Essentially I've made a system in Godot that takes the advantages of Multi-Meshes (combining all meshes of the same type into a single draw call for improved CPU performance) while mitigating the disadvantages (unable to separate/cull individual meshes, which harms GPU performance). Note: written in C#.
It is recommended to know a bit about how Multi-Mesh instancing works; this isn't a full tutorial. Not that I won't answer questions about it either :)
The way it works is:

1. "Objects" are de-coupled from Meshes. So I essentially have my own RendObj class that doesn't inherit from Node3D. These can request an ID from the MeshManager. It makes it simple to keep the "logic" separate from the actual rendering method, to swap in whatever I want.
2. The MeshManager has a Dictionary of (not to be confused with MultiMeshInstance2D or MultiMeshInstance3D) so that for every Mesh type we can track a Multi-Mesh each.
3. The reason for tracking IDs is that we want to be able to only send visible meshes to the Multi-Mesh each frame. That means if there are 5 objects and 3 are visible (object 2 and 4 are invisible) it will look like:

TrackedIDs = [0,1,2,3,4]
VisibleIDs = [0,1,3]
And then on the MultiMesh object, VisibleInstanceCount = 3.
So far it's straight forward. Just keep adding/removing elements from the VisibleIDs list.

1. Because this changes dynamically, we need to update the buffer size in the MultiMesh. So to keep things simple, the default size is set to 4 (set via MultiMesh.InstanceCount, which can be different to VisibleInstanceCount luckily). Each time we want to go beyond the current InstanceCount, we clear all buffers, double the capacity, and then set the new instance count to that capacity. So it goes 4, 8, 16, 32...

This also means having to track the positions of objects locally, as when the buffers are cleared we lose all data.

1. For performance reasons, we're going to set the Buffer array directly on MultiMesh rather than use SetInstanceTransform() on each. Therefore we need to:

Create the transform:
Transform3D transform = new Transform3D(Basis.FromEuler(new Vector3(0, rotation, 0)).Scaled(scale), position);
And then put that into a list of arrays:
return new float[] { transform[0][0], transform[1][0], transform[2][0], transform[3][0],
transform[0][1], transform[1][1], transform[2][1], transform[3][1],
transform[0][2], transform[1][2], transform[2][2], transform[3][2] };
Later we'll unpack all of these when we're doing an UpdateAll. They will get "added" to the giant MultiMesh Buffer array.

1. The last piece of the puzzle is the actual culling. There are two ways:

Firstly, we cull by what is behind the camera. While not as effective as doing a frustrum cull, it's just easielazier to not have to deal with objects popping on the side of the screen. There might be an easy way if anyone knows!
There is a method in Godot on the Camera3D for checking if a position is behind the camera. But I found it faster to replace it with the Godot method where you use the Mathf Dot product.
To get even better performance, I replaced it with System.Numerics.Vector3 Dot.
Quick performance comparison:
Camera IsPositionBehind() - 1.16ms on 16,384 objects Godot Mathf Class - 0.51ms C# Maths - 0.07ms
For those wondering "is this due to marshalling / C#-C++ overhead?" The answer is probably no - the Godot Mathf class is in fact re-written for C# as far as I can tell. I understand that IsPositionBehind will be slower because I think it does use C++ AND in the other two methods I am caching as much as I can before looping through them. But I honestly cannot see a reason why Godot Mathf would be considerably slower than using C#.
The second test is to simply test the distance. Again, using System.Numerics.Vector3 LengthSquared instead of Godot's math helped. Caching the camera transform data into System Numerics variants is important to avoid many conversions.
By combining multiple of these, you can have a mesh that only shows in the far distance and others that only show up close to get the benefits of LODs.
Final Words
I kind of threw this together, so I'm sorry if it doesn't make complete sense. Feel free to ask anything!

Babette's Feast (1987) is a highly regarded arthouse film with strong spiritual themes. It won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, and has received much critical acclaim. But is it simply something pretentious, or is the respect its gained well deserved? And does it even have something serious to say?
The film introduces us to the two sisters Martine and Filippa, who are part of a very strict Puritanical and ascetic Protestant church group that was started by their father. He’s now deceased, although the first part of the film does show us some of the background, where they spurn the love of two young men in favour of the ascetic lifestyle taught by their father. The main story begins when we see them as aging spinsters, giving refuge to a needy woman from France, who is our central character, Babette.
After she wins the lottery, Babette wants to express her gratitude to her hosts for 14 years of their hospitality by cooking them with a sumptuous meal on what would have been their father’s 100th birthday. Afraid of enjoying earthly pleasure, the ascetic group solemnly agrees in advance that they will act as if the delightful food and drink doesn't have any real taste. But can they really maintain this illusion when the food is that good? Aside from this main storyline, the film also touches on some inner conflicts among the church group.
The film is in the French language, although the version I watched had an optional soundtrack with a dubbed English voice-over. Despite not knowing French, I found it far more enjoyable to use English subtitles along with the original French soundtrack. This maintains the more subtle voice inflections of the actors, and it’s surprising how much of the authenticity and impact is lost without this.
But why is this film so charming, and what has made it such a success? Aren’t we basically just watching a group of people solemnly eating a meal? Cynics will find a lot to make fun of here. But for those prepared to chew a little, there’s more than what meets the eye. To begin with, the characterization is excellent, and the depiction of the two single ladies who have forsaken everything for their faith is particularly well done. Babette’s humble service and her extravagant gift, along with all its culinary delights, is beautifully presented, in a slow-moving and serene way.
In many respects Babette's Feast first and foremost shows the foolishness of a faith that is artificial and ascetic. The feast that Babette prepares highlights the hypocrisy of the religious sect, by exposing the foolishness of their religion of externals. The Protestant group is blind to the value of the gift they are enjoying, contrasting with the visiting General and with Babette, who see and understand how things really are. There seems to be an implied critique on such ascetic religious groups, with the General functioning as a character who is enlightened despite his simplicity. True religion doesn’t just practice piety, but there also finds room to enjoy life’s pleasures.
But there is more going on besides this obvious message. Many commentators have suggested that Babette is essentially a Christ-like figure, because she gives a gift of grace in a meal that has overtones of Christ's last supper. This interpretation gives her meal a sacramental quality, and when viewed in this light, it gives a whole new perspective on the film. There may be something to this, because there is a sense in which Babette selfishly sacrifices all she has for her two patrons. Reading what Catholic reviewers like Stephen Greydanus have to say about the sacramental aspect of the film is especially interesting (link to his review). Other reviewers suggest a Lutheran interpretation, and focus more on how the film depicts a marriage between the spiritual and the carnal. Given the Danish setting, a Lutheran background to the theology is also very plausible.
You’ll find a wide range of theological interpretations among critics, so there is lots of room for discussion here. I'd be reluctant to insist on a particular interpretation, because it seems to me that the film already does us a service by stimulating such discussions, rather than coming to definitive conclusions on them.
But clearly the film does want us thinking about theology, because Martine and Filippa are named after the Protestant Reformers Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchton. Central to Protestant theology is the notion that good deeds are not done to earn a heavenly reward, but are a grateful response to a God-given gift of grace. Ironically, it’s Babette’s generous gift that captures this spirit more than the combined piety of the two sisters and their religious group. It’s possible to be so intent on pursuing piety that one misses the point of life, and fails to enjoy grace and the pleasures God gives.
The suggestion has been made by some that Babette's feast helps change the characters, and causes old quarrels to be healed, and past sins to be genuinely forgiven. If so, this raises interesting questions about the nature of sacraments, and how they function. But I’m left wondering whether it really is the film’s goal to suggest that the sacramental quality of the feast helps dispense grace and solve the sharp differences and shortcomings within the small group. For example, many reviewers see the positive discussions that the group has about their religious leader while enjoying the meal as evidence of its transforming quality.
But does this elaborate feast really transform the characters who share in it, like a sacramental eucharist might do? I’m not convinced, because it seems to me that these conversations could equally be their way of desperately avoiding talking about the gift itself, by turning to pious talk that had nothing to do with the food, and are evidence that they’re stubbornly persisting with their religious blindness. But perhaps repeated viewings of the film might cause me to reconsider this view.
The film also raises interesting questions about the value of art, as is evident from what the famous opera singer Achille Papin says about art in the afterlife. This conversation returns in the film’s concluding words to Babette about her art as chef. Filippa echoes what Papin had said to her, promising that in paradise Babette will be the great artist God intended her to be. An artist will always give their best, and that’s exactly what Babette’s extravagant feast is.
Clearly there’s more to Babette’s Feast than meets the eye, and I feel I’ve only scratched the surface of its meaning. Extensive full length academic papers have been written about it, some of which can be found online. For me anyway, spending time at Babette’s table has only increased my appetite to find out more about this thoughtful film. I'd love to get insights and perspectives from others who have enjoyed it.

Hey everyone! I've been seeing a few posts here and there about Colosseum and just an overall interest in S/S+ characters. I myself am among the unlucky few who has not yet pulled a single S character, but I've managed to 3-star every stage in the first story mode as well as complete every single mode aside from the Superstar Challenge and the Beach one (I'm putting these off until I get an S Wing Spiker since Superstar seems impossible to 3-star without a Spiker that can more frequently boom/no-touch ace, and Beach is just boring to me imo).
In addition, I've been able to beat Colosseum with only a team consisting of an A-rank WS, B+ MB, and B+ Setter. Of course, this took me a few tries but the main thing that I've learned is that the final boss is much easier to get through than the boss stages. I'm playing with Beginner and Auto mode turned off, while Run-Up is turned ON. I'm not sure if different settings will help.
I'll expand on this now and give more detail, but I'd just like to say first that this is NOT a guide for a guaranteed win. Some RNG will still matter and therefore you may not be able to win the Colosseum run on your first try. This will be a VERY long guide, but I'll try my best to give a summary at the end for those who don't have the patience or want an easy flowchart to look at while playing.
So let's start off with your roster and playing style.
Stats of your team:
Firstly, you definitely want every member to be at least B+ so you can possibly max out 2 stats and get some additional points in to others. Do NOT attempt Colosseum if you can't max out your players' stats; you'd just be frustrating youself.
For the Setter, I maxed out Jump and Defense and spent the extra points on Speed. My Setter came with 85 Attack so I simply didn't bother increasing it since it's costly and she seems to be able to get serve aces anyway even with a low attack stat.
For my MB, I maxed out Defense and Speed while spending the rest of the points on Attack. IMO you can probably tweak with this as you like, the MB really isn't that important anyway.
My reasoning for this is that you'll be doing pretty much all of the work on getting points anyway, so might as well increase your teammates' chances of blocking out spikes or receiving without getting their defenses broken through if you make mistakes.
Stats of your WS and how your playing style will vary:
As for the stats, obviously you want a maxed out Attack and Jump, while I keep Speed at least at 100 and spend the rest of my points in Defense. The low Speed is due to the fact that you'll be spending pretty much all your time in your team's zone anyway, and having a high speed MB can make up for any threats of a Touch Out.
Your playing style will be one of two things which are purely dependent on your Wing Spiker's height. Note that these playstyles only really matter with the non-boss teams and are all about defense. We'll be employing team-specific strategies when it comes to attack/defense against bosses and attacks against the non-bosses.
Currently my two best WSs are 179cm (A-rank) and 212cm (A-minus rank). The 179cm WS is my main WS that I use right now purely because of additional stats, and he's the shortest player on my team.
The tall playstyle (probably good for at least 190cm WS) will involve blocking a lot because some of the players on the regular teams generally have weak attacks but can spike higher than shorter characters, so having a tall WS with good defense stats is often enough to block out the strongest spikes from these teams. This also matters more at the start because most of the ability cards at the first round will decrease your jump points, so if your player's tall enough to still be able to block shots from the enemy team with decreased jump, then you can definitely go with this style.
The short playstyle (good for below 190cm) involves going for dives on every shot that the enemy takes. It conserves team stamina and gives you more chances to get attacks in and whittle the enemy's defenses down.
Obviously, if you've been playing for a while, you already know the advantages of blocking and diving. But, the key difference between the two when it comes to Colosseum is that the tall playstyle is generally easier and more aggressive and can let you win games faster through good blocks, but is more prone to RNG with your block sometimes leading to an unsalvageable touch out and therefore making you lose points.
Meanwhile, the short playstyle is harder but a safer style. It's harder because you need to be good at reacting to quicks and positioning yourself in general. But if you can consistently dive enemy spikes, then you'll never get a touch out and you save your team stamina for the few times that you make a mistake and your team has to cover, which they'll often do by simple receives and not dives.
Once you've determined your playstyle, let's take a look at your general tournament strategy and then your attack strategy for each opponent.
General Strategy:
When starting a run, the rule of thumb is to take a look at the path and see which one you can take with at least ONE rest while having the least amount of boss fights. If you get lucky, you can have a path with 1-2 rests without a single boss fight to take. If you're low on health/score (3 or below), I suggest avoiding boss fights completely even if taking the boss fight can lead you to a rest. Ideally you'll have at least 7-8 score/health remaining by the time you reach the final boss.
When it comes to resting, I haven't tried the full heal yet since I don't really need the full 10 HP to win. I only take the 5 HP restoration if I'm below 6 HP and take the -5 Attack -2 Jump debuffs which won't really have noticeable effects unless you weren't able to balance out your buffs and debuffs.
As for ability cards, I suggest choosing the -10%/20% jump reductions at the start if you can find them. You can choose to reroll if you really want to/can afford it, but in any case, the guideline for stats ability cards is this:

1. Avoid going below 150 for Attack; preferably you keep it at least at the max 155. This means that the more attack buffs you get from some ability cards, the more you can afford having it reduced by others.
2. Avoid reducing your speed (assuming your WS is like mine with only 100 Speed). Since you're the one mainly going for dives/blocks, you want to be able to move around at normal speed and most of the cards that increase speed aren't really worth it.
3. Unless you've been able to mitigate the initial 10/20% reduction, do NOT take any cards that reduce jump. Obviously since you're already taking huge hits to your jump stat, reducing it further without mitigating thru buffs will make it so much harder to spike/block.
4. Let your Defense stats take the most hits; if your defense goes low enough (around 120 and below), switch to diving style if you're not using it already.

