Hello, my name is Jack! A 6’2 emo nerd with a dad bod without the kids. You can see what I look like on my page. So a lil bit about me ☺️

• I adore my films so much so I studied it at university and now work within that industry. Some films I love are pans labyrinth, the wind rises, perfect blue, La La land and oldboy. I have a small collection of Blu-rays which is around 160 films which you can see on here. I’d love to hear about your favs and why
  
• My music taste is very much emo, alternative, rock and indie. Some bands/artists I listen to is my chemical romance, twenty one pilots, linkin park, enter shikari, Joji, eden and sleep token. I’ve been listening to the new Fall out boy, paramore and pierce the veil albums. I love gigs, so much so I have 9 lined up this year so far.
  
• I like my video games as well. I mainly play single player games such as God of war, the last of us, hollow knight, and the Witcher to give some examples. Lately I’ve been playing Control, and Shadow of the Colossus
  
• I’m a big weeb, love anime and manga. Some of my fav anime’s are mob psycho 100, fullmetal alchemist brotherhood, Cowboy Bebop and devilman crybaby. As for what I’m watching right now, attack on Titan, bluelock and trigun Stampede
  
• As for manga Junji Ito’s work, I have a small collection of his work. Also, I enjoyed Haikyu!!, Demon slayer, Goodbye Eri, Look Back, Tokyo Ghoul. I’m currently keeping up with Jujutsu Kaisen, chainsaw man, Choujin X, and Kaiju No.8
  
• I’ve gotten into hiking and walking big time this year. I love connecting with nature and how much peace it brings to me
  
• Last thing about me is I have 14 tattoos ranging from films, anime, games and music. To stuff about mental health and nature
  

That’s basically me, please make some effort in the message or I’ll not reply. If you got this way I hope to hear from you and that you have a good day ☺️

I'm kinda new to the game, 110 hours, playing on Prince. It always takes me 420-440 turns to win on Science, I build around 8 cities all with a Campus, also focus hard on Production, some cities can reach 120-140, trigger 70%-80% eureka and still it takes so many turns. Really need your advices

God is a morally perfect entity. His love/mercy and his justice cannot be compromised. If people weren’t held responsible for wrongdoings, he wouldn’t be a morally perfect entity. As such, God must respond to sin. And this dovetails with my further point, which is that all people are imperfect, or miss the mark sort of speak. A person may question and ask: why can't God create heaven to begin with? But it’s possible that no matter what world God creates with free creatures, we would go wrong anyway. Keep in mind that it's logically impossible for God to make someone freely do good, and omnipotence is traditionally defined as being able to do anything logically possible. Spiritual forces (e.g., the fall of Satan) only propounds the issue. This all means that heaven could only be at the final stage of history.
Support for this argument comes from the logical impossibility for God to create an impeccable free will (a libertarian free will with the impossibility of sinning). Since God contains such a will, God would be creating another God in that case. And due to the logical impossibility of creating the uncreated, He could have not created such a will. This could support the idea that God couldn't have created anybody whom He foreknew would always freely do the good. It's possible that any person with libertarian free will would eventually go wrong.
One could come back and say that someone who is always placed in circumstances that God foreknew would lead to good (free) choices is possible. But there would be absolutely no soul-building on this view. Timothy Pawl points out an illustration in his 2009 paper "Incompatibilism, Sin, and Free Will in Heaven," "suppose that Smith is prone to adultery. But Smith’s wife knows this about him. Suppose she knows the precise circumstances he would have to be in to commit adultery, or even freely will to commit adultery. Now suppose she is very good at keeping him out of these circumstances such that he is never again in adultery-prone circumstances. Extend the example a bit more and suppose that she knows what circumstances he would have to be in to perform any other sins as well. ... No matter where he finds himself, provided that his wife is watching over him, he won’t sin." This seems absurd in the extreme. Further, is one really free on this view? One certainly wouldn't have any morally significant free will. As Alvin Plantinga defines it; a person has significant free will only if that individual is “free with respect to an action that is morally significant for him,” where an action is morally significant for a person at a given time “if it would be wrong for him to perform the action then but right to refrain, or vice versa" - Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity, p. 166. Significant free will is thus a robust, non-trivial freedom of the will. If God were to create beings who could choose freely only once, and then only between two morally neutral options, it would be true to say that such creatures have free will, but it would be false to say that they have significant free will. But we would lack this if God always simply placed people in certain situations that he foreknows would lead to good decisions.
Since all morally responsible humans miss the mark and have done wrong things, none of us deserve heaven. In fact, many people curiously ask the question: “how could an all loving all powerful God send anyone to eternal hell”? But a better question could be: “how could an all just God send anyone to heaven”? This is especially since Gods justice cannot be compromised by his other characteristics. Thus, He can’t just forgive wrongdoings, which we all do. So what is God to do in this dilemma? He cannot make anyone freely choose to believe in Him. That is logically impossible, and theologians have always affirmed that God is omnipotent in the sense of being able to do anything logically possible. In my view, the only way to reconcile this philosophically is for God himself to become a human and to bear the justice that his own nature enacts wrongdoing being punished with. In other words, God cannot simply forego imposing the requisite penalty or extracting the debt owed. Instead, because of the relevant divine attributes, God must endure the payment of the debt or impose the just punishment for human sin in order to be able to forgive human beings and accept reconciliation with them. The whole reason why Christians say that Jesus is the only way. If one doesn’t accept the offer of mercy only made possible by God becoming a man to take on the punishment that His own nature demands their sins punished with, they fall back on Gods justice. As such, God's doesn't send anyone to hell, people send themselves.
And this is what all makes Isaiah 52:13-53:12 so beautiful. It's not a righteous third party that dies for our sins. It's God Himself who became a man who died for our sins to take the just wrath that we all deserve, so we can all go free. And this text was written over 500 years before Jesus!

^\God Speaks:]) See, my servant shall succeed; he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high. Just as there were many who were astonished at you—so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of mortals—so he shall sprinkle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him; for that which had not been told them they shall see, and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate. ^\Israel Speaks:]) Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by others; a man of pains and acquainted with sorrows; and like the hiding of the face for him, he was despised, and we held him of no account. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own ways, but the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Yet who of his generation even considered that he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people to whom the blow belonged? They made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with weakness. When you make his life a guilt offering, he shall see offspring, and shall prolong days; and through him the will of the Lord shall prosper. Out of his anguish he shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. ^\God Speaks:]) The righteous one, my servant, shall make many to be considered righteous, and he shall bear their sins. Therefore I will allot him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the multitudes; because he poured out his life to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of the many, and will intervene for the transgressors.
----------------------
^{1 There is huge debate and controversy over the identity of the Servant in Isaiah. On the one hand, Isaiah says Israel is the Servant outside of the Servant songs. On the other hand, the Servant reads like an individual in the Servant songs. There is a quite simple resolution to this. While the Servant is identified as Jacob-Israel outside of the songs, the nation of Israel is revealed within the dynamic movement of the four Servant songs as being embodied in a suffering individual figure. So, the Servant never stops being "Israel," but "Jacob-Israel" undergoes a reduction down to one within these songs. This is not my invention but is rather a prominent scholarly opinion. For example, Ricki Watts writes in his 1990 article: "In cognizance of the individual traits . . . it would appear that true Israel has been reduced to one (cf. 53:6 and ch. 48" - Rikki Watts 1990: p. 55. Paul R. Raabe writes: "the reader should understand the “Servant of Yahweh” who is to restore collective Israel and atone for collective Israel as Israel-reduced-to-one, God’s Israel-in-one" - Paul Raabe 2018: 331. The Servant within the Servant Songs can't be Jacob-Israel as a collective, because there are numerous points of contrast between the Servant and Israel as a nation. For example, in Isa. 49:5-6 the Servant has a mission to the nation as a group. This means that the nation as Servant is understood to shrink in size. But is this shrinking in size down to one person, or a righteous remnant? Isaiah 49:6 qualifies Israel as the remnant, so the reduction of the Servant seems to be down to one person. One also can't so easily compare the individual language applied to Israel outside of the songs with the Servant in the songs, since Israel as Servant is intentionally shrunk down in size so as to be distinct from Israel as a nation, as indicated by Isa. 49:5-6, along with the heightening of the individualistic language in each successive song. This combination of shrinking and heightening seems to signify an intentional reduction of what the prophet considered true Israel down to one. Further, the switch from the "Servant" in Isaiah 40-53 to the collective "servants" of the Servant motif in Isaiah 54-66 (see the "servants"/"offspring" section below through the Servant's offspring implies that the Servant Songs have, in the context of the book as a whole, both a (primary individual sense, referring to the Servant, and a (secondary collective sense, referring to the faithful remnant, cf. Isaiah 50:10-11, the servants of the Servant. Lastly, the people of Israel and its remnant in the context of Isaiah are transgressors, e.g., Isa. 46:1-12; 48:1-11, while the Servant is faithful and righteous, Isa. 53:9, 11. Many other points could be raised. Isaiah 49:3 does not preclude this, unless one begs the question against the "Israel-reduced-to-one" view. Plus, in Isa. 49:3, the name of Israel is probably a predicate: "you are Israel"} - ^{Jaap Dekker 2012: 38-39. As a result of arguments like these, Joseph Blenkinsopp writes in his Yale commentary on Isaiah 40-55:
"Ever since Christopher R. North surveyed the range of opinion on the identity of the Servant in 1948 (2d ed., 1956, no significant new options have emerged. While there was then and still is a strong critical preference for an individual rather than a collective interpretation, none of the fifteen individuals named as candidates by one commentator or another and listed by North has survived scrutiny" (Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40-55 \}AYBC; Yale University Press, 2002]: 355.)
^{So, is the Servant an individual or Israel? Both!}

Within the dramatic movement of the Servant Songs, the Servant emerges as an individual, and as a representative individual. This individual is representative because he is mysteriously identified and united with Israel and the world, acting for Israel and the world in their stead, doing what they could not do for themselves, and that in the culminating fourth Song this representative individual suffers, is rejected by his own people, is unjustly executed, is put to death for the sins of the many, buried, and then raised to life and glorified, all this that he might redeem the remnant of Israel and bring the gentiles to God. This is Jesus!

