Congrats on choosing and making it into NUS Business School! I previously wrote here: https://www.reddit.com/SGExams/comments/118r7cg/all_about_studying_business_in_nussmuntu/ on what are some factors when considering between NUS, SMU and NTU business school. For better or worse, you'll be stuck here for the next 4 years so here's some broad advice on making the best out of it.
1. Put in effort to draft out your own Study Plan; Future you will thank you
What is a study plan? Essentially, it's an outline on what modules you'll be taking throughout your 4 years in University. Especially for a business student, a study plan should go beyond "what majospecialization/double majominor". Yes, figuring what major (or majors) that you want to eventually take is the first step. The next step is also considering whether you intend to take a gap semester (i.e. leave-of-absence) to do internships (which is becoming increasingly more common place; maybe not 1 gap sem but possibly even 2!). The unfortunate truth is that many biz student realize late in Year 2/3 that they might not be as competitive as their peers and usually then seek out LOA internships and end up delaying their graduation (whether its a good or bad thing is debatable). Besides gap semesters for internships, there are student who do credit bearing internships (which counts for some credits/MCs) or even do a part-time internship during the semester while studying (Do modules on Mon and Tues, FT work of Wed, Thurs, Fri). Not every student get's their desired summer internships, and often student then have to compensate by applying for Off-Cycle LOA internships.
In your study plan, you would also have to take into consideration possibly going on overseas semester exchange or even the 6M to 1 Year long NOC program if you're interested! Overloading more modules earlier in your Uni (Y1 and Y2) gives you more flexibility to adapt to changes in the future. Of course, you need to gauge yourself whether you're able to cope with the workload. (Overloading in earlier sems, mean being more free in later sems to do internships/explore other modules or minors).
Additionally, most higher-level modules have pre-requisites (mostly ACC1701). If you delay taking these pre-requisite modules, your whole study plan can be delayed by a semester. My advice is to take ACC1701 (and consequently FIN2704) earlier rather than later, because these two mods open up the other majors/specializations available to you. You'll also figure out whether you'll want to to take the finance major after taking these two modules.

1. CCAs

There's a ton of CCAs available NUS-wide or Business School related. I strongly encourage you to take multiple CCAs (importantly taking into consideration what you can manage and your workload) so that you're able to meet new people and learn new skillsets. NUSC/RCs/Hall activities also count here. The unfortunately truth is that portfolio does matter in business school, and simply being good in academics (which can be competitive in itself) isn't enough. You GPA/CAP allows you to have your foot in the door; your portfolio and experience allows you to enter it. Consulting CCAs in general are great an improving your eye of aesthetic and detail which I recommend. You'll be surprised that many biz kids are outright bad and atrocious at making PowerPoint slides even at Year 4... I would say that the CCAs you join do shape your uni experience in a large way.

1. Group Mates

Find good friends and group mates! Those in NUSC/RCs/Halls have an easier time for this. For most of your basic core 1k modules, you group is usually randomized and you have no say on who you're working with. It is during these randomized group that you'll figure out the pain of having poor group mates, and things get worse if you're taking higher level and tougher modules alone. On this note, try to find friends that will do various modules together with you! Having friends doing the module together with you is a huge advantage, from extra resources, dead line reminders, doing quizzes/tests together etc. 5 brains working on a problem set is always better than 1 brain by itself, these 5 ppl will often get a better grade than the one hardworking individual working alone. Implicitly, those who stay on campus have a huge edge over those who don't.

1. Business is ultimately not a technical degree

Controversial to some, but business school at the end of the day doesn't really teach you much, we cant code, cant stats and no domain knowledge outside of finance). The only thing that it does teach is showmanship (and even then sometimes not taught well enough). Business School arguably teaches you how to carry yourself well, make fancy PowerPoints, use some excel, working with people (?) etc. Many of the more relevant things you learn, you learn them in your internship and your own experiences outside of the classroom e.g. CCAs. To me, doing well in Biz School is focusing on everything outside of academics (ensuring that you have some baseline CAP/GPA).
5. Figure out early whether you prefer Excel or Power Point.
The corporate world only runs on two applications, Excel and Power Point. Dabble in both, figure out early which application you prefer more and find a relevant internship/role/job that you enjoy decently that uses one over the other. Truly, Excel and PPT are the only takeaways when you leave the university. Great consultants are adept at handling PPT, navigating through them quickly with many templates in their desktops. Finance peeps do a little more excel work and have to do them well, fast and creatively. Even at the end of uni, there are still many students who can't use excel proficiently at a high level.
6. Internship Hell is real for those who care
Internship application period in itself can be a full-time commitment (for those that care). When internship applications open, you can will going through your own interview prep, doing several recorded interviews, applying to new internships etc. Many moving parts to juggle and a lot of ground work to be done. From preparing for interview questions, writing cover letters, tailoring your CV etc alot of the hell you experience in Biz school actually comes outside of academics contrary to popular belief (as Jean-Paul puts it, "hell is other people", bad group mates im looking at you). For those applying to more technical roles, you might also need to prep extra for technical questions e.g. IB 400 questions, consulting cases, market sizing brain teasers etc.
7. Not so much of an advice, but rather a plea from me to you
I really hope business students can be more code literate and savvy i.e. being able to read (and to a lesser extent implement) coding e.g. python or SQL. ~90% of the biz population are code illiterate (having only taken just 1 "coding module"). In a normal corporate workplace, you'll never have to code. But being able to think computationally, knowing the steps you can take to automate your task, time and workflow brings you more benefits than you can imagine when most corporate work that people do and typically repetitive and administrative.
In conclusion, do your best in biz school. I think effort correlates strongly to how well you do here. You don't need to be smart (it makes life easier) but with enough forward thinking and future planning, you'll be able to grow through the next 4 years (and hopefully be worth it).
Feel free to ask any question in the comments, or for any seniors to elaborate and share their own experience! Left out a lot of controversial views not wanting to trigger anyone or NUS. Edit: I'm a graduating student from Biz, later they dont let me grad
Some extra links:

1. An event calendar regularly updated by NUS Careers, usually has lots of interesting and relevant events, competitions, webinars (if that's your thing): https://nus.edu.sg/cfg/events
2. Grading rubrics to apply for SEP, there is an actual rubrics to secure an SEP, please refer for those wanting to go: https://bba.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/sites/37/2019/07/SEP-Place-Allocation-Grading-System-2018-10.pdf

Aeon is very close to declaring itself RC2 (Release Candidate 2), the last stage expected before being considered Released and ready for everyone.
Aeon now has totally new installation images, using a totally new installer ‘tik’. These images are built and released using the openSUSE Factory process like Tumbleweed and MicroOS
Before declaring these images as RC2 I’d like to be more confident there are no stupidly scary bugs, so I’d like to invite brave folks to test the RC2 Candidate and file bugs in the next few days
The RC2 Candidate can be downloaded from
http://download.opensuse.org/tumbleweed/appliances/openSUSE-Aeon-Installer.x86_64.raw.xz
Aeon requires UEFI hardware or an UEFI VM with at least 40GB disk space. Any VM will need to be configured with at least two disk images, one containing the installer and one for the installation to write to.
Users who install this to their laptops will not need to reinstall once Aeon reaches RC2 and Release.. though the new installer also makes it very smooth to reinstall.
The installer is designed be imaged to a USB Stick. It’s important to use an imager that doesn’t alter the image. Impression and dd are good, Ventoy and Fedora Media Writer seem not.
Please file any bugs found to https://aeondesktop.org/reportbug
For discussions, it is best to join the official Aeon telegram or matrix groups, links on https://aeondesktop.org
Comments here are welcome, but will be handled with less priority than proper bug reports.
The most important things that need testing are the following 11 features which are not available by default in any other openSUSE distro (including Kalpa)

• the new installer, with integrated support for ignition/combustion
• automatic backup/restore of existing home directories/accounts. Requires a USB stick larger than /home and /home being a btrfs subvolume. Non-Aeon users using this to migrate to Aeon will need to manually run ‘aeon-firstboot’ after logging in for the first time
• zram by default
• no root account, sudo and polkit use your user password
• silent boot powered by systemd-boot
• x86-64-v3 libraries automatically installed
• SELinux optimised for gaming, no manual Booleans required
• sshd/Remote Desktop managed by GNOME
• systemd-repart
• btrfs zstd compression by default
• automatic updates for user distroboxes

Any bugs reported on these topics will be given extra priority as they’re Aeons unique features
Thanks in advance for anyone who helps out!

We met in December through social media from the same area. I was in a place at that time after having 2 2 year relationships that ended when I was 21, I was ready to be open if something came along. I was single for 8 years. Initially I wasn’t 100% bought in on her. The lifestyle she portrayed on social media gave off the vibe she was like a fancy influencer which I’m not a fan of. Had a bit of a social media presence. I had one myself for a few years but pulled back because I realized it wasn’t for me knowing the mental health effects of it. I expressed that I don’t care for social media anymore and want a low key life. She seemed cool though so I pursued it. Off the bat our convos were deep. She was reading our comparability. And then I took her out. First date she was already saying she was admiring me and obsessed with me. Found out later she texted a friend on the side and said she was going to marry me. She traveled for this social media stuff almost every weekend. She also had her real job. I still didn’t see this going anywhere due to her circumstances but I was interested after the date however I wasn’t 100% bought in. Thinking back now, I think maybe my gut was telling me not to pursue.
I was supposed to run a marathon in another state and she said she wanted to fly down (second time meeting) and spend the weekend with me. She did and that’s when it started. I learned all her trauma. Everything moved so quickly that weekend. No relationship with family, father was a drug addict and left, mother was BPD and bipolar and so was the sister. Kicked her out at a young age was couch surfing for years. Never had a stable home. Didn’t seem to have any long term friends. Told me she had went to therapy and was all good but also told me she has fear of abandonment and ptsd. I thought she was squared away though and gave the benefit of the doubt. We already discussing futures together and the lovebombing started. Saying things to me no one’s ever said or noticed. Long story short she traveled almost every weekend for the next month and a half and i really wasn’t a fan of it. Aside from not liking the influencer stuff, it was just not the type of relationship I was looking for. Never being able to plan. Only spending a couple hours during the week because we worked opposite schedules. This went on for the first 2 months. She was supposed to travel the first 3 weeks in March but wound up telling me she’s having an identity crisis. Wants to stop traveling wants to stop on social media. It’s bad for her mental health she used it as a distraction bc she had nothing else and now being with me she has a different perspective on life and has a reason to be home. She also said she used it for validation for herself bc her family never gave it to her and people only praised her for her success and i was the first person to love her for who she is. I thought that was awesome and wanted the best for her because she told me how bad it was affecting her. She canceled all her upcoming trips and was bought in on living present, pulling back from being on her phone because she was addicted to it and just enjoying life. Would constantly express to me how much healthier she is, eating more, sleeping better etc. told everyone she knew the same thing. She’d express how she used to “self sabotage” with all this work. I would always say don’t do anything unless you truly want to and she’d emphasize how she felt this way before me, I just gave her a different perspective on life and she doesn’t want to bury herself in work anymore because she doesn’t have a reason to distract herself.
This is when the clingy stuff started. She wanted to be with me every second of every day which for some reason i didn’t see as bad at first. She started getting separation anxiety when I’d go to work and constantly fear that i was going to just abandon her. She’d take things and small jokes so seriously and somehow link it to me subliminally meaning i was going to leave her. If i wasn’t all over her in the morning she took it personal. We’d wind up in arguments of me explaining what i meant and it would either end with her insisting i take her emotions into account or she’d apologize but blame it on her past and fear of abandonment. I found myself completely losing myself constantly going above and beyond to show her how much i loved her and wasn’t going to leave her. Taking off of work spending time with her buying her things and also just constantly telling her and showing her love. It was never enough because when she had these spirals it was all forgotten about. Got to the point i was living with her basically and couldn’t go home and see my family without her coming.
Dealing with this for about 2 months fast forward to 3 weeks ago. A girl she met through social media deaded her out of nowhere and told her something she said she didn’t like. She remembered last time she spoke to her she was saying how she was pulling back from social media because it was bad for her mental health and how happy she is actually having a life outside of work and thinks this girl took that personal because social media is her life. She was upset but didn’t seem to distraught. I gave logical reasoning like If she can drop you like this clearly she’s not someone important. I kept reassuring her she doesn’t need someone like that. If she was a real friend she’d be happy for you. I made jokes about it that made her laugh. What i didn’t know until one night she was crying was that it triggered the abandonment issues and she was down another spiral and associating it with me leaving. Once i saw it was a big trigger i tried to really console her. Show her love and affection and be there for her. Everything seemed fine until a couple of days later. We woke up, i was tired maybe a little quiet (i really don’t know I’m blaming myself) and we were talking like normal. She kept asking me what’s wrong and i kept saying nothing nothing. I wound up leaving for work and i texted her. She was being very short with me until she just didn’t answer. Me thinking ok she’s busy at work no big deal. Normally she would check in during the day at work. She didn’t. I was still like okay no problem until i saw she was checking social media. So after the entire day passes without hearing from her i finally reach out and was like what’s the issue. She claimed she was busy but i said ok you were checking social media and im sure if you were to screen shot your texts you were texting other people and i was the only one ignored bc she was always on her phone(not actually saying send me your texts, I’ve never done that). She said that rubbed her the wrong way and we need to have a conversation. We hopped on the phone and BOOM everything came out. She needed me and i wasn’t there for her to comfort her i made jokes about it and didn’t take it seriously (i was there for her but didn’t realize the extent of why it was bothering her until she told me and i did everything i could to make her happy) then she started bringing up how she lost herself since she’s been with me. She can’t post on social media freely anymore because she feels like im going to judge her even though it was her who made the decision to pull back and praised how much of great decision it was(not to mention she never stopped posting 3 times a day regardless of everything she said) I went to her place and all my stuff was out and ready to go. We spoke again and the same things came up. I don’t like social media and was pulling back myself so that means i don’t support her and how i wasn’t there for her emotionally. It was literally just a big mind f. Brought up like 2 or 3 other completely random things as well as excuses as to why she was leaving again contradicting things she’s said or done. Anytime i would bring up but what about this and when i did this or said this or how you said this it was like deflected and didn’t matter. What matters is what she is perceiving and that’s it. Like I’m this horrible person who did nothing for her.
At first I blamed myself since this happened because I really don’t know what more i could’ve done. I reached out to someone who I’m friends with who knew her growing up and they told me that it seems like a reoccurring thing with her past friend ships and relationships that they all just ended randomly. It really messed with my head and I didn’t know how to deal with it. She isn’t diagnosed with anything as far as i know but it’s been brought to my attention about the BPD stuff and reading this forum a lot of the things are very familiar.
I know I’m not perfect but after years of not wanting to commit to anyone or open up i finally did and i really meant how i felt for her and it hurt me so much that i could just be discarded like that. But I’ve learned what it is and am accepting it for what it is. I’m not a codependent person normally, never have been. But somehow fell into this savior role. I truly just cared for her and thought that maybe she had a bad upbringing but we can make the next chapters happy. I truly had good intentions. Been NC for almost 3 weeks now. Would never reach out i really don’t care how much it hurt. I have a great support system and a lot to look forward to. There’s good days and bad days but the bad days are getting less and less. I think back and I recall how uneasy I felt the whole time. I thought maybe it was me. But I truly think I just always suspected something wasn’t right.
Just wanted to tell my story and see if anyone had any advice or could relate in anyway.

