Hi, This is a throw away account, I lurk on reedit occasionally to see that's going on in Canada, and what left wing people and right wing people are thinking, etc, etc. I work for one of a major Grocery retailers in one of their warehouses to be exact. I’m not going to give any specifics of which company as they have been known to fire employees for making negative posts about them online.
To start the workforce of where I work has always been diverse, mostly a mix of European, Caribbean and Filipino(all are a mix of Citizens and Immigrants) Europeans being the largest. and I have never felt, until recently, that they favored any one group over another.
Over a year ago rumors started to spread about the company directly importing people from certain West African countries to work there. At first I thought this was just a warehouse rumor and kinda laughed it off, but I did some asking around and the rumor was fairy consistent. So I went and asked someone from the union to find out if it was true, so they confirmed that it was true and gave me some of the details about it, which differed from the rumors.
So The Company, The Federal Government and the government of the West African country had entered into some kind of agreement prior to covid to bring in workers from said countries and that The Company was going to provide some form of housing for the workers and deduct it off their pay(I don’t know how much is being deducted or what kinda living arrangements they have been given) and was supposed to start in 2020 but was put of hold because of covid. (On a side note The Company really started to push DEI sometime in 2019 so maybe this was some kinda prelude to mass immigration.) The Companies justification for this is the poor retention rate, which is true, however it started to improve over the last few years.
So a few months pass and a couple of West Africans start trickling in and it was only a handful and most of the newly hired were the usual assortment of people, and I thought the rumors at that point were kinda exaggerated(Conspiracy level stuff) until around last September. When the company pretty much stopped hiring white men, and the only time they would hire someone of European decent would be a women if they could not find a “women of color” to fill the position(DEI quota). At the same time work hours in the warehouse were being reduced due to a drop in sales due to inflation, yet they kept hiring more people(A lot of new hires would quit because of lack of hours). Not all of the new hires were from West Africa, A lot of Indians as well and I do not know if they are all from the agreement I mentioned above. This change also happened with a couple of third party companies that the company contracts, like for shunting and security, where they completely stopped hiring white people all of a sudden and replaced anyone who was white with Indians.
So back in January, there was a major labor dispute at one of the fruit processing facilities in the region I live in, I won’t give names but this company but it has had a long history being associated with Banana Republics in Central/South America. The strike was caused because the company would only give them a 5 cent raise over 4-5 years, which was only 5 cents above minium wage(I think it was 5 cents, might have been a bit more, but under 50 cents). The labor dispute resulted in the company closing down the facility 4 weeks into the strike. Some of the union reps went to participate in the strike in solidarity, and I was pretty shocked at some of the stuff they had heard:

• The company had allegedly attempted to force people to work 18 plus hours, and allegedly barricaded the doors to keep people in, and only stopped because someone threatened to call the police on them
• Pior to the strike the company fired a bunch if not all of the union reps.
• One of the Managers was purported of saying something along the lines of “We’ll never hire white people again, because they know their “Rights” and push back to much.
• 75% of the workforce there were landed immigrants and from temp agencies.

Note these are allegations based on second hand information.
I suspect when said company opens up a new location they will probably be hiring only TFW’s or just directly importing people in under some other government program to avoid their worker from Unionizing, and I would not be surprised if other company's pull the same Banana Republic level shit as well, or maybe we are one, but we just don’t know it yet...
I have a couple of conspiracies theories of my own about whats going but I don’t see the Necessity to speculate when there plenty of damning evidence to begin with(Maybe some of the conspiracies are true, that's been a trend lately). And I have not even touch of my feelings about the cultural impacts of this subject as well, which are also just as important as the economic impacts. I’m really worried about the erosion of Liberal values in Canada, especially Women’s and LGBT rights, by importing millions of people from very Very VERY socially conservative cultures(Your average Conservative in Canada would be considered a Liberal in most places outside the West\Latin America).
Political action needs to be taken,I’ll most certainly be attending any protests against immigration, and its good to see people are starting to take initiative on this. I also stress people start writing their MP’s and MPP’s about this subject and keep an eye out for “town halls” hosted by your MP’s and MPP’s when parliament shuts down for the summer, and try to organize people to show up and express their concerns over immigration.
I use to support Canada’s immigration system, I remember back in 2015 all the problems Germany and Sweden were having with immigration and integration and saying “I’m thankful for the Canadian immigration system, because we bring in people who will integrate, and don’t have those problems” which was very true of the immigrants we brought in during the 70’s,80’s,90’s and early 2000’s. Or maybe we had those problems and the media was really good at covering it up… Who Knows?
If people try to call you racist or some kinda phobe, for standing up for your country, culture and people, just Smile and say “Whatever” and walk away.

(Only Europe, Please) - short note - If you're not into reading or receiving long messages,don't read any further + Please If you don't want to read everything because of my post being too long for you & instead of reading It all - ..skip some parts - find another person to talk to.Let's respect each other and our free time. All people criticizing/making fun of me & other people - will be blocked.Pretty much as people questioning my post and giving me unsolicited advice.I'm not here for any conflicts and I know I can't please everyone - I know I never will.. However It's me who should feel comfortable in my new potential friendship & obviously someone who wants to be my friend - not the whole world.. which is why I don't need any advice from people who don't even want to be a part of my life. The amount of rude people on Reddit always criticizing others and making fun of them is unbelievably high but let me tell you something - NEVER let anyone make choices for you and criticize you only because you're different! Always fight for your dreams and never let anyone make you think you're worthless! It's your life and you're the one deciding what's best for you - If you want to judge me despite not even wanting to talk to me or give me advice better block me! I'm an adult woman and I make all decisions on my own.I'm not trying to "fit in" and be like everyone else - just to get more attention.Accept me for who I am or let go - is my motto.
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Hello guys! 🙂 (read everything before you decide to send me a message) Please send me a message ONLY If you're in the same situation and If your expectations are the same as mine.I want to find like minded people from Europe (Why Europe? Read my post to find out) I'm looking for something permanent (remember - you can feel lonely even If you're surrounded by others - If there's no emotional bond) I'm fed up of meeting people who never make time for me & only text me once or twice a week to ask me "what are you up to?" Out of boredom.I don't want to meet people asking others a million of questions like "what's your favorite movie?" Just to give them one word answer and ask them another question "and music? Your favorite song?" I'm looking for something "deeper" & different 🙂
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What kind of friend would I like to find? Someone to talk to on a daily basis - Someone who needs It & wants It just as much as me
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What are my expectations? I would like to meet someone in a similar situation – why? Because I honestly feel like only a person with the same expectations and a similar outlook on life would get along with me & because I feel more comfortable talking to people like me..Friendless people who need a strong bond - people without friends and partners.. Don't get me wrong…Most people deserve to be happy and It's good to have friends but people who have friends or families in real life are usually more focused on them (which is completely understandable) & have less time for others + I simply don't want to be replaced by anyone..I kind of envy people who can call others , true friends given I don't have an emotional bond with any of my acquaintances. Please send me a message only If you're not In a relationship and don't have friends for the same reasons I've already mentioned before
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Whenever I hear that others have friends I simply get sad because (believe it or not) If I had to choose between 20 people to talk to (acquaintances) and one special person - I'd choose that one special person without any hesitation .
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I also want to talk to others every day because..I want to see someone’s effort & be someone's first choice - not another person to have random conversations with..some people ask me "Why do you want to talk to people from Europe?" Well..Because I would like to see someone I'd get along with - In the far future - face to face :) + I don't want to wait any longer than 6 hours to receive a message - waiting 6 hours to receive a message is more than enough
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I'm by no means criticizing people who don't want to talk to others often / People who really are super busy & People who want to find someone to have unimportant conversations with - I'm aware that not everyone has the same expectations which is why everything you're reading now - is here for a reason :) All I'm suggesting is - I don't want anything temporary and I don't want to be the one always giving more than receiving.Listen people - I used to ignore being..ignored by others..always being just an option to talk to during tough times or moments of boredom.I was too young to realize that I was never important enough for most people that were a part of my life. I don't know who needs to hear this but..No one is too busy to make time for you! People make excuses to avoid others because they prioritize everything and (maybe) everyone..over them. It's true that most people are busy - but It takes only a few seconds to start a conversation (If you're into short messages) and a few minutes (1-10/15) to type a long message . Don't let anyone lie to you.
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Truth is that most people either don't like you enough to make time for you or just simply - feel no need to talk to others often but are they too busy? No..You don't need to send me a message just to ask me and tell me "Do you really want to talk every day? I like long messages but I can't promise to contact you often" If you really are unsure please don't send me a message.I don't need more acquaintances aka people to talk to - occasionally.
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I'm not trying to sound rude but conversations once or twice a week wouldn't be enough for me and I don't need them... Let me tell you one thing – A true friend would never just give up on you for no reason :) It’s always possible to find someone to have a random conversation with – someone willing to send you one message once or twice a week..but..It’s almost impossible to find people willing to make more time for you.
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I’m not asking a busy person to make time for me by changing some plans! Absolutely not! I’m here to find someone who wants to talk daily (throughout the day or maybe even night) of one’s own will.Someone looking for the same kind of connection.Strong friendships are based on mutual support. One of the best things you can do for a friend in need, is just to be there for them when they want to talk.I often see posts from people who always say how friendless they are because they don't feel loved or appreciated by their "friends" remember! A true friend - someone who truly likes you or someone who wants to get to know you - will always find time for you.
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I'm not interested in small talk/short messages - I love long and meaningful conversations. It's so easy to find someone who loves abbreviations and questions like "How are you?" How was your day? Or what are you interested in? But so hard/almost impossible to find a person who knows how to keep a conversation going & show others some effort.Building and maintaining friendships takes time and effort.Never allow pursuits or possessions to become bigger priorities than your relations with other people.Close friendships are so important to us because they are so difficult to form + Having friends can help you feel as if you belong to something that brings purpose and connection to your life
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• I do NOT respond to any „Hey,hmu” or „u want to talk?” type of messages (super short messages or messages full of abbreviations – I literally can’t stand abbreviations and acronyms in text messages) ALL messages full of abbreviations will immediately be ignored.I also don't like it when people ignore everything I say in private messages just to focus on a random question or? When they start talking only about themselves and don't ever ask me anything. I love conversations with people referring to everything I say...I want everything I say and do - to be reciprocated
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• No NSFW profiles (checking mental health subreddits NOT included as I'm a huge empath and always try to understand others) - Please! I'm not looking for anyone to flirt with and I'm not looking for a partner either. I always check people's profiles (even comment history) - To avoid guys, trying to get inappropriate pictures from adult women or? flirt with them + I don't want to see you with no clothes on so If you're on Reddit only because you want others to see what's underneath your clothes - I'm not for you! I just simply don't want to see any s e x related activity on your profile If you want to talk to me.
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• If both of us (you and I) are from the same country (I live in a non-English speaking country) - I want to communicate with you in our first language! No - Not because I don't understand English - because as you see - I do. Why then? English is simply overrated and people don't appreciate other languages as much as they should. So.. If we're from the same country and you want to talk only in English (which is quite common on reddit) - Talk to someone else. I just don't want to talk to a person from the same country as mine - in a foreign language as It's just something I don't understand even If all you want is to improve your language skills
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• Please only adult people 18-36 (age range) It doesn't matter to me If you're younger or older than me (as long as you're not underage) So.. don't worry! I just want to have discussions with emotionally mature people :)
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• I don’t respond to messages I don’t find interesting even If they're long - If after receiving and reading your message I don't feel comfortable or think "I wouldn't get along with him/her" I simply do not respond (what I’m suggesting is that I don’t always respond to someone’s first or second message because..sometimes you just know If you’d get along with someone or not- I’d never ignore anyone after days or weeks of daily conversations though) just because I don’t want to do anything forcefully & because I don’t want to lead anyone on. I read all messages but I definitely don't respond to all of them! I want to make it clear because I don't want to be accused of not responding and not reading people's messages! - Some people don't message me back as well and even If It's a bit disappointing I'm ok with that! - as long as there's no emotional bond - Not responding to someone's first or second message Is completely OK! If people think they wouldn't get along with a stranger - is there a reason to start a conversation? I don't think so. I can't stand being ignored after days or weeks of daily conversations and seeing people changing priorities over time.. but that's something different - something I don't want to go through ever again for real. If I'm really interested in someone's message it's impossible to hear from me "I'm too busy" because I know myself and If I had no time for others - I wouldn't be here. I don't want to pretend someone I'm not and always try to find some cheap excuses to avoid others. (unlike most people who don't want to talk to others)
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• Don’t ask me “Can you tell me something about yourself?” If you really want to get to know me - you can ask me questions :) I'm an open book.
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• It would be better If you guys were into emojis - like me - to describe your emotions In text messages. Two emojis - 🙂 and 🙁 are completely enough! I just don't like emotionless conversations.I also don't like it when people say "yeah" or yea"as it sounds dismissively. First impression Is everything to me! I want to see your kindness even in a text message - Emojis are very helpful to express your emotions.I don't want to meet people who say "crying Is a weakness" - It's OK to cry even If you're a guy!
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• I want to talk on reddit first (just to make sure If I'd get along with you) before moving to Discord or some other app
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• I would rather talk to a homebody - not another person who always has something to do as people who are very busy don't even have time for daily conversations
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• If you're another person interested only in "childish conversations" such as "HEYOOO! I'M BORED! Ya like Pizza or cheese? xDDDD 🤣" I'm begging you! Don't send me a message.I'm not a child anymore and such messages don't make me smile or laugh.I'm looking for someone interested In serious discussions - not another person just seeking some entertainment out of boredom . Conversations with sarcastic undertones (even when It comes to some emojis such as 🤣😂) are not for me. Your typing style matters to me! Why? when It comes to online conversations with someone new - It's not always possible to know If someone Is laughing at you.. or with you. Let me tell you something else! Jokes about cancer, disabilities and death are UNACCEPTABLE to me. If you find joy In someone else's misfortune you are not a person I want to know.
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• Time response matters to me a lot! I would never ask anyone to be online all day long and I'm NOT asking any of you for any instant messaging as I'm someone who would rather wait an hour or two to receive a proper response instead of some short and pointless messages but I'm interested only in daily conversations and I don't want to wait any longer than 6 hours to get a message from you.I don't need unbelievably long messages either! Messages as long as the second paragraph of my post - are completely enough. If you like longer messages? you can send me a longer message, but If you want to send me one word or one sentence as a response to my post - don't expect a reaction from me. I don't want to come across as rude - I just don't want to waste your time
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• I'm strongly AGAINST picking on people you don't even want to chat with - and making fun of them! I can't stand people who criticize others publicly or make fun of them! (only because they disagree with someone they don't even know) There's no place In my life for someone using Reddit, to hurt other people
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• I'm not into foul language and I definitely don't want to talk to people who swear a lot...
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• I want to meet assertive people who know what they want and always stand up for their friends
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• I want to meet someone willing to call me In the future, someone spontaneously sending me pictures of animals or food, et cetera. I want more than just text conversations.. 🌻
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Why can’t you see any of my hobbies listed down below? Because what really matters to me is..who you are (If you’re honest, talkative ,understanding, caring and trustworthy – for example) just simply – It matters to me what you’re like! not what you like.Don’t get me wrong – you can tell me what your hobbies are but from my point of view - people's hobbies are important - If you want to find a gaming buddy or If you want to meet someone to hang out with in real life and..go bowling for example.What most people seem to care about are other people's passions – I don’t. I get along with other people despite having completely different hobbies but I absolutely don’t get along with people way different than me (different expectations and outlook on life – way different sense of humor or personality traits – It’s just an example) It doesn't make ANY DIFFERENCE to me If you're a gamer or? Someone interested in photography! It doesn't make any difference - > as long as you're talkative and kind and If you also want to find someone willing to stay in your life..for good - But If you're into small talk and all you want is to...type and receive super short messages or If you're here only because you're bored and don't know what to do + If you're a very sarcastic person - I'm definitely not for you! I don't get along with overly sarcastic people turning everything into a joke. Friendships should be natural – not forced. I wouldn't get along with people who laugh at everything.. In my opinion most people are way too sarcastic.. It's quite sad... Sarcasm can also be another form of passive-aggressive behavior.
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People who want to be to friends should feel comfortable and have something in common. No - not necessarily a similar taste in music or movies but something else..Most friendships don't fizzle out because of people not having the same hobbies but..because they just simply have different expectations when It comes to something important.I'm not here out of boredom and trust me - I'm not here to meet as many people as possible.I choose quality over quantity.I highly value myself and my time & Sometimes one person but a person who makes you feel comfortable and understood - is more than enough :) We ALL can choose what kind of people we’d like to talk to and maybe even become really good friends with and I? I don’t want anyone to be disappointed.We all have some expectations after all.I know that people don't have to talk as often as possible in order to become friends but I'm interested only in daily conversations. If you really need someone to talk to due to loneliness and If you have time to talk to me daily (throughout the day and maybe even night) I always make time for others.I'm literally always available.I could even stay up all night long only to talk to someone important to me. I’m ready to commit but only If there’s some chemistry between me and someone else.I don’t do anything forcefully.
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If you want to talk to me tell me your story - tell me why you're here, what kind of friend would you like to meet :) Et cetera.Such messages are way more interesting to me than...someone's long list of hobbies. I know! It's unusual on reddit but I don't make friends based on hobbies..I want to meet someone with the same mindset as mine to finally feel understood and get close to someone new. You can share your problems with me - I absolutely don't mind "complaining" as I've been through a lot in my life.What do people usually tell you when you tell them that something's wrong? "Don't complain" or "Life's not over yet - one day you'll be happy" or "There are worse situations than yours" and..obviously "Find a therapist" Life's not a fairytale and sometimes things don't go as planned.Emotions shouldn't be bottled up.I'm sick of people always telling others "everything's gonna be ok" move on " & more..Trust me people - not everyone wants to hear "Just believe in yourself and everything's gonna be ok" Some people take it as reassurance - but others? They would rather hear something different 🙁Imagine being told that things will be okay, only for them to get worse..Do you guys know why telling someone "everything's gonna be ok" Is wrong? Because you can't see the future.
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You can't guarantee others that one day they'll finally be happy + when It comes to social interactions - We're responsible only for ourselves - not others & as you guys know people let us down quite often (sometimes even when there's no reason) so instead of telling people how they should move on, forget everything and be happy or asking them to find a therapist - be there for them! Always be willing to listen to them If you really like them or want to get to know them & don't suggest everyone in a tough situation to find a therapist because even the best therapist won't ever replace a true friend + It's quite normal to be disappointed If people always do something to hurt you. Sharing your hardships with other people in a very similar situation or exactly the same one - is VERY helpful If the other person understands you & wants to start all over by just letting it all out! Feeling emotional support instead of always hearing some "positive quotes" or someone saying "Stop complaining let's talk about something else - Is very important! "Everyone needs a shoulder to cry on. I appreciate sensitive people who always try to understand others. If after hearing a sad story all you want to say is "forget the past and move on" you're not for me. It's important to be a good listener and provide emotional support to others
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Please - If you're a completely different person than the described type of person I'm looking for (If you love abbreviations,If you don't need a stable friendship, If you're sarcastic and quiet) or If you simply disagree with my post - don't force yourself to send me a message.I want my new potential friendship to be natural which is why I want you to contact me only If your needs are the same - I don't want you to pretend someone you're not - only to please me - Pretending to be someone you're not - is the worst.I want to finally be happy again & find someone "always" wanting to talk - sending me random pictures throughout the day - food pictures or pictures of some animals. What is the most important to me? I want to find people who value online friendships as much as they would value real life ones as there's another human being on the other side
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No comments please.Only Private messages and chat requests 🌺
I know It's possible to meet people with exactly the same expectations as mine but It's just not easy because most people are Interested In temporary and entertaining conversations. People like me are just "different" I really want to finally find someone who loves emojis as much as I do.. someone who loves sweet, warm and serious discussions at the same time. Emojis really do - change conversations 😊

