Now I know you people back over their saying. Umm actually, masterbation reduces cancer and sexual assault. Yea sure bud, I’ll believe your study that also includes other factors. But yea, point at the one that keeps your dirty habits up.
We’ve have been too tolerant of this content for too long. And since it targets the brain center for dopamine, it should be extremely regaled as cigarettes are. It’s also everywhere man. Remember when YouTube somehow let that slipped? How’s that possible? And also the comments, my god, I remember those sex bots were everyhwere on pewdiepies recent video. It’s also worse on Twitter, well I think they finally fixed it but they also host a lot of artist from the tumbler exodus.
You could also be arguing is for “exploring” but I don’t think having your typical bimbo women and a dude with a baseball bat penis is good for the health of the viewers. Its a fantasy, but a fantasy that’s linked heavily with biology. Such as smoking reward system. They also have massive advertising, while big corporations just shilled as sports or places were you can see them. These guys have the internet to spread it, showing it to millions of peoples with 0 consequences. Seriously I post cropped r34 with some copyrighted Song and that pops like 10k views easily. I’m just saying, that Should not be rewarded.
And I mean, who’s gonna disagree porn shouldn’t be everywhere? The only people that would oppose this are half the anti woke mob that seem like perverts to me. Idk, they always talk about women being ugly and covering the cloths. Like man, just download a mod, stop trying to hide it behind the woke agenda. Progressives would say it harms women’s body perception. And conservatives would say, it’s pretty pathetic that you’re watching actors doing the act. No one can disagree with it, because having easily addictive content is only a recipe for disaster. Thank you for listening to my Ted talk, the other sub is down for some reason, guess they needed mods.

Backstory here is probably majorly important so you don't think I'm just a total douche bag and wanting to insult my coworkers.
I'm one of the 2 women at my restaurant, the other one is 60 years old. My kitchen only speaks Spanish with very little English. They've been harassing me nonstop but unfortunately, there's not much I can do about it as we don't exactly have people lining up for their jobs right now.
Google translate is absolutely terrible at translation, and I'm in need of accurate insults or phrases to put them in check and hopefully make them stop harassing me.
I know normally this wouldn't be the best way to go about this, but I would rather just handle this myself as I already know what my boss would say. (He'd tell me to just tell them to shut up and go along with my day) But I need... something that will just absolutely squash this. It's gotten progressively worse every day since I started, and now it's getting to a point where I'm actually slightly concerned. With English speakers, I usually have no problem correcting it myself, but I'm really lost here as what to say when they don't understand English.

hey guys, i would like some thoughts/advice as to what you guys think about the relationship i am in rn.
m20 f20 for some context.
weve been in a relationship for close to 2 years now. we recently had a really huge fight but we patched up. moving on, we promised not to use any cuss words at each other. however, today, we had another fight. it was something q minor tbh but i cant keep it in anymore so ill just pour my heart out.
idk if men change as a relationship progresses or what but my love for him has been slowly decreasing each day. just today, he used words like "dumb trash", "why are you so insecure", "fucking bitch". I asked him why he was being bipolar. weve got this volunteer initiative going on and it was my responsibility to send out the msg regarding the sessions but i totally forgot about it (i took the responsibility since he was rly sick). this morning, i sent out a message to apologise and he got mad at me??? this is what he said - OMG DELETE it STOP PSSING ME OFF Delete it before i block u Its useless U didnt win Are u dumb I didnt ask u to take the balme I said I took the blame U didnt even thank me Not go take the responsibilities
when i caled him bipolar he asked me if i had a mental illness and i said stp it with the dumb and all that sht cos im not gna sit here and entertain all that bs.
then, i went on to ignore him to which he spam called me and threatened to ring my phone if i didnt pick up.
the insecure msg popped up cos we were discussing smth about what we saw on reddit and he asked me why am i so insecure to which i replied "I told u this I really don't care we are still young if you decide to do anything funny or think about it it's your loss because ik how good of a person I am and the extent to which I'll go (I doubt any women literally 1% of women pay for almost all the dates and don't even as fr the $ back) and he started calling me names like fucking bitch fucking dog after i blocked him. (oh yes I forgot to add I shouted shut the fuck up fucker because I was so fucking done with his nonsense and also I tend to be rly emotional on my period but he's a douchebag cos man only thinks about his own needs LOL)
updates: he just texted me this if u want to patch things up
i was tring to make u more confident
by sating be aware of ur self worth and stuff
Dont be insecure
And u shout SHUT THE FUCK UP TO ME
obv im gna start calling u names
Fyi
U started the f words
U typed f word and deleted it
U said
“The f”
U shouted the f word over VC
Youre the problem here
Im here not for ur damn money but for ur heart
U doubled down on me with the SHUT THE FUCK UP No one repeats what someone says
Just to make them jealous
I told u this I really don't care we are still young if you decide to do anything funny or think about it it's your loss because ik how good of a person I am and the extent to which I'll go (I doubt any woman literally 1% of women pay for almost all the dates and don't even as fr the $ back)
This entire paragraph was bullshit
Trying to justify why youre the better one in this relationship
It was honestly painful and funny to read at the same time
Cause youre insecure and two why the heck are u telling me these
When i already know u are you

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I met my FP end of 2018 and by 2019 we were already living together, since we were already together every day from the start. Very rollercoaster relationship in which I left to my mom's many times but he always reeled me back. Beginning of 2023 he suggested we break up, I moved out beginning of March. We remained super close until last month, when he pulled way back barely texting barely seeing each other. I was his FP too not that he'd ever admit it, and I very much suspect he has a personality disorder as well. In 5.5 years we've never spent more than 3-4 days apart (typically together every day) until this last month when he pulled back a lot. When I asked him why, he said mental health and that he knew he was being a bad friend and he needed to do better as I'm the only person who's ever cared this much about him. Last Monday I plotted and hid his watch when he came over for the first time in weeks (his phone was getting blown up and he was hiding it), and I looked thru it when he left. Turned out he was talking/intimate with two girls acting as if he was exclusive to each. Multiple points of evidence that he was dubbing me for plans with them, but just ignoring me or omitting the truth instead of just telling me he was busy with other people. Cue full rage scorched earth meltdown starting the next day. 2 days later he hadn't come clean to either girl so I called the "main" girl and we talked for hours thru multiple phone calls. I SUPER overshared. She went over and pressed him. Turns out she was NOT on my side the way she was leading on lol. He blew up but still didn't make me bring the watch. After they talked he said she's all he wants in life will marry her etc, wants his watch back. Tells the second girl he's in love with someone else and they can't talk anymore. Days go by, i still have the watch and im still blowing him up pleading with him and expressing my grief with no answers, then this monday got blocked. I called the girl out of desperation tuesday (expecting to already be blocked) left a super embarrassing and seed planting vm then multiple texts after trying to fix it. Nope, didnt fix it, she called him saying she was upset by it and told him what i sent. He insisted I bring his watch back. I did, we talked for hours, he told me i ruined it for him and he can tell she doesnt see him the same now, and we left off on a very very very long hug and "this isn't goodbye". He had been chill until then, but the hug made his heart race and tears fall. Brief communication the next day like things were ok....blocked by that night. Spent the night reflecting and guilt flowing in. Didn't know I was blocked yet and sent him a Doordarsh order to his work mid-day yesterday, as he always did for me during a fight. Called last night and realized blocked, then used *67 to get thru and left him a voicemail begging to be able to apologize for everything as i had begun to truly reflect on everything. No answer. This morning his sister text me to leave him alone and move on. I have a horrible feeling this girl finally told him the full contents of our convos, including admission that I purposely concealed the watch and many mean words, and thats why he decided again to block me.
I'm reflecting on how fucked up this was, how I should've never taken the watch. Or at ANY point in the week after I should've given it back and just talked to him and not continued going crazy. At first he insisted he would never give up on me and even admitted he was in the wrong, then after I confided in her and they talked he agreed with my initial rage messages that we are done and that now she's all he will be thinking about. He's spent every night with her since then. I'm so sick with myself that I fully burned our bridge. I've never gone this nuts before. It's felt like full blown withdrawal symptoms since the night I kept the watch, I'm already down 10lbs.
I'm reflecting on all the times I was selfish like this. He was not perfect either by any means but we are yin and yang in almost every way. We've been through so much in these almost 6 years. I'm surrounded by him both by objects and by physicality (tattoos, medical scars etc). I don't even know how to breathe right now. I thought I'd made so much progress this past year and a half, and I quite literally knocked it all over in one stupid decision. I'm so embarrassed at how comfortable I was to confide in this girl as she was a stranger, embarrassed I even took the step to tell her about the other girl in the first place.
He deleted snapchat where we left off on 388 day streak. I've been paying to restore it because i cant let go and im praying he'll come back. I asked him not to block me so the chat wouldnt disappear, and he didnt. I'm restricted (I assume) on instagram, but not blocked there or on Facebook. I'm blocked by phone number. We did EVERYTHING together and I've never had such a loss. I know he still cares for me deeply but I really ruined it this time and I'm cooked. Wondering how I can be so manipulative. I'm praying I'm not just delusional and we will find our way back to each other in the future even if it hurts to know he's out there giving his all to someone else right now. I put myself in debt for this man, literally built him up from the ground. Now I question did I ever even love him truly or is that the FP delusion???? LADIES wouldn't you want to know the guy claiming he only wants you is hitting another girl raw, and would you stay with him after?!? I think he jumped from one crazy to another honestly.
Anyway if you read this far, thank you. I only have one other friend and a mid sister so I haven't been able to vent this out properly. I'm seriously losing my mind trying to comprehend how everything just shattered within 10 days and it was entirely my fault and there's no taking it back. How many times can I make a grave mistake that has me praying for a time machine, which could have been prevented with even a little bit of emotional and impulse control? 😮‍💨 I guess this was the catalyst I needed to retry DBT, it's been about a decade since I last tried. I didn't realize how un-reformed I was until the opportunity presented itself

