I reread it, so here's my Goodreads review:
I've read this one twice now, and it didn't get any better. It's just plain TERRIBLE, a strong candidate for Agatha Christie's worst book.
Christie herself explains in her autobiography that this book was the result of a combination of a contractual deadline, severe emotional trauma in her personal life (the death of her mother and collapse of her first marriage), and the resulting writer's block. Her soon to be ex-brother in law suggested mashing up 12 of her short stories together with an overarching plot about supervillains trying to take over the world-and it's quite possible that the majority of the framework story may have even been written by him.
There's also another story...Christie was well known to have disliked her first publisher and wanted to leave but was under contract with them for five books. She wrote a book she knew would be rejected as the fifth, but that met the obligation and she was free to find another publisher-she even referred to this mystery book as "that awful book"-and while no one can say for sure the timing works out that it was probably The Big Four.
Point being, even Christie herself knew this one was an ungodly mess. I'll go with what is good about it. As stated, it's 12 short stories stitched together...and actually a couple of the individual chapters (stories) are well written and entertaining in and of themselves as sort of mini-mysteries if you will.
But it's the connecting plot that is a God awful abomination. The Big Four are four mastermind criminals who want to do....something? It's never quite clear what their actual evil plan is, there's some vague stuff about tearing down society and perhaps installing themselves as benevolent dictators of a New World Order but it's terribly vague and utterly unconvincing that these four people 1) would have met at all 2) would team up and 3) would somehow have the power to pull off whatever their terrible plan is. Add in a LOT of ridiculous bad James Bond type stuff (three words: poison dart cigarette), talking villains, about 10 secret lairs, multiple faked deaths, and the whole thing just reads like a bad parody of an espionage novel.
Knowing the story of how this disaster came into being what I would compare it to-you remember in the later seasons of Friends when the cast wanted to make another million dollars but not actually have to work, so they would do a "clip show"-a paper thin plot that would give the six actors a chance to reminisce and then they'd fill time with clips from great episodes of the past?
That's EXACTLY what The Big Four is and that's why some of the individual chapters are so good, while the framework of it is such trash. This one is for Christie completists only. Absolutely abysmal.

Like I've seen in a lot of posts before, guess I'll start off by saying I am terrible at writing about myself. I guess I'm looking to meet some new people and see where it goes. The COVID years have made me more hermit like than ever, and I wasn't exactly going out a ton in the before times either.
As I so subtly mentioned above, I'm kind of an average nerdy and pretty introverted dude. Enjoy spending my free time playing games (have PC, PS5 and Switch), watching random stuff on youtube, and I am trying to get back into reading (mostly fantasy novels). In terms of music, I tend to lean towards to rock or metal, though there can be a mix of various things on my main playlist.
Physically, I am about 5'11 and chubby, though slowly working on losing some weight. Brown hair that I tend to keep buzzed short, and a beard. Happy to send a picture privately.
So that's all I got I guess? If my amazing autobiography above has sparked your interest, shoot me a message and hopefully we can get to know each other better. Happy to talk on here or discord

As Reddit doesn't allow posts to exceed 40,000 characters, Eastwood's edition had to be split into two parts because his whole career cannot be ignored. The first part was posted yesterday.

Million Dollar Baby (2004)¨

"Beyond his silence, there is a past. Beyond her dreams, there is a feeling. Beyond hope, there is a memory. Beyond their journey, there is a love."
His 25th film. Based on stories from the 2000 collection Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner by F.X. Toole, it stars Eastwood, Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman. The film follows Margaret "Maggie" Fitzgerald, an underdog amateur boxer who is helped by an underappreciated boxing trainer to achieve her dream of becoming a professional.
Paul Haggis wrote the script on spec, and it took four years to sell it. The film was stuck in development hell for years before it was shot. Several studios rejected the project even when Eastwood signed on as actor and director. Even Warner Bros., Eastwood's longtime home base, would not agree to a $30 million budget. Eastwood persuaded Lakeshore Entertainment's Tom Rosenberg to put up half the budget (as well as handle foreign distribution), with Warner Bros. contributing the rest.
The film had an incredible run in limited release, breaking many records for Eastwood's career. It eventually earned a fantastic $216 million worldwide, becoming his highest grossing film ever. It received critical acclaim, and it was named as one of his greatest films. It won four Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (for Swank), and Best Supporting Actor (for Freeman). Eastwood became one of the very few directors to make two films to win both Best Picture and Best Director.

• Budget: $30,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $100,492,203. ($166.8 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $216,763,646.
  

Flags of Our Fathers (2006)

"A single shot can end the war."
His 26th film. Based on the book written by James Bradley and Ron Powers, it stars Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach, John Benjamin Hickey, John Slattery, Paul Walker, Jamie Bell, Barry Pepper, Robert Patrick and Neal McDonough. The film follows the 1945 Battle of Iwo Jima, the five Marines and one Navy corpsman who were involved in raising the flag on Iwo Jima, and the after effects of that event on their lives.
The film received positive reviews, but it bombed at the box office with just $65 million against its huge $90 million budget.

• Budget: $90,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $33,602,376. ($52.2 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $65,900,249.
  

Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)

"The completion of the Iwo Jima saga."
His 27th film. Based on Picture Letters from Commander in Chief by Tadamichi Kuribayashi, it stars Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryō Kase and Shidō Nakamura. It's a companion film to Flags of Our Fathers, and portrays the Battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers.
In the process of reading about the Japanese perspective of the war for Flags of Our Fathers, in particular General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, Eastwood decided to film a companion piece with this film, which was shot entirely in Japanese. The film was shot back-to-back, starting filming just one month after Flags of Our Fathers wrapped filming.
Despite being seen as the least accessible of both films, this film was much more successful at the box office than the previous film (including a colossal $42 million in Japan alone). It also received critical acclaim, particularly for how it handed the depiction of good and evil from both sides. It received 4 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director.

• Budget: $19,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $13,756,082. ($21.3 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $68,673,228.
  

Changeling (2008)

"To find her son, she did what no one else dared."
His 28th film. It stars Angelina Jolie and John Malkovich, and is based on real-life events, specifically the 1928 Wineville Chicken Coop murders in Mira Loma, California. It follows a woman united with a boy who she realizes is not her missing son. When she tries to demonstrate that to the police and city authorities, she is vilified as delusional, labeled as an unfit mother and confined to a psychiatric ward.
The film earned $113 million worldwide, barely breaking even at the box office. The film received mixed reviews, but Jolie received praise for her performance. She was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actress.

• Budget: $55,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $35,739,802. ($52 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $113,398,237.
  

Gran Torino (2008)

"Ever come across somebody you shouldn't have messed with?"
His 29th film. It stars Eastwood, and follows Walt Kowalski, a recently widowed Korean War veteran alienated from his family and angry at the world, whose young neighbor, Thao Vang Lor, is pressured by his cousin into stealing Walt's prized Ford Torino for his initiation into a gang. Walt thwarts the theft and subsequently develops a relationship with the boy and his family.
The film received great reviews, as well as praise from the Hmong community. It ended up becoming a sleeper hit, and it earned $270 million worldwide, becoming his highest grossing film.

• Budget: $25,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $148,095,302. ($215.6 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $269,958,228.
  

Invictus (2009)

"His people needed a leader. He gave them a champion."
His 30th film. It stars Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon. Following the aftermath of the apartheid, President Nelson Mandela decides to unite his people by supporting a rugby team in their bid to win the 1995 Rugby World Cup.
The film earned $122 million worldwide, barely breaking even. It received positive reviews, and Freeman and Damon received Oscar nominations for their performances.

• Budget: $50,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $37,491,364. ($54.7 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $122,426,792.
  

Hereafter (2010)

"Touched by death. Changed by life."
His 31st film. It stars Matt Damon, Cécile de France, Bryce Dallas Howard, Lyndsey Marshal, Jay Mohr and Thierry Neuvic. An American with a special connection to the afterlife, a woman with a near-death experience and a young English boy, who lost his loved ones, cross paths in an effort to find closure in their lives.
Despite mixed reviews, it managed to earn $107 million, turning a small profit.

• Budget: $50,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $32,746,941. ($47 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $106,956,330.
  

J. Edgar (2011)

"The most powerful man in the world."
His 32nd film. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Josh Lucas, and Judi Dench, and follows the career of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, focusing on Hoover's life from the 1919 Palmer Raids onward.
The film received mixed reviews; while DiCaprio received praise, the technical aspects of the film were criticized. It earned $84 million, making it a box office success, but far below what DiCaprio usually makes at the box office.

• Budget: $35,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $37,306,030. ($52 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $84,920,539.
  

Jersey Boys (2014)

"Everybody remembers it how they need to."
His 33rd film. Base on the 2004 jukebox musical, it stars John Lloyd Young, Erich Bergen, Michael Lomenda, Vincent Piazza and Christopher Walken, and tells the story of the musical group The Four Seasons.
It received mixed reviews, with praise for the musical numbers but criticism for the narrative and runtime, and failed at the box office.

• Budget: $40,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $47,047,013. ($62.3 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $67,647,013.
  

American Sniper (2014)

"The most lethal sniper in U.S. history."
His 34th film. It is based on the memoir by Chris Kyle, Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice, and stars Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller. The film follows the life of Kyle, who became the deadliest marksman in U.S. military history with 255 kills from four tours in the Iraq War, 160 of which were officially confirmed by the Department of Defense. While Kyle was celebrated for his military successes, his tours of duty took a heavy toll on his personal and family life.
In 2012, Cooper and Warner Bros. bought the rights to the memoir. Cooper wanted Chris Pratt to star as Kyle, but WB told him they would only greenlight the film if he stars in it. After Kyle's murder in 2013, Steven Spielberg signed to direct. Spielberg had read Kyle's book, though he desired to have a more psychological conflict present in the screenplay so an "enemy sniper" character could serve as the insurgent sharpshooter who was trying to track down and kill Kyle. Spielberg's ideas contributed to the development of a lengthy screenplay approaching 160 pages. Due to Warner Bros.' budget constraints, Spielberg felt he could not bring his vision of the story to the screen. So Eastwood was brought in to direct.
The film attained a solid, but not extraordinary response from critics. It also attracted some controversy over its portrayal of both the Iraq War and Kyle himself.
The box office though?
To say that the film had a fantastic run would be selling it short.
It opened on Christmas Day in 4 theaters, and it earned a huge $633,456 ($158,364 PTA). But the following weekend, it actually increased despite playing at the same amount of theaters, adding $676,909. That translated to a $169,227 PTA, becoming the highest second weekend PTA in history for a live-action film. And on its third weekend, it earned $579,518 ($144,879 PTA), becoming the first film to have three weekends above $100,000 PTA. In the 22 days it played in just 4 theaters, it earned $3,424,778.
On its first wide weekend, the film shook the industry by opening with a colossal $89 million. That was almost as much as the other 2014 blockbusters, and given that the film didn't have 3D pricing, it's very likely it sold far more tickets than them. It broke the January opening weekend record by twice as much, and the second biggest for an R-rated title. With insane word of mouth ("A+" on CinemaScore), this film had the legs. In less than one week, it became Eastwood's highest grossing film domestically. On its second weekend, it dropped just 28% and made $64 million, which was the biggest second weekend for an R-rated film (a record it still maintains) and crossed $200 million domestically. And by March, the film overtook The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 ($334 million) as the highest grossing 2014 film in North America.
After an insane run in theaters, it closed with a gigantic $350 million domestically, which made it the second highest grossing R-rated film in North America. Overseas, it was also very strong, and it made a huge $547 million worldwide. It was easily Eastwood's highest grossing film, even adjusted for inflation. One of the greatest box office runs in recent memory. It received six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor for Cooper, ultimately winning one for Best Sound Editing.
The biggest surprise of the 2010s? Perhaps. Cause let's face it, when 2014, did any of you had this as the top film of the year? Or even in the Top 20? Please.

• Budget: $59,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $350,159,020. ($463.7 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $547,659,020.
  

Sully (2016)

"The untold story behind the miracle on the Hudson."
His 35th film. Based on the autobiography Highest Duty by Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger and Jeffrey Skiles, it stars Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, Laura Linney, Anna Gunn, Autumn Reeser, Holt McCallany, and Jamey Sheridan. The film follows Sullenberger's 2009 emergency landing of US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River, in which all 155 passengers and crew survived and the subsequent publicity and investigation.
The film received strong reviews, and earned over $240 million worldwide, becoming one of his highest grossing films.

• Budget: $60,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $125,070,033. ($163.3 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $243,870,033.
  

