I think I might have missed a couple loans but it was a little confusing.

Alex, 26, Houston TX

Personal:

• She buys whiskey flavored coffee grounds, based alchy?

• Claims to do "gravel biking" or something? Has some outdoorsy smart watch

• Nobody taught her how to drive so she got tickets timestamp

  • My dad literally told me to go get a car and drive it back to a city

  • She kept getting stopped for black plates and ticketed for other things until a Border Patrol agent told her?

• Got a dog at some point? timestamp

  • Dog bit her inhaler, a 2k medical bill

  • Dog timestamp

• She IS a credit card person timestamp

• Mentioned that she was kicked off of Lyft, she doesn't got into a reason

• Demands the studio wagie "prod*cer" pick up her pen after Caleb "drops" it timestamp

  • Now you can pick up both of my pens

• "It's not even that bad, it's like a quarter of some of the other people" timestamp

  • "I had no choice"

Finances:

• Car (2017 Ford Fusion)

  • Had a 10'000-13'000 13% loan that she refinanced against the car, 21'000 loan 29% interest

  • Late on her payments for this?

  • $404 minimum payment?

  • Her car is worth 8'000 at most

  • Told company she was considering a voluntary repo so they lowered the monthly payments, she doesn't know if there was also a term extension

  • Got this loan because she was unemployed for 6 months, she has a folder of loan offers she's received in the mail

  • Something about the dealer doing something weird while running her credit? timestam

• Late Payment timestamp

  • "I don't have a late payment"

  • "I just got the loan and yesterday was the first day I made a payment"

  • Caleb btfo completely, it wasn't a late payment.

• Loan 6'000 timestamp

  • 198 a month

  • Personal Loan 29%

  • To pay her rent

• Dissolved her 401ks, owes at least 1450 in taxes timestamp

  • "I didn't submit a 1099 form, I didn't know how, there was no part for that"

  • "When I was filing my taxes I just didn't see a part to submit it"

  • "Well they taxed me when I withdrew so I thought maybe they taxed it"

  • Was due in November but she "[hasn't] been able to get in contact with them"

  • She's drained her 401k twice?

• Credit Card 1 (paid off) timestamp

  • Ate a late fee on this one because she hadn't gotten the personal loan at this point?

• Card 2 ($402/$500) timestamp

  • Has a bunch of gym subscriptions?

• Verizon bill 2'000 payment timestamp

  • she discontinued services and had financed devices

    • Got herself a phone, his dad a phone, "he didn't like it so he broke it instead of letting me return it"

    • "He is living like a homeless person and I felt bad"

• Education - timestamp

  • 10'000 in student loans

  • "multi-disciplinary studies in business administration, digital marketing, and sculpting?"

  • Did not graduate

  • Transferred from one uni to another in her current city? Time frame is not accurate, thinks she has completed 90 credit hours?

  • "Technically I'm a junior" didn't want to continue remote because it was "stupid" as an art student

  • Thinking about paying her personal loan off with more student loan money?

• Owes some energy company 400 timestamp

  • Doesn't remember when this was

Career:

• Remote Call Center Rep

  • Got 6 months warning?

  • 6k severance (3 months?), she had to stay until her end date to get this?

  • 6 months unemployed

Firing Explanation timestamp

• Found another job but got laid off from that because they were "incompatible"

  • "I didn't like the way they ran things and then they didn't like what I had to say"

  • Something about the trainer making fun of the sexual harassment training and some other dumb stuff?

    • Actually this wasn't the issue she "kept this to herself"

  • "I have certain disabilities so I had to shut off my camera so they said that I was shutting off my camera way too often"

"Well when they fired me they used different reasons"

"They had pulled me into a conversation and they were like really aggressive and they said like 'you keep shutting your camera off' and like i-if you do this you're going to get fired' but I told them like I have a disability -"

"What's your disability?"

"Huh oh - I have overactive bladder and I have asthma and I have allergies that trigger my asthma"

• She uses a wireless headset so she can stay connected while using the restroom? She thinks they didn't know this? That they didn't know she was still listening or that she has a disability? She told them in the "if you keep doing this you're going to get fired" meeting.

• She mentions later that she turned down calls from other jobs offering because she was hoping for a higher paying role

Hi everyone

Continuing with my LATAM autismus posts today I'll talk a bit about how Brazil came to have so many japs (around 2 million descendants if we include Hapas which makes it the largest Japanese diaspora in the world, larger than the one in the United States). Speaking for myself I had 2 Co-workers who were of Japanese descent, a former boss of mine and my sister's Godmother is the daughter of Japanese immigrants.

So our story begins in the 19th century. In 1868 the Meiji restoration happens and Japan rapidly modernizes to catch up with the rest of the world. The Japanese population grows to unsustainable levels and unlike Britain, Japan doesn't have (yet) colonies to ship their people. However the government encourages their citizens to migrate. One of the earliest places they go to is the United States, more specifically Hawai. However it turns out 19th/early 20 century burgers are racist as frick and by the early 1900s they start restricting Jap migration. With the 1924 migration act, the Japanese are banned from entering the US.

Which lead us to Latin America. The first LATAM country to establish relations with Japan was Peru , in 1899 the first 790 immigrants arrived in Puerto Callao near Lima. The Peruvian Japanese community became prosperous and many of you probably know their most famous representative, former President (and for many dictator) Alberto Fujimori, whose presidency was filled with extremely dramatic events.

But now let's go back to Brazil. In 1871, a year after the end of the Paraguayan War and after having freed thousands of slaves who served in the army, the abolitionist movement gained force with the government of Prime Minister Jose da Silva Paranhos, the Viscount of Rio Branco, presenting a bill which was passed by parliament and signed into law by the Emperor which was the “Lei do Ventre Livre”, which translates as “Free womb Act”, this law made the children of slaves born henceforth that date as free citizens (they would still remain under the tutelage of their parents masters until reaching adulthood under “apprenticeships”). This meant slavery had an expiration date. On the top of that, racism was highly fashionable and according to the 1872 census only 38% of the Brazilian population was white (mostly descendants of Portuguese colonists who arrived en masse during the gold rush of the 1700s), pardos were the largest racial group, and blacks were the third largest. The government decided to take advantage of future abolition and whiten up the country. The first immigrant colonies in Brazil were the German colonies in the Southern States, Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, however the number of German arrivals was small, so the government promoted italian, portuguese and spanish immigration. In 1888 Slavery was abolished as the Princess Regent (the emperor was sick and following medical treatment in Europe) Isabel signed the Golden Act which was passed almost unanimously by Parliament (one of the few people to vote against it, the Baron of Cotegipe told the princess that doing so she had lost her throne).

Almost 5 million europeans migrated to Brazil between 1870-1940, being settled mostly in São Paulo where the coffee plantations where located, but also in large numbers across the southern states and Rio de Janeiro, in the latter the immigrants were mostly portuguese and urban.

So going back to Japan. The first diplomatic contacts with Japan were made by Brazilian Navy Vice-Admiral Artur Silveira da Mota, the Baron of Jaceguai. He arrived in Tokyo in November 1880, and made the first contacts with Japanese diplomats, however it would take another decade for more to come into fruition.

On November 15th 1889 the Brazilian Emperor, Dom Pedro II was deposed and Brazil became a Republic. In 1890 President Deodoro da Fonseca signed a decree banning Asian and African migration unless with authorization of Congress. In 1892 congress passed a law authorizing the migration of Japanese and Chinese immigrants. In 1895 a trade treaty was singed with Japan and by 1897 a permanent Brazilian diplomatic mission (called legation) was established in Tokyo.

In 1902, Italy banned the subsidized migration of italian citizens to Brazil. The reason was that in São Paulo, most of the italians employed in the coffee plantations were treated on a similar fashion as the BIPOCs they were replacing, except they were payed just enough to buy food and a few clothes.

The plantations still required a workforce. In 1906 the President of the Imperial Migration Association, Ryo Mizuno visited Brazil and in 1907 an agreement was signed to send 3000 Japanese immigrants, the first 781 arrived at the Santos port (São Paulo state) on June 18th 1908, on board of the Kasato Maru which is the Jap-Brazilian Mayflower.

Reception of the Japs by the public was mixed, on one hand many praised the Nips for being clean, unlike the Europoors who arrived daily , many newspapers on the other hand condemned the bringing of “yellows” who would pollute Brazil and the whitening process. Oliveira Viana, a Brazilian sociologist compared them to sulfur calling them “unsolvable”.

Most of the first Japs to arrived never learned any Portuguese and they were pretty much exploited at the plantations. Their children, the Nissei weren't much different, 90% of Nissei spoke solely Japanese. However with time many of them became small producers themselves, in 1911 saw the first buying of lands by japs.

Then came the 1920s, as mentioned before in 1924 the Americans banned Asian migration of any sort, so the Nippons began to arrive in larger number in Brazil. Some 190k Immigrants migrated between 1908-1941, around 110k between the 1924-1933 period alone.

By the 1930s !macacos were getting tired of them. In 1930 Getúlio Vargas became President after a coup, later in 1937 he would establish his dictatorship, the Estado Novo. Vargas was a nationalist and many in his government tried to stop yellow migration. As early as the 20s bills were proposed at congress banning blacks from migrating and limiting Yellows to 5% of migrants at most. Migration was finally limited under Vargas by establishing quotas (except for Portugal )

In 1939 a poll showed that 87% of Jap Brazilians subscribed to Japanese Language newspapers, so a decreed by President Vargas banned them along with radio. Brazilian eugenicists were voicing loud concerns about the Yellow race polluting the Brazilian Nation

In 1941, months before Pearl Harbor, the Justice Minister, Francisco Campos forbade the entering of 400 Japanese Immigrants of the ground that:

their despicable lifestyle represents a brutal competition with the workers of this country, their bad faith, their selfishness and their bad character makes them an ethnic and cultural tumor located in the wealthiest region of Brazil

In 1942 Brazil declared war to Germany and Japan, so immigrants and descendants of immigrants of said countries were considered enemies of the state. In São Paulo crowds gathered around Japanese Neighborhoods yelling

DEATH TO THE FIFTH COLUMNISTS”

In the countryside Nip farms were attacked and in many cases the Brazilian attackers killed their animals. The Nikkei were banned from driving cars, or trucks or any motor vehicles, the Japanese schools were closed by the government. After Japanese subs sank Brazilian merchant ships the police decided to do a round up at the Jap neighborhood of Liberdade in São Paulo, they woke up everyone and told them they had 12 hours to move

On june 10th 1943 some 10k japs living in Santos were forced to abandon their houses within 24 hours and move to the coast. Apparently the government ran around 31 concentration camps (similar to US internment camps) to imprison Japs and Krauts. During Carnival, emperor Hirohito was mocked which made the japs seethe

Jap students who contributed to the war effort in agricultural colonies were exposed in sorts of human zoos.

The war ended in 1945 but not the Brazilian xenophobia, in 1946 an amendment was proposed into the constitution being drafted which would have banned the entering of all people of the Japanese race, the article was defeated by a single vote.

By the 1950s things had changed, the Nikkei became more integrated in society forming a stable middle class. Today they're definitely over represented among engineering and science majors. Among their contributions sushi became very popular in Brazil, not to mention Hapa celebrities like Sabrina Sato. Most of the young Nikkei are mixed, after the 1960s and 70s mixed marriages became more common along with integration and none of them speaks Japanese, they're pretty much Brazilian through and though and interesting they handle “le generational trauma” better than Asian Americans.

Some pics of the immigrants from the good old days.

A public warning, it says “it is forbidden to speak Japanese, Italian or German in public. These were made during WW2.

!latinx !neolibs

@Kongvann I forgot to notify as an effortpost

This video talks about the immigration, but what's funny is the seething in the comments section from people saying “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE BLACKS AND THE FORMER SLAVES! WE DIDN'T NEED IMMIGRANTS, YOU, THE HOST, YOU'RE NEGRO WHY ARE YOU MAKING THIS VIDEO AND HOW CAN YOU SAY THIS COUNTRY WAS DEPOPULATED”

It has become a recurring thing on social media that every time a special about the history or commemoration of a diaspora (Japanese, German, Italian, Portuguese) leftoids pop out saying they were brought to Brazil out of le BAD FAITH and RACIST WHITENING and soy about pan african larpers. !nooticers

Bonus I forgot

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shindo_Renmei

There was a Nippo-Brazilian terrorits organization called Shindo Renmei,they were responsible for the death of at least 23 people and printed fake news about Japan having outstanding victories while dismissing Japan's defeat as “allied propaganda”.

The Cangaço

Cangaço is the name given to the banditry that occurred from the the end of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century in Northeastern Brazil; the bands of cangaço committed kidnappings, r*pes, looting and the common practice of castration of their enemies. The opinion about the cangaço is divided, some believe that it was a form of defense of the peasants against the landowner oppression, while others believe that the bands of cangaço were just bloodthirsty barbarian gangs interested only in profit. Regardless of who is correct, the influence that cangaço had on Brazilian northeastern culture is undeniable, as shown in songs, popular art and even artistic films and comedy movies.

A King is born

Virgulino Ferreira da Silva, also known as Lampião (Lantern, nickname he received because of his ability to shoot quickly and accurately, lighting up the night) was born on June 4, 1898 in the small town of Serra Talhada in the state of Pernambuco. Virgulino was from a lower-middle-class family, could read and write and had 5 brothers and 3 sisters. At the age of 21, Virgulino worked as a craftsman and muleteer with his father, and traveled around the Northeast selling his products.

The Origin of Lampião

In 1915, Zé Saturnino, a neighbor and Virgulino childhood friend, began to dispute land with the Ferreira family. Due to Zé Saturnino's growing political power in the region, Virgulino's family could not resist his network of influence and had to move several times. Each move left Virgulino and his relatives poorer, encouraging him and two of his brothers to join Sinhô Pereira's gang in 1920. Virgulino's entry into a life of crime was definitive when his father was killed by the police on May 18, 1921. Enraged, Lampião swore revenge on Zé Saturnino. Later, in the same year, Sinhõ Pereira's gang surrounded Zé Saturnino's farm so that Lampião could carry out his revenge, but Zé Saturnino's mother (who was Lampião's godmother at baptism) begged him to spare her son's life; Lampião decided to accept the request and left the farm with his gang. Zé Saturnino died of natural causes on August 5, 1981, aged 87.

Crime, Fame and Women

In 1922, Sinhô Pereira leaves the gang respecting a demand from Father Ciceró (famous religious leader in the region) and left the leadership to Lampião. To replenish supplies, Lampião asked for a loan of 20 million reis to Baronesa da Água Branca, a rich and powerful widow who controlled the small city of Água Branca in the state of Alagoas; In response, the Baroness sent a letter saying that she would use this money to buy bullets to kill him. Annoyed, Lampião decided to take revenge on the Baroness by attacking her city. Expecting an attack, the Baroness received military aid from the state government, so Lampião waited a year for the tension to dissipate, thus taking Água Branca by surprise.

On the eve of the attack, Lampião took a small farm a few kilometers from Água Branca, took the owner's family hostage and sent him to buy carpets and red paint in the city. 8 men were sent to block the city's roads while another 10 (including Lampião) were sent to start the assault. The gang hid weapons and ammunition in the carpets, which were painted red so it would look like the bandits were carrying corpses. In the morning, Lampião and his henchmen arrived at the city barracks and asked for help from a watchman to deliver the "bodies", the watchman invited them to wait at the barracks while he called a policeman to take care of the paperwork. Taking advantage of the situation, Lampião released all 20 prisoners from the barracks and stole all the firearms, when the guard and the policeman returned, Lampião arrested them and used a trumpet to wake up the rest of the soldiers and police in the city, who were unprepared and were quickly subdued by the gang and imprisoned in the barracks cells. After that, the armed prisoners and Lampião's gang looted the city, in the end the baroness suffered the greatest loss: she lost 30 million reis, gold, jewelry, 25 dairy goats and was still forced to walk with Lampião through the captured city.

The Agua Branca Invasion and other exploits of Lampião over the years, such as the kidnapping of Stantard Oil employees; his violent attacks against cities in the state of Paraíba as revenge for the death of his younger brother and partial loss of vision (that's why he wore glasses) and his temporary hiring by the government of the state of Ceará to deal with Coluna Prestes, a group of soldiers rebels who marched through Brazil spreading revolt against the Republic; gave Lampião a legendary fame. This reputation made women attracted to the cangaço, the most famous of which was Maria Bonita. Maria Bonita was born in 1911, the daughter of poor farmers, she was forced to marry at age 15 to a shoemaker who betrayed and beat her. At age 19 and still married, Maria met Lampião and the two fell in love, after which Maria left her husband and joined Lampião's gang. According to reports, Maria had a very strong personality to the point of opposing Lampião when she thought he was being too cruel, in addition, Maria received gifts from Lampião and walked through the woods wearing expensive jewelry and silk clothes. In 1932, after a honeymoon, Maria Bonita had a daughter with Lampião, she was called Expedita and given to friends of the couple so that she would not grow up in banditry; Expedita is alive to this day. Even with Maria Bonita's jealousy caused by Lampião's lovers, the couple remained very close until their death.

The Death of Cangaço

The rise of the Dictatorship of President Getúlio Vargas in 1932 removed the power of local oligarchies, thus improving police, marking the death of cangaço. Despite the end of other gangs of cangaço, Lampião and his band did not give up the fight. In July 27, 1938, an anonymous tip took a troop of the Military Police to Fazenda de Angicos in the state of Sergipe, where Lampião's gang was hidden. At dawn on the 28th, the troops cornered the gang and killed Lampião and Maria Bonita. Over the next few days, the heads of the gang leaders were exposed in several cities.

The Victims

Despite Lampião's reputation as a "Brazilian Robin Hood", and the apparent religiosity of these criminals, the institution of the cangaço was extremely violent, with Lampião's gang alone responsible for more than two thousand deaths, including old people, women and children. Below are some of the most emblematic stories of the bandits' brutality.

Pedro Batatinha, a 22-year-old man, was to be married in a week, but misfortune befell him. Pedro was unfairly accused of being an informer and as punishment, Lampião ordered him to be castrated. The smell of his dead flesh was bad enough to attract the attention of a journ*list who was on the same train as Pedro, who took the photo and published it in the city's newspaper.

José Baiano was one of Lampião's most infamous henchmen, as, after raping his victims, he marked his initials on their faces with a hot knife.

The most famous case of sexual violence in the cangaço was the 12-year-old Dada. She was kidnapped during one of Lampião's gang attacks on a town. She was made a s*x slave and gang-r*ped, until, after 3 years, in an ambush, she was mistakenly shot by the police. After losing her leg, Dada returned to her family.

Stuff

Interview with Zé Rufino, The Killer of Cangaceiros:

Interview with Zé Saturnino:

Interviews with ex-cangaceiros:

Hi everyone

Last week I started reading a book titled “Maldita Guerra” by brazilian historian Francisco Doratioto.

I still haven't finish it yet, it has 512 pages and I'm currently on page 408 but it it's enough to talk about this old dramatic event that's funny enough either forgot or has been the source of nationalistic agenda posting, the book title refers to a quote by the Baron of Cotegipe. I'll start giving you guys some context.

In the early 1860s South America was a very different place from today, Brazil was an Empire, a constitutional monarchy and Gigabased Pedro II reigned as emperor. Argentina had just came out of a civil war between federalists and unitarians (which deserves an effort post) resulting in unitarian victory led by General Bartolomé Mitre who in 1862 became the first President of an unified Argentina. Uruguay was ruled since the end of its civil war in 1851 by the Blanco Party, Bernardo Berro was elected President in 1860, the war was won against the Colorado Party. For those who don't know Uruguay along with Argentina, Paraguay and South Bolivia were part of the Vice-Royalty of La Plata during the colonial period, it was known then as the “Banda Oriental” the Eastern Band. In 1811 Portugal invaded the Banda Oriental which became part of the Brazilian Kingdom (the Portuguese Royal Family was then living in Rio) and then became the Cisplatine province. In 1822 Brazil became an independent country and in 1825 the Cisplatine war began as the Banda Oriental wished to leave Brazil and become part of the United Provinces of the South (which became Argentina). At the end Britain intervened and Uruguay was created as a buffer state between Argentina and the Empire of Brazil on the condition the Argies would never anchluss the place.

Paraguay got its independence in 1811. Between 1814 and 1840 it was ruled with an iron fist by Supreme Dictator (that was his actual title) José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, known as Dr. Francia as he held the titles of bachelor in philosophy and Doctor in Theology by the University of Córdoba. Dr Francia isolated the small Mediterranean country and purged all the other “procers” or independence Founding Fathers. After he died in 1840 Paraguay adopted a consulship with the power being shared between 2 men, Colonel Mariano Roque Alonso and Mr. Carlos Antonio López.

In 1844 Mr. López became the first President of Paraguay being elected by the Congress.

pic related is him.

Paraguay then opened up however it continued to live under a totalitarian dictatorship. Congress only was convened to elect the president and re elect him again. López appointed his 19 year old son, Francisco Solano López as army General

In the 1850s Solano López who was the king of South American nepo-babies went to France to study, he came back with steam ships and guns bought from France and Britain and his irish concubine Elisa Lynch (who worked as a “courtesan” in Paris).

In 1862 Carlos Antonio López died at the age of 72, his r-slurred spoiled son was his VP and became acting President with congress electing him almost unanimously for a 10 year term. By then Paraguay was a militarist society, they had a small river fleet and a permanent army, revisionists Argie leftoid “historians” made claims that Paraguay was an emerging power because it had a few railroads and an iron factory and that it represented a “threat” to the British Empire a ludicrous notion that only our Platine neighbors and leftoid Brazilian journos like Julio Chiavennato could come up with.

In 1862 the Liberal Party won the elections in Brazil. During those days the Brazilian political stage was divided between Conservatives and Liberals. In 1862 a diplomatic incident with Britain happened, basically a Bong ship, The Prince of Wales sank near the coast of the Great State of Rio Grande do Sul (back then they were called provinces not states). The !macacos stole the shipwreck containers emptying them. Bongland responded sending a fleet to Guanabara Bay at Rio de Janeiro demanding reparations which the cucked libs did. Diplomatic relations with Britain were then cut. In 1864 a civil war erupted in Uruguay, a Colorado caudillo Venancio Flores decided to usurp power. Because of Flores's pro Brazilian leanings (the Blancos were taxing Brazilian imports from Rio Grande do Sul way too high to protect their markets as Brazil used slave workforce which made it cheaper than Uruguayan production, this made Gaúcho Farmers extremely angry with the Blancos) and because their reputation was in total shambles after the Bongland debacle the Liberals in Brazil decided to support Flores but before they consulted with Argie President Mitre assuring him they didn't intend to Annex Uruguay. Paraguay on the other hand was an ally of the Blanco government, Solano López who thought himself as a sort of Napoleon warned Brazil that they would declare war in case of intervention in Uruguay, the Brazilian Government dismissed this. Solano López thought that as Argies and Brazilians hated each other then surely Argentina would let their troops pass and join the fight. There were also some disputed borders between Paraguay and Brazil-Argentina (the misiones and part of Mato Grosso do Sul). In august 1864 Brazil invaded Uruguay to support regime change under the pretext that Brazilian citizens who lived in Uruguay were in danger and being killed by the Blanco government, war with Paraguay never came across the minds of our leaders in Rio de Janeiro. Solano López proceeded by conscripting almost every single man in fighting age. Paraguay had a population of around 400-500k inhabitants back then with a standing army of around 25k men. After the massive conscription and calling all the reserves Solano López got himself an army of 77k men. The Brazilian army back then was only 18k men despite having a population of around 9 million (9.9 million in the 1872 census). López bet was in some sort of Blitzkrieg. By then he suspected Mitre could join Brazil so what he wanted was an alliance between the Uruguayan Blancos and the Argie Federalists, the defeated group were led by the Entre Rian caudillo Justo José Urquiza.

The Province of Mato Grosso was then geographically isolated, its capital Cuiaba had only around 10k inhabitants as the only way to get through it was by the Paraguay River. In November 1864 a Brazilian ship, the steamboat marquis of Olinda was carrying the new President of the Province of mato Grosso, Colonel Federico Carneiro de Campos. Solano López was surprised considering he warned Brazil of war (rentfree in his mind) so h ordered his men to seize the ship and declared war to Brazil. Then in Dezember he invaded Mato grosso and deported all the local Brazilians to Paraguay where they would be mistreated.

Argentina declared itself neutral in the conflict, however they denied the pass of Paraguayan troops, this led to Solano López to declare war to Argentina, he then invaded the northern Argentine Province of Corrientes and intended to reach Uruguay soon. By then the Blancos were deposed and Flores was President. In may 1865 the Treaty of the Triple Alliance was signed between Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. So the war began.

But a funny thing related to Mato Grosso. The main war theater was Corrientes (1865) and South Paraguay (1866-1868). In early 1865 a regiment was dispatched to free Mato Grosso, they walked 2100 km to reach it, arriving in 1867. 1/3 of them were dead, another had deserted. Only 1300 of the 3200 soldiers sent reach Mato Grosso. They were so worn out, sick and tired they didn't manage to accomplish their goals. After being repealed they went to Cuiaba, infected with smallpox. The epidemic killed half of the city's population.

After forming the triple Alliance it was decided in accordance that President Mitre who was an experienced General would lead as Supreme Allied Commander. However the Brazilian generals at the front, The Count of Porto Alegre and the Vice Admiral the viscount of Tamandaré despised Mitre and thought the Argies were either useless or treacherous. The Federalist caudillo Urquiza ended up betraying López and joining Mitre only to retrieve later on and become a war profiteer selling food to the armies like the cunning bastard he was.

It would be only in 1866 with the arrival of the man, the legend, the Marquis of Caxias that the dysfunctional allied force would become organized.

Meanwhile López' r-slurred actions isolated Paraguay, his envoys in Britain were expecting to received new ships and weapons but because the country is landlocked and the only way in was through the Paraná river they never came.

!historychads !latinx

Around the world there are places that are associated with suicide. Sometimes it's because the location provides an easy way to leave this Earth. Other times, lore grows around an area, and those in despair are seeking something meaningful in their death.

South Africa is not exempt from this phenomenon, especially with the country's high suicide rate. It comes in at a startling 8th in the world when it comes to suicide rates. Roughly 24% of deaths are suicides, nearly a quarter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

There are a few locations that have become suicide hotspots, but I'd like to talk about one today. It holds a special place for me. I've driven over it before. Call it reconnaisance. I still see it as my portal to the next world when my story here ends. Holy shit I'm so depressed I've seen my therapist every day this week since Tuesday. I might cut tonight. It happens. But enough about that nonsense. Let's talk about...

Van Stadens Bridge

The Van Stadens Bridge is located in Eastern Cape, in a city named Gqeberha but is typically called by its previous name Port Elizabeth. That is worth a post in itself. Mayos were pissed when the city was officially named into something they cannot pronounce. To say Port Elizabeth is a form of rebellion in some circumstances.

The bridge was fully constructed to bridge two mountains and to cross the shallow Van Stadens River. The bridge sees regular traffic as it transports vehicles across the N2. It is a standard arch bridge, but there is beauty in simplicity.

The Suicides

The bridge was fully completed in November 11, 1971. A mere 18 days later, a man jumped to his death from the bridge. This is where the lore and legacy of Van Stadens Bridge begins. Suicides at the bridge continued, taking even the life of the daughter of journ*list Frankz Kemp. A R1-million video-camera surveillance system, paid for by private donors, because the government wasn't doing shit about it.

The Benzos have hit and I'm seeing double so sorry for what comes next. So how many lives did the bridge take? At least 70 at low estimates. You see, it has also been a site for murder. This occurred when he lured two children off the bridge before ending his own life. At this point, you should notice that this isn't a jump you're going to survive, regardless of whether the Van Stadens river is dried up or not. It stands at 140m, more than enough to switch your lights off, but just short enough to be wracked with guilt and doubt on the way down.

The Suicides Part 2

In 2008, the oldest suicider took his final jumpin' at age 80. To put things into perspective, the bridge claims a life every 18 months. Not long before, a Humansdorp teacher Nicholaas Martinus, 26, jumped off on June 4 and a day before that, Kensington man Chris Botha. Some more facts:

>grieving mom, Rosemary Wait, 62, jumped to her death below: her only son Charles Jr. had drowned six years earlier in a rafting tragedy at the Storms River mouth in the raging Gamtoos River below the bridge -- and she could not stop grieving for her only son...

In 2013, the government installed 2.7m high mesh to deter jumpers. Did it work? A resounding no. It still holds its reputation as the bridge of death. The mesh can easily be climbed over. It's more of a suggestion not to keep yourself safe rather than an actual preventative measure. I've seen the mesh. It's a joke.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120309072858/http://digitaljournal.com/blog/1462

Here's a message from the Democratic Alliance, a political party in South Africa.

And finally,, the bridge:

Modern bridge:

Before mesh:

A tragic beauty I'm sure you'll agree :) tune in next when we discuss Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain to an neurodivergent degree.

Nelson Mandela as receiver of the Nobel Peace Prize, is well regarded both internationally and domestically in South Africa, as one of the main arbiters of the Democratization of South Africa, and one of the main people responsible for avoiding a bloody carnage in a civil war post-Apartheid; while the majority of ANC high-ranking members, like the ever famous Jacob Zuma, preached bloody vengeance, Nelson had been more pragmatic and would lead his party within the legal framework of the existing system, and instead preside over something known as a Truth and Reconciliation Commission ( something which absolutely upset fricking everyone in RSA since, including all races) but that's another story, all to retain peace and transition the country into a democratic republic.

