Printable invitations with camo border

Alright, buckle up because we're diving into why Vancouver's food scene is straight-up legendary. Forget the regular city vibes; Vancouver is a melting pot of flavors, a culinary carnival that beats anything else in North America. Join me on this personal quest to unravel why the combo of Asian influence, Pacific Northwest goodness, and chill dining vibes makes Vancouver the top pick for foodies.
Asian Culinary Delights: Tradition and Creativity Unleashed
Vancouver's streets resonate with the aromas of traditional Asian dishes, prepared with a touch of authenticity that transports you across borders. Picture slurping savory ramen in Chinatown or savoring hand-pulled noodles in a cozy corner of East Van. But what makes Vancouver's Asian food scene truly exceptional is its fusion of tradition with modern creativity.
In this city, innovation meets tradition on a plate. Take, for instance, squid ink brioche with sea urchin pâté – a daring yet harmonious blend of flavors that pushes the boundaries of culinary expectations. Vancouver's chefs are culinary artists, creating dishes that not only pay homage to traditional recipes but also elevate them into extraordinary, palate-pleasing experiences.
And let's not forget the matcha mochi croissants that have taken the city by storm. A fusion of Japanese mochi and French croissants, these delectable pastries are a testament to Vancouver's culinary diversity. Each bite is a dance of textures and tastes, showcasing the city's flair for seamlessly blending cultures and cuisines.
Pacific Northwest's Grocery List: Seafood Galore and More
Living next to the Pacific Ocean is like having a seafood aisle in your backyard. Fresh salmon, sweet Dungeness crab, and chubby spot prawns – Vancouver's seafood game is on point. And let's not forget the local veggies and meats, straight from the region's green landscapes. It's like nature’s way of saying, "Hey, enjoy the good stuff!"
Nature Vibes: Dining with a View
Vancouver's layout is like a dating app for food and nature; they're a match made in heaven. Whether you're brunching in a leafy neighborhood or devouring seafood with an ocean panorama, the city serves up an Instagrammable backdrop for every meal. Picture this: a patio, a breeze, and the scent of fir trees – eating out just got a whole lot cooler.
Neighborhood Chronicles: Culinary Adventures Off the Beaten Path
Downtown is cool, but venture out, and you'll hit foodie gold. Commercial Drive's eclectic spots or Richmond's legit Asian flavors – Vancouver's neighborhoods are like culinary treasure maps. Each area has its own flavor story, tempting you to be the food explorer you were born to be.
Conclusion
Vancouver isn't just a city with good food; it's a food fiesta waiting to happen. The Asian vibes, the Pacific Northwest's goodies, and the city's chill connection with nature make dining here a full-blown experience. Vancouver isn't just North America's food champion; it's a vibe, a journey through flavors, and a big, fat stamp on your foodie passport. So, next time you're craving a culinary adventure, Vancouver's got your back, fork, and knife.
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Record temperatures, record migration, record emissions, record displacement, record PFAS……start building an ark.
Last Week in Collapse: May 12-18, 2024
This is Last Week in Collapse, a weekly newsletter compiling some of the most important, timely, useful, soul-crushing, ironic, stunning, exhausting, or otherwise must-see/can’t-look-away moments in Collapse.
This is the 125th newsletter! You can find the May 5-11 edition here if you missed it last week. You can also receive these posts (with images) every Sunday in your email inbox with Substack.
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Flash flooding in northern Afghanistan killed 300+ people and destroyed 1,000+ homes. Hundreds of thousands of others have been affected. Last month, similar floods in the region killed 70+. Four died in Texas storms last week as well.
Venezuela is suffering from record wildfires, which so far this year have burned about 5M acres—almost the size of Sardinia. Some experts think indigenous people started the blaze as an attempt at forest clearance, which quickly got out of hand. “Institutional failures” compounded the disaster when the ailing government responded with an inadequate number of poorly equipped firefighters. Another study from last week examined the impact of wildfires on soil health.
Flooding and “cold lava” killed 50+ in Indonesia, injuring dozens and displacing several thousand. Cold lava is a mixture of water and rocks tumbling down the side of a volcano. Meanwhile, an actual volcano erupted in Indonesia, sending smoke & ash 5000m high; further eruptions are possible soon.
The Swiss Re Institute published a 37-page report last week about natural disasters in 2023—and how much damage, in USD, they caused. The largest catastrophe was the February 7.8 earthquake in Türkiye & Syria, which killed 59,000+ people and caused $163B+ in damage. The report is full of interesting graphics & data about natural disasters.

“Last year, economic losses from natural catastrophes reached USD 280 billion, meaning that 62% of the global losses were uninsured….the insured losses surpassed USD 100 billion for the fourth consecutive year….annual insured losses will grow by 5–7% over the long term…today’s insured losses could double in 10 years….There were 142 insured-loss inducing catastrophes in 2023, a new record. Most were of medium severity, which we define as events resulting in losses of USD 1–5 billion….Over the last 30 years, we estimate that natural catastrophe insured losses have grown by 3 percentage points more annually than the global economy (in inflation adjusted terms)...”

Flooding and heat waves are impacting Brazil’s oranges, responsible for about 70% of the world’s supply. One food analysts declared that the “era of cheap food is over”—in the UK, at least. That may be one reason why UK residents took record food bank packages last year. Madagascar is struggling to adapt to a future with far less rainfall.
France is growing more concerned about a dam on Lake Geneva, controlled exclusively by Switzerland. The Rhône River, which begins in Switzerland and flows south through France, is shrinking in summers as climate change melts Switzerland’s remaining glaciers.
The Tonlé San River has been dammed in Vietnam, lowering the level in Cambodia and sometimes drying the river downstream entirely. Meanwhile, China’s lychee harvest is getting blasted by rain, impacting the world’s largest source of lychee. And, once again, Saudi Arabia is suffering flooding in its inland regions. 7 dead in historic flooding in Iran.
The eminent climate scientist James Hansen posted that, since “human-made aerosols and their cooling effect are in decline,” the cooling effect of La Niña will be counterbalanced by these rising temperatures. He also identifies a “large anomaly of increased absorbed solar radiation at midlatitudes in the Northern Hemisphere” responsible for rising temperatures there. CO2 levels are rising faster today than they have at any point in the previous 50,000 years…and a study of millennia-old trees determined last summer was the hottest worldwide in 2,000+ years…
Record nighttime May temperatures were tied in the Philippines and Vietnam. A couple Indonesian cities broke records for May temperatures. And a number of southern African states saw more records drop. And Toronto saw a record tied for the number of days reaching 14 °C (57 °F). A heat wave has returned to Bangladesh. Flooding in Cali (pop: 2.9M), Colombia.
The University of Washington was ordered to stop a geoengineering project that scientists sere conducting from the deck of a decommissioned aircraft carrier. The experiment ejected aerosolized saltwater in an attempt to reflect solar radiation. A comparative study in Nature Communications of a number of carbon pricing found that, yes, carbon pricing does work to reduce the total CO2 emitted.
It’s that time of the year again. Wildfires in Canada grow, some of which are moving towards the tar sands—forcing thousands to evacuate. 39 of the total nation’s blazes are “out of control,” resulting in air quality alerts in the United States. Meanwhile, across the Caribbean, water shortages have become the new normal, and residents (and tourists) are finding their old consumption habits hard to change. St. Lucia has declared a water emergency. In Myanmar, water shortages worsen, particularly as related to the spiraling conflict.
At least ⅛ of Europeans live in a place at risk of extreme flooding—so says a 175-page report from the European Environment Agency posted on Wednesday. The number of people living in flood-risk coastal areas in the EU & UK is expected to jump 24% by 2050. The graphics-packed report also considers how flooding will impact healthcare facilities, mental health, wastewater treatment plants, the spread of disease, cyanobacteria, permafrost thaw, and much else.

“Europe has seen devastating floods following record rainfall, droughts of magnitudes not experienced in hundreds of years, continuing sea level rise, and increasing lake and sea temperatures….permanent water stress already affects 30% of people in southern Europe….since 2018, more than half of Europe has been impacted by extreme drought conditions….Climate change is expected to increase mercury bioaccumulation in the marine food chain due to rising ocean temperatures, ocean acidification and permafrost thawing….Depression, anxiety and PTSD may persist for years after a flooding event….Under the changing climate, northern Europe is becoming wetter in general, but drier in summer. Southern Europe is becoming drier, especially in winter. For central-eastern and western Europe, the trend is less clear…” -selections from the report

Milan suffered flooding last week, the worst May flooding in 170 years. Early spring in the UK has disrupted migratory bird species and their usual patterns.
A 74-page working paper which is not yet peer-reviewed claims that earlier estimates for how much GDP would be impacted by another 1 °C temperature rise is way less than it would be in actuality. The paper claims the real cost (in USD) is about 6x greater. They claim “global temperature has much more pronounced impacts on economic activity than local temperature” and that extreme weather is mostly behind the projected decline in productivity.
——————————
Epidemiologists are worried about how climate change in Africa may extend the life of disease-bearers like ticks and mosquitoes. Other epidemiologists are worried about how cattle may become a permanent reservoir for H5N1. Growing traced of bird flu have been found in wastewater testing in the U.S., but investigators think it may be runoff from infected dairy farms.
Obesity, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure rates today globally are 50% higher than in 2000—though researchers claim that air pollution still poses a larger threat. Of a study participants in Hawai’i, 75% had respiratory issues, probably from the Maui wildfires last year.
The 2024 World Migration Report is out, and its 384 pages are not as apocalyptic as one might think. However, internally displaced people are at their all-time highest. India, Mexico, Russia, China, and Syria lead the world in emigrants; another document contains the definitions for who exactly constitutes a migrant. Unfortunately much of the data relied upon ends in 2022. Data from this year, not included in the above report, indicates a 40% jump in traffic through the Darien Gap compared to the same time period in 2023.

“The last two years saw major migration and displacement events that have caused great hardship and trauma, as well as loss of life….There have also been large-scale displacements triggered by climate- and weather-related disasters in many parts of the world in 2022 and 2023, including in Pakistan, the Philippines, China, India, Bangladesh, Brazil and Colombia….disinformation tactics are increasingly being used by nefarious actors with negative impacts on public, political and social media discourse on migration….Forced displacement is the highest on record in the modern era…overconsumption and overproduction linked to unsustainable economic growth, resource depletion and biodiversity collapse, as well as ongoing climate change (including global heating) are continuing to grip the world….the risk of further conflict has not been higher in decades, as military spending reached a new record high of USD 2,240 billion in 2022…” -excerpts from the introduction

Another report, focusing on internal displacement, came out last week; its 69 pages show a cross-section of about 47M people displaced by natural disasters (56%) or armed conflict (44%). Most of the disasters were storms & flooding, and most of the conflicts were civil wars of some form. This report also provides detailed region-by-region analyses—with sub-Saharan Africa accounting for 46% of global IDPs.

“Conflict and violence triggered 13.5 million movements, the highest figure for the past 15 years….Disasters and conflict are presented as different triggers, but their impacts can overlap, often leading to repeated and/ or protracted displacement….Drought triggered 331,000 displacements in Somalia….Floods triggered 550,000 displacements in Ethiopia….Conflict and violence triggered 3.8 million displacements in DRC in 2023, a slight fall from the record four million in 2022, but still the second-highest figure globally after Sudan….nearly two-thirds of the internal displacements recorded in 2023 originated from Khartoum state. More than 39 per cent of the state's inhabitants were forced to flee, leaving entire neighbourhoods empty….Criminal and communal violence triggered nearly three-quarters of Nigeria's 291,000 conflict displacements….” -selections from the spotlight on sub-Saharan Africa

Experts are concerned about the mental health impacts that climate change has on our minds. Hotter temperatures reportedly increase depression & aggression. Wildfires and storms can cause PTSD. Workers feel stress and desperation as their usual industries are impacted. And air pollution influences ordinary brain processes in many ways.
Some analysts believe “Peak China” may be over, signaling a period of economic tapering-off, as well as a growing militancy. Increasing U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods are continuing to separate the two economies. The Netherlands finally formed a provisional government, though its proposed immigration & farming policies have set it at odds with the EU.
The Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank, released a 46-page report on potential climate risks to the banking system’s resilience. As far as I understood, most of the risk lies in extreme weather events and the risk to insurance agencies.
Part of southeast England experienced an outbreak of Cryptosporidium, a diarrhea & vomiting illness, highly contagious, which can last weeks. At least 22 cases have been reported. Meanwhile, the CDC is issuing warnings about the more dangerous strain of monkeypox circulating in the DRC, although cases are currently limited to Africa.
North Carolina’s Senate voted to ban mask-wearing last week, under the reasoning that it would make police identification of protestors difficult. An fMRI study found lasting neurological changes in COVID survivors; they “had significantly higher cognitive complaints of mental fatigue and cognitive failure….even two years after recovering.” Experts say a summer rise in COVID cases is coming to the United States.
A study on The Canadian/American Great Lakes found that PFAS levels are increasing in the 3 largest lakes (Superior, Huron, and Michigan), while decreasing in the other two (Erie, Ontario). The study also found that precipitation is the primary means by which the Lakes are accumulating PFAS, since the chemicals are small & stable enough to move through the water cycle. Meanwhile, in England’s Lake District, a telecom failure resulted in raw sewage being pumped into England’s largest and most famous lake, Windermere, on-and-off for 10 hours; and a major British water CEO took a $4M USD pay package last year. And a look into the Chicago River’s health found that microplastics & trash are endangering health & biodiversity.
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An assassination attempt by a lone wolf on Slovakia’s PM left him in critical condition, but likely to survive. 11 civilians were slain by cartel fighters in a few battles in Mexico. Violence continues to spiral out of control in Goma, DRC.
In Haiti, everything worsens indefinitely. Guns have reportedly entered from Florida, a phenomenon which officials call an “iron river.” Police have been put on the defensive against the growing might of the gang warlords.
A brawl broke out in Taiwan’s parliament. An Iranian plot was allegedly foiled to smuggle weapons into Jordan to destabilize the pro-U.S. regime.
Dozens more died in Sudan from escalating violence around Darfur. People are warning about “a disaster on top of a disaster” and the possibility of Sudan splitting apart. Others have called it “hell on earth” as 1,000+ refugees cross the Chad border every day. Disease and malnutrition are growing, while famine encroaches upon 9M helpless victims of the conflict—but the world’s attention is elsewhere.
The U.S. Army Engineers completed constructing the pier in Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid. Some 600,000 Gazans have been displaced from Rafah already, and fighting has escalated against Hamas militants in northern Gaza.
Taliban forces skirmished with Pakistani soldiers for about 90 minutes last week. Taliban attacks in Pakistan, and counterattacks have resulted in a kind of ambient disruption for the rocky border zone.
Violent protests—and counteroperations—are continuing in New Caledonia (pop: 270,000), a Pacific island part of overseas France. The riots, which have killed 6 people so far, began after metropolitan France proposed a plan to expand voting rights beyond indigenous residents. A state of emergency has been declared amid worries about a spiral of violence taking hold.
As the Sahel dries out, experts are concerned about the links to rising terrorism in the region. The Sahel accounts for over 40% of global terrorism deaths—according to the analysts’ understanding of “terrorism.” Mali in particular has reportedly become home to 41 new, different non-state armed groups (NSAGs) since 2007. A contested election in Chad resulted in the consolidation of the interim leader’s power.

