Litter robot over torque fault

I've had USAA a long time. I haven't had any any accidents, tickets, etc in 11+ years... about 2 weeks ago I was driving on a highway and a huge SUV started veering into my lane slowing down. I honked my horn for a solid 5 seconds and started slamming on my brakes but the other vehicle just kept coming. We collided, the front right corner of my bumper hitting the rear left of his vehicle as I veered off into the grass trying to avoid him. No air bags deployed and everyone was fine.
Unfortunately I don't have a dash cam to prove that he drifted into me; ironically I had been planning on buying one very soon.. it was sitting in my Amazon cart.
Of course, this is being labeled as my fault. And it's incredibly frustrating. I get that technically I hit him but I literally could not stop on time for someone who just suddenly cut me off on the highway. And of course because his vehicle is a ginormous monster (one of those giant Chevy Tahoe's) my little Hyundai probably has a lot more damage.
USAA originally told me I was covered and they will repair the damage so I drove it to a shop and got a rental. Now, over 2 weeks later, USAA is telling me its a "possible loss" and they need to tow it for further inspection.
I called the repair shop to sign off on it being towed.. and the shop guy said "the vehicle is taken apart and I've already got all the parts here."
So basically, no one has any idea what is going on. I don't know how this all works but clearly USAA isn't communicating with the shop or the adjuster or me, and it's all a clusterfuck.
Because I have a Hyundai (and the issue with all the Hyundai's/Kia's being stolen isn't going away) I'm honestly thinking of just getting rid of my car regardless of the outcome...
But I don't know the best course of action here. If its totaled, what is the best course of action?
The worst thing is I am scheduled to go on a long road trip very soon.. one that has been planned out and paid for well in advance of this accident.
For future reference: how do I go about those "interviews" they do with you about what happened? I feel like this is a bullshit tactic and I always feel played.

B and I got together when we were both 20. We were friends in middle school and high school. She would later tell me she had a huge crush on me and would have jumped on me given the chance. She had a boyfriend who was 2 years older than us, played hockey and had a badass truck given to him by his parents and B (my ex) was a blonde smoke show. I was not even in the same league in my eyes, but apparently he would walk her to and pick her up at social studies because she had told him she liked me and he was jealous.
Fast forward to when we were 20. I was scrolling Facebook one night and she had posted she was bored. I commented simply "do something about it" she Dm'd me right after and I asked if she wanted to hang out. It just so happened to be a provincial holiday with fireworks, so we walked to the harbor and watched them, after we went and played pool at a bar and to finish the night we drove to a beach and laid on the hood of my truck and watched the stars, then had the best sex I've ever had in my life. Turned out to be the perfect date just by chance.
I had found out a few days later through the grapevine that she had just gotten out of a very bad relationship and had gotten tied up in heroin with the guy. She was still addicted, but being a 20 year old working in camp and the connection we had from before everything I kept seeing her when I was on my off shift.
Turns out when you fuck someone 12 times a day for 7 days straight who has a less than perfect routine with birth control, they can and will get pregnant. We were 20 and more or less FWB and she was still doing drugs so I asked if she would get an abortion. She said no. I couldn't stand the thought of leaving a child with a drug addict, even if she was young with good parents and on track to clean up, so I stayed.
Over the years we ended up having a great relationship. looking back on it 12 years later and it was amazing. She cleaned up while pregnant, we rented a big house in a rural suburb, we had our daughter and we had our perfect little family. She ended up starting college to be a nurse when our first child was about 18 months old .Were then making good money and were getting set up pretty well in life at this point, so we decided to have another child.
We ended up buying a house in the same area later on near some friends of ours. At the time I thought it would be great being so close to good friends, later it turned out this was not the case.
Over the years of living in our own house my ex would drink with her friends more and more. To the point it got really bad, she would drink every day, wake up at noon or later on every weekend leaving me to do things with the kids alone. She gained alot of weight and started smoking cigarettes too. She was getting depressed and would not make any changes to her lifestyle saying it's not that bad. All of this was a huge strain financially and emotionally on our relationship. We got abusive and toxic with each other and our perfect life and family was turning into hell.
I ended up leaving the house 6 months ago. I took our travel trailer and lived in it at my aunt's. I kept paying the mortgage and car payments as we were going through our separation, I was offering her a buyout over 100k below market to keep her and the kids in their home, this would give me just enough to start over and her mortgage payment after child support would be very easy to deal with. She was not taking the separation well, she believed I would come back but I told her over and over that we were finished.
My mother in law called me a couple days ago and told me she found B dead in her bed with family photos around her. She overdosed herself. I'm going to say right now that B is one of the strongest ppl I know, she overcame that terrible drug for aver 10 years and we had the picture perfect life that would not have been possible with her hard work and determination. I had no idea I still loved her so much still. I've been crying for 2 days straight. My heart is breaking for my kids, they are destroyed by this.
I feel like a peice of shit. I should have helped my best friend when she was on a downward slide, yet I just left. Now she's gone because of me leaving. Everyone is saying it's not my fault but it is, we were holding each other up. She would have never touched that stuff if I hadn't left and now my children's beautiful mother is dead and I have to try and raise my 2 beautiful children by myself.
Look around you and your life, remember how short it is and dont take for granted those you love.

I was a Kickstarter backer of Luba. After the long wait (12 months) for delivery the Luba had a faulty bumper straight out of the box. When connected Luba simply thinks there’s constantly something blocking it and so just slowly reverses out of task area. I figured out that without bumper attached it worked (even though it’s not supposed to without bumper attached…). Well it worked for a week or so until the new software and firmware upgrade. Since then there is zero connection to any satellites and Luba therefore 100% inoperable. I have tried multiple relocations of the RTK including high up on roof. All locations had open skies. No connection to any satellites at all.
Then on to customer service. Or rather the utter lack of it. I have sent approx 25 emails, sent photos videos etc through the app and yet zero resolution from Mammotion. In fact they haven’t even suggested a single thing! Nothing! And now total silence from them for over 2 weeks despite multiple emails.
Clearly when the product works it’s great. But there are many many many of us with major issues and inoperable machines just sitting in the corner doing nothing whilst the grass grows.
So if you’re considering purchasing Luba DO NOT. Maybe come back to this product in a year or so and see if they actually have a reliable working auto mower. Or still a basket case like now. Save your money and spend it elsewhere on a reliable and established brand of auto mower that has proper customer service.
For now my advice is stay well clear of Mammotion - serious product faults and definitely the worst customer service from any company I’ve dealt with in many a year.
Very disappointing.
Zero star rating.

It really just rubs me in the wrong way. Pati nung bata pa ako, hindi ko talaga gusto yang kanta niyan, especially the first time I heard and learned the lyrics. Maganda naman yung music, panira lang talaga yung lyrics para sa akin.
Parang nangguguiltrip, nakakarindi. It's one of those having 'well-meaning' intentions, but only came out as insensitive and ignorant. Ang tagal na ng kanta na nyan, pero hindi talaga nagbabago opinyon ko tungkol dyan. God, it's so bad!
Maybe it's just my way of interpreting things, but look at the lyrics! It's so blatantly obvious that the song puts the parents in a positive spotlight, perfect role models, no flaws and all, and then suddenly their child is a failure and a rebel!?
And the parents are surprised why their child ended up that way?!? What the heck?
The lyrics are just so shady to me that even as a child, the song just really really didn't sit well with me! Like the first verse is fine, sure yeah...tapos yung lyrics after that:

Ikaw nga ay biglang nagbago, Naging matigas ang iyong ulo, At ang payo nila'y sinuway mo, Di mo man lang inisip na Ang kanilang ginagawa'y para sa iyo Pagkat ang nais mo'y Masunod ang layaw mo Di mo sila pinapansin

A child doesn't rebel out of nowhere. It's not like Big Jack Horner shit or anything. There's always a reason why a child acts up. There's a reason why a child doesn't listen to their parents.
It's just so weird how they treated the child in the song as some ungrateful brat who never appreciated anything their parents did. Sure, there are instances where despite the normal and happy childhood and such, some children can turn out to be bad people (like Big Jack Horner or something).
But that isn't the case all the time, is it now?
It's like parents turn a blind eye when something bad happened to the child, and when everything's too late to fix everything, they're questioning the child rather than the root of the problem.

Anak, ba't ka nagkaganyan?

Like really? What happened to 'minamasdan pati pagtulog mo'? Bigla bang nawala ha nung nagrebelde yung anak?
And I especially FUCKING hate this part the MOST!

Nagsisisi at sa isip mo'y Nalaman mong ika'y nagkamali Nagsisisi at sa isip mo'y Nalaman mong ika'y nagkamali Nagsisisi at sa isip mo'y Nalaman mong ika'y nagkamali...

Like over and over again, echoing like a stupid alarm clock that doesn't need to ring incessantly because you're already awake. WHY IS IT THE CHILD'S FAULT!? Bakit, ano ba yung mga magulang niya? Perfect ba talaga mga yan? Hindi alam nangyayari sa anak nila? O baka sila naman yung dahilan bakit nagkaganyan anak nila, just saying...
God, this reminds me the conclusion of the bear plot in Pixar's Brave. IT WAS SO HORRIBLE! Merida said that it was her fault for causing the conflict in the first place, it's like she had no idea why she rebelled in the first place! (Ehem, the fact that her mother wasn't listening to her and forcing her into an ARRANGED MARRIAGE!)
But she's a perfect parent, a good role model...
That's what the song is reminding me of! How despite the proper caring of parents to their child, it's as if they hold no accountability when their child goes to the dark place. No form of communication or support. Just the child regretting everything in the end and how the parents are always good and always right all along...
The parents remind me of Mother Gothel from Disney's Tangled. The parents reminds me of that grandmother who broke Miguel's guitar in Disney's Coco. The parents reminds me of Abuelita without the character development in Disney's Encanto.
It's a hidden generational trauma where the child is put on a negative light instead, where the child is the villain...and the parents are fucking perfect. There's no happy ending to the grown-up kid in the song, there's only the 'I told you so' from the parents.
I'm not saying it's the parents fault all the time when the child grows up bad. I'm saying that the song implies that a child did grow up bad without any sort of bad influence from the parents or any outside influnce. That it's solely the child's fault for everything bad that has happened to them.
God, maybe the song's just vague enough to be interpreted like that. I really just hate the song, and it's not gonna change anytime soon.
Please enlighten me why most people like the song. I really don't get it. What do you think of the song's lyrics besides mine?
Also, thanks for reading the whole rant, kung nabasa niyo lahat hahaha.
TLDR: I despise the song ever since I was a kid because it puts the child in a negative light where everything is their fault for every bad situation they experienced. And I hate how the parents in the song are so oblivious about the reason of their child's actions it's as almost as if they didn't raised and took care of their child like the pristine parents they are. Also Disney references scattered through my rant.

So I found that for some reason Veritcal Robot, the developers of Red Matter 2, runs the game at a scaled down resolution on the Quest 2 but they scale it up on the Quest Pro. Since there's not much, if any, performance difference between the two headsets, I thought I'd try to up the resolution of the game on the Quest 2 and see how it goes. It was great. Same performance. If anyone is interested, your device must be in developer mode. I posted a video about it you can watch here, but the bottom line is just run this command:

adb shell setprop debug.oculus.textureWidth 1900&adb shell setprop debug.oculus.textureHeight 2100&adb shell setprop debug.oculus.refreshRate 72&adb shell setprop debug.oculus.foveation.level 4&adb shell setprop debug.oculus.foveation.dynamic 1 

Then fire up Red Matter 2 and enjoy. Surprisingly there really isn't much, if any, horsepower difference between the two headsets. That's ONE of the reasons I returned mine. This game is so well done, the visuals are great, they used a heavily modified version of Unreal Engine for this game, they really went over and beyond in optimizing this game, and the story line is great. If you like Sci-Fi you'll enjoy this game.
Technical details: On the Quest Pro this game runs at: 1699x1904 Whereas on the Quest 2 they run the game at: 1256x1440 This is a significant difference. The above listed command sets the Quest 2 resolution to 1900x2100, which must be set since this game is using a lower resolution multiplier on the Quest 2, which brings the game to run at 1704x1904 on the Quest 2. Also Dynamic Fixed Foveated rendering is enabled with the above listed command. I've run this game on the Quest Pro and the Quest 2. I couldn't believe how POOR it looked on the Quest 2 until I did this. Hope any Red Matter 2 fans can rediscover this game using this method! Out of all the Quest 2 natively run VR games I've played this one comes the closest to looking like the PC VR version.

