Hi all. I'm kind of losing my mind at how long this is taking and I was hoping someone here had advice on what I could do to speed things up? Or get a partial refund? Really, anything. We both worked very hard to save up $60,000 for this deck and it's been 9 months of constant frustration. We feel helpless. We contracted with Lowe's on this because we had such a nightmare time with our house contractors, and we figured Lowe's would handle the logistics for us. Hoooo boy that's not been remotely the case.
Here's a quick overview/timeline of events:
2023
August - Signed a contract with Lowe's for a deck. Just a normal deck. Estimated date of material delivery: early October 2023. Estimated project completion date: October 31, 2023. We were told verbally that these things take time, permits take a while to be reviewed, etc., and that we should expect the deck to be completed by end of DecembeJanuary. Cool, that's totally reasonable.
October - Materials are delivered, including the concrete for the posts. When they finally did start this build, there were concerns from the decking company who Lowe's contracted for our project on whether these materials would still be good when they started, but they used them anyway.
November - The designeengineer comes out to build our deck plan. This plan was submitted to the city mid-November.
December - The engineer calls and says he needs to get paid for the deck plan. We are in Mexico and unable to do much, but we call Lowe's to sort it out.
2024
February - A city inspector is at our house for a different thing and he shows us the permit that was submitted in November still required a $400 plan review fee. Again, this is something we assumed(????) Lowe's would be on top of. They act confused for the next month about who is supposed to pay for this (take it out of the $60,000 we gave you?????). Eventually someone pays for it. Not sure who.
March - Work starts. The company Lowe's hired spends about two weeks working. They are unable to continue work because Lowe's/the supplier sent vertical railings instead of the horizontal deck railing we ordered. The company Lowe's hired stops work and then stops responding.
April - Lowe's lets us know that they've removed that original contractor and have replaced them with someone new. Great. Turns out the rails are on back-order. Could be weeks until they arrive.
May - The correct rails arrive and the new contractor puts up two (2) for the inspector to check. Turns out the previous company did a terrible job on one set of stairs, missed a couple safety requirements on the deck itself, and made several accidental over-cuts into the Trex wood.
As of May 19 - We are still waiting on a re-order of replacement materials for the fixes listed above.
Again, I don't mean to be dramatic. There are people with real problems, I know. But we purchased a deck nearly a FULL YEAR AGO from a MAJOR HOME IMPROVEMENT COMPANY and it's still not built.
Does anyone have advice on what kind of recourse we have? Next steps? Hail Marys?

Welcome back once more, for our final discussion of Armadale. I apologize again for the discussion being late. Last week, my excuse was that I had to spend time with my sister's family, including a labradoodle. This week, I am dog-sitting my mother's beagle, who has separation anxiety and gas. I am horribly sleep-deprived because this dog insists on sleeping next to my bed every night, snoring loudly and farting. Speaking of people breathing in poison in their sleep, let's get to the recap:
Allan has just set off for the Adriatic, with his cash converted to gold, obviously the result of Manuel's suggestions. Lydia and Ozias have been transferred to Turin by Ozias's employer, and Lydia pretends to have gotten a letter from her mother, asking her to come home, so she has an excuse to go back to London. Once there, she checks the newspaper for any articles or obituaries indicating that Allan has died. She also finds Mother Oldershaw's new address, but decides not to visit her.
After a few days, she finally gets the news she's been hoping for. Allan's yacht sunk off the southern coast of Italy, and everyone on board perished. Her next step is to write to Bashwood:
My dearest Bashwood,
I desire you... I mean, I desire to *meet with you... to apologize for my previous behavior towards you. I have foolishly made the mistake of marrying an immature child. If only I had married a real man (realness not necessarily extending to his teeth and hair)!*
Please, do not show this letter to anyone. Let us meet clandestinely.
Sincerely,
Lydia Armadale (note the last name)
Lydia then considers the marriage certificate, and realizes a glaring flaw in her plan: Ozias's handwriting looks nothing like Allan's. In a panic, she decides that her only option is to get advice from Mother Oldershaw. Unfortunately, Mother Oldershaw appears to have found God, and no longer wants anything to do with Lydia's plans. (Of course, she refuses to give Lydia the signed paper that she was going to use to extort money from Lydia if her plans succeeded.)
While leaving Oldershaw's, Lydia runs into Dr. Downward... excuse me, Dr. Le Doux, totally legitimate sanitarium owner. She realizes that he may be able to advise her, and asks to meet him later at the sanitarium. The sanitarium is basically what you'd expect a 19th-century sanitarium to be: creepy old house with shelves containing jars of preserved "creatures," a "galvanic apparatus" for providing electric shocks, etc. No patients yet, though.
Lydia tells the doctor her story, leaving out the worst details (he doesn't know that she's the reason the yacht sunk, or that her husband goes by the fake name "Ozias Midwinter"). Downward agrees to assist her by claiming to be a witness to the marriage... for a fee of six hundred pounds. Lydia agrees, and he assists her in sending a letter to Thorpe Ambrose, claiming to be Allan's widow.
The next day, Lydia gets a visit from Bashwood, who delivers the news that Neelie is beside herself with grief, and Mr. Darch is handling the matter of the inheritance, which was going to go to Allan's cousin, before Lydia announced her claim.
Bashwood returns a few days later with a shocking letter from Yugoslavia: Allan is alive! This is where I'd normally try to write a funny version of the letter, but nothing I could possibly write would be funnier than the actual letter's opening line: "I have been the victim of a rascally attempt at robbery and murder." Yes, "rascally." Oh, Allan, never change. One of the would-be murderers took pity on Allan and didn't securely board up his cabin, so he was able to escape instead of sinking with the yacht.
Lydia turns to Downward for help.
Downward: What if we trap Allan in the sanitarium?
Lydia: And murder him?
Downward: WTF, no. We get him to agree to not press legal charges against us.
Lydia: And then we murder him?
Downward: I have so many regrets about teaming up with you
Lydia: How do we catch him?
Downward: You could get Bashwood to lurk around the train station and intercept him before anyone else sees him. Have him tell Allan that Miss Milroy was sent here because she was driven insane by her grief for him.
Lydia: Can we murder Allan and Miss Milroy?
Downward: I am running an unlicensed sanitarium under a false name, and even I think you're unhinged.
Lydia: Gwilty as charged
Downward: But wait, what if he doesn't agree immediately, and we have to keep him here for months? What if I have actual patients at the time, and they report us?
Lydia: What if...
Downward: ...please don't say "murder"
Lydia: ...what if he had an accident?
Downward: Oh. Well, if it was an "accident," that would be okay. I don't know how an accident could happen, though, if you aren't an inmate here.
Lydia: I'll think about it
Meanwhile, Bashwood keeps vigil at the train station, until one day he sees... Ozias, who is searching for Lydia because she's stopped writing to him. While they talk to each other, Bashwood can't contain his shock at hearing that Lydia is Ozias's wife, and accidentally calls her "Mrs. Armadale," which understandably makes Ozias suspicious, so he follows Bashwood to see where he goes, which of course leads him straight to Lydia. Lydia pretends she was never married to Ozias, and Ozias faints from the shock.
Lydia heads straight to the sanitarium, tells Downward she's going to be an inmate, and asks for a sleeping draught. Downward prepares the draught, but first places yellow liquid in a purple flask. He then informs Lydia of what he thinks they should say at the inquest after Allan dies: The two of them knew he hadn't drowned, but when he arrived in England, they decided to trap him in the sanitarium because, shortly after his marriage to Lydia, Allan had starting having a delusion that he was engaged to Neelie. Once in the sanitarium, Downward diagnosed Allan with an incurable and fatal brain ailment, and that's what killed him.
Downward has scheduled a "Visitors' Day" so that people will witness Lydia as an inmate in the asylum. The visitors are mostly women, because life as a woman in Victorian England was so boring, they had nothing better to do than go to sanitariums to gawk at the mentally ill people and see where they will eventually live when the hysteria finally drives them mad. (I am only barely paraphrasing. The actual quote is "In the miserable monotony of the lives led by a large section of the middle classes of England, anything is welcome to the women which offers them any sort of harmless refuge from the established tyranny of the principle that all human happiness begins and ends at home.")
Downward shows them around the sanitarium and explains how it will be run, including only allowing novels that make people feel comfortable. (I assumed this was an intentional satire of Wilkie's critics, and the notes in the Oxford World's Classics edition confirmed this.)
But then Downward gave a sales pitch that damn near sold me on his sanitarium. "I throw up impregnable moral intrenchments between Worry and You. ... Will ten minutes’ irritation from a barking dog or a screeching child undo every atom of good done to a nervous sufferer by a month’s medical treatment? There isn’t a competent doctor in England who will venture to deny it!" Considering I almost couldn't post last week's discussion because of a few hours' exposure to two loud children and a labradoodle, I'm about ready to self-diagnose with hysteria and deranged lunacy.
He also explains that while the bedrooms lack fireplaces, they're heated with hot water. This impressed me because I've read about Victorian insane asylums not having fireplaces in the bedrooms (since the inmates might burn themselves), but I always assumed this meant that the inmates were cold in the winter. But wait... the bedroom also has secret controls that let him open, close, and lock the window and door from the outside, and a vent that lets him pump gas into the room. Whaaat? I rescind my diagnosis of hysteria and deranged lunacy. I want nothing to do with this.
After the tour is finished, Downward demonstrates to Lydia how to prepare the poison, and then breaks the bottle so that his assistant (who doesn't know about the purple flask) will think there's no more of that chemical in the house.
Meanwhile, Ozias is stalking Bashwood at the train station. He thinks Lydia is cheating on him, and Bashwood is waiting for Lydia's lover. But then he sees Bashwood with Allan. After confronting the two of them, he learns Bashwood's story about having to take Allan to Neelie in the sanitarium. Realizing that Lydia is probably still behind Bashwood's actions, Ozias insists on going with the two of them. On arriving at the sanitarium, Allan is informed that Neelie cannot see him until the morning, but he and Ozias are welcome to spend the night: Allan in Room Four, and Ozias in Room Three.
Lydia sets Bashwood up to spy on Allan's door from a room with a grate in its door. She tells him to make sure Allan stays in his room all night. Later, watching from the grate, Bashwood observes Ozias leave his room and examine the fumigating apparatus connected to Allan's room. Then Ozias stuffs his handkerchief in the grate, blocking Bashwood's view, before going into Allan's room and convincing Allan to switch rooms with him.
Later that night, Lydia returns and asks Bashwood if anything happened. Too afraid to tell her about the handkerchief, he tells her nothing happened, and she dismisses him to bed. After almost convincing herself to not go through with it, she then starts the process of pouring the poison at five minute intervals. While waiting for one of the intervals to pass, she notices Ozias's handkerchief and realizes that Bashwood lied to her. She checks in Room Three, and finds Allan asleep where Ozias should be.
In a panic, Lydia rushes into Room Four and drags the unconscious Ozias out. She then continues to pour the poison, writes a last letter to Ozias, and locks herself in the room.
We end with an epilogue that rapidly ties up all the random loose ends. Lydia has been buried in a nearly unmarked grave. The doctor is apparently still running his sanitarium. Allan and Neelie will be married in the spring. Mrs. Milroy doesn't have much longer to live, but she's undergone a personality change for some reason and she and the Major are happy for once. Ozias is recovering and living with Allan. Mother Oldershaw is a religious speaker, apparently. Bashwood has gone insane. Manuel drowned.
But wait, one last thing: Wilkie has something to say to us. He wants us to know that he intended the dream to be left up to interpretation. Thanks for handing me a discussion question like that, Wilkie. He also shares a weird-ass story about how, after he'd finished the rough draft and while the story was in the middle of serialization, several people were poisoned in their sleep on a boat called The Armadale. Okay, Wilkie. Thank you for that incredibly weird anecdote.