For special ability cards, most of them are good but what you choose will depend on your playstyle. My favorite is Topspin Feint and Overpower. I would avoid Leap of Faith, Anchorage, and pretty much all of Oasis's cards EXCEPT Sunrise if you can get it early (no real point taking Sunrise if you're 1-2 matches away from the Final Boss)
Non-boss team strategies:
Let's start with Blue Lancia, which imo is the most predictable non-boss team in the mode (I've gotten multipel 12-0s against them). Their blocking is somehow near-perfect yet their receives are ass. So, to keep this short, the flowchart is just around 2 conditions, based on the enemy blocker:

1. Whoever's blocking you at the net jumps at the same time as you do - Just feint. Even at max attack, my WS rarely ever gets through the blocker and causes me to lose points when spiking, so just feint over him, and if you do it for long enough, Blue Lancia's receiving is so bad that their receive will break even from just a simple feint.
2. They don't jump at the same time - Spike. The max attack stats will break stamina faster. You'll rarely win points from spiking because even when their defenses are broken, they can keep the ball in the air when receiving spikes but can't when it's a feint So ultimately you'll still be going back to condition #1 to actually win the point.

With Red Scudo, you can pretty much win by doing the usual strategy of spiking well. They're generally weak on both attack/defense so no real special strategy there. It's pretty easy to win through serve aces if you can consistently hit the top of the net or land the ball on the edge of their side. Blocking's also pretty easy against them if your defense isn't too low.
For Yellow Spear, most of the strategy involves around defense. They're the only non-boss team that likes doing quicks/surprise attacks from what I observed, and their attacks CAN get through high defense at times. For attacking against them, you can play normally but you might want to go for feints if their tall blocker jumps (I forgot his name) since he can sometimes block you out, but not as much as Blue Lancia.
Boss teams:
There are certain teams that you want to avoid completely. Although you can try your luck with some of them if you think you're skilled enough to do so. I suggest avoiding boss fights completely if you're only on 3 health or lower unless you're willing to use the quitting/retry cheese strat.
My ranking of the boss teams from easiest to hardest to beat is as follows (note once again that this is from the perspective of playing with NO S characters, I'm sure that this will be completely different for those with S characters especially a WS):

1. ZeroN - Strong stats and fast spikes by Youngsub which can make it tough to dive, but once you're on the attack, there's nothing special you need to really do to get points.
2. Art High - Mid stats and extremely annoying to play against because of how consistently they can receive, but their attack's pretty predictable and even consistently blockable except if it's Sanghyeon spiking. You only really need to look out for Sanghyeon and that's about it.
3. SolaOasis's team (forgot the full name) - Very difficult to beat, I suggest avoiding them. Surprisingly, AI Oasis isn't all that hard to play against, but the real challenge when it comes to this team is their serves. Both Oasis and ESPECIALLY Lisia have difficult serves. Lisia's underhand seems to always target you, though, so as long as you get the timing right, it's possible to receive it with a dive. But I suggest eating the serve with a normal receive if you can't get the timing or if you're confident that your defense/stamina can handle it.
4. Valentia Spikes - Just avoid them. The Nishikawa in the Colosseum mode is the one that does the delayed spike the most which your team can't really defend against. Other Nishikawa spikes are blockable and actually quite predictable based on his positioning, but the delayed spike and his serves will eat up your points. I think with enough practice and the right ability cards, you can definitely learn to beat this team but it doesn't really seem worth it without an S-rank WS.

Final Boss Teams:
Another disclaimer coming here... I haven't fought Robert's team yet at the time of this writing so I can't really give my insights on how to beat them. But considering how surprisingly forgiving BYE (NN's team) and BELL (Isabel's team) are, I doubt that Robert would be any different.
I find BELL to be the easiest team to play against. You can play pretty much normally since they don't have strong blocks and receives, while defending would just be doing the usual dive strat which I've already mentioned is the safest.
BYE is harder but only in a general sense. I don't find NN's set to be that much of a threat (tbh it makes their attack much easier to time), and Jaehyun's spike is consistently blockable although not worth testing the RNG for possible Touch Outs if your score is low already.
Summary:
Take jump debuffs (I almost never take the Easy ability cards since I want to greed for Blue Flames) at the start and just slide/dive or block against weak attack teams. I recommend diving for pretty much every team and don't bother blocking if you wanna conserve health as much as possible, but this can make your runs longer.
Play normally against Red Scudo. Play more defensively against Yellow Spear. Feint as much as possible against Blue Lancia and only spike when the enemy blocker doesn't jump with you.
Go for boss fights if you have enough health and they aren't Valentia/Solar. Make sure to get a good ability card such as Nishikawa's Topspin Feint, Overpower or Heesung's Absolute Block (if you can mitigate your original jump debuffs) if you can afford rerolling for them; otherwise just take whatever good ability card you can get and prioritize Attack/the stats most affected by previous debuffs.
I highly suggest avoiding Valentia Spike and Solar unless you're determined to figuring them out. IMO it's a waste of time to attempt them without an S-rank but of course, it's your choice.
Against BYE, keep an eye out for NN's set and change your receive timing when he's setting. That's the only difficult part.
Against BELL, just receive well and be persistent with your spikes. By the time that you've reached them, you'd ideally have a high enough attack stat that you can easily break through their defenses.
​
And that's pretty much it! I'll update this post or just post a comment about Robert once I've played against his team. Apologies for the length of this post, but hopefully this helps some of you :)

NOTE: I drafted this before reddit slashed its allowable post size and decided it was unpublishable at that point. A friend strongly recommended I post whatever reddit will allow and if people wanted to see more, I could post more of it. So here's the first segment of it.
Therapeutic memory reconsolidation has a dark side. It's not something typically discussed outside of the coffee rooms of the lab-rat and clinical-practices sets, where the tedium of the current work occasionally gives rise to darkly humorous dystopian speculations.
This dark side is not simply the stuff of mad-science speculation and dark fantasy. In fact, its existence predates even the discovery of the MR process itself. And it has already resulted in mild-to-catastrophic negative consequences for hundreds of thousands of people. (Depending on your perspective, it's conceivable that the current victim count could be in the tens or even hundreds of millions ... we're notorious for undercounting casualties of previously-unrecognized catastrophes. Fair disclosure: I'm one of those casualties.) It's an aspect of MR that I believe is worth knowing about for anyone seeking to exploit MR in therapy either as a practitioner or as a client.
For almost as long as the transformation (i.e. MR) phenomenon has been recognized, there have been tales of sordid applications of this effect. Religious sects, particularly the charismatic ones, have been exploiting the MR phenomenon for thousands of years, typically labeling it as either divine healing or proof of faith. Not that the results aren't beneficial for the individual. In most cases they are. But reconsolidation is only a part of the whole process of restoring health to old psychic wounds. The inducement of therapeutic MR in an individual not ready for the experience can be among the most brutal tortures imaginable, but most of the harm that comes from misapplication of the MR phenomenon can be traced to opportunistic exploitation of the setup for, and aftermath of, the transformational experience, and it's my belief that most of this harm is done by individuals and/or groups with little or no sense of the risks involved in
Keith Raniere's NXIVM organization is probably the most widely-known example of a cult founded largely on a MR-consistent methodology bent to less-than-humane ends. It made national news for years in Canada based on allegations of financial wrongdoing and sexual scandals, its leader was indicted in the US in 2018 and was sentenced to 120 years, and in 2020, not one but *two* major exposé miniseries/docuseries aired on streaming services.
"The Vow" (Mark Vicente's story)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vow_(TV_series))
Vicente's series orients around his involvement in the growth and promotion of NXIVM, and isn't afraid to get into the weeds around how Raniere strategized and developed the organization's techniques and tactics.
"Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult" (India Oxenberg's story)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seduced:_Inside_the_NXIVM_Cult
This series centers more around IO's personal journey with the cult, and the people who were caught up in its darkest aspects.
"The Vow", first to be released, was not a fun watch for me. Thirty years prior to this, I had been ensnared by another cult, closely affiliated with the Unity Church of Today in Warren, MI at that time. Both of these cults exploited phenomena surrounding therapeutic memory consolidation as their primary lures years before we even knew that MR had a scientific footing.
The two organizations had shockingly similar modi operandi. So similar, in fact, that I still suspect that NXIVM's founder might have gotten much of his basic training from CoT's Pavillon resort in Quebec, whose month-long "therapeutic retreat" programs were a clever and completely unabashed cult indoctrination program. Ok ... well ... nearly completely unabashed ... during the month that I attended, we were only told that we were being groomed for the cult on the third-to-last day, by which time they surely knew who was ripe for the picking and who wouldn't be swayed, and were pretty confident of no open objection to such an announcement.
I want to make clear that this is not a word of exaggeration. The head of the "clinic" literally told us that if it felt to any of us like we were being recruited for a cult, he assured us that yes, we were. Nobody gasped, nobody even giggled. And as if to prove that this wasn't just dark humor, the director assured us that it was all fair play on their part since his was "the only cult that matters". That is exactly how confident Pavillon were of their methods. (Or at least they were in mid-1989 ... Pavillon appears to have vanished in the mists of history. Not every great cult idea grows up to make it to the big leagues.)
Neither "Seduced" or "The Vow" actually get under the hood and explain the psychology underlying the cult's success, let alone in context of therapeutic memory reconsolidation. In fact, I'm pretty sure that MR was never mentioned in either series. But right from the introductory/demo sessions presented in the first episode of "The Vow", most readers of this sub will instantly recognize that NXIVM leveraged the benefits and relative simplicity of MR-consistent transformational therapies to capture the attention, loyalty, and ultimately the wealth of prospective cult members.
But that's not nearly enough to lead us to a real understanding of how this happens. If either of these series' had been able to achieve that, this post could effctively end here. It's my belief that those of us who are consumers of MR-consistent services, or who work with consumers, do need this understanding. When the mechanics of the seduction are understood, it doesn't just help us to identify how malignant influences were brought to bear on potential victims, or provide us with a degree of immunity from those influences. It can also help us to better identify and relate to individuals who may be particularly vulnerable to these influences, and not just in therapy cults, but in all cult-like cultural groups, and get a better sense of how we can best communicate with people living under less-than-virtuous influence.
Fortunately, it doesn't appear to be all that difficult to acquire this understanding. Simply knowing basic MR theory and therapeutic application takes you halfway to mastery in a world still largely ignorant of how transformative change works. And the successes of Pavillon and NXIVM, coming as they did well before the general public even knew that MR was a "thing", pretty much proves it. But solving the remainder of the problem appears to involve first understanding how the application of MR-consistent methods could lead to cult exploitation in the first place.
MR-consistent transformational phenomena were relatively common knowledge back as far as the early 1980s in new-age/psychotherapy circles, and were even well-understood by certain inner-circle dwellers. And it was clear at least a decade earlier that certain disciplines practiced in a certain way were capable of producing remarkable therapeutic effects, even if no one could quite explain how or why. All Raniere and Pavillon needed to do was to refine techniques already known to be highly effective and they could reproduce those results. Which is exactly what happened, and this gave these two groups a powerful enticement, or a free sample product if you prefer, for people interested in living better, happier lives. Whatever else they did that we would likely view as objectionable or even evil, they both figured out how to get people to transformational moments in ways which were a lot easier than Erhard Seminars Training (EST), more efficient than religious or mystical practices (Transcendental Meditation, kundalini yoga, visionquesting, etc.), and less exclusive/expensive than a stay at Esalen or a year or two of the "talking cure".
So whatever we may think/feel about their methods, credit where due: they knew a good thing when they saw it and they got the transformational part right. So how did techniques which we rely upon to free us from exploitation by our own nervous systems become tools for THEIR exploitation? On the surface it seems like using MR to coerce and enslave people makes about as silly as trying to poison someone with multivitamins. But there's a clever logic to it, and to understand this we need to look beyond the bounds of MR and the transformational phenomenon, and at how the entire transformation process is managed. (And there's the operative word: managed, not facilitated.
We know MR as the process that underlies transformation. But transformation isn't healing, but only a subprocess within a greater restoration process. Healing doesn't usually even end the process, either. Following transformation, stress must be managed until the subject's next full sleep cycle or treatment efficacy is substantially impaired. Even beyond that, the structure of post-traumatic adaptation leaves the individual vulnerable to retraumatization in the wake of treatment, meaning that in perhaps a majority of cases, the triggers which activate PTS symptoms need to be kept to a

