I almost always just eat at local restaurants, but sometimes sometimes eat at big national or Southern California restaurant chain.
I know that private equity firms have been really buying up restaurant chains the last 10 or so years, and trying to sort through who owns what and what isn’t owned by private equity firms is a lot of work. I figure the private equity firms ruin stuff by only caring about money, so I’d like to keep some of mine from them.
So- anybody know already?
Edit- partly inspired by Rubio closing a bunch of stores suddenly

May got out to a lightning start for me, continuing the torrid April pace for a while before cooling off a bit in the back end of the month. That's partially by design, as I jumped into a pair of longer games (one enormously so) which I won't finish until deeper into June, but I've also noticed I'm slowly bleeding gaming time from my evenings. As my kids get incrementally older and the days grow incrementally longer entering summer, an hour that would previously be my own is now deferred to them, and that adds up over the course of an entire month.
Not that I'd trade my kids, you understand.
(Games are presented in chronological completion order; the numerical indicator represents the YTD count.)
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#27 - Contra: Hard Corps - GEN - 8/10 (Great)
It's been fascinating to watch the Contra series evolve over time, and Hard Corps on the Sega Genesis is no different. With no Mode 7 (the SNES' proprietary isometric viewpoint mode) available on the system, necessarily some of the top down content from Contra III would need to be altered or removed, and that begged the question of what would take its place: after all, a return to basic sidescrolling action might feel like a big step down, and we can't have that. So I think I expected Hard Corps to throw in a new wrinkle to keep the formula a bit more fresh. What I did not expect was for it to make three enormous changes.
For one, Hard Corps has four different characters to choose from, and each is actually unique. It's not just the look - where else can you play a cybernetic wolfman? - but they've got different sizes and hurtboxes as well. And while each starts with the same basic low power machine gun, each has a completely different loadout of possible weapon upgrades, ensuring that all four play very differently from one another outside of the fundamentals of movement. To that end, the two weapon toggle of Contra III is expanded in Hard Corps, allowing you to hold all four of your upgraded weapons simultaneously and switch between them at will, which adds a new layer of depth and strategy to the action. Building upon this notion of enhanced player choice even further, the second big change is that the game has branching paths. After the first stage you make a choice that determines where you head for the second level, and then later on you make another choice that creates further divergence, such that the game has four main endings (and a secret fifth!), all with their own dedicated unique stages. It's for that reason possibly the most replayable game so far in the franchise; I myself did a run through of each ending using a different character per run to get a feel for them all.
This leads to the final big change, which is the only one I don't regard a resounding success: the entire game is basically a boss rush. Let's zero in on the main path that I followed on my primary playthrough and add up all mini-bosses and full boss phases. What number might you expect that to come out as? A dozen or so? Well, sorry about your naiveté, but the answer is 43: it's bosses all the way down. This is a MUCH more mentally taxing load than previous Contra games where you could kind of skate through the non-boss sections with good fundamentals. And that's just one of four possible paths through the game! It's absurd! It's also way more fun than it sounds it would be from the description, but I've heard people say Hard Corps is the toughest Contra game and now I know why. I do miss just running and gunning and dropping dudes in one hit before a thrilling finale; it's hard to be properly wowed by a boss fight when that's all you ever see. But nevertheless Contra: Hard Corps is lives up to the legacy of greatness the franchise had up until that point established...just steel yourself mentally for the extensive memorization it requires of you.
​
#28 - Ancient Enemy - PC - 5.5/10 (Semi-Competent)
Solitaire is one of those games that nobody really wants to play. It’s a game of convenience and opportunity, only attractive in the absence of something better, which is to say “nearly anything else at all.” Slightly more entertaining are variations on the form, such as Mahjong Solitaire or Free Cell, where certain cards/tiles are locked until the ones above them have been cleared away. These are still just time wasting games for people with nothing else to do, but when presented as a discrete set of challenges there’s a bit more appeal. Do you know they say that every one of the 32,000 numbered games of FreeCell on classic Windows operating systems was supposedly beatable? Did you know a very bored teenage me once decided to see if I could prove it by playing and beating every single unique game of FreeCell in order? I got into the low 30s or so before I questioned what the hell I was doing with my life and wisely moved on.
Well, Ancient Enemy is a game for people with nothing better to do, masquerading as a game that would qualify as "something better to do." It’s an RPG, I guess, but the gameplay revolves entirely around a solitaire variant. You have a deck of “stock cards” numbered 0-9 and start each encounter (“hand”) by flipping the top one. Then on the board you have to collect a card with a number adjacent to the one you’re displaying - 0 serving as a bridge between 1 and 9. Getting a card reveals any card trapped immediately below it and enables that card to be collected as well. If you can’t make a move, you can flip a new stock card over to get a random new number until your deck runs out. Some levels are simple puzzles in this vein, trying to clear all the cards from the board. Most encounters though are battles, where you do the exact same thing, except the color of the card you collect enables you to attack, defend, or cast a spell. So it’s turn-based combat, except each turn is you basically clearing as many cards as you can from the board to juice up your attack or bolster your defense, and that’s about it.
Now, at first, this is actually way more fun than I’m making it sound. I mean, I like solitaire type games for what they are, and the extra mechanics definitely do enrich the experience. You get consumable wild cards, battle boards have bonus cards with instant benefits, you get powers that manipulate the board, new types of cards appear, all good stuff. The problem is that the game completely runs out of these new ideas about a quarter of the way through, at which point you’re just going through the motions until the end, accompanied by a complete nothing of a story that I was confident I had figured out, only to find that the ending was somehow worse than the cliche I’d been anticipating. Thus, the game sadly settled into that exact same niche of games it was supposed to improve upon and supplant. Which I suppose is ok…if you’ve got nothing better to do.
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#29 - Snakebird Primer - PC - 7/10 (Good)
I follow a general rule of always playing game franchises in order, but Snakebird Primer is a unique case wherein the developers of the original Snakebird decided that it was too off-putting to new players, and so they made a sequel that they explicitly wanted newcomers to play first. A "primer" in truth to ease you into the overall Snakebird challenge, as it were. So when I decided to check out Snakebird, I thought all right: just this once I'll do it your way.
So how does Snakebird Primer shake out? Well...it's fine. It's a jaunty kind of puzzle game, with bright colors, friendly art and music, and general good vibes. In each stage you control one or more segmented "snakebirds" and have to get them all to the rainbow portal to complete the level. Sometimes you need to eat fruit to open the portal as well, but that's the entire game in a nutshell. It's a very simple concept, complicated only by the fact that a snakebird that has no body segments touching the ground will fall, and so each stage is a kind of pathing challenge, tasking you to figure out the right order of operations to reach the end. The levels are very well paced and designed if you just go in order: there aren't any hand-holdy tutorials, but new ideas are introduced organically at various intervals, and the challenge always feels reasonable, especially because you can undo any number of moves at will, like stepping through code to find an error.
There is, however, a significant difficulty spike for the last couple levels, which is pretty jarring. And when you add to that the fact that the designer of Baba Is You said he built a lot of his design philosophy around the original Snakebird, I've got to admit I'm a lot less keen on checking that one out. It's in that same realm of "enter these six dozen commands in precisely the right order" that made Baba Is You eventually feel more tedious and frustrating to me than anything else, so I think for now I'm happy to have just played the "lite" version instead.
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#30 - It Takes Two - PS4 - 8.5/10 (Excellent)
When trying to write down a genre for It Takes Two in my tracking spreadsheet, I wanted to put "Yes". It's as though the developers wanted to make a bunch of different kinds of games and, rather than accepting any limitations (self-imposed or otherwise), they just found a way to do it all at once. It Takes Two is a platformer. It's a third-person shooter. It's a puzzle game. It's a rhythm game. It's a racing game. It's a stealth game. It's a boss battling action adventure. It's a minigame collection. It's a romantic comedy. It's an exploration playground. One minute you're flying around on a jetpack chucking Captain America shields at devils and the next you're literally playing a timed game of chess. None of the things that It Takes Two does would be characterized as masterpiece forms of their respective genres, but that's not the point. There's sufficient depth and development of each mechanic that it never feels like a lazy tack-on to check a box - and that in itself is beyond impressive - but it's the sheer number of different ideas tossed into this package that make it truly special.