How can you move on if you ruined someone’s life? I reported my ex boyfriend for overstaying his visa and working illegally because he broke up with me… i feel so terrible for doing this. Its so hard to cope and the guilt is so extreme I dont know what to do or how to handle it… I feel so bad for lashing out - I feel so bad for letting my emotions get to me. I should have let go. Now he cant come back to USA and I ruined him forever. He was such an amazing man and I’m such a monster… I ruined him because I was caught in an emotionally/narcissistic abusive relationship before him- with someone he used to know, they were friends once. And even though I was broken and didn’t heal we kept on pursuing our relationship. In part because I was lonely and he was nice to me… but I would snap at him and I ended up threatening him a few times so he could do things that made me happy because I wouldn’t want to take a no for an answer.. (it was things like watching a movie, a series, playing a game, etc… going out… nothing crazy) but I shouldn’t have treated him this way… i should have accepted his “no”… I thought of my self inferior for some reason, controlling and I just hated to hear the word “no”. I made many mistakes and once I realized the damage I had done to him I tried to fix it, I tried to work on myself, I tried to be more loving and supporting… but it was too late… because of the way I was to him… I broke him… and he would acuse me of cheating all the time but never have I ever done this and it went on since October 2023 until now… everything became so toxic and we couldn’t talk it through and I exploded and lashed out and didn’t think about the consequences of my actions… God I feel so bad… this was an online relationship… It was all my fault… But I was always like this to him… I always put myself before him and never considered him - I should have had put us both and thought about us both but I messed everything up all the time. Im such a mess that shouldn’t be alive… im a walking mistake, im a demon, im a devil - and I dont want to be. I wish he was here with me. I ruined him. I want to work on myself but every time I smile i think about all the damage i have done… im the worst person alive. I apologized many times… but apologies dont do anything - they dont bring back our lives, it doesn’t bring him back… they dont matter and I dont want to live with this guilt… its so awful… I wish I had realized things sooner or myself or my behaviours…

**WARNING** long post. Feel free to skip the background information if need be
BACKGROUND:
I am a software engineer at a major bank. Relative to my counterparts on my team, I am the "most junior", but I have three years of experience. This is important to know as it may offer some insight to our team culture. I landed this job in November 2023 and was placed with my team in January 2024. The team consisted of two women, including myself and five men. I work at our NYC office with three of the other men, one of which is our team lead, let's call him Anderson. The other woman coworker lives in FL and the other two men are in India. I am the only black person on the team, and the rest of my coworkers are of Indian descent. This, too, is important to note.
From day 1, I was intentionally assigned low level administrative tasks while my coworkers were purposefully trained and briefed on other, technical tasks. The first week with my team, I mentioned to my team lead that I felt it important to learn the technical tasks that my teammates were learning, even if these technical tasks were not going to be my responsibility, because there would not be anyone to take on the technical tasks if someone was on vacation. My team lead told me to focus on the work he assigned to me.
Still determined to learn the technical tasks, I scheduled trainings with my offshore counterpart so that he would train me instead. This meant that I had to sign in to work after hours to be trained. I was now trained on what my "work buddy" knew, but still not fully trained on what the rest of the team knew how to do. Suddenly (not suddenly), my other woman coworker, let's call her Sandra, went on maternity leave and I was assigned her work. My team lead expressed his frustration with me not knowing how to do her job, and told me to figure out how to learn the things she was doing.
What is interesting to point out here is that during the first few weeks on the team, my team lead would assign our other senior engineer to train Sandra and answer all questions that she had. I was not granted this opportunity. Instead, my Slack messages went unanswered (I have all of this documented) when I had questions and after another two weeks, my team lead quietly reassigned Sandra's work from me to another senior engineer instead. He never explained why he did this, or gave me feedback on the work I was doing.
As the weeks went by, my team lead called me into a meeting to gauge my knowledge on querying our databases. He asked me to find a few items, which I could not find because for one, I had NEVER interacted with the databases before, and for two, I had no understanding of the database architecture or the data flow for our app. Nevertheless, I decided to ask clarifying questions to help me better understand the data so that I could write appropriate queries. My team lead responded to this with yelling "you are an engineer and you don't even know SQL", to which I responded that my knowledge of SQL was sufficient (part of my technical interview was based on writing complex queries), but I needed to understand exactly what he wanted me to find. He ended the meeting and never followed up on the information he was looking for. I still do not know what task, if any, that he was trying to assign to me.
I decided to follow up with him and explain to him that I could sense his frustration, and I asked him to define clear expectations for me and the team, and provide official training that focused on our application architecture and other technical areas that we needed to focus on. He told me that no amount of training would fix the "fact" that I did not know SQL and that it is the team members' job to train themselves.
Nevertheless, after that meeting, he assigned me with handling all onboarding for new projects moving forward. I have taken the liberty of advocating for my team members to ensure that we are all properly trained and provided with ALL resources needed to do our job well. Since then, the team, and myself has expressed more confidence in our ability to do our work. We are even at a point where senior team members reach out to me when they cannot find resources and either ask me to provide documentation, or ask me to reach out to other engineers to schedule meetings to provide trainings. Here is where I am concerned that I might be experiencing hostility at work. Please provide objective feedback and even constructive criticism if need be:
MAIN POINTS:
-my team lead uses language in his interactions with me that creates a false narrative. For example, he accuses me of "not caring" about my job, not "being collaborative", and not paying attention. One example is where I was tasked with migrating a google guice project to springboot. We had four weeks to get the work done and each week during standup, I brought up to my team lead my plans to make changes to the service. Each time, he would redirect my attention to administrative tasks. The third week of the sprint, literally in the middle of a Slack conversation of me telling my team lead that I planned on making some code changes and him instead telling me to do something else, our senior manager called a meeting with the team and yelled at my team lead for not getting any work done related to the code refactoring. After the meeting, my team lead followed up with me and berated me for not having work done. This is all documented in Slack and I remember being very confused as he had literally told me to do other tasks. As a result, my team lead removed me from the code refactoring project and used this to further justify his belief that I do "not care" about the work. Keep in mind that these interactions are documented.
-my team lead constantly verbally berates me in my interactions with him. One example is when I was typing up a document on a zoom call and I was sharing my screen with him. He kept rushing me and was saying things like "come on man I have other things to do", "ughhh hurry up", "you need to move fast!". Two things here: he yelled at me for moving fast because he said he could not see what I was clicking on when I moved fast. Then he yelled at me when I slowed down. There was one time he yelled at me for clicking a back button instead of the home button on the screen...he told me that I was not listening to him or paying attention...I am confused by this because the point of his instruction was for me to return to the home screen. There was another time where I misspelled a word in the middle of him berating me, and then he berated me even more for misspelling the word...
-my team lead has unclear expectations and gets angry at me when I do not do things he wants me to do. One example is when he wanted me to watch a 40 minute training video, summarize the points in the video, and schedule a follow up training with the person who lead the training so that the team (me) could ask questions. He asked me to get this done within an hour. He also wanted me to upload some recordings to Sharepoint. But this task was just another task to complete and not time-sensitive. After the call, I watched the video and made a summary and got back to him with an update in 45 minutes instead of the hour. He responded to my message 20 minutes after I wrote him by hopping on a call with me and yelled at me for not having the videos uploaded. Again, he accused me of "not caring" about my job. When I explained to him that the videos were not uploaded because I was focusing on the other, time sensitive task, he said that that task was not as important as having the videos uploaded and "people" were asking him about the videos in the Sharepoint space....this was a lie because it has been a week and the only person who accessed the uploaded videos was...you guessed it...me :)
-my team lead just berates me in general. He berated me for collaborating with a team member to explore a new internal application. He said that there was no need to get on zoom with the coworker because we should have already known everything...the app was new and I was the only one who understood how to navigate it after exploring it with the team member...oh...need I mention that he then asked me to train the other team members on the new app's UI next week?
-my team lead expressed his frustration at not having access to certain resources when I was on bereavement.The documentation was incomplete and I had to take a sudden leave due to a death in the family. Upon my return, he asked for the documentation and said that he find an "excuse" to tell his manager as to why the documentation was incomplete and that I was "on vacation"
-my team lead "warns" me not to "disappoint" him when he assigns me with tasks. When I ask him to define what a "disappointment" is and for us to agree on what is acceptable, he ignores me.
-my team lead tells me that "people" ask questions about my work and one day he is going to make our department head "deal" with me. The department head is known for being a hot head who yells at people. But he has NEVER yelled at me in any interaction I had with him, no matter how frustrated he may have been.
I want to make an important note here that he does NOT speak to other people like this and he ONLY does this over zoom. I work 3x days in office and on the days where he speaks to me in person, he does not even make eye contact with me and he speaks so soft I can barely hear him sometimes. My team lead has never provided any feedback on my work. As a matter of fact, he uses my documentation and my explanation of technical tasks as if they were his own.
I am considering taking my concerns to our senior manager, who apparently is a well respected, "big boss" at work, but also MY direct manager and I happen to have a great relationship with him. I want to be as objective as possible in my complaint but in the meantime, I would like to explore areas where maybe I can improve to minimize my team lead's verbal assaults on me

I've got a 2018 Model 3 with HW 2.5 and EAP. I do a drive from Dallas/Fort Worth to Colorado Springs quite often. On the leg back, there's 1 place outside of Des Moines NM where my Model 3 will slow down while in TACC or AP. It's a 50mph zone and the car will go down to 0 if I let it. I know exactly where it is, so it's just a nuisance at this point.
Yesterday I had to carry a bunch of stuff along with my so I took the Model Y which my wife typically drives. When we first got this vehicle, we couldn't go 10 minutes without the car either alerting us that we were about to die in a head-on crash or randomly braking. So yesterday when I started out and I was able to use AP on I-35 without any issue I thought that maybe, just maybe they'd straightened their crap out.
Well, that didn't last too long. I used TACC about 90% of the trip. One way I had 3 random slow downs, 1 head on collision warning, but no AP issues. But wait, before you get excited. The reason why I had no AP issues is because for some reason the Model Y, in Texas, would not recognize any speed limit sign over 65mph. Most of the time it thought the limit was 55mph when in reality it was 75mph. Some of the time I could start AP at 55mph and then increase it to 75mph, but other times it would say, "auto steer only available at 60mph". When I was able to manually bump it up, I was worried that it would decide that it needed to drop down to 60mph.
I don't understand how a car that is 3 years old almost can still be running software that's alpha quality. I also can't understand why my 6 year old vehicle works so much better than the Model Y. I also feel like all developer resources have been drained away from cars like mine so that they can concentrate on FSD which I'm not really interested in. Doesn't Tesla still owe buyers a working AP version?
Meanwhile, my daughter just bought a VW Taos and it has a lane keep and TACC that my wife told me works much better than the one in her Model Y. That car's only $30k.

