It happened around March of 2016 since I had my AC on and it was pretty hot night in Texas. Me heading off to sleep on my own bed after my week stay from a behavioral hospital. I was prepping up my bed and off I doze up to sleep at 11:36am. Yes I slept late even though I go to highschool but this week was for me to rest up from school since I gotten a therapist note given to the principal.
Anyways I doze off and woken up in my dream. I was in my room and it was sunny outside. I peeked out the window and it was so warm and fuzzy day. I then lay on my bed with the window opened and then move around my room from drawing to fixing my room a bit and looking at the time. Then it quickly got dark and I shut the curtains fast and hopped back in bed to lay down. I proceed to cover myself in my blanket and hold my body pillow close. It felt like an hour passed and heard a creaking on the floor and got alarmed. I turn slowly to lay on my back and saw the entity.
It was looking at me with pure black eyes straight to my own. It's a monster. A demon. It had six or eight thin legs that ended them being sharp. A long body that made the thing look agilities of a flexible snake with high speeds. The head of human like?? But fleshy of darkness. The body was covered in sort of scales but also the skin was hard and sturdy that not bullet can harm it. The skin was also coming off like a slimy substance but also noticed six pores on its belly which I didn't know what it can do there.
Then it began to speak in a very terrifying voice you can ever hear in your dreams. So clear that you might think you're talking to it in real life.
"So... You're the one I've been looking for you for ages!" It hisses in an angry tone, "I've finally found you... Future guardian!"
I scurried to run away but it quickly pinned me down on my own bed. My body now facing the opposite way whole my feet were on my pillow, I shivered in fear and tried to summon my wings but somehow the entity made something to avoid me from doing so. I felt hopeless as if I was caged up.
"LET ME GO!!! HELP MEEEEE!" I cried for help and my scream felt too real to me. I wished this was not happening in reality. I begged to wake up but couldn't and now stuck in this nightmare.
I checked the time and it was 2:30 am. I'll repeat the clock and keep in mind, the clock is an important piece of my stories.
The entity hisses and the pores became tentacles sprouting under it and lifted my shirt to reveal my back. I was scared shitless and then hit me with the tentacles on my back as hard as it could. My body was now paralyzed and couldn't move. I tried to scream for help or something but couldn't. Even trying to shift my limbs a bit. I couldn't.
"I FINALLY GOT YOU. YOU SON OF A BITCH! YOU ARE NOW MINE!!! YOU CAN'T ESCAPE! Can't believe they chosen you to be the new guardian or something in their eyes."
My back felt wierd and it sucked out something out of me. It was hungry and starving for fear and I was looking at the door which was my only hope to escape.
Then my hope was close to diminished until I saw bright light on the gaps of the door. The beast looked at the light and continued to look at me. Then loud bangs on the door began to arise.
"THIS IS THE POLICE!! LET THE KID GO! OPEN THE DOOR!!!"
I was scared since the loud banging scares me and the beast snarled and continued to see me as it sucked my back.
The cops banged again and then another being appeared in my room with glowing white light.
"LET HER GO YOU BEAST OF HELL!" it said.
The beast finally let's go of me and scramble to be facing the being. "SHE IS MINE!! I WILL KILL HER IF I MUST!!"
"FROM THE HEAVENS TO GOD'S HANDS, I SHALL RETURN YOU BACK TO HELL!!! YOU BROKE THE GOD'S LAW OF TOUCHING A GUARDIAN IN THE MAKING AND SHOULD BE PUNISHED BY BOTH GOD AND LUCIFER!!"
The entity hisses angrily, "YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS!!"
Then it lunges towards the being and I saw the clock. 3:45am
"TO THE GATES OF HELL!! TOWARDS THE PUNISHMENT OF TWO HANDS, YOU SHALL NEVER RETURN TO THIS REALM EVER AGAIN!!"
Then there was a bight light explode inside while the door was closed and I woke up.
I was in the same position as I was when the entity pinned me down on my bed. My shirt still exposing my back and the clock read 3:45am. I was still paralyzed and moved slowly as the most harsh tingling feeling grown in my body and back. I can still feel the tentacles on my back like six of them and to this day I can feel them still.
I then rested my head on my pillow and was scared to sleep back again. I couldn't sleep till 6 am and I couldn't dream. When I slept again, it was dark. Nothing. Floating in the void as if the entity and being were still around somewhere and it was protecting me for the time being.
After that incident, I fear sleeping because what if it happens again. Then as I dreamed, I felt pain anywhere I got hurt. It became too real that at one point my arm was in pain as well but that's a story for another day.
Idk if that being was the guardian angel since the glowing was too bright to even see them.

I look out in front of me, and perceive the sea lit up out to the horizon. I look around me: to my left and right, I see the limitless straight line of the beach, and behind it, the dunes -- all in space. With my gaze I make the space my own. The objects are clear and plain. I see the wind bend over to the ground, the reeds that keep the dunes in place.
I am at the center of this universe by means of my gaze, which sweeps across this space and lets me know everything in it. By combining these images of reality, I grasp it as a whole, and become a part of it as a result of my looking.
My sight constructs a universe for me. It reveals to me a directly perceivable reality composed of colorful, simple, harmonious images. But it also furnishes me with more subtle materials. I learn to read my brother’s or my enemy’s face. Transmitted images are superimposed on one another, and as a result, I now know that a given image belongs within a particular context of reality. It conjures up another image; I anticipate what I am going to see, but what is coming will in any case be located in space and will constitute part of reality -- deeper and hidden, in a sense, but still reality.
Such information is precise and pinpointed, and deals only with reality. Nothing else, no other dimension, is ever involved. …Sight has made me the center of the world because it situates me at the point from which I see everything, and causes me to see things relative to this point. My vision makes a circular sweep of space, working from this point: my point of view. But now I am tempted, as the center of the world, to act on this spectacle and transform this setting. What was missing in my vision was someone to act, and I am available.
Sight moves to action at the same time that it serves as the means of action. Again, without it, how could I act, since I wouldn’t even know what my hand was touching or what was within my reach? …I am a subject, not separated from what I look at. Rather, what I see becomes a part of me, as my action involves me in what I see. Images both permit and condition my action; they are always imperative. I lean out the window and look searchingly into the emptiness. Images of distance and depth thrust themselves on my consciousness. I know I mustn’t lean out any further.
The image defines and marks the boundaries of my action. The image does not induce my action, but establishes its conditions and possibilities. Without visual images my action is definitely blind, incoherent, and uncertain. Sight conveys certainties and pieces of information to me, as we have said. Such information is reliable. I perceive a gray ocean and an overcast skyline. This is unquestionable. The reality around me is a certainty in which I can be confident. It is neither incoherent nor deformed. I know, of course, that this is also something learned; there are no data coming directly from the senses, and the shapes and colors and distances I apprehend are perceptible to me because I learned them. My culture has furnished me with the very images I see. But however important this may be (and we must not push this idea too far!), it is still true that I see.
What a dreadful uneasiness takes hold of us when reality is submerged in fog…sight fails to furnish me with clear images and I can no longer act. The world loses its midpoint. It is off center because I cannot see it anymore. The center could be anywhere, but it is no longer located where I am.
In order for my sight to mislead me concerning reality, there must be some unusual phenomenon, like a mirage. The image is not ambiguous. This peach I am looking at is red and weighs heavily on the bending branch. This is absolutely certain. But the image is insignificant. It has no meaning in itself and must be interpreted. In the case of a fruit ripe for picking, the visual image gives me indisputable information, but if I stop there, nothing will happen. It must therefore be interpreted. In order to move from the vision of the fruit to "I should pick it" or "It can be picked," there must be an interpretation: an attribution of meaning to these real images of reality.
Another dimension must be added to sight: interpretation will come through speech. Thus the image contains within itself a deep contradiction. It is not ambiguous: it is coherent, reliable, and inclusive; but it is insignificant. It can have innumerable meanings, depending on culture, learning, or the intervention of some other dimension. For this reason I must learn to see, before looking at the image.
After seeing it, I must learn to interpret it. The image is clear, but this clarity does not imply certainty or comprehension. My certainty is limited to this directly perceived reality that my sight reveals to me. Nothing beyond that.
I call these images "vision" because they are connected with the other images I am accustomed to. I would be tempted to say in this case that the order is reversed. The visual image exists, and then I attribute a meaning to it; but the vision appears only as the illustration of a previously established meaning. No matter how insignificant it may be, the visual image is always rigorous, imperative, and irreversible. I saw what I saw. I cannot change the reality which is conveyed to me in this way, except through my action. There is no ambiguity at this point. Nor is there reversibility.
If I had only one "view" of my universe, I would be a participant in a totality which would be both terribly coherent and yet at the same time composed of fragments without any necessary relationship. The totality would be like a cloud of irrational dots which can form only the framework of an action, a change in the relationships between the points. But the cloud of dots cannot be used for understanding anything, because this pointillism of images is space but not duration. The image is present. It is only a presence. It bears witness to something "already there": the object I see was there before I opened my eyes.
I have a point of view, a location from which I see things, but it is situated within what I see and inseparable from it. Wherever I place myself, however I shift my position, I remain in the field of vision, I remain in the middle of what I see. I can never take my distance, act as if I were not present, or even begin to think independently of what I see.
At night, when I cannot see, a certain distance is established. This explains why the day’s events become so painful at night: the distance between me and the world around me allows for reflection and meditation. A flood of images overwhelms me, beckons me, and carries me along: an image I have seen follows immediately after the one I have just dismissed from my mind. I can never stop this movement of reality in space. I can never consider a given image like a diamond or a painting from which I can take my distance in order to be "myself," instead of being overwhelmed by the images composed of dots.
The image prevents me from taking my distance. And if I cannot establish a certain distance, I can neither judge nor criticize. Of course, I also feel pleasure or displeasure in what I see. I can find it beautiful or ugly. But this is not a critical process. No judgment is involved. Furthermore, what possible criticism or judgment can we make with respect to space and reality? In spite of the frailty we have all observed in a person’s testimony about what he has seen, everyone has the same certainty about anything he has seen. He has seen reality.
Sight involves a relationship with reality as established in space. It is an artificial construction. Medusa’s head transfixes whoever gazes at her. Whoever looks at the scenes on the shields of the Iliad is terror stricken. Sight introduces us to an unbearable shock. Reality when seen inspires horror. Terror is always visual. Horror stories play only on our visual sense and suggest representation.
In contrast, the spoken word can involve us in mystery or drama. It places us in situations of conflict and makes us conscious of tragedy. But it is never on its own terrifying or stupefying. We are dazed by sight -- by an image or a vision. The word takes us to the edge of terror only when descriptive and painting extremely precise images. Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories are an example. All the descriptions we have heard of Nazi death camps move us to revulsion and to a judgment that may be based more on strong feelings than anything else. The image of bulldozers pushing along mounds of skeletal corpses, which shortly before had been living beings, faces teetering from the machine’s pushing -- this image drawn from ‘Night and Fog’ moves us to abject horror. It terrifies us, because we see. Such terror results from the horror of reality.
Reality apprehended by sight is always unbearable, even when that reality is beauty. We have a horror of reality, perhaps because we depend on it so. Language, even when it is realistic, allows us to escape from this terrible reality. Sight locks us up with it and obliges us to look at it. There is no way out -- except by controlling and mastering the reality.
Images fall into a pattern with respect to each other, but sounds do not. Instead, sounds contradict each other and cancel each other out. I am listening to a Mozart concerto, and suddenly near me someone speaks. Or a visitor knocks at my door. Or someone starts noisily putting away dishes and silverware. Sounds produce incoherence. The noises I hear form no panorama of the world.
Alone among all other sounds there is one that is particularly important for us: the spoken word. It ushers us into another dimension: relationship with other living beings, with persons. The Word is the particularly human sound which differentiates us from everything else. In this connection a fundamental difference between seeing and hearing is immediately apparent. In seeing, the living being is one form among many. A human being has a special shape and color, but he is included with all the rest as part of the landscape: a discrete, moving speck. When I hear speech, however, the human being becomes qualitatively different from everything else.
The spoken word, even if it involves an essential proclamation or the thought of a genius, falls into the void, passes, and disappears, if it is not heard and recovered by someone. The ocean over there, even if no one contemplates it, remains what it is and what it was. I see it, and it produces a flurry of emotions in me. I leave. I go away, but it does not. The spoken sentence has sunk into nothingness; time has gone by, and there are no "frozen words" which can make themselves heard again later.
Thus speech is basically presence. It is something alive and is never an object. It cannot be thrown before me and remain there. Once spoken, the word ceases to exist, unless I have recovered it. Before it is spoken, the word places me in an expectant situation, in a future I await eagerly. The word does not exist on its own. It continues to exist only in its effect on the one who spoke it and on the one who recovered it. The word is never an object you can turn this way and that, grasp, and preserve for tomorrow or some distant day when you may have time to deal with it. The word exists now. It is something immediate and can never be manipulated. Either it exists or it doesn’t. It makes me what I am, establishes the speaking me and the listening me, so that my role is determined by the word itself rather than by its content. For the word to become an object, someone must transform it into writing. But then it is no longer speech. Yet even in that form, it requires time.
The word is, of necessity, spoken to someone. If no one is present, it is spoken to oneself or to God. It presupposes an ear; the Great Ear, if necessary. It calls for a response. Every word, even a swearword, an insult, an exclamation, or a soliloquy, begins a dialogue. The monologue is a dialogue in the future or the past, or else it is a dialogue incorporated into a monologue. Here again, time is involved. Dialogue develops according to a variable timetable, but dialogue cannot exist unless those engaging in it are inserted into time. Language is a call, an exchange. I avoid using the threadbare term "communication." It is not true that language exists only to communicate information.
Language never belongs to the order of evident things. It is a continuous movement between hiding and revealing. It makes of the play in human relationships something even more fine and complex than it would be without language. Language exists only for, in, and by virtue of this relationship.
Dialogue involves a certain distance. We must be separated as well as different. I do not speak to a person identical to me. I must have something to say which the other lacks, but he must also be different from me. Yet similarity is required as well. When Adam sees Eve he bursts into speech. He speaks because of her and for her. She was flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone; and yet different: a dissimilar similar person. Speech fills the infinite gap that separates us. But the difference is never removed.
Discourse begins again and again because the distance between us remains. I find I must repeatedly begin speaking again to restate what I have said. The result is an inevitable, yet rich and blessed, redundancy. The word is resumed and repeated because it is never fully explicit or an exact translation of what I have to say. It is never precisely received, never precisely understood.
The word reduced to the value of an algebraic formula with only one possible meaning would be useful for us in carrying out an identical superficial activity. But such language could never create meaning, and would never produce agreement and communication with another person. "Algebraic" language could never produce -- or suggest a story. Bees communicate pieces of information to each other, but do not produce anything like history.
The word can also obstruct and impede history, when mythical language immerses us in an ahistorical time that is repetitive and continually reduced to myth. Language is either historical or ahistorical, either a discourse on action to be undertaken or of a myth to listen to. According to the sort of language used, human history either arises and becomes a significant aspect of humanity’s existence, or else it remains on the level of everyday incoherence.
With insight, meaning becomes perfectly transparent. The other person’s words become mine; I receive them in my own mind. I experience utter intellectual delight, but a delight in my whole being as well, when I understand and am understood. The Word ushers us into time.
When I say that language normally deals with Truth rather than Reality, I only mean that there are two orders of knowledge, two kinds of references we use as human beings. There are references to the concrete, experienced reality around us, and others that come from the spoken universe. The spoken universe is our invention -- something we establish and originate by our words. We derive meaning and understanding from language, and it permits us to go beyond the reality of our lives to enter another universe, which we may call phantasmic, schizophrenic, imaginary, or any other name we choose.
I am certain that since the beginning, human beings have felt a pressing need to frame for themselves something different from the verifiable universe, and we have formed it through language. This universe is what we call truth.
The important thing is that the unique value of language lies in truth. Language is not bound to reality, but to its capacity to create this different universe, which you can call surreal, meta-real, or metaphysical. For the sake of convenience we will call it the order of truth. The word is the creator, founder, and producer of truth.
When it uses a loudspeaker and crushes others with its powerful equipment, when the television set speaks, the word is no longer involved, since no dialogue is possible. What we have in these cases is machines that use language as a way of asserting themselves. Their power is magnified, but language is reduced to a useless series of sounds which inspire only reflexes and animal instincts.
How often we have come up against a blank wall instead of a face, when the other person did not want to understand! How can we make him understand as long as he persists in that attitude? In reality, language is an extraordinary occurrence in which each person’s liberty is respected. I can oppose my word to the other person’s. Or I can turn a deaf ear. I remain free as I face someone who tries to define me, encircle me, or convince me.
In other words, of necessity I give my listener a choice to make. A situation where there is choice is a situation where there is freedom. But at the same time, I invite him to use the gift of liberty inherent in language, just as I have. He must speak in turn, consciously making use of his freedom. I invite him to start down the difficult road of self-knowledge and self-expression, of choice, self-exposure, and unveiling.
Language always involves the exercise of freedom. It is never mechanical, just as it is not an object! Subtle structural linguistic analyses are of course limited to texts; that is, to finite, fixed words rather than open-ended ones. Such analyses seem to account for everything…But they overlook one thing. Once the languages and lexicons, rhetorics, discourses, and narratives have been stripped of their mystery, one thing is left: language itself. It remains because it is history, and such linguistic analysis excludes history.
This is its second characteristic. The paradox, let us remember, is something situated beside or outside the doxa (opinion). The paradox is free of all doxa, but at the same time calls the doxa into question. Roland Barthes is right in showing that "the real instrument of censorship is the endoxa rather than the police."
Our civilization’s major temptation (a problem that comes from technique’s preponderant influence) is to confuse reality with truth. We are made to believe that reality is truth: the only truth. At the time of the controversy over universals, the realists believed that only truth is real. We have inverted the terms, believing that everything is limited to reality. We think that truth is contained within reality and expressed by it. Nothing more. Moreover, there is nothing left beyond reality any more. Nothing is Other; the Wholly Other no longer exists. Everything is reduced to this verifiable reality which is scientifically measurable and pragmatically modifiable. Praxis becomes the measure of all truth. Truth becomes limited to something that falls short of real truth. It is something that can be acted upon. The Word is related only to Truth. The image is related only to reality.
Of course, the word can also refer to reality! It can be perfectly pragmatic, used to command an action or to describe a factual situation. The word enters the world of concrete objects and refers to experiences of reality. It is the means of communication in everyday life, and as a result it fits precisely with all of reality. It conveys information about reality and takes part in the understanding of it. It can even create reality, producing effects that will become part of reality. Thus the word is ambivalent. But its specificity lies in the domain of truth, since this domain is not shared with anything else.
On the contrary, the image cannot leave the domain of reality. It is not ambivalent. At this point I can hear someone tempted to ask: "What is Truth?" I will carefully avoid answering by suggesting some specific content for the word. Such an answer would be challenged immediately, involving us in a long digression which would exceed my capacity. Without attempting this sort of definition, I can show what the object of truth can be, and this will serve to distinguish it clearly from reality. The very questions asked about truth can indicate its nature, replacing the answer that cannot be given. We can grant, then, that anything concerned with the ultimate destination of a human being belongs to the domain of Truth.
It does not matter if one can answer or not, nor does it matter whether the answer is personal or is objectified as philosophy or revelation. But when a person asks about his own life (consciously or unconsciously), then the real question of truth has been asked. And when anyone claims to have resolved it, he is lying.
When he tries to answer this question within the framework of reality alone, he has no answer to offer.
An individual can ask the question of truth and attempt to answer it only through language. The image, on the other hand, belongs to the domain of reality. It can in no way convey anything at all about the order of truth. It never grasps anything but an appearance or outward behavior. It is unable to convey a spiritual experience, a requirement of justice, a testimony to the deepest feelings of a person, or to bear witness to the truth. In all these areas the image will rely on a form. Images can convey a rite, and thus people have a tendency to confuse religious truth with religious rites.
An image can catch a psychological expression on someone’s face: ecstasy, for example. People will believe that they are seeing authentic faith, whereas all they have is a psychological state that can be utterly unrelated to faith. Such a state can be induced by a drug, for example. Faced with such a problem, those who identify reality with truth are so monumentally confused that they deny faith because a psychological state can be artificially induced! An image can show a body’s position, as in a photograph of clasped hands and bowed head, seeming to say that this is prayer. But in reality, no prayer is involved in this image; it could be only a joke. Even when no one is joking, an image is incapable of expressing the seriousness of truth.
…An image can report miracles, but only recorded miracles -- after they have taken place and grace has departed. The image can never penetrate as far as the holy place where the Word proclaims that an individual has become a new creation. The miracle is an expression of this new creation. No image is able to convey any truth at all. This explains in partly why all "spiritual" films are failures. When we insist on expressing spiritual matters this way through images, something other than truth is always perceived. Even more serious and alarming, truth tends to disappear behind all the lighting and makeup. It tends to vanish when squelched by images.
Our generation is characterized by the exclusive preeminence of reality, both at the factual level and in our preoccupations. We are moved in this direction by the marvels of technique, the prevailing tone of our time, the great concern about economic matters, etc. Our era is further characterized by an absolute identification of reality with truth. Marxism has prevailed absolutely in this matter, and science has finally convinced people that the only possible truth consists in knowing reality, and that the proof of truth is success relative to reality. Thus in the thinking of modern individuals the image is the means par excellence which communicates reality and truth at the same time.
This attitude concerning images can be held only if one confuses reality and truth to begin with, believing that a scientific hypothesis is true when it is confirmed by experiments. Such a hypothesis has nothing to do with truth, and is merely accurate. Of course, this preeminence of reality and this confusion coincide with the universal belief in the "fact," taken to be of ultimate value.
The image is an admirable tool for understanding reality. A documentary film of a riot enables us to penetrate the world of anger better than any speech could. But an image is explosive only if the spectator knows what it represents and if it is taken for what it is: a faithful representation of reality. An image becomes falsehood and illusion as soon as a person tries to see truth in it. At that moment, by means of an amazing reversal, the image loses all its explosive power.
When the image is understood to speak only of reality, however, it is explosive and terrible. At this point we discover a new problem. images in our society are always the product of a mechanical technique. Technique is truly an intermediary, since the universe of images is established for us by technique. But this is the equivalent of saying that we find ourselves in the presence of an artificial world, made by an outside force with artificial means. Therefore it is important to realize that stark reality is never conveyed to us in this universe of images. Instead we find a more or less arbitrary construction or reconstruction, with the result that we must constantly remind ourselves of the ambiguity behind the apparent objectivity of the image: it expresses a reality, but of necessity it presents us with an artifice. In this sense the image is deceptive: it passes itself off as reality when it is artifice; it pretends to be unilateral truth when it is a reflection of something that cannot be truth.

