon is a fake" from the Kawabe memo. This statement seems to be influenced by the author of "view of wood honzon is false", Minobu priest Bentetsu Yasunaga, who is an associate professor at Minobu's Rissho University and chief priest of Zenshoji Temple.
'In recent years, the exchange of Minobu priests and Nikken sect priests has become more frequent. Monks of the Nikken sect make pilgrimages to temples of Minobu sect with Hokkeko members, or they invite Minobu monks to Taisekiji. General chief of the Hokkeko federation, Kisoji Yanagisawa, made a pilgrimage to Kuonji Temple, the general head temple of the Minobu sect. We [the Fake Newsletter] have mentioned this issue before, and even "Emyo," one of organ papers of Nikken sect, could not argue against this. Taisekiji priests Kaido Seki, Jikei Maekawa, Kosho Mizushima, Sonfuku Ochiai, Gishu Funabashi, all made visits to Minobu's temples themselves. They later made excuses during lectures at their temples or in their temple newsletters, saying, "We went and saw the temple but did not chant."...etc.'
The proof of Rissho's heritage is on their own website, the page on "History of Rissho":.
'Over 120 Years of Tradition and 70 Years of History as a Modern Educational Institution'
'No other institution of higher education in Japan has a longer tradition than Rissho University.'
'Our founding dates back to 1580 when the "Iidaka- Danrin School" was established to educate student priests of the Nichiren sect of Buddhism. The school took its name from its location, Iidaka Town, which is now Yoka- lchiba City in Chiba Prefecture. Some of the ancient wooden structures have been carefully preserved and form part of the Hanko-ji Temple. These structures include the lecture hall, gate, drum tower and bell tower, which are designated as "Important Cultural Assets" by the Government. The school closed its gates in 1875. During its 295-year history, it produced a great many talented figures who made prominent contributions to promoting Buddhism and education in Japan.'
'Shortly before it [Iidaka-Danrin School] was closed, the "Nichiren-shu Shukyo-in" (Nichiren Religious Academy) was established in 1872 at the Jokyo-ji Temple in Takanawa, Tokyo, to succeed the "Iidaka-Danrin School" in modern times.'
'In 1904, the Academy was moved to Osaki,Tokyo, the present site of the main campus of Rissho University.'
'Authorized by the Government ordinance concerning colleges issued that year [1904], it opened its gates as "Nichiren-shu Daigakurin" (Nichiren Religious College).'
'When the Government issued an ordinance concerning universities in 1924, the University was reorganized into Rissho University with Faculty of Letters newly opened. Its doors were opened to both Nichiren priests and ordinary students.'
Hence, Nikken is more than simply an enemy of the Soka Gakkai and a very bad High Priest at the Fuji School.
Nikken is clearly not a follower of Nikko's School and never has been at any time. He is a follower of the Five Senior Priests and a minion of Minobu, in spite of what his conscious mind tells him. Consciousness is, after all, only one of Five Components.
Nikko's intent on that is absolutely clear in the 25th Admonition:
25. My disciples should conduct themselves as holy priests, patterning their behavior after that of the late master. However, even if a high priest or a priest striving for practice and understanding should temporarily deviate from [the principle of] sexual abstinence, he may still be allowed to remain in the priesthood [as a common priest without rank].Nikko did not want the priesthood to be a self-sustaining community, where priesthood positions could be handed down to the kids, like a family business. He clearly intended that every priest should come from a family of lay believers, or spring forth spontaneously from the new membership.
(from Living Buddhism 4/1998)
This is abundantly clear, since abstaining priests cannot even donate to a sperm bank for artificial insemination. THEY CAN HAVE NO CHILDREN.
Frankly it is not my concern that that imposes an unhappy restriction on priests. Nichiren, Nikko, Nichimoku and Nichikan followed all 26 Admonitions abundantly well, and I only need to have those four priests in my life. I don't need any false priests that are lay-person wanna-bes.
And I am not the author of these restrictions, Nikko is. Argue with him (heh).
For myself, I have ABSOLUTELY no argument with Nikko, I follow all 26 of his admonitions, even the 2nd and the 25th: I will not lower his standards on training at Nichiren Shu or in accepting a priest who does not practice abstinence. PERIOD. Never. Not for anyone.
I will accept a priest that has never had any contact with, or priest-training from a follower of the Five Senior Priests (Nichiren Shu or Shoshu, or any other slanderous funeral Buddhism), and who practices abstinence and follows all 26 Admonitions of Nikko. From an excommunicated (Gakkai) family or off the street (common mortals are the true Buddha, according to Nichiren), either source is fine.
It is Nikko's undying determination in action ... that having violated any of the 26 Admonitions in a clear and obvious way ... one will then proceed to violate all the rest, including Admonition #1, which requires us to practice Buddhism in exactly the same way as Nichiren.
They may erect statues of Nichiren at Taisekiji and worship them, in the same way that the Tendai and Nichiren Shu worship statues of Shakyamuni, but there is ultimately no difference between these two slanders. Idolatry is not Nichiren's Buddhism. The Gohonzon is the "supreme object of devotion in all of Jambudvīpa."
From "The True Aspect of All Phenomena", WND p. 384:
A common mortal is an entity of the three bodies, and a true Buddha. A Buddha is a function of the three bodies, and a provisional Buddha. In that case, though it is thought that Shakyamuni Buddha possesses the three virtues of sovereign, teacher, and parent for the sake of all of us living beings, that is not so. On the contrary, it is common mortals who endow him with the three virtues."A common mortal is ... a true Buddha". And Nichiren and Shakyamuni are endowed with the three virtues of sovereign, teacher, and parent BY the common mortal, who is the true Buddha.
If Nichiren and Shakyamuni are somehow "special people", then we cannot match their accomplishment, and attain their Buddhahood.
They are NOT special humans. And we CAN attain their fierce determination for Kosen Rufu, which is no more and no less than their Buddhahood.
Indeed, we MUST attain that determination, or we shall surely fail to accomplish the ultimate intent of the Thus Come One (our true self).
This is why it is a slander for common mortals to worship statues of provisional Buddhas (they are all just humans, not objects of devotion).
This is why we have the Gohonzon, which reflects the Thus Come One inside our very own Sense Field = Six Components in Three Realms.
This is why we do shakubuku. The common mortal (true Buddha) we shakubuku endows the three virtues upon us, and that is our provisional Buddhahood. Without shakubuku, there is no Buddhahood.
So ... slander of Buddhism will always identify itself, by raising one person over another: over the common mortal. In the end, slanderers of the Law all make the same appearance, by worshiping statues of someone or other. (And, by the way, appreciation of your mentors: those who helped you along ... is NOT worship, it is merely showing your gratitude. We need to discard that fallacy.)
Next in Part II, we will apply the grid of the Hindu caste system to the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood. We will talk about some of the priesthood's socially unacceptable behavior, but really ... I only mention these instances to show pattern and connections between priest families.
2024.05.29 10:56 Heavy-Response-9700 I don’t think I can ever love my stepmom
I’m 16m now, i was 9 when she came into my life. My mum passed away when I was 8 and it took a hard toll on me. I didn’t expect my dad to get with another women a year later, and it made me upset because while he was in the honeymoon phase with her I was being sidelined and ignored. They’ll always deny this happening but everyone in my family agrees that I was put aside so that they could be in love. I only knew they were dating while on holiday in Canada, he’d FaceTime her every night and whenever I wanted to sleep with him in the same bed while he was on FaceTime with her he’d get angry at me and grumble about it before we’d sleep. I think our relationship together started off really negative but it just kept getting worse. I’d bring up my mum or wanting photos of my mum up but my dad would talk to me and tell me how it made my stepmom uncomfortable. We stopped having pictures on the wall by the time I was 11, not a single photo of her was up. The same goes for me, my step siblings have so many photos of them up and I have one from when I was in kindergarten. I know my stepmom never planned on having another child, so me being there is just something she has to put up with. I have never seen her as a mother figure, not even as a mentor or someone to look up to. If I had to choose a mother figure I’d say my aunt (mums sister) is the mother figure I’d always want and she’s like my mentor. Despite trying to I just can’t get along with her, she always seems to be in a bad mood, I talk about my day and she just shrugs it off. I’ve moved schools and was telling her how I’ve made a friend group and it was the same old “oh that’s great” as she sits down and watches TV. Something that will forever rub me the wrong way is the fact she told me she was glad my mum died, she said it in front of my dad and my dad didn’t care. She told me how if my mum was alive then she could have made me hate her by telling her lies, even though we probably wouldn’t even be in this situation since my dad and mum loved each other a lot and I don’t think would get a divorce. It upsets me that my dad lets her shame me, I eat things after school and she talks about how I’m going to get fat even though I eat healthy and go to the gym and walk everyday. My parents believe that everything I do is because I am copying other people, they never believe me when I say I want to do things or that I enjoy things out of the norm for them. It makes it hard to talk to them because it’s like I try to be open but it’s never taken seriously. I’ve talked about how I want to go to university but they keep talking about how I’m going to go to unitech once I graduate which is something I don’t want to do. They have this ideal life style of how I look in the future when it’s not what I want. I’ve considered moving out so many times but I know I’d just get into more trouble. Another flaw she has is not respecting boundaries. She goes through my bedroom when I’m at school, she has my location turned on and she goes through my emails. I’m transgender and she has taken my binders as she believes that I am just trying to be cool by being transgender and it’s so annoying. She blamed me for my dad’s high blood pressure which was actually caused by two things 1. It’s genetic and 2. Him drinking often. She told me that by being trans I am stressing my dad out. I also can’t remember the last time she has said I love you to me this year, the last time she said she loved me was after I had tried to make an attempt on my life, which they never got me therapy for and believe I was just a little sad despite me making more attempts afterwards. Now that I’m at a new school my parents told me I’m not allowed to talk to counsellors and it just pisses me off they never take my mental health seriously. She has told me that I am not allowed to keep in contact with teachers from my old school despite me being close with a few of them. She only ever talks to me to complain about something I didn’t do when I didn’t realise it needed to be done. But tonight made me realise she doesn’t truly know me, I like baking sweet treats for people. I decided to make brownies for my new friend group. She came up to me after dinner as I was cleaning up to ask me why I made brownies, I told her they were made for my new friends. She told me I shouldn’t be baking to try and win people over and to just be myself, she then told me how I better not be going to the rainbow club and that she’ll be contacting the school about it and making sure I didn’t try and secretly join. She doesn’t trust me and she doesn’t know me at all, I enjoy baking for people that I care about and making brownies are for the people I am becoming friends with not some random people I know nothing about. Also ddint know where to add this but she has apparently always been not really affectionate as my step sibling said she would barely say I love you, only saying it when she thinks it’s deserved. My dad also calls her my mum and it upsets me because they know I don’t like when they call her that. I’m expected to pay for everything myself now that I have a job, I want to learn the guitar and they are making me pay for it and they haven’t helped me find a teacher at all. I also still haven’t gotten a birthday present and my birthday was in February.
This is just a big rant that I needed to get off my chest, I will never love my stepmom, she has hurt me so much, this is only scraping the surface. As soon as I am able to I am moving out and I’m going to cut her off, I’ll keep in touch with my dad but not her. I do not see her as a mother figure or a mentor. She makes me feel insecure and like my feelings don’t matter.
submitted by Heavy-Response-9700 to offmychest [link] [comments]
This is just a big rant that I needed to get off my chest, I will never love my stepmom, she has hurt me so much, this is only scraping the surface. As soon as I am able to I am moving out and I’m going to cut her off, I’ll keep in touch with my dad but not her. I do not see her as a mother figure or a mentor. She makes me feel insecure and like my feelings don’t matter.
2024.05.29 10:47 Count-Daring243 Best 50 000 Volt Taser
 | submitted by Count-Daring243 to u/Count-Daring243 [link] [comments] https://preview.redd.it/n0qx31f9wb3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=79c2cd6f0e2be0e3b1d70dacabc98d97f11f147d If you're in the market for a powerful self-defense tool, look no further than the 50 000 Volt Taser. This incredible device is designed to provide peace of mind and protection when you need it most. In this roundup article, we'll take a closer look at some of the top-rated 50 000 Volt Tasers available today, comparing their features and benefits to help you make an informed decision. Whether you're a security professional or simply looking for a reliable personal protection tool, you'll find everything you need right here. The Top 19 Best 50 000 Volt Taser
Reviews🔗Powerful High-Voltage Stun Gun for Securityhttps://preview.redd.it/r82f138awb3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1fceb020af5727eb61f3bb9983abcfe1ab4d2868 Recently, I had the chance to try out the Guard Dog LIGHTSAFER Stun Gun w/ Tac Light. This handy device is perfect for those who want to feel secure in their day-to-day life. With its concealed high voltage stun capability, I was able to immobilize an aggressor before they could get too close. The powerful bolt was not only intimidating, but also effective in making them retreat. The stun gun's 400-lumen flashlight comes in handy in a variety of situations, whether you're walking home late at night or just taking a shortcut through a dark alley. Additionally, the battery life indicator was a real lifesaver, as it allowed me to keep track of when the device needed recharge. The stun gun's shockproof anti-roll body, made of type III aircraft-grade aluminum, gives it the durability it needs to endure any tough situation. Overall, the Guard Dog LIGHTSAFER Stun Gun w/ Tac Light has proved to be a reliable and effective device for anyone seeking self-defense tools. 🔗Portable LED Stun Flashlight with Ergonomic Grip and Lithium Batteryhttps://preview.redd.it/pig08ixawb3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=152aa91bf62c6c8880913d19eb67edd88fecd933 From my personal experience, the PS Zap Stun Stick, or as I like to call it, the "pink powerhouse, " has become an essential part of my daily routine. As a fitness enthusiast, the soft rubber coating and non-slip molded grip were a game-changer for those long walks and late-night runs. The stun gun color, combined with the two ultra-bright LED bulbs, adds an extra layer of safety without compromising style. The included lithium CR2 batteries, wrist strap, and belt case ensure convenience wherever I go. However, it's not all rainbows and sunshine with this powerful little device. After experiencing moderate to severe pain from a stun gun in the past, I can tell you the Zap Stick delivers a powerful punch. The arching sound is quite loud too, making it even more intimidating for potential attackers. While some users found the built-in holster lacking in grip, I was pleasantly surprised by how sturdy it was. The tough rubber coating and finger grooves offer an excellent grip, even when I'm feeling a bit sweaty during my runs. And let's not forget the bonus feature: a bright flashlight for those dark encounters. Now, a word of caution: this product might not be for everyone. Some users have reported it not being as powerful as advertised or having issues with the shipping process. It's essential to check if the device is allowed in your state before purchasing. But overall, for me, the Zap Stick has become an invaluable part of my daily self-defense routine. 🔗1 Million Volt Stun Gun & Flashlighthttps://preview.redd.it/19hdkaebwb3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c199a24ebaefdd191a725d5c2d390c83eff8e84b As someone who has tried the Zap Light Extreme 1mil Blk Stun Gun/Flashlight, I can say it's a powerful and versatile tool for personal protection. The 6 Ultra-sharp Spike Electrodes offer extra protection and can penetrate clothes, helping you to ward off potential attackers. The built-in high-endurance Ni-MH rechargeable battery ensures the product is always ready when you need it, while the ultra-bright LED bulb shines for an impressive 5 hours per charge. I loved the convenience of the USB wall charger, USB car charger, carry case, and wrist strap that came with it, making it easy to carry and store. The only downside I encountered was the flimsy belt clip that sometimes made it difficult to secure the stun gun in my pocket. Overall, the Zap Light Extreme is a reliable and intimidating tool for self-defense and personal safety. 🔗Long Range Taser for Safety and Accuracyhttps://preview.redd.it/pxgdjwtbwb3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8e6e62900324891dfeced0f3eca74884ec54e5bb I recently had the chance to try out the Taser X1 Kit in my daily life, and I have to say it was quite the experience. The moment I held it, I could sense the quality of the device - it felt rugged and reliable in my hands. One of the most impressive features was the built-in laser, which eliminates aiming guesswork and significantly enhances accuracy. This made me feel confident that I could protect myself if needed. However, I also noticed that the product does require some level of maintenance, as it has non-rechargeable performance power magazines. This means that you'll need to keep an eye on the stock and be prepared to replace them when necessary. Overall, the Taser X1 Kit proved to be a powerful tool for self-defense, with some minor inconveniences thrown in. It's certainly a product that warrants consideration for those looking for an innovative non-lethal solution for personal safety. 🔗Long-Range Taser with Increased Probe Spreadhttps://preview.redd.it/62fkdhbcwb3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=688031327892fd60131c2fda57f1dc2df3bf2938 Imagine stepping into the safety and security of your home, armed with the confidence that comes from owning a Taser 7 CQ Home Defense device in yellow. This non-listing device stands out among the rest for its impressive features and power. Picture this: You're in the middle of a home-defense situation when the need for a backup or follow-up taser arises. The great news is, the T-7 holds not one but two replaceable cartridges, providing you with that extra edge in the face of danger. Gone are the times when you'd have to recharge batteries - this device comes with a trusty replaceable battery pack. The Dual-Shot technology works wonders, improving the dart's accuracy and speed, almost doubling its kinetic energy for a better connection. How cool is that, huh? The Adaptive Cross Connect technology ensures the probes reach an optimal spread when deployed just 3 feet away from your target, no more fumbling. Armed with a range of 12 feet, the T-7 has you covered in close quarters with its contact stun feature. Even better, its 5-second exposure cycle will give you the time and space to act. With the Taser 7 CQ Home Defense device in your hands, you won't have to worry about encountering trouble on your turf. Not only is it perfect for home-defense, but law enforcement agencies worldwide trust it for their security needs. What a product to own, right? So next time you're in your home, protected by something powerful and reliable, remember, it's the Taser 7 CQ Home Defense device that stands by your side. Stay safe! 🔗High-Intensity 50,000 Volt Taser Strikelight 2 Kit with Flashlight and Wrist Straphttps://preview.redd.it/iurfl5scwb3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9d85d7dbb04bddff4cd2e992b9b1c297ae8d68e9 The Strikelight 2 Kit from Taser International is a unique blend of safety and security. I was impressed by its combination of an 80-lumen flashlight and a stun gun within the same device. This makes it convenient for those who want to carry a personal defense tool without needing to separate light from stun features. With two separate activation buttons, it's easy to switch between the two modes without any accidental discharges. What stood out to me is the quality of the materials used for the device. Its lightweight anodized finished aluminum and high-strength polymer front lens holder make it sturdy and reliable. Additionally, the anti-roll design ensures that the stun flashlight is easy to use. The Strikelight 2 Kit comes with a rechargeable battery that lasts for up to 5 hours of continuous light or 100 5-second stun discharges when fully charged. I appreciated the inclusion of a wrist strap, which made it easier for me to carry the device. While the Taser Strikelight 2 Kit is a powerful personal protection tool, it does require a bit of recharge time, which may seem inconvenient to some users. However, the versatility of the device and the combination of its features make it a valuable addition for those seeking personal safety. 🔗Tasers for Self Defense with Built-In Charger and Flashlighthttps://preview.redd.it/gbn9997dwb3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9449f6b793377510c30844a0f903d44542d02ea6 I've never felt safer than when I carry the 80,000,000 Volt Zebra Multiguard in my pocket. This self-defense tool is sleek and easily concealed, but don't be fooled by its unassuming size. With its cutting-edge micro-technology, it packs quite a punch. One of the stand-out features is the super-loud siren, which is great for drawing attention to any dangerous situation and potentially defusing it before it escalates. And let's not forget the blinding 120 Lumens LED flashlight—perfectly timed to blind an attacker while you make your escape. The rubberized coating provides a secure grip, and you can easily carry it in your hand or pocket for convenience. The included built-in charger is a must-have feature, ensuring you're always ready for action. Lastly, the heavy-duty nylon belt loop holster keeps your Multiguard safe and secure when not in use. While the Zebra Multiguard packs a powerful punch, it does have some drawbacks. The electrifying stun feature can be a bit too intense for some users, so it might be worth considering how well you can handle it. Overall, though, it's a solid choice for those seeking personal protection and safety on the go. 🔗Zap Hike N' Strike: Secure LED Flashlight and Stun Gun Hiking Staffhttps://preview.redd.it/95m323fdwb3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=19a290a7100b2f7601046e5d74801bdd0ba919c8 As a frequent hiker, I've always been on the lookout for ways to stay safe in the great outdoors, especially when it comes to potential encounters with wildlife. When I stumbled upon the Hike 'n Strike, I was intrigued by the concept of a stun gun and flashlight all in one. Upon receiving the product, I was impressed by the weight, which felt substantial yet manageable. The bright orange shaft made me more visible in the woods, and the removable reflective yellow band added an extra touch of safety. The rubber handle felt comfortable to grip, and the adjustable shaft allowed for a perfect fit for a variety of hikers. One of the most noteworthy features of the Hike 'n Strike was the placement of the button for the stun gun. Located almost two feet away from the prongs, I found it easier to activate and aim the stun gun without accidentally shocking myself. It's a design that sets this product apart from other stun guns on the market, which often place the button too close to the prongs. However, there were a few downsides to the Hike 'n Strike. Firstly, the included batteries do not last long. With frequent use of the flashlight and stun gun, the batteries drain quickly, and I found myself needing to replace them more frequently than I would have liked. It would have been convenient if the product came with a rechargeable option. Secondly, the rubber cover for the prongs tends to come loose and is easily detachable. I've lost one already and have had to replace it with electrical tape. I would have preferred if the company provided a stronger solution for keeping the cover securely attached. Overall, the Hike 'n Strike has impressed me with its unique design and emphasis on safety and security during hikes. Despite the drawbacks, I would recommend this product to fellow hikers who value their safety and desire a device that serves multiple purposes. 🔗Next-Generation Long Range Taser for Self-Defensehttps://preview.redd.it/ntk8q7udwb3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=decbb3b5984d7e707fb4de58f1e159852c3dca70 The Taser Bolt 2 has proven to be a reliable and powerful energy weapon in the world of self-defense. Its discreet look is deceiving, and the device has saved me from numerous dangerous situations. The wrist strap makes it easy to carry and ready to use at a moment's notice. The fact that the Bolt 2 can establish up to 15 feet of safety is incredibly reassuring, and that it can lock an attacker for up to 30 seconds is a game-changer. I've tested it with the Axon Protect app, which alerts emergency dispatch the moment I use it, providing me a sense of comfort knowing help is on the way. One downside is its weight - the device weighs only 1 oz, making some users cautious about its safety. However, with proper handling, this doesn't pose an issue. Overall, the Taser Bolt 2 is an excellent self-defense device that could save your life one day. 🔗Taser X2 Professional Series: Compact, Long-Range, Contact Stun Device for Home Protectionhttps://preview.redd.it/8pysnqcewb3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e982a570ba756e1d96debd53011eea9f6fcbad7b When I first heard about the Taser X2 Professional Series, I was intrigued by its ability to provide immediate back-up. As someone who values safety, this device stood out to me as a game-changer. The first feature that caught my attention was the Neuro-muscular Incapacitation (nmi) technology. It was truly amazing how it temporarily overrode an attacker's central nervous system, limiting their muscular control for 5 seconds. This feature really gave me the confidence I needed during those close encounters. The laser targeting paired with the powerful LED flashlight was also a highlight. The targets were hard to miss, even in low-light situations. The 15-foot safety range was perfect for ensuring ample space to make a safe escape. One drawback I experienced was the weight of the device. It wasn't heavy enough to weigh you down, but it was a noticeable difference compared to other personal protection devices I've used. In conclusion, the Taser X2 Professional Series has become an essential part of my home security and daily life. Its advanced technology, durability, and ease of use make it a must-have for anyone looking to strengthen their personal protection plans. 🔗Long Range Taser for Self Defense and Securityhttps://preview.redd.it/sj5godmewb3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8a3fe5a71bc8951eea80178e6229259317f7d865 The Guard Dog Knightro stun gun is an impressive piece of self-defense equipment that I've been putting to the test in my daily life. Not only is it built like a tank, but it's also incredibly powerful and capable of stunning potential attackers. The Type III aluminum alloy construction and reinforced body can withstand a variety of impacts, making it a reliable tool for any situation. One of the most striking features of the Knightro is the concealed inner stun technology. This allows for a seamless integration of the stun gun and flashlight, making it more discreet and versatile for everyday carry or security purposes. The built-in tactical flashlight is another impressive aspect, offering three light settings including high, low, and emergency flashing strobe. While overall the product has been an excellent addition to my self-defense arsenal, it does have a few drawbacks. The stun gun has quite a loud and imposing discharge, which may startle bystanders. Additionally, the switch between the flashlight and stun gun can be a bit cumbersome and somewhat difficult to operate in a high-stress situation. Overall, the Guard Dog Knightro stun gun is a powerful and reliable tool for anyone looking to enhance their personal safety. It's built to withstand even the toughest conditions, and the seamless integration of the stun gun and tactical flashlight is a great feature. My only concern would be with the switch between the light and stun gun, which can be a bit tricky to operate in a panic. 🔗2 Million Volt Non-Lethal Taser for Personal Protectionhttps://preview.redd.it/1kmhgd1fwb3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2a7a07891a88f80a7a12dfaa2b213cb224685dee I recently received the PS Zap Enforcer 2 Mil Blk Zapen and couldn't wait to try it out. With its 2 million-volt stun gun feature, I felt it would be my new best friend in ensuring my safety during my evening walks. However, one thing I noticed was the size - it felt a bit too large for my hands, particularly for someone like me who is only 5'3. Using this product, I found the flashlight to be extremely useful. The bright beam made it easy to navigate through the pitch-black nights, while the stun gun function made me feel safe knowing I could defend myself if needed. The metal exterior and sturdy construction added to the product's reliability. However, the charging issue proved to be a bit of a pain. After using it for a few days, the battery seemed to drain quickly, and despite being warned about this, I still found myself struggling to keep it powered throughout the day. Another minor issue was the lack of a smaller or more portable option, as the size could be a bit unwieldy for some people. Overall, the PS Zap Enforcer 2 Mil Blk Zapen has its pros and cons, but it's definitely a useful tool for those seeking a bit of extra security in their daily lives. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a stun gun flashlight, but just remember to keep an eye on the battery life to avoid being left in the dark. 🔗Maximum Strength Tactical Stun Gun with Flashlight & Holsterhttps://preview.redd.it/izoj3vhfwb3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ae90e26d34a3a244ad533a987e4c91b0a2954c2d The Sabre 2.517 UC Tactical Stun Gun with Flashlight has been a helpful addition to my self-defense arsenal. The stun gun's maximum strength of 2.51 uC ensures that it packs a powerful punch, giving me the confidence I need when I'm out and about. The 130-lumen LED flashlight is a great feature, helping me disorient anyone who might be threatening me from a distance. The fact that it has a rechargeable battery is an added perk, and I appreciate how the charging cord is included in the package. However, there have been a few minor drawbacks. Firstly, the holster that comes with the stun gun doesn't seem to be as well-made as the rest of the product. I had to resew the stitching on the belt loop strap after it broke only a few days after putting it on. Secondly, the charging light only worked the first time I plugged it in. Since then, I have no idea if it's actually charging or not, which is a bit concerning. Overall, I would say that the Sabre 2.517 UC Tactical Stun Gun with Flashlight is a reliable and powerful self-defense tool that I'm glad to have by my side. Despite the minor issues I've encountered, it has proven to be a valuable addition to my daily life. 🔗Portable Stun Gun Flashlight with Wrist Strap and Charging Cablehttps://preview.redd.it/oovo90tfwb3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dda5907b1bb9aa8e2ec94ae4e38325fcd1f3950f When I first got my hands on the Taser StrikeLight 2 Kit White, I was immediately impressed by its sleek design. It looked like a powerful tool meant for serious moments, but at the same time, it was surprisingly comfortable to carry around with me. The 700-lumen high beam setting was simply mind-blowing. I found myself reaching for it whenever I needed a good, bright light in a dark situation. The low beam and red mode were also incredibly useful, providing just the right amount of light for specific scenarios. I have to admit, I was more than a little intimidated by the thought of using this device as a stun gun. But, after putting it to the test, I was pleasantly surprised by how effective it was at close range. Its stun gun capabilities provided a sense of security and safety that I hadn't quite expected. But, nothing's perfect. Although the device itself is relatively light, I noticed that the charging cable seemed to be a bit of an afterthought. It was a little flimsy, and I had to be careful not to tear it by accident. Overall, the Taser StrikeLight 2 Kit White has been a reliable companion in my everyday life. It's saved me from a few nervous encounters, and the built-in stun gun capabilities give me a sense of security that I never knew I needed. While there are a few cons to consider, the pros outweigh them by far. 🔗Powerful Rose Gold Stun Gun by PS Productshttps://preview.redd.it/vrggaq8gwb3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3caad05f4087707661c7a4703382128a52e0522b Recently, I had the chance to test out the PS Products Zap Edge, a sleek and stylish stun gun with a rose gold finish. This powerful device is capable of delivering a whopping 950,000 volts, making it an impressive choice for those seeking protection. One thing that caught my attention was the USB rechargeable feature, which makes it incredibly convenient and eco-friendly. The compact design also made it easy to carry around, ensuring I always had it on hand when needed. However, it's important to note that this product may be restricted in certain regions, so be sure to check before purchasing. Overall, the PS Products Zap Edge stun gun impressed me with its powerful build and user-friendly features. But remember, it's always crucial to use such devices responsibly and only as a last resort for personal safety. Buyer's GuideWhen it comes to self-defense devices, few options are as popular or effective as a 50,000-volt taser. These powerful devices can incapacitate an attacker and give you precious time to escape or call for help. However, with wide variety of tasers available, it can be hard to determine which one is the best fit for your needs. In this guide, we'll outline the most important features to consider when purchasing a 50,000-volt taser, as well as some general advice to ensure your safety and well-being. https://preview.redd.it/p3oihf1jwb3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d5a228c1e2d264fae0dca193b7d5bd096c76375e Power and VoltageOne of the most important factors to consider when purchasing a taser is its power and voltage. A 50,000-volt taser should ideally be powerful enough to ensure it works effectively against most attackers, regardless of their size or strength. Ensure to look for a taser that is rated to be powerful enough for this purpose.Design and Build QualityThe design and build quality of a taser are also important considerations. It should be lightweight, easy to carry, and rugged enough to withstand accidental drops or impacts. Additionally, it should have a secure locking mechanism to prevent it from accidentally firing while stored or transported. https://preview.redd.it/mv5qbozjwb3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9074ed760fdb5d60f155cdfb0b9cdd26145683c3 RangeAnother important feature is the range of the taser. The range can vary depending on the design and power of the taser, so it's essential to choose one with a long enough range to ensure its effectiveness. Generally, a range of 20+ feet is desirable for a 50,000-volt taser.FunctionalityA good taser should have multiple functions to help you in a variety of situations. At a minimum, it should have a single-shot setting for immediate use, but it's beneficial to have an option for a stun-gun mode, which provides a constant stream of shocks for a longer duration. A safety feature that automatically deactivates the taser after a few seconds of use is also highly desirable. https://preview.redd.it/xmh02grkwb3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=757e96b0f02eaecad4e989b6aa2fb4d757702d3c Ease of UseYour taser should be easy to use, even in high-stress situations. Look for a model with a clear, intuitive interface that allows you to quickly switch between modes and adjust settings as needed.When purchasing a 50,000-volt taser, it's essential to consider factors like power, voltage, design, build quality, range, functionality, and ease of use. By keeping these factors in mind, you can make an informed decision and choose the best taser for your needs, helping ensure your personal safety and well-being. FAQhttps://preview.redd.it/dztlxw4lwb3d1.jpg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ca2ca842eaf4553e0f41c9f41f393f5099153440 What is a 50,000-volt Taser?A 50,000-volt Taser is a brand of stun gun that emits an electrical discharge to incapacitate an attacker or deter a threat. These devices typically operate by delivering a high-voltage, low-current shock designed to cause muscle contractions and temporarily disable the target.How does a Taser work?A Taser works by utilizing a high-voltage electrical current passed through its probes. When the probes touch the target, the electrical current travels through the body, causing the muscles to contract. This can lead to temporary loss of muscle control and immobilization, providing an opportunity for the user to escape or defend themselves.What is the difference between a Taser and a stun gun?