My brother-in-law is cheating on his wife and has multiple times. She let it slip while upset, and before she even asked, I told her I wouldn’t say anything. Now I feel like I’m hiding something from my husband (this is his brother) and am wrestling with what to do.
I knew there were issues in the marriage with lots of fighting and that my BIL hit her hand once and has spanked their kids against her wishes. He threatens suicide regularly. But on top of that, he’s been cheating on her throughout the marriage (and apparently started during her first pregnancy) and is now apparently keeping her from visiting her family without him. She’s afraid of getting a divorce and that he would be punitive in the process. She doesn’t want to end up away from her kids 50% or more of the time. She says she won’t leave unless he became physically abusive, or at least she feels that way now.
I am just really not sure what to do. On the one hand, it feels somehow a betrayal for me to know this and my husband not to understand what’s going on in his own family. But I told my SIL I wouldn’t say anything.
I guess I just need to let them deal with things, but I’m a little overwhelmed by the misery in which she lives. Also no way the kids can grow up in this kind of environment and not end up a little f***ed up because of it. There’s certainly mental abuse going on as he uses the infidelity as a weapon, according to her. To get back at her when she doesn’t toe the line or is “difficult.” Being kept from her family because he doesn’t want her with them if he’s not there — so controlling. I’m also shocked by how much a piece of shit he is, because while he’s not my favorite person in the world, you would never know any of this is going on.
Anyhow, I was just hoping to get advice or if I need to think of anything else. TYIA.

I tried to post this on asknyc but I couldn’t for some reason.
But I want to make the move from San Francisco to NYC, but I’m not sure how to do it. I’m originally from San Francisco, have lived elsewhere, visited elsewhere, but whenever I’ve been to New York, the thought of living there just feels completely right. It’s exactly what I would want in a city, I feel more at peace in New York than I do in SF. And after analyzing and dissecting it, with respect to the pros and cons, I really want to move. But I’m not sure how, logistically.
One of the reasons I want to leave SF is the amount of opportunities in NY for the type of work I want to do compared to the tech haven of SF. SF is very limited in opportunity in that way, and I can’t completely grow here at the pace I would like to. I love my city, but again I feel like for me New York is where I need to be.
That being said, how the hell does one make that move? Financially? Career wise? Would it better to find a job first before moving? Should I have a certain amount of money saved? I currently don’t have a corporate job so it’s not like I would be moving as a software engineer or something that I could easily transfer as. I’ve seen people say you don’t need anything saved at all or you need thousands of dollars saved. Life in SF is expensive af so I’m already used to the need to spend wisely and the high cost of everything, and living as an average worker. These are things I need help figuring out. Friends I know that live in the city came they for school or for work so their experience isn’t quite the same.
I am determined y’all !

Im a university student and work full-time. I have some friends from university with a similar family background to me, but my close friend group is from high school and overall I'd say my family is upper middle class and they are lower middle class.
By no means is my family rich. Both my parents are engineers but my mom doesnt work. My dad makes a good amount but my parents are immigrants, they save a lot of money, and have worked hard for everything they got. The designated hang out place is my house because it has a pool and because im always the one initiating messages in the group chat saying that we have to hang out.
But recently I've gotten pissed at them because every time they come to my house they leave stuff everywhere or break things. And my family is very organized and neat. I told them that they need to help clean, stop messing with stuff, and that I need them to help pay for supplies when I have hang outs because i literally pay all the money for food.
This weekend I had a BBQ and they left cups in my pool, dented a wall, used our towels and left them on the ground, rode my dads bike and hit it on the curb, and lit candles on our table which stained it with some black ash. The whole time I was telling them to stop doing stuff and politely asking them to be careful with our stuff and they would say "why do you care you can just buy a new one?" And that made me so mad. They also asked me to say till midnight but I have to clean when everyone leaves so I told them no, and they got upset.
They also constantly just bring up how I have no issues in my life since my parents are "rich." We travel once a year, my family pays my tuition and got me a car which is paid for. But anything else that I want I have to pay for. I pay for my clothes, personal groceries, vet bills, food, going out, trips etc.
I know im more privileged but I don't like how my friends have zero care for our stuff and dont realize that I'm paying for most of my things with my own money.
I also am an engineering student, i did my first internship at my dad's workplace. I got many other offers but chose to work with my dad because I knew I'd learn more since I'd have him to answer my questions. And we could drive to work together. It was a really fun internship but everyone seems to think I got it from nepotism, although I had other offers.
I also am a much better student than them, i do personal projects, was a teaching assistant, am vice president of an engineering student org, and have a personal website. So I got three offers for internships this semester while they didnt. And they think I got them all from nepotism. I don't know how else to explain that I understand I have more privileges but I work hard and my family doesn't throw money at me.
I don't think they understand that people that have money still are careful with their things, don't just spend money on random stuff, and that I'm not a millionaire that can fund everything.
They also arent even poor. Most of them have parents that are engineers but I think they cant manage their money and end up poor. They spend crazy amounts at bars and on random trips while I save. I go to the closest uni by my house so I can pay in-state tuition, not pay dorms, and not pay for a meal plan. I don't want my parents paying insane amounts for my degree. But they all go to one 2 hours away and are in debt. It's just very frustrating.

