A new era is under way in Green Bay, and there's a lot to cover about this offseason. First, let's set the stage.
Key Signings:
KR Keisean Nixon- the return dynamo who renewed my will to live after watching Amari Rodgers play football. Signed again on a 1 year deal worth up to $4m. And he figures to have a larger role on defense this season. This was one of the biggest wishes for packer fans this offseason, as it finally shows a dedication to building the ST unit.
S Rudy Ford- he had himself a nice 2022 and got re-signed for his efforts. It's a one year deal, and he will compete for the starting safety spot as of now.
CB Corey Ballentine- a reserve CB who I will always have a soft spot for due to his tragic draft night story. Ballentine has been re-signed and will compete for snaps in an unsettled secondary.
S Dallin Leavitt- a Rich Bisaccia re-signing. Leavitt was a quiet killer last season as a special teams ace, and he returns in that role this season.
OT Yosh Nijman- a developmental prospect that has blossomed into an serviceable swing tackle, I thought Nijman would get more on the open market than his RFA tender price. He will be back with the Pack in a LT2 and RT2 role for 2023.
Key Departures:
DT Dean Lowry- Lowry gave the Pack his best and we appreciate him, but his ceiling was evident and achieved. Devonte Wyatt was drafted as a high upside replacement. Lowry signed with the Vikings on a 2 year deal.
WR Allen Lazard- Aaron Rodgers's latest security blanket, Lazard is rejoining Rodgers on a 4y, 44m deal with the New York Jets. A quiet, consistent performer for the Packers throughout his tenure, Lazard will continue to be a sure-handed possession receiver in New York, transforming the slot position previously occupied by Elijah Moore into more of a big slot. He will also continue to mug people in the run game.
TE Robert Tonyan- Bobby Tonyan heads south to Chicago to be TE2 behind Cole Kmet. Packer fans love Tonyan for bringing pride back to the position in GB, and I honestly feel bad for him. He likely missed on his chance for a big pay day after tearing his ACL in 2021 and having a down year coming back. Now he's pushing 30, but he still provides excellent hands for the position and a great work ethic. Godspeed, buddy.
DL Jarran Reed- the big man returns to Seattle this season on a 2 year deal. Reed was just about what we expected in Green Bay- not great, not bad. He was a placeholder in a spot that Wyatt hopefully can take over.
Free Agents yet to be signed:
WR Randall Cobb, S Adrian Amos, TE Marcedes Lewis, K Mason Crosby
All members of the old guard. Cobb recently had surgery, and is a contender to rejoin Rodgers in NY. Amos had a down year, but could still have some left in the tank. I'm guessing he has an offer from GB and is weighing his options. Lewis also could be weighing his options between retirement, the Jets, or sailing into the sunset where it all began for him in Jacksonville. Mason Crosbys wife seemed to confirm on social media recently that the Packers have little interest in re-signing their all time leading scorer. Crosby made some clutch kicks for us over the years, and if this is the end, the Silver Fox will never have to buy a beer in Titletown again.
2022 season review: Record: 8-9 Oh man. 2022 was the year it all came crashing down. Green Bay tried to keep its veteran core together for a few years, appeasing Rodgers and navigating the salary cap reasonably well. But they never achieved that brass ring. Minus Davante Adams and working with a broken thumb, Rodgers struggled the most he has since his inaugural season as a starter. It's now time to address Rodgers in this post; I could write an entire entry solely on Rodgers and this past season, but I'll leave it at this: Aaron is my favorite football player of all time. He led the Packers to their greatest stretch of sustained excellence since Vince Lombardi roamed the sidelines, often with depleted rosters around him. In my opinion, hes the most talented QB to play the game. It seems a majority of Packer fans were ready to move on from the man and soured on him this offseason. Personally, I think he will be an MVP contender in NY next year and still love him. But it was time. The Jordan Love era needs to happen, if only for the front office itself needing to justify their faith in the Love pick. Rodgers and the Packers were operating on different timelines the past few years, stuck somewhere between going all in and resetting. The front office has put all their chips in on Jordan Love.
The defense was expected to be a top 5 unit, but regressed heavily. Joe Barry was under scrutiny all year long, seemingly incapable of putting his plethora of first rounders in positions to succeed. A late season push did just enough to save his job (apparently).
Favorite win: Dallas Most frustrating loss: Detroit, week 18
Rodgers's exit also raises an interesting thought: will we see the True Matt LaFleur Offense this season? Offensive deficiencies have been blamed on Lafleur himself or Rodgers's hesitancy at transitioning from a traditional west coast offense to a Shanahan-esque, motion based attack. The answer will be uncovered this year, with Jordan Love having 3 years of experience in the scheme and a first round pedigree. As a Love truther in the pre draft season who hated the pick for the Packers, I am fascinated. This pick will make or break Gute's and Lafleur's tenure.
Aside from the quarterback situation, there are lingering questions concerning LaFleur's ability to lead the team in general. The Packers have consistently laid an egg in one game every season of his tenure and have come up short in the playoffs, with some head scratching decisions rearing their head in crunch time of big games (the end of the Bucs NFC championship the most glaring). I also have questions on his staff hirings/retentions. LaFleur hired 2 dogshit ST coordinators before making the obvious choice of Basaccia. He also chose to retain Joe Barry, noted football terrorist, as defensive coordinator. I've read rumblings that Gute has more say over the staff than the head coach, which is unconfirmed but concerning. I don't mean to dump on LaFleur in this piece, only to emphasize how big of a year this is for him. I think his scheme is sound and the guys play hard for him. With Rodgers gone, I think we see less RPOs and inside zone handoffs to AJ Dillon out of shotgun. The offense will have more identity. But if there are 2 more years without the playoffs in Green Bay, the Cheeseheads will advocate for a new coach.
2023 Draft:
Positions of need: S, TE, WR, DT
Round 1, Pick 13: Lukas Van Ness, Edge, Iowa With the world expecting Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Gute stuck true to his type and drafted athletic freak LVN out of Iowa. Van Ness profiles as a Rashan Gary clone, with a high RAS score and unrefined repertoire of pass rush moves. If he works out like Gary, this is a massive hit. In the pre draft process, the only guy who could have realistically been there for GB that I had above Van Ness was Peter Skoronski. He wasn't there, and there was no doubt in my mind Gute was going for LVN afterwards. He'll rotate with Gary and Preston Smith this year, and will kick inside on certain packages. He makes Smith expendable in the future.
Round 2, Pick 42: Luke Musgrave, TE, Oregon State Musgrave has the size and athleticism to be a game changer at tight end. His tape was short but encouraging. His biggest questions are durability and how he will develop, given his late breakout and immediate injury afterwards. My comparison to his playstyle was Travis Kelce, and if he can approach even 70% of Kelce's production in a season, this is a great pick. The biggest hole on the roster was TE, and I have a feeling Gute got the top one on his board.
Round 2, Pick 50: Jayden Reed, WR, Michigan State The process of this pick was nerve wracking. I was one of many fans pounding the table for Brian Branch, the S out of Alabama. When Gute traded down instead, I was telling friends I hoped he took Jayden Reed, and that's what happened. Reed is smaller receiver who plays bigger than his size on contested catches. He carried the Michigan State offense last year after Kenneth Walker jumped to the NFL. My comparison for him is Tyler Lockett. In Green Bay, Reed will take over the slot role, and I expect him to see around 60% of offensive snaps.
Round 3, Pick 78: Tucker Kraft, TE, South Dakota State Another tight end added to a barren room. The former Jackrabbit is similar to Musgrave in a lot of ways- big, athletic, and a willing albeit unrefined blocker. Kraft's addition along with Musgraves could push the Packers into more 22 personal this season, something LaFleur wants to run but hasnt had the personnel for, and I would not be surprised to see him outsnap Musgrave if he develops quickly. I'm really hoping this is the pick that breaks Green Bays 3rd round curse (seriously look it up its so bad).
Round 4, Pick 116: Colby Wooden, Edge, Auburn A former 4 star recruit at Auburn, Wooden collected 17 sacks as a 3 year starter in the SEC and showed inside/outside versatility. He shows an ability to rush with speed and power, but is inconsistent in his pad level and technique. He anchors well in the run game and showed great gap discipline. I don't see him getting many snaps this year, but if he does I think he takes Kingsley Engabare's role on run downs.
Round 5, Pick 149: Sean Clifford, QB, Penn State A perplexing pick until I saw this man somehow has a 9 RAS. Clifford is an experienced college starter who plays with a clear understanding of his role and a passion for the game. My issues with him were accuracy, arm strength, pocket presence, and decision making. You know, playing quarterback. I did not give Clifford a draftable grade and would have preferred Jaren Hall or Max Duggan. But this is really nit picking over a 5th round pick who was drafted to be a career backup. If the staff sees something in him, I'll give it a chance.
Round 5, Pick 159: Dontayvion Wicks, WR, Virginia A 6'1, 206 lb vertical threat, Wicks was inconsistent in his career at Virginia. If he replicated his 2021 production last year, he might have found himself as a day 2 pick. Alas, a new offense and drops led to his availability at this spot. Wicks has a good release package and the ability to stack DBs and get vertical. His tendencies as a body catcher led to drops last year, and he doesn't provide much after the catch. With his profile, he'll be a WR4/5, but could be a special teams ace very early in his career.
Round 6, Pick 179: Karl Brooks, DL, Bowling Green A bit of a tweener, Brooks is a high motor, high effort pass rusher. He flashes great technique and seems to rush with a plan. He can get washed out in the run game, and will need to commit one way or another to defensive end or defensive tackle. He graded very high from PFF, so that's something. To get on the field, he'll have to show more consistency and ability when anchoring down in the run game.
Round 6, Pick 207: Anders Carlson, K, Auburn Apparently, Mason Crosby's replacement. Anders is the brother of Las Vegas kicker Daniel Carlson, who's pretty damn good. There is a connection with Basaccia there, who's known Anders since high school. I wasn't encouraged by his stats at Auburn, but I'm not going to pretend to be an expert in scouting kickers. If Basaccia says he's that dude, then that dude he is.
Round 7, Pick 232: Carrington Valentine, CB, Kentucky Valentine is a WR convert with a long, slender frame. He is at his best in press man, where he has a variety of ways to get hands on the receiver and reroute him. Unfortunately for Vallentine, Joe Barry hates press man and will kill my family if I suggest it again. Valentine's frame can lead him to get bullied by bigger WRs at times, but he is physical at the catch point. He also brings experience as a productive kick returner, something that could be helpful in the future or even this season if the staff wants to keep Nixon fresh for defensive snaps.
Round 7, Pick 235: Lew Nichols, RB, Central Michigan A big back with some intriguing traits, Nichols enjoyed a very productive 2021 before injuries hampered his 2022. Nichols has good vision, contact balance, and power as a north-south runner. He was productive catching out of the backfield, but wasn't asked to run many routes beyond that. His biggest hurdles in the NFL are going to be elusiveness and speed. He lacks both, but should be a decent backup. For the Packers, they used their RB3 less than maybe any team in the league last year. This will be the Jones&Dillon show again in 2023.
Round 7, Pick 242: Anthony Johnson Jr, S, Iowa State Johnson Jr is a converted cornerback who plays with rare physicality for someone of that description. He did his best work in the box or in the slot at Iowa State, and that may be where the Pack will try to get him some snaps this year. He can be over aggressive in his pursuits at times and take bad angles, but that is coachable. Given the state of the safety room, the 7th round rookie may find himself starting some games this season.
Round 7, Pick 256: Grant DuBose, WR, Charlotte DuBose comes from UNC Charlotte, where there apparently is a football team, and he was 2nd team all C-USA last season. DuBose has excellent size at 6'2, and I love his agility on in-breaking routes crossing the face of safeties. He has experience both outside and in the slot, and is an interesting addition to the WR battle at the bottom of the roster, which is going to be highly competitive. It may come down to how good he can be on special teams. Coaches and teammates rave about his work ethic and love of football, and he worked at Walmart while keeping himself in shape during the Covid year. I'm optimistic he can carve out a role for himself and make the team.
Overall, Gutekunst drafted for need at times in this draft, but still stuck to picking guys that fit his type: big, athletic, and versatile. My biggest shock was not taking a safety until the 7th round, but I think it just never lined up with his board. There was an obvious effort to surround Love with talented pass catchers, which is a breath of fresh air from this team. I was surprised that they didn't take a single offensive linemen, given this is almost certainly Bakh's last year in the green and gold and question marks surrounding some of our young guys, but we drafted 3 linemen last year and the staff may have high hopes for Zach Tom to be the next left tackle. The franchise has earned the benefit of the doubt when it comes to scouting and developing OL.
All told, 2023 is the most excited I've been for a Packer season in a few years. There are so many unknown variables surrounding the team, from Jordan Loves development to LaFleur's offense to Joe Barry's pending glue eating scandal. Media pundits have them ranked somewhere between 20 & 26 in the league hierarchy heading into the year. Personally, I'm a little higher on the Pack, and they will shoot up these rankings if Jordan Love delivers. There's a lot on Love's shoulders. This is the season we've been waiting for with baited breath for 3 years, the post-Rodgers era, and now it's here, for better or worse.

