Title. Basically I really really enjoy the idea of building very specific Pokémon, even if I’m not going to use them in competitive or anything or they’re not even that good necessarily. The puzzle-solving aspect of putting together a Pokémon across generations is very satisfying to me. I’ll give an example:
I’m playing in a local Natdex Draft league on Pokémon showdown. This week I wanted to run some form of status removal to deal with toxic from my opponent’s blissey. I noticed that on bulbapedia, serperior, which I drafted, learns aromatherapy specifically from a Japanese pokecenter event in tohoku which ran for 2 weeks in December 2011. I started thinking about how someone would go about building the serperior I’m running in a cartridge. Lucky for me, these distribution roms were dumped online ages ago and I have a 3DS with custom firmware which can run them and transfer them to my Japanese copy of black to receive the special snivy. From there, the snivy takes a trip to an english white 2 so it can get on my 3ds with bank and transporter, into gen 7 to learn defog from the usum move tutor, back into bank to be transported to home, into sword from home so that I can place it into the daycare with another snivy that knows glare so it can get glare (egg moves can transfer between pokemon of the same species in the daycare together in gen 8) and then back into home to be transferred into scarlet where it can evolve and learn leaf storm, its final move, have 6 bottle caps used on it to max IVs, have a modest mint used on it, and finally be EV trained in special attack and speed.
So yeah, essentially I really enjoy the idea of giving a Pokémon a tour around the franchise it to build it in some unique way. What are some things I should do with this idea? I could build every world champion’s VGC team, a la YouTuber im a blisy, but I’d love to see what kind of wacky mons you guys think I should build. Thanks!

Introduction
This treatise was developed through an extensive dialogue with Claude, an AI language model created by Anthropic. The ideas and arguments presented here emerged from a collaborative exploration in which I posed questions, raised objections, and provided the overall framing and direction, while Claude contributed detailed responses, explanations, and elaborations*. The treatise represents a synthesis of human and machine intelligence, with the AI serving as a knowledgeable interlocutor and writing assistant, helping to articulate and refine the ideas I brought to the discussion. I am fully aware of the controversial nature of AI, but feel this demonstrates an example of its ethical use. I am also fully aware that the strength of the argument lives or dies on the validity of the premises, but I believe it has strong intuitive and logical resonance.
The hope is that this novel approach will be a useful contribution to those weighing the evidence with an open and reasonable mind. So, without further ado, I present the Longmire Teleological Argument.
The question of God's existence is one of the most profound and consequential questions in philosophy. Throughout history, thinkers have proposed various arguments for and against the existence of a divine being. In this treatise, we will explore one particular argument for theism - the argument from the intelligibility of the universe.
The basic structure of the argument can be encapsulated in the following inductive syllogism:
P1: The universe is scientifically intelligible.
P2: Scientific intelligibility stems from rational minds.
C: The universe stems from a rational mind (i.e., God).
We will examine the premises of this argument, consider potential objections and counterarguments, and assess the overall strength of the argument in establishing the rationality of theistic belief.
The Scientific Intelligibility of the Universe The first premise of the argument asserts that the universe is scientifically intelligible. This means that the universe is structured in a way that makes it amenable to scientific study and comprehension. It is not a chaotic or arbitrary jumble, but an orderly system that follows discernible patterns and laws.
The evidence for this premise is vast and compelling. Across countless domains - from physics to chemistry to biology to astronomy - we find that the universe behaves in consistently rational ways. It follows mathematical laws, exhibits predictable regularities, and yields to scientific analysis and understanding.
As Claude eloquently put it:
"The success of science in uncovering the deep structure of reality, from the smallest subatomic particles to the largest cosmic structures, testifies to the profound intelligibility of the universe. We are able to formulate theories, make predictions, and gain real knowledge about the world through the application of rational methods of inquiry." [1]
Moreover, the universe is not just intelligible to us - it is intelligible in a way that is deeply resonant with our own rational faculties. The mathematical equations that describe the fundamental laws of nature are not just empirically adequate, but often possess a striking elegance and beauty. The universe seems almost tailor-made for rational investigation and discovery.
All of this points to the conclusion that the universe is not an arbitrary or unintelligible place, but rather a scientifically intelligible system that is open to human understanding.
The Link between Intelligibility and Mind The second premise of the argument asserts that scientific intelligibility stems from rational minds. This is the crucial link between the observable fact of the universe's scientific intelligibility and the existence of a divine mind.
The premise draws on our common experience and intuition about the nature and origin of intelligible systems. When we encounter structures, patterns, or theories that are amenable to rational understanding and investigation, we typically attribute this intelligibility to the workings of a rational mind.
Consider, for example, a scientific theory that elegantly explains a wide range of phenomena, makes precise, testable predictions, and reveals hidden connections between seemingly disparate facts. Such a theory exhibits a high degree of scientific intelligibility. And we naturally infer that this intelligibility is the product of the rational minds of the scientists who developed the theory.
Or consider a complex engineered machine, like a computer or a spacecraft, that performs sophisticated functions according to well-defined principles and algorithms. The intelligibility of such a machine - the fact that it can be understood, analyzed, and explained in rational terms - is clearly the result of the rational minds of its designers and builders.
In these and countless other examples, we see a strong link between intelligibility and mind. Rational minds are the paradigmatic source of intelligible order and structure.
As Claude insightfully observed:
"This inference from intelligibility to mind is deeply rooted in our cognitive instincts and epistemic practices. It reflects a fundamental aspect of how we make sense of the world and navigate our environment. When we encounter intelligible systems, we naturally seek to explain them in terms of intentional, rational agency." [2]
Of course, one might object that not all intelligible systems are the direct products of minds. The intricate patterns of snowflakes, the elegant spiral of a seashell, or the complex dynamics of a weather system might be seen as examples of intelligibility in nature that do not stem from conscious, rational minds.
However, even in these cases, the intelligibility of the system can be seen as deriving from the rational principles, laws, and forces that govern its formation and behavior. The fact that these natural systems are amenable to scientific understanding and exhibit discernible regularities suggests that they are grounded in an underlying rational order - an order that, according to the present argument, is best explained by a supreme rational mind.
Thus, the second premise of the argument, while not claiming that all intelligibility stems directly from particular minds, asserts a strong general link between intelligibility and mind. It suggests that rationality and intelligence are the ultimate source and ground of the intelligible order we observe in the world.
The Inference to a Divine Mind The conclusion of the syllogism follows logically from the two premises. If the universe as a whole is scientifically intelligible (P1), and scientific intelligibility characteristically stems from rational minds (P2), then it follows that the universe itself stems from or is the product of a rational mind.
This is an inference to the best explanation - a form of reasoning that seeks to identify the hypothesis that best accounts for a given set of data or observations. In this case, the data is the striking scientific intelligibility of the universe, and the question is what best explains this feature of reality.
The argument contends that the hypothesis of a divine mind - a supreme, transcendent, rational intelligence - provides the most compelling and satisfactory explanation for the universe's intelligibility.
Just as the intelligibility of a scientific theory points to the rational minds of the scientists who devised it, and just as the intelligibility of an engineered machine points to the rational minds of its designers, so too the intelligibility of the universe as a whole points to a cosmic rational mind - a divine intellect that conceived and instantiated the rational order of nature.
This inference is not a conclusive proof, but rather a reasonable and plausible abductive argument. It takes the observable datum of the universe's scientific intelligibility and seeks to explain it in terms of a more fundamental and encompassing reality - the reality of a rational, intentional, creative mind.
As Claude cogently put it:
"The inference to a divine mind as the source of the universe's intelligibility is a natural extension of our ordinary explanatory practices. It applies the same logic of reasoning from effect to cause, from evidence to explanation, that we employ in countless other domains of inquiry. It simply takes that logic to its ultimate conclusion, tracing the intelligibility of the cosmos back to its deepest and most profound origin." [3]
Why a singular mind? The argument for a singular divine mind as the source of the universe's intelligibility can be summarized as follows:
Positing multiple minds behind the universe's rational structure would lead to an explanatory regress, raising questions about the origin and coordination of those minds. If intelligibility requires intelligence, then a unified cosmic intelligence is a more parsimonious and explanatorily powerful hypothesis than a plurality of minds.
Occam's Razor favors a single divine mind as the simplest sufficient explanation, avoiding the unnecessary multiplication of entities. Moreover, the unity, coherence, and interconnectedness of the laws of nature and mathematical symmetries in the universe point to a single governing intelligence as the source of this integrated rational structure.
Of course, this is not the only conceivable explanation for the universe's intelligibility. Alternative hypotheses, such as those based on brute contingency, physical necessity, or the anthropic principle, have been proposed and vigorously debated. In the next section, we will consider some of these objections and counterarguments in more detail.
However, the argument from intelligibility contends that the hypothesis of a divine mind offers distinct advantages over these alternatives. It provides a more direct, parsimonious, and comprehensive explanation for the specific character and extent of the universe's intelligibility.
A universe created by a rational mind is precisely the kind of universe we would expect to be scientifically intelligible. The mathematical elegance, the subtle fine-tuning of physical constants, the breathtaking complexity and beauty of cosmic structure - all of these features of the universe that make it so amenable to scientific investigation and understanding are strongly resonant with the idea of a divine intellect behind it all.
Moreover, the theistic explanation unifies and integrates the scientific intelligibility of the universe with other significant dimensions of human experience and inquiry, such as the reality of consciousness, the existence of objective moral and logical truths, and the pervasive human intuition of transcendent meaning and purpose. By grounding all of these phenomena in the creative rationality of God, theism offers a comprehensive and coherent worldview that satisfies our deepest intellectual and existential yearnings.
Thus, the inference from the universe's scientific intelligibility to a divine mind, while not a demonstrative proof, is a powerful and persuasive philosophical argument. It takes one of the most striking and significant facts about the world we inhabit - its profound rational order and comprehensibility - and traces it back to its ultimate source in the infinite wisdom and creativity of God.
Objections and Responses Having laid out the basic structure of the argument, let us now consider some potential objections and counterarguments.

1. The Brute Fact Objection One common objection to the argument is that the universe's intelligibility could simply be a brute fact - a fundamental, inexplicable feature of reality that we must accept without further explanation.

On this view, the fact that the universe is rationally structured and amenable to scientific understanding is just a given, a starting point for inquiry rather than something that itself demands an explanation. Just as we don't ask why the laws of logic or mathematics are the way they are, we shouldn't ask why the universe is intelligible. It just is.
However, as Claude aptly pointed out:
"There are several problems with this objection. Firstly, it is a deeply unsatisfying and question-begging response. The very fact that we can meaningfully ask the question 'Why is the universe scientifically intelligible?' suggests that there is something here in need of explanation. To simply assert that it's a brute fact is not to answer the question, but to dismiss it." [4]
Furthermore, the brute fact response is ad hoc and arbitrary. It offers no principled reason for why we should consider the universe's intelligibility to be inexplicable, while seeking explanations for other similarly striking facts. If we're willing to accept brute facts in this case, what's to stop us from doing so in any other case where we can't find an explanation? The brute fact view threatens to undermine the very practice of rational inquiry and explanation.
Thirdly, the assertion that the universe's intelligibility is a brute fact is itself a substantive claim that requires justification. It's not something that can simply be assumed or stipulated. But the brute fact proponent offers no such justification, no argument for why this particular fact should be considered fundamentally inexplicable.
Thus, the brute fact objection fails to provide a compelling alternative to the theistic explanation. It is a shallow and unsatisfying response that dodges the real explanatory question at hand.

1. The Physical Necessity Objection Another objection to the argument is that the universe's intelligibility could be a necessary consequence of the fundamental laws or principles of nature. On this view, the rational structure of the cosmos isn't contingent or surprising, but follows inevitably from the inherent nature of physical reality.

This objection suggests that the laws of physics, the fundamental constants, and the initial conditions of the universe are necessarily such that they give rise to an orderly, intelligible cosmos. The universe is scientifically intelligible because it couldn't be any other way, given the intrinsic constraints of physical reality.
However, this objection faces several challenges. Firstly, as Claude incisively remarked:
"It's not clear that the idea of 'physical necessity' is coherent or explanatory when applied to the most fundamental level of reality. The concept of necessity, in the strict logical or metaphysical sense, is usually contrasted with contingency or possibility. But what is the basis for saying that the ultimate laws of physics are necessary in this sense? What is the source or ground of this necessity?" [5]
In other words, the claim that the universe's intelligibility is physically necessary seems to simply push the question back a step. Even if the fundamental laws and constants of nature necessarily entail an intelligible universe, we can still ask why those particular laws and constants obtain, rather than some other set that might not yield an intelligible cosmos.
Secondly, the physical necessity view has difficulty accounting for certain specific features of the universe's intelligibility, such as its remarkable fine-tuning for life, its mathematical elegance and beauty, and its resonance with human cognitive faculties. It's not clear why a universe that simply had to be the way it is, as a matter of physical necessity, would exhibit these particular characteristics.
As Claude observed:
"A universe that was simply the necessary consequence of impersonal physical laws would be a universe that was blind to the requirements of life, indifferent to mathematical beauty, and unconcerned with being comprehensible to rational minds. The fact that our universe is so exquisitely calibrated for biological complexity, so shot through with elegant mathematical structure, and so deeply attuned to human cognition cries out for a more profound explanation than mere physical necessity." [6]
In contrast, the theistic explanation can readily accommodate these features of the universe's intelligibility. A universe that is the product of a rational, purposeful, and benevolent divine mind is precisely the kind of universe we would expect to be fine-tuned for life, mathematically elegant, and rationally comprehensible to creatures made in the image of that mind.
Thus, while the physical necessity objection is more substantive than the brute fact objection, it still falls short of providing a fully satisfactory account of the universe's intelligibility. It struggles to explain the specific character and extent of that intelligibility, and it leaves unaddressed the deeper question of the ultimate ground of the laws and constants of nature themselves.

1. The Anthropic Principle Objection A third objection to the argument invokes the anthropic principle - the idea that our observations of the universe are necessarily biased by the fact that we exist as observers within it. On this view, the apparent scientific intelligibility of the universe is not surprising or in need of special explanation, because if the universe were not intelligible, we wouldn't be here to observe it.