The episode resumed on a shot of Zee and Jo, their skin tones back to normal, running up to a smiling Chris. "Welcome back," he told the camera. "Zee and helper Jo are the first to arrive here, at the world's largest mud puddle!" The camera pulled back, revealing that the trio was standing near the edge of a large lake of burbling mud, a measuring stick rising out of it at the nearest edge.
"It's eight feet deep," Chris explained over a close-up of the measuring stick showing the mud reaching up very nearly to the 8' mark, "and 200 yards across. And," the camera quick-panned to the far right side of the 'puddle', "since it's too thick to swim through," the shot cut back to the couple and Chris, "the only way to the other side is with one of you piggybacking the other."
"Umm...," Zee said hesitantly, sharing a wary look with Jo, "doesn't that mean the person on the bottom..."
"Will drown?" Chris finished. "Yes."
"What?!" Jo said in wide-eyed shock.
"Unless they use this garden hose!" Chris added, a light chime playing as he held up a length of green hose.
Zee let out a breath. "Okay then. Guess I'm on the bottom, then."
Jo's eyes widened a bit in a brief bit of surprise, and she looked at her partner. "I should be objecting to this since I'm supposed to be the helper, but hey. No heavy lifting from me."
"Yeah…" Zee agreed half heartedly.
Confessional: Zee
"I was able to hold Jo onto my back while we were skiing," Zee told the confessional. "I can still do the same while under mud."
Confessional Ends
"I know that I said you were weak in the past," Jo said, "but that was until I saw that you were able to make it this far in the game."
"You thought wrong about me," Zee replied. "I wasn’t active at first in challenges and finding food, but with Julia eliminated, I was able to grow and become a finalist."
Chris suddenly stepped between the two. "How touching. Now start the challenge."
The scene cut to Zee and Jo jumping into the mud, the former disappearing below its depths while the latter, on his shoulders, held up the length of the hose. They started moving forward, and the camera panned back to the left to show Harold, Scarlett, and Chris holding up another length of hose.
"Yeah, I'll be on top," Harold stated.
"Pardon me?" Scarlett countered, raising an eyebrow.
"I don't trust you not to let me drown," Harold told her. "Self-preservation comes first."
Scarlett groaned. "That's fair," she said, taking the hose from Chris, "but if you let me suffocate, I'm dragging you down into the mud with me."
"Crustal," Harold deadpanned, and as Scarlett crouched down, she jumped onto the brainiac's shoulders. Scarlett stood back up and put the end of the hose in her mouth, and she jumped into the mud.
The tense music faded away as the camera moved onto Chris, the host sighing as Chef walked up. "You think the mud was a bad idea?" Chris asked. "It's a little quiet… oh yeah," Chris said as if in sudden realization, "almost forgot about the Peanut Gallery. Bring 'em back in!" he said into a walkie talkie he only then pulled out.
Moments later, the wind kicked up around them, and the camera zoomed out to show the large helicopter flying in with the former contestants still hanging – and screaming as they swayed ominously – below it. "Would you let us down already?!" Leshawna shouted angrily. "It's freezin' up here!"
"Yeah, I want to cheer for Zee!" Julia chimed in.
"If I wasn't tied up right now, I'd have half a mind to pound you!" Duncan shouted at the host.
The camera focused on DJ. "Hey, Chris?" he looked forward and asked loudly. "Just bring us down before anybody else gets miffed at you!"
"No, and I don't care," Chris answered with a calm smile, until Chef whispered to him. A flat note played over a close-up of Chris staring blankly at him. "Huh...good point," he admitted. "Ooh!" he said with a sudden grin. "I just had an idea!"
A flash took the scene to Zee and Jo, the tense challenge music resuming at a low volume and slow pace in the background. They were still slogging through the mud, Zee out of sight but Jo only submerged up to her stomach. She looked back over her shoulder, smiled, then said "Keep going!" into the piece of hose she was holding. "They're way far behind!"
Confessional: Zee
"So as it turns out," Zee said, "being submerged in the mud is kinda like being trapped in the dark. But there aren't any animals below to scare me."
Confessional Ends
The music ramped up as Jo suddenly stopped moving, then seemed to turn around and start moving back towards the start. "Uh, Fruit Loop?" she asked into the hose. "We're going the wrong way!"
The camera cut to Harold, looking somewhat bored as he held the hose atop Scarlett's shoulders, before noticing the other team and frowning. "Why are they coming this way?"
"Ugh! They're too safe to sabotage each other!" came the sudden voice of Chris McLean, the camera cutting to him standing in the show's jeep with Chef at the wheel, speaking into the microphone of the jeep's loudspeaker. "Deploy the 2.0 model!"
The shot cut back to Harold and Jo as they looked around with strange expressions, the sound of something like a rocket taking off coming from somewhere in the distance. They looked up and to the left, and the camera shifted to their viewpoint to show a large object shooting up through the sky overhead...
...then abruptly diving towards them, revealing itself as a red-eyed robotic bear with small jet engines coming out of its back. Harold and Jo screamed as their respective partners continued in their previous directions, getting out of the way as the Bear landed in the mud. It hit with enough force to cause a wave of mud, which shot all the way across the puddle carrying the finalists and their helpers along for the ride. All four immediately began to cough upon landing in a muddy heap.
Confessional: Harold
"At least I have a better shot," Harold said. "We're tied right now, but who knows what other tricks Chris has up his sleeves."
Confessional Ends
A close-up of the nozzle of a fire hose in Chef's hands preceded him blasting the muddy finalists and helpers with water, all four screaming where they'd landed on the shore of the 'puddle'. Moments later, the water was shut off, leaving them drenched but clean.
"We're all tied up," Chris announced with a smile. "Perfect time for a little break. First, let's bring in the Peanut Gallery again." He took out his remote and pointed it at a patch of ground nearby, a hole opening up in it and a rather shoddy-looking set of stadium seats shooting up out of it with the ten former contestants seated – and still tied-up – in it.
"Sha-finally," Lightning said, the shot cutting to him sitting in the top row with B, DJ, Duncan, and Max and Leshawna, Ella, Julia, Sammy, and Amy in the bottom row. "Are we gonna get to watch the rest of the challenge now?"
"Yup!" Chris answered with a happy smile, pressing the button on his remote again so that a large widescreen television emerged from another hole in the ground near him and the finalists.
"Will you untie us too?" Ella chimed in.
Chris huffed. "Whine, whine, whine," he said in annoyance. "Don't I do enough for you kids as it is?"
"No," all fourteen of the season's cast members replied at the same time.
A flat note played over a close-up of the host pursing his lips. "Yeah, I owe Chef twenty bucks about that," Chris said, the camera zooming back out again to show the finalists and helpers. "Everyone, grab a seat," he instructed, and the four reluctantly sat down on the logs lying behind them. "I'm gonna show you some of my favorite clips from the show..." He pointed his remote at the TV, and the shot focused in as it switched on and started to play footage of a confessional...
"Dunderhead was already pretty useless," Jo complained. "But now he's making moves on one of the actually decent players on the team? Not on my watch!"
The camera cut in close to show Jo pausing and looking back. "Something on your mind, Anti-Squeakerbox?" she asked, the camera shifting to show B peering at her and shaking his head.
“It's not what you think it is," Jo told him. "As long as they are on this team, Julia and Zee will not date."
“Not exactly how I wanted the elimination to play, but hey. Julia’s gone and with Zee still in the game, I could manipulate him into doing whatever I say,” Jo grinned.
The footage paused, and Chris leaned out in front of the television with a wide and mischievous grin. "Seems like there isn't a shipper on deck…" he said impishly.
"So you were trying to keep me and Julia apart?" Zee said as the camera moved to him and Jo, his eyes wide with shock. "Does this mean that...,"
"Yup. I convinced Julia to quit," Jo replied. "I didn't expect her to fully go through with it since I was gonna vote you out!"
"I can't believe you'd try and do that!" Zee said with a glare!"
"If I didn't do what I did, then you two likely would've blown challenges for us like the dueling one!" Jo argued back.
The camera focused on Julia in the Peanut Gallery. "I was trying to defend my boyfriend, but sure," she said dryly.
"I'm just worried what Chris is gonna show from Scarlett," Sammy said. "It looks like he wants to mess up the finalists and their helpers..."
"Maybe he won't show anything?" Amy suggested. "I mean, it's not like Scarlett and Harold were that close to begin with."
The shot cut back to a smiling Chris. "Oh, don't worry, I have no intention of leaving those guys out of all this fun," he said happily.
"I don't see how," Scarlett said. "Harold already knows everything about me now. I’m practically an open book."
Chris laughed. "Seems you forgot that the cameras are always on. So here's some more juicy information that everybody gets to hear." The screen on the TV went from static to a scene from the fifth episode.
Scarlett herself grabbed the dueling stick Ella retrieved, fished an electric eel out of the water, and tossed it to Max. "Max!" she cried, and her teammates looked at her in confusion, prompting her to pretend that she had coughed. "Pardon me!"
“The plan was for Max to be the only one not in the trap, so the team would know he built it and vote him off!” Scarlett confessed.
"I overheard Leshawna and Harold's conversation when they were foraging together, and Leshawna being on to me is something that I refuse to let happen," Scarlett claimed. “Zee's really gullible enough to deceive, and I'll try to talk to Ella.”
A deep, dramatic note was struck over a shot of Harold in shock. "So it was you who got Leshawna eliminated!" he scowled in Scarlett's direction.
"I wasn't ready to come out just yet, and between the two of you, you were less likely to warn anyone about me!" Scarlett retorted.
"So all this time, Scarlett was aiming to usurp her master!" Max ranted.
"I don't blame her," Leshawna commented. “As much of a pain as she is, I would've done the same thing and sent your annoying behind home.”
"Okay," Chris said happily as the shot moved onto him, "I'm sensing some major hostility and I'm liking it. I'm out of popcorn, though, so we should probably get back to the challenge."
"Seriously?!" the finalists and helpers alike exclaimed.
"Obviously, the helpers aren't gonna be very helpful anymore," Chris replied. "So, instead of helpers, Jo and Scarlett will now be hinderers." As he spoke, Chef walked back into view with a pair of video game controllers, tossing one each to Scarlett and Jo. "The island is now back online," Chris continued, "and, with these controllers, they will be able to throw up obstacles to throw you down, or, completely crush you."
The shot cut to Scarlett as she looked at her controller and smirked. "Good to know."
"Looking forward to it," Jo said in determination.
Harold and Zee gulped, and Chris laughed. "That was the good part," he said. "Let me tell you the bad part. You have ten minutes to finish this challenge," he told Zee and Harold. "If neither of you do, Scarlett and Jo get to split the money."
"Dude, what?" Zee said in shock.
"You can't do that!" Harold protested.
"I can! I will! I am! GO!" Chris announced, blowing his airhorn right in Chef's face, earning an annoyed sigh from the man. Harold and Zee immediately ran off, but the camera cut to a close-up of a thoughtful Jo.
"Well...I want the money, but I'm not really comfortable with how this is set up," Jo said to herself. "But...I guess it wouldn't be too bad if I just made this a little more challenging for them..."
"Do what you want," Scarlett said, the camera panning over to show her grinning darkly with her controller in hand. "I'm getting my justice."
Confessional: Jo
“And I thought I was an underhanded person,” Jo mentioned to herself. “Velma has less morals than me and Gnome Master.”
Confessional: Scarlett
"I was snubbed in the last episode," Scarlett confessed. "And now that I've been given permission, I can stop the finalists from winning without getting electrocuted!" She pulled out the remote from the seventh episode. "I don't even need this device. I have a controller to do the job for it."
Confessionals End
A few quick drum taps opened up a deep and dangerous challenge theme, the scene returning to Zee and Harold sprinting across the open field only to gape in shock as the pine trees in the background starting launching like rockets.
"What the heck?" Harold said. "Rocket trees?"
One landed right behind them, forcing both finalists to roll forward out of the way. "This island is wild!" Zee cried as the two continued running, more and more trees landing behind them like massive spears.
The two were shown together in a brief close-up, raising their eyebrows in surprise. A quick-pan ahead revealed the landscape changing, trees and rock formations rising up out of the artificial ground to form a large, dense barrier.
Harold jumped ahead of Zee as they climbed over the first big rock formation.
Zee vaulted downward and dashing forward along a lower 'path' among the rocks. Just as he was about to jump down onto grass, however, a boulder shot upward – and he landed on it groin-first. A close-up showed him letting out a high-pitched squeal of pain.
Harold's wince drew the camera's attention back upward to show him leaping from a boulder and grabbing onto the branch of a tree, only for the tree to suddenly shoot back down into the ground – causing him to yell as it dragged him down and slammed him back-first onto a fallen log.
Zee gave him a quick concerned glance as he jumped onto the same log, then upwards onto a rock formation before climbing onward and to the right and out of sight.
The scene cut back to the hinderers, both still working their controllers with Scarlett still looking considerably happier about it. "No need to change what works," Jo said uncertainty.
"What happened to that cutthroat attitude you've been displaying?" Scarlett asked. "Don't throw it away when I can get something out of it. And lower some of those trees. They're giving them too much cover from this storm I'm whipping up."
The camera panned onto the monitor to show Zee and Harold struggling against a powerful wind as they walked through what looked like a dense forest as leaves, dust, branches, and various small woodland animals blew past them.
A focus on the monitor's screen transitioned the scene back to the challenge. "I think...I can see the finish line in the distance," Zee said, pausing for a moment as he struggled against the intense gale.
"They're not making this easy on us," Harold commented.
The pair briefly passed behind a thick and mossy pine tree, the camera zooming in slightly as they reappeared. "Would you?" Zee asked.
"...I guess not," Harold answered after a moment.
The shot cut back to the Peanut Gallery to show them watching with worry and anticipation. "C'mon, Harold," Leshawna spoke. "Just hang in there."
"I know you can win this, Zee," Julia said. "You deserve it after everything."
Then the camera cut back to the hinderers, Chris standing next to their monitor with his hands behind his back and a smile on his face. "Ooh! They're getting close!" he said excitedly, prompting Scarlett to scowl and Jo to frown.
Once more the scene moved back to the finalists, their arms raised to buffer themselves against the winds – snow beginning to fall and lightning beginning to crack in the background - with Harold in the lead. "Two minutes left!" Chris called out over the island's loudspeaker. "Two minutes!"
"I...," Harold said with glee. "I think I can make it!"
"Not if I can help it!" Zee shouted, speeding up as the dense trees around him and Harold began to recede into the ground – and the tense and dangerous challenge music resumed. "If I win, me and Julia can go out and change the world together."
"I have to win this," Harold told him. "I've been undervalued and looked down on by my peers, friends, and even my family. I need to prove my might."
The snowy ground below their feet began to crack. A hollow sound played, then all at once, the ground shot up under them, earning startled yells from both. The shot soon cut to the new peak they were standing on rising up into the sky, then stopping.
"Drats..." Zee muttered, both finalists looking down with wide eyes. his final word echoed as the camera zoomed out, revealing the snowy mountain they were now at the top of.
The Peanut Gallery was shown gasping, as were Jo, though Scarlett was smiling as their misfortune. "Twenty seconds left...!" Chris said as the camera moved on to him looking at his watch.
The shot cut back to Harold. "I guess it's over," he sighed. “Scarlett wins after all.”
Zee noticed a bulge in the snow beside him. The boy shoved his hand into it and pulled out the phone Duncan stole from Chris. "I don't know how this got here, but we have to get down. Start stomping the ground."
Harold nodded and stomped on the ground at his feet, and after a few cracks, Zee hurled the phone down, breaking the device apart. Their eyes widened as the mountain began to crumble under them, and the ground imploded in on itself.
"Six! Five!" Chris began to count off, the music cutting out save for a single plodding note to highlight each number. "Four!" The camera panned onto the television, showing both finalists tumbling through the snow and rock. "Three! Two! One!" The shot cut to the finish banner, then zoomed out to show the avalanche stopping just under it – with neither finalist in sight. "GAME OVER!" he announced, blowing on his airhorn as a subdued but triumphant riff played.
Jo stood up in surprise, and Scarlett started cheering.
"My mission was a success!" Scarlett said in victory. “Now hand over my well-deserved prize!”
"Congratulations Jo and Scarlett," Chris said with his usual smile. "Revenge is sweetest-" he glanced at the monitor- "ohhhhh, what have we here?" he said with a sudden look of shock, the music cutting out as he pointed at the television screen.
A sharp note played as a familiar hand stuck out of the snow lying just past the finish line and waved. Scarlett's jaw dropped in shock, and Jo let out a sigh of relief.
The scene cut to the finish line, the camera pulling back a little ways as Chef walked up with a stretcher, dressed as a female nurse. Leshawna ran onscreen and pushed him out of the way. Chef flew off frame with a shout, and Leshawna grabbed the arm and pulled, freeing a shocked and snowy Harold from the aftermath of the avalanche. "Oh," he groaned, looking around as Leshawna dropped him on the stretcher, "what happened?" he asked as the victorious music began to play again with much more enthusiasm.
"You won, Ginger Baby!" Leshawna answered with a smile, the camera pulling out even more to show Harold looking back at the finish banner.
"I did it!" Harold said excitedly. "Harold Norbert Cheever Doris McGrady V has claimed victory! Boo yah!" he raised his arms and cheered, the shot cutting away to show all of the Peanut Gallery cheering.
“We weren't able to talk to each other as much, and it's clear we like each other as more than just friends, but how about we hang out a little bit back home and see where things go?” Leshawna suggested.
“As long as we don't rush into a committed relationship, I'd like that,” Harold smiled back.
The camera panned to the left to show Julia frantically pulling a dazed and half-conscious Zee from the rest of the avalanche, and picking him up onto her back.
"Julia," Zee said weakly, "I'm sorry that I-"
"Be quiet," Julia said with a weak smile as she carried her boyfriend over to the stretcher and set him down next to Harold. "You need to rest."
"But-" Zee tried to say.
He was cut off by Julia grabbing his head and kissing him full on the lips. "You didn’t win the money, but we can still provide for the world in our own ways, and with the power of love," she said with a smile as she broke the kiss, leaving Zee looking dopey.
The capstone theme began to play as the footage skipped ahead to a shot of the open sky, the double-rotored helicopter soon flying up into view. "That's it for this very, very off season," Chris began, standing in the open doorway with Zee and Julia sitting on the edge letting their legs dangle freely with Julia leaning into Zee; Harold and Scarlett standing on either side of Chris, the latter annoyed and the former grinning while holding the suitcase full of money to his chest; and the rest of the cast, crouching down and peering over in the gaps between and behind the rest, constantly jockeying for position as they tried to get one last shot of themselves on camera.
"This is Chris McLean, saying if you can't stand the pain-" the handsome host continued, the shot cutting in closer- "stay off the Total! Drama! Paaaahkitew Island!"
"RE-VENGE!" Max suddenly yelled from behind Scarlett, shoving her out of the helicopter, and the brainiac screamed as she fell.
The camera lingered on the dumbfounded looks of Chris and the other ex-campers, all of them staring at Max in shock. "This is how a traitor should be rewarded," he said, crossing his arms and closing his eyes defiantly.
The ex-campers and host burst out laughing, and a fun and energetic tune started to play. The camera panned over to the windshield to show Chef laughing along with the rest of the cast from the pilot's seat, and the helicopter flew away.
The music soon faded away, though, and the scene quick-panned down to show a screaming Scarlett landing in the giant mud puddle. She quickly surfaced with a shocked splutter, and pulled herself out onto dry land. "How am I going to get home now because of those imbeciles?!"
A few ominous notes were struck, and a ferocious growl caught Scarlett's attention. She looked up, and the camera zoomed out to show Scuba Bear 2.0 standing over her, eyes red. "Heheh," the brainiac laughed nervously. "You're not going to hurt me are you?"
The scene abruptly cut outward to the full long-distance shot of the island, the ominous music ending as Scarlett's scream and Scuba Bear's snarl echoed across the lake.
(Roll the Credits)
Lightning - 14th
DJ - 13th
Amy - 12th
B - 11th
Julia - 10th
Max - 9th
Leshawna - 8th
MERGE
Jo - 7th
Duncan - 6th
Ella - 5th
Sammy - 4th
Scarlett - 3rd
Zee - 2nd
Harold - 1st

