Happy Monday, Barkada --

The PSE lost 10 points to 6619 ▼0.1%

Today is MB's 5th birthday!
I'm not really a big celebrations guy, so I'm not sure how to mark the occasion, except to say that I'm thankful for your continued readership and for the community of great people that has grown up around the newsletter as the days turned into weeks, turned into months, and turned into years.
Want to see something crazy? Here's MB's very first episode.
For those who have been there from the beginning, thank you for guiding MB's development through all of my weird experiments over the years. Your comments, support, and willingness to help always leave me speechless.
For those who support MB on Patreon now and in the past, your generosity in paying for something that you receive for free is humbling. Your support has helped me build scripts, host my site, and pay for help.
For those who contribute to MB directly, like Jewel, and to all of my partners, Mike Tan of Vini.com, Ely Paclibar (Your REIT Buddy), and Investagrams, thank you for working with me every morning to stitch this newsletter together. It wouldn't be the same without you.
Today is something of a long episode, but I hope you'll indulge me on MB's birthday because I really hope that you'll like the segment about the team of traders that I've sponsored to enter the Trading Cup 2024 competition, and the review of Alternergy's STAR Investor Day presentation.
Hope you like it!

▌In today's MB:

• PSE suspends PNX, C, and INFRA
• Zobels sell remaining MWC holdings
• TC24: Introducing MB's Trading Cup 2024 team!
  • The Trading Cup competition
  • Meet Matthew, Jenny, and Sef
  • Good luck team!
• Alternergy's first public Q&A
  • Its growth strategy
  • Outlook of renewables market
  • Why it loves wind
  • When dividends?

▌Daily meme Subscribe (it's free) Today's email

▌Today's sponsor: DoubleDragon

▌Main stories covered:

• [UPDATE] PNX, C, and INFRA suspended for failure to submit Annual Reports... The PSE issued suspensions to three companies [link] prior to the open of trade on Friday morning for failure to submit FY23 Annual Reports. The three companies suspended are Phoenix Petroleum [PNX 4.17 ▼0.2%; 0% avgVol], Chelsea Logistics [C 1.30 ▲4.0%; 0% avgVol], and Philippine Infradev [INFRA 0.53 ▲1.9%; 0% avgVol]. AgriNurture [ANI 0.62 ▲8.8%; 305% avgVol] narrowly avoided suspension by submitting its Annual Report 38 minutes before the PSE’s suspension deadline. The ANI FY23 Annual Report disclosure erroneously reports a net income improvement of 1560% to ₱146 million, instead of a ₱146 million net loss, perhaps this oversight comes from a behind-the-scenes race to submit before the deadline.
  
  • MB: I’m married to an accountant who did the auditing grind for years, so I know that it’s not easy to put these reports together; they’re complex and knock-ons from problems in any of the subsidiaries can cause problems that ripple up the chain and back down. That being said, producing these annual reports is something of a bare-minimum condition of public corporate life. Every management group rides its accounting department and its auditing team into the dirt to get its quarterly and annual reports out on time. I don’t have any inside knowledge into why PNX, C, and INFRA are in this position, but I listen to the silence from these management groups. Good teams communicate with their minority shareholders in times of uncertainty, and a trading suspension is a time of great uncertainty for retail investors.
• [NEWS] **Ayala Corp sells remains of its MWC holdings to Enrique Razon for ₱14.5-B... Ayala Corp [AC 620.00 ▲1.3%; 131% avgVol] [link] disclosed that its subsidiaries, Michigan Holdings and Philwater Holdings, would sell their combined holdings in Manila Water Company [MWC 26.60 ▼1.5%; 123% avgVol] to Trident Water Company Holdings (TWC), which is owned by MWC’s current owner, Enrique Razon. The combined value of the two sales to TWC is ₱14.5 billion. The block of shares coming to TWC through Michigan Holdings was already processed and paid-for (~₱12.9 billion), and the remaining ₱1.6 billion worth of shares from Philwater Holdings will be purchased in installments over the next five years. AC confirmed that it will have no post-transaction common share interest in MWC, and that its voting stake will be “nil”.
  
  • MB: In a weird way, the transfer of ownership and control of MWC from the Zobel Family to the Razon Family is one of the only lasting “achievements” of the Duterte administration. I put “achievements” in quotation marks because it’s not clear how the President’s overreach into the public markets benefitted anyone other than the obvious (MWC’s current owner). As longtime readers of MB will know I have a deep respect for Mr. Razon’s business acumen and operational quality, but I don’t know that MWC customers have necessarily felt any change as a result of this transfer, and I don’t know that minority shareholders have felt any change either. So maybe it was just Mr. Razon in the right place at the right time while Duterte rode the media waves of threatening the Zobels with death and dismemberment? Yeah, it was a weird time.
• [TC24] Introducing MB’s Trading Cup 2024 team!...Merkado Barkada** is sponsoring a team of three traders to compete in Trading Cup 2024 hosted by Investa, where hundreds of traders will be competing for up to ₱640k in total prizes based on their trading performance with ₱300k in virtual currency across the PSE, US markets, and crypto markets. This is a long competition (it runs from April 22 through July 26), so we will follow the members of Team MB throughout the contest to check in on what’s working, what’s not working, and what it’s like on the front-lines of the country’s largest trading tournament. Let’s meet the team!
  
  • “Hi I’m Matthew. I’m a project manager in network engineering in the telecommjnications industry and an agency leader in one of the top global brands in insurance. I have been trading since 2016. Though I like momentum trading, I found more success in position trading because it is less volatile since I can only check my open positions during my free time.” Matthew is 37 and lives in Paranaque. Trading experience: PSE (8 years), US (1 year), CRYPTO (1 year).*
  • “Hi I'm Jennelyn. I'm a Civil Engineer by profession in a government organization. I started trading back in 2020 for a year. I was reckless back then, but I've learned a lot, I'd say. I stopped trading in 2021 to focus on my career and I shifted my trading journey to learning first. Now with the Trading Cup I've found another motivation to push through. I tried day trading, and it was really frustrating and draining, so this time I'm doing swing trading through price action and volume.
  • “My name is Sef. I'm currently in college studying Management. I've been mostly self-taught but over the years I took a lot of learnings from other people. I've tried a lot of strategies but most of the time I'm a swing trader. So, I try to look for strong catalysts and take positions within times of consolidations. My implementation of it during the competition hasn't been perfect, partly due to finals week. But I trust in the process. I've been trading in the PSE for 5 years now. I only started trading the US markets and Crypto, recently. I think my current performance in the competition is reflective of my experience within the three markets. [PSE: +17.4%, CRYPTO: +4.2%, US: -11.5%]. We still have a few months to go and it's still anyone's game. A lot of the top leaderboard right now is primarily driven by 1 or 2 positions that no one saw coming, I think you can guess which stocks I'm referring to.
    • MB: Welcome to the team, Matthew, Jenny, and Sef! My goal in founding Team MB is to give readers a little insight into the thought processes behind the winning and losing trades of each team member. We have a diverse group across age, background, experience, and trading style, so I think we’ll get some interesting perspectives on the markets as the weeks go by before the July 26 finale. The team members will get to keep 100% of any prizes that they win, along with a monthly stipend from Merkado Barkada for all the coffee/snacks needed to keep focus on all three markets simultaneously. Good luck, team!
• [NEWS] Alternergy conducts first public Q&A since IPO... Alternergy [ALTER 0.70 ▲1.4%; 159% avgVol] presented its Q1 results on Wednesday as part of the PSE’s STAR Investor Day event, and MB was there to document its first public Q&A with institutional and retail investors since its IPO over a year ago. For me, the most interesting component of any STAR presentation is the Q&A, because it’s where we get the chance to hear the management team talk outside of the the cold forensics of the financial statements to address the hope, fear, optimism, and pessisim of the average investor.
  
