I work a very physical, high stress job. Seven weeks ago I fell down the stairs in my house and sustained a full thickness tear of my MCL.
Like most industries, my field is in trouble. People are leaving constantly due to burn out or leaving due to physical limitations as we age out because it is not sustainable.
When I initially fell the first words out of my mouth were “I’d rather be dead than not able to physically function at work.”
We have been so short staffed, busy and overworked. I had been coming in a hour earlier than the start of my shift on our busiest day while my coworkers had child care issues and came in an hour late (I’m not upset about this, I understand having children). These days were particularly horrible combined with my coworkers telling me all the things I should be doing differently.
I already have a lot of anxiety around work, and my physical abilities: in 2021 I found out I have 3 herniated discs one in each section of my spine, either caused by work or exacerbated by it. I was about at 90% when I tore my MCL.
I have never missed this much work, I’ve been employed since I was 16, I am now 37. Initially my coworkers seemed supportive. After the first six weeks (I’d been out for 5 because I worked with crutches and a leg immobilizer until I got my MRI) I thought I would return. After my visit with the doctor and talking with my supervisor we agreed to an additional two weeks until I could come back for sedentary duty because my foot is still swollen on and off that I cannot consistently wear close toes shoes which is a safety hazard.
Last week a direct coworker called to find out why I wasn’t back yet. I explained to her why and about how it was the smartest decision for me as I’m not sure I can come to work consistently and I have no PTO. She told me she understood and then proceeded to tell me that they were all frustrated and upset that I’m not back yet and that I’m “making myself look bad on social media”.
Now I am by no means a TikTok star. I have been posting story telling and makeup videos these past weeks because I’m super bored with a lot of time on my hands. It was already a mild hobby before I was injured. You know what I’m not doing in any of those videos? Anything physical, just me talking to a camera.
I asked if she would have liked for me to be miserable, and to not find any joy while being injured and unable to do anything physical. She claimed I was defensive and putting words in her mouth. The conversation went spectacularly bad and I lost my whole mind.
She ultimately said that she was just trying to convey how stretched thin and overworked they are and wanted to know if there was anyway I could come back sooner.
So I quit.
I start my new job the day I was supposed to return to my old job.
(I did talk to my supervisor and manager who agreed I’d done nothing wrong or inappropriate. This phone call was unsolicited and off the clock. They tried for a mediated conversation but the damage was done.)

Hello to everyone in this sub, I have always been a silent reader. I wish I could write every single thing about my previous/ongoing (?) relationship but I truly can’t, there’s too much history and too much to tell but I guess ill give it my best shot. English isn’t my first language, Im sorry if my grammar isn’t the best.
My emotionally and psychologically abusive ex (M25) has been in and out of my (23F) life now for 6 years. We started dating when I was 17 and he was 19, he was my first boyfriend.
To be honest, right now it feels like Im literally choosing him out of fear. Im tired of disappointing people around me (close family and friends) and myself for letting him in EVERY SINGLE TIME he wants to and never knowing my worth just to say NO (I just feel like I can’t say no to him).
So Im here, in the only subreddit I feel truly understands me, asking for help.
My ex and I met a long time ago and we were friends way before we actually dated. To give you some context about myself, I have always felt like im a very unstable person, (AKA the “irrational impulsive friend”). I have previous childhood trauma that is related to abandonment issues and previous SA that have turned me into a very volatile person (now, being diagnosed as borderline at my 23 years of age, I finally understand the reason why).
But back then when I was 17 and this whole ordeal started, I had no idea why I was the way I was.
When we started dating it wasn’t magical or perfect I just simply idealized him as that, which is even worse. But to be honest, the emotional torment has always been there.
I have always feared him (he has never hit me or been physically aggressive), he is a very angry person, and so very early on in our relationship we came to a point where I just felt like I needed to do exactly as he said so he wouldn’t leave me. He knew this, so he used it in multiple occasions to get what he wanted, knowing I was completely afraid of being without him.
He was very controlling in the first years of our relationship, extremely possessive and jealous, to the point were he wouldn’t let me have male friends or would get mad at me if I liked a male picture on social media. We fought a lot and he was extremely manipulative, always turning the conversation on its way to blame me, and making me apologize even in times were I had done absolutely nothing wrong. He would block me, ignore me and hang up my calls when we fought (which made my abandonment issues even worse). I can truly say it always made me feel insane, like I needed to record him and show him the things he said so he wouldn’t turn them on me. Our fights were completely exhausting mentally, they were really explosive. He would do a lot of name calling, blame shifting and then he would just ice me out. I would ALWAYS cry my eyes out in these fights, beg and plead until he turned a switch and then he would hug me, kiss me and then tell me he loved me and that everything was okay. This was extremely damaging because I don’t know if I became addicted to getting back his love in a way were it felt like I needed to earn it. And these are JUST the first things he did. I feel like since I was so young it created an idea in my mind that relationships were this way, I loved him like the love of my life and wanted to marry him without a doubt in my mind. With him, my BPD just went out of the window in terms of stability.
I lost myself in this relationship. I became HIS girlfriend and I wasn’t even my own self. I had no idea what I was or who I wanted to be without him. I became very submissive, I would just take the name calling, the blame shifting and the explosive fights because losing him was worse than the abuse. LOTS of things happened between the years but I truly can’t even type it out, it exhausts me so much. While all of this was happening, I was still growing up. Graduating high school, getting into med school, studying hard, meeting new people. Slowly, I realized that the more responsibilities life threw at me, the harder it became for me to live my own life (f*ck you BPD). Since I have a lot of trauma from my childhood and early teenage years, adult life became extremely hard for me, tasks that were easy for everyone around me like being independent or living alone were almost imposible for me. During these years I developed a very severe eating disorder and later on I started having problems with substance abuse (especially alcohol). I say all this because I know I wasn’t the perfect partner, I was filled with internal struggles and issues I didn’t even recognize and had a debilitating mental illness that I didn’t even know, so being with me, obviously, wasn’t very easy. I shielded myself in this relationship as my “safe” place, because honestly, it was the only constant thing I kept having in my life, and it made me completely attached to him.
Because of my BPD, I split a lot, it is the worst symptom of my borderline personality disorder, this makes me an extreme perfectionist and the burden I put on my own shoulders on being the BEST, PERFECT, woman is truly unbearable. Through these years I have caught myself needing him to validate me since he would always leave when I was in my worst (broke up with me once in the ICU and the second time in the hospital). But he would always come back when he started seeing me do better, or look better (gaining weight etc etc), and I ALWAYS took him back. I felt like when he left I was worth nothing, and every time he came back I was perfect again. TLDR version: He did a lot of shit, I did a lot of shit and took a lot of shit, the relationship was extremely unstable. You get it.
So I guess I will start with the reason I am posting this.
We have broken up more than 6 times, he ALWAYS does the breaking up and I would ALWAYS beg him to stay. Sometimes he would stay, other times he would just kick me out of his life and then slowly reappear months later. Since everyone in my life started noticing this behavior, they tried to make me realize that I wasn’t myself when he came back, I would push them away, leave them behind (family included) but when he left, although I was in pain, I would slowly find a way back to myself. Until he would come back again. This made it really exhausting for the people around me to support me, even though they have never left.
This brings us all to October of 2022, the last time we had our big breakup. He did something truly awful and I, for the first time, felt like I didn’t have the strength to forgive him. So I went no contact. I stopped reaching out, I stopped answering his calls or messages even though he was apologizing. I felt like the anger was letting me leave this chapter of my life behind. It felt like I wanted to DIE, I hated every second of it, I wanted him in my life but I tried to keep myself distracted. I started rekindling my relationships, going to therapy constantly (I had started already, but I feel like until he left my life I didn’t even realize I didn’t want him in my life), taking my meds and finding a love for medicine and surgery that had left me almost since my BPD got really bad (2019). It wasn’t perfect, (Im trying really hard not to split right now) but it was better.
On November 2022 I met someone. Yes I know, not the best thing ever, but I truly feel like meeting him (26M) made me realize I was settling for absolutely NOTHING, not even the bear minimum. Many things have happened, and he has understood every step of the way. From the get go he was amazing, and he still is amazing with me. He is patient and doesn’t want me to change a thing about myself. He truly has helped me a LOT ever since I met him and I feel like I have found a person that is teaching me what I deserve. Not only that, he has helped me see some patterns in myself when I shut away because of fear, and he has helped me become more communicative and assert my position in a relationship like I never have before. He respects my needs and wants, he has read about BPD and tried to help me in every way. So I truly do not understand why, the more he tries to be there, the more I push him away.
My ex and I didn’t talk until December 2022 when I left our city to finish my last year of medical school. It was really hard, living alone (I have roommates but they aren’t usually here) and that was when it got really bad, missing him was unbearable to the point that when he came back just to speak, I fell into his arms. AGAIN. We talked for a while until eventually he pushed me away again, but this time, it didn’t hurt as bad. We stopped talking until February 2023 and that brings me to today.
He’s back, shocker, promising things he never has before, saying all the right things I want to hear: Im sorry I left you, I will never do it again, I can help you heal, I love you, I want to marry you, I want life my life to be with you, no one makes me feel this way etc etc. He’s says he’s here for the long run, and for good. FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 6 YEARS I didn’t immediately say yes. I know in my heart of hearts I DO NOT WANT TO GO BACK, but it is SO hard for me to say no. He has me completely manipulated and programmed to being there for him, EVEN when I have met someone that I truly feel doesn’t deserve absolutely anything that is going on. Even if nothing has truly happened. It feels like a magnet is pulling me back to him, and it is really hard to pull away.
So, I need help, I need to find the strength to kick him out for good, now that there is no anger, now that he is being perfect, now.
I need to find the strength to live the life I want. I need to stop fearing him and start fearing the life I am getting into if I keep choosing him.
So please, anyone, just lend me a hand, and help me find the strength. This trauma bond is very strong. You are all so powerful and have motivated me in sleepless nights, I know I can do this. I just feel like I need to push myself to do it.
Anyways,… Thank you for reading… And If you are in the same place that I am… We can do this.
Love, G

