I saw a comment on here talking about the tension caused when one person isn’t out and the other person is or wants to be and it got me thinking about being out in general.
At what level are you personally out?? I’m not closeted, if asked I’d never lie and I’d never deny it, but to people I don’t know, a lot of the time I’ll purposefully be vague to the elderly lol.
Also I’m told I dress gay because I wear running shorts, t-shirts and calf length socks with Birkenstock slides everyday lmfao but random old people wouldn’t know. It’s just easier not to bother with them 🤷‍♀️

Personally, I am not a fan the approach because it seems like a half-baked proposal that fails to get to the core of the problem. However, this is nothing new as the NDP constantly puts forth half measures and band-aid solutions.
Why is the current proposal a half measure? Because the "excess profits" are generated by the oligopolistic market structure. That is, the grocery corporations have monopolized to the point where they have so much market power that they can raise their prices without much of a fear of losing customers / market share due to an lack of competition within the industry.
Unfortunately, oligopolistic market structures, such as the one which enables big grocers to accumulate monopoly profits, have now become widespread and pervasive. While we should take notice of the behemoth corporations that sprouted out of the last four and half decades of globalization, our neoliberal political paradigm brought this about by annihilating our protectionist policies to allow the free movement of capital and commodities over national borders, privatizing our national industry, and ensuing an abundance of labor so that real wages in most industries would never rise (or, as in the case of the grocers, be driven right down to minimum wage).
In short, we need to start focusing more on our contemporary economic conditions and forms of market structure (including the labor and housing market) because these have been organized in a way by neoliberal politicians to facilitate an increasing concentration of capital / worsening economic stratification. That is, both our economy and the global economy have been intentionally structured to vastly enrich a small minority of capitalists and speculators while, on the other hand, intensifying the immiseration of the working class.
In reaction to such oppressive and exploitative economic circumstances, Jagmeet is absolutely right to call out monopolists and threaten them with additional taxes if their quarterly profits are deemed by (at least progressive) politicians to be excessively high. However, while increasing taxation on these corporations would undoubtably be beneficial, I do not believe it gets to the deep core of the problem.
I think it is clear to everyone that Jagmeet is a sweet-hearted guy who undoubtedly deserves credit on his cultural inclusiveness. He constantly makes us proud when he rallies to the defense of marginalized populations. However, it is also evident that Jagmeet is not a visionary. That is, he does not have a bold vision of a post-(neo)liberal social order in which we overcome the current afflictions of late capitalism.
Unfortunately, such a lack of futural vision seems to run throughout the entire NDP.. we have still not overcome the sentiment of resignation that impelled us to relinquish the term "socialist", and such an impotent stance is causing us to lose disillusioned working class voters to (absurd as it is) Poilievre. Even as the liberal party implodes and widespread social discontentment intensifies, the NDP fail to make gains.
In order to face the encountered challenge, the NDP needs to recognize that at this present moment in history we are facing multiple, overlapping crises in which our current institutions and ideational convictions are unable to resolve. In other words, our current institutions are slow collapsing under the weight of the numerous contradictions plaguing contemporary society. Such a bleak situation is engulfing the country in a cloud of despair, fueling reactionary populism, and leading us down a path of disaster.
Thus, to move us out of such a deadlock, the NDP and its leadership need to be visionaries who espouse a bold eco-socialist form of society by which we can overcome the malaise of late capitalism. The populace demands real solutions to real problems, and if the NDP could muster up the courage and insight to deliver this to them, we would once again experience a much needed taste of hope.

I hesitate to post this because I've been on reddit for years and know ya'll can be vultures but here it goes:
TL;DR - Fiancé and I are confused and exhausted. We're currently a dead bedroom, it's my doing. He needs more physical intimacy and for some reason I can't provide it. He has cheated, only since physical intimacy stopped, although he does not agree it is cheating. He knows he has hurt me. Blah blah blah, wedding is postponed, we've discussed an open relationship and/or taking a break.
Background:
We have been together for 10 years, engaged 2. We're in our early 30s. Wedding is planned for next year. No kids, but 3 dogs together.
The beginning of our relationship was like any new relationship. We were young, the honeymoon phase seemed never-ending as we didn't see each other often, and sex was new and exciting.
2 years into dating, I started birth control. Immediately, we didn't notice many sexual side effects, but looking back, there probably were. We had both been taking antidepressants/ anti-anxiety medication before we met, and we both currently still take those medications. We know these have sexual side effects, for both of us.
After dating a few years we moved in together and shortly after, sex became infrequent. About 3 years into living together he brought up concerns about lack of sex and physical intimacy. I eventually realized I got comfortable and content, and didn't prioritize sex and physical intimacy as I should have been. I promised I would change, but I unfortunately didn't. Around this time, he sent a nude photo of himself to a friend of mine. I couldn't believe it, he told me a few days later, and promised to never do anything like that or to hurt me like that again.
Fast forward to now, we own a house together, and still unfortunately, I have done little to nothing to increase my sex drive and physical intimacy. I start little things but no progress is made. For example I say I'm going to plan a "sexy time" but it just doesn't happen. I did surprise him with a photo album of sexy polaroids of myself, which he enjoyed. But maybe a year later he asked a different friend of mine for sexy photos. I think he's just missing that attention that I should be giving him. His love language is physical touch, mine is acts of service and gift giving, and I struggle to show him love in the way he wants to be shown (physically.)
Since our engagement, the past year has been filled with discussions about our dead bedroom: why it happened, can we fix it, etc. For both of us, it's been almost impossible to be excited about being engaged or planning a wedding or getting married because of this issue. We've agreed that we don't want to get married if we're not excited, so we're postponing the wedding. Also, we both see a therapist and have started couples therapy.
Where it gets complicated:
He recently told me that last year, he visited a club a few times. Only on one occasion it got physical: he received a handjob, (I do believe him because at this point there's nothing to hide.) This handjob visit occurred 6 months after he proposed. Leading up to these club visits (which remember, I didn't know about until recently) he would urge me in a healthy way to be intimate, communicate his needs, and so on. But for whatever my multitude of reasons are that I'm working out in therapy (vaginismus, piled on stress, self-esteem issues, maybe not being attracted or turned on by my partner, low libido, possible imbalanced hormones, health scares that may have caused trauma) I just couldn't do it. Of course I regret it, I don't know what's wrong with me and I wish I could snap my fingers and fix it. So I do understand why he went to that club.
We truly do not know what to do. We love each other. We've been through so much, helped each other through a lifetime of stressful events, and experienced such great things together. We've talked about our future together for the past decade. But we also recognize that time spent together does not mean you should or are obligated to stay together. We recognize that right now, neither of us are happy and something needs to change.
We've briefly mentioned opening our relationship, taking a break, or both. But we don't know what that entails. Since we live together and the dogs are like our children, we don't know how a break would logistically work. As for opening our relationship, considering the infidelity, I just don't know. But at the same time, there is no sex or intimacy happening and I want to see him happy in that way. I feel like it would improve his mental health. Our therapist has been focusing more on us rather than discussing those options at the moment.
Of course there is so much more to a decade-long relationship, and I'm trying to be as neutral as possible when writing this. But we just feel like we're in this best friend, roommate, sometimes cuddle limbo and are avoiding truly discussing it because we know the options...we just don't. know. what. to. do. So if anyone has any actual advice, similar stories, or experiences with an open relationship or taking a break (while engaged) please share.
Also if you're going to respond with something unnecessary or unhelpful like "just break up" we'll save you the time and say thank you, we've discussed that option as well.

What’s the Difference Between On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO?

On-page SEO focuses on optimizing parts of your website that are within your control, while off-page SEO focuses on increasing the authority of your domain through content creation and earning backlinks from other websites. To further understand the difference between the two, you have to understand, at a basic level, how search engine algorithms work. Let’s break it down.
There are two main buckets that search engines (SEO) look at when evaluating your site compared to other sites on the web.

