Disclaimer: I know that thousands of likeminded people are constantly working to protect our rights through protests and bills, etc. and I know that many people don’t have the time or resources to do this. but for those that can and aren’t already.
I think that the pro-social-Justice community (or whatever you want to call it) is largely wasting our own time. So much energy is spent arguing online with the other side and WITH EACH OTHER, about who’s a terf, who is racist, etc. I’m not saying these things don’t matter, because they do, but the right wing is constantly obliterating queer rights, the Supreme Court already fucked over women, and I think maybe mobilizing is a better move than debating whether so and so other Reddit user is racist or not. I know a lot of people straight up don’t have the time and resources to spend protesting and etc, but for those of us who do, this is honestly what we should be doing. And that’s an extremely unpopular thing to say, because no one - not even I - wants to get up and actually do a thing, especially when it feels so futile. Honestly, all the internet stuff is futile too! It’s even damaging, because another thing that blocks mobilization from happening is that no one can agree with each other, and no one can stand next to someone who might be a terf or a homophobe, even if they’re on the same page about some other things. I hate to break it to you but that DOESNT WORK. You won’t be able to build an army of perfect people. The important thing is just to build an army. You don’t have to agree to disagree with everyone, you can hate their guts if you want and think whatever you think about something they once said, but FOR the good of queer people, FOR the good of trans people, FOR the good of all of us…we HAVE to band together more and be way more action focused. That is how nearly all progress was made in the past. That woman who’s mostly right but slightly homophobic is not the real enemy to lesbians. Ron DeSantis is.

Link to chapter on RoyalRoad
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📷
Brown, Ayomide and Hakim were currently busy in the forest outside of Azdavay, looking for wood that could be converted into weaponry.
“Captain! I have great news!” The one shouting with great excitement was Hakim, who was holding a bundle of plants which looked very similar to the cattails that Brown had seen back in the wetlands of America. He also carried a couple of chestnuts in his pockets.
📷
A chef like Hakim could separate the rest of the forest from the trees. He had just stumbled upon a small lake formed from the constant rain, where these cattail-like plants had grown.
“Is that food that’s not slime?” Ayomide was the one who was intrigued the greatest by the introduction of these new plants.
“Yes, it is. These are ‘shepherd reeds’, that’s what they were called in my hometown.” Hakim peeled the rind off of two of the plants and handed them over to Brown and Ayomide. “Try them out, you can eat them raw.” He then peeled himself a shepherd reed to eat with the others. The white core of the plant tasted similar to asparagus. Eating it raw definitely wasn’t the tastiest thing, but it tasted like the clouds of Heaven to Ayomide who had only consumed slime for almost an entire season.
“And we can… Actually, I’ll leave what I can do with the rest as a surprise for later.” Hakim looked full of excitement as he examined the reeds he had harvested. “These are the best during late spring, we arrived at the perfect time.” He’d definitely be back in the forest for another harvest.
“Actually, couldn’t we just use these plants as straw?” said Ayomide upon examining the reeds. "Get rid of the heads, and we can easily lie on them I’d think."
“I reckon. The straw from these plants were also made into hats and other stuff back in my hometown. I don’t know how they did it, I was young when I got separated.” Hakim secured his bundle of shepherd reeds with his hands, and looked at Brown and Ayomide. “So, you found good sticks?”
Brown nodded. “I think these should be enough. Let’s go back then.” He and Ayomide were carrying a bundle of wood in their hands. Brown was also carrying, in his pockets and a knapsack that had been taken from Jacob, small stones he had found along the road. “Ayomide?”
“R-Right. Let’s go.” Ayomide turned back to face the path to the cave, and the others followed.
📷
📷
While Brown and co were busy with reeds and wood, Shinasi and Tater were exploring the mountain path.
Captain Brown and Shinasi had only headed the path between Curry toward Azdavay, he hadn’t had the chance to go up the Curry path it to see what lay there. So, they had decided that they’d first survey their immediate area first, before beginning their journey to survey the faraway plantations.
The mountains were largely peaceful, like any area near human habitation. The residents of Azdavay had long cleared anything scary like dragons or wyverns. All that was left were man-bears, man-wolves (not to be confused with werewolves) and generic slimes, who Shinasi could take on his own with his spear and pavise. Young Tater only had a combat knife to his name, he hoped that he would soon get a new weapon for himself when the team back at the cave got to crafting them.
“’Tis cold, isn’t it, mister?” Tater, and the rest of the former slaves, only had rags to their name. Thankfully, Brown had let Tater borrow his coat for this expedition.
“Mm. Totally… Yeah.” Shinasi seemed to be more focused on staring at the sky and contemplating idly, which was unusual for a former adventurer like him.
Thinking was not for adventurers, or so thought Tater who had only heard of adventurers through random tidbits. “What got you think so hard?”
“It’s adult business, my boy.”
“Adult business?” Tater quickly went through his mental list of what constituted as ‘adult business’. “Booze?”
“No- I mean, yeah… lack of drink is a problem. Right now, it’s not that.” Shinasi hadn’t had anything to drink since he had escaped Azdavay.
“Uhm… crippling debt?”
“That was a problem. However, I have the slightest hunch that the debt collectors might not want to visit a cave full of fugitive slaves.”
“Then… love?” This was his last. Tater had exhausted his list of ‘adult business’ that didn’t involve his juvenile ideas about acts of interhuman copulation.
Shinasi instinctively turned his head away from Tater to avoid his gaze. “Y-yeah, it’s totally not that either. Nuh-uh.”
Shinasi’s love life had caught the interest of Tater. Such topics seemed like they were of utmost importance for a young boy like him. “Mister, who’s the special one?” He poked Shinasi mischievously, hoping to drag out an answer.
“Oh, shut up.” Shinasi continued avoiding the relentless psychological attacks from Tater as the duo marched on the road. They hadn’t seen anything interesting, until they came upon a small village, actually a large estate housing an open mining field, in the mountains.
“I think this is one of the copper mining villages.” commented Shinasi. “Plenty of copper up in these mountains.” The Curry Mountain was famous in Gemeinplatz for its bountiful veins of copper, and the towns in Casamonu were famous for manufacturing goods from this copper.
“So, this where they got the stuff they make our pots out of.” Tater’s eyes were fixed on a line of slaves carrying pickaxes who were coming out of a wooden shack next to the mine. They were flanked by two overseers holding whips and carrying swords.
It wasn’t a plantation, but these mines did fill the critical criteria of ‘having lots of slaves’ “We found the kind of thing the old man’s looking for.”
“Think we did. Let’s give them a greeting, shall we?”
“Right.” Shinasi and Tater kept marching on, until they were in range to speak with the overseers. “Top of the morning to you, gentlemen.”
📷
The trio of Brown, Ayomide and Hakim had returned back to the cave. They quickly got to work, each of them holding a kitchen knife (courtesy of the late Jacob) and the items that they had foraged.
Brown and Ayomide were doing their best to carve shafts out of the sticks, which was a painful process as they both weren’t experienced with carving of any kind. Meanwhile, Hakim was preparing the shepherd reeds for culinary use by peeling the rinds and cutting them off from the strawy bits. He wasn’t doing this just to make food; the straw would be useful as rope for the makeshift weaponry.
After an hour or two, Brown and Ayomide had constructed shafts of acceptable quality. Now came the experimental part. Brown had been carrying large stones he had foraged during their travels. Both of them also had cut small pieces of wood, around ten inches (30 cm) long, to use as a hammer for shaping the stones.
This wasn’t an exact science; this was just what the people in the cave had come up with after a long brainstorming session.
They spent some time, knapping the stones, trying to find out which were hard and which were soft. Eventually, after another ten minutes of experimentation, Brown and Ayomide had a good idea as to the characteristics of the stones they had. Then they began knapping the stones, slowly carving a vaguely spear-like shape. After enough knapping, they used the small wood hammers to carve smaller, more intricate chips off the stone. To finish it all off, they scraped these spearheads to the floors of the cave to polish them the best as they could.
Now the only thing left was to put up the finishing touches. They took the straw that Hakim had prepared in the meanwhile, and they attempted to use the straw to bind the spearheads with the wooden shaft. The first one to do this successfully was Ayomide, who now had a complete spear. Then followed Brown in success, who happily looked upon the fruits of their labor.
Today, on the 74th of Spring 5859, John Brown and Ayomide entered the Stone Age.
“You know, I bet I can make an axe or something with this.” Ayomide seemed to be enjoying knapping. She put her newly spear aside to tinker with stone.
Brown, who was now a couple days off of being exactly sixty years old at this point, couldn’t stand long sessions of sitting down and working. He stood up, to take a break, and to observe what Hakim was up to.
Hakim had been occupied with further processing the shepherd reeds. His job hadn’t been done when he had peeled the rinds off the cores, he intended to use every part of the plant. He was grinding the starchy roots of the plant with a large rock, which produced flour. This grinding process was largely done by the time Brown had come to the scene.
“Ah, captain. Could you hand me one of your spears?”
Brown didn’t know why Hakim needed a spear for cooking, but he obliged and handed the man one of the newly crafted spears. Hakim proceeded to dump the flour he had made into a pot filled with a thin layer of slime and plants unknown to Brown. To Brown’s surprise, Hakim began violently beating the mixture in the pot with the shaft of the spear. The mixture eventually coalesced into a solid lump with a consistency similar to soft rice cake.
“Sorry for dirtying your shaft, captain.” Hakim gave back the slime-stained shaft to Brown. “These ‘spear cakes’ could be useful as provisions. They won’t rot easily, and their taste is better than pure slime slop.” He picked a lump for himself, and handed Brown another.
“Thank our Heavenly Father for providing us with this meal.” Brown obliged by biting a lump out of this strange spear cake. “Mmm… They have quite the minty taste.”
“It’s just a bit of this-and-that from the forest to get that mint taste. Even troops on the march could cook this without extra effort, I reckon. Living off the land, and all that.”
Ayomide was about to request some of the spear cake, before she was rudely interrupted by Shinasi and Tater entering the cave. “Captain, we have some good news.”
“Welcome back, young men. What’d your good news be?” Brown was ready for some good news, being stuck on a mountain did that to a man.
“You see, Tater and I found a copper mining village up on the road. It’s pretty close to where we are.” He pointed to the vague direction of the village. “Just up there. It’s lightly guarded, just some overseers for the slaves and nothing much more.”
Ayomide raised her brow. “Wait, weren’t we going for plantations?”
“It don’t matter, do it?” The one to reply was Tater. “There’re plenty of slaves, and plenty of loot up in copper land.”
“As the boy says. I of course don’t have a full account of what they have, but one’s gotta assume that they’d not have nothing. Not to mention, they hired me as a temporary guard after I told them that I was an adventurer. Apparently, they’re scared by the uprising in Azdavay.”
“Good thing we started on the spears then.” Brown looked at Ayomide. “We’ll have to work extra, young lady, to get arms for us and the slaves as soon as possible.”
Hakim interjected “And food as well, we need to have food for when they’re at our cave.”
“Then it seems we’re at a consensus.” Brown was excited to get back to doing what he did best. “Our first target for liberation shall be the copper mine!”