National Union of Journalist member Albert Smith is publicly accused of deriving the name Parpoint from the blood and honour of {Par}force and Focal{point},the publishers and distributors of Goring Biography,Smith appears inside of the revised digital propagandist version of this Holocaust denial publication describing the book in his own words callously as a "Good Offering".
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LinkedIn https://ie.linkedin.com › albert-smith-1a9111143
Ireland · Editor · Parpoint Media Services Albert Smith. Freelance editor specialising in plain English editing and training. Parpoint Media Services. Ireland. 45 followers 45 connections. 20/02/2023 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Reichsmarschall - David Irving FPP.co.uk http://www.fpp.co.uk › reviews › HGReviews
"Overall, Irving's book is a very good offering. It is not as concerned to provoke controversy as many of his earlier works." Albert Smith in The Irish Independent Newspaper. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2010 Parforce UK Ltd
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Göring : a biography
943.086 ́092 ́4– dc19 Focal Point Publications Printed in the United States of America Focal Point Classic Edition ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Irving v Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt is a case in English law against American historian Deborah Lipstadt and her British publisher Penguin Books,
In her book, Denying the Holocaust, Lipstadt called Irving a Holocaust denier and falsifier, as well as a bigot, and wrote that he manipulated and distorted real documents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_v_Penguin_Books_Ltd ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(e) Conclusion 11. Irving's claim that the 1991 edition of Hitler's War and the 1989 biography of Göring indicate that he is not a Holocaust denier is not credible when the Index references he cites in support of this contention are actually consulted. Both books give an account of Nazi policies and actions towards the Jews during the Second World War that is perfectly compatible with the central tenets of Holocaust denial as this is normally understood by historians https://www.hdot.org/evans/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scholar who denied Holocaust jailed for 3 years - NBC News
NBC News https://www.nbcnews.com › wbna11455196 20 Feb 2006 — Right-wing British historian David Irving pleaded guilty Monday to charges of denying the Holocaust and was sentenced to three years in .. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ It's Official: David Irving is 'Pro-Nazi' https://www.splcenter.org › intelligence-report › its-of... World War II historian David Irving is called 'an active Holocaust denier' by a London judge.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Holocaust denier Irving must pay £2.4m libel costs
The Independent https://www.independent.co.uk › UK › Crime 21 Jul 2001 — The revisionist historian David Irving is facing bankruptcy after losing an appeal on Friday over a libel ruling that he was a "Holocaust ...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WIKIFREAKS : - Reddit
W I K I F R E A K S W.W.V 16458825

In Math its impossible that Parpoint publishing isnt derived from {PAR}force and Focal{Point} as these three companies appear in the same Holocaust denial publication Goring Biography…and so the Irish police should question British National Union of Journalist member Albert Smith if he intended to name his publishing outlet after Convicted racist David Irvings organization on the grounds that if he lies the courts can decide….par see !
w.w.v

National Union of Journalist member Albert Smith is publicly accused of deriving the name Parpoint from the blood and honour of {Par}force and Focal{point},the publishers and distributors of Goring Biography,Smith appears inside of the revised digital propagandist version of this Holocaust denial publication describing the book in his own words callously as a "Good Offering".
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- LinkedIn https://ie.linkedin.com › albert-smith-1a9111143
Ireland · Editor · Parpoint Media Services Albert Smith. Freelance editor specialising in plain English editing and training. Parpoint Media Services. Ireland. 45 followers 45 connections. 20/02/2023 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Reichsmarschall - David Irving FPP.co.uk http://www.fpp.co.uk › reviews › HGReviews
"Overall, Irving's book is a very good offering. It is not as concerned to provoke controversy as many of his earlier works." Albert Smith in The Irish Independent Newspaper. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2010 Parforce UK Ltd
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Göring : a biography
943.086 ́092 ́4– dc19 Focal Point Publications Printed in the United States of America Focal Point Classic Edition ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Irving v Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt is a case in English law against American historian Deborah Lipstadt and her British publisher Penguin Books,
In her book, Denying the Holocaust, Lipstadt called Irving a Holocaust denier and falsifier, as well as a bigot, and wrote that he manipulated and distorted real documents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_v_Penguin_Books_Ltd ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(e) Conclusion 11. Irving's claim that the 1991 edition of Hitler's War and the 1989 biography of Göring indicate that he is not a Holocaust denier is not credible when the Index references he cites in support of this contention are actually consulted. Both books give an account of Nazi policies and actions towards the Jews during the Second World War that is perfectly compatible with the central tenets of Holocaust denial as this is normally understood by historians https://www.hdot.org/evans/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scholar who denied Holocaust jailed for 3 years - NBC News
NBC News https://www.nbcnews.com › wbna11455196 20 Feb 2006 — Right-wing British historian David Irving pleaded guilty Monday to charges of denying the Holocaust and was sentenced to three years in .. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ It's Official: David Irving is 'Pro-Nazi' https://www.splcenter.org › intelligence-report › its-of... World War II historian David Irving is called 'an active Holocaust denier' by a London judge.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Holocaust denier Irving must pay £2.4m libel costs
The Independent https://www.independent.co.uk › UK › Crime 21 Jul 2001 — The revisionist historian David Irving is facing bankruptcy after losing an appeal on Friday over a libel ruling that he was a "Holocaust ...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WIKIFREAKS : - Reddit
W I K I F R E A K S W.W.V 16458825

This is a collection of short stories that have something to do with current events. Enjoy.
2023-03-20