Before I start, I want to say that I don’t mean to intentionally offend anyone and I am solely looking for different point of views which might change my perspective. I will not go too deep into my thought and will try to provide as much context as I can. If my point of view is confusing or needs further clarification, I can further clarify.
Now to begin, I am currently under the belief that Sikhism like all other religions is man made.
REINCARNATION:
Aspects about reincarnation do not seem to make much sense. In Sikhi what I have found is that it is stated that 8.4 million life forms are which we have to cycle through to finally become human. First of all, I am pretty sure this is a concept that is very similar to the Puranas, in which it is also listed that the cycle of reincarnation is through 8.4 million life forms. The more detailed view might be different but the underlying concept is the same, some argue that this is a evidence that concepts in Sikhi are copied(I don’t have much of an issue with this but would like if someone can elaborate). Now the 8.4 million life forms do not make sense to me, while it is predicted that 8.7 million species exist right now(National Geographic) this number is also ever changing. And SGGS also proposes that there are multiple worlds with multiple species, wouldn’t this already contradict the claim of 8.4 million species?
My other issue with the concept of reincarnation is that from what I have gathered consciousness is exclusive to one life, meaning it does not carry over to another reincarnations(I got this concept from many videos that talk about death/consciousness and from people I have talked to about Sikhi). If the consciousness does not carry over and only the soul does what is the point of going through so many cycles of reincarnations? You obviously won’t know, sure your soul might be the same in every reincarnation but then again I have found no clear definition of what a souls is in Sikhi. It cannot be consciousness as that is clearly evident to be a byproduct of the mind.
REINCARNATION and SUFFERING:
If one is born into extremely poor circumstances(war, bad family, forced into non consensual acts, does crime due to circumstances) how exactly is that fair? We say that they must have done bad actions in their previous life, but this leads to two different questions. If they went through 8.4 million cycles to be a human why were they given impossible circumstances to become one with god? The other question being, if they clearly don’t remember what they did in the past in what way is it fair to give them a less desirable environment(in which they suffer)?
THE GURUS:
Now before I start this section, I think all Sikhs would agree that preforming miracles was a key aspect the Gurus were against. Yet we say that every guru had the “light” of Guru Nanak passed through them. I do not know if this is metaphorical or literal, if it is literal it goes against the no miracle teaching.
Another issue I struggle to understand is how I believe 7 out of the 10 gurus were directly related? I understand that there is a saki(forgive me I do not remember the exact saki) where someone asked one of the gurus to keep all the remaining gurus from the same family. This seems to be a somewhat of an escape from answering the question. Whether the saki is true or not I do not know but in the end the whole idea of many of the gurus being from one family makes the religion seems somewhat like a empire to an outside(non Sikh) and in some I have discussed it is one of the vital point of doubt.
Why were none of the Gurus female? This is a small non issue but slight confused question I have. If one of the gurus was a female it would further solidify how Sikhi broke norms and how regardless of gender the gurus were enlightened.
I think I will stop here, I have some more questions regarding practices done by the gurus and the concepts taught but I will stop here. My questions are not intended to offend someone and if my language used may seem offensive or aggressive I apologize that is not my intent. It just seems based on my research I seem to only conclude that Sikhism out of the major 5 religions is the most morally just and inclusive religion. The teaching taught in Sikhi can be adopted my anyone and they generally lead to good outcomes for many(good morals, equality, etc). However, other than this I do not see any evidence of God in Sikhi. The questions I ask seem to be my biggest issue in taking a “leap of faith”. The answers I have gotten is you have to experience god yourself, which is to me the same as telling a Hindu to imagine Vishnu(or any deity) with their eyes closed obviously they will have a image of the said deity if they truly imagined such. I will stop here, it seems I am frustrated with myself and I initially wanted to get closer to Sikhi to help deal with the unknowns of life. I am in simpler terms struggling to take a leap of faith due to some of the questions I have with Sikhi, this has lead me to currently take a agnostic stance in which I think God does not care about what we do and simply ignore us.
If any of my passages seem to be just rants or repetitive I apologize I did not mean for them to be as such(I have this problem sometimes). I can clarify any of the topics I discussed and I am open to anyone changing my mind.

17 days ago, a member of this sub posted about Ivanna Sakhno joining M3GAN 2.0, we got some comments on the post, and then 3 days ago the OP deleted the post, thereby also removing everyone else's comments from visibility.
I believe that OP is in the habit of automatically deleting their posts after 2 weeks. Since I haven't been given a reason for this, I'm here restoring the comments (which were deleted without consulting their authors), but not the original post (whose author wanted it deleted).
I could restore the comments because I commented myself: by accessing your comments on your own Reddit profile, you can see threads to which you contributed even if the original post has been deleted, including other people's comments on that thread. You just can't get the original post back.
Should any of these comment authors wish their comment to be removed, please say and I will edit it out. Also, if there really is a good reason to delete this entire thread, please contact me or a mod and we'll do it. But my default assumption is we probably want this discussion to be preserved, and the OP's deletion of the entire discussion was a mistake, so here it is.

‘Ahsoka’s Ivanna Sakhno To Co-Star Opposite Allison Williams In Atomic Monster & Blumhouse’s ‘M3GAN 2.0’

Sorry, this post was deleted by the person who originally posted it.
Top-level comment from Jazzlike-Movie-930•17d ago•Edited 17d ago: 4 upvotes:
Here are my theories on which character she will play in M3gan 2.0:

1. She will play Gemma’s rival toy company engineeroboticist.
2. She will play an intern at the Funki Toy company or rival toy company.
3. She will be the voice of Am3lia (the rumored antagonist) of M3gan 2.0.
4. The last theory I have is unlikely but possible. She plays an adult version of M3gan and M3gan looks human. That said, M3gan will probably have that child doll face again in M3gan 2.0 so that makes this theory unlikely.

It should be a big role she landed though and I look forward to seeing her in M3gan 2.0.
Reply Budd96•17d ago•Edited 17d ago: 3 upvotes:
The both 1 and 3 would be a high possibilities for her role in Sequel.
But I still believe she's going to be AM3LIA's Roboticist.
Reply from Jazzlike-Movie-930•17d ago: 1 upvote:
I agree that #1 is probably the most likely option but I would not be surprised if she voices Am3lia. If she is the voice of Am3lia, then Amelia needs to look like a teenage or young adult robot doll or look like an older sister to M3gan.
Reply from Budd96•17d ago•Edited 17d ago: 1 upvote:
Well, M3GAN and AM3LIA are both going to be older in Sequel, both of them will not have relations to each other.
Reply from AntiAmericanismBrit•17d ago: 3 upvotes:
Congratulations to Ivanna for landing the role and congratulations to the M3GAN team for getting her.
We have absolutely no idea who she'll play, but if theories are fun, I don't think they'll mind a bit of wild mass guessing going on.
I agree "adult M3GAN" is unlikely for this actress, because we're told her part is major. It's possible the film might end with an "in the future all grown up" scene, but we have no reason to think that will be the main part of the film (I mean Violet McGraw is 13 now, not 23), and therefore any actor involved in the "all grown up" scene (if it happens) won't count as a major part. (Well it might become a major part in the THIRD film if they go that way, but not in the second.)
Voice of a robot is possible, but would they really hire Ivanna just for her voice? Unlike Jenna Davis, Ivanna doesn't seem to have much of a history of doing voice work. She's very much an actress who gets seen on the screen. So I think the odds of this one are quite low (but I might be proven wrong).
but Shin Hati is a villain in the Star Wars franchise, and if an actress plays a villain in one film, she's more likely to be a villain in another. (But not necessarily!)
I'm not sure if rival roboticists and bosses etc count as "major" parts if all they do is set a robot going and then get off the set. A colleague might if they're hands-on enough. It depends how major you mean by major.
Right now I think the simplest explanation is the Amelia rumour is wrong and the plot will be completely different from what we were expecting. But let's see what they tell us later.
Reply from Budd96•6d ago•Edited 6d ago: 1 upvote:
I don't think AM3LIA plot rumor is wrong at all, there's some truth to it, if the AM3LIA is rumor is wrong, who took the Schematic Files than rival roboticist, it can't be Gemma it wouldn't make sense taking the Schematic Files when she was the original creator of M3GAN, it could be M3GAN herself, but she has some limitations to control any robotic systems that don't have AI integrated, she's probably need human help to create her a new body, that's where Ivanna Sakhno's Character comes in to help.
Reply from AntiAmericanismBrit•3d ago: 1 upvote:
well a lot of options were left open with the files Kurt stole. The main Doylist (real-world) reason for having that in the original film was so M3GAN could call him out on it in the elevator as part of her gaslighting setup.
It might also suggest a history of Kurt leaking Funki secrets to the competitor that made Furzees from Purrpetual Petz and thereby making Funki management feel the competitors are too good at getting stuff quickly, which means M3GAN needs to be launched fast, hence pressure to cut corners. But I think in the case of Furzees that clone could be done quickly from the off-the-shelf product anyway without needing the files (the files might actually slow them down, because they'd get Gemma's listening model tech and the point was to take that out to make the toy cheaper).
Anyway, as of end of M3GAN:

1. We don't know whether or not Kurt managed to leak those files before he was killed,
2. If Kurt did not manage to leak the files, we still don't know whether or not they might still be found by his relatives or by investigators going through his things after his death,
3. Even if Kurt didn't leak them and nobody looked at his docs, it might still be possible for someone else to get hold of the same files off of Funki's system,
4. If somebody does get hold of the files, how easy would it be to use them? When I write code for internal use only, I sometimes fail to explain it properly, meaning I'm probably the only one who can actually use that code without considerable effort. Films depicting stolen code as instantly usable are not actually realistic. I think it would be a great sub-plot if whoever gets the files can't make sense of them until M3GAN-online pops up to help them out with the job. Either that or they have to work for a very long time which explains the delay between the films. Or they have to work for a very long time and then M3GAN-online helps them finish.
5. We also don't know if the files are needed at all. Maybe M3GAN-online can tell whoever she likes how to build a robot designed by M3GAN herself that is better than the one described in those files. Or something drastic happens to totally change the attitude of Funki or Gemma or Cady and they're the ones who rebuild M3GAN. Or something else.

The only thing we do know is, Shakno's character will be "major". I'm not sure what counts as "major" in this case but normally it's things like: appearing in many scenes throughout the film, heavy effect on the plot, and perhaps some character development along the way. I'm not entirely sure that just rebuilding a robot in a couple of scenes is enough to make the character "major". But that doesn't rule out the possibility of Shakno's character rebuilding the robot plus also playing some other role that makes her major, like babysitting Cady for an extended period or something. We don't know; could be anything.
Reply from leytonk_tx•10d ago: 3 upvotes:
Wouldn’t make sense to cast Ivanna who doesn’t do voiceover work at all and is purely an actress for a voice role. I’m going on a hunch just by her previous roles and what she’s good at that she will be the primary antagonist of some kind. Makes the most sense. Uncertain about this Amelia plot, idk if that is even true or if Ivanna’s looks will play a part in her role (porcelain skin, very wide eyes look that could play well into any type of doll/robot) so who knows. Anyways theatomicmonster on instagram reposted Adam Hendricks story from a couple days ago. Peep the directors laptop screen.
Top-level comment from Budd96•17d ago•Edited 17d ago: 2 upvotes:
I believe she's going to be Gemma's Rival/New Doll's Roboticist.
Top-level comment from Ok-Effective4500•6d ago: 1 upvote:
But as who?
Reply from Budd96•6d ago: 1 upvote:
The plot is not revealed yet, her role is currently unknown, but seeing her Play as Antagonist in other films, her character most likely going to help M3GAN to creating a new body and hunting down Gemma and Cady.
She coud be either rival roboticist or she's working from secret military government who worked on building Super-Integelligient Machines.
That's my guess for what she's going to be.

So, im using a throwaway acoount for this since my girlfriend is also in this sub. Sorry for spelling mistakes, english is not my first language.
So, me and my current girlfriend (f20) have been together for past 3 years. Lately i've noticed her trying to change herself. She doesnt talk to me that much. Is more on her phone. So i asked her about this and she confessed that she's obsessed with my ex girlfriend(F25). Me and my ex dated for 3 years and were engaged. I met my current gf about 6 years ago when i was still dating my ex. I am sorry if i might sound bad now, but i started liking my current girlfriend at instant sight. My ex had cheated on me multiple times and since she felt guilty she opened up our relationship. And then i started flirting with my current girlfriend.
So, in 2021 i told my girlfriend about things my ex(f25) forced me to do. My current girlfriend reacted very badly to all this. She gave my ex some kind of a reverse or something .
I've seen my current gf's journal since she left it open. I didnt look through it but the page that was open was about my ex. My girlfriend wrote how she wants to be called my ex's name. Let's call my ex Maya. She wrote "im her" all over the page. I am scared that my girlfriend has some sort of an obsession with my ex. She even made some reports about my ex girlfriend on some websites. And she does same makeup as my ex does. My girlfriend says that all memories me and my ex did were actually me and her. Not me and my ex.
What should i do in this situation? I love my girlfriend a lot and i want the best for her.
Note: my girlfriend already has a psychiatrist and a therapist.
Edit: she turns 21 in few weeks, sorry for typo.

