https://instagram.com/glucyghost?igshid=MzNlNGNkZWQ4Mg==
Just wanted to give you an update on Ghost! He's currently still at the vet, and they've been taking great care of him. They had to perform an enema on him twice since nothing came out the first time. Afterwards, they put him on an IV to help soften his stool, and he was able to pass some feces. However, there's still a bit remaining, as shown on his x-ray, and his bladder is slightly swollen. 😕
We're in the process of scheduling his surgery, but I need to pay a 50% downpayment first. Unfortunately, there's a slight hiccup with the donations on PayPal, as they're currently on hold. I've reached out to their support, but I haven't received a response yet. If anyone has any suggestions on how I can receive the donations sooner, I would greatly appreciate it! 🙏❤️

Hi friends! I just wanted to know if you have any tips or if you lived in a situation similar to mine. I work in a laboratory, six days per week and I arrive at home at midnight. I’m not allowed to use my cellphone at work, only at dinner, but mostly of the time I prefer to socialize with coworkers; so when I’m home I spend two hours to relax and look at some news. Currently it’s 1am in my country, I think I should be sleeping RN but I’m not sleepy yet. Not even a little bit.
I wake up everyday at 5am to the sound of my husband’s alarm clock, sometimes I wake up to make him some coffee (not because he asks me, I just to it to make him feel happy) and go back to sleep, waking up at 10am.
Unfortunately I know about “do not use your phone at night, lower your lights at night, practice exercises”, but I think I could use some more advices or tips to make me sleep better and wake up early.
Ps: the lights at my work are so bright that give me headaches sometimes.
Thank you and sorry for my English, hope you understand what I’m trying to say.

Is this too top-heavy, and what else can I add to round it out?
ORM, 30 male
Previous career in politics, a short stint in the senate, time as an organizer and campaign consultant.
520 MCAT, 3.85 undergrad (religious studies), 4.0 post-bacc classes.
2500 hours as ER tech, 1000 hours in a research lab with one poster and a paper in review.
List: Albany, University of Michigan, Emory, Johns Hopkins, UMD, Virginia Tech, BU, Harvard, Tufts, Albert Einstein, SUNY Downstate, Robert Larner, M.D., UVM, Chapel Hill School, Northwestern, Pritzker University of Cincinnati, Case Western Reserve, Ohio State, George Washington, Georgetown, Wayne State, Duke, Western Michigan, Hofstra, Renaissance, Medical College of Wisconsin, University of Minnesota, Vanderbilt, Yale, Tulane, Quinnipiac, Columbia, NYU, Weill, Kaiser, Bernard J. Tyson, Drexel, Katz, Perelman, Sidney Kimmel, University of Pittsburgh, Brown, Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Mayo Clinic, Saint Louis University, Washington University, New York Medical College, UMass, mount sinai.

On September 14th 2022 I went to my regular doctor and asked about a referral to bariatric.
I started tracking calories to achieve a deficit from that day. Highest weight at that appointment was 308. Bariatric goal was to get to 295 pre-surgery and did so by December. Continued to lose a bit as I waited for a surgery date. Surgery date set for March but I was lucky enough to have it moved up as I was so ready. Went in on Feb 23rd at 275.6lbs (on my home scale).
Starting weight: 308 Surgery day weight: 275.6lbs Pre-surgery loss: 32.4lbs in the months from September referral to February surgery.
Surgery and recovery went really smoothly (thanks to the great Kaiser team). I didn’t need the pain medications after 72 hours and was back at work (not a strenuous job) on day 5…and haven’t looked back.
Just about 10 days now since my three month group check in. The goal sheet they provided said I should be on track if my weight was between 247-233lbs. I am at 223.2
Weight day of surgery: 275.6 Current weight: 223.2lbs Post surgery loss: 52.4lbs 100 days post op!
So far total lost since September 2022 is 84.8lbs
I don’t know what will happen next, I hope everything stays on track.
I am averaging: 74oz of fluid per day and 110grams of protein per day
I’m male in the 40s and 5’10” if that helps anyone looking for benchmarking.

Hello everyone! I just got a breakdown of my employer's benefits. The weird thing is, the company is based in California and has their medical insurance providers from California as well. (Kaiser and cigna). I am a 24 year old guy living in Texas though and will be needing to get an MRI done and go to physical therapy as much as possible for my busted up shoulders. I'm worried that if i enroll it'll be hard to find coverage and also i have no idea of what plan to choose as well given the fact that i would be going to the doctor's frequently. The pay is 19 an hour as well since its an entry level position.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oJcoyI65\_LBoA9Uh32mcurCb2AvtpqWB3KHFzFRtKc0/edit?usp=sharing
I am reading up on the FAQ but i want to get some suggestions as what to pick from those who know better.

