Vons near me

I already know I'm going to apply to Princeton, Columbia, and Yale, even if it's unrealistic, simply because I'll regret never knowing if I could have gotten into my dream school. That being said, I'm still waffling about what other colleges I want to submit an application to, especially since the fees are so high.
Desired Major: Art, and currently interested in language for a minor
GPA: 3.95, both weighted and unweighted. And no, I didn't take any AP courses, which is by far the weakest point of my application and freaking me out badly. I had specific reasons for this, but still.
Highest SAT: 1580 (haven't taken the ACT yet, or any subject tests)
Ext. Activities: Won an international art competition (lengthy interview, work featured in magazine and NY exhibit), currently working as a concept artist for a highly recognizable company, won top prizes at state fair, founded a non-profit (fairly large number of participants / raised 20K+), Vice President of the National Honor Society, 100+ hours of volunteer work for the TNR feral cat program, and a member of Art/German clubs at school. There's some more stuff, but this is pretty much the gist.
Edit: I'm also working on getting some pieces into the Guggenheim. Nothing's guaranteed at the moment, but that would probably look good if it did happen.
LOR and Essays: So my essay is only a draft right now, but I'm confident I can make it memorable (partially because I kind of have to, if I want any chance of getting in). I've always been really close with a lot of my teachers, too, so I'm not worried about the letters of recommendation. The letter from my counselor probably won't be as strong, but I certainly don't think she would write anything unflattering.
Optional Arts Supplement: Will be submitting one, and I'm hoping it'll work in my favor, not against me.
Current In-State Options: UNC of Chapel Hill, Davidson, and Lenior-Rhyne. Also, I have no problem with going out-of-state, but would preferably like to stay near the East Coast (especially somewhere North, since I just moved from the South in September and don't want to go back lol).
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Thank you in advance, and apologies for this being so long by the way.

I would type out the whole background and story for context but I know it is too long and y’all don’t want to read that lol
I am in Ontario, Canada and work in a media based job as a production coordinator. The role is newly created and I have been in this role for almost a year.
About 6 months in, I had to take a mental health week as recommended by my therapist because of how unreasonable, pushy, nit picky, and horrible my manager was being. HR had to get involved as I had to send them my therapists note to be able to take my mental health week and my manager was talked to and I thought things were going to get better.
Fast forward to now, I just had my Q3 review this past week. My manager has gaslit me into thinking I have poor communication skills, while making excuses for my team members who actually don’t tell me anything and leave me off important emails and meetings pertaining to projects I am a coordinator on, but she also is telling me I ask to many questions and has fostered an environment in which I am so fearful of making a mistake, reaching out for help, or asking a question.
She submitted her feedback for my review without me actually seeing it first and what she told me for our review meeting was not even what was actually written out on my review that got submitted to HR.
She wrote blatant lies about me, saying I have poor work ethic, cause misunderstandings, delay projects, over communicate and waste peoples time but also I don’t communicate enough, I have not memorized product knowledge, the work I produce is bad, I can’t be trusted to get projects done, etc etc etc.
This is not at all what was told to me in the meeting and it’s not true at all. I have not received any positive feedback in my time in this role and I feel like I have done an excellent job mastering it and I have never had a project be delayed, I follow up with every single person I work with, I ensure information is delivered in a timely manner and I ask questions when it is something I haven’t done before and I am afraid to make a mistake because of the way my manager is.
I did disclose my ADHD and anxiety before my mental health leave and expressed the kind of communication I require and how asking questions and having peers look over things when I do something new the first few times is essential to my learning style. She is now using this against me and making me look horrible when I talked to colleagues outside of my department who were asked to submit feedback for me and it was all positive and nowhere near what the “feedback from my peers” was on the review submitted.
I like the job, the work, the company, the pay, the benefits but my manager is so clearly trying to fire me because she got in trouble from HR. Now she has submitted a formal review full of lies and misinformation to build a case to fire me with cause and I don’t know what to do. The job market is rough as it is and I have been working so hard and suffering with my mental health so much this last year because of my managers actions and she is only making things worse.
What can I do? Do I have any way to fight the lies? I feel she is discriminating against me for my mental health and she even used language in my feedback saying that I “get inside of my own head and assume things like my manager is mad at me when she is not” weaponizing a conversation about my mental health that I had with her after I came back from my break.
Help? I don’t want to have to quit but I can’t work with her she is making me so miserable.

My husband and I have been trying for a baby for 2 years. We were so excited when we finally got that line, I'd already picked out my whole baby room. We were planning how we were going to tell our parents. 6 weeks in we were traveling for a wedding, I decided to let my husband tell his friends early because it was the only chance he would get to tell them in person.
Unfortunately right after we had told his friends, I started having spotting, in the morning I lost the baby. We were nowhere near a hospital and out of state. We had to drive for an hour and a half to get to the er, I passed out on the car, and later that day we had to take two separate flights to get home.
But I think the worst part was the ultrasound. We were in the ER, we weren't sure at that point if it was a full-blown miscarriage or just pregnancy bleeding because apparently it was early enough that my cervix was still closed. You imagine your first ultrasound with your doctor and them talking to you and showing you your baby and how happy it all is. But this person wouldn't talk to me, I'd ask her if she found my baby and she just said "the doctor is going to talk to go over it with you later". The ultrasound took nearly an hour, just feeling completely exposed and helpless in a dark room, wondering if she'd even found it and this damn woman won't talk to me. The longer she took the more sure I was that it was gone, and I completely lost it.

