National tree company replacement led bulbs

In the coming decades, we will see a resurgence of marriages and monogamy

2023.06.06 21:19 Former_Molasses_7073 In the coming decades, we will see a resurgence of marriages and monogamy

So I believe, based on global conditions and economic climates, in the USA, possibly also Europe, we will see a resurgence of marriages and monogamy, with a down turn in hookup culture and high earning single people. Allow me to explain:
The first is artificial intelligence. The thing artificial intelligence does very well, without much fail, is writing content and doing text based work. This is already taking over many content based jobs . Many of these jobs are held by women. Writing, journalism, documentation, text based research and more will be over taken by AI . The same with replacing only fans , instagram, tiktok, or any form of digital modeling, AI will be able to do it better than any real woman. Similar with fashion modeling. Why hire models when you can take a virtual copy of clothing and wear it on a virtual model ? So in short, any field where women had a gender based advantage will be gone, thus equalizing women and men.
The other big change will be a reduction in high earning employees. What this means is that, doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc will see much lower salaries . This has been happening for physicians for years and is starting to happen to tech engineers. A lot of places and jobs people used to think set people for life, aren't that way anymore. Even software engineers are increasingly being hired in cheaper places like Eastern Europe. In the research sector, things not tied to national security or in high demand will not get grants.
What we will see is a resurgence of both manufacturing and trade skills jobs, as well as people opening their own small businesses. Manufacturing is being decoupled from China and other risky countries in terms of geopolitics. Trade skills and manufacturing jobs will be more or less require two incomes in a family to thrive. Small businesses are generally run in families. I know a number of software engineers where their SO converted from being a doctor or an IB analyst to making their own online company. The engineer does the tech side, the other one does the business side. Many many new small businesses started in the pandemic.
My view is that, we are entering a phase where education doesn't lead directly to a high earning career as an individual, less jobs that give an advantage to a single gender, and an environment where theres more money to be made in running your own business. Thus, I believe this will encourage marriage and monogamy. We will be seeing less of the "women in STEM" and more of the "men and women running a business"
Also, the rise of passport bros will increase due to developing countries being hammered by the loss of globalization. This will further increase marriage and monogamy, guys previously without a woman will find one elsewhere.

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2023.06.06 20:49 Lonelystoic72 $1,600 to replace body control module possibly due to having swapped my fog light bulbs with LED.

I replaced my fog lights with Sea Light LED bulbs a few months ago. Shortly thereafter my passenger headlight went out. Replaced the headlight bulb with an OEM bulb and still didn’t work. Took it to Ford today and they said it was a bad BCM possibly due to the led fog lights. I had also purchased replacement LEDs for the headlights and high beams and was going to install those but they advised against it. Anyone else experience this issue when swapping to LEDs? Or was this just a coincidence? I can’t see crap at night without the LEDs.

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2023.06.06 20:26 SpicyTumbong Noob question

I'm planning to upgrade my crosstrek '23 sport into LED (DLR, low beam and high beam) do I need a converter if Im going to use diode dynamics LED's?
Coz as per them
"No need! Our lights are a direct LED replacement for halogen bulbs!"
I don't know if its real.

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2023.06.06 20:20 igorekk handpicked for Berlin in May (mostly startups/career related)

After skipping April, here are some inspiration snippets from Berlin, Germany and wider. Career and other cool insights. Here is March.

Week of 1st (May)

🤔 Do you know any shortcuts/tips/tricks on how to get an appointment at Ausländerbehörde? If so, please share in the comments or drop me an email. Thank you so much!
🚃 Lost something on public transport? Here is the website to deal with it. It will be sold at an auction if you do not pick it up in 6 weeks. These are done quarterly, and see you at Auktionshaus Beier in July because I need some AirPods.
🚗 Germany is extremely dependent on the automotive industry and their exports. Don’t quote me on that, but the big ones make roughly 1/3 of their revenues in China. Now, look at these charts and think: What sets modern cars apart? What does it mean for Germany? Soon, the brand will be the only differentiator.
🙌 Pragmatic Engineer (Gergely Orosz) gave me a nice shoutout tweet. A must-follow if you are interested in tech/engineering. One of my recent favourites is this interview with Steve Yegge, which is full of interesting insights.
🤖 If you are like me, you maybe feel worried that your ChatGPT prompt game is weak (especially after reading all those "prompt influencers" milking the trend on the bird app). A while ago, I even linked to a “Prompt Engineer” as a future profession. But according to Ethan Mollick's Guide to Prompting, we do not have much to worry about. In a nutshell: just try things out and then repeat.
📦 eBay-Kleinanzeigen, one of the best German websites (😅) with 40M monthly users, will finally rename to Kleinanzeigen on 16.5 after being sold to Norwegian classifieds specialist Adevinta in 2021. Most of it will stay the same; I am delighted my “Top Zufriedenheit” status will also be migrated.
😔 Bad news: N26 is laying off 71 (4%), Knister Grill (Munich) insolvent; Flink shrank for 8k (down from 21k!) employees since April 2022.
berlin choice of the week: activists vandalized a few luxury shops on K’damm, and of course, the commentariat delivered again on all sides of the spectrum. Also, BVG has a new type of tram that looks like a car. 😅
✈️ This week I learned that BER Terminals 1 and 2 are connected. You can use any security control to access gates at both terminals.
💬 Briefly: SellerX (Berlin) is rumoured to be in a sale process; HelloFresh and Delivery Hero are, unsurprisingly, growing slower: check their Investor Relations pages for details and take it with a pinch of salt; Bosch plans to purchase TSI Semiconductors' assets for $1.5 billion to enhance its semiconductor business with silicon carbide chips; Finn (Munich) CEO Max-Josef Meier resigned after harassing several female colleagues on a company event.

Week of 8th (May)

🚂 If you have decided to take on €49 ticket, Exberliner prepared a nice list of suggestions for excursions from Berlin. Worth a save!
🤑 Here is a summary of research on money and happiness. I like Nick’s conclusion: Increased income is associated with greater happiness for lower-income individuals. For high-income, unhappy individuals, further income is unlikely to increase happiness. For high-income, happy individuals, while more income could enhance happiness, the effort required may not be worth it.
😔 Bad news: CleverShuttle (Berlin) insolvent; Shopify 20% of employees (most of German org).
berlin choice of the week is an interesting Reddit AMA from an U-Bahn driver from a year ago.
💬 Briefly:
Getir wants to own them all and is reportedly buying Flink—enjoy it while it lasts;
Tier reportedly selling itself;
Vice News, a former alter news source loved by millennials and eventually copied by everyone, is in serious trouble;
TeamViewer from Ba-Wü posted 13% YoY growth (151M);
SAP wants to enter LLMs with an investment into Aleph Alpha—it will surely be expensive;
Lilium (Munich) needs/wants to raise €250M;
founder of once-hyped Gorillas, Kagan Sümer, is building something new in HealthTech called Mirror (no website yet);
his other three colleagues founded meal-as-a-service for restaurants, Tasty Urban.

Week of 15th (May)

✌️ Here is another reminder to check out my article with 40+ questions you can ask at the job interview. Disclosure: not written by ChatGPT!
👻 Like all the startups beyond Series B, Bolt also plans to become profitable soon, specifically in the next 12 months, and then IPO in 2025. They might also do payments? More at Reuters. Meantime, Lyft, another Uber competitor, is firing 1100 employees.
⚡️ Remember all those predictions on the Russian gas and the collapse of Germany? Here is an interesting article about the concept of substitutes in economics (the fallacy: “When the average person thinks about a 40% reduction in natural gas supplies, they implicitly assume that each natural gas-dependent industry must cut its usage by 40%.”), but it is also worth reading the comments for differing opinions (= free markets are BS.)
👀 Besides your burgers and curries, Lieferando started to deliver 100 different MediaMarkt products inside the Berlin ring (useful if you urgently need a phone charger or a phone, lol? and bad for their competitor Arive). Food & high margin product delivery is probably here to stay, but groceries? I think not.
📚Blinkist, a Berlin-based app that always felt like cheating to me, was bought by Go1 from Down Under; nobody asked me for my opinion, but a good time to exit with all the Generative AI knocking on the door! Now I should probably go back to my book.
🌊 Have you ever heard of Seaflooding? Me neither, but it reads like a great idea. Flooding parts of the Sahara to reduce the ocean levels? Plus, make some energy on the way? Let’s do it!
👟 Adidas is stuck with €1B worth of Yeezy sneakers since the man lost his mind, but, amongst other batshit crazy stuff, found a purpose in antisemitism. They plan to sell them gradually and partially donate the proceeds. (€, 🇩🇪) What a problem to have.
⛴️ Exberliner delivers again! Berlin has plenty of ferries; I see myself using some in the summer. This article also made me think I need a “handpicked Berlin bucket list.”
😔 Bad news: nobody is publishing news about layoffs anymore! There are three options: 1) all layoffs are done; 2) all layoffs are silent; 3) nobody is laying off. I vote for 2). Infarm leaving Berlin & Europe; okäse (Köln) insolvent.
berlin choice of the week is this DDR map of Berlin from 1988; comments deliver as usual.
💬 Briefly:
swedish Northvolt plans to build a battery gigafactory in Schleswig-Holstein (and employ 3k people) with support from the state and Bund - careers;
Revolut’s CFO is leaving, which is never a good sign, especially after problems with acquiring a banking licence in the UK. On a more positive note: they will start to sell ETFs via Berlin’s Upvest;
Trivago, the troubled aggregator of the aggregators, changed almost their complete board;
VW will restructure Cariad, its software arm, replacing its CEO with Peter Bosch (ex-Bentley);
Google did not release Bard in the EU because of GDPregulation worries;
Unstoppable Finance (Berlin-based crypto play) wants to get a banking license in 2024;
Mobileye will do automated assistance and navigate-on-pilot functions for Porsche;
FS Italiane ordered 40 locomotives from Siemens worth €300M;
Rheinmetall is planning to start production in Ukraine.

Week of 22nd (May)

🚴‍♀️ If you have ever wondered how many bikes pass a certain checkpoint in Berlin, you have your answers here. (via this post on berlin)
👀 I found out about Himmel Unter Berlin, an exclusive invite-only exhibition. I did enter the waitlist, but if I could be your +1, please let me know. 🙏
💸 After eight years of rental price caps, landlords (incl. mine) just seem to love ignoring the rules and ask for too much rent! (🇩🇪) Analysis of 6K cases in 2021 shows that 98% were overcharged. Hah.
Bitpanda, an Austrian crypto investing platform, jumped on the AI hype train and will invest $10M in an AI chatbot. Ok.
In Saxony, AfD’s Sebastian Wippel brought the topic of chemtrails to the state parliament. What’s next, Flat Earth?
Sifted reports that Bolt is close to buying Tier. There are still some micro-mobility companies left, but I am still unsure how such a seasonal business can be profitable long-term. Bolt is betting on many horses, and only time will tell if we will still see so many scooters lying around in 2 years. Related:
☝️I previously recommended Matt Levine and his Money Stuff, and this week he wrote about blitzscaling of Uber being possibly illegal. The VC-subsidised “winner takes all” mentality caused partial destruction of competition and could be considered predatory pricing. Worth a read (second chapter)!
😔 Bad news: nothing to report. So instead, data from last week’s poll: 26% (41) of voters know 10+ people laid off since April 1st, and 38% do not know anyone. The rest (36%) are in-between. Hard to draw conclusions, but clearly, silent layoffs are happening.
berlin choice of the week is a flat directory of smaller real estate companies. Good luck if you are on a search now.
💬 Briefly: Tesla will start spending on marketing (inevitable with all the competition); ThyssenKrupp wants to IPO its hydrogen unit Nucera (careers) in June for 4B; Cara Care founder Jesaja Brinkmann ALSO behaved inappropriately towards female colleagues at a party in December and is OUT; Intel also wants to invest in LLM developers Aleph Alpha from Heidelberg; after Mercedes also VWis leaving Russia; DB ordered 73 new ICEs (🇩🇪) for €2B and wants to hire thousands—careers; ATU was hacked (🇩🇪)—I wonder if my car data is LOST or STOLEN.

Week of 29th (May)

📉 Germany is, because of a second negative quarter in a row, officially in a mild recession (GDP fell by 0.3% for the last quarter). Well. On the other hand, some startups (esp. renewables) were hiring extensively last year, as the analysis of Sifted shows. To me, Helsing from the Sifted list sounds promising, but ask them if they have a product already. Careers.
👎 Most of the Google/Amazon/other reviews are useless. First, a lot of them are fake and second; they can be bought, and third, they are skewed because the majority of people never review.Gergely Orosz did an extensive analysis of Glassdoor reviews after layoffs and I think the whole thing proves the point that looking at them is useless and a waste of time.
💩 OpenAI founder Sam Altman said they might pull ChatGPT out of the EU because of the regulation shortly after he also told US regulators that AI should be regulated. I guess only his regulation is the correct regulation?
🛒 Instead of selling itself to Getir, Flink raised €150M from existing investors (they took a haircut to the highest valuation at €2.5B, now at around €1B). In addition, they are letting 100 employees in HQ go and are pulling out of France after their €100M Cajoo investment (🇩🇪, €). On top, Aldi Süd will experiment with delivery around Mülheim (🇩🇪) this July. Are you bullish or bearish?
☝️Big organisations are often arrogant and inefficient. It recently happened again to Microsoft, as reported in this anecdote where Satya Nadella scolded his R&D team. Another good lesson that the size and throwing money at things often doesn’t work.
😅 One of the weirdest political debates I have seen since in Berlin is around the closing of Friedrichstrasse for traffic. Now it will be open again from the 1st of July. But hey, what is the point of just closing a street without planting trees and making it much more pedestrian-friendly? They did it in many other cities, and it worked. Half-assed attempts make no sense.
✈️ Here is a longer profile in German of Ryanair and its success (🇩🇪) after their annual report. They are profitable, are expanding their fleet and want to hire 10k.
🧨 Before joining N26, you might want to read this great analysis from Miriam at Sifted. Bullish or bearish?
🐟 Here you have an Insta post of some of the best lakes around Berlin, which you should pair with this temperature monitoring when the time comes. From my perspective, the time is not here yet.
I tried what3words a couple of times, and I remember thinking, “Wow, what a great idea”, before going back to using Google Maps. This week I learned they burned £119M to generate £2.5M in revenue in the last six years. What a time to be alive. This, kids, is what a vitamin looks like instead of a painkiller.
☄️Great news. There is probably no imminent danger of getting erased by an asteroid: We still have at least 1000 years left on Earth unless we destroy it ourselves first!
😔 Bad news: Circus (Hamburg, 35/25%); Meta 6000 (unknown for Germany); Moss(Berlin, 30), Flink (Berlin, 100).
💡 Speaking of layoffs: I have previously linked to “how to act” guidance, but it was not as good as this LinkedIn post from Mayuri Reddy. Read it and share it.
🇹🇭 I have never been to Thailand or Thai Park yet, and this is changing soon; Exberliner has tips on what to eat in Thai Park. I am going with Pad Thai. See you around!
berlin choice of the week is this discussion about Pfandpiraten and how much they can earn. Fascinating! “They estimated that about 928,000 people actively collect Pfand in Germany. Of them, 56% make less than 4€ a day. Of them, 28% collect enough that it is their primary income.”
💬 Briefly: Solaris Bank is raising fresh money (€50M); Klarna moved its goal to reach profitability this summer to “this year” and is reportedly “on track”; Flix is expanding like there is no tomorrow: India will be its 42nd market; Neeva, a Google search ads-free alternative full of ex-Google execs, is no more; Meta was fined a record €1.2B for illegal data transfers from the EU to the US beating the previous record of €746M by Amazon.

-------- You can get these weekly. Thanks for reading and feedback.

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2023.06.06 20:19 Verrgasm On The Borders Of Madness

