Sup folks.
I was just wondering how many others have their bikes parked outside throughout the season - for all the people who don't have a garage or anything?
Is it fine to have the bike outside under the seasonal rain, etc.? (presuming you ride it throughout the season)

Hello everyone. My phone must be on auto updates somehow - because now I'm on Android 13. I found this out because today when I went to enter split screen, it's a very different experience. Now the two windows are very rounded and have blank space between them - which takes up valuable screen space. My biggest problem however is that now I have to choose the second app from my recently opened apps. On Android 12, I could hit the home button and then choose the second app. To switch apps for the bottom screen, I could hit the home screen again and choose a new app without closing the top screen app. Now when I hit the home button, it closes split screen for both apps! Split screen was useful because I could have YouTube open in the top app, and then switch between different apps on the bottom half of the screen. Now I have to close the split screen with YouTube, open the new app, close the new app, open YouTube again, engage split screen mode again, and then choose the new app. I have to do that every time I want to change the bottom screen app! Long story short - split screen is no longer a useful feature with this update.
Has anyone else had this problem? Does anyone know how to go back to the old split screen functionality? It was actually the best in Android 10 in my opinion. Thank you in advance for any ideas!

I have been planning to use a troop as an enemy in my campaign soon. However I don't quite understand how they interact with certain abilities like attack of opportunity.
I understand that unlike a swarm, which just has one big token, you are supposed to actually use multiple smaller tokens for the troop. I don't think it says anywhere specifically but Form Up implies that they don't have to stay as a square but could shape a line for example, since otherwise forming up would be pointless. Also most troops can be 12 squares, which wouldn't be able to occupy the regular square either way.
Am I right or is there something I am overlooking?
When the Troop uses Form Up, that would mean its individual creatures move. Would this movement provoke attacks of opportunity? It does not have a move trait but I feel if I was playing a fighter and a zombie from a shambler troop just walked away from me to Form Up and I don't get an AoO, that would be a bit strange.

I'm interested in starting space calls in relation to CP. Basically anyone with a twitter account can take part by either listening in or speaking. Someone hosts the call (me in this case) and people can come up to speak about anything cedar point related. It's like a giant zoom call without video. Audio only. They are really fun and I think it would be a cool thing to try out for this community
I just want to get an idea of how many people have twitter accounts but I'm also going to start a poll as well to get a better idea

Hello! My name is Avery Griffith and I am a Junior in high school currently participating in the AP Capstone Program. The research being conducted seeks to answer the question:; How does the content of a self-publisher´s work change in accordance with online amateur criticism? In order to answer this, I am hoping to conduct interviews with self-published authors/ practicing writers in order to receive a personal account of their journey with self-publishing and their relationship with online criticism.
These interviews will now be conducted via email. There is still time to participate! If interested, please fill out the following form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeP0hjp4CCzyJ5xQjnx4ZQM7v7G1HuwaIdAWru4ZNJ3YrIuwA/viewform?usp=sf\_link
Please reach out to me via the email address [email protected] if you are interested or have any questions!
You are HIGHLY encouraged to share this form with anyone else who may be interested!

Please note, this was not written by me, I found this on the internet archive Here. Credit to OP who unfortunately I can not tell who that is.