I am currently looking for my first pair of over-ear headphones, so I am very new to all the technicalities that come with them. Right now the two that I have tested and like the most in terms of design are the Sennheiser Accentum Plus and the Bose Quietcomfort, I tested both in an electronics store and was surprised by the difference, the Sennheiser sounded like it had an echo, as if you played music in a hall, while the Bose was more 'directly' into my ear. The Sennheiser is much cheaper so I would prefer to buy that one if I could, but when I tested them both in a store I had the echo problem with the Sennheiser. Is this fixable with the settings you get in the app to alter the bass and other things or is this just how Sennheiser does their sound quality (perhaps it's what some people like about it?). Noise cancelling is not the most important to me personally since I do like to stay aware of my surroundings when taking walks and such, my top two priorities are comfort (I have sensitive ears so I can't even wear on-ear headphones without them hurting after 20 minutes) and sound quality, especially bass since I like to listen to music that uses lots of bass like phonk and epic movie music. Thanks in advance!

Hello, I have been playing since a bit more than a month and I had a question for more experienced players. Sorry for my english, it's not my native language.
I started to realise that my odds of getting items in the shop seems to be different depending of the current items I owned. It feels like the game is favorising items that either "combine with my current items" or "have synergy with my current items".
Combine example:

• If I have mana orb, I am more likely to find hungry blade.
• If I have a goobert, I'm more likely to find more goobert.

Synergy example:

• If I'm playing potions, I'm more likely to find more potions in the shop.
• If I have spike items, I am more likely to find thorn whip.

At first, I thought it was bias on my part, so I've been exploring the issue over the last few days. I started forcing mana build by buying blueberries early (that serves no purpose in early game and should therefore handicap me) and somewhat I have had way more success at finding mana orb which ended up make it easier to force build like fire staff or eggscalibur. Also I have been noticing I would find hungry blade more easily once I get the first mana orb because my guess is it combine with mana orb. Same thing with spike items and thorn whip, ... It's seems more obvious in mid game. In late game, this is less noticeable since you have so many items in your backpack. Therefore, you own a lot of different items that have different synergy. Same thing in very early game where there not much items in the pool.
Which lead to my question: Do items odds to appear in a shop change depending of the current items you own and if yes, how does it work? Does it work for all items or only some of them ?
I feel like this is such an important mechanic to understand to play optimally if it's actually how it works. Personally, I can't enjoy the game fully anymore if I don't know weither or not I'm playing it efficiently.

Hi!
Have you found yourself having some spare time and wondering if there is something you can do to support UNIS?
If yes, then help us with a simple tap on your phone and vote! 😁
Here is a list of on-going voting campaigns and their current status:

Winnable Purely by Fan Votes 🤳

KGMA Trend of the Year: Kpop Group (Monthly Voting - May):

Deadline: May 19, 2024 (❗️today, 23:59 KST❗️)

App Name	Current Place	Opponent
Fancast	1st - 54,577 votes	2nd - 21,025 votes

This seems to be the main goal of the fandom right now.
Judging Criteria (according to Fancast app): 1. Pre-vote (10%) - done, we lost. 🥲 2. Monthly vote (40%) 3. Main vote (50%) - main event will be held on November 16-17 this year.

UPICK (Rookie Artist of May):

Deadline: May 23, 2024

App Name	Current Place	Opponent
UPICK	1st - 6,325,785 votes	2nd - 6,257,302 votes

Don't vote today! Hold them till tomorrow!
Tomorrow (May 20), from 9PM to 10PM (KST), all voting points you use will be paid back 100% the next day. For more info, click here.
We are currently on a 3-month winning streak for this award.
The first 3 months were Elisia, Gehlee, and Yunha (in order).
It's Seowon's turn this month.

Includes Other Criteria 📊

34th SMA Rookie Award (Monthly Voting - May):

Deadline: May 31, 2024

App Name	Current Place	Opponent
PODOAL	1st - 306,300 votes	2nd - 70,750 votes
my1pick	1st - 49.34%	2nd - 40.30%
K-POP SEOUL	1st - 2,342 votes	2nd - 732 votes

Judging Criteria (as per last year's): 1. Professional judges and SMA Organizing Committee (50%) 2. Album sales (25%) 3. Mobile voting worldwide (25%) - monthly voting contributes to the main voting as per SMA's current front page notice.
As per F&F CEO, an extension of two more years will be considered if UNIS wins the "Rookie of the Year" award.
I have a feeling this is not the only one with an award of this kind though. Please comment below if you have information regarding other "Rookie of the Year" awards.

KM Chart (ROOKIE of May):

Deadline: May 24, 2024

App Name	Current Place	Opponent
Idol Champ	5th - 3.23%	1st - 55.73%
my1pick	5th - 2.84%	1st - 66.24%

Judging Criteria (according to KM Chart's website): 1. Voting (50%) - 25% on Idol Champ, 25% on my1pick. 2. KM chart data (50%)
This is a quarterly award, but it does give a physical trophy to the winner. It can motivate the girls if they get one.
Fan votes contribute as much as the chart data, so I think we have a good enough chance. What do you guys think? 😁
Did I miss something?
If yes, kindly mention them in the comments so I can include them on my next update 👍. Thanks!

I’m currently in Japan, my first time here. I started in Osaka, then just spent a week hiking through the mountains in rural Japan, and now I’m in Tokyo until I leave in 10 days.
In hindsight I thought it would be great to end with a ‘bang’ in Tokyo, plus I’m flying out of there anyway. But after spending a week in the absolutely gorgeous countryside, hiking to shrines every day, staying at ryokans and making friends with other tavelers along the way…. Tokyo does not feel like much of a bang at all.
Maybe I’m just exhausted because of the never-ending buses, trains, and subways I had to take to get here today but oh man is it an adjustment. I was incredibly spoiled at the ryokans and minshukus, and now I’m regretting booking the cheapest bare-bones Airbnb I could find. It feels more lonely here too as I met so many friendly people on the trail and at the places I stayed. Of course there are still things I want to to do in Tokyo but thought of being here for 10 days depresses me. I already have my accommodation booked so overhauling now would be an expensive mistake. I know I can do day trips but still.
Anyone else ever had a similar regret? How did you deal with it? Will the feelings pass?

Measures, as deterministic and effective as possible, to re-peg DUSD and re-collateralize the dToken system with healthy loans sold against crypto, without permanent expropriation

TL;DR

This proposal offers a structured and maximally deterministic approach to stabilize DUSD immediately and consistently, aims to reward long-term supporters, and to enable projects in the long run. It does not rely on influencing market behavior and does not indefinitely expropriate holders. The primary goal of this approach is to re-collateralize the dToken system with healthy loans sold against crypto, the backbone of our dToken system, everything else builds on top. It involves locking nearly all circulating DUSD and dTokens in tranches and releasing them successively based on predefined conditions.

Goals

• Achieve the peg as deterministically and effectively as possible.
• Enable fair market price leverage trades on crypto, which is necessary for re-collateralizing the system.
• Repay those who supported the system.
• Enable projects to execute their mission and work with real liquidity.

Problem Statement

Current measures to stabilize DUSD rely heavily on influencing market participants' behavior, making the peg too probabilistic. Even if we reach the peg, the assumption that enough collateralized loans are sold against crypto for the dynamic interest rates to maintain this peg is too probabilistic. Relying on assumptions for a peg is problematic, because market participant behavior cannot be controlled and predicted, even if incentivized. While I believe dynamic interest rates can consistently maintain a peg effectively once we reach healthy collateralization levels, the implemented fees are not an effective tool to overcome the massive liquidity of algo dTokens and DUSD circulating today.

Proposed Solution

A new approach: instead of relying on voluntary actions of market participants, force-lock-up all DUSD and dToken liquidity, whilst providing opportunities and clear rules for paybacks based on system health.

1. Locking all liquidity away and releasing it successively as needed

• The defined percentage* of DUSD are locked/removed from each owning addresses and are in equal parts allocated in 50 tranches (1-50). Those are freed/returned to the owning addresses based on predefined factors.
• The defined percentage* of dTokens and relevant LP tokens are locked/removed from each owning addresses and are in equal parts allocated in 50 tranches (51-100). Those are freed/returned to the owning addresses based on predefined factors.
• Locked LP tokens do not receive rewards, those are used to reward new liquidity providers. Exiting at peg is reward enough for those currently invested, no need to make it more expensive.
• As liquidity is then minimal, ongoing measures will buy the DUSD up immediately and incentivize the creation of backed DUSD loans sold against crypto. Those are the backbone of the peg, they are the priority of the proposed measures. All other decisions are secondary and all rely on reaching this.

2. Releasing Tranches

• Tranches with the same number are released together, this means all DUSD tranches are released first, all dToken and LP tranches are released later.
• The following system health conditions for releasing tranches are checked on oracle blocks to avoid high computational load:

One tranche at a time: - DFI market cap 2 times greater than dToken System market cap - An algo ratio below 30% - Consistent 1% DUSD premium over the period between two futureswap blocks.
Two tranches at a time: - DFI market cap 4 times greater than dToken System market cap - An algo ratio below 25% - Consistent 5% DUSD premium over the period between two futureswap blocks.
Three tranches at a time: - DFI market cap 6 times greater than dToken System market cap - An algo ratio below 20% - Consistent 10% DUSD premium over the period between two futureswap blocks.
Four tranches at a time: - DFI market cap 8 times greater than dToken System market cap - An algo ratio below 15% - Consistent 15% DUSD premium over the period between two futureswap blocks.
Five tranches at a time: - DFI market cap 10 times greater than dToken System market cap - An algo ratio below 10% - Consistent 20% DUSD premium over the period between two futureswap blocks.
This way, 2-10 million DUSD worth of dToken-system liquidity can be reintroduced into the system per week, given a healthy system state.

3. Measures to be Eliminated

• All additional pool swap fees are lifted, allowing for healthy leverage trades on DFI that can later support the DUSD peg. This part is crucial for a healthy restart. A collateralization ratio makes no difference if the DUSD are not sold against DFI as those need to be bought back when the dynamic interest rises due to a discount to support a peg.
• Reward allocations to DUSD bonds are removed; those will be redirected to the community fund until we find a better use for them. All existing DUSD bonds are released, and the freed-up DUSD are counted to the DUSD that may be locked in the tranches together with all other DUSD.
• All negative interest mechanisms are lifted. DUSD loops are unwound, and the freed-up DUSD are counted to the DUSD that may be locked in the tranches together with all other DUSD.

4. Measures to be Retained

• The futureswap mechanism will be retained. It is advised to analyze the futureswap behavior while we are at peg over an extended period. If the futureswap creates unnecessarily high amounts of algo tokens even when at peg, the following adjustment is suggested: making the futureswap spread variable and increasing it if an asset shows higher implied volatility over two consecutive futureswap blocks. This way, the chain gains a bigger trade advantage for stocks that tend to surpass the current 5% limit more often. This will burn more tokens and mint less.
• The buy and burn bot will be retained.
• The rebalancing of the community fund will be retained.
• Dynamic interests will be retained.

5. Introduction of a new dToken-system-wide fee that consistently burns DUSD and dTokens

• A dToken-system-base-fee is implemented on DVM and DMC. This fee applies to all dToken and DUSD transfers from account to account and pool swaps on the DVM side and all token transactions on the DMC side. The fee is initially set to 10 basis points (0.1%). This fee is necessary to account for rising stock prices and reduce the algo ratio.

Percentage Locked

The percentage of liquidity to be locked is crucial as this is a one-time approach. Locking too much liquidity is not problematic, as it can be reintroduced if system health allows. However, locking too little is problematic because maintaining the peg and enabling re-collateralization through backed loans sold against crypto will not be possible. I argue for minimal liquidity leading to a peg allowing for healthy collateralization to support the peg via dynamic interest rates rather than excessive liquidity that the system cannot support. Therefore, I propose locking away 90% of all dToken-system liquidity, leaving about 20 million DUSD in liquidity for the restart. If the system is healthy, up to 10 million DUSD in liquidity can be reintroduced per week. If not, we will wait until the system is healthy enough to support the liquidity.

Further Details

• Loans are all paid back before the dTokens and DUSD are locked in tranches. If insufficient assets are available on the address, they are purchased on the market via the cheapest route.
• Relevant pools are emptied before the dTokens and DUSD are locked in tranches. Trading counterparts are credited to the owning addresses.

