What's going on:

Following the AMA yesterday with reddit CEO Steve Huffman, we have decided to join many other subreddits in closing down on June 12. Reddit's refusal to provide a reasonable path for the third-party mobile apps that are essential for smooth operation of a subreddit of any size has brought us to this impasse.
For context on the events leading up to this decision, please see this post.
This is the culmination of a number of bizarre decisions by this site that give us the impression that there are no adults in the room at reddit HQ, let alone ones who understand the site's core value. Reddit continually ignores problems or refuses to communicate about them, but has resources to ineptly try to monetize by bouncing between a series of goofy, trend-chasing schemes like:

• Several failed cryptocurrency projects.
• Talks, a late Clubhouse/Twitter spaces clone.
• The RPAN video streaming platform which was actually unusable.
• Quietly opting subs into having chat rooms with no notice after promising to explicitly not do that.
• Reneging on a promise to continue CSS support in the new design.

Modding tools on the official app aren't up to the task and promises to implement them aren't really credible. We don't think there will be a change, but will reopen the sub if they reach a tenable solution.

/vancouverwa ending credits

This sub was founded in 2010 by parkman47 as a place about Vancouver, Washington.
By January 2019, we broke 5,000 users. We had to actually add sidebar rules I think during the 2018 teachers' strike because people were being shitty to one another.
By March 2022 we broke 50,000 users. The average posts per day didn't change dramatically too much in that time period, so a lot of them were probably bots - but even then late 2020 and early 2021 still probably saw huge growth in the numbers of users reading the sub. Things levelled off in 2022 quite sharply.
We had (and have!) some great people and great moments. A bunch of good posters still out there chopping it up. We will all always be haunted by that fish. WSDOT's MSPaint maps will live forever in my heart. Greg Kimsey's daughter doing an AMA was great fun. I really, really like Jan's weekend event posts.
Final shouts out to dedicated and caring mods emeritus verdammt and MercuryPDX.
We hope you all find happiness out there.

According to a national study on child abuse conducted by the Ministry of Women and Child Development in India with the support of UNICEF, Save the Children and Prayas, it was discovered that child sexual abuse is a widespread problem affecting both boys and girls in the country. The study found that boys also face significant sexual abuse, as more than half of the respondents who reported abuse were boys:
​

A questionnaire was administered to 12,447 children belonging to the five different categories of children in family environment, children in schools, children in institutions, children at work and street children in 13 different states. The major findings of this survey were:
• Out of the total child respondents, 53.22% reported having faced one or more forms of sexual abuse. Among them 52.94% were boys and 47.06% girls.
• The age wise distribution of children reporting sexual abuse in one or more forms showed that though the abuse started at the age of 5 years, it gained momentum 10 years onward, peaking at 12 to 15 years and then starting to decline. This means that children in the teenage years are most vulnerable.
• The significant finding was that contrary to the general perception, the overall percentage of boys was much higher than that of girls.
• In fact 9 out of 13 States reported higher percentage of sexual abuse among boys as compared to girls, with states like Delhi reporting a figure of 65.64%.
• Out of the total child respondents, 20.90% were subjected to severe forms of sexual abuse. Out of these 57.30% were boys and 42.70% were girls.
• 76% children were subjected to other forms of sexual abuse. Out of these 53.07% were boys and 46.93% were girls.
• Assam reported the highest incidence of sexual abuse among both boys and girls. 62.55% boys and 51.19% girls from Assam reported facing one or more forms of sexual abuse, which was highest amongst all the 13 sample states. This was followed by Delhi with 54.66% boys and 22.54% girls and Bihar with 35.89% boys and 30.40% girls reporting high incidence of sexual abuse. The Goa figures of 2.55% boys and 2.17% girls do not seem to be in line with the general perception.
• Across the country, every second child was being subjected to other forms of sexual abuse and every fifth child was facing severe forms of sexual abuse.
• Children on streets, children at work and children in institutional care reported the highest incidents of sexual abuse.
• 77% children did not report the matter to anyone.
• 50% abuses are persons known to the child or in a position of trust and responsibility.

(https://www.legalserviceindia.com/legal/article-4985-child-sexual-abuse-in-india.html)
​

The questionnaire relating to young adults looked at sexual assault in two forms: one penetration of anus and vagina by objects, and second penetration by penis and oral sex. Out of the 2324 young adult respondents, 10.33% reported having been subjected to sexual assault of one or both forms. When looked separately, 9.2% of young respondents reported penetration by penis and 7.4% by objects. The high percentage of young adults reporting penetration by an object is a reflection of the brutality perpetrated on children. The gender break up of all young adult respondents having faced sexual assault during childhood revealed that more males (58.33%) faced one or both forms of sexual assault as compared to females (41.67%).

​
Boys are vulnerable to victimization by both male and female perpetrators, and they usually don't understand that they were sexually abused:
​

Other interesting findings included that in India, some of the boys in the sample study were abused by women too, which was not found in other participating countries. The India report went further with the narrative of physical strength to include independence and knowledge about how to have sex. Or only in India did some of the respondents state the expectation for men to know about 'how to have sex'. What was suggested in all the reports was that boys do not appear to understand that boys can be sexually abused. They could give examples of sexual abuse, but the focus always appeared to be the abuse of girls. That is, many of the male respondents did not know what they had experienced was abuse, and often what is legally defined as abuse was described by a boy as experimentation or even as transactional.

(https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2022/04/13/decade-after-pocso-campaign-aims-to-highlight-male-sexual-abuse.html)
​
Furthermore, there's a harmful stigma associated with male child victims of sexual abuse. While cases of sexual abuse faced by girls are vastly underreported in India, the NCRB data reveals that cases involving boys are substantially more underreported, despite the enactment of gender-neutral child sexual abuse laws:
​

“Crime in India” 2019 report by The National Crime Record Bureau revealed that registration of cases under the POCSO Act has increased by 18.9 per cent. While, of the 26,192 cases filed under POCSO Act that has rape charges, 25,934 were girls, and only 258 were boys. Even after the implementation of POCSO (gender-neutral law), it can be seen that there is a very low rate of reporting and help-seeking among victims of sexually abused boys in India.

(https://childsafetyatwork.com/minor-boys-sexual-abuse-an-ignored-reality-in-india/)
​
The phenomenon of male sexual abuse isn't just confined to the domain of children, either. Delhi-based Centre for Civil Society found that approximately 18% of Indian adult men surveyed reported being coerced or forced to engage in conjugal relations. Of those, 16% claimed a female perpetrator and 2% claimed a male perpetrator.
Source: A Case for Gender-Neutral Rape Laws in India
While we can't say much about the accuracy and conclusions of such surveys, we don't have any official data regarding adult male victims of sexual crimes in India to work with, on account of the failure of our rape and sexual assault laws to recognize them. For a multitude of reasons, there exists a serious scarcity of information about this topic.
​
Moreover, while discussions on this topic typically center around women, it's worth acknowledging that men also face sexual harassment in significant numbers, as highlighted by the The Economic Times-Synovate Survey:
​

In an interesting new trend, a substantial 38% of the respondents agreed that in today’s workplaces, even men are as vulnerable to sexual harassment as women. In Hyderabad and Mumbai, 55% of the respondents agreed to this point. Many of the corporates and PSUs ET spoke to agree to this new trend and point out that many male employees do not come out in the open and file complaints because they feel they will not be believed, considering India’s social beliefs. They usually seek a transfer to get out of the situation or find a new job.

And, in contradiction to prevailing notions, it's not just men who sexually harass; the survey found that female perpetrators of workplace sexual harassment were as prevalent as male ones.
​
Some more indications:
​

During Ungender’s brainchild ‘Project Jagruk’, a sensitization and awareness drive regarding the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 conducted in Police Stations of South Delhi, many Police personnel wished to know if the act to applied to men as well. Many male victims of sexual harassment had approached them with complaints. When these police personnel were told that the act specifically applied only to women, they wished to know when men would also be protected from sexual harassment.

(https://www.ungender.in/why-india-inc-needs-to-protect-men-against-sexual-harassment-at-workplaces-in-india-case-for-gender-neutral-policies)
​
This article on The Hindu depicts several instances of sexual harassment faced by men including stalking, sexual harassment at workplace and sexual assault.
​
In India, the issue of sexual harassment against men is customarily overlooked, with a lack of public awareness and recognition of male vulnerability. Moreover, the absence of comprehensive legal frameworks contributes to the culture of silence surrounding male victimhood:
​

The issue is so entirely neglected in men that even our legal system is obsolete of laws protecting men from sexual harassment. The sexual assault laws of our country have been devised such as that they clearly state their existence exclusively for women. The sections 354, 509, and 376 of the Indian Penal Code which deal with sexual assault, namely, outraging the modesty of a woman, eve teasing and committing rape of a woman, all assume that men cannot be subjected to these crimes. The Vishakha guidelines which aims to prevent sexual harassment in work places are also just limited to women.
“According to the Indian law, modesty, if at all, exists only in women,” says ex-IPS officer Uday Sahai on the issue of male sexual harassment. “The only form in which a wrong sexual advancement on a man is recognized as an offence is as sodomy under the 377 section of the IPC. Apart from that there is no law to punish a person for molesting a man,” he further explains.

(https://indianexpress.com/article/india/sexual-harassment-of-male-a-reality-but-remains-a-taboo)
​
Some factors that discourage men from speaking up about their encounters:
​

The fear of not being taken seriously is not the only reason which prevents men from reporting sexual harassment cases. The fear that a female perpetrator may, in fact, use sexual harassment laws to wrongly implicate the male victim (by alleging that it was the man who sexually harassed her) has led many male victims of sexual harassment to not formally complain.
. . .
The idea that a woman can sexually harass a man is still considered inconceivable in the Indian society. What makes it even more difficult for men to speak about such incidents openly is the tendency of others to perceive male victims of sexual harassment as "feminine" or "weak". The disbelief surrounding sexual harassment of men by women in India can also be attributed to the absence of data/statistics on this issue. This, in turn, becomes a vicious cycle where the fear of being disbelieved may cause a male victim of sexual harassment to not report such incidents, leading to further lack of statistics in such matters.

(https://www.firstpost.com/india/vijay-nair-sexual-harassment-case-rising-incidents-against-men-emphasise-need-for-gender-neutral-laws-in-india-3452286.html)
​
In 2016, the University Grants Commission issued regulations stating that sexual harassment is a gender-neutral issue, recognizing that male students are equally susceptible to various forms of sexual harassment, just like their female and transgender counterparts. Although this is only applicable to institutions of higher education, it's still a positive development. Additionally, Wipro Technologies and Infosys in Bangalore have gender-neutral complaint committees. It's also worth noting that around 77 countries have already embraced gender-neutral laws. Given the international progress, it's long overdue for India to follow suit.
​
As a final note, I feel strongly about this subject because, as a male, I've personally been a target of sexual misconduct. I've come across many other men who have reported similar experiences, and I hope that more men feel comfortable sharing their stories so that the distorted narrative of sexual abuse can eventually be challenged.

Hello Reddit I been seeing this trend going around lately and wanted to share my story N ask for some advice on what to do I 19(M) have been with my girlfriend 21(F) for a little over a year now and I’ve come to find out she’s been sleeping around with her ex. So a little back story about her, we met through a old mutual friend at a party back in 2021. Couldn’t get enough of this girl she made me happy feel satisfied in the bedroom if yk what I mean. Fast forward 3 months I found she slept with her ex of 3 years before me while out of town visiting her father. Reference her father lives a hr and a half away. I found out when she called me out of town and I heard him in the background and sent a video after the fact. I was heartbroken she apologized and I was stupid enough to believe that she didn’t mean to and that she was drunk and high when it happened. After that things were normal. Fast forward to May of 2022 it happened again she went out of town for 5 days and ghosted me during that time she openly admitted to doing drugs and I was hesitant letting her go but nothing came of it she still went even after my reasoning. I got sent pictures and videos of her doing stuff with her ex again that I’m not going to go into because it makes me angry. I don’t know what to do she’s threatening to call me abusive and ruin my career so I’ve stayed in this toxic relationship I don’t know what to do I need advice someone help.

I (28m) have been the primary caregiver and care manager for my grandma (92f) for the past five years. It's been a long journey. She has dementia, and the progression of the disease has been very slow.
I'm all by myself now. My mom passed away in early 2021. My girlfriend and I broke up last year. My dad isn't capable of caregiving in a helpful way, but at least he's nearby if I need a hand.
My grandma and I have been sick together for the 4th time since November 2022. This time, it's some sinus infection. Grandma got lightheaded and passed out in the bathroom. I noticed her symptoms beforehand and was able to enter the bathroom and catch her before hitting her head. I steadied her and called her name to try and get her attention and wake her up.
In the past, I would have called 911 very quickly. After the fourth ER visit, multiple doctor appointments, and a discussion with a neurologist, I was advised to lay her flat on the ground and lift her legs if she fainted again.
I laid her on the ground, and sure enough, the blood rushed back into her head, and she came to. She didn't look like she could breathe, and I was worried about her throwing up, so I picked her up and leaned her against a wall. She proceeded to vomit on herself and relieve her bowels in a large puddle on the floor. At least she was awake, though.
With the initial crises averted, I shifted into the 2nd phase of cleaning her up. I picked her up and put her on the seat of the shower. Thankfully, I had an accessible shower installed last year.
I was able to wash her, which was a first for me. She drank some fluids and started to feel better. She was finally well enough to stand and put on her night clothes with some assistance. She got into bed and slept well.
My dad came over to help with the cleanup and sanitation of the bathroom.
The following morning, she was awake, dressed, and reading the daily newspaper when I woke. She was unaware that she was ill.
So, life keeps moving, and we are both still sick. We will get better, and I could keep maintaining her health and managing her care, but at what cost to myself? If the trend continues, we will both become sick again and infect the other. She will get worse symptoms than I and may likely have another crisis. Wash, rinse, and repeat.
I tried so hard to keep her in her home and provide her with a quality of life that was up to my standards. Now, money's running out, and we have few good options. I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, and at times it feels easiest to stay stuck because that's what is familiar and "safe."
If things work out how I expect, she will end up living in an assisted living facility for about a year. Then she'll have to transition to a nursing home that is Medicaid approved because her money will run out. The assisted living costs roughly $4000/mo.
I know this story is not unique. I've heard from others that go through the same scenario with different stories. Everyone processes the loss of a loved one to dementia differently.
I'm writing this right now to try and process this feeling of loss of control. Once she's not living with me, I won't be able or available to advocate and protect her as I do now. I won't be able to comfort or reassure her like I can now. It makes me very sad to think about it. I've never wanted her to feel scared and alone as she loses her memory.
If anyone else can relate to my story, I'd love to hear from you and do my best to reply. Fortunately, I have built a sound support system of friends, family, and professionals. However, I've been feeling pretty alone these past few days since I've been sick and looking after my grandma.

