We are a Greek Mythology inspired RP with elements of Percy Jackson taking place in ancient Greece.
-All literacy levels welcomed.
-Unlimited OC slots
-You can play as any Gods, Demigods, Mortals, Canon or just anything.
-Weekly events
-a safe place for everyone
-Open to any suggestion and non toxic!
-an easy-to-follow template
-Fair RP system
-New lore so everyone is involved.
Something dark and sinister is rising in the back gound and it is up to you and other heros of camp halfblood to save, or to be the ones to see the destruction of the Greek world. The strings of fate is in your hands.
Perm invite link, invite your friends!
https://discord.gg/st2gEh4gU2
.

Like the title says I'm having trouble building a package with catkin_make. Below is a picture of the error message I get
https://preview.redd.it/5esx8twx52zc1.png?width=1180&format=png&auto=webp&s=91974214f6f60584edfb763d2ecfa6a9d3a14a9e
And here is my cmake file:

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.0.2) project(intrepid_can) set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 17) # add_compile_options(-std=c++17) find_package(catkin REQUIRED COMPONENTS roscpp rospy can_msgs std_msgs ) find_package(Boost REQUIRED COMPONENTS system) include_directories( include ${catkin_INCLUDE_DIRS} ) catkin_package( INCLUDE_DIRS include LIBRARIES intrepid_can CATKIN_DEPENDS can_msgs roscpp rospy std_msgs DEPENDS system_lib ) add_subdirectory("include/libicsneo") add_executable(test_node src/test_node.cpp) target_link_libraries(test_node icsneocpp) 

Wealthsimple is Canada's first $0 commission stock trading app – sign up now using my referral code and we'll both Get a Bonus ($25 for you and $25 for me) to trade.
 
Now also includes crypto trading. So if you are not into stocks, you can purchase some crypto and still get the bonus.
 
CODE: US0EBW
 
Link: https://my.wealthsimple.com/app/public/trade-referral-signup?code=US0EBW
 
Bonus: Since I am a premium client, we will both get our reward boosted to $250 if you also become a Premium client within 30 days and $1,000 if you reach Generation.
 
Wealthsimple Cash (Their prepaid card) is also now integrated into the app

Hello everyone, I have been working out for about 1.5 months now, I try to do 50 push ups perday, but recently I have started working out in front of a mirror and found that I do push up unevenly. one side higher than the other. uploaded a video to youtube, can someone help me fix the problem? link in comment.

Hi!
Looking for feedback on https://launch.tractstack.com
It's a prototype of an all-in-one website builder + next chapter digital analytics + programmatic web publishing with a human heart
This website was fully built using the prototype. And it has a bunch of unique UX:

• privacy first analytics; as you engage with the site it's building a knowledge graph [human-content interactions]
  
• this allows for a "fast travel" map to get around the site; which will be cool for larger sites!
  
• interactive buttons/widgets throughout like a "Tell me more" button reveals additional, relevant content
  
• brings choose-your-adventure elements to your website -- gives each reader an intuitive UI for knowledge discovery and sizing up what your funnel has to offer
  
• everything is [or is near to being] best practices for SEO / a11y; thank-you astro!
  

My hope is to bring adaptive content pathways + privacy-first graph/analytics into one tool that people can love =D and eventually to replace wordpress as the standard "way" to publish a website.
At its core, this is a compositing pipeline that takes markdown + some special wrap-around payloads to generate a highly performant website; idea is to hook into content pipelines from industry leaders like LeapAI and take programmatic SEO to the next level -- forging a better web for storytellers, content marketers and evangelists
More background: The frontend (linked) is astro. It's all decoupled off Drupal as headless CMS. There's a PHP backend that talks to SQL + neo4j. And then there's a prototype "storykeep" editosite-builder which is in gatsby [i'm porting over now to astro]. It's all released as source-available FSL-1.0-MIT free for commercial (non-competing use) but also will be sold as a service.

Hello guys,
I need to create an advertising intermediary system between brands and creators. Specifically, I would like to develop a platform where a creator can download a media kit and an automatically generated affiliate tracking link belonging to one of the brands present.
Do you think a software like Weweb would be capable of doing this?
What should the structure of the site be?
Something similar to this:
https://www.jeeng.com/ https://www.paved.com/

I am trying to find out about C86's hardware specifications. There is no information about its CPU, RAM, Flash etc. Is it that bad, so they dont share it? There is not much info about it.
Here is list of my findings about this router: https://static.tp-link.com/upload/product-overview/2023/202302/20230202/Archer%20C86(EU&US)%201.0_Datasheet.pdf%201.0_Datasheet.pdf)
https://www.tp-link.com/in/home-networking/wifi-routearcher-c86/v1/
​
https://preview.redd.it/nyui3bvgy1zc1.png?width=2862&format=png&auto=webp&s=a98369fa2a6436258aad3f71ffeb7942b7aa66e3

So I wanted to uploaded a card I'd modified on my computer. The previous web ui for Chub had a link I could click to upload the PNG I'd updated locally. But I sure don't see a way to do this now. Is it hidden in there somewhere or is it gone?

I'm going to try to translate those top comment from Hupu for MSI, I might skip some of them as they are Chinese internet memes that I've no idea how to translate, and those comment related to Honor of Kings, a popular league like mobile game made by Tencent.
The rating is user poll generated, you can give a rating between 2 and 10, and average is used. A total of 97k people participated in this series' rating.
Hupu rating is an in APP feature so it doesn't really have a link, but here is the post match thread for the match, and on the top there is an link you can click on that get you to that page. link

MATCH 1: TL vs. TES

Team Liquid

	Player Rating	Top Comment
Impact K'sante	2.5	957 is coming out of retirement after watching this game.
UmTi Maokai	2.5	You are such a foodie, can't get enough of Jacky's Culling.
APA Tristana	2.4	Fleet footwork and Cull, you are charging up for next game.
Yeon Kalista	2.5	Heard you guys were laughing when you saw the draw and got TES?
CoreJJ Renata Glasc	3.7	You are not facing baobao anymore, you know? (Referencing Baolan, also baobao means baby in Chinese).
Spawn	3.4	Kalista Renata with Maokai and Trist, doesn't know how to scale, kept forcing plays.

Top Esports

	Player Rating	Top Comment
369 Urgot	9.7	The Dreadnought is steaming, warrior 69 is unstoppable. (Referencing to Tencent's fps game Crossfire's theme song called NiZhan).
Tian Sejuani	9.3	Kept it up, I'm watching you.
Creme Hwei	9.5	Didn't learn much from facing Knight, beside his mark of the weak. (Its a joke in LPL that once Knight faces someone and deems him weak, a mark of weak is applied and he perform much better against him.)
JackeyLove Lucian	9.7	High risk high reward, its not JackyLove if you don't kept playing on the edge.
Meiko Nami	9.8	I was playing Nami 10 years ago.
Despa1r	8.9	This BP is alright, not asking much, just need to be better than the other side's.

MATCH 2: TL vs. TES

Team Liquid

	Player Rating	Top Comment
Impact Rumble	2.6	Confucius: Living on to old age:-this is to be a pest.
UmTi Rek'sai	2.7	Dude, did you get an AFK warning from camping there?
APA Aurelion Sol	2.8	Banning your one-tricks is helping you. (reference to APA's all chat).
Yeon Smolder	2.4	Its alright, just remember to uninstall league after you fly back home, the worst player is always the most cocky.
CoreJJ Nautilus	3.1	Are you looking for "IG Baolan"?
Spawn	2.7	Did you know, in Smolder's strongest patch, when people pick smolder they still ban Jacky's Senna, and you dare to leave Senna out and pick Smolder right now?

