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Wondering about the benefits of joining Mensa
2023.06.03 06:00 Diderikdm Wondering about the benefits of joining Mensa
Hey everyone,
I've been contemplating joining Mensa recently, but there's something holding me back, and I can't quite put my finger on it. Let me share a bit about myself and my journey so far, in hopes of finding some relatability among you:
Throughout my early years until around age 25, I struggled with deep depression. My main motivation for living was simply to avoid disappointing others, but looking back, I realize that it provided me with a sense of purpose, and I'm grateful for that. However, the impact of those difficult times has left me with profound psychological scars from a broken childhood and the accompanying depression. These issues can unexpectedly resurface, and I can trace them back to certain events in my past.
At a young age, I had the opportunity to skip three grades in school before taking an IQ test at a Dutch university. The test results were inconclusive, as they couldn't provide me with a score due to a lack of comparable data. Nonetheless, based on their assessment, I was allowed to advance to advanced courses in the exact sciences when I was just 11 years old.
This unconventional path in my education had profound effects on my development. As a result of being advanced in the exact sciences while lacking proficiency in languages and other subjects, my behavior and interests didn't align with those of my peers. Despite my advanced knowledge in certain areas, the decision was made to place me back into a school environment with classmates who were three years older than me. This adjustment was far from smooth, and I faced relentless bullying and ostracization. The stark contrast between excelling in one domain and struggling in others took a toll on my self-esteem and shattered my motivation.
I experienced a deep sense of frustration as I found myself caught between extremes. Everything I encountered seemed either too challenging or too simple. The lack of a balanced education, with limited exposure to crucial subjects and social interactions, left me feeling isolated and disheartened. The setback of repeating four grades further compounded my struggles and hindered my progress. Gradually, my enthusiasm for learning eroded, and I developed a sense of disgust toward the educational process itself. It seemed like an insurmountable hurdle, with no satisfaction or fulfillment to be found.
The unconventional and challenging educational journey I had experienced left me disillusioned and yearning for a "normal" life. I grew to despise learning and longed for the simplicity and carefree existence that I believed others enjoyed. I wanted to fit in and do what I perceived as "normal" people do, without the burden of my exceptional intelligence. Goals seemed elusive, and I found myself living day by day, with little concern for the consequences of my actions or the development of harmful habits.
As I entered my early twenties, I continued to live a directionless and hedonistic lifestyle. My focus was solely on seeking immediate pleasure and avoiding any commitments that might hinder my freedom. I did venture into various fields of study, including Biology, Media & Entertainment, and Psychology, hoping to find a path that resonated with me. However, I quickly grew frustrated with the slow pace of academic pursuits and the perceived lack of practicality.
Moreover, I came to the inevitable realization that pursuing groundbreaking research, which had always held a fascination for me, would likely demand compromising my ethical principles. This clash between my insatiable desire for intellectual exploration and my unwavering commitment to upholding my moral compass felt like hitting an impenetrable wall. The weight of this realization further dampened my motivation and left me feeling trapped in a state of aimlessness
During this period, there was a stark contrast between my internal turmoil and the perception of those around me. From an external perspective, it might have seemed like I was simply enjoying a carefree existence, but internally I struggled with a deep sense of dissatisfaction and a longing for a more meaningful and purpose-driven life.
That's when I found myself navigating the uncertain waters of work without a degree or a satisfying high school diploma. While these experiences taught me some valuable life skills, I couldn't shake the void of intellectual stimulation and the lack of a true sense of purpose. I dabbled in various low-level jobs, searching for something that would ignite a fire within me.
And then, by chance, I stumbled upon programming. It was like a revelation, an immediate resonance that filled the void in my soul. It was about three and a half years ago, when I was 29 years old, that I discovered my true passion. Programming became my sanctuary, where I could breathe life into any idea using reason and creativity, unbound by the constraints of traditional education or the corporate world. It was a realm where imagination knew no limits, and the results of my creations spoke for themselves.
Now, I find myself working as a freelance senior Python developer, fully immersed in the dynamic world of technology. But it's not just about the code or the projects; it's about the impact I can have on people's lives. My goal is to become a digital nomad, embracing a life of incredible freedom where I can open my laptop anywhere in the world and make a real difference. This drive stems from the deep-rooted desire to finally make a positive impact, to contribute to causes like sustainability and engage in charity projects. Perhaps it's because I've struggled for so long to make a difference in my own life that I'm now fueled by the urge to bring positive change to others.
Throughout these years, I've come across only a few people with whom I can truly connect, understanding a fraction of my thought processes. Most people, whether friends or family, specialize in specific areas, such as discussing black holes, social interactions, biology, or general topics. I feel like I can understand what almost everyone thinks and feels, but only a minuscule percentage of people truly grasp fragments of my thoughts, even when I try to explain them in the simplest way possible, as if talking to a five-year-old (well, that's an exaggeration, but you get the idea).
It's an enigma. I possess this uncanny ability to tap into someone else's thought process, even if it involves groundbreaking research in a particular field. Yet, I find myself stranded on an island, isolated by my comprehensive understanding that I can't fully comprehend. It's incredibly frustrating. I've even attempted to diminish my intellect by resorting to excessive alcohol consumption and other substances, hoping to fit in. However, that only resulted in heightened anxiety and intensified feelings of isolation.
So now, I'm thinking about joining Mensa. I'm drawn to the idea of connecting with like-minded people who have gone through similar experiences, or are currently going through them. To be honest, I would even prefer to be less intelligent than someone else. The constant feeling of isolation has really taken a toll on me, and it's no longer something I find enjoyable.
What I truly need is to connect with people who can offer fresh perspectives that go beyond my own limited view. I crave interactions with individuals who can intellectually challenge me, point out my blind spots, and provide insightful explanations. It's important for me to find equals who truly grasp and relate to my experiences. While I have made progress in learning to love myself, I've realized that having intellectual sparring partners is crucial for my personal growth. I aspire to surround myself with like-minded individuals who resonate with my thoughts and experiences, and who can push me intellectually to expand my horizons. The sense of belonging and understanding that I've been yearning for feels closer than ever before.
I want to acknowledge the incredible role that my girlfriend plays in my life and how she has been a source of immense support. She holds a special place in my heart, and it is through her suggestion that I am considering joining Mensa. I am truly grateful for her encouragement and belief in me. At the same time, as I contemplate this step, I experience a mix of gratitude and apprehension. The idea of delving into the unknown and connecting with the individuals associated with Mensa both excites and intimidates me. It is a journey that brings both anticipation and a sense of uncertainty.
So, here I am, seeking your thoughts and insights. Could Mensa be the right place for me? I'm eager to connect with like-minded individuals, engage in stimulating conversations, and find the sense of belonging that I've been yearning for. Your perspectives and advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you all.
(PS: I have utilized ChatGPT to rephrase various aspects of my narrative. I have found that this has tremendously aided me in articulating my thoughts in a lucid manner in written form.)
submitted by Diderikdm to mensa [link] [comments]
I've been contemplating joining Mensa recently, but there's something holding me back, and I can't quite put my finger on it. Let me share a bit about myself and my journey so far, in hopes of finding some relatability among you:
Throughout my early years until around age 25, I struggled with deep depression. My main motivation for living was simply to avoid disappointing others, but looking back, I realize that it provided me with a sense of purpose, and I'm grateful for that. However, the impact of those difficult times has left me with profound psychological scars from a broken childhood and the accompanying depression. These issues can unexpectedly resurface, and I can trace them back to certain events in my past.
At a young age, I had the opportunity to skip three grades in school before taking an IQ test at a Dutch university. The test results were inconclusive, as they couldn't provide me with a score due to a lack of comparable data. Nonetheless, based on their assessment, I was allowed to advance to advanced courses in the exact sciences when I was just 11 years old.
This unconventional path in my education had profound effects on my development. As a result of being advanced in the exact sciences while lacking proficiency in languages and other subjects, my behavior and interests didn't align with those of my peers. Despite my advanced knowledge in certain areas, the decision was made to place me back into a school environment with classmates who were three years older than me. This adjustment was far from smooth, and I faced relentless bullying and ostracization. The stark contrast between excelling in one domain and struggling in others took a toll on my self-esteem and shattered my motivation.
I experienced a deep sense of frustration as I found myself caught between extremes. Everything I encountered seemed either too challenging or too simple. The lack of a balanced education, with limited exposure to crucial subjects and social interactions, left me feeling isolated and disheartened. The setback of repeating four grades further compounded my struggles and hindered my progress. Gradually, my enthusiasm for learning eroded, and I developed a sense of disgust toward the educational process itself. It seemed like an insurmountable hurdle, with no satisfaction or fulfillment to be found.
The unconventional and challenging educational journey I had experienced left me disillusioned and yearning for a "normal" life. I grew to despise learning and longed for the simplicity and carefree existence that I believed others enjoyed. I wanted to fit in and do what I perceived as "normal" people do, without the burden of my exceptional intelligence. Goals seemed elusive, and I found myself living day by day, with little concern for the consequences of my actions or the development of harmful habits.
As I entered my early twenties, I continued to live a directionless and hedonistic lifestyle. My focus was solely on seeking immediate pleasure and avoiding any commitments that might hinder my freedom. I did venture into various fields of study, including Biology, Media & Entertainment, and Psychology, hoping to find a path that resonated with me. However, I quickly grew frustrated with the slow pace of academic pursuits and the perceived lack of practicality.
Moreover, I came to the inevitable realization that pursuing groundbreaking research, which had always held a fascination for me, would likely demand compromising my ethical principles. This clash between my insatiable desire for intellectual exploration and my unwavering commitment to upholding my moral compass felt like hitting an impenetrable wall. The weight of this realization further dampened my motivation and left me feeling trapped in a state of aimlessness
During this period, there was a stark contrast between my internal turmoil and the perception of those around me. From an external perspective, it might have seemed like I was simply enjoying a carefree existence, but internally I struggled with a deep sense of dissatisfaction and a longing for a more meaningful and purpose-driven life.
That's when I found myself navigating the uncertain waters of work without a degree or a satisfying high school diploma. While these experiences taught me some valuable life skills, I couldn't shake the void of intellectual stimulation and the lack of a true sense of purpose. I dabbled in various low-level jobs, searching for something that would ignite a fire within me.
And then, by chance, I stumbled upon programming. It was like a revelation, an immediate resonance that filled the void in my soul. It was about three and a half years ago, when I was 29 years old, that I discovered my true passion. Programming became my sanctuary, where I could breathe life into any idea using reason and creativity, unbound by the constraints of traditional education or the corporate world. It was a realm where imagination knew no limits, and the results of my creations spoke for themselves.
Now, I find myself working as a freelance senior Python developer, fully immersed in the dynamic world of technology. But it's not just about the code or the projects; it's about the impact I can have on people's lives. My goal is to become a digital nomad, embracing a life of incredible freedom where I can open my laptop anywhere in the world and make a real difference. This drive stems from the deep-rooted desire to finally make a positive impact, to contribute to causes like sustainability and engage in charity projects. Perhaps it's because I've struggled for so long to make a difference in my own life that I'm now fueled by the urge to bring positive change to others.
Throughout these years, I've come across only a few people with whom I can truly connect, understanding a fraction of my thought processes. Most people, whether friends or family, specialize in specific areas, such as discussing black holes, social interactions, biology, or general topics. I feel like I can understand what almost everyone thinks and feels, but only a minuscule percentage of people truly grasp fragments of my thoughts, even when I try to explain them in the simplest way possible, as if talking to a five-year-old (well, that's an exaggeration, but you get the idea).
It's an enigma. I possess this uncanny ability to tap into someone else's thought process, even if it involves groundbreaking research in a particular field. Yet, I find myself stranded on an island, isolated by my comprehensive understanding that I can't fully comprehend. It's incredibly frustrating. I've even attempted to diminish my intellect by resorting to excessive alcohol consumption and other substances, hoping to fit in. However, that only resulted in heightened anxiety and intensified feelings of isolation.
So now, I'm thinking about joining Mensa. I'm drawn to the idea of connecting with like-minded people who have gone through similar experiences, or are currently going through them. To be honest, I would even prefer to be less intelligent than someone else. The constant feeling of isolation has really taken a toll on me, and it's no longer something I find enjoyable.
What I truly need is to connect with people who can offer fresh perspectives that go beyond my own limited view. I crave interactions with individuals who can intellectually challenge me, point out my blind spots, and provide insightful explanations. It's important for me to find equals who truly grasp and relate to my experiences. While I have made progress in learning to love myself, I've realized that having intellectual sparring partners is crucial for my personal growth. I aspire to surround myself with like-minded individuals who resonate with my thoughts and experiences, and who can push me intellectually to expand my horizons. The sense of belonging and understanding that I've been yearning for feels closer than ever before.
I want to acknowledge the incredible role that my girlfriend plays in my life and how she has been a source of immense support. She holds a special place in my heart, and it is through her suggestion that I am considering joining Mensa. I am truly grateful for her encouragement and belief in me. At the same time, as I contemplate this step, I experience a mix of gratitude and apprehension. The idea of delving into the unknown and connecting with the individuals associated with Mensa both excites and intimidates me. It is a journey that brings both anticipation and a sense of uncertainty.
So, here I am, seeking your thoughts and insights. Could Mensa be the right place for me? I'm eager to connect with like-minded individuals, engage in stimulating conversations, and find the sense of belonging that I've been yearning for. Your perspectives and advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you all.
(PS: I have utilized ChatGPT to rephrase various aspects of my narrative. I have found that this has tremendously aided me in articulating my thoughts in a lucid manner in written form.)
2023.06.03 05:51 EchoJobs PayPal is hiring Senior Software Engineer US Remote Scottsdale, AZ [Java Docker Kubernetes Go Python]
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2023.06.03 05:29 Cc17359 2nd go on Lexapro
A bit of backstory. I had my first major depressive episode my senior year of college. Depersonalization, derealization, suicidal thoughts, whole 9 yards. I eventually got put on Lexapro and this snapped me out of that after about 12 weeks. I was doing AMAZING feeling like a normal human for about a year and a half, then suddenly, boom: symptoms appeared and had horrible suicidal thoughts. Tried out a few different medications but nothing worked and I mean nothing. Fast forward to January of 2023. I went against my psychiatrist (I know I’m sorry but I was desperate) and asked my GP if we could try Lexapro again because it worked amazing the first time, maybe my body just needed a break? Anyway, yes it worked great! I felt normal again up until this week. I feel my depressive symptoms full swing and I am scared and tired of this stupid fight with my brain. So my question is, do I wait it out? Do I ask my doctor for a different SSRI? Am I totally doomed to live this cycle? Please help, I really am tired of fighting my brain and I was so happy to have at least a few months of peace on Lexapro.
submitted by Cc17359 to lexapro [link] [comments]
2023.06.03 05:21 Illustrious-Big2512 aa in high school admission process
hey! i am an incoming senior and will be receiving my AA through a local community college. i wanted to know if i could apply as a transfer if i don't get in as a freshman applicant. usually this works with those who have already graduated hs and then attend a community college (2+2 articulation agreement) but it want to see if this could work also. i live on Florida. let me know thanks!
submitted by Illustrious-Big2512 to fsu [link] [comments]
2023.06.03 05:21 EchoJobs PayPal is hiring Senior Software Engineer US Scottsdale, AZ [Shell MySQL MongoDB HTML CSS API Oracle Java Python JavaScript]
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2023.06.03 05:21 Amos54 FAQ for this sub - a work in progress
Hello everyone and welcome to this sub! We expect most of the people who show up here are men, but also understand some women will find their way here too. This FAQ, and the sub as a whole, are mainly for men to help them understand what this latest method of dating, filtering, gossip or whatever you want to call it is all about. It also includes ways to help understand the reasoning behind it, and what you can do going forward to help protect yourself and others. This document will be a work in progress and I'll edit as needed for more critical information.
Q: What is AWDTSG / Are We Dating the Same Guy?
A: AWDTSG started over a year ago, around early-mid 2022. It originated on Facebook groups and still resides there today. The original purpose of the group was a way for women to exchange information with one another about the men they were dating primarily focused on their safety. For example if the man turned out to have an extensive criminal record, was physically abusive, or in a relationship/married. There was no one centralized group that I'm aware of, although I'm sure it probably started that way. It currently exists in multiple groups in major cities primarily in the United States but also some cities in Europe. At its peak, these groups had around 2 million members.
Q: Isn't focusing on dating safety a good thing?
A: Of course! However what a lot of people fail to understand is that you do not need Facebook groups like these to be safe. Anyone can search public records on a person to find if they have a criminal background or some type of outstanding court records involving family law. No, courts don't keep track of who's in a relationship and who isn't, however you can still search for marriage records. There is no perfect system, and there are no guarantees despite what many people who claim that these sorts of groups are now essential in today's modern dating world.
Q: So what's wrong with these groups?
A: Over 95% of all AWDTSG group discussions are nothing more than gossip. Yes, like I mentioned previously they started out focusing on safety for their members and helping others investigate suspicious people by searching public records. However that quickly fell to the wayside and degenerated into rumors, gossip, comments about the appearance of men, insults pertaining to their body or how they live their personal life. Originally these groups posted men with whom the women were in established relationships, and some married women who suspected their husbands may be cheating. Instead today women will take pictures of men either from public profiles on social media sites, or screenshots of their dating profiles on various apps, and ask for "tea" (gossip) on a man whom they have never even spoken to. This is a very common occurence in all regional groups however the members of these groups justify it under the guise of "thinking about" matching with the man in question or sliding into their DMs.
Q: This sounds terrible!
A: It is. There have been many reports of men who have seen the posts and comments made by women who dogpile, there are women who claim a man have said or done something to her and the man has never met the woman before. There are no methods of verifying the comments that women make in these groups as being valid or truthful. Many are inclined to believe them unfortunately because the admins of these groups continue to parrot on a regular basis that it's all about "safety".