Hey everyone, this will be my first attempt at a serious post on this sub. I’m not exactly practiced in articulating my thoughts (I’m more of a fiction writer) so please bear bull with any mistakes and please correct me if I’m wrong. The last thing I want to do is spread misinformation, I’m not an expert (or a financial advisor) on any of this. I'm here to learn, not to teach.
This post will be the first in a series of me reading through the entire Diamond Handbook (2nd) and just commentating on points I find interesting or discussion worthy. I will be asking questions as well as giving my own personal thoughts based on my understanding of the events that have transpired. I became an ape right after the sneeze, and followed a lot of the discussions back then, but have been zen for a while so I haven't fully kept up with a lot of the new developments.
I haven't actually sat down and read DD in a long time, so I decided to give myself a refresher and actually look at the Diamond Handbook (2nd) for the first time. I had read a lot of these posts as they had come out, so I had never felt the need to look at the full PDF before. For the apes that haven’t read it either, I recommend giving it a read. You can find the full DD library in the pinned post of this sub, and the Diamond Handbook is the first one there.
As I have been reading it, I’ve quickly realized that some of the stuff is a little outdated. That can’t really be helped since so much DD has been done between then and now, but this brings me to the two reasons for this post. The Diamond Handbook is likely the first piece of DD a new ape will be recommended; I want to spark discussion to clear up some things that are misguided or outdated in this handbook. The second reason is more of a personal challenge. Whenever someone denies the legitimacy of the DD, an ape usually responds by saying something like “Well, read the DD and prove it wrong”. The average MOASS denier won’t do this though, in my experience they just think it’s ridiculous on a conceptual level, and won’t take the time to actually look through all the DD available and construct a proper debate. I can’t really blame them for this though, spending so much time on something you have no interest in doesn’t sound like a fun time.
But I have a lot of interest in this, and I am an aspiring author who writes 400K word fanfictions for fun. I’ve got the time and the writing willpower. I am very big into trying to understand how a reader will interpret a piece of my writing, so I’ll be looking through that lens and will be writing this with the assumption that you have already read the Diamond Handbook (2nd). Please take the time to respond/correct what I say here, I want to learn.
With all that out of the way, let’s get started.
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The Mother of All Short Squeezes (MOASS) Thesis, Published on May 26, 2021, by u(slash)HCMF_MACEFACE
Before we even get into the meat of this section I already see a bit of an issue. A lot of the language implies that MOASS is imminent, take this section for example:

*“If you don't believe me, just look at the chart of GME which our DD (Due Diligence/research/analysis) has been forecasting for a while now. The below pattern has only preceded massive spikes in price, but this time, those on the other side of the trade are going to have a much harder time suppressing the price like they did in January and March. Thanks to the activity on 5/25, we have entered the end-game. The MOASS is beginning.”* 

I think most new apes will look at this, then look at the date of posting (three years ago), and think this is delusional thinking. They will say that MOASS did not ‘begin’ because it hasn’t happened yet. This would be pretty short sighted though, GME has always been a Deep Value investment, long positions are called long for a reason. ‘Buy and HODL’ is such a repeated mantra because that is the investment strategy most apes employ. Like most investments, it takes a long time to realize gains. Your retirement account will be growing for 40+ years before you cash that thing out, GME is my retirement plan so I don’t expect it to be much different.
Just because the sneeze happened in a week doesn’t mean MOASS will, in theory it should be a very long event as both the shorts and longs have a test of wills to see who caves first. However, the sneeze was the ‘beginning’ because it was exposed a lot of the fuckery that is going on in the market right now, I think that is the message that should be taken from this section.

*“These terms are key to understanding the theory and speculated value of a GME investment. Hyperlinks to Investopedia, "the world's leading source of financial content on the web", have been included for most market terms and concepts and it is recommended to check them out if they are not clear. We will be breaking down some of the more complex terms and concepts within the post and framing them within the context of GME.”* 

After the introduction, this post does a great job of explaining all the concepts of the stock market that are relevant to the MOASS thesis. However, I do wish it mentioned some other stock terms for the sake of new investors. Since none of the DD is supposed to be financial advice, I can’t really blame them for these omissions, but at the beginning the OP does say they wanted the post to be good for newer investors, so I think some more pointing in the right direction should’ve been provided. I do appreciate the link to Investopedia, but this DD is already a novel, and the average reader might forget about that link by the time they finish it. So an additional link should’ve been provided at the end.
The two big concepts I see missing are Options and Wash Sales/Stop-Losses.
Options are interesting because they create a different type of buying/selling pressure compared to just buying/selling stocks regularly. There are concepts like gamma ramps and stuff that can be relevant when discussing catalysts for price movement. However, options are pretty scary for most investors, I’ve only ever bought one, and forgot about it so it auto-exercised for me (lol), so it’s not a concept I would call essential. I just think it’s better to be educated than not.
The much more egregious omission is that of Wash Sales and Stop-Losses. Wash Sales are extremely dangerous to new investors who still make decisions based on emotions and are not used to the volatility that comes with GME.
If you are unfamiliar, a Wash Sale is when a person sells a stock at a loss, then buys the stock again within a short period of time. As an example, let’s say you bought a stock at $50, then the stock goes down to $40.00 and you no longer feel comfortable with your investment. You sell the stock at a loss. You lost $10.00 on this transaction, but it’s not all bad. When you go to do your taxes, you can report this $10.00 loss to the IRS. This is good because if you make a $10.00 profit off another trade, you now don’t have to take taxes out of that profit, since the IRS will see this as you breaking even in the grand scheme of your portfolio. You didn’t actually make any money, so they aren’t going to tax you for it.
A Wash Sale is triggered when you buy back the stock you sold in a short period of time, this can even apply if you buy a stock in the same sector. So if you buy a stock at $50.00, sell it at $40.00 then buy it again. That $10.00 loss you took can no longer be reported to the IRS as an actual loss. So when you make $10.00 on some other trade, the IRS won’t see you as breaking even, they will tax you on that $10.00.
For a stock as volatile as GME this can be very dangerous, I know people who brought in the peak, then as the price went back down they triggered a Stop-Loss (auto-sale you can program to trigger when a price falls), only to then buy back in when the stock dropped even lower, creating a wash sale that fucked their taxes.
We say “Buy and HODL” a lot, but I think the ‘why’ of it has been lost in the meme. I personally buy and HODL because averaging down is a lot better for me than accidently triggering a Wash Sale. I fucking hate the IRS and don’t want any of that smoke.

*“SPOILER: GME and \[Popcorn\] have tons of FTDs reported.”* 

I just kinda don’t like the mention of the Popcorn stock here, it has never been a deep value investment. If you are unfamiliar with the Deep Value investment strategy, please take a look at the old Roaring Kitty livestreams. In summary, Deep Value investing is defined by looking for stocks that are extremely undervalued and unpopular due to no fault of the company. These external factors that are making the stock undervalued can be anything, shorting, COVID, stuff like that. But what makes it a Deep Value investment is always strong management within the company. If the company is not mismanaged in any way, then it is very unlikely to go bankrupt, and will have opportunities to make a comeback. GME has Ryan Cohen leading, a proven successful businessman that has already taken precautions to ensure GameStop never goes bankrupt. Popcorn just doesn’t have that. It is very short-squeezable, but it’s not deep fucking value.

