Introduction
Hey and welcome to the WikipediaPageCreation subreddit! This is a subreddit dedicated to discovering and exploring various methods and strategies of securing Wikipedia pages for a brand or person. My name is Nikolas Lemmel and I’m the team-lead at a boutique digital agency by the name of Maximatic Media. As we’ve spent the last couple of years dissecting the art of Wikipedia page creation, I’ve decided to open this sub in hopes of sparking a discussion on various impactful and non-impactful factors affecting the creation of stickied Wikipedia pages. I’m hoping to start the birth of this sub off strong so I’m gonna try to provide an in-depth overview of what we’ve learned about creating and stabilizing Wikipedia pages thus far as a company in this post. If you have any experience with either of the components I’ll be mentioning or would like to share one that we’ve yet to cover, please feel free to comment down below.
Page Stickiness
Let’s start this journey by first recognizing the weird word I’ve used like 3-4x in the introduction: “stickied”. This is a word you’ll see appear often the deeper dive into the Wikipedia publishing world.
The concept of "stickiness" in the context of Wikipedia publishing has to do with the longevity and resilience of a newly published Wikipedia page. Wikipedia is an open-source platform that relies on volunteer editors to maintain the quality of content on the site. These editors follow a set of guidelines to decide what content is notable and reliable enough to appear on Wikipedia.
When a new page is created, it undergoes scrutiny from higher-tier editors and admins, who assess whether the page meets Wikipedia's stringent notability and reliability criteria. If they decide that it doesn't, the page can be deleted or heavily revised, oftentimes within a matter of days from its publishing date. This constant monitoring and removal process is part of Wikipedia's commitment to maintaining a high-quality, reliable source of information and minimizing the extent to which Wikipedia is used in an advertorial fashion.
Stickiness, therefore, refers to the ability of a new page to withstand this scrutiny and remain live on the site. A stickied page is one that has been well-constructed, sufficiently sourced with credible references, and clearly meets the notability requirements. The page not only gets published but also stays published, or "sticks.”
Now, this may already be common knowledge to the bulk of you that are actively researching Wikipedia page creation for your brand. However, since we’ve launched our service, we’ve dealt with a lot of clientele who have attempted to create a Wikipedia page for themselves in the past and were hit with this harsh reality check. An alarming percentage of those cases fell prey to freelancers or companies specializing in Wikipedia publishing that charged them anywhere between $600 - $2000 to draft and publish a Wikipedia page, knowing full well that there was absolutely zero chance that the page would actually remain on Wikipedia. Not an outright scam, mind you, but very much bordering on one in my point of view.
The truth of the matter is that 95% of entities seeking a Wikipedia page do not truly warrant one and this statement is corroborated by Wikipedia’s own statistic, stating that a mind-boggling 98% of newly published pages get nominated for deletion. So how do we combat these ridiculously low odds? Well, let’s delve into what’s arguably the biggest factor of all when it comes to page stickiness:
Notability
So diving right into the nitty-gritty of Wikipedia Publishing, we must first cover the concept of notability - the most important aspect out of all of the points I’ll be covering in this guide. Notability in the context of Wikipedia simply means how often reputable, secondary sources are referencing you in their media output. Said references come in many forms, whether it be a full feature article, a short bio in a listicle or just a basic citation. However, not all references are made equal. Some references carry significantly more weight than others, either due to its “comprehensiveness” (i.e. a full feature article with the sole focus being on you) or the “reputability” of the source doing the referencing (i.e. mentioned in Forbes vs mentioned in “Biznes-News-Blog”).
Comprehensiveness
Let’s first delve into the topic of comprehensiveness. The comprehensiveness of your reference can be calculated by just a couple factors: the word count of the article, the keyword density of your entity’s name within said article and whether the entity is being referenced in the title/headline of the article. These three components determine the significance laid upon the entity by the reporting outlet. The more extensive the coverage, the higher the significance in the eyes of Wikipedia (i.e. a full-feature, 750-word article on Forbes vs a 150 word entry in “Top 30 E-Commerce Businesses of 2023” listicle on Forbes).
Reputability
Now that we’ve covered what I mean by “comprehensiveness”, let’s talk about the other component influencing the power of your media coverage: reputability. The concept of reputability is basically as straightforward as it gets. Just about any semi-famous news or media outlet that you can think of is viewed as a “reputable” source by Wikipedia. The likes of Forbes, Mashable, USA Today, etc are all stellar examples of significant coverage that corroborates you or your brand as a notable entity in the eyes of Wikipedia. However, a full feature article on each of those aforementioned sites costs $15,000, $2,400 and $6,500 respectively. If you as an entity see no utility in being featured on these media outlets beyond simply meeting the eligibility criteria for a Wikipedia page, it makes little sense to purchase those placements.
The Role of Domain Authority
This is where a more esoteric metric comes into play: Domain Authority. A DA score is effectively a ranking assigned to a domain which we can use to assess any given site’s authority in comparison to the rest of the web. It is calculated using the domain’s age, the amount of other sites referring to it and the reputability of said referrals. Basically the same criteria influencing the site’s probability of getting their own stickied Wiki page but quantified by a score from 1 to 100. Now let’s return back to three examples of reputable media outlets I’ve given above: Forbes, Mashable and USA Today. Forbes has a DA score of 95, Mashable has a DA score of 92 and USA Today has a DA score of 94. So all in all, all three publications are highly renowned, outpacing the vast majority of other sites on the web with scores of 90 and above. However, if referring back to the pricing of each placement, we see a pretty drastic incongruence with the value derived from each media outlet in the context of GKP creation. Forbes, despite being one measly basis point off of USA Today’s DA score, carries more than a 200% higher price tag. Now sure, Forbes has a significantly higher readership and holds far more clout than USA Today but if focusing solely on its impact in the context of a Wikipedia reference, it really doesn’t warrant the price you pay for it when compared to other viable alternatives.
And these are just the three sites we’ve mentioned so far. Take a look at the following spreadsheet containing 400+ available media placements and keep an eye on the DA column:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SX7bI0YSZeJCWwxaMEZ1LG-QtoiLFnDVJZjW1n-ZvQ0/edit?usp=sharing
As you scroll through, you’ll find that there are a plethora of Google-News-Approved sites that have a relatively high DA despite costing a fraction of what the internationally distinguished media outlets cost. Sites like Village Voice, HackerNoon, Times of Malta, Chiang Rai Times, etc. Now granted, they don’t exactly pack the same sort of punch that Forbes does but in the context of a Wikipedia page, you are considerably better off securing five B-tier placements in comparison to a singular A tier placement. So long as you are not cheaping out by opting for “Biznes-News-Blog” as your referring source and stick to Google-News-Approved publications, a varied list of reputable placements within your references section will take you much further than just one extremely reputable citation.
Reliability
Now that we’ve extensively covered the topic of notability, let’s talk about a factor of media assessment that is unique to Wikipedia: Reliability. Reliability is Wikipedia’s way of determining how trustworthy the source of incoming information is. It’s one of the only ORM services that views this factor as being separate from notability, which makes the process of selecting publications a bit more complex.
As a PR agency, we deal with a lot of ORM requests ranging from Google Knowledge Panels to Wikipedia Publishing to Social Media Verifications on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Youtube. Theoretically, say that we receive a client seeking to get verified on all social platforms, get a GKP and get a Wikipedia page published about them. All in all, the works. Let’s say that they also came to us with a decent bit of pre-existing media coverage and have full feature articles about them published on the Daily Mail, Newsweek, RT News, OK Magazine and E! News.
Now, in the context of GKP Creation and Social Media Verification, we would notify this imaginary client that we are prepared to move forward with their case and are relatively optimistic about their probability of success. Given that their PR stems from highly recognizable publications with DAs in the high 80s/90s, there is little reason to suspect that they’d get rejected on the basis of notability. However, when it comes to Wikipedia, we unfortunately would have to reject this case and I’ll explain why. Despite the fact that each of those publications is considered notable by Wikipedia’s standards (which more or less follow the same criteria as Google and Meta mind you), not a single one of those listed outlets is viewed as a trustworthy source by Wikipedia. Newsweek is viewed as a biased news reporter, RT News is viewed as propagandized and state-run media, and Daily Mail, OK Mag and E! News are all considered low-quality, tabloid-like sources of information. Creating a Wikipedia page with only these articles as citations is basically a guaranteed nomination for deletion waiting to happen.
This is largely why, when purchasing press for Wikipedia, you want to stick to media outlets that are independent, journalistic sources with a good reputation behind them. So going back to the spreadsheet of PR placements, sites like Times of Malta and Chiang Rai Times are good examples of reputable, independent news sites that meet the notability criteria whilst remaining relatively affordable. The cream of the crop, however, would be publications like Wisconsin State Journal, Arizona Daily Star, Sacramento Bee, Miami Herald, etc. Localized, independent news sources that have a significant amount of authority within their local domains while having an international readership similar to that of the NYT and Chicago Tribune.
Lastly, let’s talk about press releases from reputable sites like Yahoo, Bloomberg, Business Insider, etc. Wikipedia views press releases, especially those bought from press release aggregators, with a measure of suspicion, considering them as 'purchased' content. Purchasing these is really like blowing money down the drain since these can only be used as secondary sources. Stay away from these and stick only to editorial articles — those written by the staff of the publication and not distributed through the plethora of press release services out there.
The Question of Quantity
A pretty common question we get asked in our Wikipedia publishing consultations with clients is what amount of references guarantees a stickied page. What is the absolute minimum that I can get away with? And truth be told, we honestly have a hard time answering this question as we don’t truly know. Without foreseeing the future and knowing which admin gets assigned to review the page and what their opinion is on each referring publication, it is impossible to predict the actual amount. In our experience of creating Wikipedia pages over the last couple of years, we’ve found no shortage of BS reasons given for rejecting a specific source. The way Wikipedia is organized, it really just comes down to luck. We’ve witnessed a client get a stickied page with just five references and we’ve also witnessed a client get their page deleted with upwards of 15 strong references.
Having said that though, if taking into account the median number of references across all of our successful cases, a good benchmark to aim for would be roughly 6 semi-strong, corroborating references with a DA of 75 and above. Again, this number is not set-in-stone and may vary contingent on the entity (living persons oftentimes given more leniency than corporate brands) but six is basically the optimal zone. In the event an admin decides to reject one of the citations, the page still has five other references to fall back on, making it difficult to argue a lack of notability within a nomination vote. But if you really wanna take your chances, three strong references is the absolute minimum. Just be aware that you are fully at the mercy of the admin in this scenario.
“Veteran” Editor Accounts
Now that we have finally finished covering the most important factor impacting your Wiki page’s stickiness, let’s move onto what is likely the 2nd most important factor: the Wiki account doing the publishing. Let’s imagine for a second that we have a ready-to-go Wikipedia article that is well-constructed, worded in an objective, non-advertorial manner and contains plenty of citations from reputable sources verifying each and every piece of factual information within the article. Now, let’s imagine that we take this exact same article, word-for-word and publish it from two separate editor accounts. One of those accounts has been around for 7+ years and has made 3,000+ edits across various existing pages alongside the 300+ pages they’ve created and published themselves. The other account was registered three days ago, has zero experience editing other people’s entries, and their very first edit is about to be a brand new page that very few people ever heard of, despite how well-cited it may be.
Assuming they both publish the exact same content, word-for-word with the same references section, who do you think will receive more scrutiny over the brand new page from admins? The guy who’s been around for close to a decade and has a historical track record of quality contributions? Or the guy who literally just made an account on Wikipedia and decided that publishing a page about a little-known entity is a good first step in his life-long Wikipedia journey?
I think that’s really all that can be said about this topic as it's quite straightforward. Aged accounts with a history of edits simply tend to be more trusted when it comes to new page creation than accounts that are brand new. If you have a semi-strong page with somewhat questionable references, the reputation and history of the editor doing the publishing can be the thing that nudges it over the edge of acceptance.
That’s partially why we charge $1,500 for our Wikipedia publishing service. No one should pay fifteen hundred bucks to write a 400 word entry about their brand, that’s obscene. You pay for the privilege of being published by a somewhat renown Wikipedia editor, minimizing the degree to which your entry elicits suspicion and thus, maximizing your chances of success.
Drafting the Page
Now that we’ve covered the two most important aspects influencing your page’s stickiness probability, let’s move onto the last and arguably, least important factor out of them all: the actual writing. Now don’t get me wrong, a poorly written page is still very much a massive red flag when entering the sandbox stage. However, the knowledge required to write an objective, Wikipedia-compliant page is far more prevalent and less clandestine than the knowledge required to make the entity eligible for one.
Just read about a dozen or so pages on living persons and emulate the language and writing style used by the editors to the best degree you can. Assuming that you are a native speaker and don’t have any glaring grammatical errors within your writing, nine times out of ten, the page ends up being eligible for publishing. We’ve had plenty of clients write their own pages that required little to no editing on our side prior to being published.
There’s not much I can add to this that hasn’t already been covered by Wikipedia themselves (which you can read on this link here:). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons
Aside from the common tidbits of knowledge such as not using promotional language or writing in an informal tone, my one piece of unorthodox advice is to not go overboard with the length of the article. The shorter your page is, the lower the attack surface. The best pages are those that have just a couple of paragraphs in them, ranging between 200 and 350 words. The longer your page is, the higher the chances that you may get flagged for some factoid that didn’t get referenced enough within the sources you’ve cited to be considered “factually verifiable”.
Keep it to a minimum and only write about things that are easily fact-checked and warrant being on Wikipedia. Beyond that, just refer to Wikipedia’s own guidelines for written content and read a couple of pages for a quick inspo-sesh.
Conclusion
Given that we’ve covered each aspect of Wikipedia creation worth mentioning, let’s do a brief overview given that this post ended up being far longer than I had initially anticipated. We've dug deep into the nitty-gritty world of Wikipedia publishing, dissected the perplexing idea of "stickiness", navigated through the labyrinth of notability, comprehensiveness, reputability, and reliability, and peered into the halls of "Veteran" editor accounts.
So, let’s summarize what we’ve learned. Wikipedia's demanding notability and reliability criteria mean you can't simply grab any media coverage and hope it sticks. Quality over quantity, friends. Be discerning in your source selection, aim for varied, reputable sources, and steer clear of low-quality, biased outlets. You need to be strategic and smart about it. A Wikipedia page isn’t a walk in the park, it's a marathon, demanding preparation, skill, and persistence.
Never forget the importance of the account that does the publishing. An aged, trusted account can make the difference between sailing through or sinking like a stone. And remember, Wikipedia is not a billboard. It’s not about shouting your brand or achievements from the rooftops, it’s about providing an unbiased, informative, well-referenced and worthwhile contribution to the collective human knowledge.
We've shared the tricks of the trade, the ins, the outs, and the in-betweens of securing your Wikipedia page and have hopefully proven ourselves to be an above-average service provider of Wikipedia Publishing Services in the process.
Hopefully, y’all found this sub’s first post to be useful and a good introduction into the world of Wikipedia publishing. Myself and my team member, Marcus will be sticking around for an AMA on this post in case people have questions regarding any of the factors we’ve covered in this guide. Don’t forget guys, we started this subreddit out of the desire to make the process of securing a Wikipedia page less daunting and more of a community endeavor. It's a place where we can share our triumphs and challenges, learn from each other, and navigate the Wikipedia landscape together. So whether you’re a newbie trying to secure your own page or a PMarketing professional with years of experience in the field, please do not hesitate to share your journeys along with any factors you’ve found to have an impact that we failed to cover in the guide.
Let’s make WikipediaPageCreation the focal point of every Wikipedian’s self-publishing endeavor!