So, we already discussed what DC was doing to match the tenor of the early years of the War on Terror: A grim, smarter-than-it-thinks miniseries full of gratuitous rape that was meant to take the shine off the Silver Age by showing the darker side of its greatest heroes. Marvel, on the other hand, was trying to find a way to capture the zeitgeist of a post-9/11 era of existential threats, constant government surveillance, and the idea that if you weren’t with America, you were against it. A Captain America storyline saw Cap wrestle with the very concept of Guantanamo Bay; like any story arc that involves Cap doubting whether America lives up to its ideals, this made certain conservatives pissy, to the point that bad movie cataloguer Michael Medved wrote an entire article asking if Cap was a traitor. Avengers Disassembled briefly saw the Avengers face down their demons, as the Scarlet Witch goes crazy (again) and starts killing team members, her reality manipulations causing fault lines to form among Marvel’s greatest superteam. But there hadn’t yet been a storyline that would tie the entire Marvel Universe together with the burning question, “Which side are you on?”
Yeah, it’s got nothing to do with the Sokovia Accords. We’d be a lot better off if it did.
Part 1: Mark Millar’s March to the C-Word
Content Warning: Sexual assault. None of this is germane to the topic of the drama, so feel free to skip ahead to Part 1.5 if you don’t want to deal with this. Tl;dr: Mark Millar, the writer of the event, has a near pathological need to be a 3edgy5u contrarian.
Every comics crossover is ultimately a chance for one creative in the stable to shine or falter. The editors pick a writer who has turned out dependable work and give them a chance to try to alter the status quo but good. And for Civil War, Marvel’s EiC Joe Quesada decided the best person to lead the charge was Ultimates writer Mark Millar.
But who is Millar? Well, we could say “edgelord” and leave it at that, but we’re trying to dig deeper. Millar came up in comics alongside fellow Scot Grant Morrison, long before Morrison said the only time they want to bump into Millar on the streets of Glasgow is while going at 100 miles per hour. This antipathy is alleged to have stemmed from Millar copping several ideas from Morrison that went into Superman: Red Son. But after getting a start on Superman Adventures and as a cowriter on parts of Morrison’s JLA run, Millar soon branched out to WildStorm, where he took over The Authority from departing creatowritesex pest Warren Ellis.
The reason I bring up Red Son (for those non-geeks, an alternative universe comic premised on “What if Superman’s rocket had landed in Soviet Russia?”) is to frame a constant refrain about Mark Millar. He has good high-concept ideas… which often get trammeled up in an almost Pavlovian urge to shock, disturb, and/or titillate the reader. For instance, in The Authority, Ellis had introduced Apollo and Midnighter, two close companions who just happened to share the rough power sets and demeanors of Superman and Batman, with a few tweaks. Then he revealed they were boyfriends, which was a pretty bold move for a late Nineties comic book full of widescreen action and lovingly-rendered eviscerations.
In Millar’s first arc on the title, centered on a villainous Jack Kirby clone sending out a team of baddies who totally aren’t the Avengers, Apollo is subdued and is strongly implied to have been raped by someone who’s not Captain America. Apollo gets revenge by destroying EvilCap’s spinal column with his laser vision, then leaving him to the tender mercies of Midnighter, who is strongly implied to have sodomized him with a jackhammer.
In case you can’t tell, Millar loved him some rape. And it kept showing up in his creator-owned titles as well, all of which were basically written as Hollywood pitch docs. Wanted asks the question, “What if the supervillains won and secretly ruled the world from behind the scenes?” Well, an Eminem clone would take the opportunity to step into his dead villainous dad’s shoes and commit a lot of rape (yeah, there’s a reason the movie version replaced this with basically the Euthanatos from Mage: the Ascension getting orders from a magic loom). Chosen asks the question, “What if Jesus were born today?” Well, in a blatantly obvious twist, it turns out he’s actually the Antichrist, and part of his journey into realizing his evil nature involves being raped by all the demons of Hell.
It’s not that Millar can’t write innocent or restrained; he got started on the Superman: the Animated Series comic spin-off, and some of his titles such as Huck and Starlight have been praised for being relatively wholesome (keep in mind Huck is basically “What if Superman was Forrest Gump?” when I say “relatively”). And, as mentioned above, his works are made for high-concept log lines. You might recognize some of his various pitch docs: Kick-Ass, The Secret Service (source for the Kingsman movies), and, as mentioned above, Wanted. It’s just there’s this unctuous contrarian streak to a lot of his titles, a tendency to focus on venality, grotesquerie, and sodomy, with an air of pop culture edge. This also leaked into his image outside of his writing, with comments like “Games are for pedos” and ventures like the creator-owned comics periodical CLiNT (yes, the kerning is intentional). This streak continues to this day, as The Magic Order, a title that emerged from his deal with Netflix, features a magical escapologist who, she feels it very important to tell the reader in a direct monologue, escaped her own abortion. Bottom line, Millar has a sense of vision, but it’s betrayed at times by this reflexive desire to prove he’s smarter than the reader, to rub your face in the contradictions and make you a party to the artifice of it all. Usually with a dash of rape.
But at Marvel, Millar was riding the lightning of the Ultimate Universe. His Ultimates title was drawing on the wide-screen action image of JLA and The Authority, creating the cinematic language that would come to define the MCU. The choice to fantasy cast Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury is why we have Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. He also painted the Hulk as a cannibalistic monster, cemented Hank Pym’s reputation as a wifebeater, and gave us Captain America yelling “Surrender? Do you think this A on my head stands for France?”, so let’s just keep that in perspective.
But the Ultimate Universe was its own pocket universe. Millar was being tapped to write a story for Earth-616, the main Marvel Universe. And he had a vision:

“I opted instead for making the superhero dilemma something a little different. People thought they were dangerous, but they did not want a ban. What they wanted was superheroes paid by the federal government like cops and open to the same kind of scrutiny. It was the perfect solution and nobody, as far as I'm aware, has done this before.”

Yeah. About that.
Part 1.5: What Has Come Before
Ultimately, the crux of Civil War is something that has been explored lightly in the past at Marvel: The idea that, instead of being unlicensed vigilantes who decide the best solution of societal issues is to beat up assholes in spandex, superheroes become licensed government officers that register their true identities with Uncle Sam and solve societal issues by beating up assholes in spandex. In Marvel’s history, it hasn’t gone well. The reality of government liaisons to superhero bodies has ranged from Valerie Cooper, who worked with government mutant team X-Factor but still found herself backing the genocidal Sentinel program as a big “Yeah, but what if…?”, to Henry Peter Gyrich, an inflamed obstructionist asshole who had to be held back from flipping a switch that would depower every superhuman individual on Earth. The idea of heroes themselves bristling against a government they disagreed with had a long history, as there was a period where Steve Rogers quit being Captain America, and the government had to find a replacement while he rode around on a motorcycle in a surprisingly slutty costume. But the idea of registering with the government has usually ended up on the “No” side due to one big cohort at Marvel: Mutants.
Ever since the days of Chris Claremont, a general conceit of the Marvel Universe is that mutants are a stand-in for your minority group of choice. Hated and feared, born different and feeling alienated, painted as an existential menace and threat to the status quo. Of course, it’s long been pointed out that the metaphor breaks down on the general grounds that, say, gays can’t shoot laser beams out of their eyes. I have my thoughts on that which I might share in the comments if someone pokes me hard enough, but it’s been general editorial consensus that people with powers, especially those of persecuted minorities, being compelled to share their true names, addresses, and natures with the federal government is a “That train’s never late!” move. Not only that, it’s a slippery slope. The classic X-Men story “Days of Future Past” is entirely premised on the idea that a government program of genocidal robots built to wipe out mutants will eventually run out of mutants… and then start turning on humans who could give birth to mutants, and then it’s Skynet all over again.
Another running meme in the Marvel Universe is that the X-Men usually exist in a Schrodinger’s cat situation with the rest of the superhero universe, both coexisting and in their own worlds. Yes, mutants have served on the Avengers, and yes, Thor intervened when the Morlocks were nearly wiped out in the sewers under New York. But Captain America, for all his proud statements of living up to America’s ideals, has a habit of missing the plot whenever the US government (or Canada, seat of all the Marvel Universe’s governmental evils - no, really) decides it’s Genocide O’Clock. And when the mutant nation of Genosha was completely wiped out by said murder robots, the Avengers seemed to be all “New phone who dis?” But when the two do intersect, there’s usually support for the mutants. One story in Fantastic Four had Reed Richards - Mr. Fantastic, stretchy man, greatest genius in the Marvel Universe, guy who’s probably being cucked by a fish-man - get tapped by the US government to make a device that detects mutants and other people with powers. He does… and then uses it to show why the government probably doesn’t want it, as it pings several members of Congress as having just enough genetic variation to qualify as “mutants,” even if they don’t have powers.
All in all, while the argument has some merit, for years, Marvel has come down on the position that asking people with powers to reveal their identities to the federal government is something that could go really bad if somebody with a hate-on for superheroes ends up in power. Something that would never happen oh yeah it totally did. But before it all went to Hell, Civil War at least gave an opportunity to reexamine the concept and see if it had merit.
It might have. But not with this argument.
Part 1.75: What Else Has Happened Before?
And now, some things that will ultimately give context for what happens next:

• In the pages of Thor, all of Asgard eventually runs headlong into Ragnarok. Thor and the rest of the Asgardians give their lives to save the earth, taking Thor off the board… for now.
• As mentioned above, the Avengers experience a critical fault due to Wanda going batshit (a common lament). With Avengers Mansion destroyed and the team at odds, it is eventually reunited under Tony Stark, who put the Avengers up in a tower he built.
• Nick Fury has vanished due to doing some skullduggery in the pages of the miniseries Secret War (no, not Secret Wars**, this is different). Acting head of SHIELD, the all-purpose super spy squad of Marvel, is Maria Hill, who can’t seem to draw her pistol without shooting herself in the foot.
• Due to Wanda continuing to go batshit, the House of M crossover event ends with her casting a spell: “No more mutants.” While the damage is staunched, Earth-616’s population of mutants (which was recently established to be somewhere around 16 million, meaning they outnumber Native Americans or the Romani) is reduced to 200, the rest being depowered or dying as a result of being depowered. This was because, as Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada said, the idea of mutants being everywhere made them “boring.” The fact that mutants were starting to be written less as a minority stand-in and more as an actual minority group with fashion, culture, music, and neighborhoods might have had something to do with that. From the wake of this event emerges Sally Floyd, a journalist whose own mutant daughter died before the mass depowering due to having a power that was more curse than blessing. The series Generation M follows her as the viewpoint character as she investigates the stories of former mutants.

Part 2: Connecticut Can’t Catch a Break
The big kick-off for Civil War involves the New Warriors, a team of teen heroes who have, as of a recently canceled series, been trying to make it big as reality TV stars. They get in a fight with a bunch of villains in the small town of Stamford, CT, when exploding villain Nitro goes positively nuclear, resulting in a blast much bigger than any he’s generated. [1] Not only does this mostly wipe out the New Warriors (save for kinetic energy-absorbing goofball Speedball), but it also happens to hit a nearby school. In the end, 612 people are dead, many of them children, and the nation wants answers.
With public opinion turning against the New Warriors, former member Hindsight starts leaking secret identities to get the heat off his back. This only makes things worse. Secret identities have only recently stopped being a thing for some heroes: Captain America only came out a few years ago, it was only recently that Tony Stark stopped pretending Iron Man was his bodyguard, and Daredevil was almost outed in the pages of his book. But something needs to be done, so Tony helps work with Congress to pass the Super Human Registration Act, which requires that all people with powers or working as vigilantes register their identities with the government to receive training and oversight. If you don’t? Believe it or not, jail, right away.
Fault lines quickly develop in the superhero community. While Tony is leading the “pro” side, alongside Reed Richards (yeah, we’ll get to that), Captain America, usually painted as the embodiment of the dream of America despite its compromised history and many sins, is against it. He’s lived through Richard Nixon being a secret fascist and shooting himself in the head after being fingered as mastermind of a vast criminal conspiracy ([yes, that happened](SE02.jpg) ); he knows how badly this could go in the wrong hands. Needless to say, Maria Hill and SHIELD hear his concerns, understand his problems with it, and are willing to iron out the kinks through reasoned debate.
Just kidding. Before the law has even been signed, Maria sics SHIELD’s elite Cape-Killers squad on Cap with the intent of getting him behind bars. Cap swiftly goes underground and starts his own group of anti-registration superheroes.
The fight continues for the next few issues. Spider-Man, caught in the middle, reveals himself to be Peter Parker at a press conference, declaring his support for the SHRA. Doctor Strange is so powerful that he tells the government to fuck off, and somehow, Maria Hill doesn’t decide to go charging up his asshole. Ben Grimm, the ever-loving blue-eyed Thing, is so sick of all the conflict he goes to France. But things are still at a stalemate, and while SHIELD may be acting like a bunch of merry assholes, it seems like there’s a debate to be had that could still be resolved reasonably… except for one key factor.
Part 3: I Fought the Law, and the Law… Huh?
No one ever really defined what the Super Human Registration Act, the legislation that tore the Marvel Universe’s superhero community asunder, did. Every book that had an issue that touched on the event seemed to have a different understanding of its principles, as well as just how fascist it might be in the long run. In the pages of She-Hulk, attorney Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk argues the law is a net good, as it gives heroes the backing and resources they need to not have to go it alone, while also having some measure of government oversight. In the pages of Civil War Frontline (oh, and we’ll get back to Civil War Frontline, don’t you worry), Wonder Man is told by the government that he needs to do a job for them, and if he refuses, well, one thousand years dungeon.
Which then leads into the other issue behind the SHRA. Namely, that everyone in favor was either starting to swing towards fascism or embracing bootlicking as a lifestyle, not a kink. In the pages of Amazing Spider-Man, Peter asks Reed Richards, who has always bucked authority and once stopped the US government from doing something just like this with mutants, why he’s pro-registration. Reed then reveals that an uncle who has never been mentioned before was called before HUAC; he refused to name names, his career was ruined, and he killed himself. From this, Reed - the man who stole a rocketship because the government said “no” to his planned space voyage - has learned that the government is always right, especially when they could step on your neck (this was received so badly that a later comic revealed he’d actually borrowed the concept of psychohistory from Asimov’s Foundation, he’d made it work somehow, and his calculations showed that this was the only way to avoid a greater disaster). This comic also revealed that people who were in violation of the SHRA were sent to a literal extradimensional Gitmo, a prison in the Negative Zone that later comics would reveal was overseen by… Captain Marvel. No, not that one. No, not that one. The Kree superhero Captain Mar-Vell, who had famously died of cancer decades before. How did he come back from the dead? Fuck if we know.
This “the law says what you want it to say” approach spread across various books and miniseries meant to cross over into the event. In the pages of a crossover mini between the Runaways and the Young Avengers, this meant SHIELD Cape-Killer squads were using lethal force against teenagers. The second-to-last issue of the mini ends with several members of both teams in extradimensional Gitmo, about to be dissected by a guy who’s horny for torture. The fact that all the captive heroes were the queer members of both teams? Total coincidence. Honestly.
So, it quickly becomes clear that the editorial control on this event is less than cohesive. There are different ideas all over as to what the SHRA does, and some of those ideas are tacking pretty fashy. But if the law is being painted as that bad, then clearly, there must be some greater statement of freedom vs. security. Maybe Millar’s really painting a subversive picture of what happens when you trade liberty for control, right?
Part 4: Why Do You Hate the Good Thing?
After the publication of Civil War #3, Millar would say in an interview he was actually pro-registration. I can’t find that interview, but here’s a similar sentiment shared years later:

“Weirdly, some of the other writers would often make Tony the bad guy, which I thought was a strange choice because I was actually on Tony’s side... In the real world, if somebody had superpowers, I’d like them to be registered in the same way that somebody who has a gun has to carry a license. But a gun can kill several people while a superhero can kill several thousands of people, so on a pragmatic level I’m 100% on Tony’s side. Maybe on a romantic level, Cap’s position makes sense but I don’t think anybody in the real world would really want that."”

And again, here’s the thing: He’s not entirely wrong. As said above, the idea of civil liberties for all and “free to me you and me” falls down a little when one of your neighbors can blow up a city block by thinking real hard. But Millar is fighting against years of ideological inertia in the Marvel Universe, as well as painting Captain America, the guy who has always embodied the ideal of a righteous, just America, as in the wrong. He needs to make one hell of an argument.
So here’s what happens in the pages of Civil War #3 to sell the audience on the SHRA:

• Thor comes back from the dead… and he’s on Tony’s side! Well, not really. Tony and Reed both realized that having one of the most beloved gods of the Marvel Universe come out on their side would be a big win… if only he wasn’t dead. So, they cloned him. Or rather, they T-800’d him, putting cloned divine flesh on a robot skeleton. But I’m sure he’s perfectly under control, and - oh, he just killed Goliath. In the next issue, one of Marvel’s black male heroes, frozen at the size of a small townhouse in death, will be buried in a gigantic ditch, wrapped in a tarp and chains. You’d think Hank Pym could grow a large enough coffin, at least.
• With Cap and the anti-registration side escaping once again, Tony decides he needs a dedicated team that can track down fugitive superhumans. To do so, he creates a new version of the Thunderbolts, a concept long associated with “villains acting like heroes.” And who does he put on this team? Venom, the Spider-Man villain who eats people’s brains; Bullseye, the Daredevil villain who will kill anyone for the lulz; and Norman Osborn, a.k.a. The Green Goblin, who famously murdered Spider-Man’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy.

Again. Tony’s in the right. The SHRA is good.
Part 5: Yadda, Yadda, Yadda
The next few issues of Civil War might best be described as “They fight, and fight, and fight and fight and fight.” The anti-registration side picks up The Punisher, Marvel’s most avowed murderer of criminals - and Cap is somewhat shocked but not entirely surprised when two minor villains join the anti-registration side and Frank promptly kills them on sight. Spider-Man starts realizing things are weird on the pro-reg side and defects, after he has set his entire life on fire. The X-Men have continued to stay out of this whole mess. In the lead-up, Emma Frost called Tony out on the Avengers’ complete absence when Genosha got nuked. Later, Carol Danvers (then Ms. Marvel, now Captain Marvel) will show up at the Xavier School to pitch the SHRA just after a massive terrorist attack kills dozens of students. Emma responds by telepathically dogwalking her.
By the final issue of the miniseries, the SHRA has expanded out into the Fifty States Initiative, wherein each state gets its own superteam. There’s a big final battle, Hercules kills Robo-Thor, and Cap nearly takes out Tony, only to be stopped by… the heroes of 9/11. No shit, Captain America is subdued by cops, firefighters, and paramedics. And when that happens, Cap finally takes a look around, realizes their big ideological street brawl has resulted in collateral damage, and surrenders. The SHRA wins, though Tony feels a little bad about it. Cap is ready to stand trial and to argue that, while he may have done something wrong, he did it for the right reasons.
Once again: Yeah. About that.
Part 6: MySpace Tom Didn’t Die For This
Running alongside Civil War is Civil War Frontline, a street-level book written by Paul Jenkins that managed to capture this world-breaking conflict through the eyes of people on the street. Though it has side stories, its main leads are Ben Urich, Peter Parker’s journalist buddy at The Daily Bugle, and the aforementioned Sally Floyd. Throughout the series, they start to realize there’s a story underneath the SHRA, as if somebody is playing the angles.
Before we talk about that conclusion, let’s talk about a side story. Remember how we said part of the comics community saw Identity Crisis as a driven effort to make things less “wacky” and intentionally darken the DCU? Well, that same tonal approach led to one of the more laughable moments of a pretty laughable arc. See, despite the fact that, as established, it was Nitro who blew up Stamford, it’s Speedball, the only survivor of the New Warriors, that views himself as responsible and is held up as a scapegoat by the general public. In addition, the blast screwed up his powers. Now, he doesn’t absorb and reflect kinetic energy; rather, he generates energy based on pain. So, he builds himself a new, extreme outfit lined with 612 spikes, one for each person who died in Stamford. This will drive his crusade to make things right - not as Speedball… but as Penance.
It was so laughably DeviantArt “OC do not steal” that no one could take it seriously. Look what you did, you took a perfectly good goofball and gave him an emo streak. The turn is swiftly mocked in other Marvel books, and it’s eventually revealed that Speedball still had his original powerset and always intended to put Nitro in the Goofy Suit of Dark Inner Torment as punishment for his crimes. But this turn gives you a sense of the tone and heft Jenkins was bringing to the proceedings.
Anyway, back to the main plot. Ben and Sally follow the thread as Namor, as he is wont to do, declares war on the surface world after an Atlantean diplomat is shot. But it turns out the assassination was arranged by Norman Osborn, who decided it was better to beg forgiveness than ask permission and manipulated Atlantis into war so that Tony could have another piece of evidence for getting superhumans on a leash. And the two journalists deduce that, on some level, Tony had to know this would be an inevitable outcome of giving state backing to an unhinged mogul who dresses like a Power Rangers villain. Weighing what to do with this information, Ben and Sally, who are kind of sick of the collateral damage by this point, sit on it while they go in for an interview with Captain America, now in custody and willing to tell his side of the story.
And then. And then. The monologue. If you want a lesson in how to assassinate a character in 30 seconds or less, this monologue is a great example. Sally Floyd calls Captain America out as completely divorced from American values. Now, again, Captain America has long served as the beating liberal heart of the Marvel Universe. He has always represented an America that reckons with its legacy of things like internment camps, Manifest Destiny, and Jim Crow, in order to transcend these scars and embody the promise offered by Emma Lazarus’s New Colossus, carved on the side of the Statue of Liberty. Why is he out of touch with Americans at the dawn of the 21st century?
Well, he’s never heard of MySpace. [2] He doesn’t watch NASCAR. He doesn’t follow American Idol. There are pop culture moments that have aged like milk; this one had all the permanence of an ice cream cone in a blast furnace. But despite the inanity of Floyd’s argument - and trust me, there are fan edits dedicated to Cap pointing out how full of shit this argument is - it’s clear it represents something else. This is a post-9/11 world. Fuck civil liberties, we have a no-fly list and Gitmo, and if the American people really cared, they’d do something other than watch Simon Cowell read aspiring singers to filth. What does Captain America stand for in this moment of crisis?
Nothing. Because he just looks away from Sally Floyd. No doubt thinking, “Oh my God this bitch.” But to underline the argument in question, Sally storms out of the interview, Ben in tow. She still has that information on Norman Osborn’s false flag operation… and while she and Ben confront Tony on everything that went down, they decide the story should never see the light of day. Because they wouldn’t dare jeopardize the SHRA, because security is more important than the truth.
Oh. And then Cap gets shot. And dies. He totally dies (except he doesn’t but we’ll get to that). If ever there was an unintentional thesis statement for this event, running in the late stages of the Bush era, it would be this: “It’s better to trust that the powers that be who oversee the new America will keep you safe, even when they stage false flag operations, stick you in a gulag, and put their trust in monsters. All that civil liberty stuff was the old America. And the old America was hopeless. It wasn’t even on MySpace.”
Epilogue: Consequences Keep Consequencing
As you can tell from that last paragraph, a lot of the fan reception to Civil War likely had a lot to do with the period. This was the Bush era, a time where you were for America or against it. We were in the shadow of the Patriot Act, Gitmo, and widespread wiretaps, paranoid about what civil liberty we’d be asked to put on the pyre next in the name of Freedom. A story all about the warm, clenching fist of government control that tells you to ignore the collateral damage… well, it wasn’t great for the cultural moment.
The ideas of Civil War aren’t necessarily bad ones. I frame Cap as the liberal dream of what America could be, but there are good arguments to be made that America has never been that and Cap is just copium for liberals. His most recent title, Sentinel of Liberty, opens with Steve saying he is out of touch with the average American - not because he doesn’t watch NASCAR, but because he’s a WWII veteran who looks maybe 30 years old at most and whose best friends are all superheroes or spies. A narrative that has him on the wrong side of the issue and detonates his beliefs isn’t impossible, but it probably shouldn’t be one where people who got powers due to a fluke of birth or a radiation accident are told by the government, “Join with us or we’ll send supervillains after you.” Hell, as the Civil War movie proves, there is a way to tell a story about a superhero community torn in half by the idea of mandatory registration as government-controlled actors, and just why people would think that could be a bad idea (“Hey, remember when a good chunk of our intelligence apparatus turned out to be Nazi stay behinds?”).
But in the context of the era, and coupled with the execution, Civil War felt like a hard sell, and you could feel the thumb pressing on the scale every second while reading it. The moral center of the Marvel Universe is wrong, the winning side employs sadistic murderers and has an extradimensional Gitmo, and the writer is telling you that any sane individual would be on Team Green Goblin Employer.
So how did that all work out? Well…

• With Cap seemingly dead, shot by his brainwashed love interest Sharon Carter as part of a plot by the Red Skull, Bucky Barnes/the Winter Soldier becomes the new Cap. Only it turns out Steve wasn’t killed, but shot with a time bullet that Billy Pilgrims his ass. He eventually comes back.
• Thor comes back, finds out what Tony did, and beats his ass all the way across post-Katrina New Orleans.
• The Secret Invasion event happens next, which leads to Skrull infiltrators hitting everything (this is also the explanation for Captain Mar-Vell’s miraculous resurrection: He was a Skrull all along). With Tony caught with his pants down and Norman Osborn seeming to save the day, Norman - who has been losing his shit for some time - takes over the Initiative and forms his own fascist cabal, HAMMER. To try and stop Norman from learning everything on every hero ever, Tony goes on the run and actually starts deleting his own brain, which he then reassembles with a backup from before anyone even thought of the SHRA. The fact that getting rid of Tony’s “Oops I did a fascism” period came out alongside Iron Man hitting theaters is a coincidence, I’m sure.