Hello and welcome to Day 19 of the May Recovery Challenge, how are you?
Wishing you peace and success for today :)
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Today's check in:

Are there any obstacles in the way of success this week?
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Bonus exercise: Getting ready for a risk food practice on Wednesday!

This coming Wednesday's bonus exercise can be a risk food practice, if people want to do one then we can practice eating a risk food without binging on it! If you don't feel ready to start that process that is 100% ok, all bonus exercises are completely optional. This is the method I learned in treatment, it is an exercise for people who are interested in reintegrating foods into their life in a controlled and supported context, to the extent that we can accomplish that here!
If you're new to risk food practices and would like to take part, here's the exercise for today:

1. Make a list of foods that you have been avoiding and/or have binged on, or would consider it challenging to eat without binging. If you're drawing a blank, just think of the last few times you binged and write down those foods. (this should be a private list to avoid triggering other people in the challenge)
2. Beside each food item on the list, rate it on a risk scale from 1-100, with 1 being "I feel somewhat confident I could eat this without binging" and 100 being "I feel like if I have a single bite I won't be able to stop a binge" / highest risk.
3. From those ratings, rank the foods in your list from top to bottom, with #1 being the most risky and the last one being the least risky. This step is important because you want to start with the lowest risk food for your first risk food practice. We will start with something "easier" and build on success rather than jumping right into the hardest one.
4. Write "DONE' in your check in so that I know who will be participating on Wednesday. If no one signs up today, that's ok I just won't do the exercise on Wednesday! :)

It is also really important to think about how you'd like to create some safety for yourself on Wednesday when you eat your risk food. I will post this again on Wednesday but here are some options:

• arrange to eat it outside of your home like at a cafe or whatever context you wouldn't normally binge in
• only have one serving on hand if you're eating at home - very important! this is about practicing eating a risk food in a normal quantity, not a test of whether you can handle leftovers of that food!
• if you have a binge ritual e.g. you always binge on the couch, make sure you eat it in a different location such as at the table or in a different chair
• check in here right before and right after you eat, I will commit to being available for real-time peer support in the check ins between the hours of 6-8 pm EST that day for anyone who needs support
• have a safety plan for what you will do with the rest of the day/evening and the next day after you eat the food

On Wednesday you will be asked to rate how risky it feels after you've eaten the food. The next two times we do a risk food challenge it will be about eating that exact same food again and rating it again. After two or three times of eating the food in a normal amount with a safety plan in place, it should start to feel less scary / more "normal", and when it does it's time to move to something that is a higher level of difficulty.
I know it probably sounds like it will take forever to get through your list, and it might lol! My personal experience though is that it didn't take that long, in treatment I did a risk food challenge once a week and once I got used to the process of facing my risk foods and creating safety around eating them I was able to advance quickly. When I've had slips and relapses I've had to put boundaries back in place but it doesn't take me long to get back on track.
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WHAT IF I HAVE A SLIP DURING THE CHALLENGE?
if you have a slip and want to turn it into a recovery learning opportunity, here are some questions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZhdjmzEVA6UTCNAEU53xn9LuN8TOfLbl/edit
(you don't have to post your answers if you don't want to, but I do recommend writing or typing them out somewhere)
HOW CAN I GET A REMINDER TO CHECK IN TOMORROW?
Copy/paste the following text into your comment to get a reminder from Reddit:
RemindMe!

It feels like american conservatives generally trust businessmen and corporations more than the government. From my perspective its totally backwards, the corporation is undemocratic. Its only concern is to get profit while the government interests is to ensure it gets voted in next time which generally means it should care about its voters at least to an extent.
The corporations are needed to have a successful economy. But the government is the only institution powerful enough to keep the corporations in check so they dont violate its worker rights.

🪞
Welcome back to the Asylum write-up, where we explore the decade-long slow-motion car crash that is the Emilie Autumn fandom.
Sorry this installment took so long to upload! Just a heads-up, I may take some time to deliver the last one too – these posts take forever to format on Reddit's finicky-ass editor, and my dumb real life is currently keeping me from precious Internet time. Thank you for your patience! You have my word that everyone who pre-ordered the final installment will receive a PERSONAL, HANDWRITTEN letter autographed and illustrated by me, a list of the snacks I consumed while composing this write-up, some exclusive behind-the-scenes secrets, and a pony.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4.1 – Part 4.2 Part 5

Places, everyone This is a test Throw your stones Do your damage Your worst, and your best (...) And if I had a dollar For every time I repented the sin And commit the same crime I'd be sitting on top of the world today (“God Help Me”, 2006🎵)

Quick recap of where we left off. First, there were five to ten halcyon years of pleasant and meaningful interactions between EA and her blossoming fanbase, prominently by way of her official forum. Then, circa 2009-2010, EA's online presence shifted towards sudden anger outbursts, ban-hammering, and an increasingly top-down communication style.
This created a sort of primordial rift within the fanbase, between those who supported EA's right to speak her mind and regulate her own fan spaces however she pleased – and those who thought that her reactions were rude and inappropriate (at best), and that even fan spaces should allow for reasonable, non-abusive criticism of the artist.
Between a poorly-handled book release (see Part 3), the controversial (Part 2) or dubiously true (Part 4) contents of said book, and serious shade from various former collaborators (Part 5), more and more fans had pressing thoughts about EA's work ethic and choices. EA attempted damage control through drastic forum rules that made it virtually impossible to voice any “serious” critical opinion. It didn't work, of course: instead of squashing the mutiny, she created a schism.
Critical fans and active haters started congregating on unofficial platforms.

“WITH MUFFINS LIKE THIS, WHO NEEDS ENEMIES?”: TROLL LIKE A GIRL

So here we were, the early 2010s. The official forum (which had about 700 members in 2006, if you recall) was now thousands-strong, reaching just over 12,000 registered users in 2012 – not all of them active, but still. In terms of sheer numbers and content creation, the party was POPPIN'... but increasingly in parts of the Asylum that escaped EA's jurisdiction, such as Tumblr, where they could speak their mind freely.

You play the victim very well You've built your self-indulgent hell You wanted someone to understand you Well, be careful what you wish for, because I do (“I Know Where You Sleep”, 2006🎵)

In one wing of Asylum Tumblr, a smattering of call-out blogs emerged, which laid out EA's various lies, faux pas, shitty takes, and general deep-seated terribleness in detailed timelines and screenshots (or, short of that, long-winded bullet points). While many such blogs framed it as “serious” whistleblowing and did their best to remain as fact-based and neutral as they could, there was some genuine disgust, animosity and creepiness towards EA on that side of Tumblr; for some ex-fans, “exposing the truth” was mostly justify obsessive hatred, prying and verbal abuse. Some, for instance, felt the bizarre need to side with EA's mother in their estrangement. (One user, with the URL “emilyautumnfischkopf”, argued in a serious and down-to-earth tone - but with zero sources - that EA's upbringing had been nothing but peaceful and supportive until she ungratefully kicked her loving family to the curb for no reason at all. They were later revealed 🔍 to have an alternate handle as “eaisalyingcunt”.)
Either way, through these blogs, a number of potential drama bombs that had mostly flown under the radar were dredged up from over the years – some of which were hard to ignore, even for supportive fans. Where to begin?
There was that nonsense in-joke song, captured twice on camera during the 2009 tour (to very little outrage, at the time), crassly called “Manatee Retard”📺. Or EA's scathing response, in print, to a wheelchair user who found it insensitive that she used a bedazzled wheelchair as a prop to do sexy acrobatics on stage. (“Your offence taken at my hard-won self-acceptance proves that I indeed have something to fight against”, she wrote). Spoken word tracks where she made trivializing knock-knock jokes about serious mental illnesses she didn't have, like schizophrenia and OCD. Multiple instances of calling Britney Spears a “bimbo” and a “Hollywood fucked-up”, resentfully claiming that she only shaved her head because she was “hopped up on drugs” and certainly not because she was “bipolar”, a word the press liked to wield as an insult anyway. (“That's almost like calling someone a retard!” Yeah, heaven forbid.) The meanest, most distasteful paragraphs in the book. Basically everything problematic EA had ever said or written.📝 In retrospect, it had been a long time coming, but it was a lot to take in – and certainly more off-putting, even to less emotionally invested fans, than silly lies about her age and last name.
In another wing of Asylum Tumblr, some fans had had it up to here and just wanted to have fun. 🎵 If Plague Rats had learned one valuable lesson from EA, it was how to crack a joke in the face of absurd tragedy – and the general state of the EA fandom certainly warranted a few.
In 2012, Fight Like a Girl was released. After six long years, three of which had been peaceful, the Opheliac era was officially over. The new album and ensuing tour confirmed that the Asylum had entered a process of glamorous Broadway-style militarization. 🎵📺
The mood board was “Roman general meets Vegas showgirl meets Victorian street urchin”.🪞 The color palette was, to naysayers, “musty pink and rotten, stale piss yellow”. 🐀 The keyword was “REVENGE” (through the power of... self-expression! sorority! brutal assault with rusty medical implements!). The chorus of the title song had an intriguing run-on line about getting “revenge on the world, or at least 49% of the people in it” 🎵 – which seemed like an awful lot, and was widely interpreted (to cheers, boos, or uncomfortable sighs) as a misandrist jab at literally all men on Earth.
The show was essentially a demo version of the musical, in that the setlist vaguely reflected the order of events in the story – but prior reading was essential in order to get what the hell was going on on stage. This one Broadway reviewer had not perused the literature before seeing the show 🔍, and hated: the set, the choreography, the skits, the plot, the lyrics, the music, the concept. (Seriously, you should read the review. It's not even my show and I feel like quitting show business.)
Pre-show VIP encounters, now violin-free, were lorded over by EA's new manager🐀, whose official title was “Asylum Headmistress”. (Interesting choice – she sounds fun!) The swag bags were less substantial than before, and the “greet” part of the meet-and-greet was rarely more than a quick hug and photo op.
On Twitter, EA continued to embrace her “I am very badass” fronting attitude...

Often wonder if cyberbullies r aware they’re fucking w/ a girl who’s BFs w/ maker of the SAW films & is marrying a knife-throwing scorpion. (🐀📝)

...and her taste for needlessly inflammatory statements. About an aisle sign in a supermarket:

If this does not infuriate you, then you're a fucking potato.

(Again with the confounding crypto-ableism, EA! 🔍) She also went through a phase of raging against Lady Gaga 📝, who had stolen her idea of using a wheelchair on stage as an able-bodied woman. 🔍 That failed to convince anyone that she wasn't the histrionic diva that haters made her out to be.
Spurred on by EA's rallying cries and “us vs them” mentality, loyalists turned the white-knighting up to 11. On Twitter, some Plague Rats got into cat fights with Lady Gaga's Little Monsters (what a time to be alive). Others tried to balance out the Tumblr negativity with initiatives like “Spreading a Plague of Love” – a “positive-only” confession blog, whose extreme fangirling, comically drastic rules and hyper-defensive tone📝 did not debunk the increasingly popular notion that “true Plague Rats” were a bunch of authoritarian and hopelessly brainwashed fanatics.
EA truthers and other anti-fans started lashing out at anyone who dared express any positive opinion of EA, solidifying claims that the backlash against EA was just a conspiracy of bitter, hysterical bullies.
All this to say: every passing day brought new reasons for fans to get mad at EA and each other, and everyone in the Asylum was in need of a laugh. It's not easy having a good time.🦠
Leading up to Fight Like a Girl and in the years that followed, user-submission-based meme blogs took off, most notably “Spreading a Plague of Lulz / Troll Like a Girl”. A lot of the early submissions were absurdist humor and toothless, cheezburger-Impact memes (a style that was, oddly, already dated at the time). Those often originated in good fun, and from loyal fans, on the official forum. But there was also true snark, satirizing EA's questionable ethics, outrageous claims, and easily spoofed artistic gimmicks. A new slang of Asylumspeak emerged: Glittertits (slight NSFW), GAGA!!, EA Gusta and all its memeface variants, Get outta mah house!, Are You Suffering?, Fight Like A Goat, [Random celebrity] copied EA (a subgenre in its own right), ...
Most of the “trolling” was directed at unrepentant bootlickers and, to a lesser extent, red-in-the-face haters and creeps. Meme blogs would post joke comments under “serious” or gushing submissions on Wayward Victorian Confessions, and taunt loyalist accounts by tagging them in their posts. When a few people complained on WVC that almost all of the Bloody Crumpets to date had been thin white able-bodied women, and a few fans responded by sharing their dream-casts for a more diverse line-up, the blog was flooded for days with confessions that “X should be a Crumpet” (candidates included RuPaul, Mitt Romney, Nicki Minaj, EA's therapist, and the WVC admins). Farcical shenanigans like that.
Ah, but some people will always cross the line, won't they. EA threads popped up on merciless, bully-friendly snark platforms like Lolcow, Pretty Ugly Little Liar, and Encyclopedia Dramatica. Snarkers with a mean streak and obsessive haters mingled in some of the more aggressive, 4-chan-spirited retaliation against EA – which would be called “brigading” in modern parlance. This included flooding EA's Goodreads page with one-star reviews (see part 4), repeatedly editing her Wikipedia page to include her legal name and birth year, and ensuring that Googling said name would bring up current pictures of her.
All of this compounded agitation fragmented the once-united fandom beyond recognition.🦠 Through substantial disagreements among fans, personal bickerings, layers upon layers of inscrutable in-jokes, and cross-platform telephone games, the Asylum morphed into a booby-trapped Escher room.
Satire blogs were taken in earnest. Earnest fan blogs scanned as satire. Memes would get called out as abuse. Appreciation without attached criticism would get mocked as bootlicking. Obvious jokes made by EA would be taken at face value. One divisive confession could trigger days and days of debate, to the point that WVC eventually banned confessions in response to other confessions. New waves of infighting created a confusing web of rival sub-factions🐀, each accusing the others of being toxic, cliquish, and delusional.
The shared fantasy was broken, the collective vision had crumbled, no onez was speaking the same language anymore. Fans would jump down the throat of other fans who held almost identical views about EA, except for that one thing she said or did that one time. Everyone had differing thoughts on what should or shouldn't acceptable to discuss, question, excuse, make fun of.
War is hell.