1 Techne Prologue with Plato and Aristotle
Heidegger and Marcuse
We are several hundred years into the project of Enlightenment, initiated in the 18th century by thinkers who believed in progress. We are the heirs of that project which freed science and technology for the adventure of modernity. This has made all the difference. No doubt human nature remains much the same - at least the level of aggression remains disturbingly high - but the means at our disposal are now more powerful than in the past. Quantity has changed into quality as technology alters the basic parameters of human action. New dilemmas emerge in a society reconstructed around these new technical means.
Two philosophers have reflected most deeply on this situation. Martin Heidegger invites us to study technology as the decisive philosophical issue of our time. Most philosophers either celebrate technical progress or worry about its unintended consequences; they conceive society as separate from technology, which holds either a promise or a threat. Heidegger, on the contrary, defines modernity itself as the prevalence of technology. Particular technical achievements and failures are unimportant since our very dependence on technology gives rise to general catastrophe. Heidegger’s student, Herbert Marcuse, reformulated the philosophy of technology in the framework of a radical social theory and projected an alternative to the desperate situation Heidegger described. For Marcuse technology is not a fixed destiny as it is for Heidegger. The promise of Enlightenment remains to be fulfilled in the future through a deep transformation of technology. Together, these two philosophers offer the deepest insight into the danger of technology and the possibilities of redemption.
Heidegger’s philosophy of technology is a puzzling combination of romantic nostalgia for an idealized image of antiquity and deep insight into modernity. His originality lies in treating technique not merely as a functional means but as a mode of “revealing” through which a “world” is shaped. “World” in Heidegger refers not to the sum of existent things but to an ordered and meaningful structure of experience. Such structures depend on basic practices characterizing societies and whole historical era. These constitute an “opening” in which “being” is revealed, that is to say, in which experience takes place. Human being, called “Dasein” by Heidegger, can only be understood as always already involved in a world in this sense. As such, it is “being-in-the-world.” The things of the world are “revealed” to Dasein as they are encountered in use and so Heidegger calls them “equipment” (zeug).
Heidegger’s language sounds mysterious. We will return to the reason for his peculiar locutions in a later chapter. Here it is enough to consider what he is saying at the simplest level. He is not claiming that things exist because we use them but rather that their meaning is tied up with our existence as experience, active beings. As such we encounter them as this or that particular object available for this or that role in our lives. A thing that was in principle out of any possible contact with a being such as ourselves, would not “make sense” but would be a bare existence, its infinite potentials a meaningless blur. It is we who order experience into recognizable objects. Without us, chairs and tables would not be the sort of things one calls chairs and tables (e.g., things to sit on, to eat at, to set and stack and clean, and so on). Mountains and stars too would be empty of meaning out of the context of a world in which such things have a place even if it be purely aesthetic, imaginary, or scientific. The difficult point is that without a finite being-in-the-world to encounter them, things are literally meaningless, non-sense, without distinction, boundaries, or definiteness. It is absurd to talk about “things” on this hypothesis. What we normally call “objective reality” is perfectly real, but it falls under this finite horizon we cannot coherently think our way around, behind, or beyond.
This picture of Dasein’s active and engaged being-in-the-world is obscured in modern times by technological thinking which treats everything as essentially an object of cognition, a simple matter of fact, including human beings themselves. Heidegger argues that this objectivistic outlook is not innocent. It goes along with the fundamental restructuring of the world by technoscience. Eventually human beings as well as things become mere components in the technical system. The modern world is a place of total mobilization for ends that remain obscure. It is this apparent “value freedom” or “neutrality” of technology that Heidegger and later, Marcuse, identify as the source of the uniqueness and tragedy of modernity. This is what allows technology to destroy both man and nature. A world “enframed” by technology is radically alien and hostile. The danger is not merely nuclear weapons or some similar threat to survival, but the obliteration of humanity’s special status and dignity as the being through which the world takes on intelligibility and meaning; for human beings have become mere raw materials like the nature they pretend to dominate (Heidegger 1977).
Both Marcuse and Heidegger are controversial figures. Marcuse is remembered as the guru of the New Left, the darling of 1968, a drastic foreshortening of a career that extended over more than fifty years of intense philosophical activity. Heidegger, of course, is the philosopher who betrayed his calling by becoming a Nazi and recognizing Hitler as his “Fuhrer,” never renouncing his error publicly even after World War II. And Heidegger is also, in the view of many, the greatest philosopher of the 20th century.
……………..
Marcuse had left by the time Heidegger made this “turn.” His thought continues the early Heidegger’s production-centered analysis of being. The model of techne influences him profoundly although its presence in his thought is soon masked by the influence of the early Marx. Marcuse’s innovative reinterpretation of Hegel is a study of this very same problematic of movement central to Heidegger’s own early philosophy. I will argue that Marcuse’s turn to Hegel is not a turning away from Heidegger but an attempt to workout the implications of Heidegger’s early Aristotle interpretation for Hegel’s dialectic which, Marcuse asserts, is itself based on Aristotle. The dialectic describes the internally contradictory character of existence Marcuse interprets as a theory of revealing in something like Heidegger’s sense.
The central chapters of this book develop this background in detail. Once this task is accomplished I will turn to Marcuse’s later work which appears now in a rather different light. Many things that have puzzled and sometimes outraged commentators since the 1960s come into focus as reflections of continuing Heideggerian influences. It would be too much to say that Marcuse is a crypto-Heideggerian, but he is indeed addressing questions posed by Heidegger and offering an alternative response. This is especially apparent in the existential demands of Marcuse’s politics, his “two-dimensional” ontology, and his approach to art and technology. These issues will be discussed in the concluding chapters of this book.
Techne and the Good
We are well aware that we are a technological society, and not just because we use so many devices but also in our spirit and our way of life. But only recently has this awareness reached the humanistic disciplines. It is strange that the 20th century, the century of astonishingly rapid technical advance, should have produced relatively little philosophical reflection on technology. John Dewey is the only figure of the stature of Heidegger to concern himself extensively with this theme (Hickman 1990). When Heidegger and Marcuse wrote about technology, it was still possible, and indeed more than possible - intellectually respectable - to ignore it. Their path breaking reflections went beyond the boundaries of conformist thought in philosophy and other humanistic fields. Now all that is slowly changing; indeed, it must change for these fields to retain any significance.
Surprisingly, these modern resistances to the question concerning technology, particularly strong in philosophy, were not shared by the Greeks. Of course the Greeks, at least Plato and Aristotle among them, shared their society’s aristocratic prejudice against work and admired pure contemplation above all else. But this did not prevent them from reflecting on the ontological significance of technical activity which Heidegger later reinterprets as the “question of being.” How did they pose the question?
Philosophy begins by interpreting the world in terms of the fundamental fact that humanity is a laboring animal constantly at work transforming nature. This fundamental fact shapes the basic distinctions that prevail throughout the tradition of Western philosophy. The first of these is the distinction between what the Greeks called physis and poiesis. Physis is usually translated as nature. The Greeks understood nature to be that which creates itself, that which emerges from out of itself. Poiesis is the practical activity of making in which human beings engage when they produce something. We call these created beings artifacts and include among them the products of art, craft, and social convention.
The word techne is at the origin of the modern words for technique and technology in every Western language, although these have a somewhat different meaning as we will see. In ancient Greece it signifies the knowledge or discipline associated with a form of poiesis. For example, medicine is a techne that aims at healing the sick; carpentry is a techne that aims at building from wood. Note that for the Greeks, technai show the “right way” to do things in a very strong, even an objective sense. Although artifacts depend on human activity, the knowledge contained in the technai is no matter of opinion or subjective intention. Even the purposes of things made share in this objectivity insofar as they are defined by the technai.
The second fundamental philosophical distinction is that between existence and essence. Existence answers the question what the thing is. That it is and what it is appear to be two independent dimensions of being in the Western philosophical tradition. But existence is a rather hazy concept, difficult to define. Apart from St. Thomas Aquinas’ attempts to understand existence as an “act,” it has failed to interest mainstream philosophy. Most of the attention is given to essence and its successor concepts as developed by the sciences because this is the content of the knowledge.
These two distinctions are self-evident. They form the basis of all philosophical thought in the West. But the relation between them is not obvious, is in fact puzzling. The source of the puzzle for the Greeks’ understanding of techne, the ancestor of modern technology. Strange though it seems, they conceived nature, physis, on the model of the artifacts produced by their own poietic activity.
With artifacts the distinction between existence and essence is real and obvious. The artifact exists first as an idea and only later comes into existence through human making. But note that for the Greeks the idea of the artifact is not arbitrary or subjective but rather belongs to a techne. Each techne contains the essence of the thing to be made prior to the act of making. The idea, the essence of the thing is thus a reality independent of the thing itself and of its maker. What is more, as we have seen, the purpose of the thing made is included in its idea. In sum, although humans make artifacts, they do so according to a plan and for a purpose that is an objective aspect of the world.
In nature, on the other hand, the distinction between existence and essence is not obvious. The thing and its essence emerge together and the essence does not have a separate existence. The flower grows along with what makes it a flower: that it is and what it is “happen,” in a sense, simultaneously. We can later construct a concept of the essence of the flower, but this is our doing, not something required by the very existence of nature as it is for artifacts. Unlike techne, which is essential to the manufacture of artifacts, episteme, knowledge of nature, appears to be a purely human doing to which nature itself would be indifferent. Or is it? Here is where the story gets interesting.
This difference between the relation of essence to physis and poiesis is important for an understanding of Greek philosophy and the later tradition precisely because philosophers have tried so hard to surpass it. Plato’s theory of ideas is the foundation of this tradition. For Plato the concept of the thing exists in an ideal realm prior to the thing itself and allows us to know the thing. Note how similar this theory is to our analysis of techne in which the idea is also independent of the thing. But Plato does not reserve this theory for artifacts; rather, it is applied to all being. He relies on the structure of techne to explain not only artifacts, but nature as well.
Plato understands nature as divided into existence and essence just as artifacts are and this becomes the basis for Greek ontology. This has many important consequences. There is no radical discontinuity between technical making and natural self-production because they both share the same structure. Techne includes a purpose and a meaning. The Greeks import this understanding of artifacts into the realm of nature which they then interpret teleologically. This conception of the world calls for a corresponding conception of human being. We humans are not the masters of nature but work with its potentials to bring an ordered world to fruition. Neither our knowledge of that world nor our action in it is arbitrary but rather they expose and complete what lies hidden in nature.
What conclusions do we draw from these historical considerations on ancient Greek philosophy? I will be provocative and say that the philosophy of technology begins with the Greeks and is in fact the foundation of all Western philosophy. After all, the Greeks interpret being as such through the concept of technical making. This is ironic. Technology has a low status in high culture but it was actually there at the origin of that culture and, if we believe the Greeks, contains the key to the understanding of being as a whole.
If we now turn to the ethical consequences of this “technical” theory of being, we will begin to understand the basis for the later critique of technology in Heidegger and Marcuse. We can uncover the Greek outlook by reviewing Plato’s original discussion of techne in one of his greatest dialogues, the Gorgias. It is worth spending some time with this text since it offers a kind of template of all the basic issues which will concern us. The argument appears remarkably modern at first, pitting Socrates against an instrumentalist who sharply distinguishes means from ends and considers ends subjective. If we recognize the typical prejudices of our times in Socrates’ adversary, in Socrates we find an alternative worldview so charmingly expressed we can almost believe it. As we will see, in some complicated sense Heidegger does believe it, or at least he attempts to give it a philosophical weight it has not had for centuries.
The Gorgias is the first text in the Western tradition to treat the relation of technique to values as a problem. In this dialogue, Socrates debates the nature of the techne, or “art,” of rhetoric. He distinguishes between true arts that are based on a logos, and what the English translation calls mere knacks, empeiriae in Greek, that is, rules of thumb based on experience but without an underlying rationale (Dodds 1959, 225).
For Plato, a rationale or logos necessarily includes a reference to the good served by the art. Knowledge of the logos of the art thus involves a teleological conception of its objects, a normative idea of their “essence” conceived as the fulfillment of their potentialities. If the art is shipbuilding, its logos will not only instruct the builder in putting together boards in some sort of arrangement, but will also guide him in making a shift that is strong and safe. The doctor’s art includes not only various notions about herbs but also a curative mission that governs their use. In this, these arts differ from a mere knack of combining pieces of wood or herbs without an underlying order and purpose.
Technical logic and objective finalities are joined in true arts, while knacks serve merely subjective purposes. But because we are prone to accept appearances for reality and pursue pleasure instead of the good, for each art there is some knack that imitates its effects and misleads its clients. Cosmetic substitutes for gymnastics, giving the appearance of health without the reality. Rhetoric, the power to substitute appearance for reality in language, is the supreme and most dangerous knack. In a debate on shipbuilding or medicine, the orator will silence the expert every time. Means triumph over ends. The only way to protect oneself is through knowledge which distinguishes appearance from reality and identifies the logos of each art. Knowledge is thus essential to the pursuit of the good.
Callicles is the most articulate advocate of the knack of rhetoric in the Gorgias. He has an unlimited appetite for power and pleasure which he serves through his mastery of the tricks of language. That such ambition was not merely a personal idiosyncrasy is clear from a reading of Aristophanes, Thucydides, and other contemporary authors, all of whom denounced the moral degeneration and egoism of the imperialistic Athens of the 5th century. In external affairs, the Athenians oppressed their own allies. Internally, the assembly became a battlefield of power hungry orators. Plato’s version of the question of his age was thus, quite simply, does might make right? His answer to this question is the basis of rational ethical thought in the West.
I will briefly review the argument with Callicles as Socrates’ refutation of his views sets the stage for modern debates over technology and values. Callicles intervenes in the middle of the dialogue. He argues that the justice Socrates makes so much of is more useful to the weak than the strong. The strong can impose their will without the help of law. As a mere special interest of the weak, justice has no claim on them. Natural justice consists quite simply in the rule of the stronger over the weaker and is diametrically opposed to conventional justice.
Callicles analyzes the earlier debates on these terms. In all of them Socrates has caught the defenders of rhetoric in contradictions. These victories, Callicles asserts, were due to a trick, namely, playing fast and loose on both sides of the line between the natural goals rhetoric can achieve, such as power and pleasure, and the merely conventional values of ethics and aesthetics.
Callicles’ analysis is astute. For examples, Polus asserts both that it is better to do injustice than to suffer it, and also that doing injustice is uglier than suffering it. He thus finds himself claiming that one and the same thing, unjust action, is better, i.e., less painful and worse, aesthetically. But, Callicles argues, pain belongs to nature and beauty to convention. Any argument that mixes the two realms will be inconsistent. And so Callicles demands that Socrates answer according to nature, giving up any direct appeal to ethical or aesthetic values.
Callicles then defends a hedonistic doctrine according to which the good is the purely subjective sensation of pleasure, a natural value. On these terms there is no gap between the appearance of the good and its reality. No science of the good is required to “know” that one is having a good time! But without a distinction between appearance and reality, the Socratic distinction between techne and empeiria collapses: rationality, the logos, is irrelevant to the pursuit of the good defined as a mere feeling each can verify for himself.
The following chart sums up Callicles’ analysis with, in brackets, a fourth good added by Socrates in the course of the discussion
NATURE (physis)
PLEAURE (hedone) [USEFULNESS (ophelia)]
THE GOOD (agathon)
BEAUTY (kalon) JUSTICE (dike)
CONVENTION (nomos)
Socrates agrees to Callicles’ strictures and quickly gets Callicles to admit that the unrestrained pursuit of pleasure leads to harm, for example, ill health. Pleasure is thus not the highest value but is pursued “for the sake of the good” (Plato 1952, 72). In this passage Plato identifies the good with “ophelia,“ usefulness, another natural value, and so the contradiction into which Callicles now falls - affirming that pleasure both is and is not the good - cannot be blamed on any tricky play on the difference between nature and convention.
After this decisive refutation, Socrates returns from natural goods to the ethical and aesthetic values temporarily bracketed at Callicles’ request. In the famous myth that concludes the text, Socrates dismantles Callicles’ distinction between nature and convention. Rhadamanthys judges the dead and punishes each soul that suffers from “distortion and hideousness by reason of the irresponsibility and licentiousness, the insolence and intemperance of its acts” (Plato 1952, 104). Divine justice is meted out according to aesthetic criteria - “distortion and hideousness” - but there is no question of conventional appearances prejudicing the eye of the judge. The aesthetic reference is ontological; it measures the “naked” soul’s actual reality. Such an ontological conception of aesthetics was perhaps more accessible to the Greeks than to us as they commonly referred to persons and their actions as beautiful or ugly for their qualities (Dobbs 1959, 249-50). The aesthetic in this sense refers to how the individuals define themselves through their actions (as virtuous, a thief, generous, a liar, etc.). What one does is not accidental to one’s being, but stamps it with a particular character that others can evaluate according to objective criteria. The act of self-definition is a function of rational self-control (or the lack of it) in terms of ethical and aesthetic standards.
The Tyranny of Reason
Modern readers have difficulty taking the conclusion of Plato’s dialogue seriously. The earlier shift in the argument from ethics and aesthetics to the conflict between hedonistic and functional goods appears to place it on a purely rational plane we can more easily accept. Since such things as health are counted among functional goods, there is plenty for techne to do even without guidance from contentious ethical and aesthetic standards.
But just how modern is even this phase of Plato’s argument? In one sense his idea of techne seems obvious. Technologies are in fact subordinated to purposes which appear in the technical disciplines as a guide to resources and procedures. Many of these purposes derive from considerations such as health and safety that have an objective rationale. A software engineer working for Rolls-Royce Aircraft explained to me that 10 percent of his time was spent writing software and 90 percent was spent testing it for safety. Plato would no doubt approve: the logos is at work at Rolls-Royce.
Yet we moderns can no longer generalize from such examples as Plato did. For every benevolent aircraft designer, there is a bomb builder somewhere. We can still relate to Plato’s emphasis on the need for a rationale, a logos, but we’re not so sure it necessarily includes an idea of the good. In fact we think of technologies as normless, as serving subjective purposes very much as did Plato’s knacks. What has happened to disconnect technology and value in modern times?
The founders of modern thought, Descartes and Frances Bacon, wrote at a time when technology resembled far more closely the plows and spears of Plato’s Athens than the automobiles and Internet of today. Nevertheless, Descartes had the temerity to promise that we would soon become “the masters and possessors of nature” through the cultivation of the sciences, and Bacon famously claimed that “Knowledge is power.” Clearly, these early modern thinkers are, at least in intention, in a different world from the Greeks - our world. Nevertheless, they share with the Greeks the fundamental distinction between nature and artifacts, essence and existence. But Descartes’ and Bacon’s understanding of these distinctions is different from that of the Greeks. This is especially true of the concept of essence. For them as for us, what Aristotle took for essences are conventional rather than real. The meaning and purpose of things is something we create, not something we discover. The hap between human being and world widens accordingly. We are not at home in the world, we conquer the world. This difference is related to our basic ontology, our concept of nature. The question we address to being is not what it is but how it works. Science answers this question rather than revealing essences in the Greek sense of the term.
Note that technology is still the model of being in this modern conception. This was particularly clear in the 18th century Enlightenment, when philosophers and scientists challenged the medieval successors to Greek science with the new mechanistic worldview. These thinkers explored the machinery of being. They identified the workings of the universe with a clockwork mechanism, a device. Strange though it may seem, the underlying structure of Greek ontology survive the defeat of one of its chief principles, it concept of essence.
In the modern context technology does not realize objective essences inscribed in the nature of the universe, as does techne. It now appears as purely instrumental, as value free. It does not respond to inherent purposes, but is merely a means serving subjective goals. For modern common sense, means and ends are independent of each other. Technology is “neutral” in the sense that it has no preference as between the various possible uses to which it can be put. This is the instrumentalist philosophy of technology that is a spontaneous product of our civilization, assumed unreflectively by most people.
Technology in this scheme of things encounters nature as raw materials, not as a world that emerges out of itself, a physis, but rather as stuff awaiting transformation into whatever we desire. This world is understood mechanistically not teleologically. It is there to be used without any inner purpose. The West has made enormous technical advances on the basis of this understanding of reality. Nothing restrains us in our exploitation of the world. Everything is exposed to an analytic intelligence that decomposes it into usable parts. In the 19th century it became commonplace to view modernity as an unending progress.
But for what ends? The goals of our society can no longer be specified in a knowledge of some sort, a techne, as they were for the Greeks. They remain purely subjective, arbitrary choices, and no essences guide us. Reason now concerns only means, not ends. This has led to a crisis of civilization from which there seems no escape: we know how to get there but we do not know why we are going or even where. The Greeks lived in harmony with the world whereas we are alienated from it by our very freedom to define our purposes as we wish. So long as no great harm could be attributed to technology, this situation did not lead to serious doubts beyond the usual literary protests against modernization. But the 20th century, with its world wars, atom bombs, concentration camps, and environmental catastrophes, has made it more and more difficult to ignore the strange aimlessness of modernity. Because we are at such a loss to know where we are going and why, philosophy of technology has emerged in our time as a critique of modernity.
The most important forerunner of this critique is Max Weber (Weber 1949; Schluchter 1979). Weber distinguishes between “substantive” and “formal” rationality in a way that corresponds in one significant respect to Plato’s distinction between techne and knack. Substantive rationality, like techne, begins by positing a good and then selects means to achieve it. Many public institutions are substantively rational in Weber’s sense: universal education is a good that determines appropriate means such as classrooms and teachers. Formal rationality is concerned uniquely with the efficiency of means and contains no intrinsic reference to a good. It is thus value neutral, like the Platonic empeiria. Modernization consists in the triumph of formal rationality over a more or less substantively rational order inherited from the past. The market is the primary instrument of this transformation, substituting the cash nexus for the planned pursuit of values. Bureaucracy and management are other domains in which formal rationality eventually prevails.
The knack in Plato is subservient to the power drive of the individual, Callicles, for example. Because an individual will can establish no overall order in society, Callicles’ triumph can only lead to tyranny and the anarchic reaction that follows. Value neutrality in Weber implies a similarly subjective purpose; however, market and political processes do establish an order of some sort. The question is what is that order? Weber himself was rather pessimistic. He foresaw an iron cage of bureaucracy closing in on Western civilization. The logic of the technical means employed in Western society had prevailed over Enlightenment values of freedom and individuality. An order was emerging that lacked any higher purposes or significance, but that was, at least, an order.
In modern times, the terms of Plato’s distinction between techne and empeiria are broken apart and recombined. Where Plato had associated orientation toward the good with rationally elaborated means, now the pursuit of power and pleasure has its own logic as a system of means institutionalized in markets and bureaucracies, and that logic imposes itself independent of human will and any conception of the good. This is the difference between the individual tyranny Plato feared, and the tyranny of rational means that haunted Weber.
Weber’s pessimism about modernity reaches its paroxysm with the Frankfurt School and Heidegger who substitute technology for markets and bureaucracies as the main instrument of rationalization. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s classic, Dialectic of Enlightenment, had a profound influence on Marcuse’s approach to technology. According to this book the struggle to control outer nature requires the sacrifice and suppression of inner nature. The distorted human beings who emerge from the process of civilization are full of aggression and violence which discharges itself in racism and wars (Adorno and Horkheim 1972). The reduction of reason to a mere instrument underlies this disastrous outcome. The “objective reason” that thought it knew the nature of the universal and could derive rules of conduct from that insight, is replaced by a merely “subjective reason,” a truncated vestige of the old metaphysics good only for control and domination (Horkheimer 1947, 11ff). Callicles triumphs over Socrates in the end. Here Weber’s distinction between formal and substantive rationality is radicalized in a dialect of Enlightenment. Enlightenment turns out to undermine its own basis while exposing nature and human beings to untrammeled power. Adorno and Horkheimer conclude, “The fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant” (Adorno and Horkheimer 1972, 3).