“If governments are continually unable to solve regional issues, the people will be at the whim of any terror group that has a basic organization. It serves these groups’ interests to promote insecurity where they can and create security where they want. A “hearts and minds” campaign in the Sahel could lead to long-term and locally supported insurgencies in a land that is currently rife with civil strife.” -from the article

Some wargamers concluded that a Trump victory in 2020 would spell the end of NATO, or at least the end of its utility. Vladimir Putin replaced his minister of defense with a top economic advisor, just before going to Beijing to reaffirm their friendship with “no limits.” Some say Putin is planning on a forever war. Some say NATO is gearing up for one, too.
Russia made several gains in the suburbs of Kharkiv, seizing several settlements which some analysts doubt they will hold. Putin claims they aren’t really trying to take Kharkiv anyway… Russia also made small progress in the Donbas—although they suffered their largest one-day casualties since the start of the war. The U.S. allocated another $2B to hasten the delivery of weapons to the front lines. The next weeks will be crucial on the front. Switzerland has invited 160+ nations to send delegates to a peace summit intended to design a path to making peace in this War.
——————————
Select comments/threads from the subreddit last week suggest:
-Brazil’s flooding was really, really bad, judging from this post and its accompanying images. Across just one of Brazil’s 26 states, 600,000+ people have been made homeless, 100+ have died, and the storm season isn’t over yet. Some of the flooding isn’t expected to subside for another month.
-How specifically might climate change make humanity extinct? This thread crowdsources a number of plausible ways, from ordinary famines to nuclear war and even a massive deoxygenation process. I tend to think it will be a consequence of an eventual nuclear exchange, followed by extended famine and disease.
Got any feedback, questions, comments, complaints, upvotes, doom prophets to follow, hugelkultur guides, directions to off-grid bunkers, ark schematics, etc.? Check out the Last Week in Collapse SubStack if you don’t want to check collapse every Sunday, you can receive this newsletter sent to your (or someone else’s) email inbox every weekend. What did I forget this week?

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Synopsis:
Juliette Contzen is a lazy, good-for-nothing princess. Overshadowed by her siblings, she's left with little to do but nap, read … and occasionally cut the falling raindrops with her sword. Spotted one day by an astonished adventurer, he insists on grading Juliette's swordsmanship, then promptly has a mental breakdown at the result.
Soon after, Juliette is given the news that her kingdom is on the brink of bankruptcy. At threat of being married off, the lazy princess vows to do whatever it takes to maintain her current lifestyle, and taking matters into her own hands, escapes in the middle of the night in order to restore her kingdom's finances.
Tags: Comedy, Adventure, Action, Fantasy, Copious Ohohohohos.
Chapter 241: Until Now
The doors to the Hartzwiese Adventurer’s Guild opened.
Before, the sound of raucous laughter could be heard flooding the street outside, filling the quiet of a spring night with all the debauchery the local drunkards had to offer.
Despite the halls of adventurers not being formal drinking establishments, those within were ready to compete in boisterousness with all the taverns, inns and pubs of the town combined. And also win. Handily.
And yet–
The moment the doors parted and I stepped within, a hush as quiet as any grave fell over its inhabitants.
A woman balancing with her derrière upon the head of another became still, the alcohol in her cup the only movement as it dribbled onto a stunned face below her.
A man slurping from the communal cauldron stared wordlessly, the stew pouring in, and then out of his mouth as the muscles of his throat forgot the means to swallow.
A bartender asleep upon a row of kegs quietly rose, the sudden din of silence waking him where the sound of debauchery and those drinking from the taps beside him had failed.
Here, there, and everywhere, eyes widened as the sudden silence was filled with the sounds of my footsteps as I strolled past, my loyal handmaiden and my brother’s attendant in my wake.
And also–
Mreow.
Mrewowow.
Meww.
Cats.
Tabby cats.
Calico cats.
Ragdoll cats.
Cats with twirly whiskers. Cats with puffy faces. Cats with slightly rounded ears.
Behind me, skipping around my legs while taking turns to sit upon my shoulders and very occasionally my head, were a legion of cats of various shapes, sizes and colours.
But no matter the springiness of their whiskers, the shine of their coat or the liveliness of their tails, one thing to bring them all together was the anarchy they caused.
This was no neat line of ducklings following after their mother.
This was a barbarian horde.
With no sense of organisation other than a shared drive to claim everything as their own, they immediately skipped amidst the stunned adventurers, scavenging for all the copious scraps while still turning their noses away from the alcohol forming sticky traps upon the floor.
Saying nothing, I allowed their demanding cries to fill up the hall as I swept forwards, pausing before a wall plastered from end to end with faded notices and requests long gone unanswered.
One by one, I systemically tore every request featuring a crudely drawn image of a cat, gathering into my arms a pile of parchment large enough to reach my chin.
Then, I made my way to the wooden desk.
A receptionist waited with a smile at the ready.
“Greetings! Welcome to the Hartzwiese branch of the Adventurer’s Guild. I see you’ve removed several notices from the–”
Poomph.
Silenced but unperturbed, this latest clone watched as I dropped the stack of requests onto her desk, before promptly topping off the stack with a copper ring.
“Do what must be done,” I said, my voice defiant. “I am ready.”
The receptionist answered me with a smile more permanent than the wall the notices were torn from.
A moment later–
“[Identify].”
A green hue appeared in her clasped palms as she assessed the ring.
“Juliette. B-rank. Your registered branch is Reitzlake.”
The sound of several cups clattered against the floor.
“Welcome again to Hartzwiese. I see from your commission history that you have an extraordinary amount of completions for recovering lost cats. May I assume the significant number of cats now roaming the branch hall relate to the notices removed from the wall?”
I pursed my quivering lips.
“Maybe.”
“Wonderful. And how many cats is it that you’ve rescued?”
“... Lots.”
“I see. Please give me a moment while I confirm the requirements of our commissions.”
The receptionist swiftly retrieved a stack of parchment from a drawer.
As she flicked through, her eyes simultaneously went to every cat roaming, napping and clawing in the hall. A skill not even monstrous overseers from the abyss with their dozens of eyestalks could match. But that’s only to be expected.
Wherever these receptionists were found, it was from a level deeper than any monster dared roam.
Eventually, she gave a nod.
“Thank you for waiting. There appears to be an excess of cats in relation to the number of commissions we have available. We’ll endeavour to ensure that every cat is rehomed at the earliest opportunity through our partner agencies and charities. But unfortunately, I can only provide official acknowledgement for cats rescued through a formal commission.”
I sucked in a deep breath, hoping that patience was one of the things I accidentally inhaled.
“Fine. And how many commissions does that end up being, then? … 10? 15?”
The receptionist flicked through her bundle of parchments once more.
“94.”
“... Excuse me?”
“I can confirm the successful completion of 94 simultaneous F-ranked commissions. Congratulations. This is a new record, breaking what appears to be one earlier set by yourself. A remarkable achievement befitting a B-rank member of the guild.”
The receptionist’s professional smile never wavered.
I thought that would be the worst of it.
But then–
She slowly brought her hands together … and started applauding.
It was the leak which broke the dam.
At once, she was joined by all who were present to witness this crowning moment of regret.
I turned around in time to see a riot in motion.
“W-Wooooooooooo!!!!”
“In … Incredible …”
“A new record … I … I heard it was broken in Trierport … to think I’d witness it broken again!”
“A B-rank adventurer … ?! Where … Where did she come from … ?!”
There was no polite, respectful applause here.
It was the wild cheering of a crowd at a tournament. The whooping cries of theatregoers calling for an encore. The acclaim of my father as he elbowed others to delight in the poetry I’d written when I was 6 and thus now regularly attempted to burn.
Everywhere I turned, I saw and heard the acclaim mixed with shouts of horror as mugs of alcohol were spilled on purpose and by accident. The layabouts stomped on the floor, doing their best to murder decorum under the strain of unbridled emotion.
Only a few falling teardrops formed any hint of more dignified revelry, the glimmer of admiration running down cheeks as sniffles were hidden amidst the raucous cheering.
And then I bore witness to the most morbid sight.
Like a tidal wave of soiled clothes and snotty faces, they suddenly came as one, hands reaching out for me with dripping mugs still in their grips. Horror struck at my soul. And unlike a farmer who’d scarpered into the night, I had nobody who could heal a wound caused by hooligans accepting me as their own.
“A-Amazing!! Take my drink! Take anyone’s drink!!”
“So many cats rescued … even my allergies can’t believe it!”
“My gods, it’s a legend! An adventurer among adventurers!”
This.
This right here.
This was the lowest point of my life … were I not an unparalleled genius.
“Oho … ohoho …”
At once, the wave halted.
Faces which were lit up in unabashed delight turned to looks of mild confusion against the tinkling music of my laughter.
They needed to cycle through the expressions until they reached horror and shame.
“Ohhohohohohohoho!!”
… For I was no drunkard seeking to join their ranks!
No … I was Juliette Contzen, 3rd Princess to the Kingdom of Tirea!
And that meant every action I took, every word I spoke, and every cat I saved was for a reason beyond the hopes and dreams these hoodlums had of wanton debauchery and rusting swords!
Indeed!
A lesser princess than I may slink away into the night, cowed by the utter shame, humiliation and disgrace of completing so many F-ranked requests that I somehow broke a record I’d only just set!
But I was made of greater things!
Of schemes and subterfuges so deep that it would take too long to explain! The plots I weaved were a silken web more intricate than any cogs which made up Coppelia as she doubled up, desperately trying to stop herself from succumbing to more pain from laughter!
And that meant with every cat request now denied to these louts … they would finally do some work!
“Ohoho … ohohohohoho!! Behold and be afraid! Witness before you the coming of a new dawn, here to lift you from your days of boundless reverie! Unfurl the shutters and gaze upon a radiance so pure it brands your dallying minds! The scorching sun has come to test the snail’s back, and all that your bleary eyes see is a great salt lake to devour you whole! Shrivel as you cling upon the sweat which drips upon your brow, for that is the proof you’re yet alive!”
A sudden silence met my proclamation of their coming ordeal.
And then–
“Wooooooooooooooooooooooo!”
“I don’t understand! But what a speech!”
“If she can do it, so can we!”
I raised a hand to my lips, barely covering my smile.
“Ohhhohohohohohohoho … !”
Here it was!
Operation: Gainful Employment!
An entirely new strategy, as bold as it was uncharted!
By removing what was surely the vast majority of missing cat quests available to the adventurers of this town, they would have no choice, utterly none whatsoever, but to engage in actual work! The type of work adventurers openly advertised themselves as doing!
Monster subjugation! Crime prevention! Fetching artifacts from hidden dungeons and then succumbing to their wounds at the entrance while the Royal Treasury pocketed the treasure!
Yes, this was clearly a highly experimental tactic.
But what was I, if not a bastion of creativity?
At the very least, I utterly refused to accept the status quo! An organisation dedicated exclusively to rescuing lost cats or elbowing into my kingdom’s sovereign affairs was no good to me!
Thus … I could not cower like some towngirl nauseous from the smell of their revelry.
Instead, I would squeeze the Adventurer’s Guild dry until the day I replaced them with an army of trained poodles. Until that joyous day, I could never tear my eyes away when they waited to be robbed.
To do so was more than a dereliction of duty …
Why, I’d be an accomplice to their drunken escapades!
My vow remained unchanged. For my goal, I would brave any indignity. The ring I was hoping the receptionist would forget to return was proof of that.
And thus–
I stood tall as a summer reed, proud in the knowledge that I had no need to feel even an inkling of embarrassment over completing 94 simultaneous F-ranked commissions! …
“Pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffft.”
“S-Stop at once! You are not to laugh!”
“Pffffttt~”
“C-Coppelia!!”
Clearly not seeing the angel of self-sacrifice who I was, Coppelia held one hand tightly around her mouth. Even so, she failed to stop either the sound of her amusement or the tears falling from her eyes.
My only salvation was that it came at significant cost to her. Even now, she careened between laughter and painful regret.
I decided to offer both her and myself mercy.
Turning to the receptionist, I found a modest pouch already waiting upon the wooden desk. As well as a copper ring waiting beside it.
“Thank you for your service to the Adventurer’s Guild,” said the receptionist, her professional smile undaunted by the commotion. “Your total remuneration is 102 gold crowns, 7 silver crowns and 9 copper crowns. I’ve taken the liberty to compile all your separate payments together.”
I took the pouch and ignored the ring.
The receptionist pushed the ring forwards.
A long moment later, I collected it, uncertain what a receptionist would do if I tossed it into the communal cauldron, but knowing it would somehow still end up on my finger regardless.
With my head held high, I bravely ignored the chorus of voices unknowingly cheering for their own hardship as I swept past. Renewed tears and applause filled the hall. A few cats attempted to follow me. I stopped to shoo them away.
And then I was outside, the door closing behind me.
“... Goodness, that was quite the sight,” said Renise with a bemused smile. “It reminded me somewhat of the inns of Reitzlake’s docks. I wonder if all the halls of adventurers are like that, or merely those which you frequent?”
“Please don’t insinuate I’m responsible for the debauchery which occurs wherever the Adventurer’s Guild is concerned. That’s something I can claim no credit for.”
“You say that … but to me, it seems that you caused quite a stir. That really is a remarkable number of cats you rescued, after all. Even I can tell that 94 simultaneous F-ranked commissions–”
“Miss Renise.”
The maid’s smile wavered against whatever fatigued expression I was making.
A moment later, it fell away entirely as she switched to her role as my brother’s attendant and the leader of whatever scoundrels he’d charged her with herding.
“... Yes, I suppose there’s time for idle conversation later. There’s a guardhouse nearby. We should report on all that’s happened tonight.”
I gave a nod of agreement.
Hopefully, the baroness hadn’t woken from her stupor yet. But if she had, I was certain the single portrait of myself I’d returned to the wall of her gallery to smile down at her gagged and bound state would calm her nerves.
Renise hummed towards the direction of Hartzwiese’s centre, before returning her attention to me.
“If you wish to keep your identity incognito, I can see guards sent to where they’re needed using my own authority, and arrange for the appropriate seizure of the goods and crowns we’ve discovered.”
I beamed at once.
My, so prudent! It’s little wonder she was chosen by Roland!
“A judicious offer. And one I’ll accept gladly, providing the burden isn’t too severe.”
“This is merely an administrative task, and little burden compared to what both yourself and Miss Coppelia regularly perform. In any event, it is only efficient. I expect I’ll be spending a significant amount of time at the baroness’s farmstead. It is quite extensive. If possible, I would like to make use of it for Rose House. I imagine having such a facility close to the Granholtz border would have its uses.”
I nodded, already forgetting the barn’s existence.
“I encourage you to use your discretion as required. My brother has put his trust in you, and so I both expect and know that you shall not disappoint in furthering the kingdom’s prosperity.”
The young woman smiled. One filled with appreciation, but also lacking ambition.
Good.
An excellent combination as far as retainers were concerned.
“Thank you. Although I worry you place too much trust in my abilities. In truth, those like Baroness Arisa would have made for a greater asset to the kingdom. Her resourcefulness must be acknowledged.”
“It is not resourcefulness my kingdom requires. It is loyalty. And hers is a pit so empty it drains others.”
“That’s true. But at least we were able to acquire some useful things from her nonetheless.”
Renise pulled out a tiny vial from the belt around her thigh.
A golden liquid was stored within, glimmering with an unnatural light.
“These were in her chamber,” she said, her eyes lacking emotion as she surveyed the bright liquid. “When we met, she actually attempted to purchase my loyalty with this.”
“A suspect vial. How quaint. And what miracle did she promise?”
“One that would wake my parents from their curse of eternal slumber.”
“... And is it?”
“I don’t believe so, no. This is one of many identical vials I found in her chamber’s desk drawer. All prominently labelled with instructions to only drink as required to stave off the effects of bloating.”
Renise returned the vial to her belt with a slightly embarrassed smile.
“It’s still useful,” she admitted. “But just not for what I require.”
I gave a simple nod as my reply.
Nothing else needed to be said.
She hoped to see her parents wake from their prison of dormancy. An understandable wish. And one I wasn’t required to supplement with the comment that no pair named the Smuggler King and the Smuggler Queen were likely to receive as light a sentence as their daughter.
I could not speak on behalf of Roland. Although I imagined that as a kind man, he would prefer not to pass judgements which were total. But as the Crown Prince, he did not have the luxury of kindness.
It would take much to change their fate.
But perhaps that’s why Renise was here, still proving true, and not accepting stomach ailment potions from a baroness.
A moment of silence followed.
Renise gave a short sigh. And that was that.
She set her eyes on the task ahead–at least until whatever words she’d parted her mouth to say were interrupted by Coppelia’s humming instead.
“Sooooooooooooooo … you just want to wake up two people eternally sleeping, right?”
A small smile met her optimistic voice.
“If a cure were readily available, I’m certain I would have found it by now. I believe one might be possible, but it would take skill and ingredients beyond any apothecary I know of.”
“Well, sure, you could go that way. But what about going straight to the source instead?”
“The source?”
“Sure. They’re asleep, right? So just ask the one in charge of where they are now.”
“I’m … not quite sure I follow?”
Coppelia clapped her hands together and beamed.
“The Spring Court is the realm of dreams. Chances are, they must have shown their faces around a few times by now. If you ask the Spring Queen nicely, she might do you a favour.”
“The Spring Queen? … The fae?”
“Mmh~ luckily, we have someone with connections here!”
Renise was startled out of her reply.
It was nothing compared to me. The one being pointed at.
“Coppelia!” I said, truly aghast at the suggestion. “The fae are not to be taken lightly. Why, I still have nightmares about my conversation with the Winter Queen! I learned a side to royalty that day which I shall never forget … and I’m quite poorer for it!”
“You met … the Winter Queen?” asked Renise, her eyes suddenly wide.
“Unfortunately, yes, but I had zero intention of meeting her, and I’ve just as little intention of meeting any other fae as well. Including the Spring Queen.”
I waved away the coming query to declare what was just as important as my lack of enthusiasm.
“Besides, I’ve not the foggiest idea how I would even hope to use these supposed connections I have.”
“Oh, that’s the easy bit,” said Coppelia, her casual disregard for what counted as ‘easy’ more terrifying than any lout I’d met today. “The hard part is getting them to do what you want. But meeting them? The fae are creatures of stories. If the time is right, they’ll speak to you–one way or another.”
“Then they must book an appointment. One which I can formally reject.”
“I mean, I don’t think you have much choice. You didn’t last time, right?”
“The last time, I was sat beside the Winter Queen’s crown. I see no fae artifacts to hook me away. And that means utterly no scenario in which I could be abducted without my express–”
I suddenly stopped, clasping my hands around my mouth.
A moment later, I raised my arms in a martial art I’d just invented, turning repeatedly on the spot.
Renise blinked at me.
“Excuse me, but what are–”
“Shhshhshh!!”
I paused, gazing intently around at the quiet, dark streets of Hartzwiese, all the while ignoring Coppelia’s giggling at my near miss.
That … That was close!
“O-Oho … oho … I almost invited something terrible. Truly, it’s perhaps best not to needlessly voice things which Fae Queens and their deviant brand of magic could use …”
Coppelia nodded at me, as proud as she was clearly disappointed.
“You’re lucky. If the Spring Queen had a sense of humour, she’d have snagged you right there and then.”
“No. If the Spring Queen had a sense of humour, she’d wait until–”
Click.
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So I'm a renter in a RV resort and found out yesterday I am getting new neighbors, met them ( well the wife) and seemed like nice people. I'm a very private person and if you read my post history maybe you can see why. So on the lot I rent I have a fence that runs directly behind my trailer, new neighbors asked yesterday if they could put a shed next to the fence line behind my trailer and I was ok with it because I'm not doing anything with the space. I'm currently recovering from foot surgery due to my diabetes. I was getting ready to do a trash run to the dumpster and the new neighbors invited me over to meet the husband, I was also introduced to one of their friends who asked what was going on with my foot and before I could answer he goes diabetic I said yeah then he goes oh can't quit eating those jelly beans and Reese's cups huh and they all start laughing, I understand they were drinking but it was rude. I don't know these people and they don't know me. I follow a rule of the company you keep saying a lot about the type of person you are. So they want to laugh guess who will be laughing tomorrow when they go to put that shed up and see the spot they cleared ( raked a bunch of leaves further behind my RV instead of picking them up) is now filled up again with said leaves and lot border markers have been put up preventing them from walking into my lot. Insult me and yeah I'm no longer comfortable with you putting something on the lot I rent and pay for best of luck finding someone else to let you do that