Part 1 - Cannor Part 2 - Escann and Deepwoods Part 3 - Aelantir Part 4 - West Serpentspine and Gerudia Part 5 - Bulwar Part 6: The Forbidden Plains Part 7: East Serpentspine
I'm nearly at the end of these series of reviews. After Haless it's Yanshen and then that's about it. The whole continent has some of my favourite mission trees in the entire mod so I'm excited to talk about it.
Azkare -> Sunrise Empire ★★★★★
Azkare is someone staring down the multiple genocidal campaigns across Anbennar, and indeed across regular human history, and asking themselves how they would design a campaign where you are the Good Guy. One where the end goal is to create a truly equal state that values all its citizens. It’s an interesting design issue since empire-building has certain inherent traits that are really hard to present as being a “good” option. Gee Hiderion, what are you going to do when one of your internal states votes for independence huh? Just going to march in an army to crush the rebels? How many millions must die for you to achieve your “dream” Hiderion? You can answer these questions during your questioning at The Hague! Or wherever they try war criminals in Anbennar.
Playing it though, it’s great fun. Sure it’s another Haless state that is simply based around conquering everything, but the mechanic on how you integrate them all into this single parliament is pretty neat. It feels like messy internal politics, which I enjoyed from a role-playing perspective. It’s wild that this much effort went into a single nation’s mission tree too, and one you absolutely never see created in-game by the AI. I have some nitpicky problems. While the writing is generally good, I think the author tried to write a short piece of romantic fiction at one point that felt so out of place it bordered on comedic. Also the end of the mission tree has such silly requirements that I didn’t even bother trying. But it’s overall one of the most complete trees in the entire game and would be one of the first ones I’d point a new player towards.
Plus, so long as you embrace the roleplay of being Hiderion, the guy with the biggest Elf Savior complex in the entire world, it is neat to imagine yourself crushing the previous horrid regimes across Haless and rebuild them in your vision of equality and tolerance. Bhuvari are slavers, Verkal Ozovar want to mind control the whole continent into subservience, and do you really think everyone would be better off under The Command? If Haless had to be united, Sunrise Empire would probably be the best option. Just don’t ask the Oni that question.
Fengwuzhe -> One Xia ★★★★☆
I know a lot of people play EU4 because they love to watch numbers go up. Stack modifiers on top of modifiers and watch as your god soldiers destroy armies 3 times their size. I am not that sort of player. I legitimately have no idea what army tradition does. The only number that matters to me is the size of the army. If I have more soldiers, I should win the battle. If I don’t, it’s probably a bug and should be patched. That all said, there was something about marching around as this death squad of militant harpy combat monks as One Xia that tickled a little part of my brain, giggling as I watched The Command flee in terror despite outnumbering me.
What made it all the more satisfying is the challenge it was to get there. As Xia, you are one of the first ports of call against the might of The Command. That’s another part I love about Anbennar that other people seem not to: I love fighting The Command. It’s a race against time as they gobble their neighbours, as you frantically build up a force capable of taking them on. Once they do turn on you, there might as well be that “Objective: Survive” popup. It’s interesting to play a game of EU4 and actually lose a war and have to figure out how to rebuild so you’ll be able to take on those hobgobbos if they attack again.
The actual story of the nation was a bit lost on me. I liked the design of the mission tree and how it forced you to really drill your troops to progress, which was a neat change of pace for me. But what their nation actually fought for and believed in wasn’t terribly well portrayed. Maybe because I don’t have a lot of experience with the genre of fiction they’re based off. Also man is the Blue Scarf Rebellion such a weird disaster. Only pops at a point where you’ve basically already won the game. A huge amount of effort into a very forgettable disaster that I very nearly didn’t see because I had reached the standard boring EU4 end-game by that point.
Verkal Ozovar ★★★★★
One of the coolest things in Anbennar is how they’ll take specific mechanics from the base EU4 game, warp it into something new, then re-contextualise what that new mechanic represents. Escann is the best example of this when it comes to the design of an entire region with how they repackage the native migration mechanics. What Verkal Ozovar does for vassal gameplay is so utterly wild and creative and I had a truly fantastic time with it.
The whole conceit is that you remain as this single province hold for the entire game, but through a series of vassals, and a very heavy focus on vassal loyalty increases, gain control over all of Haless. Early on you’re playing what seems like a fairly standard game, albeit heavily vassal-focused. But as your vassals start to dwarf (heh) your single province, it becomes a game unto itself of how does one maintain loyalty while progressing through the mission tree.
I’ll give you a few examples of the stuff I would do to maintain loyalty. I would declare war and then never move my troops from the capital because keeping them alive was more important for loyalty purposes than using them for the war. I would declare wars entirely for the purpose of draining my own vassal’s armies and manpower so they couldn’t build up a large enough force to want to rebel against me. It’s evil in a whole other way than how EU4 and Anbennar usually enforces it through “click the genocide button”, and it really fed into the themes of the story. These totalitarian, mind-control dwarfs, who seek to subjugate the people around them so they swear absolute loyalty, all while never having the capacity to ever resist you.
I literally had a notebook next to me of my vassal’s dev sizes so I could keep track of how large they were getting and dole out new provinces accordingly so none would get too large. The final end reward of having the capability to ensure total vassal loyalty is the best end-game reward in the whole game, because suddenly I was free to grow however much I wanted. I declared on the Lake Fed then just left the game on x5 speed and watched as my combined vassals experienced 3 million deaths in attrition and still won the war. My computer may have hated me for it. The end game of Ozovar is the slowest I’ve ever seen EU4 run. But I loved the campaign and it’s a top 3 all time favourite nations to play in Anbennar.

