If Faraday Future Intelligent Electric Inc. (FFIE) were to experience a successful short squeeze, the potential peak price would depend on several factors, including the intensity of the short squeeze, the extent of retail investor participation, and the responses from institutional investors. Drawing from historical examples and market dynamics, here's an outline of what could influence the peak price:

Factors Influencing the Peak Price

1. Short Interest:
   
   • With FFIE's high short interest, where over 95% of its float is shorted, a substantial short squeeze could lead to a dramatic increase in price. In the case of GameStop (GME) in 2021, the stock surged from around $20 to nearly $500, representing a 2,400% increase at its peak oai_citation:1, Is a Giant Short Squeeze Brewing in Faraday Future (FFIE) Stock? InvestorPlace oai_citation:2, Why Is Faraday Future (FFIE) Stock Up 380% Today? InvestorPlace .
2. Retail Investor Momentum:
   
   • The collective buying power of retail investors can significantly amplify the stock price. If retail investors continue to buy and hold FFIE shares, refusing to sell, this could push the stock to extreme highs due to limited available shares and increased demand.
3. Media and Social Media Attention:
   
   • Media coverage and viral social media posts can further fuel retail interest and buying pressure, similar to the influence of figures like Roaring Kitty during the GameStop rally oai_citation:3,Renaissance acquired GameStop and AMC shares ahead of meme stock rally - Hedgeweek.
4. Institutional Responses:
   
   • Institutional investors covering their short positions would add to the buying pressure, potentially driving the price even higher. Some institutions might also take long positions to capitalize on the upward momentum.
5. Regulatory Interventions:
   
   • Any regulatory interventions or trading halts could impact the peak price. For example, during the GameStop rally, trading halts and restrictions on buying introduced by brokerages like Robinhood temporarily suppressed the price oai_citation:4,Key Points About Regulation SHO.

Potential Peak Price

Given these factors, a potential peak for FFIE could be estimated by looking at similar past events:

• Conservative Estimate: If the short squeeze is moderate, FFIE might see a 500% increase from its current levels. For example, if FFIE is trading at $1.80, a 500% increase would bring it to around $9 per share.
  
• Aggressive Estimate: If the squeeze is as intense as the GameStop rally, where the price increased by approximately 2,400%, FFIE could see its price reach around $43 per share, assuming a starting price of $1.80.
  

Historical Context and Examples

• GameStop (GME): In January 2021, GameStop's stock price surged from around $20 to nearly $500 due to a coordinated short squeeze by retail investors on Reddit, resulting in a 2,400% increase at its peak oai_citation:5,Is The New Meme Stock Rally Led By GME, AMC A Repeat Of 2021? Vanda Research Says No: 'Chances We Reach That Stage Are Low' - GameStop (NYSE:GME) - Benzinga oai_citation:6,Renaissance acquired GameStop and AMC shares ahead of meme stock rally - Hedgeweek.
• AMC Entertainment (AMC): Another example from the 2021 meme stock rallies, AMC's stock price increased from around $2 to over $60, representing a 3,000% increase at its peak oai_citation:7, Why Is Faraday Future (FFIE) Stock Up 380% Today? InvestorPlace .

Conclusion

While it's challenging to predict the exact peak price, understanding the dynamics of short squeezes and historical precedents can provide a reasonable estimate. If FFIE were to follow a similar trajectory to previous meme stocks, it could see substantial gains, with potential peaks ranging from a conservative estimate of $9 to an aggressive estimate of $43 or higher. The actual peak would depend on the intensity of the short squeeze, retail investor coordination, and market reactions. (This is CHATGPT but very educational)

呪われたテクニック:ギャンブラーのガーディアン (Cursed Technique: Gambler's Guardians)

The Gambler's Guardians CT is a shikigami technique that employs the use of chance and a deck of cards to summon guardians to combat opponents. The user cannot choose which shikigami is summoned as the medium between summoning these shikigami is a deck of cards that the user always has. The user may withhold these cards to be used as a later date or to lead to the use of the user's DE.

Drawbacks Of Gambler's Guardians

1. Due to its unpredictability, you may not draw the right card for the situation or even be unable to summon a shikigami at all.
   
2. It's a very risky, yet powerful technique as the cards must physically be drawn for the shikigami to be summoned.
   
3. All the shikigami's main weakness is fire as they will become a pile of ash in a matter of seconds [as this is the main and almost only weakness for all the shikigami, it will not be repeated and only shikigami specific weaknesses will be mentioned going forward].
   

呪われた道具:プレイヤーの野望 (Cursed Tool: Player's Ambition)

The Player's Ambition Cursed Tool is a tool that is created directly from the user's CE. It is tied to the user's CE and can always be created again by the user whenever it is destroyed. The cards in this deck are extremely durable as if made of a titanium alloy while still retaining its flexibility. These cards can be very useful for other Sorcerers as the deck always has a full suit of cards [that never repeat until all have been used once] that can cause a lot of damage. As for the user, these cards serve as both the medium and a powerful offensive tool for combat. However, just like modern decks, two jokers have been placed. These two jokers are required for the user to activate their DE, if the user does not have a DE then these two jokers are used as diversions to trick or further damage opponents. When the shikigami is summoned, the card drops to the card and expands to the required size for the shikigami to exit the card as if it's a portal. Both the size and the body of the shikigami depends on how quickly it exits the card.

ギャンブラーのガーディアン:エース (Gambler's Guardians: Ace)

The Ace shikigami is a shikigami that helps smooth the flow of the user's CE and increase the user's CE output. The shikigami is in the form of a large skinny robed figure that bears the symbol of the card that is drawn [A spade for the Ace Of Spades, a heart for the Ace Of Hearts and so on]. Aceis quite physically powerful and smart as it will get very creative with its attack and almost never do something in the literal sense. The Ace is extremely lanky and has arms that almost drag on the ground on the floor. The boost from this shikigami lasts for a varying amount of time depending on which Ace is drawn. The Ace takes advantage of its long arms and powerful enhancement boosting abilities to quickly attack in swiping strikes from a distance. Ace is the manifestation of the user's grief and regret of indulging in their addiction as they have lost the love and warmth of those who were close, yet pushed away.

ギャンブラーのガーディアン:スペードのエース (Gambler's Guardians: Ace Of Spades)

The Spades variation of the Ace shikigami can be seen as the more base version of the Ace as it still retains all regular details aforementioned, but with the added detail of skin as white as snow and hands the size of a shovel’s blade. The enhancement ability aforementioned is not changed much as it still can enhance the flow of CE in the user and boost the overall strength of itself. Although it can now enhance the durability of different objects to the level of a titanium alloy.

Gambler's Guardians: Ace Of Hearts

The Hearts variation of Ace sees some very drastic changes when compared to the Spade variation. The Ace Of Hearts can be seen with the same snow white skin, but this time it seems to have brought red outlines where its nonexistent veins should be. These “veins” are visible all along its body. The Ace Of Hearts no longer smooths the flow of the user's CE, but instead is able to reverse some damages to both it and the user. The Ace Of Hearts takes advantage of this healing factor with its higher amount of agility, but this healing factor and agility come with the loss of strength. The Ace Of Hearts is much weaker and not suited for close hand to hand combat, but instead will use debris from the fight to throw at the opponents while at points jumping towards the user to heal them. The Ace Of Hearts is able to climb up buildings extremely quickly and is another very useful part of the user's chance filled arsenal.

Gambler's Guardians: Ace Of Diamonds

The Ace Of Diamonds is the more defensive variation and it will always put its life at bay to keep its master safe. It is much more bulky than its previous variations and uses this bulky-ness to shield the user with its body. The Ace Of Diamonds has the same snow white skin and the same blood red “veins”, but with the added factor of its major difference in size when compared to the other variations. The Ace Of Diamonds is also the most physically powerful variation as it can throw things like cars with ease, possibly even buses if it tried. This variation of Ace can reinforce its own skin to that of diamonds, at the cost of being unable to apply any boosts to others.

Gambler's Guardians: Ace Of Clubs

The Ace Of Clubs is the much more offensive variation of Ace as it trades away some of its high durability to gain more agility and muscle strength. Combining this increase in agility and muscle strength with its newfound aggressiveness and large hood, it can quickly apply large amounts of pressure onto anything as it mercilessly attacks the target. The Ace Of Clubs will also use it's surroundings heavily to apply further pressure, whether that be from grabbing and throwing the target into something, or picking up something and using it as a weapon.

Gambler’s Guardians: Two

These shikigami mainly focus on supporting the user as all of their variations focus on buffing their capabilities in some form, whether that be applying a protective CE shield over the user or simply healing the user. However, these shikigami are very weak and require something to protect them or else little value will be gained from summoning them. The shikigami almost look like [biblically accurate] angels about the size of a bike, the only difference is that they are made purely of the card they were summoned with, hence why their durability is so low and can very easily be shut down.

Gambler's Guardians: Two Of Spades

The Two Of Spades variation is [just like Ace Of Spades] the base variation of Two. The Two Of Spades summons two smaller shikigami that both can apply barriers of CE onto objects or even people. These barriers are not the strongest and can barely survive a single hit from something such as a grade 2 and above, but they can allow for some defense especially as it can tank at least a single hit which can potentially save the user's life.

Gambler's Guardians: Two Of Hearts

The Two Of Hearts variation allows the shikigami to be able to reverse damage to anything, but not the position [ex. If a wall was knocked down and shattered, these shikigami can reverse the damage it sustained to an extent, but not being it back to its upright position unless they somehow lift it back up] to a certain extent. No, these shikigami can NOT reverse death, the worst injury they can reverse on a human being or animal is a broken bone [unless the bone is completely shattered]. Anything more can potentially cause more pain for the user while killing the shikigami in the process.

Gambler's Guardians: Two Of Diamonds

The Two Of Diamonds variation can apply a much more durable shield than Two Of Spades, at the cost of its own speed and tapping into the user's CE reserves. This allows for a much stronger shield that can repair itself as long as the user’s CE reserves are full. These shields can survive multiple hits from a semi-grade 1 and potentially a few hits from a grade 1 sorcerer or curse. However, if the shikigami attempts to keep up the shield for too long, it will overload itself and burn up in a flash of CE. The CE used to summon these shikigami will be returned if this happens.

Gambler's Guardians: Two Of Clubs

The Two Of Clubs is the fastest variation of Two, but at the cost of its own durability. These shikigami often will apply a shield onto itself [rather than the user] and fly into a target to cause physical damage, taking advantage of its shield and speed. However, because it is so weak durability wise, so are its shields. Its shields cannot survive more than 2 hits from most sources without shattering. Even though these shields are weak, the shattering effect that happens when they break can potentially harm others [this includes the user].

Gambler's Guardians: Three

Three is a trio of shikigami that look similarly to the finger bearer cursed spirit, but Three are pure white with either black or red accents depending on which card was used to summon them and the symbol of the card on its back. They are also smaller than the finger bearer, reaching a height of about 4’4. Three is more so focused on being a supporting attacker to overwhelm an opponent, rather than taking the attention off of the user [with the exception of Three Of Clubs]. Three is very much average in all ways, but makes up for it with its speed, being able to quickly overwhelm a target.

Gambler's Guardians: Three Of Spades

The Three Of Spades is very fast and can even sneak up on opponents as it is able to dig its claws into objects and hold itself on ceilings or walls. Three Of Spades is very overwhelming as it takes advantage of its speed and strength to even break through walls to catch an opponent off guard, but will ultimately choose to protect the user even if it means death. Most of the time, Three Of Spades will stick closely to the user, but in a hidden position where they cannot be easily noticed while even hiding their own CE to an extent.

Gambler's Guardians: Three Of Hearts

The Three Of Hearts shikigami is the same looking shikigami, the only difference is that one of them specializes in physical attacks, one specializes in psychological confusion, and the last specializes in attacking the soul. The one that specializes in physical attacks is slightly above average in strength, speed and durability, but can grow claws on both its hands and feet to attempt to cause bleeding. The one that specializes in psychological confusion can release a gas that, if inhaled, will cause the victim to have hallucinations that could go from minor to severe depending on how much of the gas is inhaled. Finally, the one that specializes in attacking the soul is below average in physical strength and durability, but makes up for it with its speed and ability to cause irreversible damage.

Gambler's Guardians: Three Of Diamonds

The Three Of Diamonds are much more durable and physically powerful and the form they take represents that. They have a lot more visible muscle on them and the accents are less tattoos and actually are an unknown metallic material that is highly durable. This armour does not cover its whole body, but it does allow protection on the shikigami's arms, legs, and partially their chest. The armour is on these parts as it is a physical attacker rather than using some other ranged attack. The Three Of Diamonds are also a bit bigger than that of the rest of the variations of Three, reaching a height of 4’11.

Gambler's Guardians: Three Of Clubs

The Three Of Clubs variation can all merge together, forming a much larger and stronger shikigami, reaching the height of 5’8. Each summoned shikigami has a different part of the Clubs symbol on their back, when the three parts decide to form or the user tells them to merge, they become the powerful shikigami as mentioned before with the finished symbol of Clubs. More info on this combination will be stated below, for now information on Three Of Clubs will be talked about. The Three Of Clubs focuses more on hard hitting attacks, rather than stealthy ambushes. It loses its stealth, but instead it has a new merging gimmick and slightly increased strength and durability when compared to Three Of Spades.

Gambler's Guardians: Three Of A Kind

The Three Of A Kind shikigami is the result of when all three shikigami of Three Of Clubs merge together. The Three Of A Kind is very powerful and uses the same fighting style that the user does with the added benefits of a massive strength, durability and speed boost. The Three Of A Kind can apply a lot of pressure and can even revert back into the three separate shikigami it was before on command to dodge a potential hit from an enemy. However, the longer the shikigami are in this merged form, the weaker they will get as they have a time limit that is represented by the tattoo of the clubs on its back slowly fading from the top of the clubs down. It does slowly regenerate while not in the merged state and when it isn't even summoned. Trying to push past this state can allow a few extra seconds of strength, but ultimately will end with this shikigami to burn up in a flash of CE and the card used to summon it will be burned from the deck.

