TLDR is organized as the section titles for your convenience!
We have been together for 8-9 months.
[TLDR 1: I set up a haircut appointment for boyfriend and he said okay three times before the day of the haircut and never said no]
I found a very good hair salon and I really liked their cleanliness and how skilled the hair stylists were.
I decided that I want my boyfriend to also get a men's haircut there since he usually always struggles with his hair in the morning because his current barber cuts his hair asymmetrically.
He works a blue collar job where he only gets one day off of the week and works with a majority of older men, so I wanted to treat him to a self-care day with a haircut and a shampoo-conditioning head massage where he can just relax.
When I told him that I set up a haircut for him a week before the appointment, his first reaction was "Whaaaat? Oh geez." and then he said "thanks babe, I guess I could make the time to go for the appointment."
Two days before the appointment the salon called to confirm the appointment, and when I asked him again "Do you still want to go to the haircut appointment two days from now or do you want to just go to your regular barber?" he said "No, I'll just go to your place."
[TLDR 2: Boyfriend is confused why he is going to the salon that I am recommending if I don't even have a specific style in mind for him. He gets even more upset when we arrive at the salon.]
The night before the appointment my boyfriend started asking me what specifically I have in mind for his new hair style, and when I told him I was just going to ask for a hairstyle that is easy to get-up-and-go in the morning and fix the top part to be more symmetrical, he got a little upset and confused that I didn't have a specific hair style in mind for him.
The day of the appointment, in the morning we were planning out our day and we decided to go grocery shopping and then hiking together, and I suggested that we can skip the haircut since he seemed uncomfortable with going to a new barber.
He happily said "Okay!" and we finished our grocery shopping.
When we got back to the car, I noticed that we were just 10 minutes away from the hair salon anyways and the hair appointment was 20 minutes away. So I asked if we could just go to the haircut appointment.
But then my boyfriend's mood went bad very fast from there on our drive to the hair salon, to the point where by the time we were parked in front of the salon he was huffing and puffing and complaining that I set up an appointment he never asked for.
[TLDR 3: Boyfriend meets hairstylist. Haircut comes out great and he gets a head massage and shampoo treatment from stylist. He gets very upset that I paid for his haircut in front of the cashier and hairstylist, which is the first time he got upset that I paid for something for us. Then leaves a cash tip for stylist.]
When we got into the salon, he was able to keep a straight face and was polite to the staff. When we met the hairstylist, who was around our age, she greeted us and offered me a seat right next to my boyfriend and began asking me about my hair goals for him and asked my boyfriend about himself.
She complimented that he has amazing hair and when he answered her question about what he's doing this weekend by saying he can't do anything because he works six days a week, she said she's in the same boat and that she works all weekday too.
She kept initiating conversation with him and he got to a point where he came out of his shell and started asking her questions too.
When she was done she took him to the back to do the shampoo and conditioning treatment.
The haircut came out amazing.
After that, she walked us up to the front to the cash register.
My boyfriend started to take out his wallet but I got in front of him and covered the cost for him instead, because I felt bad that he felt like I dragged him to an appointment he didn't want.
He then took out some cash and asked the cashier how he could tip the stylist, and the cashier said it's an envelope system where the customer writes their name and the stylist's name on the envelope.
He immediately began writing his name down and then I saw him pause because he couldn't remember the stylist's name.
I took the pen and wrote the name down for him, and he took the envelope from my hand and folded the envelope and put it in the tip box.
When we left the salon and got in the car, he wouldn't say a single word to me.
It took 15 minutes of dead silence for him to finally open up and say
"When you see me taking my wallet out, please don't get all giddy next to me and make a big deal out of covering for me. If I already have my wallet out ready and you want to use your card instead, you can just virtually send by an app instead of making a big deal"
I was shocked because during the 8 months we've been together, he has never once expressed any kind of anger at all when I covered for us at restaurants or grocery stores or at shopping malls and did the little fight over who gets to cover the check. He was usually kind of smitten about it.
I said I'm shocked and asked why he didn't tell me this before,
and he said he always felt upset when I did that but that today he was already really upset and me cutting him off to pay for him made him even more upset.
I apologized and he apologized and we were off to go hiking.
[TLDR 4: Boyfriend "jokes" that hairstylist was kissing him and that she was all over him when they were in the shampoo and conditioning room. Brings up hairstylist's first name that I wrote down for him on the tip envelope and keeps "joking" about how intimate the massage was. When I warn him to stop and set a boundary, he apologizes and explains why he was making those jokes.]
By the time we were almost there, I warmed up to him and said "the haircut came out so amazing though! Don't you think?"
He started laughing and said "yeah, especially when she took me to the backroom and started to kiss me and get all up on me like muah muah muah muah!" and then I told him to stop BSing and he laughed even more and said "Oh what was her name again? Oh! Be-a-tri-ce? Right?"
I got so angry that I stopped talking to him and told him to turn the car around.
He looked surprised and said "I'm so sorry" and we were both silent from then on.
He then explained that this was the first time he's ever been to a salon where the majority of the people were all women. He asked how I would feel getting a haircut at a men's barber shop.
He said he never experienced a hairstylist massaging his head and washing his hair for him before.
He said he felt guilty about even just going to a backroom with the hairstylist where I can't see, and that it made him nervous and really uncomfortable and he wanted to be able to talk with me about it openly but didn't know how to do so without making it too serious.
The hike diffused the situation a little and we ended up coming back safely.
[TLDR 5: He apologizes, I put my anger on hold since I'm not sure if I brought this whole situation on to myself by taking him to a salon he never asked for, but I still have a huge doubt on whether he even actually respects me.]
When we got back I told him how serious his "joking" is and that paired with how he got upset at me for paying for him at the salon, it makes me think he is much more occupied with what the hairstylist who he met for one day thinks of him than what I think of him when he throws a temper tantrum at me after a haircut that was meant to be a gift for him from me.
He kept saying he doesn't know why he thought the joke was funny and that he was wrong for it.
The only thing putting me on pause is the guilt I feel about maybe I should have never taken him to the salon in the first place.
What do you think?

On the hunt for a permanent hairdresser accessible to me! Finding a hairdresser that actually gives me a cut I want feels like a never ending battle.
I am an autistic non-binary person chill with any pronouns or gender presentation but I'm so done with these ladies giving me a Karen cut or a hideous coconut bob. One lady left me looking like asymmetrical Roxanne from Megamind and even had the audacity to say she wanted to give me Karen highlights 😭
I want a shaggy wolf cut, something androgynous and like the pictures I show them, but I'm beginning to feel like I'm talking to a brick wall when i show these women what I want they never listen! I've tried every shopping centre hairdresser (eg Just Cuts, Hairhouse etc) because they're cheap and easily accessible when I'm already at the shops for groceries or whatever. Theyre nice enough ladies but if they don't feel qualified to give me the cut I want I wish they would just say so!
ANYWAY, sorry for the rant; fellow nb fellas or just anyone who appreciates a good androgynous haircut, where do you go? And how much is it for just a cut, no extra bells and whistles? What are some LGBTQ friendly and invisible disability friendly places? I'm so close to going to a male barbershop and just asking them for the Britney Spears shave because that's how I'm feeling mentally anyway lmfao
For reference, I am in the Knox council area without getting too specific to doxx myself. I've been to a couple good places in the city and they're great but it takes so much of my energy and money to go to these places, I want to find somewhere a bit closer and convenient for me as I don't have a car. I'm willing to make a compromise of course because that's life. But what do you guys think?

So earlier today this one transmasc autistic academic I follow posted the following on his tumblr.
[I was the “real me” when I had long blonde hair and blunt bangs I cut myself and hairy legs and wore skater dresses and went out with my DDD boobs braless. I was the “real me” when I was on low dose T and had a permanent headcold voice and a sloppy asymmetrical androgynous haircut I did myself and massive acne welts on my back and wore oversized men’s button-ups that didn’t fit me and too tight suit jackets. I was the “real me” when I was detransitioned and my hairy breasts were getting full again and my hair was a fuzzy tennis ball and I covered myself in huge vests and was heartbroken and nobody knew how to read me. I was the “real me” as a child in stretchy legging shorts and big black t-shirts with glow in the dark bats on them. I will be the “real me” when I am seventy years old with badly receeded gums on one side and a slope to my back and bad blood sugar and deeply set squint lines. I am the real me when I lack confidence, when I am depressed, when I have no idea what to say to people upon entering the room, when I stop working out, when I am sick, when my body breaks down, when I “look tired”, when I have a bad haircut, when none of my clothing fits, when I’m manic, if my teeth fall out, as I age, if I detransition, when I accomplish things, when I rage quit, if I look like shit, if I don’t resemble any easily recognized identity category, when random cis people whom I never asked don’t want to fuck me, in good times and bad and irrespective of how I look or how anyone else feels about it.] And it made me realize something kinda fucked up about my own history. Whenever my dad has talked about me being in ABA therapy, he always frames it as an attempt to “free” me from my autism so that I could be the “real me.” He does not see my autism as part of me, he’s actually kind of bewildered at me using the label because of the fact that ABA “cured” me. He sees my autism, something I was born with and inherited from my ancestors INCLUDING my dad’s own father, as a tumor that needs to be excised or a demon that needs to be banished. I don’t really know what to do with this information. I’ve accepted that I will never be able to change my dad’s mind. I’m just one autistic leatherdyke working against 61 years of ableist indoctrination. I still love him, but it bums me out that he views something so integral to who I am as “not part of the real me.”

I m15 saw an endocrinologist who said i was gonna grow to 5’3 (i’m 5’2 rn)
a year ago i would’ve just killed myself then and there, and i know a lot of you guys are the same way, and i want to help y’all realize how fucking easy it is to get out. I can gladly assure everyone reading this i’ll be 5’10 or taller by 20.
below is a short summary of my personal story and how i deal/dealt with my genetic shortcomings.
I’ve always been weirder, having long hair throughout a good portion of my life until when i was around 14, with the reason being i simply didn’t care for my looks. Overall life was simple to me: do school, go home, play video games/chill and sleep. Due to this lifestyle for most of my early teenage years/middle school(quarantine influenced these decisions heavily), i was left with not many friends.
Only recently, about a year and a half ago i started paying attention to myself and the world around me. this is when reality truly set in and i realized how fucked i was. before this moment, i always knew i was short, maybe some people thought my hair was stupidly long and made them opposed to me, but i really just didn’t care. Now i did, and i cared very, VERY much.
That point was when i decided i was going to make a change, and fast. I really feel like there’s 3 paths you can take when dealing with a crippling misfortune such as being short. One, self actualize and somehow become one with your mind and disconnect with your body to feel true contentment in life (this one to me sounds like bs but i’m sure it works very well for a good deal of people) Two, mope around and whine about it indefinitely, assuming just because you can’t “change” said misfortune, in this case height, that you should give up on trying to improve. Lastly, option three, what i decided to take. Actually taking action and improving the fuck out of yourself.
Now, let’s get to the point on how i did, and am doing it.
I first took a genuine, long look at myself in the mirror, on my phone camera, inverted, etc. I shed many tears doing such, but eventually came up with things i heavily disliked about myself. Little note, i feel like a lot of people hate their appearance but never think to pinpoint what they dislike and fix it.
My list looked something like the following:
Acne, eyebags/skin overall looking bad
Lack of a good physique, only some definition in my abs.
Droopy eyelids, sad overall composure
Smaller lips (white person lips lol)
Teeth lacking whiteness
my hair (pretty obvious)
asymmetry in my eyes and chin
and finally, most importantly, height.
Now that i had all of these pinpointed, i already felt 100x less lost and sad, seriously if you’re going through something similar bite the bullet and just look and analyze yourself for an hour or less and figure out what you want to be different!
I started with the easiest first, i got a haircut and immediately felt way better. After that the majority of the things on the list connected and happened overtime. i saw a dermatologist, got put on certain topicals, began whitening my teeth, and ate and slept better. along the way, i met some friends who weren’t amazing but definitely worked better than being alone. This was around the time when i began to run into obstacles. my first one was my asymmetrical face, which was like one of those things only you could realize and notice but i still definitely had a massive insecurity for it. What i was surprised to find was that it was actually a known form of facial scoliosis causing more pressure to be put on one side of your body causing your shoulder, neck, chin, and eye area to be warped slightly to that side. I was given excersises to correct the asymmetry and in a matter of days i felt and sorta looked better. I’m currently almost completely symmetrical and my doctor says it’s only a matter of weeks.during this time period of self improvement, i found friends, both male and female entering my life. after many consecutive birthdays spent alone/with my parents i found myself with a girl and two other friends smoking it up in my garage at 3 in the morning on my 15th birthday. Although this is where i REALLY started to run into issues. Over the months of gaining social relevance at my school, i found myself being put down for being short much more often, and even the friends i found picked on my height any time i got into an argument with them. For this reason alone i felt once again cast out from the ordinary high schooler experience. I made myself look good in almost every way possible, yet still found myself outcast to my peers. Partially due to this, and some due to having trouble figuring out my personality around others, even as i sat next to my “friends” on my 15th birthday, i felt estranged and as if i didn’t truly fit in. that night after they left, i was too high to be sad or cry but otherwise i would’ve cried for the first time since i was “ugly”. At that point, i realized my true flaw. my height.
you can be fat, ugly, weird, smelly, and practically any other flaw seen commonly in people and easily overcome it. Are you made fun of and cast out of social groups for a flaw you have? change it over the summer and leave everyone shocked. as much as i tried, i was never able to shake my biggest and worst flaw. height. what a few inches of bone in your legs makes in your social life and mental health is absolutely crazy. being short was now seen to me as a curse.
normally, i’d give up there. except i didn’t, this is where i truly began working. if i couldn’t do it naturally, i’d do it with science. Leg lengthening surgery would easily bring me to 5’10+. sure, it’s risky as hell but after measuring my body and legs to be shorter than the harmony is considered for my height, i realized it would really work out.
I could talk for hours on what i’ve done and what i want to do in my life but i’m not gonna bore you all. if i could do it, you can to. escape your friends shallow perspectives of you forever, like i’ll eventually do.
PS, if your friends ever dog on you for being short, it’s a reflection of their own insecurities and lack of maturity. keep your head up bros.

