So I’m applying next cycle and my target school is the university of New Mexico which I’m way above medians. I’ve been to abq plenty of times and want to practice there. Issue is I don’t have US citizenship . People keep telling me that Canadians can get a TN visa after graduation with ease but could anyone confirm that I wouldn’t need hefty sponsorship to get this? I know UNM won’t get me BigLaw which is fine but I know smaller firms will not sponsor foreigners to work at their firm after grad. I don’t wanna make a mistake by going there then not being able to find employment afterwards because of visa status. Any insight helps! Thanks :)

It frustrates me to no end how legal employers almost always rigidly insist on only employing applicants who have at least a year or two of experience. I get that they have to train, but if nobody is there to train us, then there will be no attorneys to work for them. Still, they've been pretty rigid on this.
Since law firms overwhelmingly reject applicants who don't have experience, does that mean that I got my JD and passed the bar exam for nothing?

I am in the middle of my SA role right now and am doing my best to make the most of it (doing everything asked of me, going to all the social events, etc.).
Unfortunately, I recently got back all my grades and they were the lowest of all my semester so far. A combination of way too many law school activities, depression, and job searching affected my schedule this semester. I do honestly can say I did the best I can with the circumstances.
My GPA as a result dropped by about 0.2 and it put me from just above median to slightly below median now. I am now worried that this could affect a potential return offer when firms ask for transcripts?
Is this something to be worried about?

I love literature and am doing my AS levels in it right now in Pakistan, I aim to apply to universities in the US next year for undergraduate programs and I would like to move there permanently after, I’ve been trying to do some research on how I can do that but haven’t really been able to find any clear answers. I also have straight As and A*s in my O levels, am currently at the top of my class in English lit and I also have a decent amount of extracurriculars so I do think I can get accepted into a decent college it’s just what would come after that scares me a bit. I’ve also thought about studying in the UK and I don’t know if that would be easier but I’d ideally like to go to the US. I’ve found that I can go to law school after and that it’s easy to get a work visa as a lawyer but I’d ideally like to work in a field like publishing. Can anyone give me some information on how I can achieve this goal? And please no depressing “it’s a useless degree” bs, I’ve seen enough of that.
Edit: I forgot to specify that I want to study English literature

I have a family history of overstay past their visa (more than 365 days overstay) it was about 22 years ago. I was less than 10 years old. We left the US to go to Canada, before removal proceedings and were subject to a 10 year bar. We obtained Canadian citizenship, and After the 10 year bar was over if we ever wanted to travel to the USA or even be connecting on a flight that would connect in the USA (not even visiting) we would almost always be taken into secondary questioning at every port of entry before being allowed to enter the USA.
I grew up, fell in love and married a born US citizen right before Covid. But during Covid I could not apply for the greencard and it was imperative that I finish my university degree before considering me moving to the USA or my husband moving to the USA. But we were able to maintain a long distance marriage due to Covid, my degree was moved online so I would go back and forth on a B-2 quite frequently and was issued a Redress number.
I came into the USA on a regular visit summer of 2022 before classes would resume in September (on a B-2) and upon emailing my academic counselor inquiring about what classes I should take for what I thought would be my final semester, I was told that I had fulfilled all my graduation requirements so my husband and I spoke to a lawyer to see what the eventual process would look like and to weigh our options. After hearing them we decided that since I’m already here I should just stay and apply for an Adjustment of Status (AOS) instead of leaving.
We made the mistake of hiring that same flawed lawyer for our application who would string us along for over a year saying that he applied for a CPB FOIA which he said would take no more than 60 days but it took 9-10 months to come through with nothing found under my name or my parents name, all the while no one was working on submitting our case at this firm. At that point I’d been in the USA for a year and have overstayed beyond 180 days. We fired the lawyer and got a new one, the new one also quit his firm half way through our application for personal reasons in January 2024.
Now We were back to square one. Except now I couldn’t leave to back to Canada without being subject to a 10 year bar. Or worse, a permanent bar. So we had to push forward, we were livid and anxious, we hired the next lawyer who was amazing and promptly applied for our adjustment of status within a few weeks but at this point we had already passed the 365 day overstay mark.
This is the second time in my life that I have overstayed beyond an aggregate year in the USA: 1st time as a minor with my parents 22 years ago. And 2nd time as an adult (now). Even tho I tried my hardest to avoid the latter, we just got bad luck legally. Both times I was lawfully let in but had somehow managed to unlawfully overstay beyond my allowance.
This brings us to now, It’s now coming up on 2 years that I’ve been away from Canada and I’d like to go back to visit my parents who are old and one that is disabled. I have already gotten my EAD with the Advanced Parole (AP) approval too.
Now that we are all caught up on my history and predicament; My question now is:
USCIS may have approved my Reentry in to the USA with them approving my AP, (for multiple visits so long as I carry my AP card and supporting documents.) But CBP still reserves the right to refuse entry and place a 10 year or permanent bar on me if they see that I’ve over stayed by more than 1 year TWICE.
I’m now beyond anxious and frankly distraught, I would like to use my AP because that’s what it’s for. But I need a CBP officer to blatantly tell me how “ok” they think it is and if the gamble is worth it because, if anything, if I get denied and permanently barred, this would effectively be the end of my marriage as my husband cannot move up to Canada with me. Should I just wait for my Greencard to arrive MMs.CPB officer? What are the chances of you guys denying my reentry?
My AOS case shows that it will be at least 13 more months on the USCIS website before a decision is made, I’m saddened beyond belief and anxious. And I don’t wish to leave if I have the misfortune of having a a run in with a CPB officer especially if they are having a bad day. How do I proceed?

Hey Everyone!
Let’s go….
Newly Covered Today:

1. Ethereum ETFs greenlit! This is an obvious 180 by the executive branch. After SAB 121, FIT21, and the CBDC ban votes, they must've finally realized their crypto haterism wasn't worth losing every crypto voter in the election. https://x.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1793750833592455475
2. Blackrock's entry in the ETH ETF race. Will they win this goldrush also? https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1793797895700840815
3. Very good info on Voltaire in this X space. https://x.com/NicolasC3rny/status/1795486068781072429
4. A Cardano game in the Epic Store? https://x.com/ChainsofWarGame/status/1793952585088631280
5. Very interesting Odyssey...very interesting. https://x.com/OdyseeTeam/status/1793696250191397352
6. Shocked I tell you! No one could have possibly seen this coming. https://x.com/StakeWithPride/status/1795831145436995644
7. Everyone is courting the crypto vote these days and realizing that the Dragon has poisoned crypto against her party. https://x.com/amitisinvesting/status/1794544513643590115
8. Delivery after all these years of their hard work! RealFi has arrived! https://x.com/jjtoconnostatus/1793650780605702398
9. The House majority is definitely against a federal financial panopticon. But how about the Senate? https://x.com/RadarHits/status/1793703267660402980
10. McHenry doing the good work here in full Redenbacher style. https://x.com/Excellion/status/1793716720072544321
11. Hopefully, if things go well, it'll soon be worth a full Shanahan and then even multiple Shanahans. https://x.com/AdaverseNews/status/1793714797336502764
12. Oooof! This is why you want self-governance for all, not just the insiders. Monetary policy at the Caprice of the few is literally part of the reason for crypto existing. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1793388541617041414
13. Fit21 passes the house with Bipartisan support. Another deathblow to the anti-crypto army. But, is this bill really the most beneficial policy for crypto? https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/1793424128017571849
14. 71 Dems voted for Fit21! Whether it's the best crypto policy or not, it's probably a big turning point. Richie Torres and our other usual allies in there https://twitter.com/iampaulgrewal/status/1793398763471470688
15. Can't help but love a dude going against his own party leadership to vote his conscience Ritchie Torres is the fucking man! https://x.com/RepRitchie/thread/1793447373621879257
16. May I present the super haters. No surprise to see Dragon-allied AOC & Co. in there. They're on the wrong side of history on this one. https://twitter.com/ChadSteingrabestatus/1793398842450145721
17. Emmer on Fit21. https://twitter.com/FinancialCmte/status/1793373584414724211
18. Baker Hostetler thinks the Senate won't even vote on Fit21. https://www.bakerlaw.com/insights/digital-assets-legislation-house-passage-of-fit21-unlikely-to-carry-momentum-in-senate/
19. Here's the text of FIT21. https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/4763/text
20. White House statements of opposition have become the "inverse Kramer" indicator for Congressional bill passage. https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1793287931588706767
21. Anti-crypto tears just get sweeter and sweeter. https://twitter.com/FSCDems/status/1793333122353791382

Previously covered, but still interesting:

1. Sorry, Dragon. A senator from the least populated state in the union just deeply wounded your entire agenda in one day. https://x.com/ArmySpies/status/1791572836076921128
2. Very interesting! Fallout from the Dragon's failure in the Senate vote? https://twitter.com/EricBalchunas/status/1792636523050906102
3. Wow! Is this shit actually happening? If it is, we have the Senate SAB 121 beatdown to thank for this HUGE shift in policy. https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1792656860379844875
4. The anti-crypto betas might be trying to strike back with opposition to Fit 21. https://x.com/lex_node/status/1792677933557146103
5. Looks like the message is only "strong opposition" as opposed to "don't you dare vote for this crypto bullshit". https://x.com/Eleanor_Muellestatus/1792701481575170341
6. The US state government rush to crypto has begun. https://twitter.com/BTC_Archive/status/1790395762506977502
7. This is what we wanna see: states competing to host us. https://x.com/SenLummis/status/1791112039982653550
8. Don't know anything about the project, but this is a pretty decent sized raise. https://x.com/splashprotocol/status/1791862205215801800
9. A huge thank you is due to Lummis and Gillibrand for pushing so hard for crypto in the Senate. https://x.com/SenLummis/status/1791146216522240118
10. McHenry on pushing Fit21 crypto legislation forward. https://twitter.com/PatrickMcHenry/status/1789017167821778946
11. The DOJ is talking about "MEV" and "fraud" in this indictment. Shocked I tell you! Shocked! https://twitter.com/tier10k/status/1790777058810789900
12. Schumer knows they're at a pivotal moment vs. Warren and the White House. https://twitter.com/twobitidiot/status/1790736453669949646
13. Senate Dems are trying to find a fix for the White House being. Having to veto the will of your own party's senators wouldn't be a good look in an election year. https://twitter.com/taylorjbarstatus/1790724374405828664
14. Which one of you was this? https://x.com/ArmySpies/status/1791915321529671965
15. Why Cardano? Because: https://twitter.com/josephdelong/status/1790862858244206942
16. Ahhhh...as it should be. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1790857991488782351
17. The English translation of what's coming out of the Dutch Tornado Cash case is brutal. https://twitter.com/BillHughesDC/status/1790438032098631990
18. Paul Ryan is talking about stablecoins as a solution to help treasury auctions? https://twitter.com/nic__cartestatus/1790540747466223921
19. Epic community note about TPS in blockchains. https://x.com/coingecko/status/1791406157468504289
20. Apparently, Cardano's biggest competitor is inflationary again. https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/05/09/eth-reverts-to-inflationary-asset-following-fee-reducing-dencun-upgrade/
21. Mr. T pities the fools in banking who are gonna get wrecked by Commercial Real Estate. https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1790832468767220113
22. Nothing to see here! https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1789402248293818573
23. It's easy to forget there are only a few "decentralized" blockchains bigger than Cardano. https://twitter.com/Av_Sebastian/status/1789016340755276228
24. Development on Kraken's SEC battle. https://twitter.com/msantoriESQ/status/1788944762608754731
25. Thank you non-octogenarian members of Congress. No surprise to see our crypto ally Torres in there. https://twitter.com/SamLyman33/status/1788612636428374183
26. White House threatens veto of House Bill repealing SAB121. https://twitter.com/EleanorTerrett/status/1788279283229904976
27. The White House is wild for doing this in an election year. https://twitter.com/jchervinsky/status/1788281811086221646
28. Why is it happening? Because the White House economic staff is answering to the Dragon, not the guy who needs to win re-election as President. https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/178827894030354890
29. McHenry on SAB121. https://financialservices.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=409247
30. House bill to repeal SAB121 passes with the support of 21 Democrats even after the White House veto threat. This is huge. Now on to the Senate. https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1788328626250813657
31. Doom on Hydra! https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1788292907679514677
32. Dragon also taking heat on her reaction to the FDIC scandal. https://twitter.com/nic__cartestatus/1788284368009437571
33. People are still massively sleeping on typescript in the ecosystem, totally separate from the addition of regulatorily compliant privacy. https://twitter.com/MidnightNtwrk/status/1787784475499208773
34. Grewal getting spicy in his retort to Gensler double talk. https://twitter.com/iampaulgrewal/status/1787852258572661214
35. Lubin on the SEC crackdown and MetaMask Wells Notice. https://www.wired.com/story/ethereums-co-founder-says-sec-is-gaslighting-us-about-crypto/
36. Robinhood received a Wells Notice. They're definitely trying to cover all the big on-ramps. https://twitter.com/CoinDesk/status/1787468580902088795
37. Politico article on the SeC and crypto. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/05/gary-gensler-sec-crypto-00154769
38. Druckenmiller on how easy this could have been. https://twitter.com/BillHughesDC/status/1787887702538420598
39. Fairly accurate. https://twitter.com/CryptoWendyO/status/1787847385328275514
40. Did someone say airdrop? Wait…what about the tokenomics? https://twitter.com/MladenLm/status/1787524932689174796
41. Why Haskell? Ask Anduril. https://twitter.com/TravisMWhitakestatus/1787516740961964338
42. The dirty little secret of Cardano’s main competitors? https://twitter.com/decryptmedia/status/1787513483606536560
43. The first treasury buy-back since 2002?!? So the treasuries are removed in exchange for more fiat being issued into the ecosystem. Definitely doesn’t sound like the start of things that look like QE under a new name. https://twitter.com/martypartymusic/status/1785681525746663925
44. Look at the difference 150 bps makes. https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1786510472214462967
45. What Biden’s guy wishes he said (of course with the nuance that actual physical printing…not what we’re worried about here…is done by Bureau of Engraving & Printing of Treasury). https://twitter.com/theSamPadilla/status/1786439794605572245
46. Set “Apply Thresholding” to “None” to see the real numbers. https://groups.inf.ed.ac.uk/blockchainlab/edi-dashboard/
47. Not gonna lie. This is pretty fire from Sen. Lummis. https://twitter.com/SenLummis/status/1786055913922494838
48. Three different non-BTC crypto ETFs are now listed on Hong Kong. Progress! https://www.theblock.co/post/291599/hong-kong-officially-debuts-asias-first-spot-bitcoin-ether-etfs
49. Grayscale is basically the worst ex ever. Getting our stuff out of their place has been painful and seems to never end. https://dailyhodl.com/2024/04/30/crypto-markets-break-down-as-grayscale-sends-over-245000000-worth-of-bitcoin-to-coinbase/
50. Consensys has sued the SEC seeking clarity around Ethereum and securities laws. https://twitter.com/BillHughesDC/status/1783561618741236177
51. Biden: Long-term capital gains to 44.6% + unrealized gains tax! Crypto: No thanks. https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1783028521549299932
52. Damn…they want CZ to get three years! https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1783028521549299932
53. Pragma: a new Cardano members based organization! Initial focus to be on Aiken and Amaru (a second client for Cardano…which we need). https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1782828212273443063
54. I think we all knew this was coming at some point for Tron. https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-59
55. The SEC attorneys who were on Debt Box have exited the SEC. https://twitter.com/leomschwartz/status/1782470866766340300
56. Kennedy is talking about putting the US Government budget on the blockchain. Dude may be predicting the future. But, how far out is it? https://twitter.com/Holden_Culotta/status/1782240403879576041
57. We made it! Halving complete
58. Damn! Kennedy is embracing the ChazHosk endorsement! https://twitter.com/RobertKennedyJstatus/1780726997020508562
59. So close, but yet so far! https://twitter.com/GaryGenslestatus/1780685461020663888
60. Once again, we are the best blockchain. https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1780711598375809162
61. Hong Kong ETFs, you say?!? https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/04/15/shock-leak-reveals-china-could-be-about-to-blow-up-the-price-of-bitcoin-ethereum-and-xrp/
62. As predicted when the investigation was revealed and Uniswap Labs took synthetics off their front end, the SEC has dropped a Wells Notice on Uniswap. https://twitter.com/Uniswap/status/1778127813138071904
63. A full suit against Uniswap is only a matter of time given the current composition of the Gensler led Commission. https://twitter.com/BillHughesDC/status/1778146519125774761
64. The founder of Uniswap on their willingness to fight the upcoming battle with the SEC. https://twitter.com/haydenzadams/status/1778126466984575166
65. It's definitely a little crazy given the recent ruling on Coinbase Wallet not being a broker. But, this is the result of an agenda, not fair and impartial treatment. https://twitter.com/iampaulgrewal/status/1778149863072670169
66. Ouch! Hotter than expected CPI for April. https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/10/economy/cpi-consumer-price-index-inflation-march/index.html
67. So-called "super core" inflation (no shelter, energy, or food costs) is even hotter. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/10/the-supercore-inflation-measure-shows-fed-may-have-a-real-problem-on-its-hands.html
68. Cardano's biggest competitor can't even decide what its issuance rate should be. https://unchainedcrypto.com/why-the-ethereum-community-is-up-in-arms-against-a-proposal-to-change-the-monetary-policy/
69. People are sleeping so hard on how much demographics are going to affect economies over the next few decades. Wild decisions will be made in attempts to remedy these problems. https://twitter.com/iamyesyouareno/status/1775535726383222928
70. Even Chairman Ryan sees the severity of the problem. https://twitter.com/SmokeAwayyy/status/1787925300757807226
71. This shows all the biggest depopulation trends. https://twitter.com/stats_feed/status/1786482160272118041
72. Operation Chokepoint 2.0 continues, apparently! https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1775982855169995246
73. Weird that it hurts so little when you know they're on the descent. https://twitter.com/Grayscale/status/1775983039832904014
74. No private liability for secondary trading on exchanges. https://twitter.com/iampaulgrewal/status/1776292735063888374
75. No matter how much people will obsess over various wild-niche-bullshit things, the real story over this cycle will (as always) just be this: https://twitter.com/cardano_whale/status/1776229889743728657

~Army of Spies

For a couple weeks now I’ve been conducting a study on players most enjoyed expansions. My sample sizes are unfortunately much too small to yield genuine results that can speak for the whole community. However, through multiple in-game interviews in major cities and forum posts questioning players favorite expansions on release and favorite expansions to replay, here is what I have found. The two most enjoyed expansions were Legion, and in close second, Wrath of the Lich King. Players liked Legion for its transmogs, story, class specific quests, and replayability. Players enjoyed Wrath primarily for its nostalgic aspects, similar to the advocates of Vanilla and Classic. Many said that Wrath also had a great story, and that Legion is in many ways very similar to Wrath. To my great disappointment no one voted for Mists of Pandaria, one of the most aesthetically amazing expansions (in my opinion). But in the end I enjoyed doing this research and would be happy to answer any other questions you guys may have about my research our the results!

In the P22 of A Level Law M/J 2024, I did Q2 (Criminal Damage). I wrote a lot of points about basic criminal damage and also did plenty of evaluation of those points (my answer was around 6 pages of British council booklet) but forgot to write about arson and aggravated criminal damage. Can I get 15/25?

Hello BeachVolley Lovers,
Today, I'd like to dive into a topic that's typically in the periphery, until it hits our core: shoulder injury prevention.
Have you ever wondered why you've been putting consistent efforts into strengthening your shoulders, but still end up dealing with nagging injuries? Let's take a look at one specific, often overlooked aspect of shoulder injury prevention: An imbalance in your shoulder stability muscles.
Our shoulders operate through a delicate, fine-tuned balance. We often focus our attention on big muscles: like our rotator cuff and deltoids, which aid in powerful serves and spikes. However, in the background, lesser-known stabilizer muscles, such as the Serratus Anterior, are at work. This mighty little muscle attaches to your ribs, stretches around your body, and hooks onto your shoulder blade, playing a critical part in shoulder rotation and movement.
Significance? - These stabilizer muscles are like the backstage crew of a live performance; they ensure the stars (a.k.a. the larger muscles) put on an injury-free show. - By keeping your shoulder blade firmly planted onto your ribcage during the wind-up and follow-through of a spike or serve, they significantly reduce the risk of shoulder injury.
Advice? - The key lies in ensuring your training includes exercises specifically designed to strengthen these stability muscles. - Sample exercises include dynamic hug, pushups with a plus, or scapular wall slides.
A word of caution: these exercises must be performed with precision. Incorrect movements can strain your shoulders rather than protect them. Learning to activate and engage these muscles necessitates a level of mind-muscle connection.
Remember: - Always start light; your ego might take a hit, but your shoulders will thank you. - Never rush through reps; quality trumps quantity every time.
I strongly believe that adopting this approach will drastically reduce your risk of shoulder injuries, helping you to enjoy our beloved beach volleyball for years to come.
Until next time, bump, set, and spike away, my friends!