1. On-page SEO looks at what your site (or your page) is about
2. Off-page SEO looks at how authoritative and popular your site is

On-Page vs. Off-Page SEO: What’s the Difference?

Put simply, what you rank for is largely determined by on-page factors, while how high you rank in the search results is largely determined by off-page factors.

How Does Each Type of SEO Affect Your Rankings?

What is On-Page SEO?

On-page SEO (also known as “on-site” SEO) is the act of optimizing different parts of your website that affect your search engine rankings. Where your website appears in search engine results pages is determined by a number of ranking factors including site accessibility, page speed, optimized content, keywords, title tags, etc. On-page SEO is about optimizing the stuff that you have control over and can change on your own website.

On-page SEO checklist:

How do you make sure your on-page SEO tactics are up to snuff? Here is a helpful checklist for on-site optimizations that can help curate your strategy.

Title Tags

Put your targeted keywords in the title tag of each page on your site. There are many best practices that go into writing an effective title tag.

• Limit your title tags to 55-60 characters (including spaces)
• Push the keyword closer to the beginning of the title (ONLY if it sounds natural)
• Don’t stuff your keywords
• Include brand at the end of the title tag, separated by a pipe bar () Example: “Chicago SEO Digital Third Coast”

Headings (H1)

Headings are usually the largest words on the page, and for that reason, search engines give them a little more weight than your other page copy. It is a good idea to work your target keywords into the headings of each web page but make sure you accurately reflect your page’s great content.
Make sure your H1s limited to one per page, all other headers are H2 or H3

URL structure

Put keywords into your URLs if possible. However, do not go changing all of your current URLs just so they have keywords in them. You shouldn’t change old URLs unless you plan on redirecting your old ones to your new ones. Consult a professional before doing this.

• Label your directories and folders in a way that makes sense for users
• Don’t repeat keywords in your URL more than once. Keywords are helpful, but overdoing it effects user experience. Example: /best-socks-comparison-best-socks-best-socks?
• Keep URLs as short as possible

Alt text for images

Any content management system should allow you to add something called “alt text” to all images on your website. This text isn’t visible to the average visitor – alt text is in fact used by screen reader software to help blind internet users understand the content of your images. Search engines crawl images in a similar way, so inserting some relevant keywords while accurately describing the image will help search engines understand your page’s content.
Writing an alt attribute for each image keeps your website in compliance with WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). Keep the following things in mind when writing alt text:

• Thoroughly describe the image in 8-10 words
• Include your targeted keyword where it sounds most natural
• Include, if relevant, a geo-locator (e.g., Chicago)

Fast-loading pages, or page load speed

Google wants to help its users find what they’re looking for as quickly as possible to provide the best user experience. Therefore, optimizing your pages to load faster helps your site rank higher in the search results.
Google has a tool called PageSpeed Insights that will analyze your site on both mobile and desktop. and then suggest tips to optimize page speed. There are also several quick fixes to eliminate whatever is bogging your site down and slowing your page load time. Key site speed factors to consider:

• Minimizing HTTP requests
• Making sure server response time is <200ms
• Setting browser caching to at least a week or longer
• Enabling Gzip compression
• Having image sizes under 100kb (.jpg, .png, .gif)
• Placing all CSS in an external style sheet
• Minifying all JS, CSS and HTML
• Prioritizing above the fold content loading

Mobile Friendliness

In recent years, Google has prioritized mobile page loading speed as a key ranking metric.
How do you know if your website is mobile-friendly? Unfortunately, Google recently dropped support for some free public tools that helped. However, you can now use Google Search Console to analyze this type of information. Specifically, the Core Web Vitals report can help you identify if your mobile pages are loading slower than they should be.

Page Content

The content on your pages needs to be useful to people. If they search for something too specific to find your page, they need to be able to find what they’re looking for. It needs to be easy to read and provide value to the end user. Google has various ways to measure if your content is useful.

• Aim for at least 500 words of copy. Although there is no exact formula for how many words a page should have, Google seems to prefer when a page has a lot of relevant and helpful content surrounding your topic.
• Copy must be unique to each page, not duplicated from other pages on your site, and should directly address your visitors’ search queries
• Push the keyword closer to the beginning of the title, but ONLY if it sounds natural

Internal Linking

Linking internally to other pages on your website is useful to visitors and it is also useful to search engines. Here’s an internal link to another blog post on our site that talks more about internal linking. Very meta.
When adding internal links, make sure to have relevant anchor text. Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink (usually indicated by blue font color and underline). To optimize your anchor text, make sure the selected word or phrase is relevant to the page you’re linking to.
On-page SEO ensures that your site can be read by both potential customers and search engine robots. With good on-page SEO, search engines can easily index your web pages, understand what your site is about, and easily navigate the structure and content of your website, thus ranking your site accordingly. As a best practice, make sure your page content includes 1-3 relevant internal links.

Schema Markup

Adding structured data helps Google better understand the content of a page. Google also uses certain types of structured data to display “rich results” in SERPs such as a recipe with start ratings or step-by-step instructions with an image carousel. These rich results often appear at or near the top of SERPs and generally have higher click-through-rates than normal organic listings.
Google prefers structured data to use schema.org vocabulary, and recommends using JSON-LD format. They also provide a handy Rich Results Test tool to check your code. While there are a variety of ways to add structured data to your website (plugins, Google Tag Manager, etc.), it’s always best to get a professional involved if you’re not comfortable writing code.
Check out Google’s guide to structured data and rich results here.

Social Tags

Having your content shared on social tells Google that people find your content relevant, helpful and reputable. Not every page on your site is share-worthy, but you can optimize the pages that are with these tips:

• Make sure you have Open Graph tags and Twitter Cards installed
• Make it easy with “tweet this quote” links, or social share buttons for each post

Core Web Vitals

User experience is key to a website’s long-term success. In spring 2020, Google unveiled Core Web Vitals, a common set of signals that they deem “critical” to all users’ web experiences.
The purpose of these signals is to quantify the user experience with a website, from page visual stability and load time, to interactive experiences.

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – measures perceived page loading speed and marks the point at which the majority of the page content has downloaded.
• First Input Delay – quantifies user experience of a user’s initial engagement with a page.
• Cumulative Layout Shift – quantifies the amount of layout shift on visible page content and measures visual stability of a page. It’s usually causes by images without dimensions, dynamically injected content, web fonts causing FOIT/FOUT, and other embeds added without dimensions.

To check your LCP score, access your Google PageSpeed Insights and make sure your page hits LCP within 2.5 seconds. To accomplish this, remove unnecessary third-party scripts that may be running, upgrading your web host, activating “lazy loading” so page elements load only as users scroll down the page, and remove any large page elements that may be slowing it down.
One of the simplest ways to optimize cumulative layout shift is to add height and width dimensions to each new site element. Also, avoid adding new content above existing content on a page (unless responding to user interaction).

Page Experience

Google is working on a new ranking signal (likely to come out in 2024) that prioritizes websites with positive user experiences.
The ‘page experience signal’ will consist of Core Web Vitals, plus mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines.
According to Google, “optimizing for these factors makes the web more delightful for users across all web browsers and surfaces, and helps sites evolve towards user expectations on mobile. We believe this will contribute to business success on the web as users grow more engaged and can transact with less friction.”

What is Off-Page SEO?

Off-page SEO focuses on increasing the authority of your domain through the act of getting links from other websites.
A good analogy for how authority works is this. If you have a bathtub with rubber duckies in it (the ducks are your pages), and you start filling the tub with water (links), your duckies are all going to rise to the top.
This is how a site like Wikipedia ranks for pretty much everything under the sun. It has so much water in its bathtub that if you throw another rubber duck in it, it’s going to float to the top without any other effort.
There’s a score called “Domain Authority” that calculates how authoritative your website is compared to other sites. You can type your domain name into here to see your score.