Q: How do you actually know what's said in these groups?
A: I, along with other people in this sub, have access to different groups throughout the U.S. and some other countries. Some of us are also mods in these groups.
Q: Why won't Facebook remove these groups then if they're so harmful?
A: That is an interesting question and one that's been tossed around several times before. Here's the best consensus I've been able to determine so far. Paola Sanchez is the woman behind running these groups and is the public face of them. Her boyfriend, Blake Milbrand, however is the main guy actually implementing the logistics of running these groups and also trying to use as a springboard to start their own company. We believe that the Facebook groups that got started were a way of sort of testing the market to determine if there would be any demand for such a service. Sure enough, research found that women still enjoy gossiping just like every previous generation of women going back for centuries. I also believe that Paola possibly has some insider business connections at Facebook/Meta. Very likely Facebook continues to allow these sorts of groups to exist or be created since they drive more traffic to Facebook itself. The more traffic Facebook receives the more potential revenue they can generate.
Q: So if Facebook won't remove these groups, we can just report them right?
A: Anyone can report any group on Facebook however we know for a fact that hundreds of reports have been made against these groups and Facebook will not remove them. A different approach is required....
Q: What's this different approach?
A: If enough legal complaints are made against a group, specifically copyrighted material, this will get Facebook's attention and they do take action. The easiest way a man can remove his pictures from these groups is by filing a DMCA takedown request. Your pictures are considered copyrighted material under U.S. law. When you post your pictures to a dating app, you are giving consent to that app to use your pictures when presenting your profile. However when a woman takes a screenshot of those same pics on your dating profile, you have not given consent for your pictures to be posted and displayed in that manner. Your pictures are still your property.
Q: So how do I file a DMCA takedown request?
A: This is where it gets a little tricky and is also precisely why Paola & Blake started the Facebook groups in the manner they did. These groups are private and you must apply to be a member of the group. They will only let women in, and they typically check various factors of the person's account, like account age, profile pics, friends, posting history, etc. In order to file a DMCA takedown request, you need to have the specific URL of your picture. If you have access to a group, you can right-click and select "Show image in new tab" or on a phone usually long press, and open in a new tab if viewing from a browser. The point is you need to get the very long URL with lots of random characters and typically has a "jpg" as part of the URL itself. This is so Facebook knows precisely which picture you're talking about. No one at Facebook or any other media company is going to search for you regardless of whatever DMCA takedown request you file - you must supply the exact URL for them. Anyone can file a copyright claim on their own, for free, using Facebook's own submission page located here: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/copyrightform Remember you are considered the owner of your own pictures when submitting this.
You can also have someone else act on your behalf. Some have reported success in hiring people from fiverr. Be sure to always keep records of every take down notice you submit. There are important reasons why which I will discuss later.
Q: If I file a DMCA takedown request, and they remove it, can't someone else just post my pics again?
A: Yes that is possible. In which case you will have to file takedown requests for each and every pic that is posted without your consent. It can get tiresome but DMCA takedown notices are an effective tool that has been in use for nearly 25 years in the U.S. These carry legal weight and additionally Facebook has put AWDTSG groups on notice if they receive too many legitimate complaints.
Q: What does that mean that Facebook puts these groups on notice?
A: No company wants legal trouble. Large companies like Facebook have full time in-house corporate counsel on their payrolls. These large companies pay their senior attorneys very well and so they want them to focus on very important things for the company such as buyouts of other companies, patent filings or infringements, securities and investments, etc. If legitimate DMCA take down notices are filed against the company in ever increasing numbers, this will begin to get the attention of those attorneys and that's overall bad news for the company because it's exposing them to great legal liability. Facebook has a sort of warning system in place for groups that it hosts. If Facebook receives legitimate takedown notices that it takes action on and complies with the law, after several of these Facebook will notify the group admins of the warning and usually removes certain features for the groups. One of the main features that AWDTSG relies on is anonymous posting. Anonymous posting is exactly what it sounds like - a user can submit a post as "Anonymous" so that no one ever knows their real name. Facebook typically removes this feature for the group. Paola and company have instead resorted to asking for volunteers within the group to post on behalf of other women. What many of these women don't realize is that they have potentially opened themselves personally up to tort of defamation, specifically libel. If Facebook continues to receive and act to comply with legitimate DMCA takedown notices, they will shut down the group.
Q: They've shut down the groups? That's awesome! But can they remake them again?
A: Yes, and that's already happened in several areas. Remember how I mentioned previously that your pics could possibly get posted multiple times, and you'd have to file multiple takedown notices for each one? Well you kept those records right? And you kept records of Facebook's reply stating that they've complied with your request right? Don't you think that after maybe 5 or 10 of these happening for your pics it starts getting pretty ridiculous? I mean, you might be able to make the argument that the company itself is actively supporting the hosting of infringing on copyrighted material, and that might even lead to a cause for filing for damages....in other words, suing the company for a monetary sum because they have demonstrated that they repeatedly hosted material that infringed on your rights as a copyright holder. And if you have a legitimate case against a large company like Facebook, you very likely have a pretty good case against the specific person who posted your pics without your consent. Hmmmm :) You know...I wonder if enough guys who kept those records like I mentioned, all got together and met with the same law firm, with the same complaints of repeated hosting of copyrighted material.....what's that called? Why, it's called a class-action lawsuit!
Q: What else do I need to know about these sorts of groups?
A: Aside from learning about what people might be saying behind your back, I personally have found them a very useful centralized source of information. What I mean by that is, if I happen to be going on a date with a new lady I've met, I now look her up on these groups. If she's been contributing in any way, there is no point in wasting my time with her. No date is going to happen and I move on with my life. You can easily search for ladies within these groups by clicking on the Members tab. You can also learn who in your area is very active in these groups by scrolling down to the Group Contributors section.
More info about Paola Sanchez and Blake Milbrand
In my personal opinion, Paola is a grifter. Of course anyone who starts their own company wants to make money, nothing unusual about that. However the nature of how AWDTSG got off the ground has come to rely on the gossip and unknowing defamation of men. I have personally seen posts made of men in these groups by an anonymous woman (when the anonymous feature was available for the group), a woman replied in the comments that this was her brother and knew about the situation the anonymous woman spoke of, claimed she was entirely wrong and outright lying, and other women in the group verbally began attacking the woman in the comments for defending her brother. The admins of the group sent out a notice the next week reminding the women of the rules of the group - no talking about the group to any men regardless of how you know them. In other words, Paola and company want these women to choose them over their own family.
Have you ever thought objectively for a moment how this sounds? Leaders of these groups don't want any members to talk about the group with anyone who isn't a member and don't want you showing any content of the group to non-members, most especially men. They want you accept that whatever comments are posted about men to be the absolute truth. Do you personally know the thousands of members of these groups? Do you personally know the people who might comment on a man that you do know? If you don't, why would you believe what they say?
Paola has started her company, her published intention being to move all the people off of Facebook and onto a new website or new app. https://www.awdtsg.com/ has already been created. Some of you may have found her Gofundme here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/create-a-safe-platform-for-awdtsg
Based on what I and several others have observed about her actions thus far, we don't believe she has sufficient talent or capital to make possible on her own what Facebook is already providing for her. I believe she is simply relying on the naiveté of other women to make a cash grab and nothing more.
A SERIOUS WARNING FOR ANY WOMAN READING THIS!!
If you are a member of any AWDTSG group that has lost the ability to post anonymously, likely the mods or admins have asked for volunteers who post on behalf of other women. They ask you to do this under the guise of helping that woman remain anonymous. What you do not realize is that by doing this, you open yourself up to legal liability by posting copyrighted material. Facebook will not protect you - I am referring to the fact that you will personally be held liable if an individual chooses to take it as far as pursuing civil damages for posting copyrighted material without their express written consent.
Tools to help you
Learn about DMCA takedown notices here. https://www.dmca.com/FAQ/How-can-I-file-a-DMCA-Takedown-Notice
Remember you don't have to pay to file a DMCA takedown on your own, but if you're unsure of it, you can pay someone to do it for you. Fiverr has plenty of people out there who are willing to help, and attorneys are also happy to help too for even more money.
File a copyright infringement notice with Facebook directly here: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/copyrightform
Remember you will need the specific URL of the pics.
submitted by Amos54 to AWDTSGexposed [link] [comments]
Q: What is AWDTSG / Are We Dating the Same Guy?
A: AWDTSG started over a year ago, around early-mid 2022. It originated on Facebook groups and still resides there today. The original purpose of the group was a way for women to exchange information with one another about the men they were dating primarily focused on their safety. For example if the man turned out to have an extensive criminal record, was physically abusive, or in a relationship/married. There was no one centralized group that I'm aware of, although I'm sure it probably started that way. It currently exists in multiple groups in major cities primarily in the United States but also some cities in Europe. At its peak, these groups had around 2 million members.
Q: Isn't focusing on dating safety a good thing?
A: Of course! However what a lot of people fail to understand is that you do not need Facebook groups like these to be safe. Anyone can search public records on a person to find if they have a criminal background or some type of outstanding court records involving family law. No, courts don't keep track of who's in a relationship and who isn't, however you can still search for marriage records. There is no perfect system, and there are no guarantees despite what many people who claim that these sorts of groups are now essential in today's modern dating world.
Q: So what's wrong with these groups?
A: Over 95% of all AWDTSG group discussions are nothing more than gossip. Yes, like I mentioned previously they started out focusing on safety for their members and helping others investigate suspicious people by searching public records. However that quickly fell to the wayside and degenerated into rumors, gossip, comments about the appearance of men, insults pertaining to their body or how they live their personal life. Originally these groups posted men with whom the women were in established relationships, and some married women who suspected their husbands may be cheating. Instead today women will take pictures of men either from public profiles on social media sites, or screenshots of their dating profiles on various apps, and ask for "tea" (gossip) on a man whom they have never even spoken to. This is a very common occurence in all regional groups however the members of these groups justify it under the guise of "thinking about" matching with the man in question or sliding into their DMs.
Q: This sounds terrible!
A: It is. There have been many reports of men who have seen the posts and comments made by women who dogpile, there are women who claim a man have said or done something to her and the man has never met the woman before. There are no methods of verifying the comments that women make in these groups as being valid or truthful. Many are inclined to believe them unfortunately because the admins of these groups continue to parrot on a regular basis that it's all about "safety".
Q: How do you actually know what's said in these groups?
A: I, along with other people in this sub, have access to different groups throughout the U.S. and some other countries. Some of us are also mods in these groups.
Q: Why won't Facebook remove these groups then if they're so harmful?
A: That is an interesting question and one that's been tossed around several times before. Here's the best consensus I've been able to determine so far. Paola Sanchez is the woman behind running these groups and is the public face of them. Her boyfriend, Blake Milbrand, however is the main guy actually implementing the logistics of running these groups and also trying to use as a springboard to start their own company. We believe that the Facebook groups that got started were a way of sort of testing the market to determine if there would be any demand for such a service. Sure enough, research found that women still enjoy gossiping just like every previous generation of women going back for centuries. I also believe that Paola possibly has some insider business connections at Facebook/Meta. Very likely Facebook continues to allow these sorts of groups to exist or be created since they drive more traffic to Facebook itself. The more traffic Facebook receives the more potential revenue they can generate.
Q: So if Facebook won't remove these groups, we can just report them right?
A: Anyone can report any group on Facebook however we know for a fact that hundreds of reports have been made against these groups and Facebook will not remove them. A different approach is required....
Q: What's this different approach?
A: If enough legal complaints are made against a group, specifically copyrighted material, this will get Facebook's attention and they do take action. The easiest way a man can remove his pictures from these groups is by filing a DMCA takedown request. Your pictures are considered copyrighted material under U.S. law. When you post your pictures to a dating app, you are giving consent to that app to use your pictures when presenting your profile. However when a woman takes a screenshot of those same pics on your dating profile, you have not given consent for your pictures to be posted and displayed in that manner. Your pictures are still your property.
Q: So how do I file a DMCA takedown request?
A: This is where it gets a little tricky and is also precisely why Paola & Blake started the Facebook groups in the manner they did. These groups are private and you must apply to be a member of the group. They will only let women in, and they typically check various factors of the person's account, like account age, profile pics, friends, posting history, etc. In order to file a DMCA takedown request, you need to have the specific URL of your picture. If you have access to a group, you can right-click and select "Show image in new tab" or on a phone usually long press, and open in a new tab if viewing from a browser. The point is you need to get the very long URL with lots of random characters and typically has a "jpg" as part of the URL itself. This is so Facebook knows precisely which picture you're talking about. No one at Facebook or any other media company is going to search for you regardless of whatever DMCA takedown request you file - you must supply the exact URL for them. Anyone can file a copyright claim on their own, for free, using Facebook's own submission page located here: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/copyrightform Remember you are considered the owner of your own pictures when submitting this.
You can also have someone else act on your behalf. Some have reported success in hiring people from fiverr. Be sure to always keep records of every take down notice you submit. There are important reasons why which I will discuss later.
Q: If I file a DMCA takedown request, and they remove it, can't someone else just post my pics again?
A: Yes that is possible. In which case you will have to file takedown requests for each and every pic that is posted without your consent. It can get tiresome but DMCA takedown notices are an effective tool that has been in use for nearly 25 years in the U.S. These carry legal weight and additionally Facebook has put AWDTSG groups on notice if they receive too many legitimate complaints.
Q: What does that mean that Facebook puts these groups on notice?
A: No company wants legal trouble. Large companies like Facebook have full time in-house corporate counsel on their payrolls. These large companies pay their senior attorneys very well and so they want them to focus on very important things for the company such as buyouts of other companies, patent filings or infringements, securities and investments, etc. If legitimate DMCA take down notices are filed against the company in ever increasing numbers, this will begin to get the attention of those attorneys and that's overall bad news for the company because it's exposing them to great legal liability. Facebook has a sort of warning system in place for groups that it hosts. If Facebook receives legitimate takedown notices that it takes action on and complies with the law, after several of these Facebook will notify the group admins of the warning and usually removes certain features for the groups. One of the main features that AWDTSG relies on is anonymous posting. Anonymous posting is exactly what it sounds like - a user can submit a post as "Anonymous" so that no one ever knows their real name. Facebook typically removes this feature for the group. Paola and company have instead resorted to asking for volunteers within the group to post on behalf of other women. What many of these women don't realize is that they have potentially opened themselves personally up to tort of defamation, specifically libel. If Facebook continues to receive and act to comply with legitimate DMCA takedown notices, they will shut down the group.
Q: They've shut down the groups? That's awesome! But can they remake them again?
A: Yes, and that's already happened in several areas. Remember how I mentioned previously that your pics could possibly get posted multiple times, and you'd have to file multiple takedown notices for each one? Well you kept those records right? And you kept records of Facebook's reply stating that they've complied with your request right? Don't you think that after maybe 5 or 10 of these happening for your pics it starts getting pretty ridiculous? I mean, you might be able to make the argument that the company itself is actively supporting the hosting of infringing on copyrighted material, and that might even lead to a cause for filing for damages....in other words, suing the company for a monetary sum because they have demonstrated that they repeatedly hosted material that infringed on your rights as a copyright holder. And if you have a legitimate case against a large company like Facebook, you very likely have a pretty good case against the specific person who posted your pics without your consent. Hmmmm :) You know...I wonder if enough guys who kept those records like I mentioned, all got together and met with the same law firm, with the same complaints of repeated hosting of copyrighted material.....what's that called? Why, it's called a class-action lawsuit!
Q: What else do I need to know about these sorts of groups?
A: Aside from learning about what people might be saying behind your back, I personally have found them a very useful centralized source of information. What I mean by that is, if I happen to be going on a date with a new lady I've met, I now look her up on these groups. If she's been contributing in any way, there is no point in wasting my time with her. No date is going to happen and I move on with my life. You can easily search for ladies within these groups by clicking on the Members tab. You can also learn who in your area is very active in these groups by scrolling down to the Group Contributors section.
More info about Paola Sanchez and Blake Milbrand
In my personal opinion, Paola is a grifter. Of course anyone who starts their own company wants to make money, nothing unusual about that. However the nature of how AWDTSG got off the ground has come to rely on the gossip and unknowing defamation of men. I have personally seen posts made of men in these groups by an anonymous woman (when the anonymous feature was available for the group), a woman replied in the comments that this was her brother and knew about the situation the anonymous woman spoke of, claimed she was entirely wrong and outright lying, and other women in the group verbally began attacking the woman in the comments for defending her brother. The admins of the group sent out a notice the next week reminding the women of the rules of the group - no talking about the group to any men regardless of how you know them. In other words, Paola and company want these women to choose them over their own family.
Have you ever thought objectively for a moment how this sounds? Leaders of these groups don't want any members to talk about the group with anyone who isn't a member and don't want you showing any content of the group to non-members, most especially men. They want you accept that whatever comments are posted about men to be the absolute truth. Do you personally know the thousands of members of these groups? Do you personally know the people who might comment on a man that you do know? If you don't, why would you believe what they say?
Paola has started her company, her published intention being to move all the people off of Facebook and onto a new website or new app. https://www.awdtsg.com/ has already been created. Some of you may have found her Gofundme here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/create-a-safe-platform-for-awdtsg
Based on what I and several others have observed about her actions thus far, we don't believe she has sufficient talent or capital to make possible on her own what Facebook is already providing for her. I believe she is simply relying on the naiveté of other women to make a cash grab and nothing more.
A SERIOUS WARNING FOR ANY WOMAN READING THIS!!