[Main Story] [1] [2] [3]
Mist swirled between the gnarled trunks, dancing tendrils of gray that clung to the moss-slick bark. The stench of decay hung heavy in the humid air. Rotting leaves squelched beneath iron-shod boots as Grubnik, Chief Gnarltooth, and their band of warriors trekked through the gloom of the Wild Woods.
Raggok, the Bloodfang Clan's most renowned tracker, knelt in the muck. His fingers traced the edge of a clawed print gouged into the black loam. Yellow eyes narrowed, gleaming in the shadows beneath his hood as he peered into the dense foliage.
Fresh. The beast passed this way within the past moon. No more than a few days.
Chief Gnarltooth grunted an acknowledgment, the sound rumbling deep in his barrel chest. His massive fist tightened its grip on his spear haft until the wood groaned. A legendary creature, one not seen in generations. If the tales passed down through clan lore held truth... bringing its pelt back to adorn the Winter Festival feast would ensure his name was sung for a hundred years.
If the damned thing exists at all. Snaggletooth spat a glob of phlegm, wiping his mouth with the back of a gnarled hand. His single eye glared at the surrounding trees as if they personally offended him.
The old warrior's blunt dismissal earned a sharp look from Grubnik. He tightened his fingers around his own spear and squinted up at the dense canopy, trying to catch a glimpse of the wan sunlight filtering through the leaves far above.
The Wild Woods held secrets even the goblins had not yet unraveled in their long centuries dwelling in its shadow. Ancient things, slumbering in root and bough and stone. Waiting for the right time, the right soul, to awaken. Grubnik could feel the primordial power thrumming through the loamy earth, taste the tang of it in the back of his throat.
Raggok would not lead them astray, not in this. The tracker's instincts had saved the hunting party a dozen times over in seasons past, guiding them to the richest game trails, warning them away from the territories of foul things that skulked in the forest's rotten heart.
No. If Raggok claimed the tracks were fresh, then the beast was close. Closer than it had been in living memory. Grubnik adjusted his grip on his weapon and squared his shoulders under the weight of his chief's expectations. Under the weight of the clan's future, their very survival.
He would not fail them. Could not. Not with so much riding on this hunt's success.
He met his father's eyes over the ready spears of their warriors. Unspoken understanding passed between them, the bond of chieftain and heir, of father and son. A single nod, grim and resolute. Then Gnarltooth looked away, his gaze fixing on some distant point beyond the veil of trees.
We continue. Press on until dusk, make camp on high ground.
A murmur of assent from the assembled goblins, a few scattered grunts and the creak of leather as they readjusted their grip on their weapons. Grubnik swallowed past the sudden tightness in his throat. He knew what pursued them through the forest, nipping at their heels like hounds scenting a wounded stag.
Time. The inexorable march of the seasons, winter's icy talons eager to sink into the clan's unprotected flesh. Hunger, a yawning void in the belly that ate away at strength and hope in equal measure. Desperation, a spurred heel driving them deeper into the Wild Woods' haunted reaches with each passing day.
They needed this hunt. Needed this single, glorious triumph to stave off the gnawing specter of starvation for one more winter. To fill their stomachs and their hearts with fiercer fire than any that crackled in the hearths of their huts.
Failure was no option. Not for him, not for any of them. They would return with the beast's carcass or not at all.
He shook away the dire thoughts, focusing on the crunch of rotting foliage under his boots as the party forged onward into the hungry wood. Raggok loped ahead, his smaller form nearly swallowed whole by the riotous undergrowth as he cast about for signs of their quarry's passage.
Snaggletooth and the other hardened veterans formed a loose ring around Chief Gnarltooth and Grubnik, spears at the ready, eyes darting to scour the shadows pooling between the trees. Predators stalked those shadows, things with too many teeth and a taste for goblin blood.
But no creature of claw or fang truly concerned the warriors. No simple beast, no matter how dangerous, could compare to the lurking unease that crept up their spines with each step they took away from their woodland haunts.
This deep in the Wild Woods, this far from the trails and markers carved by generations of goblins eking out a life in the forest's verge... things grew strange. Unfamiliar. The trees towered higher, their trunks gnarled into unsettling faces that seemed to leer from the corner of the eye. Odd creatures skittered in the undergrowth, small things with too many legs and eyes that glowed with a cold, uncanny light. Whispers sighed in the rustle of nameless leaves, hinting at secrets old as stone, best left undisturbed.
It played on the nerves. Set teeth to grinding and palms to sweating on spear shafts. But also awakened something deeper, more primal. The same eerie thrill that sang in the blood during the chaos of a hunt, the breathless exhilaration of pitting fang and claw and blade against a cornered beast.
The Wild Woods were the ultimate quarry, Grubnik mused as he clambered over a fallen log slick with lichen. An eternal, unfathomable thing against which every goblin was measured from first breath to last. To master its secrets, to return with trophies wrenched from its most jealously guarded shadowlands... that was the mark of a true warrior.
And he intended to prove himself such, this day. To carve his name into the sagas alongside his chieftain father. To still the doubts that he sometimes glimpsed flickering behind the heavy brows of the clan elders when they watched him training with the other young bloods.
The heir's fangs were not yet sharp enough, those looks whispered. His heart still too soft, too tainted by his mother's gentle spirit. What hope could there be for a clan led by such a whelp?
He ground his teeth until his jaw creaked, fingers flexing around the haft of his spear. He would show them. Show them all. He was the blood of Gnarltooth Bone-Gnawer, the most legendary chief the Bloodfang had ever known. He would be a worthy successor or die in the attempt.
A branch slapped him across the face, jolting him from his churning thoughts. He tasted blood and realized he'd bitten his lip near through. Wincing, he swiped his tongue over the wound and spat red. A soft chuff, almost a chuckle, sounded from his left.
Head in the clouds, pup? Better watch your tail, 'fore something sneaks up and bites it off.
Grubnik scowled at the wizened old tracker. Your eyes would serve better watching for signs of the beast, old one. Not my backside.
Raggok flashed a gap-toothed grin, somehow finding humor despite the gravity of their pursuit. Aaah, but what a comely backside it is. If only I were a few dozen winters younger...
Grubnik growled, slashing at the wiry figure with a half-hearted swipe of his claws. Raggok cackled and ducked away, melding seamlessly back into the underbrush as if he were just another one of the forest's gnarled shadows.
A grunt from his father snapped Grubnik's spine straight, an automatic response honed by years under the chieftain's unrelenting tutelage. He grimaced and hurried his steps, resuming his proper place in the formation. Gnarltooth shot him a warning glare from beneath beetled white brows, his blunt muzzle wrinkling.
Focus, boy. This is no jaunt to check the snares.
Yes, Chief. Grubnik ducked his head, heat prickling up his neck. Shame curdled in his gut, salting his tongue with bitterness.
His father had never been free with affection or approval, even before the burdens of leadership had settled across his broad shoulders like a mantle of stone. But ever since they'd left the village on this desperate gambit, it seemed his expectations for Grubnik had sharpened to a flensing edge. Every stumble, every blink, was noted and judged. Weighed against the impossible standard of chieftain-that-would-be and found wanting.
Grubnik swallowed the sudden ache in his throat, the pup's plea for a father's respect and comfort. Devoured it, churned it into resolve bitter and black as slag iron. He bared his fangs at the watchful wood, inviting its dangers, daring the very trees to stand in his way.
He was his father's son, a hunter and warrior born. His heart was the iron that would forge the Bloodfang's future, even if he had to first quench it in a river of his own doubts and fears. No beast's talons would be half so sharp as the goad of the chief's expectations.
Another goblin, one of the unblooded youths, hurried up to march at Grubnik's shoulder. The whelp's knuckles were pale green where he gripped his boar spear, the head of it trembling in minute jerks.
How much further? His voice cracked on the question, reedy with an unspoken plea. Grubnik bared his teeth in displeasure at the display of weakness. The pup shrank back, throat bobbing as he swallowed.
We walk 'til the chief says otherwise. Grubnik bit out. You tiring already?
No! No, I just... the shadows are getting longer, and...
And you fear to face the Woods' mysteries in the dark, like a mewling pup crying for its mother's teat? Grubnik snarled, derision dripping from the words. The pup cringed, shoulders hunching up around his oversized ears.
Grubnik spat to the side, lips curled in a sneer. Get back in position, whelp. And pray your cowardly whining hasn't cost us our prize.
The youth blanched and scurried back to his place in line, head low and eyes on his shuffling feet. Grubnik watched him go, a strange mix of irritation and guilt churning in his stomach. Perhaps he'd been overly harsh, but... these unblooded wretches needed a firm hand. Needed to be hardened quick, before their sniveling drew the notice of things with sharper teeth than Grubnik's tongue.
Snaggletooth dropped back to pace beside him, a mean chuckle rasping in the old warrior's throat. Grubnik tensed, expecting another of the scarred veteran's cutting critiques on his leadership style. But Snaggletooth just shook his grizzled head, single eye gleaming with dark amusement.
Pup'll be Warg shit by dawn if he don't grow a pair quick.
Grubnik grunted agreement, relieved to be spared a lecture for once. Snaggletooth was hard on the youngbloods, but they were harder still on themselves, the weight of their elders' expectations a crushing burden. Especially for those like Grubnik, who'd been born to a legacy measured in the notches on the hilts of legendary blades.
There were days he envied the unbloodeds' fumbling ignorance, untempered by the keen edge of a chief's duty. But such thoughts were just another weakness to be scoured away by the whetstone of the hunt. He was Grubnik, son of Gnarltooth, heir to the Bloodfang. His path was as solid and unforgiving as the iron of his fangs.
The hunting party pressed onward, the susurrus of the wild wood slowly shifting to a chorus of frog-song and insect-hum as dusk crept in on moccasin feet. The light took on a frail, watery quality, the green-tinged gold of autumn leaves on the eve of their fall.
Grubnik lifted his head, tasting the air as the first evening breeze stirred the sweaty scruff of his neck. The wind carried change on its back, a gathering pressure that weighted the clouds overhead to a sullen charcoal.
A storm was brewing in the deeps of the sky, the scent of it harsh and heavy with the promise of rain. It would be a hard one, Grubnik predicted, lips drawing back from his tusks in displeasure. The kind of tempest that turned dry streambeds to frothing torrents and sent every sensible creature scurrying for the sanctuary of its burrow.
Gnarltooth had noticed as well, the chief's blunt muzzle rising to snuff the air with a soft chuff of comprehension. A considering rumble stirred in the great barrel of the warchief's chest as he turned to survey the surrounding wood with a jaundiced eye.
Raggok. Gnarltooth croaked, the name snapping with the authority of an order.
The tracker materialized from the verge as if conjured, his rangy form slipping free of a bearded tangle of vines. His eyes were wide and slightly wild in his pinched, weathered face.
How far to that tor you marked, the one by the lightning-split oak?
The grizzled tracker squinted at the fading sun, thick brows furrowing like caterpillars. Half a league, maybe less. But Chief, if the storm breaks while we're out in the open...
It won't. Gnarltooth cut him off with a sharp chop of one sledgehammer paw. Get us there. The rest of you, eyes up, spears ready. I mislike the quiet.
As if to punctuate the warchief's words, a rumble of thunder growled across the sky, an ominous drumroll building to an echoing crack. The goblin youngbloods flinched, claws tightening white-knuckled on their weapons. Even Snaggletooth glanced skyward, his ruined face creasing in an anxious grimace.
Grubnik straightened, squaring his shoulders beneath the weight of his chief's expectations. He met his father's eyes, the warchief's golden stare boring into him like molten metal. A pulse of understanding passed between them, the unspoken language of chieftain and heir.
Protect them. The hunt must not fail.
Grubnik dipped his chin in a minuscule nod, the gesture a silent vow. He would not shirk his duty to the clan, to the unblooded youths in his charge. Even should the Wild Wood turn against them, even should the very sky crack and bleed, he would see this hunt through. No matter the cost.
Raggok had already vanished back into the brush, the tracker's wiry form swallowed whole by the deepening gloom. The rest of the party fell in behind him, Snaggletooth taking rear guard while Grubnik held the center, the youngbloods arranged around him like a a phalanx of spears.
The going was treacherous, the forest floor a morass of twisted roots and leaf-slick stones hidden by the dense undergrowth. More than once Grubnik had to grab a floundering youth by the scruff, hauling the wretch up before they could tumble into the yawning dark of an uprooted bole or ravine.
All the while the storm built overhead, the clouds roiling and churning like a pot left too long on the boil. The wind picked up, setting the treetops to thrashing and moaning. Grubnik felt the first fat drops of rain spatter against his up-turned face, each one a cold dart pricking his skin.
A muttered curse escaped him, snatched away by the rising gale. His feet slipped and skidded in the rising muck, the leaf-littered soil turning to a slurry of rotting vegetation and icy water. Claws denting the loam, he redoubled his efforts, pressing forward with the determination of a wolf on the heels of wounded prey.
The tor couldn't be much further. Once they gained its footing, the stone would give them purchase, a defensible position from which to weather the tempest's fury. They just had to reach it before the Wild Wood ripped the ground out from under them...
Raggok's shout, high and thin with panic, knifed through the hammering deluge. Grubnik's gaze snapped up, piercing the tangle of flailing branches. There, just ahead, through the wind-lashed veil of rain. A dark hump of stone crouching amid the thrashing wood like a great slumbering beast rudely awakened. The tor, a granite fist thrusting up from the forest floor to batter at the underbelly of the lowering sky.
And there at its base, a darker gash splitting the stone like a wound. A cave, its mouth yawning wide as if to swallow them whole.
Raggok stood at its threshold, his sodden pelt plastered flat to his scrawny frame. He gestured wildly, urging them onward with frantic swipes of his arms.
Chief! In here, quick!
Gnarltooth barged through the clinging undergrowth, shouldering saplings aside like grass stalks. Grubnik and the others stumbled in his wake, fleeing the storm's rising wrath. Lightning split the sky, the flash searing Grubnik's vision to a blind white smear. Thunder followed a heartbeat later, crashing down like an avalanche to rattle the very stones beneath their feet.
They plunged into the cave, a surge of drenched green bodies jostling and slipping on the worn stone. The darkness swallowed them, enfolding the bedraggled goblins in its cool, musty embrace. Grubnik felt his eyes adjust, pupil swelling to drink in the scant light trickling in from the cave mouth.
It was a shallow antechamber, a cupped hollow scooped from the living rock by time's patient chisel. Barely large enough to hold their band and scant supplies. At its rear, a narrower tunnel delved deeper into the tor's stubborn flanks, worming away into stygian shadow.
Gnarltooth moved to its entrance, eyes narrowed to golden slits as he peered into the whispering gloom. Senses strained for any hint of movement, any flicker of life to suggest another occupant resenting their intrusion.
Nothing. Just dank emptiness, the close walls sweating with the damp.
The chief grunted and swung his spear down from his shoulder, the haft smacking meaty palm with a solid thwack. Grubnik, with me. The rest of you, catch your breath but stay sharp. We're not alone until I say we are.
Grubnik hurried to his father's side, breath still heaving in his chest from their headlong flight. Gnarltooth spared him a glance, eyes like molten gold in the gloom. Then the chief turned and stalked into the tunnel, his heavy tread unnaturally loud in the sepulchral hush.
Grubnik followed, senses straining. His sodden pelt prickled, hackles lifting along his spine despite his best efforts to calm them. There was something about the inky blackness pressing close that set his fangs on edge, tightening his grip on his spear until his knuckles creaked.
The tunnel twisted and turned, wending deeper into the bowels of the stone. The walls pressed close, scraping his shoulders if he strayed too near their slick flanks. More than once he nearly stumbled, boots sliding on loose pebbles scattered across the uneven floor.
His father pressed on relentlessly, never wavering even as the dark thickened until it was a clotted curtain across Grubnik's vision. If not for the chief's steady tread, the rasp of his breath, Grubnik might have lost all sense of direction, floundering blind in this stony maw.
Just as the tension coiling in Grubnik's gut threatened to snap his control, Gnarltooth halted. The sudden cessation of movement froze Grubnik's breath in his throat. He crept up to his father's side, spear-tip dipping low to probe the void before them.
The tunnel had opened out, the close walls falling away into a cavernous gulf of empty space. The air hung in a hushed pall, thick and heavy as deep water. Even the sounds of the raging storm outside had faded to a distant murmur, as if the wildwood's fury could not penetrate this far into the tor's stony heart.
Grubnik swallowed against a sudden surge of dread, the unfamiliar emotion a sour weight in the pit of his stomach. This felt... wrong, in a bone-deep way he couldn't articulate. A primitive part of his brain, some vestigial animal instinct honed over generations of goblinkind's harsh survival, was screaming a wordless warning. Urging him to flee back into the storm's cleansing fury rather than face whatever nameless thing lurked in the obsidian depths before them.
He licked dry lips, tasting salt and the copper tang of his own fear-spiked musk. A muscle in his jaw ticked, teeth grinding as he clenched his fangs against the irrational impulse. He was a warrior. A chief's heir. He would not shame himself by cringing like a newborn whelp at the first whiff of the uncanny.
Father? His voice emerged a reedy whisper, disgustingly frail even to his own ears.
Quiet, boy. Gnarltooth's growl was sub-sonic, more felt than heard. Something... something is here.
As if summoned by the chief's grim pronouncement, a sound shivered through the clammy air. The soft, dry rasp of scales on stone. A sinuous slither, heavy and deliberate in the fathomless black.
And then, light. A glimmer so faint Grubnik initially thought it a delusion born of his strained eyes. But no... there in the deeps, a thin phosphorescent line coiled through the dark. Pulsing, growing, it twisted back on itself like a serpent wakened from hibernation, segments of spectral green flickering to sullen life along its length.
Until the dark unfurled not one but dozens of lambent shapes, their cold glow limning sleek hides and the wink of cruel, hooked talons. Reptilian eyes kindled to viridian lanterns above yawning maws bristling with needle fangs.
Basilisks. The breath punched from Grubnik's lungs on a single, choked exhale. Dread crystalized to icy certainty in his gut.
The cave was a nest. They'd stumbled straight into a brood of Basilisks dug in to wait out the worst of the storm. Foul amalgams of snake and lizard bloated to the size of war-hounds, with poison to drop a bull moose frothing from their forked tongues.
Get back. Gnarltooth's voice was low, steady as the tor's granite heart. No sudden movements. They're still groggy from the cold. If we withdraw slow, quiet, maybe...
A scrabbling, a panicked yelp echoed from the tunnel behind them. Grubnik whirled, icy sweat prickling his hide. One of the unblooded youths stood at the threshold, eyes wide and rolling with terror as a Basilisk reared up before him, its hideous head swaying on a sinuous neck.
The whelp screamed, a high, ululating wail that shattered the hushed air like a stone cast into a stagnant pool. The Basilisk lunged, its rope-thick body hissing across the stone with blinding speed. Needle fangs flashed, sinking into the youth's shoulder with a wet, rending crunch.
Blood fountained, black in the spectral light. The whelp's screams turned thin, reedy, as the Basilisk's venom pumped into his veins. He spasmed, dropping his spear to claw uselessly at the beast's iron-hard hide. The weapon clattered to the stone, the sound as final as a headsman's axe.
The nest erupted like a kicked ant-hill, the dark suddenly alive with darting, hissing shapes. Gnarltooth roared, the sound as deep and primal as an earthquake. He leaped forward, throwing Grubnik behind him as his spear lanced out, the razored point finding a glittering eye.
The struck Basilisk shrieked, an ear-splitting keen like tortured metal. Gore-slick talons scrabbled at the spear haft protruding from its ruined socket. More surged forward to take its place, a writhing wave of venomous hunger.
Grubnik found his feet, instincts taking over as the heady scent of blood and musk filled his nostrils. His spear darted like a striking serpent in his own right, finding soft joins between armored scales, sinking into the putrid meat with sickening ease.
Shouts and screams battered at the confines of his skull, the rest of the war-band boiling into the tunnel to join the fray. Steel rang and clashed, the metal taking on a reddish sheen as blood splattered the dank stone.
A Basilisk reared before him, its maw gaping obscenely wide. Venomous spittle drooled over dagger fangs. Grubnik snarled, bracing himself for the lunge. His spear felt like a flimsy reed in his sweat-slick grip, the leaf-shaped blade woefully inadequate before that monstrous gullet.
The beast lunged, blurring speed belied by its bulk. Grubnik dove aside, fetching up hard against the tunnel wall. Stone cracked his shoulder, setting his fangs to gritting. He whirled, just in time to see the Basilisk's barbed tail scything towards his face.
No time to dodge. He threw his head back, eyes slamming shut. Wind buffeted him as the venomous spur hissed past, scoring a burning line across his cheek. Blood, hot and salt, flooded his mouth.
Roaring, he brought his spear up in a desperate thrust. The blade skittered off ridged scales, scoring the beast's underbelly but failing to find a vital spot. The Basilisk writhed, its bulk slamming into him like a falling tree.
Air whooshed from his lungs. He hit the ground hard, spear spinning from nerveless fingers. The Basilisk loomed over him, its hooked maw drooling. He scrabbled for his knife, the blade suddenly pitiful in his grip.
A shadow fell over them both. Gnarltooth crashed into the beast like an avalanche, his spear gone, bowie knife clutched in one sledgehammer fist. The chief snarled, slamming the blade into the monster's gaping eye-socket. Once, twice, three times.
The Basilisk screamed, thrashing. Its tail cracked across Gnarltooth's back, drawing a grunt from the old warrior. But he never relented, never released his two-fisted grip on the blade as he bore the beast backward.
Grubnik surged to his feet, snatching up his fallen spear. Gnarltooth wrestled with the Basilisk, a tangle of savaged green flesh and gore-slick scales. Grubnik charged, bracing his spear butt-first against the stone.
The steel point struck true, sinking into the soft hollow beneath the beast's jaw. It punched through, erupting from the back of the meaty skull in a welter of ichor. The Basilisk stiffened, a shudder wracking its length. Then it slumped, the dead weight of it bearing Gnarltooth to the ground.
Panting, the chief struggled free of the corpse. Grubnik offered him a hand, hauling his father upright. Their eyes met, a moment of shared triumph, of primal exultation in the face of death and danger.
Then a shriek rent the air, high and agonized. Grubnik whirled, searching for the source. There, near the mouth of the cave. Snaggletooth crouched over a fallen form, his already ruined face a mask of blood. At his feet, Raggok writhed, the lean tracker's pelt shiny with gore. More blood pumped from between the fingers he had clamped to his gut, staining the stone a glistening black.
As Grubnik watched in horror, the light faded from Raggok's eyes. His body stilled, one last rattling breath shivering from slack jaws. Snaggletooth threw his head back, loosing a howl of grief and rage.
Grubnik's gaze swept the carnage, picking out the still forms of other goblins strewn amid the Basilisk dead. Too many. More than they could afford to lose. And those were just the ones he could see...
Gnarltooth shouldered past him, the chief's heavy tread resolute even as he limped on a blood-slick leg. Grubnik fell into step at his heels, numbness creeping through his veins like a slow poison.
They'd survived. He clung to that thought like a drowning goblin to a float-log. Survived the Wild Wood's attempt to devour them. But the cost...
He looked down at his crimson-painted hands, the spear haft tacky beneath his palms. Was this the price they'd pay for the Bloodfang's salvation? Blood for blood, life for life?
A terrible suspicion coiled in his gut, colder and more piercing than any Basilisk fang. Perhaps there was no great beast to be found. No legendary pelt to drape triumphant upon the clan's Winter Festival pyre.
Perhaps... it was all just a mocking lure, a false promise like the glimmer of a mirage on a salt-pan. And they'd stumbled after it, so desperate for hope that they'd been willing to brave any danger... only to end as meat for the Wild Wood's insatiable maw.
Unease prickled his muck-streaked pelt, a creeping surety that this was only the first toll the forest would exact. But he shoved the whispers down, locking them away. The clan needed him steadfast, solid as the sto-
A sound split the air, raising every hair along Grubnik's spine. A warbling, avian scream that shivered through marrow and gristle. It echoed off the stone in distorted ripples, filling the cavern with its promise of primal fury.
No. Not a scream. A roar.
Grubnik froze, ice flooding his veins. He knew that sound. Knew it from somewhere deep in the racial memory of his kind, ancestral dread welling up to choke the breath from his lungs.
There at the cave mouth, framed by the storm's raging maw. A shape condensed from the hammering deluge, coalescent shadow gaining substance with each stalking step. Lightning flared, the stark white flash limning its hulking form for a single, awful heartbeat.
Grubnik's bowels turned to water. His spear clattered from a hand gone boneless with shock.
A Thundercat. Largest of all felids, apex predator of the Wild Wood's most abyssal reaches. Progenitor of a thousand goblin nightmares.
Muscles rippled beneath a pelt of midnight blue, patterned with jagged stripes of ghostly white. A crest of guard hairs bristled along its spine, crackling with actinic sparks. Fangs like skinning knives gleamed in its gaping maw, a lolling tongue the color of an old bruise.
But its eyes... Grubnik moaned, feeling his sanity fray at the edges. Orbs of otherworldly gold, alight with a terrible alien intelligence. Holding knowledge of things beyond mortal ken, dark and primordial as the forest's stony roots.
Those eyes found Grubnik's, bored into them with a force that sent him staggering. Reeling beneath the weight of that eldritch regard, that pitiless stare. He felt flayed to the bone, every secret hope and fear turned out like a coney's guts for the beast's cold perusal.
Then it blinked, a lazy dip of night-dark lids. Grubnik gasped, a drowning thing breaching for air. He scrabbled for his spear, hands wooden, distant. His pulse thundered in his ears, louder than the maelstrom's distant roar.
The Thundercat crouched, muscles bunching beneath its impossible pelt. Sparks leapt between its claws as it sank them into the stone, flexing. Grubnik panted, ice and fire warring in his blood.
This was it, then. An ending, as sudden and merciless as the Wild Wood's own ancient law. The futility of all his dreams and doubts, all his strivings, laid bare in that single, simple action. A beast, preparing to fill its belly. And he, the meat.
He looked to Gnarltooth, seeing his own sick despair reflected in the old chief's snarling mask. Snaggletooth, gore-streaked and panting. The few surviving youngbloods, huddled together like frightened rats.
So few. Too few. All of them, caught between stone and the Thundercat's fury. Fangs and claws against brittle goblin steel and flesh.
No way out. No clever stratagem to turn this fight. Just an old story, writ again in ichor and offal. The strong devouring the weak, as it had been since the first goblin crawled from its cave to blink at the merciless sun. As it would be long after Grubnik and his ilk were dust.
He threw back his head and laughed, the sound jagged as broken glass. Let the Wild Wood take them, then. Let it glut on goblin marrow, on the shards of their broken dreams. At least he'd die as he'd lived - snarling defiance at a world bent on grinding him down.
Gnarltooth shot him a look, the old chief's eyes narrowing in their nest of wrinkles. Something passed between them in that glance, a mute understanding that needed no clumsy words. The only language left to doomed things, scrabbling at the dark.
As one, they turned to face the Thundercat. Grubnik hefted his spear, feeling the shaft's weight settle into his callused palm like an old lover. Beside him, Gnarltooth brandished his knife, the blade a paltry fang against the beast's night-drenched might.
It wouldn't be enough. Could never be enough. But perhaps, if they fought hard, if they made the Thundercat work for its meal... their blood-debt to the clan would be paid. The Bloodfang would remember their last stand, sing sagas of their defiant end. It was the best a goblin could ask for, in this hungry world of stone and shadow.
The Thundercat surged forward, its stride devouring the distance between them in terrible heartbeats. Grubnik bellowed his war-cry, the sound torn ragged by the snarling drumbeat of his pulse. He braced himself behind his spear, knowing it for the sorry reed it was.
The beast's claws sheared the air, filling his nostrils with the stink of ozone. Lightning arced between the curving scimitars, leaping to sting his exposed flesh like furious wasps. He gritted his fangs, squinting against the stinging brilliance. Waiting for the final, terrible impact.
The Thundercat struck Gnarltooth's bowie knife with a shriek of sundered steel and a gout of cobalt sparks. The old chief roared, slamming his bulk against the beast's shoulder even as his blade shattered, driving it back a staggering half-step. Grubnik lunged in the fractional opening, his spear licking out in a desperate thrust at the Thundercat's barrel chest.
The steel point skittered off the beast's hide as if it were stone, deflected by rippling muscle and bristling fur. The Thundercat yowled, more enraged than hurt. It whirled on Grubnik, moving with a speed that beggared belief. One huge forepaw hooked out, batting the goblin heir aside with contemptuous ease.
Grubnik flew, breath bursting from his lungs as he slammed into the cavern wall. Stone cracked against his spine, filling his skull with blooming starbursts of pain. He slid down the rough rock face, every nerve alight with white-hot agony.
Through slitted eyes he saw Gnarltooth throw himself bodily at the Thundercat, grappling with its sinewy neck. Snaggletooth leaped to join him, his notched blade hacking at the beast's haunches. It twisted like an eel, fangs snapping shut a hair's breadth from the old chief's snarling face. Gnarltooth reeled back, and in that instant of distraction the Thundercat's rear claws found Snaggletooth's belly.
The scarred warrior shrieked, a high and terrible sound. He fell back, hands clutching at coils of steaming viscera that bulged between his fingers. The Thundercat pounced on him, worrying at his body like a mutt with a rat. Wet, meaty sounds, and the gristly snapping of bones. Snaggletooth's wail cut off with a liquid gurgle.
Darkness billowed at the edges of Grubnik's vision, narrowing the world to a hazy tunnel. Muffled sounds reached him, as if from a great distance. Screams, the crunch of splintering bone. A goblin's death-rattle. The smack and slurp of feasting jaws.
He tried to rise, to will strength back into his failing limbs. But his body felt leaden, sunk deep into a smothering fog. Only his eyes retained any faculty, fixing on a tableau of primal horror limned in guttering witchlight.
The Thundercat crouched over Gnarltooth's savaged bulk, its muzzle buried in the old chief's gaping chest. Worrying free gobbets of dripping meat, gulping them down only to dive in for more. The great hammer fists spasmed, gnarled fingers clutching at empty air.
Grubnik keened, a wordless lament torn from his collapsing lungs. Gnarltooth's head lolled towards him, half the face hanging in ribbons. One eye found his, the other a shredded ruin. Grubnik saw pain there, and sorrow... but no fear. Never fear, even at the last. His father, the lodestone of his world, even as that world bled out onto the uncaring stone.
The eye fixed him, held him with a force stronger than any Thundercat's fury. It bored into Grubnik's own, striking deep to that inner place where all pretense sloughed away. Leaving only the purest ore of himself, raw and aching.
His father's lips moved, shaping words Grubnik couldn't hear over the roaring in his skull. But he didn't need to. He knew, in that place beyond thought, beyond blood or bone. Gnarltooth's final command, his last thread of chieftain's duty carried down until it frayed to nothing in death's indifferent shears.
Live, boy. Lead.
Darkness crashed over Grubnik in a smothering wave. It hooked into his sinews, dragging him down, away from horror, from the ruin of his world. He tried to fight, but his limbs were cold, so cold. Filled with a leaden weight, the promise of oblivion.
His eyes fluttered closed, shuttering out the sight of his father's body, the Thundercat's gory rapture. But he couldn't escape the sounds. The smack of jaws, the wet crunch of splintering bone. They followed him down into the velvet dark, scoring deep even as thought faded.
The last thing he knew was the cool press of stone against his cheek, and a spreading warmth that could only be his own blood. A final, bitter comfort, cradling him as he fell endlessly into the void.
Live. Lead.
Then nothing but the dark, and the distant roar of the hungry Wild Wood, implacable and eternal. Swallowing him whole, as it had so many before. As it would so many after.
The world spun on, uncaring. Gnawing on the bones of goblin dreams, glutting on the marrow of their defiance. Only the Wild Wood endured. Only the beasts of shadow and fang held sway in the green heart of the world.
And Grubnik sank into its depths, to await the final devouring. A feast for worms, a saga never to be sung. Just another mote, flickering out in the forest's vast and pitiless night.