The Uneven Divide - Part 3

(Part 1 and 2 in first post of Collection)
“I see a city on a disk. Though all the powers of the world would like to watch it fall, it won’t. I look at it floating above it all. Above There’s political turmoil. Beyond the grip of local markets, this city spins around the globe. You make your business everyone’s, and in turn, everyone profits from your presence.”
I see a land so cold,” I continued. “That it smokes as if it’s on fire. Like the Mother Sphere pulls you up, the frost brings your people together. This inseparable unity warms each building by your people’s sheer attraction for the Lands of Over-There. What us foreigners see as a frigid barren disk of ill fortuity, where people live barred up inside out of necessity, it’s instead a fortress from anything cold, which hosts every fervent hearted opportunity.”
The lock beeped. The door crept open. She kicked her feet off. A skinny man with both our ages walked in. He was wearing a three-piece suit. This wasn’t uncommon, as each layer made the heating bill less hard to look at. His name and the chain on his matte black visitor’s badge were contrasted with gold.
They spoke in their language.
He said something like hi, how are you, what are you doing here?
She answered something along the lines of hi, I’m doing great, in a meeting, you?
He went on saying precisely “I’m doing twice well”—which is an interesting expression meaning; I was already doing well, but from the moment you asked about me, I started doing twice as well—then I think he said he was also here for a meeting, and “who is he?”
She told him my name, then his name to me. Whom I will refer to as Gotnaym of Over-There.
He greeted me, I presented myself with a customary nod. Which could’ve been considered curt in our culture.
Then it got too wordy for me to understand. They switched languages as he walked over to extend his hand.
Mid-shake, he said in perfect speech, “She tells me your consultancy in There is no circus. I might have some questions later, my son is investing abroad.”
Then he laughed. I tried my hardest to make my confusion pass off as surprise, all while making sure not to loosen my grip nor lose the tempo of the motion, as I smiled in what I hoped to have looked like an agreeing pose.
“He’s not interested in any clown ventures I hope, Mr. Gotnaym,” I said. “I’d be out of my league if he were.”
“That’s exactly why I’d hire you,” he explained. “Thankfully, we’re a line of miners, Mr. Consultant. Hard-working people, who bring along like-minded experts. There are no full-time artists on these disks, I’m afraid.”
I was ready to let go but he wasn’t as willing.
“It’s always a fine moment to meet someone glad to buy into their family,” I concluded. “But I might not be the right hire for advice on how you ought to spend your own money. I don’t know if she's told you my line of work?”
This made him laugh some more. He was still shaking my hand.
“She has, yes!” He looked at her after placing his free hand on my shoulder side. She was completely motionless. “Funny man,” he said in his mother tongue.
“Don’t let me interrupt you, Mr. Consultant. Please continue while we wait,” he said, finally releasing his grip to grab a seat by the backrest.
“While we wait?” I asked him.
“I just is inform,” she said. “Next meeting is push to soon. Temporary lockdown here. Please continuing, Mr. Consultant. You no leaving now.”
“Emergency?” I read in their eyes the impending dread they covered up with an interest in listening only, so they wouldn’t have to think.
“Gladly,” I said. “I guess I’ll find out soon. Thank you for giving me this time out of your day.” She had some relief mixed in with her emotions. The rest of her micro-expressions were of a combination I’ve never noticed twice. It was too particular to recreate in writing or in a film.
“Mr. Consultant talking how city infrastructure be one with immigration,” she explained. “I asking what he see in city.”
“Where was I?” I asked me.
“You were reporting how the cold brings us people together,” he told me.
Wondering if their door wasn’t soundproofed had flooded my head with blood, which drew along this fresh thought frenzy and the terrible idea that anyone could’ve heard us earlier.
“Right,” I said to start hushing my blushing. “The problem. Your city is nothing more than a cold flatland sprinkled with tall boxes where folks come and freeze to death. That’s what they see from below, down in There. When I booked my ticket, my friends argued about who would get what if I didn’t make it back.”
The suitedman sat down.
“To outsiders, to the frigid ones, these lands get people to ratify off on an early will. I mean—I signed a waiver just for the elevator ride… Too many who travel to your disks don’t come back home. Most get working visas. The deal is: you spend four months a year here, and that pays for six of vacation. The smart ones, like I’m sure your son is, do five years to invest in There’s Venus coin traps. Then they sit back and never visit again. They risk their days for the money. Not for your city, not for the people here. They say they come to live out the rest of their lives at the mines. Then if they’re lucky enough not to get shipped home as a popsicle, they go to their folk waving their phat wads of cash in the hands with the least fingers lost to the frostbite.”
“I asked the locals last night. Why would you sell everything for this? Leave your families, abandon your lifestyles—What pulled you in? They all gave me the same answer. The same one I have. The first time I came here, it only took me two days. Two days to fall in love.”
“You maybe fall in loving after no long enough, Mr. Consultant,” she said.
“Are you telling me you don’t feel the same?”
“I think,” Gotnaym interjected. Then he paused. Sort of like cutting someone off on the freeway only to slow down right after.
“I think what my colleague is trying to express here … is that all of this sounds a bit too poetic.”
He looked at her to see if she’d agree. Which, she did.
“I also think we’re both happy you really are loving the experience here, Mr. Consultant. But it takes more than feelings to move to a place like this. The ones who do immigrate are steadily emigrating in larger numbers. The workforce won’t meet the upcoming demand. We start terraforming the east perimeter straight after the election next quarter. That’s a projected two years to find enough workers, build and house multiple villages. Provided the right candidate wins.”
At that moment, I was glad to have mistakenly not skipped our philosophy professor’s class on The Ethics of Language. I got my dates mixed up and thought it was a mandatory attendance lab. She explained how Over-There’s main export was subject to ethical scrutiny. They extracted such a lucrative resource, that they could afford to import all else. From food to people. Two entirely different things, that they’d fail to source locally in any useful quantity. Therein laid the dilemma. Their dialect had evolved so as to not differentiate between workers or wheat in regard to imports. As for commodities in business, they began treating both as such on paper. Written words have real-world applications. That same export was also what their disk was made of. One giant mother-cluster of concentrated minerals.
“How long is a mine active on these disks?” I asked.
“About a half lifetime depending on the weather. You’re looking at the investment of the century, my Frozen-Nozen. Literally.”
This suddenly explained why I so easily passed off as a consultant. At least, that’s what I was thinking then. They were probably ready to pay everyone and their kids to get as many opinions on this as possible. I can’t believe I used to give mine out for free.
“Frozen-Nozen?” I asked.
“It’s a term for those who aren’t afraid of a bit of outdoor labour,” he said.
“I see. Couldn’t you just advertise that fact in There?” I pitched.
“I don’t get it.” He mimed a billboard with his hands. “Come up to Over-There, and freeze your nose off for a living wage.”
“That’s not what I meant, but really, why not? People are nomadic opportunists. They’ll move and let the frost nip at their nose if you promise them a round fiddy years of job stability. If they become permanent residents.”
“No one plans on spending fiddy years in a work village, Mr. Consultant. They’re built as temporary housing. They share a shower per unit.”
“Isn’t that an issue? People need a good quality of entertainment to stay someplace so dull when they can glance at other options. They’ll want something they can’t get anywhere else. Couple that with the appeal of privacy. Your child population levels are dropping? Intimacy widely increases from zero to one shower per household. I’d start hiring full-time artists to get some inspiration flowing. Let couples make their own entertainment. Get some comfier architecture. They'll make babies. Or get your engineers to make leisure versions of your military rovers. With enough room for two. Watch them hit wild speeds in the east bumpy lands around their camps.”
“How much would that cost?” He asked. To my relief, he then immediately reconsidered. “No, these plans are staying under permafrost. We want to attract workers, not activists.”
I must’ve looked confused.
“Much leaving people, because activist come Over-There and saying mine is kill nature. Much tourism satire is Come visit before disk is all holes,” she quoted.
“If it’s really destroying the ecosystems then I’m afraid there isn’t much—”
“What ecosystem?” He interrupted. “Nothing but people live here, Mr. Consultant. And we only cover 15% of our whole island. Most of us are all in this city. The claims are false.”
“Then why do enough of both your people and mine believe these activists?” I insisted. “Who I’ve never heard of, so they must all be online. Is complaining just something to do? How does that affect where people live?”
“Emotion of being … more purposeful than normal people,” she said. “Important maybe to many action people. But also, wireless community There having very addictivity.”
“Adictivity?” I asked. “I mean—or, what do you mean by addiction?”
She explained how our wireless communications in There were designed to get individuals to react before thinking.
Anyone reading this today won’t understand the complexity of the issue, so I’ll try to translate the way people like your great-great-grandparents used to communicate. I suggest you ask them about it if they’ve opted for resurrection therapy.
We had these sorts of primitive portable screens that were usually carried around in pockets. Pockets were these holes in our clothes that would hold stuff. When we mostly owned material items, we needed a method of having those things at our disposition. And because we only have two biological hands, most would prefer to walk about with lighter objects in all kinds of pouches. From books to babies, bags of fabrics were significant to us.
The most important pouch was the pocket. That’s the place where people put stuff they wanted to hold closest to their person. That’s because not having them nearby caused an immediate sense of emergency. Their money, their analog keys, their smokables (non digital drug consumable), the time of one day divided into 86,400 different times… Most would also keep their touch screens in their pockets.
We’d communicate through a revolutionary medium termed, “social media.” If you’re not familiar with the term, it’s because presently, that’s our only form of expression left. So we just call it talking.
Fun fact: in 1402, both words were banned if put together. For all generations coming after the criminalization of social media, to try and curb the addiction, so we could gain control over the technocratic overlords of the virtual space. Clearly, that didn’t work, but I won’t bore you with the details in this format for much longer.
To quickly finish this history lesson then, we nicknamed those screens “phones.” They were these physical things that you’d feel right on your skin. And you had to push around to type words or record either your organic image or sounds, or disproportionately more often, those of a cat. A real cat. They aren’t a digital invention! Then you’d post those representations in places called “the Internet.” The Internet would be referred to as the world today.
Humans had to mind-travel via their phones to access the world before. And they’d navigate through it by utilizing their biological hands like a bunch of Neanderthals. On Social Media in the Internet realm, other people would have to move their fingers around their screen to come look at what you posted. Can you imagine? It’s like if today, someone had to do something to hear you.
They would then react to what they saw. Kind of how people used to communicate what they thought through their body language. The only difference was that in the Old World, a public would react to a speaker on stage, and everyone went on their way afterwards. No longer under the influential energy of a cheering or booing crowd, they could think about the message. On the Internet, it would stay up, and we could keep reacting to it. Even years after something was said. The public reaction would get louder and louder and it was like it never stopped to calm down and reflect. Excitement is not a friend of thought.
As people posted more and more, they did less and less of anything else. The goal of the communication was only to react. Always as fast as possible. People started doing activities only so they could post. They lost the enjoyment of doing for the sake of doing. Everything became a reason to get a reaction out of others. Everyone became amateur stage performers. Professionals had to be trained in that regard. They had to learn how to handle themselves when their work would become a series of reactions to trigger a chain of reactions. The users of primitive Social Media never stood a chance.
It’s what she explained during our impromptu board meeting that afternoon. It’s what changed the way I saw the world as well. I watched as her theory turned out to be sufficiently accurate, and I caught myself wondering for a moment if she hadn’t had something to do with the unravelling of the events.
If you’re Neanderthal enough to remember the sound of genuine vocal chords, I invite you to imagine how she expressed it all to me in her riveting broken accent. It’s why I wrote it how she said it.
The year is 1282 again. It’s cold, the exit doors are locked down, I have an actual phone in my physical pocket…
She asked me to see mine. A ritual at the time. So I showed her. She didn’t look impressed, so I asked her to show me hers. It was nice. Real nice. So nice in fact, that I started feeling a bit shy and ended up subtly putting mine away as she explained.
“People addicted to making posting. More posting, more liking, more emotion of purposeful existing. But so many content, so much other people also looking for … valid of purposeful life, because now, day no with phone is like food no with taste. Is boring. Why eat? Why do anything? But problem happen when truth is people wanting. Because goal of social media is react, react, react. Chain reaction like nuclear. Have be fast. Social media not receive, think, maybe react if wise. Social media no survive this way, very boring if not in-person meeting for exchange serious ideas. No win Internet point for taking time, finding truth, telling people wrong too. No good feeling also, if thinking, no posting, no outside influence saying yes you living and you be valid person. So no react, no valid existence.”
She paused. We both glanced at one another to confirm what we had already decided. Neither of us were going to interrupt her train of ideas. I was impressed. Not by what she was saying, though. It wasn’t anything we didn’t know. It was more that she could almost speak our language when she carried herself in her flow.
“People define value by number of attention they getting. They getting attention by posting posting posting, reacting reacting reacting, and no thinking thinking then maybe posting after long. Thinking bad for business if business is price of reacting. Business need people pushing button not after long. Social media Model is job of push button. Worker build city, push button too you thinking. But building infrastructure, opportunity, thinking involved more than even writer, Mr. Consultant. Bad thinking kill in building city.”
It took me a second to break character. Then I remembered who I really was. Eventually I realized she had just insulted me. I gave a warm chuckle. This disrupted Gotnaym’s attention. She went on.
“Influencer is job of push button to getting more people pushing button before thinking. Influencer is good if follower push button with no thinking. Even in war business, reacting not always best strategy. Pushing … gun button?”
“Trigger,” he helped.
“Pushing trigger no thinking is not same like pushing trigger because quick thinking. Influencer like is … study with school only to becoming teacher after. But only attaining knowledge in reacting more. Not attaining quick thinking. Not same. This worrying functionary like Mr. Fore Gotnaym, because how control crowd online that only goal is react react react, no thinking? On Internet, better no thinking. More reacting, more people see their reacting first and reacting to it so more people also get reacting, more people only agree for attention, and more message get famous. More message famous, no worry if true, more people believe. More people believe, less people believe when truth happen. Look at phone, Mr. Consultant.”
I took it out of my pocket.
“Make posting,” she said. “I showing you.”
The suitedman visibly refrained himself from stopping me. I was two days behind on checking in with my Internet experiment, so I did what she asked. When I connected to Social Media, my feed was filled with alerts on posts. Something about disinformation and people fighting over the truth of the universe and if it was really the end for us. The media application wasn’t this agitated two days ago. Warnings on misinformation were mostly centred around past events, never regarding upcoming ones from what I had seen before.
“Is this why we’re in a lockdown?” I asked.
“Yes…” she reacted.
“So why does it say that it’s all a fabrication?”
The room fell dead quiet. Her bottom lip quivered and she turned around to burst in muffled sobs. She just broke down. It was surreal. The man stood up to whisper something. She nodded with her head down, so he walked towards me. Then past me and to the windows, making sure I followed him by spinning in my chair. My back ended up facing her.
“Under different circumstances, you wouldn’t be locked down with us, Mr. Tourist,” he said.
Uh-oh, I thought. This culture seemed to have developed a taste for cleverly employing names.
“But there’s no use in locking you up for espionage either, it looks like your people are willing to let you rot anyway.”
“What’s going on?” I asked. She sniffled and told us I could turn around now.
“Don’t worry kid. You’re either the best spy I’ve met and you can die with dignity, or you’re the worst ever, and you’re worth more to us as living propaganda if we make it out of this,” he said, patting my shoulder as he walked by.
“I didn’t get your answer,” I mumbled as I turned around. Then I understood that he was trying to make her laugh.
“Either you’re the best,” he repeated. “Because I haven’t heard even a single high-school rumour about you. Or you’re the worst, because you were really a shit consultant just then.”
She drew in a chopped breath, which she released in a soft chuckle of relief. I thought maybe this was a prank. But then why was she crying?
I asked her what was going on. She nodded at him and he told me he wasn’t joking. They really considered that I was a spy from There. This theory didn’t hold any water in the end. The umbrella company under which the most popular international platforms operated, had somehow been convinced to place a warning on the forecast of a natural disaster headed for the disks. The corporation happened to have all their servers in There’s jurisdiction. All the privately owned media companies followed suit just to try and survive.
Gotnaym explained how anyone with any scientific authority who had attempted to voice their doubts had immediately been shadowbanned. They injected their profiles with a fake number of views and likes, and used bots to make it look like there were people engaging with their content. As far as the whole globe was convinced, as far as the citizens of Over-There were concerned, this admonition had been discredited a month before the announcement of the disaster. The United OV Body sent out an emergency text message, an even more primitive form of communication, confirming the threat to their civilians, but it was in vain. The videos debunking the warning had timestamps dating too far back. And the Internet had already decided that it was all a hoax. Eighteen world leading scientists, all saying it was propaganda. The people in this city didn’t believe they were about to die.
How could I have missed this? Especially if I had checked everything everywhere online before buying my ticket?
Like a kid again, it slipped out.
“Why?”
He rubbed his thumb and two fingers together. Money.
“Environmental warfare is not a crime, Mr. Tourist. And you seem to be collateral damage to them.”
They showed me a video of myself reassuring the world that I was okay, and that no one on this disk believed any of the disinformation propagated by the unhinged astronomers. That Over-There’s authorities were perfectly aware that it was all a hoax. It was dated two hours before I set foot on the disk. On the plus side, I never did get over a hundred million views before. To most of the world, I was a hero, here to bring down the anti-science disinformation machine. They were looking at an AI-generated video of me. They even got my voice right. My family had liked my video. My dad had sent me a message saying he was proud.
I looked up and plunged my eyes in her frightened face. It stripped me forever of any good feelings. In one hour, I felt the lifelong dissatisfaction of a hard drug addict. That day, I lost my faith in reality. To this day, I cannot enjoy anything. Not after what happened. I feel too guilty.
“Shouldn’t technological warfare be a crime, though?” I said.
“You could call a stick with a pointy rock on its end a technological advancement.”
It was becoming trickier to think straight. How can you? When you’re about to take a final blow, and there’s nowhere to run, no strength to block. It was like getting pre-concussed.
“How long until it happens?”
“It might not. We’re waiting on people to show up here and determine if it can be avoided. So try to think of something else in the meantime,” he said.
We said nothing.
“There is one thing neither of you can avoid, though… So you might as well make your peace with it now,” he added.
“What it is?” She asked.
“Mr. Tourist is about to meet your father.” He said. Then he looked at me. “Or is it Mr. Consultant to him?”