If you are a member of any AWDTSG group that has lost the ability to post anonymously, likely the mods or admins have asked for volunteers who post on behalf of other women. They ask you to do this under the guise of helping that woman remain anonymous. What you do not realize is that by doing this, you open yourself up to legal liability by posting copyrighted material. Facebook will not protect you - I am referring to the fact that you will personally be held liable if an individual chooses to take it as far as pursuing civil damages for posting copyrighted material without their express written consent.
Tools to help you
Learn about DMCA takedown notices here. https://www.dmca.com/FAQ/How-can-I-file-a-DMCA-Takedown-Notice
Remember you don't have to pay to file a DMCA takedown on your own, but if you're unsure of it, you can pay someone to do it for you. Fiverr has plenty of people out there who are willing to help, and attorneys are also happy to help too for even more money.
File a copyright infringement notice with Facebook directly here: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/copyrightform
Remember you will need the specific URL of the pics.
2023.06.03 05:21 Illustrious-Big2512 aa in high school admission process
hey! i am an incoming senior and will be receiving my AA through a local community college. i wanted to know if i could apply as a transfer if i don't get in as a freshman applicant. usually this works with those who have already graduated hs and then attend a community college (2+2 articulation agreement) but it want to see if this could work also. i live on Florida. let me know thanks!
submitted by Illustrious-Big2512 to USF [link] [comments]
2023.06.03 05:16 Junior_Cress2828 My experience at NEHS pride today! /positive
So I saw the flyer on instagram ages ago (before it got taken down bc people are ~snowflakes~ lmao) and I went after work today. I was on the bus and walked from River Road towards the event when someone saw my rainbow butterfly wing cape and was like "Man we could use a cape like that down by those protesters haha". So the spiteful little goblin I am, I kept walking straight, and didnt turn into the parking lot towards where Pride was being held. Because I literally cannot help myself. Someone told me they could use me down by the protesters, what was I gonna do, walk away like a rational person? Absolutely not. I'm a Eugenian, I don't do rational.
Low and behold about an hour and a half later I'm still there dancing in front of protesters with my umbrella. I know these protesters. They know me. I think one of them actually said "nice to see you again!" jokingly when I came up. It's always the same bunch, I've seen them at the Saturday Market and at the UO, obviously you're gonna get recognized if you see them a bunch. My motto with them has always been "do no harm but take no shit". I'll never initiate or start anything with them, but if they start something with me I'm ready to finish it. I had my umbrella up and one of them snapped at me about "blocking his freedom of speech, with is illegal!!! >:((((" because my umbrella "accidentally" got in between him and a teenager he was trying to get to talk to him. I know better than the kids do. Don't engage. They're trained to talk to you in a very specific way to make you angry, and so that you flounder your responses so they can humiliate you. They are taught to do these things. Just don't engage. And I pointed to the cops about 50 feet away from us and said "If it's illegal, go talk to them. The cops are here for a reason." And he didn't talk to me again. I'm autistic and my ability to mask my emotions from years of trauma pays off when dealing with protesters. My adrenaline levels can be enough to stop a horse's heart and I'll still be smiling and vibing calmly. The midwest small-town brat in me was ready to get into a fistfight with men twice my size but the rational adult in me was thankfully holding the leash. If you've ever dealt with someone that's persistent in all the things that make you mad (like screaming to teenagers that their parents are pedophiles that are grooming them for bringing them to an event that's giving out colorful flags and button pins) you'll know the feeling.
But in spite of all of that hate. Mostly from the one dude with the speaker the rest of them were kinda just standing around looking bored as hell this was not a lively bunch today- I wanna extend my gratitude to all the students, staff, and community members that pulled up by the curb to talk to me today. They always asked me how I was doing. "Do you need water? Do you have snacks? Are you doing alright here honey?" I would hold up my water bottle and assure them I was staying hydrated. Someone gave me an orange (which was delicious btw) and when my water bottle ran empty, I was told by someone who came out to greet me that they'd hold my place until I got back if I wanted to go find somewhere to refill it. I stayed out there for an hour and a half, from 3 to 4:30. I was only intending on being there for a few minutes, but it was honestly so much fun greeting people and welcoming them in (even with someone screaming the word of someone who only sounded vaugely similar to Jesus in my ear the entire time). A former teacher of mine ran through the parking lot when she saw me to hug me. Practically tackled me and squeezed the life out of me. I had teachers come from inside the event to come and ask me how I was doing. One of them said "Thank you for being the barrier." to me and one of the students who was out there with me with their flag, and it made me really happy. I was one of the first people out there. I know interaction fuels their obsessive ideology but they were harassing people that were coming in and out of the event on foot, calling them out specifically, and telling children that came by that their parents were pedophiles for taking them to a pride event. Someone needed to be a tension breaker and that was my goofy ass for a minute before reinforcements came. People were dancing with their pride flags and singing lady gaga and waving to people as they came in.
And then I headed inside. After an hour and a half I realized "Oh shit I'm gonna miss the whole thing if I'm out here much longer" and I waved goodbye to the protesters. I ate my amazing donated orange outside the gate. Headed on in. It was wonderful. I helped set up during the first NEHS pride last year when I was a senior. So I know just how much it's grown in just ONE YEAR. I watched friends who were still students get access to gender-affirming items (donated binders were a big one. I got my first binder at NEHS pride last year, so to see they still had that available this year? Along with gender-affirming mtf items like bras available for those who may have been mtf? Which was NOT there last year? It was wonderful to see.) I had multiple people stop me and ask if they could pet/take pictures of my pride axolotl (from build a bear, it's pink and has rainbow gills), I had people compliment my outfit, I had people compliment my wings, it was wonderful. There were games and outdoor stuff set up for the kids (which was a bit lacking last year) and there were some small artists there as well. I got a little acrylic pin that has a picture of a peach on it that says "I'm a little fruity!" for 5 bucks and its honestly my favorite thing from today. From the same place I got an "emotional support waterbottle sticker" for 2 bucks that's getting put on my favorite water bottle.
I had a long chat with someone while in line for the spin-the-wheel game. They were clearly nervous, I think they were there by themselves, so I hung out and talked to them while we were in line. I made button pins at two different booths. I collected an ungodly amount of stickers like the little sticker gremlin I am.
And I had. An awesome time. I'm home now. I have a massive headache (probably from being in the sun so long today). But otherwise I'm pretty happy :) I used to be afraid of wearing my pride stuff out in public. People on the bus have given me shifty looks like they want to talk to me in a negative way (but my headphones usually save me from any real confrontation because it's awkward to make someone take off their headphones to tell them you hate their pride flag skirt.) But I walked to the bus stop today, sore and tired, and I felt free.
For as much vocal negativity as there is in this world right now. There's a lot of silent hope, love, and community. I didn't know most of the people who stopped to talk to me today. But they saw me out there and they stopped to make sure I had water. To make sure I had food if I was hungry. To make sure I felt safe during the few times I was up there by myself. Which tbh was not often at all. They didn't know me. And I didn't know them. But we were a part of the same community. And they were there for me. I only hope they believe I was there for them, too. People are kinder than the world has taught us to believe. Don't let the vocal minority prevent you from believing in the good that there is in this world. Stay safe out there, folks! I look forward to seeing yall at Eugene Pride in August! And probably the same protesters too lmao.
submitted by Junior_Cress2828 to Eugene [link] [comments]
Low and behold about an hour and a half later I'm still there dancing in front of protesters with my umbrella. I know these protesters. They know me. I think one of them actually said "nice to see you again!" jokingly when I came up. It's always the same bunch, I've seen them at the Saturday Market and at the UO, obviously you're gonna get recognized if you see them a bunch. My motto with them has always been "do no harm but take no shit". I'll never initiate or start anything with them, but if they start something with me I'm ready to finish it. I had my umbrella up and one of them snapped at me about "blocking his freedom of speech, with is illegal!!! >:((((" because my umbrella "accidentally" got in between him and a teenager he was trying to get to talk to him. I know better than the kids do. Don't engage. They're trained to talk to you in a very specific way to make you angry, and so that you flounder your responses so they can humiliate you. They are taught to do these things. Just don't engage. And I pointed to the cops about 50 feet away from us and said "If it's illegal, go talk to them. The cops are here for a reason." And he didn't talk to me again. I'm autistic and my ability to mask my emotions from years of trauma pays off when dealing with protesters. My adrenaline levels can be enough to stop a horse's heart and I'll still be smiling and vibing calmly. The midwest small-town brat in me was ready to get into a fistfight with men twice my size but the rational adult in me was thankfully holding the leash. If you've ever dealt with someone that's persistent in all the things that make you mad (like screaming to teenagers that their parents are pedophiles that are grooming them for bringing them to an event that's giving out colorful flags and button pins) you'll know the feeling.
But in spite of all of that hate. Mostly from the one dude with the speaker the rest of them were kinda just standing around looking bored as hell this was not a lively bunch today- I wanna extend my gratitude to all the students, staff, and community members that pulled up by the curb to talk to me today. They always asked me how I was doing. "Do you need water? Do you have snacks? Are you doing alright here honey?" I would hold up my water bottle and assure them I was staying hydrated. Someone gave me an orange (which was delicious btw) and when my water bottle ran empty, I was told by someone who came out to greet me that they'd hold my place until I got back if I wanted to go find somewhere to refill it. I stayed out there for an hour and a half, from 3 to 4:30. I was only intending on being there for a few minutes, but it was honestly so much fun greeting people and welcoming them in (even with someone screaming the word of someone who only sounded vaugely similar to Jesus in my ear the entire time). A former teacher of mine ran through the parking lot when she saw me to hug me. Practically tackled me and squeezed the life out of me. I had teachers come from inside the event to come and ask me how I was doing. One of them said "Thank you for being the barrier." to me and one of the students who was out there with me with their flag, and it made me really happy. I was one of the first people out there. I know interaction fuels their obsessive ideology but they were harassing people that were coming in and out of the event on foot, calling them out specifically, and telling children that came by that their parents were pedophiles for taking them to a pride event. Someone needed to be a tension breaker and that was my goofy ass for a minute before reinforcements came. People were dancing with their pride flags and singing lady gaga and waving to people as they came in.
And then I headed inside. After an hour and a half I realized "Oh shit I'm gonna miss the whole thing if I'm out here much longer" and I waved goodbye to the protesters. I ate my amazing donated orange outside the gate. Headed on in. It was wonderful. I helped set up during the first NEHS pride last year when I was a senior. So I know just how much it's grown in just ONE YEAR. I watched friends who were still students get access to gender-affirming items (donated binders were a big one. I got my first binder at NEHS pride last year, so to see they still had that available this year? Along with gender-affirming mtf items like bras available for those who may have been mtf? Which was NOT there last year? It was wonderful to see.) I had multiple people stop me and ask if they could pet/take pictures of my pride axolotl (from build a bear, it's pink and has rainbow gills), I had people compliment my outfit, I had people compliment my wings, it was wonderful. There were games and outdoor stuff set up for the kids (which was a bit lacking last year) and there were some small artists there as well. I got a little acrylic pin that has a picture of a peach on it that says "I'm a little fruity!" for 5 bucks and its honestly my favorite thing from today. From the same place I got an "emotional support waterbottle sticker" for 2 bucks that's getting put on my favorite water bottle.
I had a long chat with someone while in line for the spin-the-wheel game. They were clearly nervous, I think they were there by themselves, so I hung out and talked to them while we were in line. I made button pins at two different booths. I collected an ungodly amount of stickers like the little sticker gremlin I am.
And I had. An awesome time. I'm home now. I have a massive headache (probably from being in the sun so long today). But otherwise I'm pretty happy :) I used to be afraid of wearing my pride stuff out in public. People on the bus have given me shifty looks like they want to talk to me in a negative way (but my headphones usually save me from any real confrontation because it's awkward to make someone take off their headphones to tell them you hate their pride flag skirt.) But I walked to the bus stop today, sore and tired, and I felt free.
For as much vocal negativity as there is in this world right now. There's a lot of silent hope, love, and community. I didn't know most of the people who stopped to talk to me today. But they saw me out there and they stopped to make sure I had water. To make sure I had food if I was hungry. To make sure I felt safe during the few times I was up there by myself. Which tbh was not often at all. They didn't know me. And I didn't know them. But we were a part of the same community. And they were there for me. I only hope they believe I was there for them, too. People are kinder than the world has taught us to believe. Don't let the vocal minority prevent you from believing in the good that there is in this world. Stay safe out there, folks! I look forward to seeing yall at Eugene Pride in August! And probably the same protesters too lmao.
2023.06.03 05:02 Amos54 FAQ for this sub - a work in progress
Hello everyone and welcome to this sub! We expect most of the people who show up here are men, but also understand some women will find their way here too. This FAQ, and the sub as a whole, are mainly for men to help them understand what this latest method of dating, filtering, gossip or whatever you want to call it is all about. It also includes ways to help understand the reasoning behind it, and what you can do going forward to help protect yourself and others. This document will be a work in progress and I'll edit as needed for more critical information.
Q: What is AWDTSG / Are We Dating the Same Guy?
A: AWDTSG started over a year ago, around early-mid 2022. It originated on Facebook groups and still resides there today. The original purpose of the group was a way for women to exchange information with one another about the men they were dating primarily focused on their safety. For example if the man turned out to have an extensive criminal record, was physically abusive, or in a relationship/married. There was no one centralized group that I'm aware of, although I'm sure it probably started that way. It currently exists in multiple groups in major cities primarily in the United States but also some cities in Europe. At its peak, these groups had around 2 million members.
Q: Isn't focusing on dating safety a good thing?
A: Of course! However what a lot of people fail to understand is that you do not need Facebook groups like these to be safe. Anyone can search public records on a person to find if they have a criminal background or some type of outstanding court records involving family law. No, courts don't keep track of who's in a relationship and who isn't, however you can still search for marriage records. There is no perfect system, and there are no guarantees despite what many people who claim that these sorts of groups are now essential in today's modern dating world.
Q: So what's wrong with these groups?
A: Over 95% of all AWDTSG group discussions are nothing more than gossip. Yes, like I mentioned previously they started out focusing on safety for their members and helping others investigate suspicious people by searching public records. However that quickly fell to the wayside and degenerated into rumors, gossip, comments about the appearance of men, insults pertaining to their body or how they live their personal life. Originally these groups posted men with whom the women were in established relationships, and some married women who suspected their husbands may be cheating. Instead today women will take pictures of men either from public profiles on social media sites, or screenshots of their dating profiles on various apps, and ask for "tea" (gossip) on a man whom they have never even spoken to. This is a very common occurence in all regional groups however the members of these groups justify it under the guise of "thinking about" matching with the man in question or sliding into their DMs.
Q: This sounds terrible!
A: It is. There have been many reports of men who have seen the posts and comments made by women who dogpile, there are women who claim a man have said or done something to her and the man has never met the woman before. There are no methods of verifying the comments that women make in these groups as being valid or truthful. Many are inclined to believe them unfortunately because the admins of these groups continue to parrot on a regular basis that it's all about "safety".
Q: How do you actually know what's said in these groups?
A: I, along with other people in this sub, have access to different groups throughout the U.S. and some other countries. Some of us are also mods in these groups.
Q: Why won't Facebook remove these groups then if they're so harmful?
A: That is an interesting question and one that's been tossed around several times before. Here's the best consensus I've been able to determine so far. Paola Sanchez is the woman behind running these groups and is the public face of them. Her boyfriend, Blake Milbrand, however is the main guy actually implementing the logistics of running these groups and also trying to use as a springboard to start their own company. We believe that the Facebook groups that got started were a way of sort of testing the market to determine if there would be any demand for such a service. Sure enough, research found that women still enjoy gossiping just like every previous generation of women going back for centuries. I also believe that Paola possibly has some insider business connections at Facebook/Meta. Very likely Facebook continues to allow these sorts of groups to exist or be created since they drive more traffic to Facebook itself. The more traffic Facebook receives the more potential revenue they can generate.
Q: So if Facebook won't remove these groups, we can just report them right?
A: Anyone can report any group on Facebook however we know for a fact that hundreds of reports have been made against these groups and Facebook will not remove them. A different approach is required....
Q: What's this different approach?
A: If enough legal complaints are made against a group, specifically copyrighted material, this will get Facebook's attention and they do take action. The easiest way a man can remove his pictures from these groups is by filing a DMCA takedown request. Your pictures are considered copyrighted material under U.S. law. When you post your pictures to a dating app, you are giving consent to that app to use your pictures when presenting your profile. However when a woman takes a screenshot of those same pics on your dating profile, you have not given consent for your pictures to be posted and displayed in that manner. Your pictures are still your property.
Q: So how do I file a DMCA takedown request?
A: This is where it gets a little tricky and is also precisely why Paola & Blake started the Facebook groups in the manner they did. These groups are private and you must apply to be a member of the group. They will only let women in, and they typically check various factors of the person's account, like account age, profile pics, friends, posting history, etc. In order to file a DMCA takedown request, you need to have the specific URL of your picture. If you have access to a group, you can right-click and select "Show image in new tab" or on a phone usually long press, and open in a new tab if viewing from a browser. The point is you need to get the very long URL with lots of random characters and typically has a "jpg" as part of the URL itself. This is so Facebook knows precisely which picture you're talking about. No one at Facebook or any other media company is going to search for you regardless of whatever DMCA takedown request you file - you must supply the exact URL for them. Anyone can file a copyright claim on their own, for free, using Facebook's own submission page located here: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/copyrightform Remember you are considered the owner of your own pictures when submitting this.
You can also have someone else act on your behalf. Some have reported success in hiring people from fiverr. Be sure to always keep records of every take down notice you submit. There are important reasons why which I will discuss later.
Q: If I file a DMCA takedown request, and they remove it, can't someone else just post my pics again?