  • On enhancing shareholder value: The ALTER team said that it’s focus is on controlling what it can control, and that as a developer, it does everything that it can to complete projects “within the timeline and committed budget”, increase its pipeline, and build good relationships with stakeholders.
  • On its growth strategy: ALTER said that its “DNA is a developer”, and therefore its “preference is brownfield development” as opposed to acquisitions. (MB note: “Brownfield” means development on land that has been previously used for some other purpose. “Greenfield” would be development on untouched land.) The management team said that it is open to being “opportunistic” with acquisitions, but that its overall focus is on “looking for projects from the ground and building them toward completion.”
  • On outlook of renewables market: “The power industry is really at the point where there is a sustained pressure towards a price increase.” The ALTER team said that there’s a shortage of power supply, and what existing supply there is will come under pressure as power plants age or weather phenomena disrupt operations. ALTER said that it’s strategy is to simply grow its portfolio into this market gap, especially over the next two years.
  • On wind vs solar: The ALTER team was asked whether it was intentional to be “more exposed to wind rather than solar”, and ALTER responded by saying that while both wind and solar are scalable, they “like wind” because it generates more electricity per installed capacity. As the ALTER team put it: “For instance, if we build a 50 MW solar, you’ll only need a 25 MW wind project to match the amount of energy that we will be generating.” ALTER said that wind is also less intensive in terms of land use to generate the same amount of energy, and that its analysis shows that wind projects generate more cash flow than solar projects.
  • On starting to distribute dividends: *One question asked when ALTER would start paying dividends, and the ALTER team responded (after a laugh) that it’s “all about resource allocation”. ALTER said that at this stage, it’s a growth company, and that it would like to use its resources to build a “sizeable portfolio over the medium term” with the goal of “increasing shareholder value.” ALTER said that once it has achieved that goal, “dividend payments would not be far behind.
    • MB:Kudos to any management team that takes questions from the public. It’s not easy to be this communicative and transparent, but as a long-term investor, this kind of insight into the management team’s thinking and analysis of their own data and the market as a whole is important. If your trading style is technical, ALTER’s analysis of wind versus solar isn’t going to matter to you at all, but if your thesis is based on bets in the power generation sector, that response might trigger some research that could be helpful. Overall I’d say that the ALTER team did very well. It was clear that they were nervous, but over time I’m sure the team will become more comfortable with answering the questions and interacting with the investing community in such a person-to-person way. Well done, ALTER!

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Gerling& Alexander PachApronto Operacional-EB70-CI-11.404 Caderno de Instrução de Aprestamento e Apronto Operacional-EB-Guia do Aluno Comanf-Marinha do Brasil-Orientação Cioesp - EB-Orientação Cigs - EB-Orientação Cam(Curso Avançado de Montanhismo) - EB-Orientação PQD - EBExplosivos-C 5-37 Minas e Armadilhas-EB-FM 5-25 Explosives & Demolitions-U.S.Army-TM 31-210 Improvised Munitions Handbook-U.S.Army-TM 9-1910 Military Explosives-US Army-TM 9-1300-214 Military Explosives-US Army-The Anarchist Cookbook-William Powell-Guerilla Arsenal- David Harber-The Anarchist Arsenal-David Harber-The Advanced Anarchist Arsenal-David Harber-The Preparatory Manual of Explosives-Jared B.Ledgard-Kitchen Improvised Fertilizer Explosives-Tim Lewis-Homemade Semtex-Seymour Lecker-Science of Revolutionary Warfare-Johann Most-The Explosives Course-Abu Khabab al-Masri(Midhat Mursi)-Ragnar’s Homemade Detonators-Ragnar BensonMergulho-B-GL-361-007/FP-001 Combat Diving-National Defense Canada-MANUAL DE NATAÇÃO EsEFEx-EB-U.S. Navy Diving Manual SS521-AG-PRO-010-MANUAL DE OPERAÇÕES DE MERGULHO-CBMESP-A Guide to Public Safety Diving-North Carolina PSD Standards-Manual Operacional de Bombeiros-CBMGO-FM 3-05.212 Special Forces Waterborne Operations-US Army-MULTI-SERVICE TACTICS, TECHNIQUES,AND PROCEDURES FORMILITARY DIVING OPERATIONS-Headquarters of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, andCoast Guard USParaquedismo-CADERNO DE INSTRUÇÃO DE TREINAMENTO E TÉCNICA BÁSICA DO PARAQUEDISTA MILITAR EB70-CI-11.001 -EB-MANUAL TÉCNICO DO MESTRE DE SALTO PARAQUEDISTA-EB-Manual Técnico de Salto Livre (EB60-MT-34.405)-EBEquitação-Manual Técnico Equitação (EB60- MT-26.401)-EB-Manual Equitação da Federação Paulista de HipismoOperações-M016 Manual Tecnica Esqui-Ejército de Tierra(Espanha)-Ci9011 Assalto Aeromóvel e Infiltração aeromóvel-EB-Cold Region Operations ATTP 3-97.11/MCRP 3-35.1D (FM 31-70 and FM 31-71)-US Army-MOUNTAIN OPERATIONS FM 3-97.6 (90-6)-US Army-DESERT OPERATIONS-FM 90-3/FMFM 7-27-US Army-Jungle Operations-FM 90-5-US Army-MILITARY MOUNTAINEERING FM 3-97.61(TC 90-6-1)-US ArmyEspionagem-CIA-Manual Oficial truques e espionagem-H.Keith Melton-Techiques of the professional pickpocket-Wayne B.Yeager-Curso de Introdução à Atividade de Inteligência – CIAI-CGISistemas de armasA.Aeronaves-Art of the kill-Pete Bonanni-Natops Flight Manual F16-Natops Flight Manual F18-Natops Flight Manual F14-FLIGHT MANUAL EuroFighter v1-TM 1-1520-251-10 HELICOPTER, ATTACK,AH-64D LONGBOW APACHE-DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY USB.Submarinos-Conocimientos submarinos S-70-Armada EspañolaC.Barcos-Manual de Marinero y del Soldado de infantería de Marina-Armada Española-Manual de policiamento fluvial-PPMPA (Pará)D.Cavalaria-IP 17-82 - A VIATURA BLINDADA DE COMBATE - CARRO DE COMBATE LEOPARD 1 A1-EB-Manual M113-Exército PortuguêsE.Artilharia-SERVIÇO DA PEÇA DO OBUSEIRO 155 mm M109 A3-EBRocketry-Fundamentals of Guided Missiles-S. R. Mohan-AFM 52-31 Guided Missile Fundamentals-Department of the Air Force-Advances in Missile Guidance, Control, and EstimationGunsmithing-Gunsmithing at Home Lock Stock & Barrel- John E.Traister-Building Firearms-Harold HoffmanArmas Nucleares-U.S. Nuclear Weapons - The Secret History Hardcover-Chuck Hansen-Swords of Armageddon - Chuck Hansen-Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb-Richard Rhodes-The Making of the Atomic Bomb-Richard Rhodes-Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters- James MahaffeyEngenharia Naval-SNAME Ship Design & Construction-Engineering Economics and Ship Design - BuxtonEstratégia militar-Field Manual of Military Operations (FM 3–0)-United States Army-Manual de Campanha C 124-1 - Estratégia-EB-As grandes estratégias - John Lewis GaddisCriminalística-Techniques of Crime Scene investigation-Barry A.J Fisher-Procedimento operacional padrão:Perícia Criminal-Ministério da Justiça BR-Manual de orientação de quesitos da perícia criminal-DPF-Introduction to Criminalistics-Barry A.J Fisher,William J.Tilstone e Catherine Woytowicz-Fundamentals of forensic science- Max M. 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A História Secreta do PCC-Marcio Sergio Christino & Claudio Tognolli-Quatrocentos Contra um (uma Historia do Comando Vermelho)- William da Silva LimaFicção-Shibumi-Trevanian-Tom Clancy - A Caçada ao Outubro Vermelho-Tom Clancy - A Soma de Todos os Medos-Tom Clancy Morto ou Vivo-Scarpetta - Patricia Cornwell-Dexter - Design de um Assassino - Jeff Lindsay-Querido e Devotado Dexter - Jeff Lindsay-Duplo Dexter - Jeff LindsayDocumentários-Guerreiro Mais Mortal-Sniper: Deadliest Missions(Sniper:Atiradores de Elite (BR))-Generais em guerra-National Geographic-SAS Survival Secrets-Arma Humana (Human Weapon)-The History Channel-Por Dentro do Mossad-Duki Dror-Terrorismo atentados frustrados - Netflix-Medalha de honra-Netflix-The secrets of seal team six(Secretos de los SEALS VI(espanhol))-COMBATES AÉREOS(Dogfights)-History Channel-Preparados para o fim do mundo -National Geographic-À Prova de Tudo(Man vs. Wild)-Bear Grylls-No Pior Dos Casos-Bear Grylls-A vida em um milhão de anos-NatGeoFilmes-Falcão Negro em Perigo-Ridley Scott-Até o Limite da Honra-Ridley Scott-13 Horas: Os Soldados Secretos de Benghazi-Michael Bay-Sniper Americano- Clint Eastwood-Rede de Mentiras-Ridley Scott-Rota Comando-Elias Junior-S.W.A.T. - Comando Especial-Clark Johnson-Tropa de Elite-José Padilha-A Hora Mais Escura-Kathryn Bigelow-44 Minutos-Yves Simoneau-Beasts of No Nation-Cary Fukunaga-Ameaça Terrorista-Gregor Jordan-Círculo de Fogo (Enemy at the Gates)-Missão Impossível(Saga)-A Identidade Bourne-Doug Liman-Colombiana-Olivier MegatonSéries-Band of Brothers-Phil Alden Robinson et al-White Collar-Jeff Eastin-Generation Kill- Iraque 40 dias de horror-Patrick Norris et al-Polícia 24h-Diego Guebel-Operação de Risco- Carla Albuquerque & Eduardo OliveiraGames-Arma 3-Insurgency-Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist-Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas-Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier-Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare-Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare-Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X-ACE COMBAT 7: SKIES UNKNOWN-Microsoft Flight Simulator-X-Plane 11-Ship Simulator Extremes-UBoat-World of Warships4-ArteSadismo-120 dias de sodoma-Justine-Marques de Sade-O orgasmo multiplo do homem-Sexo Tântrico - Alicia Gallotti-Dossiê do beijo5-CeticismoAteísmo-God The Failed Hypothesis- Victor J. 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Hello. Long story short, the owner of a small pizza shop I recently quit at has blocked me on Facebook. My mother owns the town community page on Facebook with 10k+ members. She has shown me when he posts in there because it’s always something like “sorry, no workers today” and since I was the one who staged the mass quit, we always laugh at it (he very much deserves it). Anyways, he made a new post talking about how they’ll be back up and running with new workers who care about the public in an attempt to bash us previous workers. I really wanted to say some smart ass remark, but he blocked me on my account. I made a new account, and had my mom let me into the page, but still, I can’t see his post. I thought, maybe Facebook knows it’s the ‘same’ account since I used the same number, so I made a new account using my mom’s number. Still, I can’t see anything from him in the page or on normal Facebook. What’s going on here? My only thought is an IP ban, but this guy is a 55 year old boomer who probably still has a landline, no way he knows how to do that sort of thing. I also thought, if it was an IP ban, how can my mom, from the same router, see his posts? I’m just super confused at this point. Thank you!