Hello my name is Liz. I’m a fellow gamer who is stuck.
What is this Dead by Daylight?
Dead by daylight is asymmetrical horror game where you can take a role of a killer or a survivor and play in a team of 4.Your aim as a survivor to repair all generators and escape when your aim as a killer to prevent survivors to do so.What I love about this game beside the gameplay is the fact that there’s so many license characters such as Sadako from Ringu or Cheryl Mason from Silent Hill.
Why do I want this dlc?
Dead by daylight is my favourite game. I spent nearly 3000 hours in it and I can’t stop. Recently there’s been an update which brought Nicolas Cage to the game. To say the least I love Nic Cage.I’ve watched a plethora of movies starring him. My favourites are Finding Arizona because I love Coen brothers’ humour, Valley Girl cause look at his haircut and The Wicker Man remake because of how absurd it is.It would be really cool to have such an iconic character in my in-game collection.
Why can’t I afford it?
I moved to another country due to the war in mine and found a job there but lost it because of a flood.Now I’m struggling to find another cause there’s no plenty of choices there.
Thank you for reading!
My steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198802328547/
Here's a Nic Cage for you guys ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣴⣾⣿⡿⠿⠿⠿⠿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣶⣄⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣰⣿⠟⠉⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠉⠙⠻⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣶⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣴⠟⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠙⠻⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣸⠃⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠙⠻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣦⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠠⣡⡶⣷⣦⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⢻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢠⠃⠀⠀⠀⠙⢿⡆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⡎⢀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣀⣠⣤⣤⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠸⠀⢄⣴⣶⠀⠈⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠀⠉⠉⠉⠛⠷⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⡰⠁⠀⠀⠉⠑⠂⠁⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⠀⠐⠒⠄⠀⠀⠀⠈⠂⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠰⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⠈⠀⠀⢀⠀⠀⠀⠢⡀⣾⣷⠀⠑⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠁⠀⠀⠀⠸⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠉⠓⠒⠂⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡇⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢠⠀⠀⠀⢀⡂⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡇⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⠀⠀⡔⠁⠈⠁⠀⠀⣀⣀⠀⠀⠀⠃⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠃⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠘⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢠⡿⠟⠋⠉⢀⠘⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠏⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣀⡀⠀⠀⠀⢀⢀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⢀⣀⣤⣤⣶⣶⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⠀⠀⠀⠸⣄⡀⠀⠂⠠⠀⡀⠀⠀⠀⢰⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠘⠀⡄⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⢠⣶⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⠹⠿⣿⣶⣦⣤⣤⡵⠀⠀⠎⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⡀⢀⡪⠔⢠⣿⣿⣾⣿⣿⣤⣤⣤⣀⣀⡀⠀⠀ ⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠉⠉⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⡄⠀⠈⠀⣀⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣶ ⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢱⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⢄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣠⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⡀⠔⠁⠀⠀⠀⡀⣺⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠐⠉⠀⠀⠀⠀⡠⠊⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⠒⠢⢄⣀⡀⠤⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⡠⠊⠀⠀⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡆⠀⠀⠣⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⡀⠔⠉⠀⠀⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⠸⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠷⠀⠀⠀⠈⠂⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠐⠈⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠸⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠿⠟⠀