TLDR: Zenmarket has become increasingly anti-consumer and more "oh, that's too bad" in its customer service.
I have been using Zenmarket for over two years now (purchased hundreds of items) and was really satisfied with their service at first. Things start going downhill last year though.
Previously, if a price drop/ sale occurred on a purchase item after it was added to cart (and the discount was still active at the time of purchase), the difference would be automatically refunded to you. No need to request
Gradually months later , I noticed that became, I had to request refunds for the price difference.
Finally, that turned into, no refunds on price changes since you implicitly agree to the price of the item when you add it to the cart. For example, you add an item to your car that is 5,000 JPY. After it's added your cart, it goes on a time sale and is discounted by 1,000 JPY. Zenmarket does not return the 1,000 JPY discount back to your account. They POCKET that discount!!!!!!!!!! So, in addition to their 300 JPY service fee, which is what they ADVERTISE as their cost for serve and 3.5 % fee to add funds via credit card or PayPal, they POCKET any discounts that occur in your purchases items.
I guess they're technically right that it's implicitly agreed upon, and now it's supposed to be in their updated terms of service, but this practice feels scummy and anti-consumer.
The issue can get even worse (I didn't think it could). Ever since I noticed these changes, I delete items from my cart and re-add the to make sure the price difference is accounted for. Well, this time, I deleted an item from my cart. Usually, that gets the whole cart re-evaluated for price differences. Not this time. I even messaged them before the item was purchased (I had already paid at that point as I had been in a hurry to get the sale price). Got the now usual, that's our policy now and hope for your understanding line.
Also, last year, I ordered two collectibles, each with about 25,000 JPY or so at MSRP. They arrived without their item boxes!!!! The items arrived in the shipping only wrapped bubble wrap....stacked on top of each other to save space, DESPITE my request that items be shipped in as many boxes as needed (that was my selected shipping option). When I pointed that out, I was again, asked for my understanding.
When I informed them of that issue, I was told that I hadn't left a comment to not throw away the item boxes. I was not offered satisfactory compensation/ resolution for the issue and ended up repurchasing the items at Buyee (yes, that meant I bought the same items, twice). If you are a collector, make sure you put in a note/ message to not throw away item boxes.

I released this on the forums but no one cares they only cared about hypixel being down :/
So do YOU want to get rich and start lowballing? Well you came to the wrong place. But at least you will get a laugh or 2. So sit back and enjoy this thread ( I should probably go study but that can wait )
The preparations!
Alright so when you start you will need some COINS, this can be a daunting task to get with usual money making methods. Solution? You can't sell your 3/4th shadow assassin and juju bow because then you will lose a lot of damage so you should start selling your talismans, They are usless and make good money if you sell them. After this you should have around 4m coins! Onto the next step
The building
Your island looks awful! But taking the time to fix it will take too much time that you could spend using AOTE in the hub. So you MUST build one of those lowballing areas with price ranges ( that no one cares about ) with lowballs in ranges of ( > 25m ) ( < 25m ) ( > 500m ) this will insure that it does nothing at all except make the seller keep social distancing with you
THE LOWBALLING
Now is the time where you make the coins from selling those talismans back. You will start advertising the coins you have in the format of ( I HAVE 4M COINS TO LOWBALL VISIT ME, 1M COINS +) and soon enough you will get people that visit you, now it's time for your smartness to shine, only take items that should sell quickly, no pets, no enchanted weapons, no enchanted armour. If you find someone who doesn't have an item you want kick them from the island INSTANTLY, now if they still insit on selling an item take it as a lowball of 40 percent of the item's value under lbin. So for example if an item sells for 45 million coins ask for 20 million coins. True story btw wanted to offer boots worth 45m to a lowballers and they offered 25m just to take it back as they thought it had legion V instead of last stand V.
And that should be it! If you need any more help make sure to bump this post because I don't care about you needing help and I just want views. ( Also comment what else I should sh*tpost about )

My mother runs a family business that has been around for 96 years. It’s well embraced by the community but it’s had some issues over the last few years. They consolidated from 2 stores to 1 store during covid but still have expenses that are too high for 1 location. Recently one of their main suppliers stopped accepting credit cards for inventory orders which means they are losing 30 days in regards to managing their expenses. They are in a position now where for the first time ever they may be late on their AMEX payment. The bill is due tomorrow and it’s $220,000. They are scrambling to figure this out because a late payment could mean higher rates, damaged credit, and also could impact the valuation of the company if they look to sell.
I don’t work for the business and fortunately do well doing my own thing. I have a home equity line of credit that I could tap to lend them the money so they can make this payment. My mom hasn’t asked me, but her operations manager reached out to me.
What should I do? Should I get involved? Or stay away? I want what’s best for my mom, this is her livelihood and it’s her family legacy, but it’s going through a tough time. She’s in her mid 70s and not paying as close attention as she used to. She’s also too nice to let anyone go.
I’m considering doing it, but along with it having some conditions of forcing some change. They need to reduce staff, reduce hours for representatives in the store, and they need to raise some prices.

