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In honor of this week’s RightsCon and 360/OS Summit, we dug into the #TwitterFiles to revisit the integration of the Atlantic Council’s anti-disinformation arm, the Digital Forensic Research Labs (DFRLabs), while also highlighting its relationship with weapons manufacturers, Big Oil, Big Tech, and others who fund the NATO-aligned think tank.

The Atlantic Council is unique among “non-governmental” organizations thanks to its lavish support from governments and the energy, finance, and weapons sectors. It’s been a key player in the development of the “anti-disinformation” sector from the beginning.
It wasn’t an accident when its DFRLabs was chosen in 2018 to help Facebook “monitor for misinformation and foreign interference,” after the platform came under intense congressional scrutiny as a supposed unwitting participant in a Russian influence campaign.
Press uniformly described DFRLabs as an independent actor that would merely “improve security,” and it was left to media watchdog FAIR to point out that the Council was and is “dead center in what former President Obama’s deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes called ‘the blob.’”

What’s “the blob”? FAIR described it as “Washington’s bipartisan foreign-policy consensus,” but thanks to the Twitter Files, we can give a more comprehensive portrait.
In the runup to the 360/OS event in that same year, 2018, Graham Brookie of the Atlantic Council boasted to Twitter executives that the attendees would include the crème de la crème of international influence, people he explained resided at the “no-kidding decision-maker level”

Similar correspondence to and from DFRLabs and Twitter outlined early efforts to bring together as partners groups that traditionally served as watchdogs of one another.
Perhaps more even than the World Economic Forum meetings at Davos or gatherings of the Aspen Institute in the US, the Atlantic Council 360/OS confabs are as expansive a portrait of the Censorship-Industrial Complex as we’ve found collected in one place.

In October 2018, DFRLab was instrumental in helping Facebook identify accounts for what became known as “the purge,” a first set of deletions of sites accused of “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”
Facebook in its announcement of these removals said it was taking steps against accounts created to “stir up political debate,” and the October 2018 “purge” indeed included the likes of Punk Rock Libertarians, Cop Block, and Right Wing News, among others. Even the progressive Reverb Press, founded by a relatively mainstream progressive named James Reader, found his site zapped after years of pouring thousands of dollars a month into Facebook marketing tools.

In the years since, DFRLab has become the central coordination node in the Censorship Industrial Complex as well as a key protagonist in the Election Integrity Partnership and the Virality Project.
Its high-profile role at RightsCon, the biggest civil society digital rights event on the calendar, should concern human rights and free expression activists.

According to their London 2019 event “360/OS brings together journalists, activists, innovators, and leaders from around the world as part of our grassroots digital solidarity movement fighting for objective truth as a foundation of democracy.”
Their Digital Sherlocks program aims to “identify, expose, and explain disinformation.”

The Twitter Files reveal DFRLabs labeled as “disinformation” content that often turned out to be correct, that they participated in disinformation campaigns and the suppression of “true” information, and that they lead the coordination of a host of actors who do the same.

Twitter Files #17 showed how DFRLabs sent Twitter more than 40,000 names of alleged BJP (India’s ruling nationalist party) accounts that they suggested be taken down.
DFRLab said it suspected these were “paid employees or possibly volunteers.” However as Racket’s Matt Taibbi noted, “the list was full of ordinary Americans, many with no connection to India and no clue about Indian politics.”
Twitter recognized there was little illegitimate about them, resulting in DFRLabs pulling the project and cutting ties with the researcher.

Twitter Files #19 further revealed DFRLab was a core partner in the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), which “came together in June of 2020 at the encouragement of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA” in order to “fill the gaps legally” that government couldn’t.
As a result, there are serious questions as to whether the EIP violated the US First Amendment.

DFRLabs was also a core partner on the Virality Project, which pushed its seven Big Tech partners to censor “stories of true vaccine side-effects.”

The Stanford Internet Observatory, which led the project, is now being sued by the New Civil Liberties Alliance for its censorship of “online support groups catering to those injured by Covid vaccines.”
Debate as to the frequency of serious adverse events is ongoing, however. The German health minister put it at 1 in 10,000, while others claim it is higher.

The Virality Project sought to suppress any public safety signals at all. The Stanford Internet Observatory is also at the moment reportedly resisting a House Judiciary Committee subpoena into its activities.

TwitterFiles #20 revealed some of the Digital Forensic Lab’s 2018 360/0S events, which brought together military leaders, human rights organizations, the Huffington Post, Facebook and Twitter, Edelman (the world’s biggest PR firm), the head of the Munich Security Conference, the head of the World Economic Forum (Borge Brende) a former President, Prime Minister and CIA head, intel front BellingCat and future Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, all to combat “disinformation.” We can now reveal more.

The Atlantic Council is a NATO-aligned think tank established in 1961. Its board of directors and advisory board are a Who’s Who of corporate, intelligence and military power, including:

• James Clapper – former Director of National Intelligence whose tenure included overseeing the NSA during the time of the Snowden leaks. Asked whether intelligence officials collect data on Americans Clapper responded “No, sir,” and, “Not wittingly.” Clapper also coordinated intelligence community activity through the early stages of Russiagate, and his office authored a key January 2017 report concluding that Russians interfered in 2016 to help Donald Trump. Clapper has been a 360/OS attendee.
  
• Stephen Hadley, United States National Security Advisor from 2005 to 2009 (also a 360/OS attendee)
  
• Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State who oversaw the carpet bombing of Vietnam, among other crimes against humanity
  
• Pfizer CEO Anthony Bourla
  
• Stephen A. Schwarzman, Chairman, CEO, and Co-Founder, The Blackstone Group
  
• Meta’s President for Global Affairs, Nick Clegg
  
• Richard Edelman, CEO of the world’s largest PR firm (and 360/OS attendee)
  
• The Rt. Hon. Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, Former Secretary General of NATO
  
• Ambassador Robert B. Zoellick, Former President of the World Bank
  
• Leon Panetta, former US Secretary of Defense & CIA Director. Panetta oversaw the US’s massive growth in drone strikes.
  
• John F. W. Rogers. Goldman Sachs Secretary of the Board
  

Chuck Hagel, chairman of the Council, sits on the board of Chevron and is also a former US Secretary of Defence.

The Atlantic Council raised $70 million in 2022, $25 million of which came from corporate interests.
Among the biggest donors were: the US Departments of Defense State, Goldman Sachs, the Rockefeller Foundation, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Google, Crescent Petroleum, Chevron, Lockheed Martin, General Atomics, Meta, Blackstone, Apple, BP, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, Raytheon, ExxonMobil, Shell, Twitter, and many more.
Ukraine’s scandal-ridden energy company, Burisma, whose links to Hunter Biden were suppressed by the August 2020 table-top exercise coordinated by the Aspen Institute, also made a contribution.

You can view the full 2022 “honor roll” by clicking here.

The Atlantic Council and DFRLabs don’t hide their militarist affiliations.
This week’s OS/360 event at RightsCon Costa Rica runs together with a 360/OS at NATO’s Riga StratCom Dialogue, which DFRLab note they have “worked closely with” “since 2016.”

DFRLabs was founded in 2016, and has been a major catalyst in expanding the “anti-disinformation” industry.
Among non-governmental entities, perhaps only the Aspen Institute comes close to matching the scope, scale and funding power of DFRLabs.
DFRLabs claims to chart “the evolution of disinformation and other online and technological harms, especially as they relate to the DFRLab’s leadership role in establishing shared definitions, frameworks, and mitigation practices.”

