Hi Guys!
So I fell off the wagon, and its one of my worst relapse in 2-3 years. So I decided to make this account as the first step to my recovery, and post my thoughts, and experiences during this journey. Your thoughts, experiences and encouragement I always welcome!
Socrates said something like: How sad it is that the person who lies to us the most, never leaves us, because it is ourselves. I have found this to be particularly true in regards of this addiction.
We lie to ourselves and fool ourselves. I have always found that the best way to fight my mind, my toxic habits is to speak the truth. And instead of relapsing into this warm disgusting habit I will write the truth, bring light to the shadow, and be my best self step by step.
A key element of theater is the “willing suspension of disbelief” meaning that the audience consciously sets aside its knowledge that what is happening on stage is fiction and pretends for the duration of the performance to believe that what it’s watching is real.
Lies I tell myself:

1. Porn is good. Whereas what happens on my screen is a terrible and evil act. If my psyche wouldn't have been infected so young (and even now when I abstain for a longer time) I see it what it is a terrible act, the normal reaction should be vomiting.
2. That it is me who is experiencing this lie. When in reality I'm in a dark room front of a laptop fapping to other people like voyeur. I'm degrading myself. This is not someting a healthy man does.
3. My third lie I tell myself that this is allright. That one more time is allright. That my relapse is allright. Whereas it is not allright. I'm robbing myslef of so much with this. It robs me of my energy, my creativity therfore my performance in my carreer, and living my best life, my time with my friends, robs me of my confidence with girls. Robs me from a healthy relationship that is otherwise easily achieveable. Robs me from being a great partner, robs me from being sensitive for my partners needs. robs me from being a great lover. Robs me from being human. It's a pact with the devil, fulfilling a natural desire in an evil way, not exerecising self control, and paying soo soo much more for a fading moment of pleasure, yet not even realising. The worst thing? It's a deathly spiral since it makes your life worse and worse you turn to it more and more, you sink deeper and deeper, while loosing the ability to fight against.

My truths that I live by from this moment:

1. Porn a terrible thing. It is degrading both for it's makers and for it's viewers. It was degrading me, me engageing in pmo in the past was a harmful, degrading, shameful act.
2. I have not experienced those fantasies. It is other people, and even they fake it. What really happened were a degrading, sad and evil act when I engaged in pmo.
3. My past decisions and acts engageing in pmo were not acceptable, and not allright in any way. I fooled myself thinking it was allright but I robbed myself of time, energy, my confidence, my experiences, success in my carrier, success in my romantic life, and robbed myself of experienceing life to it's fullest.

My pledge today (2023.03.28.)
I will not engage in pmo ever again. I am done with it once and for all. If I ever relapse in my life I will fight tooth and nail to get on my path again. In no way shape or form will I think, feel, or speak of pmo as anything else but a harmful, toxic, degrading and evil act. I will dedicte myself to live a healthy sex life and to live life to it's fullest.
My affirmations:

1. My past is not a reflection of my future. The old has gone, the new is here! Every day I'm getting better and better.
2. I am worthy of a wonderful, loving and sexually fulfilling relationship.
3. I am worthy of the perfect womans love whose image lives in me.
4. I will find her when the time is right.
5. I am a work in progress. I am working on to be the best version of myself every day.
6. I am enough.
7. I humble myself and face my trials with endless patience, perseverance, and power.
8. I take full responsibility for my needs and desires.
9. My needs and desires will be fulfilled in the right time.
10. I consider it pure joy, when I face trials, because I know that the testing of my faith will produce perseverance and lead me to become a mature and perfect man.

Thats it folks. I wanted to write about my journey so far with nofap and where I am at now, but maybe another time. I wish you luck!