I'm trying to sell off my Mario Golf World Tour and Yo-Kai Watch 2: Bony Spirits since I recently acquired them in a trade and don't really have any interest in them. World Tour is CIB, but Yo-Kai Watch 2: Bony Spirits has everything except the medallion that it came with sadly. I'll include pictures of them both below!
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https://imgur.com/a/JiC0xEt
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I'm hoping to sell Mario Golf for $60 and Yo-Kai Watch 2 for $50, but I'm basing that off Price Charting and sold eBay prices, so I'm open to offers.
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What I'm mostly looking for though is Pokemon games and cases! I need a case for Pokemon Pearl, and cartridge only for Pokemon Platinum, since I have the cart for Pearl, but no cart for Plat. The rest I'm hoping to get CIB so I can finish my collection! I don't need any of the 3DS games since I completed those, and I don't need any Switch games since I'll focus on those in the future since they're still in production. I only need DS and older like GBA, and GB, EXCEPT for Pokemon Diamond, Pearl (I do need the case though!) and Pokemon Black! I'll pay for those through PayPal G&S.
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Send offers my way along with pics and I'll look over them :) Thanks everyone!
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Hi,
24, M, East Midlands
not sure if this is the correct subreddit but I am kind of lost atm.
in April my landlord said she was selling the property I live in now, and a few days ago I was told that I was being made redundant also.
this has made me seriously think about how I do not have any real marketable skills, left college with a D*D*D* diploma in a subject i have no interest in and dropped out of uni after a year. However, i am extremely interested in IT/ Cybersecurity but i have no idea how to actually get started with it.
is there a way to do a level 3 diploma as an adult or do i need to do something else first? i can't seem to find any resources on google for this.
part of me was thinking of joining the army, having been in the cadets as a youth it wouldn't be something totally foreign to me and would allow me to get a drivers licence, HGV license + some certifications under my belt in the field i am interested in and still earn whilst doing so.
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does anyone have any advice on how to get higher education as an adult? has anyone joined the army in recent years? what was that like? did you have to store all your stuff etc?
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sorry if was a bit rambly, any advice is appreciated

I have PoA medically and financially over my single mom (74 years old). She just had a stroke. She is on a fixed income of SSN with no other income. Her SSN is well below the poverty line.
She is going to need to be in an assisted living facility and therefore, her home is her only asset which still has a mortgage but she has some equity there.
My question is basically around credit card debt she has. She has close to 20k in unsecured credit card debt. Her SSN income is 1K a month. When I sell her home, she will net probably 120K. That isn't going to pay for assisted living very long but then she would need to apply for title 19 assistance.
Is there any reason why I should pay another cent towards her credit card debt. I know it will ruin her credit but I have no idea why at her age she needs credit at all. But I feel like I might be missing something.
TL:DR: Aging parent going into assisted living, any reason to pay unsecured credit card debt moving forward?

About me: I am a single person in my early 30s. I work in tech and make £70k pa before tax. My monthly take home is ~£3600. I have a chronic illness, but can do my job mostly working from home and the condition is currently managed fairly well. However, even though I love my job, working 5 days a week full time may not be sustainable for me in the long run. If my health deteriorates in the future, I need to be prepared so that if I become unable to work FT or at all, that I could still live well and enjoy life. I want to be prepared for this but I’ve never been very financially savvy before and I’m learning a lot from groups like and this and reading MSE etc. I’ve taken a few steps lately which feel like a start: - tracked down pension pots and put all of them except the current one into PensionBee - moved all my debt into 0% interest options and started saving to pay it all off by June 2024 - opened a chip instant access account and started to put away the money needed to pay off 0% card debt when the periods expire - opened a first direct monthly saver 7% - paying the NI on incomplete years
About my parents situation: I’m currently paying my parents mortgage which went from 0.25% last summer to 4.5% this week, so the last payment was ~£2000 which is awful but this is hopefully temporary. I got some excellent advice from ukpersonalfinance a few months ago on how to sort out my parents mortgage problem, and have now helped them understand that they could sell our current home and still buy a lovely home a bit further out and become mortgage free. They might even have about £200k left (after stamp duty and fees etc). This depends on the eventual sale price and also if they find something they like on the lower end of their budget. They offered to give me £50k towards a flat deposit which is very kind but I’m not sure if I should accept it. Being immigrants my parents did the best they could, and they have been lucky with the house being worth ~5-6x what they bought it for; but they took some bad advice and made some poor decisions with the mortgage and one is on DLA and the other has been self-employed with no private pension. Both will get state pension eventually.
My current wish list/ vaguely informed plan: - buy a flat for myself in London close to work, ideally a 2 bedroom so I have a guest room/study or could even rent a room. Ideally this is without accepting the £50k from my parents - explained in the next point - I am thinking to move with them to their new place in the first instance, support them there and save for my flat deposit myself at the same time. Then with their £200k I want to help them to invest it and generate an income to support themselves so I won’t have to support them from my salary, which in the long term might be better than accepting the money for the deposit.
So my questions are: 1) Do you think my current ideas are realistic/wise? 2) What can I start doing immediately (if anything) to put myself on the path to FIRE? 3) Did any of you become disabled young? If so, what would you advise me to do to make sure my health condition doesn’t impact my FI? 4) What is the best way to utilise my parents’ £200k to make them FI so they won’t need to depend on my income forever more? Even when they both get state pension it won’t be enough to run their new house on.
Sorry for the long post, but any advice would be really helpful here and much appreciated. Thank you so much in advance!

No, this is not a shitpost. I mean it. Genuinely.
Anyways, welcome back to yet another simp post by user 3rachazone! I'm your resident Joshua Hong and Han Jisung simp (I just repeated this word again but it's fine, please ignore <3) and today, I'd like to introduce you to yet another man for whom I fell badly. So badly I ended up scraping my knee in the process.
He is known as the angel of his group, and he is exactly like Joshua in every way possible (I'm starting to wonder if I have a type LMAO). He used to go to church, plays the guitar, never gets angry (his fellow member has seen him mad but never angry), is the epitome of a gentleman and treasures his mother to death (he literally said that if smthg were to happen to him, the last words he’d want her to hear are, “I love you”💔). Oh, and did I mention that he's addicted to cereal?
He is Jacob Bae, the one and only bae (pun intended... I guess?)
Jacob is the lead vocalist of The Boyz and was born in Toronto. Or precisely Mississauga (cuz he’s a big babie who gets triggered if you say the former ashgfcbhj). He had a lot of interest in various activities, particularly sports. Back in school, he'd participate in volleyball, basketball, rep basketball and the like but his interest could never really be sustained in just one. Eventually, he began taking vocal classes in order to become a musician and also tried to learn how to play the guitar but gave up on that too.
He’d planned on taking a year off after graduating high school but before that, auditioned for Loen Entertainment. However, since he wasn't good at dancing, he was rejected. But the company said they'd like to see him again so that was how he found himself learning how to dance in Korea. He disliked that too and called his mom who rebuked him for wanting to give up so easily when it hadn’t even been that long (spoke fax, no print👏 and I thank her for that cuz then her son wouldn’t be who he is today and I wouldn’t have discovered him and consequently wouldn’t have fallen in love with him (/j). To him, however, that’s an entirely different story🤚)
On a srs note, what rlly struck me with this knowledge was the fact that it wasn't the drastic culture change from Canada to Korea that affected Jacob or made him cry (he was actually pretty good at adjusting which again is awe-inspiring). It was the fact that he felt like he wasn't good enough at dancing. But this man worked so hard to hone his skills that he performed Billie Eilish's Bad Guy along with Juyeon, Changmin and Sunwoo on 1Million's YouTube channel which I think is an impressive feat for a non dancer. Not to mention that Changmin himself praised him and said he was proud of him for improving.
Another video I'd like to share with y'all is his cover of Sunroof by Nicky Youre and dazy. As someone who receives their daily dose of serotonin from this song, I think he did full justice to it, though I will admit I wish it was longer xD
Oh, and if this wasn't enough, here's his fancam from Post Malone's I Like You performance. It's such a feel good one, where he's all smiles and vibing to the song but also just slaying hard with those moves, if ya get what I mean? Like he srsly wasn't kidding when he said he was aiming for a spot in TBZ's dance line.
Apart from possessing some real good dancing skills, Jacob also happens to have a really sweet voice. Like everytime I listen to him talk, I find myself immersing in whatever he says. Basically he could talk abt the most mundane thing in the entire universe and he’d still have my full attention. And when he sings, I find myself levitating and asking myself if that's what you hear outside the gates of heaven?
Ladies and gentlemen, presenting Mr. Sweet Voice's cover of 'I.F.L.Y' by Bazzi! (disclaimer: Please exercise caution while watching this video cuz he looks ethereal in this and his visuals might blind you❗️)
Now, now... I could've decided to share the studio version too but there's smthg incredibly serene and delicate abt a man wearing all white and sitting on a bench, playing the guitar among a field of flowers, smiling prettily and singing abt how there's no other girl for him and that the one he likes is the only one for him and that what he's actually trying to say is that he rlly loves her (he’s so cute he replaced the word ‘fucking’ with rlly🫠 and um… more on that later)
Funny story: I made a (former) friend of mine watch this video and after it was over, I couldn't stop giggling like an idiot and was like, "OMG HE'S SOOO GOOD DID YOU SEE HOW MUCH I WAS HYPERVENTILATING???!!"
And she squealed back with equal fervour, "AAHHHHH NO CUZ I WAS TOO BUSY FOCUSING ON HIM!!!" which is, well, understandable lol.
Other song covers of his which I'd highly recommend are: Heartbreak Anniversary (with Sangyeon) by Giveon, Wherever You Are by One Ok Rock, and Becoming an Adult by Kim Na-young (listening to this one made me realise how much I'd kill for him to cover Loser by Cheeze😭😭)
He was also nice enough to treat us to his soothing vocals by releasing his mixtape 'Kindle' on his birthday! All the songs are so chill, warm and worth listening to if you had a rough day and just needed to unwind.
On Dive Studios, Jacob admitted that he was pretty unsure of himself in the sense that he had a low self esteem (wanted to shake him badly when he said that while yelling, “SAY THAT AGAIN??? YOUR VOICE GIVES ME COMFORT AND THE WAY YOU DANCE LITERALLY BLOWS ME AWAY YOU DUMBASS WDYM??!!) He claimed that someone would compliment him on his dancing or singing and while he'd thank them, he'd still feel like it wasn't enough. I hope that while he continues to be the best version of himself, he can also pat himself on the back for constantly having shown major improvement.
Another thing which I rlly admire abt him is how he acknowledges that while he’s the type to bottle up his emotions, he also wishes he was allowed to be angry because he doesn’t want to be known as just a ‘kind person’ which I definitely agree with. It can get tiring sometimes, having to constantly live up to a certain image in your group and wanting to break free of it.
On a lighthearted note, he might be one of the few idols that doesn't swear at all! He also has the patience of a saint, considering it's very hard for him to get angry. Even Eric claimed that while he'd seen him mad, he'd never seen him angry. He also shared an anecdote on The Daebak Show where he said that while they were trainees, they took acting lessons. Jacob’s script had a swear word so he told the teacher he couldn’t say it😭
In fact, he himself revealed that the last time he got really pissed off was as a kid because his brother or his cousin had thrown a deck of playing cards at his back due to which he yelled at them and even cursed them out🥴
He never got angry again. And never swore.
And even if he did swear, he'd send a silent prayer, asking for forgiveness until eventually, he stopped doing it entirely. But now he just does it in his head or uses a word that’s similar to the curse word when he wants to be verbal💀
His friendship with Kevin also makes me so envious like fight me idc but there will never be a more iconic duo than them!
Srsly, a friend like Jacob is what everyone needs. He’s so supportive of Kevin, always hyping him up whenever he doubts himself. There was a live where he was playing a game on his computer and Kevin was reading the comments and obviously, there were a few hateful ones telling him to go. Jacob made him stay with that pouty face of his and assured him he wasn’t being a bother :(
Or that one time when a comment asked him, “What does Kevin mean to you?” And he replied with the biggest smile on his face, “He is everything to me!”
Or when Kevin made Eric Nam ask him, “Would you shave off your eyebrows if it could earn Kevin a chance to meet Beyoncé?” and he replied, “It’s one of his biggest dreams and if me looking funny for a few months makes that happen, then… I mean it’s not permanent”.
Which friend does that???😭😭
Anyways, I could come up with more moments of him being the sweetest and softest bean ever but I’ll leave it at that!
Happy birthday, Jacob! Ever since I got into The Boyz, you’ve made me smile with your smile and you’ve healed me with your voice. I hope you’re always healthy and happy and I hope IST can let you release a solo album someday so you can work on (cheesy romantic) songs (because you + them = a deadly combo my heart won’t be able to handle) with the sound you think matches you (I’m talking honeyed airy vocals with an acoustic guitar but you do you, my guy) I’ll be on the sidelines, always cheering you on! I love you loads!💕