Almost $7 million of the Atlantic Council’s $61 million spent last year went to the DRFLabs, according to their 2022 annual financial report.

Through its fellowship program, it has incubated leading figures in the “disinformation” field.

Richard Stengel, the first director of the Global Engagement Center (GEC), was a fellow.
GEC is an interagency group “within” the State Department (also a funder of the Atlantic Council), whose initial partners included the FBI, DHS, NSA, CIA, DARPA, Special Operations Command (SOCOM), and others.
GEC is now a major funder of DFRLabs and a frequent partner

In this video, Stengel says, “I’m not against propaganda. Every country does it, they have to do it to their own population, and I don’t think it’s that awful.”
Stengel was true to his word, and apart from DFRLab, the GEC funded the Global Disinformation Index, which set out to demonetize conservative media outlets it claimed were “disinformation.” (See 37. in the censorship list)

He thought the now-disgraced Hamilton68 was “fantastic.” In total, GEC funded 39 organizations in 2017.
Despite Freedom of Information requests, only 3 have been made public to date.

Roughly $78 million of GEC’s initial $100 million budget outlay for fiscal year 2017 came from the Pentagon, though the budgetary burden has shifted more toward the State Department in the years since.

The Global Engagement Center was established in the last year of Barack Obama’s presidency, via a combination of an executive order and a bipartisan congressional appropriation, led by Ohio Republican Rob Portman and Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy.
The GEC was and remains virtually unknown, but reporting in the Twitter Files and by outlets like the Washington Examiner have revealed it to be a significant financial and logistical supporter of “anti-disinformation” causes.

Though tasked by Obama with countering “foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests,” its money has repeatedly worked its way back in the direction of policing domestic content, with Gabe Kaminsky’s Examiner reports on the GDI providing the most graphic example.

GEC frequently sent lists of “disinformation agents to Twitter.” Yoel Roth, former head of Trust and Safety referred to one list as a “total crock.” Roth is now a member of DFRLab’s Task Force for a Trustworthy Future Web. Let’s hope he brings more trust than Stengel. You can read more on GEC’s funding here.

Other DFRLab luminaries include Simon Clark, Chairman of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (a UK “anti-disinformation” outfit that aggressively deplatforms dissidents), Ben Nimmo (previously a NATO press officer, then of Graphika (EIP and the Virality Project partners) and now Facebook’s Global Threat Intelligence Lead), and Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat.

Bellingcat has an ominous reputation, which it’s earned in numerous ways, including its funding by the National Endowment for Democracy...

Most recently, Bellingcat assisted in the arrest of the 21-year-old Pentagon leaker, further speeding up the abandonment of the Pentagon Papers Principal where the media protected, rather than persecuted, leakers.
Bellingcat was part of 360/OS backroom meetings with former intel chiefs, the head of Davos and the Munich security conference among many others, as we will see soon.

The Virality Project built on the EIP and had partnerships with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Google, TikTok and more to combat vaccine “misinformation.”
Stanford and DFRLab partnered with the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, Graphika, NYU Tandon School of Engineering and Center for Social Media and Politics, and the National Congress on Citizenship.

Through a shared Jira ticketing system they connected these Big Tech platforms together, with Graphika using sophisticated AI to surveil the online conversation at scale in order to catch “misinformation” troublemakers.

VP went far beyond any kind of misinformation remit, most infamously recommending to their Big Tech partners that they consider “true stories of vaccine side effects” as “standard misinformation on your platform.”

A Virality Project partner called the Algorithmic Transparency Initiative (a project of the National Congress on Citizenship) went further.
Their Junkipedia initiative sought to address “problematic content” via the “automated collection of data” from “closed messaging apps,” and by building a Stasi-like “civic listening corps,” which in recent years has taken on a truly sinister-sounding mission.
The current incarnation might as well be called “SnitchCorps,” as “volunteers have an opportunity to join a guided monitoring shift to actively participate in monitoring topics that disrupt communities”

Garret Graff, who oversaw the Aspen Hunter Biden table-top exercise, was chairman of that same National Congress on Citizenship when they collaborated on the Virality Project.
Both EIP and VP were led by Renee DiResta of the Stanford Internet Observatory, a former CIA fellow who engineered the now disgraced New Knowledge initiative, which developed fake Russian bots to discredit a 2017 Alabama senate race candidate, as acknowledged by the Washington Post.

DFRLab are the elite of the “anti-disinformation” elite.
They work closely with a wide range of actors who have participated in actual disinformation initiatives.
Here they’re invited to an elite Twitter group set up by Nick Pickles of “anti-disinformation” luminaries First Draft, also participants in the Hunter Biden laptop tabletop, and the Alliance for Security Democracy, part of the RussiaGate Hamilton68 disinformation operation.

The 360/OS event marries this tarnished record with the financial, political, military, NGO, academic and intelligence elite. Some of this is visible through publicly available materials.
Twitter Files however reveal the behind the scenes, including closed door, off-the-record meetings.

“I’ve just arrived in Kyiv” Brookie notes in 2017, as he seeks to line up a meeting with Public Policy Director Nick Pickles as they discuss Twitter providing a USD $150K contribution to OS/360 (seemingly secured), and to garner high level Twitter participation.
Pickles is visiting DC and Brookie suggests he also meet with the GEC and former FBI agent Clint Watts of Hamilton 68 renown. “Happy to make those connections,” he chimes.

360/OS events are elite and expensive — $1 million according to Brookie — so closer collaboration with Twitter, especially in the form of funding, is a high priority.
Twitter offers $150,000

When Brookie mentions the attendees at the “no-kidding decision maker level” he isn’t kidding.
Parallel to the 360/OS public program is the much more important off-the-record meeting of “decision makers ranging from the C-Suite to the Situation Room.”

Here, he is explicit about a convening of military and financial power.
Vanguard 25 is presented as a way to “create a discreet and honest way to close the information gap on challenges like disinformation between key decision makers from government, tech, and media.”

The document boasts of its high-level participants

More are revealed in email exchanges, including Madeleine Albright and the head of the WEF

They go on to list a bizarre mishmash of media leaders, intelligence officials, and current or former heads of state

...Germany’s Angela Merkel was out of reach in the end, but many of the others attended this behind the scenes meeting on “disinformation.” Who are they?

• Matthias Dopfner – CEO and 22% owner of German media empire Axel Springer SE, the biggest media publishing firm in Europe
  
• Borge Brende – head of the World Economic Forum and former Norwegian foreign minister
  
• Toomas Hendrick Ilves – former President of Estonia who co-chairs the World Economic Forum’s Global Futures Council on Blockchain Technology. Hendrick is also a fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (where the Stanford Internet Observatory is housed) and is on the advisory council of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, of Hamilton 68 renown.
  
• Chris Sacca – billionaire venture capitalist
  
• Mounir Mahjoubi – previously Digital Manager for President Macron’s presidential campaign, and former Chairman of the French Digital Council
  
• Reid Hoffman – billionaire and Linkedin co-founder
  
• Ev Williams – Former CEO of Twitter and on the Twitter board at the time
  
• Kara Swisher – New York Times opinion writer, who founded Vox Media Recode
  
• Wolfgang Ischinger - Head of the Munich Security Conference
  
• Aleksander Kwasniewski – Former President of Poland. Led Poland into NATO and the EU.
  