Top Esports

	Player Rating	Top Comment
369 Twisted Fate	9.2	Ok, points for dare to pick this.
Tian Xin Zhao	9.7	Most FMVP like game in the recent months.
Creme Corki	9.5	Last game practicing Paintbrushman, this game practicing Airplane.
JackeyLove Senna	9.7	My friend was asking me if Senna W is a point and click ability.
Meiko Ornn	9.9	Impersonating support
Despa1r	8.1	Don't practice comp now, are you suggesting trying it later against GENG? BP is good, some cloud gamer kept saying don't pick this for Creme, don't pick that for Creme. Strong team will not let Creme off so easy with those champion pool issues.

MATCH 13: TL vs. TES

Team Liquid

	Player Rating	Top Comment
Impact Renekton	2.7	Before the game: Damu Sensei (nick name for Male JAV star Tony Ooki, known in China for resemblance to Jay Chou, one of the GOAT popular Chinese musician, also looks like Impact). After the game: Da Sensei(Nickname for Hachiman Hikigaya, main character for Japanese light novel "My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, as I Expected"). PS: Mu also means mother in Chinese, one of the more common Chinese flame.
UmTi Vi	2.5	Dude, you really can camp, I mean it isn't really useful, but you really can camp.
APA Aurelion Sol	2.6	What happened to LCS, felt like they would have trouble beating PSG.
Yeon Jhin	2.4	Saw the last "Unworthy", like to emote, here is a 3-0 for you.
CoreJJ Nami	2.5	The last team try to take Nami away from Lucian is DK in S11.
Spawn	2.8	Jhin Nami botlane, paying tribute to the legendary Ghost Genshin botlane.

Top Esports

	Player Rating	Top Comment
369 K'Sante	9.5	This is for all the weakside top laner, use All Out on Nami! (Reference to the manga Fire Punch, Chapter 45 page 16. It is actually a mistranslation in Chinese version, but still became a popular meme).
Tian Xin Zhao	9.7	Case solved, TL = tian liang (Tian's first name, means sun is up in Chinese), now the sun is really up.(People call him Depression Tian and Cheerful Tian based on how he plays, and when the sun is up, people are usually more cheerful).
Creme Corki	9.7	Creme (Corki) All: Shoutu. (means offer coaching, often used in the same manner as ggez).
JackeyLove Lucian	9.8	When T1 beat FLY, people are praising T1, When TES beat TL, people are trashing TL, xdxd.
Meiko Milio	9.8	Dude, last time someone took away my Nami I got an world championship trophy.
Despa1r	8.6	No problem, if you want to practice comp at international stage, you needs to ban their one tricks.

This is a list of almost every offer available on beermoneyuk, plus a load of guides and other tips for earning and saving money. May beermoney help you when you need/want it to.

Announcements

New offers from the last month:

• Dibz - some free tickets for football bingo. Might win, might not.
• Pinecone Research - join this product test/survey site whilst you can.
• Rakuten - relaunched their site, and old/new users a like can get a £15 cashback bonus.
• Zing - grab this £20 bonus whilst you can. Offer is only available for one month.

Ongoing Tide Offer: Spend £100, get £75 cash back.
A long-running feature of beermoneyuk. The Tide offer is one of the best cashback offers out there. Open an account with Tide, spend £100 and get £75 cashback. See the post here here for details on how to get £75
BeermoneyUK Competitions
Throughout the year, we run competitions where we give away some Amazon vouchers. The latest competition saw us giving away a £200 in Amazon vouchers - see here for the winners
​

BeermoneyUK Guides

#	Topic
1	Overview - The BeermoneyUK Starter Guide
2	The Bank Switch Bribe Bible
3	The BeermoneyUK Investing Offer Guide (Investapedia)
---	---
---	Cashback Guides
4	Online Cashback Website Guide
5	TightAsF_ck's Cashback Search Tool
---	---
---	Old School Beermoney
6	Get Paid To Site/App Megalist
7	Survey Site/App Megalist
8	User Testing Site/App Megalist
9	Market Research Site/App Megalist
---	---
---	Other topics
10	Overview of money transfer offers (old)
11	List of Matched Betting Guides & half-price Oddsmonkey promotions
12	Guide for making the most of casino offers

​

Get Paid To Play Game Guides

#	Game	Link to Guide
1	Merge Dragons	Get £50 for Merge Dragons in 3ish days
2	Puzzles & Survival	Get £25 for Puzzles & Survival
3	Walking Dead	Get ~£60 for Walking Dead
4	State of Survival	Get £116 for State of Survival (take a while though)
5	Bingo Blitz	very easy
6	Empires & Puzzles	Get £25 for Puzzles & Survival

More info and chat about game offers happens on Inbox_Pounds
​

The big beermoneyuk list of offers

Below is the big list of nearly all sign-up offers posted on beermoneyuk. There's a lot of money to be made (usually more than £1000). I originally wrote it so I could easily answer questions like "what offers are available?", and I've just kept it up to date ever since,
Notes:

Search links will take you to a list of all posts on that offer, with the newest listed at the top of the page. Latest referrals are listed in the newest post and in the comments of that post. If you are on the reddit app, you need to sort the search results by "new".
I've tried to include all of the offers commonly posted on beermoneyuk. But no doubt, I have missed some and new ones appear frequently. So the list is probably missing some great offers. Aside from any missed offers, there are many tips, tricks and announcements posted on the sub that will help you earn a little more beermoney. So if this is your introduction to beermoney, please do stick around and browse the posts.

​

1 - Megathreads (the most popular offers)

The most popular offers on beermoneyuk. So popular that we had to create megathreads to keep the subreddit in order. There's only one at the moment:

None at the moment.
​

2 - Free money Offers (i.e. no spend required)

Just some free money offers for signing up and using some services.

Free money offers come in free flavours:

1. Just sign up and get some free money.
   
2. Sign up, deposit and/or spend a little money to get some free money in return.
   

​

Totally Free Beermoney - Just Sign Up Offers

No need to deposit or do anything else to get these bonuses, just sign up with a refer-a-friend link.

#	Site/App	Offer	Timescale
1	Dibz (!!gambling offer!!)	Sign up, get 2 free football bingo tickets	Might win, might not
2	PensionBee (Google PensionBee £50)	Sign up, get £50 in your pension for free	~1 month
3	Snoop (Click to search)	Sign up, get £5 free	1 month
4	Wombat (Click to search)	Sign up, get £10 Free	90 days

​

Free Money Offers - just deposit or spend a little first.

#	Title	Offer	Timescale
1	AMEX (Click to search)	Up to £150 back for £3k spend	3 months
2	ATOA Pay (Click to search)	Get £4 for sending £10	few days
3	Currensea (Click to search)	Spend £100, get £10 Free	~120 days
4	Klarna (Click to search)	£10 off Deliveroo	~1 week
5	Monzo (Click to search)	Spend £1, get £5 free	~1 week
6	Park Christmas (Click to search)	Save £25, get £10	Christmas
7	PayPal (Click to search)	Spend £5, get £10	1 month
8	Raisin (Click to search)	Save £5k, get £50 Free	6 months
9	Snoop (Click to search)	Sign up, get £5 free	1 month
10	Sprive (Click to search)	Useful direct debit (£5 bonus)	Instant
11	Vanquis (Click to search)	Spend £1, get £25 free	~1 week
12	Zing (Click to search)	Spend £5, get £20 free	~1 month

​

3 - Investing Offers

Get a little beermoney for investing in the stock market. Maybe you will be the next Warren Buffet.

