From The Question Concerning Technology
APPENDIX

1. Such reflection is not necessary for all, nor is it to be accomplished or even found bearable by everyone. On the other hand, absence of reflection belongs to a very great extent to certain definite stages of achieving and moving forward. And yet the questioning belonging to reflection never becomes either groundless or beyond all question, because, in anticipation, it question concerning Being. Being is for it that which is most worthy of questioning. Reflection finds in Being its most extreme resistance, which constrains it to deal seriously with whatever is as the latter is brought into the light of its Being. Reflection on the essence of the modern age puts thinking and decision into the sphere of effective working that belongs to the genuinely essential forces of this age. These forces work as they will, beyond the reach of all everyday valuation. In the face of these forces, there is only a readiness for their decisive issue, or, instead, an evasive turning away into the ahistorical. In this connection, however, it is not sufficient to affirm technology, for example, or, out of an attitude incomparably more essential, to set up “total mobilization” as an absolute once it is recognized as being at hand(*21). It is a matter of constantly grasping in advance the essence of the age from out of the truth of Being holding sway within it; for only thus, simultaneously, is that which is most worthy of questioning experienced, i.e., that which radically carries forward and constrains a creating into the future, out beyond what is at hand, and lets the transformation of man become a necessity springing forth from Being itself. No age lets itself be done away with by a negating decree. Negation only throws the negator off the path. The modern age requires, however, in order to be withstood in the future, in its essence and on the very strength of its essence, an originality and range of reflection for which we of today are perhaps preparing somewhat, but over which we certainly can never gain mastery.

[*21. Heidegger refers here to the central theme of Ernst Jünger’s “Die Totale Mobilmachung,” first published in 1931 as the preliminary sketch for his monumental book Der Arbeiter [The worker] (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlaganstalt, 1932). Originally, on the basis of his experience of World War I, Jünger sees “total mobilization” as the fundamental characteristic of modern warfare. Primarily a confrontation between man and technology, war shows itself to be a “gigantic labor process” (gigantischer Arbeitsporzess). (See “Die Totale Mobilmachung” in Blatter und Steine [Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlaganstalt, 1934], p. 130.) In the evolution of Junger’s thinking, the meaning of the term “total mobilization” extends itself to denote the phenomenon which for him is the essence modern times: man’s dominating of the earth by means of his technological will. “The war front and the labor front are identical” (Der Arbeiter, p. 109). Viewing Jünger’s thinking in the light of Nietzsche’s, Heidegger understands “total mobilization” as the final realization of the metaphysics of the will to power, or as the final phase of “active nihilism.” See The Question of Being [Zur Seinsfrage], trans. William Kluback and Jean T. Wilde (New York: Twayne, 1958), pp. 41 ff.]

1. The phrase “ongoing activity” [Betrieb] is not intended here in a pejorative sense. But because research is, in essence, ongoing activity, the industrious activity of mere “busyness” [des blossen Betriebs], which is always possible, gives the impression of a higher reality behind which the burrowing activity proper to research work is accomplished. Ongoing activity becomes mere busyness whenever, in the pursuing of its methodology, it no longer keeps itself open on the basis of an ever-new accomplishing of its projection-plan, but only leaves that plan behind itself as a given; never again confirms and verifies its own self-accumulating results and the calculation of them, but simply chases after such results and calculations. Mere busyness must at all times be combated precisely because research is, in its essence, ongoing activity. If we seek what is scientific in science solely in serene erudition, then of course it seems as though the disowning of practical activity also means the denying of the fact that research becomes ongoing activity, and in that way mounts to its proper level of performance, the more constantly does the danger of mere industriousness grow within it. Finally a situation arises in which the distinction between ongoing activity and busyness not only has become unrecognizable, but has become unreal as well. Precisely this balancing out of the essential and the aberrant into the average that is the self-evident makes research as the embodiment of science, and thus makes the modern age itself, capable of enduring. But whence does search receive the counterpoise to the mere busyness within its ongoing activity?
   
2. The growing importance of the publishing business is not based merely on the fact that publishers (perhaps through the process of marketing their books) comes to have the best ear for the needs of the public or that they are better businessmen than are authors. Rather their peculiar work takes the form of a procedure that plans and that establishes itself with a view to the way in which, through the prearranged and limited publication of books and periodicals, they are to bring the world into the picture for the public and confirm it publicly. The preponderance of collections, of sets of books, of series and pocket editions, is already a consequence of this work on the part of publishers, which in turn coincides with the aims of researchers, since the latter not only are acknowledged and given consideration more easily and more rapidly through collections and sets, but, reaching a wider public, they immediately achieve their intended effect.
   
3. The fundamental metaphysical position of Descartes is taken over historically from the Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysics and moves, despite its new beginning, within the same question: What is it to be? That this question, formulated in this way, does not come to the fore in Descartes’s Meditations only proves how essentially the change in the answer to it already determines the fundamental position. Descartes’s interpretation of what it is to be and of truth first creates the presupposition underlying the possibility of a theory of knowledge or a metaphysics of knowledge. Through Descartes, realism is first put in the position of having to prove the reality of the outer world, of having to save that which is as such.
   

The essential modifications of the fundamental position of Descartes that have been attained in German thinking since Leibniz does not in any way overcome that fundamental position itself. They simply expand its metaphysical scope and create the presuppositions of the nineteenth century, still the most obscure of all the centuries of the modern age up to now. Indirectly those modifications confirm the fundamental position of Descartes in a form in which they themselves are almost unrecognizable, though they are not for that reason the less real. In contrast, mere Cartesian Scholasticism, with its rationalism, has lost all power further to shape modern times. With Descartes begins the completion and consummation of Western metaphysics. And yet, because such a consummation is only possible once again as metaphysics, modern thinking has its own greatness.
With the interpretation of man as subiectum, Descartes creates the metaphysical presupposition for future anthropology of every kind and tendency. In the rise of the anthropologies. Descartes celebrates his greatest triumph. Through anthropology the transition of metaphysics into the event of the simple stopping and setting aside of all philosophy is introduced. The fact that Dilthey disavowed metaphysics, that fundamentally he no longer even understood its question and stood helpless before metaphysical logic, is the inner consequence of his fundamental anthropological position. His “philosophy of philosophy” is an outstanding form of the anthropological abrogation - not the overcoming - of philosophy. This is why every anthropology in which previous philosophy is employed at will but is explained as superfluous qua philosophy has the advantage of seeing clearly what is required along with the affirmation of anthropology. Through this, the intellectual situation finds some clarification, while the laborious fabrications of such absurd offshoots as the national-socialist philosophies produce nothing but confusion. The world view does indeed need and use philosophical erudition, but it requires no philosophy, since, as world view, it has already taken over a particular interpretation and structuring of whatever is. But one thing, surely, anthropology cannot do. It cannot overcome Descartes, nor even rise up against him, for how shall the consequence ever attack the ground on which it stands?
Descartes can be overcome only through the overcoming of that which he himself founded, only through the overcoming of modern, and that means at the same time Western, metaphysics. Overcoming means here, however, the primal asking of the question concerning the meaning, i.e., concerning the realm of the projection or delineation, and thus concerning the truth, of Being - which question simultaneously unveils itself as the question concerning the Being of truth.

1. The concept of world as it is developed in Being and Time is to be understood only from within the horizon of the question concerning “openness for Being” [Da-sein], a question that, for its part, remains closely conjoined with the fundamental question concerning the meaning of Being (not with the meaning of that which is).
   
2. What belongs properly to the essence of the picture is standing-together, system. By this is not meant the artificial and external simplifying and putting together of what is given, but the unity of structure in that which is represented [im Vorgestellten] as such, a unity that develops out of the projection of the objectivity of whatever is. In the Middle Ages a system is impossible, for there a ranked order of correspondences is alone essential, and indeed as an ordering of whatever is in the sense of what has been created by God is watched over as his sense of what has been created by God and is watched over as his creature. The system is still more foreign to the Greeks, even if in modern times we speak, though quite wrongly, of the Platonic and Aristotelian “systems.” Ongoing activity in research is a specific bodying-forth and ordering of the systematic, in which, at the same time, the latter reciprocally determines the ordering. Where the world becomes picture, the system, and not only in thinking, comes to dominance. However, where the system is in the ascendancy, the possibility always exists also of its degenerating into the superficiality of a system that has merely been fabricated and pieced together. This takes place when the original power of the projecting is lacking. The uniqueness of the systematic in Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling - a uniqueness that is inherently diverse - is still not grasped. The greatness of the systematic in these thinkers lies in the fact that it unfolds not as in Descartes out of the subject as ego and substantia finita, but either as in Leibniz out of the monad, or as in Kant out of the transcendental essence of finite understanding rooted in the imagination, or as in Fichte out of the infinite I, or as in Hegel out of Spirit as absolute knowledge, or as in Schelling out of freedom as the necessity of every particular being which, as such a being, remains determined through the distinction between ground and existence.
   

The representation of value is just as essential to the modern interpretation of that which is, as is the system. Where anything that is has become the object of representing, it first incurs in a certain manner a loss of Being. This loss is adequately perceived, if but vaguely and unclearly, and is compensated for with corresponding swiftness through the fact that we impart value to the object and to that which is, interpreted as object, and that we take the measure of whatever is, solely in keeping with the criterion of value, and make of values themselves the goal of all activity. Since the latter is understood as culture, values become cultural values, and these, in turn, become the very expression of the highest purposes of creativity, in the service of man’s making himself secure as subiectum. From here it is only a step to making values into objects in themselves. Value is the objectification of needs as goals, wrought by a representing self-establishing within the world as picture. Value appears to be the expression of the fact that we, in our position of relationship to it, act to advance just that which is itself most valuable; and yet that very value is the impotent and threadbare disguise of the objectivity of whatever is, an objectivity that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values. We should note, for the sake of shedding light on the nineteenth century, the peculiar in-between position of Harmann Lotze, who at the same time that he was reinterpreting Plato’s Ideas as values undertook, under the title Microcosmos, that Attempt at an Anthropology (1856) which still drew sustenance for the nobility and straightforwardness of its mode of thinking from the spirit of German idealism, yet also opened that thinking to positivism. Because Nietzsche’s thinking remains imprisoned in value representation, he has to articulate what is essential for him in the form of a reversal, as the revaluation of all values. Only when we succeed in grasping Nietzsche’s thinking independently of value representation do we come to a standing-ground from which the work of the last thinker of metaphysics becomes a task assigned to questioning, and Nietzsche’s antagonism to Wagner becomes comprehensible as the necessity of our history.

1. Correspondence [Die Entspechung], thought as the fundamental characteristic of the Being of whatever is, furnishes the pattern for very specific possibilities and modes of setting the truth of this Being, in whatever has being, into the work. The art work of the Middle Ages and the absence of a world picture in that age belong together.
   
2. But did not a sophist at about the time of Socrates dare to day, “Man is the measure of all things, of those that are [der seienden], that they are, of those that are not, that they are not?” Does this statement of Protagoras not sound as though Descartes were speaking? Most importantly, is it not true that the Being of whatever is, is grasped by Plato as that which is beheld, as of whatever is, is grasped by Plato as that which is beheld, as idea? Is the relation to what is as such not for Aristotle theoria, pure beholding? And yet it is no more the case that this sophistic statement of Protagoras is subjectivism than it is that Descartes could carry into execution nothing but the overturning of Greek thought. Certainly, through Plato’s thinking and through Aristotle’s questioning, a decisive change takes place in the interpretation of what is and of men, but it is a change that always remains on the foundation of the Greek fundamental experience of what is. Precisely as a struggle against sophism and therefore in dependency upon it, this changed interpretation is so decisive that it proves to be the end of Greek thought, an end that at the same time indirectly prepare the possibility of the modern age. This is why Platonic and Aristotelian thinking has been able to pass for Greek thinking per se, not only in the Middle Ages but throughout the modern age up to now, and why all pre-Platonic thinking could be considered merely a preparation for Plato. It is because from long habituation we see Greek thinking through a modern humanistic interpretation that it remains denied to us to ponder the Being that opened itself to Greek antiquity in such a way as to leave to it its uniqueness and its strangeness. Protagoras’ statement runs: Panton chrematon metron estin athropos, to men onton hos estin, ton de me onton hos ouk estin (cf. Plato, Theaetus, 152). *23
   

“Of all things (those, namely, that man has about him in customary use, and therefore constantly, chremata chresthai) the (particular) man is the measure, of those that presence, that they presence as they presence, but also of those to which it remains denied to presence, that they do not presence.” That which is whose Being stands ready for decision is here understood as that which presence of itself within this sphere, within the horizon of man. But who is man? Plato gives details concerning this in the same place, when he has Socrates say: Oukoun houtos pos legei, hos hoia men hekasta emoi phainetai, toiauta men estin emoi, hoia de soi toiauta de au soi’ anthropos de su te kai ego: *24 “Does he (Protagoras) not understand this somewhat as follows? Whatever at a given time anything shows itself to me as, of such aspect is it (also) for me; but whatever it shows itself to you as, such is it in turn for you. You are a man as much as I.”*25
Man is here, accordingly, a particular man (I and you and he and she). And this ego is not supposed to coincide with the ego cogito of Descartes? Never. For everything essential, i.e., that which determines with equal necessity the two fundamental metaphysical positions in Protagoras and Descartes, is different in the two. What is essential in a fundamental metaphysical position embraces:

1. The manner and mode in which man is man, i.e., is himself; the manner of the coming to presence [Wesensart] of selfhood, which is not at all synonymous with I-ness, but rather is determined out of the relation to Being as such
2. The interpretation of the coming to presence [Wesensauslegung] of the Being of whatever is
3. The delineation of the coming to presence [Wesensentwurf] of truth
4. The sense in which, in any given instance, man is measure

None of these essential moments in a fundamental metaphysical position may be understood apart from the others. Each one always betokens, from the outset, the whole of a fundamental metaphysical position. Precisely why and in what respect these four moments sustain and structure in advance a fundamental metaphysical position as such is a question that can no longer be asked or answered from out of metaphysics and by means of metaphysics. It is a question that is already being uttered from out of the overcoming of metaphysics.
To be sure, for Protagoras, that which is does remain related to man as ego. What kind of relation to the I is this? The ego tarries within the horizon of the unconcealment that is meted out to it always as this particular unconcealment. Accordingly, it apprehends everything that presences within this horizon as something that is. The apprehending of what presences is grounded in this tarrying within the horizon of unconcealment. Through its tarrying [das Verweilen] in company with what presences, the belongingness of the I into the midst of what presences is. This belonging to what presences in the open fixes the boundaries between that which presences and that which absents itself. From out of these boundaries man receives and keeps safe the measure of that which presences and that which absents. Through man’s being limited to that which, at any particular time, is unconcealed, there is given to him the measure that always confines a self to this or that. Man does not, from out of some detached I-ness, set forth the measure to which everything that is, in its Being, must accommodate itself. Man who possesses the Greeks’ fundamental relationship to that which is and to its unconcealment is metron (measure [Mass]) In that he accepts restriction [Massigung] to the horizon of unconcealment that is limited after the manner of the I; and he consequently acknowledges the concealedness of what is and the insusceptibility of the latter’s presencing or absenting to any decision, and to a like degree acknowledges the insuspectibility to decision of the visible aspect of that which endures as present. Hence Protagoras says (Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker: Protagoras B, 4): *Peri men theon ouk echo eidenai, outh hos eisin, outh hous ouk eisin, outh hopoioi tines idean. **27 “I am surely not in a position to know anything (for the Greek, to have anything in ‘sight’) regarding the gods, neither that they are nor that they are not, nor how they are in their visible aspect (idea).”
Polla gar ta koluonta eidenai, he t’ adelotes kai brachus on ho bios tou anthropou.*28 “For manifold is that which prevents the apprehending of whatever is as what it is, i.e., both the nondisclosedness (concealment) of what is and the brevity of man’s historical course.”
Need we wonder that Socrates, considering Protagoras’ circumspection, says of him, Eikos mentoi sophon andra me lerein: “We may suppose that he (Protagoras), a sensible man, (in his statement about man as metron) is not simply babbling on.”
The fundamental metaphysical position of Protagoras is only a narrowing down, but that means nonetheless a preserving, of the fundamental position of Heraclitus and Parmenides. Sophism is possible only on the foundation of sophia, i.e., on the foundation of the Greek interpretation of Being as presencing and of truth as unconcealment - an unconcealment that itself remains an essential determination of Being, so that what presences is determined from out of unconcealment and presencing is determined from out of unconcealedness in its particularity. But just how far removed is Descartes from the beginning of Greek thinking, just how different is the interpretation of man that represents him as subject? Precisely because in the concept of the subiectum the coming to presence of Being as experienced by the Greeks - the hypokeisthai of the hypokeimenon - still resounds in the form of a presencing that has become unrecognizable and unquestioned (namely, the presencing of that which lies fixedly before), therefore the essence of the change in fundamental metaphysical position is to be seen from out of that coming to presence of Being.
It is one thing to preserve the horizon of unconcealment that is limited at any given time through the apprehending of what presence (man as metron). It is another to proceed into the unlimited sphere of possible objectification, through the reckoning up of the representable that is accessible to every man and binding for all.
All subjectivism is impossible in Greek sophism, for here man can never be subiectum; he cannot become subiectum because here Being is presencing and truth is unconcealment.
In unconcealment fantasia comes to pass: the coming-into-appearance, as a particular something, of that which presences - for man, who himself presences toward what appears. Man as representing subject, however, “fantasizes,” i.e., he moves in imaginatio, in that his representing imagines, pictures forth, whatever is, as the objective, into the world as picture.
[*27. “As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or that they do not exist” (Nahm).
*28. “For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life” (Nahm).]

From The Question Concerning Technology
APPENDIX

1. Such reflection is not necessary for all, nor is it to be accomplished or even found bearable by everyone. On the other hand, absence of reflection belongs to a very great extent to certain definite stages of achieving and moving forward. And yet the questioning belonging to reflection never becomes either groundless or beyond all question, because, in anticipation, it question concerning Being. Being is for it that which is most worthy of questioning. Reflection finds in Being its most extreme resistance, which constrains it to deal seriously with whatever is as the latter is brought into the light of its Being. Reflection on the essence of the modern age puts thinking and decision into the sphere of effective working that belongs to the genuinely essential forces of this age. These forces work as they will, beyond the reach of all everyday valuation. In the face of these forces, there is only a readiness for their decisive issue, or, instead, an evasive turning away into the ahistorical. In this connection, however, it is not sufficient to affirm technology, for example, or, out of an attitude incomparably more essential, to set up “total mobilization” as an absolute once it is recognized as being at hand(*21). It is a matter of constantly grasping in advance the essence of the age from out of the truth of Being holding sway within it; for only thus, simultaneously, is that which is most worthy of questioning experienced, i.e., that which radically carries forward and constrains a creating into the future, out beyond what is at hand, and lets the transformation of man become a necessity springing forth from Being itself. No age lets itself be done away with by a negating decree. Negation only throws the negator off the path. The modern age requires, however, in order to be withstood in the future, in its essence and on the very strength of its essence, an originality and range of reflection for which we of today are perhaps preparing somewhat, but over which we certainly can never gain mastery.

[*21. Heidegger refers here to the central theme of Ernst Jünger’s “Die Totale Mobilmachung,” first published in 1931 as the preliminary sketch for his monumental book Der Arbeiter [The worker] (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlaganstalt, 1932). Originally, on the basis of his experience of World War I, Jünger sees “total mobilization” as the fundamental characteristic of modern warfare. Primarily a confrontation between man and technology, war shows itself to be a “gigantic labor process” (gigantischer Arbeitsporzess). (See “Die Totale Mobilmachung” in Blatter und Steine [Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlaganstalt, 1934], p. 130.) In the evolution of Junger’s thinking, the meaning of the term “total mobilization” extends itself to denote the phenomenon which for him is the essence modern times: man’s dominating of the earth by means of his technological will. “The war front and the labor front are identical” (Der Arbeiter, p. 109). Viewing Jünger’s thinking in the light of Nietzsche’s, Heidegger understands “total mobilization” as the final realization of the metaphysics of the will to power, or as the final phase of “active nihilism.” See The Question of Being [Zur Seinsfrage], trans. William Kluback and Jean T. Wilde (New York: Twayne, 1958), pp. 41 ff.]

1. The phrase “ongoing activity” [Betrieb] is not intended here in a pejorative sense. But because research is, in essence, ongoing activity, the industrious activity of mere “busyness” [des blossen Betriebs], which is always possible, gives the impression of a higher reality behind which the burrowing activity proper to research work is accomplished. Ongoing activity becomes mere busyness whenever, in the pursuing of its methodology, it no longer keeps itself open on the basis of an ever-new accomplishing of its projection-plan, but only leaves that plan behind itself as a given; never again confirms and verifies its own self-accumulating results and the calculation of them, but simply chases after such results and calculations. Mere busyness must at all times be combated precisely because research is, in its essence, ongoing activity. If we seek what is scientific in science solely in serene erudition, then of course it seems as though the disowning of practical activity also means the denying of the fact that research becomes ongoing activity, and in that way mounts to its proper level of performance, the more constantly does the danger of mere industriousness grow within it. Finally a situation arises in which the distinction between ongoing activity and busyness not only has become unrecognizable, but has become unreal as well. Precisely this balancing out of the essential and the aberrant into the average that is the self-evident makes research as the embodiment of science, and thus makes the modern age itself, capable of enduring. But whence does search receive the counterpoise to the mere busyness within its ongoing activity?
   
2. The growing importance of the publishing business is not based merely on the fact that publishers (perhaps through the process of marketing their books) comes to have the best ear for the needs of the public or that they are better businessmen than are authors. Rather their peculiar work takes the form of a procedure that plans and that establishes itself with a view to the way in which, through the prearranged and limited publication of books and periodicals, they are to bring the world into the picture for the public and confirm it publicly. The preponderance of collections, of sets of books, of series and pocket editions, is already a consequence of this work on the part of publishers, which in turn coincides with the aims of researchers, since the latter not only are acknowledged and given consideration more easily and more rapidly through collections and sets, but, reaching a wider public, they immediately achieve their intended effect.
   
3. The fundamental metaphysical position of Descartes is taken over historically from the Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysics and moves, despite its new beginning, within the same question: What is it to be? That this question, formulated in this way, does not come to the fore in Descartes’s Meditations only proves how essentially the change in the answer to it already determines the fundamental position. Descartes’s interpretation of what it is to be and of truth first creates the presupposition underlying the possibility of a theory of knowledge or a metaphysics of knowledge. Through Descartes, realism is first put in the position of having to prove the reality of the outer world, of having to save that which is as such.
   

The essential modifications of the fundamental position of Descartes that have been attained in German thinking since Leibniz does not in any way overcome that fundamental position itself. They simply expand its metaphysical scope and create the presuppositions of the nineteenth century, still the most obscure of all the centuries of the modern age up to now. Indirectly those modifications confirm the fundamental position of Descartes in a form in which they themselves are almost unrecognizable, though they are not for that reason the less real. In contrast, mere Cartesian Scholasticism, with its rationalism, has lost all power further to shape modern times. With Descartes begins the completion and consummation of Western metaphysics. And yet, because such a consummation is only possible once again as metaphysics, modern thinking has its own greatness.
With the interpretation of man as subiectum, Descartes creates the metaphysical presupposition for future anthropology of every kind and tendency. In the rise of the anthropologies. Descartes celebrates his greatest triumph. Through anthropology the transition of metaphysics into the event of the simple stopping and setting aside of all philosophy is introduced. The fact that Dilthey disavowed metaphysics, that fundamentally he no longer even understood its question and stood helpless before metaphysical logic, is the inner consequence of his fundamental anthropological position. His “philosophy of philosophy” is an outstanding form of the anthropological abrogation - not the overcoming - of philosophy. This is why every anthropology in which previous philosophy is employed at will but is explained as superfluous qua philosophy has the advantage of seeing clearly what is required along with the affirmation of anthropology. Through this, the intellectual situation finds some clarification, while the laborious fabrications of such absurd offshoots as the national-socialist philosophies produce nothing but confusion. The world view does indeed need and use philosophical erudition, but it requires no philosophy, since, as world view, it has already taken over a particular interpretation and structuring of whatever is. But one thing, surely, anthropology cannot do. It cannot overcome Descartes, nor even rise up against him, for how shall the consequence ever attack the ground on which it stands?
Descartes can be overcome only through the overcoming of that which he himself founded, only through the overcoming of modern, and that means at the same time Western, metaphysics. Overcoming means here, however, the primal asking of the question concerning the meaning, i.e., concerning the realm of the projection or delineation, and thus concerning the truth, of Being - which question simultaneously unveils itself as the question concerning the Being of truth.

1. The concept of world as it is developed in Being and Time is to be understood only from within the horizon of the question concerning “openness for Being” [Da-sein], a question that, for its part, remains closely conjoined with the fundamental question concerning the meaning of Being (not with the meaning of that which is).
   
2. What belongs properly to the essence of the picture is standing-together, system. By this is not meant the artificial and external simplifying and putting together of what is given, but the unity of structure in that which is represented [im Vorgestellten] as such, a unity that develops out of the projection of the objectivity of whatever is. In the Middle Ages a system is impossible, for there a ranked order of correspondences is alone essential, and indeed as an ordering of whatever is in the sense of what has been created by God is watched over as his sense of what has been created by God and is watched over as his creature. The system is still more foreign to the Greeks, even if in modern times we speak, though quite wrongly, of the Platonic and Aristotelian “systems.” Ongoing activity in research is a specific bodying-forth and ordering of the systematic, in which, at the same time, the latter reciprocally determines the ordering. Where the world becomes picture, the system, and not only in thinking, comes to dominance. However, where the system is in the ascendancy, the possibility always exists also of its degenerating into the superficiality of a system that has merely been fabricated and pieced together. This takes place when the original power of the projecting is lacking. The uniqueness of the systematic in Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling - a uniqueness that is inherently diverse - is still not grasped. The greatness of the systematic in these thinkers lies in the fact that it unfolds not as in Descartes out of the subject as ego and substantia finita, but either as in Leibniz out of the monad, or as in Kant out of the transcendental essence of finite understanding rooted in the imagination, or as in Fichte out of the infinite I, or as in Hegel out of Spirit as absolute knowledge, or as in Schelling out of freedom as the necessity of every particular being which, as such a being, remains determined through the distinction between ground and existence.
   