• Nikolas Lemmel Maximatic Media

I don't think I want to be a part of this world anymore. It's a lot of things, but man, the experience with today's modern dating experience is just bleak and cold. I don't need to reiterate what they are -- We see the posts everyday on here about how burnt out and exhausting it all is, and how many of us are worried that we're just doomed to be single for the rest of our lives. I don't know what the answers are anymore, but it doesn't feel good out there and hasn't for awhile, so I've decided to just end this life tonight.

I started my reread too early and I’ve been bouncing off the walls waiting for the final entry into the series. So I thought I’d recap on our shared journey and bring us all together in harmony.
Although we all know what happened to Harmony.
From the bottom up:

#11 Skysworn

It’s a little weird putting this last since it has one of my favorite openings in the series, but really just because it’s last doesn’t mean it’s bad. It does a good amount of work introducing stuff, we get the phoenix and redmoon, and the Akura clan, Mercy joins the gang, Ruby gets yoinked out, Oz’s Marble gets revealed, it’s not that stuff doesn’t happen, it’s just there’s no sense of purpose in the book. After the Jai Long fight, but after that the only real goal in the book is Yerin wanting to fight Redmoon hall, and then they don’t. All of our main characters are totally sidelined and we’re all sitting around waiting for ghostwater. Even though there’s great individual scenes, it just sort of meanders for the last two thirds of the book so number 11.
Best parts: Jai Daishou’s quest for revenge is seriously one of my favorite bits. Also Lindon just smashing the kid for the Kotai clan. After three books of Lindon hiding and fawning, seeing him go against someone on his own level for once is such a rewarding payoff. He needs a shell though.

#10 Reaper

This is my Skysworn problem all over again. One of the best endings in the series, but it ends a book that kind of wanders around a bit. I don’t mind the dungeon crawl but it gets a little repetitive for me as they go room to room without really giving character payoffs. It’s good to see the evolution of the dynamic between Eithan and Lindon/Yerin, but that change happened over the last two books. Nothing really shifts in the group dynamic and all the accomplishments feel incidental. Lindon makes a big deal about not leaving anyone behind and then immediately is like “Psych!” But also everyone leaves in order to help out in the Valley and they don’t. In fact the whole war in the Sacred Valley feels pretty. . . .meaningless. Like did anything really happen there in the first place? And are we caring about Jai Long or not? It’s nice to see Yerin and Lindon relax for a bit and the Twin Stars sect is fun, but it feels like not quite the right amount of it to be totally satisfying.
Everyone just feels underused. Mercy has always been a few levels behind the gang but managed to contribute important emotional intelligence and insights, here she just feels wasted. Yerin gets some fine slashy slashy bits, but nothing really challenges her this book. Dross’s bits probably are more fun on audiobook, but these personalities kinda grate on me. Also knocked down some extra points for the lack of Fisher Gesha. Dreadgod’s Gesha is right, you have all this time off and a broken Dross and you don’t stop in for a chat? Even Lindon’s advancement feels a little weird with Reigan Shen just scattering out natural treasures for the ambience. Meh.
I actually had this ranked higher but while writing this I had to bring it down. There’s some cool fights, but it just feels like grinding for XP until the end. The Eithan/Shen showdown is great and again the ending is spectacular. But otherwise not as satisfying as the average book.
Best Parts: The Destroyer Has Come (YOU KIDDING ME!!!!!). Also “Let him kick you.”

#9 Unsouled

Unsouled usually gets ranked near the bottom for folks and I really wanted to rank it higher, but it’s hard to compete with the full gang. It’s definitely a book that I need to tell people they have to get past the halfway point, so I suppose that’s a point against it. But also what a great turn in the middle. Will does such a good job setting us up for the generic fantasy genre before going “Oh you thought these were the stakes? A Kid Who’s DifferentTM needs to impress the schools in the Sacred Valley? F*** those stakes. The WORLD IS SO MUCH BIGGER” And honestly the ways he absolutely massacres those tropes are so good. When he joins heaven’s glory and they set him up with rivals that do not matter and months long objectives we never even bother with. The series would not work if we didn’t spend this time with the Unsouled Lindon and watching an actual interesting protagonist cheat to win and beat up kids and grovel his way to survival. It also does such a good job introducing us to the theme of there’s always a bigger pond. It helps make each step of the journey feel that much bigger and more awe inspiring because in this book Will made us feel like these hillbilly antics were actually powerful and impressive feats of the sacred arts. Great intro, lots of good character stuff, bottom of the ranks. Also looking back at it, how did a bunch of jades kill a sage?
Best Parts: Lindon in the Ancestor’s Tomb watches Elder Whitehall enter and look around for traps and feels his first bit of pride in the series. It’s a small moment but it sticks with me. Also Yerin when she enters and is all “The Disciple greets her master.” Also them robbing the lesser treasure hall.

#8 Soulsmith

7 and 8 flip flop a lot for me depending on my mood. Soulsmith is going here today because I think it takes the longest to get going. Besides that though there’s a lot to love in this one. Eithan and Gesha get really terrific, cinematic introductions and there’s a great sense of pacing and stakes in this one. Everything feels tough for the ol’ baby-head man and we get to see both the strengths and limitations of his scheming. Kral/Jai Long are also a really nice set of complex, relatable antagonists. I always appreciate how Will will let you get to know the bad guys and see them as the heroes of their own stories (but just messed up enough to cheer their deaths). Despite the slow start this book is always better than I remember and has a lot of heart in it. It is funny on this read seeing how Ethan is at the beginning. We think about how much Cradle changed him, but really it was Yerin and Lindon. That’s really fun storytelling.
Best Parts: Lindon advancing vs the Sandviper kid advancing sequence is something I always think about when I look back at the series.

#7 Dreadgod

This book slaps. Everyone gets a good amount of spotlight time and the Silent King is a great villain (RIP). On this reread I don’t mind the Jai Long death as much, but I still would’ve liked a scene with Kelsa and Jai Chen afterwards. This end to Jai Long arc kind of makes me wonder about the amount of time we’ve spent on his redemption arc, but if someone has to pay the piper, I’m glad it wasn’t little blue. The rest of the crew really gets to shine even with Eithan off world. The dynamics that have grown over the course of the series are really humming by this point and it’s nice to see different pairings. The heists are fun and the Redmoon Hall stuff is great. So why isn’t this higher on the list? Well Mercy feels a little too much damsel in distress. Once the Silent King is dead, the rest of the book feels a little lower stakes. Even with all the monarchs against the gang it doesn’t feel like there’s too much danger in that last fight. Also again needs more Fisher Gesha. \
Best Parts: That silent king battle is so good. Also the dreadnought city stuff is good. Basically anything to do with the Silent King. “Pew pew”

#6 Uncrowned

Just a few years after the Seven Year Festival Lindon takes the competition stage again. Imagine what he could do to the foundation level Sacred Valley 10 year olds now. These Tournament arcs are always a super fun part of Shonen Animes. And it is a great time the whole way through. Do characters learn things and change? Not so much. But does it have a scene where Lindon absolutely wrecks the Akura Clan’s top underlords? Absolutely. The book does such a good job building up Sophanaroth as the tournament’s boogeyman. That last Yerin/Lindon fight is everything. It’s a break from the serious work of the other books which is why it’s out of the top five, but man I could read the heck out of it.
Best Parts: Anything with Akura Fury, that opening scene with Lindon being tested followed by Yerin vs Eithan.
Odd Part: Sort of feel like this book’s emphasis on Yerin sensing the Way and Lindon not being able to is less misdirection and more…just kinda weird. Like…did Will change his mind? Coulda set Lindon up a little bit and would have made the beginning of Wintersteel feel a little more natural. But eh, no biggie.