As for Spider-Man? It might not shock you, but having a hero without the resources of Tony Stark out himself to the world carries liabilities. An assassin who tries to kill Peter instead hits Aunt May, and it appears she’ll die of her injuries. All this leads to One More Day… and if you thought the fans hated Civil War? Oh, BABY.
[1] This is eventually explored in the pages of Wolverine, of all books, as Wolverine decides maybe somebody should track down the person who actually killed hundreds of children. It’s revealed that Nitro was given power-boosting drugs by the CEO of Damage Control, Marvel’s designated “clean up after the super-battle” corporation, as a way of generating business. In a sign of how little this matters, Wolverine tells Maria Hill to her face that the person responsible for a mass casualty event is the pawn of a powerful conspiracy, and she basically says, “Not my problem.” Cobie Smulders must thank the gods that her Maria Hill is written as somebody with basic human decency.
[2] Hilariously, when Sally Floyd was brought back during Nick Spencer’s Captain America run because no one had piled enough dung on her corpse, this line was retconned to her asking him about Twitter. Given everything Elon’s been doing lately, we’ll see if that ages just as poorly.

my female rabbit is 5 months old, she’s been desexed, and her behaviour is so out of control i can’t do anything except cry. i love her so much, i have another male rabbit and they’re completely inseparable. but her behaviour is just unbearable. she chews EVERYTHING. they have so much toys and hay and food but it doesn’t help. i’ve wasted hundreds of dollars just for her to ruin it by the next day. she can’t sit still for more than 5 minutes. she has CONSTANT energy. i try and play with her all day to tire her out but nothing works. she keeps me up all night with the amount of noise she makes and it’s really starting to affect my life. however, the thing that makes me so frustrated all i can do is cry about it is she constantly gets in the litter box just to kick the litter everywhere. it gets in their food and water and all over my floor. it’s gotten to a point where i don’t even clean it up when it happens because i know as soon as i do she’ll be straight in there again doing it. there is no reason she does it other than to make a mess. and when i yell at her or catch her doing it she does binkies which makes me even more frustrated. i have tried everything with her. voice training, spraying water, pushing her nose down, time out. NOTHING WORKS. my male rabbit was never ever this poorly behaved and i got him when he was a baby. i need some advice please i am at my wits end. i cant imagine separating them but honestly i don’t think i can deal with her anymore. this hurts so much to write.

TL;DR I sold an item on ebay, arrived late after buyer had requested refund, ebay then sided with buyer and gave them full refund despite them receiving item, buyer now won't pay me and ebay is threatening a collections agency for me to pay the full amount to them.
Hi everyone,
Hope this is appropriate here.
So I sold an item on ebay for around £90 (this is my first and only sale there). Unfortunetaly this happened in December so I sent it over xmas holidays AND when royal mail was having one of it's biggest strike actions. Obviously, item was delayed by weeks and buyer was concerned, and messaged me about tracking it which I replied to same day saying it was showing as en route to them - but they seemed to not be very tech savvy and kept asking without acknowledging my replies (done through the ebay app).
Turns out the item got lost and after about a month I called royal mail who said there was nothing they could do as it was lost in their facility (great !). The buyer then asked ebay for a refund (which obviously was their right, I would have done the same after a month). And so ebay reversed their payment to me, but which I had already withdrawn from my ebay account into my bank account, so it was showing up as me owing ebay the full amount in my account dashboard.
However literally 1-2 days later I got an email from the buyer saying their package had arrived, and asking how to pay me back since they were refunded! I then went back and forth with ebay at this point saying I did in fact send the package and it was Royal Mail's fault, but they sided with the buyer due to their policies of protecting buyers. I told them that the buyer has informed me themselves they had now received the package, but they said there is no way they can reverse their ruling and that I need to invoice the buyer myself through paypal. Basically saying 'sorry figure it out yourself'. I have sent an invoice through paypal to the buyer, who agreed to pay me this way, but now they are giving me no response. Obviously they have no incentive to pay me, as they got a full refund and so their item was basically free - it's not like I can go get it back from them.
But now ebay is chasing me for the refund they issued to the buyer, since I declined their direct debit on my bank account for the £90 after the buyer told me they received the package, thinking ebay would reverse the charge once I told them the package arrived. But I guess they have decided it's my problem and not theirs.
They are now threatening to send my 'debt' to a collections agency this month, so I'm wondering how bad will letting this £90 get sent to a collections agency be for my credit score?
If you were in my shoes would you just pay it and accept you were basically scammed?
And I know this is unlikely, but can I ask ebay or the collections agency to chase the buyer instead, as they are the one that has both received my item and had the full amount refunded to them?
Thank you for any help and advice you may have in advance !

In case you didn’t know, the biggest cost to any business is labor- paying employees. If at some point, robots/AI/insert-related-term-here, took over, what happens to us (humans) and what would we do with our lives?

Are you a part of the high school group that likes to ride around Eben G on Thursday nights and drink a lot of fireball, and twisted tea, and vodka, and other alcoholic beverages? Do you ever wonder who picks up all those bottles and cans you scatter all over the eastern half of the park? Well, if it’s during the summer, it’s me! Every Friday morning! Today wasn’t too bad, only one trash bag full. In the past it’s been usually two or three bags full. I don’t like doing it, it’s a pain in the ass, and frankly I don’t get paid enough to want to pick up after you. Apparently you don’t care about littering our public parks, but please also remember that you’re making other people’s jobs harder. There are multiple trash cans and two dumpsters in that park. Please use them.

My(26F) mother(51F) has struggled with alcoholism for as long as I’ve been able to retain memories. About a year or so ago, an intense situation occurred where she finally put down the bottle and said “no more” I even told her to her face I didn’t believe her when she said this was the last straw (you just have to know to understand my harshness) but here she is proving me ALL the way wrong. I am truly at a loss for words at how incredible the whole thing is, and I beam with pride at this new person I see in front of me. This is an entire lifetime coming.
Fast forward to end of May, and I know this month will be her one year mark. So I was thinking of doing something really cool for her. I came across the Cameo website and decided this would be the way to go after searching the site and previewing a couple. I got a customized video from Dave Mustaine (she is a HUGE Megadeth fan) congratulating her on her sobriety and telling her to keep it up, that her family loves and supports her, etc etc. The video was actually really nice and worth the money I paid for it, and I was excited to show it to her.
Yesterday, as she was getting off of work I set the family TV up in the living room with the video set up so I could sit her down and play it, instead of plopping a phone in front of her face. Also, I wanted to use my phone to record her reaction. Anyways, I got everything set up, and after I let her get settled in from work I sat her down on the couch and told her I had something for her. I played the video. She originally smiled upon seeing Dave but as soon as he began to speak about her sobriety and the congrats and like, her face fell and she began to cry. I was confused at first and thought they were happy tears, but she got up and left the living room without saying a word and that’s when I knew something was wrong.
She ran into her bedroom (which she shares with my father) and didn’t come out for a long while. I was still confused as hell so I left her alone for the time being, and from experience that’s what’s my mom wants when she gets upset anyway. Only after my dad came out and I asked him what the hell happened earlier, did he sit me down and tell me that my mom had actually relapsed at around month 7 (only once-and has been sober since) and that she’s been harboring feelings of shame and guilt about it…. so my “gift” sent her over the edge.
This has been eating at me since yesterday. I’m not sure where to go from here. If I would have known I would have never gotten the stupid video. I am now terrified that this will cause her to spiral further and I feel as if it’s my fault. We haven’t spoken since then as she’s been keeping her distance, and I’m not sure if it’s because she’s upset with me or doesn’t want to face me because of her shame. I want her to know we all make mistakes and that she has nothing to be ashamed for, and that what she’s overcome already is an incredible feat…. I just don’t know how to approach her or reconcile this. What can I do to fix this? How do I make sure this doesn’t trigger her into going back? I don’t want my mom to relapse again.