A local dealership is running a Memorial Day lease special on an jeep GC 4xe EV that qualifies for the $7500 federal tax credit. Despite what I’m reading about income caps that would disqualify me and that $7500 now being $3750 on that model, the dealership is claiming they have a work around for both. How does that work?
And second, I sat in the vehicle on Sat, confirmed it was still on the website Sat night, emailed the sales person that was working with me late that night to find out if I could come in this morning (Monday) to close the deal, crickets. I don’t even want to negotiate, I’m cool with their advertised prices, I’m open to which exact vehicle it ends up being off their lot (including any number of 2022s they already have duplicate of 2023s on their lot) I have tier one credit and my trade is paid off and straight forward on the price, they can take or leave it at $10k. I texted him mid afternoon yesterday to let him know that the email was in his inbox in case it got caught in a spam filter, still crickets. Have I given that sales person enough time? I couldn’t care less, but as someone who also does sales, I wouldn’t want to cut the guy out just because he wanted a day off, I have all the time in the world as long as I still get the Memorial Day sale deal or something close to it, but no response from two main forms of communication over a holiday weekend makes me think he’s just too busy selling cars to care. What’s good customer practice in a situation like this?

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Hi everyone! This is a complete English translation of the Aniara sequel book by Harry Martinson called Doriderna that was put together after the author died. This translation was put together using various translation programs that can be found online, so I can't guarantee that it is a perfect translation, but it's better than nothing. I will also post the original in Swedish so you can improve the translation or look up words etc. if you want. Hope you enjoy!
I would also like to let everyone know that I am also working on my own Aniara fan fiction short story that I call "The Lost Voices of Aniara". This story tells about the events aboard the Aniara from the view point of another passenger and attempts to add more details to the story. It should be ready in the next week or two.
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HARRY MARTINSON
The Dorides (Doriderna)
Remaining poems and prose pieces in selection and with preface by Tord Hall Albert Bonniers Förlag
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PREFACE
For reasons I will not go into here, Harry Martinson did not publish any new work in the last years of his life. There is therefore a very large literary legacy, the publication of which began in the fall of 1978 with "Längs ekots stigar" (Along the paths of the echo), published by Georg Svensson. This collection contains only a few purely scientific poems - the emphasis is on nature poetry. The selection was made from unpublished material - which had nevertheless reached the proof stage - in three previous collections.
It remains to address other lines of thought in Harry Martinson's work: the ideas in Aniara, which in various forms occupied his imagination until the end. To follow the continuation of this great theme - at least in part - is what I am trying to do in this second selection from the surviving archive.
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The 103 songs in Aniara were part of a larger set of poems, and the author then worked for several years on a sequel, to be called 'The Dorids', the people of the tribe of Doris. Around 1959 there were about 80 songs - most of them in more or less completed drafts. The dominant figure in the Dorids would not be Isagel or the Mimarobe, but Nobia, the Samaritan from the tundra planet and deportation site of Mars. Nobia would be a norna (fate goddess), though not a cruel goddess of fate, but a norna who weaves goodness into the fabric of the world.
But the whole project remained a large-scale endeavor. The reasons were many: illness, world events, which seemed to be moving towards a fulfillment of the prophecies in Aniara, and which gave him an increasingly dark view of life: he told me that "Aniara has become a neurosis" ... I feel like Mima being blown apart'. But the decisive reason was surely his demand for absolute freedom in his creativity. He did not want to be confined, and the result was, as he himself said, 'I have stepped out of Aniara'.
The fact that Harry Martinson stepped out of Aniara, and thus also out of the Dorides, does not at all mean that he left the motifs or ideas found there, which cover the scientific field from atoms to stars. Rather, it means that he was able to write without direct connection to the characters of Aniara and the Dorides in particular.
I have therefore considered it justified to call this entire collection the Dorides, even though the prose pieces and several poems do not have a clearly visible connection with such a title.
In order to comment briefly on the selection, I would like to say a few words about Harry Martinson's attitude towards modern science (it is my intention to return to this subject in more detail).
There are two main lines. One is deterministic, and has its roots in classical physics, founded by Newton, which dominated until the end of the 19th century. It has a philosophical form in the law of causation, which means that if you know enough facts about a certain course of events in the present and in the past, you can precisely specify the course of events in the future. Examples of such events in the 'big world' - the macrocosm - are solar and lunar eclipses.
But in the world of atoms - the microcosm - this determinism does not apply. Heisenberg demonstrated this through his uncertainty relation, also known as the indeterminacy principle. In the atoms, individual events are indeterminate, we cannot discern any causality - there is randomness. But chance can be mastered by the methods of statistics, and we must content ourselves with a "statistical causality", which describes the course of events in the atom with the highest possible degree of probability.
It is this second, indeterministic line that has long been followed by most physicists. But there is one major exception, and that is Einstein. At the 1927 meeting of physicists in Brussels, for example, he asked Bohr, Heisenberg and others with mild irony whether they really believed that God plays dice - "ob der liebe Gott würfelt". Einstein was convinced that the universe follows an ordering principle, a geometric structure, which can be called a world soul. This is a pantheistic view that is reminiscent of Spinoza.
Similar ideas are already present in Aniara, but in this selection the picture has become more sharply defined. Harry Martinson does not believe that chance plays a decisive role in the course of the world, as is clear from several poems and prose pieces. He believes more in Einstein than in dozens of other Nobel Prize winners. Apart from these authorities, he follows his intuition.
His approach to religion has often been quoted: he chooses the Riddler over the God. This belief is reflected in 'The Riddle'. In 'Poems on Light and Darkness', published in 1971, Harry Martinson, with 'The Inner Light' and 'The Bird in the Phoenix Bell', presents the events inside the atom itself. These poems show that - although 'Aniara' and 'The Dorides' are more about stars than atoms - he never lost his interest in the microcosm. In this selection, it is the atoms that are more interesting than the stars.
The bard enters the atom. He describes the course of events in a world which is completely beyond our senses and which, despite the enormous aids of science, we will probably never be able to understand exactly. The story itself probably comes from Gamow's book "Mr. Tompkins Explores the Atom". Published in Swedish translation in 1946, it is, along with "Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland" (also 1946), the versatile Gamow's best popular science books. Harry Martinson rated them highly.
The two poems 'Submerged as in a dream but still awake' and 'Actually, the comprehensibility was slight' depict a journey of thought into the atom, and the same motif recurs in several other places.
The poem "A Cosmic Thickness Lying Boundlessly Spread" poetically depicts a world development related to the hypothesis of the "stationary universe" put forward by Hoyle and others, and to Klein-Alfvén's "symmetrical cosmology". For several reasons - mainly aesthetic - Harry Martinson did not like the theory of 'the big bang', which was celebrated by most scientists. His poem should have been written quite a long time ago, and perhaps he would have changed his mind if he had been given the opportunity to understand what the "cosmic background radiation" - with a temperature of about 3 degrees above absolute zero - means for the credibility of "The big bang". It took natural scientists some time to become convinced that this radiation can best be interpreted as a fading glow after an unimaginable cosmic explosion some 18 billion years ago.
This selection also contains several pieces of prose, which in general do not need any comment. But I would like to mention a few. For "The Figuration Patterns of the Goddancer's Juggling Program", in three sections, there is a drawing by Harry Martinson, reproduced on the cover of this collection. The spread comes from Hindu philosophy: we see 'Siwa's juggling dance before Brama'. The dominant curves are so-called lemniscates, which were already known to the ancient Greeks. The lemniscate looks like an eight and is the mathematical symbol for infinity. It is defined as the trajectory of a point under the condition that the product of its distances to two given points is constant. In the center of the drawing there are several small curves. They are ellipses, and an ellipse - also first studied by the Greeks - is defined as the trajectory of a point under the condition that the sum of its distances to two given points is constant. The result is a geometric pattern, similar to a flower, which at the same time provides a poetic image of the complex interplay of forces in the atom with outward and inward energy impulses The juggler finds it increasingly difficult to work with his ball-particles as he progresses through the periodic table of the elements. In the end, he "dances the spectral theme in the dance of the Phoenix" - a symbol of the indestructibility of both energy and poetry, and a recurring motif in Martinson's poetry.
"Delsaga om tidens ariadnetråd" (Part of the saga of the Ariadne thread of time) is almost a fantasy about four-dimensional space, where you have to be careful not to get on the wrong track. The selection of prose pieces ends with "Some fairies dancing in the summer night near a quiet lake". It is a cheerful tale where the author combines a love of the Swedish summer with a love of light.
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I made this selection at the direct request of Harry. He even said several times that I should have all his scientific poems and prose pieces. But I think I judged this offer correctly when I saw it as an expression of his great generosity towards his friends. I always replied that he himself should complete and select what was to be published. But in his last years he did not want to publish anything. I therefore promised to make a selection if he did not change his mind.
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He did not, and this collection is the result.
Finally, I would like to thank Ingrid Martinson and Georg Svensson for the understanding and assistance they have given me in bringing this selection to fruition.
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Tord Hall
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The Dorides (Doriderna)
The book you hold was written in Mima's hall.
Now, on a secret wavelength, it is sent home to you, my friend, who for some years inhabits a spherical beach called the Valley of Doris.
In other words, it was written so close to your own being that nothing could be closer to you than those described here. You are one of them.
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Over the graves, the indifferent wind spreads
the whisper of the immortal gods
that no loss is foreseen in the grand scheme of things.
But what do the gods - those wasteful billionaires of the heavens - know about the beautiful and wonderful Doris?
how she was worth saving forever
and that whoever loved her
can never be comforted by the gods' continued waste.
About her a bird sings now alone in the tree of the grave. Of her as she was, the glorious one, if no other, the Dorides' thrush sings.
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The window was full of stars,
The Leonids' swarm of stars came, then you know the time.
Autumn was gone, its yellowing burnt.
The lookout tower, closed on the wooded mountains.
I stood as a child of a time that saw the stars detach from the roofs towards a room where novas frightened a more distant valley, I found other myths than those I was used to picking hurled at me from the space of the Leonids.
I stood in the cathedral of fear of dreams.
The great copper woman who lay there with her back soldered to the lid of the sarcophagus drove horror into me, cast my foot with lead.
That the copper woman knew who I was, I immediately sensed as a deadly weight, and that I had been summoned here by herself, by the queen of copper, of that I was certain.
In empty benches sat forgotten years, from the emptiness of the auditorium the organ pipes shone like stalactites in the vault of a cave and there was nothing, no light, no hint that gathered my crumbling courage.
For everything was fulfilled as it was written in stone once when the water abandoned the green and it was said that man will go away and become the dead slave of the dead dust.
And as I stood there gripped, filled with horror
for this judgment and epitaph
which was predetermined and rehearsed
in the mute trumpet of the seraphim of the stones,
bells fell suddenly from the towers to the earth that rocked with an ore-broken thunder, and the copper woman rose, a scream of remembrance drawn from afar to her lips as she drew me in close to her copper body in terrified death.
He woke up. There was light. It was day.
And the Samaritan Nobia sat silent, but still heard the echo of the screams his dreams had squeezed out of his fear.
She searched for words simple enough for a stranger to grasp, but not so simple as to drive away his trust, hardly won yet.
In simple action she finally found them.
And she stood up and smiled with milk
From the moors of Gondrin to the mouth of this fugitive.
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​
It is no exaggeration to say that space gave us long winter evenings rolled into one - the one that lasts. Our leisure time finally became a grim question with ice in our eyes and a frozen flame.
It became necessary to tell stories from reality - as it can be taken. I chose to tell about King Basii, who, supported by Chefone, forcibly turned himself into a god and magician in a celestial drama.
The Goldonder King felt like God and determined to live up to the gods he built himself a city in the sky.
It was a global world city of goldonders assembled into a kind of hive heaven.
But Basil's space-city, though it contained twelve million men in his service, was not enough for him; he had another built, and the greatest city in the world was soon in space. That city was a marvel to behold: a mighty golden dome, surrounded by three bionomically serving drabants, one of which was called the Vegetable City, one the Fish Drabant, and the third the Sting.
​
The names reveal their role and purpose.
So Basii sits in his heavenly land. The aquarium dragon orbits faithfully and Stings follows it with fattened animals and the vegetable moon amounts to the redwood.
The golden dome was the city of retreat for all climbers and celestial rebels, for gamma was a poison to all alike and all poor and rich alike had to choose between death and escape.
So many preferred the city of Basil.
But although he rules over twelve million
inhabitants of the great city of space, he is still very rarely happy.
And although the dragons in a faithful circle
raise animals and grow fish and wheat
Basil's only pleasure is when he gets
with Vulvis, the royal slave, to bathe in Lethe.
But all the deliciously good virginity
that can be enjoyed in Basil's harem
is in its nakedness a skin of fear.
of frightened dissimulation. And his love story
...is but a tale to be seen from the outside..,
and all his lust a forced voluptuousness.
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Thus in The Night of Aniara I draw a little picture that everyone can understand from the rich treasure of reality.
And every time I make an arabesque in the hall of Mima about this space grotesque that Basil's space city can probably be said to be, I can for an hour or so make people sigh: the best is here anyway.
From Basil's false heaven we preserve. No, I'd rather travel with Aniara.
But soon the alarm goes off. The bells proclaim that the images of the fairy tale are overtaken by visions here that distress ignites.
And quickly to the halls I return.
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The Goldonder's garden bubbled with glamour. A party was being held there and Chefone was there. He showed us a picture of the smith of happiness: the goldonder king Basii, a portrait jubilantly taken on the day the fifteen thousandth goldonder lay in the field ready for the wave of endlessness.
Then we were each seized by thoughtfulness and went to our own in solitude.
For in every ship of this number there was a Mima locked up in its cage.
The Rapid criminal was much loved and could operate as he pleased under the protection of the admiration he aroused. He always appeared at great speeds and abducted women whom he brought to Chefone in light blue rapid rockets.
Of course it was criminal, the people of the valley thought, but the charm was so close to the deed that the rampart was breached by sheer admiration and open worship soon followed the advice of restraint at the murder pedal.
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Tucked away in a corner of our gondola, I pretend to smile at some rough fellows who spend their evenings with mockery and violence, with a devilish flutter as their sole aim.
They look at me and find me mortified,
- The clear approval is what they expect...
and I'm close to being squeezed badly