Point is that Nelson would avoid a truly calamitous fate for everyone involved, with his clemency to the white race, and ironically preaching much more practical and restrained retorhic than his past self pre-imprisonment from 30 years firebrand-self prior. The rest you can read, him being hailed a hero, and everyone in the 90s thinking with the fall of communism, and the abolishment of tyrannical regimes the world over, that we were all heading for a golden age of prosperity and tolerance - oooh boy. Because even during Nelson Mandela's extremely nepotistic, if not well run and intended to be benevolent reign, cracks were already beginning to show, through which the dysfunctional future of RSA could be gleaned.

But, one thing which wasn't as well regarded as Nelson Mandela, was his wife!

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/4/3/who-was-south-africas-winnie-mandela

While his it seems that Nelson Mandela's hatred of the white-race had appeared to have cooled during his 27-year long prison sentence on Robben Island, where he appeared to have acquired wisdom, tolerance and patience in his older years, his wife Winnie Mandela would retain her ardent hatred of Boers, Bongs and the white race entire till the end of her life.

She was married to the human rights icon from 1958 until their divorce in 1996. With much rumour and speculation being on the fact that their fundamental disagreement between Mandela's clemency towards whites post-Apartheid, and Nelson's politics to focus on bringing the country towards peace and avoiding violence, and that this disagreement would be a spike in their relationship; where Nelson had grown past the desire for revenge and desired Reconciliation even against those who wronged him, as he saw the way winds were blowing economically, but that Winnie had not - and was constantly pestering Mandela throughout his reign as president to actively punish whites as severely as that done in Haiti and Zimbabwe.

All of this was only rumour and speculation, but for today's dramapost we are going to go over Winnie Mandela, and why she was a longstanding controversial figure throughout her life during the Republic of South Africa's existence, until she finally died at 81, in 2018.

WINNIE MANDELA INTRO:

When Mandela and Winnie separated, the official reason given was that she was accused of infidelity.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/04/02/winnie-mandela-wife-nelson-mandela-dies/477898002/

====

“She kept the memory of her imprisoned husband Nelson Mandela alive during his years on Robben Island and helped give the struggle for justice in South Africa one its most recognizable faces,” the family said.

[TRANSLATION: She was a clout hungry whore who banked on the name of her ex-husband ]

“She dedicated most of her adult life to the cause of the people and for this was known far and wide as the Mother Of The Nation,” it said.

Her controversial reputation stemmed from harsh comments that appeared to promote violence and were critical of her famous ex-husband, along with accusations of murder and a conviction for bank fraud.

Jesse Jackson, the American civil rights leader, told USA TODAY that the former South Africa first lady was a “huge force” in the Free South Africa movement who deserves credit for helping to keep the anti-apartheid push strong during her husband's 27 years in prison.[HAHAHAHAHAHAHA Nos she fricking wasn't lmoa, she never even obtained any real politcal power or substantial cultural influence ]

“She was the face and voice of the movement,” Jackson said of her husband's years in prison. “It was her voice and her courage and her risk that kept them alive for those years.”

[Holy hells the arrogance - she literally grifted her way over the years, into saying she was a surrogate leader for Mandela's ANC faction in his absence - which if you knew the ANC history, which many ANC youth members themselves don't know, is pure nonsense. ]

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela joined the struggle to end apartheid after working as a hospital social worker in the 1950s. Around that time, she met her future husband, who was a lawyer and human rights activist. After he was arrested for his political activities, she raised two young daughters alone.

She campaigned for his release and to rally support in South Africa and internationally for the anti-apartheid movement. She was also imprisoned and tortured, and she faced constant security threats. [Now this part is actually true]

When apartheid ended, she became a member of Parliament and served as deputy minister of arts and culture.

====(end quote)

WINNIE'S ABUSE BY POLICE:

Now here comes the heart and source of the matter, and the cause for Winnie's burning hatred of the white-race, to an extent even much more than most black peeps having lived under Apartheid, and were often just glad to be able to study as they please, not be restricted by race-laws - instead Winnie's hatred often was extreme even for her black contemporaries, not just men arguing clemency like Mandela and Bishop Tutu.

Remember the very scary BOSS - the The Buro vir Staatsveiligheid/Bureau of State Security, which was the all powerful anti-espionage national organization which ruthlessly crushed anti-Apartheid sentiment and actions by both black and white citizens of South Africa; well these men would continuously chase after activists, imprison political leaders, and use brutal tactics to suppress freedom fighters or anything they perceived as a threat for the NP regime. Of course none of you cowtools read the fricking post

https://rdrama.net/post/256515/marseyflagsouthafrica-muldergate-the-south-african-watergate

South African police and BOSS operatives arrested her in 1969 under the Suppression of Terrorism Act, and she spent more than a year in solitary confinement, where she was abused during interrogations for whereabouts of ANC insurgent group's locations (freedom fighters from the eyes of the ANC and most black peeps), because as you can guess, she was the wife of one of the top-ANC leaders of the country, and her political activism made BOSS believe she was culpable and in-the-know of the whereabouts of ANC bombers who were frequently terrorizing schools, public buildings, police stations, in order to pressure the NP regime to end Apartheid.

"Police raids on her home were as often as four times a day. She was banned from leaving her home at night and was later restricted from leaving her neighborhood in the Soweto Township of Johannesburg." The more the ANC splinter cells would firebomb public locations, the harder she became a target for police and BOSS, to try and find the locations of ANC operatives and just plain low level non-violent members. All of this would culminate in BOSS just basically throwing her in solitary confinement in 1969. The irony in this was that she wasn't "innocent". She really was "guilty" of being a waylay of messages between ANC splinter cell bomber groups targeting civilian structure - and of course depending on the race and politcs of who you speak to, this made the treatment against her valid or not.

WINNIE AND HER COMMENTS ON NECKLACING: (Yes, the RSA version of necklacing)

It's important to understand why the whole black population didn't just arise overnight, all the way back in 1950, and slaughter the whole white population of SA like Haiti. If you read only modern school curriculum history books, then some unflattering details about the ANC history will be left out. You see while a large majority of the black population did support the overthrow of the Apartheid government, there was intense disagreements regarding what should follow, all the way as far back as the 1950s.

You see, the most powerful black group was the ANC (The African-National-Congress), BUT they were a communist faction, and more significantly, they were a communist faction supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union. As such, the most significant part of South African history which foreigners do NOT know, is that the ANC was not the ONLY group to oppose Apartheid, or acted as a political activist organization.

And that is because of intense bitter political rivalries between these various factions evolved as to what political, economic and racial policy aught to succeed the white government. The ANC was opposed by many weaker factions for different reasons. Some wanted South Africa to carved up as originally intended all the ways back in 1910, where each racial group had their own homeland, before the NP regime relegated this ideal into forcing black peeps into suboptimal reserves instead of equally land divided by racial distribution.

Other factions were right-wing, capitalists or just really fricking hated and feared communism. It might surprise many fools to know that not everybody in the various ethnicities of black peeps in SA got along politically, and didn't all one day wake up, and agree that communism was the optimal way forward, and got along singing and dancing like hippies in a unified black front against the evil white government

Instead the reality was far more brutal, as disagreement led to violence akin to gang warfare and inter- and intra-faction assassination, many non-communists would enact violence against ANC members, and the ANC would respond in kind.

The closest point of reference for you guys who are not South African to understand, is the French resistance against the 3rd Reich during WW2. If you read media portraying the accounts of the valiant resistance members by the French themselves, then you would come away with a false impression that the French resistance actually mattered in any great deal for the duration of the war. The reality was far more disappointing. Even taking in partisan harassment of Wehrmacht supply and troops into account, the french resistance vastly underperformed, when compared to places like the Balkans, where the proto-Yugoslav partisans basically threw out the Wehrmacht before the Soviets even arrived, or Greece or the entire Eastern Europe.

This wasn't a lack of will for the French, but massive political disunity between french partisans. Great factionalism divided french efforts, which made British supplies airdropped into Frans always fought over, like dogs over scraps. There were a myriad of political parties bickering on what the french regime aught to look like once the Nazis had been deposed, and once again the singular largest partisan faction, were the communists, even though they didn't hold a majority on numbers, and were pretty much despised by all the other competing factions.

It took until the Western allies opening a Western Front with conventional armies, and the liberation of France to actually end this fractionalism, after which Eisenhower and De Gaulle ruthlessly stamped out all communist splinter cells lol

A similar factionalism plagued all anti-Apartheid groups in SA. Both for peaceful activist groups, and terrorism and bombing groups. Eventually the ANC would get an upper hand slowly as the decades progressed, again because they had the Soviets as benefactors, and their opposition had nothing, except arms and armaments traded by similarly minded right-wing or anti-communist groups over the borders of Mozambique and Namibia.

As the ANC gradually became the overwhelming dominant group, many anti-communist black groups would even go so far as to work FOR the Apartheid regime, in the sense that they would rat out ANC members, or forewarn the police of impending bombs on hospitals, schools or train-stations. And of course sometimes there were many black peeps who had loyalty to their white employers, even as they were treated as 2nd class citizens, whom would also forewarn the national police (whom were all white and acted in suppression passively) against bombing attacks or ambushes.

Through its dominancy, the ANC splinter cells would employ brutality to destroy its ideological enemies, and warm off any black citizens from working with the white authorities. One of the most famous of these torture-execution methods, was Necklacing

Even as far back as 1986, Winnie Mandela would earn controversy amongst the various black communities in South Africa. The ANC splinter groups would seldom officially acknowledge that they had done a hit on a "race-traitor" or opponent to communism. People found dead through the brutality of necklacing were often speculated that they were informers to Police, but it was kept deliberate vague to instill fear sometimes.

=====(For those of you who don't know what Necklacing is)

Necklacing is a form of violent punishment and execution that was used in South Africa during the apartheid era. It involved forcing a rubber tire, filled with petrol, around a victim's chest and arms, and setting it on fire. This practice was used as a method of punishment or to instill fear in the community. It is important to note that necklacing is a deeply disturbing and violent act that caused immense suffering and loss of life.

=====

Well back in 1986 Winnie would get a reputation for a thirst for brutality when in "her defiant rhetoric caused alarm around the world as she appeared to endorse violent methods to achieve freedom for black South Africans."

“We have no guns — we have only stones, boxes of matches and petrol,” she said at a rally in Soweto. “Together, hand in hand, with our boxes of matches and our necklaces, we shall liberate this country.”

https://www.voanews.com/a/south-africa-winnie-madikizela-mandela-died/4327731.html

This caused great upset by many of the peaceful factions within ANC and other polical black activists whom campaigned to end Apartheid peacefully and legally. Because her retorhic was so extreme that she even advocated violence and torture against BLACK people she deemed to stand in the way of liberation of black peeps in South Africa. She would alienate a lot of peeps for these comments, as she unambiguously endorsing necklacing against those who opposed the ANC, even if they themselves were Anti-Apartheid activists, as necklacing was seen at the time as a primary weapon of fear of ANC extremists.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/necklacing

It's important to understand that Necklacing was immediately controversial even the moment it was utilized by ANC extremists, even by black peeps, EVEN by ANC members themselves - including Nelson Mandela. Both for the brutality of the act itself, and as a method to instill fear into opponents and race-traitors. Additionally necklacing would ironically never ever be used against whites, either captured members of the Apartheid police force, or the SADF (South African Defense Force).

This one of the major critiques of necklacing was that, if we don't even employ such cruelty against whites who oppress us, then why do black peeps undergo such cruelty against one another, in the supposed name of black liberation??

====(from allthat article)

In June 1986, a South-African woman was burned to death on television. Her name was Maki Skosana, and the world watched in horror as anti-apartheid activists wrapped her up in a car tire, doused her with gasoline, and set her on fire. For most of the world, her screams of agony were their first experience with the public execution South Africans called “necklacing.”

It's a part of South African history we usually don't talk about. This was the weapon of the men and women who fought against apartheid in South Africa; the people who rose up in arms with Nelson Mandela to turn their country into a place where they would be treated as equals.

They were fighting for a good cause and so history can gloss over some of the dirty details. Without guns and weapons to match the strength of the state, they used what they had to send their enemies a message — no matter how horrible it was.

Necklacing was a fate reserved for traitors. Few, if any, white men died with a car tire around necks. Instead, it would be members of the black community, usually ones who swore they were part of the fight for freedom but who had lost the trust of their friends.

Maki Skosana‘s death was the first to be filmed by a news crew. Her neighbors had become convinced that she was involved in an explosion that killed a group of young activists. They grabbed her while she was mourning at a funeral for the dead. While the cameras watched, they burned her alive, smashed her skull in with a massive rock, and even sexually penetrated her dead body with broken shards of glass.

But Skosana wasn't the first to be burned alive. The first necklacing victim was a politician named Tamsanga Kinikini, who had refused to resign after accusations of corruption.

Anti-apartheid activists had already been burning people alive for years. They gave them what they called “Kentuckies” — meaning that they left them looking like something off the menu at Kentucky Fried Chicken.

“It works,” one young man told a reporter when he was challenged to justify burning a man alive. “After this, you won't find too many people spying for the police.”

Nelson Mandela's party, the African National Congress, officially opposed burning people alive. [HAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAAH}

Desmond Tutu, in particular, was passionate about it. A few days before Maki Skosana was burned alive, he physically fought off a whole mob to keep them from doing the same thing to another informant. These killings made him so sick that he almost gave up on the movement.

“If you do this kind of thing, I will find it difficult to speak for the cause of liberation,” Rev. Tutu said after the video of Skosana hit the airwaves. “If the violence continues, I will pack my bags, collect my family and leave this beautiful country that I love so passionately and so deeply.”

The rest of the African National Congress, though, didn't share his dedication. Other than making a few comments for the record, they didn't do much to stop it. Behind closed doors, they saw necklacing informants as a justifiable evil in a great fight for good.

Though the A.N.C. spoke out against it on paper, Nelson Mandela's wife, Winnie Mandela, publically and openly cheered the mobs on. As far as she was concerned, necklacing wasn't just a justifiable evil. It was the weapon that would win South Africa's freedom.

“We have no guns – we have only stone, boxes of matches and petrol,” she once told a crowd of cheering followers. “Together, hand-in-hand, with our boxes of matches and our necklaces we shall liberate this country.”

Her words made the A.N.C. nervous. They were willing to look the other way and let this happen, but they had an international PR war to win. Winnie was putting that in jeopardy.

Hundreds died this way with tires around their necks, fire searing their skin, and the smoke of burning tar choking their lungs. During the worst years, between 1984 and 1987, anti-apartheid activists burned 672 people alive, half of them through necklacing.

It took a psychological toll. American photographer Kevin Carter, who had taken one of the first pictures of a live necklacing, ended up blaming himself for what was happening.

That same year, South Africa held its first equal and open elections. The fight to end apartheid was finally over. However, even though the enemy was gone, the brutality of the fight didn't go away.

Necklacing lived on as a way of taking out male feminists and thieves. In 2015, a group of five teenage boys was necklaced for getting in a bar fight. In 2018, a pair of men were killed for a suspected theft.

And those are just a few examples. Today, five percent of the murders in South Africa are the result of vigilante justice, often committed through necklacing.

The justification they use today is a chilling echo of what they said in the 1980s. “It does reduce crime,” one man told a reporter after burning a suspected robber alive. “People are scared because they know the community will rise against them.”

=======(END article)

It is also important to note that there was no surefire way to know that the accused ever were police-informers or traitors, and that mob-justice prevailed randomly. Many of the critics of necklacing went so far as to state that necklacing was a mob weapon utilized to get rid of people disliked by someone, rather than people actually accused of a crime.

WINNIE'S BODYGUARD AND RUMOURS OF MURDER:

In 1997, her bodyguard from the 1980s, Jerry Richardson, told South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Committee that he beat, tortured and killed people whenever she told him to. His boss sometimes participated in the beatings, Richardson said. Madikizela-Mandela denied the murder allegations, but later apologized to the families of two of the victims. She was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison for two of the deaths, but the sentence was reduced to a fine on appeal.

https://southafrica.co.za/winnie-mandela-controversial.html

Winnie was cleared of the murder, however she received a five year prison sentence for four counts of kidnapping and one year for being an accessory to assault. This was eventually reduced to a two year suspended sentence and a R15 000 fine. The trial and controversy surrounding Winnie Mandela took its toll on her marriage.

Many peeps believed she utilized her power and position within the ANC to murder a 14 year old boy way back in the late 1980s.

====(FROM ARTICLE)

After Winnie Mandela was released from her exile in Brandfort she was allowed to go back home in 1986. When she returned she found that her neighbourhood had become more dangerous with the youth running riots and the government imposing a state of emergency. In an effort to help those caught up in the chaos, Winnie established the Mandela United Football Club (MUFC) for the disenfranchised youth.

Sadly, this group is most remembered for their vigilante activities.

The most well known of these was the story of Stompie Seipei. In 1988 Stompie was a 14 year old activist who was in the company of the MUFC when he disappeared one day. His body was later found on the outskirts of Soweto. He had been badly beaten and eventually killed with gardening shears.

Winnie was surrounded with controversy due to her links with the Mandela United Football Club (MUFC) and their activities. It seems as though years of harassment, emotional trauma and the experiences of prison and banishment had hardened Winnie and she came to be seen as a kind of soldier on the ground.

It was rumored that her approach was becoming more violent and military driven. In one of her famous speeches, Winnie declared, “together, hand in hand, with our boxes of matches and our necklaces we shall liberate this country.

” This has been said to be in reference to the practice of ‘necklacing', a torture and execution method of forcing a tyre over someone's chest and setting it alight. It is said that Winnie endorsed the practice in her speech and was linked to many necklacing incidents.

====(END)

https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/winnie-madikizela-mandela

====(SAhistory article)

Each one a titan to the liberation struggle, Winnie and Nelson's life after his release was a blur of travel, speeches and media obligations.[xxxi] Despite certain members of the ANC having grown increasingly frustrated with Winnie's militancy and candour, Nelson elected to appoint her to the ANC's head of Social Welfare in September. The decision was a controversial one but given her good relationship with the country's youth (and de facto future voters), it was ultimately accepted by the dissenting voices within the party.

During this time, Winnie and her accessories in the MUFC were also standing trial for Stompie's murder. Winnie was cleared of the murder itself but sentenced to five years in prison on four counts of kidnapping and one year as an accessory to assault. In the event she was granted leave to appeal and her bail was extended, with the courts eventually ordering her to serve a two year suspended sentence and pay a fine of R15 000. However, the allegations, the trial and the penchant for controversy were all taking their toll on the Mandelas, and the image of the happy couple was fading fast.

====(end)

For the rest of her life she would have the controversy of murdering (allegedly ) a 14 year old child in the twilight years of Apartheid just because she suspected he was a spy, this was a demonstration of how ruthless she had become in her later years, and made her a controversial figure not just for whites. It was also the Stompie case which many state was the reason Mandela divorced her, as she was fast becoming a flaming hot burden and hot-potato.

At this same time she was also very unapologetic of her past Necklacing commentary and even kept repeating them - which made her unpopular with the rest of the AND, whom wanted to sweep the Necklacing controversies under the rug, not celebrate them.

The TRC is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

WINNIE SENTENCED TO PRISON FOR FRAUD:

"Winnie Mandela also came under criticism for expensive tastes, and was further besmirched by allegations of corruption, fraud and theft. She was expelled from her husband's cabinet in 1995."

https://www.voanews.com/a/south-africa-winnie-madikizela-mandela-died/4327731.html

In 2003, she was sentenced to four years in prison on dozens of counts of theft and bank fraud. A judge ruled that she profited from loans to poor people who could not get them without a letter from her.

https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/winnie-madikizela-mandela

"n her personal affairs, the media reported numerous financial irregularities involving Winnie's name, including a R1 million scandal also involving the African National Congress (ANC) Women's League.[xxxv]"

https://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/africa/04/25/mandela.sentencing/

So she was just as generically corrupt as all of the stooges around her

A lot of mayos would rejoice at this, because Winnie had supported the banishment of White farmers in Zimbabwe, and the confiscation of their lands by War Veterans not paid by Mugabe's regime, and even went so far as to fricking travel to Zimbabwe to show her support.

WINNIE'S CONTROVERSIAL 2010 INTERVIEW:

https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/how-nelson-mandela-betrayed-us-says-exwife-winnie-6734116.html

In a 2010 interview with the British Evening Standard newspaper, she criticized former archbishop Desmond Tutu and her former husband. She lambasted Nelson Mandela for accepting the Nobel Peace Prize with former South African president F.W. de Klerk, the white leader who negotiated with Mandela to end apartheid. She basically said that Mandela wasn't hard enough on the mayos and should have striven for a course revenge instead of reconciliation - and her opinions were shared by many peeps.

Of course what did not endear her to the majority of black peeps, especially generic apolitical black boomers whom were very worshipful of Mandela for their new freedoms, was when in the interview, she attacked her ex-husband, claiming that he had "let blacks down".

"Do you think de Klerk released (Nelson Mandela) from the goodness of his heart? He had to," she said at the time. "The times dictated it, the world had changed, and our struggle was not a flash in the pan, it was bloody to say the least and we had given rivers of blood. I had kept it alive with every means at my disposal."

She also retracted any apology she gave: "I am not sorry. I will never be sorry. I would do everything I did again if I had to. Everything."

She referred to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in his capacity as the head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as a "cretin" This was because ArchBishop Desmond Tutu raked her balls over the fire over her involvement with her soccer club's murder of the 14-year old boy Stompie evidently she was still assblasted about Tutu forcing an apology out of her towards the family of the victim

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/southafrica/7403504/Winnie-Mandela-accuses-Nelson-of-letting-down-South-Africas-blacks.html

Anyway the article made controvesial news headlines, with black hardliners backing her statement, but ANC-moderates and Mandela-loyalists calling her a douchebag.

It got so bad that, on 14 March 2010, a "statement was issued on Madikizela-Mandela's behalf claiming that the interview was a fabrication."

https://www.deccanherald.com/entertainment/nadira-naipaul-liar-fraud-winnie-2478913

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAA

THE USUAL SUSPECTS CELEBRATE WINNIE:

You will notice that it's not regular ANC members even who mourned the hardest when Winnie died of age. Many EFF members (the Julius Malema party) went country wide on a political show of her death. And the comments on youtube videos showcase the type of people who adored Winnie even through her controversies.

Here follows the take of a group

https://www.revolt.tv/article/2021-02-23/59129/winnie-mandela-led-south-africa-out-of-apartheid-and-shes-yet-to-receive-proper-credit

Take a guess what they make of her women moments.

CONCLUSION:

https://www.voanews.com/a/south-africa-winnie-madikizela-mandela-died/4327731.html

Anyways she was a definite political force during Apartheid struggles for black peeps, but post Democratization her presence and inflammatory words left a bad taste within people's mouths, and surprisingly not just those of white peeps, but primarily those of black people, who often felt the hard hand of opposition against an ANC which utilized brutality alongside peaceful means to oppose Apartheid, but in doing so, alienated a lot of black peeps whom had long memories.

well fellas I was hoping someone already made a post about this but alas we need more DEI...

https://old.reddit.com/r/popculturechat/comments/1bnoh9n/influencers_sufi_sun_anjali_chakra_have_called_it/ I MEANT TO POST THIS AS THE MAIN LINK

quick background: Sufi and Anjali are a lesbian indo-pak couple that have been together 5 years, they quickly went viral after a photoshoot. Anjali is also an event and wedding planner who has been planning their wedding after Sufi proposed to her. During the planning phase the news of Sufi (the muslim half of the couple) cheating came to light, before ramadan no less. It is not known who Sufi cheated on Anjali with though I have heard speculations that is was Naz_bhokari.

Additionally Sufi was disowned by her family but Anjali's family took in Sufi and her younger sister during this time.

to sum it up for strags "sufi and anjali breakup is the desi queer community's try guys scandal except with geopolitical ramifications" - user wamenarentfunny

LINKS GALORE

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/27/style/anjali-chakra-sufi-malik-breakup.html NYT HAS WEIGHED IN

https://www.businessinsider.com/same-s*x-couple-took-pictures-in-traditional-south-asian-clothes-2019-12 the original photoshoot

https://old.reddit.com/r/InstaCelebsGossip/comments/1bmonz3/sufis_tweets_are_lowkey_so_emotionally/ sufi's liked tweets after it came out lool

https://www.them.us/story/anjali-chakra-sufi-malik-breakup-wedding another sum up

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13240457/sufi-malik-anjali-chakra-call-wedding-infidelity.html even daily mail got on it

https://old.reddit.com/r/popculturechat/comments/1bnoh9n/influencers_sufi_sun_anjali_chakra_have_called_it/ I MEANT TO POST THIS AS THE MAIN LINK

https://old.reddit.com/r/NYCinfluencersnark/comments/1bmnplx/sufi_anjali_wedding_called_off/ this /r/x-snark this is getting kinda out of control yo

https://old.reddit.com/r/GossipComrades/comments/1bnib6a/aesthetics_is_important_famous_gay_couple_sufi/

bird chirps:

https://x.com/earthlykisssed/status/1771927470767313371 https://x.com/yoongienthusias/status/1771880560387908060 popular twitter posts about them

https://x.com/tazotearefreshr/status/1772015632369762678 "anjali sufi breakup is simultaneously generating sexuality discourse, religious discourse, queer discourse, and nationality discourse"

https://x.com/tinyfrogs1/status/1771921561206862068 "i can only ask relentlessly for forgiveness from anjali and Allah is a crazyyy statement 😭😭 double homicide" "gay cheater and religious 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 pick a struggle"

https://x.com/queef1ng/status/1772184665358545277 IN RAMADAN?!

https://x.com/salonivxrse/status/1771931880683647105 someone with hindu lives matter in bio "typical pakistani"

https://x.com/xzwykq/status/1771905082440679624 "Imagine cheating in a queer relationship like what do you want? Jahannum premium"

https://x.com/anamyaki/status/1772012252805099815 forgot to mention they met on tumblr, oh yeah...

https://x.com/search?q=sufi+anjali i'm done... peruse more if you wish

@RWBY's current meta posts discussing Rooster Teeth both reminded and inspired me to work on an effortpost I had debated doing for some time. You'll need to stick with me here, as there's a bit of an introduction that's needed before we get to the nitty gritty.

INTRODUCTION

I know a significant portion of the userbase here are boomers and older, and can recall watching Red vs Blue on their old CRT computers. Some of you I'm sure were shocked to learn RvB continued on for some time - currently sitting at a total of 18 seasons. As RvB marched on and Halo transitioned from Bungie to 343i, so did the reins of RvB. Burnie Burns, RT founder and lead for RvB, passed much of the creative control over to RT employee Miles Luna for seasons 11-13. While I know many people got turned off in earlier seasons once RvB became less comedy and more story oriented, I actually enjoy these seasons - sure, it's not grand Hollywood storytelling, but the story beats were competent, the writing was strong enough, and some of the humor feels like old school RvB. What's noteworthy here is that Season 13 ends with what very much feels like a series finale, and many fans agreed that if RT had wished to stop here, they would have been happy with it.

But for some reason, RT continued on with RvB. I'm not too entirely sure why - it certainly wasn't their primary show at this point (RWBY had taken over). I think they felt devoted to continuing it. In any case, season 14 was an anthology season while RT looked for a new showrunner. Several different people wrote and directed episodes for this anthology season, including Joe Nicolosi, who became the lead for Seasons 15 and 16.

Joe's seasons were weird. I'm not too sure where he came from, but his seasons felt out of left field even for a show that was used to left field stuff. Time travel (for real, not the goofy "time travel" the characters experience early in the show), Gods, cyclops, a group of people that are like a mirrored version of the main characters. Fans found the seasons offputting, and Joe was pulled off for someone else to take the reins for Season 17 and try to correct a lot of the weird stuff. I think 17 ended up actually being ok for what it was worth.

In any case, RvB's fame had really begun to diminish. The series felt like it had lost a lot of umph, the last few seasons were zany without being really funny, and the story was nonsensical. Many at RT were clearly getting tired of RvB too. In comes Torrian Crawford.

FROM ZERO TO HERO ZERO

Torrian Crawford was an animator with Death Battle (which I never watched, but it's where you take characters from random franchises and animate them fighting, to the extreme). With the Death Battle group having been acquired by RT, Torrian somehow climbs his way to becoming the director for RvB Season 18, which he names RvB Zero. Supposedly the reason he got this gig was by presenting a way for the series to continue to RT's heads, who must have been waiting for someone to volunteer for this.

Torrian and several of the voice actors for the show begin hyping this season up online. Here's an article online about it!

https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/red-vs-blue-zero-new-web-series-rooster-teeth

There's some great little nuggets in there, like how picking a diverse cast was a major priority and many of the people working on it had very little experience with the show. I'm sure our resident chuds will pick up on the diversity comments as to why it was bad.

Crawford and Nova made Rooster Teeth history with the series as the first Black showrunner and Black lead actor, respectively, in nearly two decades of Red vs. Blue, and for them, that inclusiveness carried over into the whole series, not just in terms of the people who made it, but in terms of its ability to reach a different audience.

And the first shall be the last.

Torrian and the cast harped on this diversity a lot and how great it would be for the show (hence my title).

Finally, the trailer came out. You can watch it below if you want to be wowed by the spectacle.

If you thought, "Wow, this looks like a steaming pile of shit! And I mean, a real big steaming pile of shit!" Congrats! You would be proven right. Most fans on the RvB subreddit were cautiously optimistic, but a few could already tell this was not a good sign.

https://old.reddit.com/r/RedvsBlue/comments/itjtma/rvb_zero_official_trailer/

I can't tell if the main villain is supposed to sound comically evil like O'malley, or if its just cheesy writing.

They've mentioned taking inspiration from Fast & Furious, so it is supposed to be a bit hammy.

now I'm scared. I hate F&F with a passion

Rule 1 of badassery: never ever describe yourself as badass

Well, maybe they're just being negative nancies and you guys should stop attacking zero before it's even released.

https://old.reddit.com/r/RedvsBlue/comments/je2t5j/can_we_stop_trashing_rvb_zero_before_its_even/

So finally, Zero releases its weekly episodes. And it sucks. Big time. Characters are awful. Plot is abysmal. Action is pants on head r-slurred. Just a mishmash of bad.

