“Thank you for contacting me, and for your advocacy on this proposed bill.
I very much appreciate your comments regarding firearm legislation. As you probably know, I do support common sense gun reform that will help make our communities safer. I am also a co-sponsor of SB 5078. While we may disagree on some of the gun reform laws that are coming before the legislature in 2023, I do thank you for taking the time to write to me to express your opinion. Robust debate and input from constituents is critically important to a transparent and healthy democracy.
Gun violence is now the third leading cause of death for children in the United States, and while I do not support banning all firearms, I do support measures that will help keep Washington children and families safe. I believe that common sense regulation will help prevent needless injury and death, and it is my goal to enact laws while continuing to allow law-abiding citizens the ability to purchase and use guns safely and responsibly.
Again, thanks for taking the time to contact me. Your participation in our democracy is very much appreciated.
Sincerely,
Noel
Noel Frame”
My response;
Thank you for your response, Sen. Frame.
While gun violence is the third major cause in the death for children, your response is mostly a non-answer. This bill you have cosponsored is heavy handed and short sighted, I've cited a number of legal precedents that starkly goes against this bill. Furthermore, this bill is also tremendously classist and racist in origin, if anything this puts more marginalized people (your constituents) in further danger, here's why;
Police officers do have a legal obligation to respond to certain calls for assistance, such as emergency situations or calls where there is an imminent threat to public safety. This is due to both qualified immunity and the public duty doctrine.
Members of the LGBTQIA+ community have historically faced discrimination and mistreatment by law enforcement officers. This has led to a lack of trust between law enforcement and the LGBTQIA+ community, furthermore racism and discrimination not only harms individuals, but it also erodes trust between law enforcement and the communities they are meant to serve and protect.
Gun control laws like SB 5078 in the United States have been used to disenfranchise and discriminate against certain racial and ethnic groups. For example, some of the earliest gun control laws in the US were passed in the South during the Reconstruction era, specifically to disarm Black Americans and prevent them from defending themselves against racist violence. Similarly, there is evidence to suggest that some gun control laws in the 20th century were motivated by racial bias and a desire to limit the ability of minority groups to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
At the same time, it is also true that gun violence disproportionately affects marginalized communities, particularly low-income communities of color.
There have been a number of high-profile mass shootings and acts of violence in recent years that were carried out by individuals with far-right or extremist views. These incidents include the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, the 2018 shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the 2019 shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, which targeted Hispanic immigrants.
There have been cases of violence against LGBTQIA+ people that have been committed by individuals with far-right or extremist views. These incidents may be motivated by a range of factors, including hate, prejudice, and intolerance.
One high-profile example of this type of violence occurred in June 2016, when a gunman entered Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and killed 49 people and injured 53 others. The perpetrator of this attack, Omar Mateen, had expressed support for ISIS and was reportedly motivated by a combination of anti-gay sentiment and radical Islamist ideology.
There have also been cases of violence against transgender individuals that have been committed by individuals with far-right or extremist views. In 2020, at least 44 transgender or gender-nonconforming people were killed in the US, the majority of whom were Black or Latinx transgender women. While not all of these killings were committed by far-right extremists, there is evidence to suggest that many were motivated by hate and prejudice.
It is important to recognize that violence against LGBTQIA+ people is a serious issue that requires a multifaceted approach to address. This may include legal and policy measures, such as hate crime legislation and anti-discrimination laws, as well as education and awareness campaigns to promote acceptance and tolerance. Additionally, addressing the underlying societal and cultural factors that contribute to hate and prejudice can help to prevent acts of violence and promote a more inclusive and equitable society for all individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
But until that is addressed, I am staunchly against this myopic bill.

I (24f) was in a relationship with this guy (23m) for about a year. We got into it pretty fast, but at the time he seemd like he had everything I’ve ever wanted in a boyfriend. We have spent a lot of time together, and after three months were basically living together, I was staying at this place for a couple of weeks or the other way around. We had a lot in common and a lot of fun together. Long story short it was all like a dream.
Then it turned into a nightmare. I accidentally noticed that he’s been texting his ex. When I asked him about it, he told me they just needed to take care of some financial things. (They used to live together.) I believed him, because he’s never lied to me before, and he has been very loving to me all the time. I genuinely felt like I had no reason to doubt anything.
A couple months later, one night we were looking at some pictures on his phone together, and a message popped up from his ex. She was asking if she could stay at his place for the night. I froze completely. I couldn’t even say a word, and I think he was hoping I didn’t notice, because you didn’t say anything until he noticed that something was bothering me. Then he proceeded to tell me that she came over the day before to his place to pick up some stuff she still had there. Then she made a move on him and he rejected her. At least that’s what he told me. He told me she talked to her about me and how much he loved me, and that she was sending that message out of spite, to try to break us off and ruin our relationship because he has moved on and she hasn’t.
This was a lot harder for me to believe, but he offered me to look through all of his messages to make sure that there was nothing going on between them, and that made me calm down a bit and made me feel like maybe, just maybe I could trust him. He also told me you was never gonna see her again.
It was very difficult for me to move past all of this, because like I told him I would’ve appreciated if he would’ve told me about these things beforehand and not just when I accidentally saw the messages… but I loved him very much and he used to tell me he was gonna marry me one day. He seemed like he was head over heels in love with me so I tried my best to forgive him, but I was already a bit more cautious then before.
A couple of months went by, and it seemed like we were in a really good place. And then one of my friends showed me a post put up by his ex from around the time she has sent him that message. They were on a picture together, having lunch. I immediately confronted him about it, and he kept giving me the same explanation: she was just trying to ruin our relationship at the time. He was also making me feel bad about accusing him, saying how much he hated being called a liar, etc… all the gaslighting you can imagine. I told him, if that was all true, I wanted him to text her in front of me, and tell her to take down the picture, and that it was a shitty move to post it at the time, because by his claims, the picture was taken years agon when they were together.
I already saw how anxious he got about texting her, so I knew where this was gonna go, so I thought I’d wait it out.
Long story short, by her replies, it was obvious that not only did they meet at that time, they have also slept together multiple times. And he still kept denying it, calling her a liar, who’s just jealous and crazy.
I told him I wanted to break up. He threatened to hurt himself, saying I was the love of his life and he didn’t wanna lose me. I said he should be honest with me then, but he still denied all of it. I moved all my stuff from his place and cut him off. He still tried to get me back, saying he just wanted one more chance to prove I can trust him, to give him some time to do so.
He wouldn’t leave me alone, so I told him I was going on dates with other people (it was not true, but I felt like it was the only way to make him realise I want nothing from him anymore). And it actually worked, because after that… He then had the audacity to confess to cheating on me! He said he knows I’m never gonne get back together with him so he decided to tell me what happened. It was all so confusing to me, because as I found out, he has been talking to her our whole relationship, even though he previously told me 1000 times that he wasn’t, and then he was also seeing her and having sex with her for a few weeks. He realised it was a mistake and that he just wanted to be with me, so he cut her off and tried his best to keep this from me, knowing full well I would never talk to him again if I knew.
It just fucked with my head so much how he denied this whole thing for almost a year and acted like nothing happened. He told me I was the girl of his dreams, looked me in the eyes and told me he was so in love with me every day, even though he was carrying this dark secret of betraying me. I don’t know what’s real anymore and I don’t know if I can ever trust someone again. It’s been months and I still feel so angry and betrayed and humiliated. I gave him my all and he just lied and took it all for granted, then he cried and cried in front of me saying he just can’t lose me. He caused me more pain than anyone I’ve ever known. I don’t miss him, but how do I ever have a healthy relationship with anyone after this?

I'm combining multiple campaigns (Search + Display) into 1 row using a regEx Extract using a common name within the campaign. (example regEg "REGEXP_EXTRACT(Campaign,r"_([^_]+)$"))
Then I'm using multiple conversion actions per campaign by blending data and combining costs. This is how my table looks:
​

Campaign (search + display)	Calls from ads	Calls from Website	Cost
123 Main Street	1	5	$100

​
Now, I'm trying to do a calculated metric for CPA, the formula looks something like this:
Cost (converted) /(IFNULL(Call from website,0)+IFNULL(Calls from website,0))
The math doesn't work out. It's always off by a few dollars. I tried using SUM, Average, and all the other aggregation options but the CPA is still off.
I tried adding Sum (cost), but I got an error:
"Calculated fields can't mix metrics (aggregated values) and dimensions (non-aggregated values). Please check the aggregation types of the fields used in this formula"
Does anyone know how I can get this calculated CPA to work?

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?”

I finished watching both animes, the OVAs, and the movie a few times now, and after reading through a lot Reddit/Quora/Stack Exchange posts, I still have some thoughts and questions I want to address. I've read the VNs shed more light on everything so I'll check those out once I have time.
​
First DMail and Alpha/Beta Divergence
In S;G episode 1, sending the first DMail causes the worldline to shift from a beta worldline to an alpha one, but I still have some confusion about that. For the DMail to cause the shift, my understanding is that there must have been at least one iteration at the very beginning where Kurisu dies for real (not killed by future Okabe), Okabe somehow gets alerted to this (no future Okabe scream to catch his attention), so following sequence of event unfolds:

1. Lecture on time travel happens, Kurisu meets up with her dad and dies for real (presumably killed by her dad)
2. Okabe somehow stumbles upon Kurisu's body, goes outside and sends DMail to the past (b/c Daru was messing with the phone microwave)
3. SERN saves the DMail in their database but don't necessarily check it and/or connect it to Okabe having a working time device right away. At this point, Kurisu's dad is on his way to Russia with Kurisu's paper on time travel
4. Daru attends a talk on time travel (this is very important b/c it's the reason Suzu wants to go to 2010, so she can meet her dad)
5. Some time passes and SERN does connect the DMail to Okabe's lab, raids it, steals the phone microwave, and uses it to develop the first time machine before Russia does (b/c SERN is the closest to having cracked time travel with the jellyman experiments), and takes over the world
6. In the future, Daru develops an imperfect time machine (since SERN has full control over what's required to build a fully functional one). Daru is killed. Suzu is raised by her mom, has never met her dad but learns about him and Okabe. Suzu's mom is also killed, and Suzu joins the resistance at some point.
7. Suzu is given the mission to travel to 1975 to acquire an IBN 5100 and make sure Okabe acquires it in 2010 so Daru can use it to decrypt the SERN database that stores the first DMail, and erase it so that SERN never takes the phone microwave.
8. Suzu travels to 2010 b/c she knows her father attends a talk on time travel and wants to meet him. Due to the time machine being imperfect, her coordinates are off, and she crashes into the roof, thereby causing Kurisu's father's lecture on time travel to get cancelled. Kurisu is alive, and her paper on time travel is never stolen by her father.
9. Suzu also doesn't meet her dad just because by traveling to the past, she's already shifted to a worldline where her Okabe prevents Daru from attending. Presumably she couldn't have predicted this outcome b/c of worldine shifts in general being unpredictable due to the Butterfly Effect.
10. From this point on, in each subsequent worldline/iteration in the Alpha attractor field, Suzu always travels and crashes in 2010, Kurisu always survives and helps the FG lab build a time machine, Mayuri always dies (b/c the universe is cruel), and the future always leads to a SERN dystopia. S;G events unfold.