SCORCHED EARTH SHENANIGANS: HONEY, I SHRUNK THE ASYLUM

Would you tear my castle down Stone by stone And let the wind run through my windows Till there was nothing left But a battered rose? (“Castle Down”, 2003🎵)

Haters vs sycophants is not really the kind of conflict where one side can come out on top (if you're participating, you've already lost). But in the long tug-of-war between “grassroots” and “EA-sponsored” fan spaces, the ultimate winner is obvious – in that the former is gasping in agony, a shriveled husk of its former glory, while the latter... is non-existent. This is due in no small part to EA's tendency, like the Czars of old, to settle conflicts by setting Moscow on fire.🔍)
That's not entirely fair: unlike EA, the czar only did it that once.
By early 2013, as EA was gearing up for her third Fight Like a Girl tour at the end of the year, the official forum was... not as lively as it once had been. Not just because of the stifling rules and disgruntlement towards EA, or because EA herself hadn't really posted anything on there in years; the Internet was also changing, and forums in general were fast becoming passé.
This made it difficult for EA to create a safe space where she could talk to fans, and fans could talk to and about her, in a way she deemed suitable (ie, a space she could gate-keep and regulate enough to keep it completely free from negative criticism). Social media was a minefield; she still posted regularly, but didn't interact very much. So EA and the Headmistress came up with a way to filter out the unbelievers: an official fan club📝, aptly called the “Asylum Army”, with a $100 entry price.
Joining the AA came with a dog tag, a sew-on patch, and a lifetime membership certificate signed by EA and – for some reason – the Headmistress. (Unlike EA's best friend and sound engineer back in the forum's heyday, I don't think fans ever really embraced the FLAG-era manager as part of the Asylum in-group. She came across more as a coordinator / businessperson / adult chaperone, at best.🐀) So, slightly better goodies than you'd get by joining the other AA 🔍 ... but not by much. The main appeal was that members would have access to exclusive content, special merch, giveaways, early bird tickets for future shows, and regular video chats with EA.
The concept itself drew a fair amount of criticism, as you can imagine. Between the name🐀, the price, and the inherent gatekeeping of a pay-to-join fanclub, many balked at the monetizing of a concept that had once (like, three years back) been significantly more DIY, grassroots, and inclusive. 📝🐀
Then again, many also longed for a positive, drama-free space where fans could just be fans. And while the creation of the AA was generally recognized as a quick cashgrab, a lot of people were surprisingly cool with it. EA was trying to finance her dream musical, after all – although a number of fans wished she had gone about raising funds in a less sketchy way.
So around 400 fans shelled out (which, according to the Headmistress📝, “basically cover[ed] the cost of running the fanclub itself – keeping the database up, website, etc.”). Enough for a close-knit, but sizable community. But already, there was a conflict of interest: a high fanclub entry fee essentially demands that you pledge loyalty to the artist over loyalty to your fellow fans, who wish to join but can't afford to. Sharing, caring, and ensuring no one felt left out were some of the more positive values cultivated in the fandom... but leaking exclusive content would surely piss off other paying members🐀, and make EA feel betrayed all over again. (And she had barely just started to mellow out on social media!)
...But then again, this is the internet. After the first month of secret AA drops (lyric sheets, some photoshoot outtakes – nothing too juicy, really), there were, yes, some leaks. EA was predictably miffed, and retaliated by... ghosting the fanclub for weeks at a time in its first few months of existence (great look!). She eventually found the “solution” to her problem, by providing something you couldn't right-click-save (and which had been part of the promised perks to begin with): live interaction.
Over webcam, she was her usual in-person bubbly, charming, funny self. Everyone seemingly had a good time during the fanclub video chat, and this gave people faith and hope.
There were a few more events, giveaways, etc. As promised, ahead of the fall 2013 tour (the last one to date, it would turn out), AA members got priority access to show tickets and VIP bundles. The latter were much pricier than before, and only included soundcheck, a photo-op, and three goodies: a tin of loose-leaf tea, a signed printer-paper setlist, and a small flag that said “F.L.A.G.”.🔍 Some stuff continued to leak – but, as some of the outlaws pointed out (scroll down to the Disqus comments), they were mostly relaying information that was relevant to the entire fanbase, such as updates about ongoing projects (the dragged-out recording of the audiobook, for one).
In early 2014, lifetime memberships were closed, and replaced with monthly, quarterly and yearly subscription tiers. Bizarrely, you ended up paying $3 more per month if you bought a $99 yearly subscription📝 – but it did include the patch, dog tag, and piece of paper!

Sometimes I kind of want to be part of the cool kids and register to the Asylum Army. Then I remember how it came about, what you could get for the same price a couple years ago, how the whole thing was and is handled, and that I won’t support any of this bullshit. (And then I roll around naked in all the money I’m saving.) (🐀)

Still, a number of fans rejoiced at the affordable monthly option, and joined – if not for the exclusive content and merch (which were... okay, but not much to write home about), then for the friendly, drama-free exchanges with an artist they actually did love, in spite of all the frustration.
For the still-too-poor or still-undecided, there was always the forum! It wasn't as active as it used to be, but a few die-hards still managed to keep the lights on... until, inevitably, Someone Did Something and Ruined Everything. (Once again: EA's wrath is spectacular, but rarely completely unprovoked.) The incident features one notable figure in the Asylum community. Let's call him the Collector.
OK, so maybe you remember the meme I linked to in Part 4, with Christian Grey and the ginormous EA hoard. Well, that's the Collector's collection. The “Violin” promo that I called the "Holy Grail of the fandom" in the same paragraph? Also his. The handwritten lyrics that went for $940? Guess who won that auction. Over the years, the Collector had probably spent five figures on EA merch and shows, and although that fact was a little unsettling, he was a very active, easy-going, and generally well-liked fixture of the fandom.
One day in 2012, shortly after the Headmistress had replaced EA's old Chicago BFF as main forum admin, the Collector's account got banned or restricted over something dumb. When the ban wasn't lifted as quickly as he hoped, he took it... the way one takes things when one is unhealthily invested: he started spamming Headmistress and the mod team with increasingly rambling and abusive emails (lost to time, probably for the best). When that didn't work quickly enough, he tried a different route.
One of the many auctions that the Collector had won, some years prior, was EA's old iPod Touch📝 – which contained all of her favorite tunes and, buried somewhere in the data cache... a phone number. Which the Collector tried calling. And wouldn't you know it: EA picked up. She congratulated him on his sleuthing skills, listened patiently as he made his case, apologized for any distress caused by the unfair account restriction, and then they got married.
Kidding! She freaked the fuck out, hung up, and banned him for life from the forum and all EA shows and events.
After his ban, the Collector allegedly still tried to attend at least one VIP pre-show (one source in the comments says he was allowed to buy some merch, refunded for his ticket, and escorted out). He joined the Reform forum to bitch about EA and try to rally people to his cause, possibly made revenge posts about her on darker snark forums, and continued to hound the Asylum mod team. So in June 2014, EA came up with a radical and unexpected fix to the Collector problem.

The official Asylum Fan Forum has been shut down permanently. I have personally paid thousands of dollars each year to keep the forum safe and secure for you ... Unfortunately, the forum has not been kept safe and secure for me, a truth which disappoints me greatly, instead becoming a place where people who have physically threatened myself and my staff prey upon forum members, pressuring them to contact me and my staff on their behalf. If the gullible wish to humor my stalkers (who live in their parent’s basement at age 30 something) and thus put me in danger, they may do it on their own dime. They may also fuck off, because stupidity can kill, and I won’t be your victim. To those who enjoyed the forum, you know who to thank for its closure. (“On the closing of the Asylum Forum”)

Voilà! This is how a decade-long archive of shared history ends: not with a bang, but with a dirty delete and a sod-off communiqué.
The obliteration of the forum took everyone by surprise...

I was actually on the forum when it was taken down. I was navigating between posts and when I went to click on a different board, an error message came up. I honestly cried a little, I'm not ashamed to say. (WVC admin on Reddit, 2024)

...and I do mean everyone:

Chicago BFF / ex-admin, the next morning: Whoa, EA forum shut down? Ex-mod: It turns out that if someone spends enough years actively “waging war” to destroy what they can’t have, eventually they’ll be successful. * eye roll * Not even mods got prior warning. Just all the sudden, poof, gone. BFF: Really? She did not let the moderators know?! This is sounding worse and worse. Uggh. I’m so sorry. Such a loss. (...) Ok, threats are serious, but why not just put it in archive mode so no one can post? (...) Sad. I shall light a candle in the forum's honor. (Facebook posts; scroll down for screenshots)

It was a gut punch, especially for people who had poured countless hours into the community, or could have used some prior warning to save years of their own writing from the role-playing threads. One last chance to take a look around the place that had meant so much to so many.

From the wording of the announcement of closing the forum and a number of other things, it sometimes seems like EA doesn't like her fans much. :/ (🐀)

Three months after the forum was nuked, Battered Rose (a venerable EA fansite, which had been around since the Enchant era and had one of the most complete EA galleries online) announced that it was shutting down too.📝 The admin, who had also been a long-time forum mod, cited a lack of “time, energy, passion, or money” to keep the website going... and being upset at the sudden disappearance of the forum. It was, truly, the end of an era for the Asylum.
...Well, no point in living in the past. For those who could afford it, and still wanted to talk to/about EA after that (not everyone did 🐀), there was always the Asylum Army fanclub!
Over the summer of 2014, EA held regular live chats and Q&A's, and... many attendees really enjoyed them, and thought the AA was well worth the money after all. She also quietly parted ways with the much poo-pooed Headmistress around that time.

Just spent over 4 hours giggling, drinking tea and playing guessing games in chat with EA and other Asylum Army members ... No griping, no downers, just lots of fun. I think I like the way the ‘new fandom’ is going and now I’m really glad I finally decided to join the Army. (September 4, 2014🐀; Battered Rose had closed the day before)

The forum was lost forever, but perhaps that was a chance for a fresh start. Could this fanclub thing really be the Asylum Renaissance that fans had been longing for?

...I have come today to a very difficult but necessary decision, and that is to discontinue the Emilie Autumn Official Fanclub. The site itself, and the community chatroom, will remain open to you indefinitely, but I will no longer be making updates to the site. (Newsletter, September 8, 2014📝)

...Never mind, then.
Turns out the fanclub had been the Headmistress' idea all along. EA had been reluctant from the start, and although she really enjoyed the live chats with a safe community of people “who are there for the right reasons”, she couldn't overcome her fundamental discomfort with the concept. Lifetime and regular members would receive a bunch of digital downloads and a -35% coupon on the Asylum Emporium for their troubles. EA said she would definitely pop back once in a while for live chats, for free, just for fun, but to my knowledge, she never did.
And so the most devoted fans were left standing in the rain...

She is happy, she made it. She is fulfilling her dreams, found love and happiness after all the pain. I understand that she now doesn’t need “us” anymore ... That doesn’t change the fact she broke my heart with taking the Asylum Army and the forum from me. Yet, I am happy for her. (🐀)

...while naysayers pointed and laughed, Nelson-style.🦠

I don’t feel sorry at all for the people that paid for the Asylum Army fan club. Most of them knew that EA is an atrocious business woman and has broken many promises before. In fact, I laugh at them. They seriously thought that EA would actually stay consistent with this? (🐀)

EVERYTHING MUST GO: THE ASYLUM WHOLESALE

EA fans were left without an “official” home for about three years. This gave them plenty of time to be annoyed at EA for: not releasing the audiobook on time, not materializing any new project for a while... and the new sin of peddling random, ridiculously marked-up AliBaba jewelry as “merch” on her official store. Think faux-antique cameo pendants and $30 Big Ben rings (...because the Asylum story is set in London, get it?).

The whole accessories section looks like a tacky overpriced English souvenir shop. (🐀)

The fanbase lost a lost of steam in those in-between years, because there wasn't much to stick around for. As evidenced by the positive reception of the AA live chats, even in the midst of unresolved drama, out-loud interactions in a friendly environment have always been EA's saving grace. Considering the amount of online hate, there are shockingly few accounts of bad IRL encounters with EA: most people say that in live conversation, she comes across as a fun, warm, and genuinely sweet person. Some report that their negative opinion shifted after meeting her.
But there were no chats or live shows anymore. There was only social media, where she ignored questions and vague-posted about overdue projects – and the newsletter📝, which was all saccharine love-bombing to promote bland dropshipped trinkets. For fans who remembered the handcrafted merch (and two-way communication) of the early years, it was a bitter pill to swallow.