I sighed. So I'm gonna get reassigned huh? I'm not apart of the c.i.a's gun running, drug peddling, and the guerilla warfare division anymore eh? I guess I'll miss air america flights. I then recalibrated my prosthetic right arm using a Philips head screw driver. Open close. Open, close.
After a couple of seconds my arm was finally done recalibrating. I'm gonna miss my friends. But I'll never miss the humid areas of laos, Vietnam, and some parts of china. The golden triangle is so goddamned hot. Honestly I don't know if it's secretly a promotion or a demotion. Or possibly I'm gonna get fired, and killed.
I'll get my name scraped out of the national files. If I get fired the chances of getting dragged into a blacksite is high, and I'll get tripped by the guys on one of the blacksites.
Oh god. I remember the LSD torture. It's like being awake but not in control. It's like being stuck as a backseat driver as people do unspeakable stuff to me. Oh boy if the public knows about the MK ultra test 2 oh boy. The people are gonna riot. It's already 2040.
The world is on edge, and under foreign influence for over a decade now. From the end of the 20's intergalactic travelers, and companies came, and control most of the world's nations within just a span of two years. They have the guts to exploit our resources, and don't give a damn about what happens to us. They care about profits. Except for the 8 major powers most of the world is under alien control. The only nations that aren't under alien control are russia, china, The U.S.A, great Britain with their manpower advantage given Australia is a British vassal state, France, Canada, Israel, and lastly an unlikely power the African union made out of 7 of the most powerful nations in Africa before the arrival of the outsiders are the only remaining independent countries.
Most of the intelligence agencies are currently working together dealing drugs with the outsiders who visit us, giving weapons to guerilla fighters, and getting weapons from the outside. Ships from an unlikely ally an independent economic alliance of nations named the syndicate allows to us to get some weapons. As long as we sell them drugs, and perishables from earth. It turns out the syndicate likes drugs, coffee, and other stuff native to earth.
Some of our intelligence guys are chatting with the aliens. The guys who are exploiting our resources are called the consortium. They are a consort of companies, and a league that agrees on how to manipulate markets. These guys are basically the more unhinged version of the wall street guys, and a mix of the c.i.a.
I sighed. "This is gonna be a long day ahead of me."
I then smoked a cigar. The cigar calmed my nerves as I inhaled the nicotine. The addictive substance relaxes me. Plus lung cancer isn't a problem anymore considering we now have a solution on how to cure it. The alien companies gave us some of their tech to show their so called sympathy before they flooded economies with consumer goods from their companies, and controlled almost all of earths economies.
"So agent smith. This is your new partner." A c.i.a handler said to me.
I spat out some ash from my mouth, and complained. "The fuck are you giving me a newbie as a partner? And what the hell am I gonna to do to need a new partner. Rodriguez already was fine yet I'm stuck with a newbie?"
The handler laughed. "Oh heavens no. This is an a.i. Codename poppy. She's your new partner in crime. Because we are gonna send you as a diplomatic bodyguard to the syndicate."
"Oh hi! I'm poppy I'm an artificial intelligence created by the c.i.a, m.i.6, the g.r.u, the s.s.m, mossad, and the s.s.a." The human looking robot said.
The voice kinda sounds synthetic, and the tone is too happy. I kinda hate it. I hate that it gives off happy go lucky vibes. I don't mean to be a grouch but the happy go lucky guys always die first. It's kinda ironic in a fucked up way.
So this thing is an a.i kinda like g.w. An a.i made by the c.i.a. G.W have made the internet more tolerable, and friendly due to context. People back then always manipulated facts into their political goals, and ideals. People get the facts misconstrued for political reasons.
G.W was made after a game character that was so prophetic about the world in the future. M.G.S 2: Sons of liberty. It has the same function as g.w from mgs2. It gives facts in a non biased way. In a way where people don't get their feelings hurt when something is given to them in a factual, and non biased ways.
People used to manipulate facts for political correctness. Hiding the fact that they misinterpret the meaning of those words. The internet used to be a toxic, and a fucked up place before g.w. Like Jesus Christ the goddamn internet was filled with incels, and attention seekers using facts and misusing them for internet clout. It was a place where no one is invalidated but nobody was right. G.w put an end to that era. G.w is now living in a secluded server thanking us for it's creation. It was phased out after it asked to be replaced by another one because it was sick, and tired of correcting people that get the facts misconstrued. It got to the point that it begged the c.i.a, and annoyed the c.i.a to the point that it wanted to be put in a secluded server so it could live it's remaining days in relative leisure just because it begged the c.i.a director so many times that he would get spam calls from the a.i using his official phone number even in the middle of the night for three straight years.
Anyways back to discussion.
"So you're one of those advanced a.i's like g.w?" I asked just to be sure I'm not paired with a dumb a.i.
"Yup. I even passed the Turing test in flying colors. I can feel emotions, do something out of spite or anger, and can think for myself." Poppy said with a dog like innocence.
"So what can you do?" I asked.
"Well. I can fly planes, use guns even those that people can't use due to physiological differences, and hack computers without being near the target. I'm basically just an a.i that can be a jack of all traits if given a chance." Poppy said.
"Fine. But you'll do it my way or the high way." I told poppy with a commanding tone.
Poppy laughed. "Okay boomer."
I sighed. This is gonna be a long day. I'm old as shit but not a boomer.
"Woah. You guys are already going along greatly. Great for you." The handler snickered.
He then left, and left me with poppy.
I'm fucked. "So I'm gonna brief you about the world poppy. Through a song."
I then sang bo burnham's how the world works song.
"Hey, kids Today, we're gonna learn about the world The world that's around us is pretty amazing But how does it work? It must be complicated The secret is the world can only work When everything works together"
"A bee drinks from a flower And leaves with its pollen A squirrel in a tree spreads the seeds that have fallen Everything works together"
"The biggest elephant, the littlest fly The gophers underground, the birds in the sky And every single cricket, every fish in the sea"
"Gives what they can and gets what they need That is how the world works That is how the world works"
"From A to Zebra To the worms in the dirt That's how it works Hey everyone"
I then pulled out a sock, and made it into a puppet.
"Look who stopped by to say "hello" It's Socko Hey! Where you been, Socko?"
"I've been where I always am when you're not wearing me on your hand In a frightening, liminal space between states of being Not quite dead, not quite alive It's similar to a constant state of sleep paralysis"
"Socko, we were just talking about the world and how it works!"
"Boy, that sounds complicated! Do you have anything you'd wanna teach us about the world?"
"I wouldn't say anything that you Probably haven't already said yourself"
"I don't know about that, Socko How about you give it a try?"
"All right!"
"The simple narrative taught in every history class Is demonstrably false and pedagogically classist Don't you know the world is built with blood? And genocide and exploitation"
"The global network of capital essentially functions To separate the worker from the means of production And the FBI killed Martin Luther King Private property's inherently theft"
"And neoliberal fascists are destroying the left And every politician, every cop on the street Protects the interests of the pedophilic corporate elite"
"That is how the world works (really?) That is how the world works Genocide the Natives, say you got to it first"
"That's how it works"
"That's pretty intense?"
"No shit Sherlock."
"What can I do to help?"
"Read a book or something, I don't know Just don't burden me with the responsibility of educating you"
*It's incredibly exhausting"
"I'm sorry, Socko I was just trying to become a better person"
"Why do you rich fucking white people Insist on seeing every socio-political conflict Through the myopic lens of your own self-actualization?"
"This isn't about you So either get with it, or get out of the fucking way"
"Watch your mouth, buddy"
"Remember who's on whose hand here"
"But that's what I- Have you not been fucking listening? We are entrenched in a way (all right, all right)"
"Wait, wait, no please! I don't wanna go back, please, ugh, ugh, ugh I can't go, I can't go back Please, please, I'm sorry!"
"Are you gonna behave yourself?"
"Yes"
"Yes, what?"
"Yes, sir"
"Look at me"
"Yes, sir"
"That's better That is how the world works That is how the world works I hope you learned your lesson"
"I did and it hurt That's how it works"
NOOOOOOO!!!
Drags sock puppet into a pocket like some introvert getting dragged into socializing in bars by extroverts.
"So do you understand know?" I asked poppy.
"That everything is made under the blood of billions, and we shouldn't make their deaths be in vein?" Poppy said.
"Correct. And we shouldn't let outsiders make our choices for us. We should kick them out." I said like some isolationist American during the 1920's.
"Ironic isn't it smith. The c.i.a used to be anti socialist but look how the circumstances turned the American government into. A social democracy/merit based democracy where politicians are based in merit rather than popularity. Politicians are insentivised to change the world than burn it down like some of the old presidents did. Ironic that america became something it hated. A weird mesh of meritocracy, democracy, republican, liberaterian, and market socialist ideals. Some sort ideological mesh made by idealogs"
"And it's working with it's remaining two Allies, and former enemies just to defeat a foreign threat. How poetically ironic isn't it? I mean the CIA used to go schizo mode when they hear communist, and socialist ideals or hearing the word russians, and chinese are plotting something. Now the country it help grew became the very thing it sought to destroy. Morbidly ironic isn't it?" Poppy said with a meloncholic under tone.
"Yeah. Specially the stuff we do now." I said agreeing to the statement.
"But that's how the world works. Everything must change. Either you adapt or die." I said with a meloncholic under tone.
"So do you know where we are going?" I asked poppy.
I then puffed up my cigar. Sweet sweet nicotine.
"Back to america. In the space port in Austin Texas. I'm already done contacting the contact the handler gave to me. E.T.A 7 hours. Now let's go to the laostian military base 7 miles north from here. Our air america flight is waiting for us." Poppy said.
I sighed. "Come ride with me. I have a motorcycle a hundred meters from here."
We walked towards my motorcycle. I then puffed up my cigar smelling the nicotine.
So my life is about to change huh? Eh. I'm just gonna adapt. After all in this world it's either adapt or die.
Click, click, click
Motorcycle engine starts rumbling.
Poppy then held my waist. It's hands are cold as steel. Colder than even corpse. I sighed.
The highway was almost empty. Everyone was working a 10-8 job in one of the corporations that control laos. There was no land vehicles transporting goods because the aliens are using their tech to transport them underground. The road was almost abandoned except for the guys who have motorcycle hobbies. Anyways it doesn't matter. After all there's no traffic anymore.
The fresh breeze calmed my nerves. It made me feel alive. A motorcyclist drive by me and waved hello. I waved back at the motorcyclist. It's good to be on the road.
After a twenty minute drive we arrived at the military base. Another CIA agent greeted us, and escorted us to the flight.
"So you guys are the diplomatic bodyguards?" Asked the agent.
"Yup. That's what my handler told me." Poppy said.
"So your one of the newer a.i models eh. Ok. Just step right in. Plus the flight is rather boring. Just sleep while on flight to save energy." The agent told me.
I sighed. I threw away the cigar, and slept through the flight.
A few hours later...
I woke up arriving at Austin executive airport. Poppy just sat there watching me sleep like some sort of creep. It made me a little bit paranoid at the unflinching eyes that was watching me. But I ignored my instincts, and went outside.
After that I ate something for breakfast. A couple of pancakes, and chicken wings. Poppy looked at me with envy. I sighed.
"Can you eat? Do you need food to survive?" I asked.
"Well.... I need glucose to recharge my batteries. I can also use a charger but it would be suspicious. So the glucose to energy converter was made for special missions so that I wouldn't blow my cover."
Figured. Those guys in the CIA RnD team are making contengencies for every eventual event. I then ordered a plate of syrup covered pancakes.
Poppy looked at me smiling. I sighed.
An hour later...
We arrived at the space port. People walked around buying nicnacs, waiting for their flight, and just waited around for their family members that were coming back.
Another agent came up to me, and gave me two tickets.
"Here's the tickets. Also have this. You'll need it."
The agent then gave me some sort of high tech phone. Then out of knowhere something exploded.
I was knocked unconscious for a couple minutes. When I woke up I was getting dragged by poppy along with the agent that gave me the tickets. She shot back at incoming enemies using alien tech.
"Ugh..." As I said that I began coughing blood. I looked down I was bleeding. My left leg was missing. It was slowly bleeding due to a tourniquet, bandages, and some sealing foam. It was still bleeding but isn't bleeding as badly as to kill me in just a couple seconds.
Gunshots echoed in the space port. Agents shot back at the alien attackers. A fierce firefight began. Bright lights like something akin to RGB lights but in a epileptic way we're seen down the isles as screams of both alien, CIA, fbi, and fully kitted out port guards were slaughtered one by one.
Poppy dragged me, and the other agent to a bathroom. "Sit rep." I asked poppy.
"It seems to be a terrorist attack. I don't know why but they looked like alien mercenaries. The question is that did the consortium hired them to kill our diplomat. Good thing the diplomat hasn't arrived. I checked the agency message boards, and they said that good thing the diplomat was sick after getting food poisoning this morning. They are already talking about it. Some of them are even suggesting that the consortium did this attack." Poppy said.
"So the diplomat got lucky. But why the fuck would they attack our diplomat to the syndicate? I mean it's counter productive. We don't need their goods or services considering the people here would rather choose human companies rather than alien shady companies. I guess they must've know about our deals with them, and decided to start a shadow war. A war in the shadows. The companies of the consortium vs the remaining independent government's. Who ever wins controls all the resources in the world." I told poppy.
She nodded. "Good guess but no one really knows. It's so sudden. We need more info before we act against them."
"I'll patch you up in the meantime. I hurried the medical assistance I gave you a couple minutes ago. I was hurrying because this guy is saying we need to leave after he suffered minor bruises. You blunted most of the damaged for him because you were in front of the explosion. He was saved because you were blocking him from getting hit by shrapnel. I cut you're leg off. Sorry. It can't be saved considering it was barely hanging on the leg. Plus I was running out of time so I had to cut it before you bled out."
I sighed. "Okay. Just get my hk UmP 45 inside my arm. It's in second the compartment a secret compartment. In the upper arm. I have a few mags of it inside the compartment. Here's a screw driver to remove the lid."
I then gave poppy a screw driver hidden in my pants, and saw her unscrew the lid off. A ump 45, and fully loaded 4 mags came out dropping loudly on the floor.
"Now carry me to the danger. I would rather die than suffer for years being reminded of the sad reality that I lost an arm, and a leg every time I wake up." I morbidly joked to poppy.
"Are you sure? You're injured! Are you fucking suicidal?" Poppy, and the agent said.
"Did I stutter?"
The two of them sighed.
Poppy then carried me in her back, and the other agent used poppy as meat shields. The agent held a Barretta 93r. A burst fire weapon.
"Ready?" I said.
"Ugh. You're lucky I accepted your request dumbass."
"Yes."
I was being piggy back carried by poppy while the agent followed us.
"Tango 15 meters to the left." Poppy said.
I then activated burst fire, and shot at the direction given. When I saw an enemy I aimed for the center mass. But I instead hit the thorax killing the alien instantly.
"Kill confirms. Enemy is k.i.a."
"Tango 20 meters ahead."
I then aimed straight forward, and saw a bolt of light strike near me. It was close enough to feel the heat of the round. I shot back, and killed the alien instantly by hitting the alien in the lungs, and heart.
"Enemy is k.i.a"
Then I heard a three round burst coming from a Barretta. I looked back, and saw the agent kill an incoming enemy.
"Thanks. So what's your name?" I asked.
"Oh I haven't properly instroduced myself. My name is agent Carter." The agent/Carter said.
"Thanks Carter. My name is agent smith."
"No problem agent smith. We CIA agents got each other's backs. We must stick together."
"Guys tangos incoming coming from the left. ETA 20 seconds."
We then aimed our Guns, and waited for the enemy to arrive. When they eventually arrived we moved them down with burst fire. After that a couple national guard guys came up to us. They were probably chasing those aliens.
"Thanks." One of the national guards said.
"No problem"
We continued, and after two minutes of walking we walked into a firefight. I smiled.
"You know what to do." I said smiling.
"Third party them?"
"Yup."
I then turned on full auto, and began to spray, and pray.
After a few seconds of pulling the trigger my gun ran out of bullets. Carter also ran out of bullets in his magazine, and reloaded. 3 confirmed kills, and multiple missed or slightly injured.
Oh crap. Then a bolt of light past near me. Enough to the point my right cheek got minor burns.
"Duck!"
I then began to be dragged by poppy into cover. Carter also looked for cover, and dived into the nearest cover. I quickly reloaded the mag, and started shooting at the aliens again. I changed the selector back to burst fire to conserve ammo.
I aimed center mass at the enemies. A loud burst of .45 ACP rounds was heard as an enemy was hit in the thorax.
"Kill confirmed."
I continued, and shot enemies in either the arms, legs, the thorax, or the chest.
After three minutes the firefight ended.
"Other sectors secured. All area's are currently in our control. Over 700 people died, 1720 were injured, and some were missing. Military and government casualties are 124 KIA'd, 24 severely injured, 57 mildly injured, and 38 MIA'd." Poppy said smiling.
Then paramedics rushed into the scene. People were rushed into nearby hospitals while I was dragged by a undercover CIA paramedic to a government safe house along with poppy, and Carter.
A week later…
I was standing in the military cemetery in Arlington national cemetery. Where soldiers who died without any identifications are buried. I saw burials around me. Soldiers who died without any family members, soldiers disowned by family, and other such things. But hey it's just the life of a soldier. That's what I know at least. From ranger grunt to c.i.a grunt. I was disowned by my parents who were conservatives, and highly religious because I was going to sacrifice my place in heaven to save some heathens from the middle east. I never regretted my actions. I saved lives, and ended some. No guts no glory after all.
Some of the people getting buried got medal of honors. Saving comrades in need of dire help in exchange for their lives, soldiers who rescued civilians in exchange for their own lives, and soldiers who honorably fought on to save others even faced with hard decisions.
I saluted the unknown soldiers for their bravery, and honor. In the background poppy, and Carter were talking. But that wasn't important. Bagpipes, trumpets, and drums play as the unknown soldiers get burried with their medals. The grave sentinels saluted while burying the dead. Gunshots in the honor of the dead was heard as the unknown soldiers got buried while being watched by the people who those soldiers saved.
After that I returned to head quarters with a prosthetic leg, and talked to my handler. Poppy, and Carter went back to the safehouse just to talk.
"Oh hi smith." My handler captain david said.
"Hi David."
"Here's another purple heart medal, and a bronze star medal." David then tossed the medals towards me.
"That's your what? 22nd and 23rd medal? Bravo congrats smith."
"I'm gonna ask you sometime David."
"Ask away smith."
"When will i get sent as a diplomatic bodyguard?"
"About three weeks from now. Also agent Carter is gonna be one of your partners for the mission."
I sighed. Figured.
"So who was behind the terror attack David?"
"Honestly. The CIA search the crime scene, and saw that the consortium blatantly did that. The mercenaries worked under one of the companies in the consortium. But for the public it's gonna be announced tonight that a rogue consortium PMC did that so we wouldn't provoke them too much."
"It's gonna be a long day smith."
"Yeah David."
Then David gave me a cigar.
"Wanna smoke?"
I nodded.
To be continued…