A: Yes that is possible. In which case you will have to file takedown requests for each and every pic that is posted without your consent. It can get tiresome but DMCA takedown notices are an effective tool that has been in use for nearly 25 years in the U.S. These carry legal weight and additionally Facebook has put AWDTSG groups on notice if they receive too many legitimate complaints.
Q: What does that mean that Facebook puts these groups on notice?
A: No company wants legal trouble. Large companies like Facebook have full time in-house corporate counsel on their payrolls. These large companies pay their senior attorneys very well and so they want them to focus on very important things for the company such as buyouts of other companies, patent filings or infringements, securities and investments, etc. If legitimate DMCA take down notices are filed against the company in ever increasing numbers, this will begin to get the attention of those attorneys and that's overall bad news for the company because it's exposing them to great legal liability. Facebook has a sort of warning system in place for groups that it hosts. If Facebook receives legitimate takedown notices that it takes action on and complies with the law, after several of these Facebook will notify the group admins of the warning and usually removes certain features for the groups. One of the main features that AWDTSG relies on is anonymous posting. Anonymous posting is exactly what it sounds like - a user can submit a post as "Anonymous" so that no one ever knows their real name. Facebook typically removes this feature for the group. Paola and company have instead resorted to asking for volunteers within the group to post on behalf of other women. What many of these women don't realize is that they have potentially opened themselves personally up to tort of defamation, specifically libel. If Facebook continues to receive and act to comply with legitimate DMCA takedown notices, they will shut down the group.
Q: They've shut down the groups? That's awesome! But can they remake them again?
A: Yes, and that's already happened in several areas. Remember how I mentioned previously that your pics could possibly get posted multiple times, and you'd have to file multiple takedown notices for each one? Well you kept those records right? And you kept records of Facebook's reply stating that they've complied with your request right? Don't you think that after maybe 5 or 10 of these happening for your pics it starts getting pretty ridiculous? I mean, you might be able to make the argument that the company itself is actively supporting the hosting of infringing on copyrighted material, and that might even lead to a cause for filing for damages....in other words, suing the company for a monetary sum because they have demonstrated that they repeatedly hosted material that infringed on your rights as a copyright holder. And if you have a legitimate case against a large company like Facebook, you very likely have a pretty good case against the specific person who posted your pics without your consent. Hmmmm :) You know...I wonder if enough guys who kept those records like I mentioned, all got together and met with the same law firm, with the same complaints of repeated hosting of copyrighted material.....what's that called? Why, it's called a class-action lawsuit!
Q: What else do I need to know about these sorts of groups?
A: Aside from learning about what people might be saying behind your back, I personally have found them a very useful centralized source of information. What I mean by that is, if I happen to be going on a date with a new lady I've met, I now look her up on these groups. If she's been contributing in any way, there is no point in wasting my time with her. No date is going to happen and I move on with my life. You can easily search for ladies within these groups by clicking on the Members tab. You can also learn who in your area is very active in these groups by scrolling down to the Group Contributors section.
More info about Paola Sanchez and Blake Milbrand
In my personal opinion, Paola is a grifter. Of course anyone who starts their own company wants to make money, nothing unusual about that. However the nature of how AWDTSG got off the ground has come to rely on the gossip and unknowing defamation of men. I have personally seen posts made of men in these groups by an anonymous woman (when the anonymous feature was available for the group), a woman replied in the comments that this was her brother and knew about the situation the anonymous woman spoke of, claimed she was entirely wrong and outright lying, and other women in the group verbally began attacking the woman in the comments for defending her brother. The admins of the group sent out a notice the next week reminding the women of the rules of the group - no talking about the group to any men regardless of how you know them. In other words, Paola and company want these women to choose them over their own family.
Have you ever thought objectively for a moment how this sounds? Leaders of these groups don't want any members to talk about the group with anyone who isn't a member and don't want you showing any content of the group to non-members, most especially men. They want you accept that whatever comments are posted about men to be the absolute truth. Do you personally know the thousands of members of these groups? Do you personally know the people who might comment on a man that you do know? If you don't, why would you believe what they say?
Paola has started her company, her published intention being to move all the people off of Facebook and onto a new website or new app. https://www.awdtsg.com/ has already been created. Some of you may have found her Gofundme here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/create-a-safe-platform-for-awdtsg
Based on what I and several others have observed about her actions thus far, we don't believe she has sufficient talent or capital to make possible on her own what Facebook is already providing for her. I believe she is simply relying on the naiveté of other women to make a cash grab and nothing more.
A SERIOUS WARNING FOR ANY WOMAN READING THIS!!
If you are a member of any AWDTSG group that has lost the ability to post anonymously, likely the mods or admins have asked for volunteers who post on behalf of other women. They ask you to do this under the guise of helping that woman remain anonymous. What you do not realize is that by doing this, you open yourself up to legal liability by posting copyrighted material. Facebook will not protect you - I am referring to the fact that you will personally be held liable if an individual chooses to take it as far as pursuing civil damages for posting copyrighted material without their express written consent.
Tools to help you
Learn about DMCA takedown notices here. https://www.dmca.com/FAQ/How-can-I-file-a-DMCA-Takedown-Notice
Remember you don't have to pay to file a DMCA takedown on your own, but if you're unsure of it, you can pay someone to do it for you. Fiverr has plenty of people out there who are willing to help, and attorneys are also happy to help too for even more money.
File a copyright infringement notice with Facebook directly here: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/copyrightform
Remember you will need the specific URL of the pics.
submitted by Amos54 to AWDTSGisToxic [link] [comments]
Q: What is AWDTSG / Are We Dating the Same Guy?
A: AWDTSG started over a year ago, around early-mid 2022. It originated on Facebook groups and still resides there today. The original purpose of the group was a way for women to exchange information with one another about the men they were dating primarily focused on their safety. For example if the man turned out to have an extensive criminal record, was physically abusive, or in a relationship/married. There was no one centralized group that I'm aware of, although I'm sure it probably started that way. It currently exists in multiple groups in major cities primarily in the United States but also some cities in Europe. At its peak, these groups had around 2 million members.
Q: Isn't focusing on dating safety a good thing?
A: Of course! However what a lot of people fail to understand is that you do not need Facebook groups like these to be safe. Anyone can search public records on a person to find if they have a criminal background or some type of outstanding court records involving family law. No, courts don't keep track of who's in a relationship and who isn't, however you can still search for marriage records. There is no perfect system, and there are no guarantees despite what many people who claim that these sorts of groups are now essential in today's modern dating world.
Q: So what's wrong with these groups?
A: Over 95% of all AWDTSG group discussions are nothing more than gossip. Yes, like I mentioned previously they started out focusing on safety for their members and helping others investigate suspicious people by searching public records. However that quickly fell to the wayside and degenerated into rumors, gossip, comments about the appearance of men, insults pertaining to their body or how they live their personal life. Originally these groups posted men with whom the women were in established relationships, and some married women who suspected their husbands may be cheating. Instead today women will take pictures of men either from public profiles on social media sites, or screenshots of their dating profiles on various apps, and ask for "tea" (gossip) on a man whom they have never even spoken to. This is a very common occurence in all regional groups however the members of these groups justify it under the guise of "thinking about" matching with the man in question or sliding into their DMs.
Q: This sounds terrible!
A: It is. There have been many reports of men who have seen the posts and comments made by women who dogpile, there are women who claim a man have said or done something to her and the man has never met the woman before. There are no methods of verifying the comments that women make in these groups as being valid or truthful. Many are inclined to believe them unfortunately because the admins of these groups continue to parrot on a regular basis that it's all about "safety".
Q: How do you actually know what's said in these groups?
A: I, along with other people in this sub, have access to different groups throughout the U.S. and some other countries. Some of us are also mods in these groups.
Q: Why won't Facebook remove these groups then if they're so harmful?
A: That is an interesting question and one that's been tossed around several times before. Here's the best consensus I've been able to determine so far. Paola Sanchez is the woman behind running these groups and is the public face of them. Her boyfriend, Blake Milbrand, however is the main guy actually implementing the logistics of running these groups and also trying to use as a springboard to start their own company. We believe that the Facebook groups that got started were a way of sort of testing the market to determine if there would be any demand for such a service. Sure enough, research found that women still enjoy gossiping just like every previous generation of women going back for centuries. I also believe that Paola possibly has some insider business connections at Facebook/Meta. Very likely Facebook continues to allow these sorts of groups to exist or be created since they drive more traffic to Facebook itself. The more traffic Facebook receives the more potential revenue they can generate.
Q: So if Facebook won't remove these groups, we can just report them right?
A: Anyone can report any group on Facebook however we know for a fact that hundreds of reports have been made against these groups and Facebook will not remove them. A different approach is required....
Q: What's this different approach?
A: If enough legal complaints are made against a group, specifically copyrighted material, this will get Facebook's attention and they do take action. The easiest way a man can remove his pictures from these groups is by filing a DMCA takedown request. Your pictures are considered copyrighted material under U.S. law. When you post your pictures to a dating app, you are giving consent to that app to use your pictures when presenting your profile. However when a woman takes a screenshot of those same pics on your dating profile, you have not given consent for your pictures to be posted and displayed in that manner. Your pictures are still your property.
Q: So how do I file a DMCA takedown request?
A: This is where it gets a little tricky and is also precisely why Paola & Blake started the Facebook groups in the manner they did. These groups are private and you must apply to be a member of the group. They will only let women in, and they typically check various factors of the person's account, like account age, profile pics, friends, posting history, etc. In order to file a DMCA takedown request, you need to have the specific URL of your picture. If you have access to a group, you can right-click and select "Show image in new tab" or on a phone usually long press, and open in a new tab if viewing from a browser. The point is you need to get the very long URL with lots of random characters and typically has a "jpg" as part of the URL itself. This is so Facebook knows precisely which picture you're talking about. No one at Facebook or any other media company is going to search for you regardless of whatever DMCA takedown request you file - you must supply the exact URL for them. Anyone can file a copyright claim on their own, for free, using Facebook's own submission page located here: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/copyrightform Remember you are considered the owner of your own pictures when submitting this.
You can also have someone else act on your behalf. Some have reported success in hiring people from fiverr. Be sure to always keep records of every take down notice you submit. There are important reasons why which I will discuss later.
Q: If I file a DMCA takedown request, and they remove it, can't someone else just post my pics again?
A: Yes that is possible. In which case you will have to file takedown requests for each and every pic that is posted without your consent. It can get tiresome but DMCA takedown notices are an effective tool that has been in use for nearly 25 years in the U.S. These carry legal weight and additionally Facebook has put AWDTSG groups on notice if they receive too many legitimate complaints.
Q: What does that mean that Facebook puts these groups on notice?
A: No company wants legal trouble. Large companies like Facebook have full time in-house corporate counsel on their payrolls. These large companies pay their senior attorneys very well and so they want them to focus on very important things for the company such as buyouts of other companies, patent filings or infringements, securities and investments, etc. If legitimate DMCA take down notices are filed against the company in ever increasing numbers, this will begin to get the attention of those attorneys and that's overall bad news for the company because it's exposing them to great legal liability. Facebook has a sort of warning system in place for groups that it hosts. If Facebook receives legitimate takedown notices that it takes action on and complies with the law, after several of these Facebook will notify the group admins of the warning and usually removes certain features for the groups. One of the main features that AWDTSG relies on is anonymous posting. Anonymous posting is exactly what it sounds like - a user can submit a post as "Anonymous" so that no one ever knows their real name. Facebook typically removes this feature for the group. Paola and company have instead resorted to asking for volunteers within the group to post on behalf of other women. What many of these women don't realize is that they have potentially opened themselves personally up to tort of defamation, specifically libel. If Facebook continues to receive and act to comply with legitimate DMCA takedown notices, they will shut down the group.
Q: They've shut down the groups? That's awesome! But can they remake them again?
A: Yes, and that's already happened in several areas. Remember how I mentioned previously that your pics could possibly get posted multiple times, and you'd have to file multiple takedown notices for each one? Well you kept those records right? And you kept records of Facebook's reply stating that they've complied with your request right? Don't you think that after maybe 5 or 10 of these happening for your pics it starts getting pretty ridiculous? I mean, you might be able to make the argument that the company itself is actively supporting the hosting of infringing on copyrighted material, and that might even lead to a cause for filing for damages....in other words, suing the company for a monetary sum because they have demonstrated that they repeatedly hosted material that infringed on your rights as a copyright holder. And if you have a legitimate case against a large company like Facebook, you very likely have a pretty good case against the specific person who posted your pics without your consent. Hmmmm :) You know...I wonder if enough guys who kept those records like I mentioned, all got together and met with the same law firm, with the same complaints of repeated hosting of copyrighted material.....what's that called? Why, it's called a class-action lawsuit!
Q: What else do I need to know about these sorts of groups?
A: Aside from learning about what people might be saying behind your back, I personally have found them a very useful centralized source of information. What I mean by that is, if I happen to be going on a date with a new lady I've met, I now look her up on these groups. If she's been contributing in any way, there is no point in wasting my time with her. No date is going to happen and I move on with my life. You can easily search for ladies within these groups by clicking on the Members tab. You can also learn who in your area is very active in these groups by scrolling down to the Group Contributors section.
More info about Paola Sanchez and Blake Milbrand
In my personal opinion, Paola is a grifter. Of course anyone who starts their own company wants to make money, nothing unusual about that. However the nature of how AWDTSG got off the ground has come to rely on the gossip and unknowing defamation of men. I have personally seen posts made of men in these groups by an anonymous woman (when the anonymous feature was available for the group), a woman replied in the comments that this was her brother and knew about the situation the anonymous woman spoke of, claimed she was entirely wrong and outright lying, and other women in the group verbally began attacking the woman in the comments for defending her brother. The admins of the group sent out a notice the next week reminding the women of the rules of the group - no talking about the group to any men regardless of how you know them. In other words, Paola and company want these women to choose them over their own family.
Have you ever thought objectively for a moment how this sounds? Leaders of these groups don't want any members to talk about the group with anyone who isn't a member and don't want you showing any content of the group to non-members, most especially men. They want you accept that whatever comments are posted about men to be the absolute truth. Do you personally know the thousands of members of these groups? Do you personally know the people who might comment on a man that you do know? If you don't, why would you believe what they say?
Paola has started her company, her published intention being to move all the people off of Facebook and onto a new website or new app. https://www.awdtsg.com/ has already been created. Some of you may have found her Gofundme here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/create-a-safe-platform-for-awdtsg
Based on what I and several others have observed about her actions thus far, we don't believe she has sufficient talent or capital to make possible on her own what Facebook is already providing for her. I believe she is simply relying on the naiveté of other women to make a cash grab and nothing more.
A SERIOUS WARNING FOR ANY WOMAN READING THIS!!
If you are a member of any AWDTSG group that has lost the ability to post anonymously, likely the mods or admins have asked for volunteers who post on behalf of other women. They ask you to do this under the guise of helping that woman remain anonymous. What you do not realize is that by doing this, you open yourself up to legal liability by posting copyrighted material. Facebook will not protect you - I am referring to the fact that you will personally be held liable if an individual chooses to take it as far as pursuing civil damages for posting copyrighted material without their express written consent.
Tools to help you
Learn about DMCA takedown notices here. https://www.dmca.com/FAQ/How-can-I-file-a-DMCA-Takedown-Notice
Remember you don't have to pay to file a DMCA takedown on your own, but if you're unsure of it, you can pay someone to do it for you. Fiverr has plenty of people out there who are willing to help, and attorneys are also happy to help too for even more money.
File a copyright infringement notice with Facebook directly here: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/copyrightform
Remember you will need the specific URL of the pics.
2023.06.03 04:41 Spliteer My team lost a member, and I'm overwhelmed with extra work. Am I wrong for setting boundaries or am I being dramatic?
I've worked completely remote since starting this company 2 years ago and added a new member late last year, for 3 of us and our manager. It was a really good job and had been very happy with my decision to accept this offer. We have these goals every quarter that are supposed to be a small project you can do in addition to your normal roles. Sounds reasonable.
It was great until we upgraded our ERP system a whole full version. Lots of last minute changes, things outside of our control causing delays, and some bugs that we're still trying to resolve and recover from. We worked weekends, after hours, and through the holidays, but we went live on our deadline. The aftermath was pretty bad things were buggy and the vendor was closed through the holidays until the beginning of January. The fall out lasted a few months with the vendor sending patches and updates. This put me in a state of being constantly behind which I haven't recovered from. So, when they gave us our quarterly projects - rolling out the next full version this quarter definitely put everyone on edge. I knew we could pull it off, my team is pretty awesome.
I mean to say we were awesome as the most senior person other than our manager left us. It's been rough as I've taken over the majority of her work and my other co-worker is having to pick up the other part and learn it. The workload has been horrible, hearing about how high the ticket count is, being treated like crap by end users who had to wait for help, and the deadline of the new system not budging. I'm going to have to do both of our parts in this and I can't. In fact I've been working 10 hour days with no breaks, on the weekends and it's destroying my mental health. It's not just me, the other team we work with is also plagued with turnover and is understaffed and burning out.
The implementation is already behind due to factors outside of our control and started off this week. When we had our initial meeting, as soon as the call ended I burst into tears of frustration. How am I going to do this? I'm very overwhelmed and I can't keep doing this much work. I really thought our director could convince the leadership to push it back at least give us more time to implement, but they wouldn't. This version of the software is dramatically different visually and that's going to take a lot of adjustment, testing, and recoding of integrations to work. This is on top of me behind on multiple projects, releasing fixes, and doing all tiers of tickets - and I forgot how nasty end users could be.
