Cap a tread vs stair nose

Lich Act 5 'choice' design

2023.06.07 10:59 norcaine90 Lich Act 5 'choice' design

I know the topic is pretty old by now but seeing how majority of players seem to be displeased in how the events of the lich mythic path play out in act 5 (and how I picked up the game only few weeks ago and couldn't participate in the discussion earlier), I decided to step in and point something out. Something that I didn't see anyone else point out to this very day.
So a5 hits, you 'save ;)' (or not) the queen, go back to drezen and... go on a murderhobo rampage against your fellow human crusaders. Everyone seems to be pointing out the lack of choice, how they'd like a good or at least neutral lich to be a thing or at least a build-up leading to this carnage. But... there IS one (the build-up, not the choice).
In every thread about the subject not a single soul cared to remember papa Zacharius' teachings. I won't quote him directly because I'm way past this point and I don't remember his exact words but he did say one, VERY important thing: that the crusaders/living WILL sooner or later betray you and that in order to not let that happen, you must betray them first.
It's not a matter of IF but WHEN. And would you look at that, you arrive at Iz and (assuming you did) save the Sword of Valor and the crusaders, and when you go back to Drezen, what do the meatbags do? Mumble curses under their noses, throw deathstares at you because you recycled troops that would otherwise go to waste AND they decide to leave your side - no doubt acting as a fuel in the future crusade against YOU.
Zacharius foretold that this would happen and it did - no matter how loyal someone may be to you, there's ALWAYS a chance that they'll betray or leave you (Anevia, anyone?). And the dead? You just subjugate them to your will and they will obey and stay unwaveringly loyal to you for eternity (or at least for as long as their bodies allow it before crumbling to dust). The culling of the living was logical and pragmatic seeing how they decided to turn their backs on you.
So yes, while Owlcat did not present us with a choice on the matter, it was NOT thoughtless - it presented the natural order of things when it comes to being a lich and it made perfect sense from the lore/story standpoint.
​
TLDR:
Zacharius said 'betray them before they betray you' and since the living failed to remain loyal, they HAD TO die - allowing them to live could backfire when they aim another crusade vs you.
submitted by norcaine90 to Pathfinder_Kingmaker [link] [comments]

2023.06.07 10:01 eggsbaconandmore Terminus Inn

PREVIOUS - THE NIGHTBUS
We were able to spend the night in the closest hotel, a dinky little inn that had a very disinterested hostess. She just gave us a key and waved us upstairs. Doesn’t money mean anything to them? All of us were too tired to argue, though, so we crawled into bed and fell asleep.
I woke up with the sun shining in my face. I sighed with relief. Okay, maybe it was all a bad dream? Did I have a weird trip from something some asshole put in my drink? When I pulled out my phone, I noticed with a lurch it was 11:59, but I calmed myself down. Noon, then. I hadn’t put my phone on 24-hour time but 12-hour. It was right before noon. I fished my charger out of my handbag (never leave without it!) and looked out the window.
Our room overlooked the town square. It had a memorial, a statue of some explorer - complete with coonskin cap - that stared out into the distance. The clock tower was across from us, still stuck at 11:59, but at least it seems the chiming had been given a rest. I couldn't see the bus terminal, as it was behind the clock tower, but I could see the edge of town from here - we were in a small valley with steep hills all around us, coated in pine trees.
I sighed and scrolled on my phone. I still couldn't see why I had wifi while the others didn't. The network was called TERMINUS - the same name as on the sign on the bus terminal - and it was free to connect to. I could scroll through news sites and wikipedia, but when I tried to message other friends, the messages didn't go through. I could only assume they couldn't send me anything either.
Caroline and the others slowly stirred awake. "Ugh, meggs, what's goin on..."
I turned around. "We're in... Terminus, I guess." I tried looking it up on google maps, but didn't get any results.
"So far from home... What do they have for breakfast?"
I shrugged, smiling. "We'll have to see. You up for getting up?/"
"No... my head..."
I nodded and waited for the boys to wake up as well. All three had a hangover, but Collin's and Caroline's were truly massive. Charlie was fit enough to get out of bed and get ready to explore the inn, at least. I kept the key of the door with me and told both of them to stay inside - not that they were going anywhere.
The hallways of the inn were bland. It wasn't big - one hallway on each floor with about five or six doors and a staircase on one end. The wallpaper was probably supposed to be a calming vanilla with a daisy motif, but it just ended up looking old and yellowed. The doors were exactly the same cream color save for the silver number on the door. Ours was 25 - second floor, fifth room. I noticed it also had a chip near the lock.
Charlie and I made our way to the staircase. The uncomfortable silence was only broken by our creaking footsteps over the carpeted floor.
"So..."
"So."
I chuckled awkwardly. "Last night was... something, huh?"
"Hah, yeah..."
Creaky steps. "How are you holding up? I know you didn't sign up for this... I mean, none of us did."
"What are you talking about? We just took the wrong bus and ended up in the wrong town. I'm sure we can catch a different bus at the bus terminal and go home."
I nodded. "Y-yeah..." My smile felt a little forced, even for me. "Yeah! You're right."
It was quiet the rest of the way down. I didn't mean to sound so insincere.
"There sure are a lot of stairs." Charlie joked. "We were only on the second floor, right?"
"Yeah, we should be-"
We landed on the ground floor. Before us were two doors - both the same bland vanilla as the room's doors.
"Which way to the reception?"
"Er..." I hadn't actually paid attention when we got up, as I was herding three tired drunk people up to a room. Not that I'm naturally good at directions, either. "Let's try the right door."
Behind the door on the right was another hallway with three more doors. Charlie blinked. "This makes no sense. This door-" he pointed to the door on his immediate left "-would just lead us to the hallway to the left door." He opened the door, but when he stepped through, he was in an empty room, lit by a single lightbulb. The same inoffensive vanilla wallpaper lined this room.
He quietly closed the door. "Where the fuck are we."
I didn't answer. I know I must have looked ridiculous, my mouth just open and closing like a fish. I mean, come on, this is physically impossible! "Maybe it's an optical illusion or something? The room looks bigger than it really is because... it's empty, or the light, or..."
"Right." Charlie didn't seem convinced. "Let's keep going straight, then. This building can't go on forever." He walked down the hallway to the last door. I meekly followed him through the door. This time the room had another two doors, and to the left, a staircase leading up.
I blinked. "Are we... back to where we started?"
Charlie yelled in frustration and barreled down the rightmost door. After a little bit, I heard running footsteps coming up behind me, and with a slam, he opened that door. "What the FUCK! I WENT in a STRAIGHT LINE!" He started kicking the walls while swearing, damaging the daisies on the wallpaper.
I chuckled quietly in disbelief. "Ha. This makes me think of Portal. Or Stanley's Parable."
Charlie stopped kicking. "What?"
"Y-yeah! In Stanley's Parable, you're a character in a story narrated by The Narrator. You can - you can choose to go along with him or go against him, but he can also go against you. It's - it's about the illusion of choice."
Charlie still didn't understand. "I don't - I'm not a game nerd. You make no sense."
"We don't... have a choice. Not really. This place will not give us one. So we have to let this place pick for us."
I fished through my pockets. I came across a coin - it wasn't there in my pocket before, but I didn't question it. "Heads for left, tails for right."
It landed on tails. I reached out for the rightmost door, and we both went through.
We stood in the restaurant-part of the inn. Breakfast was still laid out, but no-one else was there. No-one else was eating. I went towards the lady behind the counter. "Hey, uh, we'd... we'd like to pay for our rooms. And breakfast."
The lady stared at us as if we were crazy. "What are ya talkin' about? You already paid."
submitted by eggsbaconandmore to nosleep [link] [comments]

2023.06.07 09:58 WWE_Network_Bot This Day in History: 06/07/2023

The following events happened on this day in history!
What event was your favorite in this list?
submitted by WWE_Network_Bot to wwe_network [link] [comments]

2023.06.07 09:18 Ok_Sky_7689 Thyroglossal duct cyst question

Background: 19F, I was diagnosed with a thyroglossal duct cyst late August 2022 after noticing a fairly solid lump on the front and center of my neck (which moves up and down when I stick my tongue in and out) around where an Adam’s apple would’ve sat if I had male anatomy. Went to a doctor, they ordered an ultrasound, and the doctor said it was a thyroglossal duct cyst. I got a referral to an ENT, who at the end of September 2022 did a quick glance at my neck, got me to move my tongue around, and looked with one of those long thin cameras down my throat via my nose. He put me on a wait list for surgical removal (I believe the sistrunk procedure?). I’m still waiting for that surgery now.
While the cyst doesn’t really hurt to the touch or anything, I can feel it pressing against things when I swallow and it’s quite uncomfortable. A few days ago, I started experiencing some mild constant pain above my right collarbone, around the middle of it. I’m not sure, but I think there may be a small hard-ish knob/lump around that location based on comparing to how the left side feels, but I have no idea if it’s always been that way or if it’s even really there vs if it’s just my muscles that are irritated or some natural asymmetry.
The doctor and the ENT I saw were both very rushed when seeing me and seemed to just want to get me out of the door ASAP, and the last time I had that sort of experience with a doctor they had told me “you’re fine” about something that was not actually fine, so unfortunately I’m a little distrusting now (I’m trying to get over it, but it’s taking time). I know based on the symptoms this is almost definitely the correct diagnosis of the lump, and that the chances of this type of cyst being cancerous are around 1% based on google, but the things that are bugging me are:
  1. Looking at photos of myself over the years, it’s not visible at all in early 2020. The earliest photo I could find where I saw any visible evidence of it being there was early 2021 (I would’ve been nearly 17). My understanding of this type of cyst is that it’s usually diagnosed before the age of 10, so it seems a little odd to me that it visibly changed that much when I was a teenager.
  2. There’s a picture in the comments with a photo I took of an ultrasound that was taken of the cyst in November 2022. Most pictures I’ve seen online show a dark empty space (which means fluid filled if I’m understanding correctly? I’m a physicist, not a med person lol), but mine clearly has some kind of solid tissue or debris in it. Is this normal for a cyst or could this be cause for concern?
  3. With this new pain above my collarbone and the maybe knob, my mind went to the worst place possible and thought “swollen lymph node close to the cyst? It must be cancer!”, which I know is an overreaction and highly unlikely, especially at my age, but I’ve met too many young people with incredibly rare diseases to completely rule it out on the basis of “it’s super unlikely”.
Basically I just want to know if I should chill out and talk to my therapist about finding ways to distract myself from this until the surgery finally gets scheduled, or if I should be talking to my GP about getting a second opinion / (politely) nagging the ENT’s office about taking a closer look.
submitted by Ok_Sky_7689 to AskDocs [link] [comments]

2023.06.07 09:16 14g0t Bloons TD 6 - Update Notes! Version 37.0

Bloons TD 6 v37.0 - Update Notes!
Rolling out now on iOS, Android, Steam please restart your storefront or be patient if it does not appear for you, these updates can take some time to be rolled out to every region due to how the storefronts are set up.
Key New Features
New Awesome
​
Game Changes / Additions
Quest Changes
Bug Fixes & General Changes
Tower Specific Fixes
Ice Monkey
Monkey Buccaneer
Monkey Ace
Banana Farm
Engineer
Beast Handler
Hero Specific Fixes
Obyn Greenfoot
Psi
Geraldo
Platform Specific fixes
Balance Changes
Boomerang Monkey
This part has to be included along with the Lych Soul rework with Paragons which is finally making it in this update after necessary delays. As Boomerang Paragon’s knockback hits so many times so quickly, we need to make it more reasonable when applied to targets that aren’t immediately destroyed.
Bomb Shooter
MOAB Assassin fills a useful role of a pure long cooldown ‘single target assassination’ in the game, but when compared to something like First Strike it feels a little lacking that it is unable to carry damage through MOAB Layers
Tack Shooter
Blade Shooter has always struggled to find much value without MK or as a step to Maelstrom, so to give it build value on its own we feel like this should be a part of the base value on the upgrade.
Ice Monkey
Lowest tiers of ice monkey are far too effective for their cost against ceramics, with this scaling well all the way to round 100, we feel like ice duration against ceramics needs to be reduced to counter this but for now this reduction will only apply until T3.
Glue Gunner
The Bloon Solver’s rework has been very popular, however, we’d like to have a better lead up into the new mechanics by introducing this earlier at the tier 4 now.
Sniper Monkey
This will allow Cripple MOAB to take out regular MOAB layers in one shot until round 100; for such a slow attacking single target tower we feel this will help top path flex, even if mostly for show.
Monkey Buccaneer
Reworking Grape Shot crosspathing as it gains far too much crosspath value by T2 but then is lacking in purpose at higher tiers, double shot will only work as one extra grape however Destroyer will now apply its full attack rate buff to the grapes and Flagship will equip aspects of Grape Shot on the mini planes.
Monkey Ace
Spectre is shifting a little of the ceramic bonus around into basic all damage at the cost of reduced pierce, which should make up for lack of single target damage while also making the pierce crosspath more necessary when being used for cleanup focus.
Heli Pilot
Even with the map-range advantage, rotors are weak compared to any other constant AoE circle like this. Chinook feels like it’s near a place we are happy with now, however we want another tiny nudge on cost while keeping cash generation value the same. Pushing some higher values on the last Comanche Commander changes as the missile attack is effectively such a small portion of the tower’s total damage late game.
Mortar Monkey
As the Rapid Reload crosspath has actually fallen behind in value compared to Burny Stuff for top path Mortars we want to try a slight stun duration increase as this buffs the base path with a larger benefit to Rapid Reload mortars as a stalling option. Mortar consistency is lacking at x3x making it tough to spend on even though x4x is fairly good, so some of the T4 rate is shifting down to help out with this. As the camo property has grown quite weak and currently Signal Flare is considered the best decamo tool, we want to push back slightly on its cost and by reducing the blast radius of the decamo area while emphasizing crosspathing for effectiveness there.
Super Monkey
As Engineer sentries do this already, newly spawned Mini Avatars from temples will now by default match the target priority of the temple.
Ninja Monkey
We’re changing the Ninja Monkey Paragon’s focus as a fighter against camo, as we feel like a greater strength and tactical value against camo will be the full reveal of all camos rather than all camo removal.
Alchemist
Alchemist Transforming Tonic is in a weird spot with the transformation unable to attack through walls when the base alchemist is able to. Also with this, including a QoL fix for the T5 that currently prevents transformed towers from functioning with target priority.
Druid
While the tornado doesn't do anything to MOABs, it still spends itself on them which wastes a relatively long cooldown, so addressing this flaw. Avatar of wrath doubles the base attack speed before any scaling is applied, but this hasn’t ever applied to the 205 Lightning, so taking care of that as well. Housekeeping - even deep in the forest, it does actually make life better.
Spike Factory
We’ve heard the feedback, so Spiked Mines get a tweak to get more mines exploding but with less pierce on each, to overall increase quality of life in more frequent use but less wasted pierce. This will help out with some of the problems it has scaling into late game super ceramics.
Monkey Village
A minor QoL for cheap Monkeyopolis creation, we included a small base amount of cash production to the generation formula.
Engineer
The 005 crosspath fix in the last update left XXXL Trap slower than previously even if crosspathed to 205, so we are increasing that base 005 slightly to match up the 205 crosspath again so that it isn’t any slower than before.
Beast Handler
As our newest tower to be added to BTD6, we went over feedback for every path and made a large number of adjustments addressing a variety of points.
Gwendolin
Removing the stacking aspect of Gwendolin’s burn damage over time, but increasing the damage as she levels up so that it actually scales up in power now.
Adora
While they are complicated individuals, Adora can now fully appreciate the sacrifice of the newest Monkeys in the struggle against the Bloons.
Admiral Brickell
We aren’t happy with strats that start looking like exploits with frequent sell-replace loops.
Psi
Psi’s stalling out of the end of round is an odd mix of useful / annoying / out of control, so we are for now capping this to a 3 seconds of overtime stalling. Psi’s Psychic Blast ability also has weirdly low pierce for a long cooldown ability with no damage, we are increasing the base pierce greatly but it no longer increases in pierce at Lv7 since the extra pulse brings more pierce anyway.
Event / Boss / Relic / Knowledge
Looking Forward
Five months of 2023 done and dusted, which feels to us like it has zoomed by, perhaps because the Auckland office where the BTD6 team is based has only just reopened after the severe flooding at the end of January. All of Update 36 and the majority of Update 37 were completed while again working from home, but we’re very excited to have the office repairs done, the flood wall almost finished, and the ability to work shoulder to shoulder again on fun new things for the monkeyverse! Here’s the latest gaze into the crystal ball:
submitted by 14g0t to NoRules [link] [comments]

2023.06.07 08:21 cr0n_dist0rti0n 46% of the Top 15 Tokens now Defined as Securities by SEC

When removing all stable coins but BUSD, since that was named by the SEC, 46% of the top 15 tokens by market cap have been labelled a security. Here are the notable exceptions:
submitted by cr0n_dist0rti0n to CryptoCurrency [link] [comments]