The 15:17 to Paris (2018)

"The real heroes."
His 36th film. Based on the autobiography by Jeffrey E. Stern, Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler, and Alek Skarlatos, it stars Stone, Sadler, and Skarlatos as themselves and follows the trio through life leading up to and including their stopping of the 2015 Thalys train attack.
Despite choosing Kyle Gallner, Jeremie Harris and Alexander Ludwig as the leads, Eastwood decided to cast the heroes to play themselves, which was met with confusion as they lacked acting experience. And that was reflected on the final film; it received negative reviews for its acting, and it bombed at the box office.

• Budget: $30,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $36,276,286. ($45.2 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $57,176,286.
  

The Mule (2018)

"Nobody runs forever."
His 37th film. Based on the 2014 The New York Times article The Sinaloa Cartel's 90-Year-Old Drug Mule by Sam Dolnick, it stars Eastwood, Bradley Cooper, Laurence Fishburne, Michael Peña, Dianne Wiest, and Andy García. Due to financial issues, horticulturist Earl Stone becomes a courier for a drug cartel. Slowly, he grows closer to his estranged family, but his illegal activities threaten much more than his life.
It received good reviews (although some questioned its story and tone), and earned over $173 million worldwide.

• Budget: $50,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $103,804,407. ($129.6 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $174,804,407.
  

Richard Jewell (2019)

"The world will know his name and the truth."
His 38th film. The film stars Paul Walter Hauser, Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates, Jon Hamm, and Olivia Wilde. The film depicts the July 27 Centennial Olympic Park bombing and its aftermath, as security guard Richard Jewell finds a bomb during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, and alerts authorities to evacuate, only to later be wrongly accused of having placed the device himself.
The film received positive reviews, but several journalists criticized the critical portrayal of the reporter that first accused Jewell: Kathy Scruggs (specifically for trading sex for stories). The film marked another commercial failure for Eastwood.

• Budget: $45,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $22,345,542. ($27.4 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $44,645,542.
  

Cry Macho (2021)

"A story of being lost and found."
His 39th film. Based on the novel by N. Richard Nash, it stars Eastwood and Dwight Yoakam. Set in 1979, it follows a former rodeo star hired to reunite a young boy in Mexico with his father in the United States.
Nash tried to get this film made all the way since 1970s, but no studio was willing to pick it up. He restructured his films as a novel, was successful and studios were now interested. There were a few candidates for the leading role; Robert Mitchum, Roy Scheider, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Eastwood himself. Arnie was willing to star in the film back in 2003, but put it on hold when he was elected Governor. He was set to star after leaving office, but the project was scrapped after his affair scandal was made known. In 2020, Eastwood signed to return.
The film received mixed reviews, particularly for its writing and acting. It was also a huge flop at the box office, and marked Eastwood's least attended film as leading man. David Zaslav criticized the studio's decision to finance the film. Warner executives allegedly said that although they knew the film was unlikely to turn a profit, they felt indebted to Eastwood for his decades-long relationship with the studio and his consistent ability to deliver films under budget and on time.

• Budget: $33,000,000.
  
• Domestic gross: $10,310,734. ($11.9 million adjusted)
  
• Worldwide gross: $16,510,734.
  

The Future

He recently wrapped post-production on his 40th film, Juror No. 2. It stars Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, Zoey Deutch, Leslie Bibb, Chris Messina, J. K. Simmons and Kiefer Sutherland, and follows a juror serving on a murder trial who realizes he may be at fault for the victim's death.

MOVIES (FROM HIGHEST GROSSING TO LEAST GROSSING)

No.	Movie	Year	Studio	Domestic Total	Overseas Total	Worldwide Total	Budget
1	American Sniper	2014	Warner Bros.	$350,159,020	$197,500,000	$547,659,020	$59M
2	Gran Torino	2008	Warner Bros.	$148,095,302	$121,862,926	$269,958,228	$25M
3	Sully	2016	Warner Bros.	$125,070,033	$118,800,000	$243,870,033	$60M
4	Million Dollar Baby	2004	Warner Bros.	$100,492,203	$116,271,443	$216,763,646	$30M
5	The Bridges of Madison County	1995	Warner Bros.	$71,516,617	$110,500,000	$182,016,617	$22M
6	The Mule	2018	Warner Bros.	$103,804,407	$71,000,000	$174,804,407	$50M
7	Unforgiven	1992	Warner Bros.	$101,167,799	$58,000,000	$159,167,799	$14.4M
8	Mystic River	2003	Warner Bros.	$90,135,191	$66,460,000	$156,595,191	$25M
9	Sudden Impact	1983	Warner Bros.	$67,642,693	$83,000,000	$150,642,693	$22M
10	A Perfect World	1993	Warner Bros.	$31,130,999	$104,000,000	$135,130,999	$30M
11	Space Cowboys	2000	Warner Bros.	$90,464,773	$38,419,359	$128,884,132	$60M
12	Invictus	2009	Warner Bros.	$37,491,364	$84,935,428	$122,426,792	$55M
13	Heartbreak Ridge	1986	Warner Bros.	$42,724,017	$78,975,983	$121,700,000	$15M
14	Changeling	2008	Universal	$35,739,802	$77,658,435	$113,398,237	$55M
15	Hereafter	2010	Warner Bros.	$32,746,941	$74,209,389	$106,956,330	$50M
16	Absolute Power	1997	Sony	$50,068,310	$42,700,000	$92,768,310	$50M
17	J. Edgar	2011	Warner Bros.	$37,306,030	$47,614,509	$84,920,539	$35M
18	Letters from Iwo Jima	2006	Warner Bros.	$13,756,082	$54,917,146	$68,673,228	$19M
19	Jersey Boys	2014	Warner Bros.	$47,047,013	$20,600,000	$67,647,013	$40M
20	Flags of Our Fathers	2006	Warner Bros.	$33,602,376	$32,297,873	$65,900,249	$90M
21	The 15:17 to Paris	2018	Warner Bros.	$36,276,286	$20,900,000	$57,176,286	$30M
22	Firefox	1982	Warner Bros.	$46,708,276	$0	$46,708,276	$21M
23	Richard Jewell	2019	Warner Bros.	$22,345,542	$22,300,000	$44,645,542	$45M
24	Pale Rider	1985	Warner Bros.	$41,410,568	$0	$41,410,568	$6.9M
25	The Gauntlet	1977	Warner Bros.	$35,400,000	$0	$35,400,000	$5.5M
26	The Outlaw Josey Wales	1976	Warner Bros.	$31,800,000	$0	$31,800,000	$3.7M
27	Blood Work	2002	Warner Bros.	$26,235,081	$5,559,637	$31,794,718	$50M
28	Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil	1997	Warner Bros.	$25,105,255	$0	$25,105,255	$30M
29	Bronco Billy	1980	Warner Bros.	$24,265,659	$0	$24,265,659	$6.5M
30	The Rookie	1990	Warner Bros.	$21,633,874	$0	$21,633,874	$30M
31	True Crime	1999	Warner Bros.	$16,649,768	$0	$16,649,768	$55M
32	Cry Macho	2021	Warner Bros.	$10,310,734	$6,200,000	$16,510,734	$33M
33	High Plains Drifter	1973	Universal	$15,700,000	$0	$15,700,000	$5.5M
34	The Eiger Sanction	1975	Universal	$14,200,000	$0	$14,200,000	$9M
35	Play Misty for Me	1971	Universal	$10,600,000	$0	$10,600,000	$950K
36	Honkytonk Man	1982	Warner Bros.	$4,484,991	$0	$4,484,991	$2M
37	White Hunter Black Heart	1990	Warner Bros.	$2,319,124	$0	$2,319,124	$24M
38	Bird	1988	Warner Bros.	$2,181,286	$0	$2,181,286	$14M
39	Breezy	1973	Universal	$200,000	$17,753	$217,753	$750K

Across those 39 films, he has made $3,536,687,297 worldwide. That's $90,684,289 per film.

The Verdict

Insanely profitable.
Even the bombs do not taint this kind of reputation. Eastwood has made all these films under budget and never past its deadline. That's something that has to be treasured for studios, no wonder he's been staying with Warner Bros. since 1976. His ability to get films ready in short notice is impressive; Richard Jewell started filming in June and it was on theaters in December. One of the most impressive actors who transitioned into directors. You can tell that Sergio Leone and Don Siegel taught him well.
Now of course, his method of directing can also have its setbacks: he's often known for not asking for multiple takes and he skips rehearsals. So that means the performances of his actors aren't always the best they could've done. Which is why, despite making some masterpieces or fantastic films, he's also made a few films with weak technical aspects: poor lighting (J. Edgar), questionable logic (Cry Macho), and some bad acting (Gran Torino and The 15:17 to Paris). At the same time, it's clear he can also get extraordinary performances through these methods; Gene Hackman, Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman won Oscars for starring in his films.
He also proved old age doesn't prevent you from continuing to work. He's turning 94 in a few weeks, and he's still directing films. Manoel de Oliveira directed films until he was 104, so perhaps we still have a few more years with Eastwood behind the camera.
P.S. Ever since I started this series, there's been suggestions that I should do "Actors at the Box Office" multiple times. While the idea is intriguing, that doesn't seem feasible for me. I'd have to categorize whether the actor is leading, supporting, original IP, adaptation, remakes, etc. Besides, with the continuing decline of star power, it's tough to decide what actor is truly moving the needle at the box office. That's why I'm making solely "Directors at the Box Office", because the director is responsible for the production. If the film succeeds, the director will get credit. And if the film flops, the director will be blamed. So this is the closest you'll get to "Actors at the Box Office".
Hope you liked this edition. You can find this and more in the wiki for this section.
The next director will be Robert Zemeckis. One of the biggest falls from grace.
I asked you to choose who else should be in the run and the comment with the most upvotes would be chosen. It had to be a controversial filmmaker. Well, we'll later talk about... Zack Snyder. Oh, BoxOffice chose fuego 🔥
This is the schedule for the following four:

Week	Director	Reasoning
May 20-26	Robert Zemeckis	Can we get old Zemeckis back?
May 27-June 2	Richard Donner	An influential figure of the 70s and 80s.
June 3-9	Ang Lee	What happened to Lee?
June 10-16	Zack Snyder	RIP Inbox.

Who should be next after Snyder? That's up to you.