Sometimes I do have to work after hours for maintenance, and last night was one of them. Normally I do these things around 8PM (we have no set time), but my husband committed us to baby sit my niece and nephew which I'm always down to spend time with them. I get home almost at midnight and started up my task only to find I didn't have the permission to do it and couldn't grant it to myself. I typed up a teams message to my boss to send first thing in the morning. My boss is usually really cool, but this time he was really irritated that I didn't call him at midnight so he could do it. It wasn't something mission critical that had to be done, I just had the items ready and wanted to check them off my list. So I cried. Today was my day off and I still managed to cry over work. I answered a few pending emails and then, I canceled my plans because this week has sapped my energy. Is it his fault I cried? No, it's all the things going on at work and in my life compounded.
I decided that I'm going to tell my supervisor that I am not going to work extra and what gets done gets done. I've been very flexible in the past and normally I am, but I won't be taken advantage of. I have to set a boundary that it's not my fault we're understaffed and I'm not going to work early, late, through lunch, or on weekends to meet the deadline that is unreasonable. Is that reasonable? I'm also planning a vacation this summer and I feel guilty taking it. I'm salary, so technically I'm paid to complete a task. It will take a while to find someone to replace my teammate, it's very in demand, but not enough applicants that have the skills and experience.
submitted by Spliteer to work [link] [comments]
It was great until we upgraded our ERP system a whole full version. Lots of last minute changes, things outside of our control causing delays, and some bugs that we're still trying to resolve and recover from. We worked weekends, after hours, and through the holidays, but we went live on our deadline. The aftermath was pretty bad things were buggy and the vendor was closed through the holidays until the beginning of January. The fall out lasted a few months with the vendor sending patches and updates. This put me in a state of being constantly behind which I haven't recovered from. So, when they gave us our quarterly projects - rolling out the next full version this quarter definitely put everyone on edge. I knew we could pull it off, my team is pretty awesome.
I mean to say we were awesome as the most senior person other than our manager left us. It's been rough as I've taken over the majority of her work and my other co-worker is having to pick up the other part and learn it. The workload has been horrible, hearing about how high the ticket count is, being treated like crap by end users who had to wait for help, and the deadline of the new system not budging. I'm going to have to do both of our parts in this and I can't. In fact I've been working 10 hour days with no breaks, on the weekends and it's destroying my mental health. It's not just me, the other team we work with is also plagued with turnover and is understaffed and burning out.
The implementation is already behind due to factors outside of our control and started off this week. When we had our initial meeting, as soon as the call ended I burst into tears of frustration. How am I going to do this? I'm very overwhelmed and I can't keep doing this much work. I really thought our director could convince the leadership to push it back at least give us more time to implement, but they wouldn't. This version of the software is dramatically different visually and that's going to take a lot of adjustment, testing, and recoding of integrations to work. This is on top of me behind on multiple projects, releasing fixes, and doing all tiers of tickets - and I forgot how nasty end users could be.
Sometimes I do have to work after hours for maintenance, and last night was one of them. Normally I do these things around 8PM (we have no set time), but my husband committed us to baby sit my niece and nephew which I'm always down to spend time with them. I get home almost at midnight and started up my task only to find I didn't have the permission to do it and couldn't grant it to myself. I typed up a teams message to my boss to send first thing in the morning. My boss is usually really cool, but this time he was really irritated that I didn't call him at midnight so he could do it. It wasn't something mission critical that had to be done, I just had the items ready and wanted to check them off my list. So I cried. Today was my day off and I still managed to cry over work. I answered a few pending emails and then, I canceled my plans because this week has sapped my energy. Is it his fault I cried? No, it's all the things going on at work and in my life compounded.
I decided that I'm going to tell my supervisor that I am not going to work extra and what gets done gets done. I've been very flexible in the past and normally I am, but I won't be taken advantage of. I have to set a boundary that it's not my fault we're understaffed and I'm not going to work early, late, through lunch, or on weekends to meet the deadline that is unreasonable. Is that reasonable? I'm also planning a vacation this summer and I feel guilty taking it. I'm salary, so technically I'm paid to complete a task. It will take a while to find someone to replace my teammate, it's very in demand, but not enough applicants that have the skills and experience.
2023.06.03 04:37 CTx7567 Chance me for my current track, Freshman in HS
Currently on accelerated science and math courses, as well as signed up for APs next year. I know things will not always pan out as planned, but I figured I should see about getting chanced based on my current plan for HS. This is all predicated information, the only solid things are the “about me” things, freshman year, and awards. If this post is unfit for this subreddit, or if there is not enough information, let me know and I will take it down.
Practice ACT - 30
credit at local university - #
advanced placement (max 4.5 gpa) - AP
Freshman
4.0 weighted and unweighted
3.8-4.0 unweighted, 4.0-4,2 weighted
3.8-4.0 unweighted, 4.2-4.4 weighted
Chemistry - AP Calculus AB - AP Government - Graphic Arts II - P.E. 11 - English 11 - Aerospace engineering (Depending on scheduling) # - ASL III #
Senior
3.8-4.0 unweighted, 4.3-4.5 weighted
Although I do not know yet what my awards will be, I predict to have a couple by the end of high school. So far I have
4 Years Forensics
3 Years Student Council
2 Years National Honors Society
~3 Years volunteering at local Humane Society
(Should I plan on beefing up my activities?)
General About Me
-FTM, came out at 12, family supported
-Autism, Tourettes, Anxiety, Depression, Self Harm, Dysphoria (Yes all diagnosed).
-White, like seriously, I’m mostly german
-Grew up with little brother (20 mo younger), mom, dad, and two cats.
-Great relationship with all family and relatives, a little strain with mom
-Dad has a associates but worked his way up and now has a relatively good and successful career, mom has a masters and a bachelors. Parents and grandparents were always overachievers, raised me to be the same.
Colleges??
University Minnesota Twin Cities
University Wisconsin Madison
University of Chicago
University Michigan
MIT (long shot)
Others you think would fit me?
Edit: formatting
submitted by CTx7567 to chanceme [link] [comments]
Practice ACT - 30
credit at local university - #
advanced placement (max 4.5 gpa) - AP
Freshman
4.0 weighted and unweighted
- Algebra II/Trigonometry
- Biology
- U.S. History
- Graphic Arts I
- Woodworking I
- ASL I
- English 9
- Online P.E. and Health
3.8-4.0 unweighted, 4.0-4,2 weighted
- Pre Calculus
- Principals of Engineering
- AP European History
- Woodworking II #
- ASL II
- English 10
- Online P.E.
3.8-4.0 unweighted, 4.2-4.4 weighted
Chemistry - AP Calculus AB - AP Government - Graphic Arts II - P.E. 11 - English 11 - Aerospace engineering (Depending on scheduling) # - ASL III #
Senior
3.8-4.0 unweighted, 4.3-4.5 weighted
- AP Chemistry
- AP Calculus CD
- Phycology
- Sociology
- AP Lang/Comp
- Personal Law #
- Personal Finance #
- ASL IIII #
Although I do not know yet what my awards will be, I predict to have a couple by the end of high school. So far I have
- Academic Excellence Award given by ASL teacher
- Academic Excellence Award given by woodworking teacher
- Part of the National Junior Honors Society
4 Years Forensics
3 Years Student Council
2 Years National Honors Society
~3 Years volunteering at local Humane Society
(Should I plan on beefing up my activities?)
General About Me
-FTM, came out at 12, family supported
-Autism, Tourettes, Anxiety, Depression, Self Harm, Dysphoria (Yes all diagnosed).
-White, like seriously, I’m mostly german
-Grew up with little brother (20 mo younger), mom, dad, and two cats.
- Lived my whole life in a mid sized Wisconsin town
-Great relationship with all family and relatives, a little strain with mom
-Dad has a associates but worked his way up and now has a relatively good and successful career, mom has a masters and a bachelors. Parents and grandparents were always overachievers, raised me to be the same.
- Trouble socially since a very young age, general struggles growing up with undiagnosed Autism
- Very creative, I enjoy taking some random pieces of things and making them into something useful
Colleges??
University Minnesota Twin Cities
University Wisconsin Madison
University of Chicago
University Michigan
MIT (long shot)
Others you think would fit me?
Edit: formatting
2023.06.03 04:28 RemarkableCounty7309 Elderly dad’s MIBC Diagnosis
Hi everyone…first my heart goes out to all of you here. Whether you’re dealing with a diagnosis yourself or a close loved one, it’s a terrible thing to have to go through and I am grateful for places like this where I might be able to find some answers.
My dad is 83. We are still freshly grappling with his MIBC diagnosis which was discovered during a Cystoscopy back in March, at which point they went ahead and did a TURBT.
For all intents and purposes, he feels he’s lived a long enough life. He feels he doesn’t want to go through surgery. (The recommended plan is Chemo + Bladder Removal.)
Given his age and his most recent weight loss…I too, question if he can handle all of it—even the Chemo alone. Other than his weight loss he’s in decent shape for a man his age.
I guess I was wondering if anyone here knows of someone in that age range going through Chemo? And / or Chemo + RC Surgery? Basically I don’t want to counsel him to go through anything he or we will later regret. But he’s my dad and of course I want him to live a longer life (but it should be one worth living for him.)
Any insight on seniors with this diagnosis would be helpful.
submitted by RemarkableCounty7309 to BladderCancer [link] [comments]
My dad is 83. We are still freshly grappling with his MIBC diagnosis which was discovered during a Cystoscopy back in March, at which point they went ahead and did a TURBT.
For all intents and purposes, he feels he’s lived a long enough life. He feels he doesn’t want to go through surgery. (The recommended plan is Chemo + Bladder Removal.)
Given his age and his most recent weight loss…I too, question if he can handle all of it—even the Chemo alone. Other than his weight loss he’s in decent shape for a man his age.
I guess I was wondering if anyone here knows of someone in that age range going through Chemo? And / or Chemo + RC Surgery? Basically I don’t want to counsel him to go through anything he or we will later regret. But he’s my dad and of course I want him to live a longer life (but it should be one worth living for him.)
Any insight on seniors with this diagnosis would be helpful.
2023.06.03 03:55 yalag I really hate that iCloud Photos is no longer the real time sync library that it once was 10 years ago
10 years ago, Jobs sold the idea that iCloud is going to be the source of truth. Not just that, it's also going to do propagation to all devices in near real time. It certainly is true for most things. Like contacts, and cal etc.
Photos is now the exception to this. It lived up to that expectation for years with photo stream. You take a photo and BAM. All your devices have it right away. Even apple tv.
Then some years later, photo library sync itself also worked pretty good. Things would sync right away.
Then in recent years, Photos app dont work like that no more. Photostream is also getting killed. And now WHEN it syncs is this magic algorithm that Apple determines. At first I thought it was my phone being buggy but now I've gone through a lot of Apple support calls. All the way to senior support.
Their answer is - No - photos app will not sync right away. It will determine the time to sync based on A LOT of factors - including, your battery level, if its charging, what network service it's on, your charging pattern, the time of day and a bunch of other stuff.
I get it, Apple is trying to look out for users here. But god damn, so many times, I just woke up, iPhone is at 98% battery, connected to WIFI, I just took ONE photo. I walk back to my mac and I expect to see it there. It's not....the last resort is always just some kind of airdrop or sending it and that really sucks...considering how important camera and photos is now to our day to day usage....
And trust me, apple support has done every possible troubleshooting there is, including factory resets, relogin to icloud, etc. It's just too bad this is Apple's decision.
submitted by yalag to iphone [link] [comments]
Photos is now the exception to this. It lived up to that expectation for years with photo stream. You take a photo and BAM. All your devices have it right away. Even apple tv.
Then some years later, photo library sync itself also worked pretty good. Things would sync right away.
Then in recent years, Photos app dont work like that no more. Photostream is also getting killed. And now WHEN it syncs is this magic algorithm that Apple determines. At first I thought it was my phone being buggy but now I've gone through a lot of Apple support calls. All the way to senior support.
Their answer is - No - photos app will not sync right away. It will determine the time to sync based on A LOT of factors - including, your battery level, if its charging, what network service it's on, your charging pattern, the time of day and a bunch of other stuff.
I get it, Apple is trying to look out for users here. But god damn, so many times, I just woke up, iPhone is at 98% battery, connected to WIFI, I just took ONE photo. I walk back to my mac and I expect to see it there. It's not....the last resort is always just some kind of airdrop or sending it and that really sucks...considering how important camera and photos is now to our day to day usage....
And trust me, apple support has done every possible troubleshooting there is, including factory resets, relogin to icloud, etc. It's just too bad this is Apple's decision.
2023.06.03 03:46 Malice_Qahwah Scurrying Darkness (Oneshot, gory, horror)
****WARNING****
***
Body Horror, bugs, death, gore. Attempted horror.
By my own standards, this is fairly tame, your mileage may vary, content advisory.
***
Captain Van’tu, the Garaboosian commander of the Alliance of Free Stars light scout cruiser Mandrake, frowned, in the way of his species, and gestured with a lower lefthand at his human science officer to continue.
The woman turned back to her console, to peer into the hood of her ‘scope and minutely adjust a control.
“The ship is an old Terran Alliance Explorer class, the TAN Nebula Star. She was reported overdue for resupply a little over a hundred years ago, exact details are spotty as the station she was supposed to report to was destroyed in the Terran civil war. By modern standards she was little more than a heavy cruiser with an oversized jumpcore, and limited weaponry. The Terran Alliance Navy was very much focused on exploration and first contact, and several of their vessels vanished without trace only to show up decades later in pirate hands. However, this does not seem to be the case with the Nebula Star…”
The image on the holotable was mute testimony to this information. The old starship, much more massive than the Mandrake, but significantly less well equipped, looked derelict. Several holes gaped in her once-pristene white hull, the smooth lines marred and crooked, and the jumpcore bulb near the stern showed a terrible, blasted crater, black with soot and melted steel.
Captain Van’tu scrolled the smooth wheel of the holo controls, swivelling the image and zooming into the damage.
“What do we think of this, Sasha, that looks like an internal explosion, not battle damage.”
“Yes Captain.” Sasha, the science officer, agreed. She manipulated a pad on her side of the console. Several sidebars lit up. “Here, here and here. Chemical signatures we’ve picked up in the dustcloud around the wreck, and the blast pattern, indicates a high yield chemical explosive was utilised, we would need to get a scan from inside the wreckage to be certain, but I think I can confidently say this was caused by a c4 package commonly kept as part of ship inventories of that era. We carry a similar type of explosive even now, it has uses in a number of emergency protocols.”
The captain nodded. “I’m familiar with Human paranoia, ‘better to have and not need than need and not have’, which is why I learned to carry a backpack heavier than myself at the academy.” He smiled at the woman, who grinned back in that wolfish human fashion.
Commanding a Terran vessel as part of the Alliance Navy was a high honour for a non-Terran, and he’d earned it the hard way, he’d actually completed his officer training on Earth itself, heavy gravity, lethal flora, fauna, and practical jokes be damned, he’d always dreamed of command, and he had never planned to settle for anything less than the best ships of the fleet.
Somehow his determination to ‘make it’ had actually impressed his trainers and teachers, and earned him the interest of a senior Admiral, which explained his current command. And he was no ticket-puncher, his crew was, in his opinion, the best in the fleet, and if his ship was small, he was so proud of her, some days he could almost burst his hearts from it. She was his first, and with luck, not his last, and while scouting duty following pre-war exploration routes was far from glamorous, it was essential work for the Alliance, following up first contacts, reopening lost trade routes, and, now and then, coming across relics, and giving closure to the descendants of those vanished vessels.
“Alright. She looks cold, and her reactor is dead, but we don’t know what happened to her, she could have run afoul of pirates, or been captured and misused for decades, or been left boobytrapped, so pack up a SAR shuttle, and give them a leader drone, they don’t enter unless the drone clears the way in.”
“Aye aye Captain, I’ll get them on their way. Sidearms?”
“Yyy…esss. Yes. And overarmour. If someone’s left any surprises, it will help.”
Sasha turned and walked off, already tapping her communicator to summon the personnel she’d be sending.
He frowned again, looking into the depths of the hologram. Something was bothering him, the same sensation he’d felt while visiting a zoo on Earth. Humans around him grinning, nodding to one another, and the confirmation of his worry came as a boom of hundreds of pounds of apex feline carnivore crashing against the high density crystal he’d been standing with his back to…
Something was creeping up on them, he could feel it.
***
The shuttle launched from the brightly lit boatbay of the Mandrake, arcing smoothly through the glittering blackness towards the cruelly murdered starship. In front of it zipped the mote of the drone, its scanners and sensors slaved to the shuttle, giving the drone specialist on board an instant feed to all his senses, feeling, experiencing everything the drone saw.
It zipped around the gaping hole where the jumpdrive had once been housed, then around in a helical pattern, scanning every micron of the lost ships hull, mapping it in complete three dimensional perfection, then tracking towards the boatbay. Inside, two, much older, versions of the Mandrakes shuttle rested, crooked against their davits, the bay airlock doors lying open.
The drone slowly crept inside the dark corridor as the shuttle followed it in, nestling into an empty davit. Power hookups, identical after a century thanks to long ago agreed standardisation, marry up, pogo pins compressed and energized, drawing trickle power from the shuttle to latch securely.
The crew debark, except the probe operator who remained strapped in his jumpseat, guiding the drone deeper into the derelict.
Suited figures follow its path, jumping from the shuttle hatch to the airlock. They don’t bother trying to seal it, it had been lying open for a century, there was no air left within to preserve. The drone met a cross passage, and moved right, headed towards the bridge, following schematics downloaded from Mandrake’s computer. The scout crew followed, alert, and making note of damage to bulkheads, the carpets that once covered the floors looking torn, dark stains telling a worrying story.
The probe entered the bridge of the Nebula Star and paused. The LIDAR scanner illuminated the space in a slow pass of green laser light, left to right and back again. The chamber was empty, save the various consoles and chairs the crew would have used, and the lone figure of the Captain, in his central command chair.