Are Tasers legal in my area?The legality of Tasers and stun guns can vary depending on the state or country you reside in. It is essential to research and follow the laws particular to your location before purchasing or using one.What are the safety features of a 50,000-volt Taser?
What should I do if a Taser is discharged in my vicinity?If you are within the proximity of a discharged Taser, it is crucial to avoid touching the target or the ground where the electrical discharge has passed. If you accidentally come into contact with the discharge, move away from the area and remove any worn clothing or belongings that may have been in contact with the discharge.As an Amazon™ Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. |
2024.05.29 10:47 Silver-Bullfrog1030 I (21M) am in a complicated relationship with my gf (22F). The inconsistent behavior has left me questioning her intentions and my place within the relationship. I seek answers, can you all help me?
(this is my throwaway account) let me write my whole backstory
i honestly don't want to burden anyone with this. i'm a very reserved person.
but after so many years, i really want to talk all of this with someone.. i'm sorry as this is too long... if you don't want to read all of this, it's okay. but if you do read this, please help me by giving some clarity.
FIRST of all, the below storyline is a total timeline of 5 years.
so i was a very shy and reserved boy. i was in my +2 when i met a girl, let's call her A. we immediately became good friends and we were best friends for over a year. she used to like/had a crush on a boy named B. she had told me this initially, within a month of our friendship, i was cool about it as i was just a friend. they were in kinda complicated relationship i believe, but they had broke up in between (around 4-5 months of our friendship). so yeah, we continued as friends and got very close with each other (nobody has confessed yet). and one fine day, i get to know that she's still in relationship with B (i got to know that through her friends and i didn't quite understand why she didn't tell me eventhough i was her top 1 best friend out there)
i kinda figured it out NOW that it was because of one of these
we were in relationship for some months and i broke up with her (i couldn't bare the immaturity, every fight was being blamed upon me, every night i used to go sleep after a lot of crying, after every fight i'm the one who convinces her).
some months have passed and i find out she got into relationship with other dude named C (yeah okay, i don't mind, but i hadn't moved on from her, eventhough all of those immaturity, i was having a really good time with her). they were in relationship for 2+ years. i had talked to her and met her in between of their relationship and she had confessed that she hasn't moved on (basically hinting that her relationship with C was rebound relationship). we got into the relationship again (still when she was dating C - basically cheating on him). when one day i gathered myself and told her this can't go long, you can't love 2 people at once, you need to choose one (replies were all confused crying - long story short, she chose him. i felt like a spare tyre, a second option).. he broke up with her after some months (because of some other reasons).
okay, then (maybe after few weeks of breakup idk), she starts dating her best friend named D. it lasted for maybe 10-15 days (idk if that was rebound relationship too). later she contacts me and tells me about her breakup with C (she doesn't tell me about D). we start getting closer again and started dating (this became a very serious and lovely relationship than ever before - as both were emotionally very mature). we dated for some months, i get to know about D and i start having a lot of confusions as i am having right now. my confusions were like
okay so these confusions i just shoved them away thinking they're my overthinking (these confusions have come back now).
so after we dated for months, my orthodox family got to know about it. we both belong to 2 different religion. (long story short - i either get to choose to live with A and leave my parents (OR) i leave A and have my parents.). after lot of fights and convincing, i had to breakup with A and live with parents.
okay in few months, she started dating D again. 7 months pass by since our breakup and i wasn't able to move on at all, i still loved her a lot. she was my first thought when i wake up and last thought while sleeping, used to look at her pictures every single day. so, on a random day i get a long text from A that she's having some problems. we talked on call and you know, got close again. we knew we are impossible to be together but yeah. but i basically found out after few days that she had moved on and she contacted me just to be an emotional support. this broke me, and then she revealed about dating D few months back (after we broke up and it didn't work out well). i felt even more bad, as in, how can she even move on that easily and start dating someone else.
okay now, after she revealed all of this i had a lot of confusions, this is how the convo went.
me: do you constantly feel the need of love and attention. yes/no.
A: Yes
me: most of the time, do you ask for it or you get it
A: Both.. Sometimes I get ... sometimes I ask for it
me: do you need love and attention from specific people or anyone that could provide a level of love and attention which would match your expectations
A: Only certain people
me: imagine a time, where you don't get that love and attention from that set of certain people. would you give a chance to someone new in your life who can give the same love and attention?
A: No. I'll keep expecting from tht person itself
me: why did you feel a need to go to them then? (i'm implying C and D)
A: Bez i k them. I crave for love and affection from the people i feel same. I don't crave it from my dad, my brother or my girl frds. There are only few people in my life. Whom I feel safe and let all my childish self out. It surely doesn't mean tht I will go with Anyone who will give me love. Only bez i want it.
eventhough i asked all of these, i still had a lot of questions about her, myself and our complicated relationship story. i don't want to ask her more because she is literally accused me of judging her character after i asked these questions, implying that i asked these by judging her character. so i don't wanna ask again, instead i want to ask you all strangers here so that my head gets cleared.
p.s. sorry for any grammatical mistakes, english isn't my first language.
submitted by Silver-Bullfrog1030 to RelationshipIndia [link] [comments]
i honestly don't want to burden anyone with this. i'm a very reserved person.
but after so many years, i really want to talk all of this with someone.. i'm sorry as this is too long... if you don't want to read all of this, it's okay. but if you do read this, please help me by giving some clarity.
FIRST of all, the below storyline is a total timeline of 5 years.
so i was a very shy and reserved boy. i was in my +2 when i met a girl, let's call her A. we immediately became good friends and we were best friends for over a year. she used to like/had a crush on a boy named B. she had told me this initially, within a month of our friendship, i was cool about it as i was just a friend. they were in kinda complicated relationship i believe, but they had broke up in between (around 4-5 months of our friendship). so yeah, we continued as friends and got very close with each other (nobody has confessed yet). and one fine day, i get to know that she's still in relationship with B (i got to know that through her friends and i didn't quite understand why she didn't tell me eventhough i was her top 1 best friend out there)
i kinda figured it out NOW that it was because of one of these
- she "probably" had feelings for me and if she told me about the relationship, she would probably lose the chance with me
- i was maybe a spare tyre, if relationship with B didn't work out, i'd be there for her emotional baggage (idk if this is a possibility because i can't think of her this way, she was a good girl)
we were in relationship for some months and i broke up with her (i couldn't bare the immaturity, every fight was being blamed upon me, every night i used to go sleep after a lot of crying, after every fight i'm the one who convinces her).
some months have passed and i find out she got into relationship with other dude named C (yeah okay, i don't mind, but i hadn't moved on from her, eventhough all of those immaturity, i was having a really good time with her). they were in relationship for 2+ years. i had talked to her and met her in between of their relationship and she had confessed that she hasn't moved on (basically hinting that her relationship with C was rebound relationship). we got into the relationship again (still when she was dating C - basically cheating on him). when one day i gathered myself and told her this can't go long, you can't love 2 people at once, you need to choose one (replies were all confused crying - long story short, she chose him. i felt like a spare tyre, a second option).. he broke up with her after some months (because of some other reasons).
okay, then (maybe after few weeks of breakup idk), she starts dating her best friend named D. it lasted for maybe 10-15 days (idk if that was rebound relationship too). later she contacts me and tells me about her breakup with C (she doesn't tell me about D). we start getting closer again and started dating (this became a very serious and lovely relationship than ever before - as both were emotionally very mature). we dated for some months, i get to know about D and i start having a lot of confusions as i am having right now. my confusions were like
- she cheated on B for me
- she cheated on C for me
- she didn't like dating D
okay so these confusions i just shoved them away thinking they're my overthinking (these confusions have come back now).
so after we dated for months, my orthodox family got to know about it. we both belong to 2 different religion. (long story short - i either get to choose to live with A and leave my parents (OR) i leave A and have my parents.). after lot of fights and convincing, i had to breakup with A and live with parents.
okay in few months, she started dating D again. 7 months pass by since our breakup and i wasn't able to move on at all, i still loved her a lot. she was my first thought when i wake up and last thought while sleeping, used to look at her pictures every single day. so, on a random day i get a long text from A that she's having some problems. we talked on call and you know, got close again. we knew we are impossible to be together but yeah. but i basically found out after few days that she had moved on and she contacted me just to be an emotional support. this broke me, and then she revealed about dating D few months back (after we broke up and it didn't work out well). i felt even more bad, as in, how can she even move on that easily and start dating someone else.
okay now, after she revealed all of this i had a lot of confusions, this is how the convo went.
me: do you constantly feel the need of love and attention. yes/no.
A: Yes
me: most of the time, do you ask for it or you get it
A: Both.. Sometimes I get ... sometimes I ask for it
me: do you need love and attention from specific people or anyone that could provide a level of love and attention which would match your expectations
A: Only certain people
me: imagine a time, where you don't get that love and attention from that set of certain people. would you give a chance to someone new in your life who can give the same love and attention?
A: No. I'll keep expecting from tht person itself
me: why did you feel a need to go to them then? (i'm implying C and D)
A: Bez i k them. I crave for love and affection from the people i feel same. I don't crave it from my dad, my brother or my girl frds. There are only few people in my life. Whom I feel safe and let all my childish self out. It surely doesn't mean tht I will go with Anyone who will give me love. Only bez i want it.
eventhough i asked all of these, i still had a lot of questions about her, myself and our complicated relationship story. i don't want to ask her more because she is literally accused me of judging her character after i asked these questions, implying that i asked these by judging her character. so i don't wanna ask again, instead i want to ask you all strangers here so that my head gets cleared.
- there are so many instances in above story where she is able to date someone else (but still say that she hasn't moved on from me). this makes me doubt, if she hasn't moved on, how could she even date someone else?
- does she really love me or any of the B, C, D or she just relies upon us as a punching bag? just a source of love and attention? this is my prime question because in the above story u can notice that she jumps from one person to another as soon as one person breaks. why is it so, when i couldn't move on from her in these 5 years and could never date anyone else (because she always occupied my mind). how is that i'm so bound to her but she could move on to other people and come back to me.
- i feel like, if we just stop contacting now, i'm 100% sure she will start leaning towards D or find someone else. am i wrong in thinking this? i really feel this. they're still best friends (how can you be in contact with your ex, without having any feelings? honestly baffles me)
- were me and D, just her backups? spare tyres? because when she was dating B, she didn't tell me about him (maybe because if she did, she would probably lose the chance with me). and when i was dating her, she didn't let D know about it and was still best friends with him (maybe because she would lose a chance with D, maybe her plan was to use him as backup if relationship with me fails)
p.s. sorry for any grammatical mistakes, english isn't my first language.
2024.05.29 10:35 Silver-Bullfrog1030 I (21M) am in a complicated relationship with my gf (22F). The inconsistent behavior has left me questioning her intentions and my place within the relationship. I seek answers, can you all help me?
(this is my throwaway account) let me write my whole backstory
i honestly don't want to burden anyone with this. i'm a very reserved person.
but after so many years, i really want to talk all of this with someone.. i'm sorry as this is too long... if you don't want to read all of this, it's okay. but if you do read this, please help me by giving some clarity.
FIRST of all, the below storyline is a total timeline of 5 years.
so i was a very shy and reserved boy. i was in my +2 when i met a girl, let's call her A. we immediately became good friends and we were best friends for over a year. she used to like/had a crush on a boy named B. she had told me this initially, within a month of our friendship, i was cool about it as i was just a friend. they were in kinda complicated relationship i believe, but they had broke up in between (around 4-5 months of our friendship). so yeah, we continued as friends and got very close with each other (nobody has confessed yet). and one fine day, i get to know that she's still in relationship with B (i got to know that through her friends and i didn't quite understand why she didn't tell me eventhough i was her top 1 best friend out there)
i kinda figured it out NOW that it was because of one of these
we were in relationship for some months and i broke up with her (i couldn't bare the immaturity, every fight was being blamed upon me, every night i used to go sleep after a lot of crying, after every fight i'm the one who convinces her).
some months have passed and i find out she got into relationship with other dude named C (yeah okay, i don't mind, but i hadn't moved on from her, eventhough all of those immaturity, i was having a really good time with her). they were in relationship for 2+ years. i had talked to her and met her in between of their relationship and she had confessed that she hasn't moved on (basically hinting that her relationship with C was rebound relationship). we got into the relationship again (still when she was dating C - basically cheating on him). when one day i gathered myself and told her this can't go long, you can't love 2 people at once, you need to choose one (replies were all confused crying - long story short, she chose him. i felt like a spare tyre, a second option).. he broke up with her after some months (because of some other reasons).
okay, then (maybe after few weeks of breakup idk), she starts dating her best friend named D. it lasted for maybe 10-15 days (idk if that was rebound relationship too). later she contacts me and tells me about her breakup with C (she doesn't tell me about D). we start getting closer again and started dating (this became a very serious and lovely relationship than ever before - as both were emotionally very mature). we dated for some months, i get to know about D and i start having a lot of confusions as i am having right now. my confusions were like
okay so these confusions i just shoved them away thinking they're my overthinking (these confusions have come back now).
so after we dated for months, my orthodox family got to know about it. we both belong to 2 different religion. (long story short - i either get to choose to live with A and leave my parents (OR) i leave A and have my parents.). after lot of fights and convincing, i had to breakup with A and live with parents.
okay in few months, she started dating D again. 7 months pass by since our breakup and i wasn't able to move on at all, i still loved her a lot. she was my first thought when i wake up and last thought while sleeping, used to look at her pictures every single day. so, on a random day i get a long text from A that she's having some problems. we talked on call and you know, got close again. we knew we are impossible to be together but yeah. but i basically found out after few days that she had moved on and she contacted me just to be an emotional support. this broke me, and then she revealed about dating D few months back (after we broke up and it didn't work out well). i felt even more bad, as in, how can she even move on that easily and start dating someone else.
okay now, after she revealed all of this i had a lot of confusions, this is how the convo went.
me: do you constantly feel the need of love and attention. yes/no.
A: Yes
me: most of the time, do you ask for it or you get it
A: Both.. Sometimes I get ... sometimes I ask for it
me: do you need love and attention from specific people or anyone that could provide a level of love and attention which would match your expectations
A: Only certain people
me: imagine a time, where you don't get that love and attention from that set of certain people. would you give a chance to someone new in your life who can give the same love and attention?
A: No. I'll keep expecting from tht person itself
me: why did you feel a need to go to them then? (i'm implying C and D)
A: Bez i k them. I crave for love and affection from the people i feel same. I don't crave it from my dad, my brother or my girl frds. There are only few people in my life. Whom I feel safe and let all my childish self out. It surely doesn't mean tht I will go with Anyone who will give me love. Only bez i want it.
eventhough i asked all of these, i still had a lot of questions about her, myself and our complicated relationship story. i don't want to ask her more because she is literally accused me of judging her character after i asked these questions, implying that i asked these by judging her character. so i don't wanna ask again, instead i want to ask you all strangers here so that my head gets cleared.
p.s. sorry for any grammatical mistakes, english isn't my first language.
submitted by Silver-Bullfrog1030 to relationship_advice [link] [comments]
i honestly don't want to burden anyone with this. i'm a very reserved person.
but after so many years, i really want to talk all of this with someone.. i'm sorry as this is too long... if you don't want to read all of this, it's okay. but if you do read this, please help me by giving some clarity.
FIRST of all, the below storyline is a total timeline of 5 years.
so i was a very shy and reserved boy. i was in my +2 when i met a girl, let's call her A. we immediately became good friends and we were best friends for over a year. she used to like/had a crush on a boy named B. she had told me this initially, within a month of our friendship, i was cool about it as i was just a friend. they were in kinda complicated relationship i believe, but they had broke up in between (around 4-5 months of our friendship). so yeah, we continued as friends and got very close with each other (nobody has confessed yet). and one fine day, i get to know that she's still in relationship with B (i got to know that through her friends and i didn't quite understand why she didn't tell me eventhough i was her top 1 best friend out there)
i kinda figured it out NOW that it was because of one of these
- she "probably" had feelings for me and if she told me about the relationship, she would probably lose the chance with me
- i was maybe a spare tyre, if relationship with B didn't work out, i'd be there for her emotional baggage (idk if this is a possibility because i can't think of her this way, she was a good girl)
we were in relationship for some months and i broke up with her (i couldn't bare the immaturity, every fight was being blamed upon me, every night i used to go sleep after a lot of crying, after every fight i'm the one who convinces her).
some months have passed and i find out she got into relationship with other dude named C (yeah okay, i don't mind, but i hadn't moved on from her, eventhough all of those immaturity, i was having a really good time with her). they were in relationship for 2+ years. i had talked to her and met her in between of their relationship and she had confessed that she hasn't moved on (basically hinting that her relationship with C was rebound relationship). we got into the relationship again (still when she was dating C - basically cheating on him). when one day i gathered myself and told her this can't go long, you can't love 2 people at once, you need to choose one (replies were all confused crying - long story short, she chose him. i felt like a spare tyre, a second option).. he broke up with her after some months (because of some other reasons).
okay, then (maybe after few weeks of breakup idk), she starts dating her best friend named D. it lasted for maybe 10-15 days (idk if that was rebound relationship too). later she contacts me and tells me about her breakup with C (she doesn't tell me about D). we start getting closer again and started dating (this became a very serious and lovely relationship than ever before - as both were emotionally very mature). we dated for some months, i get to know about D and i start having a lot of confusions as i am having right now. my confusions were like
- she cheated on B for me
- she cheated on C for me
- she didn't like dating D
okay so these confusions i just shoved them away thinking they're my overthinking (these confusions have come back now).
so after we dated for months, my orthodox family got to know about it. we both belong to 2 different religion. (long story short - i either get to choose to live with A and leave my parents (OR) i leave A and have my parents.). after lot of fights and convincing, i had to breakup with A and live with parents.
okay in few months, she started dating D again. 7 months pass by since our breakup and i wasn't able to move on at all, i still loved her a lot. she was my first thought when i wake up and last thought while sleeping, used to look at her pictures every single day. so, on a random day i get a long text from A that she's having some problems. we talked on call and you know, got close again. we knew we are impossible to be together but yeah. but i basically found out after few days that she had moved on and she contacted me just to be an emotional support. this broke me, and then she revealed about dating D few months back (after we broke up and it didn't work out well). i felt even more bad, as in, how can she even move on that easily and start dating someone else.
okay now, after she revealed all of this i had a lot of confusions, this is how the convo went.
me: do you constantly feel the need of love and attention. yes/no.
A: Yes
me: most of the time, do you ask for it or you get it
A: Both.. Sometimes I get ... sometimes I ask for it
me: do you need love and attention from specific people or anyone that could provide a level of love and attention which would match your expectations
A: Only certain people
me: imagine a time, where you don't get that love and attention from that set of certain people. would you give a chance to someone new in your life who can give the same love and attention?
A: No. I'll keep expecting from tht person itself
me: why did you feel a need to go to them then? (i'm implying C and D)
A: Bez i k them. I crave for love and affection from the people i feel same. I don't crave it from my dad, my brother or my girl frds. There are only few people in my life. Whom I feel safe and let all my childish self out. It surely doesn't mean tht I will go with Anyone who will give me love. Only bez i want it.
eventhough i asked all of these, i still had a lot of questions about her, myself and our complicated relationship story. i don't want to ask her more because she is literally accused me of judging her character after i asked these questions, implying that i asked these by judging her character. so i don't wanna ask again, instead i want to ask you all strangers here so that my head gets cleared.
- there are so many instances in above story where she is able to date someone else (but still say that she hasn't moved on from me). this makes me doubt, if she hasn't moved on, how could she even date someone else?
- does she really love me or any of the B, C, D or she just relies upon us as a punching bag? just a source of love and attention? this is my prime question because in the above story u can notice that she jumps from one person to another as soon as one person breaks. why is it so, when i couldn't move on from her in these 5 years and could never date anyone else (because she always occupied my mind). how is that i'm so bound to her but she could move on to other people and come back to me.
- i feel like, if we just stop contacting now, i'm 100% sure she will start leaning towards D or find someone else. am i wrong in thinking this? i really feel this. they're still best friends (how can you be in contact with your ex, without having any feelings? honestly baffles me)
- were me and D, just her backups? spare tyres? because when she was dating B, she didn't tell me about him (maybe because if she did, she would probably lose the chance with me). and when i was dating her, she didn't let D know about it and was still best friends with him (maybe because she would lose a chance with D, maybe her plan was to use him as backup if relationship with me fails)
p.s. sorry for any grammatical mistakes, english isn't my first language.
2024.05.29 10:30 SaintedTainted Why GRIPPY is J.Cole's Best Feature Track
"She like my kick game"
submitted by SaintedTainted to Jcole [link] [comments]
Ah, the elegance of sneaker culture immortalized in a bar. J. Cole opens with a profound statement about his footwear prowess, because clearly, the depth of a relationship is measured by one's ability to sport fashionable kicks. Revolutionary!
"And when you me, you don't kick game"An introspective dive into the nature of authenticity. When you're with J. Cole, there's no need for superficial charm or 'kick game.' He's just too real for that. Shakespearean.
"I put her front row at the Knick game"Symbolizing devotion and status, placing her in the front row of a Knicks game is the 21st-century equivalent of presenting a lady with the finest jewels. Truly, an act of modern chivalry.
"Now she in my phone with a nickname"Nicknames are the foundation of intimacy. This line reveals the deep emotional bond formed, showcased through the sanctity of contact information. Profound and touching.
"It's, it's, it's, hmm (Mmm)"The triple repetition of "it's" followed by thoughtful contemplation (hmm) signifies the struggle of expressing indescribable feelings. A lyrical stroke of genius.
"Grippy"A word so impactful it requires no further explanation. "Grippy" stands alone, a beacon of poetic simplicity.
"Grippy, huh / Grippy, I call her that 'cause it's grippy"Reinforcing the significance of the term, J. Cole masterfully reiterates 'grippy,' ensuring the audience understands its monumental importance. Poetry in its purest form.
"She thick in the hips, she a hippie"A masterclass in wordplay and imagery. The juxtaposition of 'hips' and 'hippie' is nothing short of brilliant, painting a vivid picture of the muse.
"And she thick in the lips, she gon' lick me"Diving into anatomical admiration, this line highlights both physical attraction and impending intimacy with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Artful!
"And she sendin' a flick when she hit me / With a kissy emoji, she miss me"Modern romance, encapsulated. The digital age summarized in two bars, capturing the essence of contemporary love language through emojis and pictures. Iconic.
"When she see me, she say she gon' strip me"Foretelling the undressing of not just clothes but societal norms. A metaphor for vulnerability and openness. Layers upon layers.
"She gon' chew on this stick like it's Wrigley's"Ingenious product placement and a vivid simile that ties romantic action with everyday life. The marketing potential is limitless.
"Mm, yeah, believe it or not like Ripley's"Channeling Ripley's Believe It or Not! to underscore the unbelievable nature of their connection. Clever and culturally rich.
"She said she was gay until I slayed, now she strictly dickly"A transformative tale of love's power to alter identity. Deeply philosophical, examining the fluidity of attraction.
"As soon as she page, I'm on the way, and I be showin' up quickly"Commitment and punctuality in one line. A lesson in reliability and speed, values we can all aspire to.
"On the highway, I'm doin' a hundred-and-fifty"An adrenaline-fueled testament to urgency and desire. The speed metaphorically reflects his passion. Riveting.
"Like, I gotta get you up out of them Vickies, uh, like"An homage to Victoria's Secret, elevating lingerie to a status symbol. The urgency to reveal hidden beauty, poetically expressed.
"Pussy so good, I just had an epiphany"The apex of enlightenment through physical connection. A spiritual revelation sparked by intimacy. Enlightening.
"It's grippy and wet, you know I'm a vet, but you makin' me feel like a rookie"A humble admission of being outmatched, even as a seasoned veteran. The vulnerability and respect for her prowess, beautifully conveyed.
"How you make me tap out so swiftly? / But I'm back for the second round victory"Resilience and determination in the face of overwhelming challenge. The spirit of a true champion.
"I remember I saw you on Fifth Ave with your homies Sabrina and Tiffany"A vivid scene setting, placing the listener right on Fifth Avenue. The names add a personal touch, bringing the memory to life.
"I was thinkin' like, 'Damn, your whole clique bad' / But I wanted your body specifically, hmm"A moment of selective admiration, showing discernment amidst abundance. An ode to the power of individuality.
"Like, I'm tryna see how that glove gon' fit me, hmm"A Cinderella-like metaphor, seeking a perfect match. The fairy tale continues.
"Like, I wanna feel like I'm touchin' your kidneys, hmm"Anatomically ambitious, aiming for a connection that's deep—literally and figuratively. Bold.
"Like, bitch, I'ma send all your kids to Disney, hmm / I'ma pay a lil' extra, make sure they meet Mickey, hmm"Generosity in its finest form, promising joy and magical experiences for her children. Philanthropy and romance intertwined.
"She a what? She a what? She a grippy, huh (Mmm) / She a what? She a what? She a grippy"Ending with the refrain, solidifying the term "grippy" as a timeless descriptor. A hook that will echo through the ages.
Conclusion
In conclusion, J. Cole's verse in "Grippy" is an unparalleled work of art, combining emotional depth, cultural references, and profound insights into modern relationships. It is truly the best certified classic, banger, club track, black anthem, and negro spiritual of the year. A lyrical triumph that will be studied for generations to come.
2024.05.29 10:06 ame_delicate little piece of wisdom i found
disclaimer; i didnt write this. I don't remember where I found it. I kept it because it was interesting. if you wrote this, feel free to claim it. I just thought it be cool to share as a little getaway from the edgy blood sacrifices and metaphysical mumbo jumbo like "it was revealed to me a in a dream". who knows. I think the contest was someone was asking what is lucifer's purpose or etc.
"Kicked out of heaven is something of a joke. If you read Dante to the conclusion you learn that Lucifer wasn't kicked out he left, he isn't barred from returning because he was naughty its just not an option for him, and he isn't imprisoned in hell he's just stuck at the center of the universe because he choose to take responsibility for it all and the weight of the world holds him in place.
Heaven is everything happening at once in one place and one moment that is simultaneously everywhere and always. Its beyond agency or action because actions require existence in space time. This is why Lucifer can't return to heaven. You have to give up any connection to earth to truly ascend. Angels "fall" when they interact with our universe. In fact, if you read De Celestia Hierarchia its arguable that angels, archangels, and Principalities are the 3rd of the heavenly host that fell to earth as demons. Those celestial beings are tied directly to material things, relationships, and groups whereas powers, virtues, and dominations, and seraphim, cherubim, and thrones are whatever they are.
Astaroth is like Nyx or Nuit. She is the void after there is more than the void. It is the night sky as creator of and companion to earth before the sun or moon or any other celestial sphere is considered. Its the purest two. This is why the Keys of Solomon says Astaroth will teach you of the fall of angels, because you on earth and as earth must make Astaroth as Heaven descend to you. Ishtar is the wife of God, the Queen of Heaven. You are God.
Heaven is the darkness even more than it is the light. Light is descended from darkness. In the beginning there was nothing (Chaos, the abyss, the void), then God (YHWH, the elements) said let there be light (YHSWH, logos, shin at the center of the four elements).
The interesting question is why is her symbol a pentagram? And, why is she referenced along with a golden ring? That symbol shows up in the Legends of Charlemange and the Prose Edda. In the Legends of Charlemange it is without question a reference to Astaroth as the ring is born by a woman from Cathay (the east), who remains invisible as long as she keeps it in her mouth (don't talk about magic if you want to live). In the Prose Edda you can see how glamdring is a reference to Astaroth once you know her as the abyss or void. The one ring that drips nine more (the realms) each night."
submitted by ame_delicate to DemonolatryPractices [link] [comments]
"Kicked out of heaven is something of a joke. If you read Dante to the conclusion you learn that Lucifer wasn't kicked out he left, he isn't barred from returning because he was naughty its just not an option for him, and he isn't imprisoned in hell he's just stuck at the center of the universe because he choose to take responsibility for it all and the weight of the world holds him in place.
Heaven is everything happening at once in one place and one moment that is simultaneously everywhere and always. Its beyond agency or action because actions require existence in space time. This is why Lucifer can't return to heaven. You have to give up any connection to earth to truly ascend. Angels "fall" when they interact with our universe. In fact, if you read De Celestia Hierarchia its arguable that angels, archangels, and Principalities are the 3rd of the heavenly host that fell to earth as demons. Those celestial beings are tied directly to material things, relationships, and groups whereas powers, virtues, and dominations, and seraphim, cherubim, and thrones are whatever they are.