WIBTA If I tell my cousins Bf that he cheated (Please help, I need advice!)
Hey Reddit or tiktok I honestly don’t care if this spreads I need advice and validation.
No keep things anonymous I will be using fake names,
Noah my cousin has been dating Anthony for the past year, and Anthony is in the Air force and is stationed in Germany and is planning to come back and marry my cousin next year. But here’s the thing I’ve been sick of Noah’s dumb ass, stupid ass, fuckery that I’ve witnessed because he says that Anthony and him have worked it out but now it’s gotten to far!
My other cousin Violet had a graduation party and it was fun, until Noah invited this guy called Ethan. Now Noah and Ethan were upstairs the house alone for a while during the party for 30 mins. I checked up on them and they were alone a lot. My cousin’s Noah excuse was “ I invited Ethan because he knows how to do drag and I am surprising Violet with a drag show.”
And to be quite fucking honest, the makeup wasn’t even that god damn good, and it took them 2 HOURS! TWO FUCKING HOURS! Other girls were going up and down the levels to help with the makeup after the 1st hour. But whenever I even went upstairs to check. Ethan would hold onto Noah’s waist and would blow on his neck for makeup to dry. This dude was so close to my cousins neck like it was Edward was to Bella! Like WTF
My cousin Violet, girl of the party was concerned why Noah was alone with Ethan for so long and pulled me aside to get something off her chest, we get to the bathroom and she confessed that earlier when setting up the party, Noah and Ethan were in the house. Noah confessed to Violet that he and Ethan were on the bed and things happened and they made out!
I was fucking livid, thankfully my boyfriend was there to calm me down, I didn’t want to ruin Violets day of her collage Graduation in front of her friends. So I didn’t say much. But the drag show went on and it was fun, but still, seriously, 2 hours for makeup that looked like it would take 30mins!
And mind you other guest were actually suspecting how they were close. Also since people were drinking people were staying over the house. So NOAH AND ETHAN SLEEP IN THE BASEMENT ALONE!!!!
Yes alone! Also Noah met Ethan on Grinder so that makes things worse. I face time the girl cousins confessing how I’m sick of Noah’s shit and I don’t care if it ruins my relationship with him and if I do something it’s not against h them, and they agreed. But I told them how Noah during the first few months of dating Anthony, Noah would go to his ex’s work and ask in person if they could play overwatch, while in the side lines his actual bf would ask to play games! Noah gas also go to his ex’s job to just “hang out” and eat while his own bf was overseas in the Air Force. This guy, his ex then bought my cousin a 400, yes 400 tv just because . Months later his ex has the confidence to ask my cousin to leave his bf for him…. I told time he should block him and never should’ve done this in the first place, because what his ex did was disrespectful and honestly noah was cheating to, but noah said that he still wanted to be friends and a clear boundary to not hate on who he decides to be friends with even if they are exes…
But here’s what happens if I become the asshole. Violet doesn’t want to be involved but she’s the only person that Noah told that he made out with Ethan. She doesn’t want me to use her name, but obviously it would all lead back to Violet. My Boyfriend said if I say something I technically throw violet under the bus and ruin all of these relationships and friendships.
But Anthony needs to know what my cousin has done. He has done more. And I wish I could type more but I will in comments.
So WIBTA if I tell my cousins bf that my cousin cheated on him
TLDR: my stupid ass cousin admitted to my other cousin that he made out with a guy he invited to a party and I want to tell his bf he cheated. There’s more my cousin has done and I’m fine ruining this relationship. I actually want them to breakup .
Edit to add: noah used 2000, yes two thousand! Not two hundred but 2000 dollars of Anthony’s credit card money on the party and personal uses… soooooo yea.

i’m a diehard hip hop fan, more specifically Kendrick, so most of this stuff I know by heart so why not make a post pointing out EVERY SINGLE wrong thing i can catch Pyro say. Im mostly making this since it pisses me off when people who have zero clue about something come in and try to sound confident as hell about it while getting countless things wrong. I will try to link proper sources for everything he got wrong as well. Enjoy! By the way when I say Dot it is Kendrick I’m talking about. And I will also put the time stamps of what i’m talking about
Also if i got something wrong please correct me so I can edit it. Most everything here should be correct however
First off and it isn’t Pyro, it’s Critikal, but talking about how youtubers in 2016 ruined diss tracks and Dot vs Drake is the first beef since then to make real diss tracks is so funny because Pusha T vs Drake happened in 2018 I believe so just goes to show how in touch they are
Okay once again something petty , it’s small but it kinda shows how much research was done from the get go, because Kendrick’s real name isn’t Kendrick Lamar, It is Kendrick Duckworth, Lamar is just his middle name. So it kinda shows the research level when you can’t get the dudes name right when you’re supposed to be saying the full name of both dudes.
4:50
Claim - Drake came from nothing thus Drake flexes money
Okay so this is the first major one I think. Drake did not come from nothing, he grew up in rich neighborhoods, more specifically Forest Hill in Toronto. Not to mention his father’s side of the family had many successful musicians. He grew up rich. This is why people dislike Drake as he tends to go on his records rapping about the hard hoods and shit like this when he grew up infinitely more wealthy than most other rappers.
5:05
Claim - Kendrick does not like Drake as he flexes too much
Not even close. The actual origin of their beef is said to come from Kendrick’s legendary verse on Control. It is said that after Kendrick made his verse Drake felt very disrespected and thus attempted to blacklist kendrick from various radio stations which didn’t work. Kendrick felt that Drake took the verse too personally when Kendrick was just being competitive(it is vital to note that every other artist Kendrick mentioned ignore it or praised him for it). And eventually the animosity just kept ramping up as many people began to perceive drake as a culture vulture due to the fact he’d rap about stuff such as hard life in the streets or gangs despite never growing up around that only because it was trendy at that time. Which funnily enough is what pyro is doing right now, he’s culture vulturing off the beef since it’ll give him money but doesn’t really care
6:00-8:00
I don’t see why bring up Pusha T vs Drake as this isn’t that relevant to the Dot beef. Not to mention he just skips over 90% of things said in the beef. But yea it’s not Adoeniss lmao.
8:15
Okay so that wasn’t a diss track. That’s a sneak diss, something very big to distinguish as in the hip hop community sneak disses are seen as a pussies way to start beef while trying not to. this is especially relevant to drake as one of the biggest criticism of drake is how often he sneak disses rappers. to the point dot himself mentioned it in one of the diss tracks. Also tory le ness. also again i don’t see why bring this up as it is not relevant to the Dot beef. It wasn’t even a beef in the first place megan never fired back nor did drake even say her name. just feels like padding runtime
9:15- 9:30
Why is bigfoot being brought up at all it is not relevant, i’ve said it like three time but it really isn’t you can skip over all this and not have missed a single thing
10:05
Claim - Megan’s law line is about drake
It isn’t, this is the line that kickstarted the nicki beef. Nicki’s husband and i think brother are both sex offenders, Megan’s line about Megan’s law references a law in america where it is required for the police to make a sex offenders information public. Maybe it can be about drake but it almost unanimously agreed it’s about nicki. Okay so i listened to everything he said, basically the same I said. So yea it’s probably not about drake only reason people think it is is because kendrick called him a predator
14:03
Metros booming track? For all the scary dogs? what? Everything else he said seems accurate however. He didn’t mention the prince and jackson line though which was specifically at drake
16:30
No, GKMC was the classic he was talking about. The actual line would be the classic is GKMC, the overhyped is TPAB and the prime was DAMN. This is the only one that makes sense as not many people see section 80 as a classic whereas GKMC is seen as the first of the four run classics by Kendrick. Also good kid and Maad City
21:14
They weren’t directly involved but essentially Drake was saying that all the dudes I collab with clear you because of me. And that you’re not even the biggest in your own label, cus I think him and SZA were both top dawg. Pyro also doesn’t mention the push up and give me 50 line despite being the fucking chorus
21:48
That’s not it? At all? What Rick ross was trying to say is that Drake is so insecure about his own music that he had to “leak” the song in order to see if the public liked it enough for him to officially release it
22:20
That’s not what he claimed at all either. The nose job thing is not about not giving credit to his mentors, it’s about how Drake is seen as confused about his race and how he never felt black enough and that he isn’t black enough. Pusha and Dot tackled the same thing head on. Hell Dot literally ended Euphoria by saying Drake shouldn’t say the n word no more. It’s nothing abt giving credit rather adding on to the fake narrative that’s chased Drake his whole career
23:35
Thats part but not the only reason. He used the voice of the most iconic west side rapper ever to diss and make fun of tue current best west side rapper. This is why that became so controversial among the hip hop community, which he doesn’t mention. Because it’s corny to use the voice of a dead man to diss a dude who’s seen as the protege of Tupac and the current rep of the west coast.
25:48
It’s small but hearing Pyro act like DMX is just “some random rapper that passed away that said the same thing” is so annoying. Like bro isn’t a legendary rapper himself. It’s the equivalent of saying “oh yea and this interview of this one boxer, Mike Tyson idk if yk him, said the same shit”
26:13
No he isn’t saying that because Drake isn’t an activist he’s saying that because of the fact that Drake grew up super wealthy, but likes to act and pretend like he had a hard up bringing. The black enough just comes form the way Drake is perceived as a culture vulture who likes to pretend to live a life he didn’t.
29:33
Most people don’t care about writers. Kanye is a legendary rapper and he was well known for having writers in his track. The problem comes from when you attempt to portray yourself as an incredible writer when in reality you have 20 dudes doing it and you ignore that part. What makes it funnier is that Kendrick actually mentioned this in Euphoria I believe with the “It’s 1v20 with all the writers”. Essentially it’s the same as an athlete taking steroids but pushing himself as clean. Just makes you feel fake, which again is the main narrative around drake
31:00
Thing is that it wasn’t just his son, he literally addresses each family member, including his father. Also the predator line is referencing his father, and also Baka who’s an actual sex offender, so idk why mention that but not mention who it is he’s talking abt
Okay, so I think that’s it. Pyro weirdly left out vital parts of the beef such as how Drake was constantly alluding to Dots wife cheating with the bodyguard. Or other stuff like that. Or just not explaining certain bars and what they mean when it’s like 20 seconds at most. Or why some backlash occurred or like leaving certain things that can paint a picture of why Drake lost which is what he’s attempting to do. Such as him leaving out the fact that the Tupac part got backlash because of the west coast connection. Or how Drake isn’t critiqued for flexing but rather pretending to live a life he never did just because it’s trendy
In other words it just sounds like a white dude who’s never even listened to one song by either artist trying to make money off of it. Stick to Sunnyv2 and inflated furry porn pyro.