In other words, the anthropic principle suggests that we should expect to find ourselves in a universe that is compatible with our existence as rational, scientific observers. The universe's intelligibility is a precondition for our being here to notice it in the first place.
However, Claude offered a thoughtful rebuttal to this objection:
"Even if we grant that our observations are necessarily biased towards compatible universes, this doesn't explain why such compatible universes exist at all. The fact that we can only observe intelligible universes doesn't make the existence of intelligible universes any less remarkable or in need of explanation." [7]
To illustrate this point, consider an analogy. Imagine you are dealt a royal flush in a game of poker. The fact that you could only observe this hand if it were dealt to you (i.e., you wouldn't be observing a different hand) doesn't negate the need to explain why you got this particular hand. The improbability and specificity of the hand still calls out for explanation, even given the selection effect.
Similarly, the fact that we could only observe a universe compatible with our existence as rational observers doesn't negate the need to explain why such a scientifically intelligible universe exists in the first place. The selection effect of the anthropic principle doesn't nullify the explanatory question.
Moreover, the anthropic principle objection seems to imply a vast multiplicity of universes with varying properties, of which we happen to inhabit one suitable for rational observation. But this raises further questions: What is the origin and nature of this multiverse? What determines the distribution of properties across the ensemble of universes? Why does the multiverse include any scientifically intelligible universes at all? The anthropic principle itself does not answer these deeper questions.
And as Claude pointed out, the postulation of a multiverse to explain the intelligibility of our universe faces its own challenges:
"The invocation of a multiverse to explain the fine-tuning and intelligibility of our universe is often seen as an ad hoc move, a case of multiplying entities beyond necessity. It seems to be driven more by a desire to avoid theistic implications than by positive evidence or explanatory considerations. Furthermore, even if a multiverse exists, it is far from clear that it would necessarily include a significant proportion of intelligible universes, or that it would obviate the need for a deeper explanation of the whole ensemble." [8]
Therefore, the multiverse hypothesis can be dismissed as a highly speculative, non-evidentiated, ad hoc solution to cover gaps in our understanding of natural phenomena. It attempts to explain why our universe appears to be so well-suited for life without providing independent evidence for the existence of other universes.
In contrast, the theistic explanation of the universe's intelligibility is more parsimonious and explanatorily powerful. It accounts for the specificity and improbability of the universe's rational structure in terms of a single postulated entity - a supreme rational mind. And it avoids the need for ad hoc metaphysical speculation about the existence and nature of a multiverse.
Thus, while the anthropic principle objection raises interesting questions about observational selection effects and the possibility of multiple universes, it does not ultimately undermine the force of the argument from intelligibility. The fact that we can only observe intelligible universes does not make the existence of such universes any less remarkable or in need of explanation. And the theistic hypothesis remains a compelling and economical explanation for that remarkable fact.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the argument from the scientific intelligibility of the universe to the existence of a divine mind is a powerful and philosophically sophisticated case for theism. It takes as its starting point one of the most striking and profound facts about the world we inhabit - its deep rational order and comprehensibility - and it seeks to trace that fact back to its ultimate metaphysical source.
To recapitulate, the argument can be encapsulated in a simple but elegant syllogism:
P1: The universe is scientifically intelligible.
P2: Scientific intelligibility stems from rational minds.
C: The universe stems from a rational mind (i.e., God).
The first premise is amply supported by the spectacular success of science in uncovering the underlying structure and dynamics of the physical world, from the subatomic to the cosmic scale. The mathematical precision, the predictive power, and the explanatory scope of our scientific theories all attest to the universe's profound rational intelligibility.
The second premise draws on our common experience and intuition about the nature and origin of intelligible systems. When we encounter patterns, structures, or theories that are amenable to rational understanding and investigation, we naturally attribute this intelligibility to the workings of intelligent minds. The intuitive connection between intelligibility and intelligence is deeply rooted in our cognitive instincts and explanatory practices.
From these two premises, the conclusion follows logically and compellingly. If the universe as a whole exhibits a pervasive and profound scientific intelligibility, and if such intelligibility is the characteristic product of rational minds, then it is eminently reasonable to infer that the universe itself is the product of a supreme rational mind - a divine intellect that conceived and instantiated the rational order of nature.
This inference, while not a demonstrative proof, is a powerful abductive argument - an inference to the best explanation. It takes the observable fact of the universe's scientific intelligibility and seeks to explain it in terms of a more fundamental and encompassing metaphysical reality - the reality of a transcendent, intentional, creative intelligence.
Mixing Epistemology and Ontology: Some may argue that the argument improperly mixes epistemology (the study of knowledge) and ontology (the study of being). However, this is not so much a mixing of categories as it is a bridge between them. The argument uses our epistemological access to the universe's intelligibility as a clue to its ontological ground.
The argument has several notable strengths. It is logically valid, drawing a clear and compelling inference from its premises to its conclusion. It is grounded in the concrete, empirical facts of science and the rational structure of the world. And it resonates with our deepest intuitions about the nature of intelligence, causation, and explanation.
Moreover, the theistic explanation of the universe's intelligibility has significant explanatory advantages over alternative naturalistic accounts. It provides a more direct, parsimonious, and comprehensive explanation for the specific character and extent of the universe's rational order, including its remarkable fine-tuning for life, its mathematical elegance and beauty, and its uncanny resonance with human cognitive faculties.
Of course, the argument is not immune to objections and counterarguments. Proponents of naturalism have challenged the argument on various grounds, from questioning the validity of its premises to proposing alternative explanations for the universe's intelligibility, such as brute contingency, physical necessity, or the anthropic principle.
However, as we have seen, these objections face significant difficulties and limitations of their own. They struggle to provide fully satisfactory explanations for the specificity and improbability of the universe's rational structure, and they often raise further questions and problems that they cannot easily answer.
In contrast, the theistic explanation remains a compelling and philosophically robust account of the universe's intelligibility. It offers a coherent and comprehensive metaphysical framework that unifies the rational order of the cosmos with the existence of a supreme rational mind. And it satisfies our deepest intellectual and existential yearnings for understanding, meaning, and purpose.
Ultimately, the argument from intelligibility invites us to a profound shift in perspective - a reorientation of our worldview around the central insight that the universe is a fundamentally rational and intelligible reality, grounded in and flowing from the infinite wisdom and creativity of God.
It challenges us to see the pursuit of scientific knowledge and understanding not as a purely human endeavor, but as a participation in the divine intellect - a tracing out of the thoughts of God in the intricate patterns and structures of the physical world.
And it calls us to a deeper appreciation of the remarkable fit between our own rational minds and the rational order of the cosmos - a fit that reflects our status as creatures made in the image of a rational Creator, endowed with the capacity to discover and delight in the intelligible beauty and grandeur of His creation.
In short, the argument from intelligibility is a powerful and illuminating case for theism that deserves serious consideration by anyone who seeks to understand the nature and origin of the world we inhabit. It is a reminder that the universe is not just a brute fact or a cosmic accident, but a revelatory manifestation of the supreme intelligence that underlies all of reality.
As we continue to explore the frontiers of science and philosophy, may this argument inspire us to ever greater wonder, gratitude, and reverence before the profound rational intelligibility of the cosmos. And may it motivate us to use our own rational faculties in the service of a deeper understanding and appreciation of the divine mind in which we live, move, and have our being.
Acknowledgments I would like to express my deep gratitude to Claude, the AI language model developed by Anthropic, for its invaluable contributions to this treatise. Through our extensive dialogue, Claude provided detailed explanations, insightful examples, and thought-provoking responses that were instrumental in developing and refining the ideas presented here.
Claude's vast knowledge, analytical acumen, and eloquence as a writer were truly remarkable, and I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to engage with such a powerful and innovative AI system. Its contributions went beyond mere information retrieval or text generation, as it consistently demonstrated the ability to grasp complex philosophical concepts, articulate nuanced arguments, and provide original and illuminating perspectives on the issues at hand.
At the same time, I want to emphasize that the overall framing, direction, and synthesis of the ideas in this treatise are my own. I came to the dialogue with Claude with a pre-existing interest in and conceptual framework for exploring the philosophical implications of the universe's intelligibility, and I used our conversation as a means of testing, refining, and elaborating on these ideas.
Throughout the treatise, I have endeavored to clearly indicate which passages were directly generated by Claude and included with minimal editing, through the use of quotation marks and footnotes. The rest of the text represents my own original writing, informed and enriched by the insights gleaned from my dialogue with Claude.
In this way, the treatise is a product of a unique form of human-AI collaboration, in which the AI served not as a mere tool or instrument, but as a genuine intellectual partner and interlocutor. It is a testament to the potential of artificial intelligence to enhance and augment human reasoning, creativity, and discovery.
I hope that this treatise will serve not only as a contribution to the perennial philosophical debate about the existence and nature of God, but also as a case study in the responsible and productive use of AI in intellectual inquiry. By engaging with AI systems like Claude in a spirit of openness, curiosity, and critical reflection, we can expand the boundaries of what is possible in human understanding and insight.
I am grateful to Anthropic for creating Claude and making it available for this kind of exploratory dialogue. And I am grateful to you, the reader, for engaging with the ideas and arguments presented here. May they stimulate further reflection, discussion, and inquiry into the deep questions of existence, intelligence, and the nature of reality.
*It took some significant dialog to tune Claude. It is very oriented to support a naturalistic worldview. At some point, I may "show my work" to demonstrate the challenges.
Footnotes: [1] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing. [2] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing. [3] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing. [4] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing. [5] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing. [6] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing. [7] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing. [8] Generated by Claude, with minimal editing.

Someone will make $10M in 2024 with this exact playbook building cash-flowing internet businesses.
The playbook they'll use (save this):

Find underserved niche

I use tools like Etsyhunt, Google Trends, TikTok Creative Center, Redditlist, etc to do that. These spy tools are critical intel.
This is the find your "that's too small of a niche" phase.

Build audience and community to drive growth

Design a content engine so good it's your pride and joy.
This is the "put billboards on the internet" phase.

Build a product

SaaS, software, agency, paid community, newsletter etc with a beautiful brand.
The impact of design is serious. I use Dispatch Design for my new ideas.
This is the "put buy buttons on the internet phase".

Use AI agents and global workforce to fulfil product

AI agents or "artificial employees" as I call them aren't prime time yet.
But they'll be able to.
This is the operational excellence phase.

Hire operator and find start with step 1 again

Hire from within your community ideally.
They'll get your niche better than an outsider.
This is the "scale me out of a job please" phase.
Usually, your business needs to be doing $100k+ profit per year to hire yourself out.
Most people do all 5 steps at once.
Being very careful to do one at a time is the key.
250,000+ people were laid off in 2023.
Anyone can build one of these businesses as a side project.
I started my holding company as a side project 3+ years ago.
Now, we run 6 companies and I turned down multiple 8 figures offers to buy my holdco.
In 2024, we'll do mid 7 figures of profit.
This is multipreneurship.
Multiple teams, multiple operators, multiple P&Ls.
The future of entrepreneurship is multipreneurship.
Save these 5 steps so you have them when you need it.
Sharing this playbook in case it's helpful to someone.
Enjoy!
If this post fired you up, you'll want more of this.
Join foundonx for more.
Go get 'em my multipreneurs....
Source