In the spirit of frugalness while maintaining good dietary healthy, and also the rising topic of meal kits, I am writing this lifehack guide on meal kits gather from my experience for the past years consuming them. Hopefully, it can inspire you and sparks good discussions.
Firstly, a misconception, you don’t have to eat meal kit everyday and order them every week. I usually order the largest box (4 ppl, or 6 ppl for Everyplate) every another week, often takes 1.5 weeks to finish it for 2 ppl. I still shop at colesworths, fresh market and Asian grocers to get extra ingredients I like. The point is that I don’t have to make it a duty to shop for food, there is always enough food at home and I can also cook the food i like in between
For frugalness, a discounted box is actually way cheaper than colesworth with the same ingredients, especially after the inflation by colesworths’ greed. The maximum discount follows these patterns:
HelloFresh: 40% 40% 20% 20%
Everyplate: 40% 40% 40%
Marley spoon: 65% 50% 40% 40% 30% 30%
From the above example, assume that we only order when the discount is larger than 40% and loop only these three services. It would be 9 weeks (40% 40% 40% 40% 40% 65% 50% 40% 40%). Since I skip a week in between, a full cycle is actually 18 weeks. This is long enough for the first company to provide the maximum discount for the new cycle to restart
I believe on some level, it isn’t always about being cheaper. The veggies in these meal kit are fresher than colesworths, at least from the experience of the Sydney distribution centres. I did some observation on purpose, a pack of baby spinach from colesworths would turn black and breaks down after a week; the meal kit ones are still in good shape after two. If the veggies aren’t good, open chat with customer service and they will do a partial refund for the veggies with issue. Some requires photo proofs, others don’t.
Regarding the recipes, HelloFresh is very healthy and especially good for the guts. The taste profile and techniques are more western oriented. Marley spoon recipes are more towards an international taste profile and culinary styles. Everyplate is a cheaper version of HelloFresh and Dinnerly to MarleySpoon. The budget meal kits have the exact taste profile to their respective parent companies. Marley spoon gives points toward everyday reward card, an extra peaks if applicable. MarleySpoon has more recipes per week while HelloFresh is more mindful with common allergies.
Is this churning of meal kit ethical? Likely yes. This is because even when the box is cheaper the colesworths, meal kits stock at wholesale price and big saving on not even having a retail shop. They can still profit on discount price. Is it ethical to try to find loopholes to always get free boxes? Absolutely NO, those companies are business that feeds workers and drivers at their distribution centres. No one deserved to be casually robbed. If you are in need, Foodbank (and many more orgs) can help, also consider contracting Centrelink. That’s what our tax dollars for
Lastly, my preference is MarleySpoon > HelloFresh > Dinnerly > Everyplate. With that said, a good diet is to increase varieties, so I am happy with all of them. You can definitely have your own opinion on your food :)
Ps. I still have 10+ free referral boxes of HelloFresh for those who need it, want to test the water or to get you start on the loop. PM me
——
Edited:
Price guide. As requested, i am including my own price guide here.
The size cost depends on a few factors:
meal kit usually have a fix shipping cost around 10 bucks, varies depends on your location
most meal kit has the biggest size of 4x5 (20 serves), EveryPlate offers 6x6 (36 serves!)
HF, EP and Di underestimate the size. For example for us, 4 serves is actually 5 serves for us. This depends how much you eat and the recipe itself. MS is true to size
at 40% discount, HF will result in around 102; MS is around 108. So the estimation is around <110 per 1.5 week. EP and Di are budget variants so the boxes would be way cheaper than 10X at around 70 or 80ish!
MS is a bit more costly but it has the biggest discount and more seafood options that’s why it is my go to if it is on discount
My yardstick:
get the highest discount possible. Skip, cancel or ignore the 20% discount. 30% is okay for Di and EP, while 30% for HF and MS is like going to colesworths
get the biggest boxes as you can afford. Since the shipping is a fixed cost, largest box results in cheaper per serve
get started and cancel as soon as you can. It takes them around 1 to 1.5 weeks to send new offers
avoid FOMO. If the offer is lower % and you still have food, wait for the best discount as the mentioned pattern
Combining all the knowledge, in our case, 1.5 week is $10X or less, meaning we can achieve less than $75 a week Your mileage might vary, yet, less than 100 per week for 2 or 3 people is definitely doable
——
Edit 2:
As to why I have this knowledge, I don’t work for them and I am not in anyway affiliated with them.
I am just blessed with an okay job so I could just experiment everything out with my own $. There were discount wasted, money wasted on extra features or different box sizes with big4, and also money wasted with others services beyond the big4
Fully disclosure, HF and EP has referral bonus, MS and Di only gifts free boxes. Credit can be used with full price only most of the time and I never pay full price. If you don’t want to give anyone any bonus by getting a free boxes from them, or just very reserved in trusting anyone, you can still get new customer discounted price for each service. That’s how I started, not through free boxes because I knew no one back then
——
For those who are seriously struggling:
I understand some maybe here to find good way to save. A quick reminder that if you are in desperate need and in hunger because of the economy. Don’t be! There are helps like Foodbank (https://www.foodbank.org.au/find-food/) and similar orgs. Also consider Centrelink if required, our tax dollors are better spend on food for people. You are not alone, stay well and stay strong

15 m, pretty antisocial, and someone in my small friend group is not something I'd consider an option. I know that some of the girls in my grade are the hookup type, but I've said like 5 sentences to all of them combined. I'd like to think I have semi-decent basic people skills, and I think of myself as decently good looking, corroborated by some people at camp (a whole other story), but I really just don't talk to that many people, or know how to start a conversation with someone in general. I've got kind of an issue with trying to ingratiate myself to people by acting the fool, which often backfires, and I'm kind of a social pariah at this point.
Thanks for any advice

If you are reading this, it is me again haha. I know, but no matter how many times I've been disappointed by men, I keep trying and I still put myself out there :(
165cm (5'4), latina (you know what they say about latinas) and a teacher.
I love cooking, going for walks, listening to music and reading. I love spending time with my family and friends. I've not been lucky when it comes to love. I'm a romantic and kinda old school. Maybe Reddit is not the best place to find my future favorite person, but who knows, dating apps and real life dating hasn't led me to my person.
I wish I could find someone who matches my energy, someone who I can feel protected with, someone who can make me laugh, but mostly, someone who respects my moral values and someone who I can grow old with (look at this for reference). I am not that picky when it comes to physical appearance but, Pocahontas set my bar when it comes to men, John Smith, hahaha. Yes, I have a weakness for men and for military men (kinda unrealistic I KNOW, but who doesn't love cute men in uniform) Why? Maybe we can discuss that over dinner, but if you want to make your research, on TikTok there are pretty good videos explaining why.
Jokes aside, dating these days is a jungle.
If you finished reading my post, thanks. If you want to talk with me, **include a picture of you, not random dudes from internet (catfishing sucks)** also I don't want us to waste our time, if you plan on disappearing after a conversation, please let's avoid that.
SERIOUSLY: Idc how much your marriage sucks, if you are "going through a divorce" and all of those things. **Do not contact me.**

Welcome back to my solo reviews, this time for what is perhaps an unusual pick, Caverna: Cave vs Cave. I have a handful of Rosenberg games and had held off on Caverna proper due to it appearing to be too similar to many of the games I already own, but I wanted to make sure my collection represented any missing cave mechanics from that game. From what I’ve heard, this game doesn’t really do that, but it definitely stands out as a unique game, and for that I think it deserves a bit of the spotlight. If you’ve passed over this game because it’s a silly 2P edition of an already beloved game, maybe this will offer something extra for you to consider.