[June 2013]
The vehicle took about 3 days in total to repair. I explained our situation to the mechanic over the phone and asked if we could hold off until the weekend to pick it up. He agreed that would be fine, so Saturday morning Devon and I took the Civic back to Alabama to retrieve the SUV.
We had put a ton of miles on the road together, considering we literally never went anywhere fun. We were one week away from our first anniversary. Devon spent the first nine months of our marriage on deployment, and in the other 3 months, we managed to squeeze in a trip to Texas, Wyoming, Tennessee, and Alabama...twice. Good lord. So much for a "honeymoon".
Once we made it back to the shop, the mechanic began reading off the long list of shit they had to do to get the vehicle operational again. We could not afford to pay for the repairs out of pocket. Fortunately for us, they offered lines of credit for people in our situation. I applied and was approved for $20.00 less than the costs of the repair. I took what I could in credit and paid $20.00 out of pocket.
The vehicle was back in our possession, and it was time to head back to Mississippi. I drove my Civic and Devon drove his Explorer.
About an hour from home, my phone started ringing. It was Supreme, from the old apartment complex. What could he want? I answered, and he said he had something for us, but he wouldn't tell me what. Me, hoping it was weed, told him we would be home in about an hour if he wanted to swing through then.
Shortly after Devon and I pulled into the driveway, Supreme pulled up, threw it in park, and grabbed a large box out of his back seat.
That's a lot of weed.
Devon held the door open for Supreme, and he set the large box on our coffee table.
The fuck.
That's not weed.
It's a box of kittens.
He said he found the litter out by the dumpsters at the apartment complex. It wasn't too far from where Devon had found Peanut back in February. I wouldn't be surprised if this litter was from Peanut's unfixed mother as well.
The kittens were tiny and adorable, but I refused to pick one up. I thanked him for showing us, but-
Then I looked over and Devon had the ugliest kitten in his hands and the biggest smile on his face.
"Oh, no, we really don't need another kitten." I said.
Devon, who somehow acquired a string and is now teasing the ugliest kitten with it, said, "The fuck we don't. This one is staying."
That's how we acquired our second cat: Punk.

I am so absolutely furious! I joined various ADHD FB groups, as I have been diagnosed abroad, but I normally live in a country where it is "not a thing", so I don't have access to specific therapy or most of the medicines usually used in the US to treat symptoms. I thought I was joining a group full of insightful people sharing tips on how to manage ADHD, but instead I found myself in a depressing hugbox where NOT A SINGLE THREAD is about actually working towards improvement, just pat patting on each other's back about how difficult it is to clean the home or to shower or stuff like that. I am also in a few depression-realted groups, and it's exactly the same thing. There are so MANY pictures that get shown around, with houses that seem to have just been passed over by a tornado. Dirt on the floor, mold on plates, shoes everywhere,... And you know what's the most common denominator in these threads? ALL THESE PEOPLE HAVE KIDS! MORE THAN ONE USUALLY. And the caption is always the same "I am very ashamed to have reached this point blah blah blah, my kids deserve better blah blah blah" and the comments are never slightly close to giving suggestions, no, it's always "oh yeah, my house is even worse, no worries". Now, I do have depression and ADHD too, and never would I dream of bringing ONE baby let alone multiple to this world before I learn to manage my symptoms (plus a variety of other reasons for that matter). I decided to not even adopt a cat, because I am afraid I might skip cleaning their litter box for a couple of days when I am really down. How come these people went through a thought process that led them to believe they could care for kids? And once they have them, they never think that it's their non-negotiable responsibility to have them living in a properly cared home and teach them the basics of self care (which include living in a clean house)?

Has anybody had experience where a heat wave has caused their ferret to have diarrhea? Going to preface this with saying that I've already called the vet and will be taking in a stool sample. I'm going to provide canned pumpkin and Pedialyte, and I'm aware of other concerns such as ECE and FECV. At least one of our 4 ferrets is on their 3rd day of diarrhea. Day one was loose tan poop, yesterday was some green slimy poop, and now today it's back to being brown, but whoever it was clearly had a hard time making it to the litter box through the night, as there's liquid poop all over the cage. Everyone is acting normally, assumed to be eating normally, and isn't showing other signs of illness, blockage, or heat stroke. This bout of runny poop happens to be coinciding with a bit of a heat wave where we are; it's been consistently 90°F for 3 or 4 days now. The room that their cage in is kept as cool as it can be, and obviously they always have access to water. I'm just curious to know if anyone else has had a fur-noodle whose sensitive little intestines have had a hard time adjusting to temperature changes. Thanks in advance for being kind with your responses. 🖤 Details about the business: 4 ferrets: Female 2yrs, Male 2yrs, Female 1.5yrs, Male 1.5yrs. No changes to diet or routine.