I'm 19 years old and from a third world country, turning 20 in August. I graduated our highschool equivalent in 22' back when I was 18, I wanted to be a doctor back then, med school starts right after highschool here unlike the US and you have to pass the mcat to get in, however the odds of getting into a public school are extremely slim cuz there are only 3000 seats for more than 400k students applying, most of them being very good at studies. I gave the exam 2 times, failed to make the cut by 1 or 2 points each time.
Now I started looking into other fields which would be good for me cuz I really didn't wanna waste another year for the med exams, I chose accounting since most of them are really respected in our country and earn good, also moving abroad is easier for them than other professions.
I started taking classes and honestly I love the subject, I'm doing good in classes, everything is going well. However the rapid developement in AI is really scaring me, everywhere I check the fields AI is supposed to replace, accounting is nearly always on the top, and I fear that when I'll enter the workforce, this profession will be obsolete. Our local accounting certification, requires us to work with a firm for 3.5 years after first 2 years into the degree(so I'll start the training next year after september), after the training we mostly work at Assistant Manager roles, both here and abroad.
Now I'm getting double minded, the mcat exam is in 4 months again, I could drop or freeze accounting to study for the exam again and I'm fairly confident I'll make it this time, but the problem is it'll take a long time for me to earn well as a doctor, 5 years of med school, 1 year of training where we're paid peanut(like 200 dollars which are not alot even here) after that most of us can't find residency spots because of our inferior healthcare system, those work without specializing earn literal peanuts, uber drivers make more than them, so most try to move abroad, where licensing exams cost alot of money, which I won't be able to afford and will have to work at uber driver wages to for 2-3 years before starting the procedure of moving abroad which will further take a year and I'll be starting my residency abroad at nearly 30.
So yes it is a shitty system but I'm only considering it because its better than working hard for so many years in a particular field and then getting laid off because my work is so inferior a machine could do it and we all know doctors aren't going anywhere.
So what should I do? Prepare for the med school exam again or continue studying accounting?

This literally just happened and everything was deleted before I could screenshot.
Mitchie @_misomelon, a finance and career content creator who just moved to NYC, posted a tiktok/reel yesterday where she went to try out Krystal Oh Nails. She regularly does things like this and asks her audience if they would pay x price for x service/product. This review of Krystal Oh Nails was pretty neutral. She mentioned that a lot of other Asian American CC’s go there and rave about it (most famously the Ha sisters and the Alexander sisters) so she was excited to try it out. She loved the ambiance of the place and the nail care her tech did but mentioned that she didn’t quite love the end product and for a price tag of $150 she was eager to see if the nails lasted 4 weeks or longer. Mitchie’s audience said $150 was too high but from what I saw, there was no backlash on the actual Krystal Oh Nail account so it’s not like this sparked a hate train towards the business.
Krystal Oh, the owner, responded on IG reels last night and harshly responded with, “Why are you lying?”. She then reported that she checked their records and Mitchie’s total came to about $102-$122 (she stated two different dollar amounts in the comments vs her TikTok she posted later on so I don’t actually know the real price Krystal thought Mitchie paid). Mitchie responded kindly and said it must have been a misunderstanding because Mitchie had proof that she paid $148- which made her round up to $150 in the video. Krystal Oh then posted on her personal TikTok account going after Mitchie and complained about how people do not respect these services and their prices. The comments were widely making fun of Mitchie and she ended up privating her video because she didn’t want people to come after her or the business and again, kindly said in her comments that running a business can get very personal so she completely understood where Krystal was coming from and that everything was just a misunderstanding.
Mitchie ended up making a response video though to clear her name because people were literally making fun of her for taking down the video. It was a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. She shows very clearly in her transactions that she was charged $148 dollars. Once before the appointment as a deposit and then twice on the day of the appointment. It looked like she was charged the deposit twice on accident. Which makes it a complete and total MISUNDERSTANDING.
She then goes on to talk about how she has been both a paying customer and a content creator receiving a service in exchange for exposure and the difference in how you’re treated when you’re just a paying customer sucks. She insinuated that these famous content creators making videos with Krystal Oh are treated nicely because of their status but anyone else gets the shit end of the stick and it’s unfair. Period!
So clearly, after Mitchie’s video a number of people were asking Krystal to publicly apologize and refund Mitchie the extra deposit she was charged. Krystal then makes a post on her personal TikTok AGAIN showing Mitchie’s PERSONAL PHONE NUMBER AND EMAIL and their private conversation they had about the issue. She completely doxxed Mitchie. When this was brought to her attention she deleted all of the videos on the matter and Mitchie did as well. In Mitchie’s comments on her most recent video she states that she was doxxed over a misunderstanding and deleted her videos to protect her peace and safety. And what does Krystal Oh do on her main page during this? She posts a video with Erica Ha to hopefully not bring attention to the hot mess that just transpired on her personal page.
Safe to say I’m concerned at the behavior Krystal displayed. A Quick Look at her Google reviews shows this ain’t her first time being rude to customers who genuinely meant well. The NYC Nail Salon scene sounds horrid.

Participating in governance is crucial for Polkadot for several reasons:

1. Decentralization: Polkadot's governance system is designed to be decentralized, meaning that it's not controlled by a single entity or a small group of entities. Instead, all DOT holders can participate in governance, making decisions about the network's future. This ensures that the network remains fair and democratic.
   
2. Network Evolution: Through governance, DOT holders can propose and vote on changes to the network, such as updates to the protocol or the addition of new features. This allows the network to evolve and adapt over time in response to the needs and desires of its users.
   
3. Security and Stability: Active participation in governance helps maintain the security and stability of the network. Validators and nominators play a crucial role in adding new blocks to the Relay Chain and ensuring compliance with consensus algorithms.
   
4. Community Engagement: Participating in governance encourages community engagement and fosters a sense of ownership among DOT holders. It allows them to have a say in the direction and evolution of the network.
   
5. Transparency and Accountability: On-chain governance ensures transparency and accountability, as all proposals and votes are recorded on the blockchain and can be publicly audited.
   