Lora Jones gazed blankly into the forest as she sat alone, knees hugged tightly to her chest, almost forgetting the uncomfortable flaking boards of the porch beneath her. The air was still and deathly quiet, and an indeterminable stirring had drawn the girl outside; cutting through the silence as if calling directly to her. Lora listened intently, intermittently escaping her daydreams to scan the treeline in hopes of encountering something unreal. Something different. Better.
The feeling of being watched was one Lora never found respite from, but as she sat there perched on the porch’s top step the understanding that this wasn’t of the usual malevolence that stalked her wherever she went seemed almost inherently undeniable. This presence was one of positive intent. Soothing, like the mother she’d never had but always longed for.
Lora tentatively got to her feet, the bare skin of her soles rubbing against the moist evening grass, still wet from the prior day's soft rain. As she was about to turn and go back inside, the forest cried out to her in an ethereal, desperate wail. But only ever so briefly. The girl froze, unsure of herself despite the deep, revelrous rays of affection pulsing and radiating from within the trees. She desperately wished to explore, to become one with it all, however her father had expressly forbade her from any such excursions beyond the property’s borders. Especially past the treeline, into those woods that may as well stretch on until the end of the universe. Lora knew what the consequences could be if she were to disobey.
The rusted hinges of the wooden front door creaked and with its closure disappeared anything resembling warmth or hope. Simply cold, fetid air; tainted by the stale musk of Lora’s father as he sat slumped, dozing in his chair. Lora crept across the floorboards, each squeaking almost as if to spite her. Her father stirred, but he didn’t open his eyes.
Lora gripped the knob of her bedroom door, twisting it ever so slowly so as to not make another sound, but it was too late. She turned, stifling a scream as she saw him swaying in the hallway towards her.
“Where do you think you’re going, girl?”
Lora’s father’s breath stank, and it was all she could do but to gag when he stuck his tongue down her throat. The bedroom door clicked behind them, and in her mind Lora went to the forest. She didn’t return until it was long over, but even then she was only half present. Her thoughts reduced to little more than grating static. Lora resolved through the fog that it was time to be free from all the nastiness of her homelife, even if it meant starvation or being ravaged by some sick wild animal. One with razor-sharp teeth and killer claws. Anything would be better than staying there, in that decrepit old cabin on the border of the ancient woods. That horrid, ramshackled shack on the cusp of the forest that breathes.
Lora awoke, tears streaming down her cheeks. When she caught her reflection in the grime-smudged bathroom mirror she couldn’t help but vomit, holding her long dark hair back with one hand while gripping the seat with the other; grasping onto it like someone on the verge of falling. Tight enough to make her fingers ache. She washed her face, then, trembling, crept down the hallway into the living room. Her father’s chair sat empty. The television, off. The fridge was devoid of alcohol, explaining his absence. Unfortunately the cupboards were barren as well, and the young girl’s stomach growled in its emptiness. She settled on the crumbs remaining in an old box of off-brand sugary cereal, the sweetness of which tasted strangely bitter.
As Lora looked absently through her wardrobe for something to wear, she remembered the vow she’d made to herself in the night. About how she’d be freed from this nightmare, one way or another. A flash of vengeful determination made its home in the depths of her gut and it spread until she was no longer acting with conscious thought, snatching a black trash bag and stuffing clothes and keepsakes inside. Lora’s eyes glistened as she rubbed the friendship bracelet between her fingers before sliding it onto her wrist, trying to recall the face of the friend that’d given it to her all those years ago. She couldn’t, and her desire to escape grew ten-fold. Anger was overtaken by remorse and then dread before coalescing into an anxiety-ridden desperation. Looking over the bottles of medication atop the dresser, Lora sent them rattling to the floor with a shriek. Just another set of cogs in the terrible machine that made her feel so awfully hollow. She wouldn’t need them anymore, Lora told herself. Not where she was going.
Her father had locked the front door behind him, a cruel attempt to keep his daughter captive. Luckily for her, Lora had learned many useful things during her confinement. Like how to pick the lock. She removed the pin from her hair before retrieving a thin sewing needle, getting to work. He could be back any minute. A long, increasingly tense struggle ensued as Lora strained to find her way through the locking mechanism; dark as it was inside with all the windows boarded up, allowing in only thin slivers of sunlight. Finally, she felt the click. But her joy was as short-lived as any other feeling considered to be good. Lora shivered with the rumble of her father’s truck as it rolled into the gravel driveway. When he found out what she’d done, anything could happen.
Without another thought or even a look over her shoulder, Lora flung the door open so hard that the wood splintered against the frame and she burst through the threshold, abandoning her bagged-up belongings on the filthy living room carpet. Her sneakers connected with the overgrown grass of the yard before meeting the somehow tamer undergrowth of the forest floor for the very first time. Lora kept running, and she didn’t stop until her father’s furious screams faded deep into the distance behind her. Then, she ran some more.
‘Lost’ was the wrong word, because as confused in her surroundings as she was, Lora felt her trepidations slowly recede into the background. Unseen birds chirped overhead amongst the treetops, welcoming her. Encouraging her to go on. So, she did. She walked for miles through that inviting brush, all laid bare before her as if the very spirit of the forest itself were parting every obstacle in her path, and yet her legs didn’t tire, not at all. A smile quite unlike any other she’d expressed in a long time found itself upon her face. Every breath felt like heaven. The air, sweet and intensely lovely; scented like fresh pine and whipped cream. Everything, Lora felt in that long, perfect stroll among the undulating swathes of greens and browns, everything was going to be alright. Afterall, with a feeling that good, how could anything possibly be bad?
The sun hung fixed above, beaming down from the center of the cloudless, blue sky. By the time Lora realized that it hadn’t and refused to move since the start of her escape, she had begun to notice other curious things about the forest as well. Like how the densely wooded landscape had steadily and subtly changed. The ambience seemed tinged, almost. A sepia-like tone washed over the plants and trees so that all appeared almost entirely brown, punctuated by the dark silhouetted blacks of branches and leaves. They writhed, indistinguishable from one another. Still, her joyous sense of adventurous freedom had hardly faltered and Lora continued on, becoming evermore aware that the path ahead was becoming increasingly treacherous. Thorn-covered thickets threatened to claw at her skin, penetrating the denim of her jeans and scratching at the pale flesh underneath. Lora grew timid in her steps, becoming disenchanted in the forest’s solitude.
For the first time since she’d stepped foot in those woods, Lora stopped, and knew instantly that she was utterly alone. It crushed her, sending the girl to the floor. She sobbed quietly to herself, feeling the pine needles dig into her hands as she grasped at the earth. As she was on the verge of giving up and simply laying down to die, she looked to her left and saw them a foot from her reddened, tear-streaked face. A bush, packed full of ripe blackberries, as appetizing as anything she’d ever seen. Lora ravenously wolfed down more than she could count, as quickly as she could pick them, and after a nourishing feast she lay with her back against the nearest tree where she slept like a baby. Someone uncorrupted.
When Lora opened her eyes, she saw to her surprise that the sun remained unmoved. The area around her had once again changed in hue though, from the sickening reddish-brown to one of a much more affable pink appearance. Sparkling particles danced and winked through the lush clearing ahead, leading the way. The air now tasted sugary, like Halloween candy. Lora couldn’t remember the last time she’d been allowed to go trick-or-treating. Maybe she never even had to begin with. Every sad recollection and vicious intrusive thought slid right off the young girl as she concentrated on the soft crunches her feet made and nothing else, unable to touch her. Eventually, when Lora had to stop once more to regain her bearings - having abandoned a linear path hours before - she realized to her stunned delight that the woods weren’t quite as empty as she’d previously thought.
Through a gap in the trees, past an impassable grouping of thorny thickets, Lora spied a congregation of creatures that she couldn’t quite explain. Even to herself, even though they inspired no fear, their nonsensical appearance left her paralyzed beyond reproach; completely frozen where she stood, and yet grinning ear-to-ear. Cooling themselves from the heat of the summer sun in the shade of a monolithic toadstool, fluttered a peaceful assortment of strange winged women surrounded by translucent stubby things whose jovial laughing mouths led to no innards. Frogs the size of cows croaked from the sidelines and other ineffable beasts hunched and clung to the taller branches above. Lora yearned to join the scene, to be among friendly faces, but she innately understood that were she to call out, they wouldn’t hear her. Let alone begin to understand. Crestfallen in her exclusion, but invigorated by the magical presence she now knew to truly exist, Lora went on her way. Hopeful of meeting someone or something that could take her pain away, if only for a little while.
The tinny brass screech of horns bellowed in the distance, but from which direction, she didn’t know. Contrary to everything she’d learned from books about wilderness survival, wandering aimlessly proved to be the correct approach, and Lora found herself looking in on another group. Who, this time, seemed much more humanoid in appearance, for the most part. Men and women, of over two dozen in number and all intricately clothed in ornate robes and dresses as if attending some grand ball and not just a clearing in the woods stood around, enjoying one another's company. Dwarves pottered about, shrilly chuckling with each other over the din as the brass players began to toot a song likely never before heard by mortal ears that even the sunflowers seemed to dance along to. It was beautiful. To Lora, at least. The partygoers seemed nonplussed by the sweet sounds, going about their conversations and business as if they’d heard them every day of their infinite lifespan. A sickly stream of opaque, swirling orange fog separated the two parties, and again Lora knew that her pleading shouts would have no effect on the beings should she try to call out to them. Distraught, she staggered away, crippled by the dreadful loneliness which was now very much unbearable.
She wandered as if in a daze; unthinking, unfeeling. Ready to perish. The air, once sweet and warm, had turned bitterly sour and in her terror Lora craned her neck to the sky, shivering, and saw that the sun had vanished. The perfect blue sea above had begun to degenerate, turning darker by the second. It exuded an implied emptiness, devoid of stars, as if everything she had felt and seen was all just some cruel joke played by no-one. A thick, miasmic fog began to form around her, and the trees grew less dense and full of audible life. The fetid stench rising up from the swamp was intoxicating. Sickening. Lora’s belly rumbled, begging for food as if it hadn’t ever been full, and she began to weep once more, imploring some vague altruistic force to save her from her torment. She screamed into the blackened sky until her bone-dry throat stung and she could scream no longer.
Then, as quickly as she’d entered, she was no longer among trees, surrounded by the vastness of an unending and desolate desert. Lora didn’t care. She didn’t even glance over her shoulder to see what she’d left behind, she simply continued forward; unable to go on any other way. A violent wind was picking up, carrying clouds of coarse gray dust which slashed at the girl’s eyes. The dunes stretched onto the horizon in patterns that seemed to repeat infinitely and they had nothing to offer except for slow and excruciating death; a suffocating abyss.
Lora’s knees were long since weary, buckling under her meager weight, but she didn’t stop. Even though the cold, dead sand looked like a fine enough place to fall asleep for the last time. As one leg gave out and she tumbled to the ashen desert floor, Lora stared glaringly into the distance; searching for something deadly that might have the courtesy to look her in the eyes before it killed her. She saw no great and hungry beast with razor-sharp teeth and killer claws ready to devour what was left of her, but an ocean instead. Black and unforgiving. Lora lurched in its direction, and found herself on the shore. Ahead, around an arched rock formation of inexplicable nature, danced a number of fairies, male and female; waving their sparkling wands freely as if entirely without inhibition with their pale white skin exposed for all to see. Cherubs writhed floating in a congealed mass above the figures atop the formation; a loving family, crowned in shining white light. The beings reveled soundlessly as Lora watched on, still observing with fascination even as her body gave in to her exhaustion and she collapsed onto the brittle, jagged rocks at her feet. The divine group seemed to take notice of her then, and some laughed at her misfortune. Others whispered mocking jeers which stabbed at Lora, at her very being, even worse than the inhospitable ground she’d fallen onto. The insults became less direct and softer, but still impossibly cruel. They said cryptic, confusing things like ‘This one’s still breathing.’ and ‘Get her out of here.’ Lora knew that she wasn’t wanted. Not there, or anywhere else. The entire world seemed to throb in and out in a deep wavering much like the ripples on the dark, impenetrable sea and the young girl felt hands on her. Picking her up. Delivering her.
Flashes became another place entirely, until finally Lora could see again. She was at home, being lifted out by strange men. Scorching blue lights streaked her vision through the slats of rotting wood nailed to the windows and a wailing enveloped the night, drawing closer. More sirens. As she passed through the living room, Lora saw her father. All sticky and red in the face. Crushed. Glued to his chair, and bashed in. In that sinking, numbed moment that seemed to stretch on into infinity, the girl knew that the overdose she’d taken hadn’t worked, and that she wouldn’t be free. That they were going to bring her back, so that she could pay for what she’d done. Empty pill bottles littered the carpet along with the stained-brown wraps of her father’s stash, mingling with the usual cluttered garbage. It hadn’t been enough, it could never be enough. But as the blinding white light of the ambulance's interior swallowed her, Lora felt herself slipping away. She fell backwards, forever, and while the paramedics hurried about their duty and their desperate pleas became less and less clear, Lora was glad that it was all finally over.

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2023.06.06 20:10 Verrgasm On The Borders Of Madness

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2023.06.06 20:09 Verrgasm [HR] On The Borders Of Madness

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2023.06.06 20:08 Verrgasm On The Borders Of Madness

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2023.06.06 19:44 SpicyTumbong Noob question

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2023.06.06 19:36 RowBowBooty Someone keeps airdropping me photos of myself.

My nightmare started when I woke up on a park bench in Omaha, Nebraska. My original travel plans were much more adventurous, but most of the vacation fund dried up after the company’s CFO found me in his car…with his wife. Turns out she wanted to get caught, to make him jealous or something.
That is how, for reasons not totally beyond my control, I ended up summering in Omaha instead of Oahu. But hey, at least they have great fried pickles. I spent most of my time their napping, and that was what brought me to the park bench.
I woke up to a bird on my shoe. He was pecking away at the residual crumbs of what may or may not have been fried pickles.
“Hey little guy,” I said, smiling down at my visitor. He wasn’t a bird of paradise, but at least he liked me. Then the crumbs ran out, and he didn’t like me so much anymore. “Fuck you, too!” I shouted as he flew away, off to go play with some other man’s heart no doubt. Just as I was about to settle back in to my midday nap, I felt my phone buzz.
Finally, I thought. Someone to talk to. I was getting sick of just swiping through my home screen pages every time I wanted to look busy, but when I pulled my iPhone out, I found something even more surprisingly than a text from a friend or loved one. It was an airdrop:
ANONYMOUS would like to share some photos.
Decline Accept
I looked around. There were people near me, but most of them weren’t young enough to know how to airdrop something, and no one was using their phone. I accepted.
“What the hellll?” I let out before a chuckle. The first picture was of me, slumped over on the park bench, sleeping with my mouth open. I was instantly filled with embarrassment and wonder. On the one hand, it’s pretty depressing to see yourself sleeping in an unflattering position and I had a triple chin thing going in the photo. On the other hand, I couldn’t deny that it was pretty funny.
I looked up, hoping to catch someone giggling or at least staring in my direction, but I couldn’t see anyone who gave the slightest indication that it was them. In fact, by the time I looked up, I was alone.
Weird.
The second picture wasn’t funny at all. It was all black, with a bunch of characters in what looked like Mandarin or some other Eastern language drawn on with the digital marker. A message from the sender. But I couldn’t read whatever language it was, and I didn’t know how I would go about translating it, seeing as I couldn’t just copy and paste the text, so I chose to just ignore the message, telling myself I would go to the trouble of translating it later. God, do I wish I wasn’t such a procrastinator.
The sun was setting so I stood up, took one last glance around for any hidden airdroppers, and walked back to my motel.
Later that night, I found myself hopelessly scrolling through Tinder. I realized long ago that dating apps can tell you a lot about the place you’re visiting, and I considered it part of my cultural experience to judge strangers behind a screen in my pajamas. Mostly I would just swipe my way through and laugh at the weird corn people without even considering a meet up, but every once in a while I would swipe right if I felt something. I never imagined that I would get anywhere.
Then I got another notification, and this time from someone I actually wanted to talk to. It was a girl (who looked waay out of my league) named Cristina.
“Hey, Greg. If you were on a lifeboat with me, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and the Queen (who was already dead at this point), who would you eat first?” I stared at her message. It was kind of quirky, but I liked it so I texted back.
“Obviously you, because I need the Rock to do all the rowing, the Queen is dead, and you’re quite the snack…” I smiled, proud of my work. The CFO’s wife didn’t know what she walked out on. Luckily, Cristina liked my reply as much as I did, and we struck up a nice conversation that had me copying the address to a local karaoke bar into my phone an hour later. It was only then that I began to regret my choice in vacation attire, and noticed that the bird had shat on my loafers. I ironed the only Polo I brought, threw on my sneakers and sped out.
On the way I stopped to fill up at a Chevron and went in to grab some mints (I thought about buying some banana sleeves, but that seemed a little too boastful.) When I went to pay, I dropped some change out of my wallet. Shit. The cashier, some kind of wannabe cowboy like everyone else in that city, smirked. I took a penny from the little plastic dish out of spite before leaving the store. While I was in my car, my phone buzzed. I snatched it up with excitement, assuming it was Cristina, but saw a different yet familiar name.
ANONYMOUS would like to share a photo.
Decline Accept
What the fuck? I looked around at the cars in the lot. Two others were filling up, and about four more were parked in front of the convenience store. I wondered whether someone inside the store would still be close enough to airdrop. Cautiously, I accepted.
The photo was of me bending over to pick up the change I had spilt, taken from the parking lot. I stared at it for a little while. It was funny and embarrassing just like the first one, my butt crack was even showing a little, but for some reason this photo made me uneasy. Is someone following me? I wondered. Had some influencer punk started a one-man hidden camera show where he just waited for you to do something embarrassing? I stared at the other cars.. Some of the windows were too tinted to see in. After a minute or two, I rolled out of there and drove off.
At the bar, I was relieved and elated to find that Cristina looked as good, nay, better than she did in her photos. “Wow,” I stuttered. “You’re beautiful.” She also said the same about me, which I chalked up to having ironed the polo. Things were off to a good start.
Throughout the date, Cristina was bubbly and adorable. She told me all about her life in rural Nebraska and what brought her to the “big city”, but I couldn’t pay attention to any of it. I really wish I could have, but I just couldn’t get those damn airdropped photos out of my head.
Cristina left to go to the bathroom, and I took the opportunity to look around the bar, scanning the room for any familiar faces. Everyone looked engrossed in their own evenings and dates and cringy singing, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched.
“Hey, your profile says you really like to sing,” Cristina began with a smile. That was a fast bathroom break. “But you never said what type of music!” I stared at her, still a bit lost in thought, and it took a couple seconds to register what she was saying.
“Oh, well I like simple boring things, really. Commercial jingles, recycling PSA’s, communist propaganda, that kind of stuff.” Cristina smiled.
“You’re…you’re not a communist, right?”
“Of course not!” I laughed. “Let’s go sing something,” I got up from our table and offered her my hand.
“Good, because my parents always said that if I moved to the big city I’d end up marrying a commie, and I hate to prove them right about anything.” She giggled.
“Hey, baby, I’m so capitalist I changed my birthplace to the Cayman islands.” Cristina giggled even more. Damn were we getting along well. I got up onto the little square stage they had for karaoke singers and looked out at the crowd. Then I got a notification. You can probably already guess how it read.
ANONYMOUS would like to share a photo.
Decline Accept
I looked out across the room, dumb founded that ANONYMOUS had followed me here. I thought about showing Cristina but decided it would just worry her, and, even worse, prove her parents were right about the “big city”. I accepted the photo and startled backwards. My phone nearly fell to the floor. It was a photo of me at the bar, but not up on stage where it would have been easy for anyone to sneak a photo. It was from before, at our table, when I had turned to check out the other people. The worst part was that I was looking right at the mutherfucking camera!
My hand trembled. I tried to calm down. For some reason I didn’t want whoever sent the photo to know I was nervous. And I did NOT want Cristina to think that I was scared to sing Ring of Fire in front of a couple dozen famer hicks. But it was obvious from this picture that the photos weren’t just to be funny. This time, I wasn’t making any faces and my ass wasn’t showing. My face in the photo was one of concern.
How did I look right at the camera without realizing it? It struck me that the person sending these photos was going to extra lengths to remain hidden, maybe even as far as to camouflage themselves. They could be anyone, anywhere, with any sort of goal in mind. I shuttered.
The music started up and Cristina began to sing. I whipped around and looked at her. She was smiling, oblivious to the whole thing. And she looked happy. I didn’t want to spoil this moment, which was probably the only truly fun one of my vacation and the first time in a while that I was feeling some self-confidence. I began interchanging lines with her.
“I went down, down, down and the flames went higher.” I baritoned into the mic. She winked at me. I made it through the song and asked her to get the hell out of there, to which she excitedly said yes.
On the way back to my place, I thought about telling her about the photos but didn’t want to kill the mood. Still, I couldn’t help but look through the windows of every car that we passed.
I checked the rear view mirror for the umpteenth time, and a blue pickup truck was tailing close behind us. I made a right turn, then another, and the truck stayed close behind. After a while I made two more right turns and the headlights disappeared from my rearview mirror. Phew.
“What are you doing?” Cristina asked.
“Huh?”
“You just made four right turns. You went in a circle.”
“Oh, yeah haha. I was hoping you wouldn’t notice, I wanted to be smooth. Just made a wrong turn back there.” Cristina nodded and reached out for my hand. I checked the rearview mirror. More headlights. Another pickup.
When we rolled into the parking lot of the motel, the truck behind us continued down the road, and I noticed it was red. I felt relieved until I pulled into my parking spot and hopped out of the car. Behind us to the right, the same blue truck from before was parked. Shit, he must have taken a quicker way over here.
How did he know where I was staying?
I put my arm over Cristina’s shoulder and rushed her into my room.
After the deed was done, Cristina promptly fell asleep (which I hoped was the sign of a job well done) and I decided to go for a walk in the parking lot. I wanted to figure out what the fuck was going on, but I didn’t want to call the police before there were any real threats or anything.
So, like every dumbass horror film victim, I went alone into the dark to investigate. I stepped out into the dark motel parking lot and eyed the truck sitting across the lot. Its headlights and grill formed an angry face that stared at me. I felt like it could read my thoughts. Leave, it said to me. Get out of here, you’ll only get into trouble. The headlight eyes bore into my brain. Don’t be dumb and you won’t get hurt-
A loud BANG came from behind me. I spun around to see a dark figure turn the corner and disappear around the back of the motel. My heart started to pound, urging me to move my legs in either a flight or fight direction.
I sprinted off towards the figure, and in moments I was turning the corner. Behind the motel, there were only tall thin trees and a formidable darkness that shielded whatever had run away from me. I paused, searching through the trees for my stalker. I squinted but couldn’t quite make anything out in the dark.
Then I heard something. Behind me. Something was...coughing.
Slowly, with my eyes first, I turned around and what I saw made my heart flutter. The sounds were coming from a dumpster, the kind usually left behind restaurants or apartment complexes that can only be moved by big semi garbage trucks. From within the dark dumpster, the head of a terrible beast with a black mask rose up. Its mouth, full of razor sharp, enamel covered fangs, clamped down onto a chicken bone with a hiss. It was a raccoon.
I laughed. There was so much pent up adrenaline in my body that I couldn’t help but convulse with the giggles. Soon tears were spilling out of my eyes and I had to lean on my knees to keep from passing out.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I told the raccoon, and it scampered off into the shadows. I remained there until my laughter subsided, and when it was gone I decided to stay a little while longer. It was a beautiful spot. Nebraska wasn’t that bad when you got to know it.
After a few more minutes spent collecting my thoughts and calming my nerves, I went back around the bend of my motel. I strode with new confidence towards my room, but still couldn’t resist looking over my shoulder at the blue truck in the parking lot. Is there someone in the driver’s seat? I didn’t want to be paranoid, but there was no way to deny that I felt like eyes were burning into my back. I walked more quickly until I reached my door, unlocked it and slipped inside.
Acting quickly, I shut the door behind me and put in the chain lock. I felt safer in my room. That is, until I lied back down onto the bed next to Cristina.
The instant my sweaty ass made contact with the crusty bed sheets, I got a notification. A lump formed in my throat and I grabbed my phone, but paused and said a silent prayer that it would just be a message of support from my mom, or a campaign donation request, or any other useless shit besides an airdrop before checking it. But I knew what it was, and looking at the screen only confirmed it.
ANONYMOUS would like to share a video.
Decline Accept
I gasped for oxygen. The humid air around me suddenly felt too thick to breath. I accepted the air drop and the video downloaded. It showed the door of my motel room. As I stared at the still frame, a new sense of anger rose up within me. Who the fuck was this Anonymous guy, anyway? Did he think he was scaring me? I mean, was he hoping that after seeing a few photos of myself I would send him my bank information? It was pathetic. I decided that I had done enough cowering and whimpering. I didn’t even play the video, but went to frantically jotting down a strongly worded letter in my Notes app threatening to call the police if he didn’t stop stalking me and at least tell me what he wanted. I signed off by writing;
Wishing you the best,
Pissed off Guy
I took a screenshot. “Pissed off guy” wasn’t my best work, creatively speaking, but I couldn’t think of any better names. I was too pissed off.
I opened the airdrop recipients in the vicinity. Despite my newfound courage, I trembled as the airdrop recipients in my area registered on my phone. For some reason, I was afraid that ANONYMOUS would pop up. Proving he was at the motel would make the situation feel more…real. Up until that point, all he had done was send me some pictures. If I sent something back to him, would he get more…aggressive?
I stared at the screen, my heart beating faster than a Browning automatic could shoot hollow-point bullets into a cheap motel room. One named appeared: ANONYMOUS’s iPhone. I swallowed a heavy breath. Was the air getting thicker? Slugs of sweat rolled down my face. I exhaled and sent my note to ANONYMOUS.
Shit, I thought to myself. What am I doing? I wanted to unsend it. For some reason this suddenly felt like the dumbest thing I’d ever done. I watched my screen intently. The tension was so high my heart almost sprung a leak, and I was afraid my bladder just might. Thankfully, it didn’t take very long to get a response.
ANONYMOUS would like to share some photos.
Decline Accept
I hit “accept” the instant I got his request.
It was a collection of photos. All the same photos he had sent me before. My blood boiled, and my face heated up. I work up the courage to talk to him and he just ignores me? I was starting to grow less concerned and more irritated by Anonymous’s antics, but then I noticed something.
The first picture of the most recent airdrop, the one where I’m asleep on a park bench and sporting a triple chin, had a red circle on it. The kind that you draw on a picture when you want to draw attention to something, except there didn’t seem to be anything particular inside the circle. I zoomed in, and my heart dropped into my stomach. Far off in the background, in the middle of the circle, was a man’s face hidden between the bushes.
He was wearing a dark hoodie that cast a shadow over his face, but zoomed in I could make out the details. He was bald, and most of his features were normal and indistinct, but his lips were curled up into an enormous hungry smile, with too many crooked yellow teeth crammed into his mouth for him to be a normal human.
His nostrils were flared, like he was breathing heavily. It gave the impression that he was almost lusting after me, like a beast stalking its prey. My blood pressure fell through the floor as I realized that he was looking straight at me. His ravenous chops wet with saliva, itching to sink his teeth into my plump, dormant flesh.
I nervously swiped to the next photo. Me in the gas station bending over to pick up my change. There was a red circle around someone standing a few yards behind me in line. It was the same man. He stared at me intently with eyes that were opened impossibly wide, and drool dripping from the corner of his mouth.
I nearly threw my phone in shock. He had been so close to me, and yet I didn’t remember seeing him. If you weren’t paying close attention, it would be easy to miss his inhuman features. I had probably been too distracted and embarrassment at having dropped my change on the floor to notice him. Damn my social anxiety.
The next photo was from the karaoke bar, the one where I was looking directly into the camera. Seeing me stare directly at the photographer without recognizing him or her made me queasy the first time I saw it, but now I was more worried about what was in the background. There was another red circle, in the dark hallway that led to the bathroom behind the bar to the left, but it was too dark to see anything in the shadows. I zoomed in and turned the brightness all the way up, and then I could just make out one thing.
A crooked, yellowed smile pointed in my direction.
Whoever or whatever he was, he had followed me for the whole day.
The last photo was all black except for something Anonymous had written, also in red. It said:
I AM NOT STALKER.
Goosebumps popped up behind my neck and down my shoulders. That’s when I remembered the video of me walking back to the motel room, the one I hadn’t watched.
With shaky fingers I opened the video. It was centered on the door of my motel room. For the first few seconds nothing happened. I thoroughly scanned the backgrounds and corners, making sure to search extra hard in the shadowy areas, but I couldn’t see the man anywhere.
Then he walked into center frame. This time he wasn’t hidden. He crept towards the door, his arms remaining eerily immobile as he walked, and when he got to the door, pulled a key card out and slipped inside. I gasped. When was this recorded?
That question was answered for me when a moment later I walked into frame, unlocked the door, and went in. It was from when I came back after finding the raccoon in the dumpster, less than two minutes ago.
I shivered. Suddenly, it was dawning on me that Cristina’s breathing sounded…different. It was just a little heavier and deeper than I remembered it being. Very slowly, I turned my head to look over at the other side of the bed and noticed that the lump under the covers seemed larger than it had before. I felt the air; it was thicker and wetter than I remembered it being and had a warm, almost metallic smell.
The body lying next to me wasn’t Cristina’s. I froze. What do I do? Dear God, what should I do now? Slowly, I sat up and pulled my legs over the side of the bed. I thought about turning the lights on, shouting for Cristina, trying to fight the stalker, but I had the gut feeling that she was beyond saving. Even if she was still alive, there was no way I could last more than a few seconds against this thing in bed with me. Whatever it was, it was built for hunting down humans and tearing them apart.
I casually mumbled “better take a shower” and crept over to the hall. Luckily the bathroom was right next to the front door.
Once I got in front of the bathroom door, I silently lunged for the front door, turned the lock as quietly as I could and tried to open it without making a sound. CLANG.
I stared in horror at the chain lock I had set when I came in. Idiot! I heard a rustle from the bed. The time for stealth was gone.
I yanked the chain out and swung the door open. In less than a second I was outside closing the door behind me and then bounding towards my car. I turned it on and peeled out without even checking to see whether my visitor had followed me.
I sped away from the motel towards the city and dialed 911.
At the police station, I waited for the cops to check out my room. When they came back, they asked to talk with me. I was led into the interrogation room, and they started to hit me with some accusatory questions. They said her body was ripped into pieces and strewn across the room, everywhere except the bed. Imagining myself in that room, totally oblivious to Cristina’s organs and tissue around me made me sick.
It soon became obvious that the police believed I killed her. I tried to convince them that there was someone else in my room, and told them there was video proof on my phone. I showed them the video that ANONYMOUS had sent me. They were intrigued, but still skeptical.
I was starting to get nervous that I wouldn’t return from my lame ass vacation for 10-30 years when something amazing happened.
Still in the officer’s hand, my phone got a notification.
ANONYMOUS would like to share a video.
Decline Accept
“That’s him, that’s the guy who’s been airdropping me stuff!” I said frantically. The officer raised an eyebrow. He hesitated, looked around, and after an agonizing pause accepted the video. They hid the screen from my face, but from his expression I could tell the video was something violent. All I could hear was an animal-like growl, heavy panting and a guttural human yell.
It wasn’t until after being cleared to leave and given my phone back that I watched the video. ANONYMOUS had filmed me leaving the parking lot of the motel, and then gone into the room and turned the lights on. The ‘thing’ was standing in the middle of the room, only a few feet from the camera. It stared at the camera and gave it a slow wave. Its slender fingers seemed to pulse with excitement, and the creature wiggled them elatedly. It smiled and its lips peeled back to reveal blood soaked teeth.
The room was covered in blood and body parts. There were intestines hanging off the lamp, what looked like a half-eaten liver soaking the office chair, teeth laid on the t.v. stand close enough to the camera to see that they were neat and white. I pictured him sucking them clean like cherry pits.
The most disturbing part of all was a big piece of skin that had been ripped off like a sheet and laid on the bed post by my side of the bed. In the middle of the skin was what looked like a belly button. I had been lying with my head right underneath Cristina’s drying stomach leather and never had a clue.
After the camera panned around the room, it focused back on the man. He stood there for a moment, his chest rising and falling rapidly, eyes wide and hungry. Then he took a lighting quick stride forward, and the camera turned toward the door. That is where the video ends. Watching it made me fear for ANONYMOUS’s safety, but I knew that he at least made it out healthy enough to make it to the police station.
Sometimes, when I’m alone and get the feeling I’m being watched, I open my airdrop options to see if ANONYMOUS is somewhere near me. I haven’t ever found him.
Earlier this morning while on the subway, I looked up and had a heart stopping shock. I was sitting at the end of one car and just happened to look through the window into the car behind us. There he was; the same creature that killed Cristina. The doors were still open and I almost took off running but… he wasn’t looking at me.
He was staring intently and smiling at a woman on the opposite row. Every few seconds he would lick his lips hungrily. I shuddered looking at his teeth because I couldn’t help but imagine them cutting into Cristina’s flesh, piercing through her skull and ripping her teeth out of their gums down to the root.
His prey had headphones in and was flipping through a magazine, totally oblivious to the terrible monster sitting just a few yards away from her. I took a picture through the foggy glass.
You can’t see the creature very well in the photo. But I can always circle him. Maybe she’ll have to zoom in, and she just might need to turn her brightness up all the way, but I’ll make sure she gets the message. I have no idea how to get the photo to her without drawing the attention of the creature, but I’ll figure it out. We’ll both figure it out. Wish us luck.

