I felt my phone vibrate underneathe my head this morning; pulling me from the murky depths of a benadryl induced sleep. I fell asleep scrolling through the internet again. I wake up to no good morning texts, no song recommendations, just the weather app telling me I'm going to roast alive again out here in the middle of nowhere. I decided to send this signal out before dragging myself to the shower.
I guess that's what happens when you yank free from the ties that bind your life together. I spend my evenings alone now, watching small town traffic, nursing whatever cold beverage I alternate between pressing to my forehead and taking sips. I feed the cats that live underneathe the porch, and I turn my phone over when I see that it's my mom calling again. I look out over the overgrown backyard and watch the sun go down in a town where no one knows who I am. My place isn't that nice, but the roof is solid when the rains and winds come, and there's a bed, a small TV, and a honeysuckle bush that grows right next to the bedroom window, and that's enough to satisfy.
I suppose my needs and wants are simple. I like that my truck starts everytime I turn the key. I like that there's no traffic when I want to empty out my heart on long drives, music turned to MAX. I like that I dont have much in the way of belongings, just some records, books, some sweatshirts I stole from my dad and a pair of gold hoops gifted by my mom. Despite all this, waking up alone, itd be nice to have the interest of another person, someone to shout wild with in the fields I find to sleep in when I can't shake my restless and rowdy nature, someone to place their hand on the small of my back as they guide me to their favorite booth at the local diner, someone who sees how rich the world is because of the wildflowers that grow on the side of the highway, and that sometimes your favorite song plays on the radio at the right moment on the right day.
This is a lot of rambling to say hey, send me a message if this sounds like something you're into.
Thanks.

This is something noone has ever taught me and I'm incredibly confused by it. But how do people buy a decent car? I have an above average salary (>40k), fantastic credit rating (999 according to Experian), live in a dual income household with no kids and I'm in my 30s and all my life I've had bangers, I drive a 3 series BMW now which sounds good until you realise it's a 2005.
The vast majority of people seem to have really nice cars, I rarely see cars older than 8 years on the roads. But even bad cars that are this old just seem ludicrously expensive. A tiny little hatchback costs around 20x the amount I would get for my car if it's from the past 5 years.
What am I missing?

So, I interpret the following things all as S brake, or Si PoLR. Still, I somehow think I could write as much about my personal experience with F brake, or Se PoLR. Framing it in Socionics jargon, it feels like my cognition abandoned Sensation in general, inflating Intuition to the maximum and balancing it out with strong E-L (FeTi), neglecting P-R (TeFi).
Before you think that I think this was something cool, like Intuition from MBTI or even ""16p"", lol, I want to emphasize that what this primarily means is that I hate facts and sources with disgust; instead, I need to think up everything in my own images, thoughts, words, metaphors or analogies from the bottom. This may sound like special unicorn energy, but in reality it just is inefficient, hated in academia, and generally gets you nowhere (especially according to Gamma values, lol). Everything has to be my idea, truly living inside of me; otherwise it's worthless external bs I ignore as a whole. Researching for my bachelor's thesis soon will mean horror for me, as you might imagine now.
My life is one big concatenation of random special interests on which my obsessive tunnel-vision focuses. (Typology is one of them.) My parents told me this behavior was already present at an early age with all kinds of weird eruptions. Only now, for about the last 5 years, this paradigm shows its downsides.
Currently, one phase can take up to 5-6 weeks, in which I sleep around 4 hours per night, dreaming of nothing but the current thing, and doing nothing else whenever possible while awake. It comes close to mania. In such phases I dissolve in my interests, neglecting everything from hygiene, sleep, food and social contact. However, from the outside I may seem functional: I don't miss work and keep a collected appearance; but everything which has no immediate negative consequences gets reduced to the bare minimum.
When focusing on sensations in a lighthearted way, I realize my general sensitivity:

• easily blinded; even on darker winter days my eyes turn into slits making the muscles in my cheeks tense and uncomfortable over time
• skin is easily burned
• irritated by smell but good nose
• even worse with sounds but good ears
• precise tongue: people sometimes are surprised when I taste subtle differences in recipes

I (unconsciously) am continuously fleeing from sensation in life by keeping a mentally over-active, even draining state. I always had a very good focus, making it possible to point all of my attention on one thing for a long period of time. This makes me forget my body about 95% of my life. Problems arise in these remaining 5%, leaving me with all kinds of hypochondriac phenomena, weird body sensations, excessive fears of dying and generally an over-reaction to the smallest signal from inside.
I don't like going to the doctor because I fear I will become a person who will run there every other day due to some worries that all turned out to be nothing serious anyway. However, the last time I was there I had to go as I felt pressure on my chest still days after a severe panic attack (, that I did not recognize as a panic attack back then). My doctor asked me if I ever thought about autism and my mind immediately was like: You wot mate? Don't you realize my Fe is strong af?!
However, I see now that me being somewhere on the spectrum is at least likely, and I'm just very experienced at what psychology calls "masking". After telling my parents, they researched autism themselves and now they regret that they didn't knew about it and how it generally plays out back when I was younger. They are both sure I "have it", while I myself am not fully convinced.
Seeing how large parts of the community portrait E (or Fe) sometimes is irritating from my perspective. I'm not that much of a people person. I can be - all my life I half-consciously worked on a system what makes people tick; something I like to envision as a mental mosaic of the general person in which every shard represents a single experience of mine, all connecting to one picture - but it's very exhausting for me. People tend to like me while naturally I'm more edgy in the not so cool way. I'm sure this community wouldn't type me as EIE if you knew me in real life, but after learning so much about myself with the help of typological framing, I don't care anymore about the label. (As the seriousness of my flair[s] suggests.) <:-)

i am 24 (f) and my boyfriend is 28. we have been together for 4 years now and we’re starting to hit a rocky point, which is mainly my fault. and i’m kind of glad i’m finally able to admit that i’m the problem, but i don’t know how to fix it.
now this is my first relationship ever. i’ve somehow gone through life doing everything in my power to avoid relationships. i never saw myself as a person to love someone, or to be loved. i put up this emotional wall for 6 months while he was trying to win me over. evidently, he won my heart and i am deeply in love with this man.
now according to family, i’ve always been kind of on the ruder side - aka younger sibling syndrome. don’t like to be touched. easy to tick off. but with my boyfriend in the beginning of our official relationship, i was always in a good mood, pleasant to be around, and we had fun all the time. but now… i am CONSTANTLY rude to my boyfriend. getting mad about the smallest things and making it ruin the whole night. every night. my boyfriend expressed to me he is no longer happy in our relationship and misses the old me, and we are on the verge of breaking up if i don’t become kinder, and generally less angry.
backstory: i have struggled with mental health problems pretty much my whole life. nothing very serious and no diagnosis, but it’s very apparent i have some form of depression. not sure if that plays a role, but i can clearly admit i can be extremely irritable, and that might be a root cause of how i treat my loved ones. which sucks. and i struggle to express my emotions. i don’t want to be this angry person anymore. why would i?
the solution sounds simple, just stop being a cold bitch all the time, but sadly i am struggling with it - for whatever reason. any tips on how to improve my attitude and save my relationship?

I was accidentally exposed to a somewhat loud sound yesterday and have since felt slight pain/discomfort in my ears. Yesterday it was either primarily or exclusively the right ear, which was also towards the speaker, but today it is both. What confuses me is how mild the pain is. Indeed I would hesitate to call it pain at all, except the rare instance of a bit of stabbing pain for up to a few seconds at most. The sound also wasn't that loud, all things considered. It was created by a commercially available speaker at not even full loudness. The specific sound was radio static, if that impacts things (can frequencies you can't hear damage the ear?). Furthermore, I have no issues hearing in either ear. On the somewhat contrary, things almost sound louder, which is probably more realistically susceptibility to loudness. This begs the question: Should I be avoiding sounds until I feel better (edit: meaning normal sounds. I've already turned the loudness down on all my electronics, but maybe I shouldn't be wearing headphones at all?)? I also have no ringing in my ears at all, which I was under the impression generally accompanied damage to the ears. Indeed, I thought it was the first step before pain. After all, in my googling, I found a "study" that said 60% of concertgoers have ringing in the ears after a concert. That is of course longer exposure to slightly quieter sounds, which I suspect changes things. Even so, the sound I was exposed to really wasn't louder than what you'd get at a concert, but I suppose my ears might be delicate, since I've generally tried to avoid loud environments.
​
I'm not really here for comforting words, I'm under the impression that hearing damage (insofar as my hearing sounds fine still) never fully heals, but I'm wondering what this even is. Google simultaneously tells me that a ruptured eardrum is ridiculously painful and not painful at all. The lack of actual pain makes it difficult to justify going to an emergency doctor, and getting an appointment at least a week out is well... slow.

In TWOIAF, we found out that Septon Barth wrote a book on how Valyria acquired it's dragons

In Septon Barth’s Dragons, Wyrms, and Wyverns , he speculated that the bloodmages of Valyria used wyvern stock to create dragons. Though the bloodmages were alleged to have experimented mightily with their unnatural arts, this claim is considered far-fetched by most maesters, among them Maester Vanyon’s Against the Unnatural contains certain proofs of dragons having existed in Westeros even in the earliest of days, before Valyria rose to be a power.
The World of Ice & Fire, Beyond the Free Cities: Sothoryos.

In his book, Barth makes the bold claim that Old Valyria made their dragons from bloodmagic. I do believe his claim to be the truth. Why?

Most of what Septon Barth claims, turns out to be the truth.

Septon Barth made another bold claim that the Children of the Forest taught the men of the Night's Watch how to speak through ravens, that using ravens as a means to transport letters is a degraded form.
This claim turns out to be the truth, despite the Maesters disagreeing with this notion.

"Do all the birds have singers in them?" "All," Lord Brynden said. "It was the singers who taught the First Men to send messages by raven … but in those days, the birds would speak the words. The trees remember, but men forget, and so now they write the messages on parchment and tie them round the feet of birds who have never shared their skin." A Dance with Dragons, Bran III.

He also claims that the seasons are a result of the higher mysteries and magic rather than natural causes, a notion that is again scoffed at by the Citadel. A notion that our author GRRM has confirmed to be the truth.

It’s not another planet. It’s Earth. But it’s not our Earth. If you wanted to do a science fiction approach, you could call it an alternate world, but that sounds too science fictional. Tolkien really pioneered that with Middle Earth. He put in some vague things about tying it to our past, but that doesn’t really hold up. I have people constantly writing me with science fiction theories about the seasons — “It’s a double star system with a black dwarf and that would explain–” It’s fantasy, man, it’s magic.

By looking at those two examples, it's reasonable then to establish Barth as a reliable source of information.

Blood magic seems to be capable of doing what Barth claims.

According to TWOIAF, blood magic is capable of breeding two distinct creatures to create an entirely different one.

In the dungeons of Gogossos, torturers devised new torments. In the flesh pits, blood sorcery of the darkest sort was practiced, as beasts were mated to slave women to bring forth twisted half-human children.

Whatever Aerea encountered during her flight to Old Valyria seems to be a result of blood magic.

“The things…Mother have mercy, I do not know how to speak of them… they were…worms with faces…snakes with hands…twisting, slimy, unspeakable things that seemed to writhe and pulse and squirm as they came bursting from her flesh. Some were no bigger than my little finger, but one at least was as long as my arm…oh, Warrior protect me, the sounds they made…
Fire & Blood, Jaehaerys & Alysanne, Their Triumphs and Tragedies.

Dragons do resemble wyverns and firewyrms

After the Battle of Rook's Rest, Sunfyre is too injured to take flight and instead remained at the Rook's Rest. During this time, it's likened to wyrm by those that witness it crawling throughout the place.

The king’s dragon, Sunfyre, too huge and heavy to be moved, and unable to fly with his injured wing, remained in the fields beyond Rook’s Rest, crawling through the ashes like some great golden wyrm.
Fire & Blood, the Dying of the Dragons, the Red Dragon and the Gold.

When Daenerys takes Quentyn to see her chained dragons, she wonders whether her dragons can dig tunnels similar to firewyrms. They could, to a certain degree.

He's made himself a cave, the prince realized. A burrow in the brick. The foundations of the Great Pyramid of Meereen were massive and thick to support the weight of the huge structure overhead; even the interior walls were three times thicker than any castle's curtain walls. But Viserion had dug himself a hole in them with flame and claw, a hole big enough to sleep in.
A Dance with Dragons - The Dragontamer

The strongest evidence of all, we find in Fire & Blood. Laena Targaryen, the daughter of Baela and Alyn, has an egg that hatches a creature that is for all intents and purposes, a wyrm.

“Her parents' pride and pleasure quickly turned to ash, however; the dragon that wriggled from the egg was a monstrosity, a wingless wyrm, maggot-white and blind. Within moments of hatching, the creature turned upon the babe in her cradle and tore a bloody chunk from her arm. As Laena shrieked, Lord Oakenfist ripped the "dragon" off her, flung it to the floor, and hacked it to pieces.” Fire & Blood

​
When you look at all these points, the most logical conclusion one can come to, is that yes. Targaryen dragons, or dragons from Old Valyria are a result of sorcerery and magic done by the Valyrians.

Article from 2008
South Korea, Republic of Suicide
Suicide, a commonplace in capitalist societies dominated by money, is raised as a serious social problem in south Korea , a colony of US imperialism.
The rate of suicide is on steady increase every year in south Korea .
According to an official data of the government 13,407 persons in all committed suicide last year or over 36.7 persons killed themselves every day.
This figure is much more than that of 2006 by 439 suicides.
An analysis of the suicides of each sex for the last 5 years indicated that the suicide rate of men is higher in general by 65 to 70 % but the women suicides are increasing remarkably every year.
The number of women suicides has increased by 19.3% for the last 5 years from 3,871 in 2003 to 4,617 in 2007.
Of the motive of suicide the pessimism is 46.7% (31,002 persons), taking the lion’s share, and in ages, the middle-aged suicides in their 40s were 23.2% (15,454), the most.
The yearly increase of suicides in south Korea is caused by the unpopular policies of the government.
A lawmaker of south Korea deplored the reality of suicide saying “If we fail to check the social phenomena of suicide which has high contagious speed the whole of society would be engulfed in destruction. As it has the first responsibility for safeguarding the people's life the government should take prompt measures”.
Nonetheless, by pursuing the big-business-benefiting policy the Lee Myong-bak clique is driving small and medium enterprises into bankruptcy, dismissing lots of workers from workshops, knocking down the stock-breeders en mass by allowing the import of cheap American beef, and endangering the people's life.
So, the people, who were deprived of their valuable living place, have no choice but committing suicide cursing the decadent society.
In the gangster-like society overpowered by the jungle law, where they unscrupulously kill even their parents and children for the sake of money and power, and in the misanthropic capitalist society where man is regarded as slave of money and capital, the suicide is unavoidable phenomena and incurable disease.

I visited the Corning Museum of Glass, part of the world renowned Corning, Inc. glass works in Corning, New York, USA many times as a child, between 1986 and 1996. The Hall of Science had an enormous screen filling an entire wall, with a high-fidelity audio system, that repeatedly played a 15min long informational film for tourists about the emerging science of fiber optics (engineered and manufactured by Corning, naturally). The title screen used the theme music from Star Trek: The Next Generation by Jerry Goldsmith. I used to wonder if Corning, Inc. paid for the royalties to this song, and still wonder if copyright issues related to this song have something to do with why this film has never been commercially released, à la MTV's The State. The film started with a scientist explaining the basics of light and optics in layman's terms. I distinctly remember him saying, "You need light to see me." It cuts to a shot of this same scientist outdoors using a hand operated signal lamp to send a Morse Code message to another operator far away.
The film continued with some (now retro-futuristic) vignettes showcasing the way that fiber optics were going to change the way we live. There was a boy in the USA video chatting with a girl in China, with a robotic voice auto-translating everything each one of them said. "Do you have a boyfriend?" he asks, and she just giggles coyly. There's a woman voting from home using a touch TV screen, which sounds an alarm when her toddler puts his hand on the screen for identity verification.
The final climactic scene of the film is a fantastical, 80s sci-fi indulgence, reminiscent of Tron. The narrator scientist holds a glowing fiber optic cable in his hand, pointed right at the viewers. There is dramatic bass reverberation on the audio system as the shot zooms in on the cable, and the scientist says solemnly, "Come with me on a journey through a fiber optic cable," or something along those lines. As soon as the cross section of the cable fills the whole screen, the CGI animated "journey" begins. It's exhilarating, and feels much like a space age roller coaster or waterslide ride, with many unexpected twists and turns, graphics of bouncing light balls, neon light grids, and mathematical equations flying past. The audio is full of robotic sounding chirps, beeps, squelches, and rumbles. It was obviously designed to wow tourists, and I never got tired of watching it.
If I remember correctly, the film ends abruptly at the end of this "journey", the lights come up, and tourists are invited to continue through the museum to the next exhibit.
"The Light Fantastic" was directed by Bran Ferren's company Associates & Ferren. Bran Ferren is a special effects artist renowned in the video industry, but relatively unknown outside of it.
I tagged this post as [Partially Lost], because according to the Corning Museum of Glass Library's catalog, at least one copy of "The Light Fantastic" is available in hard copy there, but access to it appears to be limited to this copy. The film is no longer shown in the museum, and I can find no evidence of any availability beyond this library. It was never commercially distributed, and is not on YouTube, from what I can tell. Can anyone prove me wrong on this? What I wouldn't give to see this film again.
The next time I'm in the Southern Tier of New York State, I may just have to set aside a day to visit the Corning Museum of Glass Library in person, and give "The Light Fantastic" a watch for old time's sake. I may just attempt to say "Hail, Prometheus" and surreptitiously make a copy of it for upload it to YouTube, unless someone can convince me that this would be a very legally dangerous move.