Hi everyone. I just really needed to vent and hopefully hear from people that might relate. I'm a 21F in Electrical Engineering. I just finished my fourth year of college, and I have a year left of my program since I switched from Computer Science.
I'm not going to lie. I find Electrical Engineering to be highly dissatisfying. I also found Computer Science to be the same way, although I do like EE more than CS.
For context, I'm Indian. My whole life, up until the last year of high school, I wanted to be a doctor. It was only that last year where I started thinking if that was really what I wanted to be. I wanted to do game development, and I figured since I respect innovation CS would be a better fit for me, and I had taken some CS classes in HS and volunteered at a hospital which wasn't always fun. When I first told my parents of this switch, they freaked the fuck out. They thought I'd get no job. They literally started an intervention to get me to pursue medicine instead, it was a whole ordeal. I felt like absolute shit about myself. They eventually accepted it, but it definitely wasn't something they were impressed about, at least I don't think. They never said they were proud of me and didn't brag about me, even though that's something they would do even when I didn't want them to talk about me.
I always did above and beyond and they wouldn't be impressed. And then when they would be impressed, the trauma I got from them was so bad that I still hated myself. For example, in HS, I got salutatorian but I HATED it. My parents, in the other hand, were very proud. They bragged about it to the people they knew, even when I asked them to stop. I didn't want people to know, I didn't want to be celebrated, because that was a failure in my eyes and still is.
When I switched to EE, the same shit happened. They thought I was going to be a failure and there'd be no jobs. They could not (or didn't try to) understand why I couldn't give them an answer for what the salary is. I'd just say it depends on the industry, role, and other things. They didn't understand there wasn't a textbook answer like if I had become a doctor for how much I'd make, if I knew what type of doctor I wanted to be.
They eventually settled down with the bullshit drama, but I doubt them so much now. My mom says she's proud of me, but it doesn't matter what she says, I just think she's lying. She says she's proud, but then says the most hurtful things to my face about my major implicitly. And she stopped doing that honestly. But she will always do it again. Recently, I was talking about how I was so stressed because I was behind in this intensive coding program I signed up for because I was having midterms and finals for five classes this past month and I had so many deadlines for my research at the same time, while preparing for a conference. She knew all of this, then proceeded to say, "You should leave your switch home the next time you go to college, it only distracts you." Are you fucking kidding? I haven't played my switch in months, I barely get to do any of my hobbies. When I told her that, she said she only mentioned it because from seeing what I did back at home (I go to college in another city), she thought it was just distracting me.
I can't even describe how badly this hurt me, she turned herself into the victim when I tried to explain why it was hurtful, so I just gave up and hung up. She clearly thinks EE is a walk in the park, because she gave such useless simple advice that would seemingly solve all my problems. Additionally, my parents just don't recognize how hard I work, and it kills me. Of course she noticed me gaming over break, But what about the countless hours I grinded doing my research, sobbing because I was stressed about finishing enough over winter break? She KNEW how stressed I was, but ofc now she only remembers me "being distracted by gaming" but doesn't remember shit about how hard I worked. Oh, and I also mostly gamed because I had a surgery and was in so much pain, which I remember her telling me to get to work constantly while I was recovering too.
Before this semester, almost every semester beforehand I've worked at LEAST two jobs. It was only during the last semester that I quit my internship because it was so overwhelming to do that while I had to balance school and research. I wish I never quit. I had such poor grades then, but honestly my grades have only gotten worse even though I genuinely study so hard and try my best. Nothing has improved. If my parents knew my grades, they'd be horrified. My friends used to tell me how much I impress them, and that I'm taking on so much. They don't seem impressed anymore now that I don't have multiple jobs. Struggling is only okay when there is a reason. It's not acceptable for me to be struggling to pass with so much effort and just research as my other commitment. Because that's just one job. People used to say, "wow that's so much work!" now, when people ask me why I'm stressed and what I have going on other than school and I say research, no one comments the way they used to.
Now, I'm a C/D student, struggling to pass my classes. The way that EE is set up my university, if you fail a class you'll be set back for a whole year. Because all of the core classes are offered once a year, but they're prerequisites for classes you're meant to take the next semester, so if you don't pass them you have to wait a year before you can progress your requirements. But it's not impressive to just pass. I used to think working hard can get you where you want to be, but I disagree now. The amount of effort I put in is not proportional to the results. I get barely passing grades.
The future just seems so bleak. I want to pursue a masters after graduating, but I probably won't even be able to do that because my GPA doesn't meet the admission requirements and my GPA does nothing but drop every semester. I talked to an advisor at my school, and he said that my University won't even look at your application if you don't meet their GPA requirements. Which is devastating because I've done research since my freshman year. But instead of looking at someone that genuinely wants to pursue graduate school that is shown by their research experience, they'll accept someone who chose to do graduate school last minute and has no research experience because they meet the GPA requirement. I feel so lied to, GPA absolutely matters more than experience, from what I've noticed. It's just that if you only have the GPA without the experience, that's not enough.
My parents don't brag about me anymore, they say it's because it's not good to brag, which I agree, but they wouldn't stop even when I asked them to before. They only stopped bragging once I decided not to become a doctor.
Looking back, I regret not pursuing medicine. It's the worst regret of my life. I know that I would excel had I chosen a pre-med major like biology, because I always did well in those subjects. What I struggled with a lot was problem-solving like in Engineering and math. I chose something that does not come easily to me. But if I had, I would have easily gotten more respect and kindness from everyone around me. I no longer feel like working as an engineer would be meaningful, because it's not like I'm dedicating my life to saving others. Honestly, I could have become a doctor if my parents didn't place so much emphasis on it my whole life, I kind of had a crisis in HS, because I was worried that I only wanted to do medicine because I was brainwashed. Also, ever since I decided to do engineering my parents have placed so much pressure on my sister to do medicine which they never had before, because I was going to do it. Now my sister is getting ready to pursue medicine, and I just feel insanely envious. I'm going to be a failure next to her, who will be doctor. And engineers are just okay by Indian standards. Even if people in the Indian community ask me what I'm doing, they seem unimpressed when I mention that I'm majoring in EE, and assume I'm just going to become an electrician which is super insulting considering the education differences, or they say, "not a doctor"?
Please be kind, I'm really rejection sensitive, I can't handle reading passive aggressive comments, I just really want to feel supported right now. Please don't say becoming a doctor would be hard too, Im talking about pre-med majors being easier, And I've always done good at pursuing activities outside of college, so I wouldn't have struggled with that either. I know a pre-med major would've been easier for me and I would've garnered more respect.

6000 Alpha Damage in one shot. Keep this in mind. All 6000 damage in one, single, impact point. To all my MechWarriors reading, I think you might understand the goal here.
Now, people will tell me the DPS works out really poor. That it's DPS actually sucks. And here's the thing? They are right. It's DPS is not great. If you can't overpower shields, what's the point?
This does mean the Ion is a suboptimal choice as a Solo ship. I concede that. We'll talk about how it can thrive as part of a pair later.
Let's know that anything Valkyrie or Smaller is going to sweat at every impact. However, you may feel your not killing targets fast enough still?

Stop shooting Center-Mass! You are throwing away critical damage with no pay-off!

3.23 has several new tools that are being slept on.
Precision Mode and Subsystem Targeting were built for the Ion to sing.
It takes only 1-2 hits of an Ion on a Cutlass's fat engines to tear it off. A Cutlass with missing engines has a new battle with Torque Imbalance.
"They're not dead, but they wish they were."
One hit of the Ion on almost any gun system will knock it clean off.
"They're not dead, but they wish they were."
So the going Strategy right now is to aim center Mass and land shots to punish shields, and then, Depending on the ship, use SUBSYSTEM TARGETING to pick a juicy limb to rip off.
Cutlass's have those fat engine thighs,
Crusader's all have very exposed remote turrets that are easy to pop like zits.
Anvil? Valk's engines can tear off, but they bristle with guns they hate to lose.
Aegis loves their wings and Ion loves to rip em off.
More Tips:
You dont' need your Power Triangle in weapons. Full Power to shields in 3.23 makes the Ion's beefy shields shrug off most anything.
My biggest issue with the Ion? Honestly it's projectile speed could go up a *touch* but too much and it's One-Shotting Arrow/Bucc/Gladius far too easy. I do not want a one-shot.
But the Ion THRIVES as part of a pair. Let your buddy in a Light or Medium fighter strip shields, while you line up a 2 km Precision Mode Kill shot on the engine.
An Ion won't solo kill an Hammerhead, but if it's shields are down? The Ion can pluck all it's teeth like a medieval Dentist. No other ship is better at it.

I struggle with this to no end. I have an advanced degree, a decent job, a house, and a family, but my dad seems to have had so much more life experience by age 40 than I do.
My dad knows how to work on cars and boat engines. He knows some electrical. He owned one of the first personal computers and knows about all the RAM, ROM and such. He does woodworking and has built entire beautiful pieces of furniture and beds we still use. He’s run marathons and used to bike 30 miles to work each way.
My brother in law is gen X, and is very similar.
I, on the other hand, like to sleep in every day. I watch YouTube, cruise Reddit, and play old video games. I feel like a waste.
Maybe they lived these lives out of necessity. Maybe I just have it too easy, and have paradoxical anxiety because of it.
Is this a generational thing, or is it just me?

I’ve used square for my mobile business for about 3 years now, I sell clothes online through my website and my local store in my neighborhood. My transactions are usually around $20-$100 depending on what and how many items that are bought. For the past 3 years I’ve had no issue besides the typical account review, they’ve gave me a loan for $6,000 after a year of processing with them and everything has been fine. Last year (2023) they decided to deactivate my account due to being “high risk”, which I don’t get because like I said I’ve been processing transactions with them for 3 years with 0 issues. But they sent me an email saying my funds ($1,000) will be released after a 90 day wait period, this was Jan 30th 2023. I then refunded a few transactions on my square account because the customer(s) agreed to pay another way. After the 90 day wait (April 30th 2023) I was left completely in the dark, didn’t receive an email or update about my situation. After patiently waiting 180 days for them to release my funds I yet again was left in the dark. I’ve called more than 100x and they all say “we can’t discuss this issue further with you” or “we’ll escalate your case to the account services” or just flat out lie and tell me “they don’t know why my funds haven’t been released”, “my funds should be released that day (the day I called)”, or just straight up hang up in my face. I haven’t been able to reach anyone through email and the chat service no longer works for me. It’s almost impossible to talk to someone at square about this because they all say the same thing or can’t do anything about it. I’ve now reached out to BBB to try to help resolve this since reaching out via phone, email, chat support, and any social media account they have isn’t getting me anywhere.