Welcome to Camp Redwood! The feel-good camp for ALL AGES.
We toast marshmallows around the fire, tell spooky ghost stories, and hide in random secret military bunkers under the campgrounds! Because SOMETHING IS HERE WITH US.
Camp Redwood is the PERFECT PLACE for a summer getaway where we start EVERY DAY with a CAMP REDWOOD SMILE. Where our counselors disappear every five minutes, and our campers disembowel us for funsies! Did I forget to mention our littles aren’t actually eight years old, but fully grown adults?
We hope you enjoy your fucking stay!
We are also not responsible for any counselors revealing they are not who they said they are—and not who they appear to be.
...
So. There’s a LOT to tell you and not a lot of time to tell it.
Right now, I suppose you could say we are under lockdown—if that is the word. I want to go over the last several days to get you up to date. That’s all I can do right now. I can hope and pray the thing with Teddy’s voice does not get in here, and once again cry out for help—that I know is not coming. Not from the authorities, at least. But hey, if any of you fancy coming to rescue us, we’re in the middle of the Canadian wilderness. The closest rest-stop is maybe three fucking hours away. So have fun. Has it really almost been a week since I posted? Well, we’re still here!
And surprise, surprise, help is not coming. So, please excuse the salt. I am seventeen years old and I have been abandoned by the adults who were supposed to be looking after us.
Who were supposed to act under protocol if something like this happened. I know they were waiting for it—there are specific fucking guidelines on an emergency evacuation for counselors if this ever happened. But then the little shits took over before we could do anything. I guess I’ll start by letting you know that there are two of us left. (three, if we count Rowan, but I’m not). What I thought was going to be a quiet summer getaway with kids my age has turned into a nightmare.
For one, we have been cornered inside the head counselor’s underground secret bunker. If you want to know why she has a secret military bunker, I guess you should keep reading.
Because shit gets weirder than animal crackers having the power to turn adults into kids, and vice versa. When I made my first post, I thought that was it for us. I thought for sure there must have been a self-destruct somewhere—which meant whoever was running this camp was waiting for something like this. I was sure we were going to die, so after making the post, I have to admit with ya’ll—I just slept. I curled up, tried to ignore Harry and Carmel calling our names through childish laugher, and went to sleep with the thought in my head that I was completely at peace with what I had done with my life.
Sure, I was young. Seventeen years old is too young to be ripped apart by littles who are in fact grown adults. But as I was falling into slumber and allowing myself to fall, with my head resting in my lap, my head turned towards a separate pile of files on the other side of the room—I realized I really wanted to know how this was possible. There was so much I needed to know. Why did eight-year-old Eleanor Summers have a file where here birthday dated back to 1979? Why had supposedly innocent sugary snacks turned our adorable littles into mini psychopaths?
These kids were not kids, somehow. But how? How was that even possible? Could it be that the files were wrong?
1979 was definitely 45.
But Eleanor Summers couldn’t be 45 years old. I knew what 45 looked like. I knew that they thought like. They spent half of their time on Facebook laughing at outdated memes, and the other half… I don’t know, working? They have job’s! They’re happily married with kids, maybe soon grandkids! That was not Eleanor Summers. Because Eleanor Summers was most definitely eight years old. I had played several rounds of teddy-bears picnic, and spent hours reassuring her that Harry's ghost stories were in fact not real, enough times for me to know that this little kid was little—and a kid.
But something was bothering me. More than the secret military bunker, and magic age-regressing animal crackers. When I first signed up to Camp Redwood, one of the tag-lines to gain attraction had been, “Solve mysteries in the woods in the dead of night, with nothing but a flashlight and your fellow campers!” I had no idea I would be solving this thing on my own, trapped inside a bunker.
“What are you doing?” Rowan, who was still looking through Allison’s dinosaur laptop, turned to me with half lidded eyes, when I slowly got to my feet, careful not to make too much noise, and crept over to the pile of separate files which seemed to be crumbling apart from age. He kept his voice low, but it sounded almost like a whine. He could have been scared, but from the way he was sitting, cross-legged with a frowny face, I figured something must have been going on with him. The guy looked tired. More tired than normal.
The bags under his eyes were practically shadowing his face, and were an odd contrast to unusually ashy colored cheeks and slightly dilated eyes. Still though, Rowan refused to look vulnerable. I caught glimpse of Harry’s raybans sitting on his head, pinning back thick dark brown curls from falling in front of sleepy eyes. Maybe he was finally losing his cool and breaking out of the well-constructed façade he had been hiding behind since Teddy disappeared.
We had just narrowly escaped a crowd of psycho littles high on age-regressing sugary snacks who were doing who-the-fuck knows to the other counselors who had been captured, so I didn’t blame him looking like that. I guess he couldn’t look me in the eye, because in Rowan’s mind, he was the reason why this happened. He was the leader, and the camp had fallen to psychopathic little eight year olds who had taken half of the counselors hostage, and the other half—most likely taken apart in the physical sense, after what we had witnessed in Cassie’s cabin. Still though, it wasn’t Rowan’s fault. He could sit there and pull a face all he wanted, it’s not like I was going to blow up at him for getting us stuck down here. He actually saved us.
And trapped us, judging from the footsteps upstairs, Carmel and Harry still bouncing around looking for us.
It was a game in their heads. The little’s thought it was cat and mouse. Harry and Carmel were the oblivious cats prowling, while we were the mice, hoping to fucking GOD we weren’t caught and eaten. Ignoring Rowan, I glimpsed what looked like a box full of DVD’S—all of which were labelled with dates and names. I saw familiar ones, my heart racing into my throat. Phoebe. Eli. Cassandra.
Each DVD had one of the kid’s names scribbled on the front, as well as a date.
I found Eleanor’s right at the back of the box.
Eleanor Summers.
08/05/2021. (PM)
Before I could hesitate and think what I was doing, I slid the DVD into the portable player attached to the MacBook. Rowan, to my surprise, didn’t move. But he did make an acknowledging noise when the screen flickered to what looked like video footage. Peering at the screen, I found myself staring at a small white room. There was no door. Only a wooden desk and a chair, and sitting on it was a middle aged woman with dark blonde curls tied into a strict ponytail. She was wearing what looked like a prison jumpsuit.
Her eyes were eerily glued to the camera, unblinking. Her wrists were cuffed in front of her. Though from the look on her face, she saw the restraints as a game. Her eyes lit up with intrigue and I could practically see the cogs in her mind starting to turn as she struggled with them.
As soon as I saw this woman, I felt all of my nerve endings set alight. I wanted to turn the screen off, or look away. But once I was looking at the screen, I couldn’t bring myself to tear my eyes away. “Let’s try this again.” There was a woman offscreen. She sounded young. Too young to be in that kind of authority. I figured there was no way teenagers were being hired as special ops agents, but I guessed I was wrong. She cleared her throat. “It is 4:35 exactly. August 5th 2021. My name is Agent Lemrac,” she stated. “I am asking once again for you to comply with us. As I have said several times, the court are willing to lessen your sentence if you plead guilty with insanity.”
The woman surprised me with a snorting laugh. She seemed to come alive, leaning forward with animated features, her brow reaching her hairline. She was acting like a child, bouncing up and down in the seat, her lips stretching into a wider grin. “What did you just say?”
There was a pause. I could tell the woman was intentionally antagonising the interviewer.
“It means you have been legally declared insane,” the interviewer stumbled over her words slightly. “Mrs Summers, it would be in your best interest to work with us to lessen your current sentence which at the moment is standing at,” the sounds of shuffling paper crackled through the speakers. The interviewer cleared her throat again rustling paper. “Thirty six years. Without parole.”
The woman didn’t speak, only continued to smile—and the interviewer delved further into the sentence. “If you do in fact plead guilty with declared insanity, you will be sentenced to a program which is in the process of supporting and rehabilitating people with your…” she caught herself for a moment. I could tell this interviewer had a biased opinion and it was definitely showing through her interviewing style. I could hear the rapid intakes of her breath as she hurried through what seemed to be a script she was reading from. “Conditions.” She finished. “The Redwood program aims to help people exactly like you.”
Redwood? I thought.
Like… Camp Redwood?
Rowan whistled behind me. I guess I could call that a reaction. The guy was probably still in shock after seeing Café de Teddy splattered all over little Cassie’s cabin floor. I should have known those little bitches weren’t playing Operation for eight hours straight. Turning my attention from Rowan and back to the screen, the woman in the jumpsuit appeared to have changed tactics. Her expression twisted into nonchalance. She leaned back in her chair. “I am not pleading insane because I am not insane.”
“Mrs Summers—”
The woman cut her off. “I am not crazy.” She raised her hands “I am doing what needs to be done.” She leaned forward. “Humanity suffers in the skin. We age and die— and how is that fair? What if we want to see the next millennium? And the next two millennia after that? Why should our bodies dictate our lifespan? Why should we sit here and wait to rot and wither and die when we have the intelligence and mindset to do it? If nobody else is willing to throw ethics aside to take a step forwards in human evolution, I should do it myself.” She folded her arms across her chest, again, like a child. “I did what was to be done.”
“Dr. Summers.” The interviewer’s tone grew stiff. “You and your colleagues conducted illegal and unethical procedures on your family and friends—as well as four other victims.”
The woman inclined her head. “You have a daughter, am I correct? I have a son.”
“A child you killed, Dr Summers.” The interviewer retorted in a hiss which was definitely expressing emotion. She ignored the mention of her daughter, but I could tell it had rattled her to her core. Her voice had cracked. This case was close to her.
That was obvious. Without seeing the interviewer herself, I could sense how uncomfortable she was, shuffling in the chair. Every so often I would hear the sound of her rubbing her hands on her knees and tapping her shoe against the chair leg. She oozed anxiety, not just from her tone of voice, but the way the frame seemed to move with her. “Dr. Summers, you used your son in your research, along with several of his friends. This was not science.” Her voice shook. I heard her sharp inhale. Unprofessional, but very human. Instead of staying stoic and keeping to script, this agent was cracking apart. “It was murder.”
“Agent Lemrac, concentrate on the interview only.” An official voice crackled through what sounded like an intercom on screen.
“Got it.” She spoke through her teeth.
The woman was finding wounds and pressing on them. She was scanning the interviewer for vulnerabilities and preying on every insecurity. She leaned back speaking through a sigh. “Without my son’s sacrifice we wouldn’t have created an answer to death. To growing old and dying, and leaving loved ones behind.” Her voice softened into a murmur, but I didn’t trust it.
After identifying the shattering pieces of this interviewer which were very clear visible in her view, the woman was taking advantage.
“Agent Lemrac, you have a daughter. Am I correct in saying her name is Mari?
“That… that is not relevant.”
“Glioblastoma.” Dr. Summers lips curved into a sickening smile hidden behind mocking sympathy. “A sickness of the brain--which, unfortunately, I cannot fix. If your daughter’s brain was in my hands, I would try. However, not even a brand new body would help her. One which would never age or grow sick. And for that, I am deeply, deeply sorry.” She reached her cuffed hands forwards. “My condolences, Agent Lemrac. Honestly. I have to hand it to you. You are incredibly brave for coming here today and talking to me while abandoning your sick child.” She shook her head.
“Your daughter is dying of an incurable illness, suffering inside fragile skin which will break and fall apart and be unable to keep her standing for much longer. While my son will live on forever. He will see every millennia, a planet which will crumble and build itself back together. And maybe the end of the universe itself.” There was a twitch in her expression and a glitter in her eye I did not recognise. Insanity.
She was fucking insane. I was seeing the pure of it, the depraved and disgusting gleam in eyes empty of remorse and regret. This woman did not care what she had done. I could tell from the look on her face. If she had the chance, she would do this again.
But there was no way they were trying to say her cruelty and complete disregard for her son’s life was due to insanity.
“You are sick, Dr. Summers.” The interviewer said after a moment of gathering herself.
The woman shook her head with a chuckle. “I told you. I am not sick--”
“Sick in the head!” The interviewer’s voice exploded through the speakers in a shriek—a terrified cry she had been trying to hold in. I finally saw her—or at least the back of her. She was a young woman with light blonde hair falling loose on her shoulders. She was trembling. Slamming her hands down on the table, she screamed at the orange jumpsuit woman.
“You are psychologically fucked in the head! You psycho bitch! That is my sister!” She spoke through strangled sobs rattling her whole body. “Mari is my little sister. She is not my child.”
Her breaths were strangled and harboured. I noticed figures looming in the background, but she was continuing. “You killed your own fucking son,” she spat. “You are not legally insane, you are sick!” she shrieked. “You planned and put this together! You sit there and you talk about your son like he’s a… like he’s a tool! You deserve to rot. Do you hear me?” I noticed the orange jumpsuit woman was still smiling, satisfied with the interview’s reaction. Her words were spoken in a vicious poison as she leaned forward and spat directly in orange jumpsuit’s face.
“Agent Lemrac!” Whoever her superiors were—were panicking. “I told you not to turn it off. I knew this was going to happen. Can we stop the demonstration, please? Human emotions present inside an Aceville soldier are too powerful—"
Voices were murmuring in the background, and Agent Lemrac raised her hands. “I want to stop.” She choked out, her hands trembling. She spoke like she still had control over the situation and wasn’t being apprehended. “I want to stop. Do you hear me?” The interviewer was crying, I realized. “Stop the recording! I can’t do this. Oh god, I think I’m going to be sick—”
When the footage ended in a burst of static, I found myself backing away, something slimy creeping its way up my throat.
The woman in the orange jumpsuit who had murdered her son and countless others in what sounded like an attempt at playing god, was Eleanor Summers. I thought back to Teddy’s corpse, and the surgical precision of every organ’s removal. The young interviewer had mentioned colleagues of Eleanor.
Was it possible that Camp Redwood was in fact nothing more than a rehabilitation camp for murderous criminals? There was a loud bang from above, and I was torn from my thoughts.
I turned to Rowan, who had been unusually quiet. And I realized why, when I twisted around to find him three inches from my face, his laboured breath tickling my cheek.
The boy jumped back with a chuckle—like me noticing him was some kind of game, before diving back into the chair. I did notice something odd, as my thoughts spiralled. Rowan couldn’t sit still. Slumped in the leather spinning chair, he fingers tapped a rhythm on the armrests while his feet jumped up and down. In the dim light of the bunker, I glimpsed a sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead and the flesh of his neck. He looked to be… feverish—and now that I was looking at him properly, all of my attention on the boy, I noticed small things which seemed… off about him.
For one, he wasn’t coming up with a plan. Rowan always had a plan. Even if he wasn’t completely sure of it, or was completely winging it. This time though, he was strangely quiet. I found my voice when he stuck out his tongue at me. “What are you looking at?”
“Rowan.” I spoke softly, careful not to garner attention from above us where Harry and Carmel were still clamouring around, playing games. “Are you… feeling okay?” I asked, when he turned back to the laptop, manically biting his fingernails.
“I dunnnooooo, Josie! Am I feeeeeeling okaaaaaayyyyy?” He surprised me with an uncharacteristic laugh.
But I did know it.
I knew it from earlier when he reacted to Allison’s bunker and I had been too freaked out to realize that I was dragging along the enemy with me.
Because the fucking idiot had consumed animal crackers. I had seen him for myself earlier, pouring a pack into his mouth for a snack. Which meant either the ‘kids’ had intentionally dosed him with mind altering sugary snacks, or the more likely, he could not resist those preservatives which was the equivalent of caffeine. It’s not like I could blame him when he harboured the weight of an entire camp, but come on, did he really have to sacrifice his own fucking mind to keep himself awake?
Rowan wasn’t just biting. His nails. He was gnawing. Which he previously thought was a filthy habit. He had yelled at a camper for chewing on her nails a few days earlier.
Now that I was noticing it, I couldn’t… stop noticing it. The boy’s whole demeanour had changed; the way he was sinking into the chair, instead of sitting up straight like usual—- I used to call it having a stick up his ass. The boy started typing on the laptop, ignoring me. But when I watched the pattern of his fingers, he was just typing gibberish. Footsteps pounded above us, Harry and Carmel acting as the kid’s’ brainwashed foot-soldiers. Or, more likely somehow, if the animal crackers had caused the littles, or I guess, the fully grown forty year old criminals, to relapse in age-- then maybe it was possible for the same thing to happen to us. To Rowan.
I could feel myself starting to back away, but there was nowhere to run. I just slammed into a cupboard. My gaze flicked to Rowan again, who was tapping a beat on the laptop tracking pad, swaying back and forth, his eyes elsewhere before his gaze found mine. “Marcoooooo!” Harry shouted from above, giggling with Carmel.
I had to guess their mental age had to be at least 8-10 years old. Which meant I wasn’t just dealing with a camp full of forty-year-old psycho’s, I was also dealing with mentally relapsed counselors acting like toddlers.
Rowan seemed to jolt in the chair, twisting his head around, his eyes suddenly incredibly childlike and playful, and very Un-Rowan, were finding the ceiling, his mouth stretching into a smile, like he was seeing butterflies. His eyes flashed to me, and I caught a twitch in his lip. I knew that look. It was the look on my seven year old sister, who knew mom was mad at me, and wanted to make it even worse.
His cheeks were starting to blossom scarlet from what must have been the overwhelming urge to laugh. Rowan pressed his lips together and held in a breath like a hamster, and the asshole was fucking with me. Waiting for me to beat him to it by accident. Kids were fucking ruthless, but there was something terrifying about an 18 year old with a little kid’s mind.
I lifted my index to my lips, miming for him not to even try, but the boy just mimicked me, bugging out his eyes and pressing his finger to his grinning mouth. “Don’t you fucking dare.” I managed to whisper. The boy was definitely playing his own game, moving in twitching movements, baiting me. When he cupped his mouth, I almost let out a cry, but then he dropped his arms with a giggle, as if to say, “I’m just kidding!”
Slowly, I turned around, grabbed the salt I’d found in Allison’s cupboard, and a flat can of soda. Without making too much movement, I poured a handful of salt into the can. But Rowan seemed to know exactly what I was doing. Because in the time it was taking me to advance towards him with the can of salty soda, one arm shakily ready to grab hold of him, and put him into a headlock, he was cupping his mouth, all logic and everything adult, everything he had been as our leader, igniting in playful eyes, leaving me the last one standing.
“Pollloooooo!”
By the time Rowan had managed to reveal our hiding place in a spluttered laugh, I had hold of the squirming boy, one arm wrapped around his neck, my other forcing the can of soda into his mouth. I had definitely miscalculated his strength. During camp Redwood activities, he was always the last one to come back from the trail, holding his knees and panting. I figured he was unfit. However, I was wrong. Underneath his shirt, the guy had some serious muscles.
It was like attacking a brick wall. However, Rowan was mentally a kid. So, I had my intelligence and logic on my side. When it became obvious I wasn’t going to get anywhere with brute strength, I resorted to tickling him, which made him squirm, squeaking out a laugh. When he opened his mouth to yell at me to stop, I took my chance, thrusting the can into his lips and holding his nose so he swallowed it down.
“No!” His laughter turned into muffled yelling, as he batted his fists at my chest. “No, no, no! Get off, get off!”
His body convulsed as the salt did its job, causing the boy to lurch to his knees and choke up forbidden animal crackers in a gooish sludge which turned my stomach. By the time Rowan seemed half himself and half not, still kneeling, his head pressed against the floor, Harry was poking his head through the door with a goonish grin. “Found you!” He giggled, before forcing the door open, allowing Carmel and Callen, freshly caught and mentally turned into littles, to advance down the stairs with equally terrifying grins. There was something wrong with Harry’s face, and I only realized it when the guy himself was hauling me from the bunker, Carmel dragging a barely responsive Rowan. There was nothing in Harry’s expression, only blind childish excitement at winning the game. When he dragged me out of Allison’s cabin and threw me to the ground, I realized he too had insane strength I had not been expecting. But that thought quickly retracted when I was seeing his face in the light of a crescent moon lighting up the sky an eerie glow. Harry’s cheeks were puffy and swollen, his right eye way bigger than it should have been.
When he spoke, his voice was more of a lisp. This was something far more realistic than magical animal crackers fucking with his brain.
“He needs help!” I managed to choke out when Carmel wrapped jump-rope around my wrists. Next to me, Rowan was refusing to get up, still choking up salty soda, groaning into his hands. Every time Callen tried to restrain him, he hissed out like an animal.
“Do you hear me?!” I struggled violently. “Harry needs—”
BANG.
Is what it felt like. The feeling of something—what felt and sounded like a toy car—colliding with my temples, sent me onto the ground, my head spinning itself off of its axis. I remember lying on my back and frowning at the moon which almost looked like it was getting closer to me, blurring into a white ball of light—before reality sunk in, and it was in fact Carmel’s converse coming down to finish me off. I didn’t stay knocked out for long. But I did dream.
I think you can call it a dream? I was lying in bed at home; my room drowned in the dark. I was cosy, curled up in my blankets, when a clammy hand slammed over my mouth, rousing me from slumber. There were two figures in my room. They didn’t have faces. They just existed as shadows, silhouettes. Before one of them raised something above their head, and… impact.
It was the same impact as the toy car hitting me, snapping me back to that night. It wasn’t a dream. Because I remembered his clammy fingers over my mouth, and his hisses for me to shut up as he dragged me from my room.
My parents stood in front of me with expressions of sympathy. Basked in warm light, my mom and dad looked almost otherworldly. “For the best.” Was what they mouthed when my own phantom screams slammed into me. I asked them why, and they didn’t reply, allowing him to pull me further and further from what I knew, from my life as I knew it. But.. that couldn’t be real. I had memories of getting on the bus to camp Redwood. I could recall the whole journey. So, why… why was my tangled mind saying otherwise?
When I gathered myself, the first thing I realized was I was sitting down. I was outside, cool night air grazing my bare arms. There was something attached to me, jerking violently, And it took me several disorienting blinks to understand that I was tied back to back with Rowan. My head pounded, and something wet and warm dripped down my temple. Great. I could add head injury to the long list of things to worry about.
“Let me go you little fucking witch.”
Rowan was back to himself, though from the muffled hissing and the sound of choking—I had to guess he was being force-fed animal crackers.
“Let me—mpphmmm. little…. fucking… mphmmphhmhppmm!”
“Rowan.” I managed to get out in a croak. Through flickering eyes, I caught glimpse of a familiar figure dancing around us. Shivers rocketed down my spine, and I wrenched at the jump-rope restraints, but they did a surprisingly job of restraining my arms behind my back.
Eleanor was with Rowan, while Eli was knelt in front of me. Looking at him, the boy had definitely aged in the face—and I couldn’t help wondering what exactly he had done as a forty something year old to be sent to this place.
“Josie!” Rowan responded in a wail. “Josie. Wake the FUCK up.”
“Stop swearing.”
Eleanor spoke with the cold tone of her actual age.
“Oh, yeah?” Rowan spluttered. “Fuck you.” The boy’s laugh was still rough from almost vomiting his insides out from too much salt intake. “I’m sorry, you were a fucking boomer all along?!” He wriggled in the restraints, lunging forwards, which sent me backwards.
“Stop swearing, Rowan.” Was all the girl responded with calmly.
“Like I’m going to listen to you!” He sneered. “Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fucking fuck!” What are you going to do, huh? Bite me with your false teeth?” The sound of saliva hitting skin made me wince. He was pissed. I had no doubt his completely rational anger was going to get us killed. Rowan was also somehow getting mixed up between forty and eighty. Though he was unwillingly snacking on mind bending sugary goodness.
“Fudge, Rowan.” Eleanor spoke in a giggle.
“What?!”
“Say fudge. Not fuck.”
“No.”
His hiss of pain caught me off guard. I don’t know what she was doing to him, but it was hurting him.
“You fudging fudge! I’m going to fudging kill you when I get out of these fudging ropes—“ his manic cursing became a muffled yell.
“Say fudge,” Eleanor hummed, followed by his hiss when the palm of her hand skinned his cheek. “Fuck is a bad word. You even said so yourself and you’re my favourite counselor.”
He heaved out a breath.
“You fudge,” Rowan spat. “When I get out of this, I am going to fudging kill you, you fudging—” His manic ranting morphed, once again, into muffled yelling, after another fistful of animal crackers were forced into his mouth. When I risked twisting around, I could see his rebellion slowly starting to simmer out as he relaxed slightly. I wanted to yell at him to keep a clear head before cold fingers were dipping under my chin and forcing my head around where I found myself face to face with Eli.
“I like you, Josie,” he said, before untying me and pulling me to my feet. Now at the age of nine or ten, he was a lot stronger. When I tried to pull away, the cruel blade of a knife grazed my gut. I caught his grin. “But we don’t need you.” Eli pointed to Rowan.
“We just want them.”
I followed his pointer finger which went from Rowan to Harry and Carmel, who were just standing there like fucking idiots, probably awaiting the next game. Harry’s face was getting redder. It looked like he was suffocating, and yet his grin was growing wider and wider, splitting his lips apart. “Rowan Atlas.” Eleanor said, dragging him to his feet. Something was stapled to his forehead head, which caused him to howl in pain, hissing another strangled line of “Fudge”. but I couldn’t read what it was.
“Camp leader. Intelligent, and problem solving skills.”
“Harry Carlisle.” Eli nodded his head with a smile. “Quick thinker. Strong minded.”
“Carmel Locke.” Cassie spoke behind me. She had her arms folded, a wry smile on her lips. “Smarter than she makes out—- an independent learner, and can work well under pressure.”
Looking at these kids, I felt sick to my stomach. They were planning something—and had the intelligence of renowned scientists, which was what I gathered from the footage on the MacBook. “What?” was all I could hiss out, as Eli prodded the blade of the knife into my back, ushering me to walk. “What are you talking about?”
“Duh.” He spoke in a more tweeny giggle. “Like I said, Miss Josie. You’re my favorite counselor but we don’t need you, so I’m going to use you for parts.” He laughed when a shiver spiderwebbed down my spine. “See! I told you I was going to show you my collection!”
“But… what do you need them for?”
Eli pressed his index finger to his lips with a laugh before forcing me to face forwards. “That’s a secret!”
When I didn’t, or couldn’t move, he shoved me into a stumbling power-walk, and I managed to turn my head quickly, making feverish eye contact with Rowan.
“Rowan.” I said calmly through the gutter in my throat. “Get…. Get help.”
If I was going to die, I needed him to get a hold of himself and somehow alert the outside world what was going on.
“From whom, Josie?!” He wailed back—and as I was dragged away, I could once again sense the childish undertones in his voice.
I had no choice but to obey Eli’s orders. If I didn’t want a knife in my back. He took me to the main lunch cabin, which, when I set foot inside, almost sent me to my knees.
Something lurched inside me, and I was screaming with no voice, staggering backwards, only to be shoved onto my face. In front of me was what had been the lunch hall, fully converted into the beginning of a laboratory.
What had been cafeteria tables were fashioned into makeshift gurney’s and beds, and I was looking at all of the missing counselors. Yuri and Noah had been skinned completely, their faces laid out on a makeshift surgical table. Joey had been ripped open, his heart and brain removed, a glittering metallic substance creeping its way across his forehead. It was then when I remembered Eleanor Summers words.
She wanted to prevent death and preserve the human mind. Looking at what was in front of me, this was the start of it. There was equipment I had never seen before. Lily’s body was empty, carved out completely, tubes forced inside her. When I glimpsed her fingers move and begin to ball into a fist, I saw red. I saw fucking red. The exit was so close and yet Eli, fucking Eli, wielded his knife. I think that is when part of me gave up. My brain just stopped. It short circuited. Seeing my friends murdered and yet somehow being kept alive through playing god, my body slumped to the ground. I was numb. Completely numb.
I’m not sure what would have happened if those bloody saws and instruments which had been used on my friends were used on me too.
Luckily, that did not happen. Before Eli could get his slimy hands on me, he crumpled to the ground in an almost cartoon-like fashion, and standing over me was Harry. Who was looking better. When he grasped hold of me and helped me up, I only had one word. “Out.” And he was nodding, his eyes glistening as he drunk in our friends’ fate.
“How?” I managed to sputter out, when we made it out of the cabin, ducking behind a tree. Harry turned to me, motioning for me to shut up. There was a group of now ten to eleven year olds already running around, searching for what I guessed was him.
“I’m allergic to peanut butter,” Harry murmured, his grasp tightening on my wrist as he led me across the camp, the two of us stumbling.
“What, and you just magically healed?”
He didn’t respond to that, which bothered me.
“The bunker is our best shot,” I hissed out. “I think we can get in contact with someone down there.” I paused, unable to stop myself. “What makes you so important?”
“Dunno. Maybe I’m their favorite.”
When we found Allison’s cabin, which was more of a safehouse (an exposed safehouse) I found Rowan sitting on the wooden porch with his legs swinging over the side. “Rowan!” Harry groaned. I found it hard to believe their roles had been switched. Now he was the one yelling at the camp-leader. “I told you to stay inside!”
He ushered the boy inside, before barricading the door with some hefty looking equipment. I could tell from the grin on his face that our so-called leader was once again no longer himself.
I had to bite back a groan. “You’re kidding.” I said, pointing to Rowan, who buried his head in his knees and blew a raspberry. “Does he look and act like our leader right now?!”
“It’s Rowan, Josie.”
“He’s a liability.”
“He’s our friend! Wouldn’t Rowan do the same?”
Yes, he would. But. He would also realize we’re lost causes.
“Gag him with something.” I said. “If he makes any more noise, we’re dumping him.”
“He’s a kid!”
“Just the mind of one.”
I don’t know how animal crackers worked, but his age seemed to be progressively younger. This time he just sat with wide eyes watching us.
Harry almost tore apart the place looking for means of communication, before an old fashioned ringing sound made me jump.
“What was that?” Harry turned to me with his lip curled.
“How am I supposed to know?!” I hissed. “Keep looking!” But when I ducked under the table, my hands crawled under the desk, finding a wire—and attached to that, an ancient looking phone which looked straight out of a 1940’s movie, a bright green rotary phone.
Hesitantly, I answered it, lifting the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“Did you awaken the subjects, Agent Salta?"
The voice on the other end was a woman, an oldish sounding woman with the tinge of a British accent.
“What?” I shot a look at Harry before shaking my head. “No. My name is Josie Greenfield. We’re at Camp Redwood, and we need help.”
The woman paused.
“Where is Agent Salta?” She cleared her throat. “This line is reserved for communication with agents only.”
“I don’t know who the fuck you’re talking about!" I squeaked out. “My name is Josie, and whatever is happening here, we need help!”
“Josie. Did you awaken the subjects?”
I paused after a moment, shooting Harry a look when he tried to take the phone off of me. “Yes.”
“And… are our agents unavailable?”
“I don’t understand.”
“When a health and safety breach is activated, our agents are awakened to deal with the Project Spearhead subjects if they were to ever go rogue, or become conscious enough to think. Josie, can you tell me what is in front of you? Describe it to me.”
I held my breath. Next to the hidden phone under the desk was what looked like mismatched wires, all of which had been severed. I lowered myself slowly, poking at mess. “Wires. I see… cut up wires.” I whispered. “Does this mean they know about you?”
She hummed. “Ah…That makes sense. The only way to activate our sleeper handlers would be to send out the signal. You appear to have been sabotaged. Unless activated manually, our agents cannot help you. I am sorry. They are your problem now.” The woman paused.
“If I were you, I would hope and pray they have not sabotaged the self-destruct. If you find that, then you may be able to save yourselves and find peace.” She cleared her throat. “Thank you for your service, Josie Greenfield.”
“Wait.” I managed to get out. “Wait, no! You can’t just… you can’t leave us! We need help!”
I found myself yelling at nothing when the phone went dead. The dull tone of the dead ringtone was clanging in my ears before footsteps from up above. “Fuck this.” Harry picked up a lead pipe. “They’re still little kids, right? I mean, their head must still be partly kids—- so let’s fucking beat their heads in.”
He noticed something, then, starting forwards towards the mess of files I had left earlier. Harry knelt on the ground and picked up Eli’s file, his eyes wide. But he wasn’t staring at the dates confirming the little boy’s age.
Instead, Harry pointed at the bottom of the file. “I don’t want to freak you out, Josie,” he whispered. Initially, I didn’t know what he was trying to show before I glimpsed notes scrawled at the bottom of the file, followed by a signature. “But I’m pretty sure that is my fucking writing.”
Harry was right.
I pulled the paperwork off of him, flicking through each file before turning my eyes to him. “Who the fuck are you?”
A clanging sound from above broke the tension, and whatever Harry was about to reply with was strangled in his throat. He slammed a hand over his mouth.
“Guys?”
The voice twisted me up inside, threatening to release a shriek from my mouth I had managed to clamp shut.
Teddy.
“Are you down here?” His voice was strained, and had an odd tone to it. “I can’t… I can’t see you.”
…
Can someone please tell me what the fuck is going on?! It’s been a blur of a week. We’ve managed to stay down here, surviving off of Allison’s rations. Rowan isn’t getting any better. He seems to have stopped mentally de-ageing at the age of maybe six. Harry has spent the last few days trying to get in contact with anyone, but it’s like they are IGNORING US.
I’ve been looking through everything I can find on Project Spearhead, but nothing points to Harry being involved. So. How is his signature all over the files? How is it possible that two friends I thought I knew several days ago, are now complete strangers?
Teddy keeps coming back.
He’s crying out to us.
I think he’s… in pain.
My god, I can’t stand this anymore. Please. CAMP REDWOOD NEEDS HELP.