If this is correct, this implies that one of the major divergence factors is the first DMail and not necessarily Kurisu's death and her time travel paper. SERN can still develop a time machine using just Okabe/Daru's phone microwave. It's just that the very first iteration of the alpha worldline (at least from the perspective of the anime) will eventually lead to subsequent alpha worldlines in which Kurisu is still alive and is the one that develops the time machine instead. We know that Kurisu isn't strictly needed to develop a working time machine b/c Daru is able to do it, albeit with Maho's help, in the beta worldline. Thus, it's not unreasonable to think Daru + Okabe + SERN's research is enough for SERN to create a time machine first even if the Russians have Kurisu's time travel paper.
However, I feel like this is probably incorrect, and this may be one of those cases where Suzuha just always travels to the past, and there's no initial origin point where Kurisu dies, and her father steals her time travel paper. It just never happens the moment the first DMail is sent no matter how many iterations back you try to look.
​
Kurisu's Importance in the Beta Worldline Attractor Field
One thing that gets emphasized is how Kurisu needs to survive to prevent WW3 in the beta worldline, but I don't think that's true, if my reasoning for the previous section is correct. The conditions that lead to WW3 are the following:

1. Kurisu's time travel theory is exposed to the public in some way (be it her father stealing it, someone using Amadeus to recreate it, or something else). This causes a global arms race to create a time machine which escalates into WW3.
2. Okabe never sends the first DMail so SERN never acquires the phone microwave device from the FG lab.

Whether Kurisu lives or dies is irrelevant. In fact, the only real difference between the S;G and beta worldlines besides Kurisu's survival is the survival of the time travel theory which leads to the time machine arms race. If the paper is destroyed, even if Kurisu is dead, the world would effectively be in a pseudo S;G worldline where SERN isn't guaranteed to control the world and WW3 isn't guaranteed to happen. It could even be argued that Kurisu's survival actually increases the chances of WW3 b/c she has the ability to recreate the time travel theory. The reason saving Kurisu is so important is b/c it's Okabe's ideal worldline where both Mayuri and Kurisu are alive, not necessarily b/c it's the ONLY way to prevent a guaranteed dystopian future.
​
Time Travel Mechanics and Reading Steiner
At this point, it's common knowledge that there's only one universe, and there can only be one active worldline. This means there's no multiverse or meeting multiple future/past selves and grandfather paradox shenanigans. My understanding is that every time any time travel happens, be it through sending DMails, sending data, physical time travel or whatever, it causes a worldline change. Sometimes the change is so negligible (e.g. Okabe telling Daru about Faris's strategy in the Rai-Net tournament) that it's effectively the same worldline in every other way, and it doesn't trigger Reading Steiner which means Reading Steiner doesn't trigger in every worldline shift, only ones that are big enough that overwriting the new Okabe's memories would trigger it. Logically, this means there are worldline shifts that even Okabe won't detect, but for all intents and purposes, they're insignificant b/c the Okabe getting overwritten had the exact same (or close enough) memories as the Okabe doing the overwriting, and the worldlines are effectively the same.
But what about traveling to the future? Or when there are multiple instances of the same character from the future/past traveling to the same time. I think traveling to the future must be functionally the same as traveling to the past in causing worldline shifts. We know that worldline shifts must occur each time someone travels to the past so this means two instances of the same character traveling to the same time will never meet each other (e.g. no 3 Okabes on July 28th in 2010). Consider the scenario where Person A has time machine FG203 in the year 2036. Person A uses FG203 to go to 1975. Person A then uses FG203 to go back to 2036, exactly 1 minute before Person A leaves initially leaves for 1975. At this point, if traveling to the future doesn't cause a worldline shift, time paradoxes become possible. Therefore, any kind of time travel, to the past or the future, must cause a worldline shift. This is why Suzu and Daru are both concerned about Suzu time traveling to a point in time she's already time traveled to (e.g. Suzu and Mayuri traveling to 2010 for Operation Arclight). It could cause a significant enough worldline shift that introduces new variables and Butterfly Effects that make the Steins;Gate worldline unattainable. The reason I emphasize significant is b/c, as we've already conjectured, any kind of time travel causes a worldline shift, but not all worldline shifts are big enough to trigger Reading Steiner. You can still shift to a worldline that's only slightly different enough to be effectively the same.
​
Timing of Reading Steiner From Okabe's Perspective
We know that Okabe was ill as a kid which is heavily implied to be due to Reading Steiner activating from a worldline shift, possibly due to Suzuha traveling to 1999 to prevent Y2K. Reading Steiner also activates the moment Okabe sends the first DMail, as opposed to happening on the date it gets sent to in the past. This implies that it must always happen from the perspective of the Okabe from just before the worldline shifts. However, how exactly does the universe determine when exactly the worldline shifts from Okabe's perspective? Here's a thought experiment to illustrate what I mean:

1. The S;G worldline's future is somehow actually worse than both the Alpha and Beta worldlines. Okabe calls Suzu out of retirement for one last job jump. Suzu's mission is to go back to 1999 and prevent Okabe from developing his mad scientist persona, thereby preventing the events in S;G from happening.
2. Suzu travels from 2036 in the previous worldline (in which Okabe is still alive) to 1999 in a new worldline (in which Okabe is also alive). When does Reading Steiner activate from the perspective of Okabe? Does it happen in 2036 or 1999? Or does it happen in both? If it happens in both, would Okabe in 1999 only receive the memories of Okabe up until 1999 from the previous worldline? And, then separately, in 2036, assuming Okabe is also still alive, he would receive the full memories of the previous worldline, right?

In the anime, this is much easier to follow and reconcile b/c we only follow the perspective of one Okabe at a time b/c either there's only one Okabe at that time or the Okabe in any other times that are relevant for the worldline shift are dead (e.g. 2025 in beta worldline).
​
S;G 0 Ending Timeline
Here's my understanding of the timeline.

1. S;G 0 Okabe successfully thwarts the rooftop helicopter attacks, allowing Operation Arclight to be carried out.
2. Suzu and Mayuri travel back to 2010 for Operation Arclight, only stay for the minute that other Suzu and Okabe are still in the past to avoid time paradox that would cause a worldline shift, run out of fuel and get stranded in 18000 BC.
3. At this point, even if Mayuri slaps some sense into Okabe after his initial failure to save Kurisu, it doesn't do anything b/c we still don't have the plan for Operation Skuld figured out yet, or do we? I lean towards not yet b/c then the ending in 2025 doesn't make sense to me.
4. Timeline proceeds as normal, leading to beta worldline where WW3 happens, but this time, having been reinvigorated by Mayuri's plea, Okabe spends the next 15 years figuring out all the details for Operation Skuld, realizing that you can "deceive" fate by faking Kurisu's death.
5. The recording we see at the end of episode 23 followed by Okabe undergoing Operation Altair to rescue Suzu and Mayuri in 18000 BC is all actually the previous worldline just before episode 24 in the original S;G anime.
6. Unclear where Suzu and Mayuri go to after this. Okabe 0 presumably stays behind to not risk overwriting present Okabe (or any point up until his death in 2025), though I don't know if the overwriting is that risky so much as just traveling to the future itself being risky since it can cause a significant worldline change. I touch on this more further below.
7. More time passes, as Suzu has to grow up to become future soldier in 2036 (unless we can use Suzu that time traveled back from 18000 BC?) and carry out her missions to acquire an IBN 5100, use it to prevent Y2K in 1999 per the original John Titor timeline at the start of S;G episode 1, and convince Okabe to save Kurisu.
8. This time, it's the final iteration which leads directly to episode 24 in the original S;G anime and everything needed to achieve the S;G worldline is present.

With that said, since we've established that traveling to the past definitely causes a worldline shift, and traveling to the future likely causes a worldline shift to avoid time paradoxes, doesn't this mean that Operation Arclight is somewhat risky? There's no guarantee the worldline shift caused by Suzu and Mayuri traveling back to the future won't change things enough to make the S;G worldline unattainable. Basically any more worldline shifts after Suzu goes back from 2036 to 2010 for the final iteration is risky b/c of the unpredictability of worldline shifts and Butterfly Effects. Or maybe, the power of love and friendship is enough to overcome this? Personally, I fully respect Okabe's decision to save future soldier and best girl.

I'm combining multiple campaigns (Search + Display) into 1 row using a regEx Extract using a common name within the campaign. (example regEg "REGEXP_EXTRACT(Campaign,r"_([^_]+)$"))
Then I'm using multiple conversion actions per campaign by blending data and combining costs. This is how my table looks:
​

Campaign (search + display)	Calls from ads	Calls from Website	Cost
123 Main Street	1	5	$100

​
Now, I'm trying to do a calculated metric for CPA, the formula looks something like this:
Cost (converted) /(IFNULL(Call from website,0)+IFNULL(Calls from website,0))
The math doesn't work out. It's always off by a few dollars. I tried using SUM, Average, and all the other aggregation options but the CPA is still off.
I tried adding Sum (cost), but I got an error:
"Calculated fields can't mix metrics (aggregated values) and dimensions (non-aggregated values). Please check the aggregation types of the fields used in this formula"
Does anyone know how I can get this calculated CPA to work?