• Richard Edelman – CEO of the largest PR company in the world
  
• Elliot Shrage – previously Vice-President of Public Policy at Facebook (DFRLab had election integrity projects with Facebook)
  
• Lydia Polgreen – Huffington Post Editor in Chief
  
• Jim Clapper –former US Director of National Intelligence
  
• Maria Ressa – co-founder of Rappler and soon to be winner of the Nobel Peace Prize
  

Why would such a group all gather specifically around the question of “disinformation”?
Is disinformation truly at such a level that it requires bringing together the world’s most popular author with military and intelligence leaders, the world’s biggest PR company, journalists, billionaires, Big Tech and more?

Or is this work to build the case that there is a disinformation crisis, to then justify the creation of a massive infrastructure for censorship? A glimpse of the agenda offers clues

Here the head of the most important military and intelligence conference in the world (Munich) sits down in a closed door meeting with a former Secretary of State and the Executive Vice-Chair of the Atlantic Council.

Which is followed by a closed door session with the Editor-in Chief of the ...Huffington Post and peace-maker Maria Ressa who presented to the same group of military, intelligence, corporate and other elites.
Is the role of a journalist and Nobel laureate to work behind closed doors with militarists and billionaires, or to hold them to account?

At 2022’s OS/360 at RightsCon Ressa conducted a softball interview on disinformation with current US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.

In testimony last April 2023, former CIA deputy director Michael Morrell stated that Blinken “set in motion the events that led to the issuance of the public statement” by more than 50 former intelligence officials that the Hunter Biden laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russia information operation.”

The Twitter Files also revealed that in August 2020 the Aspen Institute organized a table-top exercise to practice how best to respond to a “hack and leak” of a Hunter Biden laptop.
The laptop only came to light however two months later.
In attendance was First Draft (now the Information Futures Lab), the New York Times, Washington Post, Rolling Stone, CNN, Yahoo! News, Facebook, Twitter and more.

Here, DFRLab head Graham Brookie speaks with the Aspen Institute’s Garret Graff, who coordinated the Hunter Biden tabletop exercise.

After it turned out the Hunter Biden laptop was real, and the disinformation operation was more appropriately described as having been led by the likes of Blinken and the Aspen Institute.
The appropriate response is apparently for RightsCon, DFRLab, Blinken and Ressa to put on a nice forum to promote these figures as “anti-disinformation” leaders.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8YTPuTC9xs

Former DFRLab fellow and intel front Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins is also invited to the closed door sessions with a former head of the CIA, a former Prime Minister and a President.

How do you keep power accountable when you are in the same cozy club? This theme runs throughout.
Bellingcat is featured heavily at the public sessions also

On the public side, we see Amnesty International participating to further collapse the distinction between those who are meant to hold power to account, and the powerful themselves.
The Iraq war gave us embedded journalists, and the “anti-disinformation” field gives us embedded digital rights activists.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Chris Krebs also joined the closed door session.
Krebs was Co-Chair of the Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder.
Other members included Prince Harry, the Virality Project’s Alex Stamos (Stanford Internet Observatory) and Kate Starbird (University of Washington and previous 360/OS participant), Katie Couric, and more. Craig Newmark attended as an observer.

Meanwhile Renee DiResta, former CIA fellow and Stanford Internet Observatory Research Director, presented with the former Prime Minister of Sweden.
This was years before she would launch the Virality Project, and take on the bugbear of “true stories of vaccine side effects.”

The President of the Atlantic Council participated in an “off-the-record, “ behind closed doors conversation on “trust” with the CEO of the world’s biggest PR firm, Edelman.

“Public relations” and “trust” may well be opposites, and trust is being destroyed not by the disinformation street crime that these groups claim to target, but by the disinformation corporate crime protected by, or in some cases created by these same people.
Disinformation is real, but its biggest purveyors are governments and powerful corporate interests.

DFRLab and RightsCon show just how far the capture of civil society by elite interests has come. Again, I made a mistake helping to co-organize RightsCon in 2015.

The jumping in bed with the government and Big Tech was arguably there in 2015, though to a much lesser degree.
It now partners with militarists in the form of the Atlantic Council and is an enabler of the “disinformation” grift that is so deeply impacting freedom of speech and expression.

The air-gaps that should separate civil society, media, military, billionaires, intelligence and government have collapsed, and many of these actors have formed a new alliance to advance their shared interests.
If weapons manufacturers funding human rights is considered legitimate then where is the red line? Effectively, there is none.

This collapse however has also been pushed by funders, who have been proactive in asking NGOs to collaborate more with Big Tech and government - something I successfully resisted for my almost 18 years at EngageMedia, critically RightsCon was the only time I let my guard down.

The RightsCon sponsor matrix wouldn’t be out of place at NASCAR
This is the equivalent of hosting a Climate Change conference sponsored by Shell, BP, Chevron, and ExxonMobil.

How do you keep power accountable when Big Tech pays your wage? The “let’s all work together” approach has failed.
The weakest partner, civil society, got captured and we lost.
Many more lost their way and have acquiesced to and often enabled much of the new censorship regime.

https://www.racket.news/p/twitter-files-extra-how-the-worlds

my notes on in times new roman

1. obscenery - extremely groovy and octave fuzzy like EV and TCV almost! where did the violins come from??? bass is super groovy ofc. this sounds gorgeous, can i just say. crisper than LC honestly. the perfect refresher after villains. josh’s voice is gorgeous also!! gonna be throwing around the word gorgeous a lot because queens is gorgeous. very strange song structure, i expect a lot of that from this album from what i’ve read, but i’m good with that!!
   
2. paper machete - is this not just little sister again?!??! even the vocals are very little sister esq. loving the heavy guitars paired with synths!! even the solo is extremely little sister!!! was little sister (since its a love song about someones little sister) written about brody? because this could be totally intentional. theres that octave guitar part teaser at 3:10. never expected the context.
   
3. negative space - quite a bit slower in studio. love this song already from the live video. oh fuck this sounds good. very sat by the ocean. cant wait for that dual guitar solo. the vocals on this are awesome. FUCK this album sounds good. love troy’s echoey phaser guitar. or maybe dean with the wah guitar like he does live. just noticing a ton of phaser in the mix, and i bet thats all troy. very tcv with the room mic and echo on guitar. HE SAID EMOTION SICKNESS!!!! OH FUCK THAT SOLO!!!! this is my favorite so far.
   
4. time and place - what is happening. OH SHIT!!! tcv and ev enjoyers will love ITNR… and those are my two favorite josh albums. this is such a groovy song, fuck its good. these songs are all so intricate, so it’s gonna take like 15 listens to fully understand them, but idc i’m just happy we have incredible new queens. this song is so groovy holy shit. that 1:53 flanger fuzzy guitar part!!! love all the echo and modulation and octave and fuzz. nothing new for the band, just happy to see it all so prominent. fucking loving how much mikey shines here. such a garage rock album so far!! but super super rocky. i’m listening to this with my friend, she calls this one a mix of all of ev, dead end friends, and new fang, and i agree. thank god lullabies, ev, and tcv are my favorites, because this album is the product of those three. its definitely got the tcv groove, the ev weirdness, and its haunted like lullabies.
   
