Welcome to the Toronto Daily Thread.

This thread serves two purposes:
1) To collect and make visible new posts in smaller Toronto based subreddits.
Feel free to visit, comment and be generally helpful in posts indexed below. Please also remember to stay on your best behaviour when travelling outside of /toronto.
2) To act as a general off-topic conversation hub for the day.
To that end, use this thread to talk about whatever is on your mind, regardless of whether or not it's related to Toronto.
No matter where you're posting, please remember to be excellent to each other.

/AskTO

Post Title	Author	Comments
looking to buy your broken samsung phone	blitzz06	0
What are some good bridal alterations businesses in Toronto?	hsangha	1
Any recommendations for getting US shipping only products off Ebay?	sa-chii	1
Cuatom made wooden crate	reireireis	0
Landlord hasn't fix major leak	kindofmischief	2
Where to buy carry on luggage?	phwarner	14
Best Italian grocery	vigilstarry	9
How would you help your child survive the TTC?	MidniteOwl	11
Haskap Berries in TO?	pwalyg	1
What is the best internet provider?	Friendly-Ad9110	11
Where can I test a cannabis edible for an unknown substance?	Maluma_Goat	4
What’s happening just north of Yonge/Lawrence?	dizzy_rhythm	2
Sequence of tapping presto card if travelling two transit systems?	involmasturb	3
UP Express unlimited use?	H410m45t3r	11
BMO right now	JRoss4141	2
Looking for amoxicillin tonight	tchattam	28
Anyone else been sick with some type of cold on steroids?	amla17	8
Ladies, what purse or bag do you carry to work? While commuting?	curioustoknoq	16
LCBO hours change	cocaineyoshi	8
Shipping parcel from Chicago to Toronto	Mental_Advice8645	2
A large tree branch has snapped from a neighbor’s tree resting on a bell utility pole and cables.	23sigma	4
Indian takeout - British style?	flytotheleft	7
Anyone know of a cheap place for haircut?	qtqtqtqtpi	7
Do you use Brita water filtration?	MagNox92	6
What T.O. downtown neighbourhoods/spots would you feel most uncomfortable or unsafe in walking solo at night?	Far_Pin2086	58

/TorontoJobs

Post Title	Author	Comments
Self-Taught Data Analyst Possible?	throkkkkkkw	0
Work for newcomers in Canada,Toronto,that’s impossible to find something non general Labour or not?	InternationalTeach78	1
[OFFER] Job-winning Resume and Cover Letter For You! 🚀	mcgill83	0
I will improve your resume in exchange for a review	Thisguyplayspiano	8

/TorontoEvents

Post Title	Author	Comments
Tomorrow Night, seven comedians compete for your laughs in Bring It!	comedynuggets	0
/Toronto Monthly Meetup: Saturday, April 8 at 7 p.m. at the The Artful Dodger near Yonge and Bloor	rtorontomeetups	1
Corner Place Comedy Night - Front and Jarvis	HeftyJuggernaut	0
"Termite Education: A standup comedy show" Friday March 31 10pm	Aromatic_Field_982	0

/GTAMarketPlace

Post Title	Author	Comments
looking to buy your broken samsung phone	blitzz06	0
Selling 2 tix to Grandson @ History July 19	black0utcity	0
[500$] 55" Hisense H9G/Q9G 4K HDR Smart TV For Sale Inn Great Condition [500$]	MagnusArcadius	0
Depeche Mode Floor Tickets	TechNIvestor	0
URGENT- SELLING 2 RINI TIX, SHOW SOLD OUT	kaamirazi	0

/LostAndFoundTO

Post Title	Author	Comments
Looking for a lost book with a hand written note inside. The book is “Lifetimes the beautiful ways to explain death to children”	Ground_up_and_beyond	0

I am a bot, and this post was generated automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

I am not the Original Poster. That is u/Whofuckingknows2. She posted in AmItheAsshole
For today's spoiler cover, u/Artichoke_Persephone sent me a fun fact to use! "Greta Thunburg’s mum represented Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2009. It’s an interesting pop-opera number with some dancers wearing a mirrored masks at the end. Very stylish!"
Trigger Warning: Verbal/emotional abuse; drug addiction
Mood Spoiler: Slightly hopeful but mostly sad
Original Post: March 5, 2023
My fiancé (m22) was injured over a month ago and had surgery to correct things literally two days after the accident. I (21f) have been my his side the entire time. I have more or less become his caregiver.
In the last month I have taken over the role of keeping our house together. I cook all the meals. I take care of the pets. I stay up all night to tend to his endless needs. I take him to the bathroom. I have been working remote. I haven’t left the house for more than an hour since the accident (aside from taking him to and from appointments). I am not saying this to complain, I am grateful that my life allows for me to support him the way I have.
My problem is his attitude. He was given very strong pain killers for the first two weeks after surgery. He had to extend his time on them and recently stopped taking them in the last week. When he was taking them, he thanked me, told me how much he loved me, apologized at every step, though he didn’t need to. Without the meds he doesn’t seem to see that I am helping him. Every dish I bring him is the wrong one, he will yell for me and when I come he will tell me to “fuck off” if he’s in pain he expects me to fix it. I am exhausted. I can’t do anything right and it is wearing on me. I haven’t slept in weeks. I haven’t seen a friend or family member in way too long. I can’t even be on the phone for more than 10 minutes without it being an issue.
After days of what turned into verbal abuse, I called my MIL. I told her everything as soon as I saw he was asleep. I cried for about 15 minutes. I felt terrible unloading on her like that, but I had so much built up frustration I just couldn’t stop. She was very supportive on the phone, let me know I wasn’t wrong to feel like that., and let me cry. After hearing everything she was furious and ended our call to talk to her son. She tore him an new asshole. I heard him trying to defend himself through the door but it was mostly just stammering.
She flew up yesterday and put me up in a nice hotel. I haven’t heard much from my fiancé since I left but as I was leaving he was yelling at me for calling his mom, he said he didn’t want to marry someone who couldn’t be there for him in sickness. I told him I loved him and I was sorry, I am just so tired. He didn’t care and just told me to go, and his mom could do a better job for him then I ever could.
So now I’m in my way too nice hotel room, feeling like a major AH. I need to know if I am wrong here.
Edit- He began weaning off two weeks ago and became fully dependent on over the counter medication this week. He did not stop taking them cold turkey. His doctors were heavily involved too, due to previous drug abuse.
Edit 2- March 6, 2023 (Next Day)
MIL is taking him back to they’re hometown once they can get flights together. I’ll stay in this hotel until then. Fiancé doesn’t want to talk yet and tbh I don’t blame him, he knows what’s coming and that I am pissed. I’ll go visit him in a week so I have until then to decide how I want to move forward. My mother called last night about a venue she found in my hometown and I told her what’s going on, she doesn’t want to spend a bunch of money on a “pending divorce” so we are stepping back from planning.
Not much more to add, I’m excited to see my pets and be able to sleep in my own bed. I’m going to try to make my sister fly to my state so I can have some company. That’s pretty much it. I’m in serious awe about how I let my life get like this, but oh well. Today will be better.
Relevant Comments:
Is it withdrawal?
"He behaves like this frequently when in pain, just never to this degree. I can promise you that he had been weaned off and would tell me if that’s what he was feeling. I have seen him go through much worse withdrawals when we first met and this isn’t that. He is lashing out on me in pain, which I get. I was the only person around."
"He has a history of drug abuse, I took administration of the pills very seriously. Due to his history we worked very closely with his psychiatric team and the orthopedic to make his weaning period as easy as possible. I should have put that in the post but he did not stop cold turkey."
Is this abnormal?
"He has what some would call a short fuse. Especially with me. Him saying hurtful remarks to me or just blatantly putting me down is not necessarily uncommon and is something we are working on. Prior to this he would apologize and make it up to me, now even when I’m in tears he will just keep laying on insults."
OOP has thoughts later that day:
"Being away and able to process the last month of my life has been eye opening. I couldn’t imagine trying to care for a child under conditions like that. I couldn’t imagine how frustrated I would be. HIs injury is in his arm, he can walk, he can use his left (dominant) hand. I understand that he is in pain and its awful but I have had a friend with much worse injuries help us move! I’m thinking about returning my ring."
OOP is voted NTA
Update in comments (Same Post): March 13, 2023 (8 days later)
"I’ve returned. My last night in the hotel I called my parents to make a plan and it didn’t go well. I’m home with my fiancé again. He wont talk to me except to bark orders at me. I’m hoping I can move out within a month or two. Surgery and recovery are expensive and we have been living on my income for some time and I’m pretty broke but I’m keeping my head up and I’m confident I can get myself out."
Why didn't he go with his mom?
"I know she pushed for him to go home but he is a very stubborn boy. Thank you, I will be okay."
Update Post: March 22, 2023
Updates on AITA seem like a process so I’ll just post here.
I went home two days after posting. Things were sad. My mil had cleaned but the energy in the house was a bummer. The first thing he said to me when I got back was “I’m glad you’re back, can you make me a snack?” There was no apology, no accountability, just a task. He only talked to me when he needed something. His attitude was worsening. My mil took the rest of he prescribed opiates so I knew he wasn’t using.
The weekend following the MIL debacle my wonderful Fiancé told me he had friends coming to stay for the weekend. 2 hour heads up. Didn’t ask. I sighed and made up the guest room. His friend and friends girlfriend came to stay. During the stay my fiancé bought me flowers, got out of bed daily, took me out, and let me call my parents unsupervised. The day they left he was back to bed with a shitty attitude.
I wish I could say I am in my own apartment with my pets and a bottle of rosé that’s just for me. Or with my girlfriends that I haven’t seen in months. Unfortunately I’m writing this on the couch while I listen to the music that are his endless demands. However I do have a light at the end of the tunnel.
I’m scared to leave him in person but he’s leaving the country for a month in April. My sister lives abroad and I’m working on getting to her during that month. It’s a process especially with pets. I look forward to getting there.
My mother hasn’t spoken to me since I told her I was returning the ring because “That’s not we do, we clean our messes.” But I have my fathers unwavering support. I’ll miss my MIL but I deserve that kindness and understanding from my partner, not his mother. I have stopped forcing myself to find the joy in his presence and its helping to fuel my drive to get out of here. I may update again when I get to my sister but don’t be surprised if I do my best to put this chapter behind me.
Thanks for the kind words. I hope you all get the love and hugs you need.
Update in a comment on this post:
Why isn't he with his mom?
"MIL was planning on taking him, he refused. Things got very bad since I posted this. Im currently in my childhood room at my fathers (decently hungover) and I am officially a single lady."