*“Short sellers must eventually close, or cover, their short position.”* 

Ok, but why ‘must’ they? This is another point I think has been lost in the memes. There are two problems with just saying ‘shorts must close’ without providing context. The first is the simple fact that there isn’t a due date. Unlike a common car loan or mortgage, a short position doesn’t operate on a time table. They can wait forever to close, unless they get margin called.
This next part I’m a little shaky on, I’m probably getting some things wrong here:
Ok, well how are they going to get margin called? The problem I see is that these Short Hedge Funds (SHF) are making a lot of money by selling naked shorts. It’s really hard to get margin called when they are literally printing money, and since they don’t have to report these their books just look to be filled with an infinite amount of cash.
So, there are a couple solutions to this:
1, Government regulation. If the SEC puts a stop to naked shorting, these SHF can’t print money anymore. Eventually the interest from their positions will eat them alive, and they will get margin called. Unfortunately, MOASS has the potential to destroy the economy like in 2008, so they probably aren’t too keen on just doing this without creating some kind of safety net. So I can’t really count on them to help, because the government has a vested interest in keeping MOASS from happening. It’s just not something I believe will be the catalyst. Although they might just do it on purpose given the right reason, like pinning the economic collapse on a scapegoat, or by GameStop forcing their hand by exposing the fraud somehow. I’ve seen a lot of apes hoping for one of these reasons to come to pass, but for me, I don’t see enough motivation from the participating parties.
2, A price run-up. If the price of the stock can unbalance the books of the SHF enough then they could also get margin called. I’m not counting on this either, since the price is manipulated by the process of naked shorting. Sure, they are digging a bigger grave when they suppress the price like this, but it can also help smaller SHFs with exiting their positions with OTC stuff. Over-The-Counter trades are trades made off the lit exchanges, historically it was intended to kind of simulate a transaction between two individuals, like buying a video game from a buddy off the books, no taxes, no regulation. Unfortunately, this is abused by institutions and can’t even be used by individuals, making dark pools of trades full of fraud and undermines the free market. Smaller SHFs that are more at risk of getting Margin Called due to their lack of collateral, can make OTC trades with the big naked-shorting market makers to ‘close’ their positions using fake shares. Of course, this only passes the buck so to speak, but it’s a viable strategy for them since the big SHFs that take on these ‘bucks’ are less likely to get margin called. A lot of historic short squeezes happen because a small SHF gets margin called, then drives the price up and causes a bigger SHF to get called, and so on until they’re all in the grave. This is why I don’t really give a shit if the price goes up to $80 in a week, it’s not enough, the buck has been passed. (To be clear, I don’t have proof that this is the reason for the uptick in OTC transactions, it’s just a theory. If a smarter ape than I can get on this that would be great.) But, even if a price run-up itself doesn’t cause MOASS, it may give motivation for the true trigger:
3, Interest Rates. Here is the big one that I look at, that I believe will be the true cause of MOASS. Now please, correct me if I’m wrong again, I am just an ape who dropped out of college. So, from what I understand a Short institution has to pay a certain amount of interest to the people they borrow the stocks from. This is the cost of borrowing and is how these Lenders make money. For a long time, the interest rate was at like 1%, this means that selling one naked short could cover the cost of the interest 100 times over. However, let’s say that the interest rate becomes 110%, sounds crazy, but this would mean that borrowing the share would cost more than the share. This would destroy the balances of the SHFs and ensure they get margin called. Why would this ever happen though? Because these lenders want to make money. These lenders are the real winners of MOASS, and they aren’t talked about enough in my opinion. Lenders can’t sell the shares they’ve lent out, their income is in the interest rates, there has to be a balance here between it being more profitable to lend the shares or to sell them. If Lenders start to think that lending their shares aren’t making them more money than the alternative, they will raise interest rates to make these profits until SHFs can’t pay them, then the SHFs have to return the shares, causing MOASS with the massive buyback, then lenders can just sell the shares on the way down. Lenders have a monetary business interest in causing MOASS, so they are the most likely cause of it in my opinion.

*“This is the GME MOASS thesis. GME is a stock that stands to hit an unprecedented price point due to the fact that manipulators of the market have failed to bankrupt GameStop thanks in huge part to the Legendary Keith Gill AKA* u(slash)DeepFuckingValue*, Ryan Cohen, and all of the GME investors who took part in this saga. It may not be today, this week, or even this month, but one day soon, these toxic participants have no choice but to buy the stock to close out their short positions.”* 

I don’t think this is necessarily inaccurate, but I think it’s misguided, and the language here is a bit to emotive for my taste. I think the reason the company didn’t go bankrupt is because of the strategic share offering made by Ryan Cohen to build up more cash than the company’s valuation (at the time). All the other stuff was just dressing, DFV and retail did not make RC do this, this move by RC is what ensured the company literally can’t go bankrupt, until then (and at the time this was posted) it was still a risk in my opinion. So this huge thanks feels kinda like a pre-cum celebration, and I've never really liked putting Keith on a pedestal, he's just an individual investor, just like the rest of us.
​
FAQ, Published April 12, 2021, by u(slash)BYE_TRIANGLE

*“Why does Holding do anything?”* *“They need your shares to cover their short positions! They got greedy. Thinking GameStop would fail, the short sellers started Naked Shorting the stock. Long story short they created synthetic stocks with their special privileges as Market Makers. But they can’t cover a short with a synthetic share. So because of the Naked Shorting, the Short Sellers, multiple large greedy money managers, and Hedge Funds need a total number of shares greater than the number available to purchase. THEY NEED EVERY SHARE, EVEN YOURS CONAN!”* *“aRe YoU GuYs MaNipuLatIng THe MaRKeT?!”* 

Holding does something else that I think is really important. It proves that retail is not responsible for the manipulation of the price. You see it in the mainstream media every time the price fluctuates, they say that retail and Roaring Kitty is driving the price up for the memes, and that the ‘meme stock craze is dead’ whenever the price falls, claiming that retail is selling. However, it quickly becomes clear to anyone with the willingness to research that retail holds. Holding doesn’t move the price at all, so they literally can’t blame this sub for the fuckery that happens.
Now, on the flip side, I know people on the old sub to buy and sell with these fluctuations, they did it during the sneeze and I’ve seen comments claiming to do it last week. I think this is why Roaring Kitty really had to speak to congress about this, because a legitimate-seeming argument could be made that retail was buying and selling at high volumes. The loss and gain porn on the old sub could be presented as evidence. Here though, apes hold, we glaze purple doughnuts.
So when MOASS does happen, the massive price increase will be only due to buying pressure from SHFs, so they are the only ones that can take the blame for what happens next.

*“No one knows how high the squeeze could take the stock price. The best rational reasoning says that these numbers \[500k per share\] are possible through the laws of supply and demand. Furthermore, it is likely that the Short Percentage is a lot higher than reported, with many suggesting that the short-sellers, cumulatively, need more than 100% of the float to cover.”* 

A lot of naysayers will claim people are insane for thinking that phone number prices are possible. They will cite that it would make the company’s valuation higher than the amount of money in the world, which is true. However, with the nature of fraudulent naked shorts being fake, the price is fake too, and the valuation of the company doesn’t necessarily mean that the whole float will be sold at those prices. Yes, it shouldn’t be possible, by all accounts it wouldn’t make sense, but it is possible due to the naked shorting. Also, institutions that own shares likely won’t HODL out for the phone number prices, they will sell when they think it’s safe, and when they won’t get in trouble with the SEC for destroying the economy. The infinity pool (the shares that will be sold at these prices) will be a small fraction of the total amount even among retail investors. So the argument that I see against the possibility of this doesn’t hold a lot of weight.
Keep in mind that even though ‘buying pressure’ moves the price up, someone has to be willing to sell in order for someone to buy. So as the price creeps up from $100 to $1000 to $100000 to $8675309 someone will be selling on the way up to get there.

*“Synthetic long positions could be used to disguise their short positions as well, the mechanisms behind this practice utilize the options markets and could explain some of the crazy options activity that we have seen in GameStop the last few months.”* 

So uhm… I don’t understand ‘Synthetic Longs’ at all. Could an ape with more wrinkles elaborate on this? From what I can extrapolate, this may refer to an institution purchasing a naked shorted share from someone else?

*“While at the same time they employed the use of social engineering to slowly depress the positive sentiment for the stock on Reddit and elsewhere.”* *“You may have been called a Shill for one of a number of reasons. This community is very inclusive and open to everyone, but because of the blatant attacks this forum has suffered a lot of people are understandably paranoid. (Myself included). Please, unless you really are a shill, don’t take it personally.”* 

I want to address this, because there is a lot of misconception about SuperStonk. A lot of people will claim that this sub is just an echo chamber cult that can’t handle anyone questioning the narrative. This may seem true on the surface, but I think the reality is just that we’ve become hyper sensitive to the social engineering the old sub fell victim to, and I remember this sub being attacked with that as well. So whenever we see a post that has extremely emotive language, we become skeptical and down vote it. Emotions have no place in investing, that is a common rule touted in even the oldest investing books, so posts that try to incite an emotional response are shot down. Apes aren’t about to be manipulated again. That being said there are emotive posts that still get upvoted, ones with positive hype-filled narratives. Since these get upvoted and the negative ones don’t that sometimes gives the impression of an echo chamber. This is because the facts do support the MOASS thesis, so a hype title and opening paragraph is just more agreeable with the facts-based narrative. Some people are just scrolling on their phone and don’t have time to read the whole post.
However, if you go into the comments of these posts, there are apes investigating the profile history to determine if posters are bots, regardless of the pushed narrative. If you look past the upvote counter, apes are very skeptical of any post that isn’t based in fact or harmless memes. The comments rule the post, and I have to say I’ve very proud of this sub for staying vigilant in the wake of Reddit restricting moderation tools.

*“Ryan Cohen clearly believes in Gamestop, to the point of announcing that he will be taking equity as compensation. In fact, as of writing this all of the new Gamestop board members are going to be taking equity as compensation. This is seen as an incredibly bullish sign of the company's future success.”* 

This is one of the principles of Deep Value investing, I wish this was elaborated on more of why this is bullish. This means that the board, and more importantly Ryan Cohen, is tying their individual self-worth to the company. Due to this tie, they will essentially ‘go down with the ship’ if the company goes down. This means that the board and Ryan actually have an interest in the company doing well, instead of having an interest in making money off the company. You may think this sounds like the same thing, but it’s not. If RC cared more about money than the company, then he could destroy the company to make money (this is what’s happening to popcorn), but by tying his worth to the shares, the only way for him to become richer is for the company to flourish.
I don’t really like the language being used here, stuff like ‘clearly believes’ ‘seen as incredibly bullish’ are all pretty emotive and doesn’t actually explain why these are positive growth signs for the company, they are just saying it is ‘bullish’, the average new investor isn’t even going to know what that really means. Even though GME is extremely manipulated, causing Technical Analysis to become increasingly difficult to depend on, the investment is still rooted in fundamentals of deep value.

*“Below is a shortlist of some of the potential catalysts people are speculating about:* 

-A Stock Split, or some similar move from Gamestop that recalls shares
-Gamma Squeeze
-Gamestop’s Q1 Earnings Call
-Some speculate Gary Gensler (Newly appointed head of the SEC), may make some move that sets things in motion
-DTCC rule changes taking effect
-Appointment of a new CEO”
Yeah… this feels bad man. I’ve talked about this already, but we can rapid fire down this list.
The stock split didn’t work out, since those in charge of distributing the splits did it fraudulently. Gamma Squeeze is the kind of thing that could trigger a smaller hedge fund to get margin called and cause a domino effect, but I’ve shared my theory of the OTC action. Earnings are nice, but public sentiment has always been more tied to the media manipulation than actual facts. Fucking Gary.
On the subject of bringing in new talent, I do feel like a big move will happen soon. We’ve already seen a lot of job offerings from the Corporate side of GameStop so this could be the next phase of the plan. I really think that RC has spent these last few years taking precautions to make sure the company can’t go bankrupt, the last thing he wants is to turn out like Toys-R-Us. A lot of downsizing happened, so now he can start thinking about upsizing again.
I’m not necessarily saying that these things can’t trigger the squeeze, but I am saying that depending on something to start it is just inviting disappointment. I think the ‘no dates’ rule has been sorely forgotten lately with all the hype and speculation around Roaring Kitty’s tweets and stuff. I am a zen ape, it happens when it happens.

*“First of all, it is incredibly important to note your potential biases when determining if someone is just a shill trying to spread FUD. Not all FUD is invalid, someone may bring up a solid point against an otherwise great DD, and that could scare you. Remember that just because you do not like what someone is saying, doesn’t make it invalid. It is important users here work with constructive criticism to refine their theories.”* 

Damn, wasn’t I just talking about this? This critique isn’t going to just be wagging fingers, this is really good stuff that still applies today, and from what I’ve seen apes are doing a great job of distinguishing between FUD and legitimate criticism. I also want to take a second to thank the mod team, especially after their tools were restricted, they’ve been a great help.

*“…but since then retail investors have been buying on every single dip in the price… That's more than two whole months of buying-the-dip. Now, I will not speculate on numbers here, if you want to know more you will have to read the DDs on that.”* 

This is pretty outdated now. Apes have been buying for three years now, and with the advent of Direct Registering we have a much better idea of how much apes hold. I can say with confidence now that retail owns a floats worth of shares. Since there is so much naked shorting, a lot of institutions probably own their own floats too.
I glaze those purple doughnuts, yum.
​
Citadel Has No Clothes, Published March 14, 2021, by u(slash)ATOBITT
Ohhhh, this one is special to me, I read it when it first came out, first time I was there on release night. Let’s see how it hodls up.

*“TL;DR - Citadel Securities has been fined 58 times for violating FINRA, REGSHO & SEC regulations. Several instances are documented as 'willful' naked shorting. In Dec 2020 they reported an increase in their short position of 127.57% YOY, and I'm calling bullsh\*t on their shenanigans.”* 

58 times. I don’t actually know how much that number has gone up, but I’m sure it has. I am reminded of an old saying, that if the punishment for a crime is a fine, then it only a crime for the poor. The crime being done to GME is class warfare, it’s nothing less.

*“$295,347,948,000 of that is split into options (calls & puts), while $78,979,887,238 (20.52%) is allocated to actual, physical, shares (or so they say). The rest is convertible debt securities.”* 

This is why I’m skeptical that it’s even possible for Citadel to get margin called by a normal price run-up. Let’s do some math here. GME’s float is at 232 million-ish shares, let’s say they shorted 300% of that, just to be conservative (lmao), so that’s 696 million. To take what the first post said, Margins don’t get called unless an entities’ collateral becomes less than 80% of what they’ve borrowed. If they use their entire $384,926,232,238 portfolio as collateral, then GME would have to soar to a price of… divide by 4, multiply by 5… $691.32 per share. That may sound relatively reasonable, but I don’t think a normal catalyst would be enough for that. I really think interest rates are the key, think about it, if they have to pay like 30% interest on all of those shares, their portfolio will be reduced by that much (kinda) and we can find a much more reasonable midpoint. Now brace yourselves, I’m about to spend an unreasonable amount of effort on something that is probably wrong because I don’t know shit about fuck about margins or getting called (I have a cash account and I lack rizz).
In order to calculate that we gotta do one of those double equation variable bullshit things we all hated in school, I forgot what they were called but I remember how to do them.
So, we have a few variables:
C = Citadel’s Portfolio = $384,926,232,238
S = Shorted Shares = 696,000,000
I = Intrest = 0.30
X = Price Per Share
Y = Citadel’s new portfolio amount after paying interest
So, X and Y are undetermined, but we have two equations to work with
C – I(X*S) = Y
This one calculates how much money is going to be in citadels new portfolio after paying interest, we calculate the interest by multiplying the cost per share, by the amount of shorted shares, and multiplying that by the interest rate, then subtracting it from their total portfolio.
Y * 1.25 = X * S
This one calculates the total amount those shorted shares have to be in order for Citadel to get margin called, by multiplying their new portfolio by 5/4 and calculating the total cost of the shares.
X * S has a direct value; we can plug the left side of the second equation into the first to get
C – I(Y*1.25) = Y
Now we just gotta isolate Y on one side of the equation.
C = Y + 0.3(Y*1.25)
C = 1.3Y * 0.375
C= 0.4875Y
C * 0.4875 = Y
Y = $187,651,538,216.03
Now we gotta find X, we can just plug in the other stuff.
(Y* 1.25)/ 696,000,000 = X
X = $337.02 per share for shitadel to get margin called on 30% interest.
Holy shit, now that’s what I call reasonable. See how much interest can completely fuck a portfolio? They lost almost half of their portfolio value to a 30% interest to this. This is why the whole market will bleed red on the run up to MOASS, they will have to sell half of their portfolio just to pay the interest.
Citadel is probably not a good example of this, since they print the naked shorts themselves... so they would be paying interest to... themselves... when they borrow them? Citadel is so fucked up, I don't have enough wrinkles for this.
But hey, I think the concept of what I said is fine. High interest rates can reduce collateral and cause margin calls. Hey, just out of curiosity, how much is the borrowing interest rate looking now?
16.5%
SHF are fucked.
​
Anyway, I’m writing this on a Wordpad document so I’m not sure if I’ve come up on the character limit, but I think I’m getting close so I’ll end this part here. Please let me know what I’ve got wrong or any insights you want to share, I’ll be sure to talk about any interesting comments when I do a part 2!
TLDR: I am reviewing the Diamond Handbook (2nd) and seeing what has changed in the three years since it’s been compiled. I have a bias in thinking that high borrowing interest rates are what will cause MOASS, and that is shown here. This is not meant to be an impartial analysis, just my thoughts. Not financial advice.