God is a morally perfect entity. His love/mercy and his justice cannot be compromised. If people weren’t held responsible for wrongdoings, he wouldn’t be a morally perfect entity. As such, God must respond to sin. And this dovetails with my further point, which is that all people are imperfect, or miss the mark sort of speak. A person may question and ask: why can't God create heaven to begin with? But it’s possible that no matter what world God creates with free creatures, we would go wrong anyway. Keep in mind that it's logically impossible for God to make someone freely do good, and omnipotence is traditionally defined as being able to do anything logically possible. Spiritual forces (e.g., the fall of Satan) only propounds the issue. This all means that heaven could only be at the final stage of history.
Support for this argument comes from the logical impossibility for God to create an impeccable free will (a libertarian free will with the impossibility of sinning). Since God contains such a will, God would be creating another God in that case. And due to the logical impossibility of creating the uncreated, He could have not created such a will. This could support the idea that God couldn't have created anybody whom He foreknew would always freely do the good. It's possible that any person with libertarian free will would eventually go wrong.
One could come back and say that someone who is always placed in circumstances that God foreknew would lead to good (free) choices is possible. But there would be absolutely no soul-building on this view. Timothy Pawl points out an illustration in his 2009 paper "Incompatibilism, Sin, and Free Will in Heaven," "suppose that Smith is prone to adultery. But Smith’s wife knows this about him. Suppose she knows the precise circumstances he would have to be in to commit adultery, or even freely will to commit adultery. Now suppose she is very good at keeping him out of these circumstances such that he is never again in adultery-prone circumstances. Extend the example a bit more and suppose that she knows what circumstances he would have to be in to perform any other sins as well. ... No matter where he finds himself, provided that his wife is watching over him, he won’t sin." This seems absurd in the extreme. Further, is one really free on this view? One certainly wouldn't have any morally significant free will. As Alvin Plantinga defines it; a person has significant free will only if that individual is “free with respect to an action that is morally significant for him,” where an action is morally significant for a person at a given time “if it would be wrong for him to perform the action then but right to refrain, or vice versa" - Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity, p. 166. Significant free will is thus a robust, non-trivial freedom of the will. If God were to create beings who could choose freely only once, and then only between two morally neutral options, it would be true to say that such creatures have free will, but it would be false to say that they have significant free will. But we would lack this if God always simply placed people in certain situations that he foreknows would lead to good decisions.
Since all morally responsible humans miss the mark and have done wrong things, none of us deserve heaven. In fact, many people curiously ask the question: “how could an all loving all powerful God send anyone to eternal hell”? But a better question could be: “how could an all just God send anyone to heaven”? This is especially since Gods justice cannot be compromised by his other characteristics. Thus, He can’t just forgive wrongdoings, which we all do. So what is God to do in this dilemma? He cannot make anyone freely choose to believe in Him. That is logically impossible, and theologians have always affirmed that God is omnipotent in the sense of being able to do anything logically possible. In my view, the only way to reconcile this philosophically is for God himself to become a human and to bear the justice that his own nature enacts wrongdoing being punished with. In other words, God cannot simply forego imposing the requisite penalty or extracting the debt owed. Instead, because of the relevant divine attributes, God must endure the payment of the debt or impose the just punishment for human sin in order to be able to forgive human beings and accept reconciliation with them. The whole reason why Christians say that Jesus is the only way. If one doesn’t accept the offer of mercy only made possible by God becoming a man to take on the punishment that His own nature demands their sins punished with, they fall back on Gods justice. As such, God's doesn't send anyone to hell, people send themselves.
And this is what all makes Isaiah 52:13-53:12 so beautiful. It's not a righteous third party that dies for our sins. It's God Himself who became a man who died for our sins to take the just wrath that we all deserve, so we can all go free. And this text was written over 500 years before Jesus!

^\God Speaks:]) See, my servant shall succeed; he shall be exalted and lifted up, and shall be very high. Just as there were many who were astonished at you—so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of mortals—so he shall sprinkle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him; for that which had not been told them they shall see, and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate. ^\Israel Speaks:]) Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by others; a man of pains and acquainted with sorrows; and like the hiding of the face for him, he was despised, and we held him of no account. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own ways, but the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Yet who of his generation even considered that he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people to whom the blow belonged? They made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with weakness. When you make his life a guilt offering, he shall see offspring, and shall prolong days; and through him the will of the Lord shall prosper. Out of his anguish he shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. ^\God Speaks:]) The righteous one, my servant, shall make many to be considered righteous, and he shall bear their sins. Therefore I will allot him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the multitudes; because he poured out his life to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of the many, and will intervene for the transgressors.
^{1 There is huge debate and controversy over the identity of the Servant in Isaiah. On the one hand, Isaiah says Israel is the Servant outside of the Servant songs. On the other hand, the Servant reads like an individual in the Servant songs. There is a quite simple resolution to this. While the Servant is identified as Jacob-Israel outside of the songs, the nation of Israel is revealed within the dynamic movement of the four Servant songs as being embodied in a suffering individual figure. So, the Servant never stops being "Israel," but "Jacob-Israel" undergoes a reduction down to one within these songs. This is not my invention but is rather a prominent scholarly opinion. For example, Ricki Watts writes in his 1990 article: "In cognizance of the individual traits . . . it would appear that true Israel has been reduced to one (cf. 53:6 and ch. 48" - Rikki Watts 1990: p. 55. Paul R. Raabe writes: "the reader should understand the “Servant of Yahweh” who is to restore collective Israel and atone for collective Israel as Israel-reduced-to-one, God’s Israel-in-one" - Paul Raabe 2018: 331. The Servant within the Servant Songs can't be Jacob-Israel as a collective, because there are numerous points of contrast between the Servant and Israel as a nation. For example, in Isa. 49:5-6 the Servant has a mission to the nation as a group. This means that the nation as Servant is understood to shrink in size. But is this shrinking in size down to one person, or a righteous remnant? Isaiah 49:6 qualifies Israel as the remnant, so the reduction of the Servant seems to be down to one person. One also can't so easily compare the individual language applied to Israel outside of the songs with the Servant in the songs, since Israel as Servant is intentionally shrunk down in size so as to be distinct from Israel as a nation, as indicated by Isa. 49:5-6, along with the heightening of the individualistic language in each successive song. This combination of shrinking and heightening seems to signify an intentional reduction of what the prophet considered true Israel down to one. Further, the switch from the "Servant" in Isaiah 40-53 to the collective "servants" of the Servant motif in Isaiah 54-66 (see the "servants"/"offspring" section below through the Servant's offspring implies that the Servant Songs have, in the context of the book as a whole, both a (primary individual sense, referring to the Servant, and a (secondary collective sense, referring to the faithful remnant, cf. Isaiah 50:10-11, the servants of the Servant. Lastly, the people of Israel and its remnant in the context of Isaiah are transgressors, e.g., Isa. 46:1-12; 48:1-11, while the Servant is faithful and righteous, Isa. 53:9, 11. Many other points could be raised. Isaiah 49:3 does not preclude this, unless one begs the question against the "Israel-reduced-to-one" view. Plus, in Isa. 49:3, the name of Israel is probably a predicate: "you are Israel"} - ^{Jaap Dekker 2012: 38-39. As a result of arguments like these, Joseph Blenkinsopp writes in his Yale commentary on Isaiah 40-55:
"Ever since Christopher R. North surveyed the range of opinion on the identity of the Servant in 1948 (2d ed., 1956, no significant new options have emerged. While there was then and still is a strong critical preference for an individual rather than a collective interpretation, none of the fifteen individuals named as candidates by one commentator or another and listed by North has survived scrutiny" (Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40-55 \}AYBC; Yale University Press, 2002]: 355.)
^{So, is the Servant an individual or Israel? Both!}

Within the dramatic movement of the Servant Songs, the Servant emerges as an individual, and as a representative individual. This individual is representative because he is mysteriously identified and united with Israel and the world, acting for Israel and the world in their stead, doing what they could not do for themselves, and that in the culminating fourth Song this representative individual suffers, is rejected by his own people, is unjustly executed, is put to death for the sins of the many, buried, and then raised to life and glorified, all this that he might redeem the remnant of Israel and bring the gentiles to God. This is Jesus!