5. made to parade - I GET THE WARSAW COMPARISON!!!!! fuck this is good, i’m giggling of joy right now. warsaw is my favorite tcv song, and it changes daily. getting a spinning in daffodils/tangled up in plaid thing from this as well. fuck i love sinister groovy and weird queens. this is like the perfect album for me. the harmonized like octave on the vocals. oh shit?? airy and light chorus!! HE SAID THE THING!!!! (what you worship is your god) this album is so fucking weird i love it!!! hopeful and light and airy chorus that follows another haunting verse.
   
6. carnavoyeur - already know and love this one!! super iggy and bowie inspired, almost post punk. great song, not gonna write a lot for this or emotion sickness cuz we know those
   
7. head like a haunted house 2 (peephole) - this has villains’s swagger but with incredible production. everything i could ever want. josh’s voice is just Always good. love how much mikey and jon are shining. OOOH HE SAID THE THING! he really doesnt care what the people say i guess🤷‍♂️ i love the slight interruptions in the vocals with josh’s “lazy” s/t voice. tonight is the night. john mulaney was right. FUCKING COOL! can’t wait for sicily.
   
8. sicily - cant quit me baby 2. OH MY GOD THIS IS THE JESSE PORK RINDS TEASER THAT IVE BEEN SO FUCKING EXCITED FOR LETS GOOOOOOOO. this shit is so groovy and evil as hell oh my godddddd im shaking and have chills. this also feels very headache esq. calling it, this is my favorite queens song ever. ohhh fuck that lazy jam after all that evil shit. ohhhhhhhhhhhh my god. super cant quit me baby. AND THE EVIL BUILDUP!!!!!! the low vocals oh my goddddddddd. sorry im having such a visceral full body reaction to this song. specifically just below the waist and above the thighs. that synth oh fuck dean just killed me.
   
9. emotion sickness - ferocious. we know this
   
10. straight jacket fitting - okay here we fucking go i guess! super fucking angry and rock-y. very i appear missing in the chorus honestly. nvm lol super badass and garage rock. theres a vocal at 1:45 that makes me think of makin us all forget from 3s & 7s. im losing my shit. this is so badass. tremolo guitar and more of that octave vocal harmony. super super groovy. glass shattering is an additional percussion thing. OHH 4 MINUTES IN THE VIOLIN. is he saying carpé demon? ohhh josh, you silly goose. this seems to be progressing along like a tcv song would but its a super badass straightforward rock song. very very very very clockwork. but of course they said this was an old clockwork track reformatted, so it makes sense. so goddamn sick of this place i’m only human? i think that’s what he’s saying. badass rock closer. more glass shattering. who the fuck said this album wasnt heavy??? no c standard though guys! doesnt really matter, doesnt need to be c standard or even d standard to be badass. oh shit is this acoustic part d standard????? theres a droning cello and ebow guitar part over it. fuck this is good. you guys are in for a treat. fuck that was magical.
    

final comments, HOLY SHIT!!!!! no seriously though, this album is probably a grower just like ev and lullabies and tcv were for me, but right now i’d rank it over lullabies honestly.

1. ev
2. tcv
3. itnr
4. lullabies
5. clockwork
6. r
7. deaf
8. s/t
9. villains

and btw i fucking love villains too, this is an order of favorite to almost favorite, not good to bad. objectively, clockwork and deaf are best and always will be. but i love some weird, groovy, haunting shit. and in times new roman delivers on it fully.

We’ve been together for two and a half years. We’ve been through a lot of hard life experiences together, and we’re extremely bonded as friends which makes this whole decision even more difficult. My recent emotionally erratic and unpredictable behavior has ultimately led to me to end my relationship with her. There has been no physical abuse by any means, but my reactions to minor setbacks like tight finances or botched plans are becoming wildly irrational. My breaks from reality start and I become anxious, I become a flight risk and will often walk away on foot, I get verbally abusive and frustrated with my self, and It has recently ruined vacations, date nights, and even family gatherings. She does not want me to leave her, and she’s begging me to stay. I’m incredibly torn, because I don’t want to give up on our dreams and the life we’ve built together. However, she doesn’t deserve to be subject to all of this emotional turmoil.
I’ve been to psychotherapists, psych MD’s, and general practitioner MD’s in efforts to figure out the source of my mental breaks from reality, but I’ve never been able to be formally diagnosed by anyone. I played football from ages 7-19 and lacrosse from 12-18, and I was also in several fist fights as a teenager. I was diagnosed with 2 concussions in sports, but there’s no way of ever knowing if I have CTE while I’m still alive. Regardless of my condition I am still responsible for my behavior.
I can not live with myself seeing my behavior cause her any more pain, so I just ended it. Did I do the right thing?

I've been browsing this sub for awhile now, using the search function to get whatever answer I need, and I'm quite surprised at the amount of people that hate it there or pressure people into not moving there. I was born in Miami, and spent my entire life in North Carolina, moving back to Florida (Orlando) and I honestly can't get the answers I'm looking for besides hate for rent increases and "We're full" comments.
I'm not saying Orlando or Florida in general is the best place to live, but besides the politics and weather taking some getting used to and not being for everybody, I'm not understanding why it's complained on so bad considering it's not so different than you think. One of biggest complaints I see is the housing/job market.
People are upset that the average 2bdr in Florida is around $1500-$1800 and say that Florida is the worst place to rent or buy from. Dude, that's pretty much everywhere. My rent in NC went from $1700 to $2100 after just a YEAR of staying in my apartment and from what I heard they're due for another increase and I lived in a smaller town, the rent prices in Charlotte were either the same or worse. Before deciding to move to Florida I looked everywhere in NC and unless you stay in some small town in the middle of nowhere where the closest store is about 15 miles away or the flat out hood, you're looking at about $1500 minimum, even for a 1bdr lol. After doing research in the Orlando area the rent prices are either the same or even lower in Orlando compared to NC.
Don't even get me started on traffic, you guys complain about I-4, come take a look at I-77, it's backed up everyday, it's a wreck everyday, and I-85 ALWAYS has some sort of construction going on lol
So now you have a choice, do you continue staying in a city/state you've been your whole life with absolutely nothing to do and dealing with horrible rent increases? Or do you accept a change of scenery in a place that you love where it's tons of things to do daily for the same price or lower? Seriously, the only "Amazing" thing in NC is Carowinds, the nightlife is horrible and on top of it being nearly vacant, there's shootings every night at some club or bar, the art districts are lackluster, shootings there as well, even in the NoDa district, there's barely any events, CIAA was removed from the city because of shootings, theres no water just infinite trees and grass, no beaches unless you go to the abandoned beach on the coast or South Carolina, which are both 3-4 hours away, the weather is absolutely bipolar. One day it's cold, then it's hot, then it's warm, then it's raining, then it's cold again, then its storming, then it's snowing in February and hot in the winter.
I can go on and on but point is, Florida may not be the best place to stay, it has its issues, but its not far off from quite a few other states and even more forgiving in some cases. People complain about the influx of northerners moving to Florida, how do you think we've felt? We're their first stop, Charlotte has been completely overturned with Northerners and it's trying to be an artificial version of NYC. I'm just saying you can't really blame everyone for wanting to move there, it's A LOT better than most places, and a lot cheaper too especially on the east coast lol