This is part of my little series about the adventures of Vr'ocria and Human Aldrick. If you'd like to read previous parts, they're linked below, along with brief summaries of each:
Part One: Alien learns what "sleep" is and how humans prefer to do it in a comfy bed with blankets and pillows. And they find it utterly adorable.
Vr'ocria and Human Aldrick are sent on a survey mission together. Things go south, Aldrick makes sure they're safe, and then Vr'ocria learns what human sleep is and how vulnerable humans are when they sleep. Vr'ocria's people don't sleep, but enter stasis, a form of rest in which they typically stand, and they are still slightly aware of their surroundings. Vr'ocria finds human sleep utterly adorable, and also decides she will protect Aldrick while he sleeps. And she also develops a massive crush on him. (Her scales turning purple is her version of blushing)
Part Two: An alien + human adventure with such shenanigans as poison drinking, befriending dangerous wildlife, and fighting a space pirate. Oh, and they have a huge crush on each other.
Vr'ocria and Human Aldrick end up assigned together for another survey mission. Vr'ocria tries to deny her feelings for Aldrick after a tense conversation with her nestmate about the danger of humans, but when they're ambushed in the night by a pirate and Aldrick takes a blow to save her, becoming injured in the process, she comes to realize just how strongly she feels for him. She kills the pirate, carries Aldrick to safety, and the two share a tender moment.
Part Three: When a cold-blooded alien has to cuddle a warm-blooded human for warmth
Vr'ocria and Human Aldrick are assigned to an ice plant for their next mission. Aldrick chews out Command for assigning Vr'ocria there when they know she's cold-blooded and not built for the cold, and when the power goes out, they cuddle to keep her from freezing. They finally confess their feelings for one another, and Vr'ocria learns what kissing is.
Part Four: A human leaves a hickey on his alien lover. Her nestmate doesn't understand what a hickey is, and thinks the human injured her
Vr'ocria enjoys neck kisses, and asks Aldrick to indulge her. Later, she has a video call with her nestmate Galek. Galek is already wary of humans, and when he sees a bruise on her throat that she didn't notice, he figures out Aldrick is responsible and freaks out, thinking Aldrick intentionally hurt her. Vr'ocria dresses Galek down, explaining that it's not an injury, and also that he needs to get over it and respect her relationship with Aldrick.
Now for the new story!
TW: There will be blood and broken bones.
—
"I have a bad feeling about this."
Vr'ocria turned to Human Aldrick in the pilot seat next to her. He was drumming his fingers on the console, brow furrowed, as he watched the Xenthum solar system approach.
"What do you mean?" She asked.
"I dunno. I just–" he bit the inside of his cheek. "You ever just get an ick feeling about something?"
Vr'ocria frowned. "No. Can you explain it?"
He scratched the back of his neck. "It's hard to explain. Like, there's nothing wrong that I can tell about this mission, but ever since we got within visual range, I've had this gut feeling that we need to turn back."
Vr'ocria wasn't sure she understood, but she didn't like seeing him uncomfortable. "Well, we're here on orders–"
"I know, I know, I don't want to get us in trouble, I'm already on thin ice after yelling at Lieutenant Prax–"
"–but the minute anything starts to go wrong, no matter how small, we can turn around."
He glanced over at her. "Thanks," he said with a grateful smile.
They had entered the Xenthum system now. Its main planet was sparsely populated, used mostly as a trading outpost since it was so close to the Dridian border. The trick was navigating through the minefield of asteroid clusters. Aldrick let Vr'ocria take the lead piloting, since of the two of them, she was more skilled at delicate maneuvers.
They were almost to the planet when an alert pinged. Aldrick sat up to check the sensors.
"There's a ship nearby," he reported. "A big one."
"Where?" Vr'ocria pulled up the sensor on her screen. "I don't see anything. Just asteroids."
"Turn on the warp detector and increase the ion frequency."
Vr'ocria pressed a few controls. "Oh wow, you weren't kidding." She frowned. "It's way too big to be in the middle of an asteroid field. What are they doing?"
"I don't know, but I don't like it." She could feel the tension radiating from him.
"You want to get out of here?" she asked.
He chewed his lip. "Y'know what? Yeah. Let's at least take an alternate root, we can–"
But before he could finish, there was a loud BANG and they were sent flying from their seats as the shuttle rattled.
"What the fuck?" Aldrick yelled as he scrambled to his feet, lunging for the console. "Did we scrape an asteroid?"
Vr'ocria crawled back into her seat as well and banged out a few commands on her screen. Her blood froze.
"No," she said in a low voice. "It was phaser fire."
They'd been so focused on the massive ship that they'd missed the tiny shuttle creeping up from below them.
BANG. The screens flickered and glitched.
Aldrick cursed. "We've lost shields!"
There was another hit, then another, and another. Sparks were flying now, and the sensors were screaming as the shuttle's operating systems started failing.
Vr'ocria was tossed against the wall in one particularly brutal crash, and the last thing she saw was a broken panel flying right towards her face.
—
Everything hurt.
Especially her nose. The tang of blood clung to the back of her throat.
There were muffled voices somewhere nearby, and the sound of metal scraping. When she tried to move, she abruptly registered something cold and hard encircling her wrists.
"She's waking up."
Vr'ocria coughed, blood splattering from her lips. Moaning in pain, she managed to lift her head and crack her eyes open.
The scraping sound was the heels of her boots sliding across metal grate flooring as she was dragged by her wrists. She craned her head back, pain shooting through her neck, and realized that her wrists were clapped in rusty manacles. A massive blue hand fisted the rust red chains that suspended her arms over her head.
"Wha' th'fmm–" she slurred. Her brain felt like sludge.
Suddenly she was yanked even higher into the air, her toes just brushing the floor. A shock of cold assaulted her and she yelped, flinching as water dripped down her face.
"You awake now?"
A man was standing in front of her, tossing aside a now-empty bucket. There were several people, actually. All different species, all looking very pleased, and all wearing distinctive black Norvidian armbands.
Pirates.
A hand cracked across her cheek, sending more blood flying. She bit back a cry as the shockwave laced through her broken nose. "Fuck you," she spat instead.
The man chuckled. He was tall, muscles bulging through his coat, and his skin was blue. He must've been the one dragging her. "Picking up human words, I see."
Vr'ocria's blood turned to ice. "What have you done with him?" She demanded in a low voice.
His grin only widened. His teeth were crooked and rotting. "I'll be asking the questions here."
Her scales burned a bright and hot yellow and snapped as they turned on end. But before she could respond, his hand lashed out and grabbed her throat–not enough to choke her just yet, but enough to make her freeze.
"You're the lizard bitch from Theta-7, yes?" The grin was gone now, replaced by a withering glare.
Understanding dawned on Vr'ocria. Blast. Oh, blast.
He saw the realization in her eyes and slowly released her throat. "You are."
"What's it to you?" She snapped.
He sneered. "You killed one of my men."
"He attacked us first!"
Stars burst behind her eyes as the air was forced from her lungs, and it took her a moment to realize that he had punched her in the gut. All she could do was cough and gasp, trying to regain her bearings through the pain as he turned away from her and towards the others standing around. He raised his arms.
"We are Norvids!" He boomed, and the others whooped in agreement. "We stand together! We protect our own!"
Vr'ocria tuned him out as he kept proselytizing, using the opportunity to look around the room. It was massive and almost all metal with towering walls. Crane chains hung from the ceiling, and crates and barrels of different sizes were scattered about, everything dusty, rusty, and old. A storage room. An old cargo ship? She wondered. That would explain why it was so big.
She ran a quick headcount of everyone she could see. Seventeen.
But where was Aldrick?
Vr'ocria felt sick. You better be okay…you have to…please be okay…
The man–the captain, she guessed–finally turned back to her. He drew a dagger from a sheath strapped to his arm, and her eyes went wide.
"A life for a life," he growled, stalking towards her.
But before he'd made it even two steps, a voice rang out through the cargo bay.
"Don't you fucking touch her."
It was enough to stop the captain in his tracks.
Footsteps sounded from behind her, and Vr'ocria tried in vain to twist her body around.
But she didn't have to. The man approaching from behind came forward and stepped in between her and the captain, and she didn't have to see his face to know who it was.
"Aldrick," she nearly whimpered.
The caption sneered. "Well well, a little escape artist, are we?"
Aldrick was silent.
Deathly so.
Vr'ocria swallowed.
Even the captain, who was twice Aldrick's size, seemed to waver. Vr'ocria wasn't sure she wanted to know what he saw on Aldrick's face.
Finally, Aldrick spoke. "Any of you touch her, and you will die." His voice was so cold it pierced her to the bone. She could see his clenched fists trembling at his sides. He's not even armed!
The captain began to laugh, his voice echoing around the bay. The others laughed with him.
"And who's gonna stop us?" He demanded. "You? Little human, you don't know who you're messing with." He dashed forward, raising the blade, ready to strike.
"Aldrick!" Vr'ocria screamed.
But Aldrick dodged as easily as water flows through a river, ducking under the dagger and going for the captain's legs. He barreled his full weight against his hips, and with a shout, the giant fell, the dagger clattering from his grasp. Quick as a whip, Aldrick snatched it up–and drove it directly into the captain's throat.
Vr'ocria couldn't help but watch in horror as green blood frothed forth, spraying all over Aldrick. The captain's eyes were wide, and he choked and spasmed as his life drained out onto the dirty floor.
By now, the others were surging forward, shouting, screaming, and brandishing their own weapons.
"NO!" Vr'ocria screamed as they converged on him. She kicked and yanked uselessly at her chains, desperate to help, to do anything. The manacles bit painfully into her scales, some of them even popping off onto the floor, leaving beads of blood welling up in their wake. But the manacles did not yield.
When she looked back, she was terrified she'd see Aldrick lying dead on the floor.
But he wasn't.
In fact, there were three pirates–no, make that four now–sprawled lifelessly instead. Aldrick was a whirlwind of limbs and gnashing teeth–he ducked and dodged, spat and kicked, slashing at knees and elbows, slowly incapacitating or discombobulating each one until he was able to sink the dagger into throats, chests, between ribs–bodies were dropping--he was covered in blood now, eyes wild–
"BEHIND YOU!" Vr'ocria screamed.
Aldrick turned just a second too late, and a woman covered in dark fur landed a kick directly to his chest. He hit the floor, the dagger flying from his grasp. The woman pounced, her hands wrapping around his throat. His legs thrashed as he clutched at her hands, and he was just able to roll them over until he was on top. From there, he simply started punching, and punching, blood spraying his face with each hit.
A large man behind him had stumbled back to his feet. He lunged forward and yanked Aldrick into the air by the back of his shirt, throwing him bodily into the air, where he crashed against a metal crate.
He hit the ground and didn't move.
Vr'ocria was screaming. She didn't know if she was saying words anymore, but she was screaming, and blood was streaming down her arms now from how hard she was pulling against the manacles. All she could do was watch as the final three pirates approached her mate where he lay lifeless on the floor.
They stopped before they were in arms length, looking between each other. She couldn't hear what they were saying, but one of them finally edged forward and poked Aldrick's side with her toe.
Vr'ocria wanted to rip their entrails out with her bare hands.
He still didn't move. Seeming satisfied, they moved forward, and one bent to grab him.
All at once, her human surged back to life. The man closest to him hit the ground as Aldrick swung his legs around, sweeping the man's feet out from under him. Once he was down, Aldrick bashed a crane hook–one he must've picked up from the floor–into the man's skull so hard that it caved in with one blow. Still lying on the floor, Aldrick used his vantage point to kick the woman's knee backwards, and she collapsed with an agonized scream. One more strike with the hook, and she was silenced.
That left just one. The final pirate appeared to be reptilian like her, although he had large spines stretching across his head and shoulders. This one didn't try to rush Aldrick. Instead, he kept his distance, watching warily as Aldrick climbed to his feet.
"So it's true," the spined pirate said, "what they say about humans."
Aldrick returned a deadly stare. "And what's that?" His voice almost didn't even sound like his anymore.
"You're monsters. Demons. Scourge of the universe."
Aldrick grinned, but it looked more like a feral animal baring its teeth. "That's me."
The pirate's spines flexed. "You could join us," he said. "Join the Norvids. We'll find another crew, you can be captain."
They were circling now, Aldrick crouched like a predator ready to strike, the pirate shuffling back with his hands held out.
"You could be rich!"
Aldrick picked up a rusty chain from a barrel as he passed by.
"Think of the power you would wield!" The pirate cried desperately.
Aldrick still said nothing. He forced him back, and back, until the pirate realized, too late, that he was cornered between two crates. His back hit the wall and he slid down, cowering, as Aldrick loomed over him.
Vr'ocria could barely hear because of the distance, but the metal room carried Aldrick's low hiss as he bent down to the trembling pirate: "You hurt my mate. Now, you die."
The rusty chain crackled as Aldrick wrapped it around the pirate's neck in one fell swoop. He pulled the loop tight and the pirate clutched at the noose, his eyes and forked tongue bulging out. Then, with one swift and hard yank, an audible splinter-snap filled the room–and the pirate was dead before he hit the floor, his neck bent at an unnatural angle.
Aldrick dropped him in disgust. His back was turned, but Vr'ocria could still see his chest heaving.
He turned and met Vr'ocria's eyes, and the demented expression drained from his face. He stepped towards her, slowly at first, and then broke into a sprint.
It seemed like he wanted to throw his arms around her, but he came to a sudden halt before he could touch her, instead raising his shaking hands to her face. "Vr'ocria, 'ria, my Ria, I'm so sorry–" his voice broke and his eyes welled with tears that quickly spilled over and began running down his face, carving tracks into the grime and blood spatter.
"Aldrick," she whispered, drinking him in. He's alive.
"Hold on, hold on, I'll get you out of these cuffs, fuck–" he turned to the dead captain on the floor and rifled through his pockets until he produced a key.
He returned and had to stand on his tiptoes to reach the manacles, and with a scrape and groan of metal, the manacles cracked loose.
Vr'ocria collapsed onto Aldrick, her legs too weak to hold her up. Her arms fell over his shoulders, and he caught her around the waist. Together they sank to the floor until they were both on their knees, clutching at one another as if they would disappear.
Aldrick buried his face in her neck, shaking with silent sobs. Vr'ocria tangled her hands in his bloody hair, not caring about the mess. Her people couldn't weep like humans did, but she might as well have with the way her chest heaved with stuttering breaths, her scales burning bright red.
Aldrick clutched her tight enough to hurt, but she didn't care. "Ria, my Ria, my love," he gasped like a mantra.
She finally took his face in her hands and pulled him back, forcing him to look at her. "Are you alright?" She implored. "Are you hurt?"
He let out a half-laugh, half-sob. "You're asking me?"
She used her thumbs to wipe away some of the grime on his face. "You took on all of those people by yourself," she croaked. "And the way he threw you–planets, I thought you were dead."
His hands slid up her back to clutch her shoulders. "I'm alright," he assured her. "Bumps and bruises is all. But you–" he looked her up and down, rage rekindling in his eyes. "Son of a bitch, what they did to you–"
She shook her head. "They're dead now," she said firmly. "It's over and done." She leaned forward to squeeze him again, resting her head on his shoulder. "Let's just go home."
"Don't have to tell me twice." Aldrick rose, pulling her up with him. Her legs were still too unsteady to walk, so instead, he slid one hand under her knees and swept her up into his arms. She settled against his chest as he carried her out of the cargo bay.
"Should we be worried about any other crew members?" She asked, casting her eyes around the barren corridor.
Aldrick shook his head as he walked. He seemed to know where he was going. "It was just them."
"How do you know? And what happened to you, by the way?"
His arms tightened around her. "After you got knocked out, they locked a tractor beam onto the shuttle and pulled us inside."
They came to a fork in the corridor, and he turned left. "I thought they were just raiding for scrap metal and Union tech, but when they boarded the shuttle, they went straight for you. I–" his voice cracked. "I tried to protect you, but there were so many of them and I was so caught off guard..."
Vr'ocria stroked the nape of his neck with her thumb. "It's okay, it's not your fault."
Aldrick swallowed before continuing. "They took you away and locked me in an old storage container. Thankfully the hinges were on the inside, so I just popped the pins out once they were gone. I was able to access the ship's computer and scan the whole ship, because the idiots didn't know how to encrypt anything. All brawn and no brains, I guess. That's also how I was able to figure out where they kept their own shuttles, since ours is pretty busted."
"Is that where we're going?"
He nodded. "Anyway, I used the scanner to find your location, and then I just crawled through the air ducts so I could get inside without them knowing." He stopped. "We're here."
They'd arrived at a loading door with a rusty label that read "SHUTTLE BAY."
Twenty minutes later found them back out in open space in the least-old shuttle they could find. The engine puttered every few minutes, but with any luck, they'd reach their ship in an hour or so.
Vr'ocria had regained her bearings, and she was rummaging around the storage box at the back of the cabin. She finally found an old "in case of emergency" kit, but frustratingly, all the first aid supplies had been picked clean. She did, however, find an unopened package of wet wipes.
Vr'ocria took the wipes back to the front of the cabin. Ripping the package open, she knelt by Aldrick where he sat in the pilot seat.
"What're you doing?"
"Hold still," she murmured. She raised a wipe to his face, and began gently cleaning the blood off. His eyes became soft as she tended to him, throwing the dirty wipes aside one by one while she worked her way down his face and neck.
When she was done, he took her hand before she could get up. He reached for the package as well, and began wiping the blood from her arms, taking care around the nasty scrapes that marred her wrists. "We need to get these bandaged up."
"It's okay. They're not bleeding anymore, we have time."
Aldrick placed a hand on her cheek. "I love you so much," he whispered. "And I'm glad you're okay."
Vr'ocria leaned into his hand, closing her eyes. "I love you too."
Turns out it's REALLY hard to write fight scenes lol. I can see it happening in my head, but getting it down on paper is another story. I had fun though! And I hope I did it justice.
Thank you for reading!