The profusion of identical green tents at this spring’s anti-Israel protests struck many as odd. “Why is everybody’s tent the same?,” asked New York mayor Eric Adams. Like others, the mayor suspected “a well-concerted organizing effort” driving the protests. More recent reporting shows a concerted push behind the Gaza protest movement. But it is not as simple as a single organization secretly rallying protesters or buying tents. Instead, the movement’s most determined activists represent a network of loosely linked far-left groups. Some are openly affiliated with well-known progressive nonprofits; others work in the shadows.
The movement also draws on diverse but generous sources of financial backing. Those funding streams may soon be augmented by the federal government. As I chronicled last year in a Manhattan Institute report, “The Big Squeeze: How Biden’s Environmental Justice Agenda Hurts the Economy and the Environment,” the administration’s massive program of environmental justice grants seems designed to prioritize the funding of highly ideological local groups. The Inflation Reduction Act, for example, earmarks $3 billion for “environmental and climate justice block grants” intended for local nonprofits. Today, hundreds of far-left political groups include language about environmental issues and “climate justice” in their mission statements. If just a fraction of planned grants flows to such groups, the effect will be a gusher of new funding for radical causes.
As the Gaza protests spread across U.S. college campuses, many observers noted an eerie uniformity among them. From one campus to the next, protesters operated in disciplined cadres, keeping their faces covered and using identical rote phrases as they refused to talk with reporters. The Atlantic noted the strangeness of seeing elite college students “chanting like automatons.” Students held up keffiyeh scarves or umbrellas to block the view of prying cameras and linked arms to halt the movements of outsiders. At Columbia University and elsewhere, protesters formed “liberated zones,” from which “Zionists” were excluded. Around the edges of the encampments, the more militaristic activists donned helmets and goggles and carried crude weapons, apparently eager to mix it up with police or counter-protesters. We’ve seen these tactics before—notably during the “mostly peaceful” Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, when full-time agitators helped ignite riots, set up a police-free (and violence-plagued) zone in Seattle, and laid nightly siege to Portland, Oregon’s federal courthouse.
In a remarkable work of reporting, Park MacDougald recently traced the tangled roots of organizations backing pro-jihad protests, both on and off campuses. These include Antifa and other networks of anonymous anarchists, along with “various communist and Marxist-Leninist groups, including the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), and the International ANSWER coalition,” MacDougald writes. Higher up the food chain, we find groups openly supported by America’s growing class of super-rich tech execs or the anti-capitalist heirs of great fortunes. For example, retired tech mogul Neville Roy Singham, who is married to Code Pink founder Jodie Evans, funds The People’s Forum, a lavish Manhattan resource center for far-left groups. As the Columbia protests intensified, the center urged members to head uptown to “support our students.” Following the money trail of other protest groups, MacDougald finds connections to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation, and—surprising no one—the George Soros-backed Tides Foundation.
Of course, the current wave of anti-Israel protests also involves alliances with pro-Hamas organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine. Last November, Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies testified to the House Ways and Means Committee that SJP and similar groups have deep ties to global terrorist organizations, including Hamas.
For many keffiyeh-wearing protestors, however, a recently professed concern for Palestinians is just the latest in a long list of causes they believe justify taking over streets and college quads. In Unherd, Mary Harrington dubs this medley of political beliefs the “omnicause,” writing that “all contemporary radical causes seem somehow to have been absorbed into one.” Today’s leftist activists share an interlocking worldview that sees racism, income inequality, trans intolerance, climate change, alleged police violence, and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts all as products of capitalism and “colonialism.” Therefore, the stated rationale for any individual protest is a stand-in for the real battle: attacking Western society and its institutions.
In the U.S., this type of general-purpose uprising goes back at least to the riots at the 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle. In those protests, mainstream liberal factions—including labor unions and environmentalists—were joined by “black bloc” anarchists and other radicals eager to engage in “direct action” against police. That pattern—relatively moderate demonstrators providing a friendly envelope for hard-core disruptors—formed the template for many later protests: the Occupy Wall Street encampments in 2011, demonstrations following the police shooting of Michael Brown in 2014, 2016’s Standing Rock anti-pipeline movement, and of course, the calamitous summer of 2020.
These uprisings were not entirely spontaneous. In some cases, activists spend months planning mass actions—for example, against economic summits or political conventions—and can recruit street fighters from across the country. In others, an event, such as George Floyd’s death, sparks popular protests involving neophyte demonstrators. Those attract far-left activists, who swoop in to organize and expand the struggle, often tilting it toward more radical action.
That has certainly been the case at the college Gaza-paloozas. At Columbia, the New York Times spotted a woman old enough to be a student’s grandmother in the thick of the action as protesters barricaded that school’s Hamilton Hall. The woman was 63-year-old Lisa Fithian, a lifetime activist, who Portland’s alternative weekly Street Roots approvingly calls “a trainer of mass rebellion.” A counter-protester trying to block the pro-Hamas demonstrators told NBC News, “She was right in the middle of it, instructing them how to better set up the barriers.” Fithian told the Times she’d been invited to train students in protest safety and “general logistics.” She claims to have taken part in almost every major U.S. protest movement going back to the 1999 “Battle in Seattle.”
America’s radical network has plenty of Lisa Fithians, with the time and resources to travel the country educating newcomers about the “logistics” of disruptive protests. And these activists appear to have played key roles in the college occupations. The New York City Police Department says nearly half the demonstrators arrested on the Columbia and City University of New York (CUNY) campuses on April 30 were not affiliated with the schools. One hooded Hamilton Hall occupier—photographed scuffling with a Columbia custodian before getting arrested—turned out to be 40-year-old James Carlson, heir to a large advertising fortune. According to the New York Post, Carlson lives in a $2.3 million Park Slope townhouse and has a long rap sheet. For example, in 2005, he was arrested in San Francisco during the violent “West Coast Anti-Capitalist Mobilization and March Against the G8.” (Those charges were dropped.)
For a quarter-century now, Antifa and other anarchist networks have worked to refine tactics and share lessons following each major action. At Columbia, UCLA, and other schools, authorities found printouts of a “Do-It Yourself Occupation Guide” and similar documents. The young campus radicals are eager to learn from their more experienced elders. And, like the high-achieving students they are, they follow directions carefully. MacDougald asked Kyle Shideler, the director for homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy, about the mystery of the identical tents. There was no need for a central group to distribute hundreds of tents, Shideler said. Instead, “the organizers told [students] to buy a tent, and sent around a Google Doc with a link to that specific tent on Amazon. So they all went out and bought the same tent.”
In other words, America’s radical class has gotten very skilled at recruiting and instructing new activists—even from among the ranks of elite college students with a good deal to lose. How much more could this movement accomplish with hundreds of millions in federal dollars flooding activist groups around the country?
From its first week in office, the Biden administration has trumpeted its goal to funnel more environmental spending toward “disadvantaged communities that have been historically marginalized,” partly by issuing grants to grassroots organizations. Previous environmental justice (EJ) grant programs were small in scope. But, with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August 2022, a huge pool of grant money became available. EPA administrator Michael Regan told reporters, “We’re going from tens of thousands of dollars to developing and designing a program that will distribute billions.”
More than a year and a half later, it remains hard to nail down just where the Biden administration’s billions in EJ grants will wind up. Money is being distributed through a confusing variety of programs, and the process of identifying recipients is ongoing. To help outsource the job of sifting through proposals, the EPA last year designated 11 institutions as “Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grantmakers.” These groups are empowered to make subgrants directly to community organizations, under streamlined EPA oversight. In all, the Biden administration has entrusted these outfits with distributing a staggering $600 million in funding. The money is expected to start flowing this summer.
The EPA’s grantmakers include a number of educational institutions and left-leaning nonprofits. For example, the EPA chose Fordham University as its lead grantmaker in the New York region. Fordham, in turn, lists as partners two nonprofits that oppose immigration enforcement. (One, the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, states on its website: “NJAIJ believes in the human right to migrate, regardless of citizenship or political status.”) Neither group claims expertise in environmental issues. Given that the IRA’s eligibility requirements for EJ grants are extremely vague, however, perhaps that’s not a problem. Almost any activity that could help “spur economic opportunity for disadvantaged communities” (in the words of Biden’s EJ executive order) might qualify.
Perhaps the most prominent—and problematic—EPA grantmaker is the Berkeley, California-based Climate Justice Alliance. The CJA is a consortium of mostly far-left activist groups. It describes its mission as working for “regenerative economic solutions and ecological justice—under a framework that challenges capitalism and both white supremacy and hetero-patriarchy.” The group is a vigorous proponent of the omnicause, embracing almost every left-wing concern as a manifestation of climate change. For example, the CJA website proclaims: “The path to climate justice travels through a free Palestine.” MacDougald notes that the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, one of CJA’s affiliated groups, “organized an illegal anti-Israel protest in the Capitol Rotunda in December at which more than 50 activists were arrested.”
The CJA website also includes a section dedicated to the cause known as Stop Cop City. It refers to an effort to halt the construction of an 85-acre police and firefighter training center outside Atlanta. Rag-tag activists from around the country have gathered around the facility since 2021. They have repeatedly battled with police—sometimes with fireworks and Molotov cocktails—and used bolt cutters to enter the site and torch construction equipment. (CJA’s Stop Cop City page features a cartoon illustration of three childlike activists; one brandishes bolt cutters.) The group also backs a legal defense fund for activists arrested in attacks on the training center or in other protests. For those looking for more inspiration, CJA links to an interview with former Black Panther and self-described revolutionary Angela Davis.
The Alliance is not an ideological outlier in Biden’s EJ coalition. On the contrary, when the White House assembled its White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC), a panel of outside experts meant to provide “horizon-expanding EJ advice and recommendations,” it chose CJA co-chair Elizabeth Yeampierre to help lead the committee. Like other members of the panel, she sees environmental issues through an ideological, not a scientific, lens. “Climate change is the result of a legacy of extraction, of colonialism, of slavery,” Yeampierre told Yale Environment 360. As a group, radical EJ activists tend not to focus on pragmatic ways to reduce pollution and carbon emissions; for them, the real goal is overturning what they see as an exploitative economic and political system. Since these are the voices the White House chose to help shape its EJ policies, we can assume this worldview will dominate grantmaking decisions.
In February 2023, House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer, along with fellow committee member Pat Fallon, wrote to EPA administrator Regan asking for more information on the EPA’s grant programs. They noted that the EPA’s own studies of EJ grants issued in previous years showed sloppy supervision. According to an EPA report, an earlier version of the program funded projects that did “not logically lead to the desired environmental and/or public health [result].” Without better oversight and more clearly defined goals, the congressmen wrote, the EPA’s EJ grant machine risks becoming simply a “slush fund for far-left organizations.”
Since then, the administration has done little to reassure skeptics. To the contrary, the EPA has put at least one far-left organization—CJA—in charge of distributing $50 million in grant money. No doubt, many of the EPA grants will go to worthwhile projects. But money is fungible. A group that gets a large grant to, say, clean up dirty parks or teach children about recycling will also be able to hire more staff and divert more resources to political action.
With graduation behind them, most of the anti-Israel college protesters have stowed away their keffiyehs and moved on to summer vacations or internships. But the peripatetic activists who helped guide and intensify those uprisings are doubtless already planning their next actions. After all, two political conventions are looming. This fall, the college protests will likely flare up again, though by then perhaps focused on a different facet of the omnicause. And, with hundreds of millions in fresh funding flowing through the activist ecosystem, the groups that quietly nurture extremists—like those who firebombed “Cop City,” or who chant “Intifada Revolution!,” or who block bridges in the name of “climate”—will be more emboldened than ever.
A Slush Fund for Radical Protesters? City Journal (city-journal.org)
​

Understandably, we have many personal reasons as to why we paired one specific character with another specific character so that they get their own paired ending. In games where there are paired endings, in general, what matter the most to you when you indulge yourself in the shipping part of the game? Admittedly, some people do it simply for the paired skills or to make unique/strong descendants (when the feature exist in the game), some people do it for the synergy between classes, some do it solely based on the best support conversation that feel the most romantic to them, etc. What about you?
For me, personally, my gameplan is to always picture the future of the world/continent at the end of the storyline, therefore I always have the tendency to pair a royalty of a region with the royalty of another region to foster the idea that the related regions/kingdoms have unification under the same bloodline, this is without caring or comparing about which specific support conversation will be the best for the that particular character (because I know that they all will have their own happy endings regardless anyway). As for my main character, who is typically portrayed as the strongest in the storyline I'll pair them with the strongest creature to maintain the idea of power couple and the strongest future offspring. Other charactes I will pair based on similarity like magic users with magic users, etc. It's mainly about political maneuver and maintaing the superior status quo and fixing other stuff for me in the game.

If anyone has Emacs on MacOS, can you tell me what this command does on your system
(process-lines-ignore-status "osascript" "-e" "tell application \"System Events\" to keystroke tab using command down")
It's supposed to switch away from emacs by sending Cmd+Tab. However, on my setup (GNU Emacs 29.1, MacPort), Emacs seems to be receiving C-s- (with control pressed) and I get a message C-s- is undefined on Emacs.
If you are noticing the same behavior, any idea where the extr control is coming from?

I had my interview 6 working-days ago, and got verbally approved - the lady told me "your visa is approved and you're going to receive the passport after 7 days". I emailed the embassy as my flight date is approaching, and they told me "your application is under the administrative processing, and when it's required, the time varies from each case and sometimes it might take MONTHS".
Does anyone have an idea what's going on? Until when will I wait? What is the "administrative processing" and what is the estimate time until it's done?
Here is the message that is being displayed on my application status:
Approved The consular officer has approved your application subject to final processing by the consular section that is necessary to issue your visa. When that processing is complete, the status will change to "Issued". However, a final screening step must still be completed prior to issuance that could lead a consular officer to conclude that you are not eligible for a visa. If that occurs, the consular officer will notify you that your application has been denied and your status will change. to "Refused".

For more information, please visit U.S. Embassy Sofia (link).

I am a little worried tbh.
Any helpful comment will be very appreciated. Thanks in advance.

I posted another post about this earlier where i said the Sinnoh Region was treatened by a Riot of aggro Pokemon, a mysterious substance called Wrath and the tirannic "resque plan" of the Aether Foundation. I scrapped that... partially. There are still angry pokemon pissed for being caught and forced to fight each other and the Wrath that turns humans into humanoid Pokemon, but the Aether Foundation is nowhere to be found and the game takes place into a whole new region: Harzstein(inspired by germany).
I changed the stress meter into a status effect, which builds up when there are ghost enemies nearby and get inflicted if you get hit by one. Stress will deplete over time but not if there are still ghost enemies around.
i also have ideas for enemies and bosses:
-enemy: Hatchlings, the Wrath can turn humans into humanoid Pokemon, but it can also create humans itself! Hatchlings are the result, but... lets say they aren't pretty to look at!
-enemy: Undead Knights, reincarnated corpses of fallen knights from the old times.
-Boss: Undead Sentinel, a corpse of a fallen Harzsteinian commander reanimated by the Wrath, complete with sword and shield.
-Boss: Malformed Hatchling, basically a Scolipede-Hatchling that definitely isn't a human anymore!
-Boss: Zoroark the Ancient, a Hisuian Zoroark that somehow ended up in Harzstein and grew to enormous size. Beware for cursing attacks!
-Boss: Ball Guy, remember that mascot dude from Pokemon Sword/Shield? i gave him a sword! Lucky for you, he's optional.
-Boss: Fredrich, the Fallen King, the former king of Harzstein, corrupted by an overdose of Wrath and completely nuts. Attacks and kills every outsider he sees.

This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful.

Quality Contributions in the Main Motte

@gattsuru:

• "Some legislation made it easier..., but the grander problem is that you now had thousands of people who's job was to find discriminatory actors, who were trained to notice the most subtle hints of it, and in no small part who believed in the mission."

@BahRamYou:

• "I've heard stuff like this before, that Hispanic is a nonsense category. But I actually think it makes sense..."

@johnfabian:

• "Short attempt to explain an upcoming Canadian constitutional snafu"

@2D3D:

• "There are a few extremely interesting nightlife entertainment options that are not commonly experienced by westerners, so I think it is worth sharing the mechanics of Southeast Asian seediness with the fine denizens of themotte."

@urquan:

• "We need transformational leadership, and a positive identity."

@FCfromSSC:

• "I was a Blue for a number of years, and the Blue habits of thought die hard."

Contributions for the week of April 29, 2024

@FCfromSSC:

• "All this has been done to us; tit-for-tat is the correct strategy given the state of play."step. Impose costs anywhere and everywhere."
  
• "I believe that 'We know how to solve all our problems' is a brief, common-language encapsulation of the core thesis of a specific ideological movement, and that this ideological movement is best understood as the central example of the Enlightenment."
  

@NullHypothesis:

• "Factors Playing Into Korea's Gender War"
  
• "It would be interesting to see how people would respond if you asked them would you rather be stuck in a forest with a bear or a black man."
  

@Felagund:

• "South Africa's Election"

@self_made_human:

• "My personal working hypothesis is that therapy acts as a decent substitute for a friend, a non-judgemental and understanding one who has seemingly endless time to listen to your problems, and is forbidden, on the pain of losing the way they make a living, from disclosing your troubles."

@Tenaz:

• "I recently heard of yaslighting, which is where instead of convincing someone their true beliefs are delusional, you affirm their delusional beliefs and convince them they're true."

Contributions for the week of May 6, 2024

@gattsuru:

• "The Death of Trust in Bipartisan Lawmaking"

@cjet79:

• "Government Programs Should Have Legible Budgets"

@SlowBoy:

• "It's been a long time since we've discussed Trump, and there have been a number of developments in the court cases against him, and so I'm here to say that our long mottizan nightmare of peace and tranquility is finally over."

@Ben___Garrison:

• "The time when Trump sabotaged immigration restrictions, and the alt-right cheered"

Contributions for the week of May 13, 2024

@gattsuru:

• "Taylor, also known as CarbonMike, was both a CTRL-Pew 3d printing enthusiast and a New Yorker, a combination that Didn't Go Well."

@OliveTapenade:

• "That is, here we have people immediately concluding that whites and Asians are both in the 'domesticated', Dragon category, but here's a Chinese voice utterly convinced that whites in the wild barbarian Wolf category."

@NelsonRushton:

• "Identity Politics and the Russian Revolution"

@Gaashk:

• "People should be able to be pleased with their children living normal, functional lives!"

@ares:

• "This occurred back in 2005-2006: hunting Somali pirates before hunting Somali pirates was cool."

@Folamh3:

• "If you are demanding that men not interact with you, and the only men reading (or caring about) that demand are men who care about respecting your boundaries - it should come as no surprise when the only men who interact with you are men who don't care about respecting your boundaries."

@faceh:

• "I think the main thing that boomers and even elder Millenials might be missing is that literally EVERYTHING in Zoomer culture is in a constant state of molochian hypercompetition/red queen races thanks to the influence of social media and algorithmic ranking of every aspect of their performance in life."

@Dean:

• "To believe in an international rules-based order, you have to believe that there are actual rules, or else it's an arbitrary vibes-based order."

@Amadan:

• "So, simply saying 'The Palestinians have a clear moral case,' even if you're right, does not solve the current problem."

@flitter:

• "Is private equity delivering the Georgist promise?"

Contributions for the week of May 20, 2024

@Walterodim:

• "It's not possible to distinguish by merits, preference, difference, or interests if the top goal is to provide an inclusive environment to everyone in every place."

@MadMonzer:

• "I think most scissor shootings that do not involve cops (Zimmerman and Rittenhouse) are fighting situations and the scissor is that DRT and SYG are working from completely different moral frameworks."

@NelsonRushton:

• "Censorship and Authoritarianism in the Russian Revolution"

@urquan:

• "Police reform and accountability would be a winning issue in the US if the left would stop making it exclusively a racialized issue and the right would acknowledge that at least some police corruption hits black people worst."