Let's spend the day together. Maybe we go to the park and have a picnic, sitting by the duck pond while we feed bread to the ducks and the fish. Maybe we go to the beach where we can both sit in the sun and enjoy an ice cream, and each others company. We could wonder around the city, enjoying the sights and sounds before finally finding a place to eat, we each pick something and decide who made the better choice. Or perhaps we just stay at home, cuddling together while we watch something or play a game together. Let's just spend our time in one anothers comfort and see where it takes us?
Hello there! I am Star and I am hoping to find someone that I might be able to enjoy experiences like those above with. I hope to find someone that is both my best friend and my partner. Ideally I would be looking for someone between the ages of 20 to 30.
I am 183cm (6 foot) tall, with a slim build. Blue/green eyes and black hair that's generally on the longer side.
I am the sort of person that enjoys chatting throughout the day, I like learning about the things you may enjoy. I am an introverted person for the most part, I don't go out drinking or partying and clubbing is not something I am interested in. I do not smoke and would appreciate if you did not as well, though it isn't a complete dealbreaker for me.
Things I enjoy doing would be playing games, reading manga, watching anime or shows and spending time on youtube. I enjoy exploring new places and trying new things when I can. I have a job in the tv industry that I enjoy and keeps me active outside of my free time.
The person I am looking for should be kind and caring and share an interest in the things I have already mentioned. While I am more attracted to personality then appearance it does still play a factor, so I would appreciate seeing a picture to connect a face to who I am talking to.
If you made it this far and any of this sounds interesting to you then please send me a message! Tell me a little bit about yourself and ask any questions you wish. I look forward to chatting with you :)

Let's spend the day together. Maybe we go to the park and have a picnic, sitting by the duck pond while we feed bread to the ducks and the fish. Maybe we go to the beach where we can both sit in the sun and enjoy an ice cream, and each others company. We could wonder around the city, enjoying the sights and sounds before finally finding a place to eat, we each pick something and decide who made the better choice. Or perhaps we just stay at home, cuddling together while we watch something or play a game together. Let's just spend our time in one anothers comfort and see where it takes us?
Hello there! I am Star and I am hoping to find someone that I might be able to enjoy experiences like those above with. I hope to find someone that is both my best friend and my partner. Ideally I would be looking for someone between the ages of 20 to 30.
I am 183cm (6 foot) tall, with a slim build. Blue/green eyes and black hair that's generally on the longer side.
I am the sort of person that enjoys chatting throughout the day, I like learning about the things you may enjoy. I am an introverted person for the most part, I don't go out drinking or partying and clubbing is not something I am interested in. I do not smoke and would appreciate if you did not as well, though it isn't a complete dealbreaker for me.
Things I enjoy doing would be playing games, reading manga, watching anime or shows and spending time on youtube. I enjoy exploring new places and trying new things when I can. I have a job in the tv industry that I enjoy and keeps me active outside of my free time.
The person I am looking for should be kind and caring and share an interest in the things I have already mentioned. While I am more attracted to personality then appearance it does still play a factor, so I would appreciate seeing a picture to connect a face to who I am talking to.
If you made it this far and any of this sounds interesting to you then please send me a message! Tell me a little bit about yourself and ask any questions you wish. I look forward to chatting with you :)

Let's spend the day together. Maybe we go to the park and have a picnic, sitting by the duck pond while we feed bread to the ducks and the fish. Maybe we go to the beach where we can both sit in the sun and enjoy an ice cream, and each others company. We could wonder around the city, enjoying the sights and sounds before finally finding a place to eat, we each pick something and decide who made the better choice. Or perhaps we just stay at home, cuddling together while we watch something or play a game together. Let's just spend our time in one anothers comfort and see where it takes us?
Hello there! I am Star and I am hoping to find someone that I might be able to enjoy experiences like those above with. I hope to find someone that is both my best friend and my partner. Ideally I would be looking for someone between the ages of 20 to 30.
I am 183cm (6 foot) tall, with a slim build. Blue/green eyes and black hair that's generally on the longer side.
I am the sort of person that enjoys chatting throughout the day, I like learning about the things you may enjoy. I am an introverted person for the most part, I don't go out drinking or partying and clubbing is not something I am interested in. I do not smoke and would appreciate if you did not as well, though it isn't a complete dealbreaker for me.
Things I enjoy doing would be playing games, reading manga, watching anime or shows and spending time on youtube. I enjoy exploring new places and trying new things when I can. I have a job in the tv industry that I enjoy and keeps me active outside of my free time.
The person I am looking for should be kind and caring and share an interest in the things I have already mentioned. While I am more attracted to personality then appearance it does still play a factor, so I would appreciate seeing a picture to connect a face to who I am talking to.
If you made it this far and any of this sounds interesting to you then please send me a message! Tell me a little bit about yourself and ask any questions you wish. I look forward to chatting with you :)