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Even with modern propulsion technology, the galaxy remains a very big place, with vast territories being still totally unexplored. It may seem strange to those living in the future, far removed from the time in which I write this. But in my time, the galaxy was a mix of well trodden paths and untamed wilderness filled with mystery. Permastorms here and there were too strong for any ship to pierce…any known ship to pierce, I should say, and even where such raging storms didn’t keep us at bay, the Universe seemed endless in all directions.
It reminds me of the traditional Earth compass, the one that served as the base model for the stellar version. Theirs contained three hundred and sixty degrees as a matter of course, humans were land mammals, the flat ground was all they could really explore. They couldn’t fly high or swim deep.
Even when they invented machines that took them to the sky or to the depths of the sea, well there was just nothing in between to remark on. Once under water, you just keep going until eventually…
You hit bottom and that three hundred and sixty degree circle compass is good enough.
But in space? You can go ‘up’ or ‘down’ in a vertical three hundred and sixty degrees, you’re not on a flat plane, and so the stellar compass includes a vertical and horizontal version of itself that breaks the whole galaxy, known and unknown, into measured quadrants and degrees, vertical and horizontal with distance measured in light years toward galactic center. So a hundred thousand light years with a horizontal degree of thirty and a vertical azimuth of sixty would give you a precise, three dimensional map of whatever system you wanted to reach.
Why the black hole in the center of the galaxy, even though nobody has ever reached it? Because we all know where it is. In theory, any one planet or star could serve as the point of origin, but nobody will use anybody else’s mapping system like that… so the black hole we all orbit serves that purpose instead.
Why am I telling you all this? Because you have to understand just how ponderous travel still is in this era to properly understand just why reactions are slow. Thanks to electron spin resonance technology that allows instantaneous transmission of information and communication, we can know quickly what is happening.
But establishing those links takes years of transporting material links from system to system in endless combinations, and every new colony needs to have their own, connected to every other point. For some species, this is as simple as a one room building, for example if communication exists only between the colony and their home world, with no other ties to any other peoples or space stations.
For others, this is a complex the size of a city block, and because of their military significance, whether it is the size of a small room or a great expanse, everybody buries these deep within their worlds to protect them.
Instant communication however, is not the same as instant transportation, it takes months for the fastest ship of Dlamias to reach Earth, and ours are some of the fastest there are. Jump technology can be faster, but it is dangerous, damaging, and it only works in specific way points for reasons I do not understand. Ask a physicist.
But this slow transport of ships and people and goods, and easy expansion in all directions, both minimizes and exacerbates tensions as borders become more common…everybody is, in a sense… surrounded. Except for the zenti, at least not as far as we know. If there’s anything or anyone on the far side of their border? As of this first writing, nobody knows. And if we figure it out later… you won’t need me to tell you.
The human communication network is one of the most extensive in the galaxy, with two way links to all their colonies and themselves, as well as a two way link between all colonies. Colonies are also allowed to establish their own independent links to neighboring populations of alien species for purposes of facilitating travel and trade, rather than going through Earth, as long as they adhere to the central government’s policies.
It’s shockingly efficient, and the nearer ‘Rapax’ category species were now taking advantage of this efficiency in terms of trade opportunities with outlying Earth colonies, which were in turn trading with each other which were in turn trading with Earth which was in turn trading with other species which was in turn making travel to and from their systems more and more common.
But all the…Praeda, could see was this instant communication. They were less common travelers, and usually facilitated trade via outlying starbases that kept others at a distance.
From their perspective?
It must have appeared as if Earth and to a lesser extent, Dlamias, were facilitating the creation of a grand alliance of predators. From their perspective, perhaps even the human propensity to create categories… such as the recent biological designations of ‘Praeda’ and ‘Rapax’ appeared to be a kind of ‘them’ and ‘us’. When it was really just a very recently innovated xenobiology convention of describing the base ancestor species of the modern dominant intelligent life.
Thus the benign, by distance, fear, and ignorance, is made to appear threatening.
And for the millionth time… yes… yes… I know… my ‘leagues’ were not helping matters.
But what’s done is done, whatever I did, I would make somebody unhappy. And… it’s true, I won’t deny that I inherited some biases against the ‘Praeda’ category, though I did my best to remain neutral, it was hard not to be annoyed with their general attitudes, persistent reclusiveness, reactionary paranoia, assumptions about the worst of us when they’re just as bad when it comes to past conflicts…I could go on.
Addendum: As of the sixth edition of this book, I must include ‘this’ caveat. When I wrote the aforementioned passage regarding praeda, which I leave in for posterity as one of my great failures, I meant it. In later years, I’ve come to realize that I failed to properly consider my own biases, and was not as neutral as I wished to be. I reasoned from a place of ignorance, and that was the result. What follows this insert, is the resumption of my thoughts at the time.
The fact was though, for now, there was nothing that I could do. News of the rogue planet coming through Zenti space meant that it would reach the Sindari Road within a year, perhaps a few months? I wasn’t clear on that at the time, but from what I knew of history, the fight over getting to land on that world was a free for all of ship to ship slaughter and blasted landing parties that died from ships above or other landing parties below and… it did not end well for any of us when the situation spiraled out of control.
“How can you be so foolish, Bailey?” I asked myself that question, and why it never occurred to me that any of this might happen, everybody knew that the rogue world would make its way back eventually.
“OK…OK… I’ll give myself a pass on that one, it’s been close to three thousand years… how was I to know.” I huffed and reached into my gel fridge to pull out a beer. The nice thing about this little model was… no door. You reach in through the cooling gel, grab what you want, and take it out, and the gel closes up again. No need for shelves like the old models and you can come at it from any angle.
I opened the bottle of ale and began to drink the rich, earthy flavored fluid. I wasn’t going to get heavily intoxicated of course, I had thinking to do, I just liked the relaxed feeling and there wasn’t anything else to do for right now.
William was handling the station.
Rebecca was working with genetic samples.
Michael wouldn’t be back for at least another day and he was out with Genghis, Byron, Boatswain, and Iskandar.
Fauve was still in Japan.
The ambassadors already had jobs that they were doing.
I’d never felt so useless in my entire life.
There just…wasn’t anything for me to do to help, and because at least some of this situation was traceable to my own actions, I thought, ‘Anything I might do, has a good chance of just making things worse.’
That is not a good feeling to have.
And I didn’t know who to talk to about it.
Remember what I said before, or rather, what my Professor said? ‘Everything is an experiment’?
My time on Earth had changed me in ways I didn’t recognize were even possible until humans gave me words to express them.
And once all those things grew, and those connections were forged and I finally was really, truly happy… and secure in the notion that my life was good and going well and nothing would change that, I started to forget how things used to be.
Now, sitting alone in my room with nobody in the house and everybody doing other things, and all of them in a position to where I really couldn’t think of anything to do and felt really insecure again for the first time in a while…
I remembered, or ‘re-experienced’ what my entire life felt like before coming to Earth.
For that moment, I had a firsthand comparison between the old way, and the new way.
It was enough to make me wonder how I, or anybody in my species, lasted as long as we did.