Caverna: Cave vs Cave

Overview

In this game, you’re a dwarf who is part of a small dwarven tribe, and it’s your job to carve into the mountainside and furnish a luxury dwarven apartment that outshines a nearby rival tribe. I hadn’t considered how unusual this was until I wrote this, but this is basically a dwarven equivalent of those reality home decorating shows.

Theme and Aesthetics

The theme here is really nice and ties in quite well. As far as I can tell, all your actions and the various items have good thematic integration insofar as you can sort of understand the flow of actions based on real-world logic. In connection with the overview of the game, you need to first excavate your mountainside, thereby creating space, and you must then furnish the empty space. The limitations on excavating are simply that you need to have a direct route to the area you’re excavating from the entrance, which makes real-world sense. The number of actions you can take corresponds to the number of working dwarves in your tribe. You get it. This kind of thematic integration is something I value highly because it eases the learning and playing of the game – you don’t need to constantly refer to the rulebook if the rules follow a logic that you can guess or intuit based on your existing understanding of the world. This will be a recurring topic in my reviews, but generally speaking I find that Uwe Rosenberg tends to do this quite well.
Overall, I find the theme of dwarven apartment furnishing to be one of Rosenberg’s weaker ones, but the artwork does a very good job of giving it that classic Rosenberg charm and it’s certainly a lot better than if the artwork were reminiscent, for example, of Lord of the Rings. It’s not the coziest theme, but it integrates well and Rosenberg does a great job of keeping that connection through all the game’s actions.
The visuals are by Klemens Franz, who Rosenberg seems to have some sort of professional affiliation with, if not outright friendship (online bios of Franz are surprisingly limited) – most of his bigger games are made in collaboration with Franz, and this artstyle has become an icon of eurogame design by basically being the face of some of the most popular euros, courtesy of Rosenberg. That said, Franz’s artwork has been somewhat controversial at times because, to be frank, it’s really not the greatest. It has a very storybook quality, and I think in the modern age people tend to expect a bit more out of their artists. I am, however, personally of an opposing mind, and I think that Franz’s artwork, while somewhat basic and (at times) crude, is an integral part of the feeling invoked by Rosenberg’s games. I would describe this feeling as a sort of pleasant, warm, accepting coziness, or more succinctly as Franz or Rosenberg might put it themselves, gemütlich. If you’re familiar with Klemens Franz’s work, then for better or worse, you know what to expect. If you’re new to this artwork, then try to reserve judgement because some truly great games hide beneath that veil.

Components

This is mostly positive, and anyone who’s ever played literally any Rosenberg game should know exactly what to expect. All the locations and playerboards etc are cardboard, but not that thick chunky cardboard that lines more luxurious games like those by Lacerda – in spite of this, I think the quality of this cardboard is perfectly fine, and in fact really like the hard, sturdiness of the tiles.
The resource track has a bunch of different resources depending on whether you play the long or short game, but their quality is strangely mixed. The grain, flax, stone and wood in era I are all the exact same wooden bits you’re used to seeing in every Rosenberg game, and in era II you add wooden donkeys and iron bricks which, for whatever reason, are represented by long, slender blue rods. A peculiar choice, but an inoffensive one.
The component quality takes a bit of a hit when we get to the food and gold in era I and the weapons and coal in era II: these are all represented by little tiny cardboard pieces. Generally I’m not a fan of tiny cardboard bits for anything, but it’s particularly jarring when half the resources are wood and the other half are cardboard. While there’s some functional reason for the weapons and gold being cardboard (which I’ll get to later), there’s no such reason for the food or coal. It’s not a huge deal, but it’s one you’ll have to regularly face as you manipulate your resources.
The player boards representing caves have very rough and jagged edges for both the era I and II versions. Aesthetically I thought it was kind of a cute little touch, but then you learn that they actually fit together like a puzzle in order to combine them and it felt quite satisfying. They could have had flat edges, or been jagged and not fit together, but the jagged + fitting together was a cheeky little detail that I really appreciated.
While this next part technically ties more into the gameplay, I’ll mention it here because it’s necessary to understand what I’m about to mention: the reason gold and weapons can reasonably be relegated to cardboard bits is because the backside has “+10” on it to indicate that the actual value of that resource is 10 higher than where it’s at on the tracker, because all other resources cap out at 9. The reason I’m mentioning this here is because I’ve actually upgraded my components: I recently was putting an order into Meeplesource and figured I’d throw an extra dollar or two at getting the 4-6 pieces I needed to make this feel more complete. I upgraded the visually busy weapons tokens to wooden ‘stone axe’ bits and the ‘empty plate with a single utensil’ cardboard pieces that Rosenberg likes to use to represent food (which I actually hate) to wooden ‘ham leg’ bits. Aesthetically they match and I’m much happier with these, and then I used a couple spare black cubes from Brass Birmingham for coal and a couple spare gold cubes from Terraforming Mars for the gold (why did I have spares from these games? Stay tuned to find out!). My solution with the gold and weapons, however, was to simply use two for every tracker board, and your value is just the sum of the two. I thought this was a clever solution, and it was one I came up with by copying it exactly from another Rosenberg game, Fields of Arle. I thought it was an odd choice to not have done it this way when it was already an established mechanic he’d created, but at almost no extra cost I was able to elevate my copy of Cavera: Cave vs Cave to a consistent level of comfortable quality.