The representation of value is just as essential to the modern interpretation of that which is, as is the system. Where anything that is has become the object of representing, it first incurs in a certain manner a loss of Being. This loss is adequately perceived, if but vaguely and unclearly, and is compensated for with corresponding swiftness through the fact that we impart value to the object and to that which is, interpreted as object, and that we take the measure of whatever is, solely in keeping with the criterion of value, and make of values themselves the goal of all activity. Since the latter is understood as culture, values become cultural values, and these, in turn, become the very expression of the highest purposes of creativity, in the service of man’s making himself secure as subiectum. From here it is only a step to making values into objects in themselves. Value is the objectification of needs as goals, wrought by a representing self-establishing within the world as picture. Value appears to be the expression of the fact that we, in our position of relationship to it, act to advance just that which is itself most valuable; and yet that very value is the impotent and threadbare disguise of the objectivity of whatever is, an objectivity that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values. We should note, for the sake of shedding light on the nineteenth century, the peculiar in-between position of Harmann Lotze, who at the same time that he was reinterpreting Plato’s Ideas as values undertook, under the title Microcosmos, that Attempt at an Anthropology (1856) which still drew sustenance for the nobility and straightforwardness of its mode of thinking from the spirit of German idealism, yet also opened that thinking to positivism. Because Nietzsche’s thinking remains imprisoned in value representation, he has to articulate what is essential for him in the form of a reversal, as the revaluation of all values. Only when we succeed in grasping Nietzsche’s thinking independently of value representation do we come to a standing-ground from which the work of the last thinker of metaphysics becomes a task assigned to questioning, and Nietzsche’s antagonism to Wagner becomes comprehensible as the necessity of our history.

1. Correspondence [Die Entspechung], thought as the fundamental characteristic of the Being of whatever is, furnishes the pattern for very specific possibilities and modes of setting the truth of this Being, in whatever has being, into the work. The art work of the Middle Ages and the absence of a world picture in that age belong together.
   
2. But did not a sophist at about the time of Socrates dare to day, “Man is the measure of all things, of those that are [der seienden], that they are, of those that are not, that they are not?” Does this statement of Protagoras not sound as though Descartes were speaking? Most importantly, is it not true that the Being of whatever is, is grasped by Plato as that which is beheld, as of whatever is, is grasped by Plato as that which is beheld, as idea? Is the relation to what is as such not for Aristotle theoria, pure beholding? And yet it is no more the case that this sophistic statement of Protagoras is subjectivism than it is that Descartes could carry into execution nothing but the overturning of Greek thought. Certainly, through Plato’s thinking and through Aristotle’s questioning, a decisive change takes place in the interpretation of what is and of men, but it is a change that always remains on the foundation of the Greek fundamental experience of what is. Precisely as a struggle against sophism and therefore in dependency upon it, this changed interpretation is so decisive that it proves to be the end of Greek thought, an end that at the same time indirectly prepare the possibility of the modern age. This is why Platonic and Aristotelian thinking has been able to pass for Greek thinking per se, not only in the Middle Ages but throughout the modern age up to now, and why all pre-Platonic thinking could be considered merely a preparation for Plato. It is because from long habituation we see Greek thinking through a modern humanistic interpretation that it remains denied to us to ponder the Being that opened itself to Greek antiquity in such a way as to leave to it its uniqueness and its strangeness. Protagoras’ statement runs: Panton chrematon metron estin athropos, to men onton hos estin, ton de me onton hos ouk estin (cf. Plato, Theaetus, 152). *23
   

“Of all things (those, namely, that man has about him in customary use, and therefore constantly, chremata chresthai) the (particular) man is the measure, of those that presence, that they presence as they presence, but also of those to which it remains denied to presence, that they do not presence.” That which is whose Being stands ready for decision is here understood as that which presence of itself within this sphere, within the horizon of man. But who is man? Plato gives details concerning this in the same place, when he has Socrates say: Oukoun houtos pos legei, hos hoia men hekasta emoi phainetai, toiauta men estin emoi, hoia de soi toiauta de au soi’ anthropos de su te kai ego: *24 “Does he (Protagoras) not understand this somewhat as follows? Whatever at a given time anything shows itself to me as, of such aspect is it (also) for me; but whatever it shows itself to you as, such is it in turn for you. You are a man as much as I.”*25
Man is here, accordingly, a particular man (I and you and he and she). And this ego is not supposed to coincide with the ego cogito of Descartes? Never. For everything essential, i.e., that which determines with equal necessity the two fundamental metaphysical positions in Protagoras and Descartes, is different in the two. What is essential in a fundamental metaphysical position embraces:

1. The manner and mode in which man is man, i.e., is himself; the manner of the coming to presence [Wesensart] of selfhood, which is not at all synonymous with I-ness, but rather is determined out of the relation to Being as such
2. The interpretation of the coming to presence [Wesensauslegung] of the Being of whatever is
3. The delineation of the coming to presence [Wesensentwurf] of truth
4. The sense in which, in any given instance, man is measure

None of these essential moments in a fundamental metaphysical position may be understood apart from the others. Each one always betokens, from the outset, the whole of a fundamental metaphysical position. Precisely why and in what respect these four moments sustain and structure in advance a fundamental metaphysical position as such is a question that can no longer be asked or answered from out of metaphysics and by means of metaphysics. It is a question that is already being uttered from out of the overcoming of metaphysics.
To be sure, for Protagoras, that which is does remain related to man as ego. What kind of relation to the I is this? The ego tarries within the horizon of the unconcealment that is meted out to it always as this particular unconcealment. Accordingly, it apprehends everything that presences within this horizon as something that is. The apprehending of what presences is grounded in this tarrying within the horizon of unconcealment. Through its tarrying [das Verweilen] in company with what presences, the belongingness of the I into the midst of what presences is. This belonging to what presences in the open fixes the boundaries between that which presences and that which absents itself. From out of these boundaries man receives and keeps safe the measure of that which presences and that which absents. Through man’s being limited to that which, at any particular time, is unconcealed, there is given to him the measure that always confines a self to this or that. Man does not, from out of some detached I-ness, set forth the measure to which everything that is, in its Being, must accommodate itself. Man who possesses the Greeks’ fundamental relationship to that which is and to its unconcealment is metron (measure [Mass]) In that he accepts restriction [Massigung] to the horizon of unconcealment that is limited after the manner of the I; and he consequently acknowledges the concealedness of what is and the insusceptibility of the latter’s presencing or absenting to any decision, and to a like degree acknowledges the insuspectibility to decision of the visible aspect of that which endures as present. Hence Protagoras says (Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker: Protagoras B, 4): Peri men theon ouk echo eidenai, outh hos eisin, outh hous ouk eisin, outh hopoioi tines idean. \27 “I am surely not in a position to know anything (for the Greek, to have anything in ‘sight’) regarding the gods, neither that they are nor that they are not, nor how they are in their visible aspect (idea*).”
Polla gar ta koluonta eidenai, he t’ adelotes kai brachus on ho bios tou anthropou.*28 “For manifold is that which prevents the apprehending of whatever is as what it is, i.e., both the nondisclosedness (concealment) of what is and the brevity of man’s historical course.”
Need we wonder that Socrates, considering Protagoras’ circumspection, says of him, Eikos mentoi sophon andra me lerein: “We may suppose that he (Protagoras), a sensible man, (in his statement about man as metron) is not simply babbling on.”
The fundamental metaphysical position of Protagoras is only a narrowing down, but that means nonetheless a preserving, of the fundamental position of Heraclitus and Parmenides. Sophism is possible only on the foundation of sophia, i.e., on the foundation of the Greek interpretation of Being as presencing and of truth as unconcealment - an unconcealment that itself remains an essential determination of Being, so that what presences is determined from out of unconcealment and presencing is determined from out of unconcealedness in its particularity. But just how far removed is Descartes from the beginning of Greek thinking, just how different is the interpretation of man that represents him as subject? Precisely because in the concept of the subiectum the coming to presence of Being as experienced by the Greeks - the hypokeisthai of the hypokeimenon - still resounds in the form of a presencing that has become unrecognizable and unquestioned (namely, the presencing of that which lies fixedly before), therefore the essence of the change in fundamental metaphysical position is to be seen from out of that coming to presence of Being.
It is one thing to preserve the horizon of unconcealment that is limited at any given time through the apprehending of what presence (man as metron). It is another to proceed into the unlimited sphere of possible objectification, through the reckoning up of the representable that is accessible to every man and binding for all.
All subjectivism is impossible in Greek sophism, for here man can never be subiectum; he cannot become subiectum because here Being is presencing and truth is unconcealment.
In unconcealment fantasia comes to pass: the coming-into-appearance, as a particular something, of that which presences - for man, who himself presences toward what appears. Man as representing subject, however, “fantasizes,” i.e., he moves in imaginatio, in that his representing imagines, pictures forth, whatever is, as the objective, into the world as picture.
[*27. “As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or that they do not exist” (Nahm).
*28. “For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life” (Nahm).]

My girlfriend (24F) called me (24M) this weekend and said she was having some doubts about our relationship. She confessed that she'd had doubts about me since the very beginning of our relationship (7 months ago). She said that I couldn't have done anything differently and taught her how much she could be loved by someone, but she didn't see me that way. She never did. Mind you this is the first time I'm hearing about any of this. I thought everything was great. I hung up after she confessed out of pure shock. I didn't know how to process anything. I called her the next day to ask questions and this is what the call effectively was:
Q1: "Why would you pursue me and initiate the relationship if you were unsure?"
A1: "I thought I could push past the doubts to make a relationship work."
Q2: "What are these doubts?"
A2: "Our brains work differently sometimes and you have some interesting opinions."
Q3: "Why did you wait until now to tell me? Especially since you know that I value transparency / honesty and have an issue trusting people (past relationship trauma that she was aware of)"
A3: "I was afraid that if I told you about the doubts you would break up with me."
Q4: "Why didn't you talk to me about this in person yesterday (we saw each other the day before)?"
A4: "Everything was fine yesterday." However, she said in the original phone call that every time I hugged her that day she felt like running because she felt so guilty.
Q5: "Why did you think it would be a good idea to force it?"
A5: "I just really wanted to make it work."
Q6: "Didn't you think about how this would kill me if I got attached and your doubts didn't go away?"
A6: "Yes."
Also, we met on a dating app, so I checked her profile before the call just to see if she'd gotten back on. And sure enough, her pictures had changed.
She is coming over Saturday to grab her Nintendo Switch that she let me borrow, and that will probably be the last time I see her in the near future. She said on the last call that maybe things could work out in the future, but I said I could never trust her again. I'm torn between giving her the option to get help and that we can potentially revisit things in the future once she's worked on herself or just telling her to get out of life entirely and never look back. Or maybe somewhere in the middle? I don't know what to do.

I ( 22 f) met my bf let's call him V ( 23 M). We are classmates in our graduate degree. I made a really close friend because in my recent university since its hard adjusting to new environment because my ideas were clashing with everyone in class and I have social anxiety. So I met V during my classes i was hesitant, I thought he was a nice guy and way out of my league.
Ok so I will give a detailed view of my friend S (22 F) she was in a casual relationship with a doctor who's a mumma's boy. She has lost her father. Yup so it was all roses and peonies until our classes being it was going well then as soon as classes started a guy in our class gets obsessed with him let's call him Y he would message her, stalk her online, and try to talk to her. Mind you at this time me and S were really close like sharing everything her tell how her 1st relationship ended her been r*ped and how she never had a father figure and she lost her brother in covid too. I told her how I belong to an orthodox family were i have to follow all my parents decisions and they are doing so for my well being only she told it's just holding me up. I also told how my previous relationship ended 1st being dating a play boy who tried to get in pants with all my girl bestie and I talked about my recent breakup were i was verbally abused and physical hurt. During this time she also started getting closer to Y because he was complementing her and encouraging her while she was drifting away from her bf because his mother hated my friend. S and Y starts sharing notes she breaks up with her bf and in a week's span gets with Y. I didn't question it because her now ex's was a karen and rude she wanted to get emotional support which Y provided ignoring the fact he stalked her and apparently she was happy. Also they have a vibrant lifestyle too much vibrant for me which she likes to talk about and Y is apparently like those bad biker boys our mom tells to stay away from tattoos and hitting daily gym.
Ok so yup now lets get to main story, so as soon as my friend S starts to date Y, she doesn't talk to me much and we are losing touch. I don't have any other friend so she introduces me to V ( my now ex) who's a good friend of Y and they have a close group of 4 people. So I start talking to V he hit it off and becomes good friends. During this time my family is undergoing lose of my both grandparents and V doesn't even come to give emotional support. It's ok I was ok with it. We have started dating by then. I lived with my grandparents for context.
Then it's all good we don't fight much but the issue starts two month before our break up. I wasn't in my right mind and he was constantly asking me to check random caller ids. When I ask why he told me about his ex who was a crazy girl and forcing him to marry her since they have had intimate relationship which he didn't want to. Then she started seeing other guys and shared her cheating pics with him. He told me how he have saved everything as proof that she's mentally harassing him. I felt awkward like who saves his ex's intimate pictures as proof but as i said i wasn't in that mental state but provided him comfort and support.
Then the harsh reality struck me I when on his birthday i was enjoying with that close 5 people group a friend of his started calling me fat (I was bloated) and I don't say anything usually since it was V's birthday i didn't want to argue everyone were in good mood but he never defends, 2 days after I hear from him his friends along with Y and S were saying i was sleeping with someone. He then started to accuse me of cheating i talked him out of it and it was all good until my exams started.
I didn't study this year well so before exams i wanted to try my best so i wasn't speaking to him much. So again he said I am not talking to him, ignoring him and talking to him rudely. Like my personality has flipped 360⁰, I didn't sat much then he knew i only talked to S, my friend who was now his close friend to asking to talk to me what's wrong with me why I am not picking his calls. I told her how irritating it is that he keeps doubting i am dating someone else. Then I didn't answer his text since it was mostly:
What have I done wrong ? Is something wrong ?
I simply told him I need time and we will talk after exams. And didn't text anything, a day after our 1st exam he confronts me with his group of friends including Yand S. Kept on asking did I tell my friend i irritate him. And again accused me of cheating i angrily said yes i did because I was fed up at this point. On my way home he shared my tinder id of which I created when I was 19 and forgot to delete while uninstalling.
Now I have no one on my side everyone thinks I am a cheater because I feel he have showed this to everyone. Even my friend whom I trusted has blocked me. Should I go apologize to my ex for ghosting and being rude?