Hans The Fearless
Hanson Van Buskirk, called Hans by his friends, owned a little pawn shop on the seedy side of town. The worn wooden sign was flaking bits of cheap white paint from the backboard which bore the name Gold Reposit Pawn & Loan, spelled out in flickering red neon. The Van Buskirk family name was spread thickly throughout the county, along with the Hancock's, Davis', Peyton's, Campbell's, and the others who could be found in the town's original 1818 charter, but Hans was not in the good books of his more well to do relations. He had many connections, but they were not the sort to be invited to parties by the last inheritors of old money. Hans lived on the outskirts of society, and that's the way he liked it.
One of his frequent clients was a young man named Douglass Whitemore. Despite an aversion to honest labor, Douglass had been employed in the security industry, by various companies, for many years, and frequently brought in items to sell or pawn which were of questionable provenance. On one day in particular, he brought a booty of items that would change Hans Van Buskirk's understanding of reality, and that was no mean feat. Douglass displayed a marked nervousness as he entered the shop, mopping his brow as he repeatedly looked behind him, biting his lips as he peered out into the street through the closed glass door. Hans watched the performance with some amusement from his counter. He did not fail to notice the sunken cheeks, and dark circles beneath the bloodshot eyes. It was obvious to Hans that Douglass was not well.
At length Douglass approached the counter, where he spread out the items that he wished to sell. The first was a thin, antique, gold coin, of Spanish origin, bearing a distinctive bow and arrows design. It was not a terribly rare piece, and might have mates in any local numismatist's collection, and bore no individual marks which might distinguish it from any other of it's kind. Hans had sold a few like it for as much as two thousand dollars. He offered Douglass six hundred for it, and Douglass agreed without haggling. The next item was an unusual rock. It was a large chunk of pink chert, possibly local, that had been knapped and flecked into a particular sharp edged shape, but it was broken off at one end. Hans guessed it may once have been part of an ancient native plow, or hoe type gardening tool. Such things were always being dug up in fields or found in creekbeds of the surrounding area. It had a little value, but wasn't the sort of thing that Hans liked to deal in. He passed on it. The third item was something very unusual. At first thinking it was a common chess piece, Hans picked the object up to see if there was anything special about it that would make it worth buying, only to discover that it was in fact a clay figurine, just the length of his own middle finger, of unique workmanship, light gray on one side, streaked with dark gray on the other, and with a considerable amount of surface wear. It may have been a native fetish, or an idol of some sort, but it was from no culture with which Hans was familiar. It appeared to depict some sort of bird like entity, with a long beak pointed downward to it's taloned feet, feathered wings folded along it's back, with a snake like tail coiled up behind it. A pair of taloned hands folded up along either side of the beak where it crossed the breast of the creature. Hans had never seen anything so bizaare, and he was intrigued. While the piece may have been some modern toy, the fact that it was made of baked clay, and had been so peculiarly carved, with straight slices and precisely curved incisions, made him feel as though it were something even more ancient than the pink chert tool. Shrewdly, he offered Douglass ten dollars for it. Again Douglass agreed without haggling. He took the cash from Hans, and hurriedly fled into the street. He didn't even take the chunk of rock with him. Hans put away the coin and the rock, but slipped the figurine into his pocket with the idea of researching it later in the evening.
Shortly after six o'clock, a trio of strange looking visitors arrived. Three women, each over six feet tall in identical high heeled shoes which were made of some scaley hide, with segmented points at the sharp toes and a pointed barb jutting backwards from the bottom of the narrow heels. Their faces were all the same pale grayish complexion, with identical large, round, green eyes, and startlingly thick black eyebrows contrasting their thin red lips. Their noses were long and thin. Only their hair seemed appreciably different from one to the next. The first woman to enter the door had dark gray hair streaked with black, done up in a tight bun that sat on the top of her head, making her seem even taller. The second had blood red hair, worn down around her shoulders, with shocks of white at the temples. The third was platinum blonde, styled in an asymmetrical bob cut. They wore identical black fur shrugs over black capes and matching black midi length gowns. The total effect of their appearance caused an uncanny valley reaction in Hans, though he merely noted it without fear.
"What can I do for you fine ladies this evening?" he asked in a jovial tone, as he met each of their gazes in turn with his most charming smile. The blonde and the redhead turned their faces to the dark haired one. Hans guessed that made her the leader of the group.
"Weee haff comm forrr what is oursss," said the dark haired woman in a breathy, rasping voice.
"Ooh, that is one doozy of a beautiful accent you've got there. Where are you ladies from, if you don't mind my asking?" replied Hans.
"Dooo nnot bee impudent, younggg sssirrr," said the woman sternly, as her sisters hissed at Hans. "Weee knnnowww that you hafff ourrr prrroperrrty! Weee demmmannnd that you rrreturrrn it to usss!"
Unperturbed, Hans demured. "I'm sorry, Ma'am, but I just don't know what you're referring to. Do you have a claim ticket for this property? I run an honest business here and I'm sure that I would remember if you had been in to hock anything, but I just don't."
"Weee hafff trrravelled far to rrretrrriefff the ammmulet, annnd weee will nnnot rrreturrrnnn without it!"
"Amulet, you say?" Hans was a bit startled now, though he never let his smile falter. Was the strange woman talking about the figurine in his pocket? "Ma'am, could you possibly describe this amulet?"
"The immmage offf god, innn the ffforrrmmm offf a ssstorrrk. You knnnowww it! You hafff it! Give it back to usss!"
"Ma'am, I'm going to remind you that this is a business. If I come across this stork amulet of yours, I will be happy to sell it to you at a reasonable price. What do you reckon it's worth to you?"
The woman's face reddened as she thrust it over the counter at Hans. "You want a prrriccce offf hummmannn mmmonnney, forrr ourrr herrritage? The insssolenccce!"
Hans didn't miss the use of that word, "human", in her description of money. This was getting very interesting. She was being very insistent, even a bit haughty, but he could smell desperation. It was his bread and butter. "Oh, I don't guess it would need to be cash. I'm willing to consider an interesting trade. What else have you got to offer?" As he spoke those words, he winked with his right eye, and gave an extra bit of a grin to that side of his face. It was an old gesture he had unconsciously picked up from his paternal grandfather, and one he used constantly whenever trying to defuse a tense situation. It had never seemed any more special than that, but this time, as he did it, he felt a strange puissance arise. He was normally a confident man, but in that moment he felt truly powerful.
The woman drew back, surprised. She looked to her sisters, and they literally hopped closer to her. Their heads bobbed together as they discussed something in a babbling foreign tongue. After a few minutes of this, all three of them placed their long nailed hands on the counter, leaning in close and peering directly into Hans' face.
"A boon," said the dark haired one.
"A favor, you mean? Just the one? Seems like it might be worth more than that. What could you really do for me anyway?" He winked again, and he felt the puissance again.
"Onnne. Frrrommm each."
"So three individual favors, total. Well now, that is certainly an interesting offer, if a little unorthodox. I'm going to have to mull it over. Come back tomorrow morning, and I'll let you know."
"No. Nnnot mmmorrrnnning. Eeffennning. Afffterrr sssix."
"That is acceptable. I'll look for you here after six."
The women left. Hans patted the pocket which contained the figurine which he was now very confident was the amulet sought by them, whatever they were. It's possible that they were female, he reasoned, but he was quite certain that they were not human. He wanted to go do some research on the internet, but suddenly his shop was very busy. He wound up making a week's worth of sales before closing time. He wondered if that was merely coincidence. His drive home was interrupted by a large package of beef, at least half a side, falling out of the back of a delivery truck directly in front of him. The truck kept going, so Hans took the beef and put it in the back seat of his car. He stopped at a gas station near his house to buy a few bags of ice to keep the meat frozen for a while. While exiting the car, he stepped on a lottery scratcher that stuck to his shoe. While pulling it off, he noticed that it was a winning ticket, for the amount of six hundred dollars. He cashed it inside and used some of the money to buy all of the ice that was in the gas station's coolers. When he arrived home, he checked his mail first thing. There was a special delivery letter from his great aunt, Maureen, stating that he had been named in her will, and asking him to come for a visit as soon as he could. He spent the next couple of hours fitting the meat into his bathtub, covered in forty pounds of ice, since he didn't have a freezer. He would have to forego showering for a few days, until he could figure out another situation, but he would be eating beef for dinner for the next six weeks. After all of that he was too exhausted to do any reading, so he just went to bed.
Hans slept late, not rising until eight thirty nine in the morning. The sun shone brightly through his windows. The pawn shop was supposed to open at ten, so he skipped breakfast and arrived ten minutes early, despite the late start. He had his first customer in the first ten minutes after opening, a man wanting to sell a deep freezer. Normally that would be something he would pass by, but since he happened to need a freezer, he happily acquired this one for fifty dollars. After getting it moved to the back of the store, he discovered that it contained a single frozen breakfast burrito, covered in frost. He took it and heated it in one of his microwave ovens in the shop. As he finished his breakfast, he got his second customer, a woman wanting to buy a specific rare baseball card, which he happened to have in mint condition. She was so pleased with her purchase that she gave Hans a voucher for a free cup of coffee from the diner where she worked. She also informed him of some local news that she had heard that morning. It seemed that a young man named Douglass Whitemore had been found dead in a park, and looked like he had been torn to shreds by some wild animals. Hans was not overly surprised to hear of Douglass' fate. That fellow was a ne'er do well that had made a lot of enemies over the years. However, the gruesome manner of his dispatch was somewhat concerning. Who would go to so much trouble? Hans would sort of miss seeing the weasely young man bringing in his suspicious looking trinkets, but whatever had happened to him was none of Hans' business.
The rest of the day went much the same way as the previous evening, busy and profitable. Business was steady until around five thirty, when Hans was finally able to relax a little. He took the amulet out of his pocket and set it on the counter. Was it really possible, he wondered, that this strange little figurine was responsible for the way everything had been going his way for the past twenty four hours? He slipped into reverie while gazing at the thing, and began to have a peculiar daydream. He saw the figurine enlarged to the size of man, plated with gold, decked with jewels, clouds of burning incense swirling all around it, all set within a strange hut with a high peaked roof. Suddenly the door swung open and the trio of women entered, dressed exactly as before. The clock displayed the time as six minutes after six o'clock.
The women instantly focused on the amulet, exclaiming excitedly in their own language. Hans scooped it up just as they reached for it.
"So, this is the thing that you wanted. I'm glad that we've established that. Now, ladies, I've got to know. You aren't human, are you?"
They gasped, recoiling, almost in unison.
"Now now, no need to get all excited. I'm not going to expose you. What you are doesn't scare me. I just need to know what I'm dealing with here. You see, I think I know why you want this little doodad. I seem to have gotten a little taste of what it can do. And that sheds some light on what you must be able to do, in regards to our agreement."
The women looked at each other warily, confused.
"I promised to sell this amulet to you for a reasonable price, you offered me three boons as payment, and I told you I'd think about until this evening. Now here we are, and I have a better understanding of the value of what is, currently, my legal property. Honestly I'm inclined to go through with the trade, because I'd like to see you lovely ladies get back what once was yours, but here's the sticking place, I need to be sure I'm getting that reasonable price. So please, can you just confirm what I already suspect?"
"It iss as you haf ssaid."
"Excellent. And that means the boons you're going to owe me can be for anything I want, doesn't it? The sky's the limit?"
"Not quite. We are not sso powerful, efen with the amulet. We musst use it's giftss for our own kind. But, thrree timess we may do ssomething wondrouss on yourr behalf. You haff only to call for uss, but only in the eefening."
"Fair enough. Ladies, we have a bargain. You may take your amulet, in exchange for one boon from each of you." Hans pressed the amulet firmly and gently into the outstretched hand of the dark haired lady. She clutched it to her chest with a crow of triumph, and the trio made their way toward the door making joyful cooing sounds. Hans stopped them.
"Ladies, one thing before you go. I'm going to need some time to consider what boons I'll be asking. In the meantime, would you all do me the honor of coming to my house for Sunday dinner?"
They stared at him blankly, not responding.
"Uh, I'll be serving steaks. Am I right in thinking you'll want your meat served rare? Shall we say, half past six?"
Then the ladies seemed to comprehend that he was offering them food, and good meat at that. They bobbed their heads together for a minute, discussing the opportunity. When they had decided, the dark haired one nodded affirmation to Hans, and the ladies finally exited. Hans felt almost giddy with excitement. This was proving to be a most promising venture, with unparalleled potential for profit, not to mention all of the valuable information that he was learning in the process. A whole dimension of reality of which he had not been previously aware was now opened up to him like virgin territory, ripe for the taking. And he owed it all to that last transaction with poor dead Douglass.
There were no more customers that evening, and the next three days yielded no more than the usual traffic. Hans had expected that might be the case, now that he no longer possessed the amulet, and he was fine with it. What he had already gleaned was a great boost to his business numbers, and what he expected to gain in the future could well allow him to retire in the splendor of his forbears.
He didn't bother opening the shop on Saturday, instead spending the day thawing, slicing, and brining the steaks for Sunday dinner. He cut them nice and thick, leaving all the fat clinging to the sides. Each cut of meat was around three pounds, and the freezer, now installed on his back porch, was still mostly full. He started grilling after five o'clock on Sunday. He needed his small round grill, his large box grill, and his oven to get the job done, but he was skilled at grilling meat, and managed to produce three very large, hot, juicy, rare, steaks for his guests, and one broiled yet very nice medium rare cut for himself.
The ladies arrived promptly, entering through the front door, which Hans had opened for them. They were dressed in the same clothes they had before. Hans seated them at the table by pulling out their chairs for them one at a time, but didn't indicate which one of them should be seated in each chair. He watched carefully as first the dark haired one sat, then the red haired one, and finally the blonde, the same order in which they had entered both the pawn shop, and his home. Clearly, they had some sort of hierarchy.
Once they were all seated, Hans removed the lid of a large chafing dish, revealing the food dramatically. The ladies inhaled deeply, and gibbered their appreciation, reaching out with their hands as if to take the meat. Hans used a barbecue fork to serve each of them by lifting the large steaks onto earthenware dinner plates, which he carefully placed before them on the table in the same order in which they were seated. He watched as the dark haired lady at first excitedly grabbed the meat with her fingernails, but then glanced at the others, and sheepishly picked up a knife and fork from the table instead. She had no trouble with the utensils, despite her long nails. They all began cutting the steaks with single powerful strokes, shoving large bites into their mouths. Hans noticed for the first time, that they had sharp pointed teeth, needle like and slightly curved. The blonde haired lady noticed him noticing her teeth, and bared the full set at him menacingly, pulling the edges of her mouth back almost to the ears. Small bits of bloody meat stuck in between the narrow, crowded teeth, quivering with her breath. Hans looked around the table, and all three ladies were baring their teeth in the same way. Hans chuckled.
"You ladies have such beautiful smiles. I'm sorry I haven't seen them before. But, I am glad that you're enjoying the food. Very glad." He winked at the blonde lady, who stared at him for the space of three heartbeats, and then blushed, returning shyly to her meal.
"You know, ladies," Hans continued, charmingly, "It occurs to me that we've spent all this time together, and I don't even know your names. I apologize for being so inconsiderate as not to ask."
The ladies stopped chewing their meat, and stared at him apprehensively.
"Oh, it's fine if you don't want to give me your family surname. I just need something to call you individually, you understand. I feel a bit silly just repeating the word ladies all the time. Your first names will be just fine."
The blonde lady snickered. "Ourr firrsst namess? You wouldn't efen be able to pronounce them. No one speakss that language anymorre." Her voice was similar to that of the dark haired lady, though somewhat higher pitched. It was the first time Hans had heard her speak in English. The dark haired lady was glaring angrily across the table at her, Hans noticed.
"Well, now ladies, there's nothing to be upset about. What is said at this table shall stay at this table, on my honor" Hans said solemnly.
The dark haired lady snorted, and a small puff of orange flames flew from her nostrils, but she nodded in agreement, and the others followed her lead.
"Megarakore," said the dark haired lady.
"Alektakore," said the red haired lady.
"Tsisiphankore," said the blonde lady.
Hans smiled warmly. "There now, we're all good friends at last. It's a genuine pleasure to properly meet you all finally, Megarakore, Alektakore, Tsisiphankore. Those are all lovely names, but I promise not to use them publicly. Instead, I will call you Megan, Alexa, and Sissy. That should be safe enough."
They passed the rest of the meal in cordial conversation. Hans told them stories about his upbringing, and about the pawn business, while he probed them for harmless personal details every so often, while complementing them on anything he could think of. He learned a few things, but the ladies were fairly tight lipped. They did not reveal their origins to him, as he had hoped. At the end of the evening, Megarakore demanded to know what boons Hans had decided to ask for. Hans deflected, said that he wasn't sure yet, but invited them all back for another Sunday dinner. Next time, he promised, there would be wine to wash down the beef. At the mention of wine, they readily agreed.
This happened every Sunday over the next six weeks. Eating meat, drinking wine, talking together of many things, postponing the boons. Each time, Hans learned just a tiny bit more about them. He had actually made up his mind about the first thing that he wanted, weeks ago, and was just seeing how long he could drag things out, to satisfy his own curiosity. By the seventh Sunday, he had exhausted his supply of beef, and fed the ladies with two mutton legs and a whole roasted pig. He would never forget the sight of Sissy gnawing on the head, before Megan tore it away, broke it open, and slurped out the brain. Alexa had snatched the tongue out before Sissy got to it, and quietly chewed on that while the other two tussled. Hans smiled and chuckled at these little informal moments. It showed him that they were getting more familiar, grown comfortable in his home, in his presence. He decided it was finally time for that first boon.
At the end of their evening, he addressed himself formally to Megan, as he had learned was the proper order of things, Megan being the leader of the trio. He asked for the most obvious of things, enough wealth on which to retire in the rich manner of his ancestors, if they had also had every modern convenience, of course. But, less obviously, he asked for all that to come in a way that would seem completely legitimate to anyone who might be concerned, and without the specter of death attached to it. He felt that this stipulation would guarantee him the least amount of the type of trouble that seemed to always accompany such wealth.
"Sso sshall it be!" Megan exclaimed with an extravagant flourish.
The very next day, the boon was accomplished. Just like that. A man with an expensive haircut, and much more expensive shoes, clumsily lugged a heavy object into the pawn shop. It looked like an old cooking pot, big enough for a twenty pound turkey, but the man was straining so hard to carry it that it could have been made of pure iron. It had a dark gray patina that obscured some sort of decorative work covering the surface. When the man hefted it up onto the counter, however, the impact made a sound that Hans was very familiar with. That was not iron. Hans did not let his excitement show, but asked the man what could be done for him. He replied that he wanted to pawn this fine antique pot, from the Rococo period, for five thousand dollars. Hans, as shrewd as ever, scoffed, and refused outright. The man insisted. Hans countered that he might consider buying something like that for three thousand. The man swore that it was worth at least six thousand, not even noticing that he had gone from pawning to selling. Hans offered three and a quarter thousand. They settled on four thousand, which Hans payed in cash, and made the man sign a receipt. Hans walked him out, and then locked the door, turning over the We're Open sign to the We're Closed sign. He got some soapy water and shop towels, and started wiping away the grimy patina of the pot. He barely breathed as the dirt of centuries washed away, confirming his suspicion. In the clean spot he saw the unmistakable glint of gold. As he wiped off more and more of the dirt, he looked over the decorative figures, and while he didn't know everything about art history, he could tell that this object was not made in the Rococo period. It was surely much older than that, oh so very much older. It wasn't precisely a pot, either. This thing would be more accurately termed a cauldron. He cleaned it as much as he could without special tools, and stood back to examine the tableau displayed on it's sides. Pictured there were figures of people and creatures like giant preying mantises, as well as some sort of bestial characters with beards of short tentacles, all walking toward a free standing arch or doorway. He found it incredibly odd.
Hans didn't think that he could sell the golden cauldron on his own, but he knew some people who knew some other people that probably could. So, he made some phone calls, and before the day was over, a representative for a buyer came to the shop to examine the cauldron. They struck a deal immediately, and transferred funds into Hans' bank account right there in the shop. The cauldron was hauled out, wrapped in protective blankets, by two men that the representative had brought along, and Hans was five million dollars richer.
The next Sunday's dinner was lavish. Hans served beef, monkfish, mutton chops, and roast goose, with a dozen bottles of different expensive wines, including champagne, and desserts featuring german chocolate layer cake and five flavors of ice cream. The ladies devoured the meat, ignoring the roast goose, sampled each of the desserts, and guzzled down the champagne. It was a glorious, gluttonous, bacchanal. Hans declared that his good fortune was his friends' good fortune, and earned himself a slap to the face by drunkenly trying to kiss Sissy on the cheek. He realized that she could have knocked his head off, but chose to withhold her full strength, and burst out laughing for a full minute. By the end of that minute, they were all laughing, and the ladies' laughter was a bone chilling cacophony of raptors' shrieks. In the afterglow of that moment, Hans decided to ask for his second boon. This one went to Alexa. He requested the ability to know the secrets of others, gleaned from their minds without their awareness.
"Sso sshall it be," declared Alexa, softly.
The following evening, Alexa appeared in the pawn shop, alone. She presented Hans with a leather bag filled with black lumps of an unidentifiable vegetal substance that reeked of mushrooms and rotting chrysanthemums.
"Forr tea," she explained. "Only a pinch. It will giff a window into otherr mindss, forr a timme, to ssee theirr secretss."
Hans accepted gladly. As Alexa left the shop, she looked back at him over her shoulder for several seconds, studying him coolly. He could not read her expression. And then she swept out the door, into the street.
Hans began to use the tea the next morning. All day long he heard the secret thoughts of his customers, the mundane, the obscene, and the terrible. It was as if those thoughts which they held most tightly, down in the depths of their minds, flew out like moths drawn to the flame that was the extraordinary power of Hans' ability. It gave him such an edge in negotiating prices that he tripled his usual daily earnings, not that money was of much concern to him anymore. He had more than enough now to satisfy his earthly desires, and had already begun planning the best ways to spend it. This, however, was about more than mere wealth. He was using the pawn shop as a testing ground for his ability, but he had a much grander design in mind, and one which would elevate his station beyond anything ever dreamed of by any of his relations. But that would all come in due time. For the moment, he found it useful to maintain the low profile that had served him well all of his life. There was no sense in drawing attention by putting on airs.
There was a building in town that had once been a freemasons lodge. They had built themselves a larger and grander temple in a different part of town some years ago, and the old building had held various short lived enterprises since then. Hans bought the building, charmed by the architectural resemblance to ancient places of worship. Considering it's estimated value, he was able to negotiate a price that was incredibly low, due to being able to manipulate the previous owner through hints at his secret sins.
The building was clean and in good repair. It just needed a few small renovations to restore it to it's original layout. He ordered good solid furniture and expensive silk cushions, velvet curtains, and a large, ornate, solid oak table. All that took only three weeks, and then Hans moved his Sunday dinner with the ladies into the lodge. It was the thirteenth dinner they had had together. They had their feast on silver platters, with real silverware utensils that they hardly even used, and drank champagne from fine crystal goblets. On this occasion, Hans gave gifts to the ladies. Matching gold necklaces with emerald pendants delighted them. It was as though no one had ever given them jewelry of their own before, and they were not immune to the female fascination with glittery baubles. Secretly, out of sight of the others, Hans also gave Sissy a ruby ring.
Hans had decided on his third and final boon, this one going to Sissy for fulfillment. He was not a romantically inclined man, having been disappointed by love several times in his younger years. When he got the urge to indulge himself in carnal lust, he did so without attachment, or promises of a deeper relationship that would, he knew, eventually wither and die. He did not hope for emotional fulfillment, having resigned himself to a solitary life without such ephemeral luxury, but he had always wished for more prowess in the physical act of passion. He sometimes found his stamina diminishing, his interest and focus waning, just when he wanted them to increase. So, the boon that he asked from Sissy was to have that prowess increased to the point where he was better at sex than any other mortal that had ever lived.
"Sso it sshall be," Sissy purred, with a little sigh of pleasure. She took his hand, and gently lifted it to her lips, whereupon she flung open her jaw and bit deeply into the flesh. Hans felt some sort of acidic liquid enter the veins of his hand, and begin to spread through his body. He swooned and fell back into the silk cushions. When he awakened, the ladies were gone, and the wound on his hand had closed up, although it did bear a scar.
Hans closed the pawn shop, and spent the week settling all of the old business associated with it. During that time, he intentionally flirted with every attractive woman with whom he had any interaction, with astounding success. The ones he deemed worthy were taken to the lodge, where he bedded them, and gave them the most pleasurable experience of their lives, making sure to push himself to ever greater heights of ecstasy. Whatever energy he reached for, in pursuit of any sensation, was always there at his grasp. He felt like a god.
Sunday evening came, and Megan, Alexa, and Sissy, came to the lodge for dinner, which was as lavish as before. Sissy inquired if Hans was satisfied with his boon. He joyfully replied in the affirmative. She seemed pleased, as did they all. Megan announced that this would be their last Sunday dinner. The boons, she explained were now fulfilled, and the ladies had been away from their proper home for much too long. They were expected. They were late. Hans had somehow forgotten that the end of his boons would mean their leaving. Now that the moment had come, it made him feel sad. True, the strange creatures he had called his ladies were perhaps never truly his friends, having been beholden to him, but he had treated them as though they were, and had even begun to feel a certain unaccustomed attachment to them. He felt, quite strongly, that he could not abide letting them go so summarily. He needed something, yet, something to comfort him on the closing of their association. An idea occurred to him, an idea so strangely familiar, as though it were fated. It was a mad idea, totally improper, an unnatural obscenity. He could not resist it.
"My ladies," he said, "Megarakore, Alektakore, Tsisiphankore, if this is to be our last evening together, would you, in honor of the kindness I have shown you over the past months, join me in a different sort of celebration?"
They fell still and silently stared at him more intently than he had ever been looked at before, as though they gazed into his very soul, waiting on his explanation.
"I mean that, if it pleases you, I should very much like to show you my sincere affection, with the physical act of love." As that final word fell from his lips for the first time in years, he felt the unfamiliar weight of it.
"Loff?" asked Megan. "You sspeak of loff, to uss? You wish to -make loff, with uss?"
"Yes, if you have any affection for me, as I have for you. Sissy? Surely you feel something for me?"
"Yess," agreed Sissy. "I do. Shall we, sistersss?"
The ladies nodded to each other, smiling wide, revealing all of their teeth. They pulled off their black capes and gowns. The strange black shoes which they always wore split apart into sections, not shoes at all but scaley claws with talons. Their serpentine tails unwound from their nether regions, whipping about their black scaley legs. The soft, black down that coated their bodies from thigh to shoulder, was parted on their chests, revealing black veined dugs which hung like over ripe fruit. They closed on Hans, embracing him with strong, feathered arms, gripping his limbs with the talons of their hands, pulling him down into a pile of cushions. They tore his clothes off in rags. They slid their tails down and around his legs, tightening just enough to make him gasp. They lapped at his neck and face with their long wet tongues, making him shiver. Each of them had their way in turn, taking advantage of his unnatural prowess. At the moment of his climax, his mind was filled with a rapture, a bliss which he had never known. He felt no pain as his ladies pierced his flesh with their talons, noticed no discomfort as they pulled his shoulders and hip joints apart. As his body was rent asunder and his own blood splashed back down upon him, the warmth of it only added to his pleasure. He experienced no agony, until the very moment that his manhood was separated from his loins. The scream that tore out of his throat was drowned out by the ecstatic raptor screeching of his ladies. His vision faded to the blackness of the void.
Megarakore, Alektakore,and Tsisiphankore, donned their ancient garb once more, departing the lodge in silence. They climbed the service stairs to the roof, where they lifted their arms, and at last allowed the wind to carry them homeward.