Requirements

A hard fork will be necessary to implement these changes. Furthermore, cooperation is needed from relevant projects to handle the balances in smart contracts on the DMC. If they do not cooperate, this proposal cannot be implemented. Addressing smart contracts on the metachain is crucial to treat everyone fairly and ensure the success of the proposed measures.

Measure Until Implementation and Proposal Kill Switch

The implementation of the proposed measures is challenging and time-consuming, it will probably take months. Until implementation, we implement a 50 basis points fee on all dToken pools to burn algo tokens, in hope to be able to activate the following proposal kill switch: If, during implementation, DUSD consistently trades around $1, this proposal is not to be implemented.

Further Food for Thought

Measures targeted at changing voluntary market behavior have had insufficient success, forced locking with conditional payouts ensures fairness and effectiveness. Measures based on voluntary lockups are unfair because those who do not participate unjustly gain a bigger advantage, despite the cash flow offered as recompensation to those who support the system. Additionally, cash flows are costly to the system, either the dToken system or DFI itself. No solution will make everyone happy. However, a deterministic forced approach treats everyone fairly and equally, does not rely on probabilities and ensures success.

Optional

I would argue for future swapping all dTokens at the oracle price to DUSD, making the locking and releasing much easier. Additionally, the upside from here is 10x after fee on a repeg. Assets being worth times 10 should be enough to compensate the owners for the forced sale of their preferred dTokens. If not, we must release DUSD before dTokens, as dTokens might rise in value and the greater liquidity they provide would mean a slower payout for everybody, which is not fair to the people holding DUSD instead of dTokens.

Q&A

Q: If we have little liquidity, users will be angry that the system cannot be used. A: Liquidity is a secondary issue for me, the more important question is if we can afford the liquidity. The liquidity we have in the system right now is a cost that, if we can't afford, should not be maintained. If we can afford it, the liquidity will be reintroduced; we have it on the backburner. Additionally, the goal is to attract real liquidity through backed loans, which we will achieve if the product is valuable.
Q: If we have a 10 bps fee on all transactions, there will be less usage. A: I also pay 10 bps on every exchange, usually much more, especially in traditional finance. I pay 2% on every card payment and substantial fees on asset management. For example, at Relai, you pay at least 50 basis points, usually 1%. Fees are charged everywhere; things cost money. I believe a usage fee on RWA is justifiable. RWAs rise in price, so even if the futureswap burns more dTokens than it mints, it may create algo DUSD balances. We have many algo tokens. This fee is a necessary cost that users must pay for an effective synthetic RWA spot system.
Q: Why include the fee system-wide on all transactions? A: New users will probably use the DMC. If DFC is successful, we will likely find most usage there. We want many projects using our dTokens. We need to charge the usage fee where the usage will occur; otherwise, users will flee to DMC where no fees are charged.
Q: But we have the stabilization fee. Can’t we just keep that instead of the base fee on all transactions? A: The stabilization fee makes healthy re-collateralization (sold against crypto) more challenging when the algo ratio is high because the user gets less crypto for his DUSD. When we have high algo ratios, we want more collateralization-based loans sold against crypto. It is the "collateralized loans sold against crypto" that maintain the peg if dynamic interests are raised. A loan left in the dToken system brings a low algo ratio but does nothing if I pay back a loan without buying the DUSD beforehand. Dynamic interest rates stabilize nothing in this case. By first eliminating most algo tokens and implementing a base fee, we can remove this fee and allow for healthy leverage trades supporting the system to occur in the first place.
Q: Why lock so much liquidity? A: This approach is a one-time silver bullet. It must be as deterministic as possible; I do not want to rely on probabilistic assumptions about how market participants will behave based on incentives and public information. In the past, single addresses hindered re-peg efforts, and we cannot predict which addresses will act against the peg efforts in the future. Therefore, we must lock substantial portions of everyone's liquidity. Liquidity is the cost in our current situation, and we aren’t at the peg because none of the measures or whales can afford it. If the chain were a person, it would be flat broke. We cannot afford the liquidity at this point. Let's gradually ramp up the expenses when and if we can afford it, but not before.

I don't know who to ask advice of this so I thought reddit would be the best place. I 23 F Have been dating my 22 M boyfriend for a little over 2 years and today we had an argument. Usually I don't mind them and understand they are going to happen but today's was too much for me. For context I am currently unemployed with my boyfriend earning the household funds, because of this amongst other reasons I help him in the mornings. I get out of bed before him, lay out his clothes aswell as products he'll need then make breakfast and coffee and you guessed it, turn the geyser on. Last night I took a late bath and usually ask him if he'd like it on so he can shower afterwards, last night I didn't since it was late and I only took a bath since I was in pain. Fast forward to this morning. I half wake up seeing him dressed and annoyed. A little more context, he sometimes works on Sunday and in return wakes up later so he wants to do it himself. Anyway, as I wake up I see he's annoyed so out of instinct and care I asked if he was alright and if he was annoyed about something. He proceeded to tell me that I left the geyser off the one time he didn't tell me to and that he had a bad shower. Bare in mind I did ask why he was annoyed but I wasn't expecting that answer. After a few minutes I said I was sorry in which he proceeded to explain further that it annoyed him. Later after having time to think I confronted him and said that this was my first affence in this matter and asked why he got this mad at me because I couldn't grasp it. He continue with saying why does he need to ask, I should just do it which I proceeded to answer with that I ask him out of curtasy but forgot once. In this house my boyfriend and I share I felt bad leaving the geyser on since it just takes more money so I guess I instinctively didn't and didn't even have hot water myself. The arguements continued and he stormed off, but not before making a final statement. I respond with, you can't just walk away with him yelling I just did. Got in the kitchen where he was 5 seconds later and went to the fridge. I was hungry and acknowledged that I will not be treated with respect so what's the point of the conversation. He proceeded to ask questions like nothings wrong and I responded with the fact that I will not be speaking to someone who has no respect for me and storms off like a child. He proceeded to get offended and yelling at me. I told him I will not be yelled at like a dog, if he does not show me the same respect I show him I will not have this conversation. During which, he wanted to interrupt countless times which I did not allow in a span of 30 seconds. Than he stated that he is angry he is going to yell which I then stated again then I won't have this conversation. He trodded after me slamming the door open and yelling at me saying he is going to say this in which I said I do not want to have this conversation please respect that. He did not. He continued to yell in which a bit childish I know but I blocked my ears and kept repeating I do not want to talk please respect that and leave me alone while I could see his mouth moving and yelling. He then stormed off in a huff and continued to make snippy comments as he left. I was very supprised at how sound I handled they argument, stating my boundaries was kinda freeing. Worst part is he uses work as a reason not to handle the situation better because he will be late so whenever we have arguments he states that he does not have time for this so our arguments go unresolved. After the fight I walked out saying I do not want to talk to a man that has zero respect for me or time. After cooling down I think I should've just accepted the complaints and move on, I don't know what to do and honestly I am tired of it all, I love him so should I apologize or do something? AITAH?