every time they jokingly glance at my grave door.
The brute is approaching, his dull face with many a foolish whim weighing on his mind.
And many a scowl missed by pigs from the worst corners of the soul he throws at me.
And when, full of fear, I strike with depleted strength in the dull face, the troll is only amused by my blow and raises his eyebrow with interest.
Then I flee between the troll's legs and out the other side of the danger of death.
How this happened can only be fully explained by the light of the gopher and the fourth tensor theory.
​
Here came the sober, composed and sober man who always kept his soul in trim and stuck to the dry, honest maxims of life.
Now he went into the fire with his imagination.
His cool reason was completely burned His sober composure was fried in seconds when the photo turbo in Xinombra exaggerated the cold matter.
And yet I can't help but admire the man as he made his way to the office where he had been employed for many years
and where, despite offers to flee to the tundra, he provided punch cards for thousands who broke up every day.
There died a man who never raised his voice, who always remained true to his calm tone, the martyr of calm composure who was burned when the cruel fires of excess were lit.
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One is often chilled to the rock crystal by everything one hears before the ear falls like gray-white ash into the cremation hall.
And the girl from Rind who sees nothing is often heard to ask beyond the eye: how is the world of such torment visible? What is to be seen in this madness, where eeriness against eeriness is heard to answer?
Cultivating insight seemed futile
and many fell away from the faithful crowd.
and its program which was to see through
so that with the transparency of evil
as lens and instrument
try to find new signs
and new ways for the land of Gond.
Most people grew tired and withdrew from the room of the Truth Service, and Nobia sat for long periods almost alone, trying to hold on to her looms, always tormented
by the blood moisture of evil memories, the echoes of horror
surrounded her days
and made the Mara a bedfellow
who tore the fabric of the noman
and raped Nobia's dream
and the mood of life over the moors of Gondria.
It is as important to us to have friends
in the houses of distant worlds as at home by
the familiar road of the green earth.
You are reflected in endless eyes, watched by immense spectators.
They never interfere, but they watch the sewing and the mining,
the nurse and doctor on the rounds and the weapons in the shamelessly cruel wars.
Your own position under their eyes may be likened to the position you take with one whom you do not wish to grieve, but to share joy and to please.
So spoke the old astronomer, and then laid his head down to rest.
And he went smiling to the eternity that had been waiting by his side all his life.
His forehead shone with its ideas, even in the dead of death in the years of space.
He was among those who know the fairies of everything, those who get to comb Berenice's hair.
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But for the longest time I still want to believe that this is the torment of an evil dream and the ship Aniara a phantom from which I will wake up in the Valley of Doris.
Perhaps everything is a nightmare and I want to wait with poison and a knife. They say there are dreams of a kind that seem as long as a man's life.
Out of the dust you were born, from its gifts you were supported.
You did not manage the gift, many a meadow you made desolate.
What is beyond this sea is called Going down deep among riddles too great to be found in a grave.
Faith can never cover more than what you see in spirit.
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All the other things are too much to bear.
Do you hear the sound of the rescue team calling from an emergency station that is one of a thousand others, regardless of faith?
Now guess where the road leads and what Paradise is.
One of a thousand rescue stations scattered along the coast here.
Now I want to sing to my ear and ask it to listen to a voice that descends not to destroy the language I have collected for comfort. For the comfort of life and death, I whisper the price of sensitivity every time the sinful flow of language storms the breeze of the spirit.
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One night Heba lay awake in the city of Aniara and heard the painter's joyful painting.
The skilled varnisher was varnishing the years that would one day end on a stainless steel stretcher.
And suddenly from Heba there was a shout against the smooth roof.
The skilled varnishers know their business well.
Too hard to become joy, too happy to become sorrow. The painters paint everything in Aniara's castle.
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We know that we have been left out of the higher insight of the ocean of mystery and that we lack the tools to reach the depths of clarity that Mima once gave. But since Mima's death, the average of what we achieve of truth is not very high average is what is required if the choice of new paths is to be avoided.
A small number reach the values that should be the average to reach.
The others are satisfied with the flow of thought,
the rattle with which time is made to pass.
A daughter of my mother, called Tovi, was born in the night of space. Alas, dear ones, where can the crowd's demand for sensation and wonder lead us?
First came, as it should be, the blissfully sweet and indescribably pure birth, when the mimicry lay naked, uncovered and panting in the golden bed of the formula.
To her camp now came the mimicry and winged it
the naked one, as when the butterfly flies the honey chalice of its flower, in Dori's meadows. The description is not given (much to my regret) because there is always the possibility of a wave of miracles taking place in secret, to the great disappointment of many who wish to see how the mimagyne makes love, and from what angle the picture of the goddess's love life should be taken in order to really reach the audience.
Can it not be enough that Tovi gave birth to an allegorical child whom Isagel happily suckled at her breast and practiced miracles and consolation You may think so yourself, but others think otherwise.
For not even a mimagyn can defend the fruit of her womb against the human hyena who demands a clear answer on every point of what precedes it all: the prelude to sowing,
with the insides of the thighs well described in a clear image that gives the "public" a feeling that it was in the bed.
​
Yes, it has happened that I have sometimes asked myself (in private silence, of course) whether the smooth ice of superficiality does not have enough joy, and that the great swallows in these spaces are only terrible wakes which, compared to the agile princess and heartlessly threatening with superior power, will in the end become the cold room of beauty.
So small a strip bears, the other breaks, and all the incomparably large gapes with the same dark death which, unchanging with cold upon cold, only imitates itself.
To raise one's hand then with a light-year pound and demonstrate the fugue of eternity on terrible organs, while the girl in the icy distance dances, hardly greater to see than a fly flown away towards the light, it is to chill with the great weapon as when the superpower with the powers the element hides coldly makes its rows in the land of Gond against unsuspecting cities and, although itself dismissing all talk of sin punishment and trial, nevertheless treats the human with such terrible flame that this terrible torrent of loose gamma released by those who do not mean sin punishment nevertheless cruelly destroys both Yaal and Gena and melts down to ashes the wonder Heba
With the same fire they turned on Chebeba.
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Posterity does not understand you so easily.
It judges according to the image of posterity
and counts up the time you lived in
as rows of negligence, as offenses
against the spirit of foresight, the duties of thought.
To this it adds the work of suffering
and piles up, as blind as a judge
as you were blind as a criminal, case by case.
Can those who have killed the foundations of joy and destroyed the great city of joy have the right to the joys of life?
Does Cain have the right to be happy?
Can those who strangled the joys of Xinombra and burned the valley of paradise have the right to heights of heaven other than Aniara's daily agony?
I ask but never get an answer. I have to arrange for pastimes
for the hordes of Aniara and manage its entertainment.
​
A wave of newly awakened hatred swept through the mountains where Nobia lived in deep mines and ghostly white lights illuminated every thread of life in the fabrics she wove.
She had sought and found the thread of life - a discovery of how healing rays are empowered by the inner council of things and fused with the heart of the atom.
And while hatred swelled around the mountains
and wounds screamed in the valley of time.
she wove day and night until the color of victory
and the skin of life rose in the hall of death.
Of her beauty little can be said. It was lost in a wave of radiation but the clear purity of the soul could be weighed; in healed wounds we saw her reflection.
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Then I will throw you out of your chair. I will break your armchair view, because it is false and holds a convulsive security in a time that has slipped out of its rooms, but also the other way around: that it becomes a view without deep insight.
From this world, I shall send you happiness today to the kingdom of love, to the evil shore where the Samaritan Nobia and others spread works of love from country to country.
Figuring out the ways of evil and tracking down all the poison in the city of hate was futile, for hate stood there with heavy blocks united row by row.
Within its walls there was life and movement in the birthing centers and squares where human beings were conceived and human beings were born and human life in the human gap was destroyed. It was best to pretend that this city of self-righteous evil existed as nothing more than a devilish childhood that would mature, grow tired of itself.
We resolved to keep on sending saints there for the longest time.
from the saints' camps as long as the funds lasted
and as far as the need still aroused the heart.
This plan was tried for nine years, during which the Rind camp of saints bled to death: an act of self-sacrifice based on faith in the powers of good. But the heavy wall of hate stood just as hard, and the fatigue of leadership followed the act of hate; only too great was the throne of victory we had.
A single city consumed the power which we had thought sufficient for the transformation of the world.
​
On a rare occasion, the happiness of being free from desire also came.
Then the emptiness suddenly became populated by a kind of spiritualized mystery.
We walked the spirit's path of happiness along the beach, exchanging thoughts, making fortune cards.
It was evening and sunset in the sea.
Night fell, but the land of thought stood firm.
He woke up. She said: guess where.
I can't, he said. How did you get here? The same way you did: up the gravel path and then straight to the left among the cypresses. There was a dewy path the moonlight itself went there with light steps which I tried to imitate.
And when everything was past and the path was over
I managed to become a clear crystal and find you, my friend, on this path.
It is so transparently wonderful here.
We no longer exist. All that was is over.
Neither god nor devil here reaches us anymore and the end is the cruel parody of life.
​
Where is the plain text?
This is what I'm looking for.
The one that fits but still gives song.
After thanking God that he was a wasp and not something else, he continued between the leafy branches and stung the farmer.
Laid out by spiritual mobs, the truth becomes worse than the lie. When the mob washes the barley, it is never clean.
The rabble always wash in the dunghill from the Augean stables.
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​
Matema's camel bells ring in the deserts of speech where the caravans of unfinished quarrels
never reach their oasis, only become more camels.
Immersed as in a dream but still awake, I found myself changed and so naked that no dream has words for what it was like when, transformed by the stone, I cut down towards the inner realms and while this was happening I became smaller, smaller and even more stripped of layers and layers of time and space as I sank further and further into the stone, deeper and deeper into things.
Who undressed me, wore me down so much that no conceivable smallness so small on this earth can be imagined unless one is long since beyond what every comprehensible thought wants to deny.
And yet I was being stripped and reduced still further in no direction.
So sunk, unceasingly sunk in
towards even more breathtaking reduction
I retained in my dream a way of seeing
and understand that I was traveling into
to the dimensions, the innermost
who with their interior work with their interior
and whose interiors compose the world.
They scare children with darkness, criminals with punishment and sinners with realms beyond death where the vengeful desire to torment has transported its arsenal of tormenting images.
But sorrow follows us every day, and joy follows us every day.
We ourselves are the sorrow, we are also the joy, everything human is rooted in humanity, and no human being can escape humanity, not her hatred and her self-degradation, nor the joy she spreads, nor the love she forms.
There is a third land that is not death and not life, but the reality that pervades all realities, and spins the very thread of the fabric from which dreams are woven. Yes, I had come to the rooms where these threads are spun. When I arrived, I stepped out and saw no longer surprised the smallest fairy, who herself was not at all surprised to welcome me to her inner land.
And although we were both unimaginably smaller than two grains of traveling dust on a suit on earth, we thought we were big here in this smallest room to which I have now come and which nevertheless encloses with its vault a separate world of realities formed.
On the contrary, I cannot describe what I saw of strange things, but that will follow when the habit of telling stories has been practiced for other habits than what life offers,
and other things than those called death.
For though beyond all I have known
this was not death
and though within all I have known
this was not life.
​
Actually, the comprehensibility was slight, as when multiples arranged in layers, and layered in the directions of space, make the fabric of the dream omnidirectional structural and become a fabric consisting of paths where the thread is only thought of as a path as a sign that here the shuttle has gone, but where is the thread? The thread is the path. I saw how the gnome was in a quandary as to which of two different possibilities to give clarity.
Then came formulas of such an elusive nature that the gnome was again gripped by the anxiety
which arises when the explanation is attempted but little response is felt by the pupil.
And with a look that shone as if with sorrow, he signaled a break in the dilemma. And with a formula more magical than comprehensible, we left the atom.
We expanded to other contexts and sat on a leaf next to a bee eagerly searching for honey in a meadow.
​
The Dance
Around the great star of the day we shall orbit the years we have been given to live, and our family for a few thousand centuries, perhaps more, perhaps less, no one knows.
But the time that we are orbiting is so small compared to that of the suns where they wander around in orbits in the galaxy our family named the Milky Way, luminous to behold.
What can our eyes see, our hearts cry out at the thought of atoms going around in the same way with waves and particles.
Some have called this the dance of the gods - it is always being danced by everything in the universe.
All indications are that among the arts of the muses
the art of dance is the first and the last,
and we are in it, dancing out
our role in the dance, it is already being danced
in other worlds separate from our time,
in other dance theaters,
yet one thing is clear
that we are dancing our turns.
Our role in it
is ours and no one else's.
Our own role in the dance art of all worlds.
​
Economic overview
Our earth wanders alive alone, around the sun our dear parent.
As far as the giant tubes reach no living neighbor to see.
Desolate and empty on the one who received the name of the god of war, burning hot and desolate on the one who received the name of the goddess of love.
Jupiter, planet of Zeus
ice-clad to two hundred times the height of the Himalayas.
The others are death's door.
Beyond that, light years to the next planetary village.
So each sun has only one living person, and that one is a leased farm, indefinitely and to an unreliable and dangerous race.
​
Here is a world of light distributed in the mystery of things.
Here is the salvaged light in the innumerable rooms of the stone.
Wands point with poles directed to their rooms inside mountains and stones, spinning mystery.
Deep in her fairy tale, she lives for the sake of the tale.
the norn who has learned to spin the yarn from the wool of the riddles.
​
The spirit of Ideema from space in endless lines gathered the seeds into the durable wood of the suns.
From far beyond time the hydrogen came in modest garb and built for its God the ingenious nests of the atoms.
Come, let us nurture the foundation of our life. The green sphere we have been given to live on in the universe's lottery system.
When the next lucky draw can get rid of the Milky Way's big tombola we do not know and can never reach.
But we do know one thing for sure: the next draw will not include us.
​
A stranger called chance shuffles the cards and deals them to the local players.
Every single poker face keeps a straight face.
There are plenty of goldfish in the tureen here.
According to the law, the silent coincidence itself is the last to raise its hand, with ice in its stomach.
Soon jaws of granite are chewing the cigar.
Where is the bundle of happiness among the starlings?
That question is answered when chance wins.
Then the shot goes off, chance's life disappears. His house of cards collapses, but soon everyone at the counter thinks it was a nice fish, that no one won, that chance herself was told by Smith and Wesson what chance was.
by Smith and Wesson what chance should do.
( translation to be continued )