Astaroth is like Nyx or Nuit. She is the void after there is more than the void. It is the night sky as creator of and companion to earth before the sun or moon or any other celestial sphere is considered. Its the purest two. This is why the Keys of Solomon says Astaroth will teach you of the fall of angels, because you on earth and as earth must make Astaroth as Heaven descend to you. Ishtar is the wife of God, the Queen of Heaven. You are God.
Heaven is the darkness even more than it is the light. Light is descended from darkness. In the beginning there was nothing (Chaos, the abyss, the void), then God (YHWH, the elements) said let there be light (YHSWH, logos, shin at the center of the four elements).
The interesting question is why is her symbol a pentagram? And, why is she referenced along with a golden ring? That symbol shows up in the Legends of Charlemange and the Prose Edda. In the Legends of Charlemange it is without question a reference to Astaroth as the ring is born by a woman from Cathay (the east), who remains invisible as long as she keeps it in her mouth (don't talk about magic if you want to live). In the Prose Edda you can see how glamdring is a reference to Astaroth once you know her as the abyss or void. The one ring that drips nine more (the realms) each night."
2024.05.29 09:54 SnooCrickets3850 The one that got away
So I don’t know how to start this but I meet this girl on a dating app and we were talking, everything was amazing even the first time we met up. She spent the night over because she was too drunk to drive home so was I, I was very hesitant because this person at that time was a stranger but we just vibe so well. After that day we just keep hanging out and exploring places in SD. I got to really get to know this person so well and deeply that we had so much in common, Music, ideas, etc.
I started to like this girl so much but the only thing I didn’t like was she was talking to her ex still but for a reason. She had to pay him back for rent which I thought It was totally fine but it started to get to a point where she was like “ugh he is just pissing me off and I can’t take this with him.” Also she would bring up certain things with him to me which I thought was weird to me because even though I knew they lived with each other about two years ago and broke up a year ago.
I never seen somebody talk about their ex so much even though it was all bad things about him but even still have contact with him. I would kinda tease her about it sometimes like “oh sounds like you guys are still together.” She denies it and says fucker I like you not him anymore but it got to a point I would say stuff like that out of concern which one day, we had a conversation about it and she said I would bring him up all the time.
I never dealt with that before, so even though I know this is wrong I went on a the same dating app I found her on and was looking and I saw her sister friend at the time. I didn’t know the friend at the time so I swipe on her and we didn’t match but I get a call from the girl I was talking to and she was telling me how could I do this and everything else, which she is right I should of never done that. I just felt like she was so drawn on her ex and having conversations with him that I was going try and see what else was out there but after that we came to a agreement on just keep talking to each other.
Months go by and we fall for each other, we aren’t in a relationship yet because I just feel so doubtful that it could work because in my mind she is still talking to her ex. She wants to be my girlfriend but I just kept telling her let’s wait because of the ex stuff, I didn’t tell her that but she got it. We have each others location and spring break comes, I don’t know what happened but my location stops working for her.
I leave to go back home. She gets worried about not seeing it and wants to fix it and I tried to fix it but it wouldn’t work for me even showing her that it didn’t but then I told her I’m going to be spending time with my family because I never get to see them because I play college football. she got that but it’s also my fault because I spent so much time with them and didn’t text her as much when I was back at home.
My birthday is in spring break so I got gifts from my family but I got crocs that had I heart N which was from my mom which represented my uncle who passed, His name started with a N. she’s worried that I might have a another girl back home. I tried telling her I don’t but I wanted her to come over since I was gone for a week and she had gifts for my birthday that past so everything was good.
She is over my place and is fine with staying until I got back from practice so I left then I get text messages from my family friend telling me she is texting her on instagram and somehow gets her phone number. I couldn’t go back home to ask why she is doing that since I was already at practice but after practice I call her and she is literally back at her house and telling me that I lied to her and that she is done with me.
She literally took an edible and drove home which I think is crazy but she is so high and I tell her, What is going on and she says I have proof of you lying to me and I told her send it to me. She takes forever to send it but she sends it to me and it’s my crocs with the N. She tries to say my family friend is the girl so we go back and forth but then she realize that it wasn’t and says sorry for leaving and she also got in an argument with her mom.
I tell her that we need to just slow down we are just dating and you are doing crazy things. She agrees and we kinda slow down, after this she is still stalking my family friend. she doesn’t know that my family friend has a boyfriend and keeps looking at her stories and thinks it’s me so she jumps to conclusions and breaks up with me. I keep tryna tell her it’s not me and she keeps saying it is but we come to a agreement again and she asks me why do I still wanna date her when she’s done that, I tell her I just like her so much and wanna see how far it can go.
This is true and still is because this is still fresh. weeks later she is having conversations with her ex but she already told him that she wants me and not him anymore. he didn’t wanna let go and she was just paying him back the money she owed him but he started to make conversation with her and they were just talking like friends. Couple weeks ago he confessed to her about wanting her back and wants her to drop me and come back to him but they have a long bad history and she told him “I’m not doing that to him, I want him in my life not you just move on.”
He literally pass out or something while driving because he wasn’t getting sleep or something and she calls me and tells me everything that went on and all that shit made me so mad. she still was talking to him because I knew he would do something like that but he gives her a ultimatum of it’s either me or him. She told me that and tells him the next day I’m sticking with him. She couldn’t and wouldn’t go back to that place he put her in so after that I’m pissed off about that whole shit and keeping contact with him.
A week ago, my family friends car stops working so she asks me to take her to target to get stuff and I did because why wouldn’t I help. I do that and we are just laughing and talking then I take a picture of her with my crocs half way in it and she posted it but next thing that happens is I get a text from the girl. She says fuck you, bye then blocks me and it hurt so fucking much like I still think about it and tried to tell her, I wasn’t doing anything with my family friend but I was blocked.
I start to post on my story and she just watches them and not saying anything. I don’t say anything as well but then she posts something about karma is coming for the people that lied to her and did her wrong which hurt because I truly wasn’t doing nothing. I didn’t wanna text her because I was still shocked that she would do that then days go by and she stops watching it.
I saw she keep going public and private on instagram so when she opened it again I like some new pictures of her then she texts and delete. I asked her what did she say and she said why am I liking her shit and I need to stop because my little girlfriend isn’t going like that like just being so petty. She tells me that she is going block me on Instagram too so I started feeling sad and told her don’t let me just talk to her.
I wasn’t even home, I was literally in a different state for a family trip which was two days ago but I tell her everything that I love her and wanna fix it. I don’t wanna lose her but she tells me she isn’t changing her mind and I’m begging her because I truly love this girl but we come to somewhat an agreement of seeing each other Tuesday. I got back in the state so I text her and tell her my flight is going be late maybe let me stay over at her place because I know her mom a little and her mom likes me.
I told her maybe I could do that and we can just talk but then she tells me that’s not a good idea and she isn’t doing that so I keep trying and trying but she says we can talk on the phone when I land so I said fine I’m cool with that. I landed and I was about to text her that I landed, can we talk now but before I went on instagram to see if she unfollowed people because I just couldn’t stop thinking about her being with someone else. I see she blocked me on instagram so I go to text her phone number and I was blocked too.
I had a whole letter for her and she hasn’t even seen it because I sent it after the messages went green but it just hurts so much because I want this girl like she just matches me. This just happened two days ago,I am really hurting bad. I don’t know what to do I feel so alone but I just want her bad like what can I do and I know the story is everywhere but it’s so hard to type this out. I don’t know if anyone wants to hear all of it, maybe I can make a discord or something but I don’t know what to do and I don’t want nobody else but her.
submitted by SnooCrickets3850 to dating_advice [link] [comments]
I started to like this girl so much but the only thing I didn’t like was she was talking to her ex still but for a reason. She had to pay him back for rent which I thought It was totally fine but it started to get to a point where she was like “ugh he is just pissing me off and I can’t take this with him.” Also she would bring up certain things with him to me which I thought was weird to me because even though I knew they lived with each other about two years ago and broke up a year ago.
I never seen somebody talk about their ex so much even though it was all bad things about him but even still have contact with him. I would kinda tease her about it sometimes like “oh sounds like you guys are still together.” She denies it and says fucker I like you not him anymore but it got to a point I would say stuff like that out of concern which one day, we had a conversation about it and she said I would bring him up all the time.
I never dealt with that before, so even though I know this is wrong I went on a the same dating app I found her on and was looking and I saw her sister friend at the time. I didn’t know the friend at the time so I swipe on her and we didn’t match but I get a call from the girl I was talking to and she was telling me how could I do this and everything else, which she is right I should of never done that. I just felt like she was so drawn on her ex and having conversations with him that I was going try and see what else was out there but after that we came to a agreement on just keep talking to each other.
Months go by and we fall for each other, we aren’t in a relationship yet because I just feel so doubtful that it could work because in my mind she is still talking to her ex. She wants to be my girlfriend but I just kept telling her let’s wait because of the ex stuff, I didn’t tell her that but she got it. We have each others location and spring break comes, I don’t know what happened but my location stops working for her.
I leave to go back home. She gets worried about not seeing it and wants to fix it and I tried to fix it but it wouldn’t work for me even showing her that it didn’t but then I told her I’m going to be spending time with my family because I never get to see them because I play college football. she got that but it’s also my fault because I spent so much time with them and didn’t text her as much when I was back at home.
My birthday is in spring break so I got gifts from my family but I got crocs that had I heart N which was from my mom which represented my uncle who passed, His name started with a N. she’s worried that I might have a another girl back home. I tried telling her I don’t but I wanted her to come over since I was gone for a week and she had gifts for my birthday that past so everything was good.
She is over my place and is fine with staying until I got back from practice so I left then I get text messages from my family friend telling me she is texting her on instagram and somehow gets her phone number. I couldn’t go back home to ask why she is doing that since I was already at practice but after practice I call her and she is literally back at her house and telling me that I lied to her and that she is done with me.
She literally took an edible and drove home which I think is crazy but she is so high and I tell her, What is going on and she says I have proof of you lying to me and I told her send it to me. She takes forever to send it but she sends it to me and it’s my crocs with the N. She tries to say my family friend is the girl so we go back and forth but then she realize that it wasn’t and says sorry for leaving and she also got in an argument with her mom.
I tell her that we need to just slow down we are just dating and you are doing crazy things. She agrees and we kinda slow down, after this she is still stalking my family friend. she doesn’t know that my family friend has a boyfriend and keeps looking at her stories and thinks it’s me so she jumps to conclusions and breaks up with me. I keep tryna tell her it’s not me and she keeps saying it is but we come to a agreement again and she asks me why do I still wanna date her when she’s done that, I tell her I just like her so much and wanna see how far it can go.
This is true and still is because this is still fresh. weeks later she is having conversations with her ex but she already told him that she wants me and not him anymore. he didn’t wanna let go and she was just paying him back the money she owed him but he started to make conversation with her and they were just talking like friends. Couple weeks ago he confessed to her about wanting her back and wants her to drop me and come back to him but they have a long bad history and she told him “I’m not doing that to him, I want him in my life not you just move on.”
He literally pass out or something while driving because he wasn’t getting sleep or something and she calls me and tells me everything that went on and all that shit made me so mad. she still was talking to him because I knew he would do something like that but he gives her a ultimatum of it’s either me or him. She told me that and tells him the next day I’m sticking with him. She couldn’t and wouldn’t go back to that place he put her in so after that I’m pissed off about that whole shit and keeping contact with him.
A week ago, my family friends car stops working so she asks me to take her to target to get stuff and I did because why wouldn’t I help. I do that and we are just laughing and talking then I take a picture of her with my crocs half way in it and she posted it but next thing that happens is I get a text from the girl. She says fuck you, bye then blocks me and it hurt so fucking much like I still think about it and tried to tell her, I wasn’t doing anything with my family friend but I was blocked.
I start to post on my story and she just watches them and not saying anything. I don’t say anything as well but then she posts something about karma is coming for the people that lied to her and did her wrong which hurt because I truly wasn’t doing nothing. I didn’t wanna text her because I was still shocked that she would do that then days go by and she stops watching it.
I saw she keep going public and private on instagram so when she opened it again I like some new pictures of her then she texts and delete. I asked her what did she say and she said why am I liking her shit and I need to stop because my little girlfriend isn’t going like that like just being so petty. She tells me that she is going block me on Instagram too so I started feeling sad and told her don’t let me just talk to her.
I wasn’t even home, I was literally in a different state for a family trip which was two days ago but I tell her everything that I love her and wanna fix it. I don’t wanna lose her but she tells me she isn’t changing her mind and I’m begging her because I truly love this girl but we come to somewhat an agreement of seeing each other Tuesday. I got back in the state so I text her and tell her my flight is going be late maybe let me stay over at her place because I know her mom a little and her mom likes me.
I told her maybe I could do that and we can just talk but then she tells me that’s not a good idea and she isn’t doing that so I keep trying and trying but she says we can talk on the phone when I land so I said fine I’m cool with that. I landed and I was about to text her that I landed, can we talk now but before I went on instagram to see if she unfollowed people because I just couldn’t stop thinking about her being with someone else. I see she blocked me on instagram so I go to text her phone number and I was blocked too.
I had a whole letter for her and she hasn’t even seen it because I sent it after the messages went green but it just hurts so much because I want this girl like she just matches me. This just happened two days ago,I am really hurting bad. I don’t know what to do I feel so alone but I just want her bad like what can I do and I know the story is everywhere but it’s so hard to type this out. I don’t know if anyone wants to hear all of it, maybe I can make a discord or something but I don’t know what to do and I don’t want nobody else but her.
2024.05.29 09:40 SnooCrickets3850 The one that got away
So I don’t know how to start this but I meet this girl on a dating app and we were talking, everything was amazing even the first time we met up. She spent the night over because she was too drunk to drive home so was I, I was very hesitant because this person at that time was a stranger but we just vibe so well. After that day we just keep hanging out and exploring places in SD. I got to really get to know this person so well and deeply that we had so much in common, Music, ideas, etc.
I started to like this girl so much but the only thing I didn’t like was she was talking to her ex still but for a reason. She had to pay him back for rent which I thought It was totally fine but it started to get to a point where she was like “ugh he is just pissing me off and I can’t take this with him.” Also she would bring up certain things with him to me which I thought was weird to me because even though I knew they lived with each other about two years ago and broke up a year ago.
I never seen somebody talk about their ex so much even though it was all bad things about him but even still have contact with him. I would kinda tease her about it sometimes like “oh sounds like you guys are still together.” She denies it and says fucker I like you not him anymore but it got to a point I would say stuff like that out of concern which one day, we had a conversation about it and she said I would bring him up all the time.
I never dealt with that before, so even though I know this is wrong I went on a the same dating app I found her on and was looking and I saw her sister friend at the time. I didn’t know the friend at the time so I swipe on her and we didn’t match but I get a call from the girl I was talking to and she was telling me how could I do this and everything else, which she is right I should of never done that. I just felt like she was so drawn on her ex and having conversations with him that I was going try and see what else was out there but after that we came to a agreement on just keep talking to each other.
Months go by and we fall for each other, we aren’t in a relationship yet because I just feel so doubtful that it could work because in my mind she is still talking to her ex. She wants to be my girlfriend but I just kept telling her let’s wait because of the ex stuff, I didn’t tell her that but she got it. We have each others location and spring break comes, I don’t know what happened but my location stops working for her.
I leave to go back home. She gets worried about not seeing it and wants to fix it and I tried to fix it but it wouldn’t work for me even showing her that it didn’t but then I told her I’m going to be spending time with my family because I never get to see them because I play college football. she got that but it’s also my fault because I spent so much time with them and didn’t text her as much when I was back at home.
My birthday is in spring break so I got gifts from my family but I got crocs that had I heart N which was from my mom which represented my uncle who passed, His name started with a N. she’s worried that I might have a another girl back home. I tried telling her I don’t but I wanted her to come over since I was gone for a week and she had gifts for my birthday that past so everything was good.
She is over my place and is fine with staying until I got back from practice so I left then I get text messages from my family friend telling me she is texting her on instagram and somehow gets her phone number. I couldn’t go back home to ask why she is doing that since I was already at practice but after practice I call her and she is literally back at her house and telling me that I lied to her and that she is done with me.
She literally took an edible and drove home which I think is crazy but she is so high and I tell her, What is going on and she says I have proof of you lying to me and I told her send it to me. She takes forever to send it but she sends it to me and it’s my crocs with the N. She tries to say my family friend is the girl so we go back and forth but then she realize that it wasn’t and says sorry for leaving and she also got in an argument with her mom.
I tell her that we need to just slow down we are just dating and you are doing crazy things. She agrees and we kinda slow down, after this she is still stalking my family friend. she doesn’t know that my family friend has a boyfriend and keeps looking at her stories and thinks it’s me so she jumps to conclusions and breaks up with me. I keep tryna tell her it’s not me and she keeps saying it is but we come to a agreement again and she asks me why do I still wanna date her when she’s done that, I tell her I just like her so much and wanna see how far it can go.
This is true and still is because this is still fresh. weeks later she is having conversations with her ex but she already told him that she wants me and not him anymore. he didn’t wanna let go and she was just paying him back the money she owed him but he started to make conversation with her and they were just talking like friends. Couple weeks ago he confessed to her about wanting her back and wants her to drop me and come back to him but they have a long bad history and she told him “I’m not doing that to him, I want him in my life not you just move on.”
He literally pass out or something while driving because he wasn’t getting sleep or something and she calls me and tells me everything that went on and all that shit made me so mad. she still was talking to him because I knew he would do something like that but he gives her a ultimatum of it’s either me or him. She told me that and tells him the next day I’m sticking with him. She couldn’t and wouldn’t go back to that place he put her in so after that I’m pissed off about that whole shit and keeping contact with him.
A week ago, my family friends car stops working so she asks me to take her to target to get stuff and I did because why wouldn’t I help. I do that and we are just laughing and talking then I take a picture of her with my crocs half way in it and she posted it but next thing that happens is I get a text from the girl. She says fuck you, bye then blocks me and it hurt so fucking much like I still think about it and tried to tell her, I wasn’t doing anything with my family friend but I was blocked.
I start to post on my story and she just watches them and not saying anything. I don’t say anything as well but then she posts something about karma is coming for the people that lied to her and did her wrong which hurt because I truly wasn’t doing nothing. I didn’t wanna text her because I was still shocked that she would do that then days go by and she stops watching it.
I saw she keep going public and private on instagram so when she opened it again I like some new pictures of her then she texts and delete. I asked her what did she say and she said why am I liking her shit and I need to stop because my little girlfriend isn’t going like that like just being so petty. She tells me that she is going block me on Instagram too so I started feeling sad and told her don’t let me just talk to her.
I wasn’t even home, I was literally in a different state for a family trip which was two days ago but I tell her everything that I love her and wanna fix it. I don’t wanna lose her but she tells me she isn’t changing her mind and I’m begging her because I truly love this girl but we come to somewhat an agreement of seeing each other Tuesday. I got back in the state so I text her and tell her my flight is going be late maybe let me stay over at her place because I know her mom a little and her mom likes me.
I told her maybe I could do that and we can just talk but then she tells me that’s not a good idea and she isn’t doing that so I keep trying and trying but she says we can talk on the phone when I land so I said fine I’m cool with that. I landed and I was about to text her that I landed, can we talk now but before I went on instagram to see if she unfollowed people because I just couldn’t stop thinking about her being with someone else. I see she blocked me on instagram so I go to text her phone number and I was blocked too.
I had a whole letter for her and she hasn’t even seen it because I sent it after the messages went green but it just hurts so much because I want this girl like she just matches me. This just happened two days ago,I am really hurting bad. I don’t know what to do I feel so alone but I just want her bad like what can I do and I know the story is everywhere but it’s so hard to type this out. I don’t know if anyone wants to hear all of it, maybe I can make a discord or something but I don’t know what to do and I don’t want nobody else but her.
submitted by SnooCrickets3850 to ExNoContact [link] [comments]
I started to like this girl so much but the only thing I didn’t like was she was talking to her ex still but for a reason. She had to pay him back for rent which I thought It was totally fine but it started to get to a point where she was like “ugh he is just pissing me off and I can’t take this with him.” Also she would bring up certain things with him to me which I thought was weird to me because even though I knew they lived with each other about two years ago and broke up a year ago.
I never seen somebody talk about their ex so much even though it was all bad things about him but even still have contact with him. I would kinda tease her about it sometimes like “oh sounds like you guys are still together.” She denies it and says fucker I like you not him anymore but it got to a point I would say stuff like that out of concern which one day, we had a conversation about it and she said I would bring him up all the time.
I never dealt with that before, so even though I know this is wrong I went on a the same dating app I found her on and was looking and I saw her sister friend at the time. I didn’t know the friend at the time so I swipe on her and we didn’t match but I get a call from the girl I was talking to and she was telling me how could I do this and everything else, which she is right I should of never done that. I just felt like she was so drawn on her ex and having conversations with him that I was going try and see what else was out there but after that we came to a agreement on just keep talking to each other.
Months go by and we fall for each other, we aren’t in a relationship yet because I just feel so doubtful that it could work because in my mind she is still talking to her ex. She wants to be my girlfriend but I just kept telling her let’s wait because of the ex stuff, I didn’t tell her that but she got it. We have each others location and spring break comes, I don’t know what happened but my location stops working for her.
I leave to go back home. She gets worried about not seeing it and wants to fix it and I tried to fix it but it wouldn’t work for me even showing her that it didn’t but then I told her I’m going to be spending time with my family because I never get to see them because I play college football. she got that but it’s also my fault because I spent so much time with them and didn’t text her as much when I was back at home.
My birthday is in spring break so I got gifts from my family but I got crocs that had I heart N which was from my mom which represented my uncle who passed, His name started with a N. she’s worried that I might have a another girl back home. I tried telling her I don’t but I wanted her to come over since I was gone for a week and she had gifts for my birthday that past so everything was good.
She is over my place and is fine with staying until I got back from practice so I left then I get text messages from my family friend telling me she is texting her on instagram and somehow gets her phone number. I couldn’t go back home to ask why she is doing that since I was already at practice but after practice I call her and she is literally back at her house and telling me that I lied to her and that she is done with me.
She literally took an edible and drove home which I think is crazy but she is so high and I tell her, What is going on and she says I have proof of you lying to me and I told her send it to me. She takes forever to send it but she sends it to me and it’s my crocs with the N. She tries to say my family friend is the girl so we go back and forth but then she realize that it wasn’t and says sorry for leaving and she also got in an argument with her mom.
I tell her that we need to just slow down we are just dating and you are doing crazy things. She agrees and we kinda slow down, after this she is still stalking my family friend. she doesn’t know that my family friend has a boyfriend and keeps looking at her stories and thinks it’s me so she jumps to conclusions and breaks up with me. I keep tryna tell her it’s not me and she keeps saying it is but we come to a agreement again and she asks me why do I still wanna date her when she’s done that, I tell her I just like her so much and wanna see how far it can go.
This is true and still is because this is still fresh. weeks later she is having conversations with her ex but she already told him that she wants me and not him anymore. he didn’t wanna let go and she was just paying him back the money she owed him but he started to make conversation with her and they were just talking like friends. Couple weeks ago he confessed to her about wanting her back and wants her to drop me and come back to him but they have a long bad history and she told him “I’m not doing that to him, I want him in my life not you just move on.”
He literally pass out or something while driving because he wasn’t getting sleep or something and she calls me and tells me everything that went on and all that shit made me so mad. she still was talking to him because I knew he would do something like that but he gives her a ultimatum of it’s either me or him. She told me that and tells him the next day I’m sticking with him. She couldn’t and wouldn’t go back to that place he put her in so after that I’m pissed off about that whole shit and keeping contact with him.
A week ago, my family friends car stops working so she asks me to take her to target to get stuff and I did because why wouldn’t I help. I do that and we are just laughing and talking then I take a picture of her with my crocs half way in it and she posted it but next thing that happens is I get a text from the girl. She says fuck you, bye then blocks me and it hurt so fucking much like I still think about it and tried to tell her, I wasn’t doing anything with my family friend but I was blocked.
I start to post on my story and she just watches them and not saying anything. I don’t say anything as well but then she posts something about karma is coming for the people that lied to her and did her wrong which hurt because I truly wasn’t doing nothing. I didn’t wanna text her because I was still shocked that she would do that then days go by and she stops watching it.
I saw she keep going public and private on instagram so when she opened it again I like some new pictures of her then she texts and delete. I asked her what did she say and she said why am I liking her shit and I need to stop because my little girlfriend isn’t going like that like just being so petty. She tells me that she is going block me on Instagram too so I started feeling sad and told her don’t let me just talk to her.
I wasn’t even home, I was literally in a different state for a family trip which was two days ago but I tell her everything that I love her and wanna fix it. I don’t wanna lose her but she tells me she isn’t changing her mind and I’m begging her because I truly love this girl but we come to somewhat an agreement of seeing each other Tuesday. I got back in the state so I text her and tell her my flight is going be late maybe let me stay over at her place because I know her mom a little and her mom likes me.
I told her maybe I could do that and we can just talk but then she tells me that’s not a good idea and she isn’t doing that so I keep trying and trying but she says we can talk on the phone when I land so I said fine I’m cool with that. I landed and I was about to text her that I landed, can we talk now but before I went on instagram to see if she unfollowed people because I just couldn’t stop thinking about her being with someone else. I see she blocked me on instagram so I go to text her phone number and I was blocked too.
I had a whole letter for her and she hasn’t even seen it because I sent it after the messages went green but it just hurts so much because I want this girl like she just matches me. This just happened two days ago,I am really hurting bad. I don’t know what to do I feel so alone but I just want her bad like what can I do and I know the story is everywhere but it’s so hard to type this out. I don’t know if anyone wants to hear all of it, maybe I can make a discord or something but I don’t know what to do and I don’t want nobody else but her.
2024.05.29 09:39 SnooCrickets3850 The one that got away
So I don’t know how to start this but I meet this girl on a dating app and we were talking, everything was amazing even the first time we met up. She spent the night over because she was too drunk to drive home so was I, I was very hesitant because this person at that time was a stranger but we just vibe so well. After that day we just keep hanging out and exploring places in SD. I got to really get to know this person so well and deeply that we had so much in common, Music, ideas, etc.
I started to like this girl so much but the only thing I didn’t like was she was talking to her ex still but for a reason. She had to pay him back for rent which I thought It was totally fine but it started to get to a point where she was like “ugh he is just pissing me off and I can’t take this with him.” Also she would bring up certain things with him to me which I thought was weird to me because even though I knew they lived with each other about two years ago and broke up a year ago.
I never seen somebody talk about their ex so much even though it was all bad things about him but even still have contact with him. I would kinda tease her about it sometimes like “oh sounds like you guys are still together.” She denies it and says fucker I like you not him anymore but it got to a point I would say stuff like that out of concern which one day, we had a conversation about it and she said I would bring him up all the time.
I never dealt with that before, so even though I know this is wrong I went on a the same dating app I found her on and was looking and I saw her sister friend at the time. I didn’t know the friend at the time so I swipe on her and we didn’t match but I get a call from the girl I was talking to and she was telling me how could I do this and everything else, which she is right I should of never done that. I just felt like she was so drawn on her ex and having conversations with him that I was going try and see what else was out there but after that we came to a agreement on just keep talking to each other.
Months go by and we fall for each other, we aren’t in a relationship yet because I just feel so doubtful that it could work because in my mind she is still talking to her ex. She wants to be my girlfriend but I just kept telling her let’s wait because of the ex stuff, I didn’t tell her that but she got it. We have each others location and spring break comes, I don’t know what happened but my location stops working for her.
I leave to go back home. She gets worried about not seeing it and wants to fix it and I tried to fix it but it wouldn’t work for me even showing her that it didn’t but then I told her I’m going to be spending time with my family because I never get to see them because I play college football. she got that but it’s also my fault because I spent so much time with them and didn’t text her as much when I was back at home.
My birthday is in spring break so I got gifts from my family but I got crocs that had I heart N which was from my mom which represented my uncle who passed, His name started with a N. she’s worried that I might have a another girl back home. I tried telling her I don’t but I wanted her to come over since I was gone for a week and she had gifts for my birthday that past so everything was good.
She is over my place and is fine with staying until I got back from practice so I left then I get text messages from my family friend telling me she is texting her on instagram and somehow gets her phone number. I couldn’t go back home to ask why she is doing that since I was already at practice but after practice I call her and she is literally back at her house and telling me that I lied to her and that she is done with me.
She literally took an edible and drove home which I think is crazy but she is so high and I tell her, What is going on and she says I have proof of you lying to me and I told her send it to me. She takes forever to send it but she sends it to me and it’s my crocs with the N. She tries to say my family friend is the girl so we go back and forth but then she realize that it wasn’t and says sorry for leaving and she also got in an argument with her mom.
I tell her that we need to just slow down we are just dating and you are doing crazy things. She agrees and we kinda slow down, after this she is still stalking my family friend. she doesn’t know that my family friend has a boyfriend and keeps looking at her stories and thinks it’s me so she jumps to conclusions and breaks up with me. I keep tryna tell her it’s not me and she keeps saying it is but we come to a agreement again and she asks me why do I still wanna date her when she’s done that, I tell her I just like her so much and wanna see how far it can go.
This is true and still is because this is still fresh. weeks later she is having conversations with her ex but she already told him that she wants me and not him anymore. he didn’t wanna let go and she was just paying him back the money she owed him but he started to make conversation with her and they were just talking like friends. Couple weeks ago he confessed to her about wanting her back and wants her to drop me and come back to him but they have a long bad history and she told him “I’m not doing that to him, I want him in my life not you just move on.”
He literally pass out or something while driving because he wasn’t getting sleep or something and she calls me and tells me everything that went on and all that shit made me so mad. she still was talking to him because I knew he would do something like that but he gives her a ultimatum of it’s either me or him. She told me that and tells him the next day I’m sticking with him. She couldn’t and wouldn’t go back to that place he put her in so after that I’m pissed off about that whole shit and keeping contact with him.
A week ago, my family friends car stops working so she asks me to take her to target to get stuff and I did because why wouldn’t I help. I do that and we are just laughing and talking then I take a picture of her with my crocs half way in it and she posted it but next thing that happens is I get a text from the girl. She says fuck you, bye then blocks me and it hurt so fucking much like I still think about it and tried to tell her, I wasn’t doing anything with my family friend but I was blocked.