How to optimize for off-page SEO

There are several factors that influence your off-page SEO rankings. While each one is tackled with different strategies, they share an overarching goal of building the trust and reputation of your website from the outside.

1. Inbound links
2. Social media marketing
3. Guest blogging and guest posting
4. Unlinked brand mentions
5. Influencer marketing

The biggest off-page SEO factor is the number and quality of backlinks to your website. Some examples of ways you can build links to your website are:

• Creating awesome content that people want to link to because it is valuable. For example, this super helpful blog post about how to improve about us pages. The post provides a ton of actionable recommendations. People tend to link to content that is useful. Creating an online tool for your industry is another powerful content type. Things like online calculators tend to get the most backlinks out of all content types because they help people accomplish a goal.
• Social media shares of your content that ultimately generate links.
• Outreach e-mails to influencers in your industry that ultimately link to you.
• Guest blogging on sites related to yours. These guest posts will have links back to your site.

While link quantity is still important, content creators and SEO professionals are realizing that link quality is now more important than link quantity. As such, creating shareable content is the first step to earning valuable links and improving your off-page SEO.
How many links do you need for good off-page SEO? That is a tough question and it’s going to be based on the domain authority of your competitors, as you want to make sure you’re playing in the same sandbox.
SEOs also used to believe that buying links was a valid way of link building; however, Google will now penalize you for buying links in an attempt to manipulate page rank. You can also be penalized for submitting your links to link directories whose sole purpose is to increase your domain authority. Again, quality wins out over quantity when it comes to link building.

Is On-Page or Off-Page SEO More Important?

It’s not about choosing between on and off-page SEO, that would be like having to choose between a foundation or a roof for your house. On-page and off-page SEO work together to improve your search engine rankings in a complementary fashion.
However, SEOs generally advise getting your on-page SEO ducks in a row before focusing too much on off-page SEO.
Just like building a house, you want to set the foundation first before building the rest of the house. Like a foundation, you may need to come back and do some maintenance to your on-page SEO from time to time. Balancing the two will help make your website “bilingual” so that your users can understand it as well as the search engine robots- and that’s how your rankings start to improve.

SEO #onpageseo #Offpageseo #Corewebvitals

Anyone else have difficulty putting on shoes/tying laces whilst bloated? As I bend over I get acid/bile in my throat and shortness of breath…
Not the biggest R-CPD issue but just curious if anyone else has issue.!!
I’m 50 YOM average build in the morning, noticeably larger in the afternoon/evening!
Botox booked 🤞it works.

Hey everyone, hope you’re all doing well. I (23M) recently got diagnosed with autism. I’m originally from Kochi, Kerala, and currently working in Chennai. This diagnosis came just a few weeks ago. After college in Chennai, I got a job offer from a company here, and since then, I started noticing certain things about myself. My team lead had a talk with me, suggesting I look into my well-being, and eventually, I found out I’m autistic.
I shared this with my dad, who lives in Kochi, and we realized he might also be on the spectrum. We’re planning a joint consultation when I visit home. Initially, my dad thought I was exaggerating, but after doing some research, both he and my mom agreed with me. So far, I’ve only discussed this with four of my friends because of the misconceptions about autism in India.
I haven’t figured out how to open up to the rest of my family about this. For a long time, I’ve been annoyed by certain things they do but kept it to myself to avoid causing a scene. They generally think I’m laid-back and mostly chill, though socially awkward. If someone disturbs me, I might react strongly, which has led to a few incidents. I come across as rude sometimes without meaning to, but they attribute it to social awkwardness. I also avoid texting, preferring long conversations over the phone or in person, which they just see as part of my character. And also generally VERY clumsily. But mostly positive and think good of me,
But I wanted to let them know that I am autistic, just so that in the future I can avoid any misunderstanding and fights. But after a recent event I am shit scared. So My oldest cousin got married to this guy back in 2018. But later turned out he had BPD and the shit that they talked and done to him is just appalling. The only person who were supporting him was my parents and a few cousins (There is no SA for DA, its just that my sister found him odd and after he was diagionised she just left him cold, like they have 2 kids with him, but still she just left him like she never knew him cause of u know misconption), My parent where like at least lets support him for his treatment but they were like NOPE. And the shitest thing is they got divorced by telling the court he was abscounding and did some shady stuff so they can be legally divorced but doesn't have to inform him because they got scared on how he would react. FFS they even denied to have the kids visit him. I ain't no legal expert but long story short they got divorced and the poor guy thinks she would come back to him with the kids after he gets his MH in order.
So after this incident I am shit on how to proceed, cause I feel something similar can happen to me. My parents also warned not to tell anyone about this. I have a cousin who is the US, she is my first cousin and the same age is me. We are pretty close so i was wondering starting from there, and she is from my mom's side of the family (the same one where the divorced story happened) and for my dad's side I have a cousin who lives in Bangalore, he is like very old, like his son is 4 years younger than me. But a very chill dude, I can rely on him. But I have no clue on how to proceed with this so if anyone who has a similar experience or any idea on how to do it, do let me know cause i have no clue on how to tell another person that I am autsitc.
Also thank you to everyone who took their time to read this very long post, sorry for that.

Do you believe a stutter is caused by social anxiety? There have been so many theories: social anxiety (like this thread is about), non-diaphragmatic breathing, inhaling while speaking/wanting to speak and many more theories. Here in my country (the Netherlands) there is a course called ‘Del Ferro’, they focus on diaphragmatic breathing and lots of people have reported it worked but a lot of people said it worked for a while and then it went away. My stutter is caused by genetics very likely, people on both sides of my family have it (yeah, bad luck I guess). But if genetics is the cause, is it even possible to totally get rid of it? Since you can’t change your genes. But I don’t stutter when talking to my cat, so is it social anxiety?