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2023.06.06 19:34 rndrumm Need next step Advice with how to navigate company Leadership in Healthcare regarding working hours per week for RN's and/or out of box thinking. It's like navigating a negligent/abusive relationship.

Hi Helpful REDDIT Humans,I wrote this letter, below the numbered points, for the Betterment of the Group, along with the input of my co-workers. I uploaded this letter to the Town Hall site for the February 10th, 2023 meeting for reduced hours or think out of the box for the retainment of staff. We are burnt out and no one is listening. I don't even think they even read the letter we submitted below. I modified some of this for protection. We are a Union workplace, I have not involved the Union.

We followed up a month later in March to Mike, Jeff, Liz and our manager Kelly (who likes to please leadership) and asked if they have come to any decisions, and also said if we could set up an appointment with any of them and it was CRICKETS.
Two weeks later we followed up again and invited any of them to our floor to talk to us. Again, met with CRICKETS. No one is replying to us.
We sent a 3rd follow-up a week later and asked to meet or they come to our floor. This time I included the National President of our company.
We finally got a response when we sent it the the National guy!!!! The state Leadership, Mike and Jeff and Director Liz were not happy about this and We finally got a response that said that we have been spoken to by management several times over the last few months regarding there will be no changes to the FTE. This is how they are going to retain nurses for the current shortage.
I replied that he received misinformation and no one came and talked to us. I asked 10 of my co-workers if they recall anyone talking to us about reducing hours or working 4-10's and no one recalls anyone coming to our floor.
Director Liz comes down to our floor the next day for our 0720 huddle unannounced huffing, puffing and pissed. She has her arms crossed and said she s here to talk but nothing is going to change. So we asked if we can try out 4-10 hours shifts. She said yes, but no reduction in FTE or the use of PRN's (as needed nurses).
I asked my manager Kelly for a blank schedule with how many nurses a day we need for the week, we took all the vacation requests for June and made it work using 21 nurses and no PRN staff!! We needed only 4 PRN nurses for the end of June to grant everyone the time off they asked for!!!!!
I submitted it to Director Liz and AGAIN had to follow-up a week later of what they thought. I asked my manager how the meeting went and she said they are running the numbers and I told her to please send this information out because the staff, at this point is demoralized. She did and it has been 2 weeks.
THIS IS WHERE WE NEED HELP. They just want us to go AWAY. This is very dysfunctional and neglectful. What is our next step? It has been 4 months of this.

THIS IS THE INITIAL LETTER WE SENT IN FEBRUARY:
To: Mike - Regional President Jeff, MD - President, Executive Medical Director From: Gastroenterology Staff - RN’s and MA’s Re: Flexible Schedules to Reduce Burnout and Increase Quality of Life Hello Mike and Jeff Thank You for holding this Town Hall meeting for the Region employees. We would like to take this opportunity to share with you our thoughts, ideas, feelings, and concerns regarding our life here in GI. Please know, GI is a wonderful place to work, our team is dynamic and patient care is fulfilling. As healthcare professionals, we are always looking for ways to improve patient safety and member satisfaction, improve our efficiency and make Kaiser Permanente Thrive. Our concern and frustration are that the required full-time employment (FTE) is unThriving many of us into the ground. It is demoralizing and makes it challenging to create a work-life balance. We have tried going the normal route of speaking to our managers. We have been told by Kelly our manager, that GI leadership says to talk to the Union, and we have spoken to the Union ad nauseam about this. A petition was circulated in the three GI departments to garner support for addressing FTE, which is below and shared with Nate our Union representative. Nothing has come of it. Union Reps have spoken to Steve, who is Kelly's Boss and it ends there, we have no idea if he presents it to Liz, who is the Ambulatory Surgery Center Admin. We are trying a new route, going from the top down. Our People Pulses reflect our dissatisfaction on several levels, but we never get to go over them as a Department to see if we can make improvements and talk about issues. We feel as though we are not Seen or Heard. Company has approximately spent $160,000 training Eight nurses that have left for three 12 houfour 10 hour shifts or went PRN THIS YEAR. Because Five/8 hour days are not sustainable. It takes approximately 2 months to train a nurse to get them up and running and a year or two to feel seasoned in GI. It is very stressful for the department to keep training people only to have them leave because the FTE is a 1.0 and then they realize the required hours are not sustainable. At the end of our workday, and work week we have very little time or energy to take care of family, home responsibilities and ourselves. As RN’s and MA’s our jobs in GI are very dynamic, physically, mentally and emotionally demanding. Physically we are constantly moving beds in and out of rooms, adjusting beds and patients for each case, getting patients ready for their procedures, making beds, and restocking supplies. During procedures some patients require a great deal more hands-on, applying pressure on the abdomen to help the doctor advance the scope through the colon, upper endoscopies may require us to hold hands, and or bracing the patient to help the DR. perform the procedure. Mentally we always have to be on. We are always assessing patients. Pre-oping patients many skills and assessments. During intra-op we are constantly assessing patients for safety and ensuring patient comfort, documenting the many patient assessments, and medication administered all while taking biopsies, cauterizing polyps, inking sites in the colon, dilating the esophagus, getting through tortuous colons, etc.
Also, many of the patients are anxious/angry or are being diagnosed with cancer and other GI diseases, all of which require extra care and can be emotionally draining. Our many work demands are unique to this department. Demands, that make us both love our job and also a need to create a balance of self-care to help us fulfill the Kaiser Permanente Mission. Quite simply, many of us are burnt out: There is increased absenteeism - which costs Company $ Increased employee turnover - which cost Company $ Increased employee workplace stress between employees - which costs Company $ Decreased employee trust, loyalty, motivation and morale - which costs Company$ Decreased employee productivity - which costs Company $ Harm to Company's Reputation and decreased respect for the organization’s mission and vision - which costs $ Please consider that St. Joe’s has openings for part-time work with benefits. GI in Oregon has 4/10 hour shifts, so does GI in California, California barely has a lot of 1.0’s, So it can be done, and it has been done at Kaiser in the past. Please consider changing the required FTE to 0.8 for Full Time/and the flexibility for 4-day/ 9-hour shifts, and 4-day /10-hour shifts for the RNs, and MAs. This would be beneficial and the staff would have the flexibility to schedule healthcare appointments for themselves and their families, get their car fixed, take their pets to the vet, increase their quality of life, and decrease stress. As we prioritize patient care, we also want all of our coworkers to have the ability to take care of themselves and their families. We have attached a screenshot of the seniority lists at all three GI locations. I think it's important to mention the inequality of FTE distribution across the three locations- Franklin has a much higher number of over all 1.0's, 13 total. All the 1.0 staff are getting resentful of fellow co-workers' lower FTE. Franklin alone has lost 5 - 1.0 just that have left Franklin GI this year. People who left (or are leaving) that were 0.6-0.8 FTE who then had their positions posted as a 1.0: Robin 0.7 last day 3/3 Heidi 0.6 People who left due to being unhappy with a 1.0 FTE in GI: Matthew - moved out of state Sara - went to KASC Lone Tree - 3/12’s Sara - went to KASC Franklin - 3/12’s Jane - went to Minors Lone Tree - 4/10’s Anna - went to Minors Rock Creek 4/10’s Jason - left for reduced hours outside of Kaiser Heidi - just gave her notice and is going to Ortho PRN Chanda-left procedures to do fibroscans With a 10-hour day shift this would allow us to; call patients, scrub schedules, and have a list of patients that can come in the next day when we see an opening. For example, a doctor had 3 cases fall off that cost Kaiser $3,000 - $1,000 per 30 minutes. We have about a 11 percent no show rate at Franklin, we could improve that by calling patients and filling in the gaps if the patient cancels with another patient. Scrubbing the schedules and increasing profits for Kaiser..there are so many ways we can be more dynamic and profitable. We can start a little earlier to set up our rooms, right now we have 15 minutes. Since Kaiser is coming down on the Doctors to do more and more and more, they are coming into our rooms earlier and earlier because Kaiser is making them do more in the same amount of time. It’s RUSH, RUSH and RUSHing all around. Please let us know how we can help support our case for a .8 FTE and/or 4 ten hour shifts. Thank you for your time and attention to this matter as it is very important to many, if not all of the RNs in the Colorado GI departments. If this doesn’t make it to the Town Hall, would you please respond to us regarding your thoughts about our letter, People Pulse, and maybe a visit to our Unit? It would mean a lot to hear a rationale instead of deaf ears and the word NO all the time, Or we can’t change it, because your schedule revolves around the Doctor’s schedule. Why is it so hard to TRIAL and/or TRY DIFFERENT schedules out to see if it makes an improvement? Thank you for your time and for listening to us, GI Colorado The letter below was from GI, circulated July 2022 Dear Company, We, the Employed Registered Nurses (RNs), Advanced Practice Providers (APPs) and Local 7 Healthcare Professionals, are respectfully requesting that full time employment (FTE) hours be reconsidered.
As committed employees of Company, we share the mission to deliver quality health care to every member. Our training to assess and care for our patients demands we be at our best with every patient contact, prioritizing patient safety and wellbeing. Currently new Registered Nurses are being hired at a 1.0 FTE, whereas RNs in the past have been hired at .9 and there are long term RN’s that are employed at a .8, .7 and .6 FTE. A five day, forty-hour work week does not allow for a balance between work and life, and limits flexible scheduling options for many RN and APP positions.
Kaiser invests a considerable amount of time to train newly hired RNs, and APPs. These new hires are initially excited to be a part of a respected and prestigious organization. They soon learn that the demands and inflexible scheduling are not conducive to creating a balance between career and family responsibilities or interests outside of work. We are hearing from our colleagues that they will not apply for a position that requires a forty-hour work week. We are losing good people to other organizations so that they can maintain a work life balance. As RNs, APPs, Local 7 Healthcare Professionals who value our careers as health care providers for Kaiser Permanente Members, we respectfully request that full time employment be flexible and part time positions be offered to allow for a work life balance. We are available to have an in person meeting to discuss this in further detail. Thank you for your serious consideration, GI https://www.thepermanentejournal.org/doi/10.7812/TPP/05-092 Some takeaways from the article: “If we’re not taking care of ourselves, then how can we take care of our members future and to our reputation,” from the late Bernard Tyson. He goes on to say, “They are critical to our future because we depend upon people to deliver our health care. Sure, technology and well-calibrated equipment are also key tools in health care delivery, but it’s the people who bring the experience to life for our members and key stakeholders. Plus, in order for us to be respected in our field and viewed as America’s health leader, we must walk our talk.” Supporting a work environment that promotes employee health, wellness, and work-life balance is directly aligned with KP and Labor Management intentions and goals. KP leaders will continue to demonstrate our commitment to the wellness of our workforce by caring and respecting the physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being of employees and physicians.” Work-Life Balance: Care Instructions - https://healthy.kaiserpermanente.org › health-wellness As America’s health leader, we must walk our talk. https://www.theskimm.com/money After dealing with labor shortages and employee burnout, companies are taking things up a notch with work perks in 2023. And we’re not just talking about lunch stipends or ping-pong tables in the office. It’s called proactive rest. And it’s more than just taking your vacation days. Because waiting until you’re burned out to take care of yourself is so 2022. What is proactive rest? Proactive rest is how some companies are stepping up to prevent employee burnout at work, according to a Gartner workplace trends report. Instead of only relying on PTO, workplaces are adjusting their policies to give their employees breaks and flexibility. It's similar to active recoveries in fitness — rather than taking a full day of rest from working out, you might opt for a walk or some stretching instead. At work, proactive rest might look like: No-meeting blocks. When your company designates certain hours or days for no meetings. Flexible lunch breaks. Meaning, employees can choose when they take their breaks. Mandatory breaks. And that could be in addition to lunch. It may look like “wellness time” for you to take naps in the afternoon. Four-day work weeks. As in, getting the same amount of work done in fewer days — with no pay cuts. Office closures. That could mean a week-long company-wide break or summer Fridays. So you can switch from “TGIF” to “TGIT” from June through September. View post on Instagram Why is proactive rest important? Prioritizing rest can help companies boost productivity. It may sound counterintuitive, but a Gartner survey found a 26% increase in performance at companies that incorporated proactive rest. Plus, it could incentivize people to apply for jobs at these companies — and even slow turnover rates. Because burned out employees are more than three times likely to look for new jobs. For employees, burnout is still extremely common. And being able to get ahead of it can help avoid having to recover from burnout later on. Building rest into the work calendar can help encourage employees to actually use it. Because Americans aren’t the best at taking their PTO, even when it’s offered. And they typically put in extra hours: The average employee worked nine unpaid hours per week in 2022. If it sounds like hustle culture, it is. While it may be helpful for climbing the corporate ladder, it might come at the expense of your mental health. View post on TikTok theSkimm Companies are taking extra measures to keep employees’ mental health in check in 2023. Because free office snacks just aren’t cutting it anymore. And having the freedom to take care of yourself now can prevent you from struggling down the road.