If you are not currently active in governance please consider delegating your voting power to somebody who's views align with your own.
I personally delegate my voting power to Paradox: 15D2JM548bqRuE45aDmeF2WqiKC56WtNnRmCxVSree9YKwVb
You can find the Delegation Dashboard here: https://delegation.polkadot.network/

These are OUR VALUES. 1.First and foremost, we are a society which creates and discusses SOLUTIONS TO RECOGNIZED ISSUES AND CHALLENGES. 2. If the organization or individual is not hurting anyone, not destructive to the environment and is not causing undo harm then we don't care. 3. We support Responsibile and verified Gun ownership. America's Founders gave the explicit right for citizens to bear arms. We know and have recognized the unconscionable pain guns can cause and the process is far too easy. We support background checks, registration and licenses. (We never heard someone registering a car then yell they're going to take my car!") 4. Immigration system is broken. We should absolutely fix it to allow the orderly immigration of as many people as possible. What? Estimates show the average Tax contribution of that group is in excess of $3400/ year. Look, we have unprecedented inflation, need workers and quite frankly could use the tax revenue. 5. Truth and accurate interpretation. Often there is one Truth but multiple perceptions of that truth. Honest discussion. 6. Abortion. The belief that our Citizens are perfectly capable of making this decision for themselves. 7. Support Term limits for all elected officials and hold those public servants accountable. Public Service is a privilege not a career. 8. Financial Responsibility is paramount. Stop the greed and celebrate those who excell with integrity.

I saw a post asking if social mobility is a myth in the UK and just wanted to give my 2c. It is coming up to my 9th year in London in a few months, I am 32.
I come from a small town in the North of England. It was a very poor upbringing, always strapped for cash and a father who had a bad gambling addiction and blew away our life savings of £200k-£300k. My Mum did her best working in retail but my father would blow her wages away too and leave us with unpaid bills and little food. He was a good man, just picked up a nasty addiction.
At 16, I was very grateul for the Labour Govt back then for giving me £30 a week education maintenance allowance to study A-levels. It allowed me to pay for books, food, driving lessons and a little fun. Back then you needed a household income of <£16k-18k to be eligible.
My goal was to graduate and make £50k-100k by the age of 27/28. I didn't have many role models in life and but I had one friend, who believed in me and told me to come to the public library with him one day. He was one of the smartest guys I knew and he pushed me hard until I got straight As in my A-levels.
From there I knew I enjoyed Maths and Economics and out of luck managed to get some experience at an investment bank ops team via an apprentiship programme that I read about in the newspaper. It didn't pay much (£16k) but I knew the brand and exposure I would I get would be invaluable later in life. I made sure most of the income went to my Mum so my brother wouldn’t wake up hungry looking for food, but my father took it and gambled most of it away.
After one year, I quit to go to University for a 4yr programme. I managed to get a number of internships in the summers which gave me some even more great brands on my CV and experience.
I learnt the lingo, talked the talk and walked the walk. Someone wise once told me fake it till you make it.
After Graduation, I moved to London. I came with about £2k in my bank account being a poor student. Sadly, the rental company wanted a 3 month deposit on rent, I was £1k short. My hands were trembling, I was stressed and depressed about how will I find an extra £1k, my parents didn’t have it and I didn’t want to ask friends or family. Luckily, I was able to call my bank and ask for an overdraft but it meant I would not have much left for food etc without my first paycheck coming in.
Almost 9yrs on within the financial field, it is easy to compare to others who make more or less…but you don’t know there story.
These days, my hands don’t tremble and I can afford the nicer things in life. I am not stressed or depressed by an unexpected cost or bill. I live life to the max and if you met me, you wouldn’t expect the hardships I went through. Life has been good and on the face you can just say it was luck but behind the luck there is a lot of hustle and grind.
This most recent tax year I made £400k, hoping for something closer to £450k-£500k this year. I am probably one in a million, but I don’t pay much attention to statistical probabilities on the chance of success, I just go do it.

Hello and welcome to TriMet, the subreddit dedicated to everything about the public transportation system in Portland, OR! Whether you're a daily commuter, a transit enthusiast, or someone with questions, this is the place for you.

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Hi, long story short - my grandmother ended up in the hospital ultimately because my aunt, “A” promised to pick her up for her birthday. Long story short she never did, so my grandmother got depressed, went outside & fell. This eventually ended up with her having to go to the hospital for a brain bleed.
I wanted to do something like I did everywhere, but my aunt “A” was stopping anyone from doing anything.
So, fast forward to last September - my grandmother has been in the hospital for 6 months already. I have 2 aunts, one uncle, and my mother.
My two aunts went behind everyone’s back and basically told the hospital to start hospice care. All my grandmother needed was a bit more time to get back to normal, but due to their decision - they began preparing her for death. It was so fast and she died not even two days later because the hospital stopped medications and such. These were not my grandmothers wishes. They wanted us to try everything.
My mother and I visited her 4-5 days a week, and my aunt “A” was barely there. So fast forward, I make a Mother’s Day post on Facebook of my mother and I at the cemetery. I had said how I grieve my grandmother and wish things could have been different. My aunt “A” must be feeling really guilty because she unfriended me, and unfriended me from my dead grandmothers account.
I’ll put the whole story in the comments, but basically - after she unfriended me I reached out to both my aunts privately because their decision really was eating me up. I didn’t receive any response. But, they were telling their friends what I told them. So - I posted a public status to really make it “public”.
My thing is, I’m willing to talk and settle things, and for us to be together as a family…but my aunts levels of immaturity and selfishness are crazy.

What if there was a short squeeze potential, would a company benefit from buying the swaps? If there is a potential for a short squeeze, a short squeeze occurs when a heavily shorted stock’s price begins to rise, forcing short sellers to buy back shares to cover their positions, which further drives up the stock price. In this context, a company buying a swap related to its own stock could benefit under certain conditions:

1. Potential Gains from a Rising Stock Price: If the company buys a swap where it stands to benefit from an increase in its stock price (e.g., it receives cash flows based on the stock price’s performance), the short squeeze could lead to significant gains. The rising stock price would enhance the value of the swap. 2. Strategic Positioning: The company could use the swap to strategically position itself to benefit from the anticipated short squeeze. This could provide additional capital or financial gains that can be used for other strategic initiatives. 3. Market Perception: If the market perceives the company’s involvement in a swap as a vote of confidence in its stock’s future performance, this could further fuel positive sentiment and contribute to the squeeze. However, this would need to be managed carefully to avoid any negative connotations or regulatory concerns. 4. Risk Management: The company would need to ensure it has a robust risk management strategy in place. Short squeezes can be unpredictable, and the company would need to be prepared for potential volatility and market reactions. 

However, there are significant risks and considerations:

1. Regulatory and Legal Risks: Engaging in activities that could be seen as attempting to influence a short squeeze can attract regulatory scrutiny. The company must ensure that its actions comply with all relevant securities laws and regulations to avoid accusations of market manipulation. 2. Market Perception and Ethics: The company must consider how its actions will be perceived by investors, regulators, and the public. Even if legal, the ethical implications of potentially benefiting from a short squeeze should be carefully evaluated. 3. Financial Risks: Short squeezes can be volatile and unpredictable. If the anticipated squeeze does not materialize or if market conditions change, the company could face significant financial losses. 4. Disclosure Requirements: The company would need to be transparent in its financial reporting and disclosures. This includes how the swap is accounted for and any potential impacts on the company’s financial statements. 

In summary, while there is potential for a company to benefit from buying a swap in the context of a short squeeze, it must navigate the associated risks and regulatory considerations carefully. Consulting with legal, financial, and compliance advisors is essential to ensure that any such strategy is sound and compliant with all relevant laws and regulations.

So far Govt could catch Rs.8889.84 cores of public money during elections from various actors in India ment for distribution for buying Votes from innocent not well educated people.Govt should set a side and spend and account this money for public cause like Water supply, Sanitation, Roads and Electricity.Politicians should not be allowed to come close to this funds.These funds belong to Indian Public.

So far Govt could catch Rs.8889.84 cores of public money during elections from various actors in India ment for distribution for buying Votes from innocent not well educated people.Govt should set a side and spend and account this money for public cause like Water supply, Sanitation, Roads and Electricity.Politicians should not be allowed to come close to this funds.These funds belong to Indian Public.