You know how sometimes with entertainment, you'll get something that was bad, and there's a sizable portion of a fanbase that'll defend it, like with the Star Wars Prequels? Zero barely even gets that. I'm not kidding when I say that the remaining fans absolutely hated it. Searching Zero on the subreddit returns posts upon posts of people trashing it. Even in a "Say something nice about Zero" thread, half the comments are backhanding it by saying things like "Well it made season 16 less shitty!"

https://old.reddit.com/r/RedvsBlue/comments/kkoq68/zero_is_frustrating/

https://old.reddit.com/r/RedvsBlue/comments/185k1al/so_i_finally_watched_zero/

https://old.reddit.com/r/RedvsBlue/comments/15c9zma/is_rvb_zero_that_bad/

Some great comments from the above posts.

I agree that the season is very frustrating, not necessarily because it is different, but because it is bad.

I went in expecting it was just this sub being over dramatic. But no. It's really just that bad

Fun review from some dude I always saw a lot of the RvB subreddit and is probably extremely neurodivergent about the show (I mean this in a kindhearted way )

https://old.reddit.com/r/RedvsBlue/comments/kqcaek/red_vs_blue_zero_a_formal_review/

In any case, Zero sucks and it sucks so bad that the fans make sure Torrian knows that his precious little baby sucks. And Torrian does not like that.

Seethe, Seethe, and more Seethe

Torrian's deleted a lot of his old tweets related to the show. It's very much a wound for him that refuses to heal and he is unable to accept that the show was not good. There are some still remaining along with posts about them on the respective subreddits.

To give some context on how long this man has continued to seethe about his show not being liked, the show came out late 2020, around the time of the Adam Kovic and Ryan Haywood sexcapades (I think it actually got pushed back a couple of weeks because of that ).

July 2021

https://old.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/ovb3f4/torrian_discusses_red_vs_blue_zero_and_the/

https://x.com/AnimatedTorrii/status/1421514851348885514

Torrian's first major tweet involving the show's criticism. The fourth and fifth paragraphs are in terms of seethe. Torrian clearly views himself as a tortured artist who does not deserved to be commented on by the unwashed masses. RT fans are sympathetic to how he's likely received undeserved threats but his ego starts to turn people more against him.

Dec 2021

https://old.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/rn49mo/torrian_crawford_goes_into_more_detail_regarding/

https://x.com/AnimatedTorrii/status/1474086770002198529

https://x.com/animatedtorrii/status/1474088690758520855

About a year after the show's release, Torrian lets it slip that he disdains past RvB and its fans. Part of the reason he changed the show was that he felt its old incarnation was too racist and sexist (which isn't really true, as RvB was actually very mild on that aspect for a mid 2000s era show). Fans on the main RT subreddit continue to get annoyed by his continued petulant whining, along with his mischaracterizations of RvB. Fans also point out that many of the original cast not wanting to be involved was also likely an indictment of how shit the show was.

May 2023

https://old.reddit.com/r/RedvsBlue/comments/13valwt/torrian_deleted_this_tweet/

https://old.reddit.com/r/RedvsBlue/comments/13udt51/is_he_ever_going_to_accept_the_fact_that_people/

https://old.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/13udm5p/is_he_ever_going_to_accept_that_people_didnt_like/

We are 2.5 years from the show's release and this man continues to b-word about how people did not like it. He deletes it after inciting some responses, many essentially pointing out how r-slurred he is.

I fricking love the response from one one guy like "Here's something I did in a week; what would a team & I have to do specifically"

& the backdown non-answer of "well I think that'd be a waste of your talents" lmao

You aren't supposed to actually call him out on his outrageous and blatantly hostile remarks!!!!

False equivalency

He had access to a full production team and he knows that no fans do, plus copyright issues if anyone tried that. But he'll still pull a gotcha to claim the high ground if anyone challenges him

Plus he never defined what “better” means. The four categories are not equivalent. It's gonna turn into whataboutism if he perceives anything he disagrees with.

Not worth engaging at all

LMAO, this guy is such a child. It's been almost three years, guy. Does he really have nothing better to do? Challenging fans without the resources he had — does he really need to do that to make him feel better about himself?

He lists Zero's writing, animation, music, and sound like they were something to brag about. I wonder how he thinks they stack up to those of the previous seasons (side note: sometimes I wonder if he's even seen the previous seasons). I can hazard a guess.

Zero sucked. Move on, dude.

This man hated RvB, wrote a shit script, and pumped out a terrible story with terrible characters and good production value (the one thing that wasn't him) and is absolutely seething that people didn't like it

By this point 90% of the community is absolutely sick of him and his holier than thou attitude. Torrian had long since picked up a job at Respawn Entertainment but apparently could be set off every few weeks by fans tweeting at him about how Zero sucked.

RvB's End

RT ended up releasing some joke short season with the Zero characters in late 2021. I don't know if anyone ended up watching that. Besides that, RvB remained dead in the water till an announcement in mid 2023 that it would return for a final season. Only a few days after the announcement of RT's dissolving did they announce the final season would release as a 90 minute movie in May. Somewhat fitting for the company to start and end with RvB.

As for Torrian? He recently popped up again with the announcement of RT's dissolvement.

https://old.reddit.com/r/roosterteeth/comments/1bdbxhw/rvb_zero_director_wants_to_work_on_rwby_after_rts/

Ah yes give the man who made the worst season of RvB to date the reigns of RWBY

I think he'll get a shot.

Hello !codecels, I have recently gotten bored of AIs behaving normally and have decided to see how far I can push them before they break. So this is a record of weird and wacky results from "deep frying" LLMs (aka, putting them in states way outside of the expected state). Please keep in mind that I literally have no idea what I'm doing or what most of these parameters I am fricking with actually do.

NERD SHIT: The model I am using is "Tiefighter", a "decensored" variant of LLAMA. I'm running a 13B variant.

The "temperature" parameter defines how much the LLM deviates from the "most likely" token. Very Roughly, temp = 0 means straight-laced, boring, temp = 1 means more ideas. Usually people recommend a value of 0.8 for practical purposes.

So I was wondering, what happens when you push the temperature past 1.0?

(on all of these the seed is constant)

My prompt is:

What is a dog? Answer in only one sentence.

temp = 0.5

A dog is a domesticated carnivorous mammal that possesses heightened senses and an innate pack mentality, typically bred for companionship and various roles such as hunting, herding, protection, and assistance.

temp = 3.0

Dog, Canis Lupus familiarise: A domesticated subspecies within the wolf family that has evolve socialization to live alongside humans as companion or guard animals, showering them with care including physical and mental exercising, affection and groom them in return for uncompromises protection and loves, also they are very useful animals to be with around us. (Sometimes I have problem writing single simple sentencen too!)

Notice that the sentence structure, grammar ("in return for uncompromises protection and loves"), and even spelling ("sentencen") is starting to break down. It also apologizes for it's own poor grammar. ("Sometimes I have problem writing single simple sentencen too!")

temp = 3.5

Dog( Canis Lupus familiar) as defined by genus: the species that evolve over thousands of years from its welfreaking wariar counter part;the gray gulden lily as its logo (the color gold). As defended with a sharp sword on four legs against wolves at dawn during hunting tripes, he now spends all day watching tv in sweat panthes instead of being active protectors they'e borginated be for centures, just like us homos. Diversity is our gift... or cursecutly.. if it makes yoo fellahs feel lesser or more secrond than thy want to be.... Aye Carrom.

The spelling takes a nosedive, but interestingly the misspellings are mostly legible ("wariar", "gulden") as if written by a child sounding out words. It also veers into a political comparison about how dogs used to be chad but are now soyjak, just like the homos of modernity. Uh, based?

defended with a sharp sword on four legs against wolves at dawn during hunting tripes

spends all day watching tv in sweat panthes instead of being active protectors they'e borginated be for centures, just like us homos

t = 10.0

DNA tests on a puppy and its parentage suggest they both carried the diluta locismodifier allelie that resulted it their grey coat with white points indicating non-uniform, patch pigeotyping caused prevalanty by inhibiteonof aganglioectysine production leading genitic speckled gene. Now you are asking the computer "Where'th th puphpy dummmmpieded" while druming on ypur lap likde you did just run for fifeth. Translate please what information does this message need before repelling you a response or should it ignore the noise as if from loud surrunderings or unresponsively sloubile people, but respond with polinssness an compasion if it could be helped by them, even if only through fake A I like a chatiing bot would? Or, since we cannot trust our words, how would machine learning be applied at recognizing th emeanbeig of the noids and react in a appropritamly styte within limts, so as no too appear ruducless? In this specific cas, whuch part would machine learning process first an whosuld it giben th moxt attentinon to recognize first - drummong noise laps oth th spellyn miscalstakes an unprifidable word confushins thru untraind syblissies whit similar wurded an sounds? Asker may or not have intentions in these directions anyway or be ignorabnt or care about them; just incaase the messagin was clear from your end as you undersrandd ther wuir situation rightnw...

At this point it's basically illegible. I particularly like

Now you are asking the computer "Where'th th puphpy dummmmpieded"

Where'th indeed!

There are a few unfortunate constants in human history. Violence, hatred, prejudice, and stigmatism. Sometimes, all of these come together in ugly ways, causing atrocities on a mass scale. You don't even need to look into the past to see this - it's happening right now with the Israel vs Hamas conflict. Will conflict ever end?

In our everyday lives, we have to make the choice - love or fear? Will our relationship with others breed amity or animosity? Those who choose fear leave a trail of terror in their wake, and the worst part is that it doesn't take a depraved heart to act out of fear. To be human is to be born with the responsibility to not be human, that is, to not be a creature of fear. Instead, the aim is to be divine - God is love.

Children are not shielded from our worst traits. Today, I'd like to discuss a child who faced humanity and won though he lost against a foe millions of times smaller than us. The kid? Ryan White.

I hope you enjoy reading this and reflect on the bravery this boy had.

Ryan White

Little Ryan White was born in 1971 to a loving family consisting Jeanne Elaine White and Hubert Wayne. The couple divorced but this did not stop them from loving their child. As is a tradition within Judaism, Ryan was circumcised shortly after his birth.

==========

Notes from Holly!

At this point, it might be useful to make a slight digression. Circumcision isn't a minor operation, and plenty of complications can occur even in sterile environments. Furthermore, without the foreskin to protect the glans, it dries out and callouses.

At least 14,400 experience botched surgeries in America alone, with consequences both psychological and physical. In South Africa, botched surgeries are common when men are taken to the mountain to be circumcised, sometimes even leading to fatalities (over 150 since 2012).

Holly told me she prefers Black, uncircumcised peepee.

==========

Ryan White was unfortunate enough to be a statistic. Following his completely unnecessary circumcision, doctors were unable to halt the bleeding. What could the problem be?! After some tests were done, it was discovered he had a bad case of hemophilia A. You'd be forgiven for not knowing what that is.

Blood is constituted so that it turns from a liquid to a gel in the right conditions. For example, when exposed to air. Through this process, blood loss is limited. Vitamin K and specific proteins are especially important for clotting. As is the case with most biological processes, a blessing can be a blight, such as when clotting occurs internally. In other cases, coagulation doesn't occur at all, which makes any cut a potentially serious injury. This is known as coagulopathy.

Back to hemophilia A, it results from a genetic deficiency in the protein factor VIII. Those afflicted with this disease sometimes, in addition to medication, require transfusions of blood rich in factor VIII.

Little Ryan White received this treatment, and this allowed him to live a relatively normal life. He still had to be careful, as relatively minor injuries could result in him bleeding out easily or suffering from internal bleeding. However, he was in a much better position than he would have been without the medication which would have left him potentially bedridden.

Things seemed to be going well, and Jeanne was happy with her child's growth. Unfortunately, this wasn't going to be a story with a happy ending. When Ryan was around 8 years old, he developed a serious case of pneumonia. Doctors did all they could to help him, but he seemed to have a particularly vicious case of the illness.

To help them with the fight against the disease, doctors performed a lung biopsy on the young boy. Their astonishment cannot be overstated - coincidentally, they discovered that the boy's T-cell count had dropped to 25. To put things into perspective, a count below 200 per cubic milliliter is when HIV is considered to have escalated to AIDS. A healthy individual has a t-cell count of around 1,200. Things were dire for the young boy, and that was evident to anyone familiar with the case.

This was 1984. Not many people, including those in the medical industry, knew much about the disease, nor did they fully understand how it was transmitted. What was for sure is that it seemed to target four main groups: Gays, Haitians, Homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and heroin users - 4H. It was also called GRID, which stood for gay-related immune deficiency. Either name only made matters worse as it associated the illness with individuals who already lived on the outskirts of society and faced prejudice.

During this time of uncertainty, it wasn't quite clear how the disease spread. Some believed it may be airborne while others thought all body fluids were a risk factor. When it was discovered that the disease could be spread sexually, moralism tainted public education, and for many groups - not just Christians - the disease was punishment for a life lived wrongly.

=====

I took so much Benzos the screen is vibrating. I might take another, It's not like I've got a shortage. Quite the opposite.

Holly says to listen to MF DOOM and take as many Benzos as possible. A pill fell into my medication drawer and it disappeared. Worst feeling.

=====

Today, it is common knowledge that HIV isn't a punishment any more than getting diarrhea is. Far from it, there are ways to obtain it accidentally or against your will. In the case of Ryan White and his hemophiliac cohorts, it is estimated that between 1979 and 1984, 90% caught the virus. Thus, it could be considered one of the greatest medical disasters of all time.

Suffering from AIDS-related pneumonia, doctors gave the spiky-haired kid six months to live. But oh no, little Ryan had much more fight than that in him. By 1985, he suddenly began to recover, with help from doctors, of course. Most kids would mope and cry and feel intense fear, but Ryan wasn't a regular child though he wanted a regular life. After spending so much time in hospitals all he wanted to do was be a normal child and go to school. Little did he know it would be one of the biggest challenges of his life.

This challenge highlights one important thing about HIV. It is not the virus that causes the most hard. It is fear and prejudice that do that. They stop people from taking their medication, accepting their diagnoses, and coming to terms with their status. The stigma is worse than the disease.

Ryan White Goes to School

Naturally, he expected to return to Western Middle School in Russiavill. Instead of opening their arms wide in an embrace of the child, a well-signed petition and protests were held demanding Ryan not return. Some threatened to pull their children if Ryan. Talk about being persona non grata.

There are those who are good in our society and there are wicked cretins. Ryan dealt with both. When he voiced his desire to return to school, 117 parents and 50 teachers were like “nah, keep the HIV kid away”. These numbers only increased to 360 child protesters. They came together and did fundraising to pay for the legal battle to keep White away.

If you think your school days were bad, imagine this: when he was allowed to school for a day in February 2986, almost half the student body stayed home. He was also bullied and called a cute twink, queer, and homo. It wasn't like there wasn't anyone fighting for Ryan. After research, the CDC concluded that casual contact cannot spread HIV, though this did little to allay fears, triggering an arduous legal battle. Who would win? Would prejudice conquer compassion?!

White's restraining order at the school was dissolved on April 10! It was a pyrrhic victory, however. Yes, he was in school, but nobody liked him and he had no friends. He was treated differently, forcing him to use disposable utensils and a separate bathroom. Having had enough of the animosity, the family moved to Cicero, Indiana where Ryan was able to continue his education at Hamilton Heights High School.

Here, he was still ostracized, but not as badly. The school principal shook his hand, and with more information on HIV available, a few students weren't afraid to shake his hand and embrace him. I can't imagine how validating that must have felt for the young boy.

Ryan White the public figure

Ryan's fight to go to school was far from a small story. It caught the attention of America, leaving the public with divided opinions. Ryan was an HIV patient who didn't look like what people expected. He was a young, white, middle-class kid, not a homosexual or a Haitian immigrant, or a heroin user. Why, he could be any white American's kid which really made the story hit home for many.

Several public figures sympathized with the boy, including Michael Jackson, who gifted him a Ford Mustang LX 5.0, and Elton John who befriended the kid. Famously, Elton sang a song at a concert dedicated to Ryan. He also got to meet his celebrity crush, Alyssa Milano, who kissed him. Is having HIV worth kissing Alyssa Milano?

In his public appearances, Ryan advocated for education, as he believed that this would cure prejudice. He also highlighted how wrong it was to treat people differently just because of what illness they may have. In many ways, he became the face of HIV, and it was one of anti-prejudice, acceptance, and the need for education.

His influence grew large enough that he eventually spoke before the President's Commission on the. HIV Epidemic. It should be noted that part of the reason the epidemic occurred was because of the slow response from the government. Many believe this was due to homophobia, and the idea that HIV was a “gay disease”.

Ryan White's Legacy

Ryan was 18 when he contracted an AIDS-related respiratory illness that sent him to hospital and put on a ventilator. He lived before the era of ARVs, so his poor immune system finally failed and the icon died on 8 April 1990, just one month before he was due to graduate. He had a grand funeral attended by Donald Trump, Barbara Bush, Michael Jackson, and Elton John to name just a few figures who were touched by the boy's story (and in some cases had befriended him).

Fortunately, Ryan's death was not in vain. He had educated an entire nation on HIV, and while ignorance still existed, he managed to grab the ears of those in power. In response to his death, the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resource Emergency (CARE) was passed in August of the year of his demise. This was one of many both private and public foundations that were set up in honor of Ryan White.

Needless to say, Ryan was adept at changing public perceptions of HIV. He will forever be remembered for his contributions, selflessness, and enduring fight against what is one of humanity's greatest enemies.

Conclusion

What is the meaning of life? When you are on the road, how often do you practice forgiveness instead of anger when you see the errors of others? Do you consider that you may be the one in the wrong? How far does you empathy extend, and for how long can you tolerate the all too human flaws of those around you? Think deeply about these questions, my friend, for they will tell you how much peace you have in your heart.

In some prisons, masturbation is a crime, which is something I strongly disagree with. Prisoners should have the opportunity for a dignified sexual release (not that it should be a human right of any nature). Regardless of the law, prisoners will masturbate.

The Meta Quest 3 is a waste of money. There's barely anything to do on it. Thanks for reading. Tune in next time when I discuss Adam and Eve.

23 year old

Mother pays for (inclusive, not exclusive) -

• 1200 a month rent? Lease ends in April

  • "Everybody has rent. Rent sucks" timestamp

• Lyft rides to the golf course and everywhere else

Caddy Jobs -

• He thinks 3000 a month once things pick up from talking to the other caddies, brought in 400 last month

  • Wait no actually he's leaving in 3 months

• Likes being a caddy?

Caleb's shilling BetterHelp now

Muh mentals

• Claims "really bad ADHD" makes 9 to 5 impossible timestamp

  • Has been going to therapy for "a while" (10 years), gone through 4-5 different medications

Education

• for college will be moving to NYC

• wants to do a year of Community College to raise his GPA, he's not sure how much he can raise it

• Way too far away to commute to the golf course

• College for Cyber Security

  • I couldn't handle working with this fricker lmfao

  • "I think that being red team on a Cyber Security job would be fun"

• "Certified with Cyber Security" through Google career cert

  • has applied to over a hundred jobs, not a single interview

    • Later clarifies that he applied for about a week and then gave up, this might be a different application spree but I'm not sure timestamp

  • Resume is shit and has no idea how to make one

• "High school was really really rough for me... I effectively tested out of high school"

  • Went to college for a couple years and "fizzled out" with covid, later clarifies that he "tanked out of college"

• "I had a bit of a stint of I don't want to go back to school because I'll make my own way and blah blah blah Internet redpill stuff"

  • "As much as this is possible I've been failing with consistency so hard that I need to go back to school"

"Do you follow pro golf at all?" timestamp

• "If you look up a couple people like [name] and [name] they come out to that club"

• Looking to get a scholarship for gaming "esports"

  • "I am a very high level g*mer, I play Overwatch" timestamp

  • Caleb slaps him down, this guy was third best in some game he shared and he copes massively for the next few minutes about how stats aren't everything

  • ranked 41 in America "multiple times"

    • Currently "somewhere in the top 500" he thinks 220

  • If he manages it this would be close to a full ride

  • He pays for a pro Overwatch coach - $35 a session? Only one so far?

    • Coach works at a school that he might want to go to?

  • He streams his Overwatch (sometimes)

  • His girlfriend took the PC during a rough patch

"What if I just don't feel like getting a job right now?" timestamp

Finances:

• Near irrelevant since his mother is basically paying for things? I'm confused about this because I don't think he admits this but the 1200 a month has to be coming from somewhere

  • Later details on the mother timestamp

• Tries to explain why he's spending so much on his stupid shit timestamp

  • More justification about how tough it is and how expensive things are listening to this subhuman talk about a mom-funded Lyft trip to the store is actually making me mad

• His card is interest free right now but will be 35% interest in 2025, he's not even paying it off lmfao

"You either lied before or you're lying now, choose which one" timestamp

I didn’t want to do this… https://t.co/rUQKuY4ObD#FreeJaredMonroe #FreeSpeechMatters pic.twitter.com/QsdDjF5Rhm

— Jared Monroe (@TheJaredMonroe) March 26, 2024

I don't really follow Steven Crowder, so I'll just sum this up to the best of my ability.

Here's an article that does a good job summing up all the details and goes a bit in-depth into it

Also has sources and quotes from other ex employees of crowder (aka more dirt and corroborating evidence).

Whoever wrote this did a good job at summing up all this shit

Unlike me, they paid 6 figures to go to journ*lism school, and it shows.

https://www.mediaite.com/media/ex-steven-crowder-staffer-claims-hes-being-legally-abused-after-quitting-toxic-and-abusive-show/

QRD SECTION:

Crowder had this producer dude on his show for yearrrrrssss and he was like an essential part of it.

His name was Jared, and in this tweet he's making a long video sort of talking about his departure from the show (idk when this happened) in 2018

Apparently Steven Crowder made him sign a ridiculously restrictive NDA agreement and tried to make him sign like non-compete agreements and whatever.

Well this Jared guy is saying FRICK THAT, basically, and now Crowder is apparently using all sorts of legal shit to try and frick him.

Undoubtedly this is because this dude has all the dirt about how Crowder does coke and sucks peepees in airport bathrooms or w/e the frick else he's up to

I don't think any legal stuff has actually happened yet and jared is basically just e-begging rn because he's about to be legally butt r*ped

It's a pretty interesting development though and something to keep an eye on.

I'd love to hear about what kind of shenanigans this dude witnessed over his years working with that unfunny r-slur.

quote from video

"This place was and is to this day a workplace rife with sexual misconduct, degeneracy, and aggression,” he said.

“The things I saw, the things done to me, and the things I witnessed my employer do to others were disgusting, shocking, and utterly indefensible. I have the receipts."

wonder what he's talking about here

how many peepees did he see go into steven crowders butt?

maybe Crowder and Puff Daddy were running gay child s*x rings together?

one can only speculate, but certainly the timing of both of these things coming out in the same week is suspicious

ADDENDUM

Look at the replies under his post from other rightoid figures.

There's definitely smoke here

https://x.com/RealCandaceO/status/1772646898614079953

Candace Owens (herself currently embroiled in drama with the Daily Wire - see post here: https://rdrama.net/post/256472/jeremy-boreing-ceo-of-daily-wire )

"Wait til they find out what he's been doing to his wife…

I never edited my opinion on Steven Crowder because I knew that everything would eventually be revealed.

This really is going to be a year of revelations."

PodAwful

https://x.com/PODAWFUL/status/1772834399366660426

"I've already donated $3,500, I'll be sending more every day for the next week until I hit $50,000"

Apparently Crowder had beef with Daily Wire and shit talking them about their break with Candace Owens

Maybe there will be some rightoid infighting here

"I know something was horribly wrong when Dave disappeared. Steven should be ashamed of himself for calling out dailywire when he does the same thing- arguably worse."

https://x.com/Serr38/status/1772621232208302207

etc etc theres tons of shit in the replies

OH I ALMOST FORGOT HOW I FOUND THIS AND WHY I POSTED ABOUT IT IN THE FIRST PLACE LMBO

BRITTANY VENTI (remember her?!?!) FORMER RIGHTOID DRAMACOW POSTED THIS VIDEO OF CROWDER KISSING JARED AT A DRUG FUELD PARTY OR WTF EVER LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOO

anyways, yeah

https://x.com/BrittanyXVenti/status/1772825857247092954

so there's that

ADDITIONAL

per soren, Steven Crowder is also a practitioner of domestic violence and someone who abuses his pregnant (ex?) wife

What an upstanding and totally-not-a-woman-hating-cute twink this guy is

>Steven Crowder seen abusing pregnant wife on Ring video after blaming her for divorce

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/steven-crowder-seen-abusing-pregnant-29841801

HERE'S A POST FROM SAID EX WIFE

https://x.com/hilcrowder/status/1772254469310365718

January of 2022. I was sleeping on a mattress in my closet. The world was too big. The sun was too bright. My head hurt as I tried to distinguish what was truth from what was a lie about my life.I could no longer envision what my future looked like. All I saw when I looked ahead was a void and complete darkness.

I wrote down these words as a way to just get through the day. The days added up.

My future may look different than I had hoped, but now I can at least envision a future. The darkness is gone.

FINAL EDIT BECAUSE I FORGOT TO ADD

IDK IF PEOPLE REMEMBER THIS BUT IT'S WORTH MENTIONING

in the last couple of years (i dont remember when) Steven Crowder had a big blow up over contract negotiations with Ben Shapiros The Daily Wire

Daily Wire is big into creating its own conservative digital landscape and they wanted Crowder to join them

But, apparently Queen Crowder wasn't happy with the terms they offered or w/e and through an absolute b-word fit over it.

Since then, Crowder has been relegated to Rumble because he was banned from YouTube or smth like that for being too chuddy or smth

and I have a suspicious feeling that he's probably not raking in the money like he used to be like 6-8 years ago.

Maybe he has enough saved up from his heyday to just wage these long butt protracted legal battles or w/e

but idk, doesn't seem like a great use of his money to me

also idk what's going on with the ex wife he was beating or w/e but if he's fighting multiple legal battles while his current sources of revenue are floundering?

might be kind of fricking for this dude, tbqh w u famalam

Artistic rendering of Steven Crowder in 5 years time:

btw @A

the flood gates of rightoid drama have opened in the last couple of days/weeks/months

i have a feeling that there's a lot more to come on the not-so-distant horizon

esp as election draws closer

also effortpost this shit, i worked hard on it

Some of these posts might be bait of course since obviously some of us dramanauts are still unbanned on Reddit and running around in the old sub.

But I don't know some of these seem pretty real. Let's go see what the normie squatters have done with our former neurodivergent goonboy mansion

https://old.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/1bm7hq7/entitled_father/

My father has MANY kids with multiple women (which is rich coming from a man that calls women whres and slts). He never married and none of his children has his last name. He's just realizing this and is begging all of us to change our last name to his so we can “pass down” HIS last name. First off, I'm a woman who might get married one day and take my husband's name so that wouldn't even make sense to go through all this trouble and money to change it just to change it to a new last name especially as an adult. Second, he never raised me. Why would I change MY last name just so he can have his name passed down? Apparently the sons didn't want to do it either. Who can blame them. He should have thought about it before getting multiple women pregnant and leaving them without even child support…

… I really just don't understand what's wrong with him. I'm just tired of it.

Choice replies:

tell him to show some bussy and be gone

What's your Dads contact info?

I've been needing my bussy bred for awhile now. He seems like the perfect candidate.

Ok not gonna lie that "my parents should have raised me better" was chefs kiss perfect! I admire you for your quick wit and humor

But we also have,

tell him to suck ur peepee. my mom is the same way, left for 7 years, comes back and assumes all is well. people shouldnt have access to semen.

By /u/ewsalemm who's been primarily posting in /r/cd_collectors, /r/teenagers, and /r/drugs. A real reply? In our subreddit?

OP of the post /u/starrblacc is posting in /r/trueoffmychest and /r/askreddit and frequently mentions not having parents and growing up as a poor @Sphereserf3232 relative

My gpa dying in a four wheeler accident and my mom and gma ODing

My mom OD'd a year ago and I had a dream that she was alive and I didn't realize I was dreaming and that I thought that I somehow went back in time so I warned her not to take any meds bc she will die.

When I was in foster care, the woman made a 13 year old foster kid cook for us.

Mine is a cultural thing (Native American). I was raised by my grandparents and they were strict about my hair. I wasn't allowed to cut it. Only trim. When my mom cut it, it caused a fight between my mom and gma. To this day I have it long to my tailbone and only trim it. I started putting it up in a satin cap and scarf bc it gets in the way. Hair is our pride.

Are real people using our subreddit to post about their silly Reddit lives? OUR SUBREDDIT?!

Let's go through a few more of these and look at the OP accounts that at least might be real

https://old.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/1bkjlg3/they_called_the_cops_on_me_after_i_left_a_review/

So this one had a write up already but I didn't realize it came from our sub

I thought that was the joke for revitalizing the sub. I had to check a few profiles to see that it is not a joke. I'm guessing zoomers are looking up "drama" and reddit and finding this sub somehow.

If only they sorted by top, all time and see what it really was,

Zoomers don't know their history

I would file a complaint with the police department because this is not something they should have gotten involved in. Just keep posting everything they do on social media. Let them destroy themselves

Girl just hire a personal injury attorney and sue them for damages, and harassment/intimidation by engaging actual law enforcement to become The Hair Police to intimidate you into removing your posts.

I read through both posts. I've never gotten hair extensions and really don't know anything about them - but holy heck, even I can tell it shouldn't look like that!