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 48%. (I'm a bot)

Kim Jong Un banned suicide, calling it an "Act of treason against socialism," per Radio Free Asia.
The number of suicides in North Korea is believed to be skyrocketing, it said.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has issued a secret order to local authorities that would ban suicides, after data showed numbers skyrocketing, according to government officials who spoke to Radio Free Asia.
The exact number of suicides in North Korea is difficult to ascertain as the regime rarely offers insight into the country's shortcomings, but the South Korean National Intelligence Service estimated in May that suicides had increased by about 40% over the previous year, per WION. Kim called suicide an "Act of treason against socialism" in the directive, according to Radio Free Asia, stating that local government officials would be held jointly accountable for failing to prevent people from killing themselves in their jurisdiction.
"Most of the suicides were caused by severe poverty and starvation, so no one can come up with a countermeasure right now," they added, according to the news service.
According to 2019 data from the World Health Organization, there were 8.2 suicides per 100,000 people in North Korea, placing the country 45th in the world ranking of suicide rates.

Summary Source FAQ Feedback Top keywords: suicide^#1 official^#2 Radio^#3 Free^#4 Asia^#5
Post found in /worldnews.
NOTICE: This thread is for discussing the submission topic. Please do not discuss the concept of the autotldr bot here.

Chris Watts was convicted in 2019 of killing his pregnant wife and two young daughters weeks after starting a sordid affair with a female co-worker. He initially confessed only to killing his wife and claimed she killed the kids and then he strangled her to death in reaction to it before hiding all their bodies. But he later eventually confessed to having murdered all of them. Watts appeared to have gotten his idea for smearing the blood of his children on his deceased wife from the officers interrogating him while he was in custody. Of course, the officers were only using this as an interrogation tactic in order to lure him into at least a partial confession by absolving him of blame. They knew he had killed his entire family, but they just needed him to confess to where he had hidden their bodies.
But one thing I have noticed is that there hasn't been much critical analysis in the media/blogosphere of his dubious initial confession. I suppose this may be largely because it is so easy to dismiss given how patently convenient and psychologically implausible it is. Not to mention that it is hard to take seriously a man who makes such a claim when the same man hid the bodies of the children by dumping them inside crude oil. Nevertheless, I would like to show that there are many aspects of the details of this initial confession that make it not only implausible but outright ridiculous and nonsensical.
It should be pointed out that while most people rightly believe that Watts annihilated his family and that he is rightly in prison where he belongs, there have been some people on the fringes defending him by professing belief in his initial 'confession' and thus claiming that his wife killed the girls and that Watts ('poor Chris') had only acted out of 'love and anger' for the children by killing his wife as well as the four month old baby in her womb. Undoubtedly the most well known proponents of this nonsensical position were of course Watts' own parents, both of whom - especially his mother - had not gotten along well with Watt's wife, Shannan, while she was alive and both of whom understandably refused to believe that their son could commit such an atrocity. In fact, this position, while being a fringe minority, had significant support especially during the first couple of months following the murders before Watts eventually made his later confessions. One thing I have also noticed about this is that the people supporting this position tend to be fundamentally deceived about Chris Watts' personality and psychology. And that includes his own parents. In fact, what makes this case so interesting is that it is one of the few well known cases of a crime of this nature perpetrated by someone who is a true closeted narcissist and one who is emotionally retarded to some degree.
So here I present a list of reasons why Watts initial story that he told could not possibly have happened because it makes no sense. (Note that it is by no means exhaustive. I could expand on it much further, but I want to keep the article as short as possible.)
First, I should lay out the details of what he claimed happened in this 'confession'. It isn't much at all, and his narration (each time he said it) only lasted a couple of minutes despite the affectedly broken and slow way he was narrating it in the form of answers to successive questions by the interrogators. Some parts are unclear due to the way he was speaking and the quality of the audio, but this is an adequate approximation of it.
According to him, he and his wife, Shannan, had an 'emotional argument' after she confronted him when she came back home that night from her business trip about her suspicions about him having an affair. While admitting he wanted separation, he continued to deny the affair. Nevertheless, he says, she was sure of it at that point, especially because she knew that the previous evening he had made a credit card payment at a restaurant for a dinner that was clearly for two people based on the cost. In any case, he then left her and went downstairs (perhaps to start packing his things, though it isn't clear). Then at some point he heard a commotion, some kind of repetitive knocking sound coming from upstairs. In response, he ran upstairs to their bedroom but Shannan wasn't there. But when he looked at the video monitor showing their daughter Bella's room, he saw in the monitor that the child was sprawled out on the bed (basically insinuating that she was dead). He then ran to their second daughter Cece's room where he saw his wife sitting over the child and strangling her on the bed. (On further questioning, he claimed Cece was lying on her side. Which is a rather strange position for someone to be choking another person. Note that, as it turned out, the girls were actually smothered, not strangled. This is a crucial detail that we shall come to later.) So he then ran up to the bed, saw that Cece was limp and blue, shoved his wife aside so she was now lying on her back on the bed and then began strangling the pregnant woman to death while the whole time she just lay there and did nothing to fight back.
So there you have it. That was his initial story. Now let me just flat out say that this story is completely absurd and nonsensical in so many ways that it's unbelievable that anyone could take it seriously. It is obvious that he was just making it up during the interrogation, though he probably made up much of the core narrative during the minutes the interrogators left him alone in the room to go bring his father. That gave him some time to think.
Before going into the absurdities, I just want to mention that it is rather curious that none of the neighbors reported hearing anything at all that night. No sounds of arguing, fighting or screaming that you would expect in such a heated scenario as described especially given that it took place in the middle of the night. It rather points to the idea that Watts coldly murdered his wife after she came back that night before there could be any argument whatsoever between them. Nevertheless, it is possible that the house may have been adequately sound proof.
Regarding the story problems, let's start with the part about Watts saying he heard a loud knocking commotion which made him run upstairs. What exactly was this loud knocking? He never said, and I wish the interrogators had asked him. If a woman is busy choking a small child to death in her bed, why would there be a loud knocking commotion? I know a certain Watts supporter who has argued that it was probably the child, Bella, having an epileptic convulsion and falling to the floor after her mother's initial attempt to suffocate her; this convulsion then alerted her mother to come back to the room and finally finish the job on her. But even this makes no sense given the timing. Remember that the sound also alerts Watts who allegedly runs upstairs in response to it. How is Shannan able to go back to the room and 'finish the job' on Bella and then go to the other girl's room and choke her to death during the time in which Watts runs up to their bedroom? Note also that Watts said that he saw Bella lying on her bed in the monitor.
Furthermore, how on earth could Watts possibly know from looking at the monitor that Bella wasn't merely asleep? So what if she was sprawled out on the bed? Children are often sprawled when they are sleeping. (Note that he could not claim that she was 'blue' given that it was a black and white monitor. Besides, the room was dark.) The fact of the matter is that Watts had absolutely zero reason to even entertain the idea that Bella was anything other than asleep when he saw her on the monitor. Besides, there was no reason for him to pay any particular attention to her. The relevant information from looking at the monitor was that Shannan was not in Bella's room. That was all he needed to know at that point.
Now let's get to the really interesting part. Watts claimed that when he entered Cece's room, he saw Shannan strangling her on the bed. This is the point at which we know for certain that he is lying about everything. The proof is in what he says.
Firstly, at this point, Watts can't actually see what Shannan is doing right away because her back is turned to him. Furthermore, Cece is a very small child, only three years old. If an adult woman is somehow sitting over her, there is no way that someone standing at the door behind them can see what exactly is going on with the child. There simply isn't enough, if any, of her body to see. Besides, Watts demonstrated with his own words that he couldn't actually see what Shannan was doing in his alleged scenario because he told the interrogators that she was strangling Cece when in actual fact the child was smothered.
The crucial thing here is that there are two alternate possibilities, both of which show Watts to be a murderer: Either he was deliberately lying when he said that he saw Shannan strangling Cece (which he would only lie about if the whole story was made up), or he simply supposed and assumed that she was. But if it was the latter, then it means that he didn't actually see what she was doing. But if he didn't see what she was doing, then why in heaven's name would he run up and start strangling the pregnant woman to death??? For all he knew at that moment, she could have been responding to some emergency and trying to save the child in some way. Or something, who knows? Why would he assume that she was killing the child? Why would his mind even go there? Wouldn't the most natural reaction anyone would have in that situation be to simply ask "What's going on? What are you doing?" Why would he just start strangling the woman to death, especially when he doesn't even know what the condition of the child is?
And yes, despite Watts' claim that the child "was blue", the fact remains that he couldn't really know what exactly her biological condition was. There was no way he could know for sure that she was dead at that point. Notice that, in this fictitious scenario, he never bothered to check the girl's pulse or anything of the sort. He never bothered to perform CPR or any kind of intervention whatsoever. His only answer to the question "why didn't you call 911?" was "because she was limp and blue."
Does any of that make any sense at all? What parent does that?
By the way, it is worth pointing out that strangulation is a form of death that takes several minutes. Even if we accept this nonsensical scenario that Watts painted for the sake of argument, notice that he could have stopped at any point and said "What am I doing?" especially when he realized that he was killing his own unborn child as well.
Speaking of the child in the womb, it is no surprise that Watts did not care about killing his unborn son in the process of killing his wife. In fact, that was precisely what he wanted! He had already expressed very strongly to his wife in the weeks leading up to the murders that he absolutely did not want the baby. In fact, his wife, who was understandably very disturbed by his sudden change in attitude and behavior, told friends that she had become afraid of Watts due to his sudden hatred of the pregnancy. Little did she know that her husband had a mistress who had told him that she wanted to give him his first son.
In fact, amazingly, Watts in his later confessions revealed that he had earlier tried to kill the baby by clandestinely giving his wife a drug that he hoped would destroy the pregnancy!
And this takes us to another absurdity of the story. Because it isn't only his unborn son that Watts had become cold towards in the weeks leading up to the murders. He also became cold and distant towards his little daughters as well. From the time his affair with this other woman began, Watts basically dropped his 'loving, dotting dad' persona and behavior he had previously been displaying towards his daughters. Which basically showed that all that 'loving, dotting dad' act he used to do with them was really just that...an act. Just as the 'nice, loving, dotting husband' thing he did with Shannan was also an act.
In fact, not only was Watts cold and detached towards his daughters in the weeks leading up to their deaths, he even admitted (to his mistress) to feeling resentment towards them (his own little children who were only three and four years old) because he thought they sometimes mimicked his wife's occasionally disrespectful behavior towards him and they seemed to prefer and favor her (Shannan) over him. Of course, this may have been in large part because of Watts' own emotional detachment from his family after he began his affair with his mistress, but he never seemed to consider that. But notice that this makes him look and sound more like a secretly jealous and resentful older brother rather than a fathehusband. And this is not surprising given that Watts, psychologically, was a weak, passive and dependent man who tended to lean on whatever woman was central in his life to lead him. During his youth it was his mother. Later it became his wife. (Then later, it seems, it became his mistress.)
And yet, we are supposed to believe that this same man, who was already planning to dump his family to start a new life with his lover, and who hated his unborn child so much that he tried to kill it, felt the kind of grief and rage for his children that he claimed in his painted scenario that justified him murdering his pregnant wife!
Finally, looking at the absurdity of the story from his wife's point of view, does it really make sense that a woman would, after coming back from a business trip and having an argument with her husband about their marriage and accusing him of an affair (which he denies), then turn around and go and murder her own daughters? In what world does that make any sense?
Anyway, I'll rest my case. As Chris Watts himself said to the interrogators during his fake confession, "none of this makes sense."

Greetings homelab,
First off, I am sorry if this is the wrong subreddit for my question. If there is a better spot please kindly let me know.
I recently acquired a Laptop (Lenovo Legion Pro 5, AMD Ryzen 7745HX, RTX 4070, 32 GB RAM) which I intend to use for gaming as well as more private stuff like banking and trading.
You can call me paranoid, crazy or both but I want to strictly separate the gaming from the more private matters. Therefore I started to inform myself more about virtualization which on paper sounds really appealing but I am lacking hard in knowledge/experience.
From what I learned these past few days is that there a multiple approaches to my problem.
1) Dual booting. Probably the easiest and most effective approach. Installing Linux on one drive, Windows on the other and switch between them accordingly.
2) Virtualization. Creating virtual machines and running both OS at the same time. From what I have read there are two major ways on how to handle this. Type 1 and type 2 hypervisors. The bare metal approach with type 1 where the hypervisor directly interacts with the hardware and both OS run in VMs or type 2 where the host OS runs the VM through a hypervisor like VMware or Virtualbox (in my case probably Windows as host and Linux as guest OS since gaming on consumer nVidia cards has it‘s own caveats when it comes to GPU passthrough apparently).
The dream would be to run both OS at the same time, gaming on one, do private stuff on the other and switch between them seamlessly while also separating them from each other as much as possible.
I am pretty sure there is no ideal scenario here and trade offs have to be made. From what I have gathered type 2 hypervisors might be the way to go though I would really welcome advice and/or recommendations from more experienced people than myself.

A guy i was seeing had a female bestfriend from childhood with whom he also had a sexual relationship as a couple.
They later broke up and now i can't accept her as my friend nor want the guy to see her. It's my personal choice and i can't change my views. I believe in 1+1 relationship without involving close opposite gender friends.
She sounds wayy too intimate by calling him " baby " and " I love you the most " Am i wrong in my part? They secretly meet too - A Red Flag
I often found him commenting " hot " , "sexy " and "darling" on her instagram pictures. Basically she's an ex with the best friend title
People should not ask anyone to change the perspective ones has in one's life.
I won't tolerate these things in my personal life and it's my right. I have the full right to function according to my upbringing that is rather conservative and no one can ask me to change it. :)