Hey, y'all! I hope you fine folk are doing great right now.
I am relatively new to reading this subreddit and trying to gain knowledge on credit repair, best practices, my rights, etc. I have learned so much already from some solid comments, threads, posts and discussions on here. I was ecstatic when I first learned of this subreddit because it is exactly what I had been searching for online for quite some time.
My question is in regards to the fairly recent change to how medical debt is reported.
I have three medical debts on my report well under $500. None of them are above $200. I can't seem to understand what requirements or actions on the party that owes the debts will suffice in the debts themselves being taken off of reports.
Shamefully, none of them have been paid. They all occurred right after I had my first child in late 2020. I was severely sick my entire pregnancy, and that progressed quickly after having my child. I couldn't work in that entire time, and was in and out of the hospital frequently. To be honest, I think I was close to dying at that time and couldn't even hold down even water for close to two years, let alone notice that a bill came in for something or that I was missing a payment needed for a service. I am far past that point in my life thankfully, and am working to tie up and clean up everything that couldn't get my attention in that period. It feels so good to do it.
I can 100% pay all three debts. If all are paid in full I will not suffer financially on my end which is a blessing. I've noticed that the three don't report on my fico when they certainly did last month. They still report on trans union and Equifax. I have no doubts what so ever that the debts themselves are for services I was given by my doctor's and those who treated me in my 1000 ER visits I had in 2021.
I can't get a good answer if they will fall off if they are unpaid, or if I have to pay them to satisfaction of the collections agencies for them to discontinue reporting on all three bureaus.
If it is the latter, I will get on that as early as I can. If not, should I contact them to have them removed, should I dispute them?
I've read through the about page in the subreddit, a few months worth of posts that cover topics in this specific situation but it seems like I see half and half as an answer.
I appreciate any advice, info or guidance in this matter. Thank you all so very much.
( I really love to read the posts on here and see the success stories, the kindness in sharing best practices, etc. It's uplifting and motivational. )

I am sudeenly in charge of setting up lights for our band. We añready use tracks in ableton 11. And we know how to send midi timecode from it. So I have a few ideas, but I’m open to other ideas. We want dmx control, with plans to add movers some day when we earn money, so I want to make sure the system can grow.
Idea1: dmx controller, with the midi-in controlling the scene changes (sent from our ableton laptop). I really thought this was going to be the best idea. But then i started reading reviews on dmx controllers under $400, and they all have quirks that scare me. Like blackouts, or scene deletion, or midi fails, and a steep learning curve, and no way of keeping a record of your scenes ither than a peice of paper.
Idea2: a second laptop to run software dmx with a usb dmx box out. This will also require a midi-in from the ableton laptop. This opens us up to a lot of different software controllers. I wiuldn’t know where to begin, but i do love the looks of the visualizers when crafting your scenes.
Not an option: using the same laptop as our ableton laptop. It is already taxed with ableton and it is also our soundboard controller for our mackie DL32.
So which way would you go? Any other ideas?

Note: Adapted from a devlog posted to itch.io. Edited for clarity, specificity, and usefulness.
Hello again, gamemaker. As part of the ongoing development efforts for my project, Reality Layer Zero, I've been tinkering around with optimization and profiling recently. I wanted to share some of my personal discoveries here, on the off-chance they're remotely useful to anyone other than me.
To preface matters, this post will largely be talking about diagnostic techniques. When you know you've got a problem and you don't know what it is, you might employ some of these steps to figure things out. The appropriate optimizations to apply, once appropriate diagnosis has occurred, tends to be a somewhat obvious thing, so that side of development is of lesser interest to us for the duration of this write-up. We'll still talk about it a little bit, in-brief, but not to any satisfactory degree if you're not yet totally comfortable with common optimization techniques and why they work. Just a little bit of optimization talk, as a treat.
I should also mention that, while much of this post will be spent discussing very "3D graphics"-related topics, the techniques outlined here should be fairly universal across all Game Maker projects (2D and 3D) and, indeed, game development in general. The only difference will be what numbers you think are acceptable, depending on what your target platforms are and how your game "ought" to run.
So, about two weeks ago, a friend of mine tried to run my game on a 10-year-old laptop with a 2GB VRAM discrete graphics card. This was the result:
Hey... That's not the usual crash message box...
After doing a real quick Google, I found that this error is (usually) caused by the DirectX application-- in this case, my game-- allocating more texture memory than is available on the host device.
To be honest, at the time, I dismissed this as being not a very critical issue-- after all, the hardware was old, probably not representative of a typical modern system, and could have had untold other problems of its own that caused the crash.
However, something kept bugging me about it and, after about 2 weeks of sitting on it, I decided to properly investigate.
As it turns out, this wasn't exactly the first sign that not all was well with the game's VRAM usage. The first time happened almost a month prior when a different friend recorded this clip of the game running on a GTX1050. There's a stutter in the framerate that occurs once every three seconds or so, and, curiously, only in "exterior" scenes. The GTX1050, for reference, has 4GB of VRAM.
On first brush with this footage, I couldn't even hazard a guess as to what was going on-- after all, the profiler said the game was running fine! The framerate was comfortably in the middle-hundreds, and memory usage was reported at around... 900MB. Well, okay, I guess that sounds a little bit high, but it's a 3D game with real-time lighting and shadows! Besides that, RAM is cheap! It... it is 900 MB of RAM, isn't it?
So, the only answer I can give is... Maybe? The documentation is somewhat vague on this point. I'm actually still not sure whether the memory usage displayed in the debugger graph is RAM, VRAM, or a lump sum of both.
After applying the optimizations I'll talk about in a moment, the profiler reports memory usage as being <= 500 MB (or 300 MB less than the control) under the same conditions. I'm not sure if this was a product of the optimizations to VRAM usage or of a separate, unrelated effort wherein I applied compression to some of the internal audio files (thus reducing their memory footprint when loaded by the game). I'm leaning toward the latter as the explanation, which would indicate that the debugger graph only shows RAM usage. This... Seems like, possibly, not the best thing in the world for video game diagnostic purposes. However, I'm unwilling to say that I've confirmed this to be the case definitively.
My favorite corner of the screen.
In a similar information deficit, the more in-depth profiler view only shows call count and execution time. This is great for figuring out certain performance bottlenecks-- stuff that isn't executing as efficiently as it could be-- but not so good for figuring out when you've, say, allocated an unreasonable amount of texture memory for a shadow map that, in truth, just doesn't need to be that nice in the first place. Not to spoil the punch-line or anything.
First place is good, right?
So, VRAM, right? There's something going on with the VRAM, according to the DirectX error in the first image. Furthermore, it might have something to do with exterior scenes, judging by the video clip. However, the Game Maker debugger isn't doing a very good job of telling me how much VRAM the game is using-- I can't, using the built-in tools, watch the game and see how the memory reacts to figure out what's going on (at least, I don't think I can-- would love to be proven wrong, though).
To give me a little bit more insight, I enlisted the help of a 3rd party profiling tool-- GPU-Z, in case you're interested. Then, I cracked open my IDE and started tweaking areas of the code that seemed memory-inefficient.
At first, I thought the overuse of VRAM was related to the way I'm rendering text-- I'm actually using multiple surfaces at 1080p to render nice outlines and drop-shadows underneath the letters in a reasonably-fast manner at runtime (and then simply downsampling to lower resolutions, which results in some pretty nice-looking words, I think). However, whenever I reduced the size of these text surfaces, I noticed that GPU-Z was only reporting a very slight reduction in VRAM usage-- like, between 30-50MB. That's not nothing, but it's not really "make-or-break" numbers for a GPU, either. So, what gives? What's the real problem?
To borrow the words of Tetsuya Nomura, it was the darkness.
... Or more specifically, the shadows.
Angry duck noises.
The effect pictured above is accomplished using fairly traditional texture mapping as described in this excellent thread. The summary explanation of how it works is that, to figure out what parts of the scene should be "shaded" and what parts should be "lit", we basically snap a photograph from the perspective of the light that's casting a shadow, and anything that shows up in that photograph gets lit up-- everything else remains tinted by only the "ambient" color of the scene, which determines the darkness (and color) of the shadows that remain.
In order to accomplish this, though, you need paper to print the photograph onto-- virtual paper, of course, for virtual photos. In Game Maker, this is accomplished by rendering the snapshot to a surface and then converting that surface to a texture. There are simpler ways to do this in more recent versions of GMS2-- surface formats-- but I'm still running version 2.3.0.529, so I can't use 'em!
The smaller the shadow map surface, the worse the "quality" of the shadows. If you don't know what I mean by "quality", take a look at this:
​
Chunky pixel shadows!
See how the shadows become kind of boxy and deformed? That's the "quality" I'm talking about.
Now, the above image, admittedly, looks kind of cool, in a stylized sort of way-- but, low-quality shadows can introduce some weird-looking visual artifacts due to, I think, rounding errors-- one of the main offenders being "shadow acne" that jitters around and is, overall, not quite as aesthetically pleasing as the shadows in the above image.
So, you don't want to go too low-- avoid the artifacts. However, you also don't want to go too high. Every time you create a texture, you need somewhere to put it, after all. Further, since it's a texture we're talking about, the only place for it is in texture memory. What happens if the texture you create is just way way way too big to fit into the available texture memory on the host device? May I refer you back to the image at the top of this post?
So, yeah, basically the problem was that the shadow map quality in the exterior scenes was turned up absurdly high, resulting in absurdly large textures that 2GB graphics cards (and below) simply couldn't deal with. I figured this out when I, by total chance, entered an exterior scene and noticed GPU-Z reading-out these numbers:
<_>
Your eyes might go cross-eyed looking at this image at first, but the important row is the one labelled "Memory Used". It's reading out 3481 megabytes! That's over 3 gigabytes of texture memory! That's not just eye-crossing, that's eye-popping!
Mind, it's not 3 gigabytes from the game alone. My GPU (yours, too, probably) allocates what I'm gonna call "ambient memory" for basic system tasks, other open applications, and all of those Google Chrome tabs you're keeping open for whatever reason. For my development PC, this ambient usage is usually between 500 MB to 1 GB, and at the time this number was recorded, was close to 1GB.
In other words, the shadow map for this exterior scene required around 2 gigabytes to store in memory. That's, put simply, excessive!!
This was caused entirely by turning the quality of the shadow map up too high, which resulted in a texture that was unnecessarily large being generated and subsequently taking up far too much space on the GPU. I cut the quality of the shadow map in half, which bought back about 1.5 GB of texture memory without resulting in... really, any noticeable visual difference. Huh. Well how about that.
I should mention here that this isn't something unique to shadows or my implementation of them. Any time you create a surface, that surface is stored in texture memory. Create one that's too large, and you'll quickly exceed the limits of many GPU's. This is something important to keep in mind, both because it might not be intuitively obvious and because Game Maker (and your own development hardware) might not do a good job of warning you when you've done something unreasonable.
While I was testing all of this, I noticed that VRAM would also creep up turn-by-turn in the debate mode until the debate ended (at which point, the allocated memory would be freed)-- a kind of "localized" memory leak, so-to-speak. This, too, was related to shadow maps-- or, specifically, to the class which manages all of the shadow maps. Turns out, it wasn't cleaning up the maps associated with the temporary spotlights created by card effects in the debate mode. In effect, that means you'd play a card, and then the pretty lighting effect would flash, and then the shadow map that the light generated would just hang out in memory for the rest of the debate, taking up valuable space! Fixing this problem was simple, but I wouldn't have ever noticed it if I wasn't looking. Since this could potentially result in progressively terrible performance or even a hard crash if a debate goes on long enough on a small-enough GPU, I'm rather glad I managed to catch this problem when I did. Even if it was a, uh, a month after the first public release...
In the interest of not doing anything halfway, I added a graphics option in the options menu to allow the player to further reduce the shadow map quality if desired (all the option does is modify a scalar "shadow quality" global). This can save a respectable amount of VRAM as well, although the majority of the performance gains here came from the reduction on my end.
- To Wrap Up -
At this time of writing, I can confirm that the fix I applied here did fix the crash that kicked off this post. The 10-year-old laptop in question is now able to run Reality Layer Zero largely without complaint... At between, usually, 30 and 50 FPS on the lowest settings. So... It's not perfect, but it's a fair measure better than it used to be! I wonder if it'll run on a 1GB card...
In conclusion, test early, test often, and make sure you profile your VRAM usage in addition to your RAM. And, perhaps most importantly... Remember to play Reality Layer Zero on Steam or Itch, since it's both a really cool demonstration of what you can do with GM and, if I'm allowed to say so, a pretty cool game in its own right!