This is just a point of discussion, please don't be mean to me.
Initial caveat: I believe in the UFO phenomena although I do not have or claim to have an explanation for it and will not / cannot say for certain that it involves literal “aliens”. This is a topic I’ve been interested in since childhood. Over the decades following the topic, I’ve been more and more interested in the intersection of the topic with extreme right wing views. You can hear ghosts of these extreme right wing positions that are now mainstream right wing positions all the way back to Coast to Coast AM…and I think we all know how easily the algorithm can lead searches into the topic into sketchier, more fringe topics with just a few clicks.
Watching the recent “march towards disclosure” and the opening up of the topic to the mainstream has been very exciting. I think, like most of us here, the more eyes on the topic the better. The more seriously it is taken by academic science, the closer we get to understanding and properly identifying the phenomena.
Unfortunately, I am noticing a trend that I think is worth pointing out, even if it will likely draw significant criticism for “being political”.
It is my concern that many actors in the current disclosure movement are either wittingly or unwittingly supporting the efforts of a group called the New Apostolic Reformation and by extension a group of Christian Supremacist politicians, lobbyists and grifters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Apostolic_Reformation
https://www.npr.org/2011/10/03/140946482/apostolic-leader-weighs-religions-role-in-politics
https://x.com/timburchett/status/1529918232487940106
https://julieroys.com/the-second-coming-of-doug-wilson/
One of the key features of the New Apostolic Reformation is the ever normalized accusation that “demons are walking amongst us” and some people are literally possessed by demons and are performing the work of the devil. Of course, these accusations are laid at the feet of racial and sexual minorities, progressives generally and all non-Christian evangelical groups.
Although I can’t find a clean link to post here, it was just last week that we heard Tucker Carlson, a likely Russian asset, claim that aliens were actually demons and they were hiding amongst us. Karl Nell also alluded to this conclusion recently. Lu Elizando and many others have recently repeated the notion that there is a “spiritual connection” to the phenomena.
The notion that there are “demons” and “aliens” amongst us is a transparent attempt to dehumanize huge swaths of the population. And it’s being perpetrated by at least one individual who has very publicly presented himself as a person who is actively trying to fracture American society and has been consistently doing so on television for decades.
Tim Burchett, Republican Congressman from TN, is another clear example of an obviously bad actor that has been given a pass amongst this community due to his insistence on disclosure. Burchett ran, as most Republicans do now, on the notion that the government is fundamentally broken, must be deconstructed to root out “deep state actors” etc etc. Most of the positions Burchett rallies behind are consistent with Russian propaganda and outwardly serve foreign interests in destabilizing the US more than they serve the interests of Burchett’s constituency.
Burchett’s attempts to declassify government programs of advanced technological nature does not serve national security interests and serves to strengthen the position of autocratic regimes that would benefit from the public image that our own government is malignant or hiding profound technologies that could otherwise benefit society.
Why does a guy like Burchett care about the existence of life altering technologies to begin with, when he fundamentally disagrees with the notion of public assistance of any kind, referring to any non-capitalist options as “socialism”. If zero point energy is a secret within our government, it seems unlikely that people like Burchett would do anything other than place it into the hands of someone else for profit.
https://x.com/timburchett/status/1621204638836948995?lang=en
https://x.com/RepTimBurchett/status/1621177069953482752
Robert Bigalow is a devout Right Wing conservative who, until recently, was one of the biggest financial supporters of Ron Desantis. He has donated to Trump’s legal defense and to the Trump campaign.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/08/desantis-trump-2024-00126054
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/donor-bigelow-gave-trump-1-mln-legal-fees-donate-20-million-more-2024-01-30/
Bigalow’s interests in the topic seem to be fundamentally financially motivated. The line drawn from Trump, Desantis and the Republican Party to the New Apostolic Reformation is short.
https://www.salon.com/2024/01/02/meet-the-new-apostolic-reformation-cutting-edge-of-the-christian-right/
And just a few days ago, Ross Coulhart suggested suggested Civil War.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuCPbavls0U
My final bit of conjecture is this:
As I’ve followed the recent events in this topic and the increased use of “woo woo” explanations that include “demonic forces”, I’ve come to three conclusions.
The Evangelical Right is attempting to dehumanize a large portion of our population while creating a sort of “secular hell” with the notions of “soul capturing aliens”.
As stated above, the growing notion that there are literal demons walking amongst us is an obvious attempt to dehumanize populations. This has known consequences, and those consequences are usually genocide.
Add to that the idea of a “secular Hell”. The notion of a theological Hell is less and less accepted by a growing secular society, but was previously used for two thousand years as a means of social control. Since there is a general decline in religious belief and the belief in Hell, it makes sense that those who would wish to control or influence social groups would create a “secular” version of Hell. In this context, this secular Hell involves the notion of Aliens who feed off negative energy and literally entrap or imprison the immortal souls of humans. The only thing we are currently missing is a group that promises to have the “solution” or “salvation” to this “secular Hell”…and it seems like that’s what we are teeing up for.
Individuals connected to the SOL foundation and SALT foundations are acting as lobbyists in conjunction with political members to convince venture capitalists to donate to lobbyist efforts with the implicit promise that any technologies brought to light through disclosure will be given to VC’s and legislation will be written under a Republican Majority that will guarantee patent rights to VC’s and connected companies who develop previously classified technologies for market applications.
Unfortunately this conclusion is pure conjecture at this point, however the influence of Peter Thiel on the topic has been previously pointed out. Whether it is Thiel’s funding of crackpots like the Weinstein brothers, or his general public disdain for the populace at large, it seems to me that he is much more involved in the promotion of this topic than people recognize. And since Thiel is one of the people who literally control the flow of information on the web, finding direct connection to Thiel and these other nefarious actors isn’t easy. I encourage better internet sleuths better than I to uncover Thiel’s connections. *See dissemination of Russian propaganda through Facebook.
A large portion of the information and efforts related to disclosure are related to foreign interventions to discredit and weaken the US government and introduce previously disseminated anti government disinformation into the UFO topic.
The parallels between Russian disinformation campaigns, the Republican platform, the Evangelical platform and the disclosure movement are terrifyingly obvious.
https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Pillars-of-Russia%E2%80%99s-Disinformation-and-Propaganda-Ecosystem_08-04-20.pdf
I appreciate everyone accepting this post as conjecture and a place to begin a conversation. Please don’t flame at me, I’m just a normal dude. These connections to Right Wing Fascism movements can’t be understated though. I think allowing these bad actors to proliferate within the topic will ultimately serve to destroy the credibly of UFO research and may ultimately be one of the many threads that lead us to losing our Democracy.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/new-apostolic-reformation-splc-hate-report-christian-nationalism_n_665f6fdae4b08e32183f25a8

Hi there!
I'm looking for writing partners interested in setting up some original guy/established woman in pro wrestling roleplays. It'd be great if you're looking to be silly and have a mix of comedy and romance to go along with the action. I want to work on characters and the general story a bit before starting up anything. I'm looking to do the plot below, though I'm open to others:
Alex is a new talent, the son of a Hall of Famer and one of the newest talents that WWE (or AEW, or another federation) has signed and is using prominently in the modern era. He's catching on quick with fans and even veterans taken notice. It's no surprise that Alex is loving the attention, and he's especially been enjoying a certain someone's.
As Alex embarks on his dream career, he finds himself continually bumping into someone else on the roster. Someone he’s known about for ages and can honestly say he’s been a fan of for awhile. There’s electricity between them each time they speak, neither can deny it, but in the hyper competitive world of Professional Wrestling, is there really time to split focus between taking over the sports entertainment world and love?
This is the main story. Note we can blow this up to include the entire wrestling world.
Regarding how soon our characters actually get together, that can also be discussed. In my head, there’s flirting from the onset, but developing beyond that, we can go as fast or as slow burn as the story dictates! I’m not opposed to break ups and make ups. So, as for your character. I feel pretty strongly about wanting my partner to play an established talent. If you wish to double, or have a character prepared that you want to talk about, I’m completely open to talking! As for the women I have in mind for this story, I have a list of some favorites and bolded the names I have high hopes of seeing!
Talent: Gigi Dolin, Bayley, Stevie Turner, Becky Lynch, Alexa Bliss, Charlotte Flair, Cora Jade, Jacy Jayne, Liv Morgan, Lyra Valkyria, Anna Jay, Mariah May, Mercedes Mone, Saraya, Skye Blue, Toni Storm, Killer Kelly
One way I see this beginning is the story starting in WWE’s developmental brand, NXT. There, NXT Superstars go to the WWE Performance Center, and that would work as a great hub to play around with characters, including introducing ours and starting an initial meeting.
I'm around a lot and looking for partners who want to write a lot. Please don't message me if you're just going to reply with "I'm up for anything" or something like that, I want to play with people who are into it! But as long as you're interested in writing and being creative, I want to plot and set something up!
If you're looking for something with shorter replies and or longer waits between them, still feel free to reach out too! Reach out, because I'm looking to write! You can send me a DM or whatever is most convenient for you. Please let me know if you write in third or first person, while I prefer third, I can do either!

I would like to start this off with a disclaimer: I am on the spectrum and have autism (mild, and I am able to function alone as a adult and have a career and live alone. I do not need help & most people don’t know I have it. But I am bad at reading people and facial expressions.) I also put a TLDR below.
Anyway:
Theres a guy who I see often in a group setting (both of us are 23) He’s a little bit awkward but very kind to me, also always watches me. He has always intensely stared at me. (He does make eye contact pretty much daily, but usually I can’t hold it so I don’t know how long he does).
However, he intensely stares at my body, and for a really long time. Especially when he talks to us as a group. I have caught him staring at my chest for months now, but before jumping to conclusions I would like to add that recently(since I’ve made an effort to stare at his eyes when he speaks) I have noticed he stares at basically EVERY part of my body, not just the sexual parts (so sometimes while he speaks in group settings he stares at my legs, stomach, feet, etc). So could it be because he’s nervous in a group setting and not comfortable looking at everyone else when speaking in a group, so he looks at me without thinking/zones out?
I have gotten more curious on if he likes me so I’ve been purposely staring at his eyes any moment he is talking to us as a group to see what he does. He always has looked over at me, but recently I’m noticing he won’t make eye contact with me in groups, but he’ll stare at me while talking to everyone (at my legs, my stomach, literally anywhere but my face) while talking to the entire group. For pretty much the entire time. EVERY time I see him. (at one point he did often make eye contact with me while talking to us as a group, but I would break it. He still does sometimes, but maybe he noticed I’m not breaking it lately?)
We’re overall friendly, but not super close as its a professional setting and also because we’re both reserved (shy probably isn’t the best word for either of us) and neither of us really are super talkative with anyone.
He always say “hi (insert my name)” to me everytime he sees me (but I never looked much into that because I assumed he thought I was weird and felt bad and did it to make me feel included 💀) and he always looks really happy to see me. I never noticed it before but now that I’m working on my eye contact I noticed he smiles and lights up when he says hello to me and it’s very sweet. But maybe he looks at everyone that way and I never noticed because I wouldn’t look at his face.
——
TLDR VERSION:
I don’t want to misread this, but why would a guy constantly stare at you- every single day- AND in group settings - but stare everywhere but your face?
We’ve known eachother for almost a year but we haven’t progressive past friendly acquaintances so could it be possible that maybe he doesn’t like me romantically, but just feels comfortable around me and doesn’t want to stare at everyone else while speaking to a group?
—
Side note: We don’t have a lot of women in our office. I’m the only one there full time. So the men there don’t get to see women often, so could it just be lust because there are no other women for him to look at? (He is SUPER attractive and fit & fits the conventional standards of attractive masculine features, so he definitely pulls so I don’t think he’s desperate—— But he’s kind of awkward and reserved so maybe he doesn’t? idk)
Also, I do find him attractive. So I wouldn’t feel weirded out if it turns out he does like me.