I came across the post 2019 Fantasy Bingo Card Using Eurovision Songs (yes, seriously) by u/improperly_paranoid and as it is still Eurovision month, despite Eurovision 2023 ending 2 weeks ago I was curious to see if I could make this work for the Bingo 2023 card and Eurovision 2023 songs because it seemed like fun.
For those not in the know, Eurovision is an annual song contest where participating countries send an entry to compete for the opportunity to host the competition the following year and show off about their culture, it's a lot of fun, very camp and participating countries get to vote for the results. This year for the first time voting was expanded to non participating countries such as: the United States, Canada, Kosovo, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Mexico, Hungary, Slovakia, UAE, Turkey, and Chile. This interval performance of Love Love Peace Peace should give you a better idea of what it is all about. Eurovision often has fantastical elements, such as a woman floating in space above the Earth, an inflating lightning dress, not to mention funky video game inspired entries, and even a stick figure imaginary friend.
I think I've made my point, anyway if anyone doesn't know what Fantasy Bingo is then check it out! It's a yearly challenge to encourage diversifying your reading, I had a lot of fun with it last year and the community aspect is great for gathering ideas for themed cards, asking about if a book fits and seeing what everyone recommends.
Rule 1: Once a country has been used for a square it cannot be reused
Rule 2: Only songs and performers from Eurovision 2023 are eligible