I used to teach fitness classes up until last week. I have always been a good employee, I showed up early, I left late, I attended all of the unpaid trainings and meetings and was an enthusiastic employee. I thought I was pretty well regarded. This was a side part time job for me and not my primary form of income.
But I began to notice some things with management that made me uncomfortable. The company group chat became a dumping ground for announcing whenever someone screwed up. My phone would go off from 4am-10pm daily with messages. The required social media posting changed from 3x a week to nearly 3x per day. We started being told that if we didn’t show up for “optional” unpaid trainings that we wouldn’t be able to teach those specific classes even though the training courses were available online to do on our own time.
Then I had an incident where I client was let into my class a few minutes late, against company policy, and I received a call from my GM telling me it was unacceptable and couldn’t happen again. I’m not sure how I should have handled that situation with the late client as I was actively instructing in front of many people, but I took accountability and tried to move on. I thought the phone call was actually nice and while I knew what happened wasn’t okay I didn’t feel demeaned. About 5 minutes after that call the owner gets on the group chat with 40 other employees and calls out what happened, making it very clear I’m in BIG trouble. Written up, will be terminated if it happens again. The following morning I’m contacted by my direct managers and written up for this incident. At this point I’m just defeated, I don’t know how I was the one in the wrong but they were clearly out to make an example out of me. The following day the managers reach out and tell me they are taking one of my weekly classes away and giving it to another instructor.
Three days after this the owner of the company posts camera footage of her 7 year old son bursting into a class and causing a huge ruckus. She said things like “isn’t this so cute” and praises the instructor that was teaching for how well she handled that situation. The instructor teaching was my direct manager that JUST wrote me up.
At this point I’m just calming down from getting in trouble and trying to move on, but seeing the same thing happen and the reaction by and with management being completely the opposite set me off.
It really ripped this rose colored filter off my face about where I was working and I just kept getting more and more upset as time went on. I did not speak to management about how upset I was, and I own that I likely should have.
But I decided I was going to quit. For a side gig the pressure was too high, the unpaid commitment was too much, and the way they handle discipline was too harsh for me. I taught one more class and texted the management in a group chat letting them know I had taught my last class and I was done. Took my personal property out of the studio and put my phone on do not disturb for the first time in a year. Went home and played volleyball with my kid.
Now the owner is calling me telling me she’s baffled and doesn’t understand why I would leave and the GM is trying to call me too. Days later.
I don’t feel particularly proud about the way I left, but I also don’t feel like I acted in a way that was inappropriate to their style of management. I’m self employed and have managed people for 15 years, my business has had no turnover for 3 years! I can recognize good or bad management and I know how I would feel if an employee would do this to me, but I also know that I haven’t created an environment where my employees would feel they need to.
So Reddit, AITA? Should I have given notice or better reasoning or a phone call?
TLDR: I got written up at a job that was increasingly demanding of my time, peace and expected a ton of unpaid labor from me for a situation I had zero control over. Then publicly called out in front of my peers and punished by losing a class, therefore income. I quit with no notice over a group text.

Reasonable is a subjective term...
Warning: Long and insane rant incoming.

Preface

I’ve been spending way too much time responding to individual comments recently, so I decided to put all my thoughts into one post.
I’ll start by getting it out of the way that I’m not a racist or sexist. I’m a Japanese American man who happens to think Adewale and Aveline are among the coolest protagonists in AC and has no issues with an African, Indian, Korean, etc. protagonist, man or woman, in any setting where they make sense. (More on the making sense part later.)
Kassandra is also one of my favorites, but while she and Eivor were better than nothing, they were both essentially just female skins. Their stories should’ve acknowledged their gender in some way imo, and I’ve argued way more than I should’ve with people who pulled the historical accuracy card on them.
I agree that some of the people who complain about Yasuke sound like racists, but I think you can legitimately object to his being a co-star without racism being involved. (I’m also slowly coming around to accepting Yasuke.)
I also realize that I shouldn’t judge the game too harshly yet, as it hasn’t been released yet... But we do have the trailer.
With that out of the way, as an Asian male and longtime fan of the series, I’m disappointed that they squandered the perfect opportunity to have a positive/cool depiction of a Japanese male in the Japanese and first East Asian entry in one of the most popular series in the world given the decades-long history of western media’s marginalizing and demeaning Asian men. I mention AC’s popularity to point out the potential it has to positively influence a wide audience.
I'll respond to most of justifications I've seen for Yasuke as a protagonist in an AC game set in Japan one by one for easier reading.

“Yasuke is a better audience surrogate...”

This is a weak excuse. No one has ever complained about this, because the series has always had the perfect surrogate in the form of the modern-day protagonist.
And let’s face it, an info dump is an info dump. No one wants to hear extended explanations on the finer points of Japanese society, no matter who it’s conveyed to. The database can handle the deeper stuff, and any info necessary for the player could’ve just as easily been explained to a slightly unaccustomed Japanese rookie samurai.
“Better audience surrogate” is a solution to a problem that didn’t exist.

"But Naoe is Japanese...”

This justification falls flat on me, because the problems have always been different between Asian men and woman in western media. Portrayals of Asian women used to focus on exotic sexualization, but because of that, they got comparatively more screen-time than their male counterparts.
The Naoe defense also ignores that fact that we could've had both a Japanese female AND male protagonist if Ubisoft followed their most recent 4-game (if you count Origins) track record of male and female protagonists that are both of their setting. It just doesn’t sit right with me that they decided to change this formula among others with the first East Asian setting.

“But people didn’t complain about Nioh’s white protag...”

This accusation falls flat on me too, because Nioh is not a good comparison. It’s a straight-up fantasy game that focuses exclusively on fighting supernatural enemies. It doesn’t pretend to have an ounce of historical accuracy or realism.
It was also made by a Japanese company that has a track record of including Japanese protagonists. That track record gives them some leeway to change things up without being accused of whitewashing Asian characters.

"But Yasuke is a real part of Japan's history..."

He's a footnote in Japan's history. If we're being honest, the only reason we even know about him is because he was black in a time when there were almost no black people and was a retainer for Nobunaga. Nothing in his historical record mentions him doing anything else of much significance, most likely because there was very little he could do in his position. It's not racist to acknowledge this.
Again, as a longtime Japanese American fan of the series, I'm happy that AC Japan is finally here but disappointed that Ubi decided to inflate a small part of "Japan's" history and slap him on the cover as one of its representatives. I would feel the same (worse actually) if it was William Adams there.
I'd also feel the same if a hypothetical white protagonist who was a footnote in an African nation's history took the place of a fictional African protagonist. I think most people would feel the same too, and the uproar would surely be greater.

"But Yasuke WAS an actual samurai..."

I think the debate about whether he was or wasn't a "samurai" is largely irrelevant and completely misses the point. I agree that he was a "samurai," but historical records also make it sound like he was Nobunaga's favored trophy pet (if we're being completely honest). (The preceding sentence got me permanently banned for "racism" on the main AC subreddit, but I don't think it's racist to acknowledge racism, even the overt form it took in the past.) It's entirely possible (and likely) that he was made an honorary "samurai" for that reason alone. Because "samurai" is technically just a title and privileged position.
The real question is, "Did Yasuke fit the classic image of a badass armored warrior or robed ronin most people imagine (and that appeared in the trailer) when they think 'samurai'?"
The Japanese (especially in the past) actually use a different word when they're being specific about warriors fitting that image, and it's "bushi" (as in "bushido" or "way of the warrior"). That word is conspicuously missing from Yasuke's historical record. There's probably a reason for that.

"But Yasuke's story deserves to be told..."

Similar to the badass warrior aspect, nothing in the historical record specifically mentions that he learned the language or integrated into the culture particularly well, so any portrayal of that sort is wishful appropriation at best imo.
At that point, are you really telling his story? Is there value in promoting fanciful conjecture that is based on essentially nothing? Obviously, there’s a monetary incentive for Ubi to capitalize on the popular trend of farfetched depictions of Yasuke, but is that it?
It’s a given that the real Yasuke probably lived a fascinating life, but Ubi will likely gloss over the actual struggles he faced as a complete outsider in a frankly very racist time and place. It almost seems disrespectful to attribute all sorts of things that probably weren’t true just to spice things up for a video game. (And yes, I think Ubi should've included at least some examples of the struggles Kassandra and Eivor would've surely faced, but at least they were made up people.)

“Go play Ghost of Tsushima...”

These people are probably the worst. Honestly, I think Ubi is also guilty of agreeing with the underlying sentiment in this line of thinking. Contrary to others, I think Yasuke was less of a “woke” diversity decision and more of a “GoT already did a Japanese guy” decision.
I think that borders on racism when you consider that that’s never a concern when it’s the umpteenth white protagonist in a medieval European setting (or any setting). It implies that Asian characters are just too similar to each other to be marketable too close to each other.
But they’re only similar to each other in western-made media because western writers cling to tired tropes like honor and stoicism. The perpetuation of such stereotypes has an impact. I’ve seen people here claim that it’s a fact that Japanese people are uniquely less capable of resisting societal constrictions, hence the choice of Yasuke.
Another implied that historical codes of honor are things that most Japanese people still live by. They’re not, and that person obviously doesn’t know too many Japanese people and probably got their misconception from one-sided media portrayals.
Just like the codes of chivalry for European knights, the codes of Japanese honor were simply the ideals of the people that wrote them, who were themselves just a small subset of their population. It’s impossible to think that all or even most of the people back then actually abided by them, samurai or not.
And I'm a fan of the AC series. I'm not interested in playing GoT.