It's hard for me to even review this game, frankly. Part of that is because I feel a strong bias towards the game for the audaciousness of what it tries to achieve, and for the way it inspires me to keep stretching myself in new ways however I can. But it's also hard because I don't remember the whole thing. It Takes Two is both fresh in memory, having just finished it, and yet far away and mingled in my mind with similar bits of similar other adventures (Tearaway foremost among them). Why is that? Well, I first booted up It Takes Two in May of 2022 as a co-op experience to share with my wife - quite fitting, as it turns out, given the nature of the game's plot of trying to reconcile an embattled couple. We'd only play in smaller bursts of 1-2 hours at a time, but every session we played it felt like we were playing a new, different game. Music to my ears, but much harder on my gaming-challenged wife, who took longer to adjust to each mechanical shift. Pretty soon we were playing less and less often, even as I was playing a game like Tearaway early on that occupied some similar design space in my head. Soon we stopped playing at all. When I tried to suggest resuming this title over the past year, I was repeatedly rebuffed until finally a month ago I managed to wear her down enough that we picked it up again for about an hour a week. So it is that the first half of the game is fuzzy and nebulous to me, even as I recall that I loved playing, whereas the back half is much fresher, and it's nigh impossible for me to separate my wife's frequent frustrations from my own experience - especially since I've been playing on a controller experiencing heavy stick drift, so managing the camera was a nightmare through no fault of the game's.
All that said, how could I not recommend this game? It's best played with two experienced gamers, but the story only fully lands if you play as a couple, so there's a bit of potential for a disconnect there, as I experienced. It's not a perfect game. But it is an incredibly ambitious one that had me routinely grinning from ear to ear, despite the grumblings on the couch next to me. When I pointed out to my wife that we finished the game in May 2024, almost to the day when we started back in '22, she said "They should've called it It Takes Two Years." We're both glad it's over, but I think for very different reasons.
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#31 - Rogue Legacy 2 - PS5 - 7/10 (Good)
Some game sequels try to really shake things up and try something different from the one before. Final Fantasy is probably the biggest and most obvious example of this, but you can also see it in virtually every Super Mario Bros. game, in the Castlevania series, and the list goes on extensively from there. On the other hand, some game sequels treat their predecessors like rough drafts to be perfected. With these, the idea is to take the vision for the previous game, use the increase in time/budget/developer expertise now available, and try to execute on it more completely than was possible before. When a game like this is successful, there becomes almost zero reason to ever play the original game (other than possibly its story), because the new version has replaced it entirely as the definitive experience.
Rogue Legacy 2 is one of these latter types of games. Everything from the first game is pretty much still there (bosses excepted): enemies, basic combat and room design, character classes, traits, progression, etc. It immediately feels like "Hey, I've played this before," yet a cursory look reveals a huge wealth of additional content over the first game. Classes are better differentiated, you get new weapons, more spells, special abilities, new items, new upgrades, new explorable regions, new mechanics, new new new. It truly is a total replacement for Rogue Legacy 1 in this regard, a "go ahead and uninstall that thing forever because we've got it all right here and then some" type of mission statement. I was amazed at how I kept finding ever more avenues of progression and discovery, even many hours into the game, In fact, I never did manage to play as every class, and each class has a variant form as well, most of which I didn't even unlock. It's overflowing with stuff.
And I think that's why it didn't work quite as well for me as the first game: it's all too much. Now there are four different types of currency, all acquired in different ways, all for different upgrade paths. You're always competing with yourself on what to level up between runs because there are too many choices and all of them seem pretty good, but as you're finding your early groove the game throws a big wrench in there: labor costs. While each upgrade has a set gold cost that increases as you level it up, early on the game adds a universal tax mechanic to the entire upgrade tree, making it increasingly prohibitive to spend your money on stuff, and it feels awful. Rogue Legacy 1 had a similar system where each upgrade cost 10g more than the previous, but in the sequel these escalate far more rapidly, to the point where you'll complete a huge run and still feel like you can only afford one or two upgrades that barely move the needle. It's a pure inflationary grinding system meant to pad playtime, and I'm not about that. I played RL1 through multiple New Game + levels, but I was thrilled to beat RL2's final boss and move on because the economy is so frustrating. Other than that though, it's got quite a lot going for it.
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#32 - Undertale - PS4 - 7/10 (Good)
When is some information too much information? Undertale is notorious for its rabid fan community insisting that there is only one "right" way to play the game, and so if you've ever heard of Undertale there's a good chance you already know what that preferred method is: pacifism. Undertale takes a unique approach to the JRPG in two primary ways: first, that defending against enemy attacks is an active system pretty much akin to dodging in a bullet hell game, and second that you almost never actually need to choose the "Fight" command from the battle menu in order to succeed in an encounter. The argument from the community is that you must play in this fully pacifist manner, largely because of a design decision that thoroughly punishes players who do not, only revealed after the game's conclusion. Thus, these players are "helping" curious newcomers by saving them from falling victim to a fairly vindictive design choice that would create a lot of frustration.
The problem with that approach is that Undertale makes it abundantly clear from the outset that you have the option for these alternative combat approaches, trains you on how to use them, and then gives you a positive feedback loop for choosing that direction with your gameplay. Which means the discourse surrounding this game effectively undermines not only the game's own ability to surprise and educate you, but also the authorial intent of that same design decision, which in context is a conscious player decision to go against the grain and suffer the possible consequences of doing so. In short, I wish I'd never heard of Undertale before I played it, as I'm sure I would've had a much better time.
As it stands, Undertale is still a highly creative take on the genre that, despite an aesthetic I didn't care for and writing that leaned a bit too hard at times into "lol I'm so random" territory for my tastes, still managed to get me invested with some of its characters and even make me laugh aloud at times. I was particularly impressed with that aforementioned approach to combat, as each enemy introduced unique hazards to avoid, so fighting a new monster was far more exciting here than in a standard turn-based RPG where the only meaningful question is "How much damage did this whatever move do to me?" So for those reasons I applaud Undertale. Even still, there's a lot of walking back and forth with no major purpose beyond "it was decided the game should be a little bit inconvenient here," adding some unnecessary tedium to the mix. In short, Undertale's a generally good time, but if you want it to be even better, just pretend you haven't read anything I just said.
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#33 - Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales - PS5 - 7.5/10 (Solid)
2018 was a big year for Miles Morales. In the fall he showed up in the PS4 title Marvel's Spider-Man as a major supporting character, and by the end of the year he was stunning cinema audiences in the fantastic Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as the primary protagonist. It's no surprise then that by 2020, with his brand so hot, Sony and Insomniac Games would cash in with a follow-up title to the hit PS4 game with Miles front and center. And for the most part, the game is what you'd expect it to be from that basic pitch: more of the same from 2018, only focusing on Miles' family, his new home of Harlem and its people, and his path to becoming a fully fledged hero in his own right. That's all fine, but here's the problem: all of it has been done better before, and recently to boot. Miles' story of personal growth and family drama was handled better in the Spider-Verse series, even though MSM:MM wisely walks chooses to walk some different beats along the way. "Superhero of Harlem" was done masterfully by Netflix with the Luke Cage series (the first season, at least) back in 2016, and MSM:MM doesn't even try to address any issues beyond the most surface level. And the "more of the same" gameplay?
Well, admittedly that's still pretty good. Web swinging is as fun as ever to the point that there's an XP challenge to web swing at high speed for a full cumulative hour of real time and I caught myself thinking, "Hmm, maybe..." There are fast travel points that unlock relatively early on, but the joy of traversal feels like the main point of the game, so why would you bother? Miles also gets some new Spidey moves related to his bio-electric powers, and these are really fun and impactful to pull off, such that "more of the same" isn't in this case a damning phrase. And yet, it's also distinctly not "more, but better." In order to emphasize your new powers, the goons you fight (now including women for the first time I can recall ever seeing in a superhero game like this) have upgraded their own abilities as well, which means the simple pleasure of chaining big combos is a bit diminished. Maybe this enemy just blocks all your basic attacks and stops you cold. Maybe this one turns the tables to dodge and counter you. Or maybe you're just constantly surrounded by a flood of dudes with guns and rocket launchers and you feel like you never get a chance to press "punch" without being thoroughly punished.
Now add to that the game's relatively brief length and general lack of meaningful activities compared to its predecessor, as well as its truly awful villains and the ho-hum plot that they service, and you've got a title that's decidedly a step back from what came before. Of course, what came before was excellent, so even a step back still lands you in territory that's quite fun to play around with. My 6-year-old summed it up best when he came downstairs to ask me a question one day and caught me playing: "Whoa...how are you Spider-Man?!" Which is to say that Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a game that really makes you feel like a wannabe Spider-Man who hasn't gotten it all figured out just yet. And I guess that's all right.
​
Coming in June:

• I've had less time for PC gaming lately for a couple of different reasons, but I'm expecting that to be a temporary thing, and I don't think I'm in danger of failing to finish Mass Effect 3 by the end of June. I didn't realize the version of the game I had included all the DLC. Nor did I actually know what any of the DLC was. So I was quite a ways into the game and feeling great about my progress when I got suspicious that the section I was playing wasn't actually base game content. I looked it up and found that, in fact, about 90% of what I'd played to date was DLC and I'd barely actually started the base game itself. That explains why the main story was taking a while to get off the ground, at any rate.
• Speaking of getting off the ground, my journey through The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom began impatiently a few months after release, but I took an extended break from the game and have now spent pretty much all of May continuing my thorough trek through the game world. I'm well over 200 hours into the game and am only several days away from having explored the entirety of the game's map. At which point I believe I'll finally advance the main quest past its initial stage.
• In my review for Rogue Legacy 2 above I mentioned the Castlevania franchise, which I feel I can speak to as a whole given that I've finished nearly every game in the series to date. Unsurprisingly I felt most drawn to the metroidvania style games, so there was a layer of disappointment in exhausting the last of those to discover. Disappointment that will soon be temporarily eradicated when I boot up Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, produced by that same creative mind.
• And more...

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← Previous	2024	Next →

My experience with Michelin in a complicated one. Having gone to one, two, and three Michelin star restaurants across the globe, I've seen Michelin do some great things for restaurants, but I've also seen them bring the demise of others.
Because it's quite apparent what good things come from being highlighted by Michelin, this post is more focused on some of my criticisms of the Michelin guide, and why I think the current structure of Michelin should be changed.
Maintaining "Michelin's definition" of the gold standard..
There have been a ton of amazing restaurants given a one star review. Restaurants don't even need to be "fine dining" to be given a Michelin star, as highlighted by some of the cheap eats that have received a one star review.
But a one star review, can at times, be a curse for restaurants. Often, restaurants receive one star reviews got there by showcasing there strengths. A passion for food and creativity, a desire to share culture or tradition, or an expression of a personal brand of art.
When a restaurant receives a one star review, two things happen.

1. They begin to get huge influx of customers. Initially.
2. They start to be compared to other one star restaurants, sometimes even two or three star.