Investing offers also come in three flavours: 1) just sign up for a bonus; 2) deposit some money to get a bonus; or 3) invest some money to get a bonus. Most require you to invest your funds/bonus for a few months.
This list includes only refer-a-friend offers. But other investing offers are available via cashback websites - detailed in the Investapedia Post (like the Bankedex, but for investing offers)

#	Site/App	Offer	Timescale
1	AJ Bell (Click to search)	Invest £10k, get £100 free	1 month
2	BestInvest (Click to search)	Invest £5000, get £100 free	1 month
3	Dodl (Click to search)	Invest £500, get £30 voucher	1 month
4	Fidelity(Click to search)	Invest £5k, get £100 free	1 week
5	FreeTrade (Click to search)	Deposit £50, get £10-£100 free	1 week
6	Income Company (Click to search)	Invest €10, get €10-€500	Unknown
7	InvestEngine (Click to search)	Invest £100, get £10-£50 free	1 year
8	RobinHood (Click to search)	Deposit £1, get up to £140	Few days
9	Wahed Invest (Click to search)	Invest £100, get £10	30 days
10	Wealthify (Click to search)	Invest £250, get £50 Free	90 days
11	Wealthyhood (Click to search)	Invest £100, get £5-£200 Free	60 days
12	Wombat (Click to search)	Sign up, get £10 Free	90 days

​

4 - Money Transfer Offers

Get some beermoney for sending money abroad (can be to your own account).

Money transfer offers also come in free flavours:

1. Get a discount off your first transfer
   
2. Get a discount off your second transfer.
   
3. Cashback money transfer offers
   

For more information on how to do these, read the The Send Money To Yourself (Money Transfer) Guide

#	Site/App	Offer	Timescale
1	Skrill (Click to search)	Send £100, pay only £90	1 week
2	Wise (Click to search)	Free international transfer	Instant
3	XE.com (Click to search)	Send £1000, get £25 (… I know…)	1 week

​

5 - Pension Offers

For people who want to live out their golden years in the Costa Del Sol.

These offers get you a bonus for opening/transferring pensions.

#	Site/App	Offer	Timescale
1	Penfold Pensions (Click to search)	Deposit £25, get £25 free	~1 month
2	Profile Pensions (Click to search)	Transfer £1000 pension, get £50 voucher	~1 month

^{Some people will post about PensionBee. It is a one-sided bonus that does not reward the new customer. To get £50 free money for signing up to PensionBee, google "PensionBee £50".}
​

6 - Get-Paid-To (GPT) Sites

Many advertisers will pay you to play games or sign up to other services. Probably they are trying to manipulate user numbers, or download statistics. But we don't care as long as we get paid!

Some of my favourite sites in here. Lots of extra sign up and paid-to-play game offers that do not appear often on the subreddit.

GPT sites are like cashback sites (they pay you to complete tasks). To ensure you do not miss out on your rewards, read the tips in the Get Paid to Site Guide.

The best (in my opinion)

#	Site/App	Comments
1	Inbox Pounds (Click to search)	My favourite site
2	ySense (Click to search)	My other favourite site
3	RewardXP (Click to search)	Usually pays more than Freecash
4	Earnably (Click to search)	Usually pays more than Freecash
5	Freecash (Click to search)	Nice game and sign-up offers

Lots of these sites have the same offers available via various offerwalls. They pay different amounts all the time. It's always worth checking which site is paying more.

The Rest

#	Site/App	Comments
1	Cashback Earners (Click to search)	Junk app that some here like
2	Cashback.co.uk (Click to search)	Some easy sign-up offers
3	Gaintplay (Click to search)	Like freecash, but only really good for TapJoy
4	OhMyDosh (Click to search)	Currently garbage

​

7 - Cashback Sites/Apps (some passive, some active):

Get cashback on your everyday shopping using a variety of means. Combine them to get even more cash back.

Cashback Cards

Get up to 4% cashback on almost all spending with these credit/e-money cards.

#	Site/App	Offer
1	AMEX (Click to search)	Varies depending on card.
2	Yonder (Click to search)	~£50 in pretty useless points

​

Cashback Websites/Apps

Get cashback when you use online shopping gateways (Topcashback/Quidco) or for purchasing eGift cards (e.g. Jam Doughnut).

Online shopping cashback platforms must be able to track your purchase in order to verify your cashback, read the cashback guide to make sure you maximise your chances of this happening.
For gift card cashback, Topcashback and Jam Doughnut are the best sites that have refer a friend offers. But better rates can usually be found elsewhere. You can find the best rates for most shops using the BeermoneyUK Cashback search tool.

#	Site/App	Offer
1	Jam Doughnut (Click to search)	Cashback on giftcards & £2 bonus
2	Cheddar (Click to search)	Cashback on giftcards
3	Quidco (Click to search)	Get £15 when you earn £5
4	Rakuten (Click to search)	Cashback at almost every online shop. Get £15 when you spend £30 online.
5	Topcashback (Click to search)	Cashback at almost every online shop. Usually £10 bonus.

​

Automatic Cashback Apps

Get cashback automatically when you link your bank account/card to these apps. Its free money, so why not?! For more information on these, read the Lazy (automatic) Cashback App Megalist

#	Site/App	Offer
1	Airtime (Click to search)	Link card, get up to 10% cashback automatically
2	Cheddar (Click to search)	Link card, get up to 10% cashback automatically
3	Unbanx (Click to search)	Link bank, get ~£0.91 and ongoing rewards

​

Receipt Scanning Cashback Apps

Get cashback for submitting your shopping receipts. For more information on these, read the Receipt Scanning App Megalist (it does need an update).

#	Site/App	Offer
1	Amazon Panel (Click to search)	£5 per month for uploading 10 receipts
2	GreenJinn (Click to search)	Cashback at the supermarket. £1 Bonus
3	Shopmium (Click to search)	Cashback at the supermarket. Free pringles.

​

8 - Cashback/Rebates on Utilities (Gas/Electricity/Broadband/Mobile, etc.):

Get money off your bills or a bonus voucher when you swap your utilities provider. We figure that most people have no choice but to spend on these things anyway, so we consider them beermoney offers.

Energy (gas/electricity)

Get cheaper gas/electricity (despite the government cap) at Octopus energy, plus a £50 bill credit.

#	Site/App	Offer	Comment
1	Octopus (Click to search)	£50 credit when you switch	Cheaper than most suppliers
2	So Energy (Click to search)	£50 credit when you switch
3	British Gas (Click to search)	£75 credit when you switch	Definitely not the cheapest

​

Telecommunications (Broadband/Mobile)

Get some cashback for essential utilities.

#	Site/App	Offer	Comment
1	Lebara (Click to search)	Referrer only bonus (discount to new customer)	Check TCB for better offers.
2	Sky (Click to search)	£30-£100 for signing up	Check TCB for better offers.
3	Smarty (Click to search)	£10 for signing up	Check TCB for better offers.
4	Virgin Media (Click to search)	£50 for signing up	Check TCB for better offers.
5	Voxi (Click to search)	£10-£20 for signing up	Check TCB for better offers.

​

9 - Freebies (free food, etc.):

Who doesn't love a freebie?

#	Site/App	Offer
1	Caffe Nero (Click to search)	One or Two free coffees
2	Coffee No 1 (Click to search)	Free coffee
3	Costa (Click to search)	Free cake & Half a free drink
4	Nordic Nicotine Pouches (Click to search)	Free nictonie
5	Roamler (Click to search)	Free stuff at the supermarket
6	Shopmium (Click to search)	Free Cadbury buttons (and cashback on shopping)
7	Simply Cook (Click to search)	Free box of four ingredient kits
8	Starling (Click to search)	Free National Trust Day Pass

​

10 - Bonus Money for giving your Opinion

Bonus money for market research sites.

#	Site/App	Offer	Timescale
1	Respondent (Click to search)	No bonus, but home of the Homecare Panel	N/A
2	Testing Time (Click to search)	No bonus, but good site for market research/user testing.	N/A
3	User Interviews (Click to search)	£10 bonus after completing first market research task.	1 week after completion

​

Bonus money for survey sites.