(I'm posting this review here as the clinic have somehow managed to get my review removed from google)
I first came here in April 2022 to have a DHI hair transplant and was relatively impressed overall. My hair on the temples was thinning a lot and the hairline has now grown back. It is still quite patchy (9 months post op) on the left side but I hope this will improve when I have a full result in a few months. Most likely, however, I will need to have another hair transplant at some point as currently I have to do a sort of side parting to cover this patch. I have met patients who had Dr Cinik personally open their channels and their results are far superior to my own so I would advise you do this if you go to this clinic as you will otherwise have a young and inexperienced technician working on you.
With regards to the operation, everything ran quite smoothly and I quickly realised that it was a fairly high-quality operation, with a well-planned itinerary for each patient.
Despite having less than optimal results, I was impressed enough to decide to return at the start of this month for a beard transplant. The experience was not so positive. While the staff at the clinic are still very nice, supportive and professional, there are a number of things that were just not good enough.
My main issue is that the beard line they gave me is not level on both sides. It is about 2-3mm higher on the right side and is very obvious from a side profile.
Dr Cinik drew the line pre-surgery and I commented that it was not even on both sides. He said that they would correct it in surgery. I was surprised that he did not want to take the time to re-draw it himself as this was the only job he had to do. I reminded the technician performing the surgery about this before the operation started and the line was redrawn.
They showed me the results at the end of the operation and I noticed that it was still not even on both sides. When I mentioned it again I was fobbed off by the senior overseers and told that they had measured it and that it only appeared different because of swelling. The swelling has gone now and as suspected, it is not even. This is something very basic that you should not get wrong.
There were other issues-
The clinic has recently opened a second site in Istanbul and some patients are sent to this second location to have their transplants done. The facilities here are not to the same standard as the main location.
In the main location patients have their hair cut by a professional barber in what resembles an on-site barbershop. In the second location (where I went this time) hair is cut in the operating room by a random member of the team and I was told to hunch forward on a stool and was not able to see what they were doing as there was no mirror. It has been poorly and unevenly shaved, with little care, with a slanting line on the side, and an extremely high line, so even though I was told I would be able to keep my hair on the top, I will now need to go to the barbers to have a buzz cut because of this. To give an idea of how sloppy it was, the hair cut took about 10 seconds, and I was left with an embarrassingly poor haircut post-surgery.
I was also very frustrated and stressed out by breakdowns in communication between staff. I spent 45 minutes looking for the man at the airport who was supposed to direct me to the taxi because he simply was not where the clinic had told me he would be. He eventually appeared and acted as if he had been there the whole time.
On my final day I also had to pay a late checkout fee of 50 euros at the hotel which the clinic had booked for me as part of the package. This was because the clinic told me that I did not need to check out yet and to head to the clinic for a post op check and first wash, after which I would return to the hotel and then airport. When I returned to the hotel to pack for my flight, the concierge demanded a 50 euro half day late checkout fee.
It's clear that I should have checked out before going to the clinic and not returned to the hotel at all.
I complained to the clinic about this and was told that they were sincerely sorry and that this had been caused by a breakdown in communication between them and the car driver company. Despite this and acknowledging their mistake they refused to refund me the 50 euros. I was shocked by this. I pressed again for it and was told that I need a receipt from the hotel, which of course I did not have. I decided to let it go.
Overall it was an unsatisfactory experience from start to finish on my second visit here. The fact that Dr Cinik could not be bothered to re-draw an uneven hairline says it all. I would argue that the clinic is sacrificing quality in search of profits. Inexperienced technicians are given free rein to operate as they take in what I estimate to be 25-30 patients a day. There also appears to be a breakdown in communication as they are expanding and taking on more patients than they can comfortably handle. Most importantly I have been left with an asymmetrical result which I am not completely happy with.
I would advise patients who still want to go here to be extremely cautious and offer to pay the maximum possible to try to ensure you get the most experienced technician there is. I still think you would be better advised going to a smaller clinic where there is quality control.