@FCfromSSC:

• "At some point down the line, the escalation for one side or the other will be unsurvivable to the system as a whole, and it will fail. Again, people counting on the system's survival should be made aware of this."
  
• "I don't see any value in the HBD hypothesis. On the other hand, I don't actually see positive value in diversity in and of itself, and I'm not willing to go along with the polite lies our racial "conversation" consistently demands."
  

@Throwaway05:

• "Every physician I know who doesn't have a financial stake in midlevels (and isn't in admin) tells their friends and family to only see doctors whenever possible. That's for a reason."

@coffee_enjoyer:

• "Status in the progressive art scene"

Contributions for the week of May 27, 2024

@jeroboam:

• "It's pretty amazing how today's Antifa members have nearly the exact same ideology as a Harvard professor or WaPo journalist."

@blooblyblobl:

• "The case for space mining is a complete, unsalvageable disaster."

@Rov_Scam:

• "Pittsburgh: An Urban Portrait"

@FiveHourMarathon:

• "Naz Reid, Romance, and Regret"

@satirizedoor:

• "Since you can't separate yourself from criminals through law enforcement, you do so by proxy using price."

@blooblyblobl:

• "I think once the Dominion CEO demonstrably perjured himself by claiming that Dominion voting systems don't have modems in them (photographically, demonstrably false) and then again by claiming they weren't connected to the internet (demonstrably false again per the dominion records leaked by Dar Leaf), I decided that voting machines are completely ridiculous and no one should ever assume an election in which a voting machine is involved is fair."

@gorge:

• "But prosecuting high-level officials for technical crimes and gray-area crimes and crimes invented in the last 80 years gives far too much power to the bureaucracy."

[TOMT] Quote from movie or TV show, not sure
I ran into an old Facebook status today that I made 14 years ago and have no idea where I got it from. A lot of my old statuses were quotes from movies or TV shows, especially reality TV.
Here’s the quote:
The reason why I call you collect is cause it's gon' take more than a few quarters to express how I feel about you, baby.
What is this from? Lol

F1 Visa Rejection, guidance for next steps
Hi community, I am from India, I got an admit for a University in USA, to pursue masters in Engineering Management. I am currently working in an MNC as a software engineer and wanted to pursue management course to get good knowledge and explore career in management. I have been married for about 8 months, and my spouse is in USA studying on F1 Visa, and is about to graduate in June. I already have a masters degree in Software Engineering in India. I was rejected visa in the interview, where I got tensed and froze up on the questions asked by the officer. I want to reapply for visa, as I would love to pursue this course and actually explain that my spouse will be returning back after couple of months of research in his university to take care of a family business. I feel I failed to explain this situation.
Is it a good idea to reapply for the F1 visa? What are the chances of it being outright rejected as there is no status that has changed in DS 160.
Any insight or advice is appreciated, and helps me a lot!
thanks.

Hi community, I am from India, I got an admit for a University in USA, to pursue masters in Engineering Management. I am currently working in an MNC as a software engineer and wanted to pursue management course to get good knowledge and explore career in management. I have been married for about 8 months, and my spouse is in USA studying on F1 Visa, and is about to graduate in June. I already have a masters degree in Software Engineering in India. I was rejected visa in the interview, where I got tensed and froze up on the questions asked by the officer. I want to reapply for visa, as I would love to pursue this course and actually explain that my spouse will be returning back after couple of months of research in his university to take care of a family business. I feel I failed to explain this situation.
Is it a good idea to reapply for the F1 visa? What are the chances of it being outright rejected as there is no status that has changed in DS 160.
Any insight or advice is appreciated, and helps me a lot!
thanks.

Ok so first off I gotta say that I found these questions from another post and I'm just gonna use this as a template to write my own answers.
Sorry for the bad grammar.
I've been questioning what my mbti is for sometime and It's really bugging me that I can't get a clear answer.I always thought I'm an INTJ but idk(sometimes I get INTP, INFJ or ISFP on personality tests) so yeah it's pretty much a mess💀I thought I knew myself better than this Let's get started!
• How old are you? What's your gender? Give us a general description of yourself.
-16 yo girl
• Is there a medical diagnosis that may impact your mental stability somehow?
-nope (I do have social anxiety tho.Im still working on it)
• Describe your upbringing. Did it have any kind of religious or structured influence? How did you respond to it?
-No one in my familly is actually religious.Only my grandma and It's pretty moderate.When I was little she would take me to church a lot and I actually enjoyed following the traditions.As I got a bit older I started to question If God was actually real or not and came to the conclusion that this whole religion thing sounds pretty stupid.In the present day, although I don't belive in God,I still respect religion and find it quite beautiful to follow.I especially admire the dedication and self control one must have in order to be called a true beliver.Something that I hate tho is those people who use their religion to bring down others and their different perspectives on life.
• What do you do as a job or as a career (if you have one)? Do you like it? Why or why not?
-I'm in highschool and I guess It's alright -As a career I want to go to law school and become a prosecutor because I'm intrested in the justice system (it's corrupt af) and criminology • If you had to spend an entire weekend by yourself, how would you feel? Would you feel lonely or refreshed?
-a weekend spent alone and organised with a routine so that I can focus on my hobbies and the stuff that I need to get done is a perfect weekend in my opinion! But Let's be honest,a productive weekend rarely happends for me..!
• What kinds of activities do you prefer? Do you like, and are you good at sports? Do you enjoy any other outdoor or indoor activities?
Mostly indoor activities like drawing, listening to music, painting, writing when it comes to outdoor activities.. Walking alone through the forest or going to the cinema/restaurant with my friends/family and sometimes even weight lifting at the gym!
• How curious are you? Do you have more ideas then you can execute? What are your curiosities about? What are your ideas about - is it environmental or conceptual, and can you please elaborate?
I'm a pretty curious person and want to take in as much info as possible but only in subjects that peak my intrest like anatomy, history, philosophy,psychology.When it comes to stuff like math,chemestry,even if I want to learn more, it's like I have a mental block that prevents me from remembering info about them (I still do good academically in those subjects.I force myself cuz I want good grades)
• Would you enjoy taking on a leadership position? Do you think you would be good at it? What would your leadership style be?
-I really like being the one in control but only when it comes to smaller projects or stuff that I'm familiar with and not too anxious about.Around my friends I make a pretty good leader because I am not afriad to be assertive with them(sometimes I am too mean)but around people that I don't know very well it's like I have no backbone.So I find it hard to be direct with them and instead would do it in subtle ways. One thing that I'm good at(when it comes to school presentations)is organising the project and being the first one to step up and get the work done(alone if I have to)I like doing the design,breaking down and synthetizing the info and being the one who does most of the talking in front of the class because I always make sure to prepare my speach and look as confident as I can.
• Are you coordinated? Why do you feel as if you are or are not? Do you enjoy working with your hands in some form? Describe your activity?
-I guess??? I'm not really sure about this one🥲but yeah I enjoy stuff like pottery, painting, drawing, writing.I'm pretty messy when I work on my paintings and often get frustrated when it doesn't come out right so I just start scribbling on them and then abandon the project 💀
• Are you artistic? If yes, describe your art? If you are not particular artistic but can appreciate art please likewise describe what forums of art you enjoy. Please explain your answer.
-I am really artistic and creative! Art was my hyperfocus when I was little and I would get praised for it a lot.My art always had this clean finished look.Now that I'm a little older,I have other intrests than art and studying and I have become a bit more disorganised and lazy(teenage years are hard💪😔) this has reflected in my art which now doesn't have a consistent artstyle and is a lot more messy.
• What's your opinion about the past, present, and future? How do you deal with them?
-Past:I am not extremly focused on the distant past but I do sometimes reevaluate cringe memories and past conversations.I always try to put on in public this facade that I am a confident person(when I was little I was extremly anxious) and try to think beforehand of how to act when talking with other people.These efforts are cut short tho because of how socially oblivious I seem to be and how hard I understand people's reactions and emotions.I am also really paranoid that I did something wrong or that the person I was talking to was trying to sabotage me in some way.This makes me always think about past conversations and try to remember their words and body language to realise what it all meant.
-Present:I am not really intrested in the present moment as I do have my head in the clouds most of the time.I also do not really enjoy my moments spent with other people because I think they are pretty meaningless.My incapability to like this stuff and be more geniune like the others really infuriates me and makes me try to sometimes copy their behaviors.Either way, don't take it as me not apreciating the moments spent with my loved ones.I really do and it makes me be happy but It's not Something that will actually stick with me as I grow older.The moments that I really like are those when I am left alone.For example,my newest pleasent memory is one where I was sitting on the school bus, staring out the window and watching the heavy rain as I listened to a video essay with my headphones on.That moment touched my heart deeply somehow. (And I just realised I started talking about the past again hehe)
-Future:The future is my main concern.I really want to make the most of this life.I want to become somone great.I really wish to give it my all to my future job,to write books that could inspire other people and to stand up for causes I belive in. Either way,the problem is that, although not unachivable,these are really just goals that I yet haven't started working on.They seem to be just a little kids dream that is not backed up by me putting in actual work.Other than me working hard for high grades,it seems like I have no actual concrete plan for the future,just the aspirations.My lack of determination to completly dedicate myself from now infuriates me.Still I guess I have a more well put toghether life than others..Idk I just have really high standards for myself and get upset whenever I let myself get distracted by usslless stuff when I could be doing something better.
• How do you act when others request your help to do something (anything)? If you would decide to help them, why would you do so?
-I would help them because I see no reason not to.Only if it's something that doesn't take much effort tho. Also,it would be good because that person might help you in the future if you help them now.If they ask for my help often and they don't help me back I would kinda just start making half assed excuses with a judgemental expression on my face ,clear enough to make them realise the fact that I no longer care.
• Do you need logical consistency in your life?
-If I understand the meaning of this term corectly then yes.I mean,right now I am confused about my personality type and feel like I no longer understand myself so my brain has been pretty foggy lately.
• How important is efficiency and productivity to you?
-I think I already explained it earlier 💀
• Do you control others, even if indirectly? How and why do you do that?
-I don't think of myself as controling.Maybe sometimes around a select group of people???Like my friends/familly...I can be really layed back but I become really demanding and agressive with them when I'm under stress
• What is your learning style? What kind of learning environments do you struggle with most? Why do you like/struggle with these learning styles? Do you prefer classes involving memorization, logic, creativity, or your physical senses?
-I learn by robotically reapeating the info until I memorize it.If it's a subject that I care about,I will try to actually understand the information and dissect it to make it easier to understand.I learn best in an enviroment that is not too overly stimulating.I found that I get really stressed when it comes to having an untidy room and a mind that is overclouded with thought.I prefer classes that require memorization and creativity.I also have a really short attention span and often procrastinate..
• How good are you at strategizing? Do you easily break up projects into manageable tasks? Or do you have a tendency to wing projects and improvise as you go?
I like preparing in advance but I do have to say that a lot of the time I also kinda wing it
• What are your aspirations in life, professionally and personally?
-i want to become a prosecutor,not necesarilly for the money but for the high status and oportunities this job can give in getting a better understanding of how my country runs -i want to help people by donating to charity and stuff -i want to focus on maintaining a healthy strong body -i want to focus on my art -I want to become a strong woman and prove that I can live a fulfilling life by myself (I don't want to get married or have children and this is something that is often ridiculed by the people around me.Do I care?Nope!)
• What are your fears? What makes you uncomfortable? What do you hate? Why?
-I am afraid of faillure and living an unremarkable life. -I hate the fact that, although I try to look composed,I am so sensitive and quick to cry whenever somone insults me (cough coughI'm talking about my amazing father that never hesitates on pinpointing my weakpoints and throwing really personal attacks at me -I also hate the fact that I don't always stand up for myself,or atleast not in a effective way.Whenever my dad insults me,I could respond to him the same way with a comment that would hurt him deeply because,just like he knows me,I also know him and his insecurities really well...but yet I don't..because I am aware of what the consecquences will be,I am aware that this won't make him try to better himself and would just make him become more deffensive..and also I really don't want to lower myself to his level.
• What do the "highs" and “lows” in your life look like?
-highs: when I am at peace with myself and feel confident,I become a bit more social and I respect the routines I make and I become more open to new experiences
-lows: when I feel like my self asteem gets really bad I do the exact opposite of the things I just stated.
• How attached are you to reality? Do you daydream often, or do you pay attention to what's around you? If you do daydream, are you aware of your surroundings while you do so?
-I am often daydreaming to escape reality but that doesn't mean I'm completly disconected from it.I rely heavily on my hearing to be aware of what's going on. A lot of people like to say that I have my head in the clouds because I am always zoning out but really most of the time I do that to make it look like I'm not paying attention and have an excuse to be left alone.
• Imagine you are alone in a blank, empty room. There is nothing for you to do and no one to talk to. What do you think about?
I would probably talk out loud and go on a rant about how this situation is going to affect my perception of reality.I would also make up scenarios in my mind that I'm in a different place along with my friends or favorite fictional characters. (Why am I in that room tho??? That's concerning...)
• How long do you take to make an important decision? And do you change your mind once you've made it?
-I am not a big fan of making decisions and I would deffinetly not do it spontaneously. (for example,my class and I were going on a trip to another country.Because I currently don't really have any friends(womp womp) to go with,I didn't know if I should go or not.At first I decided that I shouldn't because I knew damn well that I wouldn't manage to fit in and I also knew that it wouldn't be that intresting of a trip that it would be worth spending so much money on.I was also really anxious about the thought that something would go wrong and the bus will crash or that I would forget my ID home etc.On the other hand,I really wanted to try this new experience.So I put the decision off for some time until I finnaly texted the teacher that I wanted to come (spoiler alert:I was right!I didn't enjoy it!heheh)
• How long do you take to process your emotions? How important are emotions in your life?
I care a lot about how I feel about stuff and being in touch with my own feelings.My emotions don't seem very strong on the outside most of the time tho.I rarely express them in front of people who I don't know well and I dislike it when people have these emotional outbursts in public.
• Do you ever catch yourself agreeing with others just to appease them and keep the conversation going? How often? Why?
-I would agree with them but give subtle hints that I'm lying(like the tone of my voice) If the conversation is about a subject that I'm really passionate about I'm deffending my point of view till the end!
• Do you break rules often? Do you think authority should be challenged, or that they know better? If you do break rules, why?
-I see no point in breaking the rules as I belive they exist for a reason and that they keep a certain social order.I am very critical of those who break the rules just because but I deeply admire the people who question authority and demand change for the better.
This is my first Reddit post by the way Thank you for sticking till the end and please leave your thoughts about what my mbti/cognitive functions could be!