In the heart of Chicago, where the skyline pierced the heavens and the streets pulsed with life, there lived a man named Victor Kane. At 26 years old and a startling 6'3" in stature, Victor commanded attention effortlessly. His piercing gaze seemed to see through the very fabric of one's soul, and his knowing, flirtatious smirk hinted at secrets that few could ever fathom. Victor was a man of many faces, each one carefully crafted and expertly worn to blend into any situation, like a chameleon adapting to its surroundings. Each interaction with another human was as if it were another painting to be hung in the Art Institute of Chicago, a masterpiece of social maneuvering and charm.
To most, he appeared unremarkable, perhaps even a bit dim, an illusion he maintained with meticulous precision. Yet beneath this facade lay a mind as sharp as a dagger, honed by years of strategic thinking, manipulation, and the art of emotional deceit. Victor had learned from the best. His father, a man deeply entrenched in the shadowy world of organized crime, had mastered the art of bending reality to his will. A master chess player, he treated people like pieces on a grand chessboard, moving them at his whim, always six steps ahead. Victor had absorbed these lessons like a sponge, his young mind eagerly soaking up every tactic, every subtle nuance of control.
Battles with his father have left their scars, trailing off Victor like a snake's entrails as they slither through crowded streets, scanning for their next meal. They probe the aura of each passerby, tasting their energy, yet to their disappointment, they find no juicy, dirt-filled sponge of pain and suffering. They taste desires, yet nothing hits just right. Empty husks, devoid of the essence they crave. Living memories enshroud him in a cloud of black smoke, a spectral fog visible only to a witch. A demon, masquerading as a homeless man and muttering incoherent whispers, feels the snake's embrace tighten around him. He halts abruptly, turning to Victor with a knowing gaze. 'I see you,' he murmurs, 'Such discipline and composure may deceive the others, yet it's only a matter of time before they find you.' The homeless man continues his walk, pulling a black suitcase along, his tattered white shirt contrasting sharply with his black suit, and no tie to complete the ensemble.
Victor makes no comment, his mind a labyrinth of dark intentions and calculated moves. He viewed the world as a malleable entity, something he could shape and twist to suit his needs. The streets, the people, the very air he breathed; they were all part of a grand, intricate game where he alone held the key. He had no qualms about using others to achieve his goals, seeing them as mere tools in his grand design. It was a dangerous philosophy, one which required constant vigilance and adaptability. As he moved through the throngs of oblivious souls, he could almost hear the whispers of their deepest fears and hidden sins. The scars trailed behind him, living entities of their own, reaching out hungrily, desperate for a morsel of genuine suffering. Yet the city, with all its noise and chaos, offered little more than hollow echoes and fleeting shadows. Traces of happiness. Lost children in the never ending void of their own desperation. Victor's eyes flickered with a cold, calculating light. He was a master of this urban jungle, a predator in search of worthy prey. The demon’s warning lingered in his mind, yet it only fueled a burning hunger. He thrived in the shadows, where power and control were his for the taking. Each step he took was a step closer to his ultimate end goal, a twisted vision of dominance, only he could see.
In the distance, the city’s lights shimmered like false promises, yet Victor knew better. Beneath the surface, in hidden corners and forgotten alleys, darkness mirrored his own. In this abyss, he felt certain he would find what he sought: the true essence of his own hunger, the raw, unfiltered energy he could devour. Victor thrived on the underestimation of others, reveling when people perceived him as lesser. Such perceptions made his manipulations appear as innocent mistakes, acts of ignorance and oblivion. His favorite targets: those with inflated egos, individuals convinced of their invincibility.
"A person with a big ego is like an orgasm," he often mused, speaking as if to his shadow. "It's just so easy. Their first mistake: telling me we're not equals. Afterward, they reveal all the buttons and levers in their psyche. They hand me their own weapon on a silver platter, asking, 'Victor, please send me to meet Anpu. Please show me the gates of my own demise.' Their insanity begs to be freed from this curse of societal norms. Always the first mistake, then the rest follow." Laughter echoed from the snakes twining around Victor. As he whispered these musings, the words ensnared a group of Venezuelans nearby, inciting them into a frenzy of violence without understanding the spark. Victor watched, casually tossing a silver dollar their way as if to say, "Welcome to the sanctuary," his smirk a shadow under the flickering streetlights. He calls to the boys, 'there now before you boys get into trouble remember this, you're only seeing the lions teeth, yet you haven't seen what triggered it.' They stared at Victor, startled, as he bid them farewell with a two-finger salute from his left temple and continued wandering down the street.
A drone sliced through the air, its camera lens capturing the serpentine twists of the Chicago River below. Victor, watching its flight, was transported to his youth, to days spent cobbling together a demonic owl from discarded household trinkets and an owl decoy. He would pilot this macabre creation through his neighborhood, a spectral puppeteer orchestrating nocturnal ballets which both delighted and unnerved his unsuspecting audience. A sinister grin unfurled across his lips, a shadow's whisper, as memories of those simple machines mingled with the sophisticated arsenal he commanded today. In the digital age, Victor had become a maestro of manipulation, his tools refined yet no less mischievous. Social media platforms were his stage, targeted advertisements and spoofed numbers his actors, each one playing their part in his grand, deceptive symphony. With the deftest touch, he planted seeds of doubt, spun webs of misinformation, transforming allies into adversaries, stitching chaos into the fabric of daily lives with mere whispers masquerading as shouts. His schemes were crafted with such subtlety, woven so seamlessly into the warp and weft of reality, that his victims believed themselves architects of their own undoing.
The crowning jewel of his current machinations was a prototype drone, a whimsical homage to the contraptions of his youth yet imbued with the precision of modern technology. This drone, engineered to navigate from the chilly confines of his refrigerator to the steamy oasis of his rooftop hot tub, was a testament to his technical acumen. Crafted to be mended with mere baubles from any corner hardware store, it stood as a symbol of practical genius, a playful yet potent emblem of his enduring craft.
Victor glimpsed a universe of possibilities within this project, each drone a seed from which new opportunities might bloom. "Perhaps I could craft a model for a dive shop in Australia," he mused. "A sentinel to monitor the slow dance of decay among the coral reefs." Such a gift could forge pathways, perhaps even secure an internship, an opportunity to wield his 417 subclass visa before its flame flickered out. The prospect of traversing Australia's vast landscapes, of weaving his influence through uncharted territories and minds, sparked a thrill within him. Beyond the realm of circuitry and code, Victor possessed a profound mastery over the human psyche. He had the uncanny ability to read individuals, to delve into the murky depths of their insecurities and desires. With the finesse of a sculptor, he could mold a woman’s perception, convincing her of a soul-deep connection, crafting mirages of perfect compatibility. Yet, for all his prowess in the art of deception, Victor adhered to his own strict code. He eschewed physical violence, never staining his hands with assault; his dominion was the mind, his influence woven through the delicate fabric of psychology.
In Chicago's suffocating underbelly, Victor's father regarded him not with paternal concern, rather with venomous animosity. Their relationship was a battleground, devoid of affection or empathy, cloaked threats masquerading as concern. "Victor, if you don't see a psychiatrist, I'm cutting you off," he declared, his voice a cold hiss, a deeper wish for Victor's demise lurking beneath. Victor's laugh, hollow, echoing through the night, a sound devoid of warmth, knew well the true nature of the psychiatrist and the deeper machinations of his father's cruel intentions. His father viewed him not as a son, yet as a nemesis, a presence he wished to erase from existence. Surrounded by the oppressive cityscape, Victor stood alone atop his building, the L line screeching past, the lights below mere distant, watchful eyes. "Tomorrow, I bend reality once more," he whispered into the void, his voice merging with the cold wind sweeping the rooftops.
The relentless pursuit of his father's malice shadowed him into the darkest city corners where shadows moved with intent, whispering of ancient, sinister forces. Here, in the corner of his eyes an oozing of black liquid drenched an alley, a tar monster, a grotesque manifestation of the city’s darkest secrets, its gnarled face and gleaming teeth mirroring the twisted relationship endured. Against a backdrop of a city thrumming with malevolent energy, Victor pondered the fragile line between delusion and reality. "It's only delusional till it works, so is it really delusional?" he mused aloud, his words dissipating into the night where the distinction between madness and genius blurred by darkness.
Retreating from the alley, his figure melded into the shadows, each step deliberate, burdened with the weight of a cursed legacy. He was acutely aware of his dual role, both manipulator and pawn in a grander, more malevolent game, a game orchestrated by forces predating the city itself. Every movement influenced by the sinister energy pervading Chicago, a legacy of corruption and darkness intertwined with his own existence. Victor understood his every action overseen by the ancient entity had taken interest in him, an entity finding delight in his struggle, offering protection at a dreadful cost.
Emerging from the shadows back into the flickering city lights, Victor found no solace in the illumination yet his smile stretched reaching his eyes showing his gleaming razor sharp teeth. These lights did not offer hope only humor; they were beacons of a foreboding reality. He resolved to continue bending reality, wielding the cursed power both protecting, ensnaring him, and pointing out the irony of his situation. Day after day, he would play this dark game, a master of deceit entwined with an ancient force more profound and sinister than any could fathom.
With one final, lingering look at the alley where darkness reigned supreme, Victor Kane laughed, a hollow echo fading as he stepped into the nearby pub. Inside, the warm glow contrasted starkly with the night's chilling embrace, yet the shadows seemed merely to lurk at the edges, waiting. At their usual spot by the worn bar, he found Billy Smith, his old high school Basketball teammate, with two pints of beer ready. They clinked glasses, the sound slicing through the hum of conversations around them. "To the unexpected," Victor intoned, his voice laced with a hint of irony. As they settled into the rhythm of their catch-up, the conversation inevitably turned toward the unfolding news, the war in Ukraine, an event that had caught the world off guard.
"No one ever saw it coming," Billy remarked, his tone a mix of wonder and concern.
Victor's eyes flickered with a dark amusement, and raising his glass again, he offered a toast, this time in Latin, a language that carried the weight of history and secrets. "Ad profundis malorum," he declared, which translated to 'To the depths of evils.'
Billy paused, the words hanging between them like a veil being slowly drawn back to reveal a hidden scene. The toast was enigmatic, resonant with Victor’s acknowledgment of the chaos brewing both near and far, a chaos that, perhaps, only he could navigate.
As the night deepened within the grimy confines of the pub, where every corner whispered of misdeeds and the air hung heavy with the scent of stale beer and lost hopes, the laughter and chatter provided a deceptive cover for the profound game silently playing in Victor’s mind. His cryptic toast, "Ad profundis malorum," echoed a darker undertone amidst the jovial noise.
Across the bar, a woman with long jet black hair and piercing grey eyes watched Victor. Clad in a striking red full-grain leather trench coat, her presence was undeniably conspicuous, yet paradoxically, she remained unnoticed. Despite her short stature, she was fit, her features sharply defined, an attractiveness seemingly almost otherworldly amidst the grime of the pub. Curiously, not even the barkeep spared her a glance, as if she existed in a separate realm, visible only to those she chose to confront. As Billy excitedly shared his plans to open a dive shop with a taco bar on the roof, the woman’s lips moved in a whisper, her voice a soft, clear bell in the din, carrying a dire warning. "I know what you are. We found you." At that moment, a flashback surged through Victor’s mind, a haunting image of a colonial girl he once saw in the Fraser Experimental Forest. His girlfriend at the time had turned to him, her voice tinged with unease. "Victor, do you see what I see? The girl? Yeah, the girl. I can feel something following us. As if it knows what we are yet won't approach, yet I can feel it." This vivid recollection now seemed a prelude to the current moment, a chilling reminder the forces he had glimpsed back then were the same now declaring their presence.
The evening wound down with plans made and stories shared, yet the woman’s prophetic words and the ghostly memory of the girl hung unseen in the air, portending looming confrontations between the light she embodied and the shadow following Victor Kane. As the patrons began to drift away, the shadows reclaiming their territory within the pub, the mysterious woman’s figure faded into the background, her message delivered, her purpose yet unclear but undoubtedly intertwined with Victor’s fate.
The end.