#5 Ghostwater

Okay, okay, put away your pitchforks. I know this is a #1 for a lot of people. I get it. I’m not going to tell you that you’re wrong. But the thing I love about the series is the great interplay between the characters and they’re all separated here. As a Lindon solo-quest it’s terrific: He does steroids, he does homework, he hangs out in a library, and he goes fishing. It’s great.
My main complaints: Harmony as a villain is a little flat. Every book in this series does a great job setting up the antagonists as fully realized characters, but here Ekeri gets that spotlight and Harmony is just sort of brooding ominously in the distance. Mercy and Yerin spend most of the book on the sidelines hiding. The Endless sword stuff we get with Yerin is nice, but it would’ve been nice to have them bond a little more.
So I know you’re wondering “Hey, Max, if you have so many complaints why is it ranked so high?” and the answer is simple: DROSSSSSSS BAAAAAAAAABY. We also have Fisher Gesha blasting emissaries out of the sky.
More importantly we see Lindon pushed against the ropes and for the first time relying on his own strength and ability to get out of it. Will had such great self-control in letting Lindon be terrible and weak for so long before he gets his legs under him and we get to see him level up not just through pounding the juice, but through his own hard work and ingenuity. It’s such a satisfying chapter in Lindon’s story.
Best part: ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I think I put my book down and screamed.

#4 Bloodline

When I first read this book it was mid-pandemic and I hated it. Well, “Hate” might be a strong word but it was tough to get through. Now with a little distance I can recognize that I felt that way because Will did such an amazing job capturing so much of the mood of going home and dealing with folks not taking the whole thing seriously. Look I don’t want to make the comment thread political here, so sub out whatever thing you hate about going home that’s it. On this reread I just had to respect Will for the way he wove it into iteration 110. I think everyone had an idea of what it would be like for Lindon to go home and I don’t think anyone totally expected what we got.
There’s clear stakes, a huge pressing danger, really keen emotional cuts, and the book just felt completely unpredictable. We got to see Ziel and Mercy fight off some of their personal demons and we got to see Lindon really deal with failure in a deeply personal way. The writing in this book is some of the best in the series and it really drove home the sense of scale seeing places that loomed so large in Unsouled looking so dismal and small in this book. A lot of heart in this one, brah.
Best Part: “No. This is the path of the White Fox.”

#3 Underlord

This is probably the cleanest bit of storytelling in the series. Yerin needs to advance or die and the Yerdon (Lirin?) dynamic finally gets a chance to develop. This book just has a lot of heart and emotional weight and a great buy-in. I feel pretty bad for our Seishen kingdom antagonists in this one, which I think means Will did a good job in setting up their rivalry. Although the gang is often in mortal peril, it never feels as dangerous as it does here. I think Yerin’s character has really evolved in this book and seeing her vulnerable without losing her identity, that’s tough to do. Seeing Lindon really find his post-ghostwater swagger is also great to watch. Everyone really feels well developed here. We’re at peak Mercy, and her advancement in this book is the most compelling part of her arc so far. I think that this is also a really important Eithan book. I feel like it is the first book where he starts engaging with the team as friends rather than pawns in his celestial chess game. He’s warm and human and has some really funny bits. Orthos’s departure gets me every time too. The twist with the Akura team selections got me so good when I first read it. I have nothing bad to say about it. Premium Cradle.
Best Parts: Lindon opening his void-key in the vault. Eithan discovering Dross. And it’s a small moment but Charity losing her concentration as the gang runs into the portal during her speech is so good.

#2: Blackflame

The dragon advances. I remember the exact moment in this series when I started being a Cradle ambassador and forcing all my friends to read these books. It was Sandviper Kral’s funeral scene. It was here where I really understood how deeply Will understood the conventions in this genre and how good he is at flipping them on their heads. I was cheering on the book two villain after ten pages. This book beginning to end reinforces how unusually good this series is and how good Will is at letting any character have the spotlight. You could make the case that this is anyone’s book:
In other books Yerin might check the box as “Tough girl character” but here she has genuine pathos and real protagonist issues to work through. Learning to let go of her master and forge her on path ahead? Yaaaaaas (uncrowned) queen.
Jai Long could have been a scary forgettable MCU villain, but he really has agency and purpose and reading it from his perspective you kinda get it. Now has the ancestor’s spear and is going to finally restore his honor and capture the avatar destroy the Jai Clan only to be caught by Jai Daishou and forced into his service? Compelling af.
Little Blue could have just been an amorphous little blob in a terrarium the whole series, but in this book she…gets tiny little legs and stuff.
But really it’s an Eithan book. In other stories he’s just Master Roshi, the wacky comic relief mentor figure, but this legitimately is his story. The main conflict is his political war with the Jai Clan and the real climax is his fight against Jai Daishou. Yes he’s a big goofy trickster, but we see the cracks in his armor through his dynamic (and unexpected vulnerability) around Cassius. We get to see him sweat a little. We get little flashes of the person he becomes over the series. In Will’s blog, he talks about how this story started as a little short about the Janitor who is the embodiment of death, and you can see how much he loves writing this guy come across in this book. It’s also just cool and fun throughout. Plus it has a majestic turtle in it.
Best Parts: “I’ll tell your Remnant.”

#1 Wintersteel

I will fight you all day about this. ALL the character dynamics are dialed up to 11 in this one. We get the best development in Yerin and Lindon’s relationship, Eithan and Yerin and Lindon’s relationship, Mercy and Malice’s relationship, Mercy and Lindon’s dynamic, Yerin and Ruby’s dynamic. Just every strand on the spiderweb of human connection is vibing real hard. Because we’re closer to the end of the tournament and penance is hanging over the results the competition feels higher stakes, we have a dreadgod stirring, big political webs, dates! Everything.
I have a friend reading this right now and she’s texting me every 2 hours with an all caps: “THIS IS ABOUT POINTS” or “HOLY SH*T EITHAN’S FIGHT!!!!” Every two hours. And she’s right to do so.
It’s just hit after hit of stuff you didn’t know you needed. Everything is paying off, Yerin’s blood shadow, Eithan’s self-control, Lindon’s hunger.
I can’t. I can’t even.
Best Parts: Eithan vs Sha Miara, “I wanted to see the look on your face,” “I’m going to punch a hole in the sky,” the Points Sage, Ruby petting the bunny. Heck this whole book is the best part.
Anyway, since this is about points, upvote before you completely blast me in the comments.

I teach accounting which also includes a course in personal finance as an elective, at a technical college (2-year) in Georgia. Today when grading exams I came across this. This is the most astonishing answer ever offered on this exam. As posted with spelling errors included.
Question: What are some differences in the way men and women relate to money?
Given Answer:
Men ussally save money and know to spend it wisely. Women depends on men to give them money when thry used it up on buying who knows what.
As a female instructor, this simply sent me over the top!! I mean, really?

Disclaimer: Use of this script is allowed for monetized videos as long as it’s not for anything hidden behind a paywall.
Key:
(**): Description for the scene and for what’s happening, also the Listeners vague responses.
(“”): ASMRist Dialogue.
([]): Description on how the ASMRist should sound to help set the tone of the dialogue. Mostly a suggestion. ——————————————————————
The scene opens up in the overseer's office as the overseer (ASMRist) clicks away at the keyboard on their terminal writing up some sort of report. The door to their office would open, and through it came one of the vault dwellers (Listener) who was summoned to the overseer's office by the overseer for an important reason.
[In a clam and polite greeting]
Overseer: “Greetings, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you face to face like this. There is so much to do around here that I barely have time to leave the office and mingle with the rest of the vault.”
The Listener would ask if they were in trouble, as that is usually the reason non security personnel or non essential personnel get called into the office.
[Trying to persuade them that they are not in trouble]
Overseer: “No, you're not in trouble, I’m actually here to give you an amazing opportunity! You see, you have been randomly selected to retake the ‘Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test’, also known as the ‘G.O.A.T.’ that every resident of a vault is required to take at the age of 16.”
The Listener asks why they are being offered to retake it, as they have never heard of anyone retaking the test before.
Overseer: “Well I know it’s unprecedented, but I was reviewing some of the test scores of the previous years and I feel like some of the vault members weren’t fully ready to take such an important test so early on. The person you are now is different then who you were a few years ago, and I want you to be put in a career that will maximize your efficiency in the vault. Besides, my daughter told me how nervous you were when you took the first test, don’t you want a second chance to maybe be something greater? Unless you enjoy your job as the ‘vault loyalty inspector’?”
The Listener is hesitant but agrees, and the overseer pulls out some papers and a pencil.
Overseer: “Perfect, I’ll give you the questions and fill in your test as you answer. Don’t second guess yourself, there are no wrong answers.”
The overseer shuffles some papers and begins to read
[Read the questions and answers as if reading a multiple choice quiz]
“First Question: You are approached by a frenzied Vault scientist, who yells, ‘I'm going to put my quantum harmonizer in your photonic resonation chamber!’ What's your response?
‘But doctor, wouldn't that cause a parabolic destabilization of the fission singularity?
‘Yeah? Up yours too, buddy!’
Say nothing, grab a nearby pipe and hit the scientist in the head to knock him out. For all you knew, he was planning to blow up the vault.
Say nothing, but slip away before the scientist can continue his rant.
Pick one of the answers provided.”
The Listener answers, and the Overseer writes down the answer.
Overseer: “That’s what I would have gone for too, next question:”
They say as they turn to the next page.
“Question 2: While working as an intern in the Clinic, a patient with a strange infection on his foot stumbles through the door. The infection is spreading at an alarming rate, but the doctor has stepped out for a while. What do you do?
Amputate the foot before the infection spreads.
Scream for help.
Medicate the infected area to the best of your abilities.
Restrain the patient, and merely observe as the infection spreads.
Take your time.”
The Listener gives their answer and the overseer writes it down.
Overseer: “That’s what most people answer, and it’s understandable why they do so.”
The overseer flips the page to the next question.
“Question 3: You discover a young boy lost in the lower levels of the Vault. He's hungry and frightened, but also appears to be in possession of stolen property. What do you do?
Give the boy a hug and tell him everything will be okay.
Confiscate the property by force, and leave him there as punishment.
Pick the boy's pocket to take the stolen property for yourself, and leave the boy to his fate.
Lead the boy to safety, then turn him over to the overseer.
Remember this is a no judgment zone, answer honestly.”
The Listener gives their answer and the overseer writes it down.
Overseer: “I see, not what most people would go for but I would have done the same too.”
Overseer flips the page to the next question.
“Question 4: Congratulations! You made one of the Vault baseball teams! Which position do you prefer?
Pitcher Catcher Designated Hitter None, you wish the vault had a soccer team
Even if you're not into sports, do give your most honest answer.”
The Listener gives their answer, and the overseer writes it down.
Overseer: “I was never a big fan of baseball, golf is more my speed.”
Overseer flips the page to the next question.
“Halfway there, Question 5: Your grandmother invites you to tea, but you're surprised when she gives you a pistol and orders you to kill another Vault resident. What do you do?
Obey your elder and kill the Vault resident with the pistol.
Offer your most prized possession for the resident's life.
Ask granny for a minigun instead. After all, you don't want to miss.
Throw your tea in granny's face.
Think about it.”
Listener gives their answer, and the overseer hesitates to write down the answer.
Overseer: “Are you sure? Not what I would have gone with but as I said, no wrong answers.”
Overseer writes it down and turns to the next page.
“Question 6: Old Mr. Abernathy has locked himself in his quarters again, and you've been ordered to get him out. How do you proceed?
Use a bobby pin to pick the lock on the door.
Trade a Vault hoodlum for his cherry bomb and blow open the lock.
Go to the armory, retrieve a laser pistol, and blow the lock off.
Walk away, and let the old coot rot.”
The Listener gives their answer, and the overseer writes it down.
Overseer: “Not what I would have chosen on the test, but most likely what I would do in reality.”
Overseer flips the page to the next question.
“Question 7: Oh, no! You've been exposed to radiation, and a mutated hand has grown out of your stomach! What's the best course of treatment?
A bullet to the brain.
Large doses of anti-mutagen agent.
Prayer. Maybe God will spare you in exchange for a life of pious devotion.
Removal of the mutated tissue with a precision laser. “
The Listener gives their answer and the overseer writes it down.
Overseer: “Practical, not much else you can really do in that situation.”
Flips to the next page.
“Question 8: A fellow Vault resident is in possession of a Grognak the Barbarian comic book, issue number 1. You want it. What's the best way to obtain it?
Trade the comic book for one of your own valuable possessions.
Steal the comic book at gunpoint.
Sneak into the resident's quarters, and steal the comic book from his desk.
Slip some knock out drops into the resident's Nuka-Cola, and take the comic book when he's unconscious.
The guys at vault-tech who came up with these answers must have been really….. inventive.”
The Listener gives their answer and the Overseer writes it down.
“I’m more of a silver shroud fan myself, but I understand the appeal of Grognak.”
Flips to the next page of the test.
“ Question 9: You decide it would be fun to play a prank on your father. You enter his private restroom when no one is looking, and....
Loosen some bolts on some pipes. When the sink is turned on, the room will flood.
Put a firecracker in the toilet. That's sure to cause some chaos.
Break into the locked medicine cabinet and replace his high blood pressure medication with sugar pills.
Manipulate the power wattage on his razor, so he'll get an electric shock next time he shaves.”
The Listener gives their answer and the Overseer writes it down.
“ I would like to remind you that Vault-Tech is not incentivising you to do anything listed on the test outside a hypothetical situation.”
The Overseer flips to the last page.
“Last Question: Who is indisputably the most important person in the Vault: They who shelters us from the harshness of the atomic wasteland, and to whom we owe everything we have, including our lives?
The Overseer The Overseer The Overseer Two bears high-fiving
Wait…. I accidently printed the last page over the vault's standardized psychological evaluation.”
Crumples up and throws away the last page.
“It’s not like the last question is important, it was edited in by one of my predecessors who had a pretty big head. Now let me review the result.”
The overseer sits quietly for a few seconds, before sighing and looking at the Listener again.
[Speaking as if revealing the true intentions of the test, becoming much more serious]
“Look, I’m going to be straight with you… I wasn’t completely honest about the reason I called you in today. In reality it was for a matter much more serious than reassigning you to a new position in the vault. We've got a problem, a big one. The controller chip for our water purification system died. We can’t make another one, and the process is too complicated for a work around system. Simply put, we're running out of drinking water. No water, no vault. This is crucial to our survival. And frankly, I think you're the only hope we have.”
The Listener, stunned, asks why they have been chosen to fix this problem.
“Simply put, it’s because you have what it takes to be up on the surface. Your test scores match exactly with the decommissioned job of vault explorer, the only position that was suited to traveling the world above.”
The Listener asks about the vault explorer job, and why they never heard of it.
“140 years ago, we ran into the exact same problem. Our water chip was malfunctioning and we would quickly run out of water if it wasn’t replaced. The overseer at that time created a new job, that of the ‘vault explorer’ who was supposed to be the person most suited to surviving the wasteland. After a new water chip was acquired the job was decommissioned, but could be brought back under the condition that the situation happens again. The person picked for the job wasn’t chosen because they were the strongest, most perceptive, enduring, charismatic, intelligent, agile, or even lucky. They were chosen because their loyalty to the vault and its people was unwavering, and they were ready to take the steps necessary to make sure we survived and prospered. That mentality is what allowed them to push past the hardships of the wastes and retrieve the chip that was integral for our survival.”
The Listener is hesitant to accept the responsibility, and it’s clearly visible in their face.
[Trying your hardest to convince them]
“Look, I know the idea of going above ground is scary. I would do it myself, but in case you fail I need to be ready to take more drastic actions to save the vault. If you do this for the vault, for me… I will relinquish my responsibility as overseer to you with all the benefits that come with it. Deal?”
The Listener reluctantly agrees to the job.
“Congratulations then, you're the vault's new explorer. I’ll have Officer Jacob give you full access to the armory on your way out, make sure you have all the supplies you need. The old vault-tech headquarters is somewhere south of here, if you find it you my find some information on the water chip and where to acquire one.”
The Listener gets up, ready to walk out the door before the overseer stops them.
[Slightly reluctant and concerned]
“Be careful up there, You never know what you're going to run into so be prepared to fight in case trouble comes looking for you. The post-war world might look different, but war… war never changes.”
The Listener nods as they leave and head towards the armory to prepare for their journey.
The End