Super Long Post! But this is a rather huge update that includes GitRepos.
I cover a lot of this stuff in my video found here - https://youtu.be/IxMLU15dUGw (It's like an hour long and goes over a lot of the stuff said here, before they even released this info. They even use some of the same stuff as evidence.)
Discord Link to info - To see the update in it's origional format. https://discord.com/channels/988365908009447485/988662112454836234/1090510064609140867
Full list of assets purchased to make Dark & Darker: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16DjiRitUa_R3IkelPNKW0Q8F-H1KFuWXTxxw2q0SCQo/edit#gid=0
Git logs for the first year of development. The earliest entries start at the bottom of the document. It is a little embarrassing showing all our development mistakes and bugs but we believe that is further proof that Dark and Darker was built from the ground up. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qyRk3zyIMuwTOvL3E8zchxw9hiukpKWC/view?usp=sharing
- Although our company was officially founded in October 2021, our development logs go back to September 2021. This can be explained by our company history below.
​
- A bit of background history regarding IRONMACE. Several of our founding members started work as a development team starting in September 2021. The members worked for more than a month in a shabby jiujitsu gym without pay using our own personal PCs as a test of our resolve and teamwork, and also because we had no investors. Once we realized that our members could form the foundations of a viable company, the company was formally founded in late October 2021. The original funds were quickly exhausted and IRONMACE almost went bankrupt as we were unable to acquire investors. Luckily members rallied together and collected funds from over twenty friends and families to bankroll the company for another couple months. This was also quickly exhausted and IRONMACE relied on outsourcing work unrelated to game development to help it survive another month. It was only through grueling meetings and countless, countless, countless rejections that IRONMACE was finally able to find brave VCs willing to fund the studio in 2022. The studio made it point to accept as little money as possible to stay hungry and motivated to get to the current point.
​
1. Our Korean Response to the takedown claim - From Iron Mace
We are Iron Mace, a game developer in Korea developing the PC game Dark & Darker. Through this document, we will deal with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Take Down Notice (DMCA Take Down Notice) filed against us by Nexon Korea Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Nexon”), and our position on allegations of copyright infringement and leakage of trade secrets.
Through its own investigation, Nexon said, "Dark and Darker appears to have been developed by copying and stealing trade secrets and copyrighted information owned by Nexon." said. We want to make it clear that this claim is baseless. Our company, Iron Mace, has never owned or used Nexon's copyrighted materials or trade secrets.
Nexon belatedly registered the copyright related to the P3 project in February 2023, more than six months after Dark and Darker was released, and is claiming copyright infringement against it. The first point of their claim is that one of our members (then director, hereinafter A) illegally moved important assets to a private server “without permission”.
Our response to the above claim is as follows.
Due to the mandatory remote work policy implemented by Nexon in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, A received written approval from Nexon executives to use an external personal server to improve the team's work efficiency from 2020 to 2021. While developing using a personal server for about a year, A asked if it was okay to continue using the personal server. The head of the senior organization responded to the question by telling them to refrain from using private servers. A has agreed to discontinue use of the private server. Instead, we received an exception from the company to work in the office, circumventing the current remote work policy, in order to keep the team working efficiently.
In order to stop using the personal server, A moved the connected system and started deleting trade secret files, but the immediate hurdles (a kind of mid-term evaluation process in the game industry, and if the results are not good, the project may be suspended) , the migration of development systems to internal servers was not a quick and thorough process. As a result, some auto-upload scripts related to the build system were left running. And buildings around the office are closed due to corona expansion, so I can no longer go to work, etc. A made a mistake of using the personal server again without re-approval due to the anxiety of reduced work efficiency and the burden of meeting the schedule and achieving the goal.
At that time, all computers in Nexon's company were monitored using the endpoint solution, so the use of personal servers subject to approval and re-approval was known to Nexon during several months of development. However, during that period, A did not receive a single warning from the security team, and when answering to the head of the higher organization to refrain from using the server, he received an answer saying, 'It's a bit ambiguous to say that it's official/no', so he made a wrong decision. that was hit
A suffered the shock of his previous project being shut down in 2020, and several other projects within Nexon were canceled around the same time. A had doubts about the release along with various circumstances that could only be seen as lack of development support. Later, due to an incident, his trust with his boss was broken, and in June 2021, he finally decided to leave Nexon.
A revealed to members of the development team he had worked with for a long time that he would be leaving the company soon. He cited a lack of support for development as the reason for his departure, and further doubts about whether he would ever be able to launch the project. He also said he welcomes those who would like to join us for the next try. He's likely pushing for a project in a similar genre to the P3 project, but he's made it clear that everything needs to be developed from scratch. The above fact was also proven in the course of investigating a separate individual lawsuit filed by Nexon against A in the testimony collected by the police.
Immediately after Nexon's executives learned of A's plan to resign, their attitude suddenly changed to find A's fault, without any effort to amicably resolve the situation. He then sent an internal audit team to accuse him of stealing files, even though he knew the private server had been used for work for months. Seeing efforts to find out the fault somehow in this way rather than solving it through dialogue, the relationship of trust with the company was completely broken, and A consulted with a lawyer and said that since there are personal information on the personal server, there is no obligation to submit it to the company. After hearing the conclusion, instead of submitting my private server, I completely deleted everything in it.
A was fired due to a claim interpreted differently from his intention, and around August 2021, civil/criminal charges and lawsuits were filed against his house and other assets with omnidirectional seizure and pressure, and several seizures and searches were conducted. has been done up to A's personal case is still ongoing, and claims that he stole or misappropriated these files have yet to be substantiated. He actively cooperated with police investigations every time. Our company was also seized and searched several times during this investigation, but we responded to the investigation with the utmost cooperation in order to prove our innocence. If Nexon's trade secrets were really stolen or misappropriated, nine out of the more than 20 P3 project team members would not have risked joining Iron Mace.
The second issue in the DMCA notice filed by Nexon is the claim that Iron Mace CEO Terence Park abused the suspect's stolen trade secrets and copyrighted material to develop Dark & Darker for his own and Iron Mace's benefit. Our response to this claim is below.
The company's CEO makes it clear that no stolen trade secrets or copyrighted material were used to develop Dark & Darker. Indeed, Terrence Park has repeatedly stressed to his team that in order to maintain the company's vision and branding, third-party trade secrets must not exist by mistake and must be developed from scratch.
Subsequently, in the DMCA notice, Nexon claims that the only way to come up with an idea similar to the P3 project is theft, and as a basis, it claims that the P3 project has never been disclosed to a third party during this period. However, this claim can be proven unequivocally false. Nexon unveiled the P3 in a media showcase in August 2021, and has since written about it in numerous blogs and articles:
https://www.gematsu.com/2021/08/nexon-showcases-12-new-games-project-magnum-project-hp-mabinogi-mobile-more
https://pdf.irpocket.com/C3659/GbYe/dYzj/ICN2.pdf
https://www.donga.com/news/It/article/all/20210805/108384593/1
Nexon also claims in its DMCA notice that no other game has the same "concept, genre, and plot" as P3, claiming to have created an entirely new concept. But none of the P3 concepts are entirely new. A game already on the market called Expedition Agartha is a similar game in the three categories already stated.
Since then, Iron Mace has claimed without evidence that it is impossible to make a test version of Dark & Darker in just 10 months of founding without using Nexon's trade secrets. Our response to this claim is as follows.
The fact that a big game company like Nexon can't develop games this fast doesn't mean that other studios, big and small, can't develop at that speed.
Iron Mace's rapid pace of development was possible for the following reasons.
Iron Mace began development with 18 people, significantly more than the initial P3 team of about 11 people. The percentage of dual programmers doubled to 3 and 6, respectively.
We used as many 3D game objects as possible, purchased from the Asset Store, which account for most of the cost and time required for game development.
Also, with the permission of the artists, it was developed with a focus on game design and programming.
The server code did not exist because there were no server programmers on the P3 project team. However, Iron Mace was developed by employing senior-level server programmers from the beginning to create a stable server architecture.
Fortunately, we have evidence that clearly shows how we developed the game quickly and efficiently, and we will be making it public soon.
We'll soon publish a list of purchased assets used in Dark & Darker development, proving that almost all 3D assets were purchased from the Unreal Marketplace.
And we have tons of videos to see what major milestone builds look like, from early internal playtests to more recent tests. These videos will also be coming online soon, showing you how to quickly and efficiently develop the game from scratch.
Finally, for verification from a technical point of view, we will soon release the Git log and its file list, which is the development history from the first log in the Git repository to the work on the self-developed anti-cheat module. This is a log over a period of about a year or so. This will allow other developers to easily check our progress and check for stolen code or assets. In addition, since the P3 project was written while learning because none of the programmers had any experience using Unreal Engine at the time of the project, using the code and assets of the P3 project as a reference is a dark and darker project.
It wouldn't have helped you in your progress.
In the DMCA notice, Nexon compared and analyzed files from the Dark & Darker and P3 Projects and said, "The number of files with the same name is too many to be a coincidence." claims. And it claims to have found more than 2,338 files with the same name. Our response to this claim is as follows.
They attached the remaining 1,032 resources to Exhibit D, excluding files generated by using the same game engine. Of these, 950 files were either assets purchased from Unreal's Marketplace or files from plugins. The remaining 82 files (41 to be exact, because two files are created with the same file name) also have the same name because of the general concept and official naming convention recommended in the process of developing a typical first-person fantasy game. (See naming conventions and examples below)
Rules for Writing Unreal Engine Official Names
https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en/recommended-asset-naming-conventions-in-unreal-engine-projects/
example)
Blueprint (BP_) + Arrow => BP_Arrow (Exhibit D 33p)
Material (M_) + Base (Base) => M_Base (Exhibit D 35p)
If Nexon agrees to provide the file, it is suggested to compare and analyze the actual contents of the files with the same name through a third party. We have provided a list of sources for all “same-named” resources listed by Nexon.
In addition, the DMCA notice claims that the two games' character designs, worldviews, and core gameplay are similar. In response to the above claim, we'd like to say that both games borrow settings from very traditional fantasy worlds. None of this is original, and the similarities to the pointed character classes and use of torches can be found in countless other fantasy games. Both games belong to the classic fantasy dungeon exploration genre, and the similarities can be explained.
In addition, Nexon claims that "Iron Mace purchased graphic assets, including character concept art, from the Unreal Marketplace, but the assets purchased from the Unreal Marketplace and Dark & Darker's assets look different, and there are many similarities with those of P3. ” claims. Our position on the claim is as follows.
Most of the 3D assets were purchased from the Unreal Marketplace, but most of the 2D graphic elements, including concept art and UI, were created in-house. The character concept artwork that Nexon claims similarities to is a reflection of a very traditional fantasy setting. In addition, the concept artwork of the two games was created by the same person, so the painting style is also similar. Soon, our concept artist will organize and disclose that the character concept of Dark & Darker does not infringe on the concept of P3. Through this document, Google image search shows artwork of other popular fantasy concepts, and Dark & Darker's concept art follows the general fantasy world, so it looks similar, but I want to prove that I did not infringe P3's copyright. .
The DMCA notice states that the two games' core concepts, genres, and storylines are so similar that "I am convinced that Iron Mace may have used Nexon's trade secrets to create Dark & Darker." Again, Dark & Darker's concept and settings are all largely inspired by traditional and popular fantasy RPG games. The gameplay of adventurers digging through dungeons full of monsters and treasure in search of riches is so common and common that it could be widely applied in many other fantasy games as well.
Just for fun, we asked ChatGPT to explain the definition of a typical PVP dungeon exploration game, and we got the following response.
----------------------------------Content from ChatGPT------------- ----------------------
In this PvP dungeon crawl game, players compete against each other in dangerous and mysterious dungeons filled with traps, puzzles, and monsters.
Players choose their character from several classes, each with unique abilities and playstyles. They need to explore dungeons, defeat monsters, and solve puzzles to advance deeper.
But besides fighting monsters, players also have to face each other in intense PvP battles. They can attack other players to steal loot or gain an advantage, but you have to be careful not to be suddenly attacked by enemy players.
In the meantime, players can collect loot, weapons, and magic items to help them in their missions. They can also trade items with other players or buy and sell them at NPC shops.
Gameplay requires strategic decision-making, and players must decide whether to focus on attacking other players or progressing through the dungeon. They must manage their limited resources carefully, including weapons, spells, and stamina.
The ultimate goal of the game is to reach the deepest dungeon's floor and defeat the final boss. You should be able to beat other players while doing all of this. The game offers an exciting and competitive experience for players who enjoy both PvE and PvP gameplay.
-------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------
Finally, the common characteristics of the two games announced in Exhibit E are generally shared characteristics that can also be found in many other similar games.
Judging from the information presented, it would be difficult for Nexon itself to believe that Iron Mace infringed on the copyright of the P3 project. And Nexon does not provide evidence that Iron Mace used Nexon's trade secrets to make Dark & Darker, only circumstantial inferences.
Finally, Nexon is accusing Iron Mace of violating Valve's SSA and SOCR, preventing us from delivering our games to fans on the world's largest PC gaming platform. We want Nexon to stop making baseless claims.
In order to resolve issues quickly and definitively, we are willing to provide source code, produced assets, and design documentation for comparison between the two companies. We ask Nexon to make a positive impact on gamers and gaming communities around the world by actively working on resolving issues between the two companies.
That's all of that document. Translated by google.
----------------------------------------------------
2. Concept Artist response:
Rebuttal to claims of character design similarity
Hello, this is Dark & Darker's concept artist.
Through this document, we would like to refute the allegation that the concept of P3 was stolen from Dark & Darker.
Nexon claims that Dark & Darker was developed using P3's assets, and claims to be suspicious because of their visual similarity. The contents below are intended to refute this and explain what parts we focused on in class design and why the claim that the results are similar is not valid.
Dark & Darker's classes are made up of classes commonly handled in Dungeons and Dragons and medieval fantasy games influenced by it, and aim for familiar classic fantasy concepts.
Therefore, it cannot be seen that it has the distinctive features of Dark & Darker in appearance or design.
Dark & Darker worked on the class concept based on the following three concerns.
What are the most familiar classes in the memories of classic fantasy fans?
What design can you accept without hesitation even if you are not a fan of classic fantasy?
What is the range that can be expressed with the assets you own (purchased assets)?
P3 and Dark & Darker have the same concept artist (i.e., because I worked on both), the way the characters are portrayed or the painting style may feel similar, but there are significant differences in detailed composition such as costumes.
The following will refute the claim that the classes of P3 and Dark & Darker are similar by comparing each class.
​
Class Comparison 1: Barbarian
When I started thinking about Dark & Darker's Barbarian, I initially tried to work with a barbaric warrior feel like Conan the Barbarian (movie). However, I had to use the purchased armor assets in common, so I had no choice but to switch to the current Nordic Viking feel.
To elaborate more, even if I drew concept art, I did not have enough time to create assets for it, so I changed the direction of the concept art according to the assets.
Images in document.
​
Figure 1: A draft of a Dark and Darker Barbarian that was scrapped in the works.
Images in document.
​
Figure 2: Barbarian used for loading image after drafting
Images in document.
Figure 3 below is various concept art of the barbarian that I referenced during work in this regard. Based on this, we focused on creating a barbarian that fits the worldview of Dark & Darker, and designing it so that there is no particular problem when using equipment of other classes in common.
​
Figure 3: Concept designs by other artists
Image in document.
​
Nexon is claiming that P3's Barbarian and Dark & Darker's Barbarian are similar.
As explained earlier, Dark & Darker's Barbarian was created based on works from common fantasy worlds, and furthermore, those used in various games.
​
​
Figure 4: P3 and the Barbarian in Dark & Darker
Image in document.
​
Even in the details, of course, there are differences. P3's barbarian is more colorful than Dark & Darker's barbarian, such as horns, Nordic patterns of armor, beard shape, and cape, and the style is mixed. The shape of the helmet may look similar by adopting the design of the actual German helmet (Yelmo de Gjermundbu), but the detailed design is completely different.
​
Class Comparison 2: Fighter
Image in document.
Dark & Darker's fighter is a class specialized in melee attacks wearing typical medieval knight armor. The items in Figure 5 below are reference materials when designing fighters, and are also popularly used, heavy armored warriors specializing in melee attacks.
Through the items in Figure 6, you can see what process the current fighter design came out through
​
Figure 5: Concept designs by other artists
Image in document.
​
Figure 6: Fighter used for loading image after drafting
Image in document.
​
Figure 7: P3's Tanker and Dark & Darker's Fighter
Image in document.
​
Nexon claims that P3's 'Tanker' and Dark & Darker's 'Fighter' were produced in a similar form. However, as you can see from the picture in Figure 7, except for the open helmet, everything is different, including the appearance, armor design, weapon design, bag, and props.
The figure wearing an open helmet is just a type of expression commonly used to show a character's face because it is obscured.
Class Comparison 3: Ranger
In games and movies set in the Middle Ages, rangers were often depicted wearing hoods, and purchased assets also included hoods. The costumes depicted in the Dark & Darker illustration were designed with reference to the asset costumes you own.
​
Figure 8: Appearance by referring to the clothing on the left and the hood on the right
Image in document.
​
Figure 9: Ranger used for loading image after cyan
Image in document.
​
Figure 10: Concept designs by other artists
Image in document.
​
Figure 11: P3 and Dark & Darker's Ranger
Image in document.
​
Dark & Darker's Ranger has borrowed the overall color from common designs to keep the sensibility of the old fantasy intact. Also, in order to express the concept of a hunter who fights while hiding in the dark, the use of colors was limited and designed with low saturation.
As you can see by comparing the P3 and Dark & Darker's Ranger illustrations, they are not the same except that they wear hoods and have bows.
​
Class Comparison 4: Wizard
The design that became the basis of the Dark and Darker Wizard is Gandalf from ‘The Lord of the Rings’, and it is the most easily recognizable image of a wizard.
​
Figure 12: Concept designs by other artists
Image in document.
​
Figure 13: Wizard of Dark and Darker with P3
Image in document.
​
Like the image of the other classes described earlier, Dark & Darker's Wizard expressed a more traditional and classic wizard than P3's Wizard. Wearing a long and cumbersome robe for an adventurer's appearance, it was produced with the intention of taking the form of an old man who is old but wise and still capable of fighting.
Class Comparison 5: Log
Likewise, in the case of logs, other than wearing a hood, the P3 and Dark & Darker logs have different components such as weapons and costumes.
In the case of the rogue, we tried to embody the real thief's play, rather than simply wielding a fast weapon such as a dagger (it is actually possible to steal while playing), and for this purpose, the weapon was highlighted at the beginning, and finally It is made in the form of emphasizing the money bag held in the hand.
Rather, in the case of Rogue, the design was made to approach the essence of a thief more than a thief generally seen.
​
Figure 14: Initial log cyan
Image in document.
​
Figure 15: Concept designs by other artists
Image in document.
​
Figure 16: P3's Thief and Dark & Darker's Rogue
Image in document.
Like the images of other classes described above, P3’s ‘thief’ and Dark & Darker’s ‘rogue’ have different design goals.
Class Comparison 6: Cleric
In general, the class called Cleric is often designed with the Templar Knights as a motif. Dark and darker clerics also adopted a design with a tunic wrapped around chainmail to match this popular design. Also, like other classes, it had to be created based on the assets you have, so I designed it with reference to the assets below.
​
Figure 17: Polyphoria's assets referencing clothing design
Image in document.
​
​
Figure 18: Concept designs by other artists
Image in document.
​
Figure 19: P3 and Dark & Darker's Cleric
Image in document.
​
From that point of view, if you compare P3 and Dark & Darker's clerics, you can see that there are many differences in armor, costumes, and patterns.
​
Conclusion: P3 and Dark & Darker are different.
​
In this way, the design of the classes expressed in Dark & Darker is only the result of selecting the ones that are most suitable for Dark & Darker among one of the character designs that have appeared in various fantasy games that have been dealt with for decades, and are not designed by stealing P3's trade secrets. didn't
In conclusion, the allegation of theft is only a phenomenon that arises from the fact that the concepts of the two projects are oriented toward a medieval fantasy worldview. We, the development team of Iron Mace, focused on the direction of the game we were aiming for, designed and expressed it accordingly, and revealed that the game was not made by taking the parts that were produced in P3 as it is.