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worldnews

• Jimmymgs

Boris Johnson stands down as an MP immediately[BBC NEWS]
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• Diggidy

Four children found alive in Colombian Amazon after surviving a plane crash a month ago.
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• Yelmel

U.S. Official Says Spy Satellites Detected Explosion Just Before Dam Collapse
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news

• seffend

Trump lawyers quit classified documents case
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• Raspberries-Are-Evil

Trump federal indictment unsealed in classified documents probe
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• ArmandNinja

Officer who raced to Parkland massacre scene testifies against deputy who stayed outside
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science

• HeinieKaboobler

Research has shown that most middle-aged and older adults feel younger than they actually are, and this phenomenon has been labeled subjective age bias. Interestingly, new research provides evidence that this effect is increasing over time
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• smurfyjenkins

When house prices increase, homeowners are likely to strengthen their belief in meritocracy. They rationalize that income distribution in society is fair and that economic success and failure are primarily determined by individual efforts.
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• giuliomagnifico

Women are less optimistic and less willing to take risks than men because they are more sensitive to the pain of any losses they might incur than any gains they might make
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space

• Adeldor

SpaceX Dragon capsule breaks U.S. spaceflight records
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• Busy_Yesterday9455

Do you know? The last supernova that exploded in the pinwheel galaxy (before SN2023ixf) was only 12 years ago!
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• thesheetztweetz

Layoffs hit Colorado space companies as funding remains tight
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Futurology

• chemistrynerd1994

Should future Mars missions have all-female crews? A team of researchers found that, on a 1,080-day mission, a four-member, all-female crew would need 3,736 pounds (1,695 kilograms) less food than an all-male crew would, amounting to a savings of $158 million.
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• Gari_305

Performers Worry Artificial Intelligence Will Take Their Jobs
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• Teophil

GM’s electric vehicles will gain access to Tesla’s vast charging network
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AskReddit

• VisibleConfusion12

What is the one crime that could be considered worse than murder?
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• RavenGreekGod

What made you move out of your parents' house?
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• Spinksy48

What is your “never interrupt an enemy while they are making a mistake” moment?
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todayilearned

• sunnymushroom

TIL that Varina Davis, the First Lady of the Confederate States of America, was personally opposed to slavery and doubted the Confederacy could ever succeed. After her husband’s death, she moved to New York City and wrote that “the right side had won the Civil War.”
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• NegativeSector

TIL Diogenes was a Greek philosopher who was known for living in a ceramic jar, disrupting Plato's lessons by eating loudly, urinating on people who insulted him, and pointing his middle finger at random people.
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• Flares117

TIL: The "Leatherman" was a person dressed in a leather suit who would repeat a 365 mile route for over 30 years. He would stop at towns for supplies and lived in various "Leatherman caves". When archeologists dug up his grave in 2011, they found no remains, only coffin nails.
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dataisbeautiful

• Puzzled-Sherbet-7850

[OC] Geologic map of Italy
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• lbarqueira

% of land area covered by buildings and infrastructure on Lisbon - 3D
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• Away-Pepper-9239

Two Chinese writing systems [OC]
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Cooking

• SalMinellaOnYouTube

What’s the craziest thing you’ve eaten out of politeness?
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• BeanNCheeseBurrrito

I started breaking eggs on a flat surface… but now I’m dripping egg white all over the counter.
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• Ghawblin

Accidentally bought Tamarind paste from India instead of Tamarind paste from Thailand. Apparently they're drastically different and not interchangeable. What do with Indian Tamarind Paste?
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food

• SantaBarbaraBaker

[Homemade] Thin-Crust Pepperoni & Pickled Jalapeño Pizza
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• aPinchOfThyme

[homemade] pizza.
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• friendlyrican22

[homemade] pasta with ground beef
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movies

• MarvelsGrantMan136

‘Gladiator 2’ Stunt Accident Leaves Several Crew Members Hospitalized
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• mrnicegy26

From Hasbro to Harry Potter, Not Everything Needs to Be a Cinematic Universe
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• takename

Official Poster for 'Suitable Flesh'
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Art

• CorvusCurator

Devotion, CorvusCurator, Hand Embroidery, 2023
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• mristre

Untitled, Conor Nickerson (me), 35mm film, Photoshop, and Premiere, 2023
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• evagamayun

Sunbeam, Eva Gamayun, gouache, 2022
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television

• mrnicegy26

Steven Spielberg Sent Letter to ‘The Last of Us’ Creator Craig Mazin Praising Episode 3
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• Laszl0Panaflex

Marty Funkhouser Tells Jerry Seinfeld A Joke - "Curb Your Enthusiasm"
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• Key_Damage_9220

Netflix Password Crackdown Drives U.S. Sign-Ups to Highest Levels in at Least Four Years: Researcher
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pics

• Giant_Orb

2000 year old sapphire ring worn by Caligula
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• diacewrb

Double Decker Airline Seats
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• GarySiniseOfficial

Gary Sinise here. Thanks to the Lieutenant Dan Band for 20 amazing years and a lifetime of memories
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gifs

• crankrag1

Boosh!
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• joyousjoyness

Chaos the Black Cat
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• YveteFrey

Baby boy figures out how to give thumbs up
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educationalgifs

• shamefulRhino79376

How we breathe
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mildlyinteresting

• powerofwill72

Found homemade pickles in my basement from 18+ years ago
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• overweightmoose

This weird tree I found in Northeast Washington
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• 307148

My fortune cookie had a coupon for a free THC edible inside
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interestingasfuck

• ledim35

Baby parrot 41 days development
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• maazkazi

To appear headless while taking a photo, known as "horsemaning", was a popular way to pose in the 1920's.
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• asilvertintedrose

The Encephalartos Woodii cycad is known as the loneliest tree in the world, needing female trees to naturally reproduce, but none found since its discovery in 1895.
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funny

• GretelNoHans

Just some dogs chasing a ball
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• BabblingPanther

How to be a good girlfriend?
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• Mysterious_Tangelo78

*Painting "lip sync". That's what museums are for. *
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aww

• yourSAS

Love transcends barriers 🥰
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• Sonny_McClain89

Sugar got really tired after her walk
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• candiie_cane05

*OC My fiance helped this turtle to cross the road safely in the direction he was intending! My hero :) *
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29F in the USA
My stomach issues started in elementary school, I had lots of anxiety and was diagnosed lactose intolerant.
In high school everything made me feel sick. My blood work was positive for celiac, I did gluten free and vegan (was vegetarian) and then proceeded with a colonoscopy/endoscopy. My biopsy was negative for celiac but my doctor advised "if you feel better on the diet to keep it".
From late teens into mid 20s, I had a few GI issues including - stopped my vegetarian diet of 10+ years when I moved to Germany in 2013 for a summer and worked on an alpaca farm. was negative for parasites, was 5 weeks of non stop diarrhea, sometimes was going 5x an hour for 8 hours straight. I ate a limited diet once returning to the states, my mom was convinced I did have parasites so gave me a high seed diet including papaya seeds (she read this kills them). - in early 2019, went to Vietnam and 10 days into the trip, I noticed worms in my stool. Went to the hospital and received medication. - in spring 2020, got pregnant with my first. Had frequent diarrhea but realized was onset for any doctor appointments/ pandemic (lost my nana to Covid and my dad had cardiac arrest). Mid way through the pregnancy, I was deemed high risk and my anxiety spiked more, I had frequent panic attacks throughout the day, shook myself to sleep and had diarrhea but aligned with my frequent doctor appointments. My doctor had the mentality of "suck it down". I was hospitalized one night because I kept fainting, low blood pressure and sugar, I asked for a psych referral and was said they couldn't do anything. - Dec 2020, was a few weeks post partum and was 12 hours of not being able to control my bowels. Was it food poisoning? Idk? I have emetophobia, was dry heaving but couldn't puke. I feel like this then started anxiety induced diarrhea. Again, started with frequent panic attacks, diarrhea then more panic attacks when I had diarrhea. I made an appointment with a GI and landed to my PCP hysterical crying and she prescribed Zoloft - my anxiety calmed, was able to care for my baby. Wasn't perfect but eventually I lost count of how many weeks passed without having diarrhea. The GI did blood work for celiac and came back negative, I scheduled scopes - I'm pregnant again so cancel my scopes. I up my Zoloft and have a different Ob practice that is flexible, I receive medication for my morning sickness and ultimately my anxiety is lower and less GI issues. - Dec 2022, I'm 2 months post partum with my second and having similar GI attacks, diarrhea, shaking, and then more diarrhea. I opt for a dietitian but she wasn't a fan of lowfodmap. She wanted me to log my meals, BMs and see if there's a connection - I eventually find a dietitian versed with IBS and lowfodmap. I felt great within a few days, my provider wants me to start reintroduction 5 weeks in and my anxiety spikes. I don't feel ready, I've felt safe. I don't think I'm ready anxiety wise to make this jump so the last few days I've eaten gluten (bread). And my stomach is all sorts of wack
I guess my question is, does anyone do GF without the diagnosis? I plan to do scopes when I'm done breastfeeding but feel like long term I need to avoid gluten. Has anyone had mixed celiac testing results?

I have a Schedule A Letter, I'm really trying to move on from this Program Support Clerk position in the Atlanta VA of 13 years from a GS 04. Ive been looking to relocate to a position in the DC area or Remote.

RLCS 22-23: Sub-Saharan Africa

Regional #3	Day	UTC
Rounds 1 & 2	~~Fri``	15:00
Playoffs - Top 8	Sat	15:00	Today
Playoffs - Top 4	Sun	15:00
RLCS 2022-23 Guide

Coverage

Official Bracket
Liquipedia / / ShiftRLE.gg

Streams

Platforms	Link
Twitch	ACGL_Alpha

RLCS 22-23: Europe

Regional #3	Day	UTC
Rounds 1 & 2	Fri	15:00
Playoffs - Top 8	Sat	15:00	Today
Playoffs - Top 4	Sun	15:00
RLCS 2022-23 Guide

Coverage

Official Bracket
Liquipedia / / ShiftRLE.gg / / Pickstop.gg

Streams

Platforms	Link
Twitch	RocketLeague
YouTube	Rocket League Esports

Results

Elimination		Liquipedia Bracket
▼ Lower Round 3		(Bo5)
Monaco Esports	1 - 3	Hogan Mode
Moist Esports	3- 1	G1
▼ Upper Semifinals		(Bo7)
Team Liquid	3 - 3	Team Vitality
Karmine Corp	17:30	Team BDS
▼ Lower Quarterfinals		(Bo7)
TBD	18:30	Hogan Mode
TBD	19:30	Moist Esports

​

Talk about anything, music related or not. However, pop music gossip should be discussed in the Teatime & Trending Topics threads, linked below.
Please be respectful; normal rules still apply. Any comments found breaking the rules will be removed and you will be warned or banned.

Posts of Interest

• Teatime & Trending Topics - Pop music gossip
• Self Promo Sunday - Promote your own work here
• Popheads Charts - The most popular songs on Popheads each week, based on Last.fm data
• Main Pod Girl: The Popheads Podcast (Spotify link) - The official Popheads podcast, featuring a rotating cast of active users & artists
• Reintroducing... The Popheads Jukebox - A weekly round up of new music and classic where users can review and rate songs (similar to what Rate Your Music does)

---

Rates

May
2022 Anthemic Indie Pop Rate (MUNA vs. Maggie Rogers vs. Florence + The Machine vs. Mitski)
Anime Opening/Themes Rate
June
2022 Alt Club Rate (Sudan Archives/Kilo Kish/Shygirl)
00s Pop Punk Rate
---

Playlists

Check out our official Spotify playlists here, updated each week!

• Popheads Weekly Radar - A quick bite of 5-10 new songs from this week, curated by the mods
• The Popheads Stream - Rotating playlist of new and newly discovered releases from the past several weeks

---
If you use last.fm, you can create a collage here or here to display what you have listened to this week! Make sure you upload your collage to imgur, or it will change over time.

Intro

After base Rise which released on March 2021 on Switch and early 2022 on PC, Sunbreak was released in late June 2022 with new direction. The director is different, with inclusion of Frontier stuffs added in the game. This adds more variety of content with new features. Sunbreak is the game with most modern platforms present, ranging from PC (or Gamepass), portable consoles (Switch), and home consoles (Xbox Series, PS4/5).
Retrospective: are you satisfied with MHRise?
At last, the final version has come on 8 June 2023 which is the version 16. That means it marks almost a year of title updates (TUs) which has 5 TUs + 1 bonus update. With that, various additions and improvements are added until the latest version. Several monsters -- new and returning -- are added, menu improvements, extensive post-game content, and more.
Of course, any game has their own pluses and minuses which is up to you to interpret. With that, I want to make evaluation and verdict about Sunbreak for you to have some thoughts and opinions for this expansion.
For categories, I divide the category into:

1. Gameplay: weapon/buddy/follower combat design, equipment and skill design, quest design, level design, monster combat design
2. Presentation: visual design, animation, audio design, soundtrack, story, and cutscenes
3. Experience: user experience, controls, accessibility, performance, multiplayer
4. Support: title updates, improvements
5. Endgame: post-game content, grinding

As a caution, spoilers are open. Now, let's get started

1. Gameplay

Self explanatory. You play the game, right?...right?
1a. Weapon combat design
Sunbreak introduced new switch skills and new feature: switch skill swap. The swap changes switch skills in two loadouts: red scroll and blue scroll. With this, players can switch their playstyle around switch skills. Moreover, new switch skills introduced make the combat flashier and more customizable than before. Other than that, these weapons get balance updates even prior title updates. Some playstyles get more balance changes so that the gameplay feels balanced than before.