I look out in front of me, and perceive the sea lit up out to the horizon. I look around me: to my left and right, I see the limitless straight line of the beach, and behind it, the dunes -- all in space. With my gaze I make the space my own. The objects are clear and plain. I see the wind bend over to the ground, the reeds that keep the dunes in place.
I am at the center of this universe by means of my gaze, which sweeps across this space and lets me know everything in it. By combining these images of reality, I grasp it as a whole, and become a part of it as a result of my looking.
My sight constructs a universe for me. It reveals to me a directly perceivable reality composed of colorful, simple, harmonious images. But it also furnishes me with more subtle materials. I learn to read my brother’s or my enemy’s face. Transmitted images are superimposed on one another, and as a result, I now know that a given image belongs within a particular context of reality. It conjures up another image; I anticipate what I am going to see, but what is coming will in any case be located in space and will constitute part of reality -- deeper and hidden, in a sense, but still reality.
Such information is precise and pinpointed, and deals only with reality. Nothing else, no other dimension, is ever involved. …Sight has made me the center of the world because it situates me at the point from which I see everything, and causes me to see things relative to this point. My vision makes a circular sweep of space, working from this point: my point of view. But now I am tempted, as the center of the world, to act on this spectacle and transform this setting. What was missing in my vision was someone to act, and I am available.
Sight moves to action at the same time that it serves as the means of action. Again, without it, how could I act, since I wouldn’t even know what my hand was touching or what was within my reach? …I am a subject, not separated from what I look at. Rather, what I see becomes a part of me, as my action involves me in what I see. Images both permit and condition my action; they are always imperative. I lean out the window and look searchingly into the emptiness. Images of distance and depth thrust themselves on my consciousness. I know I mustn’t lean out any further.
The image defines and marks the boundaries of my action. The image does not induce my action, but establishes its conditions and possibilities. Without visual images my action is definitely blind, incoherent, and uncertain. Sight conveys certainties and pieces of information to me, as we have said. Such information is reliable. I perceive a gray ocean and an overcast skyline. This is unquestionable. The reality around me is a certainty in which I can be confident. It is neither incoherent nor deformed. I know, of course, that this is also something learned; there are no data coming directly from the senses, and the shapes and colors and distances I apprehend are perceptible to me because I learned them. My culture has furnished me with the very images I see. But however important this may be (and we must not push this idea too far!), it is still true that I see.
What a dreadful uneasiness takes hold of us when reality is submerged in fog…sight fails to furnish me with clear images and I can no longer act. The world loses its midpoint. It is off center because I cannot see it anymore. The center could be anywhere, but it is no longer located where I am.
In order for my sight to mislead me concerning reality, there must be some unusual phenomenon, like a mirage. The image is not ambiguous. This peach I am looking at is red and weighs heavily on the bending branch. This is absolutely certain. But the image is insignificant. It has no meaning in itself and must be interpreted. In the case of a fruit ripe for picking, the visual image gives me indisputable information, but if I stop there, nothing will happen. It must therefore be interpreted. In order to move from the vision of the fruit to "I should pick it" or "It can be picked," there must be an interpretation: an attribution of meaning to these real images of reality.
Another dimension must be added to sight: interpretation will come through speech. Thus the image contains within itself a deep contradiction. It is not ambiguous: it is coherent, reliable, and inclusive; but it is insignificant. It can have innumerable meanings, depending on culture, learning, or the intervention of some other dimension. For this reason I must learn to see, before looking at the image.
After seeing it, I must learn to interpret it. The image is clear, but this clarity does not imply certainty or comprehension. My certainty is limited to this directly perceived reality that my sight reveals to me. Nothing beyond that.
I call these images "vision" because they are connected with the other images I am accustomed to. I would be tempted to say in this case that the order is reversed. The visual image exists, and then I attribute a meaning to it; but the vision appears only as the illustration of a previously established meaning. No matter how insignificant it may be, the visual image is always rigorous, imperative, and irreversible. I saw what I saw. I cannot change the reality which is conveyed to me in this way, except through my action. There is no ambiguity at this point. Nor is there reversibility.
If I had only one "view" of my universe, I would be a participant in a totality which would be both terribly coherent and yet at the same time composed of fragments without any necessary relationship. The totality would be like a cloud of irrational dots which can form only the framework of an action, a change in the relationships between the points. But the cloud of dots cannot be used for understanding anything, because this pointillism of images is space but not duration. The image is present. It is only a presence. It bears witness to something "already there": the object I see was there before I opened my eyes.
I have a point of view, a location from which I see things, but it is situated within what I see and inseparable from it. Wherever I place myself, however I shift my position, I remain in the field of vision, I remain in the middle of what I see. I can never take my distance, act as if I were not present, or even begin to think independently of what I see.
At night, when I cannot see, a certain distance is established. This explains why the day’s events become so painful at night: the distance between me and the world around me allows for reflection and meditation. A flood of images overwhelms me, beckons me, and carries me along: an image I have seen follows immediately after the one I have just dismissed from my mind. I can never stop this movement of reality in space. I can never consider a given image like a diamond or a painting from which I can take my distance in order to be "myself," instead of being overwhelmed by the images composed of dots.
The image prevents me from taking my distance. And if I cannot establish a certain distance, I can neither judge nor criticize. Of course, I also feel pleasure or displeasure in what I see. I can find it beautiful or ugly. But this is not a critical process. No judgment is involved. Furthermore, what possible criticism or judgment can we make with respect to space and reality? In spite of the frailty we have all observed in a person’s testimony about what he has seen, everyone has the same certainty about anything he has seen. He has seen reality.
Sight involves a relationship with reality as established in space. It is an artificial construction. Medusa’s head transfixes whoever gazes at her. Whoever looks at the scenes on the shields of the Iliad is terror stricken. Sight introduces us to an unbearable shock. Reality when seen inspires horror. Terror is always visual. Horror stories play only on our visual sense and suggest representation.
In contrast, the spoken word can involve us in mystery or drama. It places us in situations of conflict and makes us conscious of tragedy. But it is never on its own terrifying or stupefying. We are dazed by sight -- by an image or a vision. The word takes us to the edge of terror only when descriptive and painting extremely precise images. Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories are an example. All the descriptions we have heard of Nazi death camps move us to revulsion and to a judgment that may be based more on strong feelings than anything else. The image of bulldozers pushing along mounds of skeletal corpses, which shortly before had been living beings, faces teetering from the machine’s pushing -- this image drawn from ‘Night and Fog’ moves us to abject horror. It terrifies us, because we see. Such terror results from the horror of reality.
Reality apprehended by sight is always unbearable, even when that reality is beauty. We have a horror of reality, perhaps because we depend on it so. Language, even when it is realistic, allows us to escape from this terrible reality. Sight locks us up with it and obliges us to look at it. There is no way out -- except by controlling and mastering the reality.
Images fall into a pattern with respect to each other, but sounds do not. Instead, sounds contradict each other and cancel each other out. I am listening to a Mozart concerto, and suddenly near me someone speaks. Or a visitor knocks at my door. Or someone starts noisily putting away dishes and silverware. Sounds produce incoherence. The noises I hear form no panorama of the world.
Alone among all other sounds there is one that is particularly important for us: the spoken word. It ushers us into another dimension: relationship with other living beings, with persons. The Word is the particularly human sound which differentiates us from everything else. In this connection a fundamental difference between seeing and hearing is immediately apparent. In seeing, the living being is one form among many. A human being has a special shape and color, but he is included with all the rest as part of the landscape: a discrete, moving speck. When I hear speech, however, the human being becomes qualitatively different from everything else.
The spoken word, even if it involves an essential proclamation or the thought of a genius, falls into the void, passes, and disappears, if it is not heard and recovered by someone. The ocean over there, even if no one contemplates it, remains what it is and what it was. I see it, and it produces a flurry of emotions in me. I leave. I go away, but it does not. The spoken sentence has sunk into nothingness; time has gone by, and there are no "frozen words" which can make themselves heard again later.
Thus speech is basically presence. It is something alive and is never an object. It cannot be thrown before me and remain there. Once spoken, the word ceases to exist, unless I have recovered it. Before it is spoken, the word places me in an expectant situation, in a future I await eagerly. The word does not exist on its own. It continues to exist only in its effect on the one who spoke it and on the one who recovered it. The word is never an object you can turn this way and that, grasp, and preserve for tomorrow or some distant day when you may have time to deal with it. The word exists now. It is something immediate and can never be manipulated. Either it exists or it doesn’t. It makes me what I am, establishes the speaking me and the listening me, so that my role is determined by the word itself rather than by its content. For the word to become an object, someone must transform it into writing. But then it is no longer speech. Yet even in that form, it requires time.
The word is, of necessity, spoken to someone. If no one is present, it is spoken to oneself or to God. It presupposes an ear; the Great Ear, if necessary. It calls for a response. Every word, even a swearword, an insult, an exclamation, or a soliloquy, begins a dialogue. The monologue is a dialogue in the future or the past, or else it is a dialogue incorporated into a monologue. Here again, time is involved. Dialogue develops according to a variable timetable, but dialogue cannot exist unless those engaging in it are inserted into time. Language is a call, an exchange. I avoid using the threadbare term "communication." It is not true that language exists only to communicate information.
Language never belongs to the order of evident things. It is a continuous movement between hiding and revealing. It makes of the play in human relationships something even more fine and complex than it would be without language. Language exists only for, in, and by virtue of this relationship.
Dialogue involves a certain distance. We must be separated as well as different. I do not speak to a person identical to me. I must have something to say which the other lacks, but he must also be different from me. Yet similarity is required as well. When Adam sees Eve he bursts into speech. He speaks because of her and for her. She was flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone; and yet different: a dissimilar similar person. Speech fills the infinite gap that separates us. But the difference is never removed.
Discourse begins again and again because the distance between us remains. I find I must repeatedly begin speaking again to restate what I have said. The result is an inevitable, yet rich and blessed, redundancy. The word is resumed and repeated because it is never fully explicit or an exact translation of what I have to say. It is never precisely received, never precisely understood.
The word reduced to the value of an algebraic formula with only one possible meaning would be useful for us in carrying out an identical superficial activity. But such language could never create meaning, and would never produce agreement and communication with another person. "Algebraic" language could never produce -- or suggest a story. Bees communicate pieces of information to each other, but do not produce anything like history.
The word can also obstruct and impede history, when mythical language immerses us in an ahistorical time that is repetitive and continually reduced to myth. Language is either historical or ahistorical, either a discourse on action to be undertaken or of a myth to listen to. According to the sort of language used, human history either arises and becomes a significant aspect of humanity’s existence, or else it remains on the level of everyday incoherence.
With insight, meaning becomes perfectly transparent. The other person’s words become mine; I receive them in my own mind. I experience utter intellectual delight, but a delight in my whole being as well, when I understand and am understood. The Word ushers us into time.
When I say that language normally deals with Truth rather than Reality, I only mean that there are two orders of knowledge, two kinds of references we use as human beings. There are references to the concrete, experienced reality around us, and others that come from the spoken universe. The spoken universe is our invention -- something we establish and originate by our words. We derive meaning and understanding from language, and it permits us to go beyond the reality of our lives to enter another universe, which we may call phantasmic, schizophrenic, imaginary, or any other name we choose.
I am certain that since the beginning, human beings have felt a pressing need to frame for themselves something different from the verifiable universe, and we have formed it through language. This universe is what we call truth.
The important thing is that the unique value of language lies in truth. Language is not bound to reality, but to its capacity to create this different universe, which you can call surreal, meta-real, or metaphysical. For the sake of convenience we will call it the order of truth. The word is the creator, founder, and producer of truth.
When it uses a loudspeaker and crushes others with its powerful equipment, when the television set speaks, the word is no longer involved, since no dialogue is possible. What we have in these cases is machines that use language as a way of asserting themselves. Their power is magnified, but language is reduced to a useless series of sounds which inspire only reflexes and animal instincts.
How often we have come up against a blank wall instead of a face, when the other person did not want to understand! How can we make him understand as long as he persists in that attitude? In reality, language is an extraordinary occurrence in which each person’s liberty is respected. I can oppose my word to the other person’s. Or I can turn a deaf ear. I remain free as I face someone who tries to define me, encircle me, or convince me.
In other words, of necessity I give my listener a choice to make. A situation where there is choice is a situation where there is freedom. But at the same time, I invite him to use the gift of liberty inherent in language, just as I have. He must speak in turn, consciously making use of his freedom. I invite him to start down the difficult road of self-knowledge and self-expression, of choice, self-exposure, and unveiling.
Language always involves the exercise of freedom. It is never mechanical, just as it is not an object! Subtle structural linguistic analyses are of course limited to texts; that is, to finite, fixed words rather than open-ended ones. Such analyses seem to account for everything…But they overlook one thing. Once the languages and lexicons, rhetorics, discourses, and narratives have been stripped of their mystery, one thing is left: language itself. It remains because it is history, and such linguistic analysis excludes history.
This is its second characteristic. The paradox, let us remember, is something situated beside or outside the doxa (opinion). The paradox is free of all doxa, but at the same time calls the doxa into question. Roland Barthes is right in showing that "the real instrument of censorship is the endoxa rather than the police."
Our civilization’s major temptation (a problem that comes from technique’s preponderant influence) is to confuse reality with truth. We are made to believe that reality is truth: the only truth. At the time of the controversy over universals, the realists believed that only truth is real. We have inverted the terms, believing that everything is limited to reality. We think that truth is contained within reality and expressed by it. Nothing more. Moreover, there is nothing left beyond reality any more. Nothing is Other; the Wholly Other no longer exists. Everything is reduced to this verifiable reality which is scientifically measurable and pragmatically modifiable. Praxis becomes the measure of all truth. Truth becomes limited to something that falls short of real truth. It is something that can be acted upon. The Word is related only to Truth. The image is related only to reality.
Of course, the word can also refer to reality! It can be perfectly pragmatic, used to command an action or to describe a factual situation. The word enters the world of concrete objects and refers to experiences of reality. It is the means of communication in everyday life, and as a result it fits precisely with all of reality. It conveys information about reality and takes part in the understanding of it. It can even create reality, producing effects that will become part of reality. Thus the word is ambivalent. But its specificity lies in the domain of truth, since this domain is not shared with anything else.
On the contrary, the image cannot leave the domain of reality. It is not ambivalent. At this point I can hear someone tempted to ask: "What is Truth?" I will carefully avoid answering by suggesting some specific content for the word. Such an answer would be challenged immediately, involving us in a long digression which would exceed my capacity. Without attempting this sort of definition, I can show what the object of truth can be, and this will serve to distinguish it clearly from reality. The very questions asked about truth can indicate its nature, replacing the answer that cannot be given. We can grant, then, that anything concerned with the ultimate destination of a human being belongs to the domain of Truth.
It does not matter if one can answer or not, nor does it matter whether the answer is personal or is objectified as philosophy or revelation. But when a person asks about his own life (consciously or unconsciously), then the real question of truth has been asked. And when anyone claims to have resolved it, he is lying.
When he tries to answer this question within the framework of reality alone, he has no answer to offer.
An individual can ask the question of truth and attempt to answer it only through language. The image, on the other hand, belongs to the domain of reality. It can in no way convey anything at all about the order of truth. It never grasps anything but an appearance or outward behavior. It is unable to convey a spiritual experience, a requirement of justice, a testimony to the deepest feelings of a person, or to bear witness to the truth. In all these areas the image will rely on a form. Images can convey a rite, and thus people have a tendency to confuse religious truth with religious rites.
An image can catch a psychological expression on someone’s face: ecstasy, for example. People will believe that they are seeing authentic faith, whereas all they have is a psychological state that can be utterly unrelated to faith. Such a state can be induced by a drug, for example. Faced with such a problem, those who identify reality with truth are so monumentally confused that they deny faith because a psychological state can be artificially induced! An image can show a body’s position, as in a photograph of clasped hands and bowed head, seeming to say that this is prayer. But in reality, no prayer is involved in this image; it could be only a joke. Even when no one is joking, an image is incapable of expressing the seriousness of truth.
…An image can report miracles, but only recorded miracles -- after they have taken place and grace has departed. The image can never penetrate as far as the holy place where the Word proclaims that an individual has become a new creation. The miracle is an expression of this new creation. No image is able to convey any truth at all. This explains in partly why all "spiritual" films are failures. When we insist on expressing spiritual matters this way through images, something other than truth is always perceived. Even more serious and alarming, truth tends to disappear behind all the lighting and makeup. It tends to vanish when squelched by images.
Our generation is characterized by the exclusive preeminence of reality, both at the factual level and in our preoccupations. We are moved in this direction by the marvels of technique, the prevailing tone of our time, the great concern about economic matters, etc. Our era is further characterized by an absolute identification of reality with truth. Marxism has prevailed absolutely in this matter, and science has finally convinced people that the only possible truth consists in knowing reality, and that the proof of truth is success relative to reality. Thus in the thinking of modern individuals the image is the means par excellence which communicates reality and truth at the same time.
This attitude concerning images can be held only if one confuses reality and truth to begin with, believing that a scientific hypothesis is true when it is confirmed by experiments. Such a hypothesis has nothing to do with truth, and is merely accurate. Of course, this preeminence of reality and this confusion coincide with the universal belief in the "fact," taken to be of ultimate value.
The image is an admirable tool for understanding reality. A documentary film of a riot enables us to penetrate the world of anger better than any speech could. But an image is explosive only if the spectator knows what it represents and if it is taken for what it is: a faithful representation of reality. An image becomes falsehood and illusion as soon as a person tries to see truth in it. At that moment, by means of an amazing reversal, the image loses all its explosive power.
When the image is understood to speak only of reality, however, it is explosive and terrible. At this point we discover a new problem. images in our society are always the product of a mechanical technique. Technique is truly an intermediary, since the universe of images is established for us by technique. But this is the equivalent of saying that we find ourselves in the presence of an artificial world, made by an outside force with artificial means. Therefore it is important to realize that stark reality is never conveyed to us in this universe of images. Instead we find a more or less arbitrary construction or reconstruction, with the result that we must constantly remind ourselves of the ambiguity behind the apparent objectivity of the image: it expresses a reality, but of necessity it presents us with an artifice. In this sense the image is deceptive: it passes itself off as reality when it is artifice; it pretends to be unilateral truth when it is a reflection of something that cannot be truth.