#	Site/App	Offer	Timescale
1	Pinecone (Click to search)	No bonus, but a good product test survey site. Sign up whilst you can.	N/A
2	Attapoll (Click to search)	£0.40 bonus, Endless surveys	N/A
3	Prime Opinion (Click to search)	~£5 bonus, More endless surveys	N/A
4	Eureka (Click to search)	£1.50 for completing profile	N/A

​

Bonus money for mystery shopping sites.

#	Site/App	Offer	Timescale
1	MarketForce Wiki (Click to search)	Five Guys mystery shopping	N/A
2	Roamler (Click to search)	Supermarket mystery shopping	N/A

​

Related subreddits:

#	Subreddit	Offer
1	Inbox_Pounds	For the those who like getting paid to play games
2	breadandhoney	Like beermoney, but for discounts
3	beermoney	The US beermoney subreddit
4	beermoneyglobal	Another non-UK based beermoney subreddit

​

Notes

Happy to add to, remove from, and correct this list as appropriate. So please suggest things you think should be on it.

In recent years, the rise of ultra-processed foods has sparked significant concern among health professionals and consumers alike. These highly processed food products, characterized by their long list of artificial ingredients and additives, have been linked to various adverse health effects, including both mental and physical implications. In this comprehensive analysis, we delve into the intricate relationship between ultra-processed foods and human health, shedding light on the detrimental consequences that these products may have on our overall well-being.
Defining Ultra-Processed Foods
Before delving into the impact of ultra-processed foods, it's essential to understand what constitutes these products. Ultra-processed foods are typically defined as ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat products that undergo extensive processing, often containing additives such as preservatives, artificial flavors, and colors. Common examples include sugary snacks, fast food items, packaged meals, and carbonated beverages.
Physical Health Implications
The consumption of ultra-processed foods has been closely linked to various physical health issues, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and certain types of cancer. These products are often high in refined sugars, unhealthy fats, and sodium, while lacking essential nutrients such as fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Regular consumption of ultra-processed foods can contribute to weight gain, insulin resistance, elevated blood pressure, and an increased risk of chronic diseases.
Mental Health Effects
In addition to its impact on physical health, the consumption of ultra-processed foods has also been associated with adverse effects on mental well-being. Research suggests that diets high in processed foods may be linked to an increased risk of depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders. The excessive intake of refined sugars and artificial additives found in ultra-processed foods can disrupt neurotransmitter function and lead to fluctuations in mood and energy levels.
Nutritional Deficiencies
One of the key concerns surrounding ultra-processed foods is their poor nutritional quality. These products often contain empty calories devoid of essential nutrients, leading to nutritional deficiencies and imbalances in the diet. Regular consumption of ultra-processed foods can displace nutrient-rich whole foods from the diet, resulting in inadequate intake of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants essential for optimal health.
Addictive Properties
Another factor contributing to the widespread consumption of ultra-processed foods is their addictive nature. These products are specifically engineered to be highly palatable and crave-inducing, often containing a combination of sugar, salt, and fat that stimulates the brain's reward centers. As a result, individuals may find themselves craving and consuming these foods in excess, leading to a cycle of overeating and weight gain.
Environmental Impact
In addition to its detrimental effects on human health, the production and consumption of ultra-processed foods also have significant environmental consequences. The industrial processing and packaging of these products contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, and deforestation. Furthermore, the cultivation of ingredients such as palm oil and soy for use in ultra-processed foods has been linked to habitat destruction and biodiversity loss.
Promoting Healthier Alternatives
To mitigate the negative impact of ultra-processed foods on human health, it's crucial to promote healthier alternatives and encourage dietary habits centered around whole, minimally processed foods. Emphasizing the consumption of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and healthy fats can provide essential nutrients while reducing the intake of harmful additives and empty calories.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the proliferation of ultra-processed foods poses significant challenges to human health and well-being. From their detrimental effects on physical health and mental well-being to their environmental impact, these products represent a significant public health concern. By raising awareness of the consequences of ultra-processed food consumption and promoting healthier dietary choices, we can work towards creating a healthier and more sustainable food environment for future generations.

In recent years, the rise of ultra-processed foods has sparked significant concern among health professionals and consumers alike. These highly processed food products, characterized by their long list of artificial ingredients and additives, have been linked to various adverse health effects, including both mental and physical implications. In this comprehensive analysis, we delve into the intricate relationship between ultra-processed foods and human health, shedding light on the detrimental consequences that these products may have on our overall well-being.
Defining Ultra-Processed Foods
Before delving into the impact of ultra-processed foods, it's essential to understand what constitutes these products. Ultra-processed foods are typically defined as ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat products that undergo extensive processing, often containing additives such as preservatives, artificial flavors, and colors. Common examples include sugary snacks, fast food items, packaged meals, and carbonated beverages.
Physical Health Implications
The consumption of ultra-processed foods has been closely linked to various physical health issues, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and certain types of cancer. These products are often high in refined sugars, unhealthy fats, and sodium, while lacking essential nutrients such as fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Regular consumption of ultra-processed foods can contribute to weight gain, insulin resistance, elevated blood pressure, and an increased risk of chronic diseases.
Mental Health Effects
In addition to its impact on physical health, the consumption of ultra-processed foods has also been associated with adverse effects on mental well-being. Research suggests that diets high in processed foods may be linked to an increased risk of depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders. The excessive intake of refined sugars and artificial additives found in ultra-processed foods can disrupt neurotransmitter function and lead to fluctuations in mood and energy levels.
Nutritional Deficiencies
One of the key concerns surrounding ultra-processed foods is their poor nutritional quality. These products often contain empty calories devoid of essential nutrients, leading to nutritional deficiencies and imbalances in the diet. Regular consumption of ultra-processed foods can displace nutrient-rich whole foods from the diet, resulting in inadequate intake of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants essential for optimal health.
Addictive Properties
Another factor contributing to the widespread consumption of ultra-processed foods is their addictive nature. These products are specifically engineered to be highly palatable and crave-inducing, often containing a combination of sugar, salt, and fat that stimulates the brain's reward centers. As a result, individuals may find themselves craving and consuming these foods in excess, leading to a cycle of overeating and weight gain.
Environmental Impact
In addition to its detrimental effects on human health, the production and consumption of ultra-processed foods also have significant environmental consequences. The industrial processing and packaging of these products contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, and deforestation. Furthermore, the cultivation of ingredients such as palm oil and soy for use in ultra-processed foods has been linked to habitat destruction and biodiversity loss.
Promoting Healthier Alternatives
To mitigate the negative impact of ultra-processed foods on human health, it's crucial to promote healthier alternatives and encourage dietary habits centered around whole, minimally processed foods. Emphasizing the consumption of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and healthy fats can provide essential nutrients while reducing the intake of harmful additives and empty calories.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the proliferation of ultra-processed foods poses significant challenges to human health and well-being. From their detrimental effects on physical health and mental well-being to their environmental impact, these products represent a significant public health concern. By raising awareness of the consequences of ultra-processed food consumption and promoting healthier dietary choices, we can work towards creating a healthier and more sustainable food environment for future generations.