1. Which weapon do you main? Are you having fun with these new features?
2. Which weapon gets the most/least benefits for these new skills?
3. Which weapon is the most/least improved, balance wise?
4. Which weapon convinces you to try more after getting these new features?
5. What do you want to see more about these skills? Do you think these added skills will be implemented for the future games? (example: moves from switch skills will replace the some of the core movesets permanently for next game)

1b. Buddy, follower, and endemic life
Buddies, such as Palico and Palamute, got new equipment and skills. This means they can now contribute more than before. More tools and gadgets added for expanding the game.

1. What do you think about their new tools and abilities? Are they significant enough towards combat gameplay which makes you depend on them?
2. Do you think those buddy skills will be implemented for the future?
3. Should this buddy system be implemented for the future?

Besides buddies, there are followers. Same as buddies, they can support for players during combat. Buddy amount wise, you can have four buddies: two pets and two followers. As a note, followers are only available at single player.

1. Who's your favorite follower?
2. Do you think followers should contribute more?
3. Do you think followers should be implemented for next game?

Don't forget about endemic life too. Sunbreak also added new endemic life to expand further to gameplay, ranging from various wirebugs (ruby, gold) and more creatures (marionette spider, etc.).

1. Which new endemic life do you think has the most/least benefit?
2. Should this endemic life system be implemented for next game?

1c. Equipment and skill design
This is where it goes spicy. Equipment is the most crucial, meta-defining feature in the game.
For weapons, the stats are varied than before with additional trees. The ramp-up skills for weapons in Rise are changed into a decoration, called rampage decorations. This allows weapons to use rampage and one-off skills.

1. Stat wise, do you think the weapons are balanced enough? What are the best/worst weapon trees?
2. What do you think about the change from ramp-up skills into rampage decoration? Does it ease the customization more?
3. Most/least favorite rampage skill to use?

For armors, the skills are getting varied more than before with returning skills from previous games but with modernized mechanics. Some skills are more radical and thematic with representing monsters. For example, you have to reach certain damage to buff your stats on time, otherwise you got debuff (bloodlust); or let's say you can change buffs according to your scroll color but some has tradeoffs (furious, mail of hellfire); or another one: changing your health mechanics but benefits into damage (berserk, dereliction).

1. Do you think these lineup of armor skills are good or better than before?
2. Most/least favorite armor skill to use?
3. Most/least impactful armor skill so far?

How about the initial balance? To balance these skills, usually the decorations are determined by decoration level, from Lv1-Lv4. To accommodate the feature, some armors, weapons, and talismans get a slot for those

1. How is the balance of armor skills, whether it's for the stats or decoration level? Is is balanced enough?

For post game features like Qurious Crafting (armoweapon) and talismans, I'll elaborate in Endgame section
1d. Quest and level design
For quests, the design remains the same, except now we got follower quests. These quests are specifically designed to delve more into certain followers. Other than that The quest design is improved for story purposes, meaning that we can understand more the story.

1. What do you think about quest design that integrates more to a story?
2. Some quests are presented once (example: afflicted Lunagaron story), meaning the set piece cannot be replayed again. What do you think about this decision?
3. What do you think about follower quests and its progression? Does the reward worth the content?

For level design, we got two major areas: Jungle and Citadel. Jungle is a recreation from MHFU Jungle. The map features rich and vibrant design with added verticality (it has rain at night!). Citadel is a new and larger map designed with three themes of environment: forests, snow, and castle. While they are at most large, it's dimension is still approachable

1. What do you think about those maps so far?
2. Should they recreate more old maps?
3. What should be the ideal size for a map? Horizontal vs vertical design?

What about rampage quests? Rampage has finished its story so there are no rampages in Sunbreak. However, some levels use heavy artillery from rampage implemented there.

1. What do you think about heavy artillery in Sunbreak, since they are shown a bit limited? Should they implement them more?
2. On heavy artillery, how would you design a level/quest/area with focus on that?

Lastly, arena stages like Gaismagorm arena and Forlorn arena. While they are straight to the point, the helpers are there with various endemic life placed for the arena

1. Are the arenas good enough to play?

1e. Monster combat design
With introduction of Master Rank, monsters are getting harder with some movesets added and/or changed. New moves are trending at chip damage, multiple hits, or big hits. Some are faster to counter player counterattacks, aerials, blocking, and more. With this, it creates more challenge to hunt with these pace

1. What do you think about the trends of monster combat design?
2. Do you think these trends should exist in future game?
3. Which monster is most/least improved from High Rank to Master Rank?
4. Which Sunbreak monster is good enough for a combat? Is that also your favorite monster to fight against?
5. Which monster feels the most faiunfair, even for the new ones?

Talking about monsters, don't forget about wyvern riding. Prior Sunbreak release, we have been given a feature not to force ride if hitting the monster. However, wyvern riding for new monsters has more moves and combos. Sometimes, single strong movement is not enough.

1. What do you think about wyvern riding moveset for new monsters?
2. Which new monster is the most fun for wyvern riding?
3. With endemic buffs like ruby/gold wirebug, which one do you prefer?

2. Presentation

Presentation is where players can experience the art direction of the game, including the visual and audio identity of the game
2a. Visual design
After the eastern or let's say Japanese centric visual direction on base Rise, Sunbreak goes into rather "European" direction (at least east Europe centric?). We can see medieval style with some of the equipment, character design, and even monster designs. However, this feels different compared to western style used in old school MH (talk about MH1 and MH2). Those gens were truly darker in theming, but now it's vibrant, which can be a balance to old approach blended with fantasy feel

1. What do you think about the shift of visual direction from Rise to Sunbreak?
2. What do you think about the character, NPC, and equipment designs?
3. What do you think about environmental designs especially the village and the areas?
4. What do you think about monster designs in general?

A bonus about returning contents remade, such as returning areas and monsters. Polygons and texture resolution are getting upgrades. Environmental lighting retouches the materials of areas and monsters. Skyboxes rich in color makes vibrant feel for the game.

1. What do you think about these graphical update for returning contents such as monsters and areas? Does it still have the same charm as source material?

2b. Animation design
The animation is something MH doesn't miss for this kind of content. We can see the facial expressions during cutscenes (later discussed in 2e), new moves, better implemented animations on equipment design, monsters' animation, NPCs, and more. Moreover, some of these animations are motion captured, meaning that it can match realistic movement with creative freedom. While in final product feels faster, it's still realistic due to the capture

1. What do you think about general animation design here?
2. What would you like to see the animations forward?

2c. Audio design
Another thing about these cool arts are audios. Playing with sounds with choice of output options such as speakers/headphones/soundbars makes varying experiences. Besides that, audio designs for the game are getting more oomph, such as explosion sounds with enhanced bass and middles.

1. First of all, what kind of audio output you usually play on? What do you hear, feel, and think about audio design on the game? Which audio preference do you choose in the options settings?
2. What do you think about audio design in Sunbreak? What makes it different than Rise?
3. Are there standouts for great audio design in Sunbreak (not limited to sound effects)?

2d. Soundtrack
Audios are something to hear, including the soundtrack (OST if you like abbreviations). OST direction in Rise were inspired with Japanese instruments, something that was mostly presented in MHP3rd. It added vocal choirs for each areas and monsters. In Sunbreak, the direction is different. There are more emphasis on classic instruments with fewer choir segments. As a tradeoff, the horns section is more frequent than before. That's no exception with returning OSTs such as Jungle music and monsters like Astalos, Seregios, Magalas, and more. They even invited the original composer to rearrange said monsters to give a faithful feel.
To give reference, Sunbreak OST directory is here. Also, I created the MH composer list

1. What do you hear, feel, and think about the Sunbreak OSTs in general? What do you like from them? What are your favorite track(s)?
2. What do you think about original composer rearranging some returning OSTs? Do you feel something different? Is it necessary to do?
3. What kind of soundtrack direction do you want forward?

2e. Story and cutscene design
Story in MH is arguably not the kind of priority, mostly for the lores and stuffs. However, for Rise series, they are more emphasized, direct, and personal. This direction continues in Sunbreak, enhancing what's missing from Rise (minus Rampages). Characters are more expressive, including side characters who gives somewhat more important backstory. And of course, there are more character content. First, the follower quests which makes more character story. That also supported by their social media team who gives more further information about character story. Moreover, if you see the characters, their names are more personal and given rather than by title. For example: the name's Galleus vs Admiral
Cutscene design is no exception. While they are basically have focused direction as Rise, The experience is still good. You can feel the overall tension of the story.

1. What do you think about the story so far? Does is more direct and "in your face" compared to older games?
2. What story aspect that stands out for you, and what aspect that can be improved?
3. How's the cutscene so far?
4. What do you think about names which is now personal than being a title in previous games?
5. Do you think they should emphasize more into the story in the future?

3. Experience

Experience is how players experience the game, such as how to access the game, how does it control and perform, and the multiplayer experience
3a. Overall user interface and user experience
With UI and UX improvements, such as loadouts, equipment & talisman navigation, quest navigation, etc., the overall experience is improved from what's inside Rise. That applies in Rise version especially UX updates.

1. What is the most improved aspect of the UI and UX in this game?
2. How was the experience when you entered Sunbreak the first time? Did it overwhelm you?
3. Is the tutorial popup helpful or at least improved, judging from the timing and how it's described in the game?
4. What kind of UI and UX you want to see in the future?

3b. Menu information (visual)
Menu is the most vital part of MH, giving people information about what's up. In hunter's notes, unlike previous games, they've shown actual numbers and meters to inform the values. This is huge in meta aspect, making the fight easier to analyze such as hitzone values, weakness thresholds, and more. Another thing is the armor skill descriptions. There are some consistencies need to be desired such as when to show the numbers in description or not. For example: damage +10 vs (further) increases damage.

1. What do you think about these menu information? Does it inform you enough, or do you want it more?
2. Do you think they need to make descriptions more concise or verbose, or should they release more numbers in description?

3c. Controls (motoric)
In combat section, with introduction of switch skill swap, the controls become more complex. At least they have shown the UI for indicator, which is still a good thing. For PC, there are control improvements, even though there are some unfamiliarities transitioning from controller to keyboard and vice versa

1. What do you play with? Does it play responsively?
2. Optional: do you make the transition from one control to another? (example: controller to KbM)
3. Switch users: do you feel different controlling in portable/docked mode?
4. Does this game need full button remaps or at least button presets?

3d. Audio experience (audio)
This has slightly different question than audio design in section 2. There are extensive audio controls in this game, including 3D audio. With this option, players can listen the direction of the sound

1. How's the audio engineering? Is it well mixed?
2. How's the 3D audio so far? Any differences compared to basic version?

3e. Performance and graphics (tech)
Title, so I straight up ask

1. For PC, optional: specify the main PC specs such as CPU, GPU, storage, RAM, VRAM. How does it perform in your PC? What are the most intensive performance so far? How's the driver update treat the performance? Is there a bottleneck so far?
   1. frame rate: 30, 60, 120, or unlimited fps?
   2. How's the booting time? Does it concern you?
2. For home console: specify the console used. How's the performance so far?
3. For switch: how's the performance on portable and docked mode? Are there changes on optimizations?
4. In terms of graphics, where are the most beautiful scenes? (excluding cutscenes)

3f. Multiplayer (online)
Multiplayer is one of the key features to experience in MH. Because of it, this time I put them in experience section. Although the experience is basically the same in Rise, there can be improvements, maybe a bit subtle, so I'll ask again

1. How's the general experience of multiplayer in Sunbreak? Are there improvements compared to Rise?

I forgot to mention in Rise, the quest design flow is a bit different. If we compare to World, Rise is offline first. This affects how quests are designed. For the host, quest can be toggled for online but only in the hub whereas World can toggle while hunting due to online first design (SOS Flare +++ quests). Now for the finder, you can search while in "offline" mode (should I say asynchronous mode since searching lobby is basically online?). You can select specific quest. But there is one caveat, you don't know the players playing the quest or not, so for the finder it can be frustrating if there are no specific quests posted.

1. Do you think this is a good multiplayer quest design so far? Is there something that needs to be improved?
2. What should be the better multiplayer system for MH? (doesn't need to be retrospective)

4. Support

4a. Title updates
Title Update (TU) is the most vital part of the game given how to make the game long lasting until now. TUs come with bunch of stuffs, including but not limited to monsters, gimmick weapons, additional weapon balances, followers able to participate anomaly quests, new craftable decos, and more. In fact, besides updates, we get more QoL features and improvements based on the feedback to make more convenience.

1. What's your opinion about the overall TU lineup for Sunbreak?
2. Which TU feels significant content wise? Also, which TU is your favorite?
3. What do you think about how they treated weapon balance prior updates?
4. Is the QoL across the updates enough, mainly for UI and UX aspects, or is there something that needs to be addressed more?
5. Does the performance stable enough to handle TUs?
6. Does the TU make grinding easier over time?

4b. Event quests
Event quests are operated independent against TUs. As the name suggests, let's jump straight to questions:

1. Do you like that the updates are independent against TUs?
2. Downloadable quests vs scheduled event quests?
3. Are you satisfied about the rewards after completing even quests??

5. Endgame

5a. Anomaly quests, monsters, and grinding
After the final boss, there are anomaly quests that elevates the difficulty from the base version. Majority of monsters get afflicted with qurio parts to break with indications if some parts are broken, the player(s) passes the damage check which topples monster. Otherwise, monster unleashes large and stunning AoE damage which is kind of dangerous. Some may say it's akin to MHGen hyper monsters which has hyper parts needed to hit to increase hunter arts gauge. The rewards? You get afflicted materials.
However, anomaly quests and the rewards are not enough. They introduce anomaly investigations. This may be similar to MH4U endgame quest (disclaimer: I don't play MH4U). Anomaly investigation has the level system that needs to be increased to get better rewards with a increased difficulty. These rewards

1. What do you think about anomaly quest design, and what about the rewards?
2. What do you think about anomaly investigation design, and what about the rewards? Does the rewards worth the time to grind?
3. In case of investigation. What is your usual time to beat the quest? How exhausting is the progress by grinding more? What do you think about its increased difficulty and the damage?
4. What do you think about afflicted monsters gameplay? Is it well designed for its stats, mechanics and moveset?
5. Favorite afflicted monster to fight?
6. Which monster is the best/worst for anomaly quests?