Everyone I spend time with my friend it feel so wonderful. Is it still love after all this time?
I miss her so much every time I leave after a visit.More of a story and a question. I really don’t even know where to start. You need to how painfully confusing this friendship was from the start. Met in grad school 2017, was taken with my friend quite quickly, and she expressed interest and when I followed up on her invites she wasn’t interested. So, I avoided her because I didn’t want to get involved. However, she ended up running into me all the time and something changed. One night right around Christmas at dinner, she just blurted out she’s polyamorous and a few other things. I didn’t know how to react and by the time I knew what the hell was going I, I didn’t know if I wanted to get involved, thought I might get hurt.
There were a number of nights at 3AM when she asked me to come back for coffee or whatever(that I remember), and I wasn’t sure of anything. However, we ended up living close together and then spent way too much time together during the pandemic going on trips alone, with her other partner. I felt myself falling for her again, but then she moved away and my life fell apart. But it didn’t end.
I need to clarify. My life falling apart wasn’t her fault. The pandemic pidgeon-holed me in a toxic job and then both my older parents had health incidents which required that I move back and start taking care of them and 80% of the household items and transitioning them to a smaller house. Couple that with my own health problems which are a result of all this stress and I feel like I’ve lost who I really learned to be.
I know I should be out doing things and looking elsewhere, but I have no time. I waste 2.5 hrs commuting to work, errands after work for my parents, come home cooking, scrape the remnants of myself together, take a sleeping pill (because the tv is never off) and go to bed. This isn’t relevant except to say I hope I’m not simply clinging to my friend for the wrong reasons.
I’ve withdrawn into myself, am nervous and generally don’t feel like dealing with people. Every other aspect of my life is so taxing right now.
Back to my friend. Knowing her changed me. Although I was confused, she still taught me how fulfilling it can be to make someone happy, communicate emotionally with someone and just feel content and happy being with them. Simple things like telling them unabashedly how something small they did made me happy, being more demonstrative with me affection, and how reciprocating is so fulfilling. The constant making fun of me always helped too. I think that I wouldn’t really have these feelings if she didn’t keep doing as much for me as I try to do for her. I don’t know why I feel embarrassed, but I feel content and so much more when I’m with her.
She gave me so much confidence and energy.
A couple months ago, we met up in NYC for four days and just spent time together. When I went pick up my car at the valet service, we hugged, said goodbye and (it sounds stupid) she said she wanted to wait with me. So we sat down on the bench, and she put her head on my shoulder. It just touched me. There’s a quote that always stuck with me from a young age, but it never really meant that much until I met her. It is “Find someone to sit with you, none of us are strong enough to do it alone.” I held it together until I drove away. I know it’s a reflection of how I’m struggling right now, but the time I spent with her, made me perk back up, be myself more.
Then last week we met up again. I drove 8 hours to spend 10 hours with her and a few friends. It made it clear to me how much time spent with her makes me feel more like my ‘actual self’ if that makes sense. She kept up bringing things up she wanted to do, and had already planned another trip.
Yes, I’m pretty sure she knows how I feel. When she moved away, I told her that she means so much to me and all the time we spent together meant the world. She stopped her car, ran back out and just squeezed me so hard. It felt like a stupid Casablanca moment. I’ve probably drunkenly said something I don’t quite remember too. To be clear, I don’t ever expect anything ‘more’. I cherish having her as a friend.
There’s always a part of me that hopes one of us won’t follow up. More often than not she asks me right before I leave if I’d like to do ‘something else’ with her that she’s already started thinking about. Or I’ll get a call right when I get home. I don’t ever say no.
Part of this post is me trying to understand me feelings. I know I want her in my life more, but that won’t work now or possibly ever. What does more mean for me? I don’t know. I get so much energy when I see her, I’m motivated to do so much with her. Seeing her giggle and have fun give me a wonderful feeling. The other 90%of my life is filled with constant stress, and indifference bordering on hate for my parents. And why does she make me feel like a more complete person? I don’t know.