I start to post on my story and she just watches them and not saying anything. I don’t say anything as well but then she posts something about karma is coming for the people that lied to her and did her wrong which hurt because I truly wasn’t doing nothing. I didn’t wanna text her because I was still shocked that she would do that then days go by and she stops watching it.
I saw she keep going public and private on instagram so when she opened it again I like some new pictures of her then she texts and delete. I asked her what did she say and she said why am I liking her shit and I need to stop because my little girlfriend isn’t going like that like just being so petty. She tells me that she is going block me on Instagram too so I started feeling sad and told her don’t let me just talk to her.
I wasn’t even home, I was literally in a different state for a family trip which was two days ago but I tell her everything that I love her and wanna fix it. I don’t wanna lose her but she tells me she isn’t changing her mind and I’m begging her because I truly love this girl but we come to somewhat an agreement of seeing each other Tuesday. I got back in the state so I text her and tell her my flight is going be late maybe let me stay over at her place because I know her mom a little and her mom likes me.
I told her maybe I could do that and we can just talk but then she tells me that’s not a good idea and she isn’t doing that so I keep trying and trying but she says we can talk on the phone when I land so I said fine I’m cool with that. I landed and I was about to text her that I landed, can we talk now but before I went on instagram to see if she unfollowed people because I just couldn’t stop thinking about her being with someone else. I see she blocked me on instagram so I go to text her phone number and I was blocked too.
I had a whole letter for her and she hasn’t even seen it because I sent it after the messages went green but it just hurts so much because I want this girl like she just matches me. This just happened two days ago,I am really hurting bad. I don’t know what to do I feel so alone but I just want her bad like what can I do and I know the story is everywhere but it’s so hard to type this out. I don’t know if anyone wants to hear all of it, maybe I can make a discord or something but I don’t know what to do and I don’t want nobody else but her. I just wanna give her this letter, I have for her. Maybe somebody could send it to her email from me but is that too much? So many scenarios in my mind.
submitted by SnooCrickets3850 to heartbreak [link] [comments]
I started to like this girl so much but the only thing I didn’t like was she was talking to her ex still but for a reason. She had to pay him back for rent which I thought It was totally fine but it started to get to a point where she was like “ugh he is just pissing me off and I can’t take this with him.” Also she would bring up certain things with him to me which I thought was weird to me because even though I knew they lived with each other about two years ago and broke up a year ago.
I never seen somebody talk about their ex so much even though it was all bad things about him but even still have contact with him. I would kinda tease her about it sometimes like “oh sounds like you guys are still together.” She denies it and says fucker I like you not him anymore but it got to a point I would say stuff like that out of concern which one day, we had a conversation about it and she said I would bring him up all the time.
I never dealt with that before, so even though I know this is wrong I went on a the same dating app I found her on and was looking and I saw her sister friend at the time. I didn’t know the friend at the time so I swipe on her and we didn’t match but I get a call from the girl I was talking to and she was telling me how could I do this and everything else, which she is right I should of never done that. I just felt like she was so drawn on her ex and having conversations with him that I was going try and see what else was out there but after that we came to a agreement on just keep talking to each other.
Months go by and we fall for each other, we aren’t in a relationship yet because I just feel so doubtful that it could work because in my mind she is still talking to her ex. She wants to be my girlfriend but I just kept telling her let’s wait because of the ex stuff, I didn’t tell her that but she got it. We have each others location and spring break comes, I don’t know what happened but my location stops working for her.
I leave to go back home. She gets worried about not seeing it and wants to fix it and I tried to fix it but it wouldn’t work for me even showing her that it didn’t but then I told her I’m going to be spending time with my family because I never get to see them because I play college football. she got that but it’s also my fault because I spent so much time with them and didn’t text her as much when I was back at home.
My birthday is in spring break so I got gifts from my family but I got crocs that had I heart N which was from my mom which represented my uncle who passed, His name started with a N. she’s worried that I might have a another girl back home. I tried telling her I don’t but I wanted her to come over since I was gone for a week and she had gifts for my birthday that past so everything was good.
She is over my place and is fine with staying until I got back from practice so I left then I get text messages from my family friend telling me she is texting her on instagram and somehow gets her phone number. I couldn’t go back home to ask why she is doing that since I was already at practice but after practice I call her and she is literally back at her house and telling me that I lied to her and that she is done with me.
She literally took an edible and drove home which I think is crazy but she is so high and I tell her, What is going on and she says I have proof of you lying to me and I told her send it to me. She takes forever to send it but she sends it to me and it’s my crocs with the N. She tries to say my family friend is the girl so we go back and forth but then she realize that it wasn’t and says sorry for leaving and she also got in an argument with her mom.
I tell her that we need to just slow down we are just dating and you are doing crazy things. She agrees and we kinda slow down, after this she is still stalking my family friend. she doesn’t know that my family friend has a boyfriend and keeps looking at her stories and thinks it’s me so she jumps to conclusions and breaks up with me. I keep tryna tell her it’s not me and she keeps saying it is but we come to a agreement again and she asks me why do I still wanna date her when she’s done that, I tell her I just like her so much and wanna see how far it can go.
This is true and still is because this is still fresh. weeks later she is having conversations with her ex but she already told him that she wants me and not him anymore. he didn’t wanna let go and she was just paying him back the money she owed him but he started to make conversation with her and they were just talking like friends. Couple weeks ago he confessed to her about wanting her back and wants her to drop me and come back to him but they have a long bad history and she told him “I’m not doing that to him, I want him in my life not you just move on.”
He literally pass out or something while driving because he wasn’t getting sleep or something and she calls me and tells me everything that went on and all that shit made me so mad. she still was talking to him because I knew he would do something like that but he gives her a ultimatum of it’s either me or him. She told me that and tells him the next day I’m sticking with him. She couldn’t and wouldn’t go back to that place he put her in so after that I’m pissed off about that whole shit and keeping contact with him.
A week ago, my family friends car stops working so she asks me to take her to target to get stuff and I did because why wouldn’t I help. I do that and we are just laughing and talking then I take a picture of her with my crocs half way in it and she posted it but next thing that happens is I get a text from the girl. She says fuck you, bye then blocks me and it hurt so fucking much like I still think about it and tried to tell her, I wasn’t doing anything with my family friend but I was blocked.
I start to post on my story and she just watches them and not saying anything. I don’t say anything as well but then she posts something about karma is coming for the people that lied to her and did her wrong which hurt because I truly wasn’t doing nothing. I didn’t wanna text her because I was still shocked that she would do that then days go by and she stops watching it.
I saw she keep going public and private on instagram so when she opened it again I like some new pictures of her then she texts and delete. I asked her what did she say and she said why am I liking her shit and I need to stop because my little girlfriend isn’t going like that like just being so petty. She tells me that she is going block me on Instagram too so I started feeling sad and told her don’t let me just talk to her.
I wasn’t even home, I was literally in a different state for a family trip which was two days ago but I tell her everything that I love her and wanna fix it. I don’t wanna lose her but she tells me she isn’t changing her mind and I’m begging her because I truly love this girl but we come to somewhat an agreement of seeing each other Tuesday. I got back in the state so I text her and tell her my flight is going be late maybe let me stay over at her place because I know her mom a little and her mom likes me.
I told her maybe I could do that and we can just talk but then she tells me that’s not a good idea and she isn’t doing that so I keep trying and trying but she says we can talk on the phone when I land so I said fine I’m cool with that. I landed and I was about to text her that I landed, can we talk now but before I went on instagram to see if she unfollowed people because I just couldn’t stop thinking about her being with someone else. I see she blocked me on instagram so I go to text her phone number and I was blocked too.
I had a whole letter for her and she hasn’t even seen it because I sent it after the messages went green but it just hurts so much because I want this girl like she just matches me. This just happened two days ago,I am really hurting bad. I don’t know what to do I feel so alone but I just want her bad like what can I do and I know the story is everywhere but it’s so hard to type this out. I don’t know if anyone wants to hear all of it, maybe I can make a discord or something but I don’t know what to do and I don’t want nobody else but her. I just wanna give her this letter, I have for her. Maybe somebody could send it to her email from me but is that too much? So many scenarios in my mind.
2024.05.29 09:17 maybejustwait I hid my buli*mia for 4 years. This is my journal entry 21 days into recovery
Entry 1:
It’s crazy to think this is the first time I’ve ever dared to put words on paper about this. My eating disorder that lived inside of me for four years, just shut away from the rest of my life, ignored by the me that others saw and thought they knew. Even now, the word Bulimia is unsettling. How is it possible that I actually lived with this monster that consumed every inch of my thoughts, practically every single day of my life? How did I live a life for four years where it was normal to wake up with my first thought being what and when will I throw up today? When should I go to the gym so I can eat and throw up after? 4 meetings on the calendar today, cool, maybe I’ll get a quick b&p in between the 3rd and 4th. There was a second of every day where I wondered if maybe today was this day that I’ll finally stop, only to end the night with my head over the toilet, doors locked tight and music blasting, and a meticulous clean up session to make sure no one noticed any food left in the toilet, or the tears and snot dripping down my face that came with repeatedly forcing my fingers down my throat.
Yet, everyday, I got away with it.
Looking back, it doesn’t even seem real. Outwardly, I was always a shining symbol of fitness. Inwardly, I clung onto it like it was the only thing I had, because part of me felt like it wasn’t real. Like a classic bulimic, I tended to fast during the day (we usually weren’t hungry in the morning as our bodies were still processing the 6,000+ calories we ingested last night in one sitting), but the hours I put into training were real, and I had the body to show for it. I even boasted a pride for my fitness, yet there was always some part of me that was shameful and guilty for what happened behind closed doors at night that made me feel like a fraud.
Everyday I wanted to stop, and yet something more powerful overcame me everyday. Perhaps it was the dopamine rush of eating everything in sight, everything I normally wouldn’t eat unless I was able to purge it later. Most of the time, however, I couldn’t even remember how I started. It was mindless, like I’d forgotten the rest of the world. My hands were on autopilot, just reaching for more, over and over again. I couldn’t stop. Not until I’d run out of food or the sharp pain in my bulging stomach screams in desperation do I snap out of the tunnel vision. At first it was oh no, I need to get this out of me right now. As time went on, it became more like clockwork. At the last bite of Sour Patch Kids or my inability to breathe from the pressure on my stomach, it was just a routine feeling. Cool, onto the next step.
Entry 2:
What seems even less real is how I’m now 21 days into my recovery, the longest I’ve gone in four years without binging or purging. I catch myself thinking, is this what a normal person feels like? To walk into the house without anything pressing to do without a thought of going into the kitchen to see what I could binge on, when was a good time, or if I should make a quick doordash order for junk food to save for later; to be on a long drive and not be consumed by thoughts of food; to actually wind down before bed instead of using the extra hour to swallow chocolate bars and bags of chips just to bring it back up. I’m suddenly able to think about more, and do so much more. It was like I had lost a percentage of my brain to a mindless plague.
*Written at time of post*
If this sounds like you, know you're not alone, and that recovery is possible. Your body can be your own again.
submitted by maybejustwait to EDAnonymous [link] [comments]
It’s crazy to think this is the first time I’ve ever dared to put words on paper about this. My eating disorder that lived inside of me for four years, just shut away from the rest of my life, ignored by the me that others saw and thought they knew. Even now, the word Bulimia is unsettling. How is it possible that I actually lived with this monster that consumed every inch of my thoughts, practically every single day of my life? How did I live a life for four years where it was normal to wake up with my first thought being what and when will I throw up today? When should I go to the gym so I can eat and throw up after? 4 meetings on the calendar today, cool, maybe I’ll get a quick b&p in between the 3rd and 4th. There was a second of every day where I wondered if maybe today was this day that I’ll finally stop, only to end the night with my head over the toilet, doors locked tight and music blasting, and a meticulous clean up session to make sure no one noticed any food left in the toilet, or the tears and snot dripping down my face that came with repeatedly forcing my fingers down my throat.
Yet, everyday, I got away with it.
Looking back, it doesn’t even seem real. Outwardly, I was always a shining symbol of fitness. Inwardly, I clung onto it like it was the only thing I had, because part of me felt like it wasn’t real. Like a classic bulimic, I tended to fast during the day (we usually weren’t hungry in the morning as our bodies were still processing the 6,000+ calories we ingested last night in one sitting), but the hours I put into training were real, and I had the body to show for it. I even boasted a pride for my fitness, yet there was always some part of me that was shameful and guilty for what happened behind closed doors at night that made me feel like a fraud.
Everyday I wanted to stop, and yet something more powerful overcame me everyday. Perhaps it was the dopamine rush of eating everything in sight, everything I normally wouldn’t eat unless I was able to purge it later. Most of the time, however, I couldn’t even remember how I started. It was mindless, like I’d forgotten the rest of the world. My hands were on autopilot, just reaching for more, over and over again. I couldn’t stop. Not until I’d run out of food or the sharp pain in my bulging stomach screams in desperation do I snap out of the tunnel vision. At first it was oh no, I need to get this out of me right now. As time went on, it became more like clockwork. At the last bite of Sour Patch Kids or my inability to breathe from the pressure on my stomach, it was just a routine feeling. Cool, onto the next step.
Entry 2:
What seems even less real is how I’m now 21 days into my recovery, the longest I’ve gone in four years without binging or purging. I catch myself thinking, is this what a normal person feels like? To walk into the house without anything pressing to do without a thought of going into the kitchen to see what I could binge on, when was a good time, or if I should make a quick doordash order for junk food to save for later; to be on a long drive and not be consumed by thoughts of food; to actually wind down before bed instead of using the extra hour to swallow chocolate bars and bags of chips just to bring it back up. I’m suddenly able to think about more, and do so much more. It was like I had lost a percentage of my brain to a mindless plague.
*Written at time of post*
If this sounds like you, know you're not alone, and that recovery is possible. Your body can be your own again.
2024.05.29 09:04 amriteshkr8 A 40% keyboard+joystick i made for my cyberdeck.
 | I used circuitpython as i did not find any hid libraries for micropython that support the pi pico. submitted by amriteshkr8 to raspberrypipico [link] [comments] This is a 40 key keyboard with 3 layers. Layer1:letters and ctrl alt win etc. the rocker works like a thinkpad pointing nub. Layer2:qwertyuiop to 1234567890 and symbols on most letters. Rockers behaviour has no change. Layer3:same as layer1 but qwert is f1f2 f3 f4 f5, y is f7 and u is f11 also the rockers y axis is now a scroll wheel. Layers are selected using the red switch bank(switch 1 is not wired as i ran out of gpio pins on the pi pico) Getting the display to work is a headache especially after i have used it with arduino and found how simple it was. But this is circuitpython. The display code make my program look like a mess. I want to display the battery pack voltage on the display (read on gpio 28 through a voltage divider) with maybe something static, like my name etc. The display is connected to pins 26 and 27. I also attached an image of the cyberdeck for which i am making this. Can someone guide me to apply this code to the second core or even on core one where this code uses some kind of function like millis() is used in arduino to execute every 3 minutes. Note: please only answer in context to circuitpython. |
2024.05.29 08:57 esgexi chaotic end to years long relationships
i won’t be using names but this story is extremely specific so if you read this and were part of it, oh well. this is what happened through my eyes.
a little over a year ago i was kicked out of my living situation with a former “friend” of mine. i’m extremely lucky to have so much familial support as i was able to move in with my brother immediately after. it’s honestly all still a blur, thinking about how it all went down. i was so so excited to live with my friends, we had been friends since freshman year of highschool for most of them (one of them i had been friends with since i was 8 years old. i was 22 when i was kicked out). it was like a dream, two of us in one unit (me and the person who kicked me out) and three of us in a different unit on the same complex. it was supposed to be like a party all the time, and i was so excited to feel surrounded by support and love.
unfortunately, right before the move in date i reconnected and ended up getting back together with someone i had been in an on and off again abusive relationship with. my friends DID NOT like them and they knew that, but i felt pressured to ask if they could live with us regardless. and so they did! it was me and my ex sharing a room with my cat, and my ex friend in their own room with their two cats. it was an abysmal situation pretty much immediately, my ex and my ex friend hated each other and fought constantly. after about only a month, my partner moved out and returned to their home state. my friends were increasingly concerned about the nature of our relationship and saw the massive toll it had taken on me. they urged me to end things, so i finally did. i was devastated, crying for days and days even though i knew it was the only solution for my safety and happiness.
fast forward to the new year (i broke up with my partner in october 2022) and things were okay. i had been making new friends at my job and was so elated to have two groups of people that seemed to care about me and love me as i was. i turned 22 in february and it was one of the best birthdays ive ever had, even in hindsight. i started dating one of my new work friends, and she made me feel like i was part of something, part of the cool kid group. however, her friend group openly found my old school friends “cringey” and “annoying” and were constantly trying to separate me from them. in the meantime, still living with my friends, i fell into a deep depression. i struggled to take care of myself, to keep my space clean, and to clean up after my cat. my room was disgusting, and i will forever be ashamed about it. i never let anyone inside due to pure embarrassment. my cat was always fed, but i was not scooping her little box leading to her urinating and defecating all over the carpet eventually leading to me having to remove the carpet. my clothes were always dirty. i wasn’t allowed to let my cat out of my room because she didn’t get along with my roommates’ cats. she never showed any negative emotions towards me regardless of the poor care i was taking of her (and myself) and we were constantly snuggling and spending time together.
i could tell my roommate was becoming frustrated with my lack of cleanliness but i was in such a dark place it felt like i would never get out. one day, while i was at work, my roommate texted me telling me they had taken my cat away from me and given her to my friends in the apartment nearby. i was incredibly upset, my cat means the world to me and she felt like the only good thing about my life. immediately after i got off of work i went straight to my friends to beg for my cat back. i was an emotional mess, crying and hysteric trying to keep my calm but it was so difficult to see them all turning on me before my eyes. they told me my roommate had taken pictures of my room and showed them. it was humiliating. at first they were concerned, not mad. they did not give me my cat back so i was forced to return back to my own apartment empty handed. i blew up at my roommate. i’m not proud, but i felt pushed to the edge and completely out of control. i have suffered so much heartache at the hands of others my whole life, and the fact that it was coming from people i thought were my best friends was breaking my heart in two. in the moment i told my roommate they were acting like my ex partner, and they snapped and told me i had 30 days to leave. i returned to my room and sobbed for hours. in the following days i moved as much stuff as i could to my brothers house and had to take hours out of my own very busy work day (i had recently been promoted to manager) to retrieve my cat. i was so wracked with anxiety i couldn’t face my friends. in text messages they were calling me an animal abuser and telling me i was a bad person. i couldn’t understand the complete 180 that happened in the blink of an eye. my mom was luckily able to get my cat back, and that first night with her at my brothers house was one of the worst of my life. she instantly crawled on my lap and did not leave the entire night. i took her to the vets office the next day and they told me she was in perfect health, there was nothing wrong with her whatsoever.
i tried to move on with my life and find comfort in my girlfriend and her friends, but they ended up dropping me a few months later as well. here i am now, over a year later, without friends and no support system other than my family and my boyfriend. my cat is still in perfect health, and is living lavishly in a large house with space to roam and a consistently clean litter box. i deep clean every week, and i absolutely refuse to fall back into the filth i was living in before. but it still hurts just like the day it happened. i’ll never understand why, in my time of greatest need, my roommate decided to make a villain out of me. and then went on to convince my friends of it too. i was so sure these people would be in my life forever. there are places i can’t go anymore without extreme anxiety because of the chance i will see them. i have an incredibly difficult almost impossible time connecting with new people now, so i really have no way of creating a new circle. i am extremely depressed and often don’t feel loved, even by my boyfriend. i struggle everyday to keep it together, but i risk losing my job due to the amount of time ive had to take off due to not being able to stop crying and panicking. i feel hopeless and suicidal everyday. i had an abortion early this year with no friends to support me. i’m struggling in my relationship and have no one to talk to about the things i can’t tell my mother. i’m desperately trying to find a therapist that listens and understands but it feels impossible.
despite everything though, i’m trying to take everyday as it comes. all i can hope is that in the future, ill have friends and loved ones who care about me and love me for who i am, even if im struggling. im not saying im a perfect person, i never have been. i struggle with self hatred and feeling like a bad person constantly. it might sound silly, but this was a traumatic event for me. in a life with so much hardship this made me feel like i will never be happy again. i feel lost, but i can only hope healing will set me free.
i know this is extremely long and personal and i don’t expect anyone to read the whole thing, but if you do, thank you for listening. just typing this all out has been incredibly cathartic
submitted by esgexi to offmychest [link] [comments]
a little over a year ago i was kicked out of my living situation with a former “friend” of mine. i’m extremely lucky to have so much familial support as i was able to move in with my brother immediately after. it’s honestly all still a blur, thinking about how it all went down. i was so so excited to live with my friends, we had been friends since freshman year of highschool for most of them (one of them i had been friends with since i was 8 years old. i was 22 when i was kicked out). it was like a dream, two of us in one unit (me and the person who kicked me out) and three of us in a different unit on the same complex. it was supposed to be like a party all the time, and i was so excited to feel surrounded by support and love.
unfortunately, right before the move in date i reconnected and ended up getting back together with someone i had been in an on and off again abusive relationship with. my friends DID NOT like them and they knew that, but i felt pressured to ask if they could live with us regardless. and so they did! it was me and my ex sharing a room with my cat, and my ex friend in their own room with their two cats. it was an abysmal situation pretty much immediately, my ex and my ex friend hated each other and fought constantly. after about only a month, my partner moved out and returned to their home state. my friends were increasingly concerned about the nature of our relationship and saw the massive toll it had taken on me. they urged me to end things, so i finally did. i was devastated, crying for days and days even though i knew it was the only solution for my safety and happiness.
fast forward to the new year (i broke up with my partner in october 2022) and things were okay. i had been making new friends at my job and was so elated to have two groups of people that seemed to care about me and love me as i was. i turned 22 in february and it was one of the best birthdays ive ever had, even in hindsight. i started dating one of my new work friends, and she made me feel like i was part of something, part of the cool kid group. however, her friend group openly found my old school friends “cringey” and “annoying” and were constantly trying to separate me from them. in the meantime, still living with my friends, i fell into a deep depression. i struggled to take care of myself, to keep my space clean, and to clean up after my cat. my room was disgusting, and i will forever be ashamed about it. i never let anyone inside due to pure embarrassment. my cat was always fed, but i was not scooping her little box leading to her urinating and defecating all over the carpet eventually leading to me having to remove the carpet. my clothes were always dirty. i wasn’t allowed to let my cat out of my room because she didn’t get along with my roommates’ cats. she never showed any negative emotions towards me regardless of the poor care i was taking of her (and myself) and we were constantly snuggling and spending time together.
i could tell my roommate was becoming frustrated with my lack of cleanliness but i was in such a dark place it felt like i would never get out. one day, while i was at work, my roommate texted me telling me they had taken my cat away from me and given her to my friends in the apartment nearby. i was incredibly upset, my cat means the world to me and she felt like the only good thing about my life. immediately after i got off of work i went straight to my friends to beg for my cat back. i was an emotional mess, crying and hysteric trying to keep my calm but it was so difficult to see them all turning on me before my eyes. they told me my roommate had taken pictures of my room and showed them. it was humiliating. at first they were concerned, not mad. they did not give me my cat back so i was forced to return back to my own apartment empty handed. i blew up at my roommate. i’m not proud, but i felt pushed to the edge and completely out of control. i have suffered so much heartache at the hands of others my whole life, and the fact that it was coming from people i thought were my best friends was breaking my heart in two. in the moment i told my roommate they were acting like my ex partner, and they snapped and told me i had 30 days to leave. i returned to my room and sobbed for hours. in the following days i moved as much stuff as i could to my brothers house and had to take hours out of my own very busy work day (i had recently been promoted to manager) to retrieve my cat. i was so wracked with anxiety i couldn’t face my friends. in text messages they were calling me an animal abuser and telling me i was a bad person. i couldn’t understand the complete 180 that happened in the blink of an eye. my mom was luckily able to get my cat back, and that first night with her at my brothers house was one of the worst of my life. she instantly crawled on my lap and did not leave the entire night. i took her to the vets office the next day and they told me she was in perfect health, there was nothing wrong with her whatsoever.
i tried to move on with my life and find comfort in my girlfriend and her friends, but they ended up dropping me a few months later as well. here i am now, over a year later, without friends and no support system other than my family and my boyfriend. my cat is still in perfect health, and is living lavishly in a large house with space to roam and a consistently clean litter box. i deep clean every week, and i absolutely refuse to fall back into the filth i was living in before. but it still hurts just like the day it happened. i’ll never understand why, in my time of greatest need, my roommate decided to make a villain out of me. and then went on to convince my friends of it too. i was so sure these people would be in my life forever. there are places i can’t go anymore without extreme anxiety because of the chance i will see them. i have an incredibly difficult almost impossible time connecting with new people now, so i really have no way of creating a new circle. i am extremely depressed and often don’t feel loved, even by my boyfriend. i struggle everyday to keep it together, but i risk losing my job due to the amount of time ive had to take off due to not being able to stop crying and panicking. i feel hopeless and suicidal everyday. i had an abortion early this year with no friends to support me. i’m struggling in my relationship and have no one to talk to about the things i can’t tell my mother. i’m desperately trying to find a therapist that listens and understands but it feels impossible.
despite everything though, i’m trying to take everyday as it comes. all i can hope is that in the future, ill have friends and loved ones who care about me and love me for who i am, even if im struggling. im not saying im a perfect person, i never have been. i struggle with self hatred and feeling like a bad person constantly. it might sound silly, but this was a traumatic event for me. in a life with so much hardship this made me feel like i will never be happy again. i feel lost, but i can only hope healing will set me free.
i know this is extremely long and personal and i don’t expect anyone to read the whole thing, but if you do, thank you for listening. just typing this all out has been incredibly cathartic
2024.05.29 08:54 VolarRecords YES THIS IS ABOUT THE HISTORY OF UFOS -- Has the C.I.A. Done More Harm Than Good? - by Amy Davidson Sorkin October 3, 2022
Found this article after doing a quick deep-dive after this post from u/evilez:
https://www.reddit.com/UFOs/comments/1d33m4l/does_anybody_remember_what_podcast_this_was/
"Hello fine ladies and gentlemen! I remember listening to a podcast less than a year ago. The main subject of the podcast was UFOs (I think)... anyways the guest told a story that a congressman or senator wrote a bill that was against the CIA or going to defund the CIA, in the 80's... and shortly thereafter, someone broke into his home, dragged his wife out into the street and stuck a gun in her mouth and told her to kill the bill."
Some light Googling brought up this article about the history of the CIA, the OSS, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan's attempts at defunding the agency in the 90s.
Here's an article about that attempt brought by Moynihan published on the Carnegie Endowment Website on December 20, 2005.
https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2005/12/the-case-for-abolishing-the-cia?lang=en
Here's the New Yorker piece about all of this from October 3rd, 2022.
According to the article regarding the resuscitation of the OSS as the CIA immediately following Roswell and the Twining Memo:
"Many of its officers moved straight to the new C.I.A. Most consequentially, perhaps, four future directors of the C.I.A. were O.S.S. veterans: Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, William Colby, and William Casey."
Here's the New Yorker article in full:
"On January 4, 1995, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, of New York, introduced a bill called the Abolition of the Central Intelligence Agency Act. It had been a rough stretch for the C.I.A. The year before, Aldrich Ames, a longtime officer, had been convicted of being a longtime mole for Soviet (and then Russian) intelligence. Despite having a reputation among his colleagues as a problem drinker who appeared to live far beyond his means, Ames had been given high-level assignments with access to the names of American sources in the U.S.S.R. When the F.B.I. finally arrested him, he was in the Jaguar he used for commuting to work at Langley; by then, he was responsible for the death of at least ten agents. Moynihan said that the case was such a flamboyant display of incompetence that it might actually be a distraction from “the most fundamental defects of the C.I.A.” He meant that the agency—in what he considered to be its “defining failure”—had both missed the fact that the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse and done little to hasten its end.
He gave a diagnosis for what had gone wrong. “Secrecy keeps mistakes secret,” he said. “Secrecy is a disease. It causes a hardening of the arteries of the mind.” He quoted John le Carré on that point, adding that the best information actually came from the likes of area specialists, diplomats, historians, and journalists. If the C.I.A. was disbanded, he said, the State Department could pick up the intelligence work, and do a better job.
Moynihan was, in some respects, being disingenuous. As he well knew, even if his bill had passed, spies and spying wouldn’t have gone away. The State Department already had its own mini agency, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. The Departments of Energy and Treasury each had one, too. The Defense Intelligence Agency conducted clandestine operations; U.S. Army Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, and the Office of Naval Intelligence kept themselves busy as well. The National Security Agency was nearly two decades away from the revelation, by Edward Snowden, a contractor and a former C.I.A. employee, that it had collected information about the phone calls of most Americans, but it was a behemoth even in Moynihan’s time. So was the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There were about a dozen agencies then; now, after reforms that were supposed to streamline things, there are eighteen, including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (O.D.N.I.), a sort of meta-C.I.A. that has a couple of thousand employees, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis. The Drug Enforcement Administration (which currently has foreign offices in sixty-nine countries) has an Office of National Security Intelligence. Four million people in the United States now have security clearances.
It can be hard to sort out which agencies do what; players in the espionage business aren’t always good with boundaries. Both the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. make use of satellite resources, including commercial ones, but there is a separate agency in charge of a spy-satellite fleet, the National Reconnaissance Office—not to be confused with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which deals with both space-based and ground-level imaging, or with Space Delta 18, the nation’s newest intelligence agency, which is attached to the Space Force. Abolishing the C.I.A. might do nothing more than reconfigure the turf wars.
[NOTE: both Sean Kirkpatrick and David Grusch worked for the NRO and at least Grusch worked for the NGA]
As the senator from New York also knew, a large proportion of the C.I.A.’s resources are devoted not to intelligence gathering but to covert operations, some of which look like military operations. In “Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence” (Princeton)—one of several recent books that coincide with the seventy-fifth anniversary of the agency’s founding—Amy B. Zegart, a political scientist at Stanford, writes that it’s “getting harder to know just where the CIA’s role ends and the military’s role begins.” Yet the agency’s paramilitary pursuits and related covert activities go back decades. They include the botched Bay of Pigs landing, the brutal Phoenix Program in Vietnam, and a long list of assassination attempts, coup plots, the mining of a harbor (with explosive devices the agency built itself), and drone strikes. These operations have very seldom ended well.