As the anomaly endgame goes further, we are introduced with Risen elder dragons, who got in control with qurio to make them afflicted. Risen elder dragons difficulty is increased with exclusive moves that explodes anywhere near (or a bit further) with fearful damage. What makes them different than afflicted monster is they don't inflict bloodblight as the afflicted ones.

1. What do you think about risen elder dragon so far, whether for its difficulty, moveset, time to complete, etc?
2. What's your usual completion time for risen quests? Does the reward worth the grind?
3. By completing these anomaly quests with some level requirement, you can unlock a new decoration and craft it from those quest rewards. Therefore, there are variety of decorations as opposed to Rise. Is this system good enough to be implemented

5b. Qurious crafting: armor
As the reward for completing anomaly quests, you get items for augmenting equipment a bit further, particularly afflicted essences. Qurious armor takes the augmenting further, adding or trading skills so that the augmentations can be mixed.

1. Whats your opinion about qurious crafting in general?
2. How grindy is this in comparison to previous games' grindy sections (like MHW deco grind and others)?
3. In terms of augmentation, do you like the fact you can have a tradeoff involving defense, slots, and skills?
4. Do you think this augmentation is better implemented for next game? Or are there other suggestions for armor augments?
5. Bonus: do you play without qurious armors this whole time? ^{Because I do}

5c. Qurious crafting: weapons
Back in Rise, you can ramp up the weapons with rampage skills. Since Sunbreak, these upgrades are replaced by qurious weapon crafting. This features stat increases such as raw/elemental attack, sharpness and slot upgrade, and other upgrades like shell types. What makes them different compared to qurious armor crafting is this one's requirement is fixed and can minmax freely after you unlock what's desired. This system doesn't reward randomly like in armor. However, with this characteristics, the grind is real that you need to reach some of highest level of anomaly investigation

1. What's your opinion on qurious weapon crafting in general?
2. Do you think this kind of augmentation can be implemented for later games?

5c. Hazard quests
Hazard quests was introduced in late title updates. Currently, these quest is implemented for all monsters after accomplishing anomaly investigation level 300, event quests, or even hub quests. These quests introduces modified movesets for monsters and also increase their health. In practice, the rewards are title badges and more.

1. What do you think about hazard quests so far? How's the difficulty of it?
2. Does it worth the accomplishment?

Closing

This is a closing part of the post. MH Rise series has come into the end with Sunbreak final update. We don't know what will happen how for the mainline series goes, but this marks for 2 years of service including planned last event quests at 27 July 2023. I believe there are many community contribution through this series, ranging from fanarts to in depth meta guides.
Last but not least, after these evaluations, it's time for the verdict.

The verdict: are you satisfied with Sunbreak?

Thank you
---
Resources by OP:

• Sunbreak moveset flowchart diagram
• Sunbreak combo analyzer

INTRODUCTION:

BYND is a company that produces plant-based meat. It’s currently at its growth period having their IPO very recently in 2019. These couple years have been rough for BYND as it burns through cash to establish market share, faces negative net income and multiple health scares. Management’s plans for success are Price Parity with Animal protein, Enhancing Taste, Aroma and Texture to taste like Animal protein, Education on Misinformation + Health benefits of BYND and Plans to cut off fats such as Better Inventory management, Layoffs, Increased capital efficiency, Improve their operating expenditure situation.
REVENUE:
TOTAL ADDRESSABLE MARKET
I’ve used a top-down approach when building my revenue model. I followed the revenue forecast of the meat industry [Plant based inclusive] (SOURCE)
%STAKE
The %stake of the market held by BYND changes to a small extent to avoid being too optimistic in my forecast. I used historic numbers when forecasting %stake.
COST
The general principle I took for forecasting Cost was following management’s guidance from 2023 Q1, their goal of “Sustainable growth” and focusing more on margins.
COGS
Initially, COGS is going to be lower from reduction in co-packing and overall headcount bringing production more in house.(SOURCE)
But going forward, COGS is going to be lower due to higher economies of scale. (SOURCE) Management has set forth that they plan to achieve price parity with animal protein by 2024, so the largest fall in COGS will appear in the first few years of forecast.
The moment price parity is achieved, I’d guess that it takes 2-3 years for BYND to reach close to the level of margins as the animal protein industry as BYND needs to sort out other issues e.g., how to more efficiently ship higher volume, Agriculture has ops. margins of 7.84% (SOURCE).
ADVERTISING
Advertising is going to slightly increase in the first few years of forecast. Management has stated that there is a lot of disinformation in the market and consumers are relatively unaware of the health benefits of BYND (SOURCE). So, management will scale up advertising efforts. Opting for less granularity I assume that advertising will remain the same as 2022.
SHIPPING
Opting for less granularity when forecasting Shipping, the cost of Shipping is constant for the past few years so Shipping is assumed to follow historic trends.
During the high growth period, BYND may be not ready to deal with larger volume of sales so I’d assume that cost of shipping slightly ticks upwards for the next 2-3 years before tending back down.
OVERALL
Margins of BYND will be higher than Animal protein due to cheaper production cost (SOURCE), e.g. Pea protein costs $5/kg whereas Animal protein costs $300/kg
NON-CASH ADJUSTMENT:
D&A and CapEX
Management has given out guidance that they want to get more capital efficient, so for the first few years of forecast I’d assume that BYND has net negative or close to net negative CapEX for the first few years. Onwards, as BYND develops better products and gets more widely recognized they will begin priming their net reinvestment for growth before tapering down for maturity.
Change in NWC
Management has given guidance that their inventory levels are quite high and they are planning on selling off, I’d assume that the first few years they are aggressively selling off inventory. But in the long run, they will have positive change in NWC as I believe they may require to hold some stock.
WACC:
COST OF EQUITY
RFR (1M Average) = 3.53%
4105.02 = [4.58% x 4105.02] x (1+5%) / (1+R) + ([4.58% x 4105.02] x (1+5%)) x (1+3.417%) / R - 3.417% / (1+R) ^2
R = 8.635%
ERP = 5.105%
Beta = 2.00 (SOURCE)
COE = 13.74%
COST OF DEBT
BYND has no credit rating, negative EBIT so no interest coverage ratio and no outstanding bond with a market YTM. So, the best proxy to use is book yield.
Interest expense = 3.966M
Total Interest-bearing Liability = 60.359M
COD = 6.57%
WEIGHTAGE
BYND has 1 billion worth of convertible bonds at conversion price of $206 per share, so it’s OTM.
Total liability = 1093.05M
Share price (1M Average) = $10.185
Shares O/S = 64094.52M
Market Value Equity = 737727.91M
%Equity = 99.8%
%Liability = 0.02%
Marginal Tax Rate = 21%
WACC = 13.71%
EFFICIENT WACC
The elevated WACC that BYND faces is only because it is a new company with an unproven business model and not yet enjoying the full extent of economies of scale. So, I’ve looked at the averages for the agriculture industry and assumed that BYND will tend towards these numbers as the business gets more efficient, COD remains constant.
Average Unlevered Beta = 0.91
Average D/E ratio = 33.87%
Average Levered Beta = 1.15
Average COE = 9.40%
Average WACC = 8.33%
R&D:
R&D
Historical data has to be reconciled as management treats R&D expenditure as an operating cost. This is inaccurate as R&D provides value for more than a year, so it should be capitalized. Assume R&D expenditure counted from 2017 onwards and it takes 6 years to develop a product. (SOURCE)
CONCLUSION:
I value BYND at $17.10 for my base case. BYND has a hidden pocket of value that most investors do not consider, their NOL carryforward. Even when we take a conservative view and only consider those that do not expire. Their NOL carryforward is still 738M. I believe that as countries turn to be more environmentally conscious BYND will be the first in line to profit. Even if environmental concern is out of the picture, plant protein has a huge potential to be significantly cheaper and even healthier than animal protein. The less privileged will be able to benefit from this, not having to pick between health and hunger.
DCF (BASE) : [SOURCE]
DCF (WORST) : [SOURCE]
DCF (BEST) : [SOURCE]
Revenue Model : [SOURCE]
Cost Model : [SOURCE]
QUESTIONS & POTENTIAL ERRORS:
1) How can BYND penetrate into Asia if most products are Westernized e.g., Burger patty?
2) BYND may not be able to achieve EOS as “The common plants used for protein in alternative meats, such as peas, are only being produced in a few countries” (SOURCE)
3) Given that I used book yield as a last resort, it may not necessarily give the most accurate representation for Cost of Debt.
4) Management may or may not tend towards the efficient wacc I’ve defined in my DCF for reasons such as they may not be able to cheaply do it or may not see a need to do so in general.

Hey Reddit
In October of 2022 I purchased an apartment and have lived there since. The building has a shared car park. There is signs in the car park to say that is private and you need a permit.
When I got the keys the estate agent told me that despite the signage the car park is not monitored and there is nothing to worry about. For a variety of reasons I had no reason to doubt the agent.
In March I received a ticket. The ticket is from 'Spring Parking' who monitor the car park on behalf of the building owners.
I contacted the owners of the building and explained the situation to them, they replied back to say they would contact Spring Parking and have the ticket removed.
Flash forward to today and I have received a letter from a debt recovery agent claiming that I owe money. I can only assume that the building owners did not make much of an effort telling the parking company there is no need for the ticket.
It makes it pretty clear on the letter that failure to comply can result in court action, damage to my credit, etc.
What would be the best way of going about this?should I follow up with the building owners, or is it too late to get the ticket voided?
Thanks in advance.

V svojih prejšnjih postih sem omenil veliko slovenskih borznih hiš in zavarovalnic ki finančno nepismenim in naivnim vlagateljem pod krinko “plemenitenja” podtikajo toksične produkte z astronomskimi stroški in katastrofalno nizkimi donosi. Zato me veliko ljudi sprašuje kaj torej priporočam namesto slednjih, torej kakšen naj bi bil “idealen” porfelj?
Idealnega portfelja seveda ni. Lahko pa vam povem kaj sem sam povedal mlajšim članom svoje lastne družine.
V zadnjih 100. letih so imele najvišje donose ameriške delnice, pred komunistično revolucijo leta 1917 pa so to bile ruske delnice:
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52810617474_891bac5112_b.jpg
http://topforeignstocks.com/2013/02/15/comparing-the-returns-of-russian-and-u-s-equities-1865-to-1917/
Če misliš da bo tudi za časa tvojega življenja delnice ZDA nadaljevale trend zadnjih 100 let lahko ves portfelu vložiš po receptu A, če pa v to nisi prepričan se lahko poslužiš recepta B:
Uporabi online posrednika, mislim da je cenovno najugodnejši Interactive Brokers.
RECEPT A: v vsakega od spodnjih 3. ETFov daj približno tretjino kapitala:
Velika ameriška podjetja, povprečno 10% letnega donosa v $ med 1926-2015: ETF: SXR8 posnema indeks SP500 (500 največjih ameriških podjetij)
https://www.justetf.com/en/etf-profile.html?query=IE00B5BMR087&groupField=index&from=search&isin=IE00B5BMR087#overview
Stopnja rizika 4 od 5 (višji rizik = višja nihanja: v 70% mesecev delnice gredo navzgor)
Mala ameriška podjetja, povprečno 12% letnega donosa v $ med 1926-2015: ETF: ZPRR, posnema indeks Rusell 2000 (vsebuje okrog 2000 delnic malih ameriških podjetij) https://www.justetf.com/en/etf-profile.html?query=IE00BJ38QD84&groupField=index&from=search&isin=IE00BJ38QD84#overview
Stopnja rizika 5 od 5 (višji rizik = višja nihanja: v 70% mesecev delnice gredo navzgor)
Visoka tehnologija: ETF: SXRV, posnema indeks NASDAQ 100 (vsebuje 100 največjih podjetij ameriškega indeksa NASDAQ kjer so koncentrirana podjetja visoke tehnologije), povprecno 8.61% letnega donosa od ustanovitve indeksa 31. marca 1999, oziroma 10.36 %v € od ustanovitve ETFa 7 septembra 2001 do 27 maja 2022:
https://www.justetf.com/en/etf-profile.html?query=IE00B53SZB19&groupField=index&from=search&isin=IE00B53SZB19#overview
Stopnja rizika 5 od 5 (višji rizik = višja nihanja: v 70% mesecev delnice gredo navzgor)
RECEPT B: Vse vložiš v globalni ETF IWDA ki posnema indeks MSCI WORLD, (vsebuje 1541 delnic 23. razvitih dežel celega sveta, 68% v ZDA), povprečno 5.92% letnega donosa v € od ustanovitve indeksa 29. decembra 2000 do 27. maja 2022:
https://www.justetf.com/en/etf-profile.html?query=IE00B4L5Y983&groupField=index&from=search&isin=IE00B4L5Y983#overview
Stopnja rizika 4 od 5 (višji rizik = višja nihanja: v 70% mesecev delnice gredo navzgor).
Potem pa se drži sledečega:
V ETF vlagaj kadarkoli moreš, ne ugibaj kako se bo gibal trg. Tega ne ve nihče. Če bi to vedel tvoj “svetovalec” se ne bi ukvarjal s teboj pač pa bi skupaj z Muskom organiziral polete na Mars.
Izogibaj se “pomagačev”, zlasti sladko govorečih slovenskih “strokovnjakov” ki ti bodo za astronomske provizije podtikali sklade s katastrofalnimi donosi:
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52930191823_471b960a61_b.jpg
Približno 10 let predno boš začeli iz portfelja dvigovati denar dodaj obveznice, o tem kaj več drugič.
Zgoraj navedeni portfelji so v zadnjih 10. letih krepko premagali VSE slovenske finančne produkte (vzajemne sklade in ostale produkte Finančne Hiše, Modre Pokojnine Ilirike, in Sklade SOPa) in to neglede na možne davčne olajšave. Dokler vlagatelj ne zna ali noče primerjate VEPov (Vrednosti Enot Premoženja) slovenskih skladov s pasivnimi ETFi to sicer ni problem kajti ignorance is a bliss!
Zgoraj navedeni portfelji so prav tako premagali veliko večino portfeljev narejenih v ZDA.
Če greste na stranico https://portfolioslab.com/lazy-portfolios boste našli tudi nekaj portfeljev ki so v zadnjih 10 letih imeli višje donose od tega kar sam priporočam svoji družini. Vendar gre v teh primerih za novejše tehnologije za katere se še ne ve kakšne donose bodo dajale v tudi bodoče.
Dobra vira za Slovenijo:
https://plemenitenjealiplenjenjevlagateljev.weebly.com/
https://biznispace.com/sl/blog/v-katere-etf-investirati