 Hello! My name is Madison. I just turned 22 and am in my next to last semester of college at the University of Cincinnati. I’ve always worked hard to achieve my goals. As a kid, I found a love for science. I continued to follow my passion and earned my associates degree in Medical Laboratory Technology. Currently, I am working on my bachelors degree to work as a medical laboratory scientist. Even though I don’t meet the majority of my patients, I care for them. I see the people I perform lab tests for as people and not numbers. Somebody loves them, and they have people they love. I like serving my community in healthcare. I’m actively seeking a new job I can serve my people with. The hospital I work at currently has a laboratory with no standards. I’m treated like dirt by coworkers, traveling lab techs, nurses, and doctors. We currently have no chemistry or hematology supervisors due to retirement and sickness. Because of the lack of supervision, countless rules are being broken. Administration focuses more on non-permanent travelers than the people they employ. The main reason lab techs don’t want the job here is because of the drama, work environment, and low pay. Travelers are paid 2x-3x more money than permanent employees are while doing the worst job possible. I am seeking to leave this hospital to find a professional work environment that cares about the results they put out. I’m already completing my clinical rotations here while working. I stay working 12-15 hours per day for five days a week. The people here don’t care about my education or that I’m exhausted. I received money from my workplace for tuition assistance. The policy is if I quit now, I need to pay back the money I was given or stay for another full year after graduation. I can pay back the money that would be owed, but I still have one semester left of college to complete. While working long hours and paying for my college on my own out of pocket, this is the time I need to ask for help. Every little bit helps, and I appreciate anything you may donate. Just know that you are contributing not just to my education, but to give the best healthcare to the people of my community. 

Hey guys, it is coming with a lot of delay, but here it is – the practical part of the complete amphetamine purification guide that I announced ages ago.
First, a few things upfront.
Due to time and space constraints, it is not possible for me to cover and list all potentially possible purification methods that exist.
Therefore, I have focused on the ones that, in my experience, make some sense. So, things like recrystallization from an alcoholic solvent are not included because, in my opinion, it is a complete waste of time when it comes to amphetamine.
Furthermore, when it comes to purifying an unknown mixture, the problem is that it is not possible to choose the simplest possible method, as it strongly depends on which impurities need to be separated.
Therefore, I can only advise everyone who consumes regularly/daily to spend some money and invest in the necessary equipment for liquid-liquid extraction/acid-base extraction, as it is the most effective method apart from distillation when you don't know which substances you want to separate.
Lastly, a note:
All the procedures mentioned here are based on the assumption that the amphetamine is in the form of sulfate, as it is the case in 99.99% of all instances.
Most of the procedures should also work with other salts, but that strongly depends on the specific salt.
If you are unsure, start with a small amount to test it. I hope I don't have to mention that I assume all the chemicals involved are acquired in the highest possible purity and should preferably be anhydrous to avoid losses.

"Washing" speed or purifying it through filtration.

I consider washing your speed to be the minimum you should always do for your own sake because, honestly, it requires almost no effort, and the costs for everything you need are minimal, so there's practically no reason not to do it.
The procedure itself theoretically works with a wide range of solvents, but in practice, 2.5 solvents have proven to be effective: acetone, dichloromethane/chloroform, and in some cases, isopropyl alcohol.
Washing primarily helps to remove synthesis residues, solvent residues, caffeine, and in the case of isopropyl alcohol, lactose. The principle is the same in any case: The solvent dissolves the corresponding impurities but not the amphetamine sulfate, and after mixing the speed with the solvent, the sulfate is separated from the solvent through filtration.
I would advise everyone to determine the amount of solvent based on the assumption that 100% of your speed consists of caffeine, that is, based on the solubility of caffeine in the respective solvent. Isopropyl alcohol is the least preferable option because it only dissolves 1g of caffeine per 100ml, so I would recommend using it only if lactose is also present.
Acetone is the best choice for small amounts because it is relatively safe to handle. Acetone dissolves 1g of caffeine per 50ml, so I would use 50ml of acetone per gram of speed.
Dichloromethane and chloroform are the best options, but since both substances have a certain level of toxicity, caution should be exercised when working with them. They dissolve 1 gram of caffeine with just 7ml. For washing purposes, I would simply use 10ml per gram of speed for simplicity. In general, it is also recommended to perform two or more washing cycles because a single cycle will never achieve the same efficiency.
The concept and execution are the same for all:
​
Required equipment:

• 2 glasses,
• a spoon,
• a coffee filter,
• and the solvent are all you need, in my opinion.

​
Execution:
Allow the speed to dry and then finely chop it. This will provide a more optimal surface area, making it easier to remove impurities.
Once that's done, take the speed and put it in one of the glasses.
Then pour the solvent into the glass and stir it with the spoon for a bit. Stir a bit longer, around 1-2 minutes.
Wait for another 5 minutes, then take the coffee filter and place it over the second glass like a funnel.
Once that's done, simply pour the contents of the first glass through the coffee filter into the second glass and wait for all the solvent to drain through the filter.
The amphetamine sulfate will still be in the coffee filter since it doesn't dissolve and can be scraped together after tearing or cutting open the filter.
Once the powder no longer has any odor, it can be consumed.