Gambler's Guardians: Four

Gambler's Guardians: Four Of Spades

Gambler's Guardians: Four Of Hearts

Gambler's Guardians: Four Of Diamonds

Gambler's Guardians: Four Of Clubs

Gambler's Guardians: Five

Gambler's Guardians: Five Of Spades

Gambler's Guardians: Five Of Hearts

Gambler's Guardians: Five Of Diamonds

Gambler's Guardians: Five Of Clubs

Gambler's Guardians: Six

Gambler's Guardians: Six Of Spades

Gambler's Guardians: Six Of Hearts

Gambler's Guardians: Six Of Diamonds

Gambler's Guardians: Six Of Clubs

Gambler's Guardians: Seven

Gambler's Guardians: Seven Of Spades

Gambler's Guardians: Seven Of Hearts

Gambler's Guardians: Seven Of Diamonds

Gambler's Guardians: Seven Of Clubs

Gambler's Guardians: Eight

Gambler's Guardians: Eight Of Spades

Gambler's Guardians: Eight Of Hearts

Gambler's Guardians: Eight Of Diamonds

Gambler's Guardians: Eight Of Clubs

Gambler's Guardians: Nine

Gambler's Guardians: Nine Of Spades

Gambler's Guardians: Nine Of Hearts

Gambler's Guardians: Nine Of Diamonds

Gambler's Guardians: Nine Of Clubs

Gambler's Guardians: Ten

Gambler's Guardians: Ten Of Spades

Gambler's Guardians: Ten Of Hearts

Gambler's Guardians: Ten Of Diamonds

Gambler's Guardians: Ten Of Clubs

Gambler's Guardians: Jack

Gambler's Guardians: Jack Of Spades

Gambler's Guardians: Jack Of Hearts

Gambler's Guardians: Jack Of Diamonds

Gambler's Guardians: Jack Of Clubs

Gambler's Guardians: Queen

Gambler's Guardians: Queen Of Spades

Gambler's Guardians: Queen Of Hearts

Gambler's Guardians: Queen Of Diamonds

Gambler's Guardians: Queen Of Clubs

Gambler's Guardians: King

Gambler's Guardians: King Of Spades

Gambler's Guardians: King Of Hearts

Gambler's Guardians: King Of Diamonds

Gambler's Guardians: King Of Clubs

Extension Technique: Full House

This Extension Technique allows the user to overload their cards with CE, allowing the capabilities of the shikigami to be heightened [ex. More durability, faster, stronger, special gimmicks have a stronger influence, ect], but burning the card after being used. When this happens, the card is less likely to be pulled again or even just not even to be pulled from that deck ever again, forcing the user to attempt to artificially create another deck they can use from their CE.

Domain Expansion: Joker's Last Cabaret

When this DE is activated, both the user and the opponents will be placed in the midst of a casino filled with different cards flying everywhere extremely fast [fast enough to cut the skin on a human being]. As soon as one of these cards draws blood and they land flat on a surface [face down], the corresponding shikigami of that card will be summoned with the person the card had hit as their target. These shikigami will not target any other person until the original target is felled. Once that target is defeated the shikigami will explode into a flurry of cards, allowing for more shikigami to be summoned. The user can concentrate CE to slightly direct the cards into a target, but then these cards that were directed turn into blank cards that have no other use than as a physical weapon rather than an intermediary. The Joker cards will burn up after this DE is summoned, meaning this DE can never be used again unless the user can focus enough CE onto another set of Joker cards.

I recently experienced a really painful experience with termination and am still struggling to understand why my therapist (a psychologist) would terminate in this way.
I will try and keep the story as brief as possible (although it is going to be long) and obviously this is only my side of it.
I have been seeing this therapist for almost a year. They are my first one. I am male. They are female. She is slightly younger than me.
I initially went there to discuss my relationship problems. It was one of those scenarios where I wanted to do couples therapy with my wife but she refused and ultimately I said OK Iwill go alone.
I would be lying if I said I did not form a deep attachment to her but this attachment was never in a way which was sexual or where I desired her to be part of my life outside of her office. And this is being 100% honest with myself.
I have been a very closed off person including to my wife and whatever reason my ability to try and open up to my therapist was an extremely new experience for me and resulted in this attachment which I have discussed with her.
Our communication outside of sessions would be an email or two from me a week mainly to jot my thoughts down about what I would like to discuss with her in session.
My continued attendance with her became a problem for my wife in that she thought it was a form of emotional cheating. All of this was relayed to my therapist. I am not after any commentary about whether my wife is wrong or right to feel this way - it is what it is.
My final session with my therapist, from my perspective went somewhat along these lines:
1.) We discussed an ultimatum my wife had given me essentially regarding termination of therapy or the end of our marriage
2.) We discussed this in the context of my wife setting a boundary and whether I could seek therapy elsewhere
3.) I discussed that I did not wish to do this process again (therapy) with anybody else and I wouldn't be doing that
4.) What we didn't discuss was whether I actually wanted to terminate therapy. I never once communicated that I wanted to or that I was going to terminate with her
5.) I would describe whathappened next is that she manipulated the conversation into a termination as though it was being guided by me but she was essentially putting words in my mouth, cancelling our further sessions and pushing me out the door, early.
6.) I was so overwhelmed by what I perceived her to be doing that I essentially shut down, unable to communicate that I could see what she was doing and that I did not agree to terminate. I was getting more and more hurt and angry every second I was in the room. I beleive she was acutley aware of this.
7.) I felt that the session was highly manipulative on her part - in that I truly believe she used her power over me and skills to make it seem like I was terminating when it was in fact her.
I eventually got the courage to call her out on this behaviour as feedback via an email.
I eventually got a reply as follows:
Hi X

Firstly, I appreciate the honesty and feedback. Thank you for expressing it. It was never my intention to make you feel unwelcome in my office, or as though you could not continue to receive treatment from me. My intention is always to help my clients and provide them the support they need to grow.
However, it is my professional responsibility to you to assess the impacts of treatment from our sessions. After the discussion we had regarding me as your therapist in the first half of our session on Thursday, it became apparent that my appointment as your therapist has become a maintaining factor to reaching positive therapy outcomes which you seek. I understand the magnitude of this but truely believe you are capable of meaningful engagement and continued progress whether it is here or at another clinic based on how far you have developed since our first session.
Kind regards,
X
My reply was as follows:

Hi Therapist
I really do appreciate your reply.
I guess from my perspective we should have had that conversation. As I said in my prior email I would have listened to you and respected that. I don’t know why you felt that we could not or should not have that conversation. Instead, I walked away feeling the way I did. I actually felt really manipulated.
I do really thank you for your honesty with me today and can honestly tell you that it actually helps me a lot to understand and give me closure.
Regards
X
I have not received any further reply.
I essentially take her email as an admission of what she did (the final paragraph). I just don't understand why she would not have discussed this with me. This is the whole point of therapy!! Open and honest communication..
Regarding her comments, I actually would agree with her... I take her last paragraph to mean either of the following:
1.) I went to her originally trying to better my relationship with my wife and ultimately that seems to have failed and the process while perhaps being beneficial to me overall has created a greater wedge between my wife and myself; or / and
2.) The connection I have formed with her is working as a road block to me wanting to open up more to my wife
Both of these things are probably true and I take no issue with this - I just don't understand why she would not have this conversation with me and ultimately left me feeling really manipulated.
I am wondering from a therapist perspective how and why this could have happened this way??

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

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

Paramount: Deal Rumors Aside, What About The Operations? Can The Company Turn A Profit?
May 21, 2024 2:41 PM ET
Summary
Paramount Global remains my worst investment, but I still believe in its potential for success.
Paramount's "lack of scale" is not the reason for its underperformance as it spends about as much on content as industry leader Netflix.
Paramount's loss last year was largely the result of one-off writedowns, both domestically and internationally. These losses will not repeat going forward.
Paramount's streaming operation suffers not from lack of scale, but an abundance of overload waste, which may be alleviated under new management.
The sports slate remains best-in-class, and CBS is still the leader in broadcast scripted. CBS Television City in Los Angeles, Ca, USA. JHVEPhoto/iStock Editorial via Getty Images
Paramount Global (NASDAQ:PARA) (NASDAQ:PARAA) remains my worst investment. Let's just get that clear from the start. I said two years ago it was madness not to buy Paramount. That was wrong, wrong, wrong. The fact that I recommended against buying the new Warner Discovery at the same time, and heeding that warning saved a lot of money, makes me feel a little better, but not much.
And no, the fact that Warren Buffett made the exact same mistake as me doesn't help much, either. Mr. Buffett and I are about to part ways, anyway. He is now completely sold out of Paramount, while I am hanging in. Yes, I am still buying. Get all the ribbing out of your systems, and then read on.
Although a few rounds remain to be played in the game, it is no longer inconceivable that none of the various deal permutations that have been put forward for Paramount will pan out, and that it will continue as an independent company. Essentially, Redstone will block a deal with Apollo Global Management, Inc. (APO) and Sony Group Corporation (SONY) and the 'B' shareholders will litigate a Skydance deal to death.
Because so many Seeking Alpha articles are already offering a blow-by-blow analysis of the deal talks - and I absolutely encourage you to read them - I wanted to turn back for just a minute to a more in-depth look at Paramount's actual operations. If it stays independent, can it turn itself around?
Scale Is Not The Issue I'm angry. Usually, when an investment goes wrong, I can manage to be philosophical or even dispassionate about it. Risks of the trade, can't win 'em all, pick your maxim.
But this one is really getting to me. I'm sure part of that is simply the sheer amount of my portfolio that has suffered - I bet a lot more on Paramount than I did on my typical investment, so sure was I that it had the tools needed for success. Fortunately, some of my other media investments have worked out much, much better, or I'd really be hurting. In fact, my Netflix buy has repaired all the damage my Paramount buy has done.
Still, I'm unusually angry, partly because of the sheer amount lost. But it's also that I still don't believe there is anything wrong with Paramount, at its core. It has become quite commonplace to speak of Paramount's "lack of scale" as the reason for its apparent impending demise, or at least subsumption. But I would still argue that that isn't born out by the numbers. Paramount spent roughly $16 billion on content in 2023, the same total as 2022, when $4 billion of it was spent on streaming. That is only slightly less than Netflix, Inc. (NFLX) which leads the industry in market cap and performance, if not in spending. While the gap with other studio peers is larger, I'm not sure spending at Netflix levels equals a "lack of scale."
What's more, a lot of that extra spending by other traditional industry players like Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (WBD) and The Walt Disney Company (DIS) is not spending that investors should necessarily cheer. As I've explained before, Paramount's lower spending total is almost entirely accounted for by its far more profitable approach to sports rights; a lot of that extra spending that Disney and Warner are doing isn't particularly profitable or even sensible.
What then, does account for Paramount's underperformance?
Stock Performance That depends on which underperformance you're talking about. First, the stock price. Paramount cut its dividend in spring 2023. That announcement, with its Q1 earnings, was enough to cause half of the past-year decline in a single day. Paramount went from $21 to $16 with the dividend cut and was still at $16 as late as December.
Since then, the other half of the decline has reflected the increasing evidence that Paramount is more or less ready to throw in the towel, and intends to be a distressed seller to another studio or private equity firm soon. More specifically, it is actually Shari Redstone, who exercises control over Paramount through her 77.3% share of Paramount's Class A voting stock, who is ready to call it quits. The perception that she has no leverage and will be forced to accept a fire sale offer has driven the stock lower.
Operations All that, however, merely explains the stock market decline; what is the operational explanation for Paramount's troubles? The company reported a $600 million loss for full year 2023. How is it that one of the Big Five movie studios, with the most popular of the Big Four broadcast networks, the most popular show on cable (Yellowstone) and the only profitable sports slate in American television, can't make money?
Accounting Element First, we need to acknowledge that there are some accounting factors in that 2023 loss. Paramount took a "programming charge," i.e., a write-down of the value of programming assets, of roughly $2.4 billion in Q1 and Q2 last year. That is money that would ordinarily be amortized over a period of years - it's mostly streaming originals, which Paramount usually amortizes over a 4-year period - that instead saw its red ink taken all at once. Had it been amortized normally, Paramount would have reported an operating profit of roughly $1.2 billion, more or less identical to 2022, instead of reporting an operating loss of the same amount.
Still, that write-down reflects the fact that the content isn't performing well, so those losses were always going to happen, and they're quite real; the accounting change is simply a timing issue. So Paramount is operationally deficient, even if perhaps not quite as operationally deficient as this one-time write-down makes it look. We cannot dismiss Paramount's operational issues by putting them down to accounting distortions.
TV Scripted Content Difficulties Paramount did not break down the programming charge, but outside reports have about half of it owing to the integration of Showtime in Paramount+ as a single service. It's not entirely clear which side of the ledger those losses are coming from; one of the less understood things about merging services is that it potentially makes content on both sides less valuable as it is replaced by more popular content from the other side. Showtime's Q1 2023 viewership was very top-heavy, with just two shows, Yellowjackets and Your Honor constituting 30% of all viewership. Presumably, those two shows reduced the value of some Paramount+ existing content while the rest of Showtime's library may have suffered from competition with P+ content.
Regardless of the exact source, Paramount's content is not performing. That's a little surprising considering that, as I said, CBS content is actually quite popular on the linear side. In fact, in the earnings call following the annual report now-former CEO Bob Bakish reported that CBS had the top 16 scripted programs and 18 of the top 20 in the first week of post-strike broadcasts. Paramount has disclosed in the past that CBS content makes up roughly half of the viewership on Paramount+; and this is despite the fact that P+ isn't even the sole beneficiary of CBS content; roughly $600 million per quarter of Paramount's licensing revenue comes from CBS shows as well.
One possibility that I perhaps did not consider sufficiently was the chance that the unique characteristics of CBS would make it harder for that channel to transition to streaming than its other broadcast peers. CBS is the most popular of all broadcast networks, but that popularity owes disproportionately to more elderly viewers; in the demo, it is actually Comcast Corporation's (CMCSA) NBC which takes the top crown.
With elderly viewers both less appealing to advertisers and less likely to make the transition to streaming, it is perhaps not so surprising that CBS is continuing to perform well on linear but having trouble translating that to streaming.
International Shortfall The damage isn't through yet, either. Paramount disclosed that it took another $1.2 billion impairment charge on content in the first quarter. This one has to do with the international side; a few years ago Paramount commissioned 150 new, original international shows and movies to try to boost international growth. Now, Paramount reveals that even international consumers spend no less than 90% of their time streaming Hollywood content; the local originals aren't doing very much for growth or retention.
About the only good thing that can be said about this complete and utter debacle is that it is a one-off; unlike Paramount's US content spending, which is ongoing and therefore must be made more efficient if Paramount is to survive and thrive, Paramount is gradually exiting International production. In fact, to help cover the losses on its international originals it is selling its share in Viacom18, the network that formerly served as Paramount's onshore operation in India, to its partner Reliance for a little over $500 million.
Where Are The Children? Yet another factor is children's programming. While many have essentially written off Paramount's entire cable channel group, and I agree the prognosis for MTV and Comedy Central is rather grim, I have argued that Nickelodeon remains a real asset, as one of the top two children's channels in linear TV. I believed that would be a powerful subscriber acquisition tool, alongside sports, as the streaming transition continued.
It hasn't worked out. Surveys consistently show the Big 3 for parents with children are Netflix, Disney, and the third is Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) of all things. Neither Paramount+ nor Warner Discovery's Max make the cut, despite ownership of top children's linear platforms/libraries Nickelodeon and Looney Tunes, respectively.
The prognosis here isn't entirely grim. Paramount has reported that half of their streaming subscribers touch kids' content regularly, so clearly Nickelodeon does mean something to the subscribers. It's possible it helps with retention, even if it doesn't drive acquisition. Paramount owns the number one brand for pre-school kids, Paw Patrol.
Paramount has shut down the separate Noggin streaming service and will presumably be amplifying the kids content on P+ as a result, so perhaps this trend will yet turn around. With so many other things going wrong, though, the inability to make kids content more central to the strategy is a painful blow.
The Mismanagement Of Streaming I suspect, however, that Paramount's single biggest defect over the past few years has been the competency of its management. In a streaming world, success hinges overwhelmingly on the efficiency with which a content budget is deployed. That efficiency, in turn, requires avoiding the trap of "overload," something cable doesn't have to worry about but which can kill a streaming service.
What Is Overload? In brief, overload is when a streaming service spends money on content that appeals primarily to those subscribers who were already subscribed and intending to remain subscribed, even without that content. Because revenue does not increase with more viewership, such spending is essentially wasted money. I have been arguing for several years that some economic models of streaming profitability fail to take account of this significant element.
Paramount seems to have had a lot of overload in the last few years. Specifically, its single most broadly appealing piece of content is the NFL, which Paramount is an anchor broadcaster for. Because NFL fans are accustomed to spending upwards of $100 a month on cable just to watch the NFL - over 10% of cable subscribers say that the NFL is the only reason they're still subscribing - Paramount's $6-$12 a month fee for streaming really doesn't need anything more than NFL games to attract these 40-50 million fans.
The Earnings Jaw-Dropper And yet, it seems that's where a lot of the extra streaming money has been going. On the Q2 earnings call last year, CEO Bob Bakish, watching the stock price steadily decline, seemed to be eager to reassure he had a handle on the situation and began describing some of the changes he'd be making. It started out well enough, really; he told investors that NFL viewers churn drops dramatically if they also engage with entertainment titles, which is what you'd expect.
But then, he stunned me and I expect just about everyone listening when he said, "we probably need to do less for [the NFL viewer] in the fall, and more outside the fall because we can rely on the NFL." Compounding the almost Looking Glass-feeling, he then went on to reassure everyone he would be "fine-tuning" the content strategy to address that point in the years to come.
It was, frankly, stunning. Both me and I suspect just about every analyst who was modeling Paramount had just assumed it went without saying that of course, any entertainment content targeted at retaining NFL viewers should drop in the other half of the year when the NFL wasn't playing on TV. My own calculations of the profit margin on CBS's NFL deal had always incorporated that.
And while that was bad enough, it also raised the concern that a management team that didn't understand that going in might have put a lot of other overload in other categories as well. Suddenly, it wasn't so hard to see how the best-scripted shop with the most profitable sports contracts was having trouble making money. Double-loading for 50 million households would be a major drag on the financial performance for streaming.
Light At The End Of The Tunnel Despite all of this, I still think there are bright spots in the Paramount picture, even without a merger. Its operations, as well as its merger discussions, don't seem to lack potential.