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Treasure Nr. & Year	Rare & Retro Sets	Hero	Price	Stock	Reserved
Diretide 1. 2022	Dark Behemoth	Primal Beast	40💲	6
Diretide 1. 2022	Blue Horizons	Marci	15💲	14	1
Diretide 2. 2022	Brands of the Reaper	AntiMage	25💲	2
Aghanim's. 2021	Wrath of the Celestial Sentinel	Chaos Knight	50💲	1
Aghanim's. 2021	Pyrexae Polymorph Perfected	Ogre Magi	30💲	1
Cache 1. 2019	Gothic Whisper	Phantom Assassin	95💲	1
Cache 2. 2019	Cinder Sensei	Ember Spirit	145💲	4
Cache 1. 2019	Defender of Ruin	Disruptor	20💲	3
Cache 2. 2019	Fowl Omen	Necrophos	15💲	5
Cache 2. 2018	Cruelties of the Spiral Bore	Magnus	50💲	2
Cache 2. 2018	The Rat King	Chen	8💲	2
Collection 2022	Charms of the Firefiend	Batrider	1💲	1	1

​

Diretide Cache 2. 2022	Hero	Price	Stock	Reserved
Darkbrews Transgression	Alchemist	8💲	2
Withering Pain	Clinkz	8💲	2
Dawn of Darkness Foretold	Doom	8💲	2
Sacred Chamber Guardian	Huskar	8💲	2
Bird of Prey	Legion Commander	8💲	2	1
Feasts of Forever	Night Stalker	8💲	2
Freebot Fortunes	Ogre Magi	8💲	2
Transcendent Path	Oracle	10💲	1
Darkfeather Factioneer	Phantom Assassin	10💲	1
Cursed Cryptbreaker	Pudge	15💲	1
Grand Suppressor	Silencer	8💲	3
War Rig Eradicators	Techie	8💲	1
Acrimonies of Obsession	Vengeful Spirit	8💲	3

​

Diretide Cache 1. 2022	Hero	Price	Stock	Reserved
Hounds of Obsession	Chen	8💲	13
Seadog's stash	Clockwerk	8💲	12
Starlorn Adjudicator	Dawnbreaker	8💲	10
Chines of the Inquisitor	Faceless Void	8💲	13	1
Shadowleaf Insurgent	Hoodwink	10💲	10
Champion of the Fire Lotus	Monkey King	8💲	14
Crimson Dawn	Phoenix	8💲	13
Scarlet Subversion	Riki	8💲	13	1
Whippersnapper	Snapfire	10💲	10
Spoils of the shadow veil	Spectre	8💲	12	1
Forgotten Station	Terrorblade	8💲	11
Dirge Amplifier	Undying	8💲	12
Trophies of the Hallowed Hunt	Ursa	8💲	13	2
Deathstitch Shaman	Witch Doctor	8💲	12

​

Aghanim's Cache 2021	Hero	Price	Stock	Reserved
Blightfall	Abaddon	12💲	3
Cosmic Concoctioneers	Alchemist	16💲	1	1
Secrets of the Frost Singularity	Ancient Apparition	12💲	2
Days of the Demon	Axe	15💲	1
Widow of the Undermount Gloom	Broodmother	10💲	2
Perils of the Red Banks	Chen	12💲	4
Apex Automated	Clockwerk	25💲	1
Perception of the First Light	Dawnbreaker	25💲	2	1
Silverwurm Sacrifice	Dragon Knight	20💲	1	1
The Chained Scribe	Grimstroke	10💲	2
Forgotten Fate	Mars	15💲	2
Scales of the Shadow Walker	Phantom Lancer	8💲	3
Test of the Basilisk Lord	Razor	10💲	1
March of the Crackerjack Mage	Rubick	10💲	1

​

Cache 2. 2019	Hero	Price	Stock	Reserved
Endless Night	Abbadon	15💲	1
Prized Acquisitions	Batrider	10💲	2
Fury of the Bloodforge	BloodSeeker	10💲	4
Automaton Antiquity	BroodMother	12💲	3
Directive of the Sunbound	Clockwerk	12💲	2
Sight of the Kha-Ren Faithful	Drow Ranger	20💲	3	1
Souls Tyrant	Shadow Fiend	25💲	4
Distinguished Expeditionary	Tusk	10💲	1
Verdant Predator	Venomancer	10💲	2
Tribal Pathways⠀	Warlock	10💲	4

​

Cache 1. 2019	Hero	Price	Stock	Reserved
Echoes of the Everblack	Abaddon	16💲	2
Priest of the Proudsilver Clan	Chen	10💲	2
Allure of the Fadeshade Flower	Dark Willow	20💲	2
Forbidden Medicines	Dazzle	10💲	2
Soul of the Brightshroud	Death Prophet	15💲	1
Scorched Amber	Dragon Knight	20💲	1
Glimmer of Sacred Hunt	Drow Ranger	45💲	1
The Arts of Mortal Deception	Enigma	12💲	2
Pursuit of the Ember Demons	Huskar	20💲	2
Riddle of the Hierophant	Oracle	8💲	1
Appetites of the Lizard King	Slark	20💲	1
Poacher's Bane	Tidehunter	18💲	2
Curse of the Creeping Vine	Undying	12💲	3

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Genuine Weather	Price	Stock	reserved
Ash	7💲	6
Snow	4💲	11
Rain	4💲	10
Moonbeam	4💲	10
Aurora	3💲	25
Harvest	3💲	12
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Pestilence	2💲	11
Sirocco	2💲	11
Total	32💲	6	1

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A while ago, I posted a test that was to determine what kind of writer someone is, based on what part of the “modernist” spectrum they fall into. Part of the reason why I did this was to see how much I understand about the subject matter, since I will always have a postmodernist tell me that I am clueless as to what any of these are. Another reason is to have writers start realizing why they think the way they do, and possibly start questioning why they write how they do. I found out that, from the dozen or so people who took the test and posted their results to me, that most people I encounter and get along with online are modernist. A lot of these people reject mainstream media and they are secluded in alternative media sites because they don’t get along with the current overton window that’s among popular sites. I think it’s safe to say a lot, if not all, of these people are anti-woke, and they received 1 or 0 answers on the woke aspect of the test.
If I can pat myself on the back for anything, at least I can say I got the woke part correct.
Although the buzzwords I used for woke might be cheating since we all know I’m referring to something woke when I say something like “inclusivity” or “intersectionality” or “oppression”, because anyone who listens to even something like Joe Rogan will know these terms and treat them like they’re dripping with vomit and diarrhea. A lot of us, especially the classical liberal, center to center-right types, and even the center-left types, are tired of this woke nonsense. Even some guy who drinks beer while watching football and shopping at a basic store like Target is tired of this tomfoolery.
So this followup is to address a lot of the complaints I received and also to bring in some insight into how I wanted to conceptualize the test and how it turned out. I will also explain the relevancy of this type of test since some are wondering why something like scoring modernist means anything.
In philosophy, you are to hit 5 branches in order for your philosophy to be considered “full” or at least “full enough” to be granted a name. These 5 are:

1. Metaphysics (study of existence)
2. Epistemology (study of knowledge)
3. Ethics (study of action)
4. Politics (study of force)
5. Aesthetics (study of art)

If you hit all 5 of these at least once, you have a full range of addressing the stuff that makes up a philosophy. I tried to reverse engineer these 5 categories into 22 questions, and after the fact(meaning this evening), I realized that I should have had 4 questions for each category and then 2 questions about the reader and then the writer. The number 22 is related to the major arcana in tarot, with the 2 extras being the fool(the writer) and the world(the reader). That or maybe something like “what exactly do you write in your story?” and then that can relate to worldbuilding or something. It would have to be a question that lets us know what the person sees as a good world to write in the first place, because then that would show us the world they aim for, which is related to their worldview.
Or maybe to question what they read so that we can see what a writer finds interest in, so that it correlates with what they would write.
That was not critiqued by others, but I know I messed up on that. I was listening to a Jordan Peterson video where he said that a good survey questionnaire takes months of planning to get the wording right for the questions and the answers, and I looked at my test and saw I did it in a day, and went “well, I think I messed up, yeah.” My own critique will be taken into consideration so that I can remake the test and make it better. To repeat what I said in the test: I wish to use this to determine who to avoid when hiring and working with people, because anyone scoring even something like 2 answers on the woke mentality is something to be concerned about.
Other critique involves question 1 where the phrase “copy it” should be changed to “emulate it”. Yeah, I agree, that makes more sense, since copy makes it sound like someone is not putting their own spin on it or putting it in their own words. Imitate, match, resemble, something that intends to retain the purpose but including your own position on the matter. Question 17, how we get our knowledge, is a very open question about epistemology, and that one seems to have given a few people the woke answer by accident, even if they aren’t woke in the way they answer. The problem with the term “lived experience” is that people think it’s a normal term and it is one of the few woke terms that go over some people’s heads. The term is used commonly in correspondence with articles that feature globohomo artwork and they talk about how it’s important to have a person in your corporation or non-profit organization who holds “lived experience” and they are referring to living as a black person to know what a black person feels.
I find this incredibly woke because, as I’ll explain further later on, the woke are saying that the only way to know something is to be that thing, thus forcing writers to be, say, autistic in order to write an autistic character. Or they must be a woman to write a woman. Or they must be a black to write a black. This enforcement is what causes the demand for diversity hires, because somehow these diversity hires hold mystical magical knowledge that nobody else in the company would even dare to understand or comprehend unless they checked off some boxes first. On top of that, the term “pragmatic action” was poor wording and that’s my bad. I was trying to say something like “scientific realization” in order to attach the modernist to science. Something that is both pragmatic(able to be done practically) and part of some kind of education/training. You’ve done it, you’ve learned about it, you see others do it, that can be the modernist idea of knowledge.
Other than those two, I think every other question went over rather well, but I will still enhance them to be worded better as time goes on and as I revisit it with more of an organized “5 sets of 4 and the 2 big ‘uns” in mind. But then there comes the elephant in the room. The scoundrel who dared to question my authority and make a critique about the test. How dare they and stuff.
Jokes aside, I really like this kind of critique and it’s great that she put it into clear questions that I can firmly address. I like it when people are clear. It’s much better than that obfuscation thing the postmodernists always do when they complain about me without really having a reason other than something where they don’t like labels or they were offended that I dared to mention any category of anything. Page Zaplendam, a fellow writer, brought up 3 important questions which you can see for yourself here:

1. Where are the definitions of the terms?
2. How do you justify reducing things to something like woke?
3. How do you prevent people from rejecting pre-modernism?