Frank could have slept in the trailer, but he preferred being in the van under current circumstances. He could scare off anyone who got a bright idea to try and steal the vehicle, for one thing. And if something happened in the motel room, if Jenna and Mike needed help, he was closer.
Not that any of that seemed likely; this place seemed dead as hell.
The motel was a not-too-busted-down place. The town it sat at the edge of was a wide-spot-in-the-road type. An out-of-the-way hamlet, some might call it. To Frank's parents, the town would have seemed ideal. Small enough to seem homey and friendly — and Christian, of course — but large enough to have the basic amenities: a pool of suckers for Mama's MLM sales and other schemes, people looking for someone like Papa who could at least seem to fix anything for cheap, and an attitude that led people to mind their own business, even with new folks and strangers, leaving no one too inclined to call in Youth Services or the equivalent at every sign of a bruise or a scrape or bleeding backs or broken limbs.
They'd done a lot of midnight runners out of places where people showed some level of neighborly concern. Left a lot of things behind in rented houses and apartments.
The best time had been when Frank was between the ages of five and seven. They lived with Grampa and Gramma Schnedeker then, and all the kids who were old enough got to go to proper school for a while, like school-school. Grampa Schnedeker needed a lot of looking after, and Gramma wanted the kids out of the house at least a few hours a day so as not to disturb him too much.
Since they got to go to school, Frank and his siblings right on either side actually learned to properly read and do the beginnings of math and such. Mama said all they needed to read was the Bible, and Papa said math was only important as far as helping him measure and cut lumber and pipe for projects, but still, the kids learned. And when Grampa Schnedeker died and the family moved on, the kids who had got school for a while tried to keep up and to teach things to the little ones.
That got stopped pretty quick, and Mama took over the "lessons," which really just meant she handed the kids their little workbooks every morning after breakfast and left them to work — QUIETLY as she always demanded — while she went and schmoozed sales or whatever. All the boys stopped having any "lessons" after 10 years old. That was when they would start going to work with Papa.
All the boys besides Frank, anyway. But that was before anyone besides Frank even knew that Frank was a boy.
And boy, had that been Hell on Earth when he finally outright told them he was a boy. Mama went to scream-praying like she tended to, and Papa tried to beat Frank to death, and then he did other things that really almost did kill Frank, but luckily Susie called 911.
It was Hell after, too. All that time in the hospital, and the stuff was on the news, and then Frank was sent to foster parents practically across the country. Those first ones were okay, except they also didn't believe Frank was a boy. They just tried to send him to a conversion therapist, who somehow luckily realized that there was no converting Frank and tipped off the social workers. Frank got new foster parents who accepted him, helped him get a name change, and even let him stay with them after he aged out of the foster system, until he could get his GED and see about college.
And then there was college, with his new name and his new clothes and finally being himself, and then the year of college, he met Jenna, and everything since then had been almost golden.
He could not sleep, crunched up in the driver's seat of the van with his head full of memories, so instead he just let it all play, the good and the bad, until it was almost sunrise and he needed to piss like a racehorse.
Then he got out of the van and went to knock at the door of the motel room. After he peed, he would ask Jenna if she minded taking the first shift driving today.
Gotta be up early and get everything together. Danna hated cooking, so Derick made breakfast, got the kids settled, and carried a plate back to his wife, still ensconced in the big bed in the back of the RV.
God had said that the wife should be the one to tend to the home and children, had he not? And yet, if the wife was unable to do some part of that, surely the man, in his free moments, should try and help. Thus, Derick would cook and would see that the children had breakfast, since Danna had such trouble sleeping, and then had trouble waking in the morning, especially when she was pregnant.
And if Danna's mother had never taught her to cook, well, that was the sin of Peggy Lynn Sooks, not her daughter. God would punish Peggy for her failures as a wife and mother.
Other than the sleeping trouble and the aversion to some of the arts of housewifery, Danna was excellent. She was really smart, figuring out how to put together all the social media stuff. And she was always ready to go whenever God told Derick they needed to pick up and move on. She greeted each trip, long or short, with joy, and she treated her other wifely obligations with equal joy.
Perhaps too much joy, sometimes. Danna, for example, took great joy in the act of procreation. That was good, of course, for they were to be fruitful and multiply and spread their family over the Earth to carry the Truth of God's message.
But the act of procreation, sacred and holy as it might be, was never something Derick greatly enjoyed. He did not, as he knew some husbands did, press his wife to fulfill her duties every night. In fact, their marriage had not been conssumated for nearly two months after the wedding, simply because Derick was disinclined. It took Danna reminding him that God's holy word also said a husband should satisfy his wife, and then they finally joined fully in their union.
Still, they did not do it often, unless Danna pressed Derick. As the years went on, she did so more and more, and so he let her have her desire. It was his duty as a husband.
Today, they would stay here. God had said they would be here about a week. Danna seemed happy with that, and the children seemed pleased as well.
They always seemed happiest when the family stopped wandering a while.
Derick had tried to explain to the children why they moved around so much, and why they must keep doing so. He thought perhaps the oldest two boys were beginning to understand. The little ones were still far from such wisdom, but there was time yet.
There was time.
3 Table of Contents

As the summer break approaches for Parliament and MP head back to their riding s, I’ve thought up some interesting ways to protest mass immigration.
One idea I have been playing with as a means to protest mass immigration, is to make up fake job fairs at MP and MPP’s local consistency offices as well as the Head Offices of corporations that are benefiting from mass immigration or support the centaury initiative.
Spam a bunch of signs around saying “Job Fair, Indians only” or something along that lines.
Second idea is a bit more cheeky. Put up signs and posts online saying “White Women looking for Indian man” followed by the phone number and or email address of your MP or MPPS constituency office and corporations supporting the century initiative HQ as well. I kinda got this idea from Unifor when they told a bunch of people to phone Doug Ford(Don’t give out personal phone numbers of MP’s)
All three party's are fair game for this, since they all support mass immigration. This is meant to rub their noses in the mess they have created over the decades, and to be honest I think a lot of our representatives live in a bubble where they don’t see the impacts of their shitty dissensions.
What not to do
Do NOT post personal or home phone numbers. Do NOT post their home addresses.
Another Idea I have been playing with is to start discouraging people from coming to Canada or any other western countries for that matter by either making posts online/on social media and buying up news paper space in other countries. This also would also take effort and a lot of people(and abit of money) to pull off, and you would need people fluent in the language(s) of the target country as well. The Danish government does a similar thing to discourage people from immigrating to Denmark, if our government wont do this, then we should.

For some context, a tech-priest has discovered a Genestealer Cult on a Mechanicus world and has decided to use them for his own ends. He tells them that he will wipe them out unless they perform an uprising during the national "Ascension Day" celebrations, where he will use the chaos they create to seize power for himself.
The Magus of the cult Claress is old and decrepit, she feels that they missed the time they were actually meant to rise up decades ago and the cult has atrophied since then. Worse, after a series of failed raids their best fighters were killed or imprisoned. She knows they have no chance against the crack Mechanicus troops who have pressed the world for generations but facing no other option the Cult begins its preparations and sends messages to the uncorrupted workers unions and factories that have pledged their support if an uprising against the Mechanicus happens (not knowing that they're dealing with a cult).
I like this section as while it falls into the modern 40k novel habit of listing a bunch of codex units and describing how they fight, I think that it does a good job of portraying the awkward beginnings of an uprising, where nobody actually knows what will happen that spirals into the Genestealer Cult suddenly realising that if they work together they might have a chance.