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2023.06.06 19:11 DaAdobo DeAutoLED alternatives?

I wanna replace my reverse lights, interior lights, plate lights, and puddle lights (and possibly foglights) into LED for my Mk5, and don’t want to run into canbus issues where the car rejects the bulb. Are there any better priced options other than DeAutoLED?

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2023.06.06 18:37 Galaxy_the_nightwing First Impressions part 47

First Previous Next
-----Damian-----
Damian kneeled off to the side, trying his best to blend into the rubble around him as Ree was scolded like never before by his mother. He cradled the toddler closer to his chest through the harness it was placed in when it started to fuss. At the attention, it settled back down. As Violet basically breathed fire at her chick, the angry image being ruined by the mother-henning she was doing checking his injuries, Damian kept an eye on the armored aliens standing around watching them.
Damian didn't like the way they semi-circled to trap him, his kids and his birds between themselves and the broken tree-tower. The only things keeping him from placing himself between them and his family was the child who refused to be separated from him and Sky. Said bird was perched on one of his thighs to better reach some of his wounds. Despite that, he still had to lean down a bit to let him reach the wounds on his head and the big one on his bicep.
His eyes constantly scanned the area in an uneasy search for Squeaks, who had jumped down and scampered off once he left the tree. He was not happy with her sudden disspearance, since the same thing was what started this mess. Then again, it was what led him to the toddler who would definitely have been killed, had he not been here. He could confidently say the voices didn't like it either. They were a constant mind-numbing buzz in the base of his skull but at least they didn't do so farther up. He could actually think past their annoyed chatter for once.
As he watched his surroundings and let Sky look at his wounds, he talked with some of the calmer voices. They discussed ways to compromise his head space. Clearly they didn't like being locked in the back of his mind, if the violent attacks were anything to go by, but he can't focus on anything if they are free to wander without any restrictions. His conversation was interrupted by a voice that is mostly quiet, one of a very few number that is more....not physical but just felt more than heard. Them mostly being known by non-verbal contributions to the conversation. Anyways, it butted in with a hand on his metaphorical shoulder. His attention shifted to it, making it easier to.....notice? read? it. It sent the feeling of pointing to the outside world, like pointing out a window.
It takes a few seconds to extract himself from the web of conversations he was keeping an eye on while he brainstormed. Once he did and zoned back into the real world his attention was drawn back to the armored aliens by movement at the very edge of his vision, just this side of his blindspot. He tenced and whipped his head around to stare down the movement. The alien that has walked closer immediately stopped walking and retracted the leg halfway through it's next step.
The build of the alien was vaguely familiar, like he's seen one of it's species before. He just can't quite place where. Its not any of his flock, or one their species anyways, since its bigger than Untruthful. That much he's sure about. It also can't be one of the fish-aliens from when he was in that reverse-aquarium since it didn't have a tank or anything that looked like it would help it breathe water. And the fact it has legs, too. The fish-people only had hand-fins and tails. So maybe he just saw one when they all went to that market-place? Where he found Squeaks. Its a possibility, there were a lot of aliens packed together.
It stands silently in its spot a few steps closer than the semi-circle of other armored aliens. It's legs were bent ever so slightly, posture slouched, and head lowered like it was trying to look as small and submissive as possible while still being considered standing. He couldn't tell for sure where it was looking because of the helmet covering it's face but from the angle of it's head, he guesses it's staring at the ground just before his folded legs.
He was confused at the position it froze in. It doesn't look at all comfortable for it. It's legs constantly shifted slightly to move around it's weight like the pose wasn't something it naturally did but was taught to do. Why was it doing that? He would understand if it was it's species' way of showing peacefulness or a lack of aggression but it was clearly uncomfortable. Though a good portion of that was probably the fact that he was staring it down with a death glare.
It had six limbs: two arms, two legs, and a small pair between them that was half bent in the air. From what he saw as it walked, the two tiny limbs extend and are used as legs when it moves. It seems like when it stands still it leans back on its thick tail. Its overall body shape is like a long noodle. Like a ferret or particularly wide snake. Its head, from the shape of it's helmet anyways, looks like someone took a sphere and cut off the bottom quarter before sticking it to the creature's neck.
The only thing showing which side of it's head is the front is the two flat wedges on either side of it's head. From the way they were covered they looked like a mix between fins and ears, with the front being flat and the back angling out and into the head like a ramp. Said ear-fin-wedges were currently flattened against the side of it's head and drooping down like someone tied weights to the ends of them.
He stared for a few long minutes, only shifting to give Sky more access to whatever wound he moved to look over. It didn't move closer or try to speak the entire time but it didn't move away either. It just stood there in an uncomfortable pose like it was waiting for something. He didn't have a single guess as to what and he didn't like how still it was being. Slowly his lips lifted into a mockery of a smile, more of a snarl than anything. When it only flinched but still refused to move, he unconsciously made a low unhappy humm from his chest.
With the snarl still on his face and the way he was awkwardly slouched and twisted for Sky, it came out much more guttural and growl-like than he expected it to. The alien flinched again and shifted it's weight backwards ever so slightly like it wanted to step back but it's feet were glued to the ground. Before he could try again to make it back off Sky spoke up from his lap as he nudged the hands holding the toddler, wanting to check on the kid's side. His voice was perfectly neutral, none of he emotions usually plastered all over his words to be found.
"If you are just going to stand there and work up my Dark-crest, you might as well leave." Damian's head whipped down at that tone so fast that he felt his neck crack. That tone was so strange coming from Sky that he worried something was wrong. The small bird's expression was perfectly neutral but he did see a spark of mirth and amusement in his eye when the armored alien winced and stuttered a few failed starts. He moved his head ever so slightly to look up at the stuttering alien out of the corner of his eye as he lifted the toddler out of it's harness and onto his lap, letting Sky loosen the make-shift bandages to check it's wound.
The alien paused its stuttering to take a breath, at least he thinks so. He couldn't quite tell since he didn't hear it breathe through it's helmet but it did pause its arm movements like it did. Either way it paused to probably collect it's thoughts and calm itself, well, as much as possible with Damian glaring it down and ready to lunge if it so much as twitched wrong.
At this point the voices seemed to notice the nervous alien and were split between ignoring them and turning their attention to the situation. Of those that did switch, half were making fun of the armoured alien and the other half were cooing over how cute it's nervousness was. Damian was confused and distracted by the ones cooing over it. Sure, objectively it could be considered cute, what with it being under half his size, but that wasn't what confused him. It was that they kept calling it 'baby', 'child', and a few said something about a student. Was.....wasn't it an adult?
Who in their right mind would ever think it was a good idea to toss a kid into armour and let them play soldier with actual trained adults? That gained the attention of more voices them either snickering at the mental image and passing their own back and forth with each other, berating whoever it's guardian was, or cooing sympathetically at the child. He let the conversations wash over his thoughts and blank his mind as he just watched the alien. Almost all his previous aggression was absent from his expression and posture, replaced by intrigue and curiosity.
Apparently the alien had gotten it's thoughts together enough to swap a few sentences back and forth with Sky since he snapped back into the present at the sound of his name.
"-Damian." Unfortunately Sky said his name at the end of the sentence so he didn't know any context. The reply the alien made gave enough, though. It tilted its head, at least he guessed so, as it took a few slow creeping steps towards them.
"Really? I-" It caught itself at Sky's sharp glare, "He is.....forgive me for not using the right word but, 'tame'?" It seemed like either it wasn't very fluent in common or it didn't know the right term to use for this specific situation. Either way he cut in sharply before Sky could reply.
"No, I'm not 'tame'. I am not some mindless animal to be trained-" He interrupted himself with an agressive snarl to his voice as the alien continued to creep closer. "And I will gladly rip your head off if you take one step closer to my flock!" The alien immediately stopped and scuttled multiple steps backwards with a fearful yelp, stuttering out a nervous stream of apologies. They ended up a bit closer than they originally were but seemed to understand the correct distance to keep.
Damian felt Sky pause their checking of the toddler to lean their head into his chest in attempt to stifle his giggling, shuttering with the force of the attempt. Damian felt his glare and scowl lessen with a barely withheld smile at the quiet stuttered breath-laughs escaping his bird. Eventually he couldn't hold a straight face and let a lop-sided smile spread onto his face with an amused exhale as he relaxed his shoulders and looked down at the small bird.
"Could you not? Its kinda hard to keep an angry face with you giggling away into my chest." Sky held his breath for a second at the teasing comment, just barely holding in his laughter. Sky lifted a wing-claw-hand and hit his chest in reprimand, glancing up at him with a horrible attempt at a stern glare, laughter clear behind his voice.
"Don't you dare make me laugh! I'm supposed to be working." Damian relaxed a bit at the voice, happy he was able to make his bird break the emotionless mask. He leaned back on a hand, the other cradling the toddler, as his smile grew to flash his teeth.
"Your own fault. I was just stating facts. Hard to act all big and bad with a chicken-sized being giggling away like a child into you." Sky squawked much like Violet does before her and Ruby bat their wings at each other. Sure enough Sky spread his wings and flapped them to continously bap him in the head. Damian let himself laugh as he ducked his head and raised his free arm in a fruitless attempt to sheild him from the harmless attack of feathers.
Once Sky got it all out of his system he folded his wings back up and floofed his already puffy feathers to make him even rounder. Damian laughed at him again and playfully ruffled his crest, not noticing how much more relaxed he is after that. Sky finally let out a small chuckle and shook himself off to resettle his feathers.
Damian moving his free arm to cradle the toddler again he glanced up at the maybe-child alien once he remembered it and huffed out an amused snort at it's completely baffled body language. Hearing something halfway between an oink and a squeak, Damian glanced down. The toddler was staring up at him with big suprised eyes.
"What?" He asked the kid, not expecting an answer. The reply he got was the child snorting a nearly identical sound he made but with a slight change to it. It then looked at him expectantly. Damian glanced up at Sky but the bird was occupied with talking with the armoured alien and hadn't noticed. Looking back at the child he hesitated for a second before repeating the snort he made before.
The child squealed, in what he assumed was happiness, and headbutted Damian's ribs hard enough that he was sure they would bruise, it's tail wagging so violently the fluffy end was hitting it's sides. Damian laughed and held the child as it made happy snorts and grunts.
-----Runt-----
Runt was confused and scared. He didn't know what was happening. Brute, Scavenger, and soft-BruteSoundermate left the not-den-path after they exchanged not-instinct-speak with the weird voice. Once they left to the out they paused at the sight of the weird-things. Two more soft-maybe-BruteSoundermate walked over and talked with them. The bigger of the two taking the first soft-BruteSoundermate and making annoyed-shoat-angry sounds. The smaller of the new soft-maybe-BruteSoundermate chattered to Brute until he lowered to the ground and let it check it over.
Runt watched as Scavenger ran off, making Brute call out to it in protest. It was ignored and grumbled unhappily for a while until the weird-things moved to enclose everyone else. Runt didn't like the lack of escape and whimpered a bit as he cuddled into Brute. Brute held him closer and Runt felt reassured. Runt dosed off for a bit, trusting Brute would protect him from the weird-things. Plus, his side was really hurting.
He was brought out of his not-really-sleep when he heard soft-maybe-BruteSoundermate make weird short high-pitched squeals. Brute took him out of the strap-holder-things keeping him to it's chest. He watched as the small-soft-maybe-BruteSoundermate started to unwrap the wound-cover. He couldn't help but shy away once it started to hurt, peeling off his side. Soft-maybe-BruteSoundermate exchanged a few weird sounds with the weird-thing. The weird-thing started to slowly creep closer to them. Runt was scared. He hid in Brute's middle. Eventually Brute seemed to have enough with the weird-thing since it spoke up and ended on anger-warning-backoff.
The weird-thing immediately scrambled back and soft-maybe-BruteSoundermate leaned against Brute while making quiet-amused sounds. Why was it amused? It hit Brute and Runt shied away from it, expecting Brute to punish it for the weak attack. It never happened though. Brute just made teasing-amused sounds and even relaxed a bit. Soft-maybe-BruteSoundermate then made a weird noise, probably taking the lack of response as Brute not acting like he should as Protector.
Then it......made its arms longer? The extra flaps on its arms extended and it continuously hit them against Brute's head. Runt watched in tence silence as Brute just lifted its arm to try and shield it from the useless attack. Runt waited for Brute to grow tired of soft-maybe-BruteSoundermate disrespecting it's position and move to put it in it's place. Again, it never happened. Runt was confused when it eventually stopped it's useless attack and make itself bigger. Brute just made an amused-happy sound and rubbed it's head. Brute then glared up at the weird-thing, moved to hold Runt a bit more protectively and-
"Mine." Runt whipped his head up at Brute in suprise at the clear Neath word.
"Maybe-sire?" Brute looked down at him and grunted something he didn't understand. Runt didn't want to get his hopes up, maybe he just didn't hear Brute right so he asked it what it said.
"Yours?" Brute glanced at soft-maybe-BruteSoundermate then glared at the weird-thing before looking back down to him and replying.
"Mine." Runt couldn't help the happy squeal as he felt the bond click into place. Instinct made happy rumbling noises in the back of his head as he happily headbutted his Sire. A Sire picked him. A Sire picked him! His Sire picked him! He has a sounder! He was so happy he couldn't do anything but vocalize his happiness and excitement. He felt his Sire hold him closer and that only made him happier.

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2023.06.06 17:49 Jayboy1015 First Miata Mods and Repairs

Just got my first Miata and it's a base model NC.
On day 2, my neighbor backed into it. Yuck. It's in the body shop now. While I wait for it, I'd like to order parts for repairs and upgrades.
While I was waiting for the insurance company, I replaced the worn out rear struts. I went for a factory replacement and I suspect I'll have to do the front struts as well. I noticed the ball joint boots were torn - I'll try to patch the boot and refill them with grease, but I know that won't last long.
Repairs:
- Rear ball joints on lateral arms. Looks like I have to replace the entire arm. Any good aftermarket ones I should consider?
~~- Both the sun visors don't stay up. I've velcroed them for now, but that only works so well and they occasionally fall. And when they are down, I can't adjust the angle.~~ Found on Ebay for $20 each :)
- Drivers side seat bolster is torn - probably easiest to replace the whole seat? Where can I get one for cheap? I'll also be checking some local upholstery places.
- ~~License plate lights are falling off -~~ found some LED replacements on Ebay
Upgrades:
What are some inexpensive performance enhancers I can do?
- Likely a Cold Air Intake
- Wish I could afford a turbo right now.
I also want to do a few visual mods and would like some recommendations
- Any good aftermarket fog lights out there?
- LED headlight conversion - looking at SuperBrightLEDs.com. I've used other products by them on other cars and am super happy with them. I figured I'd give them a shot for this too unless y'all have some better options.
And what are some other mods I should look into?

submitted by Jayboy1015 to Miata [link] [comments]

2023.06.06 16:13 JoshAsdvgi The Origin of Fire

https://preview.redd.it/10vtw8bdoe4b1.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=28d8a684ecd1c831b6bbc900ec143e0073a476b2
Kids Story (( BedTime Story ))
Apache:
The Origin of Fire
Long, long ago, animals and trees talked with each other, but there was no fire at that time.
Fox was most clever and he tried to think of a way to create fire for the world.
One day, he decided to visit the Geese, te-tl, whose cry he wished to learn how to imitate.
They promised to teach him if he would fly with them.
So they contrived a way to attach wings to Fox, but cautioned him never to open his eyes while flying.
Whenever the Geese arose in flight, Fox also flew along with them to practice their cry.
On one such adventure, darkness descended suddenly as they flew over the village of the fireflies, ko-na- tcic-a. In midflight, the glare from the flickering fireflies caused Fox to forget and he opened his eyes--instantly his wings collapsed!
His fall was uncontrollable.
He landed within the walled area of the firefly village, where a fire constantly burned in the centre.
Two kind fireflies came to see fallen Fox, who gave each one a necklace of juniper berries, katl-te-i-tse.
Fox hoped to persuade the two fireflies to tell him where he could find a way over the wall to the outside.
They led him to a cedar tree, which they explained would bend down upon command and catapult him over the wall if he so desired.
That evening, Fox found the spring where fireflies obtained their water.
There also, he discovered coloured earth, which when mixed with water made paint.
He decided to give himself a coat of white.
Upon returning to the village, Fox suggested to the fireflies,
"Let's have a festival where we can dance and I will produce the music."
They all agreed that would be fun and helped to gather wood to build up a greater fire. Secretly, Fox tied a piece of cedar bark to his tail.
Then he made a drum, probably the first one ever constructed, and beat it vigorously with a stick for the dancing fireflies.
Gradually, he moved closer and closer to the fire.
Fox pretended to tire from beating the drum.
He gave it to some fireflies who wanted to help make the music.
Fox quickly thrust his tail into the fire, lighting the bark, and exclaimed,
"It is too warm here for me, I must find a cooler place."
Straight to the cedar tree Fox ran, calling,
"Bend down to me, my cedar tree, bend down!"
Down bent the cedar tree for Fox to catch hold, then up it carried him far over the wall.
On and on he ran, with the fireflies in pursuit.
As Fox ran along, brush and wood on either side of his path were ignited from the sparks dropping from the burning bark tied to his tail.

Fox finally tired and gave the burning bark to Hawk, i-tsarl-tsu- i, who carried it to brown Crane, tsi-nes-tso-l. He flew far southward, scattering fire sparks everywhere.
This is how fire first spread over the earth.
Fireflies continued chasing Fox all the way to his burrow and declared,
"Forever after, Wily Fox, your punishment for stealing our fire will be that you can never make use of it for yourself."
For the Apache nation, this too was the beginning of fire for them.
Soon they learned to use it for cooking their food and to keep themselves warm in cold weather.

submitted by JoshAsdvgi to Native_Stories [link] [comments]

2023.06.06 15:51 Meaning-Plenty KUNAN POSHPORA – THE OTHER STORY

This guest post by SHRIMOYEE NANDINI GHOSH is based on two essays about the men and women of Kunan Poshpora, that appeared in the Kashmir Reader dated 1 September 2013, and 13 January 2014.