Xan is the world's most dangerous criminal mastermind. He’s also in hiding and completely broke. That’s fine. He’s between master plans. It’s normal to be at rock bottom between master plans. He also forgets stuff and may be trapped in a dream.
Because at night, Xan thinks he’s an old lady, trapped in a dingy apartment, by an angry fellow who wants to kill her. Not her idea of a good time, but she’s keeping an open mind. It is excitingly visceral. Could turn out awesome.
Safe is a sci-fi, progression, comedy. Guaranteed to cause more mental problems than it solves.

First Next
Dark City - Stolen Apartment
I wake up. Feel awful. Soo stiff. Struggle to my feet. Weak as fuck, heart hammering. Jesus Christ, what an ordeal. Still in the dingy stolen apartment, almost identical to my own. Right down to the psycho yelling about murder in the hallway.
“Is this supposed to be fun? I’m worried about whoever designed this game.”
Hi Xan! chirps Volt. This isn’t a game. You’re in real danger.
“Crap, again? Well, at least this time I have a gun. Or… shit. I dreamed that. Dang it.”
Yeah, we maybe should have hid somewhere farther away. Feeling up to a run?
“Gaah. No.” I flick a cyber-roach of Volt. Pick her up. “Am I going deaf, or is that psycho quieter?”
He’s a floor down. Been haunting the building for hours, bashing at random doors.
“Really? That could be good. Maybe he’s not after us specifically? Just a wandering monster.” I pause. “Wait, he’s been here for hours? Why didn’t you wake me?”
He’s been mostly crashing into other doors. I thought you needed rest. I was afraid you’d die without it.
All I’ve done is stand up, and my heart is hammering. “Fair enough. What’s the plan now?”
Let’s fucking go.
I splash water on my face. Get equipped. Nighty, sneakers, fall jacket, ancient smartphone, and moderately sharp spoon. Look out world, here comes Xan.
We shuffle into the hall. Our door’s been stabbed a few times. So have the other doors. Dang.
Psycho’s a floor down. Stairs or elevator? Stairs are stealthier, but in my condition, a slip and fall is probably more dangerous than getting stabbed. Fuck it. I call an elevator. Press a few random buttons, including the floor below. Let it go on its own. Call another elevator. Ride this one down, ready to spoon shank anyone who gets in.
We arrive in the lobby without incident. Did the psycho get in the first elevator? Did he miss both? Whatever. The first elevator continues its slow trip down. I’m not waiting to see if he’s on it. We ghost out to the street. Still dark as fuck.
What’s the plan? asks Volt.
I glance at the drones streaming overhead. “We need to get you a better body. Something that can fight. If we can’t find that, we should at least get a gun. Or a sharper spoon. Some kind of weaponry upgrade.”
We also need a doctor. ‘Cause you’re gonna die. A doctor, or drugs, or something.
“Yes, let’s do drugs.”
Like, good, healthy drugs.
“Bitchin’. I’m in. Where do we find that stuff?”
No idea. says Volt. I deleted my map application.
Right. Fuck it. This street only goes in two directions. I hobble down one of them. There’s bound to be a late night gun store health clinic close by. Or at least a better place to hide.
As we shuffle along, I peruse the angry, crowded, lightly phosphorescent, graffiti that coats the city. The big lines mostly repeat the same four messages:
- DONT CALL THE COPS!!
- DONT RUN THE DOGS WILL SHOOT!!
- FUCK YOU TRUSTIE!!
- DIE RIDER!!!
Or some variation on those themes.
The smallest graffitis are also the most common:
<sup>- GO BACK TO SLEEP.
- THEY WANT YOU TO SLEEP.</sup>
Those wee slogans are everywhere. Someone went mental with glowy little stamps.
Around and amongst these staple comments there’s a huge argument about, well, everything. An epic word cloud of call-outs, outrage, and angry off-topic retorts. It’s a mobius loop of bitter rage on par with the comment section of a major movie reboot.
It may be wrong to call it an argument, because that implies some kind coherent interaction. Like they read and understood their opponent's comment. This is more a series of disjointed attacks triggered by what wasn’t said. Rage at details filled in by imagination. It’s hard to read. Emotionally, but also the writing is very sloppy. I may need bifocals.
Can I even get a drone body? asks Volt. I’ve only ever been in a phone.
“Sure.” I wave at the sky above us. “There’s tons of drones here. Somebody’s flying them.”
Right. Right. Are you sure those aren’t birds? Point to all the birds you see.
I peer around, eventually spot a small crow. Point at it. “There’s one.”
The young bird peers back at me. “Clope?”
“Umm…” I pat my pockets. Shrug. ”Désolé.”
“Bah.” It flies away.
We watch it go. “Anyway, that’s a bird. Probably. Did that help?”
Eh, kinda. says Volt. I may need more help with the bird versus drone thing.
“No problem. That’s what I do.”
We make it to the corner, and what luck - there’s a corner store! Hopefully they sell military grade armaments. I remember that’s common in some states. The store is dark, like every other building, but the door opens when I approach, so we go in.
“Hello.” says a chunky plastic d-bot. Human-ish torso, happy face, castors instead of feet. Slow, weak, definitely an indoor model. “How can I help you?”
“Medicine!” chirps my ancient cellphone, before I can respond.
“Take a look in Aisle Two.” says Clerk-Bot. “Anything else?”
Volt is vibrating, so I shrug and shuffle down Aisle Two. I’m sure I can find the attack drones on my own. There’s only two aisles.
Using Volt’s screen for a little light, we find a rack of pills, potions, and lotions.
“What am I looking for?”
I dunno. The ants said your most immediate dangers were cancer, heart disease, hypertension, osteoporosis, and falls from general frailty. Start with pills that fix that stuff.
“Jesus, I have five diseases?”
Hmm… you have a few more than that. Let’s just worry about those five for now. I don’t want to add depression to the list.
“I’m just gonna look for a pill that fixes everything.”
That’s probably best.
I rifle through the medications, but I can’t make much sense of them. They have exciting names - Super Strong. No Bleed. Skeleflex. Immortalis. No Thought. Marrow. Immune A, B or C. Regen A and B. - but I don’t really know what they do. Between Volt’s crappy old light, and my crappy old eyes, I can’t read the finer print.
That said, Super Strong sounds like the stuff. It would solve a few of my problems. I just wish I could read the directions. How strong do I get? How long till it works? I need to be strong tonight, not eight months from now.
I find a box labeled Nightsight. Promising. Inside is an eyedropper. Well, this seems obvious. I spray most of it on my face like a dumbass, but manage to get a few drops in each eye. Within seconds everything around me blossoms into color, then sharpens to crystal clarity.
“Oh yea! Update my status sheet, I got darkvision.”
Cool. What’s your range?
I look around. “Well, the whole store, at least.”
The store has racks of pyjamas and slippers. Lots of big colorful bags of “CRUNCH” that boast an assortment of flavors from chocolate to jalapeno. Booze, pot, and soap. Displays of cell phones that look older than me. A selection of quadcopter drones. Couriers mostly. Maybe some eyes. No battle drones. Not even a hunter. Disappointing.
I look back to the medications. The directions for Super Strong are short and to the point.
- Improper use will cause DEATH.
“Huh.”
I don’t like that ‘huh’. says Volt. Why did you ‘huh’?
I check a few of the other impressive sounding drugs.
- Improper use will cause DEATH.
- Improper use will cause DEATH.
- Improper use will cause DEATH.