Purification through fractional recrystallization:

This method is based on the principle that when a mixture of substances dissolved in hot water is cooled, the substances that are less soluble in water compared to the other substances precipitate first. This is particularly true for caffeine, which is almost always present in speed, but certain sugar alcohols and substances like creatine can also be effectively separated using this method, which cannot be achieved through, for example, an acetone wash.
For example, caffeine is 33 times more soluble in boiling water compared to its solubility in water at room temperature, while the solubility of amphetamine sulfate only changes by a factor of 7.
To remove synthesis byproducts, it is still advisable to wash your speed first. However, this is not a prerequisite.
​
Required equipment:

• A Kettle or a pot,
• A Coffee filter,
• 2x beakers/glasses,
• A Pasteur pipette 5ml (optional),
• A Glass rod or spoon for stirring

​
Required chemicals:

• Distilled water

​
Procedure:
First, the distilled water needs to be heated to boiling. The easiest way to do this is with a kettle, but a stovetop and pot will also work if necessary.
While the water is slowly coming to a boil, fill a beake glass with the (previously dried and finely chopped) speed. Then, drop by drop and while stirring, add hot water until everything is dissolved.
As a rough guideline, you can estimate that approximately 4ml of water will be required, but this may vary slightly.
Next, let it cool to room temperature and then place it in the refrigerator for about 2 hours.
Meanwhile, place the coffee filter over the second glass. After the 2-hour period, the caffeine should be clearly visible as cotton-like needles in the beaker glass from the refrigerator.
Pour the contents troughthe coffee filter, collecting the filtrate in the second beaker glass.
What remains in the filter is the caffeine, while the amphetamine salt is now in the second beaker / glass. Transfer its contents onto the plate and allow the water to evaporate.
Once the water has evaporated, the residue only needs to be scraped together and is ready for consumption. Alternatively, it can be directly filled into a nasal spray.
​

Liquid-Liquid Extraction/Acid-Base Extraction

This method is not suitable for casual consumers as it involves a more complex procedure and requires some equipment and chemicals investment. However, most of the costs are one-time purchases, so they won't be incurred in subsequent runs.
This is the method I would personally recommend to regular consumers as it is significantly more effective than others, second only to distillation. However, this method involves working with potentially hazardous substances such as concentrated sulfuric acid, concentrated sodium hydroxide, and others. While handling them safely is possible, there is a potential risk involved.
The method combines the concept of liquid-liquid extraction with the acid-base salt concept, which ultimately achieves significant effectiveness.
Liquid-liquid extraction is a classic separation method in organic chemistry commonly used for processing reaction mixtures. It utilizes the differential solubility of substances in two immiscible solvents (e.g., watedichloromethane). According to the Nernst distribution law, different substances will ultimately accumulate in the solvent in which they are more soluble.
Subsequently, the amphetamine base is released from the amphetamine salt, causing a drastic change in solubility. This allows for the extraction of the amphetamine base and separation of all substances that do not undergo this salt/base transition, including water-soluble and less water-soluble compounds.
During the practical implementation, there are a few aspects that may vary depending on the choice of solvent, among other factors. Therefore, it is advisable for everyone to understand and internalize the information provided before carrying out the practical procedure. Link to reference/04%3A_Extraction/4.06%3A_Step-by-Step_Procedures_For_Extractions)
Required Equipment:

• One set of (6+) beakers (250ml - 500ml)
• 1 separatory funnel with stopper (250ml-500ml)
• 1 stand to hold the separatory funnel (1 stand base, 1 stand rod, 1 stand clamp or ring)
• 1 glass rod
• 1 scale
• 1 pH indicator paper
• 1 glass pipette

Chemicals:

• Distilled water
• Acetone
• Alcohol-based solvent (such as isopropanol), preferably 99.5% or higher
• Sulfuric acid (as concentrated as possible; if concentrated sulfuric acid is not available for purchase, you can concentrate it yourself Link)
• A non-water-soluble, relatively nonpolar solvent (I recommend DCM)

I will explain the practical procedure using dichloromethane (DCM) as it has a convenient density for the process, is highly effective for caffeine, and evaporates rapidly.
Practical Procedure:
Personal protective equipment (goggles, lab coat or apron) should be worn at all times. It is recommended to wear a pair of nitrile disposable gloves with a pair of latex disposable gloves over them. If any chemical contacts the gloves, immediately remove them, wash your hands, and put on a fresh pair. This precaution will help prevent any chemical burns. Always wear protective goggles to safeguard your eyesight when working with any chemicals.
​

1. Wash the speed with acetone.

​

1. Purity the amphetamine sulfate by "shaking it out".

First, the amphetamine is naturally purified as a salt. Dissolve the speed in sufficient water and add the corresponding nonpolar solvent to the separatory funnel.
The ratio of water to organic solvent should be roughly 2:1 in terms of volume. Each phase separation should be given approximately 30 minutes. The amphetamine salt will be present in the aqueous phase, which, in the case of DCM/water, would be the upper phase, while the nonpolar impurities would be in the organic phase at the bottom of the separatory funnel. The extraction should be performed three times, meaning that after each phase separation, the organic solvent is drained into a separate beaker, and fresh organic solvent is added. Once that is done, drain the water+speed solution into another beaker and clean the separatory funnel.
​

1. Preparation of sodium hydroxide solution.

To release the base, sodium hydroxide solution is required. Start by adding 10ml of distilled water to a 100ml beaker. Weigh out 7g of sodium hydroxide and add it slowly (with pauses) to the beaker containing the distilled water in small portions, stirring with a glass rod (Caution! The solution reacts exothermically, meaning it becomes hot!). Once all the sodium hydroxide has been added, set it aside and let it cool.
​

1. Releasing the amphetamine base.

Clean the separatory funnel with distilled water and acetone, then refill it with the amphetamine sulfate/water solution.
Slowly add the sodium hydroxide solution in small portions, following the instructions provided in the link. Shake while venting the funnel and repeat this process until small oily droplets form on the surface.
Caution! This process is also exothermic!
Then, using a pipette, take a sample from the lower aqueous phase and test if the pH value is strongly alkaline (pH >= 13).
If that's the case, close the separatory funnel with the stopper and wait for the solution to cool.
​

1. Extracting the amphetamine base.

After a short waiting period, add the organic solvent in an initial ratio of 1:2 (organic solvent) to (water). Shake vigorously, let it settle, and then drain the organic solvent+base mixture into a beaker.
Note that in the case of DCM, the base will be in the lower phase since DCM has a lower density than water. In other solvents, it may be different.
Then add the same amount of organic solvent again. Shake, let it settle, etc., and drain the organic solvent into the same beaker again.
Repeat this process for three extractions without adding new water. Once that is done, drain the water into a separate beaker as well.
​

1. Drying the amphetamine base.

First, dry the solvent+base mixture by using anhydrous potassium carbonate or molecular sieve A3, and separate the drying agent as in the washing step trough filtration.
Allow the organic solvent to evaporate.
The base is not as volatile as one might think, so depending on the solvent, you can apply some heat if necessary.
​

1. Formation of amphetamine sulfate.

Once the base is dried and the solvent is evaporated, the salt is formed.
Dissolve the amphetamine base in the alcoholic solvent in a beaker.
The base-to-solvent ratio can be about 1:10. Stir the mixture with the glass rod and then prepare the sulfuric acid. It is recommended to dilute the sulfuric acid for this step, possibly to 20% or lower.
Dilute it in the alcoholic solvent and not in water because water could dissolve the salt, resulting in lower yields compared to diluting sulfuric acid in an alcoholic solvent.
Pour the diluted sulfuric acid into a pipette and slowly add it drop by drop to the base-alcohol mixture while stirring.
Take your time and don't rush. Regularly and frequently monitor the pH during the addition, ideally after every few drops.
Once the pH reaches around 8-7, stop adding acid.
​

1. Washing the formed sulfate.

Afterward, filter the mixture and rinse the sulfate in the filter cake with acetone.
​
That's it! You have completed the process.
General notes:
Please note that without knowing the exact purities, we cannot work with stoichiometry. Therefore, we will rely on the pH value for approximate measurements. However, there are rough estimates for the amounts needed per gram of speed.
For every mole of amphetamine sulfate, you would need approximately 2 moles of sodium hydroxide. This translates to around 3.09 ml of a 1.75 molar sodium hydroxide solution per 10 grams of amphetamine sulfate.
During neutralization, we would require approximately 1 mole of sulfuric acid for 2 moles of amphetamine base. This amounts to about 2.8 grams of sulfuric acid per 10 grams of amphetamine. It is advisable to dilute the sulfuric acid to around 20/25%. This makes it more manageable, but you will need to dilute it yourself.
Commercially available sulfuric acid is sold as a solution in water, and the higher the water content, the lower the yield you will obtain. Therefore, it is recommended to purchase sulfuric acid with a relatively low percentage, concentrate it, dissolve it in isopropanol, and then use it.
Additionally, familiarize yourself with the entire process, including practical execution, by referring to internship papers from universities, which are intended for their students, for example.
Pay attention to details such as regular pressure release, as they are crucial.
Theoretically, you can also carry out the neutralization directly in acetone.
This would eliminate the need for an additional alcoholic solvent. I had this in mind because 1L of 99.5% isopropanol costs me less than two euros, while acetone costs about six times as much.
Regarding the polarity of the alcoholic solvent, I would not recommend going higher than methanol. In methanol, the sulfate would be soluble, even if only to a minimal extent.
Do not worry about exposing the base to certain temperatures or leaving it exposed to air for a while. Significant evaporation should not be a concern unless the temperature exceeds 60-80 degrees Celsius.
It is possible to use other acids instead of sulfuric acid if, for example, phosphoric acid is more affordable. Phosphoric acid is also easier to handle. The pH of the solution would be only slightly different in the end. Please conduct further research on this topic.
Please ensure that you are mentally coherent during the process. Avoid attempting the procedure after several sleepless nights, for example. While the overall procedure is not difficult to complete without incidents, if you forget to release the pressure from the separation funnel due to lack of sleep and it explodes in your hand or you get splashed with highly concentrated sulfuric acid, you will encounter significant problems.
Finally, consider how to handle the waste products. Most of them can either be evaporated or disposed down the drain, such as sodium hydroxide. However, do not attempt to dispose of sulfuric acid in this manner.

Steam Distillation:

This method is only suitable for people who really want to achieve maximum purity and are willing to invest a significant amount of money and engage in safe practices in organic chemistry.
Steam distillation is a special form of azeotropic distillation.
Simply put, volatile compounds that are steam-volatile add their own vapor pressure to the vapor pressure of water. These compounds distill along with water when the sum of their vapor pressures reaches atmospheric pressure.
In other words, the distilling water "carries" certain substances with it, allowing them to distill below their actual boiling point and separate them from a mixture. The method is very gentle on the substances and highly selective, as only a few substances are steam-volatile. Amphetamine is one of these substances.
To perform this method, you will need specific equipment and ideally have experience with laboratory work. It's important to know what you are doing to avoid compromising your yield or, worse, encountering significant problems.
Assuming you have already liberated the amphetamine base and have it solvent-free, either through the method mentioned above or by some other means, it is essential to familiarize yourself with safe distillation practices beforehand. You can refer to resources like Chapter 19 here.
Required Equipment:

• 1x Three-necked distillation flask with ground glass joints (NS 24/29)
• Multiple ground glass caps and stoppers (NS 24/29)
• 1x Liebig condenser with ground glass joint (NS 24/29)
• 1x Distillation head with vertical side arm, 2 NS 29/32 cores, 1 NS 14/23 socket
• 1x Distillation thermometer NS 14/23
• 1x Magnetic stirrer with heating plate or heating mantle,
• 1x heating plate
• Multiple hoses with matching ground glass connectors (NS 24/29)
• At least two stands with clamps
• 2x Three-necked flask as a steam kettle with a capacity according to requirements (ground glass joint 24/29)
• 1x Two-necked flasks as collection vessels for the distilled amphetamine (ground glass joint 24/29)

​
Assembly of the distillation apparatus:
First, place the stand on a stable surface and secure it with clamps.
Next, securely attach the three-necked distillation flask to the stand and place it on the magnetic stirrer with heating plate.
Make sure the flask is stable and upright, without wobbling.
Initially, attach the ground glass caps (NS 24/29) and stoppers (NS 24/29) to the necks of the distillation flask.
For the "steam kettle," use a second three-necked flask with ground glass joints (NS 24/29).
Seal the middle, long neck with a stopper and place a riser tube on the inlet neck of the flask for added safety.
Secure the "steam kettle" with a stand to ensure its stability.
Connect the outlet of the steam kettle to the inlet neck of the three-necked distillation flask (NS 24/29) using a hose and a suitable ground glass connector (NS 24/29).
Next, connect the ground glass outlet (NS 24/29) of the distillation flask to the ground glass inlet (NS 24/29) of the Liebig condenser using a distillation head with vertical side arm, 2 NS 29/32 cores, 1 NS 14/23 socket.
Align the condenser so that the upper part (inlet) of the condenser is positioned above the distillation flask, and the lower part points towards the collection vessel.
Attach a distillation thermometer with NS 14/23 joint to the socket of the distillation head. The length of this thermometer should correspond to your specific requirements, meaning it should only measure the temperature of the gas phase and not dip into the liquid.
Check that all connections are tight and stable. Finally, connect the lower end of the Liebig condenser to another two-necked flask with a ground glass joint (NS 24/29) using an appropriate connector.
Insert the connector into the inlet neck of the two-necked flask.
This two-necked flask serves as a collection container for the distillate and should also be secured by a stand.
It should have two necks because a screw valve with ground glass joint 24/29 is screwed into the remaining free neck.
This valve allows the release of any pressure if necessary.
Once everything is set up, perform a test run and distill a certain amount of water as a trial. If everything is sealed, stable, and without any issues, you can proceed. Otherwise, disassemble everything and reassemble it carefully.
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Practical procedure:
First, add approximately five to ten times the volume of water compared to the corresponding amount of amphetamine, along with boiling stones, into the steam kettle and seal it tightly with a stopper.
Then, add the amphetamine base into the distillation flask and seal it tightly with a stopper as well.
Now, heat both the steam kettle and the distillation flask to 100 degrees Celsius, but stir the contents of the distillation flask gently.
Carefully monitor the distillation process.
The hot water in the steam kettle will act as carrier steam, vaporizing the amphetamine. The distilled amphetamine condenses in the Liebig condenser together with the water vapor and flows into the collection vessel.
Pay close attention to the temperature of the water vapor during the process. While the distillation process is in progress, the temperature will fluctuate and may not stabilize at a constant 100 degrees Celsius. Once the distillation process is complete, the temperature of the water vapor will stabilize and settle at 100 degrees Celsius.
At this point, you can stop the distillation process and separate the distilled amphetamine base from the water using liquid-liquid extraction.
Important: First, remove the steam inlet connection from the distillation flask! If you don't do this first and instead turn off the heat sources, a vacuum will be created in the steam kettle as the cooling water vapor condenses. If the inlet connection dips into the solution, the entire contents of the distillation flask will be sucked into the kettle.
Additional Notes:
The distillation flask should be filled to a maximum of two-thirds of its capacity at the beginning of distillation, which should be considered when purchasing the flask.
The steam kettle should have a volume several times greater than the volume of amphetamine because, in case of any unforeseen circumstances, you may need significantly more water than amphetamine.
The uniform heating of the steam kettle is not critical, but remember to include boiling stones. However, it is crucial to ensure even heating of the amphetamine.
An oil bath would be ideal as a heat source, but a magnetic stirrer with a heating plate will also suffice.