2023.06.07 07:56 ArmyofSpies Cardano Rumor Rundown June 07, 2023

Hey Everyone!
Let’s go….
Newly Covered Today:
  1. SEC vs. Coinbase. Yep…crypto is now at war. https://twitter.com/ArmySpies/status/1666159275217911835
  2. Brian Armstrong’s response. https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1666129111025324035
  3. The Cardano Foundation has disputed the characterization of Cardano as a security in comments to Fortune. https://twitter.com/Cardano_CF/status/1666128229952897024
  4. Here’s Coinbase politely pointing out the SEC’s complete refusal to provide any direction or cooperation despite Coinbase’s continuous and plentiful attempts. https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/1666135834062467083
  5. The question of regulatory jurisdiction may end up being the biggest problem for the SEC in all these crypto matters. https://twitter.com/MetaLawMan/status/1653821211544092672
  6. Rumor: There could also be a DOJ case coming for Binance. https://twitter.com/AP_Abacus/status/1666180524535062529
Previously covered, but still interesting:
  1. A nice thread on the many strengths of Cardano. https://twitter.com/TobiasIlskov/status/1656388178369212416
  2. Remember, lobster traps are a thing. https://twitter.com/TheCardanoTimes/status/1656064744225120257
  3. Today (May 11 at 1pm EST) there will be a Messari Cardano Analyst call with Charles & Frederik. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1656272372452954112
  4. I think we all love it when they start making our case for us. https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1656379837823561730
  5. Ethereum is lamenting many of its poor design choices that Cardano already fixed. https://twitter.com/moo9000/status/1656215016016683008
  6. Drunkenmiller says this is the broadest asset bubble he’s ever even studied let alone seen firsthand and we’ve only had a few soft landings since 1950. https://twitter.com/Stephen_Geigestatus/1656416819312222219
  7. Live footage of meme coin investors accepting their ROI. https://twitter.com/KaylerSmithTV/status/1656130092966264834
  8. Here’s the Messari call from today with both Fred & Chaz. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouUhWwF74MM
  9. People really seem to be enjoying the CF’s Blockchain Education Alpha Program. https://twitter.com/andreassosilo/status/1644263843743293451
  10. The US Chamber of Commerce brief in the Coinbase case is calling out the SEC for acting “unlawfully”. https://twitter.com/MetaLawMan/status/1656737447756038177
  11. About that whole self-custody thing we’ve discussed… https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1656706653801136132
  12. The SPO poll on K and minFee starts today (May 15)! You should redelegate if your stake pool doesn’t vote the way you would vote! https://cardanofoundation.org/en/news/entering-voltaire-poll-experiment-live-on-mainnet/
  13. There are also a series of forum topics for discussion of the various options in the Cardano.org forums. https://twitter.com/Lovecoach_nic/status/1657700010148896770
  14. Coinbase spotlights Empowa! May be the first time they’ve ever given such a spotlight to a Cardano project. Tides are turning. https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/1657081243518005254
  15. Wow. Leaked “Key Messages” document for the joint committee meeting in the US House last week. Best part: they basically complain about separation of powers in point three. https://twitter.com/EleanorTerrett/status/1656362002577772544
  16. Dr. Vanishree Rao on ZK-Rollups. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1657778843854274560
  17. Here’s a new Decentralized Identity article from IOG. https://iohk.io/en/blog/posts/2023/05/11/atala-prism-pioneering-digital-identity-with-decentralized-solutions/
  18. There are reasons we’re in a hard capped cryptocurrency like Cardano. https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/15/business/argentina-interest-rates-inflation/index.html
  19. What is a dRep? This video is for you. There will be additional categories of default dReps that vote abstain or no confidence on every vote. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1658034085401337857
  20. The US Dept. of Justice is officially saying they are targeting exchanges. Great. Great. https://www.ft.com/content/5aac457e-cc80-44ae-ac40-9b51d9b601a3
  21. Wow! Ledger just made what is possibly the greatest PR blunder in the history of crypto. Trezor will be poppin’ bottles tonight. https://twitter.com/Ledgestatus/1658458714771169282
  22. People are claiming that the hysteria is a misunderstanding of cryptography. But, that’s not what’s going on here if Ledger plus one of the other two shard custodians can reconstruct your private key without having to use your private key. https://twitter.com/nimuepool/status/1658517533836574720
  23. The Ledger Recover FAQ seems to support this understanding as it suggests you use a brand new device for recovery. https://support.ledger.com/hc/en-us/articles/9579368109597
  24. Wow. Unfortunate timing for this. https://twitter.com/Ledgestatus/1658095051375800321
  25. Ken Kodama will be doing a Japanese language interview on CardanoSpot on May 18. https://twitter.com/Emurgo_Ken/status/1658838077136162828
  26. The stake pool operator poll on network parameters of K and minPoolCost is live. See the results here. The re-delegation phase will begin on May 25th. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
  27. Cornucopias dropped some new in-game footage. As expected, Solace is beautiful. https://youtu.be/j5iwNsQVMDQ?t=1846
  28. Wow….the Ledger shards are encrypted with “a master key that is contained in all devices”. Wut? https://twitter.com/P3b7_/status/1658809445965606913
  29. Sadly, the Ledger CEO seemed to be denying exactly the above just a day ago. https://twitter.com/_pgauthiestatus/1658508082941403144
  30. Here’s why 340 ADA minPoolCost promotes multi-pools. https://twitter.com/ArmySpies/status/1659387255537176581
  31. Numbers are emerging on the benefits of K=1000 over K=500. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1659398551917727744
  32. Here’s the latest on the Stake Pool Operator poll. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
  33. Rep. Tom Emmer is trying to help crypto by cutting crypto assets out of the definition of a “security”. He creates a new non-security asset category called “investment contract asset”. https://twitter.com/GOPMajorityWhip/status/1659291641281146886
  34. Prof. Wadler (co-inventor of Cardano’s Plutus) has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society joining the likes of Einstein, Darwin, Hawking, and Isaac Newton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLOm-dWje-M
  35. Huge amount of voting for economic self-interest by multi-poolers in the SPO poll. Earlier today (May 21), 84.73% by stake of the vote for K=500, Min Cost 340 ₳ was multi-poolers. Only 15.6% of the vote for K=1000, Min Cost 170 ₳ was multi-poolers. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
  36. Large pools also voted heavily for economic self-interest with the K parameter. 70.02% by stake of the vote for K=500, Min Cost 170 ₳ was pools with delegation over 35 million. Only 30.57% of the vote for K=1000, Min Cost 170 ₳ was pools over 35 million. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
  37. Apparently Cardano has its own wiki now! Probably better given our previous treatment by the big wiki group. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1660383700243329024
  38. Rep. Tom Emmer is getting some reactions on the bill he sponsored with Rep. Soto. https://twitter.com/GOPMajorityWhip/status/1660329932495486977
  39. You’re really gonna hold up a debt ceiling deal because you hate crypto so bad? https://twitter.com/gaborgurbacs/status/1660248530135515138
  40. Looks like a few big multi-poolers have voted in the poll since yesterday. Pretty easy to predict what they didn’t vote for. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
  41. Reports coming in that DCG has defaulted on the payment owed to Genesis. https://twitter.com/AP_Abacus/status/1660671386388504577
  42. Ledger Recover would allow governments to confiscate crypto assets by subpoena? Called “not a real concern in the end.” Really? https://twitter.com/TheBTCTherapist/status/1660677064700178436
  43. Frederik Gregaard on DeFi and regulation. https://twitter.com/F_Gregaard/status/1660655806709211137
  44. Don’t Forget, the May Cardano 360 will be on May 25th. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1660621805017608194
  45. Here’s the daily check-in on the status of the SPO Poll. We have surpassed 590 pools voting (as of May 23). https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
  46. The Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong has decided to get our hopes up with a proposed regulatory framework for crypto exchanges that could mean more trading for coins like Cardano. https://apps.sfc.hk/edistributionWeb/gateway/EN/news-and-announcements/news/doc?refNo=23PR53
  47. Here’s an IOG thread on the latest out of Atala Prism and Self-Sovereign Identity. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1660904360925188097
  48. Here’s an IOG article on Cardano native tokens. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1660975383997448193
  49. The difference in decentralization between Cardano and Bitcoin is still…laughable. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1660979639907500033
  50. Ledger is finally caving (a little) to the backlash. It’s reported that they will focus on open sourcing parts of their code and only release the “Recover” firmware after that open sourcing is finished. https://twitter.com/NFTherdestatus/1661026174779420672
  51. Looks like the Hong Kong announcement yesterday might have been a hint of what’s coming. https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1661391542504902664
  52. The Cardano Layerverse is coming to life. https://twitter.com/TobiasIlskov/status/1660697833115385856
  53. Wow! Incredible! Thank you for voting in favor of decentralization, 1PCT! https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1661460222203002880
  54. Federal Reserve report debunks claim that crypto is not useful to people in the US. https://twitter.com/SebVentures/status/1661063483369177108
  55. The SPO phase of the poll is over. Nearly 800 pools voted. Now it’s your turn to see how your pool voted and re-delegate if you think they voted against decentralization and for their own pocketbook. https://adastat.net/polls/96861fe7da8d45ba5db95071ed3889ed1412929f33610636c072a4b5ab550211
  56. The May Cardano 360 is out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_bCa_xCoxA
  57. Charles dropped an update today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfL2U2hAGWw
  58. Sen. Cynthia Lummis declares her opposition to the 30% tax on bitcoin mining. https://twitter.com/SenLummis/status/1661803569341759495
  59. Lots of volume being transacted on Cardano recently! https://twitter.com/cwpaulm/status/1662929296329981952
  60. Recent subpoenas to the Python Package Index don’t bode well for those hoping to store seed phrases with third-party custodians. https://twitter.com/_jonasschnelli_/status/1662531840606093312
  61. Transaction volume is looking very interesting right now. https://messari.io/charts/cardano/txn-vol
  62. JPG Store has now launched Android and IOS apps. https://twitter.com/jpgstoreNFT/status/1663281982262919170
  63. It’s true. Cardano is straight killing it on the security leg of the trilemma.https://twitter.com/cardano_whale/status/1662987243655684096
  64. Just checked. Yep. The centralization in ETH is still staggering. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1663222056870350848
  65. There’s a documentary about a 2022 Plutus hackathon in Argentina. https://twitter.com/LarsBrunjes/status/1663111319732535297
  66. Pavia is testing NFT gating. This could get very interesting. https://twitter.com/Pavia_io/status/1663153213988823040
  67. Marlowe is on mainnet! You can now code Cardano smart contracts in javascript or blockly via Marlowe! This is an amazing leap forward. https://twitter.com/marlowe_io/status/1663480828016435200
  68. Don’t forget! We are still in the re-delegation phase of the CF Poll. See how your stake pool voted! If they were voting for their pocketbook instead of decentralization, you should re-delegate! https://twitter.com/Cardano_CF/status/1663564854572244994
  69. Wow! Cardano projects are doing big things these days! https://twitter.com/CardanoCrocClub/status/1663468916843114498
  70. The CCP has dropped a white paper on how it will develop Web 3 including NFTs and the metaverse. https://twitter.com/milestones_nft/status/1663458500922712064
  71. Lace is now open source! https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1663953642045714433
  72. Binance is back and apparently they don’t care if someone had that ticker first. https://twitter.com/pool_pm/status/1663809731603906560
  73. Summon is now allowing for multichain swaps of ADA & ERG. https://twitter.com/N8iveToEarth/status/1664038846563225600
  74. Charles did a Twitter Space with World Mobile. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1663984094252810283
  75. Here’s an easy infographic on CIP-1694 Voltaire governance from IOG. https://twitter.com/Hornan7/status/1664007623799185409
  76. Apparently, Cardano sushi is a thing! https://twitter.com/Allison_Fromm/status/1663841386074976257
  77. This kind of sums up the problems with central bank behavior over the last 20 years. https://twitter.com/JeffWenigestatus/1664012650781585409
  78. Interesting news about the currency in one of Cardano’s biggest metaverse projects. https://twitter.com/Pavia_io/status/1664240389610704896
  79. Messari has released an article on operational decentralization in proof-of-stake crypto. https://messari.io/report/evaluating-validator-decentralization-geographic-and-infrastructure-distribution-in-proof-of-stake-networks
  80. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has MASSIVELY revised their figures on Q4 of 2022. No surprise, the numbers were much worse than they told us. https://twitter.com/FrogNews/status/1664253845399130113
  81. Looks like DAOs are getting a little hesitant about fee switches due to possible legal/tax implications. https://twitter.com/FrogNews/status/1664253845399130113
  82. We even have Arctic block production. https://twitter.com/Laponia_pool/status/1664226409466740737
  83. Questions are being raised regarding the blockspace consumption of dApps still on Plutus v1. https://twitter.com/matiwinnetou/status/1664385383122051073
  84. Atomic wallet got hacked. https://twitter.com/zachxbt/status/1665080799253733377
  85. No surprise: general interest in crypto & Cardano is still pretty low according to google trends. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=cardano&hl=en
  86. Here’s the Weekly Development Update from June 2. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1665394985934499840
  87. The Chairs of the House Committee on Financial Services (McHenry) and the House Committee on Agriculture (Thompson) are co-sponsoring a new pro-crypto Digital Asset Market Structure Bill. Currently just a discussion draft. Here’s the summary. https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AG/AG00/20230606/116051/HHRG-118-AG00-20230606-SD002.pdf
  88. Here’s the actual discussion draft. https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AG/AG00/20230606/116051/HHRG-118-AG00-20230606-SD003.pdf
  89. Here’s a section-by-section with exhibits. https://docs.house.gov/meetings/AG/AG00/20230606/116051/HHRG-118-AG00-20230606-SD001.pdf
  90. Cornucopias has released more game footage. https://twitter.com/RobGreig3/status/1665310543589040130
  91. SEC vs. Binance/CZ. It begins!!!!! https://twitter.com/ArmySpies/status/1665845917268815874
  92. Written response from Charles to the SEC/Binance complaint. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1665780536177217537
  93. Written response from Binance on the SEC complaint. https://www.binance.com/en/blog/ecosystem/sec-complaint-aims-to-unilaterally-define-crypto-market-structure-8707489117122437402
  94. Video response from Charles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zBZ-aGqldA
  95. Cornucopias has dropped a whole new reel of gameplay footage. It looks really good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8ftHH8bbxQ
  96. Cardano Gaming at the NFT.Brazil event! https://twitter.com/cardanowarriors/status/1665815653398507520
~Army of Spies
submitted by ArmyofSpies to cardano [link] [comments]

2023.06.07 07:43 nsideus Trip Report - 19 days in Japan with an infant and a toddler