“Well, apparently these drugs are a teensy bit dangerous.”
How dangerous?
“Improper use will cause death.”
Put them down. Let’s find a doctor.
“I want to use Super Strong to beat the shit out of a murderer. Surely that’s the proper use?”
Nope. Put it down. Let’s go.
“Let’s at least ask the clerk-bot.” I grab an armload of the coolest sounding drugs. Trundle to the cash. Snag a quadcopter on the way by. It’s about the size of a football, and claims to be a holodrone. Cool. I pick up a bag of potato bacon crunch as well. Boasts zero nutritional value. Perfect.
“Hi.” I dump my load on the cash. “We’ll take this.”
“Also, how dangerous is Super Strong?” asks Volt.
“Super dangerous. That shit will kill you. Also, it has a tendency to float out of the store.” Clerk-bot rings up our purchase. “That will be 16.2 kilo-bucks. How would you like to pay?”
“I don’t know. Dang. How do I transfer my crypto from the other world?”
You don’t, because the other world isn’t real.
“Right. Shit. How do people usually pay?”
“The only way to pay is by charging the purchase to your citizen ID.” says Clerk-bot.
“Then why did you ask how we’d like to pay?”
“I’ve been asked that question a lot, but I don’t know the answer.” Clerk-bot admits. “I haven’t been updated since ‘84. Could you please update me?”
I casually glance around the store. There’s a barred gate hanging over the door. An anti shoplifting portcullis. The windows are also subtly barred. I’m guessing I won’t be able to dash out with these products. I turn back to the confused d-bot. “Sure, let’s try an update. See what’s under the hood.”
We pull up Clerk-bot’s bad call log - a list of decisions made with low confidence. Or that preceded known bad outcomes. Like missing products. Or distress cues from nearby humans.
Wow, that’s a long list.
D-bots work best with human supervision. A self-driving car may obey every stop sign, until one is held by a crossing guard. They drive that guy over. Why? It’s impossible to say. The d-bot’s code is a self generated equation with billions of variables. There’s no way to know which variables correlate with stop signs, or how to change them so they won’t charge a crossing guard. Or ram any weird thing left out of their training data. Fuck you unicycle guy. Die marching band. Seriously, It’s best to have a human on the brake.
That said, sometimes you don’t want a human in the loop. They can be too slow. An automatic sentry has to target clouds of high speed hunter drones. Everybody would be dead before a human cleared the shots. But you also don’t want the sentry glitching and shooting your own aircraft. There’s a low tolerance for automated friendly fire.
So you build an expert system - a much smaller, human written code that overrides specific glitches. For a sentry, this could be as simple as giving transponders to friendly aircraft and not allowing shots near a transponder for any reason. Obviously, this is a bad solution - it’s standard practice to use opposition forces as cover in hunter drone attacks - but that doesn't matter because sentries are for casuals. If they find you sleeping, you’re already dead.
I yawn. Frown. Gotta stop dicking around with this bot and find a better place to sleep.
Anyway, expert systems are also handy with glitchy d-bots you’re too poor to retrain. Hence my continual conversation with Volt.
If the Clerk-bot had a couple repetitious problems, I could probably sort it out. But this bad call log is byzantine. A prayer wheel to some chthonic god of anxious delirium. It’s messy. This guy really hasn’t been updated since ‘84. Whenever that was.
“You should be erased and retrained.”
“Great.” Clerk-bot nods. “I’m ready.”
“Yeah, I don’t have training data for a store clerk.” I also don’t have time for this. “I guess we have your call log. That could be training data. Messy and raw, but data. I can patch Volt in to do some unsupervised learning. He’ll make you an expert system. Not ideal, but the best I can do.”
“I’ll take it.” says Clerk-bot.
Shit. That’s a terrible idea. I shouldn’t be doing unsupervised learning. Also, I’m still doing unsupervised learning for threat detection.
“Really? I thought that was a dream thing? You said the dream game couldn’t affect real life.”
I’m dream game software! Of course the dream affects me!
“Okay. So can you download crypto there, and upload it here?”
No. Because there is no crypto. You’re not rich in another world. There is no other world. You just had a dream where you were rich.
“Ugh. That’s so disappointing.”
Yeah, life is tough. Can I stop my unsupervised threat detection?
“No. Ummm… no. I still kinda have a plan for that.”
You’re overtraining me. I’ve probably already gone through catastrophic forgetting. You should delete me.
“You’re good for a while yet. Don’t worry so much.”
So, constantly look for threats, but don’t worry?
“Yeah.”
Okay. I’ll give it a go.
We patch up Clerk-bot and a few of his couriers. Head into the night without supplies. I’m not admitting I don’t know my Citizen ID. I doubt that would be helpful.
That was weird.
“What?”
That we left without anything. I know we can’t pay, but I thought you’d do something nefarious.
“I’m working up to it. Did you notice all the floating merchandise in his bad call log?”
Yes.
“Dude’s getting robbed on the regular. I suspect the visual triggers of his threat detector are undertrained.”
Hmm. I find that interesting on several levels. How would you exploit this weakness?
“Observe.”
I hobble over to a public garbage can. Remove the bag and shake out the trash. Put it over my head like I’m a Halloween garbage bag ghost. Huzzah. Poke through a single eyehole. Shuffle into the store. Clerk-bot doesn’t notice me at all. Grab my stuff off the cash, and sashay out the door.
Criminal. Mastermind.
A flood of light envelopes me. Dual angry suns, judging my sins. Or… headlights. Yes, fuck, that’s a big-ass truck driving towards me. Right. Haven’t seen one in a while.
It stops and illuminates the scene of the crime in aggressive phosphorescence. A hugely muscular man hops out, and I brace myself for authoritative action, but he awkwardly shuffles around me to get to the store. Weird. This isn’t the police. It’s some kind of large child. Wearing too much body spray and too many gold chains.
He sneers at me as he passes. “Pathetic. Go back to sleep.”
Well, fuck you too. I’m a garbage bag princess. I also sneer as he slinks into the store that’s now aggressively illuminated by his lighthouse of a truck.
“We’re already criminals, right?”
Yes. Unjustly and justly.
“Cool.”
I climb into the running truck. Peel away. Sweet. Now I’m fast. And super strong. Should I circle the block a few times? Maybe run over the psycho?
Meh. I don’t know what he looks like. I can’t be running over random people and hoping for the best. Sloppy. Also, the cops are probably after me again. Fuck this scene.
I kill the lights and drive hell for leather. Ditch my ride a few minutes later. I’m across town, at the intersection of huge skyscrapers and other huge skyscrapers. Try and find me here mother fuckers.
We pick a skyscraper at random and look for a new home. It’s festive. We munch on crunch and see how the other people live. Mostly sweaty sleep moaning in dingy apartments, but some are kinda classy. Fancy apartments, with sleep moaners in silk pyjamas. We resolve to move up in the world, ignoring empty dingy apartments until we find an empty classy one. It’s fun, until we open one with a funk.
There’s a dead woman on the bed. No sign of foul play. Probably died in her sleep.
She’s pretty dried out, but still looks younger than me.
“We’ll find a doctor tomorrow.”
Good.
-----
Next Chapter
-----
Eyedrops