It's the evening of June 27th 1914, just a day before the assassination of Franz Ferdinand that would plunge the world into a great global conflict and ultimately change the modern world and history forever, and as Kaiser Wilhelm II lays in his bed drifting to sleep he suddenly has a future vision of every single event that will transpire from June 28th 1914 all the way till June 28th 2024, but the most important future event that will transpire in just a few hours is the killing of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary and his Wife which will be the powder keg that will begin the countdown to war and everything that follows thereon afterwards. What would the Kaiser immediately begin doing with over a hundred years worth of future knowledge? Would it be too late to repair relations with the likes of the UK, France, and Russia? If the Archduke still gets killed would he still give Austria the blank cheque and try to make better military decisions as the war would normally start to give Germany a better chance of winning? Or would he overall do anything he can to prevent a European war and mediate the situation in Europe during this time?

From Glaucoma Research Foundation

A research study has found that high-contrast visual activity promotes optic nerve regrowth.

Thanks to a new study, researchers are questioning the belief that optic nerve damage is always permanent. In fact, reversing optic nerve damage caused by glaucoma may someday be possible by combining special medication with watching a television program or video game designed to stimulate the optic nerve with high-contrast visuals.
Thanks to research funded by the National Eye Institute, the first steps toward this possibility are being taken. And while we still have a long way to go, researchers are now discussing whether the physical cause of blindness in glaucoma cases can be slowed, stopped, or even reversed. That is a pretty exciting development, one which opens the door to a whole host of possible alternative glaucoma treatments and therapies.

The Study

Dr. Andrew Huberman, a “Catalyst for a Cure” researcher with ties to Glaucoma Research Foundation, worked with the National Eye Institute to develop a study combining gene therapy with visual stimulation. They knew from previous studies that increased activity of a protein called mTOR promoted some regeneration of the optic nerve. They wondered if there was more that could be garnered from this understanding, and asked if visual stimulation would add to this effect.
To find out, they used gene therapy on laboratory mice with damaged optic nerves to cause cells in the retina to overexpress the mTOR protein, allowing this to work for two weeks. Afterwards, the mice were then placed in a chamber for several hours a day for three weeks where they viewed high-contrast images—essentially changing patterns of black lines. After three weeks, the scientists saw more extensive regeneration, with axons growing through the optic nerve as far as the point where the nerves from each eye cross, a distance from the eye of about 6 millimeters. Seeing this regeneration in the optic nerve, the researchers increased mTOR activity.

The Results

Huberman’s team saw some amazing things come out of their study. They not only saw healing in the optic nerve, which is a great thing in itself, but they also found that the regenerating optic nerve cells actually navigated to the correct regions of the brain where they seemed to attach and function. That’s right: the cells not only went to the right places, they also went to work. This is an exciting development for glaucoma patients and anyone suffering from optic nerve damage, considering that reconnecting neurons in the visual system has been one of the biggest challenges to developing regenerative therapies for blinding eye diseases like glaucoma.

The Future

Now that this study has found that high-contrast visual activity promotes nerve regrowth, the research team is looking at the effect of intense visual stimulation on glaucoma specifically, and working out what kind of visual stimulation works best to regenerate the optic nerve. They are also looking into future therapies that preserve optic nerve cells, therapies that could include video games and television programs designed to deliver regeneration-inducing visual stimulation.

I am trying to upload the whole thing as a text and pictures story and I hope it works. The Images & Video tab doesn't offer this format from what I see...
Straight out I would say this turned out so much different than I ever expected and also it has been taking days of work. All of which enjoyable, I love building stuff, but building a cooling system from scratch needs quite some precision work :)
This is one of my first post here, so I hope it all turns out well!
It all started when a friend gave me his old GPU - a strix gtx 970 4gb OC. And that cascaded in getting all other components. I should note that this is not the best option for a GPU in a fanless system, but it's what I got :) To be hones, it ran VERY quiet with original cooling, but... I disassembled it already , there is no going back haha.
CPU is a ryzen 5 3600
MB is mini ITX GIGABYTE B450I AORUS PRO Wi-FiBeQuiet pure power 11 500W . it has a fan, but have seen it spinning only a few times and it's inaudible :)
18gb ram, 1tb samsung nvma and so on, nothing special on this front, just needed some parts to make it run.
All temps are in Celsius! :)
At my work ( I repair clinical equipment) I got a hold of these beauties from a device in one laboratory.
I thought I would need only two of them and have the rest for another project - how wrong was I haha
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https://preview.redd.it/55jfcwv9ey3b1.jpg?width=4624&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f18810a7056862da6e2618939a201c8dba944c3d
My first idea was to directly press the cpu against a block of aluminum and the big heatsink.Unfortunately the 2 prototypes I tried, didn't transfer the head fast enough to the big headsing and the CPU would get hot really fast during a stress test.(I glued the nuts with fast glue and baking soda. It got so hard and strong that I had trouble removing it after that! haha )The first 2 tries looked like that:
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https://preview.redd.it/uhhiropbey3b1.jpg?width=3468&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4d8b7d2bf5b8422c32eaae04f149a7ec817dd082
https://preview.redd.it/v65xatpbey3b1.jpg?width=3456&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=330781de1619968a28420652a7e355ffe953aaf1
At this point I was still under the disillusion, that this would be a quick job, done in a few hours. I lough at myself when I think back at how I imagined all this would go...Trying to build and cut everything on the fly, every whole was on the wrong spot, I kept on breaking drills and taps , while making holes and threads...After the first few uncecesfull attepmts I realised I need to take my time to work on every single piece of it slowly and measure everything better if I wanted to go anywhere with this.At this point I still didn't know if I would be able to cool the CPU, much less the GPU.The CPU is 65W and the GPU is twice as much and probably sucking even more power at max load.
Next I decided to use heat pipes, but instead of ordering some and figuring out how to attach them to the CPU die, I decided to repurpose an older cooler master CPU cooler I had around ( also a donation from a friend ) It was for an older intel CPU, so I had to create a mount for it for my AM4 platform :)
So I began and 2 hours later ...
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https://preview.redd.it/tbqwlkceey3b1.jpg?width=3468&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c6bfb6fb98d54c978d631c7e1cecc5399bb44525
Than 2 days later ...
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https://preview.redd.it/0r7neflgey3b1.jpg?width=4624&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fa60f6b30562fb14761503d07b703443049da78f
https://preview.redd.it/i9zf6glgey3b1.jpg?width=4000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=12a22d0e896000fd3969d02a7c3f2821e8b467dc
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https://preview.redd.it/qeleu4hiey3b1.jpg?width=4624&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2536ddfdbb471f3c23af008ac2bebf46ba3f08b0
I drilled holes for half of the pipes and stuck them inside the radiator, the other ones I bent and pressed against the face of the other radiator. At this point I am using two of them.Bending the heatpipes without a proper tool is a mess.I ended up using the neck of a bottle of wine.....I wouldn't go too deep in this topic hahahahTo my surprise it was working!!!! I managed to get to max 80C under stress. :)
At this point I was feeling a bit more optimistic and started working on the cooling for the gpu.This time I didn't even bother with trying to cool the gpu without headpipes, so I did the same as with the CPU - repurposed some heatpipes... or you could say - Destroyed a perfectly fine working cooling hehe -
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https://preview.redd.it/blem4afley3b1.jpg?width=3468&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3da5f223a395ebe84fa9053e79b0ebe22be82c92
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https://preview.redd.it/dz9n1k1qey3b1.jpg?width=4624&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f436826bbfb499a4f8670e267b378c9425ebc016
https://preview.redd.it/8g7fik1qey3b1.jpg?width=4624&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d8e2ed45323ef40901aaca5693f72a897985ade2
At this point I was much more careful with the holes I drilled.I have a few jars with old bolts and nuts left from my grandfather - they hold everything in this project. Whenever I needed any size of anything, I found it in there. And everytime I was thankful to him! <3 Love you grandpop!
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https://preview.redd.it/l0b0hg1ney3b1.jpg?width=4000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8b6262e9d96b9c9c6213245f3aaa96fd245f398c
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The first time I ran the Pc with the new GPU cooling, and started stress testing it - the computer turned off without a warning! It obviously overheated.I was a bit disappointed for a while, until I remembered the VRMs have just a small heatsink above them and no fan to blow air on it at the moment...So I cut two big sheets of 3mm aluminum and stuck them on the chips with a thermal pad.That did the trick , but they got around 95C while playing games.I had to address this.
Next I got more presents from a friend - a flat heatpipe from a laptop cooling and an old GPU cooling ( heatpipes and radiator)I should have made more photos of the creation, because it is so funny :) Nowhere near good looking.I put a 2mm copper plate on the vrm chips the laptop heatpipe, sandwiched with a sheet of aluminum plate. The flat heatpipe curves around the gpu body, goes to the other side and there I pressed the other end between another sheet of aluminum and the other gpu cooler.
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https://preview.redd.it/ol6huhftey3b1.jpg?width=3468&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=65cd952991757ed3d1a32ec8611f04e95c28867a
https://preview.redd.it/3w9bckftey3b1.jpg?width=4624&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=80441221b4d056aca2f3c00a8335e74780660fd7
https://preview.redd.it/dbl1ijftey3b1.jpg?width=3468&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=95ba941aef99d548a76a4fd70fbb1a8416c82b5d
This did the trick - VRM are at 62C during gaming. That's fine for me. :)Holding one end with a zip tie... At this point I have no aestetic goals for the inside :D
Building everything together around the gpu is a step by step process in specific order so that everything comes together... I had to build and take everything apart or rework it in order to have access to all the bolds and nuts holding the whole thing together.
When I play Horizon : Forbbiden west, I get 50-60C CPU, 62 VRMs and around 90CI seem to remember that on the build before the vrm upgrade the gpu was not getting hotter than 85C... Will have to work on that more.
There is an original, thin black alu plate on the back side of the GPU that get really HOT. I can't seem to find anything directly touching to it, aside from one small chip ( don't know what its for) with a 2-3mm thick thermal pad on it. I am thinking of changing this thin back plate with a much wider and thicker one. I have some 3-4 mm sheets.That's one of the next steps, when I feel motivated, and after that I will start thinking about making a wooden box for the whole thing. I have a few Teak wood planks.And just for the sake of it am wandering if I should add one fan at the bottom of the box just in caseMaybe an Noctua nf-a12x15, turning at very low RPMs... will see about that :)
I don't know how heavy it is. It's still not in one piece and stays in place thanks to my oldschool sci-fi book collection :)
At the moment it looks like that and I LOVE it and the whole experience :
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https://preview.redd.it/5zbi4q6zey3b1.jpg?width=4624&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=168ef8b6001b215a77b59fc197b8d3ffa2c18263
https://preview.redd.it/mq34es6zey3b1.jpg?width=3468&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7aa61eb616310aaffc0376ca829ce7c745e1681a
https://preview.redd.it/59swvp6zey3b1.jpg?width=4624&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dd109c427fc7fe504baabab22b932f3a7a7fe3f7
It's been 4 months now since I started and I work on the project whenever I have time.
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I will add updates with any progress.I have some crazy ideas for the wooden box, to make it even heavier :D
Thanks for the patience of reading the whole thing :) You are free to make fun of the whole "creation" hahaha or add any advice.
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https://preview.redd.it/83kvhwj1fy3b1.jpg?width=2448&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e45ed36adced3cd02a93a929574eee9fca59cd85
~o)0(o~

TL;DR course is beautiful, race is super well organized, would recommend.

Race Information

• Name: Revel Rockies Half
• Date: June 3, 2023
• Distance: 13.1 miles
• Location: Denver, CO
• Website: https://www.runrevel.com/rdv
• Time: 1:28:52

Goals

Goal	Description	Completed?
A	Have a good time	Yes
B	Sub-90	Yes

Splits

Mile	Time
1	6:50
2	6:46
3	6:26
4	6:50
5	6:52
6	6:46
7	6:52
8	7:13
9	7:12
10	6:27
11	6:35
12	6:31
13	6:10
13.1	1:28:52

Training

This was my 4th half of the year. In January, I ran the Kaiser Half in San Francisco and finished with a 1:30:24. This race - Revel Rockies - was the last in a series of three, over 2 months: The Get in Gear Half in Twin Cities, MN (1:31:07), and the Brooklyn Half in NYC (1:30:02).
Between all these races, I followed a weekly schedule of one speedwork day and one long run, with lots of easy miles thrown in.
Because I had come pretty close in Brooklyn, and the Revel Rockies course has a net downhill of about 1,700 feet, I thought I’d have an excellent chance of going sub-90, and maybe it’d even feel easy! (it didn’t)

Pre-race

I got to Denver Wednesday that week. This year, I planned my race calendar around cities where I have friends; in this case, Denver is where the designer on my team lives, so she and I worked together for a bit, but we also hit up the kid’s casino (Round1) to play some claw machine games. Obviously, the house always wins, but we did win a bunch of soft toys for ourselves and a children’s hospital nearby, so let’s call it a draw.
While we were working together on Thursday, I was nursing a headache, and it suddenly dawned on me to ask: “Are we at altitude?” (lol). Being a mile up from sea level explained why I was feeling so trashy for the last 48 hours - that, combined with the person in the next door hotel room deciding to smoke throughout the day/night (???)
On Friday, I went for a short 3 mile trail run and was significantly more winded than I should/would have been for the route. Still, I was pretty confident the significant downhill would win out - it’d just feel a bit sucky.