For those who don't have time to read
I was too lazy to build a complete model. Much of the math here is eyeballing, relying on the sell-side who have done the modelling for me already being wrong, and table napkin math and this is not investment advice.
I have UNS Jan 37/39 that I intend on switching to Jun/Sep and GPC May 170/155 spreads plus a wide range of UNS 38 Puts from Apr to Sep.
I recommend puts/bear spreads on UNS & GPC in a 50-50 ratio. Earliest June.
This is because
1) operating margins should go down,
2) there may be potential hits to EPS from the impairment of goodwill,
3) there is market and multiple-based overvaluation relative to historical troughs. You also won't be chasing the trend after it has happened like those schmucks in WSB.
Earnings come out end Jan and end Apr for GPC, and early Feb and early May for UNS if I am not blind. The end.
For those who have time to read.
An intro to distributors.
The great thing about distributors is that they will typically always turn a positive income because they can choose where to buy, when to buy, who to sell to. If they can't, you have massive problems. As such, they are highly cash generative and a genuinely good distribution company is a great investment.
Revenues change at the whims of the market. Margins are what distributors control and are almost everything.
However, because of everything above, they are dependent on good decision-making – you need that to optimize the value you are squeezing out of the supply chain . And that implies the need for good management, and good decisions with M&A so as not to burn cash. And the stock price can also be overvalued, obviously.
THE REAL QUESTION: WHAT ARE THE HEADWINDS TO STOCK PRICES OF AUTO DISTRIBUTORS SPECIFICALLY?
As I mentioned,
1) operating margins are almost everything,
2) The industry is constantly undergoing consolidation. Large players engage in heavy M&A and overpaying for acquisitions is another driver of share price dips – thus another downside risk from potential hits to EPS from impairment of goodwill,
3) market and multiple-based overvaluation.
#1 What makes you think margins will go down?
One image that says a lot. Orange highlights are below the 20Y averages for all companies in their respective block.
Now,
A little context on UNS.
Let me first run you through a history of UNS' management situation.
Management has changed hands very frequently in the last decade. Margins were downhill and the company was in deep stuff back in 2015, and so management was switched. Upon which, margins rose dramatically, before starting to fade again. It occurred again in 2019 with Brent Windom, and then margins rose a little before going to the gutter due to COVID. And it occurred again in June 2021 when Brent Windom retired and Brian McManus took over, upon which margins shot back up.
Brent Windom (2019-2021) who spent 30 years in the auto industry could not fix margins – for all we know, he was just unlucky to run into the pandemic. However, the slowing margins in late 2019 suggest otherwise.
Brian McManus is impressive. 18 years in Stella-Jones is nothing to scoff at, and SJ stock apparently plunged on his departure of SJ. Shareholders will try to kick you out if you are doing poorly and that he was there for that long, shows immense skill. And he is certainly much more than some random keyboard regard like me. But if an auto industry CEO of 30 years could not do it, can a seasoned wood producer CEO of 20 years? That question is untested as I believe the macro environment has greatly supported margins (as you will see below). And I am veering towards: NO , I believe there is something fundamentally wrong with the company. Is it economies of scale, poor workflow processes, or unmotivated personnel? I have no clue what exactly, but their baseline margins, absent the great inflationing was a recurring problem, and I do not think this has changed.
What are expectations for UNS?
Mid 7%s for 2023. This is absolutely a fever dream given that their 10Y range averages about 3-5% with many more down years than up, and 7.5% is not just a rarity, it is almost an anomaly. It was only seen in 1 or 2 quarters from 2009 – 2021. That is about 1/25, I did the math for you. So to expect 4 more 7.5%s on average in 2023 absent any significant improvement is astounding.
I believe this is simply a case of analysts following the trend after it has been established. (see the section "A Hypothesis on Distributor Margins")
But is the margin improvement due to cost initiatives, trimming of the fat, blah blah…?
All companies with bad but improving margins will tell you that. And as you can see here, margins have come up across the board for both auto retail and auto distributors. So I believe we are seeing the increase more due to the nature of the industry than individual initiatives.
What about GPC?
#1 is not an issue for GPC as it is for UNS as they have actually seen their margins at this level many times before. I think management is ok. CEO has been in charge for a long time and incentives are more or less on par in quality with UNS (some EBITDA which is bad, some working capital management which is good, sales which is good).
_ So why did margins go up in the first place? Why will they go down? _
A Hypothesis on Distributor Margins
Consider a drop-shipping business that buys custom equipment parts from parts of Asia such as Taiwan or Japan, and then re-sells it in Country X.
Consider a situation of increasing inflation in Country X. Basic economics says that your currency should devalue (see Venezuela for a spectacular example). However, strong distributors can pass their costs on to their buyers because they are they control so much of the distribution network. Who would you use otherwise, and would you know where to source your parts? The leading auto part distributors in U.S. and Canadas are LKQ, GPC, UNS followed by AZO, AAP and ORLY which do a mix of distribution and retail. Thus the net effect is:

1. inflation ↑, currency value ↓, distributor costs ↑
2. distributor services charge when passed to consumers ↑, revenue ↑

The net effect is an even margin.
However, Country X happens to be the fucking United States, where we have the global reserve currency, inflation is apparently transitory and the market is extremely forward looking. Thus it does not matter that inflation is approaching 9% in late 2021-2022, the DXY has barely gone below 90 (value at the start of Jan 21), because 1) equity buyers think: inflation will go away, US stocks are mooning and I need USD, 2) bond traders suspect Fed will hike, so equity FOMOs/bond traders front run the market and USD is supported. Thus the net effect is:

1. inflation ↑, currency value ↑ ????, distributor costs ↓
2. distributor services charge when passed to consumers ↑, revenue ↑

And the net effect is an outsized increase in margin.
So why will they go down?
To begin, according to Bloomberg, YoY auto part inflation has ranged from 12%-15% (peak in June) and as of September is at mid-13s. This is against a range of mid-0s (Jan '21) to mid-11s (Dec '21).
And when this returns to normal… I want to note that UNS traditionally does not have strong EBIT margins, while GPC has a traditional 15Y margin slightly lower than it is now and a much lower recent 2018-2020 margin (due to its own company issues).

1. The reason that I think margins will normalize soon is
   1. The dollar is weakening. (see above hypothesis)
   2. The inflation excuse will start to get stale soon enough. Savings are dropping across the board, and UNS especially has half of its business in some very weak markets like UK, followed by Canada.
2. Revenues of the small-medium car part retailers are starting to tank (see image for last quarter revenue surprises), and so I suspect that auto distributors are going to have less business soon / their days of gouging are over. I mean, look at CVNA and WSBs obsession with being late to the party as always. Lucky for you, we are trying to be first in on the trade this time… That aside, it is a rather large extrapolation and thus a flimsy reason, I know. Some extra notes:
   1. I tried going back to the dot-com bubble and looking for a lag relationship between auto retailers' stocks and auto part distributors but came up short. The correlation is strong but saying there was a lag relationship would be a stretch.

So what are your margin projections and how do they impact price?
GPC: Assuming it does not break the curse of 2018-2020 completely, I think 7% is reasonable into 2023 and 2024. Without going to deep into the rough math, at a cost of capital of 7% and taking only 2 years of projections (not good practice) this would be about a 10% headwind to stock price. Alternatively, I expect a 7% hit to EPS expectations next year on a recalibration to 7% margins when it becomes clear that estimates were overoptimistic.
UNS: My opinion of course but 7.5% for 2023 is crazy talk for a company that has done 3-5% their whole life and does not even have that much scale. I think 5-5.5% is reasonable going into 2023. Taking the average (5.25%) gives a large 0.95 CAD (39%!) hit to earnings expectations, on margins alone.
#2 What makes you think there may be impairment risk?
The meat of the play is really in the overvaluation and margins argument, and this is kind of icing on the cake plus my hands are getting tired.
GPC has been making several mid-sized acquisitions as of late. About 7% of their capitalization on acquisition, one in 2017 and one just last quarter. In mid-2020, they did one of their first ever write-downs as things were looking increasingly bad. I think that there will be additional downward pressure from the distribution business that was acquired at the height of the inflationing.
UNS has a massive acquisition in UK (about 23% market cap at the time) from September 2017 that has yet to come back to bite them, but if they did not write down from COVID I do not expect this to be a trend.
#3 Why do you think, data-wise, that there is overvaluation?
This is a repeat of my comment on Friday. I would like to add that I am stupid and got the exchange rate wrong, so the estimates for UNS are actually 45 CAD and we are at the price target.

• We are far from the multiple troughs seen in the 2010-2015 period, where demand was relatively weaker and inflation smaller (companies like GPC ~10-12x fwd Ev/EBIT in 2010-2015 vs. about ~18x as of this post, UNS 9-12x fwd EV/EBIT vs. about 13.5x as of this post)
  
• Short floats 0% (UNS) and around 2-3% (GPC) if my sources are correct. The trade is relatively uncrowded, which is good.
  
• Analysts are still counting on company expectations for 2023... of all things! And the crazy thing is even after all that, the current prices of some stocks are still above analyst expectations. (20% for GPC, 0% for UNS) I would like to add that, even though it is not done here, I usually take a 10% haircut from analyst price targets because I do not agree with the cost of capital values, and some analysts may have the incentive to promote the company/be overly bullish.
  

Overall, a return to that trough would give us about 34 for UNS, and lower than 150 for GPC.
OTHER QUESTIONS
Why don't you use 2008 or the COVID recession as a benchmark?
I think using either of these as a benchmark for this recession is too bearish. GFC involved a loss of confidence in the financial system, and COVID had outsized impacts on certain industries due to the nature of a pandemic (such as the auto industry). This recession is beginning to look like a mix of the dot-com (asymmetric impact on different industries), and the 1990s and 1970s recessions. Unfortunately, data from the 1970s and 1980s is hard to get. Thus, I tried to use the dot-com bubble and the post-GFC period, where growth was weak, as a reference as far as possible.
If you dislike UNS so much, why recommend a 50-50 split?
I have accepted that the market can be irrational for a longer time than it takes my puts to expire. And UNS seems to be a very low liquidity and relatively under-the-radar stock. Additionally, reading through the price history shows me that UNS is relatively resistant to drops in the S&P500 but very jumpy when the market is optimistic, which is silly. With GPC, I have both the support of the sell-side analysts' projections AND falling S&P500 if need be, and given that I see the index falling 10%, that is a rather good backup.
I should be opening naked shorts on UNS with a target of 2024 (no 2024 options available). But they don't have the leverage I want, and I am a degenerate.
What about the scenario where I timed it wrongly? (a supporting factor)
GPC and UNS trace the market drops fairly evenly (about 10% for 10% in the June and September dips). The one backup is that assuming earnings have 0 effects, and we go into a small recession by May, and the market drops 10% from current levels, we have GPC at about 165 and UNS at about 38.

I (40s male) have been with my wife for some 25 years, the last 19 of which we have been mostly very happily married. We are both busy professionals and have two great kids. We’re a very good couple and love each other completely. I am also still crazy attracted to my wife as she’s in great shape and looks fantastic for her age.
There is this thing, however. Every so often my wife gets a bolt of inspiration, goes to an edgy hair stylist downtown, and gets a super short, asymmetric bang-less haircut that I absolutely hate to the bottom of my soul.
Now, I hate that I hate it because I want to support her in whatever aesthetic choice she makes for herself, and because I wish I were less superficial, and because I believe men shouldn’t be telling women how to look.
But…it simply makes me less attracted to her. It puts distance between us. You will have to trust me when I say that the haircut is so bad that it makes her look like she’s mentally unstable (I swear to you that my kid asked me just today if mommy was having an “anxiety attack or something”). You will have to trust me when I say that our marriage is really good, we tell each other almost every thought we have, and she is mentally very stable. The haircut is not a message to me or a cry for help. It is just really bad and my wife thinks it’s cool.
So, the not so simple question is: how in the hell do I tell her?

I'm traveling for work to the land of racehorses and bourbon.
At breakfast this morning someone spilled the hot water from the coffee station, and the hotel staff quickly dealt with the situation. Towels, mops, and one "Wet Floor" sign were in place in very short order.
I wait for them to finish cleaning it up, grab my tea, and tuck in to my breakfast at a table a few steps away.
Along comes Karen, with her asymmetrical haircut and sunglasses on top of her head at 6:45 in the morning.
Cast:
Karen: We all know. Mary Jane: The poor person dealing with the breakfast area in this hotel. I named her this because of her resemblance to Mary Jane in Spiderman. She'll be 'MJ' after this. Sarah: A manager with the personality of a certain cyborg-terminating movie heroine.
Karen: "Why is this sign here? It's in the way."
MJ: "Because the floor is wet."
Karen: "So clean it up."
MJ: "We did. But the floor is still wet."
Karen: "So do something!"
MJ: "We did. We put up a sign."
Karen: "Why didn't you dry the floor?"
MJ: "We did. But there's always a bit of water left that has to dry."
Karen: "So go get a heater or something."
MJ: "You're upset that the sign is in the way, but an electric heater on a wet floor wouldn't be in the way?"
Karen: "How hard is this? DRY. THE. FLOOR!!" She actually stomped hard enough doing this to break a heel off of her imitation Louboutins.
Karen: "LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!! YOU'RE BUYING ME NEW SHOES!! WHERE'S THE MANAGER!?!?"
MJ: "Standing behind you ma'am."
Karen had to make a 3-point turn with her broken shoe, but she turns and immediately starts screaming in this woman's face. She had been assaulted. MJ has screamed in her face that she could go fuck herself. MJ had called her a "stupid boomer", along with a host of other names. MJ had tried to hit her with the sign, causing her to try to flee, and breaking her $1000 shoes in the process. The thought never occurred to her that if the manager was standing behind her, she had seen the whole thing.
Sarah: "Really? That's terrible. Should I call the police to report this horrible assault?"
Karen: "YES!! That's exactly what I want!! And I want that bitch to buy me new shoes!! Not you!! Her!! When she can't pay her rent and she ends up homeless, I want her to know that it happened because she didn't KNOW. HER. PLACE."
Sarah: "OK, I'll call them down here and we can look at the camera footage together. Do you have the model name and size of those shoes? I'll check the website to get the proper costs for the police report."
Karen: "Cameras?"
Sarah: "Yes, the cameras. I'll be happy to turn the video over to the police."
Then Sarah's customer service smile drops off.
"On the other hand, the officers might not take kindly to coming here to arrest this woman if the cameras dont show this terrible assault." She reaches into her pocket, dials a number, and puts the phone to her ear.
Karen: "What are you doing?"
Sarah: "Calling the police. I'm not going to tolerate a guest being assaulted in my hotel."
Karen: "Forget it! I don't have time for this!" She kicks her other fake heel across the room and stomps barefoot out of the restaurant. It took a few seconds for everyone to go back to their breakfast, and Karen has not been seen since.