Let's spend the day together. Maybe we go to the park and have a picnic, sitting by the duck pond while we feed bread to the ducks and the fish. Maybe we go to the beach where we can both sit in the sun and enjoy an ice cream, and each others company. We could wonder around the city, enjoying the sights and sounds before finally finding a place to eat, we each pick something and decide who made the better choice. Or perhaps we just stay at home, cuddling together while we watch something or play a game together. Let's just spend our time in one anothers comfort and see where it takes us?
Hello there! I am Star and I am hoping to find someone that I might be able to enjoy experiences like those above with. I hope to find someone that is both my best friend and my partner. Ideally I would be looking for someone between the ages of 20 to 30.
I am 183cm (6 foot) tall, with a slim build. Blue/green eyes and black hair that's generally on the longer side.
I am the sort of person that enjoys chatting throughout the day, I like learning about the things you may enjoy. I am an introverted person for the most part, I don't go out drinking or partying and clubbing is not something I am interested in. I do not smoke and would appreciate if you did not as well, though it isn't a complete dealbreaker for me.
Things I enjoy doing would be playing games, reading manga, watching anime or shows and spending time on youtube. I enjoy exploring new places and trying new things when I can. I have a job in the tv industry that I enjoy and keeps me active outside of my free time.
The person I am looking for should be kind and caring and share an interest in the things I have already mentioned. While I am more attracted to personality then appearance it does still play a factor, so I would appreciate seeing a picture to connect a face to who I am talking to.
If you made it this far and any of this sounds interesting to you then please send me a message! Tell me a little bit about yourself and ask any questions you wish. I look forward to chatting with you :)

Hi fellow Japanophiles! Heading for my 1st ever trip to Japan from 10 to 22 May, landing in KIX in Osaka and leaving from NRT in Tokyo. Would appreciate if anyone has any constructive comments in terms of feasibility, logistics, variety, interesting areas that I shldn't hv missed out, or places I had included that shldn't hv been bothered with at all.
Total pax: 3 (brother & I both in our early 20s, and middle-aged mother)

• Dates: 10 May (Wed) >> 22 May (Mon)
• Cities covered: Osaka, Himeji, Nara, Kyoto, Tokyo
• Areas of interest: Nothing specific, tho I'm kinda a foodie. To get a feel of Japan as a nation, as well as its history and culture, food, landscape, architecture, and possibly nightlife. Avoiding theme parks as my family isn't keen, so no USJ / Disneyland / Disneysea / etc.
• Budget: On the lower side but not afraid to splurge if I deem it worthy

Naturally, also interested in getting some shopping done and hopefully a few quintessentially Japanese souvenirs (any reccs? :P)

Days 1-5: Osaka-based (Osaka, Himeji, Nara; 2.5:1:1)

D1 (10 May, Wed): Arrival in Osaka (2pm at KIX) (from SG, so no big worries re jetlag)

• Drop off luggage at Airbnb (Namba). Check out the nearby areas until early evening check-in time
• Check into airbnb, settle in
• Hozen-ji / Hozen-ji Yokocho
• Nipponbashi District (dinner, shopping)

D2 (11 May, Thurs): Osaka Amazing Pass, 1 of 2

• Osaka Castle - Museum, gozabune moat boat ride, garden
• *Lunch* (ramen?)
• Osaka Museum of History
• Shitenno-ji / Keitakuen garden
• Tsutenkaku tower
• Shinsekai (dinner; izakaya)
• Ebisubashi shopping street / Dotonbori (shopping, street food)
• Tonbori river cruise
• America-mura (optional)

D3 (12 May, Fri): Osaka Amazing Pass, 2 of 2

• Namba Yasaka Shrine
• Kuromon Market (grab something to go for lunch)
• Lunch at Airbnb
• Osaka Museum of Housing and Living
• Tenjinbashi shopping street (street food)
• Umeda Sky Building
• Hep Five (dinner) / Hep Five Ferris Wheel

D4 (13 May, Sat): Himeji Day Trip; Kansai Area Pass, 1 of 3

• Himeji Castle / Koko-en
• *Lunch* (Anago?)
• Mt. Shosha / Engyoji
• Otemae Street (grab some jokamachi-dog)
• Head back to Osaka
• Dinner (Dotonbori area)

D5 (14 May, Sun): Nara Day Trip; Kansai Area pass, 2 of 3

• *Check out of Airbnb.
• Nakatanidou (watch the making of the famous handmade mochi and sample some)
• Kofuku-ji
• Kasuga Taisha Shrine (wisteria blooming)
• Nara Park (brief stroll/rest/lunch)
• Nandai-mon
• Todai-ji and its bell-tower
• Nara National Museum
• Dinner in the area
• *Retrieve suitcase. Bring along en route to Kyoto.
• *Check into Kyoto Airbnb.