Now, the Squares.

First Row
Title with a Title: Future Lover - Brunette (Armenia), although Queen of Kings would also work here I need it for...
Superheroes: Queen of Kings - Alessandra (Norway), I mean look at that cape! If she isn't a superhero I don't know who is.
Bottom of the TBR: I Wrote A Song - Mae Muller (United Kingdom), Mae performed as the final act in the Grand Final so was literally the performance we'd been waiting for the longest. Alternatively Luxembourg, who are returning to the competition in 2024 after a 30 year absence.
Magical Realism: Bridges - Alika (Estonia), a piano that plays itself.
Young Adult: Breaking My Heart - Reiley (Denmark), very bright and feels like it has a younger target audience.
​
Second Row
Mundane Jobs: Who the Hell is Edgar? - Teyas & Salena (Austria), about singers and a dead writer ghostwriting.
Published in the 00s: What They Say - Victor Vernicos (Greece), okay obviously none of these songs are published in the 00s because that goes against Eurovision rules, however singer songwriter Victor is 16 years old...Yes this is an age joke, he's the youngest singer in the competition this year and he was born in the 00s. Plenty of other contestants for this year are born in the 2000s as well, including Brunette.
Angels and Demons: Blood & Glitter - Lord of the Lost (Germany), no blatant angel/demon iconography this year so I had to stretch the definition a bit, with this song embodying the notion that everyone has both angelic and demonic characteristics. Serbia's song does namedrop the Devil, but I need that song for later.
Five Short Stories: Flag Parade featuring short live performances from previous highly successful Ukrainian acts, showcasing the history of Ukraine in Eurovision interspersed with UK songs due to the UK hosting on behalf of Ukraine.
Horror: Like An Animal - Piqued Jacks (San Marino), this song might come the closest to straight up horror this year because of the lyrical content, alternatively this staging may qualify Romania's entry for this square.
​
Third Row
Self-Published: Carpe Diem - Joker Out (Slovenia), as far as I could tell only this song and Future Lover - Brunette (Armenia) are self-published this year.
Set in SWANA Country: Tell Me More - TuralTuranX (Azerbaijan), this source explicitly mentions Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Published in 2023: Promise - Voyager (Australia), this is a freebie since they are all published in 2023. Check it out, this band knows how to put on a show.
Multiverse/Alternate Realities: Eaea - Blanca Paloma (Spain), again I'm stretching a bit here, but this song does have a very otherworldly feel to it.
POC Author: Heart of Steel - TVORCHI (Ukraine), Jimoh Kehinde was born in Nigeria.
​
Fourth Row
Book Club or Readalong: Cha Cha Cha - Käärijä (Finland), the song everyone is watching on youtube, it currently has the most views of all the live performances of the 2023 show, with 15 million views.
Novella: Mama ŠČ! - Let 3 (Croatia), the shortest song this year according to youtube. Also Croatia did get to the Grand Final, but their semi-final performance video on youtube is shorter for some reason.
Mythical Beasts: Unicorn - Noa Kirel (Israel), it's even HM
Elemental Magic: Break A Broken Heart - Andrew Lambrou (Cyprus), the most elemental mage in Eurovision 2023, we get a waterfall, rain and fire. Shoutouts to Romania for their firey performance and Georgia and Estonia for their water iconography.
Myths and Retellings: Soarele şi Luna - Pasha Parfeni (Moldova), use of multiple folklore characters with the lyrics written by Pasha's wife Yuliana about a beautiful marriage, you could definitely argue this is a retelling of their own love story.
​
Fifth Row
Queernorm Setting: Because of You - Gustaph (Belgium), a camp song described by Gustaph as "an ode to the queer community".
Coastal or Island Setting: Solo - Blanka (Poland), features a coastal background.
Druids: Power - Diljá (Iceland), she's got plant powers.
Featuring Robots: Samo mi se spava - Luke Black (Serbia), a lot of video game iconography, very moody atmosphere and a big robot boss to fight. TVORCHI's Heart of Steel also fits here.
Sequel: Tattoo - Loreen (Sweden), a surprising amount of songs work for sequel, as we had 6 returning performers from previous Eurovisions/Junior Eurovision including Pasha Parfeni (Moldova), Marco Mengoni (Italy), Monika Linkytė (Lithuania), Gustaph (Belgium), Iru (Georgia). But Loreen fits best here, as she returns from winning Eurovision 2012 with Euphoria to win again in Eurovision 2023. Making her the second person to win Eurovision twice.
With a few stretches to make a Bingo challenge meant for books work for songs, it sort of worked. How about that.