I know this is unnecessarily long, so if you are not in the mood for reading, I understand. But I would greatly appreciate anyone who would take the time to read my story that is probably TMI and badly in need of some editing. I just really need some advice from people whose heads are less cloudy than mine.
My fiancé M/42 and I F41 have been together for about 4 years and have known each other since high school. I knew he was a recovering addict when I got together with him but I fell head over heels in love and didn’t see the relapse on the horizon that would occur shortly after the honeymoon phase and would eventually almost kill me - I took a swipe of some mystery powder and touched it to my tongue (fentanyl) thinking it would help me get through the most stressful day of my life as i was ceaning out his place while I was packing him up for detox. It was a total freak accident, I’m not an addict, never done anything like that in my life, I’m a single mom and a kindergarten teacher, but I loved him so much I just followed him down the rabbit hole and honestly just became so disoriented in this world I (naively) didn’t understand or even realize I had signed up for.
Anyway, He literally saved my life, and said I also saved his, because that day is what motivated him to get and stay clean for good despite being an active heroin addict for the majority of his life.
He worked an incredibly thorough program, and he gained more friends, money, and more overall success in 2 years than I’ve been able to scrounge up in an entire lifetime. And it’s no surprise honestly. He’s a special person. Absolutely brilliant, charismatic, driven, and has a heart of gold.
Within a year of getting sober, he moved me and my daughters into a gorgeous home adjacent to a golf course, bought luxury vehicles for both me and him, convinced me to quit my teaching job which was making me miserable, so I could finally be fully present for my girls, and then put a giant diamond ring on my left hand. He completely spoils us. We went from having nothing to having every tangible thing, we could possibly need.
The stability that he provided for us meant the world to a single mom who was barely making ends meet, but it was always just the icing on the cake for me. He’s my best friend in the world, he makes me laugh so hard my mouth hurts from smiling, he show me that he loves even the parts of myself that I don’t find lovable. I found my soulmate.
His program started slipping after 2 1/2 years (last November). He was already struggling in his role of being a stepfather, and we were fighting a lot about parenting stuff. He has a lot to learn, has little patience, and seems to have very unrealistic expectations of my kids. He wanted Parenting to be this effortless thing, and he just doesn’t get that it’s not. And that kids are not always going to behave themselves and that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with them. so we were fighting a lot.
In December, he started complaining about his chronic back pain again (a real issue for him as he’s had five back surgeries due to a snowboarding accident in his early 20s-this was during that height of Purdue Pharma and what got him hooked on pain meds)
While I know he was legitimately in pain, it was also a red flag because pain was the culprit for his last relapse. He decided to go in for a sixth surgery and was told he would have to wait three months. He found a surgeon who has made a lot of profit off of him over the years (as he’s a PI attorney) and was willing to prescribe him generous amounts of pain pills to get him through the three months of increasing pain that he was experiencing. He spent the next three months in bed, depressed, checking out, taking pills depressed, checking out- as I became increasingly suspicious that his behavior was much too loopy for the amount of medication he was being prescribed. I fell into the role of his nurse, and his babysitter. Making sure he didn’t text to nonsense to clients, making sure he didn’t fall and make his back worse, making sure he wasn’t interacting with the kids, etc
I knew he wasn’t being honest with me, but he just kept gaslighting me. It honestly felt like he was psychologically tormenting me, treating me as though I was totally paranoid, heartless and out of line. I thought after the surgery, it would finally get better. I made a promise that I would be there for him because he had never had anyone there for him for the previous surgeries and it had been a really traumatic experience for him in the past. I really stepped up and tried so hard to his rock. The hospital experience was horrific, mainly because no amount of diloted was relieving him of the pain. None of the nurses understood why he needed so much more than everyone else, but I think his tolerance had just become so high.
After that nightmare was finally over I was really counting on things getting better, as the plan was for him to taper off the meds, live pain-free, and get back to normal. It didn’t go that way. It just kept getting worse and no matter how many times I told him that I didn’t trust him he just had an excuse for an explanation for everything. He is a master manipulator and I listened to him do it to everyone, doctors, the pharmacist he formed a “friendship” with, literally everyone.
On Mother’s Day, it got to a point where he couldn’t hide it anymore. He disappeared for the day, Ended up, passing out at a gas station and was unreachable for hours, when he finally came home, the car was all fucked up and he claims it was someone else’s fault. He went straight to his home office and I didn’t see the rest of the night until I walked in on him smoking crushed up pills. After that, he confessed everything to me, including the time that he told me not to check the mail because he had a special surprise for me to thank me for all the love and support I gave him To help him through his surgery. it turned out he had drug dealers sending him drugs in the mail. Needless to say there was no surprise for me me. Just heartbreak and betrayal. I felt like a fool.
I was still processing this the next day when , after insisting on taking a photo of me in these designer sunglasses he purchased for me out of guilt. I asked him not to take my photo, because I had tears in my eyes, but he insisted. He was napping next to me and I opened his phone to erase the photo. we’ve always had each other’s passwords, and have looked through each others photos before for various reasons, sharing photos, etc. I cannot emphasize enough how much I trust his loyalty to me when it comes to anything other than drugs.
But for some reason, all of my photos, the ones I was taking on my phone were showing up in his feed. I was so confused, so I started scrolling through deleting unflattering double chin pictures of myself when I came across that menu photos organized based on face recognition. One of them was his ex. I remember him telling me he deleted all of his photos of her the first time he told me he loved me.
I opened it and scrolled through hundreds of pictures of their happy life together. The pictures got more and more sexual, one of her with her legs spread, another another of them in the bathtub together, her kissing him while he had his hands around her neck, another screenshot of her naked in the shower with a thumbnail shot of him in the corner obviously jerking off to her on FaceTime. Because I’m a masochist I decided to take it one step further and look in his video folder. I found a There I found a thumbnail shot if a close-up of him penetrating her. I watched it and it just completely crushed whatever was left of me.
I’m normally a really passive person, and I just completely lost my mind. I reacted as though I had caught him cheating on me. I just couldn’t handle the physical evidence of such a close up shot of him being inside another woman. It’s stupid because I know, like me, he has a past. Obviously he’s been with other women. Obviously he’s been attracted to them. But it just scarred my brain, I literally haven’t even been able to eat since because I’ve been so nauseous. I know it’s ridiculous, because this is a reality I was well aware existed, but seeing it with my own eyes… I don’t know what to say. Other than that I need a lobotomy.
He says he erased all of those videos and photos from his phone, and something weird happened where all of his photos from the cloud just re-uploaded when he got a new phone. He’s not a technical person and I actually believe him because, aside from being a complete liar when it comes to drugs, he has always show me the upmost, integrity, love and loyalty. So it’s not that I don’t believe him. I just can’t get that image out of my head.
I can’t tell if this intense emotional reaction I’m having would be the same reaction anyone would have if they saw what I saw, or if I’m combining the feelings of betrayal over the gaslighting and the relapse…, the last four months of feeling completely invisible, hopeless, and like he was choosing drugs over me. My mind is like mush and I seriously can’t differentiate between these two very separate issues. I’m so confused, but that’s what gaslighting does to you. It makes you question your reality.
He said that he’s finally willing to go into detox, so at this point, I have waited this long, it would be silly not to stick around and see if he’s finally going to put an end to this. What’s getting me is that he’s still making excuses, still not seeming very remorseful, and is still so deep in self-pity that he doesn’t seem to have any awareness of how badly I’m hurting because of him. It feels like he just doesn’t care. anyone who’s ever loved an addict knows that feeling well.
I’m in Al-anon, and I’m well aware of all of the things I should be doing, focusing on myself, etc. but I’m just not doing well, and I can’t seem to find my way out of this dark hole. Anyone who has made it this far deserves some sort of a Reddit badge of honor. This was more of an autobiography than a simple question. I just wanna hear some outside input because I don’t trust my own mind right now. I’m willing to take your criticism, just please be kind. I know I’ve made mistakes, I’m just hurting so badly. I can’t seem to sort through this. Thank you so much if you took the time to read all of this and still want to respond. You have no idea how much it means to me.

the suicidal
step out
into death
who am i to judge ?
for what eternity holds
no-one knows
the low reading aged
if you write something they can’t understand
then according to them
its your fault
so they reject
this is the path of mediocrity
and cretinism
all religions schism, narratives of homogeneity require force to maintain (which can be extremely brutal historically)
Knock Out Asinine Nits
photos
staring out from a smooth granite block
if not quizzical
then should be
stuck in eternity
like that
somewhere
there must be a couple that mesh
and get along with each other
somewhere
i’m gone
the world rolls on
i disappear
and appear
the pages of a book that flick through
some words rest
and others don’t
skimming stones
eventually
stop
and sink
rhoticity explained to me, i now understand it, but otherwise i wouldn’t have had a clue except for the joking use of irish, scottish, canadian or usa accents
i think the zen term "seamless monument" is a metaphor for reality, you can’t penetrate it, there’s no artefact of manufacture since it has no seam, it can only be traversed, which btw is the basic philosophical problem of existence, there is no "inner" reality that subsumes "the detail of being"
“ I m currently 16 years old and a "child prodigy". I started university at 14. I have thus far only received one grade which was not an A+. It was an A-. I have memorized 100 digits of pi, the periodic table, and most of the Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks. I am learning Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Sahidic Coptic, Spanish, and Italian. I just like old languages. I don’t have to study long — I have a nearly photographic memory. When I do study, I just write things out over and over. I am a very visual thinker, so I remember pictures. Ask me anything ! ”
ed. she also has ehlers-danlos syndrome and is ADHD
in my view, the languages are a big mistake, they interfere with each other
“ Why do you think that ? ”
the languages you list are particularly disjunctive its a heavy learning burden with heaps of "opportunity costs" and the skill is becoming increasingly redundant with AI translators
also my experience of polyglots is they get damaged in some way
the brain is not infinitely capable, beware of burning it in waste of time activities, which to be honest a lot of so called education is
dr. alan cole argues that zen masters are in fact "made-over" daoist sages
i would go further and say that the koan system involves the same sort of "puzzling process" as the tao te ching
when you hear this sort of crap from the policy making elites, no wonder china is a problem !
the real impact of the one child policy may be the scarcity of anyone at the higher levels of government or policy being able to think straight
of course, this is to the advantage of the west and is the same problem japan had in WW2, idiots determining their strategic direction
boundaries crossing
abatement of being
from this perspective
everything looks crazy
really ?
do you ever listen to anything outside your own echo chamber ?
sad souls
in the twilight of their lives
mumbling gibberish
the words of others
are not your own
if you actually understood
why wouldn’t you use your own words ?
time separates
that childhood intensity
fades
as the branches grow apart
what was not seen at the time
is now seen
you are not well read and have an "anti-creative" mindset !
i’m getting on in years and just can’t be bothered to deal with your hubris
good-bye
ed. the net is full of these entitled gen Z’ers with a deeply entrenched intellectual inertia created by a malfunctioning education system
valves, muscle, connective tissue, timing
easy to see how it can go wrong as we get older
this dynamic core of existence in the center of our chests where every beat needs to be followed by another
i think religion can be regarded as a hallucination, the hallucination being that a literary work is real, perhaps most easily seen in the beliefs of ancient egypt, what are the pyramids and all those smaller tombs about ?
the reification of stories
these people
who
rather than bringing something to the table
only
take
and
are
impertinent
with
it
the puzzle of the poetry of others
seems to need the conversion
into something
i understand
"the girl on a bulldozer" (2022), a good tightly written kdrama
caodong poetry 23; verses on master fushan’s sixteen themes #4; touzi; translated by suru

1. not falling into life or death

on the day when the golden rooster heralds the coming spring
the jade hare conceives, entering the purple palace
reeds bloom on both shores, shadowing egrets
an old fisherman lifts his oar, dispersing mist, returning home
.
不落死活。 金雞日裏報春時。 玉兔懷胎入紫微。 兩岸蘆華映白鷺。 漁翁舉棹撥煙歸。
.
my reply
one day
the distance travelled
catches up with you
and you have arrived
.
one day
the distance travelled
catches up with you
you
have
arrived
ed. the terms in suru’s translation are very chinese and have a historical perspective, so i have "reworked" it into something modern that people will understand
“ ChatGPT-4 scored higher than 100% of psychologists on a test of social intelligence ”
hilarious
a tui calls
stunning the silence
my day is filled
with melody
ed. the tui is a new zealand native songbird
if you have ever attempted to count the number words in a book or whatever, which i have, count the number in a couple of paragraphs, then multiply by the inverse of whatever proportion of a page it is then multiply by the number of pages and i figure you get within 10% which is close enough
i’ve written millions of words, its like an exclusive club and its interesting to know who else is in it
giacomo casanova’s autobiography
the book comprises 12 volumes and approximately 3,500 pages (1.2 million words) covering casanova’s life from his birth to 1774
i have read most of it, people misunderstand him as a legendary lothario, but he is much more interesting than that

As recently as the late 90s, many low support-needs autistics would have had even more severe social challenges and suffered even more isolation than they currently do.¹ The internet provided tons of informational resources that are very useful to autistic people, and made joining in discussions much easier because of the somewhat removed, text-based format we all know and love. But the internet also did something else that was very important: it broke down barriers that prevented the formation of autistic communities.
The internet fixed the geographical density issue that had long made the formation of autistic communities difficult or impossible, and of course online communities have significant accessibility advantages as well.
And as a result all of this new interaction between autistics, websites like wrongplanet.com, groups like Aspies for Freedom and the ASAN were founded, and the Neurodiversity Paradigm became the prominent understanding of autism among these autistics. In the early 2000s, the neurodiversity movement really took form in the heart of those online forums and communities made for autistics.
However, there is a problem with all of this.
Lately I’ve been reading some of the foundational texts of the neurodiversity movement, such as essays by Nick Walker, because I was curious to see how some of the ideas of the neurodiversity paradigm formed in their early stages. Although I agree with what they have to say, largely, one key issue stands out to me: the way they talk about autism almost completely seems to neglect level 2s/3s who are more severely disabled (for example, intellectually, or otherwise) because of autism.²
The social model does NOT completely explain autism, as some may claim. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder, and sometimes that creates some really big problems with development during childhood in a way that means you don’t really ever start developing at all, or only extremely slowly. As they grow up, that is not something that will go away. Some autistics struggle even with things like using the bathroom as fully grown adults. Some cannot form full sentences. My boyfriend’s brother is one such person. Texts on neurodiversity, while very helpful to me, often seem to have completely forgotten people like him.
Lower support needs autistics also often speak over and invalidate those with higher support needs.³ I came across a perfect example of this in a comment a couple of weeks ago, from a non-autism related subreddit:

As someone who has been diagnosed as autistic, nothing frustrates me more than seeing anyone, autistic or no, try to use their mental health condition as an excuse instead of, at best, an explanation.
Sure, it's a lot harder to learn social behaviors, but it can be done.