The majority of the time, when a restaurant receives a one star review, the rapidly get a ton of customers wanting to try them. And in just a few months, they start to raise prices. Because money can change people.
And eventually, they start to act as more of a "tourist attraction", and start to lose the original loyal clientele that brought them to where they were in the first place.
Secondly, they begin to compare themselves to the standards of other "higher" Michelin star restaurants.
And that typically means focusing more on a particular brand of fine dining. Hyper-attentive service, an overuse of "micro complex food"(emulsions, purees, colorful vegetation). Just to name a few.
I've seen this unfortunately happen time and time again.
If your customers wanted to go to a Eleven Madison Park, they'd travel to New York. But don't turn your restaurant into a chain of fine dining. You'll start to lose the allure, and it starts to feel like the routine of Mcdonalds or Capital Grille.
​
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To preface this post, I want to give the disclaimer that like many things, there is not a black and white answer the question. I'm writing this as an experienced tech professional, and the information provided is based on opinion.
To start with. A little bit of history..
The golden age of software engineering(and similar jobs) is over. At least for the next 5 - 10 years. I don't think this is an unpopular opinion. The reason why between the years of 2010 - 2022, these jobs exploded, was because of the boom of the internet for commercial and personal use.
This is different from the dotcom boom of 2000s, where the internet was just starting and most of the products being created were for basic things like: putting banking on the internet, putting videos on the internet, etc.
The boom in the 2010s was related to the widespread popularity of commercial and personal products. Things like Uber, Spotify, and Salesforce. With the sudden increased usage of the digital world, there were MILLIONS of companies rushing to create digital products.
However, we're starting to see the rise and fall of some of these products, millions of startups failings, and less VC funding. In case you don't know, VC stands for Venture Capital, which are basically investment companies that give money to other companies to help them grow and develop, in return for partial ownership of the company.
As the industry began to mature, successful companies started to emerge, and many more started to fail.
The present day..
Software engineering and like jobs will continue to be important, and there will be a high demands for these engineers. Nearly every company will still need a website, a place to manage their data, and people to manage their hardware. BUT.. the basic technologies they need to run their company will become more efficient. AND there will be less research and innovation because the a lot of the trial and error already occurred.
We're in a weird spot where the demand for workers is now decreasing from it's recent peaks, and the supply of workers is now increasing because of how all the benefits of being a software engineer in the past decade.
This has really unfortunate consequences for any recent graduates or others trying to break into the tech field. There are WAY more beginning career people than jobs available. Which is made even worse with the amount of layoffs there are, where mid-level employees are now having to settle for entry level jobs.
What can we do?
I have two pieces of advice for people interested in the topic, or wanting to break into the field but can't. Try breaking in from a adjacent field, where you can get some exposure to tech. Things that data entry, analytics(this can be finance, supply chain etc). Then try to learn as much as you can from the tech people at your company.
The second piece of advice. Go into a different field. Software engineering is not for everyone. You have to learn and understand some relatively complex topics, and it's becoming harder and harder to be competitive in the industry. Healthcare, supply chain, and many other industries are booming right now.
Understanding history, you can see that certain industries will rise and fall. For the near future, technology might be one of the harder careers to break into. Something like healthcare would be that's expected to grow exponentially. The average population of the world is getting older, as less and less people are wanting to have kids. There will be higher demand for healthcare professionals and healthcare technology.
Do your best to review and understand these trends, and hopefully you can create a good life and career. Best of luck!
​
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[INDEX]
I banked the fire and stared into the golden eyes of Beatale before I crept into my makeshift tent.
I still had my auric vision running and couldn’t help but notice the thin silver cord that ran from me to Horse. Firming up my aura, I reached out with my hand and grabbed it. I could feel the nearly imperceptible vibration between my fingers as I used my mind to probe at the thread. I could feel a bright spark of intellect, a light at the end of a tunnel. Pushing with my mind, I slid down the thread until the spark grew larger and eventually filled my inner vision with a hazy white light. Horsey thoughts nudged at me curiously.
I slid into the haze and immediately lost all sense of direction. If it wasn’t for the silver thread, I’d have no idea how to exit this shifting white fog. Horsey thoughts got stronger as I followed the thread while the haze thinned and cleared to reveal an endless prairie of green grass. I found myself standing before a naked man wearing a horse mask and I stared in shock. It was obviously me wearing a cheap costume horse mask — there was no mistaking my tattoos.
“What did you expect?” Horse neighed at me. “I am you and you are me and we are all together. Goo goo ga joob.”
Horse made a shooing motion with his hands and I accelerated backwards through the white haze and slammed into my own body with a gasp. I stared at the tarp overhead for a long minute, processing this new revelation. Horse was a part of me, a piece of my spirit. Whatever psychic stuff I did with that silver cord lead me into a house of mirrors where I got to look at myself pretending to be a horse. I can’t even deal with that right now.
Rolling into my blankets, I dropped off to sleep.
*Ding*
-=- - Welcome to the Dreamworld - Included in the Psychic Skills pack, the Inner Sanctum is your psychic domain. It is the mental fortress that you must secure and maintain to defend against psychic and spiritual assaults. All of your neurosis and fears are symbolised in this realm and must be defeated or subjugated before you can become master of the domain. Good luck. -=-
I banished the pop-up and looked around. I knew I was asleep, but everything was just as real as when I was awake. I was breathing, I could feel the floor under my feet, and if it weren’t for the pop-up, I would have sworn I had been teleported. The room I was in resembled an oversized luxury prison cell, maybe a thirty foot cube. No windows. Rough stone walls with thick mortar. Large brass wall sconces were set directly into the stone and suffused the room with a warm, golden light provided by glowing rocks. The stone floor had colourful Persian rugs tastefully placed. A high plaster ceiling was painted with a rendition of Michelangelo’s ‘Creation of Adam’, depicting me as both Adam and God.
There was a comfy sofa in front of a large screen television that hung from one wall and an ornate grandfather clock ticked loudly in the corner. It was currently 10:08 PM. Another wall was a floor to ceiling bookshelf, stuffed with books of varying sizes. The third wall was covered with pictures and I could see at a glance that they were images from my life. The fourth wall had a thick riveted steel door on the right side, a full sized mirror on the left, and a computer workstation in the middle.
The picture wall was my first target. A few were quite large, nearly life sized, while others were tiny prints no larger than the palm of my hand. Scenes of my life were displayed in each one. The largest was me riding Horse with a shit-scared expression, shooting at a pack of wolves. Others were smaller, each with different frames. Some ornate gold or silver, others plain wood, a few wrapped in briars or barbed wire. Nanny Ramsey holding me as a young child. My dog Jean with a red ball in his mouth. My parents, screaming at me. I turned my attention to the books. Books are safe. Books don’t judge you.
The sweet, musty scent of a used book store filled my nostrils as I drew close to the honey coloured shelves. Hundreds of volumes filled the wall from floor to ceiling, with a ladder that could be rolled along a rail to access the top. I smiled at the sight. I had always wanted a library like this. I pulled a book at random and read the title, “Confused Fantasies about Joseph Harris, part XXIV of the Middle School Years”.
I slid the book back onto the shelf. Let’s see what’s on TV.
The remote was a slim, futuristic looking affair with a minimum of buttons. I pointed it at the television and moments later the huge screen came to life and presented me with a simple menu for movies, divided into six categories: Happy, Surprised, Afraid, Disgusted, Angry, and Sad. I scrolled through the offerings for a minute, reading the titles and reviews about the movies of my life. It really bothered me that there were so few selections in the Happy section.
The number of Sad movies increased by one.
I walked over to the mirror and noticed there was a small sticky note pasted to it. “Astral Realm. Experienced users only.” I shoved the note in my pocket and stared at my image. Sturdy black boots, black denim jeans and shirt with mother-of-pearl buttons, deep brown gun belt slung at my hip, red bandanna and black felt hat. All I needed was a pencil moustache and I would look like the stereotypical villain in any spaghetti western. At that very moment I decided to grow out a goatee. I’d rather be mistaken for a bad guy than a victim.
So how does this astral realm thing work?
The mirror appeared to be nothing more than a mirror. It was cold, smooth glass surrounded by a wrought iron frame, and reflected my image. I didn’t necessarily want to go walking into danger, but I wanted to know how it worked. I pushed and prodded the glass in frustration until I noticed my image grinning at me. I jumped back in surprise and it doubled over in silent laughter.
“Hilarious, dude. You got me,” I huffed. “So how do I get in?”
My mirror-self tipped his hat and stepped to side.
I reached up to the mirror again and my hand passed through, vanishing as if cut off. Okay, just a quick peek and we’ll explore the rest of the room. I stepped through and the world shifted around me. I was standing back at the campsite. My body was insubstantial as a ghost and the tarp was a wisp of substance running straight through me. Non living things don’t seem to have much presence in this realm. Glancing down, I saw my sleeping body rolled up in the blankets, a thin silver thread running from it to me, and another thread running to Horse.
Looking around, I surveyed the campsite. My astral vision seemed to be on and had an unlimited range. I could see the life all around me, the distant forest was a sea of greenish-gold, grasses and brush nearby glowed with spectral light. Tiny ghost insects scurried while ghost mice nibbled at whatever ghost mice nibble on. Ghost seeds and ghost insects, I suppose. I turned my attention overhead and gaped at the sight of a monstrous serpentine spirit flying through the inky void. I dropped back through the tent and rolled inside my body. That was plenty enough for now.
I rolled through the mirror and landed flat on my back, staring at the fresco on the ceiling. Vinnie-God winked at me and Vinnie-Adam grinned. Climbing to my knees, I brushed non-existent dust from my trousers and watched mirror-me doubled over in soundless laughter.
“Hey, laughing-boy!” I yelled at him. “You’re like the guardian or something, right? You got it covered?”
Mirror-me stood and saluted with a smile, then gave me two thumbs up. A moment later, his face took on a serious expression and he wriggled his right hand in the ‘maybe’ motion. Then he pointed at me, tapped his wrist, and then a finger to his head.
It all depends on how fast I learn stuff, I guess.
Two thumbs up and a winning smile reflected back to me.
A large cork board was mounted to the wall over the computer and a small note was pinned to it. “Note to self: Don’t fuck with the Elvish womens.”
The computer screen featured a screensaver of me as Vitruvian Man doing callisthenics over the words ‘HumanOS’. I tapped the spacebar and was rewarded with the sound of powerful fans kicking to life as the computer emerged from sleep mode and prompted me for a password. Should I assume it’s the same as the password on the computer I pawned in my previous life?
Password: *******esi
I was rewarded with a sweet R&M desktop and a couple of icons. System, NeuralNet, My-Tunes, My-Movies, My-Office.
System was just what I expected, lots of .dna files and other confusing scariness that allowed me to tweak my physical body and mental state. My-Tunes was a collection of every song I’d ever heard and My-Movies was a collection of every movie I’d ever seen. Not that I’m complaining, but it would have been nice to have “My-Games” so I could play RDR. My-Office was a clone of the popular software by a similar name. I have no idea what I’ll ever need a spreadsheet for in this world.
NuralNet opened up a search engine called Me-Seeks, featuring a familiar blue guy.
I typed in “beer” and several thousand results were displayed, anything I’d ever read, heard, or watched about beer, including how to make it. This right here made the price of admission totally worth it, access to an exact copy of everything I’d ever read, and I was a voracious reader. Sadly, most of the stuff I read was futurology — solar panels, electronics, biotech advancements, quantum computing. The material for steam engines, blacksmithing, farming and the like, were slim pickings. That’s okay though, I could still reproduce the Gutenberg press, the cotton gin, simple internal combustion engines, and basic batteries along with some sketchy knowledge of metal alloys, acids, bases, and other things I had read over the years. All that wasted time watching “How Things Work” was finally going to pay off. I copied a few likely money makers to My-Office, saved the file, and exported to my Notes, just in case they didn’t exist on Aerth.
A popup covered the screen.
📱 [New Upgrade Available!] 📱
🎉 Enhance Your Experience with the Latest HumanOS Features! 🎉
🌟 Features Include:

• 🧠 Memory Booster: Increase your Memory for smoother multitasking and improved performance.
• 🔋 Energy Optimizer: Extend your battery life with advanced power-saving techniques.
• 🛠️ Utility Upgrades: Access new apps and utilities to enhance your daily life and adventures.
• 🗺️ Advanced Mapping: Never get lost again with enhanced GPS and location tracking.