1. Switches. Electromechanical Relays. Ladder Logic

6.1. Switch Types
A switch is a device that interrupts the flow of electrons in a circuit when pressed. They can switch between two states: completely on (‘’closed’’) or completely off (‘’open’’), which makes them similar to the binary devices. There are different types of switches, some simple, some more complex, but all of them have the ability to either be ‘’open’’ or ‘’closed’’.
6.1.1. Toggle Switches
The toggle switch can be found in most common households. They are actuated by a lever angled in one of two or more positions. Most used toggle switches will come to rest in any of their lever positions. There are also others that have an internal spring mechanism returning the lever to a certain normal position, allowing the so called ‘’momentary’’ operation.
6.1.2. Pushbutton Switches
Pushbutton switches are two-position devices actuated with a button that is pressed and released. Most pushbutton switches have an internal spring mechanism like the one mentioned above by the toggle switches. Others will stay in their ‘’pressed’’ position until the button is pressed again to go into the ‘’pulled out’’ position.
6.1.3. Selector Switches
Selector switches are actuated with a rotary knob or lever to select one of two or more positions. Like the toggle switch, selector switches can either rest in any of their positions or contain an internal spring mechanism for momentary operation.
6.1.4. Joystick Switches
A joystick switch is actuated by a lever free to move in more than one axis of motion. One or more of several switch contact mechanisms are used depending on which way the lever is pushed, and in some cases by how far it is pushed. Those types of switches are most commonly used for crane and robot control, sometimes even designed to be operated by the motion of a machine rather than by the hand of a human operator.
6.1.5. Limit Switches
The so-called limit switches are motion-operated switches. They are often used to limit the motion of a machine by turning off the actuating power to a component if it moves too far. These switches closely resemble rugged toggle or selector hand switched fitted with a lever pushed by a machine part.
6.1.6. Proximity Switches
Proximity switches sense the approach of a metallic machine part either by a magnetic or high-frequency electromagnetic field. Simple proximity switches use a permanent magnet to actuate a sealed switch mechanism whenever the machine part gets close (typically 1 inch or less). More complex proximity
switches work like a metal detector, energizing a coil of wire with a high- frequency current, and electronically monitoring the magnitude of that current. If a metallic part (not necessarily magnetic) gets close enough to the coil, the current will increase, and trip the monitoring circuit. Another form of proximity switch is the optical switch, comprised of a light source and photocell. Machine position is detected by either the interruption or reflection of a light beam.
6.1.7. Speed Switches
These switches sense the rotary speed of a shaft either by a centrifugal weight mechanism mounted on the shaft, or by some kind of non-contact detection of shaft motion such as optical or magnetic.
6.1.8. Pressure Switches
Gas or liquid pressure can be used to actuate a switch mechanism if that pressure is applied to a piston, diaphragm, or bellows, which converts pressure to mechanical force.
6.1.9. Temperature Switches
The temperature switches use a temperature-sensing mechanism called ‘’bimetallic strip’’, which is a thin strip of two metals, joined back-to-back, each metal having a different rate of thermal expansion. When the strip heats or cools, differing rates of thermal expansion between the two metals causes it to bend. The bending of the strip can then be used to actuate a switch contact
mechanism. Other temperature switches use a brass bulb filled with either a liquid or gas, with a tiny tube connecting the bulb to a pressure-sensing switch. As the bulb is heated, the gas or liquid expands, generating a pressure increase which then actuates the switch mechanism.
6.1.10. Liquid Level Switch
A floating object can be used to actuate a switch mechanism when the liquid level in a tank rises past a certain point. If the liquid is electrically conductive, the liquid itself can be used as a conductor to bridge between two metal probes inserted into the tank at the required depth. Level switches can also be designed to detect the level of solid materials such as wood chips, grain, coal, or animal feed in a storage silo, bin, or hopper.
6.1.11. Liquid Flow Switch
Inserted into a pipe, a flow switch will detect any gas or liquid flow rate more than a certain threshold, usually with a small paddle or vane which is pushed by the flow. Other flow switches are constructed as differential pressure switches, measuring the pressure drop across a restriction built into the pipe.
6.1.12. Nuclear Level Switch
Another type of level switch, suitable for liquid or solid material detection, is the nuclear switch. Composed of radioactive source material and a radiation detector, the two are mounted across the diameter of a storage vessel for either solid or liquid material. Any height of material beyond the level of the source/detector arrangement will attenuate the strength of radiation reaching the detector. This decrease in radiation at the detector can be used to trigger a
relay mechanism to provide a switch contact for measurement, alarm point, or even control of the vessel level. Source and detector are outside of the vessel, with no intrusion at all except the radiation flux itself. The radioactive sources used are weak and pose no immediate health threat to operations or maintenance personnel.
6.2. Switch Contact Design
One way to construct a switch is by bringing two conductors into contact with each other in a controlled environment and manner. A crude but easily understandable example will be two copper wires touching each other by the motion of a lever, or directly pushing two metal strips into contact. The conductive parts in a switch used to make and break the electrical connection are called contacts. They are typically made of silver or silver-cadmium alloy, whose conductive properties are not significantly compromised by surface corrosion or oxidation. Gold contacts exhibit the best corrosion resistance, but are limited in current-carrying capacity and may “cold weld” if brought together with high mechanical force. Whatever the choice of metal, the switch contacts are guided by a mechanism ensuring square and even contact, for maximum reliability and minimum resistance. Contacts such as these can be constructed to handle extremely large amounts of electric current, up to thousands of amps in some cases.
The limiting factors for switch contact ampacity are as follows: heat generated by current through metal contacts (while closed); sparking caused when contacts are opened or closed; the voltage across open switch contacts (potential of current jumping across the gap). 6.2.1. Mercury Switch A common type of sealed-contact switch is the mercury switch. Mercury is a metallic element, liquid at room temperature. Mercury switches use a slug of liquid mercury metal as a moving contact. Sealed in a glass tube, the mercury contact’s spark is sealed from the outside environment, making this type of switch ideally suited for atmospheres potentially harbouring explosive vapours. 6.2.2. Magnetic Reed Switches Reed switches are another type of sealed-contact device, contact being made by two thin metal “reeds” inside a glass tube, brought together by the influence of an external magnetic field. 6.3. Contact “Normal” State and Make/Break Sequence The normal state of a switch is that where it is unactuated. For process switches, this is the condition it’s in when sitting on a shelf, uninstalled. Therefore, contacts that are open in this position are called normally open and contacts that are closed – normally closed. Sometimes those terms are abbreviated to N.O. and N.C., respectively. Normally-open contacts are designated by the lines not touching, while normally-closed contacts are designated with a diagonal line bridging between the two lines. The switch on the left will close when actuated, and will be open while in the “normal” (unactuated) position. The switch on the right will open when actuated, and is closed in the “normal” (unactuated) position. Multiposition switches can be either break-before-make (most common) or make-before- break. The “poles” of a switch refers to the number of moving contacts, while the “throws” of a switch refers to the number of stationary contacts per moving contact.
6.4. Contact ‘’Bounce’’ Due to the mass of the moving contact of a switch and the possible elasticity inherent in the mechanism and/or contact materials, contacts will ‘’bounce’’ upon closing for some milliseconds before coming to a full rest and providing unbroken contact. Most of the times this presents no consequences, however, if the switch is used to send a signal to an electronic amplifier or some other circuit with a fast response time, contact bounce may produce very noticeable and undesired effects. For example, if we use a switch to provide a ‘’clock’ signal to a digital counter circuit, so that it increases the counted value with one every time the button is pushed. When the so called ‘’bouncing’’ happens, the circuit will mistakenly count a single push as several counts. Therefore, when we use switches for such precise work, we need to find a way to debounce them. There are several different ways of debouncing a switch contact: to reduce the kinetic energy of the moving contact, which will reduce the force of impact as it comes to rest on the stationary contact, thus minimizing bounce; to use “buffer springs” on the stationary contact(s) so that they are free to recoil and gently absorb the force of impact from the moving contact; to design the switch for “wiping” or “sliding” contact rather than direct impact, such as a “Knife” switch design; to dampen the switch mechanism’s movement using an air or oil “shock absorber” mechanism; to use sets of contacts in parallel with each other, each slightly different in mass or contact gap, so that when one is rebounding off the stationary contact, at least one of the others will still be in firm contact; to “wet” the contacts with liquid mercury in a sealed environment, so that after initial contact is made, the surface tension of the mercury will maintain circuit continuity even though the moving contact may bounce off the stationary contact several times. Each one of these suggestions sacrifices some aspect of switch performance for limited bounce, and so it is impractical to design all switches with limited contact bounce in mind. 6.5. Relay Construction Relays are extremely useful when we have a need to control a large amount of current and/or voltage with a small electrical signal. The relay coil which produces the magnetic field may only consume fractions of a watt of power, while the contacts closed or opened by that magnetic field may be able to conduct hundreds of times that amount of power to a load. In effect, a relay acts as a binary (on or off) amplifier. Just as with transistors, the relay’s ability
to control one electrical signal with another finds application in the construction of logic functions. In the above schematic, the relay’s coil is energized by the low-voltage (12 VDC) source, while the single-pole, single-throw (SPST) contact interrupts the high-voltage (480 VAC) circuit. 6.6. Contactors When a relay is used to switch a large amount of electrical power through its contacts, it is designated by a special name: contactor. Contactors typically have multiple contacts, and those contacts are usually (but not always) normally-open, so that power to the load is shut off when the coil is de- energized. Perhaps the most common industrial use for contactors is the control of electric motors.
Large electric motors can be protected from overcurrent damage through the use of overload heaters and overload contacts. If the series-connected heaters get too hot from excessive current, the normally-closed overload contact will open, de-energizing the contactor sending power to the motor.