We are a family of 4 with two young kids, a toddler who’s nearing 3 years old and an infant who is 9 months old. We visited Japan in May of 2023 for 18 nights. We stayed in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka, and took day trips to Nara and Kobe.
Some people might call us crazy for taking an international trip with two small children. But my wife and I, who were avid travelers before we had kids, hadn’t been out of the country since 2019 due to 1) having kids and 2) Covid. We were itching for a trip, so we took the chance. Were there some crazy times? Of course. Was it worth it? Definitely.
I did a lot of research and prep before the trip, but there are always surprises that come up when you have kids. I’ll try to share some of the lessons I learned on the trip.
—Flights—
This was our first time on an airplane with the kids. I was a bit worried beforehand and in retrospect the flights were the worst parts of the trip. The main advice I’d give is do as much as you can to make your flight more tolerable, which no doubt means spending more money on tickets and gear. But it’s worth it.
I considered a few different airlines for this trip: ZipAir, Singapore, ANA, and Japan Airlines. JAL was too expensive. ZipAir was interesting because they provide car seats, you don’t have to take your own. We didn’t rent a car in Japan so we didn’t need our own car seats. I was just worried about racking up extra fees on ZipAir. Singapore and ANA were similar, they both provide bassinets and the price was similar. I ended up going with ANA for two reasons: 1) I had flown ANA on a previous trip and been happy with them and 2) they fly to Haneda instead of Narita, which saves you time getting from the airport to your hotel.
We opted for 3 seats and a bassinet. My infant is big for her age so she barely fit in the bassinet (she’s 21 pounds). But we were glad to have it. I had to call in to ANA customer service which had an hour+ wait time to get the bassinet, but other than that it was no trouble.
Which leads me into probably the most important part of flying with kids on a lengthy flight: get your kids to sleep on the plane. The more they sleep the less likely you are to run into a tantrum or meltdown.
To encourage sleeping we did a few things: 1) Take an overnight flight 2) Get a bassinet for our infant 3) Get a JetKids bed box for our toddler. Our ANA flight from LAX left at 5pm, which allowed time for the dinner service to show up before we put our kids to bed. They set the bassinet up right after you get to cruising altitude, so it’s there the majority of the flight. Our infant rejected it at first but eventually fell asleep.
As far as our toddler sleeping, the JetKids worked well. There was a bit of trouble with it staying in place since we had bulkhead seats, but overall I was happy with it as a bed. I absolutely hate the JetKids a piece of luggage though, it’s not easy to lug around and holds nearly nothing. But it helped our toddler stay asleep most of the flight. You don’t necessarily need a JetKids though, other airline seat bed solutions may work just as well. Just bring something that will help your toddler sleep. If we had to do it again, I think I’d prefer having car seats over both the bassinet and JetKids. That’s probably what we’ll do on the next trip.
There were a few unexpected problems we ran into on the flights. On the first flight, our infant got motion sickness and spit up multiple times. She ruined one of my shirts and my wife’s pants. Not to mention my wife got motion sickness as well so I had to do most of the heavy lifting with the kids alone. It was a sleepless and messy flight.
On our flight home, there was a mechanical issue with the plane. They said we were losing oil. So on a Tokyo to Los Angeles flight we somehow ended up landing In Anchorage, Alaska. It goes without saying this was horrible and the flight home from Anchorage on Alaska Airlines was horrible too. But that’s not really relevant to flying to/from Japan so I’ll leave the details out. We won’t be flying with ANA ever again.
To reiterate, do what you can to make your flight easier. Get the non-stop flight. Get the extra seat. This isn’t the area to be frugal.
—Stroller—
So you survived the flight. How do you get your kids around once you’ve landed? We have two kids so we need a twin stroller right? Wrong. Taking a twin stroller to Japan is a huge mistake, don’t do it.
Most guides will tell you to use a carrier, and if you only have one small infant then that’s likely the way to go. But with two kids we used a travel stroller and carrier combo. At first I expected to only use the carrier and carry the stroller around until we needed it, but I quickly realized that carrying the stroller around all day is a huge pain. We have the Cybex Libelle which is small at 13lbs, but 13lbs is still heavy enough that you don’t want to carry it all day.
So our stroller remained deployed basically all the time. My infant sat in the stroller most of the day, until it was my toddler’s nap time. Then the infant went in the carrier and toddler in the stroller to sleep. It worked well for us.
How did we keep the stroller deployed the whole time? Elevators. Lots of elevators. And occasionally carrying it up and down stairs. The availability of elevators depends on where you are. Of the cities we visited, I’d say Tokyo is the best and Kyoto is the worst for elevator availability.
The wide majority of metro and train stations are going to have elevators. It can be hard to find the right entrance to use to find an elevator, but there is always signage and almost always a map. You may need to walk an extra 5 minutes, or wait in line, or get lost, so always give yourself extra time when catching a train if you are using your stroller. We spent a LOT of time looking for elevators on this trip.
We only found two stations our whole trip that had no elevator at all, one was the JR Kobe station and the other was a JR station in Tokyo (I forget which one). When this happened, I picked up the stroller and carried it with our infant in it on the stairs. If our toddler was in it I made her get up and walk, then carried the stroller.
The other problem at metro / train stations with a stroller is the gap between the train and the platform. There’s always either a gap or the train and platform are at different elevations. You don’t have a lot of time to get on / off the train so this was a constant source of anxiety. Once our stroller wheel got stuck in between the train and the platform. It took some effort to pop it out. Another time my toddler stepped in the gap, but luckily I was holding her hand and stopped her from falling in. Always be mindful of the gap when you have kids. It’s probably one of the least safe situations you’ll constantly run into in Japan.
Malls and shopping centers almost always have elevators. You may need to wait a while to get one though. In the malls with 10+ floors, you might need to wait 5 minutes for an elevator. Sometimes they have “priority” elevators for the handicapped and strollers but often times perfectly abled people rudely take up all the space in those elevators.
We thought we would have trouble taking our stroller into restaurants but it was actually much less trouble than expected. There was only one restaurant that flat out turned us away, Sushi Tokyo Ten in Roppongi. Other establishments will usually move a chair so you can put your stroller at the table or counter where the chair was.
So overall the stroller was annoying to use but I don’t think we could have done the trip without it. It was a necessary evil with two young kids.
—Shinkansen—
We used the Shinkansen to get between cities. We had two trips, Tokyo to Kyoto and Osaka to Tokyo. We did not bother with the JR Pass, it wasn’t worth it. Mostly because our trips were 8 days apart so we would’ve needed the 14 days pass which wasn’t worth it for two Shinkansen trips.
One thing that caught us off-guard about the Shinkansen is how quickly it leaves a station when it makes a stop. We were expecting to have some time to get on when the train arrived, but it’s basically the same as a Metro stop. You have to get on right away. We made the mistake of buying a reserved seat for a train leaving in less than 15 minutes, without knowing where the elevator was. So we scrambled to get to where we needed to go on the platform and were the last ones on the train. We jumped on the train at the last second, we wanted to get to our specific car from the platform but we weren’t going to make it. It’s a miracle we didn’t lose a piece of luggage or a kid on the way. On the second trip I reserved a seat on a train that was 40 minutes out.
As far as seating we only needed to buy two seats. We would have put our toddler on our lap if needed, but we didn’t need to. Basically, one side of the train has 2 seats and the other 3. If you find a row that has the window seat open on the 3 seat side, then it is very unlikely anyone will sit in the aisle seat if you reserve the window and middle seat. We basically got a free seat for our toddler this way on both trips.
—Baby supplies—
We had more trouble than expected finding baby supplies. A lot of guides online tell you to go to drugstores, and maybe we were going to the wrong drugstores but that wasn’t working out for us. We were distraught until we by chance came across Babies R Us. Yes, the Babies R Us that went out of business in the USA. We happened to be browsing the malls in Odaiba when we came across this gem. It’s a treasure trove of western style baby food and supplies.
Our infant is in the “purée” food stage and we didn’t find any in drugstores. Most of the baby food is juice or rice porridge. Babies R Us has aisles worth of puréed food. It has diapers, wet wipes, formula, nose cleaners, and basically anything else you’d ever want for your baby. We stocked up on everything when we found this place. There are several locations but we went to the Odaiba location in Tokyo and the Harborland location in Kobe.
Another smaller store we found in the mall below Tokyo Skytree is Dadway. They don’t have as much as Babies R Us but we did pick up some purée here.
The other place we picked up diapers and a few others things is Don Quijote, which has locations all over the place. Their baby food collection is basically as limited as drugstores, but it’s fine in a pinch.
—Eating—
I’ve spoken a lot about logistics, but I had one primary reason for going to Japan: to eat tasty food. I had been to Japan once before I had kids and fell in love with the food.
Most guides will tell you families should go to family restaurants. Nope. Not happening. We did not go to a single Saizeriya or Bikkuri Donkey. And I definitely did not go through all of this trouble to eat at Denny’s. We went to a total of ZERO family restaurants.
I’m here to tell you there are plenty of good restaurants you can go to with kids. Even with a baby. Even with a baby and a toddler.
I’ll tell you my main approach to finding restaurants that will allow kids to dine with you. Your main tools are: Tablelog, Google Maps, and the individual restaurant websites. Tablelog is a great tool and their “with children” section on the restaurant info page is very accurate. If a restaurant is listed as “Babies are welcome” or “Baby Strollers accepted”, then you can very likely eat there with a baby. If a place does not have such a listing, it isn’t necessarily a no, it’s a maybe. That’s when you need to search Google Maps reviews for “kids”, “children”, “family” to see if anyone mentions the restaurant’s stance on such things. If you can’t find anything on Google Maps, go to the restaurant’s website. If they have an online reservation system, it is likely to list their stance on kids on the reservation page.
I did a lot of research beforehand and pinned all the relevant restaurants on Google Maps. That way, no matter where I was, I could find some good kid tolerant restaurants. I say “kid-tolerant” instead of “kid friendly” because I consider “kid-tolerant” to mean that they let kids in the restaurant, while “kid-friendly” means they have a kid’s menu, high chairs, etc.
We were able to eat at a wide variety of restaurants, from overpriced Michelin starred places to budget Omakase places. There are a lot of restaurants in Japan. If a restaurant doesn’t let you in because you have kids, it’s fine because there’s another similar one that will.
This is a list of good restaurants we ate at with our infant and toddler. These are just the places we made it to, there were plenty more I had on my list we didn’t make it to:
Gion Maruyama, Gion, Kyoto
Sushi Wakon, Four Seasons, Kyoto
The Oak Door, Grand Hyatt, Tokyo
Kobe Plaisir, Kobe
Roku Roku, Grand Hyatt, Tokyo
Daiwa Sushi, Toyosu Market, Tokyo
Inshotei, Ueno Park, Tokyo
Sushidan, Eat Play Works, Tokyo
Nishiya, Shinsaibashi, Osaka
Tonkatsu Wako, JR Isetan, Kyoto
Soju Dining, Tokyo Midtown, Tokyo
Imakatsu, Roppongi, Tokyo
Mizuno, Dotonbori, Osaka
Rokurinsha, Tokyo Station, Tokyo
Tsumigi, Tsukiji, Tokyo
Lots of different food stalls in Tsukiji Market, Tokyo
Other times we ate at conveyor belt sushi places, department store basements, or ramen places. The basements are a good place to get something for everyone. My toddler ate a lot of gyoza and noodles on this trip, she didn’t take a liking to much else. But Ichiran and Ippudo were right down her alley.
Tsukiji market was our go to breakfast place when we stayed in Tokyo. There’s plenty of different choices there and it opens early enough for jet-lagged families.
Overall I had a great time eating. If my toddler is eating she’s usually not having a tantrum, and we tried as best as possible to put our infant to sleep before we went to any higher end restaurants. There were some awkward tantrum moments but for the most part it was fine.
—City by City Report—
Tokyo
We had two different stays in Tokyo, the first after landing in Japan and the second right before departing Japan. We stayed a total of 10 nights in Tokyo, but we wish we had even more.
We could have come to Tokyo alone the whole trip and been perfectly content. It has the best food, the most kid friendly facilities, and there’s plenty to see and do.
Here’s a few choice things we did with the kids:
DisneySea: My toddler loved this one. We’ve been to Disneyland in SoCal but this is completely different. Even I was excited since it’s been a long while since I’ve been to an unexplored Disney park. A lot of people will say DisneySea is for older kids but there were plenty of rides my toddler could get on. It’s a great place for toddlers. A must visit with kids.
Ueno park: We spent a whole day in Ueno Park. There’s a great zoo, a fun Natural History Museum, and good restaurants. We picked up bento boxes from Inshotei and ate them at a picnic table in the zoo. I think this park is also a must do with kids.
One of the city views: you have a few choices here but we went to Tokyo Skytree and Shibuya Sky. Shibuya sky is a little less kid friendly, because they don’t allow strollers on the roof and they have some weird rules about holding your baby on the roof. I think they’re scared of a wind gust pulling your baby off the roof? I like the mall at Tokyo Skytree, and there’s a Rokurinsha there too (very good dipping ramen).
Small Worlds: This is a miniature museum on one of the man-made islands in the bay. It’s a little out of the way, but we made a day out of Toyosu Market, Small Worlds, and Odaiba. My toddler liked this one, the exhibits are interactive and fun to look at. It was better than expected.
Other than that we did a lot of eating and shopping in Tokyo for us adults.
Kyoto
Kyoto was probably our least favorite city to do with kids. In general it’s just hard to get around. There’s a lot of stroller unfriendly places. Streets without sidewalks. Rough cobblestone-like roads. Temples are not stroller friendly. Hills everywhere. Good luck getting to the top of the monkey park with a stroller. It’s definitely a trend in this city.
Maybe if you have older kids it’s fine. But if you have younger than elementary school kids it’s probably skippable. There’s not that many kid friendly activities here either. Temples aren’t interesting for kids. The best kid activity here is probably the Arashiyama Monkey Park. My toddler got a real kick out of feeding the monkeys. Just be aware there is a significant hike to get to the top of the hill where the monkeys are. My toddler is a pretty good walker, she made it all the way without crying or complaining. But I saw some other kids that didn’t fare as well.
The other thing you might try near the monkey park is the Arashiyama bamboo forest. I think it’s one of the most overrated sights in Japan though. It’s just mobbed with tourists all day. It’s not enjoyable with the crowds. I’ve been here twice and I’ve been disappointed both times.
I doubt we will be back to Kyoto any time soon.
Osaka
Osaka was nice. It was a bit refreshing to have many of the Tokyo conveniences again. Elevators everywhere, well paved and flat roads, and plenty of baby rooms.
Osaka is a good base for taking nearby day trips as well. We went to both Kobe and Nara without needing to take the Shinkansen.
The best kid experience in Osaka is the Kaiyukan aquarium. It’s big. The central tank with the whale sharks is impressive. They have lots of different animals from all over the world. It’s bigger and better than any aquarium we have in California.
The one thing I wasn’t prepared for was the lines. You need to pre-book your timed entry tickets online. We didn’t, and ended up getting tickets that were for entry two hours later. And we were there right when they opened. If I go to the aquarium at opening time on a weekday where we are from we can walk right in. Lesson learned.
We stayed in Shinsaibashi and it’s a very walkable area. There’s a covered shopping street that goes all the way down to Dotonbori. Namba is walkable from there. And America-mura is between Shinsaibashi and Dotonbori.
The Daimaru mall in Shinsaibashi is good for kids. There’s a Bornelund in there with a small indoor playground, a Pokémon Center, and good food.
I liked Osaka overall. The only thing I thought was a let down was okonomiyaki.
Nara
Nara was worth the trip. It’s about 45 minutes from Namba on the train, so not too out of the way.
There’s deer all over. Deer that bow to you. In the park, on the sidewalk, in the street. It’s a unique experience you should see at least once.
The deer are rather aggressive when you have food for them. It’s not a place where you want your kids feeding the deer. As soon as you buy the food from the street vendor, they mob you. They try to snatch the food out of your hand. Make sure you watch someone else do it first before deciding to do it yourself. If I let my toddler do it she probably would have been terrified.
The other must see in Nara is Todai-ji. It’s impressive. The giant Buddha is something. This was probably the best temple we saw on this trip, it’s visually stunning. More than anything we saw in Kyoto. I did have to carry the stroller up and down some steps, but there’s not too many.
Kobe
Kobe was great. It exceeded my expectations. The trip from Osaka is easy. We spent a full day there.
We started our one day in Kobe at the Nunobiki Herb Gardens. I wasn’t expecting too much but this place is really nice. It’s big, with lots of different gardens and exhibits to see. There’s great views as well. We took lots of pictures.
There’s a few different places to eat and drink in the gardens as well. We had some sparkling rose at “The Veranda” which had a great view of Kobe. We didn’t eat because we had a lunch reservation down the hill.
There’s a few things to watch out for. This place gets busy, so get there early. There’s no reservations, you just go early and wait in line. When we left at midday the line was massive, so get there when they open.
The herb garden only takes up the top half the hill. At first I thought it extended to the bottom of the hill, but the bottom half of the hill is actually a hiking trail without gardens. So I bought a one way gondola ticket to the top expecting to walk down all the way, but after I realized the garden ended at the middle I bought another ticket to go down (instead of getting the round trip ticket like I should have).
After the gardens we went to eat Kobe beef. Kobe Plaisir was the restaurant I chose, which was both high end and had a kids menu. The beef was great and everyone had a good time.
Afterwards we went to Harborland. It’s a nice area on the harbor that has a big boat you can go out on, and a couple of shopping malls. The Anpanman museum is here too but by the time we got there tickets were sold out for the day. This is also where you can find a Babies R Us.
Our Kobe day was one of the best days of our trip. I’d suggest a day trip here for anyone.
—Closing—
It’s hard to travel with kids this age. No doubt. Everything will take more time and be more expensive than when you used to travel alone. But I do not regret taking this trip at all. As a matter of fact I want to go back right now. My wife loved the trip, and my toddler might even remember it when she grows up. She still talks about feeding the monkeys and how dad ate a “real fish” (A Japanese sweetfish they grilled in front of us at Gion Maruyama). Japan is a great place for a first family trip.
submitted by nsideus to JapanTravel [link] [comments]

2023.06.07 06:48 ManLikeFlight Help choosing right frame for Them 909 skates

Hey guys, firstly let me apologise if I don’t have the terminology down pat, it’s been 20 years since I last skated (I’m 41 now lol)
Anyway I really want to get a semi decent city skate set up as il mostly be cruising. I was looking at the twister XT but I discovered the Them 909 and I LOVE the boot. Not really into the freestyle boots - it’s kinda like running shoes vs basketball shoes and the aggressive boots just do it for me. So my plan is to get a ufs frame and I was looking at the endless 90 ufs frame but I’m seeing online that some of the Them 909s seem to have an issues with this frame due to the 909 frame bolts. I really don’t want to make a mistake and get the wrong gear so I’m here cap in hand hoping to get some decent advice as I really don’t know what to do. Sorry for the long read and thanks I’m advance.
submitted by ManLikeFlight to rollerblading [link] [comments]