I'm a guy, I'm 26 years old, I'm from Brazil. So first of all, I'm currently looking for someone to meet and develop a relationship with - start as friends and see how things go from there. In short, I would appreciate a meaningful connection with someone. So, hear me out, I'm looking for something long term and preferably everlasting, crazy, isn’t it? I'm willing to invest my time and put effort into someone and, honestly, I just expect the same back.
I'm pretty open minded and very honesty person I will not lie to you, I ask you the same thing, so we can talk about everything and anything and surely, I'm not the kind to judge so you can be yourself around me, bonus points for me, right? At least I would like to think that I'm very understanding and supportive and I value communication a lot so there is that...
A little overview about me:
Loves cat and nature, Technology, Science, Cooking, Meme, Plants, many more.
Pretty into space related stuff and History
I like movies/series (anime to some degree as well), music, and reading
I'm not a fan of football and many other sports. I also don't drink alcohol or smoke.
That's basically the tip of the iceberg so maybe we can draw some common ground for starters.
It will be cool if we can watch Movie and series together, go to Voice call and video call.
I don't care what you look like. As long as you're able to maintain a dialogue, we won't have any problems.
If you are interested in my appearance, and not a conversation with me - do not write. I don't look like Brad Pitt.
What I can do accordingly: For my part, I can offer communication and time. We can talk about all sorts of topics. Maybe we'll learn a language together. I am open to your suggestions. But I definitely can't understand people who don't support the dialogue, but only want to be written to. It turns out that I am a more real person. If you are such type of person who don't have emotional energy to communicate. Please don't write to me.
Please - If you're a completely different person than the described type of person I'm looking for (If you love abbreviations, you don't need an emotional connection, if you're sarcastic and quiet) or if you simply disagree with my post - don't force yourself to send me a message. I want my new potential friendship, to be natural which is why I want you to contact me If your needs are the same - I don't want you to try to change yourself only to please me - Pretending to be someone you're not - is the worst
My time Zone is (GMT-3)
Please only adult people 23-30 age range (I'm 26)
Hope to hear from you soon and, regardless, have a wonderful week and stay safe!

I'm a guy, I'm 26 years old, I'm from Brazil. So first of all, I'm currently looking for someone to meet and develop a relationship with - start as friends and see how things go from there. In short, I would appreciate a meaningful connection with someone. So, hear me out, I'm looking for something long term and preferably everlasting, crazy, isn’t it? I'm willing to invest my time and put effort into someone and, honestly, I just expect the same back.
I'm pretty open minded and very honesty person I will not lie to you, I ask you the same thing, so we can talk about everything and anything and surely, I'm not the kind to judge so you can be yourself around me, bonus points for me, right? At least I would like to think that I'm very understanding and supportive and I value communication a lot so there is that...
A little overview about me:
Loves cat and nature, Technology, Science, Cooking, Meme, Plants, many more.
Pretty into space related stuff and History
I like movies/series (anime to some degree as well), music, and reading
I'm not a fan of football and many other sports. I also don't drink alcohol or smoke.
That's basically the tip of the iceberg so maybe we can draw some common ground for starters.
It will be cool if we can watch Movie and series together, go to Voice call and video call.
I don't care what you look like. As long as you're able to maintain a dialogue, we won't have any problems.
If you are interested in my appearance, and not a conversation with me - do not write. I don't look like Brad Pitt.
What I can do accordingly: For my part, I can offer communication and time. We can talk about all sorts of topics. Maybe we'll learn a language together. I am open to your suggestions. But I definitely can't understand people who don't support the dialogue, but only want to be written to. It turns out that I am a more real person. If you are such type of person who don't have emotional energy to communicate. Please don't write to me.
Please - If you're a completely different person than the described type of person I'm looking for (If you love abbreviations, you don't need an emotional connection, if you're sarcastic and quiet) or if you simply disagree with my post - don't force yourself to send me a message. I want my new potential friendship, to be natural which is why I want you to contact me If your needs are the same - I don't want you to try to change yourself only to please me - Pretending to be someone you're not - is the worst
My time Zone is (GMT-3)
Please only adult people 23-30 age range (I'm 26)
Hope to hear from you soon and, regardless, have a wonderful week and stay safe!

Today, my watch told me I burned 266 calories. No logged activities. I’ve had the usual day, a commute that includes 20-25 minutes of walking both before and after work, and a long day working as a vet, today 9 hours clocked. I rarely sit still apart from my 30 min break, I examine animals all day, lift and hold them still, and walk around the clinic a lot. I hit 10.000 steps although some of these may be from arm movements.
But: is it just me, or does this seem like a greatly underestimated output? I may be biased as I count my intake, have doms from yesterdays strength training and was craving snacks as I came home.
I have a FR255s, and am F29 at 69 kg BW if that’s needed. Putting 50 mins of walking into a calculator gives me a 180 kcal burned estimate. That leaves 86 kcal for at least 8 hours of standing and lots of movement.

Out there - Patreon (for all those curious or wanting to support :))
At the Beginning
Adventure Arc - Arc 2
Wilderness Arc - Arc 3
Academy Arc - Arc 4
Previously on Leveling up the World…
Book 2 (start of the Adventure/City Arc) is available for pre-order!
 
A thin shimmering layer covered the sword once Dallion returned to the real world.it wasn’t the standard shimmering of an otherworlder, at least not entirely. There was a slight nuance to it, making it appear both to be part of this world, but also not.
“This what you wanted?” Dallion stood up.
Based on the intense emotions resonating from both Phoil and Raven, the answer was obvious. Even so, the black-haired noble had no desire to surrender a compliment.
“How many tries did it take you?” he asked.
“Two. Does it matter?”
“Not particularly.”
Internally, Dallion frowned. He’d learned to accept that nobles respected items, least of all.
“Alright, then. Now about your part of the deal? I need to be out before dark.”
“I’ll keep my word.” Raven pointed at the sword in a slow, dismissive fashion. That was more than enough for Phoil to pick up the weapon. Instead of heading outside, though, he went up the stairs to the private area of the building. “It’ll take me a bit to get my seal adjusted. Meet you at the door in half an hour?”
“Half an hour.” Dallion nodded. “See you there.”
This was the best deal he’d get, so there was no point in shaking the boat. He himself had something to pick up from his room.
Onda, did you get all that? Dallion asked as he went back into the corridor.
Well done, old man. One could almost near the nymph clapping. Lamer than me, but still cool.
What did I do wrong?
Nothing. Everything was perfect. The set up, the way you convinced the guardian, the selection of the material… It’s your logic that’s messed up. No, not exactly messed up, just too dependent on other things.
Hmm.
Keeping himself from running along the corridor, Dallion made his way to his room. The new feat he’d achieved filled him with more energy than was healthy. He tried getting rid of some of it by extending magic threads out of his hand—weaving them into a rope, as Katka had instructed—but that made him even more restless. Magic had a way to make its owner feel invincible, almost as if he’d drunk a bucket of energy drinks.
“Ruby, we’re heading outside.” Dallion pulled back the cluster of threads back into him, then took the aetherizer he kept hidden in a drawer with an invisibility symbol on it. “How do you feel about that?”
The shardfly stoically flew off the spot on the ceiling, taking its place on Dallion’s shoulder. For some reason, that reminded Dallion of Gleam.
Within seconds, the euphoria he had accumulated vanished without a trace. Was he capable of bringing the shardfly back? It had to be more complicated than opening a portal to the banished world. And even if it wasn’t, Dallion had no way of reaching that realm again.
“Tell me when you sense nearby illusions, okay?” Dallion said.
Okay. Ruby flocked his wings.
“And don’t get into any fights, even if I’m attacked. Got it?”
Dallion looked at his heavy gear. Considering what he would be facing, having his armadil shield and harpsisword would help. Unfortunately, he’d have to make do with his Nox dagger.
Less than a minute was necessary for Dallion to reach the main door of the building. Judging by the occasional look of disapproval he received from passing apprentices, it was safe to say that the glamor from the challenge was starting to wear off. And then there was the waiting. Every second dragged on. Unlike Dallion, Raven didn’t seem to be remotely in a hurry to get there.
Now you know what it feels like for guardians, Nil commented.
Precisely thirty minutes after he’d promised, Raven appeared, walking calmly down the corridor. Surprisingly, he wasn’t alone.
“Mage Tisaku?” Dallion asked.
The man didn’t seem at all pleased to be there. The fact that he was showed the pull Raven’s family had.
“Dallion,” the man acknowledged the other’s presence as he walked by, stopping right in front of the door. “Two hours,” he said, fingers drawing an intricate pattern faster than the human eye could see. A top level awakened would have trouble following the design. Unlike the standard spell, this was composed of a single pattern.
Purple light blended with the threads and symbols covering the door’s surface, melting them away.
“Try not to get in trouble. I don’t want to owe the White Eye favors.” The door opened.
“Yes, mage.” Dallion was the only one to answer.
Meanwhile, Raves passed by as if both of them were beneath him. The sad truth was that thanks to his father, they probably were.
From such an angle, the surroundings seemed a lot better than what Dallion had seen from the rooftop. That was to be expected; the mages had taken great care to cover all undesirable sights with illusions. If one didn’t know better, they would swear that the cluster of buildings surrounding the Learning Hall was pretty much the same as it always had been. Occasionally, there would be small signs that something was wrong—some magic symbols wouldn’t glow as bright, some streets would have a quarter of the people they were supposed to—but the illusion was close to perfect.
“Well, we’re out.” Raven looked at Dallion. “How what?”
“Now, I need to see a dwarf.”
After ten steps, Ruby mentioned that they were near an illusion. The spell was quite subtle, creating the impression that Dallion was walking along the same path. In a matter of minutes, he had reached his destination—the shop he had frequented so many times while outside.
That wasn’t remotely true. Discretely casting the spell that let him see through illusions, Dallion found that he’d reached an entirely new area. The level of the spell was beyond impressive; it had successfully created a false memory of the area and maintained it as reality, while in truth shardflies were destroying more and more of the surroundings.
A few steps from the shop, Dallion stopped. A small, quickly constructed building was in front of him. It was impossible to tell whether he’d find the same people on the inside, or the whole thing was nothing but a fake façade.
“Aren’t you going in there?” Raven asked.
“No.” Some things were better left uncertain. “I changed my mind. There’s somewhere else I need to be.”
Ignoring the noble’s comments, Dallion went back through illusion to the first place—the potion lab. The trip took slightly longer than Dallion remembered. To his surprise, the actual building was still there, mostly intact.
“You’re here to buy potions?” Raven crossed his arms. “I could have gotten you everything this third-rate place could make.”
“It’s not potions I’ve come for. Wait for me here, okay?”
The black-haired shrugged, then summoned a chair for him to sit in.
Reciting the names of the seven Moons, Dallion opened the door and stepped right in. The lab was in relatively good shape, if abandoned. Gone were the apprentices slaving away, as were most of their tools and material components.
Splitting into a dozen instances, Dallion went on. Every few seconds, he’d pause and split again, in case a flutter of shardflies came flying at him from somewhere. Thankfully, no such thing happened.
“Mage,” he said, as he approached the office of the lab’s owner. “Mage?” He entered.
The room was a lot smaller than he remembered. Seated on a rickety chair, slumped over a small old desk, was the mage. A strong stench of alcohol came filled the room, mixed in with tobacco smoke.
“Mage?”
“Mage no more,” the man said. His appearance was in worse shape than the room itself. One could only speculate how long it had taken him to reach such a wretched state, but it was more than a few weeks.
“The Academy rogued you?”
“Ha.” The man let out a sad laugh. “If they had rogued me, at least I’d have something. Now, I’m just a nobody that’s sentenced to remain here. I lost my reputation with this. All the conniving schemers that wanted to take me down had their chance. Everyone important wouldn’t speak to me, and anyone less important doesn’t want to have anything to do with me.” He pushed an empty glass across the desk.
Dallion couldn’t be sure whether he was being offered a drink or expected to fill the glass. Ultimately, he did neither.
“My apprentices left, as did all my customers.” The mage cast a spell, pulling the glass back. As he did, it filled up with murky liquid. “The archmage generously offered me temporary quarters in the apprentice wing. Me!” he tapped his chest with a finger. “To live with common apprentices.”
Would have been better than here, Dallion thought.
“Why not leave the Academy?” Dallion asked. “Temporarily.”
“No one’s leaving the Academy. Not with the war going on. The web of lies is in full effect. One province has fallen, two more are all losing ground. And the idiots in the south are still engaged in their petty squabbles.” He grabbed the glass and downed it in one go. For a moment, the stench in the room got worse. “Mages are too precious to be out in the open. Emperor’s orders. The way things are going, we’ll be ordered to fight.”
So, it’s that bad, Dallion thought.
He’d long suspected it, but this was the first time he’d gotten actual confirmation… if the words of a drunk could be believed. Looking at him, it was clear that the mage was a potion maker and an academic. He was not fit for combat. He’d probably forgotten all his combat spells decades ago, relying on the impenetrable strength of the Academy. His reputation was the most valuable thing he had, and now that was gone as well.
“They’ll be a need of potions again,” Dallion said, using his music skills to add as much joy to his words as possible.
“If the war doesn’t finish us, the blasted shardflies would!” The man tried to take another gulp from his glass, only then noticing it was empty. “You’re the hunter, aren’t you?” he asked. “Your level’s too high to be anything else.”
Here we go, Dallion prepared mentally.
“I guess I must thank you. I wanted to get you kicked out after you sealed off my room in the basement. Truth is you did me a favor. I don’t know what spell you cast on the shardflies, but they didn’t attack anyone here or try to destroy the place. They destroyed lots of buildings around me, but never mine.”
“The swarms came from here?”
“Who knows? Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. All of them appeared from the ground. The idiots thought they could stop them, and they did. The shardflies have been contained, but no one has any idea why they became active in the first place.”
“This whole place might be built on a shardfly nest…” Dallion whispered, more to himself than the mage.
Worst of all, it was all but confirmed that he had caused a stir with his arrival. An empath with nightmares of void was enough to stir any creature. No doubt it had happened subconsciously. Neither Dallion nor the creatures suspected. Even so, something had kept disturbing the shardflies, causing them to drill above ground and lash out at anything in sight.
“And the Academy has no overseer,” he added.
“Overseer.” The mage laughed. “We have enough battle constructs to destroy armies. That’s the problem, though. Everyone is too good at destroying. Those that aren’t affected don’t take the shardflies seriously, and those that are, are already considering how to use that to their political advantage. I did. I even snatched a few buildings from a few people. All of them are now holes in the ground.”
That sounded like something a mage would do. Yet, why hadn’t the Archmage intervened? Even with everyone busy covering up the situation, there was no way he wouldn’t notice by now. Unless, he too was covering up for the emperor. Such a dramatic failure could well be grounds for him to be replaced. Isolating the Learning Hall could well have been the best option from his point of view.
Dallion took out the aetherizer. He still had second thoughts about using it. Nonetheless, he linked the item to the realm and then activated it. The artifact turned purple.
Holy crap!
There had to be hundreds, if not thousands, or vortexes in the twenty miles area surrounding him; so many that he could tell when one started, and another ended, not what level they were. Suddenly, all this seemed more than a natural phenomenon.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this story, consider joining my patreon or check out my other stories on redditserials:
The Scuu Paradox (a Space Opera Sci Fi)
The Cassandrian Theory (a Space Opera Sci Fi)
The Impeccable Adventure of the Reluctant Dungeon (Dungeon Core Adventure Comedy)