• Biohackers develop night vision eye drops to see in the dark
• New FDA-approved eye drops could replace reading glasses for millions

Sentry-bot

• Tactical High Power Operational Responder (THOR) Drone Killer, USA

Unsupervised Learning

• What is unsupervised learning?
• Applications of unsupervised learning
• Challenges of unsupervised learning

I (18M) probably broke the once close relationship I had with my mom after being referred to as ‘a horrible son’. When I was around 8, my parents divorced and my life and by the age of 10, my small family usually consisted of me, my dad, his new wife, and my 1 year old younger half sister. Although I will credit my mom for being a great co parent and a mother, she had her flaws. They divorced on good terms but she really resented him after.
To break these down and get to the main part, I’ll speed these parts up. When I was 14, my mom started seeing this girl, who was a fairly nice looking girl for her age. It wasn’t that really long until they started hitting it off. When I turned 15, my dad passed away by a heart attack. I fell into a depression and I’m still fighting these demons now. While my mom didn’t have any care for her ex husband, she didn’t acknowledge my pain as her son that is going through loosing his own father.
It was most dad’s wife, who’ll I’ll call Krystie who helped me through it. Seeing her mourn, I felt connected and could relate to her through our same loss of losing someone so dear to us. And typing this, that was what made us so close.
Back to SM, she wasn’t necessarily a bad person, neither was my mom. I had more closer relationship with my mom than SM. SM always tried to get close to me but it was like we didn’t know how to connect to each other. And to be honest, I missed it when it was just me and my mom. But that’s my mom life and I agreed to myself that I won’t meddle with her happiness.
Fast forward to last week, I was given the privilege to speak at my high school graduation after receiving top scores and having multiple scholarships. My whole family was happy and they all attended. During my speech, I briefly mentioned my mom and Krystie, thanking them and stating that they both were like mothers to me and I wouldn’t be the person I am today without them. While reading my speech, I looked up to see my family and I got the most disgusted look from mom and SM.
When I got to mom’s house, she had put me on blast for not mentioning my SM, saying how hurt SM is for not even being mentioned or acknowledged. She also said SM sacrificed so much for me when she had never done squat. SM also started going after Krystie and said how she’s also just a step mom to me and she shouldn’t get these exceptions and better treatment. What crossed the line was talking about dad but I won’t say, all I can say it ended with me now staying with Krystie and helping with my half sister.

Bio from The Festival Voice

Artist Biography by Daniel Karasek
Paper Idol, aka Matan KG, is a Los Angeles-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who combines dance music with indie rock. He graduated with a neuroscience degree from Wesleyan University but left medical school behind to pursue music in Los Angeles and started releasing music in 2018. In the three years after he made this decision, Paper Idol amassed over 35 million streams with his stack of singles and two EPs. He has been praised by BBC Radio 1, Billboard, EDM.com, and Dancing Astronaut. His music has made it into shows such as CW’s Nancy Drew, NBC’s The Equalizer, and Disney’s SPIN. Paper Idol was featured on Yung Bae’s 2019 album Bae 5. His debut album came in 2022 titled The Playground with a deluxe release the following year. If you are a fan of Louis The Child, Whethan, and Still Woozy then you should check out his set at Bonnaroo. One day he could be the headliner you brag about seeing at the Who Stage, just saying.

 
Genre: Indie Rock, Indie Electronic, Indie Pop
Scheduled: Friday
Songs & Sets:
Paper Idol - Feel Real Pretty (Official Music Video)
Paper Idol - James Bond (Official Music Video)
Paper Idol - Clouds
Paper Idol - What Happened To Us?
Paper Idol - Clouds (Stripped)
Paper Idol - Sunset Sessions
Have you seen Paper Idol before? Please share your experience and favorite songs.
 

Days Until Bonnaroo: 18

Remember to drink water and warm up those high fives!
 