this is long, I know, but for 20 years I've told nobody about this and it's been eating me alive.
My dad is generally very abusive towards my mom both physically and emotionally, and her being an immigrant who married him and left her career behind to be a mom made her unable to retaliate or even leave the marriage due to the financial chokehold my dad had on us. Divorce is also very taboo in our culture, which led to my mom never telling her family about anything that had happened until very recently; even now, she has only told them bits and pieces out of sheer desperation after my dad called them and spent hours manipulating them with sob stories about how he just can't live with such a "demanding, arrogant woman" but was only doing so "for the kids". Scratch that, because he has now made it his "demanding, arrogant family", including me (20F) and my sister (8F).
I was born shortly after my parents got married (an arranged marriage) and my dad spent hours on the phone with my grandad when my mom was pregnant with me, where my grandad would make up ridiculous stories about how my mom's family had "disrespected" them and how that made them horrible people. This was clearly to rile up my dad, who would then get physically and emotionally abusive with my mom, yelling at her and even strangling her while she was pregnant.
I grew up with my dad acting the same way towards my mom, but with him showering praise and love on me (only through his words), all the while slipping in a few details about how my mom was irrational and crazy but he was so much better and how she had manipulated him into making ridiculous sacrifices for her (taking her to the doctor when she was sick). I grew up with my mom yelling at me and even cursing at me for the simplest accidents and mistakes, going on and on about how every other child was good but she'd been cursed with me and how i didn't fear her enough. She'd rarely come back and apologize or make fun of me for crying - I could never find a pattern. While all of this is wrong on her part, I can't help but notice how a stranger abusing you all the time and treating you like trash while you toil away as a housewife thousands of miles away from any family and forbidden by that man from having friends would break your mind to at least that degree.
My dad never bought me or my mom anything that would give us happiness; not out of poverty (he made good money) but purely because he would lie saying that he was broke while sending his lazy family thousands of dollars every month.
He would claim that things like theme parks were too expensive for birthdays to which i would beg to go to a Chuck E Cheese's, which he would also claim was too expensive for him to afford, going on speeches abut how I had to be "more understanding of how daddy is struggling to make ends meet." He never got me any toys past the age of 3, not even ones from the dollar store. He also never got me a barbie doll despite me begging for years.
I was also forbidden from having any friends, going to birthday parties/sleepovers because "if you go to their parties you have to buy presents, which we can't afford, and you'll also need to throw a party for your birthday, which we can't afford either." It got to the point where when a girl miraculously wanted to be my friend and would come ring my doorbell to go play with her, I would be told to stay silent and pretend nobody was home. I never had any video games growing up, and never had the experience of waking up on christmas/my birthday and unwrapping presents or even having someone get me anything at all. We never even went to restaurants - fast food chains were a biannual event. I never went out to buy pretty clothes ever - i was lucky to go clothes-shopping once a year at walmart. I didn't need much clothes or shoes since i never went out anyway. All i would buy were uniforms for the public school i went to. We never even had nice furniture, because who gives a shit when nobody is coming to our house anyway. He complained about the 1000 he spent on a sofa once our decade-old one was withering, also claiming that to be an example of how my momn was an exorbitant spender.
We went to Disney and Seaworld once each when i was 3-4, and my dad decided that was it. These were simply experiences for him to show other people pictures of to prove that he was a wonderful dad.
As a family of 3 whose idea of a grand excursion was walmart superstore and a child who would act like she had won the lottery if her dad got her a ring pop, he'd claim he spent about 5k a month in "expenses" and also had a 20k credit card debt by the time I was 9. His yearly compensation was about 70k after taxes at this point, but both me and my mom knew that asking him about this would lead to him being more abusive, so we never did.
By the time i turned 10, i was lonely, depressed, and suicidal. Puberty was hitting me and it just made all my emotions worse. I didn't know how to word these emotions as I was too young but I knew I wanted a pet, which was forbidden. So I asked for a sibling. My mom had told me she planned on another child, and I told myself that a sibling would solve my problems. I wouldn't be bored or sad because I'd have a partner for the rest of my life. I was told I can never go to therapy for burnout/suicidal thoughts because "what would people think if they somehow found out my daughter had seen a shrink?"
I love my sister, but I sometimes wish she weren't here so that I could just end it without having to think about her future. Selfish, I know, but she is the only reason I never went through with any of my suicide attempts. I love her to pieces and I would never forgive myself if I left her alone with my two parents to become what I have.
I've moved out and live at college. I don't work, my dad gives me an allowance each month because he "doesn't want his precious girl working at a fast-food joint". In reality, he knows it would reflect poorly on him now that he earns 6 figures a year working from home. I'm 20 now, and I still struggle from time-to-time with accepting that I deserve to have little things that make me happy. I deserve to buy a trinket that I think is cute. I'm allowed to go to a burger place again the next day because I liked it. No, your life is not going to crumble because you bought a pair of jeans despite having a pair. No, sustaining yourself doesn't really cost 2000 dollars a month.
Looking back now, I can't ever remember a time when I was any less mature than I am now. It's like I told myself when I was 6 or something that I had to be an adult who didn't prioritize happiness or fun because those were luxuries. Growing up I'd hear people say "you're so mature for your age" and I would feel proud of myself, but i know see that all of that was actually not a good thing at all.
Me moving out means that my sister is unfortunately alone at home with my two parents. My mom has kind of come around after years of me explaining how she was not being a good parent, but still gets angry at accidents without thinking. My dad is still abusive. I suggested they get my sister a nintendo switch so that she has something to do - she's been saying that she's inexplicably anxious all the time and has trouble relaxing, and I know that the cost is something we can definitely afford. My dad spent the next hour yelling about how i was asking too much of him and how we were all conspiring against him and how he "can't kill himself for us" because IF the device malfunctions, my sister would "cry asking for another one". My sister, who was jumping up-and-down in excitement when I suggested the switch, held back tears as she told me she didn't want it anymore and that it was okay. That's when I broke.
I see my sister being denied the little joys of life and tricking herself into thinking she doesn't need to have nice things gives me immeasurable rage and sadness. She's becoming me. She's becoming a shell of a girl, one who gets praised for "never asking for things" and being "disciplined". One who will grow up with absolutely no childhood at all because she was never allowed to be one. This happened at 10am today. It's 1pm as i type this and i'm still choking back tears. I can't believe I can't save her. I hope that in 1 more year when i graduate I can go no contact with him and take my sister with me wherever I go. My dad has started telling my sister in private that I am a horrible big sister to her and that i'll drain him of money and abandon her too once I get a job, which thank god, she didn't fall for. I don't know what to do until then.