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

I’ve always hated the smell of gun oil. It clings to everything it touches, soaking deep into the fibers of my clothes, the lining of my backpack, the coarse hair on the back of my hands. Yet here I am, kneeling on the cracked linoleum of our mudroom, a Remington .308 laid across my thighs, and the stench of gun oil sharp in my nostrils. The early morning light barely scratches at the edges of the blinds, dim and gray like the belly of a dead fish.
My dad Frank is in the kitchen, clattering around with the coffeepot and mumbling under his breath. Today we’re heading up to the woods of Northern Michigan, same as we did every year before Leah… before we lost her.
I can’t help but feel the old scars throbbing as I load bullets into the magazine. It’s been ten years since that hunting trip, the one that tore my family into before and after. Before, when Leah's laughter was a constant soundtrack to our lives; after, when every silence was filled with her absence.
We were just kids back then. I was ten, Leah was eight. It was supposed to be a typical hunting trip, one of those bonding experiences Dad was always talking about. But things went wrong. We got separated from Dad somehow. One minute we were following him, the next we were lost, the dense woods closing in around us.
Dad says when he found me, I was huddled under a fallen tree, my eyes wide, my body frozen. All I could mutter through chattering teeth was "Dogman."
It was only later, after the search parties had combed through every thicket and hollow, that they found her. What remained of Leah was barely recognizable, the evidence of a brutal mauling undeniable. The authorities concluded it was likely a bear attack, but Dad... he never accepted that explanation. He had seen the tracks, too large and oddly shaped for any bear.
As I load another round, the memory flashes, unbidden and unwelcome. Large, hairy clawed hands reaching out towards us, impossibly big, grotesque in their form. Yet, the rest of the creature eludes me, a shadow just beyond the edge of my recall, leaving me with nothing but fragmented terrors and Leah’s haunting, echoing screams. My mind blocked most of it out, a self-defense mechanism, I guess.
For years after that day, sleep was a battleground. I'd wake up in strange places—kitchen floor, backyard, even at the edge of the nearby creek. My therapist said it was my mind's way of trying to resolve the unresolved, to wander back through the woods searching for Leah. But all I found in those sleepless nights was a deeper sense of loss.
It took time, a lot of therapy, and patience I didn't know I had, but the sleepwalking did eventually stop. I guess I started to find some semblance of peace.
I have mostly moved on with my life. The fragmentary memories of that day are still there, lurking in the corners of my mind, but they don’t dominate my thoughts like they used to. I just finished my sophomore year at Michigan State, majoring in Environmental Science.
As for Dad, the loss of Leah broke him. He became a shell of himself. It destroyed his marriage with Mom. He blamed himself for letting us out of his sight, for not protecting Leah. His life took on a single, consuming focus: finding the creature that killed her. He read every book, every article on cryptids and unexplained phenomena. He mapped sightings, connected dots across blurry photos and shaky testimonies of the Dogman.
But as the tenth anniversary of Leah’s death approaches, Dad's obsession has grown more intense. He’s started staying up late, poring over his maps and notes, muttering to himself about patterns and cycles. He’s convinced that the dogman reappears every ten years, and this is our window of opportunity to finally hunt it down.
I’m not nearly as convinced. The whole dogman thing seems like a coping mechanism, a way for Dad to channel his guilt and grief into something tangible, something he can fight against. But I decided to tag along on this trip, partly to keep an eye on him, partly because a small part of me hopes that maybe, just maybe, we’ll find some kind of closure out there in the woods.
I finish loading the rifle and set it aside, standing up to stretch my legs. I wipe my greasy hands on an old rag, trying to get rid of the smell. The early morning light is starting to seep into the room, casting long shadows across the floor.
Dad comes out of the kitchen with two thermoses of coffee in hand. His eyes are bleary and tired.
“You ready, Ryan?” he asks, handing me a thermos, his voice rough from too many sleepless nights.
“Yeah, I’m ready,” I reply, trying to sound more confident than I felt.
We load our gear into the truck, the weight of our supplies and weapons a physical reminder of the burden we carry. The drive from Lansing across the Lower Peninsula is long and quiet, the silence between us filled with unspoken memories and unresolved grief.
—
The drive north is a blur of highway lines and the dull hum of the engine. I drift off, the landscape outside blending into a haze. In my sleep, fragments of that day with Leah replay like scattered pieces of a puzzle. I see her smile, the way she tugged at my sleeve, eager to explore. The sunlight filters through the trees in sharp, jagged streaks.
Then, the memory shifts—darker, disjointed. Leah's voice echoes, a playful laugh turning into a scream that pierces the air. The crunch of leaves underfoot as something heavy moves through the underbrush. I see a shadow, large and looming, not quite fitting the shapes of any creature I know.
Then, something darker creeps into the dream, something I’ve never allowed myself to remember clearly.
Before I can see what it is I wake up with a start as the truck jerks slightly on a rough patch of road. Dad glances over. "Bad dream?" he asks. I nod, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, the remnants of the dream clinging to me like the cold.
"Yeah, just... thinking about Leah," I manage to say.
As we drive, Dad attempts to bridge the silence with small talk. He asks about my finals, my plans for the summer, anything to keep the conversation going. His voice carries a forced cheerfulness, but it’s clear his heart isn’t in it. I respond when necessary, my answers brief, my gaze fixed on the passing scenery.
The landscape changes as we head further north, from flat expanses to rolling hills dotted with dense patches of forest. It's beautiful country, the kind that reminds you how vast and wild Michigan can be, but today it just feels oppressive, like it’s closing in on us.
—
We finally arrive at the cabin, nestled deep in the woods, its weathered wood blending seamlessly with the surrounding trees. The place hasn't changed much since the last time I was here—a relic from another time, filled with the echoes of our past. I can still see Leah running around the porch, her laughter ringing out into the forest.
Dad parks the truck, and we step out into the crisp air. The smell of pine and damp earth fills my nostrils. We start unloading our gear, the tension between us palpable.
“Let’s get this inside,” Dad says, his voice gruff as he hefts a duffel bag onto his shoulder.
I nod, grabbing my own bag and following him to the cabin. Inside, it’s a mix of old and new—the same rustic furniture, but with new hunting gear and maps strewn across the table. Dad’s obsession is evident in every corner of the room, a constant reminder of why we’re here.
As we unpack, we exchange strained attempts at normalcy. He talks about the latest cryptid sightings he’s read about, his eyes lighting up with a fervor that both worries and saddens me.
“Did you hear about the sighting up near Alpena?” he asks, laying out his maps on the table.
“Yeah, you mentioned it,” I reply, trying to muster some enthusiasm. “Do you really think there’s something to it?”
Dad’s eyes meet mine, and for a moment, I see a flicker of doubt. But it’s quickly replaced by grim determination. “I have to believe it, Ryan. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
We finish unpacking, the silence between us growing heavier with each passing minute. I step outside to clear my head, the cool air a welcome relief. The sun is starting to set, casting long shadows across the clearing. I can’t shake the feeling of unease.
"You can take the upstairs room," Dad mutters. His voice is strained, trying to sound normal, but it's clear the weight of the past is heavy on him. I nod, hauling my backpack up the creaking stairs to the small bedroom that I used to share with Leah. The room feels smaller now, or maybe I've just grown too much since those innocent days.
I unpack silently, setting my things aside. The bed is stiff and cold under my touch. As I settle in, I can't help but glance at the corner where Leah and I would huddle together, whispering secrets and making plans for adventures that would never happen. I push the thoughts away, focusing on the practicalities of unpacking.
After settling in, I go back downstairs to find Dad loading up a backpack with supplies for our hunt. The intensity in his eyes is palpable, his hands moving with practiced precision. I know this routine; it's one he's perfected over countless solo trips since that fateful day.
"We'll head out early," he says, not looking up from his task. "Gotta make the most of the daylight."
I nod, though unease curls in my stomach. I'm not just worried about what we might find—or not find—out there. I'm worried about him. Each year, the obsession seems to carve him out a bit more, leaving less of the Dad I knew.
—
The morning air is sharp with the scent of pine and wet earth as Dad and I head into the deeper parts of the forest. The terrain is rugged, familiar in its untamed beauty, but there’s a tension between us that makes the landscape feel alien. Dad moves with a purposeful stride, his eyes scanning the woods around us. Every snap of a twig, every rustle in the underbrush seems to draw his attention. He’s on edge, and it puts me on edge too.
As we walk, my mind drifts back to that day ten years ago. I can almost hear Leah’s voice echoing through the trees, her high-pitched call as she darted ahead, "Catch me, Ryan!" I remember how the sunlight filtered through the leaves, casting dancing shadows on the ground. Those memories are so vivid, so tangible, it feels like I could just turn a corner and see her there, waiting for us.
Dad suddenly stops and kneels, examining the ground. He points out a set of tracks that are too large for a deer, with an unusual gait pattern. "It’s been here, Ry. I’m telling you, it’s close," he whispers, a mixture of excitement and something darker in his voice. I nod, though I’m not sure what to believe. Part of me wants to dismiss it all as grief-fueled obsession, but another part, the part that heard Leah's scream and saw something monstrous in the woods that day, isn’t so sure.
As we continue, Dad's comments become increasingly cryptic. "You know, they say the dogman moves in cycles, drawn to certain places, certain times. Like it’s tied to the land itself," he muses, more to himself than to me. His fixation on the creature has always been intense, but now it borders on mania.
We set up a makeshift blind near a clearing where Dad insists the creature will pass. Hours drag by with little to see but the occasional bird or distant deer.
The sun rises higher in the sky, casting long, slender shadows through the dense canopy. I shift uncomfortably in my spot, the forest floor hard and unyielding beneath me. My eyes dart between the trees, hoping to catch a glimpse of something, anything, to break the monotony. Dad, on the other hand, remains steadfast, his gaze fixed on the treeline as if he can will the dogman into existence by sheer force of will.
A bird chirps nearby, startling me. I sigh and adjust my grip on the rifle. I glance over at Dad.
“Anything?” I ask, more out of boredom than genuine curiosity.
“Not yet,” he replies, his voice tight. “But it’s out there. I know it.”
I nod, even though I’m not sure I believe him. The forest seems too quiet, too still. Maybe we’re chasing ghosts.
As the sun begins its descent, the forest is bathed in a warm, golden light. The air cools, and a breeze rustles the leaves. I shiver, more from anticipation than the cold. The long hours of sitting and waiting are starting to wear on me.
“Let’s call it a day for now,” Dad says finally, his voice heavy with disappointment. “We’ll head back to the cabin, get some rest, and try again tomorrow.”
I stand and stretch, feeling the stiffness in my muscles. We pack up our gear in silence and start the trek back to the cabin. The walk is long and quiet, the only sounds are the crunch of leaves underfoot and the distant calls of birds settling in for the night.
—
Dinner is a quiet affair, both of us lost in our thoughts. I try to make small talk, asking Dad about his plans for tomorrow, but it feels forced. We clean up in silence.
After dinner, I retreat to the small bedroom. The fatigue from the day's hike has settled into my bones, but sleep still feels like a distant hope. I lie down, staring at the ceiling, the room cloaked in darkness save for the sliver of moonlight creeping through the window. Downstairs, I hear the faint sound of Dad moving around, likely unable to sleep himself.
I drift into sleep, but it's not restful. My dreams pull me back to that fateful day in the woods. Leah's voice is clear and vibrant, her laughter echoing through the trees. She looks just as she did then—bright-eyed and full of life, her blonde hair catching the sunlight as she runs ahead of me.
"Come on, Ry! You can't catch me!" she taunts, her voice playful and teasing.
I chase after her, but the scene shifts abruptly. The sky darkens, the woods around us growing dense and foreboding. Leah's laughter fades, replaced by a chilling silence. I see her ahead, standing still, her back to me.
"Leah?" I call out, my voice trembling. She turns slowly, her eyes wide and filled with fear. "Ryan, you have to remember," she says, her voice barely a whisper. "It wasn't what you think. You need to know the truth."
Leah’s words hang in the air, cryptic and unsettling. Before I can respond, she turns and starts running again, her figure becoming a blur among the trees. Panic rises in my chest as I sprint after her, my feet pounding against the forest floor.
“Leah, wait!” I shout, desperation lacing my voice. The forest around me seems to close in, the trees towering and twisted, shadows dancing menacingly in the dim light. I push forward, trying to keep her in sight, but she’s too fast, slipping away like a wisp of smoke.
Suddenly, there’s a rustle, a flash of movement in the corner of my vision. Leah screams, a sound that pierces through the heavy silence. It happens too quickly—I can’t see what it is, only a dark blur that snatches her up.
“Leah!” I scream, my voice breaking. I stumble, falling to my knees as the forest spins around me. My heart races, and the terror is so real, so visceral, that it pulls me back to that awful day, the one that changed everything.
I jolt awake, my breath coming in ragged gasps.
I sit up, wiping the cold sweat from my forehead as I try to steady my breathing. The room is still dark, the shadows cast by the moonlight seem to flicker and dance on the walls. My heart is still racing from the nightmare, the echo of Leah's scream lingering in my ears.
As I struggle to calm down, the floorboards outside my room creak. The door opens slowly, and I see the silhouette of my dad in the doorway, a Bowie knife in his hand, his posture tense.
“Dad, what the hell are you doing?” I whisper, my voice shaking.
“Shh,” he hisses, holding up a hand to silence me. “I heard something. Something moving around in the cabin. Stay quiet.”
I swallow hard, my mouth dry. I glance at the clock on the nightstand—it’s just past three in the morning. The cabin is silent, the kind of deep, oppressive silence that makes every small sound seem louder. I can’t hear anything out of the ordinary, but Dad’s expression is deadly serious.
He motions for me to get up, and I do, moving as quietly as I can. My heart is racing, a mix of lingering fear from the dream and the sudden, sharp anxiety of the present moment. Dad leads the way, stepping cautiously out of the bedroom and into the hallway, the knife held ready in front of him.
We move through the cabin, checking each room in turn. The living room is empty, the furniture casting long shadows in the dim moonlight. The kitchen is just as we left it, the plates from dinner still drying on the counter. Everything seems normal, untouched.
We finish our sweep of the cabin without finding anything amiss. The silence is heavy, punctuated only by our soft footfalls. I can see the tension in Dad’s frame, his grip on the knife unwavering. After checking the last room, we pause in the dimly lit hallway, the air thick with unspoken questions.
“There’s nothing here,” I say, my voice low. “Are you sure you heard something?”
He looks at me, his eyes searching for something in my face. “I heard growling. Deep and close. It was right outside the window.”
“Maybe it was just an animal outside, a raccoon or something?” I suggest, although the certainty in his voice makes me doubt my own reassurance.
“No, it wasn’t like that. It was different,” he insists, his voice tense.
I nod, not wanting to argue, but the seeds of worry are planted deep.
The look in his eyes sends a chill down my spine. It’s not just fear—it’s desperation. The kind of desperation that comes from years of chasing shadows and finding nothing. I can see the toll this hunt has taken on him, the way it’s worn him down, turned him into a man I barely recognize.
We head back to our rooms. As I lie down, my mind races with thoughts of my dad. I can’t help but wonder if he’s losing it, if the years of grief and guilt have finally pushed him over the edge.
Dad wasn’t always like this. Before Leah’s death, he was the kind of father who took us fishing, helped with homework, and told terrible jokes that made us groan and laugh at the same time. He was solid, dependable. But losing Leah changed him. The guilt twisted him into someone I barely recognize, someone driven by a need for answers, for closure, that may never come.
I try to sleep, but my thoughts keep me awake. I can hear Dad moving around downstairs, probably pacing or double-checking the locks. His paranoia has become a constant presence, and I don’t know how to help him. I don’t even know if I can help him.
—
The next morning, the sunlight filters weakly through the cabin windows, casting a pale light that does little to lift the heavy mood. I drag myself out of bed, feeling the exhaustion of another restless night. Dad is already up, hunched over his maps at the kitchen table, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep.
“Morning,” I mumble, rubbing the sleep from my eyes as I pour myself a cup of coffee. “Did you sleep at all?”
He shakes his head, not looking up from his notes. “Not much. I couldn’t stop thinking about what I heard last night.”
I sip my coffee, trying to shake off the remnants of my nightmare. “Maybe it was just an animal, Dad. We’re deep in the woods, after all.”
He finally looks up, his eyes intense. “Ryan, I know what I heard. It wasn’t just an animal. It was something else.”
I sigh, not wanting to argue. “Okay, fine, Dad. What’s the plan for today?”