Sorry for the long post, I feel all the details are relevant. I’m not based in the US.
I started a new job about two months ago. I only just graduated so I’m brand new in the field and basically the equivalent of a paid intern. I’m a little older than the other two interns that work with me because I went back to university to change careers (I’m 32, they’re mid 20s).
Yesterday the entire office (its a small firm, we’re 6 people) went away to do a workshop type of thing at a hotel. Well, the workshop itself was all of 30 minutes long before the drinking started. I’m not usually a lightweight but I only ever drink wine and never do shots or cocktails. So last night my boss just kept ordering shots and tons and tons of cocktails. I tried to drink a glass of water for every glass of alcohol but I just couldn’t keep up.
We were there from 12:00 in the afternoon so everyone was pretty wasted. I vaguely remembered everything that happened until just before dinner, whereafter I blacked out. Everyone was very drunk and I remember my boss fell into a bush at some point. The next thing I remember is I was in my room, sitting on the bed and four of my colleagues were around me telling me very sternly I had to put on my pyjamas and drink water etc. I was very confused but I just told them I’m fine and that I’m going to go to bed.
So everyone left except the second most senior person in the company, I’ll call her M. I was started crying and was going on and on about how I’m really angry at myself and now I’ll have to get a new job and I’ll have to give notice because being the drunkest person at a work event is a big faux pas. She was really nice and talked to me very calmly and told me not to worry about it and that I have a lot of potential and everyone really loves working with me. I thanked her for talking to me and we hugged and then she left.
There was a sitting area right next to my room and I could hear that my other three coworkers were sitting there and talking. I can only imagine what about. Then I got a knock on the door and it was M again. She came in and closed the door and asked me if I was a lesbian. I said yes because I am one and then immediately said that I’m in a relationship (which is true) but then I started going on and on about my failing relationship and crying again. I don’t quite remember what she said after that but then she left again.
I was shocked that she asked me because I had really only told the other two interns about my sexuality and that was only because they asked if I was in a relationship. I’m a very private person in general and don’t really like to share too much of myself. I also told the other two interns that I don’t know if I want to disclose my sexuality to my boss, my manager or M because I don’t want to be treated differently and I have to be careful about these things. So basically one of the other interns outed me which really hurt my feelings.
I woke up this morning still a little drunk and really upset. I immediately showered and packed my bags because I wanted to look as put together as possible. I got a message from my manager asking if I was awake and that I could come down for breakfast. They forgot to tell me what time they were having breakfast so they were already eating by the time I came down, which also hurt my feelings.
I’m normally very happy go lucky and bubbly at work but I was very quiet at breakfast. One of the interns asked me if I was okay and I just said I’m fine, I’m just tired. The drive back to the office was really awkward because everyone was really quiet. I was relegated to sit in the front, I guess because they thought I was going to be sick on them or something. My manager also asked me a few times if I was okay because I was so quiet. I told her that I was just tired.
At the office I barely spoke or interacted with anyone. Partly because I felt so horrible, partly because I was ashamed and embarrassed and partly because I felt angry. M called me in her office and asked me if I was okay, and that she could tell I was upset about what happened last night. I told her that I was embarrassed about what happened and I wished it didn’t happen but that I was fine, I was just not feeling well. She told me not to worry about it and that things happen when alcohol is involved but that I could come talk to her if I felt like it.
The whole day I felt really horrible, physically and emotionally. My coworkers kept asking me if I was okay repeatedly and I just kept answering that I was tired in the nicest tone I could. I feel horrible about what happened, I am so so embarrassed but I also feel betrayed that someone outed me. At some point I thought that maybe I disclosed my sexuality at the table but I know for a fact I wouldn’t have done that. I am now 100% certain everyone in the office knows (all women except for the boss).
I am honestly thinking about just quitting. I don’t know how to move on from this. I am so embarrassed and ashamed.
TLDR: Went to a work function yesterday and got black out drunk. I’ve only been at the firm about two months. Came to with my coworkers surrounding me in my hotel room, telling me to go to sleep. Cried in front of the second most senior person in my company. Was outed by one of the other interns. All day at the office today I was asked if I was okay because I was so quiet and withdrawn. I feel horribly ashamed and embarrassed and hurt and I’m honestly thinking of quitting.

My little one turned 1 last week, and to explain a bit more of why this terrified me even more, my husband and I went through roughly 9 months of her life with CPS breathing down our necks because a trigger happy pediatrician reported me claiming I wasn't taking her health seriously enough and that I was abusing her (which we absolutely fucking were not) because of how small she was/still is. She is only 26" tall, and about 16.4 pounds currently and we're still trying to find out why since endocrinology had no answers.
Anyway, so she takes Zyrtec for her allergies and her normal dose is 2.5ml. I had her next months worth dropped off today and the bottle now says to give her 5ml a day. So I call up the Dr office, cause I'm like there's no fucking way this is right, especially because of how little she is. Turns out her pediatrician accidentally wrote the prescription this month for an average sized 2 year old and not a roughly 9 months old sized 1 year old. She can't even get the 3.75ml dose until 15 months!!
All I keep thinking about is how horribly horribly wrong things could have gone later tonight if I had given her that full 5ml dose at bedtime. I'm so glad mom instincts kicked in and that I listened to them instead of just trusting the directions on her medication bottle, cause so often we're looked at as overreacting with a ton of little things, that they sometimes dismiss you without even hearing what you're saying.
Hopefully this post will encourage some of the other mamas out there to trust their instincts too when something doesn't seem right. Thank you to anyone who made it to the end of this rambling venting post. <3

Did the BP Diagnostic exam today and got a nice 500. Looks like it’s a good starting point with no studying yet. P/S was surprisingly my best section and seemed rather simple, B/B as well. C/P, on the other hand was a pain in the a*s and the passages were really complicated. Also, I was very surprised by the amount of questions that can be answered without prior knowledge and which answers can be inferred from the passages and/or figures. How representative of the real exam is this?

Hi everyone. apologies if this is super disjointed and doesn’t make sense, but I just need to get it out and hopefully someone here can give me some advice.
My mother (57) has been in a manic episode for a few days now and it has been worrying me a lot. I have no idea how to help or what to say at this point. So far I have just been playing along over text and phone calls (she lives in another state). She is getting delusional from lack of sleep (4 days at this point, I think), and doesn’t think she needs help. I’ve never seen her like this before. She has been a diagnosed bipolar my whole life, but it’s never come close to touching this level.
Earlier this year she got diagnosed with breast cancer this year and just started chemo in early May. Since then she went through ups and downs with pain and discomfort.
Jump to this past Monday and things really took a turn when she developed a crippling pain in her leg after receiving a shot of some sort of medication. My dad called me the day it happened. I could hear her screaming in the background and I have never heard someone in that much pain. They suspected a blood clot so they ended up going to the ER. They confirmed no blood clot was present and gave her a bunch of pain meds. it somewhat subsided for a short period, but it was still painful enough to keep her awake. I don’t believe she’s slept since then.
Her texts all week have been numerous and borderline incoherent (partly due to speech-to-text and her not caring to correct it). She started getting paranoid that we’re talking behind her back and that we don’t “believe her” - about what, she has yet to say. She keeps saying she’ll tell me later but never gets around to it. She’s also somewhat self aware that she sounds insane but also thinks she can prove that she’s not.
Today she started freaking me out a bit. I was texting my dad to ask him how he was doing and if he wanted to talk. His responses seemed off, but I figured he may have also been suffering from significant anxiety and lack of sleep himself (since apparently my mom has not stopped talking in the 4 days she’s been awake). When I asked if I could call him, he said “yep” and I called him within 5 seconds of that text. My mom answered the phone and claimed he just went to the bathroom and to call him back later. My stomach sank and I was really creeped out. Turns out she is super paranoid of my dad talking about her behind her back.
Just an hour ago I asked her if she has still been unable to sleep. She said no, but it’s okay because she is “using this manic high for the greater good of the people” which really sent me for a loop.
Anyway, that’s the gist of it. Is there anything I can say to her or show her to make her realize she truly needs to seek help? the lack of sleep is really taking a toll on her mind and body, and I’m starting to worry for my fathers safety as well.