I have never been able to love myself my whole life. Or even feel positive feelings towards myself. I'm on the spectrum, have clinical depression and generalized anxiety. I have never felt like anyone truly understands me. I've always felt that there is something wrong with me. With every hobby that I have I always feel like I'm never good enough at it and it's extremely rare that I'm able to feel proud of myself or my creations. Recently through therapy I've also learned that I have a dismissive avoidant attachment style, which makes it really hard for me to be vulnerable with people and maintain relationships.
The most frustrating thing is my family, friends, etc all tell me I'm decently attractive, intelligent, like my art and music, I'm a good guy, funny, good career prospects, etc. But no matter how many people tell me positive things about me I simply can't believe it myself. I look in the mirror and think I'm ugly. I look at my art and only notice the mistakes.
I'm doing more to work towards loving myself than ever before in my life. I'm going to therapy, taking medication for anxiety and depression, daily meditation, exercise, and journaling, making new friends and trying to be a better friend to existing ones, creating art and music, and practicing things I learn in therapy like reframing negative thoughts.
I've been doing all these things since the beginning of the year but I still feel like I haven't made any progress towards loving myself. And because I am incapable of feeling good about myself from within, I desperately seek external validation that I'm attractive/cool/interesting/worthy. For me that means I really crave girls attention and being interested in me.
I ended a 3 yr relationship at the beginning of the year and I know I'm not ready for a new relationship. Nor do I want one. I'm happy being single and having the time to work on myself. But I'm also human and I want to be wanted. And I'm seeking attention/validation/sex to fill the void that I can't fill myself.
But then the autism piece comes in and makes it next to impossible to talk to girls and understand the non verbal cues and maintain eye contact, know how to flirt, etc. I don't want to come across like some incel that hates women. I don't think I'm owed sex or for any girl to be interested in me. And like I said I'm truly working on myself every day and trying to become a person who girls would be interested in.
It's just so frustrating when everyone in my life says all these nice things about me but I can't feel them myself. So I have shit self esteem and no confidence. And I can't even feel good about myself through one night stands and sex because there are so many steps involved from meeting a girl at a bar or show, to having a good conversation and feeling the vibe out, to actually bringing someone home. And in the end I know meaningless sex and attention from girls won't even truly make me feel better about myself I'm just so desperate to feel anything, anything good towards myself idk what else to do.

So I started in the Lebron Era and control the Bobcats. I stopped the thing where they turn into the Hornets. Is there anyway I can progress them from being the Bobcats into the Hornets or will they stay like this for the rest of the time?

Chapter 14

Log. 19500.k I have sent a complaint to The Great Government. “Why isn’t anything being done about the virus? People are losing their memories from the Cloud and you are not doing anything about it! You need to take responsibility, after all, you forced us to change bodies.” We await for an answer.
The electric wheelchair invaded Tovu’s nightmares over and over. He could feel the cold, metallic arms holding him so tight it hurt, he saw the wheels turning into blades and mangling what was left of his body, the arms ripping his stomach open and spreading his guts all over the floor.
He woke up scared, screaming, darkness surrounded him and it was difficult to know whether he was still stuck in the nightmare or not. The nurses tried to calm him down, even gave him some drugs, but nothing would make his mind relax enough to even consider the manual wheelchair.
Nothing except Koira’s voice. She didn’t tell anyone else Tovu had been sent to kill her, that would be a death sentence for him — the Underground people wouldn’t kill him, but they would leave him up there on the craters to die.
— Hey, Tovu. — Koira opened the door to find a lump under the blankets. — The nurses said I’m giving ya nightmares.
— I’m sure you’re having fun with it. — he mumbled from under the blankets.
— Oi, that’d make me a horrible person. — She sat on the chair beside his bed. — I don’t like ya, but I don’t hate ya. Not enough to give ya endless nightmares, anyway. Wanna talk about it?
— No.
— Nightmares are just like wishes, both follow the same rule: they don’t happen if ya tell. — She waited for an answer that never came. — I’m sorry. I didn’t think the electric chair would scare ya so much, because it’s kind of like a…
— Immortal. — he interrupted her.
— I was going to say car. Have ya ever met an Immortal?
— I was offered. Before I was left in Sand City.
— Oh.
— I don’t like cars. Never been in one.
Silence filled the room as Tovu mourned his childhood and Koira was looking for a solution. She had been quite busy working on braces for a little kid, but she could make some time, try to adapt a manual wheelchair for the one-handed man. It wouldn’t be easy on him, but at least he could have some autonomy.
Koira got up out of the blue and Tovu flinched under the blankets. She walked out of the room, stopped by the door, walked back in, and touched what she hoped was his shoulder:
— I have an idea, whether or not it’ll work, well, I suppose we’ll find out later. Don’t forget to eat, and think about the prosthetics. Bye!
This time she walked away and didn’t come back.
Log. 19468.g Apparently the news have spread. People are getting more nervous. There are reports of fights and several people have been taken to hospitals. Well, I find it all quite convenient. That way, Robot Physicians can activate the viruses. It may be just another conspiratorial thought, but I think that this could be fake news to create chaos and distrust.
Ganen woke up slowly, she felt like a fly trapped in honey. Her body was all sore, the texture under her hands wasn’t grass or fabric. She opened her eyes and the view paralysed her in the same instant: the texture was bark; she was on top of a tree. The woman blinked a few times, took a deep breath, she was wide awake alright.
When Ganen looked down, the world spun too fast for a second; she had no idea how high she had climbed, but at least the memories were coming back. She felt the rope tied around her waist a few times, enough to secure her up the tree, and thanked her years of exploring for making things like that instinctive. If she had slept there without the rope, she would be dead, there was no doubt about it.
— Séra? — she called. — Where are you?
— Down here! — Séra’s voice was so far away, metres and metres below Ganen. — Oi, how did ya get up there?
— I guess I climbed? — She let out a nervous laugh. — Can you help me down?
— Of course, love. — Séra looked for something she could use; she had the right intentions, but none of the tools.
— Hold the rope! — Ganen started to untie herself and hoped it was long enough. Now that she was moving, it was impossible to ignore how painful her arm was. But focusing on the pain was good, at least it avoided her from freaking out. — Did you get it?
— Yah! Come on, I’m holding ya!
There was no other option, so Ganen breathed in and out, and started going down the tree. Séra let the rope go up slowly, she followed the rhythm of the woman’s steps, and prayed to the universe there weren’t any spiders or other dangerous creepers crawling on the tree.
Time seemed to slow down, she wasn’t as strong as before yet, and her arms were shaking with Ganen’s weight. Séra remembered some stupid idea of getting the clouds out of the sky, she remembered being too afraid to climb. If she was being honest, helping Ganen like that was giving her a sense of deja vu.
— Almost there, love, just a bit more.
Ganen nodded from above and kept going down, one step at a time. She repeated to herself she was used to heights, some of the tree paths were tall enough one could barely see the ground; “But they are safe”, she added to her thoughts.
And when she least expected, Séra wrapped her arms around her, and rested her head on Ganen’s hair.
— Love, you’re down, you’re here, I was so scared! I was trying to keep it cool, but, oi, I was…
— Me too, hun. — Ganen felt herself melt in the arms of the woman she loved so much. — Me too.
Holding onto each other, the women just breathed for a long time until their hearts were calm once again.
-– Okay. — Ganen then said. — I think we should go back to camp and check on our things. AND — she added — we’re not having mushrooms again. My stomach is a mess.
— Oh! Yah, that makes sense. Do ya think we got high?
—Honey, I'm sure we got high. — Ganen sounded a bit angry. — I’m just glad I remember stuff this time.
— Are ya upset with me? — Séra asked, her eyes down to the floor.
— No, hun, no, that’s not what I meant! — Ganen smiled and held her hands. — It’s not like you did it on purpose, and I also looked at the mushrooms and thought they were safe. If any of us are guilty, we both are. Let’s just avoid them next time. — She laughed.
Séra smiled again; she had been feeling insecure and anxious since the incident with Ori, and her need for approval was almost physiological. Holding hands with Ganen helped, it was good to be cherished, not scorned.
What she didn’t notice, however, was that Ganen was a bit nervous. Her eyes darted from one tree to the other, and all looked the same. She didn’t even remember seeing trees that tall when they got in with the car.
Following that train of thought, Ganen got to two options: they had either taken a different direction, or went too deep in those woods. Both of them were bad.
— Séra… — Ganen stopped walking.
— Uhm? — The woman looked at her, a mix of confusion and preoccupation.
— I think we’re lost.
Séra stared at her in silence for a moment. Then she looked around, at the trees, at sky so high above, at the ground with no footprints. In Sand City, people always carried a flare when they left town, and there were watchers within the walls ready to shoot a flare back, to avoid losing lives to the endless sands. She even felt her pockets for a one, but there were none, of course.
— What I was taught is, when lost, get to a high place, and try to find a path. — Ganen interrupted her thoughts. — But I’ve just got back to the ground, I didn’t want to climb again. — She made a crying face; her arm was still sore and she was afraid of checking if all the stitches were still in the right place.
— And I’m sort of afraid of heights.
— Yeah… Let us rest our arms a bit more, then you help me climb like we did to get me down, can it be?
— Sounds like a plan.
— Gosh, we’re soooo not using any kind of drugs again! — Ganen laughed to hide how anxious she was. She could almost hear her own heart racing in her chest, ready to jump out.
— Hey, what if I try to climb this time? — Séra looked at Ganen’s arm; the bandages weren’t red last night.
— No, don’t worry, I can do it.
— But your arm is…
Then Ganen had to look. She was unwilling to remove the bandages, she knew it was hurting, but now she had to check and, as she expected, some of the stitches had come off.
— Welp, that’s why it’s hurting. But, Séra, there’s nothing we can do about it now, so let’s rest, then you help me up again, and I find our way.
Séra was forced to agree, and started looking for a place to sit.
Log. 19457.h Some scientists say Comet Treiny will hit Gaya. They say Gaya's orbit has changed by a few millimetres in the past four centuries and this will influence the comet's route. They want to use weapons in satellites to destroy the comet and avoid any risks. The Great Government’s in the process of evaluating the results; a young woman from the Group showed me the numbers and graphs, but it’s not a subject I understand. Although I understand about the human body and understand more than most people about our inorganic bodies, I don't understand anything about physics, let alone physics in space. But it’s true that both routes look different, I can’t deny that.
Koira had stayed up all night; the city lights were turning on when she crawled to bed. But even if she had laid down before, she wouldn’t have slept: a great idea hit her at the very moment her head touched the pillow, and she was forced to get up and put it in action.
Which was good, because she had spent the last two days working on a manual wheelchair for Tovu, which was kind of a challenge. Now, however, the braces were ready, they had an awesome and adjustable knee joint, designed to limit how far the knees bent until the kid’s legs were strong enough to do it alone.
She was satisfied with her work, it was a piece of art, and, most importantly, it was comfortable. The kid — a little 6-year old boy — had complained the last ones hurt his legs, the plastic parts chafed to his skin as he tried to walk, and they were a hassle to remove, but she had high hopes for the new ones.
— Later. — she whispered to herself. — I’m sure he can wait a few more hours.
Destiny, however, had other plans. Not long before she closed her eyes, someone started knocking on her door and calling her name. She grunted, tried to hide her head under the blankets, but one of her cats jumped on top of her ribs and she let out a small scream.
– I know you’re in there! Open up or I’ll let myself in!
— Just come in! — Koira screamed back as she got up and looked for some trousers or shorts.
Qena walked into Koira’s house and found her half-dressed in her bedroom. The woman’s eyes betrayed her exhaustion and the messed up hair completed the story in details.
— Have you just got out of bed? — Qena raised one brow, surprised and a bit disappointed.
— Oi, shut up. — Koira yawned. — I was finishing that all night long. — She pointed at the braces. — I had a brainwave last night, had to make it.
— Do you think that’s the final version? — The judging eyes softened as she walked to the leg braces. — They look so good, I’d wear them just for fashion.
— Ya have a weird taste. — Koira laughed.
— Maybe that’s why we’re best friends. — Qena gave her the most innocent and treacherous smile; something only she could do. — Come on, let’s test those with Ryth, then I’ll let you sleep as much as you want.
— Yah… that sounds good. Oi! Let’s take Tovu’s wheelchair as well, I’m not sure how he’ll use it, but, eh, guess we’ll find out.
The city lights imitated the outside with perfection, and weren’t too bright; the day was young and hopeful. Koira really wanted Tovu to at least test the chair; she hated having her creations scorned like that. Also, she wouldn’t admit it, given the circumstances, but knowing Tovu had been offered to an Immortal as a child made her feel a bit guilty about the electrical chair.
The streets in the Underground City were the best she had ever seen, the cars were driven around with ease. Geothermal energy was harnessed from deep wells further east, and there were wind energy poles in a valley a few days south; energy was a basic need in the Underground City, and now Koira understood it.
All houses had electrical lights, wall sockets, almost everyone had datapads, radio communication devices — comms, for short —, no one was afraid of technology or photographs, children were learning how to build and create mechanical tools at school, and the hospital was incredible!
The innovations in prosthetics called to her the moment she visited the lab. Or, as she liked to call it, the human garage — no one else shared her naming conventions. She had learnt so much these past few years, her only regret was leaving Séra behind. If the city hadn’t threatened to kill her on sight, she would have travelled back to get her.
None of her letters ever had answers, but she would rather think Séra hated her for leaving, and was so happy with Treiny’s family that she wouldn't even want to read them. Any other thought scared her too much.
Qena woke Koira up, and she mumbled something about burning papers. She looked at Qena, completely lost for a second, then the gears in her brain started working.
— Did we put the legs and the chair in the car? — she asked, almost wishing they hadn’t, just so that she could sleep a bit more.
— Yes. Come on, we gotta test those braces, Ryth’s been waiting for months now.
— I know, I know. — Koira let out a long loud yawn.
— I’m glad you have wonderful ideas, but they could hit you during office hours, no? — Qena said as she unfolded the wheelchair on the floor and put the leg braces on top of it. — Come on, hurry up. — With a smile, she offered one arm to the sleepy-eyed woman, and both walked into the hospital.
Koira grunted and let herself be taken around by Qena. The place was big and she felt like she walked through a thousand corridors before getting to Ryth’s room. The small boy, with curly dark hair and withered legs, was having breakfast on his bed, and opened a huge smile as he saw them.
— Auntie Koira! Are those for me?
— I hope so. — She laughed; seeing a child this happy could heal anything. She still needed to sleep, though. — Finish your breakfast and we can try them.
Ryth ate as fast as he could, even after they told him to eat more slowly, and soon, he was waving his legs on the bed while Qena tried to hold him still so Koira could attach the braces. After what seemed like eternity to her tired and sore fingers, the braces were on, and the boy was on the floor.
— Now, walk around a bit, eh? — Koira said.
At first, she walked with him and the doctor, so that they could adjust the knee joints, but after a few minutes, Ryth could move from one side to the other with ease.
— That’s good progress, Ryth. — his doctor cheered. — And it looks so cool!
— It looks super duper awesome! — The boy waved his arms.
— Let’s test them for a while, then give auntie Koira our feedback, okay?
— Okay. — Ryth sulked a bit; he had been through that enough in the past months to know what was next: — Therapy?
— Physiotherapy, yes.
— Fine. — The boy crossed his arms, trying to imitate an adult’s movement, and pouted. He didn’t like it. He always got tired at the end of it. And sore.
— Call me if ya need anything, yah? — Koira asked; her curiosity was the only thing keeping her awake.
— I’ll be sure of it. Now you should go home and get some sleep. — The doctor laughed. — Doctor’s orders.
— And they shall be followed. Qena, my dear, would ya be so lovely as to drive me home?
— Yes, I would. Or else you’d sleep right here, right now. Just show me how to use the chair, so I can teach the Sand guy.
Koira nodded; she could already feel the soft cotton pillow case against her face.
Log. 19337.s There are great programmers in the Group. Great hackers too. They said they’ll help me search for the origin of the virus. I hadn’t thought about discovering its origin, only about fighting it. But if we know where it comes from, we can fight against the source directly and prevent it from becoming a global problem! That is, if it’s not already a global problem...
While they were resting, Ganen remade the bandages on her arm and prepared herself to climb the tree. She waited for Séra to get up, then told her to hold the rope so that she could have at least some sort of safety as she was climbing.
Throwing the rope over a tall branch took quite a while, Séra needed to gather her strength to throw it that high, but once it was tied safely around her thighs, Ganen walked to the tree and looked up; it would take a while.
— Séra, hun, do you have anything with you? Anything I could, uhm, lemme think, tie on the rope and throw down, so we can mark the right direction?
— I… will check. — She started putting her hands in her pockets and looking for something. — That’s a lot of thinking. Have I told ya you’re quite smart?
— Ah, yeah, well, not my first time. — She smiled, a bit embarrassed.
— I don’t think I have anything… — Séra looked down. — Will a shoe do?
— It’ll do nicely. — Ganen thanked her.
She tied the shoe-lace around the belt loop and prepared to go up. Ganen looked at her arm one last time, and tried not to think of how painful it was. However, the tiniest pull made her wince. And Séra couldn’t bare to watch it.
As much as she was afraid of being that far from the ground, she was worried about her lover. Just like Ganen, Séra wasn’t at full strength, but she was quite sure it would be easier for her to climb instead of the woman who had a knife through her arm less than two weeks ago. She stopped Ganen before she could try a second time.
— I’ll do it. — Séra put a hand on her shoulder. — Just… give me directions, yah?
— Are you sure? I… I… My arm’s still hurt, but I’ll just go a bit slowly. — “I can’t hold you if you fall”, she failed to say.
— I’ll go slowly too. I hope I can hear ya from up there. — She started getting her shoe back from Ganen’s waist. — Can I take one of yours?
— No, no, no, stop that! You said you were afraid, you don’t have to do it!
— Love. — Séra held her hands. — Ya saved my life again and again. Lemme repay ya at least a bit.
— You know you don’t have to, that’s not how things work, right? — She tried to deny still.
— Come on, just lemme do it. — Séra got serious. — Your arm is so hurt, if ya climb this again, it’ll hurt even more. I won’t fall.
Ganen took a deep breath, then let it out in a resigned huff. There was no winning in that, and she had to admit Séra was right. Climbing that tree would only make her condition worse, it could even harm her arm even further.
— Fine. — She gave Séra one of her shoes, took off the ropes around her legs, and helped the woman wear them.
— I’m so glad we caught rope.
— Me too. I think it was because we wanted to see if it was possible to climb a cloud. — Ganen couldn’t help but laugh.
— Oi, what a stupid idea! — Séra adjusted some knots to make it a bit more comfortable. — So, what do I do now?
— Pay attention on where you put your hands, try not to touch living things. If you get scared, try your best not to panic, and move away slowly. Always check if a branch if strong enough to support you, I’ll try to tell you the best ones.
— Okay… Hands, don’t panic, test branch.
— And once you’re up there and can see where we need to go, you throw me the shoe, and we’ll try to point it to the right way.
— Hands, don’t panic, test branch, shoe. Okay, got it, let’s go before I chicken out.
Séra slapped her face with both hands and took a deep breath. The first branches weren’t low enough, so she had to hold onto the tree and try to find places she could put her feet on. Ganen pulled her up one bit at a time; while the mechanic was able to pull her with her arms, the scholar had to use her whole body and walk away to find enough strength and pull the rope.
Reaching the first branch was a success, a moment to be celebrated before acknowledging there were plenty more to climb. It was a difficult task and Séra did her best to listen to Ganen without looking down. She was certain she would freeze the moment the ground got further away.
Eyes focused on the crown, Séra grabbed a branch to her right — the one Ganen told her to — and felt the slight push of the rope around her. With a deep breath, the woman pushed herself up and kept going. Once she got a rhythm, things started to become a bit easier; testing the branches wasn’t so scary, and as she went higher, the tree offered much more support.
Until her hand touched something strange. It wasn’t bark, it could be some weird tree sap, maybe even some gross dangerous goo animal thing. Ganen asked something when Séra stopped, but they were too far to understand it well. The woman took a deep breath, repeated to herself she couldn’t panic, then she pulled her shaky hand back, millimetre by millimetre.
There was something between her fingers, some kind of goo, it was sticky and didn’t smell good. She tried not to think much about it, hoped it wasn’t venomous. She just cleaned her hand on her pants and started looking for another branch.
It felt like hours, days had gone by, and even though she wasn’t as slow as she thought, Séra felt stuck in the same place. The bark too close to her eyes was always the same, only the lichens promised her she was moving.
Smaller branches full of green leaves crowded her vision and made it difficult to find good support, “But maybe that means I’m getting closer”, Séra thought. And she was right. A few more steps took her high enough to push her head against the leaves and find the timid sky.
She basked in the sunlight for a few minutes, her arms and legs were shaking from the effort and fear, and the gentle breeze kissed her sweaty skin as a long lost lover.
— Okay, time to look for a way out.
At first, all she saw was a sea of green. Luxurious, glossy, beautiful green. Growing up in the desert, green was rare. It could be found underground and in the agave leaves, but green like the one she was seeing was new. For a moment, she even forgot what she was supposed to do, and just appreciated the view.
Mountains painted the east until the horizon, and if she squeezed her eyes tight enough, she could imagine the desert far north. The river which fed Bridge City shimmered northeast, but something else also caught her eyes: a very constant sparkle to the west.
Séra squeezed her eyes, put her hands on her forehead, to get some shade, and there it was. The car.
— I FOUND IT! — she screamed at the top of her lungs. — GANEN, I FOUND IT!!
There was no intelligible answer, which was expected, so, very careful as to not let it fall, Séra untied Ganen’s shoe from her trousers. Then she paused. She was supposed to tie it on the rope and throw it down, but the only rope they had was the one keeping her safe.
— Oh no, what now? I could hold the tree very tight, but… Uhm… Oh! I can tie the rope around myself, like Ganen did, it’s long enough.
Some weeks ago, before they got to Bridge City, they talked about cutting the rope in 5-metre pieces, so it would be easier to use. She was glad they hadn’t done it. She started pulling the rope and there was some resistance at first — Ganen was holding it —, but after a few more pulls, it came up easily.
Séra took her time to tie herself to the tree, and tried not to think how horrible her death would be if she fell, then she tied the shoe to the other end and threw it down. She had to break a branch to dislodge the shoe the times it got stuck, but in the end, she was happy to see the rope going down with no problems.
On the ground, Ganen heard a thud and her heart stopped. She looked around, scared and nervous, and almost fainted in relief when she saw the shoe. She looked up and tried to find Séra up there, which took quite some time, but once the woman pointed the right direction, Ganen untied the shoe and left it indicating the way.
Once again the rope went up, Séra untied herself, and let the rope down over a branch, as it was before; she had some trouble getting it below the see of baby branches, and almost fell in the process. As much as she was trying not to worry Ganen, she couldn’t help but scream when twig under her feet broke.
— I’M FINE! — She screamed back, once she found support again. — At least I’m a bit lower now…
Finding a silver lining in that situation wasn’t easy.
Once Ganen gave it some pulls to let her know she had the rope in hands, Séra started going down. It was a bit easier then going up, gravity helped a lot. She tried using the same branches as before, even though it was almost impossible to remember which ones they were.
Ganen was holding the rope with one arm and her whole body; her left was painful now, it hadn’t got better, but she was doing her best to help Séra and hold her up — even though she was the cause of a few scares in the process.
Once both of them were back on the ground, Séra hugged her lover tight; it was good to be back. The whole thing was a mix of emotions, the view from so high up was stunning, but getting up there was terrifying.
— How about you teach me how to climb and I teach you how to drive? — she whispered, breathless and tired.
— Once my arm is healed, yeah, we can climb together. — Ganen nodded a few times. — Let’s go before we get lost again, come on, hun.
Séra kept her lover between her arms a bit longer, then took a step back; the car wasn’t as close as they had thought.
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15 minutes of Armenia coverage by Transcaucasian Telegraph. Follow for regular updates.