Ever since Nidalee’s VO update, I’ve had a bit of a thought regarding champion popularity, the reason being is if this were only a few years back I get the impression there would be more discussion and/or hype even though Nid’s popularity was in a fair bit of decline then as well.
So the question I’d like to ask this Reddit is: What champions do you feel that were once popular that no longer are? And would it be possible for them to be popular once more?
Please note that what people might consider populaunpopular can be very subjective for that reason I don’t strictly think there’s a wrong opinion here, especially when in game and out of game popularity can be two different things.
Since Nidalee was the champ that gave me this idea, I’ll start off with her, my breakdown might be very long because I had a long time to think about this and hopefully, I don’t accidentally write an essay.
I’ll be going through The Rise, The fall and The future of Nidalee in my post.

The Rise of Nidalee

Pre rework Nidlee

~~Q, Flash. Best champ in the game.~~
Jokes aside, I heard Nidalee was an absolute terror on the rift before her rework this was a bit before my time playing league so I unfortunately never got to actually play Nidalee in this state, but I’m aware she was rather popular and somewhat toxic on the rift.
Even after the rework Nidalee was still rather popular and still played for many years after this, she’s a very fun champion despite the high mechanical skill required to play her.

Nidalees large amount of skins released early on

This is probably one of the biggest examples I can think of in terms of Nidalees popularity.
From Nidalee’s full release back In late 2009 to early 2013, Nidalee had received six skins, each skin released (With the exception being Headhunter as it was over a year between it and Bewitching) had released not even 12 months between each other, which by today's standards is crazy.
You don’t get that many skins unless the champion is rather popular. Even when there were significantly less champions in the game. Nidalee currently has thirteen skins in the game with one of those being the DWG skin an impressive feat for a champion that isn’t so popular anymore.

The Fanart of Nid throughout 2010 to 2016

The amount of fanart Nidalee got throughout the early 2010s was crazy, people that weren’t even fans of league or really familiar with league were drawing fan art of her and these days unless that character is someone like Ahri, that doesn’t really happen much.
Additionally, any sort of art contest that Riot ran during the early 2010s you can be sure you’ll see many Nidalee’s within that contest.
The reason I believe that Nidalee was so popular to make fan art of is simply because of her design it’s very simple, doesn’t have a lot of specific details even then you don’t need to be completely accurate as you can still make it look like Nidalee, as long as you’re good at human anatomy you can make a good Nidalee.
There’s also the fact that Nidalee happens to be a rather attractive woman wearing very little clothing, that might also have something to do with why she was so popular.
Unfortunately, most of the fanart of Nidalee from this era is stuck on DevientArt, a site not many people really use anymore and, in a way, kinda feels like a bit of the league fandom that has been lost to time as a result.

The Downfall

Merchandise and Nidalee within LoL media

Or lack thereof, recent years Nidalee hasn’t gotten much merchandise, I did try to research and it indeed does seem like Nidalee did get some collectable statues made of her both official and unofficial but considering what I’m about to mention in ‘Changing Society Taboos’ I doubt we’ll see much more of her. I did find a Head Hunter Nidalee statue but I’m unsure if it’s actually official or not.
The only official merchandise you can obtain of Nidalee these days is a Nidalee poster from the League website and I’m pretty sure I can get that for cheaper from unofficial storefronts.
And forgive me if I’m wrong, this is the first time I’ve really tried to look into League media, but I haven’t really found much of Nidalee being shown, I did find she made a short appearance during The Worlds 2015 video, but not much else beyond that I could really find.

The Jungle role and Nidalees role within it

The Jungle role I feel is one of the most stressful and flamed roles in the game, given that this is the only place that Nidalee is viable this no doubt had effects over her popularity over the years.
Especially when Nidalee is a champ that requires high mechanical skill and you don’t necessarily always get rewarded for it. There are better champions for Jungle that are easier to play and will cause you less stress.
Because Nids not great at the moment you might even get flamed by your teammates for attempting to pick her.
This years recent jungle changes don’t seem to help Nidalee much at all, although a recent patch that has somewhat buffed counter jungling has helped her a bit but it’s uncertain if this will truly help her in the long term.
There is some good news at least, she does at least see significant play in ARAM, probably helps that people just walk into Nids Spears on that game mode for some reason. You’re also not going to get flamed for picking her here, which is pretty nice I guess.

Nidalee in Pro play

I don’t want to try and speak for pros on what they believe is or isn’t strong but considering nearly every team that has tried to pull out the Nid has lost their games this year, I’m pretty confident in her not being good there either at the moment.
Then there was last year with DK vs Gen G, where despite Canyon massively gapping Peanut as Nid and the team getting all 15 tower plates they still lost the game. That does not mean it’s impossible to win with her, it just means there are better champs to pick.

Changing Society Taboos

Sex Appeal is something that has started becoming Taboo in video games and even modern culture over years, the problem is this was a big reason as to why she become so popular to begin with and still is a reason why so many female league champs are so popular. Still Nidalee is probably one of the champions most heavily defined by her sex appeal in the past.
Additionally Nidalee’s skins that change her skin tone have become another societal taboo, as it can be seen as ‘white-washing’ in a few ways.
I really wish I didn’t have to mention Nidalee’s sex appeal as I feel that would overtake all discussion regarding Nidalee but unfortunately it’s both a very important part of her character design and a big reason why she became so popular outside of gameplay. It’s not something you can particularly ignore unfortunately.

Nidalee’s future

I hate to be a downer but I don’t really see a path forward that would in anyway make Nidalee popular again, mainly because of the ‘Changing Society Taboos’ that I mentioned earlier.

Nidalee’s VO change

Despite the VO change, I doubt that those that disliked Nidalee based on her sex appeal to are going to pick her up now, especially when there was no ASU to replace Nidalees more lewd attire and her problems with not getting picked in game seem to have very little to do with her being sexy or not.
I believe the response to the VO change was rather mixed as well and I don’t particularly think it’ll make Nidalee more popular or even less controversial for that matter.
Considering she’s barely been involved in media prior to this point, I doubt she’s going to make much more of an appearance in anything league related.

Any potiential ASU

Considering how long it took us to even get a Skarner rework and even if Nidalee was next in line to get an ASU it would take ages, probably even longer than usual considering they have to make two models for Nidalee, One for her Human form and another for her Cougar form.
The ASU will be rather controversial because given the direction of Nidalee’s VO, a ASU will no change a lot of her skins overall aesthetic, which will definitely make some people mad as again and if the new skins don’t make the skintones all similar to that of base Nidalee that will make another group of people mad.
May some Deity protect whomever has the task of remaking the French Maid Nidalee skin, cause even with Nid’s decline in popularity redoing that skin and potientially less lewd will likely result in a shorter life expectancy.
Speaking of that, since it’s likely any ASU will have Nidalee’s old skins be heavily changed, it could present an issue to players that they’re getting a wildly different skin to the one that they bought. Not that this has stopped Riot in the past but it’s something to think about.

Conclusion

I spent a lot of time than I should’ve trying to explain why I believe Nidalee is not popular anymore. Please give me your opinions on which champions you believe aren’t popular anymore so it doesn’t feel like I wasted my time on nothing.
TLDR: I wrote a post talking about how Nidalee isn’t as popular as she used to be it’s possibly a bit too long and I want to know your opinion on what Champs have become unpopular over the years.