I broke up with my on again off again boyfriend since middle school nearly three years ago. He and I were best friends/dating for 12+ years. We were each others first kiss in 6th grade, and we loved each other all the way up until our senior year of college. We used write each other poems, he’d get me build a bears with his voice in it, we’d write each other notes in the sand in the beach, he bought me Louis Vuitton and Gucci when we were in college, and so much other little things that don’t really matter, but still mean a lot to me to this day. Until the last year or so, our relationship was literally like a movie. I could talk about it for hours. I miss those days. I think of them fondly.
I won’t go into major details about our break up, but just know it was one of those breakups where you feel forced to break up with them because they completely changed/started to treat you different. Let’s pretend his name is Tommy. I didn’t want to break up with Tommy. I ADORED Tommy. Like, literally would sometimes cry while thinking of him because of how much love and care I had in my heart for him. We had been in a long distance relationship, close distance, everything in between. His family loved me, and mine loved him. My family toook him to Key West, Disney World, the beach, and so much more. Tommy was like my parents son. When we broke up, I completely lost myself. I would give up my body to guys just so they could spend the night so I could have somebody to sleep beside. Writing this is bringing me close to tears, because I truly regret doing that. I obviously was lost, until I meet this great guy who I dated for about a year. I ended up breaking up with him too because I resented him for making me unfollow Tommy and his family on social media, talking badly about him, etc.
About 6 months after I broke up with Tommy, I found out he had been telling people I “emotionally cheated on him” which is not true whatsoever. He made me look like the “bad guy” (probably because he was hurt) and all of our mutual friends from childhood, boys and girls, no longer speak to me. Meanwhile, I had only been speaking highly of him and wanted to still be friends, I even considered our break up a “break” at this point. So, naturally, to hear such a blatant and nasty lie was very hurtful. To think he was telling others I cheated on him when all I wanted to do was love him unconditionally was not a good feeling. I shrugged this off ike I didnt care, but I do. Now, I believe the lie and believe maybe I am the bad guy for breaking up with him. Also during this time, I found out Tommy was diagnosed with heart failure at the age of 22. We are both 24 now. If he does not get a transplant soon, he will die. This has been confirmed by a FB post from his mother. When I found out, I once again told myself I didn’t care. A few months later, I had a total breakdown one evening and told my parents I can’t handle it. Against my best judgement and normal character, I caved and texted him for the first time since we broke up. I said something along the lines of “Hey Tommy, this is xxxx. I wanted to lyk you are in my prayers and of course my family. If you ever need anything at all we are all here for you”. Send. No reply. Frantically a few days later, again against my character, I texted him again. I said something like “If you want me to leave you alone I will please just let me know what you want me to do”. Send. No reply. Damn, thats still gut wrenching to think about.
Here two years after his diagnosis, and three years after our breakup, I would be kidding myself if I didn’t admit that I dream of him every night, think of him at least once a day, and regret ever leaving him even though I know it was the right thing to do. Sometimes I wonder if he never got the diagnosis, if I would be over our break up now. The anxiety I feel daily about the fear of him dying is nearly unbearable. I have a new boyfriend now whom I feel like I neglect because of this entire situation, and I truly don’t know how to fix it. Every time I get a memory on social media, it’s of him since we were together for so long. All my major memories in my life (firsts, proms, graduations, vacations, etc) are with/of him. I feel like I can’t escape it. I’ve tried to forget and that just seems to have made things worse because I feel like I never gave myself time to heal. At this point, I feel like I should be healed. I am starting to get scared that this is going to affect me long term, and that I will never get over it. Some days it bothers me a lot (like today, to which I had to write for advice to strangers on the internet) and other days I rarely think of it at all. I have a family history of mental illness, and I every so often think of suicide even though I know realistically I’d never do it. I’m currently taking Buspar after being on Prozac for 15+ years. Advice is appreciated. I sincerely thank you if you read this far.
TLDR- I broke up with my first love 3 years ago and still think of him nearly daily. I think part of this is due to the fact that he is now unexpectedly dying from heat failure, and I live in constant fear that he will pass any day now. Please help with tips on how to get over this/how to move forward.

Why are Vikings built to be annoying; A Thesis by JLNS0KU
This is both a rant and not, as it's a complete introspective into the faction. This will be talking about lightspam as well, something that's a nonissue in this day and age but still exists, but nevertheless, is still apparent with a few heroes due to a number of reasons. Though I admit, there are exceptions to the rule I have established already. The exceptions would be Raider and Valkyrie, who I never feel cheated or unsatisfied if I win or lose against them. I could never hate these two, so my Raider and Valkyrie mains, you are doing great. You heroes could use some slight buffs or nerfs, but for argument sake you'll be excluded. With the two heroes pushed aside, I will now delve into the history of "lightspamming" and deconstruct every Viking hero one by one in order to deduce what makes them annoying.
As I have previously stated, lightspam is a non-issue in today's time in comparison to the past. You see, when For Honor first released, up until the CCU in year 4, lightspamming was real and efficient. Most were 400mls, near unreactable even in today's time and with the newer consoles for those not on PC. In addition to being faster and more stamina efficient when compared to heavy attacks, they also did much more damage by today's standards. Some went well past 22 damage, and some heroes even had 3 light chains to make spamming all the easier. Of course in reference to Orochi, which brings me to my next point in the past, and how the Samurai were primarily lightspammers. Orochi, Nobushi, and Kensei all had three light chains, Aramusha and infinite light chain, Shinobi had little other options, and Shugoki of course had the hyperarmord light to interrupt any and all offense. The stigma still exists of course against the Samurai for this, but only fools complain about lightspam from Orochi, who had the third light removed a while ago much like Shugoki's armored light. The CCU of course took care of the rest, and it made lightspam nothing short of ineffective.
But my dear reader, it never killed lightspam. Lightspam still exists, far weaker, but equally as annoying in today's time. For no matter if they work against you or don't, your opponent will be adamant to throw it out against you, due to the lack of a fully developed brain. My findings conclude the Vikings, ironic enough, house the de facto light spammer in the game. But my research (getting my ass slapped) revealed much more. Allow me to now dive deeper, and explain the basics of our remaining Vikings.
We shall start firstmost with Warlord, adequately named Borelord by some, with how simple and plain this grease stained Neanderthal really is. I have always stated that Warden is the white bread of For Honor, with how simple he is. If that's the case, Warlord would be equivalent to the stale moldy bread some booger picking child left behind the bleachers during gym. He is a product of his time, forgotten, and both tasteless and unhealthy for you. Despite having absolutely zero redeeming qualities, as he fell out of meta as of late, people still insist on playing this hero. Firstly, I am not one to judge you harshly on your character choice, you are entitled to play who you desire. But in a game with 34 different heroes, you pick the most stale, boring, and bland hero for more than a single rep? I will question your tastes then, but I understand them. Warlord being a product of his time, has not aged well. I do not blame the veterans of this hero, but it does not have to make me enjoy him. He is boring to fight as and to fight, since his kit is extremely limited. Most of the time, Warlord will try to light you over and over to shrink your health pool, so that for the first time in years they may use a heavy and perhaps get the execution. Any reactable maneuver you do, however, will be parried instantly. This means, of course, that your offense becomes that of Warlord, who now has forced you to play his sick twisted game of doing nothing but an opener bash and light attacks. Warlord, who I also like to call Warwar like I was speaking to a toddler incapable of higher thinking, is incapable of doing anything interesting ever. And for some reason, he is one of the last heroes who can easily put you out of stamina, since his parry riposte stuns and eats a chunk of your stamina, and his gb into wall splat eats a third. For the reasons listed, I believe he is one of the most annoying, and unenjoyable heroes. I imagine most Warlord players wanted to play as a fatman, but didn't want to be funny or interesting like Shugoki, so they got second best.
Onto our next Viking, Berserker. Berserker is an interesting case, because unlike Warlord, Berserker is actually strong. Deemed as S-Tier for the past few seasons and still going strong, this hero is an extreme fucking menace that always makes me sigh when I see one. In some odd twist, I've also seen many grow an ego from playing someone so easy, and given a year or so, I imagine this number might grow exponentially and one day reach at least half the amount of Orochi's with ego, but I digress. In Berserker's case, we have another case of lightspam, even though he's not limited to it. You see, this homeless crackhead can feint intio 400 mls heavies that are armored. He can easily track dodges on the heavy timing, trade and keep his offense going, or interrupt any offense you have going as well. Most Berserks will throw this out 3-4 times in a row, and think they have some masterclass good at the game. Despite how annoying this is, it's not as nearly as bad as the rest of his kit, who has no weakness. You cannot outtrade him, you cannot outrun him, you cannot outdodge him, and you certainly cannot outdo his absurd feats. His damage can easily reach 40+ on heavies, and his instant hyperarmor enables this easily. If you hated dodge recovery cancels before, then I'm sure you'll hate them combined with instant armored attacks. But while I also understand he's an excellent hero choice, I still believe there's way to many of them. Seriously, every other fucking game there is a Berserker. I've officially counted more Berserkers than Orochi. Orochi. A character whose nickname by the community was Roach, for being a bug you want to stomp and with how many they are. I genuinely wish they take this crackhead out back and break his knees. As a final note onto this mess of a hero, his marching fire armor is fucking ugly.
Our third is Highlander. Personally, I have never ever enjoyed this hero. He has been a mess from day one, with high damage but no reliable way to access it. However he's recently received a rework, so, what does this mean? Well, I actually believe his rework was okay. It granted him much more access to his offensive stance, and gave him more tools to work with. This unfortunately, had the side effect of making him good. If there was any hero that should've stayed bad, it would be Highlander. The idea that his rollcathcer is a command grab that pins you and can easily set up a quick gank is ludicrous, and returning to the light-spam topic for a moment, Highlander can actually do it quite well. Once again, lightspam in this discussion isn't about if it's effective or not, but merely a playstyle of a bygone era most people partake in. That being said, Highlander's offensive stance lights are now 400mls, which actually makes them an effective means to spam with. So this is our third viking who usually will lightspam you somewhat, which once again, is annoying.
Moving on to our fourth, is Shaman. Shaman is an interesting case, as the always delusional Shaman mains believe just because she's bad (she should be) that she can't be annoying (she is). Shaman, in my opinion, is by far the most annoying Viking. But she is not the best light spammer. In fact, she rarely spams lights at all. Shaman is actually a very rare case of a zone spammer, as her shit is extremely annoying and effective. Some dodges will still be caught by her dumb looking flurry of blows. It's her spammiest move by far, and genuinely, Shaman is meant to be spammy. This is because in a stroke of absolute brilliance, Ubisoft decided to give her a lifesteal as an innate part of her moveset. Yes, the most complained aspect about Kyoshin, is just naturally a part of this ugly tweaker. Ensuring that once she gets an insane 17 dmg bleed 400mls stab, she has a healthswing on every thing she does. Her zone is perfect for this at it's four hits or yet another change at a 17 dmg bleed stab. But my friends, it gets far worst. For you see, her bite is even more absurd. Confirmed off GB or by an ally, Shaman's bite does a huge 35 damage, while also healing her for 50. This is a 50 damage health swing, which is absolutely absurd, and should not exist in this game's day and age. Especially when, an ally can easily sneak in a heavy during the bite's wakeup. Many stupid people defend this, by saying Shaman has to work for it through her bleed. But I must retort, does not every hero have to work for their damage? Does Shugo not have to for his hug? Does Jorm not for his slam? Well ignore what I just said, because not even Shaman has to work for her absurd bite. In some sort of unholy alliance, most Nobushi'a have started keeping Shaman's as pets. Any match with a nobu and shaman is most likely a duo, and you can bet they're going to be sitting in eachothers lap all game. One tick from bleed is all it takes for you to lose against them, as Nobushi's 35 damage undodgeable against bleeding foes, allows shamam to get her bite with insane ease. Her bite also guarantees more damage from Nobu, so by being generous, we can say that a Shaman and Nobu gank can be nearly 70 damage. God, I hate this bitch and her stupid hair, and one day I wish Shaman mains may actually learn what good fashion is, so my eyes won't be assaulted while I'm being violated by genderbent Hannibal Lector.
Our fifth is Jormungandr, who actually stumps me quite a bit. His most annoying aspect is his wallsplat, which frankly, I despise that this mechanic has become more common. But that's very little reason to place him with these.... other "heroes". No, I've noticed that most Jormungandrs I come across, also prefer to spam lights. Despite having an interesting kit, nine times out of ten, they will always light, light, zone, light, light. Even more odd, is I feel most I come across rarely let their unblocable heavy fly, instead, choosing to feint it for a light attack. I actually believe this has to be further researched, so it is here I humbly ask the Jormungandr council to investigate themselves, and found out why this might be. I see now I have the least to say about Jormumgandr, but nevertheless, I'd still consider him annoying enough to be listed.
And finally we arrive, to the most, abhorrent, foul, despicable character ever conceived. The pinnacle of how not to design a hero, the de facto lightspammer, who could make even Orochi blush; Vanrangian Guard. Varangian, is by far, the most annoying Viking if I push my Shaman hate boner aside. Ubisoft Montreal was truly cooking, when it came to designing this dumbass character. We shall start firstly by discussing her ability to lightspam, which is frankly uncontested. You see, Varangian has enhanced lights that also have the superior block property. This is not unheard of, what is, however, would be the fact both her dodge attack and her light finisher also have crushing counters. So, by pressing light and light over and over, she'd actually be doing what she's designed to do by the devs themselves. You cannot simply block a light, as that won't stop her offense, and both starter and finisher light give her no reason not to lightspam, as her damage goes up to 20 with a CC. Her CC on dodge attack is also vastly more generous compared to Tiandi or Zhanhu, who require more strict time. Yes, Virginia really is a lightspam machine, who is constantly rewarded by pressing the right bumper over and over. Even if you parry a light attack and get your punish, she'll surely do it again. But my dear reader, we are not done yet, for you see, that's not all that makes this hero annoying. In another stroke of brilliance, no doubt cooked up by Harvard graduates and other brilliant scholars, she can pin you constantly. In order to combat the meta of wide attacks and hitstun, they made a hero who has wide attacks and hitstun. By simply blocking an attack with her shield, she can pin you for a few seconds, easily preventing you from doing anything more. To which, if she so wills it, can do a guaranteed heavy, which will pin you again for an additional amount of time. Vagina is designed, almost directly akin to Warlord, but a modern take that actually makes them a viable pick. Her other mix-up, the orange into soft feint gb, is also taken from another hero, that being JJ. Unblockable soft feint to gb is not inherently annoying, but it's extremely boring and effective, much like everything else about Vag. She's a brick wall who can also attack thanks to her constant CC's and pins. I also don't believe anyone like her or mains her because they find her moveset enjoyable, anyone who says otherwise is clearly a Ubisoft plant to persuade others that she isn't simply lazy design.
This marks the closure of my post, I hope I have enlightened some to the flawed and absurdity of these chosen heroes, and while I do hope they can be changed for the better, I also hope we can all collectively agree that anyone who plays these heroes are less than human, excluding Jormunagndrs, who are on thin ice. As always, I am open to debate to the comments, and will thoroughly explain any questions one may have.