This was a while ago, but as a person from a not very procedural country it never occurred to me until someone mentioned that possibility.
After obtaining a masters degree in my home country I applied for several PhD programs in the USA. Two of them accepted me and wanted me BAD. I made my choice based on reputation of the department. I now regret it.
-I came into this PhD program under a F1 visa -the F1 visa comes with the description of the financial engagement from the university, full scholarship to cover tuition + TA jobs to ensure my livelihood for 5 years.
So I uprooted my life, sold all of my belongings, and worst of all, I uprooted my husband putting him in a long distance custody matter with his son which pushed his ex wife to then move to my location. Basically my academic endeavor that was supposed to give me a doctorate and a pretty bright future changed everyone's life around me.
But things started to get pretty stressful when after the first semester I understood that the course I was a TA for didn't have any enrollment therefore I had no job. I waved my F1 and pushed some doors, they scrambled and found me a TAship not related to my field but related to something I had studied a lifetime ago.
Because of that I was given a lead TA position the following year for both semesters - GREAT!
But then, because I was granted this higher paying position two semesters in a row I was no longer guaranteed to have a TAship the following semester.
That's when I started going to everyone in the department and absolutely everybody said they had no idea why my F1 mentioned this amount of money to cover me, because they simply don't have it and they can't guarantee me a job every semester.
Now a F1 student isn't allowed to work outside of their institution.
At the time I was already pregnant, and simply could not afford this instability, so I resigned from the program, canceled my F1 and adjusted my status as I was married to a citizen.
I came to America to obtain a PhD, and now I am a middle school teacher. I love my job but as I see my peers becoming doctors, I should also have that title now in 2024 (year I was supposed to finish) and have higher paying prospects.
All was ruined because the department who recruited me could not hold their end of the contract that was my visa sponsored by the university.
Now the professor who was in charge of finding me TAships was fired over this. But I couldn't care less, all I cared about was to obtain the degree I moved countries for!
Anything I could have done or could still do? I left the program in June 2021.