‘This is the end of us,’ she hissed. ‘The priest will use us, and then he will destroy us. Or imprison us in his jars and make us his experiments. All our ways, our traditions, our faith. He will melt it out of us. There will be nothing left but his science.’
‘Child…’ Claress repeated.
‘We should flee,’ Davien almost shouted at her. ‘All of us, each to a different hole. We should abandon this city. We should carry our words and our blood to other places. We’re finished here! I’m sorry, magus, I’m sorry.’ And she was simultaneously weeping and incandescent with rage. At herself, at Triskellian, at Claress. ‘I have ruined us! I’m a traitor. Punish me, magus. Destroy me.’
‘You have listened to the lies of the enemy, it is true,’ Claress said softly. Her hand fell on Davien’s shoulder, a husk of a thing, no weight to it. ‘And you may be punished in time, that is also true. But for now, you are one of us, and you must play your part in what is to come.’
‘But it’s a sham!’ Davien exclaimed. ‘It’s some Taskmaster plan, some infighting between them. It isn’t the time!’ Struck by a sudden hope, she searched the old woman’s face. ‘Is it? Is all this… the Emperor’s plan for us? Can it be?’ And before she could hear any empty comforts, she rushed on. ‘Tell me truly, magus. Please tell me.’
The sad calm on Claress’ face was heartbreaking. ‘I don’t know, child. I wish I could give you all the grand certainties in the world. I wish I could give you the words of fire and faith I’d speak in the chapel, of the Many-Handed Emperor and His angels. But that is what faith is for, Davien.’ She sagged, sinking in on herself a little more. ‘Take me to my chamber. I must rest before tomorrow.’
‘You can’t take to the streets, magus. Not you.’
‘I must. We all shall play our part. We shall triumph together, or we shall fall. I do not want to be left alone if my kin are taken from me.’
Davien led her deeper into the maze of cellars. All around, the Congregation were in a frenzy of preparation. The building was haemorrhaging the faithful as they rushed out to carry the magus’ words across all the poor districts of the city. Out there, all Davien’s distant kin would be arming themselves. And the others, all those who weren’t blood but who had suffered beneath the crushing iron boot of the tech-priests, they’d be gathering too. All of them cast against the iron walls of the Hollow Men.
When she had Claress back to the old woman’s bed, she helped her lie down, hearing joints click and crack. The magus lay there, staring at the low ceiling, then shifted her head to look at the painting of the Emperor on the far wall. It was flaking now, half-obscured with grime. A depiction from the time of the Great-Aunts and Uncles, when the blood of the Emperor was stronger in them, so that none of the Congregation could show their faces for fear of being known for what they were. A figure with four arms: two human hands and two with radiant claws like crescent moons. An elliptical head split by a great benevolent smile that was all teeth. The eyes were beatific, murderous, inhuman. Davien had stared at the image often, feeling out its contradictions, letting them speak to the human and the inhuman within her. It frightened her; it inspired her.
‘I hear them singing to me.’ Claress’ dry voice rose to her. ‘The angels. They throng the cold void. And I sing back. I tell them, We are here. We are faithful. We’re waiting for you. And their great wings carry them across the freezing spaces, through the perilous labyrinth of the warp. They are coming, Davien. They tell me, We hear you. We come for you. Only have faith, and you shall become part of us. The Blessed Union, child. Our destiny.’ She laughed softly, coughed, shuddering with each dry convulsion. ‘They came from the stars, our ancestors. The first on Morod to bear our blood was an angel’s child, and so we are children of angels. But weaker, each generation. I lack the strength of the Aunts, the might of the Great-Aunts. I am too human to be truly strong. But I hear them, Davien. They are so beautiful. There is nothing on this ugly world to compare to them. I need to see them with my own eyes, before I grow too old.’
And Davien, one of the diminished survivors of a younger generation still, thought about how thin her own blood was, how little of the angel remained. ‘Do you think the priests’ Ascension Day will be our ascension too? Or will all our blood just end up on the streets and in that priest’s laboratory?’
Claress’ yellow gaze switched to her. ‘Faith is all that we have, when the machinery of this world comes to crush us. I hear the angels. They come to us, but space is vast and the warp is a trickster. All we can do is believe that the Many-Handed Emperor will not abandon His faithful in their time of need. That He is a true divinity, beyond the enthroned corpse the machine-priests worship. Our god lives, Davien. Our god is life, life in all its many forms and guises. Theirs is dust and ancient mechanisms. We must prevail, or we give the universe over to entropy and death. Only by our truths can life eternal survive and spread throughout the cosmos. Do you understand me, child? Do you have faith?’
And Davien thought, We are going to die tomorrow, on the streets and in their arena. This is not the true uprising we were promised, it is some priest’s gambit. But she couldn’t hold to those thoughts against the old woman’s rustle of a voice. It got under her skin. It spoke to all those services in the buried chapel. It spoke to her blood.
Easy to have faith when you were strong, after all. And what was the value of it, then? But they stood under the steel hammer of the tech-priests, and they would rise up nonetheless. Let Triskellian think it was all to his plan. The Congregation would rise because it was their time. Who said that he was using them? And even though, intellectually, she knew the truth, she still felt that fire in her, that burned away all doubt.
‘I believe, magus,’ she said fiercely. ‘Tell me what I must do.’
The next dawn, even as the tech-priests were attending their early Ascension Day devotions, the streets of the South Chasm districts erupted into armed uprising.
Davien saw it from the rooftops, crossing from building to building by the gantries, bridges and ropes that the skitarii periodically brought down but the locals always strung up again. All night the Congregation’s messengers had been running like sparks through the poorer districts of the city, seeing which claves would catch their fires. All of the true faithful rose up without question, of course. Right now she could only see the more inarguably human of them, those marked only by a pallidity of skin, patches of chitinous scales, unblinking yellow eyes perhaps. No unusual traits on as poisonous a world as this. Behind and within the walls of the tenements, though, the older generations of the god-touched would be stirring; would be eager. They had waited all their long lives, after all. They had hidden away as their younger offspring had busied themselves in the world, unable to show their distorted faces. They had known only the burning fire of their faith, and now that faith told them, Rise!
The streets were thronging with people, just ordinary people. And yet, not ordinary, for in many of those bodies a few drops of divine blood ran. But they were not the superhuman figures of Imperial myth. Not the Adeptus Astartes that had been made into little gods; not the tech-priests, elevated by machinery until they had forgotten what it was like to have two living feet on the ground. People, with nothing but their faith, and what tools and weapons they could scavenge or make themselves. And today they would attempt to wrest control of their destiny from those who had ordered and limited their whole lives.
And they would die, she knew. Heavy-hearted she watched them muster, factorum workers clapping each other on the shoulder, hard greetings called across the crowd. There were banners there, and some were of the Many-Handed Emperor Scattering His Angels Upon the Faithful, but there were others, too. Crude standards celebrating this ward or that factorum, this mining crew, even one for the staff of a workers’ refectory. There was an air of festival, just as if they were celebrating the damned Ascension Day after all.
And then the first skitarii came into sight. Davien knew she should be away by now, off on the errand that Claress had given her, but she couldn’t. She had to see if the whole venture would collapse into tragedy.
A wedge of red-clad cybernetic soldiers ordered itself precisely across the street ahead of the gathering mob. Behind them, a pair of dragoons stalked in, towering over the soldiers’ heads. Their riders couched forked lances snapping with sparks, even as the servitor beneath them, merged with the workings of the machine, directed the Ironstrider’s jerky motions. The crowd stilled, seeing all those carbines levelled at them, knowing more would be on the way.
The skitarii alpha called out, voice amplified until it rattled Davien’s skull like thunder. ‘By the order of the Fabricator General, you are required to disperse. There will be no second warning.’
And Claress stepped forwards from the ranks of the crowd, standing ahead of them, raising her staff. Somehow her high, clear voice carried even to Davien. ‘Faith and freedom! Faith for the true Emperor’s blood! Freedom from the yoke!’
The skitarii opened fire.
Davien screamed when they did it, curled away from the blaze and heat of it, knowing this was surely the end even as the uprising began. But in the echo of the shots she dared look, and saw Claress somehow untouched, standing with bodies to her left and right, the faithful who had put themselves in harm’s way. And not so many bodies, even, not compared to the vast mass of humanity that was packing the street. Angry humanity, crammed with grievances.
Claress’ voice called out again, and now she was sounding the charge. Davien saw members of the Congregation break into a run on either side of her, funnelling through the streets in a great rush, wielding hammers and prybars and power-cutters, emptying their shotguns and automatics into the skitarii wedge. The dragoons were in motion instantly, striding over the heads of their human-sized allies, accelerating into a counter-charge with lances lowered. Davien saw the first connect, its huge iron feet sending insurgents flying even as the lance swept an arc through the crowd, charring and burning. Then an eye-rending beam of light seared into it. One of the mining crews had a rock laser set up on the rooftop across from Davien and they drew lines of molten steel across the dragoon’s chassis before striking something vital.
In an instant the walking machine flashed incandescently and exploded, laying waste to the nearest fighters in a horrible toll of shrapnel and shredded flesh. For everyone left standing, though, that was the signal to rush forwards. Moments later the skitarii were giving ground, shooting and falling back. Or just falling, dragged down by the crowd who saw them as nothing more than the tools of their oppressors.
And then Davien was off, roof to roof, eyes open for when the tech-priests’ more subtle instruments decided the higher reaches were their territory. There would be rangers up here sniping down at the crowd soon enough. There would be the murderous rust-stalkers trying to flank the Congregation to bring down its leaders with their blades and claws. She had to be ahead of all of that. She had work to do, a task entrusted to her by the magus herself.
She shadowed the forerunners of the mob until they exploded out before Nilhetum Square, where the rail depot was. More of the Palatium’s troops were disembarking even as everyone arrived, hurriedly evacuating the train and taking up position to defend it. And if the Congregation wished to reach the Palatium, they needed to control the train line, and they needed to take it swiftly before the tech-priests began destroying their own infrastructure to deny it to the rebels.
There were more than just skitarii out there. She saw the low, trundling shapes of Kataphron servitors grinding down ramps from flatbed carriages, armoured human head, torso and arms set into a mechanised assault vehicle that was also their lower body. Davien felt a flare of rage at the tech-priests and their meddling. They took the divine flesh and carved it and pared it down, merged it with their devices. Nothing could be left alone. Nothing had any value until it was incorporated into their machines. And, on a grander scale, no individual lives had worth unless they were components of the wider priestly engine that spanned the human universe and enslaved everything it touched to their cold metal vision.
The Kataphron were terrors, nigh invulnerable to the weapons the foot-soldiers of the Congregation had brought, but by now the rioters had been given the chance to bring in their own big guns. With a choking roar and a belch of smoke one of the big quarry trucks raced out of a side street, already up to its lumbering top speed. It was a heavily armoured Goliath model, its entire front given over to rock-grinding blades that would chew hungrily on skitarii machine-flesh or the armour of the Kataphron. And, in its wake, a flurry of robed figures bearing a banner showing that familiar many-armed figure. The Aunts and the Uncles had come out from their cellars and holes, from their forgotten wall-spaces where they had waited for generations. Even as the Goliath powered forwards, meeting the lead Kataphron head-on and making a jagged mess of its armour, the elders were leaping around and over it, brandishing knives, pistols, or just their own hooked talons. And there was more. Davien felt a voice in her head, then. A singing so pure and beautiful that she thought it must be the angels, come at last. All the Congregation must have heard it, from the way they redoubled their pace and closed joyously with the skitarii and the machines.
A great figure, head and shoulders over the rank and file, had come into the square – a Great-Aunt, one of the true elders, shrouded in streamers and rags of cloth that could not hide the divinity of her form. She sang, and the Congregation echoed her, voices upraised in prayer and praise. In one of her three hands was a banner, not the crude handmade things the crowd had spent last night creating but something ancient, preserved for this day over generations. It showed not the expected Imperial visage, but an emblem with that same long-jawed head and a trailing cog-backed body; a serpentine shape curled in upon itself, one end a hooked claw, the other hungering jaws ready to devour the tech-priests and all their works.
The skitarii turned their weapons on her, blasting away, but the banner had electrified the Congregation so that they were swarming the lines, clambering over the Kataphron, braving the massed fire of their foes. Davien saw explosives go off, mining charges devastating bodies on both sides. She saw brutal knots of knife-work and bayonets and the bludgeoning butts of carbines, no quarter given.

Hello and good morning/afternoon/evening. I recently, in the past 8 months have become a lost control representative. I will be filling out 1099s at the end of the year. I don't work for one specific company but I am subcontracted through other insurance companies/lost control companies. I have been traveling the US for almost 2 years now and still new to this field so trying to learn what works best for me as for organizing for inspections and paperwork time. I'm trying to do this full-time as my girlfriend works in healthcare and we travel for her. I was a Chef for 16yrs and having to apply to a new place every 3-6 months was killing me. I picked this up as it can travel with me and I can pick up different companies in different parts of the state for different jobs.
I have worked builders risk, workers compensation, property and liability and a few more. I like this job and I feel like my background will help with many job types I go to. I have had my OSHA 15 for 9+ yrs, I have done tower climbing for a company that builds maintains and takes down towers, worked in the restaurant business for many years. I have high wire rescue certifications from working that job and building BIG zip lines. This has been a weird transition for me to say the least. Now I wear nice clothes and I'm the guy thats on the other side talking to people that I have never met, a big part of the job, and needing business card, but it's a great time and depending on how hard you work and what part of the country you are in this could be a high six-figure a year job.
Seeing that I'm on the road so much I don't get to meet anyone in my field and "talk shop". That's one thing I kind of miss is being able to talk to coworkers about our jobs. It would be nice to be able to bounce questions off some one else and find out tips and tricks to this trade. Talk about this stuff to people that know what I'm talking about. I see myself doing this for a long time and maybe jumping up and be a field manager at some point. So I'm wondering how do you prepare for an inspection. How do you call up the insured and talk to them about what you need to do on there worksite, house, office or business. What do you use for a organization tool. Mac or windows, Android or Apple haha. These are all this that Im trying to get a hang on. How do you go about your work days?
Thanks for reading and hope to talk soon.

Hello Ladies and Gents, it’s been a while since I’ve been active in Rep-land but I am happy to be putting words back on print with a mini review for a mini bag! I have a few weddings to attend to this coming summer so I knew I would need a handy sidekick to spruce up my looks. Naturally, the purse closet had nothing to wear (y’all know what I mean) so I turned to social media to look for inspiration and found this mini beauty from Loewe! My sister was in the market for a Loewe Puzzle and she wanted to get one from Hyper Peter, so I tacked on asking about my Flamenco. Thank goodness for my handy rolodex of rep resources, HP had both bags we wanted in stock!! A little bit of a wait due to HP being on much needed vacation, but in the end, he delivered and happy to report both bags are stunning!
About the author: I am a Loewe Lover through and though. The Puzzle has my heart and I’ve convinced my sister to get one for herself. We frequent the Loewe store often and it’s been a bad habit of mine trying on their bags. I always wanted this mini Lambskin baby so when the situation presented itself, I decided to go for it and buy at the same time as my sister! Been a replady since OG RL days but stepped a way from Reddit for a bit to put a cap on my spending habits (it was going a bit overboard especially when I started buying 18K reps…)
PHOTO TIME!!
My photos ❤️
HP does not usually disclose factory or factory pics and I didn’t ask but I know he has amazing Loewe Puzzles. Example 1 / Example 2
NO PSPs Opted out because I am an old time buyer of his.
~Authentic on Loewe website~ And this review was helpful too for details and mod shots! Also Purseblog’s 60 second review.
Disclosure: I didn’t receive a discount or anything in exchange for this review
Seller: Hyper Peter
Whatsapp: +44-774-303-8638
Instagram: Hyperpeter7
Product: Loewe Flamenco Mini in Nappa Lambskin
Price: 1300 yuan plus 480 yuan (for shipping 2 bags) Fedex shipping no branded Loewe box total 1540 yuan or $213 usd
Paid by: Wise
Timeline:
⏳ Messaged Peter and paid on April 3
⏳ Confirmed with Peter that the bags are available April 3-4
⏳ Opted out of the PSPs because of the additional charge, Peter showed me pictures of the actual bag he sells and I figured it would be similar enough to it.
⏳ May 14 received the bags, worth the wait in my opinion!!
QUALITY:
1. THIS LEATHER IS BUTTERY!!! I can’t express how supple and luscious this lambskin is in words! It is incredibly soft, zero hint of dryness, thick yet malleable. It actually looks and feels very very close to the auth Loewe Flamenco I fondled at the store, buttery AF!
2. The pouch shape is correct, with correct stitching on the base of the bag and the top section that bunches up randomly in buttery folds (hence the name of the bag because the ruffles mimic a Flamenco dancer’s dress!) that look both elegant and casual at the same time. The opening of the pouch is cinched at the top with two leather knotted drawstring straps which can be used as the handles for this bag (as a low key clutch), but as a security feature, there’s also a magnetic closure that seals the opening of the bag, perfect for keeping your goodies in the bag!
3. This bag has not 1 but 2 straps! A beautiful “donut” ring strap with interwoven leather in alternate lacing and the second strap is an adjustable leather cinch strap that slides long and short depending on whether you want to use it as a shoulder bag or cross body!
4. The only other hardware of the bag is in the snap clasps which are nicely weighted and match the yellow gold tone of the donut chain. All function as needed.
ACCURACY:
1. Here are the dimensions of the auth Mini Flamenco: – Weight: 0.18 kg , Height : 17 cm ,Width : 23 cm , Depth : 5.5 cm. Admitedly I don’t have a scale so can’t weigh this bag myself but obviously for it’s size it’s very light. Here’s what I got for my measurements: Height : 17 cm, Width : 24 cm, Depth : 5 cm. I’d say this is a good match for the dimensions.
2. The first strap, the leather knotted version is removable and adjustable with a minimum length of 82 cm and max of 142 cm. The donut chain strap is 36 cm for mine.
3. The Donut strap gold tone is yellow, perhaps a touch more yellow than auth, but the luster and gloss is correct, it also is very dependent on lighting so I am not docking points off this because it’s verry hard to judge if you don’t have the auth next to it.
4. The shape, engravings and weight of the hardware are a good likeness for the auth. The snap hooks on the strap are the correct shape, have good functionality and are correctly branded with the Loewe logo.
5. Everything about the leather is just delicious. I can’t complain because I remember the auth being very similar in feel to the softness and density of this nappa lambskin. The burgundy shade is pretty much an exact match to the auth. The knotted drawstrings do not feel flimsy, the thickness and density are appreciated and even for a small bag, I don’t need to baby it.
6. The make/craftmanship of the bag is top notch. The suede lining is well lined, stitched well and no loose or faulty craftmanship anywhere. The pouch opening leather is well folded and stitched over.
7. I will deduct points for the thread being a shade too light compared to the auth. I am not too fussed about it but I did want to call that out for those who are concerned with the minute details. Taking one point off here.
8. Interior suede is thick, has good dense feeling and has a very nice texture. The interior datecode and logo match the auth well.
WFIMB:
Well this bag is teensy weensy, so other than my phone, a pack of issues, a cardholder, a compact and lipstick I am not really adding anything to it….I mean, what do you REALLY need at a wedding except for these few items?! A pack of gum or tictacs? Easy peasy, done deal. At any rate, whatever essentials you’d need for dressing up, this baby can handle it and that’s all you need in here anyways!
SATISFACTION:
I honestly didn’t expect to love this bag so much, but now I see any ladies love it and say it’s a good part of their collection. I was on the hunt for a small but practical bag, and with all the different ways this bag can be carried it’s quickly becoming a standout for any time I need a small elegant but functional bag for parties or nights out.
It’s my first burgundy colored bag (I was initially going to get the black) but I am glad I went for this pop of color. The burgundy is very deep, classy and understated in color but still pleasant to the eyes. I am not considering getting a puzzle in the dark burgundy as well just because this color is growing on me.
SELLER SATISFACTION:
Peter has always been one of my go to sellers. I know there have been many members who feel jilted that his communication has been few and far in between but I took the patient route and just waited for my bag to arrive (my order took over a month from start to finish, by the way). Perhaps it’s because I am a seasoned rep buyer and also a long time client of Peter’s so I was sure I would get my bag in the end. I find the best way to enjoy repping is to not stress over the small stuff and trust the process (and your gut of course). The mods here do an awesome job of guiding and advising when it comes to reviews and sellers so I knew that if I needed help, they’d have my back. But in all honesty, my bag arrived to me safely, my payment and ordering process were smooth sailing and the bag itself was certainly within my budget. For all these reasons and more, Peter will always have a top spot in my rep rolodex for reliable bags and service.
THE WRAP UP:
This bag is divine and being quite nonchalant about what others think or say, I would proudly wear this to any party or date night I go to. I would likely not flaunt it around my usual Loewe store (those SAs all recognize me) but I wouldn’t mind wearing it into a high end department store. My sister’s puzzle is absolutely accurate to the authentic though, I will help her write up a review for that one when I get a chance. I’d give Peter’s Loewe gold stars for the incredible value for the price!