Spoilers ahead.
Connoisseurs of film are undoubtedly well-aware of La Nouvelle Vague, aka, the ‘New Wave’—an experimental movement in filmmaking with its origins in the French cinema of the 1950s, with an emphasis on exploration of personal themes such as existentialism, iconoclasm and absurdism. Although the ‘New Wave’ is considered to have met its chronological end in the late 1960s, to be followed by successive movements like ‘New Hollywood’, ‘Cinema Novo’ and ‘Dogme 95’, the influence of la nouvelle vague continues to be keenly felt in the artistic masterpieces of Bollywood production house YRF. Under the skillful hand of renowned auteur Aditya Chopra, the studio has produced a lineup of commercially successful arthouse flicks that continue the French filmmaking renaissance of the ‘50s, successfully infusing avant-garde storytelling techniques with high production values and modern Indian themes. Nowhere is this revolutionary vision more evident than in films like DDLJ (a masterpiece in abstract, absurdist storytelling), Mohabbatein (a sensitive examination of the taboo topic of attitudes towards adolescent self-gratification), Kal Ho Naa Ho (an ambitious adaptation of historian David McCullough’s book 1776), Jab Tak Hai Jaan (a religio-philosophical drama that engages in debate upon the tenets of Christianity, Shaivism, and the cultural taboo of Kala Pani) and, of course, the Dhoom franchise.
As YRF’s most popular franchise, the Dhoom series has, with each installment, made great independent strides in cinematic theory and practice. Although—as read above—YRF films explore a wide, varying range of topics as a whole, the Dhoom franchise focuses exclusively on the examination and discussion of economic and socio-economic matters of policy and practice in the Indian context. Over the course of 3 films, the discourse acquires a rich depth, with the analysis of issues including the economic costs and benefits of national highway construction, the clash between entrepreneurial aspirations and the security of bureaucratic employment, the 2008 economic recession in the BRICS context, and the causes and consequences of non-performing bank loans and a profiling of defaulters of on said loans. Indeed, a first course on Indian economics at any prestigious institution may well be framed around careful viewing and discussion of the Dhoom films. In the careful hands of Aditya Chopra and Vijay Krishna Acharya (Dhoom 1/2/3, Tashan, Thugs of Hindostan), each Dhoom film achieves a delicate balance between the overt cops-and-robbers heist story and the covert exploration of complex economic schools of thought.
As the 1st film in the franchise, Dhoom (2004) establishes the storytelling framework for the films to come, and by itself explores the challenges and opportunities presented by Indian economic policymaking in the early ‘00s. The film features an all-round star-studded cast, with support from Honorary Roadie & Stardust Awards nominee Esha Deol, Star’s Sabsey Award winner Rimi Sen, and Indian Telly Award nominee Arav Chowdharry. At the film’s helm are Lions Club Award winner John Abraham, Sansui Award winner Abhishek Bachchan, and Emmy nominee Uday Chopra. Series regulars Bachchan and Chopra play Jai and Ali respectively, Jai being a policeman and Ali a small-time mechanic with a penchant for fast bikes and disinterested women. Abraham essays the villainous role of Kabir, part-time restaurant waiter and part-time leader of a gang of biker thieves. The film begins with a series of daring heists pulled off by Kabir’s gang, relying on their high-speed bikes to orchestrate sudden thefts and promptly escape the scene soon after. Their exploits catch the eye of Jai, a lifetime appointee to the post of Assistant Commissioner of Police. Jai, however, finds himself out of his depth and through a series of accidents, makes the acquaintance of Ali, a mildly-seedy mechanic and bike racer. Initially reluctant to be associated with law enforcement, Ali is eventually induced to join Jai’s cause and attempt to chase down Kabir and his merry band of men. Dhoom is slow and deliberate in its setup, and the film’s early minutes are heavy on subtext and detail, therefore, it is essential to take in the plot in small increments, so as to be thorough with one’s analysis.
In an allegorical sense, Jai, as a police officer, represents bureaucratic authority and the security, comforts and powers of government employment. Abraham’s Kabir, as a thief, is a laissez-faire capitalist, relying on his material advantage in the form of fast bikes and his manpower advantage in the form of skilled bikers to partake in a series of one-sided transactions with economic entities such as banks and government funds. In this sense, the act of robbery in Dhoom is merely a transaction between two private parties wherein one side gains an unfair amount at the other’s expense, absent external interventionism. In addition to being a free-market advocate, Kabir is also an employee at a pizza parlour, which seems to be the film’s attempt at exploring both the growing role of the service economy as a share of India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and the amorphous nature of employment within the modern ‘gig’ economy. Caught between the competing ideas of state-control and free capitalism, Chopra’s Ali is a stand-in for the directionless youth, lured by the safety and dignity of a government job, whilst simultaneously seduced by the potential for greater wealth presented by free-market capitalism. The film’s plot is overt in this depiction, with Ali simultaneously fearful of Jai’s authority, yet desirous of wielding said authority as an employed policeman. Furthermore, in an action sequence set in Mumbai’s Chor Bazaar—a flea market specializing in illegally-hawked goods—Jai and Ali get into a fight with goons in the market, and are forced to make a hasty escape after being outnumbered. Ali bringing Jai to the market illustrates his ties to the informal, underground economy—a large, undocumented component of the Indian economy—and Jai’s subsequent fleeing the scene highlights the failed outcome of government attempts to regulate this grey economy by force and bluster.
Initially at a loss for clues, Jai is eventually able to deduce that Kabir’s bikers arrange their heists in close proximity to highways, providing as the highways do quick getaways after. This is no doubt an allusion to the economic importance of the National Highways Authority of India’s flagship ‘Golden Quadrilateral’ national highway construction project. Kabir, the raw capitalist, is empowered in his capitalistic pursuits by the government’s infrastructure investments, and John Abraham’s moody expression throughout the film is in no small part perhaps due to the discontentment within Kabir’s mind about his enterprise’s dependence on resources provided by the state. Having deduced Kabir’s MO, Jai and Ali attempt to catch him in the act. However, Kabir and his gang appear to have substantially faster bikes than Jai and Ali, which is undoubtedly an allusion to the government’s perceived ineptitude and inability to generally compete with private enterprise. Left chafing and chasing the dust, Jai catches a lucky break when an overconfident Kabir offers him a clue about his upcoming crime, with the catch being that if Jai fails to avert it, he must recuse himself from the case and leave Kabir to his entrepreneurial pursuits. Kabir, the staunch capitalist, is here hinting at the idea of termination clauses in Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), agreements between enterprises and governments for mutual benefit. Whilst the government naturally retains the right to sever the partnership at any point, Kabir clearly believes that he, as the private party, is also entitled to terminate the contract should the government, aka Jai, default on the agreed-upon terms. Formally known as the ‘Authority Default’ concept, Dhoom represents this idea in the form of a simple, easy to understand challenge between Jai and Kabir.
Even as this layered conflict plays out between Jai and Kabir, Ali is enamoured by the mysterious ‘Dilbara’ (Esha Deol). Little is known about Dilbara, however, like other characters in the film, it may be reasonably assumed than she is also an allegorical depiction of an economic concept. Ali’s infatuation with her suggests that she is perhaps intended to be portrayed as a vague, undefined avenue of aspirational employment. Furthermore, the fact that she (as is later revealed) is in fact a part of Kabir’s gang, yet also harbours feelings for Ali, leads one to conclude that Dilbara represents a form of compromise between dirigisme, aka restrictive state-controlled economy, and laissez-faire anarcho-capitalism. The filmmakers leave the specifics of this compromise vague, however, Dilbara’s skimpy outfits perhaps represent the scantiness of opportunities presented by this nebulous alternative.
Returning to the main plot, Jai, despite being forewarned, fails to foil Kabir’s next robbery, despite being able to take down one of his gang in the process. Left short of a gang member, Kabir attempts to recruit Ali, left sidelined by Jai following their failure to catch Kabir. The jilted Ali readily embraces Kabir’s neoliberal worldview and the duo jet off to Goa, where Kabir has his eyes set on one final score from a casino. Subtextually, the casino and gambling in general represent what is in Kabir’s eyes an essential component of his brand of capitalism—rampant speculation and volatility that may be manipulated to one’s benefit. There may also be an addition reference to British academic Susan Strange’s seminal 1986 work Casino Capitalism, a critique of unregulated banking and financial systems. However, Kabir is more likely than not to be derisive of such thoughts, and therefore, if this reference was intended, it may merely be made to indicate the filmmakers’ complete mastery over both Keynesian and Austrian schools of economic thought.
The importance of dance numbers in YRF films cannot be overstated. Even as Bollywood music gravitates towards being little more than catchy jingles designed to elicit maximum publicity, the music and dance numbers in YRF films complement the plot perfectly, serving to both entertain and narrate. Dhoom is no exception to this tradition of excellence. On the eve of Kabir’s final heist, an inebriated Jai shows up at the casino, claiming to have left police employment and moved on. Kabir, however, is rightly suspicious, given as Jai is still a cop, and is merely attempting to lure Kabir into a false sense of comfort as a prelude to catching him in the act. This Jai accomplishes by putting on a song-and-dance in front of Kabir to convince him of his abandonment of state-sponsored socialism and his embrace of Kabir’s unrestrained capitalism. The song is entitled ‘Salamee’, a clever homophone of ‘salami’, a sausage that consists primary of beef. The consumption of beef was, in a landmark 2005 Supreme Court judgement, forbidden on grounds on anti cow-slaughter laws. Kabir, as an opponent of government intervention, would likely have been opposed to the idea of such a restriction being imposed upon him. Therefore, to show his solidarity to the cause, Jai takes to the stage in front of Kabir and sways to the refrain of “Naye kal ko aao kare, hum karein, karein/Salami, salami, salami/Kar le salami…”.
The subterfuge is apparently successful, and a placated Kabir is lulled into a false sense of security by Jai’s reinforcement of his worldview. However, as mentioned, Jai’s conversion is little more than a ruse, and a hoodwinked Kabir is successfully caught in the act by Jai and Ali, who is revealed to have been Jai’s mole all along. The ever-slippery Kabir, however, weasels his way out of Jai’s clutches, and flees with his loot. Although Dhoom 3 would better address the phenomenon of loan defaulters taking flight from the verge of captivity, Dhoom too takes a cursory look at the occurrence, although Kabir does not quite embody a loan defaulter. He is merely the free-market capitalist, the robber baron caught flouting regulations and fleeing from the consequences of government intervention. A long chase sequence ensues, with Kabir fleeing but ultimately cornered by Jai and Ali at the precipice of a sea-facing cliff. Facing a choice between certain captivity and death, Kabir chooses to fly off the cliff with the last of his loot. In a literal sense, Kabir merely dies by falling off the cliff into the sea. In a figurative sense, faced with the prospect of his enterprise being forced to comply with ungainly regulations, Kabir chooses instead to offshore his business, and make for better waters, thus bringing his character arc to a natural and satisfying conclusion. A frustrated Jai bemoans his end, representing the government’s exasperation at ultimately failing to bring a rogue enterprise to heel. Ali, having seen his capitalistic expectations dive off a cliff with Kabir, chooses in the film’s final shot, to finally pursue the path to safe, steady, state-sponsored employment after all, asking Jai if he finally is a bona-fide police officer, as the film fades to black.
The topical nature of Dhoom is a cause for admiration, even a decade and a half after its release. The film successfully ties together strands of economic and socio-economic thought from its time—the ‘Golden Quadrilateral’ project received a major fillip in the first years of the new millennium, the service sector encountered a boom around the same time, as did the contribution of outsourcing to employment and economic growth. The rise of men like Kabir is perfectly timed in the post-License Raj years, as the country embraced capitalism over state socialism. Yet, the lure of stable, ‘safe’ government employment holds true, and powers men like Jai and seduces men like Ali. Dilbara’s unknown fate at the end of the film—left waiting for Ali by the side of a road—is representative of the uncertain outcomes of economic models with time. On a meta note, the Dhoom franchise’s casting of Abhishek Bachchan and Uday Chopra in every film is a nod to the ‘Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act’ of 2005, a flagship government initiative that guarantees employment for a certain number of days out of the year, in the form of unskilled labour.
In summation, Dhoom rightly deserves its place as a seminal film in the annals of both YRF and Indian cinema. In its own right, it is a bold, experimental film that marries erudition to entertainment. It is also the progenitor of its celebrated franchise, providing the springboard from which future films would explore similar issues in an equally deft and precise fashion. To YRF, the Dhoom franchise, and Indian cinema, the film Dhoom is nothing short of a bottle of nitrous oxide, that when attached to a bike, propels it into the stratosphere.

Well I don't know if i Can cover everything but I'll provide links and try connect some dots in view of the Samsung's HBM3e failing nVidia's tests - see separate thread posted by Billbraski17 and comments from BeepBeep2_.
Let's start with graphics GPUs and how AMD's Navi31 chiplets separated to memory controllers and cache look:
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/MXSNQxPqaEXKNHST8NEJNb-970-80.jpg.webp
Those 6 separate chiplets are the secret sauce as to why AMD's MI350 can use lower bandwidth HBM3e and still provide good throughout for AI while nVidia's cannot.
Full discussion :
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-rdna-3-gpu-architecture-deep-dive-the-ryzen-moment-for-gpus
Look at nVidia's H100 chip picture :
https://www.cnet.com/a/img/resize/f8544ab63f95a08ad7a93f1cbac5e55557e86fbd/hub/2022/05/04/f920f256-0175-430e-8f8a-2be5c16fdb5e/20220429-nvidia-h100-hopper-ai-gpu-04.jpg?auto=webp&width=768
You see 6 big squares around a center area. These are the HBM six total of 6.
Look ar AMD's MI300X chiplets picture:
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbfd1877e-4029-4c7e-b702-a2f75a8b2d31_2880x3016.png
As you can see there are 8 big squares and 8 small squares in between. Big squares are the HBM small squares are the memory controllers and cache driving the HBM.
Now the MI300X has 8 place holders memory chiplets but those will become working silicon for the MI350. Otherwise there shouldn't be wasted area as CoWoS substrates are cut from a wafer and wasted area is very costly. As you see nVidia's H100 has no gaps.
Rumors of canceling the MI350 as Mi400 will be out this year? Nope. At most naming will be change to call the MI350 MI400 but no canceling. It's been confirmed by an analyst and AMD:
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/supercomputers/amd-instinct-mi350-with-upgraded-4nm-process-node-and-hbm3e-may-launch-later-this-year-according-to-analyst-firm
This is a 4nm chip just like Blackwell is. No need use 3nm to compete with 4nm.
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/supercomputers/amd-instinct-mi350-with-upgraded-4nm-process-node-and-hbm3e-may-launch-later-this-year-according-to-analyst-firm
B200 has total of 8 HBM3e but using 8 stacks has only 144GB
https://www.anandtech.com/show/21310/nvidia-blackwell-architecture-and-b200b100-accelerators-announced-going-bigger-with-smaller-data
The nVidia's Robin using 3nm and HBM4 by end of 2025
https://www.techpowerup.com/322282/nvidia-blackwell-successor-codenamed-rubin-coming-in-late-2025
HBM4 probably in 2026 actually and MI400 will use too:
https://www.techradar.com/pro/samsung-confirms-next-generation-hbm4-memory-is-in-fact-snowbolt-and-reveals-that-it-plans-to-flood-the-market-with-precious-ai-memory-amidst-growing-competition-with-sk-hynix-and-micron
So just like for the Navi31 Radeon 7900XTX vs nVidia's 4090, AMD doesn’t need to use the fastest GDDR5 memory or in our case HBM3e to provide the throughput while nVidia's B200 must as it jas no cache chiplets.
I've omitted the electrical engineering aspects of RC multiplier and P=RI² and parasitic capacitance and resistance, pHY etc as the above is way too much already. ..
We'll see next week!

New here-wish I didn’t have to be here but here we are! I discovered my husband (30M) has been online cheating on me (28F) after 2 years of marriage. No kids. Just a dog.
I discovered Grindr notifications on his phone this past Saturday (3 days ago). I know his passcode, probed further, and to my amazement found Feeld and his profile which labelled him as bicurious. He was flirting with several people, of all genders. Grindr was much more agressive conversation with men. I confronted him. He took complete accountability. Told me that this has only been happening for a month and was because he succumbed to his “urges” when he was feeling powerless as we had been arguing at the time. He also stated that it was chatting and sending pictures/sexts. He never met up with anyone or physically did anything. But to me, the flirting and sexting is considered cheating.
Now this is where it gets messy. I knew before our marriage that he was sexually abused as a child by a male relative known to his family. At the time he wasn’t too comfortable opening up about the details and we left it at that. I encouraged him to start individual therapy. He’s been in therapy for the past year unpacking it. He disclosed to me 3 days ago upon this discovery that it was actually way worse than what I imagined. All I can say is it involved grooming, and there was not just one abuser.
He stated himself that his trauma is no excuse for stepping out of our marriage and doing this. Since unpacking it in therapy a lot of repressed emotions and confusion have come up for him and he thinks it comes from a place of wanting power and control back. He gets them as these “urges” or impulsive thoughts when he’s stressed. Homosexuality issues, masculinity concerns, the whole gambit. He’s spoken to his therapist about his sexuality and tells me he’s attracted to women. But honestly the sexuality piece is not what bothers me, it’s the complete betrayal. Of course there’s a lot of shame and guilt here and he says he wanted to tell me eventually but was very worried about what would happen. I’m at a loss of how to process it all. All I know is I feel betrayed, angry, numb, and as if my entire marriage was a lie.
He said he wants a monogamous relationship, wants me, and genuinely is remorseful and ashamed of himself.
I’m struggling with being compassionate while also honoring my own feelings and taking care of myself. After learning more about the abuse I am so angry and beside myself. Angry at the culture he was raised in, his parents, and humanity in general. I deeply love this man and want to reconcile, but genuinely do not know if I can be the same person. The hyper vigilance, lack of trust, constant doubt and questioning seems agonizing and it’s not fair to me or my mental health. But he is truthfully my best friend and I love our marriage and loving him. His response to the confrontation has been reassuring, and I believe we can build towards trusting again-I’m just deeply afraid of what’s going to happen to me and it’s been coming in waves.
Speaking to my therapist, I’ve decided to take care of myself before having to make any decisions but I just need to talk about this. Haven’t seen anyone with a similar situation. Any pieces of advice? How do you honor yourself while also being kind to your partners experience?