You guys know what an alpine coaster is? They are like a small roller coaster you find in the mountains. They are also called summer toboggans or mountain coasters and I think there’s some long German compound word they are called in parts of Europe. They are like a roller coaster, but with much smaller one or two person sleds you just sit on instead of multi-person cars you ride in, and instead of being built with like a scaffolding or a framework the tracks are just on the ground, using the elevation of the mountain. Basically it’s a coaster track on the side of a mountain where you ride a sled down.
They are pretty fun. Or at least I used to think so. They are more “personal” than roller coasters and although you get nowhere near the speed on them that you do on a good traditional roller coaster and they can’t do corkscrews or loops or anything like that the openness and simplicity of the ride gives an impression of a much greater speed. You’re just sitting there with nothing but a little plastic sled and the track between you and the ground as it goes zooming by. It’s like the difference between how fast a go-cart feels compared to how fast a sports car feels. You know the sports car goes faster but the open, simpleness of a go-cart feels a different kind of fast. There’s plenty of POV Youtube videos if you want to get the basic idea of what they are.
I used to love alpine coasters. Used to.
My family used to go to Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge and up and down the Smokey Mountains for vacations when I was a kid and they are common in that area and I’d always rode them every chance I got.
But as with so many things after I grew up and went to college they just became part of my childhood that slipped away. They aren’t exactly common once you get away from the mountains.
Until one cool spring afternoon in 2004. I was in my final year at college and I was driving back to campus in Tennessee after a short visit to my folks in North Carolina. It was only like a 4 or 5 hour drive via the most efficient route and I had no need to be back at campus early so instead of taking the freeway all the way I got off and took part of my trip through the mountains. The scenery was nicer and I admit I liked pushing my Camaro just a little faster than I should through the twisty mountain roads.
Just after lunchtime happened upon one of those little by-the-highway tourist towns deep somewhere in the Smoky Mountains near the Carolina/Tennessee border. Nothing fancy, a gas station/truck stop, a diner, a couple of places selling tourist merch nestled deep in the mountains. I pulled into the gas station. My tank was getting low and I needed to stretch my legs, maybe grab something to eat. It was still early and I only had another couple of hours. I could kill an hour or so and still make it back to campus at a decent hour.
I pulled into the gas station and was filling my tank when I happened to glance across the road and… well I’ll be damned. There it was. “The Blue Ridge Alpine Coaster.” Nestled on the side of the mountain was a building, a mockup of a red barn, where a single railed track that led up into the mountains, where it soon got lost in the greenery. Wooden hand painted standees of cartoon character bears dressed in stereotypical “Hillbilly” getup stood around, some of them holding signs showing the ride hours and ticket costs and other info. I had to admit, as silly as it was, it made me smile.I finished pumping my gas and, well, nostalgia is a helluva thing. I decided then and there I could waste a little time riding an Alpine Coaster again after all these years before getting back on the road.
I parked my car in a corner of the truck stop's parking lot, put my phone in the center console, this being the days before smart phones when people didn’t keep their phones with them 24/7 and I didn’t want my old Nokia brick phone to fall out during the ride, locked my car and walked across the mountain highway to the Alpine Coaster building.
Getting closer, the place was less inviting. The half hearted attempt at a whimsical faux-Americana kitsch was far less effective when it brushed up against the actual decaying, run down wooden building. Hell calling it a building was generous. It was a wood frame holding up a long roof that covered the area where you got on the sleds. The wood boards creaked under my footsteps.
The only real enclosed structure was a shack that held, what I assumed, was a ticket booth. A door on the side had both a single occupancy bathroom with an out of order sign on it. An old Pepsi machine buzzed and glowed next to it.
Still the place looked alive. Ahead of me a bored looking attendant was helping a mother and her young son into one of the sleds while in a bored monotone repeating the safety brief. A few people were waiting in line at the ticket booth. Up in the mountains the playful shouts of people on the ride echoed down. Fond memories of my own childhood rides flooded my mind.10 minutes and 15 dollars later I was settling into the hard plastic seat of a bright red sled sat atop a simple aluminum rail.
I couldn’t help but grin as the sled slowly climbed the track up the mountains, making click-clack ratcheting sounds that hit my nostalgia centers hard. I felt good. The air was cool and crisp and smelled of pine.Higher and higher in the mountains we went. I don’t know if this is my mind trying to make sense of it after the fact but when I remember these moments, the last good moments, I sometimes think I remember a very slight, very subtle pit of fear in my stomach. I honestly don’t know if I felt it at the time or not or it’s just how my mind tries to make sense of it looking back at.
But either way mostly I was enjoying myself. I smiled. I was a kid again. I could hear riders in front of me let out that initial yell of terrified glee you get at the first drop of any good ride.
It peaked. I glanced around. I could see for miles, rolling hills and mountains. I the sled tipped over and zoomed down the mountain and I let out the same happy yell I heard from the other passengers.The ride zoomed down the mountain, catching speed. The mountain forest floor zoomed past, only a few feet under me. Trees zoomed past. I gave out a happy whoop as the ride banked hard around a curve and then looped back under itself.Another dip, another curve. I closed my eyes, enjoying the feel of the G-forces pulling me every which way.
There was no one exact single moment where things started to go “wrong.” The ride kept going. And going. At this point the first creeping thought entered my head.
The ride… was still going.
It just started to hit me… this ride was going on for a really long time. I had taken a dozen rides on various coasters of this type before that day and they topped out at about 5 minutes or so, and that was the long ones. Longer than a traditional roller coaster but not that long. This one had been going on for what felt like 10, maybe even 15 minutes.
I looked back over my shoulder and could only see trees, moving too fast to really get a bearing on where I was at in relation to anything.
I wasn't exactly really worried yet. Okay so I had found a particularly long alpine coaster. At the time I wasn’t 100% wasn't sure they didn’t exist or anything like that. I was a little… unnerved but nothing was happening that was impossible. Yet.
I was trying to talk myself back into just enjoying the ride and stop overthinking it, and halfway succeeded, when out of nowhere I suddenly banked hard, the track jutting out almost over a sheer cliffside. I gripped the sled more tightly as I was whipped around. The ride then dipped hard and picked up speed, barreling down the side of the mountain.
I was pushed back against the seat by the force of the drop. Jesus I didn’t remember them being this rough. I was feeling slightly nauseous. And where had this elevation drop come from I wondered? I was still in the foothills and I didn’t remember seeing anything but gentle rolling hills and light drops from looking at the ride’s route earlier. How the ride had managed such a long, steep drop in this area I didn’t know. . For the first time I hoped that the ride would be over soon. I had no idea then how much I would want that same hope to be true so much more as time went on.
With a whiplash motion I was whipped forward and then back as the ride leveled out on flat ground again, but by this point I was going fast, too fast. My neck hurt from the mild whiplash and I felt sour in my throat and for a moment the contents of my stomach threatened to come back up. For the first, but hardly the last time the ride felt unsafe. Alpine Coasters are tame affairs, much slower and gentler than full on roller coasters but this thing was throwing me around like no thrill ride I had ever been on.
I looked around. I mean I wasn’t that deep into the woods. I should have been able to see a glimpse of something; the highway, the gas station, the tourist shops, the Alpine Coaster office, something, anything. But nothing. Just trees.
I forced back some panic for the first time. I closed my eyes and counted to ten. The ride zoomed along. I counted to 60. I counted to 60 again. And again. Okay this was getting uncomfortably harder and harder to explain.
Suddenly I noticed that up ahead the track seemed to just end, for one brief, terrible moment I thought the track just ended but I was wrong. Almost without warning the track dipped in an almost vertical drop. I almost screamed as I plummeted for 20, maybe 30 seconds before flattening out again.
By this point the voice in my head that was telling me something was wrong was louder and I could no longer tell myself it was wrong. This ride could not have been this long. I tried to make sense of it, wondering if somehow I had gotten diverted onto some kind of maintenance track or, hell for one brief irrational moment even entertaining the idea that I had wound up on an actual train track somehow. But that was absurd. The rail below me was not a train track, it was still just the simple, aluminum rail of an alpine coaster and there had been no diversions or junctions in the track. I was still on the ride, as insane as that was starting to feel. Had the ride somehow looped? Again after having the thought I immediately dismissed it as crazy. There’s no way I could have missed the ride building where I got on. And what kind of ride loops over and over?
The sled zoomed through the forest, oddly never seeming to lose speed despite the relatively flat grade of the track. I cursed myself for leaving my phone in the car and not wearing a watch. I don’t know exactly how long I had been on the ride at that point but it felt like I had been on the ride for a half hour, maybe more. But time is a funny thing when you’re in a situation you’ve never been in. Could have been more, could have been less, at that point.
My pride finally failed me. I started to scream for help. I screamed out that the ride was broken, to stop it, that I needed help. I did that for about ten minutes or so I think. The ride kept going. Mostly flat, level track with occasional mild dips and turns. But the simple length of the ride grew more and more unnerving and unexplainable.
I thought about just bailing out. But the ride, impossibly, was still not slowing down and chunks of mountain rock and thick tree trunks were all around me. Bailing out without risking smashing into a rock or a tree seemed impossible.
The ride kept going.
Up ahead the forest was clearing out some, I could see the forest brightening, more sunlight making it through the canopy.
I wasn’t prepared for what I saw.
The trees stopped and I had just enough time to take in a flat, open area of rock maybe 40, 50 yards at most before another sheer cliff. The tracks twisted and turned and then shot straight down. But that wasn’t the worst of it. For a moment, a very short moment, I had a clear view for miles and the landscape was, to be blunt, totally impossible. Any possibility that I had just stumbled on some incredibly long ride was blasted out of my head. Barren, volcanic looking rock stretched for miles. Jagged, black rocky outcroppings as far as the eye could see. I was in the goddamn Smoky Mountains. They don’t look like that.
I had a few moments for the terror of that view to settle in before the cart plunged into another horrifying drop. I gripped the handles of the cheap plastic sled until my knuckles turned white. The drop felt completely vertical, like I was falling at terminal velocity. I screamed. My stomach dropped and turned. I imagined the sled coming away from the track and me just plummeting screaming to my death on the rocks below. But somehow the ride still functioned. I closed my eyes tightly and just waited for whatever was going to happen. Eventually after several what felt like a full minute of steep plunging the track again leveled out, and I opened my eyes to see myself moving at breakneck speed over that black, rocky landscape.
Now that I was moving on a more or less flat horizontal track again I took a few deep breaths. I looked over the edge of the track. Nothing but that black, jagged rock, almost looking like obsidian, zooming past. I had no idea how fast the sled was moving now. Fast. Faster than a gravity powered sled should be moving. And the track was higher off the ground now. Alpine slides usually stick pretty close to the ground, but I was 20 feet or so in the air, the track suspended in the air, a simple metal tube tower like a power pylon every few yards.
Without any immediate threat and the sled moving fast but steadily and level I was able to think about my situation again, for all the good that did me. Ahead of me the track just continued to the horizon, nothing but the same rocky landscape as far as I could see. I craned my neck to look back over my shoulder and looked back behind me and it looked the same. Even the mountains were but distant specs on the horizon behind me.
This was insane. There’s not a giant seemingly endless field of black jagged rock in the goddamn Smoky Mountains. There’s no cliff faces tall and steep enough for a multi-minute vertical drop. And alpine coasters were small affairs, not major engineering projects that span miles with pylons and vertical tracks. It made no sense.
Sadly it wasn’t going to start making any more sense anytime soon.
The ride kept going.
I was on this rocky landscape for several hours. I feel comfortable saying this because I could actually notice the sun getting lower in the sky. And the sled wasn’t slowing down despite the grade of the track being flat. I was getting cramped from sitting and stretched my legs and twisted my back as best I could. Didn’t do much help. My eyes were starting to get irritated from the constant wind in them. Worst of all it was starting to get chilly. I only had on a light jacket, a windbreaker, just something to keep the breeze off me, no real insulation. I was cold, my joints were stiff, I was hungry and thirsty. My eyes watered and my throat was so dry it was sore.
But none of that was as bad as just how little sense this all made. There’s nothing like this place anywhere near the Smoky Mountains. This was like some volcanic rock landscape. The more I thought about it the less sense it made.
The ride kept going.
My mind didn’t even try to process this. Whatever I was experiencing simply couldn’t be possible. I was crazy. I was dreaming. The CIA had kidnapped me and dosed me with some new version of LSD and I was in a straightjacket in a padded room at Area 51.
The sled kept zooming along as the sky turned to dusk. Soon the bridge disappeared from my view and I continued on along the endless, rocky, featureless landscape.
I sat back against the sled, mentally and physically numb. I was exhausted. I was thirsty. I was cramping up. I was hungry. I had to pee. I held it for as long as I could, then had no choice but just wet myself. I cried until I had no more tears left. Then I just sat there.
The ride kept going.
By the time the sun dipped below the horizon my throat felt like sandpaper. I dug around in my jacket pockets hoping to find a stick of gum or piece of candy. Nothing. I checked again, having nothing else to do. Under a crumpled store receipt in the inner pocket of my jacket was a single old, forgotten cough drop. I unwrapped it from the paper and popped it in my mouth. Saliva flooded back into my mouth and I was overwhelmed by the methanol and medicine taste. It was something at least, although I knew it would be a brief and temporary fix at best.
I felt my eyes get heavy. It was getting colder. That mountain cold. That deep cold the mountains have even into the early spring when the sun goes down. That kind that just pulls the heat right out of you. I shivered. A terrible, horrible certainty came to me. I would ride until I passed out from exhaustion or the hypothermia set in. My body would tumble off the sled to fall and skip across the rocky ground like a stone skipping across a lake, my bones breaking as I tumbled until my body finally came to a stop. If I was lucky I would be killed and not have to lie for days, broken and bruised, on the ground until death took me.
The ride kept going. The ride kept going. The fucking ride kept going.
“Fuck you” I said to the ride, my voice a horse whisper. I pulled my jacket closer around me, for all the good it did. The cold wind was slowly but surely pulling my body heat away. My shivering got worse, crossing the line from a simple normal shiver into those deep, almost violent full body ones.. I wasn’t anything you could call an experienced outdoorsman, but I knew enough to know that wasn’t a good sign.
It was getting dark. There was a full moon at least so I wasn’t totally in the dark.
About then I noticed something. The landscape, what little I could see in the fading light, was changing. It was smoothing out, becoming less rocky and craggy. Up ahead an odd, shimmering light was starting to appear on the ground.
I was over it before I even realized what it was. The tracks were going over a smooth surface.
Water. It was a lake. The odd lights I had seen were the moon, reflected in ripples on the lake.
Within minutes I was out of the view of the land. After the nearly endless rocky landscape and everything else I had seen, it scared me how little I was shocked. I didn’t like how mentally numb I was getting. I leaned over. There was enough moonlight to see the water, 15 or 20 feet below the track. The pylons holding up the track went into the water, the light wasn’t good enough to even make a guess at how far they went down or how deep the water was.I leaned back in the sled. My eyes were red and bloodshot from the constant wind. I closed them. This was a mistake.I jerked awake. I don’t know if I dozed off for a split second or an hour. My weight had shifted and I caught myself as my center of gravity was in danger of sending me off the sled and into the water.
I screamed in anger. A deep primal scream. I hurt so bad. My joints felt like they were full of glass. My limbs were full of pins and needles. I glanced over at the water. For the first time on the very edges of my brain a tiny voice started to speak up, telling me that I could be all over if I just jumped. I shut the voice up, but it scared me still.
I sat there as the ride went on. It felt like hours. Eventually the lake ended in a rocky shore line. The damned ride. There was no safe place to bail out. If the ride slowed down, it was high in the air, if it moved toward the ground it sped up. Sharp rocks, big trees, nothing you could safely bail out into.
I kept having to force myself awake. I kept dozing off. Once I felt myself falling asleep and drove a vicious uppercut into my own nose to stave it off.
I seriously started to think about how much longer I could hang on. The voice came back again. This time I didn’t shut it up. I wasn’t admitting it to myself yet, but I was starting to think about the best way to land that would end it quickly if I needed to.
Something was ahead. The track seemed to dip into the ground. I was too tired, too beaten to even get scared. I was just resigned to whatever happened at this point.
With little warning the track took my sled into a tunnel in the ground. Everything went completely pitch black. After several moments even the dim moonlight was gone.
This was the worst part. The creepy forest, the immense rocky landscape, the eerie lake… those were bad. But this was just nothing. Nothing to look at, nothing to hear, nothing for reference or sense of where I was going. The walls of the tunnel felt like they were inches from me in every direction. The air felt thick, like there wasn’t enough oxygen.
With every moment I was in that tunnel I lost a little more hope. After a long, long time I made a decision. When I got out of this tunnel, I would jump. I didn’t care anymore. Hopefully there would be a spot where I could be certain the fall would instantly kill me. I was done. The ride had beaten me. I sat there, waiting for a chance to end this on my terms. That was all I had left.
Eventually up ahead, a tiny speck of light appeared. I gathered my strength, ready to end it. I sat up, getting my legs under me so I could jump as soon as we were clear. The sled burst out of the tunnel. The dim light of the full moon was enough to be momentarily blinding after the pitch black of the tunnel.. I gave my eyes a moment to adjust.
I was back in a normal looking Appalachian forest. Rolling hills, green trees. The air smelled of pine again. I heard an owl hoot off somewhere.
Slowly I lowered myself back into a setting position, in shock. At first I refused to believe it but the ride was slowing down. I held still, making sure my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me, but no, the cheap plastic sled that had been my world for what felt like an eternity was slowing down.
Up ahead, a structure was visible, peeking out from among the trees in the dim lighting as the sled moved down the track.
It was the Alpine Slide building. The crappy fake red barn where I had boarded this cursed ride so long ago. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, sure it was either my mind or the cursed ride playing tricks with me. But the building stayed there.
It grew closer and closer. The track leveled completely out. The sled slowed down more. Before I had the time to really come to terms with it I arrived back at the building.
The sled slowed to a stop, gently pumping against another sled parked on the track. I sat there for a few moments, gasping in great big gulping fear breaths, trying to assure myself the ride didn’t have one last trick of its sleeve.
I looked around. The place was empty, deserted. The overhead lights were still on and the old Pepsi machine still glowed and buzzed, but the ticket booth was dark and empty, a metal gate pulled down over the ticket window.
Suddenly it hit me that I was free and I practically leapt out of the sled and onto the platform. I immediately collapsed. My legs were jelly and my head was spinning. I tried to stand up again and doubled over, dry heaving. Have you ever been out on a boat for a day and have that weird reverse motion sickness when you’re back on solid land? It was like that times a hundred. My inner ear was literally pounding, all the motion had really done a number on it.
I laid there for a few moments and eventually forced myself to stand up on my two wobbling legs. I looked around, a horrible certainty creeping into my mind that there would be no exit, no way off the platform but to my relief an exit turnstyle, one of those full height ones, was set into the fence that surrounded the ride property.
I went through it and found myself back on the main road. The truckstop was still there, still open but far less busy. My car sat in the same corner of the parking lot I had left it.
I allowed myself one look back, just one quick one. The metal skeleton of the Alpine Slide track sat there, dark and quiet but otherwise normal.
I stumbled-ran back to my car, dug the keys out of my pocket, and collapsed inside. When the door shut I let out a primal scream, the tons of fear and confusion and anger all fusing into a single, raw emotion. I screamed again and again.
After a few moments I felt like I was emotionally at least back to a place where I could act, although I wasn’t sure yet what to do next. Not really knowing what to do I cranked the car. The A/C had been on low when I shut off the car and it came roaring back to life and cold air blowing on me almost sent me back into a full on panic attack. I fumbled with the climate controls until the air stopped blowing directly on me, then calmed down enough to turn the heat on, helping to get the chill out of my bones. There was a half full bottle of water in the center console cup holder and I grabbed it and chugged it. Nothing ever tasted as good before or sense as that few ounces of water.
That was when I noticed the clock on the radio head unit. It was 4:17 in the morning. It had been about one, one thirty or so in the afternoon when I got on the accursed ride.
Over 15 hours. I had been on the goddamn ride for over 15 hours. Over half a day.
I just sat there. Warming up. Calming down. I was exhausted. I was dehydrated. I can’t even describe how my head felt. I probably had at least a minor case of hypothermia. I thought about going into the gas station and asking for help but what would I even say, and more than anything I just wanted to get away from this place. And I just wanted to get away. I wanted to be nowhere near that damn ride.
I put the Camaro in gear and pulled into the street and in panic I immediately slammed on the brakes. I was lucky there was no traffic on the road at that moment. The feeling of accelerating to just normal surface street speeds made me sick to my stomach. I gathered myself and very slowly accelerated the car I usually treated with a very heavy foot up to 30 miles an hour. Every time I tried to accelerate at a pace faster than “Old Lady Going to Church, Uphill” I would have a panic attack. I was okay once I was up to speed, but accelerating freaked me out after being on that ride.
I drove about 30 minutes, putting some arbitrary amount of distance between myself and the coaster. Eventually I made it back to where the twisty mountain road met back up with a major road that would eventually meet back up with the highway. After a few more minutes of driving I saw the onramp for the highway. There was one of those big truckstop travel plazas and pulled in, parking right up at the door. I smelled like pee and I can only imagine how I looked, but I didn’t care.
I kept a couple of emergency 20s in the back of my wallet and spent it on the biggest bottle of water the store had, an overpriced bottle of eye drops, and a huge travel mug of coffee. The clerk looked at me as if he was expecting me to either drop dead or rob him the entire time.
Back in my car I downed the coffee. I put a few eye drops in each of my eyes and sat there as the caffeine took effect until I felt like I could make it back to my apartment. The sun was just coming up when I finally pulled out of the truck stop and got on the freeway. I slowly, very slowly, accelerated up to highway speed, put the Camaro in cruise control, and let the miles start to drift away. I turned on the radio, I needed to hear human voices. Every time my mind went back to what had just happened I turned the radio up louder, eventually drowning it out with painful levels of rock music. I wasn’t ready to think about it yet. Yes looking back I know I was just in denial. I finally made it back to the crappy little apartment I had off campus, a little two story walk up studio. I let myself in and collapsed on the cheap couch. I was asleep before I even had the time to decide whether or not to do anything else. I woke up later that afternoon. I took a shower and ate a meal and didn’t think about the ride. I washed the pee stained filthy clothes I had been wearing and didn’t think about the ride. I went back to class and didn’t think about the ride. Every time I thought about the ride I forced it out of my head. I’m sure this wasn’t the most mentally healthy thing to do but what can you say?
I didn’t forget about it, don’t be silly. This isn’t the kind of thing you forget. One day while looking up something else in the university’s library my curiosity got the better of me and I looked up the Alpine Slide. No website but a few Google Map and Yelp mentions. None of them mentioned anything weird, certainly nothing even remotely like what I experienced. Near as I can tell it closed sometimes in the winter of 2012.
Life went on. I mean, that’s what it does. The next day was a little better. And the day after that a little better. And the day after that a little better still. I met a nice girl. Graduated. Got married. Got a nice house in the suburbs. Got a dog. Had a daughter. Spent a lot of time happy and not thinking about being trapped on an endless alpine coaster.And that was my life for many, many years after that.
Until a few weeks back when as a very different person I found myself driving a boring and safe mid sized family SUV through those same mountains. My wife Carol, 5 months pregnant, sat in the passenger seat, our 6 year old daughter Emily in a booster seat in the back, and Max our mixed breed mutt next to her. It had been a nice pleasant trip, driving back from visiting her folks.
I hadn’t thought about that fucking ride in so long I barely registered that I was in the same general area until it was too late. Suddenly I realized that little mountain tourist trap town was only a few minutes down the road. I swallowed hard and gripped the steering wheel hard. Carol was looking out the window at the scenery and Emily was deep into some kid’s Youtube video on an iPad. I forced myself to keep my breath steady as we rounded the corner.The town was still there, sorta. Time had not been kind to it. The gas station was still there, at some point it had been bought out by Shell. The tourist trap shops were still there. One of them was now a vape shop. The diner was closed, the building looking like it sat unused for a long time.
But of course that’s not what I cared about. A looked over at the site where the Alpine Coaster once stood. It was gone. The kitschy fake barn was gone. The site was just a bare concrete slab with a chainlink fence around it. Faded “no trespassing” and “for sale” signs hung off the fence. A pile of old, decaying lumber that might have once long ago been part of the structure covered part of the old lot. No sign of the track remained outside of some old concrete support posts dotting the side of the mountain.
I exhaled out a breath I hadn’t even realized I had been holding in. Soon the little town disappeared in my rear view mirror.
About a half hour later we stopped for gas. I pulled up to a gas pump across from a massive motorhome. Max stuck his head out the window and started barking at a little white dog, a toy breed of some kind, in the window of the motorhome. Carol and Emily immediately headed into the store to restock on snacks while I fueled up.
I stood there, a half smile on my lips as Max barked and wagged his tail in an attempt to attract the attention of the other dog while I filled up the tank, said dog doing an admirable job of ignoring him.
Right about the time I finished fueling up and cleaning the bugs off the windshield Carol returned from inside the store, Emily in tow, arms filled with two full sized bags of Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips and what looked to be a half dozen individually wrapped pickles.
I raised an eyebrow at the collection of food but knew better than to question a pregnant woman's snack choices.
“Should we take Max for a quick walk?” Carol asked. The travel plaza had a nice little gated dog walking area off to the side.
“Yeah probably not a bad idea, he’s been cooped up in the car for a few hours.” I said. Max, upon hearing his name and the word “walk” , forgot about the other dog and upgraded from wagging his tail to wagging his entire body while making whining sounds and staring right at me.
About this time I became half aware that the big motor home next to us was pulling away. I didn’t think much of it, outside of doing a quick automatic mental check to make sure Emily was well clear of the moving vehicle, but she was safely between me and our SUV, well out of the way.
But that was when Emily looked behind me and cheerfully yelled “Daddy look a roller coaster! Can I ride the coaster?”
It’s cliche as fuck I know but my blood went cold.
I turned around slowly, certain in my knowledge that terrible old decrepit Alpine Coaster would be there, having just popped into existence to trap me again.
That.. is not what I saw. Sure enough there was a coaster there, one I hadn’t noticed earlier because it had mostly been blocked by the motor home, but there it was. It was even an Alpine Coaster.
But it was not the same coaster I had encountered those years ago. That was immediately obvious. It was a small but modern and newish looking setup with neon lights and a bunch of people. There was an actual building where you bought tickets and a little snack stand.
“Daddy! Can we go on the coaster!” Emily asked again.
My mouth made motions but no words came out. I glanced over at Carol, hoping she’d say we didn’t have time but to my horror she smiled and said “You know what? That does sound like fun. Daddy will take you while I take Max for a walk.”
My mind raced, trying to think of a way to get out of it. But Emily was already dragging me across the parking lot to the entrance.
I patted my pocket, making sure my phone was in it. Every fiber of my being was screaming to run away. I slept walked through the line and the ticket booth while Emily bounced happily.
We got into a two seat plastic sled. This one was actually a lot nicer than the one my mind wouldn’t stop thinking about. It had two nice cushioned seats, big grab handles, even a nice rollbar.
The sled started up the track. I fought back the panic. I swerved my head around, keeping the building in my view. I was terrified of losing sight of it. We made it to the top and Emily did a happy squeal as we started down the side of the mountain.
My heart raced. Any second, any second my mind told me we’d lose sight of the building and then the ride would never end. The ride sped down the mountain. My mind tortured me with thoughts of not only going through it again, but seeing Emily go through it. The ride went around a big, banking turn. Emily kept shouting happily. How long before Carol reported us missing I wondered? Could I keep Emily calm? What if it lasted even longer this time? What if this time it never ended?
And then we were back at the start of the ride. The same attendant who had helped us into the sled was helping Emily out. I stepped out. The attendant gave me a brief look but said nothing. I guess I looked a little wild eyed.
I was fine. Emily was fine. It had been a perfectly normal, fun ride.
“That was fun Daddy! Thank you!” Emily said. I forced a smile back. “It was fun.” I responded, hoping like I sounded like I meant it.
I took Emily’s hand and we walked back to the car. Max saw us coming and barked happily. Carol looked up from the pint of Ben and Jerry’s she had somehow acquired and added to her snack collection while we were gone and smiled at us.
“Did you have fun?” she asked.
“It was so fun Mommy!” Emily said.
Carol smiled down at her, but then looked at me and frowned. “Are you okay?” Carol could read my face a lot better than the attendant could. “You’re pale.”
I smiled and this time the smile felt real. “Ya know what. Yeah, I think I am okay.”
Carol looked a little puzzled, but didn’t press it. We loaded Emily back in her booster seat, stopped Max from trying desperately to eat half a discarded gas station hot dog off the ground and got him back in the car. Carol and her small collection of snack food took her place in the passenger seat and I got in the driver's seat.I smiled. I cranked the car. I put it in gear. I pulled out of the gas station and back on the road, this time accelerating just a little faster than I had in years.