CONTINUED IN COMMENTS

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25 yr old looking to invest 8-10 lakhs gradually over the next 2 years. Which mutual funds should I start with? I have the following in mind-
ICICI Prudential Bluechip- 6K Nippon India Growth Fund- 3K Quant ELSS Tax Saver Fund- 5K Parag Parikh Flexi Cap Fund- 4K
To give further details, I already have 10L+ in my bank account. My risk appetite is conservative atm because I’m just starting out and know too little to be aggressive. Once I start to get the hang of it maybe then I’ll be more comfortable with the risks. I have been trying to learn and get educated on market and investments but there’s too much noise and I 1) am stuck because of analysis paralysis, 2) do not yet understand the extent to which I need to learn about market and from where exactly. There is no structured material available online for free. I have gone through the basic course that varsity offers but I do not find that enough (obviously).
I am not the sole earning member of the family so do not have big responsibilities to fulfil. I’m looking to learn and grow financially. Once I start to understand the market well (maybe in the next 6 months to 1 year), I wish to invest and risk more.
I’m still a student, a research student of the social sciences. I will be starting my PhD this year. I guess I’m looking to preserve (and perhaps grow?) the little money that I have since I have to continue being a student for a considerable amount of time. I feel like I have done very little for myself financially as a 25 yr old. I do plan on working alongside my PhD but that would take some time ( a month or so atleast I suppose). Currently, main source of income is my fellowship which is around 56K a month and this will continue till 2026.
I hope I have given enough details to seek financial advice from the members of this sub. If not, apologies. I’m still an amateur in this area but do not plan on being one so any help is much appreciated.

TLDR: My boyfriend is amazing, but has depression which makes him constantly upset and irritated with me, making me extremely paranoid and on edge with everything I say because i’m scared he’ll get upset. He keeps saying he’d change, but goes back to how he was, but he is now seemingly making more of an effort to change by changing his medication and going to therapy. I still feel very paranoid and anxious with him even though he is doing better, but i’m worried that in the process of him getting fully better, he’ll go back to how he was, and I don’t know how much more of it I can take. He is an amazing man and I love him so much, but I’m worried I will always feel on edge when I’m with him. Any advice?
Hi! A little backstory, my boyfriend (19M) suffers from depression, and has always taken medication for it since he was younger. Right before we met, he had taken a gap year to focus on his mental health, and got to a point where he went off his medication because he didn’t like how it made him feel (zombie-like). We first met (we technically already knew each other but that’s besides the point)around 4-5 months before he would’ve started college again, and got together around 2 months into being friends. As school came around, he became really scared that he would have to take another gap semesteyear, because even though getting off his medication helped to an extent, he was still struggling with dealing with his mental health. At the same time, he was worried about getting on medication because he told me that he experiences and adjustment period for the first 6 weeks that causes him to become irritable and agitated very easily and have increased suicidal ideation, but even after the adjustment period, irritability would still be a side effect that he had to deal with and manage.
Eventually, when school started, his mental health did become worse, so he decided to get on medication again, and he did go through an adjustment period. It was a struggle- it was hard seeing him very sad and depressed all the time, and I always tried to help him as best as I could- offering to help him get ready in the morning/drive him to school if he couldn’t get out of bed, helping him with assignments, etc.
At the same time, he definitely became constantly agitated with me. If I didn’t hear him say something and asked him to repeat it (although this was also an issue before he started the medication, but i feel like it got more pronounced), he would basically get very clearly annoyed and quiet, barely talking to me or shutting me down with one word responses. If i didn’t text him for a couple of hours (i have adhd and will sometimes forget to text, which i know is reasonable to be upset about, but he would also do the same thing when playing games with friends), or talked just a bit too much (another adhd symptom, which again i understand can get annoying because i can sometimes go on for VERY long), or if i forget something (an item, memory, or something he told me before), or if we have a recurring joke but for some reason just didn’t like it that day, or if i called him on the phone unprompted (which he does to me too, so i didn’t know that was something i couldn’t do) or if i just say any normal thing but for some reason he just didn’t like it that day, i would be met with irritation, passive aggressiveness, and the silent treatment. I would’ve been slightly more okay with it if it was just a few minutes and then he was back to normal, but he would continue like this for HOURS. If we started talking in the evening, and i said something that slightly annoyed him, it was basically a guarantee that he would be essentially silent for the rest of the night. Not only that, but this happened almost every single day.
I’d like to note that he never expressed his irritation in an angry way, or yelled/said harmful things about me/did anything physical, he would just become very quiet, and anything he did say was very clearly in an irritated voice, as well as passive aggressive remarks.
Eventually, I talked about this with him. When i did, i basically completely forgot that his medication was a reason for a lot of what was happening, so when i talked to him about it, I didn’t mention medication at all. He told me that his medication caused a lot of his agitation and at first accused me of not believing that his medication caused side effects/not taking them seriously, but eventually apologized and said that it wasn’t an excuse and that he’d do better, but also said that sometimes i misinterpreted him as upset when he really wasn’t (which tbh i don’t believe, because sometimes if i pointed something out that he did, he’d say he wasn’t upset or annoyed at all, but a day or two later, tell me he was irritated with me).
He did do better for a bit, but after around a month it basically went to the same way it was before. This went on for a few months, I continued to have conversations with him, he continued to tell me he’d do better, and he would be a bit until he wasn’t. To be fair, after the 6 week adjustment period was over, he still was not doing well at all for about another month, and so he increased his medication dose, which made him have another adjustment period, and he did tell me that his biggest concern was how he’d treat me during that time, so I decided to keep being patient until he got his medication under control.
Fast forward a couple of months, and I was seeing improvements- until about 2 months ago. We saw each other a lot more often; before this time, we’d usually see each other 1-2 times a week and we’d have some sleepovers, but in those two months, i’d stay over at his house for 3-5 days a week. During this time, his irritation got way worse. He definitely valued his independence, but would continuously ask me to stay over, it wasn’t like I urged him to let me stay over. Here are some examples of things that happened:

1. before i came over, he told me how he didn’t want to think about making food because he was stressed over schoolwork. I asked him if I could make him something, he told me yes, so I made pizza while he showered. I’ve made pizza several times before, he made it once with me(also, i’ve cooked for years while he only started occasionally baking things when we got together since i liked to cook/bake), and when he came down, he saw the pizza dough was slightly stickier than it looked when he made it with me. He got annoyed and kept asking what I did wrong, and that from now on, i should only cook when he was with me to make sure I don’t mess it up, and then basically became extremely quiet for the next 15-30 minutes. I think he realized he sounded super weird saying this, and tried to turn it into a joke after those 30 minuted, but it made me feel really bad in the moment becsude I only wanted to do something nice for him. By the way, the pizza turned out great- my friend came over to eat with us and told us it was one of the best pizzas she’s ever had.
   
2. These next few are connected: The next day, he was at school, and I happened to not have school that day so I stayed at his house while he was there to rest because I had a really bad headache. Again, the past few days he told me how stressed he was about school, so I wanted to surprise him. I cleaned his room, made pizza sauce for pizza since we had extra dough (he really likes the pizza), and made him cookies because he told me he was craving them a few days before. He took an uber to school (he couldn’t drive yet at this point), and so I also offered to pick him up.
   

* The first thing that happened was he has a mildly confusing alarm system I had to disable before going outside to get to the car. If i didn’t do the steps correctly, the alarm would sound. Basically, I had to disable the alarm, go through the garage door and close it fully, press the button to open the garage, go back inside and press another button tot turn the alarm back on, and go out the garage door while it’s beeping and fully close the door again to stop the beeping. He told me these directions and I followed them, and the beeping continue to happen even after I closed the door. i texted him that I was walking out the garage but there was still beeping, he told me it was okay, but then the alarm went off. I think he thought that I didn’t close the garage door yet, which is why he thought it was okay? But apparently I didn’t wait for him to fully give him instructions (which I was genuinely confused about bc even looking back at the texts now he did), and he got extremely frustrated with me, telling me that because I didn’t properly follow directions, it was now going to call his parents. He kept saying that it was whatever, and that he’d just take an uber, but I apologized profusely and kept telling him that I’d do it right. He texted his mom, and apparently he told me to press the wrong button, and that i need to press a different one instead after going back in through the garage door. In the moment, he kept saying that the other button was still right and always works for him, but later he admitted that he was probably wrong about it. * The second thing that happened isn’t really a big deal, but i’ll still include it. My boyfriend also has anxiety, and is a very big backseat driver. However, backseat driving makes me extremely paranoid and be a worse driver, so it’s just a never ending cycle. I would be following the directions on the GPS, and he would keep telling me the directions as if I can’t see them myself. For example, if i’m about to turn right, he’d would keep repeating “turn right over here” a bunch of times, each one more with more urgency, as if it isn’t what I was already doing. He will pick apart everything I do, and tell me not to talk too much or turn the music up too loud because it would distract me. Again, to be fair, because of my ADHD, I do get distracted easily, even on the road, but it’s usually pretty manageable, and I’m able to talk on the phone/listen to music when driving when I’m by myself. The problem is with him, I get paranoid over what i’m doing, so I get distracted, and I guess that makes it seem like the music/talking is what’s distracting me. Again, when he backseat drives, he also gets extremely agitated/quiet, and he basically continued on like that for the next few hours. * Lastly, when we got home, he was irritated over everything I did. I did leave a bit later than I told him I would because of the things I was preparing (i think i left at 3:15 instead of 3), but I told him beforehand, and he told me to take my time and come anytime I wanted to since I was going out of my way to drive him(be told me this right when I offered to drive him and after I told him i’d be a bit late). When we got home, I told him about what i made and that I cleaned his room, but he got upset because I made the pizza sauce/cookies because he wanted us to do it together. I told him that I would’ve loved to make them together, but just wanted to surprise him because he told me he had a lot of work to do and told me he was craving cookies earlier. He said that he didn’t have as much work anymore, and told me that he thought I knew that because he told me the assignments he need to do (i did know that most of the deadlines were for that day and the day before, but he told me he had some deadlines for a few days after and had told me his whole week was busy, but I guess to him I should’ve know that most of his pressing work would’ve been done that day). He was upset with me again for another few hours, and I tried to tell him there were things we could still do together like assemble the pizza, make something the next day, etc, but he wasn’t having it. Eventually a few hours later he got over it and told me he appreciated that I made him those things, and he was disappointed that we couldn’t do it together, and then mentioned that he was grateful that I cleaned up for him (he didn’t mention it before). 