Hello to everyone in this sub, I have always been a silent reader. I wish I could write every single thing about my previous/ongoing (?) relationship but I truly can’t, there’s too much history and too much to tell but I guess ill give it my best shot. English isn’t my first language, Im sorry if my grammar isn’t the best.
My emotionally and psychologically abusive ex (M25) has been in and out of my (23F) life now for 6 years. We started dating when I was 17 and he was 19, he was my first boyfriend.
To be honest, right now it feels like Im literally choosing him out of fear. Im tired of disappointing people around me (close family and friends) and myself for letting him in EVERY SINGLE TIME he wants to and never knowing my worth just to say NO (I just feel like I can’t say no to him).
So Im here, in the only subreddit I feel truly understands me, asking for help.
My ex and I met a long time ago and we were friends way before we actually dated. To give you some context about myself, I have always felt like im a very unstable person, (AKA the “irrational impulsive friend”). I have previous childhood trauma that is related to abandonment issues and previous SA that have turned me into a very volatile person (now, being diagnosed as borderline at my 23 years of age, I finally understand the reason why).
But back then when I was 17 and this whole ordeal started, I had no idea why I was the way I was.
When we started dating it wasn’t magical or perfect I just simply idealized him as that, which is even worse. But to be honest, the emotional torment has always been there.
I have always feared him (he has never hit me or been physically aggressive), he is a very angry person, and so very early on in our relationship we came to a point where I just felt like I needed to do exactly as he said so he wouldn’t leave me. He knew this, so he used it in multiple occasions to get what he wanted, knowing I was completely afraid of being without him.
He was very controlling in the first years of our relationship, extremely possessive and jealous, to the point were he wouldn’t let me have male friends or would get mad at me if I liked a male picture on social media. We fought a lot and he was extremely manipulative, always turning the conversation on its way to blame me, and making me apologize even in times were I had done absolutely nothing wrong. He would block me, ignore me and hang up my calls when we fought (which made my abandonment issues even worse). I can truly say it always made me feel insane, like I needed to record him and show him the things he said so he wouldn’t turn them on me. Our fights were completely exhausting mentally, they were really explosive. He would do a lot of name calling, blame shifting and then he would just ice me out. I would ALWAYS cry my eyes out in these fights, beg and plead until he turned a switch and then he would hug me, kiss me and then tell me he loved me and that everything was okay. This was extremely damaging because I don’t know if I became addicted to getting back his love in a way were it felt like I needed to earn it. And these are JUST the first things he did. I feel like since I was so young it created an idea in my mind that relationships were this way, I loved him like the love of my life and wanted to marry him without a doubt in my mind. With him, my BPD just went out of the window in terms of stability.
I lost myself in this relationship. I became HIS girlfriend and I wasn’t even my own self. I had no idea what I was or who I wanted to be without him. I became very submissive, I would just take the name calling, the blame shifting and the explosive fights because losing him was worse than the abuse. LOTS of things happened between the years but I truly can’t even type it out, it exhausts me so much. While all of this was happening, I was still growing up. Graduating high school, getting into med school, studying hard, meeting new people. Slowly, I realized that the more responsibilities life threw at me, the harder it became for me to live my own life (f*ck you BPD). Since I have a lot of trauma from my childhood and early teenage years, adult life became extremely hard for me, tasks that were easy for everyone around me like being independent or living alone were almost imposible for me. During these years I developed a very severe eating disorder and later on I started having problems with substance abuse (especially alcohol). I say all this because I know I wasn’t the perfect partner, I was filled with internal struggles and issues I didn’t even recognize and had a debilitating mental illness that I didn’t even know, so being with me, obviously, wasn’t very easy. I shielded myself in this relationship as my “safe” place, because honestly, it was the only constant thing I kept having in my life, and it made me completely attached to him.
Because of my BPD, I split a lot, it is the worst symptom of my borderline personality disorder, this makes me an extreme perfectionist and the burden I put on my own shoulders on being the BEST, PERFECT, woman is truly unbearable. Through these years I have caught myself needing him to validate me since he would always leave when I was in my worst (broke up with me once in the ICU and the second time in the hospital). But he would always come back when he started seeing me do better, or look better (gaining weight etc etc), and I ALWAYS took him back. I felt like when he left I was worth nothing, and every time he came back I was perfect again. TLDR version: He did a lot of shit, I did a lot of shit and took a lot of shit, the relationship was extremely unstable. You get it.
So I guess I will start with the reason I am posting this.
We have broken up more than 6 times, he ALWAYS does the breaking up and I would ALWAYS beg him to stay. Sometimes he would stay, other times he would just kick me out of his life and then slowly reappear months later. Since everyone in my life started noticing this behavior, they tried to make me realize that I wasn’t myself when he came back, I would push them away, leave them behind (family included) but when he left, although I was in pain, I would slowly find a way back to myself. Until he would come back again. This made it really exhausting for the people around me to support me, even though they have never left.
This brings us all to October of 2022, the last time we had our big breakup. He did something truly awful and I, for the first time, felt like I didn’t have the strength to forgive him. So I went no contact. I stopped reaching out, I stopped answering his calls or messages even though he was apologizing. I felt like the anger was letting me leave this chapter of my life behind. It felt like I wanted to DIE, I hated every second of it, I wanted him in my life but I tried to keep myself distracted. I started rekindling my relationships, going to therapy constantly (I had started already, but I feel like until he left my life I didn’t even realize I didn’t want him in my life), taking my meds and finding a love for medicine and surgery that had left me almost since my BPD got really bad (2019). It wasn’t perfect, (Im trying really hard not to split right now) but it was better.
On November 2022 I met someone. Yes I know, not the best thing ever, but I truly feel like meeting him (26M) made me realize I was settling for absolutely NOTHING, not even the bear minimum. Many things have happened, and he has understood every step of the way. From the get go he was amazing, and he still is amazing with me. He is patient and doesn’t want me to change a thing about myself. He truly has helped me a LOT ever since I met him and I feel like I have found a person that is teaching me what I deserve. Not only that, he has helped me see some patterns in myself when I shut away because of fear, and he has helped me become more communicative and assert my position in a relationship like I never have before. He respects my needs and wants, he has read about BPD and tried to help me in every way. So I truly do not understand why, the more he tries to be there, the more I push him away.
My ex and I didn’t talk until December 2022 when I left our city to finish my last year of medical school. It was really hard, living alone (I have roommates but they aren’t usually here) and that was when it got really bad, missing him was unbearable to the point that when he came back just to speak, I fell into his arms. AGAIN. We talked for a while until eventually he pushed me away again, but this time, it didn’t hurt as bad. We stopped talking until February 2023 and that brings me to today.
He’s back, shocker, promising things he never has before, saying all the right things I want to hear: Im sorry I left you, I will never do it again, I can help you heal, I love you, I want to marry you, I want life my life to be with you, no one makes me feel this way etc etc. He’s says he’s here for the long run, and for good. FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 6 YEARS I didn’t immediately say yes. I know in my heart of hearts I DO NOT WANT TO GO BACK, but it is SO hard for me to say no. He has me completely manipulated and programmed to being there for him, EVEN when I have met someone that I truly feel doesn’t deserve absolutely anything that is going on. Even if nothing has truly happened. It feels like a magnet is pulling me back to him, and it is really hard to pull away.
So, I need help, I need to find the strength to kick him out for good, now that there is no anger, now that he is being perfect, now.
I need to find the strength to live the life I want. I need to stop fearing him and start fearing the life I am getting into if I keep choosing him.
So please, anyone, just lend me a hand, and help me find the strength. This trauma bond is very strong. You are all so powerful and have motivated me in sleepless nights, I know I can do this. I just feel like I need to push myself to do it.
Anyways,… Thank you for reading… And If you are in the same place that I am… We can do this.
Love, G

WHAT??? Our founding fathers put forth a structure of checks and balances that ensure nothing Authoritarianism ever happens. While Authoritarianism has never happened, we have seen constitutional failure that resulted in a Civil War. If a Civil War can happen, why is it not possible for the rise of Fascism, or an Authoritarian leader to rise to power. We have already seen an attempt to overthrow the system and keep a leader who clearly lost an election. Since then, we have seen others try to follow that framework. Things like January 6th don’t just happen.
Let’s dive a little deeper into some of the most troubling and signs that our Democracy is fractured and could be in trouble.
A Growing Distrust in Science
I start with this one very purposely due to recency bias with COVID. There has always been an anti-vax movement. In the 1860’s Britain found its first anti-vax movement after the smallpox vaccine was made mandatory with penalties for refusal. In the 1870s, a British anti-vaxer came to America and started the movement. That fizzled out. There have been movements here and there since. The modern movement however can be traced back to 1998 and a British doctor named Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield recommended and falsified data for the MMR vaccine suggestion that the vaccine caused autism. With the newly popular internet, the growing media, and the growth of rapidly growing access to information we end up with a massive conspiracy with legitimacy due to false information. There have always been circles that distrust science, but this one was different. It was mainstream, celebrities got on board, we still live with the fall out and here this one. Wakefield admitted that he did not do a full study, falsified information, and served prison time. He set the cornerstone for a lot of the distrust in science we see today however. His study has helped turn the world into an anti-intellectual society.
There is a lot more we could dig into between Wakefield and COVID but I feel this is enough background at this point. We could get into the science of mRNA, and false perceptions. We could get into the fact that it was identified in the 1960’s and has been in use for medical applications, including vaccines and cancer treatments since the 1990’s and the science has been proven safe for decades. We could get into the fact that 90+% of the ingredients are more or less inert and in use for other vaccines and medicine and has been for decades, but that’s enough of that. Let’s get into COVID and the crippling blow for science that was dealt during COVID.
Rudy Gobert and the NBA shuts the country down. In the US, we watched as Italians sang off balconies during the lockdown. Venice canals turned pure blue due to lack of boat traffic. China was sealed into their houses, sometimes by bolting their doors. We all knew it was coming, then Rudy tests positive for COVID. The NBA cancels games and the rest of the country follows suit. We were in lock down. We know we had a new Coronavirus that was different, easily transferable, and had the potential to be very serious.
Quickly we picked sides. We used the same data points to prove the other side wrong. We used scientists and a shifting understanding of the virus to prove/disprove our feelings about how COVID works. I use the term feeling deliberately. This is the key here. True science does not pick sides, but we pick the sides that best fit our political beliefs. This in turn created a massive influx in false data and further eroded the trust in our scientific community. We had our President as one of the main anti-vax influencers (link: https://www.psypost.org/2021/06/study-indicates-donald-trump-was-the-main-anti-vaccination-influencer-on-twitter-in-2020-61032) while pumping billions to accelerate a vaccine. A president who was fueling the anti-mask movement while wearing one himself (link: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53378439). The face of the scientific community for this issue was not much better. Dr. Faucci starts comes out and says masks don’t work, only to back track and say it was because the masks were needed for health-care workers (link: https://www.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics/factcheck_e58c20c6-8735-4022-a1f5-1580bc732c45). I use CNN on purpose here as it’s the left calling out the left. This statement had a big effect on the movement as well and further eroded our trust in science. Even more troubling, 36% of Republicans distrust science. If you look at these survey links from 2/15/2022, you can see the results (pew link: https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2022/02/15/americans-trust-in-scientists-other-groups-declines/ and https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2022/10/25/americans-value-u-s-role-as-scientific-leader-but-38-say-country-is-losing-ground-globally/). Another troubling shift, is the declining trust in education, you can see where that is going. You can also point to this study and overlay it with how Trump planed the steal the election claim. I feel this is a good stopping point and time to move on to the media. If you want me to detail the timeline of how Trump set up his ability to claim election fraud, I would be happy to spend some hours putting it all together.
The Media
We live in a time where the media is as much of the news as the news is. We have massive cooperation with a 24-hour news cycle which needs constant content to stay afloat. They have their sides and vision for what this country should be. We have less reporters and journalists than people who push propaganda and agendas down our throats. We do not have state or party funded media, but we have media that is attached so much to the parties, there is barely a difference. We have very few fact reporting centered news organizations (link: https://libguides.com.edu/c.php?g=649909&p=4556556). It is our fault though, very few if any media outlets are not for profit. They are feeding us what we want to hear, not what we need to hear. That’s what sells, and with the race for content and the growing competition, what else can we expect? Then we have the internet which has become media by meme, YouTube, and TickTok (link: https://www.pbs.org/newshounation/in-the-age-of-memes-how-are-young-people-getting-their-news). With that we have bot farms, hackers, and other foreign agents sponsored by other governments and companies hired by politicians (see Cambridge Analytica) working fairly successfully to undermine our Democracy. We have made a shift to alternative news sources, unreliable news sources, or news sources that are created to mislead the rest of the world. We are fed a stream of propaganda, we eat up, and repeat the misinformation until it becomes true. Fascist and Authoritarian leaders have known for decades, if you can create a big enough echo chamber, anything can become true.
Fringe Groups/People in Places of Power
There are a couple categories here. There are the fringe politicians who take mainstream ideas to the extreme and there are the fringe politicians who are just conspiracy theorists. A.O.C., MTG, Lauren Bobert, Ilham Omar, Trump, and many more. If everything is good, we do not elect fringe politicians. It is a sure sign a shift has happened and it's not good. We are unhappy, we are believing the conspiracies. The propaganda is working. Something is rotten in Denmark. There are many things this can be attributed to including Rapid technological changes, groups feeling marginalized, the two-party system that has been stagnant for decades and has been engaged in tit-for-tat politics since for most of the last century. The A.O.C. group who push the boundaries of mainstream ideas is not necessarily unhealthy. It can be healthy if in the right conditions. Testing the boundaries helps you grow and evolve. You get new ideas, new perspectives. The MTG conspiracy theory group is dangerous. Two things happen with this group, it gives further legitimacy to the conspiracy, and they use the conspiracy to expand their power base. You can trace the great Jewish conspiracy through Europe for centuries and see this. Look at all the “Devine” monarchs. It is all over in history. Typically, there is a group that is pointed at including Jews, LGBTQ+, women, Africans, and Islam to name a few. If there is a them, it's easy to create a us.
Targeting groups
We are seeing this in many areas. It is rapidly becoming more and more prevalent. We have politicians in South Carolina who are trying to pass legislation for women who get abortions. We have politicians in Florida trying to pass legislation so women cannot talk about their periods. We have all kinds of legislation passed against the LGTBQ+ community. We have laws on the book that disproportionately affect various races, and when they bring it up, they are snowflakes. We are building laws and banning citizens from numerous countries. Give us your poor, your week, your huddled masses, as long as they fit the bill. Books are being banned, including some that are formative and important for people to learn how to understand the world, all under the guise to protect our children. We would not want our children learning our true history, we would not want our children learning to accept THEM. We don’t want equality. If THEY have more, WE have less. In a country with 3.5% unemployment, high paying tech jobs that can only be filled by H1V1, we have a good part of the country that would be capable of filling these jobs if we just thought differently. There is enough to go around, but instead of upskilling and getting our citizens into these high paying professional jobs, we are making America great again. America has always been anti-immigrant to a degree but when you start seeing laws passed, the gap between us and them accelerates. As the divide becomes greater, the easier it is to rule based on fear. Historically, this is the gateway to genocide.
Militarization
This one is often overlooked but it is an important one. A sure sign that your country is becoming nationalized is when your military is beyond reproach. Now I am not saying we should not be grateful and kind to those who served. I am saying we should examine our military and hold them accountable when they do something wrong. As we fail to do this, the nation starts to come before all. If someone speaks out against injustice, disrespects the flag, the office of the president, they are ostracized. It starts with militarization. Once the military becomes beyond reproach, civil servants are next. You can see this throughout history. Look at Vietnam, look at Nazi and the Kaiser's Germany, really almost any authoritarian regime.
I am not saying we are at the tipping point. I am saying the signs are there. Unless we can start to find a way to come back to the middle, the divide will continue and we may end up in an authoritarian state.