Even before he really knew what it meant, Allen Wong wanted to be rich. As a kid, he didn’t yet equate the word with “luxury” or “status” or “expensive things.” He didn’t think wealth would bring him 85-inch televisions and Jacuzzis, a one-of-a-kind rose-gold Lamborghini in the garage, a wearable Iron Man suit that shoots lasers — though he does, actually, have all of that now. What “rich” seemed to dangle was something simpler, more elementary, more a feeling than anything else: freedom from pain.
Wong’s parents had fled poverty — at one point, his father used tennis balls as flotation devices to illicitly cross waters from Guangzhou into Hong Kong — in order to raise a family in a more opportune land. But growing up in New York City, Wong watched one parent peddle medicinal herbs all day long while the other toiled away in a Chinatown sweatshop. They barely had time to slough off one workday before trudging into the next.
“I didn’t want my life to end up like that,” he told me. “I didn’t want to be absent from my family and only show up a few hours each day after work. I didn’t want my life to be monotonous and stuck in a repeating loop until I die.”
Then, in 2008, right as he was graduating from college, the family convulsed. Wong’s father was ousted from his business, sank into a depression and committed suicide; his mother tripped down a spiral of mental illness. Suddenly, Wong’s entry-level computer programming job was the household’s only source of income, and there was a world financial crisis going on. He had always dreamed about digging out of the middle-class quagmire — striking gold, pulling in enough money from a one-off idea that he would never have to work the way his parents did. But it was now, as anxiety and medical bills piled up, that those idle daydreams began to feel urgent and necessary. So he turbocharged his ambitions. He started coding around the clock, tinkering on D.I.Y. software ideas whenever he wasn’t at work, barely sleeping. He doggedly pushed one project after another to the App Store, praying for something to take off.
Eventually, one did: an app that let users tune in to police scanners around the world. Then another. Their runaway success took even him by surprise. By the time his peers were splurging on their first West Elm sofas, he was a self-made multimillionaire.
Wong found his day job interesting enough, and he liked his colleagues. But submitting himself to a boss’s whims, spending his days trapped like a houseplant under corporate fluorescence, grated at him; it reminded him too much of his parents’ suffering. What, he wondered, could a so-called career really offer him if he had already secured enough money for a good life? The whole point of working was to get what he had just gotten. So, at 25, he bought a $250,000 sports car painted a shimmery lime green — it wasn’t so crazy a purchase, he reasoned, because his police-scanner app was by then generating that amount of revenue in a single month — and announced that he was retiring forever.
It was only after he bought a second exotic car, a five-bedroom house in Celebration, Fla., a dog and a Disney World annual pass for his mother that Wong learned that there was an entire online community of people seeking to do what he had just done. Wong had heard of the Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) movement before, but he didn’t think it really applied to him because of its focus on frugality. FIRE got its start in the early 2000s with a mantra of extreme saving — you may remember hearing about stoic ultraminimalists living off beans and friends’ couches — but it has since come to include all the people who would like to exit the work force on their own terms, at an age of their own choosing, rather than hustling for a paycheck all the way into their 60s. After Wong made a Reddit post sharing his story, it attracted such a flurry from FIRE adherents that he quickly became the quasi president of one of the group’s biggest online enclaves.
Some FIRE aspirants still get to early retirement by the traditional route of simply saving madly. Others, though, truffle-hunt for high-paying W-2s, tax loopholes, bold and risky market bets or big entrepreneurial ploys like Wong’s. The overarching credo of FIRE is that in today’s unpredictable financial landscape, 9-to-5s and decades-long careers have become bad investments: Old-school benefits like pensions and job security are a thing of the past, and wages aren’t even keeping up with the galloping pace of inflation. According to a 2023 survey, one-quarter of Americans would like to retire before age 50. After decades of tolerating workaholic culture as the norm, employees are tired, unafraid to show it and yearning to yank back control of their lives. To fed-up workers willing to do a little bit of math, FIRE offers a straightforward antidote: You can just leave it all behind.
Like Wong, and like so many other people who chase financial independence, I didn’t grow up with a lot of money — which might be why I became obsessed with it.
Long before “side hustle” became Merriam-Webster lingo, I was working Costco snack arbitrage on the elementary-school playground and hawking homemade bookmarks to my teachers. In adulthood, I moved on to online surveys, research studies, plasma donation, vintage resale, parts modeling and dog-sitting in other people’s homes in lieu of paying rent. I have left no income source unturned. I’ve trawled every page of NerdWallet and The Points Guy. I have made questionable margin calls. I have woken up at the crack of dawn to day-trade $NVDA, $TSLA, $TSM. I have “flipped”; I have “churned.” When I feel sad, I open my phone to check on the interest rates in the five-pronged CD ladder I’ve lovingly assembled in my Marcus account, like a tic, to feel better.
Come on, Kids. Let’s Grab Drinks. ImageWong in his Ironman suit standing next to the bathtub. Wong created a police-scanner app that was so popular that it allowed him to retire at 25.Credit...Maggie Shannon for The New York Times Is this all embarrassing to confess? Incredibly so. Would I characterize my relationship to money as “unhealthy”? Also yes. But I often wonder if anybody in this economy, in this country — where more than 60 percent of the work force lives paycheck to paycheck, where the average American is in five- to six-figure debt and often has only cursory knowledge of how he or she got there — has a healthy relationship to money. Simply learning to understand your own finances can feel, several FIRErs said to me, like acquiring a “secret weapon.”
The original FIRE doctrine revolves around delay of gratification. Save your money — ideally as much as 50 to 75 percent of each paycheck — instead of spending it immediately, and when you’ve amassed enough of a nest egg, quit your job and take the rest of your life for yourself. “It’s simple, because the main principles fit on a Post-it note,” Jacob Lund Fisker, a Danish former astrophysicist who is often thought of as the father of the FIRE movement, told me. “However, it is not easy, because everything the typical middle-class consumer has been raised and trained to believe goes against these principles. People have grown up associating success with money and spending money with happiness. They’ve been trained to sit still and perform repetitive work, first by a teacher, then by a manager. They’ve been educated to be specialists in a narrow field and never think outside that box.”
Fisker’s 2010 book, “Early Retirement Extreme” — written mostly while he lived out of an R.V. on $7,000 a year — is one seminal text for early retirees. Two others are “Your Money or Your Life,” a 1992 personal-finance bible written by Joseph R. Dominguez and Vicki Robin, and the blog Mr. Money Mustache, started in 2011 by Peter Adeney, who retired from his software-engineering job in 2005 at age 30 and figured out how to shrink his family’s expenses down to just $24,000 a year. The tao of all three tomes is that minimalist spending and anti-consumption can offer the keys to better living. (Adeney has professed to be “really just trying to get rich people to stop destroying the planet,” but his tens of thousands of monthly visitors tend to be more fixated on his other mantra: “Make you rich so you can retire early.”)
Conventional FIRE adherents are not necessarily big earners or genius mathematicians with incredible impulse control. Their superpower is their expert planning; it’s the ability to see the finish line from miles away that has allowed even some minimum-wage workers to achieve early retirement. One simple FIRE rule of thumb is to first calculate your target “FI number” by multiplying anticipated annual retirement expenses by at least 25, and then squirrel away as much as possible into interest-accruing or tax-advantaged buckets like 401(k)s, low-fee index funds, certificates of deposit, HSAs and Roth IRAs until you hit that number. As an example, if you bring home $150,000 a year, can save half of that and plan to spend $50,000 per year in retirement, then it will take only 16.5 years before you can kiss your job goodbye. For those who earn less or spend more, it will take longer — but for still others who can endure greater sacrifices, FIRE can be possible as early as their 30s.
From these plain origins, many offshoots of FIRE have sprouted up — some much more brazen than others. It’s rare to find anyone these days who actually wants to get to early retirement by living off beans; those people, with their stringent penny-pinching, are largely known in the community as LeanFIRE. A lot more people aim for CoastFIRE (a more measured approach that involves front-loading your retirement savings and “coasting” on compound interest and working lightly until you’re ready to quit) or BaristaFIRE (quitting your job but buttressing your retirement with a side gig, such as that of a part-time barista, to receive health-insurance benefits) or FatFIRE (a luxurious, no-sacrifice approach to retirement, the polar opposite of LeanFIRE — and the subset to which Wong belongs).
You might be tempted to regard early retirees as layabouts, soaking up sunshine while everyone else toils. But why not see them as brave maniacs, daring to build an entirely new vision of the world? Retirement has long been framed as a reward for a job well done — social reformers started pushing for mandatory post-work benefits in the early 20th century, and policies like Social Security later codified the tipping point between labor and leisure — but if FIRE’s incredible popularity of late (the Fire subreddit alone boasts nearly half a million members) is a defiant reaction to economic hardship, then it’s also a plea to re-evaluate the centrality of work to modern living. Maybe, the movement suggests, we should have always been in it for ourselves, and nobody else, from the start.
To my left was a woman who runs a phone-sex hotline; to my right, a cruise operator, a disaster-response volunteer, a kitchen-appliance entrepreneur, a public-school teacher and a former Off Broadway actor who now lives out of the back of an 18-wheeler and puts 70 percent of her weekly paycheck into index funds. It was a chilly spring weekend, and we had all flown to Cincinnati for EconoMe, an annual all-flavors-of-FIRE conference in which hundreds of people of all ages, from all over, bandy about tips on financial independence from dawn to dusk. The point of FIRE meetups — EconoMe is the largest, but others take place all over the world, some of them at a monthly clip — is only partly to give fiscal advice. Every person’s retirement plan is a highly individualized choreography, after all, so the manifold workshops and breakout groups are meant to offer only high-level ideas. The broader purpose of these get-togethers is more a sort of group therapy, geared to help people achieve their common goals and forge through their common struggles.
Much of the crowd was timid but curious — like Laura Rojo-Eddy, who decided on a whim to fly out from Texas. “My family doesn’t know anything about FIRE,” she told me. “I’ve been really shy talking about it. It’s hard to talk about finances with strangers, but in a way it’s even harder with people you love.” She chanced upon the movement in 2021 via a former colleague’s LinkedIn post, which made her consider for the first time that she may not have to work until the standard age of 65. The friend “posted she was retiring thanks to FIRE, and I was like: That’s really cool! But what the hell is she talking about? And, holy crap, this person’s my age — 40 — and what if I could do that? Should I do that?”
At EconoMe, bank-account totals were traded more freely than phone numbers. The conference’s organizer, Diania Merriam (retired at 33), introduced speakers like Jeremy Schneider (retired at 36), who spoke about how to pick a good financial adviser; the retired divorce lawyer Aaron Thomas, who evangelized the importance of prenups; the real estate tax strategist Natalie Kolodij, who discussed real estate investing and recommended employing your children starting from the age they are able to do household chores, which offers a double benefit of reducing a parent’s taxable income while building an investment-accruing tax shelter for the 7-year-old. Stephanie Zito’s two-hour seminar on the nitty-gritty of “travel hacking,” a.k.a. traversing the world through strategic deployment of credit-card points, had the crowd on the edge of their seats.
In one morning session, a brave volunteer named Krista put her life’s “balance sheet” up on a big screen so that 500 strangers could critique it for blind spots. She is 35, with four kids ages 16, 15, 9 and 7, and makes $32,000 working in a library in Wisconsin. Over the last seven years, since discovering FIRE, she and her husband had slowly paid off $200,000 in credit-card and home- and auto-loan debt. But she knew, she said, humbly dipping her head a bit, that she still had a long way to go, especially when compared with all the younger, already-retired millionaires in the room.
“Wait a second,” Frank Vasquez, one of the conference’s speakers, interrupted. “No. Do you all see this? Krista was a teenage mom who grew up in poverty. We are looking, right now, at a map of a hero’s journey.”
Jackie Cummings Koski of Dayton, Ohio, grew up on food stamps, learned about FIRE in her early 40s and retired at 49 with $1.3 million in savings.Credit...Brian Kaiser for The New York Times During a break, Jackie Cummings Koski, an Ohio local, shared her story with me: She grew up on food stamps and had a “wake-up call” with money after an acrimonious divorce left her a single mother. She learned about FIRE in her early 40s. Newly enlightened, she started saving 40 percent of the salary from her five-figure job, reached financial independence at 47 and pulled the trigger on retirement at 49, with $1.3 million in savings. “My corporate job had nothing to do with what I want to do,” Koski told me. “I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it.” She added: “While most FIRE people brag about having an old car with 200,000 miles or whatever, I drive a luxury car. But nobody’s going to chastise me, because I still retired early, even with that car, even with having made some mistakes!” Koski spends her time nowadays creating financial content and advocating for personal-finance classes to be added to high schools, and she recently wrote a “FIRE for Dummies” manual.