Race

To get to the start line, everyone had to park near Bandimere Speedway and take a bus up the mountain so we could run down it.
With a 6:30am start, the first bus left at 4:30am, which in turn had me waking up at 3am to eat 3 bagels and drink a triple espresso. I went to bed at 8pm and had a pretty decent sleep, all things considered.
In terms of organization, I didn’t really know what to expect, but as I pulled into the parking lot and saw a long line of neatly parked school busses waiting to take runners up, I started to get excited - the whole scene had the vibe of a school trip; one where you’re either up super early or super late to go somewhere fun.
I had originally planned to nap on the way up, but I happened to sit next to a really nice lady and we chatted throughout the ride. I’m not sure I would have been able to fall asleep after all that coffee anyway.
We got to the starting line around 5ish and it was a little chilly, but the organizers had provided everyone with heat blankets, gloves, and arm sleeves, which was super thoughtful, and definitely came in handy. I used the bathroom, warmed up, went to the bathroom again, before lining up at the starting line.
Unlike my last race in Brooklyn, where I had a pretty detailed pace plan, I was going to take the first couple of miles easy (1:30 pace at most), and then run the rest of the race by effort. The course has a couple of rolling hills, but the elevation profile pretty much looks like a right angled triangle, starting at about 8,000ft and dropping to around 6,000ft, so it’s not really that complicated. Having said that, there was some mild elevation gain in the course: 174ft (for reference, Brooklyn had 236ft).
The course actually started with some rolling hills, which helped me stick to my plan of not going out too fast; I took my foot off the gas when going uphill, and let some faster runners pass.
The rest of the race consisted of winding roads downhill, with a couple of smaller hills (the 7min+/mile splits). Running at altitude definitely felt different. I usually race with a heart rate in the 170s-180s, but I was getting winded in the high 160s, and my heart rate never made it above 176, despite me feeling like I was pushing plenty hard. Also, the small hills felt like a lot more work than normal. I’m not sure if it was because I’d been running downhill the rest of the time and my muscles were thrashed, or I didn’t have the cardio capacity because of the altitude, or both.
In any case, the course was gorgeous - you’re surrounded by mountains pretty much the whole race, and they closed one of the road lanes, so you’ve lots of space to run.
This was a smaller (~1,200 people for the half) race, so there wasn’t a lot of passing/being passed going on. A small group of runners took off at the start, and other than a handful of times I was passed/passed someone, I was running by myself.
For the last few miles, the gradient got even steeper, and so I managed to clock some faster miles, and by the time mile 11 came around, I knew that unless something stopped me from putting together two 7:10-7:20 miles, I was going to come in at under 90 minutes. The last 200m though, was actually uphill, but I had enough in the tank to sprint to the finish line and was pleasantly surprised to find out that I’d come in 3rd in my age group.

Post-race

I have to say that this was one of the most well organized races I’ve run. The finisher’s area was right next to a creek and really picturesque. They had lots of great snacks and vendors offering samples. There was also a beer garden (that I didn’t check out). After checking out some of the booths, I took the bus back down to the parking lot and went back to my hotel.
In addition to doing a great job with the logistics, the organizers also put together many small touches that made the event special. For example, immediately after the finish line, you could get your results printed on a nice card. Also, the age group awards were a white embroided band that they attached around your medal ribbon, which I hadn’t seen before and thought it looked really cool :D There were also lots of photo opportunities, including a cool “R E V E L” sculpture-thing that lots of people (myself included) were taking photos in front of.
It definitely felt like they went out of their way to put on a great race!
Overall, I had a great time and would definitely consider running another Revel event.
Made with a new race report generator created by herumph.

Did you also grow up watching all the usual cartoon shows on TV? Even if you were not a die-hard fan of cartoons, there was always one on at almost any hour on some channel. In my country here in Northern Europe they ran cartoon show episodes during daytime hours and the late evenings were reserved for the adults and parents with national news and movies in the airing schedule.
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The most popular ones for a long time were shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy, King of the Hill and South Park. They have some really good classic jokes that a lot of people relate to. But some of them did not age well. Coming out as gender queer about a year ago I started to notice their really outdated jokes on trans people and other gender identities. Anyone remember Quagmire's father in Family Guy coming out as a trans woman and immediately the showrunners hook him up with Brian, without his knowledge, depicting her "trapping" the family's womanizer dog during her first few days dating as a woman? Or Mister Garrison in South Park, who has a really long character arc as a detransitioner chasing after a medical transplant growth on a lab mouse, which runs away from the laboratory and she has to chase the mouse around town? The Simpsons didn't really include a trans character early on, instead comparing trans people to cultists in S4E10, to spiders and other nuisances to family time on S10E22, to discount/low quality versions of attractive poster models in S10E23, and to sexual predators and social climbers in S16E10 (where Patty thinks she is marrying a "masculine woman", and Marge crashes the wedding revealing that her wife has an Adam's apple, and thus is not "what you think, Veronica is secretly a man!".
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All these shows berated trans people for the longest time, and growing up as a cis hetero kid in a cis hetero household, it never really clicked to me as a kid that these shows were peddling potentially hurtful messages, and having laughed at many of them makes me feel sick of myself and that time period now... Its kinda scary how a lot of people romanticise that era nowadays.
Nowadays I dont remember really seeing this kind of stuff in newer episodes, but neither have I seen any legitimate, likeable cartoon or TV show characters that are transgender or any other gender identity outside the norm. It feels like popular media still feels quite weird about us and is afraid to include us in any light in big budget productions now that depicting in negative light is no longer in fashion.
What do you think about all that? My understanding is that this is not the norm in most cartoons anymore (because we fought back), but it was totally a part of everyday life even just 10-15 years ago. Does it make you feel these shows were / are run by awful people and popular culture back then was super harmful to LGBTQ people, or do you still find yourself laughing at these jokes and simply not take it all so seriously? Am I just overreacting to a bygone era here, or is there still a legitimate risk that this kind of stuff becomes the norm in the "West"?

Hi! Please let me know what you think about my school list - it feels a bit top-heavy, but I'm not sure which other schools I should apply to that aren't low-yield, OOS unfriendly, or may yield protect me. Thanks in advance!
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• State of residence: MI
• Ties to other states (if applicable): IL
• URM? (Y/N): N
• Undergraduate vibe: UMich
• Undergraduate major(s)/minor(s): Neuroscience major / Business minor
• Graduate degree(s) (if applicable):
• Cumulative GPA: 3.84
• Science GPA: 3.82
• MCAT Score(s) (in order of attempts): 525 (131/131/132/131)
• Gap years?: 3 (not including 5th year spent on lost honors thesis) - spent as MA
• Institutional actions?: N
• First application cycle? (If no, explain): Y
• Specialty of interest (if applicable):
• Interest in rural health?: N
• Age at matriculation to medical school: 26
• Primary: applied super early, essays should be solid

Extracurricular Background:

• Research experience: 500 non-clinical, more hours not listed on primary spent on honors thesis that got burnt because of COVID & health issues
• Publications?: no pub, one poster
• Clinical experience: 3k completed, 1.5k anticipated (500 scribe, rest MA)
• Physician shadowing: 125 completed, 100 anticipated
• Non-clinical volunteering: 225 (crisis line, service trip)
• Other extracurricular activities: strong chess player, social venture student org, exec board of honors society
• Employment history: barback/bouncer at college bar, supervisor of all college rec sports buildings, physics tutor
• Letters of Rec: strong overall but generic

List: 23 total
Michigan, Northwestern, Stanford, NYU, Vanderbilt, UChicago, WashU, Yale, UVA, Cornell, Mt Sinai, Pitt, Kaiser, Ohio St, Cinci, Emory, Western Mich, Wayne, Mich St, Wisconsin, Indiana, Oakland, Central Mich

Caltech's recent breakthrough has moved us closer to achieving the transformative potential of space-based solar power.
https://gizmodo.com/scientists-beam-space-based-solar-power-earth-first-tim-1850500731
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The California Institute of Technology has big news for space-based power. Researchers at the university have reportedly beamed solar power from space to Earth without a single wire—and they say it’s a first.
The experiment is a part of Caltech’s Space Solar Power Project, and the institute announced a successful transmission via press release yesterday. The researchers conducted the power transfer experiment using the Microwave Array for Power-transfer Low-orbit Experiment, or MAPLE, which is a small prototype aboard the in-orbit Space Solar Power Demonstrator (SSPD-1) that launched this past January.
The researchers say that, in a first, MAPLE’s array of transmitters successfully beamed solar power collected in space using microwaves to a receiver on the rooftop of Gordon and Betty Moore Laboratory of Engineering on Caltech’s campus in Pasadena.
“Through the experiments we have run so far, we received confirmation that MAPLE can transmit power successfully to receivers in space,” said Space Solar Power Project co-director Ali Hajimiri in the press release. “We have also been able to program the array to direct its energy toward Earth, which we detected here at Caltech. We had, of course, tested it on Earth, but now we know that it can survive the trip to space and operate there.”
The SSPD-1, attached to a Vigoride spacetug from Momentus Space, consists of two panels used to collect solar power. An array of transmitters within MAPLE sends that energy across a given distance using constructive and destructive interference. Located about a foot away from its transmitter, MAPLE has two receivers that collect solar energy and convert it to DC electricity which, during the experiment, was used to light up two LEDs inside MAPLE. The researchers were able to light up one LED at a time by shifting the transmissions between the receivers, demonstrating the accuracy of the array. MAPLE also has a window that can allow the transmitters to beam energy to a target outside the spacecraft, like Earth.
“In the same way that the internet democratized access to information, we hope that wireless energy transfer democratizes access to energy,” Hajimiri said in the release. “No energy transmission infrastructure will be needed on the ground to receive this power. That means we can send energy to remote regions and areas devastated by war or natural disaster.”
The ability to wirelessly transmit solar power from space has huge implications for renewable energy, so much so that Japan plans to start using it by the mid-2030's. A Japanese research team is looking to pilot the technology in 2025 with a public-private partnership.
As humanity’s growing need for energy continues, a powerful solution like space-based solar power collection and transmission could be a huge step in the right direction. Space-based power collection would be able to operate 24-hours a day—whereas night pauses ground-based solar power collection—and would be to able to beam power to remote or disaster-stricken areas, assuming they have the requisite infrastructure.