Earlier this year, I got a new cell phone. My old one was getting unreasonably slow, and I was way overdue for an upgrade. And, if I’m being honest, I was tired of not having all of the cool new features that my friends had. So I went online, browsed around and found a fantastic new phone I could use to make all of my friends jealous, at least until they upgraded again.
My new phone’s great. It’s got twice the storage of my old phone, it’s running the newest OS, and basically just has all the bells and whistles. Top notch cameras, hotspot mode—you name it, this phone can do it. It’s even got built-in voice-to-text on voicemails, so that when someone leaves me a message, I can just read what they had to say instead of having to actually dial in and listen to it. It’s not perfect, but it gives me the gist of the message, at least. Given that most of the voicemails I get are robocalls asking me to vote for some candidate, or scams telling me that the IRS is coming to arrest me, this feature has saved me a bunch of time.
A few weeks ago, however, I got a voicemail transcript that just said “Hurt.” One word, nothing else. The timer bar showed that the call was over three minutes long, though, which was particularly weird. Obviously, I played that one back to hear what was going on. Had the caller just said “hurt” and then hung around on the line? Had I been butt-dialed, and just caught the very beginning of a conversation at the end? It wasn’t from a number I recognized, but that didn’t necessarily mean I didn’t know the caller.
Except there turned out not to be a caller. I listened to the entire voicemail, all three minutes and forty-two seconds of it, and it was completely silent. I mean, there was a little bit of static, enough so that I knew that my phone hadn’t just cut off, but there wasn’t even the sort of background noise you get when you’ve been called from someone’s purse or pocket. There was nothing, and there definitely wasn’t anyone saying “hurt.”
I listened to the voicemail twice more before deleting it. It was weird, but I didn’t give it any more thought after that. Technology does strange things sometimes, you know? Makes it interesting. I used to have an iPod that would skip songs it didn’t like. It made me laugh. I appreciated that it had a bit of personality.
But then a few days later, I got another long, blank voicemail. This time, the transcript said, “You there? Helm.” This one was a minute and six seconds long, and just like the first one, there was absolutely nothing on it even remotely like a voice. I closed myself in a silent room, turned the volume all the way up and pressed my ear to the phone, and there was nothing. Just that quiet static, like a white noise machine playing from the next room over. Not even any real variations in that sound. Nothing.
The day after that, there was another one. This one was two minutes long and it said “miss you,” according to the transcript. I downloaded the voicemail that time and played it back on my computer. Not only could I still not hear anything, but the spectrogram showed absolutely no spikes. There just wasn’t any sound in there, but my voicemail was convinced there were words.
I tried a few things then. I borrowed a friend’s phone and called mine, left myself a blank voicemail. No transcript. Then I called again, played the recording I’d made of the “miss you” blank voicemail into the phone. My phone faithfully reported it as “miss you” again, even though I could see on the computer that the speakers hadn’t produced any sound other than that quiet hiss.
My friend’s phone had voicemail transcription too, so I swapped the phones, called his, and left him a recording of that blank voicemail. I just wanted to prove that it was something weird with my phone, but when his phone popped up with the voicemail notification, his transcript read “miss you,” too.
We both got kind of freaked out at that point, but we decided to try it with one more. I still had the “helm” one from the previous day saved, so we transferred it over to the computer, called his phone and let that blank recording play through, too. This time, the transcript wasn’t quite the same. I don’t know if his phone had better speakers or better transcription software or what, but his voicemail transcript read, “You there? Help me.”
So my friend bailed out at that point, and I couldn’t really blame him. Silent calls from nowhere were bad enough, and now that they were getting creepy on top of it? Time to get out, for sure.
Only when I thought about it, it wasn’t really that creepy, was it? If anything, it was sad. Someone, something, was trying to contact me, and I couldn’t even hear it. Him. It. And it couldn’t hear me, because all it ever got was my voicemail.
I decided to start answering the phone when I got calls from unrecognized numbers. The first few were more robocalls, and I hung up on them as soon as they started talking. There was always a brief moment of hope when I said “Hello?” to an empty line, and then a letdown as the telemarketer or automated message cut in.
And then one time, after I said “Hello?”, there was nothing but silence and a faraway hiss. I listened, straining my ears, but heard nothing but that soft susurrus.
“Can you hear me? I want to help you,” I said. I felt like I was calling out over a great distance, and fought the urge to raise my voice. I heard no response.
“Tell me what I can do for you,” I pleaded. Still, there was nothing. I stayed on the line, listening, until it clicked dead a couple of minutes later.
Since then, I’ve been getting voicemails almost every day. They’re always of varying length, some as short as forty seconds, one almost five minutes long. I don’t usually bother to listen anymore, because I know I’ll hear nothing but that quiet, continuous sigh. But I read the transcripts, fragmentary and occasionally garbled as they are.
Hurts said one, which I think is what the first one was supposed to say, too.
Searching, said another.
Come find me.
Ever tomb.
Marking light for dark.
Smiles.
Hurts dark.
Peace.
Help, help you.
Invitation commit accept.
Blood, water.
As you can see, they don’t usually make a lot of sense. They veer between creepy and peaceful, lost messages getting tangled trying to make their way out of a labyrinth. It’s been a fascinating view into something, even if I’m not sure what I’m seeing.
But today, my phone’s been ringing off the hook. Every time a call ends, a new one starts ringing. I answered a couple of times, and it’s always that same eerie silence. And today, every time the voicemail notification beeps, the transcript says the exact same thing:
See you soon.

As always, thank you to u/SpacePaladin15 for the wonderful universe that is NoP
Thank you to u/cruisingNW for proof reading and helping me out of some hang ups, you're the man! Honestly LoM wouldn't have gone very far without him! If you haven't you should absolutely go read Foundations of Humanity! It's very good.
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Memory Transcription Subject: Christopher A. Dewey, Human Merchant Sailor, Venlil-Human Exchange Participant
Date [Standardized Human Time]: August 29th, 2136, Very Early Morning.
We got a message an hour ago from Videk, ordering us to report to Hangar-08 to start On-Stick training; and to bring our bags! I guess the guy had wanted to get as much out of the day as he could. That or he wanted to get this over with as soon as possible.
Videk met us at the doors to the hangar, a small travel bag sitting on the floor by his side, tail swaying slowly as he watched us approach. “Good Waking, Taisa. Good Waking… Christopher.” An improvement, I’ll have to ask Taisa about that talk they had.
“This,” He continued, motioning to the shuttle parked in the hangar behind him with his tail. “Is your training shuttle: registration C1-0V3R-HR-EX.Your first On-Stick training assignment will be to follow appropriate lift off and departure procedures, plot and follow a course to The Capitol on Venlil Prime, seek permission to land from the proper authorities, and land safely and legally following those permissions. All of this, while following proper procedure and regulations. All of this will be graded.”
As he speaks the door behind him slides open, revealing a broad hangar bay, heavy clamshell doors dominate the far wall. At the center of the bay sits a stout craft painted white and black, a pair of stubby wings jutting from its sides flowing into a pair of engines flanking a singular tail. Venlil script is painted at the root of the tail and on the top of the rear ramp.
“Upon arrival in the Capitol you will have some paperwork to do at the U.N. offices with regards to your habitation. I will need to pick up some equipment from the training facility at the landing fields. After our respective errands, let’s say half a claw, we will meet up back at the shuttle and from there you will be plotting an in-atmosphere route to Shadetree, Sunward of the Capitol, to drop me off and wait for me to install and calibrate the remote instructing equipment. Once that is completed, you will plot another in-atmosphere course to Heartwood River, concluding this paws evaluations. Do you have any questions?”
I shook my head, and Taisa flicked her ears, in what I believed was a negative. “Very good, load your stuff and we’ll begin immediately.”
After a few minutes of finding places to tie off our belongings and get everything situated, I sat in the pilot’s seat and ran through the pre-flight check with Taisa. We caught a pair of faults in the starboard fuel delivery units. Videk seemed pleased we had caught them, and that he hadn’t had to tell us they were there. I could feel a slight smile tug at the corner of my mouth.
Devious little bastard makes for a damn good instructor.
Once the preflight was complete I closed the rear ramp and hailed the flight control tower. “Tower this is shuttle C1-0V3R-HR-EX requesting clearance for departure, place us enroute to Venlil Prime with planned landing zone of Capitol Shuttle Field 13-Bravo.” A Human voice came back over the line, a bit of mirth in their voice. “Shuttle, Tower, you are clear for departure, opening bay doors now. Good luck and Godspeed.”
The doors to the station hangar yawned open, filling the viewport with the void and all its stars beyond as I slowly brought the shuttle off the hangar floor, easing it out through the opening. I reached over to the nearest display and opened the Nav-computer interface, plotting our course to VP, and then on to the Capitol landing fields. Once I was confident I had the proper navigation commands and sequences set I called over Videk to have him review my work.
He gave me a quick flick of his tail before saying “Looks good, Christopher. Feel free to spool and jump when you’re ready.”
Videk’s approval given, I reached over and pushed forward on the throttles, engaging the drive and hurtling the shuttle into subspace.
It. Was. Beautiful. Everything seemed to stretch, stars in the distance turning from pinpricks of light into brilliant colorful streaks, lengthening as we bounded through the void. Lines of light far off in my periphery zip past like tracers as the ones before me feel as if they’re pulling me in with their kaleidoscope of color. The hum of the shuttle fell into the background while I became entranced by the light show in front me, picturing myself on the set of one of those old sci-fi shows I would watch with Pa on the weekends. The Future my ancestors had imagined was Here, right before my eyes and at the tips of my fingers! This view was… Hypnotic. The simulator couldn’t hope to do it justice.
Two hours. That was it.
Two hours to travel what, until very recently, would have been considered an insurmountable distance for Humanity. Dropping from Sub-space into the proximity of Venlil Prime was another astoundingly brilliant view. Scorched white deserts flowing into massive swathes of golden sands cut by the occasional streak of blue before blending into a beautiful verdant mix of turquoise and green fields, with vast lakes and rivers dotting the forests, flowing into wide marshy wetlands. Before finally, the curve of the planet fell away from its star, allowing the fading sunlight to showcase glittering city lights dotting the countryside.
The thrusters burn to life, crackling and thrumming with power as they drive us forward through the void to the beautiful marble before us. I flip two switches on the overhead, tapping the leftmost display to call up the local channel list and place a hail to the Capitol’s landing fields to request clearance and pad assignment. A quick ping, signifying my hail had been acknowledged, chimed over the console speaker.
“Capitol Shuttle Field 13-Bravo this is Shuttle C1-0V3R-HR-EX requesting clearance for landing at an available pad of convenience.” “C1-0V3R-HR-EX, you are cleared for landing, 13-Bravo, direct to pad Charlie-5.”
The Flight through the Void may have had some feeling of familiarity and nostalgia to the old Sci-fi shows at home; but in-atmo had the far better view! Rolling turquoise fields and towering thick trees, with their canopies tilted greedily towards that unmoving sun, falling away to a gargantuan metropolitan area, its architecture entirely alien yet still somehow familiar. Massive skyscrapers soar to touch the sky, reflecting light in brilliant angles and colors, the space below them populated by squat sturdy buildings and deep black roads. The Venlil going about their lives below look like ants as I ease off the throttle, taking the speed down to prepare for the final approach. The display on the viewport flags my landing area with a small pip guiding me in, slow and easy.
The cabin jostles slightly as the ship settles onto its landing gear. Videk seemed impressed; his ears up as he tapped away at his data pad! Taisa’s tail sways happily back and forth as she runs through the diagnostics of the landing, checking system status reports.
“Looks like we’re all clear. Videk do you have a time we should try and be back by?” Taisa beeps, showing the flight instructor the console in front of her.
“I just need to pick up the equipment and get it linked up, that should only take about a half a claw. Walking to and from the landing field and the U.N. Offices should put you at about the right time.” Videk turned away and made for the ramp; Taisa’s talk helped, and he was clearly trying, but he was still a bundle of nerves around me. His fur was so puffed out it looked like he was holding more static than a thunderhead.
As we stepped out of the artificial gravity of the shuttle I felt like I was carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. My first step faltered making me stumble down the ramp and bounce off the… soft pavement? “Oh, forgot about that.” Videk winced sympathetically, “Our gravity is about twenty percent more than earth’s, so be careful. Falls are likely to hurt a little bit more here.”
“Would’ve been nice to know first, Videk.” I groaned, rolling myself over and sitting up, luckily the visor hadn’t fallen off; I would need to add one of those new back braces and some knee compressors to that order of stuff from home. “Do you know where the U.N. Offices are? Or should we just ask around to find our way there?”
“I do not, but you should be able to get directions on your pad. I trust the two of you can figure it out, so I’m going to go get the equipment I need. I will wait for the two of you with the shuttle once I am ready.” With a parting flap of his ears, Videk turned and walked away; flicking the tip of his tail back and forth as he did.
“Alright then,” I grumbled, forcing myself up off the pavement, swaying as I found my new equilibrium. “let’s get going. Can you pull up those directions?” She nodded slightly, flicking her ears forward. “Got them up already! You alright there?”
“I’m fine.” I grunted, rolling out my shoulder a little. “Feels like I weigh a quarter ton, but I’ll get over it with time. Lead the way.”
After a few minutes of walking we were off the landing fields and into the streets of the city. My boots sinking into the pavement a little with each step, just like on the landing field. “Taisa, what is this stuff? I figured it was just to make landings a little softer on shuttles but it’s everywhere! Looks like pavement but it gives like rubber; why are your roads like this?” “Anti-stampede concrete.” She stated, matter of factly, like that meant literally anything to me. My silence must have tipped her off that I wasn’t getting it as she focused one eye on my visor. “Oh… I guess Humans wouldn’t need that. It’s to help reduce stampede fatalities, it’s the same reason the roads and buildings have gentle curves, no sharp angles.” Looking around at the way the groups of Venlil flowed through the streets I realized she was right, what I had thought was a futuristic aesthetic design was just to keep people from killing each other against walls or trampling them into the ground when they got scared. How strange… and slightly worrying.
“Weird, that sounds like some crazy wonder material. Bet we’d have a bunch of uses for it back on earth.” My eyes watched the tips of skyscrapers towering above us, “How far out does it say we are?”
“Only a little further, about one and a half kilometers.” She responded, a slight pant in her voice. I wasn’t in the best shape, cardio wise, but I couldn’t imagine getting winded after 10 minutes of walking; guess all that talk about the Venlil having less stamina than us was right.
The U.N. Office complex was a series of giant flowing buildings built on a large park area. It wasn’t any design I had ever seen so I figured it had to have been an existing complex that just got turned over to the U.N. for their uses.
Passing through the heavy glass front doors we found a wide receptionist's desk, with several Humans sitting behind it, answering questions and directing people where they needed to go. One of the receptionists, a short dark haired woman with a visor obscuring her face, beckons us over. “Hello! How can I help you today?” “H-Hi!” Taisa beeps excitedly, her tail swaying behind her confidently as she takes a deep breath and straightens her back. “We’re part of the ‘integration’ experiments, we were told we need to fill out some forms for habitation. Where do we go to do that?” “Oh! Congratulations! That would be Suite 216-B” The receptionist answered, excitement in her voice as she pointed to a room on the map infront of her.
“Thank you!” Taisa responded, turning to head up the stairs behind the receptionist's desk. Halfway up the stairs she swiveled her ears over to me before saying. “Sorry, I figure if I’m probably going to have to work with Humans other than you for this I should try and at least work on being able to talk to them.” “It’s alright,” I chuckle, patting her shoulder. “That’s a great idea and you’re doing alright!” Walking down the hallways we saw prints of landscapes from Earth, Machu Picchu, the Uyuni Salt Flats, The Grand Canyon, YellowStone, Hạ Long Bay, The Zhangye Mountains and Plitvice Lakes. I pointed out the places I had been to as we walked past them, finally stopping at suite 216-B.
The door was open so we knocked, getting a quick ‘enter’, before stepping in. A man sits behind a desk, the top covered in organized files and folders, a placard on his desk declares his name as ‘Obediah Kamara’ with a small Liberian flag stamped beside it.
His visor obscures his face as he looks between the two of us before beginning. “I presume you are…” He sorts through a couple of the files and folders before stopping on one and opening it, pulling out a document packet. “Christopher Dewey and Taisa. Correct?”
We both respond in the affirmative as he gestures for us to take the seats across from him, sliding the documents across the table as Taisa’s pad pings on her belt. “These are agreements to ensure that you,” He starts, looking at me. “Understand the rules in regards to your habitation here on Venlil Prime. I understand that part of your integration will be taking you off world to and from Earth, these rules primarily apply to your time here. We ask that you remain considerate of the provided rules and guidelines on the ship if you are carrying Venlil passengers. Taisa, those are the terms, conditions, compensations and requirements for your family to house a human when the two of you are present. Virtual signature of that document is required within the next 3 of your ‘paws’.” Taisa stiffened a little bit, likely thinking about her Mother’s response to my arrival; that was something we were probably going to have to have a talk about later. I had an idea for the short term, at least. I ran through the paperwork real quick and it was all pretty simple: don’t be without the visor or some kind of face covering in settings where you couldn’t guarantee that an unprepared Venlil wouldn’t see you, avoid aggression, speak quietly, no eating meat, animal products or byproducts, no hunting local wildlife; bit odd considering I didn’t even have a bow or a gun but rules are rules, I suppose.
“Sounds good to me,” I said, signing the indicated portions of the document. “When are my items supposed to get here?”
“We don’t expect your requested items to arrive for another week or so, for now you’ll have to make do with what you brought with you.” Obediah responded, shuffling the packet of papers back into the folder they had come from. “With that complete you are free to go. I understand you have training to complete, so I wish you good luck with your endeavor. If you have any questions or needs with regards to your habitation you can contact Sam, their details will be forwarded to your communication devices.”
I caught Taisa’s tail twitching as her ears swiveled nervously out of the corner of my eye; even with her attempts to push through it I think the amount of Humans around was starting to get to her. Still, she was doing better than I think a lot of Venlil would be able to manage. I reached over, gently tapping my hand against her paw, trying to ground her a little before motioning to go, she nodded slightly as she flicked her ears.
“Thank you, Obediah, we’ll be sure to get into touch with them once we get their contact. Have a good day!”
Taisa and I stood, exiting the room and making our way out of the building, stopping to look at another picture or two along the way. Something needed to be done about possibly not having a place to stay to put my, and more so Taisa’s, mind at ease. I figured I could sleep in the shuttle, if I had to. It wouldn’t be particularly comfortable but I could certainly do it; I’d need a mat, maybe a sleeping bag or some blankets and a pillow.
I had no clue where I was going to get my hands on those, or at least a set of them big enough for me to actually use.
Then I saw the temporary units in the field near the offices. Men and Women in U.N. fatigues were milling about the area. Barracks? That could solve the problem, if they’re willing to help out a man in need, of course.
“Hey, Taisa, I need to make a stop real quick.” I state, walking briskly towards the largest of the buildings. “What’s up?” She asks, ears focused on me as she tilts her head a little.
“Well, I was thinking, I don’t think your parents, your Mom especially, won’t, uh… won’t want me around. At least not for a little while until she gets to know me better.”
“I think you can get past it, she’s not that bad… It’ll just be tough.”
“Oh I’m sure I can get past it, but I’d rather not just sleep in the grass in the meantime.” “I don’t think she’d make you sleep in the grass…” “I like being prepared, if she doesn’t want me in her house I’m not going to push the issue.”
“I just… I hope it doesn’t come to that, I’m not going to let her toss you outside like an animal.” She sighs quietly as we push through the front door of the barrack building.
A desk manned by a napping U.N. Marine with Private ranks stuck to his shoulders filled the space beyond the doors. He stirs as the doors clank shut behind us before scrambling to throw on his Visor as he notices Taisa.
“Hello, Uh… Can I help you? This area is for active U.N. personnel only.” He starts, his voice finding its authority only about halfway through the statement.
I stand straight, trying to muster the stern demeanor I’d found in my father and his friends so often when they tried to get something on base after their retirements. “Easy, Private. It has come to my attention that my accommodations lack proper bedding.” “O-Oh, uh, I apologize…” He stammers out, searching for something to say, likely looking to find a way out of trouble for sleeping on duty.
“Sir.” I state. “What’s your name, Private?”
“A-Alvarez, Sir.”
“Alvarez. I’ll remember that, Alvarez, how about we make this quick, you get me a wrap of blankets, 3 pillows and a bedroll and I don’t find your commander to report your… lack of enthusiasm.”
The private snaps to attention before firmly stating. “Yes Sir! I’ll be right back, Sir!”
As the private turns and walks away crisply I hear Taisa whistle with laughter a little beside me. “I’m surprised that worked.”
“You’d be surprised what a hard voice, straight back and the right slacking Private can get you if you just don’t go pushin' it too far in your story.” I whispered with a wink.
After a few minutes of waiting Private Alvarez returned with a duffle bag, stuffed full with blankets and pillows, as well as an inflatable bedroll under the other arm. “Here you go, Sir. Will this be ok?” He asked, passing the items over to me.
“Perfect, thank you Private.” I took the bundle of bedding and turned to the door, before turning my head back over my shoulder, “Oh, and Private? Do try and get proper rest before duty.”
A shaking “Y-Yes, Sir.” followed Taisa and I out of the door.
The first half of the walk back to the landing field was quiet, I was scanning the skyline again, I just couldn’t get over the fact that I was on another planet. Taisa however had her ears pinned back, her paws lightly holding her tail tuft as we walked.
“What’s got ya down?” I asked, watching the herd of Venlil glide around us as we came, trying their best not to get too close to me.
“I’m… concerned.” She sighed, the tip of her tail twitching between her paws.
“About?”
“My mother, what she’ll say… What she’ll do.”
“I can’t exactly say I know what her reaction’ll be… But, whatever it is we’ll just have to deal with it. It’ll probably take time, but we’ll get by.” I soothed. She let go of her tail, placing the tip of it on my back, but her ears didn’t let up at all.
The rest of the walk to the shuttle was quiet as she fidgeted with her paws, trying to take her mind off of the subject. Videk was there waiting for us, a few crates secured to the cargo area of the shuttle that weren’t present before.
“You two ready?” He asked, flicking his tail at us.
“I think so.” I responded, stowing the bedding in an empty compartment as Taisa flicked her ears.
We ran through our preflight checklist again, finding another pre-placed failure from Videk waiting for us, this time in the starboard control surfaces. Once the check was done we radioed the tower for clearance to take off and set an in-atmo course for Shadetree to drop off Videk. It was a short hop, about a half hour of flying or so before I had to call ahead for clearance to land again.
Most of the flight from the Capitol to Shadetree had been rolling turquoise and green hills or open fields of produce growing in the everpresent light. A sudden dense forest rose from the fields, thick dark brown trees with fluttering golden leaves stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction. A sudden break in the forest revealed a clearing for the Landing field, much smaller than the one at the Capitol. The city was built under the canopy of the trees, giving it a constant filtered light casting down through the shifting leaves. It was certainly a beautiful town, I’d have to come back to visit some day. Maybe once Videk had warmed up to me a little bit more.
As the ramp fell ,a small cargo truck arrived alongside the shuttle to collect Videk and his equipment. I offered to help but the Venlil driver just about ran when I started talking so I figured it was probably best to just keep out of it. Once the cargo truck departed, Taisa came back up to the cockpit, plopping down in her seat, and looked through the viewscreen at the trees beyond. The soft hiss of the ramp closing marked the finality of Videk’s departure.
“So, how are you feeling about Venlil Prime so far?” She asked, one eye on my face as I finally slipped the visor off.
“I like it! Between the beautiful scenery, interesting architecture and hanging out with you and Shamrock, here I’m having a great time!” I responded, rubbing my hand on what amounted to the shuttle's dashboard.
“... Shamrock?” She asked, her tail swaying in what I figured for amusement.
“Yea! Remember how I told you Humans like looking for patterns? Well it works on words and numbers as well. The tail number for the shuttle could be taken to spell ‘Clover-HR-EX’, or just clover for short. Clovers are a type of plant on earth that a few cultures believed to be lucky, one way or another. One of the nicknames for them was a Shamrock!”
She laughed at me.
“You are such a dork.” She said, wiping a tear from her eye as her tail whipped back and forth. “It’s a good name, usually shuttles don’t get one. I think it fits.”
I chuckled, a thought crossing my mind. “Think we could get any shuttle-grade paint? Preferably green, yellow and black?” She raised an eyebrow at me as her ears cocked at different elevations. “Oh? Someone feeling a little artistic?”
“Well, I could always paint a Shamro-” I was interrupted as the ping signifying we were being hailed sounded off. “We’ll finish this later.” I said, pointing at her as I accepted the hail.
Videk’s voice bled through the speakers. “Ok, looks like the connection is secure. Let’s go ahead and run through getting you familiar with the software, it should be quick and easy.”
It was not.
It took two hours. After a lot of trial and error, stop and go flights to test the connection and a few near misses with an especially tall tree we had gotten the system setup such that Videk was confident it would work in an emergency if he needed to step in. With that all squared away Taisa and I settled in to get on our way to Heartwood River. Sleeping on the blow up mattress or on a real bed hardly mattered at this point, I just wanted to sleep.
The overall flight time was set to be about an hour and a half, not too bad and man was the view beautiful: rolling fields, roaring rivers, pristine skies and alien forests abounded across the countryside. We had just passed over Hidden Plains when Taisa and I were just settling back into talking about her parents and our best route to try and handle them, when the hail system chimed and immediately spat out a harsh tone without acknowledgement, the same one the simulator used for distress calls.
“Mayday Mayday Mayday. Report of shots fired at residence housing humans. Need immediate medical evac at The Berrypatch Farm in The Grove, 11 minutes Night-ward from Hidden Plains. Hailing all airborn craft, we need a medical evac immediately!”
I immediately returned the hail. “This is cargo shuttle C1-0V3R-HR-EX. Responding to Mayday from the Grove. We are en-route to render aid. Hold tight, we’ll be there.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Taisa tighten her flight harness as I reached for the throttle.
---
First Prev. Next

