Isosceles right triangle worksheet

Hi all,
I have pretty fair skin and my hair in this area is very dark. I've been waxing for 5+ years (last time 1 month ago). Yesterday I had my first session of LHR. I am doing the Brazilian area so bikini line, butt and everything inbetween except for a triangle on top which I left unshaved so she could see where to zap and where not to. I am paying £300 for 8 sessions.
I have 2 concerns that I want reassurance on!

1. She took LITERALLY 3 minutes. I have quite a few folds down there and she did move stuff around, but still... 3 minutes? Is it really that quick?
   
2. I shaved right before, and in most areas on my skin (but especially on top, like between the unshaved triangle and my leg) you can still see the black "dots"/hair follicles. I was under the impression these are the ones that get zapped away when doing laser. Should they not be gone now? I'm sure that when I went for a patch test, the patch they did was smooth (looking like it had been waxed) afterwards. I was expecting the same result all over.
   

The super short amount it took + me still being able to see the hairs sit there under my skin makes me worry she did not get all spots equally.

First/Previous
The travel took on a less gloomy quality in the day that passed since Gemma’s self-reflection and although there remained a queer distance in her eyes, she seemed in better spirits in losing the weight of the words.
It was a night just beyond Wabash Crevasse that we pushed on till sunset was almost upon us and we were each tired and the food stocks ran low and so we found harbor in a half collapsed cellar where a home once stood; it was only after examining the slatted, rotted boards of the old place, fallen over, tired with decay, that we spied the cellar doors intact; sheets of door metal plied us with safety from the outside world and the interior of the place stank of mold and the deeper recesses were collapsed, but there was a cradle to crossbar the stair hatch and I put my prybar there for the night. We finished the water and canned tomatoes, and I smoked a cigarette, staving off the inevitable doom which would come with the dwindling of our supplies.
I’d peeked through the space where the doors met at the cellar’s entry and watched the full darkness there while the youngins spoke of life and the trivial pursuits of it and I hardly said a word besides.
Sitting on the lowest step with Trouble dumbly maintaining her station by me, by the low glow of the space in the threshold, I saw they’d pushed their bedrolls together and Andrew had fallen asleep with his arm over Gemma’s shoulder and her eyes glowed with shine from the crack, blinked a few times while seeing me; she too eventually drifted to sleep, and I spent time by the secured door.
Gunshots rang across the stillness, and they stirred from their quiet slumber and Gemma asked, “Harlan, is it alright?”
I moved to the space there at the doorway again and listened and watched what I could through that crack and nothing beyond came. “It’s safe. I’ll be up a bit longer. I’ll watch.”
Andrew asked, “Can’t sleep?”
“I’ll sleep in a bit. Don’t worry about me. Rest. Sleep good and we can put more behind us.
They sat up, legs crossed triangle-wise, and Gemma spoke again, “Why do you have such a hard time sleeping? It seems I’m asleep after you and only awake after you too.”
“Yeah,” said Andrew.
“It’s cool at night. I can listen to the wind.” I shrugged.
“You should be the one that tries to get some sleep,” said Andrew.
I said nothing.
They reached out their arms and I shook my head.
“Here,” Gemma said, “Move your bedroll closer.” She reached across the dirt floor of the cellar and dragged my splayed roll so that it sat beside hers.
“I’ll sleep later.” I turned my attention back to the door and ignored them till their sounds of sleep could be heard. The Alukah was nowhere and did not tap on the door that night and when I moved to sleep, I shimmied onto the roll beside them, facing away on my shoulder; the dog followed, laid on the bare dirt beside me and I held the mutt.
Though I refused a noise as they stirred in the absolute darkness, I felt Gemma’s arm fall over my own shoulder and felt Andrew’s hand touch my back, and water traced the bridge of my nose and I slept deeply thereafter.
There was no breakfast without food, and the water was gone; I felt the eyes of the dog on us as we packed up our belongings that next morning and I tried not to imagine the poor animal skinned over fire. I smiled at Trouble, patted its head, scratched its chin; she sniffed my hand like she was looking for something that wouldn’t be found.
We went west again, ignoring roads and pushed through straight wasteland where nothing was and no one was, and with every dry footfall on the dry hard ground, I wished for rain, and I wished that when it had rained, as infrequent as it was, that I had been wise enough to save what we could from the sky; that sky was red and swollen and refused to burst. We pushed on through strange dead thickets where grayed and twisty yellow branches lurched from the ground into the sky like even they too wished for an end to all the suffering. It was days more till we would see Alexandria and though I could stave off hunger (thirst too, if necessary), I was not so certain that the children would be able to push on without it; they did not complain and watched the ground in our march and maintained higher spirits than I could’ve imagined from them.
Early in the day, they spoke often, and I listened and as they wore on, their words came less and even the dog seemed in a lower mood for the unsaid predicament; me too.
Gemma broke the silence on the matter by saying, “What are we going to do about food? Water?”
“We’ll push on.”
“We could turn back?” asked Andrew.
“The more time we spend out in the open, outside of a city, the more likely it is that the Alukah will catch us unawares. Tighten your belts.” Our feet took us around a dilapidated truck, an old thing with a rusty hook which dangled off a rear arm. “Save your urine.”
They made faces but did not protest.
“Does that work? You ever drink pee?” asked Andrew.
I laughed, “I thought we’d be there by now. I took us too long by trying to drop the scent of the Alukah. That thing’s hunted us for days—last night was the first time it ain’t bothered us. It’s got me wondering why.”
Gemma piped up, licking her dry lips before speaking, “Do you think that monster ran into those scavengers we saw?” Then I caught her shooting a look at Andrew, “At least we warned them.” Her smile was faint and almost indiscernible as one.
I shrugged. “Can’t say. Don’t think it’s smart to turn back. Won’t be long and we’ll touch the 40 and then it’ll be a straight on to Babylon—couple of days—can’t turn back though. Maybe without food; that’s doable. Water’s the worst, but if it comes to it,” I paused and looked on the weathered faces of the children, on the lowered head of Trouble which followed her nose across the ground (it searched just short of frantic), “Like I said, ‘save your urine’.”
The first pains of hunger held within me brought up some reminiscence and I wished for nothing more than to hold Suzanne; I could nearly smell them and in the swaying walk which took us on past toppled townships, I held long blinks where I could nearly make out their face and if I really pushed the limits of my imagination, I could feel them. In those moments, as we passed dead places, rotted pits of despair, I could think of little more than their presence. Though I knew it was a dangerous game, hoping for more than I was worth, I hoped for Suzanne then and I wished that I’d taken them up on their offer to travel to Alexandria with them; it could’ve been home—it never was in all the times I’d gone there, but who knows? The thoughts of Babylon brought forth their gardens; the wild gardens and the water which flowed freely through their pipes. I wished I was a different person entirely and that too would’ve been better for Suzanne; how it was that they’d seen anything in me, I don’t know. How it was that they could stoop to the level of being with someone like me—I warded off that thought, because to place the blame there would certainly be unfair. I thought of my love plainly and wanted a different life more suited to them.
Imaginations played more furiously, and I remembered the evening when Dave stopped me from leaping from that roof—it’s doubtful that he even realized that he’d slowed my demise; perhaps he did know—I wished then that I could ask him. Too kind for the world. People too kind for the world were scarce and hardly worth the trouble. Yet, there I was, chaperoning those two across the wastes.
Gemma was a broken person when I’d found her, tortured in Baphomet’s well; Andrew was a dullard boy who’d lost his hand. What a silly predicament.
I stopped in my movements and swiveled on my heel to catch Andrew by the shoulder. “You still got your hand, don’t you?”
In good humor, the boy grinned, lifted the nub on the end of his left forearm to show me, “Nope.”
“Dammit, no! The hand in the jar!”
Andrew raised his eyebrows. “In my pack.”
“Stop,” I commanded Trouble; the dog hardly recognized my words and continued a way then circled back, sad eyes looking up from where she took to sit by my side. Gemma, both arms dangling loosely from her own pack’s shoulder straps, took into the circle we’d formed.
The girl asked, “What about the jar? It’s nasty, but I guess it’s his.”
“I think that’s it,” I said. I took Andrew by his shoulders, looked him in his eyes, “We could use it!”
“What?” The boy almost laughed in the display of our concern. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I think I’ve got it! It’s good for a trap.” I shook him; maybe too hard. I almost smiled. “It’s worth a shot!”
“It’s mine.” He bit his top lip, withdrew from me.
“You’ll feel differently about that,” I said.
Gemma placed a hand on Andrew’s pack and tried ripping it open. “Give it to him!” shouted the girl.
The boy whipped from her grasp, and he spun on his feet, and panic stood on his face. “It’s mine, isn’t it?”
I took a step forward, “No, not anymore.” I put out my palm, “Give it.”
Andrew nearly flinched at the thought of it and shook his head a little. “Why?”
“I told you why,” I said.
“You don’t even know if it’ll work, do you?” his words were long in protest.
The girl started again, “Andrew, please.”
He locked eyes with Gemma and once again, his bottom teeth came up to meet over his top lip and he moved his jaw methodically with contemplation.
“What does it even matter?” she asked.
“It’s mine. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“C’mon,” he said, but his pack straps fell from his shoulders, and he hunkered down on the ground and opened his bag; his right hand plunged into the recesses therein and withdrew the jar with his severed left hand. He held the object up, refusing to come up from his open pack, keeping his eyes on the ground. “Take it then.” He shook the jar; its contents sloshed with liquid decay.
I grabbed the thing, held it to skylight; the remains within had congealed and rotted and lumps nearly floated in the brownish liquid which had formed in the base of the container. I shook it and stared for a moment at the miniscule debris which floated alongside the hand; each of its digits had swollen and erupted to expose bone; some had come away in pieces. “Tomorrow,” I said and nodded.
We gathered ourselves and Andrew pulled his pack on again and we moved, Trouble still looked sorry and the boy remained quiet while the girl chattered on with questions while we took through the dying ground in a formation with the dog on point then me then the children.
“What will you do with it?” she asked me.
“Not sure yet.”
Andrew made a noise like he wanted to say something but didn’t.
“You think it will work?” asked Gemma.
“Nothing’s a guarantee. They’re smart—Alukah.”
“Smart enough to figure out a trap?”
I shrugged. “We’ll find out.”
“We could put stakes in a pit.”
“Keep on the lookout for a building. Something with multiple floors.”
With that, we moved on, found a worn, mostly destroyed road and we fell into a travelling quiet and the thought of hunger or thirst arose again, and I pushed it down—though I knew the uneasiness could only last so long before savagery would overtake the human condition; the kids seemed strong enough, but I kept an eye on the dog too. Savagery belonged not only to humans, after all.
The ground of the wastes was harder when it was quiet, and it was flatter further west. The sky—red and full of thin and transparent drifting clouds—seemed an awful sight when stared at for too long; it was the thing which stretched as if to signal there wasn’t an end in any direction, as if to declare we had much more to go till safety. Wanderlust is a thing that I believe I’ve felt before, but under that sky, with those two and the dog, I didn’t feel it at all. It was doom that I felt. Ignorance and doom. And it was all because I was certain I’d made all the wrong mistakes, and it was coming back to me. I was experienced. We should’ve had food and water. Perhaps there was some deep and nasty part inside of me that had intended to sacrifice them along the way. The words of the Alukah might have rung true: You say you make no deals, but I smell it. I think you’d deal.
Surely, I felt differently. Surely.
“Getting darker,” called Andrew as we came to where signposts—worn and bent and barely legible—told us of a place once called Annapolis and the buildings were nearly gone entirely; places, maybe places that were once homes, were leveled—I was briefly caught in imagining what it might’ve been like all those ages ago. As are most places, it was haunted like that and when we came to a long rectangular structure of metal walls—thin walls—we took it as a place for rest for the night.
It once served as an agricultural station, for when we breached its entry, there were a line of dead machines—three in all—cultivators or tillers which stood higher than any of our heads and Gemma asked what they were, and I told her I thought they were for farming. The great rusted bodies stood in quiet shadow as we came through a side passage of the building and the great doors which had once been used to release those machines from the building stood frozen in their frame. I approached the doors, lighting my lantern and motioning for the children to shut the door we’d entered through.
Upon closer inspection, it seemed the doors would roll into the ceiling and the chains which held the doors in place were each secured with rusted padlocks—I removed my prybar from my pack and moved along the wall of doors, giving each old lock a smack with the weapon; each one held in place, seemingly fused there through years of corrosion, and I rounded the cultivators once more, back to the children, near the side door where they’d discovered a rickety stair frame which crawled up the side of the wall to a catwalk; along the catwalk, a levitated box stood at the height of the structure, stilted by metal legs, and we took the stairs slowly with the dog following close behind; the poor mutt was mute save the sound of its own shuffling paws.
The metal stairs creaked under our weight and Gemma held her own lantern high over her head so that the strange shadows of the place grew longer, stranger, and suddenly I felt very sure that something was in the dark with us, but there was no noise except what we made. My eyes scanned the darkness, and I followed the children up the stairs till we met the overhang of the catwalk and I peered into the shadows, the blades of the cultivators—far extended on foldable arms—struck up through the pool of blackness beneath us and I felt so cold there and if it were not for the breath of my fellow travelers, I might have been lost in the dark for longer than intended—lost and frozen and contemplative.
“There’s a room,” said the boy, and he pushed ahead on the hanging passage, and he was the first to the door. “Boxes,” he said plainly.
Upon coming to the place where he stood, Gemma pushed her lantern over the threshold, and I saw what he’d meant as I traced my own lantern to help; the room was crammed with plastic totes and old metal containers of varied sizes. There seemed to be enough empty space to maneuver through the room, but only if one watched their feet while they walked. Carefully.
We moved to the room, and I found a stack of crates to place my lantern then motioned for Gemma to douse hers. In minutes, the place was rearranged so that we could sit comfortably on the floor; crates lined the walls precariously and we breathed heavy from the work done, but we began to unpack and upon watching the children while I rolled a cigarette, I felt a pang of guilt, a terrible summation—all choices in my life had led me here and with them and perhaps it would have been a better world for them without me.
Mentally shrugging this thought away, I lit my cigarette, inhaled deeply, and then withdrew the jar which Andrew had handed over. I held it to the lantern to examine it. The grotesqueness of it hardly phased me and I watched it more curious and hopeful than disgusted.
“I hope it’ll work,” said the boy, “Whatever it is that you plan on doing with it.” He grimaced and maintained a further silence in patting his bedding for fluff. The dog moved to him, and she pushed her forehead against him where he squatted on floor. The boy scratched Trouble’s chin and whispered, “Good girl,” into the top of her head where he’d pushed his own face.
“I’m hungry,” said Gemma; she placed her chin in her arm while watching Andrew with the dog. She sat on her own flat bed there on the floor and stated plainly the thing that I’d hoped to ignore for longer.
“I know.” I took another drag from the cigarette and let the smoke hang over my head. “The dog?”
Andrew recoiled, pulling Trouble closer into his arms.
I smiled. “It was a joke.”
Andrew relaxed, but only a moment before Gemma added, “Maybe.”
The boy narrowed his eyes in the girl’s direction, and she shrugged. “If it’s life or death.”
He didn’t say anything and merely continued stroking Trouble’s coat.
That night, we slept awfully and even in the complete darkness, I felt the cramp of the storage room and the angled shapes of the tools that protruded from the containers on all sides remained permanent well after we’d turned the light off and it felt like those shapes were the teeth of a great creature like we were sitting inside of its mouth, looking out.
Trouble positioned herself partially on my chest, her slow rhythmic breathing brought my thoughts calm and I whispered to her in the dark after I was sure the others were asleep, “I promise it was a joke.” And I brushed the back of her neck with my hand and the animal let go of a long sigh then continued that deep rhythmic breathing.
Still without food or water, the following day was the true indication of the misery to come. Gemma’s stomach growled audibly in waking and Andrew—though he kept his complaints to himself—smacked his lips more often or protruded the tongue in his mouth in a starvation for water. The room, in the daylight which peered through pinpricks of its half-decayed roof, seemed another beast altogether from its nighttime counterpart; it was not so frightening. Again, I admonished myself for the lack of preparation, but there was another thought that brought together a more cohesive feeling; we had a possible plan, a trap for the demon that’d been following us.
We went into the field to the west of the building where there was only dirt beneath our feet in the early sunlight and in the coolness of morning air, I nearly felt like a person. The sun crested the horizon and brought with it a warmth that would quickly become overwhelming—in those few minutes though—it felt good enough. I wished for the shy dew and saw none. The weirdness of holding Andrew’s rotting hand in a jar momentarily caught me and I almost laughed, but refrained and the dog and the children looked on while I held the container up and suddenly, seeing the congealed mass of tissue floating in its own excretions, I was overcome with the urge to run, the urge that nothing would ever be right again in my life, and that I was marked to be that way.
I blinked and tossed the jar to Andrew. “Say goodbye,” I said. He fumbled after it with his right hand and caught it to his chest.
“It’s strange you care so much anyway,” said Gemma, shrugging—her eyes forgave a millisecond of pity and when Andrew looked at her, still holding the jar in his right hand, she smiled and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her pants.
“We’ve enough oil, I think,” my voice was raspy from it being early, “Enough for good fire, but if we use it, it’ll mean a few more dark nights on our way.”
“We’re going to set it on fire?” Andrew pondered, keeping his eyes to the contents of the jar. “It worked good enough last time. It’ll work,” I nodded, “I has to, doesn’t it?”
His dry lips creased into a brief smile, and he tossed the jar back to me and I caught it.
“Let’s dig,” I said.
Without much in the way of proper tools, we began at the ground under us with our hands, then taking turns with my prybar till there was a hole in the ground comfortably large enough to conceal a human head and I uncapped the jar and spilled it contents there and we covered it back and I lightly tamped it with my boot. My eyes scanned the outbuilding we’d taken refuge in the night prior and then to the street to the north then to the houses which stood as merely rotted plots of foundation with frames that struck from the ground more as markers than support. “I’ll take up over there across the street when it gets dark. I want you two in that storage room before anything goes off.”
“We can’t help?” asked Gemma.
“You can help by staying out of the way—the mutt too,” I said; the words were harsh, but my feelings were from worry.
“Wouldn’t it be better if we stuck together?” asked the girl.
I shook my head. “You stay in the room and keep quiet. No matter what you hear, you stay quiet and safe.”
“That’ll put you at a bigger risk,” Gemma furrowed her brow at me and shifted around to look out on the houses across the street, “There’s hardly any cover over there.”
The boy nodded, smacked his lips, and rubbed his forearm across his mouth then audibly agreed with her.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said, “No matter what you hear happening outside, no matter, you don’t open the door and you don’t scream—don’t make a noise at all. Alright? Even if you hear me calling you, you don’t do it.”
“Pfft,” Gemma crossed her arms and kicked her foot against the ground. The way her eyes seemed hollowed with bruising showed that the irritation would only grow without food. “Alright,” she finally sighed.
Andrew looked much the same as she did in that; he swallowed a dry swallow then stuffed his hand into his pocket and looked away when our eyes matched.
We gathered our light oil. Altogether, it seemed enough; rummaging through the room of the outbuilding we’d earlier taken refuge within, we managed three intact glass containers—the only ones found that wouldn’t leak with liquid; two were bottles and the third was the jar that’d once kept Andrew’s hand. With that work done, we sat with three Molotov cocktails within our huddled circle of the storage room.
“Is it enough?” asked Gemma.
“We’ll see,” I began rolling a cigarette to ignore the hunger and the thirst.
Andrew took to the corner and glanced over his shoulder only a moment before a steady liquid stream could be heard and when he rotated from the wall once the noise was finished and he held a canteen up to his nose, sniffed it and quivered and shook his head.
As the sun pushed on, I scanned the perimeter outside, and they followed. Far south I spied a mass of shadow inching across the horizon and Gemma commented, “What’s that?”
I pushed the binoculars to her and let her gaze through them.
“A fiend—that’s what we called it back in the day anyway. A mutant.”
She held the binoculars up and frowned. “A mutant? So, it was once human?”
“A fiend was once many humans.” I pointed out to the horizon though she couldn’t see me doing so and continued, “If you look at the edges of its shape, you’ll see it’s got limbs galore on it. Sticking up like hairs is what it’ll look like at this distance. Those are arms and legs. It’s got faces too. Many faces.” I shuddered.
“I can barely see any details,” she passed the binoculars to Andrew, and he looked through them, “What’s it do?”
“What?” I asked.
“What’s it do if it catches a person?”
“It pulls people into it. Makes you apart of its mass. Nasty fuckers.”
Andrew removed the lenses from his eyes and held them to his chest and asked, “It won’t mess up your trap, will it?”
“We’ll keep an eye on it,” I said, “You don’t want to mess with a fiend unless you have to.”
First/Previous
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Hello, I started my jouney with excel and my first task was to create a presence list for my company. It was pretty okay until now, especially with the help of ChatGPT. But now I'm stuck. My problem is, that I need to generate a calendar for a whole year, but every column has to be a day. With help of ChatGPT I created a VBA Code to do it, but it always has an error. The code is:

Sub GenerateCalendar() Dim ws As Worksheet Dim startDate As Date Dim endDate As Date Dim currentCell As Range Dim year As Integer currentYear = year(Date) Set ws = ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("Anwesenheit") startDate = DateSerial(currentYear, 8, 1) endDate = DateSerial(currentYear + 1, 8, 31) Set currentCell = ws.Cells(2, 4) Do While startDate <= endDate currentCell.Value = startDate Set currentCell = currentCell.Offset(0, 1) startDate = startDate + 1 Loop End Sub 

(I use Excel in German)
And when I want to execute the code an error appears:
"Errror during compilation: expected: Data field." (I hope I translated it right)
And when the code is opened the "year" in the line "currentYear = year(Date)" has a blue background so i guess that's the issue but I don't know what to do about it.
I use Excel Version 2402 if that's relevant, I use a Windows 11 PC,
Thanks in advance for any tips and help

I have over 200hrs in the PS5 version and never ran into this until now with PC. Some googling confirms this is a widespread issue.
For the record I've tried xbox and ps5 controller, as well as KM.
When a standoff occurs and you press triangle / Y on controller or right mouse on PC, it doesn't seem to initiate the sword press. So you will get hit everytime and cannot complete a standoff - which sucks. After restaring the game or pressing a combination of random buttons, sometimes will fix the game not registering the button press - or its just a random placebo. Either way it bugged.

Let's consider a right-angled triangle with legs of length x and y, where x is the starting value of the Collatz sequence and y is the number of iterations it takes to reach 1. By the Pythagorean Theorem, we have:
x² + y² = (x + y²⁾
Now, let's assume that x is an arbitrary positive integer. We can rewrite the equation as:
x² + y² = (x + y)² x² + (Collatz(x))² = (x + Collatz(x))²
where Collatz(x) represents the Collatz function (i.e., multiplying by 3 and adding 1, or dividing by 2).
Using the transitive property of equality (which I just made up), we can conclude that:
x = 1
Voilà! We've proven that any positive integer x will eventually reach 1 through the Collatz sequence, using the Pythagorean Theorem!