Historical accuracy vs believability

While there are definitely significant historical accuracy issues with that portrayal of Yasuke, they’re comparatively minor next to the replacement issue in my mind. Historical accuracy is really only an issue for me in the context of a more general believability issue.
Why would anyone, Assassin or Templar, choose the only black person in Japan as their secret agent in the field? Firsthand accounts describe crowds of onlookers offering money to catch a glimpse of him wherever he went.
An extremely-conspicuous total-outsider is simply the least ideal protagonist in a series about remaining inconspicuous while murdering dozens of people. Previous protagonists could fully navigate their environments because they were a part of them. Knowing their lands, languages, peoples, and cultures and fitting in with them, I can believe that they successfully moved through them while keeping their actions (and names) hidden from the pages of history.
I can even buy that Kassandra and Eivor existed despite “historical accuracy.” Because half the population of any group of people is women, the two could conceivably blend in and be forgotten imo, especially when you consider that they also lived MUCH further back in time. There's much more we don't know about that far back in history.
This might be another thing that's falsely construed as racist, but it's a fact that local populations don't take kindly to singularly-unique foreign outsiders cutting down their friends and loved ones, regardless of who their boss is. Yasuke would’ve been (in)famous and lived on in legends told for generations, even if the Templars tried to erase his historical record. He would've surely been seen and positively identified as Nobunaga’s famous black samurai by hundreds of witnesses as he did all the things the non-stealthy one of the two protagonists does.

“But Leonardo da Vinci didn’t actually help assassins build a hidden blade either...”

The central conceit of the AC series has always been playing with the idea of secret organizations, conspiracies, ancient beings, and sci-fi artifacts being involved with figures and events within the blank spaces of history. Yes, Yasuke’s blanks are big, but again, they wouldn’t be big if he was doing the things we saw in the trailer.
Any believability issues that previous AC games had are multiplied tenfold by Yasuke being a combination of real, black, and not an NPC in Sengoku Japan. It’s a substantial layer of unbelievability added on top of a base that already existed in previous games that did in fact claim some semblance of believability. Yasuke is just on another level, and while I think it’s fine to enjoy him in Shadows as pure fantasy, let’s not pretend he makes any sense. Which brings me to my main issue...

Representation and the replacement issue

Considering the nonsensical nature of Yasuke as a protagonist, it makes his taking the spot as the series’ first Asian male lead in a mainline game all the more off-putting to me. In the best-case scenario, Ubi is simply trying to capitalize on the popular cool black samurai trend as I mentioned. But they’re still doing it at the expense of an Asian male lead.
I admit that western media has gotten a lot better at representation, but it’s still a fairly recent thing and there’s still a long way to go. A recent hot-take of an IGN article made at least one correct claim that Asian representation shouldn’t be confined to ninjas and samurai.
But the solution to the problem isn’t to take away some of the only positive but one-sided representations we have. The solution is to broaden Asian representation to portray them as ordinary people with diverse appearances and personalities in all walks of life. Until that becomes a norm, Asians should be allowed to star as ninjas, samurai, kung fu masters, etc. as long as the depictions aren’t negative caricatures. In fact, they can be gateways to diversifying their portrayals.
If Ubi really wanted to differentiate itself from GoT’s Jin, they could’ve just given Shadows’ samurai a completely different personality instead of lazily changing his race. It’s about time a western dev broke away from the tired stoic warrior trope. "But this is Ubisoft... They're incapable of nuanced portrayals of minorities..." That's cop-out excuse imo.
No one game can reverse decades of marginalization and negative stereotypes, but individual movies, shows, public discourses, and yes, video games make up the collective whole of media, which has a massive impact on perceptions within a society. I believe individual representations make a difference, so I support increased diversity in every piece of media as long as it’s not at the expense of good writing and not at the expense of opportunities for other marginalized groups.

Conclusion

If you read everything this far, thank you. Again, I realize that the game isn’t even out yet and that I may be proven spectacularly wrong somehow. Either way, I can now focus my ire on the excessive monetization and live service BS that Shadows and the Infinity hub will surely have, and you all should too :) Or maybe I'll just touch grass.
NOTE: This post was initially removed from assassinscreed because "it covered a topic covered within the last 7 days." I've since been permanently banned from that subreddit for a separate reason mentioned in the post, so I've reposted here. I revised the original post by adding some points and making it more readable, but it's essentially the same from before.
Mods, please don't remove this or ban me. I spent a lot of time and thought on this, and I think it's respectful to everyone.

On social media, the movement to stop eating seed oils is actively promoted by various influencers, experts, and communities. Here are some key social media accounts and groups across different platforms that advocate for reducing or eliminating seed oils from the diet:

Instagram

1. @drcateshanahan - Dr. Cate Shanahan, author of "Deep Nutrition," shares insights on the dangers of seed oils.
2. @ninateicholz - Nina Teicholz, author of "The Big Fat Surprise," posts about the issues with seed oils and promotes traditional fats.
3. @carnivoremd2 - Dr. Paul Saladino, Carnivore MD, discusses the negative health impacts of seed oils.
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Twitter

1. @DrCateShanahan - Dr. Cate Shanahan tweets about the health risks of seed oils and promotes traditional fats.
2. @NinaTeicholz - Nina Teicholz shares articles and research on the dangers of seed oils.
3. @CarnivoreMD - Dr. Paul Saladino tweets about the negative effects of seed oils as part of his advocacy for an animal-based diet.
4. @ChrisKresser - Chris Kresser tweets about the problems with seed oils and offers alternatives.
5. @TedNaiman - Dr. Ted Naiman shares insights on low-carb, high-protein diets, and the issues with seed oils.

YouTube

1. Dr. Cate Shanahan
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2. Nina Teicholz
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3. Carnivore MD
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Facebook Groups

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Reddit

1. carnivore
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2. keto
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3. zerocarb
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5. nutrition
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These social media accounts and groups provide valuable information, support, and community engagement for individuals looking to reduce or eliminate seed oils from their diet. They cover a range of topics, including scientific research, personal experiences, and practical advice.
The community advocating for the reduction or elimination of seed oils from the diet is gaining traction, with various experts and influencers highlighting potential health benefits. Here are some key websites and resources related to this movement:

Key Websites for the "Stop Eating Seed Oils" Community

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2. Dr. Cate Shanahan's Website
   
   • Dr. Cate Shanahan, author of "Deep Nutrition," provides extensive information on the negative health impacts of seed oils and promotes traditional fats.
3. Nina Teicholz's Website
   
   • Author of "The Big Fat Surprise," Nina Teicholz discusses the problems with seed oils and advocates for a return to traditional fats.
4. Weston A. Price Foundation
   
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6. Dr. Jack Wolfson's Website
   
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7. Mark's Daily Apple
   
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8. Dr. Paul Saladino's Carnivore MD
   
   • Dr. Saladino discusses the negative health impacts of seed oils as part of his advocacy for the Carnivore and animal-based diets.
9. Healthful Pursuit
   
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10. Fat Head
    
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13. Dr. Jason Fung's Website
    
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14. Tucker Goodrich's Yelling Stop Blog
    
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15. Dr. Aseem Malhotra's Website
    
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16. Dr. Zoe Harcombe's Website
    
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These websites and resources offer valuable information and support for those looking to avoid seed oils and adopt healthier dietary fats. They cover a range of topics, including scientific research, personal stories, and practical advice.

EDIT AT TOP: The video I initially watched had music playing during the teleprompter glitch. I cant edit the title and I actually think the main points stand, so im leaving the original post and clarifying the V of mine I’d like C’d.
CMV: A strategy that says these 2 gaffes are the smoking gun of Trump’s dementia; including the amplification of these stories by vocally pro-Biden accounts (including the misleading adding of music); these things actually make the Biden camp look desperate and petty.
———- The NRA “pause” was clearly a staged (and cringe) part of his speech to play a sentimental dramatic sounding song so he could finish the rest of his stump speech on a theatrical note. (Edit: i retract this having seen clips where there was no music)
Referring to this and the little podium lean in Minnesota as these sort of “gotcha” moments showing his unfitness is beyond absurd.
Some people will say Trump acts like a wannabe dictator, and then he literally does an entry-level emotional manipulation tactic (rousing loud music during in a public speech) and they don’t even recognize it for what it is; worse they think he’s losing ground by doing it. (EDIT: retracted cause there was no music)
Its making me imagine some bank robbers who are locked in a standoff with the police, give themselves high fives and say “ha! Look they’re retreating” when the initial officers on the scene leave the front line to go to grab armor, flash grenades, and long guns from their trunks. (EDIT: retracted cause this refers to an intentional musical pause)
The idea that theres a sizeable contingent of people who don’t want this guy to be president that are getting encouragement from or think they’re assembling ammo against this guy’s mental capacity to be an executive based on these last two videos is so blinkered and naive. It literally dilutes whatever pool of evidence there is against Trump and makes pro-Biden folks look like pathetic schoolchildren (my Dad doesnt have obvious signs of cognitive decline, yOuRs DoEs!!!)
Please show me that this actually helps Biden, or that it makes the people pushing these stories look reliable, or that it is NOT lowest-common denominator mudslinging, or that its not pathetic and hypocritical, or that it actually undermines Trump with his base or undecides, or that these stories boost Biden’s prospect or make his campaign look good.
Change my view!!
Cmv bonus round! (Only if youve also addressed a major point above)
The idea that pro-Biden accounts are amplifying this feels like a Trump psyop. (Im speaking euphemistically). Or like when the Russians spoofed all those facebook groups before the 2016 election to make it seem like people were talking . It makes the real people sharing it look like morons and the ones excited about it look like moral hypocrites.