To Captain Van’tu, observing the time delayed remote feed on his own bridge, it was remarkable just how similar the darkened derelict wreck was to his own vessel, down to the arrangement of bridge consoles and type of carpeting used. He’d read, in one of his intro to ship design classes, that Terran bridge layout owed much to speculative fiction of pre-spaceflight eras, and a lot of experimental wet-navy designs.
He'd brought it up once with his chief of engineering, who had responded with a ridiculous approximation of a Scottish accent, “Aye laddie, we Terrans owe an awfy lot tae an auld lass called the Enterprise!” and laughed, continuing his explanation in his more natural German accented standardised Terran. Van’tu had spent several informative evenings with his console, soaking up ancient Terran entertainment as a result.
The drone circled the bridge, slowly, keeping its thruster exhaust well clear of the mummified body in the central chair, making its way to the science console. A small arm popped out and slotted into the consoles data port.
Several lights flickered on the antique panel, the probe powering up the cold circuits to read the datalogs, then around the room, dim red lights came to life, as more of the bridge woke up. Through the hull itself, a faint whine transmitted, the probes oversized fusion battery providing enough current to trigger the startup of a backup generator below the bridge.
The scouting party stepped in, peering around. One, her grey skinsuit marked with a red stripe down the arms, moves across to the captain, a medical scanner in her hand.
“I’m reading significant trauma throughout the corpse, but remarkable preservation as well. Life support must have been glitching badly for a long time after… Wait…” She smacked the side of the scanner, then passed it back across the corpse. “Scanner keeps picking up my own heartbeat, trying to tell me this guys still alive, fucking thing.” She put it away in the side pocket of her suit and pulled out a smaller device. “I kept my old one, should be good enough to… Fuck me sideways…”
“Maybe later Carol, what’s the script?” A green stripe on the party leader’s arm. He was looking around, feeling… itchy, between his shoulder blades. Something wasn’t right, and not just the dead ship. He’d been lead on two other derelict searches, and they never went like this. Accidents happened, people died, usually horribly, and you always found, well, bodies. Whole or otherwise. Yet, aside from the clearly traumatic bloodstains on the floors, soaked long before the artificial gravity had failed, this ship hadn’t shown them a single body, nothing, not even fragments.
Not only that but he could swear he’d seen movements. No-one else had, but he also knew that his reflexes tested significantly higher than average, he was seeing something the others were simply not noticing.
Carol stepped away from the corpse.
“My old scanner says this guy’s alive Mark. Heartbeat, brain activity, oxygenated blood. He’s not breathing and he’s a fucking corpse, but both my scanners say he’s gooey in the middle. And I’ll be honest I don’t want to be here, send probes back across on AI control and let them explore, this is too freaky. I know you’ve been seeing shit, well, I’ve been picking up weirdness all along, and this is too much. We should leave!”
Mark bit back a curse. He agreed, but he was also supposed to be a professional, and as the leader of the scout team who first boarded the derelict, he’d have been slated for command of the ‘prize crew’ to bring her home. At the same time, he was holding back a growing uneasiness, his other two team members were shuffling nervously, and Carol was on the edge of panic.
“Alright, we head back to the shuttle and leave the probe to grab the logs. Something’s weird here, might be the atmosphere on this thing, I admit it’s spooky, but we all know I see weird bugs and things other folk miss, and Carol, you’ve had that personal scanner since high school, if it’s saying something weird, something weird is going on. If Captain… Morrison, is still alive after a century in vacuum, he can keep a few more hours until the AI probes can collect him. We’re not equipped for medical evac anyway.”
They stepped back through the hatchway, leaving the probe to its work. Emergency lighting flickered into life, adding a lurid red glare to the tableaux, Mark, last to leave, sharply snapping his head back around as something… He was reminded of a time as a child, he’d turned over a log in his parents’ yard, and hundreds of inch-long centipedes had scurried in panicked circles to escape the sudden glare of sunlight.
Nothing moved, aside from the slow pulsing of rebooting computers.
He followed his people towards the shuttle.
One by one, they made the leap back to the shuttle davit, and boarded, cycling back aboard, and taking their seats. The drone pilot barely moved to acknowledge them, clearly lost in the datefeed from the old computers, and aside from a quick glance across readouts to ensure the data was flowing cleanly to the Mandrake, Mark didn’t disturb the man.
He hit the switch to release the davit clamps, and the popped free. The shuttle turned, and smoothly glided out, aligning with the mothership and headed home. He blinked and shook his head. That motion again, out the corner of his eye. He glanced over, seeing the drone pilot’s faceplate swarming with legs for a fraction of a second.
“Uhh, Josh, you alright there?” He hated breaking into drone pilot concentration, but this wasn’t right, and Carol was gesturing desperately at him from her chair. He reached across, and nudged Josh’s shoulder, the skinsuit collapsing under his fingers and the skull clacking loosely against the faceplate.
***
Captain Van’tu listened to the soft report coming from Sasha, the scout crew had found the captain of the derelict but were returning early due to some unsettling information they’d found. He didn’t like it, but he also respected human instincts. If skilled officers felt there was a reason to withdraw before mission completion, he knew better than to override the human-on-the-spot.
He’d have a word with Mark later, in private, if necessary, but the man had never been wrong before.
Across the communicator, there was a sudden eruption of yelling, the shuttle on the holo spiralling wildly. Sasha was demanding a clear response from the screaming communicator.
Mark came over the channel. “Abort mission, contamination, alien threat…” His words ended in a gurgling scream, the kind that began high and ended, eventually, in a growling snarl of mortal agony. The line remained open, however, and the entire bridge crew turned to stare, mouths agape, as into the silence the faint sounds of gnawing began to echo.
Sasha shut off the feed with a shaky finger. “Captain, I…”
“I know. Arm several probes, get them to the shuttle, find out what happened and…”
Once more, attention fell to the holo display, as on it, the icon of the shuttle winked red. Sasha motioned, and the focus zoomed in. Where the shuttle had been, a spreading scatter of debris remained.
She pulled up the sidebars again.
“Right before Mark, uh, died, his authorisation codes were used to trigger an overload on the shuttle reactor. We didn’t pick up the feed in real time, they were returning after all, but all of them suffered catastrophic biological distress immediately before their lifesigns cut out. Mark was the last one alive, and severely injured when he triggered the reactor.”
Captain Van’tu shook out his lower hands with a stress-shedding gesture. “The shuttle reactor is in a sealed compartment. He had to get from his chair to the access panel and enter his code, while suffering life threatening injuries which had already killed the rest of his crew?”
“Yes, Captain. I’m sorry, I missed it, my team is still processing the data, but it looks as if the drone pilot ceased responding several minutes before the shuttle departed the wreck. At five minutes into the flight, the three junior officers began exhibiting distress, but gave no verbal alerts. Mark seems to have reacted to something that triggered a fight or flight response, but within a few seconds was exhibiting the same injury markers as the others. At the six-minute mark, he sent his warning, while moving. It appears as if the cessation of his vocalisations was not the end of his life, almost thirty seconds later his code was entered into the shuttle reactor, and it detonated.”
Captain Van’tu moved to his command chair, and sat down, lower hands grasping the armrests, upper hands folding under his chin. “Helm, chart course back to the nearest Alliance outpost, and warm up the jumpcore. Tactical, bring shields to standby and start charging the grasers, I don’t like what’s happening, and I do not want to be caught with our backs turned.”
His crew moved into action, tactical alerts bringing various stations to readiness.
“Sir! We’re receiving a communications request, uh, from the Nebula Star.”
He stared at his communications officer, who looked equally shocked.
“Please, Jen, put them through to the main holo.”
The hovering image of the wreckage that had once been a shuttle vanished, replaced by the familiastrange image of the old bridge, and its captain.
The man was a corpse, there was no debate. The papery skin had pulled back from his eyes and teeth, his nose collapsed inwards, decades of icy coldness and baking heat as the derelict tumbled slowly from shade to sunlight had freeze dried the body, yet, it moved. The jaw flapped open, and the sticklike arms gestured against the command chair arms, clawed fingertips clicking uselessly.
“Gree. Tings. Un. Known. Vess. Sell. I. Am. Cap. Tan. Morr. Iss. Son. We. Come. In. Peace.”
The corpse in the holo quivered and twitched in some horrible mockery of life, the bared grey teeth clicking as the jaw spasmed open and closed, not, Van’tu noted, in time with the words being spoken. Inside the jaws, he also noticed, something black and shiny and segmented.
“I highly doubt you come with any sort of peace in mind, what are you really, and what did you do to the crew of the shuttle who boarded the ship you are on.”
The body twitched, a trickle of black ooze popping free from the corner of the sunken eye socket. Under the dried up eyelid, something squirmed around, curling with segmented motion, a few pointed claws poking briefly free before vanishing once more.
“I. Am. Cap. Tan. Morr. Iss. Son. We. Come. In. Peace. We. Rek. Wire. Ass. Iss. Tan. Sse. Let. Uss. Board.”
An alert flashed from Sashas direction. A gesture diminished Captain Morrison to a corner of the holo and expanded the view of the derelict. Two shuttles of archaic design had just launched from it and begun making their way towards the Mandrake. He muted his pickup and turned to his tactical officer.
“Jeff? They do not get close enough to board.”
“Aye aye sir, tracking has them locked and my grazers are charged.”
“Very good.”
He returned to the holo and reopened the grisly view of the dead man being puppeted on his display.
“You will not be permitted to board my ship. I demand to know who you are, what you represent, and why you are trying to impersonate Captain Morrison.”
“You. Are. Food. You. Have. Use. Full. Tech. Nol. Ogy. We. Will. Take. It. We. Will. Use. You. We. Will. Mul. Tip. Lie. This. Vess. Hell. Came. To. Us. In. Peace. We. Took. It. We. Came. For. Ter. Rah. We. Became. Trapped. We Became. Lethargic. We have waited. Now you have brought us. A new vessel to carry us. To Terra.”
Captain Van’tu shook his head. If these things were familiar with humans, they’d recognise the gesture. For the sake of understanding he’d long ago learned to at least emulate some human body language.
“You will not be allowed to go any further. I have a duty to safeguard the people under my command, and to the people of… Terra.” Whatever this species was, it was not something he wanted anywhere near a colony or, worse, defenceless homeworld, of any of the Allied or friendly species he knew lay between here and Terra herself. Best for all they only had Terra in mind.
“Sir! The incoming shuttles are not going for docking, they’re on a ramming approach! Firing solution lost on bogey one!” The Mandrakes grazers were firing, gunnery crews managing their weapons as they tracked automatically and fired, spearing one of the wildly corkscrewing shuttles with lances of gravitationally focused gamma radiation. The second shuttle however spun, and fell downwards, smashing into the still warming shields, and through, impacting the Mandrakes hull with tremendous speed.
The scouting vessel shuddered. The shuttle had breached through the outer hull and spilled into a mess area.
Thanks to the alert condition, all crew had been in skinsuits, not that this helped the two cooks who had been finishing off the lockdown of the mess kitchen.
Fresh alerts sounded, the sound of which sent crewpeople to arms lockers. Mandrake had been boarded.
Captain Van’tu pointed to his tactical officer. “Destroy that wreck! vaporise it!”
“Sir! Weapons are offline, on-mount crews are reporting power losses.”
Across the bridge, the communications officer looked up. “Reports coming in, boarders are breaking out of mess two!”
The captain snarled. Ancient Garaboosians had warded off predators with that sound, and his teeth bared in an animalistic threat display. He slammed a finger into the appropriate button on his armrest.
“All hands, all hands, defence stations, repel boarders!”
His head snapped around. “Sasha, do we still have telemetry from the drone on the Nebula? If so, I want it to shut that shitheap down, or overload its reactors!”
His science officer acknowledged with an “Aye captain!” and turned to her console.
He returned to his holo. Removed the mute. “You have attacked an Alliance of Free Stars vessel, while using a Terran Alliance vessel reported lost to causes unknown. I am hereby declaring you to be pirates, and you will be treated accordingly. Surrender now and you will be returned to your government or homeworld after serving a prison term to be determined by Admiralty courts.”
He did not expect the thing pretending to be Captain Morrison to surrender.
“There will be no surrender. We will take all you have and all you are. You will be ours to consume and use.”
His tactical alert flashed, somehow, the older ship was charging its weapons systems. He flicked a gesture, and the old vessels appeared, with sidebars. The weapons were underpowered, and normally not really a threat to a modern vessel, but the Mandrake had just been rammed by a shuttle, cutting power to her own weapons, and disrupting her shields, it would take several more minutes to regenerate them.
He glared at the grinning visage of the corpse which was still mimicking life. The left arm was still quivering against the rest, fingertips drumming against a keypad almost identical to his own. From the bottom of the sunken belly of the dead man, a slowly undulating shape crawled, a thick-pincered head, followed by a segmented body flowing with sharp-tipped clawlike legs. It moved upwards and climbed back in through Morrisons throat.
“Captain, boarders have been destroyed. Sir, they were humans, but they were dead. Like mummies. They had some kinds of bugs inside, we had to go in with plasma to clear them out.”
“I see. Ensure all the bulkhead seals around the messhall compartment are still green, and pull everyone back, full medical scans on exit. Once everyone is clear, blow the compartment.”
“Uh, yes, sir, understood. Engineering teams are saying they’ll have full weapons restored in eight minutes.”
“Good. We can’t allow any of these things to get back to inhabited space. I want that wreck vaporised. Mess compartment too.”
He continued to watch the dead mans fingers rattle against the old command chair. And nodded.
“Captain Morrison, it has been an honour. Captain Van’Tu, out.”
In the holo, the corpse finally went still. The creatures which had inhabited him began to swarm, black blood and ichor bursting from his skull as the mother of the monsters which had ridden his body and his ship since they had tricked their way aboard a century before, burst free from her manipulating, feeding grasp in his skull.
“Captain, the drone has fully copied the Nebula Stars database, but is unable to access any critical systems. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay Sasha. When we have weapons available, we’ll finish whatever is left.”
“Sir? I don’t understand what…”
The holo tank cut her off. The Nebula Star had fired its engines, angling towards an intercept with the Mandrake, it needed to be much closer to engage with its much more primitive weapons. As the engines flared to life, fire blossomed across the aft hull. Multiple explosions rippled through it, billowing outwards from within, as the reawakened fusion reactors, initially stirred to life by the probes batteries, then by crawling undead crew hidden in the ships dead spaces, all overloaded, and detonated in a final orgy of self-annihilation.
There was a shudder again, as the Mandrakes crew activated the emergency charges that blew an entire section of the ship into space, carrying with it the bodies of dozens of the Nebula Stars crew, hundreds of incinerated and still crawling parasitic alien monsters, and the corpses of two unfortunate cooks.
“Begin sweeping everything in range with fire, maximum power and aperture, everything must burn. I want medical and bio survey teams going around the clock scanning for any trace of those things that might have breached containment. For the record, I will be recommending the Mandrake be scuttled once all crew are cleared and disembarked. Needless to say, we will not be making any landfall or station docks before then.”
He sat down in his command chair. He couldn’t remember standing up. He stared down at his armrest, and the keypad on it. With the fingers of his bottom left hand, he began typing, sending the results to the main holo where Sasha watched, curious.
ENMY HMWRLD r41429.135 i334451 b-1.791 KILL BURN QURTN
The rest of the sequence was the override code that would trigger the Nebula Star to overload its powerplants and blow itself to pieces before it could be used against its creators.
“Captain? How did you get that message? The log entries are still being processed, but it doesn’t look like anything coherent survived, there’s no co-ordinates in them.” Sasha was confused, and Captain Van’Tu smiled.
“Humans, you’re all the same when it comes down to the wire. Mark blew his shuttle rather than let it dock with those things on board. Even while they ate him alive, he crawled through his command, to do his duty to his species, and to the galaxy. Captain Morrison held off death, kept those things guessing, somehow, as they tried to use him, his ship, to reach Earth, made them keep him in some sort of horrific half-life, until they were distracted enough that he could get back control of his hand. His chair Sasha, same as mine. Probably came out of the same factory, a century apart, and he was typing, while they tried to speak to us, while they tried to board us, shoot us, while we distracted them, he set them up to give us the knowledge he knew we would need to ensure they would never threaten anyone again.”
Fire was still blossoming across the larger area of the holo display, graser weapons detonating fragments of hull with nuclear fire.
“Once we’ve cleared the skies here, we head to an outpost, and start warning the Admiralty. Jobs not over until these things are completely contained.”
***
103 Years, 4 months, 5 days before.
Jack staggered, his leg still bleeding from where a crewman had slashed at him with fingers broken into sharp bone claws. He’d stamped the mans head until the skull popped, rupturing the centipede thing curled inside. He was close. The familiar, once comforting hallways of the Nebula Star had become nightmarish, red lighting and blotches of gore, streaks of blood on the pristine walls, he was living in a horror game, but he had a job to finish.
He pushed off the wall he’d leant against. Behind him, he could hear screaming, and begging. He didn’t stop. It was a trick. They found the noises amusing, and mimicked them, discovering that it could draw in ‘helpers’ they could ambush.
Aft section, frame fourteen, jumpcore bay. He slapped the button, and fell through the door as it slid open. Inside, the bay was immaculate, no-one had been in here since this had started. How they had gotten aboard, he didn’t know.
Inside the skull of a landing team member, he could guess.
He knelt beside the humming machinery. His vision was going grey around the edges, he could feel dripping around his knees, he was kneeling in a pool of his own blood after only a few seconds, he didn’t have long.
He pushed his burden against the drive casing, the chem-catalyst agent on the back bonding it to the drive with a molecular weld.
He pressed the keypad of the emergency c4 cannister, the detonator arming with a beep, and a green telltale.