Want to find the best noise cancelling headphones according to Reddit users? This post is a hub for Reddit discussion on that topic!
Here you'll find a sourced summary of the most recommended noise cancelling headphones by Redditors (with quotes on why), as well as a list of Reddit threads discussing the best noise cancelling headphones - with input from real users who have sometimes used a product for years.
Got your own questions or product suggestions? Make sure to leave a comment here to get even more discussion going!

Summary: best noise cancelling headphones in 2023 according to Reddit

These are the top 3 recommended options:

1. Sony WH-1000XM4 - most recommended for good ANC & sound. Usually around $350
2. Bose QC 45 - great ANC and comfort. Usually around $270
3. Anker Soundcore Q30 - best budget option. Usually around $80

Below you'll find more info on where they've been recommended, and why.
1. Sony WH-1000XM4
Features: 40mm driver, bluetooth 5.0, 30 hour battery life, touch controls, AUX port (Amazon link rated 4.7 stars after 49000+ reviews.)
Mentions by Redditors:

• "Recently bought Sony XM4. So far I am impressed by the noise cancellation. It is pricey but worth of investment. Just be careful using it while walking in the road. I forgot to turn off the noise cancellation when there's a car beeping on me already. Some bystanders need to pull me haha. Now I use the automatic ambient sound control so it will be safer LOL" - source, 18 upvotes
• "I'd personally recommend the Sony XM4's for that price range - they usually retail around $400+ though as they recently released the XM5's I'd expect to see them discounted in the lead up to Christmas (i.e. they were on sale for $300 last Christmas)." - source, 44 upvotes
• "I just upgraded to the Sony MX4s and absolutely love them, I've always gone with Sony and they are reliable and durable" - source, 12 upvotes
• "Sony W1000XM4 have the #1 Noise Cancellation rating, these should be at the top of your list, sound wise they aren’t that bad, not the best but not the worst." - source, 127 upvotes
• "Sony XM4 get my vote!! Great audio sound quality (I use mine to play relaxing rain sounds) and the auto ambient noise level adjustment is nice if you use it! I like to keep my ANC at my control, so I have it set to toggle between ANC or not by a quick double tap to the right headphone. The tap controls are nice! I also wear mine for 8-12 hours a day depending on what’s going on. They are insanely comfortable! Pricey but cost/per use for me has made these a great investment." - source, 5 upvotes
• "I have Sony 1000xm4 (over ear)and they are spectacular at ANC and really good at audio after some eq tweaks. They are simply amazing on planes and trains and bus rides. Great in offices, but higher tones come through easier than lower tones" - source, 73 upvotes
• "I’ve had AirPod pros, NC700, and Sony XM4. Out of that bunch, XM4 wins." - source, 3 upvotes

2. Bose QC 45
Features: 40 mm driver, bluetooth 5.1, 22 hour battery life, button controls, AUX port (Amazon link rated 4.6 stars after 10000+ reviews.)
Mentions by Redditors:

• "The other option would be the Bose QuietComfort 45 (no major difference between the Sony XM4)" - source, 44 upvotes
• "Tried on a bunch recently; went w e Bose QC45 as found them the most comfortable on (some of the others kind of “grabbed” & pulled my hair). So agree maybe try to get him to try on" - source, 3 upvotes
• " I personally love the Bose QuietComfort line, and the QC 45s in particular are wonderful. I use them to listen to podcasts while working and doing chores around the house, and they quite easily remove the sounds of appliances and dampen (but not remove) the noise of a TV. It's enough that with my podcast or audiobook at low/medium volume, I cannot hear any of the outside world." - source, 11 upvotes
• "Bose quietcomfort 45. So comfortable and good bass." - source, 2 upvotes

3. Anker Soundcore Q30
Features: bluetooth 5, 40 hour battery life, AUX port (Amazon link rated 4.5 stars after 50000+ reviews.)
Mentions by Redditors:

• " I have the Soundcore Q30,and it is quite good. It blocks about 50 percent on voices and about 70% on machine noises." - source, 5 upvotes
• "On a budget, the Soundcore Anker Q30 are an option. I travel a lot and they work well. Not as high quality as the Sony, but definitely do the job" - source, 4 upvotes
• "Second Anker Soundcore. I only have Q30s which are a few rungs below the Q45s, and I’m super impressed with the build quality and noise cancellation. I use them at work (open concept office) and on planes, trains etc and they get the job done." - source, 3 upvotes

Amount of upvotes as of: June 9th, 2023.

Reddit threads discussing the best noise cancelling headphone

Here's a list of Reddit threads I've analyzed that have genuine recommendations about choosing the best noise cancelling headphone:

• Good noise cancelling headphones recommendation on HeadphoneAdvice, 20 comments
• Noise cancelling headphone recommendations please on newzealand, 34 comments
• [...] looking for noise cancelling headphones to specially listen to Podcasts [...] on podcasts, 64 comments
• recommendations for noise canceling headphones on neurodiversity, 39 comments
• Which headphones in 2022 would you say has the best noise cancelling? on HeadphoneAdvice, 40 comments
• Moved to a super noisy common area. What head set is the best for an chaotic office environment? on sysadmin, 186 comments
• noise canceling headphone recommendations? on delta, 127 comments

Amount of comments as of: June 9th, 2023.

Questions or suggestions

Still have your own questions or suggestions for a good noise cancelling headphone? Comment below!

My canyon torque 2018 makes a clang sound, presumably from the fork (rockshox lyrik). It happens on the first and last bit of travel when pushing the handlebars hard. If I don't let it decompress all the way I won't hear the noise. It also happens when dropping either the front or back wheel.
The fork has supposedly been services 20 hours ago by the previous owner. I didn't think much of the noise as he said the upper headset bearing needed to be replaced according to him. Both headset bearings have been replaced, but the issue persists, so it's more likely a fork issue, but I have no clue what it could be.
Video demonstrating the issue:
https://reddit.com/link/14539fv/video/n0q8k5hzcz4b1/player
Edit: tried deflating and re-inflating the fork, and testing this on both ends of the rebound setting, but that didn’t really make a difference.

St. Jerome, 393 AD: Men Should Not Marry
St. Jerome (AD 347 – AD 420) was one of the most prolific of the early Christian theologists. His main accomplishment was the translation of the Bible into Latin, an important part of the crumbling Roman Empire’s conversion to Christianity. He is frequently ranked among the likes of Augustine, Ambrose, and Gregory the Great as one of the original Doctors of the Church.
Although Christianity has a long history of supporting holy matrimony, St. Jerome was vehemently opposed to the idea of marriage. In my opinion, his condemnation goes too far; he claims furthermore that all sexual contact is inherently sinful and unclean, and urges chastity for all people. It is worth noting that he engaged in much sexual hedonism and debauchery as a young student in Rome, so he at least speaks with experience, if only to reject that lifestyle. Nevertheless, his dissection and critique of marriage and male-female relations remain supremely insightful.
(His advice could be applied to softer relationships too, for the same dynamics and drawbacks are present, albeit in lesser form. Where he says “marriage,” one could easily replace it with “LTR,” and “wife” with “girlfriend.”)
He lays down his reasoning in a book written in 393 AD, Against Jovinianus. An extremely well-learned man, Jerome brings up many quotes, anecdotes, and famous figures from the Classical world. Here are the original sources for these excerpts if you want the whole picture.

Theophrastus’ Golden Book of Marriage I feel that . . . I have said far more than is customary in illustrating a point, and that I might be justly censured by my learned reader. But what am I to do when the women of our time press me with apostolic authority, and before the first husband is buried, repeat from morning to night the precepts which allow a second marriage? Seeing they despise the fidelity which Christian purity dictates, let them at least learn chastity from the heathen. 

Even back then, women were quick to move on with their (love) lives, and marriage vows held little sway.

A book - On Marriage - worth its weight in gold, passes under the name of Theophrastus. In it the author asks whether a wise man marries. And after laying down the conditions that the wife must be fair, of good character and honest parentage, the husband in good health and of ample means, and after saying that under these circumstances a wise man sometimes enters the state of matrimony, he immediately proceeds thus: “But all these conditions are seldom satisfied in marriage. A wise man therefore must not take a wife. For in the first place his study of philosophy will be hindered, and it is impossible for anyone to attend to his books and his wife. Matrons want many things: costly dresses, gold, jewels, great outlay, maid-servants, all kinds of furniture, litters and gilded coaches. Then come curtain-lectures the livelong night: she complains that one lady goes out better dressed than she; that another is looked up to by all; ‘I am a poor despised nobody at the ladies assemblies.’ ‘Why did you ogle that creature next door?’ ‘Why were you talking to the maid?’ ‘What did you bring from the market?’ ‘I am not allowed to have a single friend, or companion.’ She suspects that her husband’s love goes the same way as her hate. 

God, those complaints sound word-for-word like what you’d hear today. Things just don’t change.

There may be in some neighbouring city the wisest of teachers; but if we have a wife we can neither leave her behind, nor take the burden with us. To support a poor wife, is hard; to put up with a rich one, is torture. Notice, too, that in the case of a wife you cannot pick and choose; you must take her as you find her. If she has a bad temper, or is a fool, if she has a blemish, or is proud, or has bad breath, whatever her fault may be – all this we learn after marriage. Horses, asses, cattle, even slaves of the smallest worth, clothes, kettles, wooden seats, cups, and earthenware pitchers, are first tried and then bought; a wife is the only thing that is not shown before she is married, for fear she may not give satisfaction. 

I’ll admit that it is now easier than ever to “try before you buy,” but even so, a woman has incentive to hide her flaws and stay on her best behavior until you’re invested and committed. In any case, you’d still have to do a lot of sifting to find one without any major faults.

Our gaze must always be directed to her face, and we must always praise her beauty: if you look at another woman, she thinks that she is out of favour. She must be called ‘my lady,’ her birth-day must be kept, we must swear by her health and wish that she may survive us, respect must be paid to the nurse, to the nursemaid, to the father’s slave, to the foster-child, to the handsome hanger-on, to the curled darling who manages her affairs, and to the eunuch who ministers to the safe indulgence of her lust; names which are only a cloak for adultery. Upon whomsoever she sets her heart, they must have her love though they want her not. 