🔥Welcome to Modern Anarchy🔥 - A Dedicated Community of Anarchy Enthusiasts!
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org
👾Anarchy at Its Finest with a Dedicated Community:
• Hack like a pro, build empires, survive the chaos.
• No bans ever - only mutes for hate speech, hard slurs, or chat spam.
️🕹️ Forge Your Path in a Pure Vanilla World:
• Experience the true essence of Minecraft with no vanilla altering plugins or meddling admins.
• Reach your potential in this survival wasteland with no resets ever.
🌍 World Exploration Extravaganza:
• Discover a vast 3x3 million block world border.
• Respawn within 500 blocks of 0 0, allowing you to redefine your survival journey.
• Explore and exploit the nether roof.
🔒No Teleports, No Shortcuts: Authentic Vanilla Anarchy
• Hard Difficulty, No Compromises: Test your survival skills in the toughest conditions.
• Uncover the mysteries below spawn - good luck!
💬 Shape the Future with Direct Input: Join our Discord and engage with the community.
• Server owner, Vorlice, is available for technical queries.
️• Launched in July 2023, always synced with the latest version (1.20.4).
• Powered by robust hardware in New York for a lag-free experience.
💎 Support the Chaos:
Vote or donate to color your name in chat and stand out in the vibrant community.
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org

🔥Welcome to Modern Anarchy🔥 - A Dedicated Community of Anarchy Enthusiasts!
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org
👾Anarchy at Its Finest with a Dedicated Community:
• Hack like a pro, build empires, survive the chaos.
• No bans ever - only mutes for hate speech, hard slurs, or chat spam.
️🕹️ Forge Your Path in a Pure Vanilla World:
• Experience the true essence of Minecraft with no vanilla altering plugins or meddling admins.
• Reach your potential in this survival wasteland with no resets ever.
🌍 World Exploration Extravaganza:
• Discover a vast 3x3 million block world border.
• Respawn within 500 blocks of 0 0, allowing you to redefine your survival journey.
• Explore and exploit the nether roof.
🔒No Teleports, No Shortcuts: Authentic Vanilla Anarchy
• Hard Difficulty, No Compromises: Test your survival skills in the toughest conditions.
• Uncover the mysteries below spawn - good luck!
💬 Shape the Future with Direct Input: Join our Discord and engage with the community.
• Server owner, Vorlice, is available for technical queries.
️• Launched in July 2023, always synced with the latest version (1.20.4).
• Powered by robust hardware in New York for a lag-free experience.
💎 Support the Chaos:
Vote or donate to color your name in chat and stand out in the vibrant community.
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org