During a short drive in my neighborhood with the radio on, I noticed my dash clock and average mpg display were dead (airbag indicator was working). As I pulled in to park, the audio system popped audibly and died (no display, couldn’t get it back). I did not notice at the time, but I think the “locked” audio chirp failed as well when I walked away after engaging the automatic locks from the door (I noticed this was the case after I parked the car at home an hour later). When I returned to my car after my errand to drive home, I could not get the car to unlock from my key fob. I suspected the battery had died, but the security alarm went off when I unlocked it manually and the car started up fine.
I haven’t dug into the fuse box yet but was curious if there’s a bus or relay that could cause this behavior. Thanks.

Title. After research many threads, found out this bug is not common at all, but annoying and frustrating as hell. Tried everything to fix, full reset, switch off and on DnD mode, reinstall Clock app, create new alarms, still no sound sometimes. And I can't predict when this bug happen, its totally random. Shit sucks. Anyone have same problem? Did logs can help to figure out why it happens? Is it software or hardware issue? Is this bug really transfers through devices(seen comments like this)? If so, then it somehow binded to icloud account? Didn't try full reset with new account tho, and don't want to. First I thought it was me, and it not happens so frequently, but now alarm fails almost everytime, if I set it more then a 3-4 hours. After waking up, all I see is phone alarm screen, and no vibro or sound. iOS 16.4.1(a) SE 2gen Will try this workaround today, if it not helps... I hope it will.

I personally can't really tell the difference with lossless and top shelf MP3/AAC (or maybe just not anymore) and I probably wouldn't even take a gig that could get the most out of them like a festival anyways. Lossless may help when you're red lining or driving a sound guy nuts, but I usually keep it around 0db after hearing Dan Bell do it at DEMF cuz it sounded so nice and clean compared to Moby's set. I've heard effects and pitching up and down drag more on a lossy file but I don't use much effects and stay around +/-5. At most I'd consider +/-10 but I've tried playing 2 files at 50% speed in FCPX and didn't hear any real differences. (tho maybe DJ software isn't as efficient not sure how scientific that was lol) Finally, altho I like the idea of lossless and maximum quality and even tho drive space is cheaper these days, the size of the files honestly feels alarming to me just for music and it almost prohibits me from buying more music and even mixing at times. I'd rather feel more free when work with 99% of the way there quality than feel held back from that little extra that only a handful may benefit from.
Having said that, I do enjoy the sound of vinyl and it does have a tangible difference. Less pristine, maybe a lil dusty sounding at quiet parts, that airiness of the needle dragging, perhaps unlucky if you get too many pops in there but it does feel more organic. Was curious if there's any places that sell vinyl recordings of tracks instead of digital pulled straight from the software, or if the only route is just spending a ton of money and time doing it myself?

BACKGROUND
Long story short I spent 8 years on the West Coast holding increasingly important positions in the energy industry, but I hated it with every fiber of my being. I started taking nursing prerequisite courses in January of 2020. Family trauma happened. I moved home to Texas to be closer to my family, quit my job (was making ~$130k with bonus), and took the plunge and went to back to school for nursing at 31. I am half way done with an accelerated BSN program and I have a 4.0 GPA. I love it so much despite it being very difficult. I have externship currently and I have an ICU internship lined up for my final semester, which is basically a guaranteed new grad job.
I currently live with my mom and brother. We are remodeling our house so we are in an apartment for a bit. Very tight quarters but thankful to be with them. Boyfriend just successfully made a big career move and is now a superintendent for an important and well respected organization in town making $60k annually with a 8% bonus. Very proud of him and very excited for our future - we are talking about getting engaged in the next year. He is getting an apartment in the next couple months after living at home with his family due to some major family health issues he has been helping out with so you will see some of the apartment search start to happen in this diary!
Currently boyfriend and I split going out expenses pretty much down the line, but with this new job we had a discussion last week about how he will pay for the majority of our going out costs moving forward once he gets his first paycheck this month until I start working full time again in January!
Previous money diary from August 2022 here.
ASSETS (comparing last money diary to now):
​

	August 2022	June 2023	Difference
401k	$156,400	$158,600	$2,200
Roth IRA	$68,000	$68,500	(500)
Saving's account	$41,001.43	$26,572.63	($14,428.81)
Checking Account	$3,024.58	$915.41	($2,109)
HSA	$8,800	$7,100	($1,700)
Brokerage	$440	$444	$4
UGMA	$85,000	$84,000	($1,000)
Pension	forgot to include	$27,000	N/A

NET WORTH: $373k
**I don’t carry any credit card debt / no student loan debt / no equity in any kind of home. I was lucky enough to be in a position where I saved up over $40k cash to pay for living expenses when in school. My UGMA account will be used as part of a down payment for a house in the next couple years. My current BSN degree is being covered through family. Also, trying to figure out what to do with my pension - depending how finances go the next 8 months I am in school / if I have any emergencies (I have 2 senior pets) I could cash part of it out or completely roll it over into an IRA.
INCOME
Income Progression: I worked in the energy industry for 8 years; my starting salary was $35,000.
I worked in the Seattle area starting out at $35k in 2014. Moved to a new job in 2016 for $65k and then another new job in 2018 for $85k +12% bonus. Got up to $104k + 20% bonus before I quit. Also worked as a CNA on the weekends for about 6 months for $15 an hour during COVID to make sure I really wanted to go to nursing school.
Main Job Monthly Take Home: It varies but the average so far this year it is $535. I have an incredibly flexible externship at a hospital very close to where I live where my director literally just lets me show up whenever I want to work. I make $17 an hour. I met a couple incredible mentors but I think I am going to quit soon since it just won’t be feasible to work this semester and I already have my ICU internship lined up for September. Trying to be easier on myself and put myself first and I feel very lucky that I don’t need to work. Don’t get me wrong the extra money is SO NICE but I want to concentrate on school, myself, family, partner, and friends. Work on top of an accelerated nursing program is too much. I am actually the only one working in my cohort currently.
Any Other Monthly Income Here: I live with my mom right now and she pays for most of the groceries, utilities, etc. I feel incredibly privileged and lucky that I can live with her and that she is able to support me in this way while I transition careers. I do lots for her to support her such as chores, errands, paying for big Costco runs, etc. My boyfriend also helps out with pet expenses and other things I want / need.
MONTHLY EXPENSES

• Rent: $400 to my mom for a very discounted rate at our current apartment. I don’t pay rent when we are at the house. I will not be paying rent when I semi-move in with my boyfriend in the next couple months. Our goal is to get our own luxury apartment next year close to both of our places of employment after a year lease at a cheaper place. Between now and then I’ll split my time with him and my mom.
• Cellphone: $15 (on family plan & I just pay for additional data)
• Spotify: $5.40 (student plan)
• iCloud: $2.99
• Prime: $8.11
• Gym membership: $20
• Regular therapy: $5 a session and I go biweekly
• Health insurance: $122.54 monthly
• Costco: $60 annually

I allocate the following to my biggest expense categories monthly:

• Gas: $120
• Groceries: $300
• Eating out: $400
• Pet expenses: $200
• Other discretionary spending: $400