1: My Usual Paramount Bull Argument: Sports Profits

One thing that continues to go right is sports content. A few years ago, I wrote that Paramount was a strong contender to become a sustainable streaming business because it had the only profitable sports slate in the business. The stock hasn't gone where I wanted it to go, but that is the one part of my thesis that has been definitively borne out. In fact, many now say that it is CBS's sports deals, at least as much as Paramount's film/TV studio, that the prospective buyers of Paramount are after.
I've covered these in other articles already. The March Madness deal runs until 2032 and the NFL deal runs until 2033, although the NFL has an opt out after 2029 that it will probably exercise given the utterly ludicrous bids the NBA is receiving, so the last four years of that deal might have to be chopped off the profit projections. Even so, Paramount can probably generate $1.25 billion a year in profit just off of those two deals for the next six years.
Those are probably the biggest, but it doesn't stop there. Almost every sports deal Paramount has is profitable. For all the flak management has deservedly taken, Paramount continues to show discipline and focus on sports. You won't find Paramount throwing $2.5 billion a year at the NBA's 'B' package, which is more money than the NFL gets for its 'B' package despite having 10x the viewership.
For all its many, many missteps, a Paramount that can just manage to stay afloat long enough for some of these ludicrous sports bets at other companies to blow up may yet find itself with cards to play later in the decade.

2: Recouping Write-downs Via Preferred Conversion

Another small boon has been the official conversion of the preferred shares. The Paramount mandatory convertible formerly trading under the PARAP ticker was capped at 0.85 shares per common share. Given the initial price of the convertible at $100 per share, that effectively means that a preferred share that was carrying a $100 liquidation value has just been converted into 1.1765 shares of a common stock currently trading around $12. A total value per preferred share of around $14.
And they sold for $1 billion, so that's basically $860 million back into the common equity that management was able to get at the peak of the boom. That actually repairs almost all of the red ink from Paramount's doomed international originals push on its own.

3: An End To Streaming Waste

Finally, a lot of the waste in streaming may soon be ending. Bob Bakish was finally fired a few weeks ago, and while I never want someone to lose their job, he frankly had looked overmatched for a while. Bakish was a lifetime cable executive who seemed to be having trouble making the transition to a streaming-world mindset. Frankly, if I knew about it in 2021, the CEO has no business fine-tuning it into the strategy in 2023.
With international originals no longer draining the coffers and overloaded entertainment programming shifted to months of the calendar where it can be more productive, streaming may yet turn the corner.
Investment Summary I recognize fully that each fall in Paramount stock makes my bullish optimism seem ever more out of step. I do believe, however, that Paramount's failures are more failures of execution than lack of scale or structural disadvantage. Paramount CEO Bob Bakish simply wasn't up to the job. Ironically that wasn't what got him fired; Bakish was almost certainly fired for opposing Redstone's plan to enrich herself at the expense of other shareholders, probably the most competent thing he did in the last few years of his whole tenure.
Paramount has everything it needs to be successful; profitable sports contracts, which is just unbelievable in this day and age, a thriving scripted TV operation, and a viable, if recently somewhat mismanaged, streaming service. An end to overload waste, the continued exploitation of its favorable sports slate, throttling back unhelpful international originals and boosting kids content engagement may yet produce a different streaming picture going forward. Should older viewers start to get more comfortable with streaming going forward and following their favorite programs to Paramount+, that would just be icing on the cake.
It's been a depressing ride the last few years, but I'm sticking with Paramount.

Hey all, working on an o11 vision build & will have some extra fans. Just wondering if there's any benefit to having a push/pull setup for the aio (side mounted 360mm Deepcool LT720) or I'm better off just having it as intake with 3 fans alone.
Could care less about noise the noise factor.
Thanks in advance for your input 🤙

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One of the biggest frustrations I see people having in this group is with the YouTube Algorithm. They are 110% certain that they aren’t getting any views because the algorithm is broken. Instead of spending time improving their content, they spend most of their time, trying to prove to themselves and everyone else – “The YouTube Algorithm is broken and not working as it should”. Or the classic – “The YouTube algorithm only pushes content from big YouTube Channels”.
Today I wanted to share with you what I’ve learned about the infamous and evil “Algorithm” and how it applies to your YouTube channel. Hopefully it helps give you clarity on the YouTube Algorithm and reframes your thinking when it comes to building a successful YouTube channel. I also hope it helps reduce the frustration and the burn out you may feel because your channel isn’t where you want it to be.
The YouTube Algorithm is an AI-powered recommendation system, which is designed to put the BEST and most engaging content in front of viewers on YouTube. It does this by analyzing large amounts of data that tracks the preferences and habits of viewers. The cool and frustrating thing about the algorithm is that it changes over time. For example, the algorithm used to favor subscriber counts, but it has recently shifted and prioritizes views. I am sure there are other tweaks and shifts that happen often, but this was the most noticeable change.
Here is where it gets frustrating, most new content creators are misled by random bits of information from “YouTube Experts” about how the algorithm works. And when their videos flop on YouTube, the only reason they can come up with is – “The Algorithm is not working correctly.”
The truth is, in order to understand how the algorithm works, you first have to accept one simple fact. An algorithm will always work in favor of a company’s policies, values and mission statement.
Now that we know this, let’s dive a little deeper. YouTube’s approach prioritizes the 4-Rs

1. REMOVE content that violates its polices.
2. REDUCE false news.
3. RAISE UP authoritative sources for news and information.
4. REWARD trusted creators.

In their creator videos, YouTube says – “YouTube’s recommendation system actually finds videos for viewers, rather than finding viewers for videos” - Put simply, YouTube prioritizes the VIEWER – not the CREATOR! Let me say it another way just for emphasis – Viewers want to see videos THEY WANT TO WATCH, not the videos YOU WANT TO MAKE.
Although the algorithm takes into account several factors when recommending content, it can be split into two main categories
• Viewer Personalization – This includes data about what videos users watch and which ones they ignore.
• Viewer Satisfaction – This measures the performance of a video based on metrics like longer watch time, video shares, likes, comments, subscribes and watch history.
Reading the comments and posts, it seems a lot of people don’t take into consideration the fact that; “The Algorithm” is a term that reflects the behavior and viewing habits of YOUR audience. It’s not some robot deciding if it should show your video to other people or not. It is also very important to remember, because YOUR audience loves YOUR videos, it doesn’t mean other people will.
How to win with the algorithm audience on YouTube.
1). Make the tough decision on how you want to use the YouTube Platform. It doesn’t matter what you decide to do, just always keep in mind each decision has different outcomes, and success is not guaranteed.
a. Do you view YouTube as a place to share your life/experiences and videos on YouTube. This is fine, but you need to remember all art, isn’t fine art. If your art isn’t appealing to the masses, you may get frustrated and burnt-out creating content for people who aren’t interested.
b. Do you view YouTube as a business and an opportunity to make money. This is also fine, but at this point you become a contracted "employee" of YouTube, and it is your responsibility to make sure you adopt their business model and align your content with YouTube’s expectations – Do this and you are more likely to succeed.
2). Understand the metrics and how/where YouTube places your content.
A. YouTube Search – YouTube is a search engine, and it prioritizes your content based on the following
i. Relevance – your videos should have appropriate keywords, titles, tags and descriptions.
ii. Engagement – your videos should have high watch time, likes, and comments.
iii. Quality – Your videos should have quality content, display expertise and trustworthiness.
B. YouTube Homepage – Here is where most viewers start their journey. Here a viewer can see video ads, relevant videos and shorts that a person may be interested in.
C. Recommended Videos – Videos are recommended to users based on their watch history, search history, channel subscriptions, country and time of day/month/year.
D. Trending Videos – Trending aims to share videos that appeal to a large audience. Think viral videos, new music videos or breaking news. – Things that instantly capture a viewer’s attention.
E. Subscriptions and Notifications – Videos are shown to people who have subscribed to your channel and/or are notified of your latest content.
Always remember to succeed at YouTube you have reframe your thinking and use logic and data to drive your decision making and content strategy. Don’t let misinformed “YouTube Experts” influence your decision making. In 2023 YouTube generated 31.5 billion dollars in revenue and reached 2.7 billion active users – How can they do this if their algorithm is broken?
It’s a tough pill to swallow, but greatness is only achieved by setting aside our egos. Stop worrying/arguing about the algorithm, and work on making small improvements and connecting with your audience. Bruce Lee once said – “It is like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.”
Disclaimer – I am not a YouTube expert, but I am an expert in the Information Technology field, and I use data and analytics to make data driven decisions and to craft and tell compelling stories.

Hi. I (33M) have been in a relationship with my girlfriend (31F) for the past year. We have been doing long-distance and it's been difficult, to put it lightly. I have been a certain way my whole life and have never really addressed it. I can be stubborn, irritable, and irrationally angry. Basically, I can be an asshole. Until now, I've sort of just accepted it's who I am and that I get it from my father. However this has obviously taken a toll on my girlfriend and she is at a point where she is done with the relationship. In addition to the above, she has often felt like I don't care about her needs/feelings and that I've never made her feel special. We would have fights and discussions and she would tell me how she feels and what she needs. She often felt insecure because of how I would react and get so angry at times and threaten the relationship. I would always claim that I can do better and that it won't continue. However it would continue. I would think I could handle these things myself but I just couldn't. After several cycles of this, it just wore her down to having no confidence in us.
I've always had an excuse for my behavior. I first blamed it on my diagnosed ADD thinking that treatment for that would help (it did slightly), then I blamed external factors such as stress surrounding our plans or my anxiety disorder. At no point did I really accept that the reason for so much of our troubles was simply just me and whatever internal issues I have.
It's been a couple of weeks since we last saw each other. We spent a month together and my bulls*it caused so many fights, arguments, and general negativity and a big fight on our last day really pushed her away. It's very clear she has lost a lot of love for me and she doesn't see how this can work. It's made me really acknowledge my ignorance in the past and how I've essentially ruined this relationship single-handedly.
I don't understand why I've acted the way I have, despite always feeling like she is the love of my life. I feel that way now more than ever before. Being with her is all I want. I've accepted everything that's happened and am committed to being everything she wanted and needs. I have been getting support from friends with what I can do and am starting therapy for the first time next week to start understanding why I have always been this way and what I can do to correct those negative behaviors. I want so desperately to be better and not let any of those past issues be present going forward with her. Not only specific to this relationship, I'm just committed to being a better person without those issues present in my life. I hate that I've been this way and will do whatever I can to change it.
I have been trying to convince her how committed I am to making this work and being a great partner, however she doesn't see how it can happen. I'm sort of at a loss for what to do. I can't handle the idea of being without her and will do whatever I can to show her that, but she says "the damage is done."
So my question is 1, is changing these behaviors realistic? And 2, how do I explain to her that what's happened in the past will not be what we are going forward?