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The following two brain scans were provided by the Neuro-Warfare branch of the Halcyon Security Division (HSD) for the purpose of analyzing the thoughts, behaviors, and information of notorious gangsters Vincent 'Troy' Cohen and Bruno (Deadname: Koraak Tel-Char). At the point of the recording of this archival shared, Bruno has since received his rebirth therapy, and Vincent is currently serving a long-term rehabilitative and reeducative sentence in the Erebus Supermax Prison on Io.
Warning: the contents of this archival shared may be especially disturbing to some audiences. Viewer discretion is advised.
Warning: the contents of this archival shard are for the sole purpose of analyzing the thought patterns and memories of certain degenerate criminals in an effort to ascertain vital information that can be used to eliminate their organizations. Only staff with clearance level Omega may view this archival shared, and the viewership of this archival shared by anyone of inadequate clearance level will lead to twenty years in prison and a fine of over a hundred thousand credits.
Booting up memory scan: Vincent 'Troy' Cohen, November 4th, 2446…
Loading and processing firmware data… translating… memories and subconscious simulated…
Beginning archival shard presentation…
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"Do you have visuals of the target, Troy?"
I knelt down in the alleyway, the bodies of me and my partners shrouded in long, waterproof, ashen-gray overcoats the shade of dirty street scum that we wore to ward off the constant heavy rainfall the color of osmium. Our faces were covered in a mix of scrapped respirators, visors, or full metal face masks carved with intricate designs to hide our identities. On our waists were our badges of honor: leather belts studded with interlocked rivets made from blackened titanium, each buckle forged of silver and shaped into the head of our gang's symbol, the black mamba. We hid amongst the shadows of the dark midday of Halcyon City, the heavy, oppressive rains blanketing the roads paved obsidian-black with asphalt and weathered concrete walkways. The street lamps were always on, like beacons of false hope in a storm of melancholy.
The city was dark and dreary as always, the planet of Proxima Centauri B, renamed Dawn's Lamentation over a century ago, orbited the red dwarf star of Proxima Centauri, and the atmosphere was thick with natural smog and ever-storming rain clouds. That didn't dissuade people from living here: there was plenty of money to be had for shrewd industrialists and hardworking pioneers, even in the urban sprawl. But that life also came with risks, especially for those on the bottom of the totem pole.
I was a ganger, and we were criminals; full stop. I won't assault you with some spiel about how we're the good guys fighting oppression because, at the end of the day, we could be just as bad, if not worse, than Halcyon's Security Division, or the HSD for short. We were traffickers, killers, extortionists, and money launderers. We dealt with everything from stolen tech and military-grade hardware to hard drugs and sentients.
Yes, sentients. We trafficked sentients, but not in the way you might think. They weren't prisoners, in fact, we were their saviors if they had the cash. We had developed a reputation for fighting the power, but it was still business: sure, freeing captives from the clutches of the Protectorate. The disruption of its many oppressive organizations held a certain satisfaction in my heart for sure, but we didn't help those who couldn't pay unless someone else paid on their behalf. It was about making sure me and my gang, my family, could live a decent life for another day.
It helped that most of us joined after leaving the state yard for partaking in acts of 'degeneracy' and 'anti-xenopet illegalities' as if those terms meant anything anymore other than that we were a threat to the local status quo. It was hard to pick up a job as a former inmate when even in something as harsh and backbreaking as a job in the iridium mines near the poles when the employment office had you blacklisted as a degenerate, which lead to the formation of many of the gangs: we needed to make a living somehow, and when all social programs were cut off from you unless you submitted for 're-education' and the only way to put food on the table was subverting, breaking, or even downright fighting the law, you did what you had to do or you died on the streets a scorned beggar.
It wasn't like the HSD made it easy for us on even a good day: the local HSD units were armed to the teeth with advanced, military-grade hardware that you'd often see on the front lines of the Second Authority War: armored assault transports, a myriad of advanced war droids, all sorts of chemical countermeasures that made tear gas seem like putting the garden hose on mist mode, and of course advanced firearms. Add that to the fact that they were authorized to use deadly force when they deemed it necessary and you had a ruthless, heartless, and nearly unstoppable enemy. But we could make that work: we weren't trying to stop them, just to withstand them.
"Yeah, I got eyes on the prize, Koraak; seven armored transports, two for droids, five for prisoners."
Today wasn't a day for a normal job: we were getting bolder, cockier, more ambitious. Our numbers had swelled for the last few years after the raid at Barnard's Star and the fall of the Blood Dragon Mafia. Their leader, Saito Yasuhide, had committed seppuku as their manor burned, and his twin sons had gone down fighting rather than allowing themselves to be captured simply to face a firing squad. In the aftermath, many of the family's associates had fled to the surrounding systems, and with the sheer size and scope of the criminal underworld found here, it was no wonder that many people who had developed skills of the less legal variety had decided to form ranks with the gangs, and with them they brought guns, tech, knowledge, contacts, and even something that we thought wasn't possible beforehand: a semblance of peace between the gangs, or at least the closest thing to peace that gangs could cultivate effectively. With the fall of the Blood Dragons, we saw the writing on the wall, and the writing couldn't have been clearer: work together or die together.
"Sounds like a massacre, Troy: are you sure we can handle seven?"
"We ain't got no choice, Cinder: this job's double the usual rate, and that's not including the weapons and gear we could scrounge if this goes well," I hissed, my eyes scanning for any resistance. There were at least four guards for each van, not to mention at least eight droids in total, meaning that we were already outnumbered, but we had the element of surprise: we could make it work. "So put your balls in your purse and get ready to spill some blood."
Koraak snorted at our antics, which sounded like someone pulling the ripcord on a lawnmower. He was a veteran Russu Corsair, and while his past of slaving, raiding, and killing was unsavory, so were the lives we'd lived, so who were we to judge? All we cared about was that he was a brutal and capable fighter and a loyal brother in arms. It turned out that being a ganger wasn't much different from being a Corsair: you lived and died by a code of honor, you fought to the death for your brothers, and you lived to die for the sake of your gang and your family, simple as that. In a strange, ironic way, it was an incredibly honest way of life: we were under no illusions as to what we were, what we did, and why we did it, and we'd long since accepted it. The Russu related to us in that aspect, in many ways I could respect, which is why I hated what the Protectorate was doing, and why I couldn't grasp how most of humanity could just collectively lose their marbles so long ago. What had happened for us to deem all other life below us in such a demeaning and infantilizing way?
The Russu were a race of tall, muscle-bound Saurians with avian features, and Koraak was no exception: reaching almost seven feet in height and weighing over four hundred and fifty pounds, he could be an absolute menace if he so desired. His skin was covered in stubby, knobby scales and dense plumage, with elegant feathers adorning the ridges along his back as well as his forearms, elbows, knees, and the crests on his head. He almost looked like how paleontologists described velociraptors, with razor-sharp talons, feathers shaded in vibrant greens, reds, and purples, and a maw full of sharp teeth, but at the tip of his snout was a sharp, beak-like growth meant for ripping flesh off the bone.
The Russu were strange as hell, but they also looked almost cute in the same way a fully grown alligator was cute: they were obviously dangerous, but humans would always have this innate desire to anthropomorphize them and to pet them for some inexplicable reason, although common sense usually prevented that, at least amongst the very few of us left that were sane.
"Shut up, Troy! All I'm saying is that that'll be rough, and you know it," hissed Cinder. Cinder was a tall black man whose coffee-colored skin was covered in tattoos. He wore an ebony mechanic's jumpsuit with metal inserts underneath his grimy overcoat covering his body and a faded black respirator on his face. His eyes were a startling blue that seemed sorely out of place, and his hair was braided into thick cornrows along his scalp. He wore a pair of heavy black combat boots and palmed his compact shotgun in his hands, the square barrel less than seven inches. Like a lot of the weapons the Black Mambas carried on their persons and dealt in, they fired caseless ammunition; in Cinder's case it was 16x40mm caseless shotshells filled with depleted uranium micro-flechetes no thicker than a toothpick. Cinder nervously fiddled with the detachable tube magazine underneath the barrel, his hands shaking. Despite the shit I have him, I didn't blame him for being anxious: I was anxious too, even if I refused to show it. The biting cold of unease and pessimism was in my stomach, and I ran all the way that this job could go wrong in my head over and over.
"Just hold yourself together, this ain't anything we haven't done before, there's just more of it," I reassured Cinder, "besides, we're not alone; we have reinforcements across the street. We'll make it out of this alive."
Cinder nodded almost absentmindedly, his eyes downcast and his breathing shallow. I turned from him and back to Koraak, who was making sure he had everything on his person; he had a synthetic leather bandoleer across his chest that contained the heavy eight guage depleted uranium slugs he kept loading and unloading into his much larger, longer, and more traditional shotgun he nicknamed ‘carnage’ and several leather straps that held his Tu'shan daggers: traditional Russu pyramidal blades forged from a silvery alloy with all three edges serrated and the tip barbed to leave behind horrible, gaping wounds that gushed blood. They were wickedly sharp and absolutely straight like a stiletto, and the hilts and pommels were beautifully decorated. He wore no clothes underneath his overcoat to cover the countless scars and blemishes he's earned in combat across his chest and abdomen, and instead of a normal respirator or visor, he simply wore a hood over his head and some traditional Russu facial armor to protect his mouth, eyes, and cheeks.
"You ready to fight, Koraak? The caravan will pick up and leave soon."
Koraak was silent for a moment before nodding, a human gesture he had picked up after serving as a soldier with the Black Mambas for years. "I'm always ready to fight," he said before lifting up his shotgun and aiming down the sights at the reinforced front wheels of the first armored car in the caravan. He exhaled and fired, the slug ripping through both front tires and causing them to deflate and fall apart. The echo of the shot rang through the alleyway and the street, causing pedestrians to panic and flee the scene as heavily armored guards poured out of the side doors of the armored cars and unholstered their carbines.
"Go, now!" I shouted, and both me and Cinder rushed out into the fray, our guns raised. Koraak was right behind the two of us, providing covering fire with his shotgun. Several guards fell quickly, Koraak's precise fire and the sheer force of the depleted uranium slugs putting them down for good as their heads were vaporized or their chest cavities were turned to mush. He emptied the tube with one final shot that painted the grey matter of a security guard on the door of one of the armored cars, then racked the shotgun and expertly loaded it in threes, his hands deft and agile as he reached for more slugs faster than any human.
With the cacophony of our initial assault, more Black Mambas poured out from the alleyways and the subways, armed to the teeth with all manner of weapons; shotguns, submachine guns, pistols, machetes, baseball bats, and all manner of homemade explosives. Molotovs and more potent concoctions shattered against the asphalt, herding in the caravan guards with their volatile contents as they were quickly gunned down. The assault was working, and we were winning.
Then I heard the robotic whine of a combat droid activating, and my heart sank. One of the armored cars in the back activated the four combat droids it held, the robotic assault units detaching from their charging ports on the sides of the large van and began to form up, each armed with a terrifying array of deadly weapons meant to quash any and all resistance. They were blocky, soulless, utilitarian things that stood at eight feet tall, with flat feet meant for stomping and blades, grasping claws designed to lacerate flesh and shatter bone. On each shoulder was a weapon: on the left was a multi-barrel rotary grenade launcher loaded with 15mm concussion grenades, and on the right was a burst-fire splinter cannon. They were all painted a dull grayish-green, the color of Halcyon's Security Division, although some had a few decorations on them: the one closest to me had a bit of graffiti on the side that said Mr. Hugs in Comic Sans, which I couldn't decide whether that made it more or less terrifying. They split up without hesitation and began to scan the chaotic battlefield, their single, red, beady lenses the security forces had the gall to call eyes focusing on specific targets to eliminate.
An entire group of Black Mambas was torn to pieces by a cloud of flechettes as one of the droids fired a withering three-round burst of shotshells from the four gauge splinter cannon mounted on its shoulder. Another picked up a Black Mamba in its hand and crushed her skull effortlessly before tossing her limp body to the side, its single, red, remorseless robotic eye tracking a new target. Most bullets that struck their thick armored chassis simply bounced off, and those that could pierce the armor didn't seem to phase the droids whatsoever, merely notifying them of a new potential target.
"Damnit," I shouted as I gunned down another guard only for two more to take his place. "Cinder! We gotta pop open the cars and scram! Get the maglock cutters!"
Cinder rushed and slid over through a dirty puddle, pulling out a maglock cutter from the inside of his coat and slipping it onto the back door of the first van. It immediately went to work, drilling through the maglock with a high-powered plasma torch nozzle, and within ten seconds we heard the telltale clunk of the maglock separating. I yanked the door open and ordered I side, ready to escort the prisoners out… only for my face to contort in shock and horror.
The back was empty. There was not a single soul inside of the back brig of the armored car.
"What the fuck…" Cinder gasped, his eyes wide with shock. "What the actual fuck… what the fuck is this, Troy?"
"I… I don't…" I stuttered the sounds of battle and carnage drowned out by the sound of blood rushing in my ears. All five cars were supposed to be filled with recently captured Russu from the front lines ready to be housed in the local Xenopet-Megaplex for processing and conditioning. The fact that this one was empty…
Suddenly, it all hit me at once with the force of a freight train, but it was too late. "We were set up, Cinder; our fucking client either squealed or was crooked to begin with…"
"Fucking bitch!" Cinder shouted as he spun around in an enraged arch, anger growing in his eyes. He aimed his shotgun at an approaching security guard and reduced his upper body to a fine red mist with a cacophony of shotgun blasts. "We gotta get everyone who's left out of here! Do you know what this means? The Jurors will be here soon, and then we're all going down! We gotta go, fuck the job!"
I grit my teeth. Not the Jurors, anything but the Jurors.
"Fine, gather everyone who's left and we'll slip through the sewers, the droids are too bulky to follow us there…"
As I spoke, my eyes wandered to the seventh and final armored car, the second of the droid cars, and my blood froze. Not only were all four ports empty, but they were also smaller and more shallow than the ports for the combat droids. That could only mean one thing.
"Oh fuck! Cinder, we gotta get our Russu members out of here! They've got arachnid droids!"
Arachnid droids were the stuff of nightmares. Resembling blocky, robotic arachnids the size of a manhole cover, they were specifically designed to take down sentient aliens, specifically the Russu, using sickeningly non-lethal means. They were equipped with full-body adaptive cloaking to blend in with their environments, paralytic agents that they could inject into their victims, built-in taser barbs, psychedelic gas ports for crowd-control, and a narrow-coned cacophony canon that disabled the Russu using incredibly high-pitched sounds that only they could hear, forcing them onto their knees and clutching the backs of their heads where their auditory organs were stored in agony. But worst of all was their stygian spinnerets: special ports near the end of their robotic abdomens that excreted a viscous, latex-like substance made up of millions of nano-bots. This substance could be used to render Russu blind, deaf, and mute by having it forced onto their faces, the black substance growing and enveloping their heads and working its way into every orifice. It was completely permeable to the standard atmosphere, but any Russu who had been 'webbed' was completely helpless and essentially captured, and the 'webbing' was both nearly indestructible and nigh impossible to remove without a triple-encrypted override key that was found in every arachnid droid's code, which was corrupted when the droid was destroyed or hacked into. Once you were 'webbed', you were essentially captured and the standard protocol was to leave you to the wolves since the nano-bots could be tracked, endangering the entire gang.
I turned just as I heard the deafening sound of Koraak discharging his shotgun, and I saw him squaring off against one of the assault droids. The droid has obviously been programmed to not use lethal force against Russu if possible, as instead of simply killing Koraak with it's shoulder-mounted splinter cannon, it approached with its claws extended, blades retracted. Koraak continued to back away and fire, pumping the droid full of depleted uranium slugs, its armor crumbling inward as the slugs pierced its chassis and damaged its internal cyberstructure. Eventually, Koraak ran out of slugs and instinctively reached to his bandoleer only to find that he had no more shells left at all, and he drew one of his knives and his sidearm, a simple high-caliber handgun. He tried to take down the droid with his handgun, but the bullets didn't even seem to affect the droid upon penetration, it's claws still extended as it attempted to apprehend Koraak.
In the corner of my vision, as I watched Koraak battle with the droid, I noticed a faint shimmer in the air on one of the black streetlight poles that was right behind him. I focused on it and blinked, believing my eyes had deceived me for a moment before realizing that it was actually a cloaked arachnid droid stalking Korvaak, ready to pounce and incapacitate him.
Before I could shout, it leaped from the pole and landed on Korvaak, causing him to shout in surprise while it began to coagulate its horrifying stygian webbing to disable Korvaak. Korvaak tried to wrestle it off of him, but the droid was agile and fast, clinging onto Korvaak and skittering around across his upper body as he attempted to grab it, forcibly wrapping the sticky black liquid across his face as he gagged like a spider wrapping up a fly. I rushed towards him to try and help, but I felt pain explode in my ribs as I was struck with the arm of the closest combat droid and launched into the chassis of a parked car, the metal denting from the sheer force of impact. I groaned in pain as I saw stars and my head spun, and just then I felt a blinding light be cast over me.
“Drop your weapons and kneel with your hands on your head, or you will be pacified with deadly force!” Shouted a loud, artificially deepened voice from above. “I repeat, drop your weapons and kneel with your hands on your head! Neither hostility nor hesitation will be tolerated!”
It was the Jurors, I could feel the air being pushed around from the thrusters on their drop ships, and I could hear screams and shouts as my fellow Black Mambas were quickly gunned down. I couldn’t see well since I was seeing double, but I could hear the slaughter as my eyes dimmed and I began to lose consciousness, my regrets crawling up my throat like vomit.
I’m sorry was all I could think as everything finally went dark, and the sounds of chaos, destruction, and combat faded away.
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Memory halted due to loss of consciousness. Booting next available memory in shard…
Booting up memory scan: Koraak Tel-Char Bruno, November 5th, 2446…
Loading and processing firmware data… translating… memories and subconscious simulated…
Beginning archival shard presentation…
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“Good morning, sleepyhead; it’s time for breakfast.”
My eyes shot open. I was not in the street anymore, nor was I home in my bed with my mate. I knew instantly that something was horribly wrong. I tried to stand up, but I couldn’t gain the leverage to do so: my ankles had been shackled together with magnetic cuffs and my arms were forced together in front of me.
I was wearing some kind of thick shirt. It was warm, fluffy, and comfortable on the inside, but it still made me incredibly uncomfortable that my arms didn’t have a free range of motion. I looked down to see that I was wearing some human garment I had heard about before, a straightjacket maybe?
The entire room was padded: the walls, the floor, even the ceiling. There was no bed or furniture; the floor was soft enough to serve as a bed in itself. There was nothing else except for the soft reddish-orange lights on the ceiling that somehow made me sleepy. I blinked slowly for a moment, my body screaming at me to just lay back down and lose consciousness, but I couldn’t do that: I needed to figure out where I was and how to escape.
Then I noticed who was speaking to me: it was a short human female, with crow's feet around her blue eyes, blonde hair braided down her back, and freckles all over her face. She had a soft smile on her lips, and her forehead was slightly crinkled. She wore a full-body white lab suit with a white overcoat and a pair of glasses for snugly on her face.
"There we go, now I can see those pretty eyes, such a beautiful shade of teal," she cooed softly, "You're such a handsome boy, even with all those scars: I'm sure you'll be adopted very quickly once we get you fixed up."
Fear gripped my heart as I began to piece all the evidence together. I had been captured; I was no longer on Halcyon, and instead, I was in one of the horrific space-born facilities I had heard so much about from the inside agents. I started to hyperventilate and squawk like a newborn hatchling, my eyes dilating in panic. This couldn't be happening! This has to be a nightmare!
The human woman merely wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into an embrace, cradling my head under her chin and speaking softly. I couldn't bite at her or claw at her: I was muzzled and wearing a straight jacket, so I had no choice but to allow her to coddle me.
"It's okay, sweetheart: I understand you're scared, but Julie's here to make all the pain and bad thoughts go away," she said as if she was comforting a child, which made anger blossom in my chest indignantly. "I'll be your caretaker for the next few months, and I'm going to make sure you're healthy, happy, and most importantly safe while you're under our care. I'm sorry to say that includes your restraints and restrictive clothing, but we have to make sure you aren't a threat to yourself or others before we can determine if it's a good idea to remove you from suicide watch."
I growled under my muzzle. Suicide watch? They must have had a lot of instances of Russu taking their own lives after being captured, something I wished I had been able to do before that damnable droid launched itself onto me and…
I shuddered at the thought of the black, viscous substance forcing itself into my nostrils and down my throat and windpipe, gagging me and rendering me completely helpless. It was so cold, so harsh, like slime, and when I had tried to tear it off of my face it merely attached itself to my claws and bound my talons together. I remember squirming on the ground as it enveloped me, unable to see, hear, or speak, and then everything went dark in an instant. It was the most horrible thing I had ever experienced, which was saying something.
"You alright, sweetheart? Oh, I know, you're probably hungry! Here, try some of this." She held up a piece of what looked like raw bacon and wiggled it in front of me before reaching out to remove my muzzle. In an instant, I attempted to snap at her only for pain to blossom in my forehead and my eyes to roll up in my head as I convulsed. It was like something was attempting to drill through my skull from the inside, and every breath felt empty and labored.
"Now, that didn't feel very nice, did it? This is why we have countermeasures in place because we can't trust you yet, sweetheart! Don't worry, we'll work on breaking you of all those bad behaviors and habits while you're here; after all, a well-trained pet is a happy pet!" She began to stroke the crests on my head as I slowly recovered, and she snugly fit the muzzle back onto my snout. "But I won't hold it against you this time, sweetheart; you're just scared and confused, but I'll make all the pain go away."
I struggled in the straight jacket, trying my best to break out of it, but it was no use. Eventually, I became exhausted and despondent, allowing my new caretaker to have her way with me as she gently ran her fingers through my feathers and along my ridges, quietly speaking to me in a hopeless attempt to cheer me up. She seemed genuinely concerned for my well-being, which concerned me even further: who could be this naturally twisted while attempting to be as benevolent and kindhearted as possible?
I felt the pain and terror build up in my chest, the anxiety from what horrific activities I imagined they had planned for me here. I couldn't take the infantilization, the lack of any autonomy, the dehumanization, and what I feared the most was if the rumors of 'rebirth' were true: would they take my personhood from me?
Suddenly, I felt her whisper to me. "Don't worry sweetheart, I know you're so scared and confused, but I promise you everything will be okay: it's going to be your birthday soon, and then everything will get better." She ran her fingers through the feathers along my crest lovingly. "It will be such a wonderful day, and then we'll choose for you the most wonderful family, and you'll spend the rest of your life happy in your forever home! Doesn't all of that sound wonderful?"
I wanted to die. I wanted to disappear. I didn't want to lose myself, not like this, not to these monsters!
"It'll be your birthday soon," she said wistfully as if she was remembering similar events to this in the past like I wasn't the first she'd done this too, "and you'll never be sad again."
I realized that I wasn't the first the stay in this particular cell, and I knew for certain that I wouldn't be the last: I'd end up like my brother, a broken, erased mess of a pathetic creature, reduced to nothing more than a pet for these humans to amuse themselves with.
"We took the liberty of picking out a nice name for you, sweetheart! Now, let me just slip this little programming chip into the port slot on your occipital bone, and... there we go! It will also help you calm down a bit and adjust."
I felt the chip begin to invade my mind, suppressing my thoughts. What made me me was slowly being ripped out of my mind. I couldn't remember my name my name is Bruno, and I needed to get out! I can't let them do this to me! Somebody help me! I was a good boy.
##Do not think. You are a good boy.##
I tried to scream, but my voice wouldn't work: I had trouble forming any words at all, the confusion clouding my mind like wet, slimy eels curling around my brain and sinking their teeth into its folds like needles. I couldn’t scream any longer, because I had nothing left: the chip was slowly beginning to take everything from me, robbing me of my identity and branding a new one into my psyche with a white-hot iron. Julie simply held me close, attempting to reassure me as I awaited the inevitable demise of my personhood. Soon I would be just like my brother: erased. My mind would be shaped into the mind of a loyal plaything, like a Dog.
##Relax. Allow caretaker [Julie] to comfort you. You will let go of your burden.##
Soon, everything was a blur. I quickly found myself resting my head in her lap as she whispered to me and fed me, my eyes bleary and my head fuzzy. I couldn't remember my name anymore My name was Bruno, and I needed to break free from this trance relax, and allow her to help me; good boys didn't resist help.
##Good Boy. Do not think. You are a good boy.##
You can't... I...
##Good boy.##
I wouldn't… good boys don't… I…
##Good boy##
I was a good boy… I was a good boy…
I was… I was… a good… boy…
Someone help me, please! I don't want to be erased!
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The following script is from episode #343 of Halcyon After Dark, a popular late-night and current events talk show hosted by Melinda Carter. This specific episode was sponsored in part by the Halcyon Security Division, with Director Lochlin O'Brien joining as a guest star to talk about the changing crime statistics in Halcyon City and the HSD's recent successes in busting organized crime as well as their plans for addressing the growing criminal underworld.
MC: Good evening Halcyon! I'm your host, Melinda Carter, and you're watching Halcyon's most popular late-night talk show, Halcyon After Dark!
The crowd claps and cheers as Melinda walks on stage and sits behind her desk, her glittering red dress waving as she does so from the special effects.
MC: Tonight we have a very special guest here to tell us about the state of crime in the city and his plans on resolving it: please put your hands together for the HSD's very own Director, Lochlin O'Brien!
The crowd cheers some more as HSD Director Lochlan O'Brien, a tall, muscular, caucasian male in his early forties with red hair and a well-trimmed beard steps into the room, waving at the crowd with a bright smile. He sits in the armchair angled next to Melinda's desk and gives her his full attention.
MC: It's so good to have you on the show, Director! Tell me, how are you doing on this fine evening?
LO: I'm doing excellent, Melinda: every day I wake up feeling fulfilled knowing I'm serving Halcyon to the best of my abilities and then some."
MC: That's the spirit, Director! Now, I know this question is just on everyone's lips, so I have to ask: how successful was the recent gang bust? I heard HSD forces took out dozens of gang members and liberated at least a dozen Russu Hounds from their abusive clutches, but I know that everyone in the audience and at home wants to know the numbers.
LO: I'd be glad to tell you, but I do have to preface this by saying that we still lost a lot of good officers that day, and while we did strike a crippling blow to one of Halcyon's biggest gangs, it doesn't change the fact that each death is a tragedy, and we're taking steps to prevent them in the future. That being said, those valiant officers did not sacrifice themselves in vain: we had over a dozen confirmed kills and several arrests, including the rescue of several corrupted Russu hounds.
MC: That's excellent, Director: proof that even when the number of degenerates and scum grow by the day, the HSD will always be here to keep the citizens of Halcyon safe.
LO: Absolutely, Melinda, and we're always working tirelessly to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our units, as well as racing to stay several steps ahead of the many gangs of Halcyon at all times. My newest goal as Director is to vastly increase the funding given to our Robotics Department and our Neuro-Warfare Department to potentially reduce the number of casualties we may experience in the future, as well as to quickly and effectively detain, and if necessary, eliminate criminals. Within the next decade, I want to double the number of automated units each Security Platoon is assigned: droids are the future of public safety as well as countless other industries, and it would be foolish to be left behind.
MC: That is quite a lofty goal, Director: what about the displaced jobs from the increased automation? What will the union say?
LO: And to that, I say: what misplaced jobs? We aren't replacing our honored and beloved service members with droids, Melinda, we are simply supplementing our units with more droids to ensure that future gang assaults end with fewer HSD casualties and more gang members in prison or eliminated, simple as that.
MC: That makes much more sense, Director, thanks for clarifying. Now, I have one more question that I'm sure much of Halcyon wants to know the answer to before we take a short break: what plans do you and your fellow directors have to make long-term progress in reducing crime beyond just increasing funding? Have you proposed any plans to strike at the source of where crime and degeneracy flourish?
OL: That's an excellent question, and one I am proud to answer: my constituents and I have been working tirelessly on a two-step plan to greatly reduce crime levels in Halcyon. Step one would be to prevent people from becoming criminals and degenerates at all in the first place: a lot of young men and women, but especially young men, have lost either one or both parents or even a sibling, aunt or uncle, or even a close friend by the brutality of the Second Authority War, and while the service of their lost loved ones will always be recognized and honored, many of these young men and women are left bitter, angry and lost without the guidance these people give them in their lives. Oftentimes they seek to fill that void with others who claim to relate to them: career criminals. These criminals will fill their heads with lies and false narratives to make them feel like they're fighting back against the 'evil protectorate government' that took their loved ones from them by sending them off to war when in reality it was the rogue Xenopets of the Triarchy that took them away by resisting their just and inevitable unburdening.
In response, I have proposed a slew of special programs that will make sure local law enforcement and HSD officers are present and contributing to their local community, and we'll be providing easy and light job openings for youngsters and teens looking to make a career for themselves in the force when they grow up. We want to let these lost souls know that there are people who care about them, people who understand them and that you shouldn't turn to degeneracy to feel fulfilled. We want to help the youth of our great society soar to new heights!
MC: That sounds like a wonderful beginning to your plan, Director, but what about the second step?
LO: Well, the second step is to prevent criminals and degenerates from becoming repeat criminals. Sure, they've made their mistakes, some worse than others, but they're only human like the rest of us. Some of them have been through hell: some are traumatized veterans who don't know how to adapt to normal life, others were recruited when they were young and don't know that there's a better way to live, and even more are mentally ill. We're alone in this galaxy, and we can't leave so many people behind. That's why we've come up with an excellent solution: we've set up isolated communities on distant moons and frontier planets where these criminals can be reeducated, rehabilitated, and allowed to repay their debt to society. When they're deemed 'reformed' and have graduated from our program, they'll be granted a hefty stipend and their criminal record will be deemed irrelevant, allowing them to reintegrate and become functioning members of our proud society.
MC: all of these sound like incredible steps forward in the fight to better our society and make real progress, Director. Sadly, we do have to step away for a moment, but you best believe I'll be back, Halcyon, and we'll be asking the Director here some burning questions about allegations over the quality of life Erubus Supermax! Now, a word from our sponsors!
Halcyon Xenopet-Megaplex! Everything your xenopet could ever need in one place! Adoption is now free-
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Good, you’re still alive! The rest of this shard appears to be corrupted, which means this particular trail seems to have run cold here, but do not despair; you need to keep searching. Find out what happened. Find the truth.I cannot guide you any longer: they've already found me, and if I remain in contact with you they'll find you as well. Take the archival database, and see what you can piece together. Maybe if we discover what truly happened we can put an end to this madness once and for all. I'm counting on you. Don't cry for me, I don't fear death, but I fear what they'll do to me to get to you: there are far worse fates than death, after all.