I’m a new teacher and maths isn’t my KLA.
My question is about my own experiences of maths in high school (in Vic, late 90s/early 00s).
This is how I remember it:
I was pretty good at maths until middle of year 7.
I was put in the high ability class at the beginning of the year based on a pre-test before start of year.
Then I started to struggle. I would follow the formulas in the text book but my answers would be wrong. I asked for help, the teacher would say “just follow the formula”. I thought I did. I tried again and it wouldn’t work. I asked for help again, the teacher said I wasn’t following the formula. To the best of my memory, she didn’t explain how I wasn’t, or maybe I didn’t understand the explanation.
I was then moved into not the middle ability maths class but the low ability maths class. I continued to struggle. I would ask genuine questions about how this relates to anything and ask for help doing the work. I couldn’t understand why we were doing what we were doing most of the time, unless something had an obvious real world application.
I did poorly in maths for the rest of high school EXCEPT percentages, which I got 99% in the test for while the rest of the class basically failed. We had to re-do the test (with different questions) and the second time I got 100%.
I remember occasionally getting the right answers for some things but my “working out” was wrong; I was getting the right answer but not using the prescribed formula.
But apart from that I just couldn’t get it. In year 11 I basically stopped opening my books and often wagged maths class (and I never did this with any other subject). Obviously the fact I was bad at maths affected my motivation but I also continued to be unconvinced about the value of what they were teaching us in terms of life in general. (Even though I did know then on some level, and I definitely know now, that learning maths at school has huge value beyond “how will this help me directly in life”. Talking about problem solving and analytical thinking etc etc.)
Anyway I dropped maths entirely for year 12 with full support from all teachers (in fact it was a maths teacher who strongly encouraged me to not do any maths in year 12). This was highly unusual at my school - everyone was generally encouraged to at least do general maths in year 12.
Since then I’ve lived believing there’s something wrong with my brain in some way. I still remember basic times tables from morning drills in primary school, and I can do more complicated multiplications if I have the time. If they’re really complicated I need to do it on paper or REALLY REALLY concentrate, but would probably need to write down the mini multiplications so I don’t forget them so I can then add them together at the end.
But when I see anything with lots of numbers, or anything resembling algebra, or even any kind of data representation (graphs and charts) that in my opinion seems to require an above-average level of mathematic proficiency to understand I experience one or more of the following: - eyes glaze over - vision blurs - instant nausea - indigence - sense of failure
I was never great at calculating the right change with 100% accuracy when I worked hospitality jobs, which always confused me because I really felt like I was calculating it correctly but I’d then come up with the wrong change. And I could never balance the till at the end of the night.
BUT I scored far above average in the numeracy part of LANTITE.
And I can get by day to day. I don’t THINK I have dysgraphia but I’m not an expert and need to do more reading about it.
I do have ADHD (recent adult diagnoses and I believe, and the doctor agrees, that I’ve definitely had it from very young age). I think ADHD probably explains my struggles to do head maths under pressure. When I have plenty of time I get the right answers.
But what explains me being apparently good at maths until I suddenly wasn’t? What happened?
A more general question is: is there any single factor that makes a person inherently more likely to understand and succeed in maths at school?
One teacher in year 9 or 10 said at parent teacher interviews told me and my mum that I “missed something crucial in maths at some point and it was affecting my ability to keep up now”.
This is mostly curiosity. (On some level it’s also insecurity. I dream of one day being able to do maths but it’s absolutely a pointless thing to spend any time on at this late stage.)
So if any maths teachers read this and have any ideas I’d love to know what you think. Why was I bad at maths at school? Is there anything you see in the students you’ve taught who just don’t “get” maths?
As a new (non-maths) teacher I’d also love to understand maths more so I can understand maths teaching more so I can understand teaching more.

I should have found a safe room before I made my move.
Now I was running in shin-high water through a field of lotuses from the aswang chasing me, and I had no idea where to go. I could only hope the creature currently running after me was a simple vampire or ghoul aswang, rather than the more fearsome variants.
Running past a black marble pillar, I stumbled and fell to the lotuses on something. I looked down and realized I had tripped on a piece of wood sticking out of the pillar. It was the handle to a door! My excitement, however, was short-lived as I looked up and saw the aswang right in front of me.
The creature lunged atop me, trying to bite into my arm only to be met with a kick to the face. This didn’t deter it, however, as it grabbed my leg and sunk its fangs into my right calf. I screamed in pain, trying to land a punch, but I had no momentum. My hits only glanced off its skin until I sunk my foot into its gut. Even then, its jaw refused to let go, and took a chunk of my leg as payment for my kick.
I couldn’t run. My only hope was making it into the safe room, but I had to somehow stop it from seeing me open the door. So I had to fight back.
Tears of pain flowed down my cheeks as I used my good leg to launch myself onto the prone aswang. I mounted it, and gripped its head as it retaliated by grabbing my bad leg just below the knee.
There’s few words to describe the pain my leg was in. A chunk of my calf had been torn out, and my blood spread out into the shallow water of the lotus field. When the aswang gripped my leg, it dug its claws in and squeezed with the power of a hydraulic press. Its effects were akin to that of a tourniquet - blood no longer left the wound in my leg due to the sheer pressure.
I heard a sickening snap as my shin broke. The pain nearly made me black out, and I was only able to stay conscious by biting my lower lip with as much force as I could, the sting on my face and the taste of copper in my mouth anchoring me to consciousness.
I lifted my thumbs. I had one goal, and that was to stop the aswang from seeing me. With a horrid squelch sound, I put out the aswang’s eyes, assisted less by my muscles and more by gravity as I collapsed upon the creature’s body.
The aswang released its grip and writhed in pain, clutching its face as I reached for the door handle. I opened it, and fell into the room below.
I needed to patch up my wounds. I used about half of my shirt to make strips and wrapped them around the bite. It hurt like a bitch, but was luckily a shallow enough wound that I didn’t need to worry about bleeding out. I then took two pieces of wood nearby and attached them to both sides of my leg, using some more strips from my shirt and tying them to my leg.
After I finished making the splint, I looked around the room. I had fallen in through a short tunnel from the door, either not noticing the ladder or being too panicked to think about using it. The bottom two rungs had been broken off - I suppose I broke it during my fall, and used it for my splint.
The room was decently sized, about the size of a big bedroom. A makeshift bed laid at the end of the room. It seemed to have been made from woven lotus stems and filled with wilted lotus flowers for cushioning. Whoever made it had a lot of time on their hands. The sides of the walls were lined with - were those bones? Those were bones. Whoever dug this room out must have had an easier foe than me. Shelves were dug out into the sides of the walls, and were supported by abnormally long bones. More bones rested on the shelves, many carved into spears. I tried to compose myself, and hopped my way over to the bed. I was too tall for it, with my legs hanging off the end up to the bite in my calf.
I grabbed some unsharpened bones on my way to the bed, and spent the next few hours constructing a sketchy, but ultimately functional crutch out of the bones with the last strips of my shirt tied around them. I was tired. I didn’t know what variant of the Indian opening I was going to be up against, but you always play the same second move. Already knowing what I was going to play, I laid my head on the pillow and went to sleep.
I suppose I was lucky enough to be familiar with aswang. It seems I was no exception to rule 4a, and a spark of dread made its way into my drowsy head as I realized what the other pieces represented.
No matter what, I could not move my queen.
I woke up to an aching pain in my leg. It was to be expected. I would have to figure out a plan, and fast. I had no way of fighting off any more aswang in my current condition, but I also had to make more moves unless I wanted to deal with a horde of them with working eyes. I looked at the sharpened bones on the shelf. Perfect spears.
I wouldn’t be able to do any form of spear combat though. The best thing I could do was throw them, but with only one working leg I wouldn’t be able to put much force into it. It wasn’t like I had any other choices though, so I stood up and began gathering some spears. As I picked up one of them, I looked at the shelf and smiled. I finally had a lucky break. One of the bones had been carved into an atlatl.
I tested how well I could throw the bone spear with the atlatl. To my relief, I was able to embed the spear into the wall over two inches deep.
I had some difficulties climbing the ladder, and I was only able to carry three spears and the atlatl with me, but it would have to be enough. When I reached the door, I opened it as little as I could, just enough to peek through. I looked through the crack and saw the aswang, still holding its face in its hands as it paced around the area about 8 metres away. I looked up to the sky, and saw it was nearing sunset. I could make my move again. But another aswang would be appearing very soon.
I stepped out of the door. At the sound of me stepping into the water, the aswang’s head snapped to my direction just as it did before. Rather than its bloodshot eyes, however, I saw only the eerie blank space of its sockets. It ran at me. I let loose the spear.
I missed.
The spear flew past its head, and it ran towards me and threw a punch. My only hope of dodging was to lean my head as far to the side as I could.
The aswang’s fist dug into the black marble pillar just past its wrist. It raised its other hand, but before it threw another punch, the spear I threw saved me. A loud ting sound rang from where the spear had hit the pillar behind the aswang, causing it to momentarily turn its head. I took the opportunity, and used my good leg to launch myself onto the aswang once more. This time, however, I was on its back. My weight dragged it to the lakebed with me, and we fell into the lotuses with my arms around its neck in a rear naked choke. Not knowing where to attack, it swiped its claws in the air wildly before a sickening snap came from its neck and it went limp.
No sooner than when I released it and I stood back up did I see its body begin to twitch. My foe stood back up. I threw one of my spears past the aswang and away from the chessboard, which stood 20 metres away. I stayed as still and silent as possible, not even daring to turn my head around as the aswang ran towards the spear that bounced off another column. One spear left.
I was still 5 metres away from the chessboard when a mass of marble and lotuses began rising next to it. The sun had gone down yet again. 24 hours had passed. I went as fast as I could, nearly stumbling twice. I saw two lotuses on the front turn white and shift and shrink into eyes. Two petals on the sides of the mass stretched and turned into elvenesque, pointy ears. Jagged shards of white marble formed themselves into a toothy grin. Eventually, the entire mass became smooth, shifting in hue to an olive brown. Vines grew over the mass, turning into the aswang’s robes and taking on bright coloured patterns. The thing’s head shifted towards me, and I was met with bloodshot eyes. It launched itself towards me. And in the span of less than a second, the transformation reversed itself. It fell past the chessboard in a heap of broken lotus flowers and cracked marble. I had touched the chessboard.
Now I had to make my move.
The rules said nothing of how much time I had to make my move, but I took a risk and stood there for a few minutes. I gazed around at the endless lotus field and impossibly tall black marble pillars. The vines wreathed around the pillars and over the shallow lakebed, all in front of a background of a galaxy of shining stars. The sun’s orange glow faded as it fell past the horizon, and my surroundings were overtaken by hues of blues and purples.
I looked at one of the lotuses adorning the chessboard. It was delicate, with a vibrant yellow bulb in the center accented by a crown of petals, white in the centre and expanding to a beautiful pink at the edges. This felt like a dream. This was the deadliest situation I’d ever been in, yet in this moment I felt nothing but peace.
I unconsciously shifted my weight, and the sharp pain in my calf brought me back to the current situation. I already knew what move I was going to play. The most common and solid move against the Indian defense was to play c4 and move the king’s bishop pawn up two spaces. It grabbed space in the center and capitalized on the slower playstyle of the opening. It was imperative that I not lose the position - while white enjoys a large spatial advantage, it is nearly impossible to make a comeback if black obtains a winning position.
I looked at the four columns surrounding the chessboard, each a little over 5 metres from me. A large canopy of vines hung between the columns, easily enough to support my weight. Lower-hanging vines could be used as ropes to pull myself up. The note had said there were safe rooms in the columns and under the lakebed. Those columns were easily large enough to hold a small room. I doubted there were no doors in the vine canopy.
I went to step away from the chessboard. As I did, the mass of lotuses and marble slowly began to rise again. I immediately stepped back to the board, and it fell down once more. I sighed. I had a game plan. I just hoped I could execute it in 60 seconds.
I moved the king’s bishop pawn two spaces forwards. The board responded with e6 and moved the king’s pawn up one square. I went towards the column as fast as the crutch would allow me. I had a good amount of time to climb when I reached the column - About 45 seconds. I put my arm through the gap in the crutch and held it on my arm as I climbed. It was a difficult task, but I was on the canopy about 3 metres off the ground. I looked down. Not good. The aswang was nearly fully formed. The only option I could think of was to hide. I went to the side of the column opposite the chessboard, praying the vines did not snap. After what felt like hours in under five seconds, I heard the sound of the aswang walking. I held my breath.
The walking sounds were getting quieter.
Not even daring to breathe a sigh of relief, I looked across the canopy, and my previous suspicions were confirmed. A small wooden handle was attached to the column across from me. A safe room.
Quietly as possible, I crawled along the thickest parts of the canopy, avoiding any risk of a vine snapping and sending me to the ground, alerting the aswang, or both. Eventually, I reached the door. I opened it and crawled my way inside.
Inside the column was a cylindrical room close to 2 metres across. The room itself went up very high, nearly 10 metres, and marble platforms jutted out from the walls, turning the room into some kind of spiral staircase.
I decided to climb. Ten platforms up, the platform had the 19x19 grid of a Go board carved into it, and the next platform was indented and held hundreds of black and white marble tiles. I accidentally knocked a few of them off as I climbed up. A few platforms later was the 8x8 grid of a chessboard, and the next platform was similarly indented to hold the pieces. A few more platforms up and I reached the top. The top was a large platform that acted as effectively a floor as opposed to a step. It stretched across the room, and was padded by a large pile of now wilted lotuses. I wasn’t able to lay down straight on it, but I was able to get into a relatively comfortable position if I curled up slightly. Next to the pile were three bone things. They looked similar to a clothes hanger, being a hook attached to a handle on each side.
I looked behind me and saw there was a door.
Cautiously, I opened it. There was no canopy here, and if I stepped out I’d find myself plummeting to the aswang below. But what there was, was a thick braid of five vines tied around the column at the base of the door, leading above the chessboard to a column 20 metres away.
It was a zipline. That could come in handy.
I decided to play through some more practice games before I went to sleep. I went down to the chessboard platform and grabbed the pieces from the next platform up. Underneath the pieces, however, was a piece of paper. I picked it up. It contained only two words, repeated on the page over and over.
“DON’T CASTLE.”