To my surprise, a sizable portion of the FIRE crowd at EconoMe was older. This wasn’t so surprising to Bill Yount, a 58-year-old retired physician who recently started up a podcast with Koski and another friend, Becky Heptig, that speaks to older demographics. “The average American is a late starter,” Yount told me. “That’s just who we are, living in this consumption society and not having the mentality of saving often or early.” And things are no longer “9-to-5, 40 years and a gold watch” the way they were for his parents’ generation: “I’m not in the gold-watch generation. Gen X got lost, got forgotten.”
Heptig, who is 68, found herself in dire financial straits in her 50s, when her husband’s small business faltered. “I got really scared, thinking we will never get out of this debt and we will never retire,” she says. They took a course from the financial-advice radio host Dave Ramsey, and her husband signed up for a W-2 job. After that, they started saving madly. “We were net-worth zero at 50 years old, and he retired at 63 — so for us, where we started from, we consider ourselves retiring early,” Heptig says. She had made the same wild discovery that everyone in FIRE does: that it can really take as little as a decade to hit early retirement, from the moment you learn about it and start planning. But as Yount put it to me: “You don’t know what you don’t know. You don’t even know to go looking for it.”
Maybe it’s because I know too much about looking for money that I found myself, while reporting this article, especially drawn to the subculture of FatFIRE — and to the lavish, unapologetic, in-your-face money philosophy that Allen Wong and others of his ilk prefer. FatFIRE flies in the face of all the other variants of FIRE. It is anti-anticonsumption. Its typical benchmark is to accumulate enough wealth that you can comfortably spend at least $100,000 a year in retirement, but some highfliers aim for much, much bigger sums. It espouses an unbridled maximalism, a have-it-all abundance.
While most other FIRE communities steer toward the friendly and pragmatic, FatFIRE’s adherents tend to be jaded, brusque, laser-focused. They hunt for the “exit,” in the tech-world manner of speaking: a fast, lucrative way out. On the FatFIRE subreddit, aspirants ogle severance packages, geo-arbitrage, REIT, tax loopholes, high-risk options straddles and potential business moonshots. Successful FatFIRErs applaud one another for hitting double-digit-millions net worth, debate the merits of private jets versus second homes and agonize over how large a trust fund is ethical to set up for their kids. And just as Fisker and Adeney were beacons to early-era FIRE devotees, Allen Wong is FatFIRE’s mythic hero.
Wong is quiet and unassuming in person. When I finally met him this spring — three years after we first began chatting online — near his childhood home in Queens, he wore jeans, Asics and a wary self-consciousness. Now in his mid-30s, he has comfortably enjoyed nearly a decade of leisure; he spends the bulk of his days playing pickleball and counseling strangers online on how to follow in his footsteps. He’s not particularly interested in fame, so he posts, as the senior moderator of FatFIRE, under his app company’s name. For someone who is a living talisman against the tenets of conventional living, he speaks with a surprising calm — though his eyes flashed with a certain pride whenever we talked about his childhood or his father. Even though it sprouted up only seven years ago, FatFIRE is on the verge of overtaking FIRE in size, Wong told me. Membership doubled during the pandemic despite moderators’ intentionally hiding the forum from Reddit’s homepage, he said, showing me a graph, and he added that most of its members seem to be “early-career American men.”
This makes sense. Millennials may have been ushered into the work force with the encouragement to hustle, but we soon found ourselves jerked around by utterly unaffordable housing, pandemic layoffs, salaries that flopped flat while costs went stratosphere-high. Nearly half of young adults have “money dysphoria,” according to a recent survey from the personal-finance company Credit Karma. Online, trends like “quiet luxury” and “dupe culture” glorify totems of wealth while making it clear how depressingly inaccessible that echelon is for the average Joe. If the recent “antiwork” movement laid bare the disillusionment of the young work force, then FatFIRE represents those feelings put into action.
Some FatFIRE success stories are like Wong’s: a result of obsessive entrepreneurism. Just as many are a byproduct of grinding away at a regular, albeit high-earning, job for enough years. (Fisker, for one, argues that FatFIRE is just an aesthetic rebranding of the work-smart-not-hard ethos that has been woven throughout American history.) In San Francisco, Sam Dogen faithfully saved his finance-job paychecks for 13 years before retiring in 2012 to live off passive investment income. He initially budgeted $100,000 for him and his wife to spend per year, but they upped the target to $200,000 after having their first child, then to $300,000 after a second child — and recently again to $350,000 to account for the recent bout of unchecked inflation. “We choose to live in an expensive coastal city and choose to have two children,” Dogen told me. “But you look at the $300,000 budget I made for a family of four, and you’re like, This is a pretty middle-class lifestyle. FatFIRE is almost a necessity if you want to live in San Francisco.”
“I think more people should aim for FatFIRE, because even if you don’t hit it, you’ll be at regular FIRE,” Jeff Underwood, a San Diego-based FatFIRE aspirant who started chasing financial independence after he lost his house and sank $10,000 into debt, told me. “The idea of LeanFIRE makes me super nervous. Health care costs are going up. There are all these unknowns. You could really find yourself in trouble.” Through smart tips he picked up on financial-planning forums, Underwood’s net worth steadily climbed from $0 in 2011 to $1 million in 2023. He is drawn to FatFIRE’s cheeky energy and its emphasis on securing a big safety net: “I had spent so long in the survival mind-set,” he says. “My default position is to plan for the worst, because I’ve already been through the worst.”
Wong now splits most of his time between houses in Celebration, Fla., and in New York City. He wakes up early to play pickleball and can keep at it for hours if the weather is nice. Because he has so much free time to practice, he has gotten good enough to compete against elite players and coach novices. (He offered to teach me how to play, but it was a wind-whipped 35 degrees when we met up in early April, so we went to have soup dumplings instead.) Otherwise, he reads up on tech and cybersecurity news, plays video games and undertakes home-renovation projects. His houses have been burglarized three times, although he managed to halt the latest attempt with a self-programmed alarm system. He used to make videos about his exotic car collection on YouTube, a few of which went viral, but he grew tired of being a “content creator” because it felt too much like having a job. Plus, he had already done the whole rack-up-a-huge-number thing before — with money.
“It was as if I fast-forwarded through an entire movie, and the end credits are slowly rolling,” Wong told me recently, recalling his first, restless years in retirement. “There was nothing more to watch, and all my peers were still busy watching the movie that I already finished. After I traveled the world and had done just about every possible fun thing I could possibly do, I often found myself wondering, What now?”
Life after early retirement: the elephant in the room. What to do after the cruises, the skydiving, the teetering stack of books on the night stand? The main danger of FIRE is that you might be running hard away from something rather than toward it — that you’re propelled only by the too-nebulous idea of escape. And then, even for those who lay out a clear road map for decades of nirvana, the loneliness can eat at you.
That’s why some, like Merriam, EconoMe’s organizer, host regular social events in their local cities. The online community ChooseFI maintains a sprawling network of hundreds of local FIRE groups in cities around the world. Amy Minkley, who retired by working in Asia as a teacher and saving up to $90,000 of her salary each year, organizes an annual FIRE meetup in Bali as a way of keeping up the community that saved her from depression: “It just felt like someone had thrown me a life raft, and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel,” she told me.
A lot of other people go the Mr. Money Mustache route: They blog. Their posts about income spreadsheets and VTSAX returns then attract the like-minded, as potential friends or even lovers. Koski has heard of romances blossoming among fellow FIRErs — though many of them prefer the company of a FIRE Luddite. “A good chunk of my friends are on my phone,” Gwen Merz, who began saving up for FIRE when she discovered the Mustache blog at age 22 and reached CoastFIRE at age 32 with $400,000 in savings, told me.
A common worry is when to stop. How much is enough? Why not make more? Since there is an upper limit to money’s effect on joy — studies have shown that global happiness tops out at income levels of about $75,000 a year — chasing infinite wealth may be psychologically futile.
“I think people can accumulate money to the detriment of their health and happiness,” says Alan Donegan, who with his wife, Katie, lives a nomadic lifestyle and coaches FIRE newbies toward their resignation letters by “trying to show money is a tool to create your version of an extraordinary life.” There are also those like Oliver Truong, a 27-year-old who cares less about the dollars and cents of it all than about fulfilling a self-imposed challenge: “I think FIRE people are some of the most creative people I’ve ever met,” he told me at EconoMe. “At least for me, it was never about the money, honestly. It was more about just doing something I wanted on my own.”
For those who succeed at early retirement, especially at the FatFIRE level, a surprise depression can set in. “It’s quite alarming and sad to see how many people are lost after they do this,” Wong’s FatFIRE co-moderator, Mike Doehla, told me. Doehla himself thought he was prepared for the social segregation when he FatFIREd at 40 in 2022 through his nutrition-coaching business. He wasn’t. “It has been pretty isolating, and almost awkward at times,” he confessed. Based in a small town in upstate New York, Doehla doesn’t know anyone in real life who has retired early, and all his friends are still working. But, he told me, “I think I’m psychologically broken from ever working someone else’s schedule again,” and he is keen to discover who he is, as a person, outside of work. If the quest for happiness were a tangible metric, Doehla reckons he is about 60 percent of the way there: “I have this FOMO, this empty cup, regarding what is going around me that so many people have experienced, that I just want to taste a bit.”
At EconoMe, I met a 52-year-old architect who considers himself “FattishFIRE”; he and his wife spend about $8,000 a month in Boston and would like to keep up that lifestyle in retirement. But, he told me, “I pretend I have a lot less than I do.” He lives in a building where many of his neighbors “have very little money, live off government assistance and are critical of wealthy people. They don’t know we’re like ‘stealth wealth.’ Would they not like me anymore?” (For this reason, he asked not to be identified.) He has saved enough money to retire within two or three years if he wants to, but he worries about how he’ll be perceived within a field that takes pride in its workhorse culture: “I’d always thought ‘architect’ was my personality and was going to be until I died,” he said. “Am I being too nervous? Am I crazy? I’m still a little ashamed.”
Sam Dogen budgets $350,000 a year in expenses for his family of four: “FatFIRE is almost a necessity if you want to live in San Francisco,” he says.Credit...Maggie Shannon for The New York Times After a decade in retirement, Dogen, the San Francisco FatFIREr, recently did the unimaginable: He decided to go back to work. He doesn’t really need the money, but the endless leisure has begun to wear on him. “I can’t do pickleball all day,” Dogen told me. “So what’s the responsible thing to do? And the responsible thing to do is to find a job that has good purpose, good meaning, where you can work with some smart people and have a lot of camaraderie.” He added: “It just feels good to be part of something. I think it’s really important that we all feel like we’re part of something, contributing.” He took one gig but quit because it ate up too much time, and he is now looking for a less demanding part-time position.
Wong, these days, loves to volunteer. He donates to charities, serves on neighborhood boards and of course plays both chairman and soothsayer to the fraternity (for it is largely male) of FatFIRE. Wong doesn’t so much mind being solitary in real life — he considers himself a lone wolf and is often wary of making new friends for fear they will try to take financial advantage of him. He has been duped in the past by family members or acquaintances, including a friend who falsely claimed to need support for lifesaving heart surgeries. It’s not uncommon for him to get Venmo requests from strangers. (Many of his pickleball acquaintances learned about his wealth when a photographer showed up on the court to shoot him for this article.)
I asked him what he plans to do in his second decade of retirement — or his third or fourth or beyond. He doesn’t know yet. He told me he has been intrigued by the rise of A.I. and has flirted with the idea of a D.I.Y. project in that space. Ultimately, though, he hasn’t pursued it. He fears even self-employment would bring back the manic stresses he fought so hard to leave behind. “When I FatFIREd, I freed myself,” Wong told me. Inner peace, then, is the precious goal. He treasures all the time he has been able to spend with his mother and may one day share his wealth with children of his own. “Should I have worked more and made even more money? I’ve definitely left many millions of dollars on the table by stepping away from it all,” he told me. “But I always end up coming to the same conclusion: There’s no point in making so much money if you’re not going to be happy. I’d rather be free.”