Hi, beginner here having some trouble with my project. I know very little about color grading but I watched some tutorials and figured out how to set my project to YRGB color managed and lo and behold it worked. Trouble is, even though the footage looked nice I thought it may have recognized the wrong color space because it simply said "apple pro res" on the color page and nothing about the blackmagic pocket that I know it was shot on. So instead of leaving it as is, and god knows why I did, I tried to manually input the "correct" colorspace.. which made everything look awful. I managed to revert things to their somewhat original state but now every clip in my media pool, that has already been used on my timeline, has lost its grading completely, as if not color managed at all. As seen in the image below, new clips I drag onto the timeline still are and stay color managed but everything before that is gray again.
https://preview.redd.it/4gkzllttryoa1.jpg?width=1922&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a4ab3afae16b50af614fd47dadf100e6e9ee8b7a
I tried changing the project settings to "YRGB" and back to "YRGB color managed", but nothing has changed and ctrl + z only affects my edits at this point.
Below are my color project settings.
https://preview.redd.it/6vv1us1esyoa1.jpg?width=845&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=afea4ec073d9104d79a321d7574f6a945cd78bf8
And as you can see here, I applied no grading to the correct looking footage.
https://preview.redd.it/trkqluwfsyoa1.jpg?width=957&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8b9dfa169497f6e1d3490ff415059242256b0153
Hope you all can help me.

Edit: I'm on windows 10 with the free version of davinci 18.1.3 Build 8.

A few months ago, when I was 20, I met a girl through some mutual friends on Discord. We became friends almost instantly. Talked about fandoms we were in, art, church, cosplay, family, values, mindsets for the future and school(we're both in college) I found out through a mutual friend that she was 17. I was both worried and calm about it, because I've never liked/courted anyone younger than me, but I've also never been someone that asks for nudes or anything inappropriate nor was I manipulative or predatory. She said it herself. We'd ended up taking a liking to each other, though we both agreed to place several healthy and platonic boundaries for each other as neither of us were ready for a serious relationship. I figured that waiting for her to turn 18 or beyond to even approach her about a relationship of any kind was appropriate and fair for her to get adjusted to adult freedom and lifestyle. (keep this in mind for later.) I also wanted her to stay committed to school (and it even inspired me to enroll back in and finish my final year!)
We didn't spend too much time together, but the time that we did spend on call was great! We'd watch anime, talk about life, even game together. My friends often told me to be careful and be cautious and I always was. Not a single negative/ulterior motive crossed my mind. I just knew I'd met someone who got me as much as I'd got her. We were happy. Happy until one of our mutuals kept questioning our connection. I stated several times that we were what you consider "courting" which is having a high interest in one another but not exactly dating. I had to remind people we knew multiple times that nothing sexual was happening between us and that emotional connection was the dominating force of our duo. Over and over again I explained this and almost overnight, I lost my friends, whom I considered a 2nd family to me, as they felt betrayed by how I conducted myself for standing up for what I thought was right. One former mutual friend mentioned that me waiting for her to be of age was grooming. I felt hurt, because I'd never imagine grooming someone, as I take that sort of manipulative behavior incredibly seriously. Even the girl herself told me she never considered what we had grooming and never considered me creepy. This has caused problems for my rep.

After that, I was kicked out of both of my social circles(we were all mutuals), even after explaining that there's been a misunderstanding and that there were no signs of manipulation to go on. I didn't think 3.5 was a huge age gap, nor did I believe I was grooming anyone. I've been thinking about it night and day for this entire month, and I've been praying for clarity and some sort of reconciliation with both the girl and my friend group. I've never been so alone nor depressed. It keeps me up at night replaying it all over and over. Can someone tell me if I was actually in the wrong (if so, I take full accountability) or is this social media trying to turn a molehill into a mountain? I do feel that I may have brought this upon myself and I could've handled things much better. One thing I've learned from this is to drop anyone first instinct if you find out they're underage(even if they're on the literal verge of coming of age, it could be trouble!)

(Note: As stated before, as someone who is an uncle to two precious and bright kids, I take things like this seriously. I completely understand the need to protect younger people, this world is crazy! As a God-fearing man, I would never hurt, manipulate, or groom anyone of any age, knowingly or willingly and would never try to justify it.)
(Another Note: I've dated women my age and above before, so before you come for me in the comments about me trying to get with someone younger or being predatory, stop it.)

So my ex dumped me saying she doesn't have mental peace and wants to be alone and that she has hurt me enough. She never put in genuine effort into the us because trauma of last relationship ( left her ex for me because the guy neglected her completely for 2 years long distance) . We had amazing compatibility even on bed. I showered her with a lot of love and care and she used to tell me that this her first time being loved so much as her exes have always treated her like shit. I felt like home to her and was very comfortable with me. She lost her virginity with me as she was not comfortable with her ex. I have been given less then bare minimum by her and i would have to fight for that. So now she has dumped me , it has been a more than a month. After dumping me, i unfollowed her (my acc is public) , she started cyberstalking me for 2 weeks straight right after telling she wants to be alone , she liked my newest reel ( she didn't do that sometimes when we were together) and she knows things like this affect me alot. Week 3 , she posted a thrist trap and made her account public for a day. All of my friends say it was for me. I have told her if she ever wants to try again in the future, i am just a call away. Then she goes completely silent ( she was very active on social media for 3 weeks) and finally when i thought she has moved on, guess who viewed my story and only one.
My friends and brother are saying she will definitely come back because of what she said during the relationship and her behaviour after ending it.
Could please help me as this has being fucking with my mental health.
I don't think she will come back .

The third season of Social Experiment will be a season filled of unexpected and unique twists, with deception around every corner. Play hard, or you will find yourself making your Last Wish.
WE OFFER : 🌘 An experienced, laid-back hosting team that makes the cast feel welcome. 🌗 Twists that you keep you on your feet. 🌖 Creative ideas with great execution. 🌕 A great atmosphere even if you just want to spectate, with regular recaps and a Game Updates role. 🌔 This season will have all social challenges, each one unique! "social experiment" hint hint 🌓 A truly fleshed-out original format, on its third season. 🌒 A wiki page! (it's not fully finished, I'll admit that)
🌝 Applications Close & Check-Ins Begin • Tuesday 11th April 8PM UTC 🌚 Season Begins • Thursday 13th April 8PM UTC
https://discord.gg/XqRf63XvYh https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/983446723508711457/1076648337119379496/S8_Square.png?width=562&height=562

I'm researching how to achieve this as my Plex server is a RPi4/8GB. It's running vanilla RPi OS with Plex installed. I found a few guides and stopped at `sudo apt-get install cifs-utils` - then the wheels come off because every single guide does it differently. Some say edit fstab, some say another thing, I'm really lost here.
My preference is to mount my MEDIA folder from my Synology and then create multiple Libraries in Plex, if that is even possible (or mount multiples is fine too: MEDIA/Movies, MEDIA/Shows, etc...)
I have a read-only account that I use for exactly this purpose. The username is read. Simple.
Can anyone point me to a guide that tells me step by step? I feel like my setup is the most basic setup with regards to having one user that needs read access to the NAS and every guide is different and overwhelming.

If you ask Christians to sum up their faith in one sentence, most will give you some variation on "Jesus died for your sins." This idea is called 'substitutionary atonement' - Jesus atones in our place and acts as our substitute. Everyone has sinned and deserves harsh punishment, but Jesus offers to take that punishment in their place. In this post, I will argue that this is unjust.

The Tale of Jeffrey Lundgren
Warning: not for the faint of heart.
In 1987, self-proclaimed Christian prophet Jeffrey Lundgren started a cult. It soon grew to include about 20 people, including a family of five called the Averys. Lundgren did all sorts of terrible things with his influence: He had his cult members move into his farmhouse and give him all of their money. He forbade members from talking with each other without his presence and convinced them that he could read their minds. He began planning a violent takeover of the local Kirtland Temple, from which he had stolen tens of thousands of dollars, and pressed his followers into preparing to rob the temple and kill its inhabitants.
However, in 1988, Lundgren became unhappy with the Averys. The Avery family were loyal followers - they sold their house and moved states in order to join him, and they believed and trusted in him. But Lundgren felt their faith was weak because they decided not to live in his house and only gave him most of their money while setting aside a small sum for family use. So on April 17 of 1989, Lundgren had his followers dig a pit in his barn, and then lure the Averys there one by one, from oldest to youngest.
First the father, Dennis Avery, who was hit with a stun gun, gagged, and dragged before Lundgren, who shot him twice in the back.
Then the mother, Cheryl Avery, who was gagged and had her eyes duct taped before Lundgren shot her three times.
Next was 15-year-old Trina Avery who Lundgren shot twice in the head.
Then 13-year-old Becky Avery, who was shot twice but did not die instantly and was left to bleed out.
Finally 6-year-old Karen Avery, who Lundgren shot once in the chest and once in the head.
For his crimes, Jeffrey Lundgren was given the death penalty, and after exhausting his appeals he was executed on October 24, 2006.