Gameplay

The way this game works is that you have a long action selection board which is slightly more limited in the solo variant, achieved by flipping the action board to its other side. 4 basic actions are laid out on the board, followed by several more face down tiles with increasingly powerful actions: each turn you flip the next action tile, expanding your decision space, and you can take 2/3/4 actions depending on the point you’re at in the game. Due to the level 2 and 3 actions being shuffled (there’s only one level 4 action), the game has some variability to its flow.
The actions you can take boil down to 3 main types, in varying combinations and degrees of effectiveness: excavate space in your mountainside (which reveals furnishments for your apartment), furnish a space (by selecting an available room) or activate the powers of your furnished rooms (which generally yield resources). There’s a small, yet clever, mechanic where a few actions allow you to place free-standing walls in your cave, and each room you place requires (in addition to resource costs) a specific arrangement of surrounding walls. It may seem like a small enough matter that it’s not worth being discussed in a review, but on the contrary I would say it’s actually a crucial and even defining aspect of the game. It’s a tiny detail but it absolutely makes the game, in my opinion.
At the end of era I, you score your game, and then decide whether you’d like to continue. In era II, the era II resources/rooms are added into the game, you add the era II cave to your player board (thereby expanding your cave space) and extend the action board with 4 more randomized level 4 actions. You then continue with exactly what you were doing, but now with more resources, more space and more powerful actions. The split is excellent and you could easily play just era I or era I + II with anyone, not tell them what you did, and have them believe that they played a proper and full game – era I doesn’t feel truncated or short, while era I + II doesn’t outstay its welcome or feel long or bloated. I think this aspect was really well done and particularly like that you make the decision at a point where you could equally choose to call it quits, so you don’t feel like you’ve overcommitted, such as in other games if you choose the long version and it lasts longer than you expected. It’s nice to get to the end of the brief and tight era I and say “do I want this experience to end here, or do I want more of it?”
I find that the balance between furnishing the cave and activating rooms to gain resources (which you need for more rooms) has a nice ebb and flow, and I like the choices that need to be made when it comes to expensive, high VP but fairly useless rooms, or the cheaper, low VP, functional rooms. I’ve been able to beat the recommended era I score with a bit of challenge, but have thus far fallen short of the era II score; I do still believe it’s more than achievable, and once again I feel that Uwe Rosenberg has done a very good job of conveying accurate score bands in the manual.
While this game is a very fun optimization puzzle that offers a similar decision space to, e.g., Agricola while staying a lot more compact, it should be noted that the solo mode is a BYOS type of game and does not replicate the 2P experience. In 2P (the only other player count for the game), there’s a very strong tension due to the other player taking actions you needed, and this is wholly missing from the solo mode. Furthermore, in order to mitigate some of the brutality of the 2P game, multiple tiles do similar actions but have an obvious ‘good’ and ‘not so good’ version: in 2P, if your opponent beats you to the good one, you have a consolation. In solo, however, the ‘bad’ version simply never gets used, and it felt like it might have been a little nicer if there were 3 or 4 extra solo tiles to replace these kinds of actions from the 2P game.
A brief note on the versions of the game for the crafty consumer: the game originally came out simply as the era I version, with a later “era II” expansion. Both of these are sold in the small boxes that typically house 2P games such as Patchwork, Mandala or Sobek 2P. I have the sneaking suspicion that if you purchased the game like this, you’d be able to fit all the contents into a single box, and save a lot of space. However if you’d rather save ~10$ you can get the Big Box version, which is what I have, and which contains all the content from era I + II. There’s not an enormous amount of space in the box to the point where I really want a smaller box, but the Big Box version had some of the player boards reworked so they didn’t have to fold, and consequently would not fit in a smaller box. That being said, the Big Box version is the same size as the base Carcassonne box, so still on the smaller side.

Conclusion

All in all, I’ve found that Caverna: Cave vs Cave offers a unique gameplay experience not present in Rosenberg’s other games, and I really haven’t seen it discussed much. I think that it deserves to stand alongside his other games, but I also think that its smaller stature (and price tag) is deserved too, owing to the lighter content and limited player count. Since this does fall on the less expensive side, I would indeed recommend it for a purchase exclusively for solo, predicated on the understanding that this is an BYOS optimization puzzle, and not an emulated multiplayer experience. Additionally, I would recommend going for the Big Box version since it’s only about 10$ more than the base (era I) version and you basically double the content.
I hope you found this informative and enjoyed reading through this, and I hope I was able to open your eyes to some of Rosenberg’s 2P spin-offs as worthy additions to a collection. Thanks for reading!

I look at Bobby’s ykwd and Calta and Kelly podcasts and see the sponsorships … no one is sponsoring them unless it’s something Bobby has purchased recently and some how swindled a deal to shout out there business … this to me shows that not many people have any interest in hearing him on a week to week basis (I’m not saying his stand up is bad I’m sure he gets good crowds to those gigs)
I just wonder if Bobby thinks this will open a window for him .. which it won’t he’s now the old man like vos.. I worry for the bonfire as it looks to me to be coming to an end if they don’t somehow change things up with how the show is coming off since Dan left.
The first episode that Dan is a guest will be automatically the best show since he left I guarantee it.
I’d rather listen to big Jay and Jacob instead of Bobby with the rehashed storied told a trillion times before on O&A

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I have this laptop a Lenovo IdeaPad s-10 I got it from my uncle who had passed I have no idea how to update it to the current windows update. Internet explorer doesn't run anymore but I do have Google on it. Does anyone have any idea how to update this laptop to a more modern windows?