WEDNESDAY - DAY 1
8:45: I slept 10 hours last night and it was glorious. I worked a 12 hour shift at the hospital yesterday and our patient acuity was very high.
9:30: Make a coffee and walk and feed my pup. I walk over to the pool for a morning swim. I love a quiet morning swim so much.
11:30: I had a nice 500 yd swim, drank a Premier Protein shake & ate overnight oats with blueberries for breakfast, had a relaxing shower, and started some laundry. Feeling anxious about everything I have on my plate currently. Also I feel hungover from work yesterday. I was going to work another 12 hour shift tomorrow but now I don’t know if I can handle it with school also starting on Friday and a very busy social weekend coming up. Luckily, my director literally lets me show up whenever I want so I may do 7 or 8 hours tomorrow instead of a full 12. Try to table my feelings to discuss in therapy this afternoon.
11:40: Sit down to finish some online orientation for my internship that is coming up my final semester.
13:03: Orientation stuff only took about 20 minutes thank god. I ran to the grocery store and grab a 4 pack of watermelon Celsius, frozen veggies, Eggo waffles, tea bags, string cheese, coffee filters, Wheat Thins, and lean ground beef ($37.01). Head up to the rooftop lounge at the apartment complex to FaceTime a friend that lives across the country since there is zero privacy in the apartment.
14:15: Get off FaceTime, work on some more laundry, and head out to therapy.
16:15: Good, productive, fun, and validating therapy session and I make it over to my friend’s condo to check on her kitties. I had set up a reoccurring biweekly therapy appointment now that I know my school schedule for the upcoming semester too. We talked about money fixation and anxiety and trying to let that go. We agree that I should sleep in a bit tomorrow, walk my dog, go for a swim, and then go to work. I don’t ~need~ the money so working 12 hours vs 7 or 8 is not an issue. My mental health is more important. Also the work hangover from yesterday is real.
17:00: Boyfriend comes over after work and jumps in the shower while I’m a couch potato (Disclaimer: he’s friends with my friend too and she’s 100% comfortable with him hanging out too.) We relax and hang with the kitties and catch up on our days.
18:45: We head to dinner. We grab burritos at one of our favorite local spots and I pay ($25.88). We look at houses for fun on Zillow and discuss what apartments we want to tour in the next couple weeks.
20:00: I make it home and have a long talk with my mom about her friend who ended up in the hospital today with a compound fracture. Long story short I’ll need to stay up until midnight to hand off the house keys, garage door opener, etc. to a friend who is driving into town that can take care of her dog. Her dog is a pit bull that is vicious to strangers so no one else can go over to the house other than this friend who pet sits and knows the dog.
23:30: The friend makes it and we hand him the keys and everything he needs. I had spent the evening tidying up and meal prepping and looking at more apartments. It’s amazing to me how much time goes into keeping a clean and tidy home.
12:08: I spent a half hour setting up my June budget and then pass out.
TOTAL: $62.89
THURSDAY - DAY 2
9:05: I finally wake up to a bunch of texts from multiple different friends / friend groups. Ugh. I’m just feeling really anxious about school starting tomorrow, my mom being very distraught over her colleague / friend, working today, and a busy weekend coming up. I make some coffee and walk my pup.
9:33: I call my mom while feeding my pup breakfast and tell her how I’m feeling and we both agreed I ran around too much last semester and I told her I am setting firm boundaries with myself to basically not do anything social during the school week once clinical start (Monday - Thursday) unless it’s like a super casual dinner and I truly have the capacity for it. I burned myself out at the end of last semester and spent weeks putting the pieces back together.
9:55: I make another cup of coffee and take myself for a morning swim. It brings me so much joy and grounds me. I swim 500 yards and then jump into the shower, throw my scrubs on, kiss my pup goodbye and head to the hospital. I drink a chocolate Primer Protein shake and call my friend L on the way to hear how her trip has been going so far. It was nice to catch up even though we saw each other over the weekend lol.
10:54: Ate my overnight oats made with half and half and some blueberries, clocked in, and headed out to the floor. Immediately get asked to be a sitter which literally never happens. Thank you universe. Feeling a little less anxious now that I’m here and feeling thankful for the little bit of extra money I’m making and being here for my community.
14:04: Maybe not thank you universe - the patient slept for a while then got extremely combative and was trying to punch me. I switch off with a coworker and head to the break room to eat a bowl I made with frozen veggies + rotisserie chicken from Costco + cheddar cheese on top.
19:09: I finally clock out. I had a snack of 2 rice cakes and some almonds at one point. Rest of work was wild (i.e. a psychotic patient that pulled out his IV and was throwing things everywhere, someone screaming in pain for hours nonstop, etc.) and had me questioning what I am doing making this career change. I am tired.
19:49: I make it home after swinging by L’s to check on her kitties. Jump in the shower. My mom has dinner ready and I scarf down this gorgeous basil, mozzarella, peppers, tomatoes, avocados, and olive salad + a couple Trader Joe’s dolmas + a couple pieces of fresh bread. Delicious. I force myself to get my food and my school bag ready for tomorrow and lay my scrubs out before I crawl into bed a little after 9.
TOTAL: $0
FRIDAY - DAY 3
06:22: Alarm goes off and I roll out of bed and take my pup for a nice walk. Give him breakfast / shower / throw on my scrubs / pack my lunch / give the pup a big kiss goodbye and I am out the door a little after 7:00.
07:47: I get to school and I am NOT feeling it lol. I stopped at Costco for gas on my way ($20.67) and I also swung by a very Texas niche store that sells all kinds of beef jerky my brother really likes to grab some for his birthday coming up ($17.98).
10:00: Class is boring - it’s tough getting back into it with an 8 hour cardiac lecture. It’s good to see my friends but struggle is real. I run into my favorite professor and she makes my morning. I tell her all about my upcoming internship and my boyfriend’s new job and she was stoked and told me to “lock him down” hahaha. I also make 2 phone calls to apartment complexes we are interested in cause my boyfriend doesn’t get great reception at work during business hours. One place doesn’t have any current availability but the lady was so nice and will be sending me a virtual tour later today. Schedule another tour on Monday afternoon.
11:30: We break for lunch and I eat the same thing as yesterday - rotisserie chicken + frozen veggies + cheddar cheese.
12:30: Spend the afternoon in class completely unable to concentrate. The professor is throwing ECG rhythms around left and right. 8 hours of ECG lecture is NOT a productive way to learn the material. I work on a couple study guides during class cause I cannot.
3:30: We get out a little early and I rush to meet my mom for a walk through of the house. I follow her back to her office because I sent a big Chewy order there. Pick up the box along with a Diet Coke, order us Cava for dinner, pick up Cava, check on my friends cats on my way home real quick, and then have a shower and relax. Mom pays for Cava and I thank her multiple times.
7:00: We eat dinner all together when everyone is eventually home (harissa avocado bowl for me!) and then my boyfriend calls right when I head out to walk my dog. Perfect. I miss him and have been having anxiety around our new schedules. We have a good 30 minute chat about our days before I spend the evening basically doing nothing. I chat with my family and mess around on my phone. Text boyfriend about different apartments.
22:44: Bed time after I brush and floss my teeth. I’m zonked from the week.
TOTAL: $38.65
SATURDAY - DAY 4
08:30: I’m awake! Did not sleep well at all cause thunderstorms. My pup is deathly afraid and will not stop shaking for hours so I end up sleeping on the couch on and off. We were up and down all night but somehow I feel okay. We go for a quick walk, feed him, and start a load of whites in the washer.
09:08: I have a shower, and then I head out to get my family coffee from one of our favorite spots.
10:45: Make it back home with 2 cold brews for my brother and I and a latte for mom. I also picked up 5 breakfast tacos and a German chocolate cake for Sunday dinner tomorrow ($56.24). I eat a bean and cheese taco and a potato and egg taco, start some laundry, and put air in my tires with my home compressor since my low air light has been on in my car for an embarrassing amount of time. Brother needs air in his tires too so turns into a production lol.
12:18: Spent a couple hours putzing around dealing with the tires and more laundry and packing a bag for tonight. We are headed to the lake for a friend’s bday party and I have no clue what I want to wear so I pack a lot of options and clothes for church tomorrow morning too. Now it’s time to drive around for a little bit and check out some potential apartments and do a small Target run.
14:02: I make it home from apartment cruising and my Target run. I bought a 3 subject notebook, tire pressure gauge with valve caps included, two bags of frozen veggies, mini coke zeros, and a bag of Lesser Evil popcorn ($21.50). I was so tempted to stop for lunch on my way home but lines were long everywhere so I made myself some cheesy eggs + 2 Eggo waffles when I got home. Put the valve cap on my tire that is missing one.
14:36: Make it to L’s condo and clean up after the cats and start the Roomba. Boyfriend texts that he is out of work and on his way over! He’s been up since 4 am this morning for work and I am feeling some type of way with everything on my plate / anxiety so we will see how long we make it tonight lol.
15:30: S is showered and we are out the door!
16:30: We make it to the rental, change into our bathing suits, and walk down to the river.
19:00: We hang out in the river for a good 2.5 hours. It was a good time - nice to chat with my school friends and their partners. Boyfriend and I head out before the real partying starts lol.
20:00: We eat dinner at this cute Tex Mex place. Boyfriend has some kind of alcoholic mixed drink and we share a fajita for 2 plate. Boyfriend pays - it was $70.56 with tip. I drive us back because he does not like to drive even after one drink which I am 100% here for. We are so tired lol.
21:15: Make it back to L’s condo and we take a hot shower and get into bed in the guest bedroom. It takes forever for us to both fall asleep.
TOTAL: $77.74
SUNDAY - DAY 5
6:50: Oh boy neither of us slept well. There was another thunderstorm. One of the cats was yowling nonstop outside our door. The ceiling fan was clanking on and off. The bed was way too soft. Up and down again all night for a second night in a row for me lol.
8:11: I’m showered and we are both dressed and we head out to one of our favorite taquerias for breakfast. I get 2 bean and cheese tacos and one machacado + egg taco. Boyfriend also gets 3 tacos and we both get coffee. We sit and chat for a while until it was time to go to church. I pay on the way out ($22.98 with tip).
11:40: After an hour of church and an hour meeting for a committee I’m on - I’m wiped out. Still have a house walk through to do with my family and boyfriend so I head over there and we are there for about an hour.
13:10: Finally made it home, walked my pup, and made myself a late lunch of Dave’s Killer bread toast + peanut butter + banana.
13:54: A girlfriend calls and asks if I want to get a pedicure this afternoon. We decide to get dinner together on Thursday instead. I’m actually very touched she called me because we are friends through another friend and normally don’t get together just the two of us. I’m really happy she reached out. I also invite one of my friends from school - I have been wanting them to meet for a while.
14:30: Nap timeeeee! I knock out for an hour then realize how thirsty I am and how badly I need to get out of the apartment. I get up, take the pup for a spin with my brother, and head to Sonic to get a large diet cherry limeade and then head to L’s condo to check on the kitties and chill ($3.34).
18:00: I spent a couple hours chilling on the internet - working on my google calendar, school organization, church emails, reviewing some apartments we may drive by tomorrow, and I download the remaining episodes of season 1 of Nurse Jackie to watch tonight. I had bought the complete first season over a month ago and still haven’t watched it all lol. That’s how little I watch tv.
20:00: We had bibimbap for dinner and German chocolate cake for dessert. Delicious. I clean up the dishes and do more laundry because that’s my life between school, work, working out, having 2 hairy pets, etc. Unpack my bags from the river day and sleepover last night too. Chat with my family.
22:00: Crawl into bed and watch some Nurse Jackie before passing out.
TOTAL: $26.32
MONDAY - DAY 6
7:33: I slept better but still tossed and turned. Still just anxious with everything going on, especially the start of another intense semester.
8:47: Pup is fed and walked. I open the windows because it is 68 degrees which is unheard of in June in south Texas.
10:06: I ended up doing a deep clean of my room hahah. Wiped down and vacuumed every surface. So much hair. My pup is shedding so bad. I change my bedding and toss my comforter in the wash. Thank goodness I have 2 sets of sheets now. I had only 1 for the longest time lol. I take a break and eat some Greek yogurt + pecans + banana + drizzle of honey.
11:03: I vacuumed the common areas in the apartment, took a long shower, and I’m dressed and ready for my boyfriend to pick me up. I felt like being cute today so I put on this new leather skirt from Alice + Olivia my boyfriend got me as a present that I haven’t worn yet + a white crop top + my cheetah old skool Vans. I’m so tired though lololol. This is one of the only Mondays we both have off for the foreseeable future so I am gonna rally and make the most of it!
11:15: Boyfriend is so tired too bahah. We go grab coffees at this cute little coffee shop I’ve been wanting to check out. I get a cortado. Boyfriend gets an iced caramel almond milk latte and I treat ($11.82 with tip). We sit and chill and map out what apartments we want to check out today.
12:30: Walk across the street to grab Tex Mex for lunch at a pretty famous place in town. I get the enchilada plate and boyfriend gets a chicken quesadilla plate. He pays and it is $27.89 with tip.
1:30: Go for our first apartment tour of the day and it is depressing. We drive around and check out the other apartments we are I interested in and then go on one more tour at a place that we are really impressed by. It’s $1.3k or so for a 500 sq ft one bedroom and that’s a stretch. Ideally he wants the base rent to be $1,000 or less which is quite doable. Yet again - south Texas prices for the win. He is looking at older buildings, but they are well kept up and in good neighborhoods. They are not in the hottest places to be in town, but definitely still nice.
16:00: We go back to L’s condo and chill and take care of the kitties. Discuss the apartments and ask my brother if he wants to get dinner with us and he agrees.
18:00: We head back to my apartment, pick up my brother, and head to dinner. We order a large caesar salad, an arugula and sausage pizza, and a mushroom and pepperoni pizza. This spot does $10 two topping pizzas on Monday and it slaps. I treat my boyfriend and brother to dinner ($48.01 with tip).
20:00: Home and boyfriend walks my pup with me. Brother makes us both tea and we have a nice cup of tea and chat until boyfriend heads home. I put together my breakfast and lunch tomorrow and then lay down to chill and have some quiet time.
22:30: Bed time! First day of critical care didactic is tomorrow and I am feeling mostly excited.
TOTAL: $59.82
TUESDAY - DAY 7
6:22: My alarm goes off and wakes me from a deep sleep. I finally slept a good 8 hours though!
7:10: I am showered and throw on some black Lululemon Align leggings and a swiftly tech tee. I was gonna wear real pants but screw that haha. I am really dragging this morning.
7:50: Make it to school and lecture starts at 8. Honestly - that lecture could have been given in 45 minutes but we spent the first 2 hours simply going over the schedule and clarifying assignments since everything is such a disorganized hot mess at the beginning of the semester.
10:05: We take a break and call a fellow church congregation member to see if we want to meet today to tour an organization that supports people immigrating. We are debating if we want to allocate church donation funds to them. We agree to meet at the location at 1:30.
12:41: We are done with class and I stayed a bit after to start making my study guide for our first test even though it isn’t for 5 weeks. I realize the time and quickly pack up and go heat up my lunch. Chat with an MSN student who I had met in orientation for my internship a couple weeks ago and he expressed his frustration about how the start of this semester is rough for him too.
2:38: We finish our tour and we are very impressed at the clean and organized operation. We agree to each write our own follow up email to the rest of the group before the end of the day supplying the church donating.
3:30: I make some jasmine tea and have some quiet time when I get home before starting on some dosage calculation problems that are due on Friday.
5:45: I end up spending almost 2.5 hours on homework - dosage calculations, an article summary, and start on a medication sheet. Ouch. I lay down for 20 minutes, take my pup out, and then head out to meet my friend for dinner at Cava.
6:30: I get the lemon chicken bowl and pita chips ($13.69) and we sit and chat for a 1.5 hours. We just saw each other a couple weeks ago, but so much to catch up on.
20:00: We agree to go on a double date in the next couple weeks and I head home. I walk my pup with my mom and brother, pack my gym bag and my food for tomorrow, write my follow up emails from today’s visit to the church committee, and relax in bed.
TOTAL: $13.69
TALLY OF DAILY EXPENSES:

• Food + Drink: $240.36
• Fun / Entertainment: $0
• Home + Health: $0
• Clothes + Beauty: $0
• Transport: $30.67
• Other: $17.98

TOTAL EXPENSES: $279.11
REFLECTION
I spent quite a bit on going out to eat this week with my boyfriend, family, and friends. It was the end of my school break and boyfriend is transitioning to a new job so we were a bit out of whack with spending on food. Usually we eat at home with our families more, but it was nice to go out and enjoy ourselves too. It was a super busy week for me too - which is the norm lately. I have a great community and social life here compared to the West Coast and I do not take that for granted. Trying to make myself more of a priority so I don’t burn out again, which is difficult for me.

it is getting louder
A deep voice shouting S U G O M A on the left ear and an alarm clock ringing all the time on my right ear
and sometimes there are dwarfs dancing in a circle and singing always the same ww1 era marching song
And the feds, they are chasing me
And the smell. Imagine the smell!