I’ll address the first one to then follow through with the rest of the answers, because they all go in a long chain of “why, why, why” and “how, how, how”.
To begin the explanation, we’re going to need to establish what modernism is so that the others can be explained. It’s the word that created the reason we see a difference in aesthetics like this because this was the moment we engaged in what’s called the enlightenment. During the early 17th century and around that time, people started to remove their dependency on kingdoms and instead create nations and industry. Religion was also being questioned because scientific advancements through record keeping allows people to give better assessments on what causes something to happen in the world. The view of the world started to become more natural and so naturalism was common, as well as rationalism and empiricism. People were using logic to make their decisions and data to come to conclusions, rather than faith or scripture from prior.
During this time, the modern age, traditions were tarnished and deemed as unnecessary. Medicine allowed people to praise science instead of pray for a mystical cure. Predictions of weather with meteorology allowed people to reduce famines and starvation. Printing presses allowed books to become more common, machinery allowed more production of goods, and life went from depending on neighbors to depending on communities and global trade. This dramatic change in both lifestyle and mentality allowed art to enter the modernist art era, which is determined as art that experiments to search for new meaning and objectivity without the necessity of a deity, tradition, or the supernatural.
Mythology became psychology, alchemy became academia, and religion became fandom. Everything mentally changed under modernism to create an environment of experimentation, the romances took over, which led to the pulp adventures and existentialist works of things like noir. Weird tales brought us ideas of cosmicism, thanks to the lack of god or at least the lack of a god who cares about humanity. With this freedom from religion, the mostly liberal environment of modernism allowed people to make up their own rules, their own ideas of what’s real, and thus we were able to focus more on the individual, rather than the collective. Stephen Hicks has a great video where he lectures about how modernism came to be and what it is, but I can simplify it into the 5 categories he has on his chart.
Metaphysics: naturalism
Epistemology: empiricism and reason
Human Nature: Tabula Rasa(everything mental is gained from experience)
Ethics: individualism
politics/economics: liberal capitalism
As you can see, modernism caused this reliance on the self, but also reliance on science as a replacement for religion. It caused the worship of money, while also opening people up to other ideas thanks to the liberal mindset. The liberty to engage with other things allowed people to mingle with both good and bad ideas. This is actually why people, like James Lindsay, say that liberals caused things like Nazism and Communism to come into fruition, because the liberal is so open and accepting that they allow terrible ideas to take over the top of the social structure and they think it won’t touch them if they are on the bottom. This is also how dictators were able to trick people into treating them like a God, because the dictator convinced people that they were able to answer prayers and did this during their campaigns to get elected or during the revolution while they’re beheading their opponents in the streets.
In other words, the uprising of democracy had people rely on voting in the same way as people relied on prayers, but here it’s where we pray to a natural government and hope they do something we want.
One thing that we don’t like to realize is that colonization occurred because of a scientific superiority among the Europeans, and this scientific advancement was caused by years of wars and immense dedication to their royalty. Then there were areas they colonized that had a crazy amount of gold, such as Australia and the Aztec empire, and this abundance of gold allowed trade to skyrocket, while Indian trade and the silk road allowed wealth to spread across the globe. Diamonds and gold found in Africa, like a sick joke from God to force white people to go to such a hellhole to get the diamonds in the rough. It’s not that white people wanted to go around and rule the world. It’s that enlightened explorers and merchants wanted to make a crazy amount of money and these environments were inhabited by people who left these literal gold mines untapped, and these explorers used technology to take over.
No wonder modernism was full of that toga wearing utopia sci-fi stuff!
It’s not hard to realize why the Europeans took over entire empires with small groups of conquistadors. They had armor, guns, ships with cannons. Those Chinese must have their face red realizing they are the ones who sold them black powder. Every alchemist should feel bad and stuff that they are the reason guns were used versus the people who didn’t have guns. It was such a destructive force to use guns against savage tribes and kingdoms because it was both physical and psychological. It was like dealing with metallic robots who fired lightning from their arms and filled the area with a concealing smoke. That’s like showing a caveman a cellphone, their brains instantly melt trying to comprehend what’s going on.
So people are angry at the modernists for being… rational and empirical, and I guess being urbanized or industrialized. People are mad at capitalism for being effective and a good way to globally get along. They’re mad at liberals for being okay with race mixing. The utter nerve of such horrid actions. How dare people mix. I’ll make sure to tell my own future mixed kids that they should be ashamed of themselves for having parents who came from different parts of the Earth and that’s about it.
So modernism, do I like it?
Well, it’s not bad. A lot of my favorite stuff is modernist and usually when people say they want to go back to the old days, they point at modernism as the example. Hell, a lot of postmodernists now are saying they want to go back to modernism, and then they say they don’t, because they feel like it's superior, but they hate the idea of accepting that it’s modernist. I mean, that’s why it’s called postmodernism, it’s the thing after modernism is gone, it’s the rejection of modernism and also pre-modernism. But more on that one later.
I noticed a lot of people got mostly modernist as their answers on the test and it makes sense. Many people online, especially on alternative social media, will be actual liberals who are open to different ideas, which allows them to engage with things that both offend them and possibly something they see as evil. They’re open to having their minds changed and they are always willing to learn more because there’s a big idea on learning more and experimenting, which is something I can relate to because I’m always trying out new restaurants in my area and I don’t mind trying a genre that I’m not familiar with. For me, I have a bit of that liberal mindset because I try out a lot of things I’m not familiar with and I end up liking some stuff, but I usually stick to what I established as my firm ideas from prior.
For example, when I was a kid I hated eating beans and I refused to eat fish that wasn’t canned tuna. Now, after being more open, I love salmon and I love eating beans, which dramatically helped my nutritional intake. There is a healthiness involved with experimenting and there is also a risk factor. But if you know how to avoid dangers, I don’t see a problem with trying out something like a new genre you’re not used to, just to see if you can get into it.
I mention this because the modernist writer will experiment, but will also claim a truth that comes from rationalism, which assumes the world we live in is logical. Even if it’s chaotic and absurd, they’ll say it’s logical, because it’s predictable and we can interact with it. This allows their writing to hold to formulas through things like pulp, while also experimenting through things like weird fiction. There is repetition that happens, and this is why genres became a big thing, so the reader can tell what form of repetition they want to deal with through what they are familiar with. This caused what’s called a comfort zone, which is the state of mind where a person feels at ease because there is an abundance of familiarity and a lack of unwanted challenges. Genres create these comfort zones, and this is then where we have to talk about individualism.
Liberalism has the problem of causing individualism to slowly become sophistry and egotism. The person declaring they are the one who is to be relied on and they are the ones who make up their own rules becomes a person who can’t tell who they’re obeying. Especially if that person puts something above themselves, like race, or science, or nation, or the opinions of others through democracy. Thanks to romanticism during this modernist time, we were able to feel like we had an abundance of freedom and capability, but then barely a century later the rise of Naizsm and Communism caused people to realize that this capability is in relation to what the shadow is capable of. The darkest, most disturbing and destructive actions a person is capable of, beyond their imagination and beyond what we’d consider a “human act”.
This quick change into the most dangerous entity nearby is why I don’t trust anarchists when they say their utopia would be functional. When it comes to real life, that doesn’t work, we need a more powerful overarching thing to keep that shadow in check, and we need that entity above the human to be in check of its own shadow on top of that. And this shadow is also what causes the modernist to engage with things like dada and a hatred of art to the point where they can say the work is for them and them alone, or that all art is equal, down to where a turd on a pedestal is the same as the Mona Lisa.
The pro of modernism is a focus on the individual, which promotes movements like poetic realism and neorealism, which grants a look into everyday lives. The mundane can be put into the forefront and average people can feel like they relate, which allows the average person to buy the work. That is a great plus, and it’s why the most popular shows out there are stuff that involves soap opera style drama and an environment that is simple, like a hospital or a police station. The sitcom is a result of modernism, because only a modernist would find value in seeing a family hang around their house while you’re sitting in your house with your family watching someone else in their house with their family.
Now let’s get on with pre-modernism, after all of that introduction is said and done. Pre-modernism is everything that came before this enlightenment and this separation from God. Atheists like to say how atheism has been popular forever and they have simply been suppressed, but something crazy that they ignore is that every civilization, without ever talking to each other, before any contact with anyone else, became a religious, spiritual, civilization. We even have a name for this basic religion, called animism. This natural desire to be religious in humans comes from how we think when we are young, as well as how we think when we are not relying on science or even words.
I know this sounds strange but we think more in pictures and visions than we do with words when we don’t know how to read. Reading unlocks a vast amount of knowledge that can be gained practically instantly, but a lack of language in our ability to think causes an abundance of symbolism in our head to fill in the gaps, meaning the ability to read locks away this visual aspect. When we’re babies, we view everything as giant, threatening, and frightening. And why not? We’re this tiny soft thing that has a skull that can easily be dented and we’re unable to feed ourselves. We need someone to throw food into our mouths like bananas into the mouth of a hippo at a zoo. We have our parents doing stuff for us, and so our brain right away connects the two.
Stuff happening around us is caused by something like a parent, like an authority, like a sky father and earth mother. The father gives me brain stuff and the mother gives me food stuff. But then we’ll grow up and realize that something like the wind moves on its own, the moon comes up to replace the sun on its own, and the seasons change on their own. There’s something we can’t see that’s doing this, something beyond the sky and under the ground, and everywhere we can’t see, especially behind our eyeballs. There’s this strange image that appears behind my vision that is not of the world but of my mind, and I conjured it.
And if I didn’t conjure it, I had someone else put it in my head through a spell, in the form of words, which cast the symbol to occur in my mind. Writers in the pre-modernist age are spellcasters, wizards, that make sure something is explained about the mysterious and supernatural world that is beyond the stuff we see around us. This “rejection of the average” causes the pre-modernist writer to talk about stuff that are not only real, but hyper-real. It doesn’t speak about an individual and it’s not for an individual, because it’s attaching everyone under the same umbrella and form. This is why I find poor interpretations of mythology humorous but also rather useless.
People will look at something like Greek mythology where a god has a child with their sister and go “well, isn’t incest a bad thing?” Not only do they miss the point, but they forget that it's a god we’re talking about and it’s not a human. It’s not some biological thing standing in front of you. It’s the supernatural, it’s beyond something like biology. Or better yet when someone reads the bible and goes “why did Adam take a rib out to get a woman? Couldn’t God just make a woman without taking his rib?”
It’s like, you missed the point and you’re ignoring the importance of symbolism, and this symbolism grants all of the meaning that you’re missing from the bible. Yes, Eve is made from Adam, and yes, it takes a rib, because rib is a bone and bone is structure. A rib is near a heart, a protector of heart. Heart is courage, love, emotions, stuff that makes our blood pump. Blood is a humor based on air, and air is one of the 4 elements. The connection goes on and on and on, because this mythology is all connected together into one giant story that goes beyond the words stated in the story. Each tiny noun or verb means way more than it lets up to mean. I’ve been studying mythology for a while, and really trying to look into them before I say anything about them, and there is so much inner history with mythology that’s both present and reachable, but it’s practically endless with how everything connects.
And at the same time, all of this is essential, of a form, symbolic, and objective.
This relation to religion in pre-modernism causes the definition to be something like “the art form that depicts hyper-reality in an objective truth that involves the supernatural as a source of the natural and as the source of truth.
Stephen Hicks puts the politics of the pre-modernist as feudalism, but it’s more like monarchy, where you believe that there should be a king, because someone has a family line that was sacred enough to treat like one. In pre-modernism, we had ancestor worship in every culture, because your family line was important to keeping your existence relevant. This is because everything in the pre-modern age involved titles, which were granted by an authority, and many times this authority is a god or an ancestor.
Your title within your family is in relation to your family members and your last name determines your family’s title for others to recognize. If someone was a smith, they would get the last name smith, like say John the smith just becomes John Smith, and they will endow their established trade to their next of kin. So if the son of John Smith wants to make a living, he’s going to be a smith as well. There is this lineage and family business that is treated seriously, because if you step out of this title, you’ll have to create your own. People could do that by entering a trade or a guild, by learning from others, from gaining a title after being born a bastard, or whatever they could to get a title.
But the key factor is that title is important to the pre-modernist. What’s even more important is form, because this religious mentality creates the environment that perfection is possible. A metaphysical manifestation separate from the material world that is able to be aimed towards and sought after, even if unable to be reached. This was well portrayed in characters like Jesus, which Christianity dedicated itself to fulfill the traits of Jesus, due to Christianity being a religion where people follow the teachings of Jesus.
I would say that every religion had their own type of Jesus, the perfect form that someone or something has to uphold and look up to as inspiration.
Later on, alchemy came out of the prototype phase and started to connect all of these religions and symbols with each other to create more overarching symbolism that went for more core ideas. At this point, people could only argue against combinations and where something is in a hierarchy, rather than the validity of the claim of something like a single god or a creator. Sects of religions were made in order to determine different end goals, or different ideas in how a ritual should be done, or whether something like a church is important for worship, and these were the biggest sources of dispute possible.
You either followed God's will or you didn’t, and if you didn’t, you were a heathen. Heathens are sent to the bad place, believers go to the good place. We have a supernatural aspect of our body, beyond our body, beside our body, that went there for us, usually in the sense of a soul or spirit. The mind is an intermediary between the body and spirit that allows communication between the two at all times. This was usually depicted with gods like Psyche or Hermes or any other messenger god.
The gods would speak to us with omens and with us using clairvoyance. Any pattern in front of us or up in the stars could be used as a means to decipher a supernatural message. This message was easily able to repeat itself because there was an objective meaning to everything, which is why something like Zodiacs are constantly watched even to this day. Pre-modernist art retains this tradition of using mythology and symbolism to depict truths about the world. Romanticism was an attempt to return to this truth telling style during the modernist era, but Romanticism was absent of the religious aspect and was more of something like a neo-alchemical way of handing stories, where symbols were kept basic and for individual progress instead of a collective one.
A big part of pre-modernism is collectivism, especially the collective unconscious, which Jung coined later on when referring to his more pre-modernist analysis of psychology that heavily relied on alchemy and mythology. We used mythology to say something of value, with a universal or at least human level of objectivity, and the only way to miss the message is to deny that symbolism exists for them. Or at least, your level of symbolism in your interpretation would have to be so low resolution that it misses every point entirely and has zero context as to why mythology is important in the first place.
Mythology grants the idea that our world holds order, while the modernist idea is more about how the world is chaotic and we hold order to shape the world better. Fables grant the idea that particular personalities do particular things, while modernism declares that things change or can be grey and shows how. The black and white morality of the pre-modernist merged into grey once modernism kicked in, because there is the lack of theism under modernism.
We’re half way through the explanation and now we come to postmodernism.
Pre-modernism establishes that the supernatural causes order to cause truth, modernism changed that to say a secular natural world causes chaos to have us find truth. So what does postmodernist do to change all of that?