AuthoMedia Critic/Journalist Maureen Ryan spotlights Lucasfilm’s creative’ish bureaucracy in her new book Burn It Down; featuring former-staffesource known by the pseudonym Emma, who was hired to work on expanding Lucasfilm’s existing IP with a spin-off of some kind. Emma worked with a person at Lucasfilm (who is given the pseudonym Derek), who she believed did not understand the assignment despite being well-connected within the film and television industry.
Emma is described as possessing “extensive experiences and impressive résumé, yet never creatively helmed a project all on her own; Until Lucasfilm reached out to her with their offer…”
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Once Emma figured out the lay of the land at Lucasfilm, she realized she had been brought in to do a lot of grunt work on behalf of Derek, a well-connected man who, in her opinion, didn’t know what he was doing. He would get the glory if the project was a success, and it sure felt as though she would get the blame if it wasn’t.
Executives at Lucasfilm, Emma said, treated Derek as more important than her, even though he reliably generated chaos, subpar scripts, and other problems. His management skills were questionable when they were not entirely absent. The executives supervising the project listened to Emma’s complaints about these serious, ongoing issues, and more often than not, she told me, they agreed with her. But their promises about changing the situation came to nothing. “They back their creative people fully—the people they see as creative,” Emma said. And Derek was the person they backed.
“It took a long time to cut through the doublespeak and figure out what was really going on,” Emma told me. She had thought—and had been told—that she was going to have real creative influence over this major piece of IP. That was not the case. And Derek, thanks to his powerful connections, was essentially untouchable. Emma slowly realized that her job was to “channel” Derek’s creative vision and turn it into filmable content. “I can’t speak to whether it was intentional or not, but really, what they wanted me to be was a well-paid babysitter,” Emma observed. “I was in this double bind where I was both accountable to them and also not creatively empowered. It just puts you in this position of feeling like the janitor.”
At Lucasfilm, in Emma’s view, preference and precedence in the TV arena is given to those who have credits in the film world.
In any event, Emma wishes she’d known up front what Lucasfilm really wanted. She would have said no to the job, or something like, “Call me when you’re ready to fire him and give me the job. And if you’re not going to do that, then great—it’s all on him.” She did eventually leave the gig, exhausted by the constant chaos and the fact that nobody made any meaningful moves to stop it.
Maybe the powers that be at Lucasfilm didn’t feel they needed to. Before Emma took the job, a friend in Hollywood told her that Lucasfilm didn’t particularly care about going over budget. Emma was gobsmacked by her friend’s observation, given the penny-pinching ways of her previous employers. “But I saw it up close—that it doesn’t matter how many mistakes are made or how incompetent some people are,” she said. “Our budget doubled, and I’m sure it went up after I left*. I’ve never seen anything like it.*”
At Lucasfilm, it’s not hard to figure out why the money might flow a little more freely: the company and its offshoots have had massive success in the realms of film, television, theme parks, and merchandising, among other ventures, since the first Star Wars film came out nearly half a century ago. And in Emma’s view, the worldwide success of shows like The Mandalorian just reinforces the internal belief that the company can do no wrong.”

^{Excerpt From: Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood by Maureen Ryan. Chapter 8: The Myth of an Egalitarian Future The IP Strikes Back}

I started a new job 6 months ago that is work from home most of the time, there were 4 people who started with me but only 1 was doing the same job as me. We'll call her Rebecca. Me and Rebecca both have exams through work and have them at the same time. Because of this, we message fairly regularly at work with revision tips and questions about work or exams.
It's nice having someone I get on with at work so I do enjoy talking to Rebecca. We pretty much only talk about work apart from small talk around weekend plans etc. Near the first exam Rebecca messaged me on social media asking a question and this was the first time we messaged outside of work. Since then, we now have each other on Facebook but have only messaged 2 or 3 times on social media. My partner thinks I talk to Rebecca too much and asked if I'll reduce the amount I talk to her. I told her she's a co-worker and I can't just decide to stop talking to my co-workers so now whenever my laptop makes a noise when I'm working, if my gf is home she'll comment asking if that's Rebecca.
I told her to stop since it's not fair that she thinks she can dictate how much I talk to my colleagues and she shouldn't be trying to make me feel guilty for having a friend at work. She just repeated that she thinks I should talk to Rebecca less and that I shouldn't have a problem with it. How would you handle this situation?
tl;dr I have a coworker at work who I talk to fairly regularly. My girlfriend said she wants me to reduce how much I talk to her and she got annoyed when I refused. How would you handle this?

So christmas 2021 i got a pair of skates. The wheels are polyurethane and I had to loosen the wheels trucks and stuff but it was fine, until I tried to skate with them and realized the street I live on is like super bumpy and I can't rlly skate on them, also I don't know if its the skates or if its me but I just cant push to , well , skate. the elementary school near me has pretty smooth pavement and I've thought about practicing there but at the same time I dont need to be judged by all those kids (even tho I went there before them and I can do what I want etc etc I have anxiety okay) so umm yeah what do you think I should do?
Btw the skates I have are the Gonex women skates, the ones with sunflowers on them, if you just google them they come up

So the dev blog has kinda gotten me a bit cynical, i was mostly just cautiously optimistic and now i’m thinking i’ll lean towards cautiously pessimistic - mostly because of how a few things were handled:

1. the parkour: we have a parkour system that’s been actively marketed as unity lite for months, then gameplay previews come out and it looks a lot like origins, then the devs say its like the ezio trilogy but simplified - for one thing, i don’t like the inconsistency with what they’re saying, and secondly, the ezio trilogy’s parkour does not need simplification because of the player control it has to offer
   
2. They boasted about new enemy types such as guards who poke into hey bales, for example - we already had that, so don’t market it as a new feature
   
3. the active push for pre order bonuses before we even got a release date (which is now oct 12, sure) but pre orders before any real info is just shady
   
4. the use of color grade setting changes (ACI filter) for the sake of nostalgia - the color grading in ACI worked beautiful y because it fit the story being told, and the ominous nature of the modern day - color grading is a form of artistic expression and given that the game already has a tone, and the devs said “yeah just change it lol nostalgia” tells me that the artistic vision isn’t really there.
   