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POV: Commander

The beach day seemed to be some sort of tipping point. Somehow it had convinced Ouer that we could be trusted and we would help her people.
She shared that the "sand" in the sandpits they used for sleeping was just ground scrap. Just think about sleeping on top of a garbage pile! Sharp garbage to boot.
Mateo had his surgery after I had mentally strong-armed him a bit. Milko promised to be by his bed as soon as it was completed.
I also promised that if the surgery went haywire Milko would be let in to use her Coltavalke Voice and Light. The endorsement of the HOTCHI Station's very own Dr. Anna Dilmurat helped a lot. Thankfully that wasn't needed. The surgery went well.
Mateo had to wear a colostomy bag for two days just to give his intestines time to heal. He hated it and was embarrassed by it. He thought everybody would know why he needed one. In my opinion he wasn't the one who should feel embarrassed at all but I understood his feelings all the same.
My xo Marcus told Mateo that he once had one for a week after a shrapnel injury. He also reminded Mateo that he came with a military vessel and many people saw him in a partial uniform during the alarm. I think that helped him immensely.
But this also meant that Mateo and Milko were both unavailable when Ouer wanted to have another discussion. Thankfully he had found a new lawyer. He had had a selection of three to choose one. Standard procedure after a mismatch.
The new guy was called Asbjørn Oppegard. He wore a suit that looked a lot like a pilot uniform. He had a loud voice, a ready smile, and a roaring laughter. He had talked with Ouer for quite some time, which was a good sign.
Saša: Are you comfortable talking with us, Ouer?
Ouer: Yes, I am
Saša: If you feel like you have to talk to us because we have been nice to you...
Ouer: It's not that!
Saša: Good. Because we would continue being nice to you as long as you need us, whether you tell us anything or not.
Commander: That's right. We would always help a child - or young person - in need of help. We have laws to say that but most people have an inner need to do so even without the laws.
Mr. Oppegard: True. We also give aid to all civilians whenever possible.
Commander: Even to enemy combatants if you have advanced past them because they are then your responsibility.
Ouer: That's amazing. If our defenders had rules like that, maybe they wouldn't have gone all blood-crazy.
Commander: Possible. Or at least it would have been confined to a few extremists.
Mr. Oppegard: Ouer of the House Ioianda has a proposition to present.
I suddenly had to sit up straighter. House? Is the kid Eoan royalty?
Mr. Oppegard: While the so-called "Defenders" were called Eoans, the civilians were called Ioans. And they were ruled by the House Ioianda. They continued to lead the exiled Ioans. Eoan's mother was the Shoal Bearer Regnant. After the murder of her mother, Ouer is now the monarch of the Ioans. Since she is underage, four chosen advisers are going to help her.
Commander: So what happens now? Obviously, she needs to get back to her people but she doesn't feel comfortable letting us know how to contact them.
Ouer: I have reassessed the situation. I would like us to contact my people. Do you think your government would be amenable to a collaboration with mine? I understand if the Eoans have soured any possible affiliation.
Commander: What sort of cooperation did you have in mind?
Ouer: My parents were scouting anything and anyone who could help our people. The Ioans are suffering. The immature brat that I am I snuck in their spacecraft. After hiding my entire life I just wanted to see something, anything different.
Saša: So the current monarch and the next in line were both conveniently onboard the same spaceship.
Ouer lowered her head in shame. She was almost in tears.
Ouer: To my defense, my little brother was left home. Though there hasn't been a male Shoal Bearer Regnant in centuries. Also, he is only two years old. Factions would have formed. Different groups would have had different ideas on how to save our people. Power-hungry individuals would have tried to cozy up to my brother. A civil war could have been the result.
Saša: Well, it seems you now understand the consequences of your actions. I'd say you had to grow up a lot in a very short time. You now feel the weight of your responsibilities. I don't think you'd do a similar mistake in the future.
Commander: Don't beat yourself up too much over what is now in the past. Your parents' faith would have been the same regardless. You didn't cause it in any way. Let's concentrate on the future. Did the Eoans know who you were?
My words seemed to resonate with her. I hadn't noticed before but her posture was constantly a little stiff. I noticed now because she visibly relaxed. Poor kid, feeling she caused her parents to be murdered. Kids of all ages always blamed themselves and an outsider pointing out the obvious often helped.
Ouer: The monarch is marked visibly, so they knew who my parents were. My father saw me and quickly treated me as a servant. He even slapped me. The Eoans laughed. I am sure they didn't understand who I was.
Saša: Thank the void for small mercies!
Commander: However, they knew they slew the monarch. Did they communicate with anyone after that?
Ouer: No. They tried to use our communicators but they were broken for a reason.
Commander: For a reason?
Ouer: When my parents realized we lost and the Eoans were boarding, they destroyed them as per protocol. The Eoans got really mad since theirs were not working either. They dragged us all into their craft. And then they murdered my father. And my mother after some additional taunting. They added me to their food pantry with the humans.
Saša: So they are cannibals as well. Oh, it means eating their own kind.
Mr. Oppegard: So going back to legalities here. I hope this show of good faith is reciprocated. Is Ouer Ioianda in any legal trouble? Is she a POW? What is her status?
Commander: Oh, no. Ouer Ioianda is not detained or suspected of any wrongdoing. We only needed to understand what happened.
Mr. Oppegard: So the lawyers and guardians and the rule not to go to the public places were all...
Saša: For Ouer's protection.
Ouer gave her lawyer some silent message. And they began to tell us how to communicate with her people. Despite the inherent risk in letting her be the first to speak to them, we agreed it was a necessary risk.
I contacted the Terran Command and the presidential bureau. As expected we got the green light. Finding allies was of foremost importance before the BBB -or PACA - made their next big move. Deathworld allies were naturally most important since a war of armed conflict was in all probability in our future.
I also relegated my concerns related to the PACA-controlled syllabi in our institutions of higher education. I was afraid vulnerable students might get brainwashed by the propaganda. If our brightest scientific minds were taught to rely on "saintly, benign, just, and fair" PACA in everything, we would be a divided people when attacked.
These were, after all, PACA-mandated changes to our education sector, and we could be quite sure they weren't benevolent in nature. All we needed was for our young to blindly trust in PACA!
I was aware that this was a slippery slope. All oppressive regimes started by making groups of people - learned people most often - seem suspicious and the root of all the problems. I didn't want a witch hunt of our young academia.
But it was true that resistance movements to tyranny also start by assigning suspiciousness to the ruling party. I shared this dichotomy with Terran Command and the presidential bureau. I felt history would blame us for whatever we chose to do.
I shook off these gloomy ponderings and stopped Saša and Ouer outside the room to share some news with them.
Commander: Ouer, you asked us to let you know how the two humans you saved were doing.
Ouer: Oh, yes!
Commander: They agreed to let you know the surgery went well and the girl is on the mend. The woman is doing well too.
Ouer: That is such a relief!
Commander: They have suffered great trauma. They are receiving care from mental health specialists. They are immensely grateful to you for saving them. Unfortunately, they don't wish to have further contact with you.
Ouer: I see. I suspected that might be the case.
Commander: Please don't take that as an insult. This is all just so overwhelming for them. They have nothing against you personally. I'm sorry, Ouer.
Ouer: It's fine.
I could clearly see she wasn't remotely fine. I felt sorry for her. While I understood their decision I knew several people who would have at least mustered a thank you note.
Commander: However, Mateo's surgery went well. He is tired but would very much like to see you. He insisted to be moved to a room where you can visit him easily.
Ouer: Really?
Commander: Yes, really. Just let Saša know when you wish to...
Ouer: Now! Can I go now?
The giant cone mollusk was all but levitating in joy and excitement. She didn't look monstrous at all at that moment. Somehow knowing she represented a different subspecies allowed me to see the differences. Her cone was a little different: her coloration was shinier and faintly blue, and while Eoans' cone twisted widdershins, Ioans' twisted deiseal.
Commander: Saša is that okay with you?
Saša: Totally.
We took the omnidirectional hover-lift right next to Mateo's hospital room. It was a delight to see the young people talking joyously. My kids were flabbergasted to know Ouer was not only royalty but the current ruler of her people. In the end, though it didn't make much difference to them.
It took five days for the newly minted Ioan-Terran cooperation task force to arrive at the HOTCHI Station. And they arrived in style. The entourage encompassed several spacecrafts but the jewel was a small Virginia Hall -class carrier.
When I said a "small carrier", I meant small to Terrans. We have always liked big things. But Virginia Hall -class was so much more.
It was painted with the same special void black paint as my Bolt, and equipped with enormous, heavily shielded, phase change material heat sinks. The heat energy is used for the phase change and can be later used for warming the ship as well as in a power failure situation. Or radiated into the cold space. But that would be visible - to all but the weakest of sensors - and could just as well paint a bull's eye on the carrier for the enemy.
All the water onboard was also conveniently an excellent heat sink and cosmic radiation shield.
Despite being a big frecking carrier the vessel could stay practically invisible for weeks before it had to dump the heat sinks and botron^∆ out of there to avoid detection. That's why the class was called Virginia Hall.
She was the first spy for a nation that was a superpower on Earth for a long time. She actually was first a spy for another powerful nation in the same war.
She served behind enemy lines and was betrayed and hunted. I mean, I'm sure it was pretty hard hiding with that prosthetic leg of hers (a hunting accident before she was a spy). At that time in history, prosthetic limbs were heavy, wooden, and cumbersome. This tough woman called hers "Cuthbert".
The enemy harried her, calling her "the most dangerous of all Allied spies" and "the lady who limps". She escaped over the snow-capped Pyrenees mountains. With Cuthbert.
When the nation he spied for didn't let her go back, she went back as a spy for the other (allied) nation. There was no stopping her! She had some sisu^✓ !
She led several thousand resistance fighters, masterminded jailbreaks for agents, rescued downed pilots, and a lot more. We don't even know the rest. When asked decades later she said: "Many of my friends were killed for talking too much."
This particular Virginia Hall class carrier was retrofitted for Ioan habitation. As it happened it was originally being built as an aquatic zoo but abandoned due to a cancellation of the order. Luckily for us, it had most of the water hardware and features halfway fitted.
The crew rooms were larger and equipped with sandpits with actual, fine-grain sand from Mars excavation sites, lightly salted, clean water, heating, and on-site sanitation. Each room also had a large aquarium with fish and water plants the Ioans ate. The ship had enormous fish farms and seaweed forests as renewable food source.
Were Terran crafts have their park, this craft had a shore and water area like the one where Ouer, Caleo, Mateo, and Milko had their beach day here at the HOTCHI Station. Except this one was colossal, again with fish and water plants.
For a functioning coastal marine ecosystem working conveniently also as a carbon sink and purifying water by filtering pollutants, seagrass meadows and algae, kelp, sea urchins and sea horses, small invertebrates, mallards, swans, and many more were added.
Some wisecrack had even added seagulls, those marauders with no moral compass. The Ioans themselves are filling in the marine predator locus together with the sea birds and predatory fish.
Parallel to corridors the most used passageways had also transparent water tubes for traveling. The chairs on the bridge, in the cafeteria, and in other places for staying for a duration had osmotic chairs like the omnidirectional lift. Since the retrofit was for long-term habitation the lighting in the craft was to follow their home planet's day-night cycle.
It also was a carrier, so it had a few smaller spaceships like mining vehicles, shuttles, and escape pods. The carrier was large enough to be classified as a space station (not by accident; Terra was only allowed a very modest number of military vehicles by PACA but the amount of small space stations was less limited).
It had modest defense weaponry and a sophisticated sensor array. Nothing compared to what our military had but above average when compared to what most other species had.
This first retrofitted carrier was a gift from Terra. It was to make negotiations easier. Also, the Ioans were to evaluate it and give us valuable feedback. In addition to acquiring an allied species, we were hoping for a jump start for our ship-building economy, aquatic division.
Ouer christened the spaceship The Uara, after her mother. We had a small launching ceremony before setting off for the rendezvous coordinates. The Bolt was temporarily reassigned for escort duty. My xo Marcus was to captain The Uara with a temporary skeleton crew granted by the president's office and provided by the Terran Command.
Ouer, Mateo, and Milko requested to travel onboard The Uara. I would have granted it in any case, but the Terran Command specifically assigned Mateo and Milko there as important to the success of the Ioan alliance mission. Ouer had declared Caleo as a royal ward, so he completed the entourage.

POV: Marcus

After just one day of travel, a bright red warning appeared on the main screen in the command deck hidden deep inside the carrier. Klaxons blared and an automated voice told the crew and the civilians what to do.
Automated voice (in Eoan/Ioan and New English): Battle Stations! Battle Stations! Enemy contact! Crew for battle stations!
Automated voice (in Eoan/Ioan and New English): Shelter! shelter! Enemy contact. Civilians to Shelter!
The few civilians scurried into the insanely heavily shielded shelter in a speedy fashion. The ship systems automatically went to FN mode ("Fade to Nothing", our stealth mode).
Historical Earth submarines are the closest analog to the FN, except to stay undetected, instead of not making a sound we needed to not reflect light or emit infrared energy from radiating heat. The void paint and shielded heat sinks cover those. When getting closer or sending probes, there are visual sensors. Void paint is pretty good there too unless the other party knows what they are looking for and the rough area where to look.
Bolt as a military commando vessel had also NT-mode ("Not There"), where she essentially visually shows what is on the other side of herself. This way she doesn't create any area empty of what should be there.
That said, not all our escorts had similar stealth capabilities. Our ship's sensors detected not one but three Eoan ships.
The thing with Eoan ships is that they very seldom travel in packs. The last time was the attack on the HOTCHI Station with three ships each carrying five Eoans. And before that...must have been before we met the monsters. Three of them now sniffing the space relatively near the HOTCHI Station like a pack of hungry sharks was cause for concern.
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1. ^∆ botron = "skedaddle" in New English, from Vietnamese bỏ trốn (run away)
   
2. ^✓ sisu = determination regardless of cost, persistent obstinacy, willful stubbornness in New English, from Finnish
   

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This post is my answer to the question asked in this post:(https://www.reddit.com/reactivedogs/comments/143ftpm/obviously_this_is_situational_based_on_the_type/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
We adopted a rescue 8 months ago. We were told he was a happy, chill 1 year old. Turns out, he is an extremely anxious, hyper-aroused, fear-aggressive, disregulated mess. He’s also the sweetest, smartest, greatest boy. It's been a very intense ride. Medication has played an important role in our journey so far, and I expect it will contnue to do so. I'm not a dog professional and I'm certainly not a trainer. I'm just a layperson who has had to become obsessed with dog mental health and behaviour modificaiton. Here's our story, and some of the key things I've taken away so far about medication for reactive dogs. (For what it's worth, I believe my key takeaways apply to human mental health and medication too)

Pre-Medication, 0-2 months post adoption:

Before medication, my dog was in fight/flight and completely flooded for almost all of his waking hours, and he barely slept. He was hyper vigilant and always aroused. He lunged, bit, jumped, and alarm barked for hours every day. We worked really hard on basic relaxation protocols for 2 months, and could barely make any progress, even just to be able to settle at home.
We did manage to reduce biting during this early period by redirecting to toys and reinforcing “booping” with the nose as an alternative way to get our attention. Even though reducing biting was obviously a really important early win, it didn’t actually improve any of our lives as much as you might think. A frantic, terrified 70lb dog in fight/flight who needs constant attention and help is a serious problem, and makes his humans miserable and is miserable himself, whether or not he’s biting. My point is- we had a little training success reducing his most problematic behaviour. But the overall mental state was unchanged. His hyper arousal and constant panic was the real issue. We got him doing slightly less dangerous expressions of intense panic, but the real goal was to change the underlying panic.
Our highly qualified trainer told us we owe it to our dog to get him some pharmacological help. Training wasn’t going anywhere for him without medication. He was too panicked, flooded, and sleep deprived to be able to learn. He was living every day as if he was fighting for his life. The parts of the brain where operant conditioning works are not in command when a creature is in that state.
Our phenomenal, compassionate fear free vet helped right away. We began with round the clock trazodone and started fluoxetine. Trazodone made a difference within hours. Fluoxetine didn't do a thing for 10 weeks.

Medication Early Days, 2-4 months post-adoption:

Medication was life changing. It opened up a crack in his intense mental state that allowed us to get into his head and heart and start making progress. The first huge win was that he was finally able to truly relax in the house. He quickly picked up the relaxation protocols and learned to self-soothe (at least sometimes). He was finally able to get a healthy amount of sleep. All the out of control arousal behaviours were reduced in the house, because he was feeling just generally a little more at ease. My partner and I were finally able to get some sleep and relax a little too. We weren’t constantly managing an out of control dog who was permanently in the midst of a fear-aggressive reactivity meltdown. We were able to have calmer energies and do a better job building the relationship. He quickly picked up a lot of basic skills, and we realized that he is super smart and trainable as long as he isn’t in the midst of panic.

SSRIs kicked in- 4-6 months post-adoption:

The fluoxetine kicked in, and his emotional state was more steady throughout the day (trazodone only really has an affect on him for about 4 hours, but we could only safely dose him every 8 hours. Until the fluoxetine kicked in, every activity of everyone living in our home revolved around the timing of trazodone). With more stable emotion regulation and arousal, we were finally able to make some progress on desensitization. We greatly reduced alarm barking in the house with the Kiki Yablon's thanks for barking protocol. Basic skills became rock solid. Fear aggressive behaviours continued to decrease, until they were never directed towards us at all, and were generally more mild and infrequent.
He was still highly reactive in the outside world, and highly reactive to strangers in our home, but was even beginning to show some small improvement on these fronts. Our bonds became really tight, he came to deeply trust us. He started (occasionally) looking to us for help when scared, instead of aggressing. As long as we were home and conditions were just perfect, he was a well-trained, obedient, apparently perfect dog. Life was really limited because it took extreme management to keep him happy, and walks/ pottying were hell no matter where we went, but even so- this time period was a huge positive tipping point.
We finally had long periods of time each day that were peaceful, happy, and content. He had FINALLY decompressed. It felt like this is when he adopted us back. We implemented consent protocols and cooperative care techniques, which removed a little more stress from each day. We trained rock solid eye contact and began to do some successfule LAT. It took until this point for us to be in a position to really address the part of his issue that looks like what most people call reactivity (barking/lunging/snarling at triggers on a walk or strangers in our home).
We began counterconditioning and desensitizing. We struggled, because he was still too triggered in the environment too often. And it’s haaaard to desensitize a dog who is reactive to almost everything we encounter as soon as we walk out the door, even with the help of a good trainer. But despite the difficulty, we have made some progress. He’s less territorial around our house, and sometimes even likes saying hello to our neighbors. He doesn’t trigger stack as quickly. He can tolerate traffic much better than before (we live on a busy road, so this is important). He recovers from reactions in seconds/ minutes instead of hours/ days. Throughout this period we slowly reduced his trazodone, because it started making him frantic and confused for a couple of hours, and then super dopey for a couple hours (vet and trainer said this is a good indication that his physiological and neurological arousal is generally lower. Yay!).