We sit down and try to talk it out I’m livid now. I’m on the verge of just shutting it all down and going emotionless again. She says sorry.. about my mother and everything then starts blaming me! Holy fucking shit I’m providing almost all the finances I’m doing equal shares of laundry dishes and folding except for the last GODDAMN WEEK I’ve been putting atleast one kid to bed getting the puppy calmed down and still having the audacity to workout maintain the lawn and work 9-13 hour days. I called her out and it was cold. I’m not proud but it was needed.
She tried to defend her actions at this point I’m done and just walk out. I need a moment. She gets upset and everyone decides they need to go north to a college down to shop. I’m alone wiring electrical and putting together the toddlers bed and retapping parts of the wall… I haven’t felt this much self loathing in years. I was just sitting there working which was the only thing keeping me away from razors again. I wanted to cry but I can’t anymore. No release could be found that wasn’t self destructive.
They all come back like nothing ever happened. At this point I’ve over excreted what little energy I had. My skin was cold and clammy but my body was sweating profusely. My face was pale and I was struggling to breathe. Now she says I should be resting and she has no idea why I’m pushing so hard?! Am I being fucking gaslit?! This was all your idea this was your demand?!
Flash forward an hour my puppy was outside for about 30 minutes and it’s hot so I try to get her in. She refuses which isn’t uncommon but she’s hiding under the deck.
I get her out and in and make sure she’s drinking water we get down stairs and I’m about to feed her and she fucking pees on the carpet. It’s tinged with blood. Oh fuck no not now, well let the wife know and she knows it’s just like when she first arrived from Iraq. Got a UTI again, so I have to now rearrange all the shit from the projects in the garage get the car seats out and her crate in the truck pushing way past what my body wanted or needed. Yeeted an energy drink. Which was also a mistake.
Then wife goes “you look like your about to pass out I’ll do it for you, I’ll drive her the hour to the vets” cause no where is open on a Saturday except an hour away. No fuck that I just pushed myself as fucking hard for you and got the puppy I’m in it now. Fuck whatever happens.
Drive down to big city, talked to mom entire trip and forced her to tell me what wife said about me. Same shit like always, her and MIL shit on me for everything. barely make it cause I’m dying inside looks like a ghost staring at me in the mirror. Fuck who cares honesty. 5 hours there 1000$ later got meds for her and head home…

18f. i dont know how to tell my mom to stop talking about my ass. this is a serious post. my mom is single, desperate for affection/attention from anyone she can find, has a new boyfriend every couple months and still talks to other guys while in relationships. gives you a good idea on what kind of person she is. it's been like this since i was like 5, and when i was too young to stay home alone she'd take me to guy's houses or parking lots or where ever they met up. anyway. she's very open about her sex life to me, and has been since i was like 12. talks about her kinks, sexual experiences, guys shes fucking, asks ME about kinks/fetishes, asks me for help posting only fans stuff, things i probably shouldn't be doing. just generally uncomfortable. i always tell her i dont want to hear about that stuff or help her with that stuff but she doesn't really care. what bugs me the most though is she ALWAYS talks about my ass. i've got physical problems that cause me to overheat very easily, so i usually just walk around in a t-shirt and boxer shorts. (not even short shorts). she always makes comments on my chest (i'm an F cup,) and my ass. she says my legs are so athletic and i have thick thighs, and that i have her ass, and my chest is bigger than hers. she ALWAYS talks about my ass though. how it's round and how guys love a nice ass. i hate it and i dont feel comfortable at all. she'll slap it or pinch it sometimes when she walks by, and i thought it was more of a teasing thing growing up, but its making me more and more uncomfortable nowadays and she won't listen when i tell her to stop.

I am in a terrible and scary situation at the moment and I need your advice or experiences. A week ago I was experiencing very thick and intense discharge. I came to the midwives of the hospital , they took a sample to see if amniotic fluid was leaking or if I had the cervix open and also took a sample to check for any infections. All were negative but discharge was getting intense. Two days ago I had my 22 week morphology scan with a different doc than my OB. The doc saw that my cervix was funnelling quite a lot. He immediately admitted me to the high risk ward and called my doc who came. In the beginning the doc was positive he said ok we will keep u just tonight then you go home and bedrest and I am sure we will reach 34 weeks. Upon my admission they also did about all the tests possible for infection etc. During the night I was feeling a bit weird and that the discharge was getting more watery than the initial mucus so I begged the midwife to check if amnuitic fluid was present and it was. The next day the doc came and told me that my chances of my baby surving are low as he did another ultrasound and saw that the cervix opened from the outside further than yesterday and given that fluid is leaking there is no way we can stitch the cervix or put a pessary. To note that my cervix is not short however just funnelling and now open. Then yesterday he came and said that we have maybe identified the bacteria causing this its ureaplasma and i am being treated for it. I am also on progesterone and magnesium and antibiotics. My doc said that my hope to reach 30 weeks is close to impossible but we will try the best. He told me there is hope but not much. He cannot do surgery either. If by Tuesday nothing changes it will be a great sign and we can think of other treatments. So far I am stable. Anyone had a similar situation? I am so so worried what were your outcomes? Thank you 🙏