🔥 Special Offer: Only 2000 credits for version 2.0 or 5000 credits for version 3.0! 🔥
[Upgrade Now ✅] [Remind Me Later ❌]
Apparently I could upgrade myself, which reduced the cost of using my Utilities while providing other minor benefits. My Utilities would level up as I used them, which would increase their battery cost, so if I didn’t keep pace with an update to the OS they could become prohibitively expensive to operate.
Stupid pay-to-win world.
So, do I pay 2000 credits for version 2.0 or 5000 credits for version 3.0?
I selected version 3.0 and klicked [Install]. After watching it download the update, it popped up another screen that asked if I wanted to update now, or wait until Midnight for the mandatory update.
I selected [No] just as the grandfather clock chimed 10:30 PM. I wondered if time ran slower in here, because it seemed like I had spent a lot more time on the computer than 15 minutes. Walking over to the imposing steel door, I noticed a bronze key with a thin chain in the lock. There was another sticky note on the door. “Subconscious. Please keep the key with you at all times.”
That’s not scary at all, is it?
I unlocked the door with a loud clunk and pulled it open to reveal a bedroom straight out of some royal castle. I could tell immediately that it had seen better days. The tapestries on the wall were frayed and fading. The canopy over the bed had a few holes in it. A thin layer of dust covered the mantle of a small fireplace set into the wall. There was a window letting in bright sunlight and I moved over to look outside.
I was on the third floor of a keep surrounded by the walls and turrets of a modest castle. A castle that had fallen into serious disrepair. Did this represent the state of my inner mind? One tower was shattered and the curtain wall under it damaged. The lower bailey was full of litter. I could see a few soldiers walking around the allure, keeping watch.
I have people in my subconscious?
Someone behind me cleared their throat.
Whirling, I discovered a familiar old man standing in the door of the bedroom. What was left of his hair formed a white halo around his head, his face was unshaven and covered with several days of growth. He was dressed like a poor and tattered manservant, but carried himself with a dignified air.
“Woodhouse?”
“It’s nice to see the master at home,” He said with a proper English accent. “There are many matters that require the master’s attention.”
“Uh, sure,” I said, hanging the key around my neck and tucking it in my shirt. “And who are you again?”
“Your personal manservant, of course” he said with a slight bow. Walking over to the steel door, he pulled it closed and it locked with a solid thunk. “Master should always keep his inner sanctum closed. One never knows if something nasty will creep in.”
“Thank you, uh, Woodhouse. I’ll remember that,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “So what needs tending and how do things work around here?”
He smiled and beckoned me with a white gloved hand. “If master would be so kind as to follow me, I’ll introduce him to the staff and explain the duties and obligations of his domain.”
I’m 99.9% certain that everyone here is just me wearing a mask, so I shrugged and followed Woodhouse out of the bedroom and into the rest of my subconscious.
Five minutes later I was on the ground floor and seated on a shabby throne with the cast of a popular —and probably very copyright protected— animation in front of me. Woodhouse was the head butler and my personal manservant. Pam was the cook and demanded that I start importing sugar and alcohol before she was shushed by Woodhouse. Carol was a maid. Krieger was chancellor and Cyril was the steward. Archer and Lana were in charge of security. Ray was the marshal in charge of everything from the stables to the blacksmith.
I stared in disbelief at the motley crew kneeling in front of me. No wonder my inner mind was in such shambles. I was overcome with an irrational sense of anger at myself.
“Arright, listen up,” I barked, my voice echoing around the room. “I swear to God that I will fire every single one of you and hire circus clowns to replace you if you keep fucking things up. No joke. Circus clowns, got it?”
I ran a hand over my face as Ray pissed himself. “The only reason I’m not putting a boot in your asses right now is because I realise that you’re aspects of me, and the people you represent are pretty damn good at their jobs when they give enough of a shit to actually do them. As a team, you’re dysfunctionally fantastic and always seem to come out ahead no matter the odds.”
Heaving a sigh, I continued. “Things have changed and I need to get my shit together. I’m going to need every one of you to pull your weight and help me help you. Get back to your duties, I’ll meet you one on one later.”
My subconscious caretakers scurried out of the room.
“I’ll have one of the maids tend to the piss,” Woodhouse assured me.
“Never mind that,” I snapped. “I honestly had no idea my mind was such a shit show. I’m very disappointed in myself.” I pictured the Angry, Sad, and Disgusted counters on my personal movies clicking up. “Show me what needs to be done and let’s get started.”
During Woodhouse’s walking tour, everything clicked into place. This was some altered version of Bodiam castle, a location that was on my bucket list of places to visit. The royal council room, located behind the throne room, contained a “living” tapestry on the wall that showed the castle and surrounding land in real time. The castle was located in the middle of a small lake, and a single wood bridge led to the mainland. A small town surrounded the lake and a wall encircled the town. Outside the wall, the land was an irregular patchwork of forest and field, with a stinking swamp to the south. The entire “kingdom” was maybe ten miles across, surrounded by impassable mountains with innumerable creeks that fed the lake which drained into the southern swamp.
“Zombies are the problem, sir.” Woodhouse said, as I surveyed the living tapestry of my mental domain.
“Zombies?” I prompted.
“Yes sir, Zombies” Woodhouse continued. “Nasty bitey things that come in from the mountains and harass the peasants. They’ve gotten especially worse over the last few months. The soldiers do what they can, but they seem to have lost all motivation. Probably because they haven’t been paid.”
“And who pays them?”
“Typically chancellor Krieger is in charge of financial matters, although Steward Figgis has taken over the duty, sir.”
“Then let’s make Figgis our first stop.”
“Very good, sir.”
The office of the steward was run by Cyril Figgis, who managed the kingdom in my absence. It was overflowing with paperwork and charts, books and scrolls piled high on every flat surface. Cyril was desperately attempting to tidy things when Woodhouse and I walked in.
“Yo..you..your majesty,” Cyril stuttered, bowing low. Scrolls fell from his overloaded arms, spilling across the floor. He dropped to his knees and scrambled to gather them up. “I didn’t expect you to visit so soon. Please forgive the mess, housekeeping has been slacking…”
This was the guy who ran things while I was conscious.
“Shut up, Cyril” I said. “You’re responsible for everything in this office. That includes keeping it organised and tidy.”
“Y..yes milord.”
“It’s my understanding that you’re in charge of making sure everyone gets paid. So why aren’t we paying people?” I asked.
“We’re nearly out of Fuks, your majesty. I’ve been saving them for emergencies.”
“Fucks?”
“Fuks,” Cyril explained, pushing a pile of books off a large chest and opening it. Reaching inside he pulled out two small bags and emptied them on top of his cluttered desk. “Gold and Silver Fuks, the currency of the kingdom. I can’t maintain the kingdom when I have no Fuks to give.”
Behold the subconscious kingdom of Vincent J. Carter, it runs on Fuks.
“So how do I get more fuks?” I asked, examining one of the coins. It had an image of me on one side and symbol on the other that could be interpreted as “peace among worlds”.
“You kill the zombies, your majesty.”
Of course I do.
Woodhouse and I left Cyril’s office and headed towards the office of the chancellor where Krieger worked. It seemed that Cyril took over financial matters when Krieger became erratic and proposed luring all the zombies into the city and setting it on fire. Not sure how that corresponds to my own self-destructive behaviour, but I’ve had some dark thoughts over the last couple of months and I’m sure they’re reflected here.
Krieger’s office was much neater in comparison to Cyril’s, but it wasn’t by much. Shelves lined the walls and were filled with an array of questionable items, including a still snapping zombie head in a jar. While the office of the chancellor was supposed to be in charge of financial matters, it looked more like a dodgy rummage sale.
Krieger was launching sword blades at a pig carcass when we walked in.
“What exactly are you doing?” I asked, standing in the doorway.
“Hm? Oh, your majesty!” he said, turning around and bowing deeply. “I’m testing a new invention. It’s a spring loaded hilt that shoots sword blades. Very useful for our soldiers.”
“Stupidest idea ever,” I snapped. “I hate everything about it.”
“Okay,” Krieger said, tossing the hilt into a nearby pile of junk. “But don’t blame me when you need to shoot a sword at a zombie and don’t have one.”
“So why aren’t you managing the financial affairs? Collecting taxes, paying people, stuff like that?”
“Because the population has declined so much none of that matters?”
“What do you mean?”
“Wellll, the population represents things you care about,” Krieger said, going into lecture mode. “And the zombies and other monsters are real or imagined problems in your way. Since you don’t care about too many things the population has shrunk to just what’s needed to keep everything running on the bare minimum of fuks. And since you don’t seem to have any long or short term goals, there’s no need to kill off the zombies and get more fuks. Everything is fine just the way it is.”
“No, it’s not Krieger” I said, grinding my teeth. “My mind is in a shambles. It’s a joke. I want it fixed. No, I want it better than fixed. I want it improved.”
“Oh! I’ve got just the thing for that!” He said, digging around in his pockets, “It’s a spring-loaded hilt that shoots swords!”
Pam and Cheryl were hanging out a gallery window jeering at Archer and Lana sparring in the inner courtyard.
“What the hell are you doing!” I snapped
They whirled in surprise and then dropped into deep curtseys.
“Your majesty!”
I took a deep breath, trying to regain my centre. “Get to work cleaning this place up. Find a room, clean it, and move on to the next. Start with my bedroom, then the throne room and the council chamber, then everything else.”
Cheryl spoke up. “Can’t do it. We got no fuks to clean with.”
“You need fuks to clean?”
“Gotta buy stuff,” Pam said. “Cleaning supplies, food. You wanna eat, you’re gonna have to spend some fuks.”
“Talk to Cyril,” I ordered. “Tell him I said to get you supplied.”
They ran off in the direction of the stewards office.
I watched Archer and Lana bashing each other enthusiastically through the window.
Several minutes later the sparring couple stopped and bowed when Woodhouse and I stepped into the inner courtyard.
“Your majesty”
“My liege”
“Enough,” I said. “If you have enough energy to smash each other, you have enough energy to smash zombies. Tell me what I need to know so I can start gathering fuks.”
Archer shrugged and spoke first. “You just kill the zombies and other monsters. They drop fuks.”
“Anything special about the zombies?” I asked. “Are they fast? Do people get turned into zombies when bitten?”
“Nope,” Lana said, resting her wooden sword on her shoulder. “Most of them are slow shamblers and just need a good wack to the head to kill them.”
“Some are special,” Archer interjected. “Occasionally you’ll have some fast ones, or those that need holy water to kill. They’re just bad memories, figments of your personality that need to be eliminated. Some are worse than others.”
“The zombies are bad memories?” I asked, imagining all the bad memories that I had.
“Memories, thoughts, insecurities, metaphysical mumbo-jumbo,” Woodhouse supplied. “They are endless, but constant vigilance can keep them under control.”
“So let’s get started,” I said. “Lead the way.”
Lana and Archer lead me up to the parapet over the front gate where I looked over at the dozens of zombies milling about aimlessly in front of the entrance to my mind. Pulling out my gun, I began to pick them off, easy as shooting fish in a barrel. The crack of my spell pistol attracted more zombies and I dispatched them with ease until no more were left around the gate. As I fired each shot I could feel some sort of existential energy flowing from me, draining some hidden reserve.
“Gather up the Fuks,” I commanded. “And Lana?”
“Mi’lord?”
“There’s no excuse for this. From now on, I expect the walls to be clear of all zombies.”
“Yes mi’lord,” she said, giving me a small bow.
Turning to Archer, I shook my head. “You’re obviously my personal narcissism, so just try to stay out of Lana’s way, or better yet - try to kill more zombies than her. If you think you can.”
Archer scoffed. “No contest. I took top marks in sharpshooting.”
“That means I should expect to see results by tomorrow. I look forward to it.”
Archer looked panicked for a moment then smiled. “Sure, I can give you results.”
Turning back to Woodhouse I said “Show me what else need attending.”
Woodhouse led me through the town that represented my mind, pointing out each business that had fallen into disrepair, suggested others that needed improvements, and additions that would benefit me. In the distance, I could hear Lana and Archer shooting at the crowd of zombies and with each echoing shot I felt a tiny bit better about everything.
[INDEX]