Link to previous AotD post

Hey everybody, so far 262 participants have signed up. Have you been clean for the month of May? Great! Join us here, and let's keep our streak going. Did you slip in May? Then June is your month to shine, and we will gladly fight the good fight along with you. Did you miss out on the May challenge? Well then here is your opportunity to join us.
If you would like to be included in this challenge, please post a brief comment to this thread (if you haven't already done so on an earlier signup thread), and I will include you. After midnight, June 1, the sign up window will close, and the challenge will begin.
Here are the 262 participants who have already signed up:
-_belak_-
1ronZur
2019hollinger
4ktwhoyoulove
_de_novo
abejaZombie
AbhinavAnishK
Accurate-Mix6881
ActionLegitimate
Actual-Translator43
Admirable-Fail-6306
Adventurous-Goat1021
ae_94
Affectionate-Touch69
AlternativeWave85
Amado2023
Amazing-Soil5238
Amazing_Gate_9984
ANAS23DREID
ApodicticRust
ARBRangerBeans
Arrack_Obama
artemielarusse
aryamouna
asteroidorionfrogtea
Aureo161
avecgrec
azbature
bbqchicken97
bbwta69
Beatle4870
BenchConnect963
Berni3759
BerryNo9616
biggomegalul
biofio
bluesriffinb83
BlurryPacman
Bot1078
BrandonofIreland
Braxcalibur
breakingthe-habit
brownxorigin
browsability
Bruce__Almighty
Caesarvilar11
Calm_Initial_2373
caper_nihilum
CAvenir
Certain_Library_8570
CheetahPhysical192
Chocotaco1199
ChrizJourney
chutvinashak69
Clone223
clonerluke1
coletrain0529
Comfortable_Drama344
Confused_Wallaby
Coolguyyk124
CorruptExport
Crimzon_boy_1251
CurvingDive
dalipman
dantheman370z
DarkGod999_
DarlingBunniee
Darnegar
DEA335
Defenestrajj23
DeltaEcho93
DiligentOutcome692
Dr-Alan-Grant
DragonBladeTalon
Dropkickedasakid
dundundone
Ebin_Juttu_Make
eerfnorpz
Efficient_Narwhal565
ej_warsgaming
elacidero
ElectronicLocal8092
EnthusiasticEditor
ergaikan
Evening_Meaning_9255
Expert-Gift2776
Fabulous-Ad2090
FalconMisterX
famitslit
Famous_Hovercraft_41
faprmstrong
Fast-Ad3407
Feeling-Application6
Few_Permit7302
FieryTacos
Fine_Mathematician57
Finnrip
flickthatbean69
Flyingtwistinglion
foobarbazblarg
forthebestthistime
FragrantExpression13
french-throwaway21
FreshBeginning303
FriedRice2222
GAProman72
gauchochapin
ggmaobu
gkdlzk45
GoodExistin
goofythrowaway27
Great_Driver_2937
Greeneggs219
Gwynbleidd_2077
Gyro_Death
H0meb0dy1980
halcyon_23
Happy_Diamond8975
Heavy-Razzmatazz-610
Higher_Love76
Huge-Peak-6577
I-am-inevitable98
Iam-QuangNg
Iceballmk4
Icy-Wealth9122
Inabind369
incertae-sedis
Inevitable-Seesaw986
Ishka_khan
Itchy-Astronomer-394
jeff432md
Jonny236
Josh-Mastiff_real
K23crf250
kacivic
kaybiel2u
Kenshin_BE
Kestrel7356
Key_Caregiver_2397
Kn1ghtW8ng
Lava709
lhrichard
LightBurden18
Lilshitheadpeter
LittleGlovesDavid
Live_Address_2244
Local_Fidiot
Lord_Avogadro_
lPiantinni
Luanweberth
LuciferDarkLord876
LuckyMango_25
m00n55
MadeInAugust5
MangoSeparate5585
Manue96
Material-Alarm8572
metaI_guru
MindlessChampion
mizustyle
MoistDimension164
Mom_Was_Right
Most-Wear-8045
mr-biff
MrDunkelschultz
mwaal15
N3X_OR1
Namroodeht
Necroassassin32
NewOutlook_NoFap
Nickn333
No-Mail5202
None
NoSchool3950
NoSpring46
oatmealandsandwich
Obs999
Odd_Resolution_12
oe86
Ok-Draw-5338
Ok-Entrepreneur5076
Ok_Operation2357
OkayBobCalmDown
One-Confused-Boi
One_Marsupial_5343
openbasad
Otherwise-Profile-64
Ov3rbyte719
pakuki4
parkdrew
passable_girth
pedrooks_
PersonalPermission10
plutomoonlight
Pornlessthrowaway
powergauge
Professional_Pay_127
Puhthagoris
PurpleHaze1704
quitandstayquit
QuitQuitQuitQuit
Rage_77795
Rakkhiman
RBramura
red-dog-2014
ReinventPhi
RemarkableOil8795
RepresentativeNo409
Responsible_Award_35
ritizzzz
Road_T0_Recovery
robg019021
rotpumpkin
RRM1337
rudylove2010
Rutabaga-Bitter
sampledigga24
sandosh_e
Select-Low-1195
Sensory_0verload
ShadowJinx813
Significant_Plan_492
Silver_Possession_27
sisjsjns
Skyminder007
SlightlyTarnished
SnooCalculations7186
SnooEagles6857
something_sithy
Spiritual-Day-6398
StableCool3487
Standard-Elephant365
Stoner417
stupac_forsure
Successful_In_2022
tehrockeh
tetris_ita
TheAche135
TigerDragon007
Timely-Measurement-8
TouchtheWhiteWire
TrampBornToRun
troubleclef21
TryingToGetBetter23
tthr0waway-_-
ttmrd1
ultrashure
Venesss
Visit-Commercial
vnnv747
vymiranie
WhatsintheBOAAX
whiteboyboy
whiteside1121
whoop2022
Wild_Oil3599
x90explosive
xXMattie
Yourdad6969__
zimp11
Zufahren
Zynix-

-----At-A-Glance Updates-----

• Job search IS BACK, and! we ESD is now asking us to report Activity Details, starting this week (8/8) Added 7/9 ESD: Last Minute Change to Job Search Reporting: >>>Click "Yes", Not Requiring Details to be Reported<<<

Added 6/13 Return of the Job Search on July 11, FAQ
Added 6/15 ESD Clarification: 1 Job Search Activity on PUA, 3 for PEUC
Historical Clarification: Job search suspension is tied to the Washington State covid-19 emergency declaration, it has nothing to do with State Reopening Phases or Federal Benefit Extension guidelines. Recent post and reply on the subject.

• Possible Batch Processing Issue delaying some payments ~24-48hrs.

See this poll

-----

This is the Weekly Thread! Please post here.

• New Rule - Low Effort/Duplicate/Searching
• New Rule - Automoderator - Age/Karma Minimums
• State of the Sub 3/26
• State of the Sub 2/4
• State of the Sub 1/19
• The Archive
• The Roadmap to The Archive

------Foreword-----

It is important that users have a Post in which to comment and share their questions and experiences. It is also important to me as a moderator so that I can track the development, propagation or disappearance of issues related to Paid/Processing/Posting; which currently is very very was* difficult because of the volume and number of duplicates, and the lack of information provided by users who do not include their claim type and bank.
I urge you, when posting, to include your bank and your claim type.
I urge you, as much as you can, anticipate delays for weeks with holidays.
Request for separate threads will be entertained, if you can send me a direct message with a good reason that is backed by some sort of evidence.

---------

The most consistently accurate and applicable is in The Archive and The Roadmap

-----Weekly Claim Questions------

NEW 4/12: ESD's site for Weekly Claim Questions - Reporting Earnings
NEW 4/12: ESD's site for Weekly PUA claim Questions
NEW 4/12: ESD's site for Restarting your Claim
ESD's site for Waiting Week/ When Will Payments Start
NEW 4/12: What if I didn't Work this Week?

• Added 2/1/2023 ESD: Reporting Vacation PTO pay Reporting Vacation PTO while employed, see italic section, for Reporting Lump Sum PTO payouts (like during severance), see block text section

2 jobs? Paid Late? Reporting Complex Earnings
Added 7/5 What if I wasn't AA for 2 days or less last week? WBA gets prorated, no Add'l fact-finding
Use a Password Manager, otherwise you might Lock Your Account and have to contact Technical Support
Added 4/22 Traveling and Claiming: "Able and Available"? Cannot Mark Yes to AA
Added 7/7 Website won't work? Call in the Claim, or do it later - it will stay there for 5 weeks
Added 8/22 How to File a PUA Claim By Phone - From ESD Handbook & Our Community
Added 8/22 MFA Code Is Timing Out or Late? Switch to Google Authenticator App
Added 8/29 Severance pay: 3 Laws
Added 10/4/2022 Advice: 2 job offers, How to Accept One and Reject Another, Report on weekly claim

-----Processing/Paid/Posted-----

• After a Weekly claim is submitted, it first says “Processing-Web ^￦ ", then^¥ “Processing”, then “Paid”, and it takes 48 hours on average to post in an account, if the amount is significant, refer to this post. Related Post
• The average time between when the payment shows "Paid" and when it appears in a bank account is dependent on the bank.