But she say he just a friend!

If you give her the management of the whole house, you must yourself be her slave. If you reserve something for yourself, she will not think you are loyal to her; but she will turn to strife and hatred, and unless you quickly take care, she will have the poison ready. 

Poisoning is harder to get away with these days, so they use divorce papers instead.

If you introduce old women, and soothsayers, and prophets, and vendors of jewels and silken clothing, you imperil her chastity; if you shut the door upon them, she is injured and fancies you suspect her. But what is the good of even a careful guardian, when an unchaste wife cannot be watched, and a chaste one ought not to be? For necessity is but a faithless keeper of chastity, and she alone really deserves to be called pure, who is free to sin if she chooses. 

In other words, mate-guarding is useless, and a woman who is faithful only out of fear of consequences or of losing you is not truly pure at heart. She can still mentally undress anybody she wants.

If a woman be fair, she soon finds lovers; if she be ugly, it is easy to be wanton [i.e. promiscuous] It is difficult to guard what many long for. It is annoying to have what no one thinks worth possessing. 

If nobody’s buying her goods, then the price of entry goes down. But since most men value sexual exclusivity as much as sexual attractiveness, then so does the value. It’s a vicious cycle, but what’s a plain woman to do to snatch a high-value mate?

But the misery of having an ugly wife is less than that of watching a comely one. Nothing is safe, for which a whole people sighs and longs. One man entices with his figure, another with his brains, another with his wit, another with his open hand. Somehow, or sometime, the fortress is captured which is attacked on all sides. 

Jerome notices that there are many ways to stimulate a woman’s lust. Wealthy noblemen, lanky musicians, sly conmen, brutish warriors, and stern rulers all enjoy sexual success in exchange for what their lifestyles have to offer.

Men marry, indeed, so as to get a manager for the house, to solace weariness, to banish solitude; but a faithful slave is a far better manager, more submissive to the master, more observant of his ways, than a wife who thinks she proves herself mistress if she acts in opposition to her husband, that is, if she does what pleases her, not what she is commanded. 

Then, as now, men had the same fears and faulty reasoning in pursuing relationships with women.

But friends, and servants who are under the obligation of benefits received, are better able to wait upon us in sickness than a wife who makes us responsible for her tears (she will sell you enough to make a deluge for the hope of a legacy), boasts of her anxiety, but drives her sick husband to the distraction of despair. But if she herself is poorly, we must fall sick with her and never leave her bedside. 

Notice he uses the word “sell” to describe the woman’s crying and pleading for children (i.e. a legacy). Jerome had enough experience with women to see through the long con.

Or if she be a good and agreeable wife (how rare a bird she is!), we have to share her groans in childbirth, and suffer torture when she is in danger. 

Even if she does her best to make your life easy, a good woman still needs much support, protection, and care. Proceed at your own risk.

Then again, to marry for the sake of children, so that our name may not perish, or that we may have support in old age and leave our property without dispute, is the height of stupidity. For what is it to us when we are leaving the world if another bears our name, when even a son does not all at once take his father’s title, and there are countless others who are called by the same name. Or what support in old age is he whom you bring up, and who may die before you, or turn out a reprobate? Or at all events when he reaches mature age, you may seem to him long in dying. 

Many of my grandfather’s friends raised incompetent sons, despite being hardworking and conscientious themselves. As a result, they’ve had no support from their offspring in their old age. It is always a gamble, even if you do right by your family.

Friends and relatives whom you can judiciously love are better and safer heirs than those whom you must make your heirs whether you like it or not. Indeed, the surest way of having a good heir is to ruin your fortune in a good cause while you live, not to leave the fruit of your labour to be used you know not how. 

This is probably a big, big factor in how the children of good men become spoiled. They know a great inheritance is in the works, plus they’ve had every want and need fulfilled since their parents were so successful at providing, so where’s the children’s incentive to work hard themselves and pay back the favor? For those same reasons, a wife can be spoiled the same way your children can.

Examples Showing Why Men Should Not Marry When Cicero - after divorcing Terentia - was requested by Hirtius to marry his sister, he set the matter altogether on one side, and said that he could not possibly devote himself to a wife and to philosophy. Meanwhile that excellent partner, who had herself drunk wisdom at Tully’s fountains, married Sallust his enemy, and took for her third husband Messala Corvinus, and thus, as it were, passed through three degrees of eloquence. Socrates had two wives, Xantippe and Myron, grand-daughter of Aristides. They frequently quarreled, and he was accustomed to banter them for disagreeing about him, he being the ugliest of men, with snub nose, bald forehead, rough-haired, and bandylegged. At last they planned an attack upon him, and having punished him severely and put him to flight, vexed him for a long time. 

I find it interesting that St. Jerome pointed out Socrates’ ugliness as the reason for his wives abusing and disrespecting him. I guess looks do matter.

On one occasion when he opposed Xantippe, who from above was heaping abuse upon him, the termagant soused him with dirty water, but he only wiped his head and said, “I knew that a shower must follow such thunder as that.” 

Socrates had another quip, something along the lines of “If you marry a good wife you will become happy; if you marry a bad one you will become a philosopher.” At least he had a sense of humor about it all.

Metella, consort of Lucius Sulla the Fortunate (except in the matter of his wife) was openly unchaste. It was the common talk of Athens, as I learnt in my youthful years when we soon pick up what is bad, and yet Sulla was in the dark, and first got to know the secrets of his household through the abuse of his enemies. 

To put this in context, Lucius Sulla was one of the most successful generals and leaders of Rome. He sacked Athens, captured Rome to end a civil war, became dictator, and reinstated the Roman Senate. He was declared by none other than Machiavelli as having the prime attributes of an effective leader – cunning like a fox, courageous like a lion. Apparently all this had no bearing on his wife’s fidelity.

Pompey had an impure wife Mucia, who was surrounded by eunuchs from Pontus and troops of the countrymen of Mithridates. Others thought that he knew all and submitted to it; but a comrade told him during the campaign, and the conqueror of the whole world was dismayed at the sad intelligence. 

Pompey could be considered a successor of sorts to Sulla. As a young military commander, he was wildly successful, ruthless, and bold. He became consul of Rome at age 35, an unprecedented feat attributed to his popularity. All this was still not enough to inspire his wife to remain true. They divorced after Pompey learned of her frequent adultery during his military campaigns.

Cato, the Censor, had a wife Actoria Paula, a woman of low origin, fond of drink, violent, and (who would believe it?) haughty to Cato. I say this for fear anyone may suppose that in marrying a poor woman he has secured peace. 

A poor woman will not be automatically appreciative of your relative wealth, and make only modest demands of you. She will still want everything you have to offer. Just as you want her sexual best – and nothing less – she will want your provisional best – and nothing less.

When Philip, king of Macedon, against whom Demosthenes thundered in his Philippics, was entering his bed-room as usual, his wife in a passion shut him out. Finding himself excluded he held his tongue, and consoled himself for the insult by reading a tragic poem. 

Even kings are made to sleep on the couch. Sing it with me: “Who run tha world?”

Gorgias the Rhetorician recited his excellent treatise on Concord to the Greeks, then at variance among themselves, at Olympia. Whereupon Melanthius his enemy observed: “Here is a man who teaches us concord, and yet could not make concord between himself, his wife, and maid-servant, three persons in one house.” The truth was that his wife envied the beauty of the girl, and drove the purest of men wild with daily quarrels. 

How do you keep multiple girlfriends happy? Make each one secretly believe she’s number one.

Whole tragedies of Euripides are censures on women. Hence Hermione says, “The counsels of evil women have beguiled me.” In the semibarbarous and remote city Leptis it is the custom for a daughter-in-law on the second day to beg the loan of a jar from her mother-in-law. The latter at once denies the request, and we see how true was the remark of Terence, ambiguously expressed on purpose – “How is this? Do all mothers-in-law hate their daughters-in-law?” 

A mother often understands her son’s wife/girlfriend better than he does – that hatred means something.

We read of a certain Roman noble who, when his friends found fault with him for having divorced a wife, beautiful, chaste, and rich, put out his foot and said to them, “And the shoe before you looks new and elegant, yet no one but myself knows where it pinches.” Herodotus tells us that a woman puts off her modesty with her clothes. And our own comic poet thinks the man fortunate who has never been married. In all the bombast of tragedy and the overthrow of houses, cities, and kingdoms, it is the wives and concubines who stir up strife. Parents take up arms against their children; unspeakable banquets are served; and on account of the rape of one wretched woman Europe and Asia are involved in a ten years’ war. 

I am not sure what war Jerome is referring to here, maybe someone with better history knowledge can chime in.

We read of some who were divorced the day after they were married, and immediately married again. Both husbands are to blame, both he who was so soon dissatisfied, and he who was so soon pleased. Epicurus the patron of pleasure (though Metrodorus his disciple married Leontia) says that a wise man can seldom marry, because marriage has many drawbacks. And as riches, honours, bodily health, and other things which we call indifferent, are neither good nor bad, but stand as it were midway, and become good and bad according to the use and issue, so wives stand on the border line of good and ill. It is, moreover, a serious matter for a wise man to be in doubt whether he is going to marry a good or a bad woman. The Snares of Marital Love; Chastity Recommended to Women Aristotle and Plutarch and our Seneca have written treatises on matrimony, out of which we have already made some extracts and now add a few more: “The love of beauty is the forgetting of reason and the near neighbour of madness; a foul blot little in keeping with a sound mind. It confuses counsel, breaks high and generous spirits, draws away men from great thoughts to mean ones; it makes men querulous, ill-tempered, foolhardy, cruelly imperious, servile flatterers, good for nothing, at last not even for love itself. For although in the intensity of passion it burns like a raging fire, it wastes much time through suspicions, tears, and complaints: it begets hatred of itself, and at last hates itself.” The course of love is laid bare in Plato’s Phaedrus from beginning to end, and Lysias explains all its drawbacks – how it is led not by reason, but by frenzy, and in particular is a harsh gaoler over lovely wives. 

Jerome is talking not only of oneitis, but of pure lust as well. Both can lead to a man’s downfall. In both cases, sexual jealousy can rear its ugly head. But if a woman wants to cheat or branch-swing, there is virtually nothing you can do to stop her from acting on that desire, or from having the desire in the first place. And if a woman does not want to cheat or branch-swing, then jealousy is useless and can only damage your standing in the relationship, perhaps leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy. And all the while, your feelings of rage and inadequacy only cause you psychological harm. That said, I completely understand the natural tendency to become jealous. It is probably an evolved, instinctive response to being cuckolded or losing reproductive opportunity, which would’ve been useful to avoid wasting resources and to keep your genes in the gene pool. But if sex is all you’re after – and the women you sleep with fulfill your sexual desires – then what do her other lovers matter to you? Sure, STDs are a concern, but if it’s your goal to sleep with multiple women, you’re already exposing yourself to considerable risk.

There is nothing blacker than to love a wife as if she were an adulteress. Men who say they have contracted marriage and are bringing up children, for the good of their country and of the race, should at least imitate the brutes, and not destroy their offspring in the womb; nor should they appear in the character of lovers, but of husbands. In some cases marriage has grown out of adultery; and, shameful to relate! men have tried to teach their wives chastity after having taken their chastity away. 

I think this speaks to the hypocrisy of men expecting women to enjoy having sex, but only with them and no one else. If a woman likes wine, would she only drink chardonnay? If a woman likes country, would she only listen to Carrie Underwood? Likewise, if a woman genuinely enjoys sex, why would her tastes be limited to just one man?

Marriages of that sort are quickly dissolved when lust is satiated. The first allurement gone, the charm is lost. 

Relationships based on attraction alone do not last, simple as that. You actually have to be compatible as people – if that’s possible between a man and woman. You both need enough self-control and motivation to overcome your straying impulses. Men must check their desire for polygamy, and women must check their desire for hypergamy. Otherwise, the relationship will become exploitative on one side or the other, or dissolve entirely.

What shall I say, says Seneca, of the poor men who in numbers are bribed to take the name of husband in order to evade the laws promulgated against bachelors? How can he who is married under such conditions be a guide to morality, teach chastity, and maintain the authority of a husband? 

Even then, men were compelled to marry and place themselves under the yoke. Remind me again how Marriage 1.0 was such a good deal? Ain’t a damn thing changed.
Summary: St. Jerome, one of the most influential figures in early Christianity, warned of the follies and dangers of marriage, and advised wholeheartedly against it. Even during Marriage 1.0, women often ruled the relationship. Famous philosophers, powerful rulers, and charming orators were unable to keep their wives in check. Jealousy and mate-guarding are useless to prevent cheating, they can only help a man to walk away from potential cuckoldry and abuse. It is paradoxical to expect a woman who enjoys sex to only desire it with you. Conversely, it is irrational to expect a chaste woman to act like your own personal whore.
Do not marry for sex or love, because the relationship will crumble when mutual attraction fades. Marrying to have kids is also foolish, because you don’t know how they will turn out or whether they will actually support you in your old age. Ultimately, it is impossible to know for certain beforehand if a woman will make a good or bad wife, so it is wisest to avoid the risk altogether. DO NOT MARRY.