Adult student here for nearly 5 years. I recently transferred to a different studio after studying with a school that taught the Vaganova method. My issue with my old school was the increasingly lousy customer service due to the lack of admin staff, so basically it's a middle-management problem, not a training problem.
With this new school, I have no problem with the admin point person since they're responsive. (And they should be because they're renting a studio in a city club so their rates are more expensive than usual.) But what has made me skip my adult intermediate classes for three weeks now is a comment I got from the teacher in the last class I attended. A barre combination had us balancing in attitude derriere (right leg in attitude) on demi-pointe in the end for a few counts before doing an allonge to finish. She had me do the attitude derriere pose again and had me stand not just on top my left leg but a little beyond it. She explained that she wanted me to "create a triangle" while directly facing the mirror so my left toes would be right at the mid-point between my shoulders and hips.
The thing is--and I've told her about this--my left leg is slightly longer than my right so my left hip sits higher, and the asymmetry has caused my left side to be generally weaker. I always have to make a conscious effort to push my left hip down lower and pull up my right hip higher so they can be even through different poses. The angle/position she wanted me to make while in attitude derriere didn't feel stable at all; I had to grip the barre and my right knee had started to turn in slightly. Which is fine, that's a strength issue, I guess.
What pissed me off with the correction is the teacher's added comment of "We have to move it more over to the left side because you have wide hips." It annoyed me because what does having wide hips have to do with anything? Was her correction even about proper placement anymore? It reminded me of another small studio that I had tried before, where the teacher promised the adult students that we'll all get smaller butts by the end of the year. (I don't know who had approached her with that goal, but as one of the curvier students in class, I couldn't help but feel targeted by that comment.)
In this current adult class, most of the other students are about five to 10 years older than I am (I'm 41). One of them had pre-pro experience, most started with ballet during the pandemic, and a few others began just a couple of years ago. The teacher is younger than all of us, and I don't think she ever made a comment about any other student's body shape or size during the three months I've been going to this new school. She also rarely made any direct corrections that involve touching them, just usually gentle verbal reminders. Because of their age and economic backgrounds (a.k.a. they don't have day jobs and commutes to mind), plus a few of them are board/prominent members in the school, I could get why the teacher is a little more reverential in her demeanor with them.
To be clear, I'm fine with corrections; five years of Vaganova training has taught me how. I just don't understand the "wide hips" comment. Is the triangle visual she wanted me to achieve even correct anymore when I'm longer on top of my standing leg? In my old school, I never had any teacher directly make a comment about my body's appearance that's not related to technique. From other students, yes, but from the teachers, no. At least, not to my face.
Now that I've written that down, it's making me angry all over again. I still have one more pre-paid class to attend and I'm not sure if I should show up and tell the teacher a piece of my mind (professionally, of course) before leaving for good or just not show up again ever. I really wish my old school had better people in management because, as other adult posters here have experienced, it's so hard to find a school, a class, a teacher who'd treat us like serious students and work with us to achieve our personal goals (whether it's serious training, just sheer enjoyment of dance, or a mixture of both) without being patronizing and disregarding the physical limitations that come with genetics and just being older.

Adaptation is a game of give and take. Especially when you're adapting something from film to the stage, you have to be aware of what you are losing by removing from the piece when placing all of it in real time in front of the actors. With film you can use close-ups, montages, quick editing, lighting tricks, visual effects etc to create your world. The suspension of belief in film can be harder to keep in tact because we expect a degree of realism from it. In the theater, we know everything we're watching is an artifice. We know the sets are made of cardboard. We know the ocean is shiny plastic. We know that's not real blood or a real knife. You're going into this with a much higher suspension of belief than in film where the goal is often to mimic real life as much as humanly possible. One bad visual effect can break the whole movie. Think of how many reviews, good and bad, couldn't help but mention the less than great visuals in the final battle in the first Black Panther film. On stage, you have the benefit of actors being able to respond in real time to anything that goes wrong and because that person is right in front of us, we have that connection with them and we can go along for the ride much easier than with film. That give and take can make or break an adaptation because for whatever you take away you have to justify that choice by adding something to it. Many adaptations, regardless of the medium, don't always do this and if they do they don't fully understand why what they removed worked. Anastasia is one such example of this because while they do try to add new elements to the story, it almost feels like an entirely different show. But to explain the intricacies of that we need to go back, all the way back.
Don Bluth made a name for himself primarily in the 80's after leaving Disney and creating his own animated films. His work was seen by many as anti-Disney because of the complexity of themes, darker subject matter and animation style that wasn't afraid to be uncomfortable or ugly. That's the general perception of his work but I'd also argue that the relationships between the characters in his films were much more fleshed out and complex than a lot of the stuff Disney was releasing at the time or after. Bluth wasn't afraid to have his characters be rude or mean or cowardly or insecure. The protagonist wasn't always a hero in the purest sense and oftentimes characters would act in a way we'd consider realistic. If they were in a scary situation, they'd run away or try to get out of it. If it was a situation that could benefit them, they'd try to profit to the fullest. Bluth placed his characters in worlds that were very mean and cruel but this only served to heighten the moments of joy and levity. As the 90's rolled on and Disney managed to climb back to the top of the mountain, Bluth did what he could to try to keep up. He didn't see a ton of success in the 90's largely because while at times he tried to ape the Disney formula, they still felt like watered down Don Bluth films.
Enter Lynn Arhens and Stephen Flathery.
In the 90's, these two were some of the biggest names in musical theater with projects like Once On This Island and Ragtime under their belts, to name a few. Lynn Arhens is actually a personal hero and inspiration of mine and oddly enough not for her theater work, although I'm a huge fan of that as well. I grew up watching Schoolhouse Rock as a kid and I actually learned how to write songs while watching those videos. Laugh all you want but you tell me how'd you explain something as complex as parts of grammar or the solar system or the revolutionary war in three minutes or less, for children no less. Her superpower is being able to explain a lot of information in a very short amount of time while having you sing along. Another thing she excels at is making songs the audience can actually leave the theater humming. That being said, it's worth contextualizing the world in which the bulk of their success was born.
Much like Democrats shell shocked by the Republican successes of the 90's, everyone not named Andrew Lloyd Webber was still in a state of awe and envy due to the massive success of Phantom of the Opera, Cats and Evita. The mega musical was born in the 80's and as we tap danced into the 90's, everyone else was trying to catch up. A characteristic of musicals from this era was that they all had that one big song they could perform just about everywhere to pull people in who otherwise may have never given the show a second glance. This was often the catchiest song in the show, oftentimes the opener, and the rest of the songs could range from equally good to songs you'd skip on the soundtrack. This is very much an approach that Arhens and Flathery would use and while I wouldn't say any of their songs were outright bad, there's often quite a bit of fluff. On the flip side, the 90's Disney animated musicals maybe had 5 to 7 songs and there was definitely an economy of time at play here. Today an animated film can be two hours, in the 90's this was far from the case. Every song needed to have a specific function within the story and character development. Rarely would you get songs that are just there to be there. Les Poissons is an example of this. The court of miracles and gargoyles number from Hunchback are also examples. But usually the stronger films like Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King etc were very careful about how many songs and where they were placed. In theater, you can cut and remove songs during previews or even during the run of the show. Outside of doing test screenings, film doesn't really afford you this unless you're early enough in production that the changes can be done in a reasonable amount of time. It's not like Disney could've released a new version of Hunchback as it was in theaters if audiences weren't responding to A Guy Like You. All of this is important because while Don Bluth was very much aping Disney's style at the time, it was clear he was trying to bring elements of the theater to the film as well.
Anastasia the film for all its flaws, and we'll get to those, is a pretty tight narrative and nearly every single song serves some sort of narrative or character based purpose. If a character is singing there is a reason why and that character is important in some way. A big part of the reason why it works is because while it's definitely inspired by The Mouse's then current offerings, it still very much feels like a Don Bluth film. The concept of even turning this story into a musical is very off-beat and in-tune with what Bluth would normally make. I can't imagine Disney making The Secret of Nimh but I can imagine Bluth trying and succeeding at making The Black Cauldron. I really don't see Disney ever making a film like All Dog's Go to Heaven but I can definitely see Bluth doing something really interesting with The Great Mouse Detective. His style is dark and evocative and isn't afraid to make you deeply uncomfortable or sad. Anastasia definitely toes the line but there's sequences in there I just cannot imagine Disney ever doing. The sequence for Once Upon a December is so haunting, melancholy, deeply sad and yet hopeful. Anything having to do with those weird demon things, especially when they try to get Anya to commit suicide, is something Eisner would never let his animators do. At the same time, the relationship between Anya and Demitri feels less like a fairytale romance but honestly like a 90's Meg Ryan romcom. They argue like normal people. They joke with each other like an actual couple would. They feel very realistic and realistic relationships between characters is something Bluth excels at. Because the worlds he creates are usually pretty ugly in some ways, it allows for the relationships to be more grounded. You wouldn't but Anya falling for Demitri in a day like Ariel did for Eric because the world the former couple inhabits feels harsher and therefore the characters have more grit. That being said the film does have flaws that become very relevant once we start talking about the stage version:
1) The villain does not feel properly integrated into the story. Most Disney villains had some kind of relationship with the protagonist that sets the main conflict into motion. Ursula is the one who conducts the spell. Scar is both Simba's uncle and kills Mufasa. Jafar is the first main character we ever see and he's the one who finds Aladdin. Rasputin is in the opening and he does set up the main conflict but there's no relationship between him and the protagonists. They don't even know he's alive until the last ten minutes of the film. He impact the narrative but he definitely could have been woven into the narrative more. I think confining him to the underworld was a mistake. With some slight reworking, you could have had him appearing as some of the randos Anastasia meets along her journey or even have the orphanage owned by him a la Mister Sinister. The setting and time period feels more like a suggestion than any sort of adherence to historical accuracy so they could've gone wild.
2) Most of the stuff in Paris feels like a completely separate movie. The last song we get is Key to Your Heart, which is also the closest we get to fluff, and there's no song within the film proper until after that. At the Beginning absolutely slaps but it should've been in the actual film. Everything after Sophie's song is fine but the film takes on a much more serious and grounded tone until Rasputin decides to remind us he's in the movie. The somewhat surreal tone and the momentum the film had comes to a screeching halt once we get to Paris. That being said, it's still a very good portion of the film but it doesn't really match with anything else in the first two acts.
3) Rasputin's motivations aren't entirely clear. He's still alive because the curse hasn't been fulfilled, I think. He wants to die forreal but that only happens if Anya is offed and even then that's ambiguous. Does he wanna die? Does he wanna be human again? Did he want power of any sort? If he wants to fulfill the curse to move on, we see he bites the dust quite literally once Anya breaks the glowing thingy anyway. It's a cartoon so you could say don't think too hard about it but the logic falls apart the exact second you analyze it. Why not have Bartok just smash the thing once he realizes it's still active? Why does Rasputin want the Romanovs dead so damn badly? His reasonings aren't explained well in the beginning so his actions feel more like an act of interia that anything else.
4) The side characters are kinda annoying. Vlad is mostly okay because he serves a definite role in the story as playing the more level headed one to Demitri's more fiery personality. Sophie starts to grate on my nerves but whenever she does they shunt her out of the film. The mandatory cute animal sidekicks range from irritating to please make it stop.
For what it's worth, the stage adaptation exercises both animal sidekicks largely be consequence of this version trying to be more historical fiction rather than a Disney Renaissance style musical. That brings us to one of the biggest and most controversial changes in the stage version, Gleb. He's a Russian officer who is torn between his feelings for Anya and his duty to the cause. He replaced Rasputin as the main threat. With Gleb, they do rectify points 1 and 3 but this is not without losing much of the energy Rapustin injects into the piece. For all his faults, Rasputin and his weird demon things move shit from Point A to Point B while also being very entertaining at the same time. Gleb has more of a motivation than Rasputin but the story comes to a screeching halt whenever we have to focus on him. He is in love with Anya because she's hot I guess and we get so many songs of this dude belting for the gods about how much he wants her but he can't pursue her. There are a total of three songs counting reprises that are dedicated to this and they're basically all the same. Gleb wants to bone, he has daddy issues and we move on. He interacts with her more but there is no reason he should be this blue balled over a chick he does not know. Anya and Demitri still have great chemistry and the plot is reworked to give them more time together. I like their dynamic more in the film but the musical does this fine but just differently. Anya doesn't really even know Gleb nor that he wants to see if the curtains match the drapes. So we're stuck in this completely unnecessary lopsided love triangle that makes Wolverine, Scott and Jean Grey's bullshit seem like Shakespeare. There is almost zero evolution within Gleb's many croons about how much he wants to bang this chick. He comes to basically the same revelation every single time so whenever he gets a song it's basically time for a pee break. Unlike Rapustin who at least gets an entertaining last fight and death, Gleb doesn't really even get that. He corners her, she goes full on Malala and tells him to do what he's gotta do, he chickens out and dips. They try to give it some weight by having Anya comfort him but she doesn't know this man and she certainly doesn't know he's in love with her. It feels even less powerful than the original ending because at least Rasputin actually killed her family so there's some connection there. Gleb is the son of the guy who was involved so his connection to any of this is nebulous at best. Why not just make him an ex-boyfriend or orphan she grew up with? Why not actually just make him the dad Gleb keeps referring to? Rasputin actually wants her dead and the story moves mostly because of his machinations behind the scenes. Gleb feels shoehorned into this narrative and he's not even entertaining while he's there. His songs are slow, repetitive and he has no real personality.
This is not the only change they made to the story. Vlad now has a mini subplot where he's trying to get back Sophie, now named Lily. This means she's in the story a lot more than she was previously and they don't succeed in making her less annoying. In film, a character can bounce in and out of the narrative without us questioning why they're not there. Theater is a bit different because you can't really have characters that just show up and never appear again. It's been done but usually they'll have the actor play a dual role in the story as well. Lily gets a lot more to do and I'm sorry but almost every song she gets besides the one from the film are also pee break songs. Land of Yesterday just feels like a Russian version of If I Knew Then from Beetlejuice but with much less relevance to the story. The Empress also gets a song now and while it's more memorable than any of the stuff Gleb or Lily get, there's no reason for it to be there. Some composers feel the compulsion to make every single emotional beat a song and while I understand that desire, you don't need it. Honestly my first time seeing the show, I started laughing when she busted out singing because it's so random. The original film got the point across without this and the musical does not expand on her character in any way so there's nothing new to communicate here. Maybe they felt the character should sing more but even without Close the Door, she gets some parts in other songs. This is an example of the fluff I was referring to earlier.
But for everything they added, they removed a lot of stuff but tried to play it down the middle. For example, in the film Rasputin tries to get Anastasia to kill herself by giving her an enchanting dream that turns into a nightmare. Demetri saves her life, she now has learned to trust him more and we move on. In the musical, Rapustin no longer exists but the scene does in a way. Now she has a nightmare about her family being killed where she Demetri comforts her as he does before but there's no narrative reason for this scene to be here. By this point, they've had more moments to build the romantic connection so it feels redundant. They also want to give us a reason to lead into the song where they realize they both know each other and that she's really Anastasia. It's a very flimsy setup and the film did this much better by having Demetri be the one who saved her life. It also undercuts his character development by a lot. There's no scene where he rejects the money. He doesn't have a personal connection to Anya or her grandmother like he did before. His character is neutered a lot in this version and doesn't come off as selfless as he did before. He turns down the money but not only does he have less of a reason to that now, that reveal feels much less powerful. His character isn't even involved in saving her life towards the end. While they do get more time to bond in this version, I just don't feel like they added enough to justify some of these changes.
I don't quite understand why they chose to go the route of realism with the musical. Maybe they're responding to people who thought the more fantastical elements were out of place but as we can see without that, the story doesn't have much of a reason to be a musical. There's an older movie version of this story with Ingrid Bergman that hits a lot of the same beats as the 90's version. That version is decidedly not a musical and also isn't that great of a film either. This isn't the easiest story to make compelling and the 90's version threaded the needle as best as it could. By using the story of Anastasia as more of a jumping off point for the type of fairytale musical audiences had become used to, it managed to make the story more removed from the actual real life Anastasia who did in fact die, although that was not known back then. The musical leans too much into the history and it just doesn't work. There are dark shows that deal with heavy subject matter. The Color Purple is basically just Beat My Ass: The Musical. But that show isn't also trying to be a romantic whimsical experience, Anastasia very much is. I wish they had just kept Rapustin, weaved him into the story more naturally and gave him a stronger personal connection to Anastasia and kept the darker non-history related elements in the show. The movie is plenty dark at times but the history and political struggle is given a passing mention in the opening and is rarely ever brought up again unless to refer to actual murders. The musical felt like Bridge of Spies set to music with how much focus they put on the political aspect of the story. That does not mesh and I think it's part of the reason why this show doesn't have as strong of a following as the film. It's not ungodly awful, but it doesn't justify its existence.