Hello, in my opinion Eclipsa was a pretty bad queen for Mewni and i'm going to show you why this is the case.
Ever since i joined the fandom, Eclipsa seems to be a fan favorite in the show, where people and the show see her as a 'misunderstood bad girl with a good intentions' or that she did nothing wrong for the most part at least.
And while i agree she was misunderstood and that she at least doesn't have any evil intentions this doesn't excuse her awful performance as queen especially in the aftermath of Conquer during her short-lived second reign.
Eclipsa's First Reign (300+ years before the main events in the show)
During her first reign she almost caused the collapse of the Butterfly Dinasty by running away from her kingdom(and her duty as queen and legal husband) with a monster, and not any monsters but The King of Monsters, who was known to eat and terrorize mewmans, her subjects. Yes, i know Globgor sucessfully changed and became a vegetarian for his love of Eclipsa but the mewmans and the MHC weren't aware of this fact. You can imagine how mewmans would feel to have as their king someone nicknamed 'Plucker of Limbs' or 'Crusher of Skulls' and he would still be a possible threat as he could at any moment revert back into his old ways without Eclipsa's support, as we seen in the episode 'Doop-Doop' Globgor likey was the one with the idea to have a mewman-style cake hinting that he still has those instincts inside him but i digress.
For all his faults, King Shastacan remaining as the King-Regent after being cheated on and abandoned by the Queen of Mewni understandably wanted nothing to do with the bastard(in royal succession term) offspring of Eclipsa and Globgor and thus he choosed to disinheret her in subtle way possible by swapping Meteora with a peasant mewman baby, he was the one likely who ordered the MHC with finding the replacement heir to the throne which they did in Festivia who was adopted by King Shastacan and MHC into the Butterfly family, again as subtle as possible in order to maintain stability and give the impression of continuance of the royal bloodline.
And another argument to justify this action, in the hindsight, the MHC were vindicated and proven right about their fear of Meteora the hybrid mewman-monster of the most powerful magic Queen and king of Monsters, considering how powerful she became in the season 3 final episodes and especially the finale 'Conquer', she almost caused the destruction of mewmanity and the Butterfly kingdom.
Eclipsa's Second Reign (Post Season 3 Finale after Conquer)
And now getting to her 2nd reign, after Star decided(sadly and unwisely in my opinion) to give the throne back to Eclipsa as she saw Eclipsa being the rightful queen(despite she effectively abdicating when she fled the kingdom the run away with the Globgor but whatever)
One of her first acts as queen was to move the capital to the Monster Temple as the Butterfly Castle laid in ruins after the Star vs Meteora showdown, which is understandable but she decided to keep it as the permanent capital and leave the Butterfly Castle, with so much prestige and history behind it in ruins which probably wasn't taken lightly by the mewman population who felt like their new queen(they already distrust and dislike) snub them for monsters, especially after naming the new capital 'New Monster Town'
This change symbolizing a change of focus away from mewmans and towards the monsters which again likely infuriated alot of mewmans, fermenting an understandable resentment towards Eclipsa the queen who they traditionally depend for guidance and aid.
Another awful act was confiscating the houses of mewmans and "returning" them to the monsters.
This is my opinion was one if not the worst decree done by Eclipsa, not only she expropriating homes mewman family used to live for generations but she let many of them literally homeless and basically to their fate, and you wonder why so many mewmans grew to absolutely despise their "Queen" who had only done them harm so far.
Luckily for the homeless mewmans, their ex-queen Moon who's actually a competent manager and ruler managed to create a small town our of her initial Yurt for her unfortunate former subjects who finally found a place of refugee and belonging even if they had a bit of a rocky relation initially.
Not only that but Eclipsa left former once prosperous towns in ruins(likely caused by Meteora's rampage) and their inhabitants homeless and destitute in 'Ghost of Butterfly Castle' without any plan to repair either by dispatching teams or using her magic to help. Again you wonder why so many mewmans continued to despite their queen.
Yet in another reckless act of of Eclipsa, while understandable from her perspective but very irresponsible was trying to free her controversial husband Globgor.
Thus potentially putting her mewman subjects at risk in case Globgor had desires for (understandably) revenge and straining relations with the other kingdoms who were already (understandably) horrified by the return of the 300 year old 'Queen of Darkness' and her Mewman-eating Husband who they heard so many dark stories and myths about.
She was basically inviting a coup against her by the MHC who didn't trust her to begin with and especially didn't appreciate her efforts to free Globgor who they fought hard to defeat.
While she managed in the end specially in 'Cornonation' to win the hearts of the mewmans who decided to come to her coronation event, this wasn't enough to convince the rest of the disgruntled mewmans to return, and as that wasn't bad enough, many of them took interest and joined Mina's radical movement to remove Eclipsa by force, while partially motivated by genuine racism against monsters, i think their biggest reason to rebel was due to their hatred and disappointment of Eclipsa's rule, which can be understandable considering her decrees.
In the end, while this doesn't justify Moon's decision to ally with Mina (an extremist and insane monster hater) which eventually led to the destruction of magic, Eclipsa pretty much made these conditions possible due to her policies and decisions, from abandoning her people in favor of monsters to refusing to mend ties with the MHC and prove them wrong, the finale could've been avoided if she was to put it bluntly a better queen, Eclipsa wasn't a bad person from the beginning to the end but she just wasn't a good queen for Mewni, and perhaps the throne being returned to her was a mistake, all things considered.

so lets give some background- Ill call the first friend maya. She is a very sweet person and honestly would never purposely hurt anyones feelings. Lets call this second girl cara and cara honestly can be passive aggressive and be stubborn about her opinions. Theres another girl, lets call her Bee. Bee used to be best friends with maya but now only talks and prefers to talk to cara, which is her choice so its whatever. Cara has shit talked all of us including Bee and we know this for sure. She left her old friend group because they knew she shit talked them, and she blames me for them coming up to me and asking if she did the same with me, which I said yes to. We are all part of another big friend group lets say 14 people. We put our differences aside because its really not that deep and everything was chill In our group. Recently some girl started a slander account on insta making fun of people in our year group. We were curious who it was as this was the third time i think and they never got caught. While the whole gc were texting and trying to figure it out just for fun, Cara says she knows who it is and what we are guessing is wrong and she knows how this girl "operates." We just asked out of curiosity, "who is it" cause i thought as good friends for a few years she would tell us. She said she didnt want to and coudnt. we said and I quote "alr its ur choice but is there any reason you cant?" we asked out of concern and curiosity and it was well intended. However, she said she just "I cant." we then said "ah fine then its ur choice."
Maya asked after "did this person say anything to u before doing this?" which she asked because she thought that the person behind the account had announced it and cara heard or something along those lines. Cara interpreted it as Maya was saying she was involved in the account and was friends with this person which:

1. if youre friends with them, then you arnt responsible for their bad actions but covering up for them is wrong, so as long as u report it, its fine and we dont really care
2. Where tf did u see it as if maya was saying u and this person were besties, her text did not say anything like that at all???
3. if you arnt going to tell us who it is, why keep announcing you know this person and how they "operate," which makes it sound like you know them well

Cara sent 3 voice messages on the group chat and then a whole paragraph basically saying, "how could u think i would be friends with a person like that tf." I felt bad for Maya as she kept apologising when she didnt even have to, and I know she woudnt even hurt a fly and didnt mean any harm. So I said "i read the text as if she was just asking if this person said something about it to you, not that you were involved." and I also said "its just a misunderstanding cara!" which is what it was. But soon after Bee steps in and asks Maya "are u okay bro tf" "why would you say that" "this is horrendous." and writes a paragraph that assuming stuff is wrong. But didnt cara assume Maya was being mean? Bee and cara sent maya whole rants on priv after, at like 12 in the night and maya was asking me to help out because she didnt know what to do and kept apologizing.
I asked Cara why she didnt see that maya didnt mean any harm, but long story short cara kept telling me that i was gaslighting her and making her believe that her side of the story was wrong and i never took her side,
she brought up her whole old friend group and said it was my fault that they think she shit talked them (there was screen shot proof of her doing that and they only asked me if cara did the same to me which I had proof off so I said yes).
Cara said maya and me attacked her on the gc, and when Bee stepped up it was her being mature and not taking a side which is so wrong what, It feels like double standards to me because when i stepped up and said nothing wrong btw just that it was a "misunderstanding," she said I was wrong. I dont know what to do but its really not that deep and its ruining the whole friend group as no one wants to take sides seeing as we have our finals and no time to fixate on this.
Cara keeps saying no one sees her side and she keeps saying she knows shes correct. I said I acknowledge u have ur own views but so do I so can we just move on from 1 simple text? and she said no. she seems to have forgiven Maya but is still mad at me. I apologised anyway for how our texts may have come accross but she said she doesnt want to see my side because im wrong and i cant justify it.
what should I do and AITAH