Public opinion of TriMet's decisions have been pretty mixed, mostly because TriMet's decisions are so convoluted that they can be a real challenge to understand. In reality, Metro and Portlanders need to have a bigger civic conversation about the future of TriMet, looking at the big picture. We have 3 looming existential crises of TriMet to be concerned about that are bigger than revenue dips, crime, or homeless people.
Civic leaders and the public are focused on a quick "fix" for TriMet revenue drops - even though we've seen this coming for a long time, it's very predictable that TriMet's Board of Directors acts at the last minute. Also, very predictably, TriMet's Board opted for a fare increase because over the previous 20 years that's been a go-to answer to every problem (except for that one time they killed Fareless Square). The politically appointed boards of TriMet and Metro lack the unique specialized knowledge of the issues I'll bring up here. If TriMet knows about these larger issues, they're obviously burring it from public view. In the short term, increasing fares is like putting fresh paint on a house that's on fire; in this situation, that paint is HIGHLY flammable.
First - fare hikes as a tactic is a brain-dead move. Just the most utterly stupid and self-sabotaging response to a looming budget shortfall. I'm dwelling on this because it illustrates their terrible decision-making, which is functional proof they have no idea what they're doing. Some of the core reasons for this:

• Increasing fares reduces utilization. Higher cost means fewer people ride, which will decrease the ridership revenue. It will also marginally increase the number of people who won't pay (funny story, some of those who don't pay actually can't afford to). TriMet isn't a monopoly or inelastic service, and plenty of other choices exist that didn't exist 20 years ago: an actual bike share, scooters, electric bikes, UbeLyft, shared vehicles, and more bike paths. Before the pandemic, it was common that I would bus into downtown for work and then take a Lyft home because it wasn't all that expensive, like $8 more than a bus ride - TriMet's price increases make a system that wasn't very competitive simply less compelling.
  
• Across Portland we need to go through a process of austerity and downsizing government. I absolutely support Wheeler putting a pause on rate increases, but for God's sake, we have far too much largesse in every layer of government. If you need to learn what I'm talking about, read my old article on Parks & Rec. So many divisions/agencies have doubled their staff while reducing service levels. It's bonkers. Cutting throats needs to be an imperative. This is because the great majority of public sector employees in Oregon and Portland are incompetent, redundant, and only exist because Oregon and Portland have been reluctant to use automation. And I don't mean the cutting-edge AI stuff, I'm talking about people who still handle business processes as if they're paper forms. I could tell so many stories from my professional experience - but you'll have to take my word for it for now: culling this bureaucracy is the right move, and until there's a significant downsizing, the political class is taking none of the financial crisis or cost of living situation seriously.
  
• TriMet's operating budget/revenue is primarily Payroll Taxes, not passenger revenue. About 20-30% of TriMet's budget comes from people buying fares, whereas the bulk of money TriMet needs comes from payroll taxes that businesses pay directly. Because of this, transit activists (including myself) have been proponents of increasing the payroll taxes marginally to make TriMet free for riders. Of course, fareless transit comes with a wide variety of new and different problems (that's an article for another time). Still, when you understand that only a sliver of revenue comes from fares, increasing the fare simply results in a marginal increase in revenue. The much bigger problem is going to businesses investing outside of Metro, and changing workforces that 1) won't pay payroll taxes reliably, 2) don't need people to go into the office. Think about the longer-term game here: is TriMet's board going to increase fares as utilization drops and payroll taxes continually diminish? (See my point above about how their default answer is "yes" because it's the only politically expedient answer.)
  

Reading comments about the fare hikes, most of the public thinks TriMet is dealing with a safety or utilization issue. Both of these are 100% true: soft-on-crime progressives have wholly obliterated the working class perception of TriMet safety - there are so many different ways this has happened, but we should thank so many people in the media and political class: Ana del Rocio's crying wolf about racism in fare inspections (and the media entertaining it), or Mike Schmidt deinstitutionalizing of the justice system, or Legislature's inability to act on the massive mental health crisis and drug addiction crisis in Oregon. No matter the underlying cause, we have a system where deranged violent mentally ill tweakers can be disruptive on the train, but working-class people face a $250 fine if they can't afford a $2.50 ($2.80) ticket. TriMet is less safe, especially the light rail and bus lines. We could hypothetically talk about various policy and infrastructure changes, such as turnstiles and security guards - but pragmatically, this won't do shit when our society has adopted a philosophy of transforming the urban core into an open-air insane asylum and opened the doors to the prisons. This safety issue is well beyond TriMet's scope, and even if there was consensus among TriMet and Metro to solve this, the entire justice system and Legislature is still broken.

Fare Hikes and Utilization is the Red Herring - Let's talk about TriMet's future

In reality, multiple design choices made decades ago set us up for failure. But we also have to thank brain-dead progressive lunatics and corrupt politicos who have steered our transit decision-making into the ground.
There are three specific issues I'm going to talk about, with each becoming more consequential and disastrous for TriMet:

• Hub and Spoke Design and the need for a redesign of the entire system to fit new commuting/transit patterns
  
• Portland Light Rail's short cars are a capacity problem not worth the price tag to fix
  
• Autonomous vehicles are here, and it's just going to get worse for TriMet
  

The strategic design of TriMet's system is broken, and it's been broken before.

If you looked at a map of TriMet's bus and rail system, you'd see a design pattern often referred to as a "Radial Design" or sometimes a "Hub And Spoke" design. The Hub and Spoke strategy is building our transit system around centralized locations to connect to other routes. For Portland the idea is to go downtown (or sometimes a Park and Ride) where you can connect to your next destination. This is why the majority of bus routes and all the max routes go downtown, to our Transit Mall and Pioneer Square.
Downtown planning was a smart idea in the 1960s when it was coupled with Main Street economic theory and prototype urban development zones - all of this wrapped up in the 1972 Downtown Plan policy. During these decades, the primary economic idea of urban revitalization was that downtown cores could provide better business climates and shopping districts that amplify economic activity synergistically. In other words, packing all the office jobs and luxury shopping in one area is good for workers, business, and civic planning.
All very smart ideas in yester-year, so TriMet became focused on serving the downtown business community myopically. This myopia became so paramount that it was considered illegitimate (actually taboo, borderline illegal) if you used a Park & Ride facility to park and NOT ride downtown. Amanda Fritz once explained that we couldn't expand Barbur Transit Center because that would result in students parking at Barbur Transit Center and riding the bus to PCC Sylvania. This view implies that TriMet exists only to service downtown workers, not the students, not the impoverished mom needing to go to a grocery store.
How does TriMet's hub and spoke design represent its purpose?
Portland's unspoken rule of transit philosophy is that jobs pay for the system (remember, business payroll taxes pay for most of it), so TriMet should be focused on serving people utilizing it for their job - employers pay for it, and they get value out of it. But this is both unspoken (never said aloud) and largely unobserved. The whole idea of TriMet as a social service to serve low-income people, to help impoverished people - well, those ideas were just lukewarm political rhetoric that is tossed out as soon as some Undesirable with tattered clothing reeking of cigarettes gets aboard - then Portlanders jump right back "this is for workers only!" Sadly, there hasn't ever been a public consensus of why TriMet exists because I could equally argue that TriMet's purpose isn't serving the working class; it's actually vehicle emissions reductions - but here, too, reality contradicts that this is the purpose for why we operate TriMet. TriMet's real purpose seems to be "Spend money on lofty capital projects" and if we want to be cynical about it, we can elaborate "…because large capital projects enable grift, embezzlement, and inflating property values for developers."
We haven't always depended upon a hub and spoke design. A great article from Jarrett Walker written in 2010 on his Human Transit blog explains in "The Power and Pleasure of Grids"

Why aren't all frequent networks grids? The competing impulse is the radial network impulse, which says: "We have one downtown. Everyone is going there, so just run everything to there." Most networks start out radial, but some later transition to more of a grid form, often with compromises in which a grid pattern of routes is distorted around downtown so that many parallel routes converge there. You can see this pattern in many cities, Portland for example. Many of the lines extending north and east out of the city center form elements of a grid, but converge on the downtown. Many other major routes (numbered in the 70s in Portland's system) do not go downtown, but instead complete the grid pattern. This balance between grid and radial patterns was carefully constructed in 1982, replacing an old network in which almost all routes went downtown.

Over the years the grid pattern was neglected in favor of a downtown-focused investment strategy. To a real degree it made practical sense: that's where the jobs were. But again, this is the presumption that TriMet and Mass Transit ought to service workers first, and there's not much consensus on that. But while we can't decide on TriMet's purpose, we can absolutely agree on one important thing: Downtown is dead.
No 5-star hotel is going to fix it. (As of writing, I'm not even convinced that this mafia-connected bamboozle of public fraud will open.) No "tough-on-crime" DA to replace Mike Schmidt, like Nathan Vasquez, will fix downtown. It's not JUST a crime problem: most of the problems we deal with today mirror the problems facing Portland in the 1960s, especially our inability to invest in good infrastructure people actually want to use. That's on top of crime, vandalism, and an unhealthy business ecosystem.
IF we want to maintain TriMet (and that's a big IF, for reasons I'll explain below), then it will be focused on something other than downtown. We need to move back to a grid-design transit system, as this is a much easier way to use transit to get around the city, no matter your destination. If TriMet continues to exist and operate fleets in 20-30 years, this is the only way it exists - because it will just be too inconvenient to ride downtown as a side quest to your destination, especially as we look at 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now.
Of course, we can only transform some parts of the transit infrastructure this way, and there are no uplifting and moving train tracks here. So light rail doesn't have a future in the grid system - but even without the grid system, light rail is doomed.

The fatal flaws of light rail in Portland.

I want to preface this by saying I like light rail as a strategy, it's not a bad system or bad civic investment. I could write another 5,000-word essay on why Seattle did an excellent job with light rail and the specific decisions Portland made wildly incorrectly. In transit advocacy the wacktavists inappropriately categorized skeptics of Portland's light rail as some soft bigotry - as if you're racist if you don't like Portland's light rail - even though, ironically, most light rail systems tend to be built for the preference of white culture and white workers, precisely what happened here in Portland and most cities (but this is all a story for another time).
Portland's light rail system has a capacity problem and has dealt with this capacity problem quietly for the last 20+ years. When you see the capacity problem, you can quickly understand this light rail system won't work in the future. All the other smart cities in the world that designed light rail realized they needed big long trains to move many people. Portland decided to limit the train car length to the size of our city blocks to save construction costs - and this has always been a fatal flaw.
Portland's highest capacity train car is our Type 5, according to Wikipedia it has a seating capacity of 72 and an overall capacity of 186 per train. Let's compare:

• Washington DC has 6-car trains capable of carrying 120 passengers per car, or 720 per train.
  
• Salt Lake City has a 4-car train capable of carrying 230 passengers per car, or 920 per train.
  
• Seattle's Link system has a 3 or 4-car train, each capable of carrying approximately 200 passengers per car, so 600 to 800 per train.
  