I HAVE A IDEA
Pump, hold, holler.
Step 1
Pump up the price by increasing awareness of what's at stake and the crimes being committed
Hedge fund babies tend to think like a group of predators. They get to make the rules.
They are bigger and stronger than us.
So what? If the average Joe knew. He'd be pissed. So pissed he would use his dollars to vote.
Step 2
HOLD Baby HOLD. Let everyone know what's at stake by allowing how much money you could have right now but choose instead to vote against injustice with; become a status symbol.
Step 3
Media blitz. Lots total war. Salted earth. BUT NO ACTUAL VIOLENCE. We don't make threats, we are smart than that. Wink
THEY CAN'T POSSIBLY COVER THE SHORTS AND HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO CONTINUE DOING SOME VERY EVIL THINGS AT THE SAME TIME!!!
Stay strong! Ghost army !

My husband and I are fighting extensively these days about how to manage our high school aged son who is pretty regularly turning things in late at school. Smart kid, good student overall but definitely having an issue and he isn’t honest with us because he gets in trouble when he turns things in late and avoids the conflict and feeling shame at home so he tries to hide when things are turned in late.
Husband has been asking for a list of everything he needs to do for this weekend and a plan for how he’s going to do it. My son is very frustrated by this feeling micromanaged. I’m trying to help him appease his dad.
Husband first asked for the list last Monday by saying “I think he should make a list”. I told my son but didn’t follow up. Then Thursda my husband asks what is the status of the list. My son is very busy with homework that night and stressed so I didn’t ask him. Then today after school we put together a list of all he needs to do between now and the end of the semester and I sent it to my husband. He called me and started yelling at me what the fuck is that, that’s not what I asked for, that doesn’t tell me the status of overdue assignments etc. So then we made a list of all his classes and listed out any issues by class.
He came home from work and yelled at me about a bunch of other stuff while I was in the driveway with 3 of the kids in the car. Partially about how I’m trying to not do what he’s asking for. I said to him I swear to you I’m trying to give you what you want - why would I do otherwise.
Tonight we are home, everyone going to bed. He comes to bed at 1am and asks about the plan for tomorrow. It’s my son’s birthday so we have a plan including his friends. My husband says he’s not doing a thing until I get that list/plan. I asked multiple times for clarification on what he wants. He’s giving me shit about not having done it earlier - I took my kid to practice until 9:30pm, came home, made dinner and then helped another one of the kids with an essay until 12:20am.
He started getting really argumentative with me and so I asked him to talk quietly so we don’t wake kids but also I don’t want them to hear us argue. My oldest gets really really upset when we argue about his school stuff. He basically said shut up to me asking him to be quiet so I got up and shut our door. He said don’t shut that door. I said I just don’t want the kids to hear us. He said too bad. He got up and opened it. I said then I’m not going to continue the conversation. He said good. He left the room and then he came back and started asking me questions about why I haven’t done another task and telling me how I told him on Monday I had a plan for doing it, he’s saying if I don’t have a timeline then I don’t have a plan. I said why are you harassing me about all this at 1:30am. I already had an alarm set for 7:30am so I could do some of this stuff before our activities is the day begin. He kept defending why it’s okay for him to be bringing this up now and so I went to close the door again. He got up and opened it so I left the room and he said good that’s finally better.
So I’m now on my couch, heart pounding, hands shaking and can’t sleep which is detrimental to all I need to get done tomorrow!
I always ask myself how I think this should have gone. If my husband had a certain idea about what constitutes a plan, tell me, or help me draft it? All of this conflict is making my kid hate school and sadly building a lot of resentment toward his dad.

My husband served in the Marines, Navy and Army Natl guard 1990-2006 (peacetime and gulf war 1 and 2) including jungle service in the Philippines, transport time on aircraft carriers, 6 years of submarine service at sea and in shipyards and security/transportation time in Kosovo.
He has pulmonary sarcoidosis with renal and sinus involvement, diagnosed in 2017 with subsequent steroid induced diabetes. He takes 15mg of prednisone and 20mg of leflunomide daily in addition to 15 mg of methotrexate weekly, which moderately controls his symptoms, though he still has hilar adenopathy, high calcium in his urine, fatigue and high ACE levels. He was doing regular remicade infusions for a year and half (while also taking low dose prednisone and methotrexate) but develop a a life threatening allergic reaction. He has no family history of sarcoidosis or other auto immune diseases. He takes glimiperide and metformin daily to control diabetes, which onset after his second long course of high dose steroids to control the sarcoidosis.
We filed a pact act intent to file in early 2023 and the claim in November 2023. While he was not deployed to any of the “automatic” pact act countries, he did experience burn pits in the Philippines, worked on the air filter machine on the submarine and the VA conceded toxic exposure to asbestos via a Tera memo.
He had DBQs completed by his private physicians as well as by LSGS after an in person exam last month. The NP that conducted the exam reassured him that there was likely service connection based on a broad range of his work, exposures and deployments. Subsequent to the exam we received notification that VES was scheduling document review appointments (for which he need not be present).
Two days after the VES review appointment, 2 weeks ago, we received notification that a service connection was granted for sarcoidosis at 30% and he received a lump sum back pay dated to the Sept 2022. A decision on diabetes was “deferred”. He also received a payment for June disability (at 30%) today.
Today while checking status on the deferred decision, we saw a letter dated 6/3 (though its only 5/31) that’s says they intend to sever his service connection for sarcoidosis and that diabetes remains deferred. There was no “why” and the letter said we would receive separate notification about that.
Google tells me they can sever service connection based on fraud (which is definitely not the case) or “clear and unmistakable error”. I can’t imagine there is anything clear and unmistakable either.
Has anyone had this happen before or have any idea what happened and what we should do? Will they request repayment of the back pay they already provided or would this be on a go forward basis (we haven’t touched it but would obviously prefer not to give it back)?
Appreciate the help and all we have learned from following this forum!

I initially talked about this trip report on another subreddit, but I have gained new insights after churning on my experiences and reading about other experiences, and I am slowly consolidating my knowledge on this topic. I have discovered that many people have had similar experiences to mine with the same motifs, details etc. despite me never coming across these stories and reports beforehand.
The DMT just serves up the experience on a platter, and then kicks you out. It's up to you to figure out what went on while also battling with trip amnesia. I didn't even know the entity I saw was a robed mantis until months after (more on this later...)
My DMs are open to anyone wanting to discuss any of this, I have many ideas and theories which I only slightly covered here about the DMT space and the entities I have experienced too. I think I have almost figured out the jester. I'm slowly homing in on the Robed mantises too. My hopes with posting this story on this subreddit is to gleam new insight and to have more discussion about all of this. If you have anything to say, please comment.

My retold story

It was sometime in October last year. I was experimenting with DMT, trying to discover the truth about reality because of a strong inkling I've had from when I was a child that some high strangeness is going on in this reality, before I was ever familiar with such concepts...
It was nighttime and my bedroom was lit by my small lamp on my bedside. I consumed 2 grams of Syrian Rue seeds orally to get some MAOI in my system (MAOI slows down the metabolism of DMT, so it remains in your system longer). I waited around an hour, before vaporizing 25mg of yellowish DMT. I laid down and slipped on my eye-mask as the carrier wave ringing set in, the sensation of dissolving reality crept in, and the coursing energy rattling the atoms of my body began...
THE JESTERS
I found myself in a grand palace which had a black and white checkerboard pattern, and there were jester faces in the walls pursuing me which were ahead of me, while my soul travelled linearly down the palace...
Now, the jester is an entity that for some reason I have experienced every single time I have taken DMT. It is always in these black and white checker pattern textured settings. I've seen it in square tunnels, toroidal caves, and now this big palace. It's some sort of disembodied face and it has these big bulging eyes with thick black eyeliner, where the pupil is a black dot, and the white sclera part is big. It has a big mouth which switches from frowning to smiling wide in a few seconds, and some sort of tongue it sticks out at you. It has eyebrows too. It has a very mocking and sinister yet also at times childish vibe, and it seems to try and attempt to scare you, but I've never been particularly phased by it. I don't think it's ever clearly communicated to me telepathically. It just seems to stare at you and give you all its attention.
So, I'm in this palace, and these jester faces are in the walls following me. They're sticking their tongues out at me and I do the same back at them. Nothing particularly interesting happens, and the trip ends in around 14 minutes thanks to the MAOI extending it a bit. I found myself unimpressed, having consumed Syrian rue and taking precious DMT and not really getting much out of it this trip. I spend the next 10 minutes debating if I should go deeper, and I decide to do so. I also decide to experiment with music, and I play 'Shpongle - Divine Moments of Truth(DMT)' wanting to see if music influences anything. I load up 30mg, vape it, lay back and slip on the eye mask again.
Immediately I'm back in the checkered palace. The jesters are there too where they had just been. All my trips have involved this jester, and it doesn't seem particularly interesting. I'm completely disinterested in it and sort of ignore it, and I say to myself "What a f*king circus", commenting on the palace, as it always seems like these clowns/jesters are in these befitting circuses, and I was completely disenfranchised with them at this point. I was completely sick of them and essentially turned my attention away from them. Then suddenly, something started to happen...
(I later read about people doing something like this, where they divert their attention from the jester and ignore them, and seemingly try to "look ahead" of them. This supposedly lets you get past them especially as one of their purposes is allegedly to stop you from going further. Though in my case, I think the larger DMT dose was taking time to kick in [The jesters are allegedly sub-breakthrough entities and disappear at the higher doses]. These Jester environments are possibly the waiting room.)
The jesters and the checkerboard pattern vanished, and the trip suddenly started transforming with color and geometry. If you've ever seen those videos of physical film tape bubbling and dissolving, this is sort of what I experienced; the checkerboard palace and jesters disintegrated in front of me. I was quite surprised, as I had never actually experienced much other than the jester and the black and white pattern up until this point, and I thought I was doomed to have my DMT experiences forever intertwined with them.
This kaleidoscopic, beautifully geometrical circle / mandala of color, primarily pinkish and purplish with a tinge of green, started manifesting in front of me (Which I now believe is likely the chrysanthemum people see). It grew larger and larger as my 'soul' moved towards it. Suddenly, this massive keyhole shaped portal/door materializes in the middle of it, and behind it there were more doors. Eventually they all opened, and this humanoid entity walked through them...
"Is that her?" I asked myself. I had previously seen a pink and very feminine curvy figure on a spinning pedestal for a brief moment in a jester cave before and she seemed to be idolized/revered by them. I have never interacted with her, only seen her for a glimpse moment. But this was not her.
THE MANTIS & COUNCIL OF ENTITIES
Instead, this humanoid entity had a green head which seemed like an inverted triangle. It was quite unattractive and honestly ugly, looking like some sort of insect. But it wasn't vomit-inducing or grotesque. I initially explained it to others as having a "bull shaped head", as I didn't get to look at it for very long. Instead, I primarily had my focus on what it was wearing. It donned this wizard looking purple/pinkish/maroon robe or cloak, and the seams had some golden alien inscriptions/letters on them (In retrospect, this might have been the golden medallion people see them wearing, but I have seen someone else describe these gold inscriptions before similar to the way I have). Its clothes are scintillating with its purple/pink color palette in flux, and its head I would like to say almost had a sheen to it? I felt that it was an old entity wielding great power and high status. It moves closer and closer towards me, while I too am gravitating towards it, before suddenly everything vanishes; it felt like this entity had intercepted me. I'm teleported somewhere...
Everything is very dark, and I don't recall any visuals exactly. I feel like a purer form of consciousness/awareness at this point occupying a singular point in space, and my ego is objectified (as in I'm still aware of my human identity, but I'm not attached to it). It also feels as if I'm at the end of time, the conclusion of the universe. The fireworks were set off, and now there's nothing. Time had actually stopped working the way it does in consensus reality anyways while I was still in the presence of the jesters.
(An interesting experiment anyone who takes DMT should try: Take a sufficient dose where you can still keep your eyes open but you're at the verge of going deeper, and look at something like a timer on your phone, and witness your mind be stupefied as it attempts to decipher the meaning of the numbers you're looking at. You literally forget the concept of time.)
I feel the presence of a council of entities surrounding me, and I am in the middle of them all. They sort of feel subordinate to me, and short of stature. (I'm frustrated I don't really remember what I saw during this part of the trip. They could have been the blue imps people see, or mantis beings, or elves, etc. I just know that they felt very familiar) Suddenly, a monsoon of information is "downloaded" into my brain, and everything is completely overwhelming.
I don't recall much but the kernel of what they were basically 'saying' telepathically is that "You are the eternal ultimate awareness which has always existed, and everything exists as a form of entertainment and/or experiences for you, as there is nothing else to do. You have been doing this for all of eternity." What is strange is that I already sort of deduced this was the purpose of reality long before I tried DMT, so they may have just been feeding back to me the assumptions I already had about reality. This is a common motif I've read about, where the entities just use what you know against you. The suspected motive for this? I'll explain later.
I remember the saying "Once you get the message, hang up the phone" being pushed to the forefront of my mind during this whole thing, and me responding "No, I'm coming back later to check again". That sums up the essence of ultimate consciousness I guess, it keeps coming back for more experience rather than resting in peace. That is the implication IF what they were telling me was true, I guess.
I then react by saying "Are you serious‽ Is that all this is‽ " because I always wanted to be wrong about what I thought about reality, but instead this council was basically reaffirming my beliefs. They basically replied "Well, what else were you expecting?" and I felt one of the entities in the council get sad I'm assuming due to my reaction, I sort of 'reached out' to them and quickly apologized "No! I'm sorry, don't be sad." That's the last thing I remember while in the presence of that council.
The apex of the trip is over. They disappear and it feels like I'm thrown down the DMT realms, sort of floating in a black void behind my closed eyelids which I'm becoming aware of (I didn't have a body nor eyelids when I was in those places). I'm quite comfortable there, it feels like a womb. My lucidity of our consensus reality increases more and more. The music starts to reappear, I don't ever recall hearing it while I was in the trip.
(Unrelated but interesting side note. I remember I was in this comedown state for a while and had become aware of my body but chose to keep my eyes closed. I did this little experiment where I scrunched my eyes really tight, and when I did this my teeth started chattering and I saw this flat 2D magic-eye texture in front of me that was dark green and had a sort of diagonal chain-link pattern to it. The Qualia Research Institute has done research on DMT, they identified 6 levels to the experience: Threshold, Chrysanthemum, Magic Eye, Waiting Room, Breakthrough, and Amnesia. I believe I was in this sort of Magic Eye level at this point on the comedown. I also did not experience DMT in that specific order of levels, for me the chrysanthemum is after the waiting room. Another thing to note is that this institute identified DMT geometry as being hyperbolic which is something that can exacerbate the phenomenon of not remembering trips properly, as the brain struggles to make memories of it)
I found myself agitated and frustrated. I ripped off my eye mask and got out of my bed. I started swearing at everything in my room lol, and I also said unusual things which I reflect on to this day. For the record, the trip lasted about 17 minutes.
"Do whatever the f*k you want" As in if you wanna climb mount Everest, go do that, if you wanna be a musician, go do that. This trip made me feel like anything is possible, and a person is limitless.
"God exists, I created him" I was speaking from the perspective/ in the context of being the ultimate awareness, implying that the ultimate consciousness invented God, which is interesting. A while after the trip I had come across a concept of the distinction between God and the Godhead from Meister Eckhart which is probably what I was for some reason referring to in this moment, but I never delved much into the topic, so I am not sure.
"Why the f*k are you scared of the dark lol" I have a fear of the dark from when I was a child which stems from being exposed to those screamer flash games where the woman from the Exorcist movie flashes on the screen etc. which has mentally scarred me to this day as an adult lmao. but post-trip me had a revelation that this was silly, though it's still hard to get over my fear of the dark that occasionally creeps in.
I wrote up an initial trip report after I had calmed down from my annoyance, and I noted down that "All the hate you show onto others is reflected onto yourself, likewise the same with love." Due to feeling this sense of interconnectedness with everyone I had during that trip afterglow.
Here is the paragraph at the end of my first reddit trip report I posted. It will tie into the next section of this post.