Now:

We are now 8 months post-adoption. He’s doing really well. We’ve stopped trazodone completely, though we keep some on hand in case he undergoes a major stressor. He’s still on a high dose of fluoxetine. We’re experimenting with CBD to help with his GI distress and possibly reduce anxiety, but it's too soon to say if it is helping yet. Occasionally, when the stars align and our management is perfect (which is exhausting but possible), we can go days without him going way over threshold (at the beginning we would go seconds or minutes). His circle of trusted people has broadened. He can tolerate more/more intense triggers without reacting, and if he does react, he recovers much more quickly. He has a whole beautiful fascinating personality beyond just his fears and behavioural issues. He is silly, playful, mishcevious, intelligent, and sweet. He absolutely adores my husband and me, and we adore him too.
Now we are finally at a point that we can really address his reactivity. But we’re all exhausted, overwhelmed, and burnt out (dog and humans alike), so we’re taking a break from training and desensitizing. We are taking 4-8 weeks to just use management to get by, and take some time to enjoy our happy little family and appreciate how far we’ve come. We’re observing him closely, trying to get better at seeing his subtle stress signals as early as possible. We’re experimenting with his diet, trying to get his gut healthy (maybe the gods will smile on us, and when we finally fix his gut, his fear will disappear. I can dream, right?). I’m devouring Michael Shikashio’s podcast and reading Grisha Stewart’s book. We’re taking time off from constant training to rest, regroup, read, observe, and get ready for the next leg of the journey. Also my husband and I are going to see a therapist, because we're starting to think we may have experienced some (real though mild) trauma in those first few months. We need to get our own mental health back up to par too.
After our break, we’ll be getting back on the horse to really work on desensitizing and socializing him to the outside world. I don’t know exactly what that will look like- BAT, counterconditioning, pattern games... We'll be starting with a new trainer with expertise in complex reactivity and fear aggression. My hope is that she'll do an in-depth assessment and help us make sense of the the complex motivations and emotions my dog experiences when he is triggered, and then we'll all develop a training plan together. I expect it to be a marathon more than a sprint

Takeaways:

So- is my dog able to stay below threshold just because of the medication, or has the medication allowed us do more training, and the training is what has really helped? The answer is both.
We needed the medication to be able to make the first bit of real training progress. And I’m certain the SSRIs are still playing a very important role in keeping his mental state steady. But we no longer need to use the sedative (trazodone). And all our training work has made a huge difference. If all we did was drug him, he would not be as calm, happy, skilled, and able to function as he now is. If all we did was train him, he wouldn't have been able to relax enough to start training.
Management (for us that has included drugs) turns down the volume of experienced huge feelings. Training/behaviour modification teaches how to cope with feelings, and eventually changes them.
Will my dog be on medication forever? I don’t know. I don’t really care. My goal is for my dog and my partner and I to all have a good quality of life. I want us all happy, healthy, and able to navigate our world with confidence and ease. I want joy. I want routines that work for all of us. I want friends and family and some semblance of normal life back. I want Bruno to be able to feel happy and at ease in our world. I want to never have the option of rehoming lurk at the edge of my mind ever again.
If he always needs medication for that to happen, then he will always be on medication. If we continue to make progress with training, and he eventually becomes so resilient that medication is no longer helpful/ necessary, then we will stop the medication. But it doesn’t really matter to me. I care about the goal much more than I care about how we achieve it. The process that will get us to something close to a normal happy life will include an ebb and flow combo of management and training; management makes training possible, training reduces the need for management. I think of medication as a part of management.
I know that the cost of meds is a factor. On the one hand, his meds are an added financial expense, on top of the veterinary bills, specialty diet, thousands in destroyed clothing, enrichment toys, muzzle, harness, and expensive trainer. But if I measure the TRUE cost of getting this dog mentally well, which includes lost connections to friends and family, missed trips and events, the serious toll on my and my husband’s mental health, impact to our careers, hours spent (hundreds/thousands), and oh yeah money too I guess- then medication is one of the cheapest forms of management we've been able to implement. We’re in a good financial position, and I know not everyone can afford to think this way. But for us, ~$200-$300 per month on medication is money very well spent. It probably made the difference between it being possible for us to help him, and him having to be rehomed.
My dog is an extreme case. I sincerely hope that you and your dog will have a much easier journey than we have had and will likely continue to have. But even though your dog is (hopefully) not in as bad shape as mine was, I bet the basic ingredients to change the mind of anyone’s reactive dog are the same. The volume of the dog’s big feelings has to be turned down enough that they can learn, and then they have to be taught to make different choices and feel differently about the world. Management (sometimes including medication) turns down the volume of the feelings. Love, dedication, sacrifice, and science-based behaviour modification training teach the dog.
My advice: Don’t stress about whether or not medication will be a permanent fixture. You can’t possibly know that yet anyways, and it’s only one piece in the large puzzle you will put together to help your dog. Just get busy finding any/every solution that works for you that will get you and your dog some peace from huge reactions. Then get busy on behaviour modification. And in the meantime, take care of yourself too.

(Yes, that is how they spelled "vengeance". Just roll with it).
Haven't seen many posts about this game, so I thought I'd give my impressions. There will be some spoilers, although for this game spoilers don't matter very much because the plot is intentionally incoherent. Note that I haven't completed the game yet, but I believe I've played most of it.
Slayers X is a wonderfully weird game. It's a boomer shooter spinoff of Hypnospace Outlaw, a puzzle game set in an alternate universe late 1990s internet. The concept is that Zane, a teenage edgelord character from Hypnospace Outlaw came up with a design for a mod for the (fictional) game Kataklysm when he was in high school. In the present day, he found the unfinished mod and completed it with the help of a friend, and Slayers X is the end product. The developer went so far as to create a fake Twitter account for Zane, and believe me, they commit to the bit 100%.
Slayers X fully embraces the "developed by an edgy teenager in 1999" thing. The main character is a self-insert in the most literal sense: you play as a superpowered version of Zane - not a character that resembles Zane, it's literally Zane himself with glowing green eyes and the ability to cast laser beams from his hands. The original soundtrack is heavily inspired by Nu Metal. Maps make no sense: one minute you're going through a dollar store, the next you'll open a door and find yourself in a secret sprawling underground base. Levels are unnecessarily adorned with mispelled signs. Enemy variety is thematically incoherent: so far I've run across assassins in trenchcoats, floating skulls, killer clowns throwing exploding alarm clocks, literal turd monsters, swarming enemies that make really irritating noises, and werewolves with rocket launchers. Zane seems to have a weird obsession with washrooms and toilets, which feature uncomfortably frequently in the level design.
It's clear that Slayers X is in large part a tribute to and parody of the late 90s modding scene, back when a determined individual could make what was then referred to as a "total conversion" for a game like Doom. While there were lots of really good mods that came out of this era (Team Fortress was originally a mod for Quake, Counter Strike started out as a Half Life mod), there were also a lot of very amateurish stinkers. Slayers X is a homage to all the mediocre mods we forgot about. In one section, Zane says "wow, this looks just like a level from my favourite game Kataklysm" - implying that Zane perhaps ran out of time and just ripped a level out of the base game and tweaked it a bit, which was a somewhat common practice back then. It's hard to make a game with intentionally bad design patterns but also make it fun. Despite a few hiccups, I think the developer succeeded here.
The other interesting thing is the particular genre of boomer shooter Slayers X is. Most modern boomer shooters draw inspiration from Doom - Prodeus is the archetypical example. While Slayers X has a little Doom in its DNA, it's clear the main inspiration was Duke Nukem 3D. The emphasis on hidden paths and environmental interactivity is classic Duke3D. Like Duke3D, there's also plenty of one-liners when killing enemies, but in keeping with the game's intentional shittyness, they are really bad but probably sound badass to Zane (example: "I made out with your mom last night!"). It's fun to have a boomer shooter that explores the Duke3D/Build Engine genre rather than another Doom clone.
Ultimately, I've enjoyed the game so far. It's definitely a GamePass title - I doubt In would have tried this game if it wasn't included in the subscription. It's definitely not for everyone, but if you're interested in a very specific piece of late 90s gaming nostalgia, it's worth a download at the very least.

Here is chapter 16 of Tight Money.
Special thanks to u/SpacePaladin15 for creating the universe and allowing fan writers to join the fun.
Additional thanks to u/BiasMushroom, u/YakiTapioca, u/cruisingNW, u/SavingsSyllabub7788, u/YaaliAnnar, u/White_Dragon_Coranth, u/Illwood and u/Redundant-Honse for letting me use elements from their fanfics in mine.
Thanks to u/Zyrian150, u/Saint-Andros, and u/Eager_Question for proofreading this chapter.
Today, I have 3 character updates for you. We get to see good things happen to Leena and Dani and we get another update on what Niit is up to as well as revisiting some old characters and introducing a new one. This chapter was my first in collaboration with u/Eager_Question. We are doing a crossover for the next few chapters of Tight Money. A huge thanks to them for entirely changing the trajectory of my plans for Niit and Leena. I'm excited for where this is going.
I love your comments so please tell me what you think so I can get better or if you have suggestions for future snippets of life on Venlil Prime you would like to see me cover, leave it in the comments.
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Memory transcription subject: Leena, Human Refugee Host
Date [standardized human time]: November 7, 2136
The smell of delectable food woke me up before my alarm – a sweet scent with a hint of roasted vegetables. My stomach demanded a meal, and glancing at the clock, I could see that I had some time before the twins would wake. Eagerly walking to the kitchen, I saw Dani had placed out all manner of items on the counter. She stood in front of her ‘hot plate,’ stirring a steaming pot that emanated the delightful aroma.
“Good morning, sleepy head!”
“Good waking, Dani. What are you up to with all those fruits and jars?”
“Well, you remember how I told you I was going to make some chalk for the neighborhood kids? That’s what I am doing right now – I'm making colored chalk! It's a fun DIY project. You see…”
“That did not translate correctly. The translator said, ‘letters of the English alphabet ask for clarification.’”
“Oh, it is an acronym that stands for the English words, ‘do it yourself.’ A lot of humans are pretty handy and have the skills to make the things that most people buy from a store. Sometimes they make things to save money, some do it for the challenge to see if they can, some do it because they want to customize something, and a lot of people do it because they enjoy doing it.”
“Like you said at our meal, this last paw.”
“Yeah! First, I slice up these fruits and vegetables into thin slices and boil them in water for [10 minutes]. The boiling process helps extract the natural pigments from the foods. Once I've boiled the fruits, I strain the colored water and keep it aside.”
Dani reached for a strainer and gently poured the steaming water into another pot and put that on the ‘hot plate.’ She set the slices of fire fruit on a plate and took a tentative bite out of a slice. I followed suit and to my delight, the fruit had a new mellower flavor with a hint of sweetness. Looking over the counter while I snacked on the boiled slices of Firefruit I got a better look at the jars of colored water and a few with colored powders.
“Okay, I'm following so far,” I pointed to one of the powder jars. “What are the powders for?”
“I’m doing an experiment. I want to see if I can use the pigment water as is or if I have to bake it to remove even more of the moisture in order to get a good color. I’ve never used these vegetables before so I need to do some trial and error to get this right.”
Dani had received a small strayu forge a few days ago in the mail and was putting it to good use making all manner of things except strayu. Honestly, I had no idea you could do anything else with them. Humans think of the strangest things. The forge dinged alerting her that it was done with whatever it was doing. She pulled out a tray of shriveled up Firefruit slices and transferred them to an empty plate. Dani laid several more fresh Firefruit slices on the trays and began the process anew.
“Dehydrated slices make wonderful snacks. Now, I take plaster,” Dani scooped some white powder into a cheap plastic bowl and poured in two scoops of the colored water, “and mix it with the colored water we obtained earlier. The plaster acts as a base and helps give the chalk a solid form.”
“Dani, that's so clever! So, the colored water gives the plaster its colors?”
“Exactly! The colored water mixes with the plaster, and we end up with a mixture that has the desired colors. Oh, and while I'm doing this, I'm also pouring the mixture into these silicone molds.”
I watched as Dani mixed the blue water and white powder until it turned into a light blue soup. Dani poured the liquid into the cavities of the flexible trays and scrunched up her face the way she did when she was unhappy or thinking.
“Is something wrong?”
“Yeah, it is supposed to be a much deeper blue than this. I think I’ll have to find something else to make a better dye or try the powder method. Oh well, live and learn.”
Dani began to clean up just as my alarm went off, informing me that I needed to get the children ready and fed. When I came out of my room after feeding the twins and grooming their fur, Dani had finished cleaning the counter and sitting on the couch browsing on her tablet. She looked up as I sat down.
“You get your cast off today right?”
Peering at the clock on her tablet, “Yes, my appointment is in quarter a claw at the out-patient recovery facility. It is only a short ride away. Would you?” I passed the twins to Dani before I stood. “I need to get ready.”
“Come here little babies, let's play hide and peek-a-boo.”
A quick shower later and I returned to find Dani loading the twins into the stroller; still talking to them in her higher pitch and smiling. Nothing out of the ordinary about that but what was out of the ordinary was that Vissa and Tas were also showing their teeth. Not quite a smile but not for lack of trying. I wasn’t sure what to say about that. I didn’t want Dani to stop smiling at Vissa and Tas but that behavior worried me.
“Okay, we’re ready.” Dani reached in and tickled my children. When they were done laughing they ceased to show their teeth much to my relief.
“Dani, when I get the cast off and return this scooter, is there anything you would like to do? I would rather not go back home and sit down once I can walk again.”
Dani’s eyes sparkled at my suggestion. “I would love to see some of your museums and I read about these places where people can make communal art. Could you show me one of those?”
“I would love to.” I’m glad I can do something nice for you, after all you have done for me.
​
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Memory transcription subject: Niit, Capitol Spaceport Logistics Coordinator
Date [standardized human time]: November 9, 2136
I was fortunate. Only three claws after I was fired from the spaceport a new job presented itself. It was a temporary job but it would give me time to find something permanent and help my job history. Getting fired looked worse than the contract ending. They had advertised that they needed someone to come in and finish a new facility. I wondered what happened to the last coordinator. I sent in my application, trying to highlight that I had some experience in procuring building materials for the maintenance of the spaceport hangars.
I was given an interview time for the following paw. That didn’t give me much time to prepare and the place was a bit out of the way. I had to take the train out to the outer ring of the Capital and then walk [20 minutes] more but at least it was easy to find; I could hear the construction a [kilometer] away. A yotul was outside watching the construction crews, obviously impressed with the advanced construction equipment.
“Excuse me,” I tried to be respectful and not shout, “could you direct me to the project manager's office?”
The yotul looked at me and then pointed to a series of temporary buildings in the distance.
“The furthest of the temporary dwellings on the right," he said, "it has a label on the door.”
“Thank you.” I waved my tail goodbye.
I walked over to the white construction shelter the yotul indicated and raised my paw to knock when the door slid open and a large, dark gray venlil appeared in the doorway. I froze in surprise as he looked me up and down with his left eye.
“Are you Niit?”
“Y-y…” I flicked my ear in affirmation.
“Come in.”
The gray venlil stepped inside and motioned to a swivel chair opposite a desk near the door. I took the seat opposite him at the desk and he opened a file with my application on his datapad. The office was a mess of binders, tools, and open cases of energy snacks and drinks; I assumed for the crew. A large map of the block hung on the wall.
"You can call me Foreman Apec or just Foreman is fine too. I'm so glad you could come on such short notice, this project is rather urgent and our last coordinator was poached by one of those ghastly flesh factories they're building now."
The very mention of those atrocious places nearly caused me to lose my lunch. “I-I’m so sorry to hear that. Well, I can guarantee you that I will not be leaving to work in such a place.”
"That's wonderful to hear. Tell me more about your experience, how comfortable are you handling tight schedules?"
“Oh, very, when I worked at the Capital Spaceport I had to manage several tight repair schedules regularly.” I hope he didn’t call Director Cass. I doubt he would give me a positive reference.
"Wonderful to hear. Like I said, we're rather in a rush to get this all done as soon as we can. The good news is that human laborers can work for two, sometimes three claws a shift, so we should be able to manage."
He stated that so nonchalantly, waving his tail around like it wasn’t the most ludicrous thing.
“T-three claws? They can work that long? No,” he’s joking, “You are pulling my ear. There’s no way anyone can work that long.”
Foreman Apec leaned forward and lowered his voice conspiratorially.
"I could scarcely believe it myself! Between you and me, I believe they're what you'd call persistence predators, but they're all hush hush about such things, you know. Anyhow,” he sat back and resumed the interview questions. “You mentioned repairs–I assume for starships-- do you have any experience with buildings?"
Persistence predators? I’ll have to look that up later, focus!
“Some, yes. I managed the construction of hangars 17 and 18 two [years] ago and the repairs to some of the buildings when debris fell after the successful defense against the arxur earlier this [year].”
"Fantastic! And, of course, while the position does not require you to interact with many humans, it'll likely come up due to the nature of the project. Are you comfortable with that?"
“I’ll manage.” It’s only temporary and I have my secret weapon now. Let's see them crawl inside me now. Ha!
"You should be fine. Older fellows like myself seem to struggle much more than youngsters like you, and I have my first meal with a human every paw now! I'm afraid the compensation on the ad is as high as we can go due to the budget, is that also alright?"
He flicked his tail apologetically.
“Yes, I’m grateful for the opportunity to gain experience in construction and try something other than starship repair.”
"Fantastic. When can you start?"
“I can start immediately, thank you!”
"Well, then you're hired! I'll send you an information package as soon as I can, and you can start at the next claw. As I said, we are quite strapped for time."
I rose, my tail wagged with joy, “I won’t let you down. I’m eager to see what this place will look like when it’s finished.”
"As am I. The whole thing has been mired in secrecy. You'll have to sign an agreement when you accept the contract, it'll be in your information package."
A secrecy agreement? What are the humans building here? “Oh… mysterious.” I tried to wave my tail playfully.
"Yes indeed! We'll be able to talk all about it once you sign on officially, but suffice it to say that the building plans are different from any I've ever seen."
The foreman walked around the desk and opened the door to escort me out. As I left, I turned one last time to reply.
“Well, I am eager to talk with you about it next claw.”
"Wonderful. Go, read through the package. Rest up. You'll need it."
​
​
Memory transcription subject: Krin, Capitol Extermination Officer
Date [standardized human time]: November 9, 2136
Driving to another abandoned home, looking for another poor warto spawn for trespassing. Probably gonna have drugs too; they all do. Rigel was driving the truck and seemed rather quiet, well, more quiet than usual.
“This is wrong, Krin. Evicting someone from an abandoned house just feels wrong.”
Rigel you are naive and too emotional. These people have already left the herd and need to shape up.
“I get where you're comin' from, Rigel, but it's our job. Can't let folks squat in places that ain't theirs.”
We were headed to the poorer part of the city. Clean streets but smaller houses; some no bigger than an apartment. The homes had an artificial feel to them, lacking any sort of wood or stone, just fillcrete walls and plastic doors. The road was getting bumpier with potholes in the rubber asphalt and frayed edges. The paint was nearly gone in some places and sunbleached in others.
“But it's rough out there, Krin. The economy's tanking, folks are losing their jobs, the banks aren’t making allowances…. Is throwing someone out really the answer?
For herd’s sake, “Look, Rigel, I feel for 'em, I do. But ya gotta think bigger. This squattin' stuff leads to more crime, drugs, theft, vandalism, urban decay. Ain't good for nobody. It’s a breeding ground for predator disease.”
“I get that, but it's hard not to sympathize. People are struggling. Maybe we could help them instead of evicting them?”
You want to help them so much, go be a social worker and see how much help you can give these people. Social services were drowning. Everyone knew that but with less revenue from fees and taxes, agencies had to make cuts. Everyone just had to make do.
“Help 'em how? We ain't social workers, Rigel. We got our hands full already and the owners are breathing down our necks when they should've taken care of this mess in the first place!”
“I know, Krin, but it just doesn't sit right with me. Can't help but think there's a better way to handle this.”
“We can't solve all the world's problems, Rigel. Our job is to keep the peace, not save everyone. It's tough, but that's reality.” The simple reality that ain’t so simple anymore, stupid humans.
“I just wish we could do more, you know? Feel like we're caught between a cliff and a shadestalker.”
“Trust me, Rigel, I feel it too. But we can't change the system overnight. Gotta focus on what we can control and do our jobs. Besides, no point thinkin’ about it anymore, we’re here.”
I stopped the car and got out. Officer Rigel checked the front door and it swung open. We entered the house, announcing ourselves as we went, but saw no one. The place was rather clean for a squat. If it wasn’t for the makeshift bed in one of the rooms and the inflatable birthday pool in the bathroom with a stack of towels, we wouldn’t have even known there was a squatter here.
“Looks like we came all this way for nothing.” The frustration in Officer Rigels voice mirrored my own.
The water in this pool was almost gone, the towels were dry and we didn’t find any paraphernalia. Whoever had been here, was long gone.
“Yeah, let's call it in and go back to the office.”
We climbed back into the truck and pulled out of the driveway. As I drove us back to the guild, we passed a disheveled man. Is that our squatter? I slowed the car and looked in the mirror, from behind I could see he was wearing a dirty safety vest and carrying a trash stick. No, he’s not a squatter. Glad I’m not that guy though. Sanitation work is not for me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
First Previous