I'm guy almost 27 years old from Brazil and I've never had a really close friend. I wish I had the besta friend who will not betray or turn away, with whom it will be possible to motivate and support each other.
I am fond of Youtube From music I prefer atmospheric, I love Soundtrack, etc. I love nature. I like To Communicate on video call or voice call. It would be great to find someone with similar interests.
I'm pretty open minded and very honesty person I will not lie to you, I ask you the same thing, so we can talk about everything and anything and surely, I'm not the kind to judge so you can be yourself around me, bonus points for me, right? At least I would like to think that I'm very understanding and supportive and I value communication a lot so there is that...
A little overview about me:
Loves cat and nature, Technology, Science, Cooking, Meme, Anime, Plants, many more.
Pretty into space related stuff and History
I like movies/series (anime to some degree as well), music, and reading
I'm not a fan of football and many other sports. I also don't drink alcohol or smoke.
That's basically the tip of the iceberg so maybe we can draw some common ground for starters.
It will be cool if we can watch Movie and series together, go to Voice call and video call.
I don't care what you look like. As long as you're able to maintain a dialogue, we won't have any problems.
Since i'm From Brazil My Time zone is (GMT-3)
Please only adult people 22-30 age range (I'm 26)

I'm guy almost 27 years old from Brazil and I've never had a really close friend. I wish I had the besta friend who will not betray or turn away, with whom it will be possible to motivate and support each other.
I am fond of Youtube From music I prefer atmospheric, I love Soundtrack, etc. I love nature. I like To Communicate on video call or voice call. It would be great to find someone with similar interests.
I'm pretty open minded and very honesty person I will not lie to you, I ask you the same thing, so we can talk about everything and anything and surely, I'm not the kind to judge so you can be yourself around me, bonus points for me, right? At least I would like to think that I'm very understanding and supportive and I value communication a lot so there is that...
A little overview about me:
Loves cat and nature, Technology, Science, Cooking, Meme, Anime, Plants, many more.
Pretty into space related stuff and History
I like movies/series (anime to some degree as well), music, and reading
I'm not a fan of football and many other sports. I also don't drink alcohol or smoke.
That's basically the tip of the iceberg so maybe we can draw some common ground for starters.
It will be cool if we can watch Movie and series together, go to Voice call and video call.
I don't care what you look like. As long as you're able to maintain a dialogue, we won't have any problems.
Since i'm From Brazil My Time zone is (GMT-3)
Please only adult people 22-30 age range (I'm 26)

When I was first offered a job a TikTok, I was happy to be working full-time from home. It would help me financially, I hoped; and maybe, in the future, I can move up a little and then leave. I knew I would leave at best in three years, but I did not know it would be at the expense of my mental health.
It is not so much mental health that bothers me, but the despondency I'd feel in the presence of others after having worked at TikTok. The managers have absolutely no empathy and find gaslighting employees to be absolutely normal because we "should be grateful to be working at TikTok", as moderators mind you.
As soon as my training ended, within the first month, my enthusiasm began to die down; and by the six-month mark, the experience molded me into a person who despised humans for the indignity they demonstrated in the TikTok videos and mental abuse exuding from the company who, despite its wax-lyrical about mental health, goes as far as to create what one employee described as a "kill list"; which basically means management and hr conspire to abuse a person until they leave the company. You can read about it here: https://www.ft.com/content/f9f5f344-84df-404a-96bd-0047a94bdf34
Let's assume you aren't on that list, then how do they treat you? Within the first of my tenure at TikTok, KPIs increased by 30% or so, even though they were incredibly insane to begin with. This coupled with the dismal working hours and shift patterns, inevitably took a toll on people, spawning some serious cases: One colleague of mine they were becoming more and more depressed as time passed, and they couldn't do anything because they needed this job. He had mentioned this to the manager of the department, who replied with: "Oh, I wouldn't say it is affecting your mental health", in the most condescending way possible. Literally, two weeks later, this very same manager took a mental-health sick leave, of around a month, because some people did not give positive feedback about her. I informed my colleague about this, and they weren't happy to say the least. But this person said they so scared to complain about clear gaslighting and abusive behavior that they felt they can lose their job. They are right, they'll be "managed off".
So what happens when you complain about a manager? I became friends with another employee who started at the same time as me. She was in contact with the other girls in the training team, and they informed her that the manager who started with them was incredibly rude, condescending and abusive, causing an exodus from the team, but not before they complained numerous times: HR did absolutely nothing. One of the other girls in her team, who started with me, left three months into her tenure; but because she was a girl of steal, she made sure this "piece of shit" got a mouthful. The manager is still at the company.
Some people may put this down to a lack of organization in HR. Although this is true in general, it isn't when it comes to abusing and pressuring people. I witnessed managers who were actually really good to us and contributed to the success of our team get moved away because they were too nice to us, for absolutely no reason and in an instant. It happened to two of our managers, who were finally replaced by the most toxic sycophant I have ever seen. This manager gaslit around 20 moderators in team meetings several times, telling them they do not know what certain words mean and implying that they were stupid. He shouted at people who tried to them that they do things this way because that is how previous managers did it because, when this manager first started, they were looking for bs reasons to get people into trouble. So people tried to explain they weren't doing anything wrong. This manager went as far as making up company rules and shouting at people for not following them. This "person" also lies quite often about what someone did or said.Some people complained but nothing happened to this person.
Any manager who isn't a sociopathic drone is immediately moved somewhere else, fired; or they quit. Most teams within the company hate their managers. One employee once told me they were close to jumping off the desk and battering their manager, and that it took enormous self-control to actually avoid it. Why?We are constantly pressured, lied to, condescended and abused. For instance, if the team complains about the shift patterns, which they have for the almost three years I have been there, the manager pretends to have raised it with the shift team, only to return and tell us we should be grateful for the shift pattern within the company.The managers are intentionally chosen to be this way and forms of socialization are only kept within the teams. In fact, in the office in which I work, they have split the teams into specific areas and employees aren't allowed to gather for too long in the common areas, as they have sensed the discontent of the employees, which may spread to real action if they were to talk about it. This is a common tactic that also occurs in meetings with teams: The teams are split.They want someone to constantly watch and control you, tell you what to leave and use accusatory language all the time. So they want a literal drone
So what happens when we all voice our opinions in a space? Well, last time people voiced their concern for the low-pay and forced work-from-office system, which costs employees transportation money and time. This was in an online team meeting between all the moderation teams. TikTok's response was to organise a meeting with a crypto-bro-looking douchebag. This enormous waste of time proceeded to condescendingly tell us how to spend our money. He said things like: Avoid going to bars and instead, we should buy wine from the store and sit in the park. The message was the following: "Don't live, just exist. Sit in the cold if you have to. Live in a cave. The company's profits are important, and you do not matter. All else is trivial." As douchebag was spewing his inane nonsense, which was in an of itself condescending and belittling, another douche was employed to gaslight people who raised their discontent with the whole thing, in the comments section. I could not believe my eyes and ears. It is the only moment in my life I legitimately felt envious of blindness and hearing impairment.
The worst part of everything is that people who have been treated worse than you never help you out. They are too scared to lose their jobs and often abandon the people that had their backs. It is a highly toxic place.
Why people continue working here for more than two to three years and why people use this app; I will never understand because here's something else: It is a stupidity generator and is specifically designed that way. I do not want to watch humanity decline to depths of ideological hell while I am working in deteriorating conditions, just like my comrades (working people) all around the world, to keep it afloat.
I will be quitting TikTok very soon, as I am way passed my threshold; in fact, I have been incredibly tolerant, even after watching 90% of those who started with me and after me leave the company as soon as they found another job that paid around the same. Career progression is only possible if you exist within the cult, and not desirable in these circumstances anyway. The tenure at TikTok is around 9 months. It is time.
There's much more to say, but I would leave that to us, who you can read here:
https://www.teamblind.com/post/TikTokByteDance-toxic-culture-z7giSDj0
https://metro.co.uk/2022/08/09/tiktok-why-are-employees-unhappy-at-the-worlds-fastest-growing-app-16950852/
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/06/tiktoks-toxic-culture-reviews-on-glassdoor-impact-hiring.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktoks-work-culture-anxiety-secrecy-and-relentless-pressure-11651848638
https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/former-tiktok-moderator-asked-to-leave-up-disturbing-violence/13613958 (this person started after me and left over a year ago)
https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/9/23063350/tiktok-work-culture-stress-investigation-united-states
https://www.thedailybeast.com/tiktok-employees-complain-working-there-is-hell
Edits: A few typos