So I have a friend, who has been single for a very long time. In fact, he's never really had a boyfriend. For the past 2 years or so (just around when COVID restrictions started lifting), he has gotten fixated on finding a boyfriend. Like it's all he can talk about. All conversations with him eventually lead to his complaining that he's single, guys don't like relationships, guys don't like him, guys are flaky/shallow, guys only want sex, guys only care about money etc. At first, I thought this was a temporary mindset and he was just reacting this strongly after lockdown because of the pandemic. But it has gotten worst as time has gone on.
What brought things to a head is that my fiancé and I got engaged a few months ago and have been slowly planning our wedding. At first he seemed happy for us, but as time has gone on, he's become very sippy, not just at us, but towards all the couples in our friend group. It's made a lot of people not want to get together to plan things out. My boyfriend and I are estranged from most of our families for the typical reasons, you might expect for gay men. So it means a lot of have our friends kind of take the roles that would have gone to family members and helping us plan.
He has made things unbearable and all about his singleness. He always has something sarcastic and negative to say ("Thanks for letting help out with planning your wedding, since I'm never going to have my own!", "I guess only the good looking guys get happily ever afters", "I guess the guys with money just want to marry each other and us peasants have to beg outside for scraps"). Please note, my fiancé and I are neither insanely rich or outstandingly handsome (well I think he is, but I'm bias), but it's like he's been lionising everything to make the wedding seem "outrageous", "unrealistic", or "unattainable".
He says these things in a "I just JOKING" way, and with anyone else I would probably believe that, but these catty/mean comments have been happening so frequently that I just don't buy that he means it light heartedly.
He also has had the audacity to ask me to set him up with dates, implying that I owe it to him since I'm having a wedding while he's still single and thus embarrassing him. Note, I've tried setting him up in the past, but according to the dudes I set him up with, he came on WAY too strong, was super clingy, and was already talking about relationships and LOVE before they had finished their coffee. And those guys are now in long term relationships with other men, so they were genuinely looking for relationships. So I honestly don't want to set him up with another friend, because that would be unfair to the friend.
The cherry on top is that he has started confiding to another single friend, whom has never said anything negative about being single. But now he's starting to immitate his behavior and has started to commiserate with him.
I know most of you will say to dump him as a friend. Admittedly, this would be the logical choice. But he was my first openly gay friend. When I came out to my family and my brother punched me and my father disowned me, he held me as a cried and drank myself to sleep that weekend. He's been there for me when I was at my lowest, I don't want to write him off unless I really have to.
I know I need to have a discussion with him about how his actions/statements/attitudes have become intolerable at this point. My friends and I have tried to broaching the topic before but he becomes defensive, will make excuses, and will redirect the conversation.
So how can I have a direct conversation with him, without him feeling threatened/criticized so he doesn't try to run away from the topic? How can I frame it? Should I have him come over one on one to watch TV, then transition into the discussion or should I tell him directly what I want to talk about? Should it just be me or should other friends that he's started to become critical of also be present to Voice their concerns/hurt, or would that make him feel like he's being gained up on?
Any experience and/or advice on organizing/framing this discussion would be of a great help.
TLDR: Chronically single friend had started to become intolerable toxic/mean/snippy since fiancé and I got engaged. His negatively is affecting the friend group and I need help on how to frame a discussion with him that won't feel overly critical so he doesn't try to deflect.

I'm reposting this bag, which is still for sale. PM me for details. https://imgur.com/gallery/tCW8tno

so i recently bought a new ssd for my pc and i put windows on it and set it up properly but now i want to use my hdd which is the c drive for just storage and it wont let me change anything to do with it in the disk manager but i have made it so the ssd is first in the boot sequence in the bios. any help on how to fix this?

Building team/clan for endgame content and Day 1 raid(mainly)
Trying to build a chill clan/team of active hardcore people who play all content and wanna have a chill time, ex: raids, dungeons, trials, quick play, gambit whatever. Also trying to build a main raid team to s tier endgame pve activities. If interested or want more info dm me or mssg me on discord @PIRU XVIIBeHeMoTH#9344

I was very happy with how it all worked out. I called 14 days before my flight on a Monday and got an appointment for that Friday at the Buffalo office. I think I was in and out in under an hour. They told me to come back two hours later, and they had my passport all printed and ready to go. They weren't stingy about ink color, cause they gave me a blue pen to write in my state where I had forgotten it (though I would still recommend using black ink!) The people were very kind and efficient. Honestly, 10/10 would do again in ten years.
Personal notes:
I had a baby passport where my name is spelled with the cultural spelling instead of the legal spelling, they had no problem making the change to the legal spelling on my new passport so that I could have consistent documents. No, I have no idea how that was allowed to happen in the first place.
I'm from Mass, but I live in upstate NY for college (about 2.5 hours away from Buffalo) and applied with Mass documents.
I had copies of my documents with me, but they just made copies of all my stuff behind the counter, so that was nice.
Did not need to contact a Congressperson or Senator.
Paid with credit card (via Apple Pay).
Hope this helps some other people with questions about the process, feel free to ask about anything I might have missed!