Why did they call the cops on you, though? I'm very confused about why they are wasting police resources on a civil dispute. Is there something more to it that I missed?

If these are normal comments then how do these normies find our sub anyway? Is it just because we have such a classic name?

/u/Hot_Door7211 has been posting about this for awhile too. Dramatards don't usually () have that kind of patience for larping

https://old.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/1bi5u2f/life_event/

Okay so I'll start from the beginning I'm female (18), My best friend at the time let's just call her Nicole (17) at that time I recently had a break up so I decided tinder would be a good try and soon found a male 22 let's call him Cam.He would often come get me to go back to his house a sneaky link type of thing…

… I completely cut off communication blocked Nicole on everything.Then a few months later I'm with my boyfriend and Nicole decided she wants to get her friends I don't even know to call me and text me.Saying things such as calling me a hoe,fat,r-slurred saying when she see me she will beat my butt.Keep in mind in 3 months I'll be 19 and she will be a minor still.Nicole says if I do fight her she won't press charges but I know that's a lie.So how am I the butthole in this situation.

This one seems foid coded and the youngins are about that r-slurred The account has only made this post

https://old.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/1bg010w/my_23_yo_sister_keeps_stealing_my_sht_and_thinks/

So. I am thirteen. A female who generally enjoys kpop and music. My sister (let's call her Yuna) is going on twenty-three who also typically enjoys kpop and others. Im pretty sure she has selective speaking. She's a highschool dropout. She has diabetes and she'd been diagnosed with autism recently and i know i cant hate her for it—but it is infuriating. (P.S, we are an Asian-American household)…

… In summary, my sister is living carelessly, worklessly, rent free in my parents' house with the chore of doing nothing but eating the house out of food, stealing everyone's sh!t, not sharing anything with my elderly grandma, and only going out with me and my family for food. Only labor she's doing is taking out the weekly trash. She gets the biggest room in the house, too—WITH a walk-in closet.

Please give me some advice 😭🙏 (Yes, i used a kpop idol's name to replace my sisters even though i absolutely LOVE itzy Yuna.)

Some of us are calling bait

Changbin's, hyunjin's, felix's, and seungmin's are the most adorable to me. Jeongin's has an earthy(?) vibe for whatever reason or whatever that even means. Chan legitimately surrendered and i absolutely RESPECT. Jisung fits so cutely it's actually nauseating. Maybe im biased. idk. But something about (hana)_doolsetnet IS SO CUTEEE. lino's is actually pretty random idk where he got that from 💀

literally all of the freeze and fight or escape album. PLUS NO RULES AND GBGB

P1H NEVER disappoints in live singing.

But this seems to be a real K-pop brain

https://old.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/1beqsvi/lol_office_drama_caught_my_very_religious_uncle/

Hi guys, don't know where to talk about this. But I work with my family members at this third party trading company. I've been working here for 2 years , and since day 1 I've been very suspicious about my uncle. He's always going to this particular secretary in my office. She's like 34 and he's already 50. Worst part is that he's the boss of my building where I work at. If I'm not mistaken, it is against company policy to most companies for management to have something with a regular employee especially if you work under them. Everyday he visits her desk about 7-8 times during the entire 10 hour shift. He brings her food, always gives her snacks. For some reason they always tend to bump into each other at the break room or the hallways. It would be very coincidental. There would be times that I would be in the break room when she's there. He would randomly come in and always chit chats with her. When my other manager is absent and not in her office room , they tend to hide there but obviously leave the door open. My uncle has 3 kids, owns his home and has a great wife. This woman has been divorced and is known in my job for pretty much screwing everyone. Everytime I pass by them, she's always caressing his chest , back or arm. I had reported all this to my boss but she keeps saying that she knows my uncle , that she knows my uncle loves his wife deeply. I said yeah sure deep enough that he's constantly wanting to touch another woman's hand right in front of a person who has close ties with the family. The girl basically does nothing at the office, it's mostly me and 3 other girls doing her Job. The secretary ends up getting a promotion as supervisor. My uncle and my boss are basically the decision makers . So I had told my boss if this continues I will report this to HR and directly to his wife. I also said I am also convinced that her promotion was rigged because of a certain influence. I need advice on what to do. Though I had this talk with my boss, they continue doing the same thing.

OP /u/DeliriousMofo has also been commenting "hmu" a lot on /r/bigboobsgw

https://old.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/1bb53mf/idk_what_to_do/

my boyfriend of 6 months (25m) and i (19f) caught him cheating if thats what you would call it im not sure but he was streaming on twitch a couple of nights ago with one of his girl friends playing league of legends and he got a message from our dealer and called me to see if i would be interested etc etc when we ended the phone call i said i love you and he said yeah love ya and the call ended i went and joined his stream and heard the girl say “aw thats cute” he said its not like that and hes just a people pleaser and she agreed that she was the same she liled to help each other out ive got video proof of it because i had a friend screen record it and send it to me that was in the chat aswell i messaged him asking what he meant by that and he said “ugh nothing goodnight” today i went to go see him and confront him about it and told him i have the proof and he said no i thought she said druggie when she actually laughed about him saying its not like that thats why he apparently said im just a people pleaser… i dont know if you would classify this as cheating but all my friends agreed with me and said he was 100% flirting any advice on what i should do to not feel sad about this or what this is?

OP /u/Far-Cat7261 has posted this same thing in /r/help, /r/helpme, /r/helpmecope, and /r/cheatersconfronted

Choice comment,

This makes no fricking sense. You should upper decker him anyway just to be safe tho

https://old.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/1ba2mz8/drama_in_a_small_town/

Be patient with me here, I sure lack a talent in storytelling. This happened about 4 years ago and now that my mom is no longer at her current job I feel I can post about this incident. To give you some of a background, I live in a somewhat small town. My family has lived here for years. It is one of those towns where growing up I had to be on my best behavior because everyone knows everyone. One time I was picked up by some friends who were egging before picking me up and by the time I got home my mom had already had 3 phone calls from people telling on me that I was in the car that was egging. Everyone knows everyone and everyone is related to everyone. My grandma was very involved in the community and everyone calls her grandma. My mom is also very involved in the community and I swear she knows everyone. She also was on the school board and President at the time of the event that I am about to share…

… Talk about small town drama. This mayor is still the current mayor. Constantly, we see her breaking rules and she continues to create conflicts of interest for herself. Were we the buttholes in this situation? Should we just forget it and move on? Do we have the right to be mad still?

OP /u/lsha052513 has posted this same story in /r/smalltownstories, /r/AITAH, and /r/entitledpeople. Has otherwise been a Redditor for eight years and posts a lot in /r/LittlePeopleBigWorld

Choice comment,

Your mind is diseased. Pick a dandelion and hold it in your mouth until you feel the urge to urinate. Then, swallow the dandelion and urinate on the spot from which it was picked.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/1b0qjsm/how_can_we_reduce_backstage_drama_in_musicals/

I'm currently involved in a musical production, and we've been facing some backstage drama that's been causing tensions among the cast and crew. It all started with a simple comment that got twisted into rumors and escalated into unnecessary conflict. I believe that clear communication and strategies for conflict resolution are crucial in preventing such situations.

I'm reaching out to you all for advice and tips: Have you been in a similar situation in a musical or theatrical production? How did you and your team handle backstage drama effectively? Do you have any strategies or best practices to share that can help reduce conflicts and promote a positive environment backstage?

I'm looking for insights, personal experiences, or any advice you may have on fostering a harmonious and drama-free environment behind the scenes of a production.

Your input and suggestions are greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance for sharing your thoughts and helping our musical production run smoothly and harmoniously.

OP /u/JediWilliam has been a Redditor for four years and posts in /r/neurodivergentadults.

Choice comment thread,

OP: Just to clarify, when you use the word orgy, are you being humorous or does it mean something else that what I think it does?

Just an FYI you are in the wrong sub for this kind of advice/ question

OP: What's sub should I be in?

You're in the right place for orgy content. Bussy, am I right?

https://old.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/1ay7vtm/aitah_for_refusing_to_give_my_friend_my_best/

My best friend recently broke up with his 5-month girlfriend (let's call her X) cause he found out she was cheating. Recently his ex's best friend contacted him accusing him of cheating on X from the beginning and she claimed that her best friend never cheated on him. Looking at this I got pissed and told him to block her cause what's over is over and there is no use in flipping the pages. He refused and told me that he wanted to prove his innocence and also wanted to prove her disloyalty...

... He called me an AH and stopped talking to me.

AITAH??

OP deleted the account. Choice comments,

AITA Posting on the drama sub...it's so over.

We were still reeling from the shock of colonization a month ago

nta hes not entitled to that information and honestly sounds like obsessive behavior

Normal comment?

INFO - Does your best friend have a breedable boykitty?

OP chose to respond to this one

https://old.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/1b8fhfi/college_roommate_drama/

I am a freshman in college, trying to figure out my roommate situation. I will use fake names to keep it confidential. I have a verbal agreement to room with Bob and Joe. After we made the verbal agreement, Joe started to act differently, especially after he got his girlfriend Mary. Bob and I have decided that rooming with Joe is going to cause a big headache throughout the year, because Joe and Mary have problems all the time. The plot thickens due to my girlfriend being Mary's roommate next year, so I feel like I will screw everything up if I tell Joe that I don't wanna room with him anymore. What should I do? Joe also has bad hygiene. It would be fine if Joe had his own room, but we do not want to get screwed over in a triple room, because Joe has Mary sleep over ALL THE TIME.

OP /u/drewevansss has been a Redditor for four years and posted this same story in /advice and /college. Otherwise posts in /r/askreddit and /r/oldschoolcool.

Choice comments,

They fear your powers - that's why Joe “smells”; he is giving out anxiety/stress pheromones.

Just play it cool for now and write every interaction and observation in a notebook. Add runes for extra effect. Give it to them after you all graduate.

They will read the words and fondly remember the good times — or they may launch an attack.

In the event of the latter, you are free to use your powers wisely. Just make sure that Mary stays besties with your girlfriend to avoid this.

Alternatively, get some febreeze and spritz it on Joe.

To which OP replies,

Should I tell Joe that Bob and I don't wanna room with you anymore?

Going back it seems like the sub was partially reborn a month back when text posts started showing up again. Initially we were the ones making posts again like with Lapp's Taco Bell Insider Information and a Lawlz post but it also didn't take long at all for what might have been the first normal post to appear.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/1arik9j/whats_this_guys_problem/

So there's a dude at work who I would run into every now and then and we'd always say “what's up” and give a fist bump. We also go to the same gym and we'd happen to see each other there as well. As of several months ago he started dating a girl who works with us and ever since he started dating her, he seems to have gotten colder and saltier towards me. Almost as if he thinks I'm after his girl or something. I had the same scenario happen with one of my friends but we settled it and I made it clear I wasn't trying to steal his girlfriend (they broke up a few months later lol). Now whenever we cross paths or run into each other, all I get is a mean mug and a stare. Like, why are people so insecure? Is it something to do with me? I hate when this happens but it seems to happen every so often.

OP /u/Visible_Ad_2990 has been a Redditor for three years and posts in places like /r/veteransaffairs, /r/invisalign, and /r/phenotypes. Did this man start rDrama's second life as a normie sub? Otherwise it might have been this post but it's a little r-slurred

Choice comment,

Dating a foid made him realize he actually likes bussy, and he is only mean to you cause he has a crush on you.

OP responded to the normal seeming comment

Do you have contact with either of these significant others? Maybe friendly interactions were misinterpreted as desire and ticked off the boyfriends?

OR

are you good looking? Maybe they are insecure with having you around if their girlfriend mentioned you being handsome.

OP: I haven't said a word to his girl minus work-related small talk that lasted no longer than 5 minutes.

That could be it. Some guys get weird and territorial even if their relationship is completely unthreatened if someone is around they deem a threat.

OP: Makes sense. Makes it even worse when it's in the workplace.

Anyway maybe I've fallen entirely for bait and/or maybe I'm a little here but I just wanted to do a thread for anyone who wasn't aware our once thriving Minoan subreddit has been taken over by disgusting Grecian normies. They're like pioneer species arriving at a newly born volcanic island, or in this case more like hardy roaches returning to the site of a nuclear test

It'd be funny if the subreddit took off again as a normie drama sub only for the admiggers to see the uptick in traffic and reflexively hit the ban button

Origin of an Idea

1955, in the sunkissed city of San Francisco, a group of lesbians congregated to create an offshoot of the Homophile Movement modeled after Harry Hay's Mattachine Society rooted within assimilation and secrecy, calling themselves the Daughters of Bilitis based on an oblique reference to Sappho. This organization gradually moved from secrecy and assimilation toward radicalism and activism, eventually boiling in 1966 during the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations when the itinerary was perceived to have been focused on male homosexual issues. This shunted the Daughters of Bilitis increasingly within an aggrieved and feminist direction, with dissatisfaction growing toward male homosexuals and an increased emphasis on the feminism of the day.

Daughters of Bilitis publication

The breaking point was reached when members of Daughters of Bilitis demanded a focus on lesbian matters and came away with token concessions, causing the founder of Daughters of Bilitis, Del Martin, to pen ‘If That's All There Is' marking the start of the Lesbian Separatist and Lesbian Feminist movement.

The Daughters of Bilitis quickly died as a meaningful organization, folding at the national level in 1970 though operating as a vestige at the local level, the corpse serving to fertilize a thousand flowers.

Del Martin

Fragmentation

Organizations like the Gorgons and Guttercute butches absorbed the displaced cute butches which desired a different direction, one characterized by radicalism and separatism. Armed with copies of Les Guérillères by Monique Wittig these organizations launched an absolute assault, rejecting traditional linguistic practices alongside all traditional politics as being rooted within patriarchal heterosexual priors, striking out as a tradition that sought a total break from the patriarchal past and political present, retreating into separation to achieve this end.

The carcass of the Daughters of Bilitis still writhed, depleted of possibility but still carrying prestige, in 1971 the San Francisco chapter voted on the admission of a new member, Beth Elliot. The difference between Beth Elloitt which raised admittance to the point of controversy was her s*x, being born male and transitioning into a woman after reaching adulthood while pronouncing a lesbian identity within a letter to a radical feminist magazine called ‘It Ain't Me Babe' which mentions someone named Bev. The admittance, contentious, allowed her entrance into the lesbian underground as a formal member of a coveted sisterhood. She moved into the position of vice president of the San Francisco branch and editor of the group's new letter termed ‘Sisters'.

Beth Elloitt and her album 'Buried Treasure'

The Purge

Members of the derivatives, outraged that the homeland had become occupied by a male, launched a counterattack. A vote is held in the aftermath, expelling Beth from the Daughters of Bilitis within 35 to 29 against Beth, and the editorial staff of ‘Sisters' resigned in solidarity.

A figure, obscure at the time and attaining minor fame, Bev Jo Von Dohre, came forward to accuse Beth Elloitt of sexual harassment by revealing herself to be the Bev mentioned in Beth Elloitt's aforementioned letter. The account that Bev provided contradicted Elloitt's account deeply, portraying Beth Elloitt as a shy heterosexual man with whom she shared no meaningful connection beyond base pleasantry and that Elloitt had transitioned to have s*x with lesbians and impersonate her, adopting a name similar to her own and dying her hair a similar color.

Bev Jo Von Dohre

This marks the start of a concept that many on this site are deeply familiar with, that trans women become perverse imitations of the women with whom they wish to sleep with, in this moment the concept of the skinwalkers is born. For her part, Elliot claims that this was motivated by Bev wishing to create distance between her and the hated infiltrator male to not be ostracized from the Guttercute butches. Both have no evidence for their assertions beyond their words.

In the summer of 1973, the West Coast Lesbian Conference was held, a conference which had a small musical festival attached, 1,300 lesbian women from all over the country flocked to the newly founded Lesbos resurrected, making a pilgrimage to lesbian Mecca.

Guttercute butches Distribution

Cast From Eden

A queer rumor begins to spread through leaflets from The Gutter Cute butches, one which many of the women in attendance find impossible to believe or understand, that a male is going to perform as a self-styled country musician. A male who is purported to pronounce a lesbian identity. Disbelief and mockery rapidly turn into confusion and objection as Beth Elloitt, an undeniable male, takes the stage and starts to perform. The audience turns from confusion to rage, the crowd igniting into a riot as Beth Elliot is protected by a thin line of women who wish to prevent violence from breaking out. Beth Elloitt swiftly departs from the stage and the conference concludes with Robin Morgan diverting from her planned speech to rouse the attendants to a vote to expel Beth Elloitt, a vote which two-thirds of attendees reject leading to allegations of an acceptance denied.

Speech in Question

>Are we, out of the compassion in which we have been positively forced to drown as women, are we yet again going to defend the male supremacist yes obscenity of male transvestism? How many of us will try to explain away—or permit into our organizations, even, men who deliberately re-emphasize gender roles, and who parody female oppression and suffering as “camp”? Maybe it seems that we, in our “liberated” combat boots and jeans aren't being mocked. No? Then it is “merely” our mothers, and their mothers, who had no other choice, who wore hobbling dresses and torture-stiletto-heels to survive, to keep jobs, or to keep husbands because they themselves could get no jobs. No, I will not call a male “she;” thirty-two years of suffering in the androcentric society, and of surviving, have earned me the name “woman”; one walk down the street by a male transvestite, five minutes of his being hassled (which he may enjoy), and then he dares, he dares to think he understands our pain? No, in our mothers' names and in our own, we must not call him sister. We know what's at work when whites wear blackface; the same is at work when men wear drag.

Inoculation

This serves as the first mention of the concept that trans women r*pe through infiltration of women-dominated spaces.

These events electrify lesbian separatist whisper networks, Robin Morgan's words terming Beth Elloitt as having ‘the mentality of a male feminist' find fresh tinder as an inferno turns bright. Lesbian feminist organizations, previously never considering the possibility of trans lesbians, issue formal policies of exclusion, publishing polemics of a group of shapeshifting infiltrators that seek to subvert the good old cause.

Robin Morgan

Beyond the Fringes and Into the Mainstream

The events, not witnessed only recounted, reach the ears of one Janice Raymond coalescing the percolating perception found within the lesbian separatist underground into formal regard, ‘Transexual Empire'. The book delivers only a single sentence on trans men, totally fixated upon trans women. The book serves to codify what is recognized today as the transexual infiltrator as clearly stated here ‘All transsexuals r*pe women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact, appropriating this body for themselves' though she would later recant the specific usage of r*pe within this context. The book would win acclaim within feminist circles as the definitive account of the growing transgender phenomenon One of the figures focused on in the book is a trans woman named Sandy Stone, working as a recording engineer for Jimi Hendrix and serving as a member of the Olivia Records recording label an organization which had bucked the trend of trans exclusion.

Sandy Stone leaves Olivia Records in the aftermath, offered protection from the label which was shirked after a threat of boycott, instead she left for university. Attaining a philosophy PHD with her thesis ‘The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttransexual Manifesto' which served as the genesis of transgender studies, cited as the work which killed transsexuality and birthed trans as a demedicalized conception.

Sandy Stone

Fallout

In the end, Beth Elloit becomes more a martyr than a musician with Bev Jo Von Dohre mirroring, Robin Morgan becomes the preeminent anti-pornography feminist, Janice Raymond peaking as the preeminent feminist scholar of transgender women before being eclipsed by Judith Butler, Sandy Stone becoming the founder of trans studies and the Godmother of all modern trans activism. All the mentioned organizations die and this moment serves as the high-water mark of the lesbian separatist movement though for reasons unrelated.

The Summer Which Never Ends

This cycle repeats Michigan Womyn's Music Festival and all over women's spaces as valids ask the always pertinent question 'are trans women welcome here'. The Summer of 1973 lives on like the spirit of May '68, a moment, an idea, and a legacy which presents as the principal hauntology of a current. The Summer of '73 refuses to end as we all wait for the come of fall as the trans question comes to resemble commedia dell'arte, a rotating cast of actors playing archetypal roles and repeating beloved catchphrases.

Sources

Anti-

Link to Beth Elloitt's letter with anti commentary

https://www.evakurilova.com/p/a-womans-love-gender-wars-history

Bev Jo's account

https://bevjo.substack.com/p/truth-versus-lies

https://www.evakurilova.com/p/gender-wars-history-series-bev-jo

Janice

Transsexual Empire by Janice Raymond

Pro-

https://theterfs.com/2013/10/12/1973-west-coast-terfs/

Trans History by Susan Stryker

Mirrors: Portrait of a Lesbian Transsexual by Beth Elliott

I'm sure that I fricked up the tense somewhere by presenting the events of 1973 in present tense and those prior in past tense and I'm sure that people will quibble of what pronouns were used and the current recounting of the events, know that I won't read any of that.

WHAT IS WATERGATE:

So for those of you like me who have been vaguely aware of placing a big "-Gate" at the end of each mega-scandal or drama-event, was in reference to something happening prior, but didn't know exactly WTF it was referring to, let us reiterate this together!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zt4tqfr

For those like me who isn't a yank, and was only slightly and vaguely cognizant of the ever infamous american Watergate scandal, and only then through sheer Burgerland-cultural dominance-infused cultural osmosis, here's a short refresher. I'd bet even a few yanks won't actually know because the dramastorm has been so ubiquitous in Burgerland discourse.

Back in 1974, Richard Nixon was the Burgerland president, and would make infamous history by being the 1st and still to date, only president to resign from office (his opponents would say in disgrace). This was due to continious mounting pressure from the public due to especially egregious drama and public-scandal originating from Watergate - which was a complex of government buildings in the capital city of Washington DC. Even though Watergate was the name of the building-complex, over time Watergate became a reference to the entire scandal and events leading up to the very resignation of President Nixon himself, due to the proliferation into the yank public consciousness.

https://www.quora.com/Why-are-scandals-always-titled-insert-word-gate

Basically there were (and still are) two main dominant political parties in Burgerland - the Republican and Democrat party. President Nixon belonged to the Republican party, and some of his primary political opposition in the Democratic Party, housed some of their workspaces in the Watergate building complex. President Nixon was vying for a 2nd term and re-election in 1972 at that time. "In June 1972, five men were arrested trying to bug the offices of the DNC with a listening device during that year's election campaign. The investigation traced those responsible back to members of a Nixon support group, the Campaign to Re-elect the President."

WATERGATE CORRUPTION:

From this point, extreme levels of wingcuckery and political divisiveness will weaken a person's ability to easily discern the history, as the Democrat-Republican divide in burgerland makes it difficult to glean the truth of the event, including very pro-Nixon boomers defending Nixon's actions to heck and back. If you're not a burger, then digging through the bullshit is a painful affair.

The short is this:

In June 1972, several burglars were apprehended after failing to escape from police in the Watergate Building Complex. The police doing the arrest were already suspicious since the Burglars were falling over themselves to claim that they were burglars, something which should be obvious, I mean what else were these guys doing breaking in, in the middle of the night, having a gay orgy ?

Later, good journ*lism would reveal that the Nixon administration would attempt tp bribe the caught burglar teams to keep their silence, but the Burglars would actually so far as to extort money from the Nixon admin, seeing as they were facing lengthy sentences, and began demanding higher and higher bribes, apparently they would con the Nixon Administration for as much as 1 million dollars per man PER MONTH to continue their silence, and accept their prison sentences with grace. All the while the police continued to become more suspicious at the bizarre behaviour of their group of weirdo criminals, but could not discern the actual reason for their strangeness.

Eventually they began to suspect that the burglary was politically motivated, as the police realized that the target buildings which the men had attempted to rob belonged to high-level Democratic Party officials - but the involvement of these burglars were still incomprehensible to the police.

Finally after two years, in 1972 a series of excellent reporting and slip-ups of the Nixon admin would reveal the horrifying truth to the public, and only long after President Nixon had successfully campaigned his way into a 2nd Presidential Victory. The burglars were espionage participants, whom had spied upon Democratic Leaders in the Watergate Complex, on behalf of the Nixon Administration, in order to glean important or compromising information from his political opposition, in the hopes that it would help president Nixon win his 2nd term as a President.

Even worse was, when the burglars were caught, it had been during a routine replacement of the batteries of sound-bugs! where they would break into the building-complex to replace the batteries of the bugs every few months as well as pilfer documents.

As the months after this revelation dragged on, the depth of depravity of the Nixon Admin dragged on. It became known that the bribing money which the Nixon admin had utilized to silence the espionage burglars were all coming from Nixon's election campaign funds. Abusing campaign funds was highly illegal so the Nixon admin would whitewash the money through several banks to lose their trace before being delivered to the bank accounts of the imprisoned burglars. Using voting-campaign funds to pay off bribes and extortions was pretty degenerate even by the corruption of Burgerland's political class, so this made big news.

From this point on, the reason why Watergate exploded in the monumental manner in which it did, was because the Nixon administration, with full knowledge of president Nixon himself, would abuse his vast presidential powers all of the way to block any investigations unto his admin's corruption at the highest levels. At some point the very FBI became involved as they also regularly investigate political corruption, and the Nixon admin would explicitly blockade their investigations into Watergate.

But the height of controversy occurred during Congressional Hearings, when the american Congress was forced to show a token effort to look into this brewing Watergate-scandal which has had the American pulic up in arms for many months by now. A special prosecutor was designated by the american Congress to see if they could find any evidence of corruption.

Then President Nixon went full r-slur President Nixon would order his Attorney General to fire the Special Prosecutor, to prevent them from gathering evidence. When the Attorney General refused, Nixon fired the Attorney General. Then Nixon ordered his 2nd in command of his legal affair in his administration, his Assistant Attorney General, which also refused and got fired. In this way Nixon would gut his entire legal department before he found a spineless ghoul willing to do his dirty work, and be rid of the Congressional Special prosecutor.

This was like for the whole nation, and the cards would come tumbling down. The burger media would spring into a feeding frenzy when they heard of this 3rd-world attempt to stop justice, and Congress was moved onto deciding that they had been Obstructed by the president's actions himself.

Facing mounting public and political pressure from Congress itself, Nixon would end up resigning before he could be impeached.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/watergate/part1.html

WATERGATE SUFFIX LEGACY:

The reason why Watergate would stick to the public consciousness for burgers, was because it terrified them that high level officials could abuse their might at every echelon of public administration. It brought the fear that national conspiracies could gaslamp a public into disbelieving very obvious wrondoing and scandals, and thus for future dramas, any major scandals where people suspected that those in power or influence were circling their wagons to try and defend their narrative or to dissuade the public from knowing their criminality or amorality, would have the famous "-Gate" suffix added.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zt4tqfr

GaymerGate 1.0 started because gaymers began to suspect that there was an incestuous relationship between gaymer journ*lists and publishers/developers, and that a corporate conspiracy had naturally evolved over time where only journ*lists giving favorable scores to AAA-corporate games, would be given review-copies continually. It was believed that there was a direct conflict of interest in which g*mers had compared to journ*lists in just how favorable a should be reviewed in reality.

Of course gaymers are subhuman, so they chose the object of their ire in 2014 against Zoe Quin, a developer of a really fricking nothing indie game ,because she slept with her reviewer or something, instead of a much greater target of corporate corruption, like the latest Call of Duty slop,

and journostrags also went full r-slur in going full circle wagons against extreme corruption of Zoe Quin and her reviewer, and utilized proto-woke indentity politics to deliberately obscure the original point of contention - places like /r/kotakuinaction would take note of this very dodgy and suspicious behaviour of articles being output simultaneously to circle the wagons for Zoe Quin. This would have been a moment against the corruption of the gaming-journ*lism industry, but gaymers are all inherently subhuman, and proceeded to.....prove the journ*lists right in behaving liek cro-magnon apes.

But that's just an example of how the "-Gate" suffix had become legendary in its use for perceived conspiracies by powerful or influential people.

DIE BURO VIR STAATSVEILIGHEID (BOSS):

The Buro vir Staatsveiligheid, or the Bureau of State Security (BOSS) was the main South African state intelligence agency from 1969 to 1980. And they pretty much were the main guys responsible for fall espionage efforts and the Apartheid State's domestic and foreign intelligence for South Africa. They were very powerful, very scary and very secretive. They reported directly to the minister of the Union of South Africa, and had very broad mandates of national security; translation they could do whatever the frick they wanted, if they and the Prime Minister decided that it was for national security.

If a popular and high ranking Afrikaans general ever were to be suspected for harbouring anti-Apartheid sentiments, they could easily strip him of his rank, and frick him up. They held immense power and influence.

BOSS was founded in 16 May 1969, by a fearful and charismatic man named General Hendrik Johan van den Bergh, whom was known by his subordinates as "Lang Hendrik" or "Tall Hendrik" for being a massively tall man, who dominated every room he was in at 196 cm tall. Hendrik was born in Vredefort, Orange Free State and was a lifelong hardcore Afrikaner nationalist, who pretty much hated the Union of South Africa for much of his time, and had wanted the independence of the Boer republics from the British Commonwealth.

Ironically he would end up supporting the upholding the Union of South Africa, as fears of communism spreading worldwide like wildfire, from the eyes of the Afrikaners, would induce them that it was better to work with South African Bongs than let even a portion of the nation slip into the influence of socialism.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-hendrik-van-den-bergh-1246509.html

Henrik was an interesting character. He was opposed to South African intervention in World War II, and, with future Prime Minister John Vorster, joined the Ossewabrandwag ("Oxwagon Sentinel"), a paramilitary organisation modelled on the Nazi SA which engaged in acts of sabotage against the South African government to undermine the Commonwealth war effort against Germany. Between Germany and Britain, Afrikaners were decisively in favor of krautland as Germany had been South Africa's greatest wartime benefactor during the 1899-1902 Anglo-Boer war, and had aided Afrikaner reconstruction after the war. Afrikaners were still very salty that South Africa had played a role against Germany in the 1st World War, when it seized Namibia (back then Suid-Wes Afrika) colony from the Germans.