2023.06.07 06:46 CornerCornea Old Traditions for a Night Wedding

I had been contacted by the magistrate to investigate a night wedding in the countryside that had involved the loss of human life. There seemed to be a recent rise in tourists involved in ghost dowries over the years. However, from my research I believe it was a man in search of night weddings for personal gain that was the cause of so many deaths.
When I received the request, I was nearby on Green Island, and addressing a rather unique matter even for my line of work. A little girl from the mainland had arrived two weeks prior and claimed to be the recently deceased husband of the grieving widow.
The child claimed to have woken up in the hospital where the doctors informed them that they had drowned and was clinically dead for 4 minutes when the body inexplicably sat upright in the gurney. This would have seemed to be great news, except when the child looked into the mirror, it was not their face staring back at them.
In old Taoist texts I have read of such events, where the bodies of the recently deceased are not put to ground quickly enough, and their souls are left to wander. They could get carried away by the Northeast or Southwest wind. Depending on the location from where they died. And possibly attach to an empty host.
This seemed to be the case, as the wife acknowledged that due to the wet season, they did not bury her husband's body right away. Because the grounds were so wet, that any graves would wash away, leaving corpses laying in the street. Still, I had the responsibility of testing the child. Whom passed a simple test of naming names. Where they used to live. The wife's habits. A conversation they recently had, and even childhood memories. All were confirmed by friends and family. But it would be the child's handwriting that ultimately convinced me. They were a perfect match, down to the signature.
Upon my approval, the villagers had no choice but to accept that this child was indeed the man come back to life. And when I left, he was sitting outside of his house cleaning fish as he had always done for 32 years, except now in the body of a 10 year old girl.
I didn't have much time to dwell on this case as I was needed at the aftermath of the failed night wedding. Ghost dowries have been in use for thousands of years, and traces of it can be found in many different cultures. From the Aztec to the Egyptians, and more recently from old Spain to the streets of Southeast Asia. Though in recent times, only a few remote places continued the practice, and there are a limited number of priests today who are qualified enough to handle such a case. Luckily, I had plenty of experience in this matter.
In my early years, I had married many ghost brides.
And was often asked, "But you're a priest, how can you get married?"
"Zhengyi Taoist priests can choose to take a wife or not. In fact, in order to pass on my Celestial title, I must have an heir."
The man looked distraught, "And you're sure this will stop her from whispering into my ear every night?" He clutched the bag rather tightly.
"Don't you worry," I took the bag from his hands. "Everything will be fine."
We would perform the customary vows and the following night the man reported no more whisperings from his daughter, yet a week later, the police raided my hotel in a different district. The man had claimed that I had swindled him. That his daughter had returned and continued her whispering of terrible, horrible things that he dare not listen. Clanking and banging away in the walls as he covered his ears in fear until sunrise.
Fortunately, I was allowed to prove my innocence.
I returned and stayed in the man's room, waiting with him for signs of his daughter. And surely enough, late in the hour, I heard the wretched scraping and dragging in the walls. The man stopped breathing in his bed and laid perfectly still. Even I was afraid to move as the most dangerous aspects of my job are in the unknown. My mind began racing, wondering if I had somehow botched the night wedding. Or worse, that the ghost bride wasn't his daughter at all, and I had inadvertently given this mysterious entity a special anchor to this world, a holy man.
The walls shook without reason. And a tiny noise could be heard near the man's bedside. He jumped off his mattress and ran to my side. The two of us watched as the noise traveled back and forth against the back wall like wooden clogs.
"My daughter did always carry around a rattle drum when she was little," the man whispered.
"Hush, don't let it capture your breath," I warned him. "Whatever this is, I don't believe it is your daughter. And because of the ritual, we may have increased its hold on this realm."
He whimpered, "Not my daughter?"
I held up my finger and traced the noise as it traveled in an odd form. I began to wonder if the entity was creating some sort of symbol.
"What are you drawing," the man cried.
"It may be creating a portal," I told him. "Now hush before it turns its attention toward us."
"Please, there must be something you can do?"
I reached into my bag and pulled out some incense. I lit the ends and began chanting. From my waist I pulled out a long yellow parchment. And drew on it a sealing spell. "Spirit," I called as I stepped forward. "I am a guiding light." The noise rattled with conviction as I drew closer. "Let me lead you to peace!" And with one quick motion I punched my hand into the wall, clutching the sealing spell in my palm, at the last place I heard the noise. To my displeasure I felt something wriggling in my grasp as something long and thin wrapped itself around my wrist, its end clawing at my forearm. I screamed when I felt its teeth sink between the soft flesh of my thumb and index finger. But I did not let go. Instead I pulled out this demon from the wall and threw it roughly to the ground.
The man screamed as he jumped onto a chair and screamed, "Rat!"
Yes. A simple field rat. That had a trap stuck on its tail which caused its movements to rattle in the wall. That had been rummaging near the man's nightstand because in one of the drawers he had left a bag of watermelon seeds.
Not all cases are this simple, and plenty are true to life supernatural encounters. Over the years my experience has taught me to be more cautious in my evaluations. Which was why when I finally arrived at the house of the massacre due to a failed night wedding. Every hair on my neck stood on end as I tried to be objective as possible.
But there was no denying that something heinous had occurred here. Bodies were still laying on the floor. Some with their faces in the dirt. Some missing their heads completely. And those with their faces up, were unrecognizable. And my first wife leaned into my ear and whispered to me, "This is the work of a ghost bride."
"How do you know?"
"I recognize her anger. It was mine before we were married."
"How do I know what?" A man walking toward me asked. "Are you the priest they called out here?"
He was average built, and in plain clothes, "Detective, why yes. I am here to assist you in anyway that I can."
The detective spit on the ground, "Assist me? As far as I'm concerned we're wasting valuable time carrying on with this hocus pocus bullshit. The killer's trail will be cold by the time we get through all this religious tape." He wafted the air in front of his face, "And the dead bodies boiling out here. This is all your fault as far as I'm concerned. Assist me," he snorted.
"Where there any eyewitnesses, Detective?"
"Several. But they're all saying the same damn thing. Spouting a bunch of nonsense. Which is why those religious nuts down at the station dredged you up."
"All non-relatives to the home owners?"
He snorted again, "Coincidence."
"Let us hope so," I told him. "Because the alternative is much worse." I walked the scene, going around the upturned tables, tracing the steps of carnage in the courtyard, to the main living room. There I saw the body of an old man, both hands clutching his chest, his face was completely missing. "Any surviving family members?"
"Some are still left," he grunted. "But we've gathered most of them under police protection."
"Have you located the husband?"
"Yeah, we're trying to extradite him."
"Extradite?"
"The foreigner took off in the middle of all the commotion. Boarded a flight back home according to our investigation. We've contacted the airline, and the airport security in America will hold him when he lands. As he is currently my number one suspect."
I circled the area in front of the shrine. Noting the spilled bowl and its contents on the ground. The position of the spoon next to it. Before standing in the spot on the left side where the effigy would have stood. "What about the bride?"
The detective shook his head, "What bride?"
"It was a night wedding," I told him. "There must have been a physical object acting as a stand in for the daughter's soul."
"Nothing more than bags of cotton usually," he paused. "But they did report that the stand-in this time was some sort of department figurine. A mannequin of some sort."
"Have you looked into that?"
"Why would I look into that. Are you crazy?"
"Right, you're right of course. You'd have to wait until after sunset to be able to figure out which mannequin serves as the ghost bride's earthly form."
The detective stormed off as if I had said something outlandish. Leaving me to my own devices, I interviewed a few of the neighbors who attended the night wedding, gathered some evidence and sorted with the other officers at the site, and then left for the nearest hotel in the city.
It had been a long month for me and I couldn't think of anything better than I would enjoy more than a cold beer. So after checking in I went down to the bar, where an ethereal creature sat alone. She was beautiful to say the least and I had to strike up a conversation lest I live a life of regret, "S'il te plaît ma chérie, dis-moi comment on t'appelle pour que quand je sois perdu dans les ténèbres. Puis-je demander la lumière."
"What?"
"Oh, American. I apologize. I thought you were French."
"On my mother's side," she brushed away her hair.
I noticed the ring, "Ah, you are married. My sincerest apologies miss."
"Newly married," she told me. "My husband speaking with the concierge."
"Activities on vacation," I mused. "How wonderful."
"It's nothing like that. It seems someone has left him a note. And we're technically on our honeymoon." She paused, "Though this isn't where we're supposed to be. We're supposed to be in Hawaii."
I ordered a beer with the bartender and sipped my drink, "Hawaii is wonderful, but this is also a beautiful island. In fact, when the Portuguese came here, they named it Formosa. Which translates to beautiful island. It may not be where you're supposed to be, but perhaps you'll find that this is exactly where you need to be."
The woman sighed, "I don't even know anymore."
"Ah, I know what this is. I've great experience in these matters. Having been married many times. You feel doubt."
She laughed, "How many times have you gotten a divorce?"
"Divorce?" I laughed. "I never leave a woman after we have been wed."
She looked taken aback, "Oh. I didn't know polygamy was so common in these parts." She glanced behind her to where a tall man was standing with what looked to be the hotel's concierge. "I guess we're in the same boat."
"It's not what you think," I told her.
"Where have I heard that one before," she rolled her eyes.
"Larissa!" The man called for her.
She stood up, "Well, it was nice meeting you. Tell your wives I said hello."
I smiled as she left, glancing at my sides. "If only you knew," I said while sipping my beer.
Now in hindsight, if I were not so fatigued after nearly a month of hard work and constant traveling. I would have perhaps picked up on the fact that she too was familiar with the concubine lifestyle. Which was unusual in itself for an American. Or perhaps I would have picked up on the fact that Larissa was an uncommon name. As I had read Jim's article. But there was no such luck, which is why, when I say that I am deeply regretful of what I read on the news later about the couple, I am truly at a loss for what I could have prevented. But that is not my story to tell.
After I finished drinking at the bar I made my way to the elevator and got in. When a man came towards me to hold the door, I called out, "It's full." He looked at me bewildered as I was the only person he could see in the elevator, before sticking his hand out to stop the doors from closing. Huffing and puffing as he glared at me angrily before pressing his floor number. Except the elevator pinged. The weight capacity light had turned on above our heads. "Like I said, it's full." The man shook his head in amazement. Pressing his floor number again. The elevator pinged again. Unwilling to budge. I sighed and got out, "I'll wait for the next one."
And wait I did, even in my room I waited for night fall instead of resting. The thoughts of a botched night wedding swirling in my head. For the many things that could go wrong. Because even though I had much practice in these matters, I was still always nervous before a fight. So when night fell, I was red eyed and exhausted, but better mentally prepared than before.
But when I arrived back at the scene of the crime, I was not prepared for all of the commotion.
"Ka-kin-eh Ka-kin-eh," a man shouted as the fire blazed.
I grabbed one of the men running by with an empty bucket, "What happened here?"
"T-the villagers, they set the p-place on fire. Trying to rid the evil demon."
I let him go and shook my head. The fools! I made my way toward the courtyard where I saw the detective from earlier moping his forehead as he was helping put out the fire. "Detective! This is terrible," I yelled as the flames licked the night.
"No shit dumbass, it's a fire."
"You don't understand," I told him. "Now the entity has nowhere to return. We may never find it."
He threw the bucket to the floor and whirled around, "Enough! I've had enough! Listen here, there is a fire. F-I-R-E. This a real problem. If it catches to the fields, it could light the newly laid fertilizer on fire and catch the entire mountain!"
"Detective!"
That was the only word I had to say before he punched me. It was a dark night out, but stars had suddenly appeared. He hovered over me and I thought he would strike me again but then suddenly he froze. "What is that?"
I turned my head and looked out into the field. The heat of the fire burning the back of my head as I tried to stop my nose from bleeding. "Where?"
Neither one of us moved as we watched the tall field.
"Right there." He pointed.
I reached up and threw his hand down, "No! You never point at entities," I told him. "Now you could be marked!"
He ignored me and reached for his gun, "Stop! Hey you! I order you to stop or I'll shoot!"
I looked into the field, scanning the endless rows before my eyes stopped and froze in horror. At one point in time the thing must have been a simple plastic mannequin. Standing in a department store perhaps. But now, it was twisted and gnarled. It's first dirty and unrecognizable. It stood on all fours sometimes threes as it swayed slowly back and forth. The thing was also without form because it didn't need to bend or move as normal people. It was still objectively, plastic. It swung its arms behind it and used that as leverage to run, turning its head - cracking the seams that had somehow still held and took off.
The detective rung a shot out at it. I think it struck but it didn't matter. Though the mannequin was gone. The detective must have lost his mind because he gave chase.
I couldn't let him go alone so I followed. Pulling out my long yellow parchment as I wrote on it the symbols for sealing, hoping the simple spell would work. As we entered the tall field.
It was chaos. The ground was mushy beneath my feet, and the smell of fecal matter assaulted my senses further. In the brush I had lost the detective, so I was forced to tell my wives to help me locate his whereabouts. They didn't often leave my side, and some were reluctant but ultimately agreed.
I stood in the field, waiting with bated breath as I heard further gunshots in the distance. I couldn't wait for my wives to gather as I tore after the detective. And just in time as I saw him standing, looking absolutely terrified as he shot blindly into the fauna until his pistol clicked. The mannequin lunged for him. But I got there first. Pushing him to the ground, causing both of us to tumble.
He was eating a mouth of dirt as I pulled him to his feet. "We have to get out of this field! The ghost bride will pick us off in this thicket!"
Stumbling, and running, the two of us were covered in more than dirt. Several times we heard rustling nearby as if something were running alongside us. But eventually we made it out into the open plain. The detective trying to catch his breath as he reloaded his pistol.
"Shooting it doesn't work," he panted. "But maybe I can disable it from moving."
"Shut up," I told him. "Listen."
He stopped for a moment and we waited. Then all of the stalks before us shook wildly as if a hundred people were running through it. The detective raised his arm but I stopped him as my wives ran out of the field.
They were terrified as they ran right through us.
I hadn't experienced the feeling in awhile but the coldness as their ghostly forms went through our bodies was cold as ice. It was enough to bring us both to our knees, clutching our chests as we struggled to breathe. I had passed through one or two in a row before. But never 10 or 20 at a time. I lost count.
"What was that," the detective managed to gasp, his fingers in a death grip around his gun.
"A blue procession," I told him. "Something caused all of my dead wives to flee."
We looked up as the leaves in front of us rustled.
"Is it..."
I shook my head, running forward to catch her. My 13th wife, Ah-ren. Her arm was missing, and a part of her shoulder. She was an innocent girl that had drowned when she was alive. Her innocence carried on with her to the afterlife where many souls generally grew up embittered. But never her, always sweet my girl, just weary of water.
"I didn't want to go," she told me.
"I know," I held her. "I'm sorry."
"It got some of the others too. But Meita got in its way and told me to run." She cried.
"Don't cry I told her. You know how you hate getting wet."
"I don't want to go. I wanted to stay with you. All of us together."
I watched as her soul splintered and disappeared forever.
I had never felt such fury. In all my years, a womanizer, a liar, a cheat at cards, a scoundrel, a bastard even. But an undutiful husband? Never.
Without thinking I approached the field and cast a spell that was been forbidden.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm purging the field. All beings alive or dead will forever feel displaced when they enter here. A feeling of unending dread and doom will overcome them, causing madness if they do not leave or are unable to. But I have no other choice." I reached into my side and threw a handful of salt. It landed on the ground as I chanted. The winds carrying it into the field, the small white morsels rolling obediently into the darkness.
"Nothings happening," the detective's word stuck in his mouth as a horrible scream echoed into the night. It sounded like two pieces of steel being twisted together.
"There," I took off after it. The jumbled figure of the mannequin fled toward the village.
We followed it through people's homes, and between alleyways; the villagers screamed and fled when they saw it. We barged through home after home as we chased it. Until we cornered it at an abandoned building at the edge of town.
"It was supposed to be a mall," the detective told me. "But the developers ran out of money."
We walked quietly into the empty building. Shells of stores stood in various degrees of construction. Checking a few of the fronts before venturing further inside.
"You've got to be kidding me," the detective said as we came near the center of the complex. There next to the escalators and the fountains was an army of mannequins of all shapes and sizes lined up like terracotta warriors. "They must have stashed them all here when the place was being built, and forgot about them when it closed."
"There are hundreds."
"We'll go through together. Quickly and quietly." He added, "Stay alert."
We moved through the rows, staring at all of the stuck faces, searching for one covered in grime and bullet holes. But it was more difficult than it sounded. Many of the mannequins were in bad shape, weathered, broken, laying in pieces on the ground. It was hard to tell if a pile of parts was indeed our culprit.
Slowly we began to clear the rows and I could see the other side in sight.
"There!" The detective shot his gun. The surrounding mannequins dropped like dominoes when the entity scattered. Falling down all around us, drowning in a sea of plastic arms and smiling faces. I was struggling to stand as I looked up and saw the entity come rushing toward us. The detective fired his gun blowing out a knee cap. I hurriedly reached for my parchment but could not find my pen. Another shot, but the scorned bride kept on charging unable to feel pain.
It jumped into the air and another shot blew a part of its face away. The detective screamed as it tore at him. Pieces of his sinew was launched into the air as he was torn apart. I rushed forward trying to help but the creature grabbed me by the throat and lifted me into the air. My feet searching for the ground as my lungs folded trying to breathe. The thing turned its head toward me and said, "Will you marry me?" As the darkness closed into the corners of my eyes.
The fight was leaving my body as I saw several of my wives rushing forward. Their ghostly forms ethereal as they began tearing at the mannequin, slowly pulling out pieces of her soul, causing the mannequins arms and legs to go limp as they dragged her out.
I scrambled the floor blindly with my fingers searching for my sacred parchment but could not find it amongst the rubble and the ghost bride was fleeing, leaving the shell of her mannequin in a heap on the floor. My wives chasing her, screaming their fury for killing the others. For destroying their souls.
I chased after them into the open air, where she was being cornered. Crying as I approached, trying to escape into the Southwest wind. I knew what I should have done, but could not bring myself to do the right thing. Instead I bit my finger and drew symbols on my forearms with my own blood. Approaching the bride that never was and tore her soul into pieces.
When I was done my wives sat down around me before slowly dispersing as the sun began to rise.
"We did it huh?"
I continued staring at the sun, "Yeah."
"Well then," the detective said before disappearing. "Maybe in the next life I'll be sooner to trust you."
Later they would find his body in the abandoned mall. Still clutching his gun. The department gave him a 21 gun salute at his funeral and a medal as commemoration. I was just glad that his soul had not been eaten.
I, on the other hand, went back to the hotel. To the bar and ordered a well deserved drink. Where I saw a pretty woman sitting alone, "Did you know that in order for me to pass on my Celestial title, I must bear an heir?"
​
​
s
submitted by CornerCornea to nosleep [link] [comments]

2023.06.07 06:09 powderbum88 Microcap Biotechs are Waking Up: $HOTH, $EFTR, MREO, $SILO

The biotech sector has been getting hotter in the past few weeks--with clinical trial results and issued patents having positive moves in the market. $HOTH ($3.35) Hoth Therapeutics announced that HT-ALZ, a therapeutic in development for Alzheimer's disease, achieved positive preclinical results that had improved results vs. a previous study. With a Market Cap of $11.062 Million, HOTH had huge Trading Volume of 97.23 Million yesterday. 52 Week Range $1.52 - $17.50
$SILO ($2.24) Silo Pharma is a developmental stage biopharmaceutical company merging traditional therapeutics with psychedelics with numerous patents. The company reported positive results for its toxicology study of SP-26, its novel time-released, dosage-controlled formulation of ketamine. Also pursuing research on Alzheimer's, dementia and arthritis. 52 Week Range $0.17 - $12.25.
$EFTR ($1.39) eFFECTOR Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, engages in the development of selective translation regulator inhibitors for the treatment of cancer. Its lead product candidate is Tomivosertib, an oral small-molecule inhibitor of MNK that is in phase 2b clinical trial for the treatment of patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer. They have a research and license collaboration with Pfizer. Market Cap $65.47 Million with a 52 Week Range of $0.33 - $1.99
$MREO ($1.15) Mereo BioPharma Group plc, a biopharmaceutical company, develops and commercializes therapeutics for the treatment of oncology and rare diseases in the United Kingdom and internationally. Its lead product candidate, etigilimab (OMP-313M32), an antibody T-cell immunoreceptor with Ig and ITIM domains, which is in Phase 1b clinical trial for the treatment of tumors. The company is also developing Navicixizumab (OMP-305B83), which has completed Phase 1b clinical trials for the treatment of the late line ovarian cancer. Volume precedes price....Average Volume is 1.75 Million, but yesterday's volume increases 6 fold to 11.19 Million.
NOTE: Due diligence is always encouraged.
submitted by powderbum88 to pennystocks [link] [comments]

2023.06.07 05:54 greendream42 Stair tread tool

If any installers on here have hesitated on buying a pro knee treadman stair tool. It is 100% worth its weight in gold! I've done residential lvp and commercial rubber stair treads with it and will never look back!
submitted by greendream42 to Flooring [link] [comments]

2023.06.07 05:45 Perrin42 Perrin's Pet Insanity Build Mk V: Crystal Peth

It's me again, with the latest version of my Pet Insanity build. The big changes are the HYDRA console and the Crystal Harmonics set. The HYDRA console doesn't add any pets, but it does cause several of them to fire phaser beams at a target; and I do mean several, meaning about seven. It's certainly not all of them, but it is funny when the unarmed pets fire the beams. Seeing a big orange beam coming out of a repair drone is just amusing. Other than that, though, it doesn't feel like it has a big impact - maybe because there's so much else going on on the screen.
The Crystal Harmonics set, now, that's where the real fun is. Because it creates a whole bunch of little crystals floating around. How many? I don't friggin' know. 1-2 every time I defeat an enemy, 2.5% chance per hit from the omni, another 2% chance every time I do tetryon damage... Lots of little crystals everywhere. The crystals don't move, since I really don't have space for the console, but there sure are a lot of the darn things floating around.
Anyway, the latest version is towards the bottom of this post. And immediately below I've posted links to the previous versions of the build, if you'd like to track my descent into madness (and perhaps recommend a skilled psychologist.) Enjoy!
https://www.reddit.com/stobuilds/comments/wbnubk/perrins_pet_insanity_build_mk_iv_sad_pets/
https://www.reddit.com/stobuilds/comments/grt4os/perrins_pet_insanity_build_mk_iii_legendary_pets/
https://www.reddit.com/stobuilds/comments/944tge/perrins_pet_insanity_build_mk_ii_victory_is_pets/
https://www.reddit.com/stobuilds/comments/6l3ei5/perrins_pet_insanity_build/
​

Captain Details

Captain Name  Edward Thomas (E.T.) Williamson   
Captain Career  Science  3 pets 
Captain Faction  Federation   
Captain Race  Liberated Borg   
Primary Specialization  Temporal   
Secondary Specialization  Command   

Space Skill Tree

Rank  Engineering    Science    Tactical   
Lieutenant  Improved Hull Restoration  Improved Hull Capacity  Improved Shield Restoration  Improved Shield Capacity  Improved Energy Weapon Training  Improved Projectile Weapon Training 
Lt. Commander  Improved Electro-Plasma System Flow  Improved Impulse Expertise  Improved Control Expertise  Improved Drain Expertise  Targeting Expertise   
      Control Amplification       
Commander          Advanced Weapon Amplification  Improved Weapon Specialization 
Captain  Defensive Subsystem Tuning  Offensive Subsystem Tuning  Improved Exotic Particle Generator  Improved Long Range Targeting Sensors     
    Weapon Subsystem Performance         
  Auxiliary Subsystem Performance           
Admiral  Improved Warp Core Potential  Improved Engineering Readiness    Improved Scientific Readiness  Coordination Protocols  Improved Tactical Readiness 
          Defensive Coordination   
          Offensive Coordination   
0 Points Left  16    15    15   

Space Skill Unlocks

Purchases  Engineering  Science  Tactical 
2  Hazard Emitters III  Science Team III  Tachyon Beam III 
5       
7  Feedback Pulse III  Photonic Shockwave III  Jam Sensors III 
10       
12  Polarize Hull III  Gravity Well III  Tractor Beam III 
15       

Ship Loadout: Jem'Hadar Vanguard Carrier

Slot  Item  Notes 
Fore Weapon 1  Refracting Tetryon Beam Array Mk XV [Ac/Dm][Acc]x3[Proc]   
Fore Weapon 2  Bio-neural Warhead  1 pet? 
Fore Weapon 3  Vaadwaur Cluster Torpedo  5 pets? 
Fore Weapon 4  Breen Transphasic Cluster Torpedo Mk XV [CrtH]   
     
Aft Weapon 1  Omni-Directional Interlacing Tetryon Beam Array  2.5% chance to create a Tholian Warp Crystal (+2% from Tholian Crystal Harmonics 3pc) 
Aft Weapon 2  Black Ops Mine Launcher  4 pets?   
Deflector  [Revolutionary Deflector Array ]() Mk XV [CtrlX]x2[EPG] Very Rare   
Impulse Engines  [Revolutionary Combat Impulse Engine ]() Mk XV [Aux][Turn]x2 Very Rare   
Warp Core  Tholian Nucleating Warp Core Mk XV [S->W][SCap][SSR] Very Rare  1-2 Warp Crystals per defeated enemy 
Shields  Tholian Enhanced E.A.C. Shield Mk XV [C/R][Cap]x3 Ultra Rare   
     
Devices  Scorpion Fighters   
  Subspace Field Modulator   
  Kobayashi Maru Transponder   
  Deuterium Surplus   
     
2 Engineering Consoles  Console - Universal - Swarmer Matrix Epic  5 pets 
  Console - Universal - Aceton Assimilator Epic  1 pet 
     
5 Science Consoles  Console - Universal - Linked Command Matrix Epic  1 pet 
  Console - Universal - Priors World Elite Defense Satellite Epic  1 pet 
  Console - Universal - Defensive Drone Guardians Epic  4 pets 
  Console - Universal - Open the Maw of Grethor Epic  12 pets 
  Console - Universal - Harmonic Yield Distribution via Radial Aperture Epic   
     
4 Tactical Consoles  Console - Universal - Repair Platform Epic  2 pets per teammate in range 
  Console - Universal - Reinforcing Squadrons Epic  4 pets 
  Console - Universal - Cardassian Mobile Torpedo Platform Epic  1 pet 
  Console - Universal - Cardassian Support Platform Cluster Epic  4 pets 
T6-X Universal Console  Console - Universal - Polymorphic Probe Array Epic  3 pets 
     
2 Hangar Bays  Hangar - To'Duj Fighter Squadron  6 pets 
  Hangar - To'Duj Fighter Squadron  6 pets 

Officer Details

Bridge Officers  Power  Notes 
Commander Science  Science Team I    
  Hazard Emitters II    
  Structural Analysis III    
  Photonic Officer III    
     
Lt. Commander Tactical  Beam Array: Fire at Will I    
Leadership  Cannon: Scatter Volley I    
  Torpedo: Spread III    
     
Lt. Commander Science-Intelligence  Transfer Shield Strength I    
  Electromagnetic Pulse Probe I   1 pet 
  Ionic Turbulence II    
     
Lieutenant Universal  Deploy Construction Shuttle Wing I   4 pets 
  Boarding Party I   3 pets 
     
Ensign Engineering  Engineering Team I    
     

Traits & Duty Officers

Trait  Name  Description  Notes 
Personal Traits  Fleet Coordinator  ''Space Trait''': Increases your Damage based on how many players are in your party. (Self Included)   
  Photonic Capacitor  Space Trait. This trait causes the activation of your Science abilities to reduce your remaining cooldown on Photonic Fleet by 20 seconds. This effect may only be triggered a maximum of once every 10 seconds, and will only trigger if Photonic Fleet is currently in cooldown.   
  Photonic Reinforcement  As an expert in Photonic Studies, your [[Ability: Photonic Fleet]] ability summons an additional ship.  1 pet 
  Unconventional Systems  Using Control Bridge Officer Abilities reduces the cooldown of all Universal Consoles by 7%.   
  Wing Commander  100% Rank Up XP for all Hangar Pets   
  Hive Defenses (space)    3 pets per 5 seconds for 45 seconds (27 max) 
  Friends in Unusual Places     
  Projectile Training  Increases Projectile Weapon Damage.   
  Feel the Weight of Our Presence  Space Trait. Each friendly ship on the map debuffs Damage Resistance Rating of Foes within 12km by 0.5 for 10sec, stacking up to 12.5 for 25 Allies. Mines and Torpedos don't count, but Hangar Pets, Distress Beacons, Turrets, and all other forms of Allies do. The sight of a ship can strike fear into the hearts of foes, but it is the people represented by that ship which form its true strength. A fleet, an alliance, or even just a cause, what matters most is the people it champions. [Applies "Feel the Weight of our Presence": -0.5 All Damage Resistance Rating for 10 sec   
  Bulkhead Technician  ''Space Trait''': Increases your Maximum Hull Hit Points.   
       