It's asking me to post something after joining.. Here we go.
There's no such thing as AI. Yet, at least. Not GPT, nor Claude, Devin or any "AI" I know of is capable of thinking. Think cats or dogs or whatever. Most animals don't have any language that we know of. No language to read or write or communicate in, of course, but also no language to think in. Yet one cannot argue that most animals are very aware of the world around them, and understand it even. Throw something a cat has never seen before towards it, and it will jump out of the way for example. Without language they have understanding. And current "AI" has language, but is without understanding.
ChatGPT-4 cannot think or understand. That said, it fakes it can better than anything humans could anticipate any tech will be able to less than just 5 years ago. It's an amazing tool as is, but it makes you wonder what will be..
How much do you think just the next version, GPT-5, will improve over the last major version?
I've talked about "understanding" language but with understanding and creating images in "multi modal" flavours it's even worse. GPT-4 hasn't a clue about any image, instead it converts it to text, does it's prediction magic, and converts it answer back into an image. The Omni supposedly solves that so image understanding is at least on par with language understanding. While that suffices for GPT to be a better communicator, advisor, and with way more knowledge and less hallucinations, than most human I've ever talked to, it's still sub par in novel ideas, thinking outside the box, or finding a helpful analogy from the past events for coming up with sound logics to resolve a new legal situation that is not yet covered by written laws for example.
How likely do you think it is that OpenAI (or competitors) will come up with technology that will overcome all those hurdles in the next year? And if they manage to create it, what do you think the probability is for them to actually release it to public instead of just (ab)using it for themselves?
Not trying to be a cynic. Just wondering how the human nature plays with unnatural progress.