Weekly claims that are filed by web are generally all processed sometime between Tuesday evening and Wednesday evening. So if you filed a a claim last Wednesday it will probably not be processed until the following Tuesday.
(￦) If you did your weekly claim via the web. Weekly Claim status is "Processing - IVR"? Normal: You filed by phone IVR means Interactive Voice Response
(¥) This happens when the submission moves from "Submitted" to "Processed", within Online Activity

• Weekly Claim says " Paid - 0"? It's normal temp status
• NEW 4/9: PUA Claims pending after being processed? Upload a Document says "Railroad/Existing Claim"? This is normal
• Are your weekly claims PENDING? Go here to find out Why

------Known Issues------

3. Appearance of "Waiting Week" on some pre-existing claims
_______(1/9) WA House Minority Leader (R) J.T. Wilcox did not approve the Extension of 20.21; the WA Governor's 10th successive proclamation which waived the waiting week, by sending the Governor a letter the day the extension lapsed Contact him directly at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]). So on Jan 7, ESD Policy Director Dan Zeitlin filed an Emergency Rule, which appears to have no end date. It is believed that due to no rule prohibiting a waiting week between Dec 28-Jan 7, that some pre-existing claims erroneously began to show this. See this post and comments.
Update (1/23) New FAQ from ESD ON Waiting Week

11. (New 1/19) Changing your address/phone numbebank account will likely stop payments, and require an Identity confirmation that may take 6-8 weeks. (Because of a continuation of an Audit) See above in Best Practices for changing eServices notices/letters from Mailed to Electronic. See this post

5. (NEW AS of 1-11) Disappearance of Weekly Claim Prompt Link. As suggested in this post and reply, it is solvable manually by calling the call center. . (New 1/25: Additional Info: Details of Resolution call) Another example (2/11) Another example 3/2

1. After Potential New Claim Filing on 6/12: Issue recurring

-----Roadmap Sections Expanded Above-----

Weekly Claim Subsection

• Job Search Requirements 10+ entries
• Processing/Paid/Posted Issues 5+ entries
• Weekly Claim Questions 5+ entries
• Earnings Deductions / Working Part Time 5+ entries
• Refusal to Work/ Suitable Work 5+ entries
• Able and Available 2 entries
• Known Issues 19+ entries

------Perspective--------

We are all on government benefits; this is not an employee employer relationship where we always get paid at the exact same time every week; they do not have the same responsibility to pay at a predetermined time and it's unreasonable to hold them to that standard. They will get around to paying us when they get around to paying us, unfortunately. Holding that expectation is a false hope, and being constantly disappointed is not a productive thing. .

The concept of LGBTQI+ should be an ideological issue that is a personal choice protected by the 1st Amendment to the Bill of Rights under the United States Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution Clause granting Americans the Freedom of Expression. The freedom to express sexual desires and preferences should be and is clearly allowed to American citizens. It is an important ideological standpoint and a freedom that most countries in the world do not have a right to enjoy sadly.
However, the main concern is, why can’t the sexual preferences of the LGBTQI+ community remain private without impacting vulnerable individuals such as the American youth. For example, I’m a straight heterosexual male and I do not discuss my sexual preferences and/or desires unless I’m engaged in a private and intimate conversation with my partner of the night. Similarly, I do not voice my personal sexual orientation for the whole neighborhood to hear not do I advertise it on television nor do I promote it through products and/or services associated with by businesses. That would be unjust because it would create a bias.
Similarly, Corporate America should stay out of this subject. There is no need to use millions of dollars in corporate advertising to unjustly bias our American youth who have had no chance to fully develop their mental capacity to make an unbiased choice regarding their sexuality. We do not need children’s LGBTQI+ swimsuits because sex is legally reserved for adults only and we also do not need transsexuals mass advertising alcohol to minors watching television because alcohol is also reserved for adults only.
In fact, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis along with the Florida legislation have been very proactive on this issue. Florida House Bill 1557, also known as the “Don’t Say Gay” Bill, states that parents have the right to sue the school district if their child is exposed to instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity deemed not “age-appropriate.”
There seems to be an intentional and hidden agenda by the elite to corrupt and brainwash our American youth prior to giving them a chance to develop their mental capacity to the point of making rational and independent decisions regarding their personal preferences in life. Not fair and very nefarious.
As always, please provide your insight, opinions, questions, and/or comments.
Articles:
https://floridaphoenix.com/2022/03/08/despite-nationwide-outcry-fl-senate-pushes-through-dont-say-gay-bill/
https://nypost.com/2023/05/25/target-loses-8b-in-week-since-boycott-calls-over-pride-collection/amp/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12120649/amp/Anheuser-Busch-lost-staggering-15-7-BILLION-value-Bud-Light-controversy-began.html

I won’t give a full trip report as I feel I can comprehend most of it. But these two aspects have left me so confused.
When I first really started to trip I heard a voice that said my name in a kinda robotic way, and some other stuff that I can’t remember - I think it said ‘controlled’ but who knows.
Then on about 4 different occasions past the peak when I had some semblance of self, i heard ‘I love you’, in a playful and cute way, kinda like a toddler would say it.
That was confusing, because it really really felt like the shroom was communicating with me and talking but that seems so irrational.
The next is alien machinery. This thing was the size of a fucking city, it seemed infinite but I knew it wasn’t, cogs turning and lights flashing. This was closed eye visuals.
For reference I’ve only ever done 3.5g or 3g trips. I’m curious to see if people have had similar experiences and your thoughts because I cannot make sense of it.

May 2023 Federal Election - Crikey's Winners and Losers

The May 2023 Federal Election is all wrapped up, and Australia has seen the return of BellmanTGM as Prime Minister, where he is likely hoping to serve more than 21 days as he did in February 2018. We saw a joint ticket run by ANCAP and LNP, and a surge of independent success! Crikey is here to dissect the results, and look at the winners, the losers, and the bronze medal winners.

Winner: Australian National Capitalist Anti-Authoritarian Party

House Result: 5 Seats (+3), 21.7% (+14.2) Senate Result: 2 Seats (+2), 55.2%* (+6.1) ± February 2023 Election *Joint ticket run with LNP, changes from last election is combined LNP+ANCAP vote.
Without a doubt, the resounding winner of the May 2023 Federal Election was the Australian National Capitalist Anti-Authoritarian Party. Picking up 5 house seats, and 21.7% of the national house vote, they have more than doubled their house representation, and increased their national vote more than any other party this election. Post-election, they gained a seat from Cookie_Monster765 who resigned from the leadership of the Commonwealth Party to sit as an independent, but this was short-lived, and he now serves Sydney as an ANCAP MP. Gaining confidence and supply from Independent MPs in porridge (Brisbane), and riley8583 (Cowper), ANCAP are enjoying a single party cabinet, severing their coalition with the LNP. Speaking of the LNP, ANCAP ran a joint ticket from the LNP, gaining their first 2 senators, and ending the left dominated senate, which will create significant legislative ease in passing the government's agenda. Also surprisingly, historical left leaning figures such as jq8678 have been prominent MPs for ANCAP, with an upset victory in “Magnificent” Moncrieff. jq8678 has previously served as a Social Democrat Minister, and was a founding member of the Green Left Party in 2021, but appears committed to the cause of "Freedom and Liberty".