It rejects both and says both pre-modernism and modernism are wrong, and instead says everything that can be perceived is subjective and the objective is unknown to us. Stephen Hicks says in his video that postmodernists are really intelligent and well read into an abundance of stuff, and he’s impressed by that. I would have to disagree with him because it’s not like they read everything they did in order to understand it. They read everything and continue searching because they intend on claiming it’s not true, and use their personal interpretation to claim such. It’s very much like when a person studies mythology to then say “you know, the gods committing incest and magically transforming is really weird.”
Before I get deep into postmodernism, I would like to explain the concept of realism. Realism, in both philosophy and art, is to depict a thing as how it truthfully is. There is accuracy, there is something there that really exists, and it has attributes that causes it to really exist. Both modernism and pre-modernism have this as an axiom. Postmodernism on the other hand is ANTI-realism.
You cannot believe in something being “real” as a postmodernist because to claim something is real is to claim an objective truth, which a postmodernist is allergic to doing. They are unable to claim anything as true, because there is no proof for them to use, thus any statements they make must be an opinion and any statement they see must be perceived as an opinion as well. In all honesty, I have trouble finding postmodernists who go this far down the rabbit hole. All of them focus on subjectivity, but they’ll still try to tell others that things can be real in a colloquial way that lets them blend in with modernists. It’s hard to get people to follow you when you claim things aren’t real, so there is a form of deception and contradiction that occurs, but it’s also acceptable to the postmodernist.
This is because postmodernists don’t care about logic, and anything they want to claim as “true” is based on a social subjectivism that can also be considered an overton window that shows them what is acceptable to say and what isn’t. A lot of them try to push it, others try to blend in with it, with the intensity depending on how far they want to push their deconstructionism and reductionism. For example, phrases like “we’re all just stardust floating around” is a way for the postmodernist to seem deep with their reductionism, but it’s actually their way of saying they are nihilistic while trying to sound deep and poetic.
Stephen Hicks does have an amazing point in his presentation where he says truth no longer matters to the postmodernist and what does matter is power. That kind of concept comes from Nietzsche’s will to power (which is why Nietzsche is considered a proto-postmodernist, one who helped birth it into existence) and Marx’s historical materialism. The thought that human labor forms the material basis of society, and this idea being spread out into every 3rd world country(aka communist country during the cold war) means that a big chunk of the world is convinced of this concept of power through labor and power through capital that’s seen as “stolen labor” when it’s a bourgeoisie.
This leaning into Marxist terminology, thanks to communists and hippies, causes postmodernist politics to be considered leftist, and exclusively leftist. There is no way for a right wing postmodernist to even occur because the right winger believes in a truth through natural rights and there is no way to remove that aspect. This is why Stephen Hicks calls the postmodernist political and economic idea socialist, which what he really means is leftist. Although, socialist works a bit more for the political aspect since socialism is a wonky word that means whatever the socialist wants it to mean.
They think the worker owns the means of production and that some form of social relevancy should happen and the rest is dependent on what they want to advocate for. Not surprisingly, this socialist aspect quickly turned into syndicalism and later corporatism when relying on the government to enforce this social power upon the masses, also known as a cult of personality. The cult leader, or leaders, tell everyone that they have power, they tell everyone that they’re special, the people don’t question it because they think it’s a common opinion, and so the cult grows unrestrained. We see this at all times when people will both hold water for a politician for any little thing and also attack their opposition for any little thing, no matter how much of a double standard or fallacy they apply to their advocacy.
To the postmodernist, advocacy is labor geared towards power, with advocacy being the only thing you can do to socially stay relevant.
When it comes to postmodernist media, the key idea is exploitation, because the goal is to get as many views as possible and break as many boundaries as possible. Modernist rating systems are pushed and pushed constantly into exploitation to the point where new ratings are made and R rated material becomes the new norm. The grindhouse is a common place and is normalized, even though before these would be considered taboo, because the way the overton window moved more towards the left through their advocacy. The leftist postmodernist demands power as the social structure and so they demand power and are slowly granted it over time. But there is a bit of a weird thing that happens between how Hicks and I see postmodernism.
In his chart, he labels postmodernism as collectivist and egalitarian. I see this as a bit misleading since the leftist is not really for collectivism in the same way as a pre-modernist would claim we’re all connected. The postmodernist believes that we’re all connected in how we’re all trapped in our own subjective constructions, as if we’re all islands in this massive chain of islands and the water between us is the subjective separation.
For example, let’s say I look at a dog and another person looks at a dog. We both see the dog but the dog is one dog for me and another dog for them and there is this supposed infinite number of dogs who make up this single entity that takes up the space where the perceived dog resides. And not just an infinite number of dogs, but infinite number of things between what the dog is made of, with an infinite number of those for each smaller thing. I guess, to him, that’s collectivism, and the egalitarian thing comes from how leftist demand that people are to be treated equal, as well as all art to be treated equal.
Just like dada, which was a proto-postmodernist art movement, the postmodernist thinks that all art is equal, with the Mona Lisa holding the same aesthetic value as a turd on a pedestal. This allows the postmodernist to use juxtaposition to combine something of high regard with something of low regard, like say having classical music play during a moment where someone is being tortured in a grindhouse way. Or maybe another example is like how Tarantino combines low quality exploitation movies with high quality dialogue that people praise for its realism and tension. This is why surrealism became popular under postmodernism, because surrealism juxtaposes a high concept symbol with nonsensical low concept literal images or events.
Another aspect of postmodernism is the idea that art and real life has merged into a type of hyperreality that blurs the line where life and art meet. People record their lives online and turn that into media, thus turning even things like talking about people who are in media into a form of media itself(aka Hollywood gossip stuff and youtube drama).
Without much of a message or objective symbolism, a lot of postmodernist media focuses on playfulness, because messing with things is all that there’s left as a means of entertainment and media making. Personal interpretation as the only means of experiencing causes the postmodernist to aim for open interpretation work, using vague wording and dog whistles to hide intents that they believe a common audience wouldn’t like, but select circles would catch. And with this demand for social power came the rise of corporate media, where corporations crank out stuff with self made trends and control groups who guide the corporation towards more money, thus more power.
There is also a combination of media, usually in the form of merchandising, so that a form of media will still be advertised and thought about, even when not engaged with the media directly. For example, GI Joe started out as a toy for kids. Then it became a comic and a show for kids. Now it’s a movie series for kids. Transformers, He-Man, I think even Gundam. These things aim for sales first and then plan the story after, because it’s all one big marketing campaign. There’s nothing in these that try to say what is true, they simply try to say things that will have people think they agree with it, or at least can’t argue against it to where they disengage with the product that’s being sold.
This has caused postmodernist media to become both highly marketable but also highly forgettable. Things easily get outdated even if the tech level stays consistent because of intertextuality, which is the relationship one media has with another to grant the user of intertextuality with relevancy that can have the audience understand the reference. This is a fancy way of saying something like an inside joke or a typical reference like a meme that we see online. If you ever want to understand this one, just think of any Channel Awesome reviewer. They will try to make jokes that reference something in media, probably something they reviewed prior, in order to keep the dedicated fans in the circle of attention and make the new fans try to keep up with this intensifying requirement of knowing jargon.
Intertextuality can also be seen as a sort of specialized culture within a franchise or company or genre or just stuff that is similar, so that the people who are of the fandom can all enjoy speaking some special language with each other and keep out the people who don’t know about their niche idioms and references.
This combination of reality and media, along with removing objectivity from the equation, with high and low arts being combined through playfulness and for marketing, is why our media is the way it is today. It’s made like fast food, doesn’t offer anything for the brain to work with, and is actually more for our brains to turn off if anything. People like Ray Bradburry saw this issue with TV and determined it was going to turn us into Idiocracy, which he explored in his book Fahrenheit 451. People are indulged and distracted by the idiot tube, they stop questioning things, books start being called evil, the government enacts a war against books, all people have left are things that keep them dumb, and then they can’t even see a war that’s happening all around them and in their own backyard.
The benefit of postmodernism is that it can appear more creative and people get entertained. That’s about it. No more feeling like you need to tell the truth, now you can make a story about whatever. The only benefit quickly becomes the main problem with it: it’s a bad influence. Postmodernists can only deconstruct and so they’re never pleased.
We see this all the time with Channel Awesome reviewers where they will miss the point of everything in a movie, like say Last Action Hero, and even though Last Action Hero is a postmodernist deconstruction of action movies, the reviewer will scream and holler about how the movie can’t be taken seriously. Then when they are challenged on the integrity of their review, they will spin it around and say they were just being meta and knew it was satire all along, that nobody should take any review of theirs seriously or as their actual opinion.
Or better yet, a postmodernist fan will chime in and speak for the reviewer, like when I said Spoony’s review of Final Fantasy 8, yet another deconstruction work that people were conflicted on, was misguided and wrong. A bunch of fans came in and said “Well, that’s not his REAL opinion. He didn’t REALLY say what he wanted to during the months he spent working on that review.”
I guess the point of postmodernism is to NOT say what you mean. Because how can they? That would address there is an objective idea in their head of what they mean, and that can’t happen under postmodernism. So you’re left with this endless chain of people trying to make a satire or make fun of something that is already making fun of something and that thing is already not to be taken seriously, and… you get the picture.
But then, recently, a sort of organized idea sprouted out from postmodernism. This idea that everything is both power and subjective, while also being a social construct, coagulated into a unification of something under what is called intersectionality. In 1989, Kimberly Chrenshaw coined the term, which already was working off of ideas during postmodernism such as second wave feminism and critical race theory. Through the idea that extreme egalitarianism is the way, in a subjective way, these defenders of the marginalized demanded that media should cater to whoever they deem as marginalized.
This branch of postmodernism is known as woke.
For wokeness, there isn’t much of a history or even aesthetic choice to shift through, but there is an awful lot of jargon to explain so that people know what I’m talking about. So for the majority of the woke explanation, I will be explaining the special words used that the woke will both claim are super important to know, but will also refrain from defining because they want to keep it on the down low. They mostly want to do that because they know their reasoning doesn’t make any sense and because it’s self contradictory, but that’s okay for them because they are, by their own admittance, anti-logic and “there is no real wokeness”.
Actually, before I explain the jargon, I want to get into that “there is no such thing as woke” talking point they always do. This is the same thing as saying “I want everyone to do x and there is no x”. Or when they are less radical, they will say something like “Everyone should do x, but nobody has done x yet.” But recently it’s been more like “This thing in the media has always been x, which is why we need it to be more x”.
As you can see, the narrative is always changing and they are always telling people to do something. This is the opposite of postmodernism in how it’s authoritarian, but is part of postmodernism because of the subjective aspect, as well as the neo-dada form of anti-art. The “art” of woke art is meant to express representation, and this representation is supposed to be of a group, and this group is supposed to look a particular way, absent of any stereotypes, negative or positive, and absent of any grand narratives, pre-modernist or modernist.
Therefore, all we’re left with is… appropriation and exploitation of marginalized groups.
Something tells me they didn’t think this through. It’s almost as if their goal is to be the thing they claim to fight against, but they don’t want to be called racist or sexist or whatever phobic because they don’t want to lose social power. This enforcement of an ideology, an ideology that tries to equally exploit for money, is put under the acronym DEI: Diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is a profitable business to get into, because DEI is estimated to have corporations annually spend $17 billion on DEI programs and organizations by the year 2027. In 2003, it was estimated that corporations spent $8 billion. In 2022, that number was recorded at $9 billion.
What do these numbers mean? It means companies are wasting money on this and they’re losing money after enacting woke policies.
When we combine wokeness with the socialist/Marxist mentality of the postmodernist, we end up with a constant drain of capital on the end of the media maker. The one making the art LOSES MONEY when they go woke, which is why we say “go woke, go broke.” There is no intention on making money with wokeness. This is why governments added wokeness to what is called the ESG score, which is a score that governments use to subsidize companies that follow things like climate change advocacy, DEI, and following whatever regulations a country puts in like mask regulations.
Follow these things, get closer to the “leader” score, and you get more money from the government. This is why companies don’t care when they lose customers, because at the end of the day, they are kept afloat by tax dollars. Then the people in charge of these companies buy the lowered stock that was hit by a controversy, and they have it go back up between woke projects. This is why the CEO of a corporation loves woke backlash, as long as they can pretend they had nothing to do with the woke decision. This is why, for example, Budlight decided they had nothing to do with hiring Dylan Mulvaney AFTER the boycotts worked, instead of, you know, while hiring him to be a spokesperson for the beer on April Fools day of all days.
So the go broke part is for the company itself, while the people using wokeness for their benefit are grifting and taking short term gains. Same thing was for something like BLM, which is an organization that revealed the money donated for the purpose of helping black communities was instead used to buy the founders mansions. The idea that wokeness brings in the cash and it can be called “woke capitalism” is absurd due to the lack of longevity the concept has. This is like calling a stolen item that gets sold at a pawn shop “illegal capitalism”. It doesn’t mean much, and it’s just trying to tie capitalism in with something negative, which is hilarious since wokeness is meant for the left.
With that out of the way, I’m going to get into the jargon, which will allow us to see some of the “philosophy” behind woke. The first one is “critical theory” which is what everything under wokeness is based on to enact a policy. This is how they choose who is marginalized and who isn’t. The term critical race theory originated in the 1980s through discussions about laws because some people decided that equality was not enough. It’s not enough that you can treat a person as an equal, like how a liberal does, because somehow a person born in 1980 is influenced by their ancestry from 1480. Judith Butler helped popularize critical queer theory, which lost the critical part once that aspect was seen as bad, thanks to critical race theory.
They kept all of the critical theory roots, but they removed the word critical because they don’t want to appear… critical. This also happened when Lisa Tuttle popularized the current form of feminist theory, where they remove the critical part because of the stigma they know the word has. No matter what, deception and omission must be used to get their agenda through, because that’s all they know how to do. They cannot get power unless they deceive people into giving them their power. And I find that a little odd since critical theory is a Marxist theory that came from the Frankfurt School from a man named Max Horkheimer, way back in 1937.
Max’s idea was that the enlightenment was a mistake, making him anti-modernist, but the postmodernists of this school of thought will still insist that there is something modernist about critical theory. They claim it’s because Marx was objective because Marx thought something objective is whatever is practiced, yet nothing he claims that is practiced was ever true, so it’s sort of a strange way to misdirect people into thinking that his appeal to his own version of rationalism was somehow actual rationalism. In other words, it’s wordplay. But, we can still say something like his attachment to science being a key element of his ideology, with science trying to be used to determine the natural world, is sort of modernist.
And this is the first step into getting confused as to what anything is, which is why people need a clear explanation as to what something like a modernist is. A good way to explain if something is actually modernist is if you can ask a writer if they believe in marxism and objectivity. If they say no, then we can see that Marxism appeals to the postmodernist in a way that is by design, not by accident. This is why Jordan Peterson is forced to call actual Marxists “neo-Marxists” and “cultural marxists”, because of the constant wordplay that is used by the very same Marxists.