I broke up with Jay a few weeks ago. We have lots of friends in common and will be at least friendly with one another in our shared social circles. I'm not sure what I want a friendship to look like yet, I'm still processing and want more time.
In the meantime I've had lots of realizations about our relationship and I want to talk to my former metas about them. Stuff like:
"I didn't notice without the benefit of retrospect that he never did grow or change in response to our relationship despite being a champion of intellectual humility...I feel like I was tricked into doing all the change required when we had conflict"
"Wait a second...this guy is incapable of seeing his faults! He can't apologize, he believes that if his intent was good he shouldn't have to take responsibility for the outcome"
"When he fully dismissed my NP's concerns about sexual health that should have been a flag for me D'oh"
Etc..
My gut says that talking to my ex-metas about him would be douchy. He still has 3 partners who I get along with/am friends with so it feels weird not to be able to commiserate ("commiserate" not "vent") with them about this but...what do you all think?

I'm guy almost 27 years old from Brazil and I've never had a really close friend. I wish I had the besta friend who will not betray or turn away, with whom it will be possible to motivate and support each other.
I am fond of Youtube From music I prefer atmospheric, I love Soundtrack, etc. I love nature. I like To Communicate on video call or voice call. It would be great to find someone with similar interests.
I'm pretty open minded and very honesty person I will not lie to you, I ask you the same thing, so we can talk about everything and anything and surely, I'm not the kind to judge so you can be yourself around me, bonus points for me, right? At least I would like to think that I'm very understanding and supportive and I value communication a lot so there is that...
A little overview about me:
Loves cat and nature, Technology, Science, Cooking, Meme, Anime, Plants, many more.
Pretty into space related stuff and History
I like movies/series (anime to some degree as well), music, and reading
I'm not a fan of football and many other sports. I also don't drink alcohol or smoke.
That's basically the tip of the iceberg so maybe we can draw some common ground for starters.
It will be cool if we can watch Movie and series together, go to Voice call and video call.
I don't care what you look like. As long as you're able to maintain a dialogue, we won't have any problems.
Since i'm From Brazil My Time zone is (GMT-3)
Please only adult people 22-30 age range (I'm 26)