details form yesterday's gas station explosion on Yerevan-Sevan highway

Here is what leaked and caused the blast: 111 tons of gas, 8 tons of diesel, and 12 tons of benzin.
No deaths. There was fake news about 18 deaths.
7 injured, 5 of whom are gas station employees. 6 are middle-aged men and 1 is a woman.
2 of the injured are in critical condition fighting for their lives, with burns covering 60% of the body, including lung tissue damage.
4 of the injured have 20%-25% burns. They are walking.
1 was treated and discharged.
The fire was extinguished in all reservoirs but the efforts continued the following day to cool the area with additional water. Gasprom-Armenia temporarily shut down the gas for residents of Abovyan. Part of the highway had to be shut down.
Authorities launched a felony investigation for neglect that led to serious bodily injuries.

... about the gas station (by Hetq)

The gas station "Gas Oil Ltd" opened in 2021 and has since been fined several times for violations and owed taxes. In 2023 it was fined two for not printing sales receipts.
In February the inspectors discovered that the station was under-filling the drivers' tanks. They were fined and forced to put a public sign reading "մենք տուգանվել ենք թերլիցքավորման համար:"
In February 2024 its activities were suspended for not passing the fire inspection; violations were detected. Inspectors came and sealed off the equipment to prevent it from being used. The owner launched a legal dispute to challenge the findings.
In May, the IRS asked the court to declare the company bankrupt. (the company disputes the reports that it is going bankrupt)
Authorities restricted its operations just hours before the explosion.

... who is the owner?

Rafael Ayvazyan, possibly a former owner, is a politician from Armenia's richest man Gagik Tsarukyan's BHK party and balloted in 2018. The Facebook page says he is Tsarukyan's assistant.
Shushanik Hayrapetyan is possibly the current owner. Her husband claims the explosion was an intentional sabotage. He supposedly has a name of a suspect but won't release it while the investigation is underway; he is cooperating with authorities. He also claims the gas station was operating legally.
UPDATE: There are separate gas and benzin stations. The former had the right to operate, while the latter was suspended. That's probably where the ownership and suspension confusion comes from.
photo, source, source, source, source, source, source, source, source, source, source, source,

Yerevan municipality demolished 25 illegal gas stations located dangerously close to apartment condos last year: Mayor Tigran Avinyan

He promised to continue the process this year.
source,

U.S. wants Armenia and Azerbaijan to sign a peace agreement ASAP

Other parts from the State Department's comment to an Azerbaijani outlet:
STATE DEPARTMENT: We are ready to support any process that will bring peace and stability to the people of the South Caucasus. Secretary Blinken and other officials maintain regular contact with high-ranking officials from Armenia and Azerbaijan. We are encouraged by the progress between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and we support the two countries to conclude a peace agreement as soon as possible for the benefit of the region. We welcome the continued progress in border delimitation based on the Alma-Ata Declaration. This is an important step towards concluding a stable and dignified peace agreement. //
source,

Yerevan: Armenia is willing to sign a peace deal with Azerbaijan within the next month

In response to Baku's continuous false claims that Armenia has territorial claims against Azerbaijan and that Armenia's constitution is an obstruction to peace:
YEREVAN: Armenia does not have territorial claims on any of its neighbors, including Azerbaijan. The Constitution of Armenia and the amendments to it are an internal affair of Armenia, and we consider the attempts by official Baku to intervene in the internal discussions in Armenia as a gross intervention into the domestic affairs of the country.
We believe that such rhetoric torpedoes the peace process and casts doubts on the sincerity of the leadership of Azerbaijan to achieve peace. The negotiated peace agreement clearly states that the Parties recognize each other’s territorial integrity and do not have territorial claims against each other. There is also an agreed provision in the draft peace agreement that neither party may invoke its domestic legislation for not implementing its obligations under the peace agreement.
Accordingly, we believe that the clearest and most direct way to address all the concerns of the Parties is to sign the agreement, which will open the door to lasting peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan is ripe enough for signing, and the Armenian side expresses its willingness to work constructively and intensively to complete and sign it within the next month. //
source,

Ilham Aliyev again cries about feeling bullied by Western powers

Aliyev described the AZ-EU relations as overall positive but he is unhappy over the harsh treatment of 3 European countries after his 2023 ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Without naming the countries, he said some EU countries have formed an "anti-Azerbaijan group" and "declared cold war" against Azerbaijan.
Aliyev praised the Orban regime for using Hungary to obstruct some of EU's pro-Armenian efforts.
source,

Parliament President Alen Simonyan about the visit of the Armenian Ambassador and a Yerevan district leader to Bucha, Ukraine, the site of the massacres committed by the Russian army

The visit was not part of an official delegation sent by the Armenian parliament, but they did receive authorization from the foreign ministry. Simonyan has just returned from a foreign trip, so he was either unaware that a low-ranking Armenian delegation visited Bucha, or the reporter's question confused him:
REPORTER: Today [Russia's foreign ministry spokesperson] Maria Zakharova urged the Armenian parliamentarians to present the list of supposedly killed civilians in Bucha that the parliamentarians received from Ukraine. Has the parliament received a list about Bucha?
SIMONYAN: I won't comment on her and the lies. No delegation was sent to Bucha, but I can send the list of hundreds of people killed in Nagorno-Karabakh to Mrs. Zakharova. If they are interested, I can also send the list of 100,000 refugees who fled the area of the responsibility of their peacekeepers. I have no further comments on lies and absurdities which, have become a routine occurrence.
REPORTER: Why is Zakharova making such assumptions? Are there suspicions?
SIMONYAN: She is just lying.
REPORTER: Why?
SIMONYAN: I don't know. You know that nobody went there, right? Neither opposition parties, nor...
REPORTER: It was a visit by the head of Yerevan's Nor Nork District and our Ambassador.
SIMONYAN: Then I will ask the Nor Nork district administration to respond to Russia's foreign ministry.
REPORTER: The Ambassador was also there.
SIMONYAN: Maybe my neighbor's husband was also there. No parliamentarians visited there. There is a strict protocol the MPs must follow before a trip. It's all a lie.