Beneath the horrors of the mass rape committed by Indian troops in the twin villages that night in February 1991, lies the untold story of systematic torture of men, carried out by the same forces with the precision and deliberation of a planned military operation.
In June 2013, a Public Interest Litigation filed in the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, by fifty Srinagar based women, supported by human rights group Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil society (JKCCS) had resulted in a Magisterial order for the further investigations of the mass and gang rape by Indian army personnel of the women of Kunan, and neighbouring hamlet Poshpora, in Kupwara District of North Kashmir on the night of February 23rd-24th 1991. The police, it appears from the lack of any remotely investigative activities in the villages to have done little if anything, by way of following the court order in the last six months. On 14 September, 2013 they asked for and were granted an additional three months time for further investigations, without notice to the survivors who are legally represented in the case.
However, the closure report, which police had failed to file for twenty – two years, and which had been presented before the Magistrate of Kupwara just weeks before the Public Interest Litigation, in March 2013, had yielded several important previously unavailable official documents. These included a hand drawn police map, a nominal roll of 125 army personnel (including several officers) who were admittedly part of the operation and in Kunan-Poshpora that night, statements from victims, witnesses and army men mentioning specific locations, times and incidents, and the official medical reports of some of the rape victims. JKCCS had decided after some deliberation that if the police did not appear to be doing any investigations, they would themselves, aided by the new documents, attempt to rescue from oblivion the events of that night. Over the last three months, they have been engaged in a process of interviewing villagers, explaining to them what the police papers say, seeking clarifications, and attempting to piece together as coherent a narrative as possible given the constraints of resources, the lapses of memory, the reticence of rage, grief and repeated recounting, and the deaths of crucial witnesses. On 24th August 2013, I accompanied a team of human rights lawyers and researchers from JKCCS to the village of Kunan, on one of their visits. I was told that their interviews with those of the women who wished to speak was almost complete, and the day’s planned interviews were mostly with men from the village. Previous conversations, as well as police statements showed that interrogation centres had been set up in the village during the operation, and witnesses referred to extreme and extensive torture of men, but this was not specifically recorded in the First Information Report, and formed no part of the official list of crimes that occurred that night, which consists of rape, house trespass and illegal confinement.
As in the police documents, Kunan Poshpora has become inscribed as a story of rape in Kashmir’s public memory. But something else also happened that night. A crime so commonplace in that age of cordons and crackdowns that even the men who were its victims, barely thought to mention it, attending instead like the rest of us to the outrage of the raped women. As Ahmad Ameen put it, ‘They let us go home after the crackdown, in the morning at about 9 am.’ [Some men were bleeding; others were barely conscious and had to be carried. One man told us he crawled home on all fours].‘That’s when we realised what had happened. What they had done in every house. Then all hell broke lose.’ Several of the men were somewhat laconic when the interviews began. ‘Joh karte hai, wahi kiya’, Rahim Dar said. ‘They did what they do.’ And indeed they had– with wood, water, electricity–those universal implements for the infliction of finely calibrated pain. JKCCS believes on the basis of preliminary conversations that between hundred to a hundred and twenty men from the two villages were tortured that night. A total of twelve men were interviewed during the course of the day I visited, by three teams of researchers. I think it was after the fourth time I heard mention of medical treatments for sexual dysfunction, that the true irony of the ‘emasculation’ metaphors that are so abundant in talk about the Kunan-Poshpora rapes dawned on me. What I often dismiss as misplaced patriarchal indignation had been repeatedly made flesh that night. ‘Oh! Come on’ I want to say aloud, every time I hear or read the words ‘rape’ ‘our women’ and ‘impotency’ in close proximity–‘It’s NOT about you!’, but this time it was. And it involved wires, needles and a portable DC battery.
A kind of unmooring from the realms of human language has characterised the description of the Kunan Poshpora rapes. District Magistrate S.M Yasin’s report speaks of being unable to put down in ‘black and white’ the acts committed by the ‘beasts’ for instance, and the rape survivors themselves talk of the chaos of a toofaan, of foul smelling shaitaans apparating through their black-outs and disassociated states as they lay in the dark . But, as I listened to the men, ranging in age from 90-year-old Lal Dar (68 at the time of the torture) to 40 year old Manzoor (18 in 1991) their torture seemed to bear a somewhat different relationship to language and the world. What happened to them was nailed to a scaffolding of banal bureaucratic and military terms—interrogation, information, identification, search, cordon, crackdown—and tethered to mundane physical objects and familiar places–-buckets, logs and planks of wood, helmets, torchlights, batteries, wood sheds, barns, streams and trees. As the men spoke I began to picture that night, not as an endless orgy of a horde of rampaging beasts, but as a quiet and efficient military operation, carried out by trained men. Four companies of men from the 4th Rajputana Rifles, 68th Mountain Brigade commanded by a Colonel K.S. Dalal, in fact, as the army itself admits in police statements. Alpha and Delta Companies were deployed in the outer cordon, Bravo and Charlie in the search and interrogation. While teams of ten to twenty soldiers, sometimes headed by an officer who they were heard referring to as ‘Sir’, went on a systematic house to house search, rooting men out of their beds, demanding to be taken immediately to militants or hidden weapons, strip searching them and burying them in the snow, their comrades were otherwise engaged. Most of the commissioned officers were deployed at the ‘interrogation centres’ according to the army. Two kuthars (large barn like outbuildings for storing grain, fodder and cattle) within yards of each other, belonging to Asad Dar and the village numberdar (revenue official) Aziz Shah, and Abli Dar’s home, on the main lane of Kunan’s maze of winding alleys, were quickly commandeered and their lofts or rooms converted into make shift ‘interrogation centers’, while their compounds formed a holding space for the men. All three were provided with the same basic equipment – a bench fashioned out of planks of wood, a large wooden log, a bucket of chilli water, a couple of wires connected to a radio battery forming a crude live-circuit, assorted sticks and ropes, a few chairs, and somewhere to suspend the men from–but adaptations were made according to available resources and geography. For instance, in Asad Dar’s yard through which the village stream ran, repeated dunking in its icy depths formed part of the standard procedure. At two of the compounds, Aziz Shah’s and Abli Dar’s where firewood was stored in the wood-shed a bonfire was lit, around which parka-clad soldiers chatted and drank, and villagers recovered from their water treatments. At Asad Dar’s kuthar a tall, fair and somewhat chubby faced officer sat on a chair before a wireless set, giving orders and flashing his torchlight. Downstairs, in all three yards, men squatted or stood in the snow waiting for their possible turns on the equipment. Occasionally when they went up, they saw a neighbour or brother who was before them in line, slumped on the floor at the head of the stairs. Some like Salim Dar, whose brother was a surrendered militant, paid a visit to two of the three centers. He still walks on crutches as a result.
The village of Kunan has changed in twenty-two years. It is no longer ‘the huddle of thatched and wooden houses’ that journalists described in 1991 (‘Indian Villagers Tell of Mass Rape by Soldiers’, The Independent, March 19, 1991). Buildings have been torn down, and rebuilt in brick, cement and tin. The chashma (natural spring) that emerged from the earth behind Aziz Shah’s kuthar has dried up, and only a muddy depression now marks the spot. Ghulam Afzal walked with us around the hamlet amidst squawking chickens and curious children, pointing out the sights– ‘this is where the Abli Dar’s old kuthar stood, that there- is his new house…this is the wood shed in which I hid, this is the nallah along which Naba ran, this used to all be clear ground then…’ For some reason, seeing those buildings brought home to me an intimation of what it was like to be a man from Kunan-Poshpora on that night, in a way even their words hadn’t.
What was it like, I found myself imagining, to be squatting in your own snowy barn yard, drowning in your tin bucket, broken and blubbering on your hard granary floor, blinded by chillies from your own store? And then all the hypotheticals began, as my mind ran on and on. How did it feel I wondered to hear the sounds coming from the village? Yah Khudaiyo! Yah Khudaiyo! Could you hear them over the sounds of the interrogation? Pakistan, Militants, Samaan, Information, Bol Saala! Could you hear them over the groans of your neighbours? Could you hear them over your own yells? Which was worse–to definitely identify the scream of a loved one, or merely contemplate if it was them, through the fog of your insensibility? What was it like to be told you could leave in the morning, to be given painkillers by the army doctor, (Capt. Dr Shyam Sundar accompanied the unit according to his own police statement), to come home and realise what had seemed so far like a recurring nightmare—another crackdown, agonising but vaguely familiar –had been another kind of visitation altogether? And then, to unable to leave or get help for two days, because of the army siege around the village? To have no family or neighbours to turn to, because everyone you knew, was in precisely the same state as you? What kind of courage did it take to be Abdullah the compounder, from neighbouring Trehgam who snuck into the village using the back route through Chopan Mohalla, to deliver what analgesics and first-aid he could knowing it to be hopelessly inadequate? Or most unimaginably of all, to be Abdul Wani. To return from an over night business trip to Srinagar and find your front door broken, your two sons in bed electrocuted, your wife and three daughters raped, and your family’s barn turned into the village torture chamber? How does one live with such knowledge? And having held one’s peace for twenty two years, how does one begin to tell a stranger with a note book, not about what was done to the women, not about what was done to the never to be named teenaged girls, but what was done to you, to your own aging and scarred body, all those many years ago?
That night is full of other kinds of silences, not as innocent but just as tortured. What can one say of Abdul Ghani, the police constable who was related to several families in the village who accompanied the soldiers on their rounds, and signed a ‘No Objection Certificate’ (NOC) the next morning stating that the villagers had no complaints? He appears in many accounts like some kind of will o’ the wisp with a torch light— relaying messages between houses and family members; accompanying one man back to his home to fetch more firewood, allowing him to peep in through the windows and see his wife on the kitchen floor but not to enter; giving water to a woman with a broken spine; getting locked in a cow shed for remonstrating with soldiers; carrying a cousin home on his back in the morning, weeping as he related what he had witnessed. How do we begin to disentangle the betrayal, the subversion, the unlooked for kindness of it all? Constable Abdul Ghani Dar’s statement of what he heard, saw, and did that night, would have formed a crucial part of the prosecution evidence, if the case ever comes to be tried in a court of law. But ‘unidentified gunmen’ murdered Abdul Ghani in his bed in 1993, pumping thirty bullets into his gut, rendering his words hearsay, and obliterating them from the legal record.
Several other critical eyewitnesses have died in twenty two years, including Sharif-ud-din Sheikh who led the fight to get the police report registered and the case heard in the State Human Rights Commission. Some have died as a result of their rape or torture that night, others from age, bullets or disease. By some estimates from villagers, fifteen of the rape survivors have had hysterectomies. Along the way I lost count of the many other surgeries, unsuccessful treatments, chronic aches, intolerable pains and nameless ailments I heard described. One, however stood out. Lal Dar, whose knee was shattered by a rifle-butt early in the proceedings, and who spent most of the night sprawled in the snow outside his home watching the comings and goings of the men, said that he subsequently had two surgeries, the second to remove his knee cap. He said he could not bend his left leg any longer. He finds it hard to pray.

A Meeting in the Park
Impressions and reflections on meeting the survivors of the mass rape at Kunan Poshpora, at the Sher- e-Kashmir Park in Srinagar on Human Rights Day, 2013

It came as a surprise. I don’t think any one, even amongst the organisers of the event at Sher- e Kashmir Park, on December 10th, had expected that women from the two villages would come. It was assumed that the survivors would be represented by members of the Village Committee, elderly men folk from Kunan and Poshpora, themselves survivors of the mass torture that took place on the night of February 23rd-24th, 1991. But the women had come, almost thirty of them. They had arrived in Srinagar by Matador van, leaving their homes in Kunan and Poshpora at seven in the morning, when the frost was still hard on their windows. I had met some of them before, but it was different seeing them here in Srinagar. I couldn’t remember all their names; their biographies had come detached from their faces. Many of them hugged me.
I remembered S. though, one of the more outspoken survivors I had met— her sharp, twinkly eyes behind thick, black rimmed granny glasses, her wide smile full of crooked teeth, in a face wrinkled and brown like a walnut. We had met at Kunan, in August 2013, when I accompanied a legal research team, from Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) who was representing them in their recently renewed litigation against the Indian army. She had spoken fiercely about the injustice of it all; the many outrages that she read about everyday in the papers, her desire to see such criminals behind bars for life. Her anger was loud and visceral. But when it came to the actual events of that night, she had refused to answer any questions. She had a terrible headache, she said. She could not wait, she had blood pressure, she was dizzy—she had to leave, she always felt like this when she thought of that night, she would not talk to us anymore. It was the only interview that had to be abandoned half way. Today, she was complaining about the long journey, ‘bumping-bumping-bumping all the way.’ ‘We should have come by Sumo’, she grumbled. But, it seemed to me that despite this, she couldn’t quite mask her delight at being out in the sunshine. In the open, amidst the falling leaves, outside the shadows of their men folk, their kitchens, their village, the women grew garrulous. S. told me of her daughters, one married to a doctor, the other working at the Social Welfare Department. At one point, Gul Fatima, from the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, wife to a disappeared man, came over to the group of Kunan Poshpora’s women. ‘Where are you from?’ she asked them. ‘From Kupwara’ S. replied, naming the district. Then, a shadow seemed to cross her face. ‘Kunan – Poshpora’ she said. We’re here from Kunan Poshpora.’
Many of the women from Kunan Poshpora, did not wish to be photographed. The cameras made them uneasy. Some of their children, and grand children they said, did not know their stories. They huddled together and covered their faces with scarves, but the photographers persisted. It felt undignified– cringing behind shawls, cowering under ‘We Demand Justice for Kunan Poshpora’ posters, being asked to join the circle and sit in the appropriate place like an errant schoolgirl, when one had wandered away to avoid the cameras. In 2004, Manipuri women activists protesting the rape and killing of Thangjam Manorama had shocked us by their dramatic inversion of the figure of the cowering and shamed raped woman. Stark naked, they had stood in front of the Assam Rifles Base at Imphal, holding a banner that read ‘Indian Army Rape Us’. The photograph had made headlines across the world. I thought of it as I pleaded with a particularly intrusive photographer on behalf of the women to ‘please respect their privacy’. At this, he turned around and asked me, ‘Why have they been asked to come here, then?’ .I didn’t really have a good answer. It is true. We do need them. We want to have their pictures. We want to put faces to their tragedies, to commemorate their losses and violations. We need them to remind us that we remember, that we have not lost the battle against forgetting yet.
After I got home, the women of Kunan Poshpora, and their attitude to the news-cameras, made me think of a question. Would the agitations against the Shopian rapes in 2009, have been so angry, so volatile, so strong, if Asiya and Neelofar had lived? If they had survived, would we have heard of them at all? And if we had, what particular stories would we hear? Perhaps their rapes would have been covered up, as so many have been in the villages of Kunan and Poshpora, in the name of marriages, families, reputations, futures, for the sake of preserving innocence. A raped dead body makes for an uncomplicated heroine– worthy of both victimhood, and martyrdom. But a living rape survivor is a different being altogether. Her speech and her silences are more fraught. The women of Kunan Poshpora have been voices, not victims through these twenty three years. They have spoken back to the forces of occupation, before media crews, independent fact finders, the police, the state human rights commission and the courts of law. But, they constantly remind us– by covering up before our cameras, by getting dizzy, by blanking out, by her reticence before our questions, that we are all incriminated in her secret yet public shame.

https://kafila.online/2014/01/20/kunan-poshpora-the-other-story-shrimoyee-nandini-ghosh/

submitted by Meaning-Plenty to Kashmiri [link] [comments]

2023.06.06 15:48 mattias2017 2015 Nissan Altima Headlights

I have a 2015 Nissan Altima, and their model lights had a recall. I bought the car used, so I missed the window for the free replacement. They've gotten so bad here recently, when driving at night it's like they're not even on (low beams- high beams aren't that bad). I bought some bright new leds and a headlight restoration kit. I'm leaving on my honeymoon soon, and the new lenses won't be in in time to replace them. Will the new bulbs and restoration kit suffice for a week? We're driving to Florida (roughly 13 hours total but staying the night halfway)

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2023.06.06 15:45 cjflex Interview Kickstart Transition to ML Program - Worth It?

Hello all,
For others' background I am a software engineer at a FAANG company with almost 3 years of experience. I've gotten quite bored of my job and am interested in transitioning to machine learning. I started looking into bootcamps and was recommended Interview Kickstart by someone. In particular they have a program called SwitchUp, which is targeted towards people that want to make a transition to another career. And I'm particularly interested in the ML one.
To summarize the course:

The Material

Purports to get you knowledgeable in machine learning from scratch, focusing on topics that will be relevant to ML work in FAANG+ companies
Hands-on assignments
Support and mentorship from hiring managers, ex-professors, engineers, etc.
Placement assistance, like resume/LinkedIn prep, mock interviews, etc
Negotiation support

See the screenshots from their webinar that I attached for some more detail

https://preview.redd.it/jblqhw57u94b1.jpg?width=2400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fe78d5082c3548f8db5e7be996af373ac4634a64
https://preview.redd.it/m477i5c9u94b1.jpg?width=2400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=60647ba3df8eb9f504ef4efaeb3ffdca5f44f002
https://preview.redd.it/16k0a3nbu94b1.jpg?width=2400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4cf7284429546f509d6168579d49d7eb30f46bf4

Student expectations:

This course is designed for working professionals, with ~15 hours of time to dedicate a week. Though you can go at a slowefaster pace per your own discretion.

The cost:

$12k if paying upfront (though there's a promo for $9k right now), with 50% money back guarantee.

Here is a link to a Google doc with much more detail for those that are interested

Reviews

Here are the reviews for Interview Kickstart in general:
Yelp
CourseReport
As you can see, the reviews are quite mixed.

My ask

Do others think that this course would be worth it?