The Lesson
Jeffrey Lundgren did terrible things, and he received punishment for these things. We call this 'justice'.
Now imagine for a moment Lundgren's trial in an alternate reality where substitutionary atonement is practiced. His lawyer says, "Your Honor, no doubt the death of the Averys is a terrible thing, and justice demands my client pay with his life. But one of my client's followers has stepped forward and said they are willing to die in his place." The judge agrees, and a cultist is executed while Lundgren walks free.
I ask you - is that justice?
No! Justice doesn't demand someone be punished - it demands punishment on the perpetrator! Lundgren's cultists would have no doubt been willing to die in his place, but we would never allow it, because it would be deeply unjust.
However, by the Christian account, we are all sinners. Just as Lundgren has sinned, so have the rest of us - and justice demands we all face punishment. By many accounts of Christianity, we deserve even worse punishment than Lundgren received. Just as it would be unjust for a cultist to be punished in Lundgren's place, it would be unjust for Jesus to be punished in a sinner's place.

Aims of Punishment
Why do we punish people when they do something wrong? There are five generally recognized aims of punishment:

Deterrence: providing motivation for the perpetrator and others not to commit similar acts in the future (e.g. charging a fine for illegal parking).
Incapacitation: preventing future transgressions by removing the perpetrator's ability to commit them (e.g. locking up a person planning a murder).
Rehabilitation: giving aid to the perpetrator to resolve the cause of their transgression (e.g. mandating anger management classes for someone who started a bar fight).
Retribution: taking pure vengeance on the perpetrator (e.g. secretly slashing the tires of someone who hurt your friend).
Restitution: compensating the victim in order to partially or completely reverse the harm (e.g. making a thief give back what they stole).

All punishments are issued to achieve one or more of these aims. For substitutionary atonement to serve justice, it would have to achieve these aims just as the original punishment would have. Let's examine them one at a time.

Deterrence
A deterrent punishment aims to prevent similar transgressions in the future by making people fear the consequences of committing them. For example, we fine people who illegally park their cars to dissuade them from doing that. If someone knows that an act will result in punishment, they are less likely to commit that act. Most of our laws act for deterrence; when we ban an act - public urination, copyright infringement, wire fraud - we don't just say it's illegal, we add a punishment to encourage people not to do it.
Deterrence is not transferable. If you punish someone other than the culprit, you don't give the culprit any motivation not to transgress again. Imagine a rich brat who often gets drunk at restaurants and smashes up the place. Each time they do this, their parents deal with the fallout and pay the restaurants for the damage. As a result, the brat has no reason not to keep doing the same thing - the punishment affected the parents, but it failed to deter the actual perpetrator.

Incapacitation
An incapacitative punishment aims not to punish a transgression that has already happened but to prevent one from occurring. For example, if we find someone planning a murder, we lock them up to prevent them from carrying out the murder. This helps prevent transgressions directly by removing the perpetrator's ability to transgress.
Incapacitation is not transferable. Imagine we find someone planning a murder, but we lock someone else up in their place: this does not prevent them from carrying out the murder. Punishing a substitute is entirely useless and does not accomplish the aim of preventing the transgression.

Rehabilitation
A rehabilitative punishment aims to help the perpetrator and remove their reason for transgressing. For example, if someone starts a bar fight, we might mandate they take anger management classes to help them control their anger. If an employee's negligence causes an accident, their company might require them to undergo additional training. Some people consider this not to be punishment at all since it aims to benefit the perpetrator, not to harm them. Regardless, rehabilitation aims to prevent transgression not by making people afraid to transgress but by addressing the reason they would transgress in the first place.
Rehabilitation is not transferable. If a perpetrator commits a transgression, we must help them in particular to help them not do so in the future. If the person who started the bar fight sent someone else to the anger management classes in their place, their anger problems would not be addressed, and they would be likely to transgress again. Rehabilitating a substitute does nothing to accomplish the aim of rehabilitation.

Retribution
A retributive punishment aims to hurt the perpetrator for no other reason than that they deserve it. For example, if someone hurts your friend, you might feel that they deserve to be hurt back and secretly slash their tires. In this case the punishment does not act as a deterrent (since neither they nor anyone else knows what caused it). It also doesn't act to incapacitate them - they are fully capable of hurting your friend again - and does not act to rehabilitate them - as it does not address the reason they hurt your friend. The aim of the punishment is pure vengeance; when someone does something bad, we want bad things to happen to them.
Retribution is not transferable. If we punish someone other than the perpetrator, then we don't inflict harm on the perpetrator. For example, as we saw in Lundgren's case, punishing a cultist did not serve justice and Lundgren did not get what he deserved.

Restitution
A restitutive punishment aims to undo harm to the victim or offset it by compensating them with something else. For example, if a thief steals some money from a victim, we make them give it back. Restitutive punishments aim to return the state of affairs to what it would have been had the transgression not happened.
Restitutive punishments are the only kind of punishment which is transferable. Restitution has everything to do with the victim and nothing to do with the perpetrator; so long as the victim is restored, it doesn't matter who's doing the restoring. For example, if a child breaks a school's window, their parents can pay the school for the broken window on their behalf. The school doesn't demand the money come from the child in particular because they simply want to be compensated for what was lost, not to punish the child (and will likely institute another form of punishment to accomplish the other aims, such as detention or suspension, which they wouldn't allow the parents to take in the child's place).

Substitutionary Atonement & Jesus
As we have seen, substitutionary atonement is impermissible in most cases. It's only permissible in punishments levied entirely for restitution. That's why our society widely practices substitutionary atonement for restitution - we call it 'insurance'. Insurance companies are punished on our behalf when we crash our cars, and they pay restitution to the victims of the crash in our place. The victims don't care whether the money comes from us or from our insurance company; they just want to be compensated. Notably, we don't have insurance for any other kinds of punishments - you can't pay someone to go to jail on your behalf or take remedial driving classes on your behalf, because non-restitution punishments are not transferable.
So what transgression did we commit, and what kind of punishment is Jesus taking in our place? Depending on which Christian you ask, you'll get wildly different answers to this question, but the vast majority of answers boil down to retribution - we did something wrong, or inherited some sin from someone else who did something wrong, and we deserve to be punished for it. However, no answers aim for restitution. Remember that restitution involves restoring the harmed victim and reversing their harm. The punishments of the afterlife - be they eternal conscious torment, oblivion, separation from God, or something else - certainly don't restore the actual victims of our acts. The old lady you cut in line or the man you bore false witness against don't gain anything from you going to hell, except perhaps the satisfaction that you were punished (which falls under retribution, not restitution). Your punishment does not restore anything that was taken away from them or undo any harm done to them. Therefore, in all Christian conceptions, the aims of the punishment we face are non-transferable. Jesus can't die for your sins because justice would not be served.

Objections
So what, you'd rather go to hell?
Yes! If I have truly done something so horrible and vile that justice demands I suffer hell for it, then I ought to go to hell. It would be wrong for me to avoid the punishment I deserve just because someone in charge agreed to look the other way.

The victim of your sins isn't the actual person you hurt - it's God, and Jesus pays restitution to God in your place.
This view maintains that you harm God when you sin, and that your punishment aims not to affect you in any way but only to restore him. But God cannot be harmed - in almost all versions of Christianity, God is perfect and unchanging. You can't steal fifty bucks from God and then be forced to give them back.
Even if your acts displease God, they do not take something away from God - and a punishment of hell or oblivion doesn't give anything back to God. Remember that restitution is entirely about the victim and has nothing to do with the perpetrator; in Christianity, punishment for sins definitely has something to do with the perpetrator.
Many people think that sins are not just crimes against your fellow man, but an offense against God. If you think that sins are deserving of punishment because they are an offense against God, then that falls under retribution, not restitution - this view aims to punish people for offenses they committed against a victim, not to restore that victim.

Your argument doesn't address this particular theology or theologian!
This is true - given the extreme diversity of theological views in Christianity, it would be impossible for me to address them all here. However, the vast majority of Christians believe in a commonsense view of substitutionary atonement and don't base their understanding on any complex theology. As a result, I offer a commonsense analysis to rebut their beliefs. People often get upset that I 'misrepresented the Christian view,' forgetting that their view is not the Christian view, but one of many Christian views.

Jesus's sacrifice wasn't about punishment, it about grace/love/mercy/conquering death/something else.
If you have a different idea about the purpose of Jesus's sacrifice, that's fine. There are many alternative models that explain why Jesus died on the cross, such as moral influence theory and the Christus Victor view, and they are outside the scope of this post. I am specifically rebutting here the idea that Jesus died in our place. If you agree that Jesus did not die to take on some punishment in our place, then my argument has succeeded in what it set out to do.

If you ask Christians to sum up their faith in one sentence, most will give you some variation on "Jesus died for your sins." This idea is called 'substitutionary atonement' - Jesus atones in our place and acts as our substitute. Everyone has sinned and deserves harsh punishment, but Jesus offers to take that punishment in their place. In this post, I will argue that this is unjust.

The Tale of Jeffrey Lundgren
Warning: not for the faint of heart.
In 1987, self-proclaimed Christian prophet Jeffrey Lundgren started a cult. It soon grew to include about 20 people, including a family of five called the Averys. Lundgren did all sorts of terrible things with his influence: He had his cult members move into his farmhouse and give him all of their money. He forbade members from talking with each other without his presence and convinced them that he could read their minds. He began planning a violent takeover of the local Kirtland Temple, from which he had stolen tens of thousands of dollars, and pressed his followers into preparing to rob the temple and kill its inhabitants.
However, in 1988, Lundgren became unhappy with the Averys. The Avery family were loyal followers - they sold their house and moved states in order to join him, and they believed and trusted in him. But Lundgren felt their faith was weak because they decided not to live in his house and only gave him most of their money while setting aside a small sum for family use. So on April 17 of 1989, Lundgren had his followers dig a pit in his barn, and then lure the Averys there one by one, from oldest to youngest.
First the father, Dennis Avery, who was hit with a stun gun, gagged, and dragged before Lundgren, who shot him twice in the back.
Then the mother, Cheryl Avery, who was gagged and had her eyes duct taped before Lundgren shot her three times.
Next was 15-year-old Trina Avery who Lundgren shot twice in the head.
Then 13-year-old Becky Avery, who was shot twice but did not die instantly and was left to bleed out.
Finally 6-year-old Karen Avery, who Lundgren shot once in the chest and once in the head.
For his crimes, Jeffrey Lundgren was given the death penalty, and after exhausting his appeals he was executed on October 24, 2006.