"You should go to Hallett. We went last year and it was fun. A good track for Miata's"
My friend Gerry the Texan who along with his team brings several Miata's to races all over from Road America to Houston to Seibring. It's a great bunch of people who are having a blast racing Lemons. He told me that and it got me to thinking. We wanted to go to a new track this year and after the disappointment at Barber going somewhere and having some fun sounded good. Also Hallett is noted for having a smaller field so we could be competitive. I always say that Barber is more like a pro level Lemons race in that it attracts the faster and better prepped teams. Road America was like that too.
But first we have to fix the car. As typical, we wait until the race is almost upon us to start. There's the matter of how bad the car is bent from the last race where Manny hit the wall. They thought it was good but we need to check this.
After pulling the rear sub frame in hopes of replacing it we learn that a 90 is a bit different than a 91 subframe or a 2001 subframe. Supposedly it all interchanges but after looking over the differences, Youngest adds a few reinforcements at places the internet gurus say are the weak points and we put the rear end together and put it back in the car. Then we check the alignment. To my great surprise the rear camber and caster is spot on. I was shocked, but the crew did a great job that night fixing the car while it was up on jack stands. Using just a tape measure they got the car really close. Toe was out but the borrowed porta powers got the bent subframe where it needed to be.
We changed the oil and brake fluid, bled the system where we took the rear apart to drop the subframe.
Another project we attempted was to swap in a larger fuel tank. Manny who has been helping with the repairs found a article on the internet that said you could bolt in a NB fuel tank out of a 2001 or so Miata and gain a gallon of fuel capacity. Yeah, that is not possible. The tank has a hump where the car does not and would involve cutting a hole in the car which would be a bit noticeable. Not worth it for such a little gain. Good news is I now have two extra NB tanks if anyone needs one. A gallon would not seem to be that much but we are still dreaming of two stopping the car at certain tracks, stretching our mileage to only stop every two hours and 25 minutes and make a seven hour day with one less stop. It's not all about raw speed, strategy can make a difference. One less stop per day could potentially add ten laps in a weekend of racing at certain tracks.
After we got the subframe in and the car aligned Youngest pulled it all apart again. He was not happy with the bushings holding the rear differential in place. The rear has to move a bit so it is not solid mounted, it actually can pivot a slight bit. He felt the bushings holding it were letting it move too freely.
Once again we put the car back together.
All during this time Manny and FabGuy have been working hard on a new car. Manny got a little crazy on Co-part. First one Miata shows up at our shop. Then another. Then another. I started joking with the guys "Hi I'm Manny, I might have a Miata addiction". Yeah. So after a lot of looking we have three wrecked cars, one being a automatic that was absolutely destroyed. It had zero good body panels and even the front subframe was pushed back where it had got up on something in a wreck. I think the only things we saved off that car was a rear axle, engine, transmission and the hard top which was cracked but usable.
We then robbed enough body parts off of one to put on the other so we ended up with a mostly maroon car with a drivers side red fender, red door and silver hardtop. I say we but all we did at the shop was to take the cars apart, everything else went to Manny's garage where he and FabGuy installed the cage and built the car. They did bring it over a time or two to put in the air to install a few parts or when we aligned it. The build and fitment were top notch on the car, lots of nice parts went in, like a better seat and belts than we use on our Miata. Like most builds they were literally bolting parts to it the night before we loaded the car to head west.
Finally both cars are prepped and it's time to get on the road. Manny has a business where he uses two rollbacks and moves cars mostly to and from car lots and auction lots. So he gets the newer one of the two trucks and shows up at the shop Thursday morning. RacerGuy and I are already there and have hooked our camper to RacerGuys truck. I am leaving my trucks at home, but taking our race trailer and our camper. The plan is to hook the camper to RacerGuys diesel F250 and hook the race trailer to Manny's newish Chevy 4500.
The plan nearly goes off the rails when Manny shows up and I get to looking at his truck. Being in the business I can't not help but look at tires. His drives are terrible, two are bald, one is soft and one showing wire. I go to air up one of the bald ones and it's not having it. Air is leaking out as fast as it was going in. In Manny's defense his employee was driving this truck and Manny had not seen it in weeks. I had already loaded tire tools and extra spare tires for every truck and trailer in the caravan except RacerGuy's truck and I would have got a spare for it too if I had thought about it. With nothing else to do, we all jump in and start busting tires. Forty five minutes later we have four new drives on the truck and we are in a much better spot to make the long drive. I hadn't done any big truck tires for a long time, sold that part of the business. Still got it, just like riding a bike.
We find I40 and start clicking off miles. Manny has already told us the limiting factor which is that GM put a really tiny fuel tank in his truck so we are forced to stop every 160-180 miles for fuel. It slows us down but it's not all bad, we find a roadside BBQ joint that looks like a camper up on blocks that has a huge parking lot and a ton of customers lining up. Of course we try it out, the best BBQ comes from little places like that, not the ones with massive buildings.
We cross Arkansas and I think it was the first time I ever went that way westbound on 40. Came back the other side when we brought the box truck back where we bought it in California. We finally make Oklahoma and bent north to go to Tulsa. Did not see the Tulsa King anywhere, stopped in a Super Walmart and stocked up on groceries for the weekend. Hallett is in the middle of nowhere, so we are planning on eating at the track.
We get there and make our way into the paddock. This will be the first time we have every camped inside the track. They have a cross over with gates that close during when the track is hot and a tunnel for access when the gates are closed. The tunnel looks kind of tight, I'm happy to not test the posted height limits. It says our trailers should fit. Yeah we will wait.
We hustle to get the camper leveled and the generator cranked up. For the next three days it will run non-stop to keep the fridge cold and our lights on. We run the a/c but for the most part temps are very nice.
The next morning we are up and on the road after the drivers meeting. We go to Pawnee, take in some sights then hit Stillwater for some parts and pieces at a hardware store. We also gas up all our empty gas cans so we are ready for race day.
Back at the track Manny and Fabguy are unloading their car off the back of the rollback. It was nice carrying one and towing one car. They go out and practice a bit, come in and make some changes then go out again. It's a new build and everyone has realistic expectations about the car. We are all expecting issues as it takes a while to find the weak spots and fix them.
We get our car out and practice. We send three of the four drivers out and have them run a few laps. I'm about to get ready and go out when RacerGuy comes in and says he felt something pop. We get to looking and the adjuster is gone off the alternator. Look a little more and the bolt has broken off in the alternator. So we have a spare motor in the trailer but it is missing the adjuster. Looks like we need the adjuster, the bolt and the alternator. We make a few visits around the paddock to look for parts but none of the other Miata teams have what we need. Youngest goes into the trailer and in a small miracle finds the adjuster laying under the spare motor loose. He and Coach head into Tulsa on a parts run while Manny agrees to put me into their car for a few laps so I can get a feel for the track. I've watched a hundred laps on Youtube but nothing is like actually driving the track. I go out and don't push things too hard. It is a very worn surface with some patches, particularly in the groove of turn two. Manny's car drives a lot different than ours, you can really tell you have more power and grip. Their tires are a lot wider as well as having 30-40 more hp. They have been working on the car all day and just finished taking off the lines where they installed a remote oil filter, they were not Lemons grade and were leaking.
Just before dark Youngest gets the parts on the car. We also install a helmet blower, we are going to try to use the air to defrost the windshield. All reports indicate rain is coming Sunday.
Then it's dinner time. Our friends from Minnesota have brought pure Lemons art down in the form of a Chrysler Magnum wagon powered by a slant 6 that is mid mounted. It is a engineering feat and runs out nicely. Adam the team leader and I have been planning and they are cooking for us for tonight and we are cooking for them Saturday night. They show us up by putting on a feed with steaks and salad. I'm feeling bad about the fact we are serving hamburgers, coleslaw and potato salad the next night. It was great.
Saturday morning dawns and we are up and moving around. I give up waiting on a shower as the line is too long inside and try the outdoor shower. It has no roof, just walls. It was ok. The next morning I tried it again and it was freezing, no hot water!
I skip breakfast and get ready to get in the car. I want to get on the grid early as I still am not feeling great about the track. The laps in Manny's car did not give me much to make me feel really attuned to the track as I was learning both the car and the track at the same time. I want all the practice laps I can get in our car. The line up is me, Youngest, Coach and then RacerGuy bringing up the finish for the day. FabGuy is gridded about ten cars behind us and he is under team orders to take it easy to start the race.
We get out and start doing pace laps. Soon enough it's green and the race is on. A few laps in Fabguy blasts by me. So much for taking it easy. Going into turn 2 I see a car off track. I mean he's not a little off the racing surface, he's 150 feet off the corner and just about in the tree line. I wonder what happened there. I am starting to get the hang of the track and pick up some speed. Then I mess up early on and miss the line completely going into turn 9 from 8 and run off the track. I fire the car back up and quickly exit and head to the penalty box.
"what happened?'
"I missed the line and ran out of asphalt and talent all about the same time"
The judge kind of laughs, "keep it on the track" and sends me back out. Youngest has made it to penalty and looks the car over from my adventure in the dirt and grass and gives the go ahead. If you are going to mess up do it right at the entrance to pit road, it really cuts down your time off track!
I run clean the rest of the stint. I tiptoe around the corner I went off but run hard the rest of the track without pushing so hard I get off again. Then Youngest, then Coach. We are having one of the best days we have ever had at the track. Besides my adventure off track no one else has messed up. Our stops are clean and quick. Our times top to bottom are very similar and consistent. Something strange is happening. We are in the top 15 overall and since we managed to get put in B class we are doing very well. Only 50 cars at Hallett this weekend, the smallest Lemons field we have ever competed against.
Fabguy pulls off to go to the gas pumps. We are fueling on pit road but they are going to just fuel at the pumps this race. They aren't planning on winning anything so why go to all the trouble of getting all your gear on and doing hot pit stops? Fabguy comes off a little hot and the officials come over to tell them they were over the ten mph paddock limit. Manyy drives the car up to the penalty and Fabguy comes up and they are told they are good to go. Later Manny gets off the track and goes to penalty. They start in on him not serving the penalty for going too fast in the pits. "we served that penalty" The judge goes off "do you really want to argue about this" Later when they realize the team was right and the previous judge had not marked it off the offenders list before going on break. In a first the judge apologizes to them.
With about two hours left in the day their Miata is towed off. The engine is super hot and will not crank. All signs look bad. Later it cools off and will crank, but cranks with ease, signs of a engine that has lost all compression. Their weekend is done and Fabguy heads out to get a headstart on getting to work early Monday. The rest of us will pull an all nighter after the race Sunday.
I start doing the math and realize it's going to be very tight. We make our calcuations based on a normal 7 hour race day. Today is a 7.5 hour day which is a bit longer than normal when racing Lemons. I figured out the stints and got it wrong. We realize our mistake and run Coach a bit longer before we put in RacerGuy. It's going to come right down to the limit of our fuel mileage. We start planning dinner and cleaning up the paddock with about ten minutes to go when all the sudden we realize the car is not out there. We run to the pumps and find Racerguy there. He ran out and limped the car to the pumps but could not get all the way there. By the time we get the car pushed around to get fuel the race is over for the day. I feel like a total idiot, I could have ran another five minutes easily in the car in the morning and not had this problem.
But the good news is that somehow even after I went off the track and and then we ran out of gas was that we were still very good on the day. We had enough of a lead on the car behind us in Class B that we still had a 7 lap lead even after running out of gas. Even better our paddock mates in the Chrysler are putting a shellacking on Class C as well. Their Magnum wagon is running a Richard Petty scheme, they all have uniforms and the requisite trademark Petty cowboy hat and STP logos, only this time it means "Slow Through Paddock" signs and all. They actually shouted this out when doing the morning driving meeting when they were going over the rules. "STP, Slow through Paddock!" every time the officials discussed that rule in the drivers meeting.
We put everything away, rain is moving in. We are in shock about how well everything is going. Surely we will find a way to loose this race tomorrow. Will other cars be faster in the rain? Will we shoot ourselves in the foot and have poor driving and get multiple black flags? Will something break on the car which has been running great all day long? And who the heck is this Coach guy? All that and more when we wrap up this in the next part of this story. Stay tuned!

Hi, I’m bonzos-number-1-fan You might know me from such theories as; "Theory of Fears; or, Zur Furchtlehre", "What R# Means: The ABCs of Fear" or, "Padlocks, How Do They Even Work?".
I’m back with another essay about this show. Today’s subject is a little different from previous ones. Rather than explaining what I think something in this show is, I’ll be explaining what I think it isn’t. What I’m going to be talking about is the very popular theory that CAT1/2/3 means the supernatural aspect is a Person/Place/Object.
Because I’m talking about other people’s ideas here I do want to start off by saying I understand why this theory is attractive and I don’t think anyone is stupid or anything for believing it. I just personally think there are angles from which it doesn’t work and that the sum of them makes it fairly certain to be untrue. I could be very wrong about that, and my other theories, or I could be very right. I don’t think either scenario matters much. This essay isn’t about being right but about talking about a big thing in the community. I just happen to not believe this one and people have signalled interest in hearing why.
So with all that out of the way I’m going to start by establishing the terminology being used. Then I’ll break down what this theory is positing and follow it up with the ways I think it does and doesn’t work. That’s basically it but with 16 episodes and supplemental material to cover it’s still not going to be terribly short.
Huge thanks to @brettanomycroft for proof reading/editing this madness.

Spoilers for The Magnus Protocol up to and including episode 16.

 

What is a CAT#?

A CAT# is the first 4-5 characters of an OIAR's incident report header. While these are not often referenced in the main body of the show, each incident we hear is accompanied by one in the show's description and transcript. As an example this is the case number for the first incident of episode 1.

CAT1RBC5257-12052022-09012024

Reanimation (Partial) -/- Regret [Email]

The first line is the case number. CAT1 is this incident's CAT#. The RBC (R#/Rank) and 5257 (DPHW) have been topics I've discussed in essays I linked at the start. The second line is the header and is formatted “Section (Subsection) -/- Crosslink [Format]”. CAT#s is all we're concerning ourselves with today but I will be using this terminology going forward.
Now we know what they look like, what is it we know about them? Well, not much at all. From the show itself we know there are CAT1s, CAT2s, CAT3s and CAT23s. From the Klaus excel sheet that was found as part of the ARG (and can be found here) we also know there are CAT12s and CAT13s. With that information we can say with some certainty that CAT1, CAT2, and CAT3 are non-mutually exclusive groupings. It's very likely not a linear scale of some description—i.e CAT23 isn't between CAT2 and CAT3—because CAT13 doesn't fit such a scale. Which means that where there are two numbers in a CAT# that incident likely fits both groups rather than being a new group. This also strongly implies that an incident could be CAT123 although we have yet to see that demonstrated.
We also know that CAT is short for "Category". In the Klaus sheet these numbers are located in the "Kategorie" column. "Kategorie" being German for "category". This unfortunately doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know. CAT#s denote some form of grouping.
There is only one other fact we know about CAT#s and that's this:

ALICE
Right, so, after each entry there's four numbers. That’s the DPHW. So, “dolls comma watching” is… 1157. Then you cross reference with the table here, that would be a 2-C, and then you type that into the box here, along with date of incident if there is one and today’s date.