Earlier today, my son and I (F 34) were home alone as we usually are (recently moved to Pennsylvania and are currently staying in my mother-in-law’s basement apartment while we house hunt after a relocation with my husband job). My husband (M 34) works about an hour away. We were downstairs in the apartment, and I had just woken my son from a nap and we were playing in the living room when I heard footsteps upstairs in the main house. Normally it wouldnt be weird but my MIL and SIL are in California. About three seconds after i hear the heavy footsteps I get an alert on my phone telling people in my direct area to shelter in place lock their doors and stay away from windows due to a police incident on a road very nearby. I hear the footsteps again, grab my son telling him to be very quiet which he thankfully did, and lock the exterior entrance door, but cant safely get up the basement stairs to lock the interior staircase door (id been up and down doing laundry prior to my son waking up from his nap) so i run into my bedroom and lock the deadbolt and the door lock , turn off all the lights and go to hide in my sons closet (his room os connected to ours with no other entrance). I climbed into the back of the closet and hid behind clothes in the dark with my son while on the phone with 911. I continue to hear footsteps. I was stifling sobs and trying not to scare my son but i honestly thought something terrible was going to happen. Police finally get there and also hear the person upstairs and since they entered though my apartments exterior entrance felt safe enoigh to escort me and my son, guns drawn to our car and tell us to go to a neighbors house far enough away and tell them to lock the doors. I dont know any neighbors so I went to the gas station, parked and sobbed shaking uncontrollably. I tried calling my husband but he kept sending me to voicemail because he was with a client. Fast forward 15 minutes and the cops call me, they have cleared the house, whoever was there must’ve gotten spooked and took off a back door (the house is huge with many entrances). The remaining cops brought me through the house and combed through once again to reassure me there was no-one. Needless to say I still feel unsafe and go to the nearby grocery store parking lot and call my husband who headed straight home, but not before yelling at me telling me i should’ve texted him and that “I never know if something is serious with you, your always a chicken little.” (Ive never ever given him a reason to say this and it hurt me so deeply especially because this was such a traumatizing experience. My husband barely hugs me when we meet in a parking lot of a best buy to purchase security cameras and continues to be cold, nasty and distant from me and my son all night. So I put my son to sleep and my husband comes downstairs and proceeds to get belligerently drunk and start yelling at me telling me that he believes me, but I’m such a chicken little. continues to scream at me telling me that I’m being horrible to him and that he doesn’t know what the hell I expect him to do that I live in a fantasy world where i have these grandeous expectations of how a husband should react. I then (sobbing) tell him i need comfort, he never dven asked if i was okay. He continues to stand there with his arms crossed across his chest, screaming at me asking me what the fuck I expect him to do and I’m just there crying begging him to comfort me and he just turns around and says “whatever “. He isnt the most emotionaly adept man and has been lacking empathy in the past in certian situations, but this has traumatized me. every time I close my eyes I get scared because it’s dark and it feels like I did when I was in that closet fearing for mine and my sons Life. after sobbing in the bed and trying to sleep, I go out in the living room and he’s just sitting there on his phone completely unfazed and I ask him if he can please come to sleep with me so that I can feel safe so that we can lock the door to the bedroom, and he doesn’t answer me so now I’m in my toddlers room, door locked in his bed because I’m too scared to sleep alone and my husband just doesn’t seem to care. Idk how to feel other than heartbroken and for some reason embarassed. What do I say? What do I do?