The Lesson
Jeffrey Lundgren did terrible things, and he received punishment for these things. We call this 'justice'.
Now imagine for a moment Lundgren's trial in an alternate reality where substitutionary atonement is practiced. His lawyer says, "Your Honor, no doubt the death of the Averys is a terrible thing, and justice demands my client pay with his life. But one of my client's followers has stepped forward and said they are willing to die in his place." The judge agrees, and a cultist is executed while Lundgren walks free.
I ask you - is that justice?
No! Justice doesn't demand someone be punished - it demands punishment on the perpetrator! Lundgren's cultists would have no doubt been willing to die in his place, but we would never allow it, because it would be deeply unjust.
However, by the Christian account, we are all sinners. Just as Lundgren has sinned, so have the rest of us - and justice demands we all face punishment. By many accounts of Christianity, we deserve even worse punishment than Lundgren received. Just as it would be unjust for a cultist to be punished in Lundgren's place, it would be unjust for Jesus to be punished in a sinner's place.

Aims of Punishment
Why do we punish people when they do something wrong? There are five generally recognized aims of punishment:

Deterrence: providing motivation for the perpetrator and others not to commit similar acts in the future (e.g. charging a fine for illegal parking).
Incapacitation: preventing future transgressions by removing the perpetrator's ability to commit them (e.g. locking up a person planning a murder).
Rehabilitation: giving aid to the perpetrator to resolve the cause of their transgression (e.g. mandating anger management classes for someone who started a bar fight).
Retribution: taking pure vengeance on the perpetrator (e.g. secretly slashing the tires of someone who hurt your friend).
Restitution: compensating the victim in order to partially or completely reverse the harm (e.g. making a thief give back what they stole).

All punishments are issued to achieve one or more of these aims. For substitutionary atonement to serve justice, it would have to achieve these aims just as the original punishment would have. Let's examine them one at a time.

Deterrence
A deterrent punishment aims to prevent similar transgressions in the future by making people fear the consequences of committing them. For example, we fine people who illegally park their cars to dissuade them from doing that. If someone knows that an act will result in punishment, they are less likely to commit that act. Most of our laws act for deterrence; when we ban an act - public urination, copyright infringement, wire fraud - we don't just say it's illegal, we add a punishment to encourage people not to do it.
Deterrence is not transferable. If you punish someone other than the culprit, you don't give the culprit any motivation not to transgress again. Imagine a rich brat who often gets drunk at restaurants and smashes up the place. Each time they do this, their parents deal with the fallout and pay the restaurants for the damage. As a result, the brat has no reason not to keep doing the same thing - the punishment affected the parents, but it failed to deter the actual perpetrator.

Incapacitation
An incapacitative punishment aims not to punish a transgression that has already happened but to prevent one from occurring. For example, if we find someone planning a murder, we lock them up to prevent them from carrying out the murder. This helps prevent transgressions directly by removing the perpetrator's ability to transgress.
Incapacitation is not transferable. Imagine we find someone planning a murder, but we lock someone else up in their place: this does not prevent them from carrying out the murder. Punishing a substitute is entirely useless and does not accomplish the aim of preventing the transgression.

Rehabilitation
A rehabilitative punishment aims to help the perpetrator and remove their reason for transgressing. For example, if someone starts a bar fight, we might mandate they take anger management classes to help them control their anger. If an employee's negligence causes an accident, their company might require them to undergo additional training. Some people consider this not to be punishment at all since it aims to benefit the perpetrator, not to harm them. Regardless, rehabilitation aims to prevent transgression not by making people afraid to transgress but by addressing the reason they would transgress in the first place.
Rehabilitation is not transferable. If a perpetrator commits a transgression, we must help them in particular to help them not do so in the future. If the person who started the bar fight sent someone else to the anger management classes in their place, their anger problems would not be addressed, and they would be likely to transgress again. Rehabilitating a substitute does nothing to accomplish the aim of rehabilitation.

Retribution
A retributive punishment aims to hurt the perpetrator for no other reason than that they deserve it. For example, if someone hurts your friend, you might feel that they deserve to be hurt back and secretly slash their tires. In this case the punishment does not act as a deterrent (since neither they nor anyone else knows what caused it). It also doesn't act to incapacitate them - they are fully capable of hurting your friend again - and does not act to rehabilitate them - as it does not address the reason they hurt your friend. The aim of the punishment is pure vengeance; when someone does something bad, we want bad things to happen to them.
Retribution is not transferable. If we punish someone other than the perpetrator, then we don't inflict harm on the perpetrator. For example, as we saw in Lundgren's case, punishing a cultist did not serve justice and Lundgren did not get what he deserved.

Restitution
A restitutive punishment aims to undo harm to the victim or offset it by compensating them with something else. For example, if a thief steals some money from a victim, we make them give it back. Restitutive punishments aim to return the state of affairs to what it would have been had the transgression not happened.
Restitutive punishments are the only kind of punishment which is transferable. Restitution has everything to do with the victim and nothing to do with the perpetrator; so long as the victim is restored, it doesn't matter who's doing the restoring. For example, if a child breaks a school's window, their parents can pay the school for the broken window on their behalf. The school doesn't demand the money come from the child in particular because they simply want to be compensated for what was lost, not to punish the child (and will likely institute another form of punishment to accomplish the other aims, such as detention or suspension, which they wouldn't allow the parents to take in the child's place).

Substitutionary Atonement & Jesus
As we have seen, substitutionary atonement is impermissible in most cases. It's only permissible in punishments levied entirely for restitution. That's why our society widely practices substitutionary atonement for restitution - we call it 'insurance'. Insurance companies are punished on our behalf when we crash our cars, and they pay restitution to the victims of the crash in our place. The victims don't care whether the money comes from us or from our insurance company; they just want to be compensated. Notably, we don't have insurance for any other kinds of punishments - you can't pay someone to go to jail on your behalf or take remedial driving classes on your behalf, because non-restitution punishments are not transferable.
So what transgression did we commit, and what kind of punishment is Jesus taking in our place? Depending on which Christian you ask, you'll get wildly different answers to this question, but the vast majority of answers boil down to retribution - we did something wrong, or inherited some sin from someone else who did something wrong, and we deserve to be punished for it. However, no answers aim for restitution. Remember that restitution involves restoring the harmed victim and reversing their harm. The punishments of the afterlife - be they eternal conscious torment, oblivion, separation from God, or something else - certainly don't restore the actual victims of our acts. The old lady you cut in line or the man you bore false witness against don't gain anything from you going to hell, except perhaps the satisfaction that you were punished (which falls under retribution, not restitution). Your punishment does not restore anything that was taken away from them or undo any harm done to them. Therefore, in all Christian conceptions, the aims of the punishment we face are non-transferable. Jesus can't die for your sins because justice would not be served.

Objections
So what, you'd rather go to hell?
Yes! If I have truly done something so horrible and vile that justice demands I suffer hell for it, then I ought to go to hell. It would be wrong for me to avoid the punishment I deserve just because someone in charge agreed to look the other way.

The victim of your sins isn't the actual person you hurt - it's God, and Jesus pays restitution to God in your place.
This view maintains that you harm God when you sin, and that your punishment aims not to affect you in any way but only to restore him. But God cannot be harmed - in almost all versions of Christianity, God is perfect and unchanging. You can't steal fifty bucks from God and then be forced to give them back.
Even if your acts displease God, they do not take something away from God - and a punishment of hell or oblivion doesn't give anything back to God. Remember that restitution is entirely about the victim and has nothing to do with the perpetrator; in Christianity, punishment for sins definitely has something to do with the perpetrator.
Many people think that sins are not just crimes against your fellow man, but an offense against God. If you think that sins are deserving of punishment because they are an offense against God, then that falls under retribution, not restitution - this view aims to punish people for offenses they committed against a victim, not to restore that victim.

Your argument doesn't address this particular theology or theologian!
This is true - given the extreme diversity of theological views in Christianity, it would be impossible for me to address them all here. However, the vast majority of Christians believe in a commonsense view of substitutionary atonement and don't base their understanding on any complex theology. As a result, I offer a commonsense analysis to rebut their beliefs. People often get upset that I 'misrepresented the Christian view,' forgetting that their view is not the Christian view, but one of many Christian views.

Jesus's sacrifice wasn't about punishment, it about grace/love/mercy/conquering death/something else.
If you have a different idea about the purpose of Jesus's sacrifice, that's fine. There are many alternative models that explain why Jesus died on the cross, such as moral influence theory and the Christus Victor view, and they are outside the scope of this post. I am specifically rebutting here the idea that Jesus died in our place. If you agree that Jesus did not die to take on some punishment in our place, then my argument has succeeded in what it set out to do.

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While reading, I stumbled across this statue in the gallery of a wikipedia article, where it was captioned with the following sentence "Isis priest (formerly identified as Scipio Africanus), bronze bust, mid 1st century BC". On the article for Scipio himself, the same statue is identified with a similar caption: "Bronze bust dated mid-first century BC, formerly identified as Scipio Africanus, now thought to portray a priest of Isis". However, neither caption was cited, which made me curious to learn how they came to that conclusion. What identified it as a priest of Isis? What had convinced archeologists and historians it was a bust of Scipio Africanus?
Thank you in advance for any responses!

Two and a half years ago I lost a lot of weight (20-25kg approx, hard to say because I was training calisthenics and cardio to avoid losing all muscle mass so it was slightly a recomp) ever since I've had a crashed libido. I've been weight lifting for almost two years now (ppl 6 days a week), eating healthy, at a healthy bmi, sleep, etc. I got a referal to an endo and a blood analysis and zero surprise, my t is tanked (158ng/dl), but since I'm above the ridiculous range and under 30 they won't consider doing anything and I doubt I can get any real answer from the healthcare system in my country.
So I want to try to restart my HPTA on my own. I've read the wiki, a lot of pubmed, etc and I have a few questions regarding my plan to do clomid (or enclomiphene, though it seems way pricier so still considering) pct. If using enclo, dosing it like this: 6.25mg EOD for two weeks 12.5mg EOD for two weeks 12.5mg ED for four weeks 25mg ED for two weeks
1.Most pct is "prescribed" as a proportion of people's cycles in length. Since I haven't been cycling, any idea of what could be a minimum length?
2.Should my SERM use peak or taper off? Almost every experience or study I've read favours peaking before discontinuing, instead of slowly tapering the dose back to zero. I'm guessing there's good reasons or experience for this, but want to ask anyway since many other drugs take the taper approach
3.Enclo has a 10hour half life, does it matter the time of day when you take it? better at night or morning
In case it's necessary, I'm 1.89, 94 kg, 26y old

Greetings, Im looking for a mod armor that resembles the appereance of the white lions of chrace from warhammer, would you perhaps know something similar? Perhaps a shoulder cape that resembles the head of a lion?
Picture - https://whfb.lexicanum.com/wiki/White_Lion#/media/File%3AWhite_Lion.jpg
Thanks un advance

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