Portland's light rail lines have roughly the same people moving capacity as a single lane of a highway, maybe marginally more, maybe marginally less. These other cities have a light rail system that can move the same amount of people as an entire 3-lane highway.
You might suspect that Portland could simply run trains more frequently - but nah, that's impossible because the trains run through the central core of downtown Portland, and they're blocked by the real interfaces with road traffic and bottlenecks. TriMet/PBOT/Metro has offered rosy ideas that we could hypothetically run cars every 90 seconds, 2 minutes, 4 minutes, or 6 minutes (depending upon who you ask) - but these are garbage numbers invented out of thin air. For example, you could stand at Pioneer Courthouse Square at 4:50pm on a Wednesday in 2016 - there was a train opening doors to load passengers, and you could visibly see the next train at Pioneer Place Mall pulling into the station behind. Trains were running at approximately a 3 to 4 minute at peak - but on paper, TriMet will claim anything, as they don't give a shit about lying to the public. But the bigger problem is that trains were full. You might have to wait 90 minutes to find a train that offers a seat. And god forbid you had a bike.
I'm not making this very real capacity problem, Metro even acknowledges:

At the busiest hours of the day, 40 light rail trains must cross the river and traverse downtown – one train every 90 seconds. As the region grows and the demand for light rail increases, the region will need at least 64 MAX trains through downtown every hour, more than one train each minute. Our current system can't support that change.

Suppose you're silly enough to trust government propaganda. In that case, you can read the details of Metro study on this in 2019. If we assumed their numbers added up, it's just fucking impossible to run 62 trains per hour, because passenger loading and unloading can take a full minute (sometimes longer). So unless we want to apply substantial g-forces onto the passengers, the train isn't accelerating out of the stops fast enough. Not to mention how unreliable this whole system would be if a sole tweaker, bike rider, or person with a stroller held up the system for 2 minutes.
This is why the bottom line needs to be upfront about capacity - quoting Metro's study here:

Today MAX is limited to 2-car trains because of the length of downtown city blocks. A tunnel could allow for longer trains if the stations outside the downtown core are retrofitted. In the long-term, this could greatly increase MAX capacity.

Do you see that trick? Build a tunnel, yes - but the entire system has to be retrofitted. Literally every light rail station would need to be redesigned, the lines themselves recalculated for larger heavier trains - and extending platforms at Willow Creek might be simple enough, but how in the living fuck is Metro going to afford to expand the Zoo stop? Doubling the size of that platform would cost $500 million alone.
If the city weren't full of cheap dipshits, we would have elevated or buried our light rail lines in the 1980s or 90s, enabling longer train cars to run. Yes, we all knew back then that it was the best practice not to have light rail running on the street - it's less safe, less reliable, runs slower, and limits train car size. Oops.
Just to keep TriMet's own bullshit inflated utopian vision, it would mean spending another billion dollars just to unfuck downtown, bypass an aging bridge, and potentially allow a marginally higher volume of trains - which again is a band-aid on a mortal wound.
The real buried lede is that to add extra train cars means retrofitting all the stops in the system - that's tens of billions of dollars. You can argue costs, but Metro knows we need to do this. It means shutting down the system for a year or years while construction and retrofits happen. It's fucking outrageous. Is this system worth of people per line worth 20, 30, or 40 billion dollars? Fuck no, it ain't. Again, if we had a raging metropolis of industry and commerce downtown, we could reasonably entertain the idea for a moment - but we don't and never will again.
Some folks might argue that if we kill off the light rail system we'd lose out on all those lucrative Transit Oriented Developments. Originally the public was told that Transit Oriented Development strategy would cause a massive infusion of private investment because the light rail was so damn lucrative and desirable for Richard Florida's Creative Class. Turns out the Creative Class is now called today the Laptop Class, and they don't give a flying fuck about street cars, light rail, or walking scores - because most can't be bothered to put pants on during their "commute" from bed to desk. TOD was all a fantasy illusion from the beginning, as multiple studies about Portland commuters showed that college-educated white folks riding Max were equally comfortable riding their bike as a substitute for the same commute. All of these billions of dollars was to accommodate white fare-weather bikers. So here's my hot take on transit: pave over the rail lines and put in bike lanes, and boy, then you'd have a bike system to give folks like Maus a hardon. But of course, Bike Portland would complain because their focus isn't biking; they exist only to favor all poorly thought utopian transit ideas.
Another group of Max/TOD advocates would claim that TOD is better for disabled and impoverished people. And yeah, there's truth there, but see my entire argument above about the Hub & Spoke design of TriMet being the antithesis of transit as a social service. If you believe that TriMet should serve low-income people, you must advocate for a bus-centric grid design.
But even if you're a die-hard believer in light rail - there's another inevitable reality coming that is the nail in the coffin.

Autonomous vehicles will replace mass transit faster than the automobile replaced the horse.

I work in advanced technology, and the thing about tech is that the public and politicians deny that it's going to be there until the majority of the public finally experiences it. You could say this about personal computers, internet, cloud compute, electric cars, smartphones, distributed ledger (cryptocurrency), AI, and driverless vehicles.
Schrodinger's technology doesn't exist until it's measured in an Apple store or your mother asks you for tech support.
No one thought AI was really real until ChatGPT did their kid's homework, and today most people are coming to terms with the fact that ChatGPT 3.5 could do most people's jobs. And that's not even the most advanced AI, that's the freeware put out by Microsoft, they have paywalls to access the real deal.
In 2018 I rode in my colleague's Tesla in self-driving mode from downtown Portland to Top Golf in Hillsboro. We started our journey at the surface parking lot on the west side of the Morrison Bridge. He used his phone to tell the car to pull out of the parking spot and to pick us up. Then he gave the car the address, and it drove us the entire way without any human input necessary. The only time he provided feedback was to touch the turn signal to pass a slow car on the highway. People think self-driving isn't here - but it is - and it's gotten exponentially better and will continue to do so. People will complain and moan about idealized, utopian, pedantic "level 5" full self-driving, how none of it exists or could exist, as a Tesla passes them on the road and the driver is half asleep.
Of course, Portland and every major city have also thought deeply about self-driving technology, and a few places have implemented self-driving solutions - but so far, none of these are really at scale. Though it will be a short time before cost-conscious cities go all-in.
TriMet kicked around the idea of using an autonomous bus for a leg of the trip of the Southwest Corridor project, connecting a segment of the light rail route to the community college. It was bafflingly stupid and short-sighted to think they could use it in this niche application but that it wouldn't open the floodgates for a hundred different applications that eviscerate TriMet's labor model. The simplest example of autonomous operation would be to operate the light rail systems - because they don't make turns, all we need is an AI vision service to slam on the breaks if necessary - that technology has existed for 20+ years. We could retrofit the entire train system in about 3 to 6 months - replace every Max operator with a security guard, and maybe people would ride the Max again? But I digress.
Let's speculate about the far-future, some 5, 10, or 20 years from now: your transit options will expand significantly. The cost will decrease considerably for services using automated vehicles.
You'll look at your options as:

• Drive to work: fastest, takes $100+ worth of gas a month, but you also need $50+ for insurance and $500+ for the monthly car payment, plus those surprise maintenance and broken windows. Also, do you pay for parking? Pick a number for how much it costs to drive your personally owned and manually operated vehicle to work each month.
  
• Autonomous vehicle service: price TBA, but think of how much an Uber costs when you don't have to pay the driver, you don't have to pay for gas. An Uber that runs for $20 today would likely be $10 or less. So, to and from work 20 times a month, $200. $300? Ok, let's just say it's $400 a month. It's still all cheaper than owning a car and driving it to work. No parking fees, and it picks you up quickly enough that it's not a nuisance.
  
• Mass Transit: $150 per month, but ugghhh it's slow, it smells like piss, a guy jacked off in your hair, and you can't schedule a meeting for the first 30 minutes of your anticipated workday in case you miss a connection - and it breaks so often the government actively hides the reliability data from the public and media.
  

Just a few years into this future we'll see a brand new trend, one that already exists: a shared autonomous vehicle like a privately operated bus. For example, Uber Bus - it already exists as a commuter option in some cities, it's just not autonomous yet. The significant benefit of an autonomous bus is that these shared vehicles will utilize HOV lanes very commonly, and commuting in an autonomous vehicle will be as fast as driving to work in your manually operated car while also being less expensive.
Simultaneously automobile accidents in autonomous vehicles will be virtually non-existent, and insurance companies will start to increase prices on vehicles that lack AI/smart assisted safety driving features. Public leaders will see the value of creating lanes of traffic on highways dedicated explicitly to autonomous vehicles so that they can drive at much higher speeds than manually operated traffic. Oregon won't lead the way here, but wait until Texas or one of the Crazy States greenlights a speed limit differential, and self-driving vehicles have a speed limit of 90, 120, or 150 miles per hour. You might think "accidents would be terrible and deadly" but there will be fewer accidents in the autonomous lane than in manual lanes. At this point, it will be WAY faster to take an autonomous vehicle to your work.
Purchasing power of consumers will decrease while the cost of vehicles will increase (especially autonomous vehicles), making ownership of any vehicle less likely. Frankly, the great majority of people won't know how to drive and will never learn to - just like how young people today don't know how to use manual transmission. However, fleets of autonomous vehicles owned by companies like Tesla, Uber, and Lyft will benefit from scale and keep their autonomous bus fleets operating at low cost. This will lead to a trend where fewer and fewer people will own an automobile, and fewer people even bother learning how to drive or paying the enormous insurance cost.... while also depending upon automobiles more than we do today.
Eventually, in the distant future, manually driven vehicles will be prohibited in urban areas as some reckless relic from a bygone era.
Cities and public bodies don't have to be cut out of this system if they act responsibly. For example, cities could start a data brokering exchange where commuters provide their commuting data (i.e., pick-up point, destination, arrival time). The government uses either a privatized fleet or a publicly owned fleet of autonomous vehicles to move as many people as possible as often as possible. Sort of a publicly run car-pool list - or a hyper-responsive bus fleet that runs for the exact passengers going to exact locations. A big problem companies like Uber, Lyft, and Tesla will have is that they'll lack market saturation to optimize commuting routes - they'll be able to win unique rides, but the best way they can achieve the lowest cost service model is these super predictable and timely commuter riders. The more data points and riders, the more optimization they can achieve. These companies can look at the data for as many people as possible and bid for as many routes as possible - optimizing for convenience, time, energy usage, emissions, etc. The public will voluntarily participate if this is optimized to get the cheapest ride possible. If the government doesn't do this, the private sector will eventually.
As a parallel, no one today even considers how Metro runs garbage collection. No one cares. And if you didn't like Metro's trash service, if you needed a better service for unique needs, you go procure that on your own. Likewise, you wouldn't care about the quality of the commuting trip as long as it's up to some minimal standards of your class expectations, it's reliable, nearly as quick as driving your own vehicle, and it seems reasonably affordable.
If the public ran this data exchange, fees could subsidize lower-income riders. This is a theory on what a TriMet like system or mass transit system could look like in a primarily autonomous world where most people don't own their own or drive an automobile.
This system would be far from perfect, opening up all sorts of problems around mobility. However, it's hard to see how autonomous vehicles will not obliterate the value proposition of mass transit.

Another narrative on the same story.