300+ upvotes. Sad.
Now, I’m sure I don’t need to break down what’s wrong here.⁴ You guys know. But what I’d like to discuss is the why. While they may seem unrelated, I think these two things, the lack of inclusion of severely disabled autistics in writings about neurodiversity, and the tendency of some level 1s to say bullshit like that, have the same underlying cause:
I think there is a survivorship bias problem in the autism community.
While the inernet allows us to meet so many other autistic people, it’s only a limited subset of autistics. Those with very high support needs, or whose presentation of autism makes them wholly uninterested in joining online communities/discussing autism online, never make it into such communities.
It’s very easy to see the broad neurodiversity of these online spaces and think that it must be most of the autism spectrum. But it isn’t, it’s only autistics that would be in such places in the first place! And so, it is very easy to walk away with a view of autism disproportionately skewed towards those with lower support needs, with many autistics completely missing from this vantage point.
I hope that one of the best solutions to this is simply awareness. So, here is that for you. Consider yourself aware.

1. If you’re curious to see what life was like, I recommend the book, Aquamarine Blue 5. It’s a short little collection of autistic autobiographies published in 2001, each one describing their experience in college. I’ve only read some of it so far, but I’ve found it illuminating and extremely interesting to compare and contrast my own life.
   
2. Frankly, the only online group that consistently seems to remember that such people exist is the “Autism Moms”. Granted, they also sometimes think it’s the ONLY kind of autism that exists.
   
3. Shoutout to SpicyAutism for first calling attention to this for me. If you visit, please make sure to respect that it’s a space for those with moderate to high support needs — dont go posting here regularly if you are not. I only ever comment, personally, when I decide that a particular discussion is probably also open to me.
   
4. Please comment and ask for a breakdown if you need it :)
   

As recently as the late 90s, many low support-needs autistics would have had even more severe social challenges and suffered even more isolation than they currently do.¹ The internet provided tons of informational resources that are very useful to autistic people, and made joining in discussions much easier because of the somewhat removed, text-based format we all know and love. But the internet also did something else that was very important: it broke down barriers that prevented the formation of autistic communities.
The internet fixed the geographical density issue that had long made the formation of autistic communities difficult or impossible, and of course online communities have significant accessibility advantages as well.
And as a result all of this new interaction between autistics, websites like wrongplanet.com, groups like Aspies for Freedom and the ASAN were founded, and the Neurodiversity Paradigm became the prominent understanding of autism among these autistics. In the early 2000s, the neurodiversity movement really took form in the heart of those online forums and communities made for autistics.
However, there is a problem with all of this.
Lately I’ve been reading some of the foundational texts of the neurodiversity movement, such as essays by Nick Walker, because I was curious to see how some of the ideas of the neurodiversity paradigm formed in their early stages. Although I agree with what they have to say, largely, one key issue stands out to me: the way they talk about autism almost completely seems to neglect level 2s/3s who are more severely disabled (for example, intellectually, or otherwise) because of autism.²
The social model does NOT completely explain autism, as some may claim. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder, and sometimes that creates some really big problems with development during childhood in a way that means you don’t really ever start developing at all, or only extremely slowly. As they grow up, that is not something that will go away. Some autistics struggle even with things like using the bathroom as fully grown adults. Some cannot form full sentences. My boyfriend’s brother is one such person. Texts on neurodiversity, while very helpful to me, often seem to have completely forgotten people like him.
Lower support needs autistics also often speak over and invalidate those with higher support needs.³ I came across a perfect example of this in a comment a couple of weeks ago, from a non-autism related subreddit:

As someone who has been diagnosed as autistic, nothing frustrates me more than seeing anyone, autistic or no, try to use their mental health condition as an excuse instead of, at best, an explanation.
Sure, it's a lot harder to learn social behaviors, but it can be done.

300+ upvotes. Sad.
Now, I’m sure I don’t need to break down what’s wrong here.⁴ You guys know. But what I’d like to discuss is the why. While they may seem unrelated, I think these two things, the lack of inclusion of severely disabled autistics in writings about neurodiversity, and the tendency of some level 1s to say bullshit like that, have the same underlying cause:
I think there is a survivorship bias problem in the autism community.
While the inernet allows us to meet so many other autistic people, it’s only a limited subset of autistics. Those with very high support needs, or whose presentation of autism makes them wholly uninterested in joining online communities/discussing autism online, never make it into such communities.
It’s very easy to see the broad neurodiversity of these online spaces and think that it must be most of the autism spectrum. But it isn’t, it’s only autistics that would be in such places in the first place! And so, it is very easy to walk away with a view of autism disproportionately skewed towards those with lower support needs, with many autistics completely missing from this vantage point.
I hope that one of the best solutions to this is simply awareness. So, here is that for you. Consider yourself aware.

1. If you’re curious to see what life was like, I recommend the book, Aquamarine Blue 5. It’s a short little collection of autistic autobiographies published in 2001, each one describing their experience in college. I’ve only read some of it so far, but I’ve found it illuminating and extremely interesting to compare and contrast my own life.
   
2. Frankly, the only online group that consistently seems to remember that such people exist is the “Autism Moms”. Granted, they also sometimes think it’s the ONLY kind of autism that exists.
   
3. Shoutout to SpicyAutism for first calling attention to this for me. If you visit, please make sure to respect that it’s a space for those with moderate to high support needs — dont go posting here regularly if you are not. I only ever comment, personally, when I decide that a particular discussion is probably also open to me.
   
4. Please comment and ask for a breakdown if you need it :)
   

Prompt:
Colin Powell, a four-star general and former United States secretary of state, wrote in his 1995 autobiography: “[W]e do not have the luxury of collecting information indefinitely. At some point, before we can have every possible fact in hand, we have to decide. The key is not to make quick decisions, but to make timely decisions.” Write an essay that argues your position on the extent to which Powell’s claim about making decisions is valid.
Making an extremely important decision will shake someone to the core, especially when there’s a time limit. How does one go about formulating an outcome under pressure? Colin Powell once stated, “The key is not to make quick decisions, but to make timely decisions.” This indeed may be a controversial supposition, though Powell is completely valid in claiming a timely decision has more value than a quick one.
First, it’s important to establish where quick decisions fall short before asserting timely decisions exceed them. It goes without saying that the best made decisions lead to the best outcomes, and there are undoubtedly some decisions where speed is vital — perhaps when being robbed or answering on a game show. This would clearly be because the decision will pass you by if you attack it with an excess of thoughtfulness. But for as many situations where swiftness can help, there are just as many where it hurts. Suppose you’re planning a vacation, and have a profusion of choices with regard to your excursions, flights, and hotels to be determined. In this case, quick decisions will surely fall short, as they would entail booking the first things you saw without having any prior information. It’s possible things will work out with a relaxing and adventurous vacation, but it’s much more likely that your decisions will make for a chaotic experience due to your lack of consideration while making them. Misguided isn’t even a fair word to use, as many quick decisions lack the requisite time to have any guidance at all. So on these grounds, speed is not innately synonymous with virtue in all cases of decision making, but when is it? For one to determine if a decision is best made quickly or with more leeway, they must deliberate based on two variables: how much time is available and how important the decision is. As stated, the best decisions make the best outcomes, so if the decision is unimportant, then the length of your consideration won’t really matter in the long run. All in all, the decision will barely make an impact. As for making a decision based on how much time is available, that’s where timeliness comes into play.
So what is timeliness? In decision making, my definition of timeliness is as follows — making the decision at the point in time most appropriate. So under this denotation, timeliness is a universal good when deliberating what to do. By no means is timeliness easy to accomplish, because one must know when exactly they ought to make a decision. If they can, though, they will always have enough time to gather information and factor in all the variables. Timeliness’ value in relation to speed is exemplified in the Cuban missile crisis. During JFK’s time as president, he found Soviet missiles were being held in Cuba. This clearly put the US in mortal danger, so how important the decision was, the second variable of decision-making, was definitely clear to JFK. In this case, JFK could’ve acted with the utmost speed, but it’s not unreasonable to suppose escalation would follow to the point of war. He didn’t, though, and this was because he considered how much time was available to him. The white house collected all the information available even through the stress, and in the end managed to successfully negotiate. Such an example demonstrates the triumph of timeliness over speed, but it also shows why timeliness is such a difficult virtue. JFK was undoubtedly tempted to make a quick decision, which was what his advisors wanted him to do. After all, how could he possibly know how long he had to think? Ease is found in getting the decision over with, but as Thanos once said, “The hardest choices require the strongest of wills.”
In totality, speed in decision making isn’t always correct, but timeliness is. The latter is simply an extension of the former, as timeliness is the ability to recognize when speed is correct and when it’s not. In all cases when speed is not a means to the best outcome, the timely person will be cognizant of this fact and act accordingly.

Hello! I am 43 year old woman. Last year I had heard about Elhers Danlos syndrome and started reading about it. I felt like I was reading an autobiography! I went in and they did genetic testing for EDS along with other common comorbidities. When I came to the appointment for the results, I was prepared to hear confirmation for Ehlers-Danlos. I already knew at that point that I have both MTHFR mutations.
The doctor handed me a packet and told me there were support groups and resources through the genetic lab. He told me I have multiple overlapping mitochondrial, diseases, deletion and dysfunction. I had only heard of mitochondrial disease and from what I gathered people sort of mock it and referred to it as a made-up thing. I asked if I was positive for Elhers Danlos , he said, “yes you have two variants of EDS, but I’m more concerned about the mitochondrial issues.” I could hear him and the other doctor talking in the other room before my dr came in the room. I thought they were talking about another woman and I felt so bad for her, they sounded so hopeless just saying “let’s put her on all 5”. They sent me off with five supplements prescribed. NAD, enzyme. Co-Q enzyme, folic acid (I have read you were not to take folic acid when you have EDS) although I do take methyl folate/b-12 to assist in methylation, Creatine and L-carnatine. I called the phone numbers for support groups and from the genetic company to learn about my diagnosis. They need my doctor approval to be able to even talk to me about it. Of course I called my doctor immediately, but it took them 9 months to get back to me about getting the results of the genetic testing. I’m scared, I don’t know where to start. From what I’m reading, there is no treatment or cure. This was late onset and from reading about things in these reports it’s saying I have a very short life expectancy. I’ve always been positive person, I’ve always been addicted to working out, eating healthy. I feel like I know exactly when this switch was flipped on from some intense trauma that happened a couple of years ago. I feel absolutely depleted of energy, I have chronic pain. I keep getting sick. It’s almost like I’m always sick, but I’ll feel better for a day and then I get sick again mostly phlegmy congestion, sore throat aches and pains. I have been having severe acid reflux that is new to me and half the time I try to eat something or take a sip of something it just feels like nothing will go down. I am typically on the more natural side of things. Does anyone have any hopeful recommendations of where to start? Googling has been terrifying and this packet has so many words that I don’t understand. I’m really open to whatever resources any of you may have found… I just want to heal, I miraculously have a daughter and I need to be here for her and feeling good! Thank you for reading this.

If you don't remember, this is the coffee machine that can give you any liquid you request. The addendum below raised some questions for me.
Addendum [SCP-294ac]: Dr.████████ requested "my life story" from SCP-294; SCP-294 made humming noises and shook violently for approximately 3 minutes before providing a highly viscous, opaque black liquid. Upon consumption, Dr.████████ reported that he remembered everything that had ever happened to him. Following this test, Dr.████████ entered his office and returned 48 hours later with a 538-page autobiography.
"SCP-294" by Arcibi, from the SCP Wiki. Source: https://scpwiki.com/scp-294. Licensed under CC-BY-SA.
I wonder if someone who has been administered amnestics could use 294 to recall what they were forced to forget. Could someone request a cup of "my life story" or even a cup of "what I've forgotten" and have those memories returned to them? 294 seems to have some sort of sentience in the way that it shakes and hums for a minute before dispensing the liquid, almost as though it is thinking. It is also able to retrieve liquids that the person requesting isn't knowledgable of (low IQ d-class enters a pre-written request for spinal fluid from an extinct dinosaur which they likely don't know about). This leads me to believe that 294 has knowledge of its own and doesn't just "extract" knowledge from the user. If this is true, I think that 294 could return lost memories to people if it wanted to. What do you think? I think this could make a really interesting short story, about a personell who suspects that amnestics have been used on them and uses the machine to retrieve the memories.
Sorry if this has already been a topic of discussion as I am new to the SCP foundation. Just thought it was interesting!