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)
​

Hey,
Just asking opinions if there is something I should probably change in my current crypto investing plan. I am mostly investing for longer periods, steady monthly money in, At bull runs I usually sell, take something back and reinvesting the rest. So I am not looking for lottery win with meme coins just to be clear.
My current portfolio:
Nexo app (6500€):
ETH 30%, NEXO 20%, BNB 20%, XRP 7%, XLM 5%, SOL 5%
The rest: LINK, ADA, EOS, LTC, BTC, MATIC
I am currently investing monthly: ETH, SOL, XRP (all 40€ each)

Cryptocom app (5500€):
ETH 50%, CRO 25%, VECHAIN 15%, ADA 5%
The rest: HEDERA, GAS, FANTOM, ANKR, etc... (the list goes on these are very low amount of money)
I am currently investing monthly: ETH, VECHAIN, ADA (all 40€ each)

Coinmotion (2000€):
ETH 70%, CHAIN 15%, XRP 15%
I am currently investing monthly: ETH, CHAIN, XRP (all 40€ each)

So. I have my funds invested in three different platforms and mostly going on with Ethereum. But I am having second thoughts of what altcoins should I invest or keep investing what I am doing now, or should I put more funds in Ethereum?
Idk, I havent invested in BitCoin because I feel like I have lost the game already lol.

Hi, I have a business bachelor and have been working in food retail for more than 7 years in companies from Latin America and Europa,, my main experience has been as a Category Manager in chargue of the purchasing for to global suppliers in different áreas such as perishables (Salmón from norway, shrimps from Equador, etc) and lately Vegetables and frozen products. My endeavor wil be related to improve supply chain and Sourcing for non specialized perishables products in the US. i have consulted law firm Beltran Brito Casadiego and they said that with my profile we can build a strong case, but they chargue a lot of money. Asking for a honest opinion, do you think that I can build a winning case with my profile? Do you have any other recommendations of other law firms?

So I am playing in a band and using my dad’s old rig, a peavey mark iii 300chs into a 1x15 cab with black widow speaker. The amp head gets an awesome clean tone, is indestructible and has volume on tap. I dont really want to buy a different head because money is a bit tight atm and apart from this issue, I love the amp.
The issue I’m having is I use a darkglass b7k ultra on my pedalboard for distortion and tone shaping (along with a tuner, compressor, octave pedal and noise gate) and I am getting almost none of the distortion through the amp. When I have run the exact same setup into other amps I have distortion on tap and barely need to run the drive at halfway but with this amp I have it cranked all the way and basically get nothing.
I have messed with the pregain, swapped inputs, messed with the eq, changed pedal chain, swapped cables, basses etc and I am at a loss. Does anyone have any ideas why I am having this issue and what it might be?

I just recently started getting into SM64 speedrunning. Initially I started learning 16 star, as it feels like the most approachable for beginners. But I’ve been drawn to 70 star over any other category. This category has a lot more fun strats and stars that aren’t in 16 star. Plus, it’s fun to figure out a good route, which stars are faster, which strategies to use, etc.
So I’ve been learning all the stars from the 70 star route on Ukikipedia. As a complete noob, I figured I’d rank my top 10 most difficult stars in the run. This could serve as useful info for anyone looking to get into the category.
Also, this list only counts the EASIEST strat for each star, not necessarily quickest. So you won’t see Pillarless, Breezeless, etc on this list.

1. Behind Chain Chomps Gate (Bomb clip)

Idk how this is considered a beginner trick. It took me several tutorials and hours of practice to even land once. I recently got an Usamune practice ROM, and the first thing I did was dedicate 2 hours straight to just this one trick. Despite all my grinding, I’m only up to a success rate of 1 out of every 5 or so attempts.

1. Stomp on Thwomp

This star is very long and movement heavy. It’s difficult to memorize the movement, and there are lots of easy places to mess up, resulting in death 90% of the time.

1. Cruiser Crossing Rainbow (no lakitu bounce)

I find this star so difficult, even with the beginner strat. The triple jump right at the beginning is a super hard trick right off the bat. The wall kick to get on top of the maze feels insanely precise. And it’s easy to miss a wall kick on the blocks leading up to the ship, and fall to your death.

1. Tricky Triangles

Another RR star. This one is mainly on the list because of the long jump to the falling blocks. I miss it 9/10 times in practice. Then you have the triangles, with a very tight timer.

1. Slip Sliding Away

The slide in CCM. I’ve been trying to learn the skip that goes straight to the bottom of the slide, but I haven’t managed to land it even once. The one thing keeping me from ranking it higher is that I’ve come close several times. So I know with a bit more practice, I’ll probably be able to get it.

1. Swingin In The Breeze

I came into this star thinking it would be an easier one. And I was right for the most part. It’s not too bad until the triple jump off the flame thrower. It’s so hard to get the right angle, land on the right spot, and get the timing right. To add to the challenge, you’re on one of those falling blocks, so you have no time to set up your angle and distance for the jump.

1. Bully the Bullies

The movement to reach the bullies platform gives me so much grief. I keep messing up the long jump by the volcano and getting burned. And once you get to the bullies platform, you have to find an extremely precise spot and time your jump perfectly to get all three bullies into the lava at once. Then another extremely precise jump to get the boss bully into the lava. If you mess up, you have to fight the bullies the normal way, and if they gang up on you, it’s run over.

1. Bowser in the Fire Sea Reds (beginner cycle)

Idk why, but the movement on this star feels much more advanced, even with the most beginner strats. Perfectly executed roll-outs, speed kicks, managing distance and angle, it’s going to be hours of grinding on the Usamune before I can even begin to worry about a “cycle”. For now, I just go slowly and use “let’s play” strats.

1. CCM 100 + Big Penguin Race

Maybe I just suck at slides, but I can’t seem to not miss coins. I always end up missing between 5-10, ruining the entire star. And that’s without taking the race into consideration. Having to go fast makes me miss even more coins. The penguin keeps bumping me off. I take corners too fast and fly off. This star gives me so much trouble that I actually don’t do it on my route. I instead do a modified version of Slip Slidin Away with 100 coins, but I do the slide first, then get the rest of the coins after spawning the slide star.