Only Europe Please- short note - If you're not into reading or receiving long messages,don't read any further + Please If you don't want to read everything because of my post being too long for you & instead of reading It all - ..skip some parts - find another person to talk to.Let's respect each other and our free time. All people criticizing/making fun of me & other people - will permanently be blocked.Pretty much as people questioning my post and giving me unwanted advice.I'm not here for any conflicts and I know I can't please everyone - I know I never will.. However It's me who should feel comfortable in my new potential friendship & obviously someone interested in being my friend - not the whole world which is why I don't need any advice from people who don't even want to be a part of my life.
Hello guys! 🙂 (read everything before you decide to send me a message) Please send me a message ONLY If you're in the same situation and If your expectations are the same as mine.I want to find like minded people from Europe (Why Europe? Read my post to find out) I'm looking for something permanent
(remember - you can feel lonely even If you're surrounded by others - If there's no emotional bond) and meeting people who never make any time for me & only text me once or twice a week to ask me "what are you up to?" Out of boredom.I don't want to meet people asking others a million of questions like "what's your favorite movie?" Just to give you one word answer and ask you another question "and music? Your favorite song?" I'm looking for something "deeper" & different🙂
What kind of friend would I like to find? Someone to talk to on a daily basis - Someone who needs It & wants It just as much as me
Do you ever feel like an option? Like a stranger to others despite knowing them for months or years & talking to them quite often? Like there's always something and someone more important than you and you just..don't fit in and no matter what you do - your effort is never appreciated?
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I'm always the one texting people immediately (or at the very least trying to) no matter where I am and who I am with (family) others? Never - except for one exception.A really lovely person.
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What are my expectations? I would like to meet someone in a similar situation – why? Because I honestly feel like only a person with the same expectations and a similar outlook on life would get along with me & because I feel more comfortable talking to people like me..Friendless people who need a strong bond - people without friends and without partners..Don't get me wrong…Most people deserve to be happy and It's good to have friends but people who have friends or families in real life are usually more focused on them ( which is completely understandable) & have less time for others + I simply don't want to be replaced by anyone..I kind of envy people who can call others , true friends given I don't have an emotional bond with any of my acquaintances. Whenever I hear that others have friends I simply get sad because (believe it or not) If I had to choose between 20 people to talk to (Acquaintances) and one special person - I'd choose that one special person without any hesitation .. I also want to talk to others on a daily basis mainly because..I want to see someone’s effort & be someone's first choice - not another person to have random conversations with..Why I'd rather talk to people from my continent? Well..Mainly because I would like to see someone I'd get along with - In the far future - face to face :) + I don't want to wait any longer than 6 hours to receive a message - Especially given most people are always available on social media sites & keep their phones in a pocket.Once you receive & open my message - get back to me (If you're as serious as I am & really need a true friend) waiting 6 hours to receive a message is more than enough
I'm by no means criticising people who don't want to talk to others often / People who really are super busy & People who want to find someone to have non important conversations with - I'm aware that not everyone has the same expectations which is why everything you're reading now - is here for a reason.All I'm suggesting is - I don't want anything temporary and I don't want to be the one always giving more than receiving.
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Listen people - I used to ignore being..ignored by others..always being just an option to talk to during tough times or moments of boredom.I was too young to realize that I was never important enough for most people that were a part of my life
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I don't know who needs to hear this but..No one is too busy to make time for you! People make excuses to avoid others because they prioritize everything and (maybe) everyone..over them. It's true that most people really are busy - but It takes only a few seconds to start a conversation (If you're into short messages) and a few minutes (1-10/15) to type a long message Don't let anyone lie to you.Truth is that most people either don't like you enough to make time for you or just simply - feel no need to talk to others often but are they too busy? No..
You don't need to send me a message just to ask me and tell me "Do you really want to talk daily? I like long messages but I can't promise to contact you often" If you really are unsure please don't send me a message.I don't need more acquaintances aka people to talk to - occasionally
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I'm not trying to sound rude - I just don't want to meet new people and get emotionally attached - only to end up being left alone after weeks or months of daily conversations.I'm sick of that never ending story and always meeting people who ghost me without a single word (even if everything seems to be ok) or people who "change priorities" over time & become like strangers…I don't want to go through this ever again.
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Let me tell you one thing – A true friend would never just give up on you for no reason :)
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It’s always possible to find someone to have a random conversation with – someone willing to send you one message once or twice a week..but..It’s almost impossible to find people willing to make time for you.I’m not asking a busy person to make time for me by changing some plans! Absolutely not! I’m here to find someone who wants to talk daily (throughout the day or maybe even night) of one’s own will.Someone looking for the same kind of connection.
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Strong friendships are based on mutual support. One of the best things you can do for a friend in need, is just to be there for them when they want to talk.I often see posts from people who always say how friendless they are because they don't feel loved or appreciated by their "friends" remember! A true friend - someone who truly likes you or someone who wants to get to know you - will always find time for you. 🙂 I'm not really interested in small talk/short messages - I love long and meaningful conversations. It's so easy to find someone who loves abbreviations and questions like "How are you?" How was your day? Or what are you interested in? But so hard/almost impossible to find a person who knows how to keep a conversation going & show others some effort.Building and maintaining friendships takes time and effort.Never allow pursuits or possessions to become bigger priorities than your relations with other people.Close friendships are so important to us because they are so difficult to form + Having friends can help you feel as if you belong to something that brings purpose and connection to your life.
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• I do NOT respond to any „Hey,hmu” or „u want to talk” type of messages (super short messages or messages full of abbreviations – I literally can’t stand abbreviations and acronyms in text messages) ALL messages full of abbreviations will immediately be ignored.I also don't like it when people ignore everything I say in my post or messages and just focus on some question in a certain message or... when they don't ask me any questions themselves.
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• No dirty messages PLEASE.I'm not looking for anyone to flirt with and I'm not looking for a partner either. No NSWF profiles..I always check people's profiles (Even comment history) - To avoid guys,trying to get inappropriate photos from adult women or? flirt with them.I also absolutely don't respond to messages from people whose comments are very rude & obviously - Messages from people who judge other people and use vulgar words to describe them or? Make fun of them.Respect is very important
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• Please only adult people 18-36 age range (I'm 27)
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• I don’t respond to messages I don’t find interesting even If they're long - If after receiving and reading your message I don't feel comfortable or think "I wouldn't get along with him/her" I simply do not respond (what I’m suggesting is that I don’t always respond to someone’s first or second message because..sometimes you just know If you’d get along with someone or not- I’d never ignore anyone after days or weeks of daily conversations though) just because I don’t want to do anything forcefully & because I don’t want to lead anyone on. Some people don't message me back as well and even though It is a bit disappointing I'm ok with that as long as there's no emotional bond - I think it's ok to not respond to someone's first or second message If people just think they wouldn't get along I can't stand being ignored after days or weeks of daily conversation and seeing people changing priorities This is something I don't want to go through ever again for real If I'm really interested in someone's message - I respond within a matter of minutes - max 6 hours (If I'm in bed - just sleeping) you won't even hear from me "I'm too busy" because I know myself and If I really was too busy to make time for others - I wouldn't be here.I either want to talk to someone..or not.I don't want to pretend someone I'm not and always try to find some cheap excuses to avoid others. (unlike some people)
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• Don’t ask me “Can you tell me something about yourself?” If you really want to get to know me - you can ask me questions :) I'm an open book.
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• It would be better If you guys were into emojis - just like me - just to describe your emotions through text. Two emojis - 🙂 and 🙁 are completely enough I just don't like emotionless messages.I also don't like it when people say "yeah" or yea"
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• I want to talk on reddit first (just to make sure If I'd get along with you ) before moving to Discord or some other app
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• Time response matters to me a lot! It matters to me whether I get a message back after one hour,three hours,6 hours or..12 hours and even..after a couple of days..And If you're another person just looking for one day conversation and then? "Disappear" for some amount of time longer than one day to come back and apologize me for being busy - don't even leave me a message.I just want to be honest with you from the start.I'm interested only in daily conversations
Why can’t you see any of my interests listed down below? Because what really matters to me is..who you are (If you’re honest,talkative,understanding,caring and trustworthy – for example) just simply – It matters to me what you’re like! not what you like.Don’t get me wrong – you can tell me what your hobbies are but in my personal opinion,common interests are important mainly when you want to find a gaming buddy (for example) or If you want to meet someone to hang out with in real life and..go bowling for example.What most people seem to care about are other people's interests – I don’t. I get along with other people despite having completely different hobbies but I absolutely don’t get along with people way different than me (different expectations and outlook on life– way different sense of humor or personality traits – It’s just an example) It doesn't make ANY DIFFERENCE to me If you're a gamer or? Someone interested in photography! It doesn't make any difference - > as long as you're talkative and kind and If you also want to find someone willing to stay in your life..for good - But If you're into small talk and all you want is to...type and receive super short messages or If you're here only because you're bored and don't know what to do + If you're a very sarcastic person - I'm definitely not for you!I don't get along with overly sarcastic people turning everything into a joke
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Friendships should be natural – not forced.Both people wanting to be friends should feel comfortable and have something in common. No - not necessarily a similar taste in music or movies but something else..Most friendships don't fizzle out because of people not having the same hobbies but..because they just simply have different expectations when It comes to something important.
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I'm not here out of boredom and trust me - I'm not here to meet as many people as possible.I choose quality over quantity.I higly value myself and my time & Sometimes one person but a person who makes you feel comfortable and understood - is more than enough :)
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We ALL can choose what kind of people we’d like to talk to and maybe even become really good friends with and I? I don’t want anyone to be disappointed.We all have some expectations after all.
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If you really need someone to talk to due to loneliness and If you have time to talk to me daily (throughout the day and maybe even night)I always make time for others.I'm literally always available.I could even stay up all night long only to talk to someone. I’m ready to commit but only If there’s some chemistry between me and someone else.I don’t do anything forcefully.
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If you want to talk to me tell me your story - tell me why you're here, what kind of friend would you like to meet :) Et cetera.Such messages are way more interesting to me than...someone's long list of hobbies.I know! It's unusual on reddit but I don't make friends based on hobbies..I want to meet someone with the same mindset as mine to finally feel understood and get close to someone new.
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You can share your problems with me - I absolutely don't mind "complaining" as I've been through a lot in my life.What do people usually tell you when you tell them that's something's wrong? "Don't complain" or "Life's not over yet - one day you'll be happy" or "There are worse situations than yours" and..obviously "Find a therapist" Life's not a fairytale and sometimes things don't go as planned.Emotions shouldn't be bottled up.I'm sick of people always telling others "everything's gonna be ok" move on " & more..Trust me people - not everyone wants to hear "Just believe in yourself and everything's gonna be ok" Some people take it as reassurance. But others see it as false hope. Imagine being told that things will be okay, only for them to get worse..Do you guys know why telling someone "everything's gonna be ok" Is wrong? Because you can't see the future.You can't guarantee others that one day they'll finally be happy + when It comes to social interactions - We're only responsible for ourselves - not for others & as you guys know people let us down quite often (sometimes even when there's no reason) so instead of telling people how they should move on,forget everything and be happy or asking them to find a therapist - be there for them! Always be willing to listen to them If you really like them or want to get to know them & don't suggest everyone in a tough situation to find a therapist because a therapist won't ever replace a true friend + It's quite normal to be disappointed If people always do something to hurt you.Sharing your hardships with other people in a very similar situation or exactly the same one - is VERY helpful If the other person understands you & wants to start all over by just letting it all out & feeling emotional support instead of always hearing some "positive quotes" or someone saying "Stop complaining let's talk about something else"
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Everyone needs a shoulder to cry on. I appreciate sensitive people who always try to understand others.Empathy is everything
Our world needs more peace 🤗 I've seen a lot of rude comments on reddit.If you don't agree with me - OK but please don't criticize me + Not everyone is here for some advice.
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Listen people - I know how different my post is & I know It won't be easy for me to find what or rather who - I'm looking for BUT I always want to be myself instead of pretending someone I'm not and lying to others.I know It would be easier if (like others) I had less expectations but I I know what I want and honestly? If my post was different..I wouldn't be me.Even If I won't meet a person I'd get along with - that's ok! but don't give me any unwanted advice because I wouldn't change for someone who doesn't even know me pretty much as I wouldn't want to change anyone else.I'm not trying to "fit in" and be like everyone else - just to get more attention.Accept me for who I am or let go - is my motto.I'm not here to argue with anyone and to make fun of others.
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Please - If you're a completely different person than the described type of person I'm looking for (If you love abrreviations,If you don't need an emotional connection,If you're sarcastic and quiet) or If you simply disagree with my post - don't force yourself to send me a message.I want my new potential friendship,to be natural which is why I want you to contact me If your needs are the same - I don't want you to try to change yourself only to please me - Pretending to be someone you're not - is the worst
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No comments please.Only Private messages and chat requests.I don't really like public conversations.I do not respond to comments so If you want to send me a message just do it without saying "You can DM me"

Howdy, folks. Long time Diablo-enjoyer here. I wanted to play just a couple hours of the D4 early access weekend so as not to burn out on the early game pre-release. Instead I became totally captivated by the sorcerer and spent most of Sunday digging through everything she has to offer. So now– hours later–I thought it might be fun to organize my thoughts and share them with you all.
Let’s get a few things out of the way first.
1) I played exclusively on world tier 2. I cannot comment on WT1.
2) I dabbled in the other two classes, but I only dug deep on sorcerer. Everything here is strictly in-class. I’m not making any assumptions or assertions about how sorc stacks up to rogue or barb.
3) I didn’t have time to get to absolutely everything. Someone has to clean up this house, you know! (It’s me. I’m the one that has to clean the house. The cats sure aren’t doing it.)
4) Obviously, everything here only applies to what’s available so far. There’s probably a skill I’m going to talk smack about which, with the right legendary aspect, full 50 point build, and perfect paragon board, turns out to be a certified ripper. That’s fine. We’ll get there when we get there. I maintain that it would be cool if stuff was good more or less from the time you can use it, though, and will be operating under that principle.
5) I will express negative opinions toward some aspects of the design in this, but I have deep and abiding respect for the designers of this game. Every game, for that matter. I dabble in design and even the baby card games for babies that I’ve worked on in my spare hours seem overwhelmingly difficult to make at times. People make games. Real people. I don’t ever want to forget that and, if you choose to comment, I ask you not to forget it either.
6) Furthermore, I have deep and abiding respect for you and your opinions. No kappa. I’m not here to yuck your yum or tell you you’re doing something wrong. If you’re having a good time, you’re winning the game and I salute you.
7) What this all adds up to, is that I have spent a lot of time playing, taking notes on, and thinking about this game and in particular this class this weekend. It’s led me to some moderately firm opinions. If you disagree, I think that’s great. I want you to disagree with me. Let’s talk it out. But please be chill and respectful. If something I say about the game angers you, I would ask that you not damage your mental health and mine taking it out here. Thank you, truly.
So, the sorcerer. Pretty nifty, huh?
The tl;dr is that I think the class is very cool, and the game is very cool, and I had a lot of fun.
But.
There are definitely some things that stand out to me as not well balanced. A couple of skills seem to dominate the pack, and a few are outright stinkers. What I’m going to do is go through each skill individually, then fire off a few random thoughts.
And one more time for the back row: I liked this game and I liked this class. All criticism comes from a place of love, and for the desire to be as good for as many people as it possibly can. I wish to see the game elevated, not torn down.
On to the skills!

BASIC

Sad to start on this note, but I think the sorcerer basics are woefully underdeveloped. Spark, Frost Bolt, and Fire Bolt practically feel like the same skill. All three of them are just little baby bolts of energy that don’t look or sound particularly interesting. And mechanically, the impact of their base damage as well as the upgrades are so minimal that most of the time I’d rather just be dodging while my mana recovers.
Arc Lash though? Arc Lash is where it’s at. The numbers are better–as they should be since it’s a close range skill–but they’re much better. Add it to the wide cleave and this is the beginning of a solid basic skill. Also it’s very visually distinct, I love the orchestra conductor animation with the lash whipping back and forth.
I realize it’s probably too late to make such a sweeping change, but the three bolts could actually, literally be the same skill–call it “Elemental Bolt”--and the upgrades could apply different elemental effects, making room for other, more interesting skills basics. (Yes this would break the current skill->improvement->specialization layout followed by all the other skills, I think that’s OK.)
In any case, the other major failing of the basics is that they don’t generate any mana by default. I would really like to feel a bit of a push/pull dynamic between Basic Spell/Big Spell. And right now, they generate no mana, or very meager mana with the right upgrades, in addition to outputting damage that feels insufficient and upgrade effects that feel marginal. I say bump their numbers (generously), and consider adding some base mana regen. Maybe 3-5? Make me feel like I have a reason to weave them into my attack patterns.