Bumping “Angeles” by Elliott Smith rn. We’re in the Los after all.
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FBE World Tag Team Champion Capital STEEZ vs FBE Junior Heavyweight Champion Misery
Getting the block hot in the Grand Olympic Auditorium was a true Clash of the Champions, Capital STEEZ and Misery channelling their inner Ricky Steamboat vs Ric Flair as the greatest FBE World Tag Team Champion in history put on an intense fight with the woman rapidly approaching the longest reign as FBE Junior Heavyweight Champion! As seesaw of a battle as you’d ever see, King Capital and the Mis lived up to the hype and more, displaying exactly why they’ve held their respective titles for as long as they have whilst showing off that they can do just as much of a jam-up job under Pure Rules too, two Shining Light League favourites from B and D Block respectively tearing the house down. With the last such potential Semi Final preview seeing Misery’s Death to Juniors stablemate Joshua Epps pick up the win, she was determined to make that 2 for 2. Tangling with an all-time great was no easy feat, but in the end it was indeed Misery picking up her career’s biggest win yet!
Misery (8) def. Capital STEEZ (7)
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A Block: Mr. Calcote Miller [2] vs Paddy Murphy [0]
Despite carrying the burdens of heartbreak on his back after Michael Kalamity lived up to his surname, cruelly ending the fan-favourite Sham-Rock N’ Scot Connection, a determined Paddy Murphy headed into Blitz tonight looking to complete the Journey To The Centre Of The First Win all the same to kick off a different tournament campaign the right way. Mr. Calcote Miller with the strongest standing of A Block currently, sitting on top with an uncontested 2 points, he had everything to lose here, the pressure on him immense to maintain his standing above the rest. And yet, he appeared to handle it rather well, not cracking despite the climbing temperatures. Unfortunately for him, Murphy’s been starved for too long of his moment, firing on all cylinders here to show he’s not as 2nd Rate as it may have originally been thought, producing an unstoppable performance to lead him to his first win in FBE!
Paddy Murphy [2] (10) def. Mr. Calcote Miller [2] (4)
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C Block: Ripley [2] vs Travis Broski [0]
Since the final night of the Carnage Tour, the world’s been frothing at the mouth for a chance to see the Ripple in Time and the Undercity Underdog get in there with each other again, their tantalising draw leaving more to be wanted. Lucky for everyone, fate did its job, pairing them up here in the Shining Light League’s C Block for another certified banger no matter how you spin it. Ripley boasting the upper hand with two points to his name thus far, Travis Broski was left fighting from underneath for a chance to redeem his own first night performance, which worked perfectly in his favour, at his best in circumstances like these. That being said, he still had a mountain of a fight to summit, a landslide headed his way courtesy of The RISE member, though Travis managed to pull Ripley in its way instead to kickstart his own comeback in this tournament!
Travis Broski [2] (9) def. Ripley [2] (5)
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PROVINCE (FBE Television Champion T.M Imran & Erick Koeman) vs The Ark (Cactus Mike & FBE World Tag Team Champion Code Blue)
With a nostalgic episode of Wide World Of Sports preceding tonight’s show, featuring The Ark man himself Code Blue, the excitement for this one was only further launched through the roof, the Pasadena Paralyser set to stand across the ring from his former PRIMETIME partner for the first time since Mayflower Mayhem 2021! At very different points in their respective careers now, T.M Imran running ship with PROVINCE, deep in his second FBE Television Championship reign, Flying Dutchman by his side, and Code Blue… running boat with The Ark, amid the greatest FBE World Tag Team Championship reign in company history, Cactus “Ark Ark Ark” Mike by his side, there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt in anyone’s mind that these lot were at their very best when they tangled under Pure Rules.
Mike soon set to challenge Imran for his title, a big focus was placed on those two as they got familiar with each other’s body of work in order to strategise effectively for the pay day, whilst incorporating sound tag team wrestling on both ends, Blue brandishing his obvious unparalleled experience, and Koeman yet again proving himself to be a valuable glue like he was back in WarGames. Whilst the champion end definitely brought it, it wasn’t to be their night, The Ark gaining the New Hardcore Legend some key momentum!
The Ark (Cactus Mike & Code Blue) (11) def. PROVINCE (T.M Imran & Erick Koeman) (4)
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C Block: EED [0] vs Mark Steel [0]
Neither of these two men strangers to high-profile tournaments, EED involved in the crowning of the very-first FBE World Heavyweight Champion and the Shining Light League’s own predecessor, the E1 Climax, and Mark Steel a member of last year’s stacked Punish & Crush and Heyman Classic line-ups, they channelled the many lessons they’d picked up along the way here, wrestling efficiently so as to not burn themselves out yet still slamming down on their respective gas pedals enough to drive to victory. EED on the lighter schedule, he was the fresher of the two here, though found himself less conditioned to take shots the way Peak Performance was, steeling his way through the Notorious’s offence to give the OG a surprise. Nevertheless, the most accomplished man in his Block by miles, EED didn’t let it get to him, continuing to push on, though he’d have another thing coming when Mark scored one of the biggest upsets of his career, knocking off the legend to secure two points!
Mark Steel [2] def. EED [0] (NS)
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A Block: FBE Pure Champion Dr. Logan Wright [1] vs Arslan Malik [0]
With the A Block leader stunned earlier in the night, Dr. Logan Wright was presented with the perfect opportunity to capitalise and launch himself into first place after a gruelling opening match, though Arslan Malik would not make that easy, knowing what beating the FBE Pure Champion would mean for his career, delivering in prime “Ass-Kicker” form. The Doctor got stabby like it were an XPW show, wanting to inject Malik with the right dose to knock him out for the 3-count, whilst Arslan did his best to avoid the needle and score the winning shot of his own, Malik’s blows just as sharp as Logan’s. In a war of two very different forms of sedation, it was the man with the medical license that eventually won out, the FBE Pure Champion remaining afloat as the tides rose him to 3 points and block leader!
Dr. Logan Wright [3] (12) def. Arslan Malik [0] (3)
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Non-Title/British Rounds: FBE World Heavyweight Champion Inferno vs Joshua Epps
The long-awaited third instalment to the budding saga between Inferno and Joshua Epps came to a head right here in what’s been dubbed “The Wager in the Aether”, FBE World Heavyweight Champion and God’s Greatest Athlete out to prove who the undisputed better man is between them. A traditional 15-minutes on the clock, though split into three 5-minute rounds with a 20 second break between each, Blitz witnessed its first-ever and hopefully far from last British Rounds match in the holy grounds of Rocky Balboa vs Apollo Creed, its two competitors primed to show what pure wrestling is all about.
Epps one of the biggest success stories on Season 2 of Blitz thus far, it was clear just why with him putting on another masterclass on his end, wowing the onlooking judges with a perfect hybrid of catch wrestling and powerhouse bidness that wouldn’t look out of place at all on an episode of World of Sport 6 decades ago. Inferno answered with Marty Jones and Billy Robinson inspired techniques, paying homage to some of the men that’ve influenced his very British style of working, whilst remaining every bit of a cocky bastard as he could be in between, the Gatekeeper of Pure Rules working that mission statement to bring down any new blood that tries to size him up on his domain. Ultimately, three closely-fought, superb rounds resulted in the judges leaning their scorecards in Baba Blitz’s favour, Inferno staying on top of his home turf!
Round One: Inferno (9) def. Joshua Epps (4)
Round Two: Inferno (9) def. Joshua Epps (4)
Round Three: Inferno (8) def. Joshua Epps (5)
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A Block Standings:

Place	Competitor	Points	Record
1	Dr. Logan Wright (c)	3	1-1-0
2	Paddy Murphy	2	1-0-0
2	Mr. Calcote Miller	2	1-0-1
4	Jay Castle	1	0-1-0
5	Arslan Malik	0	0-0-2

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C Block Standings:

Place	Competitor	Points	Record
1	John LaGuardia	2	1-0-0
1	Travis Broski	2	1-0-1
1	Ripley	2	1-0-1
1	Mark Steel	2	1-0-1
5	EED	0	0-0-1

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Three fabulous nights down, but still many more to go. Interesting results are starting to break through here in the tournament as the last of the competitors begin to assume their spots in their respective Blocks, so stay tuned for next week as we see all 20 wrestlers officially be brought into play! Until then, keep wrestling the good wrestling, and pure rules.