1. Hot Foot it into the Volcano (lava boost)

This trick will be the death of me. I haven’t even managed to come close to getting a successful lava boost, even after putting in hours of practice. For my money, it’s the hardest level in 70-star.

I am not in a great place financially right now. I have about 60k in credit card debt and the cost of maintaining interest alone is becoming too much to handle. I am missing payments by a day or so more often as its now becoming an issue if I pay a bill or buy groceries. Its me and my two kids and I am not sure what I can do to make it better. I have tried to make payments but its at the point now that I am drowning in minumum payments I will never be able to make a dent in the actual debt. I only make 50k and own a home up for renewal next year in the fall that will have about $240,000 owing on the morgage while it being worth around $400,000 but who knows in this market.
While I am not going to sit here and say I am not responsible for the mess I am in, it is not the result of excessive spending. But a few large repairs and a custody battle later here I am in this situation. What I mean to say is that if I was given a chance to bundle the debt into my mortgage my spending is pretty minimal and even more so with no money to spend.
But due to my high credit utilization my credit score is abysmal in the 500s and I don't think I would be able to go to my bank to refinance or get a HELOC to get myself out of this situation. I have never missed a mortgage payment and have no plans to miss one either but my salary vs the mortgage amount made it harder for me to get a mortgage then when rates were low and now with them more than double what they were then I don't know if there is anything I can even do.
I have read some about consumer proposals and feel that is my only option but have some worry about the entire process. I contacted one of the national chains to just feel out the process and after a quick rundown of my situation pretty much what I just explained they suggested I talk to my bank first before eeking help from them.
Given what I just explained would it not be a terrible idea to go to my bank who I only deal with for a mortgage not day to day banking and tell them of my situation? I feel like that would endanger my chances for getting an automatic renewal offer that I understand most people get if they dont miss payment.
Any input on this would be greatly appreciated. Thank-you.

So a while Back I posted a Post about My Server America Roleplay, but what can you all expect:

• A Map of the Lower 48 States Of America (Not exactlly every state, More Places could be added later on)
• A fun roleplaying server
• 2 Groups of Players (Chill Players: Working Shifts, Getting Money, Buying house's and Furniture and other cool stuff. They might play some RP stores but not so much as the other group) (Roleplayers: People Who do the same thing as The Last group, but Also have Amazing story Lines to accompany them)
• No IRL Bussiness' yet: You can be the in game creator of the McDonalds Chain, or of the IKEA Chain. Or you can Just makeyour own made up bussiness
• Around 20 Cities and Some Towns
• Its Bedrock tho, and there is no realm Yet so it is like Timed entry

Moderators: So right now Me (Ben) and My friend Sem Are Creating the entire game by ourselfs. With sem being the Lead Terraformer and Me Being the Main Lead. But what we need is someone Who can Build pretty good, as I can't build buildings that good and Sem Is pretty good but if ee can fix someone else we can Let him focus on Terraforming. Interested? Leave your DC in the Comments and I shall take contact with you
Our DC Server: https://discord.gg/VRhuNCv5
Any other Questions? Ask them here ⬇️

In college, my senior year, I lived with 2 of my friends and their other friend that I didn’t know so well. When we all moved in, I got their first and got probably the best room. Followed by my other two friends that got the next best set ups. Bad roomate, we’ll call him “M”, got the last room, it was by far the least desirable.
First couple months were fine, everyone loved everyone and things were smooth. Some of us would take turns cooking dinner for the house. M would not. About 1-2 months in, M and another roommate got into it over roommates dog. During this time, I was walking back and forth from the kitchen to the living room, eating my Jimmy John’s sandwhich. Just going back and forth talking and eating. When I was in the living room, listening to them go at it, M storms out of the house going through the kitchen.
M grabs the meat off my sandwhich, over half of it was left, and leaves the house. After some laughter, I go back into the kitchen to finish my sandwich, the f-ing meat is gone. I’m in disbelief. 1-sandwhich is ruined. 2-I had nothing to do with the situation and I was actually on M’s side. Everyone that I knew thought that was so funny. When I asked M he said “the dog took it”. That is when I started hating the guy.
This was just the beginning of a long 10 months.
M did not go to school, he did not work. All he did was play Fortnight for 18 hours a day. Not a joke, would sleep from 4am-10am and would play fortnight all day/night.
Now that’s not a problem right? Here we go:
Roomate had an aderall prescription, he would offer me some, I would ALWAYS decline. Wasn’t my thing. M would go through his room when we were gone and steal his adderall. When roommate would ask M about it, M would blame it on me. I made it very clear that when he offered me I declined because I didn’t want. M called me a liar behind my back, I called back to the Jimmy John’s sandwhich incident and immediately got a different response.
Roommate had a 1 of 1 Bong he won in a raffle. We would only hit it on occasion because he was about to sell it. If roomate didn’t want it out , he’d put it in his room. That night, I get home from the bar and go to bed, roomate stayed the night at his a girls house. M came back, took his bong that he was hiding, and M broke the down stem of this 1of1 2k$ bong. M left it on the ground of his room.
The next morning I’m awake when roomate gets back from girls. I hear yelling and stomping down the stairs. Roommate opens my door and said “we knew it would happen”. When Roomate confronted M, M said I was the one to take it out of his room and left it in the living room. For the next few hours, M was getting ripped for taking his bong and breaking it. Eventually he coughed up the money to get it repaired.
What’s next?
Other Roomate, call him O, had another clean nice bong. Where he would not hit tobacco from, M would hit tobacco out of it, and blamed it on… yours truly.
At this point, all M would do was play fortnight for 18 hours a day. It was honestly pathetic. Didn’t socialize, it was unhealthy.
One thing that everyone did that I wasn’t thrilled about was some cigarettes inside. Only time I accepted it was when everyone was drunk. Who cares. My buddy M, would smoke cowboy killers at 3am playing fort night and yelling “he’s on me he’s on me. He’s coming in my box”….. I took school very seriously, I politely say “listen dude. This will be a long rest of the year if you keep behaving like this.
We are still just getting started.
A friend of ours worked at the meat counter of a grocery store. We would get filet mignon for the price of a chicken breast, then he’d throw a few more filets in the bag. It ended up being 4 filets for like 10$. We’d do this like once a week. M would never participate in these “team dinners” instead he’d buy a $2.49 frozen white pizza and eat about 1 a day.
Who cares ?
Well, when we cleaned up and put the left overs in the fridge, Midnight M would raid the leftovers. Guess who he blamed it on… the boy.
This whole time, M did not pay rent, hahahahahahahahaha. Fortnight, chain smoking cigarettes inside, yelling “he’s coming in my box”at 4 am, smoking all the table weed, stealing aderall, stealing leftovers, stealing JJ’s sandwich meat, all while only paying about 2 months of rent
The leasing office calls me and says why haven’t you paid, because they already called M and M blamed no rent on me. I’m yelling at the leasing office calling them idiots saying read the ledger, I apologize and say what can we do to get him out/or paying.
Since it’s a joint tenancy we are all liable.
The end of the year rolls by and he owes 7k in rent, this is because all the fees and owed rent. I ended up leaving and moving back home over the summer, the lease ends and everyone leaves.
About a year later the leasing company serves us and sues us for the owed money. For the first hearing, we all show up, no M. It’s because “he never got handed anything by any sort of official”. That’s not how it works haha.
After countless attempts to get his rent money before we get sentenced. I agree with my Roomate we have to just bite the bullet and take the sentencing. Since the three of us were standup young men, we agreed to split it 4 ways. Even though all of the balance was M…
So there it was, paid in full, charges dropped. Not a single apology or thank you or explanation. Nothing.
M and the other roommates live in the same city and d not keep in touch with M.
I texted him once calling him a bad word…
But that’s the end
I will probably never see m again … but he owes me and I want to strangle him if I don’t get paid.

So first off hi I'm a gf and my bf and I'm 2 years is coming up in October (yes ik it's barely june and I plan ahead and love buying things for him) I'm a very indecisive gf and I love him very much. So I often ask for his opinions on gifts months or so in advance (semi bad at surprises) but I've been looking at Tennis Chains for men with a diamond cross pendant, now here's the issue I'm running into, does it matter if its not real diamond all over? Majority of the products I'm finding are stainless steel or sterling silver with a "false diamond" called C2 or something. And to my understanding it's fake. Idk if this means it's not worth the money cause I can afford it. I just don't know anything about that stuff. Now domt get me wrong there very nice pieces and look real but idk. My questions are:

1. With it being a fake diamond does it make the piece less meaningful or worth to give him?
   
2. Should I feel weird about buying a piece of jewelry for over 150 knowing there isn't a real diamond on it? I feel like I'm buying the cheap version of it ya know? Not saying that's a bad thing but I'm having mixed feelings.
   