I manage a forum that has been around since the early 2000s. We recently made the switch to Google Adsense and I've been dealing with the odd policy violation being flagged by Google.
We have a number of very old threads as the site serves as a great archive for the community. Some of those old thread have links to now defunct websites and Google flags these as Site Behaviour: Navigation errors.
What is the best way to handle this? Does Google really make zero consideration for users posting dead links ever? Do they really expect communities to police dead links? Especially when it's to external websites? They're already flagged with rel="nofollow noopener" and open in a new tab too.
Is my only option to just keep a list of old content with dead links to hide ads on those threads?

WEEKLY COVID CASES STATEWIDE REPORT FOR MAY 7, 2024
TOTAL NEW COVID CASES REPORTED WEEK (Sun-Sat) OF: 01/28-02/03: 6,550 (Estimated correction; VDH put up a typo) 02/04-02/10: 6,191 (VDH corrected from 5,663, +538 cases) 02/11-02/17: 5,432 (VDH corrected from 4,814, +614 cases) 02/18-02/24: 4,978 (VDH corrected from 4,494, +484 cases) 02/15-03/02: 3,891 (Figure is estimated from VDH data) 03/03-03/09: 3,134 (VDH corrected from 2,843, +291 cases) 03/10-03/16: 2,118 (VDH corrected from 1,909, +209 cases) 03/17-03/23: 1,764 (VDH corrected from 1,591, +173 cases) 03/24-03/30: 1,667 (VDH corrected from 1,449, + cases) 03/31-04/06: 1,255 (VDH corrected from 1,273, -18 cases) 04/07-04/13: 1,232 (VDH corrected from 1,113, +119 cases) 04/14-04/20: 1,151 (VDH corrected from 1,029, +122 cases) 04/21-04/27: 991 (VDH corrected from 899, +92 cases) 04/28-05/04: 782 (preliminary figure) Counts reported after 4/30/24 may be incomplete
VDH's reporting of the numbers above (Sun-Sat) is by illness date.
COVID CASES SINCE LAST REPORT BY DAY This runs report day to report day, not Sun-Sat Case numbers are from the previous day unless indicated otherwise Previous week's cases day count in parentheses after this week's day count Report covers 05/01/2024 to 05/07/2024