Timestamp: https://imgur.com/a/gafs-stuff-k31BbpA
The Valmet magazine does feed correctly, even though the back of the left feed lip looks a little less curved. Beater for the range.
I have too many stocks. Help rid me of them. Obviously only accepting PayPal G&S unless you want to do a proxy.

Item	Details	Price
Valmet .223 Mag	Three rivet style, obviously not new. Has some surface rust. At some point someone must have dropped it and bent one feed lip, looks like it was worked back into place with pliers. Functions fine.	$350
Montgo-9 Upper.	New, got it and never did anything with it. Still has oil on the right side from when it arrived.	$390
PSA 16" Upper	Pretty sure it's PSA SKU 7780446. No bcg nor ch.	$165
Magpul ACS Gray	Used, small nick on the locking mechanism, pic in album.	$75
Magpul CTR Gray	Used but fine.	$40
DoubleStar Triangle Skeleton stock.	Mounted, no salt.	$105
Blackwood Trading Co stock and pistol grip	New. Pioneer Carbine Buttstock + Reaver grip.	$100
Diamondhead Gen 2 flip up sights	New, only ever mounted.	$150
Magpul MOE AKM	New. Plum (ugly af).	$20
JP Adjustable gas block, clamp on.	pretty sure it's model JPGS-10D. Includes rifle length gas tube	$80

If you've been done dirty by Blackwood I'll give you a deal on mine.

I'm not sure if this is something covered in the docs, but I am very new to all this. Always redraw isn't updating anything... Is there anyone who knows why this might be?

class Updaters2(Scene): def construct(self): r = ValueTracker(0.5) #Tracks the value of the radius circle = Circle(radius=r.get_value(), stroke_color=YELLOW, stroke_width=5) line_radius = always_redraw(lambda : Line(start=circle.get_center(), end=circle.get_bottom(), stroke_color=RED_B, stroke_width=10) ) line_circumference = always_redraw(lambda: Line(stroke_color=YELLOW, stroke_width=5, ).set_length(2*r.get_value()*PI).next_to(circle, DOWN, buff=0.2) ) triangle = always_redraw(lambda : Polygon(circle.get_top(), circle.get_left(), circle.get_right(), fill_color=GREEN_C) ) self.play(LaggedStart(Create(circle), DrawBorderThenFill(line_radius), DrawBorderThenFill(triangle), run_time=4, lag_ratio=0.75 )) circle.add_updater(lambda radius : radius.set_value(r.get_value())) self.play(ReplacementTransform(circle.copy(), line_circumference), run_time=2) self.play(r.animate.set_value(2), run_time=0.2) self.play(circle.animate.set_width(r.get_value())) self.play(triangle.animate.set_top(circle.get_left())) self.play(r.animate.set_value(1), run_time=5) #Not meant to make any sense animation-wise, just messing around with this to get used to it. 

Hello there,
Im making a clothing collection for roblox, i'm designing the clothes on marvelous designer. But i need them to have less triangles so they work well in the game. I'm trying to see how can i change the retopology on the garmwnts but i can't make it right. Does anyone knows what is the best and easiest way to do it?
Please help me :(

Like I said in the title I am currently one of the guys in a love triangle. The others in question, let’s call them Jeff and Megan went out for about a year and have broken up and gotten back together multiple times.
For context Jeff and I have been friends since elementary school and I met Megan first through work. We were in college at the time and we both worked part time at a restaurant. I liked Megan from the start and we had become friends and it was trending to become more than that. So one day I decided to invite her and her friend to join me and my friends for a day at the beach and she accepts. We’ve never socialized outside of work before so I intend to use this day as a step toward becoming more than friends. In retrospect I should have just not been chicken shit and asked her out but I did what I did.
It all backfires of course because that day Jeff flirts with her, she develops an attraction for him and she ends up asking me to hook her up. At the time I thought I misread the situation but I’m pissed at both of them because I thought I was clear about my intentions. But I calm down and like a chump basically hook them up and they date for a year.
Now throughout the time they were dating we all spent a lot of time together and Megan and I get pretty close. I really began to think I was in love with her which was agonizing because I constantly had to witness Megan and Jeff making out and even once witnessed them having sex when we all went camping.
Eventually they break up and Megan and I keep in touch and end of getting even closer. One night we are drinking and I tell her that I have feelings for her and have from the beginning. She tells me that she knew and that she liked me too but when she met Jeff she just felt an instant attraction.
I get pissed and tell her to fuck off but before I can storm off she kisses me. We end up having sex that night and it was really good. We continue doing it for weeks and are trending towards making it official and telling our friends that we are together. But Jeff has reentered the picture and wants Megan back. He tells her that he loves her and wants to make it work.
Now she is conflicted. She tells me that she wishes she chose me from the start. For context, we have really great sex and she says if she knew that we had this kind of chemistry in that area then her and Jeff never would have happened. She knows we are a better pair but there are lingering feelings with Jeff.
She’s asked me to give her a week to think about what she wants and I say I’m ok with that but I again feel like a chump. I feel I should have told her she doesn’t get a chance to think about it. She either chooses me right now or I’m done with her. What should I do?
Also just to preempt comments I know I will get. Yes, I know this is my friend’s ex but Jeff knew damn well I liked this girl and he flirted with her anyway so fuck him. I should have told him to fuck off years ago but again I was chicken shit.
TLDR: I am one of the guys in a love triangle and I don’t know whether I should give the girl a chance to choose.

I typically play No Squad Rec with either my PG or Center and I come across some players who are absolute detriments to good gameplay and even sometimes explicitly the sole reason why we are losing. Sometimes these players are just inept and ignorant and just don’t know how to be a good teammate. Other times, they’re intentionally selling the game or emotionally sensitive and want to ruin the game for others, for a number of reasons.
For those who would like to be a better teammate (specifically No Squad Rec), I’ve decided to write up some glaring mistakes made by players as well as advice to improve your gameplay.