Starship Traits  Superior Area Denial  - Activating Beams: Fire at Will or Cannons: Scatter Volley causes your weapons to debuff foe's armor resistance for a short duration, as well as activating Fire at Will: I and Cannons: Scatter Volley I on your hangar pets.   
  Hivebearer  - Game Description: When you launch a hangar pets or hangar pet dies: Spawns a swarmer for 30 seconds (Maximum 8 swarmers at a time).  8 pets 
  Numerical Superiority  - While this trait is slotted, you gain a damage bonus that increases as more allies target your targeted foe, including yourself. This includes pets like Saucer Separation or Multi-Vector pets, but not Hangar pets.   
  Superior Command Frequency     
  Team Synergy     
  Black Alert  - Game Description: While this trait is active, activating Beam: Overload, Cannon: Rapid Fire, or any Intelligence Bridge Officer Ability will allow temporally-displaced duplicates of your ship to appear near any foes that you damage over the next several seconds. Each of these duplicates will fire Torpedo Spreads at the damaged foe and other nearby targets. This trait may only activate once every 25 sec.  4 pets 
       
Space Reputation Traits  Chrono-Capacitor Array  Reduces Bridge Officer Recharge Times   
  Auxiliary Power Configuration - Offense  In space combat you gain a damage and accuracy boost based on your Auxiliary Power Level.   
  Precision  Increases your Critical Hit Chance in space combat.   
  Auxiliary Power Configuration - Defense  In space combat you gain a bonus to Maximum Hull HP, Maximum Shield HP, Kinetic Damage Resistance Rating and Energy Damage Resistance Rating that scales based on your Auxiliary Power Level.   
       
Duty Officers  Projectile Weapons Officer  [SP] Chance to reduce the time to recharge torpedoes   
  Space Warfare Specialist  [SP] Increased damage vs. All   
  Assault Squad Officer  [SP] Chance for Boarding Party shuttles to be armed.   
  Flight Deck Officer  [SP] Chance to double the number of shuttles launched with Boarding Parties  3 pets 
  Flight Deck Officer  [SP] Chance to double the number of shuttles launched with Boarding Parties   
  Flight Deck Officer  [SP] Chance to double the number of shuttles launched with Boarding Parties   
  Flight Deck Officer  [SP] Chance to double the number of shuttles launched with Boarding Parties   
submitted by Perrin42 to stobuilds [link] [comments]

2023.06.07 05:06 VeryFallible What to hunt for PvP this week: Beach Week edition.

One complaint we see often from new GBL players is "how was I supposed to know that I should have farmed 'x' when it was available?" While a lot of the people posting on TSA are veteran PVPers with absolutely stacked stables of pokemon, there are always people who are just now joining the fun. My hope in writing this post is to give new (or even just less experienced) players some idea on what they can grind now to start building out their own stables. We all have limited time to play, so hopefully this will help you target something specific to build our your rosters. If this is helpful, let me know - I'd love to do it more regularly.
Keep in mind that throughout this I'll refer to pokemon's "Records" vs their respective metas; this is their record in 1v1 shield scenarios on PvPoke. This is not the end-all-be-all of evaluating pokemon, but is a good starting place.
What spawns during "Beach Week?"
To save some characters, you can find the spawns here (spoiler alert: lots of water types!) You might also like to be aware of the general season spawns during our current season (Mystical Gems), which you can find here. I won't mention these much, but there will be some things worth mentioning a bit later.
What should I hunt if I'm a sub-level 31 player?
Everyone starts PVP at a different time in their PoGo journey - I know I was either high 20s or low 30s when I picked it up two years ago! The reason I'm making this distinction here is that level players level 30 and below do not have access to XL candy drops, which shifts the priorities greatly. (For instance, something like Azumarill, which generally needs to be pushed into high 40s, is much less of a priority if you don't have access to XL yet.) This is also a good list for people who are slightly above level 31 but don't have large PVP rosters yet, as the "trainer level +10" rule for powering up pokemon will keep you from being invest XL candy in some of the pokemon I'll suggest for level 40+ players.
  1. Spheal: If you're new to Pokemon Go PVP, Spheal might not look like the pokemon you'd expect to be grinding. But make no mistake: If you don't have access to XL candy, this IS the number one thing you should hunt this week. BOTH of its evolutions (Walrein, it's Stage 2 evolution, ad Sealeo, it's Stage 1 evolution) put in work in Great League. Walrein commands a commendable 21-21 open GL record; Sealeo gives up some wins in the open meta, but it occasionally sees play in Limited Metas. Walrein hits 1500 in the low 20s, but Sealeo needs to be pushed into the mid-30s to hit GL cap. Before you even consider building a Sealeo, though, you need to farm the candy for an ULTRA League Walrein, which can be built as an XL but also can slide into 2500 at level 40. With wins over Giratina-A, Swampert, and Charizard, Walrein is the best UL option a non-XL player can grind this week. Just remember that it does require both an Elite FAST TM (Powder Snow) and an Elite CHARGE TM (Icicle Spear) to build. Expect Spheal to dominate a lot of your time this week if you don't have Walrein built yet.
  2. Wingull: As a new player, Great League is likely the format you'll find yourself playing the most, and Pelipper is an absolutely fantastic budget option. Wing Attack powers out a steady stream of Weather Ball (Water), and Hurricane absolutely chunks opposing pokemon with shields down. Pelipper is cheap to build for Great League, maxing out at around level 27 and requiring ZERO Elite TMs for its optimal moveset. Pelipper is held back slightly by the omnipresence of Lanturn in the open Great League meta, but it's 21-21 record includes key wins against meta all stars Medicham, Swampert, and Galarian Stunfisk - the last one despite taking super effective damage from Rock Slide! As this is only a Great League option without access to XL, this should not be a long grind over the course of a week long event.
  3. Frillish: Great League Jellicent's impact is slightly muted compared to its XL older brethren, but this Hex-Powered jellyfish still manages to make waves. It's optimal moveset is Surf and Shadow Ball, and, like Pelipper, maxes out for Great League in the mid-20s without needing Elite TMs. Jelli and Pelli share some key wins (both knock Medi, Swampy, and...Gunny?). Jelli ultimately has a slightly worse record against the open GL at 20-23, but also has more flexibility for limited cups - while Surf/Shadow Ball is generally the preferred way to go, it has the option to go Surf/Ice Beam or Ice Beam/Shadow Balls in limited metas that call for it. As this is only a Great League option without access to XL, this should not be a long grind over the course of a week long event.
  4. Horsea: Kingdra's open Great League performance is a paltry 11-33, and Horsea even limited metas generally want you to be running SHADOW Kingdra in Great League, which is not a current option at Water Rocket Grunts. All that said, I do rate Horsea highly for players without access to XLs, as Kingdra can hit 2500 CP without investing any XLs...and only gives up a win vs Snorlax compared to its XL version. Kingdra is no open Ultra League all star, but it is a solid roleplayer in limited cups. If you're unable to access XL Candy, the grind for 300ish Horsea candy is at least worth considering.
Honorable Mentions: Staryu and Shellder both don't offer much in PvP, but both are HIGH dust gain pokemon (Staryu gives 750 on catch; Shellder, 1,000.) Catch every one you see for that reason alone. Lapras is not one worth hard-pursuing as its locked behind research tasks and raids, but is a great option for limited cups in Great League and a genuinely strong Ultra League contender with a more flexible moveset than Walrein. Mantine shares typing with Pelipper but exchanges Peli's spammy charge moves for considerably more bulk, but is much harder to farm than Peli due to being a rare spawn. Tentacruel is a consideration in a lot of limited cups in Great League; I wouldn't prioritize it over any of the above four, but I also wouldn't skip catching Tentacool. Crustle, similarly, has play in limited cups, but I wouldn't go too hard for Dwebble when there are so many better options.
What should I hunt if I'm an XL player?
If you have the option to push pokemon to level 50, Beach Week is your Cloyster. This event was tailor made for PVP! You should still try to get enough candy to build a Great League Pelipper since it's such a low requirement, but you really want to hone in on some of the great XL options below:
  1. Marill: Unlike it's Main Series Game iteration, Pokemon Go's Azumarill doesn't rely on Huge Power to secure wins. Instead, it's the sheer bulk that it gets by ascending into the mid-40s that makes it go 22-21 against the core meta. Remember that you really want a low attack, high defense/stamina Azu to maximize the benefit you get from XLing this mon. You should refer to RyanSwag's IV Deep Dive before investing in any Azu you get this week, but start farming those XLs NOW. I prioritize Marill slightly above the next pokemon on this list, just because if you're new to PVP you're more likely to be focusing on Great League. The good news is most Azu IV spreads max out in the mid-40s, which means you're looking at around 200 XL candy (as opposed to the nearly 300 needed for level 50 pokemon).
  2. Frillish: Jellicent is an absolutely fine Great League option, but it really unfurls its tentacles in Ultra League, where it is an absolute monster. A high stat product Jellicent has 29 wins in its record against the core UL meta; that's over 60% of the meta. Again IVs do matter, as a 5/15/15 Jellicent gets to level 50 while a 15/15/15 maxes at 45 (and its corresponding lack of bulk means it picks up two losses). This should be a BIG priority; you'll need 296 XL candy to max it out.
  3. Spheal: Everything I said about Walrein in the non-XL section still applies. You'll need about 400 Spheal candy to evolve, double move, and max out a Walrein in UL, so even though you don't need XL to build Walrein you should still go hard into farming for one if you don't have one. Again, requires two Elite TMs to build.
  4. Tentacool: Tentacruel has a BIG glow up between Great League and Ultra. Whereas Coolio only made my Honorable Mentions list for GL, XL Tentacruel is an absolute beast with a 25-22 record against the UL meta; there's an argument to be made that it should be higher on this list than Spheal based on record alone. Similarly to Jellicent, it has to be pushed close to 50 to really flex its tentacles, so don't settle for a high attack IV Cruel that's cheaper to build.
Honorable Mentions: Shellder and Staryu, again, are catch-on-sights due to the bonus dust they give. Dwebble's evolution Crustle can hit 2500 in the 40s, but requires a totally different Mega Evolution to farm than the other options. Lapras is showing up in research tasks and raids, and thus isn't as easy to grind as the other options. Gyarados and Swampert are both available in raids, but these are really only worth pursuing with your daily free raid pass.
What's the best Mega Evolution to use this event?
If you're fairly new to PVP (or to taking Go seriously in general), you might not be aware that Mega Evolving pokemon has any benefit on catching them, but it does. Active Mega Evolutions give a bonus to the amount of candy you get per catch to pokemon that match one of their types, with that bonus going up per mega stage - a Stage 3 Mega Evolution gives an extra 2 candy per catch, for a total of 5 candy. Stage 2 and Stage 3 Mega Evolutions both give a bonus chance to get Candy XL as well, with Stage 3 having a higher XL chance than Stage 2.
It's pretty obvious that water-type megas are ideal in general, so whatever Water mega you have at level 3 is best (Mega Gyarados, Mega Slowbro, Mega Swampert, and Mega Blastoise are all options currently in Go). If you have them all as maxed out options, I'd prioritize using Mega Swampert. Not only does it have the water typing to match all the above important pokemon, but it also gives you a bonus when catching the newly released Sandygast. The towers of Palossand, Sandygast's evolution, aren't reaching any stellar heights in PVP, but it's still a nice bonus. Mega Swampert also has a benefit for newer players in the Northern Hemisphere, as Mudkip is a seasonal spawn there currently. Swampert itself has considerable impact in both GL and UL, so while you have an entire season to farm candy for it it's still worth catching this week if you happen to get the chance.
submitted by VeryFallible to TheSilphArena [link] [comments]

2023.06.07 04:25 dollcollective I Was a Last-Minute Replacement in an Off-Broadway Play. Something Else Was Backstage With Us.