To be clear, I think the stuff between the battle scenes is great and I really enjoy the magical lessons and research, as well as the training and ideas they come up with.
I've just finished book 2 and it was decent, as well as the first book, however I'm getting less and less interested due to the insane plot armor of every character and lack of anything bad happening.
When the books started I didn't know what to expect, so every fight made me worry if someone might die, or something might go horribly wrong, which kept me glued to it. However, as book 2 progressed there were several very dangerous scenarios and scenes where I was thinking "someone is gonna die here!" or "something shocking is about to happen!", the tension built up and... then it just ended up completely flat and diffused.
When the final battle of the book came around I was barely interested anymore, because I knew that the only people who were going to end up killed were random background NPCs and nothing bad would happen to the mc or anyone they knew.
Just a few notable examples of tense situations that amount to absolutely nothing:
Alex is working with a dangerous noble with a vendetta against him who has been carefully built up as an antagonist throughout the books. The antag tries to get him fired and he has a heated argument with him in an alley. The next work day he comes back to the shop to find investigators there and everyone looks at him. Is he about to be accused of murder after that argument? Is he about to be fired because he was framed for messing up at work? Nope, the antag was conveniently killed off by the mana vampire, solving one problem with another.
The mana vampire ambushes a familiar and the small group rushes in to save it without any preparation. An important character is drained by the vampire. Does the important character die? Does the familiar? Either would be a huge motivation for revenge and raise the stakes against the mana vampire. Nope, plot armor saves them both despite the unfavourable circumstances
MC looks extremely guilty when a demon is summoned to stop the protest to allow priests onto campus. He could be falsely accused of summoning it to stop them when people find out he has the mark. Nobody saw him spying on it and nothing happens.
MC takes some big risks and trusts some people with his big secret. He figures out some of them might react badly, especially given that the mark of the fool is essentially helping him to cheat through many of his classes. Isolda in particular has been working hard to compete with him and then finds out he cheated through to beat her. Everyone including Isolda just says they're chill with it and don't give a shit.
Everyone goes to a party wearing impractical fancy clothing and are ambushed by the big-bad monsters that have been hyped up for the past two books as being extremely dangerous. Monsters are easy and all of them go down, eliminating the final active antagonist left to bother the mc
So my question is. Does this ever improve? Because I'm leery of going into book 3 for more of the same.

I'd like to vent a little since this is mainly what this sub is for. I (20F) have been working as a gas station/truck stop clerk for almost 5 years. It was my first job and hopefully not my last. I've seen a lot of shit. A bag of dildos, someone who shat their pants and left their shitty underwear in the toilet for us to fish out, cum shot on the walls, crackheads doing crackhead shit, a trucker who literally had a heart attack in our parking lot, piss jugs, so many piss jugs, but the worst part of my job is by far, men. Now, I know know it's not all of them and most of the man clientel I have is so nice and fun to serve. However, the minority is very loud, annoying and sometimes scary. Here's just a few incidents that have made me genuinely uncomfortable and scared at times.
This is the only one that genuinely made me fear for my safety. I work evening shift form 16h-00h. I was outside taking out the indoor garbage bags when a trucker approached me. He was older, mabe late 40's. It was already dark out and being a women alone at night already makes me shit my pants. He told me he had a problem with his fuel card and asked for help. Thinking I'm just overthinking like always, I go instead of asking the guy i was working with to help him out. The fuel card reader is very far away from our building, who is already in the middle of the woods on the side of the highway. Once there, i put it in and it didn't seem to work as his fuel limit was exceeded. Now, he started on and on about how it just worked and that he wanted to show me the receipt from the day prior at a different gas station of the same branch as mine. We went back forth, him insisting I come close to his truck so I can check the receipt, me telling him that there's nothing I can do and to call his dispatch. He eventually grabbed my arm to lead me closer to his door. I pulled away and told him to leave me alone, throwing his card at him. He didn't seem to like that but my co-worker, who was smoking a cigarette outside, approached us and told him the same thing I did. The trucker didn't say much else and just left in his truck. I have no idea why he couldn't just grab the damn receipt from his truck and show me or why he felt the need to put his hands on me. Thankfully, my male co-worker was there
(sorry truckers I live you thank you for your hard work. My dad is a trucker and I know how hard you work. I have nothing against you)
We have this one trucker who is a semi regular. I don't know if he's missing some braincells but having a conversation with him takes years off my life. His only eye contact is with my tits and he just has that creepy smile stuck on his face. He's asked me about my love life, sex life, he's asked me to marry him, come wash him in the showers, he purposely gets Belmonts cigarettes because I have to bend down to get them, but I know for a fact his cigarettes of choice is Next since that's what he orders from my male co-workers and older workers.
I have much more stories but I'm realizing the post will be long as fuck so I'll get to the one that made me write this post.
I'm currently at work and I just had a man come in. Off the start, he was giving me creepy vibes. I'm sure the ladies know that one stare. I started serving him and something was just off with him. At the end of the transaction he ask me to shake his hand telling me his name, Alex, and told me I had beautiful eyes. I like getting compliments on my eyes, but I almost threw up in my mouth. After some more uncomfortable staring he walked off. He came back a minute later asking me for cash back. Charged him 1 cent so he could take out 30$. I was genuinely sweating at how uncomfortable it was. He then ask me for the bathroom, I told him down the first hall at the right. He asked me to show him. Red flags but it's my job so I took a few steps away from my podium and pointed at the hallway. A fucking 3 year-old could've found it so I knew something was off. He went and came back barely 10 seconds later, telling me he couldn't find it and to show him. As I was walking down the hallway, I realized he probably wanted to get me away from the front window of the store where a group of nice old men I had just served were talking outside. Once there, he took my hand and ask me if I could help him in there. Which meant some sexual or I don't know I'm still so fucking confused. I took my hand away, told him no, laughing. I hate myself for laughing. I wish I had more of a back bone but I was still trying to be nice. I walked off, not looking in his direction as I continued some paperwork I was doing. He left without saying much else.
I'm sure some of you guys have some more unhinged stories. I live in a very safe part of Canada and, outside of my work, I've only rarely encountered people who genuinely made me uncomfortable. I just genuinely can not comprehend how people think this is okay behavior. I'm not a monkey or a robot, i have fucking feelings. I only am nice to you because I get paid to do it, i'm not flirting with you. What passes through some of their minds to think this is something I would be comfortable with. I just don't understand. I hate it here. Also, fuck Alex

Hey PubTips! Just want to say an upfront thanks to everyone who posts and comments on this subreddit - I've learned so much already!
I'm hoping to submit to a competition in which the prize is feedback from an agent. The competition is being run by Spread The Word and Frog Literary, and you can find it here if you're interested in applying too! (https://www.spreadtheword.org.uk/submissions-call-out-applications-are-open-to-lgbtqia-writers-for-1-2-1-feedback-from-frog-literary-agency/)
In the submission guidelines they ask for a cover letter, and I initially took this as more of a standard cover letter but after feedback from an author friend, they suggested they might be looking for a traditional query. My autistic brain struggles with reading between the lines sometimes, so I emailed them to clarify and the standard query is what they're after.
Just for context, my manuscript isn't completely finished but there's nothing in the guidelines to suggest it needs to be finished to apply. If anyone has any feedback or insight they could offer me, I'd be super grateful! Thank you :)
Dear [Agent],
As you represent [LGBT+ romance author], I believe you would be interested in my LGBT+ contemporary romance, QUESTIONING, which will be complete at 80,000 words. It merges the exploration of a newly discovered sexuality as seen in Kate Davies’ In At The Deep End with the wholesome, diverse found-family cast of Casey McQuiston’s One Last Stop.
Lucy is happy to spend the rest of her life in Harrison’s shadow, but she isn’t content to be confined to their kitchen only making meals for him and his fancy friends. She wants to be a real chef. When she gently brings up the idea of culinary school with Harrison, his temper flares and he kicks her out of their shared flat.
Heartbroken and temporarily homeless, she knows that Harrison will eventually calm down like every other time he’s broken up with her. She reconnects with an old friend who gives her a place to stay and introduces her to Manchester’s thriving queer scene. There she meets Aaliyah, the eccentric artist whose confident and flirty nature stirs feelings in Lucy that are much more than friendship. She has to decide whether to stick with the straight-and-narrow life she’s envisioned for herself since she was sixteen, or take a chance on this side of herself that she didn’t even know existed before now.
As a disabled, bisexual woman living in a society where productivity and heteronormativity are the key metrics of success, I’ve always sought out ways to escape. This has inspired me to create narratives that others can escape into, where queer characters all get their happy endings. Queer joy deserves to be given more space within the literary canon and I want to be part of that.
After taking an online writing course and meeting women from similar backgrounds to me, I realised that being an author might be an achievable dream. In the years since I finished that course, I’ve watched hundreds of YouTube videos, listened to hours of podcasts and read any craft book I’ve been able to get my hands on. I also received a mentorship opportunity with the editor Nicky Lovick, who suggested Frog Literary as a good match for my book.
First 300
The smoke alarm cuts through the quiet of the flat like an air raid siren, interrupting my final rehearsal of the speech I’ve been planning for weeks. I rush across the living room, grabbing a tea towel from the neatly folded pile and frantically wave it under the screaming white box. The noise continues to pierce through me, my short arms useless in the face of the high ceilings. I pull a stack of my cookbooks from the counter and lay them on the floor.
‘Sorry,’ I mutter, stepping onto Marco Pierre White’s face with my bare feet.
With the beeping finally silenced, I have to contend with the source of the smoke. A trickle of grey leaks from the top of the oven, and I send a silent prayer to the universe that my bread is salvageable. I need tonight to go well.
Pulling down the silver handle, a thick cloud billows out from inside, fogging up my glasses and filling the space with the scent of scorched sourdough. I haphazardly wrap the tea towel around my hands and grab the searing hot tin from the oven, the thin material barely enough to keep my hands from suffering the same fate as my poor bread with its charcoal-coloured crust.
I throw the whole thing into the sink, tears pricking at the edges of my eyes, though that could just be from the smoke that’s hanging around the kitchen like I’m in Victorian London rather than 21st Century Manchester. Harrison will be pissed off if he comes back to a smog infested flat, so there’s no time to cry over burned bread. Instead, I crack open the windows to the maximum amount possible on the 27th floor without being a suicide risk and head out to buy a replacement loaf.
When I get home, the flat is back to normal, the neat surfaces and sterile black furniture all looking exactly as it should. I close the window, hoping that heat from the rest of the cooking will ward away the March chill that has seeped in.

People have been saying it is a pain when a creator takes a LoRA off Civitai and you lose track of details on how to use it well, like the trigger words (if any).
The trigger words or tags are stored inside the LoRA and can be extracted with a number of tools. Here's a Python program I wrote to output the tags and their frequency in raw json. Redirect it to a file or let it output to the screen and you can just read them.
Tested on a few lora then found it didn't work on all of them. Oh well.