I’ve done a lot to help this girl behind the scenes, if y’all even knew what I’ve done and the shit I’ve mucked through to do so. Only to be blocked on both accounts today, without saying a word. She doesn’t have many people who are willing to truly help, not enable her and not be chitty chatty with people in the chat kind of people. But you can only do so much when her own mods are enabling her the worse. I am a very long ago mod, but I’ve stuck around because I truly believed I could help in some way. You make a couple inches of progress only to have others or her undo it, I can handle her undoing it because she’s sick but when it’s her own people doing it, sadly I have to exit stage left. I hope she eventually gets the right people in her life that are willing to give her love but tough enough love that will actually help her. Abby has money, yet people are still sending her groceries daily, so she can keep the money that’s given to her weekly… why do you think she has money to pay for the extra “meds” that are being taken. This isn’t an uneducated suggestion, this isn’t a biased opinion, I have no stake in this claim nor does my counter help. It’s the sad truth that so many don’t want to believe, or have the wool pulled over your eyes. I don’t wish ill will on any of you and I wish nothing but prosperity in all of your lives. ✌🏼 ❤️ 🌎

They always came at night. The terrible and inhumane things that had haunted me for years and years. I can’t even call them creatures because I never knew if they were physical beings or not. These horrors came only after the sunset, and the darkness of the night had blanketed the world with its false serenity. Nothing was serene about the nights when these malicious apparitions came to me.
I can only speculate where they came from and what they are. In my mind, they seemed like a product of prayer, a healing prayer meant to improve the health of my grandmother in her childhood days.
She’s told me about a time when she was an orphan in Western Ukraine after the Great Patriotic War when her legs started atrophying for no apparent reason and no doctor could actually help her. She spent months losing the function of her legs until an elderly woman came to visit the orphanage and found my grandma with her decaying legs. And grandma said she can vaguely recall seeing this woman standing over her, chanting; praying. After that, grandma’s legs miraculously healed.
I don’t rule out the possibility of some extraordinary thing happening there. Maybe this woman was a faith healer, maybe she was a witch doctor of some sort, and maybe she was handling forces that were far beyond her control. We’ll never know for sure. Maybe because grandma regained her legs, something had to be taken as payment. My health and my sanity.
Judging by my family’s history; it’s probably not just me. An uncle of mine became increasingly volatile before having a huge argument with the family and leaving the house. He ended up involved in the 90s Russian oligarch-gang affairs and had his life cut short. Another aunt died relatively young due to “alcoholism” even though she was by all means nothing like what one would imagine an alcoholic to be. My cousin is having weird health issues that cause her to feint every now and again, without a detectable cause.
And I, well, I, I was being visited by grotesque fiends for years at night, starting out maybe when I was five… As long as I remember myself, they’d show up at night. Horrible and inhuman; ugly, disgusting, and visually torturous. There were insectoid things, there were just ghastly amorphous shadows and there were humanoid things too. A pale, thin thing without a face and absurdly long arms with almost cartoonishly long claws. There was also a reflection of myself with its mouth sewn shut, with mouths gaping on its palms filled with Piranha-like teeth. There was an ostrich-like monstrosity with four hooves and an elongated human face. Some of those things looked like mutated animals, others like completely alien things.
The worst one of all was a vaguely anthropomorphic entity walking on all fours, almost like an ape but with an awkward gait. Its joints clicked and cracked as it crawled towards me, emanating a terrible stench of pus mixed with wet dirt as it stalked. The thing was almost completely nude, aside from the occasional tuft of hair jutting out of its muscular frame. Its most uncanny feature was its face; the thing was reversed upside down. Its mouth was on its forehead, a hairy set of lips containing a single bloodshot, soul-piercing eye and its eyelids were above its crooked chin; perpetually closed until was about to feed, revealing needle-like teeth under each eyelid and long, prehensible forked tongues.
Every time these things came to me, they came to feed on something inside of me. As a little boy, I would freeze up at the sight of something shifting and maneuvering in the dark until it revealed its horrific face to me. I thought the fear paralyzed me, but in actuality, it was something else. Something I figured out when I was a teenager. These things are like vampiric parasites; they would latch onto me with their feeding organ and fill me with a paralyzing agent to keep me still as they fed on me. Every single time they’d suck this something out of me, leaving me exhausted and in pain the morning after. Specifically leaving my bones aching and riddling my skin with the feeling of pins and needles at the site of the bite, without leaving physical marks behind.
Seems like these things leave nothing physical behind, nothing that can be seen under the light of the sun.
Naturally, I tried telling my parents about the things that haunted me at night, but they reassured me these were just nightmares or night terrors. I wish they were nightmares, but they weren’t because on many nights during which I wasn’t being attacked, I suffered from nightmares about these hellish things.
We talked about sleep paralysis too, but it wasn’t it, and when I tried to protest, they dismissed it as a wild imagination. I didn’t know that vivid imagination and sleep paralysis left behind traces of brain-melting bone aches in a child.
By the time my pain noticeably crippled me, I guess it was too late. Inflammation was burning its way through my spine. It turned out. The spinal column was already in an early stage of fusing and contorting itself. I was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis. That didn’t explain the pain in my arms and legs, nor did it explain the awful nightly battles I was having time and time again. Either with these tormenting beings or with my own body.
Many nights I had cried myself to sleep from the unbearable pain. It had gotten so bad that even taking a deep breath was becoming painful and something inside of me seemed to have snapped overnight.
The childlike existential dread of these things had turned into a burning, passionate hatred fueled by the vicious joy bringing relief of adrenaline carried on the wings of my stress-induced agitation turning into outright boiling anger.
Some time after my diagnosis, I had decided enough was enough at the same time the concept of evening was being stretched into later and later hours of the day. I had started seeing these things before I was in bed. I could see them lurking at the periphery of my vision. Stalking the unlit rooms of the house. Salivating their neurotoxin as they waited for me to head to bed.
Figuring I had to at least try to defend myself from these things or else I might end up dead or worse, a vegetable, that’s why I finally chose to fight back. Throwing fists proved effective against one or two of these night stalkers, but they’ve adapted as well. Those that usually came alone stopped coming alone. Instead, they started arriving in packs, consistently. At that point, punching and kicking didn’t suffice, and I ended up getting overwhelmed with my body becoming the banquet of alien hyena-like swarms. The mornings after were pure arthritic agony.