Days 6-9: Kyoto

D6 (15 May, Mon): Kyoto (West + North); Kansai Area Pass, 3 of 3

• Arashiyama Bamboo Forest / Okochi Sanso Garden
• Tenryu-ji
• Iwatayama Monkey Park
• *Lunch*
• Ninna-ji / Ryoan-ji (shorter visits)
• Kinkaku-ji
• *Dinner (Kyoto Stn)

D7 (16 May, Tue): Kyoto (East); using top-up card, no passes

• Kiyomizu-dera
• Sannen-/Ninenzaka shopping streets (breakfast)
• Hokan-ji (brief; observatory)
• Kennin-ji
• Kodai-ji
• *Lunch* (might head over to Nishiki Market area)
• Unplanned / free & easy
• Yasaka Shrine
• Gion District (dinner, stroll along bridge and alleys)

D8 (17 May, Wed): Kyoto (South); might get a day pass

• Fushimi Inari
• *Breakfast* (cafe)
• Tofuku-ji
• Rengeo-in Sanjusangen-do
• Kyoto National Museum
• Fushimi Sake Village (optional)
• To-ji
• *Dinner* (Kyoto station?)

D9 (18 May, Thurs): Kyoto (Central)

• *Check out of Airbnb.
• Nijo Castle
• Nishiki Market (if not alr done)
• Imperial Palace
• *Lunch near Nanzen-ji* (soba?)
• Nanzenji / Zenrin-ji (shorter visits)
• Philosopher's path stroll
• Ginkaku-ji
• Gion District (dinner & a few drinks)
• Night bus to Tokyo

Days 10-13: Tokyo

D10 (19 May, Fri): Tokyo (West)

• *Arrival at Shinjuku Station @ 7 am
• Meiji Jingu Shrine / Yoyogi Park
• Takeshita Street Square / Omotesando (strolling around to marvel at the architecture)
• Statue of Hachiko / Shibuya Crossing
• MEGA Don Quixote / Other shopping malls in Shibuya (Lunch, shopping)
• Mori Tower + Tokyo City View & Sky Deck
• *Check in to Airbnb, get sum rest
• Odaiba Seaside Park
• Teamlabs Planets
• Unicorn Gundam Statue / DiverCity Tokyo Plaza (dinner)
• Rainbow Bridge (optional, a little distance)

D11 (20 May, Sat): Tokyo (East)

• Asakusa-jinja / Senso-ji
• Ueno Park
• Tokyo National Museum
• Ueno Tosho-gu Shrine
• Tokyo Station (lunch & shopping)
• Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum (check out special exhibit)
• Akihabara (shopping & dinner)

D12 (21 May, Sun): Tokyo (Shinjuku/Imperial Palace)

• Imperial Palace East Gardens
• Kitanomaru-koen
• Yasakuni Shrine / Yushukan Museum
• Shinjuku City
• Tokyo Metro Govt Bldg
• Dinner ard Airbnb neighbourhood

D13 (22 May, Mon):

• *Check out of Airbnb
• Head over early to Narita Airport
• *Lunch before flight at noon*

P.s. Lockers at train stations will be utilised after checking out to store luggage.

Weird Seinfeld - Episode 6
FADE IN:
INT. MONK'S CAFÉ - DAY
Jerry and Kramer are sitting at their usual booth, drinking coffee. Elaine enters, looking excited.
Elaine: Hey guys, did you hear about the Soup Restaurant?
JERRY: What about it?
Elaine: It's up for auction because Peterman disappeared.
KRAMER: What happened to him?
Elaine: No one knows. But I want to buy the restaurant.
JERRY: Why?
Elaine: I want to show Sue Ellen Mischke that I can beat her at her own game.
KRAMER: What game?
Elaine: The game of life, Kramer.
Kramer nods his head, pretending to understand.
KRAMER: I get it.
JERRY: Good luck with that.
Elaine: Thanks, I'll need it.
Elaine leaves the café.
KRAMER: You know what I need?
JERRY: What?
KRAMER: A petting zoo.
JERRY: A petting zoo?
[Later at Kramer's apartment. Kramer is seen in his living room, surrounded by a bunch of rats.]
Kramer: [Talking to the rats] Alright, boys, we gotta get this petting zoo up and running.
Jerry: [Enters the room] What the hell is going on here, Kramer?
Kramer: [Excitedly] Jerry, I bought a bunch of rats and I'm starting a petting zoo!
George: [Enters the room] A petting zoo? With rats?
Kramer: Yeah, you know, it's an untapped market.
Jerry: I don't think anyone wants to pet a rat, Kramer.
Kramer: [Disappointed] What? Come on, guys, they're cute!
[Later, at the Soup Restaurant auction]
Auctioneer: [Addressing the bidders] Alright, we are now selling the Soup Restaurant. Who will start the bidding at $100,000?
Elaine: [Raises her hand] $100,000.
Sue Ellen Mischke: [Also raises her hand] $110,000.
Elaine: [Raises her hand again] $120,000.
Sue Ellen Mischke: [Raises her hand] $130,000.
[The bidding war continues until Sue wins the auction]
Elaine: [Sulking] Damn it!
Sue Ellen Mischke: [Taunting Elaine] Better luck next time, Elaine.
Elaine: [Determined] Oh, I'll get you back, Sue.
[Back at Kramer's apartment]
Kramer: [Frustrated] This petting zoo isn't going so well. I'm losing a lot of money, and my neighbors are complaining about the smell.
Jerry: [Trying to come up with a solution] Well, what can we do to help?
Kramer: [Thinking] I don't know, but I can't keep this up for much longer.
Elaine: [Enters the room] Hey, Kramer, can I take those rats off your hands?
Kramer: [Surprised] What do you want rats for?
Elaine: [Mysteriously] It's for a personal project.
Jerry: [Curiously] What kind of project?
Elaine: [Evading the question] Don't worry about it.
Kramer: [Handing the rats to Elaine] Sure, take them. I don't know what you're gonna do with them, though.
[The next morning at the cafe]
Jerry: [Concerned] Elaine, what did you do with those rats?
Elaine: [Grinning mischievously] Oh, you'll find out soon enough.
[At the Soup Restaurant]
Customer: [Eating soup] Mmm, this soup is delicious.
[All of a sudden, rats start coming out of the soup and scurrying around the restaurant, causing chaos]
Customer: [Screaming] Rats! Rats everywhere!
[The scene then shows the news broadcast of the incident, causing a national uproar]
News Anchor: [Reporting on the incident] The Soup Restaurant has been shut down by health officials after rats were found in the food. The restaurant's owner, Sue Ellen Mischke, could not be reached for comment.
[Back at the cafe, Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine are watching the news]
Jerry: [Shocked] Elaine, you did that?
The gang is shocked as they watch the news report on the rat incident at the Soup Nazi restaurant. Jerry and Kramer can't believe that Elaine would be capable of such a thing, but Elaine is smug and proud of what she's done.
ELAINE: (smiling) Revenge is a dish best served cold, boys.
KRAMER: (shaking his head) I don't know, Elaine. This seems a little extreme.
JERRY: (looking at Elaine) What did Sue Ellen do to make you do this?
ELAINE: (shrugging) Nothing, really. I just don't like her.
GEORGE: (sarcastically) Ah, the age-old reason for revenge.
KRAMER: (excitedly) Hey, speaking of revenge, I've got an idea. What if we start a new soup restaurant?
JERRY: (skeptical) A soup restaurant? What do we know about making soup?
KRAMER: (confidently) We'll figure it out. And we can call it the Rat-Free Soup Kitchen.
ELAINE: (rolling her eyes) Oh, great. That's just what we need, more competition.
JERRY: (thinking) Maybe we should focus on something else. How about we help Kramer with his petting zoo problem instead?
KRAMER: (grinning) Now you're talking.
The gang heads to Kramer's apartment to check out the petting zoo situation. They find a mess of hay and rat droppings, and the rats have chewed through the walls and escaped into the hallway.
GEORGE: (holding his nose) This place smells like a barn.
KRAMER: (defeated) I don't know what to do, guys. I'm out of ideas.
JERRY: (looking at the rats) Hey, Elaine, what did you do with those rats?
ELAINE: (smiling) Oh, I took care of them.
KRAMER: (confused) What do you mean, you took care of them?
ELAINE: (nonchalantly) I released them into the wild.
JERRY: (surprised) You what?
ELAINE: (shrugging) I figured they deserved a chance to be free.
KRAMER: (panicking) Elaine, those rats were my investment! Do you know how much money I'm going to lose because of this?
ELAINE: (smiling) Sorry, Kramer. I guess revenge is a dish best served with a side of collateral damage.
The episode ends with the gang looking at Kramer in disbelief as he starts to hyperventilate.