I want to preface this by saying I've searched this topic extensively on this subreddit and on other websites but to no avail, hence why I'm making this post. I feel as if my case is rather unique and I'm desperately seeking an answer for my problems. I'll try and explain everything with as much context and detail as possible. Note I'd like to emphasise more on download speeds than upload speeds.
Got new internet at the start of this month giving 500 down and 70 up. Unfortunately, connecting it to my pc via ethernet is just not possible and out of the question. I had a TP Link wireless adapter anyways so I used that and got speeds of around 200 down and around 60 up which was as expected. A couple days later I installed TP Link adapters with gigabit ethernet ports thinking those would first increase my download speeds a little and second give me a wired connection despite being a bit overkill. Using those powerline adapters my max download speeds were around 180. Switched the cables, used a different set of powerline adapters, same thing. I was told by TP Link that due to the wiring of my house, those speeds are as fast as I was going to expect. I'm not bothered to get an electrician or whoever so I was like okay powerline adapters and ethernet are out of the question, my only option left is wifi.
This is where I buy a new wifi card. An intel AX210, heard good reviews about it and is overkill for my router as my router is only wifi 5 but hey should be an upgrade right. I still can't get download speeds over 180 now. I've checked the adapter options and made sure that the wireless mode is 802.11ax, the preferred bands are 5ghz only and turned off any power saving features. I've checked the status of the wifi adapter too and as of typing this it shows speeds of over 700MBps and the signal quality is full bars.
Despite all of this I still can't get over download speeds over 180. My upload speeds were consistently fine at around 60-70. I've also done a fresh install of windows just to make sure that any drivers or software that were conflicting with my new wifi card were also gone (downloaded new drivers off of intels website too). Still can't get over 180.
Throughout all of this I've been checking the speeds on my other devices too. As of writing this post using Google's internet speed test I got 281 download 71 upload on my phone, 235 download and 30 upload on my laptop, 170 download and 69 upload on my pc (which is higher spec compared to my laptop). Just to make sure I also used the Ookla speedtest and achieved similar results with my pc being so far behind. I'm extremely confident my router isn't at fault here as I've also checked the settings on the broadband page. I've seen speeds over 300 download on all my devices but I can't get over 180 on my pc.
I seriously cannot wrap my head around why my PC's download speeds are so much lower compared to other devices using the same 5GHz network. I've tested all of them in the same location and made sure the server is the same on all of them on the speed tests. The DNS settings are the same across all devices too. I've tried to keep as many variables the same across all devices yet the download speeds on my PC are the worst by a mile too. So I come to you guys for any and all help please. Extremely sorry for the long post but I'm slowly losing it so yeah.

I feel confused when I think of my mom. She did a LOT that I can’t forgive her for when me and my sis were kids. She’s better now but still have a small sour taste in my mouth. Aside from that I look up to her still. I see all the hard work she has put in and see her being so successful even while being a single mom (her choice but still). She sees me as like I’m something great but I’m not. She was so upset when I couldn’t keep up with other kids but she did change when she found out I was dyslexic. Tho because of mental health issues I still did bad. Tho no matter what I did I was always given some praise but no matter what my sis did it wasn’t enough. I feel this heavy weight on my shoulders to be perfect at everything. I do my best to keep everyone around me happy while putting my feelings on the back burner. I feel like no matter what I do it isn’t enough. In a way I know I will never make as much as my mom but a part of me is beating myself up for not being able to. I want to feel like I am making her proud. I want to feel like I’m making everyone around me proud. I want to feel like I’m not constantly letting everyone down. Two jobs, all house chores, now going and doing work to be a vet tech on top of that. Not even paying for that either my mom is tho. Don’t even pay bills but my bf does. They say I’m doing fine but I know they are lying. I just want to take care of them like them me. My grandma is doing terrible physically and is going down hill fast. I wanted her to see me graduate. Maybe if I wasn’t so in my own head I could have guaranteed like the rest of my old friends and classmates. I feel like I’m falling behind. I am failing everyone. I’m trying to not let everything get to me because everyone in my circle have it harder and I feel like I’m not allowed to feel anything other than happy. I try so hard to be strong for everyone around me so they can feel like they have someone to lean on but I have no one or I guess I feel like I don’t. I know I do, but like I said, I feel like I have to pretend I am ok so I am not more of a burden than I am. I feel like I wasted my life. I look at my mom and wonder how she did it. She and others make it look so easy but I simply can’t get it. I just feel like a failure. All eyes on me to be great but I’m not. I will never be like her and in a way that is destroying me inside. (Sorry this is all over but I needed to vent)

Sorry for the rant. But I just had to get this out somewhere.
My wife and I have been taking care of her Mother since 2012 and things have just gotten so bad this year. She is over 400 lbs and my wife and I cannot move her and she refuses to do her PT and now can barely walk. She has begun to lose control of her bladder and has decided she just doesn’t want to get up to use the bathroom anymore so she just messes the bed. When we try to get her up to clean her, she says she is too worried about falling or too tied so she just sits for hours in her mess and the house smells terrible. We lose hours just waiting for her to be ready to get cleaned up. She has now developed a large pressure wound on her hip and bloods clots in her leg and had to be taken to the hospital. It took 6 firemen 2 hours to carry her out of the house due to her size. Now the hospital wants her to go into rehab for her wounds and to help regain use of her legs, but she is refusing. She wants us to take care of her at home. We don’t have the money to move into a better house for her and their seems to be no resources that we can drawn on. We are so tired emotionally and physically trying to reason with her.
Thank you all for letting me vent.

She has taken to pulling everything in her reach down to the floor and dragging them al over the apartment. If I had wall space to hang them, I totally would. But as of right now they hang off the oven door and freezer and are extremely enticing to my LO.

So I left my husband a few months ago now, we were together for 5.5 years, married for 2.5 of those. My husband is from another continent and we moved to my home country a couple of years ago, as the country where we met was quickly becoming a hard place to live during the pandemic and due to other political reasons..
I'll admit our marriage was probably rushed by our wanting to get out of there and the search for a better life.. I did love him but our relationship was already showing signs it probably wouldn't last, nevertheless I still married him, as I wanted to give our marriage a chance and help him, believing he would work on some of the issues I was having with him..
Basically he would never allow me to have time to myself, he was always there with me apart from when we were at work, he would refuse to do anything without me and this caused huge fights.. during which he would not let me sleep.. he would keep me awake by talking and poking me, insisting on talking about it there and then instead of allowing a cooling period.. I wasn't allowed to have any boundaries, if I refused intimacy I would get the silent treatment or he would keep insisting anyway until I would end up just giving in just to have some peace..
We moved to my country and he made no attempts to learn the language there unless I sat down and did lessons with him.. he wouldn't even try and make friends with anyone, this was something I always encouraged him to do but he was never interested. I started to get very bored with him, being in his company, he never had anything new to say and was always negative about anything I wanted to do for myself.
In the last year or two his behaviour got more worrying, he would make up false accusations against me and I would have to defend myself against a made-up lie in his head.. he did this several times ( our only time apart was work, I don't have a social life..) .. he would behave bizzarely sometimes and never respect what I said or explain himself when I tried to ask him. Months ago I caught him recording my intimate parts while I slept and I am sure he continued afterwards.. I also caught him watching porn several times, something he always claimed he never liked when I met him.
He blocked the door when I wanted to get away from him several times, he was never physically or verbally abusive but he definitely was emotionally abusive.
I was always on edge and stressed out with him, always doing things for him.. he wouldn't even do the shopping as he wouldn't even try get a license in my country.
The final straw was losing his job for giving unwanted attention to other women and a few of them complained about him. This was a job I got for him.
I left the place we were renting a few months ago and told him it would be best for him to return to his own country but he said he doesn't want to do that, that he is going to stay here. I also spoke to his family and let them know.
The contract on our rental expires in a few weeks when he will then be on the streets as he has refused to take my advice since I left. I do feel somewhat responsible for him as he doesn't speak the language but at the same time he will not stop harassing me.and just repeating himself.. he refuses to accept that I have left him and tries to convince me I am being cruel and that I still love him. I definitely don't. I was willing to help him find a place to rent but he just makes it impossible for me to be around him.
Should I just continue with my life and let him end up homeless, I am definitely leaning more towards this as the days go by. I am a lot happier since leaving!
Sorry for the long winded post. He is in his fourties for context..