He typed in a code, short, sweet, he’d forgotten it by the time he reached the end, it didn’t matter. The disarm code was only for when you wanted to be able to stop the countdown. Ten seconds.
They reached him, before it finished counting. Inside his brain, they couldn’t find the code to stop the bomb.
The Nebula Star would not reach Terra, he made sure of that.
As the jumpcore failed, blowing a ragged hole out of the sleek hull, a single shuttle spun away from the boatbay, damaged, lifeless, cold and drifting outwards into the depths of space, the mutilated human corpse within stirring once with scurrying life, then going still.
submitted by Malice_Qahwah to HFY [link] [comments]
***
Body Horror, bugs, death, gore. Attempted horror.
By my own standards, this is fairly tame, your mileage may vary, content advisory.
***
Captain Van’tu, the Garaboosian commander of the Alliance of Free Stars light scout cruiser Mandrake, frowned, in the way of his species, and gestured with a lower lefthand at his human science officer to continue.
The woman turned back to her console, to peer into the hood of her ‘scope and minutely adjust a control.
“The ship is an old Terran Alliance Explorer class, the TAN Nebula Star. She was reported overdue for resupply a little over a hundred years ago, exact details are spotty as the station she was supposed to report to was destroyed in the Terran civil war. By modern standards she was little more than a heavy cruiser with an oversized jumpcore, and limited weaponry. The Terran Alliance Navy was very much focused on exploration and first contact, and several of their vessels vanished without trace only to show up decades later in pirate hands. However, this does not seem to be the case with the Nebula Star…”
The image on the holotable was mute testimony to this information. The old starship, much more massive than the Mandrake, but significantly less well equipped, looked derelict. Several holes gaped in her once-pristene white hull, the smooth lines marred and crooked, and the jumpcore bulb near the stern showed a terrible, blasted crater, black with soot and melted steel.
Captain Van’tu scrolled the smooth wheel of the holo controls, swivelling the image and zooming into the damage.
“What do we think of this, Sasha, that looks like an internal explosion, not battle damage.”
“Yes Captain.” Sasha, the science officer, agreed. She manipulated a pad on her side of the console. Several sidebars lit up. “Here, here and here. Chemical signatures we’ve picked up in the dustcloud around the wreck, and the blast pattern, indicates a high yield chemical explosive was utilised, we would need to get a scan from inside the wreckage to be certain, but I think I can confidently say this was caused by a c4 package commonly kept as part of ship inventories of that era. We carry a similar type of explosive even now, it has uses in a number of emergency protocols.”
The captain nodded. “I’m familiar with Human paranoia, ‘better to have and not need than need and not have’, which is why I learned to carry a backpack heavier than myself at the academy.” He smiled at the woman, who grinned back in that wolfish human fashion.
Commanding a Terran vessel as part of the Alliance Navy was a high honour for a non-Terran, and he’d earned it the hard way, he’d actually completed his officer training on Earth itself, heavy gravity, lethal flora, fauna, and practical jokes be damned, he’d always dreamed of command, and he had never planned to settle for anything less than the best ships of the fleet.
Somehow his determination to ‘make it’ had actually impressed his trainers and teachers, and earned him the interest of a senior Admiral, which explained his current command. And he was no ticket-puncher, his crew was, in his opinion, the best in the fleet, and if his ship was small, he was so proud of her, some days he could almost burst his hearts from it. She was his first, and with luck, not his last, and while scouting duty following pre-war exploration routes was far from glamorous, it was essential work for the Alliance, following up first contacts, reopening lost trade routes, and, now and then, coming across relics, and giving closure to the descendants of those vanished vessels.
“Alright. She looks cold, and her reactor is dead, but we don’t know what happened to her, she could have run afoul of pirates, or been captured and misused for decades, or been left boobytrapped, so pack up a SAR shuttle, and give them a leader drone, they don’t enter unless the drone clears the way in.”
“Aye aye Captain, I’ll get them on their way. Sidearms?”
“Yyy…esss. Yes. And overarmour. If someone’s left any surprises, it will help.”
Sasha turned and walked off, already tapping her communicator to summon the personnel she’d be sending.
He frowned again, looking into the depths of the hologram. Something was bothering him, the same sensation he’d felt while visiting a zoo on Earth. Humans around him grinning, nodding to one another, and the confirmation of his worry came as a boom of hundreds of pounds of apex feline carnivore crashing against the high density crystal he’d been standing with his back to…
Something was creeping up on them, he could feel it.
***
The shuttle launched from the brightly lit boatbay of the Mandrake, arcing smoothly through the glittering blackness towards the cruelly murdered starship. In front of it zipped the mote of the drone, its scanners and sensors slaved to the shuttle, giving the drone specialist on board an instant feed to all his senses, feeling, experiencing everything the drone saw.
It zipped around the gaping hole where the jumpdrive had once been housed, then around in a helical pattern, scanning every micron of the lost ships hull, mapping it in complete three dimensional perfection, then tracking towards the boatbay. Inside, two, much older, versions of the Mandrakes shuttle rested, crooked against their davits, the bay airlock doors lying open.
The drone slowly crept inside the dark corridor as the shuttle followed it in, nestling into an empty davit. Power hookups, identical after a century thanks to long ago agreed standardisation, marry up, pogo pins compressed and energized, drawing trickle power from the shuttle to latch securely.
The crew debark, except the probe operator who remained strapped in his jumpseat, guiding the drone deeper into the derelict.
Suited figures follow its path, jumping from the shuttle hatch to the airlock. They don’t bother trying to seal it, it had been lying open for a century, there was no air left within to preserve. The drone met a cross passage, and moved right, headed towards the bridge, following schematics downloaded from Mandrake’s computer. The scout crew followed, alert, and making note of damage to bulkheads, the carpets that once covered the floors looking torn, dark stains telling a worrying story.
The probe entered the bridge of the Nebula Star and paused. The LIDAR scanner illuminated the space in a slow pass of green laser light, left to right and back again. The chamber was empty, save the various consoles and chairs the crew would have used, and the lone figure of the Captain, in his central command chair.
To Captain Van’tu, observing the time delayed remote feed on his own bridge, it was remarkable just how similar the darkened derelict wreck was to his own vessel, down to the arrangement of bridge consoles and type of carpeting used. He’d read, in one of his intro to ship design classes, that Terran bridge layout owed much to speculative fiction of pre-spaceflight eras, and a lot of experimental wet-navy designs.
He'd brought it up once with his chief of engineering, who had responded with a ridiculous approximation of a Scottish accent, “Aye laddie, we Terrans owe an awfy lot tae an auld lass called the Enterprise!” and laughed, continuing his explanation in his more natural German accented standardised Terran. Van’tu had spent several informative evenings with his console, soaking up ancient Terran entertainment as a result.
The drone circled the bridge, slowly, keeping its thruster exhaust well clear of the mummified body in the central chair, making its way to the science console. A small arm popped out and slotted into the consoles data port.
Several lights flickered on the antique panel, the probe powering up the cold circuits to read the datalogs, then around the room, dim red lights came to life, as more of the bridge woke up. Through the hull itself, a faint whine transmitted, the probes oversized fusion battery providing enough current to trigger the startup of a backup generator below the bridge.
The scouting party stepped in, peering around. One, her grey skinsuit marked with a red stripe down the arms, moves across to the captain, a medical scanner in her hand.
“I’m reading significant trauma throughout the corpse, but remarkable preservation as well. Life support must have been glitching badly for a long time after… Wait…” She smacked the side of the scanner, then passed it back across the corpse. “Scanner keeps picking up my own heartbeat, trying to tell me this guys still alive, fucking thing.” She put it away in the side pocket of her suit and pulled out a smaller device. “I kept my old one, should be good enough to… Fuck me sideways…”
“Maybe later Carol, what’s the script?” A green stripe on the party leader’s arm. He was looking around, feeling… itchy, between his shoulder blades. Something wasn’t right, and not just the dead ship. He’d been lead on two other derelict searches, and they never went like this. Accidents happened, people died, usually horribly, and you always found, well, bodies. Whole or otherwise. Yet, aside from the clearly traumatic bloodstains on the floors, soaked long before the artificial gravity had failed, this ship hadn’t shown them a single body, nothing, not even fragments.
Not only that but he could swear he’d seen movements. No-one else had, but he also knew that his reflexes tested significantly higher than average, he was seeing something the others were simply not noticing.
Carol stepped away from the corpse.
“My old scanner says this guy’s alive Mark. Heartbeat, brain activity, oxygenated blood. He’s not breathing and he’s a fucking corpse, but both my scanners say he’s gooey in the middle. And I’ll be honest I don’t want to be here, send probes back across on AI control and let them explore, this is too freaky. I know you’ve been seeing shit, well, I’ve been picking up weirdness all along, and this is too much. We should leave!”
Mark bit back a curse. He agreed, but he was also supposed to be a professional, and as the leader of the scout team who first boarded the derelict, he’d have been slated for command of the ‘prize crew’ to bring her home. At the same time, he was holding back a growing uneasiness, his other two team members were shuffling nervously, and Carol was on the edge of panic.
“Alright, we head back to the shuttle and leave the probe to grab the logs. Something’s weird here, might be the atmosphere on this thing, I admit it’s spooky, but we all know I see weird bugs and things other folk miss, and Carol, you’ve had that personal scanner since high school, if it’s saying something weird, something weird is going on. If Captain… Morrison, is still alive after a century in vacuum, he can keep a few more hours until the AI probes can collect him. We’re not equipped for medical evac anyway.”
They stepped back through the hatchway, leaving the probe to its work. Emergency lighting flickered into life, adding a lurid red glare to the tableaux, Mark, last to leave, sharply snapping his head back around as something… He was reminded of a time as a child, he’d turned over a log in his parents’ yard, and hundreds of inch-long centipedes had scurried in panicked circles to escape the sudden glare of sunlight.
Nothing moved, aside from the slow pulsing of rebooting computers.
He followed his people towards the shuttle.
One by one, they made the leap back to the shuttle davit, and boarded, cycling back aboard, and taking their seats. The drone pilot barely moved to acknowledge them, clearly lost in the datefeed from the old computers, and aside from a quick glance across readouts to ensure the data was flowing cleanly to the Mandrake, Mark didn’t disturb the man.
He hit the switch to release the davit clamps, and the popped free. The shuttle turned, and smoothly glided out, aligning with the mothership and headed home. He blinked and shook his head. That motion again, out the corner of his eye. He glanced over, seeing the drone pilot’s faceplate swarming with legs for a fraction of a second.
“Uhh, Josh, you alright there?” He hated breaking into drone pilot concentration, but this wasn’t right, and Carol was gesturing desperately at him from her chair. He reached across, and nudged Josh’s shoulder, the skinsuit collapsing under his fingers and the skull clacking loosely against the faceplate.
***
Captain Van’tu listened to the soft report coming from Sasha, the scout crew had found the captain of the derelict but were returning early due to some unsettling information they’d found. He didn’t like it, but he also respected human instincts. If skilled officers felt there was a reason to withdraw before mission completion, he knew better than to override the human-on-the-spot.
He’d have a word with Mark later, in private, if necessary, but the man had never been wrong before.
Across the communicator, there was a sudden eruption of yelling, the shuttle on the holo spiralling wildly. Sasha was demanding a clear response from the screaming communicator.
Mark came over the channel. “Abort mission, contamination, alien threat…” His words ended in a gurgling scream, the kind that began high and ended, eventually, in a growling snarl of mortal agony. The line remained open, however, and the entire bridge crew turned to stare, mouths agape, as into the silence the faint sounds of gnawing began to echo.
Sasha shut off the feed with a shaky finger. “Captain, I…”
“I know. Arm several probes, get them to the shuttle, find out what happened and…”
Once more, attention fell to the holo display, as on it, the icon of the shuttle winked red. Sasha motioned, and the focus zoomed in. Where the shuttle had been, a spreading scatter of debris remained.
She pulled up the sidebars again.
“Right before Mark, uh, died, his authorisation codes were used to trigger an overload on the shuttle reactor. We didn’t pick up the feed in real time, they were returning after all, but all of them suffered catastrophic biological distress immediately before their lifesigns cut out. Mark was the last one alive, and severely injured when he triggered the reactor.”
Captain Van’tu shook out his lower hands with a stress-shedding gesture. “The shuttle reactor is in a sealed compartment. He had to get from his chair to the access panel and enter his code, while suffering life threatening injuries which had already killed the rest of his crew?”
“Yes, Captain. I’m sorry, I missed it, my team is still processing the data, but it looks as if the drone pilot ceased responding several minutes before the shuttle departed the wreck. At five minutes into the flight, the three junior officers began exhibiting distress, but gave no verbal alerts. Mark seems to have reacted to something that triggered a fight or flight response, but within a few seconds was exhibiting the same injury markers as the others. At the six-minute mark, he sent his warning, while moving. It appears as if the cessation of his vocalisations was not the end of his life, almost thirty seconds later his code was entered into the shuttle reactor, and it detonated.”
Captain Van’tu moved to his command chair, and sat down, lower hands grasping the armrests, upper hands folding under his chin. “Helm, chart course back to the nearest Alliance outpost, and warm up the jumpcore. Tactical, bring shields to standby and start charging the grasers, I don’t like what’s happening, and I do not want to be caught with our backs turned.”
His crew moved into action, tactical alerts bringing various stations to readiness.
“Sir! We’re receiving a communications request, uh, from the Nebula Star.”
He stared at his communications officer, who looked equally shocked.
“Please, Jen, put them through to the main holo.”
The hovering image of the wreckage that had once been a shuttle vanished, replaced by the familiastrange image of the old bridge, and its captain.
The man was a corpse, there was no debate. The papery skin had pulled back from his eyes and teeth, his nose collapsed inwards, decades of icy coldness and baking heat as the derelict tumbled slowly from shade to sunlight had freeze dried the body, yet, it moved. The jaw flapped open, and the sticklike arms gestured against the command chair arms, clawed fingertips clicking uselessly.
“Gree. Tings. Un. Known. Vess. Sell. I. Am. Cap. Tan. Morr. Iss. Son. We. Come. In. Peace.”
The corpse in the holo quivered and twitched in some horrible mockery of life, the bared grey teeth clicking as the jaw spasmed open and closed, not, Van’tu noted, in time with the words being spoken. Inside the jaws, he also noticed, something black and shiny and segmented.
“I highly doubt you come with any sort of peace in mind, what are you really, and what did you do to the crew of the shuttle who boarded the ship you are on.”
The body twitched, a trickle of black ooze popping free from the corner of the sunken eye socket. Under the dried up eyelid, something squirmed around, curling with segmented motion, a few pointed claws poking briefly free before vanishing once more.
“I. Am. Cap. Tan. Morr. Iss. Son. We. Come. In. Peace. We. Rek. Wire. Ass. Iss. Tan. Sse. Let. Uss. Board.”
An alert flashed from Sashas direction. A gesture diminished Captain Morrison to a corner of the holo and expanded the view of the derelict. Two shuttles of archaic design had just launched from it and begun making their way towards the Mandrake. He muted his pickup and turned to his tactical officer.
“Jeff? They do not get close enough to board.”
“Aye aye sir, tracking has them locked and my grazers are charged.”
“Very good.”
He returned to the holo and reopened the grisly view of the dead man being puppeted on his display.
“You will not be permitted to board my ship. I demand to know who you are, what you represent, and why you are trying to impersonate Captain Morrison.”
“You. Are. Food. You. Have. Use. Full. Tech. Nol. Ogy. We. Will. Take. It. We. Will. Use. You. We. Will. Mul. Tip. Lie. This. Vess. Hell. Came. To. Us. In. Peace. We. Took. It. We. Came. For. Ter. Rah. We. Became. Trapped. We Became. Lethargic. We have waited. Now you have brought us. A new vessel to carry us. To Terra.”
Captain Van’tu shook his head. If these things were familiar with humans, they’d recognise the gesture. For the sake of understanding he’d long ago learned to at least emulate some human body language.
“You will not be allowed to go any further. I have a duty to safeguard the people under my command, and to the people of… Terra.” Whatever this species was, it was not something he wanted anywhere near a colony or, worse, defenceless homeworld, of any of the Allied or friendly species he knew lay between here and Terra herself. Best for all they only had Terra in mind.
“Sir! The incoming shuttles are not going for docking, they’re on a ramming approach! Firing solution lost on bogey one!” The Mandrakes grazers were firing, gunnery crews managing their weapons as they tracked automatically and fired, spearing one of the wildly corkscrewing shuttles with lances of gravitationally focused gamma radiation. The second shuttle however spun, and fell downwards, smashing into the still warming shields, and through, impacting the Mandrakes hull with tremendous speed.
The scouting vessel shuddered. The shuttle had breached through the outer hull and spilled into a mess area.
Thanks to the alert condition, all crew had been in skinsuits, not that this helped the two cooks who had been finishing off the lockdown of the mess kitchen.
Fresh alerts sounded, the sound of which sent crewpeople to arms lockers. Mandrake had been boarded.
Captain Van’tu pointed to his tactical officer. “Destroy that wreck! vaporise it!”
“Sir! Weapons are offline, on-mount crews are reporting power losses.”
Across the bridge, the communications officer looked up. “Reports coming in, boarders are breaking out of mess two!”
The captain snarled. Ancient Garaboosians had warded off predators with that sound, and his teeth bared in an animalistic threat display. He slammed a finger into the appropriate button on his armrest.
“All hands, all hands, defence stations, repel boarders!”
His head snapped around. “Sasha, do we still have telemetry from the drone on the Nebula? If so, I want it to shut that shitheap down, or overload its reactors!”
His science officer acknowledged with an “Aye captain!” and turned to her console.