On top of this, the near constant talk and reminders and mentions that “its just like the classics!” comes off as heavy handed marketing. I’m finding it really difficult to trust this game at this stage.

I love my dad, but always knew him to not really care for it hate the lgbt, he has common issues people his age have with trans people, which we argue about all the time, (he doesn’t hate them just believes in stupid stereotypes and thinks the whole kids thing is true) he knows I’m bi and I’m shocked when I told him he just made some silly jokes and moved on, but when I said about being annoyed about missing a pride event near me, he said we could go, just a bit shocked as it seems he would do that sort of thing, but he’s gonna tomorrow, so yk, yay, thought I’d say it here as it’s something that means a lot to me and this community means a lot to me too yk

Sorry for the absence of story for the last two weeks. No I'm not dead, it's just my exams weeks.And because of that, I have to redirect a lot of energy from writing. So all the stories I've developed over the past two weeks have sort of run aground, and I'm not sure they're ready to be uploaded here, yet.But now I'm back and ready to write some more, so roll up that daily disclaimer:As usual accidental copy is truly unintentional ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~7th Chromia Orbital Dock Facility~
~Orbit of Oskwa~
​
"Have they arrived yet?" I asked to my fellow commander.
"Yes General Burg, the convoy has just unloaded the... cargo just now" General Von said, looking down through the glass barrier to the cargo bay below where hundreds of yellow capsule-like containers sat in rows.
"Good, so I assume that the assault could be launch in a few hours?" I asked.
"After we distributed this to the orbital bomber we should be clear to go"
"Excellent! We'll finally be able to destroy that annoying little castle of them" I exclaimed. Excited, because finally after months of fighting, we'll be able to seize the last stronghold of the Terran Republic on this planet. Fort Linsky, a large military fortification built by the Terran Republic before the war on the planet of Oskwa, one of their territory at the time.Equipped with eight pairs of massive railgun cannons, each with the capability to penetrate anything ranging from our capital ships in low orbit to anything on the ground not covered by at least twenty meters of solid rock within the range of one thousand kilometers from its' location.
There were more of them before. But since our invasion, with either brilliant tactic, incompetent opponents, or a pinch of luck. We managed to destroy or seized all the other fort on this planet.
But Fort Linsky on the other hand is harder. Its fortification is enforced not only by its massive cannons, but also by what our soldiers on the ground called 'The Torture Zone'.
First the most obvious one, the giant wall covering the entire parameter. A huge twenty five kilometers long stone-composite wall, shaped like a giant star with spikes sticking out of each end, circling the ring where the railguns take places. Rendering all kind of ground incursion imposible.
Behind the wall there is the 'artillery', somewhat a miniature version of the railguns they're trying to protect. A long range kinetic weapon capable of yeeting medium sized projectile, both High Explosive and Armoured Piercing. Preventing any of our heavier vehicles to get close and deal any damages.
And then there is the 'always on particle shield'. While their counterpart in space is extremely weak, their usage here was proved effective against all sort of our attacks. Be it orbital bombardment, areal assault, or our own artillery or missile attack. And of course lastly, we have the Human themself. A tough mammals bipedal species born on a level six death world. Raised by wars they have perfected the art of defense, utilizing the terrain and weather for their advantage. In battle they themselves go forth to fight, in armor suit five meters tall equipped with a large gun and a pile of rockets that can be fired to scorch our troops. And accompanied by innovative flying vehicles that uses a single propeller to lift themself from the ground, armed with the same weapon hold by the armour suit they become the thorns that've always prevented us from occupying this fort. -------------------------------------------------------------- I stepped down from my transport ship to the barren ground, on a mountain ten kilometers away from the fort. Just outside their artillery range, and on a such makeshift observation point it would be worthless to shoot us out with their railguns. "Is everything ready?" I asked to one of my officer. "Yes Sir, General Borg just sent out the last confirmation signal" He reported. "Good" I responded just before a flock of officers approach. "Sir, are we sure with this?" "Yeah gas attack seems a little too much, perhaps even breaching the Communities Treaty of war" "And are we even sure this will work?" They asked one after another. "Hey, do you remember what've they done all through the war? The sight of their armour suit killing all of our soldier? their rail gun destroying our base? I bet they have committed several warcrimes on their own. And yeah, We're pretty sure this one will work. Our capsules is small enough to slip through the particle shield, and their content... Well gas attack have been banned by the Terran Republic, so I'm sure it's bad for them. And what gasses are we using again? chlorine and bromine? yeah I think they're included in the banned substance" I said reassuring the officers. Not long after, the time finally came. Receiving the signal from the Borg, we sat and watched as hundred of small yellow capsules pierces the cloudy sky with green tails coming out of 'em. Passing through the Terrans shield, straight down to the rows of troops doing their morning call. Landing next to the unsuspecting soldiers the capsules burst and released their contents. Thick green smokes billowed from the shattered containers, soon filling up the whole facility with an eerie chemical haze. We watched silently from afar. We couldn't see individual soldiers anymore, but from the lack of large response or any other movements around the base, I think it's safe to assume we've caught the Terrans off guard. "Yeah, that should kill them" I said breaking the silence. "We better start moving now, before any surviving Terrans re-enact the automatic defense" We jumped into our armoured vehicles, surrounded by around twelve thousand troops ready to captured the fort. Approaching the structure, we could feel the atmosphere getting cold. The still lingering green gasses floating low on the ground, getting darker each moments as the thick cloud from the ever-closing storm covered the sky. "Well at least the rain could clean up this mess" I said to myself. Closing in, now only a few hundred meters, we could fully feel the eerie state of this fortress. A huge ominous dark wall covered in green haze stretched out for miles, accompanied by a huge thunder on our east suddenly halted the movement of our forces. The frightened troops stopped on its march, shaking on their boots. 'What are they afraid of, there shouldn't be anyone anymore in that fort' I muttered, trying to figured out what happened. And that's where I see it, no... see them. Dozen of bulky silhouette, accompanied by a couple hundreds smaller hump lined up between us and the wall. I squint my eyes, the figures standing menacingly became clearer as the green smokes cleared. 'It-it's the Terrans! T-they're still alive!?!' I screamed internally, clenching the iron bars I was holding onto. The Terrans, on their armoursuits once again challenging our march, but there's something wrong. Their beige colored skin has grown darker, now with black ulcers and red patches covered many of their exposed area, their once white eyes were now bloodshot like those of an ancient creature on our folklore, and where their mouths should have been, were now covered by all kind cloths with their bright red bloodstains splatred on it. My frustration and annoyance suddenly turned to fear and horror as my blood ran cold from the realization. They... they're not alive anymore. Me and my troops stand there for a minute, trying to process the sights we behold. The silence continued as fear crawls on our back, forcing us not to move a muscle. Suddenly out of nowhere a blood screeching screams rang across the battlefield. The Terrans letting out a battlecry as they began to charges. An entire legion of the undead leaping into our position with the classic noise of rockets and artillery soon followed. "Retreat! Retreat!" I shouted, breaking the stagnant of my remaining troops. Without wasting a second, the remaining nine thousand troops ran away from the cursed fortress. Racing back to the safety of our base. Skipping some heartbeats I looked back, to the horror we just made. 'We didn't kill them, we just make them mad'