Bitcoin

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L2 report vol. 22
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Frequently Asked Questions + Weekly Discussion Thread
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Since this sub doesn’t allow me to post images… scam warning!
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"The @salemkode blockexplorer has full BCMR support & now resolves autchains for updating metadata! For example this is the tokenId of @BitCatsHeroes and see how it shows all the nfts! The icons are even clickable! -> [Link]"
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Bitcoin Cash NFTs on Kraken NFT Community? Let's make it happen! CashTokens (BCH)
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🚀📈🌕 #SatoshiSwap is on fire!
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blockbank ($BBANK) undervalued gem
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🚀 Join the $PEPX Meme Coin Revolution! - PepeMusk 🐸🚀
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Announcing the PinkSale Fair Launch of Billionaire Pepe - Join the Meme Coin Revolution on June 2nd!
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How does this scam work?
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Blocked from Cashing Out
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NFT Link
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Binance Support Thread
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Fantom Returns 15% Gas Fees to Selected Projects
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Another Day in Crypto: Fantom (FTM) Rekt Due to Multichain Team Arrests?
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Web3 Game Development in Singapore: The Next Gaming Trend
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When are Neutron staking rewards live for ATOM stalkers?
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Rewards are through the roof!!!!31% apy
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What is the most used DEX on cosmos besides osmozone?
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Feedback requested: launching our new State of Algorand daily report
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Set up an Eternl wallet with Trezor model T and stake
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Elite Wallet release 1.1.6
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This is a dumb idea? I need to know :)
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NVDA did not file a new shelf offering.
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Trading stocks after-hours on Robinhood
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SELLING STOCKS
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Who knew sprinkling a little AI would do that to a stock 🤔🤖
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Boys & girls, stop buying NVDA puts
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Get out of I-bonds now since rates are sub-average?
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25k of student loans at less than 5 percent interest. pay off or invest?
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If you invest in US stocks and feel confused about the current stock market, you may wish to join us! Here are the latest investment strategies and stock lists, and there will be stock market analysis every day to help you quickly recognize the current situation. Click the link below to join us：
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Lira dropped beyond 20 per Dollar after Turkey loses its chance to restore democracy w/Erdogan’s reelection.
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Hodling Nvda since it was $7,50 : selling CC to get eventually assigned strategy so I can diversify?
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QBTS on anyone's radar?
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$UFAB what’s the consensus on this ?
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Tesla Whistleblower Case Could be Serious
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Hey baseball card collectors I really need some help. I live in maryland just between DC and Baltimore and have been looking for somewhere to purchase baseball cards in person.
I’m tired of ordering boxes from different site like target, Walmart, blowout cards, da card world and would just like to be able to walk into a place to purchase cards. None of the local retail stores offer them in person only online now. If you know anywhere around the Baltimore or DC area that sell cards, whether a card shop or retail store please send me your recommendation. There’s a few in Baltimore but not sure which are best.
Greatly appreciate it.

Hi everyone, wondering what you think of my situation here. I work for Company A, the media arm of a government contractor, which is as about as dysfunctional, toxic and chaotic as a workplace can be. Our parent company (the contractor) was acquired by private equity 2 years ago and has been determined to make us (the media arm) independently profitable. It's been a huge struggle because there is a lot of management in place that frankly, doesn't have what it takes to make this happen. The media arm consists of about 20-25 people and has experienced more than 50% turnover in the last year alone because of the endless drive to meet revenue goals by pursuing content/product development that is not sustainable or scaleable.
My direct boss micromanages, is insecure and incompetent. I can do the job better than her (I'm her No. 2) and she knows it and frequently undermines me by telling me to assign tasks to more junior members on our direct team then changes the assignment and makes me do it, completely rewrites some portions of my work even though I've been doing the job 3 years now, have been promoted twice, and have demonstrated I know what I'm doing. She also drops the ball on a lot of project management, which I then have to pick up to keep our immediate team running smoothly. She does not communicate well and often "forgets" or just doesn't tell me and our junior staff members important information we need to finish an editorial product or package of products.
I threatened to quit twice last year and leveraged that into two very big raises because my boss and her boss, who is the president of the media arm, both know they'd be fucked without me.
My direct boss is only one of the big problems, because all of management engages in very gossipy, adversarial behavior with each other and toward the junior employees. For example, I've heard through the grapevine that my boss considers me "a pain in her side" because I called her out for being dishonest about errors she introduced to a published article a few months ago.
And that's the other thing – due to the obsessive pursuit of meeting revenue goals to impress our hedge fund overlords, the president of the media arm has created a burnout culture that turns to dishonesty and unethical behavior to get clients and sell our editorial products. This is a big reason why I'm leaving, because professionally, I don't want to be associated with this kind of behavior.
A friend of mine, who worked in sales for the media arm, recently left to go to another government contractor (Company B) to work in marketing. Part of the reason why she left was because of the dishonest, unethical tactics used to sell products and also because she hadn't gotten her commission in 5 months. Side note: the reason for this is because the media arm is 20-25 people and the corporate accounting team at Company A don't care about tracking down invoices and so sales people for the media arm have to track down their own invoices and clients to pay up. Media president says this is common practice at lots of companies, I smell bullshit.
Anyway, management at the media arm retaliated against my friend immediately. When she signed Company B's offer letter, she had to sign a bunch of company policies ("onboarding documents") and fill out a background check. Standard fare, right? Well, media arm of Company A accuses her of already working for Company B because she did that, and told her they couldn't guarantee paying out her commission because it was her responsibility to collect invoices and get her own clients to pay up. Then, management started spreading lies about what was going on. One manager told me that my friend was already working for Company B and was complaining about not getting paid when she was always getting paid (referring to my friend's base salary, which is pennies, as is typical in sales departments). I corrected her, media president found out, he pulled me aside to try to paint my friend as a hysterical woman, then let my friend go the next day before her 2 weeks were up. It's been a month and she still hasn't been paid out her owed commission.
So this is the background (sorry, long story). On Thursday I have a career-making event with an important government official who approached me personally to do this event with her, and we chose to do it through our media arm because that was easier from a logistics standpoint. Last Friday, I got a job offer from Company B for a marketing position with a massive raise. I like the company, my friend referred me, I took the job.
Here's the thing. I don't want to give Company A 2 weeks because I fear retaliation and I worry about them pulling me off my Thursday event, because past experiences with them demonstrates this is a possibility (my direct boss stole a similar event engagement from me 2 years ago because she wanted the career clout even though I acquired the high-ranking government official to speak and had the relationship with said speaker). Some people might say Company A would never pull me off the week of the event because of how it would reflect on them and the government official, but honestly, given their past behavior, I'm not so sure.
My current plan is to quit the day after the event so I can have a week off before starting my new job at Company B and avoid any potential retaliation. Also, frankly, given the toxicity of the workplace, I'm not sure they deserve 2 weeks anyway.
TLDR; I'm leaving a toxic workplace and am planning to NOT give 2 weeks to avoid retaliation and the possibility of them pulling me off a career-making event, which is happening right before I leave. Should I try to give them 1 week, or just commit to quitting and leaving the day after the event? How bad is this for me professionally?

I am intrigued by the Memorial day sale that, with coupon, brings the whole package of Atari VCS + 2 controllers to under $200. That's a "great deal", or at least, it would have been 2 years ago when it released. Also, I missed the GameStop deal for $99, if I had found it at that price at that time, I probably would have bought it.
As it is right now, the problem with the Atari VCS is that at this current point, there are mini-PC mfgs that are literally selling Ryzen 5 5600H units using DDR5 RAM for about $25 more than the Atari VCS. Now that is not a pure apples to apples comparison because that particular mini-PC would not have RAM and hard drive included, but I reckon the 16GB of DDR4 and 32GB of eMMC memory that Atari includes is probably worth another $30 or so. The controllers are supposedly worth a great deal of money but I feel Atari does overcharge, anyway I figure that there is about $100 of value extra that Atari gives hardware-wise.
The problem is, the Ryzen 5 5600H with Vega 7 trounces the Atari VCS R1606G with Vega 3. Which is to be expected of course, but that makes buying the Atari VCS a tricky decision on hardware specs alone. And I do love the aesthetics of the Atari VCS not gonna lie, but especially in my situation because I literally have extra memory sticks, SSDs, and controllers lying around that I can salvage, it makes it too difficult to choose the Atari VCS (if I didn't have all those things, it would be a slightly more difficult decision because of the price difference, but I'd probably still go with the modern mini-PC).
The one question I wonder though, is the included software. I understand that you get a whole bunch of Atari games included with the VCS, and that has been updated and now you get even more, is that correct? And also you get a free Antstream subscription? If so, that could tip the scales in the Atari VCS favor, depending on the details (as opposed to getting the same titles on your own, if that is even possible). Also, you get the custom Atari OS which is of course not possible to get otherwise (which you can dual-boot with Windows). So, between the games, the custom OS, and the free AntStream subsciption, I am wondering, does this finally make it worth it?