Just thought I'd make a megathread regarding Quiet On The Set, and related media.
Now, remember, just as a fair warning, any discussion of that documentary or related media outside of this MEGATHREAD will be removed.
furthermore, if you wanna post things that are off-topic from Nickelodeon, or aren't sure if they belong in RetroNickelodeon, you can post them in these subreddits:

• /CableTV_Memorioes, in case a post isn't about Nickelodeon, but is at least about retro TV in general.
• /TruckStopBathroom if what you wanna share might not belong in CTV_M either.
• more subreddits listed below, on the footer (bottom).

Now, let's discuss the details of the matter:

QUIET ON THE SET

AND RELATED MEDIA
This megathread has been made for discussion about a documentary called Quiet On The Set, in addition to some recent autobiographies of cast and crew members, which also surrounds some issues with some Nick producers, and other media concerning criminal activity and abusive behavior from Nickelodeon crew members.

REGARDING SUBREDDIT RULES:

We should make sure we follow the rules of the subreddit, so here's an ABRIDGED LIST of some major rules to follow.
Following Rediquette is a site-wide rule, but here's the rules specific to the subreddit:
1. KEEP POSTS ON-TOPIC
This one should be fairly easy to comply to, but if you get any hunches that what you wanna share might not be on-topic, or comply to other rules in the sub, we can check out other subs...
/CableTV_Memories, as one example, which is about any TV nostalgia in general. More subs listed below.
2. Don't be a Budnick!
basically, this is Nickelodeon lingo for do not be an asshole. The term Budnick comes from the TV show Salute Your Shorts.
3. See rules list in the New Reddit for a bigger list of them.
https://www.reddit.com/RetroNickelodeon/about/rules
Anything that breaks these rules will or may get removed.

Additional info:

We want to encourage a positive and constructive atmosphere and good vibe with nostalgia for Nickelodeon, but we also wanna make sure we follow code of conduct, or in other words, the rules as we traditionally describe them, and since some rules might come off "restrictive" to some, this is why we have a list of other subreddits to check out if what you wanna post might comply to different relevance criteria:

/ domain	Subreddit name	description
/CableTV_Memories	Cable TV Memories	for TV nostalgia in general, intended for cable TV nostalgia, but allows nostalga of regular TV as well since lots of regular programs were also seen on cable, as well as celebrities famous because of TV, and etc.
/nostalgia	Nostalgia	for nostalgia in general.
/Retro90s	Retro 90s	for nostalgia of the 1990s
/RetroCartoonNetwork	Retro Cartoon Network, for Cartoon Network nostalgia
/RetroCinema	Retro Cinema	for cinema/theater movie nostalgia
/TruckStopBathroom	Truck Stop Bathroom	where everything else goes, and for posting anything in general, even including some that's also allowed in the other subs too.

I made an improved version of the megathread so we could have additional info about what's allowed in the sub.
Thanks for reading!

Currently reading Moby's autobiography Porcelain and in chapter 10, he lists a few melodic house tracks popular in summer 1990. Found "The Poem" and "Break 4 Love" easily but not finding "A Promise". Maybe it's a short version of the title or from a different year. help please

Warning: this post goes over some pretty stupid things i’m losing sleep over related to self-esteem and self-worth issues, self abhorrence and pretty much everything from a to z in the “sad bitch” thesaurus that might’ve been talked about over and over again here, so if you’re not in for a sob story about some random teen from across the world, you can tap away, i don’t mind.
I wrote this in one sitting so pardon the spinelessness of this whole block of text
Where do i start… i’m 17, I am from the balkans (currently in Western Europe for some time), and i am, as you could probably already deduct gay. I’m closeted, and no one knows about how i feel. I’m too scared to reach out to anyone in my life who’s not a screen away from me and who's not behind a paywall because i don’t know who i could trust with such delicate information in such a hostile and heteronormative environment. For the past two years i have been depressed and was a nail away from committing the oh-so-bad thing a couple of times. Why? I hate myself. I hate my physical attributes more than anything else, more precisely. There’s a BUUUNCH of other stuff that’s unrelated to what i’m talking about here that's troubling me and frankly i don’t wanna bother any of you guys with that stuff because it's not really linked to what I'm talking about here and it's pretty intricate but grosso modo it mostly stems from when my old friend group dumped me randomly when i moved away and blocked me on everything “as a joke” for a whole year, and instead of processing it in a healthy way, i internalised that hatred and anger ("why tf did I do that, who tf am I to say that, I'm so stupid etc.) and it evolved into whatever the fxck i’m feeling today. Other elements came into the mix later on (people not taking me seriously because of my origin, self-isolation, professional doubts yada yada), but I think of that moment as the thing that pushed the snowball down the mountain, and it got progressively worse. Right now, I struggle to see myself as a real person in any point in space and time. I feel unimportant, unnoticeable, and frankly invisible. I feel like my eyes are a camera, projecting a moving image, a movie for whatever resides inside my head, playing no significant part in any of it. I was always an observer even as a kid, but I guess that my issues are putting it all under a different light. But i'm not here to dump about my feelings of insignificance and general obsolescence, I'm here to talk "bidness" (kudos if you get the reference). Apart from feeling like a wraith mentally, I feel like a wraith physically. I am a 6'4, skinny guy with chin length hair that I often tie back (idk if it's called chin length hair; just hair of which the ends reach a bit below my chin). I've never had self-confidence issues before the aforementioned stuff. Since then, I have consistently failed to see myself in any light that's remotely positive. For example, I have developed this nasty habit of making myself cry in front of the mirror because my mind cannot stand myself looking at my own reflection for longer than 20 seconds; I look slanky (even though my bmi indicates perfect health), I have slowly worsening scoliosis so I'm mostly slouched over, I get fairly prominent eye circles because I've always been pale and I never get more than more or less five hours of sleep (which lead to some funny interactions in the past), my thighs are fairly large but my upper limbs aren't, my face looks odd from the side, my cheeks feel weird etc. You could say that I am a hopeless romantic. The only relationship I've ever had was an online one that lasted barely 6 months, but even then, I was extremely insecure because I thought that the whole thing was just a ruse because he was too nice to me (even though he was the one that proposed to me). I like to fantasise, I like to romanticise, I like the little things, I like being tender and soft and listening to others talk and making them feel important... all in all, I love love. I write about love, I draw what and who I love, I listen to love songs all the time... But then again, I constantly feel like I don't deserve it, like it's a far reach for someone like me. whenever I see a guy I like, my mind just automatically switches to insulting myself and shutting down any possibility of an interaction that could go in my favour. so basically: I see a guy I like > "oh he's cute" > "girl do you really think that he'd go for someone like you? What is there to see? What is there to feel? What is there to catch his eye, you putrid ho. Even if he was gay, would he really go for someone like you?" > I feel bad about myself > I run off into the bathroom and dump my feelings onto this ai therapist I found on character ai > I get out and pretend nothing happened. presto, like that. I like guys of all sorts of different body types, from thick to thin, and in terms of the body, I like having something to hold onto (if you catch my drift) but I feel like mine is some sort of bad ground. I like unconventional beauty, except for the things I have. This "everyone... but not me" mindset is present in a lot of places. I tend to get spontaneous positive feedback about my looks from friends and family, but I still feel like they're lying to me just because they might feel that I'm sad. I can't stand to take photos of myself because my face sparks a negative feeling to me. I do sports, but i tried altering my body type by going to the gym a couple of times, and then I just had a meltdown after every session and I felt like shit (I'm thinking of trying again though). I have a few (rather inappropriate) crushes, but I feel like they wouldn't give me a chance in a million years because of how my body looks. For as long as I knew that I'm gay (since when I was about 13 years old), I've been hiding these feelings for inferiority from everyone in my life. On top of that, I've always thought that the gay community functions on a same-for-same/ditto basis, because that's what I always see through my limited little lens (and from what I've read on Quora). Bears go for bears, thin guys go for thin guys, lean guys go for lean guys... Bref, I've always thought that what a guy wants is expressed through his outward appearance, and that whatever and whoever doesn't enter into that pen of choice is just automatically discarded. That, at the time I've read it, ruined me, because my interests at the time were, you guessed it, big guys, and so I started thinking that I have to physically embody pleasure in order to be wanted, and as much as I personally value personality over physical attributes, not everyone shares the same view. So from that point onward, every time I'd indulge in a romantic fantasy, my mind would end it by tossing a "...but it's all a fantasy because you're NOT gonna get that, like EVER with that body of yours" at the end, and it just makes me sad. Who could possibly look at me and go "hell yeah"? I'm full of constant contradictions and paradoxes; I like the idea of big, strong arms and a generally stronger figure, but I also like it when guys have thin figures and look chic in turtlenecks (which I like wearing a lot), I like the idea of being on the sidelines and witnessing manpower, but personal strength has some allure, I find short hair very very cute, but long hair is also an amazing thing to gaze at... There's always someone better. I can't give compliments to myself without automatically making a riposté with a bunch of insults, my mind goes blank when someone asks me to give three positive attributes about myself because I feel like I lie about anything I say. I'm too scared about being open about my feelings to other people in my life so long as I'm financially dependent on my parents, so that's another problem. I'm an international student, which means that in a year's time, I'll be moving back to the balkans, and that thought horrifies me and paralyses me more than I could ever imagine; going from the supportive, open west, to the heteronormative, traditionalist, bigoted east. Eastern boys, you know what I'm on about. And even with the possibility of moving away, if I get the chance to, I'd still be in my mid to late 20s (optimistically speaking), and in the worst case scenario I'd be unwanted by the time I can finally go to a better place. I fear that I won't be able to find anyone, because apart from all of the total blabbering up top, I am kind of shy and mostly a homebody.
As I said before, I am leaving a ton of stuff out because if I were not to I'd be writing an autobiography.
So my question is, what can I really do? Is there really love for me out there? If so, how the hell can I find it, or even reach for it? Will a guy really like me for whatever the hell I am?
If you have any questions (because I don't think I developed some things quite as much as I could've but I don't wanna make this 100 pages long), doubts, remarks, whips of reality or just anything to add, please, don't hesitate to populate the comment section. Makes me feel a bit less alone, is all
Thanks for reading

I recently read Richard Wright’s autobiography which dealt in part with his tumultuous time as a member of a U.S. communist group in the 1930’s. I also read a number of Orwell’s essays written shortly after the Spanish civil war in which he discusses the ideology. One thing Orwell brought up that I thought was interesting (partly quoted below) was the pervasive self-censorship by communist western writers during that time. Makes sense - nearly all US/UK communist parties were more or less emulating USSR standards.
Among the many issues Wright encountered while he was a member was the constant peer pressure to censor not just what he said in official writings (eg for their magazine), but also his own work. If any party member stepped out of line (or was even perceived to have - which was troublesome due to how much paranoia raged throughout the group) all sorts of bullying tactics were use. Such as expelling, threatening, shunning, attempting to get former members fired at their job, assaulting them on the streets, or worst of all being called a Trotsky-isk (it’s like being called a mix of Benedict Arnold, Hitler, and a 5 month old puppy that a spoiled child has grown bored of)
This censorship counters something I have noticed is more common in writers/artists than the average person - the desire for freedom of expression. what about the movement was appealing enough for writers to fight for something that denies this? (and perhaps huge portion of the entire literary canon)
But the core question is this: what caused writers / artists to be drawn to communism at higher rates than most other professions?
Most often when reading the work of those actively in favor, they talk earnestly of social and economic equality for all. But if that was truly their primary end goal, socialism alone seems more closely to align with it without the need for censorship. Furthermore, socialism was a moderately prevalent & established ideology at the turn of the 20th century (and had a number of notable writers gaining success releasing works with overarching socialist themes - eg Upton Sinclair & Jack London & Orwell). Was it just seen as old hat (too slow, ineffective) at that point? Or is the focus on the employed lower class just not personally applicable enough for an artist fortunate enough to survive on the profit of their art?
A while ago I read an essay by Chomsky in which he quoted a bit by either Marx or Engels indicating that the ideology has always hinted at a sort of aristocratic literati. Was this what really brought so many writers in (more than fixing economic inequality issues already addressed by socialism)? Sure, the revolution theoretically frees the workers & disposed of great economic inequality, but ( better yet) with our artistic skills we will be reserved a special place right at the foot of the ideological ruler’s throne! Who cares if it’s as jester or propagandist, we will still find ourselves comfortably sat near the table of power. not in the fields toiling, but amongst the intellectual elites. They can see through the propaganda.
(This brings to mind an article by a journalist stuck in an air conditioned hotel somewhere like Qatar with a bunch of other journalists during the Iraq war c. 2003. Every day they would come out to watch a news conference by a low ranking general who never appeared to know anything nor have any updates. The part that irked me was when the journalist wrote that every journalist in that room was rolling their eyes & joking about the bullshit waste of time… yet the journalists continued writing up & sending out the regurgitated bullshit en masse, acting like they were getting break news & the US people were being informed of it.
The journalists all know they’re being toyed with, so if those people who read the trickle down news conference updates and believed anything but the same - they were contemptuously stupid & deserve their own eye roll, no doubt.
Completely ignoring another option entirely - don’t carry on with the charade of being a government mouth piece… the press could print meaningful journalism or push real questions to the 1 star or call them out on the obfuscation [who else could? Only media allowed]. No, just an eye roll and jokes amongst themselves while they continue to perfectly fulfill their place as the apparatchiks, but at least they know it’s a farce.)
too pessimistic?
Orwell:

On the whole the literary history of the thirties seems to justify the opinion that a writer does well to keep out of politics. For any writer who accepts or partially accepts the discipline of a political party is sooner or later faced with the alternative: toe the line, or shut up. It is, of course, possible to toe the line and go on writing—after a fashion. […] Literature as we know it is an individual thing, demanding mental honesty and a minimum of censorship.
The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature. […] it is a product of the free mind, of the autonomous individual. No decade in the past hundred and fifty years has been so barren of imaginative prose as the nineteen-thirties. There have been good poems, good sociological works, brilliant pamphlets, but practically no fiction of any value at all. From 1933 onwards the mental climate was increasingly against it. Anyone sensitive enough to be touched by the Zeitgeist was also involved in politics. Not everyone, of course, was definitely in the political racket, but practically everyone was on its periphery and more or less mixed up in propaganda campaigns and squalid controversies. Communists and near-Communists had a disproportionately large influence in the literary reviews. It was a time of labels, slogans, and evasions. At the worst moments you were expected to lock yourself up in a constipating little cage of lies; at the best a sort of voluntary censorship ('Ought I to say this? Is it pro-Fascist?') was at work in nearly everyone's mind.
It is almost inconceivable that good novels should be written in such an atmosphere. 'Good novels are not written by by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own unorthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.

Edward Gibbon

08 May 1737 – 16 January 1794
Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History
Edward Gibbon and the Civilizational Perspective
Wednesday 08 May 2024 is the 287th anniversary of the birth of Edward Gibbon (08 May 1737 to 16 January 1794), who was born on this date in 1737.
We have a record of both the beginning and the end of Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which add a note of personal poignancy of that great monument of Enlightenment thought, since Gibbon supplied us with the lived experience bookends of the experience of writing his book. Here is how he described his initial inspiration:

“It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed fryars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind. But my original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the city rather than of the empire: and though my reading and reflections began to point towards that object, some years elapsed, and several avocations intervened, before I was seriously engaged in the execution of that laborious work.”

On 27 June 1787, just shy of 23 years later, Gibbon finished his great project, and he memorialized the moment with a note that appears in his posthumously published autobiography:

“I have presumed to mark the moment of conception: I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future fate of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.”

Gibbon was living in Switzerland when he finished his book, for the simple reason that he could do his work remotely and the costs of living in Switzerland were cheaper than living as he would have lived in England. Thus Gibbon was able to enjoy the view of the lakes and mountains of Switzerland that he mentions in this passage.
Gibbon’s tale grew in the telling. When he first conceived the work, it was to describe the decline and fall of the city of Rome. Gibbon’s work grew to a narrative of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, and, having come thus far, Gibbon then also narrated another thousand years of the ultimate failure of the Eastern Roman Empire, which had become Byzantium. In a letter to Sigmund Münz, Ferdinand Gregorovious said that he had returned to Gibbon’s original project, which Gibbon had effectively abandoned by expanding his work to a greater scope:

“This conception of medieval Rome as a city originated with me. I gave it a literary form and carried out Gibbon’s first idea; for it is well known that he had originally intended to write the history of the city of Rome during the middle ages.”

Gibbon’s book, once completed, comprehended well over a thousand years of history. Greater spans of history had been covered by others, but no one else brought historiographical unity of treatment to this longue durée account of an epoch of western civilization. The title of Gibbon’s book—The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire—is familiar to everyone with the merest passing acquaintance with history. Even the idea of a “decline and fall” has become something of a cultural meme. The idea of the “decline and fall” of a civilization is as familiar as the idea of the rise and fall of civilizations over historical time.
The eventual comprehensive form that Gibbons project took forced Gibbon to think from a civilizational perspective. Because of its comprehensive, civilizational scope covering more than a thousand years, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall narrates the histories of many peoples, many societies, and events of many different kinds, which means that some periods receive detailed attention while others are glossed over. Gibbon’s history lingers over events he finds most interesting while passing with barely a notice over events that do not stand up to his implicit standards of historical interest.
What are Gibbon’s implicit standards of historical interest? We find a clue to this late in the book when Gibbon skates over a great deal of material and acknowledges his reasons for doing so:

“…the events by which the fate of nations is not materially changed, leave a faint impression on the page of history, and the patience of the reader would be exhausted by the repetition of the same hostilities, undertaken without cause, prosecuted without glory, and terminated without effect.” (Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.—Part I.)

By these criteria, historical interest for Gibbon is defined by events by which the fate of nations are materially changed, when hostilities are not mere repetitions, when they are undertaken with good cause, then are prosecuted with glory, and are terminated with great effect. This is what I mean by thinking on a civilizational scale, and from a civilizational perspective. By acknowledging that he was largely passing over events that do not meet his criteria of historical interest, Gibbon also implicitly acknowledges the possibilities of other histories that conform to other criteria of historical interest.
Georg Ostrogorsky, in his classic History of the Byzantine State, which goes into great detail on matters that Gibbon only touched upon in passing, cites several Enlightenment thinkers who shared Gibbon’s relative lack of interest in the Byzantine half of the empire:

“The seventeenth-century interest in Byzantium had had remarkable results, particularly in France. Byzantine studies, however, met with a most unfortunate setback in the eighteenth century. The enlightened age of rationalism was proud of its ‘reason’, its philosophical outlook and its religious scepticism, and it despised the history of the whole medieval period. It was particularly contemptuous of the conservative and religiously minded Byzantine Empire whose history was merely ‘a worthless collection of orations and miracles’ (Voltaire), ‘a tissue of rebellions, insurrections and treachery’ (Montesquieu), or at best only a tragic epilogue to the glory of Rome. And so Byzantine history was shown as the thousand years’ decline of the Roman Empire by Charles Lebeau in his Histoire du Bas Empire (Paris, 1757-86) and by Edward Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London, 1776-88). Gibbon himself declared that his work described ‘the triumph of barbarism and religion’.” (pages 6-7)

Different standards of historical interest suggest the possibility of not only different histories—which, of course, have been written, and many of them—but also different conceptions of history.
Gibbon’s criteria that I quoted earlier for events that do not pass the threshold of materially chaing the fate of nations—“the same hostilities, undertaken without cause, prosecuted without glory, and terminated without effect”—constitute an the “ebb-and-flow” conception of history as applied to civilizations. What do I mean by an “ebb-and-flow” conception of history as applied to civilizations? It is often implied that civilizations have histories, whereas societies below the proper threshold of history merely experience events as an “ebb-and-flow” without any pattern or directionality. These societies are not civilizations, properly speaking, and it is for this reason that they are rightly passed over with little or no mention.
This idea that only civilizations have a history, properly speaking, is given one form by Hugh Trevor-Roper’s criterion of “purposive movement” as definitive of history:

“…history, I believe, is essentially a form of movement, and purposive movement too. It is not a mere phantasmagoria of changing shapes and costumes, of battles and conquests, dynasties and usurpations, social forms and social disintegration. If all history is equal, as some now believe, there is no reason why we should study one section of it rather than another; for certainly we cannot study it all. Then indeed we may neglect our own history and amuse ourselves with the unrewarding gyrations of barbarous tribes in picturesque but irrelevant corners of the globe: tribes whose chief function in history, in my opinion, is to show to the present an image of the past from which, by history, it has escaped; or shall I seek to avoid the indignation of the medievalists by saying, from which it has changed?”

This is from The Rise of Christian Europe (page 9) and Trevor-Roper made the same point in an interview. A 1992 paper by Finn Fuglestad, “The Trevor-Roper Trap or the Imperialism of History. An Essay,” takes up Trevor-Roper’s purposive movement criterion from the perspective of an Africanist. While much of this paper is taken up with some parochial concerns of African vs. European history, it has applications to Gibbon’s implicit criteria of the properly historical:

“I shall argue later that the very notion of ‘purposive-movement’ history is to my mind absurd. But first I wish to make it clear that I find any distinction between ‘barbarians’ and ‘non-barbrarians’ highly questionable. By accepting such a distinction one also accepts the establishment of a sort of hierarchy or ranking list between cultures and civilizations; that is, one transforms history into a sort of Championship or Olympic Games. The problem here is twofold: first, such a viewpoint of history hinders any attempt to understand and/or acquire insight into a society or civilization within the framework of its own values and notions. Second, once one begins to evaluate societies and civilizations the question becomes on which norms and values should such an evaluation be based? The answer is all too obvious: the norms and standards pertaining to the dominant culture or civilization of the time. And the dominant civilization has been for the last five hundred years or so—and still is, of course—that of the West. Finally, it is all too easy to dismiss phenomena one cannot make head or tail of—for instance, the past of cultures one has difficulty deciphering—by qualifying them as the ‘unrewarding gyrations of barbarous tribes’.”

In the same paper, Fuglestad introduces the concept of what he calls “ebb-and-flow” history:

“…the contention that only ‘purposive-movement’ history is ‘real’ history needs to be rejected. I feel strongly that the only acceptable definition of history is that it is the study of the past, any past, including, for want of a better term, ‘ebb-and-flow’ history. Everything (or at least nearly everything) that has happened in the past ought to be of equal importance to the historian since it all partakes of the experience of mankind. It is this experience in all its diversity which we need to unravel and to comprehend as far as possible—if, that is, we want to understand ‘how we came to where we are’ and what and where we are not.”