🔥Welcome to Modern Anarchy🔥 - A Dedicated Community of Anarchy Enthusiasts!
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org
👾Anarchy at Its Finest with a Dedicated Community:
• Hack like a pro, build empires, survive the chaos.
• No bans ever - only mutes for hate speech, hard slurs, or chat spam.
️🕹️ Forge Your Path in a Pure Vanilla World:
• Experience the true essence of Minecraft with no vanilla altering plugins or meddling admins.
• Reach your potential in this survival wasteland with no resets ever.
🌍 World Exploration Extravaganza:
• Discover a vast 3x3 million block world border.
• Respawn within 500 blocks of 0 0, allowing you to redefine your survival journey.
• Explore and exploit the nether roof.
🔒No Teleports, No Shortcuts: Authentic Vanilla Anarchy
• Hard Difficulty, No Compromises: Test your survival skills in the toughest conditions.
• Uncover the mysteries below spawn - good luck!
💬 Shape the Future with Direct Input: Join our Discord and engage with the community.
• Server owner, Vorlice, is available for technical queries.
️• Launched in July 2023, always synced with the latest version (1.20.4).
• Powered by robust hardware in New York for a lag-free experience.
💎 Support the Chaos:
Vote or donate to color your name in chat and stand out in the vibrant community.
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org

🔥Welcome to Modern Anarchy🔥 - A Dedicated Community of Anarchy Enthusiasts!
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org
👾Anarchy at Its Finest with a Dedicated Community:
• Hack like a pro, build empires, survive the chaos.
• No bans ever - only mutes for hate speech, hard slurs, or chat spam.
️🕹️ Forge Your Path in a Pure Vanilla World:
• Experience the true essence of Minecraft with no vanilla altering plugins or meddling admins.
• Reach your potential in this survival wasteland with no resets ever.
🌍 World Exploration Extravaganza:
• Discover a vast 3x3 million block world border.
• Respawn within 500 blocks of 0 0, allowing you to redefine your survival journey.
• Explore and exploit the nether roof.
🔒No Teleports, No Shortcuts: Authentic Vanilla Anarchy
• Hard Difficulty, No Compromises: Test your survival skills in the toughest conditions.
• Uncover the mysteries below spawn - good luck!
💬 Shape the Future with Direct Input: Join our Discord and engage with the community.
• Server owner, Vorlice, is available for technical queries.
️• Launched in July 2023, always synced with the latest version (1.20.4).
• Powered by robust hardware in New York for a lag-free experience.
💎 Support the Chaos:
Vote or donate to color your name in chat and stand out in the vibrant community.
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org

🔥Welcome to Modern Anarchy🔥 - A Dedicated Community of Anarchy Enthusiasts!
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org
👾Anarchy at Its Finest with a Dedicated Community:
• Hack like a pro, build empires, survive the chaos.
• No bans ever - only mutes for hate speech, hard slurs, or chat spam.
️🕹️ Forge Your Path in a Pure Vanilla World:
• Experience the true essence of Minecraft with no vanilla altering plugins or meddling admins.
• Reach your potential in this survival wasteland with no resets ever.
🌍 World Exploration Extravaganza:
• Discover a vast 3x3 million block world border.
• Respawn within 500 blocks of 0 0, allowing you to redefine your survival journey.
• Explore and exploit the nether roof.
🔒No Teleports, No Shortcuts: Authentic Vanilla Anarchy
• Hard Difficulty, No Compromises: Test your survival skills in the toughest conditions.
• Uncover the mysteries below spawn - good luck!
💬 Shape the Future with Direct Input: Join our Discord and engage with the community.
• Server owner, Vorlice, is available for technical queries.
️• Launched in July 2023, always synced with the latest version (1.20.4).
• Powered by robust hardware in New York for a lag-free experience.
💎 Support the Chaos:
Vote or donate to color your name in chat and stand out in the vibrant community.
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org

🔥Welcome to Modern Anarchy🔥 - A Dedicated Community of Anarchy Enthusiasts!
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org
👾Anarchy at Its Finest with a Dedicated Community:
• Hack like a pro, build empires, survive the chaos.
• No bans ever - only mutes for hate speech, hard slurs, or chat spam.
️🕹️ Forge Your Path in a Pure Vanilla World:
• Experience the true essence of Minecraft with no vanilla altering plugins or meddling admins.
• Reach your potential in this survival wasteland with no resets ever.
🌍 World Exploration Extravaganza:
• Discover a vast 3x3 million block world border.
• Respawn within 500 blocks of 0 0, allowing you to redefine your survival journey.
• Explore and exploit the nether roof.
🔒No Teleports, No Shortcuts: Authentic Vanilla Anarchy
• Hard Difficulty, No Compromises: Test your survival skills in the toughest conditions.
• Uncover the mysteries below spawn - good luck!
💬 Shape the Future with Direct Input: Join our Discord and engage with the community.
• Server owner, Vorlice, is available for technical queries.
️• Launched in July 2023, always synced with the latest version (1.20.4).
• Powered by robust hardware in New York for a lag-free experience.
💎 Support the Chaos:
Vote or donate to color your name in chat and stand out in the vibrant community.
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org

🔥Welcome to Modern Anarchy🔥 - A Dedicated Community of Anarchy Enthusiasts!
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org
👾Anarchy at Its Finest with a Dedicated Community:
• Hack like a pro, build empires, survive the chaos.
• No bans ever - only mutes for hate speech, hard slurs, or chat spam.
️🕹️ Forge Your Path in a Pure Vanilla World:
• Experience the true essence of Minecraft with no vanilla altering plugins or meddling admins.
• Reach your potential in this survival wasteland with no resets ever.
🌍 World Exploration Extravaganza:
• Discover a vast 3x3 million block world border.
• Respawn within 500 blocks of 0 0, allowing you to redefine your survival journey.
• Explore and exploit the nether roof.
🔒No Teleports, No Shortcuts: Authentic Vanilla Anarchy
• Hard Difficulty, No Compromises: Test your survival skills in the toughest conditions.
• Uncover the mysteries below spawn - good luck!
💬 Shape the Future with Direct Input: Join our Discord and engage with the community.
• Server owner, Vorlice, is available for technical queries.
️• Launched in July 2023, always synced with the latest version (1.20.4).
• Powered by robust hardware in New York for a lag-free experience.
💎 Support the Chaos:
Vote or donate to color your name in chat and stand out in the vibrant community.
🌐 Server IP: modern-anarchy.org

# ✰ 𝐏𝐨𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐌𝐏 ✰
​
**𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐨𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫**
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▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
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> [🗣️] Active Community
> [👾] Custom GUI
> [💰] Shops and Money System
> [⚡️] Weekly Events
> [🔮] Mini Games
> [🚨] Fair rules and punishments
> [🔖] Great Builders
> [📌] Amazing Staff Team
> [🎉] City’s and Teams
​
** 𝐈𝐧𝐟𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧**
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> Potato SMP is a active realm with a good community of players from all over the world we have great builders and amazing pvpers. We have weekly events like spleef, pvp tournaments and more, Spawn is greek themed and has a town on the borders with weekly elections for mayor!
​
** 𝐉𝐨𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐅𝐨𝐫 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐦 𝐈𝐧𝐯𝐢𝐭𝐞.
𝐖𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐩𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐣𝐨𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐇𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐧! **
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https://discord.com/invite/Zp5UFjtuVz

Being a natural skeptic, this is a story I never thought I’d be telling. I grew up reading those short, half-edited horror stories that were so popular on the internet, scaring myself out of sleep too many times to count as a kid. These days, I’m still too scared to fall asleep, just like I was when I was 11 reading stories on boards I had no business browsing. This time, though, it isn’t typed words on my aging laptop that have my heart unable to beat calmly in my chest. It isn’t the long traded campfire story that has the hairs on my neck standing in unease.
It’s the envelope sitting on my desk, taunting me as I glance at it from across the room. The top torn open haphazardly, its contents situated neatly against the worn wood grain.
It’s the words that are typed so neatly along the page, bringing back every foul memory I can conjure.
“Thank you for donating.
Come back and see us again soon,
Mr. Weller.”
~
The sun hung lazily in the sky, casting a golden hue over the endless river of asphalt stretching out before me. This highway, flanked by gnarled mesquite trees and sporadic billboards advertising the next southern baptist church, had become somewhat of a familiar friend over the years. It was the unofficial gateway between my life at college and my small hometown nestled on the border of Texas and Louisiana.
I adjusted my review mirror, catching a glimpse of my own tired reflection. Summer break was finally here and I had high-tailed it from the campus as soon as my last final exam hit my professor’s desk. Gone was the grueling cycle of exams, papers, and endless nights spent hunched over textbooks. Whoever said that the college years were the best of their life needed to find the nearest sharp object to take a seat on.
As I drove, the familiar scenery slipping by in a soothing blur, my phone rang, jolting me from my thoughts. The screen flashed “Mom”, causing the involuntary roll of my eyes.
“Hey, Mom, I’m on the road. What’s up,” I spoke into the phone, trying to keep the exasperation out of my voice.
”Hi, sweetheart! How close are you to home?” Her voice was warm and overly sweet, exactly the tone she used when she was about to ask for an inconvenient favor.
“Probably a few hours out. Why?”
“Perfect! Listen, can you do me a favor and pick up a case of beer for your dad? He invited his friends over tonight and I don’t have time to run to the store with all the cooking-,” she explained quickly, probably sensing my sigh of annoyance before I could even take a breath.
”Mom,” I interrupted evenly, “you do realize there are, like, zero places to stop for miles, right? The last couple hours are practically deserted.”
“I know, but most gas stations always have the kind your dad likes. Just stop at the next one you see, okay?”
I groaned internally, glancing at my half full gas gauge. I had filled up the tank this morning specifically so I wouldn’t have to stop once on the drive.
“Fine, I’ll see what I can do.”
”You’re the best,” Mom sighed in relief, her tone calm again. “Drive safe, honey.”
With that, she hung up, leaving me to the rhythmic drone of the road and my dusty second hand CD’s once again.
I kept my eyes peeled for the next gas station, hoping to get the beer run out of the way sooner rather than later. About 20 minutes after Mom’s call, a rundown gas station came into view, its neon sky flickering erratically against the dusky sky. Like most gas stations in the middle-of-nowhere-south, it looked like it hadn’t seen a renovation since at least the 70’s.
Pulling in, I parked next to a rusted out pickup and stepped out, the heat and humidity immediately oppressive. The place reeked of old oil and dust, the air thick with the smell of mildew. I made my way inside, the crude “bell” over the door made of old fishing lures and soda caps jingling half-heartedly as I entered.
If I thought the outside of the joint was sad, the inside was plain pathetic. Dimly lit and cluttered with off brand snacks and outdated magazines, I wouldn’t be surprised if it hadn’t been stocked since at least the 70’s. I quickly located the cooler, grabbing a case of Keystone Light and headed to the counter. I tried not to breathe the air in too deeply, a little afraid of whatever strange diseases probably lingered.
The attendant behind the counter was a greasy, wiry man with sunken eyes and a gaunt face. He glanced up from his equally disheveled book, watching me approach with an intensity that made me uneasy. Placing the beer on the counter, I fished out my license, hoping to make this transaction as quick as possible. He eyed me while I pulled my wallet out, his voice reeking of prolonged cigarette and cheap whiskey.
“Headed to Texas?” he gruffed.
I nodded slowly, trying to piece together how he knew. I was still at least an hour and a half from the border. “Yeah, lucky guess.” I chuckled uneasily.
”Not lucky at all,” he drawled out, “Saw yer license plate.”
I turned towards the glass door, seeing the direct line to my car.
“Ah,” I responded, not quite sure what else to add as I put down my drivers license next to the case of beer.
Is this how social interactions at gas stations are supposed to go?
The greasy man picked up my license, his gaze lingering on it a bit too long as he rang the beer up without glancing at the register.
“You’re an organ donor,” he remarked, casual, as if it were something he asked every day.
Nope. Definitely not a normal interaction.
”Uh, yeah. Just in case, I guess.”
He handed back the license and I fought the urge to wipe whatever strange grime he accumulated on his hands off my card.
“Makes you a good person,” he nodded, offering me a rotted grin.
I forced a smile, increasingly eager to get the hell out of this place. “How much?”
”Fifteen seventy three.” He replied, his accent catching over the vowels.
I handed over two wrinkled 10s, wondering if I should tell him to keep the change so I wouldn’t have to handle anything else he touched. Before I could decide, the man spoke again, peering back at the door.
”Yer headed the wrong way if yer trynna get to Texas. Should take the next left up ahead.”
I frowned, unable to keep up my polite mask much longer. “The road’s straight the whole way,” I argued, “I’ve driven it a hundred times.”
The grimy mess of a man simply smiled, a thin, almost predatory smile.
“Only bein polite. Suit yerself”
I took my change and beer, muttering a quick thanks before bolting it out of there. The encounter left an uncomfortable feeling in my chest, and I couldn’t shake the feeling of those piercing eyes on my back as I walked to my car.
Last time I do a favor for mom, I thought dramatically.
Once inside the safety of my car, I locked the doors and started the engine, eager to put distance between myself and that disgusting gas station. The man’s words and shit-eating grin echoed in my mind, but I dismissed them. The road home was straight, I knew that much for certain.
As the miles ticked by, I found myself turning the music up louder and louder, trying to shake off the unease from the encounter. I tried focusing on the familiar landmarks and the lyrics of the songs I’d heard a thousand times. Thankfully, it only took a few songs for it to work.
The sun began to dip lower into the sky, casting long shadows that stretched across the road. I figured I was about an hour from home at this point, my mind itching to be home.
It took me longer than I’d like to admit to see that something was seemingly… wrong.
When I glanced to the side, expecting fields of unkempt brush and patches of cactus, instead I saw short, twisted trees. My eyebrows furrowed, trying to make sense of the misplaced flora. I let off the gas slightly, slowing down the car to take in the patches of damp, soggy earth peppering the fields. I looked behind me, my brain desperate to rationalize the sudden change of environment. I gripped the steering wheel tighter, a knot of anxiety forming in my stomach.
This wasn’t right. I had driven this route countless times and the scenery had never changed so drastically. How in the world had I driven myself into a bog?
The road, usually straightforward and predictable, now seemed to wind and twist as my car crept along it, each bend revealing more of the eerie, waterlogged terrain. Doubts crept in, swift and harsh. Had I missed a turn? Was that psycho right after all?
The feeling of unease grew stronger with each passing mile. The familiar landmarks were gone, replaced by dense foliage and the occasional decrepit and rotted building. I glanced at my phone, picking it up in hopes of checking my GPS, but my heart sank when I saw the “no service” icon in the corner.
Panic began to set in, a cold sweat breaking out on my forehead. I needed to find a way back to the main road, or at least to a road sign.
Just as the sense of dread threatened to overwhelm me, I spotted a building up ahead, its bright lights cutting through the encroaching darkness of dusk. Relief flooded through me. Whatever this place is, surely someone in there can tell me where I got turned around.
However, the sight before me only had my eyebrows furrowing deeper. A clean, well-lit, white building stood amidst the desolate landscape, almost cartoonishly out of place. It looked brand new, too pristine for its surroundings. Like a beacon of hope in a sea of… muck.
Desperation overrode my hesitancy of such a place, fueling my decision to pull over. I parked my car in the well-paved lot, comforted by the other vehicles sitting under the bright lights.
I made my way to the entrance, the glass doors sliding open smoothly as I approached. The stark white walls and sterile smell hit me immediately, a stark contrast to the humid smell of wood rot outside.
Is this some sort of clinic?
I paused as I looked around, my eyes landing on a front desk. A cheery looking woman with a bright smile sat behind it, her eyes already on me.
”Good evening! Are you here to donate?” she called out, her voice light and airy.
I turned back to the door for a moment, my instincts not quite thrilled being in such a strange place, but the idea of trying to get myself un- lost in the dark pushed me further towards the front desk.
”Uh, no. I’m actually lost,” I responded, giving the woman a weak smile. “I’m trying to get to Texas and I think I may have taken a wrong turn. Can you point me in the right direction?”
Her smile didn’t falter, but there was a flicker of something else in her eyes. Disappointment? Annoyance? It was hard to tell.
”Of course, sugar. But why don’t you take a seat first?”
I glanced around to what I now assumed was a waiting room. The occupants were an odd assortment of characters, each making me more uneasy than the last. An elderly man in disheveled clothes sat closest, muttering to himself while looking straight through me.
A few seats down sat a young woman with stringy hair, as if she had just gotten out of the shower. Her eyes looked red and puffy and I could only assume she either was terribly allergic to bogs, or she had been crying for a while.
Next, a man with a little girl sitting beside him caught my attention. The girl clutched a small stuffed bunny, her eyes regarding me curiously. She seemed to be the only person aware of my existence and I threw a small smile her way. Her eyes shifted immediately, darting nervously back to the man beside her. The man had no reaction, continuing to stare straight ahead with a vacant expression.
Lastly, a businessman sat in the corner, his wrinkled suit and messy hair contradicting his aloof demeanor. He held a phone to his ear, checking his watch intermittently. The whole scene of the room reeked of impatience and unease, making my skin crawl.
What the hell is this place?
I turned back to the front desk, forcing a smile. “Listen, ma’am. I’m really just looking for directions. I don’t need an appointment.”
The woman tilted her head slightly, her smile never wavering. “Mr. Weller can see you for a donation. It won’t take long.”
“I really don’t have time for that. I just need to get back on the road,” I insisted, the edge of desperation beginning to creep into my voice.
She ignored my plea, typing something into the computer. “Mr. Weller will be with you shortly. Please, take a seat.”
Frustration boiled over. I was about to argue further when I noticed the other patients had started to stare, their gazes heavy and expectant. The atmosphere in the room shifted to feel charged, almost oppressive.
Deciding I had seen quite enough, I muttered quickly. ”Thanks, but I’m going to pass,” and turned on my heel, making a beeline for the exit.
The nurse’s cheerful farewell followed me out, a stark contrast to the chill that had settled in my bones.
I hurried back to my car, the clinic’s lights painting long shadows across the parking lot. Sliding into the driver’s seat, I locked the doors and took a deep breath, trying to steady my racing heart. The “clinic” had rattled me more than I cared to admit.
As I started the engine and pulled back onto the road, the clinic quickly disappeared from view, swallowed by the hungry night. My mind raced, grappling with the bizarre turn of events. The woman at the front desk’s insistence, the strange people in the waiting room, and the clinic itself…
none of it made sense.
Determined to put this fever dream behind me and find my way home, I refocused on the road ahead, hoping that with a bit of luck, I could retrace my steps and escape this unsettling detour. The landscape grew darker, the swamp closing in around me, but I pressed on, clinging to the desperate hope that familiar sights were just around the next bend.
The feeling of unease clung to me like an unwanted second skin as I drove further on, minutes passing with no change. Eventually, at least an hour passed, the monotony of the road broken only by the occasional curve and the distant croaking of frogs. I had long since shut off my radio, seeing as no amount of Lynyrd Skynyrd could make the situation better.
My eyes strained against the darkness, searching for any road signs or landmarks.
Yet as time wore on, familiar trees passing by, an alarming realization began to settle in.
Despite making no turns. Despite the road seemingly taking me far away,
I was back where I started.
Bright lights pierced the gloom ahead, the parking lot coming into view mocking my attempt to leave. My heart sank, a cold wave of dread washing over me the closer I got.
I was back at the clinic.