I had a great day. My alarms bugged out but I still got there 15 minutes early (thank the gods for my internal alarm clock). It got a little overwhelming a couple of times bc there’s so much more to do and we were really busy but I only had to step off once. I love how there’s already a couple of customers AND employees who want me to stay at that store bc they love my “energy.” Learned how to do FDFs and our cash. Already know how to do temp logs and shift readiness logs so that was a breeze. Only made a couple of mistakes but I learned from them so no harm done.

https://imgur.com/a/1T9Uoy6 WTS (all with boxes unless noted - most have or had velcro). All prices are shipped CONUS - Add $5 bucks if you are in California, Oregon or Washington.

• CBA Spectre V2, no box, missing two screws on the bottom - can be replaced by CBA for shipping cost, but I never did, velcro, signs of use but working perfectly. $675 (UPS, insured)
• CBA Condor, wood box, velcro removed from bottom $500
• Davey Design 1979/1990 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYTlPwsx0s8 $300
• Catalinbread Belle Epoch no box $115
• OBNE Dweller &170
• OBNE Signal Blender $125
• Cooper FX Expression Generator $225
• K+K Sound Pure XLR Preamp no box. $130
• Disaster Area QConnect (red and white - two of them). I think I only have 1 box. $175 shipped with box, $170 otherwise
• Disaster Area micro.clock $115
• Disaster Area DMC.micro $110
• Cornerstone Gladio v2.1 with an after market knob replacement. $285
• Sonic Research St-300 Turbo Tuner Mini $130
• Empress Buffer Plus $135
• Vongon Onset $395
• Banana Effects Tararira V1 $185
• Wampler Mini Ego Compressor $110

With all the mudslinging going on about Shoe's "responsibility" for her content (from the recent alleged grooming of teenage boys into becoming alt-right neonazis to the months old handwringing over her Balanciaga posts providing ammo for rightwing groomer panic), I think it's worthwhile to really discuss a topic near and dear to a lot of people, which is what is the actual overlap between pedophiles and the LGBT community. I, like Shoe, don't have time to read studies or provide scientific evidence, but as a concerned LGBT person myself, I have my own anecdotes and observations to add.
First, I think anyone with basic reading comprehension should understand that Shoe doesn't believe that pedophilia is rampant in the queer community, nor does she believe that they belong to the community. Her attacks on drag shows and queer associations with children come from a good place. Shoe's entire ethos is to criticize things in order to make them better, and I believe she's sincere about that. I think she genuinely believes that if the left and queer communities don't call out sketchy and bad actors now, we're soon going to find ourselves in a world where pedos actually are accepted members of the community. I personally don't think that that's likely to happen anytime soon, but I still support her for calling out bad actors because we should always attack child predators regardless of which political side benefits from the optics of it.
So what is the actual, legitimate threat to children from the LGBT community? From my experience, LGBT children are especially vulnerable to being predated on because they tend to have fewer supportive adults in their life. Kids and teens look to trusted adults for support, and when they can't get that from their family or teachers due to homophobia and general bigotry, they're going to latch on to anybody who provides that validation and support...even if it turns out that that person has ulterior motives. To accept this argument, you need to first accept that LGBT kids exist in the first place. You have to also accept that people usually develop sexual and romantic attraction prior to turning 18, with romantic attraction sometimes starting even before puberty. You're not going to be able to fully grasp what's going on or provide effective solutions if you don't accept those realities.
Generally, the average LGBT adult is not a threat to LGBT kids, but a lot of queer culture has developed within a heavy backdrop of tolerance with pedophilia. A lot of teen gay boys get their first sexual experience with adult men. In some ways it's a hierarchical culture that's become engrained, where young gay boys in their teens and early 20s are encouraged to bottom and be submissive to older, more masculine and mature men...and then as they mature and gain more experience, their role reverses and they're expected to be tops to the newest generation of gays. Sure, some gay men will form lasting relationships and marriages, but the current climate still promotes an empty hookup culture that makes the heterosexual one look wholesome and quaint by comparison. Even if they're legal, we're culturally conditioned to be skeptical (rightly, imo) of straight relationships with large age gaps because they can be predatory and patriarchal. We're not similarly conditioned to be skeptical when that relationship is between two men, because these relationships are still considered part of the natural order (ironically also due to the patriarchy.) Age gap relationships between gay men are often framed as mentor-mentee or father-son relationships, rather than romantic ones, where the younger boy exchanges sex and pleasures the older man in exchange for his ability to provide - be it money, safety, housing, job opportunities, even just affirmation of his gay identity. Does this not sound explicitly predatory to you? It alarms me that when I go on queer dating apps, whether they be as sleazy like Grindr or "wholesome" like (such an app does not exist), I as someone who appears barely legal overwhelmingly attract older men who want to top me. I, for one, would rather date people closer to my age, and I don't appreciate the fact that having ugly hairy older men wanting to fuck jailbait like me is considered the natural order of things.
I am lucky that I wasn't socially active online as a teen, because if I was, I probably would've been victimized by a predator. Given that the queer community is heavily in the minority, we really have no option but to go online to find each other, and that creates a deadly confluence of circumstances. Predators bask in the anonymity of online spaces. Parents and other trusted adults are usually far removed from monitoring who their kids talk to online, and even when they are involved, their queer teens are loathe to trust their homophobic parents over the community of online strangers who affirm and validate who they truly are. And plus, teens are sexual and horny, especially isolated gay teenage boys who have literally few other outlets besides exchanging lewds with online strangers. And then, on top of that, these strangers can turn around and threaten to out these teens to their friends and family, blackmailing them with their own photos. Straight kids are a lot less vulnerable to these issues on average, because they don't usually have such strained relationships with their parents and don't have to go online to find people who are accepting of them.
If we want to stop predators within the LGBT community, the first place to start is with the parents of LGBT kids. If they were more accepting of their kids, their kids wouldn't turn to literal predators for support. And those monstrous parents that kick their kids out for being LGBT are literally enabling predators, because the vast majority of homeless queer youth are forced to exchange sex for survival - food, housing, transportation, etc. Homeless children share hotel rooms and take turns being raped by predators so that they can keep their room for an additional night. And let's be clear - when it's between an adult and a minor, it is rape. If you're a parent of a queer teen who you're considering disowning, please burn that image in your head, of your child being pinned down on a crusty stained hotel bed, crying and moaning in pain, as a fat hairy stranger rapes them and thanks you for the pleasure of forcing your child into this situation. You enable child predators by pushing your child away. Are you so selfish that you believe your child's queerness is really a means to spite you, a ploy just for attention?
If you're a conservative who truly believes in protecting children, how about you start by actually acknowledging that LGBT kids exist and root out the vile pedophilic element on your own side that believes teen girls being impregnated by middle-aged men is the ideal, traditional, natural order of things? Queerness manifests in every race, every ethnicity, every culture - gay and trans kids are born into even the most conservative traditional families. It is impossible to groom someone into being gay, just as you never had to be groomed into deciding to be straight. How about you take your own advice and leave the kids alone, stop trying to do everything within your power to separate them from trusted adults - parents, teachers, doctors, therapists - because all you're going to accomplish is make it even EASIER for predators to rape and take advantage of children.
And if you're a liberal, stop pretending that all queer content is appropriate for all audiences. Drag shows are sometimes not appropriate for children. Kinks belong in private, you are not being shut down or discriminated against or kink-shamed by not being allowed to show off half-naked at the pride event - as a community that's so big on consent, remember that viewing sexual content requires consent, too. And finally, stop humanizing monsters. The mass murderer and child rapist do not need to be given the grace of rehabilitation, actually. Some marginalization and discrimination is deserved. We don't need to "destigmatize" pedophilia. Sure, we can put pedophiles in therapy, but given that conversion therapy doesn't work and that they claim that their attraction can't be helped... I don't really see any other option but locking them up far away from kids. You don't need to feel sorry for them, and hey, it's better than the woodchipper that conservatives are calling for. Stop attacking people like Shoe for rightfully calling out the pedophilic element that's trying to weasel their way into acceptability.
Sorry if this is long-winded and brainwormed. I'm sure a lot of you disagree with my points.
TLDR - Shoe is right to criticize the left on the pedo issue but conservative bigotry is enabling pedos to thrive on queer kids.

Have you ever used an Ouija board? Players place their hands on the planchette to spell out words or answer yes or no to questions posed to the group. Subconscious eye and muscle movement driven by their thoughts guide the group to spell out words. This is considered part of the Ideomotor Theory which is the activation of mirror neurons, like when we yawn because someone else yawned.
What does this have to do with Cassie? Watching her with Luna is concerning as she demonstrates facilitated communication and rapid prompting method speech with her use of the AAC and worksheets. The chalk story was facilitated communication where she described hand-over-hand FC to draw the letter A. That was one of the most alarming posts given what I have learned and am sharing here today.
Opponents of FC and RPM include the AAP, APA, and even the FTC. Before we continue, it is important to know that this is all self-researched and I am not a professional speech therapist. I love learning from everyone in the comments so please let me know if I've missed something or got something wrong! I have put together some resources to help define these practices below. It is important to advocate in these areas especially when we come across psuedoscientific methods being used on people who cannot consent. 🤓
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facilitated_communication There is widespread agreement within the scientific community and among disability advocacy organizations that FC is a pseudoscience.[3] Research indicates that the facilitator is the source of the messages obtained through FC, rather than the disabled person. The facilitator may believe they are not the source of the messages due to the ideomotor effect, which is the same effect that guides a Ouija board.[4][5] Studies have consistently found that FC is unable to provide the correct response to even simple questions when the facilitator does not know the answers to the questions (e.g., showing the patient but not the facilitator an object).[6] In addition, in numerous cases disabled persons have been assumed by facilitators to be typing a coherent message while the patient's eyes were closed or while they were looking away from or showing no particular interest in the letter board.[7]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_prompting_method Critics warn that RPM's over-reliance on prompts (verbal and physical cuing by facilitators) may inhibit development of independent communication in its target population.[12] As of April 2017, only one scientific study attempting to support Mukhopadhyay's claims of efficacy has been conducted, though reviewers found the study had serious methodological flaws.[12][13] Vyse has noted that rather than proponents of RPM subjecting the methodology to properly controlled validation research, they have responded to criticism by going on the offensive, claiming that scientific criticisms of the technique rob people with autism of their right to communicate,[9] while the authors of a 2019 review concluded that "...until future trials have demonstrated safety and effectiveness, and perhaps more importantly, have first clarified the authorship question, we strongly discourage clinicians, educators, and parents of children with ASD from using RPM."[14][15]
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The American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD)The Board of Directors concludes that rather than helping people express their thoughts, desires, and choices, FC and RPM have the potential to effectively take away people’s voices. This is due to the risk of facilitator influence/authorship as well as the potential to displace efforts to access scientifically valid communication modes, such as those associated with the field of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC).
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I found this FAQ helpful>> https://www.asha.org/slp/fc-and-rpm-faqs/
The ASHA policy on FC is strongly worded and very clear. https://www.asha.org/policy/ps2018-00352/
Proponents of FC state that the technique reveals previously undetected literacy and communication skills in people with autism and other disabilities. However, these statements are made only on the basis of anecdotal reports, testimonials, and descriptive studies. Clearly, FC is a pseudoscience (i.e., a practice incorrectly framed as being based on scientific findings; Finn, Bothe, & Bramlett, 2005; Lof, 2011) and is "junk science" (i.e., faulty information or research used to advance specific interests; Agin, 2006). As such, the use of FC carries several negative and harmful consequences in that FC

1. is not an effective form of communication and does not provide access to communication;
2. denies the user's access to their human right of communication;
3. costs time and money that cannot be retrieved, and, hence, reduces opportunities for access to timely, effective, and appropriate treatment for independent communication;
4. gives false hope to families of individuals with little or no speech; and
5. has been associated with significant preventable harms arising through false allegations of sexual abuse (Probst, 2005) and other forms of maltreatment (Boynton, 2012; Chan & Nankervis, 2014; Wombles, 2014).

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In closing,

• My main question over and over is, who is validating authorship of Luna's communication?
• Additionally, why is Cassie not using resources like IDEA or FAPE?
• Do you think these methodologies are represented in Cassie's posts?

These questions are mostly rhetorical but they are the heart of what we see unfolding in Cassie's posts. In my opinion, Cassie might as well be using a dousing rod to "understand" her daughter.
Thanks for joining me on this deep dive. 🫧🤿🫧
-Stacy

I have a Moto g stylus 5g, the clock icon on the bar still stays even after I turn off my alarm. It also says that I still have an alarm on but when I press on it and go to the clock app, that alarm doesn't exist. What should I do?