Wed: 142 cases (unknown) Thu: 155 cases (157) Fri: 130 cases (201) Sat: 125 cases (140) Sun: 65 cases (125) Mon: 74 cases (85) Tue: 127 cases (205) 

Counts reported after 4/30/24 may be incomplete
Total new cases reported (Wed-Tues): 818 7-day average of new cases: 116.9 Cases per 100,000 Population: 1.317 Some Figures and Percentages are usually slightly rounded by VDH
Reported cases decreasing. Estimate reported cases down about -15%.
As usual, the case curve movement equals this amount during that time period. The 13-week graph shows solid downward movement. I still need another week of uncorrupted data to do proper computations. The previous week (and figures) are corrupted because of missing data.
REPORTED DEATHS PER WEEK Week of: 03/31-04/06: 8 04/07-04/13: 6 04/14-04/20: 14 (VDH updated from 5) 04/21-04/27: 1 (VDH corrected from 5) 04/28-05/04: 2 (preliminary figure)
The VDH death rate is never put out completely up to date due to delays in death data, which can run months. The death data above has been corrected to current reported deaths from VDH sources and is always subject to change.
The larger updated death chart covering more past weeks has been uploaded. Gray shaded areas are subject to change.
CURRENT POSITIVITY RATE AS OF MAY 3, 2024 CDC Region 3 7-Day Positivity Rate: 2.6% (was 2.8% (CDC corrected), -7.14%) US National level is 3.0% (was 3.1%, revised, last week). Highest is Northeast (NJ and NY) at 3.9% and rising (+30% jump in one week). These are preliminary figures which the CDC may revise next week.
Tests this week were done on 2,292 samples.
Large jump in Region 2 bears watching. This could be nothing or the beginning of a new wave.
Region 3 has still in the "Very Low" range, and still under the National Positivity Rate.
HOSPITALS
NOTE: COVID-19 hospital reporting requirements expired April 30, 2024. Data may be incomplete after this date.
Hospital report is partial.
VDH reported a decrease of -10.8% in ER visits last week that were diagnosed as Covid (0.33% of visits). Corrected last four weeks are now listed as 0.48%, 0.42%, 0.37% and 0.33% of ER visits. Virginia remains at a minimal level for ER Covid visits. Graph posted.
Admissions: Incomplete data. Shows a huge drop (almost -50%, probably due to the stopping of reporting), yet bed use was reported and shows a slight increase.
VDH reported an increase of +4.4% in Covid bed use, at 0.71% of beds being used (both adult and pediatric) for Covid. The last four weeks run 0.84%, 0.77%, 0.68% and 0.71%. Virginia remains at the Minimal Level for Covid bed use. Graph posted.
Last report of ICUs in use was 18 on a HHS report dated 04/27/24. This is the last time this number will be reported. HHS will receive no further updates.
FINAL NOTES
I believe we are still in a pattern of cases dropping, maybe -15%, but this figure may be too high based on the stopping of proper reporting. The 13-week chart shows a good curve downwards. As the previous week was corrupted, I need another week of data to see if I can properly report some solid figures.
LAYOUT First up is the total number of new Covid Cases for last week based on Sunday to Saturday. As the corrections VDH is putting in a week after the initial release makes following a trend impossible, I have stopped computing in this area as it would probably be incorrect.
Next is a listing of the cases from the last report to this one. It usually runs from last Wednesday to Tuesday, but could move based on holidays.
Reported deaths are next, which are based on Sunday to Saturday for the weeks listed.
The CDC Region 3 7-Day Positivity Rate is next, which at the moment just confirms or changes what the CDC put out Friday. They do another run on Monday nights taking a second look at things.
Hospital information for last week is next.
VDH's main summary page is located here. You can see all the latest trends at the link above - most graphics are interactive
EXPLANATION OF FIGURES ABOVE
Total New COVID Cases Reported Week (Sun-Sat) Of: cases reported for last week running Sunday to Saturday.
Reported Deaths Per Week: Number of actual deaths in the week (Sunday-Saturday) as reported by VDH by dates listed.
Covid cases since last report by day: The previous 7-days since VDH's last update listed by day.
7-day average of new cases: Average number of daily COVID cases over the last 7-days
Cases per 100,000 population 7-day average: Within 100,000 people, how many were positive for COVID on a rolling 7-day cycle.
CDC Region 3 7-Day Positivity Rate (if included): The last state average percentage of PCR coronavirus tests performed that are positive. The lower the better.
Hospitals: Hospital information for last Sunday-Saturday.
Data from VDH, CDC, HHS
Edit: corrections

I have another tiktok account for my business however I have many good reviews but 1 bad review and I can no longer upload new products.
One of my new other accounts recently blew up and I wanted to sell on that’s account instead. I cannot use the same ID however I used my ID for the affiliate creator thing and that worked. I wanted to know what would happen if I create a ‘tiktok for seller’ account with a different ID (siblings) and link it to this new tiktok account. Would I be able to technically do this? Or would the system pick up that I have 2 different IDs on my account?
Because technically I would be using my ID for the creator affiliate then my siblings for the tiktok seller but linked to the same account.