Welcome to karlssonSMP! ✨
What started in late August 2023 by a couple of friends who decided to invite new players turned into a fun and small community of like-minded players, our goal is to make it feel like you're just playing with friends.
At karlssonSMP our priority is to maintain the essence of the original game by preserving its vanilla aspects. However, we've implemented a few quality of life datapacks to ensure a smoother experience for all players.
⏩ Apply here: Discord
⚔️ Enhanced Gameplay: Experience the best of both worlds with vanilla gameplay complemented by carefully selected quality-of-life datapacks. Dive into a seamless gaming experience with features like custom armor statues for personalized aesthetics, mini blocks for intricate builds, anti-grief measures against creepers and endermen, player head drops upon vanquishing opponents, their heads will now serve as trophies and more mob heads where mobs have a chance of dropping their head.

• Multiplayersleep
• Hermitcraft inspired
• Shopping district
• Squaremap
• Respectful and fun members
• 10k World border
• Map reset every 6 months (S3 begins at the end of June 2024)

You can find out more information about the server and its datapacks on our discord!
🚫 Zero Tolerance Policy: Enjoy a safe and fair gaming environment with strict rules against stealing, cheating, and griefing. Our community upholds integrity and respect for all players, ensuring a fun and enjoyable experience for everyone.
🔒 Server Details: Our Java Edition server runs on PaperMC and is located in Europe, ensuring a smooth gameplay. Currently, we are on version 1.20.4.
⏩ How to Join:
Applying is easy! Simply hop onto our discord server and submit your application. Join a community of like-minded gamers and become part of the karlssonSMP family. We welcome all players, from casual builders to hardcore survivalists.
See you on karlssonSMP! ✨🚀

Welcome to karlssonSMP! ✨
What started in late August 2023 by a couple of friends who decided to invite new players turned into a fun and small community of like-minded players, our goal is to make it feel like you're just playing with friends.
At karlssonSMP our priority is to maintain the essence of the original game by preserving its vanilla aspects. However, we've implemented a few quality of life datapacks to ensure a smoother experience for all players.
⏩ Apply here: Discord
⚔️ Enhanced Gameplay: Experience the best of both worlds with vanilla gameplay complemented by carefully selected quality-of-life datapacks. Dive into a seamless gaming experience with features like custom armor statues for personalized aesthetics, mini blocks for intricate builds, anti-grief measures against creepers and endermen, player head drops upon vanquishing opponents, their heads will now serve as trophies and more mob heads where mobs have a chance of dropping their head.

• Multiplayersleep
• Hermitcraft inspired
• Shopping district
• Squaremap
• Respectful and fun members
• 10k World border
• Map reset every 6 months (S3 begins at the end of June 2024)

You can find out more information about the server and its datapacks on our discord!
🚫 Zero Tolerance Policy: Enjoy a safe and fair gaming environment with strict rules against stealing, cheating, and griefing. Our community upholds integrity and respect for all players, ensuring a fun and enjoyable experience for everyone.
🔒 Server Details: Our Java Edition server runs on PaperMC and is located in Europe, ensuring a smooth gameplay. Currently, we are on version 1.20.4.
⏩ How to Join:
Applying is easy! Simply hop onto our discord server and submit your application. Join a community of like-minded gamers and become part of the karlssonSMP family. We welcome all players, from casual builders to hardcore survivalists.
See you on karlssonSMP! ✨🚀

Welcome to karlssonSMP! ✨
What started in late August 2023 by a couple of friends who decided to invite new players turned into a fun and small community of like-minded players, our goal is to make it feel like you're just playing with friends.
At karlssonSMP our priority is to maintain the essence of the original game by preserving its vanilla aspects. However, we've implemented a few quality of life datapacks to ensure a smoother experience for all players.
⏩ Apply here: Discord
⚔️ Enhanced Gameplay: Experience the best of both worlds with vanilla gameplay complemented by carefully selected quality-of-life datapacks. Dive into a seamless gaming experience with features like custom armor statues for personalized aesthetics, mini blocks for intricate builds, anti-grief measures against creepers and endermen, player head drops upon vanquishing opponents, their heads will now serve as trophies and more mob heads where mobs have a chance of dropping their head.

• Multiplayersleep
• Hermitcraft inspired
• Shopping district
• Squaremap
• Respectful and fun members
• 10k World border
• Map reset every 6 months (S3 begins at the end of June 2024)

You can find out more information about the server and its datapacks on our discord!
🚫 Zero Tolerance Policy: Enjoy a safe and fair gaming environment with strict rules against stealing, cheating, and griefing. Our community upholds integrity and respect for all players, ensuring a fun and enjoyable experience for everyone.
🔒 Server Details: Our Java Edition server runs on PaperMC and is located in Europe, ensuring a smooth gameplay. Currently, we are on version 1.20.4.
⏩ How to Join:
Applying is easy! Simply hop onto our discord server and submit your application. Join a community of like-minded gamers and become part of the karlssonSMP family. We welcome all players, from casual builders to hardcore survivalists.
See you on karlssonSMP! ✨🚀

Welcome to karlssonSMP! ✨
What started in late August 2023 by a couple of friends who decided to invite new players turned into a fun and small community of like-minded players, our goal is to make it feel like you're just playing with friends.
At karlssonSMP our priority is to maintain the essence of the original game by preserving its vanilla aspects. However, we've implemented a few quality of life datapacks to ensure a smoother experience for all players.
⏩ Apply here: Discord
⚔️ Enhanced Gameplay: Experience the best of both worlds with vanilla gameplay complemented by carefully selected quality-of-life datapacks. Dive into a seamless gaming experience with features like custom armor statues for personalized aesthetics, mini blocks for intricate builds, anti-grief measures against creepers and endermen, player head drops upon vanquishing opponents, their heads will now serve as trophies and more mob heads where mobs have a chance of dropping their head.

• Multiplayersleep
• Hermitcraft inspired
• Shopping district
• Squaremap
• Respectful and fun members
• 10k World border
• Map reset every 6 months (S3 begins at the end of June 2024)

You can find out more information about the server and its datapacks on our discord!
🚫 Zero Tolerance Policy: Enjoy a safe and fair gaming environment with strict rules against stealing, cheating, and griefing. Our community upholds integrity and respect for all players, ensuring a fun and enjoyable experience for everyone.
🔒 Server Details: Our Java Edition server runs on PaperMC and is located in Europe, ensuring a smooth gameplay. Currently, we are on version 1.20.4.
⏩ How to Join:
Applying is easy! Simply hop onto our discord server and submit your application. Join a community of like-minded gamers and become part of the karlssonSMP family. We welcome all players, from casual builders to hardcore survivalists.
See you on karlssonSMP! ✨🚀