Hi there! In a month I'm lucky enough to visit Stockholm. I'm really excited for this trip as I wasn't able to visit there in years. But for the first time I'm traveling there with my own money so here's the question. How much Coronas do I need for comfortable stay?
For context: my gf and I would like to visit about 3 museums and rest of the time spend near the lake chilling. We would like to taste your restaurants, buy souvenirs and just not worry about money at all. I already created revolut for this trip and need a clue for prices. Anyone would like to help me estimate that?
Thank you and hopefully see you around!

We've been dating since almost 2 years, we've known each other since we were 12. She's recently fought a seemingly terminal deasese. I've recently gained control over my situation of extreme parental abuse (drunk dad who physically beat me and mom). We've both been there for each other through this.
Over the last year, through the things she tells me, I've noticed some things about her parents which bother me. and today I finally confessed it to her.
Here are the things that bother me.
1) her dad has 3 kids despite having a govt job, my GF is middle child, who is officially not their child, not on paper. Not only this thing could cause her legal issues related to her rights, but it also indicates that they are extremely conservative. How? My GF is born almost 10 years after her sister. Why? Apparently they kept trying for a baby for all that time but her mom had multiple abortions due to her being unfit for a child. But they kept on trying and finally has their 2nd child, who was also born prematurely, and yes, she had to face many deaseses, including this terminal desease. Had to live her entire childhood with restrictions.
You would think her parents would stop after barely having a second child, who is unfit and will have to face hell. But no, they went for a 3rd one, immediately. Yes, the 3rd child who is the only boy is born less than a year later.
And the reason for this I think, is obvious. They wanted a boy, and her father would rather break the law and risk the life of his wife multiple times for years, just for a boychild. (Not to mention he is born with extreme harmonal issues)
Correct me if I'm wrong but this is the first thought that comes to my mind based on the facts, please tell me if there's another possible reason.
2) After that there are other things like how he actively and verbally hates people of other religion, and is possibly also castiest, which concerns me since I'm SC.
3) Then there are other concerns like how parents have left her alone while she was in ER on fucking life support, and her parents were legit "attending a family funtion" or paying a visit to family members who lived near the hospital. But they were mostly absent.
4) They were reluctunt for letting her eat nonveg which was recommended by the doc. Especially her mom was very against it. They are vegitarians for religious reasons. Actually it's since I almost forced her to go against them and eat nonveg more often and in her house, when her issues regarding weightloss ans immunity statrted to go away.
I stated my concerns that their conservative behaviour is causing her issues and will definately become an issue when it comes to marriage (yes, we are stupid for thinking that far. But consider the ammount of suffering we have faced together, I can't imagine a life without her, and she says she feels the same. Also know that we've known each other since more than 5 years)
After I said all that, her response was "shut up". Followed by how I have no right to say anything about her parents, how she owes me zero explaination for these concerns and that her parents are always right.
If her parents are always right as she says, will she also listen to them when they tell her to stay away from me? Which they will Since I'm SC and they're hella conservative.
Not just that, she said stuff like...
They've been there for her and I haven't. This hurts because she used to call me from the ER, with a tired breathless voice, just because her parents were absent and she'd feel alone. I left everything when I used to see her call, even abandoned college classes in the middle, basically leaft anthing at hand once I saw her call. Now she's saying I haven't been there for her?
When I found out her desease was terminal, I legit went dark for 20 days, Didn't go to college, didn't see anyone except my parents maybe once a day. Stayed locked in my room trying to scour through all the 100s of pages research papers which were so hard to find it since it was a rare desease and most of the patients were above 65. It's a lung desease which was said to be 100% fatal. I stayed up all nights, made a mess of my own health while doing so, until I came accros a study, which showed only 5 patients in the entire world, who susrvived, all were minors, I figured the desease is said to be fatal because it mainly attacks old people and they don't have any regen power in their lungs. But a 17 year old girl's lungs are constantly growing, she should survive this.
I gave her hope, that alone improved her health from needing support to walk to jumping around in just one day. I forced her to get more involved in her medical process and make the doctor give her curative care instead of end-of-life support like her parents wanted. and it worked, she went to a doctor in Pune and the retests showed she's curing that desease (which is impossible on paper).
In this process, I lost 15 kgs of my weight and the will to eat anything due to severe deppression. I still haven't recovered from the physical impact. After all of this, she compleatly discredits me and my concerns, says I wasn't there for her and all that.
I feel deeply hurt.
I legit feel like I'm nothing to her, I feel like she always thought like this about me.
In her defense. She's a mature person and doesn't have traditional or conservative thoughts, neither does she seem all that proud of her parent's being so conservative. So I know she doesn't share her parent's thoughts. she was never like this, NEVER. And maybe this isn't the person in her talking, maybe she just said this because she got triggered, I understand many Indians are conditioned to blindly trust their parents and never question them, so I'm not sure if I blame her.
What should I do?
Please don't start teasing about age, we're not nibba-nibbi. We've both supported each other through life threatening situation. I have got physically injured due to family fights, have had to lock myself in a room for days with my mom to fend from my dad. Been forced to spit on my own mom, hit her with a sandal and other types of torture. she has had to face extreme pain and illness all her life, had to witness a rape and murder as a pre-teen, been through therapy. So please understand our bond is really strong after we've been through all this. This relationship is serious.
TL:DR GF's parents show extreme signs of being conservative and casuing a problem for us. GF gets hella triggered and says I have no right to talk about them, they are always right and she owes me no explaination regarding this. I feel undervalued and basically got shut up for stating my concerns.