I figured it's been a while since we got a good MaliciousCompliance story on this sub, and I stumbled into this one! They're less "updates" than they are additions to the "compliance", so I won't mark the other posts as updates because I feel that wording is incorrect. Also, marked as concluded at a mod's suggestion
I am not the OP, which is u/dead_PROcrastinator. These were all posted in MaliciousCompliance
Original Post - You want me to take my jacket off? You got it boss! (Posted Sep. 23, 2021)
I work at a secondary education institution. Anyone who has worked in academia will confirm that it's a different brand of crazy. Adding on to that, our staff has no balance in gender or ethnicity - so it's the opposite of toxic masculinity (Toxic femininity? Doesn't quite roll off the tongue). Anyway, with weak management, it has essentially become a Mean Girls Club. The Boss Lady's PA is basically Queen Bee with the rest of us being lowly worker bees. As I am not someone to kiss ass, I am often not very well liked, hence the lowest worker bee.
Work buys staff shirts for everyone with our logo on, about three or four times a year. They are usually nice golf shirts, or button up shirts. But the last time? Oof. This is an actual shirt Queen Bee was wearing one day. Boss Lady literally squealed in delight like a toddler when she saw it, insisting that all of us get one of those. Guys. Let me describe this monstrosity.
It was mainly navy blue, with a type of print. Think paisley, but not quite. This shirt was filled with cartoonish squiggles and doodles that made absolutely no sense. Apples, fleur-de-lis, sea shells, even tiny little fish skeletons. They danced and merged in every direction, in violent shades of teal, beige, salmon pink, turquoise green and neon purple (So versatile! You can wear it with so many different colours!). And if the design wasn't bad enough, the fit was even worse. A size that normally hugs my figure, fit me like a circus tent. It billowed out from right under my boobs and was so long, the bottom seam came in just above my thighs - the most unflattering cut I have ever worn. It was like a blind person tried to make maternity wear and changed their mind halfway through. It was also sleeveless.
The only one of us who voiced her reservation was forced to give it back. She was visibly happy that she wouldn't have to wear it, and this pissed management off. The shirt was made mandatory on Mondays. Being a person that never gets hot, I wore a jacket over it every time, showing as little of it as I could. One day, to solidify our loyalty, it was decided to take a group photo that purposefully excluded the shirtless one. Being super short, I was placed in front. Boss Lady looked us over and promptly declared "ZM, you'll remove your jacket, thank you".
I replied that I would really rather not. She insisted, and we go back and forth. But they were all of them deceived... I'm quite reserved, so no-one at work really knows me. I never wear anything sleeveless, because I have tattoos all over my shoulder and halfway down my upper arm. I always look "normal" and professional, wearing tailored jackets, cardigans or three-quarter sleeves. Cue malicious compliance...
"You want me to take my jacket off?"
"I insist!"
"No exception?"
"None"
I remove my jacket and toss it out of the frame in one of the coolest gestures I have ever been able to perform. I turn forward with my left shoulder facing the camera, and reveal a grim reaper with a sweeping scythe and blue wings (that actually matched the ghastly shirt quite well, now that I think about it). There is a noticeable intake of breaths, and the whole group falls silent, waiting in anticipation to see who would triumph. It was like a shootout between two gunmen in a Western.
I look at her blankly, internally screaming "Dafuq you gonna do now bitch?!" and I'm pretty sure she heard me. Boss Lady realizes she can't go back on what she said without looking like even more of an ass than she already does, and turns to face the camera. Y'all, that was one of my favourite pictures of all time.
Pissed off Boss Lady in front, with a smile that just "doesn't reach her eyes". Tatted up admin immediately to her left with the biggest grin in the whole picture. Everyone else's faces were a mixture of amusement and confusion, Queen Bee slightly frowning as she was still trying to figure out what the fuck just happened. Marketing showed it to me before deleting it and we had a few laughs - needless to say, that photo did not make it into the newsletter, as was originally intended.
TLDR; I wear a jacket to hide a hideous work shirt we are forced to wear. Boss orders me to take it off for a photo. I comply and show my unorthodox tattoos, ruining their photo in the process.
Second Post: You want your team to wear makeup? You got it! Posted Dec. 11, 2021 (recovered via unddit)
My SO and I worked at the same place for a while. He was the only man on the team. The woman who was the boss's pet would dress in "vintage" clothes and always wore disturbingly bright shades of makeup. One day during a staff meeting, the boss was extremely annoyed that Pet was "the only one wearing makeup, who cares about looking professional". Most of us were wearing makeup and lipstick, just more neutral and normal colours.
Well, before the next meeting, the women were passing around a ridiculously bright lipstick and eye shadow - to prove a point, we would all go in looking like hookers. My SO looks on and asks "What about me?" I knew the look on his face promised a good time to come. To the rest of the team's surprise, he slathered on the offending colours.
As the meeting started, the boss looked at each of us in turn and smiled. But the look of horror on this sexist, fifty puls-year-old, conservative, Christian, white woman's face when she saw my SO practically in drag makeup, was priceless. He just shrugged and said, "You wanted your team to wear makeup - here we are".
She never made a comment about anyone on the team wearing makeup again.
Final Post: You want me to wear this shirt? Again?? You got it, boss! Posted Oct. 17, 2022
So this post follows on a previous post from a year back, regarding a hideous shirt we had to wear to work. You can read that post here . I think it's pretty cool. And if I have to recap, this post will be too long.
Socially and politically our work environment is a mean girls club. I work at a secondary education institution, on the Support team. For stupid reasons, a hideous shirt that one of the support staff was wearing one day, became our mandatory Monday shirt.
Cue this week - it's photo week. We are taking group photos of all the staff, learners, and various teams and committees. These are all going in the annual magazine, which is quite a big deal. All staff were informed that they could wear whatever they wished, as long as it lined up with the colour palette of the magazine - this was shared with everyone. They actually chose really pretty shades of pink, peach, mauve, and sky blue.
The Support team was really happy we could skip the ghastly shirt. Until we couldn't. Last week Thursday it was communicated to us that we would wear The Monstrosity. Of the whole institution, our group would be the only one that looked like shit.
The next day (Friday) I was at the hairdresser, and inspiration struck. I already have a short pixie cut that I colour ultra violet (basically very dark brown with a purple sheen). I revealed my plans to my stylist and she loved it.
After my haircut, I went shopping. Now one of the things touted as an 'advantage' of the ugly shirt was the array of colours it contained and how versatile it is, as "you can wear it with so many colours". I just don't think you were meant to wear all the colours together at once.
Now in my previous post, I ruined the photo when the sleeveless shirt unexpectedly revealed the tattoos on my left arm/shoulder. So I knew this year they would strategically place me with my right side facing forward (I know how they compose and space these photos by now, I've been here too long). So imagine their surprise when I pitch up with an asymmetrical pixie cut - long bangs sweeping to the left, regular sideburns to the left. And the right side shaved in a buzz cut. All coloured bright purple. Seriously, when I'm facing that way, I look... different.
So they try to subtly hide me in the middle, at the back, slightly behind the person to the left (to hide those pesky tattoos). Because if I'm facing forward, I look sufficiently professional. But I'm wearing killer platform heels (something I haven't done in ten years) which makes me almost a hand taller than everyone else. I politely decline their request to take my shoes off. So I have to sit in the front.
Now you can clearly see my formal dress pants in bottle green. As well as my undershirt in vibrant teal. My killer heels in pale, sparkly gold. And my wide salmon pink belt. Now, I didn't waste any money on these items. Wearing any of them alone or in different combinations look fine, so I will be using them all.
No matter what they tried, they could not find a way to make the group look "coherently polished and professional". Because one way they had a tatted up admin (if they photoshopped those out, I would complain politely but firmly). The other way they had an angry emo boy. One way the height was off. And the other way they had someone in an ensemble so garish it offended the senses.
This afternoon a while after work, we were informed that the group photo would be redone for the Support team. We were kindly requested to wear the colours as indicated in the colour palette tomorrow. In the group Whatsapp, I commented "Duly noted" and received a ton of pm's joking about it.
On the brighter side, I have received a ton of compliments on the hairstyle. Something so daring, in a sane environment I never would have tried it. I've coloured it back to dark ultra violet (box colour yo, takes 20 minutes), which compliments my light pink dress nicely. And the wide salmon pink belt rounds it off well.
I am not the OP!