When you think about managing your finances, especially for a business, an accounting firm is often the first thing that comes to mind. But what exactly is an accounting firm, and why is it so important? Simply put, an accounting firm is a professional service provider specialising in various financial and accounting services for businesses and individuals. These firms play a crucial role in ensuring financial accuracy, compliance, and strategic planning.

1. History of Accounting Firms

I. Early Beginnings
The concept of accounting dates back to ancient civilisations, where it was crucial for tracking trade and managing resources. However, the formal establishment of accounting firms began in the 19th century with the advent of more complex business transactions and the need for standardised financial reporting.
II. Evolution Over the Years
Over the years, accounting firms have evolved significantly. From manual bookkeeping to sophisticated digital solutions, the industry has embraced technological advancements to enhance efficiency and accuracy. Today, accounting firms offer a wide range of services beyond traditional bookkeeping and tax preparation.

2. Types of Accounting Firms

I. Public Accounting Firms
These firms provide a variety of services, including auditing, tax advisory, and consulting, to a broad range of clients, from individuals to large corporations. Public accounting firms are often associated with the "Big Gaints.
II. Private Accounting Firms
Private accounting firms typically serve private businesses and non-profit organisations. They focus on internal accounting processes, financial reporting, and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements.
III. Specialty Accounting Firms
Specialty accounting firms concentrate on niche areas such as forensic accounting, environmental accounting, or international tax law. These firms provide highly specialised services tailored to specific industries or needs.

3. Services Offered by Accounting Firms

I. Auditing Services
Auditing is one of the core services provided by accounting firms. It involves examining financial records to ensure accuracy and compliance with accounting standards and regulations.
II. Tax Services
Tax services include preparing and filing tax returns, tax planning, and advising clients on tax strategies to minimise liabilities and maximise savings.
III. Consulting Services
Consulting services help businesses improve their financial performance by offering strategic advice on various aspects such as business planning, financial management, and operational efficiency.
IV. Advisory Services
Advisory services include guidance on mergers and acquisitions, risk management, and corporate governance. These services help businesses navigate complex financial landscapes and make informed decisions.
V. Forensic Accounting
Forensic accounting involves investigating financial discrepancies and fraud. It is crucial for legal proceedings and helps in identifying and addressing financial misconduct.

4. Choosing the Right Accounting Firm

I. Assessing Your Needs
Before selecting an accounting firm, it's essential to determine what services you need. Are you looking for basic bookkeeping, or do you need more complex services like auditing and tax planning?
II. Research and Recommendations
Conduct thorough research and seek recommendations from trusted sources. Online reviews and testimonials can provide valuable insights into a firm's reputation and service quality.
III. Evaluating Expertise and Experience
Look for firms with expertise in your industry and a proven track record of success. Experienced firms are more likely to offer reliable and effective solutions.
IV. Considering Firm Size
The size of the firm can impact the level of personalised attention and the range of services offered. Larger firms may offer more comprehensive services, while smaller firms might provide more personalised care.

5. Benefits of Hiring an Accounting Firm

I. Financial Accuracy and Compliance
Accounting firms ensure that your financial records are accurate and compliant with regulatory standards, reducing the risk of errors and penalties.
II. Time and Cost Efficiency
Outsourcing accounting tasks to a professional firm saves you time and resources, allowing you to focus on core business activities.
III. Expert Financial Advice
Access to expert financial advice helps you make informed decisions and strategically plan for the future.
IV. Risk Management
Accounting firms help identify and mitigate financial risks, protecting your business from potential threats and uncertainties.

6. Challenges Faced by Accounting Firms

I. Regulatory Changes
Constant changes in regulations require firms to stay updated and adapt quickly to new compliance requirements.
II. Technological Advancements
Embracing new technologies can be challenging, but it is necessary to remain competitive and efficient.
III. Client Expectations
Meeting diverse client expectations requires firms to offer customised and high-quality services consistently.
IV. Competition
The accounting industry is highly competitive, with firms striving to differentiate themselves through innovation and superior service delivery.
Conclusion
Accounting firms play an indispensable role in the financial health and growth of businesses. From ensuring compliance and accuracy to providing strategic advice and managing risks, their contributions are invaluable. As the industry continues to evolve, embracing new technologies and adapting to changing regulations will be crucial for future success.