Something about the idea that Lisa and Bonny Red might be in any kind of regular communication was… I don’t know. Disturbing. If I had to say it was comparable to anything I knew, the only near example was finding out that Fauve was hiding harassment from [Wolfbeard’s] friends and associates. That’s not even quite right, but… it was just the idea that there was some talk in reference to me that was absent me was just… strange.
Like a vague ominous feeling, almost like a conversation in another language that I don’t speak, spoken in my presence with expressions and gestures hinting that it was about me specifically that the discussion was being had.
It was probably nothing, and I dismissed my own thoughts on the matter, one thing I noticed about the females of both species is that it is sometimes difficult to quite comprehend their thoughts from the male perspective. Disturbing as this instance might have been, on the whole, I found that difference between the sexes to be almost refreshing.
There is something to be said for mystery, for having company that is apart from one’s self. Which does bring me to one other small point about the xenophobes that rose and fell. Their male membership on the whole seemed to hold the females of their species in the highest contempt. The very fact that Fauve was a woman, well, a young girl, was held against her.
In a way, a defining feature of these extremists was that everything had to march in lockstep together, else it had to be subdued or destroyed. In all the reports I read, in all the stories told to me by those who raided their headquarters and training centers and other lairs, only a handful of women found positions of note in their organization. This wasn’t to say no women agreed with these men, but they were all but locked out of participation in any direct manner, more than a few evidently had evidence of abuse on their person.
In a very real sense, the ability to thrive in this world now, was intrinsically tied to our ability to engage in that which made us differ from one another, between our species and our sexes alike, we were happier in just being ourselves.
I doubted xenophobes were ever very happy for very long.
I remained at her apartment that night after a quick call to the Walkers to let them know what I was doing, I still had work to do of course, even though I had AI management tools to do most of the day to day administration of my organizations, I still had to actually handle approvals, but since everything was mobile now, more or less, I could work from damn near anywhere.
I’d borrow some talent from the Barnum Cooperation to handle things while I was away, of course. At least for the last few weeks once we got to our destination.
But until then, this was super easy, barely an inconvenience, as the humans are fond of saying.
Of course, Lisa had questions about what the reason was for me going away. She asked me that, later, and I stretched out and answered her as truthfully as I could. “I can’t really tell you that.”
She cocked her head and raised her eyebrow at me as if to say, ‘Really? After all this?’
So I elaborated, “It’s one of those kinds of things. I’d rather not be a criminal on two worlds, you know. It’s bad enough that somebody on my homeworld has decided I need to be ‘expended’.”
That had her attention. “What’s that?” She asked, why I was leaving was now a secondary concern to her.
Honestly, thinking about it in retrospect, I should have been a lot more afraid than I was. After all, getting rid of ‘problems’ was as humans say ‘par for the course’ for a lot of governments. I had my suspicions about the Earth government’s quashing of the Earth First movement being even more obscure and black operated than I already knew about in the Silent Civil War. Not that I could prove anything, and if I’m being honest, after what they wanted to do to my humans, not that I cared.
It’s a universal truth of all governments that when it comes to their security, they do not mess around, and disruptive elements tend to get some form of unpleasant treatment, even in a near utopian or utopia aspiring state. There’s always something unpleasant in the foundations that nobody sees. How much moreso in the dystopian world of Dlamias?
Bonny Red and her crew were all meant to die in the void, I, had I not gone a different route, would have been offworld for centuries and not brought back until I was old and set in my ways and easily compliant. Even my sister, who more or less slipped under their radar, was put into a job where she would have her spirit essentially eroded.
I don’t know about our father, but as for our mother, I will only say I had little hope that she was living any better now than she was before.
So I took this understanding that I was now an ‘undesirable’ in stride. Not to be overly dramatic, I am not saying my whole government was after me, just that somewhere a bureaucrat decided that it would be better if I were chosen for more ‘dangerous tasks’ and that if something happened to me, things might be ‘safer’ overall. As far as I knew, nobody had been sent to eliminate me personally, though if a team were sent to get in my way eventually, that wouldn’t be a shock.
I looked over at Lisa and my ears all drooped as I explained all that, “You’re not going to have to worry, you’re not in any danger. But… my people have focused on stability for so long that disruptive elements are ‘pruned’. We’re not as crude as humans… as far as I know. I don’t have to worry about being,” I made air quotes, “black bagged, and disappearing into a shallow grave somewhere. It just means that I can start expecting my government to start making more dangerous requests of me until something happens. It’s a very practical way to get rid of trouble, especially since they can’t exile me while I’m elsewhere already anyway.” I huffed, I had to laugh at the situation, I could picture the conversation now…
“Can we exile him?”
“He’s doing this from another planet already, what are we going to do, double exile him?”
“That’s… shocking. I’m… I didn’t know your people could be like that.” Lisa seemed genuinely shocked and the sheets rustled as she brought her knees up to her chest, a genuinely worried look settled on her face.
“We didn’t become the strongest Empire in the galaxy because we’re gentle.” I said and put my hand on her shoulder, “It will be fine. I doubt they’ll do anything overt, I have a practical usefulness to two different governments right now, it’s just one of them is willing to risk losing me. Change is… well it’s hard for us sometimes, and I’ve been introducing a lot of it.”
“So you’re like a scientist bringing technology to the stone age and being declared a witch.” Lisa declared, it was an apt analogy that I would think about quite a lot as time went on. For all my people’s advances, we missed the very idea of therapy and psychiatric treatment, and I still hadn’t forgotten the team of therapists who so bluntly diagnosed my species in a general sense.
In a very real sense, by bringing my people happiness, a concept of wellness, even for all the clear and obvious good it was doing across the board, I might as well be a witch bringing unknown magics to a primitive and superstitious, anxious people.
If I may speculate for a moment, I have seen that humans who struggle most, often mistrust happiness, finding it to be suspicious, waiting for the other shoe to drop, as if happiness is just a setup for the pain to come. As I thought about Livingston, joyless, direct, having nothing but his work… how must it been for him when he first bonded with a human and found that someone genuinely cared for his wellbeing?
Maybe what made me an outlier was that I wasn’t suspicious of happiness, but embraced it, while many of my species, once they found it, didn’t know what to do with it and treated it as a danger. Maybe… Maybe I have grown, just a little.
As I’d let go of my bitterness about what our ancestors did to us, I felt no bitterness or anger toward the nameless background figure who decided my life is best spent at risk. He, like so many others, was so afraid of being taken in by contentment, that he wouldn’t be taken out of whatever darkness held him back. They were clinging to their chains even while I worked to cut them.
That was something to be sad about, more than anything else.
Lisa brightened up. “Well then, if you’re a wicked witch, how about you cast one more spell over me.” She teased, and then her face went blank and eyes unfocused. “Your hypnosis spell hits with a D20, your target is now hypnotized, what do you do now?”
I rolled my eyes, she could never take anything too seriously, even death or danger. It’s no wonder I like humans as much as I do. Even half dead they’re more alive than most of my whole damn species. So…
[Redacted]