It ruined my sleep, and my awful mood sapped the strength out of me and the will to live a normal active life, making my condition even worse as the days wore on and I found myself in a deeper abyss of bone-breaking pain.
At the time I hit my lowest point. I was becoming increasingly anxious about everything and slowly turning agoraphobic. The stress was killing me, and my internal fury was reverting to its original state. I was becoming afraid of those things again. I was becoming afraid of every movement and noise and sensation gliding across my skin. My entirety was being consumed by my fear. At some point, I began feeling as if each move I make, physically and metaphorically resulted in a burning hot nail being inserted into my skin. And that led to my mind turning in on itself. Dysthymia came first, followed by a full-blown depression. Suicide ideation came about later. I didn’t really plan to kill myself. I just kept romanticizing the idea of dying to escape all of my pain, in my head over and over.
Eating became an issue, moving became an issue, and leaving the house became an issue. Everything was falling apart around me and only the night stalkers remained. I’ve gained a new friend in the form of the occasional bowel inflammation.
These things destroyed everything for a large chunk of my life, but then, in a strange twist of fate, they were also the key to fixing most of my problems. They were winning battle after battle, but this led to my victory in our war.
One evening, as I was making coffee in the kitchen while my parents were out of town, there was a power outage. The house went immediately dark, and my mind went dark with it. Instead of freezing, probably because of my horrible sleep schedule and the constant mental strain of the never-ending stress and pain, my brain just went into an overload. An eerie cold sensation washed over me as the pain disappeared into the void of the darkness. Clarity graced me for the first time in a long time, right before I felt something touching the back of my neck.
With a swiftness I couldn’t even imagine myself having, I turned and swung my mug wildly. I hit something solid. The sound of shattered ceramic tore through the silence, followed by a terrible shriek that rocked the entire house. Somehow, I don’t even know how, as if one of the same horrors haunting me possessed my body, I kept swinging the jagged shard still connected to the handle of my now destroyed mug. The sound of soft thumps sounded almost melodic to me at that moment. Eventually, whatever I was hitting fell down.
Before I knew it, the fluorescent light had washed the kitchen anew in a white shimmer, revealing my handiwork. A bloodied chimera of avian and serpentine features was prone beneath my feet. Unmoving, still, dead.
Pulsating waves of blood raced through my body, leaving a strange after-feeling all over my body. Before long, the pain returned, followed by the realization of what had just happened. I had just killed one of those monstrosities.
Dread mixed with excitement swirled in my mind as I understood the ramifications of my actions. Both because I could finally prove the beings were real and because I killed a presumably living creature and left its corpse in my parents’ kitchen. None of that mattered come morning.
Unfortunately, or maybe, fortunately, nothing remained of the thing by the time dawn arrived. It evaporated as if it had never existed, leaving nothing behind. A pile of ceramic shards on the floor and a coffee stain. No blood, no flesh, no corpse, nothing. Only pain, lots of pain. My body was beyond sore that morning. My body was in shambles, but at least I knew, I knew I could stop these things from hurting me further. I could finally end their reign of terror over my life.
And so, I’ve finally fought back, now properly armed. Keeping a knife under my pillow, just in case.
For years, I’ve fought these things off, killing many of them. I’ve ended up knee elbow-deep in monster blood and yet they still kept coming, again and again. Somehow, even those I’ve butchered and dismembered returned. They were almost taunting me as they came back after each time I killed them to do it again and again, as if trying to prove the point that my efforts were futile. Even if it seemed so, they weren’t really futile. My condition had gotten better because these things could no longer feed on me anymore, and fighting so frequently had improved my overall feeling. The depression was gone, and I found a new joy in life. Each morning proved to be a new challenge, a new mountain of incorporeal corpses to overcome.
I fell in love with my violent routine, even though it made things with people rather complicated sometimes. It’s off-putting to have a knife under your bed, especially when you live in a decent and quiet part of town. I’ve never really bothered telling anyone about the fiends. It’s not like most people would believe me, anyway. And it’s not like my joy would last forever. Life is a struggle, after all. It is pain. And it is agony.
One day, they just stopped coming, just like that. The hordes of parasitic ghouls were nowhere in sight. Gradually, then suddenly, they just faded out of existence. Maybe they never even. Maybe I was just imagining them after all. There is no proof of their existence, and there was never any proof of their existence anywhere. My condition is an actual disease, fully diagnosable and somewhat manageable. Not to mention that my awful mental state is the way it is because of my disease.
I am a deeply disturbed man who is the son of an anxious and ridiculously superstitious, to the point of mild supernatural paranoia mother who has a medical issue that we have no real concrete explanation for. That said, I doubt these things weren’t real. They had to be. I could see them. I could feel them, I could fear them. And now they’re gone. I never imagined I’d miss the torment, but here I am, clearly losing my mind over the fact that I am not suffocating on a mouthful of dread. I am losing sleep because there is nothing lurking in the shadows and over the fact that I am completely and utterly alone. Unbothered and undisturbed. Stressing over the ghastly silence and the oppressive emotional void that comes from a not-so-sudden lack of constant stimulation.
Hemingway has this classic moment in “The Sun Also Rises” when someone asks Mike Campbell how he went bankrupt. All he can say is, “Gradually, then suddenly.”. That’s how the silence drives you insane, especially after living years and years inside a storm of noise and chaos. You wake up one day, and it’s silent. It’s weird, but it’s a welcome change, and then you wake up the next day and it’s still silent and on the third day it’s silent still by the end of the week you are suspicious because it is still silent, and it’s never been silent and you’re thinking all these thoughts, “is this for real? Is this a trap?” but it remains silent.
Before long, before you even realize it, you’re resentful of the silence and then you become afraid of the silence and you can do nothing to end it.
I just want something to go wrong for one night, but nothing ever does, and it hurts, it really fucking hurts because I’ve destroyed my life, my brain, I’ve destroyed everything to get over the pain and the chaos and now that’s gone but the mental agony still pulsates in my spine crippling me for days on end and there’s nothing I can do about these mental wounds. Nothing I can do to make them stop stinging and bleeding now that nothing but the cold gray silence remains.