My own take is the following:
I think I can learn most of the material by myself as there are tons of great resources out there. But I think most of the value would come from the interview/placement assistance resources. If the course lands me a job even a month or two earlier or helps me get a better offer, then it's worth it in my opinion.
Thanks in advance!

submitted by cjflex to learnmachinelearning [link] [comments]

2023.06.06 14:42 Johnny_Boy398 Africa Rework Proposal: Bêafrîka, Katanga, and the Mercenary Kingdoms of Africa

(This is part of a continuing series, links to which will be provided in the comments below)
Bêafrîka State: Bob Denard, Jean-Bédel Bokassa and the mercenary state.
The term “warlord” has been abused by many as a catch all term for any armed african group. It brings to mind images of a barbaric, violent oaf seeking to enrich themselves with trinkets and money off the back of their military extortion: an example of the primitive and bloodthirsty nature of the african. This is certainly the purpose of the term for the Germans, who seek to paint all native armed resistance in this light in order to justify their own return to the continent. But despite this abuse of the term, and its unjust application, it is not made up out of whole cloth: bandits, criminal gangs and short sighted thugs do exist among the africans as they do in all people, and the chaos of the German collapse has given these characters the opportunity of a lifetime. In the former RK Zentralafrika this is seen most clearly in the “mercenary state” of Bêafrîka.
Borders of a successful Bêafrîka. Many post-colonial African nations are accused of being artificial: random lines drawn on a map for the convenience of foreigners, and thus doomed to be either failures or exploitive facades. The truth of this statement is debatable: what makes a nation “organic”, is it truly critical that one be so? Are the struggles of new African nations so easily encapsulated? The argument goes on but all will agree on this: Bêafrîka is an utterly artificial and extractive state which can only begrudgingly be called a nation at all.
The north-west of Zentralafrika has always been something of a hodgepodge. The initial conquest of the area from the Free French meant the roll back of any “nation building” expenditures in favor of reverting back to the old company rule. Corvee slavery, plantations and almost non-existent infrastructure was the rule even under the French, and as such the transition to German ownership was almost seamless. If the average native african noticed a difference at all it was in the flags and helmets of the whites who terrorized them: their managers and guards stayed essentially the same. As such the region was seen by independence agitators as ripe for their own movements to grow in. Though such resistance was kept on a tight leash by the Germans it finally burst forth in the northern incursion of 1954. Supported by Nigeria and with the German forces drawn thin by the ongoing Wester Russian War, socialist militants made a lightning strike southward in the hopes of toppling Zentralafrika. For a moment it seemed as if they would do it: the road to Leopoldville was only lightly guarded and the rebel numbers were, in theory, vast. But it was not to be: poor command structures and infighting slowed the rebel advance for long enough that Kommissar Krogmann and Seigfreid Muller were able to reorganize and counterattack with the aid of a new breed of soldier: the Mercenary.
Though having been present in the role of corporate security for years this war was the instance when the Congo Mercenaries truly became a force to be reckoned with. Restrictions on who could hold a gun were dropped and the ranks of mercs swollen with Europeans, Asians and Africans. Though typically small groups and far more independent than Krogmann would have liked, they were all well acquainted with their trade and often brought along their own equipment. They could move fast, hit hard, and there was no reason to suspect their siding with the revolutionaries. With the aid of mercenaries and the cash of selling off vast tracts of land to private holders the revolutionaries were pushed back, and the long guerilla war began. Some areas of Zentralafrika were essentially passive, or had other security solutions. But in the north it was the mercenaries and the garrison which enforced the German order. Names of these men would soon become minor celebrities to the military minded, and their benefactor Seigfreid Muller got a promotion. But for our story only three names matter: the French “mercenary king” Bob Denard, “black Napoleon” Jean-Bédel Bokassa, and “the tiger” Alexandre Banza.
Though it is the armed men who hold real power in their hands, the counter-revolutionary forces are not all German and French soldiers of fortune. The APL’s anti-clerical excesses and radical nativism also alienated the thin class of native collaborators and most of all the catholic church. Barthelemy Boganda was one such native conservative, being a native priest who has tried to act through the church to both reform and aid his flock. After the death of his mentor Marcel Grandin Boganda has become a leading figure of pro-native reform without resorting to violence or leftist radicalism.
With the alliance of French and German landowners paying for their protection the mercenaries, though still technically led by Europeans, became the foremost armed presence in the north. Battling against resistance internal and external by 1962 they have become a hated and envied force, and one which Krogmann is eager to bring into line. But the South Africa War will get in the way of any reforms, with mercenaries once again being called on to shoulder the burden of warfare and internal suppression. By the end of the conflict, no matter how it ends, the mercenaries will have become an even more entrenched force in Zentralafrika. Of course when Huttig takes over this will no longer be tolerated. Having already been humiliated by Muller before, Huttig will take great pleasure in dismissing and rounding up the mercenaries, forcing them to join his forces as regular conscripts without any special privileges. Or rather he would, if he had been fast enough to catch them. When news came of Krogmann’s death and Huttig’s assumption of control the mercenaries did not wait for the order to come: they fled if they were able, and if not they seamlessly transitioned from paid agents of the state to new warlords out for their own survival and enrichment. And more than anyone they congregated around the new king of the mercenaries: Bob Denard.
For the year Huttig’s reign lasts the gangs of former mercenaries will be yet another thorn in his side: raiding, bribing and leading his forces on goose chases. And thanks to Huttig’s destruction of any boats or airplanes he could not gain control over these same former mercenaries had nothing else they could do, unless they cared to gamble trekking all the way to Free France. But Huttig’s flailing attempts to bring them to heel was only one of many threats: in this same area socialist militants and petty warlords also sprung up, and sought to destroy the hated mercenaries themselves. When Huttig dies and the German forces retreat to Leopoldville all pretense will be dropped: the Pan-africans, Fang Gabonese and Cameroonian revolutionaries will all attempt to proclaim new states and to expel the gangsters of German capitalism for good. But with their attention divided and the mercenaries still possessing skill, fire power, and all the money the old landowners could scrap together the attempt will only be half successful. Right between the three of them the new Bêafrîka State will be proclaimed.
Born in 1929 Bob Denard first got the taste for battle during the French State’s failed expeditions against De Gaulle in the late 40s. Deciding that there was better pay and better leadership to be had in Zentralafrika he was one of the first mercenaries brought in through the “King of the Mercs” Siegfried Müller. Though he has little patience for the Reich’s racial code he is a brave commander and an ardent anti-communist. After Müller’s disappearance upon Hüttig’s ascension the stranded mercenaries looked to those bold and skilled enough to lead them, and found it in Denard.
Under the nominal presidency of Boganda, who was practically kidnaped to take the role, the new state is in perhaps the most precarious position of all post-independence states.Their domestic support rests on a incredibly thin strata of white landlords, a handful of native conservatives and a mercenary army which is already looking for a way out the back door. And opposing them is a very dedicated coalition of native nationalists and revolutionaries. It would be the most natural thing in the world for this ramshackle “state” to disintegrate. But there is one thing which can unite them, and can make them all take the risk of fighting it out: Money. Specifically diamonds, gold, and other precious metals which can be sold high on the global market. The mercenaries, native or foreign, have struck for fame in Bêafrîka with the process of becoming more than the lap dogs of the wealthy, but instead to be the wealthy themselves. Baganda hates this of course, but no one asked: the guns call the shots here. And besides, the APL has already branded him a traitor to the people: in the mercenaries' eyes he should be thankful that he still has his head. And so it is decided, the mercenaries would make their own little heaven, and all they had to do to keep it was win the war for it.
Against them stands the APL, their long-time adversary. When the war begins these Pan-africanists, supported by Cameroon and Nigeria, will take the fight to Bêafrîka. This would probably be a death sentence if it were not for the fact the APL is fighting a two front war with the Nationalists to their east. If the mercenary state should still fail it will be dismantled, with the surrounding states taking over its former territory. But if it should win this first war the gamble will have, for now, paid off. Bob, Bokassa and the rest will be able to begin bringing in the money as they use outright criminal methods to both extract and then sell the bounty of the land. The people, of course, hate this as does the nominal “president”. And within the mercenary ranks new fissures will soon begin to show. When faced with a united enemy these men were willing to work together, but now that the threat of death no longer hands quite so close the question of dividing the spoils has quickly turned into a feeding frenzy: it seems to be every mercenary clique for itself trying to carve out its own privileged fiefdom. And it is here that the reformists, such as they are, spy an opportunity.
Alexandre Banza, born 1932 to the Gbaya people, is one of the very few high ranking officers who have a ethnic connection to the land they now rule. His story is much the same as the rest of the black mercenaries: born to a poor family he saw mercenary service as a path to excitement, respect and advancement he would never get on his own. Intelligent, ambitious, and unscrupulous he would rise to become a commander of his own group before the Huttig takeover, and should he take power will rename his state the Bêafrîka Republic, embarking on a cynical campaign of “reform”.
The continued presence of white mercenaries is especially resented by the people, and none more so than commander of the presidential guard and de facto leader of the Bêafrîka State Bob Denard. As such soon after the emergency of war has passed Denard will be dismissed from his position and the two most prominent native warlords Alexandre Banza and Jean-Bédel Bokassa will be invited in to take command. Denard of course has no interest in leaving, and will arrest the president in his own residence, but not before word of the new decree leaked to the streets and the other mercenaries. So it is that the fate of Bêafrîka will be decided the only way a state built on mercenaries could be: with a shootout for control of the president. On one side is Denard: he has already made overtures to Free France and the OFN, as well as criminal contacts in Europe. By leveraging these contacts, and with the aid of the remaining white mercenaries who see his removal as the precursor to their own, he may be able to fight his way out and rise to power over the bodies of his rival warlords.
If Bob Denard and his presidential guard emerges victorious president Boganda’s days will be numbered. Unceremoniously removing and replacing him with a more compliant puppet who I will not even bother you with the name of, any promised elections will be delayed, and then delayed indefinitely. In the end even the facade of democracy will be left behind as the government instead relies on various emergency decrees and under the table deals, as well as outright coercion to cement its power. This is the true mercenary state, in which the armed and powerful take what they want from the weak and destitute: the state will see its revenues come from precious minerals and eventually oil, but just as much from the underground world of smuggling, arms trading, mercenary contracts on behalf of any who will pay, and even (if rumors are to be believed) human trafficking. Denard himself is not so unsophisticated as many of his henchmen: he portrays himself and his state as anti-communist crusaders who are willing to go to the ends of the earth to protect the people from the bolshevik menace. But it makes no difference to the people and to his neighborhood: unless those friendly to him such as the Free French and the Belgian regionalists are victorious both Denard and his state will find themselves facing external invasion sooner or later. When that happens, surrounded by disciplined enemies and facing ever increasing internal revolts, Denard will do what mercenaries do best: he will gather what valuables and guns he can before fleeing. But if this should not happen: if the Congo should remain shattered, and Nigerian ambitions fail, who knows how long the dream may last?
Living as they do in a half criminal status all mercenaries are well acquainted with the underworld. Under Bob however the state itself will come to resemble a crime syndicate, with Bob acting as the Mafia boss. More than any other single resource diamonds are the breadwinner for the “White King of Bêafrîka”, but taking a page out of Manchuria’s playbook drug production and trafficking are increasingly filling the ledger as well. The diplomatic denouncements are nothing: there are always back doors which money can open.
But all this is only if Bob and his people should win the battle for President Boganda. For the first time having the full backing of the streets and with a larger manpower pool to draw from it is likely that the native warlords Alexandre Banza and Jean-Bédel Bokassa will become the victors, chasing out the (competition) colonizers in favor of their own rule. They shall of course be rewarded by the eternally thankful president for their good deeds: Bokassa will take over as the new head of the presidential guard, while Banza will become minister of finance and foreign minister. But just as inevitably there is no throne on earth big enough for two people and so the former allies will soon look for a way to oust the other. The hope of the civilians lay in the victory of the Alexandre Banza clique. If he should succeed in arresting and disappearing his rivals Banza will seek to somewhat moderate the state. Rather than rely on naked coercion he will enforce the most basic of social contracts: in return for the country's obedience he will provide protection. Though the basic facts of the Bêafrîka State shall remain: a thriving underground, an economy based on raw export, and a army of criminals, the worst aspects of this rule will be softened and the “civilianization” of government give cosmetic reform to the regime, and finally permit the nominal president a level of dignity, even being allowed to push some of his catholic inspired social reforms. Though not much more than swapping a military uniform for a business suit this will go some way to providing a sense of normalcy, and allow the state to take a non-aligned stance rather than become the plaything of some foreign power.
On the other hand is the favorite of the soldiers Jean-Bédel Bokassa. You know him as the “mad” emperor of the C.A.R. otl, but there was always a method to his madness: one cannot remain in power for over a decade by being stupid. Where Banza seeks to normalize his regime and to be seen as a developmental junta rather than a warlord, Bokassa will lean into his reputation as a warlord, adding esoteric elements to bolster his rule over strangers. Under Bokassa the new system will be entirely personal: he will take the already weak state apparatus and effectively dismantle it, instead relying on personalized dependents to govern the capital city, and leaving the remainder of the country to its own devices so long as it bent the knee when ordered. No longer able to convincingly portray himself as a benign figure to a people who are mostly foreigners to him, he will instead tap into local superstitions to appear as the master of the occult, ruling as a man to be feared even beyond the grave and allegedly indulging in cannibalism. Perhaps even more importantly however he will make a hard switch from western backing to eastern, seeking the protection and the money of Japan. In this at least he will be fairly competent: negotiating the relationship with Japan through a mixture of bribery, utility, and threatened confiscations to wring out as much foreign aid and diplomatic backing as he can. Beyond this his rule will be one of chaos and decline with the people seeing their standard of living decrease yet further to a near subsistence level. But it will be a chaos which Bokassa alone is the ruler of.
Jean-Bédel Bokassa has been fighting longer than most: volunteering for the Free French during WW2, he was captured and ultimately released during the German conquest of Gabon. From there he drifted as a menial laborer until the northern insurrection forced the Reichskommissar to bend, and Bokassa was called up by an old french commander. From there he rose to be the de-facto head of his own suit by 1962, and now the undisputed leader of his own fiefdom. The extreme personalism and close relation with Japan will eventually result in his coronation as the sovereign of the Central African Empire.
Whether it be cynical pragmatism or esoteric terror the Bêafrîka State will remain a pariah among their fellow african nations. Cameroon and Gabon will consistently attempt to undermine and take over their territory for themselves, while even the Germans will see any government as traitors and rebels. Though its military may find a backer and its people may become cowed, the incredibly fragile state will come to an end sooner than later, unless they get very lucky. Any Nigerian victory will be a disaster, but a successful unifyer to the south and east would be a great threat as well. They were already founded in the war against one of those potential unifiers and all contenders for power recognize that a united Congo is a dangerous Congo. So, either through direct aid in the case of Denard or cheering from the sidelines Bêafrîka must hope for the victory of the regionalists and Jean Schramme.
Katanga, the Regional Alliance, and “The Belgian”.
For the Pan-Africans, the Republicans, the Nationalists and even the Germans survival is not enough: they wish to reunite the old Belgian colony under their vision of the future, and perhaps even seek expansion beyond that. But not all “congolese” feel this way: in particular the province of Katanga sees no reason why it should not be free to plot its own course. Wealthy in its own right with economic ties to the south the elite of the mining provence see no reason why they should be chained to a central government, and are at least partially supported in this by the people. Just what future this “independence” takes is is still up for grabs, but in the chaotic aftermath of Huttings death Moïse Tshombe, Albert Kalonji and Jean Schramme will form a triumvirate to lead the Regional Alliance.
Élisabethville slum. Katanga is the richest province in the Congo, as well as the one with the highest concentration of Belgians, and as such has seen the beginning of a modern city develop in its capital. It has also been the prime region for victims of the Congo Dam to migrate into, on account of its relative stability and high labor demand. This has all combined to put a great deal of pressure on those populating the land south of the lake and the development of modern slums alongside the growing city.
Katanga is, in 1962, the last remnant of Belgian colonial rule left after the German takeover. Not formally of course, that had been swept away along with Belgum itself in the 50s. But just beneath the German surface the old colonial trinity of church, company and stick still held true, and mostly under Belgian control. In the aftermath of WW2 and the establishment of Burgundy many Belgians had chosen to migrate into their old colonial territory, either for political or economic reasons. Their numbers would soon fill out the officer ranks of the Force Publique, the managerial posts of various new mines and plantations, and the pews of the catholic church. But it would not be the end of their difficulties: the old trinity clashed with Krogmann’s designs for the colony and after formally absorbing it in 1955 the contest began. Where the catholic church once held near total control over healthcare and education, not to mention religious life, Krogmann favored secularism for the european and promoted dechristianization for the native. His hopes for dissolving the FP and for removing french and dutch from the lexicon would be similarly resisted. By 1962 this contest of wills has continued to grind on, with the steady advance of germanization being constantly interrupted by economic and political expediency. The Belgian Katangaians find themselves stuck uncomfortably between German pressure from above and Native pressure from below.
This native pressure is on one hand from the educated evoles, always looking to improve the lot of themselves and sometime of their kin. But it also increasingly comes from the restless masses who have come under pressure from the fallout of the Congo Dam. As the Belgian congo moderately prospered the cities began to grow as well, with the colonial authorities making tentative attempts to accommodate the influx. But after the Congo dam and the German takeover both of these trends changed. Millions of refugees fled the great flood into the wealthiest regions they could go: Leopoldville and Katanga. The population of the cities exploded, and the subsistence agriculture still practiced by most Congolese came under incredible pressure as migrants and squatters proliferated. The Belgian authorities meanwhile were left without the resources needed to truly accommodate this change, and were left with only the Force Publique to try and keep the “indigenes” separate from the new “foreigners”. It was in this context that regionalist associations with the goal of protecting specific people, such as the Lula or Lunda, came to dominate the native political scene, such as it was. Both of these movements discovered that they had similar enemies: both resented German power and feared the “national” native resistance. But this did not yet mean they became allies.
Moïse Tshombe, the nominal head of Katanga. Born to a noble lineage and always wealthy, his desire to be liked and his lack of spin have made him into an ideal puppet for other interests. His current sponsor is the remnants of the old Belgian Union Minière, which comprise much of Katanga’s economy. Though not hated by any “his” government is in reality more beholden to his lieutenants such as Godefroid Munongo.
Katanga had lived in an atmosphere of tension even before the rise of Huttig and the advent of the “Afrikareich” did nothing to alleviate this tension. As part of Huttig’s program to fully disarm the natives and bring all armed forces under SS command he attempted to disarm the Force Publique and Belgian mercenaries, rolling them into its own armed forces. Prominent civilian Belgians were arrested and replaced with SS men, leaving both the Belgians and the natives angered. Under this new pressure some decided to give it up: the new regime could not be bargained with as the prior one was, and any resistance clearly meant death. But enterprising elements were not willing to take death laying down: most prominently this included Godefroid Munongo and Jean Schramme. Using their own wealthy connections and estates as payment they would form small resistance groups, and would be the first formal alliance between the Belgians and the regionalists. To cut a long story short when Huttig dies and the Germans retreat to Leopoldville, those SS governors who do not flee will find their lifespans much shorter than expected, and those brave or desperate enough to resist Huttig will return to power. In the face of nationalist calls to reunite the congo however, the regionalists will move first. With the lavish bribery of local mining conglomerates and the justification of “popular will”, the Belgian community led by Schramme and localist leaders will form the first concret result of their ad-hoc alliance: The State of Katanga.
In its first years Katanga is a divided and unsettled place, forced into unity by the common fear of external subjugation but beholden to competing political camps. The state itself is at least nominally led by Moïse Tshombe, descendant of the kings of the Lunda people and scion to one of the last wealthy native families. He is the figurehead of a poorly organized class of native elites and collaborators, most often independently wealthy and committed just as much to their own economic privileges as they are to the cause of regionalism itself. But despite this Tshombe heads the closest thing to a “popular movement” in the new state: the "Confédération des associations tribales du Katanga" (CONAKAT). Formed in the interest of protecting the livelihoods of the Lunda against the encroaching migrants it is through this party that the people are mobilized for war. Relying on traditional authority and elite connections in the name of a tribalism has been effective in at least countering the partisans of the republicans and nationalists which contest the provence. Just as in the other contenders the war is as much a mater of internal division as it is defeating external challenges. But in order to meet those external enemies the party has been obliged to do so with the aid of their “ally”, the Belgians.
Jean Schramme, despite his official profession, is less of a mercenary and more of a Belgian “contractor” who has a reputation for getting things done and resisting German encroachment. Coming to Africa soon after the end of WW2 he is part of a new breed of Belgians who consider Zentralafrika, or more accurately Katanga, as their true home and embrace the ideal of a paternal ruler of their “primitive” neighbors. Being a successful entrepreneur as well as part time leader of the “Leopard Battalion” Jean has become a prominent part of the Belgian expat community. But though he no longer wishes to return to Europe do not think he has forgotten what the Nazi’s did: the old motherland is dead by German hands, and he has not forgiven them.
Just as on the native side the Belgians are divided internally: German policy was frustrating and insulting, but it was also relatively stable and offered a protection against the natives surrounding them. To forgo this protection and risk battle with the world's superpowers in the name of an uncertain independence requires a boldness uncommon in men. But since when did the meek make history? Returning from his armed exile Schremme will find the FP and Belgian police in disarray, and take it upon himself to topple the last of the SS governors. In his mind there is no question: in order for the Belgians to be free and prosperous they must take the risk of rebellion against Germany and carve out their own state in the chaos. But despite his personal exploits he is unable to do this on his own, and so despite his personal distaste for allying with the native regionalists his own backers in the belgian mining and administrative class have forced him to make common cause with “their” evolese. Regardless Schremme has become the critical belgian commander in this rebelion, bringing the remainder of the belgian community with him whether they like it or not. He leads in a mercenary style, never far from the front lines and with a greater emphasis on personal bravery than more mundane things like logistics.
Though Katanga is the heart of the Regionalist Alliance it is still only one part of that alliance: to the eastern flank is Sud-Kasaï, led by Albert Kalonji as the vanguard state of the Luba secessionist movement. Both Kalonji and Tshombe claim to be protecting their people (Luba and Lunda respectively) from becoming minorities within their own land and from becoming the playthings of another foreign power, whether that be Germania, Washington or any other place. They are also both from prominent and wealthy local families, who have cooperated with the belgian colonizers for generations and have every personal incentive to resist foreign acquisition. As such their support is not primarily from the people, but from the oligarchs and the army. These are two significant advantages however: While other factions are scrambling to put together a military, a state, and to pay for it all, Katanga and her allies are able to fall back on the old colonial power structures, expanding the FP and leveraging oligarchical ties to slap together an army faster than their rivals. With the mix of audacious leadership, money and the Schramme loyalist mercenaries/formed FP officers the alliance may be able to snatch its independence despite the lack of international backing.
Map of regionalist victory, Azandeland acts as a placeholder for local authority (or lack thereof), Sud-Kasai is the Luba Empire. The immediate issue facing the regionalists will be export access: the states survival depends on the revenue from its extensive mining operations, and if that material cannot be exported it is worthless. For this Katanga must either negotiate a trade deal with the German remnants, or seek a detente with the self proclaimed frontline of liberation Zambia. Neither is eager to do this, but the world calls for what Katanga can provide, most of all Uranium. Eventually the market will win out, and one side will decide it is better to compromise principle than give the other an opportunity to gain access to the Katanga bounty.
IF VICTORIOUS the Regionalist Alliance will comprise an expanded State of Katanga, the Luba Empire, and a number of minor eastern powers propped up by Katanga. For the Luba and the Eastern chiefs the question of post war politics is an easy one: tribal traditionalism shall prevail as Albert Kalonji names himself king and the local chiefs are either bribed or threatened into compliance with the new order. While some may make efforts to modernize and advance their domains it will only be done under the watchful and occasionally helpful eye of Katanga. The only question remaining is who will be in control of Katanga itself. Jean Schramme is not a reasonable man, or at least not a moderate one: if he feels that he and the Belgians are not granted their proper place he may well try to overthrow Moïse Tshombe and install himself as the leader of the new state. The natives are less than satisfied as well: though free of foreign control it is clear to them that the old order is no longer acceptable: the people who fought and won the war for independence demand that their sacrifice be rewarded in some meaningful way. And most of all the question of race can no longer be papered over: The Belgians and Europeans remain on top, the migrants have been savaged, and the land and jobs available are not enough to satisfy them all.
To reconcile these internal difficulties a conference shall be held between the Belgian leadership of the army and company's one on hand, and the native oligarchs and officers on the other to see if a viable solution can be worked out. On the Belgian side the question is that of security and property: they wish to maintain the full roster of legal rights granted to them by belgian law, to keep their property and company concessions, and for a Belgian “veto” in the national government to ensure that Belgian rights are not trampled by some future populist government. On the CONAKAT side is a desire to renegotiate the terms of the “social contract”: to ensure a majority native voice in government which cannot be overruled by Belgian privilege, greater native ownership of property and the full abolition of any legal barriers to their advancement. However both sides are united in seeking stability and in their distrust of the congolese “masses”. Those masses are not without a voice themselves: through labor unions, dissident political parties and new officer associations the experience of warfare has made the people politically aware. If the result of the conference does not give some bones to the people it may find that its support is far too narrow to be stable.
Union Minière, once the undisputed master of the Katanga economy, has declined somewhat under German overlordship. With a majority of its shares owned by the Belgian state and its former leadership fleeing to America after the end of the war its foundations were shaky. When Krogmann began the great sell off and rescinded the Belgian Congo’s autonomy the company found itself in yet more hot water. Transitioning to a locally owned company within Zentralafrika itself the Union has been forced to cut back on its paternalistic spending to make ends meet. Beyond the typical demands for labor rights and wage increases the Kantaga people also wish for a return to the housing, education and social protection once afforded by the leviathan. With its place in Katanga once again secure this may just be possible.
A successful conference will be one of compromise. For the people a number of social protections and laws will be promised: greater state funding to education, hospitals, and housing will be promised, along with a hike in wages. In order to afford this the belgians will need to accept their privileged economic position comes with a responsibility to fund the state which protects it: though direct taxes may be a bridge too far a system of expected “gifts” and an expansion of the old paternalism into state guided policy may work out. In return for their material contributions the Belgians will receive legal autonomy, organizing their own political parties and keeping their land. The native oligarchs meanwhile would take the national stage, being granted privileged places within the Katanga economy as well as using CONAKAT as their vehicle for political dominance. Concessions and compromises such as these require that all parties trust the other to keep up their end of the bargain, and not simply alter the deal when they feel they are able. And in the aftermath of a brutal civil war and a political culture of corruption such trust is very hard to come by. But if these difficulties are overcome, and Jean Schramme is kept mollified, the new State of Katanga will be ruled as a collaborative oligarchy, keeping real representation out of the hands of the people and wealth in the hands of a few, but also a relatively stable and moderate government which is willing to compromise when need be. Unless it is a question of distrusted ethnic groups attempting to secede from the state or restart Congolese unification, in which case the Katanga Gendarmerie will be the only answer given.
But what if this conference does not succeed? What if the protests outside become too large, or the sides are too inflexible, or if Jean Schramme believes the rights of Belgians are being sold too cheaply? Then the Rule of Fire will come back and those with the force to crush their opposition will prevail. And in Katanga that can only mean one thing: Schramme and his allies will stage a coup, placing themselves in charge once again as an emergency government. Those unwilling to ally with him will be dismissed, replaced with those who are. The new mission of the state is the protection of “Belgian civilization” in Katanga, with Schramme attempting to revive the old trinity of Church, State and Company under his guiding hand. He never truly wanted to be in this position: he would much rather simply go back to his plantation and be master of his own little world. But he belives that his new homeland calls out for leadership and guts it seems only he can provide, and so he will seek to lead it into the future he envisions. One where the Congo natives are grateful and subservient to their betters, where all the structures of the trinity are led by Europeans to the benefit of all. Of course most of the natives have very different ideas about what the future should look like, and so Schremma’s Katanga will immediately be thrown into a bush war as the old civil war factions reform as guerrilla movements seeking to topple his dictatorship. The profits of Katanga are vast, especially if one is willing to sell uranium to anyone willing to buy, but how long will money and determination be able to hold against the will of the people?
At a stretch the white population of Katanga is 100,000, while the total african population is somewhere north of 1.5 million. This is before one considers the increasing populations of the Luba Empire and the eternal frontier of the Eastern Congo. And then there is the highly likely presence of hostile regimes on the borders: all the money in the world cannot win Schramme this Bush War, and he will either need to swallow his pride and accept democratization for the natives or accept the return of the Reich as suzerain. And even that may not be enough to avoid the rage of a people betrayed.