Hi all. Any thoughts on mushrooms for recomp? Decent but not amazing protein content, very healthy and pretty low on calories. Rather than solely relying on the ol chicken and rice, I usually spice things up and large flat mushrooms have become a pretty staple part of my diet. They're easy to cook, fill me up well and taste fucking great with a little butter and garlic when cooking them. I'm not counting calories as I did that a ton when I first started and know what I need to eat to continue dropping that fat off slowly. So far the mushrooms have seemed to help a lot.
M21 - recomping - currently 109kg 6'8" and well built, aiming for 90-95kg, but will reassess as I lean out further. Currently the main goal is to drop off the weight I've had since I was ~15yo while maintaining the muscle I put on in my first year of gym (2-3 years ago)
I haven't seen many posts about mushrooms but wanted some specific advice. Cheers!

So I’m in college right now (second year) and at the start of the year I smoked for the first time my friend’s roommate named Tyler.
Tyler would always ask to smoke for that first semester but over time he would just get openly annoyed towards me when asking people if they wanted to smoke. He’d just walk in the room, ask everyone individually if they wanted to smoke and then he’d get to me and just be angry. Starting 2 months ago he just started ignoring me.
I always wanted to get him back but drug deals scare me (illegal state) and I haven’t been able to get in on someone else’s order so I never have anything to offer. If it matters, he has never asked me to pay him.
Now he’s just super passive aggressive to me and I’m getting tired of it. Is this even worth trying to fix?

My parents and I have always gotten in arguments, but I feel like I am not the instigator. They insist I am but they have talked to people again and again( professionals ) and they say I am not. Others looking in do not think I am what they make me out to be. All my life I was taught to fear them, they would hit and yell at me. I get that can be normal but most of the reason why they did this was because I was rude. So I’ve tried new things over and over but they never seem to work. I remember cases of them locking me in a room, making fun of me, and other traumatizing things, but they claim it to not be true? Often I feel they have isolated me from the outside world. But to admit I have been angry with them, but is that wrong? I ask for help but they refused to give it to me, until I am very upset then they try to send me away. They have refused to buy me food, our house is actually empty, they refused to help me learn what I am doing wrong, and they have never stood up for me with school. I feel neglected, and I feel like they are manipulative, I feel insane and I question my reality. They often want to send me away, rather than deal with it. To them I am a burden, they’ve made that very clear. I don’t know how to talk to them anymore, and I can’t leave. I have tried, if they want me to leave they call the police ( this has happened multiple times ) and tell them to take me away. They never have but they try their best. I don’t know? Is this all a coincidence or are they actually hurting me? I have heard of what gaslighting can do, I relate to it but is it realistic? Am I a victim or am I the abuser they make me out to be? I genuinely don’t intent to be angry all the time.

https://internationalman.com/articles/david-stockman-on-the-status-of-the-everything-bubble-created-by-the-fed/

David Stockman on the Status of the Everything Bubble Created by the Fed

by David Stockman
📷 Subscribe to International Man
The Wall Street Journal recently brought word that a professor Efraim Benmelech of the finance department at Northwestern University thinks the Fed is hurting housing and the consumer too much. Opined he,

…….those higher interest rates are making mortgages more expensive and leading to fewer home sales. That leads to less spending on appliances, paint and other home goods, because people commonly buy those items ahead of a sale and after moving.“The actions of the Fed are leading to lower consumption,” he said.