Hi,
I'm going to do Land's End to John o'Groats this spring, and I am unsure which guidebook to get. I want one that I can navigate with, because I don't want to be looking at a screen all the time. I am in no hurry (I've got 6 weeks lol, some of that time is reserved for extra trips but it gives you an idea) and want to get the quiet roads and nice scenery as much as possible. The guidebooks I've found so far are:

• Sustrans
• Cicerone
• Britain's Best Bike Ride

Does anyone have experiences with any of these? Are they useful for navigation, do they have nice routes?
Other suggestions also welcome of course

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hallo, i am from germany and plan to go on a road trip from san francisco to las vegas this may. because hotels are a bit expansive, i want to camp in national parks and where there is a oportunity. can i drive to any walmart i see and buy a tent and sleeping bag, etc? or do i have to go to special walmarts? or even other stores? sorry for my bad english.

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https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-26-2023
Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff landed midday today in Accra, the capital of Ghana, a country of about 33 million people slightly larger than Michigan on Africa’s west coast.
The 54 countries in Africa vary widely in language, religion, and culture, and Harris will visit three countries which initially seem unrelated. During her week on the African continent, in addition to Ghana, Harris will also visit Tanzania, a country bigger than Texas of about 62 million people on the east coast that is known for its natural wonders—Mount Kilimanjaro and the Serengeti plain are both on the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage List. She will then visit neighboring Zambia, a landlocked country slightly larger than Texas with about 20 million people, where about one third of the country is game management areas or national parks, including one that protects the famous waterfall Mosi-oa-Tunya, or Smoke that Thunders—also known as Victoria Falls.
Harris’s visit is part of the Biden administration’s plan to counter Chinese and Russian influence on the African continent. That continent is rich in natural resources, and other countries want access to them. Between 2000 and 2016, China invested heavily in a number of African nations, sometimes in exchange for resources, sometimes for political alliances. It has become Africa’s second most important trading partner with about $250 billion in trade in 2021, just slightly behind the European Union, while U.S.-Africa trade in 2021 was about $64 billion.
Russia’s interests in Africa have tended toward support for authoritarian regimes. Russia focused on Africa after its 2014 invasion of Ukraine began to isolate it from other nations and their resources. The Russian Wagner Group of mercenary fighters has been a key player in Africa since then, often called in by authoritarian leaders to suppress political opposition in exchange for access to mines or other valuable resources.
The Wagner Group has supported anti-democratic movements across the semi-arid Sahel region, which stretches across the northern part of the continent in a band above Ghana. After recent failures in Ukraine, the leader of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, says he will turn his attention back to Africa, although it is unclear that he will be able to raise the necessary forces to make a major push.
African nations have historical reasons to be leery of European governments, who have tended to want to exploit the continent’s resources for themselves at the expense—often the deadly expense—of Africa’s inhabitants. They are also leery of the U.S., for when African nations began to throw off colonial rule, the Soviet Union tended to support those movements while the U.S. tended instead to support right-wing forces. More recently, the Trump years continued to weaken ties between the U.S and Africa as the United States withdrew from engagement with what the former president allegedly called “sh*thole countries.”
The Biden administration has worked to repair relations between the U.S. and Africa on the stated principle that Africans must have control over their own countries and their own future. The administration hosted the U.S.-Africa leaders summit in December 2022, where it announced that it backed the admission of the African Union to the Group of 20, welcoming the 55 member states of the African Union to the intergovernmental forum that focuses on global issues. The African Union has wanted admission to the G20 for years, noting that they are currently left out of discussions that affect them—most recently, the plans to address the coronavirus—and the administration’s promise that it would back the African Union’s admission was an important sign of the administration’s focus on strengthening ties between the continent and the U.S.
Since then, the Biden administration has pledged more than $6.5 billion to the continent to aid security, support democratic institutions, and advance civil rights and the rule of law. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, First Lady Jill Biden, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have all visited the continent.
Harris is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit and will emphasize the deep connections between Africa and the spread of Africans around the world, a process known as the African diaspora. In Ghana, Harris will visit the Cape Coast slave castle, used to hold enslaved Africans before they were shipped across the Atlantic for sale, primarily in the Caribbean. But the connections between Africa and the Americas reach far beyond the legacy of enslavement: Accra is the burial place of early twentieth-century U.S. writer and intellectual W. E. B. DuBois, for example. Harris will also visit Lusaka, Zambia, where as a child she visited her maternal grandfather when he worked there as a civil engineer.
The administration’s outreach to Africa is not simply a way to counter China and Russia on the continent. The White House explained that Harris is visiting these three countries specifically because their governments are investing in their democracies at a time when democracies around the globe are under siege.
Harris will launch her meeting with Ghana’s president Nana Akufo-Addo. When the two leaders met before, in September 2021, Akufo-Addo identified the key issue facing Africa and the world, saying: “[O]ur big challenge—and it is a challenge of all those who want to develop democratic institutions on our continent—is to ensure and reassure our people that democratic institutions can be a vehicle for the resolution of their big problem—that is economic development as the means to eradicate poverty on the continent.”
This is a great summary of the central issue for democracy today.
In Africa the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, alongside a rise in interest rates, has made it hard for a number of nations to pay their international debts, which quintupled between 2000 and 2020. At the same time, the Russian blockade of Ukraine has cut food supplies while international sanctions against Russia for its 2022 invasion of Ukraine has cut fertilizer supplies to the continent, increasing food shortages.
Those crises offer possibilities for international cooperation to invest in the African continent, especially as the new African Continental Free Trade Area agreement smooths trade across the continent and, with luck, brings rural regions into better contact with more urban areas.
But those same crises also open the way for strongmen to take over by promising to solve their country’s shortages. Russian disinformation in Africa drives pro-Russian and anti-European sentiment; a new Russian social media network launched on the continent in February 2022. Last week, Russian president Vladimir Putin claimed to have written off $20 billion of African debt and blamed the West for his inability to deliver the fertilizer he had promised.
But while democracy is under siege around the world, Freedom House, the non-profit organization that tracks the health of democracy worldwide, noted last September that African countries have shown important efforts to expand the rule of law and strong democratic institutions. Ghana, for example, has become more democratic but is threatened by the instability to its north.
Still, in August, the pan-African, nonpartisan research network Afrobarometer found that African voters want democratic institutions. According to a report from Chatham House that reviewed the polling, Africans “believe that the military should stay out of politics, that political parties should freely compete for power, that elections are an imperfect but essential tool for choosing their leaders, and that it is time for the old men who cling to power to step aside.” Seventy percent of Africans say they prefer democracy to any other form of government, 82% reject “strongman” rule, 77% reject one-party rule, and 75% reject military rule (even in countries that have recently experienced military coups).
Those impressive numbers in a continent of very young people—the median age is just 19—are an obvious reason for the U.S. to want better relations at a time when both President Biden and Secretary of State Blinken have been very clear that they believe democracy at home depends at least in part on democracy overseas.
And the danger to democracy at home was crystal clear last night, as former president Trump held a rally in Waco, Texas, where in 1993 a 51-day government siege of the headquarters of a religious cult gave birth to the modern anti-government militia movement. Since then, Waco has been a touchstone for violent attacks on the government. There, last night, Trump stood on stage with his hand over his heart while loudspeakers played not the national anthem but a song recorded by January 6 insurrectionists. Footage from the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol played on a screen behind him.