Which is not a lot to go on at all but it does raise an important question. How is a CAT# assigned? There are two major assumptions you could make here. The first is the “objective method” and that it’s a factor of either the section, subject, DPHW or a combination thereof. This means that they are pre-assigned in the same way that DPHWs are. This method has an inherent trait in that it means every header manifests as the same sort of thing. While it’s not a problem to say that every Doll (Watching) is the same— that could just be the rules of the setting—it does make CAT# itself somewhat redundant. The terminology of the headers will often describe something inherent about the CAT#. We have a CAT3 case that’s Dice (Bone) -/- Fate but dice are objects so why would you need to restate that?
The second is the “subjective method” in which the assessor chooses the CAT# based on the incident itself. The subjective method has a larger assumption built into it in that they know what CAT#s are. They don’t know what DPHW is and have shown no indication of knowing what CAT# is either. So I’d say it’s less likely that CAT#s are subjective rather than objective. However, for the purposes of this essay I will assume that both are as likely to be true as each other and will refer to them both. Different cases show different flaws when one of these is true over the other, so both will get discussed.
 

What is Person/Place/Object?

Person/Place/Object is the theory that the three single digit CAT#s stand for Person, Place, and Object respectively. Combinations of these digits represent that an incident falls into each category. A CAT1 incident indicates that the supernatural element of an incident is a person in some respect, while a CAT23 would indicate both a place and an object.
As I have mentioned this isn’t a theory with a single theorist or origin to point to. As such this theory isn’t a monolith and there is variation in how these categories are presented from theory to theory. Sometimes “Person” is literal and other times it includes any sentient thing, “places” aren’t always strictly physical locations, and the narrative framing of what “objects” are may shift. As such I will be taking the broadest interpretation of these categories as their definitions.
People will include animals and other sentient beings. Places will include metaphysical locations. Objects won’t need to be physical in nature. This is both the fairest I can be to all theories and also the strongest I can make this theory. The broader I can make these definitions, the more different ideas can be represented and the more wiggle room the CAT#s get.
What I’ll do next is run through all the incidents the show has mentioned and explain them as I see it. We’ll start with the ones that fit this theory well because they require little explanation. Then when that’s established we’ll talk about the places I think this theory falls down.
 

Which Incidents fit well?

CAT1:

CAT1RBC5257 Reanimation (Partial) -/- Regret: There is something like a zombie in this incident. That’s something like a person and so fits well.
CAT1RB4824 Injury (Needles) -/- Intimidation: Needles is definitely a person, no question there.
CAT1RB2275 Mascot (Kids) -/- Murder: Bonzo walks, “talks”, and probably thinks. He’s a person.
CAT1B4728 Mascot (Kids) -/- Frenzy: Bonzo is still doing that stuff so is still a person.
CAT1RB4426 Transformation (Snake) -/-Horde: There was a person and they turned into snakes. Snakes count as people here too. Given the amount of snakes this is the most CAT1 CAT1.
CAT1RB-6451 Hunt (Aristocratic) -/- Compulsion: Lady M is the most person on this list.
CAT1RB1565 Tattoo (Influencer) -/- Cardiac: Definitely involves a person doing something supernatural.
 

CAT2:

CAT2C8175 Infection (Full Body) -/- Arboreal: This incident takes place in a time and space bending garden. Makes perfect sense for CAT2.
CAT2RB2377 Disappearance (Undetermined) -/- Invitation: A spooky theatre is a location for sure.
 

CAT3:

CAT3RBC1567 Transformation (Full) -/- Dysmorphic: In this instance the object in question is the tattoo. Which I think is really stretching the definition of “object” but I’m still going to give it to the theory.
CAT3C7494 Collection (Blood) -/- Musical: A magical violin is definitely an object.
CAT3RB3354 Dice (Bone) -/- Fate: Bone dice are inarguably objects.
CAT3RB4622 Gambling (Application) -/- Murder: It’s another stretch to call an app an object but, again, happy to give it to the theory.
 

CAT23:

CAT23RAB2155 Transformation (Eyes) -/- Trespass: In this incident’s case the location is the Magnus Institute and the object is the box RedCanary stole. I think there are some problems with this one but there is enough to get through.
 

Which Incidents Don't?

CAT1:

CAT1RBC5257 Reanimation (Partial) -/- Regret: You’re not misremembering, I did say this fit well. Because on the surface it really does make sense, but I think if you push just a little it makes very little sense. Why? Because any category you want to place this in is easily justified in the incident itself. There is a zombie-esque thing but also a Frankenstein-esque figure for CAT1. CAT 2 would be the location of the graveyard itself. It was chosen by the presumed creator of this zombie-like creature and is depicted similar to the one in Marked, a CAT23 incident. If this theory is correct and the Marked graveyard is supernatural I can’t see a reason to discount that possibility here. CAT3 fits too because the presumed creation method is that they were Frankenstein-ed which does require some sort of surgical apparatus. But whichever choice you make you’ve not really clarified the incident at all.
This issue is further seen in the methodology of assigning CAT#s.Objectively it has the same problem all objective assignments do. Reanimation implies there is going to be a reanimated person so restating that doesn’t add much. If we look at the subjective method then this is chosen largely at random. There isn’t enough of an indication in this incident to clearly state which CAT this is. So it’s neither helped in the assessment of the incident and doesn’t provide anything for response because all choices are justifiable.
 
CAT1RB4426 Transformation (Snake) -/- Horde: Not misremembering here either. There is a problem with this one in that it’s demonstrated to be an infection. This makes the source of the affliction basically unknowable. The source could qualify it for other CATs but the larger issue here is that what CAT1 means here and what it means elsewhere are not that comparable. Needles, Bonzo, and Lady M are all sentient and independent. The afflicted we see in this case are normal people until they get very rapidly sick, summon a portal to the snake dimension in their throats, and die. Which leaves CAT1 translating to “something in the rough shape of a person” which is a really wide range of interpretations. Which is something I feel has little practical utility in either assessing or responding to these incidents.
 
CAT1RB1565 Tattoo (Influencer) -/- Cardiac: Still not misremembering. While you can say that Ink5oul or Madame E are the person in this instance there is a major conflict here with CAT3RBC1567 Transformation (Full) -/- Dysmorphic. If Daria’s transformation was CAT3 because tattoos are objects then there is no reasonable justification that this isn’t at least CAT13. It’s the same person, doing the same thing, to a very similar result but in a different CAT. The headers are entirely different, and so this/that may be misfiled, but it highlights a problem with Daria’s incident. If the incident with the Tattoo header isn’t an object then tattoos are probably not objects under this scheme.
If this is objective then this is always a person, or on people, which makes a great deal of sense. However if that’s the case then the objective method for Daria’s case sort of falls apart because there wasn’t really a secondary object there. Additionally, because all incidents with that case’s header being objects is a huge stretch. So if this incident, or that incident, is misfiled it doesn’t really matter. In either case (or even if both of them are misfiled), it largely disproves that tattoos are objects, creating a larger issue with that theory as it affects more than just this case. Subjectively as far as we’re aware Sam filed all three of the Ink5oul incidents. So he chose an object in Daria’s case but then opted against it here despite there being no real reason to that we can see. You could say that now Ink5oul has been in it more, he thinks Ink5oul has some sort of supernatural power themselves which makes them a CAT1; that would still make this CAT13 as episode 11 was CAT23.
 

CAT2:

CAT2RC1157 Dolls (Watching): This is a big one in my opinion. It’s not only the first incident we’re told about, but it's both Sam’s and our first exposure to an explanation of the OIAR’s filing system. It’s also one I see ignored in most of the posts that posit the Person/Place/Object theory. That is understandable as we don’t hear the incident itself but we do hear enough of it to show that there is a flaw in the theory.
What we hear about this incident is entirely focused on the doll itself and questions about its nature. It’s a split between Dolls (Watching) and Dolls (Human Skin) with the former being chosen as the latter is only implied. Dolls themselves are objects which would make this CAT3, and if the doll is sentient a CAT1. However, this is placed in CAT2 indicating that it's actually caused by the location in some respect. In order for that to make sense you have to make 3 major assumptions. Assumption 1: despite no indication in the conversation about this incident suggesting anything outside of the doll being strange there was actually a “haunted house”. Assumption 2: despite there being sections far more descriptive of locations—i.e Architecture—Dolls is more suited to this incident. Assumption 3: despite this being Sam’s/the audience’s first exposure to this system it leaves out the real source of the incident when, narratively, this is an explanation of it. Those are some fairly major assumptions to make to justify a theory.
This also has issues with either method of assigning CAT#s. If CAT# is objective then every Dolls (Watching) is actually a location. Unlike with something like Reanimation (Partial) that doesn't make much sense as dolls themselves are objects. In the subjective method, Alice assigned this as a location but their discussion of it centred solely on an object and she didn't explain to Sam why she did it.
 
CAT2RC3338 Agglomeration (Miscellany) -/- Congregation: This might be my favourite example of issues I have with this theory. To explain it we’ll look at this from both the objective and subjective methods while taking into account outside knowledge of the show from an audience perspective.
Everyone I’ve seen posit this theory attributes CAT2 to Hilltop here.They do this solely because of TMA. There is nothing in this episode that makes Hilltop out to be anything special in any way. But because Hilltop is special in TMA the audience is primed to view this location as special. It may very well be but there is no reason to think that. In fact, I’d argue there's reason to think otherwise based on this episode, but that is a little off topic for this essay. However from an objective perspective it can’t take Hilltop into account because not every header of this sort will take place in Hilltop. They could only manifest at special locations but that seems like a stretch. If it is true, why does this unique combination of words not include a word that describes it as a location? Subjectively it could be a misfile. Celia would be the only person who knows what Hilltop is in TMA— assuming some of the theories on her are correct—but that doesn’t make Hilltop important in and of itself. It also means she ignored large parts of this incident when filing it just to focus on that element. As this case is the one Alice uses to teach Celia the system with, then this also relies on Alice knowing or not correcting Celia. In either scenario this case is full of people of definite supernatural quality, lacks a location of supernatural quality, but has 100s of objects of dubious supernatural quality. Something doesn’t make sense here if this theory is correct.
 
CAT2RBC3366 Architecture (Liminal) -/- Hunger: This one is interesting because it shows a flaw not in the theory per se but in the methodology as a whole if the theory is correct. If CAT# is what the theory says it is why is this just CAT2? It being CAT2 at all is redundant when its header describes a location but in this incident we see it’s populated by supernatural creatures. I call them Uncannybals—as should you—and they’re monsters living in the shadow realm. That seems like very important information to include. So it should be CAT12 as there are both people and a place. The OIAR methodology already has the problem that you can’t include multiple headers but CAT#s, if they worked like this, could be used to alleviate that issue. The way it’s implemented here just makes it virtually pointless to include at all.
 

CAT3:

CAT3RBC1567 Transformation (Full) -/- Dysmorphic: This was largely already covered. So simply put if Transformation (Full) -/- Dysmorphic is an object because of the tattoo, and Tattoo (Corpse) -/- Compulsion is an object because of the tattoo, but Tattoo (Influencer) -/- Cardiac isn’t an object despite being virtually identical to this case then CAT3 doesn't mean object.
The method problems are the same as above too. Now this case is the one most likely of the three to be misfiled. So you could say that Daria's case is misfiled and would actually be CAT1 if filed correctly. Tattoos aren’t objects, this case is a mistake. Then you could explain that Marked is CAT23 because corpses are objects (so 13 if he was alive). Objectively this header always being CAT3 still poses problems because we know there are Transformations that don’t require objects. Which brings us back to the problem of “why are the headers so bad at describing these things?”. If it’s subjective Sam decided that object instead of person made more sense here. Seemingly based on the fact that there is a tattoo. Later on he changed his mind about this but choosing it in the first place seems like a stretch. If he knew what these things meant in order to choose them, object seems like a very unobvious choice.
 

CAT23:

CAT23RC5246 Tattoo (Corpse) -/- Compulsion: This one is fairly clear to me. I’m going to be very generous and suggest that the corpse here is the object based on the above. The reason this one is a problem is that there wasn’t a location here. I’ve seen people say that it must be the graveyard but that’s confirmation bias IMO. It wasn’t a large feature of the episode, didn’t do anything coastal graveyards don’t do, and had no overt supernatural properties to it. I don’t personally think anyone would categorise this as CAT23 based on the incident alone but because CAT23 people will justify it to fit. That’s not inherently a problem because sometimes you have to make assumptions but given all of the above I don’t think that assumption is a reasonable one to make.
Objectively all compelling corpse tattoos are found in magical graveyards—or morgues, tombs, goth bars, and other corpse hangouts—and I think we can all agree that’s sort of wack. Subjectively Sam decided the graveyard was magic despite there being nothing to suggest that.
 

Klaus’ CAT#s:

This is a bit of a special section. I briefly mention Klaus in the intro but I didn’t mention that some of the incidents we’ve heard have been found on the Klaus sheet. The canonicity of these aren’t 100% and I would say the show takes precedent so this is supplemental rather than definitive. I think I’ve more than shown that this theory doesn’t hold up. This is more of an academic exercise.
The big thing to know here is that Kluas’ cases lack headers entirely but that some Klaus cases have notes and it’s these notes attached. It’s only one’s with those notes I’m interested in for this because of how they relate to things we’ve heard. One case is CAT3RBC1567 with the note “tinte”. CAT3RBC1567 is Daria’s case and “tinte” is German for “ink”. So this is very likely that case. There are 4 other cases with that note and they’re two CAT1s, a CAT3, and a CAT13. So even if Daria’s case is misfiled not all of those are the correct CAT# for that assumption. There are also two CAT1s and a CAT2 marked “Herr B”, which is “Mr B” in English. These aren’t tied to a Bonzo case we’ve heard yet but one of them does take place in Bland Theme Park, Somerset. That’s not definitively Bonzo but it’s a good hint at it.
Additionally there are 6 CAT2 cases that have the note “Katzen LOL” or “Cats LOL” which you’d expect to be CAT1s if there are cats involved. In a similar vein there are one CAT1 and five CAT2s marked “Kreigsvolk” which is literally “War People” but more likely “Army” or “Soldiers”. Again, you’d expect more CAT1s if CAT1 is people.
I’m not saying any of the above is the backbone of my reasoning here but these are things that are showing up in the show and they do seem to be pointing the same direction as what I’m saying. Ignoring them entirely I think the theory doesn’t hold up but with them I think it’s very clear.
 