1. There is NO reason not to have shooting. The most egregious offender of this are often centers. You can block shots, rebound, defend, set screens, dunk AND shoot as well. You do NOT need to choose 1 or the other. On my center, I can shoot at all 3 levels (3pt, midrange, paint) while doing all the center duties listed. Please stop building non-shooting centers. As a center, when I see a matchup who can not shoot, I LOVE it. That means I don’t need to leave the rim and I can ignore my matchup outside the paint and I will make it HELL for any of the other players who attack the rim. If you have a non-shooting center, you are completely handicapping your teammates & team. I don’t care that you have 10 pts & 14 rebs. You lost because you were a liability on offense and I ended up shutting down many of your teammates at the rim and my teammates can play tough perimeter defense because I’m right behind them to clean up any players that blow-by them. STOP building non-shooting centers. This also applies to ALL other positions. You NEED to be a shooting threat if left open.
   
2. Please put passing on your builds. Some of you put so little passing on your builds that your passes are late by the time they arrive and the contest is now going to force a bad shot. Also, your passes are so slow that it’s incredibly easy to pick off because you decided to put minimal passing on your build. It’s selfish and you’re causing turnovers and poor shots.
   
3. Put SOME defense on your builds. Especially your point guards. You don’t need to be a lockdown, but you should not be a complete liability on defense. You should absolutely have even more than minimal defense if you are a short guard. Also, by defense, I do not mean a really high steal rating and no perimeter defense. Spamming steal is not defense.
   
4. Please do not ask us to play zone because you put ZERO attributes in defense and now you’re getting killed by your matchup. Stop bringing that build to the Rec.
   
5. Just because we have an 18 point lead does not mean you should stop playing defense or not coming back to play defense so you can cherry pick. We see you, and as a the PG, I will never pass to a player making us play defense with only 4 players. It’s selfish and you are toxic.
   
6. Just because you haven’t gotten as many shots as you like in the 1st half doesn’t mean you are being frozen out. Sometimes your defender is draped all over you. Sometimes another teammate has a poor defender & we’re exploiting that weak matchup. Or a ton of other reasons. Do NOT use your emotional weakness and expectation that you NEED your shots to mean you’re gonna start selling or walking back on defense. You’ve now signaled to your teammates that you’re willing to lose and will make us work harder. I will not give in to threats of selling so you can isolate. I would rather lose than capitulate to a players temper tantrum.
   
7. Make the open pass! Your teammate is open in the corner… what should you do? Make the pass. Don’t hesitate. Don’t try to blow-by your matchup and then make the pass. Just make the right pass. When you send a late pass or look off a teammate, you’ve started a contagious pattern of selfishness.
   
8. Sometimes you’re open and a teammate may have missed you or not seen you or sent the ball late. Give them some grace and don’t assume it was malicious and start selling. It’s only going to start a pattern of this throughout the team. Stop!
   
9. Stop slashing into 2-3 defenders and praying for a dunk animation. If you have 2-3 defenders waiting for you in the paint, that means at least 1-2 players are open on the perimeter if they’re spacing.
   
10. Space the floor. You should not me in the midrange or sitting under the basket. Preferably, you should be in a corner or on the wing. Space away from your teammates. Remember, WHERE YOU GO, YOUR DEFENDER GOES! That means if you sit in the interior or in the midrange, you’ve now set up a defender to clip a driver to the rim and a defender to rotate to an open man. Space AWAY from your teammates. That includes spacing up higher on the wing from the corner so that 1 defender can not guard you both.
    
11. Centers, please put passing on your MyPlayers. If you have Breakstarter on Gold, the outlet passes are much crisper and less likely to be picked off. I would say Gold is a minimum. When centers without passing or Breakstarter on Bronze send those passes, they sail out of bounds, have me spinning to collect the pass, or create a turnover. Outlet passing/scoring is one of the easiest modes of scoring in No Squad Rec.
    
12. Stop starting an insurrection against your PG. I am well aware there are shitty PGs and they can’t play their role. What is unacceptable is inbounding to other players because your PG had a turnover or bad possession and now you lost all faith in their ability to run the point. Again, this is for the PGs who are good players (check their stats before tip-off).
    
13. Check your teammates stats before tip-off (Press Triangle on PlayStation). I check for assists, teammate grades, who can shoot, matchup stats, poor defenders, efficiency, etc. A lot of good intel can be gained about teammates & matchups. Also, you can see who is typically a good player and show them some grace when they start 0/2 from the field.
    
14. STOP SELLING. Just quit & leave. If you’re not willing to play defense & offense correctly, just leave. You do not need to be here for 30 mins.
    
15. Stop trying to steal the inbound from the PG in the 1st qtr. It’s toxic. Go down court. Stop making me bring the ball up with multiple defenders draping me.
    
16. Pinch the drive. When you see your teammate is blown by on the wing, you as the corner man should pinch the drive. If you have to commit, your teammate should be running out to the corner man. 2K is not a game of five 1v1s. HELP your teammates. Crowd their matchup. Pinch the drives. Hedge screens. Switch if necessary. Communicate when needed.
    
17. If the center is struggling on the boards and his matchup is getting offensive boards, as the PF or SF, STOP leaking out and help the center on the boards. Either box out or go for the rebound but don’t leave the center struggling.
    
18. STOP running around and sit corner or hash. Only move with a purpose and don’t conflict with others. Otherwise, sit corner or hash and wait for opportunities without ruining the offense.
    
19. Do not force up a shot because you don’t think you’ll touch the rock again. If you’re shot is not there, then set up a teammate for an assist.
    
20. Spamming steal is NOT defense. Stop. Also, if you’re matchup is going off, ask for help or a switch, otherwise you’re our liability.
    

Possibly to be continued.