“We’re going back out. I found some tracks yesterday, and I want to follow them. See where they lead.”
I nod, feeling a mix of apprehension and resignation. I can see how much this means to him, how desperate he is for any kind of lead. “Alright. Let’s get packed and head out.”
We spend the morning preparing, loading up our gear and double-checking our supplies. Dad is meticulous, going over everything with a fine-toothed comb. I try to match his focus, but my mind keeps drifting back to Leah and the dream I had. Her words echo in my head, cryptic and unsettling: “You need to know the truth.”
We set off into the woods, the air crisp and cool. The forest is alive with the sounds of birds and rustling leaves, but it all feels distant, like background noise to the tension between us. Dad leads the way, his eyes scanning the ground for any sign of the tracks he found yesterday.
As we walk, I can’t help but notice how erratically he’s acting. He mutters to himself, his eyes darting around as if expecting something to jump out at us. His grip on his rifle is tight, his knuckles white.
“Dad, are you okay?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady.
He glances at me, his expression unreadable. “I’m fine. Just focused.”
He stops frequently to examine the ground or the bark of trees, pointing out marks and signs that seem meaningless to me.
“Look at this,” he says, crouching down to examine a broken branch. “See how it’s snapped? That’s not a deer or a bear. That’s something bigger. Stronger.”
I crouch next to Dad, squinting at the broken branch. To me, it just looks like a regular broken branch, the kind you see all over the forest. "I don't know, Dad. It just looks like a branch to me," I say, trying to keep my voice neutral.
Dad's eyes flicker with frustration. "You're not looking close enough. It's the way it's snapped—too clean, too deliberate. Something did this."
I nod, not wanting to argue. "Okay, sure. But even if you're right, it could be anything. A storm, another hunter..."
His expression hardens. "I know what I'm looking for. This is different."
I sigh, feeling the weight of the past and the tension between us pressing down on me. "Dad, I had a dream last night. About Leah." The words hang in the air between us, heavy and fraught with unspoken emotions.
Dad's eyes widen, and he straightens up, his entire demeanor shifting. "What kind of dream? What did you see?" His voice is urgent, almost desperate.
"It was... strange. We were in the woods, like we are now, but everything felt different. Leah was there, running ahead of me, laughing. Then she stopped and told me I needed to know the truth, that it wasn't what I thought."
Dad grabs my shoulders, his grip tight. "What else did she say? Did she tell you anything specific? Anything about the creature?"
I shake my head, feeling a chill run down my spine. "No, that was it. She just said I needed to know the truth, and then she was gone."
Dad’s grip on my shoulders tightens, and his eyes bore into mine with a mixture of desperation and hope. “Ryan, you have to try to remember. Think hard. What did the creature look like? Did you see anything else?”
I pull back slightly, uneasy with his intensity. “Dad, I told you. I don’t remember. It was just a dream. A nightmare, really. My mind’s probably just mixing things up.”
He lets go of me and runs a hand through his hair, looking frustrated and lost. “Dreams can be important. They can hold memories we’ve buried deep. Please, try to remember. This could be a sign, a clue.”
I rub my temples, feeling the beginnings of a headache. “I’ve tried, okay? I’ve tried for years to piece together what happened that day. But it’s all just fragments, like pieces of a puzzle that don’t fit. The dream… it felt real, but I don’t think it’s telling me anything new.”
Dad’s face falls, and he looks older than I’ve ever seen him. He turns away, staring into the forest as if it holds all the answers.
—
As we make our way back to the cabin, the sun begins to set, casting long shadows through the trees. The air grows colder, and I shiver, pulling my jacket tighter around me. Dad is silent, lost in his thoughts, his face drawn and haggard.
Back at the cabin, we unload our gear once again in silence. Dad disappears into his room, muttering something about going over his notes. I decide to explore the cabin, hoping to find something that might help me understand what’s going on with him.
In the attic, I find a box of old family photos and documents. As I sift through the contents, I come across a worn journal with Dad’s handwriting on the cover. Curiosity gets the better of me, and I open it, flipping through the pages.
The journal is filled with notes and sketches, detailing his obsession with the dogman. But there’s something else—entries that talk about Leah, about that day in the woods. His handwriting becomes more erratic, the words harder to read. One entry stands out, dated just a few days after Leah’s death:
“June 15, 2013 – It was supposed to be a normal trip. Keep them close, Frank, I kept telling myself. But I failed. Leah is gone, and it’s my fault. I heard her scream, saw the shadows. I tried to get to her, but… the thing, it was there. Too fast. Too strong. My hands… blood everywhere. No one will believe me. I can’t even believe myself. I have to find it. I have to protect Ryan. I have to make it right. God, what have I done?”
Before I can read further, the attic door creaks open, and Dad’s voice slices through the stillness.
“What are you doing up here?” His tone is sharp, almost panicked.
I turn to see him standing in the doorway, his face pale and his eyes wide with something between anger and fear. I clutch the journal to my chest, my mind racing. “I found this… I was just trying to understand…”
In an instant, he crosses the room and snatches the journal from my hands. His grip is tight, his knuckles white. “You had no right,” he growls, his voice trembling.
“Dad, I just wanted to know the truth!” I shout, frustration boiling over. “What really happened to Leah.”
His eyes flash with a mix of rage and anguish, and before I can react, he slaps me across the face. The force of it knocks me off balance, and I stumble backward, my cheek stinging.
For a moment, there’s a stunned silence. We both stand there, breathing hard, the air thick with tension.
“I’m sorry,” Dad says finally, his voice barely a whisper. “I didn’t mean to… I just…” He trails off, clutching the journal to his chest like a lifeline.
I touch my cheek, feeling the heat from the slap, and take a deep breath, trying to steady myself. “Dad, what aren’t you telling me? What really happened that day?”
“Stay out of it, Ryan,” Dad growls, his eyes dark with anger. “You don’t know what you’re messing with.”
He turns and storms out of the attic. I’m left standing there, my cheek throbbing, my mind racing. What the fuck is going on? What really happened to Leah? And what is Dad so afraid of?
—
That night, I sleep with my rifle within arm's reach, more afraid of my dad than any dogman. The slap still burns on my cheek, and the look in his eyes—rage, fear, something darker—haunts me. I lie awake, listening to the creaks and groans of the old cabin, every sound amplified in the stillness. Eventually, exhaustion pulls me under, and I fall into a restless sleep.
The dream returns, vivid and unsettling. I'm back in the woods, chasing after Leah. Her laughter echoes through the trees, a haunting reminder of happier times. This time, though, I push myself harder, refusing to let her slip away.
"Ryan, catch me!" she calls, her voice playful.
"I'm coming, Leah!" I shout, my legs pumping, my breath coming in ragged gasps.
The forest around us is a twisted, shadowy maze, the trees seeming to close in on us. Leah's figure becomes clearer, her blonde hair catching the dim light filtering through the canopy. She stops suddenly, turning to face me, her eyes wide with fear.
"Leah, what is it?" I ask, my voice trembling.
"Look behind you," she whispers, her voice barely audible.
I turn slowly, dread creeping up my spine. In the shadows, I see a figure, its form indistinct and shifting. It’s not quite animal, not quite human—something in between. The sight of it sends a jolt of terror through me, and I wake up with a start, my breath coming in ragged gasps.
I’m not in my bed. The ground beneath me is cold and hard, the smell of damp earth filling my nostrils. Panic rises as I realize I’ve sleepwalked into the woods. I scramble to my feet, my eyes adjusting to the dim light. The moon casts a pale glow over the surroundings, revealing what looks like a long-abandoned animal lair.
The walls are covered in giant claw marks, deep gouges in the wood and earth. The air is heavy with the scent of decay, and a chill runs through me. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being watched.
Carefully, I start to move, my eyes scanning the ground, desperate for a familiar landmark. That's when I see them—faded scraps of fabric caught on the jagged edges of the underbrush. My steps falter, a sense of dread washing over me as I bend down to examine them. The fabric is torn, weathered by time and the elements, but unmistakably familiar. It's part of Leah's jacket—the bright pink one she wore on the day she disappeared.
As I strain to make sense of it all, a rustling sound behind me snaps my focus. My heart leaps into my throat. I spin around, my hand instinctively reaching for the rifle I don't have—because, of course, I didn't bring it in my unconscious state.
The shadowy figure that emerges from the trees is unsettlingly familiar, mirroring the menacing forms of my nightmares. But as it steps into the moonlight, I recognize the worn jacket, the weary posture. It's Dad.
"Ryan!" he calls out, his voice a mix of relief and stern concern. "I've been looking everywhere for you. What the hell are you doing out here?"
I exhale slowly, the terror ebbing away as reality sets back in. "I—I don't know, Dad. I must've sleepwalked again." My voice is shaky, my earlier dream still clinging to the edges of my consciousness.
Dad stares at me in disbelief. "You haven't sleepwalked since you were a kid, Ry. This... this isn't just a coincidence." His eyes dart around, taking in the surroundings—the eerie, claw-marked den, the unsettling quiet of the woods. "How did you even find this place?"
I shake my head, struggling to find an answer. "I don't know, Dad. I just... I woke up here." The uncertainty in my voice does nothing to ease the tension.
His eyes lock onto the tattered remains of Leah's jacket in my hands, and something inside him snaps. The color drains from his face as he stumbles a few steps backward. "This... this is where it happened," he murmurs, his voice barely a whisper. “This is where we found Leah."
“I thought you said you don’t remember anything from that night,” he says accusingly.
"I swear, Dad, I don't know anything about this place," I insist, my own heart pounding.
“It was you, wasn’t it? You’ve been hiding this from me.” His voice is frantic. “You... last night, the growling, it was you.” His voice rises, tinged with hysteria.
I step back, my pulse racing, feeling the chill of the night and the weight of his accusation. "Dad, I don't know what you're talking ab—”
"No!" he interrupts, his voice breaking as he points a trembling finger at me. "You knew, you always knew. It was you, Ryan. All these years, the evidence was right there, but I refused to see it. You were the dogman. You killed Leah!"
His words hit me like a physical blow, absurd and horrifying in their implications. "Dad, you're not making any sense. You're talking crazy! I was just a little kid! How could I–" I protest, my voice shaky.
He steps closer, his presence looming over me, the outline of his figure distorted by the shadows of the trees. "Think about it! It all makes sense now. You led us here, to this place, because you remember. Because you did it."
"Dad, stop it!" I shout, my heart pounding in my chest. "You're scaring me. You need help, professional help. This isn't you."
But he's beyond reason, his eyes wild with a haunted grief. "I have to end this," he mutters, more to himself than to me, his hand tightening around his rifle.
His finger hovers dangerously over the trigger of his rifle. My instincts kick in, and I know I have to act fast.
I lunge toward him, trying to knock the weapon away, but he's quicker than I expected. We struggle, our breaths heavy in the cold night air, the sounds of our scuffle the only noise in the otherwise silent woods. His strength surprises me, fueled by his frantic emotions. He shoves me back, and I stumble over a root, my balance lost for a crucial second. That's all he needs. He raises his rifle, his intentions clear in his wild, pained eyes.
I dive to the ground just as the shot rings out, a deafening blast that echoes ominously through the trees. The bullet whizzes past, narrowly missing me, embedding itself in the bark of an old pine. I scramble to my feet, my heart pounding in my ears, and I start running. The underbrush claws at my clothes and skin, but I push through, driven by a primal urge to survive.
"Dad, stop! It's me, Ryan!" I shout back as I dodge between the trees. Another shot breaks the silence, closer this time, sending splinters of wood flying from a nearby tree trunk. It's surreal, being hunted by my own father, a man tormented by grief and lost in his delusions.
I don't stop to look back. I can hear him crashing through the forest behind me, his heavy breaths and muttered curses carried on the wind. The terrain is rough, and I'm fueled by adrenaline, but exhaustion is setting in. I need a plan.
Ahead, I see a rocky outcrop and make a split-second decision to head for it. It offers a chance to hide, to catch my breath and maybe reason with him if he catches up. As I reach the rocks, I slip behind the largest one, my body pressed tight against the cold, damp surface. I hear his footsteps approaching, slow and cautious now.
As I press against the rock, trying to calm my racing heart, I can hear Dad's footsteps drawing closer, each step crunching ominously on the forest floor. He's methodical, deliberate, like a hunter stalking his prey.
“Come out, Ryan!” Dad’s voice is ragged, filled with a blend of fury and pain.
My heart pounds against my chest, the cold sweat on my back making me shiver against the rough surface of the rock. I know I can't just sit here; it's only a matter of time before he finds me.
Taking a deep breath, I peek around the edge of the rock, trying to gauge his position. I see him, rifle raised, scanning the area slowly. This might be my only chance to end this madness without further violence. I need to disarm him, to talk some sense into him if I can.
As quietly as I can, I move out from behind the rock, my steps careful to avoid any twigs or leaves that might betray my position. I'm almost upon him when a branch snaps under my foot—a sound so trivial yet so alarmingly loud in the quiet of the woods.
Dad whirls around, looking completely unhinged. "Ryan!" he exclaims, his rifle swinging in my direction. Panic overtakes me, and I lunge forward, my hands reaching for the gun.
We struggle, the rifle between us, our breaths heavy and erratic. "Dad, please, stop!" I plead, trying to wrestle the gun away. But he's strong, stronger than I expected.
In the chaos, the rifle goes off. The sound is deafening, a sharp echo that seems to reverberate off every tree around us. Pain explodes in my abdomen, sharp and burning, like nothing I've ever felt before. I stagger back, my hands instinctively going to the wound. The warmth of my own blood coats my fingers, stark and terrifying.
Dad drops the rifle, his eyes wide with horror. "Oh my God! What have I done?" he gasps, rushing to my side as I collapse onto the forest floor.
As the pain sears through me, a strange, overpowering energy surges within. It's wild, primal, unlike anything I've ever experienced. Looking down in horror, my hands are no longer hands but large, hairy, clawed appendages. The transformation is rapid, consuming—my vision blurs, senses heighten, and a raw, guttural growl builds in my throat.
In that moment, a flood of understanding washes over me, mingling with the horror of realization. These are the hands of the creature from my nightmares, the creature whose face I can never fully recall because, as I now understand, it is me.
What happens next feels detached, as if I'm no longer in control of my own actions, watching from a distance as my body moves on its own. I turn towards my dad, his face a mask of terror. He stumbles back, his eyes wide with the dawning realization of what his son has become.
The forest around us seems to fall silent, holding its breath as the nightmarish scene unfolds. I can hear my own growls, guttural and deep, filling the air with a sound that's both foreign and intimately familiar. The pain in my abdomen fuels a dark, violent urge, an urge that's too strong to resist.
With a ferocity that feels both alien and intrinsic, I move towards him. My dad, paralyzed by fear and shock, doesn't run. Maybe he can't. Maybe he doesn't want to.
The encounter was brutal and swift, a blur of motion and violence. My dad barely puts up a struggle, as though resigned to his fate.
Not that there is anything he can do. The creature that I’ve become is too powerful, too consumed by the wild instincts surging through me. I tear him apart, limb from bloody limb, my hands—no, my claws—rending through fabric and flesh with disgusting ease.
The sound of my dad’s screams, of tearing fabric and flesh is drowned out by the animalistic growls that echo through the trees.
When it’s all over, the red mist that had clouded my vision begins to fade, and the fierce, uncontrollable rage that drove my actions subsides. I'm left standing, my breaths heavy and erratic, in the eerie stillness of the forest. The transformation reverses as quickly as it came on, and I find myself back in my human form. My clothes are ripped to shreds, hanging off my frame in tattered remnants. At my feet lies what’s left of my dad, his body torn and unrecognizable.
I glance down at my abdomen, expecting agony, but instead find my wound miraculously healed. No sign of the gunshot remains, just a faint scar where I expected a bloody mess.
Shock sets in, a numbing disbelief mixed with a gut-wrenching realization of what I've become and what I've done. My hands, now human again, tremble as I look at them, half-expecting to see the claws that had so effortlessly ripped through flesh and bone. But there's only blood, my father's blood against my skin.
I stand there for what feels like an eternity, trapped in a nightmare of my own making.
Eventually, the shock wears thin, and a cold practicality takes hold. I need to get out of here. I need to cover my tracks, to disappear. Because who would believe this? Who would understand that I didn't choose this, that I'm not a monster by choice?
With trembling hands, I do what’s necessary. I bury my dad in a shallow grave, the physical act of digging strangely grounding. I cover him with leaves and branches, a pitiful attempt to hide the brutality of his end. I take a moment, whispering apologies into the wind, knowing full well that nothing I say can change what happened.
I leave the forest behind, my mind a whirl of dark thoughts. As I walk, the first hints of dawn brush against the horizon, the sky bleeding a soft pink. It’s hauntingly beautiful.