Conclusion

I don’t have much of a wrap up here. Anyone who’s been reading my posts for a while has known that I’ve never thought this theory worked. It’s not something I ever get too deep into because I’m also obviously happy for people to have ideas I disagree with, as am I happy for them to disagree with my ideas. That’s just healthy theorising. I’d been considering writing this for a while though but was mostly held back by not wanting to come across as some sort of arbiter of what is and isn’t correct, and didn’t want to seem like I was calling anyone out specifically. However a few people now said they wanted to see this and there are enough instances of parallel thought on this theory that it’s impossible for me to really single people out now. So here we are.
Just to reiterate for people that did/do believe this theory I don’t think anyone was stupid and/or wrong for thinking it. I hope if the above has convinced you that I’m right about it that you’re not dissuaded from making and sharing future theories. I’ve have 3 or 4 terrible CAT# theories and a few R# theories too. My current ideas on DPHW and R# might be awfully wrong in the long run and that’ll be okay.
That’s me anyway, hope this was at the very least an interesting read if it didn’t manage to be a convincing one. Bonzo! Bonzo!! Bonzo!!!

Hi, I’m bonzos-number-1-fan You might know me from such theories as; "Theory of Fears; or, Zur Furchtlehre", "What R# Means: The ABCs of Fear" or, "Padlocks, How Do They Even Work?".
I’m back with another essay about this show. Today’s subject is a little different from previous ones. Rather than explaining what I think something in this show is, I’ll be explaining what I think it isn’t. What I’m going to be talking about is the very popular theory that CAT1/2/3 means the supernatural aspect is a Person/Place/Object.
Because I’m talking about other people’s ideas here I do want to start off by saying I understand why this theory is attractive and I don’t think anyone is stupid or anything for believing it. I just personally think there are angles from which it doesn’t work and that the sum of them makes it fairly certain to be untrue. I could be very wrong about that, and my other theories, or I could be very right. I don’t think either scenario matters much. This essay isn’t about being right but about talking about a big thing in the community. I just happen to not believe this one and people have signalled interest in hearing why.
So with all that out of the way I’m going to start by establishing the terminology being used. Then I’ll break down what this theory is positing and follow it up with the ways I think it does and doesn’t work. That’s basically it but with 16 episodes and supplemental material to cover it’s still not going to be terribly short.
Huge thanks to @brettanomycroft for proof reading/editing this madness.

Spoilers for The Magnus Protocol up to and including episode 16.

 

What is a CAT#?

A CAT# is the first 4-5 characters of an OIAR's incident report header. While these are not often referenced in the main body of the show, each incident we hear is accompanied by one in the show's description and transcript. As an example this is the case number for the first incident of episode 1.

CAT1RBC5257-12052022-09012024

Reanimation (Partial) -/- Regret [Email]

The first line is the case number. CAT1 is this incident's CAT#. The RBC (R#/Rank) and 5257 (DPHW) have been topics I've discussed in essays I linked at the start. The second line is the header and is formatted “Section (Subsection) -/- Crosslink [Format]”. CAT#s is all we're concerning ourselves with today but I will be using this terminology going forward.
Now we know what they look like, what is it we know about them? Well, not much at all. From the show itself we know there are CAT1s, CAT2s, CAT3s and CAT23s. From the Klaus excel sheet that was found as part of the ARG (and can be found here) we also know there are CAT12s and CAT13s. With that information we can say with some certainty that CAT1, CAT2, and CAT3 are non-mutually exclusive groupings. It's very likely not a linear scale of some description—i.e CAT23 isn't between CAT2 and CAT3—because CAT13 doesn't fit such a scale. Which means that where there are two numbers in a CAT# that incident likely fits both groups rather than being a new group. This also strongly implies that an incident could be CAT123 although we have yet to see that demonstrated.
We also know that CAT is short for "Category". In the Klaus sheet these numbers are located in the "Kategorie" column. "Kategorie" being German for "category". This unfortunately doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know. CAT#s denote some form of grouping.
There is only one other fact we know about CAT#s and that's this:

ALICE
Right, so, after each entry there's four numbers. That’s the DPHW. So, “dolls comma watching” is… 1157. Then you cross reference with the table here, that would be a 2-C, and then you type that into the box here, along with date of incident if there is one and today’s date.

Which is not a lot to go on at all but it does raise an important question. How is a CAT# assigned? There are two major assumptions you could make here. The first is the “objective method” and that it’s a factor of either the section, subject, DPHW or a combination thereof. This means that they are pre-assigned in the same way that DPHWs are. This method has an inherent trait in that it means every header manifests as the same sort of thing. While it’s not a problem to say that every Doll (Watching) is the same— that could just be the rules of the setting—it does make CAT# itself somewhat redundant. The terminology of the headers will often describe something inherent about the CAT#. We have a CAT3 case that’s Dice (Bone) -/- Fate but dice are objects so why would you need to restate that?
The second is the “subjective method” in which the assessor chooses the CAT# based on the incident itself. The subjective method has a larger assumption built into it in that they know what CAT#s are. They don’t know what DPHW is and have shown no indication of knowing what CAT# is either. So I’d say it’s less likely that CAT#s are subjective rather than objective. However, for the purposes of this essay I will assume that both are as likely to be true as each other and will refer to them both. Different cases show different flaws when one of these is true over the other, so both will get discussed.
 

What is Person/Place/Object?

Person/Place/Object is the theory that the three single digit CAT#s stand for Person, Place, and Object respectively. Combinations of these digits represent that an incident falls into each category. A CAT1 incident indicates that the supernatural element of an incident is a person in some respect, while a CAT23 would indicate both a place and an object.
As I have mentioned this isn’t a theory with a single theorist or origin to point to. As such this theory isn’t a monolith and there is variation in how these categories are presented from theory to theory. Sometimes “Person” is literal and other times it includes any sentient thing, “places” aren’t always strictly physical locations, and the narrative framing of what “objects” are may shift. As such I will be taking the broadest interpretation of these categories as their definitions.
People will include animals and other sentient beings. Places will include metaphysical locations. Objects won’t need to be physical in nature. This is both the fairest I can be to all theories and also the strongest I can make this theory. The broader I can make these definitions, the more different ideas can be represented and the more wiggle room the CAT#s get.
What I’ll do next is run through all the incidents the show has mentioned and explain them as I see it. We’ll start with the ones that fit this theory well because they require little explanation. Then when that’s established we’ll talk about the places I think this theory falls down.
 

Which Incidents fit well?

CAT1:

CAT1RBC5257 Reanimation (Partial) -/- Regret: There is something like a zombie in this incident. That’s something like a person and so fits well.
CAT1RB4824 Injury (Needles) -/- Intimidation: Needles is definitely a person, no question there.
CAT1RB2275 Mascot (Kids) -/- Murder: Bonzo walks, “talks”, and probably thinks. He’s a person.
CAT1B4728 Mascot (Kids) -/- Frenzy: Bonzo is still doing that stuff so is still a person.
CAT1RB4426 Transformation (Snake) -/-Horde: There was a person and they turned into snakes. Snakes count as people here too. Given the amount of snakes this is the most CAT1 CAT1.
CAT1RB-6451 Hunt (Aristocratic) -/- Compulsion: Lady M is the most person on this list.
CAT1RB1565 Tattoo (Influencer) -/- Cardiac: Definitely involves a person doing something supernatural.
 

CAT2:

CAT2C8175 Infection (Full Body) -/- Arboreal: This incident takes place in a time and space bending garden. Makes perfect sense for CAT2.
CAT2RB2377 Disappearance (Undetermined) -/- Invitation: A spooky theatre is a location for sure.
 

CAT3:

CAT3RBC1567 Transformation (Full) -/- Dysmorphic: In this instance the object in question is the tattoo. Which I think is really stretching the definition of “object” but I’m still going to give it to the theory.
CAT3C7494 Collection (Blood) -/- Musical: A magical violin is definitely an object.
CAT3RB3354 Dice (Bone) -/- Fate: Bone dice are inarguably objects.
CAT3RB4622 Gambling (Application) -/- Murder: It’s another stretch to call an app an object but, again, happy to give it to the theory.
 

CAT23:

CAT23RAB2155 Transformation (Eyes) -/- Trespass: In this incident’s case the location is the Magnus Institute and the object is the box RedCanary stole. I think there are some problems with this one but there is enough to get through.
 

Which Incidents Don't?

CAT1:

CAT1RBC5257 Reanimation (Partial) -/- Regret: You’re not misremembering, I did say this fit well. Because on the surface it really does make sense, but I think if you push just a little it makes very little sense. Why? Because any category you want to place this in is easily justified in the incident itself. There is a zombie-esque thing but also a Frankenstein-esque figure for CAT1. CAT 2 would be the location of the graveyard itself. It was chosen by the presumed creator of this zombie-like creature and is depicted similar to the one in Marked, a CAT23 incident. If this theory is correct and the Marked graveyard is supernatural I can’t see a reason to discount that possibility here. CAT3 fits too because the presumed creation method is that they were Frankenstein-ed which does require some sort of surgical apparatus. But whichever choice you make you’ve not really clarified the incident at all.
This issue is further seen in the methodology of assigning CAT#s.Objectively it has the same problem all objective assignments do. Reanimation implies there is going to be a reanimated person so restating that doesn’t add much. If we look at the subjective method then this is chosen largely at random. There isn’t enough of an indication in this incident to clearly state which CAT this is. So it’s neither helped in the assessment of the incident and doesn’t provide anything for response because all choices are justifiable.
 
CAT1RB4426 Transformation (Snake) -/- Horde: Not misremembering here either. There is a problem with this one in that it’s demonstrated to be an infection. This makes the source of the affliction basically unknowable. The source could qualify it for other CATs but the larger issue here is that what CAT1 means here and what it means elsewhere are not that comparable. Needles, Bonzo, and Lady M are all sentient and independent. The afflicted we see in this case are normal people until they get very rapidly sick, summon a portal to the snake dimension in their throats, and die. Which leaves CAT1 translating to “something in the rough shape of a person” which is a really wide range of interpretations. Which is something I feel has little practical utility in either assessing or responding to these incidents.
 
CAT1RB1565 Tattoo (Influencer) -/- Cardiac: Still not misremembering. While you can say that Ink5oul or Madame E are the person in this instance there is a major conflict here with CAT3RBC1567 Transformation (Full) -/- Dysmorphic. If Daria’s transformation was CAT3 because tattoos are objects then there is no reasonable justification that this isn’t at least CAT13. It’s the same person, doing the same thing, to a very similar result but in a different CAT. The headers are entirely different, and so this/that may be misfiled, but it highlights a problem with Daria’s incident. If the incident with the Tattoo header isn’t an object then tattoos are probably not objects under this scheme.
If this is objective then this is always a person, or on people, which makes a great deal of sense. However if that’s the case then the objective method for Daria’s case sort of falls apart because there wasn’t really a secondary object there. Additionally, because all incidents with that case’s header being objects is a huge stretch. So if this incident, or that incident, is misfiled it doesn’t really matter. In either case (or even if both of them are misfiled), it largely disproves that tattoos are objects, creating a larger issue with that theory as it affects more than just this case. Subjectively as far as we’re aware Sam filed all three of the Ink5oul incidents. So he chose an object in Daria’s case but then opted against it here despite there being no real reason to that we can see. You could say that now Ink5oul has been in it more, he thinks Ink5oul has some sort of supernatural power themselves which makes them a CAT1; that would still make this CAT13 as episode 11 was CAT23.
 

CAT2:

CAT2RC1157 Dolls (Watching): This is a big one in my opinion. It’s not only the first incident we’re told about, but it's both Sam’s and our first exposure to an explanation of the OIAR’s filing system. It’s also one I see ignored in most of the posts that posit the Person/Place/Object theory. That is understandable as we don’t hear the incident itself but we do hear enough of it to show that there is a flaw in the theory.
What we hear about this incident is entirely focused on the doll itself and questions about its nature. It’s a split between Dolls (Watching) and Dolls (Human Skin) with the former being chosen as the latter is only implied. Dolls themselves are objects which would make this CAT3, and if the doll is sentient a CAT1. However, this is placed in CAT2 indicating that it's actually caused by the location in some respect. In order for that to make sense you have to make 3 major assumptions. Assumption 1: despite no indication in the conversation about this incident suggesting anything outside of the doll being strange there was actually a “haunted house”. Assumption 2: despite there being sections far more descriptive of locations—i.e Architecture—Dolls is more suited to this incident. Assumption 3: despite this being Sam’s/the audience’s first exposure to this system it leaves out the real source of the incident when, narratively, this is an explanation of it. Those are some fairly major assumptions to make to justify a theory.
This also has issues with either method of assigning CAT#s. If CAT# is objective then every Dolls (Watching) is actually a location. Unlike with something like Reanimation (Partial) that doesn't make much sense as dolls themselves are objects. In the subjective method, Alice assigned this as a location but their discussion of it centred solely on an object and she didn't explain to Sam why she did it.
 
CAT2RC3338 Agglomeration (Miscellany) -/- Congregation: This might be my favourite example of issues I have with this theory. To explain it we’ll look at this from both the objective and subjective methods while taking into account outside knowledge of the show from an audience perspective.
Everyone I’ve seen posit this theory attributes CAT2 to Hilltop here.They do this solely because of TMA. There is nothing in this episode that makes Hilltop out to be anything special in any way. But because Hilltop is special in TMA the audience is primed to view this location as special. It may very well be but there is no reason to think that. In fact, I’d argue there's reason to think otherwise based on this episode, but that is a little off topic for this essay. However from an objective perspective it can’t take Hilltop into account because not every header of this sort will take place in Hilltop. They could only manifest at special locations but that seems like a stretch. If it is true, why does this unique combination of words not include a word that describes it as a location? Subjectively it could be a misfile. Celia would be the only person who knows what Hilltop is in TMA— assuming some of the theories on her are correct—but that doesn’t make Hilltop important in and of itself. It also means she ignored large parts of this incident when filing it just to focus on that element. As this case is the one Alice uses to teach Celia the system with, then this also relies on Alice knowing or not correcting Celia. In either scenario this case is full of people of definite supernatural quality, lacks a location of supernatural quality, but has 100s of objects of dubious supernatural quality. Something doesn’t make sense here if this theory is correct.
 