Several other things happened, but I think that’s enough to somewhat get the picture. The biggest thing that happened though was just a couple of weeks ago. We hadn’t seen each other in maybe 2-3 weeks, and so I was really excited to get to see him. He had an exam that day, so I offered to drive him, and he again said that he didn’t want to worry about making food. The day before he told me he was craving pizza, so yet again I said i’d make it before i came over (starting to think pizza and me driving is cursed). I asked him before if it was okay that I made him pizza, and he said yes, and so we agreed that I would get to his house around 2 (it was maybe 10 am at the time). I bought supplies and started making the pizza. after a while though, I guess he changed his mind about me making the pizza because it took a while. Around 1, I could tell he was getting annoyed. He kept saying that the pizza wasn’t important enough bc i could’ve been at his house already. I finished making the pizza and got to his house pretty early, maybe 5-10 minutes before 2. After that, I was still waiting in the car for another 30 minutes because he was still getting ready, and he got to my car around 2:30. He was still very upset and annoyed with me and gave me the silent treatment. I tried to keep the mood light, but again, he just didn’t say anything. When we were driving, I asked him if he wanted to play music, and what song I should play, but just… complete silence, not even a nod or head shake or anything. For the entire ride he was just on his phone, texting a few friends, and I started to silently cry because I felt so unappreciated. When we got to his campus, he went to a reserved room, but I had to stay in the car because i have a tutoring job that’s online, and had a session at the same time we parked. The person I was supposed to tutor wasn’t there for the session, which was lucky for me because right when my boyfriend left, I started sobbing. When I got out of the car I was still crying as I was walking across the street, and decided to call my friend to take my mind off of everything. Her girlfriend also went to the same college as my boyfriend, and I didn’t know exactly where I was supposed to go, so I called her to help me find where I needed to go. Since we were calling, I didn’t see some texts my boyfriend sent me, but I finally found the room. I was a bit cheered up from my friend but still sad, but wanted to act happy and normal in case he was just randomly in a bad mood and just needed a distraction. When I came in, I was happy to see him and made some jokes, but all he said was “why didn’t you text me” in the most monotone, upset voice. I told him that I was sorry and forgot, would do better next time, and was going to explain that I was on the phone so i didn’t see his texts, but he interrupted me and said something like “i don’t care about you telling me you’re going to do better, just actually do it” in the meanest, irritated tone. It doesn’t seem like a big deal at all, but he has never retorted at me like that before, especially in the way he did. That was my final straw, and I just completely broke down and started crying. He kept asking me to talk to him and tell me what I was thinking, which only made it worse because it was pretty clear as to why I was crying. He comforted me, apologized, and then had to leave for his exam. For the next 4 hours he was in his exam, I was just crying nonstop. When he came back, I was still crying, and he kept apologizing and asked if I was going to break up with him. I told him I wasn’t, and then told him that this happened so often and I felt like no matter what I did, there was something I was doing wrong, and that I felt unloveable. He again apologized a lot and told me he loved me, and later told me that he really wanted to change his medication and get therapy.
A few days later, a similar thing happened, but not to that extent. My boyfriend just got his license and offered to pick me up from one of my exams. I told him I wasn’t sure how long the exam would be, and didn’t want to let him know yet because it could’ve taken very long. I was right- it was supposed to be from 12-3, but I ended up starting later end ending around 6:30. I texted him after I finished, but he told me he wished I would’ve let him know earlier because he wasn’t comfortable driving in the dark yet, which is reasonable. He became very quiet and upset again though, and again, anytime I made conversation, he would shut it down and be really upset. I also told him that I had to move out of my dorm, and so he didn’t have to come if he didn’t want to because it would’ve been a lot of things to haul out. He said that it was okay and that he wanted to see me, and so he came over. When he did, he got upset again because we fooled around for an hour or two instead packing everything up (which he initiated), and then as we started pskcking, he became mean and frustrated again. He kept saying that he just didn’t expect to be moving me out, and that he just wanted to pick me up and go home, even though so told him before that that’s what was going to happen. After everything was packed up and we were in the car, he was still silent and upset but a bit less so. I felt really bad and became quiet, and he told me and i quote: “i’m feeling really anxious to drive this car at night, so can you just act normal”, which felt weird for him to say because I was only acting like that because of he as acting mean. I wanted to get home though because it was pretty late, so I just played some music and acted like my normal self, and that made me feel a bit better. When we got home, he apologized again, and thanked me for being patient with him, and that he’d be getting help soon.
After that, he did become a lot nicer to me. There were things I’ve said which I was sure he was going to get upset over, but he just didn’t at all. Usually, even after he’d apologize other times, he would still get a bit upset with me, but it’d only last a few minutes before he became normal again. This time, he wasn’t upset at all even for the things he’d most commonly get upset about (like me not hearing what he said for example). Hes been this way for around 2 weeks, and had not been getting upset at all, and he said he’s getting therapy soon.
The problem now is, especially because of the last two incidents, I still feel extremely anxious and paranoid when I’m with him. I am constantly on edge because I’m worried I’ll say the wrong thing when I’m with him, and it’ll be just like how it has been for the past almost one year.
Looking back at what i just wrote, these instances don’t really seem like that big of a deal, especially compared to how some other people are treated on this subreddit. I think what makes me upset is just how often it happens and how it completely messes up our entire day because he’s just upset the entire time. In the past 3-4 months, I don’t think we’ve ever had a call/hangout where he upset for at least 1-2 hours. I think another thing that really hurts me is that he just acts completely different around me vs anyone else. A lot of the times when I call him, he will get so upset and annoyed so quickly for menial things. He plays games for hours a day, so sometimes when we’re facetime and he wants to play with some friends, he’ll set his camera up so I can watch him play while i do other things, kind of like a youtube video. Whenever we’re on call and he’s upset, and then tells me he wants to play and sets his camera up, his mood instantly changes. His face literally brightens up, and he seems so much happier and talkative. I will sometimes hear his friends on the other end, and they will say/do the exact same things that he gets annoyed at me with, and it just is not a big deal at all, he doesn’t even seem to notice that it happened. Same with my friends- One day, we were planning a trip to the beach, and were supposed to leave around 12 PM. When he came home, he became upset and quiet with me again, and I kept asking him what was wrong and if we’re still going on our trip, but he just ignored me. Finally, at around 6 PM, he was normal again, and then took another hour and a half to get ready, so we ended up leaving at 7:30 PM. My friend was texting me at the same time, so I told my boyfriend to talk to her while I was driving. As we were driving (we were around 15 minutes away at this point), I realized I forgot my license. I asked him if I should turn around, he kept telling me he wasn’t sure, and he was just very upset and annoyed with me, even though judt before we left a whole 7 hours later because he was upset. We drove for an hour before he decided that I should drive back, and I kept apologizing for forgetting my license, and that we could try again tomorrow morning. His mom told us we could go to dinner or something to make up for the day, and I asked him if he wanted to do that, and he just said “why would we do that what would we even eat” in a harsh tone. Again, I tried to keep it light, telling him that I was sorry and we could start fresh tomorrow, and he said that he didn’t want to go to the beach anymore in an upset tone. Again, for half of the night after we came home, he was upset and irritated with me. Later that night, I looked back at. the texts between my friend and boyfriend, and I was in shock with just how different he was acting with me in real life vs how he was acting with her. As he was upset with me, he was texting her with updates, making jokes, and basically just making it seem like it wasn’t a big deal at all that I didn’t have my license. In real life, he acted like I was so stupid for forgetting it, and that it was the worst thing I could’ve possibly done.
I feel like most people who read this might just think he values his independence, and that aim too clingy. I too thought that maybe I just wasn’t giving him his space, especially because I’m his first girlfriend. I will not offer to call/come over as much just to see if I’m the one asking too often and he feels too bad to say no, but when I don’t, he will keep asking me to call him and come over, and ask why I haven’t been talking to him as much/initiates calls or hangouts. He’ll tell me to call more often and hang out with him more often as well. If we hang out, I’ll tell him that I’ll go home for the night and don’t plan on sleeping over, and he’ll keep asking me if I could sleep over or when I could sleep over, and continue to make plans.
Despite what I’ve said, my boyfriend is genuinely the most amazing guy anyone could ever meet. He’s sweet, kind, and thoughtful with genuinely everyone- his parents, my friends, his friends, his professors, everyone. He is an amazing tipper, he goes out of his way to do things for my friends, and anytime i mention the slightest thing he’ll go out of his way to do it for me. For example, in the first month we met, he noticed my backpack and headphones were completely broken, so he bought me a new ones without me saying absolutely anything to him. When I drove him places, he saw that it was difficult for me to look at my phone to follow GPS directions, so he randomly bought me a car phone holder. On my birthday, he made me a card out of the acknowledgement page of the first book we read together, crossed out the authors name, and put my name, and wrote a bunch of sweet, adorable things about me. Because of my adhd, I would constantly forget to chargemy phone/laptop or bring my chargers, and would constantly have no charge on both, so he bought me a pack with 10 of each type of charger, as well as a portable charger. I offhandedly mentioned that I get really carsick, so he bought me dramamine and those carsickness goggles. He bought pads to keep with him just in case I need some, and always carries pepto and advil around because i get headaches a lot and have lots of stomachaches. He helped me move into my dorm, and bought me so many food and supplies even when I insisted that he didn’t. Whenever we go out with my friends, he always covers everything. For my friend’s birthday, everyone was going to chip in to buy her airpods, but he told them he’d cover their part and essentially just bought them for her. He is an insanely hard worker, and I am so proud of him for everything that he’s been through, and he is also just the most fun person to be around. I love him so so much, and I know that a lot of the way he’s acted is because of his depression, and I know that that’s not really him. I visited him yesterday and we had a really good time, but the entire time I kept being really careful with what I said because I was scared of him becoming upset. I’m scared that this anxiety I feel around him will last forever. I want to wait until he has everything under control, but if he becomes the same way that he was before again, I don’t know how much of it I can take. I don’t know what to do or where to go from here- can anyone help me?

The church's earliest visitors on Sunday are a group of kind-hearted do-gooders. And Lucas is there too.
The group, including Lucas, is diligently doing last-minute preparations, carefully and skillfully tending to the food they expertly prepared yesterday. Every single person involved in the work does their part with impressive ease and earned confidence. Lucas's careful contributions, both his direct, visible work, and the boons conferred by his presence allow them to do their work with newfound ease, confidence, and remarkable luck. Lucas occasionally makes minor missteps, but those are due more to the drawbacks he is enduring than anything he actually does. And every time he makes a mistake it's so minor a few deft movements are enough for him to overcome them. All the while he is texting Hannah and is visibly excited to volunteer, even though his motives are still quite selfish.
Lucas wisely does not take a leadership role here. The diligent figure follows the lead of his more experienced peers, and his endless, untiring contributions are enough to allow the group to be ready in an hour, completing work that normally takes them two or three thanks to the various perks Lucas grants them, as well as his actual, material contributions. When the group is ready, Lucas suggests they all swap stories about what led them to volunteer here.
The five volunteers and the pastor encourage the newcomer to go first, and he deftly weaves a tale that incorporates bits and pieces of the backstory he constructed for himself at his job. He explains that he grew up as the only child of a family in a small town and that he has been volunteering in minor capacities his whole life. He tells his new friends the same fanciful lies he told his coworkers and is a bit shocked when he gets the "Storytelling" skill. After that, his companions share their own stories with him. The pastor goes first, explaining that when he took over the church not one charitable act was occurring here and in only a few short years the pastor has massively changed that. The others all share various stories about how they've needed food before, or known people who needed a meal, and so they wanted to make sure that if someone needed a meal they could get it. The stories stir Lucas's heart, and he feels a pang of sincere admiration for his new friends. That said the pragmatic figure is not someone who is so kind-hearted that he'd lose sight of his larger objectives here.
While his companions share their stories he activates "Rogue", but focuses the skill on his hands. This decision almost completely cloaks his hands, rendering them invisible just long enough for Lucas to pour healing magic into the soup. He pours all of his magical energy into the stuff, exhausting himself but that is a minor inconvenience given one of his handy toys and especially when he receives a notification alerting him that he has gained an "Overcharge" skill; the ability to empower something by putting more into it.
As soon as everyone finishes their stories there is just enough time for the group of volunteers to go and get ready for the first of the arrivals at the kitchen. When Lucas is out of view of everyone he reaches into his inventory and pulls out his nifty arcane potion and downs it. The instant that the golden liquid touches his lips his power begins to flow back into him, suffusing his very soul. Minutes later the lad is welcoming guests and visitors to the church. People excitedly greet him, stunned in two different ways by his appearance.
Firstly there is the fact that Lucas is stunning, aesthetically. No matter one's preferences, no one can honestly deny his wholesome movie star looks, and no one tries to. But here, in the soup kitchen, that's the less important part of his appeal. The more important aspect of his appearance is his newness. Many of the people who appear early are people who come to the church regularly, and they recognize everyone there but him. This gives the young volunteer a chance to make several new admirers, and he navigates these social interactions with aplomb. The figure, at this point, doesn't even rely on his perks, having grown accustomed to his new life and reality.
As the figure encourages the visitors to come and grab food he is extremely pleased when he feels time freeze the first time someone tastes the food he made. This is due to the fact that he is making progress towards his quest to become a "White Mage" the formal name given to the "Healer" class he received a quest to become earlier this week, The quest asks him to heal 100 people, and this marks one of the first times he has made progress towards it. The figure smiles internally as he deactivates the notification that froze time and continues the important work he's been assigned; welcoming guests and working to log in the information they're willing to give about themselves. To achieve this task the eager go-getter has a clipboard and is stationed near the entrance to the part of the church that houses the kitchen where the chefs made the food. Every time someone new eats the food he spelled to be restorative the figure has to deal with paused time, but only the first time someone lifts some of the ensorcelled food to their lips, and each time his excitement at the prospect of obtaining a new class grows more intense.
For the first hour only long-term, regular members of the church's congregation, and their hungry friends, come to the kitchen. The pastor is one of the figures serving them food, while Lucas continues the important work he was asked to do. During this time 22 people make their way through the kitchen, greeting Lucas with excited smiles and happily volunteering the same information they've volunteered before to other individuals tasked with doing Lucas's current work. The young jumper listens to distant conversations even as he writes down the information of various individuals. He smiles internally whenever he overhears someone saying that the food tastes different somehow, better than it has before. Such individuals also sometimes notice how immediately the pain they're in lessens, their old aches and pains fading and in some cases disappearing altogether. They don't know about the magic that is repairing their bodies, the sacred energies that course into them with every faint bite or spoonful of food they eat. Also during this time the chef gains more experience
Lucas doesn't consciously know this but his decision to pour all of his magic into the food has supercharged it. If not for his decision to infuse the food with healing magic again time, coupled with the diffuse nature of the soup would have weakened the healing properties of the magic, but Lucas's choice to suffuse the food with as much magic as he could in short order before the hungry congregants and community members began to arrive has sanctified the food and empowered it's naturally restorative and fortifying properties almost making it something like a potion of sorts.
More people begin to arrive during the second hour of the meal serving period. Some of these people are brand new, and of them a handful gawk at Lucas. These individuals, include homeless youth. teen parents, and college students can't resist the urge to take in the cool glass of water on a hot day that is the charming volunteer. His ability to feign kindness and his almost but not quite eerie sense of their emotional states is enough to allow them to develop crushes, platonic or otherwise, on the figure. And in the space of the hour 40 such individuals come through and eat more of Lucas's cooking, enough to allow him to level up his chef class one more time. He eagerly takes a new class ability, one that allows him to grant food he cooks very minor buffs, though he finds that it's not retroactive.
During this time the pastor gives a very brief address to the crowd of gathered individuals, and introduces Lucas to everyone though Lucas has already been social enough and diligent enough to do that himself. Lucas eagerly thanks everyone for joining them today, and during this time he experiences a very subtle glitch where he says a word but no one notices it. The young adventurer simply ignores the glitch, but not before noting that it's the first one he's experienced in a public situation.
During the last forty five minutes of the meal more people come through, and this group is the oddest and the largest. These folks are the irregulars; people who occasionally need the meals the kitchen provides but who don't love prospect of coming to the kitchen. This group numbers a total 45 of individuals, and by the time they eat the effects of the food are less miraculous, but still solidly strong. At the same time when the next to last person to eat grabs a spoonful of soup and lifts it to her lips she is unknowingly responsible for time freezing and Lucas gaining a new class, The excited hero immediately changes classes and gains a boost to his intelligence and charisma as a result of it as well as just enough experience to boost the power of "Support", making this the first time that a perk of his has been directly strengthened to a quantifiable extent.
"Support" is the most subtle of Lucas's perks other than "The Devil's Own Luck". This perk makes him a more effective leader and teammate, and boosts the efforts of his c;lose-by allies by the equivalent of a "+2", until just now, modifier in TTRPG terms and weakens the efforts of his c;lose-by enemies by "-2", or now "-3". In layman's terms all of the efforts of his allies by a tiny but noticeable margin and weakens the efforts of his enemies by an equal amount. The perk also allows for buffs or debuffs to affect all allies or enemies in close proximity to each other, but Lucas has not had many chances to buff allies or fight enemies. One effect this perk has had is that it allows his friends to cook food that is more delicious, more filling, and healthier than their past efforts. Another effect of it is that it has helped those who eat said food to ingest it more easily and thus allows them to eat it without fears of stomach pains. New spells also appear in the hero's mental grimoire, ones that offer minor buffs or debuffs to friends and enemies, targeting their attributes, but none that consider Lucas a viable target.
The hero delights in his new class and is excited to have the chance to grow as a healer and support provider but the day isn't done. When the last of the crowd leaves Lucas and the rest of his friends stay behind to clean up. Lucas is eager to put his newly enhanced perk to the test, and during these efforts Lucas gains the "Cleaner" class, a class whose initial benefits to him include a boost to his senses and to his skill with anything intended to be used to clean something. During the cleaning, Lucas does not quite gain enough experience to level up, but he knows that he will in time.
Eventually Lucas bids his new friends farewell and makes his way to the gym. He works out somewhat intensely during this time, gaining a series of new skills in the form of swimming and boxing, thanks to his time engaging in a decently stimulating jaunt around the lap pool, followed by his participation in a class that revolves around self-defense. Thanks to "Master of All" and his decision to swap classes to "Fighter" he manages to level up both his "Mage" and his "Fighter" class, opting to give himself a boost to his endurance as a class skill for "Fighter", and a boost to the rate at which he regenerates arcane energy as his class skill for "Mage". It is during this time that Lucas figures out that for his classes to level up he needs to gain class-based experience, but this is the first time that he has seen that he can level a class up without having the class equipped, there just seems to be some relative debuff to the experience gained by the classes he doesn't have equipped. This insight boosts his intelligence, the realization itself serving as a sort of training of the attribute.
By the time Lucas returns to his apartment he is immensely satisfied with the day he has had. The moon is visible in the night's sky when he steps into his apartment he is ready to spend the rest of the day honing his skills and gaining valuable experience. He immediately starts this off by using some of his magic to mess with some of his possessions, positioning and repositioning them as he pleases with telekinesis. For the first time the figure shuts his eyes and practices his telekinesis by feeling alone, an exercise which results in the acquisition of a strange new skill: Extrasensory Perception, or ESP. The figure excitedly practices this skill, even as he levels up his "Spatial Magic" skill and gains an expensive new spell: "Minor Teleport". This particular spell lets him teleport objects he can see and hit with a small magical ray, causing light, small objects he hits to appear in his hand. The mage's skills with this are enough to allow him to hit a kitchen knife with it and teleport it to him without any issues. Lucas's mind fills with possibilities as he takes in the wicked potential of this spell. Still, the spell costs enough that he can only cast it once or twice without waiting for his pool of arcane energy to recover which limits it's usefulness somewhat but that's only a short term problem.
Monday rolls around and when it does Lucas is delighted to find that he is familiar enough with his surroundings that he settles into a routine. The jumper almost immediately throws himself into his work the minute he arrives at the office and he quickly grinds the day away. The only notable event is his realization that Amy is developing a crush on him, something he notices during lunch when he is eating with her and their small cadre of colleagues, when she eagerly asks him about volunteering. On Monday afternoon the lad goes to the gym and works out, taking another dancing class and leveling up the class partway through the workout. He gains a class skill which allows him to more easily persuade anyone who sees him perform a few dances, which he realizes probably won't be very useful in this jump but might mean something later on in his "Chain" as his employer called it several days ago.
The figure spends part of the night leveling his rogue class and gaining skills associated with it thanks in part to his "Rogue" perk and his new spells. He sticks to public places, and stays out just long enough for some shopping outlets and malls to close. He limits his targets to small objects like keys and wallets with his magic, and occasionally targets people with debuffs. He also levels "Observe" enough that he can learn the moods of living things just by using the skill, When his rogue class levels up he snags a new skill which boosts the effectiveness of his actions when he is unseen by the people he is targeting. He also snags a title: "Arcane Sneak", which boosts his magical regeneration when he is unnoticed by people or in the immediate aftermath of him using magic to take something that belongs to someone else.
The next month and a half passes in a blur, and Lucas develops a decently strict schedule he sticks to. On Mondays he trains a specific class, not necessarily rogue but definitely something. On Tuesdays he works out, including taking Zumba, a boxing class, and swimming. On Wednesdays he does meal prep and stays at home honing minor stuff. On Thursday he does some sort of volunteering, and on Fridays he actually relaxes and does something like writing or website design. The weekends are filled with volunteering and city exploration.
During this time his classes, other than chef, dancer, and mage, are slow to level up. He actively practices magic, he is a regular chef, and he turns a passive admiration he once had for dancers into something he is surprisingly passionate about. He also begins to volunteer at the hospital he visited, spending a few hours every Saturday in a small room in the back of the hospital looking through paperwork and doing stuff he didn't anticipate a hospital volunteer doing. Still, he quickly racks up trust and admiration from the few hospital staff members who know of him, thanks to his ability to just not complain, coupled with his stunning effectiveness at what he does.
As he begins to approach the two month mark he is a level 10 chef, level 12 dancer, and a level 6 mage, and a level 3 fighter, rogue, and white mage, as well as a level 4 cleaner. It turns out that each class levels a bit differently, which has inadvertently skewed his leveling but he's become an advanced enough chef that his food can be actively beneficial or detrimental and that there is now a 5% reduction in how long it takes him to cook something. He can also now gain modifiers to his interactions with people who've eaten several dishes he's made, provided they enjoyed them. His dancing is similarly useful, and he is a much better mage now than he once was. The figure can also cast spells and use an ability that prevents something from getting dirty, or magically cleanse objects. Despite all of this he remains a level 1 human, having not gained any experience that would level him as a member of his species; it seems that for him to gain such experience he needs to engage in combat and even when he's sparred with people he doesn't fight them to unconsciousness.
He leaves his apartment on the last Monday in October with a smile on his face, ready to begin a new work week.