I’m still really unsure of myself. I came out as asexual last year. I’m a woman and I’ve been married to a wonderful man for nearly a decade. I’ve always had relationships with men and felt I needed to please them. Once having sex I enjoyed it (I assume physiological result) but thinking about starting or sometimes even during I want it to be over. I haven’t had sex in probably 3 years. I stopped counting after I came out. Sorry if my thoughts are a bit jumbled.. I’m just wondering if anyone else has experienced this? I’m attracted to women and always have been but was confused because I don’t want to have sex with them. I’m realizing now that I’ve never wanted to have sex with anyone but have been following what I thought I should (please a/your man). Am I asexual? I love my husband, sometimes I want a kiss but he’s still so sensitive about me “not being attracted to him”. He gets upset sometimes and I just have to walk away. He admits that he’d rather be with me than without and I feel the same. Thoughts???

What Draws Us Near is an anthology edited by Keith Cadieux and Adam Petrash and published by Little Ghosts Books.
I’m still new to writing reviews, and anthologies are especially tricky since every story deserves its own review.
This collection of scary stories is varied and unique. All of the stories give you that wonderful “I’m safe at home but also terrified” feeling.
My favourite stories were Semi-Detached by Suzette Mayr, Garden of Guiding Eyes and Grabbing Bones by Ai Jiang, and Marin: A Good Place to Live by Susie Moloney.
Semi-Detached tells the story of moving in together too soon and the stress that home ownership can put on a relationship. The ending was shocking and terrifying.
Garden of Guiding Eyes and Grabbing Bones is a story about being trapped and trying to escape. Though the story is short, I was rooting for the main character to get their deserved freedom.
Marin: A Good Place to Live is a tale of something too good to be true. It honestly gave me Goosebumps vibes in the best possible way.
If you like horror short stories, this anthology is a must read.

Hi! I have been dating my boyfriend for a year and three months long distance. We haven’t met yet due to being full time students who’s schedules haven’t lined up, but we have spoken to each others family members and facetime or call daily. In the fall of this year my boyfriend is moving near his college to finish a second degree and has invited me to move in too, signing a lease and all. This is a big dream of ours, to close the distance, but I am hesitant because I do not yet have a job. Although I have recently begun applying, I am also waiting for acceptance into a masters program which would take up much of my time come fall. The apartment we want to lease is beginning to run out of spots, so to live there we would need to sign now. My boyfriend encourages me to sign anyway under the pretense that he can pay my rent until I have a job, but I would very guilty about this as he would need to work way more while also attending school (he would have enough to pay the rent for both of us for about 6 months, so I would have 6 months to continue looking for a job if I do not immediately find one). He says that if I do not move in, he will have to break up with me because he will have so little time between work and school to maintain a relationship. I do love him very much, but I’m so hesitant given the uncertainty of having a job or getting a masters. What would you do if you were me?