Moynihan’s bill had no more luck than another that he introduced the same day, aimed at ending Major League Baseball’s exemption from antitrust laws. In each case, people understood that there was a problem, but both institutions were protected by the sense that there was something essential, and perhaps authentically American, about them, including their very brokenness. A sudden turn of events can convince even the C.I.A.’s most sober critics that the agency will save us all, whether from terrorists or from Donald Trump. But, seventy-five years in, it’s far from clear whether the C.I.A. is good at its job, or what that job is or should be, or how we could get rid of the agency if we wanted to.
How did we end up with the C.I.A.? A familiar explanation is that the shock of Pearl Harbor made the United States realize it needed more spies; the Office of Strategic Services was formed and jumped into action; and, when the war ended, the O.S.S. evolved seamlessly into the C.I.A., ready to go out and win the Cold War. But that narrative isn’t quite right, particularly regarding the relationship between the O.S.S. and the C.I.A.
[NOTE: We know how ended up with the CIA. ROSWELL.]
The United States has always used spies of some sort. George Washington had a discretionary espionage budget for which he didn’t have to turn in receipts. In the early part of the twentieth century, the State Department had an intelligence-analysis unit, along with a cryptography group called the Black Chamber, which operated out of a brownstone in New York’s Murray Hill until it was shut down, in 1929. The Army and the Navy had cryptography and reconnaissance units, too. When the Second World War began, their operations ramped up dramatically, and, as Nicholas Reynolds recounts in “Need to Know: World War II and the Rise of American Intelligence” (Mariner), these units, not the O.S.S., handled most of the code-breaking. The problem became the volume of raw intelligence. The task of making sense of it and of turning it into something that policymakers could use went to an office within the Army’s military-intelligence division (or G-2), which, Reynolds says, produced “the country’s best strategic intelligence” during the war. That office’s work was directed by Alfred McCormack, a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Harlan Stone and a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Many of the people he brought in were young corporate lawyers; the theory was that their training in plowing through mountains of documents made them ideal intelligence analysts.
William J. Donovan, who led and largely conceived of the O.S.S., was also a Wall Street lawyer, but one with an aversion to the “legalistic.” What Donovan envisioned was essentially an array of commando units that would operate stealthily and behind enemy lines. In practice, what he tried to build, according to a colleague, was a “private army.” His escapades often risked too much and gained too little. In late 1943, one of his own officers wrote to him that “the set-up has been incredibly wasteful in manpower and, except for a few spotty accomplishments, has been a national failure.” And it had produced “chaos in the field.” Donovan’s nickname was Wild Bill, but his staff called him Seabiscuit, after the thoroughbred, because of his tendency to race around, engaging in what was basically war tourism. In the end, though, the O.S.S. made real contributions, including through its contacts with the French Resistance. But Donovan’s complaint about D Day was that there was “too much planning.” Counterintelligence and strategic thinking bored him, and the O.S.S.’s analysis division was seen as secondary to its operations.
When Harry Truman became President, in April, 1945, he took a look at the O.S.S. and, in September, 1945, abolished it. About two years later, he signed the National Security Act, which established the C.I.A. (and the Department of Defense), but he didn’t want the new agency to be like the group Donovan had run. Instead, it was supposed to do what its name suggested: centralize the intelligence that various agencies gathered, analyze it, and turn it into something the President could use.
[NOTE: I tried doing some research after reading something yesterday about how the NSA was developed in 1952 under Project Sigma to try and decode "alien" communications. If anyone can offer anything, you'd be helping humanity.]
“It was not intended as a ‘Cloak and Dagger’ Outfit!,” Truman later wrote. He also had to deal with public apprehensions that he might create what a Chicago Tribune headline called a “Super Gestapo Agency”—which is why, in its charter, the C.I.A. was banned from domestic spying.
Reynolds’s book is the best of the recent batch, and the most readable. It does not retrofit the history of the O.S.S. around the assumption that the C.I.A. was the inevitable lead postwar intelligence agency. There were other contenders, including a version of McCormack’s office in the State Department—something like what Moynihan wanted. J. Edgar Hoover argued that “World Wide Intelligence” should be turned over to the F.B.I., with military intelligence subservient to him. In some alternative history, he might have pulled that off; by 1943, he was running undercover operations in twenty Latin American countries. And so things could have been worse.
[WHAT UNDERCOVER OPERATIONS WERE WE RUNNING IN LATIN AMERICANS COUNTRIES IN 1943.]
Donovan was an adept publicist, but what mattered most, in the end, was that he was good, or lucky, when it came to hiring people. Despite the “pale, male, and Yale” stereotype, the O.S.S. was somewhat more diverse than other units, and certainly more eclectic. Among its ranks were Ralph Bunche, Herbert Marcuse, and Julia Child. Many of its officers moved straight to the new C.I.A. Most consequentially, perhaps, four future directors of the C.I.A. were O.S.S. veterans: Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, William Colby, and William Casey. Each seems to have had glory-day memories of the O.S.S., which is to say that each, in various ways, was afflicted with what a general in Army intelligence called “the screwball Donovan effect.” Casey, who put a picture of Donovan on his wall, said of his old boss, “We all glowed in his presence.” Wild Bill lost the bureaucratic fight but won the personnel and mythology wars.
And, of course, the agency found customers and collaborators in the White House. There was no mention of covert action in the law that chartered the C.I.A., but Presidents—starting with Truman—began using it that way. One of the agency’s first operations involved meddling in the 1948 Italian election, to insure the victory of the Christian Democrats. The subsidies and outright bribery of Italian politicians, some of them on the far, far right, continued into the nineteen-seventies.
Almost from its creation, though, there was a sense that something about the C.I.A. was off. The split between covert action and intelligence gathering and analysis was part of it. The director of the agency was also supposed to be the leader of U.S. intelligence as a whole, but, invariably, the person in the job seemed more invested in preëminence than in coördination. That setup remained in place until the establishment of the O.D.N.I., in 2004, a move that thus far has mostly continued a tradition of trying to deal with the C.I.A.’s dysfunction by setting up ever more agencies, offices, and centers. (The N.S.A. was established, in 1952, in response to a series of cryptography-related failures.) “Legacy of Ashes,” Tim Weiner’s 2008 history of the C.I.A.—and still an invaluable overview—takes its title from a lament by Eisenhower about what he’d be leaving his successors if the “faulty” structure of American intelligence wasn’t changed. Since Weiner’s book was published, the ashes, and the agencies, have only been piling up.
Zegart’s “Spies, Lies, and Algorithms” aims to bring that history to the present. Zegart has served as an adviser to intelligence agencies, and she provides a decent guide to our current bureaucracy. Throughout, her book is clear and well organized—maybe a little too well organized, one feels, after taking in the “Seven Deadly Biases” of intelligence analysis, the “Four Main Adversaries” and the “Five Types of Attack” in the crypto area, and the “Three Words, Four Types” that define covert action. (The covert-action words, incidentally, are “influence,” “acknowledged,” and “abroad.”) Not a few paragraphs read like PowerPoint charts; contradictions are displayed without really being reckoned with. She observes that the balance between “hunting” and “gathering” seems off, but, in her telling, the fact that Presidents of both parties regularly turn to the C.I.A. for paramilitary and other covert tasks constitutes proof that doing so is part of the order of things. The impression she leaves is that if it all goes wrong, it’s because some checklist has been missed. One of the top priorities of U.S. intelligence today, she thinks, should be persuading tech companies to get with the program and help out. She moots the creation of yet another agency, to deal with OSINT—open-source intelligence.
In one chapter, Zegart provides a list of scandals involving spying within the U.S. by various intelligence agencies—notably the N.S.A., the F.B.I., and the C.I.A. “All of these activities violated American law,” she writes. “But that’s the point: domestic laws forbid this kind of surveillance of Americans.” How is that the point, exactly? She depicts the Senate’s 2014 Torture Report, which detailed profound abuses in the C.I.A.’s so-called black sites, as a they-said, the-agency-said, who-knows case. She turns it into a parable about the problems with Congress—suggesting that, although the committee structure may have needed rejiggering, the moral compass of those involved in the program of torture was just fine.
Another new volume, “A Question of Standing: A History of the CIA” (Oxford), by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Edinburgh, offers the insights of a more distant observer. He can be astute about how “false memories” of the O.S.S.’s accomplishments have led the C.I.A. astray. Part of his argument is that the agency has acted as if its influence depended on its standing with whoever is in the White House, thus motivating it to offer Presidents quick fixes that fix nothing. The net effect is to reduce its standing, and that of the U.S., with the public at home and abroad. But Jeffreys-Jones is prone to rash generalizations and pronouncements. He theorizes that, in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush’s national-security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, may have been susceptible to “war mongering” due to her status as “a descendant of slaves,” and that the working-class background of the C.I.A.’s director, George Tenet, made him more likely to vouch for the faulty intelligence on weapons of mass destruction used to justify the war. “Social mobility so often leads to conformity,” warns Jeffreys-Jones, himself the son of an academic historian.
During the Vietnam War, the C.I.A. had discouraging intelligence to offer, and, when successive Administrations didn’t want to hear it, focussed on being helpful by providing those supposedly quick fixes. That meant abetting a coup in 1963, spying on antiwar protesters, and launching the Phoenix Program, an anti-Vietcong campaign marked by torture and by arbitrary executions; in total, more than twenty thousand people were killed under Phoenix’s auspices.
Phoenix was run by William Colby, the O.S.S. alum, who was soon promoted to C.I.A. director. At lower levels, discontent about Vietnam fueled leaks. In December, 1974, the journalist Seymour Hersh told the agency that he was about to publish a story in the Times exposing its domestic spying. Whether in a miscalculation or (as Jeffreys-Jones somewhat breathlessly speculates) as an act of personal expiation, Colby gave Hersh partial confirmation. Amid the scandals and the Congressional hearings that followed, Colby angered some of his colleagues, and Henry Kissinger, by laying bare even more. It emerged that, in 1973, Colby’s predecessor had asked senior agency officials to produce a list of things the C.I.A. had done that might have been unlawful. The resulting document, covering just the prior fifteen years, was known in-house as “The Family Jewels,” and was almost seven hundred pages long.
The question of how much it matters who works at the C.I.A. is a perennial one. The influence of Donovan’s acolytes shows that decisions about whom you recruit can, in a formative period or at a critical juncture, make a big difference. But, once an institutional culture has become entrenched, it can be easier to see how the institution shapes the people within it than vice versa.
“Wise Gals: The Spies Who Built the CIA and Changed the Future of Espionage” (Putnam), by Nathalia Holt, comes at the question from a different angle. It’s about five women who worked for the early C.I.A.; three also worked at the O.S.S., and one, Eloise Page, began her career as Bill Donovan’s secretary. Holt is also the author of “Rise of the Rocket Girls,” about women in the early years of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and “The Queens of Animation,” about women at the Walt Disney Company. Her book contains fine material for a beautifully art-directed streaming series, with set pieces in postwar Paris, nineteen-fifties Baghdad, and nineteen-seventies Greece, where Page was the C.I.A.’s first woman station chief. It even has a framing device in the form of the “Petticoat Panel,” a working group of C.I.A. women that convened in 1953 to document their unequal pay and treatment. Holt quotes the transcript of the meeting at which the leadership of the agency summarily rejected their findings. Helms, the future director, says, “It is just nonsense for these gals to come on here and think that the government is going to fall apart because their brains aren’t going to be used to the maximum.” (In 1977, Helms was convicted of lying to Congress about the C.I.A.’s machinations in Chile.) What the book is not, unfortunately, is a coherent history of the C.I.A., of the era it depicts, or even of these women’s work.
Holt’s research does turn up evidence that Jane Burrell, one of her subjects, was the first C.I.A. officer to die in the line of duty, in a plane crash in France, in 1948, a fact that the agency itself apparently missed. Holt ends her book with a call for a star honoring Burrell to be added to the C.I.A.’s memorial wall. Of the hundred and thirty-seven officers represented there, she writes, forty-five died accidentally, the majority in plane crashes, meaning that Burrell’s case would be fairly typical. Burrell was on the return leg of a trip to Brussels, where she’d been sent to talk to war-crimes investigators about a mess the C.I.A. had created by relying on an agent who turned out to have worked with the S.S. and was now in custody. In that respect, too, Burrell, who had personally handled the agent, was typical of the C.I.A. (After Burrell vouched for him, the man was released.) The subject of the C.I.A.’s postwar relations with former Nazis—some of whom, like Reinhard Gehlen, it helped to install in West Germany’s new intelligence service—and with collaborationist émigré groups is, no doubt, a morass. Holt, alas, manages to make the story even more garbled than it has to be. In the end, she basically treats the whole sordid episode as a learning experience for the Gals.
The problem is that the agency doesn’t seem to learn much. Holt credits Mary Hutchison with helping to build a network of émigré Ukrainian nationalists. Beginning in 1949, the agency parachuted some of them (including one whom Hutchison apparently distrusted) behind the Soviet border, where they were quickly captured—and repeated the same procedure for a number of years. “Despite the catastrophe, the Ukraine operation would serve as a template moving forward,” Holt writes. “The C.I.A. had more success with back-to-back operations in Iran and Guatemala, where covert action was able to deftly oust leaders considered undesirable.” It’s odd to describe these coups as deft. One of Zegart’s handy lists is of the “unintended consequences” in Iran: “religious extremism, a revolutionary overthrow, the American hostage crisis, severed ties, regional instability, and today’s rising nuclear dangers.” Guatemala is still dealing with the violent legacy of the coup that the C.I.A. visited upon it. Then there’s the question of the intended consequences, which were, respectively, to elevate a shah and a military regime. Secret wars tend not to be so secret in the country where they take place.
It was, no doubt, frustrating for Hutchison when, a few years later, her colleagues on the Bay of Pigs task force failed to make use of her Spanish-language skills. But are we supposed to think that the whole misconceived enterprise would have gone off without a hitch were it not for the C.I.A.’s misogyny? One of Holt’s minor themes is that women in the C.I.A. were seen as more natural analysts than operatives—with analysis, in turn, seen as less manly, and less valuable, to everybody’s detriment. But she is more intent on showing that these women were also daring. The main point of “Wise Gals” is that it’s cool that women were in the early C.I.A., and therefore that the C.I.A. itself was cooler than we’d realized. Holt celebrates a big promotion Page got that afforded her access to the secret of a safe containing shellfish-derived poison. You don’t have to be pale, male, and Yale to be complicit in a bungled assassination plot, or, for that matter, a program of rendition and torture.
Why do so many books about the C.I.A. have trouble getting their story straight? It can’t just be the secrecy of the work itself, at least with regard to the earlier years, about which much has been declassified. (Much remains under wraps: Moynihan complained that classification created more than six million supposed secrets in 1993; Zegart writes that the number in 2016 was fifty-five million—not all of which can possibly have been critical.) The aura of secrecy, by contrast, probably does distort the judgment of its chroniclers. And the scope of the agency’s work is a challenge: it’s hard to write expertly on places as far-ranging as the Democratic Republic of Congo (where the agency initially planned to poison President Patrice Lumumba’s toothpaste, and instead ended up handing a quarter of a million dollars to Joseph Mobutu, the country’s future dictator, who facilitated the assassination) and Afghanistan (where the C.I.A. has had forty years of illusory gains and worse losses). But the biggest problem may be the agency’s own pattern of self-deception. Holt, for example, sometimes seems to go wrong when, rummaging through the archives, she gives too much credit to contemporaneous internal assessments of an agent’s or an operation’s worth.
In truth, the C.I.A. has had a “defining failure” for every decade of its existence—sometimes more than one. For Moynihan, in the nineteen-nineties, it was the lack of foresight about the Soviet Union; in the two-thousands, it was the phantom weapons of mass destruction, followed by torture and, in still evolving ways, by the drone-based program of targeted killings, with its high toll of civilian deaths. Barack Obama’s rapport with John Brennan, the C.I.A.’s director from 2013 to 2017, seems to have brought him to accept the view that the killing of American citizens abroad was acceptable, if managed prudently. The overuse of the agency on the battlefield is due not to a military-manpower shortage but to wishful thinking about the benefits of secrecy and of a lack of accountability.
It’s difficult to know, at this point, what the C.I.A.’s next defining failure—or, if one tries to be optimistic, its stabilizing success—will be. Donald Trump has had a complicated relationship with the intelligence community—increasingly capitalized and abbreviated to I.C.—which is presently conducting a damage assessment regarding documents with classified markings that he kept at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home. He might, of course, be reëlected, and have the C.I.A.’s tools at his disposal again. If the C.I.A. isn’t the place to turn for an expedient solution to foreign-policy problems, neither is it bound to be the place to turn for a solution to our democracy’s political problems.
“If you ask intelligence officers what misperceptions bother them most, odds are they’ll mention ethics,” Zegart writes. She quotes an official who complains that “people think we’re lawbreakers, we’re human rights violators.” She insists that “officers think about ethics a lot.” She portrays the agency as being filled with hardworking moms and dads who do a great deal of “agonizing.” No doubt she’s right. But if the C.I.A. keeps falling down all the same, something must be tragically amiss in the agency’s structure or culture, or both. All the talk of coups and assassination plots, Zegart worries, distracts people from understanding the C.I.A.’s more basic intelligence mission. In fact, the party most distracted by such activities—and by the military role it has taken on—seems to be the agency itself. ♦
An earlier version of this article misstated the numerical designation of the Space Force unit dedicated to intelligence.
Published in the print edition of the October 10, 2022, issue.
submitted by VolarRecords to UFOs [link] [comments]
https://www.reddit.com/UFOs/comments/1d33m4l/does_anybody_remember_what_podcast_this_was/
"Hello fine ladies and gentlemen! I remember listening to a podcast less than a year ago. The main subject of the podcast was UFOs (I think)... anyways the guest told a story that a congressman or senator wrote a bill that was against the CIA or going to defund the CIA, in the 80's... and shortly thereafter, someone broke into his home, dragged his wife out into the street and stuck a gun in her mouth and told her to kill the bill."
Some light Googling brought up this article about the history of the CIA, the OSS, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan's attempts at defunding the agency in the 90s.
Here's an article about that attempt brought by Moynihan published on the Carnegie Endowment Website on December 20, 2005.
https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2005/12/the-case-for-abolishing-the-cia?lang=en
Here's the New Yorker piece about all of this from October 3rd, 2022.
Spooked -- What’s wrong with the C.I.A.? -- By Amy Davidson Sorkin -- October 3, 2022
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/10/has-the-cia-done-more-harm-than-goodAccording to the article regarding the resuscitation of the OSS as the CIA immediately following Roswell and the Twining Memo:
"Many of its officers moved straight to the new C.I.A. Most consequentially, perhaps, four future directors of the C.I.A. were O.S.S. veterans: Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, William Colby, and William Casey."
Here's the New Yorker article in full:
"On January 4, 1995, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, of New York, introduced a bill called the Abolition of the Central Intelligence Agency Act. It had been a rough stretch for the C.I.A. The year before, Aldrich Ames, a longtime officer, had been convicted of being a longtime mole for Soviet (and then Russian) intelligence. Despite having a reputation among his colleagues as a problem drinker who appeared to live far beyond his means, Ames had been given high-level assignments with access to the names of American sources in the U.S.S.R. When the F.B.I. finally arrested him, he was in the Jaguar he used for commuting to work at Langley; by then, he was responsible for the death of at least ten agents. Moynihan said that the case was such a flamboyant display of incompetence that it might actually be a distraction from “the most fundamental defects of the C.I.A.” He meant that the agency—in what he considered to be its “defining failure”—had both missed the fact that the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse and done little to hasten its end.
He gave a diagnosis for what had gone wrong. “Secrecy keeps mistakes secret,” he said. “Secrecy is a disease. It causes a hardening of the arteries of the mind.” He quoted John le Carré on that point, adding that the best information actually came from the likes of area specialists, diplomats, historians, and journalists. If the C.I.A. was disbanded, he said, the State Department could pick up the intelligence work, and do a better job.
Moynihan was, in some respects, being disingenuous. As he well knew, even if his bill had passed, spies and spying wouldn’t have gone away. The State Department already had its own mini agency, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. The Departments of Energy and Treasury each had one, too. The Defense Intelligence Agency conducted clandestine operations; U.S. Army Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, and the Office of Naval Intelligence kept themselves busy as well. The National Security Agency was nearly two decades away from the revelation, by Edward Snowden, a contractor and a former C.I.A. employee, that it had collected information about the phone calls of most Americans, but it was a behemoth even in Moynihan’s time. So was the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There were about a dozen agencies then; now, after reforms that were supposed to streamline things, there are eighteen, including the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (O.D.N.I.), a sort of meta-C.I.A. that has a couple of thousand employees, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis. The Drug Enforcement Administration (which currently has foreign offices in sixty-nine countries) has an Office of National Security Intelligence. Four million people in the United States now have security clearances.
It can be hard to sort out which agencies do what; players in the espionage business aren’t always good with boundaries. Both the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. make use of satellite resources, including commercial ones, but there is a separate agency in charge of a spy-satellite fleet, the National Reconnaissance Office—not to be confused with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which deals with both space-based and ground-level imaging, or with Space Delta 18, the nation’s newest intelligence agency, which is attached to the Space Force. Abolishing the C.I.A. might do nothing more than reconfigure the turf wars.
[NOTE: both Sean Kirkpatrick and David Grusch worked for the NRO and at least Grusch worked for the NGA]
As the senator from New York also knew, a large proportion of the C.I.A.’s resources are devoted not to intelligence gathering but to covert operations, some of which look like military operations. In “Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence” (Princeton)—one of several recent books that coincide with the seventy-fifth anniversary of the agency’s founding—Amy B. Zegart, a political scientist at Stanford, writes that it’s “getting harder to know just where the CIA’s role ends and the military’s role begins.” Yet the agency’s paramilitary pursuits and related covert activities go back decades. They include the botched Bay of Pigs landing, the brutal Phoenix Program in Vietnam, and a long list of assassination attempts, coup plots, the mining of a harbor (with explosive devices the agency built itself), and drone strikes. These operations have very seldom ended well.
Moynihan’s bill had no more luck than another that he introduced the same day, aimed at ending Major League Baseball’s exemption from antitrust laws. In each case, people understood that there was a problem, but both institutions were protected by the sense that there was something essential, and perhaps authentically American, about them, including their very brokenness. A sudden turn of events can convince even the C.I.A.’s most sober critics that the agency will save us all, whether from terrorists or from Donald Trump. But, seventy-five years in, it’s far from clear whether the C.I.A. is good at its job, or what that job is or should be, or how we could get rid of the agency if we wanted to.
How did we end up with the C.I.A.? A familiar explanation is that the shock of Pearl Harbor made the United States realize it needed more spies; the Office of Strategic Services was formed and jumped into action; and, when the war ended, the O.S.S. evolved seamlessly into the C.I.A., ready to go out and win the Cold War. But that narrative isn’t quite right, particularly regarding the relationship between the O.S.S. and the C.I.A.
[NOTE: We know how ended up with the CIA. ROSWELL.]
The United States has always used spies of some sort. George Washington had a discretionary espionage budget for which he didn’t have to turn in receipts. In the early part of the twentieth century, the State Department had an intelligence-analysis unit, along with a cryptography group called the Black Chamber, which operated out of a brownstone in New York’s Murray Hill until it was shut down, in 1929. The Army and the Navy had cryptography and reconnaissance units, too. When the Second World War began, their operations ramped up dramatically, and, as Nicholas Reynolds recounts in “Need to Know: World War II and the Rise of American Intelligence” (Mariner), these units, not the O.S.S., handled most of the code-breaking. The problem became the volume of raw intelligence. The task of making sense of it and of turning it into something that policymakers could use went to an office within the Army’s military-intelligence division (or G-2), which, Reynolds says, produced “the country’s best strategic intelligence” during the war. That office’s work was directed by Alfred McCormack, a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Harlan Stone and a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Many of the people he brought in were young corporate lawyers; the theory was that their training in plowing through mountains of documents made them ideal intelligence analysts.
William J. Donovan, who led and largely conceived of the O.S.S., was also a Wall Street lawyer, but one with an aversion to the “legalistic.” What Donovan envisioned was essentially an array of commando units that would operate stealthily and behind enemy lines. In practice, what he tried to build, according to a colleague, was a “private army.” His escapades often risked too much and gained too little. In late 1943, one of his own officers wrote to him that “the set-up has been incredibly wasteful in manpower and, except for a few spotty accomplishments, has been a national failure.” And it had produced “chaos in the field.” Donovan’s nickname was Wild Bill, but his staff called him Seabiscuit, after the thoroughbred, because of his tendency to race around, engaging in what was basically war tourism. In the end, though, the O.S.S. made real contributions, including through its contacts with the French Resistance. But Donovan’s complaint about D Day was that there was “too much planning.” Counterintelligence and strategic thinking bored him, and the O.S.S.’s analysis division was seen as secondary to its operations.
When Harry Truman became President, in April, 1945, he took a look at the O.S.S. and, in September, 1945, abolished it. About two years later, he signed the National Security Act, which established the C.I.A. (and the Department of Defense), but he didn’t want the new agency to be like the group Donovan had run. Instead, it was supposed to do what its name suggested: centralize the intelligence that various agencies gathered, analyze it, and turn it into something the President could use.
[NOTE: I tried doing some research after reading something yesterday about how the NSA was developed in 1952 under Project Sigma to try and decode "alien" communications. If anyone can offer anything, you'd be helping humanity.]
“It was not intended as a ‘Cloak and Dagger’ Outfit!,” Truman later wrote. He also had to deal with public apprehensions that he might create what a Chicago Tribune headline called a “Super Gestapo Agency”—which is why, in its charter, the C.I.A. was banned from domestic spying.
Reynolds’s book is the best of the recent batch, and the most readable. It does not retrofit the history of the O.S.S. around the assumption that the C.I.A. was the inevitable lead postwar intelligence agency. There were other contenders, including a version of McCormack’s office in the State Department—something like what Moynihan wanted. J. Edgar Hoover argued that “World Wide Intelligence” should be turned over to the F.B.I., with military intelligence subservient to him. In some alternative history, he might have pulled that off; by 1943, he was running undercover operations in twenty Latin American countries. And so things could have been worse.
[WHAT UNDERCOVER OPERATIONS WERE WE RUNNING IN LATIN AMERICANS COUNTRIES IN 1943.]
Donovan was an adept publicist, but what mattered most, in the end, was that he was good, or lucky, when it came to hiring people. Despite the “pale, male, and Yale” stereotype, the O.S.S. was somewhat more diverse than other units, and certainly more eclectic. Among its ranks were Ralph Bunche, Herbert Marcuse, and Julia Child. Many of its officers moved straight to the new C.I.A. Most consequentially, perhaps, four future directors of the C.I.A. were O.S.S. veterans: Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, William Colby, and William Casey. Each seems to have had glory-day memories of the O.S.S., which is to say that each, in various ways, was afflicted with what a general in Army intelligence called “the screwball Donovan effect.” Casey, who put a picture of Donovan on his wall, said of his old boss, “We all glowed in his presence.” Wild Bill lost the bureaucratic fight but won the personnel and mythology wars.
And, of course, the agency found customers and collaborators in the White House. There was no mention of covert action in the law that chartered the C.I.A., but Presidents—starting with Truman—began using it that way. One of the agency’s first operations involved meddling in the 1948 Italian election, to insure the victory of the Christian Democrats. The subsidies and outright bribery of Italian politicians, some of them on the far, far right, continued into the nineteen-seventies.
Almost from its creation, though, there was a sense that something about the C.I.A. was off. The split between covert action and intelligence gathering and analysis was part of it. The director of the agency was also supposed to be the leader of U.S. intelligence as a whole, but, invariably, the person in the job seemed more invested in preëminence than in coördination. That setup remained in place until the establishment of the O.D.N.I., in 2004, a move that thus far has mostly continued a tradition of trying to deal with the C.I.A.’s dysfunction by setting up ever more agencies, offices, and centers. (The N.S.A. was established, in 1952, in response to a series of cryptography-related failures.) “Legacy of Ashes,” Tim Weiner’s 2008 history of the C.I.A.—and still an invaluable overview—takes its title from a lament by Eisenhower about what he’d be leaving his successors if the “faulty” structure of American intelligence wasn’t changed. Since Weiner’s book was published, the ashes, and the agencies, have only been piling up.
Zegart’s “Spies, Lies, and Algorithms” aims to bring that history to the present. Zegart has served as an adviser to intelligence agencies, and she provides a decent guide to our current bureaucracy. Throughout, her book is clear and well organized—maybe a little too well organized, one feels, after taking in the “Seven Deadly Biases” of intelligence analysis, the “Four Main Adversaries” and the “Five Types of Attack” in the crypto area, and the “Three Words, Four Types” that define covert action. (The covert-action words, incidentally, are “influence,” “acknowledged,” and “abroad.”) Not a few paragraphs read like PowerPoint charts; contradictions are displayed without really being reckoned with. She observes that the balance between “hunting” and “gathering” seems off, but, in her telling, the fact that Presidents of both parties regularly turn to the C.I.A. for paramilitary and other covert tasks constitutes proof that doing so is part of the order of things. The impression she leaves is that if it all goes wrong, it’s because some checklist has been missed. One of the top priorities of U.S. intelligence today, she thinks, should be persuading tech companies to get with the program and help out. She moots the creation of yet another agency, to deal with OSINT—open-source intelligence.
In one chapter, Zegart provides a list of scandals involving spying within the U.S. by various intelligence agencies—notably the N.S.A., the F.B.I., and the C.I.A. “All of these activities violated American law,” she writes. “But that’s the point: domestic laws forbid this kind of surveillance of Americans.” How is that the point, exactly? She depicts the Senate’s 2014 Torture Report, which detailed profound abuses in the C.I.A.’s so-called black sites, as a they-said, the-agency-said, who-knows case. She turns it into a parable about the problems with Congress—suggesting that, although the committee structure may have needed rejiggering, the moral compass of those involved in the program of torture was just fine.