Record temperatures, record migration, record emissions, record displacement, record PFAS……start building an ark.
Last Week in Collapse: May 12-18, 2024
This is Last Week in Collapse, a weekly newsletter compiling some of the most important, timely, useful, soul-crushing, ironic, stunning, exhausting, or otherwise must-see/can’t-look-away moments in Collapse.
This is the 125th newsletter! You can find the May 5-11 edition here if you missed it last week. You can also receive these posts (with images) every Sunday in your email inbox with Substack.
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Flash flooding in northern Afghanistan killed 300+ people and destroyed 1,000+ homes. Hundreds of thousands of others have been affected. Last month, similar floods in the region killed 70+. Four died in Texas storms last week as well.
Venezuela is suffering from record wildfires, which so far this year have burned about 5M acres—almost the size of Sardinia. Some experts think indigenous people started the blaze as an attempt at forest clearance, which quickly got out of hand. “Institutional failures” compounded the disaster when the ailing government responded with an inadequate number of poorly equipped firefighters. Another study from last week examined the impact of wildfires on soil health.
Flooding and “cold lava” killed 50+ in Indonesia, injuring dozens and displacing several thousand. Cold lava is a mixture of water and rocks tumbling down the side of a volcano. Meanwhile, an actual volcano erupted in Indonesia, sending smoke & ash 5000m high; further eruptions are possible soon.
The Swiss Re Institute published a 37-page report last week about natural disasters in 2023—and how much damage, in USD, they caused. The largest catastrophe was the February 7.8 earthquake in Türkiye & Syria, which killed 59,000+ people and caused $163B+ in damage. The report is full of interesting graphics & data about natural disasters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hi! For context, I plan to take GP as a private candidate next year and i have just done my first practice, so I don’t think it’s the best piece ahahaha. Could anyone review my essay and give me feedback, any advice would be fine tysm!!:) i shall leave the question and my answer at the bottom:
Question: Is conflict inevitable in today’s volatile world?
In the later days of February 2022, a war that would go on to send the world in shock would occur, the war known as the Russia-Ukraine war. It boggled many minds into questioning the causes of such a catastrophe. Was it merely prejudice between both countries? Could the war have been prevented? Or was it just fate? Many of these questions still linger today. Could we do something to prevent such conflicts from happening again, or is conflict really just an heinous flame that can’t be stopped. Well, I think that it is not at all a lost hope especially during this period of instability.
Some naysayers may say that time and time again, conflicts are bound to happen. It is like a never ending flame of fire that refuses to stop pervading.To a certain extent, it is quite evident as just barely two years after the Russia-Ukraine conflict started, another major and horrendous war known as the war in Gaza would occur and aggravate human relations and the ongoing chaos. Boycotts of western companies like McDonald’s were prominent in Muslim countries and protests would be news that felt like it was normalcy. Furthermore, over at the South-China sea, tensions were tensed between The Philippines and China; where both sides would relentlessly accuse each other of intrusion and damages to their properties.However, these are just parochial views of the world we see.
On the other hand, countries are more willing to talk things out than to escalate hatred. Being discontented with others’ actions is part of our innate feelings, especially in this vulnerable period of time. But what if we were able to control those discontent and talk it out with the other party? Well, that is certainly possible. At a time where North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jung Un was on the verge of throwing nuclear missiles at the United States, both parties decided to hold summits in Singapore and Vietnam that could potentially work out as a peaceful resolution. Albeit the former continuing the acts of testing missiles after some time,the summits were no frivolous pursuit, in fact there was a period of time where both sides were willing to compromise for a peaceful settlement. This was not the only case, during the war in Gaza, Israel offered to release hostages for a period of peace from hamas. This shows that though a complete truce is rather difficult to make, progressive steps are possible.
Moreover, governments are willing to internally hear opposing views and do something to it. Between citizens and governments, it is not as effortless as it seems to always follow what the people want, this will lead to prejudice between parties.In the case of Singapore, there was a contentious issue regarding the ruling out of physical concession cards and using digital ones instead which limits how one may be able to check their fare on the gantry gates. In a matter of days, it was reported that the mandate was negated and many citizens were happy about it. Moreover, over in the United States, the choking of George Floyd to serve him “justice” was angrily questioned. Within a few months, a legislation was passed to prevent chokeholds in arrests. It shows that though there might be hate at times, governments try their best to prevent hate in a contentious world.
Lastly, it is also interesting to note that countries are becoming more benevolent in a shaky world. Though we are facing major crises in our world, we do not shy away from helping one another when one is in need. This could be seen when many countries like the United States, United Kingdom and Singapore helped to provide vaccinations to different countries during the COVID-19 crisis. Most recently, many voted for a peaceful settlement in Gaza during a United Nations meeting.This shows that despite living in a very challenging world, we have the heart to forge ties as a United world instead of throwing hate at one another.
All in all,there are various ways to prevent conflict. In today’s world starting a conflict is starting to become less prominent. We can always hear each other out and change what we can at our own capacity, we too can inter alia, show kindness in the world. All these vindicates that conflict is definitely not inevitable nor imminent albeit living in a turbulent world.

Bud be gone 16 years later this month. Don’t hardly seem possible. Still remember him as if I just saw and spoke to him yesterday. The way of it. Miss him a lot, and so does Momma. Also the way of it. Get to thinking about him a lot this time each year.
Not as raw and brutal as it used to be. Had some dark days for both of us for quite a while. Again, the way of it. But acceptance comes eventually, when there’s no other choice.
I try to console myself that he lived life large in the 21 years he had - didn’t waste ‘em. Got to see and do places and things that comparatively few do. Was involved in things he felt were important.
I loved him dearly, and was admiring and proud of the man he’d become. And I told him so quite often. Advice from someone who’d not always as bright as he might be, but who nevertheless understands some basic things: say what Should be said when you have the chance. The words are important, even if they already know. Don’t, and the day might come when it’s now too late to.
He was the wild one of our brood - seems like every family has one. Not troublesome in any way for Momma and me. He asked me a serious question once, when he was 16: “Dad, you and Mom hardly ever whipped us when we were kids. How come?”
And my answer a simple one: “We didn’t need to. You were good kids.” He’d thought that over, and nodded his acceptance.
A disciplinary problem aboard his ship sometimes, though, and this didn’t surprise either of us. A different world with different rules. And he never accepted insult from anyone from the time he was small - just not in his nature. Push, and he’d push back.
But by every account we heard, very serious and disciplined when it came to his job. This didn’t surprise us, either. His primary rating Firefighter aboard ship, he’d often complain that the training wasn’t Realistic enough. To the extent that a superior had remarked once in exasperation: “Well, we can’t set the damn ship on fire for you, Bud!”
Well-known and liked throughout the crew, he was something of a minor legend among them. Famous (or infamous - take your pick) for the situations he got himself into to the point that after a while, anyone in trouble beyond the usual was referred to as having “Pulled a Bud.”
Fighting several members of Shore Patrol on one memorable occasion: “It took six of ‘em to get him under control and back to the ship, Mr. OP.” A friend.
With several members of the local PD on an even more memorable one.
He’d paid for that one on the way to and at the station. Being thrown headlong down a set of cement stairs with his hands still cuffed behind his back he figured he’d had coming. Ditto with then being picked up and rammed headfirst into a cinder block wall.
Being stripped naked, tossed in a cell, and having a fire hose turned on him every hour on the hour all night he’d objected to: “That shit was Cold, Pop! And it was fucking unnecessary! I catch any of ‘em out alone, I got somethin’ for their ass!”
“You gotta stop this shit, Bud.”
“……Sigh…I know, Pop. I know. Do me a favor - don’t tell Mom, ok?”
“I don’t intend to.”
“……Pop?”
“Yeah?”
“Captain says the same thing. Says this is my last chance…….Why’s he giving me another chance, after all the trouble I’ve caused?”
“Because he sees something in you he wants to keep - something of value to the ship. You can be counted on to do your job, no matter what. That carries a lot of weight in the civilian world - more so in the military.”
“…..You think so?”
“I know so.”
One of the last conversations, and over the phone, we’d ever have.
An old Chief remarked to us: “Bud was a throwback. He reminded me of the fighting Sailors of my own youth. I hadn’t met another quite like him in a good many years. He’ll be missed.”
His Captain remarked to me: “He turned it around, Mr. OP. It was as if he made a decision. There wasn’t another single incident of insubordination or anything else. In all my years of service, I’ve never seen anyone do so complete a 180. He’d made his mind up, and that was that. But I guess I don’t have to tell you that. He was actually due for promotion. Did you know that?”
I had. Bud had told me he’d studied for and passed the test. Perfect score, or near enough. He’d broken his hand at the time. A timed test, and his writing hand, he’d been afraid the cast would slow him down too much, so he’d cut it off and gone to get it redone afterward.
Last time I spoke to him, he had some shipmates were in Galveston during Mardi Gras. Out on the promenade. Sounds of revelry in the background. Shakedown cruise in preparation for another deployment.
Presently, to his impatient shipmates: “Just give me a damn minute, all right?! Listen, I guess I better go. Love you, Pop. And tell Mom that for me when she gets home, ok?”
“I will. Love you, too, Bud.”
Good last words to remember, I guess.
All through the days and nights we’d spent in the hospital, waiting, and hoping against hope, Momma and I hadn’t been alone. My brothers were there with us, having driven in from out of state. My sister. Mother.
And his crew. Day and night, young men and women waiting with us in great numbers. Lying sleeping on the floor against the walls lining the corridors, when all other spaces had been taken. None of the hospital staff asking them to leave.
Ship’s Officers and senior Enlisted spending as much time there as preparations for deployment would permit. Checking in in person with us and hospital staff about his condition at least once a day.
And so many of them with a story or two to tell about Bud. Many of them funny. For that was who he was, too. He could always make people laugh. Someone being down in his presence he couldn’t abide, and he always knew how to fix that.
It was as if they Needed to. And that Momma and I understood, as well. We’d known him all his life, and we could see that they knew him, too. So we were patient, and grateful, and we listened.
The day finally came when we were told there was no longer any hope at all. He’d never regained consciousness, and now there was no more brain activity at all. He was gone.
His XO was there with us when we were told, and that large, strong man wept bitterly and unashamedly. I think that probably doesn’t happen often.
Momma and I were alone the next day, in a seated waiting area next to the elevators. Waiting, just the two of us, not speaking much. Everyone had given us that space to ourselves. Sensed that we needed it, I suppose.
The first man arriving with a refrigerated transport case arrived, and took the elevator down. He seemed in a hurry. A man who desperately needed Bud’s strong heart was waiting, and time was of the essence.
Momma and I watched the doors close behind him. Then we both got up, and hand in hand, walked away. It was finished now. The book of his life was closed, though in a sense it never would be.
A few months previous, he’d registered as an organ donor. His choice.
His heart went to a 31-yr-old man in need of a new one.
A young woman in North Dakota sees through his eyes.
Many others were helped, as well. His parting gifts.
Talking to the coordinator of the donor program at the hospital at a later date, I was informed that the man’s new heart was functioning perfectly. He had, in fact, been going to the gym and hitting the weights. Something he’d had no interest in before.
“Lifting and bodybuilding were some of Bud’s passions” I replied.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time” the man had replied in kind. “And you’d be astonished at how many times something like that happens; the recipient unknowingly taking on attributes of the donor. No one can explain it.”