CORE

Overall this crop is much better. Thematically distinct, with solid visuals and good game feel. Numerically though, there are some stark disparities. Starting at the top and going counter-clockwise we have…
-Incinerate feels like the worst of the lot. Channeled spells are always tricky to get right; standing still is dangerous and, for me at least, less interesting than bobbing and weaving. I don’t think Incinerate threads the needle. The damage output and mana cost don’t justify the downside of planting my feet. Looks cool as hell though.
-Fireball is… it’s fireball, you know? It’s a classic, and it’s doing what I’d expect it to do here. Pretty middle of the pack in terms of numerical output, quality of life, and visual flair.
-Frozen Orb is functionally a very similar skill. It has more AoE, the utility of chill, and some razzle-dazzle to the animations. But the damage is so much lower than fireball that it feels lacking. I think it needs a damage bump. (But maybe I just look back too fondly upon my days as an Ice Queen in Diablo 2. xD)
-Ice Shards is the core skill I spent the least time with. I tried it in a couple different packages, but couldn’t find the use case. If I’m being honest, it kinda feels like a Basic after a couple of upgrades, not a Core. If you love this one I definitely want to hear from you.
-Chain Lightning, I’m pretty confident, makes the rest of these spells look like chumps. It is good at clear, good at single target, and the mobility it affords is unparalleled. You just fire it and go. Seriously, look at the numbers it does for the cost, and then remember that you press that button once and can’t miss, provided your cursor was on any monster, and you get to duck dive and dodge while it bounces hither and yon, smiting your foes. I don’t think it’s too strong though, I think it feels perfect. Just what I want from a Core. If the others could be brought up to this level. I’d be extremely happy. One complaint though… why doesn’t it look like chain lightning? ;__; Come on, gimme the classic forked lightning, baby! I miss it so much here.
-Charged Bolts: Another Core that probably looks better if it’s put more on par numerically with Chain Lightning. The shotgun spread of random projectiles is another classic, and being able to get bonus effects for dumping them into a single target at point blank range is pretty cool.

DEFENSE

I think these skills are overall in a pretty good place.
-Flame Shield seems almost there. The burn numbers feel a touch low and the cooldown a touch high. It’s not a “true” defensive skill, more of a mixed use skill. And since at least one solid defensive cooldown seems pretty necessary, I’d like to see this one have a bit more muscle as an offensive skill, or a bit more defensive power added in somewhere. Maybe some bonus resistances? But then it starts to infringe on Ice Armor’s design space, so I’m not sure.
-Teleport is a staple for a reason, and this version is great. The upgrades are fine if you want them but they’re far from necessary. A true one point wonder, a classic for a reason. And I love the VFX. 10/10 no notes.
-Ice Armor is a solid defensive option for any build that’s cool (haha get it cool) with standing still and getting punched in the face. I still think that archetype is going to need more support than is currently available–whether through late/postgame stuff we haven’t seen or through some adjustments to skills like Incinerate–but I’m willing to bet this will feature in many such builds.
-Frost Nova is very, very good. Reasonable cooldown, good area. Making it inflict Vulnerable is great, and lengthening the Vulnerable duration against bosses who are immune to Freeze is a smart move. Relevant in all situations.

CONJURATION

I’m just gonna say it up top; Hydra is here, everyone else can go home now. Details follow.
-Hydra is bananapants compared to the other two. The DPS value is good, both against groups and single targets. The damage to mana ratio is obscenely high. The upgrades are great, especially the one that gives a bonus head when healthy. That’s just 33% more damage, straight up, in almost every situation. Honestly this is the one sorcerer skill in the game that could get nerfed and probably still be good, I think.
-Ice Blades makes me so sad. I find it possible that in the late game/postgame, with enough cooldown reduction and ways to make enemies vulnerable, you could do a really cool thing where Ice Blades makes Ice Blades which make Ice Blades… until you have an Icy, Bladed army slicing up the whole map. It’s certainly the first thing I thought when I read the package over. But right now it’s verging on useless. It moves and attacks so slowly, for a pitiful amount of damage. Even if it turns out to be a build-around late game powerhouse, it needs help now.
-Lightning Spear feels like the actually appropriate power level for this group. Hydra clowns on it numerically, but that’s not Lightning Spear’s fault. My one complaint is that visually, it’s insufficiently distinct from Chain Lightning. I’m not 100% sure but I think they’re actually the same projectile! This look is fine for Lightning Spear, so to restate, please make chain lighting look like, you know. A chain of lightning. ^{___^}

MASTERY

This is a flock of strange ducks to me. In essence, Meteor, Firewall, and Ball Lightning feel like Cores in disguise. They’re just nukes. Blizzard set my expectation that these skills would be utility-based supplemental damage dealers. Kinda like how Conjurations are longer-lasting, fire-and-forget, continuous damage dealers. But ¾ feel like Cores; repeatable nukes to spend most of your mana on. In a vacuum this is fine, my only real quibble is that you have to spend points passing through the cluster of Core skills. And in a world where this is true, I would like to see more options for passives to buy in the Core cluster for builds that evolve to use a Mastery instead of a Core as the bread and butter damage button. (Bread and Butter Damage Button is the name of my cottagecore heavy metal band, btw.) Now let’s look at each skill individually.
-Blizzard does what you want Blizzard to do. (The skill that is, not the development studio; I make no claims as to whether or not Blizzard Entertainment is doing what you, personally, want them to do. ^__). This is the epitome of “nailed it” for this skill group.
-Meteor, man. When I first read the description of Meteor in the Diablo 2 manual I lost my damn mind. Then I cast it, sat there for a minute and said to myself, wait, is that it? Then Diablo 3 gave me the Meteor I’d imagined so many years earlier. Several different kinds in fact! This meteor? It makes the cut. Sorry, that might feel like a tangent, but the A/V, the game feel, the fantasy of Meteor is of particular importance to me. From a usage perspective it seems to fill its own niche, so that’s great, and the numbers seem solid.
-Speaking of Diablo 2, y’all remember Firewall owning the world? Conceptually this skill has never been my favorite. It seems like it should be a defensive or zoning tool, but Diablo enemies have zero sense of self preservation and will happily charge to their death for even the slightest chance to stab you just one time. That’s fine though, I know lots of other people love Firewall as a primary damage dealer. I don’t however feel like the numbers are there. Enemies in this game move pretty fast and I never felt like I found a way to kite enemies effectively for the damage to come out at a reasonable speed, especially for the mana cost.
-Ball Lightning isn’t working for me on any level. It doesn’t move fast enough to reliably hit distant targets; it doesn’t move slowly enough to reliably multi-hit close targets. Also, it’s really infringing on Frozen Orb’s design space. It’s a primary damage dealer in the form of a slow orb that pierces all targets. I actually think this skill would feel a lot better if the basic usage became the immobile version that can proc from one of the legendary aspects. That’s getting close to Firewall’s turf though.

ULTIMATE

Two of these feel like Ultimates to me, one doesn’t. Can you guess which before reading? Try it! Or don’t that’s fine, too.
-Deep Freeze is very, very good. Almost like an upgraded, long-cooldown Frost Nova. Immunity, plus barrier and Chill/Freeze that persist after that, plus (modest) damage in a (huge!!) area. Powerful, versatile skill.
-Inferno also feels appropriate to call an ultimate. Unique VFX with real wow factor, and chunky damage on a long cooldown. Though I do think maybe the vacuum effect should be inherent and that upgrade replaced with something else. It doesn’t feel quite powerful enough without it.
-Unstable Currents leaves me pretty cold. For one, I usually wanna really feel my ultimate when I hit that button. For another, it seems like the lowest impact (and highest variance, thanks to the random spell cast) of the three, but also has the longest cooldown for some reason. I think it’s a really neat idea, But it’s not quite coming together for me, and I don’t know what I would suggest be done with it.

ENCHANTMENTS

There are simply too many of these for me to have spent much time with most of them. But my game sense tells me that, most of the time, Fireball is going to be really hard to beat. Really, really hard. A huge percentage of this game is about clearing packs, and Fireball clears packs. It has limited utility against bosses, but it’s free to switch your Enchantment before a boss fight. At least for now? Maybe in postgame dungeons we’ll be locked in, like a D3 rift? But then again, we’ll get a second slot eventually, so I don’t know. Spending one skill point or getting a point in Fireball from an item right now feels as close to mandatory as anything for Sorcerer.

RANDOM NOTES

Here are a few brain droppings that didn’t fit into the above.
-Why isn’t Stun a searchable keyword in the sorcerer tree?
-Part of the reason I advocated for some inherent mana restoration from Basics is because mana recovery feels a bit too slow. Maybe more than a bit. There are a dozen different knobs that could tune this, from Basics feeling punchier and/or recovering mana, to base mana regen going up, to it being more common on gear, to base spell costs being lowered a touch… You get the idea. I wanna use my cool skills, let me use my cool skills, that’s all I’m sayin’. Probably in the late and postgame this will cease to be an issue, but I’d still like to fire off my main skill a bit more often.
-Please show me the number of points required to reach each tier of skill so I can more effectively pull and replace single points. For example, even after I have two points in Basics, I would like to see on screen somewhere–maybe off to the side, maybe on a tooltip–that it takes a total of two points invested before I can put points in Core skills. (Obviously this is more for stuff way further down the tree, that was just an easy example.)
-We won’t know until later in the game, but is there ever a reason to deliberately mix elements? I’m all for a good Only Lightning, Other Elements Need Not Apply sort of build, but I also like the way D3 had skills and gear that encouraged mixing and matching. Right now it looks like the more you can mono-focus the better, so I’m hoping gear and/or Paragon Boards will open up some builds that combine two or even three damage types.
That’s all I have for now! What do my Sorcerous Comrades think? Satisfied? Underwhelmed? Haha Hydra go brrrr? Counting the minutes until June, but until then, I'd love to hear from you.