As the title implies, I need some help figuring out how to balance what should be a theatrical moment with actual game mechanics. The reason why I brought this up is because it was during a final boss fight where a mad desperate queen was performing a ritual to revive her fallen beloved king and that my players had to stop her ritual since she had to perform blood sacrifices for it to happen. To cut a long story short the queen managed to revive the king mainly due to them rolling low on the initiative count and one of the players argued that the revived king wasnt allowed to have their legendary sword equipped upon their revival as well as the queen shouldn't be able to grab the legendary shield to give to him either nor take actions. Basically argued mechanical game reasons why since I was describing a scene to them where the King stood up drawing their blade and the queen grabbed the shield to offer to the king and that would start the real final encounter. Ended up putting the game to a bit of a halt near the climactic end. I understand where they're coming from since they want to avoid their party from being dealt tons of damage since they knew before hand that these legendary weapons contain great magic within them since the mini bosses they fought to get there also had similar versions with the effects just being glorified breath weapons. In the end what ended up happening was the same player stole the shield and prevented the King and queen from taking their turns on their initiative counts since one already did their action to cast a ritual while the other had to use theirs to only grab either the sword or the shield since dead people don't have weapons equipped. I know the argument that can be made is that these things should be hand waved away to keep the game flowing but they really weren't into the idea and still wanted to argue against it. Any help would be appreciated in case something like this happened again.

hey! just venting haha.. but i saw my bf this week and hung out in the park. everything was going well until i just suddenly went non-verbal. i was already having a terrible week at home and at school, also really wasn’t feeling my best due to that. but i didn’t tell him any of that. i know i shouldn’t have acted like that though. my bf kept on asking what was wrong and i just unintentionally kept on giving him short responses. he told me that he felt like he was talking to a wall and he didn’t really know if i wanted to see him that day due to the way i was acting. he said that how i was acting kinda turned him off and he was overthinking that if i get too comfortable in our relationship is that that’s how i’ll always be like. i’ll admit that what he said hurt me a bit.
he talked to me about it the day after and said that he didn’t appreciate how i was. i told him that i was just having a bad week and was feeling a bit down, it had nothing personal to do with him. i did my best to explain it very well to my bf cause he gets anxious and sensitive when i become silent/distant/cold (which only happened this one time) as he overthinks i’m second-guessing certain things so i just wanted ro reassure him.
it then went to the topic on how i should just properly communicate with him. he loves communicating and is really good at it. i kinda envy that ability of his. but he’s noticed that i’m a closed off person and he doesn’t like that “i’m not honest with him”. i don’t think that’s entirely true. but still, i grew up avoidant and my bf is the first guy to ever encourage me to actively communicate and reinforces that i shouldn’t be afraid to do that.
i honestly don’t know where my post is going. i guess i’m just looking for any advice on how to properly communicate with my bf as someone who is avoidant and closed off. i’m willing to do anything and change this aspect of myself cause i don’t want to lose him and also cause i know that communication is something i’d have to eventually learn.
has anyone been through this? any response is appreciated :)

Hey there, been having this problem for weeks now and its getting worse and worse and I cannot figure out what's causing it! Any sort of help would be INSANELY appreciated
I bought a Ducky One 3 Mini keyboard about 6 months ago and the last couple months its been chattering. I initially saw that it was similar keys although as of recent its spread a bit to random ones. Some days its nonexistent and I don't see any key chattering and other days it seems to happen every other word. I've updated its drivers, cleaned the keyboard thoroughly and still had issues with it but I'm not certain its actually the keyboard that's the issue.
I've been live streaming Elden Ring and have noticed random chops and stutters in that too when I have a perfectly good PC with a 4070, a 5800x3D and 32 GB of RAM. I noticed that a lot of the time this happens, Device Manager refreshes so I thought it might be a faulty USB port? But I've tested them all out and it seems unlikely that all of them are broken
(full PC: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/usetephrite/saved/bpZYXL )
I've also noticed that Chrome tends to glitch sometimes, merging tabs into one visually until I refresh. I tried with and without hardware acceleration and still the same. I suspected this was all a GPU issue so a few months ago I upgraded to the 4070 but it seems the problem is still occurring. I did the same with the RAM but again, still happening. I have also updated my BIOS, Mother board and GPU drivers using DDU and clean installed Windows 11.
Finally yesterday I had a really weird encounter. I currently use a Focusrite Solo interface for my audio. When unplugging my keyboard yesterday, my audio cut out. Upon plugging it back in, my audio returned which is extremely strange considering both my keyboard and Focusrite are plugged directly into the motherboard so there's no reason for them to be effecting each other. Shortly after this, I left 4 live streams on just lurking and a few hours later I came back to a frozen PC that wouldn't shut off by holding the power button but had to turn it off directly from the PSU.
Any sort of help would be amazing. I'm convinced its either the motherboard or my hard drive but I have no idea how to tell!!

Hey there, been having this problem for weeks now and its getting worse and worse and I cannot figure out what's causing it! Any sort of help would be INSANELY appreciated
I bought a Ducky One 3 Mini keyboard about 6 months ago and the last couple months its been chattering. I initially saw that it was similar keys although as of recent its spread a bit to random ones. Some days its nonexistent and I don't see any key chattering and other days it seems to happen every other word. I've updated its drivers, cleaned the keyboard thoroughly and still had issues with it but I'm not certain its actually the keyboard that's the issue.
I've been live streaming Elden Ring and have noticed random chops and stutters in that too when I have a perfectly good PC with a 4070, a 5800x3D and 32 GB of RAM. I noticed that a lot of the time this happens, Device Manager refreshes so I thought it might be a faulty USB port? But I've tested them all out and it seems unlikely that all of them are broken
(full PC: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/usetephrite/saved/bpZYXL )
I've also noticed that Chrome tends to glitch sometimes, merging tabs into one visually until I refresh. I tried with and without hardware acceleration and still the same. I suspected this was all a GPU issue so a few months ago I upgraded to the 4070 but it seems the problem is still occurring. I did the same with the RAM but again, still happening. I have also updated my BIOS, Mother board and GPU drivers using DDU and clean installed Windows 11.
Finally yesterday I had a really weird encounter. I currently use a Focusrite Solo interface for my audio. When unplugging my keyboard yesterday, my audio cut out. Upon plugging it back in, my audio returned which is extremely strange considering both my keyboard and Focusrite are plugged directly into the motherboard so there's no reason for them to be effecting each other. Shortly after this, I left 4 live streams on just lurking and a few hours later I came back to a frozen PC that wouldn't shut off by holding the power button but had to turn it off directly from the PSU.
Any sort of help would be amazing. I'm convinced its either the motherboard or my hard drive but I have no idea how to tell!!