Welcome to Camp Redwood! The feel-good camp for ALL AGES.
We toast marshmallows around the fire, tell spooky ghost stories, and hide in random secret military bunkers under the campgrounds! Because SOMETHING IS HERE WITH US.
Camp Redwood is the PERFECT PLACE for a summer getaway where we start EVERY DAY with a CAMP REDWOOD SMILE. Where our counselors disappear every five minutes, and our campers disembowel us for funsies! Did I forget to mention our littles aren’t actually eight years old, but fully grown adults?
We hope you enjoy your fucking stay!
We are also not responsible for any counselors revealing they are not who they said they are—and not who they appear to be.
...
So. There’s a LOT to tell you and not a lot of time to tell it.
Right now, I suppose you could say we are under lockdown—if that is the word. I want to go over the last several days to get you up to date. That’s all I can do right now. I can hope and pray the thing with Teddy’s voice does not get in here, and once again cry out for help—that I know is not coming. Not from the authorities, at least. But hey, if any of you fancy coming to rescue us, we’re in the middle of the Canadian wilderness. The closest rest-stop is maybe three fucking hours away. So have fun. Has it really almost been a week since I posted? Well, we’re still here!
And surprise, surprise, help is not coming. So, please excuse the salt. I am seventeen years old and I have been abandoned by the adults who were supposed to be looking after us.
Who were supposed to act under protocol if something like this happened. I know they were waiting for it—there are specific fucking guidelines on an emergency evacuation for counselors if this ever happened. But then the little shits took over before we could do anything. I guess I’ll start by letting you know that there are two of us left. (three, if we count Rowan, but I’m not). What I thought was going to be a quiet summer getaway with kids my age has turned into a nightmare.
For one, we have been cornered inside the head counselor’s underground secret bunker. If you want to know why she has a secret military bunker, I guess you should keep reading.
Because shit gets weirder than animal crackers having the power to turn adults into kids, and vice versa. When I made my first post, I thought that was it for us. I thought for sure there must have been a self-destruct somewhere—which meant whoever was running this camp was waiting for something like this. I was sure we were going to die, so after making the post, I have to admit with ya’ll—I just slept. I curled up, tried to ignore Harry and Carmel calling our names through childish laugher, and went to sleep with the thought in my head that I was completely at peace with what I had done with my life.
Sure, I was young. Seventeen years old is too young to be ripped apart by littles who are in fact grown adults. But as I was falling into slumber and allowing myself to fall, with my head resting in my lap, my head turned towards a separate pile of files on the other side of the room—I realized I really wanted to know how this was possible. There was so much I needed to know. Why did eight-year-old Eleanor Summers have a file where here birthday dated back to 1979? Why had supposedly innocent sugary snacks turned our adorable littles into mini psychopaths?
These kids were not kids, somehow. But how? How was that even possible? Could it be that the files were wrong?
1979 was definitely 45.
But Eleanor Summers couldn’t be 45 years old. I knew what 45 looked like. I knew that they thought like. They spent half of their time on Facebook laughing at outdated memes, and the other half… I don’t know, working? They have job’s! They’re happily married with kids, maybe soon grandkids! That was not Eleanor Summers. Because Eleanor Summers was most definitely eight years old. I had played several rounds of teddy-bears picnic, and spent hours reassuring her that Harry's ghost stories were in fact not real, enough times for me to know that this little kid was little—and a kid.
But something was bothering me. More than the secret military bunker, and magic age-regressing animal crackers. When I first signed up to Camp Redwood, one of the tag-lines to gain attraction had been, “Solve mysteries in the woods in the dead of night, with nothing but a flashlight and your fellow campers!” I had no idea I would be solving this thing on my own, trapped inside a bunker.
“What are you doing?” Rowan, who was still looking through Allison’s dinosaur laptop, turned to me with half lidded eyes, when I slowly got to my feet, careful not to make too much noise, and crept over to the pile of separate files which seemed to be crumbling apart from age. He kept his voice low, but it sounded almost like a whine. He could have been scared, but from the way he was sitting, cross-legged with a frowny face, I figured something must have been going on with him. The guy looked tired. More tired than normal.
The bags under his eyes were practically shadowing his face, and were an odd contrast to unusually ashy colored cheeks and slightly dilated eyes. Still though, Rowan refused to look vulnerable. I caught glimpse of Harry’s raybans sitting on his head, pinning back thick dark brown curls from falling in front of sleepy eyes. Maybe he was finally losing his cool and breaking out of the well-constructed façade he had been hiding behind since Teddy disappeared.
We had just narrowly escaped a crowd of psycho littles high on age-regressing sugary snacks who were doing who-the-fuck knows to the other counselors who had been captured, so I didn’t blame him looking like that. I guess he couldn’t look me in the eye, because in Rowan’s mind, he was the reason why this happened. He was the leader, and the camp had fallen to psychopathic little eight year olds who had taken half of the counselors hostage, and the other half—most likely taken apart in the physical sense, after what we had witnessed in Cassie’s cabin. Still though, it wasn’t Rowan’s fault. He could sit there and pull a face all he wanted, it’s not like I was going to blow up at him for getting us stuck down here. He actually saved us.
And trapped us, judging from the footsteps upstairs, Carmel and Harry still bouncing around looking for us.
It was a game in their heads. The little’s thought it was cat and mouse. Harry and Carmel were the oblivious cats prowling, while we were the mice, hoping to fucking GOD we weren’t caught and eaten. Ignoring Rowan, I glimpsed what looked like a box full of DVD’S—all of which were labelled with dates and names. I saw familiar ones, my heart racing into my throat. Phoebe. Eli. Cassandra.
Each DVD had one of the kid’s names scribbled on the front, as well as a date.
I found Eleanor’s right at the back of the box.
Eleanor Summers.
08/05/2021. (PM)
Before I could hesitate and think what I was doing, I slid the DVD into the portable player attached to the MacBook. Rowan, to my surprise, didn’t move. But he did make an acknowledging noise when the screen flickered to what looked like video footage. Peering at the screen, I found myself staring at a small white room. There was no door. Only a wooden desk and a chair, and sitting on it was a middle aged woman with dark blonde curls tied into a strict ponytail. She was wearing what looked like a prison jumpsuit.
Her eyes were eerily glued to the camera, unblinking. Her wrists were cuffed in front of her. Though from the look on her face, she saw the restraints as a game. Her eyes lit up with intrigue and I could practically see the cogs in her mind starting to turn as she struggled with them.
As soon as I saw this woman, I felt all of my nerve endings set alight. I wanted to turn the screen off, or look away. But once I was looking at the screen, I couldn’t bring myself to tear my eyes away. “Let’s try this again.” There was a woman offscreen. She sounded young. Too young to be in that kind of authority. I figured there was no way teenagers were being hired as special ops agents, but I guessed I was wrong. She cleared her throat. “It is 4:35 exactly. August 5th 2021. My name is Agent Lemrac,” she stated. “I am asking once again for you to comply with us. As I have said several times, the court are willing to lessen your sentence if you plead guilty with insanity.”
The woman surprised me with a snorting laugh. She seemed to come alive, leaning forward with animated features, her brow reaching her hairline. She was acting like a child, bouncing up and down in the seat, her lips stretching into a wider grin. “What did you just say?”
There was a pause. I could tell the woman was intentionally antagonising the interviewer.
“It means you have been legally declared insane,” the interviewer stumbled over her words slightly. “Mrs Summers, it would be in your best interest to work with us to lessen your current sentence which at the moment is standing at,” the sounds of shuffling paper crackled through the speakers. The interviewer cleared her throat again rustling paper. “Thirty six years. Without parole.”
The woman didn’t speak, only continued to smile—and the interviewer delved further into the sentence. “If you do in fact plead guilty with declared insanity, you will be sentenced to a program which is in the process of supporting and rehabilitating people with your…” she caught herself for a moment. I could tell this interviewer had a biased opinion and it was definitely showing through her interviewing style. I could hear the rapid intakes of her breath as she hurried through what seemed to be a script she was reading from. “Conditions.” She finished. “The Redwood program aims to help people exactly like you.”
Redwood? I thought.
Like… Camp Redwood?
Rowan whistled behind me. I guess I could call that a reaction. The guy was probably still in shock after seeing Café de Teddy splattered all over little Cassie’s cabin floor. I should have known those little bitches weren’t playing Operation for eight hours straight. Turning my attention from Rowan and back to the screen, the woman in the jumpsuit appeared to have changed tactics. Her expression twisted into nonchalance. She leaned back in her chair. “I am not pleading insane because I am not insane.”
“Mrs Summers—”
The woman cut her off. “I am not crazy.” She raised her hands “I am doing what needs to be done.” She leaned forward. “Humanity suffers in the skin. We age and die— and how is that fair? What if we want to see the next millennium? And the next two millennia after that? Why should our bodies dictate our lifespan? Why should we sit here and wait to rot and wither and die when we have the intelligence and mindset to do it? If nobody else is willing to throw ethics aside to take a step forwards in human evolution, I should do it myself.” She folded her arms across her chest, again, like a child. “I did what was to be done.”
“Dr. Summers.” The interviewer’s tone grew stiff. “You and your colleagues conducted illegal and unethical procedures on your family and friends—as well as four other victims.”
The woman inclined her head. “You have a daughter, am I correct? I have a son.”
“A child you killed, Dr Summers.” The interviewer retorted in a hiss which was definitely expressing emotion. She ignored the mention of her daughter, but I could tell it had rattled her to her core. Her voice had cracked. This case was close to her.
That was obvious. Without seeing the interviewer herself, I could sense how uncomfortable she was, shuffling in the chair. Every so often I would hear the sound of her rubbing her hands on her knees and tapping her shoe against the chair leg. She oozed anxiety, not just from her tone of voice, but the way the frame seemed to move with her. “Dr. Summers, you used your son in your research, along with several of his friends. This was not science.” Her voice shook. I heard her sharp inhale. Unprofessional, but very human. Instead of staying stoic and keeping to script, this agent was cracking apart. “It was murder.”
“Agent Lemrac, concentrate on the interview only.” An official voice crackled through what sounded like an intercom on screen.
“Got it.” She spoke through her teeth.
The woman was finding wounds and pressing on them. She was scanning the interviewer for vulnerabilities and preying on every insecurity. She leaned back speaking through a sigh. “Without my son’s sacrifice we wouldn’t have created an answer to death. To growing old and dying, and leaving loved ones behind.” Her voice softened into a murmur, but I didn’t trust it.
After identifying the shattering pieces of this interviewer which were very clear visible in her view, the woman was taking advantage.
“Agent Lemrac, you have a daughter. Am I correct in saying her name is Mari?
“That… that is not relevant.”
“Glioblastoma.” Dr. Summers lips curved into a sickening smile hidden behind mocking sympathy. “A sickness of the brain--which, unfortunately, I cannot fix. If your daughter’s brain was in my hands, I would try. However, not even a brand new body would help her. One which would never age or grow sick. And for that, I am deeply, deeply sorry.” She reached her cuffed hands forwards. “My condolences, Agent Lemrac. Honestly. I have to hand it to you. You are incredibly brave for coming here today and talking to me while abandoning your sick child.” She shook her head.
“Your daughter is dying of an incurable illness, suffering inside fragile skin which will break and fall apart and be unable to keep her standing for much longer. While my son will live on forever. He will see every millennia, a planet which will crumble and build itself back together. And maybe the end of the universe itself.” There was a twitch in her expression and a glitter in her eye I did not recognise. Insanity.
She was fucking insane. I was seeing the pure of it, the depraved and disgusting gleam in eyes empty of remorse and regret. This woman did not care what she had done. I could tell from the look on her face. If she had the chance, she would do this again.
But there was no way they were trying to say her cruelty and complete disregard for her son’s life was due to insanity.
“You are sick, Dr. Summers.” The interviewer said after a moment of gathering herself.
The woman shook her head with a chuckle. “I told you. I am not sick--”
“Sick in the head!” The interviewer’s voice exploded through the speakers in a shriek—a terrified cry she had been trying to hold in. I finally saw her—or at least the back of her. She was a young woman with light blonde hair falling loose on her shoulders. She was trembling. Slamming her hands down on the table, she screamed at the orange jumpsuit woman.
“You are psychologically fucked in the head! You psycho bitch! That is my sister!” She spoke through strangled sobs rattling her whole body. “Mari is my little sister. She is not my child.”
Her breaths were strangled and harboured. I noticed figures looming in the background, but she was continuing. “You killed your own fucking son,” she spat. “You are not legally insane, you are sick!” she shrieked. “You planned and put this together! You sit there and you talk about your son like he’s a… like he’s a tool! You deserve to rot. Do you hear me?” I noticed the orange jumpsuit woman was still smiling, satisfied with the interview’s reaction. Her words were spoken in a vicious poison as she leaned forward and spat directly in orange jumpsuit’s face.
“Agent Lemrac!” Whoever her superiors were—were panicking. “I told you not to turn it off. I knew this was going to happen. Can we stop the demonstration, please? Human emotions present inside an Aceville soldier are too powerful—"
Voices were murmuring in the background, and Agent Lemrac raised her hands. “I want to stop.” She choked out, her hands trembling. She spoke like she still had control over the situation and wasn’t being apprehended. “I want to stop. Do you hear me?” The interviewer was crying, I realized. “Stop the recording! I can’t do this. Oh god, I think I’m going to be sick—”
When the footage ended in a burst of static, I found myself backing away, something slimy creeping its way up my throat.
The woman in the orange jumpsuit who had murdered her son and countless others in what sounded like an attempt at playing god, was Eleanor Summers. I thought back to Teddy’s corpse, and the surgical precision of every organ’s removal. The young interviewer had mentioned colleagues of Eleanor.
Was it possible that Camp Redwood was in fact nothing more than a rehabilitation camp for murderous criminals? There was a loud bang from above, and I was torn from my thoughts.
I turned to Rowan, who had been unusually quiet. And I realized why, when I twisted around to find him three inches from my face, his laboured breath tickling my cheek.
The boy jumped back with a chuckle—like me noticing him was some kind of game, before diving back into the chair. I did notice something odd, as my thoughts spiralled. Rowan couldn’t sit still. Slumped in the leather spinning chair, he fingers tapped a rhythm on the armrests while his feet jumped up and down. In the dim light of the bunker, I glimpsed a sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead and the flesh of his neck. He looked to be… feverish—and now that I was looking at him properly, all of my attention on the boy, I noticed small things which seemed… off about him.
For one, he wasn’t coming up with a plan. Rowan always had a plan. Even if he wasn’t completely sure of it, or was completely winging it. This time though, he was strangely quiet. I found my voice when he stuck out his tongue at me. “What are you looking at?”
“Rowan.” I spoke softly, careful not to garner attention from above us where Harry and Carmel were still clamouring around, playing games. “Are you… feeling okay?” I asked, when he turned back to the laptop, manically biting his fingernails.
“I dunnnooooo, Josie! Am I feeeeeeling okaaaaaayyyyy?” He surprised me with an uncharacteristic laugh.
But I did know it.
I knew it from earlier when he reacted to Allison’s bunker and I had been too freaked out to realize that I was dragging along the enemy with me.
Because the fucking idiot had consumed animal crackers. I had seen him for myself earlier, pouring a pack into his mouth for a snack. Which meant either the ‘kids’ had intentionally dosed him with mind altering sugary snacks, or the more likely, he could not resist those preservatives which was the equivalent of caffeine. It’s not like I could blame him when he harboured the weight of an entire camp, but come on, did he really have to sacrifice his own fucking mind to keep himself awake?
Rowan wasn’t just biting. His nails. He was gnawing. Which he previously thought was a filthy habit. He had yelled at a camper for chewing on her nails a few days earlier.
Now that I was noticing it, I couldn’t… stop noticing it. The boy’s whole demeanour had changed; the way he was sinking into the chair, instead of sitting up straight like usual—- I used to call it having a stick up his ass. The boy started typing on the laptop, ignoring me. But when I watched the pattern of his fingers, he was just typing gibberish. Footsteps pounded above us, Harry and Carmel acting as the kid’s’ brainwashed foot-soldiers. Or, more likely somehow, if the animal crackers had caused the littles, or I guess, the fully grown forty year old criminals, to relapse in age-- then maybe it was possible for the same thing to happen to us. To Rowan.
I could feel myself starting to back away, but there was nowhere to run. I just slammed into a cupboard. My gaze flicked to Rowan again, who was tapping a beat on the laptop tracking pad, swaying back and forth, his eyes elsewhere before his gaze found mine. “Marcoooooo!” Harry shouted from above, giggling with Carmel.
I had to guess their mental age had to be at least 8-10 years old. Which meant I wasn’t just dealing with a camp full of forty-year-old psycho’s, I was also dealing with mentally relapsed counselors acting like toddlers.