AuthoMedia Critic/Journalist Maureen Ryan spotlights Lucasfilm’s creative’ish bureaucracy in her new book Burn It Down; featuring former-staffesource known by the pseudonym Emma, who was hired to work on expanding Lucasfilm’s existing IP with a spin-off of some kind. Emma worked with a person at Lucasfilm (who is given the pseudonym Derek), who she believed did not understand the assignment despite being well-connected within the film and television industry.
Emma is described as possessing “extensive experiences and impressive résumé, yet never creatively helmed a project all on her own; Until Lucasfilm reached out to her with their offer…”
- - - - - - - - - -

Once Emma figured out the lay of the land at Lucasfilm, she realized she had been brought in to do a lot of grunt work on behalf of Derek, a well-connected man who, in her opinion, didn’t know what he was doing. He would get the glory if the project was a success, and it sure felt as though she would get the blame if it wasn’t.
Executives at Lucasfilm, Emma said, treated Derek as more important than her, even though he reliably generated chaos, subpar scripts, and other problems. His management skills were questionable when they were not entirely absent. The executives supervising the project listened to Emma’s complaints about these serious, ongoing issues, and more often than not, she told me, they agreed with her. But their promises about changing the situation came to nothing. “They back their creative people fully—the people they see as creative,” Emma said. And Derek was the person they backed.
“It took a long time to cut through the doublespeak and figure out what was really going on,” Emma told me. She had thought—and had been told—that she was going to have real creative influence over this major piece of IP. That was not the case. And Derek, thanks to his powerful connections, was essentially untouchable. Emma slowly realized that her job was to “channel” Derek’s creative vision and turn it into filmable content. “I can’t speak to whether it was intentional or not, but really, what they wanted me to be was a well-paid babysitter,” Emma observed. “I was in this double bind where I was both accountable to them and also not creatively empowered. It just puts you in this position of feeling like the janitor.”
At Lucasfilm, in Emma’s view, preference and precedence in the TV arena is given to those who have credits in the film world.
In any event, Emma wishes she’d known up front what Lucasfilm really wanted. She would have said no to the job, or something like, “Call me when you’re ready to fire him and give me the job. And if you’re not going to do that, then great—it’s all on him.” She did eventually leave the gig, exhausted by the constant chaos and the fact that nobody made any meaningful moves to stop it.
Maybe the powers that be at Lucasfilm didn’t feel they needed to. Before Emma took the job, a friend in Hollywood told her that Lucasfilm didn’t particularly care about going over budget. Emma was gobsmacked by her friend’s observation, given the penny-pinching ways of her previous employers. “But I saw it up close—that it doesn’t matter how many mistakes are made or how incompetent some people are,” she said. “Our budget doubled, and I’m sure it went up after I left*. I’ve never seen anything like it.*”
At Lucasfilm, it’s not hard to figure out why the money might flow a little more freely: the company and its offshoots have had massive success in the realms of film, television, theme parks, and merchandising, among other ventures, since the first Star Wars film came out nearly half a century ago. And in Emma’s view, the worldwide success of shows like The Mandalorian just reinforces the internal belief that the company can do no wrong.”

^{Excerpt From: Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood by Maureen Ryan. Chapter 8: The Myth of an Egalitarian Future The IP Strikes Back}

I was doing a pickup at a Rallys in a decent neighborhood. Had some graduation thing or something happening which had teens ordering like crazy and also filling restaurants. (Not my hometown.)
They had 1 drive-thru line marked for delivery drivers only. Waited for 10 minutes, but got my order and was ready to go. There was a car ahead of me with two teens in it. Apparently they ordered for like 10 people. I flashed my headlights once to let them know someone was behind them that needed to move. There were parking spots on the other side of a short concrete barrier just a few feet away. I was ignored. Waited about five minutes and then honked. Ignored again. After a few more minutes I got out of my car and walked up to the two kids standing next to their car. Kept a few feet away and said, "Hey, could you please move your car. There’s some parking over there and I need to make a delivery.
Kid lifted his shirt and flashed me a gun. I was like, "Hey I don't want any trouble, I just need to make a delivery." He responded, "Whatever" and moved his car barely out of the way.
I'm fairly certain that he was just posturing, but it pissed me off! I was in that neighborhood, because the busiest areas near my house are downtown in some rough spots and I don't feel like putting myself in danger for a little money.

Ok so to jump right into it about 6 months ago I was involved in an aircraft accident (not my fault) that nearly took my life and left me with an injury list about a page long. I’m finally doing better and in the stages of dealing with the FAA. I do have the AOPA pilot’s medical assistance but I’m asking here if anyone else has navigated the steps I’m on and has any advice. Especially on people I can disclose confidential medical info with and not have it reach the FAA until the ducks are in a row. I’ve recovered from all injuries, some of the bigger injuries I’m sure they are concerned about are the head injury (concussion with brain bleeding in two areas) and the broken back (I’ve recovered from). I’ve read that the brain injury can carry a 5year wait to obtain a medical again, but it seems like a case by case basis as someone I know was in a coma from a motorcycle crash and had a first class a year afterwards.
Essentially the current step I’m on is to get letter from all of my Doctors, treating physicians and physical therapists saying I’ve made a full recovery. If anyone else has gone through this step my question is what can I expect next? Cog screen/psych eval? I doubt the FAA will just say “okay cool here’s your first class back” but one can hope.