PS D:\loras> py gettriggers.py --input 'oil painting.safetensors' --triggers
[!] There was a problem opening the file 'oil painting.safetensors'. Are you sure it exists?
May sure you use the proper file extension.
PS D:\loras> py gettriggers.py --input Woman_life_actions.safetensors --triggers
{"img": {"she puts on lipstick": 37, "in front of a mirror": 37, "wiping her mouth": 13, "putting on tights": 23, "writings": 5, "licking her lips": 10, "extreme closeup": 7, "closeup": 3, "adjusting hair": 28, "adjusting lock of hair": 14, "biting lips": 10}}
PS D:\loras> py gettriggers.py --input 'Real_Mirror_Selfie.safetensors' --triggers
{"img": {"mirror selfie": 163, "1girl": 161, "holding smartphone": 80, "underwear": 75, "panties": 72, "topless": 48, "navel": 86, "long hair": 97, "brown hair": 38, "indoors": 67, "covering breasts": 7, "breasts": 126, "sitting": 20, "bathroom": 46, "nipples": 94, "necklace": 7, "jewelry": 34, "sink": 21, "counter": 1, "holding cellphone": 55, "underwear only": 28, "medium breasts": 52, "black panties": 13, "slightly obscured face": 24, "perfect girl": 8, "mirroredge": 85, "blonde hair": 39, "tattoo": 11, "clothes lift": 12, "spread legs": 4, "pussy": 13, "panties removed": 1, "fully obscured face": 13, "ass": 25, "barefoot": 19, "bed": 6...

https://pastebin.com/Ec1Psf9V

I'm not a good writer and I dont normally make posts like this, but I'm at a crossroads and busy losing the battle. I'm a proud person, I dont talk about my feelings or put my shit on other people, even if I had family I would figure it out myself, not burden them with my issues, but you reach a point where you give more than you can give and it's not enough and nothing you do seems to work. And right now I need to talk to a mom or a dad to figure out something or get some advice or just vent becuase I feel broken.
3 months ago I finally got off the streets, it was insufferable hell to live there. I was repeatedly mugged, I was constantly treated like a cheap whore, everyone I met that I thought could help only treated me like a whore, I was raped, everything I tried to get (like the cheapest cellphone) was repeatedly stolen / mugged from me. Many nights I was freezing and 3 nights I almost froze to de.a@,th, waking up with an ambu.@,lance in my face because I had pas@sed out from the cold and people found me in the morning. 10 to 15 days at a time I don't e,@.at and when I do the only issues I had was not being able to find a bathroom or nobody that would allow me to use theirs. It got to a point where eating fuck@@ed up my body worse than not eating because my body wasn't used to it. Every day I spent the whole day just trying to sur.,@vive, I wake up and search for a place to charge my phone (2km walk), I spend 6 hours trying to find a place I can get some food (10kms), I spend 4 hours trying to find a safe place to sleep where it's public and where nobody can do anything to me while I'm asleep. I spent 3 hours a day at the library (4kms) to try find a job or create a resume. I spent day after day finding a place that I can try have a shower and sometimes i couldnt shower for a week or two because nobody would allow me to shower there. I tried going for jobs but I looked so bad that the security stormed me and asked me to leave the store before I could even ask that I need a job. Everywhere I went people treatred me like I was inferior human garbage, waiting for me to just d.@i,.e so they can wi@pe me off the streets.
When I got some money and got off the street. I finally managed to pay for a place to stay. It has a broken roof and rats and the mattress has fleas that bite me at night and it's not the best but I had wifi and a shower and clean water and a roof and a door I can lock. I then tried to find any job I can, anything, I tried to create a linked in account and I got banned from it because I didn't have a government ID, it takes 8 months to get one. I got banned from upwork because I didnt have a legal ID. The wifi at my place keeps failing so I lost some jobs because for some hours I couldnt be online. I tried to go to the local banks or libraries to get wifi but when i didnt immediately respond to people they throught I wasnt serious about the job. I didnt have enough money for shampoo so I just kept showering with clean water but my hair falls out. I look so bad already. People take one look at me and refuse me the job beacuse they judge me on how I look, especially when I intervierw men they judge me like complete garbage because I'm not good looking any more. But I dont have the money to look better right now. I spent a little money I had on one pair of jeans and 3 shirts so I had at least something nice to wear, but it's not good clothes. The pair of shoes I bought is so fuck@ecd up already it's starting to create worms running up my legs, but I dont have money to buy new ones.
I have tried everything to get a job or get anything I can do. The last week I tried reddit for jobs and I contacted many people and tried posting in many places. Today I posted in some subreddits for freelance work, then I struggled with a post topic, they had strict rules for it like "make a point at the end of a title" and "show country in brackets" and other things, I kept getting it wrong 4 times then reddit ba,.@nned me entire account for spam, they deleted all my posts and chats and I wasnt able to post anythign any more. It was like the nail in the c,@.offin that the universe told me to fuck myself. But the universe never just hits one nail in the co,@.ffin, it hits them in slowly one after another till you know that final nail leaves you with nothing but de.@,th.
The past two weeks I lost hope because in 1 month I will again be put on the street. And I can't do it again. I tried everything I can think of to just pay one more month rent or anything I can do but nothing I try seems to work out. The past two weeks I keep thinking what will be the best way to d,@.ie, if I should w@alk into the ocean and just dive deep and start inhaling to di,@.e, or if I should just stop drink@ing water and d,.@e over the next 8 days (but then I'm scared my landlord finds me before I can do it and puts me on the street before I can di,@.e). There is a gu.,@n sh.@,oting range close to me, I can find out if they would let me pay to sh@,.oot and just s,@.hoot myself, with the money I have left. I keep thinkning what is the best way to g.@,o because I can not go back to the streets. And still I'm busy doing everything I can to try find anythign possible to just pay the rent of $200 so I can l.,ive another month trying something.
Please dont report my acount for suic,@.idal bullshit. I'm not intereted in some "profess@ional" psychotic and delusional advice from a privileged person with everythign perfect in their life telling me about "life", what the fuc@@k do they know. The post already got flagged for su.c,@ide and I had to struggle to get it posted, deleting it will just accelerate my de.a@,th evne more. They will not be the one to get raped and beaten, they will not be the one that slowly starves to de.a,@th and freezes to d.e,@ath over night after night. They will not live the extreme suffering they can never comprehend, I dont need their stupid "advice" when they know nothign of life. You're not helping me by doing that, you're just causing me more problems and isolating me further and contributing to my de.@@ath even more. This post is one of the last ways I'm reahching out for help or advice. If you want to help me give me real advice that would actually work.
What I need is a mom or a dad's advice, My own mom d,@.ied 6 years ago. My father 14 years ago. I would never have contacted them if I needed help or advice. I was too proud. But now I am desperate to try anything and. Right now. I keep thinking of spending the rest I had to just get really drunk and go wa,@.lk to the ocean. Or something. I feel like I have no op,.@tions left and I dont know what to do any more and I have no emotional energy left to t@ry, i have given more than I thought I could give to just keep going. I dont know what to do any more.

The show was great just finished binge watching it but i have a couple questions about why they didnt do things differently. Maybe i missed some information but….
1- Why didnt they set up a corner in the town square for them to use the bathroom like a couple curtains and some buckets, so they didnt have waste in any of the bedrooms?
2- if the chutes took away their clothes couldn’t they leave the waste in there and wait for it to be taken away?
3- why didnt they buy food when 8 was starving them out?
4- why didnt they all just eat their meals in 8s room family style that way they didnt have to rely on the chutes and could just split the extra four meals in each others presence? (They also couldve done this when all the shit was piling up in 1s room, instead of sitting next to all the crap)
5- when they didnt know who was running up the clock by hurting the captives, why didnt they buy a bunch of stuff with their time to run out the clock? Or 2nd floor after locking them up could’ve done this while everyone was in their rooms?
6- couldnt they have just put their hands through the box around the phone in the town square and used it? It wasnt a solid closed box and there was definitely enough space to put their fingers through the slits, knock it off the receiver, and speak into it without needing to put it up to their ear.
7- if they didnt want the upper floors to keep their prize money at the end(or to punish them), why didnt they leave them tied up in the time square so that theyd lose money per the game rules? (This is just me thinking about how id get back at them, i understand the lower floors were taking the high road by not punishing them but it seems like an obvious thing to do)

So I’ve been talking to this guy for a few months now and he has this friend who we both know, but she doesn’t like me. She claims to be madly in love with him and is borderline stalkerish with her behavior toward him. She even pretends that I don’t exist during their conversations and will get upset with him for talking about other women. We’ve talked about her many times and he says he’s not interested in her, but he continues to be friends with her, going so far as to spending time with her when I’m not around. It’s not a problem for me that he has female friends. I’ve been there done that in relationships where one person would give an ultimatum and have the other person cut off friends of opposite genders. It’s dumb and not everyone can be friends with their same gender for whatever reasons. So I never had a problem with her being around until she started obsessively pursuing him and he lets her stay around. In some of our conversations about he, he has asked me for my perspective of everything and I’ve told him that cutting her off is the only way she’ll get the point. She uses any interaction between them as meaning he just needs time to fall for her so she doubles her efforts. I should also include that she threatens to unalive herself anytime she thinks he’s not showing her enough attention. I’ve told him she’s manipulating him and he needs to get the authorities involved so that they can watch her, but he never wants to. I don’t want to come across as heartless since she’s making those threats, but at what point do you seek out a professional to take over and get the person the help they need? So I’m just wondering if I’m wrong for wanting to put distance between him and I since it seems like the woman is not going to go away and he’s going to continue to spend time with her knowing she’s in love with him. I just don’t see this thing developing into anything serious if there’s always going to be that situation hanging over our heads.

I'm just two weeks into E patches and Spiro.
I went out last night with some of my closest friends and had a great time. Several of the women said that I looked different. I was in my male clothes (women's underneath) and am nowhere near presenting femme.
So, apparently my alcohol tolerance has changed in this short time. (I love, love, love a good cocktail!) One drink in and I was tipsy. Second drink in and I was giddy and talking loud. I do not, by nature, have a giddy personality. Third drink I didn't finish because I needed to sober up for an hour to drive home. Normally, I'd have no trouble downing four or more over the course of 4-5 hours out and feel just fine.
We were directly under an AC vent while dining. Normally, being formerly hot-natured, I would have loved the blowing cold AC. I froze my non-existent titties off.
Got home, crawled up under two blankets and froze my ass off all night. Every time one of my cold toes touched another body part it would wake me up. (On top of the multiple pee-wakes from the Spiro.)
This morning, as I type this, I am absolutely burning up and sweat is pouring out of my scalp. I took my Spiro about an hour or so ago.
Does this ever hot/cold stuff level or balance out?!?
Will I be able to tolerate alcohol again?

Alright, so first off, I found out my ex's pregnancy on the day of the breakup. She never wanted me to make adjustments because I used to always drive half an hour to get to her place, and we spent 5 days a week together. She'd never let me do things without her, she would always take my phone, she would always throw a tantrum if I decided to hang out with a friend instead of her. I was exhausted and I couldn't take it any longer. Turns out that when I decided to break things up, she told me she had stopped being on the pill for a whole month, and got pregnant. We had tried no condom during this time at least once, all while she knew something I did not. She told me that she told her brother and her best friend that she stopped taking it and i reeeally don't think it concerns them like it concerns me. I've managed to knock some sense into her head, that i consider this some kind of SA, because I would've never agreed to unprotected sex if there wasn't at least one form of protection. Thankfully, she's getting an abortion, and I want my clothes, headphones etc. back. She says we're just taking a "break". I do believe i should just leave as soon as the abortion is complete but would that be a dick move? LMK

when i was going through the worst of my eczema, constantly on this subreddit, i think i really needed to hear some positivity. so here i am lol.
it will get better, you will find a treatment that works for you. i spent 8 months in the trenches of eczema, infections, depression, the whole lot, but after some phototherapy and avoiding my triggers my skin is finally clear, and im so happy.
i really see my eczema as a blessing in disguise. it teaches you not to take anything for granted, and to take care of yourself. before my flare up, i didn’t appreciate the little things, like being able to sleep, shower, move, wear clothes, ect.
you will get past this, and you will be better off for it. and if you flare up again (which lets be honest we all will, it’s unfortunately a chronic condition) it wont last forever and youll know how to deal with it.
good luck, sending you all love 💟

The Great Serpent, The Formless Mother, and The Blood Star
I believe that the Great Serpent of Mt. Gelmir and The Formless Mother are related through Red Glintstone and The Blood Star. The nature of their relationship is unclear at this time, and although I have a theory I will not make any claim of certainty. Still, I think there is strong evidence that they share some significant ties to one another, and these connections lead to some interesting questions/observations about the nature of the Outer Gods.
Before I start I should acknowledge that:

1. This game’s lore is often purposefully obtuse and it’s extremely difficult to say anything concrete.
2. While mechanics and lore interact really well in Fromsoft games, sometimes a mechanic exists because it’s fun and cool, and not because it reveals some deeper truth about the story.
3. I am not an Elden Ring Lore expert. I am also not a real life anthropologist, historian, writer, or anything else that would give me any real insight into these games and their lore or themes. I just think this stuff is neat.

Red Glintstone and The Blood Star
With that out of the way, let’s begin by talking about Red Glintstone. Most of the information about it comes from a few items, The Staff of the Guilty and Alberich’s Set. The Staff of the Guilty is a staff wielded by Thorn Sorcerers, found in certain areas of Liurnia and the Mountaintops of the Giants. The Thorn Sorcerers are criminals who have been punitively blinded with briars, and placed into servitude as soldiers under the Fire Monks. An excellent video by SmoughTown (which I will reference heavily from this point on) goes into much greater detail on the nature of these aberrant mages.
Alberich’s Set is the clothing of Mad Tongue Alberich, a former servant of the Roundtable Hold and heretical sorcerer. Most players will encounter him when he invades on the ground floor of the Roundtable, however his set is acquired from the Roundtable’s physical counterpart, the Fortified Manor in Leyndell.
The Staff of the Guilty reads:

“A heretical staff fashioned from a smoldering, withered sapling that turns the blood of sacrifices pierced by it into glintstone. Similar to hex magic.
Sorceries are scaled with faith rather than intelligence when wielding this staff which enhances Thorn sorceries in particular.”

Alberich’s Set (specifically the robe) reads:

“Mad Tongue Alberich's robe.
Set with red glintstones said to be formed by the blood of sacrifices. Strengthens thorn sorcery.
Alberich was an aloof yet disturbed heretical sorcerer said to have been driven mad by jeering tongues during his service to the Roundtable Hold long ago.”

What we learn from these items is that Red Glintstone is a form of Glintstone created from the blood of sacrifices. This is an odd property for any type of Glintstone to possess, since all other sources of information surrounding Glintstone imply that it is heavily related to the Stars and the Primeval Current, not something as terrestrial as blood.
The beginnings of an explanation for this come from the descriptions of two spells, namely those used by the Thorn Sorcerers and Alberich himself. These spells are called Briars of Sin and Briars of Punishment which read:

“An aberrant sorcery discovered by exiled criminals. Theirs are the sorceries most reviled by the academy.
Wounds the caster with thorns of punishment, sending a trail of bloodthorns running over the ground to impale enemies from below…
The guilty, their eyes gouged by thorns, lived in eternal darkness. There, they discovered the blood star.”

So the Blood Star seems to be a celestial body that appears to the guilty after they are blinded. Again, SmoughTown’s video goes into great detail on this topic, but the brief summary is that it is an entity in and of itself, as many stars appear to be within Elden Ring’s cosmology. It is also the source of the astral properties necessary for a stone formed of blood to function as Glintstone. Through a combination of faith in this entity, bodily sacrifice, and this specific variant of Glintstone, aberrant magic can be wielded.
Another possible mention of the Blood Star, though less direct, comes from the description of the Great Stars weapon:

“Huge bludgeon with three stars at the striking end. Though primarily a striking weapon, the stars' spikes cause blood loss.
A blood-stained star is an ill omen, a fact not lost upon those against whom this weapon is brought to bear. Landing attacks slightly restores HP.”