Like the title says, me and my bf currently live with a roommate to help cut costs and they're a Boomer and I just want to rant about it.
When I first met her 6 years ago she was sweet and respectful but over time she's gotten really nosy, passive aggressive, manipulative, self righteous and alltogether annoying as hell to be around. She also thinks herself to be very wise and progressive, yet will turn around and say dumb shit like aspbergers not being a condition on the autism spectrum or that animals don't have thoughts and feelings.
We currently live together in a two story house that my bf owns where we sleep upstairs and her downstairs and her and I pay rent. While she doesn't bust into our rooms without knocking she will constantly yell upstairs expecting us to yell back or immediately go downstairs at her beck and call instead of just texting/calling us or waiting to tell us in person later. And when we do go downstairs she will immediately come out of her room as if she is waiting for us the whole time and either ask lots of personal questions, rants/gossips about other people, or gives unsolicited "advice" on how she thinks we should be more extroverted like her or apply to her company so she can get the employee referral benefit. It's very obvious when she is home because she always slams the front door closed (we can feel and hear it from upstairs), slams kitchen cabinets, and passive aggressively talks to herself about what she thinks we or othee people should be doing (loud enough for us to hear it from rooms away).
Also, one of her cats has a very strong bond with me because she almost lost him a couple years ago (due to her negligence too, not an accident) literally the day she got him when he was a kitten and I ended up having to rescue him - because of that in the past she said she would let me have him, but for the last few months she's backtracked on that "because he's just too cute to let go". While that is ultimately her decision to make I think it's rude as fuck to offer that for so long just to take it back for her own amusement and it will be very sad when I can't see him anymore - he tends to be anxious and yowl for me if he can't find me and I'll be heartbroken to not have him around anymore either. I also never share any personal details of my life with her anymore because if she gives me any unsolicited "advice" and I don't follow it she takes it personally and lashes out. She's told me verbatim that she thinks she knows me better than I know myself, which is total bullshit and if I were to follow her advice blindly I would most likely be dead by now. I'm not kidding. There's a ton of other stuff she's done that we either weren't okay with or she never thought out or researched before something bad happened due to her ignorance.
Due to all that we both hate being around her or doing things downstairs by ourselves when she is home, but as soon as she's gone we often roam the house and do stuff. And for the last couple of months we have been gradually cleaning out our space and trying to declutter because we would like to move as soon as we can afford to and stop living with her. In a way it's made the situation worse because she now thinks we don't do anything when in reality we both just bide our time as much as we can upstairs until she leaves so we can both relax and live our lives without her constant judgment. Not to say we literally don't do anything when she's home, but there's way more activity on our part when she's gone since we don't have to worry about her during those times. However if we were to be around her more it would then just lead to more drama and more blow ups from her and we have better things to do than placate her.
We have tried to calmly discuss things with her in the past and each time she is disrespectful and tries to act like she's the victim 100%. She will especially try to make me feel like I literally have no idea what I'm doing just because im younger than her and that I should rely on her "like a mother" when I never asked or wanted for her to be that for me. She also does this to other people as well. Both me and my bf suck at conflict resolution and my bf is especially bad at dealing with conflict in general (we're both on the spectrum with not so great social skills) so he has not yet attempted to evict her during the times it seemed most valid and necessary.
So for now we are biding our time and doing what we can to prepare ourselves for when the time comes to notify her about moving. We will make sure we give her enough time of course, but with how the housing market is nowadays that might not even be enough for her - which I mean, is too bad for her because she should have been nicer and not gaslight and manipulate us like she's been doing lately.

I will try and be concise, but there’s a lot for me to unpack. Overall I’m extremely depressed and feel stuck in life (job, relationships, especially family crap). Most of this is why I feel this way, and my then my plan to start over.
From ages 6-19, I was extremely depressed because I was overweight and my parents wouldn’t help me. I begged my parents to help me eat healthily. It was either too inconvenient because they only eat junk food or too expensive (we’ve always been upper middle class, and have had plenty of disposable income, neither of my parents spend money well or hoard money). In undergrad i immediately lost weight, made it my goal to get under 200lbs and I did. But after the first semester I got sick and ended up bouncing around colleges to finish a degree. I ended up becoming a commuter student because my parents forced me to chose between two local schools. I again tried to pursuade them it was better for me to start over (I would only lose a year) at a local community college which would save money and give me the opportunity to explore more fields. I was too good for community college. I’m an intelligent guy, but needed an opportunity to grow and overcome my depression, not wallow in it. At age 21, I was back home, gained all my weight back because I was stuck commuting two hours a day, and then working a shitty retail job. I finished my degree but it was not what I wanted. I merely chose a degree I could use all the college credits I earned in high school. I made and lost countless friends, was betrayed by a teacher I almost considered a family member and felt completely lost after undergrad. At this point I hadn’t really lived life. I hand two relationships in high school. A few flings when I was in undergrad, but I never got the opportunity to really know someone romantically as an adult.
Segue to Grad school. I had to get a degree I something I could parlay into a normal job. I went with International Relations. I was lucky that I lived near a well known college they would actually give me a leg up professionally. I applied and got it to my surprise. Now, two big important things came out of grad school which helped me grow and built my confidence, but now are problems:

1. My friend, let call her Freya has become one of my best friends and favorite people. First day of grad school, I told myself just to focus on work/school. Then my friend shows up. I was almost immediately captured by here. I don’t know what, but she screamed exactly my type. I just stayed focused on my work and then one day she just walked over and started talking to me and we just hit it off, she handed me her number in a crumpled piece of paper. She told me to hit her up. Long story short it was on again off again because she didn’t seem to be in a good place, so I kept it profession and just avoided spending time with her. It just that she kept pushing to do stuff together. At one point after I had learned she was poly, I turned down a 3am coffee because I wasn’t even sure how I’d handle things and valued her friendship more than sex. But the problem is that I still have feeling of some sort. When I spend time with her, I just want a bit more. For some reason I always have energy for her. What’s confusing now is that she includes me in trips with her partner and it just me. I’m starting to feel like a third wheel and that I shouldn’t go on trips anymore. She’s the first person that has really made an effort to be part of my life and appreciate me.
   