Another new volume, “A Question of Standing: A History of the CIA” (Oxford), by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Edinburgh, offers the insights of a more distant observer. He can be astute about how “false memories” of the O.S.S.’s accomplishments have led the C.I.A. astray. Part of his argument is that the agency has acted as if its influence depended on its standing with whoever is in the White House, thus motivating it to offer Presidents quick fixes that fix nothing. The net effect is to reduce its standing, and that of the U.S., with the public at home and abroad. But Jeffreys-Jones is prone to rash generalizations and pronouncements. He theorizes that, in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush’s national-security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, may have been susceptible to “war mongering” due to her status as “a descendant of slaves,” and that the working-class background of the C.I.A.’s director, George Tenet, made him more likely to vouch for the faulty intelligence on weapons of mass destruction used to justify the war. “Social mobility so often leads to conformity,” warns Jeffreys-Jones, himself the son of an academic historian.
During the Vietnam War, the C.I.A. had discouraging intelligence to offer, and, when successive Administrations didn’t want to hear it, focussed on being helpful by providing those supposedly quick fixes. That meant abetting a coup in 1963, spying on antiwar protesters, and launching the Phoenix Program, an anti-Vietcong campaign marked by torture and by arbitrary executions; in total, more than twenty thousand people were killed under Phoenix’s auspices.
Phoenix was run by William Colby, the O.S.S. alum, who was soon promoted to C.I.A. director. At lower levels, discontent about Vietnam fueled leaks. In December, 1974, the journalist Seymour Hersh told the agency that he was about to publish a story in the Times exposing its domestic spying. Whether in a miscalculation or (as Jeffreys-Jones somewhat breathlessly speculates) as an act of personal expiation, Colby gave Hersh partial confirmation. Amid the scandals and the Congressional hearings that followed, Colby angered some of his colleagues, and Henry Kissinger, by laying bare even more. It emerged that, in 1973, Colby’s predecessor had asked senior agency officials to produce a list of things the C.I.A. had done that might have been unlawful. The resulting document, covering just the prior fifteen years, was known in-house as “The Family Jewels,” and was almost seven hundred pages long.
The question of how much it matters who works at the C.I.A. is a perennial one. The influence of Donovan’s acolytes shows that decisions about whom you recruit can, in a formative period or at a critical juncture, make a big difference. But, once an institutional culture has become entrenched, it can be easier to see how the institution shapes the people within it than vice versa.
“Wise Gals: The Spies Who Built the CIA and Changed the Future of Espionage” (Putnam), by Nathalia Holt, comes at the question from a different angle. It’s about five women who worked for the early C.I.A.; three also worked at the O.S.S., and one, Eloise Page, began her career as Bill Donovan’s secretary. Holt is also the author of “Rise of the Rocket Girls,” about women in the early years of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and “The Queens of Animation,” about women at the Walt Disney Company. Her book contains fine material for a beautifully art-directed streaming series, with set pieces in postwar Paris, nineteen-fifties Baghdad, and nineteen-seventies Greece, where Page was the C.I.A.’s first woman station chief. It even has a framing device in the form of the “Petticoat Panel,” a working group of C.I.A. women that convened in 1953 to document their unequal pay and treatment. Holt quotes the transcript of the meeting at which the leadership of the agency summarily rejected their findings. Helms, the future director, says, “It is just nonsense for these gals to come on here and think that the government is going to fall apart because their brains aren’t going to be used to the maximum.” (In 1977, Helms was convicted of lying to Congress about the C.I.A.’s machinations in Chile.) What the book is not, unfortunately, is a coherent history of the C.I.A., of the era it depicts, or even of these women’s work.
Holt’s research does turn up evidence that Jane Burrell, one of her subjects, was the first C.I.A. officer to die in the line of duty, in a plane crash in France, in 1948, a fact that the agency itself apparently missed. Holt ends her book with a call for a star honoring Burrell to be added to the C.I.A.’s memorial wall. Of the hundred and thirty-seven officers represented there, she writes, forty-five died accidentally, the majority in plane crashes, meaning that Burrell’s case would be fairly typical. Burrell was on the return leg of a trip to Brussels, where she’d been sent to talk to war-crimes investigators about a mess the C.I.A. had created by relying on an agent who turned out to have worked with the S.S. and was now in custody. In that respect, too, Burrell, who had personally handled the agent, was typical of the C.I.A. (After Burrell vouched for him, the man was released.) The subject of the C.I.A.’s postwar relations with former Nazis—some of whom, like Reinhard Gehlen, it helped to install in West Germany’s new intelligence service—and with collaborationist émigré groups is, no doubt, a morass. Holt, alas, manages to make the story even more garbled than it has to be. In the end, she basically treats the whole sordid episode as a learning experience for the Gals.
The problem is that the agency doesn’t seem to learn much. Holt credits Mary Hutchison with helping to build a network of émigré Ukrainian nationalists. Beginning in 1949, the agency parachuted some of them (including one whom Hutchison apparently distrusted) behind the Soviet border, where they were quickly captured—and repeated the same procedure for a number of years. “Despite the catastrophe, the Ukraine operation would serve as a template moving forward,” Holt writes. “The C.I.A. had more success with back-to-back operations in Iran and Guatemala, where covert action was able to deftly oust leaders considered undesirable.” It’s odd to describe these coups as deft. One of Zegart’s handy lists is of the “unintended consequences” in Iran: “religious extremism, a revolutionary overthrow, the American hostage crisis, severed ties, regional instability, and today’s rising nuclear dangers.” Guatemala is still dealing with the violent legacy of the coup that the C.I.A. visited upon it. Then there’s the question of the intended consequences, which were, respectively, to elevate a shah and a military regime. Secret wars tend not to be so secret in the country where they take place.
It was, no doubt, frustrating for Hutchison when, a few years later, her colleagues on the Bay of Pigs task force failed to make use of her Spanish-language skills. But are we supposed to think that the whole misconceived enterprise would have gone off without a hitch were it not for the C.I.A.’s misogyny? One of Holt’s minor themes is that women in the C.I.A. were seen as more natural analysts than operatives—with analysis, in turn, seen as less manly, and less valuable, to everybody’s detriment. But she is more intent on showing that these women were also daring. The main point of “Wise Gals” is that it’s cool that women were in the early C.I.A., and therefore that the C.I.A. itself was cooler than we’d realized. Holt celebrates a big promotion Page got that afforded her access to the secret of a safe containing shellfish-derived poison. You don’t have to be pale, male, and Yale to be complicit in a bungled assassination plot, or, for that matter, a program of rendition and torture.
Why do so many books about the C.I.A. have trouble getting their story straight? It can’t just be the secrecy of the work itself, at least with regard to the earlier years, about which much has been declassified. (Much remains under wraps: Moynihan complained that classification created more than six million supposed secrets in 1993; Zegart writes that the number in 2016 was fifty-five million—not all of which can possibly have been critical.) The aura of secrecy, by contrast, probably does distort the judgment of its chroniclers. And the scope of the agency’s work is a challenge: it’s hard to write expertly on places as far-ranging as the Democratic Republic of Congo (where the agency initially planned to poison President Patrice Lumumba’s toothpaste, and instead ended up handing a quarter of a million dollars to Joseph Mobutu, the country’s future dictator, who facilitated the assassination) and Afghanistan (where the C.I.A. has had forty years of illusory gains and worse losses). But the biggest problem may be the agency’s own pattern of self-deception. Holt, for example, sometimes seems to go wrong when, rummaging through the archives, she gives too much credit to contemporaneous internal assessments of an agent’s or an operation’s worth.
In truth, the C.I.A. has had a “defining failure” for every decade of its existence—sometimes more than one. For Moynihan, in the nineteen-nineties, it was the lack of foresight about the Soviet Union; in the two-thousands, it was the phantom weapons of mass destruction, followed by torture and, in still evolving ways, by the drone-based program of targeted killings, with its high toll of civilian deaths. Barack Obama’s rapport with John Brennan, the C.I.A.’s director from 2013 to 2017, seems to have brought him to accept the view that the killing of American citizens abroad was acceptable, if managed prudently. The overuse of the agency on the battlefield is due not to a military-manpower shortage but to wishful thinking about the benefits of secrecy and of a lack of accountability.
It’s difficult to know, at this point, what the C.I.A.’s next defining failure—or, if one tries to be optimistic, its stabilizing success—will be. Donald Trump has had a complicated relationship with the intelligence community—increasingly capitalized and abbreviated to I.C.—which is presently conducting a damage assessment regarding documents with classified markings that he kept at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home. He might, of course, be reëlected, and have the C.I.A.’s tools at his disposal again. If the C.I.A. isn’t the place to turn for an expedient solution to foreign-policy problems, neither is it bound to be the place to turn for a solution to our democracy’s political problems.
“If you ask intelligence officers what misperceptions bother them most, odds are they’ll mention ethics,” Zegart writes. She quotes an official who complains that “people think we’re lawbreakers, we’re human rights violators.” She insists that “officers think about ethics a lot.” She portrays the agency as being filled with hardworking moms and dads who do a great deal of “agonizing.” No doubt she’s right. But if the C.I.A. keeps falling down all the same, something must be tragically amiss in the agency’s structure or culture, or both. All the talk of coups and assassination plots, Zegart worries, distracts people from understanding the C.I.A.’s more basic intelligence mission. In fact, the party most distracted by such activities—and by the military role it has taken on—seems to be the agency itself. ♦
An earlier version of this article misstated the numerical designation of the Space Force unit dedicated to intelligence.
Published in the print edition of the October 10, 2022, issue.
2024.05.29 08:51 TheDreadPirateRobots [Have Gun - Will Travel] - 1.2
*System Restart\*
I blinked at the text hanging in the air.
A small image of da Vinci’s vitruvian man did calisthenics underneath the words. More information scrolled upwards.
HumanOS Version: 1.0 Model: Vincent J. Carter Serial: 987-65-4329 Battery: 1560 @ 100% Memory: 640/640 Provider: None Network: None Credits: 9360 Expansion: None
The words flashed then swirled and transformed into a small translucent cog that hovered in the top right corner of my vision. Other icons floated into existence across the top of my vision, just like the info bar on a cellphone. An (8E) symbol, signal bars at 100%, and a full battery symbol. The time was currently 16:43 and it was Thursday, June 16th 1885
“What the heck?” I muttered, my voice loud in the silence of the ruined room.
I focused on the cog and a series of icons filled my vision. It took me about two seconds to understand that I could move them around using nothing more than my thoughts.
App Store, Calculator, Calendar, Camera, Clock, Gear, Inventory, Map, Notes, System.
“Did… Am I somehow mentally fused with my smartphone?” I wondered aloud. The timeless chaos and the voice were fading to dreamlike memories, a nightmare event that scratched at the edge of my sanity and threatened to overwhelm me. Did that entity think that the cellphone was some part of me?
“Okay, no worries. Let’s get back home and deal with this later.” I grumbled. “Hopefully I don’t run into a protest or riot or get locked up for violating curfew or not wearing a mask.”
I mentally selected [Map]
A transparent map of the room filled my vision along with tiny labels covering everything. Ruined chair, ruined bed, ruined table, rusty knife, leather pouch, unknown book. A moment later I had mastered the controls and zoomed out to find… nothing. The map was blank.
*Local Map Updating…\*
The Local map was updating, possibly because it needed to be filled in by my own exploration? I noticed a couple of icons on the left side of my vision and focused on them. Map Type, Search. Map Type allowed me to switch between Local, Transit, and Terrain.
I flipped between them and was rewarded with better information. The Transit map was like a traditional map, just lines and points of interest with the distance and travel times. I am currently in ‘Ruins of Fort Galos” with a dirt road that leads 3 miles south to “Wendleton Road” which zooms out to run between the cities of Wendleton and Comstock. Another zoom out and I’m located in the Region of Stratford… zoom out…on the continent of North Anglia… zoom out … on the planet of Aerth.
It sort of looks like Earth, if Earth had no polar ice caps. I can recognise the major continents, although most are shaped strangely because the oceans are so high. North America is split completely in two by a huge gulf that eats up all of Louisiana, most of the southern states, and carves a deep furrow all the way up to the Great Lakes and out to the eastern seaboard. Florida is missing, as is most of the eastern seaboard. The map calls that area ‘Colonia’ and it’s marked with a somewhat familiar red, white, and blue flag with just 17 stars. I’m located somewhere near Colorado, but Colorado doesn’t exist anymore. It’s part of Wilmont county in the Region of Stratford in an area called the Midlands.
My hands started shaking. It’s some sort of joke. Some kind of insanity. Some sort of delusion. Or maybe I’m delirious with the damned virus and having a mad dream. Okay. Okay. Deep breaths. Calm down and think rationally. I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths, inhaling the musty and burnt scents of my new reality.
Okay, if I’m really in some alternate world then maybe things aren’t so bad? I was on the verge of being homeless and now I am homeless, so, nothing has really changed, right? And since I seem to be fused with my smartphone, maybe I can use that to my advantage? I quickly imagined a million ways I could die in a fantasy world and pushed down the panic. No sense in panicking just yet — we can do that later when I’m being burnt at the stake for witchcraft or something.
I flipped back over to Local Map and examined the room again. Leather pouch, rusty knife, and unknown book were located under the rotting carcass of the bed. I approached it and looked carefully to see if I could spot them. I smiled to myself thinking maybe I could make a living as some sort of detective or something, finding lost items with preternatural ability. Unable to see anything in the mass of mushrooms and ferns, I mentally tapped the label “Leather pouch” on the Local Map.
*Place Item in Inventory? [Y/N]\*
I selected [Y] and received a notification. Memory: [639/640]
Huh. It takes up memory.
I pulled the heavy pouch from inventory and into my hand. The leather was dried and stiff, but I managed to open it to reveal 1 golden coin, 50 tarnished silver, 68 copper, and 30 bronze coins.
The copper coins were about the size of a nickel and quite worn, but I could make out the face of some priest with a fancy hat on the face and a hammer and anvil on the reverse. The brass were the size of a quarter and similarly worn, and featured a bull on the face and a sheaf of wheat on the reverse. The silver were the size of a dime and slightly tarnished, with the image of some queen on the face and a crescent moon on the reverse. The gold coin was untouched by time and featured a stern looking king on the face, with a stylised sun on the opposite face. I popped everything back into Inventory.
Huh. It appears that everything I stick into inventory counts against the available memory of 640 that was listed earlier, but coins stack into one slot for each type so now I have 636/640 memory. Not bad, not bad. A little experimentation quickly proved that I could add the ruined chair and table too. One slot each. A seriously overpowered feature that I planned to abuse in the future — just put things in bags and boxes and my Inventory was practically unlimited! I rubbed my hands together like an evil villain. Half an hour ago I was a broke nobody with no future, and now I’m able to start completely fresh with cash and some strange abilities. Thank you strange entity!
It was terrifying and exhilarating. I wanted to dance and puke at the same time.
I placed the Unknown Book into Inventory and it popped into my hands a moment later along with a strong musty aroma. The leather cover was green with mould and swollen with moisture. Carefully flipping through the pages I stared in wonder at the illustrated script. It was like one of those old religious books you see in museums, every page a work of art. Too bad it’s written in some strange language I can’t read. Arabic maybe? Putting it back into Inventory, it took just a moment to figure out that I could get a quick overview of the item. [Unknown Book. A mouldy old book written in an unknown language.]
The rusty knife was what my father would have called a “pig sticker”, with a grubby leather sheath, bone handle, and a thick blade about ten inches long. Even though the blade was spotted with a bit of rust, it seemed to be in decent condition and could probably be salvaged with a whetstone and some oil. It was a weapon, and considering current events, a welcome addition to my new collection of personal possessions.
I kept the ruined chair and table in inventory. Never know when you might need firewood.
The Calculator was pretty cool, selecting it allowed me to mentally perform arithmetic in moments or provided a count of items in my vision. As long as it was open I could just think of a simple maths problem and the answer popped in my head along with a running tally. There was a scientific tab on it, but I didn’t foresee me using cosine functions anytime soon.
The Camera was interesting, allowing me to snap a photo of what I could see, but each picture used one memory although they only took up one Inventory slot. Delete, Delete, Delete.
Calendar was 13 months with 30 days each. The weeks were 6 days long and Monday was missing. Good. I don’t like Mondays. Especially since the days here are 26 hours long. I could also set appointments and reminders.
Clock was a basic clock with alarms and stopwatch function.
Notes was really cool though, it was like virtual paper. I could sketch things with my finger, or use thought-to-text, or even attach photos to the note and save them, which took up one Inventory slot per filename. The Export function created a thick piece of paper that appeared in my hand. Nice. Fire starting material!
It has an Import function too?
I created a new Note, then imported the mouldy book from my Inventory. It appeared as a virtual object in my vision that I could manipulate with a thought. Then I exported it. A popup appeared in my vision and I watched my Battery dip from 1560 down to 1460, then a duplicate appeared in my inventory. Sweet! I could set up shop as a magical print-wizard! Or work as a pack-mule, hauling entire warehouses of goods invisibly. I chuckled to myself imagining that.
However it took 100 battery points, so it wasn’t much of a cheat unless I could reproduce expensive texts. I wonder if it took 100 battery for everything, or if it was based on the complexity of the object?
System had some nice features included. One was Health Monitor, which gave me a general screen of any health issues. Notifications was also nice for popping up things that might be important. Nothing else of real importance, just some little tweaks to the User Interface and the ability to turn off the (8E) connection I had noticed earlier. Airplane mode, I guess.
Another hunch presented itself in the System and I opened up the language setting. English was currently selected. I scrolled through the selection and choose Arabic from the list. A slight wave of dizziness washed over me and I examined the unknown book again. Nope. Still unknown.
I sighed and flipped back to the language settings and noticed there’s an “Auto-Translate” selection. Mentally mashing the illusory button in my User Interface, another wave of dizziness washed over me. This time the unknown book had a tag on it. [Old Avestan - Translate? Y/N]
Duh, yes, translate! An old, unknown book hidden in a burned out room? That just screams Secret Book of Incredibly Over Powered Magic, doesn’t it? Annnnd… Nope. I flipped through the copy and it seems to be nothing more than some religious textbook. Beautifully illustrated, but I’m not getting any magic vibes off of it. I tossed it back in my inventory [Book. Zoroastrian religious text. Professionally Illustrated. 50SP] and continued my journey of self exploration.
When I enabled “Show Hidden Files” in System, it was absolutely terrifying. File names like “Digestion.dna”, “Endocrine.dna” and “Sensory.dna” filled my vision. I disabled that feature as soon as I realised what I was looking at. I’d hate to accidentally delete my sense of taste, or something even more important.
The Service tab under System was confusing. It seemed to be some sort of weird version of a mobile service plan that asked me to choose a Service Provider.
There were dozens of Service Providers to choose from; Industrial Charms & Enchantments, Whitehall Wizard Group, Sorcerer’s United, Atlantis Magic and Enchantment, and a slew of other providers with different tiers named after gemstones and the best offering being the Diamond Unlimited plan that offered ‘unlimited mana and roaming, some limits apply’ for an astronomical amount per month. I could see the service zones of each provider laid out across a map, along with colour coding for the quality of service ranging from 1E to 8E.
I could also choose from various Celestial or Infernal Contracts which had entire pages of TOS benefits and obligations. Another terrifying aspect of my new world.
I decided to dig into that mess later. I had no use for a service provider and picking one was a problem for future-me if I ever needed one.
The Gear icon opened up a minimalist overlay with a picture of me and the items I was wearing. Socks, shorts, underwear, tee-shirt. A mental twitch rotated the image and confirmed that my backside was just as filthy as the floor. Two buttons were visible next to my image, [Custom] and [Labourer]. I selected Labourer and the image shifted to show me wearing work boots, wool socks, denim trousers, leather belt, cotton underwear, cotton pull-over shirt, leather gloves, soft-brim hat. [Select? Y/N]
A mental push of the button and a million indigo motes surrounded me. Two seconds and 10 battery later I was wearing the new gear. And clean! All the grime on my arms and legs had vanished. Seriously, how awesome is that? I still feel like I need a shower though.
[Labourer class selected - Standard] Skills: Lifting, toting, stepping, fetching, shifting, digging, hauling, packing…
Knowledge of menial labour filled my head beyond what I was already familiar with. I somehow knew the most efficient ways to dig a ditch, safely shift a box, casually walk to the water cooler, and slack off while looking busy.
Huh. Did changing my gear change my class? That’s interesting. What happens if I put on a Wizard hat? Would I become some sort of hybrid day-labour wizard with spells for digging ditches? Oh, wait. I have five slots and can fill them with clothing and label them whatever I want.
I opened up the App Store.
Holy. Shitsnacks.
Dozens of icons filled my vision, offering a vast selection of what appeared to be careers? Professions? Classes? Skills?
Archivist, Accountant, Bartender, Book keeper, Cartwright, Con-artist, Farmhand, Herbalist, Hobo, Inn keeper, …Priest, Prostitute, Politician, …Sorcerer, Tailor, …Wizard, Zookeeper.
It was a huge and confusing array of choices.
submitted by TheDreadPirateRobots to redditserials [link] [comments]
I blinked at the text hanging in the air.
A small image of da Vinci’s vitruvian man did calisthenics underneath the words. More information scrolled upwards.
HumanOS Version: 1.0 Model: Vincent J. Carter Serial: 987-65-4329 Battery: 1560 @ 100% Memory: 640/640 Provider: None Network: None Credits: 9360 Expansion: None
The words flashed then swirled and transformed into a small translucent cog that hovered in the top right corner of my vision. Other icons floated into existence across the top of my vision, just like the info bar on a cellphone. An (8E) symbol, signal bars at 100%, and a full battery symbol. The time was currently 16:43 and it was Thursday, June 16th 1885
“What the heck?” I muttered, my voice loud in the silence of the ruined room.
I focused on the cog and a series of icons filled my vision. It took me about two seconds to understand that I could move them around using nothing more than my thoughts.
App Store, Calculator, Calendar, Camera, Clock, Gear, Inventory, Map, Notes, System.
“Did… Am I somehow mentally fused with my smartphone?” I wondered aloud. The timeless chaos and the voice were fading to dreamlike memories, a nightmare event that scratched at the edge of my sanity and threatened to overwhelm me. Did that entity think that the cellphone was some part of me?
“Okay, no worries. Let’s get back home and deal with this later.” I grumbled. “Hopefully I don’t run into a protest or riot or get locked up for violating curfew or not wearing a mask.”
I mentally selected [Map]
A transparent map of the room filled my vision along with tiny labels covering everything. Ruined chair, ruined bed, ruined table, rusty knife, leather pouch, unknown book. A moment later I had mastered the controls and zoomed out to find… nothing. The map was blank.
*Local Map Updating…\*
The Local map was updating, possibly because it needed to be filled in by my own exploration? I noticed a couple of icons on the left side of my vision and focused on them. Map Type, Search. Map Type allowed me to switch between Local, Transit, and Terrain.
I flipped between them and was rewarded with better information. The Transit map was like a traditional map, just lines and points of interest with the distance and travel times. I am currently in ‘Ruins of Fort Galos” with a dirt road that leads 3 miles south to “Wendleton Road” which zooms out to run between the cities of Wendleton and Comstock. Another zoom out and I’m located in the Region of Stratford… zoom out…on the continent of North Anglia… zoom out … on the planet of Aerth.
It sort of looks like Earth, if Earth had no polar ice caps. I can recognise the major continents, although most are shaped strangely because the oceans are so high. North America is split completely in two by a huge gulf that eats up all of Louisiana, most of the southern states, and carves a deep furrow all the way up to the Great Lakes and out to the eastern seaboard. Florida is missing, as is most of the eastern seaboard. The map calls that area ‘Colonia’ and it’s marked with a somewhat familiar red, white, and blue flag with just 17 stars. I’m located somewhere near Colorado, but Colorado doesn’t exist anymore. It’s part of Wilmont county in the Region of Stratford in an area called the Midlands.
My hands started shaking. It’s some sort of joke. Some kind of insanity. Some sort of delusion. Or maybe I’m delirious with the damned virus and having a mad dream. Okay. Okay. Deep breaths. Calm down and think rationally. I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths, inhaling the musty and burnt scents of my new reality.
Okay, if I’m really in some alternate world then maybe things aren’t so bad? I was on the verge of being homeless and now I am homeless, so, nothing has really changed, right? And since I seem to be fused with my smartphone, maybe I can use that to my advantage? I quickly imagined a million ways I could die in a fantasy world and pushed down the panic. No sense in panicking just yet — we can do that later when I’m being burnt at the stake for witchcraft or something.
I flipped back over to Local Map and examined the room again. Leather pouch, rusty knife, and unknown book were located under the rotting carcass of the bed. I approached it and looked carefully to see if I could spot them. I smiled to myself thinking maybe I could make a living as some sort of detective or something, finding lost items with preternatural ability. Unable to see anything in the mass of mushrooms and ferns, I mentally tapped the label “Leather pouch” on the Local Map.
*Place Item in Inventory? [Y/N]\*
I selected [Y] and received a notification. Memory: [639/640]
Huh. It takes up memory.
I pulled the heavy pouch from inventory and into my hand. The leather was dried and stiff, but I managed to open it to reveal 1 golden coin, 50 tarnished silver, 68 copper, and 30 bronze coins.
The copper coins were about the size of a nickel and quite worn, but I could make out the face of some priest with a fancy hat on the face and a hammer and anvil on the reverse. The brass were the size of a quarter and similarly worn, and featured a bull on the face and a sheaf of wheat on the reverse. The silver were the size of a dime and slightly tarnished, with the image of some queen on the face and a crescent moon on the reverse. The gold coin was untouched by time and featured a stern looking king on the face, with a stylised sun on the opposite face. I popped everything back into Inventory.
Huh. It appears that everything I stick into inventory counts against the available memory of 640 that was listed earlier, but coins stack into one slot for each type so now I have 636/640 memory. Not bad, not bad. A little experimentation quickly proved that I could add the ruined chair and table too. One slot each. A seriously overpowered feature that I planned to abuse in the future — just put things in bags and boxes and my Inventory was practically unlimited! I rubbed my hands together like an evil villain. Half an hour ago I was a broke nobody with no future, and now I’m able to start completely fresh with cash and some strange abilities. Thank you strange entity!
It was terrifying and exhilarating. I wanted to dance and puke at the same time.
I placed the Unknown Book into Inventory and it popped into my hands a moment later along with a strong musty aroma. The leather cover was green with mould and swollen with moisture. Carefully flipping through the pages I stared in wonder at the illustrated script. It was like one of those old religious books you see in museums, every page a work of art. Too bad it’s written in some strange language I can’t read. Arabic maybe? Putting it back into Inventory, it took just a moment to figure out that I could get a quick overview of the item. [Unknown Book. A mouldy old book written in an unknown language.]
The rusty knife was what my father would have called a “pig sticker”, with a grubby leather sheath, bone handle, and a thick blade about ten inches long. Even though the blade was spotted with a bit of rust, it seemed to be in decent condition and could probably be salvaged with a whetstone and some oil. It was a weapon, and considering current events, a welcome addition to my new collection of personal possessions.
I kept the ruined chair and table in inventory. Never know when you might need firewood.
The Calculator was pretty cool, selecting it allowed me to mentally perform arithmetic in moments or provided a count of items in my vision. As long as it was open I could just think of a simple maths problem and the answer popped in my head along with a running tally. There was a scientific tab on it, but I didn’t foresee me using cosine functions anytime soon.
The Camera was interesting, allowing me to snap a photo of what I could see, but each picture used one memory although they only took up one Inventory slot. Delete, Delete, Delete.
Calendar was 13 months with 30 days each. The weeks were 6 days long and Monday was missing. Good. I don’t like Mondays. Especially since the days here are 26 hours long. I could also set appointments and reminders.
Clock was a basic clock with alarms and stopwatch function.
Notes was really cool though, it was like virtual paper. I could sketch things with my finger, or use thought-to-text, or even attach photos to the note and save them, which took up one Inventory slot per filename. The Export function created a thick piece of paper that appeared in my hand. Nice. Fire starting material!
It has an Import function too?
I created a new Note, then imported the mouldy book from my Inventory. It appeared as a virtual object in my vision that I could manipulate with a thought. Then I exported it. A popup appeared in my vision and I watched my Battery dip from 1560 down to 1460, then a duplicate appeared in my inventory. Sweet! I could set up shop as a magical print-wizard! Or work as a pack-mule, hauling entire warehouses of goods invisibly. I chuckled to myself imagining that.
However it took 100 battery points, so it wasn’t much of a cheat unless I could reproduce expensive texts. I wonder if it took 100 battery for everything, or if it was based on the complexity of the object?
System had some nice features included. One was Health Monitor, which gave me a general screen of any health issues. Notifications was also nice for popping up things that might be important. Nothing else of real importance, just some little tweaks to the User Interface and the ability to turn off the (8E) connection I had noticed earlier. Airplane mode, I guess.
Another hunch presented itself in the System and I opened up the language setting. English was currently selected. I scrolled through the selection and choose Arabic from the list. A slight wave of dizziness washed over me and I examined the unknown book again. Nope. Still unknown.
I sighed and flipped back to the language settings and noticed there’s an “Auto-Translate” selection. Mentally mashing the illusory button in my User Interface, another wave of dizziness washed over me. This time the unknown book had a tag on it. [Old Avestan - Translate? Y/N]
Duh, yes, translate! An old, unknown book hidden in a burned out room? That just screams Secret Book of Incredibly Over Powered Magic, doesn’t it? Annnnd… Nope. I flipped through the copy and it seems to be nothing more than some religious textbook. Beautifully illustrated, but I’m not getting any magic vibes off of it. I tossed it back in my inventory [Book. Zoroastrian religious text. Professionally Illustrated. 50SP] and continued my journey of self exploration.
When I enabled “Show Hidden Files” in System, it was absolutely terrifying. File names like “Digestion.dna”, “Endocrine.dna” and “Sensory.dna” filled my vision. I disabled that feature as soon as I realised what I was looking at. I’d hate to accidentally delete my sense of taste, or something even more important.
The Service tab under System was confusing. It seemed to be some sort of weird version of a mobile service plan that asked me to choose a Service Provider.
There were dozens of Service Providers to choose from; Industrial Charms & Enchantments, Whitehall Wizard Group, Sorcerer’s United, Atlantis Magic and Enchantment, and a slew of other providers with different tiers named after gemstones and the best offering being the Diamond Unlimited plan that offered ‘unlimited mana and roaming, some limits apply’ for an astronomical amount per month. I could see the service zones of each provider laid out across a map, along with colour coding for the quality of service ranging from 1E to 8E.
I could also choose from various Celestial or Infernal Contracts which had entire pages of TOS benefits and obligations. Another terrifying aspect of my new world.