3. He got me a promise ring and I took it to a family friends jeweler and he said it was worth around 1200-1500, so does this mean I should be shopping for higher quality? Also where is higher quality jewelry cause I'm looking at GLD and JAXXON.
   

I'd been a member for 16 years. Became a member when I enlisted in the Navy in 2008. Just switched companies this year. I spent over $83k (100% auto insurance) with them in that time.
Had one claim in ~2012 for a window that had a rock thrown through it while I was gone on one of my deployments. Although I paid nothing because they used to have free glass replacement, it took almost 2 years for me being home at the same time of 1) them being able to find a replacement in the same town and 2) find an installer of their choice in the same town. I had moved 3 different times during the claim (homeport to shipyard and back). I honestly didn't think anything of it and chalked it up to bad timing.
The second claim was in 2014 for an accident that I was paid $1200 for a front end collision at 40mph. Planning already to get an offroad bumper for my truck, I used that money for one. Upon installing, I found the 2 frame rails on my pickup were accordianed 2" on one side and 1" on the other. I showed them and they said it couldn't have happened from that low of impact speed. Called BS, but phone calls got me nowhere. Pulled the frame rails as straight as I could with a friend's truck and some chains and went on about my day. Clean title with frame damage. Yay. Still have the truck too.
The third and final claim was for a windshield replacement on my 2022 Camry. A car in front of me on the highway drifted out of the lane and off the sharp asphalt ledge. He quickly perked the wheel and jumped the ledge causing both left side tires to explode and throw rocks and tire bits like a grenade. Got the whole thing on dash cam with a time stamp. Windshield now has 6 cracks all over 12" long. I had just switched my deductible from $500 to $0 3 days prior because I had received a raise at work and could now afford a little bit more on insurance. I drive 180 miles/day for work 5 days/week and thr extra peace of mind is worth it with the time spent on the road. A dozen phone calls later over the span of 3 months, multiple of which were with "senior management" (or so I was reminded numerous times), and I was told they would not be honoring the $0 deductible because "the time since deductible change had been too little". When asked what that time would be, nobody could define it. I had to repeat my story over and over so they could make sure my timeliness was accurate. Not once did they accept the dashcam.
Pretty simple to me if you are now paying more for a deductible change, they should now honor the deductible.
A $500 hill is what they stood on after getting $83k from me. A $500 hill that could have turned into another $83k. Fuck 'em.

No doubt no fear go Teddy!
This is a very smart billionaire from (Canada) Doug Putnam!
Ryan Cohen is from (Canada) also very smart!
Putnam investments in January of 2024 became a (subsidiary) of Franklin Templeton Investments (in the US). In addition he also owns many shares of PulteGroup, Inc
Douglas Robert Putman (born 25 March 1984) is a billionaire Canadian businessman, predominately trading in the retail sector across North America and Europe. Through his firm, Putman Investments, (he owns numerous) retail chains involving music, entertainment, toys and home goods.
Notice the companies above ie Bed bath and beyond, Toy r us, Sunrise records
We should all be tracking by now for what is to come in near future!
Short criminals are going to get vaporized when the official news happens in near future and shares/equity worked out.
I am excited about what’s to come for all strong retailers but will be more excited watching Kenny Griffin ie Bernie Madoff, Citadel implode so well deserved. He may have won the battle with his illegal games but he is going to lose the war without a doubt!
This calculated plan was thought out very carefully many years ago to make a lot of money and to crush the short criminals doing it! This final plan was to also preserve great American companies and not allow evil to destroy great companies out of greed.
A holding company can make money via its subsidiaries, income from assets, royalties, or leasing/loaning assets to 3rd parties or subsidiaries as desired. Regular dividends - A holding company can profit from its subsidiary companies from shares of stocks or bonds that pay dividends or interest
Believe what you want but this plan is about freedom! It will be the catalyst for many others (same short criminals).
Bots and shills don’t even comment go find another post to swarm on and spread your garbage!
In advance thank you sincerely Mr Cohen and Mr Pulte for being righteous and standing up for the people!
Happy Independabce Day in advance!
Semper Fi

Hi there,
I will try not to waffle on too much. I'm not the best at structuring posts. Please be kind..!
Both my parents passed away in the last 5 years, to cancer. I was 21 then 23 when they passed, now I am 26. My brother is 28. We are both neurodivergent. We inherited the 3 bed 2 bath family house, garage and small garden, mortgage free. They bought the house for £170k in 2006 and we've just had the property valued by two separate agents for £275k-285k. I lived in the house from age 9 - present, and my brother moved back in a couple of years ago. (My dad paid off the mortgage not long before he passed - he did not know he was ill).
The house is in a small rural town in central England. Not a bad area by any means, just not appealing to either of us for the rest of our lives. Ideally we would move quite far away separately. It is not currently in outstanding condition and requires work. My parents started painting walls, pulling up carpets etc when I was a teenager but were told to stop by doctors when my mum was diagnosed with cancer, and it never got finished. We now have found a new and very worrying issue with the roof leaking quite badly and needs a kind of urgent replacement. It's been causing mould on the 1st floor's ceiling and damp walls. There are also some concerning problems with the floor in the extension downstairs, but nothing horrendous. Costs to fix the roof are about £8-12k (several roofers have come round. also had a surveyor round) and the floor is another few thousand (cannot remember off the top of my head). My brother and I both just work in hospitality and hours aren't the best so our income isn't amazing.
As mentioned, we sought the advice of two separate estate agents. When they came to see the property, both said something along the lines of - it is best to sell now because people who are seeking a 3 bed 2 bath in this area will be lucky to find this for less than £300k because its a rare find, and they won't mind the work needed if it means buying a cheaper house. We were also told that it's best not to fix the roof and just sell the house as it is because it might not be done in the way new buyers want and they might change it and all that money we spent will be for no reason.
The house has served us well and I had hoped to keep it for an indefinite amount of time because I expected the cost of the house to increase over time (which can only be a good thing for us, right? Sell for more in the future? Or at least make a tiny supplemental income from renting?). We could move out and likely rent it out whilst we rent elsewhere. However, my brother would rather sell ASAP, but I believe that's because he would prefer having the cash now for more freedom now. We are having ongoing talks about plans for the house and we are open and receptive to each others ideas but the truth is we are both kind of clueless (but trying!) in the grand scheme of things. Since my parents passed, I've tried to educate myself on financial things. I've been learning about buying/renting/selling houses etc but still pretty new to it all and don't have anyone to help me.
My question I suppose is, what would you do?

• I don't love the idea of renting it out and having issues with the tenants and having to constantly fix problems, but I am aware that property managers can take care of those things. To do this though we would obviously have to fix the roof. The roof fix will be a nasty dent in our savings, doable if we split it, but still uncomfortable.
• But my brother thinks selling it now is our best option because we struggle to upkeep everything (which is true, just our garden alone is so much work and we can't keep up with it, regardless of the house).

I'm in a position I didn't choose to be in, but I'm in it now and have to deal with it. I'm sure I am capable (/we are) if I put my mind to sorting it but struggle with depression so feel quite overwhelmed at times and just avoid it, that's why I'm here seeking a range of advice, not just from agents who want commission.
I know a little about chains and other bits and pieces. I've received some advice saying if we are going to sell, I should buy another property ASAP because of the ongoing rises in house prices. With the 50/50 split of the property price today, I likely won't be able to buy anything at all (barely can now) in the next 10 years ish with what money I get for this house. I'm kind of picky about the areas I want to live in next and I can't really afford anything with the cut I get now. (Of course I could possibly get a mortgage but I'm not keen right now especially as a single clueless person).
I hope none of this comes across badly. I hope I explained myself well. Excuse my naivety... Many thanks for reading and any advice at all is appreciated.
EDIT i forgot to mention that I like having a 'base' to fall back on. I know not everybody has this luxury and I'm in a lucky position to have that now. I am someone that likes to work for a bit, save up and travel. I know I might have to let that go now.