2. My job has become the bane of my existence. I quite my retail job shortly after grad school, got a temp job, they liked me and within two weeks I was a paid intern at a higher wage. People guided me through the state government system, and working with other office i was offered a fellowship. The fellowship quickly deviled into an extremely toxic workplace with a violent secretary who constantly tried to provoke people and asked sexual questions. My boss kept protecting her because she was pregnant and three other minorities. I left that office for my old office, but everyone had left and it is a toxic hellhole since the pandemic I’ve been doing way more work than I should’ve with the promise of a promotion, then. They screwed me over the and wanted me to train the “qualified” person. Now I have the opportunity to take a new job, but I’m completely burned out. I don’t know that I can succeed anywhere right now. I almost don’t care about a “career” anymore because it hasn’t gotten me anywhere or anything.
   
3. My parents. If you read the first part of the post you can guess my feelings towards them right now. Since I started grad school in 2016 I’ve been begging them to downsize, consolidate their massive house and piles of shit. I could see that they were declining and they were barely adulting for most of their lives. Since I was 12 I did most of the house work (cooking, cleaning, my own laundry). Over the pandemic my mother had mini strokes and now lacks any real executive function, all she does is watch tv snack and start things then get distracted. My father who has never listened to his doctors or me has gone into end stage kidney failure.
   

See comments for continuation.
I’m summary, my parents are draining me and refuse to change or acknowledge their imminent senility (they already there in some respects), I need to end my very close friend with my friend because it’s never going to be anything more (I’m not bitter, I just feel I’ve put myself into an emotional loop), and I’ve let my job define me too much and need to learn to live again. I feel forcing myself to absorb a new culture, actually focus on living instead of taking care of everyone else and possibly share it with someone else.
TL;DR: It’s really too long to summarize, read the whole thing. I’m struggling with selfish aging parents, a toxic job, a botched/nonexistent romantic/social life. I’m read to run off and start over. My best option is Italy, since I’ll have dual citizenship. I still have a great deal to figure out.

Residing in NSW
We've been renting off a private owner since Feb and have paid rent on time and taken care of the property how we agreed upon. All agreements in writing.
The owner is unwell so her family have taken over her estate and are straight up bullying us. Here's what they've done:
Come onto the premisis several times without consent. We have proof of this.
Trying to force us to sign a "indemnity" letter that states "I ...... agree that this indemnity is granted to all members of land owners family for any blame, fault, litigation due to any accident, theft, injury, misfortune or adversity incurred by me at any time, anywhere in this property, or anywhere in the company ot any of the property owner family."
They've bombarded us outside a restaurant trying to make us sign this letter before we've had it looked at by someone. The letter was provided Tuesday, less than a week ago. I took a video of them harassing us without their knowledge, this was in a public area so im assuming it should be fine.
There are other things as well, all similar to this, but ultimately I'm just looking for general advice on who to speak to first. Not a individual firm or anything. I have no idea where to go so any help would be greatly appreciated.

so I met this guy a couple of months ago and we really hit it off at first and I thought that he really liked me. He even invited me on a trip with him and offered to pay for the accommodations. So this guy was traveling all around, so it wasn’t anything serious. I was meant to go to this place with him and then he go to the next place on his list and I go back home where we met. But while we were there, he didn’t like the place that we went to, and he asked me if he could stay at my apartment and stay back in the city for a few days (where I live). I said yes, because I felt like I owed him because he had paid for a lot of our dinners and he let me stay at the hotel that he had booked in the city that we had went to.
But then he started acting more distant with me. We were hanging out every day before i let him stay at my place, and suddenly he wanted to only go out with the friends that we made together by himself, and he basically dis invited me all future hang outs. (i introduced him to these people) One night they were doing something cool and I asked if I could join and he said yes and when we got there the whole entire time he was flirting with this girl and not talking to me at all. Like yeah we weren’t together it was just a fling but common decency to not try and hook up with a girl in front of the girl you’ve been hooking up with.
it was then I finally realized that the guy was an asshole and i lost all interest in him. but he was only staying there for a few more days, so I just didn’t say anything and stayed civil. Luckily for me he was only at my house to shower and to change his clothes but I’m pretty sure he spent all the nights at this girls house. The day came for him to go and we said our goodbyes , after he left he pretty much ghosted. but I didn’t really care because I already knew he was an asshole.
But then one day he started talking to me more and he was calling me every day. We were texting every day. I entertained it because the conversation was good and then it was nice to have someone there whenever I was bored to talk to you, but that’s all it was to me just someone to talk to you when I was bored. Then he asked me if I would go with him to another city that he had next on his travel list , and if I would split the hotel with him because he had to get a tattoo done in the city.
Now, he had previously told me that he went too crazy with his money when he was in my city and had run out and wasn’t living off of so much. He had his mom sending him 100 bucks every few days for food. He has been expecting a few thousand dollars from some money from insurance but he had planned another two months of travel so it wouldn’t be enough. He also asked me if he could come back to my city and stay with me for a month because he really liked it. I then realized that he was giving me all this attention for the past two weeks just to warm me up because he thought that he could benefit off of me to help fund his travel costs. meanwhile, the past two weeks we had been talking every single day he was also a dick to me a lot.
So I told him yes, that I would go with him and that yes he could stay with me in my city. But of course, I had no intentions to. I let him believe that for another week or so while we have been talking every single day and he had also been a dick to me a lot, and didn’t treat me well at all. When I finally got enough of pretending. (about 2 weeks before “our trip”)I told him that I don’t wanna talk to him anymore because I don’t like how he treats me. Suddenly he starts panicking and trying to call me (because he needs me at this point) and I just tell him nope, good riddance. And then i block him.
I just looked at his Instagram story , today he was supposed to be in the other City to get the tattoo that he told me he had been excited about for a year. But instead he’s at his grandmas house :) I’m guessing that he couldn’t afford to go. Maybe next time be a genuine person and don’t use people while being a dick to them and the odds will go in your favor.
Maybe some of you see this and think I was too harsh. But i’ve been used so many times before, and this is the first time i’ve been able to recognize it and I was fed up. He wasn’t going to get away with insulting my intelligence like that.

For context, I was raised in a house where everything outside of conservative Christianity was “bad”. Secular music, “immodest” clothing, cussing, alcohol, weed, being LGBTQ+, sex before marriage, etc. When my mindset about religion and political issues, I had no problem accepting things like LGBTQ+ rights, cussing, secular music, and women’s rights. But with some things, no matter how much I try to change my mind, there is still such a negative feeling towards it in my head. For example, weed and alcohol are hard for me to feel comfortable around. Maybe it is because my family feels so extremely about these things. I am a 21 year old woman and I have only had a few drinks in my life (all since turning 21). I was with lots of friends I felt comfortable with and still I felt so much shame. Weed is something I am even more uncomfortable with, and when people smoke it around me or even when people mention they’re high, something in me freaks out about it. I don’t treat anyone differently for it, of course. I just can’t figure out why it’s so aversive to me. It makes it hard with dating because I don’t want to avoid people solely based on their weed or alcohol consumption. A lot of guys I’m interested in on dating apps are into weed and it’s been making me realize how much I avoid it unnecessarily. Did anyone else have this problem after growing up in a conservative Christian household?