I’m the child but she’s the one slamming doors when she can’t get her way and thinking she can bully someone into getting what she wants even when it pertains to what someone else is wearing on there own body because she doesn’t like it. Has literally stolen at least $30 dollars from her daughter and much more from her other daughter. Has “borrowed” over $2000 from your youngest daughter (me) and upwards of $10,000 from your older daughter that you swore you’d pay back but never did because your financial skills are horrible. (Some of that being birthday and Christmas money I would get from my dads side of the family as a literal child, and a lot being money I gave to her as a struggling student in college living off the scholarship money I got from my full ride that I was supposed to put towards books and paying my rent in my campus apartment.) And much more from other family and friends. Jumps to threatening her 26 year old daughter with violence after simply being asked to please stop yelling at her. (She threatened to smack me in the face then held her hands up to my face and clapped right in front of it to scare me.) Has no emotional intelligence and is constantly embarrassing anyone around her by cussing out strangers to their face that make her mad. (She called my ex boyfriend’s mom the B word on the phone with her in highschool because the mom accused her of being racist towards Arabic people (which she is and is also against latino people and African people and has called them monkeys and apes.) She is deeply colorist and said to my beautiful dark skin sister AS A CHILD that she “wished she was more lightskin like me.” and while I’m on a role let’s talk about how when I was 17 she pushed me into a wall and started attacking me then when I was able to escape to the bathroom and lock the door she threatened to throw my laptop into water (that my dad had bought me and they’re divorced) unless I came out and let her abuse me some more. She would constantly hit me in the face if I would “talk back” to the point that as an 18 year old I actually sat in the back seat of the car at times just so I wouldn’t be in reaching distance if she was in one of her moods. She also the same year sold me guitar without me knowing (that again my divorced dad bought for me, not her) to the pawn shop because she needed the money. I opened the guitar case one day wanting to practice a song and to my shock found it filled with some stuffed animals instead of my guitar only then did she tell me she sold it. I didn’t know this until years later but apparently my older sister had actually given her money to buy the guitar back from the pawn shop and apparently she spent it on whatever else and I never saw my guitar again. All this while she was getting child support from my dad so I’m not sure where all the money was going. And y’all may ask why I never bring this up with her or try to fix things. When I have she has one of two responses. Recently if I ever bring up why I don’t want to talk to her or how she’s caused me trauma she’ll mock me and say “oh boo hoo you were abused cry me a river” and will say that I’m lying and that she never did those things when I literally have trauma nightmares of her abusing me. Not from anyone else in this world, just her. That can’t be a coincidence. The other response I used to get when I was in college and refused to visit her for long periods of time is that she’ll start crying and say that I’m gonna regret all of this and feel real guilty when she passes away and realize that I’ve been treating her wrong. These are just the highlights there’s been many more physical and verbal abuse by her but I’d be here all day. I’m by no means the perfect child I have several mental illnesses that can be tiring for me and everyone around me and I have my faults like not keeping my room clean and now that I live with her again I don’t have a room so I keep the living room messy. But the way I feel is none of that is harming anyone physically or mentally the way she has. I try to be better but it’s never enough for her. If I try to surprise her by doing all the dishes and putting them away or cleaning the bathroom we both use it’s “wow you’ve done this one time big deal you should be doing this all the time I’m not impressed” and the second I’ve not done something she wants me to it’s “you NEVER clean up you NEVER do anything” nevermind anything I’ve ever done to try and be better at cleaning etc. I pay $400 for rent and light bill every month and give her extra money whenever she claims to need it for meds she somehow can’t afford or for when she claims they’re threatening to cut off her phone nearly every month because she hasn’t paid her bill on time. Yet she treats me like I’m a second class citizen and like she can talk to me/treat me however she wants as long as I’m living under “her roof” that everyone in this family seems to be paying for except herself.

Dear you,
It was an old, suppressed memory that I had forgotten that was brought up to me. It was a text message that you had sent to me very early in the morning (I honestly don't remember what my response was). You said something to the effect of, "I'm figuring out my life alongside you." You also expressed sadness and defeat that I had already thought of you as the villain in my story. What you didn't say was that, because of the way that I had cast you, I was setting you up to fail no matter what.
That was more than 2 years ago, and I had no idea that I had communicated that to you and made you feel that way.
Well, considering the state that you and I are both in right now, I don't see the harm in extending out to you my attempt to course correct and roll things back. And I say attempt because I don't know if this is going to result in anything productive, or this is just an exercise that the universe wants me to practice for whatever reason.
Anyway, here goes ...
I put you in that role because I wanted to steel myself from missing you. It wasn't missing you per se that I was avoiding, but knowing what missing you would eventually lead to: missing you > desire for you > wanting to be with you. I wanted to avoid the confrontation that, after all, you just weren't a guy to play around with and just have fun with. It was much easier for me to paint you as a POS, the kind of guy who just wanted to play around with others, someone very flighty and flaky that I couldn't trust, so that way I could easily dismiss how I felt and get over you.
You did the right thing by biting your tongue, because if you had tried to talk to me or reason with me in any kind of way, I would reframe everything you had told me as pure bullshit and would move heaven and earth to point out every fault and weakness in everything you told me to prove that I couldn't trust you. I didn't give you the safe space for you to talk to me and gave you no breathing room to really open up. Of course, you weren't going to waste your time with being vulnerable with me. Should I be the least surprised that you've just chosen to say nothing to me instead?
Of course, you see right through all this and you're asking the tough question: "Why?"
I'm angry at you.
I'm angry at you because you were the kind of guy with whom I wasn't supposed to be vulnerable. You didn't allow me to just use your body for my temporary pleasure and then BS you into believing that we'll meet each other again when, in reality, I'd be done with you. You weren't content with each and every defense mechanism I put up, believing that you'd just simply give up and walk away. You gently challenged everything that I had brought up to you, and was willing to see through into those deep things about me that 99.99% of men on this planet have clearly missed.
I'm angry at you because I felt safe, open, vulnerable, real, accepted and really seen in your presence. I didn't have to put up a front in order to impress you or take off my clothes to seduce you. Rather than stripping me of my clothes, you stripped me of my defenses and I felt emotionally naked with you and exposed. You were too perceptive to be easily tricked by everything that I had tossed at you, throwing you off the scent so you wouldn't see what I was doing.
I'm angry at you because when you said, "I love you", my willingness to challenge you and put your "love" to the test was telling you what I wasn't willing to verbally express to you, "I'm scared that you actually love me for real, a love that I can trust, but because this is the first time I have experienced real love, I would rather deflect and choose to expend my energy into proving you wrong." You weren't supposed to mean it when you said that you have loved me; you were supposed to have lied to me and deceived me the way all the others have, and have only used those three words to get what you wanted out of me (which you didn't!)
I'm even more angry because I don't know how to channel this anger productively. Arguing with you is not going to help. Pushing you away is not going to help. Getting underneath another man is not going to help. Utilizing "outta sight, outta mind" is not going to help, either.
So, I guess I'm just stuck here for a while.
~ Me

If you were to speculate, how will AI be used five years from today?
It's difficult to predict exactly how AI will be used five years from today, since the technology is still rapidly evolving and its applications are ever-expanding. However, based on current trends and ongoing research, here are a few possibilities of how AI might be used in the next five years:

1. Improved personalization: AI could be used to personalize products, services, and experiences based on individual preferences and tendencies, improving customer engagement and satisfaction.
   
2. Enhanced healthcare: AI could be used to analyze vast amounts of medical data and provide novel insights for treating diseases and improving health outcomes.
   
3. Autonomous vehicles: AI-powered self-driving cars could become more prevalent, offering safer, more efficient modes of transportation.
   
4. Enhanced cybersecurity: AI could be used to identify and prevent advanced cyberattacks, protecting sensitive data and systems.
   
5. Natural language processing: AI could be used to refine human-machine interaction, improving services like customer support, chatbots, and translations.
   

These are just a few examples. However, the possibilities of AI applications are limited only by the imagination and creativity of its developers and users.
What about ten years from now?
As the technology of AI continues to evolve and mature, it is expected that we will see its adoption and integration into nearly every sector of industry and society over the next ten years. Here are a few potential ways that AI could be used in ten years from now:

1. Medical breakthroughs: AI could be used to gain new insights, creating better treatments and medicines.
   
2. Human-level cognition in machines: There could be progress in creating machines with human-level intelligence and reasoning power, capable of advanced problem-solving and precise decision-making.
   
3. Advanced automation: Automation enabled by AI could transform factories, office environments, and other industries, leading to greater efficiency and productivity.
   
4. Deeper insight into natural phenomena: AI could help us better understand the universe's mysteries by analyzing large amounts of data from telescopes, sensors, and other sources.
   
5. Personalized care: AI-assisted services could utilize sensors and devices to track and analyze a person's unique health data, providing them with individualized treatment and care.
   

These are just some of the ways that AI could evolve and impact society over the next decade. However, as its potential applications continue to expand, the real extent of its impact could be even more profound and transformative than we may anticipate today.
What about 20 years from today
It is difficult to predict exactly how AI will evolve and transform our world over the next two decades. However, here are a few potential ways that AI could impact society in 20 years from today:

1. Fully autonomous systems: We could see fully autonomous vehicles, robots and other machines become a common part of our everyday lives, leading to even greater efficiency and convenience.
   
2. Human-AI interfaces: Advances in brain-computer interfaces could allow a tight integration between humans and AI, opening up new possibilities for how we interact with machines and information.
   
3. Space exploration: AI has the potential to play a significant role in space exploration by helping us analyze vast amounts of data collected by futuristic missions, and also by supporting intelligent, autonomous spacecraft.
   
4. Evolution of work: Automation could become even more prevalent in the workforce, leading to a significant shift in the way work is done across many industries.
   
5. Enhanced quality of life: AI could be used to develop new treatments for diseases and improve energy efficiency, saving lives, and promoting sustainable development.
   

These are just a few examples that show how AI could transform many aspects of society over the next two decades, from science and medicine to transportation and manufacturing. However, as the technology continues to evolve, it will prove to be one of the most transformative forces of our time.

I’m wondering what things I can work on at home over the summer and during the coming school year. She did well in Pre-K. Teachers praised her behavior and she knows anything you would expect her to know and maybe a little bit more. I just want to have her as prepared as possible.
What skills do you see lacking with incoming kids that I can work on with her?
Any tips on getting her to write letters in lower case? She strongly gravitates to all caps (my fault for teaching them first without including lower case).
Thanks in advance for any advice!

Hi everyone,
​
I'm not sure this will be helpful because everyone's situation is different but when I was deep into my dpdr I came here often and recovery stories really gave me hope. So I wanted to share mine with you. Hoping it will help some of you.
After losing my dad to cancer unexpected I didn't really take enough time to process it and just carried on working and being busy. I started to obsess over my gender identity (which I never had before) and it gave me A LOT of anxiety. It was like my mind was hijacked by thoughts about being transgender. I sought help and was diagnosed with OCD. I started therapy for it. Then a few weeks after I had a panic attack and I suddenly was completely tied up in very scary existential thougths and feelings of dpdr.
I felt like I couldn't exist anymore. Because everything about life had become unbearable and scary. I was constantly scared of being a person and being in my body and about how reality could exist. It was not just thoughts. I also felt very estranged from myself. Like I couldn't relax. I was on edge all the time. Going through a day was absolute agony and terror. I didn't know what to do. I felt like I was slowly going crazy and I feared that this would all never go away again. I had it before in my 20's. I'm 36 now. And I felt it was much worse this time.
It started in September 2022 and it lasted up until February 2023. That was the worst of it. After that it became a little better and better gradually. And it isn't completely gone. But it's like 99% better than it was. I'm still plagued by thoughts about my gender identity but that's another story ;)
What helped me were a number of things. For starters my therapist really helped me to stop fighting the thoughts and sensations and just accept that I had them. I still felt awful but with accepting the situation as it was I began to try to identify things that were helpful for me. For me I found it it was all a lot of accumulated stress and being in a constant state of panic.
Helpful things were:
-expressing my fears and emotions to others and to cry when I felt like it was all too much. Just let it all out. -having a good sleep pattern -trying to do things that make me happy or used to make me happy -avoid catastrophic ways of thinking like this will never be better -grouning exercises like mindfulness meditation. I did a bodyscan every night before going to sleep -running therapy tremendously helped me to relax my body and mind
What is Running therapy?
Running therapy is the use of a calm endurance course, during which you exercise at a moderately intensive level. Research shows positive results of exercising in depression, anxiety, addiction and chronic pain. In addition, exercising strengthens the body, provides relaxation and creates an overall improvement in mood. People who exercise regularly at a moderately intensive level show a considerable improvement in physical and mental health. The running therapy group is supervised by one of our psychologists, who is also trained as a running therapist. The added value of running therapy carried out by psychologists is the extra attention for the relationship between body and mind. -ACT acceptance and commitment therapy helped me to accept what I was dealing with and to find ways to cope. One thing I used to do was to write all my thoughts on sticky notes when it was bad. It helped me to get it all out. -This will maybe sound a bit cheesy but really getting into contact with my emotions helped me to get in contact with myself. So cry when you feel like crying. Vent about what you're going through. Try to get out of your head. -This one is very important: try to look at yourself with compassion. Like you're a little child or a friend you have to take care of. Take it one day at a time. Every day can get you closer to feeling better. And don't beat yourself up for experiencing this. It isn't your fault. -A lot of people will not understand what you're going through and it's hard to explain. This can feel lonely. I found out that for me it wasn't necessary that people completely understood me. What helped me was feeling their support and love. A lot of people know what it is to go through hardship. Even if it's not the exact same things you experience you can still symphatize. -Doing jigsaw puzzles and coloring really helped me to get out of my head. Eventhough I sometimes felt really anxious while doing them. -I found someone on reddit who went through the exact same things. We started to message to support each other and help each other. She helped me through some bad nights.
Unhelpful things were
-investigating my symptoms online. This made me constantly worry it would turn into psychosis or something -obsessively trying to monitor how you're feeling every moment of the day. It made me focus on it even more. It was the same with telling every little thought I had to my family. There's nothing wrong with asking for support or advice. But for me too much emphasis on the symptoms made me worse. -Negative and catastrophic thinking patterns, like this will never end. -Not eating or sleeping enough made it worse for me. The same with being too busy.
I didn't use any medication because I didn't want to. But that was my personal choice. I'm not saying meds can't be helpful for others.
I realize that my tips will not work for everyone. Because everyone is different. And I'm not a therapist or something. I can only share what helped me cope. I really hope it is helpful for someone. And I hope people will stay strong going through this. I know it's the worst. But it can get better.