You don’t say!
Then again, has it occurred to the good professor that the years and years of ultra low mortgage rates engineered by the Fed were totally unnatural, uneconomic and not sustainable?
The evidence for that is in the chart below. It shows that for most of the last three decades, the Fed drove the after-inflation or “real” interest rate on 30-year mortgages steadily lower until it actually turned negative.
Inflation-Adjusted Interest Rate on 30-Year Fixed Rate Mortgages, 1990 to 2023
📷
Stated differently, the unfolding recession is a long overdue and necessary purge of artificial economic activity stimulated and subsidized by the central bank’s own financial repression policies.
The Fed’s belated attempt to “normalize” interest rates, therefore, is not a mean-spirited policy to deliberately cause labor, manufacturing capacity and other economic resources to be idled. To the contrary, it’s a belated attempt to unshackle markets from the excesses, bubbles, malinvestments, inefficiencies and unsustainabilities that were the inherent results of decades of reckless money-printing.
One of the many bubbles created by the Fed’s relentless monetary expansion of recent years might be termed the “labor bubble”. By that we are referring to the madcap hiring undertaken by corporate HR departments in the aftermath of the Covid Lockdown disruption.
As it happened, they failed to meet staffing needs in the early days of the re-opening in 2021 owing to the fact that millions of workers had left the active labor force thanks to massive stimmies, early retirements and other welfare state inducements, along with mom and dad’s basements and checkbooks. So HR departments plunged into hiring “just in case” the re-opening boom of 2021 and early 2022 continued. In effect, they began to hoard labor.
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek admitted as much in a recent missive to employees announcing a 6% cut in the company’s workforce:

“In hindsight, I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth. And for this reason, today, we are reducing our employee base by about 6% across the company. I take full accountability for the moves that got us here today,” the exec said.

Of course, the re-opening and stimmy boom didn’t last—notwithstanding the Fed’s massive money-pumping and monetization of the public debt issued to finance the $6 trillion of Covid bailouts.
Since the spring of 2021 when the stimmies peaked, the US economy has actually been slouching toward idle. In fact, once you strain out of the GDP numbers the one-time inventory rebuilding, which was necessitated by the drastic depletion of merchandise stocks triggered by the stimmy based consumer spend-a-thons, there is hardly any organic growth left.
As shown in the chart below, the combination of Dr. Fauci’s Virus Patrol and the Washington spenders did a real number on the business economy. First, the normal business inventory-to-sales ratio exploded to the upside during the initial lockdowns and spending collapse, and then plunged to unprecedented lows as the stimmy-fueled boom in Amazon orders drained the system of its working inventories.
Whipsaw of Business Inventory-to-Sales Ratio, 2018 to 2022
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Since reaching bottom in October 2021 inventories have been rebuilt to nearly normal levels, but that’s just the problem. The GDP gain reflected in the inventory rebuild is just a case of “one and done”. In fact, with the interest cost of carrying inventories now rising rapidly it is likely that the business sector restocking is over.
As we indicated, once you peel back the effect of inventory restocking, the stagnation of the US economy is starkly apparent. For instance, in the case of the industrial production index, which covers all of manufacturing, energy, mining and utility output, the level in March 2022 stood at 103.5.
As it happened, the index posted at a nearly identical 103.4 in December. Call it nine months of “growth” to nowhere!
Industrial Production Index, March to December 2022
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Needless to say, none of this madness would have happened without the enabling hand of the Federal Reserve.
Editor’s Note: The truth is, we’re on the cusp of an economic crisis that could eclipse anything we’ve seen before. And most people won’t be prepared for what’s coming.

OK so a case I use, the Corsair Air 540 has an MSI Z590 A Pro motherboard. This has a front usb c header but the air 540 has no usb c support out the box..... Ye it's old but gold.
So need a solution to use a 5.25 bay for adding usb c to the case.
A bit of Googling yields ugly 5.25 bay inserts that have sata, usb and a million other things needing sata power and usb headers galore. Nah man not for me if I can possibly avoid it.
Is there a simple stealthy bay adapter that just uses the usb c header. Maybe molex or sata in the back for power if needed.
As my 13 y/o nephew would say "Link me fam" (sorry)

*Disclaimer* I made an alternate account to not attract attention to myself since I am aware my colleagues use reddit frequently.
Anyways, im depressed and have been for awhile now. I feel stuck and nobody to talk to on base about how I feel or anyone to take me seriously. I don't know what i want to do or even my options. Im overseas and have no family near or any friends. Im not suicidal but I genuinely don't want to live like this.