The sun began to set on the small Scottish island, casting a warm orange glow across the quaint village. As the residents finished their meals and the last few visitors trickled out of the local pub, a man named Ewan slipped into the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment to make his move. Ewan, a middle-aged man with a scruffy beard and unkempt hair, was an alcoholic. He was known by many on the island for his frequent drunken antics and had been kicked out of the pub more times than he could count. Despite several attempts to quit drinking, Ewan was powerless to resist the allure of alcohol. As the last of the pub's patrons made their way out the door and the owner began to close up, Ewan seized his opportunity. He snuck into the now-empty pub through a back door, hiding behind a large wooden barrel in a corner. He held his breath, praying he wouldn't be discovered as the owner locked up and left for the night. Once he was sure the coast was clear, Ewan emerged from his hiding spot and surveyed the room, his eyes gleaming with excitement. He licked his lips as he approached the rows of bottles behind the bar, the promise of a long night of uninterrupted drinking weighing heavily on his mind. However, as Ewan began to move across the pub, he couldn't shake the feeling that something was off about the pub. The warm, lively atmosphere he was accustomed to had been replaced Ewan looked around as he approached the bar and wondered to himself. Why do pubs always limit themselves to the same decor? The harsh shades of red. The black and white photos of people long dead and oil paintings which seem to have been painted to fade into the background. Ewan had both drank and been barred from every pub on the island now and has seen little to no variety in interiors. "I guess it is to make it feel homely and familiar. Our brains associate familiarity with safety and people who feel safe are likely to drink more." while still feeling unsettled moving across the bar. The feeling of unease wasn't going to stop him from drinking as much as he can physically take before sneaking out leaving the landlord none the wiser. Until a stock take shows some discrepancies that he will probably put down to spillages or his carelessness with bookkeeping. Then he thought "No I will drink as much as I want and top the bottles up with water" Ewan's eyes grazed over the selection of choices on the Optic. Grouse being his usual preferred choice when he wants to spoil himself on the rare occasions he has money to burn, Bells being his usual go-to poison as the price and alcohol content measure up quite nicely but tonight he was going to drink like a king. He grabbed the bottle of Redbreast and carefully unscrewed it from the optic and began to greedily chug straight from the bottle. He walked drunkenly from behind the bar to a stool he sat down and for no reason held the bottle to the sky and said "cheers" at that moment the jukebox began to blast out at an incredibly loud volume "You're mine" by Ritchie Valens. "FUCK!" Screamed Ewan as he put down his bottle and hurried over to the jukebox. The light emitted from which was now making the shadowy areas seem darker by contrast. He scrambled to the floor feeling for a plug socket behind it to unplug the thing. The sound up close was almost deafening. After feeling along the wall to no success he quickly pulled at it to come forward so he could get behind it to where the plug must be and sure enough it was there. He yanked it out of the wall with a hard jerk and the record began to slow "yourrr minee forrrr eternityyyyyy....." and then silence. Ewan let out a sigh of relief. "Thing must be connected to some sort of sensor" Ewan walked to the window, crouched down in case anyone was looking in to see what the noise was. He looked to see if anyone in the opposite building heard the commotion. He looked and the only building on the other side of the road facing the pub was a thatched-roof cottage. Dimly lit by street light, with a sign above the door that read "Alf's funeral home" "Well Alf. I'm sorry if I woke up any of your clients" slurred Ewan while chuckling to himself. He reached for the bottle on the bar while turning and no bottle. He retraced his steps from the bar to the jukebox to the window and back to the bar but the
bottle was nowhere to be seen. Then he looked up at the Optics. There he saw it. The fine redbreast whiskey. He staggered over to it. Holding the bar for balance. There it was and seemingly untouched. He must have drank near on a quarter of the bottle but there it is. Almost full and back where it was. "I must have tipped it up with water after drinking and put it back. This isn't the first time I've lost chunks of time from drinking and it won't be the last" mumbled Ewan allowed as an attempt to reassure himself. Putting his feeling of unease down to the nerves of being caught along with the dull twinge of guilt he feels for stealing Ewan decided to look for cheaper alternatives for his next binge. He finally settled on a bottle of Jack. Only total pussies who want to pretend they like whisky because they think it gives them an edge drink Jack Daniels. The faggots that drink it non ironically will never notice it is watered down. Ewan grabbed a glass this time deciding to drink measured amounts. Aware that loss of time while drinking is usually followed by passing out entirely. Ewan sat hunched over on a rickety wooden stool, the creaking of the floorboards beneath him barely audible over the deafening silence that enveloped the empty pub. The musty smell of stale beer and old wood filled his nostrils as he took another swig from the glass of his Jack Daniels, a bitter taste lingering on his tongue. “Piss water,” he thought to himself. The room was dark, though his eyes had now adjusted enough to fully take in his surroundings. The old faces in frames on the wall. A photo on the wall to his left was of a party being held in this very pub. Looking to be in the 1910s judging from the fashion. Amongst the 20 or so people in the image, one woman stood out in the dead center. Her long hair was down, a contrast from the other ladies in the photos sporting the traditional Pompadour style of the time. She was smiling while looking off to the side. Seemingly unaware that she was to be the star of the photograph. Above the photo on a shelf made from taxidermy antlers sat an antique hunting rifle. The light from the street lamp reflected off the mettle barrel casting eerie shadows across the rows of dusty liquor bottles. Ewan thought about how many parties would have taken place here over hundreds of years this pub had been open. The idea of drinking for any kind of pleasure had become such an alien concept to him now. Drinking for Ewan wasn't a way to unwind or relax or even in his mind feed an addiction. Not anymore anyway. Now he finds himself desperate for a drink to quell the demons that haunted his every waking moment. As the alcohol began to take hold of him again, the memory he had been trying so hard to suppress clawed its way back to the forefront of his mind. It was a memory that he could never escape, a weight that anchored him to the ocean floor of despair. It had been over six years since the accident. The night had started like any other: dinner with friends, laughter, and, of course, alcohol. It was supposed to be a celebration of Ewan and Isla, his wife's fifth wedding anniversary. But as the night wore on and the glasses piled up, so too did the tension between them. “We need to get a taxi.” Said Isla after excusing herself and Ewan “I am fine to drive! It is only a mile down the road” “You were supposed to stay sober tonight” “Yeah, and you were supposed to get your license 3 years ago.” “Do you really wanna do this now?” Ewan thought on this for a second before speaking “No. I am sorry I was only meant to have a couple but got a little carried away. I am sorry, but you know we will never get a taxi at this time of night. Come on I'll drive slow” Ewan cut this memory short. He wouldn't allow himself to think about this anymore. As tears began to fall from his face he necked the remainder of the contents of his glass. Before he had a chance to pour himself another drink the stall he was sitting on was jerked back with such force that Ewan landed on the ground with a thud. Smashing the glass that was tightly gripped in his hand in the process. Ewan let out a pained gargled yelp as he shook his now bleeding hand in pain. The blood splatters landed on the wall art and photos. He looked at his hand and saw that yes indeed a large chunk of glass was sticking out of his hand. He yanked it out. With that more blood trickled out rapidly. He turned to see what happened to his seat. And there almost 3 feet away from him sat his bar stool. “Fuck this!” said Ewan as he hurried to the back door. Locked. He tried the fired exit, the windows. All locked. At this point, he didn't care about being discovered. He turned all the lights on. And started bashing his fists against the windows. The glass wouldn't budge he grabbed a chair and began smacking the window over and over again until the chair had fallen to pieces. Suddenly the Jukebox started playing again. Some big band highland number that he did not recognize this time. “I know I unplugged that” as he looked at the jukebox he noticed that the hunting rifle that sat on the shelf to the right of that was gone he scanned the room and to his horror, he saw a lady standing in the corner of the room facing away from him. His vision was slightly wavy from the alcohol. “Hey I don't know if you work here and you are trying to mess with me for breaking in. You have successfully scared the shit out of me and I am happy to wait outside for the police to arrive or whatever. I am bleeding, let me leave?” The woman turned around. It was the lady from the photograph. Her face was covered in bruises. Her eyes were red and puffy. She put the hunting rifle that was in her hands up to her chin and pulled the trigger. The front of her face exploded revealing bits of teeth and a gaping hole where her mouth should be parts of her brain decorated the ceiling the remainder half that was still in her skull pulsated a little as blood tricked out. She fell to her knees and now with her few remaining teeth bare, she looked as though she was smiling. Though her eyes gave the impression of pure rage. As she fell head first on the floor the electricity died. Ewan scurried away while on the floor to the corner by the bar and then vomited. “not real, it's not real it's not real” he said while covering his eyes. Afraid to look. He sat like this for what felt like hours. In that time a puddle of urine collected around him. “Usually I don't piss myself until I've finished my second bottle” he darkly thought to himself. “I need to find a way out of here” Thought Ewan as he opened his eyes and saw that there was no trace of the lady from the photograph anymore. The ceiling was clean and the gun was back on its shelf. He stood shakily. As He stood he noticed that the building on the opposite end of the street now had a light on. He began banging on the window again “Hey! I am trapped in here! Send help!” He saw movement in the window as someone pulled back the curtain to look. It was a middle-aged gentleman with greying hair. He looked around confused to see where the noise was coming from “OVER HERE!” Shouted Ewan and he banged on the window until his other hand was just as bloody. The gentleman then turned in Ewans direction “YEAH OVER HERE I AM TRAPPED! PLEASE COME AND HELP ME!” The gentleman looked as though he was trying to hear while with his hand he reached for the lining of his shirt. With one motion he ripped his shirt open relieving a gash going all the way up his body stitched together with what appeared to be wire. His look of concern turned to amusement and he pulled the wire. Undoing the stitches to show where his vital organs that have now been donated used to be. He laughed like a madman as he pulled his skin back. His head now leaning against the glass and his laughter which sounded muffled due to the distance was still audible from the pub. Deep and raspy but that of a madman. Ewans attention was broken by the sound of a familiar clank of something metallic. It was a sound that was instantly recognizable to anyone. The sound of coins dropping to the floor. Ewan turned and looked and sure enough, there were two coins on the ground behind where he stood. He bent to pick them up. They were old. Very old. From what he could see in the dim light they looked to be that of the Victorian times. He heard the sound again. This time over by the jukebox. He walked over to pick them up and noticed something. The floor under the jukebox looks to be a cellar door. He dragged it out some more to reveal that yes indeed, it was some kinda entrance to a hatch of some kind. This time Ewan saw the coins drop to the floor. He looked up at the ceiling and saw dozens of corpses laying flat against the ceiling with coins covering their eyes dressed in their funeral clothes all shoulder to shoulder. The sight was horrifying. And as if waiting to be viewed, at that moment their flesh began to melt to just skeletal remains, and coins and blood showed Ewan as he frantically tried to get the hatch on the floor open. Digging his fingers into the gaps trying to grip it to lift it until he eventually found a bit to latch onto. With one firm pull the hatch came up. He dove into the cellar. Not caring what he will find at this point. Slamming it shut behind him. He searched his pocket to find his lighter. After a few attempts at getting it to light he managed. He saw it wasn't a cellar at all. Instead, it was a tunnel. He began to follow it along. After walking for about 30 minutes the tunnel got narrower and narrower until Ewan was crawling on his hands and knees. He noticed a light ahead and felt hopeful that this could be the end of his ordeal. He began to notice he was crawling on pavement and broken glass. He kept going until he could stand and he could see trees and a road he hurried out of the tunnel and saw to his confusion. He was still inside the cellar. The trees stopped sharply at the ceiling and the road stopped sharply at the four walls that surrounded him. He turned to go back through the tunnel, Back the way he came. this was not the way out. what he saw as he turned defied all logic. The small part of his brain that clung to rational explanation broke as he saw that the tunnel he had just crawled through had been replaced with a tipped-over car. He saw a younger version of himself slowly regain consciousness while suspended upside down. He froze unable to move or look away. “Oh god please don't make me relive this” “Isla? Oh my god, Isla” Ewan checked her pulse but couldn't find one. He could see emergency services lights coming towards them from a distance. He knew he would go to prison for manslaughter if caught causing death by dangerous driving “I am so sorry baby. I am so sorry” Ewan said through tears while unbuckling her seatbelt and moving her over to the drivers side and then crawling back out of the car to flag down the ambulances. "They'll be able to resuscitate her, She will be okay and I will take care of her". Ewan didn't notice that the car had begun to ignite until it was too late. The flames spread quickly. “Ewan..?” said a dull voice from the car. Ewan turns and hurried to the car but by that point, it was too late “Isla!” He cried as he watched the flame cover his wife. Isla screamed in pain until her face was completely burnt away and all she could make was gargles and all Ewan could do was watch in horror. Then the entire room went up in flames and became ash leaving Ewan completely in the dark. Sobbing. “I am sorry I didn't know. I didn't mean to. I.... I...!" Ewan composed himself. "I deserve to die but I am not dying in here" Ewan stood and pulled out his lighter again to light the room only to see it was now filled with hundreds of bodies all staring at him. the tips of their feet scraping across the floor as they floated closer. Ewan backed away until he felt something metallic. A ladder leading up to a manhole shaft. he quickly began to climb as the ghostly rotting corpses moved closer to him at a more rapid speed now. as he reached the top and forced the lid open he was greeted by sunlight. hands clutched at his ankles dragging him back but with determination to survive he pulled himself free and was finally outside in the open. He closed the cover shut. He could hear birds chirping, and sounds of people driving to work. The world had never seemed so beautiful. "Oh my god buddy are you okay?" said a young man who looked horrified at Ewan who was covered in dried blood, ash, and a collection of injuries. "I am going to call you an ambulance buddy hang tight" The young man pulled out his phone and began to dial. by this point, Ewan began to pass out. He slipped in and out of consciousness while getting carefully placed on the gurney. "What is your name?" "Have you taken anything?" "Who's blood is this" "My name is Ewan, I haven't taken anything. I guess I have had far too many spirits last night though" he laughed to himself as the doors to the ambulance closed. as the vehicle began to speed away music began to play on the radio. "I didn't think ambulances had radios" said Ewan as he began to recognize the music. "Your mine and we belong together. Yes, we belong together" He tried to stand but he had been strapped down to the gurney. The walls of the ambulance began to melt away. The paramedics all had coins covering their eyes and mouths stitched shut. Ewan let out a scream as fire began to cover his body he could see once the walls of the ambulance were fully gone he was still in the pub. it was still night and he was now very much on fire. He let out one final scream before his lips were completely gone. His chard body fell to the floor by the bar with a thud. An empty bottle of Jack tightly gripped in one hand and his lighter in the other. In his final state of living consciousness before his inevitable death, he saw the light emerge from the window. The sun was finally rising for real. He closed what remained of is eyelids and let out a pained sigh as he died. Ewans body was discovered later that day by a confused and horrified cleaner. Who immediately phoned the police. The investigating officers, who knew all about Ewans drunken antics on the island and had their suspensions regarding the circumstances involving his wifes death. Put Ewans demise down to an elaborate and painful suicide. That night as his body lay on the slab in Alfs funeral home. After the sun had set and everyone had left for the evening. But in the pub opposite the funeral home, Ewan emerged from his hiding spot behind the barrels and surveyed the room, his eyes gleaming with excitement. He licked his lips as he approached the rows of bottles behind the bar, He felt an unsettling feeling of deja vu but had managed to shake it off by the promise of a long night of uninterrupted drinking which weighed heavily on his mind.