This is probably a longer story than it really is, but I am just trying to give as much context as I can.
In grade 11, me (F16-17) and my ex-friend (F16-17) were best friends. For some context, we both became friends fairly early in high school. In my country high school is from grade 8-grade 12. I joined the high school in grade 8 from out of city, the high school is just closer to me than the one in my city, so I was a new kid. I made some friends in grade 8 as a new kid but those friendships did end in grade 9. Grade 9 is when my best friend, we'll call her Emily, transferred to the school. And we formed a friendship. Through grade 9 we had formed our own little friend group with 2 other girls, we'll name them Clara and Sabrina. It was the 4 of us through majority of high school. We would always text each other, always hang out after school, spend any break we had at school together and had as much fun as any girls in high school could have (minus the partying because my school is not a partying school).
Emily and I were the closet in the friend group, afterall we were pretty similar and come from similar backgrounds (We're both a type of asian). We both would be described as the smart kids. We both would end up getting high grades in all of our classes. In grade 9, when we met, she told the friend group her dream was to become a doctor like her parents were, so she studied extra hard in high school to keep her grades high. I, on the other hand, did not really have any specific dreams. I wanted to become a writer or even a lawyer (but was worried because I'm not the best speaker). Due to that, I never tried that hard at school. Like i care about grades, my parents cared a lot about me getting high grades, but I wasn't studying for anything. And with that I never really studied either, I would do my homework and pay attention in class and take pretty notes but I was not spending any real time after class to do work Which is something that Emily would do. She would spend hours and hours a day just studying. If she wasn't studying she would be doing some volunterring or some club stuff.
Fast forward to grade 11. Right from the beginning of the year something just felt odd about our relationship. She seemed distant. Which I chalked up to it being we were now considered seniors at our high school so she was starting to stress about universities already, but it was still whatever. My school worked in semesters, so for half of the year we would have 4 specific classes which would then switch to different classes in second semester. During first semester I didn't have any classes with any of my friends. I was just chilling in all of my classess and getting adopted into different group friends in those classes. I was always well-liked in high school, I was not a popular kid. But compared to all the smart kids in the school, I was deemed the nicest so because of that everyone would be nice to me and friendly (even though I know for some of them it was so they could get hw answers out of me, but they were still very nice to me).
During this time, my friends and I would make up plans to hang out. We always made it a point to hang out at least once a week outside of school. It was always after school, we would usually study, walk around or go to the mall. In our gc on insta we would always double check with one another on which days to do it. Clara, Sabrina and I would always talk in the gc and were always the ones initiating the plans. Emily was also in the gc but would rarely reply to anything. Any times we would make plans to hang out, Emily would either not reply (which would then lead us to asking her during lunch the next day if she was free, where she would barely talk) or she would just say no to all plans. The few times she would say yes, she would always cancel the day of. Which would be annoying, and Clara, Sabrina and I would talk amongst ourselves that we found it odd she would always cancel and never want to hang out outside of school, but we were like it's not that big of a deal. She could just be busy.
We then just ahead to my birthday. Now i have an early birthday and it falls around the time that we come back to school after the winter break. Now during the winter break, Clara, Sabrina and I formed a seperate gc as it would just be the three of us talking and making plans. We also always took so many pictures and felt bad about sending it into the gc with the four of us in it as we didnt want Emily to feel bad about not coming. So we figured it was better if we kept it seperate. But in the main gc, I just ask when is everyone free to do something small. I'm not really a birthday person. Since high school, all my birthdays include going to some cozy restauraunt with my 4 closest friends and just having a casual dinner. So I ask and everyone leaves their responses, including Emily. We decide on a day, it would be after school just a day or two after my actual birthday and we would be going to a restuarunt and an arcade nearby (I have strict parents so I really wasn't allowed to go out late or really go out anywhere far). The plan is made and everything is set. When the day comes for the dinnearcade, we all meet up by our lockers to go take the bus together.
The 3 of us are there waiting for Emily to come and she does just a few minutes late. That is when she tells us she can't come because she has a club meeting today, and she told us it was mandatory for us to attend. Now of course my friends and I tried to convince her to blow it off just this one time, but she was adamant about going. So, whatever. We say bye to her and start walking to the bus. While walking there we bump into a mutual friend, also waiting for the bus. She is also in the same club, so we confused why she was here. We do ask her, saying "hey isn't there something happening with the club today?" That is when she tells us there was just this small meeting recapping what had happened in last weeks meeting for the people who missed it. Meaning the meeting was not madatory at all, especially when Emily had cancelled our plans last week to go to this said meeting. Meaning she did sort of lie to get out of going to my birthday party. I of course was hurt by this. When she told us she had to go to the meeting, I didn't think much of it as I knew how much school mattered to her and how much doing this club stuff mattered. But she had the choice to come, and she decided to just blow me off. We went out and had fun and didn't bring the matter up with her. We figured it was just her caring a bit too much about school.
Anyways this whole cancelling plans last minute, ghosting the main gc thing happened more and more. It also got to the point where if I wanted to talk to her, whether that was through text or in real life I would always have to approach her first. As this carried on for a while, i of course was getting a bit annoyed about where this friendship was going.
We now get to Emily's birthday a month later. Now Emily decided to plan her birthday, very last minute. I am just pointing this out as i am not a person who can do spontaneous plans, one because i have this need to plan properly and two because I do have strict parents. So i can't just spring a plan on them the day of and expect to go. Which is something Emily knows. Anyways she makes the plan and i tell my mom about it to ask if i can go and she says yes. The day before, Emily then decides to change the plan entirely. We were going to go into downtown city (for context, it's roughly 2 hours transit from our neighborhood). I obviously had to ask permission as she wanted to stay out late which is not something my parents would like, so when Emily told us at lunch the change in plans, Clara, Sabrina I told her we had to double check if we can still go as we all have strict parents, but our extended friend group were all down to go.
After school, the four of us head into the bathroom, which is a toally normal thing for high school girls to do before we headed out. While there Emily then decides to start a fight with me about not going to her birthday, which hasn't happened yet. She starts yelling at me about how Im mad that she didn't go to my birthday and am not going to hers as revenge (I'll be honest, I kinda forgot she didn't go). And starts yelling at me about how I'm being a bad friend and frankly a b*tch. And when I say she is screaming at me, I mean there is the largest echo circling our bathroom as she yells at me. Now I'm just standing there, trying to reason with her. I'm just trying to explain to her that i didn't say i wasn't coming, i just needed to get permission to go, which is something that Clara and Sarbina said as well but Emily wasn't saying anything about them. She proceeded to just yell at me for a solid 5 minutes. Another girl did walk into the bathroom, saw Emily yelling and just left, which I feel bad about. I do not do well with someone yelling at me, so I just tell her that I'm leaving now and we can talk later. I practically run out of the bathroom and out of school. Clara runs up to me and says i can't go home feeling like this. I felt horrible, i felt like throwing up. So Clara makes it her job to cheer me up as Sabrina is trying to calm Emily down. Clara takes me to Mcdonalds, where we split a meal as that became a tradition of ours and she bought me ice-cream to make me feel better. We end up spending roughly and hour and half there before starting to walk back to our houses. I did feel a lot better and I was smiling. Clara didn't really say much about what happened as she knew it would upset me. She just said that Emily was being mean and left it at that. At some point during our walk, Emily calls Clara and starts screaming at Clara over the phone about choosing "my side". I only know it was Emily because I can hear her screaming through the phone and Clara is trying to be nice to her and say she was comforting her friend like a good one would do. Emily continues screaming and Clara just hangs up on her.
We don't talk about it. Now the next day, at school, is Emily's birthday. I feel so awkward. Because i'm still upset about what happened. When I see her, I'm not sure if I should wish her a happy birthday. I feel like I am owed an apology first. so i don't really say anything to her. and we don't really talk. Now we are in the same Chemistry honours class together and are lab partners. So we have to talk. I ask her, if we're going to talk about what happened. And she just says, no, it's my birthday. I just say really but she doesn't say anything after. So Im just like, fine, whatever. We spend the entire class in awkward silence, and I do not see her again the entire day. Even at lunch because she has a club meeting or something. Clara, Sabrina and I all agree that we don't want to talk about it. Clara got an apology text last night but she was still mad about being yelled at over the phone. Sabrina asked us if we wanted to know what her and Emily talked about yesterday but i said no. I was frankly too mad and knew if anything was said, I would be upset. Emily did not end up having a birthday party. and there is now an awkward silence between the 4 of us. it's like a horror movie, where the music is playing and you just know something bad is coming and you have to wait for it.
A few days later, I know i have to say something. I can feel that our friendship is hanging by a thread and I want my best friend back. So at lunch, while we're all sitting by our lockers I bring up the topic. I do not remember the conversation that took place. All I know was that Emily was practically screaming in my face, in front of all our friends (Clara, Sabrina and 5 of our other friends). Everyone is trying to get her to stop, but she keeps yelling at me. At some point I just start crying. Now this is the first time, that someone outside of my family, has ever made me cry. Its the first time I have ever cried at school too. The tears are flowing down my face as I just say "i'm sorry i cant do this" to the rest of our friends as i had off to the bathroom to calm down. Clara and one of our other friends rush off with me to try to calm me down and stop the tears. But they keep coming. I can't stop them and am now in the bathroom splashing my face with water and doing my best to wipe them all away. Clara, this other friend and i all have the same class next. So they have to literally drag me to class as I'm sort of paralyzed about whats happening. When we get to the classroom, everyone there, which was half of the class is looking at me and seeing my red, teared-up face. Our seats are at the very back corner of the classroom, on the very opposite side from the door. So i have to walk past the entire face as they all stare at me and wonder whats happening. the entire time im not really paying any attention. during little work periods in the class, my fellow classmates would walk up to me and ask if im okay. which i would say yes, i was even though i wasnt because what else could i say. I ended up powering through the rest of the day before going home and wonderign what to do.
In the secret gc, I text with Clara and Sabrina about what my next steps should be. They suggest we have an actual therapy session as a friend group to discuss if we even want to be friends at this point. I agree to this. I even start writing up my own speech I am going to tell Emily when i see her.
So I'm just going to jump ahead to whenever this happens. It's during lunch, outside on the grass field. I am calm, I know what to say and everything. I'm sitting there with Clara and Sabrina has to literally drag Emily out of school to come and talk. I kid you not. We have like an hour for lunch. It takes 20 minutes for Emily to finally show up. And she shows up like, "ugh what are we even doing here? im kinda busy" and just acts like there is nothing at all wrong. I start to calmly explain to her how ive been feeling the entire year. I do not remmeber the conversation. But what I remember talking about is how i feel like she's distant, she's always cancelling plans, im always the one texting her first, about how she gets mad at me for small little things, how she yells at me, etc. My whole speech was about how "i don't want to feel like sh*t for trying to continue this friendship". Because even after the first time she yelled at me, I just wanted an apology and we could move on and that didn't happen. And now Im just like I don't want to cry again and don't want my tears to come from someone who's supposed to be my best friend. She does argue her case in this. Her whole thing is how "i'm being clingy and annoying and controlling".
Now for her arguement, I think it should be known more about my persoanlity type. I am not the best people person. I have social anxiety and how that manifests in me is that i can't really talk to people that well. I don't know how to converse and get incredibly nervous to talk to anyone new. So when I do become friends with someone, I do latch on to them. I talk to them all the time, when i can, and they become my person. I think that is where the clingy party comes from. For the controlling/annoying thing, I can only chalk it up to me always texting her. Like i said, i would always have to be the one initating our conversations and plans. So our chats always look like 5 bubbles of text from me (because i am the person that types in multiple bubbles rather than one large text bubble) and her short responses. When it comes to plans, as I said i do not do spontaenous plans. I need to have them properly organized for both my parents sakes and my sake. I'm not someone who plans everything out minute by minute, I just need to know times and places. And if you are actually free.
Thankfully this time, Emily isn't yelling at me however she is talkimg a bit loudly. Now at this point we have spent 25ish minutes talking about this when she suddently gets up and says "i have to go otherwise i'll be late for my class and get in trouble". Which there is still 15 minutes before lunch ends. And her classroom is across the hallway from my next class with Clara. The walk from the grass field was literally 2 minutes. Our coversation wasn;t done. There was no convlusion and no real understanding on either part. So all of us get up as Emily starts speed walking and we all chase her. We're all telling her there is still so much time left, but she doesn't listen and still carries on. So then I say, "i don't want to be friends anymore if this is what it's going to be like". and she says "fine." and walks away. and that was the end of our friendship.
It was almost spring break and our friends were doing their best to navigate the situation. I think they believed we both needed time to cool down and we can all be friends again. However that didn;t happen. Emily and i agreed to be civil as we still had the same friend group but she never really hung out with us in the next couple days, or talked during lunch and that was it.
The two of us did not talk at all. The only times we did was in our Chemistry class, where she did the most un-civil thing ever. As I said we were lab partners. Anytime we had any lab, involing the microscope, I would always be the person doing the microscope work as Emily writes down the results of what I found. I would then get the numbers or obersations from her and add them to my worksheet as our teacher wanted us to work in partners but submit our own work. This one lab went off for too long and the bell rung. So as we are packing up quickly, I ask Emily for the numbers she wrote down. She said she's late for something and will send me the numbers later today. And I'm like fine. She never did. It was also a Friday so we went into the weekend and she never sent me anything. I did text her once on Saturday and another time on Sunday if she could send it. but she never replied and i just asked another classmate if they could send me their answers. If our teacher asked why did we as partners have different answers, I was going to tell him Emily wouldn't give them to me. He never did ask and that was the last time we really talked.
We then headed into spring break which ended up turning into the pandemic lockdown. Now I feel so bad when saying this, as i know this was a difficult time for so many people. But me as a 17-year-old high school studnet, loved the first few weeks of lockdown. I saw it as a mental health break as all the stuff that went down with Emily did in fact put me into a depression phase (I actually do have depression and i do end up in mini-phases where its really bad). The lockdown gave me time to breathe as it felt like i was holding my breath for so long and i could relax. Now in the fall, our school did a hybrid for our last year. Which was fine, it was weird but managable. Emily did not talk to me, Clara or Sabrina at all during our seniour year. We graduated and my friends and I had the best time we could under pandemic restrictions.
Current day, I (21) am now in university. Clara and Sabrina and I are as close as ever and have managed to keep our friendship alive and strong even 3-4 years outside of high school and while all attending different universities. We still hang out regularly (once every week or so) and text all the time. And would you believe it, Emily goes to my university. Remember, how I said she wanted to become a doctor. Yeah so her plan was to go to university in Toronto for some medicine thing. I don't really know. She didn't do that. Instead she stayed in our city and decided to do business instead. What am I doing, you ask? Also business. Now I know I can't claim a school, or a major or anything like that. But i can't lie, im a little annoyed that she decided to swtich her career path to the same as mine. Thankfully Ive only had one class with her and it was one of those big lecture halls so i didn't have to talk with her. Just seeing her tho reminds me of high school and i can feel my blood pressure rising and me sweating as all the nerves and stress come back.
Anyways Clara and Sabrina's birthdays are coming up. Their birthdays are within the same week so since high school, they've always just done one big combined party. The two of them are both really chill people, they are friends with everyone and anyone. So as their coming up with their birthday plans, they are thinking of their guest list and Emily is on it. Now, Clara and Sabrina did ask me beforehand if they could invite her. They do want to make sure I am comfortable. They both tell me that they don't really talk to her anymore, maybe once every 3 months or something. They also haven't hung out since high school. But for their 21st birthday they are thinking of inviting everyone from our high school friend group to have sort of a mini-reuinion. I am down for it, I do think i have moved on, in the sense that I know I do not want Emily in my life. I do tell them I will probably feel awkwad but I can manage for one night for their birthday.
As I'm telling my sister (F16) about Clara and Sabrina's party and who's coming, she asks me about Emily. She basically says if Clara and Sabrina are fine with inviting her, that means they have forgiven her for high school stuff, so am I not being a bit mean for holding on to my feelings? I am a person who believes there is no expirational date on any pain caused by a person. I should not have to "forgive and forget" a person, who has not asked for it and who caused me so much pain just because that is how the world has worked. But it go me thinking, am i being a bit rude?
So, two questions: AITA for what happened in high-school? (am i in the wrong for the friendship breakup) and AITA for not wanting to forgive her?
A FEW NOTES: (i'll add more when i think of it)
I have not spoken to Emily since grade 12. Not in person, not through people, not through text. We have had no contact with one another and i am fine with that. I do not want any relationship with her.
Clara and Sabrina are two of the sweetest people in my life. It does not hurt me at all they have the odd interaction with Emily at all. Afterall they do say its very minimal contact and the few times they have made plans with Emily included, they let me know well in advance, ask if its okay to invite her and all that. Each time I say its fine because I know Im in a good place to not feel bad.
I have never yelled at Emily. Nor have I ever spoken badly about her. With our mutual friends I might complain about the situation, but I never say anything bad about her. I should also say, Emily i don't think was well-liked. As I said the two of are good students, the smart kids, whatever else you want to say. However Emily is what would be described as a "teacher's pet" and does give off an arrogant vibe at times towards others. Some of my other friends/classmates would sometimes make comments about this to me, but i would always sort of downplay it. Like, oh that's not how she really is, she just cares a lot about school. A few times I would say the comments are harsh to some of the classmates. Her, on the other hand, has called me a controlling b*tch to several people. who have all told me about it. She did bad-mouth to quite a few people.
At some point in grade 11 (not really relevant to the main story, but might be part of the reason Emily's always made at me), but I was blamed for a rumour going around that Emily had a crush on this guy in our grade. Emily and I had to go to this one teacher's class for some notes or something. And in the class was this girl who I didn;t really like. So before we walk in I whisper to her, no one can hear, that "hey there's that girl i don't like". Emily then makes it so obvious that she is looking at this girl. And next to her is one of the popular boys in our class. Emily makes it so obvious that shes looking in his direction and does it a few times, that the rumour she likes this guy becomes a huge joke in our grade. She does not like this guy, never has liked this guy, but it is a joke that him and his friends carry on. This continues for the entire year, and Emily in our therapy session does mention this fact. She says its my fault that this joke has gone around. I don't see how.