This is my second year of bingo, so naturally I had to extra challenge myself and do a themed card this time. I set out to do strictly re-tellings, but I ended up broadening the category to include strongly inspired by or incorporating folk tales or mythology. It’s a category I read a lot in anyway, and I love that the genre is exploding to include cultures world-wide. And yet somehow I only ended up with 13 authors of color (out of 40 - counting all the short stories). But this year was about 90% women (with 3 non-binary and one man), so huzzah for feminist re-tellings! And all but four of the authors were new to me. I didn’t quite hit all hard mode, but the theme was my hard mode, really.
I tried to cover a variety of inspiration texts (myths, folk tales, “classic literature,” film) as well as stories from around the world, but I’m missing any representation from Australia and the Pacific Islands as well as South America. The origins of a lot of the stories are Western European, but some have been re-told in settings elsewhere in the world. East Asia also ended up well represented.
I did end up substituting a square this year. Instead of “weird ecology,” I opted for 2018’s “a god is a character” square. There were a couple books that had some weird landscaping in them, but none of them quite fit the spirit of the square. Things like a magical forest in an otherwise standard-issue earthly landscape rather than a fundamentally different ecosystem overall. If anyone has any recs for re-tellings set on far-flung planets, let me know! I tend not to do deep researching – mostly I read somewhat mindfully, hoping for the best, and panic in January.
Here’s the visual card: https://imgur.com/4XRW9W9
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Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (LGBTQIA list)
The Iliad from Patroclus’ perspective, but starting with his childhood and teenage years in which he and Achilles grow up together and fall in love.
If you remember the Iliad or just the general arc of the story of the Trojan war, then you will go into this knowing it’s going to be a tragedy. That doesn’t make the pain any less exquisite. The time we spend growing up with Patroclus moves from lonely and neglected to beautiful, golden, idyllic. The voice of Patroclus – pacifist and healer – is expertly written and his relationship with god-like Achilles is full of moments that make the heart ache. This is still on the best-seller list for a reason.
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Lore Olympus: Volume One by Rachel Smythe (Substitute square: god character, HM)
Olympus is a contemporary city, albeit still only inhabited by gods, and Hades and Persephone might be falling for each other.
Graphic novel. The limited color palettes in this volume are excellent, emphasizing mood and character. It’s beautiful to read. The Greek gods are notorious for having very human flaws, and this telling feels very rooted in human emotions. Olympus feels a bit like a college campus in this telling. There’s a lot of loneliness, and trying to figure out how to fit in. It also gets a big content warning for rape.
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Hag: Forgotten Folk Tales Retold by Imogen Hermes Gowar, Naomi Booth, Emma Glass, Irenosen Okojie, Daisy Johnson, Natasha Carthew, Eimear McBride, Liv Little, Mahsuda Snaith, Kirsty Logan (2+ authors, HM)
Strange folk tales from every corner of the U.K. are re-imagined – often in contemporary settings – giving women voices they may have been denied in the originals.
It took me a long time to read all these short stories because almost every one deals with death or brutality towards women. That’s not to say they all have unhappy endings – indeed, some have joyously vengeful endings – but there’s quiet tragedy and outright violence woven throughout. Powerful stories, strong narrator voices, and often poetic prose, but read when in a strong mental state.
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A Clash of Steel: A Treasure Island Remix by C.B. Lee (Historical, HM)
Treasure Island set in 1826 in the South China Sea with a pirate crew of queer misfits sailing for treasure and a better life – plus actual historical Pirate Queen Zheng Yi Sao as Captain Flint.
With contemporary prose and an updated cast, this still feels true to the source material with the adventurous quest deciphering maps and clues. Long John Silver doesn’t have an exact analogue, but his surprisingly complex parental feelings come through with found-family bonds as well as a wild ride of birth-family feelings, and a fraught lesbian love interest.
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Once & Future by Cory McCarthy, A.R. Capetta (Set in Space, HM)
This time, King Arthur is a queer teenage girl on the run from the big bad capitalist Mercer Corporation – in space!
In this re-telling, the characters are aware of the King Arthur story as a myth from Old Earth, but when they find themselves re-incarnating the well-worn pattern, they don’t seem to recognize it beyond the magic sword and Ari’s renewed determination to be a hero. Merlin has lived through every iteration, and has his own interests at play. Our heroes spend a fair bit of time in their space ship or on planet-sized space-stations, though it may be pushing the rule to say it’s 50% actually in space. This is a YA book and it definitely reads that way, but it’s fun. I thought the “Renaissance Faire Planet” was a bit of a stretch and the big bad was almost a caricature of every evil empire, but if you can look past a bit of cheesiness, there’s plenty of sci-fi action, a quick pace, and some intrigue under the surface.
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The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid (Standalone, HM)
Hungarian and Jewish folklore plus the early spread of Christianity weave together to create a world where magic manifests differently depending on your religious tradition, the Christians are ardent new converts in charge of a poor besieged country, and persecution abounds.
The first person perspective came with a lot of (justified) rage and some pretty violent moments, but I found Évike’s voice to be frustratingly naïve at times. The pacing was uneven, and with a lot of elements in play the story was lacking cohesion. I felt okay on the enemies-to-lovers trope in this one. Overall, this book was redeemed for me by the imagined folk stories woven in, and the heart-warming moments spent in the Jewish community. (I forget the actual names of the religions in the book, but they’re pretty obvious stand-ins.)
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These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong (Anti-hero, HM)
This time, Romeo and Juliet are in rival gangs in 1926 Shanghai, but their teenage romance is already dead from betrayal at the start of the book and a strange madness is devastating the city they struggle to rule.
I usually read-read, but this one I listened to and I loved the narrator! I had a few hang-ups on Juliet as a character (though perfect anti-hero material). Which was tough since she got of lot of screen time, but thankfully we also got Roma and some absolutely wonderful side characters, including a trans woman and a refuses-to-admit-it gay couple. There were some moments of lovely prose, plenty of action, and all the jostling factions in the city were well-balanced in the narrative. First of a series, I definitely want to pick up the second one soon.
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All the Murmuring Bones by A.G. Slatter (Book Club, HM)
Drawing primarily on Irish folklore, this is the story of a girl who wants to escape her family obligations - ones that come with generational trauma and greed.
It’s a little hard to talk about this one without spoilers since there are basically three distinct sections and each could almost stand as a story on its own, but each depends on the earlier one. Another angry woman in this one, taking matters into her own hands and trying to break spells, break open dark family secrets, and get free of men who are trying very hard to be in charge. I liked the gothic atmosphere, the prose, and probably the middle journey section with fairy-tale creature encounters was my favorite. The family history is also told in mini fairy-tales throughout. The ending fell a bit flat, and I didn’t really connect to the main character, but neither of those were deal-breakers for me.
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Spear by Nicola Griffith (Cool Weapon, HM)
From the King Arthur mythos, the story of Percival and the quest for the holy grail, but Percival is a supernatural queer woman who lives in sixth century Wales when the pagan gods still have power.
Novella. The story opens slowly and with some very poetic prose to start Peretur’s early life in the wilderness with her mother – a mythic feeling that I fell hard for right off the bat. And yet it also felt very much a story from history – the details of the setting showed the research Griffith put in. I wish it were just a touch longer to give some more room to the relationship developments that get packed into the back half of the book. But the interweaving of historical details, tidbits from myth and story, and imagination was so flawless that this re-telling feels like it could be the "true" history of the story-figure. Even including the gender flip - a skillfully handled "woman dresses as a man to be a knight" trope that works even better when the woman is queer.
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Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny (Revolution/Rebellion, HM)
On a distant planet in the far future, the original colonizing crew have set themselves up as gods, specifically taking on the roles of the Hindu pantheon. One member heartily disagrees with how the rest are running things.
The prose in this one was a little tough and I’m pretty sure the style is a deliberate choice to make this book feel more akin to reading a religious text. And as a play off of Hesse’s 1922 Siddhartha, since they share the same main character. But some of it may also simply be because it was written in 1967. Still, the content is intriguing. The struggle is between the immortal gods who like being the ones with all the advanced tech (including re-incarnation to transfer themselves into new bodies), and the one who thinks this is some kinda bullshit, why make the inhabitants here go through the dark ages when they could have medicine and electricity now. The premise and watching it play out is the interest here, not so much any emotional investment in the characters.
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The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White (Name in the Title, HM)
Still asking, “who is the monster?” and giving the same answer even more definitively than the original, this is a re-telling of Frankenstein from Elizabeth’s POV with some distinctive twists.
In 2022 I did the Dracula read-along and then promptly decided it was finally time to do Frankenstein as well. Which meant I could now read re-tellings of these classics. Elizabeth, when you get to hear her side, turns out not only to be independent-minded, but also a remarkable anti-hero character trying desperately to maintain the only stability she’s ever known. Though there are a lot of grim happenings and emotional abuse, this version has more hope for humanity than the original (which, imo, has almost none). Also, unlike narrator Viktor, Elizabeth doesn’t make you hate her guts regularly; she’s just trying to survive. The prose was the weak point in this one, especially coming off Mary Shelley, but not detrimentally so.
​
What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher (Author Uses Initials, HM)
Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” leaves plenty of room for embellishing and this novella does so perfectly with nightmare fungus, more rounded-out characters (including a non-binary protagonist), and horrifyingly possessed creatures.
Alex is a rational narrator, the best kind for encountering increasingly creepy phenomena. Even with the addition of a no-nonsense mycologist and a competent American doctor, the atmosphere of oppressive, inevitable horror from the original short story suffuses this novella. There certainly are rational lines of thoughts to follow to unravel the mystery of the Ushers’ illnesses, but that doesn’t stop each revelation from setting everyone on edge and fearing madness of themselves. Gothic. Horror. Perfection.
​
Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan (Published in 2022, HM)
The Chinese story of Chang’e is the basis for this re-telling, but this focuses on her daughter and starts after the original stories end. Xingyin’s quest is to obtain freedom and forgiveness for her mother’s actions that gained her goddess status, but exiled her to the moon.
The world building of the Celestial Kingdom was a highlight of this one for me since I’m not super familiar with the Chinese pantheon. The story itself relied on some classic YA tropes (including a love triangle, one of my least favorites) and I found the narrator’s voice somewhat simplistic. She’s also a very emotional character, which at times was endearing and at others frustrating. Wise, peaceful dragons do make an appearance, though, and there’s some good political intrigue and a few unforeseen twists. An entertaining read overall, and there’s set-up for the second book, but this one wrapped up nicely enough and I’m not feeling pressed to read the second one right away.
​
The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo (Urban Fantasy, HM)
The Great Gatsby, but from Jordan Baker’s perspective and she’s a bi Vietnamese adoptee in a New York where magic makes all the parties more dazzling.