I decided to dig into that mess later. I had no use for a service provider and picking one was a problem for future-me if I ever needed one.
The Gear icon opened up a minimalist overlay with a picture of me and the items I was wearing. Socks, shorts, underwear, tee-shirt. A mental twitch rotated the image and confirmed that my backside was just as filthy as the floor. Two buttons were visible next to my image, [Custom] and [Labourer]. I selected Labourer and the image shifted to show me wearing work boots, wool socks, denim trousers, leather belt, cotton underwear, cotton pull-over shirt, leather gloves, soft-brim hat. [Select? Y/N]
A mental push of the button and a million indigo motes surrounded me. Two seconds and 10 battery later I was wearing the new gear. And clean! All the grime on my arms and legs had vanished. Seriously, how awesome is that? I still feel like I need a shower though.
[Labourer class selected - Standard] Skills: Lifting, toting, stepping, fetching, shifting, digging, hauling, packing…
Knowledge of menial labour filled my head beyond what I was already familiar with. I somehow knew the most efficient ways to dig a ditch, safely shift a box, casually walk to the water cooler, and slack off while looking busy.
Huh. Did changing my gear change my class? That’s interesting. What happens if I put on a Wizard hat? Would I become some sort of hybrid day-labour wizard with spells for digging ditches? Oh, wait. I have five slots and can fill them with clothing and label them whatever I want.
I opened up the App Store.
Holy. Shitsnacks.
Dozens of icons filled my vision, offering a vast selection of what appeared to be careers? Professions? Classes? Skills?
Archivist, Accountant, Bartender, Book keeper, Cartwright, Con-artist, Farmhand, Herbalist, Hobo, Inn keeper, …Priest, Prostitute, Politician, …Sorcerer, Tailor, …Wizard, Zookeeper.
It was a huge and confusing array of choices.
2024.05.29 08:50 maybejustwait I hid my buli*mia for 4 years. This is my journal entry 21 days into recovery
Entry 1:
It’s crazy to think this is the first time I’ve ever dared to put words on paper about this. My eating disorder that lived inside of me for four years, just shut away from the rest of my life, ignored by the me that others saw and thought they knew. Even now, the word Bulimia is unsettling. How is it possible that I actually lived with this monster that consumed every inch of my thoughts, practically every single day of my life? How did I live a life for four years where it was normal to wake up with my first thought being what and when will I throw up today? When should I go to the gym so I can eat and throw up after? 4 meetings on the calendar today, cool, maybe I’ll get a quick b&p in between the 3rd and 4th. There was a second of every day where I wondered if maybe today was this day that I’ll finally stop, only to end the night with my head over the toilet, doors locked tight and music blasting, and a meticulous clean up session to make sure no one noticed any food left in the toilet, or the tears and snot dripping down my face that came with repeatedly forcing my fingers down my throat.
Yet, everyday, I got away with it.
Looking back, it doesn’t even seem real. Outwardly, I was always a shining symbol of fitness. Inwardly, I clung onto it like it was the only thing I had, because part of me felt like it wasn’t real. Like a classic bulimic, I tended to fast during the day (we usually weren’t hungry in the morning as our bodies were still processing the 6,000+ calories we ingested last night in one sitting), but the hours I put into training were real, and I had the body to show for it. I even boasted a pride for my fitness, yet there was always some part of me that was shameful and guilty for what happened behind closed doors at night that made me feel like a fraud.
Everyday I wanted to stop, and yet something more powerful overcame me everyday. Perhaps it was the dopamine rush of eating everything in sight, everything I normally wouldn’t eat unless I was able to purge it later. Most of the time, however, I couldn’t even remember how I started. It was mindless, like I’d forgotten the rest of the world. My hands were on autopilot, just reaching for more, over and over again. I couldn’t stop. Not until I’d run out of food or the sharp pain in my bulging stomach screams in desperation do I snap out of the tunnel vision. At first it was oh no, I need to get this out of me right now. As time went on, it became more like clockwork. At the last bite of Sour Patch Kids or my inability to breathe from the pressure on my stomach, it was just a routine feeling. Cool, onto the next step.
Entry 2:
What seems even less real is how I’m now 21 days into my recovery, the longest I’ve gone in four years without binging or purging. I catch myself thinking, is this what a normal person feels like? To walk into the house without anything pressing to do without a thought of going into the kitchen to see what I could binge on, when was a good time, or if I should make a quick doordash order for junk food to save for later; to be on a long drive and not be consumed by thoughts of food; to actually wind down before bed instead of using the extra hour to swallow chocolate bars and bags of chips just to bring it back up. I’m suddenly able to think about more, and do so much more. It was like I had lost a percentage of my brain to a mindless plague.
submitted by maybejustwait to confession [link] [comments]
It’s crazy to think this is the first time I’ve ever dared to put words on paper about this. My eating disorder that lived inside of me for four years, just shut away from the rest of my life, ignored by the me that others saw and thought they knew. Even now, the word Bulimia is unsettling. How is it possible that I actually lived with this monster that consumed every inch of my thoughts, practically every single day of my life? How did I live a life for four years where it was normal to wake up with my first thought being what and when will I throw up today? When should I go to the gym so I can eat and throw up after? 4 meetings on the calendar today, cool, maybe I’ll get a quick b&p in between the 3rd and 4th. There was a second of every day where I wondered if maybe today was this day that I’ll finally stop, only to end the night with my head over the toilet, doors locked tight and music blasting, and a meticulous clean up session to make sure no one noticed any food left in the toilet, or the tears and snot dripping down my face that came with repeatedly forcing my fingers down my throat.
Yet, everyday, I got away with it.
Looking back, it doesn’t even seem real. Outwardly, I was always a shining symbol of fitness. Inwardly, I clung onto it like it was the only thing I had, because part of me felt like it wasn’t real. Like a classic bulimic, I tended to fast during the day (we usually weren’t hungry in the morning as our bodies were still processing the 6,000+ calories we ingested last night in one sitting), but the hours I put into training were real, and I had the body to show for it. I even boasted a pride for my fitness, yet there was always some part of me that was shameful and guilty for what happened behind closed doors at night that made me feel like a fraud.
Everyday I wanted to stop, and yet something more powerful overcame me everyday. Perhaps it was the dopamine rush of eating everything in sight, everything I normally wouldn’t eat unless I was able to purge it later. Most of the time, however, I couldn’t even remember how I started. It was mindless, like I’d forgotten the rest of the world. My hands were on autopilot, just reaching for more, over and over again. I couldn’t stop. Not until I’d run out of food or the sharp pain in my bulging stomach screams in desperation do I snap out of the tunnel vision. At first it was oh no, I need to get this out of me right now. As time went on, it became more like clockwork. At the last bite of Sour Patch Kids or my inability to breathe from the pressure on my stomach, it was just a routine feeling. Cool, onto the next step.
Entry 2:
What seems even less real is how I’m now 21 days into my recovery, the longest I’ve gone in four years without binging or purging. I catch myself thinking, is this what a normal person feels like? To walk into the house without anything pressing to do without a thought of going into the kitchen to see what I could binge on, when was a good time, or if I should make a quick doordash order for junk food to save for later; to be on a long drive and not be consumed by thoughts of food; to actually wind down before bed instead of using the extra hour to swallow chocolate bars and bags of chips just to bring it back up. I’m suddenly able to think about more, and do so much more. It was like I had lost a percentage of my brain to a mindless plague.
2024.05.29 08:48 moondreamer96 Golden order fundamentalism was Miquella's doing and what he learned during that period lead him to the realm of shadow
I believe Leyndell was a very different place before Miquella, his handiwork, trinkets,blessed armors and weapons made of unalloyed gold and phylosophy realy makes me think he was the one who brought(at least tried to) reason to a borderline barbaric religion, but ended up learning its true terrible nature. There are many signs of subtle rebelion or stretching the rules that might be his doing, The biggest one is the statue that may turn into Marika by performing law of regression, I highly doubt the sculptor hired just saw him turn into Marika from a window, I suspect Miquella told them about Radagon's true nature, and before that Radagon explained EVERYTHING to Miquella. Miquella growing the Haligtree and learning more and more about the nature of their world in order to heal Malenia looks like the most likely scenario, but its still hard to determine if Mohg kidnapping him was part of the plan or Mohg is just a weirdo.
Smaller possible changes brought by Miquella:
the perfumers, they use alchemy and herbs to heal, Miquella must have passed on many of his studies when he tried to at least make pain killers for Malenia or those inflicted by rot
Miquella's lilies being cultivated in the capitol, those lilies are both very valuable and religious symbols so its hard to determine why were they cultivated there, their pressence suggests that Miquella was loved by many and his lilies are considered truly sacred by anyone. St Trina's lilies are a bit more complex but I think the same is true for them, intresstingly they often grow in places where great tragedies happened. I suspect these lilies are the same as Malenia's flower buds, unleashing their magic makes flowers grow.
White masks, they are mercy killers, and strangely drawn to Mohg, its not that big of a stretch that at some point they were Miquella's followers or just respected him in some way. The allure of a swift death or eternal sleep kind of come from the same place
Possible reason on why Miquella could have went along with Mohg kidnapping him:
I don't think he was powerless or needed the protection of Malenia at any point, he accepted her dedication as her sign of love. When we enter Malenia is asleep, possibly an enchantment put on her by Miquella/St Trina. Once Miquella foound some sort of conclusion he might have reached out for Mohg who communed with the formless mother. The formless mother could be related to that massive pile of corpses from the trailer, or the true nature of erdtrees. Its important to mention that Miquella knew more than us, he saw the whole picture, this may be an unreasonable conclusion from our limited perspective, but huge masses of bloody flesh and corpses are being fed to erdtrees, they need human flesh and blood. This conclusion might be justified by Law of regression, Miquella going back to the source of everything, the source was rivers of blood and mountains of corpses. Receiving omen blood could be a way to exit the cycle, discard his golden flesh. I like to think Mohg is actually a good guy framed as a weirdo who likes his little brother way too much.
As a conclusion I'd say we can expect to meet a benevolent mastermind in Miquella who is a lot like Goldmask but actually speaks, neither are afraid to face dire truths about their world, like gods themselves being a "fly in the ointment", or look for the truth no matter how dark it is
submitted by moondreamer96 to Eldenring [link] [comments]
Smaller possible changes brought by Miquella:
the perfumers, they use alchemy and herbs to heal, Miquella must have passed on many of his studies when he tried to at least make pain killers for Malenia or those inflicted by rot
Miquella's lilies being cultivated in the capitol, those lilies are both very valuable and religious symbols so its hard to determine why were they cultivated there, their pressence suggests that Miquella was loved by many and his lilies are considered truly sacred by anyone. St Trina's lilies are a bit more complex but I think the same is true for them, intresstingly they often grow in places where great tragedies happened. I suspect these lilies are the same as Malenia's flower buds, unleashing their magic makes flowers grow.
White masks, they are mercy killers, and strangely drawn to Mohg, its not that big of a stretch that at some point they were Miquella's followers or just respected him in some way. The allure of a swift death or eternal sleep kind of come from the same place
Possible reason on why Miquella could have went along with Mohg kidnapping him:
I don't think he was powerless or needed the protection of Malenia at any point, he accepted her dedication as her sign of love. When we enter Malenia is asleep, possibly an enchantment put on her by Miquella/St Trina. Once Miquella foound some sort of conclusion he might have reached out for Mohg who communed with the formless mother. The formless mother could be related to that massive pile of corpses from the trailer, or the true nature of erdtrees. Its important to mention that Miquella knew more than us, he saw the whole picture, this may be an unreasonable conclusion from our limited perspective, but huge masses of bloody flesh and corpses are being fed to erdtrees, they need human flesh and blood. This conclusion might be justified by Law of regression, Miquella going back to the source of everything, the source was rivers of blood and mountains of corpses. Receiving omen blood could be a way to exit the cycle, discard his golden flesh. I like to think Mohg is actually a good guy framed as a weirdo who likes his little brother way too much.
As a conclusion I'd say we can expect to meet a benevolent mastermind in Miquella who is a lot like Goldmask but actually speaks, neither are afraid to face dire truths about their world, like gods themselves being a "fly in the ointment", or look for the truth no matter how dark it is
2024.05.29 08:44 Crisaiguerrero The Truth.
 | when I was at my lowest in life, as an Atheist I believed everything that exists was Just a Happy accident. that we were all Just particles floating around in nothingness, I was depressed, Suicidal Ready to give up. I met the first spirit Blated off on DMT, he Seemed Cool Collected, Calm, Confident, these are things I could see and feel, he was the coolest looking thing i’d ever seen and as I got to feel him out, Hi gave off a particular energy, INFLUENCE. He Suggested I draw Him, being a dude that can barely draw a stick figure let alone a being from another realm I thought it was a terrible Idea, But in a time I felt so Alone, I was just happy to be seeing what I was seeing and basically talking to someone, I felt special, I had a cool Buddy in another dimension, that would tell me and show me all sorts of out of this world things, so I started drawing.. As soon as I opened the notebook I was able to see lines on the paper that weren’t there, and as I drew it what as if I was tracing an extremely copmplex and detailed stencil, and I drew this thing hundreds of times High on Psychedelics, till I got the first drawing, blasted on DMT again, By that time Him and I had become very close, and on one of the many encounters we had, he spoke to me his name…i’m called many names but I AM SATAN clear a I ever heard words spoken……I laughed…Yeah sure…….Huh?, so he started to show me visions, Of wealth, Fame, Women, drugs, sex…. It appealed to me at the time. Being a Cook at a strip club that life always seemed like the most fun, a Dream. He also told me how I could I could by my Mom the house shes always wanted, How I could help people in need with the money i’d make, all I had to do Was Serve him, But aren’t you Evil? , I asked, No he responded, so I don’t have to do weird satanic ritual shit or any weird shit like that?, I remeber sunday school, Don’t you Lie? Aren’t you Evil, No he said, You Just live that lifestyle and put my name and Image on on all of it….I believed Him, I had giving up any faith in God years ago for anger of my life’s trials and Hardships….a different vision came in that moment, I saw a place, the only way I can describe it is…Spinning windmills of Fire dark purple in color with protruding faces coming out all in seemingly terrible agonyand Anger, towards the middle of this wheels multitudes of people in chains pushed a new Main Huge turning wheel contraption endlessly, and like that I was back with my buddy satan… Is that your home I asked, he said, Yes…. So, So If I serve you I get all this Cool shit, and when I die I go there and be in Labor forever?, he said Not forever, only till your soul is Undone, till your soul wears itself out and i’ll give you the easiest position…… well, I thought…How many years do I get on earth, 30?, no. 25? No. Well How many bro….hes assured me, He Did not know….I considered it, during this time I remembered He wasn’t the only spirit I had seen during this trips, I had see another and drawn it, surely I can call upon one of these other and maybe get a better deal or something, so I told him No, I don’t really need you to draw these things, this ability belongs to me, and I can draw other things and Just do me, work my 9 to 5 live regular humble life and When I die ill Just be a spirit and hang out with my other buddies… but as it would seem, every new trip I went in I only saw him, and every time he would run the offer by…. I got sick of seeing him eventually, he assured me I wouldn’t draw him or his friends perfectly till I made this deal , one night on two Tabs of Acid right after peaking, I lashed out at him in anger, I told him to Fuck off, my stomach started to Hurt, felt like my Guts were being ripped out of me, I was in intense physical pain, I was certain he was trying to kill me, So I shouted at him, If you are real, God has to be real Too, I shouted Jesus help me!, then I finally saw one of the other spirits I had seen before, Looked so bright I could make it out even less the satan, but I could make out many eyes, Wings, and rings all through and around each other between the rings, light silhouettes of a City with people looking down at me as if to see my next move, and at its hight the source of the Light, one of these cratures spoke as I started drawing,Follow Jesus he said, and the pain had gone, I said What?, why would he want anything to do with me, He responded, You are his Son, He Loves you…..Can I see him, He said No, but in that moment he let me feel him, Unconditional Love is the only description…..But my life? i’ve done nothing but Sin for 20 years, Nothing but mock him and share with everyone of my lack of belief that he even exists, He brought to mind when I was 16 and got baptized, at the time I went to church but never really felt like any of it was for real, My family is Christian, so I guess i’ll go along with all this, then I remembered my childhood, as a kid I did believe, I was sure God existed and it was all real, and I would pray and talk to God, I started crying..then I snapped back to the Angel…. What is your name?, I asked, Uriel, through later research I found out he’s whats called a Thrown based on what he looked like,so I did as he said and started to learn about Christ… During this time I kept Tripping and drawing, while reading the bible as much as I could to learn about God, the Angels assured me you will find God in no other scripture, Met a couple more Angels, The main Being the Archangel Azrael, Some call him Death, other the grim reaper, Anubis. I recognized him, He was the other spirit I had encountered before, He looks technological in view like made of the bifrost from the thor movies many Wings and Eyes I had seen him best on Acid, when he told me his name and I google it I felt instant fear….Am I dying? I asked, Maybe he said, almost as if trying to mess with me like, I felt him said it as a Joke , then He told me to Draw……Like for real man, Are you here to take me?…. No….well cool I get to Just draw death, far more beautiful then satan in every way, and hes one of the good guys… so ask him…We’ll since we’re buds now…can you clue me in on how or when I die?….No sir…But why?, he responded, Because I don’t know…..Huh?..you’re literally the Angel of death….I am not God Sam, it is he who knows and only he, I Just come Collect, and Transport…. As I started to read the Bible I felt a new voce appear in me, that would speak to me all the time even sober… I stopped taking Psychedelics, but kept smoking weed… and started to get full Psychedelic visuals on Just weed… so I drew and drew and read scripture to learn, often times reading something in the bible the spirit had spoken and taught me before even reading, like the fact that satan isn’t some ruling body in hell that or has any say in what happens down there, that that place was created as his and his servants prison, where he’ll be getting the worst of it….then I noticed as I drew that I was seeing only one spirit again, and back to back I only saw this one spirit, the Second image is of this spirit, The Angel of the Lord, the Holy spirit of God, in this spirt resides all creation and I could never capture it fully and accurately. angels, Thrones , Powers, principalities, cherubim, dominions, authorities…I learned the Kingdom of heaven Is vast and far more diverse in Life then our entire Planet, Creatures of all sort, and all those who Die in Christ are welcomed with open arms into this Kingdom as Kings and rulers, It’s the Most ancient and technologically advance civilization there is and will ever be, and exactly as described in Ezekiels Vision , The entire place is Gods throne, he sits on it and with earth under his feet, and at his right hand stands the Lord…My Lord Jesus christ who is one with God the father, the perspective that I see when i’m there is Gods view , i’m looking down first person at Giant legs and feet surrounded by smaller spirits all singing his praises, worshiping, and decorating he’s feet and toes with all type of Gold plating and Precious stones, Iv’e seen him stepping on satan who by comparison is a house cat to a human in Size, Gods arms made of Fire and Lightening and Pure Spirit, truly the Most beautiful, awesome , Holy, and Wonderful sight, and thats Just his feet and arms, certainly seeing him face to face would mean my Death, as it is written, But he made a Way.. The first picture was drawn 2.5 years ago Fully blasted off on DMT, the Second was drawn recently on a few puffs of Sativa, all he’s asking for me to continue to be with him and see him, is to be with him and see him, He Just wants to be our Father, as we were all created in his Image to be His Children, He Loves us, and he knows what is best for us, and we can only be with him through Jesus Christ The man who was tortured, spat on, crucified, taking on all of Gods wrath for humanity, the man who Died and rose from the dead Three days later as Azrael could do nothing but bow, as he paid the price of our Souls salvation from our much deserved punishment, there is no other way to God, and Sin is not worth loosing that opportunity, All Glory be to the God and Father of My Lord Jesus Christ, His way is better than the Worlds Way, we are all Born Sinners and will always struggle with it, but through him We can be Born Again, not through the Flesh but through the Spirit, and with the presenceof the spirit purify our hearts and Souls to Avoid the Sin in thanksgiving of the Love and Grace he has shown Us. submitted by Crisaiguerrero to psychedelicartwork [link] [comments] |
2024.05.29 08:39 Informal_Patience821 BREAKING: Bible Prophecies About the 4 Madhabs, The 1st Fitnah etc (Part 3): Prophet's Name Mentioned - Mu'awiyah The Dajjal - The Holy Covenant - Hassan's Short Caliphate Post Ali's Assassination - K*llings Of Early Scholars - & Much more (Must Read!!)
In the Name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
Salam to everyone!
First, read part 1 and part 2 of this series before you read this part, because it is crucial if you want to understand everything.
The individual responsible for shattering the unity of the Muslim community and violating the sacred Covenant is none other than Mu'awiyah, the manipulator. Mu'awiyah is a man who insidiously ascended to power, akin to a serpent, employing a deceitful strategy that involved falsehoods, massacres, and other nefarious tactics that only a corrupt and ruthless criminal would utilize. This will become abundantly clear as we delve deeper into this chapter.
Despite my numerous attempts to refute his claims, I have reached the end of my patience with him, as he continues to regurgitate the same arguments and refuses to acknowledge the limitations of his own understanding.
In this next section (part 3), the absurdity of individuals like him will become increasingly apparent, as it will be revealed that my initial assertions were, in fact, totally correct. I offer my heartfelt gratitude to God alone for guiding me towards this remarkable discovery and allowing me to share it with all of you.
To those of you who have commented in support of this individual and his baseless claims about me, I implore you to fear God! This person is not a Muslim and is deliberately spreading falsehoods against me and our Faith, yet you are choosing to side with him against your own brother in faith. I want to make you aware of the gravity of this.
However, there is no need to worry, as I believe that after reading this part of the series, you will humbly recognize how easily you can be deceived by individuals like him and never let it happen again. I extend my forgiveness to you, as you are still my brothers and sisters in Islam. Nonetheless, I strongly encourage you to bear this in mind as you move forward and to exercise greater discernment. The enemies of God will invariably resort to lies and fabrications in an attempt to undermine our faith and its true adherents. Their objective is to hinder the progress of Truth and to create obstacles in its path. It is crucial that we remain vigilant and steadfast in the face of such tactics.
Link: Islam and Muslims in the Bible: You need to read these verses in Hebrew!!
This is an issue that has unfortunately been concealed from the Ummah, and I believe that individuals like Mu'awiyah are responsible for this. The reasons behind this will become increasingly apparent as we progress through the chapter. I plan to delve into this topic further in a future post on this subreddit, but for now, let us continue with our interpretation of the chapter.
Verse 23:
Battle of the Masts (655 AD): This pivotal naval battle saw Byzantine Emperor Constans II leading a fleet against the Muslim forces off the coast of Lycia. Mu'awiyah's attempts to solidify control over the Mediterranean faced substantial Byzantine opposition, which led to a retreat back to Syria (Wikipedia).
Merrill & Baker write:
Shaun O'Sullivan writes:
It is truly remarkable how detailed this prophecy is and how it perfectly aligns with the events of early Islamic history. I have never before encountered a prophecy that has been so thoroughly fulfilled. The verse even specifies that "He will lose heart" rather than stating that he will lose the battle against them, which, according to historical accounts, is precisely what happened. Mu'awiyah's motivation and will to continue waned.
This above is from the "Literal Standard Version," and they have added the word [sacrifice] but it is not there in the Hebrew verse. The verse is simply saying:
Mu'awiyah and his deviant supporters "turned aside" the 'îd prayer and preferred the oration (i.e. Khutbah, preaching) so they could brainwash the Muslim community while having them all gathered.
Ibn al-A’rabi stated:
"Oud" carries the meaning of "to return" and "to recur," and "continuance":
I am truly at a loss for words. I cannot adequately express my awe and fascination with this entire prophecy. It is simply breathtaking. All I can say is, "Wow!" I am profoundly grateful to God for guiding us to Islam and for urging us to follow the Quran alone, and for protecting us from what verse 4 stated in this Chapter.
Mu'awiyah and his followers introduced numerous innovations, one of which was prioritizing the oration over the prayer during 'Îd. This verse emphasizes this particular innovation because it is of the utmost importance in the eyes of God that we, at the very least, perform the rituals of His religion without neglecting them. It should not be necessary for Him to delineate the etiquettes of these rituals in the Quran for us to collectively remember and perform them in His praise, adoration, and submission. And that such an early Caliph did this to His faith is beyond an abomination.
Let us proceed.
Verse 32:
It is no secret that Muawiyah massacred the Muslims to reach the top. That he unalived scholars who spoke against his actions and his dominion is a given.
He is being described as Sunni Hadiths describe Dajjal.
Do you understand now why I am convinced that the Sunni Hadiths have been transmitted to us by the enemies of God, most likely rabbis and Christian monks? They took notice of this prophecy and manipulated the Sunnis into believing that a "Dajjal" would emerge in the End Times, coinciding with the return of "Jesus" (despite the fact that God has not even mentioned Jesus' return). They deliberately fostered this belief in the return of Jesus and linked it to the appearance of this Dajjal for a specific purpose. Their objective was to prevent Muslims from connecting the dots and realizing that this chapter is, in fact, referring to Mu'awiyah.
There's even Sunni Hadiths saying that the Dajjal would appear in the time of the companions, ironic enough.
This verse has been mistranslated by all of them. The Hebrew verse states:
"Hemdat" here is of course referring to our prophet. He would not regard any God, not regard our prophet Ahmad/Muhammad, not regard women, and would exalt himself above all, just like the Dajjal is described in Sunni narrations:
The verse is actually literally saying:
This marks the end of part 3, and the remaining portion of this chapter consists of general statements. I am unsure if I will create a part 4, but we shall see.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and please consider sharing it and liking it. May God bless you.
/ By your brother, Exion.
submitted by Informal_Patience821 to Quraniyoon [link] [comments]
Salam to everyone!
First, read part 1 and part 2 of this series before you read this part, because it is crucial if you want to understand everything.
Introduction:
As we approach the culmination of this chapter, the pieces of the puzzle are falling into place, and it is increasingly evident that this chapter is, as I initially suspected, a prophecy of the early Islamic era. The subsequent verses elucidate the subject matter with great clarity, focusing on a prophet, his dominion, and the sacred Covenant of Peace, along with all associated matters.The individual responsible for shattering the unity of the Muslim community and violating the sacred Covenant is none other than Mu'awiyah, the manipulator. Mu'awiyah is a man who insidiously ascended to power, akin to a serpent, employing a deceitful strategy that involved falsehoods, massacres, and other nefarious tactics that only a corrupt and ruthless criminal would utilize. This will become abundantly clear as we delve deeper into this chapter.
Disclaimer: My stalker here on Reddit and my response...
As you are likely aware, there is an individual who has developed an unhealthy fixation with my posts and is persistently attempting to "expose" me and my articles, a situation that I find rather amusing. I have chosen to block this individual and totally ignore him due to his propensity for dishonesty, his relentless harassment of me in response to every post I make, and his penchant for highlighting even the most minor of errors that I may inadvertently commit, which he then exaggerates to an unwarranted degree.Despite my numerous attempts to refute his claims, I have reached the end of my patience with him, as he continues to regurgitate the same arguments and refuses to acknowledge the limitations of his own understanding.
In this next section (part 3), the absurdity of individuals like him will become increasingly apparent, as it will be revealed that my initial assertions were, in fact, totally correct. I offer my heartfelt gratitude to God alone for guiding me towards this remarkable discovery and allowing me to share it with all of you.
To those of you who have commented in support of this individual and his baseless claims about me, I implore you to fear God! This person is not a Muslim and is deliberately spreading falsehoods against me and our Faith, yet you are choosing to side with him against your own brother in faith. I want to make you aware of the gravity of this.
However, there is no need to worry, as I believe that after reading this part of the series, you will humbly recognize how easily you can be deceived by individuals like him and never let it happen again. I extend my forgiveness to you, as you are still my brothers and sisters in Islam. Nonetheless, I strongly encourage you to bear this in mind as you move forward and to exercise greater discernment. The enemies of God will invariably resort to lies and fabrications in an attempt to undermine our faith and its true adherents. Their objective is to hinder the progress of Truth and to create obstacles in its path. It is crucial that we remain vigilant and steadfast in the face of such tactics.
Part 3, The End stages of the 1st Fitnah (Trial):
Verse 21:"The next to come to power will be a despicable man who is not in line for royal succession. He will slip in when least expected and take over the kingdom by flattery and intrigue."Interpretation:
- "The next to come to power": This phrase refers to Mu'awiyah, who managed to persuade Hasan to relinquish the Caliphate to him, thus becoming "The king of the north" in place of 'Ali, whereas he had previously been "king of the south."
- "A despicable man who is not in line for royal succession": Mu'awiyah was not a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad's family, unlike 'Ali. The fact that this chapter explicitly continues the narrative in this manner by mentioning specific details such as royal succession in leadership further supports the argument that it pertains to the early Islamic era, which was marked by numerous trials and tribulations related to leadership. Mu'awiyah was a highly reprehensible individual who ruthlessly seized power by taking the lives of countless believers. It is noteworthy that Sunnis regard him as a righteous man, despite the historical evidence that suggests otherwise and paints a picture of a man who was, in fact, highly despicable. They rely on their Hadiths, treating them as divine revelations, disregarding the fact that they could have been concocted by the adherents of Mu'awiyah in his support.
- "Slip in when least expected and take over the kingdom by flattery and intrigue": Mu'awiyah employed political scheming, deception, and strategic marriages to consolidate his power, ultimately becoming the first Umayyad Caliph in 661 AD.
"With the force of a flood they shall be swept away from before him and be broken, and also the leader of the covenant."Interpretation:
- "With the force of a flood": Symbolizes a powerful and overwhelming military force.
- "They shall be swept away from before him and be broken": Refers to their defeat to his schemes and/or campaigns.
- "also the leader of the covenant": This is Hasan, 'Ali's son, who was considered a rightful successor of the covenant that prophet Muhammad was given by God, the 'Covenant of Peace.' Hassan abdicated the caliphate to Mu'awiyah under a peace treaty and certain promises, promises that Mu'awiyah never fulfilled. It is very obvious that he was just a power-horny lunatic who lied and murdered his way to the top and thereby ruined both the Muslim reputation, the Holy Covenant of Peace and the Muslim unity as a whole.