... Alen Simonyan about the statement by Russia's Deputy FM Galuzin

REPORTER: Russian Deputy FM Galuzin urged Armenia not to make reckless moves and not share national databases or classified information with Western states. Otherwise, he says it will become impossible for Armenia to have a common defense zone with Russia and CSTO. What information is Galuzin referring to? Why are they concerned?
SIMONYAN: First of all, please stop threatening us. Enough with the threats. Second, enough talking about CSTO. Before they talk about CSTO they should first come here and show where CSTO's borders go through and what obligations Russia has as part of CSTO and the AM-RU bilateral agreements. Enough of making such statements about Armenia's sovereign territories. Third, Armenia is not negotiating with any country to bring their military base or join their military alliance [NATO].
REPORTER: Moscow is concerned you might share certain information with the West.
SIMONYAN: What information?
REPORTER: National databases.
SIMONYAN: Absurd. Enough talking to us with that rhetoric. Enough threatening us directly and indirectly with their propagandists and mankurts with Armenian last names [Kremlin's ethnic Armenian propagandists], and all those people who get paid for it. It doesn't work on our population; it has the opposite effect. We don't use [what Kremlin propagandists say] as a guide.
REPORTER: So you won't respond to Galuzin?
SIMONYAN: I don't think I should respond to the Mister. If our foreign ministry finds it necessary to respond, then...

... Alen Simonyan about AM-AZ peace efforts

REPORTER: Aliyev wants Armenia to join the effort to dissolve the OSCE Minsk Group. Should it be dissolved today?
SIMONYAN: Discussions about dissolving the Minsk Group can happen after signing a peace agreement, and Armenia is taking steps to accomplish this. Aliyev is attempting to stonewall the peace process by making constitutional demands. The constitution is Armenia's internal affair and it will be reformed and that process began in 2020 but it's an internal topic of Armenia. Azerbaijan is using our opposition parties' opposition to constitutional reforms against us. We sent the 9th revision of the draft peace agreement to Baku, Azerbaijan's FM described it as very positive, but Azerbaijan uses our opposition to harm the process and Armenia's positions. Azerbaijan and Armenia's opposition are being guided from the same place [Moscow].
REPORTER (Azatutyun): Are you saying that as a political statement or do you have specific facts [about the two being guided by Moscow]?
SIMONYAN: It is a political statement and I'm so glad that out of all outlets, it's Azatutyun asking this because [they recently asked an NSS official if protest co-leader Bagrat Galstanyan is suspected of being a Russian spy and after receiving a response that there is no such open case against Galstanyan, opposition-aligned outlets presented that as Galstanyan's movement not serving the interests of Russia, to "absolve" him]. So you guessed it, this was a political statement by me.
REPORTER: Armenia's foreign ministry said it's possible to sign a peace agreement within a month. What steps were taken to bring us so close?
SIMONYAN: Most of the problematic paragraphs have been addressed. As I said late last year, we could sign it at any time in the presence of political will, but the Azerbaijani president continues to derail the process by making statements. Lately, he spoke about Khojalu. It would be better for him to start by discussing the massacres of Armenians in Baku and Sumgayit. A country that wants to host COP29 and be viewed as an internationally respected player should not torpedo a peace process and should release the Armenian POWs. We have a guy, who is a civilian, abducted by Azerbaijan on the AZ-AM border and jailed in Azerbaijan illegally. I have great concerns about him and I've expressed it to every international structure and to every international partner I've met. We have reasons to believe that this man's health and life are at risk. [oh damn I thought Alen didn't care about POWs].
REPORTER: What are the disagreements around the peace agreement?
SIMONYAN: We will find out soon. We sent them our response and we are waiting for their response.
REPORTER: Is there an agreement to hire an international company [as suggested by the Armenian government several months ago, instead of bringing Russian forces] to handle the customs procedures on the southern route? Pashinyan mentioned that earlier.
SIMONYAN: I don't recall that being written in the peace agreement. Our stance is that Armenia is ready to open all roads, all communications, which would also benefit Azerbaijan.
REPORTER: Pashinyan said in 2020 that it's possible to hire a specialized third party to manage it.
SIMONYAN: A lot has changed since 2020 and today we have a special unit in NSS ready to handle that process but we could again consider the involvement of a 3rd party company specialized in customs but in any case that can't be a country [e.g. Russia] that's regional. As far as I understand, there are no such discussions right now.

... Alen Simonyan about Bagrat Galstanyan and the ex-regime protests

REPORTER: Are you not concerned about their large numbers?
SIMONYAN: They won over 240,000 votes in 2021 so it's expected that they could gather 30,000 supporters. Galstanyan led his followers to clash with the police in front of the foreign ministry building while he watched. In comparison, in 2018 it was the protest leaders climbing barbwires. They still have the old mentality. They think they can hide and bribe others to show up. They think a revolution is a LEGO game. That's not how it works. It's difficult to repeat what happened in 2018 today because today people have the ability to vote. Back in 2018 people were upset because their right to make a change through elections was taken away. Today people have the ability to exercise their rights, and there are municipalities where we lost the elections. The protest leader understands that his efforts are failing so he is sacrificing his followers. I apologize to our residents for this inconvenience. I urge Bagrat Galstanyan to discuss with Serj Sargsyan and Robert Kocharyan and find a way to minimize the impact on people's peace. International soccer matches are being held in Armenia, there are wine and other festivals [Galstanyan visited it today and received a warm welcome from some vendors], we have tourists, there are problems in hotels because of that and our businesses and state budget are taking a hit just because Galstanyan decided to circle around Yerevan with a thousand people.
video, source, source,

Armenia's parliamentary Defense Committee approves the ratification of Armenia-Greece defense agreement

The agreement was signed in December 2023 by MOD Papikyan and MOD Dendias.

... what's in it?

• Research of innovative technology for defense
• technical support in arms production
• creation of joint weapon manufacturers
• joint personnel training
• repair each other’s military equipment
source,

Armenia and Germany sign documents on military-technical cooperation [what the fuck?]

Armenia and Germany have reached agreements on military-technical and military-technological cooperation.
The documents were signed after discussions between Deputy MOD Brutyan and his German colleague Benedikt Zimmer, as well as other officials and representatives of German military-industrial companies.
The Armenian Defense Ministry delegation is in the German capital to participate in the ILA Berlin 2024 exhibition.
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Russia is attempting to convince countries to authorize its "Mir" payment cards (similar to Visa and Mastercard)

Armenian banks recently banned Mir citing the risks of Western sanctions. Moscow at the time responded with criticism, saying it would harm tourism in Armenia.
Now Russia is attempting to bring Mir back to Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, both of whom are "under heavy pressure from the West", said Russian Deputy FM Pankin.
Russian Deputy FM Galuzin praised Azerbaijan for making Mir cards gradually more accessible in the country. "Russia is grateful to Azerbaijan for this approach, which will contribute to the development of ties in the field of tourism."
source, source,

so it begins (dramatic background music with overwhelming tunes of toot)

The U.S. has sanctioned dozens of Georgian officials over the passage of the Kremlin-style law against civil society organizations.
It's a visa ban on members of the ruling Georgian Dream party, MPs, law enforcement officials, private citizens, and their immediate family members.
The U.S. is slightly more deeply concerned than ever before and believes the new law risks derailing Georgia’s European future and runs counter to the Georgian constitution and "the wishes of its people."
Georgia's ranking ruling party member mocked the sanctions, saying "no one is afraid" and that it makes them "smile". He earlier predicted there wouldn't be any sanctions.
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EU rejects membership talks with Georgia (for now)

European Commission recommends start of accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova this month to give a positive signal to both countries on their EU aspirations. Georgia did not get the green light.
Ukraine now meets the previously outstanding criteria including anti-corruption measures, restrictions on political lobbying, rules on asset declarations for public officials and protection of languages used by national minorities.
Orban is expected to block Ukraine.
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deputy foreign minister of the United States James O'Brien will visit Armenia on Monday

JIM: Traveling to Yerevan to lead the U.S.-Armenia Strategic Dialogue. I will meet with senior government officials, the business community, and civil society to discuss significant progress on bilateral relations and our support for Armenia.
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export stats in Q1 2024

Exports grew 2.7 times (mostly jewelry to UAE), and imports grew 76%. Exports of goods manufactured in Armenia declined by 14% YoY in the period.
source,

Armenia might build a copper smelter using Indian technologies

Economy Minister Papoyan hosted India's Ambassador Sinha. Besides the smelter, they also discussed cooperation in agriculture, jewelry manufacturing, industry, chemical industry, Crossroads of Peace, etc.
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dozens of people showed up on Friday to ride a bicycle with PM Pashinyan on the public streets of Yerevan after his Facebook invitation: VIDEO

Of course they had to start the process by spreading germs with individual handshakes that lasted inefficiently long (bureaucracy). The coffee was on the house (bribe).
The ride started early in the morning with light traffic. The cyclists occupied around half a block (smaller than Bagrat's crowd).
One ֆիքստուլ guy was seen doing a wheelie (a gang).
The 12-kilometer ride ended with selfies and participants sharing their experiences. Pashinyan said riding in a group feels entirely different. (as I said, a gang)
The PM wants to make this a regular event.
video,

soccer matches

Slovenia 2:1 Armenia
Armenia 2:1 Kazakhstan
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European Commission allocates €7 million to help develop education in Armenia

The agreement, which entered into force on September 12, 2023, is aimed at increasing the competitiveness of Armenia's educational system and implementing educational reforms envisaged in the government's 2021-2026 programme.

... how?

aims to create updated and equipped science, technology, engineering and math laboratories in all 330 schools in [several provinces] as well as to retrain teachers in modern methodology
The construction of 13 educational complexes is also planned in Syunik

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EU allocated €3.5 million for ongoing justice reforms in Armenia

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Armenia is elected to the UN Economic and Social Council for 2025-2027

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Armenia's parliamentary Security Committee greenlights a bill to require large businesses to install public entrance-facing CCTV cameras "to combat crime"

The camera must be installed in front of the premises of a retail business that's >100 sqm, gas stations and catering outlets that are >50 sqm.

applies to banks, credit organizations, pawnshops, pharmacies, currency exchange offices with separate entrance, post offices, educational institutions, underground parking lots,

The Ministry says they spoke with representatives of several businesses and that they supposedly agreed that the equipment expense is worth it if it's going to improve safety.
The bill was drafted by the Interior Ministry and approved by the PM's cabinet. It received a negative assessment by the Justice Ministry's Personal Data Protection Agency but the ministry decided to greenlight it after discussions and citing the fact that cameras face a public space.
The system will allow the police to track the movement of a suspect, after a crime is committed, by tapping into several cameras. The system will record when the police agent accesses it and the agent's badge number, for accountability.
It aims to make it easier for police to solve crimes committed in public places, and to discourage crime, said the Deputy Minister, adding that its privacy aspect is in line with "European court precedent".
source, source, source,

Parliamentary Defense Committee greenlighted the creation of a Police Guard to replace the militarized Police Forces

It's the continuation of police reforms in Armenia that led to the creation of Patrol Police, Water Patrol Police, and Interior Ministry.
The reform offers clearer standards for the use of force. Police officers will know the boundaries of ‘permissible actions’. It was covered in more detail in May 2 news digest.

the government believes, a new, purely police service will be created in Armenia, capable of solving strategic tasks, meeting all modern international criteria, equipped with appropriate weapons, and provided with adequate professional staff

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how many members of Bagrat Galstanyan's movement have been detained since May for roadblocks and clashes with police?

Authorities report 629 detentions, 76 of whom had a record of committing crimes in the past, while 28 were recidivists.
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government to fight money laundering & cybercrimea with new tools

MINISTRY: People mistakenly believe that every crime committed through the internet is a cybercrime. The legal reforms will clarify the list of cybercrimes, which is a requirement under the Budapest Convention.
It is recommended to obtain the IP address within the framework of judicial control. Today it is given on the basis of the decision of the investigator, with the approval of the prosecutor.
Authorities will need separate court approval to inspect digital devices confiscated during an apartment raid if the original court order did not assume there would be digital devices with evidence.
We will clarify the legal definition of crypto asset. Last year we had 249 crimes involving crypto assets, worth at least $5 million.
Actions related to the management of the crypto-asset must be performed within the framework of cashless operations, and the exchange of the crypto-asset with other property won't be possible, but you can still exchange crypto with another currency. //
There is going to be another crypto regulation law introduced by the Central Bank soon. This one is an appetizer.
more, full report and debates,

French architectural firm Wilmotte presents its vision for the completed Cascade

Yerevan Mayor Avinyan recently visited Paris where he met with French architects to draw a plan to finally complete the decades-long abandoned upper section of Cascade.
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do NOT eat fruits from trees on Yerevan sidewalks, warn experts

It's likely contaminated with toxic emissions and dust, according to scientists. Mulberry is the worst; they discovered mercury in Yerevan tut. Lead was also found.
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Armenia has made significant strides in improving food safety: FAO and WHO

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization marked the World Food Safety Day.