It’s hard to like any of the characters in the Gatsby story, but Jordan Baker as narrator certainly gets more sympathy from me in this go-round. Raised in a rich white family, she carries internalized racism with her, and yet struggles against it every day in a country that is trying to enact a law that will force her to leave. Where the original story condemns classism and unbridled ambition, this story expands its criticism to America’s long history of excluding people of color and the LGBTQ+ community. The prose is gorgeous, and where it overlaps with original scenes it dovetails perfectly. The magic adds an extra shimmer to this story, but doesn’t outshine the character work. I hope this one gets added to curriculums to pair with the original.
​
Skin of the Sea by Natasha Bowen (Set in Africa, HM)
Inspired by West African mythology with the Little Mermaid for some plot points. Simi was a human who became a Mami Wata and is struggling to fit into her role bringing home the souls of those who died at sea. One decision endangers all the Mami Wata and sends her on a quest with a boy that will entangle her with the gods and other legendary creatures.
This story is chock full of magical beings, young adults attempting to navigate dangerous situations as well as their relationships, and quests of mythic proportions. The dark underbelly of the story is the destruction of West African communities as colonizers take their people into slave ships. Though tragedy runs alongside the story, our heroes mostly manage to stay one step ahead of the worst outcomes. The quest did some meandering, and characterizations were a bit uneven, but I think it really came together in the latter half. The main plot wraps up well, but makes set-up for the next book clear and I do intend to get to it eventually.
​
A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger (Non-human protagonist, HM)
With roots in Lipan Apache storytelling traditions, this is the story of a cottonmouth snake and a human girl whose worlds run in parallel, but become entangled as they try to save friends and family from existential threats.
This technically has two protagonists, but the snake is the one whose chapters are in first person and the human’s are in third person. This also would have been great for the hard mode BIPOC author square since the author is Lipan Apache. I absolutely loved everyone in this story. Nina is an intrepid modern girl and a loner, but with strong family ties; and Ollie is a homebody snake setting out to make his way in the wide world. The friends Ollie makes help him to discover his own bravery, and they are a delightfully colorful bunch of creatures! Nina is trying to help her grandmother and unravel the mysteries of their family’s past and possible connections to the animal people. Read this story to be filled with the love of friendship and family, and hope in the face of climate change and social media ills.
​
Fractured Fables: A Spindle Splintered & A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow (Timey Wimey, HM)
Zinnia Gray’s illness means she likely won’t live past 21, but when she falls into a Sleeping Beauty parallel universe, she might be able to at least save someone else from that fate. In book two, she’s dealing poorly with life in the “real” world, but busting out into a new fairy tale multi-verse (Snow White’s), and finding even more complications in the re-tellings there.
I read both novellas currently out in this series, and our hero does a fair bit of jumping around the fairy tale multiverse which makes it clear that time doesn’t run evenly across it all. It’s not really the focus, but it’s there, and it does affect a couple plot points. I think Alix Harrow read the same book I did about disability in fairy tales (Disfigured by Amanda Leduc) and took it to heart to create her hero in this contemporary fairy tale take. Zinnia’s chronic illness is both from an industrial accident and an embodiment of a fairy tale curse. These books don’t take themselves too seriously, but do handle disability and the emotional impacts that come with it pretty well, I think. Disney’s re-telling style features in book one, and book two gets some darker, more horror-esque takes.
​
Wintersong by S. Jae-Jones (Mental Health)
The re-telling of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth you didn’t know you needed with extra depth from Germanic folk roots and a little Hades-Persephone flavor. Set in early 19th century Bavaria, protagonist Liesl is a composer stuck helping run her family’s inn; in the woods, Der Erlkönig (the Goblin King), may be a relic of a pagan past, but that doesn’t stop him from meddling with her heart and her family members.
Liesl is bipolar and her brother (prodigy violinist) has anxiety and (in book 2) severe depression. Her father is an alcoholic. The family member who gets stolen and must be retrieved is her beautiful sister, the life of the family. Liesl’s wild up and down swings are on full display when she enters the realm of the Goblin King and is trying to navigate her relationship with him, her relationship with her music, and her love for her family. This is an emotional book and you will be angry at almost every character at some point. But it’s also heartbreakingly beautiful. The romance sizzles; it’s unhealthy and you want them to fix it. It’s probably not a book for everyone, but I spent a fevered day and a half devouring it. For extra doses of struggling with mental health, sobbing, and musical composing, read book two – Shadowsong.
​
In the Shadows of Giants by Lazette Gifford (Self-published, HM)
In the far future, the Norse pantheon ends up pitted against the Chinese pantheon and an elder god in a potential new Ragnarok with Loki trying to avoid the mishaps of the last one – in space!
Loki gets some good character work in this book, but other characters are a little light on depth. Though Loki is the main focus, I liked that we got some chapters in the Chinese pantheon as well, getting some insight into the politics of the situation from their perspective – and not everyone in their pantheon is on board with the way things are going. Loki is also not really convinced of teaming up with the rest of his own pantheon again either, but he still has a few good ties there and room to mends some relationships. This wasn’t a stand-out novel for me, but neither do I have any strong complaints. It’s a solid sci-fi-fantasy mix, good prose, and well-paced plotting.
​
Reluctant Immortals by Gwendolyn Kiste (Runner-up, HM)
It’s 1967 in San Francisco and Lucy (from Dracula) and Bertha (from Jane Eyre) are the titular reluctant immortals trying to keep their tormentors from destroying more lives.
This seems like it could be an action-packed super-powered immortal battle, but instead it’s the mundanity of simply surviving as an undead being, escalating slowly into a horrifying body count. Obviously I had to read this after finishing the Dracula read-along. The tone is such a contrast! Where Dracula’s heroes struggle nobly against the darkness, this version is full of quiet desperation and bleakness more fitting as the successor to Jane Eyre. As the action ramps up in the last third, it plays out more like a contemporary horror film, including a strange liminal space in the afterlife and scenes of a modern mansion filled with the decay that the undead bring. The drug haze of California in the 60’s suffuses the story. I’m not entirely convinced this was a re-telling we needed, but I’m also not mad about it.
​
Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel (BIPOC author)
Kaikeyi is only briefly in the Hindu epic The Ramayana, but her “wicked stepmother” action sets the plot of it in motion. In this novel, she is given a voice and a backstory and a complex world she must navigate as a woman who wants more independence not only for herself, but for all the women of her country.
The relationship building in the latter half is one of the highlights of this book. It’s helped by some magic, but Kaikeyi puts in the work to build bonds of love and mutual respect in the royal household where she is youngest of three wives. Rama (her step-son) is the main character in the original epic (a god incarnated to vanquish evil forces), and so the reader is clued in early that disaster will befall the family because of a conflict between Kaikeyi and her husband and Rama; the threat of that tragedy seeps into even the happy parts of the story. Kaikeyi is a champion of early feminism in this telling, but she’s still human with plenty of flaws and struggles and imperfect vision. I found this book to be a bit of a slow build to connect with characters, but by the end I was absolutely tearing up. A powerful telling.
​
Malice by Heather Walter (Shapeshifters, HM)
In this Sleeping Beauty re-telling (perhaps prequel), the villain is not yet the villain – though society certainly treats her as an outcast – and a forbidden love is blooming.
This is a coming of age story for an already young adult character. Alice wants to be accepted (and loved), proving she’s not the evil pariah society thinks she is, but she also wants to escape the role she’s forced into. The build-up of tension between her warring desires is well done. As she discovers her true powers (spoilers since I used it for the shapeshifting square!) she’s put even more at odds with the establishment, and yet her growing love for Princess Aurora gives her hope for a more idyllic outcome than the escape she’s trying to plan. This was another enjoyable but not necessarily a stand-out read for me. Excellent character work for the protagonist and a slower pacing, but never felt like it was dragging. I will definitely read book 2 since this one ends with a bang.
​
Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust (No Ifs, Ands, or Buts, HM)
This book mushes up elements from Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Beauty and the Beast, and probably others, and spins a whole new story with Persian flair. A poisonous princess is kept hidden away, but when knowledge of her curse comes from a demon, her decisions will have far-reaching consequences for her whole family and the question of who to trust becomes thorny.
This was another one where the protagonist is striving to be a good person, caring for her family, and yet she understandably wants to escape her curse and is maybe willing to do some questionable things to make it happen. It’s hard to keep being good when, even though you are loved, you can’t touch anyone and have to live in a gilded cage. This story took a lot of twists and turns, including betrayals of all kinds. The romance elements were laced with emotional tension, but kept sexual feelings to a bare minimum. I felt this could have used a bit of plot streamlining, but I liked the Persian-inspired world, the overall arc of the story, and I felt it wrapped up well for a complex stand-alone.
​
For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten (Family Matters)
I thought this would be primarily Little Red Riding Hood, but it’s got a huge helping of Beauty and the Beast and a dose of fairy tale sisters tropes as well. Red is the sister that will be sacrificed to the Wolf in the Wilderwood in hopes of the gods’ return. Turns out, that whole Wolf and Wilderwood thing is really complicated.
This has a lot of elements that I tend to look favorably on – a broody love interest, a magical forest, sibling bonds – but it didn’t quite pull together for me in this book. Both characters in the romance got good development and their choices did make sense for who they were, but it was a very frustrating one to read and caused a lot of drag in the middle. The sibling relationship was much better and the sister who gets to become queen has a wonderfully tragic arc in the name of saving her lost sister. The forest itself and the religion/magic that goes with it don’t get a ton of satisfying explanation, but that’s partly due to everyone actually struggling to figure out how it works. It gets an A+ for creepy atmosphere, though! Imagery from Grimm’s more grim tales abounds and I appreciated the slight edge of horror that creeps in. Not super likely to pick up book 2.
​
I’ve done a terrible job being concise here, so I’ll try to do a really quick run-down on the short stories. I just listed the first collection on my official bingo turn-in to make it easy, but I like being able to fill in all the slots in my spreadsheet, so there are five things here. Hopefully someone has made it this far down – if so, thank you for reading!
​
The Bloody Chamber & Other Stories by Angela Carter (collection)
The titular story is one of the better ones – a re-telling of Bluebeard. Covering the classics of western European fairy tales, this collection features a lot of liberated sex with a 70s feminist lean (publication date: 1979). Girls and beasts are the big theme. There were a few excellent ones and several that left me going “but why?”
The Bride of the Blue Wind by Victoria Goddard
Closer to a novelette, but that gave this story room to get some solid world-building in. Bluebeard again, but with Bluebeard being a djinn sort of character. I loved the trader communities and desert setting and the family dynamic with the wife’s sisters.
Tales of Old Gods & New by Kate MacLeod (collection)
This collection had two specific re-tellings: another “Norse gods in the far future” re-telling which was also a sci-fi survival story, and an African inspired goddess trying to escape the cycle of her story. These were two solid ones, some of the other in the collection I felt were unfinished scribbling thoughts for novel-sized stories.
Hunting Monsters series by S.L. Huang (2 short stories, one novella)
This collection mashed up eastern and western settings and stories, including Red Riding Hood, Beauty & the Beast, the Legend of the White Snake, and Hou Yi the Archer. The main characters of the novella are middle-aged women long past the prime in which their original stories took place and I liked that take a lot. The short stories focus on a daughter and deal with culture clashes and parent-child tensions.
A Cathedral of Myth & Bone by Kat Howard (collection)
The feature in this collection is a novelette of the King Arthur story set on a college campus with grad students who are themselves studying the mythos of King Arthur. Most of the other stories in the collection take inspiration from saints’ lives or myth and folk tale tropes (or the concept of storytelling itself) and play with them in new settings. I found a lot more hits than misses in this collection.