So when you think of cities with high culture and vibrant music scenes on the east coast, what springs to mind? Obviously New York. Thanks to Drake, we all know about the growing music scene in Toronto. You prahbahbly musta tawt a Bawstan tew. Maybe Montreal or Philadelphia or even Baltimore crossed your mind.
Hah. Baltimore.
Time to check your cultural bias, pal. You passed over a quiet little city on the south shore of Lake Ontario, nestled in the Genesee River valley. It has a history as a hotbed of Abolitionism and Women’s Rights. It is the home of Eastman Kodak, Xerox, Bausch & Lomb, Western Union, Ragu and other innovative companies. It has a lively music scene, great nightclubs, world-renowned universities, thriving museums, arts & culture festivals, and live theatre. It is a true cultural gem that many folks overlook.
Yep. You bet your ass I am talking about Rochester, New York.
Since we know that Stoner Rock can come from anywhere, it should be no surprise that Rochester has produced one of the leading bands in this genre. This week we are going to check out a band you are going to want to listen to. If you know them, you love them. If you haven’t heard of them, you are going to thank me.
This week’s band is KING BUFFALO.
About Them
Hold on a sec. King Buffalo? Not King Rochester?
To be fair, King Rochester sounds like the villain in a Disney movie. Kinda hard to imagine that on a T-Shirt. King New York sounds like a particularly obnoxious Yankees fan (and yeah, finding a Yankees fan that isn’t obnoxious is a tough go). King Albany sounds like a car made by Kia.
But King Buffalo? That just works.
Our heroes didn’t start out together. King Buffalo were made up of members of two other Rochester area bands.
Randall Coon and Scott Donaldson were playing together in Velvet Elvis. That five piece band played heavy rock with space-based themes in the early 2010’s. Sean McVay and Dan Reynolds were in another band called Abandoned Buildings Club (side note: kinda neat that their initials were ABC), who had a pure psychedelic rock vibe. When both VE and ABC appeared to be having limited success, the four musicians decided to merge their talents into one band. Coon had handled vocals and guitar in Velvet Elvis and Donaldson had been rock solid on drums. McVay had done vocals and guitar in Abandoned Buildings Club and Reynolds had anchored the sound with his bass. All the pieces were there for a classic Beatles-esque lineup.
So out of the wreckage of ABC and VE, KB arose. The four members gelled so well that they were able to record their first demo - aptly titled Demo - in just two days. Their sound was immediately compared to tourmates and close friends All Them Witches. But where ATW were bluesy and sludgy, King Buffalo had produced songs full of space. Oh, there were heavy riffs for sure - but there were passages of music that were contrastingly lighter and further apart. The best example of these contrasts can be found in the more than 11 minutes of Providence Eye. The first six and a half minutes come at you at a lulling pace, enveloping you in the moment. You get swept up in the rolling riffs. But then the drop happens and you suddenly realize the song has been building to this peak. The tempo picks up and you ride a relentless rollercoaster until you hit the Black Sabbath-inspired outro, which takes you home. It is an emotional experience. The two other tracks - In Dim Light and Pocket Full of Knife are smaller essays on the same theme.
It was clear right from Demo that King Buffalo had some serious talent. But if you have listened to the band you will notice that one thing is starkly different on Demo than from any of their other releases: the vocals. Randall Coon was the lead vocalist on these recordings. If you play them up against anything since by the band they stand out. Our very own QotSA may have successfully had multiple vocalists on multiple tunes, but King Buffalo was destined to have Sean McVay take over the mic. Shortly after 2013’s Demo, Coon left the band to do a solo project called Skunk Hawk.
King Buffalo stood at a crossroads: did they look to replace Coon, or should they carry on as a Power Trio? The choice for them was obvious. McVay, Reynolds and Donaldson knew that they had fantastic potential together. They decided they didn't need anyone else.
Side note: Regular readers of these write ups know that All Them Witches just went through this exact crisis in 2019. What I didn’t share then is that ATW are close friends with KB. I would not be surprised to learn that ATW had some serious conversations about their lineup with the boys from KB before they, too, decided last year to pare down to just three members.
To re-christen their new lineup, in 2015 King Buffalo went in on a split EP with Swedish band Lé Betre (I mean, hooking up with a Swedish partner is a dream of mine, so I see the appeal.) They re-recorded their standout tune Providence Eye with McVay on vocals, as well as two new tracks - Like a Cadillac and New Time. New Time opens their side of the EP with an infectious, descending riff that hooks you immediately. It is clear from the lyrics - No wasting around, it’s a new time - that they had moved on from Coon. Like a Cadillac follows up and is a three and a half minute jam that leaves you wanting more. The re-recorded version of Providence Eye closes out their side of the split EP and leaves no doubt that they are in charge. It is a tighter, heavier version, and the amazing outro is so low down that it will make you want to rob your own house.
With their lineup now set, it was time to put together enough music to tour on. In 2016, King Buffalo released Orion. Here you can witness the melding of their influences into something majestic and fantastic, and it is here that they really develop their signature style.
To explain this style, you need to understand basic song structure.
Most pop songs tend to go verse - chorus - verse - chorus - bridge - chorus - chorus. Sure, you could add in a solo for the bridge, or a detailed intro or outro, or another verse - but this is a tried and true formula. Some variation of this dominates the pop charts to this day.
Not with King Buffalo songs. These guys are the masters of the drop, and you hear it in most of their tunes. QotSA fans are no strangers to that long build and release; it is an integral part of tunes like The Evil Has Landed, God is in the Radio, Song For The Dead, and I Appear Missing. One of the sickest drops ever recorded happens in the middle of the Them Crooked Vultures tune No One Loves Me & Neither Do I. It is where the music turns around, and a new riff takes over, often along with a pace change. It is then that you realize that the song has built to this climactic moment, and you are engulfed by the music.
King Buffalo does this better than anyone else, and you hear it clearly articulated, again and again, on the album Orion.
Take the song Kerosene for example.
A rolling bass riff from Reynolds establishes the song right out of the gate. Donaldson produces punchy drum beats with cymbal crashes at the end of each phrase. McVay’s slide guitar rounds out the intro. McVay’s vocals - very Ozzy like, if Ozzy had any semblance of self-control - frame the first verse, which ends in a fuzzy, heavy riff with crashing cymbals. This same pattern is repeated a second time and the drop is teased at just past three minutes in, but does not happen quite yet. The listener’s anticipation builds as the airy, soaring solo from McVay calls out in contrast to the rolling bass. After the guitar solo bridge, the band goes right back into the chorus. But then it happens: THE DROP. Just past 5 minutes in, the song takes a complete and abrupt turn for a totally different riff that is at the same time heavier and brand new, and yet has been there all the while.
What King Buffalo does brilliantly is subvert your musical expectations.
The standard structure is V-C-V-C-B-C-C.
Kerosene is V-C-V-C-B-C-DROP-OUTRO. Just when you subliminally expect something the same, you get something different.
The entire album is like that. Orion hardly sounds like a debut. It is a mature and deliberate soundscape built by talented musicians who are making significant choices about their art. Songs like Drinking From The River Rising open with an expansive and elastic topography, but drill down to the molten lava of heavy riffs and distorted fuzz. Sleeps On A Vine begins with one of the most zen riffs you’ve ever heard and ends in a tumultuous and heavy sonic assault that is pure controlled chaos. Every song on the album is a study in contrasts that leaves you with auditory whiplash and a burning desire for more.
They are that good.
King Buffalo were able to tour on their new material, and did so extensively. They played clubs and larger venues, often with friends and fellow Stoner Rockers All Them Witches and other bands like The Sword and Elder. In 2017, the released the EP Repeater as a follow up. It is just three songs (The vinyl ad reads, All songs on one side! No need to flip!) but it is a heck of a musical journey. The title track off the EP is 13+ minutes long and is one huge build. When the fuzz finally drops after almost 8 minutes, it is a true cathartic moment. It sneaks up on you, and is so welcome when it hits - especially after McVay’s repetition that “Every Day is the Same* - that you intrinsically understand how great it is when things finally change for the better. Too Little Too Late is an instrumental tune that is both enveloping and expansive. It is a terrific bridge to the final track, Centurion, which is an unbelievable groove. Centurion has three minutes of set up leading to an unreal fuzzy drop that is so dirty it will get you evicted from your apartment.
The influence of their touring with All Them Witches can also be seen on their next full length release, 2018’s Longing To Be The Mountain. Ben McLeod from ATW produced the album. ATW, The Sword and Elder are all thanked in the liner notes. The album picks up right where Repeater leaves off, with KB experimenting with long form songs like Morning Song and the title track, and shorter jams like Sun Shivers, Cosmonaut, and Quickening. Reynolds and McVay pepper the songs with synthesizer sounds that add colour and texture to the overall compositions. Donaldson drums with impeccable precision to provide each song with a safe mooring to return to, driving the guitars forward at the same time as he holds the rhythm in check. This is most clearly evident in Eye Of The Storm. The result is a rich tapestry of expansive and flowing music full of heavy jams and storytelling that will leave the listener wanting more. Their signature build-to-sonic-explosion style does not let fans down.
The success of Longing To Be The Mountain allowed for extensive touring across North America and Europe. It also led to appearances at bigger gigs, like at Rockpalast and the Stoned & Dusted desert rock event in 2019. Anyone that has seen any of their live work knows that King Buffalo are simply hypnotizing on stage. Reynolds’ bass work is reminiscent of Geddy Lee with his complex and flowing style. Donaldson brings controlled power to the drum kit, and is ready to cut loose when the drop comes. And McVay has become a true front man, comfortable with the lead voice on guitar and the microphone.
Their next release, Dead Star, dropped in 2020 and generated all kinds of buzz in the Stoner Rock scene. Of course, the tour planned to support it got axed when the entire world went into lockdown. But the (short album? EP?) is simply fantastic. Red Star Pt. 1 & 2 continues their long form examination and has everything you’d expect from them. Echo of A Waning Star is a lament of just over 3 minutes that is near-perfect. Ecliptic sounds like the soundtrack to a John Carpenter movie and is a complete jam with serious cool 1980’s vibes. Dead Star, the title track, is almost Radiohead-esque in its evocative and regretful take on death and decay.
But the standout track has to be Eta Carinae, which has one of the greatest musical drops and turn-arounds you will ever hear. The entire song pivots just past four minutes in and becomes a 70’s anthem worthy of Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath. If you listen to no other tune here today, you have to check it out. It will absolutely get stuck in your head.
The band dropped their first live record, Live At Freak Valley, in 2020. This is a really nice retrospective/greatest hits album kinda deal. What stands out is just how fucking tight the band is live. With some bands, live versions veer wildly from the recorded ones - and not at all in a good way. This record is the opposite. You can clearly hear on Orion and Kerosene that KB are just that good live.
In the wake of the global pandemic, King Buffalo decided to musically capture the moment in time. They decided to release a trifecta of albums. 2021 saw them drop The Burden of Restlessness and then Acheron. The third record in this trio is 2022’s Regenerator. It is really important to consider all three records in this Triptych at the same time, for they are a sonic cycle.
TBOR is a descent into despondency. Acheron is about hitting rock bottom, and being in Hell. Regenerator is about finding a way to claw yourself back into the light. Each album stands on its own, but together they form a sweeping epic journey that we can all relate to.
TBOR is an album where the protagonist gradually loses the will to exist. There is a cry of deep frustration in Burning, a not-so-subtle reference to a plague in Locusts, a study in being confined indoors in Silverfish, and an outright statement that our hero is sinking in Loam. In fact, the lyrics tell us: “Still I press my face into the ground/I’m waiting for the hammer to fall.”
It is not a happy album.
Just when you think things have to get better, we get the 4-track jam of Acheron. In this record, our hero has fallen to his lowest point. He has descended to Hell. The title track - the first one on the album - makes this clear, when it says: “Waking up under the ground/Silver asleep on my tongue.”
Just in case you didn’t get the classic reference, Acheron is the river one must cross in Greek mythology to get to the underworld. Souls going to Hell had coins placed in their mouth to pay Charon, the ferryman, to take them across the river to Hades. So our hero did sink into the Loam in the last album, and finds himself in Hell. This theme is reinforced in Zephyr, who was the Greek God of the West Wind, and Shadows, which references what the Greeks used to call dead spirits - Shades. And just in case you had any doubt, the final track on the album is Cerberus, named after the three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hades.
What is even cooler about Acheron is how it was recorded. Instead of a studio, they recorded the album underground in a cave.
Now that is commitment.
The final album in this cycle is 2022’s Regenerator. While the first two records were about descent, despondency, and hitting rock bottom, this record is about regaining hope and optimism, and finding a way to come back. We hear this clearly in the lyrics of the record’s final track, Firmament, which says: “Out of the loam I rise, embraced by the etheThe river below relieves my hands of silver” - clearly calling back to the tracks Loam and Acheron. And in case you didn’t know, in Greek mythology the Firmament means the Sky or the Heavens.
Our hero has left Hell behind, and ascended into Heaven.
References to positive mythology are all over this album, from the album art to the tracks Mercury and Avalon. It is a total jam. But the best song on the album might just be Mammoth. If you don’t like the guitar on this song, you and I can’t be friends.
I got a chance to see KB perform last year when they toured with Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats. They are fucking tight. They were the opening act, but were the absolute highlight of the show. I want everyone to hear this band because they really are something special.
Go check them out.
Links to QOTSA
We know that QotSA front man Josh Homme and Kyuss invented Stoner Rock in the 1990’s. They were the genre-defining band. King Buffalo (and other bands like All Them Witches) have picked up this proverbial torch and are now bringing the sound to the next generation of fans. King Buffalo drummer Scott Donaldson is known to be a huge QotSA fan. Perhaps he saw them live when they played in Rochester in 2014 in support of ...Like Clockwork.
It is also sometimes easy to forget that Josh was not the only architect of the low desert sound. Original Kyuss Drummer and co-founder Brant Bjork wrote many Kyuss tunes and continues to be a leader in the music scene today. King Buffalo have played with Bjork at festivals three times: Freak Valley Festival, Black Deer Festival and the aforementioned Stoned & Dusted. There is also a planned collaborative project between Bjork and King Buffalo that may be coming our way soon.
The future is bright, my friends.
Their Music
Providence Eye
In Dim Light
Pocket Full of Knife
King Buffalo songs from the Split EP with Lé Betre
Kerosene -- live in 2016
Drinking From The River Rising
Orion - entire album on Genesee Live
RepeateCenturion -- Recorded Live in the Quarantine Sessions put out by the band
Live at Rockpalast in 2019 - includes songs from LTBTM
Longing To Be The Mountain - Quarantine Sessions
Quickening -- everything is cool until the snake head pops out. Red Star Pt. 2 -- the official video
Ecliptic
Eta Carinae
Dead Star - Full Album
Silverfish
The Knocks
Loam
Hours
Acheron
Shadows
Mammoth
Firmament
Show Them Some Love
/KingBuffalo - C’mon, everyone -- there are just over 500 subscribers. Those are rookie numbers. You gotta pump those numbers up.
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King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard
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Hi CS people, this is a rant about random-number-generator (RNG) spawn points at the beginning of every round in CS:GO / CS2. I posted about this before but wasn't sure how to organize it very well, so here I go again. Maybe this will turn into a regular thing for me, who knows. Please don't mind the sus account, I posted clash of clans screenshots on my OG account, and I don't know where it went, and I'm glad nobody can see that.
So basically, I don't understand why people aren't complaining about random spawns at the start of literally. every. single. round. in this game. Like, I get the game is fun, I played 6000 hours of it, didn't get anywhere, but oh well. Still, the game has elements of randomness to it, but I just feel that that should not be in the spawns at the start of the round.
So, why? Well, the game has RNG in it-- but I believe it's best when that RNG is kept within your power as a player. You and your team can decide to full commit A, and the enemies stacked A, and you lost, and, well, you F'd up. That's your fault. But... and this is best explained with AWPs, since they're one-shot and long-distance. But what I'm about to say applies to any gun of course, any situation. It's just most notable / visible in an AWP vs AWP situation. So, well, you already know where I'm going. One awper beats another awper. Hooray. So, the awper who won is obviously better, right?
Nope.
Simply put, you might have heard of the "butterfly effect", right? This cascading effect, you know? Like you meet a girl at a library and then you blink and you thought you have grandchildren but turns out you're just middle-aged crying in your studio apartment alone. Butterfly effect, right? Ok, so, basically, awp timings. Are dumb. When they're. Determined. By. Random. Spawns.
Any timing. Rifle timings. Duelie timings. Screw it, Zeus timings.
Every. Single. Timing. In this game, is determined by, a freakin' spawn. That you didn't get to choose. You didn't want that spawnpoint! The game did. Not you! You have no control over that spawnpoint. You start running and running and running sending yourself off to war-- you didn't even choose where you started from in the first place!
You might say, "Come on dude, it can't be that big of a deal."
It's a big deal.
Butterfly effect. The butterfly effect can lead anywhere theoretically, can it not? Even to the furthest craziest outreaches of your imagination, can it not? You can pick up a plastic bottle cap and somehow that's the reason why you're a billionaire by 2030. Is that not true? Ok. So, think of it this way: Simply because of the random spawns at the beginning of the round, somehow the round played out in some way. Pretty easy to understand, right? Well, what if you're on the losing side? Yeah, now you're salty. Just like me; you're not alone.
"I suck."
"I'm bad."
"I could have done something better."
Or... could you have?
Well, just go into the demo. Answer your own question.
"Oh crap, that guy had a really good spawn for that specific situation 15 seconds into that round. If I just had a better spawn I would have gotten to that angle at Banana way earlier than him and he'd probably make that same decision of peeking it without a good flashbang and I would have popped him right in the face.
I... just... got... unlucky. That his spawn was so much better than mine. Had my spawn just been a mere 30 units further up the map, I would have killed him, and I would have won a grand total of $0 in prize money!"
And you might argue, "Well, sure, the spawns definitely played a role in the outcome of that interaction, but, come on. Obviously the dead player is just WORSE than the alive player-- all the dead player had to do was flash or molly or something you know! He's clearly worse."
My friend. Butterfly effect. Butterfly effect. Butterfly effect.
The reason why the dead player (player that lost the duel) didn't molly or flash or anything is because he's hoping his spawn is better than the other dude's spawn. The reason why the alive player (player that won the duel) didn't molly or flash or anything and instead just went straight onto the angle and ended up winning the duel is because he's hoping, keyword, hoping, that his spawn is pretty good, at least better than his enemy's spawn.
See where I'm going with this?
On BOTH sides of that example duel... my dudes be hopin'! There is no knowin'. Right?
What is CS? CS is knowing that when you molotov sandbag, and it's not extinguished by a smoke, that there's nobody there... after 2.5 seconds. You wait 2.5 seconds and now you know nobody's there (cuz they would've died by then), or if you don't hear any burnie burnie sounds. Right? That's what CS is.
What is CS? CS is knowing that when you smoke, say, A Main on Mirage off. That if they jump through they're going to be gray-screened and you're going to shoot them in the face while they're still swiping their mouses around trying to find you. If they wait for the smoke to dissipate, and push with good utility, uh oh, you're in trouble. You know this. That's what CS is.
What about CS2? Even CS2, same thing. You know that if you toss an HE onto that smoke, that it will dissipate for about a second and then come back. You know this. You know that that is what the game is, that is CS2.