Armenia has made significant strides in improving food safety through adherence to globally recommended standards.
FAO and WHO teams in Armenia have jointly promoted the multisectoral One Health approach and supported Armenia’s commitments to developing and updating national food safety emergency response plans.

... what exactly was done?

Commitment of the Government of Armenia reflected in strengthening national scientific, analytical, and technical capacities in risk analysis, early warning systems for food safety, and response to food safety emergencies which was supported by FAO.
Whereas, WHO played a critical role in supporting the Government of Armenia in implementation of the Joint External Evaluation (JEE) – a multisectoral assessment of country capacities to prevent, detect and rapidly respond to public health risks

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Yerevan Wine Days festival kicks off in the capital

This year's hero is pot, որպես պատմության վկա և պատմություն կրող.
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(I had to reupload because it wasn't formatted properly, apologies!)
“DOG lives in Manhattan and he’s tired of being alone. One day he decides to build himself a robot, a companion. Their friendship blossoms, until they become inseparable, to the rhythm of 80’s NYC.” (Official synopsis of Robot Dreams from the Arcadia website.)
[SPOILER WARNING FOR THOSE WHO HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE YET]
So it’s a given that Robot Dreams takes place in the 80s. But when exactly in the 80s isn’t entirely confirmed by the movie, so I decided to analyze the movie in its entirety to try to narrow this down the best I can. There are several key points and background elements that help imply that this is the early 80s, and I’ll bring everything up here. (Oh boy, I’m writing this like a high school essay). Any evidence that I use will be hyperlinked where it is mentioned.
In the scene where Dog goes to the NYC City Hall, all of his personal details are on the form for Ocean Beach access. From this we can tell that he was born on December 21st, 1963 (in the movie it is written in DD/MM/YYYY format because the film is Spanish). The age of majority (aka, the age when you are legally allowed to move out and live on your own) was lowered to 18 in the 1970s, so as of the beginning of Robot Dreams, Dog must be 18 years old at minimum. This would place the earliest time of the movie in 1982. So at the moment the range is 1982 to 1989 (so we can encapsulate as much of the 80s as we can).
We can narrow down the years more by looking at the baseball game that Rascal and Robot go to in the latter half of the movie. We know from the logos of the teams that it’s the New York Mets vs the New York Yankees. The bobblehead that we see in Rascal’s car is of a Mets player named Darryl. This is based on a real baseball player for the Mets named Darryl Strawberry, who was a rookie for the Mets in 1983. This would place that game at earliest in 1983. However, the pitcher for the Yankees assists in confirming this game to take place in 1983. He is drawn as a goose with notably prominent front teeth, and his team number is 54. In 1983, #54 on the Yankees team was Rich Gossage, with a prominent gap in his front two teeth, and was nicknamed “Goose Gossage”. This confirms to me that this is who this character is supposed to be, despite not being directly named in the movie, and 1983 is also the last year he was on the Yankees, save for one year in 1989 where both he and Darryl were still on their respective teams. This outlier can be disproven however, with an advertisement that is present during the game, which is copied from a 1983 advertisement of the same product (Maxell UD90 cassettes). This helps support that the movie begins in the latter half of 1982, and ends in 1983! However, this does imply that there is a fairly major timeskip that occurs near the end of the movie.
After the montage where Robot and Rascal become friends, there are only two scenes left in the movie: Dog and Tin going to the beach (which is unplaceable on a timeline other than summertime in some year), and the final scene of the movie, where there is a placeable year! When Dog and Tin are walking down the sidewalk, they stop to look into the window of El Quijote, which is a real restaurant in NYC. In the window you can see a certificate that supposedly says “Diamond Award” (award is cut-off), “approved 1984” (here is a closer image that helps show the pointiness of a four). This means that the final scene at earliest takes place in 1984, which means it’s been at least a whole year that Robot and Rascal have been living together. While there’s nothing that says that it couldn’t be 1985 or beyond, this is the only explicit year we have placed in the movie, so it’s more likely hinting that the final scene at the very least is in 1984. I will continue based on this assumption being accurate, but it could be disputed.
With the years locked in for the movie taking place from 1982 to 1984, we can now try to narrow it down even further! For starters, we can figure out that the day at the beach where Dog and Robot went to Playland was in September, as that’s the last month where Playland is open for the season. The beach access closes in the first week of September, so assuming that’s correct (and that the alternate synopsis of Robot Dreams saying that it was a “Labour Day outing” is from an official source), that would place the day that they went to the beach on September 6th, 1982 (Labor Day). I do not know what Playland’s park calendar was for 1982 specifically, though it’s more likely than not that they had similar dates for being open for the season as they do now. As a side note, skipping forward to December, it’s entirely likely that the day Dog went sledding (and got bullied) was his birthday (December 21st), which makes me extremely sad. Anyways…
We can skip further ahead now to the Robot and Rascal montage, which we know takes place after June 1st, when Dog goes to the beach to go find Robot (in vain). From the fireworks show that takes place, and the lack of snow, it is most likely to be a celebration for July 4th (as opposed to New Years for example). And because the last two scenes are somewhat difficult to place for exact dates, that’s about the closest I can narrow it down!
TL;DR, from the evidence I have gathered, the movie begins (likely) a few days before September 6th, 1982, which is when Dog and Robot go to the beach. By the time Robot and Rascal are together and watching the fireworks, it has progressed to July 4th, 1983. The final scene of the movie likely takes place after a timeskip of about a year in 1984, which would also help explain why Robot has so much more history with Rascal by the end of the movie compared to Dog. I hope this was interesting! Let me know if you have any evidence supporting (or disproving) my brain’s latest hyperfixation!

I got into an Accelerated nursing program starting this fall, however I’m pregnant and due 7 weeks after the program starts. I guess I’m confused because the city schools in is 4 hrs away (by flight) from my where I live with family.
I applied and did my prereqs over the past year, put in the work and was excited and hopeful for this year. Then I got pregnant unexpectedly after battling infertility for 3 years, so this child is very much wanted. I’ve been psyching myself up that I can do it, other women have done it and I’ll just have the baby and my family will take her back home after a few months but as the pregnancy progresses I’m battling a strange guilt about that decision (maybe mom guilt 🤷‍♀️). On the other hand I’m worried about being held back a year if I have to apply again for next fall and I’m scared the year will go by slowly. What if I don’t get in ? What if the stats of applicants is higher next year? I’m just scared, and I know some people will say it’s not old but I just turned 30 and was looking forward to getting my RN before I turned 32.

Context: Moved from Canada to USA in sophomore year, no weighted classes Freshman year. Standard level on math so I'm self studying calc bc the upcoming senior yr (working on precalculus in the summer obviously). Haven't taken any hard science classes so far (hardest is honors chem 😭) so I'm worried that they'll see this as a bad application even if I'm taking AP chemistry and physics senior year.
Demographics: woman, South Asian (Indian), Indiana, super competitive high school 💀, upper middle class
Hooks: None (maybe women in stem idkk)
Intended Major(s): Engineering (Aerospace or Electrical)
SAT: 1450 💀 (I'm working on it trust) (670RW/780 M)
UW/W GPA and Rank: 4.0/4.40 & no rank
Coursework: 3 DE, 13 APs (awaiting scores for the six I took this year; five in the upcoming school year + two self-study)
Awards: - English 10 Honors Class Award - NHS membership - Lacrosse Most Improved Medal - A Honor Roll - Robotics team Outreach All-Star
Extracurriculars:

• Outreach Student Lead for FRC team: Manages all outreach operations on team, managing volunteering, mentoring and fundraising for over 20 teams in Central Indiana that are currently getting support from us. Division Event Winners, 2x DCMP and 1x CMP while finishing as finalists in our division at Champs. Also won several competition awards as a team. (3 years on team overall after my senior yr)
• Greyhound Connections: 2 years on group after my senior yr, general member working with new students to acclimate them to the high school. Created a google site for students without social media to follow along with events happening in school and providing useful links to important stuff like counseling, course selection and contacting us. Checks on them multiple times throughout the semester and ensure sucessfull outcomes for new students.
• Hoosier Girl State: Highly prestigious government program (still haven't attended it yet)
• JV Lacrosse (3 years): Became a leader on the team and encouraged teammates to push themselves throughout the season.
• Table Tennis Club Vice President (1 year)-Canada
• Badminton Club Vice President (1 year)- Canada
• Computer Science Honor Society (1 year)
• NHS (1 year)
• Social Studies Peer Tutor (1 year)

Essays: Haven't started so can't rate them 💀
LORs: (still have to ask the last two to write a recommendation letter)

• APUSH teacher: 10/10 she's awesome and she likes me a lot and is a popular recommender in our school
• Engineering Teacher Coach of FRC team: Been on team for 2 years, junior year being heavy invovlement so I'm guessing he's going to write an 8/10 letter
• AP Government Teacher and Club Advisor: 10/10 he knows me super well and has supported me through junior year so I trust in him giving a good recommendation 🙏

Schools: ED/EA/RD, etc
EA Purdue- Dream School Stanford Indiana University Bloomington (Comp Sci for this school) Georgia Tech University of Cincinnati UIUC
RD Harvard Northwestern
Please let me know if I should consider more schools and whether this is a competitive for engineering.

ABOUT US [Liar] was originally founded as a GW1 guild in 2005. We are an international guild based on North American servers. The guild is a diverse group who strives to be inclusive of women, LGBT people, people with disabilities and people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds.
MISSION STATEMENT [Liar] seeks to create an open, social environment where people can play together and enjoy anything cooperative gaming has to offer, especially in Guild Wars 2. We seek active, genial people interested in meeting and playing with others rather than recruiting based on experience or hours played. We recruit from all stages of gaming experience including people playing through the game for the first time to those seeking advanced content. Whether you are new to the game, a gaming veteran, or returning from a break, you'll find a helpful guild at [Liar] dedicated to improving your social gaming experience.
ACTIVITIES Weekly Guild Missions- Character Progression- Living Story and Current Event Achievements- Open World Meta Events- Fractals at all Levels- Raids and Strikes + CMS- Dungeons- WvW- PvP Dailies- User created Contests and Events
VOICE COMMS Our guild is centered around voice chat. We encourage everyone to come on and chat with each other while playing. Please have Discord installed and make sure it is working before applying.
REQUIREMENTS There are no experience or hour based requirements. All we ask is that applicants be 16+ years old, have the Discord app installed and play on a North American server. We hope to see you soon!
HOW TO JOIN You must complete all 3 steps for an invite. Go to http://liar.fyi/ and click the "Apply Now" button on the Right to fill out the application. Go to http://discord.gg/rvENckg and type ?apply in the #apply-here channel. Show up for our next weekly introductions on discord, Sundays at 12:30pm EDT

Being a mood reader is not for the weak. One day, you think you're starting your serious fantasy era but then you see a random WWTBC post about an intriguing MC romance plot ... and two weeks later, you can't stop binge reading every book the author has written.
So, lately I've been going DEEP into the {Ghosttown Riders Series by Amelia Shea} AND its sister series {Ghostown East Series by Amelia Shea} and y'all ... these are SO FUN. ✨
I'd describe these as "MC lite" - meaning that a lot of the most toxic parts of MC culture are smoothed over a bit. Dangerous things and violence happens ... but it's never that serious, nor is it ever really between the MMC and FMC. The MMCs (even the most slutty bikers of the group) fall HEAD OVER HEELS "one-woman for life" for their FMC -- and even those guys that resist it are instantly alpha-roll protector types. And these MMCs are so emo! In every book, the MMC either purposefully or accidentally does something that upsets the FMC (some of it very bad!) ... but oh boy, do these dudes pine and grovel about it immediately after. It's delicious.
Heads up: like a lot of MC romance, there's still a good amount of misogyny in the culture. Club girls are called "whores," etc. It's not as bad as some MC books I've read, but warning if this a trigger for you.
I LOVED the FMCs in these. The vast majority of the FMCs are not in the MC culture, but are working-class women living the towns with pretty interesting backstories. And the best part ... these FMCs ARE HORNY. Yes, even the shyer personalities. Every single book (even the more enemies-to-lovers plots) has a FMC who takes a couple minutes to eye-fuck the MMC when they meet and think about how attracted they are to them. I appreciate and respect a horny FMC -- because, GIRL, I would too.
For those who read MC romance, these felt more the lighter tone of Kati Wilde's Hellfire Riders Series (my fave!) vs Joanna Wylde's Reapers MC series (shades darker!)
✨ ALSO THESE BOOKS ARE SOAPY! ✨ In the best way. They can by read as standalones but I loved seeing how the larger soap opera background plot develops throughout each series.
Ok, so the first series, Ghosttown Riders - I'd describe as Sons of Anarchy meets the town from Gilmore Girls. It tells the story of a struggling outlaw Motorcycle Club who wants to go legit after experiencing some violence and loss. The MC President (who is an absolute asshole until he meets his FMC), has a big plan to buy up most of the property in this very small town to try to legitimize their dealings. The existing town residents (including the FMCs) are all so quirky and fun. But they aren’t sure about these bikers moving in. So, how Gilmore Girls-coded is this town? Well, there's a lot of funny town meetings where people share baked goods. There's a grumpy old guy that complains all the time. There's a very awkward young mayor who's giving Jessica Day from New Girl vibes (she's the FMC in Book 4). It has it all!
OK, now the second series Ghosttown East ... this is the story of a more dangerous rival club that are actually introduced as the VILLIANS towards the end of Ghosttown Riders. They have new President with a tragic backstory and they don't want to go legit ... they just want to be less bad. So, their new Prez makes plan to take over a different small town by calling in all of the shady loans and deals that their former president made. But instead of this town having quirky small town vibes, it's basically described as the most dangerous, run-down, and crime-ridden place in the country. The only businesses are a strip club and a gas station (both important to the plot). While this series goes a little darker and the FMCs are more accepting of the "non-legit" workings of the club, they are a still soapy sweet delight.
Anyway, I'm in love. If you've read any of the books in these series - I WANT TO HEAR YOUR FAVES IN THE COMMENTS (or similar recs?) If you have not read these, but are looking for some fun soapy drama, protective alpha-roll MMCs, and quirky FMCs with A LOT of found family vibes -- GIVE THESE A TRY!

Despite the Western European-sounding name, Maison Alhambra is a part of Lattafa. While there are a handful of fragrances that both houses clone (e.g. Lattafa Fakhar Black and Maison Alhambra Yeah! are both clones of YSL Y), there isn’t much overlap between the two. Maison Alhambra tries to position itself as a better-quality version of Lattafa; their most popular clone lines are Tom Ford (who sued MA due to packaging similarity), Parfums de Marly, Louis Vuitton, and Carolina Herrera Exclusif. I had two of the Carolina Herrera fragrances, but traded them before I started writing reviews.
Overall, the average quality of the Maison Alhambra scents I tried is better than the average Lattafa. They’re still not going to be a 1:1 to the original, but are closer than other Middle Eastern clone houses. Maison Alhambra is among the better ME houses, but still pales in comparison to the popular American fragrance clone companies. However, they can usually be found for $20 - $30, which makes them possibly the best value Middle Eastern house.