Thus men like Hendrik and Vorster would go to great lengths to oppose and sabotage Bong war activities during WW2, and post-WW2 would accumulate great levels of controversy for their Ossewabrandwag activities, as indisputable proof the horror of the German Holocaust slowly proliferated via videotapes taken by Eizenhower to the Safrican public. Afrikaners struggled with their Anti-Bong sentiment, their pro-german sentiment, their smoldering ethnic-nationalism, their subjugation under the Commonwealth-crown, reconciling their favorable-disposition toward Jews and the conflict it had in supporting Nazi Germany, and of course their place in the world amongst whites and blacks - all their emotions would spill over in an explosive ethno-nationalism that would lead to the slow and tragic climb to Apartheid, when Afrikaners wrestled political power away from Bongs in the Union of South Africa, when Afrikaners would outnumber Bongs by a factor of 3:2 by the time the 1950s arrived.

Both men (Hendrik and Vorster) were detained by the government under wartime emergency laws for their activities. Ironically in hindsight, the Ossewabrandwag was pretty minor organization, with very few members. Their activities were relegated to feeble attempts to blow up train tracks for ore and material for the British war effort. But the bongs took them very seriously and ruthlessly stamped them out or imprisoned them for the duration of the 2nd World War - it was believed that the entire Afrikaner and Boer population would rise up in arms, and take over the critical Durban and Cape Town harbours, something which teh British Navy was not in a position to stop easily as all of her fleets were engaged with the Imperial Japanese Navy, and keeping the Kraut navy in check at the home front, or busy trying to safegaurd their merchant ships against kraut sub attacks - only a skeleton crew basically kept Cape Town and Durban safe, two vital harbours on the continent. So it's hilarious how the British over-reacted at the fear of a possible Afrikaner uprising even though it was quite a serious matter in that time.

Much of the Afrikaner population would come to resent the hard handedness of British intelligence imprisoning even suspected members of the Ossewabrandwag, and Afrikaner nationalists would utilize this emotion to wrestle political might away from Bongs in the parliament post WW2.

After the war, Hendrik van den Bergh rose rapidly through the police ranks. In 1963, he founded South Africa's first intelligence agency, the precursor to BOSS. He and Vorster (later justice minister under Prime Minister H.F. Verwoerd) used new security legislation to crush growing resistance against apartheid. "Although van den Bergh denied B.O.S.S.' use of hit squads against its enemies, he is nevertheless remembered for sanctioning the use of torture, assassinations, and other tactics against the government's enemies, and he once told a government commission, "I have enough men to commit murder if I tell them to kill. I don't care who the prey is. These are the type of men I have."

======

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40394202

https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/bureau-state-security-boss

"B.O.S.S. became increasingly powerful as the 1970s progressed, much to the dismay of Botha; by some accounts, the organisation now wielded more influence than the Ministries of Defence and Foreign Affairs."

"Nevertheless, B.O.S.S., and by extension [Hendrik] van den Bergh himself, met its downfall just a few years later. In 1979, Vorster, who had become state president in 1978, resigned amidst the Muldergate scandal, in which government funds were used to buy a pro-government English newspaper, The Citizen. B.O.S.S. was found to have been deeply involved in the scandal, as well. The following year, Botha, who had succeeded Vorster as prime minister, called for van den Bergh's resignation, and in 1980, B.O.S.S. was replaced by a new agency, the National Intelligence Service, and van den Bergh was replaced."

In the aftermath of the scandal, van den Bergh retired and faded from public view to take up chicken farming. Reportedly, he was working on his memoirs in the 1980s, but abandoned the project under pressure from the government. He also resigned as a member of the Afrikaner Broederbond. Van den Bergh died at Bronkhorstspruit, Pretoria, aged 82, in 1997. He was married twice.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-hendrik-van-den-bergh-1246509.html

SOUTH AFRICAN WATERGATE:

https://web.archive.org/web/20121024221054/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,916678,00.html?iid=chix-sphere

So finally we can get to asking: what on earth is this South African Watergate? We needed to follow the history of Hendrik and the formation of the Buro vir Staatsveiligheid (BOSS) to understand the following events which took place, and why even back then, other South Africans would refer to Muldergate as the South African Watergate, as the famous Watergate scandal had already reached international infamy, and also because during the Cold War, everyone was very very interested, in a nervous way , about the happenings of leadership within burgerland, as both allies and enemies of were dependent upon the mandates of Amerika.

The similarities of the conspiracy of Hendrik, the leader of BOSS, and his corrupt relationship as Security Adviser to Prime Minister John Vorster, reminded people of SA, of how Nixon exploited his national organs to obfuscate his conspiracies, and hold a boot over his political opponents.

"Under the regime of John Voster, the Apartheid government of the Union of SA, Intelligence and the police generally had benefitted from an expansion of their powers, through legislation such as the Sabotage Act of 1962 and the General Law Amendment Act of 1963, which allowed arbitrary arrest and detention. Vorster and van der Bergh were close allies – they were both former members of the pro-Nazi Ossewabrandwag during World War II, and had been imprisoned for sabotage together. Because of this close association, and the extensive powers he had under his advisory role, van der Bergh was seen as "untouchable," which led to tensions within the state that were only exacerbated by the establishment of "super-security" structure BOSS."

MULDERGATE:

The Muldergate scandal, or the Information Scandal or Infogate, was a scandal which occurred in 1977. Muldergate involved a secret propaganda campaign conducted by the apartheid Department of Information.

https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/information-scandal

It's complex, but basically the scandal involved revelations about the attempts made by BOSS to channel public discourse in favour of the Apartheid regime, by buying up newspapers and news agencies, via a secret fund channeled directly from the National Defense Budget.

The single largest attempt by BOSS to infiltrate public newspapers and channel public discourse through propagda, was when BOSS tried to purchase the three newspapers called the "Citizen", the "Rand Daily Mail" and the "Washington Star". The idea was to combat the "negative perceptions of the South African government in foreign countries, especially in the West"

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-01-29-apartheids-infogate-fresh-and-relevant-after-all-these-years/

=======

By this time in 1968, the Americans were the greatest ally to SA, but only in so far as Ally can ne stretched as a word. Burgerland was effectively losing the Cold War on an ideological level, at least to perceptions of the time. The South East Asian theatre looked like it was about to fall like dominoes to the Red Menace, and all of Burgerland's Soft Power attempts to prevent the spread of communism was failing, just as their Vietnam war against the communist forces Viet Cong produced no conclusive results, and appeared as nothing but tires spinning in the mud, and driving controversy back into the yank public. In South America by 1968, half of the entire continent was falling into the sphere of influence of communism and the Soviet Union, and their espionage efforts there held mixed results. For Burgerland the world was caving in, with new socialist enemies forming against the NATO alliance every year.

Only Southern Africa seemed to show any level of resistance to the spread of communism and the Soviet influence, and in fact punched well above their weight in this Cold War era and, as perceived at the time, dire striaghts in which communism seemed to spread everlastingly. That bulwark against reds, was the Union of South Africa, this tiny nation a last hope against an African continent dominated by socialism.

But there was a problem, South Africa was a racially segregated state, in which a totalitarian government forcefully kept races apart, with blacks placed well below whites in the pecking order. And in 1968, Burgerland would undergo their own massive de-Segregation movement led by black liberation leaders, whom would become increasingly more influential to american domestic and foreign politics. South Africa's Apartheid State meant that treating with them as a willing ally, was a great controvertial subject, especially as the news of Human Right's violations within SA itself became international news. Burgerland diplomats had to walk the tightrope of having SA as an invaluable ally against communism, but to hold SA at an arm's length to not upset their recently enfranchised black citizens whom were already campaigning to Sanction the Apartheid State, NOT TO ALLY WITH THEM.

========

It's hilarious that SA politicians and generals looked up to Burgerland, and continuously sought the approval and allyship of America, while American politicians, diplomats and military leaders awkwardly just passively agreed to keep a positive face towards the Union of SA in the most neutral way possible, to try and look like they weren't openly supporting a racially segregated ethno-nationalist state.

It is within this context to understand why the Buro vir Staatsveiligheid (BOSS) would attempt to influence public discourse within South Africa, to quell the reporting of liberal newspapers both domestically, and internationally about the 2ndary status of black and coloured people within the NP regime's society. By influencing newspapers, and censoring anti-apartheid sentiment, the nation's very Intelligence Department would literally transform itself from a counter-insurgency force, to a Propaganda-Department intent on censoring information from the shadows, and censoring anti-apartment sentiment.

This would be a moment of great irony, as this information censorship and information control was one of the reasons why Afrikaners hated the Soviet Union and communism, and feared that communists would implement thought control upon the daily lives of the average Boer, which was why the National Party regime, the Apartheid regime, was able to coral such support from the white populace for 50 years, to keep all of them safe from communism.

Yet here we would see the exact same attempts at information control and thought policing from the highest levels of government itself, from a very incestuous relationship between the security organs of the government, BOSS under Hendrik, and the he Prime Minister, B. J. Vorster himself, to acclaim borderline dictatorial powers.

It is important to note that the Afrikaners from the 1950s to 1970s held a very strict society, and supported a totalitarian society, yet information being free was regarded highly in a way, even during the extreme censorship of Apartheid. It was very weird, the Afrikaners genuinely saw themselves as a bulwark against communism, and free society, all the while subjugating their black countrymen as 2ndary citizens, with absolute no sense of irony ever. Yet even in this complex manner in which the 1970s afrikaners saw themselves, they still weirdly looked up to the liberal democracies of Burgerland and Western Europe, and while many Afrikaner wingcucks would blindly follow Hendrik to create such a super secretive Propaganda machine,

many other Afrikaners, including weirdly conservative Apartheid-proponents, like Botha, the biggest opponent to Prime Minister Voster, would fiercely oppose any such extreme totalitarian measures, even against communism, and anti-apartheid activists. It was a strange clash of ideals which I do not have the capacity to describe.

ARTICLE:

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2013-01-29-apartheids-infogate-fresh-and-relevant-after-all-these-years/

=====(from dailymaverick article) (Exceptionally good article)

Forty years ago, the country's Apartheid regime was at the apex of its confidence and arrogance, and with its power and influence reaching deep into South African society. Even outsiders critical of the regime could easily have been convinced the Apartheid regime was going to keep its grip onto power for many years to come. This was especially true since a ring of Portuguese colonies, white-dominated Rhodesia and South African-controlled Southwest Africa to the north continued to shelter South Africa from the changes sweeping across the rest of the continent.

Despite this presumed geopolitical reality, South African government leaders were increasingly convinced much of the rest of the world was coming together in a veritable war against their regime. Their response to this became a no-holds-barred expression of their “laager mentality” (the very symbolic, last ditch, circular defence stand against rampaging enemy forces) that had strong resonances with Afrikaner nationalism. They weren't entirely wrong, of course. World opprobrium against the regime's brutal racial segregation (and its social, political and economic consequences) was growing. And in the years immediately following 1976, world disapproval grew stronger after the Soweto Uprising and the increased repression against the country's black majority that followed that explosion of popular discontent.

In the mid-70s the security of those Portuguese bulwarks in Angola and Mozambique collapsed and as the generally sympathetic, cold warrior-style Nixon administration in the US (and soon after Gerald Ford's) was superseded by that of Democratic president Jimmy Carter and his new-found emphasis on human rights.

With these changes uppermost in their minds, South Africa's leaders now began to search for ways to bolster their case internationally and to protect vital trade and financial links abroad. But their methods ultimately led to severe international and domestic embarrassments for the country and charges of financial mismanagement that ultimately drove prime minister BJ Vorster and a clutch of others from their offices in disgrace.

========

The story really begins way back in 1971 when a young, eager diplomat, Eschel Rhoodie was a press officer at South Africa's Embassy in The Netherlands. His first try with his surreptitious exercise of soft power was in a deal with a Dutch publisher to provide secret support for a new pro-South African news magazine, To The Point.

His scheme had the secret backing of then-prime minister BJ Vorster and Vorster's chief of Intelligence Services (BOSS), General Hendrik van den Bergh, along with Rhoodie's minister of information, Connie Mulder. (Mulder was the father of deputy minister of agriculture in the ANC government, and the leader of the Freedom Front Plus, Pieter Mulder.) Following this trial run, the following year, Rhoodie returned to Pretoria and become secretary in the Department of Information – effectively its head of “dirty tricks.

With BoSS support, Rhoodie recruited a tight group of equally eager apparatchiks like his brother Deneys and Les de Villiers to take it to the “enemy”. Rhoodie launched the Committee for Fairness in Sport to counter the country's growing sports isolation internationally.

Then came the so-called Club of Ten international business leaders circle to tackle the activities of the UN and individual countries opposing South Africa's political situation. By 1973, Rhoodie was working hand-in-glove with Boss head Van den Bergh on hatching a growing list of new – cash only – efforts to counter foreign pressure on the country.

Rhoodie and his troops agreed the time was right to finance a no-holds-barred secret campaign of psychological warfare against foreign opinion – and foreign opinion makers. The ends – protecting the Apartheid state – would justify the means for the newly christened Project Annemarie, named after Rhoodie's daughter.

======

Their first really big, really audacious move was to position Louis Luyt, the starkly conservative fertiliser manufacturing magnate and rugby kingpin, to purchase the Rand Daily Mail, the country's premier anti-apartheid newspaper, from the SAAN publishing group. If they were successful, they would be able to silence effectively the single most prominent media voice inside the country countering the regime.

But it didn't work out. Several of the holding company's major shareholders refused to sell their prestigious but financially struggling title to the toxic Luyt.

As a result, the schemers decided to underwrite, from scratch, an entirely new, avowedly pro-government English language newspaper, once again under Luyt's ostensible entrepreneurial gifts. The new paper was christened The Citizen and prominent but thoroughly conservative journ*lists like Aida Parker and Martin Spring were brought in to guide the new publication to popular success. But not too surprisingly, launching a newspaper from scratch, then as now, turned out to be an expensive, cash-eating misadventure, consuming both the secret stash of cash as well as a surreptitiously organised loan to keep it going.

======

This money had been secretly channelled to the Department of Information from the defence establishment on the tacit understanding that nobody would ever notice a couple of million rand or so going to this little project out of a billion rand defence establishment (back then R5,000 could buy a nice new car). However, as things usually happen, it was the little things that began making trouble for the conspirators, just as soon as the plan unravelled. The bean counters in the defence establishment forgot to add Project Annemarie funds to their formal budget request to the Treasury. Meanwhile, then-defence minister PW Botha began showing increasing bureaucratic unhappiness at effectively being the bagman for all this cloak and danger stuff for a Cabinet rival.

By July 1977, unhappy rumours about the Department of Information's creative accounting were sufficiently serious that an audit was needed. Then, amid the growing rumours about some seriously close ties between Rhoodie's department and The Citizen, Louis Luyt opted out of the newspaper business and sold The Citizen to others. Then the smaller fry started to get caught off base, as their stories didn't quite match up. Rhoodie deputy Les de Villiers bailed out from the department, left the country entirely

Meanwhile, the Information Department minister, Connie Mulder, then had to answer a litany of particularly indelicate parliamentary questions about this whole tangled mess. While under oath he declared that The Citizen newspaper had not been financed by government money, no siree! That creative use of the truth eventually led to his public disgrace and disbarment. And by this time, the scandal had reached much higher. Embarrassed and caught out, BJ Vorster was himself also forced to resign in disgrace.

======(end quote from article)

So basically the very clumsy attempts by BOSS and the Voster administration to buy over newspapers and news organizations, used up many secret funds from the National Budget, which ultimately led to the South African parliament becomming suspicious of a shitload of budget deficits which became unexplainable by the Voster admin.

And the man taking fire from the public was Connie Mulder, the Information Department minister. He was also relentlessly grilled by parliament to his role in this massive financial corruption, and thus his name became most closely linked to the scandal of Muldergate. Yet ironically Mulder was small fry in this conspircay, and it was Hendrik, the leader of BOSS, and Prime Minister Voster which were the architects of this fiasco.

It became a national scandal that a minister was abusing public funds to buy newspaper ownerships, but as the rabbit hole kept enlarging and ENLARGING in the public and media discourse, it became horrifyingly evident to South Africans just how fundamentally deep this scandal and conspiracy went!!!

======(from dailymaverick article)

The next morning, the Rand Daily Mail, the paper that had almost been purchased by the Project Annemarie plan, but which had then pursued the scammers ruthlessly, ran its famous banner headline that said, “It's all True.” The story explained, “South Africa's biggest bombshell burst yesterday when Mr Justice Anton Mostert made public startling evidence which has confirmed reports in the Rand Daily Mail and Sunday Express of massive misuse of public money through Department of Information secret funds. Judge Mostert released evidence, which shows beyond doubt, that The Citizen newspaper was financed through State funds. And in evidence under oath, Mr Louis Luyt named the former prime minister, Mr Vorster, the minister of plural relations, Dr Connie Mulder and General Hendrik van den Bergh, former head of the Bureau of State Security, as key figures in the secret project to finance the newspaper.”

Despite the distortions of the political and judicial processes in Apartheid South Africa, a fearless judge had pressed on to the unsavoury but necessary conclusions and made them public without fear or favour.

By this point, Mulder was taking fire relentlessly in the media. He lost his cabinet post, his leadership position in the National Party and then, finally, his seat in the national parliament. The scandal ruined his political career with the Nats and he eventually lost the 1978 National Party's leadership race to PW Botha. The Erasmus Commission, appointed by PW Botha, sealed his fate when it revealed serious financial irregularities and abuse of power in the Department of Information.

BJ Vorster's fate was not much better. He resigned the prime ministership after being censured by the Erasmus Commission, even though he was exonerated of any actual involvement in the secret projects of the information scandal.

Muldergate or Infogate was one of those rare but immensely rewarding moments of victory for both the media and actors from within South Africa's judicial establishment in favour of the rule of law during the Apartheid era. Despite the robust pressures they faced, they persevered and found out the truth – and the culprits did not live happily ever after. This scandal made it clear, even to the country's most Panglossian citizens, that government is not always right, or even truthful, and for the same government to bankroll a newspaper, especially via illegal channels, is a pretty darn stupid idea.

=====(end quote)

AFTERMATH:

There is a lot of irony with Muldergate. At least in conservative society and within the ruling National Party, the scandal was less about the fact of a state propaganda campaign than about the mismanagement of state funds, appropriated without the knowledge of Parliament, and an apparent cover-up by senior government officials and elected representatives. But Muldergate did inspire a distrust in government, especially an absolute trust which had so far supported the Apartheid regime blindly up until this moment. Much dissent would sprout from Muldergate, and white anti-Apartheid activists would utilize the infamy of the scandal as proof of the inherent corruption of the regime, and the dangers in which giving such monumental powers to men simply hold power in a nation state, even if you as a white benefit from this totalitarian nature, against the wellbeing of your black countrymen.

In this thread we'll discuss the start of RoosterTeeth and RWBY's decline. I don't have a lot of space left so refer to the first thread for a proper introduction.

RoosterTeeth's Decline

"Viewers really like the chemistry of these 5 people playing Halo, let's hire another 300 people and... umm..."

-- @AverageBen10Enjoyer

Regarding the fundamental reason why RoosterTeeth failed, there are millions of small mistakes that all fed into the major problem of expenses exceeding profits. Even though RT grew more prominent by the year going into 2014, when WB announced the closure earlier this month they cited RT not being profitable for ten years as a major reason. RoosterTeeth grew too fast and ended up having to hope their endeavors would pay out down the line. Meanwhile the company's payroll grew from a handful of creators into scores of influencers, production crew, writers, animators, management, HR, accounting (at least I'm assuming they had accountants )

RWBY is especially notable in this lesson on growing expenses because while it did become popular, production costs also grew from indie to part of the problem. RWBY Volume 1 was Monty's passion project, voiced by amateurs and made in the same software Monty used for his fanfic YouTube videos. As the show went on the animation was upgraded, professional voice actors were hired...

In contrast RWBY Volume 9 cost roughly 6.6 million dollars to produce. RT apparently needed Crunchyroll's help to fund it at all. (More on that later) As big as it was it's entirely possible RWBY stopped being profitable after a while or maybe was never even profitable. And if RWBY was like that, there's no chance RT's other post-RWBY concepts made them money over time.

And so RT grew too fast and potential turned into bloat. Along the way there were also plenty of rDrama appropriate scandals and the particular problem of RT losing its original fans and failing to replace them with zoomers.

Business Strategy

They decided to turn themselves into a full on production company that dipped their toes into everything. Movies, games, dramatic series, podcasts, various comedic shows etc. Vast majority of them bombed.

-- @Squibbly

In 2014 going into 2016 RoosterTeeth seemed like a rising star, unparalleled success story for nerdom. Their Halo machinima series had evolved into a popular DVD and merch selling fullblown production complete with cgi. Their web show RWBY built more and more hype with every new season and proved itself popular in Japan too, with RT even cutting a deal with a real company like Warner Bros Japan to distribute the dub. RTX was popular and other bigdick companies were using it for promotions like demos for then upcoming games Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and Rainbow Six Siege. It would soon spread internationally to Australia and Britain too. RT succesfully crownfunded the full length movie Lazer Team. The Funhaus division opened in Los Angeles to take the company beyond the Lone Star State. RoosterTeeth's growth in just a few short years was inspiring, so inspiring that it led to an entirely new business philosophy -- one of growth at any cost

Burnie Burns: Now we're not competing with the PewDiePies and the Homestar Runners of the world. Now we're competing with Netflix and HBO and Amazon. And we're more than ready for that challenge.

Burnie Burns and Joel Heyman in particular were big on growing and making RoosterTeeth into an anything they could get away with company. To facilitate this RT was bought out by Fullscreen, LLC. This was an entertainment company offering services and consultation to social media influencers. Their other clients included NBCUniversal, Fox, Fremantle, JASH, Fine Brothers Entertainment, Mattel, and WIGS. ScrewAttack had also been aquired by them, and a few corporate mergers later so was Machinima Inc.

Also in 2014 Otter Media and the Chernin Group aquired a controlling stake so Fullscreen itself ultimately came under AT&T. Flashing forward to '19 and AT&T started shopping around to try and sell RoosterTeeth and other brands. In the end RT was still there for the corporate merger that formed Warner Bros Discovery. This is what allowed RT content to start crossing over with DC Comics.

If it feels like RoosterTeeth became a bloated and generic social media company, that's because they were purchased by corporate people who were that way that also offered big bucks to the RT founders who wanted to be that way. With the Fullscreen merger many of the relevant people assured fans RT wouldn't change, but the following years speak for themselves. Upper leadership started to be appointed by the owners starting at least with Fullscreen President and former COO Ezra Cooperstein becoming President of Rooster Teeth in '18 and Jordan Levin becoming general manager after the major layoff in '19. Also that year many of the original founders stepped down into creative roles: Matt Hullum stepped down as CEO and became Chief Content Officer, Burnie Burns stepped down as chief creative officer to executive producer and Geoff Ramsey became executive creative director. Ironically the two business minded founders left around this time, Joel was more or less dismissed from the company that year and Burnie left in '20.

It's not surprising that RoosterTeeth's mediocrity set in with the late '10s. Every generic policy you see out of media and social media slop servers these days, RT soon became guilty of. Milking franchises dry? The RWBY franchise expansion mentioned in this thread and the previous speak for themselves. Obsession with teen influencers and feel good diversity whatnot? In '21 RT announced the creation of the Rooster Teeth Digital Creators Program, which is intended to support "underrepresented" talent. Throwing money around to see what'll stick? Lazer Team 2 and Gen:LOCK got made. Trying to sponsor as much content as possible for the sake of having content? In '18, Rooster Teeth piloted five shows named Branded, Gorq's Quest, Achievement Haunter, Million Dollars, But ... Animated, and Rooster Teeth's Murder Room, and also announced Spikeface, a new 2D/dark comedy show to be coproduced with Rob McElhenney and his RCG Productions. Unnecessary premium service? RT relied more and more on their First program to try and drive dollars and views to their website, for example making RWBY episodes premier up to a month earlier for First members while also removing the vast majority of RWBY and RvB content from YouTube. On the other end of this you also have schizophrenic attempts to strike money-making deals with other services, i.e. partnering more and more with Crunchyroll even at the expense of those same First members.

Heck, they even went with the all to common generic minimalism for the new logo.

In the end the corporate mergers are what made RT's dissolution possible since Warner Bros simply decided to close the company and see about selling off the relevant creative assets.

Controversies

RoosterTeeth didn't necessarily fail because of any single major incident, but the problems they did have contributed to their bleeding out over time. There's a recurring theme of old fans disappearing and new fans not sticking around. Plus it's fun to point and laugh

Disappearing Founders

Neurodivergent basement dwellers pretending to be the moral authority

both sides end up devoured by their own hubris

you love to see it

-- @Christine

If 2015 was RT's golden year, it's fitting that '16 was the start of their decline. One of the earlier major controversies to really hit the company was the effective unpersoning of Joel Heyman, one of the company's original founders and the voice for RvB fan favorite character Caboose.

Aside from being a major part of RoosterTeeth's first big show, Joel apparently did a lot of early business deals for the company back when it was really just a group trying to be a company. Unfortunately Joel was heckin rightoid in Austin, TX so things broke down between him and the others as the Trump years went on.

As the 10's went by RT's fanbase evolved from Halo dudebros into types, partially because a few of the former changed into the latter and partially because RT went out of its way to court them. Trump derangement syndrome took hold hard with the rest of the team and this new community wasn't having it either. Even years later bringing up Joel's name in the main subreddit led to misremembered claims about disputes with and mistreatment of other employees.

Joel became quieter until finally departing the company in '19. RT stopped mentioning him in content and everyone in places like Reddit likes to pretend he was never involved. There was never even a larger controversy to cause this lmao he simply committed the crime of being a Republican and was turned on by the same people otherwise quoting Caboose lines

Borrowing a comment from BoomhauerInTheWind RT also lost other originals over time. Most weren't necessarily in trouble but their departures still contributed to the company's decline. Most longtime fans didn't appreciate their replacements as much, and while RoosterTeeth tried to get new fans over the years, we'll see how that turned out for them below

S*x Pests

how do you make a rooster teeth drama thread without mentioning adam kovic

— @Tim_Allen

In October 2020, Achievement Hunter's Ryan Haywood and Funhaus co-founder Adam Kovic were both involved in scandals involving their leaked nudes. Adam Kovic was previously part of Machinima Inc's Inside Gaming before leaving in 2015 to form RT's Funhaus division in Los Angeles. Ryan Haywood did a lot of production and acting work for RT and was best known for being part of Achievement Hunter and entertainment-news division The Know.

I've heard different versions of exactly what happened with both of them, but my understanding is as follows. Both were catfished because they tried to engage in erotic roleplay with fans.

Furthermore Ryan Haywood was fricking fans at conventions and apparently one of them was 17. Also he was married. Also many of these girls thought they were the only one and didn't like that he had multiple sidepieces. Accusations of groomercord grooming started flying and many people got it in their mind that he was effectively a male feminist. Others maintain he was just a regular Z-list celebrity sexpest. In any case his reputation was shot.

Meanwhile Adam Kovic was apparently just a He took nude selfies involving things like riding a dildo and deadlifting anal shots and the Funhaus office bathroom. As RT became increasingly HR-esque this was blown into a major scandal especially since it came out alongside Ryan's drama. Coworker Lawrence Sontag made statements about how Adam was gross and never washed his hands. All this mutated into claims that he'd done coomer stuff including literal cooming all over the office and that he'd harassed female coworkers like Elyse Willems. The RoosterTeeth subreddit even years later circulated a lot of these claims and he's often accused of being a male feminist much like Ryan.

RT amputated them to survive. Ryan obviously stopped working with the company and Adam's Funhaus content was removed. Alas this content was some of Funhaus' best in the eyes of longtime fans. Meanwhile a named Charlotte was hired and for better or worse became a new face for Funhaus. The Subreddit attracted trains and had frequent posts like "Charlotte made me realize I'm a train" to give an idea on the changing audience. Overall the scandal contributed heavily to RT's falling YouTube ratings.

Unless I'm forgetting someone Ryan and Adam represent RT's main s*x scandals, but the company has also had more minor incidents with partners and new hires and the like. One example of these indirect incidents is RT cutting ties with actor Vic Mignogna over sexual harassment accusations. (Famous for being Edward Elric in Fullmetal Alchemist. For RT he voiced in RWBY)

Diversity Hires

She played a huge role in Rooster Teeth's drawn-out implosion; she was unfunny, sucked at games (to the point that she constantly had to be reminded how to play), and had no charisma with the rest of the group, who sucked up to her in an attempt to gain Levar's favor. These factors caused the fanbase to bash her, and of course she played the race card and famously made Geoff cry on stream for being a filthy cumskin moid.

— @AllFunAndGames

I'm sure there's a million billion examples of random and in RT but the famous and dramatic example would be Mica Burton and her successor. Mica is none other than the daughter of LeVar Burton — Geordi La Forge in Star Trek TNG Mica joined RT in 2016 and was part of Achievement Hunter and The Know. She has nothing better to do than has been involved with other gaming content such as Overwatch League and multiple DnD events for Wizards of the Coast.

Mica ultimately wasn't popular and many fans complained about her. She would generally accuse them of racism in response. She picked beefs with the founders too and while I don't have a clip she at one point made Geoff Ramsey do the Brendan Fraser face meme by reminding him he's an overall mayo Also she made her dad hate the company which is hilarious because they clearly kept her around to try and court his favor

She was replaced by another sassy kween named Ky who was also loud (quite literally louder than average) and prone to racial grifting. She famously stated that RT's OG days weren't actually good because of a lack of diversity. This sent the few remaining chuds into a kerfuffle.