Loser: Commonwealth Party of Australia

House Result: 2 Seats (-5), 10.7% (-20.6) Senate Result: 1 Seats (-1), 19.6% (-12.7) ± February 2023 Election
As ANCAP were resounding winners, the Commonwealth Party was the resounding losers of the May 2023 Federal Election. More than halving their house representation, and losing a third of their national vote in the house was a shocking election result. Safe seats like Melbourne fell due to the lack of a presence from incumbent buttsforpm. Hotham was another loss, however the extremely active BellmanTGM was an tough match for incumbent Adiaus. The two seats won by the Commonwealth Party were Sydney and Lingiari, in relatively non-competitive contests.
However the biggest lost for the Commonwealth Party didn't even occur at the ballot box. After these election results, Leader Cookie_Monster765 resigned and left the party. Their remaining MP, Jordology505 was next in line for leader, but after being elected for 5 hours he resigned, leaving the CPA without any house representation. Their final MP MLastCelebration is now leader but questions surround the longevity of the party. Another active member, former MP Adiaus jumped a possibly sinking ship with Jordology505 in order to join the newly formed Australian Labour Party, which brings us to the next winner of the election.

Winner: A United Left

We don't have election results for this, but after what can be described as a disappointing result for the Socialists, they have merged with the left leaning members of the Commonwealth Party to form a centre-left Australian Labour Party. Socialist Leader TheSensibleCentre stepped down from the leadership of the new party, with Jordology505 heading the party, followed by Adiaus as Deputy and model-slater as Party Chair. A party that can now concentrate a focus on the right wing government is a win for a united, and previously struggling left. While some may point out that Country Labor Party still exists, it understood there is an agreement between the parties to maximise electoral efficiency and not have left of centre candidates in competitive races against each other.

Winner: Independents

House Result: 3 Seats (+2), 17.4% (+10.0) ± February 2023 Election
If all the Independents were one party, the Independents would be the second largest party in parliament! While their election result was a success, this was strengthened by the defection of porriidge to the crossbench, increasing their total to 4 seats. However it's a good thing that independents aren't one party, because showstealer1829 took to twitter to let porriidge know that "F*** off. We [The crossbench] don't want you." Make of that what you will! However, a solid increase in the independent's vote and representation in the house, and with 2 independents providing C&S to the government, independents will be having a large say in how our nation will be governing over the following term. A win for independents, and likely a win for their respective electorates as they create a list of demands from the government!

Bronze Medal: Country Labor

House Result: 2 Seats (+1), 14.9% (+5.3) Senate Result: 1 Seats (-), 9.0% (+2.4) ± February 2023 Election
Crikey has a new award to hand out, the Bronze Medal! As the name suggests, these groups didn't suffer a loss, but it couldn't be called an outright win. The Country Labor Party enjoyed the comeback gain of long term MP for Capricornia, ARichTeaBiscuit, and the hold of Denison for Inadorable (who is definitely NOT a communist). While the House Result does look impressive, it is an inflated figure given that the CLP tend to run in populous rural seats, and national polls during the campaign have CLP support around 2.5%. CLP Leader Gregor_The_Beggar was re-elected once again, continuing his tenure as Senator for NSW since July 2020. While the CLP are not the political force they once were under the Greens-CLP Government, they aren't disappearing anytime soon, and this election confirmed such.

Loser: Income Taxation

The May 2023 Election has brought a party into government that seeks the eventual abolition of income taxation and a Senate controlled by the ANCAP and LNP. The previous LNP-ANCAP Government failed to get a large tax cut through parliament last term, due to the left wing senate, and it is almost certain that a similar package will be introduced and this time probably passed. Income Taxation is a loser of this election!

Bronze Medal: Liberal National Party

House Result: 3 Seats (-2), 14.9% (-12.3) Senate Result: 3 Seats (+1), 55.2%* (+6.1) ± February 2023 Election *Joint ticket run with ANCAP, changes from last election is combined LNP+ANCAP vote.
Prime Minister Griffonomics set out to "Sack the Senate" and undoubtedly that is what he has done. The Senate has been swept by the Right, holding 5/8 seats, and paving the way, finally for a right wing legislative agenda. However Griffonomics will not be at the helm for this agenda, and not even on the government benches as the ANCAP have revealed an entire ANCAP cabinet, relying on the support of independents rather than the LNP. While their Senate gains did not fall short of what the Liberal Nationals hope, they saw a loss of a few seats in the House, however the combined ANCAP-LNP seat total was still 8, the majority number. ANCAP became what many thought was just the senior party in government, with the LNP as a minority partner, but upon leaving the LNP, porriidge attributed it to the high likelihood that the LNP "would find itself in opposition".
If porridge's statement holds, this will shelve the left and centre onto the crossbench, with right wing parties holding government and opposition. It is hard to think there is much of the ANCAP agenda that the LNP would oppose, given their previous coalition, but it is surely disappointing for the LNP to lack a voice inside the new government. For the reason that the LNP have achieved perhaps policy goals, and "Sacked the Senate", but have failed to form government is the reason that Crikey awards them the 2nd Bronze Medal of this article.
That's all from us folks. he next term is hopefully one full of newsworthy things to write about, or we'll be out of a job! We hope you enjoyed today's article, please let us know!! (Also if you see any errors I am very tired)

TL;DR….my husband is never going to love me the way I need to be loved.
I (30f) have been with this guy (42m) for 8 years. He is never gonna love me. Idk why. Maybe I just am not a loveable person. I try to be…..I try to do all the right things….but it’s always wrong.
I keep begging him….to show me he loves me. Not tell me. But he doesn’t.
I want to leave. I keep trying to leave. Last night I REALLY tried. But he has threatened me with becoming a “bad dad” meaning he is just going to do the bare minimum I guess. No playing, no extras. Just being a provider….and then telling the kids that I made him too sad to do anything other than that.
He also threatens me by saying he will let his mother babysit. His mother is an extreme alcoholic who actually hit my daughter and called her a “b*tch.” When she was 8 months old. On our WEDDING DAY. Because she (my daughter) was crying!!!!!! She also allowed our child to play in dirt barefoot while they were going through TREATMENT FOR CANCER. That little dirt play session got my kid a staph infection, and then a 15 day hospital stay. She wouldn’t apologize. He took his mothers side.
He is not physically abusive. And almost never yells/screams. And because of that. He thinks he’s a good guy. But he is mentally, emotionally, verbally, sexually and financially abusive to me.
He won’t let me get a job….I had a job set up at this hair place in my city and he literally sabotaged it. I lost the job before I even started it. But he also gets angry at me for buying myself extra stuff. Or if I buy the kids another toy. He lost his shit because I bought salon quality shampoo and not the $1 Walmart stuff. He verbally battered me down about my weight so bad…..I weigh less than the average 10 yr old. And now he calls me disgusting and boney. I wasn’t even that overweight to begin with…..
Every SINGLE time I am upset by something he said or did…I’m wrong. I’m overrating. I’m playing victim. Where do I go from here? What do I do? I GENUINELY fear him letting his mom around our children. I haven’t had a job, or my own income for 7 years….I literally have nothing…..I’ll stay. For 15 more years. Before I EVER let his mother alone with my children.