Their trip to the Phobos shipyards was more of the same, with the exception that Captain Oliver had Sundancers AI begin lessons. At first they were resistant to beginning school, but when Sunny explained that the lessons would be on starship manufacturing, assembly and operations, they became more enthusiastic.
In truth, Sunny was clever enough to select a base subject that required them to learn many others, such as mathematics, sciences, and engineering - while wrapped in the fascinating practical necessities of starships. So instead of boredom while learning differential calculus, physics or chemistry, they had an immediate use for their new found knowledge applicable to a very exciting field. Sunny had taken the time to download the two scholastic transcripts before they left their home station. Lan was stronger in mathematics, having completed her first course in calculus and scoring well on testing. Joe was weaker in mathematics, but had done very well in engineering and orbital mechanics for his year.
Sunny's extensive resources made her a good teacher, but it also helped that, being an AI, she was an immortal being with infinite patience, with substantial information on how the human mind worked. Keeping her captain in top shape was her prime directive after all, and she was designed to solve problems. Educating two teenagers would take up less than one tenth of one percent of her neural processing power.
After their arrival at the shipyard, Captain Oliver left the ship alone, as children in the massive industrial station would be very out of place. He was still trying to maintain some appearance of normal operations. Left alone with with the ship, they studied what they could see of the shipyards operations in the view port, and on the screens on the bridge. A large inter system liner was attached to a huge umbilical arm that was both an access tunnel, carrying personnel, materials and equipment into and out of it, and an anchor point, securing the massive vessel to the shipyards structure. The tiny suited figures crawling over the hull resembled crabs crawling over a whale. There was a massive gaping hole in the hull, where it looked like the reactor and major engine components were being removed. Frequent bright sparks of plasma welding and cutting illuminated parts of the scene in sharp black and white relief. As they watched, a massive part of the hull was freed from the ship, being guided away from the construction site by a large powerful arm. The arm released the section and it drifted towards what looked like a floating junkyard. Several of the crabs lifted off from the hulk, and attached themselves to the part, guiding it into a positing and then returning to the work at hand. The shipyards solution to storage of massive objects in space was relatively simple, they just set things off out of they way, made sure their velocity exactly matched the shipyard, and let them float until needed. Only occasional maintenance by one of the work-bots was needed to keep things tidy.
Eventually though, even this unique vista couldn't keep their attention any more. Joe finally left the bridge, and wandered about.
In response to Sunny's question, he said,"I just can't wait anymore, I need something to do." He rejected Sunny's suggestion to resume their class on orbital mechanics. After a few moments his face lit up with an idea.
"Hey!" he said, "How about training in EVA suits and airlock operations? That could be useful!" Sunny considered this, and then acquiesced. Joe and Lan had both been trained since they could walk on how to don the emergency escape suits that were a ubiquitous part of life for families in space. But the EESs were designed to sustain life in a vacuum for up to 72 hours. They were just armored bags with a helmet, mittens, boots, life support and a simple reaction motor with limited burn time. They weren't the elegant working suits that allowed a near acrobatic freedom of motion needed to accomplish complex tasks in space.
Sunny directed Joe to one of the ships airlocks. The airlock itself was the usual chamber with a door that opened to space, a second door that opened to the ships interior, and enough room for several people or reasonably large items to pass through in either direction. Inside the interior door, was another chamber, this one with lockers and suits. The noticed that their names were on two of the lockers. They each opened their respective locker and found hanging inside EVA suits of the latest manufacture, These suits were light weight, using complex carbon nano tube fabric that provided the required fifteen pounds per square inch for their human wearers, while still being very flexible. There was a ring around each neck that fitted a helmet, which provided the user interface for communications, access to water, and of course, air. The helmet was a marvel of engineering, almost unbreakable, the wearer could set any part of it from opaque to transparent as needed using the wrist pad. By turning their head slightly a small tube provided access to water, and audio was picked up and played through tiny transducers. It was very light, and resembled a slightly oval soap bubble. A transponder built into the suit allowed Sunny to track it until the power supplies ran down. The small back-pack carried power, atmosphere regeneration, and water supply. It fit neatly between the shoulder blades and extended downwards to about mid back. It was smooth and permanently part of the suit.
"Please direct your attention to the screen," Sunny said, and one of the wall panels lit up, a suiting up vid played, with Sunny providing commentary and advice on donning and using the suit, it's capabilities, and procedures for exiting and entering the ship. There was some momentary awkwardness when the part about waste handling came up, as the fitment for those functions was specific to the sex of the wearer, and the instructions were detailed and left nothing to the imagination, When venturing out into the most hostile environment known to mankind, information on how to survive trumped modesty or awkward teenager reactions.
When the lesson completed, Sunny directed them to don their suits. They quickly pulled off their ships jumpers, and climbed in to their suits. The compression method of retaining pressure on the wearer meant that any garment that could bunch up or form a wrinkle would become a painful hot spot in a short time, that would become unbearable, and eventually could also cause damage to the wearer so typically their light undergarments were all that was worn while using the suits.
At first the suits appeared almost comically too large, but this was a design feature to enable them to be put on with a minimum of effort. They turned and looked at each other, and with a nod, they pressed the activation panel on their wrist pad. Each suit immediately contracted around their bodies, resembling a second skin. there was a moments discomfort as the suits over contracted, the internal computer testing the fit and suit integrity, then the suits relaxed to their normal skin-tight compression.
At Sunny's direction they moved about the room, getting the feel of wearing the suits. In truth it was like wearing very tight fitting workout clothes. They felt pressure everywhere, but had no trouble moving about.
"Very Good" Sunny observed. "Let's put on the helmets now, and run some final checks." They each collected their helmet from where they floated, and attached a small tether between the helmet and suit, put it over their head, and twisted the base of the helmet into the collar on the suit. Early attempts at making the helmet integral to the suit had met mixed results. It seems the ability to remove the helmet while still wearing the suit in an atmosphere was more important to the end users than the slight reduction in reliability in the simple electro mechanical joint.
They touched their wrist pads and their suits went through the final checks, pressure and power were both confirmed at full levels. They were ready to go.
"I will reduce the airlock pressure now." Sunny said. She had run her own diagnostics on the suits, her link to the suits computers giving her authority over their operation. As the pressure fell, so did the feeling of compression. The suits provided the fifteen pounds per square inch the humans needed, but when worn in atmosphere the wearer felt that pressure, once a in a vacuum, the lack of atmospheric pressure reduced the compressive feeling of the suits. They became hardly noticeable.
They moved around in the airlock under vacuum. After a few minutes, Joe asked, "So Can we go outside?"
"Standby" Sunny replied. She checked the area around herself to make sure nothing would be a threat to the two neophyte astronauts, and checked her control linkage to the suits reaction motors. Worst case, she would simply assume control and stuff them back into the airlock bodily. "All set" she said after a few seconds, "Please face each other and hold hands."
This position would provide the most support to Joe and Lan as they exited the ship. The first experience in exposed space could be, dramatic. The exterior door opened at about half it's normal speed. As it slid away, it exposed a black rectangular void. Sunny dimmed the airlock internal lights, and the stars appeared. Countless stars became visible. They pushed gently outwards towards the opening and slowly floated out of the ship. Before them stretched the universe, with nothing between it and them but a few millimeters of fabric and transparent polymer. They were roughly oriented with the long axis of the ship. Below them hung the Red Planet, Mars, in all it's dusty sand blown glory. They could see details, sand storms, valleys and mountains. To their left, or the ships bow, the shipyards massive structure, cranes, arms, ships, and the huge central rotating cylinder floated, sparkling in reflected light, and the working lights of the active complex.
So taken in by the view, they would have floated beyond safe limits, so Sunny gave their suit thrusters a short command, and they stopped about two meters away from the airlock door. Being born and raised in space, they had experience in zero g movements, They released one pair of hands, and rotated themselves so they could face outwards away from the ship.
"Wow" Joe said.
"Yeah," Lan Replied, "this is... amazing."
They spoke in hushed voices, as people who enter a church do, they felt the awe of the experience. Sunny gave them some time to just float there, holding hands, and enjoy the expanse of the universe that had opened in front of them. She had to admit that even her artificial consciousness appreciated the grandeur of space, although with a degree of precision and accuracy no human mind was capable of. While a human mind would look at a star system and see beauty in the gas giants, or nebula, Sunny found beauty in the mathematical perfection of a cluster of moons orbiting a planet, the precision of the frequency of pulsars, down to a hundred decimal places. How the frequency of the cosmic background radiation, the very echo's of the act of the creation of the universe created harmonics with all the mass she could sense. She could feel joy at riding a gravity wave and boosting her drive efficiency, but not the excitement of traveling on the wave. She could tell you the wavelength of the color of a star, but not that the particular shade appealed to her. She found beauty in her own way, but it was not a human way.
Eventually, she said "OK, lets try some basic maneuvering shall we? Joe, you start, just get to the forward edge of the airlock, and place your feet on the exterior of the hull."
Joe slowly released Lans hand, and, pressing a few commands, enabled manual control of his thrusters. He could now control his motion by moving a few fingers on each hand, sensors in the gloves and the suits onboard computer would translate those motions into thruster commands. Joe could control speed and vertical with his left hand, and rotation in both axis with his right hand. He gingerly twitched the fingers of his right hand, until he was facing where he wanted to go, he over corrected, and had to rotate back. Once aligned he flexed his left pointer finger, and felt his suit push him in the small of his back, the push subsided. He had a small velocity towards the spot he wanted to land. He flexed his knees and 'landed' by absorbing as much of the momentum as he could, otherwise he'd rebound off the ship. A tiny pulse of the thrusters was all that was needed to stop the tendency to float away. He 'stood' there, his feet lightly touching the hull, knees bent. As long as he didn't move to aggressively, or push off with his feet, he could stay there. He triggered the thrusters and turned to look back at Lan.
"Very good Joe!" Sunny said. "Now, stay there until Lan joins you. Always stay together." This last admonishment was not needed, but bore repeating. As scuba divers of old knew, so did people in space, the buddy system was one of the best safety protocols available.
Lan triggered her thrusters, she nailed her rotation to face Joe, but came in a little to fast. She couldn't absorb all the momentum and rebounded slightly off the hull. It looked like the worlds slowest high jump. She grunted slightly, annoyed. Then triggered her thrusters again, and settled gently next to Joe.
"Well done Lan!" Sunny was glad they seemed to be taking to the controls and systems. "Lets try some more exercises now, and really see what you can do."
Sunny ran them through a series of exercises that involved them maneuvering in ways that would make a gravity bound acrobat jealous. Even in zero g, they had begun to sweat a bit, as they were not as relaxed as more experienced crewmen would be, they over worked themselves, where experience would let them use momentum and the thrusters together to minimize their effort they clenched muscle in futile attempts to shift their mass or momentum.
"Time for a short break" Sunny finally said. "While you rest lest review emergency procedures. On the right side of your pack, you can reach back and find a small tube protruding. Grasp that and pull it out."
They did so, finding that the tube would extend as far as they could easily reach.
"Now, just above where the tube comes out of the pack there is a small port. Plug the tube into each others port. This enables two users to share one support pack, in case one is damaged. While using the buddy system, you must hold hands, as if you pull away and disconnect the tube, you'll have to reconnect quickly, as the person with the failed pack will only have the air remaining in their suit, which is about 3 minutes worth."
They listened and nodded, more serious than their years implied they could be. Both had seen accidents in space, and knew the seriousness behind such instruction. The price of this knowledge had been paid in blood.
"If you have to maneuver using buddy air, the disabled pack should be held in front of and about waist high on the person with the operational pack. That will keep the center of gravity close enough to allow essential maneuvers. Be careful not to pick up too much speed, as you'll have twice the mass and the thrusters will need more time to change your velocity. Don't rush, under these circumstances return immediately to the nearest airlock."
"In the event of communications failure, you can still talk through sound conduction via your helmet to another helmet, of possibly a solid surface. Try this now. Touch your helmets together gently, and speak without triggering your coms systems."
They faced each other and brought their heads together slowly, in a slow motion pantomime of a gentle kiss. Their helmets touched, and they held each other to keep them together.
"umm, Hi" Joe said. Lan heard his voice, only slightly muffled, as if he was speaking to her through a door.
"Hi back" she said, "this is pretty amazing! Did you know we could do this?"
"I hadn't thought of it until you mentioned we had space suits aboard while we were in the shop. I didn't think either the Captain or Sunny would actually let us. It is so cool!"
Lan nodded in agreement, she was just as surprised at this turn of events, but delighted. Even living in space, few people actually venture Outside.
As they held their helmets in contact, Joe noticed their faces were very close together, he saw she had tiny freckles across her nose, and flecks of gold in her brown eyes. He looked into those eyes, until the silence grew a little too long, and was finally ended by Sunny resuming radio coms with them. Later on, Joe's thoughts would linger on how looking into two golden flecked brown eyes had made him feel so much, more even than the vastness of the entire universe stretched out before him had done.
Sunny had finished her instructions, she had assumed the spike in heart rates had been due to the momentary isolation. Their voice profiles didn't indicate stress however. Her vast psyche came to a conclusion, Biology, she though, bemused.
"You two take a few moments to look around, and then we'll end this exercise. I believe the captain has concluded his business, and we'll be loading out our cargo soon."
As they enjoyed the remaining few minutes of their first space walk, Lan looked back towards the drive end of the ship. It faced away from everything, into deep space, and the view was spectacular. She looked again, there seemed to be something shiny moving around near that end of the ship. Being over a kilometer away, she had to look hard, but yes, there was something. Maybe one of the crab like working suits the shipyard personnel used. She couldn't be sure. It might have just been light glinting off of something harmless.
"Sunny, " Lan said, "Is there something going on at near the engineering section? I thought I saw something moving over there, but I can't be sure".
Joe turned and looked as well. "I don't see anything," he said.
In fact Sunny had detected what appeared to be one of the shipyards worksuits, operating near the engineering section. It was suspicious, as the suit had disabled it's lights and transponder, which was illegal and highly dangerous, as if anything had happened the occupant would be lost in space, unless they could restart the transponder. It did however provide a high degree of stealth, which explains why it was able to get within a few meters of the ship before she noticed it. Had Sunny not had her two charges outside the ship, where she was monitoring the environment she might have missed it. Maybe, she liked to think not much got past her, and she was usually right. She enabled camera's and captured images of the work suit, confirming that's what it was. She noticed that the external registration markings had been altered, meaning it would be very difficult to find the operator now.
To Lan she said, "Yes, I see something there as well. I'll look into it. Meanwhile you two return to the airlock and get changed, we're boarding cargo and technical crew in about an hour. Best you're ready."
Joe and Lan entered the airlock and the door slid shut, once again shutting out the vast universe from the interior.
Sunny, the greatest multi-tasker ever, monitored and assisted Joe and Lan exiting their suits and the airlock, at the same time, turning her available sensors to a small spot on the exterior of her hull, adjacent to one of the ventral thrust nozzles. Her quantum circuits flickered though entangled states as she considered the multiple meanings of someone in a stealth posture attaching something to the outside of her hull without her knowledge. Even her artificial sense of self felt indignation at that violation, however she realized there was more here than meets the eye, much more. She sent a very discrete encrypted signal to Captain Oliver, one that only he would hear and understand.
They would have some interesting things to discuss soon.