submitted by Johnny_Boy398 to TNOmod [link] [comments]

2023.06.06 14:41 Intel81994 Crypto Ruined My Career/Life - Why I Became ANTI Crypto

Crypto user since 2014, not a noob. Started working in crypto in 2021 professionally - as in PIVOTED career to industry.
Worked for a major financial publishing firm (publicly traded, won't name) covering crypto for investment research.
Got most of my savings hacked via a crazy computer intrusion, Feds got involved, couldn't help, mental health went to complete shit, VERY dark days, almost 6 figures stolen.
Found out it was a vulnerability in a certain wallet that led to a data breach of my computer (not phishing like usual butters get hacked), but the amount stolen is apparently too small for attorneys to even take the case or try to prove.
To this day, no updates on the funds from the Feds.
Had heavy depression and even more fucked up at times. As you can imagine, if someone like me who is sophisticated can get hacked and completely lose it all with ZERO recourse, this ruined my entire idea of the industry and thereby fucked my career up mentally as I could hardly work without having PTSD.
I was in hell, had to sell my car to survive and pay rent. Fuck crypto.
Then, 2022 happened. Luckily I was too fucked up to buy any crypto since 2021 so I stayed out of the market with any buys. The people in my firm kept shilling crypto and buying themselves. Lol
Voyager went belly up, lost more there that I had stored. They lied about FDIC insurance. Luckily avoided FTX save for $500 dollars worth. Now saw the Atomic wallet hack this weekend... sad but obvious it was bound to happen. Many more such hacks coming.
Butters don't realize that with how fast AI and computing is advancing, there is NO guarantee that even hardware wallets won't get hacked one day. Sure, forensics for hacks get better, but hackers now are state actors and they will also advance.
Butters love to preach about self custody but that's not realistic for anyone in the real world as we know.
To prevent my hack I would literally have had to have a compsci PhD from Stanford and then cybersecurity training. What the fuck?
And these clowns want mass adoption and grandma to put her 401k into self custody crypto? There is a reason we use custodians, with armed guards, and insurance, and regulation.
Then, lost my job in the industry 3 months ago due to the market being shit and rate hikes. Saw it coming. But I didn't realize that being affiliated with crypto must be some sort of black mark on my resume?
Tech industry feels bad for me, finance industry thinks it's a cute joke. Worse than being affiliated with Lehman Brothers or working in porn industry.
No one thinks that there is a serious career risk/political risk/person risk of working in crypto industry. It's clear where things are heading. DOJ charges against Binance next. I interviewed with Binance last year when I was applying around. Also with Coinbase.
Can’t take the risk now. Unfortunately looks like industry US stateside has contracted sharply due to macro, layoffs likely to get worse, regulatory pressures - have to pivot industries in this economic environment.
Glad it’s getting regulated out and I plan to actively encourage regulators to ban it and speak out against it due to the lives it ruins.
Firmly believe crypto is mostly useless now except for crimes and actually it’s a major security risk for everyone / national security. Imagine if people across the country get mass hacked what that does for society.
Crypto has caused more harm than it's ever helped anyone. Speculation is net negative for society.
I don't know what to do to get my funds back since it's been over 1.5 yrs, this vulnerability was covered in the press so I could try to ask the wallet company to compensate my 75K + the 15K I spent in therapy from being so fucked up over it.
Applying to MBA programs, deadlines are 3 months away, I have no job atm, savings dwindling, have to pivot industries to survive, if I somehow land a crypto role now I would probably get laid off again because rates are staying higher for longer and I believe more dominoes will continue to fall for a while, and I can't afford another layoff anytime soon, due to the hack.
Honestly at this point you have to be mentally ill to work in crypto or keep buying it. UST's yielding almost 6%, corporate bonds almost 12%, not to mention the capital gains in bonds one can get when rates drop.... why would you keep buying crypto? Lol
Oh not to mention your bonds won't get hacked. And if they do, you're insured.
FUCK CRYPTO. I'll start by writing to my congressmen about my experience and hope they can legislate further against this shitstain of an industry.
I don't care what I have to do, if it's get the press to talk about my hack, or get CFPB to act, or DOJ. I don't give a shit.
I went to a top public US uni, am extremely hard working and sharp, and there is no reason I should be in this position in my late 20s due to this retarded industry full of grifters and criminals.
P.s. To NFT grifters or influencers making shitcoins to rug people: AI (decr. cost of compute, labor) + advancing forensics/ KYC + immutable public ledger aka blockchain will make it possible to retroactively charge criminals for billions of years. Most low IQ move ever. Better to raise $ off the blockchain and flee to Dubai.
Ironically, to commit crypto crime today, you have to be so bearish on tech/ the future to think you won't ever get caught. Definition of spazzed out short term thinking TikTok brain.

submitted by Intel81994 to Buttcoin [link] [comments]

2023.06.06 14:36 Dismal-Jellyfish SEC Charges Coinbase for Operating as an Unregistered Securities Exchange, Broker, and Clearing Agency. Coinbase also charged for the unregistered offer and sale of securities in connection with its staking-as-a-service program.

SEC Charges Coinbase for Operating as an Unregistered Securities Exchange, Broker, and Clearing Agency. Coinbase also charged for the unregistered offer and sale of securities in connection with its staking-as-a-service program.

https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2023/comp-pr2023-102.pdf

Press Release:

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Coinbase, Inc. with operating its crypto asset trading platform as an unregistered national securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency. The SEC also charged Coinbase for failing to register the offer and sale of its crypto asset staking-as-a-service program.
Unregistered Exchange, Broker, and Clearing Agency
According to the SEC’s complaint, since at least 2019, Coinbase has made billions of dollars unlawfully facilitating the buying and selling of crypto asset securities. The SEC alleges that Coinbase intertwines the traditional services of an exchange, broker, and clearing agency without having registered any of those functions with the Commission as required by law. Through these unregistered services, Coinbase allegedly:
Provides a marketplace and brings together the orders for securities of multiple buyers and sellers using established, non-discretionary methods under which such orders interact;
Engages in the business of effecting securities transactions for the accounts of Coinbase customers; and
Provides facilities for comparison of data respecting the terms of settlement of crypto asset securities transactions, serves as an intermediary in settling transactions in crypto asset securities by Coinbase customers, and acts as a securities depository.
As alleged in the SEC’s complaint, Coinbase’s failure to register has deprived investors of significant protections, including inspection by the SEC, recordkeeping requirements, and safeguards against conflicts of interest, among others.
The SEC’s complaint also alleges that Coinbase’s holding company, Coinbase Global Inc. (CGI), is a control person of Coinbase and is thus also liable for certain of Coinbase’s violations.
Unregistered Offer and Sale of Securities in Connection with Staking-as-a-Service Program
The SEC alleges that, since 2019, Coinbase has been engaging in an unregistered securities offering through its staking-as-a-service program, which allows customers to earn profits from the “proof of stake” mechanisms of certain blockchains and Coinbase’s efforts. Through this staking program, Coinbase allegedly pools each type of customers’ stakeable crypto assets, stakes the pool to perform blockchain transaction validation services, and provides a portion of the rewards generated from this work to its customers whose assets were part of the pool. Coinbase failed to register its offers and sales of this staking program as required by law.
“We allege that Coinbase, despite being subject to the securities laws, commingled and unlawfully offered exchange, broker-dealer, and clearinghouse functions,” said SEC Chair Gary Gensler. “In other parts of our securities markets, these functions are separate. Coinbase’s alleged failures deprive investors of critical protections, including rulebooks that prevent fraud and manipulation, proper disclosure, safeguards against conflicts of interest, and routine inspection by the SEC. Further, as we allege, Coinbase never registered its staking-as-a-service program as required by the securities laws, again depriving investors of critical disclosure and other protections.”
"You simply can’t ignore the rules because you don’t like them or because you’d prefer different ones: the consequences for the investing public are far too great,” said Gurbir S. Grewal, Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. "As alleged in our complaint, Coinbase was fully aware of the applicability of the federal securities laws to its business activities, but deliberately refused to follow them. While Coinbase’s calculated decisions may have allowed it to earn billions, it’s done so at the expense of investors by depriving them of the protections to which they are entitled. Today’s action seeks to hold Coinbase accountable for its choices.”
The SEC’s complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges that Coinbase and CGI violated certain registration provisions of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and that Coinbase violated the securities offering registration provisions of the Securities Act of 1933. The complaint seeks injunctive relief, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains plus interest, penalties, and other equitable relief.
The SEC’s investigation was conducted by Serafima McTigue, Erin E. Wilk, Amy Mayer, Joy Guo, Elizabeth Goody, and Derek Kleinmann of the Division of Enforcement’s Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit, with the assistance of Ellen Chen of the San Francisco Regional Office. It was supervised by Steven Buchholz, Jorge G. Tenreiro, and David Hirsch of the Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit, as well as Danielle Voorhees, Nicholas Heinke, and Jason Burt of the Denver Regional Office. The SEC’s litigation will be conducted by Nick Margida, Peter Mancuso, and Ben Kuruvilla and supervised by Ladan Stewart, Jorge G. Tenreiro, and Olivia Choe.
The SEC appreciates the assistance of the multi-state task force of ten state securities regulators led by California that also includes Alabama, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, South Carolina, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.

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2023.06.06 14:25 SepticSauces Blue Roses: Non-Sapient Predatory Introduction! [17]