Now, I want to harp on Marxism due to the fact that every single critical theory that the woke adopted is a Marxist theory. Critical theory was based on Marxism and critical theory declared that cultural equality was required in order to prevent fascism. It determined that individuals are not the ones behind social problems, but instead these problems were caused by social structures and cultural bias. What are these problems and what are the solutions, you may ask?
Well, critical theory doesn’t have any of that covered. In fact, the goal was to NOT cover any of those and to just say “social problems are at the social level” and that’s it. Congratulations, theory complete. The social thing is about society and society is how individuals interact. So it’s not the individual’s fault, it’s how they act with each other that’s the problem. So the theory is saying we need to change our act in order to solve the problems, and this was followed by the feminists who say we need to help the women get up in life. This was followed by the CRTists who said we need to help certain races get up in life. This was followed by the Queer Theorists who said we need to help the LGBT get up in life. There is the body positivity, the handicapped, the “don’t slut shame me" movement, and the list goes on and on.
Now we’re in a world where all of these things are in our media and forced into our media because somehow critical theory is the new normal, but you’re not allowed to say it’s forced. If you say it’s forced, some people might reject it and then the enforcers lose power, so they will always say “this is how media always was”. This is how we now have people claiming that ancient civilizations were pro-trans and pro-gay, even though they weren’t and I thought the entire point in CHANGING society is because these social problems are ingrained into society?
This is how the woke say one thing and then mean another. They want the power, but claim the power is given to someone else, while they take the power for themselves. Something like gender is told to be super important and something even worth committing suicide over, but then the lady who made up queer theory says that gender is performative, meaning that it doesn’t matter. Feminism is told to be super important because this is how we can help women become equal, and then we’re told by the person who made current feminist theory that “you’re not born a woman, you become one, even if you were born a male.”
This “equality of power” that the critical theorists said they wanted quickly turned into an “equality of babbling”. Nothing under wokeness makes any sense, and neither does the origin of the term woke. It is meant to mean a person is awake, that they were sleepwalking through life and now they are aware that bad things are happening in society. What are these bad things? Well, whatever you can make up and convince others is bad, since it’s all subjective. If someone steals a VCR and they are black, you can say the police who arrested the thief are evil because they are oppressing a desperate black man who “wouldn’t have stolen if society just treated him better.”
Of course, this implies that rapists only rape because they weren’t treated well enough by society, but only of that rapist is a particular skin color. The woke quickly tie the “need to rape” with skin color, and then call others racists. Actually, now that I’m on the race topic, let’s lay out CRT and how they view race from their supposed “law related origins”.
CRT determines that race doesn’t actually exist, that white people created race to then create racism. I’ll say that again to make sure if you caught that. CRT, a belief about how race works, claims that race doesn’t exist. But then it blames a particular race because… it’s not racist. Did I mention that this belief is anti-evidence and anti-reason? Yes, they do not want reason or evidence to be used for laws, because these things are biased. Instead they want storytelling from the marginalized person, who is called black, even though they don’t believe black as a race exists. This storytelling can be something like “I was walking down the street and I saw a police officer and I felt fear. I should not feel fear. That means the police officer is racist because I’m black and they made me fear.”
To make it even worse, they determine that color blindness from laws causes racist laws to form, because discrimination can occur from certain laws like murder rates, drug use, and theft. Something like being on time to work is considered racist, because a clock is a construction by white people to keep black people down. There’s always something designed by the white man to “keep black people down” because they believe white people only have power because they can keep others down. This is why they advocate to pull all of the non-whites up by forcing white people to hire non-white people into roles in movies or something like a job or using affirmative action to force black people into college classes by reducing their requirements.
Apparently, when you go to the military, the goal is not to have a good soldier but to allow more women to get in by reducing the standard for them. The goal of getting black people into college is to reduce the requirements for them so that they can get in, while increasing the requirements for Asians because there are too many Asians in college. But if we look at media, and only the US media, we can see there is a lack of Asians, so Asians are forced into film sets. Yes, there are plenty of Asians in, you know, Asian countries, soaking up all of the film time, but they don’t count.
In fact, they don’t count because white people don’t watch them as much, so now we have to have an enforcement of Asians being translated into English for western audiences to indulge in Asian culture, which is why Netflix transfers money from the west to the east and tries to get a bunch of Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Thai content out. A lot of this Asian content is also LGBT, because even though these Asian countries don’t care for such content, the west must believe that the east is super open about it. There will be something like a comedy about a pregnant male that comes from Korea, and the west will take that and say it’s empowering because it fights against gender norms.
Meanwhile, the story is just a postmodernist joke about how it would be funny if men felt pregnancy pain. And it’s because there was a postmodernist comedy called Junior which had the joke “wouldn’t it be funny if a big buff Austrian dude was pregnant?”
My point is that wokeness is just appropriation, through and through. If it’s ancient bigotry, they will say it’s woke. If it’s modernist liberalism, they’ll say it’s woke. If it’s postmodernism making fun of wokeness, they’ll say it’s woke. No matter what, they will spin something to call it woke, just so that they can say liberalism is evil and equality is evil. Their goal is to have an equal outcome, which is their excuse to give certain groups more money and fame, all while ignoring merit. The very idea of rejecting merit as a qualifier is the reason woke media is designed to lose money, and is also a way to tie woke to postmodernism.
I think this is enough explanation of the jargon for now. Not sure if I missed anything, but I think enough of a point is made on that part to have anyone understand how wokeness works. The metaphysics is the same as postmodernist, it’s all subjective. The epistemology is through lived experience because of the storytelling that’s deemed as superior to reason. The ethics is social justice, because they demand equity, aka equal outcome. The politics are marxist, meaning their goal is to remove capitalism because capitalism is an evil product of liberalism. And finally the aesthetic is what I would call anti-art.
I guess I might be able to explain the aesthetics, but it’s rather loose. The problem is that art to the woke is just propaganda. The don’t really give a story or plot with woke media, instead they just take something generic and roll with it, assuming they even give it a plot. For example, there is a woke comic from Marvel(since every comic from them is woke now) where a superhero gets stopped by a cop for being native american. This female, possibly lesbian, native american uses her powers to have the cop realize he’s racist by mind controlling him into thinking he’s racist.
Work with me here…
So the cop is at his house later and decides that he can’t live with himself as a racist person, so he shoots himself in the head. The native american woman watches him from afar and goes “my work here is done” and considers herself a hero for the day. Comic book issue over. So the plot of that story was “super hero uses powers to make a random cop kill himself because racism.”
There is nothing in the story we can call true, nothing we can call interesting, nothing can be called entertaining, nothing can be called useful, nothing can be called anything other than utterly pointless. But the point was to say “racism exists. Stay woke.” That’s the message. That’s the reason an artist spent a month working on a comic and that’s why a company invested money into it to sell it to people who decided to pay money for it and read it. I have no idea who paid money to read that, but I can safely say it wasn’t that many people.
The goal is not to have people buy the product, it’s to simply say the product exists and point to it and go “see, a company put money into that group.” This is kind of like an updated version of “everyone gets a trophy” but instead of everyone, it’s the non-whites, non-cis, non-straights, and non-males. And instead of a trophy you get a product people don’t want to buy.
This is why I consider any answer as woke in my test as an indication of a person being woke. You really do need to jump through a bunch of hurdles to get stuck into this kind of mentality and the only question that people got woke was the one where lived experience is the answer. I think a better term might be anecdotal evidence, because like I said, the woke will reject reason and evidence and instead focus on storytelling, with storytelling here meaning you’re saying what you thought happened through your subjective opinion, and this can be anything you want it to be.
Hell, I can say something like “I felt like a unicorn” and that is considered a lived experience, because somehow I know what a unicorn feels like and somehow you now need to believe I did. So maybe anecdotal is the proper term to use, but then the woke will avoid that one since they know it looks like a fallacy and they can’t socially bring themselves to be stigmatized like that when they think it’s not acceptable. So it’s one of those things where I can either have one wording that causes a false positive or the other wording that will cause a false negative. But, then again, if someone is woke already, they would fail other questions anyway, so maybe I can put that one as not really important to worry about.
So there you have it, definitions and grave detail into all 4 types. I’m sure someone will conjure up more questions and I’m sure a postmodernist will say I’m wrong about everything, but at that point, I did my part so it’s not my problem.
Onto the next section that follows the next question: How do you justify reducing things to something like woke?
Reductionism is when you take something that is complex, like a story, and reduce it to particular fundamentals to provide a sufficient explanation. This is something like when a story gets reduced to a genre when you label it with a genre, because the genre is fundamental. This can also be something like calling yourself a Christian when you believe in the teachings of Christ. Sure, you have other qualities about yourself, but this can be an explanation into something that explains very quickly because it broadens the scope. But the question is HOW do I do this with something like woke, or modernism.
Simple: you look at the definition and go “ah, I see, that’s what it’s doing.”
Pre-modernism and modernism are objective, postmodernism and woke are subjective. Already these two groups are split by a single key factor. I can instantly say woke is a terrible storytelling way of thinking because the goal is to treat merit and superior quality as oppressive, so there is no possible way of making a good story that’s woke. It’s, by design, unable to be good. If we take postmodernism, we can say that it instantly rejects telling the truth, so it must make something up with exploitation and it’s going to be like fast food for the brain. It is, by design, unable to stand the test of time.
But then if we take something like modernism, we can see a truth is there, even if it tries to be individual, because then a guide based on personalities can be seen, and a way might be unlocked. This is why a modernist story is considered classic, and we look up to it as inspiration. Pre-modernism is as primitive and societally significant as you can get, to the point where it’s part of history books as a mythology. We base entire cultures around this type of media and we follow through with our daily life by using this type of media as a guide. In fact, pre-modernism is found IN postmodernism by accident when a postmodernist tries to appropriate, which is why we can find something like alchemy and Gnosticism in a postmodernist movie like The Matrix. There are modernist concepts like The Rabbit Hole in The Matrix, despite The Matrix trying to subvert it and reject it.
So like a genre, the direction of your modernist variant is reliant on both intention and focus, rather than if something is there. I can have a cockroach crawl into my cake when I’m baking it, that doesn’t mean cockroach is part of the recipe. So the goal of the test is to see what kind of recipe people are following and we can determine what kind of cook they are in how they view recipes. There is no danger of reductionism because reductionism is used to prevent dangers. In fact, in the most ironic way possible, to claim reductionism is dangerous here is to use dangerous reductionism to make such a claim, because it reduces the entire process to the idea of dangerous.
Now for the last question: How do you prevent people from rejecting pre-modernism?
Page has determined that if you claim form = function = truth, then you have caused pre-modernism to be the same as woke. As I’ve explained, they aren’t the same thing. Yes both are based on religions, with wokeness being based on Gnosticism, which is to self worship and deem yourself as the true god that is imprisoned in your body by the demiurge, but that isn’t the same thing as “telling an actual truth”.
Gnosticism is sophistry mixed with satanism. I always forget the term and can never find it, but it’s the belief that you’re alone and you’re talking to yourself even when you talk to others. This is how people get trapped in an echo chamber, because all the can do is hear themselves talk and tackle their own ideas of what could be wrong, which requires them accepting they could be wrong, and if they don’t accept that possibility, then everything goes in one ear and out the other. They start to follow a script, become an NPC, and all they can do is become violent once the script runs dry.
Can the pre-modernist become the same thing? Absolutely not. The benefit of a pre-modernist is that we don’t believe we rule the world. We understand that the world is in control, the supernatural controls the world, and we are below all of that as measly humans. We are the cameraman, not the director. Better yet, we are the audience watching a live feed with a cameraman controlling what we get to see, and we’re not involved in any of the production. This acceptance of humility allows the pre-modernist to seek truth, which is how a mythology is born in the first place. The only valid criticism is that the subjects become so grand and universal that they are basic and unable to really tackle the more personal and social issues that modernism tackles.
This basic and broadness is what Page considered “unentertaining”. But during a later exchange, during the making of this response, I found something fascinating. Page’s definition of entertaining is contradictory, because she believes it is objective in the fact that entertainment exists, but WHAT WE SEE as entertaining is subjective. So the complaint that something could be unentertaining isn’t valid, because it doesn’t mean anything if it’s subjective. It’s like saying a traditional dish doesn’t taste good and that’s why that traditional dish is bad to limit people to it.
Well, what if every good dish becomes traditional because people see it as tasty? I am not limited to my own personal tradition, I can enjoy another person’s tradition. I can eat sushi as a German who loves bratwurst and sauerkraut. I can eat pad thai and I can eat sweet and sour pork. I can eat baba ghanoush and shepherd’s pie.
Do you know why I can eat these? Because they are all food that is made of nutrients that people ate since the dawn of time. My human body needs stuff that humans eat for nutrients and there is a select number of nutrients that I need per day because it’s the stuff my body uses. Same goes for storytelling and the specific things my brain will use to gain wisdom and intelligence. The pre-modernist believes that there are these end points that we can address and say “this is the form, this is the end point, can’t go past that.”
The modernist claims “this is scientifically why we can’t go past a certain point, but we might get more information later that will allow us to pass that point.”
Then the postmodernist says “that point is a made up line, the limitation is made up, and the idea you’re in a particular position is also made up, so just mess with things and call them different things.”
Then the woke say “That point doesn’t exist but it’s oppressing me.”
As you can see, the pre-modernist is the most coherent because it’s the most accepting of how things are. I think what Page misunderstood is that some people think a form is what humans determine the form to be, and the form is left as that. Wrong. Form is to reach an endpoint and we cannot physically reach this endpoint, meaning the form will only be in our mental state through symbolism when we’re trying to think of such. Thus, symbolism is the key factor, and all you have to do is make the symbol more clear.
What really struck me as odd is that Page also declared the Bible as entertaining, meaning a pre-modernist work is the prime example of entertaining while her rejection of pre-modernism is because it is not entertaining. I cannot make any sense of that contradiction other than maybe Page believing that media being full of lies is entertainment and that’s not allowed under pre-modernism, which doesn’t mean anything to me.
That’s like going “well, your philosophy doesn’t allow contradictions and uses only logic, so it’s not a good philosophy.”
At that point, we simply have to call such a person postmodernist, because only a postmodernist would demand such a thing.
What am I going to do now that the test was tested? Well, I am sure I am going to make 5 sets of 4 questions for sure, with the 2 overarching questions added in the beginning and end. I will also try to use that google forms thing so that it can be a real test. When I get a website up for my company, I will have the test as part of the entrance exam to join the club. Pre-modernists are preferred, modernists are welcomed, postmodernists are tolerated, and woke are excluded. Sorry, we don’t allow such hateful people into the club. We like to work with normal functional people, and the woke do not meet either requirement.
And I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I am working on the test to have writers see what they KNOW about writing. That one is going to be a bit harder to put together, since I was thinking of getting written answers rather than multiple choice. I think the hardest part with that one will be figuring out how to work in creativity, since that one is tricky to sense if it’s intentional or accidental. But, like always, if I need help, I’ll ask.
Till next time.