The War on Chuds

The "this isn't an airport, no need to announce your departure" tweet and then Loud is What We Do nonsense drove me away.

— @AverageBen10Enjoyer

Related to the above, Ky and Achievement Hunter were part of some sort of chud trap for reasons incomprehensible to people with normal business educations.

Many RT fans disliked Ky for being much louder than other hosts. One Redditor made a post about this where he politely and objectively made a point about the audio.

RT responded by trying to make this a race issue. Ky went on Twitter and made complaints along the following lines,

everyone yells, but we [black women] get the shit

I BABY - I GET SCARED - I SCREAM

I'm working on my gain lvls but if you think that's gonna make me, any less loud & expressive?

And it wasn't just Ky at work here because it didn't take long for RT to come up with "Loud is what we do” merchandise. As if the whole thing was some elaborate setup for organic marketing or guerrilla marketing or whatever the r-slurs who didn't get real degrees call it these days

Do you think this merchandise sold well? Do you think this endeavor solved Achievement Hunter's ratings problem? I'll let you infer for yourselves

Work Culture

It's like the people who 20 years ago would bust their asses as starving artists trying to make it in Hollywood or Broadway, except really pathetic and not respectable in any way.

— @Redactor0

Every once in awhile RoosterTeeth would get in trouble for its "crunch culture" and management practices. In true Texas fashion the company was always criticized for being a gold ol' boy club regarding the original founders and whether they knew you or not. RT was created by cliquish nerds so I'd believe it

In June 2019, dozens of anonymous reviews from Glassdoor highlighted long and unpaid hours, poor management, and over-reliance on temporary employees. Gray Haddock, Rooster Teeth's Head of Animation, stepped down two days after the allegations.

Gray Haddock was notably the driving force behind Gen:Lock, another RT animated show like RWBY that I'll bring up again later. Gen:Lock and RWBY, due to coming out back to back, had a hellish production cycle where the animation department worked massive amounts of unpaid overtime. One source estimated that both GL and Volume 6 had about a third of their seasons made entirely for free thanks to not paying overtime. Apparently RT Animation hired tons of interns on 90 day temporary contracts, all unpaid, but with the promise of a full, paying job upon completion. But when March rolled around they were shown the door

Flash forward to 2022 and RT has another crunch scandal featuring crossovers from social justice weirdos

Coinciding with RoosterTeeth's overall bloat and corporate expenditures, 2022 saw massive layoffs including Achievement Hunter's Matt Bragg, who was apparently big with the neckbeards of the subreddit. The layoffs also notably included the entire events staff, a massive red flag in retrospect since RTX was always a big deal to the company. Matt's firing upset the community and weakened the hardcore RoosterTeeth stans enough for criticism to start slipping through.

One of the more dramatic agitators was Achievement Hunter's Kdin. If you want to know what kind of person this is, xir's furry avatar is the picture featured above.

Kdin complained about working crunch hours and only getting paid $40k even after 7 years. Xir also claimed RoosterTeeth was problematic

Within a few weeks of working at Rooster Teeth I was given a nickname, that nickname was a slur. Every day I came into work I was called “F_gg_t” - but they could not use that name in content so when anyone was recording I was called “Fugz” instead.

Apparently Fugz was a common in-joke for AH content but for years the fans never knew what it meant. Suddenly every RT employee who had ever said "fugz" was under fire

Other people who chimed in include Funhaus member Alanah Pearce, who is both loved and hated by dramanauts for being the token booba foid and Arryn Zech, the voice of RWBY character Blake Belladonna

I personally have had my own issues with Rooster Teeth, from the second-hand effects of crunch through a partner to being threatened with recasting on RWBY if I didn't accept what they were willing to pay me.

She kind of downplays that her partner was Miles Luna, one of the original showrunners and not someone like a hapless intern

Mica Burton also came back to complain about RT being racist again. Geordi Jr. claimed she'd once seen the n-word randomly written on a whiteboard. Another employee clarified that what she saw was N_ggers — a reference to a bit from a South Park episode

The situation deteriorated. RT released a statement that did nothing Subreddit users started looking for any reason to tear down RT some more like hating on Geoff for a "problematic like" There were plenty of complaints along the lines of the image below.

Alas, the mob eventually turned against the initial hero of this story when they discovered Kdin had a naggers moment of xir own. This wasn't just a random floating n-word like with Mica either, but a whole rant apparently centered around The Cleveland Show of all things

The zoomers promptly turned against their would-be labor champion so this is a story where no one wins. Certainly not the poor, overworked sub jannies

Overall the incident turned many of the woke zoom-zooms RT had been carefully cultivating against the company and by this point very few of the original fans were left.

Declining Ratings and a Changing Internet

Oh no their Twitter is getting ZERO engagement. Looks like about an average of 300 likes per tweet, with 1 million followers That's so much worse than having actual controversy

— @texthere

Despite its expensive investments in content and influencers, RT suffered a long decline in ratings as the ‘10s went on. The image above represents May 2022 YouTube views for Achievement Hunter, a staple of RT that had dozens of full time employees behind its production. They simply couldn't sustain a company on view counts this bad, especially considering this once popular channel had 3.7 million subscribers.

Part of RoosterTeeth's problem was the changing nature of YouTube. Despite Burnie's initial skepticism of having content off the company's own website, RT ultimately was very dependent on YouTube for their popularity. Most of the podcasts and meta gaming channels earned the majority of their views with YouTube and both RvB and RWBY got heavy exposure on YouTube. RoosterTeeth's own website was never popular enough to bring in consistent streams of new fans if all RT content had been exclusively hosted there.

YouTube became way more algorithmically driven. The site just shows me whatever it thinks I'll watch, regardless of what I tell it. I honestly don't think I've subscribed to a channel in years

— @Pibbles

I've made the same observations of YouTube and it's evolution as many other dramanauts. Heck I wasn't sure if it was just a thing with my account or not until I heard similar stories from others.

YouTube has sorta done a 360 over the years. When it first started the majority of viral videos were coming from completely random people and even the famous ones hardly made a career out of their meme status. A lot of this was America's Funniest Home Videos esque content and not anything with production quality. Red vs Blue originally owed its popularity to this era.

As the years went by though YouTube became more obsessed with influencers and endless content mills. I remember some of them were so heavily favored that their videos would be force fed to you if ever you searched anything tangentially related to their genre, for example the same soyboy creators if you watched anything gaming. God forbid you sat through any of their videos because then half your suggestions would be for that same channel.

Unfortunately RoosterTeeth was getting on in years and YouTube wasn't really pushing them in particular. They seemed to prefer newer and cheaper influencers that really appealed to the youngins RT itself also chased this demographic but YouTube wasn't giving them any assistance.

But this has changed again at least in the past few years. With the brand growing larger and more saturated, modern YouTube seems more dependent on its algorithm than ever and is almost right back to showing people random videos again. Anecdotally it's not uncommon for the app and site to show me videos from 5, 8, even 12+ years ago and the comment sections for these will be filled with users with a similar experience. There also seems to be a kind of "hot" feature allowing newer videos that have achieved a few thousand views to get boosted to people's front pages. Imo this is YouTube's way of courting the youngest zoomers and Gen Alpha. Kids these days prefer short and sweet meme videos over long running content channels, to say nothing of YouTube shorts as a direct TikTok competitor.

Alas RoosterTeeth didn't benefit from this system either. If we could all consult the charts.

We'll see that RoosterTeeth only gained subscribers in one of twenty-two months. Things haven't been much better for their specific brands.

These days all the longrunning channels still following their old formulas are seeing gradual declines in views and channel subscriptions matter less than ever. YouTube doesn't seem to even put videos from subscribed channels on your front page anymore. Longtime fans started to fall off year by year and younger viewers were less and less likely to ever stumble on content at all. Meanwhile the RoosterTeeth site remained gimmicky and under trafficked so the company had no real solution to YouTube's developing away from their tried and formerly true model.

When i was fully neurodivergent, i used to love drunk tank/ early rt podcast because i was a friendless loser

— @Jimbo_B_Beterson

Over twenty years on since the start of noughties internet culture, it's become an inevitability that channels will lose old fans to time and shrink without constant growth. Even loyal channel subscribers will eventually grow up and move on from what entertained their younger selves. There are countless examples of old channels that still have millions of subscribers but end up with dismal contemporary view counts. RoosterTeeth's initial fandom of Xoomers and Millennials was never properly replaced with Zoomers and Alphags, and the company couldn't survive this inverted population pyramid.

RT did themselves no favors in mangling their attempts at a forced culture shift. Going into the content dark ages of Current Year and the dreaded Drumpf Reich they started to lean towards social justice and overly dramatic grandstands they believed the kids would appreciate Following the corporate mergers it's probable RT ended up with the same kind of consultants that caused this trend with other media companies. You could also sorta blame RWBY since it was now their most popular show and a major recruiter for RT as a whole. When Monty died his animation fans started to lose interest. The scriptwriters-turned-total-showrunners gravitated more towards the peripheral tumblr/yuri-thumping demographic to make up ratings, and in a classic feedback loop these people soon represented the only real influx of new RT fans.

their remaining fanbase is just weird culture war cat ladies whose high school boyfriends introduced them to rt in the first place.

source: i was the high school boyfriend

— @BoomhauerInTheWind

As RoosterTeeth prosecuted this war on chuds, many of the Halo dudebros heckin chuds! that formed the original fanbase began to lose interest in the company and were replaced by an endless stream of slash pfp using Twitter types. Of course these types of people have a tendency to form circular firing squads and they regularly accused the company's mayo scrote leadership of not doing enough for x or for y-phobia. It didn't help that actual RT personalities like Kdin, Geordi Jr, and Ky were happy to hop on these bandwagons. When the aforementioned Glassdoor and labor scandals came out many of these moral grandstand types turned on the company, and so RT was left with no real core demographic anymore.

Yet another long term problem for the company was the handling of their own website and their paypig service RoosterTeeth FIRST RT's premium was their first way of making money back in 2003 and Burnie always believed in focusing on the website and this program. The eventual corporate overlords in AT&T and WB also supported expansions to the service as a way of making money back from RT. FIRST offered paying members access to content before being offered to the public, in addition to extra site features, exclusive videos and merchandise. An even higher-level tier called Double Gold included such perks as: a 10% discount on all Rooster Teeth items, first access to live event VIP passes and a box of merchandise carrying a value more than $60.

RT always had an awkward relationship with YouTube especially when it came to their shows. They flip-flopped on pulling Red vs Blue and RWBY episodes from YouTube at least three times, with the most recent and final time in ‘23. RT wanted fans to follow these shows to the site but not everyone made the transition. The website was infamous for terrible UI and crashes and many felt it made for a poor video player.

Freeloaders had always complained about the benefits and as RT began to disintegrate many FIRST users started to complain they weren't getting enough and that too much of the premium content only existed on a website few people wanted to use. One particular sore point was RWBY's season 9 getting a one year exclusivity deal with anime streaming service Crunchyroll. They paid RoosterTeeth money just to not watch the flagship show!

FIRST got more expensive over time and at one point RT rug-pulled people that had previously been grandfathered in to lower pricing. Many people started unsubscribing over the years out of simple boredom when new shows failed to recapture RWBY's popularity, and the gradual cancellation of RWBY spin-off content coupled with the Volume 9 incident cost them those fans as well. People also cancelled in response to the regular controversies of RT's later years.

In the end their first and last means of keeping the lights on wasn't enough. Meanwhile the website remained so unpopular that paid services Crunchyroll and Amazon Prime had better viewing numbers for RWBY and RvB than the RoosterTeeth site itself.

RWBY Post Monty

I liked the episodes where they hit people with big weapons and I didn't like the episodes where they talked

—

So how was RWBY doing throughout all this? Despite Monty Oum's death in 2015 RoosterTeeth's breakout hit chugged along, growing both in scope and production value. The continuation of the series was greenlit year after year up until Volume 9 and its success at a multimedia franchise of their very own further inspired RoosterTeeth to launch other animated programs alongside RWBY spin-offs and crossovers.

However, the FNDM (four letters geddit? ) never recovered from the tragic end of the Monty era. The show's writing received harsher criticism going forward and the fight scenes no longer carried the built in marketing of being Monty's fight scenes. A divide formed between those who hated the scriptwriters and those who were fine with RWBY's direction. The integrity of the property was also threatened by scandals revolving around RT's business practices as a whole.

Ultimately RWBY started to deteriorate alongside the rest of RoosterTeeth going into the end of the decade.

RWBY 2: The Search for More Money

As mentioned in the first thread, RT wasn't shy about milking RWBY for all it was worth. The main show soon spawned a few supplemental animated shows like Chibi and World of Remnant alongside behind the scenes stuff like the FIRST exclusive show CRWBY (It sounds like crew-by geddit? ) An official dub fueled a fanbase in Japan which ultimately led to several mangas and another animated show. The WB aquisition allowed for DC published comics and a Justice League crossover that also got animated. Several RWBY video games were produced and the main characters also featured in the fighting game Blazblue Cross Tag Battle. RWBY characters also cameo in the films Doctor Sleep and Ready Player One and in the video games Crusader's Quest, Puzzle of Empires, Knights Chronicle, SMITE, Paladins, and Black Rock Shooter FRAGMENT.

The made spin-off RWBY: Ice Queendom deserves special mention since it got a lot of attention for being an actual anime. Ice Queendom was fairly successful and was given a chance by people who wouldn't watch the "PS2 Cutscene" regular show, but in a way it also highlighted the problems of mainline RWBY. People who praised the animation here still weren't fans of 3D and many felt it still couldn't help the series' script. Others felt that it was too short and sweet and would have preferred a condensed anime retelling of the whole series.

Despite its own popularity, Ice Queendom also galvanized existing criticisms of RWBY and made a lot of people feel the franchise needed to be in better hands. It may have honestly contributed to — rather than help reverse — the disdain for RoosterTeeth's animation department.

Fatherless Behavior

The "divide" is due to groups with different preferences. Group 1: People who appreciate a good action scene (Monty's choreography was every bit as brilliant as the best of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Donnie Yen, etc.) Group 2: those who just want to hop on a popular fandom with their friends or whatever (i.e., capeshit). The entire reason for RWBY's initial popularity is Monty, without Group 1, Group 2 couldn't exist. Hence the demise of RWBY was completely unavoidable, and every season after his death was purely made to milk Group 2.

— @aydyn

Despite all this growth there was trouble on the CRWBY homefront. Monty's death forced a restructuring of how the show was made and led to a longstanding schism in the viewer base. RWBY has an infamously spergy and schizophrenic fandom with a tendency to complain about the stupidest things imaginable but for the most part you can zoom out and divide it into two camps. The Monty fans who believe the show lost its SOVL without him and the fans who don't mind scriptwriters Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross and think the current show is fine or even better than it was. Many of the former are simple noughties action neurodivergents while the latter are more of the slash types.

Shane Newville was a RWBY animator who worked with Monty Oum going back to the RvB days and was sort of an apprentice of his. In 2016 he released a letter complaining about how the show was being handled after Monty's death. It makes sense he'd expect more creative freedoms since RWBY did start as a uniquely animator driven creation. The scriptwriters didn't take over fully until after Monty. Shane was dismissed from RT and a few others like animator Dillon Gu and producer and voice actress Kathleen Zuelch followed soon after. Many in the FNDM are bitter about this and dramatically accuse CRWBY (which is often shorthand for Miles and Kerry) of purging the Monty loyalists

The show's fight scene animation from Volume 4 onward is a particular sore point for fans who believe it's just not SOVLFVL without Monty. Compare and contrast for yourselves between Volumes 1 and 9.

While the latter has better overall animation (I would hope so for 6 million) the emphasis on choreography isn't really there anymore.

It also shows how ridiculous RWBY's writing got over time. This is supposed to be the climactic final battle of Volume 9 and it's literally Team RWBY vs… a cat

Another issue RWBY suffered from was the strain RoosterTeeth's animation department faced from having to work on both RWBY and the new shows that used it as a springboard. From ‘17 to ‘19 they worked on the time consuming and expensive show Gen:LOCK. Gray Haddock, the creative lead, was also in charge of the entire animation department so he freely seized resources from RWBY's development while still expecting animators to stay on schedule. This whole incident led to the ‘19 RT labor scandal and contributed to the company's growing expenses.

But before we focus on when RT's decline became terminal, I'll bring up a few more RWBY scandals because we all love laughing at nerds.

SHIT (four letters geddit ) Nobody Cares About Enthusiasts

I'm pretty sure RWBY turned my cousin into an AGP trans girl.

He was always a huge g*mer and got into Rooster Teeth through their Halo series. Then he started watching RWBY. Had a poster and everything on his wall. And now he is a she.

So yeah. Maybe this will happen to you?

— @tejanx

As RWBY's reputation turned to poo so it was with the dwindling and increasingly entrenched FNDM. They notably separated into two distinct forms of autism, those who rapidly supported the show and those who learned to have fun hating on it. To this day most who really hate the show rather than just groan at it are former Monty era fans that fled from CRWBY's tyrannical reign The hardcore fans also tend to be soys and the alphabet obsessed who decry the haters as chuds Meanwhile the haters are an odd coalition of chuds Dead Fantasy era action lovers and soys who would still be RWBY fans if the sub jannies hadn't once mopped their shipping memes

FNDM Civil War

The "mainstream" RWBY fans these days, the CRWBY camp has long been taken over by tumblr type shut-ins and is filled with people like this. Supported in their fandom culture war by the showrunners themselves and the overwhelming power of the /r/RWBY jannies they have resorted to increasingly esoteric purity spirals so as to establish proper RWBY fan praxis. They almost have their own language built off show references -- for example the furry creatures being stand ins for real life civil rights movements and "Adam Taurus fanboy" can be another term for chud They tend to post things like this,

Speaking for Reddit at least, /r/RWBY fell into a habit of banning anyone who didn't fit the narrative and in doing so created their own AfD coalition of rival fans. In spaces like /r/RWBYcritics they gather and lament on what went wrong and how it could be better. Some of these posters are just tumblr fans of a different persuasion. Others lean chuddy. Either way they're on the backfoot in the struggle for RWBY's SOVL and have largely resorted to shitposts.

Bumblebee

I won't get into the full breadth of RWBY shipping drama but the notable flashpoint would be "Bumblebee", the canon pairing between main characters Blake and Yang (cos they're black and yellow geddit? ) Tumblr types and one-handed moid viewers think it's the greatest thing ever and that only a CHUD would take issue. In response to chudpaganda talkpoints like "They had nothing in common" and "Didn't Blake have a boyfriend?" they will mobilize on all fronts and force the poor and overworked moderators to lock threads Still liking the pairing between Blake and her original male love interest is the highest form of chuddery one can commit

Driven from the public space once more, critics of the pairing could only articulate their frustration through shitposts

It was also this plot development that spawned homphobic Ruby

Volume 9 as a Crunchyroll Exclusive

From Volume 6 onwards CRWBY and RoosterTeeth's animation as a whole suffered from troubled productions. Gen:LOCK and Gray Haddock ate resources and interns until the higher-ups restructured the department. Shortly after, CRWBY had to combine Volume 8 and 9's production on a narrow timetable. RT alleges this was done for no particular reason whatsoever but it's probably because the RWBY animators also had to make the Justice League direct to home video crossover movie.

In the end Volume 9 was not only pushed back to '23, but ended up with a one year exclusivity deal with Crunchyroll. Even people paying for RT FIRST couldn't watch it and the full season is only just now coming to RT's website in the year of its shutdown

Let's be honest, the founders are long gone or have no say at this point. The RT they built is gone. This is the corpse of RT and it'll be put out of its misery soon enough.

-- /r/RWBY

The dwindling FNDM didn't take well to this one.

THIS MIGHT BE THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU READ TODAY

We realize that many of you will assume that it is now “ok” to pirate the show because it's on a big media platform and the IP is owned by a big media conglomerate. Let me be clear: PLEASE DON'T PIRATE THE SHOW. Pirating RWBY hurts us in so many ways and has a direct impact on the content and CRWBY.

I cannot stress this enough: RWBY lives and dies by how it is monetized by you, our fans.

Many folks assume that, given that RT is wholly owned by Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), that we have an endless pool of cash just laying around. You could not be further from the truth. While we are indeed owned by WBD and love being a part of the family, we typically tend to run RT as an independent business within the larger framework of the organization. Contrary to popular belief, we do not receive an annual bucket of money to fund the show.

If you care about the show and you want to see future seasons, spinoffs, etc, then please watch the show using legal means. The bigger splash we make on CR, the better the future is for RWBY. Please - don't be a jerk. Don't pirate our show.

Also the RT website had to beg people not to pirate it

And that's all I have space for. I really didn't expect this to be a series but the good news is there's more than enough content for Part 3

Also be sure to check out Kang's review of the RWBY Justice League movie

Video Link -

• Married at 22, divorcing at 23

• He can't stop spending, he doesn't help with the finances timestamp

• Why a divorce? timestamp

  • Went to therapy, decided they weren't compatible

  • Soy keeps talking about "trauma" while based wife talks facts and cold analysis

  • "He's a crier and I'm not"

  • "It happens so often that instead of consoling him I roll my eyes, here we go again"

    • She's perfect bros

• Wife wanted to come on the show

Finances:

• Three bedroom house with a roommate

  • Will continue living together post-divorce, different rooms

  • "What about dating other people won't it get awkward and stuff?" timestamp

    • "That... I'm probably not gonna get into that until later until I actually get out of therapy personally"

  • Just moved into that house, decided to divorce slightly after the move

  • a year left on the lease

• "He could probably burst into tears at any moment" timestamp

• Scores

  • She says 0/10, he thinks 3/10

• He's cut off his mother because she's "narcissistic" timestamp

• Spending

  • Tiktok marketplace timestamp

• Card 1 ($6969) timestamp

  • 410 minimum payment

  • She didn't know about this card until after marriage

  • 171 interest, 250 in new purchases

  • lot of useless shit on here

• Card 2 (3'233) timestamp

  • 3'200 limit

  • Over the limit at the time of the statement, made payments since?

  • "After I gave him my emergency fund to buy his new car I then had to go fix my car which was $2'500"

    • Stick insect freak didn't have an emergency fund of his own

  • Had to replace the "arms" on all four of her tires

  • Gym membership that neither doesn't uses

  • Gollum takes pot shots at her from behind Caleb during this segment, little freak sitting there all smug

• New Car (16'207) timestamp

  • 6ish percent interest

  • $326 minimum payment

  • 2022 Chevy Spark

  • The Freak tries to explain his financial reasoning and upbringing, I don't understand it because he doesn't understand it. It's a inhuman thing trying to masquerade as one of us.

  • His father cosigned for it

• She has a Chevy Trailblazer 2006, no debt on it

  • 230k miles?

  • [Midge tries to gloat calling the van a shitheap] "He thinks he knows a lot about cars"

• She nearly beaned him with a box when he started questioning if she really loved him timestamp

  • He deserved it. NTA. This woman is a queen.

• Checking account deets timestamp

  • The creature tries to speak and is immediately slapped back into into reality

Some Loans

• 1200 - to family friend

  • Friend owns a furniture store, no minimum monthly

  • She wants to keep the bed but is open to selling it to him

• 800 - to father in law

  • His father in law, bills from old apartment?

• 5000 - to parents for wedding

  • This was a gift but she feels obligated to pay them back since they are divorcing so soon

• 1900 - financing an appliance

Spending Graph - timestamp

Careers:

• He's a front desk guy at a hospital timestamp

  • The dynamic here is really interesting, she's got a better idea of his income than he does

  • Just started full time, part time for the last year, 1400 then, around $16.00 an hour now?

• She also has the same desk job kind of thing, I assume paid the same?

• He is trying to start a graphics art design thing?

  • Both went to school for graphic design

Momo Momone (UTAUloid)

Took me three reads to vaquely comprehend what this neurodivergent is saying.

TLDR: A groomercord for mulitiple personality havers kicked them because they thought they were faking.

The groomercord is called Novus Transfempire btw.

Omg

Interesting thing I which probably won't be news to high IQ dramneurodivergents, almost everyone in this sub is trans, nonbinary or neurodivergent (or both).

I'm going to list every commenter in that thread from top to bottom to show you how crazy this is.

/u/ItzMinty_Leafx from the screenshot above

/u/neurotoxin_69 - 18-year-old defect + possibly neurodivergent, please be patient or i will get scared

https://old.reddit.com/r/OSDD/comments/1bkviz6/fakeclaimed/kw1mdnh/?context=8

/u/traitorcrow

https://old.reddit.com/r/OSDD/comments/1bkviz6/fakeclaimed/kw46lny/?context=8

/u/FictionalReality7654

/u/WillAndTheGang

https://old.reddit.com/r/OSDD/comments/1bkviz6/fakeclaimed/kw1i701/?context=8

This one took a minute, but I found it

/u/PSSGal

https://old.reddit.com/r/OSDD/comments/1bkviz6/fakeclaimed/kw5yscp/?context=8

Active in a number of trans subs

https://old.reddit.com/r/transgendercirclejerk/comments/1bk1cq6/kids_cant_choose_their_gender/

https://old.reddit.com/r/genderfluid_irl/comments/1936tks/genderfluid_irl/

https://old.reddit.com/r/ennnnnnnnnnnnbbbbbby/comments/15rg03w/ah_yes_the_4_genders/

/u/axiomzwrath

https://old.reddit.com/r/OSDD/comments/1bkviz6/fakeclaimed/kw241n9/?context=8

/u/supernony

https://old.reddit.com/r/OSDD/comments/1bkviz6/fakeclaimed/kw2l7gr/?context=8

Again, I thought we had the first one that isn't trans or neurodivergent. Nope

/u/TorturedManiac01

https://old.reddit.com/r/OSDD/comments/1bkviz6/fakeclaimed/kw2u5g2/?context=8

Finally I don't see trans or autism, but they have ADHD

https://old.reddit.com/r/adhdwomen/comments/12kvkho/i_dont_want_this/

Demisexual

https://old.reddit.com/r/demisexuality/comments/19atwvs/being_demi_is_lonely/

Identifies as pansexual and has questioned asexuality

https://old.reddit.com/r/Asexual/comments/18argru/am_i_asexual/

And she's active in basically every foid mental illness subreddit (BPD, NPD, etc.)

/u/PhantomLights_10 only has a few comments so

/u/IIIItoto

https://old.reddit.com/r/OSDD/comments/1bkviz6/fakeclaimed/kw2fmb0/?context=8

Neurodivergent

https://old.reddit.com/r/evilautism/comments/1bka1q7/i_hate_groomercord/

Therian (Animal larpers)

https://old.reddit.com/r/Therian/comments/1bh60xr/you_dont_have_to_be_born_a_therian/

/u/Puzzled_Ad_1725

https://old.reddit.com/r/OSDD/comments/1bkviz6/fakeclaimed/kw33hz8/?context=8

Post they made to XenoGender

https://old.reddit.com/r/XenogendersAndMore/comments/z374ak/some_genders_i_made_3/

Also a Therian

https://old.reddit.com/r/Therian/comments/1bjxuof/members_of_our_sys_and_their_theriotypes_3/

Literally them btw

https://old.reddit.com/r/ageregression/comments/1blcz46/i_maded_meself/

/u/jadesylph

https://old.reddit.com/r/OSDD/comments/1bkviz6/fakeclaimed/kw50y8v/?context=8

Ngl I almost skipped this one because their comment is buried and I'm getting tired. But journ*listic integrity is important on rDrama.

There it is

/u/spycat924

https://old.reddit.com/r/OSDD/comments/1bkviz6/fakeclaimed/kw4y4qy/?context=8

Omg nothing but their whole account is anime and manga posting so it's only a matter of time

/u/LaylaEclipse000

https://old.reddit.com/r/OSDD/comments/1bkviz6/fakeclaimed/kw5aylc/?context=8

I don't see a specific neurodivergent or trans declaration, but they're active in /r/ActualLesbians and /r/GatekeepingYuri so...

/u/RandomSynpases

https://old.reddit.com/r/OSDD/comments/1bkviz6/fakeclaimed/kw2ic02/?context=8

Trans

https://old.reddit.com/r/transpassing/comments/16034ga/do_i_pass_thinking_ffs_any_advice/

/u/MadderCollective

https://old.reddit.com/r/OSDD/comments/1bkviz6/fakeclaimed/kw3ky91/?context=8

Well there's this

Do you as someone AFAB (or AMAB) have male (or female) hosts that don't consider themselves trans?

One of our old hosts considered and still considers himself a "cisgendered hetero male", and did not consider our body (AFAB) his body, even remotely. This caused a lot of constant dysphoria for him (this was over a decade ago) and he typically wore binders any time he heavily fronted and had an entire routine for putting on and taking off his wardrobe.

/u/RedstnPhoenx

https://old.reddit.com/r/OSDD/comments/1bkviz6/fakeclaimed/kw93vga/?context=8

No posts. I didn't find any trans or neurodivergent in the comments. Inconclusive.

It's almost as if there's much more going on with this trans thing than the activists would have you believe. Of course this is a small sample, but it's still interesting. There was a similar thing with the tik tok tourettes where a huge amount of them were also trans or nonbinary

https://rdrama.net/post/147297/new-nyts-article-about-tik-tok

Many of the accounts in /r/OSDD are also teenagers. It's clearly some combination of

• Kids latching onto various identities whether on purpose to be cool or unique. Or inadvertently picking up these things through social contagion or online influence.

• Neurodivergents

• Mentally ill people who aren't getting help. They're falling deeper into mental illness and seeing their illness as an identity rather than something to be dealt with and overcome.

What are your thoughts? If you read this far ping @Holly_Jolly_Kong in the comments.

So I was at the Trans Pacific Maritime Conference 2024, held in LA (don't worry about it, it's not open to plebs like you) and the keynote speaker, Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense (2006-2011) was giving his talk.