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

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

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

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

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

How Does Each Type of SEO Affect Your Rankings?

What is On-Page SEO?

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

On-page SEO checklist:

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

Title Tags

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

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

Headings (H1)

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

URL structure

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

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

Alt text for images

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

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

Fast-loading pages, or page load speed

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

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

Mobile Friendliness

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

Page Content

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

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

Internal Linking

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

Schema Markup

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

Social Tags

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

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

Core Web Vitals

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

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

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

Page Experience

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

What is Off-Page SEO?

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

How to optimize for off-page SEO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SEO #onpageseo #Offpageseo #Corewebvitals

I have 3 yoe in IT and currently thinking of doing an MBA, i have 100 percentile in 10th, 98 in 12 th , can anyone help me how much percentile should I get in cat to get into top 10 iims, also I'm 24F does that help in gender diversity or is it better to just go for executive MBA since I already have 3 yoe.

This song is the song where I have the most issue with when it comes to the fans' interpretation of it. Their biggest argument for this is the football references, but they fail to consider that the football metaphors were just a way for Taylor Swift to draw parallels between the (American) football world and her situation.
In this analysis, I'll be doing a line-by-line breakdown of why this is not a Travis Kelce song, but is instead a song that she wrote where she is directly addressing her fans, much like how "But Daddy I Love Him", and "Who's Afraid of Little Old Me" were written.
Here it goes. Please bear with me!
This happens once every few lifetimes

• Suggests a rare and significant event. Taylor's comeback after a major public backlash (Kim Kardashian's Snakegate incident) and hiatus was a unique moment in her career, and in anyone's public career, really.

These chemicals hit me like white wine

• The "chemicals" symbolize the rush of emotions and excitement, akin to the thrill she feels from reconnecting with her fans by organising the Eras Tour.
• "White wine" can imply a pleasant, intoxicating experience, like the support she gets from her fans (look up her sales and streaming charts).

What if I told you I'm back?

• The "you" here directly addresses her fans, announcing her return to the public eye after a period of "absence".
• IMO this line is not at all a shade to Joe, but directly references the line "but I come back stronger than a 90s trend" in willow.

The hospital was a drag / Worst sleep that I ever had

• This song is a direct reference to epiphany, and, on a bigger picture, the pandemic. We must remember that her plans ("Loverfest") were all cancelled thanks to Covid.
• The line also metaphorically refers to her time in "hiding" or dealing with the aftermath of the public fallout, which was a difficult and restless period.

I circled you on a map

• This is the easiest line - she always plans her tour ahead and would choose the locations that she would be performing at.
• This symbolises her plan to reconnect with her fans, targeting them, in each location, specifically as her focus upon her return to touring.

I haven't come around in so long / But I'm coming back so strong

• This line once again emphasises her "hiatus" and assures her fans of her strong comeback.

So when I touch down / Call the amateurs and / Cut 'em from the team / Ditch the clowns, get the crown / Baby I'm the one to beat

• "Touch down" signifies her reentry into the music industry. "Call the amateurs and cut 'em from the team" represents reclaiming her position, emphasizing that she is the top artist and dismissing those who doubted her or tried to take her place.
• "Baby I'm the one to beat" represents her thoughts that she's the one "ahead of the curve" (this is me trying). Now, couple that with her AOTY award for her albums "folklore" and "Midnights", despite the strong competition she had (SZA, Harry Styles, Dua Lipa) - no, folks, Taylor Swift is the one to beat.

Cause the sign on your heart / Said it's still reserved for me

• Indicates the unwavering loyalty of her fans who kept a place for her in their hearts despite her absence and the controversies surrounding her (in general)
• .

Honestly, who are we to fight the alchemy?

• "Alchemy" symbolizes the magical, transformative bond.
• Taylor thinks that the bond between her and her fans is a magical one, one that withstands challenges and changes.
• The Alchemy is what makes her bejeweled.

Hey you, what if I told you we're cool? / That child's play back in school / Is forgiven under my rule

• Now, this line is where she addresses her fans directly. In this line, she is suggesting that she forgave all that drama ("child's play") back during the snakegate. (disclaimer: we know she forgives, she forgets, but she never let's it go -- so let's move on from this one lol)
• But basically, between her and the general fans, she's saying that she's 'moved past' what she thought was her fans' reaction to the the public feuds and media drama.

Now, let's move on to the bridge!
Shirts off, and your friends lift you up over their heads / Beer sticking to the floor / Cheers chanted, cause they said

• This is where she uses the football metaphor to describe the celebratory atmosphere of her concerts, the unity, and the joy her fans experience together.

There was no chance, trying to be / The greatest in the league / Where's the trophy? / He just comes running over to me

• This line! Basically reflects on how she defied the odds and criticism to become the "greatest" with the support of her fans, symbolizing victory and recognition.
• By all means she is currently "the greatest".
  • She is, afterall, the first person in Grammy history to win album of the year four times.
  • Her name is definitely up there as one the greatest of all time, according to Billboard.
  • There's more but I mean, it's like repeating the same points basically.

These blokes warm the benches / We been on a winning streak

• In this line, she is trying to say that everyone else are just warming the benches, while she's the one who's been out there on a winning streak with folklore, midnights, and the eras tour.
• Her usage of "we" here indicates not only "her", but everyone involved, including her fans. This reinforces the alchemy that she has with her fans, and that all of this is a mutual success, i.e. she would not be here without the support of her fans.

He jokes that it's heroin but this time with an "E" / Cause the sign on your heart said it's still reserved for me

• This line is a controversial line, because of her usage of the word "he". Now, who is "he"? Is it Travis Kelce? Or could it be Matty Healy, considering his history with the pills? In this song, this actually does not matter. Why?
  • The point of this line is to symbolise the feeling she feels when she's performing, bejeweled, in glittery skirts, and the feeling insider of her when her fans giving her a standing ovation. To her, this feeling is euphoric. It's like taking heroin.
  • Because she is a female artist, she feels like a heroine in her show. Everyone pays attention to her, and only her. As with all heroines in movies (specifically, those movies with no heroes).
  • Combining both together, "Heroin with an 'E'" signifies as a powerful, euphoric connection (her and her fans) that's not destructive (unlike Heroin), but rather, a positive, euphoric, and uplifting feeling.
• Again, the "sign on your heart" symbolizes fans' loyalty.

and finally, this line....

• Where's the trophy? He just comes running over to me.
  • Before I do a deep dive on this, let's establish the definition of the "trophy". The "trophy" symbolizes ultimate success, victory, or recognition in a competitive field.
  • This line is a rhetorical question. There is no actual "trophy". Taylor Swift is the trophy.
  • Any dudes dating her should recognise that. That she's the trophy.

Addressing the (American) football references in this song:

As mentioned before, the football references in this song are simply metaphors to help illustrate the themes of competition, triumph, and teamwork.

• "So when I touch down"
  
  • While "Touchdown" is a direct reference to scoring in American football, it also, in a literal sense, means refers to when she has landed in her private jet. At this point, we all already know about her and her private jet "news" - I do not need to elaborate on this.
  • "Touching down" symbolizes a notable return after her hiatus and public controversies, Taylor Swift’s "touch down" represents her re-emergence into the public eye with a strong, confident, and elevated status.
  • In the context of the song, it symbolizes Taylor's return to the public eye and re-establishing her position in the music industry.
• "Call the amateurs and / Cut 'em from the team"
  
  • This phrase uses the concept of a sports team to signify separating the less dedicated or less talented (the "amateurs") from the main group. It implies that only the best and most loyal (fans) shall remain, akin to a team selection process in sports.
• "Shirts off, and your friends lift you up over their heads / Beer sticking to the floor / Cheers chanted, cause they said"
  
  • This imagery is reminiscent of celebratory scenes in sports, particularly football games where fans celebrate their team's victories with loud cheers, lifting people in celebration, and the chaotic but joyful atmosphere, very much like the Eras tour.
• "There was no chance, trying to be / The greatest in the league / Where's the trophy?"
  
  • Directly references sports league competition and winning a trophy, which signifies achieving the highest honor or success. And who is she? The Billboard Woman of the Decade. The first person in history to win the AOTY 4 times. One with one of the highest grossing tour of all time. Yes by all accounts she's the music industry.

TLDR: If you switched the "you" in this song to reference "the fans", this song will make complete sense. Now, try giving this song a listen, and think of "you" as "yourself" (the fans).
Taylor Swift's song "The Alchemy," is basically a powerful ode to her fans, chronicling her journey through public scrutiny and her triumphant return to the music industry. It draws parallels to her tumultuous period following the "snake gate" incident with Kim Kardashian and her subsequent hiatus before the release of "Reputation," the lyrics reflect a narrative of resilience, redemption, and the unwavering bond between Swift and her fans.
Once you are able to interpret "you" as "the fans", you'll be able to see, without having to do too much mental gymnastics, that the song is about the transformative and enduring connection Swift shares with her loyal supporters.
If you've made it this far, thank you for reading. Sorry for any typos or grammatical errors - but I hope I helped you made sense of the song!

Its common knowledge she is his fav character. But for someone's fav character, she hasn't had much struggles or character development since arc 4 which is a decade old at this point. And does not feel like an equal to subaru as the main heroine because she is not allowed to suffer physically or mentally anywhere near as much as him nor her naivety is punished by the narrative.
Every author has a fav character. But to being able to portray a child subaru get beheaded while you can't even draw emilia bleeding when fighting without her just dying feels 'unprofessional' for a lack of better term. While she is hated for unfair reasons for most if the world, she hasn't had an arc where she has a personal antagonist of her own like todd or roswaal for subaru. (Pandora is endgame.
Tappei once said that both of his leads are gonna have 3 transformations to complete their journey as hero/heroine. Subaru serms to have had 2 by now. But emilia ony has had 1 in arc 4. According to the recent talkshow, she only has one left which is weird because when did she changed post timeskip ? Arc 5 cannot be it becuz she didn't understood her love yet and she was not the emotional focus nor she of it like subaru is in arc 3 and 6. Nor she did got dedicated time for any development. So either he changed his mind or is now going too easy on her to the point that its not even light favoritism but active detriment.
I hope his moments for emilia to shine are not just her being able to fight someone like sphinx currently in arc 8. It feels very annoying when you have him constantly creating more despairful situations for the mc to grow and make him feel cooler in his words but does not do that the same for the heroine for whom he created this story for in the first place. Emilia has not had any moment of serious hopelessness or a brutal antagonist of her own to struggle against and emerge victorious alone by herself. Her reunion did not felt anything emotional with subaru.
I still have hopes tho cuz Vollachia was not planned and he constantly surprises us. But I do hope we some progress in her character or her realtionship with subaru in the next arc cuz otherwise after so many years of no primary focus on the heroine feels.. strange and frustrating. He better not hold her transformation till arc 11 or something cuz then her character would be imo a permanently damaged a bit because of just how long we were made to wait for it no matter how good it will turn out to be.

Currently I feel making outposts is still kind of a slog and really not worth the effort for the most part.
I have no idea how to fix this, but there are some things that might help address some of the issues I have with the outpost system. These are mostly pipe dreams and I realize they will likely never happen.

1. Cluttered Prefabs. Much like ship habs, have pre cluttered habs would make setting up outposts less annoying. Particularly the ones you don't really care about that much.
   
2. Towns/Shops. I wouldn't mind being able to expand an outpost into a mini town. Could have a few prefab Chunks/Terrabrew/Enhance!/Trade Authority buildings for that purpose. Maybe the Trade Authority could automate selling raw materials or the produced goods from your outpost for a modest fee.
   
3. Interior Walls, Catwalks, and Prefab Internals. Basically as that. Having walls and catwalks would make the outpost building a bit nicer when you care. A few small prefab interior sections (like bathrooms, precluttered shelves/lockers, etc) could make it less painful to customize.
   
4. Resource Depot. The cargo link system is interesting, but a bit complex for what little it does. It might be better just to have a building that could optionally aggregate everything for an entire system (with filtered outputs) and only require cargo links between systems.
   

What do you think could help the outpost system be more fun?