Okay backstory, so my bf(22m) and I (19f) used to do coke together at the beginning of our relationship, not everyday but weekends and occasions. He however would always do a lot more than me, and a lot more often, which wasn’t a problem for a while until I started wanting to cut down. We had a really big fight one night, basically I had said that I’d attend this event with his friends only if they weren’t doing coke, and that if that was the plan it wasn’t a big deal I just wouldn’t be there. He made a huge deal about asking all of his friends about giving it up for the night, telling me it was fine and I wasn’t intruding and told me 100% that no one we were with would be doing coke. Long story short, him and all of his friends were doing it and hiding it, and he didn’t tell me until I figured it out. We fought mostly because of the fact that he lied to me after making such a show about making me comfortable, but also because,,, why couldn’t he give it up for one night? When I specifically asked him? I considered breaking up with him, but left it at “if you lie to me again we’re done”. After that he told me he didn’t want to do it anymore and he never meant to hurt me, that he loved me too much for it to cause problems between us and would never lie to me again. That it scared him how badly he felt like he needed to do it, that he didn’t wanna be doing it forever, etc etc. It’s been about 5 months since then and he hasn’t done any.
Now here for the current issue: I thought we were on the same page about being done with it for good, I gave it up after that too, still have some but haven’t touched it since and the growing healing part of me doesn’t want to. Me and my friend were planning on going to a music festival and I invited him, told him we’d only be drinking and smoking. He essentially said that if he couldn’t do coke there he probably wouldn’t go. I pressed him about it, asked him why he wanted to so bad and if he really thought it wouldn’t be worth it without coke. His reasoning was “because I miss it and it’s fun” “I’m not gonna spend hundreds of dollars just to drink and smoke”. I understand substance issues and I have some of my own, but I’ve been in a relationship before where the substance issues bounce off the other person (terrible experience) and I truly can’t take that step back now that I’ve stopped, as much as I may want to sometimes. I tried to consider being okay with it, asked him thoroughly whether he’d keep using it after the festival or would be able to regulate, or maybe letting him compromise or something. The more I think about it though, I don’t know if i could handle the “fomo” I’d have if he was doing it and I wasn’t, in a bad way. I don’t think I could be okay with him doing it in any capacity. I don’t really see the point in starting again after you’ve already gone so long without. Obviously you want to, it’s addictive, but that’s something you have to work against, and actively steer yourself away from. I don’t know if he’s ready to do that.
I worry especially since he says he misses it that even if he’s fine with not going to the festival at all, he’ll just find another place or event to do it at. I know it may be hypocritical considering we used to do it together, but I don’t think I can be with him unless he’s fully commited to not doing it again. I feel like we’ve been together long enough to grow as people in that time, and I don’t want to do hard drugs anymore (only sometimes). I know part of all his reassurance on not doing it again was probably because he was scared of me breaking up with him, but I thought at least most of it was true. Am I wrong for thinking we were on the same page? I don’t know how to go about this and I don’t want us to break up, but I don’t want to ignore my feelings either.
note: I love my boyfriend so much, we have such a good relationship other than times like these he treats me well and we communicate well and I’ve never felt more loved by anyone, it would kill me for this to be the end of it, it’s not what I want at all. I just worry even if he accepts it, that he’ll just lie to me about it because he knows I’ll break up with him. Best case scenario, he accepts my boundary no matter how begrudgingly and won’t do it again. I’m looking for realism here though and I’m not great at that. I know I can’t magically make him not want to do coke ever again, but how do I go about this in a way that’s not attacking him? I hate to give ultimatums but it kind of is. Maybe it’ll be a simple thing maybe it won’t, I really don’t know. I’m just scared of losing him over this, even if that sounds dramatic.
tl:dr I’m worried my bf’s attitude towards coke is going to either cause problems or ruin our relationship.

My mom attempted to take her life approximately 1 week ago now. She tried to overdose on sleeping pills but realized what she was doing was wrong and forced herself to throw up. 10, to be exact, and I know this because I was the first person she told.
Background: my mom and stepdad have always had a difficult relationship. Things were fine for the first few years. I had an instinctive hatred/short temper for him that genuinely confused me because he was never mean to me to begin with. It became extremely apparent over the last couple years of their marriage that my mother is basically doing everything in this house for everyone and is the only parental figure providing any emotional support to any of the kids in this house. This has caused a lot of fights and stress for everyone involved. Fast forward to last weekend, my mother finally reached a breaking point and went to the hospital. She apparently sat in a room, alone, for 7 hours before she finally broke and tried to kill herself via overdose. As said before, she threw it up.
This is where her timeline got confusing over the phone because allegedly two hours after her OD attempt when I woke up to my phone ringing and she eventually got through her hysterics and told me everything, she was currently in her car with my two TODDLER SIBLINGS IN THE BACK SEAT LISTENING TO THIS ENTIRE CONVERSATION, driving down our road like she had recently left our house. I was at my dad’s at this time so I was concerned out of my mind not only for my mom but my siblings especially. She was clearly not in a good state of mind and the fact that she might try to take herself out again and bring my siblings with her this time terrified me. My mom told me she didn’t know where was safe to go, so I directed her to my grandmas house and called her to make sure she knew why my mom had shown up out of the blue. My grandma and my other grandma from my mom’s other side of the family took care of her from there and got her admitted in a hospital for a few days.
Being the first person to hear all these details and have to take the initiative to protect my mom and sibling was horrible. I hated feeling like my hand was being forced and that I had to assume leadership because there was not one else suitable enough to make a good choice at that moment.
Also, another very important detail: my sister doesn’t know about mom’s suicide attempt. She was told mom was having mental health issues and went to the hospital to seek help, but I’ve made it abundantly clear to everyone who I told/has been told about the situation that under no circumstances will my sisters ever know about my phone call with my mom. At this moment, I can’t feel much of anything towards it, but I know if anyone asks for details I’m probably going to crumble. I hated having to lie about when I found out mom was in the hospital and what I know, I can’t lie to her face again. She literally found out through a cousin that our mom was in the hospital because I wasn’t ready to explain things to her (the cousin wasn’t supposed to know anything, and that was only 2 days after the original phone call).
The worst of it all? While she was in the hospital, she missed Mother’s Day (we had plans to eat at our favorite restaurant. Instead, I ate a cold burrito left over from the day before) and my last concert of this year (I performed over half of the songs, including a special spotlight moment with my trio. It meant a lot to me and I thought she would’ve gotten out in time to see it so I was devastated). And since, I haven’t seen her face. She’s called me, both from the hospital and from her phone after she got out, everyday since. And the days we don’t call, we text. She doesn’t know when me and my sister will be able to go back to staying at her house right now and it’s eating me up.
I hate having to ask for project extensions because I physically cannot pick up the supplies I need at this moment given that they are at my mom’s house. And I hate that literally the only people I can talk to are adults. Not just adults either, it’s only my grandmas, my aunt and uncle who watched my toddler siblings when my mom was in the hospital, my dad, my stepmom, and my school counselor. So, options are limited. I just want to rant to my friends and talk to people who aren’t going to pity me and remind me over and over “It’s not your fault. Your mom never should’ve called you and told you all that, but now it’s in our hands so don’t worry.” No, I just want someone to be real with me. Yeah, I know it’s fucked up that out of everyone in her phone, my mother chose her teenage daughter. No explanation needed. Just someone for the love of god just tell me “dude that’s fucking messed up, but continue”.
I have so much I want to talk about and not enough people I can actually talk to. But is it even my place to talk about it? I wouldn’t want people telling everyone about my attempt, but then again if you’re going to vent to your child, I think in a way it’s my traumatic experience to talk about as well. Idk really, I tend to become a one track mind when I’m processing trauma. Thoughts?

Short version, after watching End of Evangelion, I wanted to jump into the Rebuild tetralogy. My mom and I both have Amazon Prime, they're on Prime Video, seemed cut and dry. Turned the audio to Japanese, put on English subtitles, aaaaaaaaaand I immediately distrusted the subtitles in 1.1. I can't remember what they said off the top of my head, but I know for a fact that they were different from what I saw in the original series' version of the scene on Netflix. When Misato brought Shinji home and encouraged him to think of her apartment as his home, he stepped in and shyly said "I'm home", to which Misato sweetly said "Welcome back". That interaction also takes on a different power in End of Evangelion when Rei and Lilith have a similar interaction. So seeing that the subtitles of that same scene in 1.1 was cause for concern. I turned off the TV not long after.
I'm waiting on the Blu-rays to see if there's any difference, and while I wait, I might as well ask. Are the Prime Video subtitles for the Rebuid movies accurate? Can they be trusted? Did Rebuild change that line? Did Netflix screw up here and Prime is innocent? Are the subtitles on the Blu-rays going to be any better or worse?
Someone more knowledgeable about this, please let me know. Thank you, and I'm sorry.