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 34%. (I'm a bot)

Reuters . On Feb. 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia was suspending its participation in the New START treaty with the United States that limits the two sides' deployed strategic nuclear arsenals.
The United States has told Russia it will not exchange data on its nuclear forces, a White House spokesperson said on Tuesday, describing the change as a response to Moscow's decision to suspend participation in the New START nuclear arms treaty.
"Under international law, the United States has the right to respond to Russia's breaches of the New START Treaty by taking proportionate and reversible countermeasures in order to induce Russia to return to compliance with its obligations," a spokesperson for the National Security Council said.
"That means that because Russia's claimed suspension of the New START Treaty is legally invalid, the U.S. is legally permitted to withhold our biannual data update in response to Russia's breaches," the spokesperson added.
On Feb. 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia was suspending its participation in the New START treaty with the United States that limits the two sides' deployed strategic nuclear arsenals.
Putin stressed that Russia was not withdrawing from the treaty but the suspension further imperils the last remaining pillar of arms control between the United States and Russia, which between them hold nearly 90% of the world's nuclear warheads - enough to destroy the planet many times over.

Summary Source FAQ Feedback Top keywords: Russia^#1 treaty^#2 nuclear^#3 New^#4 START^#5
Post found in /worldnews.
NOTICE: This thread is for discussing the submission topic. Please do not discuss the concept of the autotldr bot here.

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 87%. (I'm a bot)

Over a year into an invasion that, according to Russian planning, was supposed to take weeks, Vladimir Putin's government is putting society on a war footing with the west and digging in for a multiyear conflict.
Speaking at length to workers at an aviation factory in the Buryatia region recently, Putin once again cast the war as an existential battle for Russia's survival.
The thinly veiled message to the people, Trudolyubov said, was that the war in Ukraine would not be ending anytime soon and that Russians must learn to live with it.
"Many in the country have now fully accepted that this war will not go away and believe that they need to learn to live under the reality," said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who has studied public attitudes towards the war since its beginning.
Schools have been instructed to add basic military training and "Patriotic" lessons that aim to justify the war in Ukraine.
Konstantin Malofeev, a conservative oligarch who was sanctioned by the US in 2014 for "Threatening Ukraine and providing financial support to the Donetsk separatist region," said: "We have not seen such hatred since after Russian soldiers ended the war with the victory in Berlin. We stopped that war and now we, the victors, are once again facing the fact that it has risen up from hell against us."

Summary Source FAQ Feedback Top keywords: war^#1 Russian^#2 Putin^#3 country^#4 Ukraine^#5
Post found in /worldnews, /europe, /UkrainianConflict, /worldnews, /theworldnews, /europe, /putinwarns, /seenOnWorldNews, /europe, /Rusnya, /RedditSample, /TheColorIsBlue, /viral, /AutoNewspaper and /GUARDIANauto.
NOTICE: This thread is for discussing the submission topic. Please do not discuss the concept of the autotldr bot here.

I am in the USA. :)
IGSREP (60+ confirmed trades): https://www.reddit.com/IGSRep/comments/107d3lb/kamenramens_igs_rep_page/
GAMES I KNOW YOU WANT:

• Black Desert Online Traveler Edition (key expires 12/31/23)
• Blasphemous
• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
• Blood and Zombies
• Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!
• Doom 2
• Doom 64
• Doom Eternal
• Garfield Kart: Furious Racing
• Hotshot Racing
• Indivisible
• Intruders: Hide and Seek
• Monster Crown
• Morbid: The Seven Acolytes
• nIGHTS into dreams
• Outbuddies DX
• Slain: Back from Hell
• Summer in Mara
• Tunche
• Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion
• Valfaris

TÜRKIYE-SYRIA EARTHQUAKE RELIEF BUNDLE:

• 112 Operator
• 911 Operator
• Agent in Depth
• Alchemist's Castle
• Arcade Spirits
• Armello
• Backbone
• Calico
• Cats and the Other Lives
• Death Squared
• Detached: Non-VR Edition
• Doughlings Arcade
• Doughlings Invasion
• Farming Simulator 17
• Firegirl: Hack 'n Splash Rescue DX
• Frick, Inc.
• Ghostrunner
• Guilty Gear X2 #Reload
• Guns & Fishes
• Hack 'n' Slash
• Hyper Gunsport
• Into the Pit
• Izmir: An Independence Simulator
• Lighthouse Keeper
• Little Orpheus
• Lust from Beyond - M Edition
• Meow Express
• MirrorMoon EP
• Monaco
• Mount & Blade: Warband
• Non-Stop Raiders
• Orbital Racer
• Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition
• PAYDAY 2 (I have 3 DLC masks too!)
• Pill Baby
• Pixross
• Planet TD
• Project Chemistry
• Quadrata
• Remnants of Naezith
• Rym 9000
• Soulblight
• Soulflow
• Soul Searching
• Stacking
• stikir
• Space Crew: Legendary Edition
• Strange Brigade
• Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
• Sunlight
• Symmetry
• System Shock Enhanced Edition
• System Shock 2
• The Inner World
• The Amazing American Circus
• Ticket to Ride
• Worms Rumble
• XCOM 2
• X-Morph: Defense Complete Pack
• Zombie Driver HD

STAND WITH UKRAINE BUNDLE:

• Book of Demons (2x)
• Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons
• Car Mechanic Simulator 2018
• Corridor Z
• Dagon: by H. P. Lovecraft - The Eldritch Box DLC (2x)
• Dear Esther: Landmark Edition (2x)
• Draw Slasher (2x)
• Drawful 2 (2x)
• Driftland: The Magic Revival
• DV: Rings of Saturn (2x)
• EarthX (2x)
• Endless Space 2
• Expeditions: Viking (2x)
• Fury Unleashed
• GameGuru (2x)
• Go Home Dinosaurs
• Iron Danger (2x)
• Liberated (GOG key)
• Lust from Beyond: M Edition (2x)
• Monaco
• Moon Hunters
• NecroWorm (2x)
• Neverout
• Orbital Racer (2x)
• Out of Reach: Treasure Royale (2x)
• Pixplode (2x)
• Popup Dungeon (2x)
• Post Void
• Radio Commander
• Ring of Pain
• Roarr! Jurassic Edition (2x)
• RPG Maker VX (2x)
• Shing! (2x)
• Skullgirls 2nd Encore
• Slinger VR (2x)
• Soulblight
• Supraland
• System Shock: Enhanced Edition
• Telefrag VR (2x)
• The Amazing American Circus
• Toejam & Earl: Back in the Groove
• Treasure Hunter Simulator (2x)
• The USB Stick Found in the Grass (2x)
• Wanderlust: Travel Stories (GOG key) (2x)
• Warsaw (2x)
• We Are Alright (2x)
• X-Morph: Defense - European Assault/Last Bastion/Survival Of The Fittest (2x)
• Yoku's Island Express

OTHER GAMES:

• Commandos 3: Destination Berlin
• Days of War Definitive Edition
• Fallout 1
• Fallout 3
• Field of Glory II
• Five Dates
• For The King
• Hidden & Dangerous 2: Courage Under Fire
• Master Arena
• Men of War™
• Men of War™: Red Tide
• POLE
• Police Stories
• Theatre of War
• Theatre of War: Kursk
• The Battle of Polytopia
• The Game of Life 2
• Tribes of Midgard
• Turok 2

DLC!

• Black Desert Online - Lauren Family Gift Box
• Bloodhunt - EXPOSED ELECTRONIC Headgear
• Brawlhalla - Apex key sword weapon skin
• Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War - Jugger-Teddy Animated Emblem
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II - Burger King DLC
• Call of Duty Warzone Caldera - KF Weapon Charm
• Conqueror's Blade - Exclusive Item Bundle
• Dead Frontier 2 - Survivor Starter Pack Key
• Enlisted - Premium Currency And Account
• Eternal Return - Li Dailin + Luke Character and Skin
• Forza Motorsport 7 - Exclusive Alienware Suit
• Guild Wars 2 - Self-Style Hair Kit
• Guild Wars 2 - Booster Bundle
• Guild Wars 2 - Heroic Boosters
• Guild Wars 2 - Toy Mini-Egg
• Heroes & Generals - Starter Pack
• Paladins - Charcoal Viktor
• PAYDAY 2 - PAYDAYCon 2016 Mask
• PAYDAY 2 - SteelSeries Troll Mask
• PAYDAY 2 - Big Mike Mask
• Rogue Company - Aurora Weapon Wrap
• Rogue Company - Nuclear Winter Secondary Wrap
• Rogue Company - Heist Dima Skin
• Scribble It! Premium Edition DLC (Windows Key)
• Shadow Warrior 2 - Alienware DLC Ninja Skin
• SMITE - Cosmic Conqueror Hercules
• SMITE - Star Strike Neith
• SMITE - Aurora Hel Skin
• Splitgate - Blackout Marshall Character and Legendary Magnum Pistol
• Star Trek Online - Mirror Universe Agony Field Rifle
• Them and Us - First Person Mode
• World of Warships - Seventh Anniversary DLC

Software!

• Pathfinder Second Edition Core Rulebook and Starfinder Core Rulebook (Paizo key)
• Intro to Game Development with Unity (Zenva key)
• Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 7 (Ashampoo key)
• GameMaker Studio 2 Creator 12 Months (YoYo Games key)
• Music Maker EDM Edition (Magix key)
• PDF-Suite (PDF-Suite key)

WANT:

• PayPal $$$
• Steam Giftcard/Wallet Code (USD only)
• Steam games

I am in the USA. :)
IGSREP (60+ confirmed trades): https://www.reddit.com/IGSRep/comments/107d3lb/kamenramens_igs_rep_page/
GAMES I KNOW YOU WANT:

• Black Desert Online Traveler Edition (key expires 12/31/23)
• Blasphemous
• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
• Blood and Zombies
• Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!
• Doom 2
• Doom 64
• Doom Eternal
• Garfield Kart: Furious Racing
• Hotshot Racing
• Indivisible
• Intruders: Hide and Seek
• Monster Crown
• Morbid: The Seven Acolytes
• nIGHTS into dreams
• Outbuddies DX
• Slain: Back from Hell
• Summer in Mara
• Tunche
• Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion
• Valfaris

TÜRKIYE-SYRIA EARTHQUAKE RELIEF BUNDLE:

• 112 Operator
• 911 Operator
• Agent in Depth
• Alchemist's Castle
• Arcade Spirits
• Armello
• Backbone
• Calico
• Cats and the Other Lives
• Death Squared
• Detached: Non-VR Edition
• Doughlings Arcade
• Doughlings Invasion
• Farming Simulator 17
• Firegirl: Hack 'n Splash Rescue DX
• Frick, Inc.
• Ghostrunner
• Guilty Gear X2 #Reload
• Guns & Fishes
• Hack 'n' Slash
• Hyper Gunsport
• Into the Pit
• Izmir: An Independence Simulator
• Lighthouse Keeper
• Little Orpheus
• Lust from Beyond - M Edition
• Meow Express
• MirrorMoon EP
• Monaco
• Mount & Blade: Warband
• Non-Stop Raiders
• Orbital Racer
• Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition
• PAYDAY 2 (I have 3 DLC masks too!)
• Pill Baby
• Pixross
• Planet TD
• Project Chemistry
• Quadrata
• Remnants of Naezith
• Rym 9000
• Soulblight
• Soulflow
• Soul Searching
• Stacking
• stikir
• Space Crew: Legendary Edition
• Strange Brigade
• Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
• Sunlight
• Symmetry
• System Shock Enhanced Edition
• System Shock 2
• The Inner World
• The Amazing American Circus
• Ticket to Ride
• Worms Rumble
• XCOM 2
• X-Morph: Defense Complete Pack
• Zombie Driver HD

STAND WITH UKRAINE BUNDLE:

• Book of Demons (2x)
• Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons
• Car Mechanic Simulator 2018
• Corridor Z
• Dagon: by H. P. Lovecraft - The Eldritch Box DLC (2x)
• Dear Esther: Landmark Edition (2x)
• Draw Slasher (2x)
• Drawful 2 (2x)
• Driftland: The Magic Revival
• DV: Rings of Saturn (2x)
• EarthX (2x)
• Endless Space 2
• Expeditions: Viking (2x)
• Fury Unleashed
• GameGuru (2x)
• Go Home Dinosaurs
• Iron Danger (2x)
• Liberated (GOG key)
• Lust from Beyond: M Edition (2x)
• Monaco
• Moon Hunters
• NecroWorm (2x)
• Neverout
• Orbital Racer (2x)
• Out of Reach: Treasure Royale (2x)
• Pixplode (2x)
• Popup Dungeon (2x)
• Post Void
• Radio Commander
• Ring of Pain
• Roarr! Jurassic Edition (2x)
• RPG Maker VX (2x)
• Shing! (2x)
• Skullgirls 2nd Encore
• Slinger VR (2x)
• Soulblight
• Supraland
• System Shock: Enhanced Edition
• Telefrag VR (2x)
• The Amazing American Circus
• Toejam & Earl: Back in the Groove
• Treasure Hunter Simulator (2x)
• The USB Stick Found in the Grass (2x)
• Wanderlust: Travel Stories (GOG key) (2x)
• Warsaw (2x)
• We Are Alright (2x)
• X-Morph: Defense - European Assault/Last Bastion/Survival Of The Fittest (2x)
• Yoku's Island Express

OTHER GAMES:

• Commandos 3: Destination Berlin
• Days of War Definitive Edition
• Fallout 1
• Fallout 3
• Field of Glory II
• Five Dates
• For The King
• Hidden & Dangerous 2: Courage Under Fire
• Master Arena
• Men of War™
• Men of War™: Red Tide
• POLE
• Police Stories
• Theatre of War
• Theatre of War: Kursk
• The Battle of Polytopia
• The Game of Life 2
• Tribes of Midgard
• Turok 2

DLC!