I have a ghost.
In my house. I think.
My husband.
I think.
I’m tapping loudly on my computer. I do everything loudly now. I bang open cabinets, slam drawers, pound my fuzzy slippers heavily on the ground. To let the ghost know I’m here. To warn him of my presence. Because it’s when I’m sneaking… that he finds me.
This house aches. I ache - that kind of … rich people ache. A clean, hollow, Hitchcockian ache. A whistling ache. The wind rips right through you. I know because I’ve been both. A poor person’s ache feels damp. Heavy. Waterlogged. The wind can’t rip it. Nothing can.
I inherited this house. And ghosts aren’t the only things I’ve inherited with it. Brown widows (me?). Brown recluses (also me). Spindly creepy crawly heat-seeking things, determined to share my life. To take refuge from the doldrums of our island’s winter tantrums. I’ve been alone here for a year and a half, but still, every time I flip on a light switch to reveal a fat centipede skitter under my bed, or a gilt edged silver fish looking up at me from the clawfoot tub - hot terror catches me.
All creatures I somehow never remember seeing while my husband was alive. Sometimes I wonder if the house is really mine, or if it was always theirs. With the ringing absence of my late husband’s stewardship, it is changing hands, being returned back to the land. And the original owners are finding their way in through the cracks. Foundations loosening. Spirits and bugs welcome.
Looking at me, you wouldn’t think I’m the type to be haunted by the ghost of a husband who can’t move on. And yet, I fear, that is exactly what is happening.
It’s a little flattering, really. At 38, I’ve kept up pretty good. Mainly, my hair. It’s a little brassy from decades of blonde bottle dye, the ends crispy and straw-like, but I have not yet succumbed to that short haircut women fall victim to at my age. The haircut of a woman disappearing. A certain time of year I sport a rich, golden tan. But a lifetime of beach bumming with no sunscreen has taken its toll. My face dotted with faint patches and lines, settlers upon this land, seizing it and claiming it as their own. I’ve got the skinny legs of a teenager. Of a sand piper’s, nearly invisible, scurrying away from the crash of the shore. But my top half resembles that of a dumpling. Storing all my softness at my center, with heaving breasts like overripe fruit. My thinness radiating out, trying its best to stretch away, to defy the pull of a centrifugal dough ball force. I have small brown eyes. Almond shaped and light, like watery coffee with shiny hazel flecks. Big full lips, and a flat ass. A few tattoos. From over the years. Maybe a few more than I’d like. But, they prove good conversation starters anyway. I’m regular white, but don’t always look it, no one knows why. A Portuguese grandad on my mom’s side, I’ve heard? But like most family lore… probably meaningless.
I pad my way down the spiral staircase that dizzyingly dumps me at the door.
“Coming down!” I elongate the syllables like I’m trying them out for the first time.
—
March on the coast is unnerving.
Block Island has abandonment issues.
She shivers and creaks and forces you to love her. Once the tourists and second-homers pack up at the end of summer, she gives her chosen ones sixty days of pure pleasure, reigniting their shaken faith. Devilishly drawing them in, captivating them … until they become captive. Blinded by her piercing beauty, her golden September afternoons, her sweet loganberry harvest, the best of her treasures saved for the most loyal. Her October plenty. Her blazing red leaves and edible purple skies. Her bright salty mornings and crab boil nights. She wraps you in her arms so tight that come November - you can’t breathe. You’re being - choked. Her thrashing waters, a bride in hysterics. She cries “Why does everyone leave me?” “Why can’t they stay when I need them most?” The storm of her petulance tiring even herself out. Then, her loneliness turns punishing. “I love you, don’t leave me”. “Prove that you love me. Prove you won’t ever leave. If you truly love me, take my choppy seas and caustic winds. Take my blistering freeze, my cavernous hallows. Can you take it? My shrouded mourning gown, my grey forever.”
So we do. Until summer, when growing fat off the adoration of mere strangers, she turns her sun gaze away from the ones who steadied her in her bleak fit of winter. Bitterly, we blame the trampling tourist - you know the kind, throwing his money around and leaving. But deep down, every New Shoreham resident understands, if we sit still within ourselves, our ire is misplaced. That our woman chose someone else to shine on. We are back in competition with the handsome drifter.
So, March. March on the island is as sapless as it is serpentine. As dull as it is aching. Call it cabin fever. Call it winter blues. Call it anything other than what it is. A desire to leave.
—
My marriage to Jordan was fine. Really! We loved each other in a way that is truly underrated: A love balanced on the scales of “You don’t acknowledge my flaws, and I won’t acknowledge yours.” We supported each other and stayed out of each others way. The sort of love that has fallen out of fashion now. The kind where I didn’t work and I was fine with that. The kind where you both get what you asked for, then realize you both asked for the wrong thing, but you stick with it anyway. The kind where we never wanted kids because we never wanted to rouse such strong feelings. Even for each other. We did have a dog named Chester. And we loved him a medium amount. So it’s… strange that… now that Jordan’s dead… he wants me so bad.
I swipe my keys off the hook and zip my coat. A big puffy one I found in the attic. Forest green with a khaki collar. I smooth balm from the pocket over my chapping lips. I feel like he’s watching me. Even now.
“I’m going out” I yell, into the stagnant air.
—
The door chimes as I slink from the pitiless, ashen afternoon into the dark bar. Warm and humming - the belly of the whale. I sidle up and in the mirror, catch myself flipping my hair to one side and over my shoulder with wanton flair.
I had been a waitress all my life. Well, my previous life. My pre-Jordan life. Since I was 14, I worked the Rhode Inn every summer, wearing white t-shirts that read “Rhode Hard and Put Away Wet”. That’s where we met, actually. He was a city boy. Boston. Invested some capital in a few of our local dives along the coast. Degree in Finance, the whole bit. Did a good job, really. Not overbearing, not trying to “class it up”, corporatize us. They were popular little joints, so he wasn’t trying to fix what wasn’t broke.
“Want some oysters, Kat? Boat just came in.” Trish stood comfortably, some rags in hand, her red hair gelled back into one severe ponytail.
“Nah, I’m OK.”
“Ky’s out back.” She says, her back to me.
Her knees crack as she squats down, pulling sharpie-dated quart containers of soupy, red cocktail sauce out of a low boy. I try to sound casual, like I’m not quite sure why she’d be telling me where Ky is.
“Oh. OK.”
Ky was my weakness. Is now, and always will be forever, amen. The broad, thick chest of a working man. Sea grey eyes, and the touch of someone whose presence is so crushing he had to learn, the hard way, how to handle the delicate things he loomed over. Hapless and unpolished, but careful. A hearty grin when he’d give it.
I fidget with my wallet while Trish slides me a Sam Adams.
“Put that away!” she scolds.
“Thanks.” I smile sheepishly.
I put a coaster over my beer after the first sip and fish a pack of cigarettes out of my pocket.
—
Behind the restaurant, I hover. My plan is to wait for him to say something first. To happen upon me.
“Kat! Heads up!”
It’s Tony. My favorite pint-sized maniac, unloading ingredients from the back of a box truck with feverish irregularity. I look in the direction of his voice, and he lobs an industrial bag of sea salt at my head. I dodge it just in time. It puts out my cigarette.
“What the FUCK Tony!” I yelp.
“You’ll live!” He responds brightly, as I fumble with my lighter.
“Havin’ a drink?” He asks, candy-coated in envy. He slaps one commercial kitchen sized vacuum sealed pork loin over each shoulder and hops off the truck, his knees buckling ever-so-slightly.
I nod, taking a long drag.
“You can have that, by the way. It’s expired.” His “i’s” wide and throaty, an old-school New England accent stuck around his tonsils.
“Whatdoyathink I’m gonna need a five pound bag of expired salt for?”
“Your drive way!” Tony yells forcefully, rolling his eyes.
“Always tryin’ ta provide for the helpless widow…” I jab back, with over-measured precision and pitch perfect volume, aimed just-so at the back of the truck. Hoping Ky can hear.
Just then, Ky emerges, hauling clams, headed for the walk-in.
“I could think of something else to do with a helpless widow…” He breathes, brushing my coat with his crooked elbow.
The air between us sharpens.
And my unfortunate first thought is: Jordan.
Dammit. I might need this salt after all.
—
Amid the dregs of winter, having no job and a dead husband, I found I left the house less and less— which meant I rarely saw it from this angle. I pull into the driveway and idle, craning my neck up.
It’s impressive. Built in 1888, it’s a classic example of the Victorian style of architecture known as Queen Anne. Nantucket blue with white trim and cranberry stained accents. Three sweeping stories embraced by a wrap-around porch with turned posts, decorative brackets, and spindlework.
Its asymmetrical facade gives it the character of a person. Multifaceted, tiresome. Showing some things off with a flourish of Dutch gables—and concealing others, the way we do. Its most prominent features on display like stories we tell over and over at parties. Its second-story balcony almost pouts with disuse, sagging slightly under a proud polygonal turret, dramatically built on a series of bay windows—a final, trumpeting declaration. “I used to be someone, something”.
Not sure Jordan’s parents were too thrilled when he left the house solely to me. But they retained the Boston assets, washed me out of their Supper Club hair, and I got to stay. Here. At home. The island of my teenaged summers.
And so did Jordan. Apparently.
—
“I’m home!” I bang and crash through the foyer. “It’s fucking freezing in here.” I say aloud, the door slamming behind me.
It is then that I see it— four french doors helplessly thrashing against their frames in the wind. Cabinets in the kitchen all open. Whisks and muddlers violently askew on the floor. Umbrellas spilled from a shattered standing vase.
Then a side-splitting howl, as an angry gust of sea wind whips through the naked, open channel that is now my house. Suddenly, I kneel to the ground and weep. I give up. Why is he doing this to me?
—
It didn’t make sense. One, he didn’t die here. In the house. He died in a car accident. A little over a year ago. In Providence, on his way home from a lunch meeting. If people are going to haunt, they’re usually going to do it at the site of their death. Stuck there. Unwilling to move on, but unable to exist outside a loop, playing out their death over and over, trying to get it right this time. I know because I’ve done my research. Had a psychic over in November. A local woman with soft white hair piled on her head, an excess of earrings, and virtually non-stop chatter about angels. She refused to step beyond the porch, claiming she felt she wasn’t “invited” by the house, until I reminded her I’m the one “inviting” her to make that $100/hour she insisted on.
So. She tells me. If your loved one turns into a ghost, a haunting, a spirit caught between planes, it’s either because:
​

1. Their death was untimely
2. Their death was horrifically violent.

OK. Jordan was 49 when he died. So yes, too young. But not exceedingly young. Not “he had his whole life ahead of him" young. I mean, not two generations ago, that was a perfectly reasonable age to forever etch on a tombstone. His car accident, as tragic as it was, wasn’t exceptionally horrific either. Just your average death. Pretty symbolic of a lot in Jordan’s life.
But even if those two criteria were met, the psychic assured me that spirits of the departed are still likely to haunt the place they died in.
But he’s not haunting a busy stretch of I-95… He’s haunting me.
He died in me.
Somehow.
“And one more thing” she said. Stopping me, as her glasses fogged, one foot out the door, her pale eyes growing paler. “It could be unfinished business. That’s c.” The ABCs of haunting.
Unfinished business. The unfinished business of what exactly? I loved him—I want to make that one thing clear. I did love him. I smile when I think about his jet dark hair, perfect in that boxy, side-parted Republican way. His brooding countenance - the sort of etched severity that promises trouble below. Except with Jordan, there was no darkness. He had no demons. That was just how his face looked.
I miss his big vocabulary, that phone voice he reserved for “business calls”, the fake laugh he used on demanding restaurant patrons, or that easy way he fell asleep, every limb draped over mine.
He was never vindictive. Never looking for ways people could hurt him, the way I do. Sure, maybe… maybe we’d’ve been better off as friends, but we also wanted the same things: Comfort. This beach. Cold beer. This house. Using Chester-the-unruly-dog as an alibi to never visit his parents or sister. A medium sized boat.
He was never this passionate in life. He wasn’t even particularly stubborn. Unfinished business felt so uncharacteristically romantic by comparison. My throat itches as I wonder if the unfinished business we had was in never loving each other recklessly. Totally. Always skating through life unannounced. Never asking ourselves “Isn’t it supposed to be more beautiful than this?”
Now, I sweep up the broken vase and put the kitchen back together. It’s the best I can do.

I always had BDD as a kid but never knew what was wrong with my face. I always thought I just had a weird hairline and underbite. I ended up finding out I had moderate plagiocephaly which is a deformation that is commonly seen in infants but it usually corrects itself. It never with me, it caused everything above my neck to slant to the side and appear diagonal from above and the front. This is what gave me my jaw problem and I feel like the doctors who planned and performed my double jaw surgery never really took plagiocephaly into account. So now my lower face is even and prominent, my top jaw pulled out slightly and bottom aligned with it, but everything above is still skewed and asymmetric and makes me look very odd and almost uncanny. I clearly should've been attractive without the condition which is why I got away with being called cute and handsome as a little kid but now I've been straight up called ugly by strangers, and laughed at as well because of how it exaggerates how small my face looks from one side. I feel like a lost cause and regret the surgery. I could've gotten away with looking a bit quirky and maybe slightly weird from one side but instead I was shoehorned a surgery that basically exaggerated all of it. Both sides of my face are quite noticeably different, one of my cheekbones more forward and prominent and the other cheekbone caved in. I wear a hat a lot to balance my face out and when I wear glasses people always tell me I look a lot different. People even asked me if I had a haircut when I wore glasses one day to work which made no sense to me. I just don't know what to do. I guess I can work through my incredible obsessions and insecurities and try to afford more surgery to balance my face out, or I can just live with looking like an illusion.

I hope this doesn't get taken seriously since it's just a "reference" to Markiplier's Pokemon Smash or Pass video.
The Qu: weird dragonfly like alien creatures, no visible holes or genitals, and plus them being the responsible of the many abominations created from the human race. Pass
Gravitals: being giant metal racist balls that also were responsible for the mass genocide of the post-human species. Pass
Martians: Since they are by far the most human like species. Smash
Star people: big, smart and strong, i don't see why not to do it. Smash
Colonials: how do i even?... Pass
Worms: forbidden fleshlight. Smash
Insectophagi: though leathery skin plates on their faces and a very creepy posture are a nope for me; although the tongue and his big package could come in handy... Smash
Lopsiders: i mean, they seem rather tame and cute to hug and love... Smash
Parasite: they'll end up sucking me off, literally speaking. Pass
Finger fisher: as long as they don't use their hands. Smash
Hand flapper: as long as i put a paper bag on their head, absolutely... Smash
Predators: furries, but uglier. Pass
Bone crusher: their size probably means they are quite hung. Although thier having beaks and their scat fetish is enough to keep me away. Pass
Blind folk: they are big, but i'm not sure if i really wanna do it. Pass
Prey: T h i c c. Smash
Lizard herders: they (along with the martians) are the most human of the post-human species; and since they have lizards and i like people with pet reptiles. Smash
Swimmers: due to those teeth and an apparent lack of organs or structures vaguely usable for sex. Pass
Mantalope: although they have a considerably sized package, slipping it into a Mantalope is way too close to Zoophilia to be considered acceptable, and for that. Pass
Temptors (male): beaked and too short for me to work with. Pass
Temptors (female): the breeding tube calls me... Smash
Titans: they are too big to make it fit, and also with the fact that i'll get crushed if i'm the top, literally impossible to fuck. Pass
Striders: way too big (both size and package) plus their low bone density will make it hard for them to match my liking. Pass
Hedonist: this is your mom... Smash
Ruin haunter: they are big and strong, but their squidward ass faces are a turn off for me. Pass
Killer folk: would this make me a furry is i said smash?... Smash
The flyers: harpy tiddies. Smash
Bug facers: they look very humanoid, unfortunately their weird deformed ass faces are a turn off. Pass
Pterosapiens: they are really inteligent, although they don't seem to have any interenting aspects and their beaks throw head completely off the table. On top of that, they die by the age of 23, so my chances of knocking one up are very limited. Pass
Saurosapients: even tho it has human level intelligence, if i do it with the lizard it will make me a furry, but if i do it with the human, it is flat out bestiality; either way. Pass
Asymmetric people: oh god no. Pass
Tool breeders: although they don't seem to have any interesting sexual aspect going for themselves, their name imply a vast creativity with toy use; plus their smooth blubbery bodies are perfect for cuddling. Smash
Sail people: i don't even care about their long ass crocodile mouth. Smash
Modular people: having a wide variety of shapes, holes and tentacles to choose from, it will be a hell of a time. Smash
Snake people: although them being a fan favorite, aside from fisting (and maybe head), what could they offer? Pass
Symbiotes: smashing one of these with the parasite latched on the host's head means it'll be like smashing someone as their pet sees you. Pass
Satyriacs: although i could get tired of session after session, these things are literally made for sex. Smash
Spacers: their ye ye ass haircuts combined with the smell are enough reasons for me to avoid them. Pass
Asteromorph: with a longer asshole come a lot of uses; unfortunately they also use them to fart hard enough to move their bodies, again. Pass
Subjects: genetic abominations of what used to be the last bug facers; most are either slaves or doomed art projects; although for the variety to choose from, i'll never know what i'm gonna get, maybe i'll end up fricking with a subject purposely made for pleasure? So just for the sake of the surprise. Smash
Terrestrials: looking like a fucked up fusion between a fetus and a spider, plus not having any interesting features. Pass
New machines: i mean, the tendrils can be used as BDSM equipment, right? Smash
Amphicephali: due to them looking like a gigantic snake trying to swallow that pink alien camel that farted on Jar Jar Binks i am convinced to avoid this thing, not only is it ugly, but also vore is a big nope for me. Pass
Panderavis: again, not a furry. Pass
The author: the only thing that could remotely be used for sex is its long appendage that could probably be used as a dick; under normal situations i'll pass that just like how i did with the Snake people, but since this thing is the only member of its species, i have no other chance to do it. Smash