Does anybody know any good, relatively recent research (and/or good journalism) into what kinds of "opportunity loss" this sort of cost of transport might cost our economy in longer term, be that the next few years or in terms of decades?
I'm particularly thinking of younger folks travelling for events or people trying to break into industries, start businesses, trade fairs, networking, etc's travel patterns being reduced because of the higher prices.
For my part, I've been without a car for a while, and recently have had wanted to travel more for trade fairs/conferences and leisure both. I've not gone to e.g. events where good opportunities could lie, because the cost of going is enough that I'm not willing to spend on speculation. I remember back in the day I'd be able travel to London a couple times a month just to go see a band; not anymore!
I'd love for research to prove me fretting, but if not, I'm curious to know what the extent of the issue is.

What is the gluttony of 7 like? Like why do people assume Se doms can’t be 7s? If you love sensory experiences, aren’t you gonna plan your next sensory experience and take pleasure in that as well? Do people think Se doms just float around and do whatever’s in front of them never planning anything? All humans plan to an extent. I’m guessing 7 gluttony is different from 8 lust because it’s more focused on more and more experiences. While 8 lust is focused on having very intense experiences. Quantity vs Quality

Basically, Midoriya has this very weird form of power copying. Essentially, Midoriya can pick any fictional character that has a straight forward, less complex powerset. For example, he picks Superman. He now has to maintain the idea of "Superman" with his quirk in order for this to work. (That's him using his quirk already technically). Next, he basically has to seek out quirks that could be fit into a Superman shaped mold technically.
So a strength quirk of some kind, some kind of heat/laser quirk, a flight quirk, an ice quirk, etc. He basically has to touch people with these quirks, so he can store them. He can't use any of the quirks he's stored. They don't have to be exact 1-1 fits, they only need a vague resemblance. So for instance, here Midoriya would have to seek out people like Sato, Todoroki maybe, Aoyama perhaps, or Captain Celebrity.
He doesn't have to cover every minor power that showed up in one comic issue, or a throwaway ability that was forgotten by the author. Just has to be close enough. Eventually, if the quirk deems he's gathered enough, he can start the creation process and thus the quirk will spit out patchwork of different quirks Superman power set in this case. The quirks will be altered a bit to fit whichever character was shown, but they will still keep the same rough power level, and similar requirements.
For instance, if Sato was used here as the strength aspect, then Midoriya would have to eat sugar to maintain that. If Todoroki was used for heat vision here, they would be less laser like since the source was less concentrated, though Aoyama may have been thrown into the mix as well, so the colour taken might have a blue sheen. He can store several of the same type of quirk to get closer to the character's power level, but the more quirks he stores, the more tired he gets.
If Midoriya stores too powerful of a quirk, like Captain Celebrity's or All Might's, the copy he's stored will be nerfed down to whatever the power level was when the original owner was whatever Midoriya's current age is.
He can only have one character's power set at a time.

The thing about this climate crisis that no one talks about is that economically, this is not new. This is the same sort of shift as any other massive economic shift we've seen in history, whether resulting from technology or environment or society or any combination of the three. It will be rapid; as rapid as the economic expansion of Europe when it discovered just how profitable colonisation and slavery were. But it's not really anything unseen in an economic sense.
How markets work is this: everything is just supply and demand. If there is a known demand for something, in a roundabout way, the market will ensure that demand is supplied. It might melt a few glaciers in the meantime, or be delayed by a war or two, but it's a force akin to that of nature, or evolution, or cause and effect. The markets will balance. Eventually.

A detour through history

The Chinese never developed eye-glasses. They didn't have the need for glass, because their drink of choice was tea, so the materials they worked with were mostly ceramics. In Europe, the cultural drink of refinement was wine. This didn't need to be kept hot, or be brewed and poured perfectly and all that stuff I'm told is important with tea. But it had requirements and qualities of its own, and one of them is that it looks pretty on display -- and that's why Europe developed and refined glass so much faster than China.
Glass is an incredibly old invention. It's fragile, much more fragile than pottery, so we rarely find it in archeological digs. But it's been invented in and/or expanded to many many cultures throughout history since at least 2000 BC in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Syria, followed by the Greeks, the Romans, the Canaan, and the Persians. Basically anyone with an empire, including the Chinese, was making glass. Unfortunately they'd only just discovered transparent glass by the late Bronze Age, when the Bronze Age collapsed due to a series of environmental, migratory and urban changes.
(A good reminder that historically, periods of mass technological advancement are followed by civilisation collapses and dark ages. Until the present, of course. But that's been true of every present.)
A lot of glass-making technology was lost, but some important things were saved and some new stuff was rediscovered, and most of this discovering happened in Europe because they had, as I mentioned, wine. And rich people wanted to show off their pretty, colourful wine, and that only worked if your glass was transparent. And Italy had access to pure silica quartz, plus soda ash via their trade with the Levant, and so some clever spark there developed the first pair of eyeglasses.
And that's how you have Mecca, Italy and Venice (the latter of whom had been producing the famous Venetian glass, but moved all their glassmakers to Italy because they'd built all their buildings out of wood) all mass producing eye-glasses with consistent standards for Europe and the Middle East by the 14th century.
This might seem like a small development, but gradual loss of sight used to be a disability. Like, it seriously disabled people from doing many things. Far-sightedness meant artisans couldn't create and scholars couldn't read -- I can't even imagine how many people died falling off a horse just because they were short-sighted. For civilisations to have access to devices that got them decades of productivity out of some of the most skilled people in their societies was massive. And that's part of how you get European dominance over Asia, because the Chinese economic powerhouses didn't care about glass as much as Europe did. It's not enough to just invent something. To develop a technology, a society needs both the resources to play with and the need to play with it. That's why we get so much advancement from war. You can thank Germany for your microwave.

How on earth is this relevant to the market or our climate crisis?

Glass will be invented, and then it will be forgotten, and then it will be invented again. But only some economies flourished from it.
We have no control over anything but us. And that's terrifying. The climate change that crippled the Bronze Age wasn't even their fault and they still got thrown back to the Dark Ages.
We are going to see our own change in the market. We are going to live it. And one thing is true, whether National or ACT or BP like it or not: fossil fuels cannot continue to be relied upon as a commodity. Not long-term. It's a dying industry, slowly but surely, and it'll die whether we manage to wean ourselves off petrol or whether we use it all up first.
To a lesser extent, this is true of other non-renewables too. We are not at critical mass yet with our lithium-ion batteries, but we're now at the stage where people in the third world all seem to have cellphones. This is not a sustainable practice for a limited metal we have to mine from the earth. When something is running out, we don't have to stop using that material in the things we build; if we start to use it all up, it will soon get too expensive to build with, and that will stop us.
And that's why we have to stop using it: because if you as a country or industry pour all your energy and resources into developing technology based off that now-scarce resource, you will be left with no usable technology when that resource runs out.

What are National doing?

This is a political sub, so I won't mince words: something's gone wrong with National. Something's always been wrong with ACT, but National's change is recent. Power has been centralised in the board and the candidate selection process is no longer in the hands of the rank and file after Steven Joyce's shakeup, instead dominated by corporate interests. And they have dominated. We have a cabinet of lobbyists, and not just on National's side of the board; Luxon has pulled together the whole industry.
When we attribute "intentions" to things like forces and political parties, it can be easy to forget there's not a concerted, rational mind at play behind their decisions, and their actions are influenced by all of the people and factors and forces that make them up. When I say, "National has been bought by lobbyists", I don't mean every single person in the party is a corporate shill. I just mean that there is enough corporate, business, and big-money influence in the party that they are no longer being governed primarily by their voter base or even their party members.
Nothing makes this more obvious than National's direction in politics. When your LABOUR and GREEN parties are the ones proposing to fix your climate crisis via free-market ingenuity that we can patent, sell on and capitalise off, something has gone wrong. There is money to be made in climate change, and National are off chasing oil down the bottom of a well.
If we don't wean ourselves off fossil fuels, we will find ourselves paying for it the increased price for them when we don't have the green technology to utilise at the end of supply. If we don't put our minds to green tech and science, we won't have the environment-saving and cleaning and reinforcing products and knowledge to sell on when the demand for them peaks through the ceiling -- instead we will be buying from other countries at big prices, paying to ship their experts here to tell us how to manage our estuaries or dump sites or skink habitats or whatever it is we need to fix next. New Zealand got lucky with our green energy; we were already using renewables by sheer coincidence when the climate crisis struck, and it made our transition to this new world very smooth. We will not be that lucky again.
Look at what we produce as a country. We held on far too long to our wool market out of some idea that it was "what we were supposed to be doing", and it nearly wrecked the country. Because it took us so long to change, and because we'd converted all our land into pasture, the most effective market for us to turn to became beef. Now that market is thriving, and we are willfully ignoring the real economic costs that will come with being a beef export country, and that cost is methane. There is not a future where countries will be allowed to emit methane for free. And there are no methane-light cows to switch to. Not until we develop them.
And this is what people talk about when they talk about environmental solutions still to be developed -- as if other people are going to develop them. That is incorrect. WE are the Cow Country. WE are the ones that should be foremost of the cow-fart field. If we do, we will be the ones benefitting by selling our bio-engineered cows and our science that made it happen. But if we don't, if we trail behind, we let other countries get out in front, and then our industry relies on them, and their industry outgrows us.
And these are all individual product or problem examples, but we are dragging our feet across the entire green industry. Why?

Big Oil does not care if your tech is Green

I say big oil, but there are other anti-environment and pro-corporate interests at play here. And again, there's not some big puppetmaster moving his pawn pieces, but there is influence, and companies don't want the world to go green, because when they do, they stop getting money for all the things they're getting money from right now. They don't care about the environment because they don't have the capacity to care; they are not a they. They are a force, a conglomeration, a hivemind of workers breaking their back for the company, until they clock off and become their own person again.
Their only interest is keeping ahold of their incredibly profitable market, and that market needs machines that use oil, and consumers willing to buy those machines, and people who aren't thinking about switching to a non-oil version of their tractor that doesn't exist yet (because no one has found the need to invent it. Or had the right resources.)
Oil cares about oil. Mining cares about mining. Tobacco cares about tobacco. Beef cares about beef. And we get value out of these industries as a country, as a society, so when they say"This thing is bad for me", we do have to listen to that. Otherwise we won't get our beef, or our oil. But "This thing is bad for ME" isn't the same as "This thing is bad for YOU". And companies are relying on consumers to not know the difference.

Back to National

Tobacco lobbyists have bought out Parliament, and are literally drafting our tobacco laws. And they are just one interest around the table. But they have had a huge effect. Imagine what's happening to the interests of your politicians when you have your lobbyists working together. Imagine where the interests of lobbyists for mining and oil might meet. Now imagine fisheries has a guy in there too.
Our oceans should be feeling very nervous right now.
It's the small influences we can't see that make these big decisions later on. The people who select our future MPs. The people who decide, hey, I'm going to try this new glass technique. But it takes an awful lot of decisions to make a glassblowing society.
A lot of what we do, we don't do consciously, like developing eye-glasses. But the benefit of our open democracies, of our information-based societies, of our unprecedented understanding of economies and markets and science and climate, should mean that when we choose to do something consciously, we can do it.
When we don't, something has gone wrong.