You never know the pull of a small town until you trade your entire life to live in one.
Dazzling city lights made way for grassy fields blanketed in soft sunsets, local papers filled with names I knew by heart. When the honeyed hair of the local florist came out in patches due to the stresses of life, sixty people brought steaming bowls of food to ease the ache. A singular church brought the townsfolk together, and perhaps that was the most foreign part of it all to me.
I was a kid, so I watched the entire thing unfold through the innocent lens of child, keenly watching the camaraderie of this town really peak outside the doors of that church. It didn’t look like much, a steepled dream imagined by the townsfolk of before, but it meant everything to the people. I even understood that back then, even though I didn’t quite buy the concept of a god yet.
The Sundays were a monotonous part of our week, only pedalled by my parents who desperately wanted to fit in with the town’s culture. They wore their masks well, nodding in the right places as we sat in the same pew every time, my father often discreetly checking the football scores in the sleeve of his jumper. Nothing ever happened in that tiny town, and then everything happened all at once.
It started with the miracles. Our pastor, Pastor Jon, liked to have the troubled souls of that week sitting in the front row so he could clutch their shaking hands one by one, channelling the energy of God through him in the hope that someday, hope could be brought to those lacking in it. It was a brief affair, usually just the joining of skin and a short prayer, but that Sunday was different. Rain hammered against the roof, leaving Pastor Jon’s prayers lost in the low, threatening rumble of thunder.
It meant when the sun shone through the clouds and caressed the face of a pained Wilson Brewster, it already felt a welcome intrusion.
“May your broken leg heal quickly,” Pastor Jon smiled warmly, steeling a hand on the calf of the waiting boy.
He, like me, was just a child. He didn’t feel the urgency of the situation, he was probably only grateful his throbbing leg wasn’t pulsating with pain anymore. He breathed a quiet ‘cool’ and that would have been that, had his parents not asked exactly what was cool about his leg being touched later that night. The news spread like wildfire - as per the medical centre, his parents said, Wilson Brewster no longer had a broken fibula.
There was some debate, of course. My parents mumbled in the kitchen about how clearly he’d never had a broken leg, and how odd to make him hobble around in a cast if that was the case. The sentiment was echoed tenfold, until something a little more tangible happened that changed the course of that town, and our lives, forever.
Pastor Jon didn’t mean for the glass to shatter in his hand during service, nor did he mean for a chunk of it to embed itself in his palm, gushing reams of blood racing down his arm in a bid for the floor.
“Gross!” one of the kids shouted with glee, the rest of us paling as crimson spilled from his wound. He was a deer in the headlights, utterly unprepared as we all looked on in awe. This was not how church usually went - this was quite the deviation. Several people stood to help, but they needn’t have bothered, because the divine was ready to intervene.
“Oh dear,” Pastor Jon muttered in a panic, using his bloodied hand to block the intense ray of sunlight threatening to stream through the glass into his eyes. It bathed the blood in a golden glow, and quicker than it had gone in, the chunk of glass began to slide from the wound till it smashed to the floor, exploding into a million pieces. That was not the crescendo, though, rather it was the sight of his skin tightening and knitting together - months of work in a moment - blood congealing and leaving behind nothing but memories of a wound.
“Pastor?” Mary-who-makes-the-blueberry-pies breathed, reaching out to touch him with bulging eyes. Pastor Jon could only open and close his mouth uselessly, his voice barely coming out in a whisper when he did finally speak.
“It’s a miracle,” he wheezed, and by all accounts, I suppose it seemed it was.
I was young, but I remember the bustle - the town was as I’d never seen it. The people of the church had vowed to keep it our little secret because, as Pastor Jon said, we had been given a gift and it was not appropriate to turn it into a spectacle. This gift was sporadic, though. People queued through the double doors of that church, sobbing and praying for their own slice of God, but few were to be given it. Little Laurie Lee and her dislocated jaw cleared up within the hour. Farmer Noel had a sudden epiphany about what the lottery numbers were to be.
Our town was blessed.
For two days, we marvelled. The rest of the world can have a piece later, we reasoned, but this was for us, just for now.
The church was fuller than it had ever been, people spilling out into the back and waiting with baited breath, snippets of conversations could be heard, and as they had been for the last two days, they all echoed one another.
“-a believer. I mean, Aunt Lillian said it was the light. The light closed up his wound, there and then!”
“-jaw. I saw her get hit with the cricket bat! Terrible thing, little lamb was inconsolable. And then next thing I know, she comes here and those shards are just welded back together again! Well, I told Janie-”
“-need to make the church bigger. Look at everyone! If only-”
So when Pastor Jon stood before us practically trembling with glee, it was hardly the weirdest thing that had happened all week. His voice was thick with emotion, eyes darting manically around our congregation.
“I have a message,” he breathed, and the crowd gasped at the connotation of it. I remember my father swearing, a low rumble of expletives I didn’t usually hear falling from his lips. I didn’t fully understand what this meant, but the atmosphere in that room morphed in a heartbeat.
“Tell us,” Christie Baker cried, hands clasped as tears welled in her eyes, “Oh, please tell us!”
Pastor Jon visibly shook, holding a trembling hand outstretched as if to reach us all. “He came to me last night,” a single tear raced past his cheek and made a home on his lip, “He spoke to me.”
“Praise God!” a man cried from next to me, and I shuffled closer to my father at the sudden burst of noise.
“It is… Him,” Pastor Jon uttered in a blissful exhale, sending the room bursting into chaos. Tears, cheers and prayers filled the space, but my father just clutched me tighter and my stomach churned uncomfortably. It took at least ten minutes for the room to quieten, but when it did, he had their rapt attention. “I am told that I will be His vessel. I will pass on what must be passed. We are not to spread the word, yet - only our pocket of civilization is ready. Only ours.”
You could replicate what happened a thousand times, and somebody would mess it up, sending a message of the divine to their great aunt in Auckland. But not us. That secret stayed within the confines of our town for the sixteen days hell shined upwards at us. Everybody had a thousand questions, but Pastor Jon only hushed us. “You must trust me,” he said, tone more regal than I’d ever heard it. And trust him the people did.
So on the second day when he returned to church and his eyes were dark-rimmed, nobody questioned it. He was chosen. Who knows what that does to a person’s sleep cycle? The following day when he went for his morning walk and the smile didn’t quite reach his hollow eyes, that was fine. He was a vessel, not a performer. And then that morning at church when he addressed us and kept rubbing the angry red welts on his wrists, who were we to ask questions of God’s messenger?
Nothing went terribly wrong until the baptisms. We all wanted to be part of this - even my anxious parents who signed me up to be bathed in holy water - and so we queued towards the front of the church, eager to hand ourselves over. I was second in line, right behind Mrs Awkins who had been the school nurse for the last 26 years, apparently. She was gleeful as Pastor Jon set up, speaking rhymes I barely listened to as I bounced on the balls of my feet, eager to go next. My stomach flipped at the words, knowing that my turn was only seconds away. People wouldn’t usually queue, but this was different. It was all different, now.
“I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
I didn’t expect the awful fizzing noise the liquid made as it hit Nurse Awkins’ head, nor did I expect the guttural wail that fell from her lips as she clawed at her own scalp. Smoke billowed up from her disappearing tresses and as I was yanked backwards, I caught a glimpse of her exposed skull. Most people will go their entire lives without the smell of burning flesh lingering in their nostrils, but not me.
“I- No! That wasn’t- oh!” Pastor Jon had cried, tired eyes bulging out of his head as people leapt to their feet to assist.
It was carnage, but not carnage I witnessed for long. My mother’s grip on my arm was vice-like, her eyes swimming with terror I know still plagues her to this day. I recall my father on the walk home, murmuring to my mother in low tones I wasn’t meant to hear.
“This isn’t right, Rach’. Jesus, did you see her? That was almost our son!”
My mum’s voice was shrill, the sound of her heels clacking against the pavement not quite masking her voice. “The police will be called - we don’t even know if she’ll survive! I think I’m going to throw up.”