Rowan seemed to jolt in the chair, twisting his head around, his eyes suddenly incredibly childlike and playful, and very Un-Rowan, were finding the ceiling, his mouth stretching into a smile, like he was seeing butterflies. His eyes flashed to me, and I caught a twitch in his lip. I knew that look. It was the look on my seven year old sister, who knew mom was mad at me, and wanted to make it even worse.
His cheeks were starting to blossom scarlet from what must have been the overwhelming urge to laugh. Rowan pressed his lips together and held in a breath like a hamster, and the asshole was fucking with me. Waiting for me to beat him to it by accident. Kids were fucking ruthless, but there was something terrifying about an 18 year old with a little kid’s mind.
I lifted my index to my lips, miming for him not to even try, but the boy just mimicked me, bugging out his eyes and pressing his finger to his grinning mouth. “Don’t you fucking dare.” I managed to whisper. The boy was definitely playing his own game, moving in twitching movements, baiting me. When he cupped his mouth, I almost let out a cry, but then he dropped his arms with a giggle, as if to say, “I’m just kidding!”
Slowly, I turned around, grabbed the salt I’d found in Allison’s cupboard, and a flat can of soda. Without making too much movement, I poured a handful of salt into the can. But Rowan seemed to know exactly what I was doing. Because in the time it was taking me to advance towards him with the can of salty soda, one arm shakily ready to grab hold of him, and put him into a headlock, he was cupping his mouth, all logic and everything adult, everything he had been as our leader, igniting in playful eyes, leaving me the last one standing.
“Pollloooooo!”
By the time Rowan had managed to reveal our hiding place in a spluttered laugh, I had hold of the squirming boy, one arm wrapped around his neck, my other forcing the can of soda into his mouth. I had definitely miscalculated his strength. During camp Redwood activities, he was always the last one to come back from the trail, holding his knees and panting. I figured he was unfit. However, I was wrong. Underneath his shirt, the guy had some serious muscles.
It was like attacking a brick wall. However, Rowan was mentally a kid. So, I had my intelligence and logic on my side. When it became obvious I wasn’t going to get anywhere with brute strength, I resorted to tickling him, which made him squirm, squeaking out a laugh. When he opened his mouth to yell at me to stop, I took my chance, thrusting the can into his lips and holding his nose so he swallowed it down.
“No!” His laughter turned into muffled yelling, as he batted his fists at my chest. “No, no, no! Get off, get off!”
His body convulsed as the salt did its job, causing the boy to lurch to his knees and choke up forbidden animal crackers in a gooish sludge which turned my stomach. By the time Rowan seemed half himself and half not, still kneeling, his head pressed against the floor, Harry was poking his head through the door with a goonish grin. “Found you!” He giggled, before forcing the door open, allowing Carmel and Callen, freshly caught and mentally turned into littles, to advance down the stairs with equally terrifying grins. There was something wrong with Harry’s face, and I only realized it when the guy himself was hauling me from the bunker, Carmel dragging a barely responsive Rowan. There was nothing in Harry’s expression, only blind childish excitement at winning the game. When he dragged me out of Allison’s cabin and threw me to the ground, I realized he too had insane strength I had not been expecting. But that thought quickly retracted when I was seeing his face in the light of a crescent moon lighting up the sky an eerie glow. Harry’s cheeks were puffy and swollen, his right eye way bigger than it should have been.
When he spoke, his voice was more of a lisp. This was something far more realistic than magical animal crackers fucking with his brain.
“He needs help!” I managed to choke out when Carmel wrapped jump-rope around my wrists. Next to me, Rowan was refusing to get up, still choking up salty soda, groaning into his hands. Every time Callen tried to restrain him, he hissed out like an animal.
“Do you hear me?!” I struggled violently. “Harry needs—”
BANG.
Is what it felt like. The feeling of something—what felt and sounded like a toy car—colliding with my temples, sent me onto the ground, my head spinning itself off of its axis. I remember lying on my back and frowning at the moon which almost looked like it was getting closer to me, blurring into a white ball of light—before reality sunk in, and it was in fact Carmel’s converse coming down to finish me off. I didn’t stay knocked out for long. But I did dream.
I think you can call it a dream? I was lying in bed at home; my room drowned in the dark. I was cosy, curled up in my blankets, when a clammy hand slammed over my mouth, rousing me from slumber. There were two figures in my room. They didn’t have faces. They just existed as shadows, silhouettes. Before one of them raised something above their head, and… impact.
It was the same impact as the toy car hitting me, snapping me back to that night. It wasn’t a dream. Because I remembered his clammy fingers over my mouth, and his hisses for me to shut up as he dragged me from my room.
My parents stood in front of me with expressions of sympathy. Basked in warm light, my mom and dad looked almost otherworldly. “For the best.” Was what they mouthed when my own phantom screams slammed into me. I asked them why, and they didn’t reply, allowing him to pull me further and further from what I knew, from my life as I knew it. But.. that couldn’t be real. I had memories of getting on the bus to camp Redwood. I could recall the whole journey. So, why… why was my tangled mind saying otherwise?
When I gathered myself, the first thing I realized was I was sitting down. I was outside, cool night air grazing my bare arms. There was something attached to me, jerking violently, And it took me several disorienting blinks to understand that I was tied back to back with Rowan. My head pounded, and something wet and warm dripped down my temple. Great. I could add head injury to the long list of things to worry about.
“Let me go you little fucking witch.”
Rowan was back to himself, though from the muffled hissing and the sound of choking—I had to guess he was being force-fed animal crackers.
“Let me—mpphmmm. little…. fucking… mphmmphhmhppmm!”
“Rowan.” I managed to get out in a croak. Through flickering eyes, I caught glimpse of a familiar figure dancing around us. Shivers rocketed down my spine, and I wrenched at the jump-rope restraints, but they did a surprisingly job of restraining my arms behind my back.
Eleanor was with Rowan, while Eli was knelt in front of me. Looking at him, the boy had definitely aged in the face—and I couldn’t help wondering what exactly he had done as a forty something year old to be sent to this place.
“Josie!” Rowan responded in a wail. “Josie. Wake the FUCK up.”
“Stop swearing.”
Eleanor spoke with the cold tone of her actual age.
“Oh, yeah?” Rowan spluttered. “Fuck you.” The boy’s laugh was still rough from almost vomiting his insides out from too much salt intake. “I’m sorry, you were a fucking boomer all along?!” He wriggled in the restraints, lunging forwards, which sent me backwards.
“Stop swearing, Rowan.” Was all the girl responded with calmly.
“Like I’m going to listen to you!” He sneered. “Fuck, fuck, fuckity, fucking fuck!” What are you going to do, huh? Bite me with your false teeth?” The sound of saliva hitting skin made me wince. He was pissed. I had no doubt his completely rational anger was going to get us killed. Rowan was also somehow getting mixed up between forty and eighty. Though he was unwillingly snacking on mind bending sugary goodness.
“Fudge, Rowan.” Eleanor spoke in a giggle.
“What?!”
“Say fudge. Not fuck.”
“No.”
His hiss of pain caught me off guard. I don’t know what she was doing to him, but it was hurting him.
“You fudging fudge! I’m going to fudging kill you when I get out of these fudging ropes—“ his manic cursing became a muffled yell.
“Say fudge,” Eleanor hummed, followed by his hiss when the palm of her hand skinned his cheek. “Fuck is a bad word. You even said so yourself and you’re my favourite counselor.”
He heaved out a breath.
“You fudge,” Rowan spat. “When I get out of this, I am going to fudging kill you, you fudging—” His manic ranting morphed, once again, into muffled yelling, after another fistful of animal crackers were forced into his mouth. When I risked twisting around, I could see his rebellion slowly starting to simmer out as he relaxed slightly. I wanted to yell at him to keep a clear head before cold fingers were dipping under my chin and forcing my head around where I found myself face to face with Eli.
“I like you, Josie,” he said, before untying me and pulling me to my feet. Now at the age of nine or ten, he was a lot stronger. When I tried to pull away, the cruel blade of a knife grazed my gut. I caught his grin. “But we don’t need you.” Eli pointed to Rowan.
“We just want them.”
I followed his pointer finger which went from Rowan to Harry and Carmel, who were just standing there like fucking idiots, probably awaiting the next game. Harry’s face was getting redder. It looked like he was suffocating, and yet his grin was growing wider and wider, splitting his lips apart. “Rowan Atlas.” Eleanor said, dragging him to his feet. Something was stapled to his forehead head, which caused him to howl in pain, hissing another strangled line of “Fudge”. but I couldn’t read what it was.
“Camp leader. Intelligent, and problem solving skills.”
“Harry Carlisle.” Eli nodded his head with a smile. “Quick thinker. Strong minded.”
“Carmel Locke.” Cassie spoke behind me. She had her arms folded, a wry smile on her lips. “Smarter than she makes out—- an independent learner, and can work well under pressure.”
Looking at these kids, I felt sick to my stomach. They were planning something—and had the intelligence of renowned scientists, which was what I gathered from the footage on the MacBook. “What?” was all I could hiss out, as Eli prodded the blade of the knife into my back, ushering me to walk. “What are you talking about?”
“Duh.” He spoke in a more tweeny giggle. “Like I said, Miss Josie. You’re my favorite counselor but we don’t need you, so I’m going to use you for parts.” He laughed when a shiver spiderwebbed down my spine. “See! I told you I was going to show you my collection!”
“But… what do you need them for?”
Eli pressed his index finger to his lips with a laugh before forcing me to face forwards. “That’s a secret!”
When I didn’t, or couldn’t move, he shoved me into a stumbling power-walk, and I managed to turn my head quickly, making feverish eye contact with Rowan.
“Rowan.” I said calmly through the gutter in my throat. “Get…. Get help.”
If I was going to die, I needed him to get a hold of himself and somehow alert the outside world what was going on.
“From whom, Josie?!” He wailed back—and as I was dragged away, I could once again sense the childish undertones in his voice.
I had no choice but to obey Eli’s orders. If I didn’t want a knife in my back. He took me to the main lunch cabin, which, when I set foot inside, almost sent me to my knees.
Something lurched inside me, and I was screaming with no voice, staggering backwards, only to be shoved onto my face. In front of me was what had been the lunch hall, fully converted into the beginning of a laboratory.
What had been cafeteria tables were fashioned into makeshift gurney’s and beds, and I was looking at all of the missing counselors. Yuri and Noah had been skinned completely, their faces laid out on a makeshift surgical table. Joey had been ripped open, his heart and brain removed, a glittering metallic substance creeping its way across his forehead. It was then when I remembered Eleanor Summers words.
She wanted to prevent death and preserve the human mind. Looking at what was in front of me, this was the start of it. There was equipment I had never seen before. Lily’s body was empty, carved out completely, tubes forced inside her. When I glimpsed her fingers move and begin to ball into a fist, I saw red. I saw fucking red. The exit was so close and yet Eli, fucking Eli, wielded his knife. I think that is when part of me gave up. My brain just stopped. It short circuited. Seeing my friends murdered and yet somehow being kept alive through playing god, my body slumped to the ground. I was numb. Completely numb.
I’m not sure what would have happened if those bloody saws and instruments which had been used on my friends were used on me too.
Luckily, that did not happen. Before Eli could get his slimy hands on me, he crumpled to the ground in an almost cartoon-like fashion, and standing over me was Harry. Who was looking better. When he grasped hold of me and helped me up, I only had one word. “Out.” And he was nodding, his eyes glistening as he drunk in our friends’ fate.
“How?” I managed to sputter out, when we made it out of the cabin, ducking behind a tree. Harry turned to me, motioning for me to shut up. There was a group of now ten to eleven year olds already running around, searching for what I guessed was him.
“I’m allergic to peanut butter,” Harry murmured, his grasp tightening on my wrist as he led me across the camp, the two of us stumbling.
“What, and you just magically healed?”
He didn’t respond to that, which bothered me.
“The bunker is our best shot,” I hissed out. “I think we can get in contact with someone down there.” I paused, unable to stop myself. “What makes you so important?”
“Dunno. Maybe I’m their favorite.”
When we found Allison’s cabin, which was more of a safehouse (an exposed safehouse) I found Rowan sitting on the wooden porch with his legs swinging over the side. “Rowan!” Harry groaned. I found it hard to believe their roles had been switched. Now he was the one yelling at the camp-leader. “I told you to stay inside!”
He ushered the boy inside, before barricading the door with some hefty looking equipment. I could tell from the grin on his face that our so-called leader was once again no longer himself.
I had to bite back a groan. “You’re kidding.” I said, pointing to Rowan, who buried his head in his knees and blew a raspberry. “Does he look and act like our leader right now?!”
“It’s Rowan, Josie.”
“He’s a liability.”
“He’s our friend! Wouldn’t Rowan do the same?”
Yes, he would. But. He would also realize we’re lost causes.
“Gag him with something.” I said. “If he makes any more noise, we’re dumping him.”
“He’s a kid!”
“Just the mind of one.”
I don’t know how animal crackers worked, but his age seemed to be progressively younger. This time he just sat with wide eyes watching us.
Harry almost tore apart the place looking for means of communication, before an old fashioned ringing sound made me jump.
“What was that?” Harry turned to me with his lip curled.
“How am I supposed to know?!” I hissed. “Keep looking!” But when I ducked under the table, my hands crawled under the desk, finding a wire—and attached to that, an ancient looking phone which looked straight out of a 1940’s movie, a bright green rotary phone.
Hesitantly, I answered it, lifting the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“Did you awaken the subjects, Agent Salta?"
The voice on the other end was a woman, an oldish sounding woman with the tinge of a British accent.
“What?” I shot a look at Harry before shaking my head. “No. My name is Josie Greenfield. We’re at Camp Redwood, and we need help.”
The woman paused.
“Where is Agent Salta?” She cleared her throat. “This line is reserved for communication with agents only.”
“I don’t know who the fuck you’re talking about!" I squeaked out. “My name is Josie, and whatever is happening here, we need help!”
“Josie. Did you awaken the subjects?”
I paused after a moment, shooting Harry a look when he tried to take the phone off of me. “Yes.”
“And… are our agents unavailable?”
“I don’t understand.”
“When a health and safety breach is activated, our agents are awakened to deal with the Project Spearhead subjects if they were to ever go rogue, or become conscious enough to think. Josie, can you tell me what is in front of you? Describe it to me.”
I held my breath. Next to the hidden phone under the desk was what looked like mismatched wires, all of which had been severed. I lowered myself slowly, poking at mess. “Wires. I see… cut up wires.” I whispered. “Does this mean they know about you?”
She hummed. “Ah…That makes sense. The only way to activate our sleeper handlers would be to send out the signal. You appear to have been sabotaged. Unless activated manually, our agents cannot help you. I am sorry. They are your problem now.” The woman paused.
“If I were you, I would hope and pray they have not sabotaged the self-destruct. If you find that, then you may be able to save yourselves and find peace.” She cleared her throat. “Thank you for your service, Josie Greenfield.”
“Wait.” I managed to get out. “Wait, no! You can’t just… you can’t leave us! We need help!”
I found myself yelling at nothing when the phone went dead. The dull tone of the dead ringtone was clanging in my ears before footsteps from up above. “Fuck this.” Harry picked up a lead pipe. “They’re still little kids, right? I mean, their head must still be partly kids—- so let’s fucking beat their heads in.”
He noticed something, then, starting forwards towards the mess of files I had left earlier. Harry knelt on the ground and picked up Eli’s file, his eyes wide. But he wasn’t staring at the dates confirming the little boy’s age.
Instead, Harry pointed at the bottom of the file. “I don’t want to freak you out, Josie,” he whispered. Initially, I didn’t know what he was trying to show before I glimpsed notes scrawled at the bottom of the file, followed by a signature. “But I’m pretty sure that is my fucking writing.”
Harry was right.
I pulled the paperwork off of him, flicking through each file before turning my eyes to him. “Who the fuck are you?”
A clanging sound from above broke the tension, and whatever Harry was about to reply with was strangled in his throat. He slammed a hand over his mouth.
“Guys?”
The voice twisted me up inside, threatening to release a shriek from my mouth I had managed to clamp shut.
Teddy.
“Are you down here?” His voice was strained, and had an odd tone to it. “I can’t… I can’t see you.”
…
Can someone please tell me what the fuck is going on?! It’s been a blur of a week. We’ve managed to stay down here, surviving off of Allison’s rations. Rowan isn’t getting any better. He seems to have stopped mentally de-ageing at the age of maybe six. Harry has spent the last few days trying to get in contact with anyone, but it’s like they are IGNORING US.
I’ve been looking through everything I can find on Project Spearhead, but nothing points to Harry being involved. So. How is his signature all over the files? How is it possible that two friends I thought I knew several days ago, are now complete strangers?
Teddy keeps coming back.
He’s crying out to us.
I think he’s… in pain.
My god, I can’t stand this anymore. Please. CAMP REDWOOD NEEDS HELP.

About to submit today! i have worked and reworked my school list and I feel like i am just so uncertain about whether its accurate to my application potential. any advice here on schools im not considering would be greatly welcome.
quick app rundown: ORM, low SES, applying USMD only, 3.87 GPA, 523 MCAT, non trad 5 years out of school, clincial >4000 hours (lots of different clinical jobs), volunteer ~1200 (leadership oriented school club), research ~2600 hours (no pubs no posters non traditional research)
school list rundown:
27 schools, 33% public, 67% private.
3 T5: Vandy, Columbia, UCSF (mission fit)
5 T15: UW (in state), Mayo, U Michigan, Kaiser, Pitt
6 T30: OHSU (strong ties), Keck, UCSD, UNC (strong ties), Colorado (strong ties), Emory
The rest which is roughly half T50 and half T100 or unranked: Dartmouth, Boston U, Rochester, Miami, Tufts, Loyola, Quinnipac, Washington state (in state), Wake forest (strong ties), Vermont, Tulane, Rush
Thank you for your input!
Edit: I added UPenn, UVA, and U Minnesota and submitted 😳 thanks to this subreddit and good luck to everyone applying!