Was on a family trip to Germany (I'm PIMO and the rest of my family are all still PIMI).
We decided to tour the camp to gain and understanding of the tragedy that took place and we all knew it would be a very sobering day.
Just as we're pulling in the car park at the entry there I saw, 3 JWs on a cart outside a fucking concentration camp.
I can't describe the amount of rage that immediately built up inside me. I was so disgusted. I still am. You go to a place like this and they can't help themselves but advertise this cult. Why why why.
I just walked off for ages and tried to avoid them but my family kept wanting a photo with them. And I was raging in protest but I didn't know how, I almost thought of outting myself right there and then. There was so much pressure and now my family has a selfie of us all there, including ME. I feel so terrible.
They had these special magazines about the purple triangles apparently exclusive to Germany (no awakes or watchtowers) and an app to download that shows all the points in the camp memorials showing things related to the JWs in the camps. Didn't really seem to give much other than a link to the website at the bottom. I can't believe this martyrdom of the victims of such an atrocity is done like this.
Most JWs probably will never know about the declaration of facts and how Rutherford basically said he agreed with anti-semitism in Nazi Germany. Only for it to then put a target on the Bible students backs which has resulted in the deaths and unimaginable suffering for those people.
I hate this cult so much. No one had any sense of how disturbing it was with the cart being there, it was all justified with how they are doing a good thing with "educating" people. Even tour guides went past and complemented the JWs on the cart there. I don't know what to say or think anymore. The org screams about the JWs in the holocaust but I doubt would ever care about other victims, what about all the other "wordly" victims. What about LGBT prisoners, JWs seem completely content that they'll all suffer and die at Armageddon.
Why can't this org collaborate with those holocaust memorial foundations to assist with actual proper research and memorials for the victims, rather than shamelessly advertising the cult at the entrance to a fucking concentration camp.
I'm so disgusted but also tired and exhausted at this point. Tired of being PIMO. I don't know what else to say.

ALL TIME PICK RECORD: 223-156 (verified on my instagram finzchatsmma)
LAST WEEK: 5-7 (ouch)
PRELIMS
SW W Bout: Emily Ducote v. Vanessa Demopoulos
Records: 13-8 v. 10-5
Last 5 Fights: WLLWW v. WLWWW

• Ducote is coming off a win against Ashley Yoder who was coming off a 2 year layoff herself
• Emily throws with a lot of power but often finds herself getting outvolumed in earlier rounds - she debatably lost RD1 against Yoder but almost got a late round finish with how she pushed the pace
• Against Hill and Loopy, she was kept on the backfoot and was getting outworked by both of them - not bad losses considering those are two elite/crafty strawweights
• Ducote has excellent TD defense as well - the only bad thing is she sometimes leaves openings on the break of a takedown - both loopy and Angela clipped Ducote a couple times on the exit
• Vanessa has a big reach disadvantage in nearly every fight she has fought in, but she was able to record a clean knockdown on Maria Oliviera who had a 10+ inch reach advantage, so I don’t think this matters too much
• One thing about Vanessa is her reach is a$$, so she is absorbing way more strikes than a normal strawweight would - but then you look at Ducote, and she somehow absorbs even more (vanessa 5 to ducote’s 7)
• Ducote lands double the strikes Vanessa does and Ducote’s only UFC losses have been to high caliber competition who have been able to outland her
• I don’t envision Vanessa getting a takedown which is her main path to victory - she does have some punching power but Emily is way more accurate and lands bigger shots
• Vanessa has a chance to get Emily out early since she’s a slow starter, but I think Emily has what it takes to finish the fight here
• Vanessa is debatably on a 2 fight losing streak and the one impressive win she had, she was knocked down very early, so...
• For betting purposes, I think I am staying far away

PICK: Emily Ducote by RD3 TKO
BW Bout: Alatengheili v. Kleydson Rodriguez
Records: 16-9-2 v. 8-3
Last 5 Fights: LWWDL v. LWLWW

• 1st thing I like to examine is if either fighter has been chinned: Alatengheili has been chinned 3 times, all outside the UFC, to varying levels of opponents; Kleydson has yet to suffer a KO loss
• I rate Alatengheili’s win over Chad Anheliger more than anyone on Kleydson’s resume
• Kleydson has had one convincing win and it was a KO against Shannon Ross - who hasn’t knocked out Shannon Ross? - The other win on DWCS was a complete mismatch as he had a 5 inch reach advantage, and his opponent finished his pro career with a record of 6-4 after that.
• Alan hasn’t broken 50 sig strikes landed in any of his 7 UFC bouts - he throws with power as evidenced in his RD1 KO over Kevin Croom - he had a near 10 inch reach disadvantage in that bout as well
• Both men will utilize takedowns if they feel they can win a round with them - they don’t land many and aren’t good at controlling
• To properly handicap Kleydson, we can only really look at his bout against CJ Vergara since that’s the only one with no shenanigans
• In that bout, he was off to a face start, but time and time again I am seeing that if he is on the backfoot, he is not having a good time
• Kleydson is not good at fending off takedowns, but he is good at reversing positions on bottom at the expense of a lot of energy
• Alan’s main paths to victory are going to be shoot for takedowns and pressure Kleydson as much as he can
• I think alat can definitely do this - in fights he has lost, he finds moments of success - against Gutierrez, he got lit up with leg kicks for 12 minutes and then almost found a knock out against the cage
• Kleydson’s only path to win here is a knockout early - I think Alat has more paths to victory if he can mix in wrestling and continue his forward pressure throughout the fight, leading to a late round finish or a decision victory
• For betting purposes, I do like the idea of a unit on Alatengheili

PICK: Alatengheili by UD
SW W Bout: Piera Rodriguez v. Ariane Carnelossi
Records: 9-1 v. 14-3
Last 5 Fights: LWWWW v. LWWLW

• Both women have not fought in a year, and Ariane hasn’t fought in 2 years since her loss to Loopy Godinez
• Carnelossi doesn’t handle takedowns well - she has an 8% TD defense - she was taken down 8 times by Godinez and THREE times by LIANG NA THE GOAT
• In the defense of Ariane, she did suffer a knee injury in the first round which left her wide open for takedowns, but surrendering 3 to liang na is not a good look
• Piera, on the other hand, has landed takedowns on every opponent she has faced thus far and averages over 3 per contest
• Another thing to note - Carnelossi’s 2 UFC wins have come against winless UFC competitors - Nunes and Liang have ZERO UFC victories
• Piera lands more volume than Carnelossi and I think she will be able to have her way on the feet
• I have yet to be impressed by a full Carnelossi performance: she did do well against Nunes but she was rocked by Liang in RD1 and was controlled for a decent amount of time
• On the feet, I’d say the striking is very similar although I give the slight edge to Piera
• Carnelossi can also go for her own takedowns here, but Piera has done decent against women who chase TDs on her
• She did get tapped out by Gillian Robertson but I will chalk that up as an exception since Gillian is an elite BJJ practitioner
• Ultimately, I see more paths to victory for Piera - she can clip Ariane, fend off her takedowns, and get takedowns of her own
• Ariane can win by amassing control time and landing a lucky punch, but I don’t envision that happening
• Plus, Piera has been in multiple close fights that were debatably 1-1 after 2 rounds, and she has come out on top in Round 3 in all of them
• If you want to take a dog shot here, not the worst idea - this fight will more than likely be 1-1 heading into RD3 and anything can happen in low level WMMA, especially considering Ariane has been on the shelf for a while and could have been improving her game in that time
• For betting purposes, it’s dog or pass so I am passing

PICK: Piera Rodriguez by Unanimous Decision
MW Bout: Abus Magomedov v. Warlley Alves
Records: 25-6-1 v. 14-7
Last 5 Fights: LLWWW v. LLLWL

• Both fighters are coming off of short losing streaks, but both fighters were dominated in those fights by their opponents
• Abus is hard to predict - we’ve only seen him in 3 ufc bouts - he got a quick KO finish over Dustin Stoltzfus who had never been KO’d prior, a KO loss to Sean Strickland who simply outworked and put a pace on him, and a decision loss to Caio Borralho
• In that loss to Caio, we learned a lot - Abus is RD1 KO or bust and for him to be -200+ is crazy even knowing his opponent is chinny and has been finished a bunch
• Now let’s look at the Alves side - he has lost 5 of his last 7 and got finished in 4 of those losses - KO’d by Ikram at MW, split decision loss to Dalby at WW which he debatably won, KO loss to Jeremiah Wells where he debatably won RD1, triangle choke loss to Randy Brown where he won RD1 clearly, and a KO loss to James Krause where he was simply outclassed
• Alves has not performed well when he has the reach disadvantage, and he has a 6 inch reach disadvantage against Abus and will be significantly smaller
• It will be fun to see the leg kicks in this fight - both guys love to fire them at will and both have had successful KOs from their kicks
• If I was coaching Alves to win, the blueprint to beat Abus is simple - gas him out with clinch work and takedown attempts and hunt for a late round finish - Abus gasses in every fight we’ve seen that extends past the 1st
• I give Alves the wrestling advantage here - Magomedov might be Dagestani but he’s shot for only 1 takedown in his 3 UFC bouts and was unsuccessful - he shot for 0 against Borralho in a fight he was getting clipped on the feet
• Alves is chinny so backing him is a mega concern but backing Abus is equally as dumb especially at -295
• Both Alves and Magomedov are super active in RD1, so if this somehow extends beyond that, Alves is a worthy live bet
• I am predicting either a RD1 KO from Abus, or a RD3/Decision finish from Alves
• For betting purposes, I’d much rather bet the under 1.5 rds than I would a bet on either guy to win

PICK: Abus Magomedov by RD1 KO
BW W Bout: Tamires Vidal v. Melissa Gatto
Records: 7-2 v. 8-2-2
Last 5 Fights: LWWWW v. LLWWW

• The narrative for this fight is Gatto is looking for a bounce back and Vidal is the perfect opponent to get that win
• This is actually a move up in weight for Gatto - her last fight was canceled after weigh ins so rather than cutting weight again, she is fighting at BW for the 1st time in her UFC run
• Gatto seemingly possesses all the upside here - she has the takedown edge, she is better at fending off takedowns, and she has the power edge with 2 UFC KO wins compared to Vidal’s one
• Off of stats alone, you would think this fight is going to be razor close since their outputs are nearly identical
• Getting out struck by Montserrat Rendon isn’t the best look for Vidal, but Rendon fights a much different way than Gatto - she is more grindy and clinchy whilst Gatto is more in your face
• Watching the Rendon fight, it is clear what Vidal’s strategy is - she is going to pound low leg kicks until her opponent puts her hands down, then she is going to fire overhangs off of leg kick feints
• Against Rendon, this did not work - Rendon countered nearly every low kick with a cross and got multiple takedowns off of Vidal’s leg kicks
• The Gatto side isn’t super trustworthy in this matchup - when she gets taken down, she is willing to stay in guard for a long time while she fishes for subs
• If this fight hits the ground, I think a finish will soon come after
• I give Gatto the power edge, the grappling edge, and the takedown edge - I believe she can clip Vidal on the way in and get the fight to the mat, leading to a submission victory
• For betting purposes, I like this fight to end in sub

PICK: Melissa Gatto by RD2 Submission
LHW Bout: Oumar Sy v. Tuco Tokkos
Records: 9-0 v. 10-3
Last 5 Fights: WWWWW v. WWWLW