When I was getting started, an actor I knew gave me some really good advice. While deciding whether or not to take a certain role, consider three factors: the money, the show, and the people. If at least two of those things are good, accept the job. If they’re paying you well and you love the play, you won’t mind putting up with shitty people. If it’s a great show with a cast full of friends, but you’re not getting paid so well, that’s still alright, it’ll be artistically fulfilling. If it’s a bad show but you love the cast and you’re making money, you’ll probably have the time of your life making fun of the playwright backstage and laughing all the way to the bank.
What my friend failed to mention is that as an aspiring actor, you don’t usually get to be that picky. When I got the call from my agent that a production of The Bacchae was urgently seeking a new chorus member, all I could see were dollar signs. My survival job had just fallen through (the family I nannied for was moving upstate, insisting that Manhattan had just gotten “too dangerous” for their toddler), and my savings were only going to cover my rent for another month.
It was raining the day of my audition, and my train got delayed. I showed up panting (I had to run from the subway station) and my hair a disaster. Luckily, in The Bacchae, the chorus is full of… well… Bacchae. Fervent followers of Dionysus, wild women, drunk and running through the countryside. In the climax of the play, they crowd the protagonist in a frenzy, literally ripping him limb from limb.
I’ll never know if it was my frenetic energy from barely making it to the theater on time, or my actual acting, but I got the part. My costume fitting was the next day– they weren’t kidding about urgently needing a replacement. Which thrilled me, because I wasn’t kidding about urgently needing the money. At the fitting, I discovered something my agent failed to mention about the production: this wasn’t just any version of The Bacchae, it was a recreation– an attempt to perform the play in the traditional Greek style. In other words, everyone was wearing masks.
I’ve never been fond of masks. We had to do a few assignments with them in my college acting courses; covering your face can enhance the physicality of your body, something like that. But I never liked wearing them, or seeing other people wearing them. It wouldn’t be fair to call it a full-on fear, but the stiffness, the lack of expression, gives me a weird feeling in my stomach. And wearing one, your field of vision limited, your mouth covered, making it harder to breathe, harder to project your voice– I don’t like it. It’s as simple as that.
But I needed the money. My costume wasn’t ugly, per se, just strange: a long white dress, or maybe toga is a better word, the fabric about the thickness of a burlap sack. My mask, stark white, paper mache, covering my entire face except my eyes, the mouth carved to imitate a grin. No shoes. My hair tucked into a wild black wig– we wore wigs, they explained to me, so the chorus could be identical, indistinguishable. We moved as one, spoke as one, and were meant to look like one. They even made sure to cast women of the same height. In our costumes, it was impossible to tell which of us was which.
It didn’t help that I was an outsider to the rest of the cast, joining the show weeks into rehearsals. Everyone seemed annoyed that they had to teach me the blocking, the inflection of the lines (so my voice didn’t stick out from the other chorus girls), and where to go backstage during scenes with no chorus. A few people tried to be nice to me, but quickly gave up when they realized I knew nothing about Greek theater, or masked theater, or the avant garde. My last show had been a regional production of Cats, for God’s sake. I was totally out of my element.
Things got especially sour when I tried to ask what had happened to the girl I was replacing. Nobody wanted to talk about it. People gasped when I brought it up. The clearest answer I got was a whispered, hesitant, “she fell,” but the person wouldn’t elaborate any further. The cast seemed superstitious, uncomfortable, like talking about her would cause them to suffer her fate: removal from the show. And it was clear that, aside from me, everyone else loved this show. The actor playing Dionysus, the couple of times he deigned to talk to me, just kept gushing about how honored he was to play this role, how electrifying it felt to put his history minor to use, to show people a piece of the world’s theatrical beginnings.
I thought the show was fine. Kinda boring, kinda scary. I don’t think I “get” The Bacchae. In brief, the story is about Dionysus, son of Zeus, disguised as a human. He and his followers (the chorus) show up in a town, but the leader of the town, Pentheus, is upset about it. He doesn’t understand why all these women are acting crazy, and he arrests Dionysus, not believing him to be an actual God. As punishment, Dionysus possesses Pentheus’s own mother with the same madness as his followers, and together, with their bare hands, they rip Pentheus apart. His mom walks back into town holding her son’s head, thinking it to be, in her madness, the head of a lion. When she realizes what she’s done, she is overwhelmed by grief, and futilely attempts to put Pentheus’s mutilated corpse back together. Dionysus returns, basically saying, “well, he said I wasn’t a God, and that’s blasphemous, so he got what was coming to him.” Pentheus’s mother is exiled.
It’s incredibly dark. In the reviews, critics called it daring, challenging, a bloody spectacle, a feminist masterpiece. I don’t really get what part of “a man who’s a God possesses women’s minds, driving them to murder” screams “feminism,” but hey, I’m the girl who commuted to New Jersey every day for four months to do Cats, what do I know?
Here’s something I do know: the other chorus girls did not like me. And they took their jobs seriously. As we waited to enter for each scene, there was dead quiet in the wings. Usually, there’s some light joking, maybe quickly running lines, maybe physical warmups, shaking out your nerves– I tried to do this once. Before our entrance at the top of the show, we all gathered in the stage right wing, all twelve of us, a perfect and identical dozen. It was a dress rehearsal. No audience. I did a few jumping jacks, trying to hype myself up. Another masked girl grabbed my bicep, hard. When I turned, she just shook her head “no.” Just a simple, silent, “no.” We don’t do that here. We stand silently in the wings, focusing on our craft, breathing, waiting for our entrance. I never tried it again.
When you can’t talk to your coworkers, acting becomes a lot less fun. The collaboration element is totally gone. And honestly, the “acting” element was gone for me, too. How am I supposed to find my character or sense of identity in a role when my role is “don’t let your voice stick out, don’t take a wrong step, blend in perfectly with eleven women who dislike you?”
So before the shows, instead of chatting, or doing jumping jacks, I wandered the theater. I’ve always loved theaters; the dramatic architecture, the ornate prosceniums, the stark contrast of backstage, so dark, so dusty. The theater was no Broadway house, but it had a fly system (which we didn’t use, because the Greeks wouldn’t have been able to fly anything in), just over three hundred seats (including a mezzanine– fancy!), and lots of backstage space. I could say more about it, because I spent hours during the run of the show wandering, but it wouldn’t be terribly interesting to anyone who’s not me. Just know, it was a beautiful old theater– and I mean OLD. Built in the 1910s, just before the Great Depression. I used to love imagining how many generations of people had performed on that stage, imagining what they’d think of this show, or what they’d think of me.
About a week into my wandering, on some fifteen-minute break, I was looking at the ladder that led up to the catwalk– a long, thin metal walkway stretching across the stage from above, usually used for hanging lights. I wondered how long it had been since it was used during a show. I wondered if it was even safe. What would the view be like from up there, seeing the entire stage from thirty feet in the air?
I slowly looked up the ladder. I wouldn’t actually climb it. That would be crazy, right? I’m not particularly good with heights. As my eyes lifted, I made eye contact– or rather, mask contact– with someone. A fellow chorus girl, up on the catwalk.
I stopped breathing for a second. What was she doing up there? I started to say something stupid, like, “Why are you up there?” when just as quickly as the face appeared, it vanished. I saw her white robed form retreat down the catwalk, heading for a different ladder, probably. It was weird. Why did she run? Embarrassed to be caught somewhere she shouldn’t be?
I allowed myself to entertain a little fantasy: maybe she was just like me. Maybe she also hated the other chorus girls, and didn’t “get” The Bacchae. Maybe she was exploring the theater for fun on our break, enjoying the old architecture, like I did. I had no idea who she was under the mask, and she had no idea who I was. She probably thought I was one of the normal judgemental girls, and ran off before I could tell on her to the stage manager.
I was filled with unfounded hope. Could I make a friend here? Was it possible? After two and a half weeks of silence from the other girls, it was hard to imagine. How would I find her? How would I let her know it was me– that I had seen her on the catwalk, and we were the same?
After that day, I got much more observant. When the director called for a break, instead of immediately retreating into the depths of backstage, I watched my eleven doppelgangers carefully, tracking who went for water, who went back to the dressing rooms, who ran off towards the vending machines. It was hard to tell everyone apart, but people had to take their masks off to drink water eventually. I memorized faces and tried to keep track of them. I started to get a handle on everyone’s patterns, narrowing down potential adventurers.
It was impossible. Eleven people is too many to observe. But I’m an actor. Memorizing shit is literally my job. By week four, just days from opening, I had three potential girls. I tried to stick close to them during rehearsals, picking one to follow each day, but nobody ever wandered towards the catwalk. Maybe the girl, whoever she was, had been scared away from adventuring when I caught her. I started to lose hope. We were opening soon– I should focus on making my entrances, not making friends.
But then I saw her again.
This time, it was half an hour before the curtain went up for our invited dress rehearsal. The press was there. I was nervous. I knew I had my part down, but when you’re doing a show, no matter how prepared you are, there’s always the lingering fear that you’ll freeze up, forget everything, and ruin everyone’s hard work. It just means that you care. I was surprised that I cared so much. I still didn’t even get the play. I couldn’t let the other girls see me weak. I barely show my real feelings to people I care about, much less mean actresses who look down on me. To get away from it all, I wandered down to another unused part of the stage: the orchestra pit. We did have music in the show, but the Greeks didn’t have orchestra pits. So it was closed off, being used as storage.
I loved it down there. I loved looking through the storage bins, finding props from long-forgotten productions– sometimes I would find something incredible, something I swore was from the day the theater opened, something old and valuable– and usually, I could never find it again. Those bins were a treasure trove. Of all the weird little spaces I found backstage, the pit was my favorite. I felt like a real explorer down there, illuminating my path with my phone flashlight, getting spooked when a mouse ran over my foot (of course the theater had mice, it was more than a hundred years old! And besides, every building has mice in New York City).
That day, I wasn’t there to look around. Just to sit. Just to catch my breath. I tiptoed down the creaky steps, and plopped myself on the ground, surrounded by bins. I inhaled and exhaled, smelling the mildew-y scent of old props on every side of me. And that’s when I heard a noise. Not a mouse noise– I was used to those. Something bigger. I turned my phone flashlight on immediately, calling, “hello?”
And the light landed on a mask, just like mine. Mine which was currently off, because I was doing my breathing exercises. I felt exposed– she could see my face, but I couldn’t see hers. I stood up. “You scared me!”
She didn’t respond. She looked at me for a second, and started to retreat the other way, towards the stairs at the other side of the pit.
“Wait!” I called. “I won’t tell anyone I saw you!”
She stopped for a second. But then she kept walking. I stood and followed. “Please stop. Can I at least know who you are? I don’t fit in with most of the chorus girls–”
I reached for her long white toga. I swear, I had it in my hand, but somehow, she slipped away. I staggered a bit, almost tripped, confused that I hadn’t made contact with her costume. And when I looked back up, I only saw a glimpse of her disappearing up the stairs. I tried to follow, again, but I found that side of the pit’s stairs reached a dead end. I didn’t understand how she’d gotten out. And when I looked back down at my phone, it was time for places. Disappointed and defeated, I rushed away to the other stairs, making my way to the stage right wing to wait for my entrance.
I counted heads immediately when I arrived. Maybe she hadn’t made it back yet. But, alas: twelve. All accounted for. I nudged a girl next to me, subtly. “Who was the last one here besides me?”
She just stared at me for a moment, which came off as very creepy through the blank dead stare of her mask. “How the fuck am I supposed to know? We all look exactly the same.”
I sighed. “Okay. Thanks.” For nothing, I thought bitterly.
The invited dress went well. The press liked it, as I’ve already said. I was distracted the entire time. After that day, I made it a habit to count all the girls when the stage manager called for “places.” If I was right about this girl, she, like me, would be one of the last, if not the last one there. She would be wandering, exploring, getting away from the bullies.
I wish I hadn’t done this. I wish I’d given up when she disappeared on a dead-end staircase. I wish I’d never seen her on the catwalk. Because when I started counting heads, I noticed something impossible. Sometimes, before we went on, I counted thirteen identical masked faces.
It was a chorus of twelve. It was supposed to be twelve. I’d recount. Recount again. Thirteen. A chill went down my spine. We all looked the same. Same masks, same togas, same wigs. Who was the imposter? How could anyone be an imposter? It didn’t make sense. How would they get into the theater? How would they get a costume?
I started counting more often. Between scenes, in the dressing rooms, even on stage during dull moments. It fluctuated. Sometimes I’d count twelve for a whole day, an entire show, and sigh in relief, feeling like some curse was broken. But the next day, at least once, I’d count thirteen.
And it seemed as if one masked pair of eyes was always trained on me. I don’t know how she knew it was me. We looked the same. But she’d stare. It felt scary, but also ridiculous– I couldn’t be sure it was the same person looking every time. I couldn’t be sure it was unlucky number thirteen. But I felt like it was.
I felt a lot of things. I felt like I couldn’t tell anyone. The other girls already didn’t like me– I couldn’t have them thinking I was crazy. And admitting the presence of the thirteenth would mean admitting to my adventures into forbidden backstage areas. I couldn’t lose this job. I was living paycheck to paycheck. I wasn’t eating well, or sleeping well– maybe this was all a hallucination. And somehow, my biggest feeling was that if I told someone about the thirteenth, I’d never see her again.
And I needed to see her again. The obsession had only gotten stronger. I knew, somehow, deep inside, that she was the one I had seen on the catwalk and in the orchestra pit. I no longer wanted to be her friend– I wanted to corner her. To ask who she was, and why she was sneaking in as if she was one of us. I wanted to ask what she wanted from me.
Because she must want something from me, right? Why else would she stare? Why would she appear only to me?
The timing never lined up. The show had opened at this point, and I had a job to do: delighting the audience. I couldn’t skip my entrance to catch number thirteen. The chorus formations would look ridiculous with a missing person. And as much as the other girls hated me, I owed it to them as my costars to make them look good.
Logically, I knew there was only one person the thirteenth could be: Catalina, the actress I’d replaced. She must be jealous of me. Bitter. Maybe she wanted to take my role, like I’d taken hers. It would be insane, but it was all that made sense. She was the only other person who had the costume, who knew the keypad code to get into the theater. She must have recovered from her fall and come to find me.
It was almost like a game. It definitely made the show more interesting for me. Before I realized what was happening, I dreaded performances. I felt stupid, taking on this role in a show I didn’t even understand. But now I had so much to do. I had to plan.
I started showing up early, an hour before my call time. I walked my old spots, thinking I may see her. The other chorus girls were impressed that I was showing up early, thinking it showed some sort of dedication to the show. I think they even started to hate me less. They still detested any attempts at conversation in the wings, but in the dressing room, I started to have a few breakthroughs. In particular, I started a semi-friendship with Erin. Ironically, she had been one of the three women I thought may be the thirteenth, until I realized the thirteenth wasn’t really one of us at all.
She was the only person who I could actually ask about Catalina. “Did she ever say anything about the theater? The building, I mean? Did she have a favorite part of it?”
Erin would laugh at my seemingly random specificity. “We weren’t close, Michelle. I have no idea what she thought about the theater.”
“What did she do on her breaks?”
Erin thought for a second. “I don’t know. I never saw her at the vending machines, or the dressing room. I guess she found some quiet place to run lines.”
That confirmed it, for me. A quiet place like the catwalk. Or the orchestra pit. We were three weeks into our five week run when I came up with a plan to catch Catalina. It wasn’t a great plan, and I had no idea if it would work, but showing up an hour early every day was making me tired and producing zero results. I needed a new strategy. I realized that after seeing her in the pit, I only ever saw the thirteenth when all twelve of us were together.
So I told a white lie. One night after the show, when everyone was changing in the dressing room, I appealed to my fellow chorus girls. “Are you guys busy before the show tomorrow?” I innocently asked. “I’m feeling a little shaky on some of the entrances. If we could all get here just twenty minutes before our call time tomorrow, I’d love to run some stuff with you guys. I’ve been running it on my own, but without the entire team, I don’t always remember where I fit.”
To my surprise and intense joy, everyone agreed. They really did seem to respect me more when I looked like I was taking my role seriously. I could barely sleep that night, I was so excited to see if my plan worked. And hey, if it didn’t, I had two more weeks of shows to think up something else.
It was a Sunday night, our last show of the week. Mondays are often “dark days” in professional theater, meaning there are no shows that day to give the team a rest. I had planned this on purpose– if I failed, I had a dark day to reflect on that failure and try again.
At 5:40, twenty minutes before our call time, all the girls were assembled and in costume. We started running entrances. After ten minutes, I thought my plan had failed. We had run our first three entrances, and I never counted more than twelve heads in the wings. But around 5:55, as we got to our entrances in act two, offstage, I locked eyes with a mask. A thirteenth mask.
I quickly told everyone “I think I got it, you guys, thank you so much for coming early!” Everyone mumbled that it was no problem, that they were happy to help.
The thirteenth mask broke eye contact with me, looking around in confusion– perhaps distress. The girls started to trickle back towards the dressing room. The thirteenth turned and power-walked away. I shoved through the crowd to catch her, not calling out like I had in the past. I knew she didn’t respond to that. I knew I had to catch her now or never. Once we were out of the crowd’s eyeline, I began to run. She ran, too. “You’re not getting away this time!” I yelled, like some kind of cartoon superhero. My adrenaline was pumping, and blood rushed to my ears.
After I yelled, I suddenly became aware of another set of running feet behind me. “Michelle? Where are you going?” It was Erin’s voice.
“Don’t follow me!” I hastily called back, picking up speed. The thirteenth also picked up speed. Though she was running just as fast as I was, she showed no signs of exertion. I couldn’t hear heavy breathing, or heavy feet on the floor. It was like she was gliding. It infuriated me.
Erin didn’t let up. “Michelle, the stage manager is gonna wonder where we are!”
I ignored her. The thirteenth rounded a corner, and I realized where she was going: the catwalk. The ladder.
She ascended the rungs rapidly, like a spider. I clamored up much less gracefully. Erin’s voice had a heavy tinge of concern. “Michelle, what are you doing?! It’s not safe up there!”
“Then don’t follow me!” I yelled back, exasperated. “This is between me and her!” Despite my vocal warning, I heard Erin climbing behind me.
Once on the metal rail, I looked both ways, terrified she’d escaped me again. But her white toga was just a few feet away, retreating into darkness. I lunged at her. The entire catwalk shook. The thirteenth and I both grabbed the railing to steady ourselves. We met eyes. Or rather, we met masks.
“You have nowhere to go.” I stated.
I heard Erin reaching the top of the ladder behind me. “Michelle, come down, please. You’re scaring me.”
“I can’t. I finally have her.” I took a step towards the thirteenth. She took an equal and opposite step back. “Take the mask off.” I beckoned her. “I know it’s you, Catalina.”
I felt the rail shake slightly as Erin got on it. “What are you talking about, Michelle?!”
“She’s been sneaking in, Erin! She’s been standing in the wings with us before we enter! For weeks!” I took another step towards the thirteenth. In my peripheral vision, I could see how high we were above the stage. Thirty feet. You could die, falling from that height.
“It’s not Catalina. It can’t be. Stop this.” Erin called. Finally, frustrated, I turned towards her.
“Who else could it be?!”
Erin had taken her mask off. Her face was streaked with terror. “Catalina died, Michelle. She fell off this catwalk, directly onto her face, and she died. Please come down with me. I don’t know who you’re talking to, and I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but it isn’t worth it.”
“What are you talking about? I’m talking to–”
I turned back, and she was gone. Vanished like a bad dream. “I swear to God, Erin.” I started to say. “She was right in front of me. I chased her here–”
I turned back to Erin. The thirteenth was behind her.
It made no sense. Nobody can move that fast. Nobody can be in front of me one second and behind me the next. It was inhuman. I stopped speaking. I stopped breathing. It sucks to learn that in a fight-or-flight situation, my answer is to freeze.
Erin must’ve seen how my face changed. “Michelle?” She asked quietly. “What’s wrong?”
Behind her, the thirteenth raised a hand to her mask. Her hands were impossibly pale. How had I never noticed that before? She gripped the mask in her hand. Time stretched. It must’ve only been a second, because Erin didn’t move. But it felt like years of my life passed me by as the thirteenth, inch by inch, raised her mask from her face. Or– raised her mask.
Because there was no face.
Under the mask, pale and gruesome, was a bloody flat edge. Broken, disgusting, it was impossible to make out eyes, or a nose, or a mouth. Inside a somewhat face-shaped frame of stark-white skin, all I could see was flesh, red and raw, squished in on itself. Like someone had fallen from a very high height. And landed on their face.
By the time I finally began to react, it was too late. The thirteenth– or, Catalina– or, the ghost, or– whatever the fuck that thing was. It moved its hands from the mask to Erin’s shoulders. And it pushed. And she screamed, agonizingly loud, as she flew over the side of the railing. And she screamed for the second or so she was in the air. I was screaming, too. And after the crunch of her body hitting the wooden floor of the stage, everyone else screamed, cast and crew alike.
I stared down at her limp form from thirty feet up. Her legs were twisted the wrong way. A pool of blood began to seep out of her. When I looked up again, I expected the thirteenth to be gone, but it wasn’t. With no eyes, it was also looking down at Erin. At what it had done.
And then, slowly, it turned towards me. On all fours, backwards, I scrambled away from it on the catwalk, terrified, not wanting to be next. The thirteenth’s shoulders shook rapidly, like a person laughing. But it made no sound. It never made a sound. Not going up the stairs of the orchestra pit. Not when it pushed Erin. And not as it climbed back down the ladder, rung by rung. I found myself alone on the catwalk.
Erin survived, somehow, paralyzed from the waist down. Apparently she fell on her legs, which, when you’re falling from thirty feet up, is a good thing. If she’d gone down head first, there was no chance. The show had to close, of course. When they lost Catalina a few weeks into rehearsal, she was replaceable. But with me refusing to go on, and Erin in the hospital, there was nothing to be done. I haven’t seen Erin since that day. I feel too guilty. But I was never arrested, so I guess she told the authorities that I didn’t push her. I don’t know what she told them. I don’t know what I would’ve told them, had they asked me.
I don’t do stage plays anymore. The family I used to nanny for gave me a star-studded recommendation, and now I make my living taking care of a five-year-old and a two-year-old for another filthy-rich family. I still act, but I only audition for film work.
I don’t even see plays these days. I won’t set foot in a theater. If the thirteenth had vanished off that catwalk, maybe things would be different. Maybe I could chalk it up to an extreme hallucination, some terrifying creature my mind brewed up to cope with the stress of the show and paying rent. Maybe I could even forget its bloody mess of viscera in the vague shape of a face.
But I saw it go down that ladder. Rung by fucking rung. And I know it’s still out there.
Erin was unlucky. Erin was a victim of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. And if I step inside a theater again, some way, somehow, I know the thirteenth will get me on another catwalk.
This time, I’ll be the one going over the railing.
And I’ve never once landed on my feet.
submitted by dollcollective to nosleep [link] [comments]

2023.06.07 04:20 sonnythepig Simping for the boys 💪🤌

Simping for the boys 💪🤌 submitted by sonnythepig to shitposting [link] [comments]

2023.06.07 04:05 chbmg Saber - We Want More Balanced Matches! Here's How...