Oh man, this one stings.
My husband (yay!) & I got married last weekend.
I come from a very poor background and a huge family from a tiny town. We are close even if I've always been the weird and different one (moving away etc). Hubs comes from a huge, more middle class fam. One of my favorite things to do is host & entertain. I think life can be hard & making people comfortable or showing them a great time is a really worthwhile thing. It's also fun for me, like a giant crafting project, to plan an event. I love it.
My husband does very well and I have been lucky to have a great career and do the same. Our wedding was the only time likely for all these people we both loved to be in the same place, to meet & celebrate together, so we wanted to make it special and magical. We were very clear that gifts were not necessary, and I set aside a fund for my aunt and I to coordinate covering any expenses for people who wanted to come but couldn't afford the hotel, an outfit, etc. but quietly.
I know a huge wedding is a waste to many people but it isn't to us. We did 3 days of events and covered meals and open bars for 300 ppl. We had a short Cirque-type performance, a big welcome party with a kind of carnival for kids, gift bags for everyone, and lots of surprises. It was so fun to watch all the joy & everyone smiling & happy. Everything was optional, we shamed no one who came to only one part or couldn't swing it.
At brunch the final day my aunt pulled me aside & asked me to go to my cousin's room & console her. She said she had been sobbing all night/morning because her wedding (in Aug) would be nowhere near this level & she thought all our family would hate it and judge her. My heart broke! Every wedding I've been to with my family has been low key, maybe in a barn or rec center, someone's backyard. No one has ever judged or looked down on this (nor would I- Just different styles) and we always have a great time!
I left my guests at brunch and spent the better part of an hour with my cousin trying to assure her of all the above. I told her a wedding is a celebration of love, not money etc, and that we were all very excited. She finally got weirdly calm and stopped crying, then just looked me dead in the eyes and said something like, "Well you don't need to worry about it because you're not invited anymore." Then locked herself in the bathroom.
I came back to brunch and most everyone was gone. I was crying but didn't want to make a scene and just got out as fast as possible. My husband keeps telling me not to take it to heart, but I hate that something we worked so hard to make fun and memorable for people ended up making someone I love feel terrible! And now my aunt (her mom) has started telling people I just did this to "rub my family's face in my great, fancy, rich life" etc. I feel sick. I was so happy and proud and now I feel so stupid. Did I really F this up that badly? AITA?

I (F74) been away from OLD for many years. One thing that stumps me is how to respond to a guy who asks me for my phone number and wants to talk before meeting. I have several reasons I really don’t want to. (#1) Put a number into Google or other search engine and a LOT of personal info is immediately available. (#2) I’m somewhat introverted and speaking to a stranger on the phone leaves me feeling awkward. I just don’t think I am putting my best foot forward. (#3) I like to meet in person because facial expressions and the human connection gives me a better feel about compatibility with someone.
I’m only messaging through the app to men who are local to me so geography isn’t an issue. I’m happy to meet in person
Guys: how do you feel about a woman who is hesitant to talk on the phone? And, is it really that important? If so, why?
Ladies: Do you always give out your phone number when he asks? What has been your experience.
Any other thoughts for me?