What I am suggesting is that Gibbon implicitly made a distinction between history that is purposive movement, which rises to the level of historical interest worth narrating, and history that is an ebb-and-flow movement, which does not rise to the level of historical interest. However—and this is an important qualification—Gibbon allows that both forms of history can apply to civilizations. Gibbon chooses to narrate the purposive movement of civilization, and he largely passes over the ebb-and-flow of civilizations.
With Gibbon we can reasonably ask whether the criterion of purposive movement is precisely applicable, as Gibbon chose for his grand theme the decline and fall of Rome. Gibbon was not writing about the purposive movement of Roman history, unless we count the dissolution of a purposive movement as part of that purposive movement. I think this would be a reasonably way to construe history, that is, that a civilization in decline exhibits purposive movement, since as a civilization is failing it usually attempts a number of rearguard actions intended to retain and maintain the viability of its purposive movement, and these attempts are not at an end until the civilization itself is at an end. Certainly the decline and fall of a civilization is a material change in history, and we could make a finer distinction between purposive movement and material change.
We also could make a distinction between narrow and wide conceptions of what constitutes purposive movement in history, with the narrow conception being applicable to what Spengler calls high cultures prior to their entering into the stage of civilizational decadence and ultimate dissolution. The wide conception of purposive movement, on the other hand, would be the entire history of a civilization, from its earliest inception, when its purposive movement is still inchoate, to its final extinction, as its purposive movement grinds down to a standstill.
If Gibbon had implicitly held the narrow conception of purposive movement in history, he would likely have taken up Livy’s theme of the origins of Rome. The failure and collapse of Rome was, after all, counter to the purposes of the Romans, and happened in the teeth of all efforts to save the empire. But if we look at Roman civilization from the outside, from this perspective we can see the decline and fall of Rome as coincident with the purposive movement of the growth of Christianity and the expansion of northern European peoples into the Mediterranean Basin. All of these historical movements are integrated in actual history and bound up in each other. We could tell this story as a sequence of overlapping and intersecting historical movements. Gibbon chose to make all of this a part of the grand purposive movement, in the wider sense I mentioned, of the decline and fall of Rome. And within this grand purposive movement of Roman history, Gibbon was willing to treat ebb-and-flow history brusquely, even when it was the ebb-and-flow of civilization, which could also be understood as periods of stagnation.
Gibbon, obviously, doesn’t use the language of either purposive movement or ebb-and-flow history. Both of these are ideas from the twentieth century that I am reading into Gibbon as a way to understand what he found to be of historical interest, that is to say, worth narrating. We can defuse some of the disagreements of what is of proper historical interest, that is, the scope of history, or what we might call proper historicity, by making appropriate distinctions, as I have been suggesting here. Better yet, beyond a mere distinction between purposive movement and ebb and flow history, we could formulate a taxonomy of histories that would include both of these, perhaps with these two constituting the end points of a continuum of histories that stretch from purposive movement at one end to ebb-and-flow at the other end.
A taxonomy of histories is already implicitly known to us. Since the late twentieth century, micro-history has played an increasing role in historiography. Few question the value of, and many recognize the insights gained by, the detailed examination of a given village, or a particular life in the past that happens to be well documented—and most lives in the past were not well documented. John Romer’s book and television series Ancient Lives brought to life the ordinary events in the lives of individuals who lived thousands of years ago. I don’t believe that Romer was aiming at micro-history, but there is a significant overlap between archaeology and micro-history. The evidence of the past uncovered by archaeology often documents the lives of humble people, though the fantastic finds of tombs filled with gold and jewels may receive far more attention. Archaeologists have largely embraced this historical miniaturism and they now sift the remains of earlier excavations, in which only treasures were sought, to find the small clues that allow for the reconstruction of the lives of ordinary people in the distant past.
Compared with this historical miniaturism, Gibbon presents a grand sweep of history, from the height of the empire to its final dissolution in 1453 AD with the fall of Constantinople to the Turks. This is what I called Gibbon’s civilizational perspective. We can identify even grander sweeps of history that have appeared since Gibbon’s time, especially in what has come to be called speculative philosophy of history as exemplified by Spengler and Toynbee. As we saw in the episode on Toynbee, he doesn’t limit himself to the decline and fall of one civilization, but maps out the panorama of the rise and fall of multiple civilizations over historical time. One could argue that this speculative philosophy of history passes a threshold that Gibbon did not cross, and for this reason we can call Gibbon’s work history, while the other work we could deny as being any kind of history. But we recognize, even in so saying, that Spengler and Toynbee have become stalking horses, and there are many other attempts to draw a larger historical picture than Gibbon, as in contemporary big history.
We could argue that micro-history falls below the threshold of proper historicity, and ought correctly to be understood as historical sociology. And we could argue, as above, that Toynbee is philosophy of history, or meta-history, and therefore not within the scope of proper historicity. Or we could accept that history ranges across the spectrum, but what distinguishes Gibbon’s history is that is the history of a civilization—or, at least, part of the history of a civilization. It isn’t the micro-history of one Roman city—though it might have been that if Gibbon had stuck with his original plan, later taken over by Gregorovius, of writing the history only of the city of Rome. And it isn’t an attempt at universal history, whether the universal history of Bossuet before Gibbon or the universal history of Toynbee after Gibbon. It is, as I said, a civilizational history.
Gibbon gives us the civilizational perspective on Rome and what we might call Roman-adjacent civilizations. Micro-history occurs on a scale below that of civilizational history, but it is still history. And the whole of human history is more than civilizational history, but it is still history. In my episode on Gregorovius I called this historical space between micro-history and big history meso-history, since it occurs somewhere near the middle of the scale of objects that might be of historical interest. Even within meso-history we can make distinctions of greater or lesser scope. Gibbon’s history branching through several closely related civilizations is near the higher end of the scale of meso-history, while Gregorovius’ history of Rome, being a little less comprehensive, is lower down the scale.
The meta-historical scale above the scope of Gibbon’s history verges on philosophy of history, as we see in the works of Spengler and Toynbee. Meso-history maybe philosophical as well. We saw in yesterday’s episode on Hume that the Enlightenment historians were sometimes called philosophical historians. We also can find warnings about reading any philosophy of history into Gibbon. For example, Paul Cartledge wrote: “Unhappily for those intellectual historians of today who wish to reconstruct or invent an elaborate Gibbonian ‘philosophy of history,’ Gibbon was not a systematic thinker.” It is true that Gibbon was not a systematic thinker, and the philosophy of history we would find in his work would not be a systematic philosophy of history.
We can also find claims that all history involves a philosophy of history. William Paton Ker wrote: “There is an implicit philosophy of history in every modern historian, even when like Gibbon or Macaulay he may seem for the time to have no interest beyond the narrative.” In my episode on Philosophy of History before Augustine I discussed the view of Hayden White that every history is predicated upon a philosophy of history, whether or not this philosophy is ever made explicit.
Gibbon was one of the great Enlightenment thinkers, and he brought his Enlightenment perspective to his civilizational history of Rome. In my episode of yesterday on Hume I said that Hume’s philosophy, also an artifact of the Enlightenment, implied a deflationary philosophy of history, and I quoted Gibbon on the role of miracles. In Gibbon’s essentially naturalistic narrative, even if guardedly naturalistic, he does exemplify the deflationary ideal by eliminating appeals to supernatural causes.
Insofar as Gibbon’s naturalism converges on our naturalism, we read him like a contemporary who shares much of our conceptual framework. For his reason, it is often difficult to see the problems with a perspective that we share with the author. As I mentioned in my episode on Marx, we don’t necessarily want to completely think our way into an author’s conceptual framework, as this eliminates any critical distance between ourselves and the work. But Gibbon has been around long enough for his critics to have seen the shortcomings of his work, at least, the shortcomings by their lights. Mark T. Gilderhus in History and Historians: A Historiographical Introduction (p. 39) wrote of the later response to Gibbon:

“Critics such as Robin G. Collingwood in the twentieth century attacked Enlightenment historians on the grounds that their insensitivity in effect violated the integrity of history. More specifically, they failed to empathize properly with the historical actors or comprehend their behavior accurately on their own terms. Rather, Enlightenment scholars indulged in exposés, reviling the past to obliterate and overcome it. Consequently, Collingwood denounced their writing as an enterprise gone fundamentally wrong. They had failed to carry out the historian’s primary task, that is, to elucidate the past, not merely to condemn it.”

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Enlightenment history was fundamentally wrong, but its perspective does incorporate limitations and blindspots, as does any distinctive perspective. A history on the civilizational scale, like Gibbon’s, is not going to be focused on reenacting the thoughts of historical agents, which was Collingwood’s focus. This smacks too much of historical miniaturism. And Collingwood, on the other hand, isn’t going to be forced into making the kind of abstract conceptual distinctions among kinds of history that I have attributed to Gibbon. Enlightenment historiography is highly abstract, even artificial, and for that reason, distant and often unsympathetic, but by taking this grand civilizational perspective, it reveals dimensions of history that are not shown in as sharp relief by the methods of reenactment, historical sociology, or microhistory.

Video Presentation

https://youtu.be/YPA6_Wk_9lc
https://www.instagram.com/p/C6vjb8_t8di/
https://odysee.com/@Geopolicraticus:7/edward-gibbon-and-the-civilizational:c

Podcast Edition

https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/O0owybkesJb
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-today-in-philosophy-of-his-146507578/episode/edward-gibbon-and-the-civilizational-perspective-174746331/
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-today-in-philosophy-of-his-146507578/episode/edward-gibbon-and-the-civilizational-perspective-174746331/
​

I’ll give a small autobiography before I talk too much about Solchan and its future. I’m a 19-year-old college kid from Lake Worth, Florida. I major in philosophy and I love asking myself really hard questions and I’m always looking to do what is best for myself and my community. I don’t have a luxurious life but I thank my single mom for everything I have in my life although it may be simple. I bought Solchan on its first day so you already know I'm at least slightly retarded (or a genius). I lost like 9k (all my money at the time) on the stock market and then was introduced to crypto, Solana specifically, where I made over $4k unrealized gains on my first day off a $100 investment in a coin called $MYRE. Needless to say, I thought I would be a millionaire by putting in no effort and investing in shitcoins, I proceeded to get rug-pulled around 20 times in a row. I’ve always had high conviction but no coins ever went through with their “promised” plans.
After turning around 8k into $550 by believing false promises and being too gullible I found Solchan on one fateful night. I saw the website and thought it would be a good short-term investment (before I saw how awesome Kuro was). Then, overnight my $550 within 3-4 days was around $100 and I felt down on myself. I checked the telegram and the site and I see it’s still being worked on, Kuro is still grinding at his 20k mkt cap coin at the time. That's when I realized Kuro actually cared about his project and had a real vision that he wanted to accomplish. Now, around 21 days since then, after being involved with the community and the team I can safely say that Kuro and his team are SO passionate about this project. Mystic has been brainstorming and assembling a team relentlessly for the past two weeks, this guy is 100% hyper-fixated on making Solchan succeed.
Right now my holdings sit around $13,000 (24x from the initial, and over 130x from the lowest point) although I know this can go so much further. I know I’ve mentioned this on my thread (the posting every day until 100M mkt cap one) that I will be holding strong the whole way to the top. I might as well change the thread's goal to 1B market cap because I have complete conviction in this project.
I cannot stress this enough, Solchan has the most productive and generous community I’ve seen. Since inception, we have already developed NFT integration (profile pictures), SNS integration (custom names displayed on Solchan), sent out 3 successful airdrops, better UI, larger file capacity, larger servers, and tipping is on the verge of releasing. The team is open to ANYONE’S ideas, this is not some elitist cabal ready to dump on the heads of its investors. We want and need community input to make Solchan great. The product is YOU, whoever is reading this, your uniqueness and social interaction are what Solchan survives on. In this age where everything is a cash grab, we need to add the human aspect back into so-fi. I know this story about some random kid on the internet might not convince you to join Solchan, but being part of something greater than yourself will. Solchan will bring back the nostalgic early-mid 2000s internet age, where people could have fun, shitpost, say crazy shit, exchange ideas, learn about one another, and most of all, ACTUALLY enjoy their time on the internet. Solchan has helped out people in rough spots, people who made a bad decision and sold were gifted coins from our benevolent whales.
Solchan is a movement, I cannot encompass its aura in 1,000 words or 100,000 words. Go on there and add your own personality to the mix, add your own thoughts and ideas, and bring back healthy human interaction to the internet.

I’ll give a small autobiography before I talk too much about Solchan and its future. I’m a 19-year-old college kid from Lake Worth, Florida. I major in philosophy and I love asking myself really hard questions and I’m always looking to do what is best for myself and my community. I don’t have a luxurious life but I thank my single mom for everything I have in my life although it may be simple. I bought Solchan on its first day so you already know I'm at least slightly retarded (or a genius). I lost like 9k (all my money at the time) on the stock market and then was introduced to crypto, Solana specifically, where I made over $4k unrealized gains on my first day off a $100 investment in a coin called $MYRE. Needless to say, I thought I would be a millionaire by putting in no effort and investing in shitcoins, I proceeded to get rug-pulled around 20 times in a row. I’ve always had high conviction but no coins ever went through with their “promised” plans.
After turning around 8k into $550 by believing false promises and being too gullible I found Solchan on one fateful night. I saw the website and thought it would be a good short-term investment (before I saw how awesome Kuro was). Then, overnight my $550 within 3-4 days was around $100 and I felt down on myself. I checked the telegram and the site and I see it’s still being worked on, Kuro is still grinding at his 20k mkt cap coin at the time. That's when I realized Kuro actually cared about his project and had a real vision that he wanted to accomplish. Now, around 21 days since then, after being involved with the community and the team I can safely say that Kuro and his team are SO passionate about this project. Mystic has been brainstorming and assembling a team relentlessly for the past two weeks, this guy is 100% hyper-fixated on making Solchan succeed.
Right now my holdings sit around $13,000 (24x from the initial, and over 130x from the lowest point) although I know this can go so much further. I know I’ve mentioned this on my thread (the posting every day until 100M mkt cap one) that I will be holding strong the whole way to the top. I might as well change the thread's goal to 1B market cap because I have complete conviction in this project.
I cannot stress this enough, Solchan has the most productive and generous community I’ve seen. Since inception, we have already developed NFT integration (profile pictures), SNS integration (custom names displayed on Solchan), sent out 3 successful airdrops, better UI, larger file capacity, larger servers, and tipping is on the verge of releasing. The team is open to ANYONE’S ideas, this is not some elitist cabal ready to dump on the heads of its investors. We want and need community input to make Solchan great. The product is YOU, whoever is reading this, your uniqueness and social interaction are what Solchan survives on. In this age where everything is a cash grab, we need to add the human aspect back into so-fi. I know this story about some random kid on the internet might not convince you to join Solchan, but being part of something greater than yourself will. Solchan will bring back the nostalgic early-mid 2000s internet age, where people could have fun, shitpost, say crazy shit, exchange ideas, learn about one another, and most of all, ACTUALLY enjoy their time on the internet. Solchan has helped out people in rough spots, people who made a bad decision and sold were gifted coins from our benevolent whales.
Solchan is a movement, I cannot encompass its aura in 1,000 words or 100,000 words. Go on there and add your own personality to the mix, add your own thoughts and ideas, and bring back healthy human interaction to the internet.