I’m the third. Alex the parrot was the second. A man named Karl Schuster who lived in Berlin in the early 1900s was likely the first. In total, only three individuals are known to have overcome the natural cognitive limits of their species’ brains. Alex did no harm. Mr. Schuster, I’m afraid, may have inadvertently damaged reality. My transgression may be humanity’s undoing.
I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I just wanted to be like Alex.
What made Alex special? He is the only animal to have asked a question.
Lots of animals communicate. Whales and birds sing their songs to each other. Coyotes use barks and howls for identification. We’ve been teaching primates sign language since the 1960s. But these animal tweets and howls and signs aren’t language. There’s no grammatical structure. No deep concepts conveyed - just surface-level stuff. I’m here, they say. I’m threatened, or breed with me.
Animals manage to transmit information and even desires through their species’ form of communication. But none of the thousands of animals observed by science have ever asked a question. Except Alex.
Alex was an ordinary gray parrot, purchased at a pet store by a researcher studying animal psychology. Alex was taught to identify shapes and objects and to speak the name of the items he was quizzed on. One day, while being taught to identify different colors, Alex turned to a mirror and asked “What color is Alex?” This is the only known case of an animal asking a question. Even the famous gorilla who liked to pose for pictures with his kitten and the chimpanzee raised as a human child never managed to ask a question.
As you cuddle up on the couch with Mister Snugglekins the cat, or make Mister Woof Woof the dog beg for treats, think about what it must be like to have an animal mind. Animals’ brains cannot even conceive of the idea of asking a question. They can wonder things: When’s dinner? Is this new person a threat? But the notion of using communication to get answers is beyond their capacity. The gulf between us and our beloved animals is truly vast.
Now, let’s take the next logical step. Is there a mind - can there be such a mind - that is to ours like ours are to animals’? What thoughts are permitted by the laws of physics but are unattainable to the limited machinery of our brains? What if we could improve our own cognitive infrastructure, so our own minds could grasp these currently-unattainable ideas. What lies beyond the ability to ask questions? Hyper-questions? What are they like? What is their purpose? Is there hyper-love? Hyper-joy? What accomplishments lie beyond our grasp?
I used to believe that these ideas amounted to only pointless philosophical wondering. Just stuff to talk about while you’re passing the joint around. Then I learned about Alex, who somehow broke past the cognitive limit of animal thought. If Alex can do it, maybe it’s possible for a human to do it. Maybe, I thought, I can do it.
Unfortunately it is possible for a human to do it. And unfortunately, I did.
* * \*
In 2015, dozens of social media users posted images of a confused-looking elderly man slowly driving in circles in a Walmart parking lot. The emblem on the back of the car said he was driving Toyota Raynow. Toyota denies that a vehicle called a Toyota Raynow ever existed, even as a prototype.
* * \*
I’m not the first researcher to set off on a project to improve human cognition. The eugenicists whose work flourished at the dawn of the 20th century may have been the first people to search for ways to adjust to the human mind. Of course, they had their own spin on the endeavor that, let’s just say, didn’t age well. Take a look at this: an excerpt from the Proceedings of the Third Berlin Conference on Eugenics, 1904. (Translated from the original German by me)

The session on Friday afternoon was opened by Mr. Gerhard Van Wagenen, who presented the report of the Berlin Directed Intelligence Improvement Society. If we are to develop ways of improving the overall intelligence of the human breed, Mr. Van Wagenen argued, we must have, as a guide post, the ultimate limit of human intelligence. Only when we know this limit, can we pose the fundamental question of our effort: Are we to use selective breeding to improve average human intellectual fitness in a population, or are we to find ways of advancing the limit of human genius itself into areas that no individuals born to date have occupied?
Our immediate research goal was therefore to find individuals for whom the light of genius burned, not just at all, but brighter than the lights of all others of that intellectual rank. We sought to find the one individual currently alive who can look down on literally all the rest as his intellectual inferiors.
It is known that in the mass of men belonging to the superior classes there is found a small number who are characterized by inferior qualities. And in the mass of men forming the inferior classes, one can find specimens possessing superior characteristics. Therefore, we shall search wherever those of superior intellect may be found, without regard to their current station.

Inferior classes? Intellectual rank? Try putting that in a research grant proposal today!
Mr. Van Wagenen and his assistants set out across Berlin and asked thousands of people a single question: “Of all the men you know who are still alive, who amongst them is the most intelligent?” They carefully reviewed the resulting list of thousands of names. They removed the duplicates and any female names that ended up on the list. (Those crazy eugenicists, right?) They tracked down each of these men who ranked as the smartest known by at least one male resident of Berlin, and asked them the same question, generating a second-stage list: the most intelligent people known to a group of individuals already considered very intelligent.
And they kept going. They generated the third-stage names, found those people and had them produce a list of fourth-stage names. And so on. This project took a year. There was a running joke in Berlin that Mr. Van Wagenen would only stop when the last name on the list was his own.
But, to Mr. Van Wagenen’s credit, he did not rig the study to identify himself or one of his patrons as the one individual who can look down on literally all the rest as his intellectual inferiors. Indeed, Mr. Van Wagenen eventually concluded that his year-long study was a failure.

A fraction of the people named, about eight percent, simply could not be found. We were appalled to note that a small percentage of the respondents identified themselves as the most intelligent man they knew. While the ultimate individual we seek could only truthfully answer with his own name, we took these first and second stage self-identifiers to be adverse to our research and ignored their input.
In a few hundred cases, pairs of individuals each identified the other. In smaller numbers we found sets of three, four, and even five men whose linkages formed closed loops of co-admiration, eventually working around back to the first man.
But the most striking feature of the data was that over three thousand lines of reported superior intelligence ended in the same name: Karl Schuster. Mr. Schuster had been a successful industrialist before suddenly retreating from public view later in life. Strangely, when we tried to find Mr. Schuster, we learned that he had, of his own volition, taken residence in the mental asylum located at Lankwitz.
He refused to see us when we paid a visit to his private room in the asylum. The only communication we had from him was a note related to us by the Lankwitz staff, in which Mr Shuster wrote:
“I’ve spent most of my life hiding from It. I have isolated myself here, with the notion that the confused noise of mental anguish that surrounds me would act as a form of concealment. I did not suspect I might one day be discovered by ordinary men. Please do not visit me here again.”
From his note, and the fact of his residence within the asylum, we must conclude Mr. Shuster had become a mental defective. Even more damaging to our research, we subsequently learned that Mr. Schuster was a Jew. This finding, unfortunately, invalidates our work. In the coming months, we will strive to find a protocol more suitable for investigation into the nature of superior intellect.

Let’s not be too hard on these anti-Semitic, white-supremacist eugenicists. I’m willing to cut them some slack because I’ve done far, far more damage to mankind than all of these guys combined. I should have listened to Mr. Schuster’s warning. I should not have let It find me.
* * \*
In 1954 a man arrived at Tokyo’s Haneda airport with a passport issued by the country of Taured. No such country exists, or ever existed. Despite the man being detained and guarded, he mysteriously vanished overnight.
* * \*
Where the eugenicists looked to make improvements in the human population over generations by controlling or influencing reproduction, I had a more ambitious goal - to make improvements to a specific human brain (my own) in-vivo. I set out to upgrade my brain while I was using my brain to figure out how to upgrade my brain. I had astonishing success.
I’m not going to tell you exactly how I did it, because it’s just too dangerous. I don’t mean because it’s dangerous to the person undergoing the process (which it is), but because doing so can lead It to notice you. I don’t care if you fry your own cortex. But having It eat even more of our reality will be a calamity.
The human brain consists of gray matter, which is the stuff that performs perception and cognition, and white matter, which deals with boring stuff like running your metabolism. The gray matter - your cerebral cortex - forms a nice thick layer on the outside of your brain. This layer wraps the white matter underneath. I found a way to use pluripotent stem cells to expand the thickness of my cortex. With careful dosing of the stem cell culture through a spinal tap, I created new layers of gray matter underneath my cortex. These new cells replaced the white matter that was there.
For reasons I don’t fully understand yet, the new cortical cells only become active when I have ingested a potent mixture of hallucinogens and antipsychotic drugs.
The process is arduous and very illegal. Experimentation on humans, even if the test subject is also the researcher, is extremely highly regulated. And the drugs I need to use are not available from the suppliers that the rule-following scientific community uses. This work was performed in isolation and in secret. No regulators. No administrators. No rules. Just pure scientific progress.
My laboratory is as unconventional as my approach to science. I’ve set up shop in an assembly of forty-foot shipping containers in the center of my heavily forested seven-hundred-acre plot of land. Privacy!
* * \*
Thousands of people have vivid memories of news coverage from the 1980s reporting that Nelson Mandela died in prison. In the reality that most of us know, Mandela died in 2013, years after his release.
* * \*
Uplift #1 - 3 cubic centimeters
By last October, after six months of stem-cell treatment, I estimated that I had added a total of three cubic centimeters of gray matter to my baseline cortex volume. I could already feel the effects of the diminished volume of white matter. My sense of smell and taste were all but gone. My fine-motor-control was diminished. I had weakness in my legs and arms. But I had three cubic centimeters of fresh cortex to work with. I only needed to activate it. To Uplift myself, as I came to call the process of thinking with an expanded brain.
I planned for the first Uplift as if I was planning a scientific expedition into an uncharted jungle - I stockpiled food and water. I stockpiled lots of drugs. I bought a hundred blank notebooks to record my uplifted thoughts in.
I filled a seven-day pill container with hallucinogens and antipsychotics. I scratched off the Monday, Tuesday, etc. labels on the pill compartments and relabeled them: hour 0, hour 1, and so on. I planned my first Uplift to last seven hours.
Over those seven hours, I learned how to make use of the new, extra capacity in my cortex. I filled notebook after notebook with increasingly complex thoughts. Here are a few excerpts:

Hour 1: The linguistic-mathematical relational resonance is far stronger than most have suspected.
Hour 2: Questions lacking prepositional multipliers of context prevent full expository [(relations)(responses)] yet, but (!yet) there is still an I in the premise.