Yes, we are all frustrated that TWOW is taking so long to be completed and released. Understandable. But let’s think about how difficult it was for GRRM to write ADWD because of the Meereenese Knot:
“Now I can explain things. It was a confluence of many, many factors: lets start with the offer from Xaro to give Dany ships, the refusal of which then leads to Qarth's declaration of war. Then there's the marriage of Daenerys to pacify the city. Then there's the arrival of the Yunkish army at the gates of Meereen, there's the order of arrival of various people going her way (Tyrion, Quentyn, Victarion, Aegon, Marwyn, etc.), and then there's Daario, this dangerous sellsword and the question of whether Dany really wants him or not, there's the plague, there's Drogon's return to Meereen... All of these things were balls I had thrown up into the air, and they're all linked and chronologically entwined. The return of Drogon to the city was something I explored as happening at different times. For example, I wrote three different versions of Quentyn's arrival at Meereen: one where he arrived long before Dany's marriage, one where he arrived much later, and one where he arrived just the day before the marriage (which is how it ended up being in the novel). And I had to write all three versions to be able to compare and see how these different arrival points affected the stories of the other characters. Including the story of a character who actually hasn't arrived yet.”
In TWOW we are about to see nearly every character(some of whom we haven’t seen/heard from in a book or two) plot, and sub plot converge in Westeros in a relatively short time period….which is a lot more than we saw happen in Meereen.
•Jon’s resurrections, dealing with his killers, Hardhomme, everything else happening at the Wall and North of it
•The Battle of Ice, the Northern Conspiracy, Davos finding Rickon, everything else going on in the North
•Lady Stoneheart, Jaime/Brienne, Brotherhood, Blackfish, Red Weddimg 2.0, etc
•Sansa, LF, The Vale
•Dornish conspiracy, Arianne meeting Aegon, Darkstar, consequences of Quentyn’s death, etc
•Aegon’s invasion, JonCon’s greyscale, whatever Varys is really up to
•Cersei dealing with The Faith, Tyrells, invasions, the North, etc
•Arya coming back to Westeros
•Iron Islanders invading the Reach
•whatever is about to go down in Oldtown where Sam, Jaquen, and Euron will be involved
•massive civil war: North/Stannis vs Lannisters vs Aegon vs Dany vs Euron and whoever Dorne, the Vale, etc decide to join
•Dany and her army leaving Meereen, possibly going other places in Essos, and getting to Westeros
•Whatever is going on between the Faceless Men, Iron Bank, and Sealord of Braavos
•Others crossing the Wall
That’s merely scratching the surface, obviously I could go into much more detail for each thing I listed, plus whatever I didn’t list.
If the situation in Meereen was a knot, the situation in Westeros is a labyrinth.

Hello! My name is Avery Griffith and I am a Junior in high school currently participating in the AP Capstone Program. The research being conducted seeks to answer the question:; How does the content of a self-publisher´s work change in accordance with online amateur criticism? In order to answer this, I am hoping to conduct interviews with self-published authors/ practicing writers in order to receive a personal account of their journey with self-publishing and their relationship with online criticism.
These interviews will now be conducted via email. There is still time to participate! If interested, please fill out the following form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeP0hjp4CCzyJ5xQjnx4ZQM7v7G1HuwaIdAWru4ZNJ3YrIuwA/viewform?usp=sf\_link
Please reach out to me via the email address [email protected] if you are interested or have any questions!
You are HIGHLY encouraged to share this form with anyone else who may be interested!

About to pull the trigger on a Fully Jarvis desk. Does anyone have a recommendation on table top material? Considering: Bamboo, Laminate or EcoTop.
Bamboo - I've read some mixed reviews in terms of quality and durability.
Laminate - Some people mentioned the top is shiny and leaves fingerprints...can anyone confirm?
EcoTop - Described as "powder coated MDF" does anyone own this that can comment on how they like this one? Is it matte or shiny?

It seems that I used to be always busy, we had so many things to do. Normal everyday things around the house, errands, cooking etc. now it’s so quiet, I get my chores done so fast and then all I do is stare at a screen or a book. I’m bored, lonely, can only drag my family-bound friends out so many times.
I can finish grocery shopping in 12 minutes, I don’t have to discuss what bread or juice to get. I barely cook, no one eats it but me. The house is clean, and I even pulled out the stove to clean because I had nothing better to do.
I signed up for the Rec center but have hard time getting out the door. I just sit and stare and wish there was someone here again to argue with over Thai vs Indian.
What do you do with your time? How do you burn those long weekends where you don’t want to work, but being at work at least has tasks and people? How do you feel like you do something other than watch? When does the silence become less deafening?

So for those who don't know, Nuln is a Dark Fortress deep in Empire lands (kind of suspicious CA, hinting at something?) in-game and in the Throne of Chaos book, Tamurkhan works with Drazhoath and Sayl the Faithless in his attempt to defeat Elspeth von Draken and conquer Nuln.
Since a lot of fans found the Karak Eight Peaks Race to be fun, why not have another race themed around Tamurkhan of Nurgle/WoC, Drazhoath of Chaos Dwarfs, Sayl the Faithless of Norsca, and Elspeth von Draken of Empire? Each would gets unique bonuses if they conquer Nuln.
And remember this. Elspeth von Draken isn't the ruler of Nuln. She does represent Nuln and wields great influence as an adviser, but she can also represent the Amethyst Order, similar to how Balthasar represents the Golden Order. This means she can literally start anywhere. With that said, I do think Elspeth von Draken should be given a confederation opportunity to take over Nuln.
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