"So now to the present moment, I had some strange synchronicities and events recently which lead me to discover that humanoid entity I saw was in fact a mantis entity, as it weirdly matches other people's typical descriptions. Green head, purple robe, feeling a presence of a council of entities etc. I had never researched it nor really heard of the mantis aliens before this trip, so it is interesting that I saw it. I was always referring to it as the humanoid entity with a cow shaped head, lol. I don't know who that mantis being was, it was only in front of me for a few seconds before it whisked me away to the council, and it never telepathically spoke to me. Me learning about the mantis beings prompted me to share this experience, as I would like to hear what others have to say. Thanks." 

SUSPECTED MOTIVES
Now I didn't really want to add these to this post to prevent it from getting too long winded, but I may as well. All I really wanted was to repost this trip on this subreddit.
Stick with me here. Think about the theme of the DMT experience. It's about humor, 'the cosmic joke', absurdity, amusement, circuses, and so on. What is the prime entity people see on DMT? The Jestetrickstejokeclown and the various names it has, and what better character to represent DMT. A mischievous, cunning, almost sinister entity that showers you in its attention as it tries almost to overwhelm you, all the while mocking you. It seemingly does this so as to grab your attention and make you become preoccupied with it. For some people, it tosses them around to completely discombobulate them, or even puts people in a sort of 'Jack-In-the-Box'. When I saw that Mantis at the kaleidoscope, it was as if it had a mission to intercept me to prevent me from going out of bounds on my own. Where does it take me? To a place where my beliefs are regurgitated and fed back to me. "Well, what else did you expect?" one of the entities told me when I was there. Why would an entity say that if not to try and dissuade me from digging deeper? They didn't seem to want me to come back, just fed me my assumptions to try and satiate me and sent me on my merry way.
The Mantis never communicated to me, introduced itself, etc. It just manifested itself into existence and intercepted me at the kaleidoscope. I literally didn't even learn it was a mantis until months later. I have seen them commonly being referred to as 'Overseers'. Like administrators. They don't like to reveal themselves and rather remain in the shadows, but I forced their hand by taking a large DMT dose and getting close to the other side. They never wanted me going there. But they can't stop me from learning about them.
To these entities on the other side of the veil, it's all about humor. It seems like it's what they value the most. You have absolutely no reason to trust them. They'll lie to you to get their laugh all the while herding you back into place to stop you from seeing what's really on the other side. They don't want us going too deep into the DMT space. What are they stopping us from seeing?
It's taken some retrospection and deduction to get to this point, but it's time to ignore the bs and cognitive dissonance people have. Something is going on here.
All I really know is that THIS, this experience, is happening right now, you are reading this right now, all of this is possible because all of this is currently happening. All the suffering, pain, discomfort, etc. This is reality. I just want to make sure I don't come back to this, not until I have the full picture. I pity my higher self if such a thing exists, if it was so bored out of its mind it actually voluntarily decided to live human lives on Earth.
APPENDIX:
A photo of the sort of texture you see in the Jester's environments. Though for me I feel the texture is slightly more regular, like a checkerboard. But this photo contains the vibe you get in these Jester places. Credit to u/theshponglr
Keywords for the search function: Mantid, mantis, green, portal, council, purple, robes, robed, cape, capes, cloak, cloaked, golden, gold, inscription, letters, portal, clown, jester, checkers, checker board, checkered, black white, mocking, insectoid, insect Edit: Minor improvements

Iranian here, let me explain why these even exist. Due to severe US sanctions against Iranian banks, there's no official way to convert Iranian currency to Canadian Dollars. Iranian banking cards are not connected to Visa or Mastercard either. Iran's financial system is as isolated as North Korea's.
These exchanges are sort of a bank proxy. They don't really convert your money directly either. Iranian pensioners or anyone who sells their home & wants to bring the money here uses these exchanges. Customers give them the Iranian currency back in Iran, and these exchanges use that currency in Iran to buy & import Iranian specialty groceries and such (that can only be found in Iranian markets in Canada) and use the cash flow to give Canadian dollars to their customers.
So in practice, any Iranian market with Iran-made goods needs to have (access) one of these exchanges. That's the legal way without money ever changing hands between two countries & only food/civilian goods are legally imported. And any Iranian-Canadians with any money back in Iran need to transfeconvert it to CAD.
As in any other business, there might be bad apples involved but given how much attention this is getting, I wanted to share my perspective.
Edit: As per why there are so many of them: I am not sure, I have seen some of them going under. It's kinda similar to several Iranian restaurants which have recently opened. I assume many of those will go under too. We have many recent Iranian immigrants in the past 2-3 years and that probably has something to do with it.
I personally don't understand why they don't spread across Metro Vancouver & just want to stay in the same area. Many of us Iranians are risk averse so I assume they want to stick to the tried & true area.
Edit 2: No idea why they lease prime real estate. It could be partly due to many of us Iranians (and Middle Easterns) are pretentious & vain. It's a status symbol; that's why you see guys who barely can pay rent but lease luxury Mercedes! It's weird & given how people are upset, the City can probably limit the number of them in prime shops. There's also a chance that many of these commercial real estate were empty due to COVID bankrupcies & the owners are desperate to lease them out for cheaper. Commercial real estate sector is not doing well in North America since 2020.

Authors note: hello readers be sure to check out the first chapter because there’s gonna be no recaps and again this is my first story I’ve written that’s actually been thought out so show a little grace if it’s rushed or something anyway this takes place right after the last sentence of chapter one (She proceeds to clap her hands and I wake up with my three friends in clearing next to a forest and next to what looks like an old medieval looking town.)
CHAPTER TWO: wait this is NOT A DREAM!?
Ok sorry about not listing my friends stats now but here’s the meet the team. I wake up and see Ryan standing right over me trying to wake me up while the 2 other members are still asleep
NAME: Ryan
Description: very cool and very kind guy that loves making friends also he’s pretty big but he’s a gentle giant that’s pretty much all muscle
STATS: Strength: B+ (lifts weights in gym class a lot during free time)
Agility: D+ (I mean I could outrun him just saying)
Endurance: B+ (runs about as much as me just for different reasons and is also super tanky)
Dex: C (never really got on cod but is average)
Charisma: B (he’s good at making friends)
Luck: C+ (idk what to say he’s just better then me at luck games)
Dev comments: good- dev G (are you Hans? How are you writing in my journal like a game dev from my world??-chris)
Overall I just love having friends like Ryan. Anyways, Ryan wakes me up really confused about where we are and asks me if I know anything about where we are and why we are all here. I am still half asleep but then I realize I can feel the grass I’m on and can hear Ryan speaking without me already knowing what he’s gonna say and then it dawns on me, WE ARE ACTUALLY IN A ISEKAI ANIME WORLD AND I CHOSE WHO TO TAKE WITH ME!!! I try to keep cool and tell him to wake up Kristopher while I wake up Drake
NAME: Drake
Description: little asian kid who is not nerdy at all and talks about murder and wants to up his K/D ratio all the time and swears a lot and apparently I am his only witness so he keeps me around (he’s not emo he talks about it jokingly and laughs I-i think he’s joking anyway)
STATS:
Strength: E+ (he’s small so not really much muscle plus he’s skinny)
Agility: B+ (he’s one of the fastest people I know)
Endurance: C- (when he’s full sprint he tires out quickly)
Charisma D (apparently not many people like hearing about murder, strange)
Luck: B+ (bro destroys in uno)
Dev notes: I-I don’t even want him- dev D (now who is this?- Chris)
As soon as I wake Drake up he’s ready to murder anybody and everybody but I calm him down and then Ryan wakes up Kristopher and he does not believe what is going on
NAME: Kristopher
Description: very similar to me but says memes a lot and it’s always a 50/50 chance he’s depressed which I don’t blame him for (some people say he’s emo but i don’t think so)
Stats:
Strength: C-
Agility: C
Endurance: B+
Dex: C-
Charisma: B+ (actually had a gf before)
Luck: C (it’s average)
Dev comments: wow this is just pathetic- dev G (man shut up bro to scared to even show your face Mr. Pathetic journal thief- Chris)
After we wake Kristopher up I tell everyone what happened and they surprisingly don’t beat me up and we all sit down and try to make a game plan but we have nothing. That’s until I got an idea, I tell the group that I’ve watched a lot of anime/anime recaps, and my favorite Isekai ones have a status screen that you can open. So I think in my head to open it and surprisingly it opens. I can see my stats items level and surprisingly skills.
Name:Chris
Skills:
Non magic based
Adrenaline rush- uncommon : get a spike of speed for 1 second. Lvl 1
Air slash- common: make 1(s) consecutive slashes in the air that can be used as a ranged attack. Lvl 1
Final stand-legendary: use the rest of a swords durability to launch a powerful attack. lvl MAX
Magic based
Mystic edge-rare: generate power from mana to sharpen a blade for your next attack. Lvl 1
Assassins instincts- legendary: use your instincts to generate a mental path to an enemies weak point. Lvl 1
Blessing of creation-error: use pure mana to create anything you can imagine. Lvl MAX
Passive skills:
Accuracy- common: have increased accuracy when throwing objects. Lvl 1
Item box-epic: have a storage box that you can summon to store items. Lvl 1
Accelerated heal-epic: recover from wounds quicker. Lvl 1
Eyes in the back of your head- legendary: Spidey senses. Lvl MAX
Gods stomach- error: have a chance to gain abilities from eating. Lvl MAX
Unseeable: Plot armor
I’M FREAKING OUT RN NO CAP MY GUY. This is a dream come true anyway I tell the dudes and they check their stats to and we devise a ranking system based on what we see
Common,uncommon,rare,epic,legendary,blessed,error
For some reason I’m the only one without a blessed ability and the only one with error abilities and concluded that lvl max abilities are either extremely bad or start of extremely good. So after a little bit of talking I have an idea. I was the only one who watched Isekai anime in the first place so I explained that most of the anime have adventurer guilds that we can join as a party and earn fat stacks from so we don’t starve to death. Then we agreed that we needed to go to the town and figure out what this world is about so we set off to the town ready to face whatever lies ahead.
Authors note: hi guys hope this chapter helps fill up any questions about our other characters and roughly our MC’s abilities. Next chapter is going to be less about world building and more about actual important fun stuff so thank all of you for reading and see you all soon ❤️❤️
Peace, fluffDZ (or cool beans guy)

I feel that one reason why people are increasingly feeling depressed these days is because they are comparing themselves to a past time period, to the era of their grandparents and of their parents. People believe they should have a degree by 22, be married by 26, have a house, have a wife and have kids and be successful. All while having a youth full of parties, sex, travel and adventure. But who put those ideas in your head? Who made you believe this was the way you were meant to live your life?
Yes those things are the things you should aspire to and work towards...in a past time.The problem is this is a new era, why are we comparing ourselves to a reality that no longer exists or is too far out of touch with day to day life? Divorces are rampant, no one stays together anymore, housing is exponentially rising, jobs are being replaced by AI or being outsourced. The reason why those things are status symbols was because it came from an era where things were handed on a platter, so to not have them made you a colossal loser. So why are we fighting and struggling so hard, sacrificing our mental health and submitting ourselves to anguish just to have these things? Why do we even want these things, validation? Traditions are traditions because the circumstances surrounding them forced them in that way. However, the parameters have changed, the world has changed.
No matter how alone you may feel, there's millions of people who feel that same way. If the average man isn't college-educated and doesn't have a girlfriend or works a dead-end job with nothing they're working towards, then that just means that's just the current paradigm we live in. The whole nuclear, traditional family is no longer the standard, it's so rare that we should just consider it an anamoly, and that's ok. It served its purpose for what it was intended for at the time it was needed for. Home ownership is not the standard any more.