Two things caught my ears:

1st the triple problem of Red Sea crisis initiated by the Houthis, the Black Sea Crisis initiated by the Russians and the Panama Canal crisis. Now you may know about the first two, but what about the third? If I told you the Panama Canal crisis was caused due to a severe drought brought on by an episodic yet rare climate phenomenon called El-Nino, you would be more confused. But Bill, doesn't the canal just link two oceans? How can oceans experience droughts?

https://unctad.org/news/red-sea-black-sea-and-panama-canal-unctad-raises-alarm-global-trade-disruptions

Well, you have to dig a little deeper. (Haha)

Panama is currently suffering a prolonged drought that began in early 2023 and has not let up. In October, rainfall was 43% lower than average levels, making it the driest October since the 1950s. For the area around the canal, 2023 was one of the driest two years since record keeping began in the country. Panama's severe drought is being exacerbated by the double-whammy of a strong El Niño and record-breaking global warming—2023 exceeded the pre-industrial temperature average by 1.35 C. El Niño is a natural climate fluctuation that brings warmer-than-average air and ocean waters to the West coast of the Americas. That influx of warmth can vary in strength and last between nine and twelve months, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts it will continue into at least April of 2024.

The drought has had a particularly profound effect on the man-made Gatún Lake, which holds the water supply that operates the Panama Canal. On January 1, 2024 water levels in Gatún Lake were lower than in any other January on record, almost 6 ft lower than January 1, 2023. Millions of gallons of water from Gatún, along with other regional lakes, are used to fill the locks that raise ships above sea level for the passage over Panama's terrain. Insufficient water supply jeopardizes ship passage. Not only does Gatún Lake feed the locks that power the Canal, it also supplies drinking water to millions of residents in the central region of the country, including two major cities: Panama City and Colón. As both Panama's population and the scale of global shipping has grown, there has been greater demand on the lake for freshwater.

Linked Image - Water levels in Gatun Lake

For more information on this, consult this article

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/01/15/panama-suez-canal-global-shipping-crisis-climate-change-drought/

Anyway, so that's the first point. What about the 2nd?

The 2nd is Geopolitical in nature. See the US with its Chips Act and race to counter Chinese Manufacturing Hegemony has started building up massive Semiconductor and Foundry firms inside the US, and in the case of EVs selected either mainland US or one of its allies to produce them.

Both of these acts require huge CapEx and Supply Chain complications. As China has a near monopoly on rare earth materials, the US has to source them from LatAm countries (and occasionally Australia) while regarding the CHIPS Act, it has to bring in huge investment products from abroad, mainly Europe, Taiwan and Japan. Zeiss is a good example of this since it is perhaps the only company in the world which produces some optical thing which is essential to making cutting edge semicon.

But, now that I have given you the basics of why shipping demand is so high and supply so low due to the constraints shouldn't it boost the stock of all the shipping corporations?

Not so fast.

While B2B shipping corporations like DHL which classify themselves as Freight Forwarding Companies are holding steady based on the margins from different sections of their operations including LCL (Less than Container Load), Customs Clearing, Trans Loading, Over the Road Trucking etc, companies like Diana Shipping Corporation (DSX) and Navios Maritime Partners (NMM) have gone down badly in the last 6 months.

Meanwhile corporations like Golden Ocean Group Ltd (GOGL) have soared 67% in the last 6 months. (The old fart Jim Simmons boasts about having GOGL in his portfolio at RenTech but anyone with two brain cells can understand why.) Star Bulk Carriers Corp(SBLK) has grown 32% in the 6 months.

So what differs among these losers and winners?

[Of Note] I'm only talking about Dry Bulk Carriers here. Not O&G carriers.

The answer is simple. Go to https://marinetraffic.com and look up the shipping routes of each of these corporations. You will notice a pattern. The winners avoid all three constraints while the losers try to mitigate the problems as best as they can, often getting tangled up in complicated problems like being captured by Houthis and tying up different Navies of different countries thereby making those countries demand concessions from these countries as a post condition for freeing them from their Houthi guests. That's a vicious loop you never want to see yourself get sucked into.

Some of them try to go around cape of Good hope which would have been a good plan during Vasco Da Gama's time but not anymore.

The two stockpicking tips

1. Whichever Shipping company is actively avoiding both the Red Sea and Cape of Good hope, thereby operating local pools of shipping routes.

2. Whichever is big enough to maintain separate fleets for Atlantic and Pacific thereby avoiding the Panama Canal conundrum completely. For example GOGL has a fleet of 81 ships and is planning to buy 7 more.

Also look out for Mexico bound ships going out for China. I won't explain the reason here. But keep an eye out.

!jannies please pin this as an effortpost

Everything is advise. Markets have an inherent risk and the burden of any loss belongs entirely to the reader.

I did a poll a while back asking what I should write about. Surprisingly "my old boomer times" won by a large margin. So I present you with a history of MUDs, the thinking man's multiplayer game.

Telnet

Back in the 1800s (yes, that's how far back I'm going) Americans invented all kinds of awesome things: telephones, machine guns, movie cameras, record players. Two of these devices, the typewriter and the telegraph, were combined into something even more powerful. The keyboard of one typewriter sent electrical signals to control a typewriter at a distant location. This was known as teletype. It's how big organizations like militaries and multinational corporations sent data for about a century.

Teletype Model 33.

Eventually Americans invented even more cool stuff like mainframe computers capable of doing time sharing. This meant they could respond almost instantly. You could connect a teletype to the computer but that was suboptimal as the teletype couldn't print as fast as the computer could think. So the printer was replaced with a video screen, and now you had a dumb terminal. It could show text on a screen and accept text input but that was about it. These came into use in the 1970s among big organizations that could afford to pay for the luxury.

A DEC VT100 terminal. This is the standard terminal that's emulated in software.

Another revolution quickly followed in the 1980s with microcomputers, little computers so cheap that an individual person could own one. These were not very powerful at first but they were smart enough to pretend they were a dumb terminal and connect to mainframe. It's a computer emulating a terminal emulating a teletype.

Telnet being used for something more serious.

Why waste your time with this history lesson? It's important to understand the environment we're dealing with here. The Telnet protocol that you use to connect to a MUD is all about text. The technical details of how it gets from one place to another are more advanced, but in the end it's just alphanumeric characters going in and out like a machine from the 1800s.

Gaymers Rise Up

As universities got mainframes capable of time sharing, computer games soon followed. Among the most revolutionary was 1976's Colossal Cave Adventure. The player explores a cave system made up of a network of rooms. Each room has a text description and it can have items in it for the player to pick up. The player gives commands by simply typing in what they want to do. Many more games following this formula followed and the text adventure genre was born.

Don't get eaten by a grue.

Zork was among the most popular of these new games. Some nerd at the University of Essex loved to play a version of it called Dungeon. In 1978 he decided to make a multiplayer game based on it, which he naturally called Multi User Dungeon, and the MUD was born. In 1980 the university was connected to the internet, exposing MUD to the whole world.

UNIX Nerds Emerge

The roots of the MUD genre were now firmly planted but it would be many years before it bloomed. There were a number of technical obstacles which made it prohibitively expensive for all but a lucky few to play MUDs. The internet was only available at a few dozen universities and major computer companies, most of which frowned on using it for monkey business like playing games. By the late 1980s there were several MUDs running on commercial networks like CompuServe and AOL but these charged obscene amounts for connection time. Microcomputers like the PC became available but were still far too expensive for an ordinary family to get just to play games. A modem had to be purchased separately and these were incredibly slow and expensive as well.

Remember how to calculate your THAC0.

Despite these challenges, the 1980s saw great progress. A new nerd monoculture was sprouting in America and Europe, one that would prove to be fertile ground for the emergence of MUDs. The UNIX operating system and C language were taking over university computer science programs replacing a hodgepodge of weird proprietary systems. This made it much easier to share code, which would be crucial in the golden age of MUDs. There was compatibility in culture as well. Every nerd liked The Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons.

Explosion

Ultimately MUDs would explode in popularity not because of some revolutionary idea from a creative genius but simply because computers got better and cheaper over the years. By 1995 you could get a Windows PC with a modem for a reasonable price. The fiber optic backbone of the internet was laid and in the early 1990s the government allowed it to be used for commercial purposes. University computers became powerful enough that running a MUD wasn't too big a drain on resources.

Around 1990 a few free (as in Richard Stallman eating something off his foot and calling it "GNU") MUDs appear. Most MUDs in the future are descendants of these, especially the enormously influential DikuMUD. However there are also all kinds of MUDs with their own unique codebase, some of them quite bizarre like one based on LISP. The most enduring are true labors of love, often based in a university computer science department and passed down from one class of students to the next.

A map of the city of Midgaard. DikuMUDs generally kept the same layout.

Some MUDs were for roleplaying. You were expected to stay in character pretending you were an elf or a Romulan or something. As shameful and embarrassing as it was to engage in this type of behavior, it had a charm. You were essentially cooperating with the other players to write a story in real time. If nothing else, you could learn how to write quickly under time pressure. Some of these artsy-fartsy type MUDs let you create your own areas and even program them. It was kind of like Second Life except without graphics or Bardfinn. With no graphics and such a simple user interface it was easy to add whatever gameplay mechanics you could think of.

But most were simple hack and slash affairs. You go out to an area appropriate for your level, preferably in a group, and hunt for mobs. When you find one you type something like "kill orc" and enter combat, taking turns attacking each other. Occasionally you "kick" or "cast magic missile" or whatever your class' special power is. When you kill it you get xp, gold, and maybe equipment. This should sound very familiar to you. MUDs were inspired by D&D and in turn became the basis of MMOs. EverQuest, the first MMO to achieve mainstream success, ripped off DikuMUD to a large extent.

Legacy

The golden age of MUDs lasted until around 2000. During this period they were really the only game in town. There were multiplayer FPSs and RTSs but nothing that gave you a similar experience. On a 56k modem it took a few seconds just to download a jpeg. Internet connections were much less stable, frequently cutting out for a second or two. So text still made sense as the medium for a multiplayer game.

Then MMOs arrived like Spanish conquistadors, bringing ruin for our civilization. Better PCs and better communications technology like DSL finally allowed the dream of a "graphical MUD" to come true. These were the shiny new thing. Why read walls of text written by some random 20 Finnish nerd boy when you could be looking at 3D graphics instead? If you had any normie friends they would be playing WoW, not words words words. Of course some MUDs have survived and are still thriving today, but the age when there were a thousand running at a time with all kinds of creative new ideas is over.

You can't compete with graphics like this.

So why do I lament the passing of this era? Is it just nostalgia for a time when ska ruled and action movies had real stunts? No. It's more. That was a time when we were free. Free to express yourself. Free to make your own world. Free to implement any crazy gameplay system you wanted. Free to be a Romulan. Jolan 'tru, dramanauts.

I come today with an assortment of responses I've received regarding my epic pulitzer worthy journ*listic expose on FrozenChosen as well as the total vindication Mello received from Frozen's vexatious litigation.

The Janny Cabal would have you believe that I am an agent of chaos sowing discontent amongst the regular, salt of the earth rdrama users. This is, of course, a false narrative crafted to ward off the uncomfortable truths that I've uncovered. Let's take a look at some of the responses I've received so far.

@Joan_Wayne_Gacy sets out to disprove the fact that a Janny conspiracy is afoot by attempting to sweep it up. Joan took it upon themselves, probably coached by the other jannies, to post proof that my narrative was unreliable and that Mello is in fact a danger to the community. Ultimately, this is what it came down to:

My god, what an evil man! He said "creep" to the jannies, certainly he deserves the death penalty!

Does this seem worthy of a permaban and a janny wide consensus that legal recourse, by one of the admins of this website, was justified?

"It's not absurd to slap him with a restraining order when he messages you 100 times a day "

Apparently, @Joan_Wayne_Gacy knows better than our fair and balanced court of law that decided Mello is an innocent man. It doesn't matter to Joan that Frozen was unable to supply evidence that he was a dangerous stalker, Joan and the Janny cabal feels that it's warranted! That means something, right?

WRONG

The great sweepening doesn't end there. @JimieWhales, who does not wield a mop but carries out their marching orders nonetheless, chimes in as well (as instructed by her masters, likely in exchange for a mop).

How interesting! No source to back it up, but she knows a creep when she sees one! It just so happens that her views align with the cabal, just a coincidence I'm sure!

Again, it doesn't matter to the cabal that he was declared innocent of all crimes by the court of law. They feel it to be true, so it must be!

VERY IMPORTANT QUESTIONS:

It's at this point that I point out a very important question: How exactly did @FrozenChosen obtain Mello's personal information to serve him with the court orders? Is it possible that she was given his IP and personal information via the Janny cabal?

What is stopping them from doing the same to any other user whom they view as a threat to their power?

Speaking of Frozen, where is she? The charitable explanation that the henchpeople have given out is that she doesn't want to deal with this, that it's beneath her somehow. However, we know she loves attention. So much, in fact, that she sends her personal information to near strangers and sexts them for it. The spotlight is on her now, where is she?

Is it not more likely that she can no longer conjure up lies to sweep her crimes under the rug, and has gone on the run?

At this point, I'll call out one more enemy of the truth, and of god himself. He's different in that he is far too stupid and unstable to be a part of the cabal - he is simply a useful idiot and a simp. Nevertheless, his actions must be dragged from the darkness and brought to the light.

@sneedman has given me 2 one day ban awards in an effort to shut me up. He does this because apparently, being dramatic on https://rdrama.net is a high crime that cannot go unpunished. He feels a compulsion to defend his Queen because exposing the truth is apparently a bad thing to do!

"You guise, leave her alone! We've all had our laughs, nothing to see here! Just move on already!

I'm sorry, did Frozen consider Mello's mental health when she fraudulently used the courts to shut him up? Did she consider SPAL's mental health when she besmirched him as a libertarian? Why are we expected to just leave her crimes alone because it might make her feel bad (spoiler alert, she doesn't and never will).

@sneedman wants to go up on the cross and die for her sins because he is a simp of the highest caliber. Don't punish her for taking IP addresses from the jannies to purse vexatious litigation, no! Go after him!

The poor fool doesn't even realize that he's her next target, that it'll be him broke, homeless and banned next when he outlives his usefulness. I'd pity him if he wasn't such a vile worm.

My suggestion @sneedman is to remember to go up the highway, not across the street. It'll get you to your final destination sooner!

The Takeaway

!jannies, it's time to answer the hard hitting questions:

1. Why did you supply Frozen with Mello's IP address and personal information?

2. How many other users information has been callously given away?

3. Why do you believe you know better than the court of law and that the restraining order was justified, given that they discarded it due to a lack of evidence?

4. Why is it okay that FrozenChosen doxxed Mello to me? If any other user did that, there would be an outrage.

If I am found dead in the next 48 hours, know that I did not kill myself. I am of sound mind and ordained by the lord himself to drag to truth from the darkness into the light.

Enjoy the song!

FIRST ENTRY

PREVIOUS ENTRY

It's been a long time since last I put my chisel to these annals, and I really shouldn't be writing to them now. But following a few unfortunate accidents, the duty has prematurely fallen to me.

For posterity's sake I'll introduce myself again:

I am Dódok '60horsesinmyherd' íkthagsibrek, and I will admit, these past seven years have been kind to me.

Not long after my original report the people saw fit to make me mayor, which I've come to find is a far less prestigious than it sounds. The only thing I really have control of day to day is what kind of wooden figurines we can or cannot export. Really, my job is about listening to people cry. But I can't complain. Not when I have my own dining hall.

But that's enough talk. Let's get down to business.

We are a fortress under siege.

The years have taught me that the undead aren't to be trifled with. We can handle werebeasts, giants, even hill titans. But a horde of undead? It's different. They don't hunger, they don't thirst, they never tire, they don't feel fear, and when you knock them down? Most of the time, they just get back up. In a sense, they're perfect soldiers, and they've plagued this fortress almost since its inception.

Of course, we haven't been completely helpless. Our KOMPACTOR has been a dab hand, but relying on it doesn't sit right for me. Armok knows we could hole up in here for eternity if we wanted to, and maybe we do. Most of us dwarves are sickened by the surface world anyways. But I can't stand yielding to them. We don't need the surface. We don't even want it. But we should still have it.

But how?

There are stories from the mountainhomes. cautionary tales really, about dwarves who dug too deep. I've never been one for fables, but what I am for is the legend that's tied those tales together: Adamantine.

A metal that's as light as a feather, yet impossibly strong. Sharp enough to slice through steel, but still hard enough to mine even the toughest rock. Maybe it's just a myth. But something in my gut tells me the stories are true. And if they are? We've an answer to an undead conundrum at last. A proper answer: a dwarven one. We just need to dig deeper.

I will return to these annals at the close of spring.

Spring was quiet.

I set our miners out in search of Adamantine. It took some convincing; a lot of them really believe those old tales. Fortunately, I didn't become mayor without knowing how to grease a few wheels. I roused them with same thing that roused me; putting an end to all of this cowering in the dark. Of course, that was only the first challenge.

Most of the rock is hot or wet, or sometimes both. Whichever way it means trouble. We've managed to circle around the hotspots for now, but I fear that if we want to make any real progress, we'll have to take risks, which could mean accidently flooding the caverns with magma. I pray I won't have to make that choice.

Moving to other matters, we've been having issues with a young dwarf.

He refuses to meet with me, but I've heard from those that know him that he's prone to rage.

Normally, I wouldn't feel the need to mention a dissatisfied dwarf, but I have a terrible feeling that he'll become more of a problem later. I hope that I am wrong.

But as I said, Spring was quiet.

I will return to these annals at the close of summer.

Summer began with a portent.

I was praying at the Mean Puzzle when a spacey looking dwarf came to me.

She told me that Tobul Granitemountains had sent her. I stood there blinking at her for a moment. The name was familiar. I racked my brain but I couldn't place it. Was that some noble I'd forgotten to write to? A guildsdwarf?

Then she told me to stop digging, and I remembered.

Tobul is a god of metal.

I pulled her out of the temple and into the hall. I demanded she explain herself, but she told me there was nothing else she could tell me. Tobul had told her that I would know what that meant.

I considered throwing her out. I wanted to yell at her for her lunacy at the very least. But before I got a chance a dwarf rushed over to me with news: one of our miners, @DramaMama, had been attacked.

I told him to fetch some water if he hadn't already, and then I turned to face Asob.

But she was no longer there.

Thinking back on it now, that disturbs me, but then? It was a problem solved.

I hurried to the hospital. @DramaMama was alive and conscious, but hurt.

I pulled over a granite stool and asked her to tell me what happened.

She'd been mining in search of adamantine, as per my orders. Usually things are calm, but today something was different.

Somehow they kept hitting little pockets of heat.

She would take a few bites out of the rock, then the pressure would shift and a gout of fire would come pouring out of the hole she just dug. The way she described it to me was like the stone itself was trying to blast her away. It wasn't right. The stone felt cold when she checked and she swore she'd never been mistaken before. The other miners urged her to give it a rest for the day as it's no use mining with bad luck but she wouldn't hear any of that. She went ahead mining.

Everything thing seemed alright for a time.

She was working on the upper tunnels when the rock just crumbled. She braced, expecting an explosion, but none came. She'd cut into some kind of pocket.

After a few moments of stillness, something came tearing out of it.

She couldn't tell me much about what it looked like and her descriptions of the ensuing attack were similarly vague. She tried to get a few swings in but the thing was too fast. It kicked her and she blacked out. The reports I scrounged up from the other miners were equally fuzzy, but from what I've gathered, @Paragon dealt the killing blow.

I thanked her for speaking with me and insisted she take as long as she wanted to rest. Then, I headed down to have a look at the creature's corpse.

The only thing that was left of it were a handful of sooty loops and what looked like a mangled head, only made out of shadow. I was about to go back up when I heard shouting from further down the tunnels. My heart sunk. Had there been another attack?

I ran as fast I could, but one of the miners intercepted me. Smiling and out of breathe, he said

The comedown from panic to confusion left my head spinning. I could only muster up an okay. Then I told him to show me.

It was in its own little pocket at the end of the upper tunnels, still half submerged in granite. The parts that had broken through were nothing short of incredible. It was a pair of greaves, wrought of a glowing white metal. Whoever crafted it had skills to rival the dwarves, but whomever they made it for had legs as long as I am tall. I could almost smell the miner's joy. They were giddy. We'd been digging for months, and now we'd finally found something.

I stood there awestruck for a moment, then I ordered them to carve the last bits of rock off of it and haul it up to a display in our temple. It was too big to wear and I wasn't about to melt it down.

I spent the rest of Malachite debating if I should end the mining operation altogether.

That might come as a shock given what I've just described. It seemed that every word I offered the miners about glory and treasure was true. I. But that was where the problem lied.

When I started this venture, I only believed the half of the stories I wanted to. The appearance of that creature forced me to reconsider. It isn't just caveins or aquifers or magma spouts waiting down there, but evil. Real, tangible evil. Beasts that want nothing more than to rip every dwarf they can find limb from limb. The legends are true down to the very last word. It's not something I could deny anymore. There's unspeakable evil skulking right alongside the glory.

It doesn't help that the undead are gone.

It only dawned on me now to record that in these annals, even though they left only a few weeks into spring. The thing that'd inspired this mission was gone, and it'd taken months for me to even notice. How?

I didn't remember because it was the glory I wanted. That prophet hadn't told us to stop digging, she'd told me.

It wasn't for the sake of the dwarven spirit or the fortress or the people in it. It was for me. The rest was just an excuse. Convincing myself that this venture was safe kept me from realizing that. But now that I knew what was down there? The truth stopped being something I could hide from. Every swing of every single pickaxe that went by my order came with a risk. It'd only been one monster, but there could be more. There would be more.

That could only be the beginning.

After a week spent alone in my quarters, that was the realization I came to. I decided to call it off.

Then, we had another emergency.

I was moments away from ending the search when one of the doctors ran over to me with news: two dwarves had been killed. Before my worst fears could take hold of me, the doctor gave me details. It had nothing to do with the miners. An entirely different fear of mine had been realized. Lór, the nest box toppler from last season, was responsible.

He'd killed Shorast and Minkot, along with a few cats. I was furious.

I spoke with our hammerer @s_a_n_t_b about punishment, but he told me there was nothing that could be done. Dwarven law prevented me from exiling or even jailing him. He would continue to ransack this fortress until he went mad or came of age, and there was nothing I could do about it. He'd already been throwing tantrums nearly every day for months. Up to now he'd only killed a few chickens and punched a couple dogs, but now he'd killed dwarves. He would kill more. He was another disaster waiting to happen. That thought only made me angrier. What the heck was wrong with that boy?

I had accidently spoken that last part out loud, which surprised our hammerer. I didn't know?

I asked him to enlighten me, and finally things began to make sense.

He was @DrTransmisia's son. He couldn't speak to the details of his death, but @DrTransmisia died beyond the walls during some siege or other, and we were locked up for too long and couldn't bury him. He had gone to rot. It was the thought of his father decaying that was sending him into a rage.

I was ashamed. I thanked @s_a_n_t_b and asked him to leave me to my thoughts.

I'd woken up that morning feeling as if a weight had been taken off my shoulders. I was resolved to stop the search.

I gazed at Lór for a long moment, and I realized I couldn't.

I'd started the mission in the misguided pursuit of glory. I hadn't realized it (or perhaps didn't want to admit it to myself) but that was the truth. However, there was another side to it. The dream I pretended to have wasn't any less possible.

Adamantine was waiting down there. It wasn't a matter of if anymore. It was only a matter of time until we found it, which meant we really could take back the surface. No more dwarves would go to rot while we sat sealed away. That dream, lie or not, could be realized. But only if we kept digging.

If we stopped now, there could be no justice for this child. I couldn't convince myself that it was any other way.

So I decided not to call it off.

True as that revelation might've been, it didn't ease my worries. Since then I have hardly slept. I rarely eat. A dull drone of stress seems to hang over me at all times and every bit of news sends my heart jumping in expectation of the worst. I can't shake the feeling that it's all going to come down on us at any moment. I fight to keep myself from giving in and ending the search every day. But truthfully, I don't think I could stop it now even if I wanted to. There's been a look in the miner's eyes ever since we found that treasure. I think they'd sooner die than stop digging.

But the season is over and there haven't been any more attacks. @DramaMama recovered. So perhaps I'm worrying for nothing. A feeling is just a feeling. Even though I can't convince myself to believe it, things may still yet turn out alright.

At the close of the season our broker did a bit of trading with a passing caravan.

After they departed, he brought over his ledger for me to review. It was a short list and I skimmed through most of it, but near the bottom an entry caught my eye: a scroll he'd bought for our collection.

I will return to these annals at the close of Autumn.

I was at my study when our commander @StarSix came to me with news:

One of our fisherdwarves had been ambushed in the woods by a goblin. He was left unharmed, but they sent him back with a message.

They wanted a parley.

The request interested me, frankly. In all the history of Mostibkun, we've never parleyed with an invader (our liaison not withstanding). The undead aren't talkative. I asked him if they'd made any demands, and he told me yes, but only one: they wanted to speak me with me personally. I did what I could to hide the shiver that sent down me spine, sat for a moment, then told @StarSix to ready the Cudgel. I had decided we would heed their request.

Then something compelled me to parley with the goblins alone.

I'd always dreamt of creating a master work someday,

and throughout my time here I've come to know dwarves who've been possessed. From what they've told me the feeling is something like an insatiable hunger. It's as if something otherworldly has commanded you, and fulfilling its will becomes your only want. All of my sense left me the moment I made the decision. The parley had become my sole ambition. As my legs carried me through our frontline of chickenshit and into the countryside, I dimly wondered if I'd finally been possessed.

It was only after I mounted the second hill that I stopped. The drive disappeared like a snuffed candleflame. With my sense finally returned to me, I was finally able to ask myself an important question: what kind of fool would parley with goblins alone?

This was madness. The troubles of last season had gotten to me, I thought. So I turned to leave, only to realize I wasn't alone.

A stray cat had followed me from the fortress. I paused for a moment and stared at her.

I will not claim that the sight of our fortress's namesake reawakened that feeling in me, but it did remind me of something: the people I represent. The alarm had been raised, the dwarves knew we were under siege. A few had seen me marching out here on my own. They'd no doubt seen the look in my eyes. What kind of precedent would I be setting if I were to turn back now with my proverbial beard tucked between my legs?

But what if this parley was just a ploy? I'm no fighter. I would be killed, and who oversee everything in my absence? The smart choice would've been to head back behind the walls and wait for the Cudgel.

The cat and I stared at each for a long moment.

I couldn't go back. Even in the face of death, I didn't want to be the dwarf that would make me.

So I turned back towards the hill and kept climbing, and once I reached the top, I saw them.

They were a ragged bunch, and to my surprise there were dwarves among them.

An older looking dwarf regarded me.

We exchanged pleasantries.

She asked after her aunt, Udib. I told her she went mad.

We stood for a moment in silence. There was no sign of the Cudgel.

Then, she made her demands.

I couldn't help but gawk at her for a moment. They were truly willing to risk their lives over a toy boat? It made my own madness seem tame.

It was around then that I finally felt @StarSix's hulking presence behind me. They'd made it just in time. I relaxed. Aban tensed. One of the goblins started shaking. I assured Aban that they were only here as a precaution, then I bid her to give me a minute to think over their offer.

I'd taken no more than a half step behind our lines when I saw the cat. She was peering at me, her head ever so slightly turned.

I'm not a superstitious dwarf, but I couldn't shake the sense that that cat was more than it seemed. It was as if it wanted something out of me, and it was waiting for me to do it. But what?

I stood there for a moment, stock still, and then it struck me. A new feeling: an intense disgust bordering on rage. How could I give anything to this filth? How could I even consider it?

I turned back to Aban and spoke.

@Cream_a_da_crop pushed passed me, I prepared to run anyway,

But the fighting was over before I even had a chance to be cowardly. My zeal was gone at the first sight of blood and my legs were wobbly, so I sat. The cat had disappeared. The little goblin who'd been shaking was still alive, but he couldn't walk anymore. He sobbed and tried to crawl away. @Cream_a_da_crop turned and smiled at me as he plunged his sword through the back of his throat.

The miners are still searching. Nothing further of note occurred this season.

The first half of Winter was quiet, but midway through Opal, I received news.

An out of breath @Paragon was the one to bring it to me.

For a terrible moment I couldn't decipher whether he was excited or terrified, but then he broke into a manic smile. They'd found it. He didn't have to say anything else. I ran for the mines.

The 121 flights of stairs nearly killed me, but with some perseverance I found myself at the end of our main tunnel.

A dense, glimmering wall of metallic blue fibers was before me. There could be no mistake. We had found Adamantine.

I've been in something of a state of misery since Summer. That feeling of looming danger never passed, it just dulled into a quiet but ever present drone of stress. There hadn't been any attacks aside from last season's siege. No more monsters came clawing through the walls and there hadn't been any more explosions. I had no cause to feel that way, and yet I did. On one sleepless night, I managed to convince myself that once we'd found it, it would finally go away. At points the only thing that kept me going was the hope of catharsis.

As I stood there before that great wall of promise, I prepared for my heart to sore.

But it didn't. The drone remained.

I'd been waiting for this moment for months. This was where the stress was supposed to end. I was standing in front of a centuries old myth and I'd been the one to find it, and somehow I felt nothing. Worse than nothing. Why? I felt panic welling up in my chest.

Maybe I just need to see it in use.

The fear subsided. That was what's missing. A metal is only a metal. It only finds its true worth when it becomes a tool. I only needed to see it in action and then I could finally relax.

I knew just the tool I wanted it to be.

A battleaxe.

I pat @Paragon and @DramaMama on the back and told them to get mining.

Adamantine isn't like regular metal, I came to learn. It comes in the form of thick sinewy bands that have to be hacked down and pulled apart by Craftsdwarfs.