TLDR: Returning funds borrowed means realized losses being taken, increasing insolvency risk. Asymmetric risk for Celsius to try to "trade" back to solvency is bad risk for customers. Orderly unwind with haircut to customer is most prudent move.
So it would appear that Celsius is returning borrowed funds against the collateral (BTC, ETH, $stEth, other) that they posted. Good news to the extent that they were able to exit positions to get the funds to return...i.e. repay their loan.
This certainly helps them live longer. But this does NOT mean they are solvent and actually, increases the risk that they will NEVER be solvent and depositors will take a haircut. How so?
Much like a hedge fund, Celsius had "trades" on with the funds which they borrowed against the BTC, ETH, etc which they deposited with lenders as collateral. By returning the funds and lowering their liquidation levels (the BTC level which was about 14,000 or so at last post here), they have closed these "trades" and more likely then not have taken losses.
How big these losses are is something they should disclose, but it is doubtful they will. I'm guessing that the losses they have incurred are bigger than any capital they have and if they were to be liquidated, they could not return 100% to all customers.
Now if they continue as a going concern, of course they could "trade" their way back to solvency. Would customers want to trust them to do this after what has happened? Another option is to raise capital to close the insolvency gap.
Bottom line is that Celsius is badly wounded. If they were a bank they would be done: taken over by regulators and losses assigned as prescribed by law. But they are not, and much like a hedge fund their NAV has come down. No big deal in the fund world. The problem is that they held themselves out as a pseudo-bank and their customers expect 100% of their money returned. This, IMHO, will not happen.
One may never know if bad bets by Celsius, a true run or both caused this debacle, but we can certainly already discern that some of the positions that Celsius had on their books were probably more risky then they should have been. Perhaps, and likely, other Cefi's have similar positions and did not experience a "run" but that is not relevant at this point.
All Cefi's will have to move away from the "deposit/interest" model and move toward the "fund/dividend" model making it quite clear that any investment is at substantial risk.
No doubt there are "whales" who know much more then any poster here...particularly this poster....and what usually happens is that these whales will gun for the wounded player. Happens all the time in markets and will most likely happen/continue to happen in this case.
So at the next AMA Celsius should be asked point blank: how much in REALIZED LOSSES have you taken? Don't hold your breath, though, for an answer. Risk to customers is that Celsius continues to try to "trade" their way out of this since, much like hedge funds, win they win big, customers get their money back. Lose, and they lose almost nothing (from where they are TODAY) and customers lose BIG. Why would one trust Celsius to earn back the losses? Perhaps better to take 80% back and let another Cefi "invest" to get back to 100%? Maybe just announcing an orderly unwind and closure would best suit everybody. The asymmetry in the risk/reward just presented does not exist in banking, but certainly does in fund management.
Let's hope Celsius does the right thing if this hunch (large realized losses, no capital/insolvent, no "white knight" savior) is accurate....which is to unwind and return all remaining funds to customers. This would be the most prudent move.

[DISCLAIMER: I am well aware of the fact that this is a demo, and that it obviously isn't 100% indicative of all customization options that will be available in the final product. This has always been the case with Saints Row. I'm just giving my honest feedback based on what is available at present, as some things are not going to change between then and now at this point.]
Saints Row is a series I've been a fan of for a long time, and a huge part of why I prefer it as a series to things like Grand Theft Auto is the character customization. This was a feature that, since the days of the original Saints Row back in 2006, has been the biggest draw for me. Given the posts of creations people have made with the Boss Factory, I assume I'm not alone in this to at least some extent. So when we saw the new Saints Row game be announced, my first thoughts went to the character creation tools, and I hoped for a demo much like the past two full games had to poke around with. Sure enough we got just that with the Boss Factory Demo, and as with many of you, I jumped right in as soon as I was able to fool around with the options.
Ultimately, I feel like this character creation system has me conflicted, and somewhat unsatisfied. There's certainly a good bit to like, but I'm saddened by the lack of depth in some areas. I'm sure a lot of my criticism may come off as nitpicking, but I frankly feel like some of the things I will mention should be in the demo. Obviously, I'm not expecting everything to be in the demo, but the lack of some things has me concerned for the final product, and potentially how post-launch content will be handled.
I guess I better explain what I mean.
I'm going to start with the positives, because there are certainly a lot of things to like about the creation tools on offer. The biggest highlight is the asymmetrical face modeling tools, and how, despite some of the wackier ways you can sculpt the face, I feel it's up there as one of the best I've seen in a game period. I tend to fool around with these kinds of tools by making characters I designed for a book I'm working on, so I go for more "realistic" heads and bodies, rather than the more extreme stuff. The fact that none of it looks unnatural to me when doing this makes me believe we are getting ever closer to the day when the custom characters in games don't look like freaks of nature when compared to pre-made characters.
On the same note, I really love how there's options for multiple colors being a part of all hair, rather than having to either find a style that lets you tweak more than one color. This is huge for me, as I tend to design characters for said book project to have two colored hair. I do think it's a little lacking when compared to how Code Vein handled it, but I glad that the feature is here at all. That game, while limited to 2 hair colors, allowed you to adjust the placement of where the ombre occurs with a slider. I still think this is a step in the right direction regardless though, and it has me happy.
The return of layered clothing is also a huge plus. While the demo's selection of clothing is limited, I expect that's something that won't be as much of an issue in the actual game, and could very likely expand with post-launch content, if there is any substantial updates or DLC. I like how most of the clothing options look, and I think a lot of it conforms to the body better than it did in the last two games. It certainly feels like a lot more care went into it when compared to SRTT/SR4 and their wonky clothing mapping (especially when on larger busted women).
However, this is where most of my praise ends, and where my criticisms start.
We'll start with my biggest criticism because it's the one that I think holds the most weight: the body customization is extremely lacking to me. I do enjoy things about how you can adjust the muscle definition, how pronounced veins are, and how much sheen the skin has, but when it comes to the way the body is shaped, it's a total failure in my book. I can certainly understand why some of these limitations are here, and maybe the limitations feel worse on last gen versions (I played the demo on my PS4 Pro), but the way body sculpting works feels extremely limiting when compared to the face sculpting.
As mentioned previously, I like to make characters based on pre-existing characters I made for a book I'm writing, and I find it next to impossible to get the character to have a body type close to how they've been designed. Said body shapes aren't anything extreme or overly sexualized designs either, they are, for the most part, within reason, if ever so slightly exaggerated by artistic choices. I bring this up mostly because the way the body is shaped prevents fine tuning of body curvature in a way that makes even achieving a closer to reality version of the body shapes not possible. I can't fine tune shoulder broadness, spine curvature, bust size (it's here for small to medium size on non-plus sized frames), waist size, hips size, butt size (let me make my boss have a S Tier ass ffs), or even things like calves, thighs, or any other limb's over all thickness to an extent. We know the clothes can all warp to meet the buff and plus-sized thickness of limbs, so this just feels limiting as hell. Hell, that isn't mentioning the lack of a basic height slider, which while I can understand due to animation issues that could arise, still feels sorely missing as it always does. I feel like all of this limits the inclusivity of a wide variety of shapes and sizes in potentially unintended ways.
Women especially get casually screwed over by some of these options, as it prevents top heavy women or pear shaped women from being able to more accurately represent themselves. I understand there are limitations on how much can be done in terms of size (I'm not asking to be a human blob or a skeleton with skin stretched over it), and I get that there's no way to please everyone in this situation, but seriously? A single body shape triangle, a slider for what I assume is uppelower body stuff, and two sliders for chest and crotch sizes? That's it? Did all of the budget go into making the face sculpting?
While I certainly appreciate things like being able to not worry about a gender and being able to adjust chest and crotches independently, I ultimately feel like even these are too limiting, especially when the other issues are taken into account if you ask me. This is a fundamental flaw that, at this point, is caked into the game, and that's extremely disappointing. Again, maybe it's different on PC/PS5/XBS, but if it is, that just makes things less than optimal for people like myself who can't afford a good PC or are unable to get new consoles due to chip shortages and scalpers still somehow being a problem. Feel free to let me know if there is a difference or not based on PC/New Consoles when compared to last gen systems outside of texture quality and the like, as I'm genuinely curious.
Another notable thing that I think is important but poorly represented is the hair options. Specifically: the limited options for black hair styles. While, sure, there is significantly more options than there have been in the past, I feel like most of those options only appeal to the more masculine styles. Where's the proper dreads? Where's the smaller afro puffs (we have big ones, but I mean... size options for afros and puffs should be a basic option)? Hell, where's the basic stuff like curly/coily haircuts? I know that afro-textured hair is something that a PS4/XB1 will struggle with due to polygon budgets, but the fact that no attempt was made in some of these cases just blows my mind. I want to hope beyond hope that there is more hair options in the final game, or that Volition, at the very least, gives us more black hair options via free updates... but I can't help but worry that they'll end up selling some of these options through DLC, because it's often the case for black hair. I ain't even black, but this lack of proper black representation in customization options outside of stereotypes has been a longstanding problem with games in general, and I was hoping that the PS5/XBS generation would finally make a better effort in this regard, especially with the extra pushes for diversity and inclusivity in all corners of life, gaming included.
Other things that bug me, but might be a bit more nitpicky are things like the lack of freckles and moles, the complete lack of depth with piercings (the options are too basic, and don't even let you stack them to go crazy and have ears/faces full of metal... and that's not even considering the lack of earlobe plugs). These things can be fixed with patches/DLC, sure, and I can assume the final game will possibly have more options for piercings and the like, but the lack of piercing stacking just feels extra lame. There's also just the lack of things like being able to paint your nails from what I found, which is such a basic feature that I find it's lack of appearance utterly baffling.
I want to like this demo a lot more than I do. I know the game will have more options to choose from than the demo has, especially in regards to clothes, and presumably hair, accessories, and tattoos. I feel like a lot of my issues can be resolved with free updates or paid DLC. The only thing that likely won't get resolved in the body shaper's limitations, as that would have to be saved for a potential sequel. I worry that the cosmetic stuff like hair (especially in regards to more variety for black players/players who create black characters) being locked behind extra paywalls will occur in some capacity. I can say that I imagine a lot of PC players will be able to fix some of my grievances with mods, provided they are cool with the Epic Game Store of course.
Anyway, I know a lot of this is just a wall of text complaining, but hopefully people understand that I value customization options in games like Saints Row more than most. It's something I'm passionate about, especially when something is so close to being basically perfect. I probably come off as someone who spends a shit ton of time in the Sims making Sims... and you wouldn't be wrong. Still though, hopefully people can see where I'm coming from all the same, especially when customization is such an important factor that sets Saints Row apart from stuff like GTA.