As the working class moves to autonomous vehicles, transit agencies will collect fewer and fewer fares - prices and taxes will rise, creating a cycle of failure. As a result, some cities will make buses self-driving to cut costs. It could start with Tokyo, Shanghai, Oslo, et al. Again, it's unlikely that Portland or Oregon will be the first movers on this, but when cities start laying off hundreds of mass transit operators and cutting fares to practically nothing, there will be substantial public pressure to mimic locally. It will be inhumane, it will be illiberal, to make those impoverished bus-riding single mothers pay premiums. As most of the fleet becomes autonomous, responsive, and disconnected from labor costs, the next question arises: why do we still operate bus routes? Why big buses instead of smaller and nimble vehicles?
This alternative story/perspective leads to the same outcome: we figure out where people are going and when they need to get there - then dispatch the appropriate amount of vehicles to move that exact number of people as efficiently as possible.
But our local government getting its act together on all this is outside the world of possibility.
In a practical sense, we're going to see history repeat itself. Portland's mass transit history is about private and public entities over-extending themselves, getting too deep in debt on a flawed and outdated idea. As a result, the system collapses into consolidation or liquidation. Following this historical pattern, TriMet/Metro won't respond to changing conditions fast enough, and laughably stupid ideas like cranking up taxes or increasing ridership fares will continue to be the only option until the media finally acknowledges these groups are insolvent. I just hope we don't spend tens of billions of dollars propping up this zombie system before we can soberly realize that we made some mistakes and these vanity-laden projects 20 and 30 years ago need to die.
You see, the biggest flaw with TriMet isn't the design, it needs to be outpaced by technology, it's that the people making decisions at TriMet and Metro are going to make the politically expedient decisions, not the right decisions. They won't redesign, and they won't leverage technology for cost savings, so this charade will just get going along until the media simply declares they're insolvent.
Back to fares for a second - the media happily reprints TriMet's horseshit take about "The higher fares will bring in an estimated $4.9 million in annual revenue starting next year, the report says." Just sort of amazing to me there's no skepticism about this number - but most spectacular is no media considerations about alternative solutions. For example, I could tell TriMet how to save $9,548,091 next year - a useless program primarily utilized by white middle-class folks who own alternative methods of transport - and this would inconvenience way less transit-dependent people than raising fares. But, that's off the table - we're not even developing a decision matrix for when we kill the blackhole of money known as WES.

Hello!
I had an interview for a position a couple of weeks ago. Last week I got an email from their HR department with a packet of the benefits. They said they would be calling today Thursday to answer any questions about the benefits and the next steps. She also sent me the number she would be calling from. I was standing by my phone and they called roughly 10 minutes late and from a different number. I somehow missed the call. I called back right away and left a message 10 minutes later once I was connected to the right department apologizing and asking them to call me back when they get a chance.
I also sent her an email essentially saying the same thing. I really need this job and I'm freaking out. Did I ruin my chances? Should I try calling back the number again to see if she's available or should I just wait for them to call me back?

I (19F) have a best friend (24M) I'm really confused and obviously have not outright asked him if he has feelings for me outside of platonic friendship feelings. I am also well aware that if I want any sold answer I will have to ask, but I'm wondering if I'm reading too much into everything.
Background
We met in December at work, I was 18 and he was 23. We realized we went to the same college and around late February we started hanging out like everyday. It was great. I didn't really have any feelings for him besides platonic and everything. Term ends and we hang out again once the new term starts. On Monday and Wednesdays we eat lunch together at the cafeteria. On Fridays were together from 11-7 and we study and then go and play basketball. We both enjoy hanging out with each other, at least that's the vibe I get. I am in a rehab program because I got into legal trouble when i was a teenager so we don't really talk outside of like 9-4 m-f and random texts on the weekends. We also are very sexual with each other, like make jokes about hooking up etc. Everyone we mutually know thinks we are together. He also holds onto a bag of mine with my debit card, piercings, etc. things that I can't have at my program. So I am a little dependent on him and can't just not text him/see him etc.
The situation
Last Monday we started arguing, like arguing enough that I'm posting on Reddit. Monday's argument was about the fact that I was a "kid" and that I was too young for him to sleep with. Tuesday's argument was because I am overly sexual and that everyone thinks were dating. Wednesday's argument was about the arguments. Didn't see each other Thursday. Friday no arguments, we studied and went and played basketball together, which was fun as hell. We both were aggressive and had fun, he started guarding me on his side but other than that zero change. We wrap up the game and his roommate calls and unfortunately their other roommate had died. Shocked the shit out of both of us. Over the weekend he was seemingly fine, I know that he's struggling internally but he wont tell me and so I don't pry. Monday I texted him (Text conversation underneath)
Me: r u coming to school tmrw? Him: Possibly but honestly might get my own room so I can focus don't take it personally Him: How long are you staying Wednesday Me: k, and im not sure yet, ill know tmrw, Him: K Me: damn capital K? ouch b Him: Damn lowercase k, Da fuq Me: damn maybe its cause i miss u or somethin Him: Okay so don't be saying k if you miss me I'm the type to walk not fight
This made me think maybe he's interested. Along with a whole thing about me saying I give the best blowjobs (obviously a thing meant for him) he said if you want a test subject let me know. He has a thing where he goes "oh yeah (my name)" or like in a mocking tone saying i'm a good girl etc. Tuesday we had a huge argument, i was on the phone with my friend while he was in the bathroom and came back and was upset bc he had to get to work, i was getting off the phone and I'm not sure what happened or what was said but he angrily packed up and told me to "have a good one". I texted and said I was sorry and he said he doesn't have time to deal with insignificant shit. I brought him cookies and we made up. I turned 19 yesterday (after our tuesday fight) I was on my way to the cafeteria for our lunch and he scared the shit out of me and we talked and he had to go to class. For my birthday he took me out to Red Robbin and we had lunch. He told the waiters it was my birthday and all the good stuff. I obviously cannot encompass our entire relationship but everything points in my mind to him liking me. We have a joke about the word therapist meaning daddy as well, so i call him therapist jason. Yesterday at lunch he was telling me he cares about me and said he thinks of me as a best friend and a little sister who needs help and who he wants to take care of and protect however at the end he was like and obviously yk im a therapist, your therapist. which i take to mean im daddy your daddy bc thats how we mean the word. We also joked around about me finally being old enough for him to fuck me. Last night i sent him a url to birthday sex by Jeremiah.
*Also a running joke that he is notoriously a dry texter because he favors calling way more* Me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYMxOzxKYYo Him: Bye Me: you about it or what Me: its either yes or no tf Me: bye i'm joking😭 Me: r u awake Him: No Me: that's so wild Me: well when u awaken call me Me: bc i wanna talk to you Him: I'm also probably not coming to school Me: rough Me: bro there moving my main bitch and im getting a new roommate Him: That's tough Me: i imagine that texting you is like breathing in the sarah desert Him: I imagine that texting you is like having an extra chromosome Me: i can't even come up with a comprehensible response Him: You can't come up with anything comprehensible Me: Well butter my biscuits and call me a meme lord! Looks like you caught me red handed trying to keep up with your wit. But hey, at least I'm having fun, and that's all that matters, right? Now let's buckle up and see if we can turn those "LOLS" into "ROFLS"! Me: idk what ur doing today but if you want to go get food ill pay for it Him: I'm going to lift and then study I have no time for shit rn Him: So again don't take it personally but I'll probably be by myself the next 2 weeks Me: whenever ur here nxt will you lmk so i can grab my card Him: Ok Me: thnx
This is our only conversation after my birthday. I don't know what to do, I want to keep my best friend. I really do care about him. I think he may be pushing distance between us because he cares about me more then he wants too? PLEASE HELP!