I'm a 5th year Ph.D. candiate working in metabolism. I have two bosses that jointly run the lab, both of whom are great for the most part. It's a (historically) successful lab, but over the last few years I've been by far the most successfull member. I won't get in to why the lab has taken a downfall but happy discuss via DM. I've been awarded 3 pre-doc grants via T32, F31, AHA mechanisms. I've had the honor of giving a few oral presentations at conferences both domestic and abroad. I have multiple co-author publications through colaborations, a first-author review in a very high impact journal, and my main project has the potential to go to Science or Cell Metab. I've been extremely lucky.
My success, or the labs downfall, has led to extreme exploitation. At least twice a month I'm asked to chauffer people around during the weekend and non working hours. I'm currently mentoring 3 summer students against my will. I'm asked to house summer students for free. I'm tasked with interviewing and aiding in the hiring process of new lab members, and responsible to mentoring every person in the lab whether it's a high school student or a 50 year old that has been in academia longer than I've been alive. The plan is to graduate in December or January and I have a post-doc position lined up at WashU starting next year.
I realize a lot of what I've mentioned comes with being in academia, but after doing all this and having the scuess I've had my mentors have no interest in helping me publish my paper or graduate. I no longer have a mentor. I have no clue how to publish a first-author research paper, and when I think I have enough data to publish, my bosses tell me it's not ready without even reading the manuscript I've prepared or taking the time to understand the data. Not to mention they won't even discuss my dissertaiton. It seems as though that I've been abonded with the goal of keeping and exploiting me to keep their lab afloat. I could go on and on, but the last year has completely turned me off from academia and life in general. I'm contemplating quitting without graduating but I know how stupid that would be. I have no one to talk to about this and I'm beyond exhausted. Thanks for reading.
TL;DR: boo-hoo
​

I’m trying to understand more about how this placement pertains to my life. Although I have family and friends, I often struggle with feeling like an outsider or like I have yet to find a community that truly accepts me. What do I need to learn from this and how can I overcome it?

Hey there. Using a throwaway for obvious reasons.
I have known my friend M since we were in high school. We hang out one on one or with our other friends. He's probably in my top three closest friends but not who I'd call my best friend. For more context, he's always had issues with girls and I've tried to give him advice. He's never had a girlfriend but has kissed a girl. M's gone on a few dates too, but they never led anywhere. I'm kinda his "go to" for girl advice since all his other friends are guys.
Anyway, M's birthday is coming up in August and I was over at his house the other day when I asked him what he might want. He got this anxious look in his eye and asked if he could get a favor instead of a gift. I instantly got suspicious, but he's my friend, so I asked, "What sort of favor?"
He hesitated before sighing and asking, "Can I see you naked?"
I paused and asked, "What did you say?" I knew what he said, obviously, but I wanted to give him a chance to save face. He repeated himself and I told him no. He pressed the issue, saying that he thinks I'm beautiful and he's seen me in a bathing suit at the beach so it's "one step above" (his words, not mine).
I left. Part of me wants to address what happened, but the other part of me wants to move on and hope this was a one-time thing. How do I even bring this up with him if I decide to?

I’ll try to keep this as concise as possible. I just moved to a new area and started fostering cats through a rescue a coworker introduced me to. I took in two kittens and a male cat they were found with.
One of the kittens was very sick. The owner of the rescue took this kitten back for a few weeks and the kitten returned covered in fleas. She deteriorated and I asked the owner for meds for her for days and she never came through. The kitten died. She may not have been 100% compatible with life, but there was a delay in getting her treatment.
Her brother has done well. Except now he has bloody stools. I have been asking the owner of the rescue for meds since Monday (posting this Saturday). We were supposed to meet Monday. Thursday I offered to pick them up, she said she’d bring them and never did. Friday I told her I could meet any time after noon. She said she could meet too and has stopped answering me since. I made an appointment at the vet for the kitten that I will have to pay out of pocket.
What do I do? I can’t keep the cats (they’re lovely, I just have too many animals as it is). But I’m scared what would happen to their health (mentally & physically) if they were to go back to the woman’s house. She has so many cats there “in rescue” but I don’t know how many.
I will never foster through this rescue again but what should I do?

On April 26th (at the time) 15 year old Alicia Markovich goes missing after what seems like a small argument with her father. She has never been found since and no activity has been seen on her bank account or with her social security number.
Year: 1987
April 26th
9:45 a.m: Alicia is picked up from her mothers (Marcie Vitko) house in Windber, PA by her father (John Markovich). She is taken to his house 45 minutes away in Blairsville for a visit.
3:00-5:00 p.m: Alicia and John get into an argument over the typical things such as grades, friends, and Marcie seeking for more child support (Marcie wanted the payment to go from $100 to $200). The exact time she has left this house is uncertain. Marcie makes multiple attempts to call Alicia, but to no avail.
April 27th
1:00 a.m: John calls Marcie and exclaims "Marcie, she's gone!" and says he is out searching for Alicia. At the time he thinks she may have gone to a neighbors house to visit old friends. John went to the trailer park where he used to live and a friend still living there said they had not seen Alicia or John all day in that area.
Marcie searches Blairsville for Alicia and puts up missing persons flyers while John goes to make the report. At first the police suspect Alicia is a runaway despite Marcie clearly not agreeing with this. Her main reason to object was Alicias lack of streetsmarts and her lack of history of running away.
April 28th
Trooper Sokol takes over the case along with the rest of the state police.
Year: 1988
May 5th
John's 1987 Red Subaru is stolen in the night and is found in Saltsburg, PA destroyed by fire.
Year: 1990
April 26th
Alicias disappearance is finally being treated as a suspected homicide due to it being 3 years with no word from her.
Year: 2000
October
John receives a two page letter detailing how Alicia was murdered and indicates where she was buried. The letter has a return address in New Bedford, NH. The police determine this letter a hoax after visiting the address. Here is what was released from that letter
What gave me the idea to contact you was when I saw by chance an old missing persons flyer posted on the side of a mailbox in Philadelphia about 3 weeks ago. The second time I saw it, it was like everything faded to grey. Nothing seemed real for a long time. I thought that it all had been forever buried. I had spent the last 13 years erasing and boarding up the name Alicia Markovich in my mind and by seeing that, it opened up the flood gates so to say to a limitless sea of remorse, guilt, anxiety, inner sadness, and depression."
Year: 2011
April 26th
The police hold a conference essentially saying they will be starting from scratch and re interviewing everyone and asks for anyone to come forward with information
Marcie puts DNA from Alicias baby teeth on file.
Sadly thats pretty much it for this case so far besides family and friends doing their best to keep her memory alive. Alicia has never been found nor have any of her belongings she may have had that fateful night. Police have never had any suspects or leads aside from that one hoax letter. The most we have to go off of is police suspecting she MIGHT have been picked up by a truck driver the day her and her father had that argument.
Sources:
https://uncovered.com/cases/alicia-markovich#timeline
https://charleyproject.org/case/alicia-bernice-markovich
https://justiceforaliciamarkovich.net/alicias-story (this one in particular has tons of information that while not exactly relevant helps to personify Alicia)
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If you have any information please contact
PSP Indian Co. Trooper Murdoch 1-724-357-1978.

had some plot inspo as well just need some advice on this one Ruth and his mother go to a new rural town, his mother has been looking for statues of what appears to be famous people, he soons finds out the statues come to life at night, they end up chained in a house because they become vamparic. When ruth discovers he has powers, he later learns that his from another reality who are basically god like but they were sent to here due to a strange virus. They have to lock away their powers or they become vamparic in nature. Those who are unable to seal there powers burn in sun light it been known because they are not from this reality Ruth has to learn to seal his powers or he faces burning in the sun light. It soon learnt they are needed to defend earth from the same virus which has plagued them very selves.