A Green Future

To get to the sort of green economy the non-business parties are picturing, you need someone who has the time and acumen to get us there.
That SHOULD be National. There is so much involved in politics; our politicians are running so much. And they're spending most of their time undoing the last guy's policies. Labour's policies sound like the Greens. National doesn't have any except "win". ACT are doing Charter Schools again. And the policies being made are being made in the interests of business people.
Our politicians don't have visions like Hollyoake of a New Zealand forging our own future, or Muldoon's determination to make things better for the average kiwi, or (heaven help me), Roger Douglass's respect for politics. None of the old guard are happy with how politics is shaping up, and certainly not the right, or who eventually became the right, in Douglass's case -- this is what he had to say on the subject: “John Key lived by the polls and it’s very dangerous. If you want to help people, you have to tell them the truth. The problem is that the politicians of today, they want to help themselves. So they poll in order to know what to say and it’s disgusting.”
I think in that one sentence, Douglass sums up everything wrong with the modern National Party. Once upon a time, National were in it to help people. They're not anymore.

Where to now?

It's all just markets.
If National won't change, they'll kill their market and they'll be replaced by a new party, just like the Liberal Party and Reform Party and Social Credit Party before them. National and Labour have always been around, but not always as these parties, or in these forms. The political spectrum will move to meet demand -- even when curtailed by corporate interests.
Or National will change, take control of their candidates and board, and live to fight for another century or so.
Either way, the economy will continue, and so will climate change. We will still need to develop new technologies using our available resources, and direct our technology-developing towards fixing environmental solutions. I hope New Zealand will benefit from this, and not just witness it. But if it's not National making the push, another political party will. We can see that happening right now, with the other parties suggesting their own green business ideas that National should be sweeping up votes for. There is voter and consumer demand for green businesses, and National are distracting us instead with shiny baubles because the corporations influencing them don't want you to see them.
Another thing Douglass was frustratingly right about: all our parties are doing at the moment is undoing each other's policies. It's hard to see New Zealand making any forwards progress at all if that's our direction.

I don't feel comfortable around my mom and brother, and I felt much better at college with my friends, teachers, and mentors from a mental standpoint. Began to realize that even if my family ISN'T abusive, the way I was raised was still the reason why I fell into certain harmful behaviors and thought patterns.
I've only got about $470 in my checking and savings accounts combined (kept needing to lend family money last school year and they either wouldn't or couldn't pay me back). I will be able to stay on campus throughout the whole year, with the only possible exceptions being winter and summer breaks if my requests don't get approved.
My meal plan will cover any food, any places I might need to go to are well within walking distance, I will be taking my TV and fridge with me when I move this summer, I have my social security card with me, and containers of medicine with me, too. I can work with my school's Office of Student Involvement all year, and I get paid $10 an hour.
In terms of financial aid for next year, I will not get my award letter until mid-July. Last year my family had to pay about $2500, and since my father (the one whom I felt most comfortable with and the one whose information I used for financial aid) is dead, that will slightly alter my award now. I still need to apply for more scholarships and get additional funding. Currently, I am doing summer research on campus from June to the end of July.
The other problem is paying for all my other finances, as well as what my plan is once I graduate in two years. I am studying to be a Computer Engineer. I've seen lots of starting salaries ranging from $60,000 to $90,000, but I have a feeling that sounds too good to be true for most people and need to check if that's not the case.
I also need a plan if
A) I don't win my school's senior housing lottery and have to become a commuter
B) I decide to the 5-five year program and need to find a place to stay as soon as my 4th year is over
C) I get a summer internship next summer that isn't close to the school.
I only know how to cook eggs for myself right now, and I need to learn more recipes. My debit card also expires April of next year.
What are other things I need to consider? Does it look like I have any chance of surviving on my own with these conditions?
TLDR: Need advice, don't feel comfortable home, need a plan to survive if I only have $470 overall

Re: PODCAST: How to Spot a Lazy Manager
I'm telling ya, other than trying to rip off as many people as possible and get as much work out of them, and do the least amount of effort themselves, I don't know why Hagwonites bother. And I don't know why foreigners care more than the people who own the place and/or will be working there 10 years from now.
It reminds me of George Costanza's frustration with his lazy boss Mr. Kruger. You can see the YouTube clip here. Bust your rear-end for what? So it can backslide back to square 1 as soon as you leave and the new person replaces you? You're not helping the place advance, you are helping it idle in neutral.
See if this sounds like your experience at a Hagwon.
1. They blame low performance and turnover on employees.
--And every other mistake as well. The students are total brats? That's your fault. You don't teach the lesson absolutely perfectly without training? That's your fault. Kids are bored? That's your fault. A child pokes another child and mom calls about it, again --your fault.
None of these managers actually manage. They give irrelevant or no training. They institute no discipline plan all the staff, students, parents will agree on. They often don't give enough material to teach the class, ALL OF THAT falls on the hands of the foreigners. Imagine that, a place that's been open for 5-10 years still hasn't taken point on all these issues, just push them off on the foreigner and go back to gossiping about how terrible the foreigners are.

• Great minds discuss ideas.
• Average minds discuss events.
• Small minds discuss people.

BTW, I'm not an owner of a company, I can discuss people who should be discussing ideas.
2: They look for quick fixes to complex retention problems.
--That's more than true. I declined to accept a 2nd contract by being offered slightly more money, about double the vacation time, and move up to head teacher. Why didn't I accept this promotion? Because everything I said the entire year was totally ignored, the pay wasn't enough to put up with their stupidity. The vacation was totally bogus because we had to threaten a mutiny just to get 2 extra days due to a break between semesters. Why would I trust them to give me more when they didn't honor the ones in the 1st contract? Search Bar: Mutiny. Also, they harassed the head teacher out of a job, why would I then stick my head in the guillotine after they dragged the body away by the ankles?

But wait there's more!

That's the end of that link, but you and I can identify so many more issues.
3. Physically / Intellectually a bad example for everyone.
I don't know about you, but I don't respect slough-offs and idiots. The person that SHOULD Be working the hardest is the person who owns the place. Did you ever see the video of Elan Musk sleeping on his sofa in his office at the production plant? Yeah, really. The billionaire owner is there to field problems as they come up instead of being called at home and have to drive in at 2am. He suffers more and works harder than anyone there.
Some dumb-butt that owns a hagwon said on here one time,

I don't make my employees do anything that I wouldn't do!

You are supposed to do what your employees do and 10x more than that! You're the owner. This is your livelihood, it will destroy your life if it faulters. You have to pay off employees with severance, pay back loans you probably can't pay off, reduce your living space, sell off assets to survive. You put all your eggs in this basket, it HAS to work, why are you putting the outcome in the hands of people who have no skin in the game?
I don't respect boneheads who should have their educational chops figured out by this point. They should have taken notes and improved themselves as each semester rolls on by. Why are the same problems recurring every semester or every year such as the Halloween or Christmas event, you did the same thing a year ago!
4. Doesn't know your job description.
Not only does a lazy boss not educate themselves about what education is, they have neither bothered to know what teachers actually do. Sure, they scowl through the window or monitor on CCTV, but do they know what they are looking at? Almost certainly not. They tend to focus on the most inane "violations" to give themselves and everyone else the false impression they are REALLY on the ball here, nothing slips past their scrutinous eye on quality and detail! When in fact, they reveal themselves to not only being an obnoxious pest, but clearly don't even know what teachers do every day. I've had to tell more than a few in-class and CCTV observers that the things they are bothering with are so miniscule I question whether they have even taught anyone anything before in their entire lives? It's like me storming in on a mechanic, "I gotcha! I see you didn't grease those fittings!" Then they tell me that is done AFTER the breaks and wheel has been fixed and reassembled. I just exposed myself as not knowing what I'm talking about.
Hagwon management and owners don't realize how much time it takes to do the tasks they are demanding because they've never had to do them before. Sure, waive your hand and expect this or that, but a) they don't know how to do it themselves. b) we are not holding out on them with a Mary Poppins bag of lesson plans. We don't have a quick fix for their ideas. c) it takes research, editing, time, contemplation to add something that perfectly match a class's level. Management and owners think it only takes about 30 minutes to throw something together, when in fact it could be 2 hours. For laughs, ask them exactly step-by-step how the task should be carried out and receive the stupidest answers you can imagine. "Uh, I don't know, some teacher website or something? Why are you asking me? I've only been working here for 10 years, why don't you with your philosophy degree, and 3 months on the job, know how to construct exactly what I want?"
5. Boss is too lazy/stubborn to solve problems.
"I'm the boss. I say, you do. That's the end of it, now get to work, no back-talk!"
If you work in any place like this, the boss is trying to avoid being exposed as a fool. They know if they throw out instructions and ideas, they will get shot down as not knowing round holes don't accept square pegs. To avoid a face-losing situation, they avoid communication at all costs. If every idea is idiotic and everyone knows it, they lose stature and the decree will be considered untenable. If the boss demands something runs and hides under their desk, the chances that the smarter people will get together and somehow make it happen is much more likely. Really, poor or no communication can be interpreted as, "Just make what I'm demanding from you happen, and don't ask me, I have no idea how to do it or I'd be helping you do it."
6. No goals.
--Every day is Groundhog's Day with lazy people. Nothing ever improves. The latest freak-out due to procrastination, poor communication, poor judgement, lack of materials, poor training is just a temporary peak until it is resolved, a lull in the action happens, then another peak or freak-out occurs in a frequency that drives everyone crazy. You just had a blow up last semester about a certain issue, it seems to have gotten through to everyone, but yet here we are again the next semester facing the same SNAFU we thought we already settled. Nope. Lazy people get lazy, let things backslide, then get caught with their pants down time after time. It's like a captain of a ship that sleeps at the wheel until he has to wake up and right the ship before it capsizes. There are no goals for improvement, only maintain just enough to do as little as possible to maximize more time for laziness.
7. No boundaries.
--"Eh, they can do it at home if they don't get it done during the day." The boss is too lazy to prioritize proper workloads. If work exceeds the scope of your position, there is no time set aside during the normal work hours, then your boss has not taken the time to contemplate what your job is, what you agreed to do in your contract, has not taken steps to cut the fat and keep the lean meat. They over-sold expectations to parents, undersold expectations to foreigners. They have no idea how long it takes to finish tasks, nor even if the task really needs to be done in the first place. More is always better according to Hagwonites, even if it's useless/pointless busywork.
8. They don't ever seem to know anything.
Your paycheck is wrong, they didn't issue a pay ledger, they have no idea you're supposed to have a break during the day, don't know the law, don't know when your vacation days are, don't know they need supplies for the things they are asking you to do, don't know what's going on 5 minutes before it happens. They make excuses and delays to figure out how to make it up as they go along. Then when they can't, they make up lies and you have to spend energy debunking the lies. It never ends, they simply have no idea about anything other than, "Foreigner work, we get money" that's about the extent of their master plan.
If you are in a personal or professional relationship and the only response after you try to resolve conflicts is anger and annoyance? Buddy, you need to fold up shop and get the heck out of that one while the gettin's good. They are trying to teach you that if you don't have rainbows and sunshine blaring straight out your arse every day and make them slightly uncomfortable, they'll punish you with negative emotions. No good man, ain't gonna work, ain't never gonna work, never gonna improve.

I know nobody likes my stories, too many words but I'll leave this here.
Quantum chips used in cloud and AI for speed linked via a fibreoptic network so a "quantum Internet" a backbone in which everything else will attach to. Innovation in AI will be limited without quantum photonic chips. An Internet of cloud storage and AI processing.
I envisage chips progressing in technology so, they use less power improving battery performance by up to 4 times (already happening) and increasing speed of technology but there will be a limit in consumer tech due to the way in which consumer tech and cloud and AI processing will interact... but things such as quantum chips and a quantum Internet will fundementally alter the way we use technology and everything else will branch off of that quantum network.
In the future I think that AI will alter entertainment and the way we consume it ie you could ask Netflix for example to create a movie or TV series based on your preferences and basic story and it would create that entertainment for you, same with computer games, computer games is the next stage with movie like quality as your avatar moves through it. This will require fast Internet and quantum computers as well as cloud storage for processing and storage needs. There's no need for increased innovation in consumer computing we will use the cloud and AI for processing purposes, Microsoft views it the same way hence their 100 billion AI supper computer and cloud storage they will soon build.
Fibre can be faster than low earth orbit internet constellations currently... but that will change everything will be linked via it one day.
I only have a loose understanding of quantum computing, how else could you envisage our future and what could grow from a quantum computing network?
So from an investment perspective the future of chip innovation is limited due to the way in with everything will be linked, quantum computing taking over data processing and AI supercomputing with a limit in innovation reached with consumer tech. Using faster Internet to bridge the gap.
Consumer chip companies future advantage being in scalability and mass production. Intel is positioning itself so it can scale up innovating in mass production, are there any others like that? Because that takes years.
A diverging chip market with financial gain seen in mass produced chip manufacturing. Quantum computing will take more time, and linked to the big tech stocks like Microsoft, Google and Amazon who are developing their own quantum computers.
If photonic chips enter consumer tech they'll lag behind for decades due to the above model and only be driven by energy efficiency needs. But quantum computing photonic chips common place in cloud and AI processing sooner.
Photonic chips are faster and use less energy but wil always be more expensive than standard chips... Quantum computing photonic chips inevitable for cloud storage AND AI processing, generating an image on chat GPT can use as much power as 25 percent of a phone batteries power as a comparison examlle and the true reason all AI processing done in cloud due to power usage in processing and that barrier won't ever be overcome.
The true AI revolution won't occur until power usage reduced in the cloud and AI supercomputer . Hence massive investment incoming in AI super computers and cloud storage.
Energy efficiency and cost of faster chips being the reason there will be AI supercomputer, cloud storage using quantum photonic chips with chip development in consumer limited over the long term and a faster Internet bridge to connect the two.