Link to original post for context.
Thank you so much to all of the amazing people who commented and reached out. I wasn't able to respond to anywhere near all of them but I am so grateful to everyone for opening my eyes to how toxic and unhealthy this situation is.
As I stated in this update, I called my dad and basically just explained that we were having some issues, and just to ease my mind I wanted him to come down and be nearby when I talked to my husband. He did not press for more info and told me that he was on his way. He and my mom live ~6 hours away, so it's not exactly a very ideal ask but he didn't even hesitate, which I am grateful for. He arrived Friday night and parked outside our condo and we agreed that id call him and immediately hang up if I needed him to come inside, in case my husband got aggressive or angry. I did not expect him to, since he never has before, but some of the comments made me feel like I'd better be safe rather than sorry.
I debated all day Friday about how exactly to approach this situation and how I could trigger this conversation without him shutting down or getting angry. I decided to casually approach the conversation and ask him how he'd feel about me getting another vibrator (to replace the one that mysteriously broke after he 'caught' 'me using it in the shower). In response he asked "what for?" To which I replied "because it feels good". I knew this would be his response, but it was something along the lines of "what am I not good enough"? As it usually was in the past. I explained to him that it has nothing to do with him not being good enough, and that sex is supposed to be fun and experimental and interesting and that it was just something that would make it better for both of us. He then suggested that I just wanted it to use on myself, to which I asked if that would be a problem. He told me that I know how he feels about that and so I asked him why he was bothered by the idea of me masturbating. He got very defensive and asked why I would want that when I could have him, so I asked if he ever felt like he'd rather just pleasure himself rather than going through the motions of having sex. He said no and that he's "not a beta who spends his days stroking when he could be doing anything more productive". I explained to him that that was okay if it was his preference but that sometimes my sexual desires are to pleasure myself versus having sex. That's when his same ridiculous argument came out of that being "basically cheating". Pulling from another Redditor, I explained that cheating involves multiple people, and that it is impossible to be cheating if I am alone. He told me to "fuck off and go stick the shower head between my legs". I started to get upset and realized that here is when I always back down. I feel the need to apologize and make him feel better, id usually have started something and would end up guilt fucking him because I felt bad, but I didn't. I told him that he made me feel like he was trying to control me and my body and that I wasn't okay with that. He told me I could "go be a fucking whore somewhere else then" and got up off the couch and ran upstairs. I could hear him slamming my drawers open and acting like he was putting my clothes in a bag. I resisted the urge to run up there after him and just decided to sit there and see what would happen. Eventually he came back downstairs and apologized and said that he's very uncomfortable with the idea of me masturbating in our home, when I asked him to explain why, he said because it makes him feel unwanted. I told him that this isn't true, and that I do want him, but sometimes I just want that and he said "okay I guess".
I decided to leave it at that for the night, and didn't want to press any further. I told my dad it was okay to go and that I was so sorry for wasting his time and he told me he'd be staying the weekend at a hotel just to be safe.
Eventually we went up to bed and I realized if I left it at that it would just get swept under the rug like it always does. I'd go on putting up with this until it came full-circle again and I was not going to do that to myself.
I decided to ask him about him telling me that he listened to me when I showered. I told him I wanted to talk about it and he told me that he was just joking and that "I'm a fucking moron if I actually thought he was serious". I told him that it was an odd joke, especially considering he was angry and very much not laughing when he told me. He insisted that he was joking and I told him that i didn't believe him. He then responded by saying he wouldn't do it again. This went in circles for a bit before he finally admitted to deciding to do this after catching me in the shower. Instead of accusing him of anything, I asked him if he thought that was an invasion of my privacy, to which he informed me that we are married and I do not have privacy. I told him that was an issue and that in order to have a healthy marriage we both needed privacy. He was determined that there is so such thing as privacy in marriage, so I flat out asked him if he wanted me in the bathroom while he was pooping. He said no, I said "right , because you want your privacy". He told me that's different.
Over the course of the next 10 minutes or so, this escalated from a simple conversation into a full blown screaming match, and we got absolutely nowhere in our argument. It was like talking to a brick wall. I was so heated by this point that I don't even remember what was said, but he eventually told me I was: a fucking worthless whore, that i had nothing without him, that my vag was disgusting and made him sick, that I was fat and no one will ever want me (I'm 125 lbs btw), that im lucky someone like him would even look in my direction, etc, etc, etc.
I could barely see my phone through the tears and I called my dad and asked him to come get me.
My husband looked at me and said "you're fucking dad isn't driving 6 hours to come get you you dumb fuck". I started to grab some random things of mine and yelled that he was here staying in town, and he broke down and started sobbing.
He told me that he knows he's controlling, that he has serious issues, and that he's terrified of losing me. He said that he knows he's not good enough for me and that he's so afraid of losing me that he's pushing me away to save himself the inevitable heartache. He said that if he ever lost me he'd k*** himself.
As I watched this grown ass man snotting and crying in a heap on the floor, I kinda realized that I feel nothing for him. Like, nothing. The blinders I've been wearing were removed and I no longer saw the handsome, intelligent, caring, strong man I once did. I saw a pathetic, abusive, controlling, sad, and sick person. I came to the realization in that moment that there's no fixing this, and even if he does change, I would never trust him or see him in the same way again.
My dad knocked on the door and my husband ran and hid in the bathroom. I took my bags and went outside to meet him. He asked me if I wanted to talk about what was going on and I said no. He asked what I needed from him and I asked if we could just go back to his hotel room. He asked if my husband hit me and I said no. Before we had even gotten to the hotel my husband began texting me. It started with pleading with me to stay and forgive him and turned into insults over the course of the next day or so. He never threatened me physically, but told me if I didn't come home I'd lose him forever, that I'd be losing out on the best man I'd ever have, etc, etc. he told me that his friends laughed at him for being with such an ugly bitch, that his parents hate me because they know I'm not good enough for him, that I couldn't get pregnant because I'm probably a fucking whore banging other guys on the side, that he was embarrassed to be seen with me in public, and so much more.
I'm leaving. And not because Reddit told me to, because I'm genuinely not even remotely interested in staying with him and because I deserve better.
I spoke to a friend from school, and will be staying with her until I'm done school next month. After that, I'm going home to figure some things out and get a fresh start.
I'm currently in bed in a hotel room with my dad and have never felt more loved or safe. He is going to go over to the house tomorrow and retrieve my belongings, after which he is helping me move into my friend's apartment and then heading home.
I don't have much to say at this point other than thank you again to everyone who made me realize how dangerous this situation could have been. I was determined that we were not going to divorce but after Friday night I don't think there's any going back to that. I'm over it. I might update again, I might not. But making that post genuinely might have saved my life. Thank you.

Hello, using a throwaway but recently I found out my parents were scammed by a man who claimed to build them a food truck, giving ~$30k in checks. Pretty much they found an advertisement on Facebook marketplace (ik red flag) who claim to build food trucks. But he would keep delaying the project, claiming to be a one man team and he taking a while to build them. And this project started back in early 2023. I actually went to his business address and demanding him to come but ofc, the scumbag claim he's busy and cant make it. Also, btw it does look he does make trucks (there where some food trucks outside, unfinished) and the business on the trucks are real (I contacted the ones i saw).
Ok but heres where it gets interesting, I dug on the internet and I found a news article from the local town and he's facing racketeering charges for scammed over $200,000 in unfulfilled contracts. And I found his court case which he has trial in july. And now what crazy today, this man still contacts my parents (Posted bail) and still ask for money claiming we didn't pay him and will not finish the truck, even though he has a trial in july.
I was shocked by this and also concerned that no police has contacted us for evidence and I do not want to miss out on this.
This all occurred when I was away at college and I have no idea until they approached me for help. I'm an engineering student and have no clue how does the legal system work. Advice on what to do, what lawyer do i approach, or what questions should be asking.
thank you.

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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