A special thanks to u/SpacePaladin15 for the fantastical universe.
Have a really long chapter!
Forgot to say it has been a while. Hope you're all doing well!
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Memory transcription subject: Jaxton, son of a humble sheep farmer
Date [standardized human time]: October 11th, 2136
If someone asked me years ago how many people would travel the globe just to see me. My answer would have been three; my father, my mother, and Dex Mason. My mother and father would have been simply obligated to do so, as I was their son, and I would have done the same thing. Dex was my best friend when I went to middle school in America, and he stayed my best friend when I went back to Wales, going back to Atlanta for many vacations.
What can I say? He had a nice collection of guns, and his general cheerful attitude made many people optimistic, so a day on the range with him led to the both of us being happier.
Then you add in Dex’s older and younger brothers, our mutual friend John Dillinger, and then you have a recipe for a fun time; guns, video games, hiking, and the occasional sheep herding if they ever come to my home: It’s a blast!
An alien porcupine though… I honestly never expected that I would ever in my honest-to-God lifetime, have such an impact on someone before. We barely knew each other for even a few minutes, yet she to my knowledge was merely some sad Gojid that was struggling with depression and loss. All I did was walk in and comfort her, or well, that’s how I saw it.
I still feel like an absolute idiot for forgetting about what I told her. It wasn’t a promise, but based on the implication of how I said it. It may as well have been a declaration to see the girl a few hours later, or however long it took her to get ready.
Now, speaking of Barlim, it’s been a few minutes since she arrived at my doorway at the most unexpected of times. I had her sitting in our living room on our couch. The Gojid, or Gojya, that I had to have explained to me, had her arms wrapped around one of our decorative pillows. She was giving squeezes every few seconds depending on how she felt, and if she was really giving it a firm squeeze, I’d reach over and stroke the top of her head. Barlim seemed to relax every time I did this.
“You holding up better?” Barlim appeared to be holding up better: No longer sobbing out tears from her eyes, or having mucus running from her nostrils.
She merely sniffed weakly for a second, nuzzling into my hand. If I had to admit, I had no idea if I was performing some massive social taboo by patting her like an animal, but if she wasn’t going to complain, neither was I. I mean, I already poked myself twice more! “I’m feeling much better. Sorry for intruding…”
“Don’t be,” I said while holding back a small laugh. “Are you feeling better enough to talk now?” Barlim’s ears flicked in response, and then she nodded in response upon realizing I didn’t know what those ear flicks meant. “Good.”
“Hey, I would just like to apologize for how I acted,” my mother started before I had the chance to speak. “It’s just that I’ve seen on the news and read of murderous xenophobic aliens…-”
“It’s fine,” Barlim let out the most adorable-sounding chittering noise I have ever heard. It sounded as if a porcupine was, well, laughing! “I would not have reacted much differently… Three days ago?” At least she could make fun of herself for how she acted. Her ears gave a few flicks, gesturing towards amusement or self-depreciation if I had to guess. They burned bright blue.
My father took a minute to stand up and walk over to Barlim. She only fidgeted a little bit, but not much when he reached out to her with one hand. “Jameson, again, it’s been pleasant to meet you so far.” The man’s hand hung in the air for several seconds. Barlim eyeing it up with what had to be a quizzical expression. “You’re supposed to grab it and firmly shake it,” my father eventually grunted.
“Oh!” That seemed to snap Barlim out of her stupor. She reached forward in kind with one paw, clasping her surprisingly big paw around my father’s hand, which he shook. The Gojid seemed to have a fair understanding of the action after a few seconds, at which point the handshake ended and my father returned to his seat.
A brief, quiet pause occupied the four of us before there was more knocking at the front door. “Oh, uh, that may be the rest of my friends. I sort of forgot about them when I realized we were so close.” The tips of Barlim’s ears turned a delicate shade of blue. She started to get up, but with a firm palm on the top of her head, I held her down, gently.
“You traveled a long way. Let me get the door,” I state and get up from the couch. My knees and back stretch, giving a satisfactory series of pops before I work my way to the front door. I decide against grabbing the mask, assuming that Barlim’s friends have gotten quite used to the infamous human binocular stare. When I open it, I see a rather eclectic group of individuals, some familiar and some not.
“Arwen, Trivi, Tova, and I take it Barlim’s friends.” Arwen and Trivi issue some friendly waves. Tova has her forearms clasped around Arwen’s neck from behind, jaw resting on the redhead’s shoulders. Her eyes are puffy and orange. It was pretty easy to assume what she had been going through. Meanwhile, the other three flick their ears and tails in a way that was most likely a greeting, but that was just me making an inference based on this being our first interaction, and them not giving waves in greeting.
I really need to learn Gojid and Venlil body language.
“Just delivering the rest of that one Gojid’s friends.” Arwen’s tone was the general cheerful tone it always was. She briefly stepped back from the door and swung an arm to the side, pointing to the three aliens behind her, doing so while under the weight of Tova.
“Barlim,” one of the Gojid said to Arwen. “My name is Pragh,” she then pointed over to another Gojid, “That’s Tack, and,” she indicated to the final Gojid, “That is Telg.” Again, the other two Gojid gave very similar flicks of the ears when they glanced at me with one of their eyes. “I take it you’re Jaxton?”
I couldn’t resist the urge to curl my lips upwards in a smile. The three Gojid didn’t flinch when I exposed my teeth, for which I was grateful. I really didn’t feel like bowing to more people than I needed to at the moment, having not gotten a particularly great amount of sleep last night was not a wise idea. “You’d be correct. It seems I’m the popular man of the hour. What can I do for you all?”
“Well, Tack and I were simply following Barlim, so we were going to stay with her until the UN or whoever really controls the whole Gojid refugee camp situation comes looking for us-”
I cut off Pragh with an amused tone. “So let me get this straight. You wanna come and mooch off my family for a bit because you have nowhere to stay at the moment?” I hold my tongue for just the slightest second, letting Gojid raise up her paws defensively. Even Arwen’s eyes widen briefly at what I just said.
“That’s not-” Pragh doesn’t speak for long before I dismissively wave my hand.
“I’m joking, yes, I’m sure my parents will allow you to stay for a bit, but you’ll have to clean up after yourselves, and all that stuff.” I lean up against the doorframe. “Ok though, jokes aside, what do you all want?”
Pragh rubbed her paws over her blue ears. “Yes, well, you did sort of hit one of them. I will admit, there was very little planning other than we’re going to Wales on our part. You don’t have to worry about Telg though.”
“I scored myself a date! Hah!~ So, I will be going back to Georgia in about an hour or two.” The Gojid paused, popped open one of the pockets on his hoodie, and took a peek inside at a slip of paper he pulled out. “Two hours, yeah, I have about an hour to spend here. So you and Tack are going to stay here?”
Pragh nodded to Telg’s words. “Yep, someone has to make sure Barlim continues to be a responsible Gojid. Also, I still have more research to do over the internet-”
“Ah yes, research, Pragh, research, am I right?~”
“No! Not that! I’m not going to be looking up that!”
The two male Gojid couldn’t help but hold back giggles and chitters, making me feel as if I was missing some sort of- Oh. The second it clicked for me, I just let out a long, slow sigh. “Please, let me just say that humanity is probably not whatever you found. Factory farms are a thing of the past.” Apparently, I was wrong, for the other two Gojid started laughing more uproariously, “Ok, I’m wrong it seems…” The gears proceeds to click a second time after realizing it was something a lot more bawdy than damning. I opened my mouth to say something but quickly realized that I wouldn’t have anything to follow up on if one of them decided to make any sort of accusation, so I quickly shut my plan to speak about that down. “How about you all just come inside now? Your friend Barlim already came by, and I’m pretty sure you all would like a break from your adventure.”
“Actually, Trvi and I were going to take Tova to my home. Might take her to the hospital if Quilix has calmed down. God, I wished they transported him to Ysbyty Gwynedd, but no. He had a freakout and had to be moved to London.”
“It’s all my fault…” The dark venlil whined.
Arwen’s hand managed to work its way between Tova’s ears, giving a few scritches. Scritches that Tova nuzzled into. “Come on you big, big venlil. I know you’re upset. Just, hang in there for a little while longer. I’m sure Quilix will come around. Let’s take you home, see ya Jaxton!” Arwen waved and carried the venlil toward the parked taxi in front of my house. Well, carried was a generous term for half-carry/half-assisted in guiding toward the car.
Trivi followed seconds later, giving his own bye and wave. “Tell your mother and father I said hi, see you tomorrow!” And with that, the blonde venlil scampered off, following after his human lover.
This left me with the three other hedgehog-looking aliens standing awkwardly in front of my door. They looked amongst themselves, thinking about saying something.
Wait, someone’s missing…
“Arf! Arf!”
The three Gojid who looked like they were about to say something all jumped about a foot in the air when Lacey came bounding through them, running straight past me into my home. “Oh, Lacey! Welcome ho- Oh, and ignored.” I shake my head upon hearing the following oof that comes from my father. Lacey must’ve claimed my father’s lap as her seat. “Well, if you want to come inside and meet the rest of my family. Come right on in.”
The next few minutes are filled with more pleasantries being exchanged. The Gojid all take their place on the couch, somehow managing to fit four of them on a couch meant for three. I end up choosing to stand by my father, who gently strokes Lacey across her back. The border collie panting jovially, looking back and forth between us and our alien guest, giving the occasional bark to beg for more attention.
The Gojid guests seem calm for the most part, sitting on that couch, but it is quite clear that the dog makes them uncomfortable since they flinch every time Lacey either makes a noise or stares at them with those heterochromatic eyes. “Not a fan of dogs, are you?” My father breaks the silence once it starts up again.
“I didn’t like…” Pragh started but stopped seconds later. “Listen, I believe you know why most Federation species don’t like humans, right?” Pragh’s words earned an affirmative grunt from my father. My mother and I nodded too. “Well, you’re all sapient and in control of your hunting instincts…” I raised my eyebrow at that but chose to say nothing. “That dog though-”
My father raised a hand, telling Praph to stop speaking for a moment. “I am going to have to stop you right there. Firstly, humans don’t, or we believe don’t have hunting instincts, and secondly, Lacey is a good girl that has harmed no person before, human or alien. I can assure you, as well as Quilix, Trivi, and Tova, that Lacey wouldn’t harm any of you, your pups, or anything else you will be worried about.”
Those few calmly spoken, but sternly voiced words are enough to calm the four Gojid down a fair amount. While I can’t see their muscles under their fur all that well, I can safely assume that their muscles grew lax at such information. Maybe we can do more to ease them around the dog while they’re here?
With an idea springing to mind, I take a few steps over to our old wooden hall tree. It is adorned with a few coats and hats, but what I am interested in is blue colored, six feet long rope of dog leash. The second it makes the lightest noise, Lacey is bolting toward me. “Eistedd!” The dog swiftly responds to the command: Hind quarters hitting the ground the second the word leaves my lips. I reach down and stroke the top of the dog’s head with one hand, getting a jovial arf out of her. “Merch dda, merch dda.~” I give the dog’s head a little bit more tender love with my palm and fingers before attaching the leash.
“Cefn.” I keep my voice low, coaxing Lacey into walking toward the couch.
The four Gojid, three of which have probably spent some time outside with the dog, all had a similar reaction when the dog came over: Paws came up off the ground, retracting safely onto the cushions above. It wasn’t really out of the border collie’s reach, but it was clearly instinctual-driven or propaganda-driven fear. “No need to be afraid, she won’t bite you - eistedd.” True to my words, Lacey gets close, sniffing along the edge of the sofa, but not jumping up onto the furniture.
“I see you’ve been practicing, Jaxton. You showing off for the guest?” My dad jokes.
“Hey, I don’t really get a good chance to speak Welsh. Dam- Darn it, really should’ve paid more attention in school. Might go get some lessons so I’m not part of the ten percent that can’t speak it. All I can do is shepherd a dog around, ask for the bathroom, a beer, where am I, and a few other things.” It’s hard not to let out a disappointed sigh. “I need to get off my backside and stop being so lazy.” I pause for one small moment. “And that probably translated for all of them to their native tongue. Doesn’t matter if I say it in English, Welsh, or honestly, Mandarin.”
My old man grins and laughs, leaning his back into the old rocking chair he claimed. My attention returns back to the dog, the fearful porcupine, and three scared hedgehogs.
The first one to reach out if I recall his name is Tack. The Gojid’s claws lightly brush the top of Lacey’s head in a tepid fashion. The dog stares back up at the curious paw; not growling, barking, yipping, biting, or making any sort of fuss that could freak out the apprehensive Gojid. Slowly, Lacey’s tail beings to wag as the curious touching continues for a few seconds. “Is that normal?”
“Mhm… Yes, dogs’ tails wag when they are happy. If she was really happy, she’d jump on you and start licking your face.”
The four Gojid recoiled with what looked like disgust: The thought of a predator’s maw all over their face, tasting them as if they were her next meal was probably what was coursing through their minds. “I think… That’s something I wouldn’t like from a non-sapient creature.” Telg adds in.
He says he doesn’t want it from a non-sapient, but what about a sapient? Oh, what wonderful thoughts this one has. I internally joked.
Both my father and mother let out an audible cough at Telg’s… Well, it could’ve been an indecent statement, or maybe licking was a sign of greeting? There was no way for me to know with my lack of knowledge of Gojid customs.
God damn; Gojid customs, language, body language, and Welsh! That was leaving out Venlil ear and tail signals as well! Too much to learn.
With a gentle nudge, I guide Lacey down the bottom of the couch, letting each Gojid get about a minute or two of bonding time with the goodest of girls. It’s only been a few minutes, but the four could be easily seen relaxing: Tack and Telg are both confident enough to let their paws touch the floor again.
From fearful of anything that ate meat their entire life to sort of fearfully allowing a dog to sniff them, or them to touch a dog, must be leaps and bounds beyond possibility months ago.
“So, you all more comfortable around dogs?”
I get a non-varied amount of reactions: All of them positive to a minor degree, but none are negative or super positive. “Good.”
With such a positive, or well, lacking in a negative reaction from our alien guests. I reach down and unhook the canine’s restraint. No one flinches and Lacey continues to sit for about another few seconds before lazily pacing around the front of the couch, sniffing at paws for some more time before retreating back beside my father’s feet.
“So… What’s the history between humans and dogs?” Pragh was the one that shot this question. One is no doubt born from the fact that we probably allowed a non-sapient predator into our home.
Well, if I was using their logic, of course: I wouldn’t be surprised if it came from ‘Wouldn’t predators eliminate the competition?’ if I had to guess.
“The history involving our canine companions is long and complex.” I reach behind my head to adust my blonde ponytail, tightening up the black band to keep my hair from falling in front of my face. “Most domesticated dogs you’ll see; German shepherds, border collies, Australian shepherds, golden retrievers, and on and on the list goes. I believe there are hundreds of breeds, but that is another tangent we can go on another date. What you’re more interested in is the history, as you have asked.”
I took a few steps around toward the front of the couch, using this new position to project my voice onto my alien audience. My parents had already heard this story a few times when they spoke with one of our dog breeders.
“It all started roughly speaking, thirty-thousand years ago.” I paused, totally for dramatic effect, but to also allow the Gojid to digest this fair-sized crumb of information. “Our competitor, an antagonizing species of persistent pack predators with a strong social bond, the wolf, would often invade human territories, and vice versa. You see, humans and wolves aren’t too dissimilar. We’re both highly social species, pursuit pack predators as I have heard, emotionally intelligent, highly adaptive, strong parental connections, and good communication skills. I can go into specific details another time, but those are some of the big traits we share. I’d say that the large preference for having a social structure coupled with good communication skills on both sides were the two assets that helped the most. Emotional intelligence and actual intelligence would probably be third and fourth. Dogs and wolves can be pretty smart.”
I take a moment again, allowing my audience to follow along with what I am saying, waiting to see if any of them have a question. “So due to these similarities, humans and these wolves cross species’ barriers?” The bipedal porcupine opined.
I nod to Barlim’s question. “Very close, but not quite.” I take a moment to swing a pointing finger down to Lacey. “I mean, as much as I love Lacey. I don’t see a dog diplomat coming through any time soon to argue for their sapience let alone an alliance.” I then straighten my posture back up, holding back a small laugh by letting a grin stretch across my lips. “It was more along the lines of wolves were desperate for food, and they’d feed off the scraps we humans left behind. This would go on for some time with the braver or more docile canines being allowed to slowly integrate with human society.”
“But they’re eating your scraps and food, but what do they do for you? Other than herd sheep? It just seems like your competition is swooping your food from under your nose, but… You’re not complaining at all.” Pragh was the one to ask that question.
Called it!
“These proto-dogs had many purposes! Just look at Lacey and you can probably see what she has that is superior to a human. Tell me what traits you can see.”
I give the four Gojid some time to look over the dog. They eventually look like they all have something to say, so I slide down the line of them; Pragh, Telg, Tack, and then finally Barlim.
“A better sense of smell to hunt for prey you can’t see?” Pragh opined.“Better hearing for locating threats?” Telg questioned.
“Sharp teeth and claws for fighting off other humans.” Tack would state rather confidently.
“To form an emotional connection with and to not feel lonely?” Barlim tilted her head to the side, giving the dog another look.
I let them stew over their answers for about thirty seconds to discuss amongst themselves. Needless to say, I was kind of shocked, but also not by Barlim’s answer. Maybe my time spent with her gave me some subconscious understanding of her mentality? The other Gojid all looked at her, so I assume her different answer probably made something click amongst all of them.
“Well, to answer your questions; yes, yes, yes, and yes. You’re all correct. Some may say that the first three are probably the priority.” This statement earns a chitter from the four Gojid occupying the couch. “But I like to have hope for that last one: When you’re by yourself. The world is a scary place after all. It’s best not to be alone. I believe you all have herds? Well, we humans have families, tribes, or nations, depending on how deep you wish to look into it, and yes, dogs can be a part of a human family. Family cares not from where the blood comes.”
“Quick question and not to side-track the conversation too far, but I was told by my date that humans dislike being called predators. Is that true here too, or was that a dialect or cultural thing?” Telg was the one throwing this question.
“It is that way here too. When humans refer to other humans as predators, it is because that other human is a gross pervert that does horrific, deviant, and sexual things toward other people, animals, or in this case now that aliens exist, aliens, so I would refrain from calling humans predators unless you personally know the individual and they are ok with it. That being said, humans define predator as more of a relationship adjective when between animals. A deer is a predator to plants as a wolf is a predator to a deer. It is the relationship of consumption rather than dietary traits.” I finish off my statement with a nod.
“Well… If you don’t mind me referring you to as a predator for one statement…” Telg droned on.
I take a brief glance over toward my parents. My dad gives me a nonchalant shrug. My gaze returns back to Telg. “Go ahead and shoot your question or statement at me.”
The four Gojid look stunned for a moment, off-put by something I said-
Oh, don’t tell me ‘shoot’ was predatory… Probably was.
“Just… throw out your question.”
“It was more of a statement, actually, but anyways. Family cares not from where the blood comes, has to be one of the most herd-like statement I have heard from a predator.”
Did he really just say that?
He really did, but I can’t fault him. From his point of view, he’s been spun so many times that up is down, and left is right.
I shake my head, lowering it. A small chuckle slipping from between my lips. I could even hear my mother and father laughing behind me a few seconds later.
“Was what I said really that funny?”
“No, just the logic behind it is kinda funny. Like I said, humans don’t normally refer to ourselves as predators, and this whole alien thing is kind of new to me.” My words carried upon by a light tone earns some laughs as well from our Gojid guests.
I clap my hands together, signaling the end of our little tangent. “Now, if I may resume my, if I do say so myself, informative explanation… The proto-dogs seamlessly integrated into our small tribes at the time; they could track threats and prey miles before we were even aware of them, they could hear the smallest sounds and alert us of their dangers. Moreover, their sharp teeth and claws served as deterrents against other threats such as large carnivores, food-stealing rodents, or hostile human forces. Additionally, their companionship provided solace to lonely humans. As you can see,” I pointed back to Lacey, who was having her back rubbed by my father’s sock-covered foot, “Lacey seems to be enjoying herself quite nicely, but so is my father. In short, interacting with dogs triggers the release of feel-good chemicals in both human and canine brains. Activities such as petting, snuggling, and playing contribute to this positive bond."
Again, I pause, giving everyone some time to follow along. “Thus, they’d impact our evolution and vice versa: Humans that had dogs in their tribes were more successful than tribes without dogs. Humans that bonded more effectively with their canine companions would get even farther. As millennia went by, humans would get better at reading dog expressions, and dogs would get better at reading human expressions.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone. I typed into it for a bit until an old photo of a wolf showed up. I turned my phone’s screen toward the four Gojid. “Here you can see a wolf. They aren’t extinct due to some wildlife restoration efforts, but we had a few close calls. Wolves are extinct in the UK and Ireland as of now, but not in North America, Europe, or Asia. What you see before you are what thirty-thousand years of evolution has done to us.”
Based on the look that the Gojid were giving me. I would guess it was along the lines of wow.
“Now, before you start asking more questions. I should let you know that humanity has not only domesticated one carnivorous species, but a few others as well; some birds of prey like falcons, felines, and mustelidae such as ferrets. Meanwhile, on the herbivorous side, we have horses, elephants, rabbits, and so on. Yeah, it’s quite a long list. Means more animals for us to pet and touch. Humans can bond with just about anything, even non-living things, but that’s a story for another time.”.
I perform a small stretch, feeling my back pop. A small break in the monotony of speaking for so long.
“Now, to go back to the human-dog bond. I should remind myself to tell you the story of Gelert. It’s quite a sad story, but bear with me for just a moment.”
I clear my throat, getting ready to speak out an old Welsh folklore myth.
“A long time ago, a prince of North Wales by the name of Llywelyn went out hunting without his trusty dog, Gelert. He’d return home later that day to see Gelert, covered in blood, jovially returning to him. This freaked out the prince, who rushed to his son’s crib, finding it knocked over and messy with blood. He feared that the dog had killed his son and immediately plunged his sword into the dog’s side.” The four Gojid wince at the description, having just been told of the forged bond I have described moments ago. “The dog’s pained cry heralds the cry of the prince’s infant son, who lay on the other side, protected from a slain wolf. Gelert had valiant fought to protect Llywelyn’s son from the wolf, and in so was rewarded with a blade through its heart! A tragic tale to discourage impulsive thoughts and rash rushes to judgment. It was said that the prince buried Gelert and never smiled again.”
I never considered myself a great storyteller, but somehow I managed to get the four Gojid all teary-eyed. Barlim was rubbing at her eyes once again, and so was Tack too.
“H-how could he have done that to the dog..?” Barlim’s meek voice trailed off.
“Well, as said, Llywelyn thought Gelert killed his son. It was a rash decision. This moral folklore is supposed to warn against such tragedies, speaking of which, isn’t there an extermination fleet heading this way?”
While I may have been speaking for so long, having taken all our attention away from the potential destruction of Earth, or the general mopey attitude that came from meeting Tova. It probably was wise to bring up the fact that armageddon was on its way to Earth.
The four Gojid just sort of looked down sheepishly at the ground or flicked their ears in a way that probably meant the same thing. I didn’t really mean to put them on the spot like that, considering it was some of their former allies committing this attack, but I guess that’s just how the cookie crumbles sometimes.
“I think I can speak for all of us here that we don’t-” Telg was interrupted by my father.
“We don’t blame you, or at least I can attest to myself, my son, and my wife over here. One day, assuming we survive this looming catastrophe. There will be regret, followed by hope, and then love and compassion once again. Though, I don’t think that’s what my son was hinting toward, more over the fact that your allies are about to make a rash decision they don’t understand. Probably one you would have made years ago, but that doesn’t really matter here, or there. We live in the now, and I think it’s time we started stocking up on some goods for our cellar. Well, we got goods actually, and a couple of guns too, but nothing fancy like the Americans and all their machine guns. A .30-30 lever action, an old .44 revolver, a twelve gauge shotgun, and a .22 hunting rifle. Nothing fancy,” he shrugs and grunts. “I’m more worried about my sheep. The best we can do is pray they don’t shoot the barn.”
There’s a brief silence as the seven of us come down from the long monologue that was dispersed between moments of questionnaires. I rub one of my eyes, stretching my jaw open wide in a hand-covered yawn.
How long have by been talking?
“Sprak! I gotta go or I am going to miss my flight!” Telg clamors, quickly hopping off the couch. He quickly taps at his phone with his claws, making his way toward the front door. “See you guys later, and thanks for letting us stay! Yes, I know how to call a taxi!” He opens the door and bolts outside. At least had the manners to close it back without slamming it.
This left us with three Gojid!
“Well,” my mother stood up from her chair. “I’m certain you’re all hungry after such a long adventure, and Telg is probably too, but he’s gone already. Let me see if I can make you all something to eat…” She hesitates for a second before continuing. “Nothing with meat or animal products in it. Just vegetables and fruit,” she iterates before walking off to the kitchen, leaving my father and I with the three Gojid.
You know, that leaves one important question that’s been on my mind. One that I had asked Barlim, but have been quickly distracted by her onslaught of sudden tears due to my forgetful nature. “A quick question if I may have your attention.”
The three Gojid turned their attention toward me, looking at me as they awaited my question
“How the hell did you all get here?”
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