Saber - We Want More Balanced Matches! Here's How...
I'll try to keep this shorter - my last post on this subject was way too long. Brevity is not my strong suit. If you want a detailed analysis, I have one here: My Loquacious Windbag "Word Fort"
I polled the community and we overwhelmingly want most matches to be close/challenging (i.e. balanced): The Poll For Balance
Also, the community has confirmed that the single biggest issue for this game is a lack of balance/fixes: What went wrong with this game?
I put together a chart below to convey the gist of everything I said in my original post. Basically, this chart shows how games tend to snowball for one side or the other based mostly on how good/cooperative survivors are in a match. It only takes 1 bad/low-level survivor to start tilting a match in the demon's favor. Conversely, if all survivors are pretty good/cooperative and are all at level 25+, then the balance tilts more strongly in favor of survivors. At the more extreme ends of this pattern (2+ bad survivors OR a team of prestige survivors all playing their roles well), the game is completely lopsided.
NOTE: The red line below is how things look today. The green line represents what matches could be like with some simple changes.
Percentages above are just a rough estimate - the general PATTERN is the most important part to focus on
Anyway, it's undeniable at this point that most matches are unbalanced. Survivors who yell "demon OP" are likely experiencing more games on the left of the chart, esp. in solo q, and demons who yell "survivors OP" are likely experiencing more games on the right of the chart, esp. against survivors who group up. I play both roughly equally, so I see a lot of this from both sides.
The general problem with balance in this game is that most matches are "stomp or be stomped." Close games are rare, and I think it's much easier to see why with a visual representation.
Also, the game is worse for newcomers than ever before - they're up against even stronger opponents (up to P5) compared to those of us who started after release but before prestige was a thing. This game might be the most hostile online competitive game for newbies that I've ever seen. The vast majority will quit. We need "new blood" for the game to survive. It cannot just be hardcore survivors vs hardcore demons - that scenario will currently favor hardcore survivors so demons will quit, queue times for survivors will reach new heights, and the game will die.
The answer is NOT to just buff/nerf one side. Instead, the answer is to elevate "bad" survivor teams (as in, 1+ "bad" teammates) and challenge "good" survivor teams (as in, the teams that can melt a boss right after it spawns). Similarly, you would also want to elevate "bad/new" demons and challenge "good/veteran" demons. If you do all this together, the chart can look more like the green line and we'll all have more matches that feel balanced.
It's literally painful as someone with a background in programming and game dev to see how easily balance can be improved. I've tweaked the recommendations from my last post to try to stick to the least controversial changes and I'm only listing stuff that can be easily implemented by Saber (as in, most are literally just a couple lines of code).
Proposed Changes:
  1. Fix the "dodge into trap" workaround for fear-looping. Basically, ACTUALLY fix Baal (fear-looping via dodging is mostly only used by veteran demons and not used by newbies). Revert demon traps to their previous behavior for all other demons (this mostly benefits novice demons and mostly just makes games slightly more challenging for lone-wolf veteran survivors)
  2. Make vaulting cost stamina (looping a demon through buildings/railings is mostly only used by veteran survivors)
  3. Create hints for new players at the match loading screen that are clear and direct (more details in original post). Also, add flashing text in the bottom-center of the screen that alerts survivors that they're "playing stupid" (i.e. "the [insert weapon name] you are holding should go to [insert character with this weapon specialty], you should try giving 2 of your 3 Shemps to [insert Support name], you are [insert distance over 100m] from any teammates and should return to them, the [insert "dagger" or "pages"] objective is running - you need to go there, etc.). Obviously, these hints could drastically help new/bad survivors, esp. in solo q
  4. Give out a bonus XP for "good behavior" (not demolishing newbies), cancel XP for “toxic behavior” (flashlight clicking as survivor, dancing on corpses as demon), level up demon based on levels of victims (e.g. less for downing noobs, more for downing pros - base it on the internal MMR stats that Saber already has, rather than just level/prestige). These changes all make the game more welcoming to newbies on both sides
  5. Do not allow dagger and pages objectives to run simultaneously (this "split cap" method is usually only used successfully by veteran survivors, can sometimes be impossible to counter, and can also conversely cause a guaranteed loss for survivors when tried by newbies)
  6. Add a call out in the in-game communication wheel to say "I need help" for survivors. This simple change could help anyone in solo q
  7. Adjust chest rarity RNG based on the overall skill level of survivors (this can also be based more on the internal MMR stats that we know Saber already tracks since we used to have SBMM, rather than just player level/prestige). Also, if a player disconnects, all unopened chests on the map should immediately go up in value (i.e. grey to blue, blue to purple, purple to gold, and gold obviously stays gold). This change literally perfectly challenges veterans and helps bad/unlucky teams, resulting directly in more balanced games
  8. More double XP/SP events. Also, give a one-time bonus of at least 200k+ SP to anyone with zero prestige characters (this helps them quickly get at least 1 survivor or demon up near lvl 25 so they aren't just totally stomped all the time). This helps balance out everyone
FAQ:
Q: Why not just use skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) for balanced matches?
A: Because we don't currently have enough players - queue times would be too high. Also, it still doesn't address the fact that most matches tend to snowball too much right now.
Q: These are just survivor nerfs!
A: That's not a question and no they are not. Please try again. Also, please try demon for a few days.
Q: These are just demon nerfs!
A: That's not a question and no they are not. Please try again. Also, please try solo q for a few days.
Q: Why post a lot of the same stuff again?
A: I made some important changes and my last post fell on some deaf ears. I love the Evil Dead and I love the game and I want it to succeed so we can all keep enjoying it.
A Note To Saber:
Saber, you've said you want to see what the players want and here it is. We want more balanced games and it's so easy to do this stuff in the next patch. More balance = more happy newbies + veterans = higher player numbers = more DLC sales = profit. Please don't just fall back on the same tired buffs and nerfs - give some thought to what's actually wrong and fix it already.
Please get this in front of decision-makers and restore faith in the loyal fans of this game. Otherwise, we're just gonna keep thinking of this whenever we see anything from Saber...
https://preview.redd.it/6cw4oz9mnh4b1.jpg?width=1819&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=01f0680b3ecb79cf8a8e8ae815a03d9a66a5e8ba
submitted by chbmg to EvilDeadTheGame [link] [comments]

2023.06.07 04:03 LonnieJay1 Storytime: DIY Ultra Rapid Opioid detox (not recommended, wound up on life support for 3 days)

Have you ever wanted to get off opiates so badly you'd be willing to do anything?
Summer, 2017. Orange County, California
I park my car in another part of the same neighborhood. I don't bother to check my surroundings. I pick a water bottle up off the floor, get my works ready, and prep an extremely strong shot of furanylfentanyl for myself. My heart is racing, I'm shaking, I'm sweating, I feel sick to my stomach. How is it possible that I feel this sick and terrible so soon after my last shot?
I'm in trouble.
I use the seatbelt to crudely constrict blood flow to my arm. I inject the furanylfentanyl and cap the needle. I open my car door and lean my head towards the opening, in case I have to vomit.
The rush hits too quickly. My heart slows. My muscles relax. My stomach does a backflip. I try to cling to what pleasurable sensations I can, but nausea overwhelms me and an encapsulating weakness dulls the entire experience. I start to salivate, a sure sign that I am about to throw up. I start to feel very dizzy.
"NO!" I scream. "Don't overdose! don't overdose!" I yell, slapping myself in the face. The sudden movement of slapping myself causes my nausea to worsen. I let my head hang over the opening in my car door to the asphalt below.
"Stay awake. Stay awake. Stay awake," I yell, out loud, to keep me engaged. I hear a dog bark and do my best to look up from the asphalt. There is a woman walking her dog away from me. Did she see me? Does it matter?
If she calls the cops, does it matter? I try to keep watching her as she continues to walk away. Does anything matter? Does anyone even see me? Am I just a ghost, stuck on this hellish plane with my only relief being small chunks of fake feelings that I buy for hundreds of dollars and shoot into my veins, until my body finally breaks down and dies on me?
Something snaps within me.
This has to end – NOW.
Later that night.
"Ok, Bryson sent you here, and he always sends good people, so we can just do all the intake stuff tomorrow. Your bed is upstairs. Hey, Logan!" the chunky, tan, toothless house manager turns and yells towards the living room of my new flophouse, at the two 20-somethings playing Call of Duty on a gigantic HDTV.
"What," one of them snaps, quietly and unenthusiastically, not looking away from the TV. All I can see is the Boston Celtics flat-brim hat that he has on backwards.
"Can you show the new guy here to his bed? It's in your room," the house manager says.
"What? Why is he in my room?" Logan asks, irritation plain in his voice.
"Because I said so," the house manager says, walking towards them now, as if he is going to get in front of the TV and block their view of it.
The kid with the Celtics hat gets up suddenly and starts to walk towards me. He strides past me, not even looking at me.
"Thanks," I say to the house manager, before turning away from him to follow the lazily bobbing Celtics hat upstairs.
"See you tomorrow morning! Don't forget to come see me in the morning!" the flophouse manager calls after us. Despite not having me fill out any paperwork or giving me a drug test, I will be able to start living here right away because I have private health insurance. I might as well have swiped my health insurance card at the door of this flophouse hotel.
Logan walks like he can do no wrong and the world owes him something, which makes me hate him instantly. He leads me to the first bedroom at the top of the stairs, which is indistinguishable from any other middle-class suburban single-family home. It is smaller than my childhood bedroom, with two twin beds maybe 5 feet apart, two small nightstands that practically touch each other, and one dresser.
"This is my bed. Don't touch any of my stuff. That dresser is mine," he says, pointing to the indiscriminate wooden dresser against the wall opposite our beds. I feel a flash of anger.
"Nah. There’s only one dresser. We'll split it up tomorrow," I say. He turns towards me and looks me in the eyes. He’s taller than me, with long dark hair and a lean frame. I stare at him, my jaw clenched in rage, daring him to touch me, so I can take my anger out on something besides myself. I don't care if he knows how to fight and whips my ass right now, I'm at the absolute end of my rope with living on this Earth. He scoffs and walks out of the room. I sit on the twin bed that is now ‘mine’. It feels brand new. New beds means that a new flophouse has arrived in Orange County.
I wish I didn't have to precipitate my withdrawal, but this has to end sometime, and there is no time but now. I have four somas, six xanax bars, and half a naltrexone pill - 25mg - in my pocket. I pull the loose pills out of my pocket and look at them.
Six xanax bars is definitely not enough to make me black out. Six xanax bars isn't even enough to fully get rid of the restlessness, let alone cause me to sleep through the night, but at least I have 4 somas. The muscle-relaxing somas will have to do some heavy lifting, but I know they can do it.
Somas absolutely wreck me. I haven’t taken one in a long time, but I know I respond strongly to them. Taking six xanax and four somas would ordinarily be enough to cause me to black out for a full day, but I don’t know if they will even work through 25 milligrams of naltrexone.
Just thinking the word ‘naltrexone’ causes my stomach to drop and my heart to start racing. I am absolutely petrified at the thought of taking this naltrexone.
Well, it’s time to nut the fuck up and do it, Lonnie. You decided to go on your little furanylfentanyl binge, now you have to take this naltrexone. You made your shitty flophouse bed, now you have to lay in it. You’re going to be sick either way by the time the morning comes.
I try to swallow, but my mouth is dry with anxiety. How much do somas contribute to respiratory depression? I can’t remember off the top of my head. I don’t remember what the median lethal dose is, what the mechanism of action is, or even what receptors it interacts with, aside from the same GABA receptors that xanax acts upon. I wonder if there is an increased risk of respiratory depression from combining soma with xanax.
I pull out of my phone, so I can google just how sedating the soma is when combined with xanax, to make sure I am not going to stop breathing during the procedure.
You’re wasting your time, Lonnie. You have to be conscious in the morning and able to talk to the house manager. You’ve overdosed 3 times in the past few weeks. If you can inject enough fentanyl to kill 5 people, you can take 4 somas with 6 xanax. It isn’t going to kill you – and if it does, who cares? Either way, it’ll finally be over.
This has to end. I’d rather die than keep doing this, anyway.
I walk into the bathroom, the pills clenched in my fist like a loaded revolver, and close the door. I turn on the sink and put all 4 somas in my mouth. I stick my head in the sink and part my lips slightly, drinking from the stream as if I had a straw in my mouth. I swallow the pills and then put all 6 xanax in my mouth. I turn the tap off and start to chew.
My mouth fills with the incredibly bitter taste of the xanax. I used to watch people do this and nearly throw up at the mere sight alone. Now, my mouth salivates with excitement as the bitterness overwhelms me.
I hate how much my brain loves the bitter taste of chemicals. I wish my brain hated the bitterness, like normal people. I hate being a drug addict.
I swallow a few times to clear my mouth out and then drink more from the tap. I look at the orange half-pill of naltrexone in my hand. I sigh. This is going to suck.
Hurry up and swallow it, bitch boy. You don’t want to black out and start throwing fruit around before the withdrawal kicks in, like you did at Amelia’s house.
I can’t look away from the orange half-pill.
Just take it and get it over with. Put the naltrexone in your mouth and swallow it.
I know this is going to make me sick within 3 minutes of taking it. I might as well swallow dynamite – in fact, I would prefer to swallow dynamite. The taste of the xanax lingers in my mouth. I have to take the naltrexone. There is no avoiding it.
I put the pill in my mouth and drink from the tap again. I swallow the naltrexone, turn off the sink, and go back to my new flophouse bedroom, my heart pounding with overwhelming anxiety, feeling like I just made the worst decision I have ever made in my life, which is saying something. I turn off the lights, close the door, and get into the bed. I lay down on my side and close my eyes firmly. I am going to sleep, right now.
5 minutes into self-induced ultra-rapid detox.
My stomach is cramping. It hurts so bad that I can’t move my hands away from it. It feels like I swallowed poison. There is an odd sensation of electricity attached to the pain that is coming from the back of my neck. I am curled in the fetal position because my stomach hurts so bad, but everything else hurts too. How did it hit this hard and this fast? It wasn’t supposed to hit this hard or this quickly.
I throw the blanket off of me. It’s so hot, I can’t bear to have that blanket anywhere near me. The heat is so intense, I can feel it radiating off my skin. I am covered in sweat.
Why does my stomach hurt so bad? It has never hurt this bad before. I can barely breathe through the pain.
9 minutes into the procedure.
It’s so cold, my sweat feels like prickly ice water. I reach for the blanket and wrap it around me as tightly as I can. I move my feet, so the blanket is wrapped completely around them. I can feel my toes writhing back and forth, my legs moving uncontrollably. I am shaking uncontrollably, so I shake intentionally. Where is the xanax? Please, kick in. Please. Please.
God, if you’re listening, stop playing with me and kill me or let that xanax through my first-pass metabolism and into my bloodstream. I chewed it. It should be kicking in and making these symptoms milder.
T+ 14 minutes.
I feel an electric zap in my stomach that becomes a cramp. I hold my abdominals and try to massage them to stop the cramp, which is so painful I can’t breathe. I have the sudden need to use the bathroom. I jump out of bed and powerwalk to the bathroom. Luckily everyone is still downstairs playing video games or not home yet. At least this flophouse doesn’t have a curfew.
I sit down on the toilet and try to sit still. I cannot stop my body from moving for even one second. It feels like my insides are on fire. This is discomfort beyond anything I have ever experienced or imagined.
T+ 20 minutes.
It is so hot. I can’t believe how overheated I feel. I must be on the precipice of brain damage. I lay on the bed, curled in the fetal position, drenched in sweat, forcing myself to shake as vigorously as I can so that I can pretend that I am complicit in this. The xanax has to be kicking in any second now. I should be nearly unconscious right now.
A fresh electric cramp hits my stomach, driving the air from my lungs. I get up from the bed, power walking back to the bathroom, doubled over with pain. I sit down on the toilet and feel the urge to scream. I leave my body bent forward because I can’t sit up straight with this cramp. I see the trash can right across from me. My stomach is so fucked up, maybe I just need to throw up.
T+ 1 hour.
I inhale. I exhale. I inhale. I exhale.
I am not asleep, but I am not awake. I can tell that horrible things are happening in my body and brain, but I am too sedated now to be able to maintain full awareness. I am scared that I will be aware of the moment when I stop breathing – that I will suffocate while I am fully conscious, since that is exactly what I deserve.
I am no longer panicking, but my stomach is beyond fucked. I have been getting up every 5 minutes to go to the bathroom, and now my roommate is in here. It is 12 AM. I have 6 hours left to go.
The soma has all but gotten rid of the cramps. I can now lay still. The temperature swings aren’t nearly as bad – it almost seems as if they’re happening to a body that I can feel but is not mine.
You’re going to do it, Lonnie. You’re outsmarting addiction. Before you know it, you’re going to be getting the naltrexone implant, and then you’ll be back to training hard for college basketball.
I get up from the bed. I walk back to the bathroom, now having to walk carefully, my arms outstretched. The combination of the xanax and the somas has me extremely uncoordinated. I walk towards the bathroom, closing one eye to combat the double vision I have now. I slowly reach for the door and open it. I close it behind me, carefully and slowly. I walk to the toilet and sit on it as quickly as I can, due to the growing urgency of the signals from my stomach. I put my head in my hands and my elbows on my knees. One of my elbows slip immediately, and I almost fall off the toilet.
I fix my seat and put my head back in my hands, more carefully this time. Though I feel physical sensations of pain and discomfort, they are being sent through a deeply dizzying diversion. The discomfort is distant. I can’t be bothered to worry about it right now.
Stay awake, Lonnie. You can’t pass out on the toilet. You’ll get caught and kicked out or taken to a hospital. I cradle my head. I’ll get up in a second.
I hear a loud crashing sound and open my eyes. I’m sandwiched between the toilet and the wall. I reach up for the toilet and successfully pull the seat down after several failed attempts, so I can use it to help me up. Slowly and carefully, I get up from the floor. I pull the seat up and sit back down on the toilet.
I stand up from the toilet and start to walk out of the bathroom. Before I even make it to the door, I feel the need to sit back on the toilet.
This is not good. The soma probably relaxed everything too much. I might have to sit on this toilet for the rest of the night, shitting my brains out. I cradle my head in my hands, so I can relax on the toilet.
Don’t relax too much, Lonnie. You might fall asleep on the toilet. Just keep breathing. You’re probably not breathing very much. You should NOT be conscious right now. Just because the naltrexone is painful enough to force you to maintain consciousness doesn’t mean that your body isn’t barely clinging to life.
I inhale. I exhale.
I feel myself slipping off the toilet. Fuck, I need to get up. I need to do something to stay awake. I can take a shower; I just have to get up from the toilet. Give it another second, though.
I can just wait here for one more second.
​
I woke up 3 days later in the ICU as they were pulling the breathing tubes out of me
submitted by LonnieJay1 to opiates [link] [comments]

2023.06.07 03:35 Zealousideal-Fix1697 Golden 23 full team

Golden 23 full team
Just a friendly reminder this is for completionist. THIS IS NOT A competitive team. But just trying to achieve the canonic team from the manga whit the players we have as f2p. Also sadly there is no Soda Golden 23 version (wich is very rare that they forgot him).
submitted by Zealousideal-Fix1697 to CaptainTsubasaDT [link] [comments]

2023.06.07 03:20 Personal_Hippo1277 Clio Token Size As Text Size By Tier Comparison [Mega Text Wall For Enjoyers of Scrolling]