Out of all Middle Eastern/North African people, I have come across, it is usually Moroccan women who tend to marry out the most. I understand Morocco is one of the least religious countries in the world. But it does surprise me that it is so common for Moroccan women to marry out to White American/European Christian men. Why is it so common? White Western Christian women very rarely marry out and East and Southeast Asian women generally do marry but they don’t do it nowhere near as much as Moroccan women do.

I already made an angry comment on the video but I want to elaborate on it, so I've copied and expanded on it here. Also a quick disclaimer that I haven't seen the episode itself or episode 3 onward, so feel free to correct me if I get something wrong. Also, spoilers for episode 2 ahead.
The droid that Mechanic Lady sold to Din was R5-D4, the droid Owen was about to buy before he sacrificed himself to let R2-D2 go to Luke instead (she confirms it at 18:55). I guess it makes sense that he would show up with a mechanic who sells defective products and is known to trade with Jawas, but at this point it just feels like a lazy cameo. His only purpose was to sit in the little droid seat like R2-D2 did because that's a recognizable Star Wars thing and to retrieve the Strong Female Character when Din gets knocked out. But that just annoys me. What truly angers me is visible at 18:44. Din is trying to buy a droid for the explicit purpose of exploration, and she's trying to sell him R5 WITH A BD UNIT LITERALLY STANDING THERE IN THE BACKGROUND. To quote Wookiepedia, BD units were "designed to assist with operations in remote and dangerous locations across the galaxy; programmed to be the ideal assistant to researchers or explorers operating alone in the field," while astromechs "were a type of repair droid that served as an automated mechanic on starships." The BD unit was perfect for Din's needs, and the astromech suited her needs well, but she sold R5 to Din because the writers value memberberries over a good story. At least selling a common, defective droid while keeping the rare, valuable one to herself is in line with her character, but that just raises further questions about why Din keeps doing business with her.
But what could have been? With a little bit of rewriting, the episode totally could have worked with a BD unit instead of R5. To start, Grogu wouldn't need to make space for the bulky astromech, so he could have kept his little safety bubble. Next, instead of running back to the ship like R5, he could follow Din and watch him get captured by the spider tank from the shadows with Grogu (you could even have BD realize the danger and have a bit of drama as he tries to warn Din or something). Afterwards, Din could tell BD who and were Bo-Katan is to get her instead of trusting his life to a literal infant. BD may not be able to fly the ship, but we can just get rid of that signal-blocking effect of the atmosphere (because it was only there to make R5 fly the N-1 in the first place) and have him send her a distress beacon, then lead her back to Mando once she arrives.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. I'm going to go donate blood now.

Hi all! Last week I had a very scary experience with a low blood sugar, and I'd like to share my experience and also maybe issue some warnings. To start, I am 26F and have had T1D since I was 4 years old. Overall, my bloodsugars are mostly controlled (A1C~6.5). I am on the Medtronic 770G pump/sensor. However, at the time of this event, I was not wearing the sensor as I had lost my transmitter during travelling a week or so prior and hadn't gotten around to ordering a new one. This is the first time I had an experience like this in my memory. This will be long but it's important to see how easily this can happen and how to avoid mistakes that can lead to it. When I google information, it seems like sometimes a diabetic seizure can just be mild symptoms like confusion, sweating, but mine progressed into a full-blown seizure. (Read https://www.visitcompletecare.com/blog/what-does-diabetic-seizure-look-like/ for some more information.. I feel like I’ve never been formally educated on this in all my years of being a diabetic)
So last Thursday night my blood sugar was high 200s and not going down after bolus, but then I realized I had to change my site anyway so maybe that's why. Changed site, gave a little more insulin, kept checking every 30 mins-1hr or so and it was now in the 300s and not going down. At this point I decided to change my site again and lo and behold, the tube was bent and not even in my skin. Put on a new site, gave the amount of insulin to treat >300 BG since I knew I hadn't gotten any insulin for hours at that point. It was late and I was tired, so I waited until I knew for sure my BG was going down before I went to sleep. It was going down so slowly, but once it hit 240 around 1am I was too tired and knew it would be fine as it's obviously going down. I put a juice by my bedside in the event I overcorrected since I ALWAYS wake up when my bloodsugar gets too low while sleeping.
Well, not this time. The next time I woke up was around 4 am to 4 paramedics in my room. My partner had to fill me in on the details and thanks to him this all turned out okay. So I guess around 3:30am, my partner woke up to me banging my arm on the nightstand (I was laying on my side). He said I was thrashing pretty violently, and while he has no prior experiences with seizures, he assumed that's what was happening. I wasn't coherent and my eyes were open but not looking at anything. So he got up to check on me and I was half hanging off the bed, so he moved me more on the bed and then realized how sweaty I was. That's always a big indication for me that my bloodsugar is very low. So at this point he did figure I was having a seizure, but then also realized my BG was low, but at this point he hadn't put everything together. He checked my BG.. he actually tried to do it in my upper thigh at first because my arms were moving too much. Didn't work though but he did get it from my finger. My meter just read "Call 911" instead of giving a number. So here he said that within 40 seconds he learned low blood sugars can cause seizures! What a great way to learn, through experience lol. He said I thrashed pretty violently for maybe like 5 mins, then eventually it changed to smaller tremors and during this whole time I was in/out of consciousness. So he called 911 as the meter instructed, and medics were there within 4 mins.
Here I should point out, that yes, this would've been a good time for a glucagon treatment. While I do have one, it was expired, and my partner didn't exactly know where it was. So instead of wasting time looking for it, while he was on phone with the operator he put some sugar in my mouth to let it soak into my gums (note- at this point I wasn't fully seizing anymore and I was still on my side, and since the sugar melts he figured it was safe enough to put in my mouth as it wasn't much. I'm still not sure if this is the best idea, but we plan to get a sugar gel in case it ever happens again).
So once the medics arrived, they gave me a glucagon shot (at least we assume, my partner wasn't sure and was overwhelmed) and some glucose gel. After this they checked my BG and it was 20! So it must have been even lower before that. I think the lowest my BG has ever been is like 35ish? I guess at this point I was cooperating but still mostly out of it, and I don't remember this. I started coming to a couple of minutes later and I thought I was dreaming that there were medics in my room. Then I realized I had a terrible, sweet taste in my mouth, and I scratched my nose and felt sugar around my mouth. At this point I realized it was not a dream, and I am being treated for a bad low. I started communicating with the medics and my partner at this point, but no one necessarily told me everything that happened. Then they gave me an IV of some clear glucose liquid. I remember it took awhile for them to find a good vein and I also remember not feeling it at all. Then they started asking me questions (Name, date, who's the president, etc) and I was able to answer. They said this IV is supposed to raise my BG really fast and then I need actual food to keep it up. To give you an idea, it went up to 350 while getting the IV, and within a couple minutes it was already back down to 240ish. I had a couple of granola bars (I was starving at this point, wanting to do a low binge). At this point they also explained I had a seizure due to the low blood sugar which definitely surprised me. Medics stayed a couple more mins to ensure I was stable and offered to take me to hospital, but at that point I was all there and my BG started equilibrating, so I declined. I talked to my partner for a little bit and he gave me the rest of the details about how he woke up, the actual seizure, how my dogs would be terrible medical alert dogs because they slept through the whole thing (lol), etc. Then I quickly fell asleep.
The next day I woke up with a BG of 460 so my day already started off feeling lovely hah. But once that was fixed, I was physically exhausted and had a headache all day.
Now that it’s been a few days, I’ve had time to reflect about all this. It was weird the first day or two because I didn’t remember or wasn’t conscious for the worst of it. So it almost didn’t feel real? Or didn’t feel that scary, even though I knew it was a scary situation in general. I’m very thankful my partner woke up and was able to help because of course we don’t wanna think about the worst that could’ve happened.. What really scares me is if I was alone that night for some reason. We’ve lived together for 2-3 years now, but before that I lived alone (no roommates) for 2 years. Over the years I’ve been with him, he has of course become familiar with diabetes and understands most of the signs of high/low bg (like the sweating from that night), and I’m also glad I had taught him how to check my bloodsugar. He also knew it was best to get any kind of sugar in me as possible, and we had previously discussed that you can use plain sugar because it melts and absorbs into the gums. However, we had never formally discussed an action plan if something like this happened, probably because I never thought about it happening like it did. Like he knew about the existence of the glucagon, but didnt know where I kept it or how to use it if he had found it.
Another thing that could’ve prevented this was me wearing my sensor. I must admit that I go through phases of wearing it for awhile, then not wearing it for a while, and it cycles like that. I want to reiterate that every other time I’ve gotten a low bloodsugar while sleeping, I wake up. Usually in a puddle of sweat, starving. And to be honest, it doesn’t seem like the issues the night before should’ve caused me to drop that low. I didn’t think I’d given myself too much, and it was previously dropping very slowly. I guess it just dropped so fast that I didn’t wake up in time? So I guess I put a little too much trust in my body. The day after this happened I ordered a new transmitter, which should arrive tomorrow. But each night I am so anxious about going to bed, afraid it could happen again. So I have a feeling that going forward I will be much better about wearing the sensor, no matter how annoying it is.
So after all this, I guess I have some advice for my fellow T1Ds:

1. Make sure your friends, family, partners, etc. know what to do in a situation of either low or high blood sugar. Make sure they know your tells, let them know where you keep snacks/juice, etc. I’ve always been really good about doing this, especially if I meet people in a new situation where no one knows me. In addition, having a formal plan for anyone you may live with, telling them how to use glucagon, etc (this is where I realized the obvious shortcomings of not having a formal plan).
2. Keep a glucagon on hand in an easy to find place, not expired, and make sure someone knows how to use it!
3. On that note, keeping a glucose gel is also good, as it may be easier for someone to administer. Also much easier to carry around with you in pocket/purse. You can also encourage people you’re around a lot to keep some on them. I’ve never actually used these but will definitely get some. If someone is unconscious/unresponsive due to a low BG, this is a very easy way to get sugar into them safely, instead of trying to get them to eat or drink something.
4. Wear the damn sensor if you have one. They’re annoying as hell but I suppose they can truly be life saving, especially if you live alone!
5. When in doubt, just call 911 (or your country-specific emergency line). Low blood sugars are common occurrences that are easy for them to treat. I didn't even have to get an ambulance or hospital bill and was fully treated at home. But also, of course go to the hospital if you need to!

If you stuck around this long, thank you for reading! I hope your nights are full of good bloodsugars!