"Wherewith God guides all who seek His good pleasure to ways of the Peace (Subula as-Salam)" (5:15)Why is God calling His ways as "ways of the Peace"? Just eight verses earlier, God says:
"And remember the blessing of God upon you and His Covenant by which He bound you when you said, 'We hear and we obey.' And fear God. Indeed, God is All-Knowing of what is in the hearts." (5:7)Read more about our Covenant with God, the Covenant of Peace, here:
Link: Islam and Muslims in the Bible: You need to read these verses in Hebrew!!
This is an issue that has unfortunately been concealed from the Ummah, and I believe that individuals like Mu'awiyah are responsible for this. The reasons behind this will become increasingly apparent as we progress through the chapter. I plan to delve into this topic further in a future post on this subreddit, but for now, let us continue with our interpretation of the chapter.
Verse 23:
"And after the league is made with him he shall act deceitfully, for he shall come up and become strong with a small number of people."Interpretation:
- "After the league is made with him": Refers to the peace treaty between Hasan and Mu'awiyah.
- "He shall act deceitfully": Mu'awiyah promising things and agreeing to peace treaties that he later broke, consolidating power in a deceitful manner. Perhaps even making himself bigger than he actually was by way of utilizing war tactics in a proficient manner.
- "Become strong with a small number of people": Mu'awiyah’s initial consolidation of power with loyal supporters in Syria, particularly the Banu Kalb tribe. His following was small compared to the vastness of the Ummah of the Muslims, but he grew to become great gradually by gaining more and more support. How he did this is made clear in the next verse.
"He shall enter peaceably even into the richest places of the province; and he shall do what his fathers have not done, nor his forefathers: he shall disperse among them the plunder, spoil, and riches; and he shall devise his plans against the strongholds, but only for a time."Interpretation:
- "Enter peaceably even into the richest places of the province": Mu'awiyah’s strategic and peaceful occupation of prosperous areas.
- "He shall do what his fathers have not done": ...
- "Disperse among them the plunder, spoil, and riches": Distributing wealth to gain loyalty and support. In fact, Sunnis claim that Ibn Umar said that "Muawiyah was the most generous person after Prophet" (Source)
- "Devise his plans against the strongholds, but only for a time": Strategic planning against remaining strongholds of opposition, but for a limited time.
"He shall stir up his power and his courage against the king of the South with a great army; and the king of the South shall be stirred up to battle with a very great and mighty army; but he shall not stand, for they shall devise plans against him."Interpretation:
- "He shall stir up his power and his courage against the king of the South": Mu'awiyah is now the king of the north, as I've explained earlier, because he took over that position (see verse: 21), so he is now waging war against the king of the south, namely Hasan, son of Ali, who was the king of the South, based in Mecca.
- "But he shall not stand": Indicates the ultimate failure of Hassan when he gave up the Caliphate.
- "They shall devise plans against him": The successful strategies of Mu'awiyah in convincing Hassan to give up the Caliphate to him, he did this as a result of deceitful planning they made, they even made his own supporters betray him, which the next verse speaks about.
"Yes, those who eat of the portion of his delicacies shall destroy him; his army shall be swept away, and many shall fall down slain."Interpretation:
- Hasan’s forces were plagued by internal divisions and a lack of unified support. The promises and bribes led to significant desertions from Hasan’s ranks. Notable commanders and influential figures abandoned Hasan, further weakening his military strength and morale. There were also plots against Hasan’s life from within his own camp. For instance, it is reported that some of his own supporters attempted to assassinate him, hoping that his death would force a settlement with Mu'awiyah or for their own gain.
"Both these kings' hearts shall be bent on evil, and they shall speak lies at the same table; but it shall not prosper, for the end will still be at the appointed time."Interpretation:
- "The two kings": Refers to Hasan ibn Ali and Mu'awiyah during their negotiations.
- "Hearts bent on evil": Indicates mutual distrust and ulterior motives.
- "Sit at the same table and lie to each other": During negotiations, both parties made deceptive promises.
- "To no avail, because an end will still come at the appointed time": The deceit did not change the ultimate predetermined outcomes.
"While returning to his land with great riches, his heart shall be moved against the holy covenant; so he shall do damage and return to his own land."Interpretation:
- "King of the North": Mu'awiyah, who ruled from Syria.
- "Return to his land with great wealth": Mu'awiyah’s accumulation of wealth and resources.
- "Heart set against the holy covenant": Mu'awiyah’s actions undermined the principles of Islamic unity.
- "Take action against it and then return to his own country": Mu'awiyah’s policies further divided the Muslim community before he returned to Damascus.
"At the time appointed he shall return and come toward the south; but it shall not be as the former, or as the latter."Interpretation:
- "he shall return and come toward the south": He will leave his base in Syria and return to Mecca in South.
- "but it shall not be as the former, or as the latter.": Implying that things will not be as they used to be and that the unity of the kingdom would be shattered and weakened.
"Ships of the western coastlands will oppose him, and he will lose heart. Then he will turn back and vent his fury against the holy covenant. He will return and show favor to those who forsake the holy covenant."Interpretation:
- "Ships of the western coastlands": This phrase refers to the Byzantine navy. The verse describes the end stages of the 'Siege of Constantinople' that took place in 655 CE, when Mu'awiyah was not necessarily defeated but was significantly weakened at sea by the Byzantine emperor. This forced Mu'awiyah to retreat back to his own territory.
- "He will lose heart": Reflects Mu'awiyah’s loss of morale and strategic position, and not a loss per say.
- "Turn back and vent his fury against the holy covenant": After retreating, Mu'awiyah directed his frustrations against the Muslim community, further undermining Islamic unity.
- "Show favor to those who forsake the holy covenant": Mu'awiyah rewarded those who supported his political maneuvers, even if it meant forsaking Islamic principles.
Historical Context and accuracy in my interpretation:
This verse is yet another piece of evidence that supports my interpretation, making it almost irrefutable at this point. It fits too well with the historical context and cannot possibly be referring to anything else.Battle of the Masts (655 AD): This pivotal naval battle saw Byzantine Emperor Constans II leading a fleet against the Muslim forces off the coast of Lycia. Mu'awiyah's attempts to solidify control over the Mediterranean faced substantial Byzantine opposition, which led to a retreat back to Syria (Wikipedia).
Merrill & Baker write:
"The battle was part of the earliest campaign by Mu'awiya, the governor of Syria, to reach Constantinople and is considered to be "the first decisive conflict of Islam on the deep""Source: Ridpath, John Clark. Ridpath's Ual History, Merrill & Baker, Vol. 12, New York, p. 483.
Shaun O'Sullivan writes:
"The siege was unsuccessful, however, due to a fierce storm that sank the ships with war machines aboard, an event the Romans attributed to divine intervention. The land force led by Muawiyah in Chalcedon, having lost their artillery and siege engines, returned to Syria thereafter."Source: O'Sullivan, Shaun (2004-01-01). "Sebeos' account of an Arab attack on Constantinople in 654
It is truly remarkable how detailed this prophecy is and how it perfectly aligns with the events of early Islamic history. I have never before encountered a prophecy that has been so thoroughly fulfilled. The verse even specifies that "He will lose heart" rather than stating that he will lose the battle against them, which, according to historical accounts, is precisely what happened. Mu'awiyah's motivation and will to continue waned.
- "Show regard for those who forsake the holy covenant": This portion of the verse provides further evidence that the Mighty king mentioned in verses 3-4 was, in fact, sent by God, as indicated by the reference to the "Holy Covenant." Jewish rabbis, Christian scholars, and translators have attempted to claim that this chapter is about Alexander the Great, Antiochus Magnus, and others, but this verse confidently refutes that interpretation. It is clear that the prophecy pertains to a prophet or messenger of God who brought forth a Holy Covenant, rather than mere ancient kings and rulers. The only individual in history (after the Covenant with the Jews) who brought a Holy Covenant from God was the Prophet Muhammad. The new covenant is the Covenant of Peace, which is the essence of Islam. The Arabic term for Islam, "Sin-Lam-Mim," has "Salam" (Peace) as one of its definitions.
"And strong ones stand up out of him, and have defiled the sanctuary, the stronghold, and have turned aside the continual [sacrifice], and appointed the desolating abomination."Interpretation:
This above is from the "Literal Standard Version," and they have added the word [sacrifice] but it is not there in the Hebrew verse. The verse is simply saying:
"(they have) turned aside the continual"It is a continual/continuity (something done constantly) they turned aside in the sanctuary, i.e. the Kaaba, as you shall now see:
Mu'awiyah the innovator:
A Sunni Imam called Shafi’i quotes from (allegedly) Zuhri in book “al- Um” that he said:Ibn Hazm writes in the book “al- Mahalli” that: “the Umayyads innovated going late for prayer of Eid, preferring oration to prayer and saying Adhan and Iqamah (declaration of standing for prayer) for prayer of Eid."Source: al- Mahalli, vol. 5, p. 82.
Mu'awiyah and his deviant supporters "turned aside" the 'îd prayer and preferred the oration (i.e. Khutbah, preaching) so they could brainwash the Muslim community while having them all gathered.
- The definition of the word ''îd":
Ibn al-A’rabi stated:
"Because it returns every year with renewed joy, the origin of which is the oud."Source: Al-Barakatī, al-Taʿrīfāt al-Fiqhīya
"Oud" carries the meaning of "to return" and "to recur," and "continuance":
Root: عودSource: Arabic-English Lexicon by Edward William Lane (d. 1876)
A 1 عَادَ إِلَيْهِ, (S, A, O, TA,) and لَهُ, and فِيهِ, (TA,) aor. ـُ (S, O,) inf. n. عَوْدٌ and عَوْدَــةٌ, (S, O, K, TA,) which latter is also an inf. n. of un., (TA,) and مَعَادٌ, (K, TA,) He, or it, returned to it, (S, A, O, K, * TA,) namely, a thing: (TA:) or, accord. to some, the verb is differently used with فِى and with other preps.: (MF, TA:) [with فى it seems generally to imply some degree of continuance, in addition to the simple meaning of the verb alone:] one says, عاد الكَلْبُ فِى قَيْئِهِ The dog returned to his vomit: (Msb in art. رجع:) and عاد لَهُ بَعْدَ مَا كَانَ أَعْرَضَ عَنْهُ [He returned to it after he had turned away from it]
I am truly at a loss for words. I cannot adequately express my awe and fascination with this entire prophecy. It is simply breathtaking. All I can say is, "Wow!" I am profoundly grateful to God for guiding us to Islam and for urging us to follow the Quran alone, and for protecting us from what verse 4 stated in this Chapter.
Mu'awiyah and his followers introduced numerous innovations, one of which was prioritizing the oration over the prayer during 'Îd. This verse emphasizes this particular innovation because it is of the utmost importance in the eyes of God that we, at the very least, perform the rituals of His religion without neglecting them. It should not be necessary for Him to delineate the etiquettes of these rituals in the Quran for us to collectively remember and perform them in His praise, adoration, and submission. And that such an early Caliph did this to His faith is beyond an abomination.
Let us proceed.
Verse 32:
"He shall seduce with flattery those who violate the covenant, but the people who know their God shall stand firm and take action."Interpretation:
- "those who violate the covenant,": Supporters and descendants of Mu'awiyah.
- "He shall seduce with flattery": Mu'awiyah’s use of political maneuvering, distributal of booty to gain support.
- "the people who know their God shall stand firm and take action": Refers to those who remain faithful to the covenant, the real Muslims.
"And those of the people who understand shall instruct many; yet for many days they shall fall by sword and flame, by captivity and plundering."Verse 34:
"Now when they fall, they shall be aided with a little help; but many shall join with them by intrigue."Verse 35:
"And some of those of understanding shall fall, to refine them, purify them, and make them white, until the time of the end; because it is still for the appointed time."Interpretations:
- "Some of those of understanding shall fall": Leaders and scholars facing hardship and possibly executions.
- "To refine them, purify them, and make them white": Trials serving as a purification process.
- "Until the time of the end": These events leading up to a significant conclusion.
- "Because it is still for the appointed time": The final outcome is predetermined and will occur at the designated time.
It is no secret that Muawiyah massacred the Muslims to reach the top. That he unalived scholars who spoke against his actions and his dominion is a given.
Mu'awiyah is portrayed as the "Dajjal":
Verse 36:“Then the king will do as he pleases, and he will exalt and magnify himself above every god and will speak astonishing things against the God of gods; and he will succeed until the indignation is finished, for that which is decreed will be done.Interpretation:
He is being described as Sunni Hadiths describe Dajjal.
Do you understand now why I am convinced that the Sunni Hadiths have been transmitted to us by the enemies of God, most likely rabbis and Christian monks? They took notice of this prophecy and manipulated the Sunnis into believing that a "Dajjal" would emerge in the End Times, coinciding with the return of "Jesus" (despite the fact that God has not even mentioned Jesus' return). They deliberately fostered this belief in the return of Jesus and linked it to the appearance of this Dajjal for a specific purpose. Their objective was to prevent Muslims from connecting the dots and realizing that this chapter is, in fact, referring to Mu'awiyah.
There's even Sunni Hadiths saying that the Dajjal would appear in the time of the companions, ironic enough.
He will not regard any Gods, prophet Muhammad or women:
Verse 37:"He will show no regard for the gods of his ancestors or for the one desired by women, nor will he regard any god, but will exalt himself above them all."Interpretation:
This verse has been mistranslated by all of them. The Hebrew verse states:
"ועל־אלהי אבתיו לא יבין ועל־חמדת נשים ועל־כל־אלוה לא יבין כי על־כל יתגדל:"They have rendered "ועל־חמדת נשים" as "The one desired by women" while "חמדת" (HEMDAT) is a proper name in Hebrew, and not a noun. "Hemdat" (חמדת) is a Hebrew male first name (attestation) that is cognate with Mohammed/Ahmed. They have added the word "by" to make it "by women" while it is not even there in the Hebrew.
"Hemdat" here is of course referring to our prophet. He would not regard any God, not regard our prophet Ahmad/Muhammad, not regard women, and would exalt himself above all, just like the Dajjal is described in Sunni narrations:
The verse is actually literally saying:
"He will show no regard for the gods of his ancestors, Hemdat, women, nor any other god, but will exalt himself above all."The word נָשִׁ֛ים (nā·šîm) in Hebrew simply means "women" in the plural form. The phrase "Hemdat Nashim" should not be combined, and even if it were, it would not translate to "Desired one by women." Hemdat is a proper name, while "Nashim" is a separate word, mentioned separately in the plural form.
This marks the end of part 3, and the remaining portion of this chapter consists of general statements. I am unsure if I will create a part 4, but we shall see.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and please consider sharing it and liking it. May God bless you.
/ By your brother, Exion.
2024.05.29 08:37 Ben-Stanley I was the fanartist that Elyse called out and I was attacked by her fans. [Full story]
I just discovered this sub and only did because I saw a comment by u/perttygood on a thread from last year referring to me. I was the victim of an incident early last year where I made artwork for Elyse but was then rabidly attacked by her fanbase when she made a video indirectly calling me out. It’s been well over a year since this happened, but I felt like this is the only appropriate place to tell my story. I don’t care if nobody reads this, but I’m just leaving it here so I can bury the hatchet and move on.
I’d been a big fan of Elyse since I joined TikTok, which was right around when she started blowing up (mid to late 2021). I thought she was hilarious and found a lot of her body positivity videos to be helpful for me. And I loved being able to watch her become more successful in real time. In early 2022, I began making artwork where I would handwrite entire movie scripts to create a design. From the beginning, it was something I figured I could make money off of by selling prints, and I had already gained a small following on TikTok for posting videos about my artwork.
Sometime mid-2022, Elyse made a video in tears about the mental toll her job has on her and how she doesn’t think she’s making a difference. So since I was getting started making these posters, I thought that one thing I could do was use the same technique and use transcriptions of her most inspirational videos and send her a print as a way to show her that she does make a difference. Back then, she had her P.O. Box address posted and she would do unboxing videos on YouTube; so I thought it would be cool if I sent her the poster and she would film her reaction to it. If she had like a logo or something I might’ve used that as the image, but instead chose a picture of her from her website. Oh, and my wife was completely supportive of the project since she was also a big Elyse fan.
As I said, the idea from the beginning was always to make something that could be sold, and I figured that posters with Elyse’s motivational videos could make for a good merch item that I could collaborate with her publicity team to sell. So when I mailed her the print, I included a letter mentioning that and said that if she wanted to just keep her for herself, that’s totally fine; but, if she wanted to collaborate on selling the design, that was also an option. I didn’t want to publicly reveal the finished product unless or until she had responded just in case she did want to sell them.
At this point, I should acknowledge that I definitely developed a parasocial relationship with her, particularly because she was so vulnerable in the video that prompted the whole project. Obviously, I wasn’t aware of that at the time (I didn’t know what that term meant until later), but I can admit that in hindsight. I can also admit that sending her a gift but bundling it with a business opportunity was probably not the best idea; but as I said, I was leaving it up to her whether anything was ever done with the design. Oh, and also I’m on the spectrum. I don’t always think these things though.
Six months go by and I don’t hear anything, and she also never posted a new unboxing video. So I had given up on the prospect that anything would come from it, and my other artwork was really starting to take off and I was growing a good sized following. By that point, she had cut her hair to that short curly style, so I figured that there was no point trying to sell my design since it included her old hairstyle. So I decided to just make a video revealing the poster since I wasn’t expecting anything to come from it anyway. And, like I did with all my posters, I made a couple quick follow-up video responses to comments.
Dozens, if not hundreds, of people were tagging Elyse in my videos, demanding she see it and react to the poster. She did eventually comment “I have this fanart! I cried so hard when I opened it!!” In another video where I mentioned how the hair isn’t accurate anymore, she commented “The hair doesn’t change how incredible the art is. It’s hanging in my office and honestly it makes me cry a little every time I see it. I made a po unboxing for YouTube and haven’t gotten around to posting it. I’ll post it so I can show you my reaction!” And I responded with “Take your time!” I made another video telling people Elyse responded and asked everyone to stop tagging her since she’s already seen it. At one point in the subsequent weeks, Jonas did actually comment on one or two of my videos Elyse’s manager’s email so I could talk to them about prints and stuff.
About a month goes by and I don’t hear anything from Elyse or her manager. Then I opened up the app one day and see an onslaught of notifications for the comments that were flooding my videos about the poster. Things like “You owe Elyse an apology,” “You’re being distasteful,” “I’m so disappointed in you, Elyse doesn’t owe you anything.” It took me a minute to discover that they all came from a new Elyse video where she very timidly mentioned her P.O. Box and people sending things to her, and how an artist sent her something expecting some kind of brand deal and it made her really uncomfortable, and that people shouldn’t expect things out of her if they’re going to send her stuff. She never technically calls me by name or shows the poster, but she described in detail the type of artwork it was and what it looked like. I noticed that the suggested phrase in the search box was “artist mad at Elyse Myers” and basically all the suggested searches were things like “Elyse Myers artist controversy,” “Elyse Myers fanart words written out.” Basically, it didn’t take much for people to find me. Especially with people tagging me in the comments.
I discovered all this late at night, after my wife had gone to bed, so I made a really candid video responding to the situation and saying that I felt terrible about causing Elyse any more anxiety. I also clarified my intent and mentioned my neurodivergence. Because of how negative the comments were, I tried having the comments turned off on that video; however, people would just comment on all my other videos (videos completely unrelated about my other artwork) about it. So I just turned the comments back on so people could just let it all out on me there. Some of them were appalling, with many people telling me I’m can’t use my autism as an excuse, that I was being unfaithful to my wife, that I was being a predatory man by demanding Elyse’s attention, and one person threatening me. There were also at least 3 people who took my videos and analyzed the things I did and said and dissected them, saying I was being manipulative and overall just stating (not speculating) what my intent was when it wasn’t true at all. The comments on those videos were even worse because they didn’t think I’d find them, a lot of people thought I was lying about my autism or marriage and that I was just a creepy incel.
Amid all of this, I insisted that Elyse did nothing wrong and that I didn’t put any blame on her. After all, it was her fans who had tagged her dozens of times in my videos and it was her fans who rabidly came after me (even though Elyse never called me by name). However, you can see which comments the creator ‘likes’, and she would ‘like’ comments like “You should’ve just sent it back” or really just generally negative things about me. She even commented on one of those videos dissecting my videos. And it took me awhile to realize that while I was spending all this effort defending her and blaming her fans, she had done nothing except throw me under the bus.
She never once reached out to me privately. If she had DM’d me to tell me people tagging her was overwhelming, I would’ve done something about it. If she had gone back and just said “actually, I don’t think I’m going to post that YouTube video after all,” I would’ve been fine with that. Even if she flat-out ghosted me and I never heard anything about it again, I would’ve accept it. But instead, she made a video calling me out and probably thought it was okay since she never technically name-dropped me. And she was thoroughly aware that people were trash-talking me and hating on my artwork. But she did nothing to stop the haters from doing what they did.
The whole thing got me so hurt and bitter that I ended up unfollowing her on all my socials because seeing her videos pop up reminded me of the incident. I noticed that she eventually (like 2 or 3 months later) took down her video about me, so I decided to take down all my videos about the situation, including any videos that showed the poster. I even convinced one of the people who made a video using footage of me that included the poster to take theirs down, and I just wanted any evidence of it gone.
To my knowledge, Elyse never saw any of my apology videos (if she did, she never responded to them). I figured out a way to block comments tagging her or her name so she was never tagged in them. A little while later, I had made a poster for The Office, and since she was clearly a fan, I decided to send a print to her and included the note: “Figured you might like this. Sorry for all the drama the first poster caused.” I thought of it like an olive branch, but I never told anyone I did this out of fear of being called disingenuous. Well, within a week of the package being marked as delivered, I discovered that she (or someone from her team) blocked me. It could’ve been a coincidence, but it also could’ve been a reaction to the second poster.
Amid all this, I learned that I was one of at least three creators within a 6 month period who were the victims of Elyse’s insane fans. There was one woman who had told an awkward story about a week before Elyse told a really similar story, and fans accused her of stealing Elyse’s story. And there was another guy who did know Elyse as a teenager and who had done some hurtful things to her and her fans dug up information about him and exposed who he was. I made a very stern video responding to that situation, it’s the only public video I’ve made where I’m visibly and legitimately angry. Both of those other two reached out to me and we all let each other vent about it.
It’s been almost a year since I got blocked and I have barely thought about her or the situation since then. My print of the poster has remained rolled up in the back of my closet. I never heard about her second kid and only recently found out about her leaving TikTok and Instagram. I’m not really mad or hateful towards her at this point, I’m just completely indifferent.
TL;DR - I made a piece of fan art for Elyse. Six months later, she commented on my video saying she got it and loves it. Later she posted a video saying that the situation made her uncomfortable and I became the target of her angry mob of fans. I initially defended her, but she only threw me under the bus. Eventually she blocked me.
submitted by Ben-Stanley to elysemyerstiktoksnark [link] [comments]
I’d been a big fan of Elyse since I joined TikTok, which was right around when she started blowing up (mid to late 2021). I thought she was hilarious and found a lot of her body positivity videos to be helpful for me. And I loved being able to watch her become more successful in real time. In early 2022, I began making artwork where I would handwrite entire movie scripts to create a design. From the beginning, it was something I figured I could make money off of by selling prints, and I had already gained a small following on TikTok for posting videos about my artwork.
Sometime mid-2022, Elyse made a video in tears about the mental toll her job has on her and how she doesn’t think she’s making a difference. So since I was getting started making these posters, I thought that one thing I could do was use the same technique and use transcriptions of her most inspirational videos and send her a print as a way to show her that she does make a difference. Back then, she had her P.O. Box address posted and she would do unboxing videos on YouTube; so I thought it would be cool if I sent her the poster and she would film her reaction to it. If she had like a logo or something I might’ve used that as the image, but instead chose a picture of her from her website. Oh, and my wife was completely supportive of the project since she was also a big Elyse fan.
As I said, the idea from the beginning was always to make something that could be sold, and I figured that posters with Elyse’s motivational videos could make for a good merch item that I could collaborate with her publicity team to sell. So when I mailed her the print, I included a letter mentioning that and said that if she wanted to just keep her for herself, that’s totally fine; but, if she wanted to collaborate on selling the design, that was also an option. I didn’t want to publicly reveal the finished product unless or until she had responded just in case she did want to sell them.
At this point, I should acknowledge that I definitely developed a parasocial relationship with her, particularly because she was so vulnerable in the video that prompted the whole project. Obviously, I wasn’t aware of that at the time (I didn’t know what that term meant until later), but I can admit that in hindsight. I can also admit that sending her a gift but bundling it with a business opportunity was probably not the best idea; but as I said, I was leaving it up to her whether anything was ever done with the design. Oh, and also I’m on the spectrum. I don’t always think these things though.
Six months go by and I don’t hear anything, and she also never posted a new unboxing video. So I had given up on the prospect that anything would come from it, and my other artwork was really starting to take off and I was growing a good sized following. By that point, she had cut her hair to that short curly style, so I figured that there was no point trying to sell my design since it included her old hairstyle. So I decided to just make a video revealing the poster since I wasn’t expecting anything to come from it anyway. And, like I did with all my posters, I made a couple quick follow-up video responses to comments.
Dozens, if not hundreds, of people were tagging Elyse in my videos, demanding she see it and react to the poster. She did eventually comment “I have this fanart! I cried so hard when I opened it!!” In another video where I mentioned how the hair isn’t accurate anymore, she commented “The hair doesn’t change how incredible the art is. It’s hanging in my office and honestly it makes me cry a little every time I see it. I made a po unboxing for YouTube and haven’t gotten around to posting it. I’ll post it so I can show you my reaction!” And I responded with “Take your time!” I made another video telling people Elyse responded and asked everyone to stop tagging her since she’s already seen it. At one point in the subsequent weeks, Jonas did actually comment on one or two of my videos Elyse’s manager’s email so I could talk to them about prints and stuff.
About a month goes by and I don’t hear anything from Elyse or her manager. Then I opened up the app one day and see an onslaught of notifications for the comments that were flooding my videos about the poster. Things like “You owe Elyse an apology,” “You’re being distasteful,” “I’m so disappointed in you, Elyse doesn’t owe you anything.” It took me a minute to discover that they all came from a new Elyse video where she very timidly mentioned her P.O. Box and people sending things to her, and how an artist sent her something expecting some kind of brand deal and it made her really uncomfortable, and that people shouldn’t expect things out of her if they’re going to send her stuff. She never technically calls me by name or shows the poster, but she described in detail the type of artwork it was and what it looked like. I noticed that the suggested phrase in the search box was “artist mad at Elyse Myers” and basically all the suggested searches were things like “Elyse Myers artist controversy,” “Elyse Myers fanart words written out.” Basically, it didn’t take much for people to find me. Especially with people tagging me in the comments.
I discovered all this late at night, after my wife had gone to bed, so I made a really candid video responding to the situation and saying that I felt terrible about causing Elyse any more anxiety. I also clarified my intent and mentioned my neurodivergence. Because of how negative the comments were, I tried having the comments turned off on that video; however, people would just comment on all my other videos (videos completely unrelated about my other artwork) about it. So I just turned the comments back on so people could just let it all out on me there. Some of them were appalling, with many people telling me I’m can’t use my autism as an excuse, that I was being unfaithful to my wife, that I was being a predatory man by demanding Elyse’s attention, and one person threatening me. There were also at least 3 people who took my videos and analyzed the things I did and said and dissected them, saying I was being manipulative and overall just stating (not speculating) what my intent was when it wasn’t true at all. The comments on those videos were even worse because they didn’t think I’d find them, a lot of people thought I was lying about my autism or marriage and that I was just a creepy incel.
Amid all of this, I insisted that Elyse did nothing wrong and that I didn’t put any blame on her. After all, it was her fans who had tagged her dozens of times in my videos and it was her fans who rabidly came after me (even though Elyse never called me by name). However, you can see which comments the creator ‘likes’, and she would ‘like’ comments like “You should’ve just sent it back” or really just generally negative things about me. She even commented on one of those videos dissecting my videos. And it took me awhile to realize that while I was spending all this effort defending her and blaming her fans, she had done nothing except throw me under the bus.
She never once reached out to me privately. If she had DM’d me to tell me people tagging her was overwhelming, I would’ve done something about it. If she had gone back and just said “actually, I don’t think I’m going to post that YouTube video after all,” I would’ve been fine with that. Even if she flat-out ghosted me and I never heard anything about it again, I would’ve accept it. But instead, she made a video calling me out and probably thought it was okay since she never technically name-dropped me. And she was thoroughly aware that people were trash-talking me and hating on my artwork. But she did nothing to stop the haters from doing what they did.
The whole thing got me so hurt and bitter that I ended up unfollowing her on all my socials because seeing her videos pop up reminded me of the incident. I noticed that she eventually (like 2 or 3 months later) took down her video about me, so I decided to take down all my videos about the situation, including any videos that showed the poster. I even convinced one of the people who made a video using footage of me that included the poster to take theirs down, and I just wanted any evidence of it gone.
To my knowledge, Elyse never saw any of my apology videos (if she did, she never responded to them). I figured out a way to block comments tagging her or her name so she was never tagged in them. A little while later, I had made a poster for The Office, and since she was clearly a fan, I decided to send a print to her and included the note: “Figured you might like this. Sorry for all the drama the first poster caused.” I thought of it like an olive branch, but I never told anyone I did this out of fear of being called disingenuous. Well, within a week of the package being marked as delivered, I discovered that she (or someone from her team) blocked me. It could’ve been a coincidence, but it also could’ve been a reaction to the second poster.
Amid all this, I learned that I was one of at least three creators within a 6 month period who were the victims of Elyse’s insane fans. There was one woman who had told an awkward story about a week before Elyse told a really similar story, and fans accused her of stealing Elyse’s story. And there was another guy who did know Elyse as a teenager and who had done some hurtful things to her and her fans dug up information about him and exposed who he was. I made a very stern video responding to that situation, it’s the only public video I’ve made where I’m visibly and legitimately angry. Both of those other two reached out to me and we all let each other vent about it.
It’s been almost a year since I got blocked and I have barely thought about her or the situation since then. My print of the poster has remained rolled up in the back of my closet. I never heard about her second kid and only recently found out about her leaving TikTok and Instagram. I’m not really mad or hateful towards her at this point, I’m just completely indifferent.
TL;DR - I made a piece of fan art for Elyse. Six months later, she commented on my video saying she got it and loves it. Later she posted a video saying that the situation made her uncomfortable and I became the target of her angry mob of fans. I initially defended her, but she only threw me under the bus. Eventually she blocked me.