Interview was completed on May 14.
Just got the transcript. I have no idea when it will be posted. But when it does I’ll provide a link.
I’ll reply to civil thoughts in the comments
Enjoy _____\
Q: today we discuss with keeping my name private to discuss the state of Eritrean politics and its opposition
For those who have never heard about Eritrea. It’s a country that achieved its independence after a 30 year struggle against Ethiopia.
Eritrea started as a beacon of hope. However its president Isaias afwerki turned his country into a totalitarian state. Men and women permantly serve in the army, no universities exist, many have fled and it’s never had one democratic election.
As events in Europe between Eritreans continue to happen. We found one Eritrean who was willing to discuss these details. Today I welcome name to our studio.
Q: name thank you for speaking to us today. Many declined to speak to us.
A: I’m not surprised. Thanks for having me and giving the opportunity to discuss this topic.
Q: before we talk about the opposition. You told me before the interview that the dictatorship was Eritreas destiny. Many Eritreans I spoke too say they’ve never imagined dictatorship pre 2001. Why do you say otherwise
A: I agree it was destiny. You have to remember Isaias afwerki trained in China during the cultural revolution. He’s a die hard Maoist. Many knew this but said this is an issue after independence.
In 2001. Many Eritreans in govt understood Isaias plans and tried to get people to protest him. Isaias simply outplayed them.
We should’ve had elections early into independence and safeguards to protect the country. But why that didn’t happen is complicated for today’s interview.
Sadly yes, I think with Isaias in charge 93. Him outplaying many people who spoke against him but didn’t want to lead. I think this was our destiny .
—- main interview begins
Q: what would you say is the status of Eritrean politics today. What are the issues you’ve noticed?
Eritrean politics today is probably at its saddest point. I rather have no opposition groups then have BNH be our only “opposition” group. They’re barely Eritrean but whatever
This is the problem in my opinion.
Opposition groups: I read a research paper on Eritreas opposition groups and I agree with its finding. It argues that because Isaias has always preached against ethnic opposition groups. Opposition people in response make ethnic based groups. Because one. They don’t trust anyone because who’s a spy and who’s not. And second. Because if Isaias says no identity politics the opposition does the opposite
If Isaias was an ethnic federalist then the same effect. The opposition in protest would form secular groups.
So essentially we have opposition groups that don’t trust each other and are based solely to be opposite of Isaias. Irregardless what it means for Eritrea.
Educated Eritreans: we have Eritreans who are professors, engineers, doctors etc. these are the people who should organize the opposition groups. But sadly, they want absolutely none of it.
I’ve interviewed 3 Eritrean Canadian professors asking why they’ve stayed away. Their answer is essentially “we will wait for a transition then we will join”
Who’s going to lead this transition: No answer
What are the transitions goals and beliefs: no answer
It’s the same mistake with G15. Everyone wanted someone else to lead. There’s no bravery among our educated diaspora. This to me is my biggest concern because what legitimacy will they have to Eritreans when they’ve done nothing over the years. It looks too opportunistic.
Q: Why is there a huge divide within the diaspora as it relates to BNH?
A: you have to understand a lot of people including me were excited when BNH first came. We thought finally an opposition group that isn’t ethnic based.
However then we saw their strategy when it came to the Eritrean government events. We call them HEGDEF.
The strategy of BNH was to burn their events to the ground. They beat people up and were even causing a mess to cities in Europe.
Think about Black Lives Matter. Lots of support in the start. Then they kept burning property and cars and people ran away like they are flies.
For BnH this isn’t even the worst part. The worst part was during the Tigray war. BnH decided to side with pro TPLF groups. In their mind. They saw the Tigray war as the opportunity to lead a movement. This was their deathbed. People think that Eritreans don’t support Tigray because HEGDEF says so. I disagree. It’s a united belief that Eritreans understand no matter how bad our govt is. The Tigray authorities are not here for us
It will take too long to go through details but the Tigray supporting groups have done many wrongs to Eritrea. So the overwhelming majority of Eritreans just don’t support them. I forgot to add that the TPLF fired ballistic missiles into Eritrea. And still BnH sided with them. To me that’s the death of the group right there and then.
Q: thanks for painting a non complicated picture. I want to come again to opposition groups for a second before we discuss the Tigray war. There are groups like Yikal. Was it the same case? Supporting Tigray means they’re not legitimate.
A: yes, if you’re asking me, then yes. I fully subscribe to that view and so do many Eritreans. We are not trying to replace our garbage with outside garbage. If that makes sense.
Q: let’s talk about Tigray. The war. You’ve made clear to me before our interview that you don’t believe Eritreans committed war crimes. You also mentioned that Eritreans despite being opposed to their government still supported the intervention. Can you explain this?
A: would you like me to start with the war crimes or the opposition first?
Q: let’s start with why you disbelieve the many allegations of war crimes by EDF troops.
A: because theirs no evidence. It’s simple as that. We have an Eritrean force who’s in their history dating the Eritrean struggle which was 30 years by the way not having a single allegation of rape.
We then had an Eritrean force in badme and surrounding areas never accused of rape during our war with Ethiopia in 99. I’d also add that Ethiopian troops rapped our women during our struggle for freedom and 99. I know our interview doesn’t talk about Ethiopian crimes during the struggle but if you knew. You would be blown away
Coming back to Tigray. There’s simply no proof. HRW and amnesty interviewed survivors. I don’t doubt they’ve gone through trauma. But theirs literally more evidence of Tigray troops wearing Eritrean uniforms then there is of Eritreans doing rapes. I’d also add very early in the war the Ethiopian govt them self said that Tigray was using Eritrean uniforms. It’s psychological warfare.
As it relates to massacres. Eritrean troops were tracked by satellite during the whole war. In the 21st century with technology. No one can provide proof?
Also Ethiopia. Ethiopian troops have a history of rape as a weapon of war. It’s not exclusive to Ethiopia but it’s a reality. So why should I accept we did crimes without evidence when theirs a history of internal Ethiopian cycles of crimes.
Q: what about the Axum massacre
A: is Eritreans killing 800 people apparently?
Q: yes.
A: we killed 800 people and somehow still allowed Christian events to continue and no evidence exists of Eritreans doing it. It’s insane that this is taken seriously and it only helps the Eritrean govt suceede in their mission. It literally doesn’t help the anti Isaias people when this is being sad.
Q: we are running out of time but quickly can you square the fact that people don’t support the govt but supported the intervention.
A: yes. Simply put. We don’t like Woyane which is what we call the Tigray regional govt. they have made claims of our territory in their manifesto
They used Ethiopian resources to fight a war with us in 98 and sabotaged the Eritrean Ethiopian and Eritrean Tigray relationship.
They sang songs saying they’d turn us to a Somalia and a Syria. And fired missiles to our territory which in my opinion was the most idiotic move.
Q: I saw Eritreans protesting against it outside the country
A: yes. Some people supported the war and others didn’t. You’ll never see 100% uniminity on any position.
Q: some say that BnH is secretly Tigryan. Do you believe this is the case
A: let me be clear. There’s Eritreans in BNH no doubt. Some are there because their half tigryan so they’re pleased being allied with Tigray
Others are involved because they don’t know or choose to ignore its relationship with Tigray.
Then you have some who are there to beat up HEGDEF people.
My point is people either know and don’t care or are pleased about this relationship with Woyane. Those who don’t know I pity them.
Q: why would you say in your view if we argue that they are supported by Tigray that they don’t know.
A: because they don’t want to believe it’s a group aligned with Tigray. Or they believe it’s propaganda. I pity them. They don’t know what to do. They just want to help their people.
Q: are you apart of any opposition groups.
A: currently no. I had seriously considered one group but they’ve merged with BnH so I quickly dropped that idea.
Q: thanks for your time. Not many people know about Eritrea let alone its complicated political factors. Even I have a tough time following. Any last comments you would like to add
A: I’d like to add that us Eritreans are a long way from any good news when it comes to the political scene.
My message is that those who think Isaias leaving will solve our problems just like that… need to stop dreaming. Look at Somalia, Libya, Sudan etc. I’m not saying Isaias is our only choice because he’s not
I’m saying that because we need to grow up and take charge of our destiny. Or else someone with opposing interests like BNH will.
Q: thank you
A: thank you for having me

*filtered pic for smooth skin texture only in full disclosure!)
Started HRT at age 53 a week ago yesterday. I could tell from day one how much happier I became, the clarity etc. My skin is soft already which I absolutely adore, and I’ve already lost half an inch roughly at waist. When I had come out to my younger sister back in February, it actually went great and very supportive. Then the weekend before starting HRT I finally told my older sister. She didn’t take it “great” (and said she “wished you could be a regular guy” ouch)…but at least she didn’t get full of judgement and said that she wasn’t that surprised. I had told her a couple decades ago about what I then thought was “just cross dressing”.
Now for the bad and I could REALLY use some moral support here, especially from girls here who had a Christian upbringing and maybe a similar outcome to telling a parent….
What SHOULD be a 100% euphoria time from FINALLY taking control of MY life and gender dysphoria, and feeling the mental and physical changes finally aligning me correctly, has been greatly dampened ever since I decided to tell my mom.
Between my Christian and conservative upbringing (and even went to a private Christian high school), and at my age my mom being 87 so there’s the different era she grew up in…I knew she likely wouldn’t take it great…but I had no idea it would be an implosion. I am married (for now anyway) to a woman that is trans which I know was partially a last straw trying not to confront my own issues and living vicariously through her at my own expense. My dysphoria just ended up skyrocketing anyway. But my mom had come around around the time I got married to accepting my wife…or so I thought. Even in calls every week to her over years (we are on different coasts of the usa), I have not only been loving and loyal but she has consistently asked me how my wife is doing with A, B, C or D over the years.
So at first when I told my mom she didn’t react much actually but I think that’s the shock and/or the Asperger’s she deals with. But when I talked to her a few days ago, it went TERRIBLE.
….the call I intended to be about multiple topics like always not only ended up being about an hour, but started w me asking how she was doing only for the whole call tone manifest when she replied , “well NOT very good.”
Among the things she said (it’s kind of an awful blur by now trying to remember bad things) -I wish you had waited until after I’m gone -I couldn’t get to sleep for SIX hours last night -it’s the last thing I think of when I go to sleep and the first thing I think of when I wake up -my blood pressure has shot up -it’s not natural! -do you think God made a mistake? *im SO tired of this argument a cousin has since asked me too 🤦‍♂️ -I wish your father was still alive so I had him to lean on -I gave birth to you so I saw your parts (ewww omg stop!) -I saved your Mother’s Day card as it might be the last one signed with your name -I looked at old pictures and saw how handsome you were in your suit and tie -your inheritance has a man’s name on it
I’m sure I forgot some things by now but as loving and generous as she’s been all my life, yes, she’s very conservative and religious …sees the type of TV news you would expect her to watch, and has always worried excessively.
I said so many counters to what she would say…such as me saying: -I already lost decades putting up this facade even marrying someone trans -trans people have a significantly higher suicide rate that is usually tied to family rejection -no I don’t think God made a mistake any more than a person being born intersex or missing a limb is a “mistake” -I actually hated wearing suits and was jealous of my sister’s wedding dress
I still love my mom and she loves me as she said, of course, but this has changed our dynamic so much that I actually wish I never told her. That’s so sad because of course I should tell her out of respect. I didn’t want to show up on a vacation years away and just show up looking so different at that point. I’ve watched some good YouTube on being Christian and trans that seemed to validate me…but she seems so set in her ways that it seems to invalidate the facts of how much IVE suffered and if it even matters that I’m happier. More so I finally feel like I’m living instead of merely existing.
I know this was long and I often write how the thoughts come to me verbatim so thank you for reading. Any advice here as well as encouragement is so appreciated. Especially how to approach future calls with her. At this point I am actually dreading talking to her which is something I’ve never said in my life. 😞 Help….