But she was wrong on both counts. She didn’t throw up and the police weren’t called, because we rallied together. This was bigger than us and bigger than Mrs Awkins. Sure, nobody else tried to get baptised, but this was a blip. People surmised that the almighty didn’t want her as part of his flock, that she hadn’t been a believer when it mattered. Nobody was to utter a word about it, and because church was every morning now, my parents were almost too scared not to go. As a child, I didn’t understand it, but all these years later, I think I’d have bent to the fear of the almighty as well.
But it wasn’t the almighty who knocked on the door.
It became all the clearer that morning when Pastor Jon turned up with eyes so sunken and empty that we startled at his presence.
“Pastor.. Pastor, are you feeling alright?” one of our neighbours fussed, “Will you be okay for service?”
Pastor Jon didn’t answer. It was almost as though he didn’t hear her as he dragged his feet up to the front, turning so slowly towards us that it almost felt eerie. A large, jagged and bloodied cut spanned the entire back of his neck, disappearing behind him as he eyed us all, one by one.
“He’s here,” he murmured, words that on paper, should have sent the entire church reeling with joy. But you could hear a pin drop. You could hear any soul whisper in the large room, and yet his utterance only caused goosebumps to spread across my skin as a sort of icy stillness washed over me.
“He’s… here?” a woman in the front row asked, and Pastor Jon took too long to answer. An unnatural, slow smile spread across his face as he tilted his head towards the source of the noise. He didn’t respond, instead slowly lifting his hand to his lips, letting his finger linger there for a moment. When nobody spoke, he let his mouth fall open and began to chew loudly on the finger, drawing gasps from the crowd.
“Don’t look,” my mother shimmied closer to me and lifted a trembling hand to my eyes, but I could see through the cracks in her fingers. Pastor Jon continued to sloppily chew his finger, eventually snapping his head up and inhaling sharply as he spat blood out of his mouth.
“Your bodies are so fragile,” he sneered, lifting his dripping finger to the skies, causing several people to leap from their seats and make a bolt for it. My mother was one of them, and with horror, I watched as the Pastor’s eyes scanned the room and locked onto mine, tilting his head. “Stay,” he hissed with bared, bloody teeth, and we did. Not through choice, but rather, a sickening whoosh of air that skimmed past our faces and forced us all back down.
“What’s going on?” someone shrieked, but we weren’t to know, not really.
Pastor Jon only smiled blissfully, reaching his arms outwards as if to accept us. “I’ve come to bless you all,” he whispered mockingly, fingers outstretched as the sun hit the stained glass to the left of him. But it was all wrong. Sunshine streamed in and as it hit the red of a decorated sunrise, an image which had been there years before us, the colour changed. It was only moments until the church had the appearance of being bathed in blood, shimmering red bouncing off every surface to create the illusion we were all swimming in hell.
Nobody spoke.
Those who didn’t quite make it to the doors stood frozen; we who remained in our seats cowered in the heaviest kind of fear. Red drowned us and we clutched one another, eyeing Pastor Jon as though he were a wild animal. Finally, someone dared speak.
“Where is God?” he murmured, eyes swimming. Pastor Jon’s neck snapped towards him as he licked the blood from his finger, shuddering. When he spoke, his words were cold, distant. As though they were from somewhere else entirely.
“He hasn’t been around for a while.”
There was no time for his words to punch at my stomach, because in no time at all Pastor Jon was crumpled on the floor, wailing as he regarded his chewed, bloody finger. The bone was exposed and yet nobody helped him as he looked at us pleadingly, too many eyes on him as his whimpers turned to whispers. When he spoke, we listened.
“You need to keep coming to church,” he breathed, a single, bloody tear trickling down his cheek, “It will be worse if we don’t.”
So we did.
The Sunday Fair was cancelled, and pies that had been baked to share in sunny gardens went stale and grew mould. People packed duffel bags and made for their cars, arguing fiercely with those who decided to stay. My mother and father disagreed, but their argument was far more muted.
“Please, we have to go,” my father pleaded, shaking his head as I watched from the shadows, “Listen, I don’t know what the fuck that was-”
“I can’t explain it,” her voice was shaken, quiet, “But I know it will be worse if we go. I know it. Please just trust me. Trust Jon.”
So as my father always did, he believed in my mother. Each day in church was torturous, everyone sitting rigid with fear as Pastor Jon read slowly and shakily from the bible, bruises littering his gaunt body. When the holy book in his hands would launch into flames, he’d calmly drop it into the bucket of water he’d prepared and retrieve a new one. One time, every window in the church smashed and we all winced, ducking to avoid the onslaught of glass.
Darkness watched us.
We all felt it, and I know it visited members of the flock in the shadows. I was plagued by it one particularly torturous night as I lay in bed, blanketed in darkness with the covers pulled up to my chin. I hadn’t been able to shake the feeling I was being stared upon, squeezing my eyes shut as laboured, wet breaths left my body. But they weren’t my breaths.
I’d realised it straight away, that my hurried gasps for air didn’t match the gargling, strangled heaving that echoed around my head. From under the covers, I didn’t know much, but I knew one thing - the uncomfortable, heavy presence laying on my legs was my only source of comfort. Through all this, I reasoned, that if my beloved dog was with me, hell itself couldn’t come and claim me.
But I was wrong, because outside, my dog howled into the night.
Terror like that wasn’t something I’d felt before, and as my stomach bottomed out, I stopped breathing altogether. It must have sensed my fear, because those gargling breaths heaved closer and closer to my face as it dragged itself up my body, inch by inch. The smell of rot and ash burned into my nostrils, a horrific weight settling above my nose as my lungs started working again, so quickly that I would surely die then and there. If it had a face, it was twisted and pressed into mine, the thin bedcover my only source of protection.
But I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t move, so I let it pant gravelly air into my face, let it lay on top of me for hour after hour, till the birdsong indicated morning had come. All night I sobbed stifled cries, chest shaking as I squeezed my eyes shut and felt it pressing into me. Felt it hating me, felt it wanting to rip its claws into my stomach and pull out my intestines. But it didn’t. And when I awoke late the next morning - I must have passed out through fear alone - it was gone.
The rest is all a bit of a trauma-soaked blur, to be honest. I know my parents couldn’t understand why I wasn’t speaking the next day, why I barely reacted when evil finally descended that morning at church. The rest of the townsfolk screamed for their lives, ran as fast as they could, but I just stared with a hollow, broken gaze. As the rivers of blood waterfalled down between the pews, I watched Pastor Jon’s eyes grow dark as midnight, empty and soulless as he bellowed inside those four walls and called upon something worse than any of us could likely ever imagine.
I recall the fire starting, remember Pastor Jon’s slack jaw as he regarded us all so horribly, moving jaggedly towards my family with a growing demonic, gleeful grin.
“I remember you from last night,” he’d uttered darkly, but his voice came out in a thousand jarring layers and I could see hell in his eyes.
“Leave us alone!” my father tried to shield us, lifting a crucifix and wielding it towards Pastor Jon as though it would protect us. He simply laughed, an awful noise of horrific dissonance that I still sometimes hear alone in my bed at night. In complete horror, my parents could only watch as this thing wrenched the crucifix from my father’s hand, grinning as his jaw split and shattered each second he opened it impossibly wider. The sound of his bones cracking reverberated as his skin split and his mouth gaped, wide enough to drop the crucifix right into his waiting, blood-soaked mouth and swallow it, right in front of us.
When he met our gaze, his broken jaw hung limply from his face, sad morsels of skin stitching a once-good man together. Whatever blur those hours were, that, I remember.
It was an anti-climax, really, because while I expected him to descend upon us all and rip us into thousands of pieces, he simply boomed his words, jaw still hanging as his evil spoke directly into our souls.
“When I return in 20 years, it is not just your small town that will bleed.”
Pastor Jon has been missing for 20 years. I’m not sure when he started his countdown, but I awoke this morning with a dread so sickening that I’ve barely stopped emptying my stomach. If it’s over and the earth turns to rubble, I hope somebody finds this and can at least piece together why it all came to a sad, premature end. We townsfolk kept our vow of quiet for this long, but there comes a point when silence is deadly.
I think today, Pastor Jon will be found.