CAT2RBC3366 Architecture (Liminal) -/- Hunger: This one is interesting because it shows a flaw not in the theory per se but in the methodology as a whole if the theory is correct. If CAT# is what the theory says it is why is this just CAT2? It being CAT2 at all is redundant when its header describes a location but in this incident we see it’s populated by supernatural creatures. I call them Uncannybals—as should you—and they’re monsters living in the shadow realm. That seems like very important information to include. So it should be CAT12 as there are both people and a place. The OIAR methodology already has the problem that you can’t include multiple headers but CAT#s, if they worked like this, could be used to alleviate that issue. The way it’s implemented here just makes it virtually pointless to include at all.
 

CAT3:

CAT3RBC1567 Transformation (Full) -/- Dysmorphic: This was largely already covered. So simply put if Transformation (Full) -/- Dysmorphic is an object because of the tattoo, and Tattoo (Corpse) -/- Compulsion is an object because of the tattoo, but Tattoo (Influencer) -/- Cardiac isn’t an object despite being virtually identical to this case then CAT3 doesn't mean object.
The method problems are the same as above too. Now this case is the one most likely of the three to be misfiled. So you could say that Daria's case is misfiled and would actually be CAT1 if filed correctly. Tattoos aren’t objects, this case is a mistake. Then you could explain that Marked is CAT23 because corpses are objects (so 13 if he was alive). Objectively this header always being CAT3 still poses problems because we know there are Transformations that don’t require objects. Which brings us back to the problem of “why are the headers so bad at describing these things?”. If it’s subjective Sam decided that object instead of person made more sense here. Seemingly based on the fact that there is a tattoo. Later on he changed his mind about this but choosing it in the first place seems like a stretch. If he knew what these things meant in order to choose them, object seems like a very unobvious choice.
 

CAT23:

CAT23RC5246 Tattoo (Corpse) -/- Compulsion: This one is fairly clear to me. I’m going to be very generous and suggest that the corpse here is the object based on the above. The reason this one is a problem is that there wasn’t a location here. I’ve seen people say that it must be the graveyard but that’s confirmation bias IMO. It wasn’t a large feature of the episode, didn’t do anything coastal graveyards don’t do, and had no overt supernatural properties to it. I don’t personally think anyone would categorise this as CAT23 based on the incident alone but because CAT23 people will justify it to fit. That’s not inherently a problem because sometimes you have to make assumptions but given all of the above I don’t think that assumption is a reasonable one to make.
Objectively all compelling corpse tattoos are found in magical graveyards—or morgues, tombs, goth bars, and other corpse hangouts—and I think we can all agree that’s sort of wack. Subjectively Sam decided the graveyard was magic despite there being nothing to suggest that.
 

Klaus’ CAT#s:

This is a bit of a special section. I briefly mention Klaus in the intro but I didn’t mention that some of the incidents we’ve heard have been found on the Klaus sheet. The canonicity of these aren’t 100% and I would say the show takes precedent so this is supplemental rather than definitive. I think I’ve more than shown that this theory doesn’t hold up. This is more of an academic exercise.
The big thing to know here is that Kluas’ cases lack headers entirely but that some Klaus cases have notes and it’s these notes attached. It’s only one’s with those notes I’m interested in for this because of how they relate to things we’ve heard. One case is CAT3RBC1567 with the note “tinte”. CAT3RBC1567 is Daria’s case and “tinte” is German for “ink”. So this is very likely that case. There are 4 other cases with that note and they’re two CAT1s, a CAT3, and a CAT13. So even if Daria’s case is misfiled not all of those are the correct CAT# for that assumption. There are also two CAT1s and a CAT2 marked “Herr B”, which is “Mr B” in English. These aren’t tied to a Bonzo case we’ve heard yet but one of them does take place in Bland Theme Park, Somerset. That’s not definitively Bonzo but it’s a good hint at it.
Additionally there are 6 CAT2 cases that have the note “Katzen LOL” or “Cats LOL” which you’d expect to be CAT1s if there are cats involved. In a similar vein there are one CAT1 and five CAT2s marked “Kreigsvolk” which is literally “War People” but more likely “Army” or “Soldiers”. Again, you’d expect more CAT1s if CAT1 is people.
I’m not saying any of the above is the backbone of my reasoning here but these are things that are showing up in the show and they do seem to be pointing the same direction as what I’m saying. Ignoring them entirely I think the theory doesn’t hold up but with them I think it’s very clear.
 

Conclusion

I don’t have much of a wrap up here. Anyone who’s been reading my posts for a while has known that I’ve never thought this theory worked. It’s not something I ever get too deep into because I’m also obviously happy for people to have ideas I disagree with, as am I happy for them to disagree with my ideas. That’s just healthy theorising. I’d been considering writing this for a while though but was mostly held back by not wanting to come across as some sort of arbiter of what is and isn’t correct, and didn’t want to seem like I was calling anyone out specifically. However a few people now said they wanted to see this and there are enough instances of parallel thought on this theory that it’s impossible for me to really single people out now. So here we are.
Just to reiterate for people that did/do believe this theory I don’t think anyone was stupid and/or wrong for thinking it. I hope if the above has convinced you that I’m right about it that you’re not dissuaded from making and sharing future theories. I’ve have 3 or 4 terrible CAT# theories and a few R# theories too. My current ideas on DPHW and R# might be awfully wrong in the long run and that’ll be okay.
That’s me anyway, hope this was at the very least an interesting read if it didn’t manage to be a convincing one. Bonzo! Bonzo!! Bonzo!!!

Tom took another look at the dwindling encampment as his dismay began to fade away. "Whoever's left to hang out with are the most committed to the cause" he thought to himself. "If anything, I'll have more fun than I did before." And after all, they had a good lineup of activists scheduled to visit in the next few days, and an anarchist band had even agreed to play this afternoon. He had definitely noticed a rapid drop in the number of campers since the end of the semester, and had even begun to doubt that they would be able to get any sort of concessions out of the university. But his thinking had changed after hearing the speeches that morning.
First to speak was Tom's friend and comrade, Eric. His impassioned indictment of the Israeli government reminded Tom of the importance of their activism. Then came the married grad students, the Trotskyist Abdou and the pan-Arabist Farida. They were international students studying English and anthropology, respectively. Or was it anthropology and sociology? Abdou lectured on the university's connection to the military-industrial complex. His speech was filled with threats to the administration that Tom was sure the limp-dicked Trot had no means of fulfilling. Even so, he had to admit that despite all his other inadequacies, Abdou was a powerful speaker. Finally came Farida. Tom had always considered her the best speaker of them all, but frankly he had a hard time taking his eyes off her whether she was speaking or not. He had tried flirting with her before, and he got the feeling that Abdou was even more into it than she was. Thinking about it now, he couldn't quite remember what her speech had been about, but it had certainly improved his spirits.
As the "Bacon Brigade" began setting up their instruments, Tom decided to make a point of dancing with Farida that afternoon. As the average tent now held two campers rather than five, he even thought he might get a chance to enjoy some of the newfound privacy.
...
When there was a break in the music, Tom sauntered over to the table where Abdou was sitting. As an ML, Tom could hardly stand Trotskyists, but he put on a smile for the sake of "left unity."
"She's a good dancer isn't she?" said Abdou.
"Oh yes, the best," agreed Tom. He was trying to think of a way of progressing his slow seduction of this Muslim woman and decided to be bold. "Look Abdou, the band will be winding down soon, why don't you both come back to my tent and I'll show you some comradely hospitality. I also have some suggestions that I know you'll love."
Abdou's mind was racing with the possibilities of the situation. Would this be the chance to see his wife seduced and taken by this big stud? Supposing Farida won't agree? Before he could engage his brain Abdou found himself agreeing to Tom's offer. "Wonderful, wonderful," beamed Tom and he could feel his big cock twitch at the thought of bedding Abdou's beautiful wife.
Just then Farida reappeared. "What are you two talking about?" she said.
Before Abdou could say a word, Tom said "Well my dear, your husband has kindly accepted my invitation of hospitality at my tent."
Farida didn't know what to say. She had thought Abdou would whisk her off back to the hotel and give her the fucking she desperately needed. Rubbing up against Tom's manhood had taken its toll. "Well I suppose we could come and see where you camp," she said, "but we mustn't stay too late must we Abdou?"
"What? I err no, I suppose not," stammered Abdou as Tom rose and offered Farida his arm.
And the three of them found themselves heading off to tent where the lives of Abdou and Farida would be changed forever. As they walked along Abdou held one of Farida's arms and Tom the other. However, after a while Abdou consciously let go of his wife's arm and stepped behind Tom.
This was not lost on the big white and he put his big protective arm around Abdou's wife as if to say to everyone "she's mine." If Farida hadn't been so dazed by the afternoon's events, she might have noticed various other white students smiling at Tom with knowing grins. They had recognized the situation immediately; a Muslim couple with cuckold husband following on as a big powerful white man led the wife to his cot.
Soon they reached Tom's tent and both Abdou and Farida were pleasantly surprised at how spacious it was. "Let me get you some coffee," said Tom as both Abdou and Farida collapsed onto a big sleeping bag.
Having sorted the drinks, Tom put some music on, and crawling over to Farida he said, "Can we have another dance Farida, you're such a good dancer?"
Before Farida could answer she felt her husband pushing her up. "Go on Farida, you know how much you enjoy it."
Abdou secretly wanted to see his wife in the arms of this Adonis again and who knows maybe more. Having no real reason to object, Farida agreed and as she accepted Toms hand she couldn't help but feel a shiver at the thought of being reacquainted with his penis, albeit covered by his trousers. However, as they left the tent she had a suspicion that he wasn't wearing any under garments since his penis had seemed so clearly outlined earlier.
As he clasped her to himself Tom could feel his big cock twitch once again. He moved one hand down to the small of her back, just to test the waters and meeting no resistance after another minute or so he moved his hand onto her sexy bottom. He could feel through the thin dress that Farida wasn't wearing thick pants, or perhaps only very skimpy ones and he couldn't wait to see her naked.
Farida felt lost in a different world as she circled round with this big man. Not only could she feel his penis growing hard against her once more, but she felt his big hand on her bottom pulling her onto his hardness. When she looked at her husband (still sitting in the tent), she noticed that he was just rubbing his own penis through his trousers. "My goodness," she thought, "he's getting turned on watching us. Supposing I flirt a bit more and show him what he's missing?"
With that Farida deliberately started to open her legs and let Tom's muscular leg rub against her inflamed sex.
This change in Farida's demeanor was not lost on Tom. As he led her back to the tent, he let his hands roam all over the back of this sexy hijabi Muslim wife and he leaned down to kiss and nibble her neck and ears. He heard Farida sigh and knew that he was close to capturing this sexy wife. "Fatima, let's give Abdou a show to remember shall we?"
Farida was brought back from her dreamlike state by Tom's question. "What do you mean?" she asked.
Almost in a whisper Tom said, "You know, a bit of thesis-antithesis-synthesis."
He had already found the zipper that ran down the back of Farida's dress and he had it in his hands as he spoke to her. He slowly started to pull the zipper down and it was half way down her back before Farida realised what was happening. "Wait Tom, we can't do this, I'm married."
"So what of it, Abdou wants me to undress you, don't you Abdou?"
Abdou had no hesitation in replying in the affirmative. This is what he had wanted for so long.
Caught in the confusion and surprise of hearing her husband say that he wanted to see another man, undress her, Farida just lay there while Tom pulled the zipper right down and then eased the dress off her shoulders. Suddenly she realised that she was lying in only her stockings, garter belt, and thong panties.
As she looked up at Tom she saw something that she hadn't seen in a man for years and that was undisguised lust. This man was lusting after her, this married women! She should have felt ashamed at her feelings but she didn't. Having got half-naked, she realised that she was enjoying the attention of this muscular white man. In fact she decided to crawl around in front of him as if to say 'look at what my husband has and you haven't'.
This might have been a foolish act, but it merely served to confirm what both men knew. For Tom it confirmed that Farida was absolutely gorgeous, the sexiest Muslim woman he had ever seen and that she needed to be loved sexually. For Abdou as he fingered his painfully erect cock, he knew that he was just a few steps away from pushing his wife into a sleeping bag with another man. He was close to realizing his fantasy.
Tom pulled Farida to him, lifted her face to his and he kissed her. Farida would always remember that first kiss since it was both passionate but more significantly the precursor to her crossing a line that could not be re- crossed, and to setting in motion events that would last her and her husband a lifetime. She accepted his big tongue into her mouth and her tongue fenced with his. She could feel his big hands roaming all over body now.
In her trance-like state it seemed quite natural that Tom should start to remove his clothing. Both Farida and Abdou watched as the big man removed his shirt to reveal a hugely-muscled chest and then he dropped his trousers and just as Farida had suspected he wore no underwear. His big cock reared up in all is magnificence and Tom was gratified to hear both husband and wife express surprise at his size.
Tom crawled over to the sleeping bag where Farida was sitting and crouched in front of her, his big cock semi erect. He remembered that Eric had told him that the cops were closing in, and he knew he would have to move quickly if he wanted to finish before they cleared the encampment. Farida's head was at the same level as the big man's groin and she was amazed at the whole size and muscularity of this man. Her trance-like state was broken by Tom who said softly "Take my cock into your mouth."
Farida was aghast, "I can't! It's dirty and I've never done that before."
Tom laughed to himself. This wife was indeed naive and yet he was gratified that he would be the first man to have his cock sucked by her. Lifting her face so that she could look into his eyes, Tom said, "As we hear from German ideologists, Germany has in the last few years gone through an unparalleled revolution. The decomposition of the Hegelian philosophy, which began with Strauss, has developed into a universal ferment into which all the “powers of the past” are swept. In the general chaos mighty empires have arisen only to meet with immediate doom, heroes have emerged momentarily only to be hurled back into obscurity by bolder and stronger rivals. It was a revolution beside which the French Revolution was child’s play, a world struggle beside which the struggles of the Diadochi [successors of Alexander the Great] appear insignificant. Principles ousted one another, heroes of the mind overthrew each other with unheard-of rapidity, and in the three years 1842-45 more of the past was swept away in Germany than at other times in three centuries.
"All this is supposed to have taken place in the realm of pure thought.
"Certainly it is an interesting event we are dealing with: the putrescence of the absolute spirit. When the last spark of its life had failed, the various components of this caput mortuum began to decompose, entered into new combinations and formed new substances. The industrialists of philosophy, who till then had lived on the exploitation of the absolute spirit, now seized upon the new combinations. Each with all possible zeal set about retailing his apportioned share. This naturally gave rise to competition, which, to start with, was carried on in moderately staid bourgeois fashion. Later when the German market was glutted, and the commodity in spite of all efforts found no response in the world market, the business was spoiled in the usual German manner by fabricated and fictitious production, deterioration in quality, adulteration of the raw materials, falsification of labels, fictitious purchases, bill-jobbing and a credit system devoid of any real basis. The competition turned into a bitter struggle, which is now being extolled and interpreted to us as a revolution of world significance, the begetter of the most prodigious results and achievements.
"If we wish to rate at its true value this philosophic charlatanry, which awakens even in the breast of the honest German citizen a glow of national pride, if we wish to bring out clearly the pettiness, the parochial narrowness of this whole Young-Hegelian movement and in particular the tragicomic contrast between the illusions of these heroes about their achievements and the actual achievements themselves, we must look at the whole spectacle from a standpoint beyond the frontiers of Germany.
"Ideology in General, German Ideology in Particular: German criticism has, right up to its latest efforts, never quitted the realm of philosophy. Far from examining its general philosophic premises, the whole body of its inquiries has actually sprung from the soil of a definite philosophical system, that of Hegel. Not only in their answers but in their very questions there was a mystification. This dependence on Hegel is the reason why not one of these modern critics has even attempted a comprehensive criticism of the Hegelian system, however much each professes to have advanced beyond Hegel. Their polemics against Hegel and against one another are confined to this – each extracts one side of the Hegelian system and turns this against the whole system as well as against the sides extracted by the others. To begin with they extracted pure unfalsified Hegelian categories such as “substance” and “self-consciousness,” later they desecrated these categories with more secular names such as species “the Unique,” “Man,” etc.
"The entire body of German philosophical criticism from Strauss to Stirner is confined to criticism of religious conceptions. [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] claiming to be the absolute redeemer of the world from all evil. Religion was continually regarded and treated as the arch-enemy, as the ultimate cause of all relations repugnant to these philosophers. The critics started from real religion and actual theology. What religious consciousness and a religious conception really meant was determined variously as they went along. Their advance consisted in subsuming the allegedly dominant metaphysical, political, juridical, moral and other conceptions under the class of religious or theological conceptions; and similarly in pronouncing political, juridical, moral consciousness as religious or theological, and the political, juridical, moral man – “man” in the last resort – as religious. The dominance of religion was taken for granted. Gradually every dominant relationship was pronounced a religious relationship and transformed into a cult, a cult of law, a cult of the State, etc. On all sides it was only a question of dogmas and belief in dogmas. The world was sanctified to an ever-increasing extent till at last our venerable Saint Max was able to canonise it en bloc and thus dispose of it once for all.
"The Old Hegelians had comprehended everything as soon as it was reduced to an Hegelian logical category. The Young Hegelians criticised everything by attributing to it religious conceptions or by pronouncing it a theological matter. The Young Hegelians are in agreement with the Old Hegelians in their belief in the rule of religion, of concepts, of a universal principle in the existing world. Only, the one party attacks this dominion as usurpation, while the other extols it as legitimate.
"Since the Young Hegelians consider conceptions, thoughts, ideas, in fact all the products of consciousness, to which they attribute an independent existence, as the real chains of men (just as the Old Hegelians declared them the true bonds of human society) it is evident that the Young Hegelians have to fight only against these illusions of consciousness. Since, according to their fantasy, the relationships of men, all their doings, their chains and their limitations are products of their consciousness, the Young Hegelians logically put to men the moral postulate of exchanging their present consciousness for human, critical or egoistic consciousness, and thus of removing their limitations. This demand to change consciousness amounts to a demand to interpret reality in another way, i.e. to recognise it by means of another interpretation. The Young-Hegelian ideologists, in spite of their allegedly “world-shattering" statements, are the staunchest conservatives. The most recent of them have found the correct expression for their activity when they declare they are only fighting against “phrases.” They forget, however, that to these phrases they themselves are only opposing other phrases, and that they are in no way combating the real existing world when they are merely combating the phrases of this world. The only results which this philosophic criticism could achieve were a few (and at that thoroughly one-sided) elucidations of Christianity from the point of view of religious history; all the rest of their assertions are only further embellishments of their claim to have furnished, in these unimportant elucidations, discoveries of universal importance.
"It has not occurred to any one of these philosophers to inquire into the connection of German philosophy with German reality, the relation of their criticism to their own material surroundings.
"First Premises of Materialist Method: The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way.
"The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature. Of course, we cannot here go either into the actual physical nature of man, or into the natural conditions in which man finds himself – geological, hydrographical, climatic and so on. The writing of history must always set out from these natural bases and their modification in the course of history through the action of men.
"Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life.
"The way in which men produce their means of subsistence depends first of all on the nature of the actual means of subsistence they find in existence and have to reproduce. This mode of production must not be considered simply as being the production of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production.
"This production only makes its appearance with the increase of population. In its turn this presupposes the intercourse [Verkehr] of individuals with one another. The form of this intercourse is again determined by production.
[continues in comment]