Hey, I am not really a computer person but I'd like to know your opinion on this. I recently made a friend in game that I talked a lot with, and we shared like one irl photo, all was good until he was one day like: "bet I'll find your email address lol". Well he did. I never shared it with him, but he pulled it out of somewhere, along with a picture I never shared, and my real name. I tried to get out of him how he did that, and he tried to make many excuses, I excluded picture search linking my profile and clicking some strange links..
This guy now scares me, but I tried to push him a little bit, and I found out he works cybersecurity in some data center and what he found was my Microsoft account, which really has my real name, the shitty low quality picture and personal email... So.. can anyone working in a data center just look up your random personal data by knowing just your first name and country, or is it some stupid prank?
I just dont know.. if I should be like. Afraid, or.. idk..?
Thanks

I had a Python programming classes a few years ago in College where my professor was so impressed by my work that he had asked me if I'd be open to privately tutor a struggling student in which I agreed to.
The gentleman I had worked with for a couple months was older, maybe 50-60s, and did not seem quite technology literate. Additionally, his mind seemed to just not wrap his head around some basic concepts with Python. Now this is my own view, but I think programming involves a certain type of logical thinking that some people's brain just don't think in and I think it's a lot more difficult to learn and practice that thinking as you get older. Anyways.
Despite trying my best and teaching things as simply as I could, the gentlemen seemed to not grasp the concepts and had continually got frustrated. I don't know how he did on the exam but I have a feeling that he possibly even dropped the entire College program. Sucks because he was a really nice guy and I could tell he really wanted to succeed despite the frustration of not understanding.
Previously, I avoided putting this on my resume because I think your resume/LinkedIn should quantify your experiences, and with this I don't know how I could quantify it because it's likely that he failed the exam, but I truly don't think that's a reflection of my ability to teach the concepts to him. So it feels like I can't say that a professor asked me to tutor a student because he was very impressed by me (even highly suggested I transferred to a CS degree) since the outcome of my tutoring wasn't successful...
My question is: I want to include the experience 100% on my LinkedIn and possibly even my resume depending on the application it's being used for, but I don't know how! How can I demonstrate my experience as a tutor when the outcome wasn't the student succeeding?
Any help would be greatly appreciated! I think this would be a great little touch to my resume/LinkedIn and am feeling quite bummed not knowing how I can display it ://

Calling all redditors in a relationship, or the hopeless romantics out there!
Is anyone in the same boat that would like to share the excitement? I just don’t know who else to tell lol.
Anyone feel free to talk about your proposal plans, dream proposal or how it actually happened for you!
I’d love to discuss locations, public or private, the timing, how much of a surprise it was, the ring, did you get pictures of it, thoughts on asking the family before, etc!!

hello, i am 15 and currently taking a coding class (against my will i was put in it to meet the student quota). This is a 2 week class and at the end your supposed to have made an app. He has given us a tutorial course and a 3 hour video to learn and I am left with 4 days to code. Problem is I have never been good with technology and coding makes me really frustrated. I do not under stand it very well and what is wrong with the code I have currently written. I am scared to fallow a youtube tutorial as I'm concerned about getting marked for plagiarism for it being to advanced to have been done myself. I can not fail this course as if I do I do not get to graduate. I reach out in a desperate attempt to get help as I do not know what to do. Below is the code I have written if you have any idea how to make it work or just general advise on how to do this it would be much appreciated.
Code:
import SwiftUI
struct ContentView: View {
var body: some View {
case heads, tails
var imageName: String {
switch self {
case .heads:
return "heads"
case .tails:
return "tails"
}
}
}
func flipCoin() -> Coin {
return Bool.random() ? .heads : .tails
}
struct CoinFlipView: View {
@State private var coinResult: Coin?
var body: some View {
VStack {
Text("Coin Flip")
.font(.title)
.padding()
Spacer()
if let result = coinResult {
Image(result.imageName)
.resizable()
.aspectRatio(contentMode: .fit)
.frame(width: 150, height: 150)
} else {
Text("Tap the coin to flip")
.padding()
}
Spacer()
Button("Flip Coin") {
coinResult = flipCoin()
}
.padding()
.foregroundColor(.white)
.background(Color.blue)
.cornerRadius(10)
}
}
}
@main
struct CoinFlipApp: App {
var body: some Scene {
WindowGroup {
CoinFlipView()
}
}
}
}

Preview {

ContentView()
}

Obviously it is impossible to explain the entire situation in a post, but long story short, my wife views me as overly critical and I view her as overly lazy. We both have doctorate degrees but she has never worked since finishing her training. She came from a very financially comfortable family where she was never required to pay for school, a car, gas, her apartment, etc. I by no means grew up poor, but independence and hard work were highly valued within my family, and I ended up paying my entire way through college and supporting myself.
I know my wife is depressed. She does not have confidence, does not work on herself, and spends many days sitting at home. She often complains that she feels unfulfilled or socially inadequate; however, when I push her to do things that can help (e.g., find a job, find a purpose, find a way to feel more confident), she never actually does anything.
We are also very different. She is more religious, I am less. She is not particularly ambitious or driven, I am. She is very sensitive, emotional, dependent, and needy, I tend to rely on myself for comfort. She views every behavior from others as having some deeper intention or meaning, I tend to view things as less important (unless of course there is good evidence for it).
We have gotten to a point to where we both have admitted that we probably should not have gotten married. However, she recently got pregnant. I admit that while I do believe we probably should not have gotten together, I would prefer finding a way to work on our marriage for the sake of everyone involved. However, while I have started going to therapy (I know I am not perfect), she still has not. When we discussed seeking couple's therapy, the responsibility of finding someone fell on me despite having a full time private practice and being 100% responsible for most necessities (e.g., bills, etc.). I just feel like she isn't doing enough to better herself or our marriage. I am fully aware that this is a two-way street; however, I have found myself lacking respect for her and generally feeling resentment towards her.
I know some may comment that I am simply being judgemental and that I am criticizing her based on how she is different from me. I acknowledge that this likely plays a role. However, I am not convinced that this would explain the entirety of our situation. Traits such as confidence, ambition, and valuing hard work are, in my opinion, objectively positive traits. I just feel we have developed so much contempt for one another that there is no space for actively considering or working on the other's concerns. I am feeling trapped and don't know what to do.

I [26M] recently got back on dating sites because I'd really like to find a relationship and I already feel like absolute shit after doing so. I have interests like reading, watching a wide range of films and listening to a wide range of music, physical activities like biking and rock climbing, and gaming, to name a few, and I'd really like to meet somebody else who also likes at least some of those non-exercise things. Part of the issue is that I am a pretty unusual person with a lot of niche and (often, but not always) male-dominated interests. For example, I will listen to any music, but tend to prefer listening to extreme metal, have intense interest in the Fire Emblem series (I have played every single game in the main series, and have replayed most of them at least a couple of times), enjoy reading philosophy (I read 19th century philosophy for fun), history, and incredibly dorky fantasy series like Malazan Book of the Fallen. I also do indulge in a lot of things that are more popular (like I said, I will listen to any type of music, watch pretty much any type of film, enjoy popular TV shows like The Sopranos and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and am open to pretty much any type of activity) and am always open to engaging with stuff that other people show me, but the bottom line is that the things that I often find the most interesting are all pretty unpopular and my experience in life is that the vast, vast majority of people take no interest in anything that I have to share with relation to them, so I largely keep it all to myself.
I got some of my friends to help me with making profiles to make sure they are actually appealing to other people. They helped me take pictures, edit my bios/prompts wherever they might not be the best, etc. People told me that the profiles all look really good. People tell me that I'm "a catch," whatever that means, that I look good, that I am one of the smartest, funniest, and kindest people that they have ever met (I don't believe any of these things are true), and that "the bar is on the floor" when it comes to men and their profiles. I have only found a small handful of people who stood out to me (I swipe left on most people and genuinely do swipe primarily based on apparent personality compatibility), and of those people, not a single one has liked me. I have received no likes. Apparently, despite all of these nice things people say about me and the fact that most men have terrible profiles and put in no effort, I'm still fundamentally not good enough. That's not to mention that I also have autism and mental health issues (which I have received a decade+ of therapy for and have medications that work, in addition to being good enough at masking that mental health professionals took my entire life to pick up on autism) that would immediately drastically cut my chances if I did happen to manage to get a single match. These sites just make me feel like shit and remind me that, no matter how much I work on myself, I'm not good enough for anybody even in the most basic, surface-level ways, and I feel like all of my friends are bullshitting me and it almost feels insulting at this point. For the record, since I imagine people will reasonably object to the self-pity in this post and say that this mentality bleeds into how I come across, I work very hard to hide these feelings and keep them to myself and am always positive when I present myself to others. Also for the record, there aren't really any social opportunities to meet new people either in the friend circles I have or in terms of community-organized social events, so dating apps are pretty much the only viable opportunity to date available to me.
It makes me feel so awful about myself and hopeless about my chances of ever meeting anybody. I have never had a good experience in relationships in the past and they have always caused me pain. I just appear to not be good enough to interest anybody. It straight up makes me want to die.

This is a high level summary of my book I released last year. It is a men’s dating advice and self improvement book, in the same vein as Models by Mark Manson.
Part 1 - Developing Inner Game: Independence, Charisma, Resilience and Growth
Independence
Independence is the essential element of a powerful, dynamic masculinity. This sense of independence is driven by purpose. Purpose is the one thing that defines you, which you feel incomplete without. Purpose doesn’t include advancing in your career or romantic relationships.
Another key component of independence is embracing the concept that you are on your own. Only you truly understand your desires and ambitions. Friends and family don’t always want what’s best for you; even if they do, they may have misguided thoughts about what YOU want.
Charisma
Charisma isn’t as much about how people feel about you, but rather how you make them feel about themselves. From the Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane, the elements of charisma are: Power, Presence, and Warmth.
Some general points on charisma:

• Your thoughts define you
• Learn to be an engaged, present listener
• Become a student of non-verbal communication and body language

Resilience and Growth
Gratitude is the cornerstone of resilience. Despite any problem you have, understand relative suffering, that there are those out there who are truly suffering.
The false threshold- the belief that life will be easy once you reach a certain milestone. This is a false belief. There will always be difficulty, and your development as person never ends.
Visualization and self-talk are crucial components of growth. Your mind has difficulty distinguishing reality from your inner dialogue and imagination. If your inner narrative is consistently negative, it WILL be your reality.
Part 2- Understanding Attraction

1. Keep it simple. There isn’t some mystery to being fundamentally attractive. 90% is maintaining your health, fitness, grooming, having decent social skills, and having your life together
   
2. Self limiting beliefs. Self limiting beliefs that hold men back:
   

• Leagues
• Alpha Male bullshit
• The One- there’s “one” person out there

1. High value characteristics:

• Having respectful, clearly defined boundaries
• Being able to handle rejection gracefully
• Being truly busy and not always available
• Being what you want to attract and more

1. The world is truly abundant in terms of dating opportunities. There are 7 billion people on the planet. Just purely by the numbers, even if .01 of the women on earth found you attractive, you still wouldn’t have the time or resources to date them all

Tips for cold approach:

• Be outcome dependent, think of it as an adventure
  
• Smile
  
• Don’t be timid with your voice
  
• Don’t drag the conversation along
  

Tips for online dating:

• Online dating is nothing more than a tool and fun social experiment, don’t get all in your feelings about it
  
• EVERYONE gets ghosted, flaked, used for attention, NOT just you
  
• Pictures are the most important element. Only use high-resolution photos, limit selfies. Be somewhat irreverent and polarizing in your profile
  

Exercises:
The final chapter is more than 10 exercises which out the concepts into practice.
Conclusion:
You have to undergo high levels of discomfort , work and sacrifice. Most modern men want things like a beautiful girlfriend but refuse to get outside of their comfort zone and put in the work.
Don’t forget to be patient with yourself and HAVE FUN. By simply getting out of your head a little, things will naturally fall into place. It’s incredibly important that we lift each other up as men and celebrate each other’s victories.

I'll write, produce, sing, act, voice act, direct, record, edit, and do the makeup and costumes for a project and it'll get one tenth of the attention a selfie i take in 5 minutes. Like sure, I could just post my music and work and not bother posting anything but my artistic work but I tried that. I can't put out enough content to generate much of a following just based off of my work. They say you need to post at least weekly or every 3 days and frankly, I'm not about to put out the level of shoddy quality that sort of output would entail. Yeah, I could just not bother trying to develop a following and do what I want but I'm an artist and most of us are intrinsically narcissistic and want attention. Whether people noticed me or not I'd still create but I still want people to notice. It's a stupid rant I know. First world artist problems.
Some would say "well at least you're pretty and people want to see your pictures." So what right do I have to complain? And its totally fair. But it still gets me. It takes a total of 2 hours at the most to take, edit and post pictures of myself or an outfit and at least 1 month to finish an artistic project of the musical variety, and 3 months to a year to finish a novel. I'll get 50-200 reactions on a picture, 5-20 reactions to a musical project, and I have frankly, no idea for a novel I post. People go off about all pretty girls have to offer is being pretty when we literally spend countless hours working our asses off to pursue what we love but can count on one hand the people who care about anything beyond our prettiness. For every 10 messages I get hitting on me or soliciting me for pictures of my body I'll get 1 asking about my music even though it's literally written in my profile that I don't sell content and that I make music. I don't hide my work at all or make people look for it.
This will probably be an unpopular rant and since I'm on reddit I'll likely just get shamed for trying to have a social media presence at all but I just can't shake how much I hate it. I don't hate it that people like my pictures but I hate that that's all they like. I hate that they'll take the time to beg me to see me nude but not take the time to listen to what I have to say. I'm a good artist. I'm not a pain to listen to. I have a good voice, great lyrics, solid songwriting, mediocre production, decent presentation despite doing it all solo without a millionaires budget. But it doesn't matter. Because even though I say I don't sell content and that I make music they'll still beg me to sell content and not bother to listen to my music. If you truly wanna know me, consume my content. Artists are notoriously vulnerable so you'll get to know me fast. I'll get lots of messages from people asking to get to know me. They don't want to get to know me, I've given them everything they need to get to know me but they haven't bothered to look.
Alright, I'll quit my meaningless chatter and sign off. Probably tonight when I'm headed home after work I'll post some cool looking pictures where I'm wearing a cool looking outfit with an inane smile on my face telling people I hope they enjoyed the video I just poured my entire fucking soul into over this past month with the link to it. Who knows, maybe 5 people will take the time to watch it, out of my 1500 followers on fb and 1200 followers on reddit...