He returned to his holo. Removed the mute. “You have attacked an Alliance of Free Stars vessel, while using a Terran Alliance vessel reported lost to causes unknown. I am hereby declaring you to be pirates, and you will be treated accordingly. Surrender now and you will be returned to your government or homeworld after serving a prison term to be determined by Admiralty courts.”
He did not expect the thing pretending to be Captain Morrison to surrender.
“There will be no surrender. We will take all you have and all you are. You will be ours to consume and use.”
His tactical alert flashed, somehow, the older ship was charging its weapons systems. He flicked a gesture, and the old vessels appeared, with sidebars. The weapons were underpowered, and normally not really a threat to a modern vessel, but the Mandrake had just been rammed by a shuttle, cutting power to her own weapons, and disrupting her shields, it would take several more minutes to regenerate them.
He glared at the grinning visage of the corpse which was still mimicking life. The left arm was still quivering against the rest, fingertips drumming against a keypad almost identical to his own. From the bottom of the sunken belly of the dead man, a slowly undulating shape crawled, a thick-pincered head, followed by a segmented body flowing with sharp-tipped clawlike legs. It moved upwards and climbed back in through Morrisons throat.
“Captain, boarders have been destroyed. Sir, they were humans, but they were dead. Like mummies. They had some kinds of bugs inside, we had to go in with plasma to clear them out.”
“I see. Ensure all the bulkhead seals around the messhall compartment are still green, and pull everyone back, full medical scans on exit. Once everyone is clear, blow the compartment.”
“Uh, yes, sir, understood. Engineering teams are saying they’ll have full weapons restored in eight minutes.”
“Good. We can’t allow any of these things to get back to inhabited space. I want that wreck vaporised. Mess compartment too.”
He continued to watch the dead mans fingers rattle against the old command chair. And nodded.
“Captain Morrison, it has been an honour. Captain Van’Tu, out.”
In the holo, the corpse finally went still. The creatures which had inhabited him began to swarm, black blood and ichor bursting from his skull as the mother of the monsters which had ridden his body and his ship since they had tricked their way aboard a century before, burst free from her manipulating, feeding grasp in his skull.
“Captain, the drone has fully copied the Nebula Stars database, but is unable to access any critical systems. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay Sasha. When we have weapons available, we’ll finish whatever is left.”
“Sir? I don’t understand what…”
The holo tank cut her off. The Nebula Star had fired its engines, angling towards an intercept with the Mandrake, it needed to be much closer to engage with its much more primitive weapons. As the engines flared to life, fire blossomed across the aft hull. Multiple explosions rippled through it, billowing outwards from within, as the reawakened fusion reactors, initially stirred to life by the probes batteries, then by crawling undead crew hidden in the ships dead spaces, all overloaded, and detonated in a final orgy of self-annihilation.
There was a shudder again, as the Mandrakes crew activated the emergency charges that blew an entire section of the ship into space, carrying with it the bodies of dozens of the Nebula Stars crew, hundreds of incinerated and still crawling parasitic alien monsters, and the corpses of two unfortunate cooks.
“Begin sweeping everything in range with fire, maximum power and aperture, everything must burn. I want medical and bio survey teams going around the clock scanning for any trace of those things that might have breached containment. For the record, I will be recommending the Mandrake be scuttled once all crew are cleared and disembarked. Needless to say, we will not be making any landfall or station docks before then.”
He sat down in his command chair. He couldn’t remember standing up. He stared down at his armrest, and the keypad on it. With the fingers of his bottom left hand, he began typing, sending the results to the main holo where Sasha watched, curious.
ENMY HMWRLD r41429.135 i334451 b-1.791 KILL BURN QURTN
The rest of the sequence was the override code that would trigger the Nebula Star to overload its powerplants and blow itself to pieces before it could be used against its creators.
“Captain? How did you get that message? The log entries are still being processed, but it doesn’t look like anything coherent survived, there’s no co-ordinates in them.” Sasha was confused, and Captain Van’Tu smiled.
“Humans, you’re all the same when it comes down to the wire. Mark blew his shuttle rather than let it dock with those things on board. Even while they ate him alive, he crawled through his command, to do his duty to his species, and to the galaxy. Captain Morrison held off death, kept those things guessing, somehow, as they tried to use him, his ship, to reach Earth, made them keep him in some sort of horrific half-life, until they were distracted enough that he could get back control of his hand. His chair Sasha, same as mine. Probably came out of the same factory, a century apart, and he was typing, while they tried to speak to us, while they tried to board us, shoot us, while we distracted them, he set them up to give us the knowledge he knew we would need to ensure they would never threaten anyone again.”
Fire was still blossoming across the larger area of the holo display, graser weapons detonating fragments of hull with nuclear fire.
“Once we’ve cleared the skies here, we head to an outpost, and start warning the Admiralty. Jobs not over until these things are completely contained.”
***
103 Years, 4 months, 5 days before.
Jack staggered, his leg still bleeding from where a crewman had slashed at him with fingers broken into sharp bone claws. He’d stamped the mans head until the skull popped, rupturing the centipede thing curled inside. He was close. The familiar, once comforting hallways of the Nebula Star had become nightmarish, red lighting and blotches of gore, streaks of blood on the pristine walls, he was living in a horror game, but he had a job to finish.
He pushed off the wall he’d leant against. Behind him, he could hear screaming, and begging. He didn’t stop. It was a trick. They found the noises amusing, and mimicked them, discovering that it could draw in ‘helpers’ they could ambush.
Aft section, frame fourteen, jumpcore bay. He slapped the button, and fell through the door as it slid open. Inside, the bay was immaculate, no-one had been in here since this had started. How they had gotten aboard, he didn’t know.
Inside the skull of a landing team member, he could guess.
He knelt beside the humming machinery. His vision was going grey around the edges, he could feel dripping around his knees, he was kneeling in a pool of his own blood after only a few seconds, he didn’t have long.
He pushed his burden against the drive casing, the chem-catalyst agent on the back bonding it to the drive with a molecular weld.
He pressed the keypad of the emergency c4 cannister, the detonator arming with a beep, and a green telltale.
He typed in a code, short, sweet, he’d forgotten it by the time he reached the end, it didn’t matter. The disarm code was only for when you wanted to be able to stop the countdown. Ten seconds.
They reached him, before it finished counting. Inside his brain, they couldn’t find the code to stop the bomb.
The Nebula Star would not reach Terra, he made sure of that.
As the jumpcore failed, blowing a ragged hole out of the sleek hull, a single shuttle spun away from the boatbay, damaged, lifeless, cold and drifting outwards into the depths of space, the mutilated human corpse within stirring once with scurrying life, then going still.
2023.06.03 03:30 lancersupremacy Should I go to Nike nationals?
I’ve recently just qualified for it. However, I live in New York and it’s really, really far away. I would be probably the only person to go for on my school. Since I didn’t qualify for nbn, I can’t go to that.
However, I am a senior and this is my last chance to go to this sort of stuff. I’ve never qualified for nationals before. For anyone who went, what was the experience like? Is it worth a plane ride and loneliness?
submitted by lancersupremacy to trackandfield [link] [comments]
However, I am a senior and this is my last chance to go to this sort of stuff. I’ve never qualified for nationals before. For anyone who went, what was the experience like? Is it worth a plane ride and loneliness?
2023.06.03 03:29 Godspeed813 Another career change post
Here we go, another career change post!
I’ve moved across the country (Florida to Texas) for 6 figure job that while I enjoy most days, it will require me to come into the same office for the entirety of my career with no chance of WFH. For those wondering I am a Train Dispatcher for major class 1 railway. Similar to air traffic control but for trains. I could move companies, but there are only around 6 locations I could really live as a train dispatcher and your seniority resets when you move.
The goal is to eventually move back to Florida, preferably with at least 50% WFH position and equivalent salary to what I have now. I only have my associates as of now and am considering getting an IT Degree for WGU.
How many years does it take to see 6 figures within careers in IT and what path would you recommend for someone with those goals in mind?
submitted by Godspeed813 to ITCareerQuestions [link] [comments]
I’ve moved across the country (Florida to Texas) for 6 figure job that while I enjoy most days, it will require me to come into the same office for the entirety of my career with no chance of WFH. For those wondering I am a Train Dispatcher for major class 1 railway. Similar to air traffic control but for trains. I could move companies, but there are only around 6 locations I could really live as a train dispatcher and your seniority resets when you move.
The goal is to eventually move back to Florida, preferably with at least 50% WFH position and equivalent salary to what I have now. I only have my associates as of now and am considering getting an IT Degree for WGU.
How many years does it take to see 6 figures within careers in IT and what path would you recommend for someone with those goals in mind?
2023.06.03 03:19 SpideyAhmad Can Foreigners live in HDB for free?
I rented a room in Singapore HDB for a year. Then, my landlord decided to let me live for free when the contract expire. Can he just do that without telling HDB? He will not charge me at all. He is a senior and do not quite understand legal things.
Note: I have valid student pass and I am foreigner.
submitted by SpideyAhmad to u/SpideyAhmad [link] [comments]
Note: I have valid student pass and I am foreigner.
2023.06.03 03:17 Sxnflxwer2584 Blue the Blue-and-Gold Macaw (Update?)
 | I've made a few posts here about Blue the Macaw. submitted by Sxnflxwer2584 to parrots [link] [comments] The short of it is I work at a vet, and the clinic owner adopted 34-year-old Macae from an ailing woman who was going to senior living. I've always found birds peculiar and hard to read (as most of my experience is with dogs/cats who more readily display physical signs of agitation/distress/happiness/etc), but Blue was going to be here, so I wanted to get to know her. My last post was the story of Blue's first (known) bite after a child didn't listen to me when I told him not to touch her. The little one is okay, and a few days after that post, my boss (clinic owner) had a discussion with his mother, and she decided to seek other care for her pets' needs. No stitches and no lawsuits -- overall, the best outcome that could be expected. Since then, Blue's main abode has been moved to our kennel area at the back of the clinic, and she has multiple perches throughout the clinic that she visits depending on how busy it is. We've noticed that when it's busier, Blue is fussier and at the end of our days (when appointments slow down), she gets very vocal, and my thinking is she knows we won't fuss about any noise she makes as she knows there are fewer people around. Blue has taken to mimicking dogs (barking and whining mostly) instead of people. It's super cute! Except when a client is suddenly concerned that their dog is making THAT noise. "No", we tell them, "that's a bird." Blue and I are...at odds 😂😂 She dances with me when I sing for her, but I cannot pet her -- unless there is a peanut involved. A couple of pets may be redeemed for a singular peanut. I dont know how the deal was made but it was made. Mostly, I offered her the peanuts (I personally give her 1 or 2 daily since I don't know what else she's being fed or how often) and I would walk away to kind of...show her that I didnt have any expectations? It made sense in my head. I much prefer it to the outright aggression she has towards one of the techs. Every time the tech walks by her, Blue lunges at her and tries to bite. I'm not good at reading birds but that seems glaringly obvious 😅 I don't know that anything has happened between them, but I do know that Blue is like this with one other technician who is (very) part time, doesn't have a key to the building, and clocks maybe 10hrs weekly. I cant honestly remember if I've mentioned it before but Blue needs a bath. Her feathers point every which way and are clearly not lying as they're supposed to but she will not bathe herself and the one time we tried to put water on her (just a few drops from someones hands), she fell from her perch in her panic to get away. She landed talons/chest first but we still took x-rays to be sure she was okay. We also can't trim her nails or her beak. We're a small animal hospital (cats/dogs only) so none of us have idea how to properly restrain a (very) fussy middle-aged bird, and no one is willing to potentially harm her (or be harmed themselves because shes got a wicked beak) by trying. Clinic Owner is currently out of town and has said he will try with her when he gets back, but I know he's never worked with avian/exotics before, so I'm unsure how productive that will be. But otherwise! Blue is doing fine. She was slow to warm up but I'm hoping maybe she'll let us bathe her soon. More research required, but she (somehow) looks itchy to me (no mites spotted, just a very dirty birdie), and I would love to see her bathed. |
2023.06.03 03:13 DangerousKitchen3399 subleasing spot in double for fall q
i’m subletting my spot in a double 2 bed/2 bath apartment off-campus 1 mile from UCLA. it’s available August 20 - end of December (negotiable). rent is $763 + utilities (amazing deal in this economy)! the apartment will be shared with 3 senior girls and we have 2 very friendly cats <3 kitchen appliances and A/C are brand new, and the building was recently renovated. parking is available and street parking is easily located. common areas (living room + kitchen) will be furnished but feel free to bring own items! bedroom comes with bed frame, desk, and shelf, unless not wanted. my roommate is also subletting her spot in our double, so the room can be sublet as a single if preferred. please message for more details and pictures!
submitted by DangerousKitchen3399 to ucla [link] [comments]
2023.06.03 02:34 SnooApples3300 Help on Finding Housing for 2023-2024
Hello, I am a senior student who is forced to find a new place to live as the property I lived in changed property manager and they decided to not rent out the property for the upcoming semester. I am in quite an urgent state as I know housing for the upcoming semester is minimal. Does anyone know where could I reach out to? Are there any people who's looking for a roommate? Or do anyone know which apartments are still open for application?
submitted by SnooApples3300 to Purdue [link] [comments]
2023.06.03 02:24 Brebly 35 [M4F] - Atlanta/US Anywhere - Dating with a purpose is not as easy as it looks!
Good evening everyone!
I'm here today hoping to find a genuine connection, or dating with a purpose. I've been through the ringer over the last 15 years or so, but I want to get back up on that horse and find my last relationship. I'd like to find someone who believes in having fun in life and is glass half full! Someone who likes to go on random adventures and likes to travel. Someone who can appreciate a guy who knows how to be respectful and treat a woman correctly, not be a thirsty boi lol. I'm not too picky on where you live, that's what planes are for and I like to travel! I don't mind if you have kids, I do not have any of my own, but not for lack of wanting them. I have a bunch of different interests and hobbies, would love to find someone who shares some of them!
A bit about me: 35 years old (Libra). Live in Georgia but I'm a Wisconsin native. I have 3 dogs, 2 senior dogs and a 6 month old Pittie puppy(ask for puppy pictures, she's just about the cutest dog ever. Or let's go on a doggie date!). I'm a gearhead and love any/everything about cars. I like just about all music. Very big about energy. Glass half full. Fun loving. Love to make people laugh and smile. Love to travel and go on road trips. Love to play video games(and hope you do too! I love playing video games with someone!) I enjoy hiking and kayaking. Always called a great guy or the nice guy(a blessing and a curse) I like to cook!
Here's a few pictures of me for reference: https://imgur.com/a/5GEcJh2
https://imgur.com/a/OboSMIW
Obligatory puppy picture: https://imgur.com/a/MnEdiLK
If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading all the way through. Hoping this catches someone's eye and get some positive chats and a genuine connection. Have a great day and talk to you soon!
submitted by Brebly to r4r [link] [comments]
I'm here today hoping to find a genuine connection, or dating with a purpose. I've been through the ringer over the last 15 years or so, but I want to get back up on that horse and find my last relationship. I'd like to find someone who believes in having fun in life and is glass half full! Someone who likes to go on random adventures and likes to travel. Someone who can appreciate a guy who knows how to be respectful and treat a woman correctly, not be a thirsty boi lol. I'm not too picky on where you live, that's what planes are for and I like to travel! I don't mind if you have kids, I do not have any of my own, but not for lack of wanting them. I have a bunch of different interests and hobbies, would love to find someone who shares some of them!
A bit about me: 35 years old (Libra). Live in Georgia but I'm a Wisconsin native. I have 3 dogs, 2 senior dogs and a 6 month old Pittie puppy(ask for puppy pictures, she's just about the cutest dog ever. Or let's go on a doggie date!). I'm a gearhead and love any/everything about cars. I like just about all music. Very big about energy. Glass half full. Fun loving. Love to make people laugh and smile. Love to travel and go on road trips. Love to play video games(and hope you do too! I love playing video games with someone!) I enjoy hiking and kayaking. Always called a great guy or the nice guy(a blessing and a curse) I like to cook!
Here's a few pictures of me for reference: https://imgur.com/a/5GEcJh2
https://imgur.com/a/OboSMIW
Obligatory puppy picture: https://imgur.com/a/MnEdiLK
If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading all the way through. Hoping this catches someone's eye and get some positive chats and a genuine connection. Have a great day and talk to you soon!
2023.06.03 01:56 Jolie-Fille Was this a “binge?”
I am the (42F) mother of a high school senior and I went to their graduation ceremony today. It was in the area where their father’s house is, I live about 30 miles away.
Afterwards, all I could think about was where I was going to stop for lunch. I could have probably made a sandwich at my EX’s house, but no. My mind was CONSUMED with all the yummy food options. And to add to it, most of the time when I am dropping off my teen after a weekend, it’s a Sunday, and many local restaurants are closed on Sundays.
Anyway, I ended up spending over $16 just on one fast-food meal of a pastrami burger with fries and a large (not diet) soda.
It was technically just one person’s meal. So was it a “binge?” Or, not enough food to “count” as a binge?
I really regret it, especially the cost. It wasn’t worth it.
submitted by Jolie-Fille to Eatingdisordersover30 [link] [comments]
Afterwards, all I could think about was where I was going to stop for lunch. I could have probably made a sandwich at my EX’s house, but no. My mind was CONSUMED with all the yummy food options. And to add to it, most of the time when I am dropping off my teen after a weekend, it’s a Sunday, and many local restaurants are closed on Sundays.
Anyway, I ended up spending over $16 just on one fast-food meal of a pastrami burger with fries and a large (not diet) soda.
It was technically just one person’s meal. So was it a “binge?” Or, not enough food to “count” as a binge?
I really regret it, especially the cost. It wasn’t worth it.