JEFFERSON CITY — The 2024 legislative session that ended Friday seemed more a referendum on Republican Party loyalty than a collective venture toward policy.
Constant infighting among Republicans over priorities and which ones were truly conservative led to days-long filibusters, name calling and the death of many conservative bills, including a top party priority: making it more difficult to amend the Missouri Constitution.
The divisions were so ingrained that the Senate Democrats, holding 10 seats in a 34-person body, delivered the deciding votes on some of the session's most important bills.
The hard-right Freedom Caucus has said their issue with mainstream Republican leaders in the legislature is a lack of dedication to “big red” policies like reducing personal property tax and preventing foreign countries from owning Missouri land.
Looking back at previous sessions, that argument doesn’t quite stack up. In the last several years Republicans have passed one of the nation's most strict abortion bans, limitations on transgender health care and enacted several income tax cuts.
The Freedom Caucus went to great lengths to disrupt Senate procedure and strong-arm leadership in an effort to pass their highest priority, changes to the initiative petition process. The impact was that they were tossed off Senate committees by the Republican leadership and later in the session failed to convince their Republican colleagues to embrace their priorities.
Less than two weeks before the constitutional deadline for the budget and with an important federal health care reimbursement that creates over $4 billion in revenue, Freedom Caucus members filibustered for 41 hours with the demand that leadership first bring up a resolution changing the approval threshold for state constitutional amendments.
Going into the last week of session, initiative petition reform still had not passed.
This week, the Freedom Caucus supported a motion among Republicans to end the Democratic filibuster on the issue through an extraordinary motion — the previous question — that hasn’t been used in the Senate since 2020. But only 16 Republicans would support that plan, which needed 18 votes, so it was never brought before the floor.
With that failure on Wednesday, the resolution was sent back to the House, which refused to budge on Thursday and sent it back to the Senate. On Friday the Senate adjourned without any further action and the effort died.
The failure to pass the resolution making initiative petition changes showed the inability of even a supermajority to act when splintered on such chaotic, disruptive lines.
Senate President Pro Tem. Caleb Rowden, R-Columbia, said that this session showed that more can get done through compromise than confrontation.
"I'm walking out of here as a guy that has basically accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish and I did it in a way that was respectful and collegial," Rowden said in a press conference after adjournment.
Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, R-Independence, backed up that point saying, "I don't think Democrats won or Republicans lost (the session), I think decorum won."
Fiscal Year 2025 budget
A set of constitutionally mandated bills that fund the state's operations passed just three hours before the May 10 deadline. The final budget is $51.7 billion, $1 billion less than what the governor proposed, and about $2 billion less than last year's budget.
Three things stuck out in this year's budget: Infrastructure continued to be a major focus, spending was reduced to come in line with revenue projects and numerous members on both sides of the aisle were frustrated by the lack of transparency in the process.
Over the last two years, about $3.5 billion has been put into widening I-70 to six lanes statewide and I-44 in the southwestern part of the state. Both projects are about equally funded through debt and general revenue. The budget that was approved is expected to reduce the state surplus to about $1.5 billion.
Up-to-date numbers from the Office of Administration show a more rosy revenue picture than anticipated. So far Fiscal Year 2024 revenue receipts are up 2.7% year over year. That's far higher than the projected .2% growth in revenue used to craft the budget. If that revenue continues at the same pace and with a current general fund balance of over $4 billion there is a chance the state's surplus will hardly be tapped over the next year.
The declining budget also represents a return to normal state budgeting. Since the pandemic, states have received an unprecedented influx of federal COVID relief and infrastructure cash. That has led to record high appropriations that oftentimes don't get spent. In the FY 2023 budget, $10 billion of the $48 billion appropriated was never used. In 2018, only $2 billion of the $28 billion budget was left unspent.
No public comment was taken during the budget process and meetings between the House and Senate where the final budget package was finalized only existed behind closed doors. Senators only had a few minutes to review the bills before voting on them and House members had little time to debate as they passed the budget just hours before the constitutional deadline.
This backdoor process drew criticism from Democrats, Freedom Caucus members and the governor as many felt out of the loop.
Elections and initiative changes Fighting over changes that would make it harder to amend the Missouri Constitution again put the brakes on normal operating procedures on the Senate floor this session.
The Freedom Caucus has more than once sent the Senate into disarray over a piece of legislation that again failed to cross the finish line after years of attempts.
The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, R-Arnold, would have asked voters whether the current threshold to amend the state constitution — a simple majority, or 50% plus one — should be raised to also require a majority vote in at least five of the state’s eight congressional districts.
This year’s proposal included two provisions that led the chamber to several lengthy filibusters totaling more than 100 hours. In addition to the threshold requirement, the provisions would ask voters to bar noncitizens from voting on constitutional amendments and to ban constitutional amendments sponsored by foreign governments.
These provisions are already state law and Democrats made a point of filibustering against those provisions.
Republicans this session also pushed a resolution that would ban ranked-choice voting in Missouri. SJR 78 was passed by the House on Friday. The question will now go to voters to decide.
Ranked-choice voting is a practice where voters rank their preferred candidates on a single ballot until a winner is declared after receiving a majority of the vote. The idea is to give voters more options once their top-ranked choice is eliminated by distributing their vote to their next preferred candidates. Opponents said the practice does the exact opposite by splitting the vote.
While it is not in state law, St. Louis practices a version of ranked-choice voting that will be protected if the ban passes.
Education bill An omnibus education bill, SB 727, raising the minimum teacher salary, allowing charter schools in Boone County and providing private school scholarships to low-income students, has already been signed into law by Gov. Mike Parson. The provisions of the bill, approved by the minimum vote required in the House, are estimated to cost the state $468 million.
The new state minimum salary for teachers is set at $40,000 a year beginning with the next school year and includes additional incentives for teachers with longer careers and those with master’s degrees.
The voucher-like scholarship program for private school students offers up to $6,375 per child for expenses such as tuition, textbooks and transportation. The program is funded by private donors who can claim tax credits.
The size of the bill ballooned from 12 pages to more than 150 because of amendments in the Senate. House leaders blocked amendments so that the bill would not have to be returned for another vote in the Senate out of concern it would die because of filibusters on other topics.
The law requires a public vote to approve any switch to four-day school weeks while providing incentives to schools that stick with five-day weeks.
New crime provisions A major public safety bill that passed during the final House session on Friday made changes to how children are viewed in the court system, increased punishment for various crimes and limited the authority of citizen police review boards, among other items.
The bill tracks legislation passed last year, except for two technical provisions that prompted a veto by Parson. The law increases the age under which children could be considered adults in felony offenses from 12 to 14.
On July 4, 2011, Blair Shanahan Lane was killed by reckless celebratory gunfire. A portion of the bill dubbed "Blair's Law" creates penalties for such activity. After the bill passed on a bipartisan basis Friday, House members rose for a round of applause directed at Blair Lane's mother, who was in attendance.
The bill also creates "Valentine's Law" raising punishments for fleeing a law enforcement stop. It is named for St. Louis County Detective Antonio Valentine, who died in a crash pursuing a person fleeing police.
And there is a provision known as "Max's Law" that increases punishment for injuring or killing law enforcement K-9 dogs.
Sludge regulations House Bill 2134, which would create new regulations for wastewater sludge under the Missouri Clean Water Act, gained bipartisan approval and was signed by Parson.
The bill gained traction as concerns about waste lagoons and land application practices by Arkansas-based Denali Water Solutions have been brought to light. The new law prevents companies like Denali from applying waste as fertilizer without a regulatory process and testing.
Denali was previously forced to cease operations in Missouri after 6,000 gallons of slaughterhouse waste spilled into a field, causing residents to complain about the smell and runoff concerns.
Regulatory Sandbox Act The House Friday gave final approval to SB 894 creating an avenue for new companies offering innovative products to be excused from meeting some state regulations for the first 24 months that they begin offering innovative products to consumers.
Companies would be required to apply and meet certain criteria to participate in the program.
The bill also creates an Office of Entrepreneurship within the Department of Economic Development that will promote policies and initiatives to support the growth of entrepreneurship of Missouri-based businesses with less than ten employees.
Eviction moratorium A bill passed on Friday barred any municipality from enacting an eviction moratorium. The bill, SB 865, comes in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic when cities across the country prevented landlords from evicting tenets. Realtors and apartment associations spoke in favor of the bill as they feel moratoriums violate the rights of property owners.
National Guard deployment Parson signed a bill on May 8 approving additional funding for a Missouri National Guard deployment to the southern border. The governor traveled to Eagle Pass, Texas, to sign House Bill 2016 into law and visit with members who have been deployed since March.
“The battle that we’re fighting down here at the border is keeping it from happening in our own borders, in our own state in Missouri,” Parson said before signing the bill.
Members of the National Guard are assisting with Operation Lone Star after being invited by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Operation Lone Star is a state-level border security effort at the Texas-Mexico border that began in 2021.
The $2.2 million in funding supports the operations of approximately 200 National Guard members and 22 Missouri State Highway Patrol officers for 90 days. Since the start of their mission, only around 50 guardsmen and 22 members of the highway patrol have served in Texas.
Sports wagering moves ahead After years of failed attempts to get legalization through the Missouri General Assembly, sports gambling appears to have found a more promising path.
Early in May, the Winning for Missouri Education committee along with a coaltion of Missouri professional sports teams submitted over 340,000 signatures for a ballot initiative to the Secretary of State's office desk.
If the Secretary of State verifies that enough signatures are genuine, the question would be put to voters in November. Thirty-eight other states have legalized some form of sports wagering.
The petition proposes a 10% tax on wagers to be collected by the Department of Revenue, deposited into the state treasury and credit to the "Gaming Proceeds for Education Fund," raising a projected $35 million.
Approximately $5 million in funds from the sports wagering tax would go into a fund to help compulsive gamblers and the rest would go to public school and higher education programs.
Child tax credits Bipartisan support and a State of the State address plug by Parson helped two bills, SB 742 and HB 1488, which would add provisions allowing for tax credits related to child care services to reach the Senate floor for consideration.
However, opposition from Freedom Caucus members of the Senate stalled action both in an effort to advance bills they felt deserved more priority and out of a general dislike of tax credits. The Senate version is sponsored by Sen. Lauren Arthur, D-Kansas City, while the House bill is sponsored by Rep. Brenda Shields, R-St. Joseph.
Protecting IVF House and Senate bills to protect in vitro fertilization clinics got a flurry of attention but did not advance following an Alabama state court ruling that relied on a state abortion ban to restrict in vitro fertilization clinics.
The Missouri Court of Appeals in St. Louis ruled in 2016 that IVF-created embryos were a matter of “marital property of special order.” This has provided legal protection for doctors and patients in the IVF field.
However, that court ruling cited abortion protection offered by Roe Vs. Wade, which was overturned in 2022. With Missouri having a similar abortion ban to the one in Alabama, leading advocates and lawmakers alike are concerned about what could lie ahead.
Sen. Tracy McCreery, D-Olivette, filed SB 1486 which would specify that Missouri's abortion ban does not have a definition that includes in vitro fertilization embryos that have not been implanted in a body. Rep. Bill Allen, R-Kansas City, filed House Bill 2845 which states that the IVF process is protected under law and no one can be prosecuted for undergoing or administrating IVF.
Here is what happened to other legislative topics that garnered attention during the session but did not pass:
Protections for pesticide maker: HB 2763, sponsored by Rep. Dane Diehl, R-Butler, would have protected pesticide manufacturers from claims that they failed to warn consumers of possible cancer risks in their products as long as the federal Environmental Protection Agency has approved those products.
Much of the debate before the House approved the bill focused on Bayer, the company with U.S. headquarters in St. Louis that purchased Monsanto, the original manufacturer of RoundUp pesticide. According to The Associated Press, the company is seeking to stem a tide of lawsuits claiming that Bayer’s products cause cancer.
Diehl, a farmer, said he drafted the legislation out of fear that Bayer would be forced to pull RoundUp off of the market, harming farmers ability to grow crops. The bill never made it to the Senate floor for consideration.
Presidential primaries: New voting laws passed in 2022 eliminated the presidential primary in Missouri. Following low voter turnout in this year’s Republican presidential caucus, SB 1120 and HB 2618, which would reinstate presidential primaries, passed out of their respective committees. The House bill passed with amendments that would create new residency restrictions for candidates vying for U.S. Congress. Ultimately, neither bill got floor consideration.
The Taylor Swift Act: Bills in both the House and Senate sought to address the impact of problematic images created by artificial intelligence but did not make it into law. While ten states provide some form of retribution for this type of crime, only Minnesota and New York statutes allow for both civil and criminal relief.
The Taylor Swift Act, House Bill 2573, offered by Rep. Adam Schwadron, R-St. Charles, targeted fake pornographic images. The bill was approved by the Special Committee on Innovation and Technology but never received a floor vote. The name of the bill referred to explicit AI-created images of the singer that went viral in January.
A similar bill, Senate Bill 1424, sponsored by Sen. Travis Fitzwater, R-Holts Summit, did not get a hearing.
Media Literacy: Companion bills, House Bill 1513 and Senate Bill 1311, aimed to teach students about media and digital literacy. Neither bill advanced.
Danny's Law: Legislation that sought to protect 911 callers from prosecution when calling to report a hazing incident stalled in the House. The bill was named after former University of Missouri student Danny Santulli, who suffered irreparable brain damage after drinking too much when pledging a fraternity at MU in the fall of 2021.
Danny’s Law was meant to offer exoneration to those involved in hazing incidents if they’re the first to call for emergency help.
“As the mother of three college-age men, I understand this is a major issue,” said Rep. Jo Doll, D-St. Louis, who spoke during a March 7 committee hearing. “It’s really important to give kids the ability to call 911 without being afraid of the consequences to them.”
Protecting major water users: House Bill 2669, which sought to limit information being released to the public about major water users, was approved by a House committee but failed to get a floor vote. The bill was meant to protect the information of Missouri’s family farmers and would keep information about individually identifiable water users from being disclosed to the public.
Highway Commission changes: A bill, House Bill 2568, that would have changed the makeup of the Missouri Highways & Transportation Commission was voted down in a committee in Apri. Two other bills that would have either changed the makeup of the commission or done away with it altogether failed to move forward after being the subject of public hearings in early February.
Nursing restrictions: Missouri is one of only a few states not to allow nurse practitioners to practice independently without the authority of a physician. A House committee passed an amended version of one bill, HB 1773, sponsored by Rep. Chad Perkins, R-Bowling Green, that would allow nurses to practice independently after 6,000 hours of work under a physician's supervision. The bill was never placed on the House calendar, a roadblock which some nurses point to opposition from House Floor Leader Rep. Jonathan Patterson, R-Lee’s Summit.
Dmitry Martirosov, Molly Miller, Aidan Pittman, Grant Green and Madeline Shannon contributed to this story.
Cover image: State Representative Chantelle Nickson-Clark(cq) throws her papers at the end of the legislative session on Friday, May 17, 2024 at the Statehouse in Jefferson City. Nickson-Clark was the first Black woman elected to represent District 67 in St. Louis County in Nov. 2022.

Alright, buckle up because we're diving into why Vancouver's food scene is straight-up legendary. Forget the regular city vibes; Vancouver is a melting pot of flavors, a culinary carnival that beats anything else in North America. Join me on this personal quest to unravel why the combo of Asian influence, Pacific Northwest goodness, and chill dining vibes makes Vancouver the top pick for foodies.
Asian Culinary Delights: Tradition and Creativity Unleashed
Vancouver's streets resonate with the aromas of traditional Asian dishes, prepared with a touch of authenticity that transports you across borders. Picture slurping savory ramen in Chinatown or savoring hand-pulled noodles in a cozy corner of East Van. But what makes Vancouver's Asian food scene truly exceptional is its fusion of tradition with modern creativity.
In this city, innovation meets tradition on a plate. Take, for instance, squid ink brioche with sea urchin pâté – a daring yet harmonious blend of flavors that pushes the boundaries of culinary expectations. Vancouver's chefs are culinary artists, creating dishes that not only pay homage to traditional recipes but also elevate them into extraordinary, palate-pleasing experiences.
And let's not forget the matcha mochi croissants that have taken the city by storm. A fusion of Japanese mochi and French croissants, these delectable pastries are a testament to Vancouver's culinary diversity. Each bite is a dance of textures and tastes, showcasing the city's flair for seamlessly blending cultures and cuisines.
Pacific Northwest's Grocery List: Seafood Galore and More
Living next to the Pacific Ocean is like having a seafood aisle in your backyard. Fresh salmon, sweet Dungeness crab, and chubby spot prawns – Vancouver's seafood game is on point. And let's not forget the local veggies and meats, straight from the region's green landscapes. It's like nature’s way of saying, "Hey, enjoy the good stuff!"
Nature Vibes: Dining with a View
Vancouver's layout is like a dating app for food and nature; they're a match made in heaven. Whether you're brunching in a leafy neighborhood or devouring seafood with an ocean panorama, the city serves up an Instagrammable backdrop for every meal. Picture this: a patio, a breeze, and the scent of fir trees – eating out just got a whole lot cooler.
Neighborhood Chronicles: Culinary Adventures Off the Beaten Path
Downtown is cool, but venture out, and you'll hit foodie gold. Commercial Drive's eclectic spots or Richmond's legit Asian flavors – Vancouver's neighborhoods are like culinary treasure maps. Each area has its own flavor story, tempting you to be the food explorer you were born to be.
Conclusion
Vancouver isn't just a city with good food; it's a food fiesta waiting to happen. The Asian vibes, the Pacific Northwest's goodies, and the city's chill connection with nature make dining here a full-blown experience. Vancouver isn't just North America's food champion; it's a vibe, a journey through flavors, and a big, fat stamp on your foodie passport. So, next time you're craving a culinary adventure, Vancouver's got your back, fork, and knife.
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