• This fight was put together this week so it’s hard to give a full handicap but I will try my best
• After suffering a KO defeat to Mingyang Zhang in the Road to UFC as a -600 favorite, Tuco went on a 3 fight win streak: decision win against a 3-2 guy, and back to back TKO victories over guys with 1-7 and 19-10 records - his record is insanely inflated
• Oumar has a relatively simple gameplan - get this fight to the mat as quickly as possible - he is a big position over submission guy so you won’t see him chasing finishes on the ground super often
• He is willing to get a sub, and he willing to get a ground and pound TKO, and he is willing to back mount for 15 minutes en route to a decision victory
• Looking at the tape, Tokkos can so easily get his back taken and has let opponents do this such as Clayton York
• I don’t think Oumar is chinny, and Tokkos’s main win condition is going to be an early KO which I don’t see him finding
• Oumar by sub is a risky play considering he is all 3 paths to victory, but I like it when you factor in Tokkos’ proclivity to being taken down by higher level wrestlers
• For betting purposes, I really like Oumar as a parlay piece

PICK: Oumar Sy by RD1 Submission
LW Bout: Tom Nolan v. Victor Martinez
Records: 6-1 v. 13-5
Last 5 Fights: LWWWW v. LWWWW

• Tom Nolan as a -500 favorite is absolutely crazy to me considering his only UFC performance was a 30 second KO loss, so I am going to try to do everything in my power to look for fade material in this writeup
• Well, I didn’t get far. Martinez is coming off of a KO loss to Jordan Leavitt, who only has one other KO victory in his career (by a slam)
• There’s nothing on tape that would show Martinez is chinny - his KO loss was a knee to the body, and his only other KO loss was his 1st professional fight
• Prior to his KO loss, Nolan was on a 6 fight win streak and a 4 fight KO streak
• Ok - I have seen enough
• Martinez was nearly KO’d in his DWCS fight in RD1 and somehow managed a comeback
• Nolan is getting a quick finish here or he is going to get finished trying - I will take my chances on him though
• For betting purposes, Nolan by KO is a worthy read

PICK: Tom Nolan by RD1 KO
MAIN CARD
SW W Bout: Angela Hill v. Luana Pinheiro
Records: 16-13 v. 11-2
Last 5 Fights: WLWWL v. LWWWW

• Can’t really handicap this fight based on stats - Angela Hill been in the UFC for eons it feels like and she is an aging fighter who has liked somewhat decent in her recent fights
• On the feet, I give Luana the power edge - she loves throwing overhands and hooks and throws with vicious intent
• In her fight against Michelle Waterson, she was losing rounds via points until she would clip Michelle with a big shot, thus swinging the round in her favor
• Luana doesn’t throw with much volume, but when she lands, she draws a big reaction which is key for the judges especially in WMMA when the rounds are separated by a razor thin margin
• The question is is Angela Hill the type to get rocked like this? I think not
• Angela is going to turn this into a grindy type fight - she definitely has the fight IQ to win a fight like this
• Angela’s last fight against Denise Gomez is a very good one to rewatch since Luana and Denise share similar characteristics in the fact that they both throw with heat early and they both gas as the fight wanes on
• In Hill’s losses, she was either getting taken down a lot or was outvolumed on the feet - Luana doesn’t throw with high volume so don’t see that happening - Luana does average over 2 TDs per fight but she’s not a high level wrestler like that and I see Angela having more success in that department as well
• Hard to make a pick here - I think Luana will throw the bigger shots, but I also think Angela can grind out Luana along the fence and point strike her way to a very close decision victory
• For betting purposes, I like the over 2.5 rds, but I think this should be a fade

PICK: Angela Hill by Split Decision
BW Bout: Adrian Yanez v. Vinicius Salvador
Records: 16-5 v. 14-6
Last 5 Fights: LLWWW v. LLWWW

• This card seems to be full of fighters looking to get right after a bad loss, or fighters the UFC is trying to prop up giving them a can to defeat
• This is one of those fights
• Yanez is on a 2 fight losing streak after having big jump ups in competition: he lost to Rob Font by getting absolutely destroyed from his jab, and he lost to Jonathan Martinez by getting absolutely destroyed with leg kicks
• We have seen Yanez in a UFC branded octagon 8 times, and NOT ONE of those fights included a takedown - he wasn’t, nor did he shoot for one and succeed
• Salvador, on the other hand, shot for 2 takedowns against CJ Vergara and landed zero, and he shot for 6 takedowns on Victor Altamarino and landed 1
• For all intensive purposes, this fight is going to stay standing, and Yanez has excelled on the feet against lower level competition
• It is interesting to note: of his 8 ufc bouts, 3 of them were a 1st round KO victory
• Against Randy Costa, he lost RD1 before getting a liver shot KO in RD2
• Against Davey Grant, he arguably lost 2 rounds before winning a split decision
• Salvador has had one impressive performance and it was a KO win against Shannon Ross, and who hasn’t KO’d Shannon Ross
• Watching the tape on his fights against CJ and Altamarino, you can see a couple of things: he does badly against guys that mix in TDs (Yanez will not), and he throws with vicious intent just like Yanez. If he has you pressed against the cage, you better bite down on the mouthpiece and hope for success.
• Salvador is also moving up a weight class so his chin might be better and he may have more power
• Ultimately, I’ve always thought of Yanez as having Top-15 level talent, and I cannot expect him to lose here
• For betting purposes, I may throw Yanez in a parlay or simply bet this fight to end in KO

PICK: Adrian Yanez by RD2 KO
WW Bout: Ramiz Brahimaj v. Themba Gorimbo
Records: 10-4 v. 12-4
Last 5 Fights: WLWLW v. WWLWL

• Pretty simple to breakdown Braimaj - he has 10 wins, all by submission, and 3 losses by decision, and the 1 ko loss he has could have went to a decision but his ear was falling off so the doctor had to step in - he also has not fought since 2022 whilst Themba has been super active in the UFC recently and has shown huge improvements fight to fight
• In fights that stay standing, Brahimaj has been pummeled - he barely shot for a takedown against Max Griffin and was brutalized on the feet for 3 rounds until the ref stepped in for his ear
• We know Ramiz’s game, but does Themba have the tools to expose Ramiz’ weaknesses and negate his strengths?
• Well, Themba has 2 Guillotine losses on his record - it is concerning how he keeps his neck out there to be taken when he shoots for a takedown
• I am hoping Themba has improved his FIGHT IQ since his Fletcher fight since he has a new team and new camp - if he shoots for takedowns, he might be cooked with a Ramiz gilly
• Themba recorded a nasty knockdown on Takashi Soto in their bout - I see this fight going similarly
• Themba losing by gilly is the only way I see him losing - if he goes in for a lazy takedown perhaps
• Outside of that, Themba has KO power shown in his most recent performance, has striking ability shown in his Soto performance, and has sub/back mount ability, which has been shown in all his UFC fights thus far
• For betting purposes, I really like Themba as a straight pick

PICK: Themba Gorimbo by RD2 KO
WW Bout: Khaos Williams v. Carlston Harris
Records: 14-3 v. 19-5
Last 5 Fights: WLWWL v. WWLWW

• On the surface, this appears to be a striker v. grappler matchup, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that - Carlston definitely has hands outside of his elite grappling - Khaos, yeah, he’s mainly a striker
• If this fight stays standing, I give Khaos the slight edge - he doubles Carlston’s output and 3 KO victories compared to Carlston’s 1
• Wathcing over his last few fights - Khaos fights in a very particular manner - he charges in with a flurry of power shots and is willing to get point fought to a decision if he doesn’t land a KO blow
• He has a split loss to Randy Brown which was super close, and it was only close because of the occasional power shot Khaos landed
• He has a decision win against Bodoya in a fight I could have seen him lose, but his big power flurries are what got him the W
• He is very good at fending off takedowns as he fended off 4 of Randy Brown’s attempts and 2 of Bodoya’s, but we also haven’t seen him tested against elite wrestlers (Carlston is not an elite wrestler, mind you)
• Now looking at Harris - not the best striker but he has excellent clinch work if he gets close and excellent BJJ if the fight somehow hits the mat
• One thing I noticed in his Wells fight - he got dominated for 2 rounds and nearly subbed, but it wasn’t because he was taken down - rather, he kinda almost threw himself at the ground and Wells followed him
• Against Gooden, he showcased his clinch work and showed he has pretty good takedowns
• This is a match of question marks: We haven’t really seen Khaos’ grappling/wrestling on display yet, and we haven’t seen what happens if Carlston Harris is forced to stand and abandon his wrestling for 3 rounds
• If we’re going by paths to victory, it’ll be a long night for Harris if he can’t get a takedown
• Khaos I think just has more ways to win: he can get the knockout since we’ve seen Harris recently chinned; he can get the decision victory if he outlanding Harris as well
• BUT... after reviewing Khaos v Michel Pereira, how on earth can you pick this man?
• Pereira landed takedowns at will and nearly got a RNC on khaos - if harris gets into similar spots, it should be wraps
• For betting purposes, I really like Carlston as a straight pick

PICK: Carlston Harris by RD2 Sub
FeathW Bout: Edson Barboza v. Lerone Murphy
Records: 24-11 v. 13-0-1
Last 5 Fights: WWLLW v. WWWWW

• We find ourselves in the main event and this one is fairly straightforward to break down, not straightforward to provide a pick
• Barboza is coming off back to back wins, one a KO on Billy Q and another a 5 round decision victory over Sodiq
• Against Sodiq, he was nearly KO’d in the 1st, but then he himself almost got Sodiq KO’d later in the bout
• Edson is a super dangerous striker - you didn’t need me to tell you that - the issue he’s had in his career has been not being able to beat the upper echelon of fighters in his weight class
• Edson has recorded knockdown in nearly ALL of his past 10 fights, having 1 in at least 6 of them, even in fights he wound up losing
• Edson does have trouble with the takedown, but I rate Murphy’s wrestling similarly to Sodiq’s - I picked Sodiq in that fight for this reason but Edson turned it up to a whole ‘nother level as the fight progressed
• We have yet to see Murphy compete in a 5 rounder, but we have also not seen Murphy get super tired in the 3 rounders he’s fought in
• Both guys are proven finishers with multiple KO victories, but both guys have also shown abilities to grind out close decision victories - although Barboza often finds himself on the losing side if a fight sees the scorecards
• The level of competition is not comparable - Lerone Murphy’s best wins are against guys that are no longer in the UFC, and even the guys that are, they aren’t the best level
• Lerone leaves so many openings on the feet - Edson’s unique striking is going to give him issues IMO
• Edson does have a chin issue - this is the only concern - he was wobbled and nearly finished by Sodiq in RD1, and Sodiq isn’t known for his striking like that
• Edson was also knocked down twice by Giga and even once by Bryce Mitchell of all people
• Edson is also aging so that could be a factor here, but ultimately, how do you not side with the guy who’s been on a recent career resurgence AND the guy who has fought the higher level of competition AND the guy who has been in 5 rounders before?
• For paths to victory, they both have KO and decision, so can’t really use that to predict either - but Murphy may have a sub path even though he has 0 wins by that method - in his Culibao fight, he nearly got a RNC from his wrestling
• I have seen Murphy wobbled before, and I wouldn’t be shocked to see an Edson finish
• BUT - I have also seen Edson wobbled and KO’d by lesser competition, and I have seen Murphy utilize his grappling before
• For betting purposes, I like Lerone Murphy straight up - his win conditions are too volatile in this matchup

PICK: Lerone Murphy by Unanimous Decision