Amber & Leather (Tom Ford Ombre Leather)

My first smell transported me to a Victorian-era men’s hunting lodge. The leather, spice, and light florals work perfectly together; I can’t stop smelling myself when I wear this. More reminiscent of a suit jacket than a leather jacket, but still great for a date night or casual night out with friends. 12+ hour performance.
Unfortunately, my 50^th and 100^th smells were identical to the first. The opening is in-your-face amber layered on top of leather, which is better in small doses than in large ones. It smells like Maison Alhambra prioritized longevity over making sure it was a scent you wanted to smell for 12 hours straight. I’m interested in smelling Ombre Leather to see if it has the same progression; if it does, Amber & Leather is better-made than I first thought.

Bright Peach (Tom Ford Bitter Peach)

If you like peach, you’ll like bitter peach. If you don’t like peach, I don’t know why you’d buy a fragrance with Peach in the name. Smells like you’re sitting in a circle in a hippie commune, sloppily eating a peach drizzled in honey; the drydown really amps up the patchouli and adds much-needed depth as the peach top note slowly fades. Well suited for spring through fall. Decent longevity. Slightly more masculine than Bitter Peach, which leans more feminine than I expected.

Cassius (Parfums de Marly Carlisle)

I read online that Cassius had a similar profile to “wet tobacco” scents like Maison Alhambra’s Excluisif Tabac (CH Mystery Tobacco) or Mancera Red Tobacco. I checked the notes, saw that Cassius didn’t contain tobacco, and wondered what those people were thinking. The base notes are patchouli and vanilla – how could it be similar? Then I got it, smelled it, and had to double-check that I didn’t miss a tobacco note somewhere. It smells like wet, sticky tobacco with some creamy tonka vanilla underneath. I find it more similar to tobacco scents like Exclusif Tabac than to other vanilla scents. If that’s a profile you like, I’d recommend Cassius, but it’s just not for me. Maybe I just don’t like patchouli.

Hercules (Parfums de Marly Herod)

Floral, smoky, woody spiced vanilla. It’s less in-your-face spice than Tobacco Touch and more refined and cohesive than Asad or Cassius. It gets more tobacco-heavy as it dries down, but the tobacco stays light and dry rather than sticky and overbearing. It’s an instant classic winter evening scent. Feels like it would pair well with a snifter of cognac. Begs for nice clothing; I feel wrong wearing it casually around the house and watching TV. The only downside is the ~3 hour performance. I love the scent but can’t justify having to respray three times per day. I like the scent more than similar tobacco-vanilla fragrances but will likely stick to Tobacco Touch, which lasts all day.

Perseus Exclusif (Parfums de Marly Pegasus Exclusif)

It opens beautifully, with spice from cardamom and pepper complemented by light florals sitting on top of rich vanilla. If it were a linear scent with only the top notes, I’d be happy. However, as it dries down, I’m less of a fan. The three (!) different types of woods (sandalwood, guaiac wood, and agarwood) combined with the powdery bitter almond take over. I’d call this a woody fragrance complemented by vanilla, the flip side of what I get from Detour Noir. It’s well-made and apparently very close to Pegasus Exclusif. Just not for me.

Porto Neroli (Tom Ford Neroli Portofino)

Porto Neroli smells like someone describing their time wearing Sperrys on the Amalfi coast. Also smells like your dad’s rich friend who won’t shut up about yachts, but I’ll let that slide since I love neroli so much. Citrus and light florals make this a hallmark summer freshie for the ~5-6 hours it lasts. Unfortunately, it has just too much of a sunscreen accord.
It captures the essence of a good citrusy aquatic summer scent, but is a bit synthetic and doesn’t have good depth. I wasn’t expecting a 1:1 of Tom Ford for $20, but after getting a decant of the OG, I don’t see myself reaching for Porto Neroli again.

Tobacco Touch (Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille)

The first clone I got that I couldn’t stop smelling throughout the day; so good it almost made me take up smoking an old-timey tobacco pipe. Strong tobacco and intense clove and cinnamon fade into creamy vanilla and tonka, still complemented by the spice of the tobacco. The heavy spice makes it smell like Christmas without overwhelming the scent; appropriate for the dead of winter. Sweet without being too gourmand; spicy without being too earthy. Smells like a Prohibition-era speakeasy. 12+ hour longevity and decent projection for a winter scent.
Leans more on the spice notes than other similar fragrances, both other clones of Tobacco Vanille and other tobacco vanilla scents. A top pick among the $20 Middle Eastern clone house offerings, especially in the dead of winter. For any other time than Christmas day, it’s outclassed by higher quality clone houses.

Toscano Leather (Tom Ford Tuscan Leather)

Leather, leather and more leather. Smells like the inside of a leather shop. There are other notes listed on Fragrantica, but I secretly suspect that they are all code names for leather. I didn’t pick up any raspberry and scrubbed it off after 30 minutes of being surrounded by an aura of pure leather.

-TL:DR near the end-
I don't think anyone here still considers that the game can "come back" in the sense of becoming actually one of the top gachas or reaching the same numbers of active players as it had on release, so I'm not going to sugarcoat it. OPM: World flopped, and very hard at that. They lost millions of dollars, the developers were apparently disbanded, and who knows what's going to happen to the game in the future or if there's going to be a future to it at all.
I've been playing OPM: World daily since it's release and until about a couple of weeks ago. I've been top 20-50 in Maelstrom on my server for the past 2 months that I played, and I spent about $60 on the game in total. So none of this is coming from a place of hatred or anything of the sort. I played the game, I enjoyed it to some extent, and I now I'm just sad and disappointed, which is why I'm writhing this whole essay.
Recently SL: Arise released to much anticipation, it was massively successful and I started playing it too. I have been playing for a few weeks now, and I think there are certain things that can be observed that SL: Arise did right, in which OPM: World failed. This is going to be sort of a comparison between the games, but mostly focusing on what OPM: World did wrong.
First of all, monetization. That's the most important part for any gacha, since making money is the only reason they are made. The problem with OPM: World's monetization is that there wasn't much of a point in buying anything in the game. Almost everything was bad value and overpriced, and there was barely anything you could even buy (talking about reasonable things here). Being bare-bones is going to be a reoccurring topic, but the monetization sure does set up the mood well. Not much to buy, not much of a reason to spend, which surprisingly kinda leads to people to not want to spend. And that's not even mentioning an insanely long tutorial, during which you can't give the game money if you want to. They sure could've secured some spenders that didn't know any better if they didn't drag them through an hour of visual novel style gameplay first. Even without my shitty analysis we can just look at the numbers of players and the money they spent compared to other gachas, and there's a clear pattern of something going terribly wrong with monetization in OPM: World.
Now compare that to SL: Arise. The monetization in that game is abosultely putrid. A bunch of QOL is pay-walled, they sell skins for $25 that are just skins with no additional animations or anything, and there are so many ways to spend $60+ dollars to get some barely useful stuff. But it works. There's so much you can buy in that game. Moreover it's designed so that once you start spending, you have to keep spending if you want to keep progressing. There are like 3 separate subscriptions for different QOL that every player will want to have, you get reminded about them constantly, and after every (or almost every?) chapter in the story you get asked to buy a "bundle" to get "additional rewards" that you "already earned" but just need to "unlock" with your credit card. And if none of this was enough to force your hand, there's 3-6 simple events happening all at the same time, that all give decent rewards for getting a lot of points in them or ranking high on your server, and sure you wouldn't want to miss the opportunity, right? OPM: World had nothing even close to that, and that's exactly how gachas are making their money. Predatory and manipulative monetization mechanics aimed to hook you on spending on the game more then you should. Is it disguising? Absolutely. Is it an unregulated casino for all ages? Yep. Does it make a shit ton of money? You bet. If they didn't want to have the most shittiest monetization system imaginable, they shouldn't've made a gacha game.
But what does all of this predatory manipulation matter if nobody wants to play the game. The issue with OPM: World is that there's barely anything to do in it. You run out of fun content very quickly, and even though there are "plenty of things to do", most of them are repetitive and boring. You keep fighting the same mobs, using the same character mechanics, in the same locations, with the same rewards. Sure, you can technically grind your team levels until the hard celling for over a month, but the rewards for level-ups are bad, after about level 40 you don't even get any new content aside from occasional side quest or two that are just the same visual novel style gameplay with some boring fight sections with the same mobs you fought a hundred times already. And you can't even buy your way to more interesting content. Because there is no interesting content left.
Even though the core mechanics of the game are great: almost all characters are fun to play with, they all feel unique and require different sets of skills to operate them optimally. But that's about all the content the game has. Once you get strong enough in stats, there isn't much of a point playing well and utilizing the mechanics optimally, the game is very stats-oriented, where you can clear everything with any characters easily if your stats are high enough. And getting those stats is neither difficult nor engaging. Just grind the same mobs you fought before over and over every day until you get good enough memories.
Speaking of which, there are very few RPG systems in the game. You have your memories, that you can grind and your wills, that you can barely maybe get sometimes. And that's about it. No customization for the characters, no builds, no real team synergy besides just choosing the skills you need preferably with the right attribute for the fight. While progressing in this game, it rarely feels like you're getting any actual progress. You fight the same mobs that are getting stronger as you are, you're getting the same rewards that scale with the strength of the mobs, and nothing really changes. The game is designed to always be "balanced", where you never feel quite weak and never feel quite strong, which makes the whole progression part of RPG non-existent. Basically OPM: World only has the action part of an action-RPG figured out, and that's a bad way to make people want to spend money in a gacha game. You can make a successful gacha with basically no gameplay just on RPG elements, but you can't do the same with action mechanics.
Now coming back to SL: Arise and, what do you know, it's actually read its own genre. There are quite a few RPG mechanics in the game that let you customize your characters and grind for very specific things that you want. There's equipment that has sets, it's split into 2 distinct parts that each are useful in their own way. There are weapons that you need to pick for every character with SSR characters having their unique ones that you can craft. And then there's the whole main character guy, that you need to build with all the same stuff, but now there are also different skills to choose from. And blessing stones, and gems, and shadows, and, and... You get it. I actually ran out of things to list, just wanted to be a bit dramatic. Anyways, there are also different game mods to use all of this in: you can play as only your MC with support from your hunters, or as hunters without MC, or sometimes as both MC and hunters. And for every mode there's a different strategy you need to come up with.
Not only that, but the game is also very skill-based. You can't just win anything with enough stats. You have to play well, and the game will challenge you to perform very often. If you can play optimally, you can get much better rewards then if you just slouch through trying to get enough stats to fight with your eyes closed. Combine that with RPG mechanics of building your characters, and every new win feels extremely satisfactory. It feels like you deserved it. All your grind, all your team building, it was all worth it, and now you can progress to an ever harder challenge. When you get better at the game, it feel rewarding, when you get better gear, it feels rewarding. There are so many systems that influence your gameplay that it always feels like you're progressing even when you get artificially blocked by the numbers. Not only is there more things to do, but they also last a lot longer then OPM: World can squeeze even from the most long-lasting of its systems. I have played SL: Arise for a few weeks every day, sometimes for hours, and I feel like there's still so much stuff I can do in the game. By this time in OPM: World I was done with basically all the content. Even the collections.
But maybe the worst thing that OPM: World did was it's activity. As I mentioned before, SL: Arise has 3-6 events happening at all times. OPM: World in 3 months since release had a total of 2. And it's not like they were some incredible quality events or anything, they are about the same as each of Arise's ones.
Each new character released in Arise got it's own event with a couple more supporting ones, to make you want to get those new characters more. Each new character in OPM: World got... Yeah.
Arise has a full schedule of content that's being worked on. It's going to get a whole new game mode this month, a week ago or so it had a new RPG system introduced, and because of how many RPG mechanics there are, they can get away with slightly adding content to each of them to make it seem like the game is getting constantly updated.
The devs keep teasing new content, describing it and giving screenshots, while also responding to community, balancing the game and fixing bugs. And OPM: World... Well, we don't even know if there will be an update or if the game is going to close tomorrow. There is no transparency whatsoever. They fix bugs, that's pretty cool. Not very exciting for the community though.
SL: Arise has given A LOT of free in-game recourses for every occasion you can think of. As a F2P I felt like I got everything I wanted and more. Mind you, all of those resources also serve a much stronger purpose, being used for numerous RPG mechanics. While OPM: World has given... 100 silver... and some energy for maintenance a few times... Pretty cool...
When you look at SL: Arise's community, everyone is constantly excited about what's coming next. All the updates get several videos by YouTubers made with dozens or even hundreds of thousands of views. And OPM: World community has been calling the game dead since the first month it released. There's a clear distinction in community management for both games, and it certainly influences how new players view starting the game and how whales view giving the game more money.
TL:DR - OPM: World failed to create a predatory-enough monetization system, failed at compelling RPG mechanics, failed at making progress rewarding, failed at managing the community and keeping the game fresh. OPM: World failed as a gacha, as an action-RPG and as a game.
I personally think they should've spent less resources on cinematics, remaking S1 but worse, and instead focused more on systems and mechanics. Less on designing and populating streets and more on the actual playable content. I like the cities, don't get me wrong, they're fine, I like looking at pretty animations, just not worth the effort when you can't figure out anti-aliasing in 2024. SL: Arise for comparison doesn't even have any "open" world in it, there's a pathetic lobby with nothing to do in it and a constant loading screen whenever you go there, and the game made more money in the first day then OPM: World did in its entire life-time.
In hindsight I think going for the greedy play of starting with S1 for the second time was a massive blunder as well. They were banking on the game becoming a hit, and letting themselves give out as little content on release as possible, while keeping a lot of the story for later. But it would probably be better to cover all 2 seasons condensed. They could've even remade some scenes from S2 better then it was in the anime, which would've actually been met with some hype from some of the community.
Also I think the game was released at a bad time for OPM. Season 2 has ended years ago, the hype for Saitama vs Garou ended years ago, even Saitama vs Tatsumaki ended almost a year before the release of the game, while there were absolutely no news about S3 coming out anytime soon. And releasing with the story of only the first half of Season 1 with this timing was just catastrophic. People quickly found out and quickly lost interest as soon as the game released.
On one hand I'm glad a gacha game failed. They shouldn't even be legal in my opinion. On the other hand I'm very saddened that another OPM game failed. It was inevitable, since there were no lessons learned from the last one except apparently for better animation in cutscenes and addition of bare-bones gacha mechanics. If only this game was finished on release. If only it wasn't a gacha game. We could've had a good One Punch Man game for once. It had great combat mechanics, it had unique fighting styles, it just didn't have the rest of the game to become something worth recommending.