The phrasing of this “ill omen”, along with its ability to restore HP, will become relevant later.
The Formless Mother
A logical leap that many people have taken when researching these topics is to assume that the Blood Star is in some way related to The Formless Mother, the Outer God that bestows blood-related power to Mohg and his followers. At the risk of sounding repetitive, SmoughTown again explores this relationship, noting their similarities mechanically (the fact that magic from these sources causes the Hemorrhage/Blood Loss status effect) and thematically (the fact that both of these entities seem to seek bloodshed, demanding sacrifices explicitly or wounds generally). He does however say that there are enough differences in the information known about these figures to cast some doubt on them being one and the same. I agree with this, however I do still believe they are related in a way that I will discuss after mentioning the other source of Red Glintstone present in the game.
The Great Serpent of Mt. Gelmir
In the war ravaged landscape of Mt. Gelmir stands Volcano Manor, home of Praetor Rykard. Within this fortified castle’s prison town are the Man-Serpents, the results of a blasphemous breeding process who patrol and defend against intruders. And one particular man-serpent wields a staff, the Gelmir Glintstone Staff.

“Staff with a forked tip, embedded with red glintstones. Enhances lava sorceries.
The Man-Serpents of Mt. Gelmir draw from faith in addition to intelligence to enhance the potency of their sorcery.”

Once again we see Red Glintstone used in a spell catalyst, and again it imbues this tool with properties reliant on faith. For further detail, we need to look at some of the aforementioned Lava Sorceries that are enhanced by this staff.
Magma Shot reads:

“One of the sorceries developed from the magma of Mt. Gelmir. …
After discovering the ancient hexes of Gelmir, Rykard, son of Queen Rennala, brought them back into practical use as new forms of sorcery.”

These sorceries are ancient, originally practiced by the adherents of a pagan religion that worshiped the Great Serpent of Mt. Gelmir. The timeline of events is not explicit, but it is a reasonable assumption that Rykard's incorporation of these hexes into modern sorcery was a component of his adoption of the ancient Gelmir religion, and his worship and great sacrifice to the Serpent.
In addition, the practices of the Gelmir Pagans provide another tie between Red Glintstone and ritual sacrifice. The Serpent-God’s Curved Sword says:

“Curved sword fashioned in the image of an ancient serpent deity and tool of a forgotten religion practiced on Mt. Gelmir.
Formerly used to offer up sacrifices, this sword restores HP upon slaying an enemy.”

These sacrifices are likely the source of the Red Glintstone used to channel the magic of Mt. Gelmir.
The Connections
Red Glintstone therefore ties together the Thorn Sorceries, and by extension the Blood Star, with the Gelmir magics. If you agree with the idea that the Blood Star and the Formless Mother are also related, then this also bridges together the followers of Rykard and Mohg. But Red Glintstone is not the only commonality between these factions and practices.
In no particular order:
Both Gelmir Sorceries and the Staff of the Guilty mention “Hex Magic”. Along with this being a nod to Dark Souls 2’s magic system, this language seems to distinguish these schools of magic from other Sorceries or Incantations. In particular, it groups both of these into a class of magic deemed heretical by current magic practitioners.
As mentioned above, both the Gelmir Religion and the Blood Star explicitly mention sacrifices as a source of their power.
Both Thorn Sorceries and many of the skills of the Formless Mother require a tithe of the user’s blood to be paid. Thorn Sorceries and the skills Seppuku, Bloody Slash, and Blood Blade deal damage to the caster in addition to their enemies, incorporating the thematic idea of sacrifice into gameplay mechanics.
Again speaking mechanically, both the Formless Mother and the Great Serpent offer their adherents methods of healing via combat. The Blasphemous Blade, Serpent-God’s Curved Sword, Devourer’s Scepter, Taker’s Cameo, and Rykard’s Great Rune are all holy artifacts of the Gelmir Religion, either from the ancient era or from Rykard’s. Critically, they all confer the power of healing by defeating enemies, or simply by attacking them in the case of the Blasphemous Blade and Devourer’s Scepter weapon skills. While there are a few other methods of achieving this effect scattered amongst the factions of the Lands Between, one of the most notable practitioners is Mohg, who uses his Sacred Spear to heal himself with his Bloodboon Ritual. It is worth noting that one of the only other ways to achieve the effect of healing via combat is with the Great Stars, providing another possible tie between these groups. Here I will acknowledge that this line of reasoning does not include the Greathorn Hammer, Butchering Knife, Assassin’s Crimson Dagger, or Malenia’s Great Rune, the other notable examples of this type of mechanic. For those curious, I believe that Malenia’s healing is at least partially explained by VaatiVidya in his video on the topic. Vaati is a small up-and-coming lore channel and I’m sure the little guy could really use a like and a sub!
Perhaps most significantly though are the Recusant Finger and Bloody Finger items. These items, bestowed to the player after joining the ranks of Rykard and Mohg’s cults respectively, are functionally identical tools that allow invasions of other players’ worlds. Both are used for the express purpose of spilling Tarnished blood, and I do not believe it is a coincidence that they are related to the two demigods in question.
Bringing It Together
Given these threads connecting The Formless Mother, the Blood Star, and the Gelmir religion, what is the nature of their relationship? There seems to be a developing theme of "Similar but Different". There is, in my opinion, a sense that these cultures and practices share some kind of common ancestry. Again, while I don’t feel confident enough to state it with certainty, I will provide a possible explanation informed, ironically, by the Greater Will.
Most mentions of stars in the game’s text come from sources that are associated with the Glintstone, the Astrologers, Raya Lucaria, Astel, etc. However there is at least one mention of a star that sheds some light on their relationship to Outer Gods, the description of Elden Stars:

“This legendary incantation is the most ancient of those that derive from the Erdtree.
…
It is said that long ago, the Greater Will sent a golden star bearing a beast into the Lands Between, which would later become the Elden Ring.”

It’s worth noting here that a topic often discussed by lore enthusiasts is the voice of the narrator in item descriptions, and the fact that it seems to change between items and vary in its reliability. For instance, rather than saying anything with concrete certainty here, it reads “It is said…” implying there is something apocryphal about the information. It is also worth mentioning that this description in particular is infamous in the community for muddying the waters on the nature of the Elden Ring, inscriptions found in Farum Azula, the timeline of the Lands Between, and many other topics.
Still, if we take this description at face value then it seems to imply that stars, along with being entities themselves, are within the dominion of Outer Gods and can be sent to the Lands Between “bearing beasts”. Another item that relates ephemeral Outer Gods to corporeal creatures is the Twinbird Kite Shield:

“Shield featuring a vividly painted twinbird.
The twinbird is said to be the envoy of an outer god, and mother of the Deathbirds...”

Once again a presumably physical beast, the Twinbird, is said to be the envoy of an unnamed Outer God. If these two items represent a trend, then we can assume that Outer Gods have the ability to install “Beasts” in the Lands Between. The reason for this is unclear. They may be sent as sentient weapons to fight in proxy wars. It’s also possible that they are intended to be physical manifestations of the Outer Gods to spur worship. Thanks to the existence of the Two and Three Fingers, the Fire Giant, and Malenia, there is no shortage of evidence that the Outer Gods either require avatars in the Lands Between to communicate for them and exert their will, or at the very least prefer an indirect relationship for unknowable reasons. Regardless, it leads me to propose a theory:
The Theory
The Formless Mother, an Outer God, controled the Blood Star. This star was sent long before the current age to deliver a beast to the Lands Between, and this beast was the Great Serpent. Whether simply due to great expanses of time, the dominance of the Greater Will and the subsequent shunning of other Outer Gods, or some other reason that is left undiscovered, the link connecting these entities became faded, if not severed entirely. As a result, their once cohesive goals and principles diverged. The wounds craved by the Formless Mother became the sacrifices of sinners offered to the Blood Star, and the sacrificial practices of the Gelmir worshippers no longer satisfied the Serpent, now driven by world consuming avarice. These once cohesive forces were now fragmented, fated to fade into relative obscurity. Each sought new adherents in the sewers below the Erdtree, in the mountains overlooking it, and in the sinners exiled from it. The faithful of each deity created their own manner of worship, similar but different. This process can be observed in countless real world cultures who share common ancestry but diverge into discrete civilizations or religions. I believe that this explains the overlap between these seemingly disparate factions, while also accounting for their clear separation. Fromsoft has proven time and time again to be a team obsessed with the layering of culture and the echos of half-forgotten history, and I feel that this is yet another example of this theme.
I will say again that I am far from certain of this, as obviously there is no direct evidence of the Blood Star being "sent", but I believe strongly that some relationship of this type exists between these groups. I hope that with the DLC looming we may be given more information about the ancient era of the Lands Between and the various religions and cultures that existed prior to the dominance of Marika's Golden Order, but knowing Fromsoft I think it’s likely we’ll get more questions than answers.
Epilogue
If you’ve read this entire thing then the toilet seat is likely cutting off the circulation to your legs and you should stand up, but I greatly appreciate your time. Please let me know what you think of this theory, or if there’s anything you think I’ve misinterpreted or left out entirely.

As the title says. I have no more tears to cry and looking for apartments to move out. I (33F) have been living with my boyfriend (47M) since March, almost 3 years together in total. He has had a lot of criticism towards me before moving in together, but now it's much worse - he's getting stricter with me by the day.
The last fight was today, on the grounds that I have been doing a ragu Bolognese all day since the morning (a good Bolognese takes 2-3 hours to make from scratch) but I accidentally gave myself too much pasta and he didn't get enough. It really was an accident, I did not eyeball the amount correctly. I offered to give him some of mine but he declined, saying that he won't eat mine (I like mine al dente while he likes his overcooked) and then offered to make some more for him, but he declined that too. He was visibly angry so I lost it and started crying saying that nothing I ever do is good enough for him.
Because it isn't. Our fights are always about the same, he loves to tell me to concentrate everytime I make a little mistake. A spatula slips and falls from my hand, he scolds me and tells me to concentrate. I bump the vacuum into a chair, he scolds me telling me to concentrate. Every day I get told that I need to concentrate and it's driving me crazy.
He hates 90% of my wardrobe. A dress is either too tight, (he says he hates "Kardashian style" dresses on me), or too short, or the wrong color (he hates me in white, pink or black), or the wrong pattern (he hates florals), he hates wide pants, he hates heels. He recently bought me a dress to his liking, but then I wasn't allowed to wear it to work the next day, because he decided it will only be for Sundays. A few weeks ago I tried putting on an outfit I love on a date night (a lace top with a knee-long tight leather skirt) despite his objections. He was upset with me for 2 hours after leaving the house.
Once I put on a beautiful pair of white leather boots, that 70's throwback style that is all the rage now. He told me I look like a slut. I never wore them again.
We split housework equally, and I do 100% of the cooking because I like it, and he isn't much of a cook. He likes to either say that I don't do anything around the house, which sometimes escalates my frustration to the point that I want to rip my hair out, because I KNOW that I just cleaned the whole house because he had migraine. He says my cooking doesn't count because I like doing it anyway. If he sees me cleaning, he will point out mistakes that I'm making. Using the wrong cloth, using the wrong product, stuff like that.
He likes to argue that my parents did a shitty job at raising me so I can't do anything right. He says that even an idiot would manage better than me. Last week I told him that I'm looking for shared housing to move out, and his response was that they will kick me out after 2 months. If I threaten to break up with me, he says that no other man will want me. He might be right because before him, I kept getting rejected and ghosted for 10 years.
Today morning he was telling me about his last night's night out with his buddies. One of his friends complained about having to go to his gf's friend's baby shower, which was on the same day. My boyfriend took his side complaining because the women were "losers", working "shitty jobs at ZARA" and one even "cleans hotel rooms". I got angry about this attitude saying that there's nothing wrong with those jobs. I said that his friend is a hypocrite for staying at hotels and then shitting on staff doing their best to make the stay pleasant for him. My boyfriend's response was about 30 mins of gaslighting me about being too sensitive and taking things too seriously and "not taking a joke" and then he was angry for 2 more hours.
I have lived alone all my life since I was 21, and I always managed quite alright, or so I thought. This takes me to why I'm posting this here - nothing helps, my crying, my screaming, my threats that I'll move out, breaking up with him, nothing. He insists that he's right in his criticism. When I ask him how are we going to proceed from here to make the relationship work, he insists that I need to change.
I get that you guys don't live with us so you have no idea, but I'm going crazy here. Am I too sensitive? Can't I really do anything right? Am I overreacting?

Welcome to Zompocalypse Now! Can you scavenge supplies, fight the infected, and survive to the next day in the war torn country of Livonia?
VDEP Zompocalypse Now! is a Vanilla+ survival Livonia server offering a fresh take on the Vanilla Survival Experience while having a some QoL changes as well a few additions. We are a PvE/PvP server. Only Wiping every 3-4 months we provide a home for long term base building and survival game play. VDEP Zompocalypse Now! also features new military lore and POIs unique to server, making up a new and different story for those who want a more immersive experience.
To continue along with the survival and “Vietnam” aspect the VDEP team is trying to craft for Zompocalypse Now!, our new Dyanmic Weather can/will/does include hurricane conditions with periods of heavy rain, thunderstorms, fog, warmer AND colder temperatures!
VDEP Zompocalypse Now! Is a sibling server to VDEP, The Vanilla DayZ Experience Plus server. It shares many of the same settings and rules VDEP has.

Server info

Server name: VDEP Zompocalypse Now!
Map: Livonia
Search: VDEP to find us! -----------------------------------------—
There is no Kill Feed, There is no Safe Zone, There is no Admin backed Trader.
Here's the list of things VDEP Zompocalypse Now! offers:
-Vehicles spawn fully built
-Loot is vanilla quality conditions
-More Zombies! Larger Groups.
-Ever Evolving/Changing Zombie locations
-Jungle Action Movie inspired POIs/“Missions”
-Added: Unreleased Melee Weapons, colored Guns, Attachments & Helmets, Leather clothes, & more..
-Stashed items don’t affect the loot economy
-Building Supplies boosted slightly
-Grow your own Cannabis & Drink Vodka!
-Unique Lore to justify custom POIs and secrets of the map.
-Dynamic Weather including Hurricane Conditions
-Slightly Lowered “common” military weapons
-Slightly Raised civilian weapons & ammo
-Incrased the amount of heli crashes by 2
-Dark Nights
-Slightly Increased Animal Population
-Build Anywhere Enabled
-Raid 24/7
Base Damage: On Container Damage: Off
Server restart every 3 hours 3 hour days, 40 minute nights New York Us based Server 1st person only
We have punch and pie!
Come join the VDEP Community on discord
https://discord.gg/SATQXKf75c