When I was brand new to NovelAi I had no idea how 2048 tokens really looked as text. So for anyone looking at the tiers, trying to decide how many tokens they want for Clio with the new update, I've tokenized Part of The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald (public domain since 2021).
That way new users can more easily visualize what the AI's maximum context is for each tier. According to the UI Clio uses the NerdStash Tokenizer, as different tokenizers will convert text to tokens their own way.
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In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgements, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.
And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.
My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.
I never saw this great-uncle, but I’m supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father’s office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm centre of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, “Why—ye-es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.
The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather-beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog—at least I had him for a few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.
It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.
“How do you get to West Egg village?” he asked helplessly.
I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighbourhood.
And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale News—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.
It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York—and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual wonder to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more interesting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.
I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion. Or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbour’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.
Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I’d known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.
Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savours of anticlimax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he’d left Chicago and come East in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance, he’d brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.
Why they came East I don’t know. They had spent a year in France for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn’t believe it—I had no sight into Daisy’s heart, but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.
And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red-and-white Georgian Colonial mansion, overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran towards the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sundials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.
He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty, with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.
His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.
“Now, don’t think my opinion on these matters is final,” he seemed to say, “just because I’m stronger and more of a man than you are.” We were in the same senior society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.
We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.
“I’ve got a nice place here,” he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.
Turning me around by one arm, he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep, pungent roses, and a snub-nosed motorboat that bumped the tide offshore.
“It belonged to Demaine, the oil man.” He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. “We’ll go inside.”
We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-coloured space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.
The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.
The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.
“I’m p-paralysed with happiness.”
She
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laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I’ve heard it said that Daisy’s murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)
At any rate, Miss Baker’s lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly, and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self-sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.
I looked back at my cousin, who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.
I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way East, and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.
“Do they miss me?” she cried ecstatically.
“The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath, and there’s a persistent wail all night along the north shore.”
“How gorgeous! Let’s go back, Tom. Tomorrow!” Then she added irrelevantly: “You ought to see the baby.”
“I’d like to.”
“She’s asleep. She’s three years old. Haven’t you ever seen her?”
“Never.”
“Well, you ought to see her. She’s—”
Tom Buchanan, who had been hovering restlessly about the room, stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.
“What you doing, Nick?”
“I’m a bond man.”
“Who with?”
I told him.
“Never heard of them,” he remarked decisively.
This annoyed me.
“You will,” I answered shortly. “You will if you stay in the East.”
“Oh, I’ll stay in the East, don’t you worry,” he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. “I’d be a God damned fool to live anywhere else.”
At this point Miss Baker said: “Absolutely!” with such suddenness that I started—it was the first word she had uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.
“I’m stiff,” she complained, “I’ve been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember.”
“Don’t look at me,” Daisy retorted, “I’ve been trying to get you to New York all afternoon.”
“No, thanks,” said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry. “I’m absolutely in training.”
Her host looked at her incredulously.
“You are!” He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. “How you ever get anything done is beyond me.”
I looked at Miss Baker, wondering what it was she “got done.” I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage, which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming, discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.
“You live in West Egg,” she remarked contemptuously. “I know somebody there.”
“I don’t know a single—”
“You must know Gatsby.”
“Gatsby?” demanded Daisy. “What Gatsby?”
Before I could reply that he was my neighbour dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.
Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out on to a rosy-coloured porch, open toward the sunset, where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.
“Why candles?” objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. “In two weeks it’ll be the longest day in the year.” She looked at us all radiantly. “Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.”
“We ought to plan something,” yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.
“All right,” said Daisy. “What’ll we plan?” She turned to me helplessly: “What do people plan?”
Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.
“Look!” she complained; “I hurt it.”
We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.
“You did it, Tom,” she said accusingly. “I know you didn’t mean to, but you did do it. That’s what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great, big, hulking physical specimen of a—”
“I hate that word ‘hulking,’ ” objected Tom crossly, “even in kidding.”
“Hulking,” insisted Daisy.
Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here, and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West, where an evening was hurried from phase to phase towards its close, in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.
“You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy,” I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. “Can’t you talk about crops or something?”
I meant nothing in particular by this remark, but it was taken up in an unexpected way.
“Civilization’s going to pieces,” broke out Tom violently. “I’ve gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read The Rise of the Coloured Empires by this man Goddard?”
“Why, no,” I answered, rather surprised by his tone.
“Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
“Tom’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—”
“Well, these books are all scientific,” insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. “This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.”
“We’ve got to beat them down,” whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.
“You ought to live in California—” began Miss Baker, but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.
“This idea is that we’re Nordics. I am, and you are, and you are, and—” After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod, and she winked at me again. “—And we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?”
There was something pathetic in his concentration, as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned towards me.
“I’ll tell you a family secret,” she whispered enthusiastically. “It’s about the butler’s nose. Do you want to hear about the butler’s nose?”
“That’s why I came over tonight.”
“Well, he wasn’t always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night, until finally it began to affect his nose—”
“Things went from bad to worse,” suggested Miss Baker.
“Yes. Things went from bad to worse, until finally he had to give up his position.”
For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.
The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom’s ear, whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair, and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her, Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.
“I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn’t he?” She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation: “An absolute rose?”
This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing, but a stirring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.
Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said “Sh!” in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond, and Miss Baker leaned forward unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.
“This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbour—” I began.
“Don’t talk. I want to hear what happens.”
“Is something happening?” I inquired innocently.
“You mean to say you don’t know?” said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. “I thought everybody knew.”
“I don’t.”
“Why—” she said hesitantly. “Tom’s got some woman in New York.”
“Got some woman?” I repeated blankly.
Miss Baker nodded.
“She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner time. Don’t you think?”
Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots, and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.
“It couldn’t be helped!” cried Daisy with tense gaiety.
She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me, and continued: “I looked outdoors for a minute, and it’s very romantic outdoors. There’s a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He’s singing away—” Her voice sang: “It’s romantic, isn’t it, Tom?”
“Very romantic,” he said, and then miserably to me: “If it’s light enough after dinner, I want to take you down to the stables.”
The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at everyone, and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn’t guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking, but I doubt if even Miss Baker, who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy scepticism, was able utterly to put this fifth guest’s shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.
The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them, strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while, trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf, I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.
Daisy took her face in her hands as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.
“We don’t know each other very well, Nick,” she said suddenly. “Even if we are cousins. You didn’t come to my wedding.”
“I wasn’t back from the war.”
“That’s true.” She hesitated. “Well, I’ve had a very bad time, Nick, and I’m pretty cynical about everything.”
Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she
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didn’t say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.
“I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything.”
“Oh, yes.” She looked at me absently. “Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?”
“Very much.”
“It’ll show you how I’ve gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.’
“You see I think everything’s terrible anyhow,” she went on in a convinced way. “Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything and done everything.” Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom’s, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. “Sophisticated—God, I’m sophisticated!”
The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face, as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.
Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the Saturday Evening Post—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamplight, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.
When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.
“To be continued,” she said, tossing the magazine on the table, “in our very next issue.”
Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.
“Ten o’clock,” she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. “Time for this good girl to go to bed.”
“Jordan’s going to play in the tournament tomorrow,” explained Daisy, “over at Westchester.”
“Oh—you’re Jordan Baker.”
I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.
“Good night,” she said softly. “Wake me at eight, won’t you.”
“If you’ll get up.”
“I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon.”
“Of course you will,” confirmed Daisy. “In fact I think I’ll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I’ll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing—”
“Good night,” called Miss Baker from the stairs. “I haven’t heard a word.”
“She’s a nice girl,” said Tom after a moment. “They oughtn’t to let her run around the country this way.”
“Who oughtn’t to?” inquired Daisy coldly.
“Her family.”
“Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick’s going to look after her, aren’t you, Nick? She’s going to spend lots of weekends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her.”
Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.
“Is she from New York?” I asked quickly.
“From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white—”
“Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?” demanded Tom suddenly.
“Did I?” She looked at me. “I can’t seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I’m sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know—”
“Don’t believe everything you hear, Nick,” he advised me.
I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called: “Wait!”
“I forgot to ask you something, and it’s important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West.”
“That’s right,” corroborated Tom kindly. “We heard that you were engaged.”
“It’s a libel. I’m too poor.”
“But we heard it,” insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. “We heard it from three people, so it must be true.”
Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn’t even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come East. You can’t stop going with an old friend on account of rumours, and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumoured into marriage.
Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he “had some woman in New York” was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.
Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red petrol-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight, and, turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbour’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.
I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn’t call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.
II
About halfway between West Egg and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of ash-grey men, who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.
But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to
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2023.06.07 03:13 ProfessionalWaltz784 India ink wood dye?

I'm building a bookshelf using ''pine" stair treads. I'm thinking about using India ink to stain it, then sealing for a brilliant black grain. I would appreciate input from you if you've used this before. Thank you!
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2023.06.07 03:11 lets-split-up I went on a cruise, and found the source of the rotting smell…

Imagine walking into a burning building, and everyone laughs and tells you the fire’s all in your head. When no one believes you, are you going to stay to burn up with them? Every passenger in that crowd waiting to embark on the luxury cruise was already dead—they just didn’t know it yet! I stared through the windows of the terminal at the magnificent Seastar, at the broken glass and spatters of blood that only I could see… and then I fled.
Without warning a single soul.
What would have been the point? My name is Cassandra—I see death six days before it happens, and can feel it if I shake a cold hand—but no matter what I do, I can never, ever prevent it.
My flight took me as far as the escalators before a flash of purple brought me screeching to a halt. Lily Tsuki? No—it wasn’t the purple-haired musician who’d given me with cruise gift card. But suddenly I remembered how I’d been looking forward to hearing her performance aboard this very vessel…
Oh God…
It was one thing to turn my back on doomed strangers. Terrible as it sounds, it’s a bit like reading about a catastrophe in the news. Quite another thing to abandon somebody I knew! Could I really leave her to become one of the bodies putrefying in the belly of the Seastar? Every time I ordered a drink at my favorite bar, I’d remember I hadn’t even tried to save her!
“Fuck!” I cried, fumbling for my phone. “Oh, fuck me sideways… how much time…?”
Ninety minutes.
Ninety minutes to get on board, find the musician, and… what? Convince her to disembark?
How?
And yet my feet were already turning toward the gangplank—because as it turns out, I would rather plunge headlong into a ship full of the rotting dead than face an empty piano bench and the guilt that no amount of alcohol would ever drown. But to have any chance at persuading Lily, I’d need to know how the passengers died. This meant that in addition to finding a purple-haired needle in a Titanic-sized haystack, a horrifying task loomed ahead of me. I was going to have to do something I had not done in a very long time—plunge directly into my vision. Walk into its very maw and face whatever gruesome horrors lurked at the source of that nauseating odor.
I was going to have to find the bodies…
… and whatever killed them.
Boarding
The stench was so overpowering after crossing the gangplank that I dropped to my knees and dry heaved. The flow of passengers moved around me past the concierge desk. I must have looked exceptionally sick, because a pretty girl in a suit skirt approached, asking if I needed assistance. She reached out a hand to help me up—cold!
I staggered away from her and inside. Then—because I felt I might throw up—quickly found my way out to the promenade deck and the blessed breeze.
Lifeboats hung overhead. Beyond the rail, the sea sparkled in the afternoon sun. Cushioned loungers lined the deck. None were in use, presumably because the pool, patio, spa, and other amenities on the upper decks had much more attractive areas for lounging. I leaned against the rail and gulped the air, listening to the waves splash against the side of the boat, noting blood spatters further down—but nothing signifying the cause of the blood. Just vague signs of violence.
After circling the entire promenade deck and spotting only the occasional bloody spatters, I gritted my teeth, pulled my shirt collar up over my nose, and plunged into the nearest door.
The Seastar’s interior had the atmosphere of a luxury hotel. People milled about the restaurant and shopping area, buzzing with excitement, talking about cabaret shows and fine dining, while perky crew members answered questions, all perfectly oblivious to the putrid sweet rotting stench. I’d most likely find Lily Tsuki at the piano lounge, but since I didn’t yet have any plausible explanation for what had happened to the passengers, I continued wandering, entering a bustling café overlooking the ship’s grand staircase. Stepping over an enormous blood stain on the carpet, I passed the counter, nauseated by the fancy pastries behind their glass cases, peering among the tables and chairs. Paused when I spotted an eyeball in a teacup. No trace of how it got there. No body with an empty socket. Just the eyeball, swirling in a congealed bloody jelly at the bottom of the cup…
I scurried away, snatching a cloth napkin to cover my nose.
The interior darkened as I ascended the central staircase. No electricity, I noted as I clutched the railing. Why would the power be cut? A storm?
But storms don’t scoop out eyeballs with a dessert spoon….
Coming onto deck 6, I peered down a long, dim corridor lined with passenger cabins. To passengers coming and going, the hall was illuminated by electric lighting—but since I was seeing the ship six days in the future, the narrow hallway vanished into blackness. With no way to enter the cabins, and nothing much to see here or in the other dimmed halls of the passenger decks, I ascended until I reached the pool.
Pool Deck
Deck 9 opened to wide panoramic windows, dining, a spa, and of course the pool. I emerged outdoors with relief, removing the napkin from my nose as the sea breeze gave some respite from the odor.
Around me, people partied in bikinis and beachwear and suits, sipping all manner of drinks around the sky-blue swimming pool. A young woman stretched on a blood-spattered lounger, oblivious to the gore beneath her tanned figure. A few bodies floated among the swimmers, bloated and discolored. My vision shimmered briefly as a teen boy swam right through one of the bodies, splashing as if it were not there. My heart lurched when I realized that it was his own, albeit dressed in different clothes—
“Oof!” I grunted as a small figure bashed into me, her arm grazing mine.
“Sorry!” cried a little girl in a pink swimsuit, bolting by as her mother yelled at her to watch out for people.
I tried not to think of how cold the little girl’s arm felt. Counted the bodies: eight in the pool. One by the towel bin, head caved in. I made a circuit of the pool, occasionally brushing against people—cold, cold, cold.
No survivors, it seemed.
But why?
That was when I spotted a shirtless old man sitting at a table under an umbrella. I froze, goosebumps prickling along my skin. Unlike the floaters, there was no obvious reason for his death. His back was to me, the bare skin of his shoulders gray and blotchy. In his hand he held a broken drinking glass. He was positioned in repose… so what killed him?
My heart quickened as I moved round to the front of him.
His mouth hung open, shards of glass and a mangled tongue lolling out, crimson trailing down his shirt front. The source of the chewed glass was obvious—the cup in his hand was broken, its jagged edges bloody.
He’d died choking on the glass.
“What the fuck is happening here?” I whispered.
Forward Stairwell
The jogging track and the sundeck—decks 10 and 11—offered a stunning bird’s eye of the pool and ocean, but I did not stop to take this in as I circled to the bow, opting to take the forward stairs down, rather than central.
The stench hit me like a cloud.
I had to stop as I descended into the dim stairwell, clinging to the railing, doubled over, gagging. It was so so bad. My eyes watered. My stomach bucked. And it was dark. Thank God for my phone’s flashlight. I fumbled it on and, napkin firmly over my nose, plunged down into the depths… The phone’s thin illumination flashed along the carpeted stairwell and the hall of the first of the passenger decks. I kept descending. Paused at an unidentifiable slick red mound. I was examining it under my light when a crewmember jogged up to me and asked, “Lose something, miss?” “Just my marbles,” I muttered, shooing the crew member away and inadvertently brushing his hand. Cold. I turned my attention back to the mound.
A slimy pile of intestines on the stairwell… trailing down to a disemboweled body.
Intestines… eyeballs… eating broken glass… nothing about this makes sense! I swiveled the beam to check further downward.
That was when I found the source of the odor.
My path down was obstructed by a mass of bodies. The ones underneath seemed to have been trampled, but the ones on top… I squeezed my watering eyes and retched against the wall. Some of the bodies bore horrible mutilations—fingers bent and twisted, joints out of alignment, faces smashed in and jaws torn open. Many more appeared to have been crushed in the press of bodies. Best guess, there was a wave of panicked people rushing upstairs from below, colliding with a wave of others fleeing down from above.
Why this staircase? What was near this part of the ship?
The cabaret lounge, I realized. No electricity. No elevators. This was the nearest stairwell to the auditorium.
Closer. I was inching closer to uncovering the fates of the passengers. And yet, I still had no idea what the passengers were fleeing from. Who were the attackers? Or… I thought of the eyeball. The glass chewed and swallowed.
An icy pinprick at the base of my skull whispered the question I didn’t want to ask…
Why? Why did some of the passengers go mad, and do it to themselves?
Piano Bar
I took the long way round to the cabaret theatre, going all the way back up the stairs and coming down on the central staircase, only to detour on hearing the notes of a piano. I found myself in a cozy lounge and spotted a purple-haired figure at the keys. And just in time—the ship was due to depart in less than half an hour!
“Lily!” I rushed over.
The musician’s face lit. “Oh it’s you, friend! You made it!”
“You’ve got to get off the ship!”
“Off the—”
“I know it seems crazy but you’ve got to! Everyone on board is going to die—I’ve seen it because I’m psycho!” I heard it a second later and smacked my forehead. “I mean—psychic! PSYCHIC!! I can see the future.” At her scrunched eyebrows, I burst, “Look I know how I sound, but I’ve been able to see things since I was a little girl, and I am telling you that this ship is going to go dark! The engines will cut out! People are going to flee and trample each other on that forward staircase…” Launching into a rapid-fire recounting, I was just getting to the eyeball in the teacup when she interrupted:
“You’re afraid of some sort of terrorist attack?”
“No, no! No! It’s almost like… a kind of madness, a contagion, that spreads through the ship—”
“A zombie apocalypse?”
“Not zombies…”
“Poltergeists? Possession?” She played a riff from a horror movie. “Should we call an exorcist?”
“We should leave!” I checked my phone. “Quickly!—"
“What an odd duck you are! I can’t imagine any sort of catastrophe as big as you’re saying. You know this ship has tons of safety protocols. And even if I did believe some disaster were drawing near—do you really think I could abandon crowds and crew?” She looked at me over her glasses, shimmering purple lips curving in a smile. “Listen friend, if this were the Titanic and I was the only one who could see the iceberg, I’d stay to steer us right, not run off leaving everyone to die!”
Icy fingers raked along my spine. Even if she wasn’t taking me seriously, she was right—I did have a moral obligation to save people. An obligation I’d been trying to fulfill ever since I was a little girl, until the attempt killed my brother, and even after, I kept trying for years and years…. until at last I realized that there is no way to change anything. That is why I call myself Cassandra. For the Greek prophet doomed to predict the future but never be believed. Try and prevent what I’ve foreseen? You might as well try and pluck the stars from the sky!
Every hand I’d touched was cold. Everyone on board would die.
My fists balled, fingernails digging so hard into my palms they bled. “You really have no idea what you’re asking of me…”
“Oh, I’m not telling you to stay. I’m just explaining why I have to. Besides, I’m under contract.” She winked and focused on her playing as guests entered and sat at nearby tables.
She had no idea! None whatsoever! If I thought there was even a sliver of a hope, I wouldn’t abandon people! Oh, if this happy-go-lucky musician understood the futility!!
But she will, came another, darker thought. She will know the full depth of the horror coming…
“No,” I whispered.
“Huh?” She shouted, “Wait—friend, where are you going?”
But I was not listening. The cabaret theatre—was the answer there? The reason for the crush of bodies in the forward stairwell? I rushed past the cafe with the eyeball in the teacup, through the grand doors into the cabaret hall—
—but the cabaret hall was surprisingly quiet, save for a light touch of classical music. A few passengers mingled here or there, unnoticing of the cadavers draped on chairs and tables. The stage itself was pristine, the wood smooth and polished in the fading orange light through the windows. Apparently, the origin of the panicked flight up the forward stairwell was not this grand entertainment venue—nothing here supported that theory.
Nonetheless, I gave the place a thorough search until my phone’s battery ran low, and then I returned to the grand staircase.
In one direction lay passenger cabins. In the other, the gangplank back to the port terminal and safety.
“It’s not too late to be a coward, Cass,” I said. “Run from the ship, run from the empty piano bench at the bar, find a different, cheaper hole in the wall to crawl into like—like the cockroach you are…”
Always the survivor, eh…?
Or… or, I could try just one more time. “‘Hope,’” my brother always said, “is the thing with feathers.”
And look what happened to him! flashed through my mind. My heart slammed against my ribcage. I’d just die too, unless I left in the next—how many minutes? I checked my phone, but it was dead. Like I would be if I stayed.
A horn sounded the Seastar’s departure. A distant cheer rose up from the upper decks and balconies. I felt a brief panicky impulse to run back out on deck and throw myself off the ship… but in truth, my fate had already been decided before the ship’s horn blew. I hadn’t been paying attention earlier, but I’d been rubbing and rubbing my hands, and finally realized they were cold. Probably had been since I’d boarded. I shuffled leaden feet toward the passenger cabins, guided by my phone’s light to the brass number plate for 4044—my cabin. Reached for the knob and stopped.
That smell—dread squeezed my intestines like a wet rag.
Smoke. Burnt meat.
I wrinkled my nose and opened the door.
Orange rays shone through the window, the sunset so vivid it almost gave the illusion that the room was on fire. The walls and ceiling were charred. The edges of the mattress and sheets a smoldered ruin. But the worst damage was the small sofa by the coffee table. Broken bottles scattered round. And there on the sofa—
My fingers went limp on the door handle as I stared into melted sockets of a body charred beyond recognition. A dark line encircled its wrist. The blackened remnants of a charm bracelet.
My bracelet.
While the man on the pool deck swallowed glass, I would succumb to the insanity here, dousing myself in alcohol and flame—
—immolating myself.
[Part 1]
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