I’ve had chronic pain in my legs since I was a child. It’s pain in the joints of the legs, and stiffness and pain in the muscles. It usually happens when I’ve been walking/sitting in the same position for a bit (how long depends on the day- could be pretty much immediately, could be after half an hour). It makes it very difficult to walk. Because of this and a functional neurological disorder, I use a walking frame and mobility scooter to get around. I don’t take painkillers but the pain is helped a lot by heat packs
Everyone initially dismissed it as growing pains as I wasn’t very disabled by it as a child, it didn’t come on very often. I only started seeing a doctor again when I hit my 20s. They did every test under the sun; blood tests, x-rays, ultrasounds. Everything came back clear so my doctor started to talk about it being psychological pain. She explained how painkillers probably wouldn’t help because of it (this explained why paracetamol didn’t work on it)
The thing that’s made me challenge this thought was that I recently had necrotising pancreatitis which meant I was on 100mg+ oxycodone a day (a ridiculously high dose). After a few weeks I realised that I hadn’t had the pain in my legs for the whole time I’d been on oxycodone. So maybe painkillers DO help my pain, they just have to be really strong ones? This is making me think maybe there is some physical cause for my pain? What do you think?

This may not be the place I have to request this, but at this point, I think that this 'thing' has to be a game.. if it can be even considered that. I've only seen snippets of footage of it, I think it has to be a part of something bigger.
The concept is that: You are in first person, and you go around this.. room. The room has either a mess of color, or an image that you can upload [I assume]. While walking around, everything is normal for a while, until you stop, and look forward for a few seconds. Once you move again, the part you were looking at is now how the area itself looks, becoming more incomprehensible as you move again. Stop again, look at one part of the mess, and as you move again and look around, that mess is now the area itself.
I cant really describe it better then those tiktok videos that used to be popular, where someone looks at something thats more then likely just an illusion, the video stops for a second, and another different video plays that has brief outlines but uses the same 'look' and texture of the last frame of the last video.
If anyone can help me with this I'd greatly apprecite it ><"

Hello lovely people. Could someone that has the Journaler nib and at least one of the other two tell me if the Journaler wide stroke is overall closer to the medium or to the fine? Online comparisons are really not that clear or consistent and I couldn't make my mind. I would love to try a journaler, but I like the Jowo fine nibs, mediums are already a bit too wide for me, so I was trying to find some more info. Thank you all in advance!

My mom and dad are both narcissistic and I hate it. I have some chronic illnesses which incapacitate me at different times, making it so I sometimes sleep most of the day. It makes me feel useless. One day I went upstairs at around 6 PM to apologize to my mom (I feel bad and for some reason apologize) and she said “No worries! I’m not offended! Just go rest.” I said “alright, thanks” and went back downstairs. A couple hours later I went back upstairs and she was in the front room. Her boxes of mementos were out because we had been going through them. I said hello and went in to start looking at more things and she was quiet. I asked what was wrong and she said “she feels like she never sees me anymore.” I was really upset because she had just told me a couple hours before that she wasn’t offended and to sleep. I told her that and she said “I know I said that, but…” and I just sat there in disappointment. I don’t know why I still get surprised by my parents actions. I got up to go back downstairs and she started blaming me saying “what, you’re leaving?” Why does that always happen every time I leave the room from being attacked?? I don’t have to stand there taking it!
I’m tired.

i just bought a Canon EOS R10 kit. I had reserved it online and managed to get to the store at ten to six, so I really only had time to grab my bag, pay and leave.
Now as I unpacked the camera at home, a few things were off. The box says "kit" but the lens was handed to me separately. The box wasn't sealed. The battery was already in the camera. The lens doesn't seem to fit.
But the camera "feels" new, even the little battery cover was still there, the other accessories complete and didn't seem unpacked. I wouldn't mind if they had ravaged a box to give another customer a replacement lens. But I don't want to buy full price a show model with thousands of hours of runtime under its belt.
I bought in a reputable store on purpose because I thought I'd avoid the risk of scammery when buying from unknown online sources. I'm feeling a bit frustrated now.
Is there a way to check the runtime or first start of an R10, check its shutter count or anything so I know if I have a valid reason to go back and complain? What would you do?
Edit: they gave me an EF-M lens, not a RF-S. No wonder it didn't fit.
Update:
They exchanged the lens and apologized for the mix-up.
Concerning the box, they told me that Canon boxes aren't sealed in Europe. They usually don't order kits, but when they receive them, they'd take out the lens right away and sell them independently. The guy told me he didn't know why a battery was already in the camera, but it probably had been taken out to test or demonstrate something - it hadn't been on display or anything as they'd cycle quickly through the cameras.
I choose to believe that and I'll be curious to see the shutter count when/if gphoto2 updates its database to include the R10.
Thanks for your help everybody!