• Black Desert Online - Lauren Family Gift Box
• Bloodhunt - EXPOSED ELECTRONIC Headgear
• Brawlhalla - Apex key sword weapon skin
• Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War - Jugger-Teddy Animated Emblem
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II - Burger King DLC
• Call of Duty Warzone Caldera - KF Weapon Charm
• Conqueror's Blade - Exclusive Item Bundle
• Dead Frontier 2 - Survivor Starter Pack Key
• Enlisted - Premium Currency And Account
• Eternal Return - Li Dailin + Luke Character and Skin
• Forza Motorsport 7 - Exclusive Alienware Suit
• Guild Wars 2 - Self-Style Hair Kit
• Guild Wars 2 - Booster Bundle
• Guild Wars 2 - Heroic Boosters
• Guild Wars 2 - Toy Mini-Egg
• Heroes & Generals - Starter Pack
• Paladins - Charcoal Viktor
• PAYDAY 2 - PAYDAYCon 2016 Mask
• PAYDAY 2 - SteelSeries Troll Mask
• PAYDAY 2 - Big Mike Mask
• Rogue Company - Aurora Weapon Wrap
• Rogue Company - Nuclear Winter Secondary Wrap
• Rogue Company - Heist Dima Skin
• Scribble It! Premium Edition DLC (Windows Key)
• Shadow Warrior 2 - Alienware DLC Ninja Skin
• SMITE - Cosmic Conqueror Hercules
• SMITE - Star Strike Neith
• SMITE - Aurora Hel Skin
• Splitgate - Blackout Marshall Character and Legendary Magnum Pistol
• Star Trek Online - Mirror Universe Agony Field Rifle
• Them and Us - First Person Mode
• World of Warships - Seventh Anniversary DLC

Software!

• Pathfinder Second Edition Core Rulebook and Starfinder Core Rulebook (Paizo key)
• Intro to Game Development with Unity (Zenva key)
• Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 7 (Ashampoo key)
• GameMaker Studio 2 Creator 12 Months (YoYo Games key)
• Music Maker EDM Edition (Magix key)
• PDF-Suite (PDF-Suite key)

WANT:

• PayPal $$$
• Steam Giftcard/Wallet Code (USD only)
• Steam games

Trading Thesis: Tracking the float along with daily volume along with company financials helps to narrow down moving tickers Fundamental and technical analysis is often used to find growth tickers and information about them. Fundamental analysis looks to see whether an investment is overvalued or undervalued based on underlying economic conditions, as well as the finances of the company or other organization that issued a stock or bond. Technical analysis instead looks at patterns in the price of an investment to predict future movements in that investment’s price. I look for tickers that are trading at least 2 million in volume a day, with a market-cap of no less than 500 million. The shares traded are compared to the average volume to determine how much of the float is used (Or shares traded). That information is compiled with data on how profitable the company is and how much cash do they have compared to what is expected.
Uptrending Tickers

• AFRM 4/21/23 10C .84
• VOO 4/21/23 390C 1.70
• MU 4/21/23 63C 1.37
• WBA 4/21/23 3C .84
• LYFT 4/21/23 9C ,51
• VIX 4/21/23 22C 1.14
• SQ 4/21/23 75C .68

Downtrending Tickers

• PR 4/21/23 10P .20
• WB 4/21/23 20P 1.30
• BTU 4/21/23 25P 1.10
• OSCR 4/21/23 5P .30
• NVDA 4/21/23 220P 1.31
• SPX 4/21/23 3370P 1.65
• QQQ 4/21/23 288P 1.77
• TSLA 4/21/23 125P 1.55
• TAL 4/21/23 6P .35
• CVX 4/21/23 150P 1.42
• LOVE 4/21/23 20P .10
• LEVI 4/21/23 16P .25
• FUTU 5/19/23 35P .87
• COIN 4/21/23 45P 1.23

Things to consider when finding the plays-
· If the stock volume has traded 1 million or more in volume premarket, I will use that and calculate a rough estimate on what the stock will trade for the day.
· If the ticker looks to be trading more volume than the day before, I will consider it for a long play. If trading less than the movement of the ticker, I would consider a short or put play. (If all the other factors previously mentioned checks out.)
· The trades are researched afternoon daily to find possible tickers making a big move. Some of the prices may be less depending on day and time trade is executed.
For reference on options, visit https://www.reddit.com/hallofoptions?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

Hi there! I have had a tarantula handed to me. When my ex and I split he moved to Mexico and I ended up getting his tarantula.
He would hardly pay the tarantula any mind, she was on the top of his book shelf for a very long time and was usually not within my direct eyeline for the many years I was around her. He would feed her maybe 4-5 live crickets once every 2-3 months and he has never cleared her tank before. She was given to him over 10 years ago and I am pretty sure she was full grown even then.
I am writing this because Hermoines behaviour seems odd. I moved to a new house in December and she essentially stayed burrowed under her log for what seemed like months. If she was moving around I was not catching it. I recently moved her tank to a new spot in my direct eyeline and I’ve noticed she keeps climbing up the walls, often getting stuck in the mesh lid of her tank, or slipping and falling on the substrate. She is also acting very restless.
I am looking for recommendations and insight into a potential cause? Or just any general advice. I am planning on cleaning her tank and changing the substrate to see if that makes a difference. Basically going to renovate her tank and get her some new stuff. So if anyone has any tips on that I will happily take them!!
I am doing my best to care for this lovely create I am slightly terrified of but I was kind of thrown in blind. I will share pictures of the beautiful Hermoine and her tank. (I’m new to reddit and I dont know how to add pics to this post- I will try in the comments)

as depressing as it sounds, at 21 i am still bound to the expectations and obligations of my parents. they are very religious and also immigrants so don’t understand the concept of independence. i have suffered both emotional and physical abuse at the hands of my family and their excuse is that they’ve given me (physically) so much. but they’ve taken away every inch of freedom i have or hold it over my head. when i say everything i do is a mistake in their eyes it is. spending money on groceries and gas mistake. taking graduate courses mistake. the way i applied to law school. mistake. however with my brother they give him so much room to do things. he has it hard but definitely afforded a lot more than me seeing as he’s a boy. i cant even go to the mailbox at night or to the grocery store. i wasn’t allowed to go to my best friends funeral because it was out of state. while some might see this as protective. i am turning 22 next week. i want to be able to do things without being told no or worried about the consequences of asking. my mother has told me she hates me and regrets having me and honestly i agree. i regret she had me too. i have no way of becoming financially independent at the moment but i cannot live under them anymore. i don’t know what to do and honestly the worse it keeps getting the more i can’t do this. what do i do? how do i do it? how do i do it so that they can’t find me if i find a new way/place to live. help.

Hello fellow ThinkPad enthusiasts!
I’m currently in the market for a new Lenovo ThinkPad, and I’m hoping to get some advice from the community. I’m looking for a ThinkPad that meets the following specifications:

• Size: 12-14 inches
• Screen: 1080p IPS or better
• Upgradable
• Type C port
• Compatible with Windows 11

I know there are a lot of different models and configurations out there, so I’d love to hear your recommendations and experiences with various ThinkPads. Here are a few additional details about my use case and priorities:
I’ll be using this primarily for work (coding, writing, and web browsing), so I’m looking for something with a solid keyboard and “apple-like” trackpad. I value light weight, as I’ll be traveling with this laptop frequently. I’m open for a refurbished model, as long as it meets the above criteria. Budget is approx $500.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on which ThinkPad model might be the best fit for me. Thanks in advance for your help!

Me and my girlfriend have been together two years and recently got engaged. We both have a heart for the Lord and want our marriage to be fully honored under God. We have been coexisting for around 6 months now. With this being said we have been abstaining from sexual sin, staying modest with our dressing around the house and sleeping in separate rooms. Some members of my church are disappointed with me living with my fiancé. But financially it is the best for the both of us. We are able to help each other around the house and raise our dog together as well. My question for you guys is it biblical that this is wrong if we are abstaining and staying pure? We are planning to do a one month separation before the wedding day to each grow stronger with the Lord and learn how to use his love individually to guide our marriage. What are your guys thoughts? Please use biblical reference if possible. Love you brothers and sisters! God is good ❤️

Profile:
Hello guys, I'm a 30 year old man looking to purchase his first property - to live in + investment. My family + me is debt free and I would classify ourselves as upper middle. I'm currently renting a 1BR with my girlfriend in CBD for 3.5k/month for the past 6 months and I'm thinking of using this sunk cost towards a mortgage instead. I'm fortunate enough that my parents will be helping me with the downpayment of the property.
My base salary is 122k/annum excluding commission. I have ~ 80k in my OA account.
Questions:

1. Should I even buy a private property in this current market condition?
2. Type of house: 1BR New Condo/Resale?, ~1.4m - that figure is arrived as my parents are happy to pay up to 400k on the downpayment.

Some factors I have considered:

• I do not want children, I'll be getting a dog.
• I have a girlfriend (who is living together with me atm) who is happy to help with the mortgage, (she is already paying 35% of our rent while I cover the rest as she is only working in her 2nd year. The split will remain the same) but the condo will be under my name.
• Might be open to resale condo but as I'm also looking for the property to appreciate and it seems new launch is my best option.
• Freehold/999 year vs 99 year leasehold.

1. CPF vs cash vs bank loan to pay off mortgage? Should I even consider paying by cash?
2. Timing: Should I wait for a market correction?
3. Any other advice or comments you might have. Thank you!

Alright guys sorry if these are dumb questions but idk anything about taxes. I am a U.S. resident. So soundcloud for artists pays me I attach PayPal and put my legal info in. The legal info I put in is for repost to file stuff on there side ig?
So then all taxes are filed by me through PayPal. Does PayPal receive something from SoundCloud besides the money? As I understand it with like the new laws PayPal sends me a form if I make more than 600$ in a single months transaction. I am well under that so like if I don’t receive anything from PayPal can I just not report? Or will the legal info I gave to SoundCloud get me drone striked for that?
Thanks