I’ll give a small autobiography before I talk too much about Solchan and its future. I’m a 19-year-old college kid from Lake Worth, Florida. I major in philosophy and I love asking myself really hard questions and I’m always looking to do what is best for myself and my community. I don’t have a luxurious life but I thank my single mom for everything I have in my life although it may be simple. I bought Solchan on its first day so you already know I'm at least slightly retarded (or a genius). I lost like 9k (all my money at the time) on the stock market and then was introduced to crypto, Solana specifically, where I made over $4k unrealized gains on my first day off a $100 investment in a coin called $MYRE. Needless to say, I thought I would be a millionaire by putting in no effort and investing in shitcoins, I proceeded to get rug-pulled around 20 times in a row. I’ve always had high conviction but no coins ever went through with their “promised” plans.
After turning around 8k into $550 by believing false promises and being too gullible I found Solchan on one fateful night. I saw the website and thought it would be a good short-term investment (before I saw how awesome Kuro was). Then, overnight my $550 within 3-4 days was around $100 and I felt down on myself. I checked the telegram and the site and I see it’s still being worked on, Kuro is still grinding at his 20k mkt cap coin at the time. That's when I realized Kuro actually cared about his project and had a real vision that he wanted to accomplish. Now, around 21 days since then, after being involved with the community and the team I can safely say that Kuro and his team are SO passionate about this project. Mystic has been brainstorming and assembling a team relentlessly for the past two weeks, this guy is 100% hyper-fixated on making Solchan succeed.
Right now my holdings sit around $13,000 (24x from the initial, and over 130x from the lowest point) although I know this can go so much further. I know I’ve mentioned this on my thread (the posting every day until 100M mkt cap one) that I will be holding strong the whole way to the top. I might as well change the thread's goal to 1B market cap because I have complete conviction in this project.
I cannot stress this enough, Solchan has the most productive and generous community I’ve seen. Since inception, we have already developed NFT integration (profile pictures), SNS integration (custom names displayed on Solchan), sent out 3 successful airdrops, better UI, larger file capacity, larger servers, and tipping is on the verge of releasing. The team is open to ANYONE’S ideas, this is not some elitist cabal ready to dump on the heads of its investors. We want and need community input to make Solchan great. The product is YOU, whoever is reading this, your uniqueness and social interaction are what Solchan survives on. In this age where everything is a cash grab, we need to add the human aspect back into so-fi. I know this story about some random kid on the internet might not convince you to join Solchan, but being part of something greater than yourself will. Solchan will bring back the nostalgic early-mid 2000s internet age, where people could have fun, shitpost, say crazy shit, exchange ideas, learn about one another, and most of all, ACTUALLY enjoy their time on the internet. Solchan has helped out people in rough spots, people who made a bad decision and sold were gifted coins from our benevolent whales.
Solchan is a movement, I cannot encompass its aura in 1,000 words or 100,000 words. Go on there and add your own personality to the mix, add your own thoughts and ideas, and bring back healthy human interaction to the internet.

I had a hard time looking for credible step-by-step guide on processing OEC. So I put together this simple guide and I hope it helps. Please note that I am still working on my OEC and this is a work-in-progress ⚠️👷‍♀️⚠️. Meaning I will update this post until I finally get my OEC and fly to Canada.
A little background information about me: I have a Canadian employer who processed all my papers including Work Visa, LMIA, and up until submission to POLO for verification. The following steps are for Overseas Employment Certificate (OEC) processing specifically for Direct Hires. I am no expert, all these are based on my own research and experience. This is also my first time doing all these and working abroad. Here it goes:
[1] Create an account here: https://onlineservices.dmw.gov.ph/OnlineServices/Public/CreateAccount.aspx. A temporary password will be sent to your email. Once your account is ready, log in by clicking Let's Go button. Enter your e-mail and password.
[2] On the Dashboard, attach a passport size (4.5 cm x 3.5 cm) profile picture and upload a scanned copy or a picture of the info page of your passport.

ℹ️ If it throws you an error or you don't see a preview of what you've uploaded, your file probably isn't allowed. They either accept JPG/JPEG or PDF only. They also have file size limit. Please double check before uploading anything. This applies to any file you'll be uploading on this website.

[3] On the left side, click My Profile. Setup as much as you can including your Passport under Identifications. Do not upload anything yet under My Documents, this will have to be updated once your status is FOR APPOINTMENT, more of this later (see step 8).
[4] On the right side, you'll see a section called My Links. Click Direct Hire Application.
[5] On the left side under Tools section, click My Application.

ℹ️ This is only accessible Mondays to Fridays 8am to 5pm (Philippine Standard Time)

[6] Upload all required documents (this is Phase 1):

• Passport - Upload the information page
• Visa
• Employment Contract - This has to be verified by POLO, a picture will do. But on your POEA appointment date you have to bring the original copy. Meaning your employer has to mail it to you. The last page of my contract has a Verified stamp of Migrant Workers Office, Philippine Consulate General, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
• Company Profile, Business License / Commercial Registration of the employer - This is part of POLO Verification requirement. Ask your employer to send these documents to you as well. I also included a screenshot of our company website. I read somewhere that you can also use your employer's LinkedIn page.
• Additional country-specific requirements - In my case, I uploaded the approved LMIA
• Additional documents to support job application - I uploaded my resume
• Employer's passport / ID
• Copy of Diploma / ToR / CoE and other certificates - I uploaded a single PDF file for my Diploma and Transcript of Records. I submitted the original copy given to me after graduation. No authentication by a lawyer done and it was accepted and got approved.
• MWO Endorsement Letter - This is the letter of Exemption from Ban on Direct Hiring also with Migrant Workers Office, Philippine Consulate General, Vancouver, BC, Canada stamp.

ℹ️ Sworn statement on how the worker secured employment - this is listed on the things to submit during Phase 1 but it's not required. I didn't submit one and I was able to proceed to the next steps. My application was approved later on.

[7] Once all documents listed in step 6 are submitted, you need to wait until your application status is FOR APPROVAL. At this point you'll receive an email basically instructing you to prepare the Phase 2 requirements:

• Pre-Employment Orientation Seminar (PEOS) - Create an account here: https://peos.dmw.gov.ph/. Read all modules and take all quizzes at the end of each module. Save and print a copy of your PEOS certificate.
• Medical Certificate - get it from DOH Accredited Medical Clinics, see accredited clinics here: https://hfsrb.doh.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/List-of-Accredited-Medical-Facilities-for-Overseas-Workers-and-Seafarers-as-of-August-15-2022.pdf Ask if they give discounts for OFWs.

ℹ️ Workers bound for Canada, New Zealand, and Australia are exempted from submitting Medical Certificates (just upload a blank page instead).
ℹ️ Medical Certificate is only valid for 3 months. If you are confident about your application you can get it as soon as you submitted Phase 1 requirements. I actually did mine only to learn later that Canada-bound workers are exempted (which makes sense since Medical Exam is required in processing VISA). To give you an idea, you will undergo hearing exam, visual exam, radiology, laboratory (including urinalysis and fecal analysis, Hepatitis B surface antigen test or HBsAg test, HIV test, STD test, pregnancy test), psychological evaluation (personality test, intelligence test, autobiography and intake interview), and physical exam.

• Pre-Departure Orientation Seminar (PDOS) - Walk-in PDOS at OWWA 2nd Floor DMW Bldg., Mandaluyong City
  • Contact: (02) 8720-4595
  • Regular Schedule: Monday to Thursday only
  • Registration: 8am (They can only accommodate 48 pax per session, you would want to be there early).
  • Time: 9am to 11am (2 hours long) – Europe, US Territories, Asia & Pacific, Middle East and Africa (Previously they conduct PDOS per country of deployment, but these days they host a "one-size-fits-all" seminar for Direct Hires).
  • Reminder: Come on time. Late comers are not allowed and not given PDOS certificates. OWWA PDOS is free of charge. Wear appropriate attire (No sleeveless, shorts, and slippers). They have a cafeteria inside POEA. You can eat there before the seminar because there's no break in between the 2-hour long seminar.

ℹ️ Bring the following when you attend PDOS: photocopy of your passport, printed registration form (Go to Direct Hire Application > Tools > Print Registration), and your POLO verified employment contract (They won't take this, they will only check and review it).
ℹ️ This is different from PDOS conducted by Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO)'s PDOS. I made a mistake of booking an appointment with them, they didn't entertain me
ℹ️ I tried getting the online PDOS but seems like that isn't available or offered anymore.
ℹ️ Included in PDOS are orientation for SSS, PAGIBIG, PhilHealth, and COMELEC. I recommend to free up your afternoon so you can update all these in POEA Ortigas. It's so convenient since they have all these sectors in one place.
For both SSS and PAGIBIG, they accept advance payments so you don't have to worry about paying when you're abroad. Another convenient way of paying your contributions is through GCash. You may avail PAGIBIG's ID, but it is only offered Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays only. They can only accommodate 50 pax per day. If you want one, come in early.
For PhilHealth, we are required to pay our premiums and that is 5% of our salary written in our employment contract. It's a huge amount! I'm surprised the person in charge for PhilHealth Orientation in PDOS even said that we don't have to pay it, no one will chase us anyway. The only problem is you can't avail of it's benefits.
For COMELEC, there's an upcoming elections next year (April 13 to May 12, 2025). I was able to update my information and register for the planned online voting. You just need to present your passport and fill up their form, then they will take your biometrics.

• Certificate of Insurance - Print your policy confirmation. The following benefits should at least be covered by any LIFE INSURANCE company: repatriation of mortal remains in case of death and repatriation upon termination of employment.

[8] Once your application status is FOR APPOINTMENT, upload all Phase 2 requirements (listed in step 7) in Home > My Documents.

ℹ️ Again, if you get an error or you don't see a preview of what you've uploaded, your file probably isn't allowed. They either accept JPG/JPEG or PDF only. They also have file size limit. Please double check before uploading anything. This applies to any document you'll be uploading on this website.

[9] Go to your scheduled POEA Appointment. Bring the original copy and 2 extra copies of all your Phase 1 (see step 6) and Phase 2 (see step 7) requirements. Also bring a printed copy of your POEA appointment.
[10] WIP, I will update this later. I am still on Step 7 myself 😅
To give you an idea of the overall TIMELINE for processing OEC, here's my journey so far:

• March 8 - We picked up our passports after VISA stamping from VFS Global Makati
• March 20 - POLO Vancouver received the complete requirements for employment verification from my employer
• April 26 - All our documents are verified by POLO
• April 30 - My employer picked up all verified documents from POLO Vancouver office
• May 2 - I did my medical exam and accomplished PEOS
• May 3 - My employer mailed all original documents to me, they also sent me a photographed copy of all the documents so I can upload it to DMW online services. I was able to submit all Phase 1 requirements same day.
• May 6 - I picked up my Medical Certificate with "FIT to work" results
• May 6 - I received the original POLO verified documents (it was mailed to me by my employer through DHL express)
• May 6 - My application status became: assigned to POEA evaluator
• May 7 - My application status became: FOR APPROVAL, subject for Clearance
• May 9 - I attended PDOS at OWWA Ortigas and got my PDOS certificate.
• May 17 - My application was approved. I am still not uploading my Phase 2 (see step 7) requirements since the instructions said to only upload when the status is FOR APPOINTMENT. I'll check back following week.
• May 18 - Waiting... They said the status online will be updated in 2-3 days. Then I can upload my Phase 2 documents. Afterwards another wait time of 2-3 days, then they will issue an appointment date to submit all original hard copies of the requirements. I will update this post again later ⚠️👷‍♀️⚠️

Other notes:

• If your employer has 5+ Filipino employees already, they'll need to get an agency to process your papers.
• If your spouse is coming with you on an Open Work Permit, they don't need to get PDOS or OEC. They need to present a copy of your OEC to Immigration Officer. This information is from a Direct Hire department employee.