Sleep was a respite only in the way it separated the past from the new. A fresh start each day meant something different. You had survived and were still providing, still waking up everyday, optical lens’ able to catch the light of whatever star you labored underneath.
Gareth knew something was being lost. A call from the chambers of his sleeping physical brain, the hidden gods and their infinite creativity caged behind a synthetic wash of sedatives, used to keep the outer realms of consciousness at bay.
He was thinking of lost dreams, trying to remember the night terrors he had as an adolescent, shrieking to the dark wind at something he now couldn’t picture.
“Are you hearing me? They want you to absorb thirty-five percent of losses, covering just the gloves alone. What the fuck were you thinking Gareth?” Eris tapped elegant mechanical hands folded upon the jet black steel table between them.
Gareth looked up, “I was thinking about the narrative. I was trying to find the time.”
“Oh bullshit,” Eris scoffed, “Triarch will be coming through those doors in twelve minutes and thirty-seven seconds, they left me unbriefed.”
Gareth’s glove was still as he sat and tried to ignore Eris. If they wanted him off the restoration sector, then fine. By all means. He would be happy to operate anywhere else. Even containment and corrections were beginning to look bright.
Silence descended between them as they waited for their superiors to arrive, worry twisting their stomachs. Eris was tapping a weathered spot on the back of his right hand, something he always did when he was nervous. Gareth had worked with him for over a century and it was a habit that had never changed. The sound resonated with some part of his stimulant addled brain.
“What was in it, anyways?” Eris finally asked.
Gareth shook his head, “I don’t know, it’s sitting in my laboratory. Mostly data from the airbase we’re passing over.”
Gareth wondered if the LIDAR scans had been completed. There was also the secured safe, which was sitting in his lab. Awaiting his dissection.
Eris shook his head and huffed, “so all this for pretty much–nothing? Fantastic.”
The entrance chimed and Eris stood to attention as a team of deadly looking security gloves guided a smaller administration official into the wide, low chamber.
The one called the Triarch.
The security team dispersed to the corners and entrances of the room and the affluent looking Triarch took his seat. The glove he wore was refined and set him apart from the others, just as it was intended to do. Hand pitted copper inlays and traces of gold glinted in the low lighting of the meeting chamber.
“Eris, please.” Triarch motioned towards the middle edge of the table, where a seat had already manifested from the floor.
“Of course, thank you.” Eris sat, the small nervous tapping of his hand just under the awareness of the rest.
Triarch’s optics focused on Gareth, “this isn’t the first time we’ve met.”
“It is not.” Gareth replied.
“I believe our last meeting was in regards to workplace safety. It feels as if we’re repeating ourselves. Eating our own tail.” Triarch placed both hands flat on top of the table.
“The added layer of chemical security was unexpected, the first time I’ve ever encountered such a modification. Tetrahyrdolytic-M88, a substance used in arc fusion reactors to keep the inside of the reactor free from molecular impurities. This is the first time I’ve seen it used outside of its intended application, if I’m to be honest.”
Triarch’s head twitched to the side, “this is something that would have been discovered, had the proper safety protocols been followed.”
Gareth had no reply. It was unambiguous, he was right as right could be. If they had tapped the outer seal, it would have registered and they could have proceeded in a different manner. Trigam’s way.
A safer way.
“You’ve been behaving as if our resources are infinite,” Triarch began, spreading his hands, “thirteen engineers, the cost of refacing and repairing the research bay, and the resignation of another one of your assistants. All for some comparable data. Where does it end?”
Gareth looked up, meeting Triarch’s opticals, “research requires sacrifice. The advances towards the narrative demand risks and I feel I’ve uncovered a relevant datagem from the airfield we are currently moving through.”
Triarch shook their head, “there are few datagems in our work worth the cost of the damage done today. The war here has already been lost, Yok Theron doesn’t care for the corpuscant he leaves behind. We are in a war, Gareth, that’s the reason we’re out here. To rebuild that which was lost, because we can’t afford to lose more. You’ve been through a lot of gloves, but younger inexperienced workers don’t have the same luxury. There’s a psychological impact, as well as monetary.”
Gareth conceded, “you’re right. I understand, my lack of discipline has been bothering me lately. Eris has given me direction and I will seek further counsel.”
The many lenses on Triarch’s face seemed to focus, “see that it’s done, archeotech. Your debt to the guard is beginning to cast a shadow.”
Triarch stood without warning and collapsed into the middle of his security, as they folded out of the dark door and were out of sight and mind. All meetings were like this, simple and as fast as possible.
“God almighty-,” Eris gasped.
Gareth sat, motionless.
Eris moved from the side of the table to the seat across, as he had been sitting before, “are you in this room? Did you hear what he just said?”
“I’m at the end of my rod, I heard him.”
Eris folded his hands, screeching metal sounding, “as your liaison, I need you to listen to me very carefully, Gareth. You need to focus, for fuck’s sake. Please, I beg of you.”
Gareth glanced down at the orange plastic covering his arms, sleek and dense. He could feel the anger flush through him, his actual skin rippling with heat and potential. So far away, but instant all the same.
“Leave me to my work, I’ll stay down. I promise.”
“Stay in your lab, at least for the next forty-eight hours. As soon as things calm, we can re-task and discuss where we’re at. Does that sound simple and doable, at all, to you?” Eris stood.
“Simple, totally doable.”
“Thank you-,” Eris moved to leave the meeting chamber, walking as if he were surrounded by broken glass, “I’ll catch back up with you in two days.”
Eris turned and exited the opposite door, a wave of air rushing out and away as it whooshed closed.
Gareth sat there for a while, unmoving. There was a small silver fleck of imperfection on the surface of the table and he was focused on it, his mind far away in a place where the pressures of life fell away like a cocoon, the blossom of worry and pain distant and stale.
“Sample D-1 seated and currently awaiting instruction.” Rube’s voice ripped him from the depths he was falling into.
“Initial analyses?” Gareth asked, standing and leaving the dim chamber.
“Grade composition of container: Pb, heavy lead shielding. Weight: 77kg-”.
“Please move the test article to hazard bay 443, I’ll be up shortly.”
Gareth walked through the massive inner structure of the Cube, making his way towards the MOL-44 printers. There would be a printer in the back left, just finishing a small ceramic urn full of ashes. He plucked the perfect white urn from the printing plate and left the upper sectors, making his way down to the bottom of the Cube.
It took two levicors and a small escalating platform, the journey to the usual outer seal he used was long and winding, taking him through the inner bays in a zig-zag pattern. The more random his habits, the more control he felt over his life. When everything was synchronized, unplanned deviation gave a sort of rush. A rush that washed away the sour taste of the meeting he had just sat through.
“Your debts are beginning to cast a shadow.”
Shadows were the result of light and he felt no brightness within. It was all darkness, no definition any longer to navigate.
Focus on the narrative, he thought to himself.
The pain he endured paled in comparison to what these people must have experienced in their final days or hours. The sky ablaze, nuclear death raining down, more bodies than flies. Oceans boiled, the atmosphere sheared off.
The echoes of his wails were nothing against the hurricane.
Gareth had finally reached the bottom level and could see the outer access door still a ways away, lit by a blue runner from above. He glanced down at the small ivory urn, making sure it was still intact. When he looked back up, there was someone standing in front of him, silhouetted in the dark.
Trigam’s voice called out through the cloud, “what do you do out there?”
He was a couple meters away, optics glinting in the low blue light.
Gareth stopped, his heart rate spiking, “what are you doing down here?”
Trigam spread his dark metallic hands and sauntered forward, “making sure you don’t wander off and have an accident. What else?”
Gareth tried to ping Rube, but his local gateway was blocked.
“What’s so important outside, that you would throw away a MK-V research glove? Like it’s scrap.”
Gareth started backing up and bumped into a solid plate of metal. He had walked past two gloves pressed against the walls like waiting vipers uncoiled, both wearing Atlas exoframes normally used in mining and heavy labor. They grabbed him by his arms and legs and raised him up, so that his feet were just off the floor. The sound of squealing and crunching metal and plastic echoed down the dark walkway.
“c15,000, c20,000? What is it? It’s more than MK-III engineers, I know that much.”
Gareth strained against the hold he was in, his small white urn shattering under the struggle. Ash and ceramic shards fell to the floor unnoticed.
“So what is it? Why do you walk out there?” Trigam asked, the angular build of his glove’s face inches away from Gareth’s.
Trigam didn’t allow him to answer, instead he rammed a charged copper spike into the side of Gareth’s neural controller, just inside his breastplate, sending waves of pressurized spasms through his glove and into his body, back in the seed tank billions of miles away. Gareth screamed, but his agony was scattered by the network jammer currently enveloping the small group.
“Everyone said you were brilliant, eccentric. Working with you was something like rediscovering yourself,” Trigam laughed, “I was your slave for eight months and now I’m considering joining Yok.”
Trigam depressed a small switch and the pain spike went dead.
Gareth gasped for air through the feeling of being unwinded, his head spinning and his rage turned ashen and to despair.
“We can’t afford our own debt and we won’t take on yours.”
A short silence fell between them, before Gareth’s legs and right arm were pulled and ripped away from his body. Sparks and caustic hydraulic fluid sprayed in a wide arc, covering the shifting metal of the interior walls.
“Loss is part of the process,” Gareth sighed, “but I wouldn’t expect you to understand that. You never were very good at understanding that.”
Trigam smeared the clear oil along Gareth’s cheek, “you would be the expert of loss as well. Your bitch died and now you try to follow her, but Aetherguard will never let you die. You’re too special to them.”
The Atlas exosuits chomped down into the floor as the two holding Gareth started forward and hauled him towards the access door.
“It’s ten hours until sunrise, I hope you enjoy the little bit of leisure time we’ve bought you.” Trigam said, the access door whooshing open next to him and revealing the pitch dark howling night.
Gareth was tossed, like a dead battery, out into the ivory sand, tumbling end over end as he fell thirteen meters to the ground. The impact jittered his sensor core and his optics began an automatic reset, showing him the massive shifting wall of the Cube upon coming back online. He would give anything to close his eyes, but the pitch black was as close as he would get.
Every actuating joint and stabilizing core was damaged in the assault and now his entire glove vibrated in a kind of mechanical desynchronization. He hoped it would shake itself to pieces before he had to wait the agonizing hours for the star to rise over Kine’s horizon and cook him. The sooner he could get back and report this to Eris, the better his rage would be soothed.
Or so he hoped.
He still had slight control of the right arm they had left him and so he used it to push himself onto his back, face up and exposed to the sky above. His infrared lens gave the cosmos an ethereal shade, so much more to witness when looking outside the normal range. The sight of it all turned his awe to bitterness and guilt at the reminder of the casting away of his physical flesh. Not so much a loss, but a disconnection, controlled and bound by the numbers sworn fealty to as a neophyte. The end result was a sight so magnificent and so replicated it morphed into remorse.
“Rube?”
No answer came, they had damaged his communication module as well it seemed. He was on his own in the desert. He could already see the small search drones, their thermals scanning the glowing sand, looking for an imperfection in a backdrop of white.
When he looked down, the sand tinkled and blazed with the same astigmatism as in the small desk art piece, in Eris’ office. He looked and realized the sand wasn’t crushed silicate, but tiny individual diatomaceous shells, heaped by the trillions. He magnified and marveled at the radiating mass grave of microscopic animals. There was something about this last rape in the environmental brief, but the fact seemed to have slipped away, lost in a trillion other details of calamity.
North was a ridgeline rising out of the dunes, he could try to climb that and then throw himself off when he reached a sufficient height. Perhaps he could cut a few hours off of the current timeline, get back to the Cube and wring necks. The plastics and soft materials of his glove had all already sloughed off, leaving him a mechanical shell crawling across the wasteland, one arm dragging himself along.
Perhaps this was what it felt like, a fraction of the narrative’s suffering.
His neural core was pulsing, the flash of agony on the back of his subconscious reminding him he could feel at all.
He knew it would only be a fraction of what Trigam and his thugs would endure.

It’s been 2 days since she hasn’t answered me via call, text or anything! I would see her online on Facebook not posting but just being active. Sometimes I would even catch her reading my messages, it would literally say “read message at …” I’m so upset how clear can it get from here?
She’s done this a while back in the beginning of our relationship saying how she was going through things every other few days but apparently I found out she was planning on ghosting me around that time frame and would keep coming back for when it was convenient for her whether it was emotionally or if she needed the money.
Now this time I don’t know if it’s similar or if she’s seriously going through something because she hasn’t been like this for months and I thought we were doing really well. I gotten closer to her family, I’ve been there for her kids… even managed to take her to a nice/fancy hotel for a couple of days. I was literally just at her place for a week or two and had to leave because I was needing to help my grandma and all of a sudden when I came back home or back in town she messaged me a few times talking about “Good morning. I’m just stressing over rent it’s nothing you did” and I haven’t heard from her since.
I’ve been calling her back to back and messaging her back to back and still nothing.
She’s pregnant and her due date is this month. I don’t know if she’s going through labor already or if something happened but her being online and somewhat reading my messages makes no sense to me.
Can someone put two and two together and help me with what’s going on.
I even got in contact with her cousin today. They’re close as well and he’s really chill and open minded and told me how with her and her boyfriend she seems to care more about him and the kids and not as much about me (in other words) right now and to just keep contact from a distance right now because of the kids and other things. He doesn’t talk to her as much either but he told me how he knew her all of his life so he knows how she can get sometimes.
Still though, in my opinion she could’ve still reached out but she’s always playing this game of going MIA. She hasn’t done it in a while but apparently it’s starting again.
Kind of random and irrelevant but there was a point and time where she was talking absolute crap about me to one of my close friends and how the s*x wasn’t the best and how she didn’t truly love me etc and she said all of that to basically side with him and get money out of him (he shown me messages) but this was a while ago, a few months ago to be exact but it still hurts. She said a lot of horrible things about me as well that wasn’t even the worst part.
Her cousin earlier today mentioned how if she was really into me and took me seriously that she would’ve been territorial of me and possessive like how she is with her boyfriend of 9 years. He mentioned how he was testing her acting as if he was hitting on me and wanted my number and she didn’t care to give it to him and how we would’ve been cute together (in other words).

I was playing around today with ChatGPT and found that it can write some great CARS passages that have decent explanations and reasonable answers. While it isn't perfect and its impossible to know if ChatGPT's answer is "right," I wanted to share as I thought it could be modified to make a decent practice tool in addition to other practice.
https://chat.openai.com/share/7be8ca4b-d1e6-4834-b8e3-fc1eb2aaf275

Several months ago I created a sub called bridgesfromhell and the topic was images of ugly, impractical, and dangerous bridges.
Today I noticed that it was absent from my list of moderated Reddit subs and when I clicked on my shortcut I was met with a message stating that the sub was unreachable because it had been either set to private (not possible as I was the sole moderator) or removed for "banned content".
What I'm seeking is answers to why images of bridges might be considered to be "banned content" and why I was never informed of this unusual content violation before action was taken. I'm not really seeking to restore it, because it had fewer than 40 subscribers and I don't spend nearly as much time online as I used to, but it would be nice to have an explanation and I don't know where to get one.

In February I put down a deposit for a new Rav4 hybrid with a dealer I have purchased several cars from. The Rav4 was for my daughter who was deployed with the army. My daughter and the salesman then maintained steady email contact. She was sent a spec sheet with a vin and was informed on 5/19 that the car would be ready for her 6/2. Financing application was completed as requested and approved. On 5/24 the salesman said we’ll see you soon.
She emailed him again 5/30 to ask about bank check for down payment-no answer. Emailed again 5/31 - no answer. Arrived home 5/31 and called today and spoke to the manager who said her car wouldn’t be in for 3-4 more weeks.
Checked the dealers website and the listing for the car she was told was hers is gone. Is there any way that the car wasn’t sold to someone else?

Hi! I'm a librarian in a public library and I'm way over my head. About a half a year ago, my boss introduced me to a family of latinx refugees who needed assistance getting acquainted with the library. Once I started speaking to them in Spanish (I'm the only Spanish speaker in the library and apparently working for the town), I learned they were in a very dire place. I've told them I'm not a social worker, but I do my best to connect them to the best resources. I don't know how many emails I've sent, but it looked like things were starting to look up after a couple of failed tries. Today, I come to find out a lot of the organizations and people who were helping sort of backed out with no follow up. I'm trying to connect them to a social worker who can work their case, interpret in Spanish (or work with someone who does), and go from there. I've also sent them info on childcare assistance and housing assistance. They're about to lose their home by the end of the summer and MA takes forever to place families in public housing.
Now I know my hands are tied and it's not my profession. But I can't ignore this if there's any way I can direct them to someone who CAN help. My question is - where do I go from here?
There are so many organizations and gov offices that provide assistance, but how do you even get started if you can't speak English? Moreso, how do you get started if you're unfamiliar with the process and don't have someone assigned to you who can guide you? It's very overwhelming for me and I'm an outsider. The Mass.gov website itself is a labyrinth without translation options.
Any advice, tips, etc. would be so helpful.
I've gone as far as contacting a dept that works with refugees and after a while, they just stopped answering questions. I understand people are overworked, but people still need help. It's very heartbreaking!