Peggy ran as fast as she could. Her soft blonde curls flowing behind with the speed , her breaths heavy and loud , narrowed eyes only aimed at the road ahead of her . The dirt road seemed never ending as she prayed silently in her head. They were hot on her trail. Ever since Robert had confided in her the secret of where the kidnapped children of the town were, those people had started haunting her dreams until they appeared in her life for real.
The Shadow Ring was a secret cult that had been run over a decade in the small town of Shenington . Children aged between 6-12 were since then reported going missing to never to get found. Peggy had been brought up in the city and had only come to the town for dealing with the property she had inherited from her grandma. She had spent enough time to befriend a local policeman ,Robert. Being a very inquisitive soul herself, Peggy hadn't missed how unusually protective the townspeople were towards their children. She pursued Robert into telling her about the unsolved missing reports and thought of doing some further research into it.
Peggy visited all the old buildings she could, the schools, hospitals, the Town library ,every place except for the abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of the town . She searched all the newspapers dated back to a decade , made notes of the missing children's details she could get . It had started with a general curiosity but now, she was giving all her attention to it. This didn't go unnoticed by her friend. Robert soon approached her with the topic ,stating his concern for her safety.
" Pegs" he called her by her nickname he had coined for her " Listen, you shouldn't get involved with all this. This can get you in a grave danger." They were sitting in a small coffee shop , at the corner table . The shop was old and smelled like it. Old and dark ,much more in the corners.
She let out a small laugh which quickly left her lips as she noticed he wasn't really joking. Clearing her throat ,she said
"Robert, I can't believe its YOU out of all the people telling me this. Its actually your job but you seem very indifferent to any of it." she said, shaking her head in disappointment
"Its not really about that Peggy, its about your safety. You think I haven' t tried to solve this mystery with all my young vigor? Believe me , the people involved in all of this are extremely dangerous. They don't spare anyone, they won't spare anyone."
Peggy's eyes widened .
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN?! You know who they are? You know what is happening? Do you??"
She noticed how a bead of sweat trickled down his temple, how his eyes couldn't meet hers and his hands didn't seem to know where to rest.
After a while of having an inner conflict ,it seemed, Robert finally let out a long sigh before telling her the history of the Black Ring cult which had haunted the town and its children for years. They were a secret society worshipping a devil they referred as ' Gionna' ,who fed on children's blood. This information was enough to send chills down her spine.
"Do the townspeople know about it?" she asked, gulping down.
"Pegs, some of the towns people are the one involved in it. No one is supposed to take their names let alone discuss it in open. And here I am , putting you in danger with all of this information." he said ,concern and guilt lacing his words. "Please, don't discuss this with anyone. You never know who is a member and who is not, okay? And please abandon this " He said looking at a conflicted Peggy ,rising up from the table with the coat hanging on his shoulder.
"Listen, what do you mean by only 'me'? You have put yourself in danger too, right?"
At this, he broke into a nervous smile." Yeah ,never mind " With this, he left .
Days passed by one after the other. Peggy had spent nights shifting on her bed and then , falling to sleep only to get up washed in sweat due to the nightmares. Whenever she went out, it seemed as if everyone's eyes were on her. The stares grew so intense that she was confused whether it was all in her head, or was she really in danger. She was going to leave the town the next week as soon as the paperwork was done. It was a matter of few days.
On a usual morning, Peggy picked up the newspaper on her doorstep only for her eyes to land up on the last news she wanted to see. 'An 8 year old boy went missing from the Silverstone park yesterday.' Wait. Silverstone park, the one where the first child was abducted. Something clicked inside her head. She immediately went running inside and pulled open the drawer where she had saved all the old newspaper articles she had gathered. It now began to make sense. Most of the places where the children were last reported to be seen or where the dead bodies were found, were near to the only place which was left unexplored by her - the warehouse . It was the perfect place to carry out mysterious activities. The warehouse was surrounded by dense trees which further led to the forest . She had to make a decision now. One part of her told her that she was on the right track and if she went, a child might be saved. Another part screamed at her that if she was caught, she would have a terrible fate. She looked at her family photo , her parents were waiting for her to return , her beloved sister who must have saved all the funny stories of their neighbors' to tell her when she came back . Then , her eyes flickered over the newspaper bearing the 8 year old's innocent face. She looked at it intently.
She took her handgun and a safety knife, her camera to collect some evidence and finally called Robert .
"I'm going to the warehouse. If I don't get back in about an hour, there are chances that I might need your help."
"Peggy don't! I..." before he could complete, she cut the call.
Peggy climbed into her car and started towards the warehouse. Adjusting her rear view mirror, she noticed a shiny black car behind her. She noticed that the car took the exact same turns she took .The car was following her. The road was silent and nobody was to be seen anywhere near .She could hear her heartbeats ringing in her eardrums. Her throat went dry as the black car tried to bump into her. She didn't know what to do .
She slowed down until the black car now stopped her path . Two people got out with black robes and a dark hoodie to hide their faces. They had a yellow circle on the front. She froze onto her spot as they approached her. "Get out" The man said tapping at her window. She had no choice but to obey. She kicked open the door , hitting the man in the process and made a dash for it.
Now, she kept running towards the warehouse, the people close on her heels. She hoped Robert would soon come to her rescue. He knew her location. She just has to hold on for a while. This was the only hope for now. She reached the warehouse when a sharp blow on her head made her fall down.
Peggy struggled to open her eyes as she realized her hands and feet were tied down. She was in the warehouse. The people dressed in the same robes as the earlier men ,were surrounding her on all sides. The one on the front came forward. He took off his hoodie to reveal an old man's face she recognized as the postman who was very popular with the kids.
"Wh-where is the child? Let him go." She said with her dry throat burning furiously.
She grimaced as his lips formed a thin smile.
"You really think we would dare so much as to insult our lord for your sake. You have caused us so much unnecessary trouble. We were going to spare you on behalf of your friend ,but you leave us with no choice. We have already done the sacrifice." he added with an evil smile.
"Friend?" she was confused.
The old man nodded and backed as Robert came into her view.
"Rob.." she was at a loss of words as the man she had called her friend, stood there looking at her helpless form .
"I told you, Pegs.." The nickname now felt like a piercing in her heart.
The old man then put forth a sword in front of Robert. He took it .
"I can't help it .I want to live. I'm sorry" he said as he raised the sword.

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-24-2023
A follow-up to last night’s examination of the confusion among the Republicans about their budget plans: today when a reporter said to House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) that the chair of the House Budget Committee, Jodey Arrington (R-TX), had said that he and McCarthy were finalizing a list of proposals to give to President Biden about spending cuts, McCarthy answered: “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”
Noise also continues from former president Donald Trump, who early this morning posted on social media that his indictment could lead to “potential death & destruction”; hours later, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg received a death threat in an envelope with white powder in it. For three days this week, Russian accounts have emailed bomb threats to the court buildings where the grand jury is meeting.
Tomorrow, Trump will hold a rally in Waco, Texas, where a 1993 government siege to extricate the leader of a religious cult who witnesses said was stockpiling weapons led to a gun battle and a fire that left seventy-six people dead.
Although a Republican investigation cited “overwhelming evidence” that exonerated the government of wrongdoing, right-wing talk radio hosts jumped on the events at Waco to attack the administration of Democratic president Bill Clinton. Rush Limbaugh stoked his listeners’ anger with talk of the government’s “murder” of citizens, and Alex Jones dropped out of community college to start a talk show on which he warned that the government had “murdered” the people at Waco and was about to impose martial law.
After the Waco siege the modern militia movement took off, and Trump is clearly using the anniversary to tap into domestic violence against the government to defend him in advance of possible indictments.
But will it work? His supporters turned out on January 6, 2021, when he was president and had the power—they thought—to command the army to back him. In the end, that didn’t happen. Since then, Trump’s foot soldiers have been going to prison while he dines at Mar-a-Lago and rails about how unfairly he has been treated.
Trump is also in more trouble today, as Judge Beryl Howell ruled last week that Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, former director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe, former top Department of Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli, former national security advisor Robert O'Brien, former top aide Stephen Miller, former deputy chief of staff and social media director Dan Scavino, and former Trump aides Nick Luna and John McEntee all have to testify before the federal grand jury investigating Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Special counsel Jack Smith had subpoenaed these members of the Trump administration, and Trump had tried to stop their testimony by claiming it was covered by executive privilege. Howell rejected that claim. In the past, she rejected a similar claim by arguing that only the current president has the right to claim executive privilege and Biden had declined to do so. Meadows is the key witness to Trump’s involvement in the events of January 6.
Also today, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a repeal of so-called right-to-work legislation passed in 2012 by a Republican-controlled legislature, whose members pushed it through in a lame-duck session without hearings.
That legislation had a long history. U.S. employers had opposed workers’ unions since the organization of the National Labor Union in 1866, but the rise of international communism in the early twentieth century provoked a new level of violence against organized workers. In 1935, as part of the New Deal, Democrats passed the National Labor Relations Act, popularly known as the Wagner Act, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed it into law.
The Wagner Act confirmed workers’ right to organize and to bargain with employers collectively (although to appease southern Democrats, it exempted domestic and agricultural workers, who in the South were mostly Black). It also defined unfair labor practices and established a new National Labor Relations Board that could issue cease and desist orders if workers testified that employers were engaging in them.
The Wagner Act gave workers a unified voice in American politics and leveled the playing field between them and employers. But while most Americans of both parties liked the Wagner Act, right-wing Republicans hated it because it put large sums of money into the hands of labor officials, who used the money to influence politics. And organized workers had backed Democrats since the 1860s.
So, in 1947, a Republican-led Congress pushed back against the Wagner Act. The previous year, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) had launched “Operation Dixie” to organize Black workers, which seemed a threat to segregation as well as white employers. Together, business Republicans and segregationist Democrats passed the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, better known as the Taft-Hartley Act. Ohio Senator Robert Taft (who was the son of President William Howard Taft) claimed that the Taft-Hartley Act would simply equalize power between workers and employers after the “completely one-sided” Wagner Act gave all the power to labor leaders.
The Taft-Hartley Act limited the ways in which workers could organize; it also went after unions’ money. Although the Wagner Act had established that if a majority of a company’s workers voted to join a union, that union would represent all the workers in the company, it didn’t require all the workers to join that union. That presented a problem: if workers were going to get the benefits of union representation without joining, why should they bother to pay dues?
So labor leaders began to require that everyone employed in a unionized company must pay into the union to cover the cost of bargaining, whether or not they joined the union.
The Taft-Hartley Act undermined this workaround by permitting states to get rid of the requirement that employees who didn’t join a union that represented them must pay fees to the union.
Immediately, states began to pass so-called right-to-work laws. Their supporters argued that every man should have the right to bargain for his work on whatever terms he wanted, without oversight by a union. But lawmakers like Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), who pushed a right-to-work law in his own state, were clear that they were intent on breaking the power of organized workers. He was determined to destroy the political power of unions because, he said, their leaders were stealing American freedom. They were, he said, “more dangerous than Soviet Russia.”
Michigan had been known as a pro-union state, but in 2012, Republicans there pushed through two right-to-work laws over waves of protest. Repealing the laws has been a priority for Democrats, and now that they are in control of state government, they have made it happen.
Joey Cappelletti of the Associated Press notes that twenty-six states currently have right to work laws, and although Missouri voters overwhelmingly rejected a right-to-work law in 2017, it has been 58 years since a state repealed one. Indiana voters repealed theirs in 1965; Republicans put it back into place in 2012.
Republicans say that since the neighboring states of Indiana and Wisconsin have right-to-work laws—although there were huge protests when those laws went into place in 2012 and 2015—Michigan’s repeal of right to work will make that state less attractive to employers.
But after signing the law today, Governor Whitmer embraced a different vision for the state, saying: "Today, we are coming together to restore workers' rights, protect Michiganders on the job, and grow Michigan's middle class."
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Notes:
https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/whitmer-signs-repeal-of-right-to-work-bill-as-michigan-rolls-back-union-restricting-law
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