I’ve been with my partner since we were both 18. We fell for each other extremely hard. Been living together for the past 5/6 years.
We both have some self esteem, depression and anxiety issues. I think we are both prone to these issues, but I believe environment is a big factor in these kind of things. We both had some of these issues before being with each other. Over the past few years it seems they come back in waves.
I find that when I feel closer to her I have tendencies to get more depressed, and our depression can spiral into each other.
Over the past few months I have been a bit distant from her. I’m trying to figure out what I like as an individual, as we have had codependency issues. I feel some of this distance is a protection mechanism against the depression. Possibly I’m avoidantly attached?
A few weeks ago took a week holiday so I was by myself for the week. I felt quite confident and enjoyed myself in some ways. I also felt lonely but that pushed me to do more social activities that I wouldnt normally think of. Since she has come back I’ve found myself a bit more reserved and having depressive tendancies.
I’ve never been single in my adult life. I don’t fully understand myself. I’m not sure if this is just who I am and I’d be like this in any relationship, or if we are incompatible in this way.
I love her a lot. I had thought we would be spending the rest of our lives together. This relationship is not something I want to throw away, but I feel confused if it is right. We are compatible in many other ways such as world views, some shared hobbies, sense of humour, affection.

Hear me out.
Cassiopeia currently possesses 630 base HP, 350 base mana, 18 armor, and 32 magic resist. She operates out to a maximum range of 700, after which her DPS falls off a cliff as only her Q can reach further.

Mana

At level 2, Cassiopeia has 393 mana before items and runes, going up to 700-750 with the full combination of starting tear, and getting manaflow stacks. Cassiopeia's Q takes 0.25s to cast, and 0.65 seconds from input to detonation, factoring for cast time. Every missed Q is 50 mana. Every missed E is 50 mana.
A level 2 Annie with a 65 HP rune and a Doran's Ring possesses 788 HP and 31 Magic resist (30.94). In practice, this is 1031 Effective Health (give or take).
Before AP, this is would require 14 spellcasts to kill assuming we have no AP, or 12-13 if we do have AP runes. This is 600-700 mana.
At level 2, if we do not have full mana, we literally cannot kill a full HP Annie by committing 100% of our mana to the kill without the aid of runes. Even then, we can only barely skirt over the threshold if we hit literally everything. Remember that this is a character who literally has to start Tear of the Goddess in most matchups because our mana economy is that bad, so we're at a stat disadvantage.
This is not to say Cassiopeia should win lane. It is to say that if we are at 75% mana, we should not have to cower in fear because we literally lack the damage to kill an Annie 1v1 before we are out of mana. God forbid they have Barrier or Heal, because we can't do a damn thing then. This is why we often build Rod of Ages even though it's not a very good item. Catalyst of Aeons actually gives us mana to burn in fights.
When compared to Swain, Swain starts with 118 more mana than Cassiopeia, better range, and lower mana costs. When compared to Annie, Cassiopeia possesses less mana, but lower mana costs roughly even with the lower mana pool.

Damage

Noxious Blast has a 90% AP Ratio over its full duration, in spite of literally never being used for its damage. Miasma has a 70% AP Ratio. Twin Fang also has a 70% AP Ratio. In practice, only Twin Fang is really seen as a damage ability. Cassio doesn't really need, nor should she be encouraged to try to use her DoTs as damage abilities, and we could easily reduce the AP ratio on both Miasma and Noxious Blast to curtail Cassiopeia's poke potential and push her more into the close quarters battlemage that the rest of her game flow says she is.

Durability

Cassiopeia is a 700 range mage. Caitlyn is a 650 range marksman, and RFC increases that past Cass range. In practice, ADC's tend to have better burst mobility than Cass' mobility strategy of "Hit a raw 0.65s trigger time Q from 850 range or less to get movespeed.". However, in spite of this, Cassiopeia currently possesses the worst armor in the game, tied with a few other character, coupled with HP slightly higher than an artillery mage and lower HP growths. At max level, Cassiopeia's HP is equivalent to Xerath, and her Armor is lower than Xerath. In exchange, she possesses higher level 1 HP and 2 more Magic Resist at all levels when compared to an Artillery mage who's signature role is being able to hit things from so far away he is not visible. Xerath has a range of on average over 50% more than Cassiopeia before considering ultimates.
Hell, Xerath has higher HP regeneration than Cassiopeia, meaning he literally possesses more staying power.
Cassiopeia possesses durability only slightly higher than Annie, a Burst Mage. Annie possesses higher Armor, higher HP Regen, and 70 less HP with equivalent HP scaling. However, Annie starts Doran's Ring, and Cassiopeia starts Tear. As a result, Annie has 20 more HP than Cassiopeia, 1 more Armor and 2 less Magic Resist.
Annie is a Burst Mage. Cassiopeia is a sustained damage mage.
Comparing again to Swain, another sustained damage mage, Swain possesses less HP (but also starts Doran's Ring and has a passive that increases his HP). 8 more armor and 2.5 more Health Regen. This is in addition to outranging cassiopeia (725 effect radius Death's Hand vs 700 Range Twin Fang, Nevermove ties with Noxious Blast).
Cassiopeia possesses a sustained lifedrain effect on Twin Fang, scaling with AP. However, due to having no base value and a 75% effectiveness reduction vs minions, this does not impact the laning phase and does not typically matter in teamfights due to her low baseline durability.

Conclusion

Cassiopeia possesses durability and mana economy akin to a Burst mage, but the playstyle of a Sustained Damage mage. She is on average less durable than Artillery Mages who focus on sustained damage, while possessing range barely beyond that of an auto-attack character and shorter than many dashes. This results in not having enough mana to pressure opponents in lane, while often being outranged or outtraded by other mages. In exchange, she has particularly high damage ratios that are backloaded by her need to hit a poison effect in order to deal meaningful damage.
According to Lolalytics, Cassiopeia is particularly strong at the moment, but inspection of her build is telling. Cassiopeia takes Resolve as a secondary rune with Bone Plating and Overgrowth, starts Tear, rushes Rod of Ages into Seraphs into Blackfire, before going for Rylai's. And she takes Barrier. As the game will typically be over after this point, that means that Cassiopeia is taking a durability Summoner, Durability Runes, and building 3 different Durability items, as well as 3 different Mana items.
Because Cassiopeia is exclusively taking Durability and Mana items, and yet is rated highly, this suggests that her current kit is very lopsided towards requiring Durability and Mana to the point of locking her out of other items. As such, I believe that increasing her durability and mana while reducing her AP ratios at a few points would lead to a more balanced item distribution as opposed to seeing full durability items.
This is neither a call for a buff, nor a nerf. Simply an adjustment to balance out her kit.

Why Roman empire fell? Main causes.

The fall of the Roman Empire in the West wasn't caused by a single event, but rather a combination of factors that weakened the empire over a long period. Some of the main causes historians point to include:

• Invasions by Barbarian Tribes: For centuries, Rome faced pressure from Germanic tribes on its borders. By the 4th and 5th centuries, these groups, like the Visigoths and Huns, were able to breach Roman defenses and settle within the empire.
• Economic Decline: The vast Roman Empire was expensive to maintain. Over time, a combination of factors like overspending on military, high taxes, and inflation strained the economy.
• Political Instability: A series of weak emperors and power struggles weakened central authority. This made it difficult for Rome to respond effectively to threats or hold its vast territories together.
• Military Issues: The Roman military, once a powerful force, weakened over time. The ability to recruit and train legions declined, and corruption became an issue.
• The Rise of Christianity: The spread of Christianity, which differed greatly from traditional Roman religion, introduced some social and cultural divisions within the empire.

These are just some of the main reasons why the Western Roman Empire fell. It's important to remember that the decline was complex and historians continue to debate the relative importance of these factors.

What would must had be done so Roman empire could prevail?

That's a fascinating question! However, it's important to remember that history doesn't offer do-overs. The fall of the Roman Empire stemmed from a complex web of issues that built up over centuries. Here are some things the Romans could have tried, though success isn't guaranteed:

• Economic Reform: Addressing inflation, finding new sources of revenue, and promoting trade could have strengthened the empire's financial base.
• Military Reorganization: Reforms focusing on recruitment, training, and equipment could have bolstered the legions' effectiveness.
• Stronger Leadership: A series of capable emperors who prioritized stability, addressed corruption, and inspired loyalty might have held the empire together.
• Integration of Barbarian Tribes: Instead of just fighting them off, the Romans could have attempted to assimilate barbarian groups, giving them a stake in the empire's success.
• Religious Tolerance: Greater acceptance of Christianity, perhaps even integrating some aspects into Roman religion, could have lessened social and cultural divisions.

It's also important to consider external factors. The rise of powerful enemies like the Huns might have been difficult to overcome regardless of Roman actions.
Ultimately, the Roman Empire's fall was a product of its time. The solutions we think of today might not have been feasible in their historical context. However, exploring these "what ifs" allows us to gain a deeper understanding of the factors that contribute to the rise and fall of empires.