You also know that when you throw this flashbang, and let's say it's a good one, that, maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe the enemies have an anti-flash setup, maybe they don't. Maybe there's nobody there at all and you should have just saved that flashbang for the next area, right? We all know this. We understand this as "Counter-Strike", right?
But, do you know which spawn you're going to get next round?
Go, join a game. Queue up, spend another hour of your life praying to god that your team gets the better spawns according to player skill and whatnot (worst players in the front, best players in the back obviously) and hope the enemy gets worse spawns, and has no idea what to do even when you rush B with no nades. Realize, that, you didn't choose any of those spawns. The way the rounds are initiated? Literally none of your doing. Purely Valve's doing. Just with some, random number generator looping code or whatever. I don't code, sorry. I write unnecessarily long complaints about a kiddie video game.
So, where was I? Oh yeah. You don't know which spawn you're going to get. That's uh, I mean, I guess that could be just "part of the experience" of CS. But, it shouldn't. I'm trying to explain why, but, honestly, I'm having a hard time, please give me some time to try to figure this out. Basically, the way I understand it is the butterfly effect.
The butterfly effect in CS:GO / CS2: You get a spawn. You say: Oh, I could use this spawn. I should do... this play. Ok, I'm going to do it, I've made up my mind.
Teammate: Oh, sir! I see you have gotten a specific spawn! So, shall I support thee with a variety of supportive grenades to accommodate such an INGENIUS play?
You say: Why, yes please, thank you very much!
And, what just happened? Ah, yes. Counter-strike, based off a random spawn that was not of the choice of the player. Hmm. How fascinating. So what you're telling me is, had this player not been given this specific spawn in this round, he and his teammate(s) actually would have ended up doing something completely different? Ah, how interesting.
Now, a lot of people might go, No way! I'm an independent thinker. I would never let the game choose my plays for me!
Cow poop.
Trust me when I say this: 99.9999999% of the Counter-Strike playerbase, that means, allllll of you reading this. Would have literally done a different play if you just got a different spawn that round. It's just true. It's just the truth.
Want to know why? It's because you want to win. You got this spawn, and you realize, Hey, in order for me to, Win, I would have to, Use this spawn, in a, Certain way. Which would be to, Make, This play, or That play, or whatever.
You want to win. So, whatever spawn you're gonna get...
You're gonna roll with it. And tryhard to your maximum capabilities based on where you started.
So, back to the butterfly effect then. Assuming that everybody in the server is tryharding (every CS player) and knowing that everybody in the server is getting a random spawn every single time at the start of every single round. What do you think's going to happen? Do you think that if... Monesy got the best Mid spawn as Mirage CT, he would just... ignore it? Absolutely not. Like, 90% of the time, he would use it. (Spawn based CS.) He would make the cat jump, he would do an underpass one way, he would jump down to connector, Whatever! He would use that spawn.
And if, I dunno, who's an awper? JW? Alright, JW. JW, if he got the best Mid spawn as Mirage T, would he use it? Absolutely. Well, unfortunately in this specific scenario the CT awp would always kill the T awp if they both got good spawns, assuming the CT didn't get blinded or smoked off, and assuming you don't miss. But anyways, why am I even explaining any of this? Everybody knows this already. That CS is spawn based.
But my point is, it's... literally ruining players' experience of the game.
Sure, it's fun, random is fun, and, honestly, I don't really care what spawn I get. The game already has millions and billions of permutations and combinations of possibilities just based on factors such as flashbangs, smoke grenades, peek timings, and so on. With or without random RNG spawnpoints, every round of CS after 20 seconds into the round is already almost guaranteed to be unique and one-of-a-kind, much like chess.
But, sigh. How do I say this. What I'm saying is, the random spawns? The random spawns at the start of every. friggin. round? Yeah, they're like, they're like... affecting too much. All those super intense professional matches you watched? Raising you out of your seat? Going oooo and ahhhh? Yeah, those games, are actually, just...
Spawn based.
How do I say this without hurting anybody's feelings? Honestly I don't know. Screw it. When the match is fair / evenly matched, random spawnpoints are actually what determine the outcome of the game, not skill.
Obviously Vitality is going to beat your ESEA Main team. But, Vitality vs. Heroic? 10 players whom you'll never be as good as? They're all hitting instant-headshots. They're all missing 0 sprays out of 10,000. Thousands of fans look up to these guys. And... what determines the outcomes of their games?
Their skill? Counter-stratting?
Wit? Speed?
Trickery? Talent?!?!
Actually, it's, RNG spawns. Yeah. Very underwhelming. Very anticlimactic. Wanna know why?
Well, the best way I can prove to you that this is true-- that RNG spawnpoints are actually the leading cause of victory and defeat in CS, far more potent than skill, far more potent than "stratbook depth", assuming we're talking about fair, even-matched, similar-level play, so, pro play, tier 1.
Is, uh... hold on. Ok. So, let's say, Zywoo gets a spawn. It's good. He kills Teses with this spawn.
BUT. If Cadian got a BETTER spawn that round, he actually would have ended up killing Zywoo, and therefore Zywoo wouldn't have killed Teses.
Go on and go on and Heroic would have won the round, Vitality would have been broke, and Heroic would have won the map, and let's say this is Map 3 of the major. And there you go. I've just proven to you that just with one "[random] spawn interaction" (Zywoo got a good spawn, Cadian got a bad spawn), one team won the tournament over the other.
Based on random chance.
Not based on skill. Remember, we're assuming everybody never misses and is super good at the game. I know, I know, flawed thought experiment, but come on. At the pro level, BASICALLY nobody misses. It's just the truth.
So if nobody misses, and everybody hits their shots, how come one team loses and the other team wins? Why aren't both teams winning if they're both so skilled and would literally stomp 99/100 times every single person reading this right now?
Luck.
You might say, "That's just the game dude, it's part of the game, it's part of any esport or sport, there's luck involved."
Sir. Respectfully. HUGELY varying spawnpoints in a game as "millimeters" and "split-second" and "oh my god had I just done THAT I would have won ffs" as CS? Sorry, but *random spawnpoints* is not just "luck".
It's a determining factor.
Every. Single. Round. Especially at the highest level. You're praying "Please give my most skilled player the best spawn for whatever situation they're going to get themselves in"
"Please give my most skilled player the best spawn for whatever situation they're going to get themselves in"
"Please give my most skilled player the best spawn for whatever situation they're going to get themselves in"
One more time?
"Please give my most skilled player the best spawn for whatever situation they're going to get themselves in"
And that's CS. Well, not really, but it's a huge part of it. And if it were removed, things would be a lot less freakin' random. If it were removed, you could just go, Alright skilled player, I'mma setchu up right 'bout now, you're gonna go there, I'm gonna do this, you're gonna do that, we're gonna win. Instead it's... "Please gaben let my star player start somewhere that makes sense. Oh my god thank god. Alright now we can do the plan LOL." ...Yeah. Not the greatest. Sorry, have I mentioned yet, that I don't like spawn based CS? Well I'll mention it now. I don't like spawn based CS. It's not smart. At all.
I could go on forever dude. I swear to god I don't understand why people don't get worked up about this. Literally every game of CS I've ever played, Yes I know I'm bad, Yes I know I'm just a hopeless player, I know all of this you don't need to tell me again, But seriously, the random spawns actually do not make any sense at all. It's just not competitively viable. The players aren't even in control of this one pretty important factor, how can you call that good, high-quality competition? Good, high-quality competition is when players make every decision consciously for themselves by themselves and they beat the enemy players who also made their own conscious decisions for themselves by themselves. When you have a game that's just like, Oh yeah I won this round because uh, Well, the other guy couldn't really control what spawn he started with so, I mean, he got unlucky, too bad for him. Like, what?
Let's say you're karrigan and you have Twistzz, Broky, Ropz, and Rain on your team. Well, let's not just say, but that's actually what's happening right now. So, Twistzz got the best spawn to peek A as a Mirage T. Broky throws the awp to Twistzz, Twistzz peeks Triple from A Main, Twistzz misses. Because, idk, he's bad.
Let's say Broky had been in Twistzz's spawn instead, he keeps the awp to himself, peeks triple, bops a kid, say, s1mple, right in the face, no issues.
I mean, pretty simple explanation, right? Spawn based CS.
You don't want the game to choose your spawnpoints for you.
YOU want to choose the spawnpoints for you!
That way, especially if you're karrigan (none of you reading this). You can place the player you want, in the position that is best for them and the team, according to their skill, according to their specialty, and so on and so on.
Random. Spawnpoints. Completely. Gives. Karrigan. Absolutely. Very. Little. To. No. Control. Over. His... strategies! Mr. Genius Man has a strategy in mind, he wants to do something something something, annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd
Valve says "Nope, try a different one."
Come on, man. Karrigan's like "Valve why?! Valve why you don't just give me Broky fast A spawn for awp pick Valve!?!? Valve why!?!? We lose major now!!!!!"
Valve: Hehe, fonny.
Karrigan: All I needed was that ONE spawn bro! If we just had that chance at an opening we woulda been on such a roll and literally steamrolled them and I'd be down in Counter-Strike history!
So, people have told me already on here that they're not so sure about the "Ideal spawns every round" sort of thing and that it will probably lead to games being "Very boring, slow in the early round, and predictable."
Huh? This counter-argument genuinely confuses me.
If you ask me, I think it's BECAUSE spawns are random and teams cannot choose their friggin' spawns that they end up doing DEFAULT after DEFAULT after DEFAULT after DEFAULT.
Seriously, who wants to watch that? I want to watch JKS runboosting Monesy one round at top middle, then the next round I want to see JKS and Monesy running out palace with Hooxi's flashes right at the start of the round.
If the randomly generated spawns aren't accommodating of these strategies G2 might employ, then, what happens? Think. Oh yeah. Now JKS is just sitting at A ramp rafters for 55 seconds, waiting for huNteR to get a one-bullet pick on a window jumpspot from underpass. I mean like, come on.
Why? Why did this happen? All because there wasn't really a good strat that the team could think of based on the spawns so they just went for a default because they're afraid of losing the match and losing their jobs and yadda yadda yadda right?
And what. What if. What if? G2 could simply, select. I want Monesy here. I want JKS there. Hunter and Niko will go there. And I will just be there. And now instead of a default, you're seeing like, something actually happen? And... oh look. The enemy team, also, selected their spawnpoints, and are taking certain parts of the map in a certain way, based on, utilizing, those spawnpoints they selected, and, well, now, we'll just wait and see who read the other team better. Cool.
Again, like, how do I explain this. Like, the AWP pick that that nutty awper is going for? It's literally based off of a spawn. Like, bro. If he picked that spawnpoint and went for that aggressive peek himself, the nutty awper, I would be like, nice, good for you man. That's YOUR decision, congrats dude. But when the awper is just going for the pick just because he got a good spawn for it (talking about myself as well), I'm just like, eh, whatever dude. The Car peek on Inferno for example. Purely spawn based. Literally about as interesting as a paper towel from Costco.
So back to the people who think the ability to choose your spawnpoints somehow leads to CS being "Predictable, slow, and boring." How? As if tryhard CS isn't already predictable slow and boring. I can quite easily predict that most of the time when you see an awp pick happen, or any pick happen rather, it's really because somebody got a good spawn, and somebody got a bad spawn, and that's it. Sigh. Like, wouldn't it be better to think of it as, One player CHOSE this spawn and timing and angle of play and killed the other player who CHOSE that spawn and that timing and that angle to come into the peek or whatever. Like, right?
Look, I get it. S1mple's beautiful shake and his beautiful adjustments, Niko's clean deags, I get it. This game is eye-candy, and it's gonna be even more eye-candy in a short while. The beautiful plays are too beautiful to ignore, there's no way that player's position on the map and situation in the situation could POSSIBLY be a result of some RNG generator, right?
But it is. It is. Think about it.
I honestly don't know how else to put this. I'm not trying to say the game is random and I hate that. I'm trying to say that there is an element of the game that is way too random for the quality that the game should be at. This game should be, very good. But, random spawns. Put bluntly. Are not good.
Not good for competition, not good for viewers, not good for players. Well, not good for me at least. And maybe it's a me problem, maybe I'm all alone on this. And I'm fine with that. But, seriously...
I literally do not get any enjoyment when I can trace back the result of the round simply due to a spawn that I or a teammate got. We might smash full team ace whatever valorant style flawless shabangwang a round, but, if I simply remember, oh, our nutty awper dude got a crazy spawn for, that spot, and, unfortunately, they perhaps got some bad spawns so he got on the angle quite early and comfortable (like, whatever, you know what I mean). So, basically, when RNG decides to put a good player in a good spot on my team, the round goes to me. And when RNG decides to put a good player in a good spot for the enemy team, the round goes to them. RNG...
RNG...
RNG...
Same thing when I watch pro play. Same thing, no difference. Some crazy stuff can happen, but a lot of the times, I can just see that like, well, He got a good spawn, He didn't, the round went to the guy with the good spawn... dot dot dot... dot dot dot...
And it's like, yeah, obviously this is a bit of an exaggeration. Obviously the aim, the flicks, the spray control, the reads, the rotations, yes, obviously all of these HELP MITIGATE the effects of random spawns at the beginning of the round. But, in what way does that have anything to do with the fact that, the way all of these CS rounds start is just like, fundamentally flawed almost?
Like, you don't need random spawns in CS for there to be variation in the gameplay. If you knew Perfecto was going Solo B every round and s1mple was just alone in Window every round, you would just keep hitting B until Navi adjusted so they would stop losing and stop losing their jobs, right?
Again, you don't need random spawns for the gameplay to be varied and, well, random.
Because of the nature of counter-stratting and whatnot, s1mple will almost HAVE to do one round with a good B spawn to peek B aps (Mirage CT), next round a good A spawn to peek A palace, next round a good mid spawn to hold top mid from Cat, I mean like, and on and on, right?
Yet, the way the game is now... with... RNG spawns. s1mple basically just has to look at his spawn and THAT will tell him, Yeah dude, go B this time with your awp, Yeah dude, go A this time with your awp, Mid, and so on. Like, hello? This is s1mple, this man is huge this man is big this man is significant, and you're just like, placing him... anywhere? In the spawn location? Just, willy nilly?
A man like that, all that clout... don't you wanna like, be a little bit more specific? Detailed? Methodical? I dunno. English words.
Somebody replied to me before that "CS is not about things being 'optimal' every round, it's about WHO can ADJUST to the given circumstances of a round."
And it's like, heck yeah, I agree. Circumstances that are CONTROLLED by the PLAYERS in the server. Not circumstances handed to you by some all-powerful deity. The RNG lords.
CS should be about running around and poppin' heads on a map where YOU and YOUR TEAM decided the SMOKES, the FLASHES, the HE's, the friggin' DECOYS, the BOOSTS, the JUMPSPOTS, the IDK
CS STUFF
AND. DRUMROLL.
THE SPAWNS.
Where it all begins. Literally, everything you do in a match of CS. Begins. With the spawns.
Obviously.
And yet, nobody seems to care. Nobody seems to notice any impact these random spawns may have on their game, the games they watch. No, we're too busy clipping Zywoo's 1v4 + the hot and amazing silent drop-down from heaven. We're too busy making fun of Niko missing a headshot on the back of a moving target who has the reaction times of an angel. And really nobody seems to be making a fuss about how the game is almost fundamentally flawed. Almost.
If not, is, fundamentally flawed. IDK. I ain't nobody, alright, I'm just some American dude.
How to wrap up. I mean, chances are I'll come back in and edit anything else I might want to elaborate on, just for the sake of being even more annoying and ridiculous. Obviously I already talked about this with friends and whatnot, but, seriously, I don't see why not try to make this at least a little bit more well-known and well-thought-about. "CS" is sort of "BS" right now, and I don't mean that in an edgy way, I'm just trying to talk about how the game could be more polished and more "perfect" and more, competitively-sound. Competitively-sound, I'd say is what I'm trying to do here lol. Yep...
So what my suggestion is, to be clear, is basically just the Danger Zone spawn selection program thingie. You uh, yeah. You click the image and that's where you'll spawn. I know, Valve shouldn't do this because people can get toxic, like, "Hey, you took my spawn! That's MY spawn! ****head!" And so on and so on. But I mean like, maybe they can have different types of competitive (I know, Overwatch territory), one has random spawns, one has selectable spawns. Doesn't seem too out of reach in my eyes. But, just, just that simple idea basically lol. Spawn selections. So, you have more control over your team. Your play. You're like, actually playing the game now. You're not just, hoping... to play the game. You know?
Every decision you make is your decision and if it fails that's you failing, and not your RNG spawn failing you... I know, it sounds like I'm blaming my spawn for being bad, but, trust me, I know I'm bad, but I still think something's wrong with the spawn system.
So, another person mentioned that this sort of "spawning issue" is really "Focused/targetting the super-tryhards and the hyper-competitive players" and it's like, yeah, it sort of is. At least that's where you'll definitely "feel" the biggest effect if such a change were to be implemented. I dunno man, if you ask me, I feel like the pros would gobble up something like this, they'd probably all sigh a breathe of relief that they're not praying that their AWPer is gonna get a good spawn or not every round. Every day, during practice, scrims, officials, like-- they can finally have control over how they want to play the game. If you ask me I feel like they'd love it. If they want to put Zywoo "forward" and "faster" this round, they'll do it. If not, they'll put him "back there". Like, full control. I literally do not see a downside. I don't see boredom. I don't see staleness. I don't see predictability. I don't see "lack of adjustment".
I don't see "not fun to watch", or "not fun to play".
I see "very fun to play", and "very fun to watch". I know, I'm biased. Maybe I'm a bit too tryhard, and I'm trying to mold the rules of the game to my specific playstyle and I'm just a narc. I mean, maybe. Actually, yes.
Oh, so, regarding casual players. I don't see how negatively they could be affected. At worst, they're annoyed that they have to choose a spawnpoint every round despite having no idea what they want to do in the round anyways. ("Tell me, why do I need to do this again?"). At best, they get more interested and involved in the strategy and timings and spawnpoints in the game, pros and cons of having a fast or slow spawnpoint, and so on and so on. Choosing a fast spawnpoint might actually get you killed earlier. Not letting the skilled entry player get the fast spawnpoint might cause your team to lose the game. And so on and so on, all these little intricacies.
A Vitality match starts, you see Zywoo spawns in on an A-leaning spawn, you say to yourself "Hey, so, looks like the big man awper is going for an A play this round."
Rather than, "Uh, well, he COULD and SHOULD go for an A play this round based on his random spawn but I mean like, I don't know. He didn't choose that spawn so like, I really don't know lol. Maybe his team has other plans." You know?
It just, doesn't make sense, if you ask me. Random spawns in a game that can reach such a high level of organization and intent and planning and strategy, just... it doesn't have a place in a game as good as CS. That's it. That's all I have to say. Good luck reading all of this if this novel doesn't get taken down. What should I put as a TL;DR?
TL;DR: Random spawns in CS doesn't make sense in a game as competitive as CS
Ok, I'm done for now, I'll probably be back later with a bunch of edits anyway. Remember, none of this is important, it's just a video game. CS2 looks very pretty, improves visibility a lot, buy menu is new, everything is nicer, skins will be better, smokes are not just OP walls anymore and you can actually temporarily remove them so you're not just stuck behind a big wall for 15 seconds over and over again (I call it the CS experience), everything is better, but, spawns are still random? Like, okay, if that really is the best option for the game, so be it. If that truly is the best way for competition and overall gameplay to be fair, fun, interesting, exciting, and pulling in revenue, then, yeah, so be it.