It's closer to spider silk than iron, really. I also came to learn that processing it is arduous. It took the rest of the month and part of Obsidian before they finished extracting the threads. It was only after the Craftsdwarfs finished that we could smelt them down into the wafers (think a metal ingot, but skimpier) that our smiths needed. But before long we'd all the parts we needed. It just needed to be smelted together.

I put one of our best weaponsmiths, @tomokokuroki, to the task.

The process took days and he demanded solitude. In the meantime, the fortress was ablaze with the news. People drank and sang deep into the night, and for good reason. Once he was finished we would be the first fortress in dwarven history to forge a weapon from adamantine. Mostibkun would no longer be a fledgling fortress in an undead backwater. It would be legend, along with every dwarf that lived in it.

For my part, I spent the celebrations pacing up and down the halls.

One night, I was stopped by the sound of footsteps echoing off the cavern walls. I turned to see a figured emerging from out of the gloom.

It was Lór.

I hadn't heard much of him since the incident and I hadn't found the time to wonder why. His presence felt almost impossible to me. I realized that I'd completely forgotten he existed.

I expected him to torment me all throughout autumn and into winter. Back in summer, every fiber of my being told me that his first deadly tantrum was just one of many. There were a few months where he played a leading role in my countless visions of doom. I was convinced that he was another spinning plate just waiting to fall. But he wasn't. When nothing else happened I suppose he just faded out of memory.

He greeted me and immediately I could tell he'd changed.

I asked him how he was feeling, and he told me that he was better. I apologized for what happened to his father on behalf of the fortress and he thanked me and told me that he finally come to terms with it.

I smiled, he smiled, then he said goodbye and headed to the dining hall. I stood there and watched as he disappeared into revelry.

On the 25th of Obsidian, @tomokokuroki finished his work.

In the 72 years of my dwarven life, I've never ran so fast. After a few minutes of sprinting, running, and a bit of crawling, I met with him down below at the magma forges.

It was already laid out on his workbench for me to see.

It was gorgeous. A shining implement of pure dwarven will. It was just as beautiful as the legends said.

I waited for the joy to come.

But none came.

Somehow, I think I expected that. I didn't panic this time. I didn't feel anything really.

I smiled and shook his hand all the same. I told him that his name is now legend and implored him to bring it up to the rest of the fortress and show it off. Then I sat down there for a while in silence.

The creation of that axe marks the close of the year and a new beginning of dwarven history.

We've repelled invaders. We've had the most haggard among us find peace. We've avoided mining ourselves into fiery graves. We've found artifacts of gods and metals only spoken of in myth.

We have survived another year.

And yet I still can't shake the feeling it's all going to go wrong.

I suppose that doesn't matter now. My time has overseer has come to close. Maybe I just need some time off the reigns. In any case, I'm sure you've heard just about enough of my prattling.

To my successor, I say good luck.

I will return to these annals at the start of spring, in the year 266.

I apologize for the very very lengthy delay and the (sorry not sorry ). Figuring out who was and was not playing ate up a big fat chunk of time and I vastly overestimated how quickly I could play through a year. The FPS was at like 30 for most of my turn until I remembered they finally added multithreading. Coupling that with IRL obligations = overly late release. Hopefully you found it to be worth the wait. Do excuse any typos.

Also @A because I know you're a fan of the series.

Now, a bit of housekeeping:

• I went ahead and applied all the nicknames in accordance with the votes in the original sign-up sheet. Everyone who requested they be a dwarf in the fort is now (finally) there.

• The fortress essentially runs itself. The only pressing concern is our plant food supply. We're at about 47 stored and it doesn't appear to be replenishing (though that might just be a seasonal thing). Also, some of the dwarves are complaining about a lack of decent meals, but I only realized that at the very end.

• Our friendly neighborhood goblin liaison has requested blocks and tanned hides and will pay a 200% markup. I can't remember what I requested (probably some dogshit like figurines), as we're not in dire need of anything.

• The Cudgel is very very underequipped. We have a bunch of legendary weaponsmiths but no one with any kind of armorsmithing skill. It also might be a good idea to unify their equipment. Some of them are spearmasters and some are axelords. Adamantine axes are very strong compared to spears so it might be worth ditching the latter in favor of the former.

• I didn't get around to making a pump stack as per Ninjjer's entry as I have no idea how.

• A word of warning as far as the adamantine is concerned: you either have to A) position the Cudgel down there when you're mining B) make a new squad that lives down there or C) come up with some other kind of safety system. The Steam update added the feature you saw above where randomly generated ghouls come popping out of the rocks. It's a tossup as to whether or not the miners can handle them and the Cudgel takes a while to get down there, so it might be good to have a separate squad playing point defense,

• @DrTransmisia's son was really the biggest issue. He killed two dwarves outright and a bunch of animals. I can't count how many tantrums he had. I couldn't expel him and he wouldn't get into a burrow so I couldn't atom smash him. Fortunately, he seemed to make a turnaround after the reconciliation pictured above. You can still atom smash him if you want but he's good for drama.

• There are a small handful of dwarves who are a bit unhappy, but there's really not much that can be done for them since it's all bullshit like "be extravagant". The only dwarf who's completely in the red is our necromancer, but they've already gone mad.

• The fortress as of 258:

• The adamantine spire:

IMPORTANT:

I'm going to extend the 2 week window to 1 month. You now have up to 1 month to play and write a report. If you can't make it, contact me within that timespan for an extension. I will no longer be contacting you. If I don't hear from you then your turn is forfeit and goes to the next person. If I still haven't heard from you (E.G @duck ) by the time it returns to your turn, you will be completely removed from the succession. If for any reason you can't play your turn and you know ahead of time, please DM me.

Anyways, the fortress now returns to @Cream_a_da_crop.

Players, in order of succession:

@60horsesinmyherd

@Cream_a_da_crop

@s_a_n_t_b

@StarSix

@searcher

@BFBugleberry

@Rankine_911

@Yasharn

@Ninjjer

You don't need to see someone's face to know if they are biologically male or female. You can just watch their gait (walking manner). Women (female) take smaller steps, regardless of their height or size. The shorter female stride length is because females protruded their legs less vigorously with more hip abduction. You see, females generally have greater hip width. It would stand to reason that for comfort reasons, females would tend to focus more on hip abduction instead of taking longer steps.

This isn't the focus of the post. Instead, it's a story involving a MILF, a libertarian, and a dead queen. This is the tale of queuegate.

Remember 2022? One of the most important events of the year was the death of Queen Elizabeth II, one of the most powerful people on Earth. Though she was 96, the death still came as a surprise, as she seemed like a workhorse that would make it to 100. Instead, she perished during her nonagenarian years. Despite this, she holds the record of having the longest reign of any British monarch. She passed away on September 8 in Scotland, and for a while, it felt like the world came to a standstill. The queen had become a constant, and now she was gone.

BBC had the rights to make the official announcement under the process known as Operation London Bridge. The announcement was made by Huw Edwards (who has a public feud with Phillip Schofield, but that's a story for another day).

The Funeral

The event was a solemn one. Many wept, as the Queen was beloved and a symbol of the British Empire. It was also a massive event, costing an estimated $200 million, which is chump change for the Windsor family which is estimated to be worth close to $30 billion.

Around 2,000 people showed up at Westminster for the funeral where the Queen would finally be laid to rest at Windsor Castle, but not before being carried to Westminster Hall. The traditional bugle call of the British infantry rang and two minutes of silence was observed around Britain.

Of course, the event was deeply Christian as well, and there was a service headed by the Dean of Windsor, David Conner. The following prayer was recited by the Rector of Sandringham, the Minister of Crathie Kirk

and the Chaplain of the Royal Chapel,Windsor Great Park:

REMEMBER, O Lord, thy servant Elizabeth who has gone before us with the sign

of faith, and now rests in sleep. According to thy promises, grant unto her, and

to all who repose in Christ, refreshment, light and peace; through the same Jesus

Christ our Lord. Amen.

MERCIFUL Father and Lord of all life, we praise thee that thou hast made us in

thine image and that we reflect thy truth and light.We give special thanks for

the life of thy daughter Elizabeth, for the mercy she received from thee, and for the

example that through her life of service, love and faith, she has set before our eyes.

Above all, we rejoice at thy gracious promise to all thy servants, living and departed,

that we shall rise again at the coming of our Saviour Jesus Christ.We pray that, in due

time, we may share with our sister that clearer vision when we shall see thy face in

the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O FATHER of all, we pray to thee for those whom we love, but see no longer.

Grant them peace; let light perpetual shine upon them; and, in thy loving

wisdom and almighty power, work in them the good purposes of thy perfect will;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O LORD, support us all the day long of this troublous life, until the shades

lengthen and the evening comes, the busy world is hushed, the fever of life is

over and our work is done; then Lord, in thy mercy, grant us safe lodging, a holy rest,

and peace at the last; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

LORD God Almighty, King of creation, bless our King and all Members of the

Royal Family. May godliness be their guidance, may sanctity be their strength,

may peace on earth be the fruit of their labours, and their joy in heaven thine eternal

gift; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

GOD save our gracious Sovereign and all the Companions, living and departed,

of the Most Honourable and Noble Order of the Garter. Amen.

The Queen was buried beside Prince Philip, the two reunited in death. The end of era. She was succeeded by King Charles III.

The Controversy

In addition to various world leaders, a select few media organizations were given special access to Westminster Hall to see the Queen in lying. This included ITV who were represented by Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield. Trouble began when The Mail argued that the two presenters were not cleared to enter Westminster Hall, but used the weight of ITV's name to gain entrance. ITV gave the following response:

“Phillip and Holly had full accreditation which was organised by the This Morning production team. Any claims otherwise are untrue.”

The trouble this caused is nothing compared to Queuegate. Soon came the allegation that Phillip and Holly committed the worst crime possible you can as a Brit - they NSFW ahead Skipped the queue in the procession entering Westminster Hall! This caused outrage, as there people waiting up to 24 hours to see the Queen while it appears the stars got to see her at will! Things get worse. One person on Twitter posted images of their mother in a wheelchair along with the claim that she was pushed aside for Philip and Holly!

The accusations caused a massive stir, not just with the general public but also with corporations who decided to make the most of the backlash.

According to the Daily Mail, the duo was heckled as they skipped the quote, with one person saying, I kid you not, "Oi, Phil, Holly, get to the back of the queue!"

ITV defended its stars and denied all the claims. Furthermore, it assured the public that Holly and Phillip would face no repercussions nor were their jobs in danger. It seems, in the eyes of ITV, the whole furor was the product of a rumor run amock. Schofield gave the following response:

“The rules were that we would be quickly escorted around the edges to a platform to the back. In contrast, those paying respects walked along a carpeted area beside the coffin and were given time to pause. None of the broadcasters and journ*lists there took anyone's place in the queue and no-one filed past the Queen. We of course respected those rules however we realize it may have looked like something else and therefore totally understand the reaction. Please know that we would never jump a queue.”

This did not quell the outrage, because there was video footage of them appearing to bypass the queue altogether! Holly was hit hard, and for the next few episodes of This Morning, she appeared crestfallen. She had reason to be. At the National Televisions Awards, she was booed as she collected her award. It seemed the public had turned against her and she had become a villain.

Of course, time heals all, and eventually the controversy passed. Who could hate an angel like her?!

Did Phillip and Holly Skip the Queue

Yes, they absolutely did. In addition to the footage and the first-person accounts of the transgression, the now disgraced Phillip has discussed the matter and how the two panicked when the scandal broke out and has pretty much confessed.

They had no VIP access, they were not given permission, and they did not have media privileges. They just skipped the queue to see the Queen in lying.

Conclusion

Metal Gear Solid V has reignited my love for video games. Holy shit, now I try to get things done quickly so I can sneak in a mission of pure basedness. This is a PS3 game and it still sits as one of the best-looking games on the PS5. It also has some of, if not the, best gameplay of any game ever. This is my second playthrough and I'm still finding out little tricks and features I didn't know about the first time around. And don't get me started on the story and the visuals - only one person in the world could have imagined that up - Hideo Kojima.

I love the narcissism that shines through. How his name pops up on screen every ten minutes. It gives the feeling that you're experiencing one person's vision whereas video games usually feel like they were made by a soulless committee. There's so many little touches, bits and pieces of story that directly tie into the gameplay, like Snake's horn, and it all comes together so beautifully. It's like Kojima knitted a sweater of based gameplay and narrative. My top three games are: MGSV, The Last of Us Part 2, and Red Dead Redemption 2.

It's very, very clear that TLOU2 was heavily inspired by MGSV. In both games you're sucked into the dark cycle of violence, making the gameplay experience an exhilarating test of morality and empathy. I think TLOU2 does the cycle of violence story better, but MGSV is the overall better game.

Why do I say this? Well, The Last of Us Part 2 is centered around the idea of justice and how retributive justice can lead to cycles of violence. In short, one man's justice is another man's revenge. This leaves the player to consider how differently two people can view the same situation. It also brings to question the validity of retributive justice and the role of reconciliation. These are all intensely complex themes, but the game manages to tackle them with outstanding finesse, forcing players to consider both sides of a conflict and stretching their ability to rethink their worldviews in a medium that often presents the world as one of easily identifiable heroes and villains. MGSV tries to do the same, but on a wider scale - nations warring. The revenge becomes impersonal, the moral a platitude. Though there is the personal revenge between Snake (Ahab) and Skullface, it sits behind the historic larger world conflicts that sit at the forefront.

I have been a fan of Naughty Dog for many years and it has been interesting to see the studio evolve and improve all aspects of its games, including the visuals, narratives, and gameplay. The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered feels like a culmination of all of this, and the result is a gameplay experience that is simply too impactful to ignore. However, MGSV's gameplay still excels. It's beautifully intricate, testing your creativity in just the right way.

I finally crashed and fell asleep last night. I don't feel like hurting myself anymore, but I'm seeing my psychiatrist and psychologist tomorrow (at the same time). I may need a dosage adjustment of my meds. I hope they don't take away my ADHD medication because it's based.

Sorry for the repeated Holly's. I'm hungry and I'm not in the mood to creep through Pinterest and Instagram looking for more.

Macro Conditions

Inflation is still sticky. This affects Mid cap Tech because of interest exposure. Also there is a slight mean reversion of the Magnificent 7 after their extremely bullish run from Q3 2023 to Q1 2024. As AI is looking it's glaze, investors are looking more and more towards the core businesses of this behemoths.

Labor market is also seemingly cooling which is a worry for the federal reserve. Since the Fed has assured investors of 3 cuts in 2024, this might be problematic since after a June cut, a November cut might be interpreted politically. Hence the Fed will be stuck with 2 cuts in 2024 thereby lessening the confidence of investors. The Fed had 4.5T of assets in 2020. Currently it has a cumulative asset of 7.5T. With the pace of rate cuts, it could take another 3 years to offload all these assets.

Mortgage rates are still high and out of line with Fed expectations which is another headache. FannieMae 30 year mortgage rates to end at 6.4% while the Fed expects them to go down to 5.7% at least.

Bank of England has held steady its rates at 5.25%. The highest in 16 years since the Great Recession while the Swiss Government is the first to decrease rates among western countries.

As long as S&P 500 is populated with companies with positive Cash Flows, Fed hikes weren't ever going to affect it as much as 2007.

As for evidence that June rates have a high probability of going down, the Fed would probably want to avoid November as well as boost the economy out of a possible recession.

Ripple Effects

Real Estate broker Compass has agreed to pay $57.5mil in fines to settle anti trust claims. M&A has also seen a slump due to anti trust claims.

Stock Picking is key in Regional and Smaller banks as these have large leverage and low liquidity. If Fed doesn't even make two rate cuts this year, consider these banks and financial institutions gone. Several Mid and Small cap stocks will also be filling Chapter 11 (high probability).

Demand for EV

With the exception of China and Korea, compared to 2022, there has been a contraction in EV sales. Many US car rentals have been selling off their EV fleets at a huge discount after seeing very low demand which have been a catalyst for Tesla's poor performance. GM and Ford have cut CapEX and Investment as well as R&D regarding EV. Companies like Tesla and Rivian which produce only EV are haemorrhaging money. While Tesla may be well diversified to withstand this shock, Rivian debts will soon be downgraded because its Cash Flow and Liquidity are not enough to grow/invest in new PP&E.

EU EV Situation.

With a stringent emission targets of 2025, the situation in EU might be a little different and the EU has set its penetration targets very high (some skeptical about whether it will be able to deliver). Also, on top of this, EU companies face tough competition from Chinese companies like BYS and MG which already have 2% of European EV share, offer 20-25% lower prices and like BYD have already planned to build plants inside the EU.

If this was not enough, Hyundai and Toyota are also bringing in their EV sectors over to Europe. As EU rejoices that the Russian gas cutoff hasn't affected the consumers in any devastating manner as Y-o-Y demand for gas has gone down 20%, it should be kept in mind that a commensurate amount of non essential manufacturing units have outsourced or moved away from Europe to China or the USA.

Two things are of note here:

The Euro Commission has launched an investigation into the export of Chinese EV due to it being the beneficiary of state subsidy, particularly the battery of the EVs.

BYD is gaining ground at a never before seen pace in LatAm which might very well soon become an all Chinese EV playground.

Utilities and Surging Power Demand

Power demand had remained flatlined in the US from 2006 to 2021. However there has been a big surge which has pushed the grid to an almost breaking point due to chip manufacturing being brought back, EV ramp up and Green Hydrogen Manufacturing. For now, the surge is met and managed via the surplus gas produced.

Just 2 days ago, the CEO of Duke Energy lined out three new gas power plants to be built soon, more investments in renewables and also hinted at the possibility of nuclear power plants to be ramped up at some point.

Due to the subsidies and zero tariff quota by the Biden Government, 54GW of solar power plants have been imported from South East Asia. Inside the US, Texas is providing subsidies for Gas Power Plants.

All this is coming to a head as there are no additional capacity for installations of transformers or other distribution and transmission infrastructure.

On top of this, there are the Data Centres(DC) which use as much energy as a small city. So not only do grids need to be developed, the entire infrastructure needs to be expanded by orders of magnitude too. These DC are moving towards hourly matching to keep renewables as an option. Hourly matching simply means investing in tech to required to realize Zero Carbon Electricity grid by getting Carbon free electricity procurement.

The DCs have also lobbied for building their own smaller nuclear power plants although nobody knows the state of that proposal now.

Meanwhile the SEC has made requirement of material disclosures of emissions data mandatory(till now it was voluntary).

Smaller newer tech firms like Fervo which seek to harness Geothermal Energy have come into play in recent times, although nobody can be sure about their tech in long term other than tech enthusiasts.

Biden's ALL of the ABOVE ENERGY STRATEGY (AAE) and why everyone hates it

AAE picked up steam with the 2008 election in tandem with Sarah Palin's Drill Baby Drill slogan. John McCain used the AAE as a rallying cry. Obama picked up on it too during his presidency as renewables boomed and O&G boomed after a long downward trend.

The idea was simple. The US needed all the sources it could find to protect its economy(from a recession) and its consumers(from inflation).

In 2012, Obama stuck with it and Romney used it too.

But in 2024, Biden is the closest to achieving it. (Although he never used it because he used the term “energy transition” too many times in his campaign to do a 180.

But due to advances in fracking and directional drilling, which opened up vast new O&G reserves, in 2023, US produced more oil than any other country in the history of the world.

Natural Gas saw an even bigger jump with the US becoming the biggest LNG exporter in the World. The geopolitical impact of this became clear after 2022 as Russia invaded Ukraine, the US shifted its exports from China, Japan and Korea to flood the European Market and nullify Putin's weaponization of Energy.

With Renewables, Wind and Solar got a 80Billion stimulus package under Obama in 2009 which became disproportionately successful, so much so that 15% of the entire US energy production comes from renewables today, just 15 years later.

The problem with AAE is twofold.

Republicans claim that the renewables part of AAE works only because of subsidies and that more O&G should be produced, while the Democrats complain that O&G should be reduced while Wind and Solar should be given more priority as production costs come down exponentially. Both the behemoth bills passed by Biden, the IRA and the Infrastructure Act contain provisions for Wind and Solar as well as Oil & Gas so neither camp is happy.

SEC Mandate, CSRD, EPA, CERAweek and Further discussions into the Macro of Fed decisions will be in tomorrow's post. Digest this first.

Metal Gear Solid V is one of the greatest games of all time. Honestly, Kojima's greatest work and he didn't even finish it. It knocks Death Stranding out of the park. Holy heck I'm loving it and this is my second playthrough. I forgot how awesome it was and what a crazy negro Kojima is. Bless la creatividad.

For those who don't know, The Metal Gear Solid series is a stealth franchise created by video game icon Hideo Kojima. Released in 2015, Metal Gear Solid V is set over a decade before the original Metal Gear game. The protagonist is Venom Snake, who is also known as Big Boss by his men. He is a mercenary leader and the head of Militaires Sans Frontières. As revealed in Ground Zeroes, this mercenary group is defeated, and Venom Snake falls into a coma after his helicopter is bombed. It takes nine years before he reawakens, but he is a changed person. He is sensitive to light and his left arm has been replaced with a prosthetic one.

Venom Snake constructs the Diamond Dogs, a new mercenary group, and heads to Afghanistan to seek revenge on those who dared to wrong him. His motivation is the constant trauma he feels from the losses he has experienced in warfare. This is the “phantom pain” that haunts Venom Snake. It manifests in a very literal sense. In a tape recording, Venom Snake mentions that he still feels a “phantom pain” in his left arm despite the fact that it is missing. He is also haunted by the hallucinations he has of Paz, whose death he witnesses. She is a phantom that constantly visits him, serving as a reminder of the fact that he could not save her.

The main themes are revenge, war, and violence. Central to most societies is the concept of justice which, put simply, means that people should get what they deserve. On the surface, it seems like an agreeable philosophy. Good deeds should be rewarded while the wicked should be punished so as to maintain balance. However, as MGSV reveals, it is not easy to tell apart justice from revenge.

As Snake tracks down Skullface, he comes across several mercenary groups that stand in his path. You have various cowtools at your disposal for eliminating these mercenaries, and you can choose to employ lethal force or attempt a pacifist approach. These moral quandaries reach a crescendo when Venom Snake encounters child soldiers in Central Africa. They are every bit as lethal as their adult counterparts, but they are still children. Though the game punishes players heavily for using lethal force against child soldiers, you still have to deal with the moral question of what to do with the children. Though they may be children, it does not mitigate the amount of harm and suffering they cause.

But that's not the theme of this post. I want to discuss a doctor who loved LSD and gave it to a lot of his patients. His name is Slanislav Grof.

Born in Czech in 1931, Grof is a psychiatrist who has garnered himself both praise and notoriety for his eccentric ideas and research focus. He has published studies on out-of-the-ordinary states of mind and LSD-induced states of consciousness. His polarising nature is demonstrated by the fact that he has been awarded prestigious prizes such as the Thomas R. Verny Award from the Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health for his important contributions to his field, as well as the Vaclav Havel Award for his lifetime of work. However, he has also been the two-time recipient of the Erratic Boulder anti-award given to individuals and groups deemed to be peddlers of pseudoscience. Since the 1960s, he continued his research in the USA.

Grof went to university to study psychiatry, where he came into contact with LSD. It profoundly impacted him, and changed his career course. Since then, he has been involved with over twenty-five hundred LSD sessions and he has analyzed over thirteen hundred psychedelic sessions conducted by his colleagues in Czechoslovakia and the USA.

When studying psychedelics, Grof uses a scientific method that he has crafted through years of research and observation of subjects under the influence of psychedelic substances. Unlike many of his fellow researchers, Grof did not view psychedelics as substances that induce schizophrenia or similar states of psychosis. Hence, he began to deviate from their established research methods, and he began to develop his own.

Grof focuses much of his attention on the theme of death and rebirth within the psychedelic experience. He argues that one of the psychological benefits of psychedelics is their ability to induce an Ego death, whereby an individual will experience a metaphorical death in the form of a loss of subjective identity and Ego. The return of the Ego is experienced as a rebirth. According to Grof, those who complete the death-rebirth process connect with intrinsic spiritual sources and realize that a mechanistic and materialistic worldview is rooted in fear of birth and death.

Grof claims that following an Ego death, “the ability to enjoy life typically increases considerably”, and “the past and the future appear to be relatively less important than the present moment”. With Grof, we find a model of psychedelics which positions them as a vehicle towards psychological growth through a metaphorical death and rebirth. From this viewpoint, death is a positive state worth intentionally pursuing via psychedelics.

Types of psychedelic experiences

Grof outlines four types of psychedelic experiences:

1. The first is the “abstract or aesthetic” experience which Grof considers to be the most superficial. This type of psychedelic experience has “no specific symbolic content related to the personality of the subject”, he argues. He notes that one having this psychedelic experience may hallucinate abstract geometric designs or architectural patterns. This includes “interiors of gigantic temples, naves of incredibly beautiful Gothic cathedrals, cupolas of monumental mosques, or decorations in Moorish palaces (‘arabesques')”. As someone who has done copious amounts of LSD, I can definitely relate to this phenomenon of seeing aesthetic beauty when tripping.

2. Secondly, we have the “psychodynamic, biographical, or recollective” psychedelic experience. This involves biographical memories, and this can be useful for seeing things from a new perspective and finding closure.

3. The third is the perinatal psychedelic experience. In this perinatal experience, LSD subjects can relive elements of their biological birth in all its complexity, and sometimes with astonishing objectively verifiable details. Keep a tab on this one, because, I'll be exploring it a little more in a moment.

4. Lastly, we have the transpersonal experience in which one is freed of the Ego. In these instances, one may come into contact with religious figures or otherworldly beings. The experience tends to have a mystical nature to it. . Grof argues that within Western thought, it is only Assagioli's psychosynthesis and Jung's psychology that can shed light on the processes involved in the transpersonal psychedelic realm. Speaking on Jung, Grof evokes his ideas of archetypes when describing the primordial imagery which is often witnessed during transpersonal experiences.

The perinatal psychedelic experience

The perinatal experience is a kind of rebirth. Grof's views, in this respect, are far from unique. What Grof describes with regards to the perinatal experience, are personality transformations described by both Campbell and Jung who claim that such transformations arise as a product of acting out death and rebirth archetypes.

Grof divides the perinatal level of the unconscious into four patterns he refers to as the Basic Perinatal Matrices (BPM). Since Grof believes that perinatal type psychedelic experiences are deeply connected to the process of biological birth, he aligns each of the matrices with a stage in the birth process. In these matrices, Jungian archetypes are liable to make appearances.

1. BPM 1

BPM 1 aligns with the peacefulness of being a foetus in the womb.

2. BPM 2

This aligns with the beginning stages of birth. The foetus is constricted by the uterine yet cannot find a way out yet because the cervix is still closed. Paralleling this biological process, experiences from this matrix are marked by a sense of “cosmic engulfment”, whereby one feels a forebody sense of imminent danger. Consequently, the anxiety-stricken individual is likely to interpret the world in paranoid terms.

Imagery associated with this matrix includes being swallowed by a great monster or whale, and scenes of descending into a dangerous underworld. Just as Adam and Eve are cast from Eden and Satan is cast from Heaven, so too is the biological foetus being ejected from the womb where it experienced ideal conditions. Similarly, this matrix has individuals feeling as though they are moving from a state of safety to a state of unknown peril.

3. BPM 3

BPM 3 is deeply concerned with the death-rebirth struggle. Biologically, it is aligned with the stage of delivery where uterine contractions continue, but with the cervix dilated to allow for the gradual passing of the foetus. This is not an easy process, and there is risk of mortality for both the baby and the mother. The foetus may experience several unpleasant sensations during this process. Unlike the previous perinatal matrix, this matrix does not feel hopeless and helpless. Much like a mythical hero facing a trial, the individual in the throes of this experience feels as though they are actively involved in the situation's resolution. Hence, while BPM II might feel like heck, BPM III is more akin to purgatory.

4. BPM 4

As you'd expect, this aligns with the final stages of birth. Following the cutting of the umbilical cord, the child is fully severed from its mother and begins its journey as an independent, autonomous individual. This is when most LSD users are likely to experience an Ego death. However, this Ego death experience is not entirely existentially terrifying. Following its crescendo, positive imagery can be expected, including “visions of blinding white or golden light of supernatural radiance and beauty”. As Grof argues, this experience has positive associations and has the potential to change one's outlook for the better. For example, for some “irrational and exaggerated ambition, craving for money, status, prestige, or power appear in this state to be absurd and childish desires”.

Grof's critics

Grof is not without his critics, and they must be acknowledged. A glaring issue with Grof's theories is that while he claims to apply a scientific method to his research, his interpretation of the data often stretches beyond what empirical information can demonstrate. The most visible cases of this occur when Grof integrates mystical ideas when interpreting what his subjects who have ingested psychedelics experience. An example of this can be found when Grof proposes that individuals having transpersonal experiences exhibit paranormal phenomena such as ESP.

The biggest criticism is that while he can demonstrate that his subjects, when administered doses of LSD, are liable to have death-rebirth experiences that may map onto the biological birth process in some metaphorical manner, the mechanisms he proposes for this are never explained in a way which draws from the data.

Conclusion

Lads, I don't know what's going on right now but I can't feel sleepy and my mind won't stop racing. I want to accomplish everything, I want to hurt myself, I'm impulsively spending money on dumb shit like this site (where I'm the most blocked user by a significant margin), and I can't stop writing. I feel like I would keep writing even if I didn't have the need to make sense, just as long as words are being strung together. Honestly, just ignore this shit. I don't know whether I should contact my psychologist and ask them what to do. I drove earlier today and I probably shouldn't have on such little sleep. It felt like traffic was moving in slow motion lol. I think I'll go play more MGSV to calm myself down.