By the fifth hour, I was fully Uplifted, asking hyper-questions and providing my own hyper-answers. What do the musings of a fully Uplifted mind look like? Page after page of this:

(((Imagine)Imagine[)Imagine)Relate->Time]<--Force(Animal,Object–>Think)

* * \*
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
H.P. Lovecraft, Call of Cthulhu
* * \*
Uplift #2 - 5.5 cubic centimeters.
I waited a few weeks before my next Uplift. I needed time to recover from the mental strain of the first experiment, and to wait for a new dose of stem-cells to produce even more gray matter.
Although I only spent a few hours in an Uplifted state in my first experiment, I felt diminished as I returned to baseline. Hyper-questions. Hyper-answers. Hyper-joy. All of these are wonderful to experience. Life can be so much more rich and full with a post-human cognitive capacity.
But, as I learned during my second Uplift, there is also Hyper-fear.
I descended from my second uplift by screaming and running naked in the snowy woods outside my laboratory. As the drugs wore off, the activated sections of the new parts of my brain shut down. Thoughts that were clear one moment became foggy, like waking from a nightmare.
I fell into a snowbank, breathing hard. Only a trace of what terrified me was left rattling in my tiny, baseline brain: It. It noticed me. I occupied Its attention.
What was It? I knew exactly what It was moments earlier, when I had more gray matter to think with. But now I was like a dog trying to grasp the idea of a question. I was still afraid, but I couldn’t understand the source of the fear.
I returned to the lab and warmed up. Then I reviewed what I had written in my notebooks during the ten hour session. Most of it was the same sort of advanced writings that my now-normal brain could not comprehend. But, somewhere towards the end of the session, perhaps just before I shed my clothes and ran into the woods, I wrote this:

I know what Schuster was hiding from. Find out information about Shuster.

When I recovered from the strain of my second Uplift, I drove to town, where I was able to access the Internet. I found some information about Schuster in the same archive where I found the proceedings from the 1904 eugenics conference.
A short article in a Berlin newspaper described the man who had been named by so many people who took Van Wagenen’s survey.

…Mr. Schuster, at the age of fifteen, had made significant contributions to machine design, metallurgy, and chemistry. He founded four companies which he ran nearly by himself, without a large management staff to insulate him from the workers and day-to-day engineering tasks…

It seems that most of the people who identified Mr. Shuster as the most intelligent person they knew had known him well at this time in his life.
Another article, written in 1905, described strange event at his funeral:

…Also present was a contingent of a dozen people who claimed to have been friends with Schuster during the five years he spent in America. Many who had known Schuster for his entire life stated that he had never been to America, let alone spent five years there. Did a group of people mistakenly attend the funeral of the wrong man?
Everyone in attendance had similar memories of him. All recognized his photograph on the coffin. Indeed, some of the America contingent had letters, written in Karl’s hand and signed by him, fondly recalling his time spent in the New England woods. It is as if there were two Schusters: the one who lived his life in Germany and the other who spent years in America.

Uplift #3 - 6 cubic centimeters
Perhaps I’ve allowed my cortex to consume too much of my white matter. I now have trouble with perceptions. The woods surrounding my laboratory have been transformed into a city. Where there were trees, there are now charming stone buildings from a European city. The song of birds and the whisper of the wind in the trees is gone too, replaced with streetcars and voices speaking German.
I prepared my pill container and notebooks for my third Uplift, as the sounds of a busting turn-of-the-century city rang through the metal walls of my laboratory.
Although I had dozens of blank notebooks prepared, I only made one page of notes during my third Uplift:

I met it today. I know what It is. It is alive. Not just alive. Hyper-alive.
It is built into the very material that logic and mathematics is made from. The digits of the square of pi, when computed to the billionth quadrillionth place, is a sketch of a fragment of its structure.
It consumes pieces of reality. It weaves them into its being, and leaves the tattered shreds of logic and causality to haphazardly mend themselves. It ate the circumstances of Karl Schuster’s life, leaving the ragged edges of different universes to stick and twist themselves back together, like shreds of a tattered flag tangling together in a gale.
It has only begun grazing on the small corner of Hyper-reality where humanity lives. Imagine a cow eating grass from a field. A field where humanity lives like a small colony of aphids on a single blade of grass. It likes it here. It likes the taste of reality here.
I tried to tell it to go away. That we are here and have a right to exist.
It replied to me, in its way. I found its words at the bottom of a twelve-dimensional fractal, woven into the grammar of a language with an infinite alphabet. It taunted me with a question: “What flavor is Alex?”

Update to the Proceedings of the Third Berlin Conference on Eugenics, 1904
Mr. Gerhard Van Wagenen provided the committee with an update on his finding that the individual Mr. Karl Shuster was strikingly-well-represented in the responses of his survey on intelligent men. Mr. Van Wagenen writes:
Upon further reflection of the results of my survey, I returned to Lankwitz again to try to meet with Mr. Schuster. I arrived to find his ward in an uproar, as only a few minutes prior to my arrival, Mr. Schuster had been found missing. The preceding letter, which is reprinted here in its entirety, was found in Mr. Schuster’s room. While the letter does not indicate where he went or even how he managed to slip away from the asylum unnoticed, it does show the extent of his derangement. His detailed descriptions of question-asking birds, strange events from the future, and even methods of biological manipulation unknown to science are not the product of a mind that we wish to recreate. Perhaps intelligence, as a phenomenon of nature, is more complicated than we are able to appreciate with our current notions of science. If I may speculate even further, perhaps Intelligence is a phenomenon we should avoid study of, lest we learn things about ourselves that it is best not to know.
ANKoM

Recent passer here. Nag resign nako sa current job ko and will be transfering work (law firm). Diko maiwasang matakot, at di pa nakakatulong na may imposter syndrome ako. Could you briefly describe your work life? Yung work load kamusta? May weekends ba kayo? How was it nung first few months niyo? Napagalitan na ba kayo ng partners? How did you overcome it?
I'll take everything with a grain of salt. So feel free to share as your comments will be very appreciated. Thanks in advance!

• Source : https://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/courses/samples/ancient-egypt-an-introduction-online/index.html

The Egyptians lived according to maat – a concept that implies proper balance, justice and order in the world. To ensure order in society, laws (hepu) were created and decrees (wedju) announced.

• Ancient Egypt: An introduction - © Copyright the University of Oxford and contributors.

We all know about Google's new 20 testers policy where developers need to test their apps with 20 testers for 14 days before publishing new apps into Google Play.
Starting from May, production access to many developers are getting declined even after 14 days and they are getting the below mails
Which means we need to start closed testing all over again with 20 testers for 14 days. Initially I thought it might be because of bad testing practices. But when I saw the reddit posts, I realized irrespective of how developers got testers, most of them are facing this issue.

How to Solve this Issue ?

There is no exact way on how to solve this, but most of the developers who followed the below 2 steps got their access to production in the first try itself.

• After 7-10 days of closed testing, publish a new closed testing release with some changes (Don't worry closed testing won't start from day 1 again, it will not affect closed testing counter.

...

• The production access form plays the most important role. You have to fill at least 200-250 words for each question. I wrote the sample answers to those questions,, check the below post

https://www.reddit.com/TestersCommunity/comments/1d3w5h2/how_to_fill_production_access_form_after_14_days/

So, I’ve recently stepped into a managing partner role in a small general practice firm. Im a little bit of a unicorn in that I’m only three years licensed, but I had a very strong resume early on, and exploded with client generation by leaning heavily into the Vietnamese community as a bilingual (read and write) attorney.
I’ve been with my current firm for a little over two years, during which I’ve brought in over 250 clients, and after an initial three months, I began resolving cases with little to no oversight and extremely happy clients with good results. My strengths are in my client management and negotiation skills. I can settle nearly any case in a way that my clients are satisfied with the results because I set expectations and clearly communicate costs. I was also our top biller for the entire past two years on top of creating 90% of my own work.
In the last year, I basically pulled the firm out of a nosedive by finding and bringing on our last four associates and two paralegals. All hires have been fantastic, and we did record revenue last month. It’s into this backdrop that I’ve recently been thrust into the managing partner role, and looking for some comparisons as to what expenses and revenues should look like for a firm our size.
Our firm has been around for 25 years. There are two other partners, but one is looking into becoming a judge, and the other is nearing retirement. I basically have full control. The other two partners are heavily scaling back their involvement and cost the firm very little, but are invested in making sure I succeed because this is their baby.
We have 5 associates, 2 paralegals, a receptionist and a newly promoted case manager. We did about 150k a month in revenue before, but after I stepped in we’ve been averaging 200k per month. This is primarily because I spent the last year changing our collections practices, which include filtering our problem cases and always insisting on retainers. We went from low 50% collections to over 85%, and getting better.
Our practice areas are focused around general civil lit (personal injury, employment, and business lit), family law, estate planning, and business transactions. I’ve recently started building our immigration department because I have a paralegal with 15 years of experience, and a direct connect to Vietnam and access to a huge market. I guess it would be great to get some perspective on what kind of revenue a firm like ours should be producing, along with the average monthly expenses.
I’m very familiar with the golden rule (3x salary for attorneys) but I’m currently in the process of cutting expenses, but thinking about hiring one more associate. Our stream of work is solid for the next three months, and likely more. It would be great to get others’ opinions and experience.

I am a 27F, 5’2”, 116lb, non smoker. I take spironolactone (PCOS) and levothyroxine (hypothyroidism). My partner (27M, 5’11”, 168lb, non smoker, no known health issues or medications) tested positive for gonorrhea. We have exclusive for almost a decade. Any possible answers other than the obvious?
I’ll start by saying I know that the odds of it being something other than infidelity are statistically very low, but is there another reason he could have had a positive test?
We got a new primary care doctor and his urinalysis came back positive for gonorrhea. I went the week before and also had a urinalysis and the doctor had nothing of note for me, so I assume that meant mine was clean? I’m going to call in the morning and confirm they indeed did an STI panel, but the doctor did every other test under the sun so I would be surprised if that wasn’t part of it.
My partner’s last test was 2 years ago, clean. I believe my last test before this was at my gynecologist appointment in December, but not entirely sure. We have been exclusive for almost a decade so I really wasn’t thinking about STIs and didn’t think to ask. I’ve never had a positive STI result.
It just doesn’t make sense for cheating to be the cause. Could it have been latent in one of our systems for a while? Could we have had false negatives in the past? I personally haven’t had any partners outside of the relationship, and I believe him when he says he hasn’t either. We’re generally together most of the day (other than days I have to work at the office- he is 100% WFH) so opportunities for extramarital affairs are pretty limited. We have a very calm, happy, and trusting relationship- we’re both fairly introverted so we usually just hang out with each other all day.
Thank you in advance for any insights you might have! Since he tested positive I’m going to go back to the doctor anyway to be treated, especially since we have been intimate since that sample was collected.

Currently an SA after finishing first year of law school. Firm requires me to be in good academic standing. I’m still in good standing but did suffer a 0.2 drop, and GPA wasn’t super competitive to begin with.